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shipperxVarious stuff.
* I've been loving the Kindle Fire. So handy.
* Finished Confessions of a D-List Supervillain
Neat premise. Big time supervillain's masterplan ends up going awry. World is taken over and enslaved... and so are most of the superheroes. What's left? A third tier villain who... doesn't want to be enslaved and so has to fight back. There are amusing bits in here. Some funny lines. But, I've got to be honest, there's also this lurking feeling that somewhere behind this book is a bitter beta fanboy. It's just... I don't know. I think it's in the way that he writes his female characters and his male character's feelings about the female characters. The women are physically attractive bitches for the most part who don't properly appreciate him. The one female character that does respect him (and thus isn't a bitch) ends up sleeping with him. The one he has the biggest crush on is a bitch, but one that learns that she was 'so wrong' about him... And, there's just this underlying sense that this tome could be fanfic from some of the fandoms I've been in (and I can name the kind of fan that would write it) that even though I mostly enjoyed it, I didn't enjoy its depiction of women at all. And I end up thinking of the hero as being an awful lot like a certain subset of BtVS fandom fans that I could name. So... mixed review.
* After having finished the aforementioned book, I started poking around for other reads. There are a ton of cheap kindle books around. But I sort of got into the hankering for one of the old Signet Regencies. Yeah, I know that Signet stopped publishing a while ago, but I still miss that genre. It was a nice, sweet, undemanding genre. So, I searched Carla Kelly to see whether she was still writing, and she is. It was interesting reading the amazon reviews of her books because, sheesh, you can't please everyone.
Having read Carla Kelly books in the past, I pretty much know what she writes (or at least what she used to write for Signet). These were not smut-fic.(not a perjorative. I love smut as much as anyone), she just... never wrote love scenes. Her books under Signet were extremely demure, but what was always nice about her was that she would break the Regency Romance rules and would do things like... have a romance between an impoverished genteel lady and a servant, and that servant not be some Lord in disguise. He really, truly was a servant. And there was no magical ending where suddenly they become wealthy (this is one of my fave regencies The Lady's Companion ) Her characters are generally intelligent adults that behave like reasonable adults (which brings to mind another fave Carla Kelly book Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand...a widow who, in a rarity for Regencies, actually loved her late husband, who has no scarring experiences from her marriage and then meets, likes, and eventually falls in love again...and it's extraordinary in its ordinariness. It's a love story based on... falling in love. No flourishes and minimal contrivances. Now, it's not earth shaking. The sex is...well... non-existent, but it's a lovely romance nonetheless.)
Which brings me back to the reviews for her more recent books. I gather from the reviews that now that Signet is pining for the fjords, she's being published by Harlequin. And Harlequin wants sex... and several of the reviews were remarkably squeamish about 'OMG, there's... 'on screen' sex in these!" I'm not sure whether I'm amused by the squeamishness of the reviews or a bit squeamish about Kelly specifically having been asked to place sex in her novels because, honestly, it's not like Signet didn't have sex in theirs if the writer wanted to write it. In fact, most Signets had sex, so the fact that Kelly didn't seemed to be her preference. And I've never thought that really good smut comes from someone pushed into writing it. So...er... I'm not sure how I feel about Kelly having some tasteful sex in her novels. She just seems suited to 'demure' to me. It went with her whole style and probably her preference (seeing her wiki, she's in her mid-60s).
I was also amused by the complaints of one or two of her novels being 'dark.' She always seemed to have a thing about medicine and the Napoleonic Wars and treating them somewhat realistically where they appear, so I'm thinking again that she has some rather squeamish readers. Okay so there was one where in the reviews someone revealed what the dark 'secret' was, and... yeah, I'll grant that's dark. And yet, I keep thinking "Dude, I just spent a year reading all the George R. R. Martin novels back to back to back. Carla Kelly is 'dark' like a rainbow-colored Carebear!"
At any rate, I never did pick one of the Kelly novels. I wasn't in the mood really. I did end up with a Barbara Metzger (also one of the old school Signet authors) simply because it sounded mildly amusing. I'm looking for amusing these days. I sort of need it. Still, I haven't read it yet. What I am reading is...
