ALICE ADDERTONGUE by Benjamin Franklin

Rating: One raised eyebrow and a mildly baffled expression

Highlight of note: Benjamin Franklin wrote this piece with a female first person narrator, something most men of his age wouldn't have dared to do.


I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to say about this satire. I found it very difficult to follow. It is less bothersome about missing paragraph breaks than the last story in this collection, but every noun in this piece is capitalized, as though it were in German. The odd capitalization proved more confusing than I would have thought, particularly when paired with archaic speech patterns. (Note: this is how Franklin published things and wasn't uncommon at the time. I do wonder if maybe we should change it to modern convention when presenting it now, though.)

The narrator is clearly a caricature. She is a completely ridiculous person named Addertongue, so there's really no way to mistake this for something other than satire. It is also highly moralistic. Neither of these things are really surprising coming from Benjamin Franklin, but I do wish it had been a little more clever.

The entire piece is presented as a letter from a reader of a gazette save for a paragraph at the end in which the gazetteer replies. One Alice Addertongue is responding to an article on scandal, which I take from usage to have had a meaning closer to the modern meaning of gossip at the time of writing. Apparently the gazette has recently taken a stance again scandal in which they accused all woman of participating in scandal. Alice accuses that this is the author committing scandal himself by discussing a behavior and applying it to everyone in a gender. She has a valid point. Her next ascertain, however, is less solid, as she proceeds to opine that scandal serves a vital and important purpose that only idiots should wish to impede.

Alice goes on to tell us that she participates in scandal herself. In fact, she is an expert on the matter. She keeps a detailed journal of scandal and is adept at getting other people to discuss scandal via methods she's clearly spent a long time and a lot of mental energy devising. If a day goes by without her spreading scandal, she considers the day wasted. Our writer is not the most likable of characters, a fact which she acknowledges. However, she feels it is her public duty to make others aware of people's faults so that no one has a better reputation than they deserve.

All of this established, Alice goes on to bemoan that she is now suffering from a cold and a toothache. She says this is interfering with her ability to spread the stories she has received and begs the gazetteer's assistance. She says she's including some of the stories she's currently unable to spread herself and that she's long thought the gazette's readership numbers would be improved if they published more scandal.

We conclude with the reply from the gazetteer asserting that he doesn't want to publish the scandal stories she sent him because such news isn't really news. I wish Mr. Franklin had trusted his reader a little more and not felt we needed to be hit over the head with a hammer to understand his point.

I'm uncertain whether Franklin was attacking gossips or the media with this piece, or perhaps both. He was, of course, a newspaper man, and he had many opinions on what his peers chose to publish. He was adamant that he would not publish things that encourage immorality or which might cause real harm to a person, and those are both things that publishing gossip could potentially do. Even though the target of Alice's letter chooses not to publish the stories she has passed on to him, I can't help but assume there's a rebuke in there for the papers that would publish such things.

I tried to find a more educated discourse on this story and the background behind it, but failed to find anything not behind a paywall. If you want to read the story yourself, though, it can be found on in the National Archives.

TO ALL THE BOYS I'VE LOVED BEFORE by Jenny Han

Rating: some mispronounced K-pop lyrics
Highlight of note: Lara Jean's annoyance that whatever she was for Halloween people would assume it was an anime reference due to her being half-Asian.

Will you read the next in the series? Maybe, but I'm leaning toward no.

The basic premise of this novel is that a girl writes love letters to boys she likes as a way of emotional purge. She doesn't send the letters, but she does, for reasons that aren't clear to me, put them in completely addressed envelopes. Naturally, they get mailed by someone who isn't her.

I never did understand why the letters were actually addressed completely. I can understand putting them in envelopes with the guys' names on them. But she actually looked up their addresses and used those? That seems weird. It seemed very much like she was doing it for the sake of it one day initiating a plot.

