Wed Reading Meme...
Nov. 18th, 2015 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. What I just finished reading?
The somewhat generic historical The Other Daughter by Lauren Willig. I was disappointed by it.
Lots of potential but the writer just couldn't pull it together. It's a historical during the Edwardian Age or the 1920s, shortly after WWI.
Here's my review:
While there are some interesting themes touched on here - about the negative after-effects of war on survivors and those fighting it, they aren't well-developed and feel a bit sprinkled in. Most of the book is the heroine whining about her lot in life, and feeling guilty about it. After the first 50 or so pages it gets old.
The historical period is developed, but it feels again, like the writer sprinkled in the details. Yes, we have the breezy Bright Young Things, which are reminiscent of the characters that carouse their way through the pages of F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Ernest Hemingway's Sun Also Rises, and PD Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster. Willig, unfortunately, is no Wodehouse, although she probably isn't trying to be.
The plot is fairly simple here - Rachel, a governess in France during the early 1920s, shortly after the first world war, races home to be at her sick mother's bedside. Alas she is too late. Bereft with grief she lies on her mother's bed, only to find beneath her mother's pillow a picture of her allegedly dead father in the society pages of a recent magazine. Clearly he isn't dead, and worse has a wife and family. Confused, she confronts her father's cousin, David, who confesses that yes, her father is actually alive, an Earl, and living in London. On the way back home, Rachel runs into one of her cousin's former students, Simon Montforte, who for reasons of his own - convinces Rachel to join him in a masquerade of sorts in order to confront her father, and get a little revenge. The masquerade entails that Rachel become the sophisticated Vera and join the Bright Young Things who drink and party their way around London, because they have nothing better to do.
Most of the characters in this book have the character depth of a cool gin martini, without the olives. Straight up. Or are reminiscent of the somewhat shallow Daisy of Gatsby fame. It's as a result difficult to care that much what happens to them.
It's not until midway through the book that we find out what is motivating these characters, most of it is just set-up. Like many of these types of novels, the weight of the writing is on the historical detail, characters and for that matter plot be damned.
The plot just didn't quite play out for me. Various events and reveals seemed to drop in out of nowhere without much build-up. Almost as if they are an afterthought. And part of the reason for this - is the main character's complete self-absorption -- she doesn't see past her own nose and neither does the reader. We are stuck inside her rambling and repetitive thoughts, which just circle around the same things - "Daddy left me for this family. I hate them all. But how can I?"
I think, I'd have preferred a bit more on Simon, and more build-up of that relationship. The reveal that he loves her, comes out of nowhere, as does her love for him. It's not quite built up to enough. And we don't really get to know him -- well enough to understand it. The writer is too busy playing a game of a hide and seek with the character - like the heroine, we are never quite sure what his agenda is. Does he want Rachel's lonely and adrift sister Olivia, does he want vengeance on Olivia and Rachel's father? Or is he just doing this for kicks?
And Rachel is either making snarky comments/witty remarks, or whining, so it's hard to know why he'd fall for her -- perhaps the banter?
At the end, it just felt generic in style, plot and historical detail.
2.) What I'm reading now?
* X-men - Prelude to Schism - which is a character-centric book with lots of back story (think massive ret-con...for everyone but Scott Summers/Cyclops. Which is my difficulty with long-running serials, the writers often don't do their research or conveniently rewrite characters back-stories to suit themselves. Magneto for example? He was Roma Gypsey in the comics not Jewish, and his family died in the camps, because they were gypsies. I thought that was clever. And it fit the character. But the movies and comic book writers ret-conned it, they even changed his original name from Erik to Max. Seriously? Same deal with Wolverine, whose backstory is so convoluted it's not only impossible to follow, but difficult to care about the character any longer.
The only characters that haven't been ret-conned on the original five X-men, Iceman, Beast, Warren,
Jean, and Cyclops.
* Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran (my other guilty pleasure besides comic books. I appear to like male and female romance novels.) It's about a slightly mad Duke, and his housekeeper who is attempting to purloin various papers from him. Takes place...in the 1800s, I think. The Duke's beloved wife died of an opium overdose. And apparently had written a lot of letters to her various lovers - on how to ruine him. He was a faithful loving husband and a bit of an idealist, she was sleeping with anything with two feet, and manipulating him. Anyhow, when she died the letters came to light and drove him bonkers. He hasn't left his rooms for months. That is until our heroine shows up - she's fleeing her father, who has been trying to kill her since she turned 18, mainly because she's illegitimate and not willing to stay under his control. But she's discovered that the Duke has some damning papers on her father, something that she could use as leverage against him or could be used to get rid of him. So, she's entered the Duke's employ with the intent of purloining the papers. That is if she can get the Duke to leave his rooms long enough in order to search them for the papers. The Duke of course, refuses to leave his rooms. And she has already searched everywhere else. That's the set-up. It's rather amusing. Duran's books usually aren't this funny. Angsty yes, funny no.
*Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - the book club book...which is a heck of a lot more work than it needs to be. Bringing to mind a recent internet discourse that I skimmed regarding accessibility.
Do books need to be accessible to everyone? Uh, no. There's enough books written that you can pretty much find whatever floats your boat -- sort of like livejournal.
Also, I get what the writer is doing and to be fair, he's successful. He's using style and structure to convey character and theme. Most writers just use plot and characters to convey it. They aren't advanced enough as writers, nor comfortable enough with their technique to play with style. Style is tricky. But it's what most writers aspire to - to develop their own voice and own unique style. Otherwise your novel or work reads like everyone else's...it's not uniquely your own. I was able to find my own voice and style via the internet. After about 50 blog posts, I figured out the style that worked best for me. Prior to that, my style was rather generic. I looked at what I wrote in my 20s and 30s, and it was generic, no flair, no sense of style.
That said, there is something to be said for how much the reader needs to work to access the text.
And alas, not all styles are for all readers. If a style doesn't work for you, it doesn't work.
I'm on the fence about whether Cloud Atlas is working for me. On the one hand, I'm obsessed with structure and style - so fascinated. On the other -- I'm finding it hard to focus on it. I think I'd be able to read it better if I wasn't working. It's a beach book or a vacation book or a book you read curled up next to the fire.
To give you an idea what the book is about, assuming you didn't see the movie...
The book is divided into sections. The first is the Journal of Adam Ewing, a notary who is traveling through the Chatham Islands in the 1800s. He's writing this log while suffering various maladies, allegedly caused by a parasite that is slowly eating away his brain. A shipboard doctor is providing him with poison to get rid of the parasite for a price. The style is pretty much what you might expect from a middle-class man traveling on board a ship while ill. Choppy. With lots of abbreviations. Also it ends in mid-sentence, prompting various less than savvy readers to complain to Amazon about a misprint.
The next section at one point references the first section and explains what is going on. This section is basically a bunch of letters from R. Frobisher to his best friend and former lover, Sixsmith. Frobisher happens upon The Journal of Adam Ewing and wonders if Sixsmith can find the rest of the story, since it ends annoyingly in mid-sentence. Also, Frobisher states that he can't quite tell if the Journal is fictional or non-fictional. It's about a notary traveling through the Chatham Islands during the 1800s. A hyper-chrondiac, he is being slowly poisoned by a shipboard doctor, who is milking him of his funds. (None of which I picked up on when I read that section...)
Frobisher is busy having an affair with his employer's wife. He's working as an aid to a famous composer in 1930s Switzerland (I think it's Switzerland...for a while I thought Germany, but that makes no sense since the composer is Jewish and the Germans hate him. He'd be dead.)
3) What I'm reading next?
Probably the Highwayman by Lauren Kerrigan and Falling in Bed with the Duke by Lorraine Heath.
Or whatever else hits my fancy.
The somewhat generic historical The Other Daughter by Lauren Willig. I was disappointed by it.
Lots of potential but the writer just couldn't pull it together. It's a historical during the Edwardian Age or the 1920s, shortly after WWI.
Here's my review:
While there are some interesting themes touched on here - about the negative after-effects of war on survivors and those fighting it, they aren't well-developed and feel a bit sprinkled in. Most of the book is the heroine whining about her lot in life, and feeling guilty about it. After the first 50 or so pages it gets old.
The historical period is developed, but it feels again, like the writer sprinkled in the details. Yes, we have the breezy Bright Young Things, which are reminiscent of the characters that carouse their way through the pages of F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Ernest Hemingway's Sun Also Rises, and PD Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster. Willig, unfortunately, is no Wodehouse, although she probably isn't trying to be.
