The Saturday Morning Post (No. 54)

 

As I mentioned last week, I picked up two Helen Simonson books. This is her first book. Let's see how it fares.

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.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand  by Helen Simonson   DNF 26%

The story concerns a 68 year old widowed retired British army major whose younger brother just died. While he is upset with the death of his brother, he also wants to reunite a pair of very expensive shotguns given by their father, one to each, with the understanding that they were to be reunited upon the death of one of the brothers. The problem with this plan is that this is not specified in the brother's will, plus, they can be sold for a lot of money. It is an issue with his sister-in-law and niece.

The second major character, the female lead, is the 58 year old widowed owner of the small village grocery store, who is the English born daughter of Pakistani intellectual immigrant, whose family now wants her to sell the store to a nephew and become a dependent in the larger family.

There is a budding romance between these two characters. Which is fine, but too many other things didn't work for me.

So what where those things that didn't work for me?

First, because even though it is set in England, this is a contemporary story and I don't like contemporary settings for my stories. And like a lot of stories set in Britain today, there is this theme that the country is going to hell in a handcart, which true or not, makes for depressing reading.

Second, and more importantly, I did not like the Major. Or more exactly, I did not like the way Simonson wrote the Major. She wrote him, a 68 year old former army officer and teacher, as if he was a feeble 85 years old man - too frail or frightened to do just about anything on his own. As someone who's 74, I found this portrayal very annoying. Now, I am sure there are plenty of people who are frail at 68, but there is usually a medical reason for this - or an ill-spent life - which seems to be entirely lacking in the make-up of this character which makes his feebleness hard to swallow, and rather insulting. 

But I think this portrayal is actually an aspect of a larger phenomena. I will describe it in broad, sweeping terms, but I want to say that I realized I'm doing so, and that there is a broad spectrum, and exceptions, so that nothing I say is in any way absolute. But, having said that, I think the major problem with the Major character is that when a female author is too close - too inside the head - of a male character, they get us males wrong. This makes the thoughts and actions of the Major feel off key to me. Females and males think differently, and I have found that female writers who write male characters in first person, or close third, as in this story, give us males far too much credit. We're not anywhere near as thoughtful as they seem to imagine us to be. I think that most males are far less socially aware than females, but, at least the female authors I've read, give their male character far more awareness, concern and thoughts about social situations than a typical male ever would ever bother thinking about. I am sure that the reverse is also true - male writers writing female characters in first person or close third, will miss many of the typical concerns of their female characters, enough so that a female reader find them "off" as well. 

Sometimes this might not be more than just a character who feels a little off, but sometimes it is just too over the top. The male time traveler in The Time Traveler's Wife book was so very concerned about his wedding that I could not take that concern seriously - it seemed so out of the male character, whose general attitude towards the wedding, is "tell me when I need to be there" and everything else is a chore. I DNF'd that book as it seem too unbelievable. And I remember noticing this phenomena in a D E Stevenson book I read decades ago. 

In the case of this book, between the Major being written like a feeble old man, and being burdened with so many social insecurities and concerns, the story just dragged for me. I like a good romance, and this had the potential to be a sweet one - but it was, for me buried in the weeds of social etiquette and minute concerns. Plus, there were a slew of unlikable characters that I didn't care to spend my time with. All in all, I felt there where better things to do than spend my time in this book.

Once again we have a book that wasn't written for me, and if I had done my research, I might've known that. But I didn't. That said, there is absolutely nothing about the writing that would put anyone off, it is simply not a story for me.

New Audiobooks - At last

 

This week I have some exciting publishing news to share with you. At least it's exciting for me.

I am happy to report that Apple Books/Draft2Digital Audio have finally gotten around to converting several of my remaining books ebooks into audiobooks - nearly seven months after submitting them. The log jam seems to have broken.

On June 8th Apple released the audiobook version of Passage to Jarpara, a book I had released only in March, so it took them less than three months to convert it.  Then on June 16th, they released The Lost Star's Sea, only six and a half months after I had summitted it. Beggars can't be choosers, so I'll not complain. It runs 33 and 2 minutes hours as an ebook on Apple. Out of curiosity, I looked at the run time on Google - 36 hours 8 minutes. I guess Apple's American narrator talks a little faster than Google's British one - Archie, who is supposed to sound like a 60 year old.