If you've heard of this book, it's probably because it was recently made into a film that's done very well on Netflix. It gets mentioned a lot alongside The Kissing Booth. I watched that one before reading the book and spent the whole time thinking it would have worked better as a novel but then not wanting to read the novel because the movie underwhelmed me so much, so I decided to just read this one. Had I remembered Jenny Han's previous The Summer I Turned Pretty series, I'm not sure I would have bothered.

Like the other series, this one is full of melodrama and triangles where I don't think the MC belongs with either love interest. It was about as "meh" as a book can be and still have me finish it. And the conclusion is far from satisfactory. It leaves the reader going, "Yes, and?" in a way that makes it obvious there's a sequel but didn't leave me eager to read it. I might read it and the third volume, but certainly wouldn't if I had to pay for them. (The only reason I read all of The Summer I Turned Pretty was that I had purchased a boxed set.) My library has them, but they estimate a ten week wait and while I put holds on them, I may well lose interest before it's my turn to read them.

I can't quite say for sure what kept me from enjoying this book more. Lara Jean is likable enough, although maybe a bit of a Mary Sue as her main flaws seem to be caring too much about her sister and being nervous about driving. I didn't really care too much for either love interests, at least as love interests. The Neighbor Boy who spent two years dating her sister is clearly confused more than truly interested and the other one I've nicknamed Dudebro, which sums him up pretty well. There's a lot of attempts to make Dudebro deeper and more likable than it initially appears he will be, but most of them felt a little inauthentic. And other than enjoying kissing the guy, Lara Jean doesn't seem to feel much in the way of passion for him. He and Lara Jean argue a lot, but it never feels like the suppressed attraction sort of arguing.

Lara Jean lives with her father and two sisters, although one sister moves to Scotland near the beginning. (Her mother is dead. I'm starting to wonder if I should list "Number of dead parents" at the top of all YA novel reviews.) They are maybe a little too perfect a family unit. They're all very caring and considerate of one another. They argue some, yes, but always forgive each other pretty easily. It's nice and all, but a lot of time is spent on them even though they offered very little conflict. There's some adjusting to the sister, who is the highly-organized type who takes care of everything, moving away, but Lara Jean seems very understanding of her absence rather than having to fight back hurt and anger over being abandoned. The father commits what I consider an egregious affront to Lara Jean's personhood when he goes into her room and starts giving away things from her closet, but the only thing that seems to annoy her about it is that she suspects him of giving away a box that had letters she didn't want mailed in it.

Overall, this book fell flat for me. It had plenty of melodrama, but nothing I'd consider flair.

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Below you'll find the notes I took as I read. Clearly, they contain major spoilers.

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Notes

4% Lara Jean is very self-aware and mature. I like her. And her family seems really great and not all dysfunctional. (But maybe too functional?)

I do wonder how much money they have though. College in Scotland sounds really bloody expensive, even for the child of an ob/gyn.

And I'm not sure if I should roll my eyes at the dead mother. Why a dead mother? To make the sisters closer maybe? Or the father somehow more likable than he would be if he were merely divorced? Why are dead parents so common in fiction?

12% Poor Lara Jean. I was so busy relating to her nervousness about driving and propensity for getting lost that I didn't see the accident coming either. And I'd also be silly enough to just let the other guy drive off just because his car wasn't hurt. (She says the accident was her fault, but based on my understanding of VA law, I think they were both at fault. It was a four way stop, so even if the guy had right of way he also had an obligation to avoid a collision.) Also, she doesn't seem to realize how big an asshole the guy was. You don't just damage a teenager's car and flit off without guiding them through what to do even if you don't think you share fault. He was described as older than her dad, so he was certainly old enough to know you take care of kids. I bet the self-centered prick voted for Trump.

13% Her dad asked her that watch something with him and Lara Jean said no because she didn't want to move her crafting project. It just about broke my heart. If she'd realized how much he needed her, she would have taken her project downstairs and sat with him. But teens never do understand that, do they? Not unless you're actually crying and spelling it all out for them. She acknowledged earlier that he misses her sister, but is too wrapped up in how much she misses her sister to worry about him, as I think most people, and certainly most teens, would be. It was the realistic reaction, but it still brought tears to my eyes.

