Gold In Them Hills

 

Some three years ago now, I embarked on a quest to find new types of books to read. As you can see from a photo of my library, I've read a variety of books over the last sixty-some years, beginning with the Tom Swift Jr books in the right hand corner. They led to science fiction to fantasy, Sherlock Holmes and Fu Manchu to Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, and latter on to P G Wodehouse, sea stories, Victorian/Edwardian adventures stories, Joe Lincoln's Cape Code novels and Napoleonic era British naval stories, as well as books on London, the Blitz and Taoism. In short, a fair variety of books. However, my tastes for older books meant that they need be found in used book stores that were far away, plus, a quarter of a century ago, knowing that I would some day have to move all those books, I stopped, for the most part, buying books. I became content with borrowing books from the library. But even that became rare, especially once I was engaged on writing my own books. 

That said, for most of my life, if asked, I would've said I was a fan of science fiction, even as I read less and less science fiction. But some five years ago, I came to realize that I was never a real science fiction fan, and could no longer carry that banner. (I read them as old fashioned romances.) And more recently, I came to realize, though a writer, I was no longer much of a reader.

So some three years ago, I decided to get back into reading, to prospect for new books and genre to read. To that end, I collected a bunch of free ebooks on Amazon in different genres to see if anything clicked - with somewhat inconclusive results. I was also following blogs and watching YouTube videos about books. So between the free books, the recommendations I came across from the blogs and videos, and going back to reread favorites, I began to not only read again but to expand the scope of my reading.

It has been a rewarding experience. Over the last three years I've read books by W Somerset Maugham, Compton Mackenzie, Ellis Peters, D E Stevenson, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Jeff Shaara, Molly Clavering, Alexandre Dumas, Georgette Heyer, John Hadfield, and Beth Bower, Larry McMurtry, Jane Austen, James Clavell, and Yangsze Choo, just to name a few. I've found some wonderful writers and delightful books in the most unlikely places.

Of course there are genre that I have no intention of exploring, just as there are types of music that hold no interest for me - country, hip-hop, rap, and classical music prior to Ralph Vaugh Williams. Likewise, I have no desire to read horror, grimdark, or any sort of grim, dark and depressing work, no matter how literate, as well as vast epics, and ancient classics to name some genres off the top of my head.

What else isn't going to change, I think, is what I enjoy in my books - imagination, wit, charm, and cleverness in story and  the art of writing. But these attributes can be found across many genre, including, no doubt, some that I've no interest in reading, but you might.

So I just want to say that I hope that you might take my experience to heart, and to go prospecting yourself beyond your usual pastures. Go where you never read before. Cross genres, go back in time, sample this and that. Listen to what friends, bloggers, and video booktubers have to say about books to help chart your quest. There is so much joy to be found sitting on book shelves - once the books are opened and read. There is so much talent, so much imagination, so many worlds to explore, and characters to befriend, to be tied to just one or two genres.

Indeed, as a writer, I am humbled by the talent I've discovered in all the unexpected (for me) places. I'm currently reading a series of books that I'm simply in awe of. I would never have discovered them if my daughter hadn't recommended them to me - twice. I wish I had even half of the author's imagination. But oh well. I get to enjoy hers, at least. And this is just the most recent example of straying off the beaten path, the familiar pasture to find gold.

All I can say is that there's gold in them hills. Nuggets as big as your fist. You just have to leave your familiar reading pasture and go prospecting for them. 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 91)

I've fallen down a rabbit hole this time. Blame it on YouTube. 

After reading the Brother Cadfael stories, I was thinking that maybe historic fiction might be my new go-to genre. To that end, I watched a video on Tristan and the Classics, a YouTube book channel, and his video on ten historical fiction books that he recommends. I proceeded to pick up one of the books he described that happened to be readily available from my library as an ebook. So down 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.

Black Sheep  by Georgette Heyer  B+

Historical fiction, yes, but also a Regency romance, by one of the queens of historical and Regency romances, Georgette Heyer. She also wrote mysteries, historical novels, and thrillers, which I will likely have to get around to sampling. Since, as you can see from my grade, I rather enjoyed this story.

