Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road

Monday, January 08, 2024

Deathgrip - MTG 4E

Sunday, January 07, 2024

The Weapon from Beyond (Starwolf #1) 3Stars

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Weapon from Beyond
Series: Starwolf #1
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 158
Words: 47K

I would have enjoyed this a lot more 15-20 years ago, maybe even 30.

Hamilton either didn’t know that space is three dimensional and thus when giving out coordinates, you need an X, a Y AND a Z or he was using terms that I am quite familiar with in ways they weren’t meant to be used. You can’t navigate space using degrees and azimuths as separate things, because they ARE the same thing. What Hamilton needed was “declination”, the up/down part of describing movement within a globe. So yelling out “they are heading out at fourteen degrees and double that for the azimuth” is absolute nonsense. It is meaningless technobabble, but it’s not really technobabble, but misapplied terminology to what we already do know. This is why authors need to be careful. Because some guy is going to come along and read their book and he is going to know the meaning behind the babble and will simply shake his head in disgust and say things like “this is for kids”.

Other than that, this was a decent SF adventure story about some guy all by himself moving from one group to another. Very macho and heroic and manly. I still need to read stories with those elements, I just need them woven in a bit more subtly. Like I said, 16year old me would have glomped onto this like I did with Wayfarer back in the day.

Finally, the cover. While it’s old skool to the max (this was published in 1967), it actually has a scene from the story instead of just some random picture of a space guy. Covers should be representative of what is inside, not just a lure to get you to pick the book up (they can be both and I have zero issues with the lure line of thought, it just needs to take a subordinate position).

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia

Click to Open

Starwolf is a series of three novels by Edmond Hamilton featuring heavy-worlder Morgan Chane. Chane was the son of a human missionary family to a heavier-than-Earth-normal world (higher gravity) of Viking-like aliens. During the years of his life, his parents died and left him an orphan to be incorporated into the Starwolf society. As an adult he felt himself to be as much a Starwolf as his alien companions. After a dispute over plunder with a fellow Starwolf (leaving the other Starwolf dead), Chane flees (under threat of death) from Starwolf society. As a fugitive and hiding his ex-Starwolf status (the rest of the galaxy “declares a holiday when a Starwolf is killed”), Chane becomes part of a “Merc” human mercenary group commanded by a Merc named John Dilullo.

While in intersteallar space Morgan Chane survives a deadly chase by his ex-fellow robbers from Varnan, Starwolves, one of which he killed in a self-defence. On his escape he gets captured by an experienced starship captain, Dilullo from Earth who is leading a group of Mercs (mercenaries) with a mission to a planet called Kharal. Captain saves him, but quickly learns that he is one of Starwolves, well known robbers who raided almost entire galaxy and whom it’s usual to kill on spot. Learning about his trouble, captain Dilullo offers him to join his mission to Kharal and share reward. As usual for Mercs, the mission promised to be dangerous so in exchange for his help Captain offered to keep origin of Morgan Chane secret. After landing on Kharal they learn about details, reward, and about enemies of Kharal, the planet Vhol who they are at war with, and who are about to obtain super weapons capable to destroy entire Kharal. Mercs accept their mission and are tasked to find weapon’s whereabouts and destroy it before enemies of Kharali can use it. While on the Kharal, Morgan Chane gets jailed for trouble with natives of the planet. While in prison he gest contacted by Captain Dilullo who then tasks Morgan Chane with releaseing a Vhollian officer named Yorolin who was interrogated by Kharalli from the same prison where he was held.

Morgan Chane gets the job done and the team leaves for the Vhol unnoticed with prisoners on board. There, with great effort and trouble they learn about whereabouts of superweapons and set out toward nebulae. Vhol-lans send a cruiser after them. On their way they face Starwolves once again, but luckily appeared Vhol-lans cruiser gets involved and gives a chance for Mercs to escape the battle. By tracing cruiser’s path, they reach nebulae’s planet where super weapons were expected to be found, but find only enormous intergalactic spaceship wreckage. Mercs captured vhol-lans scientists present at the ship who explained that there was no super weapons and this ship belonged to an ancient powerful alien race called Krii, who accidentally landed on the planet, but survived in stasis for many years and were awaiting their rescuing fellows Krii-s who were expected to appear soon.