20% ...And at least one of the letters in Lara Jean's closet have been mailed! Presumably by her kid sister, who is mad at her and acting out, probably in part because she's upset about the eldest sister leaving. It seems like this is the start of the actual plot and that it took a while to get here. I didn't really mind waiting for it, but I'm unsure if we should have had to.

21% Apparently her dad took the hatbox with the letters to Goodwill? Why would he do that without looking inside it? Hell, why would he be in his teen daughter's room at all? He didn't previously seem like the type to completely ignore his daighters' privacy. Wouldn't a gyno realize there are likely many things in there he doesn't want to see?

29% Enter the fake-relationship trope... My money is on this being a variation where the target does get jealous and want to get back with Particpant A and then everyone is happy because the people pretending to be together actually DON'T belong together. Because I'm really not sensing that they should hook up.

52% I'm issuing this dialog a yellow card. I'm okay with our dudebro showing unexpected depth, but he also seems to be channeling someone's recently deceased grandfather.

55% The more time they spend together, the more I wonder if Lara Jean will wind up with Dudebro in this book. I've now remembered that the last series I read by this author featured a highly melodramatic love triangle. I had figured that was Lara Jean, Big Sis, and Neighbor Boy, but maybe Dudebro's involved too.

61% Well, now Lara Jean and Dudebro are arguing like they're going to break up.

65% And now Lara Jean and Dudebro are being cutesy. Whatever. I feel I should be more invested in this relationship, but I'm just not.

75% Neighbor Boy angry kissed Lara Jean! Proving both Dudebro and me right about him liking her. Although I think he's probably more confused than genuine.

76% Dudebro has totally forgotten they're not really dating, hasn't he?

78% You know, I think Dudebro's reaction to the proposed pretend breakup may have actually sold me on him.

81% "It seems like every day the sun takes longer and longer to come up." It SEEMS like that? It's mid-December. The sun actually takes longer to come up every day until the Solstice. It is actually happening, not just seeming that way.

83% PSA: Do not, under any circumstances, let your friend teach you a snowsport unless your friend is actually a snowsports instructor. It is bad for your education, your mental health, your equipment, and your friendship.

83% PSA 2: WEAR A HELMET.

89% The necklace from Dudebro's mom's store has been sold. He must have noticed Lara Jean visiting it.

91% Melodramatic intersecting triangles are a go!

THE END

Lara Jean starts writing Dudebro a letter. If you want to know what he does about it, you have to read the next book. I probably will, but I wouldn't if the library wouldn't let me do it for free.

OGRE ENCHANTED by Gail Carson Levine

Rating: a lovely pot of ginger tea with some honey in it

Highlight of note: Scents are an integral part of the descriptions in this book, both because ogres have a refined sense of smell and because they constantly reek. At the end I was left feeling I know exactly what an ogre smells like, which is sort of a mixed blessing.

Ogre Enchanted's cover bills it as a companion novel to the highly popular Ella Enchanted. It's really more of a prequel, however, as it is set in the time period where Ella's parents met. (I was a little exasperated with myself for how long Ella's father was on the page before I recognized him. I guess it's been a while since I read Ella.)

The tale is told with Levine's customary humor and clarity by a first person narrator, Evie, who is almost immediately turned from a human apothecary into an ogre. Readers of Ella Enchanted may recall that the ogres in this universe aren't exactly savory creatures. They're mean, smelly, and always hungry for human flesh. I was a little sad that ogre culture wasn't given more depth or civilization than it was, but doing so would interfere with the events in the later story. That said, I think Levine described Evie's shifting perspectives in an engaging and effective manner.

Also familiar to readers of Ella Enchanted is our main troublemaker, the fairy Lucinda, who uses big magics other fairies refuse to touch and who does so with disastrous results that she feels not the least bit of remorse for causing. In the opening chapter of this novel, she appears when Evie's lifelong best friend, who bears the unfortunate nickname of Worm, proposes to her. Even though he claims he was joking, then that he wasn't joking but expected her to say no and for this to be the start of years of dialog on the subject rather than a wedding in a month, Lucinda is offended on his behalf by Evie's refusal and decides to punish Evie for being so picky and so careless with Worm's heart.