The story itself is pretty classic. It is set in the English city of Bath during the first half of the nineteenth century, presumably during the Regency Period - 1811 to about 1820, I believe. Fanny Wendover, a seventeen year old heiress, has fallen in love with a very charming fortune hunter, Stacy Calverleigh. He is in desperate need of marrying a heiress to pay off his gambling debts and support his expensive lifestyle. Though Fanny's guardian is a straightlaced uncle who no one can stand, he had handed off the raising of Fanny to his two sisters. Thus she's grown up in the house of her two aunts. The elder, Selina Wendover, is your typical spinster, much given to (imagined) ill health, along with the younger aunt, also unmarried, the twenty-eight year old Abigail Wendover. She is a much more level headed woman, who is pursued by a number of very boring suitors. Abby  sets out to save Fanny from the fortune hunter - hopefully without turning Fanny against her. A almost impossible task since Fanny resents any ill words against Stacy. Enter Stacy's uncle, the Calverleigh family's black sheep, Miles Calverleigh. Some 20 years before, he had been packed off to India for some scandal, and who by chance, finds himself in Bath. Abby and Miles meet by a minor misunderstanding, and Abby, against her better judgement, finds that she is attracted to him, despite his dark reputation and rather careless attitude to just about everything. 

Black Sheep is no bodice ripper. It is all very proper, as are its characters. Which is good, as I like the understated in just about everything. The charm of this story is in the interesting and largely pleasant characters, plus a well researched glimpse of the life of high society of the period, the ton, who gathered in Bath to idle away part of their year. But ever more so, I enjoyed it for its clever and witty writing and dialog. I may have mentioned in previous reviews, (many times), but it bears mention, I like clever and witty dialog. Clever and witty writing trumps plot and story for me. While variations of this story have no doubt been written several thousand times since this one was written, and perhaps many times before, and the fact that I am likely outside of its target audience, speaks to its great charm. It's such a delightfully written book, that it earns a B+ in my grade book.

Glencrow Summer Is Now Available on Amazon

 

The ebook version of Glencrow Summer is now available on Amazon world wide for $3.99 USD. Customers within the US can purchase it HERE. Outside of the US, you can find it in your regional Amazon store.

The 364 page paperback version can be purchased, again in the US HERE for $12.99USD It is also available in every country where Amazon print on demand books are available.

As always, free versions of both the ebook add audiobook can be found on Google Play Store, Apple, B & N, Smashwords, and several European ebook retailers as well. (Links in this previous blog post HERE) I prefer to just share my stories, but I have to play by Amazon's rules when offering my books on Amazon and Amazon require a non-zero price. Amazon matches free prices, or not, as it is their whim, so please feel free to buy it:)

The audiobook version is now available HERE. It costs the minimum Amazon price of $3.99

I'd like to thank everyone who has already picked up their copy of Glencrow Summer.

Glencrow Summer Alternate Covers

 

This is the cover I eventually settled on

A you may have noticed in my last post on Glencrow Summer's production time line, I painted a number of pictures of the glen of the Crow River. I did so, in part, just to get back into painting. Another reason was, as the story churned in my mind, to put down some locales in paint. Given my non-visual mind, I hoped that perhaps I could make the locale more real to me by the process of painting the place. That said, I can't really say that the paintings ever quite matched the vague impressions of the scenes I had in mind. This is not surprising, since I've found over the years that the impressions I have in mind, have never quite translate into the actual scenes. My impressions are too vague, too undefined to be pinned down with my limited talents. The more practical purpose of painting these scenes was that I was needed to paint the cover I'd need for both the paperback and ebook versions. 

For the cover of a paper book that you want to wrap around to the back cover, most of the important action needs to be on the left half of the painting, which will end up being the front cover. My first effort  for a cover didn't work out at all so I repainted it with something else and then moved on to my next attempt, the painting below.

My first attempt at a cover

The problem I felt with this cover, at least I felt so at the time, was that the people in the distance were too small and remote for a book cover. I thought that what was needed was to have the characters more to the fore. Something less of a landscape painting and more of a book illustration. So I paint over parts of this picture, re-routing the river a bit to bring the two people fishing closer. Below was the result of this effort. I also added some black outline to the painting to sharpen it up a bit.

                       

In addition to this version, I also decided to use the second version of my first attempt at a cover that I mentioned above. As you recall, the original idea didn't work out, so I painted the same locale but from a different angle and called it a day as a mere landscape painting rather than potential cover. This is that re-paint effort below.

