Devon Trevarrow Flaherty's Blog, page 21

By which I do not mean stuck writing a book. I mean stuck reading a book, which happens with much more frequency to me and probably to you, as well. So, what do I do when I’m “stuck” in the middle of reading a book?

My husband has picked back up reading. We started our marriage with no TV and a growing library. More than twenty years later, devices galore have slowly leaked into our home until every space has umpteen ways of contacting the ether for information and entertainment. It was such a slow progression to movies and then streaming and then having computers in our pockets that we barely had the sense to mourn the passing of our dear dream of sitting in the bay window on a nightly basis in matching wingback chairs with matching swivel lights glowing down over our latest reads. We still have a gigantic library for two normies, but the vast majority of the books have been my acquisitions. By the Pandemic, nearly all desire my husband had to maintain his reading habits had fled. Until now.

Now, Kevin keeps out-reading me. And I—and my impressive habit of 75, 100, or more books per year—know why. We’ve talked about it. He’s sniffed at me and I’ve sniffed right back. He thinks I’m being silly and I think he’s being pedestrian. Not really. I admire him but also don’t know how to stop being so competitive and somewhat snooty. The thing is, Kevin reads what he is enjoying reading. I commit to my TBR titles and dig my heels right in. If I’m hating it, so be it. I’ll finish some day and then go on to the next title.

Although the reality is that I often don’t read one book at a time because I am struggling with a title. I let myself read something else on the side and then another and then another until the backlist of half-read books gets embarrassing. Yet, I carry the weight of the guilt of them around my neck. Why would I do such a thing when my husband and a million other sane people would just return the book they are hating to the library (or the shelf or donate it) and pick out a new book that strikes their fancy and if someone mentions it in the future, say with conviction, “I didn’t like it?” End of story. Here are the reasons I try to finish the books I start reading:

Books only make it on my TBR through careful vetting, a type of pre-curation. Therefore, if the book has made it through the gauntlet to land on my TBR, the problem must be me.If I don’t finish a book, I don’t feel right reviewing it for the public. I have to give it a fair shake if I’m going to rip it a new one, right?Most books have something redemptive about them. What if it’s at the end? Or the way it all comes together? Since I choose only highly-lauded or -recommended books, each one must be important to or enjoyed by many, many other people. I can respect that. I’m a little curious as to why.I spent precious resources (such as money and time) on the book and the reading process this far, so let’s just see this thing through.Many good things in life don’t come wrapped in sleek entertainment, like bitter pills in applesauce. Good—or great things—often have to be worked for. Some of my favorite books, or ones that changed by life, have been difficult reads. I don’t read just to be entertained, but to be edified.

Of course, there are equally good reasons for casting aside books that don’t strike your fancy in any given period, too:

Life is short. You might as well enjoy as many moments as possible.Sometimes you choose a dud. Sometimes the world has embraced a dud and sold it to you. Mistakes happen. Accept it as a mistake and move on.There is a possibility of reviewing a half-read book as long as you are clear about that and especially if you can find other reviews that are similar from people who have read the whole thing. I reviewed Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch from halfway through because I did want to have my say but I felt like continuing would have been a waste of my time and drain on my mood. I explained myself in the review.One does not have to review every book one reads, it turns out, even if one has a book and writing blog. If it’s a real clunker from the get-go, one can just pretend the whole thing never happened.

I tell you what. I feel a really strong pull to die on this hill. There is something in me that just can’t and won’t condone a life of wanton and fickle reading, chasing mere fun times and titillation. Meanwhile, I’m sort of sitting in the corner and sulking, watching my husband and friends laugh and smile their way to and from the library and bookstore, week after week, trip after trip.

Perhaps we should explore a dual TBR?

This could be bad, but at least it’s a plan. What do I mean by “dual TBR?” Or do you already understand: the thing’s in the name. What I propose is that I have two TBRs that run them simultaneously. On one TBR is easy-reads, and on one is not-easy-reads (like nonfiction, largely). The catch here is to keep both going at the same time. While we should expect the difficult reads to move more slowly, how do we ensure that both get read regularly? It seems an ideal percentage for easy to hard, on any given day, would favor easy, right? Numerically speaking in minutes? Perhaps dual TBRs have simple rules of engagement, like where the two types of reads would be read.

If I’m being transparent, I will tell you I already have a few TBRs. I have a work (writing) TBR and a devotions/self-health TBR. I tackle a couple chapters of my work TBR on most work days and a chapter of devotions/self-health on most mornings. By having these (loose) rules, those two reads click along at a fairly steady pace and then turn over to the next read. (I also have a journal TBR and an arts and crafts TBR. I think you get the point.) I’m thinking that one of the big things I need to come to terms with with having a dual TBR, though, is accepting that the difficult reads will move more slowly. Some day in the future I may also come to terms with letting books go when I’m absolutely avoiding reading them and moping around like a little, lost reader.

So where and how might easy and difficult reads be read? I don’t know, but we can guess how this might work. Easy reads go with a person. (I always carry a book in my bag.) They also get read before bedtime. They definitely go on vacas. So when would difficult books get read? One place to make some progress on a difficult read is, ahem, the bathroom. If you are trapped in there with nothing to do but read whatever, then you’re likely to read it. Or at least I am. Does that mean trapping ourselves is the best way to chip away at difficult reads? Maybe, but not too much or we’ll just resent them, I think, even though I’m not talking about reading horrible books that we hate, just ones that are choppier or longer-winded or denser or filled with unadorned facts. If you only had two TBRs running, you could feasibly commit to reading a chapter each day of the more difficult one before sitting down with the other read. Or commit to that same thing before bed. Or if there is some other time you consistently read, you could shove a chapter of that book in there. But let’s not overdo it. If you’re travelling or working out or something, you should probably stick with books that really grab your attention and keep moving.

The moral of the story is that I need to simplify my TBR but allow for some types of books to move quickly and other types more slowly. And then I need to cast aside those that are holding me up. I can stick them on the ol’ list of books I’ve begun but haven’t finished (I actually have this list), but perhaps it’s better if I just assume that means they are dead to me. If they rise from the grave, then hallelujah and so be it. By then I’ll be a more satisfied person who can handle the shame and ignominy of quitting the same book twice.

Image from Amazon.com

I’m pretty mad at the Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy. The main reason? It is a point-for-point retelling of Pride and Prejudice. Why on earth did Pamela Aidan write it as a trilogy? Did she think she knew better than the queen, Jane Austen? There is absolutely no reason why she took three books to say what one of the most classic and adored books of all time did in one! All it basically is, is a different POV. It even tried to emulate the style of writing (which no, of course it doesn’t really do, because, again, JANE AUSTEN). That’s not entirely fair. It doesn’t straight up emulate her style, but basically it leans that way instead of what you would typically write today.

Pride and Prejudice, indeed all of Austen’s writing, just crackles in every sentence, either with humor, subtlety, intrigue, or wit. I can’t imagine trying to re-write the story like I was a Victorian writer, but suffice it to say that the Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy was destined to fall flat in comparison. So it did. It was meandering and many times pointlessly flowery and romantic. It felt juvenile, even, like Aidan didn’t understand what Austen’s language is accomplishing in Pride and Prejudice. Aidan wants to sound a certain way, to read historical, and the effect is sometimes silly while also being long-winded. Not to mention, a few times I didn’t know what Aidan was trying to even show me. Austen was a master, partly due to the society in which she wrote, of giving us the clear picture from behind a cupped hand. She couldn’t come right out and say it, but she sure could get us to go, “Oh! I see.” Smirk-smirk. I can see Aidan trying to do this as well, but I wasn’t always catching on.

I was okay dipping back into the world of Pride and Prejudice, though, because I like this world. But by the middle of the first book, An Assembly Such As This, I was quite bored. Because nothing is happening. Mostly we’re just wandering around Netherfield fawning over the exasperating Elizabeth from inside Darcy’s head. Look, if Aidan were going to justify a different POV from the one Austen took (on purpose; Austen knew what she was doing), then some new characters and plotlines would have to come in in the background of the story we’re used to seeing from Elizabeth’s end. We’re going to have to learn something new, something interesting about Darcy or Elizabeth or the story. As the first book drags on, we finally get some new characters but somehow, even though we want to like them, still nothing happens. Now, Darcy’s just wandering around London instead of Netherfield Hall, hanging out with peeps we’ve never seen, but they are pointless to plot. Anything that happens is not the least bit going somewhere. While a few of these later scenes were humorous and some of the characters interesting, I kept waiting for some real mystery or plot twist… and nope; we’re still just wandering around waiting for Austen’s original story to sneak back in and save us. So upon finishing, I just about threw the book across the room. Why not deliver on the romance at the end of one book, like Austen?! There is no other point to these books and the end of book one is simply random. Ran-dom. Nothing gets fulfilled in the least way; small fulfillments are how trilogies and series WORK. Like some plot (or plots) have to come to a climax and resolution. Even the goofy, cravat and sheer-dress scandals near the end of book one come so completely out of nowhere (which they didn’t have to. Aidan could have built them up through the whole book) and resolved within a few mere pages and an “It’s okay. It’ll blow over.” There is no hero in this book, at all, because the change and the release won’t come for another two books. No stakes. No conflict. Bah!

I also had the sense that there was some real inauthenticity going on, like Aidan couldn’t quite slip into the skin of a regency author/world, but I wanted to believe she had gotten everything right and could, indeed, see her research (maybe a little too obviously). But something felt off from all the actual Vic lit I have read and sometimes it felt like she was inadvertently making fun of it. BUT I was enjoying one thing: reading Pride in Prejudice in different words. Yet I was not at all sure I wanted to read the rest of the trilogy, especially since I felt duped into it. (Even the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies series covers the events of Pride and Prejudice in ONE of the books, so you can just read that one (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the middle one) if you want the love story re-told.)

Why the heck, then, did I go to the library and check out books two and three: Duty and Desire and These Three Remain? I think it was because it felt like I had read only a third of the book, because, really, that was true. Book one just stops at the last page of An Assembly Such As This and picks up at Duty and Desire. It seemed obscene to stop where the book does, so despite feeling duped and disappointed, I grabbed the other two books (because I knew I wouldn’t need to own them). I mean, I do love the Pride and Prejudice story, Darcy wasn’t being ruined for me, and it’s not that difficult to read the books. I thought that if I gave up partway through and picked up a different retelling, so be it. I’ve read one whole book, anyhow, and can tell you what I think about that. (It’s not very nice, though, is it?)

