You Should Read This: The Forest of Forever by Thomas Burnett Swann

Tracy Townsend just did a terrific workshop this Saturday on Reading Like a Writer, (here’s the highlights from Twitter). One thing I came away with is the idea of planning my reading — or at least some of it — out much more purposefully.

When we did introductions and talked about what people wanted out of the class, it struck me that two ideas kept surfacing. One was the idea of using an activity one loves — the majority of writers are avid readers — to hone one’s craft would be more efficient. The second was a sense that if one was enjoying the writing, such learning couldn’t be happening; that work and joy could not go together.

I heartily disagree with the second, because I constantly draw on the first. Perhaps because now, as in the past, I am perpetually swimming in books, and consider that a dream existence. I was one of those kids who spent most of their hours with their nose inside a book, and at a time when the Internet was yet to appear, so I read and re-read over and over again, particularly L.M. Boston, Zenna Henderson, C.S. Lewis, Andre Norton, Theodore Sturgeon, J.R.R. Tolkein, to name a few.

Nowadays I get sent a lot of books — some attractive, some not so much — partially as a result of the somewhat scattershot way that most publisher marketing departments work, partially because I’m in a lot of anthologies, and partially because I am doing my best to support authors by buying their books through indie booksellers. I also pick up a lot of Storybundles and Humblebundles. While I’m a very fast reader, I’m not fast enough to keep up with the deluge.

So I like the idea of taking the last week of each month to plan the next month’s reading, particularly with an eye to assembling it. Tracy mentioned doing like assembling a D&D adventuring party, making sure it’s a mix. Her suggestions were these categories, all of which may overlap:

• authors who inspire and excite you
• authors who bring diversity to your reading list
• authors who people keep saying you should read
• authors who are great at the things you need to work on

Here’s some of the things I want to add to that for my personal plan:

• Some current novelettes/novellas. These get overlooked sometimes because they’re usually something best suited to the electronic, but we’re also in the midst of a resurgence of them, and I want to make sure I keep myself of what’s going on there.
• Because I’ve been trying to educate myself better about mid-to-late 20th century F&SF history, at least one nonfic book about it and one anthology produced during that period.
• At least one nonfiction book that is not about gardening or cooking each month.

So here’s my rough notes as I create my reading list for December. I usually read 20-30 books each month, so I’m going to plan out 15 and leave the rest sort of up to the moment.

• N.K. Jemisin Emergency Skin – novella, huzzah!
• Diversity – this month I’m going to add a few more LatinX authors to the mix, having read a piece with some recommendations, while also finishing up the collection of Harlem Renaissance novels I started last month. I’ve added two from their list I wasn’t familiar, Felix J. Palma and Adam Silverta, and will find a book from each.
• Classic – Walter Tevis The Man Who Fell to Earth. I enjoyed the series based on Tevis’s The Queen’s Gambit, but in looking at it, I decided to go with this instead since it’s a pretty classic book that I’ve never read.
• Classic anthology-wise, I’ve got a ton on my shelves, so I’ve snagged Orbit 3, edited by Damon Knight. I also bought a collection that’s worth working my way through, The Avram Davidson Treasury: A Tribute Collection, particularly since I want to look at Davidson’s methods of storytelling. For nonfiction that fits into that reading project, I’m adding Lost Transmissions: The Secret History of Science Fiction and Fantasy by Desirina Boscovich, which just arrived in the mail and is a handsome looking book.
• Nonfiction books I recently picked up include NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman; American Rule: How a Nation Conquered the World but Failed Its People by Jared Yates Sexton, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan; Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein. I’m halfway through the last, so I’ll plan on finishing it and reading at least one of the others.

Looking over my Kindle – man, there is a ton of other stuff I downloaded and would like to get to, so I need to stop buying books until I’ve cleared at least SOME of this away.
Only the Devil is Here by Stephen Michell
Nophek Gloss by Essa Hansen
The Wall by Gautam Bhatia
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix
The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher
The Afterward by E.K. Johnston
The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho
Banshees by Mike Baron
Touched by Venom by Janine Cross
Brimstone Angels by Erin M. Evans
*starts to add others then goes aiiieee and runs around in circles for a while instead*

I’m still pondering the various notetaking methods Tracy talked about, but certainly reading more mindfully seems worthwhile. Will any of this be useful? I dunno, but it can’t hurt, and in the meantime I get to read.

A bajillion years ago, when you could send the Science Fiction Book Club $.11 and get 11 books back, I signed up, receiving a fabulous armful particularly valuable back in the days when the Internet was just kicking off.

One of the 11 was P.C. Hodgell’s fantasy novel, Godstalk. I recently reread it when I found it and its sequel were available in the form of a single e-book, The God Stalker Chronicles.

I loved that book for its density of innovation as well as its creation of Tai-tastigon, a city is vividly alive as any other in speculative fiction, as evocative as Ambergris or Gormenghast, as alluring and perilous as Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar, as historied as Minas Tirith or fictional London or any of the cities George R.R. Martin evokes so well.

And I loved it for its heroine, Jamethiel. She comes to the reader as a semi-amnesiac, unsure of exactly what lies in her past and bearing, as such heroes and heroines often too, a magical object. Or agical objects. Those objects shaped my naming convention for magical objects and remain as lovely as when I first encountered them: the Ivory Knife, the Book Bound in Pale Leather and the Serpent Skin Cloak.

Their bearer enters the city of Tai-tastigon and swiftly is embroiled in the doings of several groups of characters, including the staff of a local tavern, the Thieves Guild, assorted priests and gods/goddesses, the rooftop-dwelling Cloudies, and assorted bandits, allies, and felines, all of whom turn out to be more connected and in more mysterious ways than one would expect. I am an inveterate re-reader. More so in the days when I didn’t have the ability to download just about anything from the Internet, but even so still a habit I indulge in. Godstalk stood up to multiple rereads over the decades and shaped my expectations for fantasy novels ever since. It set a pretty high bar.

I loved Godstalk to death and managed to find its sequel Dark of the Moon much later. It always frustrated me not be able to find others in the series. Therefore I was overjoyed to find out that that not only were there more in the series but that they were available in electronic form. I’m halfway through the third book, Seeker’s Bane, and looking forward to the next three.

One of the things that makes returning to the book so satisfying is the heroine Jamie. Her flaws as well as her strengths are written deeply, shaping her actions inevitably and eloquently. The author takes us deep into Jamie’s head, letting us watch her development as well as her struggle with her complicated existence.

The main source of Jamie’s struggle is her adherence to the Kencyr code of honor, a trait that makes her a hero in the classic sense, someone to look up to and emulate, and which often talks directly about the nature of honor. Here’s a passage I just hit in Seeker’s Bane:

Trust honor, Immalai had said.
yes. For her, balanced on the knife’s edge, honor was more than life, its loss infinitely worse than death. And part of honor was taking responsibility for one’s actions and choices, over and over, as long as one acted or chose.

Jamie is complex and compelling. Her twin brother, Tori, begins to share the viewpoint in the second book and is interesting in his own right, but Jamie is rightly the core of the series. As I’m reading through the series, it’s a pleasure as a reader to watch her history unfold even as her personality is sharpened and shaped. As a writer, it’s a terrific lesson on the effectiveness of going deep into a character’s head.

Fantasy books and series that share this depth of character development:

• Carol Berg’s Collegia Magica
• Jo Clayton’s Diadem series
• Amanda Downum’s Necromancer Chronicles
• Tanith Lee’s The Birthgrave
• Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser
• Any book by Martha Wells, but particularly The Element of Fire