Death seems to provide the minds of the Anglo-Saxon race with a greater fund of amusement than any other single subject. Dorothy L. SayersOne of the things my mother & I have in common is a penchant for detective novels. It is an oddity. Generally she prefers fairly realistic reading while I am a long time fantasy reader & never the twain shall meet. Even when we agree our tastes often differ but we do agree on Jodi Piccoult. She is just a very, very good writer.
My degree is in English lit., [not history :)] & over the years I have become a very jaded reader. There is just an awful lot of really terrible reading matter out there & most of it is modern. Some writers should never have been given pen & ink to dabble in because they have no true idea of how to use their native language. Unfortunately the worst offenders often write the thickest books! What astounds me is that these terrible epistles sell!
My children think I am a terrible reader. I begin at the end, check out the middle & only then read from the beginning, though not necessarily in chronological order. I need to know before I begin if a book is going to be worth the time & effort I put into reading it. I have no time for suspense at all. Suspense is quite beside the point. Are the characters interesting & believable? Is the language handled well? Is there grace to the literary style? Does the author evoke strong images of time & place in my mind? If they don't do these things I will put a book aside & never touch it again.
And I love detective fiction! Before you all roll your eyes I need to clarify that I agree with Dorothy L. Sayers that the how is far more fascinating than the who. Read enough of this sort of stuff & picking the who becomes fairly predictable. The how then becomes extremely important & few people do it well, let alone really well.
I first read Piccoult's Plain Truth years ago & enjoyed it so much I scavenged the library shelves for every title they held. When that well ran dry I sent off inter~library loan requests but I have never bought one of her books. In my stocking from mum this year I found The Tenth Circle. I was delighted. When the rain set in I began to read. [Yes, I read the end first; I knew where it was going & could concentrate on how it was going to get there.] I read late into the night. I read in bed early in the morning. I finished the whole thing in a little over 24 hours. Piccoult is compulsive reading but all the time something was niggling at me as it has with every book I've read of hers since that first one so long ago.
The underlying theme in The Tenth Circle is the tenth circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno where hell has frozen over & the ability to act is taken away. I finally recognized what it is in these books, that despite being excellent reads, have always left a faint trace of unpleasantness & depression behind them. Piccoult's is a completely secular, humanistic world. To misquote Sayers again, detective fiction is the purest form of fiction ~ good against evil where good always triumphs. This distinction is never clear in Piccoult's books & frankly I find her characters pretty unpleasant people but at least I now know why. Piccoult has shown me a world without God & it is not a very nice place.
Will that stop me reading her books? Not on your nellie! There are too few well written books around to give up on an author because you don't like their world view.
I have been trying to get up my courage to attempt Nineteen Minutes but I find the subject matter so distressing I'm not sure I can manage it. I don't think anyone wants to hear my views on America's gun laws so I won't rant but I can't imagine sending a child to school one morning & having them come home in a body bag. No need to rant at me. I don't come from a gun culture & I just don't understand. The trouble is I know if I start this book I will have to read to the very end. Piccoult is like that.
11 comments:
Hey, now. The problem with guns is, they're tools. If you're using them to kill someone on the street instead of your dinner, it's a problem.
I've heard the argument that a lot of these church shooters and stuff get big tallies BECAUSE other people don't have guns. In fact, one of the recent shootings, the gunman was shot and killed by a security officer hired by the church before he could kill more people.
Now, I know you Quaker folks are pacifists, and I'm cool with that. But I also think sometimes weapons are a necessary evil. Of course in theory if people didn't have guns, then we wouldn't have shootings either. :]
lol. Cain never had no gun either, lady. As I said, I don't come out of a gun culture & guns in an urban environment do not make sense to me. If you live on the land they are a necessity ~
to put an injured animal out of pain, to shoot feral pigs, to butcher meat, to prevent an attacking animal [mating roos & bulls can be stupid that way].
I've heard the *guns are tools* argument but we live in a fallen world so why make it easier for us sinners to commit the big sins? Not that I expect you to agree with me. :) Most Americans I've met are pro guns & most people I've met from other countries aren't. S'ok. We can agree to disagree.
I don't think we disagree so much. We can both agree there are some crazy people with weapons and I can add to that and say sometimes it's the government. :p
Oooh, definitely not going there! The biblical principal I try to apply is *a gentle answer turneth away wrath*, which I think comes from Proverbs.
When we were doing youth work I had a number of experiences with big knives & guns & I don't think me being armed would have helped at all. I'm not sure it's a principle I could abide by if it was one of my children being threatened but the principal remains the same.
Australia has never had a constitutional right to bear arms & our attitude towards guns is different in consequence. I find the differences in attitude fascinating but dislike people getting het about the issue.
Yeah, I guess that you can't tell on the internet if I'm just chatting with you over coffee or am hopping mad on the other end of the line.
Well, I have some coffee. :]
I think a lot of difference is cultural, though, because as you could imagine in the frontier, Americans needed and loved their guns.
I agree with you that if you don't know how to handle your weapon, or don't do well in an emergency that it could easily be used against you. I know Marines and police who are very much against certain types of people having guns not b/c they want to trample rights, but because they see that an indecisive moment or a gun left out and loaded has very tragic consequences.
I've never seen guns and weapon-knives in my years in Australia. Nope. I thought they didn't exist there, actually. Paul Hogan not withstanding. :]
lol. One too many bad experiences with fraught Americans who think everyone has a constitutional right to bear arms but hey, we started as England's dumping ground for criminal types & no~one but no~one was handing us out firearms!!!
My Dino & Theo have done some pig shooting with their cousin in W.A, feral pigs being a major pest & very dangerous. Glad I wasn't there.
My uncles grew up with guns ~ .22s I think. They used to make my dad sit in the mango tree & swing the can they so they had a moving target. Sheesh! Glad they were good shots or we might not be having this conversation! :)
LOL WOW. I don't think I'd have been that brave to play "swing the can." Good grief, there's evidence against Darwin right there. :]
(You do know I'm kidding with ya.)
You are quick off the mark today! ;D
mmm not getting into the gun thing, shivers, knew I recognised Jodi Picoult from somewhere ;o) I have Vanishing Acts on my shelf, I culled hundreds of books before we moved and now almost exclusively use the library, I started at D, not sure why and because they get so many new books in I am still at D 9 months later. A few have been dire and returned unread and the styles of writing are quite different to English/American but most of what I have read has been good enough for me to order more by the same Author I wonder if I will go to E or C next :o)
xc
Hojos: I am a completely random reader. I abhore romantic fiction but one of the best reads I ever had was in that genre. I love fantasy but most fantasy writers have me writhing with embarrasment on their behalf. I will read anything if it is well enough written ~ another Sayers maxim I believe & one she adhered to when she began her translation of Dante. Hey, if you're in the D's are you reading Dante? lol. I haven't yet. Even if I could get over the language I expect it's the sort of stuff nightmares are made of.
I like escapism, so no Dante just yet, I work hard and like to relax with a book when I can, I have the latest Terry Pratchett on the go, I have read every book of his since I was at Uni, apart from all the comic book ones, or maps, I just like his silly stories, also Robert Rankin, or Harlan Coben for a good mystery
easy to please am I :o)
Post a Comment