The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 146)

 

After yesterday's detour we're back to two more adventure books from the Gutenberg Project Adventure selection.

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 Gentleman: A Romance of the Sea by Alfred Ollivant  DNF 6%

Many novels today, at least genre novels, like starting with a bang; putting the reader in the middle of some sort of action in the hope of "hooking" them into the story. Apparently this is not a recently invented technique, seeing that's what Mr Ollivant does here. With a bang. Well, that is to say, after the forward, which featured an unnamed person longingly looking across the English Channel from France at night. I suspect this person was, in fact, Napoleon.

But after that, the action begins in breakneck earnestness, starting with with a man riding his favorite horse to death, commandeering a rowboat to take him to a ship at at anchorage, which then he orders to set sail...Why? I believe a bold French spy has escaped capture and is in possession of valuable information for Napoleon and his invasion fleet across English Channel. He must be intercepted before he can make his way across the channel to France or else... I think. It was told in such a breathless style, in a series of rapid, fragmented dialogs with characters who are largely unidentified. Thus, what's actually going on, who, and exactly why, are hard to discern. At least by me. Some of the people we meet on the ship seem to know the rider, since they begin to recall other times and sea battles they share, some of this shared history seems to involved the father of the young midshipman was in the row boat when it was commandeered by the rider who rode his horse to death... I was completely befuddled by this relentless, breathless, and confusing narration right out of the gate that I threw up my hands and simply gave up trying to figure out what was going on. I'm an old man and things were just moving too fast for me, especially if the whole story was written in this style. Spoiler: I'm pretty sure Napoleon doesn't end up invading England.

The Yeoman Adventurer by George W Gough  B

This story is set in the fall of 1745 as Bonnie Prince Charlie leads his highlanders down into England to reclaim the English crown for the Stuarts. The yeoman of the title, Oliver, Wheatman, a minor member of the gentry is the not-so-reluctant adventurer. His father is dead and he feels duty-bound to look after his widowed mother, his sister, and the family's land. Thus, he can't go to war and adventure, as much as he wants to. All around him, the King's troops are gathering to meet the threat from the invading Highlanders from the north, while all he can do is go fishing. He does, and hooks a 30 lb pike, but can't reach his gaff to land the monster. A young woman, Margaret, steps down from the bridge to the river bank, and gaffs the fish for him. He learns that her father, a well traveled mercenary captain, has been arrested as a Jacobite spy, and our yeoman, proceeds to save her from capture as well from dragoons searching for her, by carrying her under the bridge. And with that, off they go adventuring across the countryside heading towards the invading Scots in order to save her father who had been sent north. What follows is an adventure story very much in the vein of a Robert Lewis Stevenson adventure, with one thrilling episode after the next.

Oliver has made an enemy of a lecherous nobleman leading a unit of the King's dragoons, who lusts after the mercenary's daughter, Margaret, and he has set ruthless people after them. Oliver gets almost captured, captured, escapes, captured again and again only to be either saved or escape himself, to eventually, join the rebellion. He gets to know Prince Charles, and becomes one of his aides. And well, it's still one adventure after the other, one flip of the coin after another, captured and saved, as he gets deeper and deeper into the conflict, and faces the hard choices, and sudden deaths it involves.

I've read some of RLS's adventures, like Kidnapped, and I have to say that Mr Gough's writing, characters, and story are up to that level of both adventure and writing. That said, it took me the better part of a week to finish this book, despite the many things it had going for it. That may well be because this isn't quite the type of story that I'm into these days. The fact if the matter is, I don't think Kidnapped gripped me anymore than this one. Still, I think I can safely say that if you like RLS's stories, you will likely enjoy this one as well.

I tried tracking down Mr Gough, and despite this story being fairly widely available, I could find no more several purported photographs of him, that you can buy framed, and a description of him as an early 20th century British novelist. It seems he wrote at least two more novels, Terror by Night, (1922), and A Daughter of Kings, 1930, as well a several books on politics.

As a wild young novelist?

Or an elder political commentator?

The Saturday Morning Post (No.145)

I haven't seen the movie, but why not read the book? I ordered the book from the library, and it showed up sooner than I expected. So here we go...

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 Princess Bride by William Goldman   DNF 19%

A dumb book. Okay, I thought it was a dumb book. Still, it's a dumb book. A joke is a joke, but when you repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it, and then advise readers that if they don't like it, they don't have to read the remarks in the parenthesis, I took Goldman at his word, and in the spirit of skipping what I grew weary of reading, I skipped the rest of the book. Actually, to be completely honest, the rest of Chapter One.

Thus, that 19% read is a bit misleading. I skipped the two forwards in my edition, though I did read the framing sequence. However, I didn't make it all the way through the first chapter, "Bride," before I gave up. I'm sure it gets better. It has no other way to go.

