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shadowkat1. Finished reading Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens.
I enjoyed this book, but I can't say I loved it. Delia Owens is a very good naturalist writer or nature writer. Her prose is poetic, and she captures the marshlands and the setting quite well. Also, her characters are for the most part captivating.
Unfortunately she's not the best at plotting a murder mystery. The mystery doesn't quite work -- particularly if you know a lot about criminal procedure, and have read a lot of mystery novels -- by accomplished mystery novelists. And there are various items revealed at the very end of the novel that do not track. This novel is told principally through Kya, the heroine's point of view, yet -- for the reveal to work at the end, certain items should have been revealed far earlier or handled differently. I found the last fifty pages of the book to be a bit jarring.
The book would have worked far better if it had ended about twenty or thirty pages earlier than it did.Endings are hard for fictional writers -- because writers can err in one of too ways, saying too much or too little. If you say too little, it's unsatisfying, if you say too much -- it can be jarring and the suspension of disbelief is gone. (ie. It's too neat.)
What worked?
* As stated above the naturalist writing, including descriptions of plants, insects, birds, and their behavior. This was beautifully rendered.
* The depiction of loneliness, but also comfort to be found within the natural world.
* Tate and Kya's romance and relationship, along with her relationship with Jumpin' and Mable.
* How she survived in the Marsh.
What did not work?
* Kya's relationship with Chase, which makes no sense. There's no reason for Chase to be interested in her. If anything he should have been repulsed, and she repulsed by him. I can't imagine her even engaging him. It felt forced, contrived, and out of character for them both.
* Kya is a bit of a "Mary Sue" a term used to describe a character that an author writes that is almost to fantastical to be true. The Mary Sue is good at just about everything. She's beautiful, so beautiful that Chase becomes enamored of her at first sight in the woods, like she is some fairy tale creature. She can do no wrong. Kya can cook. Kay can write and draw award winning books on nature without ever attending school (which I could hand-wave to an extent, but having her be an acclaimed and award winning naturalist, poet, and academic biologist? Come on. That's overkill.)
* Why Kya is arrested makes no sense. They can't prove that Chase was murdered. He fell from a tower that he was known to visit, and was deemed by the sheriff's department to be dangerous. And it's easy to lose a necklace and have it never be found in a marshland with tides. There was no proof that there was foul play.
* Kya is depicted as the poet Amanda Hamilton at the end. This doesn't track. It's in Kya's point of view that we read Amanda's poems. And Kya who tells us that Amanda Hamilton is her favorite poet.
And Kya discovers them at an early age. Now, she's the poet? So is Kya schizophrenic? Does she have a superiority complex? It jarred me out of the book. This is at the very end. And I thought, okay, did no one edit this book? Kya's favorite poet is herself?
* The murder of Chase doesn't track. There's no way the person who did it -- could have, unless they have magical abilities. The writer is too clever about this. Also it makes no sense that it even made it to trial, there is no substantial evidence of a crime. The fact that the murderer keeps information implicating them to be discovered years later, also makes no sense. Considering how clever they are supposed to be. This feels contrived. I'd have preferred the book not have a murder mystery, and I can't help but wonder if the editors/publisher's threw it in there to sell the book.
Or, I'd have preferred that they leave it up in the air, without giving us the reveal. Leave it unsolved and up to the reader to determine. The book should have left several questions unanswered. It would have made Kya more believable, which she is up to the last 20-50 pages.
In fact, I'd say the book is quite good when it swerves away from Barclay, away from Chase, and away from the murder. If I were editing it, I'd have cut all of that out.
* One other quibble...the dialogue is uneven. It didn't bother me for the most part. More towards the end, where Kya seems to jump from being very articulate to being backwoodsy. I think she should have stayed back woodsy. It doesn't make a lot of sense that Kya would speak like Tate.
Still, better than most and I enjoyed it. I'd recommend it to others.
2. Finished Binge-Watching Stranger Things S3 -- it's only eight episodes, so relatively short to binge.
I liked it better than S2, in some respects. Better paced. But there's way too much time spent on romantic banter that doesn't really go anywhere. Joyce Beyers and Sheriff Hopper spend most of the season bickering and fighting with each other.
