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]

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 least readable -- "On his best days, he's equal to Doyle on his off days, and that's saying something." Missy is even pickier about tone and style than I am. (She also adores Gaudy Night.)

[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.

[evelyn_b]

PS: congratulations on being able to gloat! :D

(I'm in AL currently, hoping to see a sharp increase in happy local gloating soon :\).