Kathryn - Kat - Allen (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} katallen) wrote,@ 2007-10-20 06:18:00 |
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Who Can Forget A Nudibranch?
Fromatheilen the most noble timesink of them all...
http://www.freerice.com/index.php
And yes, I had no problem with the nudibranch - because it's amazing how many less usual words you pick up over the course of a lifetime. Thus I also know what a sabot is (Belgian mother).
-----
Seems to me that one thing writers, and readers, have endless trouble with is the difference between a good book - one that demonstrates craftsmanship etc and a good book - where people mean 'I liked it'.
I'm fine about liking, even loving, bad books. That some people have to find reasons why something is 'good' in order that they can like it, or else keep their love a shameful secret... not something I can be bugged with. (Yes, you're looking at the teenager who loved songs by The Clash, and Ultravox, and Abba, and... and wasn't the slightest bit worried about admitting it)
Here's the thing. Present me with the best possible dish of oysters... and my past associations and present tastebuds etc will mean I can appreciate the artistry or craftsmanship of their preparation and that they are good oysters, but they will not be to my taste. If they were bad oysters, poorly presented and smelling like dead shellfish do... I would know they were bad. I wouldn't need to like the taste of oysters to know that, either.
And yes, there's a place in the middle, where the craft is middling and personal taste can make the difference between whether one classes a book as good or bad... (or whether one can class it as better or worse than another dish of middling oysters) Which is why most books can't easily be classified as objectively good/bad on the craftsmanship scale (good pacing but clunky prose, intricate plot but poor character development... we're back to matters of taste and preferance)
But there *are* objectively good books - or better written books. And objectively worse ones.
Everything else is open to discussion...
I've been watching Stargate Atlantis Season Two... My mother was saying how much she was enjoying it, I hmmed a little and admitted I was missing something - that the first series had a 'cut off from home, must find ZPM before wraith come to kill us all' plot arc thingy that underpinned and explained the roaming around getting into trouble stuff. This series... no such explanation for why they're still roaming around when that puts them in danger of revealing their existance to the baddies. 'Oh', says my mother, 'that's true. Doesn't bother me though because I like the new guy...' (yes, the one with the knives... ::cough:: we both like him)
See, saying something is a matter of taste doesn't actually close down the opportunity to discuss what's good or bad, working or not. It just tends to be used for that purpose.
And probably rightly, because who wants to always be analysing why something is or isn't working for them? Or listen to someone making holes in their favourite show/music/book (Okay, I don't always mind, but... I'm weird that way, and it isn't always true)
[Plus... well discussions about taste can only work if people can give up on the idea that you are what you eat. That liking X makes you a better person, and liking Y reveals you're a pleb. People really do buy the latest Booker prize-winning novel and put it on quiet display -- they're generally on the lists of most bought/least read books. They read books that they think they 'should' read, or that other people are reading - even when they don't enjoy doing so. (And when I was baby-sitting for people I used to examine their 'on display' bookshelf... fascinating hobby) Literacy itself is a symbol of... well, lots of things that ain't necessarily so just because someone can read. And I'm not sure it's even possible to put aside reverance for what your society holds as important or iconic without also losing sight that it's relevant to any analysis... or to put it another way... you can decide to ignore the SFF geek factor, but then you're in danger of ignoring the influence of the geek factor.]
But yeah, there are good book and bad books... and the existance of such extremes is what encourages people to try and shove books they like or don't like into those boxes. We like tidy neat boxes (especially if we can get other people to agree that our taste is good and right and superior)
[I shudder at those all white extra tasteful Christmas trees... I'm still nursing along twenty year old plus Xmas lights... small, multicoloured and an essential part of the wild tasteless colourful extravaganza I like to call a Christams tree]
So here are three neat tidy boxes... pre-labelled. Well-written (small box). Badly-written (slightly larger box). All the Rest (box the size of New York).
-----
And Dumbledore joins the ranks of tragic gay figures... http://www.hpana.com/news.20228.htm
Why no true love and happy-memories for Dumbledore? -- well, see, he's gay.
"corrected a passage in which Dumbledore was reminiscing about past loves by crossing it out and scrawling "Dumbledore is gay" over it."
I've seen two reported version of what the Rowling question was -
"Did Dumbledore love anyone? Jo started to say "I always saw Dumbledore as gay" "
And over here - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071020/ap_
"She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love." "Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause."
This is not whining against the many good stories I've read where there's a tragic gay romance. 'The Wild Swans' leaps to mind. But with the automatic linkage of gay love with heartbreak (or the implication that heterosexuals can find true love but gay people... I guess I'm thinking that either you believe in true love or you redefine it as being based on reproductive sex, none of that meeting of minds/souls stuff.)
Not, however, surprised that so many questions were about pairing people off -- that was one of the fanfiction obsessions after all.
Nor surprised that JKR doesn't view Snape the way so many of her fans do. One of life's ironies is that intelligent people can find depth in quite shallow pools. It's about mirrors and reflections and refractive indexes... or so I understand.
