Like falling off a booklog.
Sep. 24th, 2007 07:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityofoneCould I be any more behind?
This is so huge I'm splitting it into two posts.
Weeks 35-38: 27 August—23 September
189. The Secrets of the Heart, Kasey Michaels — Romance. Another attempt by me to read romance. Another failed attempt. I wanted to like this, I really did: it's one of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
randomeliza's favorites, and the premise sounded really fun: Christian St. Clair is a foppish, shallow, fashion-obsessed society darling (read: gaygaygay!); little do his upper-class admirers know, he's also the Peacock, a Robin Hood-like defender of the poor (read: and a manly man! In the height of his manliness!). Also there's some girl and they fall in love and stuff. That sounds like a good read, right?
Well, it wasn't—at least not for me. I never liked Christian—I found him to be one of the least-convincing Robin Hood-types ever, possibly because the majority of the book takes place in high society; Michaels apparently just trusts us to assume that the Peacock's daring-do is daring-done while we're not looking. I also never felt like I got a handle on his love interest, Gabrielle (who Michaels randomly starts referring to as Gaby in the narration for one chapter before going back to using Gabrielle again; see my review of Bimbos of the Death Sun for more about how that DRIVES ME CRAZY). Much of the plot depends on Christian thinking Gabrielle is dumb, and then there are multiple reveals of "No, really she's clever! She's known all along!" despite the fact that the only examples we see of her reasoning are much closer to the "dumb" end of the scale. The whole thing—plot, characterization, the witty repartee that's really not that witty—just seems so faux.
And then there's one of the stupidest third-act plot moves I've ever seen. Also a lame and far too-easy resolution. Though I suppose, in the book's favor, the sex scenes weren't as awful as in Romancing Mr. Bridgerton?
I was relieved to be done with this. That's really not the reaction you want to have.
190. Skipping Towards Gomorrah, Dan Savage — Essays on the glory of sin. Savage tackles each sin individually, coming at most of them from interesting and unique angles. For Greed he explores the psychology of gambling, for Lust he talks about swinging; Sloth leads to a discussion of marijuana; Gluttony brings him to a pro-fat conference, Envy to a health spa filled with rich people; Pride becomes an analysis of gay pride; and Anger finds him holding a gun. Each section is full of interesting information and anecdotes, and while Savage does not actually find himself glorying in all seven sins (the chapter on gluttony is so scary, mostly because it shows that the way America eats, doesn't eat, treats people who eat too much or eat too little, or even thinks about eating is so incredibly unhealthy and fucked up), he does raise far more than seven important questions about American society, and reveals how it's both better and worse than we think it is. The essential argument of the book—directed mostly, but not entirely, at the religious right—is "if I am not hurting anyone else, please keep the hell out of my personal life," and it's one I agree with. (Of course, what to when people are hurting themselves is a tougher issue.) I'm not sure if anything Savage says in this book would actually convince anyone on the other side, although that's a near-impossible task, as for the most part, I don't think they'd really listen to him in the first place. However, if everyone put as much thought and consideration into all these issues as Savage does, I think the country would be in much better shape.
191. The Fourth Procedure, Stanley Pottinger — I read it for the mpreg. I had to sit through 500+ pages of dull plotting; bad characterization (where everyone's motivations are based on lame psychoanalysis 101 crap); loads of hilariously bad sex (two orgasming people are like paratroopers! I did not know this); utterly unrealistic portrayals of how politics, news organizations, the police, and the justice system work; painfully regurgitated pro- and anti-abortion arguments; a nasty botched back-alley abortion scene; and two horrible, disturbing rapes. And after all that, the mpreg wasn't even sexy mpreg.
So not worth it.
192. Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, Vincent Lam — A book of interconnected stories about a bunch of Canadian doctors, from their time as medical students through various incidents in their careers. Taken individually, many of these stories are phenomenal. The story about the SARS outbreak is the obvious stand-out, but the earlier tales about the romance between Ming and Fitzgerald, and about Ming's anatomy class, are also wonderful. Unfortunately, since the stories share the same core group of characters—Ming, Fitz, Chen, and Sri—and the book overall flirts with being a "novel in stories," it's impossible not to try to view them as a whole, and as one entity, they don't really work, they don't come together. In some of the more medically-focused stories, one of the doctors becomes by necessity the person who the medical incidents happen to, but it's never really clear, from a character standpoint, why that doctor was paired with that problem; I kept expecting there to be a connection, to have the ailment illuminate the person, but it seemed kind of random, and maybe it was. By the same token: one character is randomly killed, and we hear about it much later, but there's no larger significance to it. Maybe I'm wrong to be looking for these connections, to be seeking signs and wonders in a realm of medical fact, but I can't help it. I think in general I'm the kind of reader who reads for characters, so when the arcs of the people I'm following have holes or unexplained bends or just abruptly stop, I'm left feeling...lost.
I'm still immensely glad I read this book, but I couldn't love it, just moments in it. Though I must also give Lam—points? an astonished blink? an awed nod?—for being the only author I have ever seen (and probably ever will see) construct an essential plot point around U2's Passengers: Original Soundtracks 1. It's part of a story about staying awake; it certainly woke me up. There are several more (and more universal) shock moments in this book; it is worth reading just for those.
193. Chicken With Plums, Marjane Satrapi — Another amazing graphic novel from Satrapi. This one's about a very distant relative of hers, a musician who decides he will die because his wife, in a fit of anger, broke his beloved tar. Eight days later he's dead. Satrapi explores these eight days with the best, most beautifully chosen details, using vignette form to paint a full-bodied picture of this individual man, his family, what it means to be an artist, and the power of love. (And I'm not talking the aww, cheesy-healing kind of power here, but rather the "fear my wrath" variety.) The story is tragic and moving, but like all of Satrapi's work, filled with humor, too. The result is not as "important" as Persepolis—that's a feast—but a rare and perfect snack.
194 & 196. Flight (Vols. 2 & 3), Ed. by Kazu Kibuishi — Very, very pretty, if not especially memorable, collections of comic short stories. The majority of the art in both these collections is truly spectacular, but the stories are nothing special. I'm glad my library had them and that I didn't fork out the 25 bucks each costs.
195. Cirque Du Freak, Darren Shan — Fairly dull kidlit. There's some nice atmospheric stuff in the beginning, and the descriptions of the various freak show acts are cool, but the actual plot, once it gets going, hinges on the main character acting like an absolute moron, which I just can't stand. The vampire stuff, meanwhile, seemed incredibly old hat. This also appears to be one of those series that just keeps going and going—there are something like 13 voumes—and I simply can't take that much mediocrity. I'm getting out now.
197. Savage Love, Dan Savage — The best of Savage's sex advice column. Entertaining in that Savage is funny and people are weird. I certainly enjoyed it, but I don't really have any deep thoughts. Just: people are 1) dumb about sex and relationships and 2) into some kinky shit. But then I knew all that.
198. Self Life, Suzanne Strempek Shea — A memoir about a writer who, after a fight with cancer, takes a part-time job at a local, independently-run bookstore. This seemed right up my alley: books, bookstores, and writing are three of my favorite things (throw in some slashy TV and a couple of cupcakes and I'll never leave). But Shea's narrative is both too personal and too distant. She'll say things like, "And then Old Hank, who everyone in town knows, came in." That example is totally made-up and probably exaggerated, but the point remains: I don't know Old Hank; Shea never makes me feel, as a reader, like I know Old Hank—or anyone. I felt like I was having a conversation with a group of people I just met but who all know each other: their stories would resonate greatly with them, but leave me feeling left out in the cold. Shea never brings the reader in; she made me nostalgic for the bookstore in the small town where I grew up, but didn't make me feel like I knew her bookstore at all. I don't know if I was just cranky when I read this or not, but it left me feeling dissatisfied; it left me cold.
