Reading Wednesday
Sep. 21st, 2016 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Busted Flush by Brad Smith. A comedic novel (supposedly. It's more low-key amusing than laugh-out-loud funny, even if you give it the benefit of the doubt) about Dock Bass, who starts out as a real estate agent married to a woman named Terri, whom he loathes for never-explained reasons. This is clearly supposed to make us sympathetic to a strong, independant man trapped by the rules of society.
Dock and I did not get off on the right foot, as you can probably tell.
Anyway, by page 15 Dock has quit his job (it made act like a hypocrite and Dock is too straight-forward for that, you see) and left Terri (not divorced, although that's his intention, literally "left", as in, "got in his truck and drove to another state without saying goodbye or having a fight". She is almost never mentioned again, so hopefully she filed divorce papers and lived a better life without Dock around to criticize her constantly). With nowhere else to go, Dock decides to answer in person a letter he recently received, informing him that he inherited a house in the town of Gettysburg from a distant relative. Once in Gettysburg, Dock fends off more evil real estate agents, who try to convince him to sell his property for less than it's worth so they can develop the area. Instead he decides to renovate the house on his own.
(Dock spends the rest of the book rebuilding a house from 1841. Literally rebuilds, completely by himself, by hand. Everything from tearing out the roof all the way down to the rafters, making new rafters, installing those, then shingling the new roof. Then he installs new drywall, does the electric wires, the phone lines, the windows, the doors, the flooring – everything. This seems like an implausible amount of skills for one man to have, even if he did used to be a carpenter, especially since it's implied he also knows how to do all of this in accord with 1840s historical restoration. But I barely know how to change a lightbulb, so I could be wrong.)
In the process of taking out the old walls, Dock discovers a long-sealed root cellar, which turns out to contain a huge collection of early photographs, including seven of Lincoln giving the Gettysburg Address, as well as an actual sound recording of the same event. All of this, of course, immediately gets huge news attention, leading to various adventures with elderly Hungarian professors, shady antiquities dealers, millionaire collectors, competing claims to the ownership of the house, and more.
It's hard to decide what was my "favorite" part of the book. It could have been the main villain, Thaddeus St. John, who is a shockingly retrograde gay stereotype. He dresses like he's always at a costume party, wears makeup and perfume, lisps, has a barely-mentioned younger boyfriend who's clearly only there to establish the fact that Thaddeus like 'em young, is thin and weak and afraid of violence. Here's one particularly appalling line: They taped Thaddeus in front of the musket display – his suggestion. Apparently, he was going for as masculine an image as he could muster.
My favorite part also might have been that the book somehow manages not to actually take a stance on the Civil War, one of the easier moral questions out there, but rather drips with obsequious sympathy for both sides. Here's Dock raging at the corruption of modern times compared to the purity of the past at the emotional climax of the book: There’d been something gnawing at Dock ever since he’d opened up the doorway to Willy’s shop. He realized he’d been subconsciously comparing his world to that of Willy’s, and wondering why it was that 1863 kept coming out on top. And finally it came to him. Everything today had to be easy. And if you had to screw over your neighbor or your brother or your friend to make it easy, then get to it. Easy was the way to go in the modern world. Easy was the new God.
Yes, no one in 1863 ever cheated to make things easier, like, oh, say, OWNING SLAVES. What the fuck, Brad Smith. How did anyone let you publish this?
Also, for all of our sakes, I have not copy-and-pasted the scene where Dock tells a black woman she doesn't know enough about the Civil War and needs to have more sympathy for Confederate soldiers. Because they didn't have shoes. Shoes, you guys! Dock sure showed her. Somehow they end the book by hooking up despite this.
This is an unfunny, eyeroll-inducing book without a single sympathetic or enjoyable character to be found. On the other hand, it was a quick read?
....No, no, that's not enough to make up for the rest. Avoid at all costs.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander. Lady Emily is a beautiful, rich young woman in Victorian England who has a contentious relationship with her mother. She would marry anyone just to get out of her family's home. Luckily, she is quickly proposed to by Philip, who is perfectly acceptable if a bit boring. Philip dies on a hunting trip a few months after their wedding, and Emily's main problem after that is to hide the fact she's not grieving and is, instead, rather pleased by her new freedom as an even-richer widow.
However the constant repition by his mournful family and friends of what a great guy Philip was inspires Emily to learn more about him. She starts reading his journals and discovers that he was deeply interested in the Classical Greeks; this leads to her reading the Iliad, frequently visiting the British Museum's Greek wing, and even studying Ancient Greek. Slowly she begins to fall in love with Philip – who, of course, has unfortunately been dead for over a year.
OR HAS HE? Because this is a mystery novel, and so Emily sets off to Paris to investigate a conspiracy that involves several forged antiquities hidden in the British Museum, Philip's possible continued existence and/or the revelation that he did not die accidentally but was murdered, and Philip's handsome best friend Colin.
