C. Litka's Blog, page 25

The Rosie Project Revisited

The Rosie Project is a humorous novel by Graeme Simsion that I read and reviewed back in August of this year, You can read my review, or a Wikipedia article to learn more about it. You can  also sample it on Amazon or Google books.

The short synopsis is that the story concerns a brilliant Australian college professor who is on the Asperger's spectrum. He decides that he needs to be married. Being both socially awkward and detail orientated, he wants to find his wife in the most efficient way possible; through the various dating apps together with a 16 page survey to be filled out by the women who would like to date him. Needless to say, pickings are few. 

However, due to a misunderstanding, he asks Rosie to a date under the false assumption that she is an applicant. Nevertheless, they hit it off... sort of, and their growing relationship is the basis of the story. 

The book explores the mindset of a person on the Asperger's spectrum, but the author is not on that spectrum. However, a regular reader of mine, who has lived that life, read my review, searched out, found and read the book. He recently emailed me his reactions to the book. I thought that they were entertaining, interesting as well as educational, so I asked him if he would be willing to share his reactions with my blog readers. He has kindly allowed me to publish his remarks - Thank you. 

So what we have below is his thoughts inspired by certain passages in the book. The passages he quoted from the book are in bold italics with our guest blogger’s reaction to them below.

Our contributor's observations on The Rosie Project begin with a few general comments on the book and his experiences and then are reactions to specific quotes from the book to further illustrate his points.

The Rosie Project (Simsion,Graeme) The "Rosie Project" is a quite interesting novel,the style is intriguing and funny. I did not like the last part ofit. Seems a lot of books of this type end in marriage as the highestpurpose in life. It's boring. I started reading the sequel, "TheRosie Effect" but this was a horror. It started where the"Project" ended and I was not able nor willing to continuereading that one. Okay, if readers want babies and mothers the authorgives it to them but it's still boring. A few funny dialogues doesn’thelp.

Concerningthe Asperger Syndrome, what the author has written is correct, butnot comprehensive. First and foremost Aspergers are sensitive againstinfluences, like flickering fluorescent tubes, noises or evenemotions of other people. I can't work in a room with amalfunctioning tube, let aside with some employee running radiomusic, and I asked a friend of mine not to use sad emoticons in here-mails because they cause me depression. I can't stand seeing how adog or a child is mistreated, I feel forced to intervene. The resultmight be one of the following.

Overload, Over-stimulation. Everythingsuddenly is experienced by the person at 100 percent. Noises are asif a bomb explodes, lights cause extreme effects, problems includingemotions of other persons can not be kept separate from their ownemotions. 

Shutdown. The person is unable to act or react. I watcheda cashier who was confronted with a problem she could not solve. Shejust sat there for minutes, not able to speak. 

Meltdown, panic, atotal loss of control, experienced as fight for life. The subjectdoes not feel pain nor understands that he might cause pain anddanger to others, risk his own life or might be punished. 

So, I thinkthe author might have observed persons in the autistic spectrum buthas no profound knowledge about Aspergers Syndrome nor is he onehimself.

"Mostdiseases have some basis in our DNA, though in many cases we have yetto discover it."

TheAsperger Syndrome and being part of the Autistic Spectrum is nodisease. I believe that it was important for the human race that atiny part of them think differently and act differently, e.g. livealone in a hut in the woods and detect how to make fire. As ananalogy, scientists have found out that the survival of a stone agetribe might be promoted if some, but not all women live until theyare grandmothers, helping to raise the children and providing soundadvice from their experience.

"brainfunction that had been inappropriately medicalized"

Youcan't medicalize autism. You might apply drugs which have a sedatingeffect. You must educate the non-autistic part of the people totolerate autism, e.g. that autists are missing the instinctivebehaviour to make eye contact and that this is not a sign that theyare lying.

"Nowwe would have the inevitable small talk. I could have spent fifteenminutes at home practicing aikido."

Nowthat's a calculation I, being myself in the autistic spectrum, makeall the time.

"offeringpractical advice, but it seemed that she preferred to discuss trivia"

Yep.I often teased my partner she should make notes when I explainsomething to her. I am not able to discuss trivia.

"Itseems hardly possible to analyze such a complex situation involvingdeceit and supposition of another person’s emotional response, andthen prepare your own plausible lie"

Correct.I don't lie unless it's necessary for a good joke. It takes too muchtime and effort.

"Icontinued with my presentation as I had prepared it."

Correct.I take much trouble to plan and prepare an activity, e.g. a tour withmy bike club. Sometimes I had arguments with my group if suddenly themajority of them voted for changing the plan. Too much depended on myplans, e.g. to take a route where the sun would not shine from thefront directly into my eyes.

"Asperger’sisn’t a fault. It’s a variant. It’s potentially a majoradvantage"

Maybean advantage for mankind - some think that Einstein, whose strengthis said to think things which are inconceivable for other people, wasan Asperger. But the individual lacks the support of all other peopleand often is considered crazy and stupid.

"sheput her hand on my shoulder. I flinched automatically. "

That'snormal.

"Noflexibility?” “Definitely not"

Thisis definitely a disadvantage of being an Asperger.

"BeforeI met Gene and Claudia I had two other friends"

Okay,I am a senior so most friends and all relatives in my life havepassed away anyway. But today I have four friends which I communicatevia whatsapp, messenger or email. In the average I may see them twotimes per year.

"Shetold me that her birthday had always been her favorite day of theyear. I understood that this view was common in children, owing tothe gifts, but had not expected it in an adult"

Idon't celebrate my birthdays. Why celebrate when my remaininglifetime just has been reduced by one year.

"Mostadults with Asperger’s syndrome don’t know they have it"

Igot my diagnosis at 62 years.

"thehoroscope readers", "the sports watchers, thecreationists", "the homeopaths"

Idon't understand them. I am personally suffering to be locked withall of them on the same planet. I only can bear them when I rememberI might be responsible for them, e.g. my coworkers while I am betweenthe CEO and them.

"acceleratedworkout at the gym, achieved by deleting the shower", "AlthoughI was perspiring heavily from the heat and exercise"

Whybother with showering daily if I don't meet people anyway. When I wasa child, everybody bathed on Saturdays.

"Thecorrect answer is (c) on time,” I said. “Habitual earliness iscumulatively a major waste of time" 

Can't stand people whocome early to an appointment. If I expect somebody for 4 hours P.M.,I need my time for preparations, to have ready fresh made coffee by3:50 and finished setting the table by 3:59.

"Howoften do you train?” 

“Three times per week"

At50, I started training karate four times a week. Not because I wantedto become a superman, but because for Aspergers it is extremelydifficult to learn new, rhythmic movements, e.g. dancing, or karatekatas.

