October Book Report

I'm gearing up at the moment for another sprint of writing, or rather a marathon, to see how much of Mitwa I can pound out by the end of November. I'm setting 50,000 words as my goal, but I hope to have the first draft done by the end of December. I have a week off of work in December, plus two weeks break from homeschooling over the holidays, so I think that much at least is doable. Which means that if I miss my goal of 50,000 words in November, as long as I get at least 30,000 I'll consider myself quite pleased. Wish me luck!

On the reading front, I read four more Heinlein books, all collections of short stories and novellas. Namely, it was Waldo & Magic, Inc., Green Hills of Earth, Orphans of the Sky, and Assignment in Eternity. I particularly liked "Gulf" from the last of those, about a spy who is actually the next step on the evolutionary ladder. Heinlein touched on a lot of interesting ideas with language on that one (in a nutshell, the supermen speak a super language). I'll probably go back and revisit that one later. That would be my greatest writing frustration: that I can't work out how to show my ideas, about how the language you speak structures your thinking. I've played with it a bit, but I've had no real luck. In this respect movies and TV beat novels. I've been watching season one of Heroes and have really enjoyed the fact that the two Japanese characters speak Japanese with each other (and wonder why everyone in India speaks English...). I love hearing the sounds and rhythms of other languages, and getting a feel for the concepts that just don't translate. Hard to convey that in prose, though.

In the non-Heinlein front, I read Empire of Ivory, the fourth Tremeraire book by Naomi Novik. Plotwise it was slower than the first three, but ideawise it was excellent. The themes that have been slipping in and out of the background are moving to the foreground now, and I'm looking forward to book five (I suspect it will be the last, but I'm not sure).

I also read Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde. I love Fforde. In writing circles one of the most frequent (and by extension most tiresome) arguments is the question of literary versus genre (and what defines each). I don't think readers care as much as writers do about such questions; nearly everyone I know who reads, reads both. Jasper Fforde is very funny and writes one of the best female lead characters around, but what I like most about him is his palpable love of books: all books. If you love books all stripes, you really should be reading Jasper Fforde.

The last book I picked up was Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter. This is the sequel to I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You and is about a prep school for girls which secretly trains them to be spies. I've loved them both; it's cool to read books about teen-age girls who can do college level physics and math, speak twelve languages, and hack into computers but still deal with the horror that is strapless formal wear. As much as I love a teen-age witch, it's nice to see another path to empowerment explored. If you liked Veronica Mars, you'll like Ally Carter, I'm betting.

OK, I'm off to finish off a few last chores before I start the big writing crunch tomorrow. It would be nice to hit the ground running. I'm not sure yet whether I'll skip blogging, post word count updates, or use blogging as a mental break from the WIP and talk about other stuff; we'll see what the future brings.