That is actually what happened. I got maybe a fifth of the way in on Duty and Desire and got jealous of my husband actually enjoying the book he was reading next to me. Also, I realized I couldn’t stand Georgiana—a character I usually like—and couldn’t figure out why Darcy was so perplexed at her maturing in the several months he was away. I think Aidan was trying to create tension with what is already in Pride and Prejudice, but it was simply long, boring, and goofy. Looking ahead, there are going to be more of Aidan’s little forays into antics with other characters, but I am worried that these will be other to the plot and Darcy, so I have to call it. Especially after I read sentences like this:

“The dimple that cleft his cheek was swiftly matched by its feminine counterpart as Georgiana returned his loving gaze. Softly, she slipped into his arms once more. ‘Oh, Fitzwilliam, I am ever so glad you are home!’ / His arms tightly woven about her, Darcy looked thankfully to Heaven and then, burying his face into her gathered curls, could only find the strength to whisper in reply, ‘No more than I, dearest. No more than I’” (p35).

I’ll try not to call what I have just read sappy and laughable, because I am sure someone somewhere thinks this writing is pretty and well-done. But I am all done. I have too many exciting books to read to continue with this trilogy that should have been a book, with the droning on about empty spaces and how good Darcy is with horses. (I also only committed to reading the first book, so…) I didn’t exactly hate these books (what I read of them), but I did find them bo-ring and unpleasantly arranged. As far as retellings of Pride and Prejudice, there are definitely better and I don’t think the Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman trilogy (or even the first book) should be on the best-ofs list.

QUOTES:

“Are not the wounds of a friend blessed?” (p198).

“’The heart that is conscious of its own integrity is ever slow to credit another’s treachery’” (p205).

Finding information about Maggie Stiefvater is not as straight-forward as I would have expected in this day and age of digital TMI. But she seems to keep a pretty low profile and the most reliable info I could find is that she is a best-selling author, young(ish), and lives in Virginia with her husband and kids and animals. She’s also an artist and (at least amateur) musician. I also can’t figure out how she’s a New York Times bestseller but her books aren’t around most bookshops I looked in. Does she sell better in Europe? Even the booksellers I asked about her didn’t seem to know who I was talking about. Weird. Beyond that, I can tell you what books she has published (basically in order). (The books she is most know for are Shiver, The Raven Cycle, and The Scorpio Races.)

Books of Faerie: Lament, BalladWolves of Mercy Falls: Shiver, Linger, Forever, SinnerThe Scorpio RacesThe Raven Cycle: The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily Lily Blue, The Raven King and a postquel, OpalWrote book 2 of the Spirit Animals seriesPip Bartlett series (for younger kids)All the Crooked SaintsDreamer Trilogy: Call Down the Hawk, Mister Impossible, GreywarenSwamp Thing (graphic novel)Bravely (in cooperation with Disney) Image from Amazon.com

Shiver is on my TBR (which means I might have to read all four Wolves of Mercy Falls books, eventually). This time, however, I read the Raven Cycle. Book one, The Raven Boys, was on my TBR as YA lit that would be good to read while writing my own YA trilogy. I ended up reading the cycle (of four, as you’ll read below), but I did not read Opal, the postquel, or the spin-off Dreamer Series.

The Raven Cycle opens with Blue—a girl from a small town in rural Virginia—and a prophecy. She is going to kill her true love with a kiss. So she stays away from true loves as much as she stays away from the obnoxious, rich boys who attend the private, boarding school in her town, the Aglionby Ravens. But when she attends an annual ritual with one of the many psychic women who live in her home at 300 Fox Way, she sees an Aglionby boy and knows he is going to die in the next year. And then she meets him.

As much as the book begins with Blue, it takes the POV of five people: Blue and four Aglionby boys, Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and more rarely Noah. Which means that these books are much heavier on the male perspective than one might think reading the back cover copy or the first chapters. Which just means they are more appropriate for boys who don’t love romance than you might at first think. They have an edge to them, for sure, and end up dealing not just with magic and the occult, but with the heavier things of YA (death, loss, even abuse, identity) and things like hating school, role models, sports cars, gadgets, nature and animals, some politics (as a general construct), even organized crime and hit men. I don’t know what more to say without just writing out the plot, which develops quite slowly over the four books, making each of them feel pretty different. Each of the characters is carrying at least one big secret and has at least one antagonist coming for them. All their storylines end up weaving together and the minor characters are part of the larger story. The romance at the beginning simmers in the background and plays quite a small role, as does the other love stories including an LGBTQ+ one.

Like with Percy Jackson, I was conflicted about reading past the first book of this four-book series by Maggie Stiefvater. Unlike Percy Jackson, though, I had often found it listed alone and thought it could probably stand alone just fine and maybe the other books in the series just weren’t as good. However, when I finished The Raven Boys, I was stuck. The book felt like the beginning of a series and was, in many ways, quite unsatisfactory to stand alone. Then again, if I hadn’t seen the later books showing up in best books lists as much, did that mean this was the best that the series had to offer? And I needed to just call it? The truth was, too, that I was torn about how I even felt about the first book. Sure, it was pretty perfect as being similar in tone and genre to the project I was writing, which is why I even picked it up. Continuing to read the “cycle” (gag) would keep me in the space and even if things went south, I could still learn from the series. But did I want to spend three more books, around $30, and maybe ten days to two weeks reading a series I didn’t love? I mean, I was about to do that very thing with Percy Jackson because everyone assured me that—despite what I saw in the first book—it was a great series (just maybe not for me). (Please note that these series have almost nothing in common. I was just having a similar dilemma about them both.)

In the end, I decided to continue with the series, which means that my blog review posts just keep spreading out to wait on enormous series(es): Percy Jackson (which is on back order as a boxed set), The Raven Cycle, His Dark Materials, The Mortal Instruments, The Infernal Devices, and then more. I mean, I’m writing a YA fantasy adventure trilogy, so this makes sense, but I have to figure out how to keep people interested in The Starving Artist, too. Perhaps I am attaching too much importance to it. And onward!

Image from Amazon.com

THE RAVEN BOYS

I enjoyed reading book 1, The Raven Boys. Being as old and as well-read as I am, I couldn’t agree with many of the assessments of Steifvater’s writing. However, I can agree that for the genre (YA paranormal) it is decidedly literary and this I can celebrate along with many of her devoted readers. (It’s not that it isn’t witty, clever, and descriptive, it’s just that it doesn’t maintain those things at all times. I mean, nearly everything in the sightline of the POV characters was “sharp,” frequently we lose track of blocking, etc., both of which continue into the later books). Certainly the story kept me reading and the quick tempo was pretty great. Again, being me (and extremely in tune with story therefore very rarely surprised) I didn’t find any of the twists surprising in this first book. I saw them all coming, which was a bummer, because the twists are, I’m sure, half the fun here. (I was surprised a couple times later in the books, mostly in the last one, which was fun.)

The only surprise I really had was how sudden and yet unresolved the ending was (of book one. Still reviewing book one). To be honest, I found the main bit of the climax to be like, “No. I don’t think so.” Also, not sure I even really get it/believe it. The romantic tension in the book is very well done. The cast of characters is extremely well-drawn and interesting, though there are a few too many, unnecessary characters (specifically in Blue’s house). There are questions that will certainly carry on into the series, but I was disappointed that it didn’t have more immediate resolution. I partly blame the cover copy for this. The big question on the back is the question of the series, which I think is bad marketing, at least as the primary question on the back. The first book is a whodunnit, really, and it should have been framed that way. (By the way, the first book of my trilogy is also a whodunnit (or “whydunnit” in Save the Cat!-speak) which is not the same as the trilogy as a whole.)

I like the quirk. I appreciated a little darkness, and a little edge, which felt in tune with actual teens, but that’s also the sensibility of Blue and the moral compass of the whole thing. That might sound a little strange because it’s chock-full of psychics and eventually even magic as practiced (or attempted by) real “witches,” but as of book one, there was still a clear line between messing with the dark side of the supernatural and being curious about the strange side of the natural world. Yes, I was a little conflicted, but also intrigued. (Pretty funny how she doesn’t cuss much in her books but tries to convey that her characters do.) I decided at this point that I wanted to switch the POV of my own trilogy, which Stiefvater gave me the courage to do. But did I want to keep reading? I thought so, so I did.

Image from Amazon.com

THE DREAM THIEVES

There was a problem with this book that was not its fault. I ordered it used on Ebay, and I was several chapters in before I realized that some of my tripping over the prose was because I had somehow ended up with a British copy of this American book. It was the use of “boot” instead of “trunk” that finally made me turn to the copyright page to see that it was printed in London (after “tyre” baffling me for awhile). So there was that. And yet I read plenty of British books and even have some British editions of my favorites, on purpose. But there was something else going on here, and while it had carried over from the first book, it was more distracting and prevalent in book two (which is often a case of better editing and slower writing for book one in many series). Stiefvater is a talented writer, but uneven. Some of her writing comes off as interesting, poetic, and insightful. Much of it reads as just plain trying too hard. Let me give you a couple, random examples (most pages had them) of lines that would be ripped apart by your high school English teacher because the qualifiers don’t match the object, etc.:

“He wore a white vest, and his exposed shoulder was raw and beautiful as a corpse” (p274).

“He was as hungry as the night” (p272) (as well as a few mentions of “midnight road”s).

“The engine ticked like the twitch of a dying man’s foot” (p122).

What she meant was, his exposed shoulder looked raw and corpselike but still beautiful, he was hungry for his internal darkness to swallow the world around him, it was around midnight and dark outside, and the engine ticked slower and slower as it died. The three sentences above are basically nonsense, but vaguely poetic nonsense. I believe that in the first book, I complained about this in terms of everything being “sharp,” things that couldn’t possibly be sharp and were awkward even as metaphorically sharp. And the point I’m making is that these little missteps are distracting. As a reader, I can’t read fluidly or get lost in a book or its story if I’m constantly stopping to process awkward or impossible sentences, wondering what the heck Stiefvater meant. I can see the English teacher comments in the margins: “Is a corpse beautiful?” “How is night hungry?” and “How exactly does a dying man’s foot twitch differently from someone else’s foot?” I read a few sentences aloud to my husband as I went, and educated and snooty as we can sometimes be, we LOLed together without any explanation needed on my part (ex.
“Maura had ordered herself one of those small birds that was served looking like it had walked on to the plate under its own steam” (p226). Uh, what?)