Then, on June 20th, Apple released the audiobook version of The Bright Black Sea, again after submitting it on the first of January 2024. The Apple version of this book runs 30 hours and 50 minutes, while Archie narrates it in 34 hours.

The releases of the The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea are a welcome addition to my audiobook offerings, since they are too long for Amazon's auto-narrated program at this time, and until now were only available on Google. It will be good to have them on Apple as well.

With the release of these three books I am only waiting on A Night on Isvalar, Beneath the Lanterns, The Girl on the Kerb, and the Prisoner of Cimlye to be converted. We're getting there, slowly, but I'm beginning to hope, surely.

My Apple sales (at FREE) have been modest compared to my sales on Google, but I was selling a lot more ebooks on Google when the audiobooks were released than I am currently selling ebooks on Apple. The sales of audiobooks, however, have contributed a significant number of sales on Apple and have been growing month by month, so I am happy with the results. I am curious to see how The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea do, as it is my understanding that long audiobooks are popular with people who are on the road for hours and days at a time, people like truck drivers. We'll see.

In any event, the release of these audiobooks have renewed my hope that all my books will be available on Apple as audiobooks, someday. Hopefully soon.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 53)

 

One of the sources for my to-be-read list is Wanda's blog, The Next 50 which you can check out here here. She is a very avid reader who reads across a lot of different genre, and when I see a book that interests me, I'll look to see if my local library carries it, preferably as an ebook, as I am rather lazy and driving down to the library and back -- it would take an half hour out of my busy life. (That's a joke, son.) But I am lazy. The book I am reviewing this week is not the book she posted on her site, that was Helen Simonson's The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club - her newest novel, so there's a waiting list for it. However, Simonson's first two novels did not have waiting list for the ebooks, so I picked up both. I started with her second novel, as it was set in England a few months before the First World War, a period of time I have, along with the summer of 1940, an affinity for. So how did I fare?

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 Before the War  by Helen Simonson  C+

I fear that putting my grade for the book on the title line might, for the eagle-eye readers of these reviews, be a spoiler for those readers who don't like to be spoiled. So I'll cut to the chase and say here, I was somewhat disappointed by this book - perhaps because I had high expectations for it, since it promised all the things I like in a story - a small tale of everyday life set in England in the first half of the last century. It's not a bad book by any stretch of the imagination, and I think most people open to a novel set in this time period will likely enjoy it. So why the disappointment? 

I think I can say it simply enough - it was too unfocused for my taste, and too long.

By unfocused I mean that it featured too many characters, four of which were point of view characters whose appearances were scattered throughout the story, so much so that I, as a reader, could not latch on to any one of them. In addition, there were tons of other minor characters. I sometimes laugh when my wife keeps a notebook handy to write down all the characters in a story, but I would've need to do that with this book, if I cared enough.

Along with all the characters there were also a dozen plots going on all at once, with no main one to carry me through the story. And well, they were somewhat predictable as well. For example, in any story set in 1914 England you know that many/most of the young male adults are a liable to be killed. That's a given on account of history, especially if there is any pretense of historical accuracy. The romance came as no surprise. 

Simonson did her research, and had lived in the area, so the setting and historical era seemed authentic, without the dreaded wikipedia info-drops, which was one of its good points. On the flip side, there was, at times, too many details, so much so that they had me skim reading because I wasn't interested in all the minute details. Plus, I knew there wasn't anything happening that I needed to know to follow the story. These, however, contributed to my feeling that the story ran too long, that along with that lack of a central plot and character to drive the story along. 

Despite the title, the story actually covers about a year, and takes the reader to the trenches of WWI, much like that other book I read - whose name name I don't remember or find the post in which I reviewed it. But no matter. I'll just say that it too ended up in the trenches. I was hoping for a story just set in that summer with war building and the lamps going out all over the world. Not so, and really, neither the looming threat of war or the war itself played a large part in the story - at least in the sense of atmosphere. Refugees arrive, and there is talk of war, and the boys go off for it, eventually, but I didn't find the sense of place and time that I was looking for. 

