Reading Wednesday
Mar. 25th, 2015 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat are you currently reading?
The Figaro Murders by Laura Lebow. A murder mystery set in Vienna in the late 1700s. The main character is Lorenzo Da Ponte, a real historical figure who worked as a librettist for Mozart's operas (and, you know, also for other people's operas, but most of them have no name recognition today). Which is a pretty cool idea, but sadly the actual book did not live up to the premise. The writing is extremely choppy and does that thing where it avoids contractions in the hope of sounding formal and ~historical~. Lebow clearly has done a lot of historical research, but it's all communicated in awkward infodumps that disappears again as soon as the moment's over. There's no deep sense of world-building. Da Ponte as a character is whiny, misogynist (the book is incredibly, weirdly full of male gaze, with every female character defined as either "hot and useful" or "old and/or ugly and annoying"), and self-pitying, but in Lebow's defense, I think that might be historically accurate. It doesn't make him a sympathetic character though.
The strangest part of the book is that it's basically a retelling of the The Marriage of Figaro (well, if Cherubino had gotten murdered at the beginning) with the names changed, but none of the characters remark on the similarity. It's not just a retelling, because the opera also exists in the world of the book, but it's not supposed to be the characters' inspiration to write the opera either, because it's already written before the book starts. It's just... a weird reenactment, down to most of the major mysteries of the book (guess who the barber's long-long mother is? the same one as in the opera! Guess who the murderer is? the only character who didn't really have a plot in the opera!). I'd say the intended audience is people who don't know The Marriage of Figaro, but surely anyone who would buy a book advertized as about Mozart's librettist would be at least vaguely familiar with one of the most famous operas.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Christmas Angel by Jo Beverly. A Regency romance, part of the series I've been reading lately. Leander is the son of a diplomat who's spent most of his life traveling around the capitals of Europe romancing princesses. Judith is a sensible widow with two children who's never traveled more than a few miles from her small town. Leander wants to stop traveling and make a real home, and decides that he needs a very English woman to help him do that. However, he wants someone who won't fall desperately in love with him, since his parents had an unbalanced marriage. He figures Judith, who everyone believes to be still in love with her dead first husband, is perfect.
I loved this book! Both of the characters are sensible, reasonable adults who actually do things like sit down to discuss their relationship and make decisions based on things other than emotions. And yet they're still adorable as they fumble their way toward each other. There's a mystery subplot that was genuinely compelling (not all that common for subplots in romance novels), and I found the difficulties the characters had with sex – especially considering that neither of them was a virgin at the beginning – to be believable and sweet. Highly recommended!
Imago by Octavia Butler. The last in the Xenogenesis trilogy. This book focuses on Jodahs, another one of Lilith's children. Jodahs is an ooloi, a third gender common to the Oankali species. By the time this book opens, humans and Oankali have been living together in a reluctant sort of harmony for quite a while, but Jodahs is the first ooloi to be born to a human mother. Its appearance is unexpected and controversial. This book is much more episodic than the others, or maybe a better word would be bildungsroman; there's no central event or prominent theme to hold it together. Jodahs grows up, tries to control its new abilities, searches for and finds mates, and helps out its younger sibling. Dubcon continues to be a theme, but I find it more distressing when the POV is of the aggressor rather than the victim. I'm also not sure if Butler means for it to be distressing (in a Humbert Humbert sort of way) or if she finds the "your mouth says no but your body says yes!" logic compelling.
What are you currently reading?
Dangerous Joy by Jo Beverly. Still into the Company of Rogues series. This one is set in cheesy mystical Ireland!
