Surfacing....

[ellid]

One of the two classes for Conbust is done. Go, me.

Now have the two photo images for Impruneta paper (one from Scala, one from the National Gallery). helwen has been doing a terrific job on the rest of the images, so as soon as she's finished I can get the final package together for my editors and send the article off. I'm under no illusions that it won't need changes (it almost certainly will) but at least the editors will have it and we can start serious work.

To do this week before convention:

- Tweak quilting class, assemble materials, and prepare props.

- Finish prep work on what I hope will be first actual professional story submission in, oh, about twenty-five years.

- Outline and finish weekly diary for Daily Kos - oh, I haven't mentioned that, have I? Well...

About six weeks ago one of the editors at Daily Kos, a progressive blogging site, noticed that I was an enthusiastic commenter on the weekly "what are you reading?" diary, as well as the other book-related posts. He liked my sense of humor (people who know me in RL are kindly asked to refrain from hysterical guffaws) and asked if I would be interested in writing a light-hearted, humorous weekly diary of some sort.

Thus was born Books So Bad They're Good. The basic premise of this that there are some books that are so terrible they're wonderful, whether due to a ridiculous plot, bad dialogue, a silly premise, or just plain insanity on the part of the author. Every Saturday night I post a short introduction and links to 2-3 really, really bad books that are still either amusing, endearing, or just plain appalling, with commentary.

So far people seem to enjoy them, so here are the links to the first month's worth.

3/19 - Bad Science Fiction

3/12 - Bad Movie Adaptations

3/5 - Bad Non-Fiction

2/26 - Bad Gothics


Last week I did science fiction so am planning on doing fantasy this week. Suggestions for lousy but beloved books are more than welcome!

Comments

[persevero.livejournal.com]

I read the first of the Gor books when I was at university and was rather smitten by the setting and the tarns (and the alarm-clock that worked by turning one's bed cold, though in retrospect I think that might be lethal) and made a point of looking for the others on my trips into London to Forbidden Planet. After a handful I suddenly realised that the original plot wasn't going to resolve and they were getting more and more disturbing. And I did something unprecedented - I actually gave them away.

Bad but beloved fantasy - David Eddings; beloved writer producing bad series - Mercedes Lackey's Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms; ditto bad book - The Silmarillion.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Have you read Lackey's Last Herald-Mage books? They look rather overdone, especially the one where the main character wears a pink cloak with what appear to be roses on it as he tragically clings to his horse....

[persevero.livejournal.com]

They were the first of hers that I read. I had retreated into the library in Cambridge city centre because of a thunderstorm and picked that first one up from the 'just returned' trolley. Then I discovered the library was about to close... The UK covers must be the same, which is fairly unusual, as my copy of Magic's Pawn has Vanyel in a pink cloak too. Which at least suggests the cover artist had been given the gist of the plot, even if his or her response to the first mainstream fantasy book with a gay protagonist was a little stereotyped!

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I read in an interview somewhere that this cover is the reason another fantasy author with a gay hero has an informal "no pink cloaks" arrangement with her publisher....

[a-c-fiorucci.livejournal.com]

The trilogy about Vanyel is much better than some of the others in the Valdemar setting. (The Owl series, for example, I found almost unreadable, and I say that as someone who occasionally re-reads Lackey books. The wrap-up trilogy (Winds? or Storms? With Elspeth and everyone trying to fix the mage-magic echo) was extremely disappointing to me as a typically uncritical reader.

(Now that I've blathered in your journal, I will go read what you wrote over there. Sorry for the wrong order in my process.)

[gardengirl6.livejournal.com]

I feel compelled to say that as a 5th grader, having devoured the entire elementary school library, I LOVED the Happy Hollisters books.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I read them in third or fourth grade and loved them, but soon was back to reading Walter Farley :)

[gardengirl6.livejournal.com]

Good golly, Walter Farley :) I see the Black Stallion books every time I go to the South Amherst library, and I marvel that my 5th grader hasn't discovered them yet. I have pointed her to them, but she says she's not interested. I suspect her 2nd grade sister will devour them, though! A trip to the library back in the day always netted a huge stack - Little House, Black Stallion, Nancy Drew (I liked the '30s versions better than the '60s, personally), Dana Girls, and all the Oz books. Baum had some other rather weird ones, too, but I did love the Oz series. And the Phantom Tollbooth, mustn't forget that one - I've read it to my crew twice ~

[loosecanon.livejournal.com]

the worst books I have read were the Bitterbynde by Cecelia Dart Thornton.
The prose was so purple it burned. The story was not
to my taste, so I will not judge it's quality. But o' the densely deeply rich dark and earthy prose, like loam after the dripping wet rain, was just a little overboard.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

That last line alone is worth quoting....

[loosecanon.livejournal.com]

Often I regret giving them away. The tropes combined with the writing seem aimed at a precocious reader of about 10, who in all social ways is behind the curve. The books are however too large and
heavy for the audience. I am not sure if it is because I miss having them to wonder at, or shame over inflicting them on someone new.

Your new spot suits well, you do have a subtle way with words.

There was a time when I did like the Happy Hollisters a lot. I also loved Alice and Jerry, Jack Amstrong, and all of that porridge (serial pap)

Feel free to quote me, just don't name me please.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your kind words. I greatly appreciate them. :)

BTW, are you still coming up to Massachusetts sometime soon?

[persevero.livejournal.com]

As someone has mentioned books they read in fifth grade, how about Bad School Stories? Though I suppose one would be hard-pressed to find good ones. I have every one of Elinor M Brent-Dyer's Chalet School books, which are either very good (internationalist and anti-racist) or very bad (spectacularly snobbish) - I've never quite made up my mind. Perhaps a 'politically-incorrect but still compelling' category?

[ellid.livejournal.com]

That's a great idea - I had to read some Enid Blyton a while back and was less than impressed.

[persevero.livejournal.com]

I wasn't allowed to read those (my parents were politically correct before the expression was invented) so I borrowed them from schoolfriends, smuggled them home and read them by the light of the street lamp outside my bedroom window. As a result, I let S1 and S2 read them (Famous Five and Secret Seven anyway - I don't think they'd have cared for Mallory Towers) and was duly horrified to think I'd gone to so much trouble to read such dreadful trash. Though I'm sure most of the pony books I was allowed to read were even worse. I'll except the Mary O'Hara and Monica Edwards ones.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Pony books? Are these any relation to the horsey stories pitched to girls in America?

[persevero.livejournal.com]

They're probably similar. The only US ones I've read are the Mary O'Hara horsey stories - My Friend Flicka and its sequels - which were pretty good. Some British ones were excellent, but the Pony Club and hunting ones were a bit nasty, in retrospect. I'm fairly disgusted by foxhunting, but leaving that aspect aside, they were snobbish and the leading characters were unlikeable. The presence of ponies would sell anything to me when I was about ten, though. Examples would be books by the Pullein-Thompson sisters and Ruby Ferguson's Jill books.

Bad = good book

[animangel.livejournal.com]

I whole-heartedly recommend Space Vulture.

I picked it up at an airport and got exactly what I expected: homage to the quirky pulp fiction space hero adventures (such as Space Hawk as the book is "named after").

I don't normally inflict books on my friends unless I think they're really good. I made an exception for this one.