C. Litka's Blog, page 11

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 87)

 

Believe me or not, when I found myself without a book to read, I reached over and down and picked out a Dorothy L Sayer's mystery - Busman's Honeymoon, A Love Story with Detective Interruptions. This is a book that I don't believe I had gotten around to reading back in the day, 40 years ago, when I was reading Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. The book itself is one of my more valuable ones, since it is the first printing of the first paperback version of this novel, the 1945 Pocket Book edition. The first printings of which (as noted on the copyright page) I found on eBay for $60 to $80. Anyway, I read the first part - a collection of letters concerning the marriage of Lord Peter and Harriet Vane, and then the first chapter... and it hadn't hooked me. These days I find Sayers writing rather too dense for me.  And well, you can guess what happened next...

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

The Summer of the Danes by Ellis Peters  A (Of course)

I believe that I had remarked in some previous review that Peters often seems to include a murder mostly for marketing purposes, for she could've told a very similar historical fiction story without the murder to solve. And this story is a perfect example of this observation. While there is a murder, it is totally irrelevant to the story she's telling. Cadfael doesn't even solve it. It's just there to make this a "mystery." I don't miss the murders at all, so all's fine with me.

What this story is about is Wales, Welsh culture church politics, love and loyalty. Deacon Mark, who had been Cadfael's helper in the first couple of books, and who is now studying to be a priest, has been sent as an envoy to a Norman bishop newly installed in a vacant Welsh/English diocese, which has ruffled a lot of local feathers. Mark's bishop send him to deliver a welcoming gift and letter, and then to proceed to the other Welsh bishop with a gift as well, balancing everything out. Mark gets to take Calfael along on his mission, because Cadfael is Welsh and speaks the language, which Mark doesn't. A restless Cadfael is delighted to accompany his friend.

The Welsh king is visiting the new bishop at the time and it is arranged that they will travel with him on his way back to his castle and then on to Bangor to call on the Welsh Bishop. Before they set out, we meet one of the Welsh priests who has arranged a marriage for his daughter - celibacy at various times went in and out of fashion, and it was common for priests to marry in the Celtic Catholic churches. Anyway, his wife had recently died, so only his daughter remains to remind everyone that he had been married. And though he loved her, the new Norman/English bishop is from the Roman Catholic Church branch that doesn't condone married priests, and looking to his advancement with the new bishop, he hopes by shipping her off to a marriage some distance away the bishop will forget that he had once been married, and move up in the hierarch with the new bishop. 

His daughter, on the other hand, resents being given away in marriage just to free her father of her presence. Still she sets out to meet her arranged husband, traveling with Cadfael and Mark, in the party of the Welsh king. However, she attempts to escape the fate her father has made for her even before she meets her would-be-husband. After Mark and Cadfael deliver their gift to the Welsh bishop in Bangor, Mark feels that they should spend a little time looking for this runaway bride, especially after word reaches them that a band of mercenary Danes from Ireland have landed in Wales. They had been hired by the King's reckless brother, whom the king had driven him from his holdings in response to rash murder this brother had commissioned. With a Danish Viking mercenary army at his back, the brother had returned to force his brother, the King, to reinstate him and his holdings.

Given a clue as to where the runway bride might have gone - a hermitage of a solitary woman/nun, Cadfael finds her - but they are quickly captured by a band of foraging Danes, made prisoners, and taken to the Dane camp where they are held for ransom. What follows is a lot intrigue, between the two Welsh royal brothers and the mercenary Danes, with the King trying to avoid bloodshed, even as the two armies face one another and his reckless brother does his best to make everything iffier, because that's who he is and what he does. Within this story there is also a sweet love story involving the priest's daughter who is determined to choose both her life and her love for herself. 

All in all, a very interesting story of historical fiction that looks into Welsh and Irish Dane culture of the period and the ties of loyalty, even to one who may not deserve the loyalty.

