The Mystery of a French Mystery Novel's Rapid Downward Spiral

Hello! Yesterday, I finished reading 813 by Maurice Leblanc, which was my next book to finish in the early 20th century French series (though I'm reading it in English) about the "gentleman thief" Arsene Lupin. I have a lot of enthusiasm for the series, partially because it's very entertaining and partially because Adult Swim used to show an anime, Lupin the III, which was very loosely based on the books, so my opinions on the novel are probably pretty biased. That's not to say that I've loved every one of the Arsene Lupin novels. The Hollow Needle in particular drove me up a wall, since I really disliked Beautrelet, the brilliant and remarkably cocky young detective on Lupin's trail, and I thought the last half of it was a little boring, too. 813, however, was a fast-paced, entertaining and enjoyable novel until about the last fourth of the book.

 I don't know what I could say about any of it without spoiling the whole thing, as spoiler alerts are very important to avoid with books that are nearly 100 years old, but during the last part of the book, I almost slammed my Kindle shut and shoved it back in my purse. My first problem with it was that, in the final stretch of the main story, there was a series of events that happened that, though it was perfectly logical, was so infuriating and depressing that it made me actively angry to read it. If that would have been the end of it, I would have been fine with the whole thing. After all of that happens, however, and a bit before it, too, there are so many false endings that it just gets to be sort of funny. I can think of at least four instances where the whole story could have ended, ready to go to the next book in the series, but Leblanc decided to keep going after each of them. By the time Lupin joins the French Foreign Legion (which is a spoiler, but not a very applicable one), I was not quite sure why the book hadn't ended.

Despite my complaints about the last part of 813, it was still an interesting book that I'd recommend with the same warning I posted above. If you'd like to read it, too, the full text can be downloaded in several formats from Project Gutenberg or as a Kindle book from Amazon.com.

Rubbish Sci-Fi and Spiffy Pulp Novels

Hello! It's been a bit since I last posted here, so I have read multiple books since the time of my last entry. Because there are several books to talk about, I don't have a fancy picture of a book cover to put up, for which I apologize. Hopefully, however, the tale of my treks through free book lists shall prove sufficient entertainment for all of you who have somehow stumbled across this blog.

Plenzes, by Chris Lang, wasn't the first thing that I read since my last post, but since it isn't a pulp novel, it gets its own special paragraph. I would very much like to be nice when talking about this sci-fi short story, which I found for free on Kindle through http://www.ereaderiq.com/, but it is difficult. The author did have a lot of interesting and well-thought out ideas about the future of social networking, and they didn't seem as far-fetched or terrifying as they probably should have. However, his main character was an unlikable and abusive jerk, the twist at the end came out of nowhere, and the whole thing was plagued with typos. I don't think that I would have gotten through the story had it been a full length novel.

The other two books that I read, The Big Sin by Jack Webb (which was also obtained as a free Kindle book from Amazon) and The Corpse That Walked by Octavius Roy Cohen (from http://www.munseys.com/), were much more entertaining. Admittedly, I really enjoy reading old pulp novels, especially if they seem to think logic and reality are bothers while telling a story, so I'll probably post quite a bit about them in the future. I have read some of them that are so idiotic that even I can't stand them, though, and luckily, neither of these novels falls under that category.

I have to say that of the two books, The Big Sin is undoubtedly the better novel. It's more realistic, more thoughtful, has more likable characters, and is bereft of any major plot holes. It was a quick read that never got boring for a page, and it would be easy to recommend to anyone who really wants to read a book from the 1950s about a priest and a Jewish cop solving the murder of a Mexican showgirl. The Corpse That Walked, however, is about a nice, honest, and not all that smart guy who gets plastic surgery so he can pretend to be a wanted criminal while people are trying to kill him and his intrepid go-getter girlfriend poses as a reporter to uncover the sordid truth behind his exploits. It is ridiculous, over-the-top, and never even tries to be plausible, so, naturally, it was much more entertaining than the more serious novel that took the time to think about religion, prejudice, and justice. The beginning of The Corpse That Walked is painfully slow, particularly if you're reading it a chapter at a time at 1 in the morning, but once it picks up at about the halfway point, its hard to argue against the borderline insanity of the plot being, at the very least, interesting.