Another factor is that there are two basic types of novels set in the past. The first is novels of contemporary life that were written in the past - think of Molly Clavering, or D E Stevenson. The second is novels written by contemporary novelist set in the past. In general I then to prefer the former, as they usually strike me as more authentic. Contemporary novels, like this one, even when well researched and written, often either seek to educate us about the period in question and/or address contemporary issues by comparing them to the past. This book addressed the role of women in society, homosexuality, and discrimination. I find this looking back through the lens of our age, rather than from within the society of the time tends to draw me out of the time and place of the setting. 

As usual, I've gone on and on about the things that I feel like quibbling with, because they're the most fun talking about. But that does give the wrong impression. I enjoyed this book - it was very well written and (too) full of interesting characters and incidents. If you like this type of story, sagas, it will probably be your jam. It probably deserves a grade of B, but anytime I find myself skim reading parts of a book, I can't give it a B. You probably could.

Oh - the cover I used has absolutely nothing to do with the story, but then, neither did the alternative one.

The Other 98%

Last week I was rambling on about the modern day Lester Dents who write the books that, maybe 90% of ebook readers want to read. Writing as Kenneth Robeson, Mr Dent wrote 159 Doc Savage novels over the course of 16 years. He could write fast, had a flourishing imagination, and a winning formula for writing stories his readers loved. Lester Dents are rare, perhaps 1-2% of the ebook writers, but they sell probably something like 90+% of the books sold or read on Kindle Unlimited.

But what about the other 98% of writers who maybe serve the remaining 10% of the ebook market? What about them? Who are they, and what are we doing here?

I can't say for certain, except to say we're a motley crew. I think it's save to say that just about every author wants to make money writing books. The fact of the matter is that only .1% of them do, and .01% have a writing career that last more than a decade. And maybe .001% make a living at it. Writing to make money is a futile enterprise - despite the fact there are people who do make money at it a couple of thousand out of several million writers on Amazon.

That said, I will divide this motley crew into two camps. All of them write, all of them can write - you don't write a book if you can't. But some write primarily to make money, and other write primarily for the love of writing. 

The first group, the people who decide to write a book in order to make money will very likely fail to make money, either because they didn't do their homework and didn't write the type of story that a large group of readers want to read, and/or they failed to spend the effort, skill, and money needed for readers to find their book amongst the ten million other books. How accomplished they are at the craft and art of writing probably doesn't matter much, since very few people ever come across their books. These writers quickly discover that writing is not a way to make money, so after a book, or a trilogy, they go on to try to make money in some easier way. Their books of course, linger on as ghosts - their last book being released four, five, or more years ago, but the writers themselves have left the building. And in my opinion, good riddance. 

It might be hard to tell the second group of writers, from the first, since their results are much the same. These are the writers who wrote their book with a passion to write, to tell their story. They probably didn't do any homework because they were writing their story, not yours. Oh, they certainly hope you will enjoy it, and likely dream of lots of people reading and enjoying it as well. But they have published it, at least in part, because publishing completes the process of writing stories. Stories should be read, and they can't be read without being published. Very often they also only write a story or two, as they too suffer the disappointment of not finding the readers, and perhaps the money that they had hoped for. And perhaps many of them only had a story or two in them. But there are also writers who continue on simply because they love to write and tell stories.

These are the people like me. Though, I'm different in one respect from most writers in that I never have published my books to make money. This means that the lack of money has never discouraged me. I've have, however, been lucky enough to find enough readers to encourage me to keep writing. Who needs money to do what you love doing? It is the people who write for the love of it - no matter how accomplished they are in the art - that I admire. Whether they're good, bad, or indifferent writers - it really doesn't matter. Someone will like it no matter.

This is what self-publishing is all about for me. It's not about the readers, it's about writers doing what they love to do - write - and taking that love all the way to its natural end - showing their creation to the world, be it a largely uncaring audience. No half measures. No "trunk novels". Here it is - my book. I think it's good, good enough. I hope you do too, but I'm not letting doubts on that point stand in my way of sharing my work with you. All you have to do is find my book.

I don't know how many writers take this approach. As I said at the top, almost all of them would like to sell their work. But the ones who truly love to write will not stop writing if they make no money doing so. You will never get better if you stop writing. And well, writing - art - is its own reward. And it needs to be these days, with the ongoing revolution of artificial intelligence that within the next decade or so make artists of all sort redundant. The days are not far off when the only reason to do art will for the love of art. I think that's not only a pretty good reason, but the best reason. AI can sell it's soul to the Man.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 52)

 

Another of the P G Wodehouse books I downloaded from Gutenberg. This one is set in New York.