A British Narrator for Amazon Audiobooks

It was promised for the summer, but it is now here, a wee bit late, but welcomed. Last spring Amazon had said that they would be adding more voices to their collection of virtual voice audiobook collection. They have just now done so, and I have switched the voice of my audiobooks on Amazon of a British English voice (#7). I use the British "Archie" on Google, and in general prefer the British narrators. Perhaps because the American English voice sound a maybe too, ordinary, or a story set on a distant world in the future Plus, a little too eager, and/or too hard or harsh. All I know is they just clash with the voice in my head telling the story. 

As I said, this feature is a bit late, but they did go all out in implementing it. They are now offering 12 Female and 9 male voiced for American English, 3 female and 2 male Australian English voice, 10 female and 4 male British English voices, and interestingly enough, 2 Female and 3 male Southern American English voices, ya'all. Back in the spring they also said that authors would be able to have different voices for different chapters, for all those multii-point-of-view stories, but I didn't see any mention of that option just yet.

They also claimed to have improved the voices across the board. I'll just take them on their word for that. From the samples I heard, they sounded quite natural, but I don't listen to audiobooks, so I have nothing to compare them to. 

Not that all this matters much, if at all, since my current sales of non-free books on Amazon, in any format, is a mere trickle. But still, that rare audiobook buyer will now hear my stories closer to what I imagine my narrators to sound like, as they spin their tales.

Appreciating Literature, or Not

I recently read Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, which I understand is a classic. I was able to compare it to similar stories written a hundred and forty years later which were set in the same period, and well... Sorry, no spoilers for the reviews to come, but it had me considering literature in light of several YouTube videos I've watched which outline how to increase your enjoyment of reading. I have some thoughts on that subject.

I will add the links to the videos below, but to sum up their advice in a nutshell; it involves doing everything your English teacher wanted you to do in English class with your assigned reading. You were to study the book's story, plot, themes, symbols and symbolism, and style. You might even consider rereading it in order to be able to see those features more clearly. In short, these videos suggest that you conduct an autopsy of the story in order to discover, and appreciate so much more about it. In other words learn how that particular sausage was made. Or to put it another way, you are to appreciate, even marvel at, how master authors, using a variety of techniques, construct the story in order to present the themes the author, presumably, wishes to deliver to the reader. Once you learn all these tricks of the trade, you can see how various authors apply them, and get an A in class, that is to say, you will enjoy the story so very much more. Which is probably true if you're an English major, or an intellectual. But I'm neither, and I find that I disagree with this approach on a fundamental level.

In my view, books are to be read. Period. If they are written superbly, or even competently, everything the author has to say, will be conveyed within the story as it unfolds. Perhaps paradoxically, everything essential will be said almost inexplicitly. Nevertheless, the reader will be left changed in some ways from reading the story. A clock tells time, novels tell a story. If you care to, you can dismantle a clock, marvel at the intricacy of its gears, motors or springs to appreciate how it tells time, but that is not the purpose of a clock. It's purpose is to tell time. The same applied to fiction. Fiction tells a story, and perhaps explores ideas along sort the way. That is what it does. A novel is not a textbook. Though clearly, it can be used as one, just like a watch with its gears and springs.

Now, there is no harm in dismantling a story, and it may be enjoyable to do so, at least for some people. However, I think it can also be very misleading. Let's take for a example, a rather extreme work that is often cited as a book and a series that requires rereading at least several times to "understand' it. That would be Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series that begins with The Shadow of the Torturer. Almost every reader will readily admit that they don't really don't know what's going on in this book and series after their first read. They attribute this fact to the genius of Gene Wolfe and their own lack of said genius. That may be one possibility. Another one is that the work is actually an incohesive mess. Maybe even on purpose. Either way it's very hard to comprehend, and so, after reading through it several times, in order to finally "get it," it may be that what these readers are actually doing is finding and fitting their own ideas together in such a way as to create some sort of order out of the chaos, so as to make the story seem like it makes sense, or more sense, anyway. It's like finding castles or cows in the shape of clouds. Humans are hardwired to make sense of things. So faced with something that doesn't make sense, i.e. The Book of the New Sun, dedicated readers eventually devise their own meaning of the story, even if the author never bothered to do so. Or maybe he's just a genius.