Maybe it works better as a movie. Indeed, I suppose it must, since everyone has seen the movie and it has a 96% rotten tomato score and is 8/10 with the critics. Plus, the book comes in with a 4.27 star rating with almost a million reviews on Goodreads. As usual, what do I know?

What I think this all comes down to is that I don't like silly. Not at all, never. It's not a flavor of comedy I appreciate. The Princess Bride pummels the reader with silly humor. Mercilessly. 

Now, while I hesitate to make a broad statement, I will anyway. I don't think I'm much of a fan of American humor in general. I like British humor. But not all British humor. Silly British humor, and they have a lot of that, isn't my cup of tea either. I like sly, dry, witty, understated humor, and that's not what The Princess Bride offers. Or perhaps it offers too much of it. Nah, it's just silly and dumb.

Well, here I am, six paragraphs into my review of The Princess Bride, and I haven't said anything about The Princess Bride itself. Do I need to? I assume everyone has seen the movie, and maybe some of you have even read the book. Anything is possible. But the thing is, I haven't seen the movie, nor, to be candid, even now, read the book. Though I tried, I read part of chapter one. Thus, I can't really say much about the book itself. I knew it was a humors fantasy/fairy tale story, but I guess I expected something along the lines of a lighthearted Prisoner of Zenda story. As I mentioned in a previous review, I need a story that is grounded in some sort plausibility. Absurdity doesn't work for me, so the silliness of this story was never going to work for me. The framing sequence that I did read, came off more like lame advertisement for the career of the author than anything else, and the first part of the first chapter of the "novel" itself that I read proved to be even lamer. 

So to sum it up, if you haven't read The Princess Bride, you shouldn't bother. In my opinion. But if you have, and if you enjoyed it, well, I won't judge you.

Alright. Fine. I'll say two positive things about The Princess Bride. ONE: Books like The Princess Bride make writing reviews for them a very enjoyable task. A popular, fifty year old book that allows my inner critic to roam freely, dagger out, is a godsend. TWO: Because of reason ONE, I didn't waste my half hour reading what I did of it.

That's a win, right? Sort of. 

Developmental Editors and Indie-Publishing

I'm going to say it up front. Publishing is a business. A very risky business. So if you're not certain that the revenue from the book you're publishing is likely to pay for a developmental editor, you should not hire one. A developmental editor's value, at least in indie-publishing, is minuscule. Developmental editors are the ones who go through stories and "suggest" what needs to be fixed to make it a "better" story.  Which may be helpful, but considering that they'll likely charge anywhere from $1,000 to more than $3,000 for their work, unless you already have a large established readership, you'll likely never see any return on that investment. This makes spending this sort of money on developmental and/or line editing without a booming self-publishing business, a very poor business decision. In my opinion. As I said, publishing is a very risky business, and investments in it need a thoughtful consideration of facts, not dreams. Any money spent, should be spent very prudently at the scale of expected sales.

Writing, unlike publishing, is an art. Stories are a work of art, created by their author(s). This work of art can be, and almost always is, turned into a product in the hope that it will sell. The job of the editors is use their expertise to re-shape a work of art into the most commercially appealing product possible. In traditional publishing a team of editors work on the cream of the manuscript crop, i.e. manuscripts culled from the thousands submitted to agents, vetted by the agents, and then selected by acquiring editors. Still, they only manage to produce one profitable product out of every three books they work on. And how much of that success might well be attributed to the book's promotional budget is an open question. This is not to say that editors are completely incompetent, it is simply very hard, even for professionals, to know what readers will like. Your own-edited, self-published book is as likely to succeed commercially as a professionally edited self-published book, i.e. statically very unlikely.

A "well edited" book is like a tree that falls in a forest. No one will ever know it is well edited, unless they somehow discover and read it. For this to happen,  thousands of impressions are needed just to get a potential reader to click on the cover, read the blurb, and perhaps, read a sample before buying it. Only if, or when, they get to the sample pages will editing ever have a chance to play a role in making a sale. Thus, money spent on getting the book seen is a far more effective way of making sales than thousands of dollars spent on editors.

Given how late in the sales process any effects of editing might have on influencing sales, there is no compelling case that it is needed at all. Your work, your vision, is just as likely to succeed as an editor's. You just never know what will click with whom.

These days, in traditional publishing, authors usually get only one chance to prove to their publisher that they're potentially a bestselling author. This is not the case in indie-publishing.

The beauty of indie-publishing is that, unlike traditional publishing, you have as many chances as you care to take in chasing commercial success. There's a very simple reason for this; on average, only several dozen to a hundred readers will ever buy and read most indie-published books, be they good or bad. A hundred readers out of a million potential readers gives you a lot of headroom to make mistakes and many chances to get better over time, without coming close to exhausting your potential readership. And the best way to get better is to write, publish, write and publish, again, and again, learning from your mistakes and any feedback you might get along the way. And then, when you reach the point where you can look back and find yourself embarrassed by your first book, you can unpublish it. In the meanwhile, you've been building a back catalog for readers to explore and buy, when the day arrives when your newest book sells more than a hundred copies. When you've made it.

