Scriniary

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, though I did have several gripes about some of the plot elements towards the end.

I’ve never read Bram Stoker’s Dracula or any history about Vlad Tepes; it’s simply not a huge interest of mine, so I don’t know how different or new or accurate Kostova’s version of the story is from everything else that’s been done. All I know is that it’s entertaining and well-written. Her descriptions are vivid, if overlong for my taste (if I’d been reading instead of listening, I’d have skimmed them), and the characters for the most part seemed to have realistic and consistent personalities. And there’s an “evil librarian.”

The audiobook version of this is delightfully well-done. The story is told by a series of first-person narrators, many of them in letters, and every character (including the non-pov characters) is voiced by a different person. (This means there are no dialogue tags in the audiobook; I want to go look at the paper book to see how different the conversations are.)

The story begins with a 16-year-old girl, whose name I forget who is never named, finding a strange book and mysterious letters in her father’s library, which leads to a hunt for Dracula. Her father tells her his story in bits and pieces (and I kind of wanted to thwap him, especially later on, since it would have made more sense to give the girl a synopsis of his whole past at the beginning, and then fill in the details. But that would have been less interesting plot-wise). We also hear from the father’s teacher, Rossi, via his letters. I was very glad the audiobook had been recorded with several readers, or it would have been impossible for me to remember as each scene changed whether I was with the girl, the father, or the teacher, watching events 15-20ish years apart.

The plot had a few coincidences and unecessary bits. The characters seemed to meet too many other people who just happened to have mysterious books of their own, at least one of whom scarcely seemed worth the mention. Too, there’s a minor character who shows up at the (rather anti-climactic) climax who was barely mentioned before and isn’t necessary for the events of the scene. (That is, he’s necessary as it’s written, but it could have been written differently.) [1]

Worse, there are some unfortunate out-of-character actions towards the end. It almost struck me as if Kostova realized she needed to bring all her plot threads together, so she made the characters do things they wouldn’t have otherwise. [2,3]

Random thing that amused me #1: All the times a character would start off a letter with something like “I don’t have much time to write…” and then go on for what must have been pages giving details of history or archtecture or setting. They must have aced their timed essays in school.

Random thing that amused me #2: The dramatic music at the end of the chapters. Many times, it was appropriate. (”He had a mysterious book!” DaDummmm!) Others…not so much. (”Then we went into the parlor and ate a delightful dinner.” DaDummmm!)

Spoilers follow.

(more…)

Filed by scriniary at 5:48 am under Books
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This morning I went plant monitoring for the first time this year, looking for puccoon (or perhaps puccoon). We found a whole bunch at one spot that wasn’t on our map, but the places we were supposed to be looking didn’t have many specimens, even though the puccoon usually hangs out with the lupine and there was plenty of that.

Filed by scriniary at 6:25 pm under Outdoors
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Last night’s dinner was choucroute, more or less, from (as usual) Cooking Light. Pork chops, (turkey) sausage, and an apple, cooked in sauerkraut and beer.

I hate sauerkraut, but for some reason every time I run across this recipe it sounds interesting, so when I found it while making a grocery list, I decided to try it. This was a quick version since it used pork chops instead of a big hunk of pork.

It was good. Not too sauerkrauty. I’ll have to revise my previous statement to “I hate sauerkraut when it’s all by itself”.

Filed by scriniary at 1:49 am under Food
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On LJ, Shadawyn wrote an essay on the danger of being prolific. She says that when a person who had been easily writing 2,000+ words a day suddenly can’t write that many, it’s hard to accept that writing only 500 a day might be ok, even while cheering on other people who are writing more slowly than oneself.

I’m not sure that’s only a problem for prolific writers. (I’ve never been that fast, though, so maybe it is.) Even those of us with smaller goals can suddenly find ourselves unable to meet them. Right now I’m struggling to accept that my current goal — do something, anything every day — is worth bothering with, when 10+ hours a week used to be normal.

But I can’t do 10 hours a week right now, because those 10 hours don’t exist.
I guess my point is that all of us need to set reasonable goals and remember that things change. And if we suddenly can’t write 750 words a day anymore, to do what we can and stop fretting, which is easier said than done.

Filed by scriniary at 9:54 pm under Writing
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