What I'm proposing is that when readers deconstruct a story into its perceived components, these readers may well be seeing the various story choices, techniques, and themes in the ways that appeal to them, in ways that make sense to them, regardless of the author's intent. Indeed, you can do that on purpose. You can look at a story  through a particular "lens" to identify certain elements that relate with some other source. In one such example, Tristan (see below) talked about a piece he read that analyzed Dicken's Great Expectations through the "lens" of Darwin & evolution. Was that Dicken's intent? Who knows? But some sort of case can be made for it. And, I guess, looking for clues like this in Great Expectations can be fun. Another example can be found in the well known phenomena of reader/reviewers often (re)make books in their own ideas. Often to the amazement, if not chagrin, of the authors, who have no clue how these various interpretations arise from the story they wrote. All they know is that they're innocent.

Getting back to Mansfield Park, published in 1814. It was well received, and was initially praised, according to the Wikipedia entry, for its wholesome morality. Fifty years later, the Victorians treated all of Jane Austen's novels as social comedies. It was only a hundred years ago that critics and readers discovered the greatness in her work, elevating them into timeless classics which they are considered today. In the case of Mansfield Park, critical opinion on every aspect of this book ranges wildly, from positive to negative. If analyzing literary work was anything more than a literary parlor game, you'd think that the objective true meaning and value of this novel would have been discovered and agreed on after two hundred years. But that's not the case, because reading is always subjective, no matter how closely you read or analyze a work.

I'm not saying that just because I think all I need to get out of a book, I can get from reading, means that you shouldn't delve deeper into the book, if that appeals to you. I give you the joy of it. What does bother me, however, is the implication, indeed, the often bald statement when discussing this method, that doing so is a superior way of reading, for, it is at least implied, a superior sort of reader. It is something that separates the smart and serious readers from the riffraff and rabble. This simply is not the case. Analyzing a story is, in the end, nothing more than a literary parlor game, an enjoyable pastime. Unless, of course, you are using what you find in doing so as a lesson in writing. Then it's homework. 

Links if you are interesting in analyzing literature from am English PhD.'s perspective.

Tristan and the Classics #1 Way to Deepen Your Love for Literature

Style in Literature

Philip Chase & A P Canavan How to Analyze Stories Intro 

Narration, Story, and Plot  

Narrative perspective 

 Characters

 Symbols & symbolism

There several more entries in this series if you haven't had enough.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 86)

 

This week, a science fiction story about an AI generated virtual world, and life within it.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Miira, Innerscape: Book 1 by acflory  B

This book introduces us to Miira Tahn, a wealthy woman in her mid-fifties who is dying of cancer and the price she must pay if she is to continue to live, sort of. She has chosen to live a virtual life within the an AI generated virtual world, but it involves sacrificing her body to do so. The story, set a hundred years in the future, envisions people visiting and playing within an AI generated virtual world, with their full senses. People can experience the full range of life, see, smell and feel everything within this virtual world - as well as interact realistically with others who are in it just as in the real world. However, in the case of Miira, once she enters it, she can never return to the real world because her body is wracked cancer and that must be dealt with. A company, Innerscape, offers a service wherein they will dismantle her diseased body, eliminate the cancer, and replace damaged organs with artificial ones that will keep her brain alive, for a time, with her body, what is left of it, maintained in a vat at the facility until the person's organs naturally fail of old age.

This story offers a very interesting take on the idea of living beyond death. In most stories this involves transferring one's consciousness to a computer and some sort of robot. In this story, the person is freed of their body and able to roam a virtual world as real as the real one - without consequences until they die naturally. Flory goes into great detail about how this process is done, and how Miira is conditioned to accept this new reality, plus how the AI generates a flawless reality for her. This is very much a hard science fiction book that takes a serious look at the medical and psychological issues that would be needed to be addressed to make this possible.

