The Dragon Waiting group sync-read
Oct. 1st, 2020 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tabacoychanelHello everyone and welcome to our group sync-read of the first of John M. Ford's books to be rereleased by Tor, The Dragon Waiting (1983)! I know there are 5-6 of you who have already expressed keen interest in this virtual bookclub; if you are not one of them PLEASE feel free to join us if the book looks like your jam! It's said to be a dense book so I'm looking forward to having fellow travelers to tackle it with me. If you haven't already, do read this to get a general idea of what the book is like and this longer article which situates Ford's work in the context of what was happening in the genre at the time.
I'm going to start an Introductions thread below where we can all introduce ourselves and hash out the structure of the sync-read. I'll give it a few days (until October 4) for us all to post a short intro, and get on the same page re: the reading schedule. See you all down there!
P.S. there's one or two of you i may have corralled into getting a Dreamwidth account just so you could join this dicussion lol for you guys I recommend turning on email notifications for this post so that anytime anybody replies to this post, you'll get notified.
I'm going to start an Introductions thread below where we can all introduce ourselves and hash out the structure of the sync-read. I'll give it a few days (until October 4) for us all to post a short intro, and get on the same page re: the reading schedule. See you all down there!
P.S. there's one or two of you i may have corralled into getting a Dreamwidth account just so you could join this dicussion lol for you guys I recommend turning on email notifications for this post so that anytime anybody replies to this post, you'll get notified.
Introductions/Housekeeping
Date: 2020-10-01 04:59 pm (UTC)The book itself is 13 chapters + an introduction. I think it probably warrants a structured approach rather than the freeform "read however much you feel like and then post about it whenever" approach, so what do we think about weekly discussions? or should we go with twice weekly discussions? Imo we ought to start slow, 1 chapter a week, and once we've built up momentum and have the lay of the land we can go to 2 or more chapters per week if we want. Thoughts?
Re: Introductions/Housekeeping
Date: 2020-10-01 05:14 pm (UTC)I live in the Northeast USA and I'm a double-Ravenclaw according to the patented Sortinghatchats Hogwarts Houses taxonomy ;-)
Re: Introductions/Housekeeping
Date: 2020-10-01 08:17 pm (UTC)or your Hogwarts Houses, or any other relevant info.
<3! :D
Hi Lya-friends! I'm Anna, she/her, Ravenclaw, House Tyrell, Nirai faction, Gordian Hive -- with the latter explaining why I feel compelled to collect fantasy sorting system labels like that :D -- living on the West Coast of the US (originally hailing from then-USSR/now-Ukraine).
Lifelong genre reader, fantasy and sci-fi. Favorite SFF series, in no particular order, are LotR (One True Canon of my heart since I first read it at 13), Discworld, Vorkosigan Saga, Dragaera/Vlad Taltos books, Rivers of London, Terra Ignota, Machineries of Empire. Other major mentions to Earthsea (which shaped the way I intuitively think about magic), A Song of Ice and Fire (definitely past its heyday for me, but we had some great times), Harry Potter (despite JKR's best efforts in the last several years), Kingkiller Chronicles (the magic system! ♥ ♥ ♥), Chronicles of Amber, The Dresden Files, Gentleman Bastards, Bujold's Chalion/Five Gods, Temeraire (except book 8; we don't talk about book 8). Other authors I enjoy (or authors I enjoy beyond just these series) include Neil Gaiman, the Brothers Strugatsky, Naomi Novik, Ann Leckie, T.Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon, Holly Black (at least historically), Sarah Rees Brennan, Diana Wynne Jones, and as of recently Frances Hardinge.
I'm much less of a non-book media person, but I do love Babylon 5, Firefly, Avatar: the Last Airbender, and really like what I've seen of Buffy (5.5 seasons) and Killjoys (2.3 seasons), and the very basic complement of nerd-friendly movies like Galaxy Quest, MCU, and LotR adaptations (duh).
I've been wanting to read some John M. Ford for a while, because a number of authors I like are huge fans (Gaiman, Brust), and I've liked the poem of his I've come across several times (Sonnet: Against Entropy, which is my kind of thing to a ridiculous degree, so it makes me really curious about his fiction), and then the fabulous article linked in the main post made me even more curious to check him out.
re: Housekeeping -- I think once a week is a good check-in frequency -- more frequent might be tough with people's non-overlapping schedules, and also I think a week is probably a good interval in which to chat about things in DW format. And I'm on board with starting a chapter a week and seeing how it goes. Like, that was definitely the right chunk-size for Cyteen, but maybe this'll be the pull-you-along kind of book... (And I assume that of course people* can and will chaos around the structure as it fits them)
* you know who you are, and we love you for it ;P <3
Possible resource, though probably not for a first read: Draco Concordans, which I've seen recommended by a bunch of folks embarking on their The Dragon Waiting rereads.
