Book 20: Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

Given that the entire point of this project is to distract myself from the current presidential election, it might seem like a dubious decision to read a book that's all about the 2008 cycle. However, it is on the list, and I figured I'd better get it done early rather than try to read it in October...

I had a really mixed reaction to this book. Part of that reaction is just due to the fact that I had forgotten so much of the race, and how crazy it felt at the time, and eight years ago suddenly feels like a different time altogether. But it's also because this is a book that's all about The Narrative in politics. Everything is about how well (or how poorly) various people in the race played the game, and nothing is about demographics, or GOTV organizations, or data. That's really disorienting after spending years reading Nate Silver and focusing on those fundamentals, rather than on how the political press will spin every gaff or gotcha moment in a debate.

It also reads a bit like political RPF fanfic, if I'm honest. The authors take care to note at the beginning of the book that they did numerous interviews with "most" of the main people focused on in the book, and years of research and blah blah blah, and explain how they differentiate between quotes and paraphrasing conversations that often were between only two people with no other witnesses. And yet there is so much editorializing about how all of the main players FELT about everything, and the motives behind it all, that I came away from it feeling less convinced by its accuracy rather than more. There are many "she may have said this, but what she was really feeling was totally different" stories, and it's a bit hard to take while living through the media's current narrative spinning about Clinton in particular.

Having said that, I had forgotten just how insane the sequence of events around John Edwards was, and even without any narrative editorializing the fact that he was still running for president (and thought he might win!) while in the middle of a love child scandal is incredible. So that was fairly exciting to relive.

I think my biggest takeaway from this book was honestly to avoid reading the horse race updates according to D.C. pundits. As I so wisely realized eight weeks ago, paying close attention to the media's narrative neither adds to my own understanding nor improves my mood. Let's see how well I can follow my own advice.

Grade: C

Book 19: Lessons in Love by Charlie Cochrane

This is one of those books that I have no memory of buying and no idea how I found it. It's definitely in my wheelhouse, though, so at least I understand what past!me was thinking.

This is the first in a series of books of mysteries that take place at Cambridge in the early 20th Century. It's one part murder mystery, one part gay romance, both of which I enjoy a lot. The couple at the center of the story are two teaching fellows at the university, who fall in love while trying to solve a series of murders. But are they putting themselves in danger by investigating matters? I bet you know the answer to that.

The relationship is a classic opposites attract romance between the outgoing and daring Jorty Stewart and the more restrained and uncertain Orlando Coppersmith. There isn't a huge amount of tension in their budding relationship beyond Orlando's naiveté, and in some ways the murder mystery starts too soon in the book; there isn't really any sleuthing the reader can do to figure out who's behind the murders and why, so it's harder to engage with the plot than is ideal for a murder mystery. It's a book that doesn't quite know what it wants to be, and as a result it left me feeling a bit muddled as well. 

Grade: C

Book 18: The Boss by Abigail Barnette

Some of the books on this reading list have been there for so long that I don't remember their origin stories anymore; I can't trace back how I heard about them or why I bought them in the first place. But some of them I remember perfectly, like this one. You tend to remember a book that Mara Wilson of Matilda fame recommended on her twitter as a good alternative to Fifty Shades of Grey :D

This book feels like a cross between a version of Fifty Shades that's not terrible about consent with The Devil Wears Prada, with a good dose of Secretary in there as well. The first two thirds of the book is a pretty compelling fantasy about a relationship between an older, obscenely rich dom and a young, ambitious sub that is sexually fulfilling for both of them, and that never loses sight of the game at the heart of BDSM. There are no contracts to be signed, it's clear from the POV that the sub is always very happy about the pain she experiences, and while the writing style isn't exactly to my taste I definitely understood why this book would be suggested as a good alternative to Fifty Shades.

And then, in the final third of the book, the entire plot goes completely off the rails. I had already been getting a bit fed up with the terminal reluctance of both characters to admit that their relationship wasn't just about the sex, and the work drama seemed to be totally beside the point and yet kept on going. But the final narrative twists in the last couple of chapters were frankly baffling, and completely out of keeping with the genre, whether you consider this to be romance or erotica. I discovered at the end of the book that it was the first in a trilogy (which in retrospect I probably should have guessed), and from the blurbs of the second and third books, my issues with the sudden plot twists would not lesson if I read any further. So, I am not reading the next two books, and sadly I can't really second Mara Wilson's recommendation of this one, either. It certainly doesn't have the same failings as Fifty Shades, but it still doesn't succeed for many other reasons.

Grade: D

Book 17: The Music Box by Elaine Atwell

I had some major problems with this book. Which is a SHAME, because I really wanted to like it.

The central premise is definitely compelling: two lady spies both working for the Allies in WWII meet on a mission and fall in love (or at least lust) while thwarting evil! What's not to love? Well, a lot, as it turns out.

This book tries to be both too small and too big at the same time. It's definitely a novella, which is fine in the sense that the central relationship arc can be easily summed up in one sentence. But the backdrop of the early days of WWII feels far too big as a result--the length of the story doesn't fit the enormity of the historical setting, especially since the information each of the spies is attempting to obtain is hugely significant. The book also suffers from a flaw in its overall POV; the reader obviously knows how WWII ended, but no one in the story could possibly know that. It throws off the whole tension of the story (and my ability to engage with it) when characters in the book are behaving as if they know that the Allies would eventually defeat the Axis powers, which was not at all the case.

