Category: Memes (page 1 of 5)

TTT: Songs that I wish were books

Top Ten Tuesday

I considered skipping this one, because I didn’t have time to do a full list of ten. But I wanted at least to mention one song I’ve always thought should be a novel: “Dissident,” by Pearl Jam. Here’s how Eddie Vedder described it:

In “Dissident,” I’m actually talking about a woman who takes in someone who’s being sought after by the authorities for political reasons. He’s on the run, and she offers him a refuge. But she just can’t handle the responsibility. She turns him in, then she has to live with the guilt and the realization that she’s betrayed the one thing that gave her life meaning. It made her life difficult. It made her life hell. But it gave her a reason to be. But she couldn’t hold on. She folded. That’s the tragedy of the song.

There are so many ways to spin this. I’d love to see a historical take, but SFF or even contemporary would work just as well.

“Dissident” on YouTube

TTT: Historical settings

Top Ten Tuesday

I missed last week’s topic (historical settings I love/want to see more of), so I’m cheating and doing it this week.

  • Roman Britain. What can I say? I am, in Rosemary Sutcliff’s words, at home here—and have been ever since I read The Lantern Bearers for the first time, many years ago. Sutcliff wrote in many other historical settings, but her Roman-Britain books are, I think, her best and most enduring. I have also enjoyed books in this setting by Gillian Bradshaw, Ruth Downie, and others.
  • WWII Italy. This is one I’d like to see more of. I’d particularly like to see a novel about the Italian resistance, or about Salvo D’Acquisto, or about the Italian pilots who flew for the Allies after 1943. I wouldn’t turn down a novel set in WWI Italy, either.
  • The Eastern Empire. This is a growing area of interest for me. Most of my academic focus has been on the Western Roman Empire, but the East has a rich, fascinating history.
  • Revolutionary Algeria—a brand-new interest, sparked by Alistair Horne’s brilliant, devastating A Savage War of Peace.
  • The Spanish Civil War—an old interest, sparked by Hemingway.

And, for contrariness’ sake, here are five historical settings which I don’t enjoy all that much. To be clear, I have read and enjoyed books in all these settings. But I don’t tend to seek them out.

  • Tudor England. My interest in England pretty much ends with the Plantagenets.
  • Victorian anywhere—and I viciously dislike don’t care for steampunk, either.
  • Russia, for the purely irrational reason that I have never found Russian history of any period appealing.
  • The American Civil War—or, to be honest, any part of American history, especially pre-20th-century.
  • Renaissance Italy, perhaps because, like Tudor England, it seems to have been done to death.

TTT: Books I’ll never read

Top Ten TuesdayThis is a challenging topic, because I have fairly eclectic tastes, and because I thought it would be boring to list what seem to me to be the obvious choices—I have no inclination to pick up Fifty Shades of Grey, for instance, and I assume I never will. So it came down to trying to find books that I will never read for reasons other than their utter lack of literary merit. Here are three series that I have avoided:

The Redwall series, by Brian Jacques. I missed the window of opportunity for this one, as I didn’t know about it until I was much past the age of being at all interested in animal fantasy.

A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin. This may not be entirely fair, as I did try to read the first book of the series (A Game of Thrones). Though I’ve been told repeatedly that the series gets much better as it goes on, I honestly did not find anything to distinguish this from every other medieval fantasy I’ve read (and there have been quite a few)—at least not in ways significant or compelling enough to hold my interest.

The sequels to Across the Nightingale Floor, by Lian Hearn. Though I am aware that Nightingale Floor is only the first book in (I think) a five-book cycle, I have always thought of it as a standalone. The story seems perfectly complete and any sequels extraneous. Also (spoiler warning) my favorite character doesn’t survive this one.

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