There was another issue here. If you recall from a couple minutes ago in my review, I was confused by the ending of The Raven Boys. Therefore, I was disappointed to learn that The Dream Thieves would do nothing to clarify or explain, even repeat, what had happened in Book One at all. Not only had it been like a month since I’d read The Raven Boys, but I was confused about what happened, even then. So I felt really lost about a couple things, especially whatever’s supposed to be going on with Adam. I love when things are spelled out and explained directly even when done in beautiful, literary ways, but I am still lost about some things that are going on, no thanks to Book Two.

In the end, this book had more of a dramatic finish (and one that I understood) than the first. So there’s that. Though I think besides language, one of the issues with these books is pacing. Characters, good. Setting, good. Romance, good. Story idea, pretty good. Even POV is pretty good (though it leaves characters for too long, I think). But pacing and language? Distracting and awkward. And then, after this dramatic ending, I found myself asking, “Did I enjoy it?” I was still in the same place as after book one: yes, and sometimes no. I did enjoy it, but it was far from perfect and at times—yes, again—distracting from the reader flow. But there was something about the series and its mood that made me decide to finish out the series with the last two books, especially since we are still clearly building toward the finale and the answer to the original question: Does Blue kill Gansey? The romance (kind of a love triangle) builds and is probably what keeps me reading.

Image from Amazon.com

BLUE LILLY, LILLY BLUE

Unbelievably, I am now really into these books. I can’t tell if the third book is any better than the first two—I am still confused from time to time and there was one major thing that must have been so subtle when it was revealed that I was like, What?! yet I could tell I was already supposed to know—but I am hooked. I think it likely that it is the characters that are hooking me and maybe the authentic, YA voice. Though, honestly, some of the characters tend to be a bit over the top in a caricature-y way which I thought was magnified by a couple new characters who are for sure over-the-top to the point of caricature. The romance is still sizzling and that is another thing that keeps me going with the books (though it is not as central to the book as the adventure, which as I keep saying, can sometimes be confusing).

Here’s the thing. I like to be told straight. I love poetic writing and I love writing innovation, but only if I still understand what is going on because the writer made it obvious. I don’t do games well, not even in daily conversation and normal life. So, if you couldn’t tell from many other reviews, I don’t enjoy reading oblique writing (even though I am sometimes guilty of writing it). I mean, the author probably thinks it’s obvious, but I, as a very-well-read and critical reader, was still not sure what was always going on in the Raven Cycle in book three. Though I do think, actually, the writing was much clearer than before, generally, still with some blocking issues, etc. I was just still catching up to things from the first two books. And I was enjoying the craft of Stiefvater’s actual writing, which for YA is something special. And I couldn’t put it down. I wanted to buy the last one ASAP so I could get to the pow-pow-pow of the finale and find out how this is going to go down. Because the set-ups, the plot twists, the tension, the premise, the romance, are all good ones that are sure to keep you guessing: they could go different ways and still be believable, so you’re just dying to know. (It’s one of the those series where you could believe it a comedy or tragedy, which is great for tension-building.)

Also much more humor in the third book, and used to better effect. And though it’s sometimes comical, I still think there are way too many characters in Blue’s house. And, as I said way back in book one, the POV shifts are sometimes confusing/distracting too. Funnily enough, some things are repeated too much in this book (but is that my trade-off for clarity? I’ll take it.) and there are some actual surprises along the way. Am I so interested that I’m overlooking faults at this point? Maybe. Like there’s a motivation (other people’s feelings) in the romance story that I don’t quite believe, and I wish Stiefvater had stuck to the more obvious one (fear of death). Then again, I am intrigued by the whole being in love with one’s friends and the intensity of some relationships, even between multiple people.

The love triangle seems like it might be becoming a love square.

Guess we’ll see where all this ends up. And soon.

Image from Amazon.com

THE RAVEN KING

As I said for book three, either this series is getting better-written or I am just too invested to notice its glaring faults, anymore. Either way, by book four I was eating it mostly all up. (I did still notice some pacing issues and Stiefvater trying too hard with her fancy language and therefore sometimes not really making sense). But I also see her writing as sometimes poetic and sometimes playful, and I like the little bits of experimentation she dips into—as long as it’s a clear passage (which is isn’t always). We do have  bit of a love square, now, and I found everything overall clearer in The Raven King. And when I was done, I wanted to read more, which though I kinda hate it is one of the signs of a good book/series.

There are two things: the occult stuff gets heavier as the books progress. Technically there is a distinction made between using magic in a “good” versus “bad” way and between “good” and “bad” guys, but it is a bit of a slope and not a clear delineation. I mean, without an external measuring stick (like a religion or something), we’re just figuring this out based on how it affects the characters we like and are rooting for. And vague assumption, like demon = bad; tree spirit = good. As a Christian in my 40s, I didn’t find things too confusing, but it is, perhaps, unclear, and if you take this sort of thing seriously, you may want to think twice about delving in. For me, there is a difference between magic used as a device of fiction (and therefore often metaphoric) and the occult as it plays out in real life. This book, since it places a lot of magic into realistic scenarios (like tarot cards and a psychic hotline) jumps back and forth and may not be for everyone. And the other thing: I found the pacing of the ending to be off. It just plain when too fast. And yes, once again, I got confused at one spot and was grasping for clarity even though this book was by far the clearest. I thought the ending worked, but would have been better if a few key moments were slowed way the heck down.

So what can I say, in the end? This review has been messy because my thoughts and feelings about this book were messy and varied from passage to passage. I would say that in the end I liked this series and enjoyed reading it, got more into it with each page. It was full of highlights and lowlights and in the end I am glad I got to know these characters and go on their adventures, even if I rolled my eyes along the way. Also, if this series is any indication, I think that Steifvater is getting better at expressing her unique voice and creating good stories, so we’ll have to wait and see what comes out next. (I mean, she already has some later books, but I haven’t seen the awards or whatever for those, so maybe she just needs another great idea for a new series, first.) Yet for all my wishing it wasn’t quite over, I don’t feel a desire to read Opal (the postquel) or the series that centers just around Ronan, The Dreamer Series. It’s a recommend, but perhaps read (or scan) the review here first to see if you would handle the inconsistencies well. If you just want to read for a good time and you’re not picky and you also are interested in the premise, then absolutely. But even picky me: I enjoyed it, especially when the author stopped trying so hard and I understood what the heck was going on.

QUOTES:

THE RAVEN BOYS

“Both of them could trot out logic on a nice little leash, wearing a smart plaid jacket, when they wanted to” (p44).

“He’d chosen his weapon well: only the truth, untampered by kindness” (p49).

“’My mother used to say, don’t throw compliments away, so long as they’re free.’ His face was very earnest. ‘That one wasn’t meant to cost you anything, Blue’” (p302).

THE DREAM THIEVES

“Adam was so used to the right way being painful that he doubted any path that didn’t come with agony” (p74).

“The planet spins at over a thousand miles an hour all the time. Actually, it’s going around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, even if it wasn’t spinning. So you can move plenty fast without going anywhere” (p230).

“If he had no one to wrap their arms around him when he was sad, could he be forgiven for letting his anger lead him?” (p382).

BLUE LILLY, LILLY BLUE

“If there was one thing Blue had learned while being a waitress and dog walker and Maura Sargent’s daughter, it was that people generally become the kind of person you expected them to be” (p107).

“But fear hurt, too. / Just because it tantrums, Persephone had added, doesn’t make it more right than you” (p125).

“…though really, historians were such Guessy McGuessers…” (p171).

“’I just wanted him to feel busy and watched. There’s nothing like paperwork to make a man feel oppressed’” (p173).

“How unfair she’d been to assume love and money would preclude pain and hardship” (p242).

“It wasn’t that Adam had ever gotten used to being struck. Pain was a wondrous thing that way; it always worked” (p259).

THE RAVEN KING

“Other classmates complained about the work. Work! Work was the island Adam swam to in a stormy sea” (p16).

“’It’s not always running away,’ Jimi said, her voice deep and rumbling through her chest to Blue’s ear. ‘To leave’” (79).

“’But the difference between a nice house and a nice prison is really small. We chose Fox Way. We made it, Calla and Persephone and I. But it’s only your origin story, not your final destination’” (p79).

“’And it’s not always a forever good-bye. There’s leaving and coming back’” (p80).

“She could feel herself hurtling toward self-awareness, and she wasn’t sure she liked it” (p111).

“His pause at this point in the conversation was evidence of the Gray Man regrowing his heart. It was a pity that the seedling of it had to erupt into the same torched ground that had killed it in the first place. Consequences, as Calla often said, were a bitch” (p123).

“’Still time if it’s not far, then.’ Adam Parrish was about thinking about his resources: money, time, sleep. On a school night, even one with supernatural threats breathing on his collar, Ronan knew that Adam would be stingy with all of these; this was how he stayed alive” (p144).

“But it wasn’t that Henry was less of himself in English. He was less of himself out loud. His native language was thought” (p266).

“…something more, by its definition, would always be different than what you already had in your hand” (p268).

“He felt he’d already asked the question; he couldn’t also give the answer” (p283).

“That was what money did. It put plungers in copper pots, and extra dishes behind glass doors, and toys into carved hope chests, and hung skillets from iron pot racks” (p300).

“I stopped asking how. I just did it. The head is too wise. The heart is all fire” (p338).

“His father was not frightening unless you were already afraid” (p431).

This year’s badge from Nanowrimo.com

It is April 11, which means I am arriving at Camp Nanowrimo eleven days late. This is a virtual thing, so no camp counselor is looking down over their nose and clipboard at me, tapping their pencil on the page. I knew I was going to miss a few days of camp due to spring break and family vacation, but I don’t think I realized how much I was going to miss; I just didn’t do the math ahead of time. Ah well, there’s always June.

If you have been following The Starving Artist for long, you know that Nanowrimo—National Novel Writing Month—is a thing. In November every year, like a bazillion writers around the world sign up online, join local chapters, and write 50,000 words in a month (which is a short novel). I have talked less about Camp Nanowrimo than Nanowrimo, at least for the past several years. There are two summer camps annually, that take place in April and June, and some things have changed about Camp over time. When I “won” Camp in 2014, I wrote 50,000 words, just like one would for Nanowrimo (which I finally “won” in 2022). But now, the majority of Nano campers make their own goals and man are they flexible.

