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kindkitCurrently reading: The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures, ed. Mike Ashley. As I mentioned last week, reading Death by Silver gave me a craving for Sherlock Holmes pastiche (Death by Silver isn't pastiche, but it isn't a million miles away from it either). I'm actually liking The Mammoth Book more than I like a lot of pro pastiche, in part because, as Ashley says in his introduction, its authors actually know and care about the Holmes canon, and also because Ashley apparently gave them a "no Watson bashing" brief. Watson is in the stories, and is important and intelligent and a nice person and Holmes likes him! *sideyes the numerous stories in A Study in Lavender: Queering Sherlock Holmes in which poor Watson is dragooned into representing Victorian Intolerance*
Recently Read: I finally read Rohase Piercy's My Dearest Holmes, famous/notorious as the first and still nearly the only professionally (?) published piece of Holmes/Watson slash. I'd heard mixed things about it, but I thought that on the whole it was as well-written as most pro pastiche and much better than a lot of it. I really enjoyed the first section, with the blackmail case; the Watson angst was a little excessive but not implausibly so. The second section, which instead of offering a new case retraces "The Final Problem" in detail, often exactly reproducing the original dialogue, was less successful. The focus on Watson's emotions wasn't enough to maintain my interest in repetition after repetition of "readers will be familiar with the events I am about to describe" followed by lengthy and unnecessary descriptions of them. And when, after all Watson's suffering, the reunion finally came, Piercy seemed to suffer a failure of nerve. I wasn't expecting a sex scene and I'm glad Piercy didn't attempt one, but even the emotions were short-changed, literally so in that the reunion scene was maybe ten pages long (this after many, many pages of regurgitated scenes from "The Final Problem"), and metaphorically so in that, while earlier we saw every detail of Watson's angst, his happiness was summarized with a strange detachment. And it's all so coy that it's never actually clear if Holmes and Watson become lovers in the sexual sense, or if Watson has accepted Holmes's idea that like Caesar's wife they must be above reproach, and has given up what little there was of his own sex life for a future of elevated sentiment and chaste hair-stroking. Verdict: not bad, and worth reading for the first half, but fanfic does the non-angsty bits better.
My craving for Holmes also led me to read David Pirie's The Patient's Eyes and The Night Calls, which are about the young Arthur Conan Doyle solving crimes with his mentor (and model for Sherlock Holmes) Dr. Joseph Bell. The first one was tolerable, the second lurched into many of my least favorite detective story tropes, such as "the detective and everyone s/he loves are threatened by a serial killer with a personal obsession." I gave up partway through the third one, which is like the second only more so.
I tried to read Robert Harris's An Officer and a Spy, but the first page was all "Our Hero walked into the room, which was already occupied by General LongFrenchName, a tall elderly man but still renowned for his heroism at the battle of Somewhere and his glorious victory at SomwhereElse, and by his aide Colonel EvenLongerFrenchName of whom blah blah Placename Placename Regiment Medals, and by M. ExtraordinarilyLongAristocraticFrenchName, Deputy Minister of War under the famous M. SomebodyElseEntirely, blah blah political rivalry blah blah Germany blah blah economic issues." Now, since this is a novel about the Dreyfus affair, Harris is constrained by history as far as who his characters are and what they're called. But still, there's a way to do details and necessary background while engaging the reader's interest. This is not it. I may try again eventually if I hear good things about the book, but that first page is a steep uphill climb.
What I'm reading next: As usual, I don't know. I'm still in the mood for Sherlock Holmes.