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 Small Bachelor by P G Wodehouse  C

A short  review this time - not one of his best efforts. While it has some great lines in it, for example, in describing one of the characters he remarks that if people were dominos, he'd be a double blank. But otherwise, its a very talkative book, with a lot of Wodehouse going on and on about small details that detract from the flow of the story. Plus the story is pretty unbelievable even for a Wodehouse story. It involves the title character falling in love with the daughter of that double blank, with a domineering step-mother. (Where have we run into that character before?) The small bachelor's best friend is a know-it-all, who, despite his previous views on love at first sight, also falls in love at first sight. Supporting characters include a policeman wanting to be a poet, an ex-con valet with a pickpocket girlfriend. As with all of Wodehouse's works, it's best just to go with the flow and take all the coincidences in stride, but with this story that plan is rather challenging, not only are there so many coincidences, but as I said, he's distractingly wordy in this effort. All of which makes this novel drag a bit too much for my taste - despite the many witty lines.  

Twenty-first Century Pulps

In my recent book review, The Saturday Morning Post (No. 51)The Saturday Morning Post (No. 51), I said; "People complain about the quality of author/published books, but when I read SF like this, and see the ratings, I have to say that it's not the books, but the readers." I was referring to the book I had reviewed regarding its literary quality, or lack there off. I think that perhaps I need to expand on that a bit. 

Need is probably an overstatement. What I really need to do is to come up with something to write about every week to fill this slot. And talking about the quality of that book and the books I read in my youth, will, I hope, fill this slot for this week. So here we go.

Just to recap - in my review of Junkyard by Lindsay Buroker, I complained that the story was so contrived and hackneyed that it would best serve as a Captain Underpants story rather than a story for adults. Despite this fact, it had 1755 ratings with a 4.2 star average. Clearly, most of its reader found it quite enjoyable. My point was that it seems that ebook readers are not very demanding when it comes to what they read, if they could rate this rather silly book so highly. At least in my opinion.

I was thinking about this book in relationship to the common impression that self-published books and authors are less polished and accomplished compared to traditionally published books and authors. The point I was making was that books like that, and indeed a great many, but far from all books, are aimed at a readership that actually wants this type of story. The book was actually written for a certain market - the market that a hundred years ago was served by the pulp magazines. Their quality was criticized as well from literary circles, but the simple fact of the matter is, people want to read these types of books.

In my piece, I added, that I had read hundreds of books that were likely no better than Junkyard in my youth and enjoyed them, so I could hardly cast stones at either the book or these readers for settling for what I think now is a very low bar for entertainment. I know this is to be true, because over the years I have tried to reread the books I enjoyed in my teens and early twenties, and found them unreadable. The writing is too basic, too sparse, the characters too thin, the stories too simple for my taste today.  Junkyard is not any worse than those books, perhaps a little better than some. But having said that, I will say that all in all, neither those old SF books from the 20's, 30's, 40's 50's and 60's nor the Buroker book are objectively very good. They're just good enough. Good enough for their target audience - avid ebook readers of genre fiction.

The ebook market is the 21st century version of pulp stories, something I've said here from the beginning of this blog. Many, but not most, of the most successful books are written by the same type of authors who wrote those old books, which is to say, professional authors trying to make a living selling words at a few cents a word. They needed a deep well of imagination, a story formula, and the ability to type fast. Given the number of books Buroker has put out in the last decade,    this is a talent - and a profession - she shares with all those old writers. And I said, there was, and still is, an audience for this type of fiction - pulp fiction. There are likely millions of avid readers who value story over any other quality of writing, and who have the imagination to fill in all the blanks left by this type of story. Nothing wrong with these readers The fact that as I've grown older, I've come to value other aspects of writing over story doesn't make me a superior reader, just a different type of reader. And even so, I in turn, certainly can be looked down in turn by more sophisticated readers than me. Thus, I, at least, don't put a value on the type of books one enjoys. Reading is reading.