Evie is a likable protagonist. Although only fifteen at the start (being too young to get married is one of her reasons for turning Worm down) Evie is established in and dedicated to a healing practice. This isn't just background filler but something that plays a crucial roll in the plot. If she could run her own small business, it seems to me that maybe she wasn't to young to be married, but it's a hard point to really argue.

As to the plot... Large chunks of it are quite predictable, even if you haven't read Ella Enchanted, but it's not really the type of book you read to be surprised. It's more the type of book you read because you want something cozy, something that's new yet familiar, or just something cute. And in that category, I think this is an excellent choice for an afternoon's distraction.

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Below you'll find the notes I took as I read. Clearly, they contain major spoilers.

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Notes

1% Wormy? What kind of name is Wormy? Is he human? It doesn't really say.

4% Apparently Wormy is short of Warwick. And he is human. And Lucinda has arrived! Looks like the plot is going to start quickly.

5% And now Evie is an ogre because she didn't want to marry her best friend at age fifteen. Lucinda never disappoints, does she?

9% Apparently the overwhelming sensations of ogreness are angry and hunger. Evie is sympathetic and her conundrum compelling.

14% Evie seems much more aware of how young she is than most teenagers seem to. Of course, her seriousness about healing does imply unusual maturity.

28% Evie fancies herself in love with Master Peter, who I'm pretty sure is actually awful. His donkey was starving and didn't like him. Also, I'm pretty sure calling elves greenies was established in Ella to be a racial slur.

31% Peter may be dead. I doubt it. I'd love to be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Evie realizing he's scum will be an important development.

49% Peter is, indeed, alive. And apparently scamming the king. Also, Evie saw Wormy a big ago and seems to be finding him more attractive than she remembered.

61% Evie is a hero healer I'm the capital! And Wormy has showed up again! (Also, how am I just now realizing Sir Peter is Ella's father?)

66% Evie figures the fact that Wormy says he's decided to never marry means he won't propose again when it's quite obvious it's because the girl he's in love with would rather be an ogre than marry him and he'll change his mind the instant she indicates otherwise. It would feel as though this could all be solved with communication except that Evie understands he heart so poorly, possibly because ogre emotions feel different.

73% Wormy is going about giving away money to families having financial trouble because of the plague, on account of how Evie told him she liked that someone else does charitable deeds. (The poor thing is trying so much harder than he needs to!) Evie is mad at him for not coming to see her while doing this, bit part of this self-centeredness is from being an ogre. Interesting enough, Wormy is accompanied by am unknown female.

75% There's a ball to show people Evie isn't threatening, but it seems a bit like a freakshow. The unknown woman is there with Wormy (Evie is quite jealous) and I'm wondering if maybe she's a fairy.

79% Evie has realized she's in love with Wormy! Huzzah! Of course, she doesn't tell him this because she thinks he's dating the new chick. I'm quite certain he is not. If nothing else, when Evie said she approved of his dance partner, his response was a genuine "Who?"

85% Peter has been declared heir. That's interesting... And we don't have too long to resolve it.

91% And the Peter problem is resolved! The true Crown Prince is identified. And Evie was briefly free of her curse, but then accepted it again by saying she isn't going to marry the prince after all since they're both in love with other people.

93% lol. So Wormy wasn't into the other chick, but she was into him. She proposed and now he's a squirrel.

95% Apparently Wormy had been leading the other girl on to get her to propose so he could say not and get turned into an ogre so he could be ogre with Evie. Then Lucinda turned him into a squirrel instead, because Lucinda. That really wasn't very nice of him.

THE END This ends cutely and happily, leaving a feeling of contentment. I don't think most of this book is going to prove particularly memorable, but I could be wrong. Certainly the descriptions of hunger will remain with me.