My first attempt was paining the scene looking directly at the wall from the meadow.

But then it occurred to me that if I switched things around on this painting, maybe I could use it as a cover, after all. The main problem with using this scene for the cover was that the potential locale for the action of the painting was on the left hand side, and I'd need it on the right for a cover. However, flipping the digital version over to get the road on the right presented no problem in software. So I did it, and then added several figures in the foreground who were getting together for an evening of fishing on the Crow River. I also added a fence line that was described in the text and pushed back the wall of the lodge further into the woods to better fit the book description as well. Both scenes are supposed to be in the mellow evening, so I altered the tone of the paints for a more golden glow.

A second alternative cover

Now, if I was an illustrator, both of these attempts would probably have worked better as covers than the one I eventually chose. But alas, I'm not. I'm just an impressionist landscape painter. I decided that these paintings, with the figures so large looked too clunky, too awkward, too sketchy. Too just bad. So in the end, I decided to just go with a revised version of my first cover, to just settle for mood rather than illustrations of action.

So I went back to my second version, the river scene, and painted over it yet again, restoring it to something like, but hopefully better, than the original. I decided to keep the original painting just a landscape, so I added the figures fishing from the original (digital) version in "post" i.e. I cut them out of the digital version of the original painting and patched them into the new digital version. 

And just to put everything right, I repainted the road scene painting again to eliminate those clunky figures. I did, however, keep the fence line and the wall further back in the woods.

The final version of the road painting

While I did need to come up with a cover, I was mostly just having fun with paint with all these efforts. I]m not convinced that covers matter all that much. At least not in the way we're told, i.e. to have covers "appropriate" for the genre. I see too many different styles for the same genre, and see how cover styles come and go out of style, to worry over much about covers. I simply go for covers that suggest the mood of the story, and play into my long suit, such as it is, with landscapes/street scenes. And I should add, that fit with my "brand". 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 90) EXTRA! EXTRA!

 ANOTHER SUNDAY REVIEW!

This was the other book I picked up at the library. It's a non-fiction book that one of the BookTubers said that it was one of his best books of 2024. The subject sounded interesting, so I decided to give my first book in 2025 a try.

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 Dawn of Everything, A New History of Humanity  by David Graeber & David Wengrow  DNF (Heck, I hardly started it.)

As I said in my intro, this sounded very interesting. It tells the story of what modern research has revealed about the lives of people who lived in "prehistory". Which is to say,  the several million years of humanity before recorded history. The major premise of their book is that we've gotten the wrong idea about how things where, and only in the last decade or two of archeology have we began to have a better understanding of their lives and how they have affected ours. The problem is, for me, that they seemed mostly intent on arguing their case, rather than telling their story.

The first two chapters recount the two old mainstream schools of thought about early man, and their philosophical, social, and economic repercussions. The first school of thought is some version of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea that humans were hunter-gathers living in a state of prolonged childhood innocence in small, egalitarian bands. It was subsequent the rise of agriculture and cities that put an end to this innocence with laws, and a top down social order. On the other hand, we had Thomas Hobbes's contention that humans are selfish creatures living solitary, poor, nasty, brutish short lives and that any progress from this state is due to the development of governments, courts, and police in cities, which is to say the very things Rousseau saw as evils. The authors talk about these ideas and the political an economic fallout from them for the next 77 pages. No doubt fascinating reading if you're a poli-sci major, but philosophy, sociology, economic, and political debates are not in my wheelhouse. I was here for the history of the prehistory. So I skipped these two chapters hoping to start learning about early humans.

While they did start out talking about our earliest ancestors, explaining how diverse they actually where, not only in Africa, but around the world. And how the common idea of humanity coming out of Africa in one great movement, is not now considered valid. The problem for me, however, was that they continued arguing their case, always pointing out the perceived errors in previous understandings, and doing so in a very wordy fashion. I don't care about how wrong everyone was before them, I wanted to learn about how pre-historic people lived and society evolved. As Joe Friday might say, "Just the facts, Gents."  I would've loved to learn what they were saying in a more concise way with a lot of illustrations, maps and timelines, but running 536 pages long, with another 150 pages of notes, without very many illustrations, this book is simply not for me.

