Reading Wednesday
Oct. 29th, 2014 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
A Place Within: Rediscovering India by M. G. Vassanji. A memoir about a man going back to India to discover his family's roots. I always enjoy it when a book focuses on places I know well, and this book lavishes attention on the cities I personally happen to be most familiar with: Delhi, Baroda, Ahmedabad (okay, there's also chapters on Shimla and Kerala, but I haven't been to either). Unfortunately I didn't like much else about the book. Vassanji's style wants to be deep and poetic, but he doesn't actually have anything interesting to say. And I love purple prose! I will totally read your multi-page description of a sunset! Just as long as you're saying something new, and not merely repeating cliches worn pale and empty through overuse. Vassanji really wants to make a connection to his family's history or uncover some deep truth about himself, but he doesn't manage to do so. Which isn't surprising, after all, when it's been generations since his family left and there doesn't seem to be any relationships they've maintained, but if that's the case, admit it! Write about your lack of connection and how that makes you feel. But instead Vassanji just keeps wandering in circles, promising an insight that he never reaches and obfuscating how shallow his "rediscovery" is. Not recommended.
Chef's Table by Lynn Charles. A gay romance about Patrick, the cook at a small Brooklyn diner, and Evan, the chef at a popular, fancy Manhattan restaurant. I was really into that premise when I heard it! Unfortunately the book itself is terrible. There are chapters and chapters of the two guys' inner monologues about one another, loaded with superlatives – beautiful, strong, passionate, amazing, wonderful – but there's never anything unique, never anything that gives the reader any sense of their personalities or individual traits. There's supposedly some sort of contrast between Evan being driven and ambitious and Patrick being content where he is, but that pretty much falls apart by the time Evan is explaining how Patrick is "more than that place. [...] Don't you want to work someplace where [...] the clientele appreciates the work you put into your food?" (ugh) and Patrick is confessing that he's afraid of settling the way his parents did (double ugh). Because yes, this book literally has a conversation in which the main couple proclaims their love to be so much more special than anyone else's. I'm not sure if that was more or less awful than the conversation in which Evan is praised for having giving a job to an alcoholic: "You saved him. [...] You're one helluva man." Dude, I'm not sure hiring a dishwasher makes you a saint.
The plot outside of the romance doesn't have any real conflict either; everything the two guys could want literally falls into their laps without effort, in the form of multiple convenient inheritances and gifts. The book was full of little things that get on my nerves (though I know other people like them well enough, or they wouldn't turn up so often): the sex scenes that focus on butt sex as the most meaningful and significant kind of sex, the effusive endearments and promises of love that follow immediately after, the insistence that previous relationships were "bumpy and clumsy, occasionally slutty, and against everything his kindhearted and well-intentioned parents ever taught him about self-respect", etc. I guess at least there was switching! The book also had a weird perspective on New York City: seriously, a Manhattan vs Brooklyn rivalry in 2014? Brooklyn Heights as "quaint, quiet [...] a hidden gem"? I would have to win a lottery to buy a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights! And not even, like, a normal lottery, but one of the ones with exceptionally large prizes. And Williamsburg has long surpassed anywhere on Manhattan as the hip new scene, and no restaurant that focuses on feeding the theater crowds has a claim to heights of innovation. The author's attempt to write out a minor character's New Jersey accent instead sounded much more like a Valley Girl, which I suppose is only two thousand miles off.
Okay, enough, I don't really want to list every single detail that bugged me. But this is one of the worst books I've read in quite a while. Between this and A Bollywood Affair I'm beginning to suspect that the mainstream Romance genre deserves its reputation.
What are you currently reading?
The Kindred of Darkness by Barbara Hambly. More vampires! This time everyone's back in London, their baby daughter has been kidnapped, there are evil Balkan vampires, and there is still lots of threesome subtext (IS IT EVEN SUBTEXT? WHO KNOWS!).
The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair. I just started this a few hours ago, so I'm not really sure what it's about yet. A novel about an Indian-American girl going back to Kerala to visit family, so far.