Thus, it's indie-publishing's very long odds of commercial success that allows an author the freedom to write their story the way they want to write it, without compromises to conform to some "professional" editor's opinion. I strongly believe you shouldn't give up that artistic freedom. Who's to say that being different is any less effective than being a copy of last year's successful books? Fashion moves on.

Advocates of using editors often try to make authors feel that they are betraying readers and their fellow indie-authors if they don't get a "professional" editor to polish up their story. Never mind that anyone can set up shop as a "professional freelance editor." There are no bar exams for editors needed to pass in order to put out a professional editor shingle on the internet. Who knows what your "professional editor" knows about editing.

Advocates of professional editors will also point to popular authors who, they say, grew too big for editors and their books suffered for it. Authors like Stephen King or Brandon Sanderson are examples of whom they say produced bloated work as a result. What they don't mention is that while some readers might find this to be the case, there are likely as many or more readers who think those "bloated"  stories are wonderful just as they are. You can never please every reader, and shouldn't try. 

So don't be afraid. It's okay, indeed, desirable, to create your story, your way, no matter how quirky it might be. Remember the abysmal success rate of agents and editors in the traditional space. You really can't do worse by doing it your way. 

Now, by all means produce the best book you can. Get all the feedback on your story that you can from spouses, family, friends, critique partners, and beta readers if you have any doubts about your story. Produce as clean a copy as you can, using the built in spelling and grammar checks, as well as free, or paid (for a month) grammar checkers like Grammarly. But, whatever you do, keep your book uniquely yours. That's its greatest value. Don't let its uniqueness be eroded by someone's idea of making it more marketable. The numbers tell the story; editors have no magic to make a book better and there's no proof they make it more salable. Plus, when it comes to indie-publishing, it's a very different market, with different readers and reader priorities than traditionally published books. Thus,  hiring traditional publishing editors, and mimicking traditional publishing standards is almost certainly a recipe for missing the mark in indie-publishing.

I believe that authors should keep the "self" and "indie" in self-publishing and indie-publishing.

The inspiration for this post came from watching a small publisher/author's YouTube video several weeks ago. In his list of "lies authors tell themselves that will destroy their careers," he listed not hiring a professional developmental editor as one of them. It seems that we're too close to our work to see it's trash. Then last week, he posted another video, where he made the case even stronger - despite the fact that he doesn't feel the need for a developmental himself. (Is he telling himself a lie like the rest of us?) In any event, his advice seems to be a do as I say, not as I do. He then went on to say that cost of editing should be no excuse. Save up for years, if need be. No mention of the steep odds facing success in indie-publishing. And in this video he freely admitted that he was acting as a gatekeeper to keep the riffraff, the "bad" books out of the market - something a holy mission for him. He also admitted that he sees himself and his small press a traditional publisher, so his mission seems to be keeping indie writers out of publishing, or to bankrupt them as quickly as possible, should they take his advice and hire expensive editors. All of which struck me as pretty self-serving. I don't think it is in the best interest of aspiring indie authors to follow his advice, since he never addresses the sad truth of indie-publishing; that tens of thousand books are released every month and only a tiny fraction of them will sell a hundred copies or more. Most will lose most of the money the authors spend on publishing their books.

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 144)

 

I discovered that you can browse the collection of books at the Gutenberg Project by categories. I started with adventure, and downloaded four books out of the first 300 I came across. There were a fair number of books in those 300 that I had either read or had come across before. I chose new ones that looked promising.  So how did that promise play out in the first two books I tried?

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 Car of Destiny by C N Williamson & A M Williamson  DNF 6%

I know that I had read a book by this husband and wife writing team years ago. They wrote mystery and adventure stories usually centered around cars, which was C N's specialty. A M wrote many other novels on her own as well.

A poor-ish, i.e. wealthy, but not wealthy enough, soldier of fortune who is the son of a Spanish noble who fought on the wrong side in some sort of Spanish dispute, and thus is a person non-grata in Spain, instantly falls in love with a companion of an English princess who is marrying a Spanish prince... or something like that. And she instantly falls in love with him as well. But how can their love flourish when he dares not reveal his true identity? Plus, he's so "poor" as well? I'll never know, as the story seemed so improbable and so melodramatic that I simply couldn't take it at all seriously. I moved on.

One of the Six Hundred by James Grant  C+

Wouldn't you just know, this book starts out with the same premise of the last one, save that our hero, the narrator has met the girl of his dream, Lady Louisa Luftus, a number of times before he meets her again at he Uncle's estate in Scotland. There, on a month's leave from his Lancer Regiment, he and his rival, a fellow officer and a rich cad, vie for the love of the daughter of an earl whose wife aims to marry her daughter off to an old rich man. 