However, the fact that there are a large number of avid readers who are entertained with these basic genre-action stories means that basic, fast-written and cheap genre stories are what they often get. Stories like Junkyard are written for that market. So when people on the outside look at the types and qualities of indie-published stories and bemoan the fact that they are basic, fast-written, and cheap genre stories, it is not the authors that should be held accountable for the books they write, but the readers who want, or at least accept them. As I said, it's the market. To succeed you give them what they want.

This is not to say that there are no indie-published books that rival or exceed the quality of any published books. There are no doubt many thousands. And well, the bar isn't all that high in traditional publishing either. Many of these more ambitious indie-published books are just as, if not more, popular than their more pulpy indie-published stablemates. And I do think indie-published books are getting more noticed these days. Indeed, a romancy novelist recently sold her indie-published series to a traditional publisher for over a million dollars. She said she would probably earn more money in the long run keeping it self-published, but wanted her books in stores and to be a visible author, something you don't usually get as an indie-author. I seems to me that the best quality indie-books, and indie-publishing in general are slowly being recognized as an ever more legitimate publishing route. 

However, in the end, I think that the indie-market will always be dominated by pulp stories of all kinds, because there will always be a insatiable demand for pulp stories.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 51)

 

This week I have a novella that I picked up based on its review  on Berthold Gambrel's blog, A Ruined Chapel by Moonlight, which you can find here. I suggest you read his review before mine, as it will talk more about the story than I will.

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.

Junkyard A Fractured Stars Novella by Lindsay Buroker  C

This was a free novella serving as an intro to her Fractured Stars universe which currently seems to be only a single book, Fractured Stars. Buroker is one of the best selling SF author/publishers in the Kindle store, with her author page listing 168 titles including box sets and foreign language books. She has been writing and publishing since 2010. She released this title in 2019 and since then it has earned 1,755 ratings/reviews with a 4.2 average. She has tens of thousands of loyal readers, and as far as I could see, all of her books are rated 4 stars plus. I have two other books of hers in my library that I picked up over the years, no doubt for free. I remember reading one of them, back in 2015-16 but I'm not sure I finished it. I think that you are either going to have to go with the opinion of her Kindle readers, or me, because we do not agree.

I don't know if it is an ongoing project, or a dead end. The premise is that a detective of sorts, with a purple spaceship, and an android companion are hired to find two hundred tons of missing maple syrup valued four millions in the galactic currency from a warehouse with stacks of "drums" filled with maple syrup. The ship captain/detective, McCall Richter, is hired to track down the theft in the belief that, due to a closure of the space port, the syrup has not yet been taken off the moon the story is set on. 

Eagle eyes readers will have already noted that I rated this story a "C" i.e. average. As a lifetime C student myself, I can attest to the fact that a C really means disappointing. Not as alarmingly disappointing as a D or and F, but disappointing, nevertheless. It is in that sense that I give my grade of C to this story. 

Now, as readers of this series know, if I like a book I usually don't have much to say about it except how much I liked it, and maybe why. But if I don't, I have a lot. So buckle in.

The first problem with this story is the writing. In both of the stories of hers that I have read, I found the writing so flat - without any passion in it at all. This is, of course, just my personal opinion, but I find no evidence of any style or flare in her writing. It has that the old first grade reader quality , i.e. "Run, Zip Run! See Zip run." No wit. No charm. "Just the facts, ma'am," plainness. Serviceable is the kindest thing I can say about her prose. She sets out a story. Period. 

She gives her characters certain characteristics. McCall is autistic and doesn't like dealing with people if she can help it. The android, Scipio, is Murderbot dialed down to 1. No, make that .5. He's sort of clueless and she makes a few lame jokes and moans about having to meet and deal with clients. All of which allows the title dog, Junkyard, to steal the show just by being a dumb, loyal dog.

As for the mystery, they walk around, talk to some of the employees, have a few red herring tossed in to make it a mystery, and save the dog trapped in the junkyard. The crime, who does it, and what little we are told of how it is done, defies belief. It is utterly, and unredeemable stupid and impossible. It isn't even up to a middle grade mystery standards. The Hardy Boys wouldn't have wanted to be found dead in a ditch with it. Maybe it would work for a Captain Underpants book. Maybe. There is no way anyone who thinks about the mystery could imagine it being done, much less how it was done. It defies belief.