A Place Within: Rediscovering India by M. G. Vassanji. A memoir about a man going back to India to discover his family's roots. I always enjoy it when a book focuses on places I know well, and this book lavishes attention on the cities I personally happen to be most familiar with: Delhi, Baroda, Ahmedabad (okay, there's also chapters on Shimla and Kerala, but I haven't been to either). Unfortunately I didn't like much else about the book. Vassanji's style wants to be deep and poetic, but he doesn't actually have anything interesting to say. And I love purple prose! I will totally read your multi-page description of a sunset! Just as long as you're saying something new, and not merely repeating cliches worn pale and empty through overuse. Vassanji really wants to make a connection to his family's history or uncover some deep truth about himself, but he doesn't manage to do so. Which isn't surprising, after all, when it's been generations since his family left and there doesn't seem to be any relationships they've maintained, but if that's the case, admit it! Write about your lack of connection and how that makes you feel. But instead Vassanji just keeps wandering in circles, promising an insight that he never reaches and obfuscating how shallow his "rediscovery" is. Not recommended.
Chef's Table by Lynn Charles. A gay romance about Patrick, the cook at a small Brooklyn diner, and Evan, the chef at a popular, fancy Manhattan restaurant. I was really into that premise when I heard it! Unfortunately the book itself is terrible. There are chapters and chapters of the two guys' inner monologues about one another, loaded with superlatives – beautiful, strong, passionate, amazing, wonderful – but there's never anything unique, never anything that gives the reader any sense of their personalities or individual traits. There's supposedly some sort of contrast between Evan being driven and ambitious and Patrick being content where he is, but that pretty much falls apart by the time Evan is explaining how Patrick is "more than that place. [...] Don't you want to work someplace where [...] the clientele appreciates the work you put into your food?" (ugh) and Patrick is confessing that he's afraid of settling the way his parents did (double ugh). Because yes, this book literally has a conversation in which the main couple proclaims their love to be so much more special than anyone else's. I'm not sure if that was more or less awful than the conversation in which Evan is praised for having giving a job to an alcoholic: "You saved him. [...] You're one helluva man." Dude, I'm not sure hiring a dishwasher makes you a saint.
The plot outside of the romance doesn't have any real conflict either; everything the two guys could want literally falls into their laps without effort, in the form of multiple convenient inheritances and gifts. The book was full of little things that get on my nerves (though I know other people like them well enough, or they wouldn't turn up so often): the sex scenes that focus on butt sex as the most meaningful and significant kind of sex, the effusive endearments and promises of love that follow immediately after, the insistence that previous relationships were "bumpy and clumsy, occasionally slutty, and against everything his kindhearted and well-intentioned parents ever taught him about self-respect", etc. I guess at least there was switching! The book also had a weird perspective on New York City: seriously, a Manhattan vs Brooklyn rivalry in 2014? Brooklyn Heights as "quaint, quiet [...] a hidden gem"? I would have to win a lottery to buy a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights! And not even, like, a normal lottery, but one of the ones with exceptionally large prizes. And Williamsburg has long surpassed anywhere on Manhattan as the hip new scene, and no restaurant that focuses on feeding the theater crowds has a claim to heights of innovation. The author's attempt to write out a minor character's New Jersey accent instead sounded much more like a Valley Girl, which I suppose is only two thousand miles off.
Okay, enough, I don't really want to list every single detail that bugged me. But this is one of the worst books I've read in quite a while. Between this and A Bollywood Affair I'm beginning to suspect that the mainstream Romance genre deserves its reputation.
What are you currently reading?
The Kindred of Darkness by Barbara Hambly. More vampires! This time everyone's back in London, their baby daughter has been kidnapped, there are evil Balkan vampires, and there is still lots of threesome subtext (IS IT EVEN SUBTEXT? WHO KNOWS!).
The Girl in the Garden by Kamala Nair. I just started this a few hours ago, so I'm not really sure what it's about yet. A novel about an Indian-American girl going back to Kerala to visit family, so far.