I am a rule follower, so I stick to the options that the Nano site offers, but really writers come up with some crazy goals and they track them by conversion and that’s a totally acceptable thing (or you’re a rebel, if that makes you feel more excited). Like if you wanted to draw thirty pages for a graphic novel, you could call each page 1,000 words and set a goal of 30,000 and then track it that way. Officially, you can choose (this year) between writing and editing, and under writing you can choose between prepping and drafting. Your options are novel, short story(s), memoir, script, nonfiction, poetry, or other. If you jump in whenever (which means you can actually use Nanowrimo all year long), you can choose a beginning and end date (which I actually did in February and March for a personal goal of novel-finishing). If you are signing up for Camp, the beginning and end is already set for you, but unlike in November, your goal is for you to set. The bummer is that at least for now, the only goal category you can “choose” is word count. (I am told they used to offer page count, and I could think of a few more options that would be awesome.) This is where people get creative.

my Canva mockup for the cover

As for me and my book, I am working to edit a novel I finished drafting in the fall. It is about 110,000 words in its first draft, so I set the goal to edit the whole darn thing and kept it at actual word count (110,000). For editing, a lot of people set page goals and use some sort of conversion. The problem? It is day eleven and I am still a week from finishing the first draft of my current novel in drafting. Also, I was planning to take a novel revision class online before I started this revision. Whoops. If only camp had been in May this year or that I had looked ahead and understood my position a little better (considering spring break and our family vacation). I believe I shall write like the wind and take that class like the wind and then jump in at half-way (April 16, here I come!), keeping my crazy goal. No matter what, I need to get an enormous amount of work done in the next four months, full stop, and Nano is a tool that I use to keep me accountable and spur me on. I appreciate the varied goals of the Camps so that I can have time to edit, plan, etc. We’ll see where I am when July Camp rolls around. As for November, I plan to be standing there with my Preptober plans in hand at midnight on Halloween, like usual.

I don’t know what I think about online classes. There’s a part of me that thinks this is the future for a lot of people and more power to them, but there is also this little, snobby voice in the back of my head that’s like, “That can’t be good or even half as quality.” I don’t even know what to think about legit online universities, but I’m not going to have to go quite that far, today.

Image from writingmastery.com.

WRITING MASTER ACADEMY is the website and company created by Save the Cat! Writes a Novel author Jessica Brody. The site features a vibrant online community and a nice array of classes, which are expanding as we speak. Brody teaches most of these classes, so far, but she has also brought on other authors and experts to teach. Like many websites like it, the writer (me) pays a monthly subscription fee ($15) for access to the website and all of its content. There are no strings attached with this one, though you would have to keep paying for access. You can cancel at any time, and you’d still walk away with whatever knowledge you’d gained and whatever printouts you had printed and files you had saved. It actually seems like a great deal to me, especially if you are going to jump on it and take classes at a good pace. Which I did. I have plans to take more, but I think I can give you a pretty fair review, now.

Image from writingmastery.com

NOVEL FAST DRAFTING

The first class I took was the one that I signed up for and the reason I forked out my first $15. I was in the middle of the first draft of the first novel of a trilogy, having planned it basically from Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. But I was struggling with how to fit drafting into my life with both a residency and Nanowrimo in my rearview mirror. What, life? Laundry? Meals? Kids? How could I do this faster and maybe even have more discipline (reference to Anne of Green Gables, maybe book seven)?  The fast-drafting class was taught by Brody and like all the classes, was broken down into a number of videos arranged in sections, with the occasional exercise thrown in. (There were very few exercises in this particular class, but I didn’t mind because I wanted to GET BACK TO WRITING.) It took me less than a week to get through the class but it really took some time. It says there is upwards of six hours of content, but then you have some time in between to actually do what you are being told, including setting up some files and downloading some things and printing off the workbook. And if you haven’t done novel planning yet and begin that during this course, that will take you an additional several days at the very least. I was well beyond that, however.

I really liked the class. I thought it was full of super useful content. There aren’t any real existential debates or even “crafting” tips (which, honestly, you can find in most writing books), but more just step-by-step instructions and encouragement for actually writing a first draft really quickly and dirty (and also some reasons as to why you should write this way). I found Brody to be accessible and friendly. It was all easy to follow and understand and the tech was also very simple to work with. The class keeps your place no matter when you stop working for the day or for the moment. There is a printable workbook and a few worksheets, an online file that you might use, and a certificate of completion at the end.

CRAFTING DYMANIC CHARACTERS

I made a plan, then, for taking something like eight or ten of the other classes, but most of them I want to take at a certain point in the writing process. In between Fast Drafting and Complete Novel Revision (which I am about to start), I took the Crafting Dynamic Characters class, like, on the side (while fast-drafting). It took me a lot longer for two reasons. First, my main goal each day was to get my words in, not take a class. Second, there were many more exercises than in the last course and some of them were… I want to say extensive but considering real life homework, I suppose it isn’t that extensive. And I probably went overboard with some of the “assignments.” Of course, no one is checking this stuff or even checking to see if you’ve done it, so if you don’t want to practice whatever skill is being taught, you really don’t have to.

Jessica Brody was involved in all the exercises (after each one, the teacher(s) reads their “answer” to give you an example of how it might have been done). But the teacher was Mary Kole, a former agent at places I’ve actually heard of and currently a writer of writing help. She blogs at Kidlit.com. (One of the other teachers, at this point, is Scott Reintgen, who lives around here and is a speculative fiction writer who I have attended a seminar to hear speak about how to get published or something. I really enjoyed his seminar, so I’m looking forward to his class(es).) As for Characters, I thought the teaching was pretty good, but maybe I don’t need as much instruction on creating characters. It’s actually kind of my strong suit, so I don’t know if I’m the right person to review this class, specifically. In the end, though, I had a few pages of notes in my notebook and several pages in a computer file of exercises, from which I have culled at least three short story ideas (which, obviously, I don’t have the time to write, right now).

OVERALL

The thing that I really didn’t see coming was my involvement with the Writing Academy Community. I am really not a fan of this sort of (especially online) interaction, but I have been forcing myself into more situations like it since, apparently, a writing career goes hand-in-hand with networking. (I’m squirming in my seat just writing that.) In the Fast Drafting class, Brody encouraged us (me) to get an accountability partner for the fast-drafting process. I already have writing partners, but she meant someone to check in with daily during the actual process of fast-drafting and share a word count and maybe chat for a second about the day. I put an ad up on the community board and, lo and behold, I ended up with three partners and accepted all three. They hail from all around the globe, which is kinda fun, and they are maybe not fast-drafting as by-the-book as I am, but they have been there for me (well, at least two of them) on a daily basis, to check on my word count, give me theirs, talk about the process, ask questions and opinions, and just share the writing life together. Oddly for me, since I go to the community site daily to check in, I have also contributed random comments and responses on the boards and, well, it hasn’t killed me. In fact, sometimes it has been quite interesting and so far everyone is very kind and encouraging.

Which means that Writing Mastery has been worth every penny of my 50 cents per day, as far as I’m concerned. I get the classes (which I could be paying so much more for, even at my local writing “school” owned by three creative writing grads who are like all 22 years old) and I have access to a community which is vibrant and appears to be growing. I can’t join every single thing for writers across the web, but right now Writing Mastery Academy is filling the spaces of continuing education (with some books) and work community for me, and I am likely to stick around for at least long enough to take all the classes that I need (which are most of them). FYI, there are often weekend seminars and sometimes Jessica Brody does a video, but I don’t work on the weekends (right now) and I haven’t had the time to go back and view them later. But that is another perk included in the susbscription.

Maybe it’s not an MFA at Iowa, but I think Writing Mastery is well worth it if a) you are a working writer and b) you are cool with structure as part of the writing process, which includes planning and plenty of discipline and forethought. If you run solely on inspiration and coffee and eschew formula in all its forms, well, maybe not your thing. Personally, I’ve learned a lot about structuring my day and my writing process and have also explored some of the tools in my writer’s tool belt. And I plan to learn a lot more.

This a continuation of the movies and shows I am watching during the writing of a YA trilogy. However, in the spirit of recent awards shows, I have decided to include my favorite movies and shows of 2022. By “of 2022,”, I mean I watched them in 2022. They may be 100 years old (they aren’t) and several of them are actually from 2022 and were featured in the aforementioned awards shows, but the point is I watched them last year (or early this year) and I think they’re worth watching.

YA WRITING MOVIE REVIEWS, CONT’D:

Image from Amazon.com

HAUNTED MANSION (2003)

I can’t imagine how this movie ended up on this list, but Haunted Mansion is THE stupidest movie ever. Just really, really bad. Can’t wait till the new one comes out really soon, because it looks like it’s going to be so much better and I like the idea of turning the classic ride into a movie.

Image from IMDB.com

SEE YOU YESTERDAY (2019)

I didn’t hate this movie as much as some people, for sure, but I suspended my need to have real science in science fiction and also I liked that it was about societal issues and personal issues more than a sci-fi adventure. I didn’t love the ending, (no one liked the ending), though I thought there were ways they could have given better clues and landed there. And I did think all obvious fingers were pointed at police brutality when there were other issues rankling under the surface of the narrative like neighborhood violence and other American, racial problems. Which means in the end I thought it was okay.

Image from IMDB.com

LADYBIRD (2017)

Which I had seen and forgotten about. Perhaps that says something? My journal says: “Good. Maybe not as good as I wanted. Also a little boring/flat. There are better in the subgenre. But good. The mom is horrifying.”