Mercs learn that Vhol-lans had one of their cruisers survived the battle with Starwolves and both landed on the planet. They prepared to storm Mercs positions, but soon the fight was interrupted by Krii-s second super-ship appearance. By using some unknown technology Krii-s made all weapons, power plants, and engines on the planet “frozen” and useless. Krii came to save their fellows and what was on the wrecked ship. Once they finished their job, the wreackage gets destroyed by Krii, leaving only trail in the sands and second ship disappears.

Mercs quckly depart for Kharal to get reward and set their way towards Earth.

Saturday, January 06, 2024

[Art] Pain...

We all suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. A lesson we all must learn, time and time again.

Thursday, January 04, 2024

Stalking the Dragon (John Justin Mallory #3) 2Stars

Title: Stalking the Dragon
Series: John Justin Mallory #3
Author: Mike Resnick
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 237
Words: 76K

THIS was the first book I read in ‘24 and my goodness, was it boring. I don’t mean there were sections that were boring, but the whole book was boring. It was like Resnick set out to tell an exciting story but right before he started he tripped over his portable Boring Machine and dosed himself with a 100% lethal dose of boring rays.

Who cares that you have to make five left turns to get to the corner of Boring Street and Boringer street in Magical New York? Carruthers, JJ’s partner who was a former hunter and could have added some extra ultra awesome gun action (she carries something like a .75calibre magnum handgun!) is sent off on meaningless tasks and she doesn’t do anything. JJ doesn’t do anything but trudge around, and he trudges around as boringly as Resnick (the author) can make him.

Being a shorter book, by the time I came out of my stupefaction and realized that I should have dnf’d this, I was already done. Resnick is really hit and miss for me, but man, this was “tie me down and make me watch Pollyanna 1000 times in a row” kind of boringness. I don’t know how he survived writing stories like this. Thankfully, this series is over. Bleh.

I have one more I’m going to try by Resnick, a Weird West series of 4 books. But now that the fog has lifted from my brain, if I’m bored, or even Not Super Entertained by the next series, I’ll be done. I do NOT want to repeat this complete waste of my time.

Much like Marley, I come to you warning you not to waste your time on this boring story. Heed my warning……. (insert ghost noises)

★★☆☆☆

From Bookstooge.blog

Click to Open

A miniature show dragon is stolen and JJ is hired to find it. Even the Grundy, the main suspect, wants him to find it. Turns out the owner stole it himself so he could place some bets and win big under aliases. JJ finds the dragon and enters it into the contest and wins and everybody isn’t 100% miserable. The End.

All of My “Mike Resnick” Reviews

Wednesday, January 03, 2024

PSA: WP Updates

Recognize that monstrosity? You should. WordPress introduced it a couple of months ago and when they did, they made no provision to turn it off. I know, because I asked. The useless “engineers” assured me that when the option came to be able to turn it off, I’d be notified. What a bunch of liars.

Because I was poking around the guts of all my settings and came across a new option. One that turns that big monstrosity off. Here:
https://wordpress.com/settings/newsletter

Click off the two options: “Enable popup subscriber” & “Display subscription suggestion after comment”. Then people who comment on your blog won’t be annoyed by that big fat monstrosity.

I hope this post has been informative and helpful.

Tuesday, January 02, 2024

The Crime Cult (The Shadow #12) 3.5Stars

Title: The Crime Cult
Series: The Shadow #12
Authors: Maxwell Grant
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 156
Words: 50K

The Shadow goes up against a devotee of the Thuggee sect, which is devoted to the death goddess Kali. If you’ve ever seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, you’ll get a decent picture of the Thuggee cult. But they’re are also practitioners of the art of death by strangulation. So every victim in this story was strangled to death.