[And no, not particularly impressed by "Rowling remarked that if she had known that (applause) would be the response, she would've revealed her thoughts on Dumbledore earlier."]
From
atheilen the most noble timesink of them all...http://www.freerice.com/index.php
And yes, I had no problem with the nudibranch - because it's amazing how many less usual words you pick up over the course of a lifetime. Thus I also know what a sabot is (Belgian mother).
Seems to me that one thing writers, and readers, have endless trouble with is the difference between a good book - one that demonstrates craftsmanship etc and a good book - where people mean 'I liked it'.
I'm fine about liking, even loving, bad books. That some people have to find reasons why something is 'good' in order that they can like it, or else keep their love a shameful secret... not something I can be bugged with. (Yes, you're looking at the teenager who loved songs by The Clash, and Ultravox, and Abba, and... and wasn't the slightest bit worried about admitting it)
Here's the thing. Present me with the best possible dish of oysters... and my past associations and present tastebuds etc will mean I can appreciate the artistry or craftsmanship of their preparation and that they are good oysters, but they will not be to my taste. If they were bad oysters, poorly presented and smelling like dead shellfish do... I would know they were bad. I wouldn't need to like the taste of oysters to know that, either.
And yes, there's a place in the middle, where the craft is middling and personal taste can make the difference between whether one classes a book as good or bad... (or whether one can class it as better or worse than another dish of middling oysters) Which is why most books can't easily be classified as objectively good/bad on the craftsmanship scale (good pacing but clunky prose, intricate plot but poor character development... we're back to matters of taste and preferance)
But there *are* objectively good books - or better written books. And objectively worse ones.
Everything else is open to discussion...
I've been watching Stargate Atlantis Season Two... My mother was saying how much she was enjoying it, I hmmed a little and admitted I was missing something - that the first series had a 'cut off from home, must find ZPM before wraith come to kill us all' plot arc thingy that underpinned and explained the roaming around getting into trouble stuff. This series... no such explanation for why they're still roaming around when that puts them in danger of revealing their existance to the baddies. 'Oh', says my mother, 'that's true. Doesn't bother me though because I like the new guy...' (yes, the one with the knives... ::cough:: we both like him)
See, saying something is a matter of taste doesn't actually close down the opportunity to discuss what's good or bad, working or not. It just tends to be used for that purpose.
And probably rightly, because who wants to always be analysing why something is or isn't working for them? Or listen to someone making holes in their favourite show/music/book (Okay, I don't always mind, but... I'm weird that way, and it isn't always true)
[Plus... well discussions about taste can only work if people can give up on the idea that you are what you eat. That liking X makes you a better person, and liking Y reveals you're a pleb. People really do buy the latest Booker prize-winning novel and put it on quiet display -- they're generally on the lists of most bought/least read books. They read books that they think they 'should' read, or that other people are reading - even when they don't enjoy doing so. (And when I was baby-sitting for people I used to examine their 'on display' bookshelf... fascinating hobby) Literacy itself is a symbol of... well, lots of things that ain't necessarily so just because someone can read. And I'm not sure it's even possible to put aside reverance for what your society holds as important or iconic without also losing sight that it's relevant to any analysis... or to put it another way... you can decide to ignore the SFF geek factor, but then you're in danger of ignoring the influence of the geek factor.]
But yeah, there are good book and bad books... and the existance of such extremes is what encourages people to try and shove books they like or don't like into those boxes. We like tidy neat boxes (especially if we can get other people to agree that our taste is good and right and superior)
[I shudder at those all white extra tasteful Christmas trees... I'm still nursing along twenty year old plus Xmas lights... small, multicoloured and an essential part of the wild tasteless colourful extravaganza I like to call a Christams tree]
So here are three neat tidy boxes... pre-labelled. Well-written (small box). Badly-written (slightly larger box). All the Rest (box the size of New York).
And Dumbledore joins the ranks of tragic gay figures... http://www.hpana.com/news.20228.htm
Why no true love and happy-memories for Dumbledore? -- well, see, he's gay.
"corrected a passage in which Dumbledore was reminiscing about past loves by crossing it out and scrawling "Dumbledore is gay" over it."
I've seen two reported version of what the Rowling question was -
"Did Dumbledore love anyone? Jo started to say "I always saw Dumbledore as gay" "
And over here - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071020/ap_
"She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love." "Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause."
This is not whining against the many good stories I've read where there's a tragic gay romance. 'The Wild Swans' leaps to mind. But with the automatic linkage of gay love with heartbreak (or the implication that heterosexuals can find true love but gay people... I guess I'm thinking that either you believe in true love or you redefine it as being based on reproductive sex, none of that meeting of minds/souls stuff.)
Not, however, surprised that so many questions were about pairing people off -- that was one of the fanfiction obsessions after all.
Nor surprised that JKR doesn't view Snape the way so many of her fans do. One of life's ironies is that intelligent people can find depth in quite shallow pools. It's about mirrors and reflections and refractive indexes... or so I understand.
[And no, not particularly impressed by "Rowling remarked that if she had known that (applause) would be the response, she would've revealed her thoughts on Dumbledore earlier."]
