FMK# 31: I heard it on the internet

[melannen]

The mysteries F winner was the cat detectives. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked. I have already read one of the stories in it, and there were not nearly as many cats as advertised. :( The K winner was the Garrison Keillor, which is helpful because it means I don't have to keep wondering if I want to read it or not, you people have informed me I don't.

I have not read any other new FMK this week because I have been catching up on comics and other stuff. Also I saw Thor 3! That was an EPICALLY silly movie. I approve. EPICALLY silly is the only register in which Marvel Thor stuff ever works and they don't hit it nearly as often as I'd wish.

Today's is a mixed batch on the rather nebulous theme of Someone On The Internet Said I Should Read This. Will the internet contradict itself? Let's find out!

How FMK works, short version: I am trying to clear out my unreads. So there is a poll, in which you get to pick F, M, or K. F means I should spend a night of wild passion with the book ASAP, and then decide whether to keep it or not. M means I should continue to commit to a long-term relationship of sharing my bedroom with it. K means it should go away immediately. Anyone can vote, you don't have to actually know anything about the books.

I pick a winner on Friday night (although won't actually close the poll, people can still vote,) and report results/post the new poll on the following Tuesday, and write a response to the F winner sometime in the next week.

Link to long version of explanation (on first poll)

Poll #19072 FMK #31: I heard it on the internet

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 61

View Respondents

Dawn by Octavia Butler (1987)

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F
24 (58.5%)

M
16 (39.0%)

K
1 (2.4%)

Homeland by Cory Doctorow (2013)

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F
14 (45.2%)

M
1 (3.2%)

K
16 (51.6%)

Half Magic by Edward Eager (1954)

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F
17 (50.0%)

M
13 (38.2%)

K
4 (11.8%)

Black Ships by Jo Graham (2008)

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F
27 (69.2%)

M
9 (23.1%)

K
3 (7.7%)

The Stepsister Scheme by Jim Hines (2009)

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F
11 (39.3%)

M
4 (14.3%)

K
13 (46.4%)

God Stalk by P. C. Hodgell (1982)

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F
12 (44.4%)

M
8 (29.6%)

K
7 (25.9%)

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster (1961)

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F
15 (34.9%)

M
27 (62.8%)

K
1 (2.3%)

The Doom That Came to Sarnath (anthology) by H. P. Lovecraft (1971)

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F
8 (29.6%)

M
3 (11.1%)

K
16 (59.3%)

First Test by Tamora Pierce (1999)

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F
21 (65.6%)

M
10 (31.2%)

K
1 (3.1%)

The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault (1956)

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F
12 (48.0%)

M
9 (36.0%)

K
4 (16.0%)

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Ruseell (1996)

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F
12 (38.7%)

M
8 (25.8%)

K
11 (35.5%)

Old Man's War by John Scalzi (2005)

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F
23 (54.8%)

M
2 (4.8%)

K
17 (40.5%)

Illuminatus! Part 1: The Eye in the Pyramid by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (1975)

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F
11 (39.3%)

M
1 (3.6%)

K
16 (57.1%)

The Book of Lost Tales by J. R. R. Tolkien (1983)

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F
9 (30.0%)

M
8 (26.7%)

K
13 (43.3%)

The Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede (2009)

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F
15 (45.5%)

M
2 (6.1%)

K
16 (48.5%)

Comments

[rymenhild]

Me, on this poll: Fuck everything.
...in a good way.

[melannen]

Me too!

[alexseanchai]

PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH ♥♥♥!!!

[alexseanchai]

I'm pretty sure the Wrede is the "total erasure of indigenous Americans" one but I might have it mixed up with a different Wrede.

[alatefeline]

Agreed! Though there are a few bits that I wince at in retrospect, I will ALWAYS be loyal to Milo and his little car, and wish to journey with them.

[the_rck]

I don't think I've seen such a strong M candidate before...

