Harold Ogle > Recent Status Updates

This is a really interesting read: a book I picked up on impulse from the library. It's simultaneously good and awkwardly-written. I won't say its sentence structure and syntax is BAD - I've read too many flat-out-bad books in my life and know this doesn't rank - but those things are poorly done. But it also has the intricate plotting and complex character webs of some of the best mystery writing.

The story structure is like the Arabian Nights, which I really appreciate. "Splintered Suns" is the kind of novel I find extremely encouraging to read: good ideas, great plot, fun characterization...and the writing (word choice and sentence construction) is that of a 12-year-old. It's not bad writing, it's just amateurish. Books like this should be key evidence for everyone that they, too, can write a novel.

I've been struggling through this for 8 months - the whole pandemic so far. The writing in this book is fascinating to me. There's a famous contest - the Bulwer-Lytton contest - in which contestants compete to write the worst first sentence to an imaginary novel, usually with outrageous prose.
"Appleseed" is like Clute took the parody language of the Bulwer-Lytton contest and said "I can do that for a whole novel!"

This book is fascinating to me, in the meta sense of analyzing the writing (rather than the typical sense of the subject matter or plot). There's a famous contest - the Bulwer-Lytton contest - in which contestants compete to write the worst first sentence to an imaginary novel.
"Appleseed" is like Clute took the parody language of the Bulwer-Lytton contest and said "I can do that for a whole novel!"

I'm delighted with this random find from the library. Wonderful how all the stories are coming together, and the fate of the kingdom - perhaps the civilized world - depends on how one character feels about a book.

I was reading "The Hobbit" to my son, but then he read ahead and finished it. So I'll go back and finish re-reading that in December. In the meantime, I'm reading him "A Wizard of Earthsea."

has seasonal allergies. Ursula K. LeGuin is such a good writer, and this morning, reading Gifts, I told my wife: "She always wrenches my heart." Then I had to blow my nose from allergies, and my wife said "Oh, you're such a softy!" I started to laugh, while blowing my nose, because it was so ridiculous: it was allergies, not the book, but then I was laughing and sobbing because, suddenly, it was the book.

I read a bunch more of this at lunch today, and am at the point where he's trying to get back home after 27 years (trying to avoid spoilers, but the 27 years should give some indication where I am).

If you've been following my reviews, you know that I've been reading a lot of children's books. This is a novel. But everywhere I go, this is classified as children's fiction. Not so!