Books read for June:
29 June 2010 23:58![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cog_nomen-Revenge of the Hound
-Murder in the Rue Dauphine
-Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon
-The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
-Elementary, Mrs. Hudson
This brings my total to 29/50, and I'm currently casting about for book #30
Books for june:
The Revenge of the Hound
A+++ This one is a keeper, for sure. The author has Holmes in every nuance, breath, and tic of the man. Every measure of him is exactly perfect, and the mystery itself (or rather several mysteries all tied together) is fantastic. Watson is not shortchanged, and is excellently handled as well. It is definately one of my favourites so far and I know at some point I will be reading it again, as well as reccomending it to everyone who asks. I have his other book already in my posession and I am excited to read it, though I may force myself through some of the books I'm not looking forward to as much first.
Murder in the Rue Dauphine
Awful. This book is in need of an editor in a bad way. The paragraphs are made of rambling, unconnected sentences in some pathetic attempt to be Noir, but instead it just kept jarring me out of the narrative. The antagonist randomly switched genders for two paragraphs toward the end of the book, and I had to re-read the section seven times to make sure that it wasn't something I had misunderstood - and indeed it wasn't, it was just some kind of massive fuck up on the part of the author/editing team that he may or may not have had. I will skip any other books by this author - I was hoping for something along the lines of the Ben Justice series, but instead of fun & trashy, this one was just plain trash. It is already on it's merry way through paperback swap and I won't miss it in the least.
Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon
Meh, it didn't kill me. Millet's Holmes is still too harsh, and STILL too unkind to Watson - going so far as to set a house that Watson is SLEEPING IN On fire just to see if the man would wake up from the smell of smoke. Blargh. I still have his Rune Stone Mystery to get through, but hopefully that's the last one - it's the last one I already have, at least, and so hopefully I will never get so desperate as to order any others if he's even written any. With what he does to the characters, I'm really hoping he hasn't.
Private life of Sherlock Holmes
Autobiography of sorts. It recounts a lot of the research that went into solidifying Holmes as Holmes, and things like where exactly 221B Baker St. was, in addition to a whole variety of other things like how Watson constantly fucks up dates and Doyle's response was a proper victorian version of 'I don't give a shit, people read the stories anyway!' It read like an overly long essay entitled 'why sherlock holmes is awesome and you should love him', but obviously the author had a real passion for the subject and an encyclopedic knowledge of canon.
Elementary, Mrs. Hudson
Too ashamed to carry this one to work, the cover is romance novel pink, and covered in a lace doily (Hmm! Lace... doilies...) design. However, it read fast and was surprisingly entertaining. I think I may be slowly converting into some kind of dented mystery reader (I'm usually more of a fantasy person), so if anyone catches me curled up in a closet somewhere with a pile of agatha christie, try not to worry too much - it'll pass eventually. Maybe. Of course I'd have to run out of Sherlock Holmes related books first, and that's entirely unlikely in any forseeable future.
I picked up and read the first twelve pages of Hostage by R.D. Zimmerman, but I put it down again in frustration. I am not totally ignorant of the fact that AIDS is a big problem, but all of the gay authors I read repeatedly assert that AIDS is not a gay only problem. On the other hand, every time I read a story with a gay protagonist, the plot goes like this:
There was a... AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS.
Oh my god seriously can I just read some gay fiction that doesn't deal with this? I'm not trying to deny it's existence or importance, I just feel rather bludgeoned about the head and shoulders, when really it's just an overdone subject. The horse is dead. YOU GAVE IT AIDS AND IT DIED OKAY. Even Ben Justice has HIV. The equally ridiculously named pothead detective Chanse Macleod (OF THE CLAN MACLEOD) harps endlessly on and on, and then Todd Mills starts off with - SURPRISE - a plot about AIDS. It would be like if every story set in the Victorian era had a protagonist that contracted Tuberculosis. Or any story that ever involved a horse gave it Encephalitis. Find a new plot point, there are many to choose from. :|
-Murder in the Rue Dauphine
-Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon
-The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
-Elementary, Mrs. Hudson
This brings my total to 29/50, and I'm currently casting about for book #30
Books for june:
The Revenge of the Hound
A+++ This one is a keeper, for sure. The author has Holmes in every nuance, breath, and tic of the man. Every measure of him is exactly perfect, and the mystery itself (or rather several mysteries all tied together) is fantastic. Watson is not shortchanged, and is excellently handled as well. It is definately one of my favourites so far and I know at some point I will be reading it again, as well as reccomending it to everyone who asks. I have his other book already in my posession and I am excited to read it, though I may force myself through some of the books I'm not looking forward to as much first.
