I quickly finished a book I bought which is the norm for me. Never understood how people could read one chapter a night and lay a good book down. I need to devour a book and am upset if I can’t finish it the same evening. Guess the chapter a night people are the normal ones and I am the abnormal one. Really doesn’t matter to me which is which, just what I am reading matters in the grand scheme of things.
Ok! on with what I read. “Tyrannosaur Canyon” by Douglas Preston. It is a book I totally enjoyed. He is a new author for me and I found him a master story teller. Each page was something new to lead you farther into the depth of the story. I was finished too quickly wishing it was twice as long. After finishing, I read the reviews on the dust jacket, which brings me to my point.
All the reviews were good. The problem was how they described what I had just read. It seems they read a “thriller”. Now I know I am getting old, but a “thriller”, come on, It was a murder mystery. I found it as good a murder mystery as any by Agatha Christie. Yes, I know, high praise, but it is my opinion (and what that is worth, we’ve covered). So, being a very large pain about things, I decided to look up “thriller” in the dictionary. “A work of fiction or drama designed to hold the interest by the use of a high degree of intrigue, adventure, or suspense.” Ok! so it covers that loosely. Murder mystery covers it exactly. Call a duck a duck.
Then again maybe I am a purist about books. Drama is drama, humour is humour, science fiction is science fiction, fantasy is fantasy, murder mystery is murder mystery, and thriller is best left to Michael Jackson. Since I am getting old I guess you can call me a dinosaur, at least when it comes to describing books I hope.
3 Comments
The gloves come off! I think you should only refer to books as comedies or tragedies and refuse to read anything that a.) can’t fall into these categories and b.) isn’t epic poetry or ancient greek drama.
The Michael Jackson joke made me laugh, though.
What about when science fiction becomes fantasy? The early Pern books by Anne McCaffrey, Dragon Quest, Dragon Flight, Dragon Song, Dragonsinger, don’t have much science to them at all, pretty easy to confuse with fantasy.
Then the White Dragon ties the whole story line smack into science fiction — all of a sudden we learn everything is happening to a stranded interstellar colony. Fuzzy distinction, though, before that. And even after, the distinction remains blurry.
I am having trouble with Kelley Armstrong and her works. Well, not the last one, Exit Strategy is a mundane detective novel, and not nearly as entertaining, for me, as her other works. Someone at my local bookstore mistakenly shelved a couple of her earlier titles with the science fiction and fantasy titles. The stories of werewolves and vampires living hidden amongst an unaware human society - read more like fantasy or paranormal adventure than where I found the rest of her ‘Ladies of the Underworld; and other stories - in Horror. Patricia Briggs’ latest series, Moon Called, Blood Bound, and Iron Kissed, are written in about the same type of venue and similar character rolls, but the Briggs books are all shelved with fantasy/SF. I am waiting for some genius to decide that fantasy means Tolkien, that science fiction means Star Trek or Star Wars, and everything else is horror or religious fiction. Besides, Tamora Pierce wrote some of her books for younger readers, so Hastings won’t shelve any of her works with the fantasy books, and won’t order any of the adult works because they shouldn’t go on the young adult shelf. Idiots. And here I am, blithely stumbling along thinking a book store wanted to make books available to people wanting to find books to buy. Grr.
Elizabeth Moon’s “Conditions for Victory”, the final Vatta’s War volume, just came out. I think I took over 24 hours to finish, but not by much. I wish it had been as good a read as the third one. This was *not* one of the books that I immediately re-read on the first reading. The last two I did that with were both Sharon Lee and Steve Miller novels in the Liaden universe - Conflict of Honors, and Balance of Trade.
Enjoy your mis-labeled fiction!
Arguing about genre labels can be fun- but isn’t it a bit like arguing about the number of angels who can dance on a pinhead ? Has anyone noticed that the best books transcend genre labels, and the worst ones stick rigidly to the thriller/romance/sf/fantasy specification ?Read ” The Constant Gardener” by John le Carre- it’s a thriller- certainly- but it’s a lot more as well. What about ” The English Patient”-panoramic war romance ? Yup. But there’s so much more- it’s about the difficulty of leading a good life, and the delights of leading a bad one.
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