I'm sure this is an important book with lots of interesting lessons to tell about the people who lived before us - how they lived with so little in such a hostile world. But...  For the right person this book would be a great read.

The Saturday Morning Post (89)

 

As I mentioned in my last review, I intended to pick up Yangsze Choo's first book, The Ghost Bride, eventually. A day after Christmas I came across another book I thought I might find interesting. As it turned out, we were in the midst of an early January thaw, with temperatures above freezing and since both were on the shelves, according to the library website, I decided to venture out into the world to pick up those two books from the library. While it's only a ten minute drive down to the library, still, when temperatures are in the teens, that's ten minutes more than I care to spend outside in the winter. Not to mention the minute it takes to walk from the parking lot to the library... But thanks to the balmy winter weather, I have two books to read. One of them is over 500 pages... It review in a few weeks, but 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. 

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo  B

This is her debut novel, and as you can see from the cover, a roaring success, including an Oprah book of the week. I've now read her three books in reverse publication order. I like her latest book, The Fox Wife, best, her second book, The Night Tiger the least, and this one comes in second, not that it really matters. So what about this story?

All of her books are fantasies in that they featured Chinese and East Asian supernatural beliefs that, in her books, are real. Indeed, in each of the books, she has a section where she talks about the beliefs she used in writing the story. Each of the stories are set in the past of our world. This book is set in Malaya (her birthplace) in 1893, and in the city of Malacca. Or at least we start in Malacca, though we end up, for a time, in the Chinese world of the dead - a place where the dead await their judgement, which sends them to various levels of hell to punish them for their ill deeds before being reborn again.

Unlike her subsequent books, this story is told exclusively by the protagonist first person narrator, Li Lan. No messing around with a second, parallel, third person. plot line that eventually merges with the first person narrator. A big plus, as far as I'm concerned.

The premise is that Li Lan's father, after the death of his wife, retreats to writing poetry and letting his business partners eventually bankrupt him. The only son of an old friend, the very wealthy Lim family has died, and they have approached Li Lan's father with a proposal - would Li Lan agree to be their dead son's "ghost bride?" They would perform a marriage ceremony, without the bridegroom, and afterwards Li Lan would be considered a widow, and looked after in the household of her deceased "husband." Her father is considering this as a way to look after his daughter after his death as his money is all gone. Well, actually, it isn't so much the dead son's family, but the dead son himself who wants her as his bride. Though dead, he has managed to avoid going to judgement, and plans to avoid doing so for a long, long time.

As I said at the top, in this story ghosts, spirits and the spirit world are real, as Li Lan discovers... As usual, I don't want to go into the plot any deeper. Just know that you are going to take a journey into the strange world of the Chinese Buddhist afterlife, with many complications and adventures along the way.

As I said in my last review, this type of story is, in general, not my cup of tea. The fact that I enjoyed it and read it in two days says a lot about the writing and the character of Li Lan and the characters we meet along the way. If, like me, you read to take you to exotic places that you can't get to from here any other way, you may well enjoy this book, and indeed all three of her books.  

Glencrow Summer Is Available Everywhere

With all my beta readers having reported in, I'm delighted to announce the release of Glencrow Summer on the Google Play Store, Kobo, Apple, B&N, Smashwords, and more. The price varies from store to store, from $3.99 for the ebook on Amazon and Kobo, to FREE most other retailers, with the paperback version on Amazon costing $12.99 Free is my preferred price, but if you are locked into Amazon, it's only a penny less than $4.00, the cost of six eggs. Or less. As I explain below, the Kobo price is an experiment. Pick it up today at your retailer of choice.

Smashwords ebook  FREE

Barnes & Noble ebook  FREE

Google ebook FREE

Google Audiobook FREE

Apple ebook  FREE

Apple Audiobook  FREE

Kobo $3.99

Everand ebook  FREE to Subscribers

Vivlio ebook FREE

Fable ebook  FREE

Amazon ebook $3.99 

Amazon Audiobook $3.99 

Amazon Paperback $12.99

Kobo Pricing Update

Looking at my recent sales, or rather lack of them on Kobo, I decided to list my books at their Amazon retail price - for three reasons. The first is that I think Kobo buries free books in their listings. I've had trouble finding my books in their store, even when I put in my name. The second is that with the number of sales Kobo has generated, especially recently, I have nothing to lose. The third is that Kobo has its own lending library service like Kindle Unlimited. I'm thinking that maybe being able to read a book that costs money for free using the service might be more appealing than reading my free books, even if they could find them. I'm also convinced that the free book market is a distinct market from the paid book market, so that by putting a price on them I might, for these three reasons, actually find more new readers. We'll see.