It gets wearing after a while. Also, I'm sorry, but they have zero chemistry. If anything it's anti-chemistry. I was relieved they didn't have them have sex on screen -- because just..eww. There is no sexual content in this season by the way. The most we get is Mike and Eleven kissing.
The Duffer Brothers may be good at horror, but romantic comedy and romance is not their forte.
What worked was the suspense, the friendships, and the feeling of urgency. What did not work was the endless bickering. There's an art to writing good romantic banter and the Duffer's don't have it. We're watching a monster come after these characters or other characters are in jeopardy, and people are wasting time bickering over whether or not they want to date or various romantic misunderstandings.
It's sort of reassuring when other characters who are looking on feel the need to smack them upside the head or inform them to get their shit together.
The monster is rather HP Lovecraftian this go around. Although it always was.
It's also rather gross. And there's definitely an Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets government conspiracy and Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming Communist Threat. The references to 1980s fears and horrors abound. Not to mention the movies. From a pure level of nostalgia, it's a lot of fun. At one point, a rather climatic point, we get a duet of the theme song from The Neverending Story.
I have decided that Lucas' little sister, Erica, has got to be the most annoying new character on the planet. But I rather adored Robyn, who surprise surprise turns out not to be what we think. In a rather amusing and somewhat shocking twist, Robyn didn't have a life-long crush on the hunk, Steve, who she is working with at Ahoy Ice Cream. But in reality, had a crush on his girlfriend in middle school. And resented the hell out of him. They don't become boyfriend and girlfriend, they become friends towards the end. And their banter is among the few that actually works mainly because it isn't sexually based. It's in a way reminiscent of Dustin and Steve's banter in S2 -- which was the best thing about S2. Steve is basically the best thing about both of those seasons, and may well have the best arc in the series next to Eleven, Dustin, and Joyce Beyers.
I wasn't sure what to make of Billy. Who appears to be in the role of Will in this season -- the infected party, except it's clear from the get-go that Billy is doomed. Billy however does redeem himself, if only his back story wasn't so cliche.
I did however like how it echoes Eleven's story -- and helps Eleven see him and people in a different light. She's clearly not the only one who has been abused.
And it does in some respects make Eleven more interesting. Eleven branches out a bit in this season -- making friends with Maxine, and bonding a bit more with some of the others.
Also, Nancy's mother is fleshed out a bit more. And there's a heavy feminist message in the series -- that echoes what I was saying in a prior post. Nancy and her mother have a chat about how impossible it is to be a woman in this world and get ahead.
And we see both Joyce and Robyn run circles around the two guys who see them as sexual objects. Neither appear to be THAT interested in either man.Nancy also runs circles around Jonathan, who doesn't get it. But alas, it is the guys who make the major sacrifices. The two most violent, sacrifice themselves violently. Sheriff Hopper and Billy. Although with the closing credits..I'm wondering about Hopper. We never see a body. And it's not exactly clear if he died. The closing credits sequence is in Russia, and they take one of the Russian characters out of his cell to feed to the other side creatures. When they are doing it, in subtitles, they say, no not the American.
Personally, I'd prefer Hopper were dead. He doesn't deserve that. Horror writers are terribly sadistic, just saying.
Speaking of sadism? There's a lot of torture and violence in this season. Hopper tortures the mayor. The Russians torture Robyn and Steve, and appear to drill a painful shot of truth serum into them while planning on continuing to torture them at the same time. The scenes with the monster are worse than previous seasons, and also graphic -- Billy basically feeds people to the Monster. When the people die or are no longer of use they melt into the monster and become part of it. A clear call out to Dawn of the Dead -- the John Romero film that the kids sneak into watch at the start of the season. There are actually a lot of references to 1980s movies, The Dawn of the Dead, Back to the Future, Cocoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Red Dawn.
1980s references?
*Cary Elwes (Princess Bride) plays the corrupt Mayor. (ETA - also Jake Busey, Gary Busey's son in the role of a Busey like villain.)
*An actor who looks a lot like Biff from back to the future, plays one of the zombified creature puppets
*Back to the Future is playing at the movies, and there's an entertaining riff on why it makes no logical sense. (It didn't.)
*New Coke (another entertaining riff on why it made no sense)
*Neverending Story (although I thought that was later than the 1980s for some reason)
*The Muppet Movie
*The songs..."Girls Just Want to Have Fun", "Can't Fight This Feeling" both get air time. And they do "Can't Fight This Feeling" a lot. It was popular back then.
