pharmocracy

[ an apoplectic rant goes here ]

Marriott, again

Bill Marriott talks about building the Marriott Marquis NYC.

more acquisitions

• Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Jonathan L. Howard
• The Third Bear, Jeff VanderMeer
• The Narrator, Michael Cisco

Yeah, I've been on kind of a VanderMeer tear lately, and it's kind of inexplicable since I seem to like about 2/3 of his books. Which, I guess, is better than my ratio with Stephen Baxter… but Baxter's books have a somewhat lower cost of admission. Finch was kind of slow and hard to finish up until the end, when the book seemed to change in pace and tone. I would have preferred the book to have been written in one style or the other, but both was hard to finish. That having been said, I've read a lot of drek lately, and Finch is not in that category. Not by a long shot. Notably, I finally just put down The Star Fraction because I realized I didn't like reading it and I was only reading it to figure out what the author was trying to set up for the – get this – next three books.

I realize MacLeod is well-regarded (by Banks and Stross even), and I worry that I'm becoming somewhat jaded. My tastes have changed pretty substantially in the last few years, and I'm starting to read a lot more conceptual and post-modern fiction. It's unfortunately made something of an impact on my writing, too, and this kind of bothers me. In particular, Vurt and The Raw Shark Texts, and to a lesser extent Angel Dust Apocalypse have all kind of changed the way I write and read. And of course, VanderMeer has factored into that with his Ambergris Cycle, as well. And if I want to be honest about it, House of Leaves fits in there too.

The thing that tweaks me is that I didn't really feel like I liked a lot of these books. I certainly didn't like The Raw Shark Texts; I found it kind of tedious. I slogged through House (although I absolutely loved it). Vurt was absolutely disgusting in many ways. And of course with VanderMeer, I have this love-hate relationship where I keep reading despite not really liking what I'm reading. It seems, though, that somehow these works are all important, and I would somehow be remiss by not reading it and taking on a part of it.

Lately I don't know what to make of my writing. It bothers me in that it doesn't feel like my own voice. Technically, it's some of the better writing I've done. It's more complex in a lot of ways. But it's also over-wrought and affected. I really am not into writing like that, and yet when I sit down to write, it seems to be what comes out lately.

I am sure none of this affects anyone reading this. It should, however, be useful for me to look back on down the line, when I figure out what some of this work means, whether it be my own or what I was reading over the last few years.