Murder in the Rue Dauphine
Awful. This book is in need of an editor in a bad way. The paragraphs are made of rambling, unconnected sentences in some pathetic attempt to be Noir, but instead it just kept jarring me out of the narrative. The antagonist randomly switched genders for two paragraphs toward the end of the book, and I had to re-read the section seven times to make sure that it wasn't something I had misunderstood - and indeed it wasn't, it was just some kind of massive fuck up on the part of the author/editing team that he may or may not have had. I will skip any other books by this author - I was hoping for something along the lines of the Ben Justice series, but instead of fun & trashy, this one was just plain trash. It is already on it's merry way through paperback swap and I won't miss it in the least.
Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon
Meh, it didn't kill me. Millet's Holmes is still too harsh, and STILL too unkind to Watson - going so far as to set a house that Watson is SLEEPING IN On fire just to see if the man would wake up from the smell of smoke. Blargh. I still have his Rune Stone Mystery to get through, but hopefully that's the last one - it's the last one I already have, at least, and so hopefully I will never get so desperate as to order any others if he's even written any. With what he does to the characters, I'm really hoping he hasn't.
Private life of Sherlock Holmes
Autobiography of sorts. It recounts a lot of the research that went into solidifying Holmes as Holmes, and things like where exactly 221B Baker St. was, in addition to a whole variety of other things like how Watson constantly fucks up dates and Doyle's response was a proper victorian version of 'I don't give a shit, people read the stories anyway!' It read like an overly long essay entitled 'why sherlock holmes is awesome and you should love him', but obviously the author had a real passion for the subject and an encyclopedic knowledge of canon.
Elementary, Mrs. Hudson
Too ashamed to carry this one to work, the cover is romance novel pink, and covered in a lace doily (Hmm! Lace... doilies...) design. However, it read fast and was surprisingly entertaining. I think I may be slowly converting into some kind of dented mystery reader (I'm usually more of a fantasy person), so if anyone catches me curled up in a closet somewhere with a pile of agatha christie, try not to worry too much - it'll pass eventually. Maybe. Of course I'd have to run out of Sherlock Holmes related books first, and that's entirely unlikely in any forseeable future.
I picked up and read the first twelve pages of Hostage by R.D. Zimmerman, but I put it down again in frustration. I am not totally ignorant of the fact that AIDS is a big problem, but all of the gay authors I read repeatedly assert that AIDS is not a gay only problem. On the other hand, every time I read a story with a gay protagonist, the plot goes like this:
There was a... AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS.
Oh my god seriously can I just read some gay fiction that doesn't deal with this? I'm not trying to deny it's existence or importance, I just feel rather bludgeoned about the head and shoulders, when really it's just an overdone subject. The horse is dead. YOU GAVE IT AIDS AND IT DIED OKAY. Even Ben Justice has HIV. The equally ridiculously named pothead detective Chanse Macleod (OF THE CLAN MACLEOD) harps endlessly on and on, and then Todd Mills starts off with - SURPRISE - a plot about AIDS. It would be like if every story set in the Victorian era had a protagonist that contracted Tuberculosis. Or any story that ever involved a horse gave it Encephalitis. Find a new plot point, there are many to choose from. :|
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no subject
Date: 30 Jun 2010 05:17 (UTC)I've run into the same problem. I've read only three published gay fictions and two of those three made me wanna kill myself (though not via AIDS. i was too sick of it by then). I think that to get published in the LGBT section in general, it's required for writers to focus on the subject because it's such a BIG PROBLEM in that population demographic. Whatever. STD's are a problem on the all-over demographic, but we don't see normal fiction strewn with that shit all over its pages. And especially not in harlequins. Ugh.
YOU GAVE IT AIDS AND IT DIED OKAY.
That line made me laugh so bad, oatmeal cookie crumbs shot up in my nose. It was unpleasant but totally worth it. Haha, made my night.
no subject
Date: 30 Jun 2010 13:49 (UTC)I skimmed ahead a bit and the terrible shocker in the middle of the book is that the lead character's unrelated boyfriend - SURPRISE - ALSO GETS AIDS.
It's like all of these people are stuck in the 80's. AIDS is still bad, but education and modern medicine have made it better, and if you're smart about it these days you are probably not going to die of AIDS. I have never, in fact, met another person with AIDS, and I run with a pretty sexually fluid crowd.
Besides AIDS is like the glamorous, martyr STD when it's depicted in LGBT fiction - you never see a hero who has something like pubic lice or herpes. Those are gross, but not dramatic and literary!
It's very frustrating to me. I want to support these authors, but I am so sick of reading about that one topic.
I apologize for any oatmeal nose incidents I cause. :)