Jan Priddy > Recent Status Updates

I generally don't read reviews while I'm reading a book, but in this case, reviews mirrored my own dismay.

I am reminded how dreary I find novels about self-absorbed people in self-absorbed New York City. A telephone conversation from someone in a phone booth, & do not understand how she knows the other person's expressions. The novel was published in 2006. Perhaps I missed something? Interesting characters, but wish people in such novels cared about something beyond their sex lives, food, and their apartments.

I have loved Messud in the past... not certain here since this seems to be an exploration of angst-ridden New Yorkers.

I was at The Flight of the Mind with Gish more than twenty years ago. She was wonderful. I am hoping to find the story of her father kept here by the US government after he graduated from college and wanted to go home.

I am 5 chapters from the end of the 4th draft of my novel. I keep cutting lines and paragraphs and it's still 80k. A folder where I kept cuts of over a few lines contains another 13k—amazing. I will finish it and then attempt a synopsis.

I desperately need a reader for four pages written from the point of view of a Sunni Muslim from Tunisia—anyone? I've researched—only hope it's right. Help!

Two stories happening: identity and technology. A great deal more space given to developing the technological aspects, some of which seem unlikely despite exposition. The notion of identity, however, is compelling. When dialogue isn't used as an excuse for world-building, it is very strong, a natural flow of ideas and reflection, doubt and determination.

The world-building, despite all the detail crammed into these first pages, feels... unlikely? And I want to rewrite some of her sentences. I like the characters so far and the big irony is right there and obvious, even though I haven't gotten to it yet.

I had 83k words through a second draft of my novel by sometimes working from before dawn to evening, and now I'm going through it again, draft three, and both cutting and writing new.

We weren't invited anywhere for Easter, but I am getting a lot of work done on my novel. We will head west later this morning, and I will roast vegetables four supper. And I might return to working on the book this afternoon. I am nearly halfway through with 36k done, cutting almost as much as I use from my old draft, and writing new words too. I am letting the story go the way it needs to go.

I am spending April on NaNo, revising a novel. I do not expect to complete reading anything this month. Maybe. Maybe only my own.

The rape scene. Wrong, just wrong. Sometimes I consider whether men should have to take a class before trying to write about women's experiences of sex. An author I know and like has written such awful/distorted sex scenes from the POV of young women that each time he choses to read them aloud [!], I want to slap him. Hard.

Smith shifts POV in each of the first three chapters from limited third (Precious, though we do not get here name here) to first person (her father) to omniscient. This seemed unnecessary.

I was warned about the body count—details of slaughter, celebration by the victor!

Cross comparisons were going along fine and then abruptly at "stanza" 110, my two translations diverge. argh! —Burgess seems to have broken a stanza in two and now his stanza numbers no longer match, though the lines #s do.

B: Who did not expect to die. AOI
[end of 8-line stanza 110; stanza 109 is also 8 lines]
S: Who ne'er had thought such death should be their dole. AOI
[end of 16-line stanza 109]

I am working between two translations, reading all of Sayers's and some of the other. Sayers has honored both lines and sound, managing music, form, and meaning—an astonishing accomplishment.

I am working my way through two translations side by side. Sayers's from 1957 and the later translation by Glyn Burgess (1990). Both are Penguin and each translates line by line. So far, I prefer the former; the latter is ordinary modern prose cut into lines—no attempt to capture the rhythm or sound (or wording) of the original archaic French.

Ha! I joked about it being a lie before I began reading, and wouldn't you know the first thing Sayers does in her lengthy (and excellent) intro is clarify the known history and its [near total] lack of connection to The Song of Roland. Most characters, the death of Roland and his companions and army—historical, but motive, roles, & antagonists have shifted around—not history but epic of another age.

This is Dorothy Sayers's translation, which is the reason I will read it. It is war and battles (and mostly lies), but poetry too. I will try.

better

The dead woman's accent. In a video. Mentioned at last.

Close to throwing this at the wall. Body is perfect physical replica of Cassie down to no fillings in her teeth? How did Sam realize it wasn't her? No one thought after 3 days to check body's prints in databases outside Ireland? Cassie says repeatedly she doesn't LOOK Irish, so is she the only officer that notices that? Hello, what about her VOICE? Cassie has an Irish accent... did the body? Deep, high-pitched, what?

I am reading a late printing of the paperback edition from Laurel-Leaf Books with 103 pages (April 1982). It is not listed.

It's losing me... fairy tale beginning and then... Too much detail, especially of scenes I really do not care about at all. The novel ends on page 334, and I do not see how all this will end well. There are too many threads waving about.