I’ve read another short story about Thuggees, either in an Alfred Hitchcock Collection or one of the Roald Dahl adult books, but I can’t be bothered to track down one specific short story. Anyway, that story also dealt with the strangulation side of the Cult, so that wasn’t a revelation here.

The more I read of these Shadow stories, the more I can why everyone says Batman was born of the Shadow. This time I noticed just how afraid the thugs, criminals and gangsters are of the Shadow and how he not only uses that fear, but encourages it. They SHOULD fear him. It reminds me of how Batman started. He wanted something to scare the badguys, to put the fear of God into their hearts and he would out-think them but also out-fight them. The Shadow had his time, and I enjoy reading these novels, but I don’t see him ever making a comeback. I mean, Batman is on the skids after all these years due to really bad story telling and the authors and artists relying on the fans buying crap just because of nostalgia and past associations. The era of Batman is coming to a close too I think.

When I wrote about Foundation and Empire last month, I mentioned how the length of it worked for me. These Shadow novels are built along the same lines and I just love it. It’s enough to entertain me without bogging me down. There are times when I’m reading a book and if I realize it’s over 300 pages I kind of groan to myself because I know the author is going to fill in all the background when I just wanted a two paragraph description of the whole world. Even better, one paragraph would suit me just fine! But instead of whining about that, I realize I have that need for brevity and these Shadow books are filling that need perfectly.

While this is the first book I am reviewing in 2024, it was not the first I read. I read a very mediocre book and just couldn’t face up to writing a review for a completely boring and mediocre book as my first review of the year. So I decided to read a good book and review it first. That’s the beauty of scheduling posts a week or so ahead of schedule, I can do things like that. I am glad to be reviewing a Shadow book first thing. It’s brief, exciting and filled with bad, gun toting thugs, decent upstanding men in the Shadow’s employ and a main character who totes two automatic pistols and isn’t afraid to use them.

★★★✬☆

From the Publisher

Click to Open

The marks of death were upon them. A mysterious round burn no bigger than a dime scarred each forehead; upon each throat was a thin, almost invisible white line. The police were baffled, but each of the victims knew that his time was up and his page in the book of death had come due. It was obviously a case for The Shadow but the most famous crimefighter of all was missing!

All of My “The Shadow” Reviews

Monday, January 01, 2024

Bookstooge Reviews 2023

THE STATS:

Annual Blog Stats

Posts – 377 (↓ 3)

Words written – 206K (↑ 20K)

Views – 35.3K (↑ 7K)

Visitors – 9.9K (↑ 2.4K)

Followers – 488 (↑ 88)

Comments – 10.3K (↑ 1K)

Book Stats

Books read – 243 (↓4)

Novels/Novellas – 176
Short Stories – 4
Manga/Graphic Novels – 26
Comics – 37

Pages read – 49,779 (↓3K)
Words read – 15564K (↓900K)
Average Rating – 3.29 (↑ 0.06)

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

General Life Thoughts

What a year this has been. We started 2023 with Mrs B being incapacitated pretty much until late March and a little in April. That led to her moving to a new doctor and whole new medical system, which has worked out well. Then our fight with the insurance company for her medication continued at year’s end (they hid some of her options from her and we thought we were going to have to shell out over $1500 in one go) and she broke her wrist. Her courage is ok thankfully. Mine, well, that’s iffy.

My biggest physical thing was dealing with my eyes and my diabetes. My left eye continues to be the problem child and I have a bad feeling things are going to be bumpy in 2024.

Emotionally, I was all over the place. I rode the crests of the waves in the good times and man, did I crash and burn in the troughs too. I was discussing “time” with someone and realizing how much quicker things are moving for me now. October of ’22 I took off from reviewing and yet I can remember it like it was THIS October. Then I have those moments where I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast and it’s only 2hours later. Someone needs to write a book on getting older so I can read it and get prepared for what’s coming! There was a lot of other stuff too, but as it is ongoing, I’m still riding the wave of it and don’t know if it’ll end up being a crest or a trough, or even both.

