Reading Wednesday
Jan. 14th, 2015 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Good Man Friday by Barbara Hambly.This is my least favorite of the series. Which is not to say that I don't like it! I do, it's just that I like the other books better. I do like the new setting, and I really love the baseball subplot, but I think ultimately I miss Rose and Hannibal and Shaw and all the other characters. Though on the other hand, I do like getting to see more of Dominique and Chloe and Henri, and Edgar Allan Poe is pretty much my favorite historical cameo.
In terms of the mystery, I'm not really into the long strings of numbers and codes (I still don't understand how the 'Tumbling Squares' code works, but to be fair, I didn't really try to understand it. Also I keep picturing the magic squares as sudoku, and I don't think that's really accurate). I do like the trick with the Rowena's description being wrong. It's such a little thing, and yet capable of throwing off so much of the book! On the one hand, I'm not sure it's realistic she would have lied about something that could have so easily have been caught as a lie (if only one other person had described Singletary!), and yet, if you read closely, she seems to lie about all sorts of random things, so I suppose it's just part of her personality.
I really like the long flashback to the day Livia, Olympe, and Ben were bought and set free. It has such great character details for each of them – Ben crying from loneliness, Olympe spitting on Janvier's shoes, Livia neglecting to mention (or just assuming) that the children are coming with her. I'm also still so curious abut what Ben and Janvier's relationship was like. Janvier seems generally pleasant (he certainly spent a lot of money on Ben, between buying him a piano and sending him to France for school), but Ben has such a lack of emotion in his memories of him that I think they can't have been close. I hope we find out more about it in some future book.
And he remembered, in coming and going from the dissections – and mostly he and the other students had to spend the night in a hayrick or a stable, since the city barriers weren’t open again until first light – he would sometimes see the anatomy assistant Courveche in quiet converse in the shadows with furtive, unshaven men whose peasant clothing always smelled of grave-mold.
Interestingly, just a few days ago there was just a post about this on Barbara Hambly's facebook! So I guess it was luckily we ended up doing this book later than originally planned. I quote:
I hate it, hate it, HATE it when I find out after a book is published that I got something wrong in my research. In my post a week or so ago I mentioned finding a book that would have been TOTALLY useful in researching something that's already in print (and wasn't published until AFTER my book had come out...). Well, after not finding ANYTHING that said there was any difference between English medical practice in the 1820s and French medical practice - while I was writing the Ben January book, Good Man Friday - come to find out that France was the ONLY country in Europe where nobody had a problem with dissections and cartloads of cadavers were dumped every day at noon on the sidewalk in front of the Hotel Dieu, for the med students to pick through for subjects. I gather the atmosphere in the dissecting-room could get a little thick (students smoked cigars as a measure of relief - that sound you hear is my mind boggling at the thought of what the place must have smelled like), but other than that, no prob. They fed the scraps to the Hotel's dogs afterwards.
So, everybody just disregard January's reflections on dealing with grave-robbers in France. Never happened. My bad. My reasoning and extrapolation (hey, it was a Catholic country!) were at fault.
Thank goodness January's reflections on the subject was all it was, and that no plot-point turned upon it.
But I'm still vexed. Grr. Wonder if I can talk my editors into doing another edition?
(Apparently the book in question is "The Greater Journey" by David McCullough, if anyone is interested in the topic.)
‘They are Americans: drunk as holes and crazy as sticks.
Is this an actual French saying? Because if so, I LOVE IT. I did not know holes were particularly drunk (or sticks particularly crazy), but this is hilarious to me and I want to adopt it as part of my regular vocabulary.
It's interesting to me that Ben seems so very remorseful over killing Quent, since he's killed people before in the series without fasting for a year. I suppose because it wasn't in self-defense (or at least not immediate and direct self-defense), and wasn't in the heat of the battle, but was a fairly cold and conscious decision, is what makes the difference to him.
I can never figure out if Thèrése is a slave or a paid servant. As it makes a big difference in how sympathetic I am to Minou at the end, I wish I could figure it out.
And link to the FFA discussion, which is very brief. But still open! If anyone wants to comment.