THE CRUEL PRINCE by Holly Black

Rating: sparkly and sharp, like a pile of broken glass

Highlight of note: Chapter Two is one sentence long but broke my heart. It's truly a masterpiece of brevity.

I really enjoyed this book. It was gripping, beautiful, and, yes, cruel. The setting isn't new. Not only is it a somewhat traditional approach to the faerielands, but it's the same world as Black's previous faerie works. It does less for shock value than some of her earlier offerings and doesn't try as hard to be poetic in its descriptions, which means I consider it somewhat more mature than Tithe and its companions. But I loved them, and I loved The Cruel Prince. (And, no, you needn't have read the earlier books to understand this one. Characters from the previous stories wander in, but this volume stands apart from them.)

Perhaps the best compliment I can give this book is acknowledging how often it caught me off guard. The plot is full of heavily foreshadowed events that I somehow managed not to predict. I'm normally pretty good at predicting surprises, so it was nice to feel surprised so often.

The Cruel Prince has some of the cliched elements and flaws as I identified with the last novel I tried to read, Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve. Like that book, this one features a tragically orphaned protagonist who is subjected to bullying and surrounded by teens who don't speak like teens. And yet here it all worked, whereas there it did not.

The dialogue is easily explained by this story taking place in the faerielands, but why was I willing to say people have different habits of speech there when I wasn't willing to say that about the last book's setting? I can't say for certain. I suspect the answer lies in the skill of the narration outside of the dialogue, but can't be more specific.

As to Jude's orphaned status, it simply seemed more relevant. Rather than existing entirely to make her sympathetic, the loss of her parents (who are murdered in the opening pages) and subsequent move to the faerielands are clearly essential to the plot.

And the bullying... Even from the start, it felt more like the bullies may have motives that are, to them at least, understandable. Again, the author's goal with their behavior wasn't making us feel sorry for Jude. They may not have seemed like nice people, but all save one of the bullies did feel like people. Or like faeries, at any rate. (By the end we learn that most of them did have somewhat valid reasons to resent Jude, who wasn't very nice to them either.)

One may also feel that the fact Jude has a twin is a bit overdone as there do seem to be many more twins in fiction than in reality. (I myself am guilty of writing a pair.) The twin in this case is very much there to serve as a counterbalance to Jude. At one point she declares herself Jude's mirror, and the statement seems accurate. She has acclimated to being raised by faeries in a completely different way from Jude, but makes for herself a place in the faerielands that is neither more nor less valid than Jude's. I find her one of the less developed characters, perhaps because her function is so obvious, but can't fault Black for including her.


I also found the cast to be full of interesting people, although other than Jude, I'm not sure if any of them truly develop much. I think what evolves is Jude's understanding of them, but I'm alright with that as Jude herself does undergo considerable change. And is clearly still changing at the end, which leaves me happy there's a second book out.

This is only part of the story. The ending was exciting, but more of a beginning to the second book than a conclusion. That second book is out already, and I'm in the library queue for it. This is a trilogy, though, and I expect I'm going to hate having to wait on book three.

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Below you'll find the notes I took as I read. Clearly, they contain major spoilers.

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Notes

3% Now THIS is how you do tragic backstory. The prologue is great and Chapter 1 is a masterpiece of brevity. It's one sentence long but conveys depths of suffering. So, yes, we have another story about an orphan, but it seems more solid than the last book.

9% And the human girls are subjected to bullies... But it doesn't bother me like the bullying in the last story. Perhaps because there's a decent reason for it? (They're human but being raised as Gentry.) Or maybe it's just that Black is a more engaging writer.

19% Is the bully prince (Cardan) in love with Jude? His friend, Locke, is amused by how she's the only person who can truly annoy him.