* Ready Player One Which so far I'm enjoying immensely. It's delivering more of what I had downloaded Confessions of a D-List Supervillain for .. fun.
Ready Player One takes place in a dystopian future (it's always a dystopian future, these days, isn't it. I guess the Great Recession doesn't inspire shiny thoughts of a Trek-like Utopia). Anyway, it's the year 2044. The Recession? Never ceased recessing. There are now stacked trailer parks circling cities, an energy crisis, and the typical assortment of global warming, rising oceans, etc. Since reality sucks, most of the population spends most of their time in a virtual reality setting that has more or less become synonymous with the internet called "The Oasis," invented by a guy who comes off as a combination of Howard Hughs, Steve Jobs, and Willy Wonka. This guy became a bazillionaire off of his invention, and when he died he said that whoever discovered the easter egg he left in The Oasis would win his fortune...
This is where the story begins. And it's sort of a celebration of geekdom. When the protagonist explains how the easter egg hunt spawned many chat rooms, forums, etc. ... and those forums splintered into clans. ... and how there are flame wars and there's this other group of easter egg hunters called the "Sixers" who are hated by this other group... well... come on. Who hasn't experienced fandom like that? Heh.
So our intrepid hero Wade (his online avatar is Parzival) is on a quest for the easter egg holy grail left by the dead bazillionaire who was obsessed with 80s (and since there's a Firefly mention not solely 80s) trivia. So things like the original Indiana Jones Trilogy is an all-but holy artifact (They try to pretend that the one with the aliens never happened. Heh). LOTR and Star Wars are canon (they actually pause to explain the concept of 'canon' in fandom... as if anyone reading my review would need it explained... heh). And Dungeon and Dragons? Come on, like they'd leave that out! There's also a female hunter named Art3mis that he has a crush on.
So far it's been rather amusing and fun (and just a 'tiny bit' of fannish familiar. :)
* I've been loving the Kindle Fire. So handy.
* Finished Confessions of a D-List Supervillain
Neat premise. Big time supervillain's masterplan ends up going awry. World is taken over and enslaved... and so are most of the superheroes. What's left? A third tier villain who... doesn't want to be enslaved and so has to fight back. There are amusing bits in here. Some funny lines. But, I've got to be honest, there's also this lurking feeling that somewhere behind this book is a bitter beta fanboy. It's just... I don't know. I think it's in the way that he writes his female characters and his male character's feelings about the female characters. The women are physically attractive bitches for the most part who don't properly appreciate him. The one female character that does respect him (and thus isn't a bitch) ends up sleeping with him. The one he has the biggest crush on is a bitch, but one that learns that she was 'so wrong' about him... And, there's just this underlying sense that this tome could be fanfic from some of the fandoms I've been in (and I can name the kind of fan that would write it) that even though I mostly enjoyed it, I didn't enjoy its depiction of women at all. And I end up thinking of the hero as being an awful lot like a certain subset of BtVS fandom fans that I could name. So... mixed review.
* After having finished the aforementioned book, I started poking around for other reads. There are a ton of cheap kindle books around. But I sort of got into the hankering for one of the old Signet Regencies. Yeah, I know that Signet stopped publishing a while ago, but I still miss that genre. It was a nice, sweet, undemanding genre. So, I searched Carla Kelly to see whether she was still writing, and she is. It was interesting reading the amazon reviews of her books because, sheesh, you can't please everyone.
Having read Carla Kelly books in the past, I pretty much know what she writes (or at least what she used to write for Signet). These were not smut-fic.(not a perjorative. I love smut as much as anyone), she just... never wrote love scenes. Her books under Signet were extremely demure, but what was always nice about her was that she would break the Regency Romance rules and would do things like... have a romance between an impoverished genteel lady and a servant, and that servant not be some Lord in disguise. He really, truly was a servant. And there was no magical ending where suddenly they become wealthy (this is one of my fave regencies The Lady's Companion ) Her characters are generally intelligent adults that behave like reasonable adults (which brings to mind another fave Carla Kelly book Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand...a widow who, in a rarity for Regencies, actually loved her late husband, who has no scarring experiences from her marriage and then meets, likes, and eventually falls in love again...and it's extraordinary in its ordinariness. It's a love story based on... falling in love. No flourishes and minimal contrivances. Now, it's not earth shaking. The sex is...well... non-existent, but it's a lovely romance nonetheless.)