While Miira's journey into the Innerscape is primary focus of the story, there are several action orientated chapters - that come somewhat out of left field, and are not directly explained at first - that involve other people and events which, as the story goes along, the reader comes to discover are also taking place in this virtual world and are in some way connected to events in the outside world. No doubt, these interludes will become more significant in the following two volumes of this story, since this is only the first book of a three book series. All in all, I would say that this in a very unique treat for fans of hard-science fiction and cyberpunk.

Introducing Glencrow Summer, my Project 2026 Novel

 

 
I am delighted to announce the release of my 2026 novel, Glencrow Summer, slightly earlier than scheduled. It's Amazon ebook release will be on the 20th of February 2025 followed shortly by its Audible release. You can pre-order it HERE for $3.99. The Amazon paperback version will likely be released a bit earlier, the date to come. All my other ebook, and audio book versions, the FREE versions from the various retailers, will be available on or before the 20th, depending on when it clears my beta readers. More information on that date when I know it.

While my goal remains to write one novel a year, I believe in making hay while the sun shines, and at the moment, for some reason, the sun is shining brightly on my writing. I intend to make hay writing for as long as it shines and release the books once I finish them.

I have already talked about the influences that shaped this book in previous blog posts, and I will no doubt be talking more about this novel in the coming weeks. But for now, here are the covers, and its blurb. Stay tuned!

Areyou weary of long, dark, and grim fantasy epics? Tired of evilpriests, ruthless kings, sinister queens, knaves, andscoundrels—intricate palace intrigues and endless wars? Are youjaded by blood-soaked tomes of battle after battle, death afterdeath? Need a break from accounts of disembowelment, torture, rape,and murder? In short, are you looking for a different sort offantasy? Look no further.

Again.

Are you in the mood for a summer long holiday in the north woods?

GlencrowSummeris, like its companionnovel, ChateauClare,a leisurely paced, mundane slice-of-life fantasy novel set in apost-magic, Edwardian-era world. While this novel is set in the sameworld, three years after ChateauClare,it can be read as a stand alone novel, since it features newcharacters and a new setting. Once again, the stakes are low, thecompany pleasant.

Ryeth Darth-Ruen is a minorscion of one of the seven remaining Great Houses of Lorria and thepersonal secretary of his uncle Avlen Ruen. He’s asked by hisconcerned uncle to travel to Loc Lore Rey to help look after Avlen's mother, the formidable Aunt Adora Ruen. She intends to spend thesummer in a remote lodge in the north woods, accompanied her faithfulmaid, writing her memoirs. Rye agrees, only to discoverthat Uncle Avlen has a second mission for him – he’s to prevent,or at least delay, the writing of said memoirs. It seems that AuntAdora had a rather scandalous youth, one that Uncle Avlen would rather notwant brought to light. How Rye is to accomplish thisisan unanswered question.

GlencrowSummeris his lighthearted account of a summer spent in Loc Lore Rey. He meets new friends, gets in a bit of fishing, finds a hint of summer romance,and slowly, and quite unintentionally, helps uncover one of the deepestsecrets of the Age of Sorcery – the true story of the legendaryStar Chamber of the Court of Shalott.

C.Litka spins tales of adventure, mystery, and travel set in richlyimagined worlds. In GlencrowSummer,he has written a novel of a long summer holiday and its unexpectedmysteries with his usual cast of colorful, fully realized characters.If you seek to escape your everyday life, you’ll find no bettercompany, nor more wonderful worlds to explore, than in the stories ofC. Litka.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 85)

Another library hold book came in, so... Another mystery. The fourth in a series of four. I haven't read the second on yet, as it had a lot more holds on it. Well, on to the book.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Rivals in the City by Y S Lee   C

This cover calls it a "Mary Quinn Mystery." I don't know if she is planning more of them or not. They used to be called "The Agency." As you may recall, the premise is that Mary Quinn was saved from the gallows for theft as a child and raised in a private school that prepares girls for a successful life as a woman in Victorian England. The best and the brightest were invited to become undercover agents, on the theory that women were often overlooked. Mary Quinn is one such agent.

