Of matters Literary: stinkers of 2024
Feb. 1st, 2025 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evening_tsarSo, onto literary matters.
17 books this year. My lowest total since 2017. Though there were times it seemed I spent every waking hour with my nose buried in some tome, clearly, it didn’t actually amount to that much. Certainly not compared to rotting away on social media, or gaming, or such lesser usages of time. A stiff decline since last year, when I managed 25.
Or course, lists like this don’t tell the whole story. In 2024 I consumed 58 short stories, compared with 2023’s mere 49, so there was plenty of reading still going on – just not of full-length volumes.
Also keep in mind, the list only covers completed full length volumes. . .
I’m not one of those types who slavishly feel they need to finish every book they start. In fact, I’m quite ruthless about ditching whatever doesn’t grab me. Life’s too short to waste on bad books. There are only so many books we can get through in life – 816 for me, if I manage two a month and live to be 80 – and for every bad one slogged-through, a good one will go unread. So, every single one has to earn its place on that shelf.
I was stuck with a lot of false starts in 2024. A lot of tomes I picked up and just couldn’t be bothered to see through. More than usual. Either I had bad luck, or showed particularly bad judgement. Or my patience is wearing thinner than ever. Or, perhaps in these awful end-times which we find ourselves living through, I’m less willing than ever to let a book contribute to my miseries.
Part of the problem was History. I love History, read a lot of History, but rarely get through a large history book from beginning to end. Unless there is a very specific thesis the author is trying to prove, I tend to dive in at random spots, take from it what tidbits I can, then move on to the next tidbit. Often, I will put it down for extended periods, with every intention of picking it up again later. Thus the case with The Road to War by Richard Overy (with Andrew Wheatcroft). A very readable, worthy work of scholarship – great for the pub - but not one I’m in a rush to get through. The chapters on France, Britain, and Italy were (are) fascinating, but I find the rise of Hitler’s Germany just too depressing a subject to confront in more than short doses. Armaments production and strategic doctrine might be interesting and useful, but as for doctrinal motivation, I neither need nor care to know more than that they wanted to conquer the world and kill the Jews. Nor, after November, could I bring myself to read the chapter on America, and yet another account of how Roosevelt out-maneuvered the forces of isolationism to come in on the side of right. History is repeating itself, and this time fascist isolationism has won. Victories of the past, that the modern world decided not to emulate, are just too damn depressing to read about.
That brings us to Ian W. Tolls’ Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific 1944-1945, a 792 page tome I got some 310 pages into. Like the Overy book, it’s a find work of scholarship, but I paused it for different reasons.
Partially because after 310 pages, my attention tends to waver, even in the best of tomes (there’s a reason I reads so much short fiction!). I tend to get bogged down under the weight of too much detail, especially the kind of sequential-play-by-play these kinds of histories tend to engage in. I’m less interested in which direction particular ships sailed in when they were suddenly struck and went down at oh-two-hundred hours, than an informed opinion on whether Admiral “Bull” Halsey screwed up at Leyte Gulph or not.
Still, some interesting stuff. Apparently, Halsey didn’t like his nickname. Toll is quick to explain why:
Elsewhere in the year, I was bedeviled by false starts. In the mood for some science fiction, I first attempted James P. Hogan’s Enoverse, which somehow wound up on my shelf, and a bright orange cover which brought cyberpunk to mind. It was not. What it was I’m not that interested in discerning, as I made it barely past forty pages, bogged down by the ridiculous amount of exposition required to make sense of his insanely convoluted story world, and the stench of contrarian politics. Hogan was apparently big in Japan once, and apparently an influence on Robotech according to his Wikipedia entry (though not Robotech’s oddly enough).
By the end of his life he appeared to be something of a kook, giving himself over to Shaver-like pseudo histories. Bad science, bad politics, and bad prose make three strikes for me. No thanks.
