What Makes This Book So Great

Jo Walton

Book - 2014

"As any reader of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading--about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series. Among Walton's many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers ...mean by "mainstream"; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers"--

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Subjects
Published
New York : Tor [2014]
Language
English
Main Author
Jo Walton (-)
Item Description
"A Tom Doherty Associates Book"
Physical Description
446 pages ; 25 cm
ISBN
9780765331939
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Why I Re-read
  • 3. A Deepness in the Sky, the Tragical History of Pham Nuwen
  • 4. The Singularity Problem and Non-Problem
  • 5. Random Acts of Senseless Violence: Why isn't it a classic of the field?
  • 6. From Herring to Marmalade: the perfect plot of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
  • 7. "That's just scenery": What do we mean by "mainstream"?
  • 8. Re-reading long series
  • 9. The Dystopic Earths of Heinlein's Juveniles
  • 10. Happiness, Meaning and Significance: Karl Schroeder's Lady of Mazes
  • 11. The Weirdest Book in the World
  • 12. The Poetry of Deep Time: Arthur C. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night
  • 13. Clarke reimagined in hot pink: Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun
  • 14. Something rich and strange: Candas Jane Dorsey's Black Wine
  • 15. To trace impunity: Greg Egan's Permutation City
  • 16. Black and white and read a million times: Jerry Pournelle's Janissaries
  • 17. College as Magic Garden: Why Pamela Dean's Tain Lin is a book you'll either love or hate.
  • 18. Making the future work: Maureen McHugh's China Mountain Zhang
  • 19. Anathem: What does it gain from not being our world?
  • 20. A happy ending depends on when you stop: Heavy Time, Hellburner and C. J. Cherryh's Alliance-Union universe
  • 21. Knights Who Say "Fuck": Swearing in Genre Fiction
  • 22. "Earth is one world": C. J. Cherryh's Downbelow Station
  • 23. "Space is wide and good friends are too few": Cherryh's Merchanter novels
  • 24. "A need to deal wounds": Rape of men in Cherryh's Union-Alliance novels
  • 25. How to talk to writers
  • 26. "Give me back the Berlin Wall": Ken MacLeod's The Sky Road
  • 27. What a pity she couldn't have single-handedly invented science fiction! George Eliot's Middlemarch
  • 28. The beauty of lists: Angelica Gorodischer's Kalpa Imperial
  • 29. Like pop rocks for the brain: Samuel R. Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand
  • 30. Between Two Worlds: S. P. Somtow's Jasmine Nights
  • 31. Lots of reasons to love these: Daniel Abraham's Long Price books
  • 32. Maori Fantasy: Keri Hulme's The Bone People
  • 33. Better to have loved and lost? Series that go downhill
  • 34. More questions than answers: Robert A. Heinlein's The Stone Pillow
  • 35. Weeping for her enemies: Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor
  • 36. Forward Momentum: Lois McMaster Bujold's The Warrior's Apprentice
  • 37. Quest for Ovaries: Lois McMaster Bujold's Ethan of Athos
  • 38. Why he must not fail: Lois McMaster Bujold's Borders of Infinity
  • 39. What have you done with your baby brother? Lois McMaster Bujold's Brothers in Arms
  • 40. Hard on his superiors: Lois McMaster Bujold's The Vor Game
  • 41. One birth, one death, and all the acts of pain and will between: Lois McMaster Bujold's Barrayar
  • 42. All true wealth is biological: Lois McMaster Bujold's Mirror Dance
  • 43. Luck is something you make for yourself: Lois McMaster Bujold's Cetaganda
  • 44. This is my old identity, actually: Lois McMaster Bujold's Memory
  • 45. But I'm Vor: Lois McMaster Bujold's Komarr
  • 46. She's getting away! Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign
  • 47. Just my job: Lois McMaster Bujold's Diplomatic Immunity
  • 48. Every day is a gift: Lois McMaster Bujold's "Winterfair Gifts"
  • 49. Choose again, and change: Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga
  • 50. So, what sort of series do you like?