This story is set just prior to the Crimean War, i.e. 1853. The first third of this book concerns itself with our hero's courting of the beautiful Lady Louisa Luftus, who is one of a large party staying at his Uncle's house. Our hero is blind to the love of his sweet cousin Cora. It seems to have been a popular trope, and for all I know, still is.

 

If the first third is about our hero's romance, the second third recounts his experiences after leaving England, his regiment having been sent east to fight the Russians in the Crimean War. Over the summer months they camp in Bulgaria, ill supplied, ill housed, ill and inflectionally led, doing nothing but dying of cholera and dysentery. During this time he makes some friends, sees a bit of the generally squalid sights, and almost dies of cholera himself.

In the final third of the book, they are landed on the Crimean Peninsula, and begin to fight the Russians. I read the corresponding pages of this operation in George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman at the Charge, so that I would have somewhat cynical, but historically accurate picture of the events of this campaign to compare Grant's account to. In general, Grant did not glorify the battle; he faithfully describes all the carnage and horror of the battle and the aftermath; the wounded and dying left without waxing about the glory of the English victories. But besides criticizing the red tape that kept the army ill supplied, he does not comment directly on how poorly the champaign was run from on high, save to say that there was a lot of discontent within the ranks over spending those useless months dying of cholera. Anyways, in this section our hero is captured by the Russians, escapes, only be able to ride in the famous/infamous Charge of the Light Brigade; the six hundred, of the title, who rode down the valley of death in a charge that was misdirected to the wrong gun emplacements, a charge that resulted in over 50% casualties. He makes no mention of the unclear orders and mistakes that led to this foolhardy adventure. Wounded, he is returned home weak but whole to slowly recover, unlike many of his comrades.

Over long, and long winded, with the romance too melodramatic for my taste, but still, I have to give him credit; he does take the reader to many colorful and/or squalid places with his story, to a place that 170 some years later, they're still fighting over.

James Grant was a prolific author of both historical tales of famous Scottish historical figures and more popular novels such as this one. This one was written in 1875, and is a rather curious book. It is written in first person, but has sections that are set in a different locale and those parts are in third person. In addition there are at least three short stories - several chapters worth - which are unrelated to the main story included as well. These stories are told by characters in the story from their past experiences, or just stories they have heard. And brother, does he like to describe just about everything. There are pages worth of descriptions of everything from thoughts to people, to the landscape, not to mention the horrors of war. He spends many pages doing just that.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 143)

 

This is the third book I've read by Jean Webster. Let's see how this one 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.

Dear Enemy by Jean Webster   C

This is not a book I would recommend, unless you are interested in children and orphanages. Though it offers a detailed glimpse of the treatment of a hundred plus orphans, some with various disabilities, as practiced a hundred and twenty years ago. I read it out of curiosity, but I found it rather dense reading. Not without its charm, but, not a page turner either.

This is the "sequel" to Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs, which I greatly enjoyed. She uses the same format here as in that book; a collection of letters. In this case written to a number of different people, including Judy Abbot, the hero of the Daddy-Long-Legs story, now married to a wealthy husband. The writer of these letters is an old collage friend of hers, Sallie McBride, who she has talked into becoming the director of the orphanage that Judy Abbot grew up. Sallie is given in the mandate and money to modernize the orphanage to make it far less grim place than it had been when Judy was raised in it. Funded by money from Judy's husband, Sallie sets out to do just that, making a more cheerful and healthy place for the children. The long series of letters relate her struggles over the course of the better part of a year. to do just that. 

Whereas the letters in Daddy-Long-Legs were bright and interesting, these are often highly detail accounts of her effort and of individual children, one letter after the another to various people. While the content of the letters are varied and often laced with humor, I still  found reading this story pretty heavy going, perhaps because there were so many letters, and so detailed.

Webster was social active, not only in the suffrage movement but the reform movement to improve orphanages and the plight of the poor. She uses this story to highlight the challenges and possible solutions. My wife Sally was a special ed teacher, both in grade schools and high schools, and I recognize some of the issues this Sallie faced dealing with some of the children, brought to them, often out of poverty. Everything now has a name and some sort of classification, and some sort of treatment. But not back then. It was interesting to see how they approached these issues 120 years ago, how the approach and understanding changed, and how such things have not.

There are various storyline running through this novel, with a variety of characters, so you shouldn't come away from this review thinking this is a dry, dreary book. It is not, I just found it, well too dense, as in the Gutenberg copy I was reading had virtually no breaks between letters, so one tended to run into another, from one end of the book to the other, which made it  for me, rather tedious reading. As always, your mileage may vary.

