Bookshelf tetris

[ladyherenya]

Dinotopia by James Gurney has been on my wishlist for ages, but I hadn’t bought it yet because it’s so much more expensive than the books I usually buy. And if I was going to spend that much on a book, wouldn’t it make more sense to just fork out a bit more for the hardcover? Or is that just being extravagant

Comments

[asakiyume]

I haven’t watched any of Jane the Virgin this year, and after stumbling unexpectedly across unexpected spoilers, now I don’t think I’m going to.

If I recall right, you've seen a season more than I have--I'm a season behind because I watch it on Netflix, so I'm at the season finale where poor old Petra is in the hospital because of some unfortunate twin action (trying to make this vague in case people who haven't seen the series read my comment). I was already having my doubts, but the season you've just seen is all right (or seemed all right from your perspective), yes?

Can you tell me the spoilers you've seen? If you don't want to post them here (understandable), you can do an LJ message. (I think we can exchange messages even if we don't follow each other? Not sure...)

[ladyherenya]

I've only seen seven episodes beyond that particular season finale. (Those episodes aired towards the end of last year, and then the show went on hiatus for a couple of months.) But you're right, I was positive about them.

[Spoilers]
Having survived and recovered from being shot in the season finale, Michael dies suddenly and the story picks up 3 years later. That's really all I know.

I'm not thrilled about Jane the Virgin turning into Jane the Widow - for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I liked Jane and Michael's relationship.

But I know not everyone will have (my) issues with this turn of events...

[asakiyume]

Wow! I see what you mean!

I think one thing I liked early on was that although there were over-the-top hijinks happening **around** Jane, including murders, what was central in her story arc was her relationships with other people (her mother and grandmother, Michael, Rogelio, her girlfriend-whose-name-I-forget, and Raphael), and in that context, things were sometimes painful emotionally, but always *safe*. When things start to happen *to* her that are bad, then it seems to me no longer to be having fun with soap opera/telenovela tropes and instead enacting them seriously. The kidnapping of Matteo was one such thing--but it was resolved in one episode, so it was all right. But the spoiler you mention isn't something that can be fixed! (Unless it turns out to be one of those not-really-a-death things, but it sounds like it's really not.) And, while I wasn't such a fan of [character], Jane was! And the relationship was right for the two of them, fit in with the family, etc. So yeah....

[ladyherenya]

Yes, that's exactly it. This is something painful - and painfully permanent - in a way nothing else that's happened to Jane has been. It's one of the worst possible things that could happen to Jane, too. The more I think about it, the more I think How could you do that to her??? And If you're prepared to cross that line, what else is going to happen?

It makes me sad, because I enjoyed the show enormously.

[evelyn_b]

You have some nice-looking bookshelves! Congratulations on your excellent book haul!

Whereas with book series there can easily be a very murky line between “I’ve decided to abandon the series” and “I just haven’t made a point of tracking down the latest book yet”.

This is where I am with quite a lot of book series, and TV shows, too - since I'm always late to the party, it's very rare that I get a sense of urgency about keeping up with shows. Or books. Ease of access has made me lazy; I don't think I've watched a TV show as it aired for ten years, if not more.

Five Red Herrings is so bafflingly bad. I know this was not a post about Five Red Herrings, but still. I find its badness fascinating, as someone who thoroughly enjoyed the rest of Sayers' books, however "bad," and could not enjoy FRH at all.

[ladyherenya]

One of the things I like about watching TV shows as they air is that it's much easier to avoid spoilers.

Five Red Herrings is the only murder mystery I've started and not finished. (Wait, no, I quickly abandoned And Then They Were None, but that was because I didn't trust that it was going to be my cup of tea, not because it was boring.)

I guess Five Red Herrings is an indication that Sayers wasn't interested in writing the same sort of story over and over again, the way Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh more or less did. And the flip side of Sayers' playing around with the genre, or whatever exactly it is, is that we get Gaudy Night.

[evelyn_b]

That's probably true! I've managed to stay spoiler-free on most things just by being so late to the party no one was talking about them anymore, but I'm sure it also helps if no one else has seen the thing either!

And Then There Were None is worth reading at least once, if you ever decide to give it another chance! but it is a very different cup of tea from the Marples and Poirots. I think Christie is probably a little less the same than people give her credit for (I'll give you Ngaio Marsh, though).

Yeah, I'm normally very fond of Sayers and her excesses and her messing around - I love all the tedious bell-ringing stuff, for example - so I expected FRH to fall into that pattern, and objectively it does but somehow it's also the only completely non-entertaining murder mystery ever written as far as I can tell.

[ladyherenya]

There's a lot more variation in Christie's mysteries than in Marsh's, definitely. I'm not quite sure why I feel like Christie plays around with the murder mystery genre less significantly than Sayers does - possibly it's just because I read Christie first, so saw her books as defining the rules rather than challenging them.

Or else it's because Christie's characters never felt wholly real to me - I'm not sure if that says more about Christie or about me - and so the depth of Sayers' characterisation seemed mind-blowing and revelatory.

I still have And Then There Were None tucked away on my shelves, so perhaps I should give it another chance.