Now I suppose that you're really not meant to think about this story a moment after you finish reading it. It's just passing the time - apparently quite satisfactory for most of her readers - and you move on. I pretty much gave it a C on that basis. But since I had to write this review for it, I had to think about it more, and the more I thought about the story, the mystery and its by-the-formbook  concluding "action" ending, the more angry I became that an author would crank out a story like this and inflict it upon her readers. Every element of the story was written for the convenience of the author with plot holes your could pilot your spaceship through - no real thought required, just "what can I do next to fill out the word count, but not a word more - oh, sure, why not?" The SF elements were all off the shelf stuff - stage settings and no more. The crime and solution wasn't possible or was utterly stupid. Lazy, lazy, lazy. So if you should happen to give this story any thought at all like I did, I'd actually score this story a D.  I would've changed it above, but I liked my line about being a lifetime C student, so I didn't. But that's the only reason I didn't.

People complain about the quality of author/published books, but when I read SF like this, and see the ratings, I have to say that it's not the books, but the readers. I read and probably enjoyed stuff like this 60 years ago in my youth, so I can't throw too large of rocks. But still... Give'em what they want, I guess.

You know, if I have failed to convince you to pick up this free book, and you're curious to know how the heist plan worked, a spoiler outline of the plan is below these books.

"Here's my plan." says the mastermind, the one employee who knows enough about the computer security system to disable it, as he talks to himself in the mirror. "I'm going to steal 200 tons of maple syrup from the drums stored in the warehouse.  

(Which from the description of drums being piled in stacks around the warehouse, I take them to be the standard 55 gallon drum. Maple syrup weighs 11 lbs per gallon, so that the contents of a drum of maple syrup weighs 605 lbs.) ... So that he would need to drain about 660 drums of maple syrup. (2,000 tons = 400,000 lbs divided by 605lbs per drum = 660 drums.) 

"To cover up my theft for a little longer, I'll refill all 660 drums with water....Heh, Heh Heh...

"To steal the syrup I'll make a hole in the wall of the warehouse and run a hose through it and then I'll make a hole in the fence of the junkyard next door. Since the junkyard owner is off planet,  no one ever works in the junk yard, of course, so no problem. Then all I will need to do is to siphon or pump the maple syrup from 660 drums into...Wait for this, it is the genius part - into big vats. I'm going have to buy them, as well as hire some androids to secretly get into the junkyard to excavate the big holes in the ground - at night-  to hide these vats, move the dirt somewhere, and then hire a helicopter to pick drop these big vats and secretly drop them into the holes I've had dug - at night. Once I have them in the big holes, then all I have to do is pump the syrup into them, one drum at a time, and when they are filled, I'll hide the them from sight by covering them with a canvas tarp. And get this, I'll make sure the tarp doesn't blow away by holding its edges down with heavy objects from all the piles of junk around this hole in the ground. Foolproof, Huh?' All I need to do for my plan to work is find and buy vats, hire some android criminals to dig the holes, fly the vats into position, and have someone on the other end of the hose when I'm pumping syrup. Once I've emptied 660 drums, I'll just sit tight until I can safely move these vats, with the help of those androids to the local maple syrup black market and make a mint. What can go wrong? All I need now is a ton of money that I don't have and some hired androids. Or a very lazy writer."

In this case, at least, you get what you pay for.

New Writing vs Old Writing

I have plenty of old books to choose from

Last week I picked up two books by an author that a blogger had highly recommended. From their titles they sounded right up my alley, and both were available as ebooks from the library. Cutting to the chase, I was disappointed in them. I got to thinking about what it was that didn't click with me.

The actual reviews will be posted in a month or so, so rather than spoil those, I'll keep the books nameless and talk in generalities, which is really what my complaints are all about.

Both books sounded like the small stories type of books that I like. Think of D E Stevenson and Molly Clavering, and both were set in England, which is why I picked them up, more or less  sight unseen. Now, at least part of my disappointment can be written off to not being the target audience for the stories. Still, the same could be said for either Stevenson or Clavering's books as well, and I like most of their books. Instead, I think it comes down to modern writing vs last century writing.

