Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

OK, all you bitches who’ve been making fun of me all this age for having Musashi up on the sidebar for about year can quit now. I’ve finally admitted defeat. I’m about 245 pages into this monster, and I can’t stands it no more.

And by “it,” I mean “the most gawdawful translation job I have ever encountered this side of Kafka, and I’ve encountered some pretty shitty translations of Kafka.”

Seriously, every time I read a medieval Japanese character saying “Yeah,” “okay” or “all right,” I wanted to punch the translator in the crotch. I understand that rendering the language accurate in every way is impossible, and is, in fact, undesirable. And I understand that conveying the nuances of Japanese vernacular can be trying. But dude. Seriously. ENOUGH ALREADY.

I do hope to some day finish this. The day is not now. The story is too slow, and the translation is too...well, too crotch-punchy.

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This is the poor book I picked up to read after finishing Slaughterhouse-Five--which, by the way, is an incredible book, and why in the hell I waited so long to pick it up, I have no friggin’ clue. Anyway, I wanted a complete change of pace and subject matter, so I grabbed a library book. I have over 10 books checked out from the library, and I need to thin the herd. Drive Me Crazy just happened to be on top of the stack.

There’s nothing terribly wrong with this book, but there’s nothing terribly right about it either, if you know what I mean.

The hero? He never really leers, but based on his internal thoughts and his behavior, I pictured him with a leering expression anyway. He’s also kind of an asshole--not in a sexy way, but in an oversexed-turd-who-will-grope-you-in-a-bar-when-you’re-tipsy-and-chuckle-condescendingly-when-you-try-to-remove-his-hand-from-your-left-tit kind of way. Or that’s the impression I got, anyway.

The heroine isn’t much better. I like the fact that she’s a librarian who is neither mousy nor shy nor wimpy nor any of the other appalling stereotypes associated with librarians, but the author kept slapping me in the face with how she’s such an ice queen, so much so that I ended up disliking her. Because if there’s one thing I hate more than wimpy doormats in a romance, it’s an ice queen who has no discernible reason to be one. Well, there may have been a discernible reason if I’d read more of the book, but I found myself not particularly caring.

The part that made me stop reading the book and start flipping to the juicy bits is when the heroine discovers a dead body in the library. She calls the police station and gets the dispatcher, who tells her the sergeant is across (the very small) town getting doughnuts. Instead of telling the dispatcher that there’s a dead body in her library and GET SERGEANT PERKINS’ ASS RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW AND SCREW THOSE DOUGHNUTS, she tells the dispatcher to ask the policeman to get her a cinammon sprinkle doughnut and oh, by the way, drop by the library when he can, she has something that needs his attention. Nary a word about the murder. Why?

Because the dispatcher is a gossip and the heroine doesn’t want news of the murder leaking out.

Now, does this make ANY kind of sense? Like, at all? What the fuck? Lady, it’s a MURDER. This makes it newsworthy, so fuck the news spreading throughout the town, it’s going to do so anyway. It also makes it an URGENT FUCKING MATTER. Screw small-town gossip, having the sergeant arrive faster is a good thing, right? Or am I using too much Earth logic, here?

So: Ice-queen heroine: -2 points.

Who dresses like a tart and isn’t ashamed about it: +5 points

But who acts like a raging ‘tard: -50 points

I am a judgmental tool. I know this. But see, because the heroine didn’t tell the dispatcher about the dead body, there was a lag of several minutes in which the hero and heroine are left alone in the library.

I am not a happy camper when devices this obvious are used to throw the hero and heroine together.

Oh, the hero is also an asshole and moves the body around, but actually, that’s believable because, well, he’s an asshole, and it’s something assholes do: fuck around with crime scenes before the cops arrive even though you know better. I got the impression that the hero had very specific reasons for messing with the dead body, but again, did not care.