"Ihad not been to an art gallery since the tenth of May, three yearsbefore"

(Grin)That could be me, telling somebody else or composing an entry in myweblog which my few friends have the password of. Yesterday's entrywas: " Kl. Rasenmäher: Messer und Haube abgeschraubt, Grasresteim Motor ausgeblasen und die Luftfilter gereinigt sowie mitHeißklebepunkten wieder eingefügt, den dicken Grasfilz mitzurechtgeschnitzten Hölzchen abgekratzt. Das Messer hatte ichzuletzt am 14.1.23 geschliffen, davor am 19. April 21."Translation (short): "Cleaned the small lawn mower, removedsickle bar and hood, cleaned motor and filters. Last time I sharpenedthe cutter bar was on 14 January, 2023 and before that on 19. April,2021".

"Iput the herb and vegetable mixture in the large saucepan with thewater, salt, rice wine vinegar, mirin, orange peel, and corianderseeds."

Myblog entry from yesterday: "Abends zwei Hähnchenflügel, 20minbei Höchsteinstellung 230 Grad, 5min auf dem Gußgrill, weitere 5mindrauf belassen". Translation: In the evening I had two chickenwings, 20min at the maximum of 230 degrees Celsius, 5min on the castiron electric grill, stayed on it another 5min".

"Rosiecould leave and life would return to normal"

Correct.I like to have a visitor. Then I am glad if he/she's left and I canreturn to my routines and planed tasks.

"Iwent to the whiteboard and started writing up revised preparations"

Yeah,I have plans for everything, daily, week, months, life.

"“Well,”she said, “it’s been an evening. Have a good life.”

Itwas a nonstandard way of saying good night. I thought it safer tostick with convention. “Good night." I never know what I amexpected to say.

"Itold him that the flavor didn’t matter, as long as it containedalcohol."

That'smy standard line, meant as a joke or to shock people I can't stand.

"beingreminded that I needed to try harder to “fit in"

That'swhat I was told all my life. "Fit in with the onward surge ofthe lemmings, which inevitably ends in disaster".

"shehardly spoke at all. This made the walk quite pleasant"

Ionce met a girl with whom I made a trip to a beautiful lake and wewatched, smiling, a nutria who had no idea we were there. She hardlyspoke at all. She then was my partner for decades and still is mybest friend.

"hewas large and angry. In order to prevent further violence, I wasforced to sit on him".

Sofunny!

"Iam not naturally a dexterous person"

Aspergersnever are. That is the reason for: "considerable practice over along period"

"Idiagnosed brain overload and set up a spreadsheet to analyze thesituation."

WhenI told a psychiatrist exactly the same thing and showed her a 30 yearold spreadsheet, she immediately diagnosed me with Asperger Syndrome.

"Lookat me when I’m talking"

Aspergerscan't do that. In the moment where they forget strict to controltheir viewing direction they won't look at the other person.

"mydefault assumption is that people will be honest"

Yeah,that was the big problem in my life. I never thought so lowly likesome other people. Once I voluntarily maintained a public areabordering at my property. A neighbour asked me what I am doing,adding public property to my own. I never knew that the idea, tosteal a little bit of land, existed on earth. Another time, I paid myfood in a snack bar and took it to my table. Then I was admonishednot to steal the salt shaker. I did not know that there might bepeople thinking so lowly and are so stupid to believe that somebodywould steal a salt shake worth 1 Dollar. I never went to that placeagain. The are not really my race there, they only look like me.

"Withthe repeat button on", "Unlike many people, I am verycomfortable with repetition"

Ofcourse. If I like a piece of music, why not have it on repeat forsome hours or days.

"Onesentence per day. Leave out eating, sleeping, and travel.” Thatmade it easy. “Sunday, Museum of Natural History; Monday, Museum ofNatural History; Tuesday, Museum of Natural History; Wednesday—”“Stop, wait! Don’t tell me Wednesday. Keep it as a surprise."

SOFUNNY

"Howlong have you had that shirt?”

 “Fourteen years"

Iam quite experienced with turning the collar right side out after afew years so the shirt looks like new again. Have the best sewingmachine you can buy for money (Bernina).

" never watch sports. Ever. "

Ido sport. I do not sit in an armchair and watch other people doingsports. That doesn't help for better health and there is no excitingcombat like, for example, in participating in a basketball game. 

 

The Saturday Morning Post (No.18)

Here is the second installment of my review/thoughts on Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, which I am treating as a novel in 12 parts rather than a 12 novel series. I am going to be a bit briefer in these reviews, saving most of my more general thoughts to when I'm finished reading them, wherever that turns out to be.

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.

A Dance to the Music of Time: Summer by Anthony Powell

At Lady Molly's (1957)

Casanova's Chinese Restaurant  (1960)

The Kindly Ones  (1962)

These novels can be described as a series of encounters described in great detail with established and new characters over the course of decades. If you are interested in who these characters are based on, there is a web site here that lists them along with photos from real life and the TV series, I believe. The website is also a resource for all things A Dance to the Music of Time and Powell. 

At the start of At Lady Molly's Jenkins is working writing scenarios for the film studio. Starting in 1927 a certain number of films, initially 7.5% raised to 20% in 1935, that were shown in Britain had to be made in Britain or its Empire. They usually where the second film on the program, and many of them were made quickly and cheaply just to fulfill the requirement. In any event, a friend from the studio takes Jenkin to Lady Molly's house where people seemingly gather every night to socialize. Here he meets several new or previously minor characters, as well as one or two of the usual suspects. From this first gathering flows several more extended encounters with various people connected one way or another with that night.

His affair with the married woman is over at the start of this installment, and by the end of it, he has encountered the woman who I believe is related to Molly that he is going to marry - knowing so at first sight. She is one of the youngest of a large family which he knows at least some of the members. There is a  tangle of inter-family relationships  throughout this series, a tangle that I can't hope to untangle, and don't bother trying. As I said in the previous post, I just go with the flow.

With Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, we start with a rather confusing back track in time in order to introduce some new characters; a composer, Moreland, and his musical friends before taking up the story some time after At Lady Molly's. Jenkins is now married and his wife is recovering from a miscarriage. Once again the story consists of several gettogethers this time with his musical friends, a party or two, and an introduction to his various eccentric in-laws. We're now in the late 1930's with the civil war in Spain going on. Every once in a while one of his old schoolmates shows up, including Wnderpool, usually rather disastrously. As it has become the pattern with these stories, much of the action is describing various gatherings, large and small in exhaustive detail, with much musing on the characters, old and new that he meets at these gatherings.

We take another trip back in time at the start of The Kindly Ones, this time back to his childhood in 1914. His father is an army officer and they are living in a "haunted" rented bungalow near Aldershot where is his father is stationed. We are introduced to the various servants and their various idiocentric behaviors, This chapter comes to a head when, while entertaining the Cello playing General Conyers and his wife, who we've meet previously, and waiting for the unwelcomed arrival of Uncle Giles, one of the servants, who having seen a ghost that night, has a nervous breakdown. Uncle Giles brings the news of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand sparking the first world war. 