Broadly speaking, I think that one characteristic of modern is its wordiness. I think this is due to the ease of writing words on a computer which is so much easier and faster than pounding words out (and correcting typos) on a typewriter. That is very clear to me, having written a novel and a novella on a manual typewriter. Of course there were long novels written both by hand and with a typewriter before computers, but it's an order of magnitude easier and faster to do so with a computer. And for that matter its far easier and faster to typeset it at the publisher making long novels more acceptable. 

So to return to the two books in question. The first book clocked in at over 500 pages. This for a small story (little saga?) that covers the events of a single year. The second novel came in a 380 plus pages, which is pretty typical these days. Both books, however, seemed too long, too slow and used too many words for the story in hand - for my taste. We're just talking about my tastes here. Both were best selling books, so, as usual, what do I know?

Now I would've said that I like to be immersed in long novels, and maybe I did, once. But these days, I may no longer have the patience I once had, and that could be a factor in my dislike of modern work. Still, if it is written the way I like stories, their length would probably not have been an issue, though at 500 pages it would've had to have been a true saga, not a little story. What all these words allow the author to do is to delve into the trivia of a scene and every thought of the characters at a level not usually found in most of the earlier genre fiction. I find that modern writing that tells me things I don't care to know about. I like well rounded characters, so complaining about too much character seems rather ingenious, but I guess it comes down to the fact that I don't need or want to know every thought that runs through a character's mind. I don't need all elaborate details of the settings - since in my case - I can't picture them in my mind anyway. All these words tend to bog the story down, making it seem like the story-train is never going to arrive at the station.

It seems to me that the way authors wrote - especially English authors in the first half of the 20th century - often achieve the balance of characters that I could get to know and plots that I could follow without getting into the weeds and ditches. That and of did so with bright, clever writing. 

My taste in reading is what informs my own writing. I try to write interesting characters, but I don't delve deeply into the mind of even my first person narrator. I write it like he would tell the story, saying only what he would want to share. And since I can't really picture scenes, I try to invent a few key descriptive  elements to set a mood, and leave it at that. The same goes for all my characters. I don't really picture them in my mind, I merely sketch in a few features of each, and leave it to the reader to picture them as they will. The result is that I think I write stories that come off as old-fashioned. I hope so anyway.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 50)

As I said in my last post, the only books I have on hand that I've not read are the Cadfael mysteries and old P G Wodehouse books. I am writing at this time, so I don't have as much time to read, nor as much of a desire to do so, when I have my own story in my head. A P G Wodehouse story is the perfect type of reading for me at times like this - light, breezy, and funny. So without further ado.

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.

Divots by P G Wodehouse   B+

This is a short story collection featuring golf as the central theme. All of the stories are told by "The Oldest Member" of the golf club. The format is that one of the young members sits down next to him in his favorite chair and mentions some problem of his - usually involving romance - and that brings to the Oldest Member's mind a similar event, which proceeds to tell, despite the fruitless efforts of the young person to escape hearing the Oldest Member's long winded tale.

The running gag through all these stories is that golf is the most important thing in the characters' lives. All the most important lessons in life that one needs can be learned by playing golf, including humility and fortitude as well as providing a reason for living - getting to be a scratch player. The stories involve a variety of characters - we have millionaires who earned their graduated degree in doing widows and orphans out of their money at Sing Sing (A famous New York prison) who have problems with their wives and butlers, as well as young people - who don't seem to have to work and so can play a round or two of golf everyday - in love, but too shy to tell the woman of their dreams so. In short, the full range of Wodehouse characters.

While I'm not a golfer, I really enjoyed these stories. Lots of laughs based on that running gag that for every problem in life, the solution can be found in playing golf. Wodehouse was at his best brisk level of quips and toss away lines in these stories. And while I am not the greatest fan of short stories, the fact that the situations and stories are the slight typical Wodehouse fare, make the short story format work well.

I've been watching some YouTube videos on literary appreciation, and I have to admit that I don't seem to apply too many lessons so far to these stories. I suppose that I could mention that the narrator, the Oldest Member, in all these stories is the common element in these stories, drawing from his vast experiences. The plot - the way the author tells the story - is, as I mentioned, the Oldest Member relating in first person, a reminiscence of his concerning a golfer he know in a similar situation to the one at hand. As for the theme, well I guess that would be that the lessons learned by golfing - and indeed, golf itself, reveals the true meaning of life. Though from the golfers I knew, it also revealed the futility of it as well.