bibliogramma | Mind candy

I have been buried in books since Christmas morning. It's been wonderful.

One of my favourite writers of what I call mind candy is Mercedes Lackey. Please understand that this is not a derogatory term. I love mind candy. It's a total indulgence in the kind of stories that are just plain fun, without having to be "good for you" in any way. I've read most of Lackey's earlier books at one point or another, but she's so damned prolific that there's always three or four new ones hanging around, and I don't actually have in my library all the older ones I have read.

So my dear partner

glaurung bought me vast numbers of Mercedes Lackey books for Christmas (among other wonderful book surprises).

Since Christmas, I've happily indulged myself in the frothiest mind candy, and it has been a wonderful time.

Lackey re-reads:
Arrow's Fall (last volume of the Talia trilogy - I already had the first two)
Magic's Pawn, Magic's Promise (first two volumes of the Vanyel trilogy - already had the last one)
Winds of Fate, Winds of Change (first two volumes of the Mage Winds trilogy - already had the last one)
The Black Gryphon (first volume of the Mage Wars trilogy - I'm currently in the middle of The White Gryphon and still have The Silver Gryphon to read from my Christmas bounty)

New reads:
Owlflight, Owlsight, Owlknight (Damian trilogy)
Joust (first volume of her Dragon Jousters series)

And there's a Diana Tregarde waiting for me to re-read as well - Burning Water.

Mind candy.

Bounce, bounce.
Yum.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I also like mind candy books. That's why I read quite a few young adult books. With few exceptions, such as Bruce Coville's Magic Shop books (though not his other books, which are pure fluff), or Chris Crutcher's rather remarkable books, they are true mind candy.* Well, the better ones are mind candy; others are just junk food.

*Is it clear that I was saying that the books I mentioned are *not* just mind candy, but that the majority of YA books are entirely without redeeming social importance? ;-)

I also read and reread Nero Wolfe books for somewhat the same reason. I find his world very reassuring, and I read them in the same spirit as comfort food.

I went through a period in which I read copious numbers of Nero Wolfe books. There aren't very many detective series that I read, but the Wolfe books are definitely among the handful I've enjoyed.

Of course, I read every Agatha Christie novel when I was younger, and I am also a fan of Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Whimsey, Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn, and Robert Parker's Spenser (although, if you've read them, I think that Hawk deserves equla billing with Spenser).

And of course, the master, Shelock Holmes.

Shelock Holmes? Typo or commentary? ;->

I also have read every Agatha Christie novel I could find (possibly I missed one or two). I must say I much prefer Miss Marple over Hercule Poirot, who is too full of himself. I've also read and delighted in Lord Peter Wimsey, and Spenser/Hawk are also good. Roderick Alleyn didn't appeal to me so much.

I don't find all of Lackey's books to be mind candy. She details the world building and magic systems so much that I often pause while reading to discuss it all ^^

I think that the Dragon Jousters series and The Mage Wars are the heaviest on mind candy that I've read by her.

My mind candy books are most of the ones by Luna I've read so far, and the Acorna series by Anne McCaffrey. I'm not fond of McCaffrey, but for some reason I can't give the series up. It's just so...fun.

Mind candy can be thought-provoking. I think it's just as much the style as it is the content for me. Lackey's books are easy reads, they flow into you, even if you are tempted to pause and consider ethical philosophies, or magical systems. or world-building details.

At least for me.

I have a complicated relationship with McCaffrey, myself. Some of her work is so sexist I can't stop from gritting my teeth as I read it... but I still read it. I suspect that it I tried to analyse this relationship, it would drive me crazy. I just accept that I have some inexplicable tastes.

If it's thought provoking then how is it mind candy? I don't think being easy to get into makes a book mind candy- if you can't be easily drawn into a book then there's a problem with the writing. Many of my reading experiences involve me being drawn into a book when I had only planned on looking at it for a minute. If a book doesn't tempt me to read more then I'm likely to forget about it in lieu of something more interesting.

Sometimes books like that turn out to be very good, but any sections that tempt readers to stop are problems.

I haven't read any McCaffrey books with sexist problems, though I've heard a little about it. What sexist things does she write?

Mind candy. It's difficult to explain it, but as I said, it's more about the way it reads to me than it is about the content. It's usually an adventure of some sort with a protagonist that I have a strong feeling of identification with.

Obviously, all books one reads have drawn one in, in some fashion and for some reason, but mind candy books do so in a particular way. I'd say that they aren't demanding - but that doesn't mean that they don't raise issues that make one think. It's probably more that those issues are on the surface.

Lackey's Last Herald-Mage books are a good example of what I mean. There's a lot of material in the books that raises issues well worth thinking about - power and responsibility, social attitudes toward queer people, the nature of love, the meaning of sacrifice, how to deal with power differentials in relationships, and that's just off the top of my head. But the issues are very clearly delineated, and they are sp much a part of the adventure and the growth of the characters that I don't really stop to think about them apart from the book as I read it, it's all a part of my enjoyment of the book. Everything is highly accessible, and you just start reading and it carries you along rather breathlessly until it stops.

There are other books that I enjoy very much, but they do ask me to stop and think about things - or at least to parallel process both the experience of reading and the experience of thinking about what I'm reading. And for the books that I enjoy that ask that of me, the pausing, or the parallele processing, is not a problem.

That's the best I can do to explain what I mean - and of course, this could be a distinction that doesn't exist or isn't meaningful to other readers.

As for sexism in McCaffrey - it is most clearly exemplified, actually, in one of her short stories (I forget the title) about a gay man who wants a child, so he kidnaps and artificially inseminates a woman, keeps her prisoner for the term of the pregnancy, and delivers the child himself - and she actually comes to think that's OK becasue it was so important to him.

McCaffrey on occasion exhibits this intense pro-natalism and writes women characters who will put up with anything to have babies.

There's also an uncomfortable association of sex and violence in a lot of her work.

I think that she became more aware of some of these issues in her later work, and tried both to eliminate some of these themes from her later writing, and to go back and try to rationalise why they are there when she revisits the settings of her earlier work. But a lot of the early stuff is still, for me, a combination of great fun reading and occasional passages that just make me wince.

Of course, I feel that way about a lot of writers who started their work before feminism was a major force in North American culture.

We obviously define mind candy very differently, then. For me it's like real candy-- while it's fun and tastes good, it's not nutritional. A mind candy book for me isn't nutritional. It doesn't contain anything really deep, and character's sides and motives are pretty clear cut. The book's fun, but it doesn't have the potential to get you thinking.

So for me, obviously Lackey's books don't count as mind candy. A lot of the romance books I read are mind candy-- the majority of Julia Quinn's books especially.

I think it's an aspect of our different points in life, perhaps. When I was younger, I did read and enjoy a lot of books that had, as you say, no nutritional value whatsoever. These days, I have only so much time, and so many books I want to read before my reading days are over completely. So I don't read a lot of things I might have taken time to read when I felt as if I had more time.

How old are you? You've got me worried about you now.

Oh, dear, I didn't mean to do that. I'm 53 (or I will be in a month and a half). I hope to be around for quite some time to come (at least long enough to read all the books on that booklist of mine, plus the ones I keep adding to it).

It's more that as one ages, one's sense of mortality becomes more present, even if it's still in all likelihood decades away. I know that, even if it's a goodly chunk of time, that it is a finite amount, in a way that I didn't know when I was younger. So I make my choices with more of an eye as to whether or not there is something I would rather be doing with my time.

Mind candy

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