199. The Steampunk Trilogy, Paul Di Filippo — Three novels, all of which are apparently steampunk-y, though not in the way I think of steampunk (I could be thinking of it wrong). In the first Queen Victoria runs away and is temporarily replaced by a genetically engineered salamander-girl; in the second, a racist biologist is recruited to help a Dutch scientist and his African wife recover a much sought-after artifact; in the third, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman meet and do sex, kind of. Okay!
Each story was certainly interesting, but I didn't really like any of the characters (aside from Dickinson, they are all pretty much unlikeable) and everything that happened was more strange then meaningful. "Okay!", though flip, is really the most accurate record of my reaction that I could give. There's nothing to take seriously here.
200. Bad Monkeys, Matt Ruff — One of those books that starts out great and then totally falls apart. It opens with Jane Charlotte having been arrested for murder in Las Vegas; when she told the police she's part of a secret government organization (code name: Bad Monkeys) she ended up in the psych ward. The book is comprised of her interviews with the doctor there alternating with her first person account of her story. For about two-thirds of the book, this is fascinating: Ruff—whose Set This House in Order, about Dissociative Identity Disorder, I still want to read—is really skilled at making the reader wonder if Jane's story is true or the result of her being a total whackjob. But then, something that Ruff had been doing a good job hinting at was revealed as fact in about the least subtle way possible. That alone would have been a minor misstep, but it unfortunately signaled worse things to come. Suddenly plot twists were heaped on plot twists; I was left staring at the (beautifully designed, alas) book, going, "When did this become a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie?" (If one discards The Sixth Sense, that's kind of redundant, isn't it?) I shut the (incredibly cool, elongated yellow plastic) cover with no idea what this book was actually supposed to be about, what it was trying to say. Maybe I expected too much from Ruff—based solely on an excerpt from Set This House in Order—but I was deeply disappointed.
201. Mr. Impossible, Loretta Chase — Sex and sand and kidnappings in 19th-century Egypt. Daphne is a brilliant language scholar who, as a woman, has to hide her brains and let her brother take credit for her genius. Rupert is an English gentleman, but also a bit of a bruiser, who pretends to be stupider than he is. Daphne's brother is kidnapped, Rupert is coerced into helping her (and she into accepting his help), and along the way fall in love and tear each other's pants off.
My pants, however, they just bored me out of. I found Chase's interpretation of sexual tension to be incredibly dull: mostly Daphne just thinks about how Rupert makes her feel…strange…inside, and Rupert thinks about how he'd like to get Daphne naked. That's exactly how it's phrased every single time: "get her naked." Rupert is boring and repetitive down to his very thought processes!
The villains, meanwhile, are likewise dull and thinly drawn, while the Egyptian "family" Daphne and Rupert accumulate—widow! baby! cute servant boy! mongoose!—seem very fakey fake, very faux adorable. The plots felt obligatory and meandering—mandatory scenes strung together with no real care about order. Like a checklist: you gotta have a trapped in a tomb scene, and a fall in the Nile scene, and a sandstorm scene… Yawn. It's so clichéd!
But you know, I would have minded if the characters felt real to me, if I was at all invested in them. But they were so clumsily built on all tell and no show that they were nothing to me. They could have blown away with the sand and I wouldn't have cared.
Similarly, this book is already winging its way to someone in Romania via BookMooch.
202. She Went All the Way, Meggin Cabot — Three strikes and I'm out. Jack's a movie star, Lou's a screenwriter, they don't like each other, their SOs just left them and married each other, and now the helicopter circumstances forced them to share has crashlanded in Alaska and someone's trying to kill them. Will they be able to fight off their attackers AND the growing attraction between them?
Yes to the first, no to the second. And both pretty easily. Good thing they crashed so close to both a ranger station and someone's hunting cabin. And good thing Lou lost the weight she had when she was younger, and Jack likes "spirited" women! Bleck. Things I hate: heroines who "used to be fat, that's totally the same as being fat now, even if her new fabulous body is constantly referred to, right?"; also, asshole condescending men. Jack actually tells Lou, "You're cute when you're mad." No one who said that to me would ever get any sexual attention from this cutie again. My anger is not cute. If you think my anger is cute, you obviously don't respect me and can find your own way out of the Alaskan wilderness, thanks.