We then skip ahead twenty five years to the waning days of peace before the start of World War ll, and a gathering once more featuring the composer Moreland who he backtracked to introduce in Casanova's Chinese Restaurant. And once again we have a series of meetings of various sorts with old and a few new characters, with the story ending at the beginning of World War ll and Jenkins, the narrator looking to get into the army.

I realize that I am being rather uninformative in these reviews, in part because of the nature of these stories; not much happens beyond the house parties Jenkins, our narrator, attends, plus a whole lot of reflection on the lives of the people he meets at these affairs. The fact that Jenkins says next to nothing about his life, I think detracts from these stories, since all you are left with this rotating cast of characters, never on screen for all that long at any one time.

More next week.

Writing Season

Well, the leaves are turning and writing season is upon us. I took the spring and summer off from writing fiction. When it's warm enough to be outside, I want to be outside, not inside at my desk. Oh, I maintained my habit of writing by spending an hour or so every morning writing my two blog posts a week, so with that habit still intact, it will be simply a matter of switching over to writing fiction and spending a bit more time writing... Once I have a fiction story completed in my head to write. 

I'm working on that, having spent the idle spring and summer daydreaming a potential new story. I have a setting, a situation, named characters, and even five pages of notes to remind me of what I had dreamed up with, though they will be largely obsolete if and when I start writing, since the details of the story change week to week, day to day. But even with months of thinking about the story, I haven't been able to organize my many little scenes and ideas into something resembling an actual story. And to be honest, I'm far from certain that I will be able to. Nor have all the characters really come into or stay in focus. And while you don't have to know everything before you start writing, and indeed, some writers know next to nothing about the story when starting, past experience has taught me that I need to know not only the beginning, and the end, but the middle as well. And to be honest, at this point, I don't even have the end clearly in mind.

The fact is that this time around, I'm determined to have a complete story, one with a beginning, a middle, and an end solidly in mind before I start setting it to words on a screen. In the recent past, when I reached the middle of the story I thought I knew, I discovered that I had merely done a lot hand waving over the middle of it, content with only vague ideas about what to do when I got there. They proved so vague that I couldn't put words to them, forcing me to stop and work something out in greater detail, breaking the flow of writing. This time I'm determined to have the entire plot in my head; indeed, I might even write a bullet point outline down before I start so I can write straight through the story without getting lost in the middle. However, with summer of daydreaming, the fact that I've not built that complete story in my mind suggest that this story may not end up going anywhere. Always a very real possibility.

As for the story that I do have in mind, it would be released a straight "Fiction/Literature" category story, though with no pretense to being literary fiction. This time around I'm deliberately not aiming at any specific genre, even though it will have elements of fantasy/science fiction, mystery, and romance in it. Indeed, it will be step further away from genre writing than the Girl on the Kerb. 

I'm thinking that the story will reflect the types of stories I've been reading and enjoying recently; that is to say small, slice of life stories where things happen, but there is no strong, over arching story line, i.e. no Hero's Journey or epic quest. It will probably have a mystery for an underlying driving force. And while the story is set, in my mind, in my usual "universe", on a planet settled by Homo Stellar humans with their 200 year life spans. That event is in the distant past, suppressed and distorted into myth. The setting will be my usual Edwardian era type with a mix of old and new technology.

The working title of this piece is Chateau Claire and the premise is that our narrator finds that he is the heir of a once important family he never knew he was related to. With the death of an unknown great aunt, he comes into the possession of the the title chateau on Summer Isle. The story will recount the changes his life that ensue from this event, as well as a mystery surrounding this great aunt.  At present I've played out lots of little incidents in my mind, come up with lots of ideas for plot points at the beginning, but things peter out after that. I haven't been able to bring them all together into a cohesive story that would keep readers reading it. I expect I'll keep working on this story until the end of the year, but since it takes me three to four months to write the first draft of a novel, and several more to revise it, I will need to start writing it by the new year for it to be my 2024 novel. At the moment it is very much a bird in a bush. If I don't have it in hand by then, it's on to plan B.

Plan B is to return to and finish writing A Passage to Japara. That story, currently at 45K written is half or more done. It is currently aground on the reef of two major scenes that I've yet to invent original enough details for to make them worth writing. I have to believe that, if motivated enough, I could come up with those scenes, and get the damn story afloat, written and done with. However, at the moment it is Chateau Claire that holds my interest, though I have a feeling Passage to Jarpara has the best chance of being released in 2024. Who knows? It could be neither. I'm not under contract, so I don't have to write anything.

Stay tuned.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 17)

Well, with the Blandings Castle saga behind me, I have decided to embark on yet another saga, this one quite different. It is, however, also set in England and it covers the period from 1921 to the 1960's. I'm talking about Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time series of twelve novels, or a novel in twelve parts. The twelve books in the series are often divided into four "seasons" of three books each. These three book omnibuses are how I purchased the books - and yes, not having learned my lesson with the Lonesome Dove saga, I purchased the entire series from Abe Books in one go. 

The blurb says that the "...sequence chronicles the lives of over three hundred characters and is a unique evocation of life in twentieth century England. It is unrivalled for its scope, its humour and the enormous pleasure it has given to generations." As someone who finds Britain in the first half of the last century as my favorite place and time, this sounded like a series right up my alley. I came across it in the Axillary Memory blog of James Wallace Harris, and you can read his far more thoughtful reviews of the books;  here, here, and here.

In this installment I will talk about the first three novels/installments of the series A Dance to to the Music of Time: Spring. that I have read to date. I will keep any insights gained from reading further books to when I read them, or the final entry, however far I get. Thus, what you read here is only how I viewed the work after reading Spring. My impressions may change as I go along.

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.

A Dance to the Music of Time by Nicolas Poussin 

First some notes on how I'm approaching this project.

I will treat this as one novel in 12 parts. Having read the first three novels, I think that each "novel" does not stand on its own very well, and since reading them in order is essential, as characters introduced in the first book, appear and reappear throughout the stories, Without their context from the previous books, their situations would not make a great deal of sense. And since I am treating this as a single novel, I will grade it only after I have read all of the books, or when I  stop reading them, whichever comes first.

I'm reviewing these novels in sets of three, as published in the omnibus versions I purchased. They are designated by the four seasons, and each three novel set seems to cover a decade or so. I am going to treat each of the three "novels" as installments in the 12 part novel. I don't know how many installments I will read back to back without a break. We'll find out.

The stories seem to be semi-autobiographical. Semi in that from what I've read about the author in Wikipedia, the first three stories somewhat reflect the course of the author's life. I suspect that he took people and incidents from his life to use and manipulate to create this work of fiction. For example, while the author went to Eton, the narrator of these stories, Nicholas Jenkins, certainly did not. That said, both went to university, (unnamed in the book) and both worked for a publisher of art books, and both wrote a novel while doing so. So yes, there are parallels, ones that we might explore later on.

The concept of the story is inspired by the painting above. It is a work by Nicolas Poussin entitled A Dance to the Music of Time, painted around 1634-36 The idea is that just as the dancers begin to dance in a circle, and then, one by one each leaves the circle to dance alone before returning to the circle, so do the people one knows, entering and leaving one's life off and on throughout it. There is no doubt a lot more symbolism in the painting, and certainly in the books, but I have a feeling that most of that goes over my poor head.