[rachelmanija]

I really love God Stalk. It's wonderfully weird and has a very appealing dark/quirky humor. Also, it stands on its own though it does have sequels.

I hated Old Man's War so much that I never read anything else by Scalzi other than his blog, which I like. Cool premise is totally ignored for the entire book, which is generic shoot 'em up in space with nothing that I enjoy in that genre.

I also hated The Sparrow. The plot element the entire story revolves around makes no sense, and many other plot elements also make no sense. Some cool ideas but generally manipulative and annoying.

Dawn is very good and thought-provoking, if dark/sad, with fascinating worldbuilding; also, tentacled aliens breeding humans!

I remember enjoying Half Magic, First Test, and The Phantom Tollbooth, but have not re-read recently.

[the_rck]

I haven't reread God Stalk in years, but I remember loving it when it first came out while I was in high school. I didn't care so much for the sequels because I found less humor and weirdness in them. I think I've got two or three of those on my TBR shelves.

But I remember that, when the third book came out, it was only available in a very limited print run from Meisha Merlin.

[isis]

You haven't read The Phantom Tollbooth??!! It's such a tiny book, surely you have room on your shelf until you have a free hour. It's so delightful, and there's some wonderful fanfiction, too. I think it's exactly the sort of book that will appeal to your goofier side, but that's because it's exactly the sort of book that appeals to MY goofier side. I reread it every so often, and it always makes me smile.

I also loved Half Magic and its sequels, but unlike the Juster I haven't reread those in a very long time, so I don't know if they've held up. But you should try them anyway.

I enjoyed Black Ships, but I wasn't OMG WILD about it. You might like it. You might not.

[melannen]

I have not! I think as a slightly-too-old kid I picked it up once and wasn't really feeling it and put it back down because it didn't quite live up to my finely tuned standards of nonsense? IDK. I know a lot of people who really love it! I think part of the reason I haven't read it is that I didn't want to dislike it and thought I might.

[petra]

The Phantom Tollbooth is such a foundational text for me that it can't get lower than a Marry from me but it is worth a fling. It is short, sweet, funny, and if you get the proper version it has Jules Feiffer art, which is like "If you get the right version of Roald Dahl books, they have Quentin Blake art." One is not properly complete without the other.

[melannen]

Mine does have the correct art! Much like my Roald Dahl books also do. (And my Lewis Carroll for that matter.)

[flemmings]

Oh, do read The Last of the Wine. Less historical fiction than RPF, the difference being the level of fannish enthusiasm Renault brings to the project.

Love both Half Magic and Phantom Tollbooth, but I read both as a kid and can't unsee my kid's take.

Kill the Lovecraft, just on general principle. I think I read it, and found it as hot-air empty and overblown as everything else of his, but can't swear it was The Doom and not something else of his.

[melannen]

I think pretty much all the Lovecraft I've read was e-copies, so I have all these paperback anthologies I've just picked up and don't really have any idea what's in them or if I've read it. (I enjoy them for the language and the mythcrafting, but there definitely isn't much else to them...)

[the_rck]

I voted K on the Illuminatus book because my main experience with it was it being used as a bludgeon, during college, against people who weren't the Right Sort of fan. I think that those people kind of missed the point (in much the same way that theater students who get elitist about Brechtian theater miss the point), but really, the books weren't all that good.

Basically, I'd only recommend it if you're wanting to do research on that particular bit of geeky fannish culture because it did yield things that became memes. They're just mostly memes that still piss me off thirty years later.

[melannen]

Yeah, I have it because I have all the memes and I wanted to find out where they came from, but then again everything I have heard about the books leads me to believe that the memes are the only good things in them (Also, I only own two of the three.)

[brownbetty]

I've not read all of Octavia Butler, but what I have (maybe six books) is amazing consistently on a theme of non-con pansexual transhumanism with group mind-reading. Like, Sense8 is the most Octavia Butler thing ever.