* The Gap
* Indoor Malls
* Big hair
* Early cell phones and ham radios...the car phones are huge
And the ending overall worked for me. It makes sense that the story ends with Joyce Beyers moving Eleven, Will, and Jonathan (her three kids) out of Hawkings. She threatened to leave after the second season and stays mainly for her kids and Hopper. But what happens in the third season pretty much guarantees that she's out of there. She's lost not one but two love interests. And has three traumatized children, who have been terrorized in their home twice now. I'd have left too.
They can visit their romantic partners.
I could have done without the bit after the closing credits though. It wasn't needed, particularly since this is supposed to be the last season.
It's good in places, but grating in others. So, I'd give it about a B. I found it entertaining for the most part. I wouldn't say it was that scary -- no more scary than Buffy or Angel.
3. Finally had a thunderstorm today. And looks like we may have another. Although doesn't feel like it. The air pressure leading up to the first one was making me ill. So very happy it's over now. I had the migraine from hell. Barometric pressure and sinus pressure plus hormonal fluctuations do not make for fun times. Took meds before the vertigo came on -- Tynenol Sinus + Pressure works beautifully, as does a cold pack on the diaphragm. (ETA: It's Shark Week aka period from hell.)
4. I hope the people in California are okay? The news reports a string of severe earthquakes in the area. The latest was a 7.5 somewhere in the Mojave Desert of all places. No one appears to be injured, just very shaken. This is the reason my brother and his wife left California in the 1990s, they couldn't handle the crazy earthquakes.
Truth is you can sort of get that anywhere. The East Coast is on a major fault line, it's just a little more stable at the moment.
I enjoyed this book, but I can't say I loved it. Delia Owens is a very good naturalist writer or nature writer. Her prose is poetic, and she captures the marshlands and the setting quite well. Also, her characters are for the most part captivating.
Unfortunately she's not the best at plotting a murder mystery. The mystery doesn't quite work -- particularly if you know a lot about criminal procedure, and have read a lot of mystery novels -- by accomplished mystery novelists. And there are various items revealed at the very end of the novel that do not track. This novel is told principally through Kya, the heroine's point of view, yet -- for the reveal to work at the end, certain items should have been revealed far earlier or handled differently. I found the last fifty pages of the book to be a bit jarring.
The book would have worked far better if it had ended about twenty or thirty pages earlier than it did.Endings are hard for fictional writers -- because writers can err in one of too ways, saying too much or too little. If you say too little, it's unsatisfying, if you say too much -- it can be jarring and the suspension of disbelief is gone. (ie. It's too neat.)
What worked?
* As stated above the naturalist writing, including descriptions of plants, insects, birds, and their behavior. This was beautifully rendered.
* The depiction of loneliness, but also comfort to be found within the natural world.
* Tate and Kya's romance and relationship, along with her relationship with Jumpin' and Mable.
* How she survived in the Marsh.
What did not work?
* Kya's relationship with Chase, which makes no sense. There's no reason for Chase to be interested in her. If anything he should have been repulsed, and she repulsed by him. I can't imagine her even engaging him. It felt forced, contrived, and out of character for them both.
* Kya is a bit of a "Mary Sue" a term used to describe a character that an author writes that is almost to fantastical to be true. The Mary Sue is good at just about everything. She's beautiful, so beautiful that Chase becomes enamored of her at first sight in the woods, like she is some fairy tale creature. She can do no wrong. Kya can cook. Kay can write and draw award winning books on nature without ever attending school (which I could hand-wave to an extent, but having her be an acclaimed and award winning naturalist, poet, and academic biologist? Come on. That's overkill.)
* Why Kya is arrested makes no sense. They can't prove that Chase was murdered. He fell from a tower that he was known to visit, and was deemed by the sheriff's department to be dangerous. And it's easy to lose a necklace and have it never be found in a marshland with tides. There was no proof that there was foul play.
* Kya is depicted as the poet Amanda Hamilton at the end. This doesn't track. It's in Kya's point of view that we read Amanda's poems. And Kya who tells us that Amanda Hamilton is her favorite poet.
