Update: To Say Nothing of The Dog

In the end, I decided to suck it up and give To Say Nothing of the Dog the attention it deserved. Having made that decision, it took me only two days to polish off the second half (the first took me almost three weeks).

I was right about the difficulties I was having: they had nothing to do with the writing, and everything to do with the way I was reading it. This book is a really clever mystery, and I was missing that because I wasn't concentrating. I didn't get the big twist, but I got enough of it to feel like I hadn't been totally left behind. I'm quite certain all the clues were there to piece the whole thing together, if only I'd paid closer attention. Even better, the hints were so beautifully integrated with the story that they never once called themselves out.

A few times, the main character was just on the verge of working everything out. I'm not sure if it was purely a writerly trick, but every single time he reached that point, I felt like I was almost there too. Whether it was a trick or not, it was excellently done. 

In fact, that's my overwhelming impression of the whole novel: it was really well orchestrated. The payoff had all the satisfaction of a good mystery solved, but it also had all the (guilty?) pleasure that comes with the resolution of a good period romance. It even managed to sustain the dry humour right to the very last line. To Say Nothing of the Dog is definitely going on my bookshelf, because I'm sure I'll read it again. Quite a turnaround from my thoughts just two days ago, hey?

I haven't spoken yet about the other two books by female authors that I've read this year -- Elizabeth Bear's Dust and Nancy Kress' Steal Across the Sky -- but I will say that this plan to read more SF written by women is really paying off.

I read in small chunks

Eesh. I promised I was back to regular posting, and then immediately went silent again. For nineteen days. Sorry about that! I've got an excuse, or at least an explanation: I'm really struggling with Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog. And whenever I find my reading a bit of a chore, everything else slams to a halt.

So why am I finding To Say Nothing of the Dog slow going? It's a good question. It's true that it is a time travel story, and I'm not particularly fond of those. But it is well written, and often drily funny, and set almost entirely in a time and place that I enjoy in historical novels (Victorian England -- there's a bit of Jane Austen, and a bit of P.G. Wodehouse to it).

In the end, I think it is purely a mechanical issue. I read in many small chucks across the course of a day. A couple of pages waiting for the bus, a couple of pages waiting for the kettle to boil. The chapters in To Say Nothing of the Dog are fairly long, and completely without breaks. These things are combining to make the book feel really disjointed. It doesn't flow, because I keep interrupting it.

If you're supposed to write what you like to read, there's a lesson in this for me. Short scenes, frequently breaks. The issue that's vexing me at the moment, though, is this: do I push through to the end of To Say Nothing of the Dog, or do I put it aside for a time when I can give it the attention it deserves?

How much for the women?

It occurs to me that I haven't read nearly enough novel-length science fiction written by women. I'd like to fix that, so I'm looking for suggestions.

I've got a copy of Dust by Elizabeth Bear waiting for me. I've enjoyed her shorter stories a lot, particularly "Boojum" and "Mongoose" (both with Sarah Monette), "Tideline" (short story Hugo winner in 2008), and her story in METAtropolis. I should also read some Connie Willis, but I confess that I'm not a huge fan of time travel stories (funny, really). Maybe Bellwether? How about something by Nancy Kress (Probability Moon?) or Nicola Griffith (Slow River?)? They both had stories on the Hugo ballot last year that I enjoyed.

Have you got any recommendations?