May book reviews
The Weekend Novelist Writes A Mystery - Robert J. Ray (non-fiction, writing) (*)
More suitable title: The weekend novelist writes a really generic mystery.
This book offers some decent enough pointers, that might allow a beginning novelist to tighten up their plotting skills, but most of the advice given is problematic to say the least. First, the book supposes that you are writing the most stereotypical of crime novels, and that supposition acts like a strait jacket. It’s Agatha Christie/Dashiell Hammett or bust. There’s no sense that the authors realize that not all writers are the same. This is ‘one-size-fits-all’ advice to the max.
Also, while some of the advice may be good, some of it is really bad. The authors actually suggest that writers base their protagonist on themselves. I literally wanted to get out a red crayon and scrawl OMG FALSE all over this page. Self-inserts are the scourge of fiction. They open the writer up include implausible wish-fulfilment and boring minutia. As a writer, you need to probe your main character, reveal his or her darkest secrets and most unpleasant traits. Are most people willing and able to scrutinize themselves so starkly? Um. I’m gonna go with ‘no’.
After I finished this book, I grabbed Dwight V. Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer off my shelf to remind myself what good writing advice looks like. Literally, just the first five pages of Techniques are more worthwhile than the entirety of Weekend Novelist.
What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt (fiction) (**)
The second half of What I Loved might have made an enjoyably-erudite ‘thinking man’s’ thriller set in the art world of the ‘80s and ‘90s, but the meandering first half - about affluent Manhattanites and their dull, pretentious lives - makes the book, as a whole, perhaps admirable, but hard to like.
One often comes across perfectly entertaining novels that seem to have trouble getting started. Instead of plunging their reader straight into the action, they begin with ten pages of backstory. What I Loved reads like this, but it begins with two hundred pages of backstory. We get every minutia of the central characters’ lives over a ten-year period and absolutely no narrative to get invested in. Oh, I’m sure if you asked Siri Hustvedt about it, she’d claim that she was writing about ‘life’. Well, sorry, but novels are not life; they’re artificial constructions designed to entertain. I need my characters to have goals; I need them to strive and grow and not just fester in their beautiful Manhattan loft.
(Did it bother me that everyone in this novel is soaked in rich white privilege? Yeah, a bit.)
Don’t get me wrong, the quality of Hustvedt’s prose is astonishing. What I Loved is filled with wholly-believable details. The sections of the novel that revolve around artwork and artists are clearly well-researched, and Hustvedt extracts beautiful and affecting symbols from the art that surrounds her characters. Hustvedt comes across as someone highly interested in the human condition.
Unfortunately, she chooses to probe her characters as if they were sliced up and put beneath a telescope. There’s little warmth in her characterization; she seems so intent on capturing her characters’ neuroses in fine detail that she forgets to make them compelling or likeable. The artwork that the protagonist directly engages with might be memorable and affecting, but the long descriptions of artwork that only tangentially relate to the plot become boring and repetitive. Reading a description of paintings you can’t see is a bit like hearing someone describe their favourite song - an ultimately empty experience.
Oh, I’m sure academics can handwave every ‘flaw’ I see in this novel, with comments like ‘it’s a book of ideas’ or ‘it’s not constrained by the Western style of plotting’, but if I find myself bored and dissatisfied by your novel, I think you’re doing something wrong.
Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1) - L.M. Montgomery (fiction, children's) (****)
Delightful! A middle-aged, childless brother-and-sister, Matthew and Marilla, decide to adopt an orphan boy to help out around their farm, but a mix-up means they end up with a sprightly, red-haired girl who won’t stop talking. Hijinks ensue!
It’s always a bit of a gamble to go back and read a ‘childhood favourite’ as an adult, but Anne of Green Gables turned out to be just as hilarious and warm-hearted as I remembered it.
As a character, Anne is precocious and scatter-brained, but never annoying. Most of the book revolves around Anne’s various missteps (losing her temper at the town’s most meddlesome resident; accidentally dying her own hair green; etc.), but the ‘lessons’ she learns don’t feel like tedious moralising. In fact, Anne’s reflections on growing up at the end of the novel - that she’s still the silly, chatterbox girl of yore, but she’s learned to keep her thoughts to herself - are much more poignant and nuanced than you’d expect to find in a children’s book.
Really wonderful stuff, whether you’re 7 or 27.
Anne of Avonlea (Anne of Green Gables, #2) - L.M. Montgomery (fiction, children's) (**)
Disappointing sequel to Anne of Green Gables.
You know those episodes of Gilmore Girls where Lorelai and Rory were reduced to bit players and the writers instead turned their attention to the townsfolk of Stars Hollow (Taylor, Miss Patti, Jackson, etc.)? Anne of Avonlea is a bit like that. Anne doesn't get a storyline of her own: she just gets to play match-maker to a lonely woman and act as nursemaid to a rascal of a small boy. Worse still, the whole thing feels contrived and overwritten.
