Wednesday Reading Meme
Dec. 9th, 2015 08:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Martin Edwards’ The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story, which I spent all of yesterday reading and very much enjoyed, although I do have some quibbles about it. Whatever it lacks, it does have a lot of propulsive force as a book: you just want to keep reading, and reading, and reading.
However, the organization is quite poor. It’s sort of vaguely kind of chronological, but it still feels somewhat random, especially given that Edwards packs in a short biography of every single member of the Detection Club(or so it seemed to me), a club of mystery writers founded in London in the early thirties. It wasn’t (and isn’t) a very large club, but it’s large enough that the array of names and titles becomes confusing, especially given that many of the writers have multiple pseudonyms.
Sayers and Christie form the clearest through-line in the work - along with a male detective writer, Berkeley, who sounds like a misogynistic ass, but he was one of the founding members of the Detection Club so you could hardly leave him out. I think the book shaping the book more firmly around them would have given it more structure, even though it would probably have required cutting some of the material about the lesser-known writers.
Having said that, almost all the individual material is good, so it would be hard to know what to cut. But it’s very much a case where lots of interesting individual parts never come together to form a whole that is larger than the parts.
Then again, Edwards is hampered in that endeavor by the fact that the early Detection Club minutes disappeared during World War II (probably burnt up in the Blitz), so I can’t really blame him that there isn’t more about the Detection Club itself. As much as I would have loved a chapter relating the goings-on at a Detection Club dinner, the materials to recreate one clearly just aren’t there.
What I’m Reading Now
Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History, which is about… well, the history of the gulags. Because clearly I needed more gulag in my life, I guess.
I’ve also been reading the newest Robert Galbraith book, Career of Evil, and I’m kind of stalling out. This is partly because of Robin’s Irritating Fiance, Whose Face is Probably Next to the Word Tosser in the Dictionary, who is unsupportive and cranky and generally a manchild, and also irritating on a meta level because the more awful he gets, the more obvious it becomes that Robin and Strike are probably going to get romantically involved at some point. The clearer that gets, the more that I oppose it.
There’s also a generous helping of Robin in Peril, which I find stressful. I’m not even a fifth of the way through and very little Peril has actually manifested itself, but the sections from the point of view of a guy who wants to murder Robin to get revenge on Strike are creepy and gross and, you know, meant to be creepy and gross, but that doesn’t make them less unpleasant.
And they feel unnecessary to me, and I think they distract from the mystery. We already know far more than our detectives, and the only reason we don’t know every terrible detail of Creepy Cross Guy’s plan is because the narrator is being cagey. I don’t buy for a minute that CGG doesn’t constantly spell them out to himself in minute detail, so on top of everything else I feel like the book’s cheating.
What I Plan to Read Next
Still waiting for the library to whisk Charles Finch’s Home by Nightfall to me. Also L. M. Montgomery’s Pat of Silver Bush, and Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On. We shall see which one wins the race!
Martin Edwards’ The Golden Age of Murder: The Mystery of the Writers Who Invented the Modern Detective Story, which I spent all of yesterday reading and very much enjoyed, although I do have some quibbles about it. Whatever it lacks, it does have a lot of propulsive force as a book: you just want to keep reading, and reading, and reading.
However, the organization is quite poor. It’s sort of vaguely kind of chronological, but it still feels somewhat random, especially given that Edwards packs in a short biography of every single member of the Detection Club(or so it seemed to me), a club of mystery writers founded in London in the early thirties. It wasn’t (and isn’t) a very large club, but it’s large enough that the array of names and titles becomes confusing, especially given that many of the writers have multiple pseudonyms.
Sayers and Christie form the clearest through-line in the work - along with a male detective writer, Berkeley, who sounds like a misogynistic ass, but he was one of the founding members of the Detection Club so you could hardly leave him out. I think the book shaping the book more firmly around them would have given it more structure, even though it would probably have required cutting some of the material about the lesser-known writers.