Scalzi, Hines, and Doctorow are all fine, but boring. Scalzi and Doctorow come across a bit as preachy liberal, and I haven't read the Doctorow in question, but I assume its the same.

I want you to read the Hodgell because people tell *me* to read her, and I want someone else to give me a report.

I got most of the way through Black Sails, but had to return it to the library. I enjoyed it but it didn't grab me.

[melannen]

I read one Octavia Butler and it was one of those books I found super intense to the point it hurt. She's a great writer and a lot of what I found unsettling was stuff that probably needed to be unsettled, but... it did not motivate me to keep reading her for fun.

princessofgeeks has been reading Godstalk recently and reporting back, but not in a way that has given me any idea of the plot. ^_

[kalloway]

I loved Half Magic and the rest of the series as a kid, but it's getting hard to recommend it, because it is very much a product of its time in the casual-racism/racist-stereotypes way, unfortunately.

I can't quite vote a K on it, because of such strong childhood nostalgia and how fun it is otherwise, but yeah, there are some lines/scenes that are definitely a thing.

[gehayi]

Wait, it's a series? I only read Half Magic. I didn't know there were any sequels.

[briar_pipe]

I have only vaguely positive childhood memories of Half Magic and The Phantom Tollbooth, so I can't really comment on those other than that tiny!me liked them. Book of Lost Tales has a couple of good stories in it, imo, so I've kept my copy. But none of those drove me to comment this week. No, that honor is reserved for Illuminatus, which taught my teenage self that it was indeed possible for me to hate a SF book, despite all prior evidence to the contrary.

If the self-congratulatory, mansplaining tone doesn't get you, the transphobia, misogyny, and badly written sex probably will. If there is a 1970s equivalent to a pair of gamergaters egging each other into yelling cuck every 5 minutes and interspersing that with "ironic" discussions of topics they know nothing about (e.g., psychology, history, what it feels like for a woman when she has good sex), it is probably this book. Its primary purpose was to be funny, but it was just... not. Everything I didn't like about Neal Stephenson and Robert Heinlein was here, with none of the things I did like about those two.

If there is an antidote to this book, it's probably Octavia Butler. I find it ironic that she's also on the list. XD

(A note: I did suffer through the Schrodinger's Cat trilogy as well, because apparently I was incapable of resisting any book placed in front of me at that point. It was awful in similar yet slightly distinct ways.)

[melannen]

Illuminatus! is definitely winning for "most brilliantly negative comments". :D I kind of want to read it now just so I can eviscerate it with the rest of you.

[malnpudl]

I don't know (or remember) enough to comment on anything except Old Man's War. Of that, I'll just say that I find Scalzi's writing perfect for when I want something undemanding and moderately entertaining. I liked this book enough that I consumed all the sequels. I can't see ever re-reading them, though. Thus my Fuck vote.

[melannen]

Undemanding and moderately entertaining is definitely my sort of thing!

[copracat]

It is super hilarious that at the time I did this the FMK for The Sparrow was equal. I think you need to by Catholic or sympathetic to Catholicism to get through it. Also fucking harrowing in a way I would absolutely not read now, had I been spoiled.

I forgot to vote on it but please add a "K" to Illuminatus! You can only read Wilson when you're young and perhaps less critical because so many things are new and you want to experience them or you're a bloke. It's only funny if you can ignore the overwhelming whitemanittude of it. Think Heinlein, but worse.

[melannen]

I am High Church Lutheran, is that close enough? :P I've read a few other SF books that engaged with Catholicism and found them interesting, which is why I picked this one up - I do wish more SF engaged with religion more directly (in ways other than direct action by gods...) "Fucking harrowing" is not really my thing, though.

[gehayi]

My vote:

Dawn by Octavia Butler -- F

I've read multiple books by her and I haven't cared for them...but many people like her and you might, too.