And with  my Project 2026 tossed into the deep end of the pool, sink or swim, a year ahead of schedule, it's on to Project 2027!

Glencrow Summer Production Time Line

 

The original painting that I used for the cover of Glencrow Summer

I began writing Glencrow Summer on 25th of August 2024. The original working title was Glencrow Lodge, it's title sort of a companion piece to Chateau Clare, which, at the time was out to my beta readers. And being out to the beta readers, I had nothing to write. I like to write, and so, idle hands being the devil's workshop, I decided to start on my next book. While I had the basic ideas for the story, as described in previous posts, and enough of the plot to at least set out to tell the story, I did not have the the clearest idea of where it would end up. All I knew was that it was going to be a "What I did on my summer vacation" type of story. Thus, it was something of a leap in faith, not just because I didn't have a clear idea of what I would do with the premise of Glencrow Summer, but I was far from confident that Chateau Clare would find an audience, and seeing that  Glencrow Summer is more to the same, the whole project was rather iffy. I had, however decided to write the stories I wanted to write regardless of their reception, so I set out writing it, iffy be damned.

Another painting inspired from the story - the gate to Glencrow Lodge

The choice of naming the book and the locale is a little nod to a family of crows who seem to "own" the top of our hill. Hence, the Loc Lore Rey district river I named the Crow River, so its valley, or glen, and lodge became Glencrow. It would have been more colorful to name it Glenraven, but we don't have ravens around where I live. We have crows. I like crows. 

The writing progressed without a hitch. The story fell into place as I went along. The only thing that I slightly unhappy with is it's ending. Oh, it's fine enough ending, but... Well I best not say anymore. I hate spoilers, or even hints of them. You may see what I mean if you read the book.

I finished the first draft on 8th of November, with 90,245 words written in 82 days. As long as I have an idea of what I need to write, I can write 1,000+ words a day, working, these days, an hour the first thing in the morning, and optionally, coming back to it in the evening for an hour or two, when things are going well.

Another painting inspired by the story

I knew however that I would be adding more words to the second draft. Not only because I usually do, but because I knew I had rather sketched in some scenes. I also knew that I had time to do so since neither my wife nor my beta readers would be able to read the story until after the holidays. I expected to add about 10K words in the second draft. I usually don't wait long to start my second draft since the first chapters have already been sitting fallow for three months. So I started my second draft on the 10th of November, and wrapped it up on the 28th of November, coming in at 106,435, i.e. more like 16K than the 10K I was aiming for, which was fine with me. I've never been a believer in cutting, cutting cutting your story like the experts say to do. One reason is that because my stories are first person narratives, the extra words are useful to paint the narrator as a character; for it is the character who is "writing" the story, not some professional novelist.

This was an earlier treatment of the road and gate to Glencrow Lodge

I started on the third draft, hoping this time to just tinker with words and sentences rather than paragraphs, and correct any mistakes I might see. I started on the 9th of December and finished my third draft on the 18th of December with a 106,981 word draft. A slight increase. Usually I'm comfortable with three drafts, but with time to spare, I decided to do a fourth read through, this time in Google Docs rather than in LibreOffice. Ideally this would be done on an ebook reader so that I could experience what readers would experience, but that makes corrections cumbersome. Reading in Google Docs not only made it look different enough to see what needed to be fixed, if anything, but it has a better grammar checker than LibreOffice, so I made all the corrections it highlighted. I finished this fourth draft on the 22th of December, coming in a 107,294.

After this, I uploaded the book chapter by chapter to the free, web based Grammarly grammar checker and corrected the errors it found. I ignore it's free grammar suggestions, and its punctuation suggestions, as it doesn't like commas, even in places where you would think they belong. I then took these corrected chapters and upload them, again one by one,  to the free on line Scribbr grammar checker. It still finds mistakes - wrong words and such - that both Google and Grammarly missed, and adds commas where they are missing but should be.  