Image from IMDB.com

THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL (2022)

I had read the first two books of this book series in 2017 and reviewed them. I actually did not like the books, but thought the then-unfinished series could make a good movie (or movie series. I imagine they are trying to make more). So I gave it a shot. This is what I posted on the book review page:

Some years later (2023), I found The School for Good and Evil on a list I had made of YA adventure fantasy movies that I was using to give me certain vibes while I wrote a YA adventure fantasy trilogy. I remembered not liking the book series but thinking that it could make a good movie. So I watched it, despite pretty dismal reviews. Huh. On further research, I discovered that though the reviews are pretty abysmal, the movie has been popular and there is a strong likelihood the movie series will continue (possibly for even another two or three movies). I totally didn’t hate the first movie. True, it gets off to a rough start and there are definitely some cringe-worthy moments (especially with CGI) up front. But everything improves. And I found the acting, the world, the soundtrack, and the costumes (surrounded by emoji faces with hearts for eyes) to be really enjoyable. The story was much better than the original, in a pared-down, simplified version that actually had a point and a moral that made sense. Plus, (at least in the first movie) we get to have a friendship that is loving and even physically affectionate without having to call it a sexuality or sexual identity and dang was that refreshing, something I have been longing for contemporary books and movies to tackle (instead of doing the reverse and reading homosexuality into old, platonic stuff). Yay for friendship! Yay for friendship as a powerful, loving thing! Yay for physical contact that isn’t always sexual! Whew. All in all, if I’m being honest, I am bucking the trend of reviews here and saying I rather liked this movie. I would totally watch it again. I recommend it. I am going to list it in almost-favorites because, like I said, the soundtrack and COSTUMES. (Also acting and world and FRIENDSHIP.)

Image from IMDB.com

WEDNESDAY (2022)

I mean, I love Tim Burton. I am tired though, lately, of everything (and I mean everything, not just Tim Burton) being so gory. I really don’t enjoy gore and it seems that every genre out there is exploring the gory side of things or combining with horror. I was a little afraid to watch Wednesday (series, first season), but I also was super intrigued by the preview. (The costuming! The setting! The music! The faces!) Here’s the other thing: I don’t like the Addams family. I have never been able to relate to these characters and while it’s interesting that the darker side of humanity is being explored through them, I have never found any of the adaptations I watched to be very compelling, character-wise. The whole dark thing just became spoofy, or, if you will, “kooky.”

Enter Wednesday. From the first minutes of the first episode, I was hooked. I was hooked by the saturated colors, the stunning Romanian castle, the acting, the complex characters, the COSTUMES, the YA intrigue, the Tim Burton-ness of it, the sound track! And for once, Wednesday and It (the two main Addams who we see featured here) have some depth. They’re not just creepy. There are nuances developed relating to their darkness. It is inborn. It is unapologetic. It is finally interesting. Sure, the whole thing might have been a tab predictable (or very), but I was willing to go with it. I might have been wrong about who has what secrets and what’s really going on, but I kept guessing. In the end, I was basically right, but I still enjoyed almost every minute of this lush, action-packed series (so far) and I am ALL IN for the Wednesday dance this Halloween. Waiting for the next season.

Image from IMDB.com

EASY A (2010)

I think I liked this Scarlet Letter-esque movie. It wasn’t a favorite, but there was a humor and a spark to it that I rather enjoyed. Sure, it was kinda predictable and also much of it was simply unrealistic (including her relationships and her parents), but not so far outside the usual bounds of similar, YA storytelling. I would even watch this one again. My daughter didn’t like it. I’m not sure why. And I did. Maybe I’m also not sure why, it just felt like it had a spark. I was a little confused about the male characters for most of the movie, since many of them looked similar and weren’t completely distinguished from one another, but other than that, a satisfying movie for the YA crowd about gambling with your reputation and also about letting yourself be walked all over, or in positive instead of negative, the importance of your reputation and standing up for yourself and your privacy. There were also some great and a couple terrible characters (and a few forgettable ones, too).

Image from IMDB.com

WEST SIDE STORY (2021)

I am a little surprised that this movie gets the high praise that it does. It’s a good movie, objectively, I guess, but it is also not in synch with the beat of modern entertainment. It’s a blast from the past, just done to the quality standards of today’s movie-making at the highest levels. I mean, it began with Romeo and Juliet—a story which, as much as I love it, is already a little out of touch in its main story arch, these days—and then a musical based on the Shakespearean play by some of the all-time greats which hit Broadway in 1957, taking place in then-current times in the a blue collar Manhattan full of racial tension and (dancing) street gangs. A 1961 film version swept the Academy Awards (basically) and was forced upon high school students for decades and decades. Then 2021 (has it already been two years?!) and Steven Spielberg gathers a near-perfect cast for a remake. A direct remake. Like this is the original Broadway musical with a few interesting camera angles and staging decisions. It still takes place in the 1950s and Romeo still dies (though Juliet never did, here). I did think the acting was great, the cinematography notable, and the story full of twists and turns. But, I’m gonna say it, it was long and therefore got boring, the music not one note different from the original. I thought that Spielberg needed to mess with it a whole lot more to keep me interested in a tale almost as old as dirt in a recycled version from my grandmother’s day. What he gave us, I thought, wasn’t enough. I mean, it’s still great cinema to show to a classroom of highschoolers who have just read Romeo and Juliet, but to me, if felt outdated and basically redundant.

Image from IMDB.com

OVER THE GARDEN WALL (2014)

I can’t really relate, but maybe that’s why I’m watching these movies and shows and reading all these YA books. I am writing YA, so I have to relate to teens, and—like it or not—my gen Z son has watched year after year of these nonsensical cartoons while I balked at them. Actually, I believe the trend started when I was a teen, but TV is full of them now: animated series meant for anywhere from kids to adults that are so odd, so absurd, that I never figure out why, let alone what. The absurdity feels like it might be the point: just for kicks. Or like a competition. Over the Garden Wall felt like it must be an allegory, but for what, I’m not at all sure. I do love that it was a limited series (ten VERY short episodes of like ten minutes) because then it had a point (well, sorta) and could be easily consumed. After watching two episodes, I pulled my son in, and—as I expected—he did like and relate to it. So would I recommend it? Um. If you like this sort of thing. I am really the last person to ask about it, since I don’t even like Sponge Bob.

BEST MOVIES OF 2022 (AND A FEW I WATCHED IN 2022):

As the title of the section implies, I only included the ones I liked and would recommend. I did not mention the ones I didn’t like and would advise you to leave on the shelf.

EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE (2022). Despite sweeping the Oscars, this is what the journal says (from last summer): “It’s too long and missing something. It got too talked up and is more startling than anything. It’s crazy and odd and funny but too (visually) dark and there are WAY too many words and speeches. They should have cut ½ hour and then it would have been much better, considering this is right up my alley. It was cool to have a middle-aged female lead and Asian actors, esp. Ke Huy Quan (I love The Goonies, but I also love Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). The multiverse NEVER quite works, but that’s not totally the point here. Was disappointed by all the hype.”ELVIS (2022). I love Baz Luhrman and there was plenty of Baz-y stuff here to enjoy as eye-candy and attention to detail. However, I found this (exaggerated) biopic to be too depressing since it was basically from the perspective of the abuser and not in a Amadeus way (where we don’t feel trapped in the downward spiral and grossed out by our own narrative skin as Salieri looking at Mozart). I loved much of the movie, but left feeling kinda grossed out and sad.NOPE (2022). Okay, so this was a good movie that somehow missed out at the Oscars despite some early hype. Maybe because it’s horror? I found it had plenty to say and was impeccably done, but it was just not for me. Why? Because it was horror. Even though it was far better than your average slasher, there were moments that still live in my nightmares. So for me, nope. For you, depends on your level of scare/gore-tolerance.VIOLENT NIGHT (2022). This one is also not for me or for plenty of other people, due to its extremely violent (it’s in the name) nature. It’s go-ry! But for a violent, action movie, it’s really good, and I happen to be a sucker for mixing things up, especially mashing together genres. And I’m rooting for David Harbour, whether he’s a lovable cop or a Viking-based, skull-smashing Santa Claus.*THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF MASSIVE TALENT (2022). Surprise! This might have been my favorite movie of the year, and I wish it had gotten some sort of recognition. But there’s no accounting for taste. It helps when you go into a movie or show not expecting too much, but my husband and I were very pleasantly surprised by this one. Purposely goofy at times, it was a perfect genre-mashup with its tongue continuously in its cheek. I can’t even believe someone would green light a movie starring Nicolas Cage poking both fun at and honoring his own career, but I am glad that they did. Props, Nick. Props.*ENCANTO (2021). My kids are getting older, so I don’t have to rush out and see the new Disney or other animated/kids movies. But when I finally got around to this one I ended up dancing around the house singing for weeks. It is one of my faves, for sure, at least in the genre. It’s not perfect, but I loved many of the elements, most especially the music.JUNGLE CRUISE (2021). Looking for a family movie? Enjoy those old, nostalgic flicks that are adapted from theme park rides or picture books about board games? Then this is perfectly adequate viewing for your family on pizza night. Has the same feel as like Goosebumps, Jumanji, Zathura, etc., but not quite as good as some of those.SAVE YOURSELVES! (2020). The jury’s still out on the ending, though I think it worked despite its unconventionality. Starring my all-time favorite commercial actor (Sunita Mani), this alien invasion movie is funny and nothing like other alien invasion movies, focusing much more on modern life and relationships and then filling the sci-fi gaps with quirky twists. It is a little violent and gut-level creepy, but I found this to be an entertaining winner. For some reason, IMDB kinda hates it and Rotten Tomatoes absolutely loves it. I say go for it.DON’T LOOK UP (2021). Perhaps a little too close to climate-home (and a little too political satire) for some people, I also enjoyed this apocalyptic movie which hinged on nobody listening to the scientists who knew the end was coming. Star-studded, for sure, I thought they did a good job and I found it both intellectually stimulating, at times touching, and funny in a maybe-I-shouldn’t-be-laughing-at-this way (aka dark comedy).FREE GUY (2021). A family movie with all the bells and whistles. In the end, I found it a decent film and another good watch for pizza night with lots of timely, cultural allusions.INTERSTELLAR (2014). Another decent movie that was mostly well-done despite a few holes. It stayed interesting for three hours, so that’s saying something.TICK, TICK… BOOM! (2021). There were definitely a great many references that I could not appreciate, making it not my fave, but I thought it was very good. I like musicals. This is a good one.THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD (2019). A racially diverse adaptation of a Charles Dickens novel, this is one of my favorite, recent movies. Did anyone else even notice it? I really liked it.SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (2008). I love all the pieces of this movie and we all know how enthusiastic everyone is about it. I like it. I find it a bit gritty and I don’t love the ending. Otherwise, I agree with the hype. I hadn’t seen it in awhile and was on a Dev Patel kick.*CYRANO (2022). If The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent isn’t my favorite movie of the year, then Cyrano is. And I am also irritated it got not a single awards nod. I read the book before seeing it, and here is my review from there: “So yeah, Roxanne with Steve Martin was a tad goofy, but not terrible, even after a few decades of building dust. Then again, I could have done without this modernized version. As for the 2022 version with Cyrano as a little person as opposed to large-nosed (and also the contemporary practice of casting people who would not have been historically accurate, racially-speaking), I luuuurved this movie. Surprise! It’s a musical. And not surprise! It’s well-acted and beautiful to look at. It follows the story pretty darn close (including the French ending that by now you are hoping they’ll fluff on) and even retains some of the original dialogue. I don’t want to talk it up too much, actually, but I thought it was beautifully done and entertaining, to boot.”Already reviewed elsewhere: The Perks of Being a Wallflower, West Side Story, Blinded By the Light, Love Simon, Donnie Darko, The School of Good and EvilANNIE (1982). I hadn’t seen this movie in a long time and ended up turning it on on a family vacation. This was one of my favorite movies growing up, and besides being appalled by the racial stereotyping, this is still an amazing movie. I also really like the 2014 version.THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (2022). I didn’t glom on to this movie the way the reviewers and the Cannes festival people did, but I did find it interesting and like it had plenty to say about modern times and millennials. It kinda goes on and on, but a one-watch movie for film types, for sure.