I'm hoping the next book in the series, Anne of the Island, will be a return to the form of Green Gables.
(Side note: Should I make comparing literary classics to WB shows a recurring motif in my book reviews? Next time: the uncanny similarities between Faulkner and Dawson's Creek! ...okay, no.)
Just Kids - Patti Smith (non-fiction, memoir) (**)
I really wanted to like this. Patti Smith’s remembrances of her early life, her unconventional relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, and her genesis as an artist in 1960s/70s bohemian New York? Sign me up!
Alas, the book itself left me feeling underwhelmed and frequently bored.
I think the problem is that Smith’s narration of her younger self seems... remote. It’s almost like she’s writing about someone else, someone who isn’t her. (Let’s save the philosophical discussion of whether your past self is still “you” for another time.) The result is a book that feels strangely unevocative, despite Smith’s much-lauded poetic touch. Nothing really sparks off the page; the reader isn’t kept on tenterhooks.
I’m gonna go and listen to ‘Gloria’ now, and I guarantee that that song will make me feel 100x more than this book did. Shrug.
Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 - Michael Azerrad (non-fiction, music) (unfinished)
Great title. Interesting premise. Overall, a really, really boring book.
I might pick this up again if I ever decide to write a novel about being in a band and need research material, but for now, someone has requested my library copy and, I’ll tell ya, they are more than welcome to it.
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us - Robert D. Hare (non-fiction, psychology) (****)
I was watching Doctor Who yesterday, and the Doctor, ever the optimist, said something like, “people are good, down in their bones”.
Well.
Nice thought.
What about the psychopaths, though?
In Without Conscience, Robert Hare posits that there are some 2million psychopaths in the United States (and approximately 20% of the prison population is comprised of psychopaths). It’s something that doesn’t necessarily correlate with childhood abuse; some people are just bad, down in their bones. Of course, there are the exceptional serial killer cases like Ted Bundy, but most psychopaths are more banal in their wrongdoing: they just lie and cheat their way through life remorselessly.
There seem to be a good few books about psychopaths on the market, but I chose to read this one because it’s written by a psychologist, not a journalist. (Sniff, sniff.) Hare is occasionally guilty of slipping into dry academiaspeak, but for the most part, he presents an easy-to-read book. It’s no hyperbole to say that Without is GRIPPING. Most people - well, most people who watch pop culture crap like Criminal Minds, *ahem* - are familiar with the popular stereotypes of psychopathy, but the reality is almost creepier. Without is filled with chilling case studies of psychopaths that Hare has encountered.
Recommended.
More suitable title: The weekend novelist writes a really generic mystery.
This book offers some decent enough pointers, that might allow a beginning novelist to tighten up their plotting skills, but most of the advice given is problematic to say the least. First, the book supposes that you are writing the most stereotypical of crime novels, and that supposition acts like a strait jacket. It’s Agatha Christie/Dashiell Hammett or bust. There’s no sense that the authors realize that not all writers are the same. This is ‘one-size-fits-all’ advice to the max.
Also, while some of the advice may be good, some of it is really bad. The authors actually suggest that writers base their protagonist on themselves. I literally wanted to get out a red crayon and scrawl OMG FALSE all over this page. Self-inserts are the scourge of fiction. They open the writer up include implausible wish-fulfilment and boring minutia. As a writer, you need to probe your main character, reveal his or her darkest secrets and most unpleasant traits. Are most people willing and able to scrutinize themselves so starkly? Um. I’m gonna go with ‘no’.
After I finished this book, I grabbed Dwight V. Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer off my shelf to remind myself what good writing advice looks like. Literally, just the first five pages of Techniques are more worthwhile than the entirety of Weekend Novelist.
What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt (fiction) (**)
The second half of What I Loved might have made an enjoyably-erudite ‘thinking man’s’ thriller set in the art world of the ‘80s and ‘90s, but the meandering first half - about affluent Manhattanites and their dull, pretentious lives - makes the book, as a whole, perhaps admirable, but hard to like.
One often comes across perfectly entertaining novels that seem to have trouble getting started. Instead of plunging their reader straight into the action, they begin with ten pages of backstory. What I Loved reads like this, but it begins with two hundred pages of backstory. We get every minutia of the central characters’ lives over a ten-year period and absolutely no narrative to get invested in. Oh, I’m sure if you asked Siri Hustvedt about it, she’d claim that she was writing about ‘life’. Well, sorry, but novels are not life; they’re artificial constructions designed to entertain. I need my characters to have goals; I need them to strive and grow and not just fester in their beautiful Manhattan loft.
(Did it bother me that everyone in this novel is soaked in rich white privilege? Yeah, a bit.)
Don’t get me wrong, the quality of Hustvedt’s prose is astonishing. What I Loved is filled with wholly-believable details. The sections of the novel that revolve around artwork and artists are clearly well-researched, and Hustvedt extracts beautiful and affecting symbols from the art that surrounds her characters. Hustvedt comes across as someone highly interested in the human condition.