Recently Read: I finally read Rohase Piercy's My Dearest Holmes, famous/notorious as the first and still nearly the only professionally (?) published piece of Holmes/Watson slash. I'd heard mixed things about it, but I thought that on the whole it was as well-written as most pro pastiche and much better than a lot of it. I really enjoyed the first section, with the blackmail case; the Watson angst was a little excessive but not implausibly so. The second section, which instead of offering a new case retraces "The Final Problem" in detail, often exactly reproducing the original dialogue, was less successful. The focus on Watson's emotions wasn't enough to maintain my interest in repetition after repetition of "readers will be familiar with the events I am about to describe" followed by lengthy and unnecessary descriptions of them. And when, after all Watson's suffering, the reunion finally came, Piercy seemed to suffer a failure of nerve. I wasn't expecting a sex scene and I'm glad Piercy didn't attempt one, but even the emotions were short-changed, literally so in that the reunion scene was maybe ten pages long (this after many, many pages of regurgitated scenes from "The Final Problem"), and metaphorically so in that, while earlier we saw every detail of Watson's angst, his happiness was summarized with a strange detachment. And it's all so coy that it's never actually clear if Holmes and Watson become lovers in the sexual sense, or if Watson has accepted Holmes's idea that like Caesar's wife they must be above reproach, and has given up what little there was of his own sex life for a future of elevated sentiment and chaste hair-stroking. Verdict: not bad, and worth reading for the first half, but fanfic does the non-angsty bits better.
My craving for Holmes also led me to read David Pirie's The Patient's Eyes and The Night Calls, which are about the young Arthur Conan Doyle solving crimes with his mentor (and model for Sherlock Holmes) Dr. Joseph Bell. The first one was tolerable, the second lurched into many of my least favorite detective story tropes, such as "the detective and everyone s/he loves are threatened by a serial killer with a personal obsession." I gave up partway through the third one, which is like the second only more so.
I tried to read Robert Harris's An Officer and a Spy, but the first page was all "Our Hero walked into the room, which was already occupied by General LongFrenchName, a tall elderly man but still renowned for his heroism at the battle of Somewhere and his glorious victory at SomwhereElse, and by his aide Colonel EvenLongerFrenchName of whom blah blah Placename Placename Regiment Medals, and by M. ExtraordinarilyLongAristocraticFrenchName, Deputy Minister of War under the famous M. SomebodyElseEntirely, blah blah political rivalry blah blah Germany blah blah economic issues." Now, since this is a novel about the Dreyfus affair, Harris is constrained by history as far as who his characters are and what they're called. But still, there's a way to do details and necessary background while engaging the reader's interest. This is not it. I may try again eventually if I hear good things about the book, but that first page is a steep uphill climb.
What I'm reading next: As usual, I don't know. I'm still in the mood for Sherlock Holmes.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-25 08:36 am (UTC)The "gottens" in the dialogue kept throwing me out though, and such a simple mistake is puzzling when they did so much research and otherwise got the feel of period English and manners so very well. I don't mind Americanisms in the text, but not in British characters' speech; Ned and Julian wouldn't say "fall" either; it's "autumn".
But as I said, I'll look for more by them as although the lack of basic Britpicking by their "first readers" on LJ annoyed me, the writing was otherwise excellent.
I just went to look online for The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures at the library, but no go, damn it. There are lots of other mammoth books edited by Mike Ashley which look interesting, but maybe I can get the Holmes one on Kindle.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-27 01:21 am (UTC)I speculated to someone that the lack of Britpicking in Death by Silver might possibly have been requested by the publisher. The book was geared primarily to an American audience, and to Americans who don't know better, some British English structures (like "got" where Americans would say "gotten") sound ungrammatical. Since a lot of real British books are Americanized for publication here, it wouldn't surprise me.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-27 08:00 am (UTC)I know a lot of books are Americanised (e.g. Harry Potter), but the writing and dialogue in this one were aimed at fairly educated readers (and were wonderfully British otherwise) so that was rather odd. If people knew what an omnibus was, they'd surely be able to handle a few "got"s. In some cases, "received" would also have done as well which would have got (sorry) around the problem. American spelling doesn't bother me at all so I didn't even notice that.
OK, just checked the library catalogue and they have:
- Lost things
- Mighty good road
- Point of knives (the only "point" one
Looks like I'll have to buy the others on Kindle, and yay, it looks like they have pretty everything including some SG1 and Star Trek. All right!