Not to mention: the Hollywood stuff all seemed immensely fake, though not as fake as the supposed serial monogamist Jack asking Lou to move in with him immediately after they sleep together, and asking her to marry him not long after. Meanwhile, the subplot about Jack and Lou's widow(er)ed parents falling in love as well was both pointless and kind of gross. (Romances are supposed to be fantasies, wish fulfillment, right? Who in their right mind would actually want one of their parents and one of their boy/girlfriend's parents to hook up as well? That is not the way to keep it all in the family!) Even picturing Jack as Paul Gross, which I started doing about a third of the way through, was not enough to make me like this book, or even feel engaged by it.
I still think there must be good Romances out there, and that I'm just clearly not finding them. However, I think I need to take a break from the genre for a while.
This is so huge I'm splitting it into two posts.
Weeks 35-38: 27 August—23 September
189. The Secrets of the Heart, Kasey Michaels — Romance. Another attempt by me to read romance. Another failed attempt. I wanted to like this, I really did: it's one of
randomeliza's favorites, and the premise sounded really fun: Christian St. Clair is a foppish, shallow, fashion-obsessed society darling (read: gaygaygay!); little do his upper-class admirers know, he's also the Peacock, a Robin Hood-like defender of the poor (read: and a manly man! In the height of his manliness!). Also there's some girl and they fall in love and stuff. That sounds like a good read, right?Well, it wasn't—at least not for me. I never liked Christian—I found him to be one of the least-convincing Robin Hood-types ever, possibly because the majority of the book takes place in high society; Michaels apparently just trusts us to assume that the Peacock's daring-do is daring-done while we're not looking. I also never felt like I got a handle on his love interest, Gabrielle (who Michaels randomly starts referring to as Gaby in the narration for one chapter before going back to using Gabrielle again; see my review of Bimbos of the Death Sun for more about how that DRIVES ME CRAZY). Much of the plot depends on Christian thinking Gabrielle is dumb, and then there are multiple reveals of "No, really she's clever! She's known all along!" despite the fact that the only examples we see of her reasoning are much closer to the "dumb" end of the scale. The whole thing—plot, characterization, the witty repartee that's really not that witty—just seems so faux.
And then there's one of the stupidest third-act plot moves I've ever seen. Also a lame and far too-easy resolution. Though I suppose, in the book's favor, the sex scenes weren't as awful as in Romancing Mr. Bridgerton?
I was relieved to be done with this. That's really not the reaction you want to have.
190. Skipping Towards Gomorrah, Dan Savage — Essays on the glory of sin. Savage tackles each sin individually, coming at most of them from interesting and unique angles. For Greed he explores the psychology of gambling, for Lust he talks about swinging; Sloth leads to a discussion of marijuana; Gluttony brings him to a pro-fat conference, Envy to a health spa filled with rich people; Pride becomes an analysis of gay pride; and Anger finds him holding a gun. Each section is full of interesting information and anecdotes, and while Savage does not actually find himself glorying in all seven sins (the chapter on gluttony is so scary, mostly because it shows that the way America eats, doesn't eat, treats people who eat too much or eat too little, or even thinks about eating is so incredibly unhealthy and fucked up), he does raise far more than seven important questions about American society, and reveals how it's both better and worse than we think it is. The essential argument of the book—directed mostly, but not entirely, at the religious right—is "if I am not hurting anyone else, please keep the hell out of my personal life," and it's one I agree with. (Of course, what to when people are hurting themselves is a tougher issue.) I'm not sure if anything Savage says in this book would actually convince anyone on the other side, although that's a near-impossible task, as for the most part, I don't think they'd really listen to him in the first place. However, if everyone put as much thought and consideration into all these issues as Savage does, I think the country would be in much better shape.
