6. Infinity: A Bridger's Story - Writing

clash_bowley

How did you feel about Smith as a writer? How would you describe his style? Did you enjoy the reading process itself?

Apocryphal

Yes, as I said elsewhere, he’s actually a pretty good writer of action. I liked the read. It’s probably not the kind of thing I’d read a lot of, but it was fun and effective, for me and I’d be willing to have another go. But this clear and easy writing and structure really lends itself to audio books (which can get muddled when the structure changes perspective a lot, for example, and there’s no audio clue to the change.)

RichardAbbott

A light fun read. I wouldn't go back to it for great prose or interesting structure, but the writing was competent, well edited, and well-suited to its content. Seeing as how I felt it could easily have been longer it clearly didn't bore me!

Interesting to hear about the audio experience - I've been thinking a lot recently about narration. Firstly about how a bad narrator can ruin the experience of a perfectly good book. But also about how even a good narrator adds a layer on top of the book which may give it quite a different feel to what you get when you read it to yourself.

NeilNjae

"Workmanlike" is how I'd describe it. Simple, direct, pacy, clear. Does the job. I've read worse (and I've written much worse!) and I've read better.

Apocryphal

> @RichardAbbott said:
> Interesting to hear about the audio experience - I've been thinking a lot recently about narration. Firstly about how a bad narrator can ruin the experience of a perfectly good book. But also about how even a good narrator adds a layer on top of the book which may give it quite a different feel to what you get when you read it to yourself.

There are quite a few things to factor in with an audio experience, and these can either detract from, or enhance a listening experience:

1. The writing. It’s best if it’s straightforward, and the storytelling is linear. It think, to give a familiar example, that the Book of the New Sun would be a difficult audio experience. For one thing there’s a lot of flowery prose and special terms (which, because of how audio books are listened, are impossible to look up). And there are shifts in the narrative, like skipping over things, that would be hard to parse in audio. When listening to audio, it’s not practical to flip back a few pages so see if you missed a detail. You also can’t see how things are spelled, so if the story hinged on two characters, like Ford and Fforde, you’d never be able to tell them apart.

In Infinity, the writing is super clear and easy to follow. I find Christopher Priest novels are mostly good listens because his writing is so precise and economical. He does in some novels switch perspective, but usually gives clues up front (like a written chapter name, vs just numbers.

I thought Half Sick of Shadows was a good listening experience, enhanced by the Welsh accent of the reader. But The Flame Before us would be confusing, since the symbolic clues to the switching perspective would not translate, and there are a lot of somewhat similar family groups. So that’s a book that’s better read than listened.

2. Narrator can make a big difference. If their delivery isn’t great, the prose can come off as boring, or worse, distracting. The tone is also important. I thought the narrator for John Gardner’s book, Grendel, was just perfect, because he sounded like an indignant curmudgeonly troll, which was exactly right as the voice of Grendel. On the other hand, I had to refund my purchase of Tomoe Gozen because I felt the very cute female narrator did not suit the content. Narrators that are good at accents are much better than those who aren’t. The narrator of the Sharpe novels I read made the characters sound exactly like Sean Bean and the other actors in the TV series. With a really good narrator, the experience can be just as good as reading oneself, maybe better.

3. First person perspective in a novel really lends itself to audio, because it feels like the person is sitting beside you and telling their tale. In such cases, listening can be better than reading. The above mentioned Grendel was like this. There are other circumstances where audio is better than reading, too. Bird Box, by Josh Mallerman (later made into a Sandra Bullock movie) was great, because it was a post alien invasion tale where the appearance of the aliens would drive the viewer mad, so whenever people went outdoors, they were blindfolded. And the author did a great job of describing what the characters could hear, as in one memorable scene going out to the well to get water, rather than see. In an audio book, I could close my eyes and listen and really put myself in her place. You can’t do that with a print book.

4. When to listen. Over the years I’ve learned the best circumstances for me to listen to books to get the most out of them. There are when doing menial and generally repetitive tasks in a familiar environment, like housecleaning, gardening (esp weeding), snow shovelling, washing dishes or laundry. Listening while highway driving is generally good, but not so much in the city. Listening while I walk to work is ok, but not on an exploratory walk around the city. And, when I’m doing AutoCAD drawings at work, I can listen for hours at a time. But never when I have to write or do anything with numbers, like labelling or doing grading plans.

5. Because my listening times happen when my body is busy with something (but my mind is free), I’m rarely in a position to look stuff up, or make notes (though I make exceptions when listening to lectures). So if I think a book is going to be something I’ll want to make notes on, I don’t choose audio.

RichardAbbott

That's really interesting and helpful, thanks 🙂.

> @Apocryphal said:
> 1. The writing. It’s best if it’s straightforward, and the storytelling is linear. I thought Half Sick of Shadows was a good listening experience, enhanced by the Welsh accent of the reader. But The Flame Before us would be confusing, since the symbolic clues to the switching perspective would not translate, and there are a lot of somewhat similar family groups. So that’s a book that’s better read than listened.
>

It was a fascinating experience working with the narrator for Shadows (Menna Bonsels). We talked a bit while she was recording about particular words and how to pronounce them - eyot comes to mind, as a regional term for a small island in a river. But also listening to how she had interpreted some passages was a fascinating insight into how not everyone reads the same words the same way! It's ever so easy to assume the reverse, that all readers will agree amongst themselves and with the author, as to the meaning, phrasing, and sound of particular passages. The biggest surprise with Shadows was listening to how Menna narrated what I see as a pivotal point in the story, where the main character says "tell me tell me tell me tell me tell me" - she had clearly inferred a rather different emotional context than I intended... but after a lot of thought I went with her choice rather than asking her to rerecord that bit, mainly because if she read it that way then probably so would a lot of other people.


> 2. Narrator can make a big difference. If their delivery isn’t great, the prose can come off as boring, or worse, distracting.

Yes, that was my problem with the Poul Anderson book.

My other half does almost all her reading by Audible, and has come across a few books where the author has themselves narrated. Clearly this gets around the interpretation problem as the author knows exactly what they intended something to mean and signify, and how they wanted place- or personal names to be pronounced. But how many authors are also good narrators?

clash_bowley

The writing in the book was well done, in an action novel way. I never liked any of the characters particularly, nor did I dislike any. They were there and lots of things happened. Pretty much sums it all up.