Show vs tell, I think.

[hirez]

I was grovelling across the wykipeejah for something-or-other and found the entry for 'Espedair Street'. Reading the synopsis and looking at the list of Banks-books gave me a weird kind of combined adrenaline rush and ache because I remembered just how good it was to read it/them for the first time. A lot like the difference between a 128k mp3 through nasty sqeakers and a well-managed CD (or fresh vinyl) played on halfway-decent kit. Or the difference between a low-end digicam snap and medium-format film.

Some experiences take hold of a chap and are the sensory equivalent of wiggling your toes in the warm sand right on the tide-line. Others are... A lot like being told about something that someone else thinks you'll like, only that someone is tediously drunk and lacking in descriptive powers anyway.

Perhaps I am reading the wrong books. Perhaps I should confine myself to experiences akin to sliding into fresh bedlinen when righteously tired.

Comments

[cybermule.livejournal.com]

Heh. You make a point worth remembering.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

Have I told you lately that you are brilliant? As if you need to be told.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

It's the coming out of the far side of a migraine. When the world slides back into 3D and I'm actually in my head again, rather than controlling it from a distance with sticks and wires.

[andrewducker]

I had been feeling that I was going off of fiction in general until I read the latest Culture novel, which grabbed my attention like no book in the last two years.

I have no idea why this is, but I think I need to go looking for more.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Excellent news.

(I do get worried that I'm becoming jaded when new music/books/stuff doesn't hit me between the eyes the way it did when I was teenager or twentysummat. I guess I'm always going to be looking for that same lift-shaft feeling that hearing Autobahn (or Blue Monday or...) for the first time gave me.)

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

Have you read the Luminous collection, Greg Bear? It's perhaps a little clinical in execution, but I found the depth of his imagination engaging.

[reddragdiva]

I am most pleased when I find something that doesn't suck, and am reassured that shit is actually shit and it's not just me.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Definitely read Transition (his recent without-an-M novel) - it's what the pundits would call 'speculative fiction' as it's a thriller set in a world where dimension-hopping and time-travel is possible.

[andrewducker]

Thanks. I'll add it to the list!

[kathbad]

I adore Iain Banks - but have never got into Iain M Banks. Just finished Transition and can highly recommend it. Got that same buzz of reading his stuff for the first time (although he is a sick whatsit)

[reddragdiva]

I was actually the other way - read Iain Banks avidly many years ago, but of late it's all Culture all the tine.

[eljaydaly.livejournal.com]

You need to have some bad experiences so you can recognize the vomitously good ones when they hit you.

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

I recently re-read Wasp Factory, which too me back. Though I very much enjoyed Espedair Street I think that The Bridge is still my favourite - it's so reminiscent of my childhood imaginings (well, mostly - not the ending though).