The Figaro Murders by Laura Lebow. A murder mystery set in Vienna in the late 1700s. The main character is Lorenzo Da Ponte, a real historical figure who worked as a librettist for Mozart's operas (and, you know, also for other people's operas, but most of them have no name recognition today). Which is a pretty cool idea, but sadly the actual book did not live up to the premise. The writing is extremely choppy and does that thing where it avoids contractions in the hope of sounding formal and ~historical~. Lebow clearly has done a lot of historical research, but it's all communicated in awkward infodumps that disappears again as soon as the moment's over. There's no deep sense of world-building. Da Ponte as a character is whiny, misogynist (the book is incredibly, weirdly full of male gaze, with every female character defined as either "hot and useful" or "old and/or ugly and annoying"), and self-pitying, but in Lebow's defense, I think that might be historically accurate. It doesn't make him a sympathetic character though.
The strangest part of the book is that it's basically a retelling of the The Marriage of Figaro (well, if Cherubino had gotten murdered at the beginning) with the names changed, but none of the characters remark on the similarity. It's not just a retelling, because the opera also exists in the world of the book, but it's not supposed to be the characters' inspiration to write the opera either, because it's already written before the book starts. It's just... a weird reenactment, down to most of the major mysteries of the book (guess who the barber's long-long mother is? the same one as in the opera! Guess who the murderer is? the only character who didn't really have a plot in the opera!). I'd say the intended audience is people who don't know The Marriage of Figaro, but surely anyone who would buy a book advertized as about Mozart's librettist would be at least vaguely familiar with one of the most famous operas.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Christmas Angel by Jo Beverly. A Regency romance, part of the series I've been reading lately. Leander is the son of a diplomat who's spent most of his life traveling around the capitals of Europe romancing princesses. Judith is a sensible widow with two children who's never traveled more than a few miles from her small town. Leander wants to stop traveling and make a real home, and decides that he needs a very English woman to help him do that. However, he wants someone who won't fall desperately in love with him, since his parents had an unbalanced marriage. He figures Judith, who everyone believes to be still in love with her dead first husband, is perfect.
I loved this book! Both of the characters are sensible, reasonable adults who actually do things like sit down to discuss their relationship and make decisions based on things other than emotions. And yet they're still adorable as they fumble their way toward each other. There's a mystery subplot that was genuinely compelling (not all that common for subplots in romance novels), and I found the difficulties the characters had with sex – especially considering that neither of them was a virgin at the beginning – to be believable and sweet. Highly recommended!
Imago by Octavia Butler. The last in the Xenogenesis trilogy. This book focuses on Jodahs, another one of Lilith's children. Jodahs is an ooloi, a third gender common to the Oankali species. By the time this book opens, humans and Oankali have been living together in a reluctant sort of harmony for quite a while, but Jodahs is the first ooloi to be born to a human mother. Its appearance is unexpected and controversial. This book is much more episodic than the others, or maybe a better word would be bildungsroman; there's no central event or prominent theme to hold it together. Jodahs grows up, tries to control its new abilities, searches for and finds mates, and helps out its younger sibling. Dubcon continues to be a theme, but I find it more distressing when the POV is of the aggressor rather than the victim. I'm also not sure if Butler means for it to be distressing (in a Humbert Humbert sort of way) or if she finds the "your mouth says no but your body says yes!" logic compelling.
What are you currently reading?
Dangerous Joy by Jo Beverly. Still into the Company of Rogues series. This one is set in cheesy mystical Ireland!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-03-26 03:03 pm (UTC)I keep meaning to read more Octavia Butler -- I loved Kindred a lot. Dubcon is very much not my thing, but the Xenogenesis books might be well-written enough that I should read them anyway?
no subject
Date: 2015-03-26 06:23 pm (UTC)I suppose it depends on your tastes in writing. Butler's style is very, very lean and sparse, and personally I tend to prefer more poetic, lush, emotional styles. But is fairly compelling; it keeps you turning the pages.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-27 10:42 pm (UTC)It would have been a Witches book.
no subject
Date: 2015-03-27 11:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-03-28 05:14 pm (UTC)And the wedding night was perfect. I really liked the kids in this book; they weren't around enough to be annoying, but were very believable, I thought.