And Kya discovers them at an early age. Now, she's the poet? So is Kya schizophrenic? Does she have a superiority complex? It jarred me out of the book. This is at the very end. And I thought, okay, did no one edit this book? Kya's favorite poet is herself?
* The murder of Chase doesn't track. There's no way the person who did it -- could have, unless they have magical abilities. The writer is too clever about this. Also it makes no sense that it even made it to trial, there is no substantial evidence of a crime. The fact that the murderer keeps information implicating them to be discovered years later, also makes no sense. Considering how clever they are supposed to be. This feels contrived. I'd have preferred the book not have a murder mystery, and I can't help but wonder if the editors/publisher's threw it in there to sell the book.
Or, I'd have preferred that they leave it up in the air, without giving us the reveal. Leave it unsolved and up to the reader to determine. The book should have left several questions unanswered. It would have made Kya more believable, which she is up to the last 20-50 pages.
In fact, I'd say the book is quite good when it swerves away from Barclay, away from Chase, and away from the murder. If I were editing it, I'd have cut all of that out.
* One other quibble...the dialogue is uneven. It didn't bother me for the most part. More towards the end, where Kya seems to jump from being very articulate to being backwoodsy. I think she should have stayed back woodsy. It doesn't make a lot of sense that Kya would speak like Tate.
Still, better than most and I enjoyed it. I'd recommend it to others.
2. Finished Binge-Watching Stranger Things S3 -- it's only eight episodes, so relatively short to binge.
I liked it better than S2, in some respects. Better paced. But there's way too much time spent on romantic banter that doesn't really go anywhere. Joyce Beyers and Sheriff Hopper spend most of the season bickering and fighting with each other.
It gets wearing after a while. Also, I'm sorry, but they have zero chemistry. If anything it's anti-chemistry. I was relieved they didn't have them have sex on screen -- because just..eww. There is no sexual content in this season by the way. The most we get is Mike and Eleven kissing.
The Duffer Brothers may be good at horror, but romantic comedy and romance is not their forte.
What worked was the suspense, the friendships, and the feeling of urgency. What did not work was the endless bickering. There's an art to writing good romantic banter and the Duffer's don't have it. We're watching a monster come after these characters or other characters are in jeopardy, and people are wasting time bickering over whether or not they want to date or various romantic misunderstandings.
It's sort of reassuring when other characters who are looking on feel the need to smack them upside the head or inform them to get their shit together.
The monster is rather HP Lovecraftian this go around. Although it always was.
It's also rather gross. And there's definitely an Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets government conspiracy and Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming Communist Threat. The references to 1980s fears and horrors abound. Not to mention the movies. From a pure level of nostalgia, it's a lot of fun. At one point, a rather climatic point, we get a duet of the theme song from The Neverending Story.
I have decided that Lucas' little sister, Erica, has got to be the most annoying new character on the planet. But I rather adored Robyn, who surprise surprise turns out not to be what we think. In a rather amusing and somewhat shocking twist, Robyn didn't have a life-long crush on the hunk, Steve, who she is working with at Ahoy Ice Cream. But in reality, had a crush on his girlfriend in middle school. And resented the hell out of him. They don't become boyfriend and girlfriend, they become friends towards the end. And their banter is among the few that actually works mainly because it isn't sexually based. It's in a way reminiscent of Dustin and Steve's banter in S2 -- which was the best thing about S2. Steve is basically the best thing about both of those seasons, and may well have the best arc in the series next to Eleven, Dustin, and Joyce Beyers.
I wasn't sure what to make of Billy. Who appears to be in the role of Will in this season -- the infected party, except it's clear from the get-go that Billy is doomed. Billy however does redeem himself, if only his back story wasn't so cliche.
I did however like how it echoes Eleven's story -- and helps Eleven see him and people in a different light. She's clearly not the only one who has been abused.
And it does in some respects make Eleven more interesting. Eleven branches out a bit in this season -- making friends with Maxine, and bonding a bit more with some of the others.
Also, Nancy's mother is fleshed out a bit more. And there's a heavy feminist message in the series -- that echoes what I was saying in a prior post. Nancy and her mother have a chat about how impossible it is to be a woman in this world and get ahead.