While I don’t have to deal with the turmoil of hormones, my emotions are as volatile as ever they were in my 20’s and I’m coming to realize that’s just how I am, they aren’t going to suddenly change and I just have to accept that. I’m going to continue to say stupid things to people, fly off the handle at the drop of a hat, get my feelings hurt and butt heads with most everyone I meet. I just need to work on mitigating all of those things. Easy peasy, right? 😀

General Bookish Thoughts

Overall, I was happy with my reading this year. My total number only dipped 4, and that was with taking days off from blogging throughout the year. I deliberately tried to read less near the end of the year and it appears to have worked.

I did start subdividing that general number up into the various categories I assign a book, so gives a better view of what I read than just ONE BIG NUMBER. My manga and comic reading steadily dropped at about the midyear mark and I suspect they won’t be picking up any time soon. That comes and goes like a sine wave function and right now I’m in the trough.

My rating was up a tiny bit, which is good because I’m trying to get better at not picking up books that I’ll rate low. Of course, what usually happens is moral content and bam, auto 1star, which just kills my rating. Oh well, I keep on plugging along.

General Blogging Thoughts

What do I say about WordPress without going into a blue streak? Well, I have no plans on leaving in 2024. I’ve put too much work here to start all over somewhere else. So set your minds at ease on that point. At the same time, I am the unhappiest I have ever been with this company since I started really blogging here at the end of ’16. Things being broken on a weekly or monthly basis, constantly fighting to figure what they just did, and why, and most importantly for me, the absolute onslaught of their *&^%$#@! code monkeys against the comment sections. What they have works and it works perfectly. So of course they have to mess with it. And break it and absolutely destroy its basic functionality for the normal user. While they walked back that particular decision, given their history, it just means they will have a go at it again later in ’24 and in smaller increments. I guess I would say I have nothing good to say about WP at the moment. I am angry and upset and it feels like my only option is to go start elsewhere (too much work) or just leave (which isn’t a real choice as I need to interact verbally online with people).

My followers went up but that is because I’m not clearing away spam, business and dead wood accounts any more. It’s too much work and it depresses me. Turn over continues and people come but mainly people seem to go. I have to admit, it is a continual thorn in my side, but that is one of the down sides of blogging (it’s not all fame and fortune after all, no matter what some people may think).

All my other blogging metrics were also up except for number of posts written. Of course, when you’re talking 377 posts a year, 3 less posts isn’t even a 1% drop, so it’s negligible. I did write more in the posts themselves, as they were generally longer by about 100 words. I also got a lot more random views from search engines. That I put down to starting the process of getting my site completely indexed with google. That’s going to take a long time however and with so many of my early “reviews” just being the info block about the book, I doubt those will get indexed at all. As of this post, I have 4895 posts on this blog. So you could read one post a day and you would have enough reading material for the next 13.5 years. Which will give me time to churn out another couple of thousand posts. Get cracking! Those old posts aren’t going to read themselves after all.

Commenting went up too. By a thousand. That’s three extra comments a day! Of course, it’s really only up by 500, because half of that 1000 is me replying, but 1.6 new comments a day for me to reply to is bliss to my soul. Keep it up folks, you’re doing great! 😉

The Author Index is almost finished and that is a bright spot for blogging. I’ve been dragging my feet though, as I don’t want it to really be finished, because then I have to find another blog project and I’m afraid I’ll open a can of worms with some project that will be 100X bigger than anticipated. I like small blog projects, not ginormous blog projects.

The Art for my blog has also been a bright spot. Whether it is seeing the Magic cards that I played with as a teenager or putting up drawings from Miss Ross, I have enjoyed being able to do something different. I know other bloggers do that kind of stuff routinely (hence the creation of sites like Instagram, etc) but with being a book reviewer and mainly dealing with words, the weekly and monthly foray into “picture” refreshes me. Plus, it gives you something different to see than just a small wall of text.

Blogging stayed pretty much the same this year as it did last. That’s why I like doing the stats, because my feelings can skew the reality. The reality is that I wrote just as much as in ’23 as I did in ’22. I can tell how my blogging is going by how much I write. So the numbers staying the same means stability and that’s a good thing. While I’m riding the emotional waves, it’s good to know that I’m still plugging away at my posts.

