December Reading List 2013

It's very quickly warming up over here now that NaNo (November) is over. I didn't write anything else. Thinking of trying to get some more work done today if the heat doesn't end up frying my brain.

I can't even believe that this is the last month of 2013. And the last month this year I'll be putting together one of these reading lists. Crazy.

An Ice Cold Grave

I'm very much enjoying this series of books. Much better, in my opinion, than the Southern Vampire Mysteries series and without all the drama. This series is only four books long, so I'll be finishing it next month.

Magic Bleeds

Getting through this series at a rate of knots because I'm reading it with some big fans of the series. After last month's book, however, I don't even mind. This book is going from strength to strength, just like Jim Butcher's Dresden books, and just like I was promised they would! People picking up this series: It's a slow burn, but it's worth it.

Dime Store Magic.

Just when you think I'd be done with paranormal fiction for this month, I pull out this old favourite. Kelley Armstrong's Bitten is being made into a TV series starting out in January. I've read most of the books that the series is going to be based from but, sadly, I've never actually finished this one. So, into the pile for this month it goes!

Neverwhere.

Next on my list is Neil Gaiman!! After the huge success that was reading through The Ocean at the End of the Lane two months ago, I've been looking forward to reading this one with a group with baited breath. Not to mention, this is the book that the radio play read by Benedict Cumberbatch, Natalie Dormer, James McAvoy and others was based from. :D:D

The Lives of Christopher Chant
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This just wouldn't be a month of my reading if I didn't go in for some Young Adult fiction. I absolutely loved my introduction to Diana Wynne Jones last month when reading Charmed Life and so I figure this book will be one of the first that I pick up to follow that up with this month. These books are fantastic, even for adults readers who haven't read them before and so don't have the nostalgic value of their first time reading it.

Mistborn.

This is another book I'll be reading along with my group on Goodreads this month. I've never read anything that wasn't a Wheel of Time book from Brandon Sanderson before--even though I previously worked in a science fiction and fantasy book shop--and I've been told that this is something that needs fixing right away. Therefore, this is a book on my list for the month.

November Reading List 2013.

Yes, I am just crazy enough not to be slacking on books while writing NaNoWriMo this month. Boy, do I have a list of books I'm excited to read this month! I hardly think there's an author in here that I haven't been excited enough to either make a post about up till now, or plan to write about soon enough.

Grave Surprise.

This is the first of many of my continued series reads. Last year, I started the first one in Charlaine Harris' series after it was given to me for free. I've always meant to get back to it. Luckily, there are a bunch of readers on Goodreads who are happy to join me in that aim.

Magic Strikes.

The second continued series read. This book series just keeps getting better and better. Not quite as amazing as Patricia Briggs (I know, I'm a hard judge), but more in keeping with a female Dresden by Jim Butcher. As with that series, the more we get to know about this world, the more and more I'm being dragged into it.

Ship of Destiny.

This is actually the last book in a series, so at least one series will be closing up for me this month. Totally reason for me to start a whole bunch of new series? Whether it is or not, that's what I've got coming up this month!

Wideacre.

I first fell in love with Philippa Gregory reading The Queen's Fool. This is a very different time and type of story. Still historical, the main narrative point that has jumped out at me is that it involves incest between brother and sister. Intriguing, I say.

Charmed Life.

Another first book in a series. This also doubles as my young adult token read of the month. Apparently this is the woman who has taken a large hand in defining Young Adult writing as we currently read it. Published in 1977, I can't wait to see where Young Adult writing has developed from.

Five Quarters of the Orange.

For all I know, this is another young adult-ish read. Heavy on the "ish" as this is not usually the style of writing that Joanne Harris employs. However, what I do know about this novel is that it's meant to be a book primarily about childhood. So. It's not part of a series, but it is the second book I've read by her this year.

Shelf Life.

This book doesn't appear in the picture, largely because I have it on ebook format. Still, I have been waiting for the next great book from Stephanie Lawton, and I have been lucky enough to score an ARC just before release. Be assured, there will be more written about this book to come!

