(no subject)

I read six books for Mock Printz in June and eight in July and I am in the very depths of Mock Printz Reading Burnout. The surest sign of Mock Printz Reading Burnout is that I can read a B+ sort of book and lament that it's only pretty good and not flat-out great. But mostly, I am upset that I keep reading books with really awful characters -- in the sense that they're gratuitously mean, they don't care about other people, they're manipulative. The one I read last year was not even a tiny tiny bit redemptive. The one I'm reading now is probably going to try to be redemptive, but it seems to be trying to have it both ways -- redemption, yes, but also "isn't it awesome that she is so iconoclastic and unafraid to say what she really thinks?" which can work if you play it right but once you get a character who thinks it's okay to sling vicious insults at an intersex girl, I'm not rooting for her to be redeemed. I'm rooting for her to be eaten by snakes. I have glanced to the end of the book. She does not get eaten by snakes.

I don't want to be one of those people who can't separate the value from a book as literature from the fact that it has some cursing in it. And I don't want to be those people who think that the most important thing about writing is that a character be likeable. But I do think that pretending the world is nothing but cynicism and viciousness is just as bad as pretending the world is nothing but sunshine and cake. And I do think that cynicism is a much easier posture than actually putting some feelings out there.