24% Jude has now entered the service of Dain, the brother of the guy who's been bullying her. He's placed a geas on her so that other faeries can't control her but he still can. I'm figuring he's the cruel prince the title refers to, not the bullying brother. (He said he wouldn't ever torture Jude for his enjoyment, which implies he'd do it for other reasons.) Also... What is he going to enchant her into doing? Because I'm certain he's going to use that power. My best guess is that she'll be commanded to hurt Cardan after he stops bullying her and becomes a love interest.

27% Jude seems to have completely missed the fact that Cardan just saved her from the effects of faerie fruit. (It's highly intoxicating to humans.) She's crediting Locke for getting her out of the clearing full of faeries she was providing entertainment for, but it was Cardan who gave her the salt to recover. Also... Apparently there's a date with Locke now. I don't trust him one bit.

31% Turns out Cardan is being seriously abused by his eldest brother. It's enough that even Jude is seeing him as more of a person now.

35% Locke, who has been seen talking to Jude's twin on several occasions including just before this scene, nearly kissed her in the stables. I continue to distrust him.

37% So... Jude stole a book belonging to Cardan. There was a piece of paper in it with her name written repeatedly on it. Nothing but her name, over and over. Like he was trying to exorcise her, to remove the influence she has over him. ... Also, the twin is apparently engaged but can't say to whom.  That seems ominous.

42% She has gone to Locke's house. Alone. Immediately after one of his best friends tried to murder her. WHY is she trusting this guy? Because she enjoys that he acts like he desires her? She's not even into him! (At least, if she is attracted to him, I've seen no evidence of it.)

48% Apparently at some.ppint Cadan borrowed two human "servants" from his brother and didn't return them. Jude thinks that means he did something awful to them. I'm wondering if he freed them.

51% And her pledged Lord has commanded Jude to stick a knife through her hand as punishment for stabbing the guy who tried to kill her. Like I said before, I think he may be the cruel prince.

62% Well, Jude's sworn Lord is dead. So maybe not the cruel prince after all. Maybe they're all cruel and we're supposed to wonder about it. Anyway, despite all the foreshadowing that the eldest prince was going to try to kill his brother, I was still startled by the actual event.

69% I was right about the twin being engaged to Locke. Of course, I am fairly confident he was planning to break the engagement. He was creating a story to amuse himself. Twin knew what was going on with Locke and Jude though, so now Jude is challenging her to a duel. (Because that's going to make things better? Because that won't just amuse Locke?) Also, we learn in this conversation that Cardan knew what was going on and made Twin cry when he insisted she come clean with Jude.

74% OMG. Jude's kid brother Oak is Dain's son??? And Cardan's nephew? And Locke's brother? I totally didn't see that coming. It totally explains why Madoc's recent motives though. ... And makes me wonder... Jude doesn't want Oak to be king because she knows how cruel he can be unchecked. Will she use him to crown Cardan?

78% And we have confirmation that Cardan has a serious thing for Jude! And they have kisses. And Jude likes it much more than she liked kissing Locke.

80% Ah, I see what Jude plans for Oak. She's going to crown him, then kidnap him and raise him human.  I'm curious why she thinks Madoc won't find him. Is she banking that Madoc won't want to find him, perhaps?

91% Another twist that was so foreshadowed I should have expected it yet didn't. (I was curious why she said she was going to deny Madoc his regency, but figured maybe she was going to be regent instead.) Oak is going to to human world to learn not to be cruel, but not after being crowned. Jude forced that onto Cardan. Payback for that's going to be an absolute bitch, ain't it?

THE END Yeah, so, Cardan is not happy. His attraction fueled hate is stronger than ever, and yet I feel part of it's just anger at being used. He wants to matter to Jude and her actions have shown pretty well that he doesn't. The title of this book may be The Cruel Prince, but I think Jude may be the crueler of the two.

MORTAL ENGINES by Philip Reeve

Rating: Did Not Finish (but the scenery was nice)

Highlight of note: The setting is seriously creative. It doesn't make sense, but you can't say it's mundane.

This title may sound familiar. Peter Jackson recently made a movie about it. It's the weird looking one with the cities that are inexplicably mobile and go around fighting for resources while being powered by who knows what.

