{"id":12360,"date":"2019-04-22T16:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T20:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=12360"},"modified":"2019-04-22T16:00:29","modified_gmt":"2019-04-22T20:00:29","slug":"an-authorial-sin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=12360","title":{"rendered":"An authorial sin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I spend substantial time<\/strong> with a book, and then throw it aside in frustration, half-finished, I don\u2019t like to name the work or its author publicly. After all, I haven\u2019t given either of them the full time they asked for. But I sometimes want to tell you about it, anyway, in case it might be of some use \u2013 especially if you\u2019re a writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it is with the book I 86\u2019d over the Easter weekend. It shall remain nameless. It shall not go unchastened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was promoted as a sort of Wodehousian comedy, and I guess it was. In a way. It was generally lacking in actual funny lines, but the author did a fairly good job of building up ridiculous situations, so that I sometimes chuckled over the altitude of the gag, if I can put it that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he offended me \u2013 as a Scarlet Letter puritan \u2013 by treating\nit as a matter of course that a couple will fall into bed the very evening they\nfall in love. It got worse when I learned that the (admittedly charming) main\nfemale character had been married before to a man who adored her and was\nfaithful, but had dumped him because she wanted more excitement in her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That ain\u2019t funny, in my world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then, about halfway through the book, the hero made a stupid, stupid decision. A decision calculated to bring him trouble and put him on the run from the law. And I couldn\u2019t for the life of me figure out why he\u2019d ever do the stupid thing. It was illogical and imprudent. Worse than that, it was out of character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, it looked as if the author had forced the\ndecision on him against his will, simply to keep the plot going. If he\u2019d done anything\nthat made sense, the story would have been over. And happily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My righteous writer\u2019s fury blazed up against this author,\nand I cast his book into the outer darkness of Kindle limbo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Go and do thou differently, O writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I spend substantial time with a book, and then throw it aside in frustration, half-finished, I don\u2019t like to name the work or its author publicly. After all, I haven\u2019t given either of them the full time they asked for. But I sometimes want to tell you about it, anyway, in case it might … Continue reading An authorial sin<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,13,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reading","category-writing"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}