books – Page 24 – Triple Take

J’s Take on Wil Wheaton’s Memories of the Future, Part 1

I’m so out of things, I never would’ve known Wil Wheaton had another book out if K hadn’t told me. In this book, he collects summaries he wrote for TV Squad of first season Star Trek: TNG eps. It’s summary, it’s snark, it’s reminiscences, it’s geek.

At first I thought this would be a quick read, but when I started reading, I changed my mind about that. It has to be read slowly, to appreciate all the jokes. And to take the humor in small doses.

But then I changed my mind again. The episodes after the first couple didn’t seem as funny. I don’t think it’s really because they were less funny, but more that he’d lost my sense of newness and surprise by that point. Which is a key component of humor. But of course I plowed ahead anyway. It ended up being a very quick read for me.
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J’s Take on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and bleh

I’m the one who suggested we read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, for October, in the spirit of Halloween. So of course it figures that I’m the last one to finish it, and not until December. It was a hard slog. Not quite as hard as Point of Hopes, but less things compelling me to keep reading. I definitely would’ve abandoned it after a few pages if I wasn’t obligated to keep going.
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Heat Wave by Richard Castle: B

From the front flap:
A New York real estate tycoon plunges to his death on a Manhattan sidewalk. A trophy wife with a past survives a narrow escape from a brazen attack. Mobsters and moguls with no shortage of reasons to kill trot out their alibis. And then, in the suffocating grip of a record heat wave, comes another shocking murder and a sharp turn in a tense journey into the dirty little secrets of the wealthy. Secrets that prove to be fatal. Secrets that lay hidden in the dark until one NYPD detective shines a light.
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Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith: D-

From the back cover:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Merytonâ€”and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy.

What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young loversâ€”and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield. Can Elizabeth vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.

Review:
The plot of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is generally well known. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy meet, do not get along, form incomplete and incorrect notions of each other, see the error of their ways, and eventually end up living happily ever after. To this scenario, add some zombies, toilet humor, and a whole lot of innuendo and you have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Except that’s not entirely true, because somehow by adding more, Seth Grahame-Smith has robbed the original of nearly every bit of charm it possesses.

The version I read was the deluxe heirloom edition, which, in evident response to criticism about insufficient zombie presence, includes “new words, lines, paragraphs, and all-new scenes of ultraviolent mayhem throughout.” The black-and-white illustrations of the original edition have also been replaced by color paintings. Judging by what I’ve seen of the former, this is a vast improvement, even though Elizabeth looks to be wearing the same white gown throughout the entire novel. In the preface, Grahame-Smith describes how he came to be involved in the project (he was unfamiliar with the novel until the idea was suggested, and this definitely shows) as well as how he wrote it by obtaining an electronic copy of Austen’s novel and inserting his own text (appropriately colored red), vowing to change at least one thing on every page. Sometimes the changes are indeed just a word here or there, and sometimes entire excursions to a nearby village to fend off some “manky dreadfuls” are shoehorned in between two paragraphs. Not content to merely add text, Grahame-Smith seems to delight in removing it, as well. Among the casualties are many of the cleverest examples of Austen’s snark, especially those that reveal character, like when Austen writes of Mr. Bingley’s sisters that they “indulged their mirth for some time at the expense of their dear friend’s vulgar relations.”

To fit the story, the characters have changed as well. Someâ€”like Jane and Mr. Collinsâ€”manage to emerge essentially unaltered, but the leads are very different. Elizabeth is bloodthirsty, quick to consider violence as a response to dishonor, and at one point yanks out the still-beating heart of a ninja she has just defeated and takes a bite. Ew! Darcy not only has zombie-fighting prowess, he’s now a lecherous git. He’s scandalously rude to Miss Bingley, whose transparent advances he fended off in the original with implacable politeness, and often makes lewd remarks, like, “On the contrary, I find that balls are much more enjoyable when they cease to remain private.” Again I say, “Ew!” I used to adore this couple and now I don’t like either of them! Other crass (and needless) adjustments find both Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Gardiner engaged in extramarital affairs, Mrs. Bennet afflicted with recurring bouts of nerve-induced vomiting, and Wickham grievously injured seemingly for no other purpose than to allow for repeated references to his newfound incontinence.

By and large, the zombie encounters are boring and pointless. In this regard, I think Grahame-Smith might actually have been better served by altering the story even further. If the undead menace had progressed to such an extent that our protagonists were forced to undertake a final climactic battle, for example, then their presence might’ve been leading up to something. As it is, the biggest effect the zombies have on the plot is in providing explanations for the sudden departure of Bingley’s party after the Netherfield ball and Charlotte Lucas’ acceptance of a marriage proposal from Mr. Collins. Grahame-Smith invents a number of “dear friends” of the Bennets to serve as zombie fodder, but these passagesâ€”like the Christmas visit from an entire zombified familyâ€”are so embarrassingly banal I truly hope nobody reading this book without foreknowledge of the original thinks Austen’s work contained anything similar.

