shipperx | Reading Meme

What Are You Reading Wednesday Meme

What Are You Reading Now
Listening, actually.

From Troy to Constantinople by Jennifer Tobin
Professor Tobin covers  "Anatolia" from early archaeological sites (some "prehistoric") to the Trojan War before continuing through the Greeks, Persians, Alexander the Great, and the Romans..

A nice mixture of examining both the mythology and the archeology of the area. (Some of the archeological discussions are about relatively recent digs and are quite interesting.)

She's a good lecturer.

What Did You Just Finish Reading:
Forgettable Victorian romance ("Free" from Amazon Unlimited.) Sorry, I have no idea what the title was, and I've 'returned' it now (as Amazon Unlimited only allows you a certain allotted number of books at any one time, so if you want more books you have to return finished ones.)

This freebie was one of those where there were good points and bad points (But, hey, 'free' so I'm expecting to have to lower expectations sometimes).

The bad points: a couple of blatant anachronisms. I'm not a stickler like some people. It's primarily a romance after all. It's not truly historical. But authors should avoid obvious ones and there were a couple here.

The good points: genuinely flawed characters.
This is actually somewhat difficult to pull off. To make them genuinely flawed runs the risk of making them unlikable, which for a romance is highly problematic. Many genres can get away with unlikable protagonists. It's a risky route to take for a romance though. This one did a fairly good job of making the hero screw up just enough to make him genuinely flawed (in this case -- shallow and a bit self-absorbed) but not pushing it so far as to make him truly unlikable. (I think that was helped by his shallowness on judging women's looks being accompanied by his being equally harsh on his own after acquiring burn scars. He was equal opportunity superficial. As the heroine pointed out, he wasn't even really all that scarred. It might be a mark-down from his youthful handsomeness, but he was still quite handsome having only acquired a couple of 'flaw's. His looks issues were mostly in his own damn head.

The hero walked a fine line between shallow idiot and sympathetic determined guy... and that's not always easy to make work. The heroine had a bit too much self-loathing, but it was somewhat balanced by her independence and liberalism.

Backstory: The hero and heroine grew up knowing one another from childhood. She had a huge crush on him on top of considering him a friend. He, on the other hand, saw her as a nice but eye-rolling nuissance (Plus, he thought himself a 'catch' and her 'a clumsy scarecrow.') When she was 17 and he was 20 -- and sowing his wild oats -- the heroine's 'hanging-on' interfered with his pursuit of a sexy widow. He decided to 'scare [the heroine] away' first by making advances (kissing her) and when that didn't work, telling her what he really thought of her looks (which was...well... cruel) The combining of the two actions made it even more emotionally destructive than either would've been on their own.

The nexus of these two things resulted in
1) a mini-scandal as the kiss was witnessed by her quite displeased father.
2) Self-esteem issues for the heroine, who had her first crush, first kiss, (and 'dear friend'!) tell her that she was undesirable and highly unattractive.

This resulted in her parents arranging an 'acceptable' marriage for the heroine, meaning that at 17 she was married off to a far, far older titled gentleman. {The hero actually felt bad about this. In his mind, he'd just been trying to make her leave him alone. He hadn't thought her parents would force her into marrying 'an old stick' when she was barely out of the school room.}

Premise: 10 years +/- after the backstory, the heroine is now a wealthy widow and back in England. Her husband had been quite the academic traveller (collecting insects) and had taken her to all sorts of exotic locales (Egypt, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, etc.)    Her husband had been kind -- if inattentive -- and generous (leaving her a butt-load of money and property, everything that wasn't entailed). While far from perfect, she had considered it to be a 'good' marriage, as her husband had encouraged her independence, respected her intelligence, and taken her to see and do many things. {So her parents weren't complete monsters for arranging the match}. Additionally, in reaction to the hero's criticisms of her as a girl, she had affected a very elegant style. She might not be classically beautiful, but she became (mostly) impeccable.

The hero on the other hand had not fared as well. Since his father's death, he's tried to restore the family's fortunes through industry (*gasp* A gentleman who works? Who openly owns a mill?!), leaving him on the social outs. And an industrial accident led to a fire that led to (relatively minor) scarring (but we know he was quite vain in his youth). The aftermath of the fire, along with low cotton prices, has meant that even his mill is now on shaky ground (and guess who the primary silent stock holder in the hero's company was... the heroine's late husband, of course.)   Oh, how the worm has turned. Now she's rich, worldly, and excessively well-travelled, has a title that far exceeds his own, and --worst of all -- wants a say in HIS company while owning the stock options to demand it.

You pretty much know where it goes from there. Although, I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly they fell back into a friendship (despite all the mutual insecurities resulting from their shared past.)