Bits

[den]

Anne Rice Spits The Dummy
Anne Rice writes to those who don't like her books. flummery writes an excellent rebuttal.


Off to Wagga Wagga
Tomorrow I'm off to the university campus at Wagga Wagga for some serious Cisco training. Theoretically I should have the CCNA2 and CCNA3 certificates at the end, but that probably won't happen judging by the difficulty I'm having with the online assessments.

1996

Comments

[jim-lane.livejournal.com]

Good luck, Den!

Jim

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

Re: Anne Rice... my friend, I stopped reading any of her scribblings after Memnoch, so utterly disgusted with her stories that I couldn't bear another page. I forced myself, FORCED, a man who loves to read had to make himself, finish the first book of the Mayfair series; I refused to pick up another in that bunch. I enjoyed Ramses the Damned. I enjoyed Interview. I loved Vampire Lestat. I was somewhat less pleased with Queen, but read on anyway. Body Thief was a complete disappointment, but everyone has an off book. Memnoch, though, tore it for me. It wasn't a change in her writing style; she's correct in that her style has never changed and Lestat's voice has always come across as being the same character every time. His voice is consistent, as are his apparent motivations. It's her plots. They have gone from intricate in detail to being the literary equivalent of massive Rube Goldberg devices. I see Wile E. Coyote sitting at a desk, draped in black, churning out vampire novels when I read her writing now, and it is offensive.

What she's done with this diatribe on Amazon is prove to me two things: 1) I was right in thinking I was better off not supporting her with my money, and 2) she has achieved Mercedes Lackey-hood, which is the point at which an author feels secure enough in her money to lambast a large chunk of her audience. (shrug) Rice can write as many books as she likes; not one more will collect dust on a shelf in my library, not even one received as a gift from some well-meaning person who doesn't know me very well.

[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

Did you happen to go look at her other reviews? All of them have 5 stars. Bleah, she only reviews what she loves.

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

I didn't go looking for other reviews by her, no. I don't honestly care what she likes to read. (shrug) To me, it's like soliticing the opinion of a movie critic; if I don't respect your work, I'm not going to respect your opinion of the work of others, you know?

[elektron.livejournal.com]

I just think she's far too arrogant (I wonder what J.K. Rowling is like). "Every word is in perfect place"? Bah. Anyone who thinks you can perfectly express something with any language really must not have very much to express. (There is, of course, the best way to express something using dictionary words, but then, I doubt she can recall all of those, or has used them all enough to pick out all the subtleties.)

She obviously has never tried to translate anything either.

There's a Chinese phrase that translates literally as "yes, but" (except the Chinese has no comma). It means somewhere between "same difference" and "who cares". There's another Chinese phrase that translates roughly as "carelessly", except you don't say that someone "carelessly picked two boxes of blueberries" (you usually say someone "carelessly knocked over all the blueberries").