Bored Stiff

[digitaldiscipline]

Not actually bored at work. To the contrary, I'm busy as fuck (covering for people who are out, fighting various fires, and passing along all manner of exciting news).

No, the title is a riff on that of a book I've been poking at, Scared Stiff, (Ramsey Cambell).

I think that this collection of Mr. Campbell's "erotic horror" stories is going to join a short and non-illustrious list - that of books I will *never* finish, once I've started reading them.

That list, in more or less the order I started reading them:
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
Underworld, Don DeLillo
Shardik, Richard Adams
Blade Runner 2, K.W. Jeter[1]
Scared Stiff, Ramsey Campbell

What do all these books have in common? They bored my tits off.

Dishonorable mentions go to Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, Jonathan Littell's Bad Voltage, William Gibson/Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine, and K.W. Jeter's Noir[2] for being books I wish I'd never read, but finished anyways.

Clearly, cyberpunk doesn't have a lot of middle ground; it's either awesome, or awful.

[1] - Worst book I've ever tried to read
[2] - Worst book I've ever read in its entirety

Comments

[juliabk.livejournal.com]

Probably the luck of the draw that those are the ones I've tumbled on. The gritty is probably the other turn off for me. Life's already gritty and sucky enough. ;-) I don't necessarily want to wallow in it in my fiction (which is what it feels like to me, YMMV, of course). That said, gritty in fantasy (to a point) works better for me. Probably because it's farther removed from the here and now.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

*nod* A fan of Brust's Jhereg stuff, then?

[juliabk.livejournal.com]

I guess this is where I confess to having never read Brust. My hands keep straying to them in the bookstore, but I've never taken the plunge. In recent years, too, my reading has plummeted since my reading time is also my writing time. *sigh* Back when I was more likely to take a lunch hour, I'd often get 500-1000 words written at lunch. I probably should start taking a lunch more often and using that time to *read*.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I heartily recommend it as a "swords and sorcery meets the mafia" flavor of stuff, but the worldbuilding is teriffic, the characters entertaining, and the plots themselves are fun.

I read at lunch, because it's an escape from the workday. At least on those days when I can't manage a nap.

[juliabk.livejournal.com]

That sounds interesting. I'll have to keep it in mind for my next excursion to the bookstore when I have money. Or I'll put it on my birthday list for my kid to get for me. At the moment I have a couple of Pratchets and a Jane Austen I'm working on. Decided I should probably finally read Pride and Prejudice just to get my friends off my back and damnitall, I got sucked in by the writing. I guess there *is* a reason it's been in print since the early 1800s. :-) And, okay, the thread in jaylake's LJ about reading out of genre gave me the final nudge.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

My mom got the bulk of the Jhereg books for Christmas this year; she'd been nibbling on their pre-history (a send-up of Dumas' style) and wanted to see what the "contemporary" storyline was about.

[juliabk.livejournal.com]

Oh, I *love* Dumas! I plowed through a bunch of his in high school. Or was it just after. umm... I'm officially older than I used to be and can't remember. :-)

[etcet.livejournal.com]

You are now clean out of excuses not to read Brust's Dragaera stories, then. :-)

[juliabk.livejournal.com]

Fie! A pox upon you, minion of the evil one! :-):-)