I guess my blogging experience depends on the mood I’m in. So bear with me as I ride up to those heights and then crash down to those lows.

My blogger account continues to be my backup, that “just in case” place. Bookstooge.blogspot.com exists right now only for my book reviews. I don’t crosspost my non-book stuff, not even my monthly roundups. I check the comments once a week or so for spam and random people just leaving a driveby comment. It’s like that ramshackle shed in the backyard where I store all my crap and always tell myself that “one day I’ll clean that place up”. Hahahaha.

Calibre continues to be the resource I use the most whenever I have questions about the books I’ve read in the past. While I always link to a wordpress review, my initial query is always in calibre. Nothing has changed from last year and I’m just glad it is continually being updated.

THE BOOKS:

Best Book of the Year

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. I had an unprecedented EIGHTEEN 5star books this year, so it was really hard to narrow it down to just this one. But S&S hit me right in the Feelz, really hard, and when a book can accomplish that, it deserves to be recognized.

Worst Book of the Year

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh. While I had SEVEN 1star books this year, I only had one 1/2star book and Lapvona was it. Made me sick to my stomach.

PLANS FOR 2024:

Personal

Survive. Seriously. A lot of stuff has been swirling around in my head in ’23 and in ’24 I need to deal with it all. Either catch that ball and run with it for a championship touchdown or drop it like a hot potato and just cancel the game. Or figure out a way to secretly kill the ref and then call the game in my own favor.

Expand my hobby list. I’ve been reading a book called “Making Love Last Forever” by Gary Smalley about strengthening relationships and one of the points he makes is that a stable relationship has multiple hobbies to fall back on when things get rough in one area. It seemed odd to me at first to think that having multiple hobbies could help a relationship, but after an incident earlier this year when something happened that was real life book related and I just went off the deep end about it, I realize that if I had had other hobbies, the book thing wouldn’t have meant as much to me and thus I wouldn’t have reacted the way I did. Thankfully, this is an easy one, as Mark has been singing the praises of the card game Marvel Champions for the last 18+ months. In fact, you can expect a post this month on it. I know you’re already anticipating it!

In relation to that, I am hoping to do some multi-player magic over whatsapp with Dave and Mark. I’ve really not pushed for it because I’m afraid of being “That pushy guy” but the reality is that I want to play some commander, so I suspect I will have to be a bit pushy. Going to have to find the right balance. All three of us also have the Marvel Champion game so maybe we’ll explore that too. Who knows, I can dream though, right?

Get my butt in gear about being serious for dealing with the Certified Survey Technician program. I am not a self-starter but nobody else is going to make this happen except me, so I have to start. I’ll start at the bottom and work my way up the ladder. It will be good for my resume, good for my work wellbeing and make me more marketable should I need to make any moves for family reasons. But I said pretty much the same exact thing in last years annual review, so I’m remaining skeptical of myself.

Cut down on caffeine. Sorry rockstar, you’re just not My Hero any more.

Blog

For the time being, I’m going to block out Wednesday’s and Friday’s as “free days”. Wednesday will probably get filled anyway, but this way I won’t feel like I have to. Friday’s are going to be the day I really try to leave open. I need a day I can either ignore or just vent in Maximum Drivel Drive.

I’ll go back to reviewing one movie or series a month. After November and December and trying to review some sort of movie every Sunday, I realized I just can’t do that. I am not a movie person and it doesn’t work for me at all. Writing movie posts makes me feel like Sisyphus. A gimpy Sisyphus at that.

Going to be sticking to mainly novels this year. Groo is the only comic I plan on reading in ’24. No manga, no other comics, no graphic novels. If something catches my eye I’ll read it, but I’m not going to search anything out. I read two non-fiction books in ’23, thus I’ll need to scare one up for ’24 as well. I’m pretty laid back about that though. Me and non-fiction have a gentleman’s agreement; I leave it alone and it leaves me alone and we’re both happier for it.

