The Saturday Morning Post ( No.94)

 

We're back down that rabbit hole again this week. What can I say, there are a lot of them, many of which are available at the library with no, or short waiting lists.

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.

These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer  B+

This story is set in pre-revolutionary France and England - 1740's -  rather than in England's Regency period of some 70 years later. It concerns an English duke with half a dozen different names, and a young person who he "buys" to be his page - for a reason that slowly becomes apparent. This duke is notoriously coldhearted and ruthless fellow who is bent on revenge. The type of fellow, who having lost one fortune gambling, and wins another fortune from a young an foolish fellow who gambles with him and who ends up recklessly getting killed in a duel, it is said, as a result of his financial ruin. In short, he's not a very pleasant fellow, as we first meet him.

I found this book's beginning worrisome in that, as I said, the duke is anything but likeable, and the setting in Paris. However, as the story goes on it becomes  much more enjoyable once it focuses on the fate of the very engaging "page." I can't really go into the details of the plot as it is hard to talk much about it without spoiling some of its secrets. Suffice to say there is a lot going on in the story, with plenty of action. 

While romance seems to always be a feature of her stories, Heyer is very much a historical fiction writer, and a creator of a great variety of different, and often engaging characters, as well as a writer of witty dialog, which is always a plus for me. I do think that historical fiction of this sort is going to be my go-to genre for the foreseeable future.

I find it hard to grade these stories. I really enjoy them, but when I compare them to my A grade books, specifically the Brother Cadfael books, I have to admit that I find the Cadfael stories are better or perhaps, more appealingly written stories. Brother Cadfael and his friend Hugh, are rather dear to me. That said, I really have enjoyed all of the Heyer stories I've read so far. They could be A stories. It is only when I compare them to Peters' stories, do they fall just a little short. 

A Milestone Passed

 

I was standing behind the door when ambition was being passed out. I would like to believe that I was sharp enough even then, to have quietly slipped behind it, for ambition is an uncomfortable curse gift. You can get into all sorts of trouble with ambition. So far I have avoided both ambition and all sorts of trouble. I mention this only because when I set out to write, and eventually publish my books, my ambition extended only so far as to not make a fool of myself. 

I will admit that I always wanted to be a writer. Call that ambition if you care to, but my approach was hardly ambitious, nor were my goals. Which, in addition to not making a fool of myself, was simply to entertain some people who had the same taste in stories that I have. My books are happily just niche books. I had no great expectations at all.

Well, here we are nearly ten years later, and my ambitions, such as they are, have been met. They were met long ago. Now, I've kept a record of my sales, but it's just a game for me. I had, and still have, no numerical goals. I'm just curious to see how my books do each month. 

Where was I? Right. The milestone. Sometime in the middle of last month, I sold my 100,000th book. Not something I set out to do, but there it is.

Still, I will admit 100,000 is a nice round, fat number. It is big enough to impress some people, if anybody ever asks. Few do. And despite my bargain prices, I believe I made about a penny profit on each book I sold. Not a lot. Still, considering that most author/publishers lose money publishing their books, it's something. But in the end it is merely a milestone to mark and move on.

With that milestone behind me, I don't see another significant milestone on the horizon. What do you make a big deal of after 100,000?  200,000 or a million? Who knows?  Who cares? I don't and won't, if only because I'll likely be dead in either case. 

As I said, I never had any grand ambitions when I started publishing my books. I find myself more impressive by the number of books I've written. I'm truly amazed that I have written 17 or 21 books, depending on how you care to count them, written in the last 15 years. That is 1,956,952 published words. I wouldn't have thought I had that many words or stories in me to set down.

Of course, all I did was write the books. Really, this milestone is all about you, dear readers. You are the ones who are actually responsible for all those copies sold. It was you, my readers, who, in buying, reading, and hopefully enjoying these books carried all of us past this milestone. And for that, I am extremely grateful to all of you. Thank you so very much!

The Saturday Morning Post (No.93) EXTRA! EXTRA!

YET ANOTHER EXTRA EDITON

Today we have another book I came across watching a Tristan and the Classics video This time he listed what are considered the 50 greatest espionage novels by polls, writers, and experts. The Secret of the Sands, which I reviewed not long ago came in at No. 47, and The 39 Steps, another favorite of mine came in at No. 8. Since I'm not interested in Cold War espionage, I chose a WWll espionage novel set in England.

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.

Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett  DNF 46%

I gave it a good go. But the deeper I got into it, the less I was enjoying it. So, by the time I was nearly halfway through the book, I was wishing it was finished. So I finished it.

This book didn't work for me for several reasons. The first being that the story was told from a number of points of view and spans five years. I'm simply not a fan of stories with multiple points. It's not an automatic thing, but it has to be done well for me to enjoy the book. For example, there was as young couple featured in several early chapters that basically disappeared after the first quarter, though, I gathered by a brief reference in the forward of the book, that they would be playing their part in the story near the end of it. 

That brings me on to my second complaint, which is that the story was told in a very fragmented way. It was a patchwork quilt of episodes over the course of five years of a variety of characters, that included their backstories, or rather parts of them, as well as some background history, and scenes designed to set the stage for WWll England. In short, all sorts scenes, characters, and info jumbled together, destroying, for me, the flow of the story. 

Of course, none of these would matter, if the characters were compelling. But I found that none of them were in the least compelling, perhaps because of their scattered appearances throughout the story. The Nazi spy is a clever, ruthless, and utterly colorless character, who sometimes does unbelievable things. We follow him through various episodes. The British counter-intelligent agents are also utterly colorless and forgettable, despite the pages spent giving them something of a backstory, most of which seemed irrelevant. Moreover, as I mentioned they appear and disappear throughout the story, often only briefly and episodically. Thus, as a reader, I was never brought into the story enough to care about them, nor for that matter, the stakes. 

The stakes are a problem with books like this because we know the ending. They can say in the story, that the secret the spy discovers could change the outcome of the war, but we know that nothing of that sort actually happened. And while I'm not that knowledgeable about the history of the D-Day invasions, I still have to question if the spy did, in fact, succeed in his mission, if the secret he discovered was critical enough to change history. And thus, unless I was invested in a character, and/or the story, as just a story in and of itself, like I was in The 39 Steps, whose basic premise is much the same, the story doesn't work. This one didn't. 

I believe this is Ken Follett's first published novel, and he's gone on to write some very acclaimed books. Indeed, one of the reasons I picked this book from the 50 is because his massive historical fiction books, like The Pillars of the Earth, have been highly praised. All of which is to say, this book didn't work for me, but it might work for you.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 92)

We're still down that rabbit hole...

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 Toll-Gate by Georgette Heyer  B

Yes, it's another Georgette Heyer Regency story, only this time it's a mystery adventure story set shortly after the Napoleonic Wars, i.e. around 1816 or so. The story concerns one ex-captain in an elite British regiment, one Captain John Staple. He is the second son of a landed gentry and as such took up soldiering as a profession, and had a great time doin so during the wars. However, he finds peacetime soldiering didn't appeal to him, so he sold out and is now roaming about, getting into and out of strange adventures. 

In this story, he arrives at a toll-gate on a rainy night while traveling home from his brother's country estate. He finds that it's manned by a frightened youngster.  It seems that toll roads are not a new thing, and travelers on this road had to pay to use it, enforced by toll-gates along the way. In any event, he learns that the youngster's father had gone off for an hour or two, but had yet to return. The youngster finds himself alone in the night, so Captain Staple decides to spend the night in the gate keeper's cottage, to keep the frightened boy company and get himself out of the rain. He expected the father to return before morning. But he doesn't, leaving his son in the lurch, manning the toll gate by himself. What Captain Staple would've done next is an open question, because while playing the part as the toll-gate keeper that morning, he meets a beautiful lady in a carriage at the gate, and, of course, falls in love with her. He then stays on pretending to be the cousin of the true gatekeeper in order to get to know her. She turns out to be the daughter of the local gentry who is slowly dying.  He also feels that he should try to solve the mystery of what has happened to the true gatekeeper. 

In the course of the story we get to meet a colorful assortment of characters, booth good and bad, as Captain Staple sets out to solve what turns out to be several the mysteries, while at the same time courting, and protecting his true love from some very unpleasant characters who are staying in the house of the dying gentry. The story is told in the dialect of the times, and the slang of the rather raffish characters we met. I could've spent hours looking up all the slang terms she used in my copy of the Dictionary of Historic Slang if I had cared to. I did not. I just went with the flow. It works just as well.

All in all, an entertaining book. This one is more of a historical mystery and adventure than a romance. I'll no doubt be returning to Georgette Heyer in the future, as the two I've read have been entertaining and are readily available from the library whenever I need something to read.