This becomes even less excusable when the information the spies obtain is so significant that it would change the entire course of the war, but the book makes no effort to actually demonstrate that it would result in quicker victory for the Allies. If anything, it's entirely likely that the new information could have prolonged or even permanently swung the course of the war in the favor of the Axis powers. The suggested change in history is too serious to be treated so lightly. Alternate histories can be fascinating, but they only work if the author actually works through the potential impact of a change, and this was done so casually in a novella that's clearly not built to tell that kind of alternate history that it made the entire story fall apart for me. It also made it much harder for me to handwave other historical details and moments in the novel which felt suspect to me; suddenly the entire book was clearly just a house of cards, and I didn't want to play anymore.

So in the end, this was a novella with lots of elements I love, and none of the necessary execution to make the actual story work. Bah.  

Grade: D

Book 16: The Bohemian and the Banker by Summer Devon and Bonnie Dee

So there's this bohemian, you see, and he meets--you'll never believe this--a banker!

This is a pretty classic fish-out-of-water, two-worlds-colliding sort of romance. It's set in Paris and then London (and then Paris again) in 1901, and it's about a staid, by-the-rules banker who meets and falls in love with a bohemian performer at a gay version of Moulin Rouge. You know exactly what the attraction (and the conflict) at the center of this story will be just from the title, but I really liked the time and attention the book gave to how their feelings progressed. There was an immediate chemistry between them, but I could also see why their feelings for each other deepened into something beyond a single encounter.

That said, the book had a bit of trouble when it came to the major conflict between their two lives--in order for the two of them to live together happily, one of them had to dramatically overhaul his life. The final resolution worked for me, but it came together so easily in the end that it made the conflict leading up to that point seem needlessly overwrought. I ran into the problem that I do with a lot of gay historical romances, which is that I either wanted it to be more of a fantasy or more grounded in what it would actually take to make a relationship like theirs work. This book tries to split the difference, which is fine for a momentary diversion but means it's not a book that is likely to linger in my mind.

The other issue I had with the book is that in some of the sex scenes, the language choices felt odd to me. It can be very challenging to find the right balance between explicit anatomical descriptions and vague euphemisms or slang, and for me this book definitely did not always succeed at this.

Grade: B

Book 15: Serpentine by Cindy Pon

This book was given to me for Christmas by one of my brothers. The reason he heard about the book is because it was blurbed by Kristin Cashore, who is one of his (and my) favorite authors. I'm really glad that it was brought to his and then my attention, because I enjoyed it a lot.

Serpentine is YA fantasy/horror that takes place in a universe inspired by the Xia Dynasty. The main character is Skybright, who is a handmaiden to Zhen Ni. The two girls are very close friends, but there is also a fundamental inequality to their friendship. Skybright was left on the doorstep of Zhen Ni's family's home when she was a baby, and they took her in as a servant. The focus of the book quickly expands beyond the domestic when Skybright discovers that she is a serpent demon, an awakening that takes place just as a battle between the unborn and the monks erupts.

I loved this universe. It was so nice to read a fantasy world written by a Chinese-American author that explored Ancient China rather than the standard pseudo-European setting that's so common in fantasy. The friendship between Skybright and Zhen Ni is central to the book, as are blossoming romances for each of them. One of the main subplots of the book focuses on a romantic relationship between two women, which was a lovely surprise. Skybright's POV and character voice is very strong, and the writing is precise and has a beautiful flow.

The only drawback to this book was that I didn't realize when I started it that it was the first in a series; there will be at least two sequels, and possibly more. This made the end of this book feel incredibly abrupt and much more negative than I was expecting. The cliffhanger isn't too terrible, but it left me feeling frustrated, which is a shame since I enjoyed the rest of the narrative so much. I am definitely looking forward to reading the next book in the series, but I do wish it had been a standalone (or that I had known going into that it was the start of a series). I am not going to let that momentary disappointment affect the grade I'm assigning it, however, because I do think it lived up to its potential overall.

Grade: A

Book 14: Save the Cat! by Blake Synder

The subtitle of this book is "The Last Book On Screenwriting That You'll Ever Need." Given that I've never had any real interest in writing a screenplay, one might think I didn't need any book on screenwriting at all. But a number of friends of mine who write novels are big fans of this book, because what it's really about is how to structure the beats of a story so that your narrative builds and lands the way you want it to. And after the last novel I read lost the plot entirely in my view, it was very nice to read something which helped me identify why and how that happened.

The best part of this book, and the thing that my friends primarily recommended it for, is the author's beat sheet, which divides every screenplay up into a three act structure with set beats within each of the acts. Because the second (or middle) act also has a midpoint break by which point the narrative should have reached a certain moment within the story, I actually think of this structure as having four acts rather than three, but that's just how it breaks down mentally for me. The beat sheet and the storyboard visualization based on that beat sheet are the main methods he explores; there are a couple of other tips for creating characters and building tension that he mentions, but I found most of those to be either very basic or not particularly helpful for how I think about writing.

The style of the author's writing can be a bit grating, and in his view if a movie makes money it's automatically successful, and if it doesn't it's because the screenplay doesn't adhere to his laws. I don't actually think that how much money a movie (or a book) makes directly corresponds to how successful the story is narratively, but I do think his narrative structures are worth thinking about while writing. Not all of his tips can be applied to fiction writing, but enough of them can be that I think it was a useful book on writing for me to have read.

Grade: B