Unfortunately, she chooses to probe her characters as if they were sliced up and put beneath a telescope. There’s little warmth in her characterization; she seems so intent on capturing her characters’ neuroses in fine detail that she forgets to make them compelling or likeable. The artwork that the protagonist directly engages with might be memorable and affecting, but the long descriptions of artwork that only tangentially relate to the plot become boring and repetitive. Reading a description of paintings you can’t see is a bit like hearing someone describe their favourite song - an ultimately empty experience.
Oh, I’m sure academics can handwave every ‘flaw’ I see in this novel, with comments like ‘it’s a book of ideas’ or ‘it’s not constrained by the Western style of plotting’, but if I find myself bored and dissatisfied by your novel, I think you’re doing something wrong.
Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables, #1) - L.M. Montgomery (fiction, children's) (****)
Delightful! A middle-aged, childless brother-and-sister, Matthew and Marilla, decide to adopt an orphan boy to help out around their farm, but a mix-up means they end up with a sprightly, red-haired girl who won’t stop talking. Hijinks ensue!
It’s always a bit of a gamble to go back and read a ‘childhood favourite’ as an adult, but Anne of Green Gables turned out to be just as hilarious and warm-hearted as I remembered it.
As a character, Anne is precocious and scatter-brained, but never annoying. Most of the book revolves around Anne’s various missteps (losing her temper at the town’s most meddlesome resident; accidentally dying her own hair green; etc.), but the ‘lessons’ she learns don’t feel like tedious moralising. In fact, Anne’s reflections on growing up at the end of the novel - that she’s still the silly, chatterbox girl of yore, but she’s learned to keep her thoughts to herself - are much more poignant and nuanced than you’d expect to find in a children’s book.
Really wonderful stuff, whether you’re 7 or 27.
Anne of Avonlea (Anne of Green Gables, #2) - L.M. Montgomery (fiction, children's) (**)
Disappointing sequel to Anne of Green Gables.
You know those episodes of Gilmore Girls where Lorelai and Rory were reduced to bit players and the writers instead turned their attention to the townsfolk of Stars Hollow (Taylor, Miss Patti, Jackson, etc.)? Anne of Avonlea is a bit like that. Anne doesn't get a storyline of her own: she just gets to play match-maker to a lonely woman and act as nursemaid to a rascal of a small boy. Worse still, the whole thing feels contrived and overwritten.
I'm hoping the next book in the series, Anne of the Island, will be a return to the form of Green Gables.
(Side note: Should I make comparing literary classics to WB shows a recurring motif in my book reviews? Next time: the uncanny similarities between Faulkner and Dawson's Creek! ...okay, no.)
Just Kids - Patti Smith (non-fiction, memoir) (**)
I really wanted to like this. Patti Smith’s remembrances of her early life, her unconventional relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, and her genesis as an artist in 1960s/70s bohemian New York? Sign me up!
Alas, the book itself left me feeling underwhelmed and frequently bored.
I think the problem is that Smith’s narration of her younger self seems... remote. It’s almost like she’s writing about someone else, someone who isn’t her. (Let’s save the philosophical discussion of whether your past self is still “you” for another time.) The result is a book that feels strangely unevocative, despite Smith’s much-lauded poetic touch. Nothing really sparks off the page; the reader isn’t kept on tenterhooks.
I’m gonna go and listen to ‘Gloria’ now, and I guarantee that that song will make me feel 100x more than this book did. Shrug.
Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 - Michael Azerrad (non-fiction, music) (unfinished)
Great title. Interesting premise. Overall, a really, really boring book.
I might pick this up again if I ever decide to write a novel about being in a band and need research material, but for now, someone has requested my library copy and, I’ll tell ya, they are more than welcome to it.
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us - Robert D. Hare (non-fiction, psychology) (****)
I was watching Doctor Who yesterday, and the Doctor, ever the optimist, said something like, “people are good, down in their bones”.
Well.
Nice thought.
What about the psychopaths, though?
In Without Conscience, Robert Hare posits that there are some 2million psychopaths in the United States (and approximately 20% of the prison population is comprised of psychopaths). It’s something that doesn’t necessarily correlate with childhood abuse; some people are just bad, down in their bones. Of course, there are the exceptional serial killer cases like Ted Bundy, but most psychopaths are more banal in their wrongdoing: they just lie and cheat their way through life remorselessly.
There seem to be a good few books about psychopaths on the market, but I chose to read this one because it’s written by a psychologist, not a journalist. (Sniff, sniff.) Hare is occasionally guilty of slipping into dry academiaspeak, but for the most part, he presents an easy-to-read book. It’s no hyperbole to say that Without is GRIPPING. Most people - well, most people who watch pop culture crap like Criminal Minds, *ahem* - are familiar with the popular stereotypes of psychopathy, but the reality is almost creepier. Without is filled with chilling case studies of psychopaths that Hare has encountered.
Recommended.