The plot is fairly simple here - Rachel, a governess in France during the early 1920s, shortly after the first world war, races home to be at her sick mother's bedside. Alas she is too late. Bereft with grief she lies on her mother's bed, only to find beneath her mother's pillow a picture of her allegedly dead father in the society pages of a recent magazine. Clearly he isn't dead, and worse has a wife and family. Confused, she confronts her father's cousin, David, who confesses that yes, her father is actually alive, an Earl, and living in London. On the way back home, Rachel runs into one of her cousin's former students, Simon Montforte, who for reasons of his own - convinces Rachel to join him in a masquerade of sorts in order to confront her father, and get a little revenge. The masquerade entails that Rachel become the sophisticated Vera and join the Bright Young Things who drink and party their way around London, because they have nothing better to do.
Most of the characters in this book have the character depth of a cool gin martini, without the olives. Straight up. Or are reminiscent of the somewhat shallow Daisy of Gatsby fame. It's as a result difficult to care that much what happens to them.
It's not until midway through the book that we find out what is motivating these characters, most of it is just set-up. Like many of these types of novels, the weight of the writing is on the historical detail, characters and for that matter plot be damned.
The plot just didn't quite play out for me. Various events and reveals seemed to drop in out of nowhere without much build-up. Almost as if they are an afterthought. And part of the reason for this - is the main character's complete self-absorption -- she doesn't see past her own nose and neither does the reader. We are stuck inside her rambling and repetitive thoughts, which just circle around the same things - "Daddy left me for this family. I hate them all. But how can I?"
I think, I'd have preferred a bit more on Simon, and more build-up of that relationship. The reveal that he loves her, comes out of nowhere, as does her love for him. It's not quite built up to enough. And we don't really get to know him -- well enough to understand it. The writer is too busy playing a game of a hide and seek with the character - like the heroine, we are never quite sure what his agenda is. Does he want Rachel's lonely and adrift sister Olivia, does he want vengeance on Olivia and Rachel's father? Or is he just doing this for kicks?
And Rachel is either making snarky comments/witty remarks, or whining, so it's hard to know why he'd fall for her -- perhaps the banter?
At the end, it just felt generic in style, plot and historical detail.
2.) What I'm reading now?
* X-men - Prelude to Schism - which is a character-centric book with lots of back story (think massive ret-con...for everyone but Scott Summers/Cyclops. Which is my difficulty with long-running serials, the writers often don't do their research or conveniently rewrite characters back-stories to suit themselves. Magneto for example? He was Roma Gypsey in the comics not Jewish, and his family died in the camps, because they were gypsies. I thought that was clever. And it fit the character. But the movies and comic book writers ret-conned it, they even changed his original name from Erik to Max. Seriously? Same deal with Wolverine, whose backstory is so convoluted it's not only impossible to follow, but difficult to care about the character any longer.
The only characters that haven't been ret-conned on the original five X-men, Iceman, Beast, Warren,
Jean, and Cyclops.
* Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran (my other guilty pleasure besides comic books. I appear to like male and female romance novels.) It's about a slightly mad Duke, and his housekeeper who is attempting to purloin various papers from him. Takes place...in the 1800s, I think. The Duke's beloved wife died of an opium overdose. And apparently had written a lot of letters to her various lovers - on how to ruine him. He was a faithful loving husband and a bit of an idealist, she was sleeping with anything with two feet, and manipulating him. Anyhow, when she died the letters came to light and drove him bonkers. He hasn't left his rooms for months. That is until our heroine shows up - she's fleeing her father, who has been trying to kill her since she turned 18, mainly because she's illegitimate and not willing to stay under his control. But she's discovered that the Duke has some damning papers on her father, something that she could use as leverage against him or could be used to get rid of him. So, she's entered the Duke's employ with the intent of purloining the papers. That is if she can get the Duke to leave his rooms long enough in order to search them for the papers. The Duke of course, refuses to leave his rooms. And she has already searched everywhere else. That's the set-up. It's rather amusing. Duran's books usually aren't this funny. Angsty yes, funny no.
*Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - the book club book...which is a heck of a lot more work than it needs to be. Bringing to mind a recent internet discourse that I skimmed regarding accessibility.
Do books need to be accessible to everyone? Uh, no. There's enough books written that you can pretty much find whatever floats your boat -- sort of like livejournal.