In this story we return to characters central to the first story to tie up at least one loose end, though it seems like several others were left dangling. Like all the other ones I've read, the story is rather over the top, but in this installment, only the premise is. It is actually rather prodding, featuring little snapshots of Victorian London, of which the author is an expert at. The appeal of these books for me was the character of Mary Quinn, and while that is still the case, it's not so much in this book. And, as I hinted at, the premise is pretty unbelievable, and how it actually was worked was not all that well explained. And the ending, melodramatic in a classic melodramatic way, with a gun pointing at our heroine. In addition there seemed to be characters who were left hanging at the end, their fates undefined. 

I see that this series is considered YA, and that may well explain how loose its plotting is. Well, as you can see, this installment left me feeling pretty so-so about the book, and the series as a whole. The first book while over the top, was a fair bit more entertaining than this one. You would hope they'd get better as they went along. Now, while I have yet to read the second installment I don't think they have. We'll have to see how that one goes when I get it, but it won't be for months yet. I'm not holding my breath in anticipation.

The Project 2026 Inspirations Part Two

In my first installment of this series I talked about the shape and scope of the story, in this one I want to talk about its mood. 

Though I toured Scotland some 50 years ago, I have such a poor memory of my own life, that I have little authentic memories of the experience. I know some of the things I did, but far from all. Which is to say, that much of my "idea" of Scotland comes not from personal experience, but from the books set in Scotland that I've read. I have a much better memory for things like that. These books include a number of John Buchan stories, like The 39 Steps, and Huntingtower, and John MacNab, as well as a number of Compton Mackenzie stories, like Monarch of the Glen, and Whisky Galore that are also set in the Highlands of Scotland. I've tried to give my Loc Lore Rey district a sense of place like that, though it is also very different, far more forested, recalling my vacations spent in Ontario Canada's Lake of the Woods area. As I said, this is going to be another "What I did on my Summer Vacation" story, and I want to get something of that timelessness that would be spending a whole summer in a cabin in the north woods.

The emotional component, at least of the narrator, are actually drawn from a tune with lyrics by Holt Marvell (Eric Maschwitz) music by Jack Strachey called These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You), It is a melancholy song the lyrics written on a Sunday afternoon between coffee and vodka in 1936. And specifically, Ella Fitzgerald's complete 7:31 minute version on Ella and Louis Again. You can hear it HERE on YouTube, so I won't include all the lyrics here. Now, I'm not much of a poetry fellow, and no doubt the lyrics are pretty basic poetry, but the images they conjure up and the mood they create is, for some reason, so very vivid for me - in a very much 1936 way. "The Ile de France with all the gulls around it" or "The sigh of midnight trains in empty stations" or "The waiters whistling as the last bar closes" reminds me of the Paris I never knew, at least in this life. I want to bring that mood into the outlook of my narrator. That and a bit of Chet Baker's  live version of I Get Along Without You Very Well from the album Straight from the Heart, The Last Great Concert Vol ll. that you can hear HERE. Heck, that whole album. By this time in his life Chet knew heartbreak well.

I also envision a singer in the story who looks something like Julie Collins as she looks on the album cover of Strangers Again or with Joan Baez Diamonds and Rust video HERE. In short, lots of musical inspirations for Project 2026.

Otherwise, well, there is going to be a little fishing in the story, fly fishing to be exact. Never much of a fisherman, I took up fly fishing when my son got into fishing. I decided that if I wasn't going to catch fish, I might as well have fun trying, and fly fishing seemed to be an interesting way to try to catch fish in and of itself. I think I'll put a little of that into the story as well.

There are also some old favorite tropes of mine in the story, too many, in fact, but alas, as an old dog, new tricks are hard to learn.

Well these are all the ingredients that I can think of that I'm tossing into the mix for my next novel. We'll have to see what it ends up tasting like. I am hopeful it will all come together to entertain you.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 84)

 

Though I moved my L L Bean mission-style easy chair from the photo of my wall of books, it usually sits right next to it. The authors on the shelves that I can reach over, pick out, and read without having to get up from this chair include Raymond Chandler, Sax Rohmer, and P G Wodehouse. I was between library books, and so, with nothing to read, I reached out and picked one out to reread. 

