Yes, I should be working. Shhhh.

[truepenny]

Paul Di Filippo reviews A Companion to Wolves (among others) for the Washington Post and thinks it's a soap opera for furries and yaoi readers. On the other hand, the ALA's Reading List Council thinks it's worth a mention.

ETA: myalexandria has a very thoughtful post about Isolfr and feminism. To which I can mostly say, yeah, that's what we meant.

wild_patience isn't real keen on me, but I can't argue with her raving about Bear.

More commentary on Mélusine from imani.

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N.b., I collect links to reviews of my books for several reasons. One is that, as a writer, I'm curious about what people think. Another is that, as a long-time reader and a literary scholar, I'm fascinated by the different ways one book can be read and interpreted and reacted to. Now, I could chart reactions to any book, any author's body of work. But, you know, I've got my experimental sample right here. Also, collecting reviews of somebody else's work seems weird and creepy and even a little stalkerish. Also, although this may sound counter-intuitive, it's easier for me to be impartial about reactions to my work than it would be for me to be impartial to reactions about somebody else's book that I loved (or hated).

But here's the thing. Mélusine was published in 2005. The last time I even looked at it, except for fact-checking for The Virtu and The Mirador and Corambis, was sometime in 2004. Today, in 2008, my head is full of Corambis and, guiltily, the stories I want to write once Corambis is finished. I've moved on, in other words. Which is not to say that I don't still love Mélusine and that I'm not proud of it. Because I do and I am. But, to swerve for a moment into a possibly florid metaphor, my novels (I hope) are like a chambered nautilus marking my growth as a writer and as a person, and Mélusine is a chamber I've grown out of. This is, I think, the way it should be. You shouldn't get stuck on one novel, one moment in your writing life, one chamber of your nautilus. So, for me, Mélusine is a record of who I was and what I was thinking, rendered in fictional form, in the first few years of the new century. Whereas (to pick an example at random from books I read and loved last year) Peter Watts' Blindsight is something I'm thinking about right now. I'm engaged with it in a way I'm not engaged with my own work by the time it gets published. I'm far more likely to be upset with a hypothetical someone saying something wrong-headed about matociquala's Dust than I am with a hypothetical someone saying something wrong-headed about The Mirador, because I love Dust in a way you can only love books you didn't write yourself.

Which leads me to my further point: I do not post links to reviews so that people will defend my honor. My honor's fine, thanks. I post the links so that I can find them again and because I think they're interesting. Which, you know, is maybe just egocentrism. But hey. My sandbox. I can build my sandcastle any way I want.

Comments

[sasha-feather.livejournal.com]

That is a really great way of approaching reviews.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Yes, me too. I'm always vaguely put out when people start defending things, or worse yet the reviewer pops up or posts to say "don't be upset". I want to link to them so I can find them again and because the whole reaction is interesting, but I don't want to stop people saying what they think, even if they're total morons.

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

Hey -- I read ACTW last night and, as I often do, wound up clicking around looking for reviews of it. Having read them, I was intrigued by how differently I seemed to respond to the book than most people did -- so I spent some time trying to work out why that was. And I figured I'd save you the trouble of google-searching or however it is you find reviews, and come over here and just link it:

http://myalexandria.livejournal.com/619747.html

Thanks to you both for a really entertaining read; I really hope you do someday write the rumored sequel, because I feel like there's a lot more to be explored on both the Isolfr/2-wolfjarls front and in terms of Isolfr's further progress in learning to negotiate the complexities of the pack. And, I suppose, in terms of the trolls and the svart, and the plot stuff, too, but really what I'm interested in is the human society. :)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

This was a thought-provoking, encouraging post for baby-writers like me. :)

On a total aside, I heard the song 'My Medea' by Vienna Teng and thought it was Melchior about Felix. Not to mention, pretty, because--Vienna Teng!