I feel like I'm being horribly snobbish to this book. The setting was amazingly creative. I didn't connect to it though, being completely unable to think of any reason a post apocalyptic society would take existing cities and put them on moving platforms. Make moving cities from scratch? Maaaaaybe? Perhaps if it was another world entirely and not this one evolved it would have been easier to believe? I don't know. It didn't really work for me, but I tried to ignore that.

It was nearly impossible for me to get into this book, though, because in addition to not really buying the setting, I was too busy being snarky about things like the protagonist being a messy-haired small-for-his-age orphan drudge in service of a guild full of bullies to get into it. But, really? Reeve came up with a setting so creative as to be officially bizarre and he gave it to a cliched stock character? Seriously? But, yes, he did. And before you point out that so did JK Rowling, I'm going to acknowledge that, yes, Rowling did the same thing, but she did it with more talent both for effective prose and for dialogue.

Reeve's writing isn't bad. But it isn't brilliant either, certainly not brilliant enough to make up for bland characters who speak more like English professors than teenagers. The final straw came when the Interesting New Girl, who is both hideously disfigured and part ninja, described her tragic backstory in a detailed and practiced way that didn't seem even slightly organic or true to how a revenge-bent teenage warrior would speak to someone she just met.

I only made it through maybe a fifth of the book before giving up. Maybe that wasn't fair. Maybe the rest of the book makes up for a start that had me rolling my eyes so often it's amazing I don't have a headache. But I have another book that needs to be returned to the library in less than a week and I'd rather put my energy into reading it than hanging around longer in hopes this book grows on me.

Below you will find the notes I made while reading. They're spoilers, so don't read them if you want to read the book so that you can tell me how very wrong I was to abandon it.

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page 13 

Okay, this setting is really unique and creative, nearly to the point of being too bizarre to understand. But the main character? He's small for his age, has messy hair, is treated like crap by his superiors, was abandoned by his parents, and appears to only be known by name to people who want to bully him, so he'ss about as cliche as a protagonist can be. (Later correction: he was not abandoned. They died. Horrifically.)

page 14

Okay, would types of people know the MC's name: bullies and the older, intelligent, perfect girl I assume is the love interest. 

page 23

The head of this unfortunate orphan's Guild is half Indian Jones and half Dumbledore. But less compelling than that sounds. And not very trustworthy. I'm going to bed now. 

page 34 

It looks like I was wrong to think the first perfect girl was the love interest. I may also have been wrong about it being the second perfect girl. I suspect it's actually the hideously disfigured girl. (Who would be perfect except her face is scarred.)

page 41 

Nope, disfigured girl is not the love interest. I'm now certain it is Perfect Girl #2. Despite her and the MC knowing each other for all of fifteen minutes, during which her father didn't leave them alone, they are now separated and pining." 

page 45

No, I changed my mind again. Tragically Disfigured Girl may be the love interest. But I don't think I actually care to figure this out. I'm going to bed now and probably won't pick this up tomorrow.

Final Note

I am officially abandoning the book. The main reason I'm going to cite it that when we were finally given an interesting character, her back story was presented as a narrated info dump using language that implies she's a serious writer who dedicated a lot of time to this narrative, rather than being a teenager spontaneously answering a very personal question. 

THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL by Daniel Defoe

Rating: one yawning ghost

Highlight of note: This is one of the earliest paranormal stories in written English. From this, it's hard to see how they caught on though.


As I headed into Week 2 of my classic short story challenge, I broke down and bought a collection. I chose the somewhat uncreatively named 100 Great Short Stories from Dover Thrift. I might could have found most if not all of these stories for free elsewhere, but this saves me from having to search for something every week. And I figured it's probably a good selection of material as it was put together by an English professor while simultaneously being much cheaper than any of the Norton anthologies.

The first story in the collection is The Apparition of Mrs. Veal by Daniel Defoe. The only exposure I'd had to Mr. Defoe prior to this was his novel Robinson Crusoe, which I didn't really like overly much. This looked to be a ghost story rather than a survival tale, though, so I was happy to give it a shot.