I liked the idea of this book a lot (and the entire series that follows it has gorgeous covers and compelling titles which tempt me to purchase them every time I see one), but the reality did not live up the packaging. Much of the writing, especially in the first half of the book, felt oddly rushed – scenes were summarized more than they were described and constantly needed to be a page or two longer than they actually were. It wasn't quite info-dumping, just like we only had the middle of scenes and were missing the beginning and the end. Characters would show up for one or two lines of dialogue and then suddenly be gone again. In addition, the mystery was almost offensively easy to figure out, but the characters acted like idiots for two hundred pages, ignoring obvious clues.
Ah, well. A bit of a disappointment, but you know what? I really did not need to start following another 10+ book series right now. I am just as happy to put Lady Emily aside.
What are you currently reading?
Lady of the Imperial City by Laura Kitchell, which is a bog-standard romance novel in terms of writing and characters, but distinguished by being set in Heian-era Japan rather than Regency England and/or Victorian England.
Busted Flush by Brad Smith. A comedic novel (supposedly. It's more low-key amusing than laugh-out-loud funny, even if you give it the benefit of the doubt) about Dock Bass, who starts out as a real estate agent married to a woman named Terri, whom he loathes for never-explained reasons. This is clearly supposed to make us sympathetic to a strong, independant man trapped by the rules of society.
Dock and I did not get off on the right foot, as you can probably tell.
Anyway, by page 15 Dock has quit his job (it made act like a hypocrite and Dock is too straight-forward for that, you see) and left Terri (not divorced, although that's his intention, literally "left", as in, "got in his truck and drove to another state without saying goodbye or having a fight". She is almost never mentioned again, so hopefully she filed divorce papers and lived a better life without Dock around to criticize her constantly). With nowhere else to go, Dock decides to answer in person a letter he recently received, informing him that he inherited a house in the town of Gettysburg from a distant relative. Once in Gettysburg, Dock fends off more evil real estate agents, who try to convince him to sell his property for less than it's worth so they can develop the area. Instead he decides to renovate the house on his own.
(Dock spends the rest of the book rebuilding a house from 1841. Literally rebuilds, completely by himself, by hand. Everything from tearing out the roof all the way down to the rafters, making new rafters, installing those, then shingling the new roof. Then he installs new drywall, does the electric wires, the phone lines, the windows, the doors, the flooring – everything. This seems like an implausible amount of skills for one man to have, even if he did used to be a carpenter, especially since it's implied he also knows how to do all of this in accord with 1840s historical restoration. But I barely know how to change a lightbulb, so I could be wrong.)
In the process of taking out the old walls, Dock discovers a long-sealed root cellar, which turns out to contain a huge collection of early photographs, including seven of Lincoln giving the Gettysburg Address, as well as an actual sound recording of the same event. All of this, of course, immediately gets huge news attention, leading to various adventures with elderly Hungarian professors, shady antiquities dealers, millionaire collectors, competing claims to the ownership of the house, and more.
It's hard to decide what was my "favorite" part of the book. It could have been the main villain, Thaddeus St. John, who is a shockingly retrograde gay stereotype. He dresses like he's always at a costume party, wears makeup and perfume, lisps, has a barely-mentioned younger boyfriend who's clearly only there to establish the fact that Thaddeus like 'em young, is thin and weak and afraid of violence. Here's one particularly appalling line: They taped Thaddeus in front of the musket display – his suggestion. Apparently, he was going for as masculine an image as he could muster.
My favorite part also might have been that the book somehow manages not to actually take a stance on the Civil War, one of the easier moral questions out there, but rather drips with obsequious sympathy for both sides. Here's Dock raging at the corruption of modern times compared to the purity of the past at the emotional climax of the book: There’d been something gnawing at Dock ever since he’d opened up the doorway to Willy’s shop. He realized he’d been subconsciously comparing his world to that of Willy’s, and wondering why it was that 1863 kept coming out on top. And finally it came to him. Everything today had to be easy. And if you had to screw over your neighbor or your brother or your friend to make it easy, then get to it. Easy was the way to go in the modern world. Easy was the new God.
Yes, no one in 1863 ever cheated to make things easier, like, oh, say, OWNING SLAVES. What the fuck, Brad Smith. How did anyone let you publish this?
Also, for all of our sakes, I have not copy-and-pasted the scene where Dock tells a black woman she doesn't know enough about the Civil War and needs to have more sympathy for Confederate soldiers. Because they didn't have shoes. Shoes, you guys! Dock sure showed her. Somehow they end the book by hooking up despite this.
This is an unfunny, eyeroll-inducing book without a single sympathetic or enjoyable character to be found. On the other hand, it was a quick read?
....No, no, that's not enough to make up for the rest. Avoid at all costs.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
And Only to Deceive by Tasha Alexander. Lady Emily is a beautiful, rich young woman in Victorian England who has a contentious relationship with her mother. She would marry anyone just to get out of her family's home. Luckily, she is quickly proposed to by Philip, who is perfectly acceptable if a bit boring. Philip dies on a hunting trip a few months after their wedding, and Emily's main problem after that is to hide the fact she's not grieving and is, instead, rather pleased by her new freedom as an even-richer widow.