  • 51. Time travel and slavery: Octavia Butler's Kindred
  • 52. America the Beautiful: Terry Bisson's Fire on the Mountain
  • 53. Susan Palwick's Shelter
  • 54. Scintillations of a sensory syrynx: Samuel Delany's Nova
  • 55. You may not know it, but you want to read this: Francis Spufford's Backroom Boys: The Secret Return of the British Boffin
  • 56. Faster Than Light at any speed
  • 57. Gender and glaciers: Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness
  • 58. Licensed to sell weasels and jade earrings: The short stories of Lord Dunsany
  • 59. The Net of a Million Lies: Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep
  • 60. The worst book I love: Robert A. Heinlein's Friday
  • 61. India's superheroes: Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children
  • 62. A funny book with a lot of death in it: Iain Banks's The Crow Road
  • 63. More dimensions than you'd expect: Samuel Delany's Babel-17
  • 64. Bad, but good: David Feintuch's Midshipman's Hope
  • 65. Subtly twisted history: John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting
  • 66. A very long poem: Alan Garner's Red Shift
  • 67. Beautiful, poetic and experimental: Roger Zelazny's Doorways in the Sand
  • 68. Waking the Dragon: George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire
  • 69. Who reads cosy catastrophes?
  • 70. Stalinism vs Champagne at the opera: Constantine Fitzgibbon's When the Kissing Had To Stop
  • 71. The future of the Commonwealth: Nevil Shute's In the Wet
  • 72. Twists of the Godgame: John Fowles's The Magus
  • 73. Playing the angles on a world: Steven Brust's Dragaera
  • 74. Jhereg feeds on others' kills: Steven Brust's Jhereg
  • 75. Yendi coils and strikes unseen: Steven Brust's Yendi
  • 76. A coachman's tale: Steven Brust's Brokedown Palace
  • 77. Frightened teckla hides in grass: Steven Brust's Teckla
  • 78. How can you tell? Steven Brust's Taltos
  • 79. Phoenix rise from ashes grey: Steven Brust's Phoenix
  • 80. I have been asking for nothing else for an hour: Steven Brust's The Phoenix Guards
  • 81. Athyra rules minds' interplay: Steven Brust's Athyra
  • 82. What, is there more? Steven Brust's Five Hundred Years After
  • 83. Orca circles, hard and lean: Steven Brust's Orca
  • 84. Haughty dragon yearns to slay: Steven Brust's Dragon
  • 85. Issola strikes from courtly bow: Steven Brust's Issola
  • 86. What has gone before?
  • 87. The time about which I have the honor to write: Steven Brust's The Viscount of Adrilankha
  • 88. Dzur stalks and blends with night: Steven Brust's Dzur
  • 89. Jhegaala shifts as moments pass: Steven Brust's Jhegaala
  • 90. Quiet iorich won't forget: Steven Brust's Iorich
  • 91. Quakers in Space: Molly Gloss's The Dazzle of Day
  • 92. Locked in our separate skulls: Raphael Carter's The Fortunate Fall
  • 93. Saving both worlds: Katherine Blake (Dorothy Heydt)'s The Interior Life
  • 94. Yearning for the unattainable: James Tiptree Jr.'s short stories
  • 95. SF reading protocols
  • 96. Incredibly readable: Robert A. Heinlein's The Door into Summer
  • 97. Nasty, but brilliant: John Barnes's Kaleidoscope Century
  • 98. Growing up in a space dystopia: John Barnes's Orbital Resonance
  • 99. The joy of an unfinished series
  • 100. Fantasy and the need to remake our origin stories
  • 101. The mind, the heart, sex, class, feminism, true love, intrigue, not your everyday ho-hum detective story: Dorothy Sayers's Gaudy Night
  • 102. Three short Hainish novels: Ursula K. Le Guin's Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions
  • 103. On reflection, not very dangerous: Harlan Ellison's The Last Dangerous Visions
  • 104. Why do I re-read things I don't like?
  • 105. Yakking about who's civilised and who's not: H. Beam Piper's Space Viking
  • 106. Feast or famine?