However, the secondary romance is surprisingly engaging. The heroine has a loser cousin who’s a former drug addict and the town slut, and at first I had her fingered as the villain because Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Druggie Slut To Live in Romancelandia, but no, she gets her own love story with the cop. Awwww. Those parts I did more than skim through. The cop’s a really nice guy, the loser cousin chick has issues (which unfortunately are resolved in a rather facile way, but that’s a problem most romances face), and overall, if the book had focused on the two of them and their relationship, I probably would’ve read the whole thing, bonus points if she’d still been an addict when the book started.

Unfortunately, we’re stuck with Frosty and Jerkface for much of the book. The two of them do engage in some hot monkey fizznuckin’, which is fun to read about, but there wasn’t nearly enough of THAT either to hold my attention for long.

Overall, the bits I read were a C, verging into C- in spots. By no means was it horrible or unreadable, and if I’d been stranded somewhere with only this book, I would’ve read it and felt glad I hadn’t been stuck with, say, a Connie Mason or Cassie Edwards. But still: failed to engage me.

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Ever since I started this blog, I’ve been really, really good about finishing books I start. For my sanity and the sake of my huge TBR stacks, though, I’ve decided that this cannot go on. From now on, the only books I’ll make a point of finishing are books that are sent to me for review.

It’s usually not the really gawdawful books that I abandon. The most frequently-abandoned books would probably be the “meh” books: they’re not bad, they’re just kinda boring. Or annoying in really petty ways.

Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted, for example. Between the self-conscious writing style, the constant tense changes, getting shit wrong more often than making shit up convincingly and characters I really couldn’t care less about, I didn’t finish it. What I read (about 100 pages or so) I’d give a C, maybe a C-.

And yesterday, I officially abandoned Mystic and Rider by Sharon Shinn. This would be the first book of hers that I can’t finish; nothing I’ve read by her so far ranks below a B-. The premise is pretty interesting: kickass chick with mystical powers has a mandate from the king to investigate what are essentially hate crimes against other people with mystical powers. Kickass chick is travelling with two other mystics, and two King’s Riders (think special ops dudes in a fantasy setting) who are themselves very, very suspicious of mystics.

Problem number 1: The infodumping just goes on and on in the beginning of the book. In fact, there’s a character, an outsider to the land, who’s introduced just so he can ask questions and get infodumped on. Arrrrr.

Problem number 2: Nothing very interesting is happening.

Problem number 3: The characters aren’t all that compelling, which is a shame because Sharon Shinn usually writes some interesting characters, even when she descends into caricature or stereotypes (as with the Jansai in her Samaria novels).

Problem number 4: The world building is only so-so. It’s not that it’s BAD, it’s just that I feel I’ve read something similar in a million other sword-and-sorcery fantasy books.

What I’ve read so far (about 75 pages) would get a C, maybe a C+. However, I’m willing to give it another shot a little while from now, because I’ve been in a Mood in the past week or so.

I’m beginning to feel bogged down by Musashi as well. The story’s really kick-ass, but the translation is driving me nuts. The descriptive bits are pretty nice, but the dialogue… People from seventeenth-century Japan are saying shit like “Okay!” and “Got that?” and other modern Americanisms. It’s driving me batshit. I’m not expecting the translator to render the dialogue into seventeenth-century English, and I realize he’s aiming for conversation that sounds natural, relaxed and informal. But the modern speech--specifically, modern American speech--is making me hear the dialogue as bad anime dubs in my head. It’s not a good thing when Musashi starts soundling like Goku and the bad guys like Vegeta, and the crazy old lady in the book has that generic Crazy Japanese Crone dub voice in my head. You know what I mean--all shaky and high-pitched and obviously a male voice actor trying to sound like an old lady.

But I’m going to slog through this for a while yet, because The Very Tall Husband luuuuuurrrrrves this book and has threatened death and destruction to me if I don’t give it a fair chance.

So yeah. Periodically I’ll whine about the books I just can’t finish for whatever reason. Aren’t you guys just peeing yourselves in anticipation? I know I am.

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