This week’s Booking Through Thursday:

Sometimes I find eccentric characters quirky and fun, other times I find them too unbelievable and annoying. What are some of the more outrageous characters you’ve read, and how do you feel about them?

Most of the outrageous characters I’ve read are Harry Potter characters, without a doubt. In fact, there’s not room here to list all of them. Alastor “Mad Eye” Moody is probably the weirdest . . . I don’t find him particularly likeable, although I know most fans do. Dolores Umbridge is outrageously awful, the most despicable villain in the series, if you ask me. My favourite outrageous Harry Potter character is Luna Lovegood. I used to not be able to stand her because Jo’s description reminded me of someone I know who is annoying, but the film actress replaced her in my mind’s eye and now Luna is one of my favourites.

As for characters outside of Harry Potter . . . I don’t know. Can you call Puddleglum from C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair “outrageous”? I’m not quite sure, but he certainly has “quirky” in the bag. I find his woe-is-me outlook completely amusing. I’d like him as a friend, I think.

I don’t think I’ve read a lot of really outrageous characters. Those appearing in chick lit novels and similar stories tend to annoy me. I especially hate those kind of Ya-Ya characters with names like Bippy and Mabel-Sue-Ellen who are constantly doing crazy-but-admirable things, having “quirky” traits and making snappy remarks. That’s probably why I never read books like The Quilting Sisterhood of Honeywood County Humane Society (okay, I made that up); The quirks used to make such characters pass for “real” usually come off as boring and annoying.

Kate is hosting the Short Story Reading Challenge. I’ve always hated short stories, being repeatedly tortured at school with them, but since I’ve discovered that yes, there really are High Fantasy short stories, and yes, some of my favourite authors really do write bite-sized stories as well as novels, I’m going to give the format another try.

Naturally, I’m going for Option 5: “This is the custom option under the rubric of which you can tailor your reading list to best meet your personal reading aspirations. You might wish to craft a list that focuses on a particular place, or era, or genre.”

I will read 25 Fantasy short stories in 2008, by at least 10 different authors. That’s two stories a month plus one, because even numbers irk me with their perfect symmetry. The stories will be chosen as I go because I’m capricious that way.

I spent yesterday making connections. Pulling disparate threads of ideas from here and there and beginning to weave them together into something that will hopefully be beautiful. I find when I’m working on a story, those connections are so important. An implausible cheat becomes a clever turn of events if you make the right connections. Weak motivation becomes an undeniable need. The mayor isn’t just the mayor, he’s the heroine’s father. The vision isn’t just of a lady, but the Lady Fairlight, patroness of the Bards of Searoyal. You search through your notes for threads to draw tight, and something once flimsy and falling apart becomes strong and cohesive.

That’s what I did yesterday. Or tried to do anyway. I’ll continue the process through draft and revision until I’m done. I think that after a lot of pondering I’ve finally got past a huge block on my magic system and can move forward. I’m sure more details will need to be worked out as the plan progresses, but for now it’s something I can work with.

Today’s Booking Through Thursday:

What’s your favorite book that nobody else has heard of? You know, not Little Women or Huckleberry Finn, not the latest best-seller . . . whether they’ve read them or not, everybody “knows” those books. I’m talking about the best book that, when you tell people that you love it, they go, “Huh? Never heard of it?”

Probably Tanith Lee’s The Silver Metal Lover. Not only do people go “Huh?” when I ask them about it, when I describe the plot they follow up with, “The Hell?” But it’s a long-time favourite of mine, a romantic story that touched me more than most everything else I’ve read, the only book I can think of that brought me to tears.

I guess it’s the idea of science-fiction romance that throws people off. Fantasy somehow seems to naturally keep company with romance, but romance in most SF is usually relegated to a subplot, sort of like the ubiquitous romance in an action movie (the latter of which I’ve come to despise with all my heart.) This is a love story between Jane, a wealthy but isolated sixteen-year-old girl raised in a technologically advanced society and Silver, an intelligent android who seems to be malfunctioning . . . It’s beautiful, sincere storytelling that I’ve never forgotten. I hope to read it again this year, along with the sequel, Metallic Love.

Sadly, no one I’ve ever recommended this book to has given it a try. I keep on recommending it though, knowing that for the right person it’s the perfect read. (I mean, 83 five-star reviews out of 96 total . . . that ain’t peanuts.)