After which, still thirsting for sf, I finally took down Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s The Gripping Hand. This attractive, hardcover has been sitting on my shelf since the 90’s, purchased for a lunch-money low price at a Chapter’s book sale, and miraculously managed to survive the Great Flood of 20xx. I figured it deserved the attempt. Alas, Niven and Pournelle tried my patience a touch too much. I got bloody-well sick of passages like this:
Eventually, my thirst for science fiction was better satiated by short fiction (the form’s more natural mode of expression), and I moved onto historical fiction.
Michael Crichton’s Pirate Latitudes seemed a perfect summer read. Pirates! Yargh! And I do know Crichton can write page turners. But this page turner sucked. To start with, it was not much more than a piratical version of Ocean’s 11 – a heist film set in the 18th century Caribbean, with a criminal mastermind handpicking his team of specialists for a big score, each unique, none in the least bit likeable.
I despise heist films. I find them all more-or-less the same, I can’t generate any interest in their “gangs” or the success of their criminal enterprise. Often as not I want them to fail. So shoehorning that damnable trope into a pirate setting is a foolish enterprise, at least as far as keeping my attention is concerned. This one had none of the things I enjoy about pirate stories.
None of this motley bunch behave much like pirates: they’re more like ninjas, sneaking about in the dark, killing men in their sleep, sneaking up on people and stabbing them in the back. The one female member of the bunch is mainly there to distract sentries by flashing her tits, a strategy she resorts to not once, but twice. There are some nasty scenes of torture, I suppose so we know how bad the bad guy is. There is no swashbuckling. Precious few swordfights. Pirate Latitudes is to pirate literature what The Flintstones are to cavemen, without the humour. Or the cute animals.
Then, we’ve got a misguided foray into respectable Can-Lit with Morely Callaghan’s Such is My Beloved. Something of a Canuck classic 9at least according to the jacket blurbs), it was at least short, so I assumed would be sweet. Never assume anything.
The story of a young, idealistic and naïve priest befriending two prostitutes in interwar Montreal is intended, I am sure, to highlight our hypocrisies and double standards as a society. I am certain as well, it was a ballsy thing to write about at the time. But it was an ordeal to get through, and I found I just couldn’t do it. Every page, cringier and cringer, as the inevitable social scandal consumes our young protagonist. The awkwardness and embarrassment are intolerable.
I understand our friend is young and naïve and idealistic, but really, is he so clueless as to not see where this is leading? Does he really think those rich lawyers in his congregation are going to look at it sympathetically? It is also fairly obvious that it is not just theological concern for the fallen women’s souls that keep him going back to them. I suppose it’s deft psychological writing, but intolerable story-telling. Did this tale of humiliation need to be dragged out into a novel, when a short-story might have taught the same lesson?
I suppose I may pick it up again, and mayhaps it will surprise me. But I don’t handle humiliation or awkwardness well, and every paragraph had me squirming. Every attempt to pick up the book ended with me quickly putting it back down after only a few minutes, and no more than a couple of pages. There came a point I realized there were many other books calling for my attention, so I started reaching for them instead.
Such is life. Such was 2024.
17 books this year. My lowest total since 2017. Though there were times it seemed I spent every waking hour with my nose buried in some tome, clearly, it didn’t actually amount to that much. Certainly not compared to rotting away on social media, or gaming, or such lesser usages of time. A stiff decline since last year, when I managed 25.
Or course, lists like this don’t tell the whole story. In 2024 I consumed 58 short stories, compared with 2023’s mere 49, so there was plenty of reading still going on – just not of full-length volumes.
Also keep in mind, the list only covers completed full length volumes. . .
I’m not one of those types who slavishly feel they need to finish every book they start. In fact, I’m quite ruthless about ditching whatever doesn’t grab me. Life’s too short to waste on bad books. There are only so many books we can get through in life – 816 for me, if I manage two a month and live to be 80 – and for every bad one slogged-through, a good one will go unread. So, every single one has to earn its place on that shelf.