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As ever, feel free to follow my progress on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6878229.Nicole_D_Fergusson

On Erotica, part 2.

Sometimes, it just so happens that book fans as big as me get to meet some of the authors that they most enjoy reading. Even when those fans live in a place so far away as Australia.


As it happens, I met Tracy O'Hara for the first time during the WorldCon held in Melbourne a couple of years back. She was excited to see her books featured in our book store, happily signed them and then stuck around talking with me and my co-worker for around half an hour before she went to the next panel she was in.

(I also got to meet writers Erica Hayes and Catherynne M. Valente!)

((This was also the con where I managed to score a signed copy of Charlaine Harris' Dead in the Family the year that it came out and before there was quite so much drama about her writing.))

Her 'Dark Brethren' vampire series is my most favourite, written in a style similar to Ms Harris and Patricia Briggs.

Tracy O'Hara herself is a lot of fun to talk to, and we've kept in contact over the years on Twitter as Australian writers and aspiring writers sometimes seem to do. So when I saw this interview reblogged on her feed, I knew it was bound to be good.

Erotica is not Porn: Novelist Encourages New Erotic Writers.

“Fifty Shades of Grey is not the best example of erotica. It's just the one that managed to break through here. Erotica is only a new publishing phenomenon here in Australia. In the US, it's been a best-selling and profit spinning genre since 2000,” Ms O'Hara said.
(Read more)


Now I've written about erotica on this blog once before. Then, it was to quote Julian Barnes' Telegraph article, in which he stated most modern authors feel obliged to write sex scenes if they want to see themselves published. I myself could certainly relate to this in past publishing experiences.

But Tracy's post is another side of the coin, if you will, an empowering view of the writing of erotica and separating it from the more derogatory title of "porn".

“They are stories which contain graphic sex scenes but narratives also centre as much around the mental and emotional journey of the characters as they do about the physical side of things.”


What Tracy suggests seems to be that physical aspects happen in real life and if your story is about the goings on of romance and real life characters, why not include erotica as a segment of that story? It doesn't need to be gratuitous, it doesn't need to be there, but it's an option to be considered.


Earlier in this month, I read one of Francesca Lia Block's books called The Elementals which had some graphic content. It forwarded the story, the relationship between two characters. I've also enjoyed reading her short story anthology Nymph, though that is a collection of erotica, which is not exactly the same thing.

Just before posting this, I reblogged a comment on Twitter stating that the only hard thing about writing erotica is figuring out good reasons why the characters are engaging in smutty activities.

My latest project is a joint anthology of m/m retold fairy tales, which is fantastic cause it's been a long time since I wrote anything other than het (hetrosexual pairings), but it's fun as well because some of the tales are heading towards erotic content. But they also centre as much around the mental and emotional stories of the characters, so I guess that's okay. ;)

Joanne Harris, 'Gentlemen and Players' and the writer's responsibility.

You may recognise this lady, Joanne Harris, who had such prudent words to say when I was having a difficult time at work.

It was a recent reblog from her blog that enticed me into reading Gentlemen & Players this month specifically. This book's been sitting on my shelves for a number of months, but this photo set and accompanying text sold me beyond doubt.

Gentlemen and Players, by Joanne Harris.

"If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past fifteen years, it’s this: that murder is really no big deal. It’s just a boundary, meaningless and arbitrary as all others-a line drawn in the dirt."

How completely evocative is that? How much more does it make me want to read it? How talented this person for putting this collection of images together in such a way?

If there's one thing I've found that is commonly inherent in Joanne Harris' books, it's that there are very few characters of conventional morals. Joanne seems to have a particular talent for drawing out these characters and making their motivations sympathetic, understandable, whether they be protagonist, antagonist, or something else entirely.