New stuff I’ve picked up this month:

Orphans of Chaos by John C. Wright.

From the back cover: What if your teachers taught you everything–except who you really are?

John C. Wright previous fantasy novels, the Epic Chronicles of Everness, were lavishly praised by both readers and reviewers. Now he embarks on an ambitious new saga that explores the overlapping boundaries of science, mythology, and the imagination.

The Fair Folk: Six Tales of the Fey ed. by Marvin Kaye.

This one was a winner of the World Fantasy Award. From the back: Some are fair. Some are foul. All are Fantastic . . . Here are six stories from some of the most famous names in fantasy, all with one common thread—The Fair Folk.

The elves’ serenity is tested in a fable of a magical apprentice and the less-than-enchanting creatures that surround him in Craig Shaw Gardner’s “An Embarassment of Elves.”

Next, because I’ve set aside so many books for Powell’s without taking note of them, and so many books weren’t added in the first place, I’m going to have to delete the entire contents of my LibraryThing and build it again from scratch. For some odd reason, that sounds kind of fun.

Okay, enough PackRat for today. Yes, enough.

This morning was one of those lovely, unusual mornings when I get to lay in bed and daydream, yet I’m awake enough that my thoughts are coherent. Last night I’d done a little world-building, via the famous and useful Patricia C. Wrede’s Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions. The questions about magic were still echoing in my mind, demanding an answer, and so I gave them a little more thought and learned some interesting things.

Bardic Magic is not quite what I thought, at least not at the outset. It is, in a matter of speaking, coming into being. I’m still not sure exactly what that means or what it entails, but that’s part of the reason for all the commotion related to it in Searoyal. My heroine is going to be one of those I generally try to avoid: the kind with the special powers. I don’t know why I’m prejudiced against writing this type of heroine; I certainly don’t mind reading about her. In fact, I think it’d be hard to find a Fantasy book wherein nobody had the special powers, even if only temporarily. (Though Crown Duel, excellent book that it is, is the closest I can remember reading.)

I’ll have to think about it some more. I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to this outcome, but so far, things are coming together so nicely I don’t think I should stand in the way of progress.

(I’d never seen Booking Through Thursday until I spotted it on Susan Flynn’s blog. Looks like fun!)

How much do reviews (good and bad) affect your choice of reading? If you see a bad review of a book you wanted to read, do you still read it? If you see a good review of a book you’re sure you won’t like, do you change your mind and give the book a try?

A good review might convince me to read a new book I otherwise wouldn’t, but it’s rare that a bad review will dissuade me. It all comes down to the content of the review. If the reviewer tells me if it’s about vampire dudes stalking Los Angeles by night and wearing ladies’ lingerie, I am unlikely to read it even if the reviewer gave it five stars, an A+++ and a slice of red velvet cake. However, if the review says it’s about elves that do sparkly things and cross over into the natural realm to steal away human maidens, I will read it even if the reviewer called it a big, icky bear turd. So sometimes bad reviews are as helpful as good reviews; if they give you the details, you can tell that it’s something you’ll like, even if the reviewer didn’t care for it.

The one issue related to craft that will make me hesitate, however, is if the reviewer says the characterization is weak. Characters make or break a book for me, and I take complaints about them seriously when reading a review. Though I might still give it a shot.

Some readers taking the Mythopoeic Award Challenge have written reviews for books on their lists:

Annie has reviewed Tithe by Holly Black.

Gautami has reviewed Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

Giselle has reviewed Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones and Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card.

Nymeth has reviewed Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner.

Rhinoa has reviewed Fire & Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones.

I’ll definitely be adding some of these to my wishlist (I’m especially interested in Thomas the Rhymer.) If you’ve written a review for the Mythopoeic Award Challenge and I’ve missed it, point me to it in the comments!

Orson Scott Card has some interesting things to say about the writers’ strike (scroll past the review of National Treasure). Read it if you want to know what the writers are so worked up about.

“Studios create nothing. They just decide which scripts to make and pay for them. This is all well and good in a capitalist society — but the copyright law is not a corporate welfare plan, it’s a device to encourage creativity. The studios don’t have any creativity — the writers do. So the law should be shaped to encourage writers, not the studios that steal from them.”

Here’s an interesting idea: AnthologyBuilder, where you choose stories to be printed in your own personal anthology, which is then shipped to you in the form of a trade paperback. All the stories are reprints from paying publications.

(via Janni Lee Simner.)