I often come across things like this graphical novel Bad Habits by Christy C. Road and think, “wow that sounds pretty good, I’d like to read that.” I like the writing that Courtney at Feministing features (the “Brooklyn – heart” metaphor particularly) and the description on the publisher’s site. Poetic, viseral, a story I’d be interested in, somewhat real as it’s autobiographical, etc. Another part of the very city I live in.
But I’ll probably never read it. I come across too many things to read them all. Who doesn’t?
I’m currently reading another book by “he’s slowly grown to be perhaps my favorite author, at least lately” Robert Charles Wilson, Blind Lake. What I love about his writing is that he’s good at creating human characters and intriguing science-fiction worlds that don’t feel like devices and aren’t banged over your head. On top of it, he writes like a writer and not a geek, which is refreshing in the sci-fi world.
I liked Kim Stanley Robinson for the same thing — he writes like a writer — except when he puts his characters in nature, particularly any sort of climbing or hiking, when his outdoor-geek hat goes on. And his characters are generally flatter, archetypes you can recognize from story to story, and while sometimes his worlds function for themselves, other times they are devices for the point he’s trying to make. He tells more than he shows, but then, he’s more of a political novelist. Wilson is a human novelist, and he shows more than he tells.
On top of it, he’ll write succinct little things I’ve thought myself when daydreaming about the subject at hand, like “Exozoology was difficult enough; exopaleobiology was a daydream of a science.”