BEST SHOWS I WATCHED IN 2022:

Meaning, the list of only the ones I liked and would recommend, not the ones I didn’t and wouldn’t.

BRIDGERTON. At this point we are at two seasons. I had been avoiding it because it seemed like it was just an excuse for regency-era sex, but I finally gave it a try because I am basically lifetime-obsessed with Victorian literature. So, the first season is quite gratuitous with its sex, but after the obligatory, early-series stuff, the later sex is, well, almost real and involves people in actual relationships. It’s unrealistic, sure, but it is also meant as commentary on sex and married women and sex in Victorian times (and all of that together which actually speaks to girls from the 80s and 90s and purity culture) and I found some of what it had to say as interesting. By season two, we’re left with way less on-screen sex and can just indulge in the intrigue that is Bridgerton. Ideally, there will be five more seasons marrying off all the Bridgerton gang, and for now I am loving the costumes, music, and many twists and turns of high-society intrigue and romances that truly sizzle.ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING. I mean, I was on board for the first couple seasons of this almost-quirky, on-the-border-with-acting-and-about-everything-else show, but the lights along the walls of the secret passageway about did me in. Are they trying to be silly? I’m still going to keep watching, because there is some magic about it that I like despite what I know are clear faults.*WEDNESDAY. Reviewed above. Two thumbs up for me.COMMUNITY. My daughter is now watching this wrapped-up show on our recommendation, and I just bought my husband a Troy and Abed (in the morning) mug for Valentines Day. We almost missed it, though. The first season is a little bland and I kept saying “maybe we won’t watch any more.” But if you’ll stick with it, seasons two through six develop into this smart and quirky show with top-notch, individual episodes. While I never got over some characters being annoying, at least the writers realized their true center was in a couple of the side characters. They just should have wrapped up the series when first one and then the other of those two characters left.*THE GREAT BRITISH POTTERY THROWDOWN. A fan of The Great British Baking Show, I gave this pottery version a try despite not being a potter myself. I love this show. Seriously. It’s very similar to the other, but with potters, and the warmth, good-naturedness, British humor, and teaching/learning aspect of it stays the same.BEAT BOBBY FLAY. One of my favorite Food Network shows, I find this one in particular to be of the friendly variety when it comes to competition shows. Some people can’t stand him, I guess, but I find Bobby to be endearing and his guests to be fun. But the real draw is all the food and techniques. It is inspiring, for me. And there are more than 30 seasons, so plenty to watch.SPRING/HOLIDAY/HALLOWEEN BAKING CHAMPIONSHIP. Basically the same show at three points in the annual calendar, this series had been going on for almost a decade. I look forward to the new season at all three calendar seasons and I’ll be watching this until it eventually folds up and dies, which I hope is no time soon. Again, the main draw for me is the food and techniques. I learn so much and I fantasize baking my way through it, if not actually being on the show myself.TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS. Let’s see. This is the Olympics of the food world, including a strange nepotism of top-echelons personalities. That said, I get all into this, and I have my annual favorites, my teams, as it were. Go Jet! And go Alex!DERRY GIRLS. This is a watch-once, for me, but was well worth it. It ticks boxes on so many levels: humor, history, acting, nostalgia, culture, good writing, etc.*STRANGER THINGS. 2022 saw the split-in-half fourth season and the promise of the end with the fifth season (which will probably be like two years in the making). I have been a fan since day one (with my family). It has had its moments. I almost stopped when my favorite character was brutally destroyed in cold blood, but I couldn’t shut out the nostalgia (of both the time and the flavor of delivery), the pitch-perfect characters, the bizarre twists of the world in directions you couldn’t have seen coming. Season four was, I thought, almost goofy, and I couldn’t decide if they were doing it on purpose or if it had just gotten goofy. Jury’s still out, but I’ll definitely come back for the finale knowing full well (favorite) heads will roll.INVENTING ANNA/THE DROPOUT/THE THING ABOUT PAM. I got into documentary/biopic series, this year, and these three were my top picks. Inventing Anna got a little weird and actually-made up by the end, but for the most part I could not look away from any of these miniseries about truly bizarre women.NO DEMO RENO/GOOD BONES. I also occasionally watch home renovation shows, and these are my top two from this past year. No Demo Reno­—despite being full of demolition—features the literatlly cutest personality on television of all times, and Good Bones is full of a supporting “cast” that makes you wish these were your friends.TED LASSO. Right before we started watching Wednesday, my husband and I finished the two available seasons of Ted Lasso. It took us a long while to get AppleTV in order to watch this one, very-recommended show, but let me say, IT WAS WORTH IT. Sorry about yelling. But the hype is good stuff, this time. This is one of the best shows ever made, hands-down. It’s funny. Every Single Character is relatable and special. It’s heart-warming. It’s wise. It’s subtle. It’s British (at least in concept). It’s witty and quick. It has a great concept. (Midwestern high school football coach gets hired to coach a London, pro-football (read: soccer) team. The newly divorced and bitter owner is secretly orchestrating the downfall of the organization, but Ted shows up and his contagious optimism and complete vulnerability threaten to throw the whole thing off course as he not only saves the team but every member of it including the staff, one short biscuit (read: cookie) at a time. It’s just a great frickin’ show.

Image from Amazon.com

And another book that I added to my TBR because it came up under “NDE”s but has nothing to do with NDEs. Not its fault. It ended up being Printz-award-winning YA, so I can learn from this reading experience while writing YA myself. I could also have just enjoyed it. But did I?

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour (a lauded YA author) is about Marin, a girl who has left home after an unnamed tragedy with only her phone, wallet, and a picture—the only picture—of her deceased mother. She is four months into her new life as a college student at an upstate New York school, her only friend her roommate who is kind but kept emotionally outside and not knowing the reasons why Marin has almost no belongings and no contact with her former life. Marin has made special arrangements to stay on campus over Christmas break while everyone else is gone and her former best friend is going to come and see her—cold turkey—for three of those days. Thus, we have two California beach girls alone in a big, historic building during a northern, winter storm and they don’t even know what to say to each other. Meanwhile, we keep jumping back to the summer leading up to the mysterious tragedy, but in chronological order. Marin used to be happy and comfortable, a fixture in her neighborhood, friendly at school, hanging with her best friend and her best friend’s family, going home to her quirky grandpa. But what could happen in a few short months that would change that girl to one who would disappear without a trace or a word into a seedy motel 3000 miles away?

We Are Okay is short. At 234 pages with 1.5(ish)x line spacing and significant margins, it’s really a YA novella, more on par with middle grades in length. I’m not saying I couldn’t or wouldn’t enjoy a book that fell outside genre norms, but this book felt too short in that it didn’t develop characters, setting, or plot (mostly characters because this is YA) as deeply as I would expect and that felt unsatisfying to me. I mean, in the end, the story is told, the mysteries revealed, the big ending has happened, and I know two characters on a very small stage (which is accomplished with a pretty brilliant albeit dysthymic set up that would make a good play or one act movie). But I found myself wondering what things and people looked like (and sometimes was told things late in the book that were contrary to what I had formed in my head). I found myself wondering if someone who hadn’t been to these places and, most importantly, hadn’t lived the dorm life on a rural campus, would find it hard to picture and understand what was going on. And though I cried on cue, it was just a little thing. It didn’t really reach my heart, because I hadn’t spent much time in this and I was not invested.

On the other hand, I thought it was different. Interesting.  It’s atmospheric, but with an atmosphere that is unique. There is some mystery, some romance, and, well, it’s supposed to be a study of grief from the YA perspective, which it is (even if it’s not super thorough). In the introduction by Nicola Yoon, she calls the writing beautiful and either spare or sparse. It is very straightforward writing with moments of beauty, but it is really spare. So, like, Ernest Hemingway does YA about an ultra-modern teenager (complete with cell phones and bisexualism). I can’t say I’ve seen much fiction coming from this extremely normal space of dorm life or even transition to college. And in fact, it inspired me to pull out some notes I have on a novel I’m meant to write someday that is eerily similar to this one in tone, setting, and even characters and themes. I already have the opening chapter written, and it looks so much like this one. [image error] (My novel, working title Mama Said, is actually postapocalyptic, but it starts in the same, suffocating dorm situation and We Are Okay sometimes feels postapocalyptic. For Marin, the main character, this is postapocalyptic in her personal life, or at least it feels that way to her, and LaCour has created a space that is eerie in its lack of human contact thanks to a winter break and a winter storm.)