191. The Fourth Procedure, Stanley Pottinger — I read it for the mpreg. I had to sit through 500+ pages of dull plotting; bad characterization (where everyone's motivations are based on lame psychoanalysis 101 crap); loads of hilariously bad sex (two orgasming people are like paratroopers! I did not know this); utterly unrealistic portrayals of how politics, news organizations, the police, and the justice system work; painfully regurgitated pro- and anti-abortion arguments; a nasty botched back-alley abortion scene; and two horrible, disturbing rapes. And after all that, the mpreg wasn't even sexy mpreg.
So not worth it.
192. Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, Vincent Lam — A book of interconnected stories about a bunch of Canadian doctors, from their time as medical students through various incidents in their careers. Taken individually, many of these stories are phenomenal. The story about the SARS outbreak is the obvious stand-out, but the earlier tales about the romance between Ming and Fitzgerald, and about Ming's anatomy class, are also wonderful. Unfortunately, since the stories share the same core group of characters—Ming, Fitz, Chen, and Sri—and the book overall flirts with being a "novel in stories," it's impossible not to try to view them as a whole, and as one entity, they don't really work, they don't come together. In some of the more medically-focused stories, one of the doctors becomes by necessity the person who the medical incidents happen to, but it's never really clear, from a character standpoint, why that doctor was paired with that problem; I kept expecting there to be a connection, to have the ailment illuminate the person, but it seemed kind of random, and maybe it was. By the same token: one character is randomly killed, and we hear about it much later, but there's no larger significance to it. Maybe I'm wrong to be looking for these connections, to be seeking signs and wonders in a realm of medical fact, but I can't help it. I think in general I'm the kind of reader who reads for characters, so when the arcs of the people I'm following have holes or unexplained bends or just abruptly stop, I'm left feeling...lost.
I'm still immensely glad I read this book, but I couldn't love it, just moments in it. Though I must also give Lam—points? an astonished blink? an awed nod?—for being the only author I have ever seen (and probably ever will see) construct an essential plot point around U2's Passengers: Original Soundtracks 1. It's part of a story about staying awake; it certainly woke me up. There are several more (and more universal) shock moments in this book; it is worth reading just for those.
193. Chicken With Plums, Marjane Satrapi — Another amazing graphic novel from Satrapi. This one's about a very distant relative of hers, a musician who decides he will die because his wife, in a fit of anger, broke his beloved tar. Eight days later he's dead. Satrapi explores these eight days with the best, most beautifully chosen details, using vignette form to paint a full-bodied picture of this individual man, his family, what it means to be an artist, and the power of love. (And I'm not talking the aww, cheesy-healing kind of power here, but rather the "fear my wrath" variety.) The story is tragic and moving, but like all of Satrapi's work, filled with humor, too. The result is not as "important" as Persepolis—that's a feast—but a rare and perfect snack.
194 & 196. Flight (Vols. 2 & 3), Ed. by Kazu Kibuishi — Very, very pretty, if not especially memorable, collections of comic short stories. The majority of the art in both these collections is truly spectacular, but the stories are nothing special. I'm glad my library had them and that I didn't fork out the 25 bucks each costs.
195. Cirque Du Freak, Darren Shan — Fairly dull kidlit. There's some nice atmospheric stuff in the beginning, and the descriptions of the various freak show acts are cool, but the actual plot, once it gets going, hinges on the main character acting like an absolute moron, which I just can't stand. The vampire stuff, meanwhile, seemed incredibly old hat. This also appears to be one of those series that just keeps going and going—there are something like 13 voumes—and I simply can't take that much mediocrity. I'm getting out now.
197. Savage Love, Dan Savage — The best of Savage's sex advice column. Entertaining in that Savage is funny and people are weird. I certainly enjoyed it, but I don't really have any deep thoughts. Just: people are 1) dumb about sex and relationships and 2) into some kinky shit. But then I knew all that.