This Blog

I had originally planned this post to be a piece entitled The Underlying Premise of My Books. I'd written it a month or two ago for a week when I had nothing in mind to write. So far, so good. But scrolling down my list of blogs, for some reason I don't recall, I came across a four(!) part series called "My Universe" that covered my characters, society, timeline and technology which I had posted a year ago. Talk about beating a dead horse...

But it did get me thinking about this blog. What it is, what it isn't, how it's read, and what I want out of it. And so today's post is just my rambling thoughts on this blog and what its for.

I started it 2015, when I published my first book. Back then, all authors were expected to have websites and/or blogs. Websites cost money, this blog is free, so I settled on a blog. These days most major author blog & websites are mostly dead. The purposes of those websites/blogs in 2015 has now been moved to newsletters, TikTok, and other such social media sites, which are not my thing. 

In 2015 I posted 25 post, all of them about the books I was publishing. My books continued to be the focus of the blog, but after 2015 I usually only published one book, so there was only so much promotion I could do. 

One of the other reasons we authors had to have websites & blogs, was to introduce ourselves and make a connection to our readers. The idea being to present the actual person behind that name on the cover of the book. And that, I took to mean, to talk about things that interested me, and to share my opinions about some things. I have continued to do that, and in the last three years, adding reviews of all the books I read. These days I publish a general post on Wednesday, and a book review on Saturday. An since I am currently so far behind  posting book reviews, I'm reading too many, I also post on Sunday as well.

As of writing the post, this blog has been visited 225,200 times, likely 220,200 times by bots. (Luv Y bots!) That number means nothing to me. I have no goals for this blog. Indeed, I've made a conscious effort to keep a low profile for this blog by not using the tags that search engines can record and show up on searches for most of my posts. I like obscurity, because in obscurity I can write what I want without worrying about creating any ill feelings. I (usually) have no agenda. I will share my opinions on a number of subjects and the books I read, but that is all I'm doing. Sharing what I think. You're welcome to think what you want.

Circling back to proposed The Underlying Premise of My Books post, the question is, would it have mattered if I had covered that material a year ago in far greater depth? How many non-bots read these posts, and would they ever remember something from a year ago? Does any non-bot ever search back and read any of my old posts? I don't have an index for them, so they would need to scroll down through the first page of posts, to the list at the bottom and pick a year, a month, and a post from the list of posts to read something. 

I know that I read the blogs I visit as newspapers; what's new on them and almost never go back and read posts from years ago. Still, as unlikely as it seems, it appears that all my posts pick up views over time, since many of them have around 70, plus views, far more than what they likely had a month or two after positing. Are there non-bots out there reading those posts, or are they just the usual suspects - bots? I have no way of knowing, and to be honest, I don't care. I never pay any attention to  old posts. The only reason I know those numbers is because I looked back on them to write this piece. As I said above, I ain't chasing views.

So what am I doing blogging? Well, there is still the promotional aspect of the blog. I can talk about upcoming books, and talk about the stories and how they came about. I can express my opinion on various book related subjects - stay tuned for a rant next week. And I can write reviews for the books I read. But to be perfectly honest, I do this for one simple reason; I love to write. This blog is just an excuse to write. Writing and posting my writing is its raison d'etre. While I hope to amuse all the bots and non-bots alike who happen by, that is the icing on the cake. I write it to write.

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! (No. 142)

 

With this installment, we have another Jean Webster story downloaded from Gutenberg. This time around it's a mystery.

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 Four-Pools Mystery by Jean Webster  C+

This is a murder mystery, though it had me wondering for a while, since we didn't get to the murder until something like 40% into the story. An attorney, our narrator, needing rest after an exhausting case - this seems to be a popular device to get people off of work and into the story - goes down south to visit his uncle on an old plantation in Virginia. The uncle has two sons, the elder of which he disinherited, the young is still around, but often at odds with his father, plus a daughter who ran off with a fellow her father disliked. He disinherited her too, but she died. You know, an old southern aristocrat. 

Once our narrator arrives, a series of unexplained events like the supper's chicken being stolen out of the oven, plus all sort of food and other stuff go missing. The black servants consider this the work of the ghost of a slave beaten to death, i.e. a haunting. Or as it is written in the book, "Ha'nt" Our murder then follows, and eventually an newspaper reporter who is known for solving mysteries for his paper is eventually brought in to solve the crime.

The story is well written, fairly entertaining, with a great deal of time spent in the lead up to the central mystery, examining the characters, local, and customs of the South, within 40 years of the end of slavery. The black characters all talk in that stereotypical dialect, all are superstitious, and all are portrayed as loyal to the stern Grandfather, even though he beats them on occasion. The northern narrator finds this surprising, and in the end, Webster has the newspaper man say that the person murdered actually committed suicide by the way he treated the blacks; the blacks needed to be respected and treated as people. Still, in 2025 I don't think this story would be considered acceptable on account of its stereotypical portrayal of the uneducated southern black, however sympathetic it might be.