Chapter One (+ Introduction)
Date: 2020-10-02 04:23 am (UTC)Chapter Two
Date: 2020-10-02 04:24 am (UTC)Chapter Three
Date: 2020-10-02 04:24 am (UTC)Chapter Four
Date: 2020-10-02 04:24 am (UTC)Chapter Five
Date: 2020-10-02 04:24 am (UTC)Chapter Six
Date: 2020-10-02 04:25 am (UTC)Chapter Seven
Date: 2020-10-02 04:26 am (UTC)Chapter Eight
Date: 2020-10-02 04:26 am (UTC)Chapter Nine
Date: 2020-10-02 04:26 am (UTC)Chapter Ten
Date: 2020-10-02 04:26 am (UTC)Chapter Eleven
Date: 2020-10-02 04:26 am (UTC)Chapter Twelve
Date: 2020-10-02 04:27 am (UTC)Chapter Thirteen
Date: 2020-10-02 04:27 am (UTC)Post-read Thoughts/Discussion
Date: 2020-10-02 04:28 am (UTC)Re: Introductions/Housekeeping
Date: 2020-10-02 03:40 pm (UTC)Sci-fi and fantasy books are my reading material of choice – I barely ever pick anything else to read. I’ve read the usual – LotR and The Hobbit, Harry Potter, ASOIAF, some Chronicles of Amber – and in retrospect they were probably all formative, but I’m not actively into them anymore. My top current authors include: Kate Griffin/Claire North, Mark Lawrence, Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Ness, Joe Abercrombie (yeah, idk how that happened), Ada Palmer. I liked N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy a lot, but nothing else of hers; I liked Sarah Reese Brennan for Devil’s Lexicon, which was a hit, and the rest was a miss by so many miles; I liked what I’ve read of Barry Hughart, Bujold and Hardinge. I’ve read HDM, but wasn’t duly impressed; Kingkiller Chronicles are in roughly equal parts impressive and frustrating, but there is a lot of the latter; Margaret Atwood’s stuff is interesting but so far very often more depressing than I prefer my fiction to be. Sapkovsky’s Witcher series was great fun.
I’ve watched too many TV series and anime to list, but if we go for biggest impact/deepest love, I’ll go, in no particular order, with The Magicians, Killjoys, Sense8, Dark, The Umbrella Academy, Pushing Daisies and some of Doctor Who. I enjoyed the first five seasons of Supernatural and the first season of Westworld, but things have gone south for both since. My most recent joyous discovery is The Boys.
Re: Housekeeping, I also think chapter-by-chapter schedule starting with once-a-week check-in sounds reasonable - we can later adjust it, if need be. From what I so far know of this book, it might require erm significant intellectual resources, so starting out slow sounds good to me.
Re: Introductions/Housekeeping
Date: 2020-10-02 04:15 pm (UTC)Have we talked about that yet? I don't think we have, but actually I'm not surprised because him and Mark Lawrence seem like good predictors for each other, at least based on what I've read of either. As in, I cautiously picked up Lawrence off your and K's rec because it was sounding like Abercrombie, and that turned out to be a good set of expectations to go in with.
I'm with you on Jemisin, btw, and on Kingkiller Chronicles to some degree.
Also, I'm glad SOMEBODY ended up watching Killjoys and enjoying it :D
Re: Introductions/Housekeeping
Date: 2020-10-02 05:35 pm (UTC)I didn't really register you gave Lawrence a try, even though I usually keep up with your reviews (sometimes only the non-spoilery parts), weird. Honestly though, I feel Lawrence is pure fluff in comparison to Abercrombie XD Yeah, sure, Prince of Thorns starts like a psychopathic bloodbath, but it's almost immediately so much overkill you stop taking it - or Jerk - seriously. Abercrombie is so much darker and more... realistic, I guess? Plus his characters are all completely awful people. Abercrombie put me more in mind of GRRM, really ("They killed the dog, AAAaA"TM), but it's undeniable that his books, full of graphic violence and the worst of human traits, are nevertheless strangely compelling. Go figure.
Also, I'm glad SOMEBODY ended up watching Killjoys and enjoying it :D -- :P By the time you got K to watch the first episode I told her about it like five times :') But short of sitting them on a couch and making them look at the screen, there's just no convincing some people XD The show had its lower points, but overall in terms of plot progression it was one of the better ones out there. The lovely banter continues and characters are pretty and painfully fond of each other - that's really all I ask of my TV shows.
Re: Introductions/Housekeeping
Date: 2020-10-02 06:56 pm (UTC)I read really omnivorously, but speculative fiction is my biggest time sink. Along with the usual sci-fi and fantasy, I'm also into pre1990s post-apocalyptica, magic realism, and alternate histories (especially if they involve magic realism). Seeing as The Dragon Waiting is basically alternate medieval history with added magic, I am insanely excited!!!
