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One of my favorite anecdotes about a modern author is perhaps apocryphal. I am sure I read it in an interview, but I can no longer find it in the depths of the internet. My Google-fu, to mangle the quote, is not strong. Anyway, as the story goes, mystery author Laurie R. King read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and it made her so angry she decided to take the concept and rewrite it. She did, magnificently, under the pseudonym Leigh Richards as Califia's Daughters. What angered her? That's not the way that people would have responded to the crisis of limited men.
I read The Handmaid's Tale at the impressionable age of 19 during a visit to my soon-to-be sister-in-law's house. She had a copy lying around because it was part of her women's studies college curriculum. Being an inveterate reader and having finished the volume I had brought with me on the visit, I read through it that afternoon. It was unmemorable. I am not saying this to be provocative, merely noting that the thing I remember most about the experience was the question my sister-in-law shot at me at the conclusion. "So, what did you think?" I must have made some sort of reply, but I knew it wasn't the one she wanted. What did I think? Well, it passed the time. It wasn't a book that invited you to actually grapple with the "what if" that underpinned the story. To this day I cannot remember a character, passage, phrase or theme from the book, but my mind immediately rehearses favorite bits of Laurie King's answer.
In the intervening thirty years I have read scads of books in nearly all genres, fiction and non-fiction. I am finally writing my own and grappling with the question: what do readers want? There are a lot of candy floss books out there and I have no particular prejudice against them. But I knew when I wrote, I could not write candy floss. The books that matter, the ones I return to, may not matter to even my spouse. I like a period whodunnit, he likes a procedural. He will never read horror and my appetite for military thrillers is limited. Give him my share of technical manuals, and I shall take his share of poetry. But even in modes and genres that are lesser lights, I am looking for something true. Mix up laser swords with dragon fire, a whodunnit on a galactic cruiser, and a romance on a deep-sea oil rig. But give me a believable person experiencing it. If I say to myself, "A real person would never act that way," the magic is broken.
So, I ask you, Ricochetti? What do you want? For me characterization is king, but obviously that is not the case for everyone. What makes your favorite book a keeper? What draws you back time after time?
Discussion (53)
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I read all kinds of books, but at my heart I'm a science fiction boy. What I want most in a book is a really interesting idea played out well. As an example, take Flowers for Algernon. The basic idea is fantastic, taking a mentally deficient individual and performing an operation on him to make him a genius. The execution is pretty solid too.
I'm always a little bit saddened when someone gets a 10/10 premise and then delivers a 3/10 story to go with it. My go-to example here is the first Death's Gate book by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickmann. They have a giant machine with unknown purpose tended by armies of dwarves who slave away for reasons they don't know. And what do they do with it? Communist revolution. I'm not saying their book is bad but there are several ways I would have preferred to see that story go.
It's seldom I'm so annoyed by a book that I'm willing to write my own in response. The last time, I think, was reading Atlas Shrugged, where I wanted to do a postscript about life in Galt's Gulch, only the authorial pressure that made them Randian supermen is taken away. Watch their utopian society crumble when these people start acting like real people.
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The problem with The Handmaid's Tale is it is essentially a BDSM fantasy (ala Fifty Shades of Grey) that is insufferable enough to think it's a serious, cautionary tale. As far as what's currently "hip", that would appear to be the Monster Bait Romance genre, as represented by the new, hit novel Morning Glory Milking Farm. "What is this novel about?", you might ask if you don't value your sanity. Well, gentle reader, it's an erotic fantasy about a young woman's fascination with giant bovine phalluses.
This isn't necessarily what I personally want, however if I were a publisher looking to make money, I'd hold my nose and dive right in.
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I heard a dramatic reading of one of these "Monster Bait" novels on a podcast the other day. There is a market for everything, I suppose.
Certainly don't want my literary tastes judged by the general public.
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I always think of that as "spinning wheels". No forward motion with a great concept.
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Candy floss no nutritional value whatsoever. What do YOU like?
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