I was stuck with a lot of false starts in 2024. A lot of tomes I picked up and just couldn’t be bothered to see through. More than usual. Either I had bad luck, or showed particularly bad judgement. Or my patience is wearing thinner than ever. Or, perhaps in these awful end-times which we find ourselves living through, I’m less willing than ever to let a book contribute to my miseries.
Part of the problem was History. I love History, read a lot of History, but rarely get through a large history book from beginning to end. Unless there is a very specific thesis the author is trying to prove, I tend to dive in at random spots, take from it what tidbits I can, then move on to the next tidbit. Often, I will put it down for extended periods, with every intention of picking it up again later. Thus the case with The Road to War by Richard Overy (with Andrew Wheatcroft). A very readable, worthy work of scholarship – great for the pub - but not one I’m in a rush to get through. The chapters on France, Britain, and Italy were (are) fascinating, but I find the rise of Hitler’s Germany just too depressing a subject to confront in more than short doses. Armaments production and strategic doctrine might be interesting and useful, but as for doctrinal motivation, I neither need nor care to know more than that they wanted to conquer the world and kill the Jews. Nor, after November, could I bring myself to read the chapter on America, and yet another account of how Roosevelt out-maneuvered the forces of isolationism to come in on the side of right. History is repeating itself, and this time fascist isolationism has won. Victories of the past, that the modern world decided not to emulate, are just too damn depressing to read about.
That brings us to Ian W. Tolls’ Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific 1944-1945, a 792 page tome I got some 310 pages into. Like the Overy book, it’s a find work of scholarship, but I paused it for different reasons.
Partially because after 310 pages, my attention tends to waver, even in the best of tomes (there’s a reason I reads so much short fiction!). I tend to get bogged down under the weight of too much detail, especially the kind of sequential-play-by-play these kinds of histories tend to engage in. I’m less interested in which direction particular ships sailed in when they were suddenly struck and went down at oh-two-hundred hours, than an informed opinion on whether Admiral “Bull” Halsey screwed up at Leyte Gulph or not.
Still, some interesting stuff. Apparently, Halsey didn’t like his nickname. Toll is quick to explain why:
The bull is respected for it's size, strength, and aggression, but not for its tactical acumen. The bull is stubborn, unreasoning, “bull-headed”. It goes about its work heedlessly, “like a bull at the gate.” Other large beasts are clumsy in tight quarters, but it is the bull that is most dreaded by the world’s china shop proprietors. Every mammal leaves its feces on the ground, but it is the bull’s that has a revered place in American slang, signifying “nonsense, lies, or exaggeration
Elsewhere in the year, I was bedeviled by false starts. In the mood for some science fiction, I first attempted James P. Hogan’s Enoverse, which somehow wound up on my shelf, and a bright orange cover which brought cyberpunk to mind. It was not. What it was I’m not that interested in discerning, as I made it barely past forty pages, bogged down by the ridiculous amount of exposition required to make sense of his insanely convoluted story world, and the stench of contrarian politics. Hogan was apparently big in Japan once, and apparently an influence on Robotech according to his Wikipedia entry (though not Robotech’s oddly enough).
By the end of his life he appeared to be something of a kook, giving himself over to Shaver-like pseudo histories. Bad science, bad politics, and bad prose make three strikes for me. No thanks.
After which, still thirsting for sf, I finally took down Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s The Gripping Hand. This attractive, hardcover has been sitting on my shelf since the 90’s, purchased for a lunch-money low price at a Chapter’s book sale, and miraculously managed to survive the Great Flood of 20xx. I figured it deserved the attempt. Alas, Niven and Pournelle tried my patience a touch too much. I got bloody-well sick of passages like this:
“Sinbad, this is Atropos. We are closing in range to Motie ship. We haveWhat the fuck was all that about? How about this one:
a beam on her.”
“They’ll stop,” Blaine said.
“I am certain you are correct.”
“Eudoxus is signaling,” Buckman said genially.