A Dance to the Music of Time: Spring by Anthony PowellThis volume includes:A Question of Upbringing  (1951)A Buyer's Market   (1952)The Acceptance World    (1955)
These three books or installments cover the time period from about 1921 to 1930 - the final installment mentions the "slump" which I take to be the stock market crash of 1929 in the States. They cover this period like a stone skipped over a still pond; each book is divided into 4 or 5 chapters, each concerns on a certain narrowly focused incident or situation - a dance or a dinner party. Months, if not years, separate the events described within each book, with the intervening period mentioned only in passing. Thus, we are treated to a series of snapshots, rather than any sort of narrative of Britain of the time.
A Question of Upbringing begins with the narrator, Jenkins, in an unnamed boarding school where we are introduced to a cast of fellow students, and other characters who will reappear regularly through the following years. After school he is sent to France to live in a boarding house to learn French, then attends university. 
In Buyer's Market and The Acceptance World we find that he has moved to London and is working for a publishing company that publishes art books. By the end of this set, he has published his first novel, though it is mentioned only in passing, and is carrying on an affair with the separated wife of someone who he once met briefly. 

As I mentioned above, these snapshots which comprise the format of the novel usually cover a single episode in his life and their immediate ramifications. We are treated to a view of life in British upper society, though as the son of an army officer, Jenkins' status is rather undefined. Apparently he comes from a family good enough to be invited to the dances of the upper class. We also get glimpses of the artsy society and left wing political activity. As an eligible bachelor he is is invited to the dinners and balls of "The Season" where the daughters of the rich are formally introduce to society to begin their quest for a suitable husband. Along the way we are introduced to many more reoccurring characters from different parts of his life. If, like my wife, you are need to take notes to keep the characters straight in a mystery story, you might want to have a notebook handy when reading these stories, as they are claimed to have a cast of 300 characters. I just go with the flow, the main characters are on stage often enough, and the side characters, are, well, side characters.
As for Powell's writing style, a passage more or less at random will illustrate it: "That illusion, such as a point of view was, in due course, to appear - was closely related to another belief: that existence fans out indefinitely into new areas of experience, and that almost every additional acquaintance offers some supplementary world with its own hazards and enchantments. As time goes on, of course, these supposedly different worlds, in fact, draw closer, if not to each other, then to some pattern common to all; so that, at last diversity between them, if in truth existent, seems to be almost imperceptible except in a few crude and exterior ways: unthinkable, as formerly appeared, any singe consideration of cause and effect."
In short, this is literary fiction. While my selection might have been chosen for its meandering depths, much of the writing is along the same lines; wordy and thoughtful. No doubt there is a lot of food for thought in these stories, if you care to invest in the time to extract it, though I must confess that my eyes rather glaze over upon coming on passages like this, content to merely get the gist of it. If that. Que sera, sera.
Because this is a first person narrative, Jenkins spends a lot to ink pondering what is going on in all other characters' minds, and in their lives, throughout the story. Indeed the major focus of the stories is speculation on what other people are thinking, why they are doing what they are doing, and what they hope to accomplish, as he encounters them off and on over the years. I will say that the third novel, written several years after the first two, moves at a somewhat brisker pace than the first two, and I have hopes that future installments will have a bit less naval gazing and more dialogue in them. 
My initial hope with these books was to get a sense of Britain in this time period, and I suppose I am; a sliver of it from a certain class of people. Even so, it is interesting enough. My biggest complaint so far is that there has not been one glimpse of joy in the stories he choses to tell, and not a lot of humor, that I can detect, anyway, so far. However, we have only begun and anything can happen as it goes along. 
A small point; in one of the episodes, Jenkins, after attending a ball, runs into an artist friend and his girl helper late at night, and he is invited to join them to get a cup of coffee at "the stall by Hyde Park Corner," where they meet another friend of Jenkins. Many years ago I painted that very stall by Hyde Park Corner, base on a photo in the book, The Spirit of London by Paul Cohen-Portheim (photo #101 2 A.M. At Hyde Park Corner.) I have reproduced my ink painting below.

Coming up next week: A Dance to the Music of Time: Summer

The Girl on the Kerb Experiment

SF 

Six months ago I released my 2023 novel, The Girl on the Kerb. Until this book all my books had been released as either science fiction or fantasy. I used SF mostly as a setting for the story. By doing so, it allowed me the ability to write the story I wanted, as I wanted it, without somehow shoehorning it into a known time and place. Even though my stories were set in the future, many of the settings I chose to use have been reminiscent of life in the first half of the 1900's. I seem partial to that historical period, perhaps having read a lot of stories set in that time period. The Girl on the Kerb was no exception. Though set in the far distant future, the society was reminiscent of the 1930's, with radio, newspapers, trains and cars, but no cell phones, internet, and personal computers. This being the case, I decided to release the book based not on its setting in the far future, i.e. as SF, but on the major plot element of the story, which is to say, as an espionage novel. 

There were both pluses and minuses in doing this. Let's look at them.

On the plus side, I was pretty sure that my regular readers would find the book no matter what category I released it in, so that I did not expect to lose many, if any, regular fans. On the other hand, by releasing the book in a new genre, I could potentially reach new readers. And some of these readers might go on to read more of my other books.

In the minus column there were several points to consider related to these potential new readers. Espionage is not a standalone classification. It falls under the "Thriller" classification, i.e. Thriller/espionage, and Thriller/adventure. I hadn't written a thriller in The Girl on the Kerb unless there is a "cozy thriller" sub-genre. This meant that hardcore thriller readers were not going to find many of the things they usually look for in a thriller; violence, guns, death, sex, and high stakes. In addition they would be on unfamiliar ground, since the story was not set the familiar modern world but in the future. The question was/is how would they react to these twists in the genre? There seemed a good chance that I could annoy at least some of the regular readers of the genre and risk being hit with low ratings as a result. I decided to take that risk.

So how has it gone, after six months?

First off, it enjoyed some very unexpected sales. I can't definitely assign this result to releasing it as an espionage novel, it is probably serendipitous, but I never sold so many books in the first month as I did with The Girl on the Kerb. I released it as I usually do; free everywhere except on Amazon, where I priced it at $3.99. I had the ebook up on preorder for a month, and sold 17 copies at that price in the first week, which was very good for a book of mine. However, within a week Amazon caught wind of the free price elsewhere and decided to match the free price. This was fine with me. I used to let them know about my free prices elsewhere just to get them to do that, but I don't bother any more. Anyway, the switch to free resulted in the sale of several hundred books in a couple of days, which, in turn, seems to have caught the attention of Amazon's promotional algorisms and they must have promoted it somewhere, somehow. It ended up selling 2,610 free copies on Amazon in April. Sales tapered off after that, of course, with monthly sales of 165, 193, 76, 108, only to spike again in September with 864 free copies and 2 at full price (i.e. non-US sales). Which means that in its first six months, I've sold a total of 4,035 copies on Amazon and the book has remained on the upper half of Amazons top 100 free thrillers in its categories ever since release. All told, I've sold over 4,600 copies to date. My usual releases may sell around 1,000 in their first year, at best. Did this have anything to do with its release category? Somehow, someway, I think it does, but I can't prove it.