So to sum it up, nothing special, dated, and not a story that I think you have to go out and read.

The Saturday Morning Post (No.141)

 

In the back of my Gutenberg copy of Daddy-Long-Legs, they included all the original ads for other books by the publisher you often find in old books. I browsed through them, and picked out one of them to read next. It is said to be a romance.

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. 

Lavender & Old Lace by Myrtle Reed  C

Ruth Thorne, a newspaper reporter, is asked by an aunt she had never met, Jane Hathaway - not that Jane Hathaway - (Showing my age?), to look after her house along the ocean while the aunt goes on a guided tour of Europe for six months. Needing a break from her work, she takes the job and retires to this house on the hill. We meet some of the local inhabitants, including an exotic elderly (55 years old) lady down the hill from the Hathaway house, who it is hinted had a sad romantic past, but remains determinedly cheerful. Soon, another newspaper man, Carl Winfield, whose eyes need months of rest, turns up, sent by Jane's old boss. After a rocky start, there is a romance. Which you might think would be the main plot of the book. But you'd be wrong.

One of the things I enjoy about these old popular novels, is the sense of not only place and time, but of society and its expectations. Plus, it is interesting how these authors wrote their stories. This one was I found rather strange. There are lots of mysteries involving old and sad love affairs, lights in the windows, and the courtship of Ruth and Carl. The aunt returns early, and Ruth then moves in with the lady in the house below the hill. And well, the plot tends to expand to other characters, and eventually to the past for a melodramatic ending. This is another book where the reader is likely ahead of the characters, characters who seem to act, well, rather strange at times. As I said, a rather strange book, with rather strange characters.

It Seems I Like Girls

Girl authors. Or rather, the stories women write. Some of them, anyway.

I was casting around for something to write about for this blog post, when, after updating my list of books I've read so far this year, it struck me that all my favorite new books this year seemed to have been written by women authors. Was this in fact, true? So I went through my reading list for 2025 to date, and then back to 2024 as well, just to see just how many of my "A" grade stories were written by women.

Here are the numbers;

In 2024 I started 54 books, DNF'ing 5 of them. So far in 2025 I've started 81 books, and DNF'ed 17 of them, for a combined total of 135 books started.

Out of those 135 books, 34 books received a grade of "A" from me (25%). Not a bad average... On the other end, DNFs accounted for 16% Do I have a bell curve going on here? Too much work to do the math, or maths, depending on where you live. Anyway...

In 2024 18 books received a grade of an "A" or "A-" and of those, 13 (72%) were written by a women. Of the five written by men, two were P G Wodehouse books, one was a reread of Riddle of the Sands and two were by Jasper Fforde, one a reread of Shades of Grey and then the first read of Red Side Story.

So far in 2025 16 books have received a grade of an "A", of which 13 (81%)were written by a woman. All three of the "A" books written by men were rereads of Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey Series. 

However, these numbers are somewhat misleading, since they included series written by women. 

In 2024 only three women authors accounted for the 11 women-written books earning an "A" grade. They were Ellis Peters for her Brother Cadfael series, with 9 "A" grade books. The other two were Winifred Watson for her Miss Petigrew Lives for a Day, and Yangsze Choo for The Fox Wife.

So far in 2025, the five women authors accounting for the 13 books earning an "A" grade are Georgette Heyer for some of her historical and Regency romances, Beth Brower for all 8 of her Emma M Lion books, Paulette Jiles for News of the World, Jean Webster for Daddy Longlegs, and L M Montgomery for Anne of Green Gables and Anne of the Island. (Anne of Avonlea earned a B+ I'm reading Anne of Windy Poplars, it has a good chance of an A as well.)

Of course, being a woman doesn't get you a free pass. Susanna Clarke's Piranesi was the worst book I've read so far this year, and Pat Murphy's The Adventures of Mary Darling is a close second in that category. 

Nor do women dominate my reading in the number of authors. I read 30 different authors in 2024 of which 13 were women (43%) And so far in 2025,  I've read 47 different authors of which 17 were women (36%). They fare better in the number of books; in 2024, 29 of the 54 books I read were by women (54%). And so far in 2025, 46 of the 79 books I've read were written by women (58%).

Those are the numbers. But in the end, they are inconsequential. What matters is what is it about these "A" book writers that strike a cord with me?

I'm not going to make any sweeping statement about woman authors or the books they write. There are all sorts of women authors and they write all sorts of books. Plus there are plenty of woman authors in both lists whose books I enjoyed, but did not earn an "A" grade from me. 