Which brings me back to the reviews for her more recent books. I gather from the reviews that now that Signet is pining for the fjords, she's being published by Harlequin. And Harlequin wants sex... and several of the reviews were remarkably squeamish about 'OMG, there's... 'on screen' sex in these!" I'm not sure whether I'm amused by the squeamishness of the reviews or a bit squeamish about Kelly specifically having been asked to place sex in her novels because, honestly, it's not like Signet didn't have sex in theirs if the writer wanted to write it. In fact, most Signets had sex, so the fact that Kelly didn't seemed to be her preference. And I've never thought that really good smut comes from someone pushed into writing it. So...er... I'm not sure how I feel about Kelly having some tasteful sex in her novels. She just seems suited to 'demure' to me. It went with her whole style and probably her preference (seeing her wiki, she's in her mid-60s).
I was also amused by the complaints of one or two of her novels being 'dark.' She always seemed to have a thing about medicine and the Napoleonic Wars and treating them somewhat realistically where they appear, so I'm thinking again that she has some rather squeamish readers. Okay so there was one where in the reviews someone revealed what the dark 'secret' was, and... yeah, I'll grant that's dark. And yet, I keep thinking "Dude, I just spent a year reading all the George R. R. Martin novels back to back to back. Carla Kelly is 'dark' like a rainbow-colored Carebear!"
At any rate, I never did pick one of the Kelly novels. I wasn't in the mood really. I did end up with a Barbara Metzger (also one of the old school Signet authors) simply because it sounded mildly amusing. I'm looking for amusing these days. I sort of need it. Still, I haven't read it yet. What I am reading is...
* Ready Player One Which so far I'm enjoying immensely. It's delivering more of what I had downloaded Confessions of a D-List Supervillain for .. fun.
Ready Player One takes place in a dystopian future (it's always a dystopian future, these days, isn't it. I guess the Great Recession doesn't inspire shiny thoughts of a Trek-like Utopia). Anyway, it's the year 2044. The Recession? Never ceased recessing. There are now stacked trailer parks circling cities, an energy crisis, and the typical assortment of global warming, rising oceans, etc. Since reality sucks, most of the population spends most of their time in a virtual reality setting that has more or less become synonymous with the internet called "The Oasis," invented by a guy who comes off as a combination of Howard Hughs, Steve Jobs, and Willy Wonka. This guy became a bazillionaire off of his invention, and when he died he said that whoever discovered the easter egg he left in The Oasis would win his fortune...
This is where the story begins. And it's sort of a celebration of geekdom. When the protagonist explains how the easter egg hunt spawned many chat rooms, forums, etc. ... and those forums splintered into clans. ... and how there are flame wars and there's this other group of easter egg hunters called the "Sixers" who are hated by this other group... well... come on. Who hasn't experienced fandom like that? Heh.
So our intrepid hero Wade (his online avatar is Parzival) is on a quest for the easter egg holy grail left by the dead bazillionaire who was obsessed with 80s (and since there's a Firefly mention not solely 80s) trivia. So things like the original Indiana Jones Trilogy is an all-but holy artifact (They try to pretend that the one with the aliens never happened. Heh). LOTR and Star Wars are canon (they actually pause to explain the concept of 'canon' in fandom... as if anyone reading my review would need it explained... heh). And Dungeon and Dragons? Come on, like they'd leave that out! There's also a female hunter named Art3mis that he has a crush on.
So far it's been rather amusing and fun (and just a 'tiny bit' of fannish familiar. :)
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Date: 2012-01-06 04:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-06 06:35 pm (UTC)