198. Self Life, Suzanne Strempek Shea — A memoir about a writer who, after a fight with cancer, takes a part-time job at a local, independently-run bookstore. This seemed right up my alley: books, bookstores, and writing are three of my favorite things (throw in some slashy TV and a couple of cupcakes and I'll never leave). But Shea's narrative is both too personal and too distant. She'll say things like, "And then Old Hank, who everyone in town knows, came in." That example is totally made-up and probably exaggerated, but the point remains: I don't know Old Hank; Shea never makes me feel, as a reader, like I know Old Hank—or anyone. I felt like I was having a conversation with a group of people I just met but who all know each other: their stories would resonate greatly with them, but leave me feeling left out in the cold. Shea never brings the reader in; she made me nostalgic for the bookstore in the small town where I grew up, but didn't make me feel like I knew her bookstore at all. I don't know if I was just cranky when I read this or not, but it left me feeling dissatisfied; it left me cold.
199. The Steampunk Trilogy, Paul Di Filippo — Three novels, all of which are apparently steampunk-y, though not in the way I think of steampunk (I could be thinking of it wrong). In the first Queen Victoria runs away and is temporarily replaced by a genetically engineered salamander-girl; in the second, a racist biologist is recruited to help a Dutch scientist and his African wife recover a much sought-after artifact; in the third, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman meet and do sex, kind of. Okay!
Each story was certainly interesting, but I didn't really like any of the characters (aside from Dickinson, they are all pretty much unlikeable) and everything that happened was more strange then meaningful. "Okay!", though flip, is really the most accurate record of my reaction that I could give. There's nothing to take seriously here.
200. Bad Monkeys, Matt Ruff — One of those books that starts out great and then totally falls apart. It opens with Jane Charlotte having been arrested for murder in Las Vegas; when she told the police she's part of a secret government organization (code name: Bad Monkeys) she ended up in the psych ward. The book is comprised of her interviews with the doctor there alternating with her first person account of her story. For about two-thirds of the book, this is fascinating: Ruff—whose Set This House in Order, about Dissociative Identity Disorder, I still want to read—is really skilled at making the reader wonder if Jane's story is true or the result of her being a total whackjob. But then, something that Ruff had been doing a good job hinting at was revealed as fact in about the least subtle way possible. That alone would have been a minor misstep, but it unfortunately signaled worse things to come. Suddenly plot twists were heaped on plot twists; I was left staring at the (beautifully designed, alas) book, going, "When did this become a bad M. Night Shyamalan movie?" (If one discards The Sixth Sense, that's kind of redundant, isn't it?) I shut the (incredibly cool, elongated yellow plastic) cover with no idea what this book was actually supposed to be about, what it was trying to say. Maybe I expected too much from Ruff—based solely on an excerpt from Set This House in Order—but I was deeply disappointed.
201. Mr. Impossible, Loretta Chase — Sex and sand and kidnappings in 19th-century Egypt. Daphne is a brilliant language scholar who, as a woman, has to hide her brains and let her brother take credit for her genius. Rupert is an English gentleman, but also a bit of a bruiser, who pretends to be stupider than he is. Daphne's brother is kidnapped, Rupert is coerced into helping her (and she into accepting his help), and along the way fall in love and tear each other's pants off.
My pants, however, they just bored me out of. I found Chase's interpretation of sexual tension to be incredibly dull: mostly Daphne just thinks about how Rupert makes her feel…strange…inside, and Rupert thinks about how he'd like to get Daphne naked. That's exactly how it's phrased every single time: "get her naked." Rupert is boring and repetitive down to his very thought processes!
The villains, meanwhile, are likewise dull and thinly drawn, while the Egyptian "family" Daphne and Rupert accumulate—widow! baby! cute servant boy! mongoose!—seem very fakey fake, very faux adorable. The plots felt obligatory and meandering—mandatory scenes strung together with no real care about order. Like a checklist: you gotta have a trapped in a tomb scene, and a fall in the Nile scene, and a sandstorm scene… Yawn. It's so clichéd!
