Books!

[matril]

My husband came home from work today with four boxes stuffed with books. Apparently the school librarian received a large donation of books and simply couldn't deal with all of them, so she was giving them away. A generous helping of fantasy, science fiction, alternate history, and some other, less interesting genres. ;P My husband plans on keeping a lot of them in his classroom, assuming he keeps his current teaching job next year, but still, we're going to need a bigger bookshelf.

Among the books was Dianna Wynne Jones's Tough Guide to Fantasyland, a marvelous antidote to the clichés of fantasy novels. But I suffered a great embarrassment upon reading the entry for "female mercenary." It described with alarming accuracy a character in my novels. It was as if the author just plucked the description straight from my brain, backstory and all. And here I was, thinking myself so original just because I had a female who wasn't the main character's love interest. Ah, well. Sometimes conventions exist for a reason, right? I'm not going to go back and try to change her (I already submitted the first novel; it's too late!) because I think she's interesting and moderately three-dimensional and such, but it was a bit of a blow to my confidence in my creativity and originality.

Still, Tough Guide to Fantasyland is hilarious. :)

Comments

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

That book sounds great - I'll have to check the library for it, though I'm a little worried about how many of my own characters I'll find in it. I know Strange Horizons has a long list of "Plots We See Too Often" and I winced a little at finding a few of my own there. (At least I never did the horror plot where somebody plots to kill someone else and in the end the tables are turned. That one turns up on Critters about three times a week).

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

I've had a copy of "The Tough Guide to Fantasyland" for quite a while, although my being more a science fiction than a fantasy reader perhaps made my reaction to it a little more just plain "smug" than "wry amusement with a touch of embarrassment..." A while back, I was pointed to an online guide of much the same sort but about "written space opera," if I can slice definitions thinly; for me it bit somewhat deeper.

[matril.livejournal.com]

Stumbling upon Tough Guide to the Known Galaxy was how I first heard of the original Fantasy version, and conversely, I found it easier to swallow since I don't write or read as much science fiction. It's always harder to make fun of yourself, isn't it?

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

I'm interested to hear that your encountering of the two Guides was in opposite order from mine (and the link from "Known Galaxy" to "Fantasyland" is, of course, much easier to locate than the other way around), and it's very true about how it's "harder to make fun of yourself." One feeling I do have about "Known Galaxy" is that it's less purely comedic, and perhaps a bit more earnest in pointing out both well-worn ideas and even potential "more acceptable" solutions.