However the constant repition by his mournful family and friends of what a great guy Philip was inspires Emily to learn more about him. She starts reading his journals and discovers that he was deeply interested in the Classical Greeks; this leads to her reading the Iliad, frequently visiting the British Museum's Greek wing, and even studying Ancient Greek. Slowly she begins to fall in love with Philip – who, of course, has unfortunately been dead for over a year.
OR HAS HE? Because this is a mystery novel, and so Emily sets off to Paris to investigate a conspiracy that involves several forged antiquities hidden in the British Museum, Philip's possible continued existence and/or the revelation that he did not die accidentally but was murdered, and Philip's handsome best friend Colin.
I liked the idea of this book a lot (and the entire series that follows it has gorgeous covers and compelling titles which tempt me to purchase them every time I see one), but the reality did not live up the packaging. Much of the writing, especially in the first half of the book, felt oddly rushed – scenes were summarized more than they were described and constantly needed to be a page or two longer than they actually were. It wasn't quite info-dumping, just like we only had the middle of scenes and were missing the beginning and the end. Characters would show up for one or two lines of dialogue and then suddenly be gone again. In addition, the mystery was almost offensively easy to figure out, but the characters acted like idiots for two hundred pages, ignoring obvious clues.
Ah, well. A bit of a disappointment, but you know what? I really did not need to start following another 10+ book series right now. I am just as happy to put Lady Emily aside.
What are you currently reading?
Lady of the Imperial City by Laura Kitchell, which is a bog-standard romance novel in terms of writing and characters, but distinguished by being set in Heian-era Japan rather than Regency England and/or Victorian England.
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no subject
Date: 2016-09-22 12:51 am (UTC)Also, Dock. What kind of name is that?
(Also, the whole second half of this entry seems to be a link.)
no subject
Date: 2016-09-22 04:59 am (UTC)I can say fairly definitively that there was not. It was invented in the 1870s.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-22 05:46 am (UTC)If the equipment in question is the phonoautograph, then, yes, it was possible to record sound in 1863, it just wasn't possible to play it back. The device transcribed sound waves using a stylus and a surface smeared with lampblack. The resulting graphs were never intended to be played back: they were like the output of a seismograph, a visual record of propagating waves. That said, there's at least one well-preserved phonautogram from 1860 that was successfully played back in 2008 by scanning the visual information and converting it digitally into an audio file, which is how I heard of this technology in the first place. Depending on when the book is set, the gimmick could be a phonautogram of Lincoln's speech that was recorded for posterity, unplayable in its time, but by the good graces of twenty-first-century technology now able to tell the world exactly how Lincoln himself sounded delivering the Gettysburg Address, which was almost certainly a lot better than some dude self-importantly declaiming it while doing manly home repair (see Publishers Weekly, below).
If that's not the recording method employed by the book, however, then Smith has no idea what he's talking about and this plot is just so much wild blueberry muffins.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-22 01:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-22 03:32 pm (UTC)That's a great plot hook! I'm so sorry about the rest of the novel!
no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 12:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 04:01 am (UTC)I am glad to be able to share!
Your icon is wonderful! Who is the person surrounded by black cats? (I'm sure I should recognize him, but I don't appear to.)
no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 11:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 03:43 am (UTC)Thanks so much for letting me know!
Why even bother giving him a wife at the beginning if he's just going to leave her and never speak of her again because he has found his new love in the form of a battered old house?
Yeah, that bothered me too. He seemed to treat his wife like a cruel twist of fate that had randomly befallen him, a trial for him to prove what a strong, stoic hero he was to bear up nonetheless. But, like, you married her, dude! She didn't spring into being your wife without your participation! Take responsibility for your bad relationship.
Other people have handled the sound-recording equipment question. One positive thing about this book: I now know much more about early sound technology!
no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-22 03:17 am (UTC)Also, for all of our sakes, I have not copy-and-pasted the scene where Dock tells a black woman she doesn't know enough about the Civil War and needs to have more sympathy for Confederate soldiers. Because they didn't have shoes. Shoes, you guys! Dock sure showed her. Somehow they end the book by hooking up despite this.
Wow, it's nice to know there's someone out there brave enough to tell the TRUTH about whether Confederate soldiers had shoes!
no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 03:59 am (UTC)Haha, yes, exactly!
no subject
Date: 2016-09-22 05:29 am (UTC)Eurgh.
I like the Publishers Weekly review: "Smith . . . concocts a frothily entertaining satire of the corrupt Civil War memorabilia industry, but the fun is somewhat dampened by the figure of Dock, a tower of laconic manliness whose censorious mission is to reclaim the project of historical commemoration from all traces of vulgarity and materialism. The incongruous result is what you might expect if Gary Cooper were to ride into town to clean up The Antiques Road Show."
no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 12:36 am (UTC)In the other book, I really hope that handsome best friend Colin turns out to be the murderer, or the cause of Philip having had to disappear sharpish - it just sounds like the kind of book where that would be the case!
no subject
Date: 2016-09-23 04:11 am (UTC)Alas, Colin spends most of the book under heavy suspicion of being the villain, but he is finally proved innocent and rewarded by becoming Emily's future love interest. I think I would have been more interested in having him be the murderer too!