  • 107. Bellona, Destroyer of Cities, Jay Schreib's play of Samuel Delany's Dhalgren
  • 108. Not much changes on the street, only the faces: George Alec Effinger's When Gravity Fails
  • 109. History inside out: Howard Waldrop's Them Bones
  • 110. I'd love this book if I didn't loathe the protagonist: Harry Turtledove and Judith Tarr's Household Gods
  • 111. Screwball-comedy time travel: John Kessel's Corrupting Dr. Nice
  • 112. Academic Time Travel: Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog
  • 113. The Society of Time: John Brunner's Times Without Number
  • 114. Five Short Stories with Useless Time Travel
  • 115. Time Control: Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity
  • 116. Texan Ghost Fantasy: Sean Stewart's Perfect Circle
  • 117. The language of stones: Terri Windling's The Wood Wife
  • 118. A great castle made of sea: Why hasn't Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell been more influential?
  • 119. Gulp or sip: How do you read?
  • 120. Quincentennial: Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth
  • 121. Do you skim?
  • 122. A merrier world: J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit
  • 123. Monuments from the future: Robert Charles Wilson's The Chronoliths
  • 124. The Suck Fairy
  • 125. Trains on the moon: John M. Ford's Growing Up Weightless
  • 126. Overloading the senses: Samuel Delany's Nova
  • 127. Aliens and Jesuits: James Blish's A Case of Conscience
  • 128. Swiftly goes the swordplay: Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword
  • 129. The work of disenchantment never ends: Kim Stanley Robinson's Icehenge
  • 130. Literary criticism vs talking about books
Review by Booklist Review

The author is a distinguished sf and fantasy writer in her own right (write?) who, some years ago, Tor Books turned loose on their website to write a bunch of capsule reviews and critical essays on sf and fantasy no less than 130 of them. The range is wide, going back to the nineteenth century (George Eliot and Lord Dunsany) and forward to authors so new that this volume may be the first time many readers have heard of them. Along the way she covers practically the complete works of Lois McMaster Bujold and Steven Brust, praises a number of classics by Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein, praises with faint damns a good many books she thinks ought to be better known, and provides broader perspective in such essays as the difference between criticism and just talking about books. She also writes clearly, avoids political hatchet jobs, and altogether highly repays a careful reading.--Green, Roland Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

For anyone whose to-read pile is not quite tall enough, this collection gathers 130 of Walton's blog posts from science fiction site Tor.com (July 2008 to February 2011) about her favorites works of sci-fi and fantasy. The books she discusses are not the latest to hit the market, but those that novelist Walton (Among Others) has reread time and again, because "something only worth reading once is pretty much a waste of time." These brief essays are perfect for picking at random; binge on too many and the books cited might blur together. In the transition from Web to print, something is lost in translation: it's disconcerting to see questions such as, "So, what sort of series do you like?" without accompanying comments. At the same time, the themes of the essays interweave nicely; many are meditations on the genre as a whole more than reviews of specific works, and Walton often ties her points back to earlier posts (most notably in the extended review of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan saga). Walton intentionally approaches these works as a fan rather than a critic, and she successfully captures the sensation of reading on a personal, sensory level. For readers unschooled in the history of SF/F, this book is a treasure trove; for those who recognize every title, Walton evokes the joy of returning to a well-worn favorite. Agent: Jack Byrne, Sternig & Byrne Literary Agency.(Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

The Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Among Others believes there are two types of readers: those who reread and those who don't. She tells of her own experience as a rereader in this collection of more than 130 essays, which first appeared as blog entries on the Tor.com website. Walton's case for revisiting favorite books, eloquently made in the introduction but illuminated in each essay, is that the practice can be simply comforting but can also provide endless opportunities for new perspectives and even revelations about works that readers thought they knew well. Walton shares not only her deep love for sf and fantasy in general and these novels in particular but the insights of a truly thoughtful reader. Especially enjoyable is her book-by-book analysis of Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan Saga." VERDICT Although readers will miss out on some of the spirited discussions that appeared in the comments for these blog entries, it is still worth the time and money for any serious sf or fantasy fan, akin to a genre version of Nancy Pearl's Book Lust. Walton's affection for many of these titles is contagious, and fans will find their own reading lists growing. Since the author covers many core texts of the genre, this volume is also useful for collection development librarians seeking to fill holes in their sf shelves. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

