Wednesday Reading Roster: Mostly Funny Things Edition

[evelyn_b]

What I've Just Finished Reading

Samuel Johnson is Indignant is not a bad book and it's probably an admirable one, but I didn't like it. I didn't necessarily dislike it. I was just bored and felt kind of thick and heavy and occasionally mildly curious about my complete failure to like or dislike anything about it. In general, I liked the stories

Comments

[lolmac]

Clearly, Madeline Basset would look upon her suitor with an eye of newt, right?

I abandoned The Beekeeper's Apprentice one or two chapters in. It's shippy AU fanfic -- in fact, it's a pure old-school Mary Sue, complete with the inevitable distortion of the canon lead that the premise requires to make it work at all. When one cares about the canon lead enough to dislike the distortion, that kills the work from the outset.

In addition, I had read enough of Arthur Conan Doyle's work by then that a weak imitation of the style only made me miss the original. I actually liked The Seven-Percent Solution when I first read it, not having read much Doyle -- but when I tried to re-read it after, it was, again, weakly written AU fanfic.

[evelyn_b]

For most of my life, I was appalled by the premise of The Beekeeper's Apprentice and determined not to touch it with a barge pole. I got a lot more sympathetic to the idea of Mary Sue characters in the past five years or so, and then I read Gaudy Night, which I loved so much that I became irrationally convinced I would also love TBA. Self-insert detective-marrying adventures for everyone!

But it was not to be. I couldn't believe in or enjoy Mary Russell, the plots were dull right up until they hit implausible, and the best you can say for King's Holmes is that he's too indistinct to be OOC most of the time. Plus, it's shippy in shape alone, not in substance. Not!Holmes and Russell have so little chemistry they should hire themselves out as protective lab equipment. So unappetizing -- and in such small portions. :(

Can you recommend any good ACD-style Holmes pro-fanfic? I love a good pastiche, but they are so difficult to do well and when they fall, they fall so far and splatteringly. I'm probably too picky. I've never read The

[lolmac]

so little chemistry they should hire themselves out as protective lab equipment

You almost owed me a new keyboard there. It would have been worth the sacrifice, though!

Part of my take on Mary Sues, at this point (as a former hard-sore Sue-er, I used to be much more forgiving), is that it's usually OOC for a canon lead to be indistinct, or to exist in a dull or stupid plot (unless canon includes such). I can no longer give passing grades for that. I don't count Gaudy Night as a full-blown self-insert; yes, a great deal of the author is certainly visible, but no more so than many other works. Hell, if Harriet Vane is a Mary Sue, so is Stephen Dedalus!

As far as Doylefic goes -- The Seven-Percent Solution is actually about as good as it gets, to my knowledge. It's more enjoyable if you have not read any Doyle for a while, and the premise is interesting. I wish I had more to offer you there! Missy (my wife) (brief pause while I gloat over being able to use that word, ahem, where was I) tells me that Doyle's son Adrian is at

[evelyn_b]

Everyone defines Mary Sue a little differently, I think. I don't necessarily think all Mary Sues are bad and so my definition is a little broader. Probably that'll change over time -- it's changed a lot already in the past few years.

I'd say Harriet Vane does have the canon-warping properties that are the hallmark of the Mary Sue, only the warping pulls mostly toward realism instead of away from it. And a huge part of the appeal of the Vaneiad for me is the fun of watching a character who, on being abruptly dropped into several formally Sue-tastic situations, persists in reacting to them like a normal human being, as the embarrassing and inconvenient interruptions to her writing schedule they are.

I'd never heard of Adrian Doyle until now, and thanks to you I just spent [too long] reading about the mildly contentious history of the Doyle estate. The guy he co-wrote Doylefic with (John Dickson Carr) seems to have a decent reputation, though I haven't read his books yet.

[wordsofastory]

That is a fantastic Jeeves (or, well, Jeeves-adjacent?) quote!

[evelyn_b]

It's so good! The whole book is conversations like that.

Actually importantly Jeeves-deprived, as Bertie has decided that Jeeves has lost his touch and that he, Bertie, will be taking charge of Gussie Fink-Nottle's situation from now on. He is about as triumphantly successful as you might expect.

[wordsofastory]

I've read one of two of the Jeeves books, but I really need to read more of them. They're so wonderful! And this situation sounds amazing.

[evelyn_b]

It is a perfect meringue of delight (with only one or two dead gnats of casual racism). I don't think there's a single page that isn't funny, and the ending is truly inspired.