What I can say is that the women authors who do did earn an "A" from me is that they wrote some wonderful books, clever, witty, insightful, often lyrical without being purple, and mostly cheerful, or at least hopeful. Their stories are focused on life as it is lived everyday by regular people, rather that epic accounts of the great and powerful, wars and disasters. This is simply the type of story I enjoy. Everyday life somewhere else is interesting to me, i.e. all those places and times you can't get to from here and now.

Of course, not all of the "A" story authors earned an "A" grade from me for every story. I even DNFed a Heyer story. Even they don't get an automatic free pass. But they are all authors that I can confidently pick up one of their books and expect to like, if not love.

I don't know if the fact that they're women gives their writing and stories the something special that appeals to me. Or if it's just that they are writing the type of book I most enjoy, and doing so with a great skill. I do however, think the types of books they write are not often written by men. However, Joseph Lincoln books are much in the same vein; small domestic stories about everyday people, and I enjoy them as well. And there is nothing grand about a P G Wodehouse story either. So story type does count. But male authors like Joe Lincoln or Wodehouse are rare. I think that you will find this special ingredient in women authors much more often. It's likely not a matter of talent or skill, rather, that they are writing from a different perspective, and see the world with different eyes from men. Whatever it is, it is impossible for me to put into words, nor do I care to go to the trouble to try to do so. Their stories are what they are, and I'm content to appreciate them for what they are.

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTR! (No. 140)

 

We're having a Jean Webster weekend. I was curious about the author of When Patty Went to College, Jean Webster. Was she, by chance, famous enough to warrant a Wikipedia entry? The answer is yes.  That book was her first novel and she went on to write seven more novels until her death at the age of 39 of childbirth fever after giving birth to her daughter in 1916. Prior to this she lived an active life, traveling the world as well as writing and being socially active. I was curious enough to download several more of her books. In this episode I will review her most famous work.

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. 

Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster  A

I am not grading this book on the curve. I read this book in a day, and it has everything I value in a book; engaging characters, especially the narrator, along with clever and witty writing. Written nine years after When Patty Went to College, it is ten times more accomplished and engaging.

The narrator is an orphan, Jerusha "Judy" Abbot, who grew up in an orphanage and was then kept on after age 16 in order to attend high school, and work (for room and board) at the orphanage. She is offered the opportunity to attend college, with everything paid, including a monthly allowance, by one of the trustees of the orphanage. This trustee has done the same thing for several of the male orphans, and now wishes to it for her, since she is a promising student, especially in English and writing. His only requirement is that she write him a letter once a month describing her experiences, with the understanding that he won't write back. Everything will be handled by his secretary. She catches just be briefest glimpse of him, as he is leaving; only an impression of him being tall from the long shadows cast by a light outside. It gave her the impression of a daddy-long-legs spider, hence the name she gives him in her letters.

The book is mostly her letters to him over the course of four years, as she attends college, and spends her summers on a farm, reading like a diary. They, like her first book, describe life in a woman's college ca. 1910 or so. I need to have a "fried chicken and waffle supper" some time.

While I enjoy being emersed in this era, I loved her understated humor. But then, I'm a big fan of understatement in most everything. It's hard to pick out examples of this humor, But I'll give you a sample or two.

The first is from her first visit to New Your City, and shopping with a wealthy roommate. "And the shops? I never saw such lovely things as there are in the windows. It makes you want to devote your life to wearing clothes."

Or; "The weather of late has been ideal - bright sunshine and clouds interspersed with a few welcome snow-storms. I and my companions have enjoyed our walks to and from classes - particularly from."

Or on visiting the house of her rich roommate; "All the furniture was carved and upholstered and gorgeous; the people I met were beautifully dressed and low-voiced and well-bred, but it's the truth, Daddy, I never heard one word of real talk from the time we arrived until we left. I don't think an idea ever entered the front door." 

In short a wonderful story. My only complaint is a minor one, I thought the ending could've been handled with a little less melodrama.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 139)

 

A reread this time around. This is a very special book to me, since the copy I have was my grandmother's. She wrote her name, her maiden name, on the first page. She received this book as a Christmas present from a friend of hers, Leona, which I know because she kept the gift tag with the book. Grandma Algiers was born in 1894, and married in 1917. The version of the book I have is the 1908 version, so I would expect she received it within a few years after that date. It also happens to be the book that I used as a reference in the painting above.

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. 

When Patty Went to College   by Jean Webster  B-

I am probably grading this book on a slight curve, due to the book's connection to Grandma, and taking into account that I am not the audience Jean Webster was writing for. Still, it is an interesting book; a series of fifteen episodes featuring Patty and her friends during their senior year at an all girl's college. Webster attended Vassar, so it likely represents life at that college at the turn of the last century. 