I love any excuse to post something from her Tumblr. Around the same time as the problems concerning Charlaine Harris' final book in the Southern Vampire Mysteries were making themselves public, Joanne responded to a fan letter which took it upon itself to dictate to Joanne what she should and shouldn't write. Joanne was in the middle of a five part series of blog posts on herself and her relationship to others at the time.

In response to him, she wrote,

But readers are not everything. Basically, I write because writing is necessary to me.

This is a statement I've seen written by many other writers. That's why (some of us) are paid terribly. There are an abundance of us who just need to write, not for the money, not for the readers, just for the writing.

She also went on to write,

A writer can (and should) only try to please one person at a time. That person is the writer herself – because trying to please anyone else, or modifying what you write for the sake of a real or imagined readership leads, not only to madness, but to dishonest writing. And, whatever else we expect of them, we need writers to be true. (read more)

Charlaine Harris, Southern Vampire Mysteries and 'Dead Ever After'.

Okay, so, my love affair with Patricia Briggs clearly goes above and beyond any feelings I may have for Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries, or it's associated HBO television show True Blood. Time and again, I mention again how amazing I think Patricia's writing is. I don't think this blog yet has had a thing to say about the certainly more public series written by Charlaine.

At the risk of being just another commentator on the big issue that has come out of the latest--indeed, last--book of the Southern Vampire Mysteries, they are in a similar enough genre to the Mercy Thompson books and I think a person must almost have been hiding under a rock to have missed the outcry that has come along with Dead Ever After.


At the core, Charlaine completed her series of books in a way that many of her fans did not like. As with many fellow authors, she had a vision for the trajectory of the series and, even with the popularity of certain characters over other certain characters, Charlaine made the decision not to waver from her original view on how the books would end.

Now, in the wake of many impassioned and angry fans, Charlaine has had to cancel public appearances and otherwise hide under her own rock until the sensation passes, instead of celebrating the end of a particularly popular series of books.

At the end of season three, I put True Blood aside when they went off and seemed to kill everyone but Sookie at the end of season three, leaving me feeling like I would have sacrificed the main character rather than lose all the rest. I ranted about it a little to my friends that year. I even started voicing it again when time came around for season four to be premiering. I certainly did not write hate mail to the author and producer of the series, or even post my opinion publicly.

As far as the books, I've been trying to figure out how far I'd gotten. Dead and Gone is the last one I read, I think. As much as I loved the 'mysteries' element of these stories, I thought that the character interaction was, on occasion, a little thin. There were a lot of questions about Sookie and Eric getting together that I thought went overlooked in favour of other things.

I've got a Goodreads.com account, and I do post reviews of all the books I read up there. All the books I finish. There have been many I haven't, and to those I simply put a 'Did Not Finish' marker on my blog here and move on.

For any books I've finished and not liked? There is always something constructive one can say about a book. I've also read my fair share of writing in various creative writing courses over the years. It is common courtesy, even when you do not like what you've just read, to say something positive before you give the criticism. I take that route whenever writing a review to a book I didn't feel was all that strong. There's got to be some reason you kept on reading it, even if you didn't like some parts of it, so why not mention those, too? (To be truthful, I also list the one or two things I thought weren't strong in books I absolutely loved.)

The issue has brought up questions of whether authors, as both artists and producers of a service, do or don't have an obligation to give their readers what they want. It's a really interesting debate, but also really scary if authors are put in a position where they have to give in to their readers if they don't want to face all this.

Of course, this is hardly the first time anything of this nature has occurred. In what's probably the most famous previous occasion of public outcry against an author's decision, and probably something that's coming to a lot of peoples' minds right now, Arthur Conan Doyle made the decision to wrap up his Sherlock Holmes series by killing him. In this case, of course, the author did give in to public outcry and brought him back.

(Unlike True Blood, BBC's Sherlock is something I'm looking forward to with baited breath. Come on season three!)

I'll tell you what, though. The public outcry over the end of the Southern Vampire Mysteries series of books has made this little read want to sit up and finish reading these books on my shelf, just to see how she did decide to finish them. :D