Recent reading
Mar. 16th, 2024 08:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaUnraveller by Frances Hardinge (2022)
I have been blown away multiple times by various Hardinge books, but maybe my expectations are just raised too high by now, because I was not blown away by this one. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good book, and Hardinge has more imagination in her little finger than some other authors do as a whole. I guess I just felt that it had too much headlong action, and the beginning was a little too episodic for me.
Charles Edward Stuart, by Frank McLynn (1988)
I suppose it was inevitable that I would someday read this biography, which appears to be the most thorough one. It's clearly based on a lot of archival material and does have some interesting info, but it also annoyed me enough that I stopped reading it halfway through. I do wish the author would keep from psychoanalyzing. Like, he literally says that's what he's doing, and refers to psychoanalysts that he's discussed with.
Samples:
"The later emergence of [BPC's brother Henry] as a homosexual personality reflects the disaster of his childhood."
"[BPC's] precious first years with his mother were enough to give him a predominantly heterosexual personality."
WTF??
There's also the author's annoying tendency to make judgments about people's characters without saying what he's basing those judgments on. Show your sources, arrgh (many books have that tendency, to be sure). Also the author has a tendency to be cock-sure about things one really cannot be sure about.
Some random annoying quotes:
- "Was [BPC]'s enterprise a rational one, or was it a mad, quixotic, juvenile scheme worthy only of a Polish blockhead?"
What on earth. Why the random dissing of the Poles??
- "The 'internal saboteur' in the prince's mind, responsible for his self-destructive behaviour on the back through northern England, now manifested itself as illness. From 5-16 January Charles lay seriously ill with influenza and a high fever at Bannockburn House."
Or perhaps...he was infected with a virus... I mean, I'm not denying that one's state of mind can influence health, but to state so categorically that he had the flu because of "internal sabotage"!
- McLynn is also categorically sure that the Jacobites should have disputed the crossing of the Spey (just before Culloden), and even goes so far as to say that the "villain of the piece" of them not doing so was O'Sullivan. Compare this with Duffy's presentation of the same issue in Fight for a Throne where he discusses the pros and cons of doing so, showing that it was by no means an obvious choice, and the way the actions of the Hanoverians influenced the issue, and does not call anyone a villain. I have to say, Duffy is WAY better at nuance and at justifying his judgments (not to mention, in this particular case he is a military historian and McLynn isn't). Also I am annoyed by McLynn's constant dismissal of O'Sullivan as incompetent without justifying it.
I have been blown away multiple times by various Hardinge books, but maybe my expectations are just raised too high by now, because I was not blown away by this one. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good book, and Hardinge has more imagination in her little finger than some other authors do as a whole. I guess I just felt that it had too much headlong action, and the beginning was a little too episodic for me.
Charles Edward Stuart, by Frank McLynn (1988)
I suppose it was inevitable that I would someday read this biography, which appears to be the most thorough one. It's clearly based on a lot of archival material and does have some interesting info, but it also annoyed me enough that I stopped reading it halfway through. I do wish the author would keep from psychoanalyzing. Like, he literally says that's what he's doing, and refers to psychoanalysts that he's discussed with.
Samples:
"The later emergence of [BPC's brother Henry] as a homosexual personality reflects the disaster of his childhood."
"[BPC's] precious first years with his mother were enough to give him a predominantly heterosexual personality."
WTF??
There's also the author's annoying tendency to make judgments about people's characters without saying what he's basing those judgments on. Show your sources, arrgh (many books have that tendency, to be sure). Also the author has a tendency to be cock-sure about things one really cannot be sure about.
Some random annoying quotes:
- "Was [BPC]'s enterprise a rational one, or was it a mad, quixotic, juvenile scheme worthy only of a Polish blockhead?"
What on earth. Why the random dissing of the Poles??
- "The 'internal saboteur' in the prince's mind, responsible for his self-destructive behaviour on the back through northern England, now manifested itself as illness. From 5-16 January Charles lay seriously ill with influenza and a high fever at Bannockburn House."
Or perhaps...he was infected with a virus... I mean, I'm not denying that one's state of mind can influence health, but to state so categorically that he had the flu because of "internal sabotage"!
- McLynn is also categorically sure that the Jacobites should have disputed the crossing of the Spey (just before Culloden), and even goes so far as to say that the "villain of the piece" of them not doing so was O'Sullivan. Compare this with Duffy's presentation of the same issue in Fight for a Throne where he discusses the pros and cons of doing so, showing that it was by no means an obvious choice, and the way the actions of the Hanoverians influenced the issue, and does not call anyone a villain. I have to say, Duffy is WAY better at nuance and at justifying his judgments (not to mention, in this particular case he is a military historian and McLynn isn't). Also I am annoyed by McLynn's constant dismissal of O'Sullivan as incompetent without justifying it.
(no subject)
Date: 2024-03-17 12:59 pm (UTC)Yeah, I agree. But I think I would have cared more about that if the book had hooked me harder from the start.