JULY 16, 2011 1. Introduction This book is made up of a series of blog posts I wrote on Tor.com between July 2008 and February 2011. They appear here in order, and with their original dates. These are about a fifth of the total posts I made during that time. You don't have to read them in order, but sometimes one will refer back to another and develop an argument. I wrote them as blog posts, and so they are inherently conversational and interactive--they were written in dialogue with each other and also with the people reading and commenting. I think they are still interesting when taken out of that context, but if reading them here makes you splutter "but, but" and reach for the follow-up key, the posts are still online, and I am still reading comments. Interaction remains a possibility. I'm still writing new posts too. (If, however, you are reading this in a far distant future in which this is no longer a possibility, hello! Nobody would have liked to talk to someone from your world more than I would, and any regrets are on both sides.) The brief I was given when I started writing for Tor.com was to talk about what I was re-reading. Patrick Nielsen Hayden said that I was always saying "smart things about books nobody else had thought about for ages," and that's what I tried to do. You won't find any reviews here. Reviews are naturally concerned with new books, and are first reactions. Here I'm mostly talking about older books, and these are my thoughts on reading them again. There are posts on books in many genres and published between 1871 and 2008, but the emphasis is on older science fiction and fantasy. There are also posts here about the act of reading and re-reading, and about the genres of science fiction and fantasy and the boundaries between them. When I talk about books that aren't science fiction and fantasy, I'm looking at them from a genre perspective, whether it's how George Eliot should have single-handedly invented science fiction or wishing wistfully that A. S. Byatt had read Delany. My general approach to the books in these pieces is as a genre-reader, but not as a generic reader. There's no impersonality here, no attempt at objectivity. These are my thoughts and opinions, for what they're worth, my likes and dislikes, my quirks and prejudices and enthusiasms. I select the books I re-read based on what I feel like reading at the moment, so these are my tastes. I do from time to time write about books I don't enjoy, for one reason or another, but what you'll mostly find are attempts to consider the question I ask in the title of this collection--what makes this book so great? JULY 15, 2008 2. Why I Re-read There are two kinds of people in the world, those who re-read and those who don't. No, don't be silly, there are far more than two kinds of people in the world. There are even people who don't read at all. (What do they think about on buses?) But there are two kinds of readers in the world, though, those who re-read and those who don't. Sometimes people who don't re-read look at me oddly when I mention that I do. "There are so many books," they say, "and so little time. If I live to be a mere Methuselah of 800, and read a book a week for 800 years, I will only have the chance to read 40,000 books, and my readpile is already 90,000 and starting to topple! If I re-read, why, I'll never get through the new ones." This is in fact true, they never will. And my readpile is also, well, let's just say it's pretty large, and that's just the pile of unread books in my house, not the list of books I'd theoretically like to read someday, many of which have not even been written yet. That list probably is at 90,000, especially if I include books that will be written in the next 800 years by people as yet unborn and books written by aliens as yet unmet. Wow, it's probably well over 90,000! When will I ever read all those books? Well, I read a lot more than one book a week. Even when I'm fantastically busy rushing about having a good time and visiting my friends and family, like right now, I average a book every couple of days. If I'm at home and stuck in bed, which happens sometimes, then I'm doing nothing but reading. I can get through four or six books in a day. So I could say that there are never going to be sufficient books to fill the voracious maw that is me. Get writing! I need books! If I didn't re-read I'd run out of books eventually and that would be terrible! But this argument is disingenuous, because in fact there is that towering pile of unread books in my bedroom at home, and even a little one in my bedroom here in my aunt's house. I don't re-read to make the new books last longer. That might be how it started.... The truth is that there are, at any given time, a whole lot more books I don't want to read than books I do. Right now, I don't want to read Storming the Heavens: Soldiers, Emperors, and Civilians in the Roman Empire by Antonio Santosuosso, and/or The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade by Maria Eugenia Aubet and Mary Turton. I do want to read both of these books, in theory, enough theory that they came home with me from the library, but in