So then, have  all those sales led to an increase the sales of my other books? 

Just eyeballing my sales on Amazon in the months prior to April and afterwards, I would say no, they stayed pretty much in the range they had been prior to the book's release. However, since ratings are only now coming in at an increased rate, any effect on the sales of my other books may still be a ways in the future. We'll see.

As to my fears, how did thriller readers react to the The Girl on the Kerb? 

First off, perhaps due to the number of sales, it has received far more ratings in the first six months than any other book of mine. It has about 80 rating at this point, all told, but only three reviews, with only one on Amazon. Currently its star rating is 4, plus or minus a decimal point depending on the source. While I can't complain, it is a tad lower than my usual books. The lower rating is due to it having 5 or 6 one star ratings, as well as a similar number of 2 star ratings, which are significantly more than what my books usually garner, especially in the first six months. Plus, its 5 star ratings are less than the 50% level that I would like to see. Of course there is the "and/or" possibility that the book simply isn't as good as my other stories, but that is something that I can't say one way or the other. Still, I'm thinking that I did annoy some readers and that the lower score is a result of some pushback from regular thriller readers. You have to take the rough with the smooth.

Will I do it again?

Yes. Any book I write in the future (birds in the bush) that is not connected to any of my published SF titles will not be sold as SF, even though they will also be set in the future and likely on another world, as usual. One small reason for this is because I'm so over SF. I'm no longer count myself a SF fan. However, given the results of The Girl on the Kerb, I see no reason not to categorize the story by story type rather than setting, and I think that I have a good reason for doing so with any future book. Trying new things in publishing is almost a requirement, unless you're minting money. I'm not.

So what might be my next non-SF book? Stay tuned for a glimpse of that bird in the bush next week.

The Saturday Morning Post (No.16)

This week we return to a Furrowed Middlebrow offering, with a D. E. Stevenson story; Mrs. Tim Gets a Job. Mrs. Tim is the title character in four books of Stevenson. Mrs. Tim is the wife of a British Army Officer, and as such, is often living on her own while her husband is overseas defending the British Empire. A couple of decades ago, I may have read at least one of the earlier books, but if so I've no recollection of the story. I don't think they need to be read in order, but it probably helps. I chose this title because it was one of the most highly rated titles on Amazon of the Furrowed Middlebrow collection.

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.

Mrs. Tim Gets A Job by D. E. Stevenson  B-While I enjoyed this story, I think I prefer the writing of Molly Clavering a bit more than that of Stevenson. Perhaps this is because I seem to detect a slight sense of detachment or coolness in Stevenson's writing, making it for me, just a little less engaging. Anyway, this story, the third of four Mrs. Tim stories, is set in 1946. Mrs. Tim, the wife of the British Army officer, Tim Christie, now serving in Egypt, decides to apply for and takes the job of helping run a hotel in the Scottish Border lands, though with a great deal of misgivings. The hotel owner has been forced to turn her ancestral home into a hotel in order to be able to maintain the large manor house. However, this owner is not a people person, being short and gruff with guests, so she hires Mrs. Tim to help her not only run the place, but to deal with the guests.
The story is written in the format of Mrs. Tim's diary entries, making it a first person narrative, my favorite story format. It chronicles the events leading up to her accepting the job, her experiences as she settles into the job, plus the all the various people she encounters on her travel, hotel guests, and fellow employees, each with their own little stories and, usually, romantic problems.

I felt the story ended a little abruptly, as if Stevenson had reached her word count and decided that she just needed to tie up all the the last of the little subplots in play, and call it a day. However, with this type of story, one without any important overarching narrative, allows for this type of ending. 
One feature of stories like this one set in post war England is a glimpse of how long after the war ended that food rationing and a general scarcity of products remained in place. Well into the 50's times were tough in an England exhausted by six years of war. This is in stark contrast to the boom years after the war in America.
The one other thing that struck me in this story was how Stevenson treated the status of Mrs. Tim, either as the wife of a British Army officer, or by birth. She was portrayed as someone who was above the need to work - several of the characters, including her husband expressed this opinion. And while Mrs. Tim went to work anyway, she never seemed to be completely committed to it as a job. It was just something to do in the moment, after she had been turned out of the house she had been renting prior to this and with her kids in boarding schools. For example, she expected to just take the summer off from the job to spend with her two children, as guests at some relative's country estate. Keeping the hotel running in season wasn't her problem. Nice work if you can get it. One of the interesting things about these novels, no matter how idealized the stories are, is the underlying assumptions about class and society held by the writers of these stories. Most of D E Stevenson's heroines never have to work outside of the home and always have servants to do the domestic work for them inside of it, even if some of them have to scrape by on some small inheritance. The title character in Miss Buncle's Book, is an example, she had to make do with only one servant to keep house and cook for her, until she get married. Married, she then employs several servants, a cook, a maid, and a nanny to look after her children. As I said, nice work if you can get it. I suspect they reflect D E Stevenson's own life and attitude.
For my next reading adventure I am staying in the fictional Britain of the 1920's & 30's (and beyond), but hosted not by a writer of light or comic novels, but a writer of literary fiction. Stay turned to see how that goes.

SPFBO Observations; Reflections On My Writing

As I mentioned previously, having entered Beneath the Lanterns in the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off contest netted me a nice review by Liis. There were several things about the review that struck me as interesting. The great thing about reviews like this is that they allow you to see your work from a different angle, with different eyes. This passage struck me as something I never considered:

"Litka strikes me as a confident author. Confident in what he does and how he wants to tell this story. He doesn't need to rely on the shock factor to keep the hooks in the reader."

I never thought of myself as a confident author in the sense that other authors might be less confident than me. I would think most authors write their story and only publish it when they have confidence that the story is good enough, if not great. Undoubtedly a lot of authors struggle to some degree or another while writing that story, but I don't think that struggle is reflected in the finished work. What I suspect the reviewer to be saying is that I wrote, and entered, a book in the contest that does not, in story or style, conform to the current fashion in fantasy. If that is the case, judging from the reviews of other contestants I've glanced over, she would be right. There is reason for this; I am not a fan of current fantasy and have read very little of it, and this was even more true when I wrote the story in 2018.

But perhaps there is a more vague meaning, which may be boiled down to knowing what I'm doing. As an author you need to know what you're doing. You need to know your audience; what they expect, and then deliver what they expect and more, if you can. But the key to writing with confidence is knowing who you are writing for.

I do. And I keep it simple. My audience is me. 