Having said that, almost all the individual material is good, so it would be hard to know what to cut. But it’s very much a case where lots of interesting individual parts never come together to form a whole that is larger than the parts.
Then again, Edwards is hampered in that endeavor by the fact that the early Detection Club minutes disappeared during World War II (probably burnt up in the Blitz), so I can’t really blame him that there isn’t more about the Detection Club itself. As much as I would have loved a chapter relating the goings-on at a Detection Club dinner, the materials to recreate one clearly just aren’t there.
What I’m Reading Now
Anne Applebaum’s Gulag: A History, which is about… well, the history of the gulags. Because clearly I needed more gulag in my life, I guess.
I’ve also been reading the newest Robert Galbraith book, Career of Evil, and I’m kind of stalling out. This is partly because of Robin’s Irritating Fiance, Whose Face is Probably Next to the Word Tosser in the Dictionary, who is unsupportive and cranky and generally a manchild, and also irritating on a meta level because the more awful he gets, the more obvious it becomes that Robin and Strike are probably going to get romantically involved at some point. The clearer that gets, the more that I oppose it.
There’s also a generous helping of Robin in Peril, which I find stressful. I’m not even a fifth of the way through and very little Peril has actually manifested itself, but the sections from the point of view of a guy who wants to murder Robin to get revenge on Strike are creepy and gross and, you know, meant to be creepy and gross, but that doesn’t make them less unpleasant.
And they feel unnecessary to me, and I think they distract from the mystery. We already know far more than our detectives, and the only reason we don’t know every terrible detail of Creepy Cross Guy’s plan is because the narrator is being cagey. I don’t buy for a minute that CGG doesn’t constantly spell them out to himself in minute detail, so on top of everything else I feel like the book’s cheating.
What I Plan to Read Next
Still waiting for the library to whisk Charles Finch’s Home by Nightfall to me. Also L. M. Montgomery’s Pat of Silver Bush, and Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On. We shall see which one wins the race!
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no subject
Date: 2015-12-09 05:44 pm (UTC)Your first paragraph about Career of Evil was a tiny emotional roller coaster for me: "Oh no, that douchecake is still around?" "Oh, that means JKR isn't pushing Robin and Strike together, that's good! :D" "Wait, no, what if it's the opposite? :("
It can be hard for me to like romance plots that involve marking an existing relationship for destruction. Of course in real life many people are tossers and/or in relationships with tossers. But in fiction it ends up feeling like the narrative cards are being stacked against the tosser in question, who is only as bad as he is because some power beyond his control has deemed him Not Endgame.
Anyway, I'm only about a quarter of the way into The Cuckoo's Calling, but I already have strong opinions about the personal lives of Robin and Cormoran. I want them to be platonic crime-solving best friends, AND for Robin to break up with Tosser McDouchepie. Both these things can happen! It doesn't have to be either/or.
Poor old Berkeley is such a mess. I keep meaning to read more of his books, because I liked The Poisoned Chocolates Case and his chapter of The Floating Admiral was pretty excellent, I thought. Edwards makes his books sound interesting, if not always entirely comfortable. But Helen Simpson and Clemence Dane, and many others, are ahead of him in the queue.
The Golden Age of Murder is such a good book that I can't help wishing it had been better. It's at that point of near-completion where even the smallest improvements can make a huge difference in clarity and strength. It feels like either Edwards was exhausted, or the publishers wanted it out ASAP, or both. Still a great read and a book I'll want to open many more times.
Crossing my fingers for your library to get a book to you soon! Any one of those would be good.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-10 01:52 pm (UTC)I think I would find Robin/Strike more appealing (or at least less blatantly unappealing) if Robin seemed at all attracted to him, but he always sounds so unattractive from her narration, and not in a way that makes me think she's trying to convince herself that she's not attracted to him. I still don't think I'd be enthusiastic, but at least... less unenthusiastic?
And I totally agree with you about The Golden Age of Murder. It's so close! He has so much good material! But it never quite coheres. A stern editor would have been so helpful.