practice they both have turgid academic prose that it's work to slog through. I am going to try to slog through the Phoenician one before I go home to Montreal and the book goes home to Cardiff library, but the other one is going back unread. (The Phoenicians, unlike the Romans, are insufficiently written about for me to turn down a solid book for bad prose.) But yesterday, when I was picking up books to take to read on the train to London, both of them glowered at me unwelcomingly. I was already in the middle of one (pretty good) book on Hannibal's army, I wanted fiction. And I didn't just want any old fiction, I wanted something good and absorbing and interesting enough to suck me in and hold my attention on the train so that I wouldn't notice the most boring scenery in the world--to me at least, who has taken the train between Cardiff and London quite often before. I didn't want to have to look out of the window at Didcot Parkway. I had some new fiction out of the library, but what I wanted was something engrossing, something reliable, and for me, that means something I have read before. When I re-read, I know what I'm getting. It's like revisiting an old friend. An unread book holds wonderful unknown promise, but also threatens disappointment. A re-read is a known quantity. A new book that's been sitting there for a little while waiting to be read, already not making the cut from being "book on shelf" to "book in hand" for some time, for some reason, often can't compete with going back to something I know is good, somewhere I want to revisit. Sometimes I totally kick myself over this, because when I finally get around to something unread that's been sitting there I don't know how I can have passed it over with that "cold rice pudding" stare while the universe cooled and I read C. J. Cherryh's The Pride of Chanur for the nineteenth time. My ideal relationship with a book is that I will read it for the first time entirely unspoiled. I won't know anything whatsoever about it, it will be wonderful, it will be exciting and layered and complex and I will be excited by it, and I will re-read it every year or so for the rest of my life, discovering more about it every time, and every time remembering the circumstances in which I first read it. (I was re-reading Doris Lessing's The Good Terrorist . "The first time I read this was in a cafe in Lytham St. Annes in 1987," I mentioned. "How can you remember that?" my husband asked. "I don't know. It was raining, and I was eating a poached egg on toast." Other people remember where they were when they heard that Princess Diana was dead. I haven't a clue, but I pretty much always remember where I was when I first read things.) This ideal relationship doesn't always work out. Even when I like the book in the first place, sometimes a re-read is a disappointment. This usually happens when the thing that was good about the book was a temporary shininess that wears off quickly. There are books that pall when I know their plots, or become too familiar with their characters. And sometimes I read a book that I used to love and find it seems to have been replaced with a shallow book that's only somewhat similar. (This happens most often with children's books I haven't read since I was a child, but it has happened with adult books. This worries me, and makes me wonder if I'm going to grow out of everything and have nothing to read except Proust. Fortunately, when and if that day comes, in several hundred years, Proust will be there, and still pristine.) A re-read is more leisurely than a first read. I know the plot, after all, I know what happens. I may still cry (embarrassingly, on the train) when re-reading, but I won't be surprised. Because I know what's coming, because I'm familiar with the characters and the world of the story, I have more time to pay attention to them. I can immerse myself in details and connections I rushed past the first time and delight in how they are put together. I can relax into the book. I can trust it completely. I really like that. Very occasionally, with a wonderfully dense and complex book I'll re-read it right away as soon as I've finished it, not just because I don't want to leave the world of that book but also because I know I have gulped where I should have savoured, and now that I know I can rely on the journey that is the book, I want to relax and let it take me on it. The only thing missing is the shock of coming at something unexpected and perfect around a blind corner, which can be one of the most intense pleasures of reading, but that's a rare pleasure anyway. Re-reading too extensively can be a bad sign for me, a sign of being down. Mixing new possibilities with reliable old ones is good, leaning on the re-reads and not adventuring anything new at all isn't. Besides, if I do that, where will the re-reads of tomorrow come from? I can't re-read the same 365 books for the next 800 years. I've already read some dearly beloved books to the point where I know them by heart. Long before I am 800 I will have memorized all the books I love now and be unable to re-read them, but fortunately by then people and aliens will have written plenty more new favourites, and I'll be re-reading them too. Copyright © 2014 by Jo Walton Excerpted from What Makes This Book So Great by Jo Walton All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.