This singularity of focus makes writing a whole lot easier. Knowing what exactly it is that I like to read means that it just becomes a matter of dreaming up a story that appeals to me and then writing it down. It's just that simple... Right. In any event, all this method then requires is a leap of faith that there are readers who like what I like. In the beginning that may have been a blind leap of faith, but over the years I know now that there are some people will like what I like. And that is enough.

I should mention that this is probably not be the best approach to take if you are aiming to write commercial fiction, i.e. stories designed to sell books in large numbers to a large audience, unless you yourself are very immersed in the large audience you are writing for, and thus, know that you and they want in a story. I am sure that there are authors who are lucky enough to find themselves in that position, but I suspect that for many others, to write books that sell in great numbers, they need to carefully study what sells, and then make themselves write books with the potential to sell. Writing for them, is a job. 

Since I don't need or want a job, I write what pleases me, accepting that my work will appeal to a limited audience. I don't know if this is confidence so much as accepting that what will be, will be. I think this in either case, it is a pretty good attitude for most authors. Writing what's in your heart and head, brings out the best your creatively, while at the same time, making writing so much simpler and rewarding, independent of sales numbers. 

This is not to say that I never take my readership into account. I do, sometimes. For example I set out to write the Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure stories in part because they are set in the same setting as my most popular book, The Bright Black Sea. That said, I wrote them as mystery stories, using different characters and a different solar system, so they were not carbon copies of what I'd written before. I wrote them as mysteries, in part because I had something to say about mystery stories. The one thing I hate about mystery stories is that they almost always revolve around a murder, or two, or three... I don't know if mystery writers are just too lazy to come up with a mystery that matters that doesn't involve someone getting killed, or if murder is what the readers, i.e. the market, demand in mystery stories. Whatever. In my mysteries, since I still write for myself, none of them involve investigating a murder.

Liis also said in the review:

"What might not work for some readers? The Prose. I don't know what it is that makes readers shun lyrical prose these days. It's like an insurmountable mountain that masses, looking for quick and easy gratification, are unwilling to climb. But when you get into the prose, when you start to go with the flow, when you give it a chance the reward is worth it. I wouldn't say this title is overly descriptive, it is exactly what it advertises itself for - an old fashioned novel of adventure."

This was something of a head scratcher for me. I certainly don't think that I write with lyrical prose. Lord Dunsany writes lyrical fantasy. I don't. English for Liis, a Estonian who has lived in Ireland for a dozen years, is a second language, so that might explain it. I try to write in a conversational style, and I will admit that I often use two words where one will do, but I don't know if all that makes my writing "lyrical" as I understand the word, compared to modern fantasy writing.

Perhaps what she meant is that I have a distinctive narrative voice. I would like to believe I do. I try to make the narration flow as if the narrator was speaking to you, the reader. Plus, I am not concerned with taking "unnecessary" words out, like the writing advice I frequently come across tells me to do. So maybe my style is not as lean as the current style of writing, but I can't say for certain, as I've not read a lot of modern fantasy, especially self published fantasy. Most likely my writing reflects the books I love, and many of those were written in the first half of the last century which maybe what makes my writing different enough to comment about

However, this is once again a lesson illustrated in the last post; you write your book, your readers make it their own, and that version may not seem like the one you wrote. But you have to let go of your story. You have to let it, not you, speak to your readers. And the story may be better for it.

But enough of SPFBO. Next week... Writing Season. Stay tuned.

The Saturday Morning Post (No.15)

This week we have three fantasy books that I sampled and decided that they were not written for me. The first is War Bunny, Book 1 of The War Bunny Chronicles by Christopher St. John, the second is The Way of Edan, Book One of the Edan Trilogy by Philip Chase, and the third is Perseus Kills His Grandfather by Richard L Pastore.

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.

War Bunny by Christopher St. John  DNF

War Bunny is a fantasy story using animal protagonist, similar to Richard Adams's Watership Down, which I have not read, Brian Jacques's Redwall series of which I've read the first book, and Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, which I've read, plus ten thousand similar books written for kids. It came to my attention via Berthold Gambrel's excellent book review blog, A Ruined Chapel by Moonlight, and his review here. To get a fuller idea of the story, read his review. The book was free at the time so I picked it up. (See how that works?)

The story appears to be set in an post-apocalyptical world where humans are missing and the animals uplifted. The rabbit talk and have an oral tradition of books and a religion. There is probably a fuller explanation of the world in the books, as it is the first of a three book series, but accepting talking animals is the price of admission. I had no problem doing that, though I like some consistency, i.e. the rabbits are not tool using creatures - they seem to be pretty much like your garden variety rabbit, but with speech, a hierarchy, and a religion. On the other hand, an itinerate trader water rat uses his paws as hands and carries his goods in a backpack, i.e. he is given a much more andromorphic treatment. A minor quibble, since Grahame in Wind in the Willows has Mr Toad, a toad, driving not only a horse drawn caravan, but a train, as well as interacting with humans. But still, I like consistency.

My problem with this story - and it is my problem, not the author's - is not those apparent inconsistencies, but rather that, one, it starts with the now seemingly obligatory action scene; the title bunny being chased and just escaping being eaten by a fox. I really don't like that type of opening. Next it has too many point of view characters, jumping from one to another just in the first 8% of the book. I am not a fan of multi-POV stories, which are so popular these days. It also has a violent weasel attack on the rabbit warden in the first 8% of the book, so it's not a kid's book. Finally, there was all this talk about the rabbit's religion. Books heavy on religion are a non-starter with me. I've never read Dune, having passed it up when it first was released, as the blurb mentioned a hero as a messiah. It just turns me off - 12 years of Catholic education can do that to a fellow.

So, as I said from the beginning, all of the reasons I stopped reading this story are my own bugaboos, not the author's. You can't please every reader and shouldn't try, so after reading Berthold's review, and my thoughts, if you think you might like it, give it a try, especially if it is still free.

The Way of Edan by Philip Chase  DNF

Dr Philip Chase is a medievalist, with a PhD in English Literature who teaches college courses on writing, medieval literature, and fantasy literature. He also has a YouTube channel where he reviews fantasy books. This is the first book in a trilogy. I picked it up for free (yes, that's how it works) when he had it on sale for five days to promote the release of the second book in the series. I wouldn't have picked up this book if I had to pay for it, as I didn't think it would be something I'd like. I was right.

Once again, the story starts out with an action prologue in which three disciples, one of whom is the point of view character, of some religion, desecrates the temple of another religion for some reason and they get killed for doing so. Am I hooked? No. Next we start the story proper with a new point of view character, a boy and his dog going out to herd his family's flock of sheep. A page or two later - page 18 to be exact, he gets killed by some sort of creature, a "nightgangers or pucas, as most folk called them," along with all 42  of the poor sheep. So at the 3% mark we have four people killed (two of which are point of view characters) 42 sheep, and his dog. Well, I can't say for certain about the dog, he may've lived, but I doubt it, since he took off after the pucas. Do I like reading about people being killed? No, I don't. Plus, we have that religion thing again, something that I gather from the reviews I've seen on YouTube, plays an important role in the story. Being one of the YouTube content creators' gang, Chase's story has plenty of reviews on YouTube if you are interested in finding out more, since he gets reviewed by all the fantasy BookTubers. 