Homeland by Cory Doctorow -- F

Haven't read anything of his, so he gets an F on the grounds that the book MIGHT be good.

Half Magic by Edward Eager -- M

Loved it as a kid. Can't really see it without nostalgia goggles.

Black Ships by Jo Graham -- F

I vacillated between F and M for this one. Everyone I know loves it, but I haven't read it. I went with F.

The Stepsister Scheme by Jim Hines -- F

I liked the idea of three fairy tale princesses as a team of secret agents, but I realize that it's not for everyone.

God Stalk by P.C. Hodgell -- F

Never heard of it. Since I know nothing bad about it, the book gets an F.

The Doom That Came to Sarnath (anthology) by H. P. Lovecraft -- F

I'm not crazy about Lovecraft, but I don't know anything about the stories in this anthology or how winceworthy they are. In case of ignorance, works get an F.

First Test by Tamora Pierce -- M

The first book in the Protector of the Small tetralogy! MARRY IT.

The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault -- F

Vacillated on this one, too. Finally went with F rather than M. (I have a lot of Renault fans on my F-list. I just haven't read the book.)

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Ruseell -- K

Tried to read it. HAAAAATED it. I would have thrown it in the garbage if it hadn't been a library book.

Old Man's War by John Scalzi -- F

Doesn't sound interesting to me, but it might be good.

lluminatus! Part 1: The Eye in the Pyramid by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson -- K

Everyone has told me that it's boring, pretentious and whiny. Rinkworks summarizes the entire trilogy like this:

"The Illuminati are a secret society that (DRUGS SEX DRUGS) control everything in the world (SEX DRUGS SEX) including all governments, financial institutions, and (DRUGS SEX DRUGS) intelligence agencies. No, they're not. Well, yes they are but not really. (SEX DRUGS SEX) They originated in Bavaria in 1776 (DRUGS SEX DRUGS). No, actually they go all the way back to Atlantis. No, (SEX DRUGS SEX) Atlantis never really existed. Yes it did. It's not just one society (DRUGS SEX DRUGS), it's a whole bunch of them (SEX DRUGS SEX) together. No, it's just one, and they go all the way back to Atlantis, which never (DRUGS SEX DRUGS) existed, oh yes it did. They've had an uninterrupted existence since 30,000 years ago (SEX DRUGS SEX) -- no they actually only go back as far as the 1800s (DRUGS SEX DRUGS). Fnord."

The Book of Lost Tales by J. R. R. Tolkien -- F

Haven't read it. It might be good.

The Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede -- K

Racefail 2.0 convinced me that a book that erases Native Americans from their own country isn't worth reading. (And I found more than a few problems with Wrede's worldbuilding questions, too.)

[melannen]

I tried to work down the worldbuilding questions once, I think, and just got frustrated by the kinds of things they were asking. (Also, most of the worlds of hers I've enjoyed have been ones that do not have super intense or original worldbuilding...)

That summary of Illuminati looks very accurate for an SF book from the late 70s!

[marginaliana]

It's interesting to me how I have Very Strong Feelings about some of these in a way that I don't, usually, with your polls. The Phantom Tollbooth is SO GREAT and you should marry it forever and ever. Although, honestly, you might be too old to be as wowed by the wordplay as I was when I read it at age 8 or so.

The Sparrow should die and die and die. It's just pages and pages of grimdark horribleness and I came out of reading it feeling a sort of formless despair that lasted for days afterwards. And the worldbuilding was completely not interesting enough to make up for that.

And oh, the Illuminatus... IDK. I read maybe a third of the first book back in my high school days and found it unintelligible enough that I gave up there, but I think you have more fortitude for that sort of thing. I voted F just because I want to see your reactions, but I ultimately don't think it's very good, as a book.

[melannen]

This poll was designed to be Books People On The Internet Have Strong Feelings About!

Wordplay, huh? I like a good pun but. ...maybe you have to get into Phantom Tollbooth *before* you have been burned out on Xanth.