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Joy in the Morning (AKA Jeeves in the Morning) P G Wodehouse  B+

This one is one of the middle books of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster novels, dating from 1946. In general, I like the earliest of these stories, with Right Ho Jeeves! being my favorite novel. However, uncharacteristically for me, I actually might like the Jeeves and Bertie Wooster short stories even better than the novels. The earliest stories and novels have a freshness to them. As time went on, they became more and more formulaic as Wodehouse continued to churn out these and other books for five decades. This book in particular is very densely written, and while it has its share of laugh out loud lines - one of the characters is a writer and Wodehouse has a lot to say about writers - I found it was sometimes slow going because it was so wordy. Clever, but wordy. The reason for this wordiness, I suspect is that Wodehouse had six years to write it. 

As it happened Wodehouse was living in France when the Nazis invaded France and he ended up interned for the duration of the war. Indeed, he got into some very hot water in England when he agreed to appear on a German radio broadcast, intending to assure his fans that he was alright, but it was considered in England paramount to treason for aiding and abetting the Germans. He lived in the US after the war. In any event, he had six years to go over and polish this novel, and it shows, for better or worse.

The story is typical, and nothing too original for P G. Actually its rather loosely constructed, with Jeeves running the show. He's helping Bertie's uncle Percy by marriage (to Aunt Agatha) to strike a business deal. This task brings Bertie to a Steeple Bumpleigh. Most are characters are ones we've met already in previous stories. We have his ex-fiancée Florence Craye, Uncle Percy's daughter, along with that familiar pest, his son, Edwin, the boy scout who's always several days behind on his good deeds, and Stilton Cheesewright, now a police man. New to this one is Nobby Hopwood, the girl who wants to marry is old pal, the writer, Boko Fittleworth. While Jeeves tries to help Uncle Percy land his business deal, Bertie tries various schemes to get his Uncle Percy to accept Boko as Nobby's husband, since she is his ward, and she needs his permission to marry before the age of 21. While Florence is engaged to Stilton, their romance is on the rocks, and Bertie fears he'll end up being Florence's second option if that engagement goes south. And well, all the usual mayhem ensues as Bertie tries, and largely fails, at various schemes to help Nobby and Boko while at the same time attempting to avoid becoming Florence's default husband.

As I said at the top. Lots of clever writing, plenty of smiles and laughs but for me, it lacks the off-the-cup looseness and inventiveness of the first volumes of the series, hence the B+ grade.  

BookTube and Me

In the last few years I've gotten into the habit of watching "book tube" videos on YouTube, which is to say watching people review and talk about books. I think I can credit it for a revival of my book reading. Since the turn of the century, I maybe read a dozen books a year. Even less when I started writing my own stories. But in 2022, I at least started to read 40 books, in 2023, that number jumped to 108, and settled down to a respectable 53 last year. Those 53 books included longer and a wider variety than I'd been reading before. All to the good, this in spite of the fact that most of the YouTube videos I watch are on books I'm not very interested in.

Specifically, I watch channels devoted mostly to fantasy books. Which is hard to explain, since I'm not really a fan of fantasy. I read one every now and again, but most of the books they talk about I have no desire to read. I first started watching science fiction channels, but these days I like science fiction even less than fantasy. In fact I don't like science fiction at all.

So why am I wasting my time hearing about books I'm never likely to read?  A good question. One reason may be that some of these channels cover more than fantasy, and I've read a number of non-fantasy books they've promote, as well as some of the fantasy ones that sound vaguely interesting. But the main reason is that they talk about what they like in books, and being a writer of books, I am interested in that.

Alas, I have to admit that I doubt any of them would like my books. I don't write the books they, and likely many readers, seem to like. I've identified four of those reasons why.

The first is that these book people value being emotionally moved by the stories they read. The more the better. Just as sports fans savor the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, it seems that readers, at least booktubers, want their books to stir emotions in them. I, on the other hand, am not a fan of strong emotions. I much prefer peaceful contemplation and a pleasant, uneventful life to strong emotions, in both my life and my reading. This bias is likely reflected in my writing. I don't write strong emotional scenes or situations. The first person narrator doesn't dwell on his emotions, and the other characters' emotions are only seen, not felt. I'm quite sure my books would not deliver the emotional impact these readers look for in a book.

