Faintly incendiary thoughts about books.

[snarp]

My twelfth or thirteenth Nero Wolfe book (I don't remember the title because all the titles are stupid), by Rex Stout

Is Rex Stout always awesome? How is he always awesome? Did he, like, kill a stegosaurus with his bare hands and eat its heart?

(Is that why the name?)

I mean, he obviously didn't believe in second drafts, but I find this entirely forgivable in light of the steady awesomeness of the first ones.

Graceling, by Kristin Cashore

I'm only half-way through this, but there's one of those guys who exists only to be desirable and ambiguously dangerous and to fall in love with the girl. I guess they're not uncommon, but it's unusually explicit here! She asks him what he's thinking, and he lists nine things having to do with her; we are expected to believe he is being perfectly honest.

It occurs to me that this is basically exactly like...

New Moon, by Stephanie Meyer

...Edward Cullen! Whose idea of talking to Bella is asking her millions of questions about herself. Because the sixteen-year-old girl's opinions are the most interesting thing in the world to a guy who technically died a hundred years ago.

A lot of this book's plot is driven by Bella's attempts to induce hallucinations, which is an odd tack to take. You'd think she'd've thought to try some of the more traditional means of doing this at some point, but no - motorcycles and cliff-jumping it shall be.

I mainly read this because I liked Alice in the first book, and I still liked her here - but I think part of my ability to do so is her habit of being gone most of the time, and being somewhat reticent about what she's been doing when she comes back. It makes it possible to assume that she's got a busy, complicated life outside of rescuing Bella and being her mother figure, like you'd expect of an immortal clairvoyant vampire lady with a demonstrably difficult love life her own. I'm not sure if I should read any more of the series. I fear that I may be disillusioned about this idea.

Pride and Prejudice, by Leopard Solid, re-read number nine or something

Darcy doesn't have any thoughts that aren't about Elizabeth, either. We all realize that, right? He doesn't. He's a viewpoint character with a secret tragedy, and he still only ever thinks about Elizabeth.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, by NK Jemisin

And Nahadoth literally exists only in relation to the person he's in love with.

(Note that I'm not really complaining about this in any of these books; I find it somewhat restful.)

Comments

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed The 100K Kingdoms, but it did strike me as odd that the best thing about meeting God, or, well, one-third of God anyway, is that he turns out to be a really fantastic lay.

[snarp]

That is the central tenet of many polytheistic religions! There is nothing at all surprising about it.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

LEOPARD SOLID!!!

I love Yasuko Aoike with a deep and obsessive love, but LEOPARD SOLID will never ever stop being hysterically funny to me. Especially since most of her Western characters have halfway plausible names, which makes him seem all the more ridiculous in contrast. (Even Sugar Plum or Tom Cat I could halfway justify as being saddled with bad childhood nicknames that stuck, or having the misfortune to have been born to parents with either tin ears or utterly dreadful senses of humour.)

Also, am now wondering if the way to get over my lifelong semi-irrational aversion towards reading Austen would be to acquire a plaintext ebook version and search-and-replace the original names with ludicrous manga characters. Mr. Darcy, of course, will be played by LEOPARD SOLID.

[snarp]

I play the plot-heavy video games that let you choose the characters' names that way. It improves Final Fantasy VII enormously!

Trying to figure out what was going on with that name, I eventually decided that Aoike had been looking at like, curtains or Snuggies or something, and saw one that was leopard-print and one that was a solid, and the words just lodged in her head until she was forced to make a manga character out of them.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Is Rex Stout always awesome?

As a rule, yes.

How is he always awesome?

As far as I can tell, he came from a family of ridiculously talented, literary, and intelligent people, and he opted to make a a solid living for decades off of his financial skills so he'd be free to write whatever he felt like writing later in life, without needing to worry about money. So by the time he got around to writing the mystery novels, he had a lifetime of experiences to draw on, and a very long time to hone his craft.

[snarp]

So if I want to emulate him I will need inherited traits and a cooperative stock market? Bah. I'm going to try the stegosaurus thing.

[lacrimawanders.livejournal.com]

Re: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Lol.

Re: New Moon
It's a shame that just about anyone else is more interesting that Bella or Edward, and we're stuck watching the two of them all the time. I wonder what the series would be like if Belladward was a story in the background.

But I guess I get overly optimistic about stuff like that. Like in Underworld, where I took all the plot holes to be indications of great, sweeping back story that any minute.../any minute/...

?? D :

Such is life.

I was wondering -- do you do kimono stuff any more?

[snarp]

I wonder what the series would be like if Belladward was a story in the background.

Significantly better!

I was wondering -- do you do kimono stuff any more?

My yukata is in the bottom of my closet at home, so not recently. I wish I'd had it for Sakura Matsuri. あなたは？

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of an observation my friend made on the Twilight movie -- that Bella's high school friends seemed like such fun, exciting people, and it was just such a shame that the focus was on sullen, boring Bella instead.