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Books
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| 12/30/2004 |
I got two books and a couple of bookstore gift certificates for
Christmas so I've read three books in the last three days. I enjoyed
all three very much; however, I wouldn't be me if I couldn't find some
nits to pick. So here are my comments on the three books I read, in
order - both the good points and the bad.
- The Full Cupboard of Life, by Alexander McCall Smith. The latest
(and, I suspect, last: most of the loose ends now seem tied) book in
the "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series, this book was more of the
same, in a good way. Mma Ramotswe and Mr J.L.B. Maketoni's lives in
small-town Botswana continue with the same mixture of drama, laid-back
introspective insight and understated humor ("In her mind, her shoes
always addressed her as Boss, which was good. Shoes should know their
place.") as the previous books. The only nit I have to pick with this
book is that it is "more of the same" and was more of a comfortable
revisiting of old friends than a riveting page-turner. Not that there's
anything wrong with that.
- The
Sunday Philosophy Club, also by Alexander McCall Smith. The
start of a new series, this one is set in Scotland and the protagonist
is Isabel, the part-time editor of a philosophy journal who obsesses
over crossword puzzles and theoretical questions of morality. I initially found Isabel rather pretentious, but
as the book progressed I began to recognize aspects of my own
personality in hers, especially her desire to reduce things to abstract
general principles and her need to occasionally remind herself not to
be condescending. The humor in this book is in the same vein as the
Ladies Detective Agency series, but perhaps a little less subtle; I
found this to be an improvement. The principal weakness in this book
lay in the plot - some events were blatantly obvious well in advance (at
one point it was almost painful to watch Isabel fail to realize the
obvious for several pages) while others were unpleasantly jarring. I
have no problem with unexpected plot twists in general, but usually I'd
expect them to be surprising only in advance - in hindsight you wonder
how you didn't see them coming. In this book I was more inclined to
wonder how I could ever have been expected to. The greatest cardinal
sin of the book, though, was the introduction of two crossword puzzles
in the second chapter - "Excited by the score (7)" and "Vulnerable we
opined desultorily (4, 4)" - to which the book did not reveal the solutions.
Surely I'm not the only reader who is now going crazy trying to figure
these out? (If you do, please let me know the answers in the comments of this post.) If nothing else, the author deserves to be hung over a pit
of scorpions for that one, although if the answers turn out to be clues
to the plot I would be prepared to consider that a mitigating
circumstance. All in all, I have bridled enthusiasm (Click the link.
Trust me. It's worth it.) for this book.
- The
Bad Beginning, the first in the Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony
Snicket.
I had heard that these books were akin to Harry Potter, but I
disagree. Unlike HP, this was unquestionably a children's book. The
plot was transparent to any adult reader and the characters were mostly
caricatures of stereotypes. This didn't stop it from being a very
enjoyable read, though, and the humor of the writing style had me
laughing aloud on several occasions. One thing I did find extremely
annoying was the habit of explaining words to the reader, which came
across as patronizing (a word which here means "treating the reader as
if they did not have a basic knowledge of English that even a child
ought to possess") and left me feeling rather persnickety
("persnickety" means "annoyed", while also being a clever pun on the
author's name). See what I mean? I found these forgivable when the
explanation was also a joke, but just irritating the rest of the time.
Still
undecided on whether to buy the rest of the books and/or see the movie.
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