Once I reassembled the book, a few days after New Years, I printed it out and handed the paper manuscript to my wife to proofread. Unlike the old days were there were ten or more typos to fix on every page, my current process means that many pages escape unscathed, with no mistakes found at all. Only after I fix the mistakes she finds do I sent it off to my beta readers. I only sent it off to three beta readers this time, as I didn't hear from four other ones with Chateau Clare. I assume they didn't care for it, and this being more of the same, I thought I'd best spare their feelings.

And that is the story of Glencrow Summer's writing.

Glencrow Summer Maps

 

I like books with maps, so I usually put maps in my books. Glencrow Summer is no exception. However, I find that maps in ebooks are too small and awkward to be enjoyable or much use. So I post them on my blog. Here are the relevant maps for Glencrow Summer. I believe that you can click on them and download them to have alongside you when you read the book. The maps are included in the paperback book.

I talk about the influences that shaped Glencrow Summer i.e. my "Project 2026" in several other blog posts. If you are curious, you can find them linked below.

Part One

Part Two

I also talk about my future writing projects in a more general way HERE

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 88) EXTRA! EXTRA!

HAVING JUST WRITTEN MY SATURDAY MORNING POST # 100, I THINK I BETTER SERVE UP A FEW EXTRA EDITIONS, HENCE THIS SPECIAL SUNDAY EDITION. WHILE I LIKE HAVING A BIT OF A BACKLOG SO THAT I DON'T FEEL PRESSURE TO READ A BOOK JUST TO FILL A BLOG SPOT, A THREE MONTH PLUS BACKLOG IS GETTING RATHER LONG.

Having read The Fox Wife by this author earlier in the year, and enjoyed it, I placed a hold on the ebook below in my local library system, and this week, (three months ago - editor) it became available. So was the six plus month worth the wait?

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 Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo  C

This book is likely significantly better than my grade, because for me, it included several things that I am not a fan of. The first is the narration format which alternates chapters between two point of view characters, one a first person narration, and the other third person. Each of these are the two strands of the story that the author twists together until they combine. Choo used this same technique in The Fox Wife, and I wasn't a fan of it there either. Secondly, I am not a fan of dream sequences, and they play a significant part in this story. And thirdly, there are ghosts, which in this story, are people not able, or willing, to leave the living world behind just yet. Plus there is the title weretiger, i.e. a person who can turn into a tiger, or maybe a  tiger that can turn into a person. All of which stretches my credibility a bit beyond its breaking point. I'm not much of a lad for magic in general. All of which is to say that you should take my grade with even more skepticism than usual, as this book is, I believe, a very well regarded book. It just wasn't quite the book for me.

That said, I have to say that once again it was a well researched book, one that, I think, brought its exotic setting, Malaysia in the 1930's, to life. Plus, it had characters that you could root for, both of these characteristics are ones which are things that make for a good book for me. It is well written, and yet, I have to admit that I found myself skim reading parts of it - it simply ran on too long and I found it to be too, well, unfocused for my taste. It has its magical realism plotline, with weretigers, dead people communicating with the living via dreams, as it explored the superstitions and customs of the region. It is also something of a thriller, in that one of the plot lines required a character to do something within 49 days or dire results happen. It also has a strong domestic plotline with family tensions, as well as a budding romance, and by golly, a murderer mystery as well, though you'd never know it until the end. In short, there was simply too much going on for my simple tastes.

Still, if it sounds intriguing to you, I have no problem recommending it. I liked her The Fox Wife much better, but then I am more familiar with China than I am with Southeast Asia, and while fox spirits are no less magical, or believable, than weretigers, they are more familiar to me. I am now interested in reading her debut novel The Ghost Bride, but I'd have to drive ten minutes to the library to pick up a paper version of it. Bummer.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 87)

 

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

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

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A British Narrator for Amazon Audiobooks

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

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

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

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

Appreciating Literature, or Not

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Style in Literature

Philip Chase & A P Canavan How to Analyze Stories Intro 

Narration, Story, and Plot  

Narrative perspective 

 Characters

 Symbols & symbolism

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

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 86)

 

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

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

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Miira, Innerscape: Book 1 by acflory  B

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

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

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