Also, I get what the writer is doing and to be fair, he's successful. He's using style and structure to convey character and theme. Most writers just use plot and characters to convey it. They aren't advanced enough as writers, nor comfortable enough with their technique to play with style. Style is tricky. But it's what most writers aspire to - to develop their own voice and own unique style. Otherwise your novel or work reads like everyone else's...it's not uniquely your own. I was able to find my own voice and style via the internet. After about 50 blog posts, I figured out the style that worked best for me. Prior to that, my style was rather generic. I looked at what I wrote in my 20s and 30s, and it was generic, no flair, no sense of style.
That said, there is something to be said for how much the reader needs to work to access the text.
And alas, not all styles are for all readers. If a style doesn't work for you, it doesn't work.
I'm on the fence about whether Cloud Atlas is working for me. On the one hand, I'm obsessed with structure and style - so fascinated. On the other -- I'm finding it hard to focus on it. I think I'd be able to read it better if I wasn't working. It's a beach book or a vacation book or a book you read curled up next to the fire.
To give you an idea what the book is about, assuming you didn't see the movie...
The book is divided into sections. The first is the Journal of Adam Ewing, a notary who is traveling through the Chatham Islands in the 1800s. He's writing this log while suffering various maladies, allegedly caused by a parasite that is slowly eating away his brain. A shipboard doctor is providing him with poison to get rid of the parasite for a price. The style is pretty much what you might expect from a middle-class man traveling on board a ship while ill. Choppy. With lots of abbreviations. Also it ends in mid-sentence, prompting various less than savvy readers to complain to Amazon about a misprint.
The next section at one point references the first section and explains what is going on. This section is basically a bunch of letters from R. Frobisher to his best friend and former lover, Sixsmith. Frobisher happens upon The Journal of Adam Ewing and wonders if Sixsmith can find the rest of the story, since it ends annoyingly in mid-sentence. Also, Frobisher states that he can't quite tell if the Journal is fictional or non-fictional. It's about a notary traveling through the Chatham Islands during the 1800s. A hyper-chrondiac, he is being slowly poisoned by a shipboard doctor, who is milking him of his funds. (None of which I picked up on when I read that section...)
Frobisher is busy having an affair with his employer's wife. He's working as an aid to a famous composer in 1930s Switzerland (I think it's Switzerland...for a while I thought Germany, but that makes no sense since the composer is Jewish and the Germans hate him. He'd be dead.)
3) What I'm reading next?
Probably the Highwayman by Lauren Kerrigan and Falling in Bed with the Duke by Lorraine Heath.
Or whatever else hits my fancy.
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no subject
Date: 2015-11-19 03:10 am (UTC)When the comic first gave his background, he was said to be jewish, and a concentration camp survivor. This includes flashbacks to after the war, where Magneto is living in Israel for a while; this lasted for several years, until some writer thought Jewish readers might mind him being a bad guy, so they backtracked to him being Romani. Then when Jewish readers were upset that Magneto was taken away from them, he was returned to being Jewish. But it was said that his wife Magda, aka Pietro and Wanda's mother, was Romani.
Then during the Joseph years, we found out that Magnus was never his real name, but just one he used to hide his original name.
Now the name Max, comes from a damn good Magneto miniseries called Testament, where the writer fills out his childhood, and his life up until after he escaped the camps. It's a harrowing tale, about the death of his family, meeting Magda and surviving Auschwitz.
It's also one of the main reasons that lately they hesitate in turning him back into a full villain.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-19 04:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-19 01:51 pm (UTC)I definitely liked the book better than the movie, which made some strange changes. I could understand why those worked in a movie, but they were strange.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-19 09:12 pm (UTC)I loved Cloud Atlas the book! Though not all sections equally, but fortunately it jumps around enough that when I was getting tired of one character it would move on to someone else.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-19 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-19 10:55 pm (UTC)Has zip to do with the book, has a lot to do with mental overload.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-19 11:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-19 11:18 pm (UTC)Must have been a lot of fun for the actors, but was confusing and difficult to follow for the viewers.
So far, I'm preferring the book. And I don't think it's a book that works as a movie adaptation any more than Ulysses, Sound and the Fury, or various other novels written in that style. They aren't really written for a cinemagraphic adaptation.
Which is another difficulty - if you don't think a certain way -- this style can be difficult to relate to.
no subject
Date: 2015-11-19 11:22 pm (UTC)I'm going to try to read it over my vacation next week...
no subject
Date: 2015-11-19 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-11-19 11:24 pm (UTC)As an aside? Are you having problems with font and typing in the box, but when it posts it looks okay?
And if so how do you fix it? It's making me crazy.