Now, I must admit that this book was a long shot with me, so it is no surprise that I didn't care for it. I was, however, surprised at how bloody it was out of the gate, given that it was written by a college professor in English literature over the course of 18 years. Basically it started out like a bog-standard grimdark fantasy. I think I would've expected something a bit more, I don't know... literary? classical? original? - not the me-too grimdark fantasy trilogy this seems to be. Maybe if I read further, I might come to a different conclusion - but I'm not going to. He released the third book a couple of weeks ago as this is posted, so if you are interested, you might be able to snag this book at a good promotional price, or for free, if it sounds like something that might appeal to you.

Perseus Kills his Grandfather by Richard L Pastore  DNF

I bought the book along with his The Devil and the Wolf (My review of that book here.) when I saw on Berthold's blog that they were on sale for free. (See, another sale, and a sale is a sale.) I started with this book, but to be honest, I haven't had anything to do with Greek mythology since high school some 60 years ago, and had then, and still have now, no interest in Greek mythology, or anything Greek. I am happy to say that the story does not begin with a violent action scene to hook me, so that didn't put me off. However, due to my lack of interest in the subject, I switched to reading his The Devil and the Wolf instead, and while I enjoyed that book, I have yet to return to this story due, as I said, to a lack of interest in the subject. Maybe some day I will, since I didn't actually dislike it as I did the previous books. But don't hold your breath. I'm just not into the mythology or the era, and consequently, this story. Pastore writes humorous stories and this story is no exception. As with all these books, not finishing this book is on me and my tastes, not the author. If this sounds like your cup of tea, give it a sip.

Next week I return to a Furrowed Middlebrow book, and then it on to a new 12 book epic. Stay tuned.

SPFBO Observations, Reviews in General

Having entered the Self Publishing Fantasy Blog Off, 9th edition (SPFBO 9), I've been reading the reviews of the other books entered. I was struck by the diversity. Not only in the books, but with the diversity of reviewer reactions to them. I've always known that you can't please everyone, and shouldn't try, but it's been eye opening to see just how personal stories become once they are in the hands of readers. 

To illustrate this point, I'll use the story that sunk Beneath the Lanterns in the contest; Deceit by Sharon Rivest. It was chosen as a semi-finalist by Liis over my entry. The blog has to narrow down their selection to just one book, so the other members of the blog's reviewing team read and share their own views on each semi-finalist for their blog. You can read their entire reviews; here. But here is a sample of what everyone thought of Liis' chosen story.

Liis said of Deceit:

Sometimes,and it doesn’t happen often, you start reading a book and it justworks. Everything is exactly the way you like. The story flows, thewriting is smooth, the pacing is perfectly unhealthy for your heartrate but this is what we want! Every word, every bit of dialogue,every scene has captured you and before you know it, the book isfinished. Deceit wasthat book for me. I read a page and I just knew I was going to enjoythis. And I did, all the way to the end... 

Deceit isstructured to follow the main character in two timelines, the presentand the past. This structure is imperative for a story as grim andbrutal as this. This!… is the perfect example of what I want mymain character to do to me – sink his teeth in me so deep that it’sas if I live through every disaster and tragedy right there with him.The character development – the internal conflict and guilt (man, Ido love a bit of guilt!) strike me as the perfect tools to make anystory interesting.

Whatit did incredibly well, for my tastes, was the mental anguish, thetorment of regrets, the heaviness that lies upon the soul of thatvery one character. If the author has managed to put that on paper,in written word? Magnificent! 

Then we have Bjorn who only read half of the book before DNFing it:

Thebook begins in the future, with a battle where the best men have beenschooled by Mace personally. In the second chapter – one ofthe strongest, but completely confusing to me (I didn’t know therewould be multiple timelines)  little Mace is sold by hisfather, who’s mostly concerned about whether the pouch of coin hereceives contains as much coin as he was promised. It’s too latefor me to be heartbroken, though, because I already know Mace will doquite well for himself. In chapter three, we return to the futurefrom the first chapter, while in chapter four we move to earlierfuture than the later future from the chapter before. When I amstarting to develop interest in someone, I have to re-shuffle mybrain to the other timeline, and by the time I’m back I eitherforgot why I cared for the character, or they left. Also, it’spossible for a character to die a dramatic death, only to reappear,younger and in perfect health, five pages later.

Thingis – Deceit isnot a bad book at all. It’s a semifinalist, because it was one ofthe judges’ favourite, after all. It just doesn’t work for me... Butthe real reason for my low score is that I could never forget I wasreading a book. I was not in the author’s world, neither did Iidentify with any of the characters. I was very much readinga book andthe ever-changing timelines sometimes made it feel like work.

Everychapter of the future builds into a mystery that somewhat plays offthe past...The past chapters let us understand Mace’s early life –where he was sold as a boy to apprentice in one of the houses,working its way up to the reasons behind his exile and finally –his need for revenge...Every chapter in the past was like watching atrain wreck happen in slow motion. Seriously, in my notes for him Iwrote, “Dammit!Why does his every decision make me dread finishing the chapter?”

Olivia read 40% of the book, and her take away was:

Iwould probably describe Deceit asa low fantasy grimdark road trip novel… Road trip novels are, bytheir nature, incredibly difficult to pull off; because charactersare often coming and going, an author needs a really deft hand inorder to flesh out those new characters in a hurry, over andover...As a grimdark book, Deceit neverreally managed to gut-punch me, and I spent more than a little bitwondering why this was. For a while, I wondered if I’m just jadedby several years of grimdark stories one-upping each other on thegritty violence scale—but I think this problem also comes down tothe road trip formula. Because the book never allows characters tolinger on-screen for more than a chapter or two, I’m not veryattached to them as a reader by the time bad things happen to them.

Paul's take after having read the entire book: 

Basedon the synopsis alone, Deceit isa book that I expected to really enjoy. It promises a large amount ofgrimness, an intriguing revenge plot, and casts a grizzled oldermercenary as its main character. Sadly, though, the promised elementsthemselves didn’t quite come together, and it just wasn’tsomething that I could entirely connect with...As a character, Macewasn’t one I ever found myself engaged with. All of his problemsstem from his constant bad decisions, so it was hard to sympathize with him to any degree, and we don’t actually see him activelydevelop (physically, skillfully, or emotionally), he just becomes thegreatest warrior off-screen. There aren’t really any solidcharacters outside of Mace, so I found myself meandering through thestory rather than being pulled. One point I would have to mention,given that I have mentioned it with other books, is surprisingly poorhandling of the female characters. From what I can recall, therewasn’t a female character who wasn’t beaten, murdered, raped, orthreatened with rape (sometimes multiple times). 