And we see both Joyce and Robyn run circles around the two guys who see them as sexual objects. Neither appear to be THAT interested in either man.Nancy also runs circles around Jonathan, who doesn't get it. But alas, it is the guys who make the major sacrifices. The two most violent, sacrifice themselves violently. Sheriff Hopper and Billy. Although with the closing credits..I'm wondering about Hopper. We never see a body. And it's not exactly clear if he died. The closing credits sequence is in Russia, and they take one of the Russian characters out of his cell to feed to the other side creatures. When they are doing it, in subtitles, they say, no not the American.
Personally, I'd prefer Hopper were dead. He doesn't deserve that. Horror writers are terribly sadistic, just saying.
Speaking of sadism? There's a lot of torture and violence in this season. Hopper tortures the mayor. The Russians torture Robyn and Steve, and appear to drill a painful shot of truth serum into them while planning on continuing to torture them at the same time. The scenes with the monster are worse than previous seasons, and also graphic -- Billy basically feeds people to the Monster. When the people die or are no longer of use they melt into the monster and become part of it. A clear call out to Dawn of the Dead -- the John Romero film that the kids sneak into watch at the start of the season. There are actually a lot of references to 1980s movies, The Dawn of the Dead, Back to the Future, Cocoon, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Red Dawn.
1980s references?
*Cary Elwes (Princess Bride) plays the corrupt Mayor. (ETA - also Jake Busey, Gary Busey's son in the role of a Busey like villain.)
*An actor who looks a lot like Biff from back to the future, plays one of the zombified creature puppets
*Back to the Future is playing at the movies, and there's an entertaining riff on why it makes no logical sense. (It didn't.)
*New Coke (another entertaining riff on why it made no sense)
*Neverending Story (although I thought that was later than the 1980s for some reason)
*The Muppet Movie
*The songs..."Girls Just Want to Have Fun", "Can't Fight This Feeling" both get air time. And they do "Can't Fight This Feeling" a lot. It was popular back then.
* The Gap
* Indoor Malls
* Big hair
* Early cell phones and ham radios...the car phones are huge
And the ending overall worked for me. It makes sense that the story ends with Joyce Beyers moving Eleven, Will, and Jonathan (her three kids) out of Hawkings. She threatened to leave after the second season and stays mainly for her kids and Hopper. But what happens in the third season pretty much guarantees that she's out of there. She's lost not one but two love interests. And has three traumatized children, who have been terrorized in their home twice now. I'd have left too.
They can visit their romantic partners.
I could have done without the bit after the closing credits though. It wasn't needed, particularly since this is supposed to be the last season.
It's good in places, but grating in others. So, I'd give it about a B. I found it entertaining for the most part. I wouldn't say it was that scary -- no more scary than Buffy or Angel.
3. Finally had a thunderstorm today. And looks like we may have another. Although doesn't feel like it. The air pressure leading up to the first one was making me ill. So very happy it's over now. I had the migraine from hell. Barometric pressure and sinus pressure plus hormonal fluctuations do not make for fun times. Took meds before the vertigo came on -- Tynenol Sinus + Pressure works beautifully, as does a cold pack on the diaphragm. (ETA: It's Shark Week aka period from hell.)
4. I hope the people in California are okay? The news reports a string of severe earthquakes in the area. The latest was a 7.5 somewhere in the Mojave Desert of all places. No one appears to be injured, just very shaken. This is the reason my brother and his wife left California in the 1990s, they couldn't handle the crazy earthquakes.
Truth is you can sort of get that anywhere. The East Coast is on a major fault line, it's just a little more stable at the moment.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-07 02:33 am (UTC)And he was partially responsible for her torture.
Joyce not only knew what was going on -- she actually researched what happened to El in the prior season. She knows El's back story.
Seriously none of the other options make sense from a story, plot or character perspective.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-07 02:36 am (UTC)Joyce is a competent parent, she and her two children know El and are familiar with her situation, and... well, there's really nobody else. Honestly, I think El would've been better off with Joyce from the beginning, and Hopper should've looped her in right around the same time he was luring El to his house like a feral cat.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-07 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-07-07 02:51 am (UTC)But they kept dodging away from focusing on this issue like they ought to have.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-07 02:59 am (UTC)I felt Hopper was under served as well. And if they'd shown him trusting Joyce with the secret early on -- and built from there, their friendship and budding romance would have been a natural progression from it. And far less awkward.
I think the writers didn't know how to write it or deal with it -- and dodged it?