The Sword and Laser discussion

Fresno Bob wrote: "Personally I enjoyed the letters as a plot device"
I did enjoy them as well and thought that you got to know Thomas as a character through them as well. There is a theme in the book about how much past experiences shape someone's personality. The letters helped establish Thomas as a character and highlight the contrasts with Myfanwy, (view spoiler)[although there were some signs of Thomas changing a little towards what Myfanwy would become when she checked out the grafter school (hide spoiler)]

Rick wrote: "And that's what I mean. You didn't tell the same story... you told a variation that, the further you went, diverged more and more."

No I didn't. I merely supplanted the existing clunky method of giving the information with a greater variety of ways done less clumsily. Orphan Black handles this exact same story in a much better fashion by utilizing more avenues of information.

As it is, Lady Farrier is playing exactly the same part as I outlined. All I'm doing is slightly shifting her from "mysterious oracle" to "font of info." She already plays the latter role, I'm just removing the reliance on the former earlier in the book as set-up for the mystery.

My objection is not the infodumps; I'm fine with those. My issue is the same as Brendan's. Specifically:

Brendan wrote: "Also worth pondering: who exactly writes letters with full, accurate quotations from other people? Letters that read oddly exactly like a chapter from a novel. Were novel-writing and perfect memory unstated powers that she had? "

So my solution gets rid of HOW it's being conveyed, not THAT it's being conveyed.

The individual stories she tells are fine, but after a while it feels like a load of bollocks the way she writes. Also the stupid italics.

Rick wrote: "I wonder if reading speed and reaction to the letters is correlated. I'm a reasonably fast reader - ~300wpm or so - so a page or 3 of letters takes me about 2 minutes to read."

I would say no. I'm not a fast reader (usually takes me a couple weeks to finish a book) and I'm fine with the letters. I haven't finished the book yet, but so far I'm enjoying it. So, in my case, being a slow reader has not created a negative reaction to the letters.

Trike wrote: "Also the stupid italics..."

You know, I rather enjoyed the letters and thought they presented a good parallel story to the main arc (in addition to providing backstory), but I also listened to the audiobook. Had I read the ebook/dead tree version where they're written in italics, I might hate them on principle. Much better to indent the quotes (or quote block or whatever it's called) than forcing someone to read pages of italic writing. Almost as bad as when a book shows letters as handwritten cursive. In both cases, make it harder for me read thru and I'm gonna just want to read something else. Not implying that I can't read it, just for some reason not as fast as I can print words.

I didn't mind the letters but, like someone other people mentioned, I hated the italics. In a couple of the later letters, Myfanwy's thoughts were expressed in non italicized text within the italics of the letter. Ughh.. for me that just seemed a total mess.

One of the comments above mentioned reading the letters/files in the binder as a parallel story, which I did, and in my opinion, this made the experience ten times better. I'm a big fan of point-and-click adventure games, where there are a lot of random clues scattered around in the form of letters, documents, etc. Most of the time, you COULD finish the game without reading everything, and I have some friends who do this because they want to get on with the story and don't care about the extra info. I personally like to read everything possible in order to get a clearer, more accurate picture of what the characters' world is like, even though it slows me down.

This book and the way O'Malley chose to present his mountain of information (which I really enjoyed reading) reminded me a lot of a well-written, well-designed point-and-click adventure game.

I thought the letters were clever/interesting at the start, but I quickly grew tired of them.

Fresno Bob wrote: "Personally I enjoyed the letters as a plot device"

Me too, though I wonder if that was because I listened to the audio version?

Veronica wrote:
Me too, though I wonder if that was because I listened to the audio version?"
How are the letters differentiated in the audio book? Does the narrator take on a different voice/style or is the shift to first person narration enough to mark them?

Brendan wrote: "You are now outright insulting people that didn't like The Rook and implying that they're stupid. You should stop.
..."
Uh... no. reading speed and intelligence have nothing to do with one another. Your comment is stupid, but I have no reason to believe you're a slow reader for example....

My point, since I seem to have to explain things to you, is just that if people do read more slowly, the letters might well seem to drag on and thus be more annoying to them. In past threads some of the regulars, who seem perfectly bright to me, have noted that they read fairly slow.

You might want to go outside or something. You seem tense.

Silvan wrote: "The more I read and think about this, the more I believe that we have trained ourselves to think: info dump=bad. So when we identify a part of a story as an info dump there is a negative reaction t..."

Agreed. There's a tendency groups have of identifying things that are flaws and then seeing that flaw everywhere. For a while, I remember seeing this in groups when talking Mary Sue/Gary Stu flaws. Very real flaw in writing, but that doesn't mean every competent character in a book is a Mary Sue. I think it's kind of like buying a car and all of a sudden you see them all over the place... something about how pattern recognition in our brains works.

@Rick. Some forum etiquette, please.

Please keep in mind that disagreeing with someone doesn't have to mean attacking that person. There is way too much tension from a few posters who seem to be escalating disagreement into personal attacks. Please be polite to each other.