@willaful Reading a short cozy mystery, involving finding a precious antiquity in a small town on the Chesapeake Bay. Not terribly impressed so far, I'm sorry to say.
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
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@willaful In print, doing a re-read (30+ years later) of James Clavell's Asian Saga, triggered by a comment from someone on another forum. Expecting the books to be horrifically racist, and indeed the characters are, but the books are more just... about people who are various grades of awful. Listening to Elle Kennedy's latest, "The Graham Effect", which, if you like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you would like. Very on-brand for Kennedy. @romancelandia @romancebooks
@willaful I have friends who are scientists who said they couldn't enjoy e.g. Ali Hazelwood's "Love Hypothesis" because the way the science is portrayed kept knocking them out of the story. So far I've been able to get along with the fictional universities in these college hockey series, like Kennedy's invented Briar U, but for some reason in this book I feel like there are more holes in the scenery than usual.
@notTheAudience I remember being very annoyed by a Hazelwood book in which an environmental scientist justified her purchases because "duh, recycling!" I.E. the author doesn't know wtf she's talking about.
@willaful @notTheAudience @romancelandia @romancebooks ROFL, I don't remember that recycling one, but I've definitely had ace spectrum issues with Hazelwood on occasion. I still enjoy other parts, but I'm now thankful I'm not knowledgeable enough about the science community to get bothered by it.
I always find it funny which aspects of books will bother me to the ends of times, and which ones I'll be able to just shrug and accept in order to enjoy the good parts...it surprises me sometimes.
@willaful Briar is supposed to be "Ivy" but then Yale - one of the most recognizable Ivy League schools - "isn't in their conference." The courses of study and the fraternity-centric campus culture also aligns more with big state universities than typical Ivy atmosphere; it often feels more like a Southern football school inexplicably plonked into New England. One game description alternates the opponent between Northeastern and Northwestern.
@romancelandia @romancebooks
@willaful The hardest thing to swallow in this book is one of the major hurdles; supposedly one of Briar's fictional rivals collapsed financially and was absorbed by Briar, so now their hockey teams need to be combined (and somehow this is a problem for the men's team but not the women?). This isn't a thing that happens often, so I can't say it's not accurately portrayed... but it's not a thing that happens often.
@romancelandia @romancebooks
@willaful Anyway none of this in any way affects the quality of the story or the relationship between the main characters, and Kennedy is good at a lot of the things that make romances which are fun to read. It's just like those moments in a movie where the background scenery is clearly from a different city, and you're like, wait a minute... @romancelandia @romancebooks
@willaful maybe I will look that up. As someone with face blindness, I'd like to see how it's portrayed. But then, it seems kind of variable, too. My experience seems much milder than, for example, what Oliver Sacks described in some of his interviews of sometimes not even recognizing himself in a mirror.
@pretensesoup @willaful Katherine Center's latest ("Hello Stranger") leans hard on prosopagnosia for the plot, but apparently Center did a good bit of research to back it up. (Also kisses only, which is not usually my preference, but I like Center's books too much to mind.) @romancelandia @romancebooks
@willaful @romancelandia @romancebooks I'm reading/listening to The Family You Make by Jill Shalvis, hoping to finish before #HoHoHoRAT2023 ends tomorrow. It's exactly what I enjoy with Shalvis, easy, with just enough depth. And even though it's not Christmas, the winter scene fits the mood.