Books I really liked are: ASOIAF by George RR Martin, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, Territory and War For the Oaks by Emma Bull, From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury, Contact Harvest by Joseph Staten, and Zen Cho's short stories. Discworld, The Locked Tomb, The Dark Tower series, The Old Kingdom, and The Raven Cycle are also high in my heart. Other miscellaneous authors: Christopher Moore, Robin McKinley, T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon, Ursula K. Le Guin (esp. her short stories), Naomi Novak, Neil Gaiman, R A MacAvoy, Robert Heinlein, and Brian Jacques. Currently reading the third Terra Ignota book (Turn on your location Ada Palmer, I just wanna talk!).
I don't really watch a lot of visual media with a plot. I saw The Old Guard and liked it, and Pacific Rim is an instant rewatch. LotR, the first two Harry Potter movies, and several recursive-so-bad-they're-good-again sci-fi movies are up there.
RE: Housekeeping, I think a chapter a week with weekly discussion is a good place to start!
I'm very excited about this book. I hadn't really heard of John M Ford, beyond the obligatory mention of how he helped shape several genres, until about two months ago but have been eagerly waiting for the release ever since. I read the sonnet
Another link that might be of interest: his comments from Making Light, helpfully collected together posthumously. Everything I've read about Ford always emphasizes how expansive his wheelhouse as a writer was, and seeing all his marginalia bits put together really underscored that. It's mostly short verses, bits of never-written short stories, snatches of dialogue, and fragments of plays. They really gave me some insight into his sense of humor and his genius at turning the absurd into the artistic (which in turn just made me more excited for The Dragon Waiting).
And for ease of rereading (and for those who might not have read it), the Slate article with some background about why his books fell out of print and the difficult journey in dealing with his estate that's allowed them to be rereleased now.
So excited to meet all of you! Can't wait to dig into this book together <33333
Re: Introductions/Housekeeping
Date: 2020-10-02 08:02 pm (UTC)I'm K (Kay/Kamilya) and me and my succulents and my billion kilos of books have just moved house! So my life is currently very on brand and chaotic. I live in London and drag radishland (there's an Imperial Radch joke in there somewhere) nearly as much as it drags me -- into its ways, slowly but inexorably. Double Slytherin, Humanist, Targ.
I do love many of the names mentioned by you all already -- Hardinge, DJW, Kate Griffin, Pratchett, Lawrence, Bujold, Ursula's essays and Zen Cho's short fiction, and I'll add The Goblin Emperor to the list -- and I'm probably forgetting a million more. I read various non-fiction, though definitely less so than genre things. I'm also always on the lookouot for good SFF with queers -- anything on the spectrum from chewy and baroque like Ada Palmer and feel good and genre savvy like In Other lands. I was prepared to dismiss Gideon but then Harrow's book happened and exploded my brain, so there is that for the literary surprise of the year. I read quite a bit of queer romances too -- KJC's Will Darling Adventures being this year's most delightful discovery, and Captive Prince being still, regretfully, something I care about A Whole Lot. When normal kids grew up furtively reading fanfic on their family computers, I hauled doorstoppers from the library; it didn't mean I grew up dignified, it only delayed my fandom puberty.
I'm bad with TV shows and movies, and I have to consult my google keep notes to remember anything I've seen. I love Man from UNCLE, John Wick and other movies with stylish violence. I have an extensive track record with animanga, though nothing I've been keeping up with regularly for the last few years.
I'm excited about this sync-read because I love syncreads despite being rubbish at them, esp in excellent company, and I love chewy, smart books with a punchy payoff, which this promises to be. A chapter a week seems like a good pace, and i'll be on my best behavior :P
PS. I am so impressed by our darling hostess's organizational skills! and i promise not to take it as a challenge to overload it with entropy but xoxo
Re: Introductions/Housekeeping
Date: 2020-10-02 08:11 pm (UTC)- yell about how good Zen Cho's short fiction is, and why are Regency novels nowhere near that? I am so glad I didn't give up on her after bouncing off Sorcerer. did you read the order of the pure moon? that's some goddamn good wuxia love letter.
- say that Lya has got me really excited about meeting you in this syncread because she advertised your book brain in no uncertain terms!
- мастер и маргарита <3
Re: Introductions/Housekeeping
Date: 2020-10-02 08:15 pm (UTC)Re: Lawrence, I mean. Howgarts with lesbian ninjas IS fluffy, so I am firm in my secondhand conviction that Abercrombie takes this trend and runs with it much further than Lawrence (and not sure I wanna chase him into those disappearing horizons).
Let's get depressed together by overexposure to delicious intellectualness! :D (what next, Dorothy Dunnett?)
Re: Introductions/Housekeeping
Date: 2020-10-02 08:17 pm (UTC)