New Colony Six Gets Mentioned!

One things about long series that really interests me is: did the artist have it all planned out, in minute detail, from the beginning? Or did events – or popularity, actors’ contracts or other effects of time marching on – influence the direction the story takes?

I think, for instance, that a lot of Lost’s last couple of seasons was made up as they went along; they did not know, for instance, that Michael Emerson would be so terrific as Ben, so I doubt Ben was a big deal when they were outlining the arc. And I don’t think Tolkein had a clue about Aragorn (for instance) when he started The Hobbit, but most certainly did have a very detailed outline by the time he started The Fellowship of the Ring.

It strikes me, having now re-read the first Harry Potter book, that Ms Rowlings pretty much had it all down when she started. I found nothing inconsistent with later books, and a lot of positively accurate foreshadowing (Scabbers!) Groundwork laid sor Sirius Black, even.

I admire that.

“I Love You So Much” by the New Colony 6 on the speaker at Goodwill today!

Oh no - not again!

I've decided once again to read two books at once.  I've done it before with A Streetcar Named Desire and Madame Bovary.  This time, I was really intrigued by a yellowed old Pocket Books edition of Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale, but can no longer hold back the impulse to read all the Harry Potter books again.  So, now, a medley of Cakes and Ale and The Sorcerer's Stone.  Great fun.

I Enjoy AStupid Book Once In A While

Didn’t get far into Castenada.  It seemed to me you had to have read his earlier books to get this one – there was a sort of “starting in the middle” feel to it.  I’m not sure it was  a “story” as much as a lecture.  It also seemed like a bunch of people sitting around talking to each other.  Snooze.

So instead:  Total Control by David Baldacci.

This is one of those books where the bad guys are invincible, omniscient and successful until the last few pages when suddenly the good guys beat them.  It’s like the Michael Jordan Bulls playing the Knicks:  “Knicks lead.  One minute left, Knicks are ahead.  Knicks lead with ten seconds left.  That’s the game – Bulls win.”

Part of the bad guys’ problem (in this and other books like it – and on TV shows like Monk, too) might be that they kill everyone immediately, until they capture the hero.  Then, inexplicably, they keep her alive for one reason or another – in the case of Total Control, so the villain can explain to the readers all the intricacies of the convoluted plot.

David Balducci also wrote Absolute Power, another one with a totally absurd plot.  In that one, it was “burglar witnesses President of the United States kill someone”.  In Total Control it’s “Fed chairman killed in plane crash while computers take over the world” (written in 1997, before computers actually did take over the world).  Actually, it’s much more complex and confused than that, even;  in the last few chapters, the heroine explains the crime, then the villain explains it, and then the FBI agent explains it – all without repeating what the others have said.  All that explication was necessary, too.  In short:  an overly complicated plot, to the point of absurdity.

One of my favorite pet peeves makes a book-wide appearance too.  That is characters whose dialogue is directed to the readers, not to the other characters.  Or, worse, dialogue that is the writer thinking out loud, engaged in character development on the fly.

Ridiculous as it all is, I kept voraciously reading.  Because sometimes you just have to read absurd, badly written escapism.  You just have to.  It really is a page turner, one thing happening after another.  When you’re traveling, sometimes the scenery stinks, but you just enjoy the feeling of movement.  Sometimes so with books, too.