But you know, I would have minded if the characters felt real to me, if I was at all invested in them. But they were so clumsily built on all tell and no show that they were nothing to me. They could have blown away with the sand and I wouldn't have cared.
Similarly, this book is already winging its way to someone in Romania via BookMooch.
202. She Went All the Way, Meggin Cabot — Three strikes and I'm out. Jack's a movie star, Lou's a screenwriter, they don't like each other, their SOs just left them and married each other, and now the helicopter circumstances forced them to share has crashlanded in Alaska and someone's trying to kill them. Will they be able to fight off their attackers AND the growing attraction between them?
Yes to the first, no to the second. And both pretty easily. Good thing they crashed so close to both a ranger station and someone's hunting cabin. And good thing Lou lost the weight she had when she was younger, and Jack likes "spirited" women! Bleck. Things I hate: heroines who "used to be fat, that's totally the same as being fat now, even if her new fabulous body is constantly referred to, right?"; also, asshole condescending men. Jack actually tells Lou, "You're cute when you're mad." No one who said that to me would ever get any sexual attention from this cutie again. My anger is not cute. If you think my anger is cute, you obviously don't respect me and can find your own way out of the Alaskan wilderness, thanks.
Not to mention: the Hollywood stuff all seemed immensely fake, though not as fake as the supposed serial monogamist Jack asking Lou to move in with him immediately after they sleep together, and asking her to marry him not long after. Meanwhile, the subplot about Jack and Lou's widow(er)ed parents falling in love as well was both pointless and kind of gross. (Romances are supposed to be fantasies, wish fulfillment, right? Who in their right mind would actually want one of their parents and one of their boy/girlfriend's parents to hook up as well? That is not the way to keep it all in the family!) Even picturing Jack as Paul Gross, which I started doing about a third of the way through, was not enough to make me like this book, or even feel engaged by it.
I still think there must be good Romances out there, and that I'm just clearly not finding them. However, I think I need to take a break from the genre for a while.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 09:26 pm (UTC)The Kid is definitely my favorite. That was SUCH an incredibly good book.
I know I've run into that Formerly Fat thing at least a few other times, though of course my brain won't cooperate and tell me where. "Change your life" narratives like the one you describe don't always bother me, it depends on how they're done. But where "magic! boyfriend appears!" is presented as the direct, automatic result of losing weight or getting a perm or whatever else...that bothers me. That's not how real life works, and it avoids the interesting body/self issues that COULD be being explored.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 09:09 pm (UTC)heroines who "used to be fat, that's totally the same as being fat now, even if her new fabulous body is constantly referred to, right?"
See also: Monica from "Friends". The best episode the show ever did was the AU one where Monica was still fat and Chandler was a nerd, and they hooked up anyway. (Thus proving OTP but also just an interesting exploration of what was different/same etc.)
Finally, re: Gay!Romance/Adventure - have you read Swordspoint? One of my favorites EVAH. There's a new edition out called Swords of Riverside which has the original, the sequel and a short story or two in the same 'verse. I hadn't read the sequel and was pleasantly gratified to find that Ellen's talent hadn't waned.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 10:03 pm (UTC)The humor of the insanely skinny Courteney Cox in a fatsuit is one of those things that stops being funny the second you think about it for...a second. So mostly I tried not to think about it. And so yeah, I enjoyed that AU episode. I always liked Monica/Chandler. ;-)
I've been hearing good things about Swordspoint for years, but then Siria, my brain twin, hated it, so that made me a little wary. Still, I HAVE it--I bought it last December in Indianapolis, actually--so I really should read it and make up my own mind. *so conflicted* *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 10:14 pm (UTC)spent too many years of my life watching that showstill liked M+C.Dude, you *need* to read Swordspoint for yourself. I'll stop hyping though because I know personally the more something gets hyped, the less inclined I am to ever actually see/read that thing. I guess I'll just leave it at this - if you don't like it, I will
be shockedeat my hatstill be interested to hear your thoughts.(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-20 04:26 pm (UTC)