This is a Good Book Thursday, December 19, 2024
This week I read research which, since I can now choose what I’m researching, was a blast: four books on illuminating medieval manuscripts for one of the art crime books we’re doing next year. Gorgeous photos and I got to play with pens and water colors.
I also re-read Gaudy Night, which I remembered as being much better than it was. The basics were there, but my god the woman rambles, and then she did the proposal scene in Latin. Which reminded me that when she wrote the wedding stuff in the next book, she included at letter from Wimsey’s uncle in French. I knew the Latin, but it was still pretentious, and that letter in French was so elitist-you don’t speak French?-then why are you reading my book, you peasant-that I’m just done with Sayers. Allingham still is great, and Christie still works-4:50 from Paddington remains one of my favorite books in any genre, and Rex Stout is still fun (sexist as all hell, but fun, see This Buried Caesar), but Sayers is off my list. I knew you’d want to know.
You know, I don’t mind small stuff that I don’t know in a story, but a key scene or a long letter in a language that my readers don’t know? That’s just rude. My take on the writer/reader relationship is that the writer is inviting the reader into a party, that first page is the open door that the reader looks through to see if she wants to join in, so no esoteric knowledge needed, just come on it and sit down and join the conversation (because I think the reader collaborates with the writer, fills in the white spaces that writer leaves so the reader has room to participate, casts the parts as she sees fits, shapes the story with her own experiences). I want a reader to feel like she belongs in my stories.
Okay, rant over.
So what did you read this week?
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