To sum up: this is exceedingly awful. Grahame-Smith butchers the characters of Pride and Prejudice more effectively than a horde of zombies ever could. I would almost go so far as to say that I outright hated it, but every so often, an untouched bit of Austen would shine through the muck and make me smile for an instant. Now I’m going to try very hard to forget I ever read this.

J’s Take on Heat Wave by Richard Castle

Well, what to make of this book. Heat Wave is written by fictional character, Richard Castle, from the television show, Castle. That’s not even quite the weird part. The book is also pretty much an episode of the television show, just with all the characters slightly changed. Any real author basing a novel so much on real life is likely going to be in a load of trouble with his family and friends.

Let’s.. take this in chunks:

The Writing

I had trouble getting into this book at first. As in, I had trouble at a very basic level in comprehension. It was making my brain hurt. Somewhere along the line, it got easier. I’m inclined to say that the writing got better, but it could simply be that I got used to it. I’m not quite sure, but I do have some examples, and the examples are from early on.

Metaphors and other bits of language that make you stop. And yea, they make you think, and yea, they can be a bit humorous. But they also make you stop. It interrupts the flow.

Page 1: “the tourists were […] seeking refuge in Starbucks over iced drinks ending in vowels.”
Page 3: “Rook had curled his hands to form skin binoculars”
Page 32: “what looked to her like an escalator to the basement painted red” — to describe a graph

Character name switches. She’s Nikki Heat. She’s Heat. She’s Detective Heat. She’s ‘the detective’. Just when you think the author(s) has finalized on Heat and is going to stick with it, out comes another Nikki Heat or just Nikki. And of course it happens with other characters as well. Sometimes trying to give us information by doing it, like ‘her friend’. As if we couldn’t gather that by context.

Number problems. It happened more than once. Here’s one from page 15: “Two thousand six scrape with a bouncer in SoHo; 2008, you pushed a guy […]” Did some style rulebook tell you not to start a sentence with a number? Because it’s just plain silly to say 2006 and 2008 in two different ways. Plus just silly to give a year that way in the first place.

Maybe an editor should’ve caught that? problems — page 33

“I see,” he said. And then he took the plunge. “Matthew Starr indulged some personal habits that compromised his personal fortune. He did damage.” Noah paused then took the plunge.

At one point, I had trouble following who was speaking, but looking back through, I can’t find where that was.

There were also times where something was mentioned and I had to try to remember what it was referring to. Specifically the ‘perfume ad’. If you weren’t paying attention the first time Heat’s internal monologue came up with that, you were lost. And since I was already overwhelmed with metaphors and odd little references, I did miss that the first time.

The whole feel of it, especially the dialogue, was quite like the show. If you’re not paying attention, you’re going to miss a quip. Even if you are paying attention, you’ll probably miss some quips. Or my geek repetoire is not geeky enough in the right directions (music, old movies, etc) to get everything.

The Characters

So instead of Castle, the bestselling novelist, we have Rook, the Pulitzer prize-winning journalist. Who is somehow also fabulously rich. And instead of whatever her name is, the detective on the show, we have Nikki Heat. Who you can reasonably read into as Castle’s impression of who the detective on the show is, whatever her name is. And other characters map as well, including 2 detectives or cops or whatever who do the girl detective’s bidding, but competently. Unlike some shows.

And, inexplicably, Castle/Rook’s mother, the diva. She shows up briefly in one scene, and her appearance was utterly pointless.

The characters are so like the television show, that I was brought up short every time we were reminded that Rook is a journalist. I guess he didn’t fit my image of a journalist. Wise-cracking, risk-taking, devil may care journalist? And, again, rich?

A book written by Castle?

Well, I can sort of see it. At first, I was reading it in my head in Nathan Fillion’s Castle voice, though eventually that dropped off. And yea, you can totally see a guy like him writing a hot detective chick parading around her apartment naked and then kicking butt in that state.

But then I think.. well, a real novelist.. well, a) wouldn’t map his life so closely like that, and b) should know his main character better. That is, I never really felt like I was inhabiting Nikki Heat. So I never felt like the author was either. But I guess that isn’t necessarily indicative of ‘not a real author’, but more of ‘not a very good author’.

Whoa, trippy man

The quote from the back of the book: “Rick Castle must have been doing his research because Nikki Heat has the unmistakable ring of truth.” — It actually got me thinking.. how many things on the show do we see Castle learning about that made it into the book? And I don’t know the answer to that, because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the first season of Castle. Are there clever little things like that?

Summary

Interesting to read for what it is, though if it wasn’t what it is, I wouldn’t have read it. And if I had read it, I would’ve put it down. Because I would’ve found it rather dull. Reading all these mysteries is just confirming to me that I’m not particularly fond of them. (Ignoring that I did go through a stage in my youth of reading most of Sherlock Holmes.)

The acknowledgements deserve acknowledgement for being interesting and a bit amusing.

I’m giving the book a rather solid 3 (out of 5). An overall impression of ‘meh’, yet the compulsion to want to buy a copy and mark it up in red ink to figure out why I had such problems with its language.