On the other-other hand, as a much older lady than these characters, I got a little annoyed at times by the—let’s say—confidence of the main character and her bestie. She was so sure that she knew what the right choice was all the time, at least for her, and often I was like, “Nah. You don’t know jack squat, yet.” But I think that we understand by the end that she’s not right about everything or about a lot of things. Which redeems that part of it. One of the points, it turns out, is that we don’t always know what’s good for us, but we have to deal with the consequences of what we do decide. I wish that the mental health and mental illness aspects of this novel were much more fleshed out. I think I understood some things that could easily be missed because I’ve already lived some of these things. I wish LaCour had spelled them out, dug deeper, been more obvious with the themes. Perhaps she wanted kids to study this in literature, where things could be parsed out? Or teens these days just get things? Once again, I find myself facing a book that is relatable to the modern YA crowd because of their particular experience with the Pandemic. Like The Loneliest Girl in the Universe, it used metaphor to relate to the Pandemic teens instead of beating anyone over the head with literality. But surely this crowd can relate to loss, to sudden loss, to loneliness, to actual aloneness, and to growing up to what feels like a betrayal.

I think most YA peeps, especially girls, are going to enjoy this book as long as they don’t stick too close to upbeat stuff. This is a slow, lazy, close-to-home plot with many cultural allusions and real-people kind of characters. For once in my life I wish the writer had written more instead of cut more, but as it stands I would recommend it even though it was not life-shattering for me. I read it in two days with a normal sleep and work schedule.

Unrelated note: In an adorable, bookish moment, my husband and I both found the title of our books within the books’ narrative at the same moment. I was reading We Are Okay and he was reading Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Also, I love this cover.

QUOTES:

“To think that a girl who is practically a stranger could be the next person I love. To think she might take Mabel’s place” (p225).

“It’s a dark place, not knowing. / It’s difficult to surrender to. / But I guess it’s where we live most of the time. I guess it’s where we all live, so maybe it doesn’t have to be so lonely” (p228).

And I started writing this post in November. I want to finish it now, but it contains some timely content. I am going to leave it as it is and put this little note of explanation at the top.

It’s November, so Republican or Democrat, right? Wrong. Who cares! It’s Nanowrimo and writers are writing-in in droves. The real choice to be made this month is Scrivener or Something Else (usually Word, but Google Docs or something will also land you in the non-Scrivener camp). I am being facetious (do go and vote), but I have been to several write-ins and events this month and no one was talking politics. They were, occasionally, talking about what program they used to write novels. When that conversation begins, it is always basically the same. Are you using Scrivener, and why? Are you using Word, and why not Scrivener?

I am using Scrivener. Over the summer, I finally caved and tried it. The main reason writers give for NOT using Scrivener is the steep learning curve, so I was intentional about it. One of the great things about Scrivener, though, is a free trial period. They say 30 days and—how very un-American of them (it’s British)—they actually mean 30 days of use. So if you don’t use it every day, this trial period can stretch out over months. It gave me ample time to decide if I was going to purchase a copy which (again, very un-American) is not cheap at $60 but is not a subscription and I’ll only have to pay again when I want to update my version. I went through the Scrivener tutorials and even looked some up on YouTube as I got to know the software which did take the hours that other writers warned me about, but I saw it coming and I did the thing thoroughly. There are many more features I could be using, but I think I zeroed in on the ones that would really serve me. I think.

I’m not as big a fan of the corkboard feature as some others (and as much as I thought I would be) though I am considering partnering this software with Plottr later this year. (Keep your eyes peeled for that review.) There’s something about the limitations of a screen that make notecards feel utterly maddening when I can’t pick them up, spread them out, and move them around in actual space. So I don’t really use that so much, after the first few months (though I do use physical notecards that I just list out in a file for when I am away from these notecards). And that’s about all I have to say in the (barely) negative.

What do I like about Scrivener? Why did I end up paying for it and why do I use it daily? Because, yes, I did end up purchasing it and I now use it every single work day. I have not gone through all the steps of book-writing at this point, while using it, but I have planned a novel and written almost an entire novel (plus the end of another) since I converted several months ago.

Scrivener’s deal, if you don’t already know, is that they are more than word processing. They are writing software and therefore contain many features for writers, and have rethought the existing features with the writing process in mind. While you can open the program to see your current document full-screen and therefore make it look like word processing (or old-school typing, just virtual), you’ll usually open it to a suite of boxes and individual files. It is highly customizable (and there are even templates that you can purchase, like, from other places, or sometimes get for free. I used a free Nanowrimo template for Nanowrimo and it allowed me to update my word count to the website straight from my file). Otherwise, you start with the basic setup and figure out how you want to customizee from tutorials and your own experience, and hone that over time.

Along the left side of the screen is usually all your individual files. That is the main point of Scrivener, I think: that you can keep all your files organized and in one, easily-accessible place. Not only do most people organize their chapters, scenes, or daily writing in individual files on Scrivener (so that they can be easily moved around), but there are other options (sometimes with templates) to stack up files for notes, research, world-building, character development, front matter and cover copy, and other randomness (like playlists and related TBRs, concept covers and checklists). One of my favorite perks about this system is that as I edit I can save “snapshots” of different drafts and as I start shopping the book (or story) around, I can keep various version of the cover letter, writing samples, and synopses neatly labeled and right there. Until now, I’ve had to search my computer and open many files at once in Word every time I wanted to send something out or submit, sometimes getting really confused about which file was which, which version was which, and often relying on the date I last opened files instead of something more reliable. I don’t hear this talked about, but seriously, if you are sending stuff out, Scrivener can really help you juggle all the submissions files in one place.

Image from Literature and Latte

Other features that they like to toot their horn about are the corkboard I don’t really use, exporting tools that allow you to pick and chose files and export in various styles (and in the regular ways), the ability to open and work in more than one window at a time, outlining capabilities, color-coding (for, like, POVs and what draft each file is on) and very customizable views. They also refer to it as like a 3-ring binder, but on your computer. I think this is apt. Imagine shoving everything you have done and acquired in one writing project (from research photos and articles to table of contents, different edits, notes, planning…) and organizing it in a 3-ring binder. Yes, that’s it.

And that’s why I really like Scrivener. It’s all right there, a concept I am a fan of in so many areas of my life. Not only can I get more of an overview of a project and get way more organized than in typical word processing, but I can access everything from my “brain dump” to my pitch (in three versions) from one screen. Know that it takes some time to learn new software (and rewire your brain from the old way of doing it), but it’s worth it, at least for me and many others. And with a free trial, you might as well give it a try, keeping in mind the bigger picture of moving through the steps of novel planning, writing, editing, and, hopefully, publishing.

To trial or buy Scrivener from Literature and Latte, click HERE.

Image from Amazon.com

I’m going to commit to you that this is the last Pride and Prejudice retelling review I will do for a little while. I have been reading a few other things, but they are mostly series (which I finish before I do the review) and nonfiction (which takes me much longer than fiction). But I need to take a break from Pride and Prejudice retellings, myself. Right after I stay up till one in the morning finishing this one…

True story. I kept thinking, I’m almost done with this book, but I was being optimistic without cause at 11:30pm. It was 1:00 when I finally shut the book and turned off the light, and while I am a night owl, my weekday day starts at 7:15 am and I am a nine-hour sleeper and very possessive of my sleep. You do the math. Or don’t. It doesn’t add up. Does that mean that I loved Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld (who, by the way and despite the name, is a woman)? Yeeees? Maybe. I enjoyed it. I wanted to finish it. It’s one of the only times super-short chapters have worked on me.

Eligible sort of defies genre boundaries because Sittenfeld defies genre boundaries. She has had one of those fairly typical literary ascensions through short stories and prizes into high-brow fiction, maybe we’ll call it sometimes upmarket and sometimes literary. But somewhere along that line she also started playing with historical fiction and with real life politics and people, and her six books are a strange mashup of literary, best-seller, and the twisting of someone else’s story. Rodham is about Hilary Clinton if she hadn’t married President Bill Clinton. First Lady is based on the life of Laura Bush. (These are both fictional novels.) And Eligible is a retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. All the while, she maintains fan interest and literary integrity and respect, two things that often don’t go together (for no real reason, I think, besides audience expectations and the publication process). She also wrote Prep, The Man of My Dreams, and the short story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It. Actually, I want her career, except my genre crossing would be more literary to speculative fiction, across age groups.

So Eligible is a retelling and a romance, but it is also a book that deserves to stand alone in some of the judgement. Her ratings for all books tend to be below a four, which I find interesting, as I thought this one, at least, was really solid. Then again, I had a few things to complain about: the last chapter that should have been cut; the frequent lack of fireworks between Liz Bennet and Darcy… Maybe that was really it. As for that last chapter, you can just not read it if you are willing to totally believe me that it’s dumb. The book is better without it’s trying-too-hard self, if you ask me (and you kind of are). As for Liz and Darcy, well, I have learned over the past few books that this romance in particular—even though it is one of the great love stories of all time—is especially hard to nail as a writer. Austen was a genius, of course, but realizing that her most famous romance is so difficult to replicate has made me realize it in a new way. I mean, Liz and Darcy are dealing with pridefulness and prejudice, they’re both quite unsufferable and lovable/noble in equal measures, and begin with blindly hating each other (at least on one side), and then they come to slow realizations that unearth the earth-shaking sizzle that was there all along to finally apologize and overcome literary obstacles galore to end up together in the nick of time. Essentially, both the reader and character have to be deceived about their attraction until it has become full-blown love and it’s too late! And the reader has to fall for and pull for two deeply flawed characters. Creating that initial attraction-repulsion and then making it make sense is really a challenge. Bridget Jones accomplished it for the most part. Eligible almost did, but saying there is sexual tension is not the same thing as creating it. At all. I think if Sittenfeld had played up the attraction that Liz was ignoring from the beginning… but I’m not convinced Sittenfeld was trying to do that, anyway.

Instead, she approached Pride and Prejudice from a fresh, modern perspective and I appreciate so many of the clever things that she did. I have no idea how it would read without first having read (and watched and read again) the original story, but the play on the old characters in a modern New York-Cincinatti-California setting was really fun to observe. I think her Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Bennet were especially on point and I recognized these people, no matter how painful it was to see them there the whole time. Actually, all the sisters were amazingly transposed from regency England to twenty-first century America. And personally, I like the way Sittenfeld juxtaposed Victorian language at bizarre times to bring us back to the source text and use Liz’s being a writer to almost make sense of it. There might have been an element of farce (not in a good way) as the modern issues mounted (homosexuality, gender identity, race, feminism, single parenting by choice, alternative parenting options) and modern situations overflowed (reality TV, internet dating, Google searches, hook-up culture, eating disorders, online shopping addiction, fad workouts and diets), but that’s what kept the pages turning at the end when I had stopped buying into the romance, so much. (Okay. I’ll admit. It was over the top, like Little Fires Everywhere and 90s issues, though one reviewer I read argues that too much is part of the modernity Sittenfeld is writing about. I mean, isn’t self-righteousness/”virtue signaling” part of modernity?) There may have been some awkwardness there because the book has a levity and comedy to it and yet it does seem to do some preaching or teaching (the transgender plot was a bit much in its execution and I’m sure would piss some people off, as does the lack of development of the minority characters), but this might just come from Liz’s personality as a meddler and a know-it-all (prideful and prejudiced). One character thing I found fault with was that Liz wasn’t so much prejudiced against Darcy’s money and privilege as she was insecure about her own Midwestern-ness. Maybe that’s also a thing that Sittenfeld was doing with the story to modernize it. It’s hard to say.