Mike and Psmith (just to be confusing, the same book has apparently also been published under the titles The Lost Lambs and Enter Psmith, and as the second half of the book Mike) by P.G. Wodehouse. I've been meaning to read the Psmith books forever, since they have a tiny but very enthusiastic fandom. And they deserve it! Psmith (pronounced the same as 'Smith'. As he explains: "There are too many Smiths, and I don't care for Smythe. My father's content to worry along in the old-fashioned way, but I've decided to strike out a fresh line. I shall found a new dynasty. The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning. I jotted it down on the back of an envelope.") and Mike are new students at Sedleigh, a small stereotypical British public school, in the early 1900s. Mike is a jock – a cricket star! – and Psmith is witty and eccentric, goes about wearing a monocle and calling everyone "comrade". Together theyfight crime cause crime.
This book had a lot of cricket, a sport I continue to absolutely not understand, despite friends making me watch games or try and play (I could not even hit the ball. It's way more difficult than it looks! I'm impressed by your skills, Mike).
Overall, really lovely and funny, and I'm definitely going to read the other books.
What are you currently reading?
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table by Massimo Montanari, trans. Beth Archer Brombert. So far it's been more historical theorizing of the "how do we know what we know?" sort rather than the actual topic, but I'm not very far into it yet, so I'm holding out hope.
Good Man Friday by Barbara Hambly.
In terms of the mystery, I'm not really into the long strings of numbers and codes (I still don't understand how the 'Tumbling Squares' code works, but to be fair, I didn't really try to understand it. Also I keep picturing the magic squares as sudoku, and I don't think that's really accurate). I do like the trick with the Rowena's description being wrong. It's such a little thing, and yet capable of throwing off so much of the book! On the one hand, I'm not sure it's realistic she would have lied about something that could have so easily have been caught as a lie (if only one other person had described Singletary!), and yet, if you read closely, she seems to lie about all sorts of random things, so I suppose it's just part of her personality.
I really like the long flashback to the day Livia, Olympe, and Ben were bought and set free. It has such great character details for each of them – Ben crying from loneliness, Olympe spitting on Janvier's shoes, Livia neglecting to mention (or just assuming) that the children are coming with her. I'm also still so curious abut what Ben and Janvier's relationship was like. Janvier seems generally pleasant (he certainly spent a lot of money on Ben, between buying him a piano and sending him to France for school), but Ben has such a lack of emotion in his memories of him that I think they can't have been close. I hope we find out more about it in some future book.
And he remembered, in coming and going from the dissections – and mostly he and the other students had to spend the night in a hayrick or a stable, since the city barriers weren’t open again until first light – he would sometimes see the anatomy assistant Courveche in quiet converse in the shadows with furtive, unshaven men whose peasant clothing always smelled of grave-mold.
Interestingly, just a few days ago there was just a post about this on Barbara Hambly's facebook! So I guess it was luckily we ended up doing this book later than originally planned. I quote:
I hate it, hate it, HATE it when I find out after a book is published that I got something wrong in my research. In my post a week or so ago I mentioned finding a book that would have been TOTALLY useful in researching something that's already in print (and wasn't published until AFTER my book had come out...). Well, after not finding ANYTHING that said there was any difference between English medical practice in the 1820s and French medical practice - while I was writing the Ben January book, Good Man Friday - come to find out that France was the ONLY country in Europe where nobody had a problem with dissections and cartloads of cadavers were dumped every day at noon on the sidewalk in front of the Hotel Dieu, for the med students to pick through for subjects. I gather the atmosphere in the dissecting-room could get a little thick (students smoked cigars as a measure of relief - that sound you hear is my mind boggling at the thought of what the place must have smelled like), but other than that, no prob. They fed the scraps to the Hotel's dogs afterwards.
So, everybody just disregard January's reflections on dealing with grave-robbers in France. Never happened. My bad. My reasoning and extrapolation (hey, it was a Catholic country!) were at fault.
Thank goodness January's reflections on the subject was all it was, and that no plot-point turned upon it.
But I'm still vexed. Grr. Wonder if I can talk my editors into doing another edition?
(Apparently the book in question is "The Greater Journey" by David McCullough, if anyone is interested in the topic.)