And finally we have Timmy's reaction, having read 52% of the story:

I’mgoing to be upfront and say right out that Deceit isnot a book I would have picked up for myself if I had the choice.Simply because it’s not my jam. I’m not a huge fan of epicfantasy, and I don’t have much interest in books centered aroundfighting and traveling. I fully expected to dislike Deceit,and I think I was the most surprised by the fact that I didn’t. Iactually think it’s pretty good all things considered, and I cansee it finding its audience. So why, could you ask, did I not finishreading it? I just wasn’t invested in the story enough tocontinue... I found young Mace’s timeline more interestingpersonally, despite the many training/fighting scenes. But then adultMace has enough fighting so there is that too. If you ask me, thereis way too much fighting and not enough character-building for mytastes. Either way, Mace’s background story was at leastinteresting, if a bit way too gloomy. Poor man rarely had any joy inhis life – far as I could tell, that is. Too bad the plot in thepresent timeline was dragging. By the 50% mark, I really couldn’ttell where it all was going.

So there you have it. Four takes on one book. I should also note that all the reviewers for the contest make a point to cut your throat as positively and politely as possible; balancing the positive with the negative, and pointing out that what doesn't work for them might work for another reader. 

Next week, some more thoughts on what I learned from the contest, and Liil's review.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 14)

In this post we come to the final installment of P G Wodehouse's Blandings Castle Saga, with two complete novels, one short story, and the incomplete first draft of Wodehouse's final novel, the story he was working on when he died in 1972, some 57 years after the first Blandings Castle story was published.

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.

Galahad at Blandings by P G Wodehouse  BThis story sees the return of Tipton, who we first met in Full Moon. You may recall that he is the young American who inherited the chain store, who had last visited Blandings to dry out, and ended up getting engaged to Lord Elmsworh's sister Hermione's daughter, the air headed Veronica. The story opens with Tipton briefly back in New York before his wedding in jail along with a friend in jail for disorderly conduct without any money for bail. Tipton, remembering that Lord Elmsworth is also in London for the marriage of his sister Connie to an American Millionaire we met in the last entry, uses his one telephone call to call Lord Elmswoth in the middle of the night, for the loan of $20 to get he and his friend out on bail, explaining that he has no money on him to raise bail. Lord Elmswoth obliges, and when he returns to Blandings mentions to his sister Hermione that Tipton touched him for $20 because he had no money. She jumps to the conclusion that Tipton's fortune has gone belly up- the story seems set around the time of the stock market crash - and rushes off to London to get Veronica to write a letter cancelling the wedding, as landing a rich husband for her is her prime objective. And when they find out, that wasn't the case... why would they believe anything the absent minded Lord Elmworth says... she and her husband need Galahad's help to get ahold of that letter to avert disaster.

There's another love story entangled with this one, with the usual brace of imposters. Looked from a distance, all these stories look more or less the same. The enjoyment is in the the witty writing, the bright, brisk, inventive turn of a phrase.

"Sticky Wicket at Blandings" in Plum Pie By P G Wodehouse  C

A short story. In order to make a sale for Donaldson's Dog Joy biscuits, Freddie gives his wife's dog to a pretty potential customer, while she's in France for a couple of months, thinking that the can replace the dog. She telegraphs saying that she's returning to Blandings in a few days... A rather thin story this time around.

A Pelican at Blandings by P G  Wodehouse  BLord Elmsworth had been enjoying life at Blandings since all of this sisters are elsewhere, until Aunt Connie returns, along with her new step-daughter. To make matters worse, the Duke of Dunstable invites himself for an extended visit, bring along with him a painting of a naked lady that he hopes to sell for twice the price he paid for it to a millionaire who had intended to buy it because it reminded him of his last former wife. One of Galahad's godsons need his help to reconcile with his (former) fiancée who he had to cross examine as a witness to a car crash that he was the barrister for, and how resented how he handled the questing, buy getting him invited to Blandings where his ex-fiancée is staying. And there are imposters... There are always imposters. 
This is a story from 1969. My impression, mostly from the Bertie Wooster stories is that as time went on, Wodehouse's stories grew more ornate, with lots of familiar phrases, and less original. At least in the Blandings Saga, I think they've gotten better as time has gone on. Of course the set up is always more or less the same, but I think the writing is crisper and the stories are well paced. The characters are not deep, and many are interchangeable, but that doesn't matter to those of us who love P G's writing. It his wit and turn of a phrase that we read these stories for. 

Sunset at Blandings by P G Wodehouse 

This is the partial (untitled) first draft of the Blandings Castle Saga that Wodehouse was working on in the hospital until his death. As such, it is only half written, and though readable, you can see that the story is somewhat sketched in. I gather that after World War ll, the Saturday Evening Post did not run serial novels, so that he had to trim his novels that appeared in that magazine down to 25,000 words, and that this story reads like one of those cut down versions. The story involves another of Lord Emsworth and Galahad's sisters - in this book they are said to have 10 of them, including one nice one, Diana, a widow who the an old friend of Galahad, now the Chancellor of the Exchequer was and still is in love with. Besides the first draft, there are extensive notes by Wodehouse on the remainder of the book, including photostats of his handwritten notes so that you can see how he wrote his stories. From these notes it was clear that this was still a work in progress, with alternative actions going forward. The notes also include some plot notes for another Blandings Novel, one that would have had Bertie Wooster and Jeeves making their appearance. In addition there are the drawings of and floor plans for Blandings Castle and a map of the estate, along with a discussion of how these drawings were drawn from the stories. And a discussion of the train service to London. 
While the story is only half complete and nowhere near as polished as a completed novel, it is all the background information that makes this book nearly indispensable to fans of the Blandings Castle Saga.
Final thoughtsIf you have read my reviews, such as they are, it will be clear that these stories all share a more or less standard plot, though the plots can be very elaborate with many moving parts. They are also variations on a common theme; young people needing money for one reason or another, furthering or mending relationships between lovers by bringing one of the parties, usually under an assumed name in close proximity at Blandings Castle, plus a few side plots, usually involving the Empress of Blandings. The characters in these stories are pretty much cardboard characters, but corrugated cardboard; the regulars of Blandings Castle have a little depth to them, but most of the rogues and loving couples who appear as guests at Blandings Castle are interchangeable. 
With my second reading of them, I have come to appreciate them more than I did in my first reading, in large part for Wodehouse's turn of a phrase, i.e. how he writes the story rather than for the story itself. I will say that I think that his Bertie Wooster and Jeeves stories are still my favorites. Being first person narratives, a reader gets to know Bertie far better than any of the Blandings Castle characters. Bertie is a deeper, more authentic character, though still far from a real life character. But then that's his charm. Still, these novels are perfect examples of what Wodehouse was trying to write; musical comedies without music. They are evergreen stories of a timeless age; it is always summer at Blandings Castle set in the lush, old-world countryside of a never-never England of the early 20th century. Just as there is a platform at Kings Cross for a train that takes you to Hogworts, there's a platform at Paddington that will take you to Blandings Castle. These books are your tickets.