“Everything happens at once.” Joyce said.
““Sinbad, this is Atropos. As soon as we demonstrated that we could hit
the Motie ship, it turned off its drive and is now hailing us in Angelic.
‘We come in peace.
This is the Motie ship King Peter’s Gift. We come in peace. Do you have
instructions?’ Sir, do we have instructions?”
“God’s navel.”
“Suggestion,” Blaine said.
“Talk to me!”
“Who are the Medina Traders? Who must we negotiate with?”Notice how they don’t answer the question? All the dialogue in the book is more or less like this, chaotic exchanges of seemingly random belched-out phrases with little or no relation to the previously belched out phrase. It’s some of the most clunky, awkward dialogue I have ever read, and my patience for it is very, very thin. To say nothing of following the intrigue, dependent as it is on the mechanics of a story world that only makes sense in the authors’ imaginations. Why doesn’t the Empire want its agent to inspect the planetary blockade? Why is there a blockade again? What the hell’s Crazy Charlie again? Couldn’t bring myself to care.
“We are the family with the foresight and the power to be here in the moment after Crazy Eddie’s Sister opened a path. You must be aware that none can speak for the Motie Species.”
Eventually, my thirst for science fiction was better satiated by short fiction (the form’s more natural mode of expression), and I moved onto historical fiction.
Michael Crichton’s Pirate Latitudes seemed a perfect summer read. Pirates! Yargh! And I do know Crichton can write page turners. But this page turner sucked. To start with, it was not much more than a piratical version of Ocean’s 11 – a heist film set in the 18th century Caribbean, with a criminal mastermind handpicking his team of specialists for a big score, each unique, none in the least bit likeable.
I despise heist films. I find them all more-or-less the same, I can’t generate any interest in their “gangs” or the success of their criminal enterprise. Often as not I want them to fail. So shoehorning that damnable trope into a pirate setting is a foolish enterprise, at least as far as keeping my attention is concerned. This one had none of the things I enjoy about pirate stories.
None of this motley bunch behave much like pirates: they’re more like ninjas, sneaking about in the dark, killing men in their sleep, sneaking up on people and stabbing them in the back. The one female member of the bunch is mainly there to distract sentries by flashing her tits, a strategy she resorts to not once, but twice. There are some nasty scenes of torture, I suppose so we know how bad the bad guy is. There is no swashbuckling. Precious few swordfights. Pirate Latitudes is to pirate literature what The Flintstones are to cavemen, without the humour. Or the cute animals.
Then, we’ve got a misguided foray into respectable Can-Lit with Morely Callaghan’s Such is My Beloved. Something of a Canuck classic 9at least according to the jacket blurbs), it was at least short, so I assumed would be sweet. Never assume anything.
The story of a young, idealistic and naïve priest befriending two prostitutes in interwar Montreal is intended, I am sure, to highlight our hypocrisies and double standards as a society. I am certain as well, it was a ballsy thing to write about at the time. But it was an ordeal to get through, and I found I just couldn’t do it. Every page, cringier and cringer, as the inevitable social scandal consumes our young protagonist. The awkwardness and embarrassment are intolerable.
I understand our friend is young and naïve and idealistic, but really, is he so clueless as to not see where this is leading? Does he really think those rich lawyers in his congregation are going to look at it sympathetically? It is also fairly obvious that it is not just theological concern for the fallen women’s souls that keep him going back to them. I suppose it’s deft psychological writing, but intolerable story-telling. Did this tale of humiliation need to be dragged out into a novel, when a short-story might have taught the same lesson?
I suppose I may pick it up again, and mayhaps it will surprise me. But I don’t handle humiliation or awkwardness well, and every paragraph had me squirming. Every attempt to pick up the book ended with me quickly putting it back down after only a few minutes, and no more than a couple of pages. There came a point I realized there were many other books calling for my attention, so I started reaching for them instead.
Such is life. Such was 2024.