I have a couple of buddy reads scheduled already. Dave and I will be reading and reviewing Equal Rites at the end of this month. Lashaan and I will be reading Pride & Prejudice in February, as Lashaan hasn’t broken his teeth on Austen yet. If you would like to do a buddy read later in the year, let me know in the comments and we can discuss what book and timing potentials.

Magic cards once a week will continue. So will once a month art posts. I don’t have any new ideas for either (beyond what I proposed in the Experiment Post in December) and thus I will continue doing the same thing.

Nonsense posts as the mood strikes. Which is the usual, so no change there either, hahahahaa.

TOP 5:

Book Review Post Views

Non-Review Post Views

Commentors + Honorable Mention

Film Authority
Fraggle
Lashaan
Alex Good
Riders of Skaith
Honorable Leader of the Wakuza: WakizashiReviews

Movie Post Views

Art Post Views

Hall of Shame (5 least viewed posts)

Previous Year in Review Posts

Sunday, December 31, 2023

December '23 Roundup & Ramblings

Raw Data:

Novels – 14 ⭤

Short Stories – 0 ⭤

Manga/Graphic Novels – 0 ⭤

Comics – 1 ⭤

Average Rating – 3.60 ↑

Pages – 3031 ↓

Words – 1060K ↓

The Bad:

Cthulhu’s Daughter – 1Star DNF

Basil – 2.5Stars of pansy character being a pansy

The Good:

A Christmas Carol – 5stars of Dickens awesomeness

Virgin Soil – 5Stars of Russian’ness, again

Foundation and Empire – 5Stars keep on rolling!

Movie:

Miscellaneous Posts:

Personal:

Ohhhhhhhhh, what a month. Mrs B’s wrist stayed in the cast all month. She was on light duty at work and it meant that even little things like grocery shopping she needed help with. That made work time unpleasant for her as she was stuck mainly on cashiering and she hates that. It also meant I did a LOT more of the chores, which gave me a VERY good appreciation for all that Mrs B does. It’s so easy to overlook all the contributions your spouse makes, so this was a good reminder to me to not take her for granted.

Then the week right before Christmas our car died on us. In the church parking lot, after everybody had left, sigh. It made for a very rough hour as we raced around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to get everything straightened out of where to get it towed, how to get home, and how Mrs B was going to get to work, in an hour. If I had had any hair, I would have been pulling it out. Thankfully, a bunch of wonderful people from church helped us out and one of my good friends took me out to lunch so I could vent and settle myself down. I’m so thankful for good friends who not only help us out, but also know what we need after such an incident. Being a words person has gotten me some notorious attention at church but I’m working on not being such a blabber mouth. Thank God they are all merciful to me 😀

Work for me was as busy as ever. We are 3 months out for scheduling and it’s only growing longer. I had a Surveyor’s Conference partway through the month and talked to one of the project managers from my old company. They are 4 months out and growing longer. Every survey company is in the same boat and I feel bad for anyone needing a survey.

I was tired out enough that I had to block out Fridays from blogging, which was necessary and good for me. Didn’t work out 100%, but it did mean I didn’t feel any pressure to blog if I didn’t want to. I did find that I was emotionally ragged most of the month and that made me a bit curt and short on a lot of peoples’ posts. I was not proud of how I reacted in many cases.

Reading-wise, this was the best month I had all year. I had THREE 5star reads. That’s incredible, especially considering how grumpy and out of sorts I was during most of my reading time. Ahhhh, why can’t more months be like this one in that regards?

Cover Love:

Two contenders and I couldn’t choose between them. So two winners! Imperator & Get Me to the Wake on Time.

Plans for Next Month:

Have to finish up the Year in Review post for tomorrow, THEN I can deal with the rest of the month.

I do plan on taking Wednesday’s and Friday’s off from writing posts. I have not been in a writing mood ever since Christmas and I’m not going to force it. Other than that, it will be business as usual.

Saturday, December 30, 2023

Journal the 20th

Back in March, I bought several journals because Paperblanks was having a sale. It took me almost 9months to fill up the 18th and 19th journals, which was what I was expecting. So here we are with the 20th one and I wanted to show off the pictures, because a good journal should be as beautiful on the outside as the treasured contents on the inside.