Secondly, as much as I like to think that my stories are character driven, I don't think they measure up to the book tubers' masters of that trait. They cite  Stephen King and Robin Hobbs as masters of characters. I've tried reading both those authors and DNF booth attempts. The King book was 11/22/63. I found that I was too deeply into the head of its first person narrator - too many trivial thoughts such that I found it vaguely creepy, in fact. I abandoned the Hobbs book after pages and pages of a side character thinking about mostly trivial things that had little to do with the story at hand. It was just too boring. I don't know how my characters come across to the reader, but I'm not much of a "people person." I don't make a study of people, and no doubt that is reflected in my narrator's description of people and my treatment of them. Thus, I think my writing may well fall short of what character-driven readers expectations.

Thirdly, many, though not all, of these book tubers value beautiful writing. One book tuber spend half an hour breaking down two paragraphs from a Janny Wurts fantasy book praising how masterful and wonderful her writing is. The first line of which was; "Dakar snapped awake, gasping and soaked in runnels of terrified sweat."  All I could think of was, I didn't know sweat could be terrified. As for runnels, I'd just have to guess what they were, not too hard, but still. Essentially this is what I would consider purple prose. We all have our own sense of beauty, so this is not a criticism. I prefer wit and cleverness in my reading, and try to put some of that in my writing. Otherwise I'm more in the Georges Simenon school of writing, which is to say, writing plainly to build scenes upon very concrete descriptions in order to create a sense of place and mood. At least that is what I aspire to do.

And fourthly, they often talk about the themes in books, issues they addresses in the narration. Often deep and serious themes and subjects are said to be explored in the story. I have no idea how much of this has been explicably put into the story and how much these readers find for themselves in the story. All I know is that I never read a book to analyses it for themes. Nor do I ever explore themes in my books. If you found any, great. But I'm innocent. I write solely to take the reader someplace outside of everyday life, and to entertain them while there. Period. I've no wisdom to impart, but then, no one listens to me anyway. Indeed, I consider my novels light reading, and I'm unapologetic about that. 

So, long story short, my work would not be a booktuber's darling. Many authors send these book tubers books to be featured for a minute in their "book hauls" and in the hopes that they might, someday, read it, and love it, and promote it. I'm not going to bother. I'm pretty sure I have to look elsewhere for my audience.

These days I'm slowly expanding my book tube viewing, looking for someone who has similar taste to me. Anything is possible. Nevertheless, I do enjoy hearing what they say, not only about books, but about their life as "content creators" on YouTube, as there are parallels to the problems faced by author/publishers finding and maintaining an audience. All in all, an enjoyable way to spend one's free time.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 83)

I have (well had at the time I wrote this post and read this book) several books on hold at the library that should be showing up soon, so to hold me over, yet another Cadfael mystery this week. What will I do after I've read the last one?

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Potter's Field by Ellis Peters  A

A body is uncovered when the Abby of St Peter and Paul puts a plow to a field that they had exchanged with with another abbey. The Field used to used by a Potter who decided after many years of marriage that he had the calling to become a monk, and left his wife to become one. This was allowed at the time, the man was free to follow his calling, while the wife was still considered married and could not marry again. The Potter's wife very strongly objected to his decision, and disappeared shortly after her husband took to becoming a monk. The bones of a woman, who had the hair of the monk's former wife is found buried in the field close to his cottage. While there was no way to identify who this woman was, who else could it be? Suspicion turns to her former husband, now a monk. It falls on Cadfael and his friend, the sheriff, Hugh Beringer to discover the truth. And it wasn't easy, the truth being hard to come by, with may false leads.

Another good book featuring Ellis Peter's attention to characters and the time period.

There are not many Cadfael stories to go. One more novel in the omnibus volume I'm reading and two more novels and three novellas in the final omnibus volume. What will take their place?