‘They are Americans: drunk as holes and crazy as sticks.
Is this an actual French saying? Because if so, I LOVE IT. I did not know holes were particularly drunk (or sticks particularly crazy), but this is hilarious to me and I want to adopt it as part of my regular vocabulary.
It's interesting to me that Ben seems so very remorseful over killing Quent, since he's killed people before in the series without fasting for a year. I suppose because it wasn't in self-defense (or at least not immediate and direct self-defense), and wasn't in the heat of the battle, but was a fairly cold and conscious decision, is what makes the difference to him.
I can never figure out if Thèrése is a slave or a paid servant. As it makes a big difference in how sympathetic I am to Minou at the end, I wish I could figure it out.
And link to the FFA discussion, which is very brief. But still open! If anyone wants to comment.
Mike and Psmith (just to be confusing, the same book has apparently also been published under the titles The Lost Lambs and Enter Psmith, and as the second half of the book Mike) by P.G. Wodehouse. I've been meaning to read the Psmith books forever, since they have a tiny but very enthusiastic fandom. And they deserve it! Psmith (pronounced the same as 'Smith'. As he explains: "There are too many Smiths, and I don't care for Smythe. My father's content to worry along in the old-fashioned way, but I've decided to strike out a fresh line. I shall found a new dynasty. The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning. I jotted it down on the back of an envelope.") and Mike are new students at Sedleigh, a small stereotypical British public school, in the early 1900s. Mike is a jock – a cricket star! – and Psmith is witty and eccentric, goes about wearing a monocle and calling everyone "comrade". Together they
This book had a lot of cricket, a sport I continue to absolutely not understand, despite friends making me watch games or try and play (I could not even hit the ball. It's way more difficult than it looks! I'm impressed by your skills, Mike).
Overall, really lovely and funny, and I'm definitely going to read the other books.
What are you currently reading?
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table by Massimo Montanari, trans. Beth Archer Brombert. So far it's been more historical theorizing of the "how do we know what we know?" sort rather than the actual topic, but I'm not very far into it yet, so I'm holding out hope.
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Date: 2015-01-14 08:41 pm (UTC)Cricket is the weirdest, but then I kind of feel that way about all major team sports. And one of the benefits of cricket, for me as a reader, is that I don't understand any of it well enough to know whether any given cricket-related incident makes sense or not, and will happily go along with whatever the author tells me is happening. Wickets or whatever! Fieldings or something! Some kind of bat is involved! Ok, I believe you.
I hope the medieval food book turns out to be good! I love learning about Great Weird Tastes of the Past.
no subject
Date: 2015-01-14 08:59 pm (UTC)I have a friend who insists that all I need to do to understand cricket is watch the movie Lagaan, which she says will explain everything and is also just a good movie, but I haven't seen it yet. I even own a copy of it and still haven't got around to watching it, mostly because it's almost four long.
Me too! I love all sorts of food books, really, but Weird Tastes of the Past is one of the best categories.
no subject
Date: 2015-01-14 10:03 pm (UTC)SO MUCH Y. SOOOOOO MUUUUUUUUUCH.
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Date: 2015-01-14 08:47 pm (UTC)i'm afraid there's an obligatory inexplicable cricket scene per book though. i don't get it either -_-
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Date: 2015-01-14 08:54 pm (UTC)I get through the cricket scenes by doing the equivalent of nodding and looking thoughtful, while having no idea what's happening.
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Date: 2015-01-14 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-14 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-01-14 09:36 pm (UTC)However, it's definitely one of my least favorites on an emotional level, because I missed the rest of the ensemble terribly. Poe comes off as Hannibal-lite here, and while again I think she's making a good point, through his character, about what even a lot of the sympathetic white attitudes toward abolition and slavery were like, I think a lot of his interactions with Ben could have been done with Hannibal without a whole lot of rewriting (although Hannibal's not that obtuse about slavery).
I'm also still so curious abut what Ben and Janvier's relationship was like. Janvier seems generally pleasant (he certainly spent a lot of money on Ben, between buying him a piano and sending him to France for school), but Ben has such a lack of emotion in his memories of him that I think they can't have been close.