This is a Jules Verne embellished manuscripts journal. Based on his book Around the World in 80 Days.

It might seem silly to some to put such emphasis on my own words, especially considering how mundane are the details I write each week, but to me, those words are my innermost being. They are important to me and that is all that matters. Everything I can’t write here, everything private that isn’t your business, everything private that I don’t even have business thinking, I put them down in these journals. I exorcise my thoughts and feelings by transmuting them out of my head and onto the pages of these journals. It doesn’t always work and there are times I write the same thing over and over as the years slide by, but each iteration lessens the pain inside.

My journals are my therapy. That way you don’t get tortured angsty posts every week from me, hahahahahaa.

Thursday, December 28, 2023

Emma 4Stars

Title: Emma
Series: ———-
Author: Jane Austen
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Classic
Pages: 341
Words: 160K

This is my least favorite of Austen’s body of work, including her unfinished stuff. Emma as a character embodies everything that I most dislike about young women. I didn’t care for the character back in 2006 when I first read this and I didn’t care for her this time around either. I think my biggest problem is how Emma is a busybody and thinks herself superior to everyone around her.

With that being said, I still enjoyed this book quite a bit. It was very much a “Manners Romance” story and the changes in society in regards to manners made me smile. In one instance, Mrs Elton (a new to the area woman who married and is trying to be the social queen) is talking to a single young woman and calls her “Jane”, which is her name. Emma and Janes’s secret fiance overhear and both are outraged that Mrs Elton would presume to talk to Miss Fairfax so familiarly on so little acquaintance. For me, it was like reading about them being outraged because Mrs Elton said “Purple Elephant” while wearing white shoes. It just struck my funny bone, thankfully.

Much like Edward from Sense and Sensibility, Mr Knightley as a romantic lead does not make up a large part of the story. He’s there to support Emma and is busy doing real life stuff. I fully support that. He’s not swanning off writing goopy poems about her eyes and letting his own business go. This was a second instance of Austen writing about a young woman (Emma is 20 when the story starts) getting romantically involved with an older man (Mr Knightley is 37) and things working out. Was this because Austen was into that or because “Society” itself liked that and so she wrote about it to sell her stories? Most of the married couples I know are within 0-10 years in age of each other. I’ve known a few other couples with great age disparities, but they all tended to be at a stage in life when that didn’t matter (if one is 45 and the other 70 for instance) nearly so much. I know if I had a friend who was in his mid-30’s and he was interested in some cute young thing, I’d caution him about a lack of common cultural relevancies. It might seem small, and in all fairness it CAN be overcome, but something as little as knowing the same movies and the same books can ease the friction of being with another person. You don’t even have to LIKE them, just knowing about them is a common tie. Once you move beyond a certain amount of time, you don’t have those common ties to help bind you to another person. The faster a society moves, the less time those ties have to cement, and vice versa. So in Austen’s time things moved slower so the commonality had many more years to exist, which would make it much easier for a greater age disparity in a marriage to work.

Austen’s prose still makes me work. I had to just slow down to engage with this. One sentence, with multiple commas, could carry on multiple thoughts concurrently and I had to follow them all or I’d miss something, like who was even present in the room. There was one instance where Emma was talking to someone and suddenly Mr Knightley interjects a comment and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me when he had come onto the scene. I had to go back about two paragraphs, and buried in the middle of a long paragraph was a short sentence obliquely referring to him having entered the room. I love and hate that. I love it because it shows skill and I hate it because I’m lazy.

It has been over 17 years since I first read Emma and I suspect it will be that long, if not longer, before I read it for a third time.