Ugh, grimdark.

[ceb]

...with the proviso that, for Illuminatus, you need to read the whole thing in one giant weekend-long orgy and then decide whether it's a keeper.

[melannen]

Best plan! Unfortunately I only own parts 1 and 3. That won't leave me super-confused, right? Right.

[lannamichaels]

I don't know these, but this is kicking my ass to finally read the phantom tollbooth, after 25ish years of Not Doing That. ;) My childhood bff loved the book, her dad read it to her as a tiny child, the whole deal, and I just... never got around to it. I should do that.

[melannen]

Let me know if it works for you without the nostalgia! So far I've got votes for "I loved it as a kid!" but nothing from anyone who picked it up later.

[liv]

Woo, I have loads of opinions about this selection!

In particular, The phantom tollbooth is great, it's almost in a league with Alice in Wonderland. Like Carroll it's properly surreal, not just goofy, and it's quite mathsy. It might be that you need to read it as a child to get the most out of it, but I thoroughly recommend it, and it's a short, light book besides.

The last of the wine is also awesome. I love Renault's gay ancient Greeks stuff, and this is probably the best of them as well as the gayest.

OTOH, The sparrow is, in my opinion, terrible, and reading it will make your life worse. It gets a lot of praise, and it's doing some original things, but one of the main things it got hyped for (including, I believe, the Tiptree award) is that a large part of the plot deals with rape, with the victim being male. Things that are good about it: it's a rare example of SF that really engages with real world Christianity and even theology. It has some interesting stuff about communicating with aliens. Things that are bad about it: everything else, omg. Terrible prose, terrible characterization, doesn't make sense, lots of rape and torture as a device to evoke emotions.

Several other opinions too, but those are the strongest.

[sophia_sol]

First Test! I love that book. I love the whole quartet it's a part of. I love the main character Kel a whoooole bunch.

Otherwise: I moderately enjoyed The Thirteenth Child when I read it (other than the lack of Native people thing), I moderately enjoyed Old Man's War when I read it, and Dawn was an objectively good book that I didn't like. Oh and I'm annoyed about Lovecraft stealing the name Sarnath from an important historic Buddhist site.

[sheliak]

God Stalk: I love this to the point of incoherence. Especially the setting; Tai-Tastigon is probably my favorite fictional city ever, so vivid and strange. There are sequels, but it stands alone pretty well. The sequels are a slightly different subgenre, and start off strong and then slowly decline. I'm not sorry I read them (there are some great characters introduced later on) but only the second + third are anything like as strong as the first, and they don't stand on their own nearly as well.

Half Magic: Loved this as a kid, agree about the racism fairy though. The best of the sequels is Knight's Castle, which IIRC stands alone pretty well and has few opportunities for the racism fairy to get a foothold. That one's basically Ivanhoe fanfic, which I would probably appreciate more if I'd ever read Ivanhoe, but I still really liked it.

The Phantom Tollbooth: I tried to read this as a kid, bounced very hard off of it for the same reasons I bounced off of Alice in Wonderland—I wasn't good with surrealism as a kid. A few years later I tried it again and liked it much better.

First Test: I'm more of an Emelan fan than a Tortall fan, but Kel is probably my single favorite of Pierce's heroines. I'm really fond of the cast in this series.

The Book of Lost Tales: I have read this. I remember literally nothing about it. I think I still have a copy in my bedroom.

The Thirteenth Child: I remember it as being restful and just on the edge of being boring. I mostly did like it, but have 0 desire to ever revisit the book.

Everything else I went by reputation, or title if I'd never heard of it or the author.

[luzula]

You should read The Book of Lost Tales only if you're a Tolkien completist. Like, if you love Silmarillion and Tales of Middle Earth and then say to yourself: but now I really want to know what these same stories looked like in early versions, when Tolkien was still calling the Noldor "Gnomes" and Quenya was spelled Qenya.