I remember cheating on Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. If you've never read the book, it's spent in double and triple flashbacks: "To understand where I am now, I must tell you about that night in the observatory. // There I was, cowering in a telescope, and I thought back on all that had come before, especially the job as an editor that I used to have. // While I worked as a publisher I remembered how I first met Jacopo Belbo...". I suppose we would describe it as a stack data structure, you keep pushing a new "present" onto the end of the existing one.
So here's how I cheated. At one point the main character suddenly takes a trip off to Brazil, and I thought, "man, this is getting ridiculous. I bet if I just skip ahead to whenever he comes back from Brazil, I won't have missed much." It turns out that while I had missed some important things, like a new girlfriend who becomes a major player in the story, I saw enough of them afterwards to conjecture about what had happened in Brazil.
What's more interesting to me is the set of books that I keep returning to. I have probably read Zelazny's Great Book of Amber (which is itself 10 novels) five or six times in my life, maybe more. It just captures me and takes me on a ride, each time.
There are very few books that pull off these mini-stories. I found the Arabian Nights (unabridged Burton version) to pull this off with amazing elegance. The characters usually use the mini-stories for some contrived example but the stories are very short, quick and on message and together the arabian nights is a solid read.
This reminds me of how I used to read series out of order (back when I read many books that were part of a series, in physical form so the whole series was often unavailable). Much as you learned about the new girlfriend through exposure, I found I tended to be able to put the important things together. Since exposition is one of my favorite parts of a book anyway, this sort of drew out the exposition, as parts of earlier books might be referred to that I'd not heard of before.
(Disclaimer: I also read choose your own adventure books straight through.)
Now, Amber.. Loved the first book and have read it repeatedly, but could never get far into the sequels.
More seriously I can see that it might well be a love it or hate it kind of book, sometimes the ability to provoke strong responses can be as important as the polarity of the response. Although by that measure teenage vampire lit has merit...
Comments
I remember cheating on Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. If you've never read the book, it's spent in double and triple flashbacks: "To understand where I am now, I must tell you about that night in the observatory. // There I was, cowering in a telescope, and I thought back on all that had come before, especially the job as an editor that I used to have. // While I worked as a publisher I remembered how I first met Jacopo Belbo...". I suppose we would describe it as a stack data structure, you keep pushing a new "present" onto the end of the existing one.
So here's how I cheated. At one point the main character suddenly takes a trip off to Brazil, and I thought, "man, this is getting ridiculous. I bet if I just skip ahead to whenever he comes back from Brazil, I won't have missed much." It turns out that while I had missed some important things, like a new girlfriend who becomes a major player in the story, I saw enough of them afterwards to conjecture about what had happened in Brazil.
What's more interesting to me is the set of books that I keep returning to. I have probably read Zelazny's Great Book of Amber (which is itself 10 novels) five or six times in my life, maybe more. It just captures me and takes me on a ride, each time.
There are very few books that pull off these mini-stories. I found the Arabian Nights (unabridged Burton version) to pull this off with amazing elegance. The characters usually use the mini-stories for some contrived example but the stories are very short, quick and on message and together the arabian nights is a solid read.
This reminds me of how I used to read series out of order (back when I read many books that were part of a series, in physical form so the whole series was often unavailable). Much as you learned about the new girlfriend through exposure, I found I tended to be able to put the important things together. Since exposition is one of my favorite parts of a book anyway, this sort of drew out the exposition, as parts of earlier books might be referred to that I'd not heard of before.
(Disclaimer: I also read choose your own adventure books straight through.)
Now, Amber.. Loved the first book and have read it repeatedly, but could never get far into the sequels.
The Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell does this brilliantly IMHO
Cloud Atlas was awful IMHO, just as a counterpoint
You're entitled to your opinion...
More seriously I can see that it might well be a love it or hate it kind of book, sometimes the ability to provoke strong responses can be as important as the polarity of the response. Although by that measure teenage vampire lit has merit...
Oh man ... then you missed the part six pages into the Brazil trip where you find out the rest of the book is all a dream :)