The episodes are a mix of slight and humorous little vignettes and slightly more serious ones. For example, the first vignette describes setting up their room; painting the floor black, hanging tapestries on the wall (against the rules) and dealing with the janitor. Another is about a game of making up stories about staff and students "Locale Color" that are so ridiculous that no one would believe them... except some do and trouble ensues. There is one about befriending a very lonely and homesick girl who just doesn't seem to fit in and discovering why. And an episode about some of Patty's friends signing up a fictional girl for Patty's German Club - a girl who of course never shows up, and who Patty can find no trace of in the school records, even though she sends notes explaining why she didn't attend the meetings... You get the idea.

I will leave you with this one nugget of wisdom from Patty, who, after getting out of another of her scrapes with officialdom states; "When you have to explain to a woman," she said in the tone of one who is stating a natural law, "it is better to write a note; but when it is a man, always explain person."

Not a book you need to go out and read, though if it does interest you, you can download and read it from Gutenberg.

The Summer Sunsets of 2025

 

It has been my custom for years now that, during the summer, I watch the sun set while sitting on my rocking chair, playing the part of an old man sitting on his front porch. Though in my case, I'm sitting in my garage overlooking our condo's driveway/parking lot, as you can see from the photo above taken from my rocking chair. I usually get up and take the photos from the edge of the parking lot to avoid the powerlines. (Though I am sure I could get rid of them in post, but I want authentic photos, not AI enhanced ones. Most sunsets are nondescript, cloudless sunsets. Which is to say nothing to write home about, much less photograph. But when there are clouds about, I get my phone out and snap a photograph or two of them. Below are the best sunsets of the summer of 2025 photographed from the top of an Eau Claire hill, a perfect place to watch the world turn.

A spotlight on the world.

Clouds on the move.

A variety of clouds.

A moody sunset.

The sun setting in the smoke from the Canadian forest fires and a low bank of distant clouds.

Again, a selection of clouds.

A sunset in yellows, orange, and purple. 

And finally, a cloud bowing its top.  All in all, nothing too spectacular, but a decent year of sunsets. 

The Saturday Morning Post EXTRA! EXTRA! ( No. 138)

 

                      

During my teen years in the 1960's many of the pulp stories from the 20's thru the 40's were being reprinted. I read and enjoyed them. For example, I was a big fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and there were many other science fiction stories from those decades that were republished and found a new audience. However, there were two of the popular pulp heroes that, for some reason, I did get into reading back then. One was Doc Savage. I may've read a few  Doc Savage stories, since I had a friend who was collecting them. While I do have one book on my shelves from the other author, but it's not his most famous character. I have no recollection of reading it.

However, when a number of the booktubers I watch chose a book by this author to read and discuss, and the book is in the public domain these days, I decided to give it a read.

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 comments are always welcomed.

The Hour of the Dragon (aka Conan the Conqueror) by Robert E Howard  C

My kingdom for a map!

This is a late in his career Conan story, and the only (authentic) novel length one. In this story Conan has settled down as the king of Aquilonia after his days of roving. As the story opens, the enemies of Aquilonia have resurrected a long dead sorcerer using a magical jewel, the Heart of Ahriman, and with his power and the jewel they defeat Conan's army of Aquilonia by rendering Conan temporarily paralyzed and leading the army into a trap. Conan is captured, imprisoned, and escapes death with the help of a young woman, Zenobia. The story then follows Conan as he is pursued by various enemies, his kingdom sacked and misruled. He escapes several traps, and learning about the importance of the Heart of Ahriman, he chases after the various people who have stolen it first from the sorcerer and then from each other. This takes him across all the lands of Howard's Hyborian Age, hence my cry for a map. 

I'm sure I could've found a map of Howard's Hyborian Age if I Googled it, but I didn't care quite enough to bother. I think some books have one included.

As I said, this is my first Conan story. And likely my last. In my opinion, comparing apples to apples, pulp writer to pulp writer, any Edgar Rice Burrough's hero is a more fully drawn and interesting character than Conan. Conon is not the brightest blade on the wall, but not an idiot either. He's a mostly chivalrous barbarian, at least in this story. And while he can hack to pieces six fighting men, seven would defeat him, so he often has to be either saved with a arrival of unexpected help, or simply left for dead when knocked out. (This happens several times.) He knows fear and dread. All in all, he's no superman, and I must admit I found him more human than I expected. That said, Howard doesn't take a great deal of time or effort to give him any great depths. He uses him to drive the plot along, fighting and conquering.

The writing itself was a lot of "telling" as we say these days. The scenery is described. Characters give speeches to explain the story. We are given several different point of view characters to build the premise and story, when needed. Conan is also mostly described, we don't really get to know what he's thinking, though sometimes what he's feeling, usually fear, dread, or anger. As I said above, I think almost any of Burrough's books and heroes are superior to Howard's Conan in this novel. I have a feeling that the length of the story did Conan and Howard no favors. Both may shine better in short stories where less is expected.

There are many Conan and other Robert E Howard stories available for free on the Gutenberg project.