In the opening, we're told that this is the story of Mrs. Veal's appearance as an apparition. That's the only way you'd know that there was anything otherworldly going on when she visits her old friend, Mrs. Bargrave, and the two very boring women have a tedious conversation on Christian literature. She says she is unwell and about to go on a journey, but these things only seem ominous because it's already been revealed that she is a remnant.

I'm going to take a moment here to be grateful that I was born in an age where people aren't afraid to include as many paragraph breaks as necessary for readers to easily follow their stories. Mr. Defoe was not. This story contains many paragraphs that hold repeated exchanges between the women, who switch from speaker to speaker without ever thinking that maybe this shouldn't all be in the same paragraph. When, eventually, the paragraphs did end, I was generally left wondering why, as whatever rules governed that sort of thing in Mr. Defoe's day are unclear to me. I think this issue may have had something to do with saving paper and fitting into allotted spaces, but have never researched it.

Moment over. Back to the not-so-reviting tale...

After the the late Mrs. Veal has had what would otherwise be an entirely unremarkable visit with her friend, the narrative goes on to discuss how Mrs. Bargrave comes to realize her friend had died before their visit. At no point does Mrs. Bargrave seem upset to learn of her friend's death, which makes it very hard for a reader to care either.

The narrative then mentions some of the reactions to Mrs. Bargrave telling people about the ghostly vitiation. Mrs. Veal's brother doesn't like the account but doesn't do anything particularly dramatic, or even interesting, about it. Most people seem to believe Mrs. Bargrave, but, again, don't do anything interesting with this belief. There's a first person narrator who says he doesn't see why Mrs. Bargrave would be lying, but I never figured out his relationship to any of the people involved.

I feel like I'm being harsh, but I finished The Apparition of Mrs. Veal with relief that it was over and confusion as to why it had ever been published, let alone included in what's supposed to be a collection of greatness. I know that standards are constantly changing, but I can't think of anything to recommend this piece. The plot was virtually non-existent and the wording was neither witty nor invoking of emotion. The two friends were estranged prior to the start of the work, so maybe the whole thing is an allegory of some sort, but I still think there should have been a way to make it less tedious.

Honestly, I would be distressed that the first story in my newly purchased collection was so unappealing to me, but the next entry is by Benjamin Franklin, and that gives me hope that I can write something positive about next week's selection.

LOVE by Anton Chekhov

Rating: an unopened letter

Highlight of note: The opening is excellent, although possibly a bit dated.

The first story I picked for my short story a week challenge was Love by Anton Chekhov, from the collection Love and Other Stories. It's on Project Gutenburg if you want to read it.

The story open with the narrator discussing the feeling of putting a letter to ones beloved in the mail, calling to mind all the anticipation and nervous excitement that involves. I found this section very well done, for I am not young enough to have never done this. I wonder how well someone of my son's generation would understand though. Was there enough description of these feelings for someone who doesn't remember them to respond? The closest my son knows is the feeling of pressing "send" on an instant message, which is a similar sensation but not the same at all.

When the narrator's beloved responds, I found myself laughing out loud. She replied to his thoughtful missive (he wrote five drafts before finally sending one) with one sentence. Granted, it would have been several sentences had she a basic understanding of grammar, but she didn't. The narrator is appalled at the lack of punctuation and the fact that there's a misspelled word, but agrees to meet with this woman anyway. (One assumes because the bits of her he's interested in aren't the bits guiding the pen anyway.)

Other than that, I found the story disappointing though. Supposedly it is a discourse on romantic love, but I was never sold on the idea that the narrator loved this woman. Maybe my problem was with the rampant misogyny behind the narrator's treatment of his love interest. Or maybe it was just that he seemed neither happy nor sad to be in love, merely resigned to it. An author who so accurately recreated the sensations of sending a love letter should have been able to do better, so I was left wondering about Chekhov's own experiences with romance. Perhaps I'll add a biography of him to my reading list.