While the book did read like there was only one way to see the modern world, one right way to do it, it also had this vein of family being important and working for it, despite all the disagreements and objections, despite the hurts that have built up and offensiveness that persists. I guess I liked the idea that you should pitch in but there’s only so much you can do, and then you just love the a-holes because we all have our ways of being a-holes. (Except Jane. Jane is never an a-hole.) I am a huge fan of big, complicated, bring-it-all-together, pow! bam! endings, and this book had that. Since I kinda hate most reality shows (except food ones where the people are nice), the Eligible (read: The Bachelor) stuff was kinda off-key for me, but I have to admit that it really worked for the over-the-top tone of the book. I was also surprised that Sittenfeld’s writing style is not all that notable, though her weaving of things is. Her writing just got out of the way. Nothing poetic, which belies her writing origins.

I can see why this book might bug you. But I thought it was a top-notch retelling of Pride and Prejudice with some interesting character reads and modern plot twists. If you want another take on Liz and Darcy and you’re at least moderate if not left-leaning, then you should definitely read it. (If you are too far right politically, I feel you will only walk away angry and like you’ve been satirized. Indeed, you have, but I thought, at least at times, in a compassionate way.) If you want a good book to read that mixes upmarket fiction with a classical story and ends up really of-the-moment, then you should try it. If you like this sort of thing, it will probably keep you engaged up to the last page (minus that final chapter). Let me know if the romance worked for you. For me, it was more about the story and about the individual characters as they compare with the originals. And did I mention that it’s humorous? I definitely found some of the banter and the situations funny. Lol.

QUOTES:

“‘Speaking of romance–‘ Theatrically, because she was incapable of not mocking herself when initiating sex, Liz winked at Jasper” (p225).

“All those years growing up here, she’d unknowingly been headed toward a selfish, dishonest man” (p230).

“‘It’s worth a try. You just never know.’ / ‘No,’ Liz said. ‘That’s not true. Sometimes you do know'” (p260).

“Liz remained quiet–remaining quiet was the most reliable tool in her interviewing kit” (p304).

“Ignoring Valerie, Kathy de Bourgh said, ‘There’s a belief that to take care of someone else, or to let someone else take care of you–that both are inherently unfeminist. I don’t agree. There’s no shame in devoting yourself to another person, as long as he devotes himself to you in return'” (p305).

Image from Amazon.com

I’m going to commit to you that this is the last Pride and Prejudice retelling review I will do for a little while. I have been reading a few other things, but they are mostly series (which I finish before I do the review) and nonfiction (which takes me much longer than fiction). But I need to take a break from Pride and Prejudice retellings, myself. Right after I stay up till one in the morning finishing this one…

True story. I kept thinking, I’m almost done with this book, but I was being optimistic without cause at 11:30pm. It was 1:00 when I finally shut the book and turned off the light, and while I am a night owl, my weekday day starts at 7:15 am and I am a nine-hour sleeper and very possessive of my sleep. You do the math. Or don’t. It doesn’t add up. Does that mean that I loved Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld (who, by the way and despite the name, is a woman)? Yeeees? Maybe. I enjoyed it. I wanted to finish it. It’s one of the only times super-short chapters have worked on me.

Eligible sort of defies genre boundaries because Sittenfeld defies genre boundaries. She has had one of those fairly typical literary ascensions through short stories and prizes into high-brow fiction, maybe we’ll call it sometimes upmarket and sometimes literary. But somewhere along that line she also started playing with historical fiction and with real life politics and people, and her six books are a strange mashup of literary, best-seller, and the twisting of someone else’s story. Rodham is about Hilary Clinton if she hadn’t married President Bill Clinton. First Lady is based on the life of Laura Bush. (These are both fictional novels.) And Eligible is a retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. All the while, she maintains fan interest and literary integrity and respect, two things that often don’t go together (for no real reason, I think, besides audience expectations and the publication process). She also wrote Prep, The Man of My Dreams, and the short story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It. Actually, I want her career, except my genre crossing would be more literary to speculative fiction, across age groups.

So Eligible is a retelling and a romance, but it is also a book that deserves to stand alone in some of the judgement. Her ratings for all books tend to be below a four, which I find interesting, as I thought this one, at least, was really solid. Then again, I had a few things to complain about: the last chapter that should have been cut; the frequent lack of fireworks between Liz Bennet and Darcy… Maybe that was really it. As for that last chapter, you can just not read it if you are willing to totally believe me that it’s dumb. The book is better without it’s trying-too-hard self, if you ask me (and you kind of are). As for Liz and Darcy, well, I have learned over the past few books that this romance in particular—even though it is one of the great love stories of all time—is especially hard to nail as a writer. Austen was a genius, of course, but realizing that her most famous romance is so difficult to replicate has made me realize it in a new way. I mean, Liz and Darcy are dealing with pridefulness and prejudice, they’re both quite unsufferable and lovable/noble in equal measures, and begin with blindly hating each other (at least on one side), and then they come to slow realizations that unearth the earth-shaking sizzle that was there all along to finally apologize and overcome literary obstacles galore to end up together in the nick of time. Essentially, both the reader and character have to be deceived about their attraction until it has become full-blown love and it’s too late! And the reader has to fall for and pull for two deeply flawed characters. Creating that initial attraction-repulsion and then making it make sense is really a challenge. Bridget Jones accomplished it for the most part. Eligible almost did, but saying there is sexual tension is not the same thing as creating it. At all. I think if Sittenfeld had played up the attraction that Liz was ignoring from the beginning… but I’m not convinced Sittenfeld was trying to do that, anyway.

Instead, she approached Pride and Prejudice from a fresh, modern perspective and I appreciate so many of the clever things that she did. I have no idea how it would read without first having read (and watched and read again) the original story, but the play on the old characters in a modern New York-Cincinatti-California setting was really fun to observe. I think her Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Bennet were especially on point and I recognized these people, no matter how painful it was to see them there the whole time. Actually, all the sisters were amazingly transposed from regency England to twenty-first century America. And personally, I like the way Sittenfeld juxtaposed Victorian language at bizarre times to bring us back to the source text and use Liz’s being a writer to almost make sense of it. There might have been an element of farce (not in a good way) as the modern issues mounted (homosexuality, gender identity, race, feminism, single parenting by choice, alternative parenting options) and modern situations overflowed (reality TV, internet dating, Google searches, hook-up culture, eating disorders, online shopping addiction, fad workouts and diets), but that’s what kept the pages turning at the end when I had stopped buying into the romance, so much. (Okay. I’ll admit. It was over the top, like Little Fires Everywhere and 90s issues, though one reviewer I read argues that too much is part of the modernity Sittenfeld is writing about. I mean, isn’t self-righteousness/”virtue signaling” part of modernity?) There may have been some awkwardness there because the book has a levity and comedy to it and yet it does seem to do some preaching or teaching (the transgender plot was a bit much in its execution and I’m sure would piss some people off, as does the lack of development of the minority characters), but this might just come from Liz’s personality as a meddler and a know-it-all (prideful and prejudiced). One character thing I found fault with was that Liz wasn’t so much prejudiced against Darcy’s money and privilege as she was insecure about her own Midwestern-ness. Maybe that’s also a thing that Sittenfeld was doing with the story to modernize it. It’s hard to say.

While the book did read like there was only one way to see the modern world, one right way to do it, it also had this vein of family being important and working for it, despite all the disagreements and objections, despite the hurts that have built up and offensiveness that persists. I guess I liked the idea that you should pitch in but there’s only so much you can do, and then you just love the a-holes because we all have our ways of being a-holes. (Except Jane. Jane is never an a-hole.) I am a huge fan of big, complicated, bring-it-all-together, pow! bam! endings, and this book had that. Since I kinda hate most reality shows (except food ones where the people are nice), the Eligible (read: The Bachelor) stuff was kinda off-key for me, but I have to admit that it really worked for the over-the-top tone of the book. I was also surprised that Sittenfeld’s writing style is not all that notable, though her weaving of things is. Her writing just got out of the way. Nothing poetic, which belies her writing origins.

I can see why this book might bug you. But I thought it was a top-notch retelling of Pride and Prejudice with some interesting character reads and modern plot twists. If you want another take on Liz and Darcy and you’re at least moderate if not left-leaning, then you should definitely read it. (If you are too far right politically, I feel you will only walk away angry and like you’ve been satirized. Indeed, you have, but I thought, at least at times, in a compassionate way.) If you want a good book to read that mixes upmarket fiction with a classical story and ends up really of-the-moment, then you should try it. If you like this sort of thing, it will probably keep you engaged up to the last page (minus that final chapter). Let me know if the romance worked for you. For me, it was more about the story and about the individual characters as they compare with the originals. And did I mention that it’s humorous? I definitely found some of the banter and the situations funny. Lol.

QUOTES:

“‘Speaking of romance–‘ Theatrically, because she was incapable of not mocking herself when initiating sex, Liz winked at Jasper” (p225).

“All those years growing up here, she’d unknowingly been headed toward a selfish, dishonest man” (p230).

“‘It’s worth a try. You just never know.’ / ‘No,’ Liz said. ‘That’s not true. Sometimes you do know'” (p260).

“Liz remained quiet–remaining quiet was the most reliable tool in her interviewing kit” (p304).

“Ignoring Valerie, Kathy de Bourgh said, ‘There’s a belief that to take care of someone else, or to let someone else take care of you–that both are inherently unfeminist. I don’t agree. There’s no shame in devoting yourself to another person, as long as he devotes himself to you in return'” (p305).