★★★★☆

From Wikipedia.org

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Emma Woodhouse’s friend and former governess, Miss Taylor, has just married Mr. Weston. Having introduced them, Emma takes credit for their marriage and decides that she likes matchmaking. After returning home to Hartfield, Emma forges ahead with her new interest against the advice of her friend Mr. Knightley, whose brother is married to Emma’s elder sister, Isabella. She attempts to match her new friend, Harriet Smith, to Mr. Elton, the local vicar. Emma persuades Harriet to refuse a marriage proposal from Robert Martin, a respectable young farmer, although Harriet likes him. Mr. Elton, a social climber, mistakenly believes Emma is in love with him and proposes to her. When Emma reveals she believed him attached to Harriet, he is outraged, considering Harriet socially inferior. After Emma rejects him, Mr. Elton goes to Bath and returns with a pretentious, nouveau-riche wife, as Mr. Knightley expected he would do. Harriet is heartbroken, and Emma feels ashamed about misleading her.

Frank Churchill, Mr. Weston’s son, arrives for a two-week visit. Frank was adopted by his wealthy and domineering aunt and has had few opportunities to visit before. Mr. Knightley tells Emma that, while Frank is intelligent and engaging, he has a shallow character. Jane Fairfax also arrives to visit her aunt Miss Bates and great-aunt Mrs. Bates for a few months before starting a governess position due to financial situation. She is the same age as Emma and has received an excellent education through her father’s friend, Colonel Campbell. Emma has remained somewhat aloof from Jane because she envies her and is annoyed by everyone, including Mrs. Weston and Mr. Knightley, praising Jane. Mrs. Elton takes Jane under her wing and announces that she will find a governess post before it is wanted.

Emma decides that Jane and Mr. Dixon, Colonel Campbell’s new son-in-law, are mutually attracted, and that is the reason she arrived earlier than expected. She confides this to Frank, who met Jane and the Campbells at Weymouth the previous year; he apparently agrees with Emma. Suspicions are further fuelled when a pianoforte, sent anonymously, arrives for Jane. Emma feels herself falling in love with Frank, but it does not last. The Eltons treat Harriet poorly, culminating in Mr. Elton publicly snubbing Harriet at a ball. Mr. Knightley, who normally refrained from dancing, gallantly asks Harriet to dance. The day after the ball, Frank brings Harriet to Hartfield, as she fainted after a rough encounter with local gypsies. Emma mistakes Harriet’s gratitude to Frank as Harriet being in love with him. Meanwhile, Mrs. Weston wonders if Mr. Knightley is attracted to Jane, but Emma dismisses the idea. When Mr. Knightley says he notices a connection between Jane and Frank, Emma disagrees, as Frank appears to be courting her instead. Frank arrives late to a gathering at Donwell, while Jane departs early. The next day at Box Hill, a local scenic spot, Frank and Emma are joking when Emma thoughtlessly insults Miss Bates.

When Mr. Knightley scolds Emma for insulting Miss Bates, she is ashamed. The next day, she visits Miss Bates to atone for her bad behaviour, impressing Mr. Knightley. During the visit, Emma learns that Jane has accepted a governess position from one of Mrs. Elton’s friends. Jane becomes ill and refuses to see Emma or receive her gifts. Meanwhile, Frank has been visiting his aunt, who dies soon after his arrival. He and Jane reveal to the Westons that they have been secretly engaged since autumn, but Frank knew his aunt would disapprove of the match. Maintaining the secrecy strained the conscientious Jane and caused the couple to quarrel, with Jane ending the engagement. Frank’s easygoing uncle readily gives his blessing to the match. The engagement is made public, leaving Emma annoyed to discover that she had been so wrong.

Emma believes Frank’s engagement will devastate Harriet, but instead, Harriet says she loves Mr. Knightley, and though she knows the match is too unequal, Emma’s encouragement and Mr. Knightley’s kindness have given her hope. Emma is startled and realises that she is also in love with Mr. Knightley. Mr. Knightley returns to console Emma about Frank and Jane’s engagement, thinking her heartbroken. When she admits her foolishness, he proposes, and she accepts. Harriet accepts Robert Martin’s second proposal, and they are the first couple to marry. Jane and Emma reconcile, and Frank and Jane visit the Westons. Once the mourning period for Frank’s aunt ends, they will marry. Before the end of November, Emma and Mr. Knightley are married with the prospect of “perfect happiness.”