My take on Ben and Janvier is that there wasn't much warmth on Ben's end, but not for reasons that were really Janvier's fault (or Ben's). I think a big part of his lukewarmness towards Janvier has to do with the fact that, from the hints we get in other books, Ben seems to have been close to his and Olympe's father, and loved and admired him, and then he never saw his father again after Janvier took them to New Orleans. I don't think he ever got over that, and it couldn't have helped that Livia MUST have been pushing Janvier as a replacement father onto Ben and Olympe. Given Livia's determination to elide her slave past, I can't imagine her being receptive to any attempts on the children's part to suggest seeing their father or making contact with him, or even talking about them.
Livia's suggestion about naming Ben's firstborn after Janvier in "The Shirt On His Back" seems to hint at this -- she takes for granted that of course he would, while Ben doesn't even dignify the suggestion with a response. To the extent that Livia has warm feelings about anybody, her feelings towards Janvier are probably the warmest they get, because she was a woman facing a truly horrible future, and Janvier got her out of it AND kept her together with her kids. Ben, on the other hand, sees the whole thing through the eyes of a child who was wrenched from the only life he'd ever known and forcibly severed from his father, forever.
I also think Ben might never have forgiven Janvier for being the man who bought his mother, and for having that kind of power over her (and the kids), in spite of how it ultimately turned out. And that's entirely justifiable -- in a way, it might have made it worse that Janvier was apparently a nice guy, because Ben could hate Fourchet uncomplicatedly, but he couldn't simply hate Janvier because Janvier didn't deserve it ... but at the same time, Janvier was the beneficiary of a system that treated Ben and Olympe and Livia as subhuman, and the way Ben and his family got to New Orleans (bought and moved) basically underscored that system hard.
But Janvier really does seem to have been a genuinely decent guy. He bought Livia along with her kids -- which neither legality nor social mores would have required him to do -- and then freed them, and seems to have loved her and taken her wishes into account, as well as trying to do right by her kids. Ben also kept his surname in adulthood, which seems to point to, at the very least, Janvier never having been abusive towards him.
... apparently I have a lot of headcanon on them. :D
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Date: 2015-01-17 10:49 pm (UTC)It's only my least favorite with comparison to the rest of the series – I still think it's a fantastic book. I have a friend who reads Ben in this book as literally depressed, and I can totally see that reading. He does come off as exhausted and resigned in a way that he usually doesn't. Which could just be an accidental consequence of him lacking most of his ensemble, since he doesn't have anyone to emotionally engage in a deep way (I mean, he clearly loves Minou, but they don't seem to be intimate in a "have emotionally revealing conversations" way), and so he reads as cut-off because it's harder to show him doing so. Or he could be depressed, and that same lack of close friends is compounding the way he already feels.
And Poe is totally Hannibal-lite (I wish the text explicitly pointed it out, because it's so obvious it's almost weird it doesn't), but just different enough that it adds to whole emotionally isolated effect. Because if it was Hannibal, there would be more trust and closeness for Ben to rely on, but with Poe, Ben still has to lie and be careful about what he says and does, and worry about accidentally crossing a line.
But like you say, outside of the emotional component, there's so much great stuff going on with this book! Especially given the setting in the capital, it has such a strong political critique. There are a lot of moments in the movie 12 Years a Slave that remind me so much of this book (and not accidentally – I know Hambly has used the original memoir for research), but I think Good Man Friday is much more complex and effective.
... apparently I have a lot of headcanon on them. :D
Which is awesome! I completely am convinced.
I could see Ben resenting Janvier – or going through a phase of doing so as a teenager – not so much for anything specific Janvier actually did or didn't do, but for what he represents, for even his ability to choose to be good to Livia and her children, since he had the ability to choose to do otherwise. But certainly Ben doesn't currently seem to feel anything as strong as hatred; he mostly just seems to not think about Janvier very much (Which maybe – to switch to a Doylist perspective – is partly Hambly trying to avoid writing Janvier as a White Savior).
Have you read the new short story Hambly just put out? It has a lot of new perspective on Livia, and it's so great. I mean, it all totally fits with what we knew before, or with your thoughts here, but I loved reading more of it.