Yesterday, I started reading 813 by Maurice Leblanc, so that will at least be included in an upcoming post. Until then, however, I'm hoping to at least keep this blog surviving!

There Are Two Different Versions of the First Bobbsey Twins Book!

The Bobbsey Twins or Merry Days Indoors and Out
Laura Lee Hope
Published in 1904 by Grosset and Dunlap, and currently available as a free ebook from Project Gutenberg

Last night, I finished reading The Bobbsey Twins or Merry Days Indoors and Out, which I had downloaded because, having earned enough to buy a Kindle, the best thing I could think to do with it was to start downloading kids' books from the early part of the 20th century. It wasn't that different from other ones that I've read, since it was mostly a cute book and very episodic, but in this case, it had some passages that were so wildly racist that I couldn't imagine it being sold today. I did like all of the stuff about how holidays were celebrated at the turn of the century, and was pretty entertained by Bert's almost Crime and Punishment-esque dilemma about having witnessed the breaking of a shoe store's window. It was just much harder to enjoy the parts about how sweet little Flossie used a big piece of cardboard to segregate the majority of her doll collection, with fluffy blonde hair and pink dresses, from the black doll in a spiffy red hat and blue suit that the household help, who have their dialogue written in a nearly unreadable dialect, had purchased for her.

What seemed the strangest about all of those parts of The Bobbsey Twins first book was that I was sure I'd read it myself when I was in grade school, but couldn't remember any of that. I know that I probably wasn't thinking too hard about political issues in literature when I was seven, but I'm sure that the book's heroine sorting her dolls with barriers would have left an impression on me. When I looked it up to see what happened, though, I found out that the version I'd read before was a revision from 1961 called The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport. It sounds like a few parts of the story are still the same, but it was completely rewritten as a mystery novel, which partially explains why absolutely none of it seemed familiar to me now. I wish that I could remember if they'd left in the part where a girl passes out while jump roping and Nan and Bert think she's dead, but at the very least, I know that some of the politically incorrect parts of the book were cleaned up for the 60s revision of the book.

If you're curious about revisions of old series books, Jennifer's Series Books has several posts with side by side comparisons of different versions of Nancy Drew novels. I haven't read about anything on her blog that sounds quite as extreme as what happened to the Bobbsey Twins books, but it's still interesting to see what changes were made.

Singing Robots and Exploding Hands Aren't Always That Exciting

Clover: Volume One
Clamp
Published in 2001 by Tokyopop, and in omnibus form by Dark Horse Comics in 2012


Before I go on too much, I have to say that Clover (Volume 1) is one of the prettiest comic books, or manga, if you want to be more specific, that I've ever read. Even with all of their empty spaces, the pages of this look lovely, covered in characters that wear flowing clothing and never have a hair out of place, even in the middle of a one-on-one army guy yelling and stabbing fight. The character designs are well done, the backgrounds, which are filled with a disproportionate amount of giant curtains and a lot of things that look fairly robotic, are really detailed, and, because of all of the aforementioned empty space, the panels look like they're floating, leading to a comic that's never cluttered or difficult to read.

As pretty as the first volume of Clover is, however, it doesn't make a lot of sense. I realize that, as the first volume of the comic, it has quite a bit of time left to explain things and fill in all of the blanks that the reader is left with after reading this segment of the story. For now, though, all that's evident is that Kazuhiko, who has a dark past and is involved with the military, has to escort Suu, a clueless, but, of course, super-cute robot girl to a location that is undisclosed, not just to the reader, but also to them. At some point before the story starts, Kazuhiko also got a robot hand that can turn into weapons and things like that, but that seems slightly less relevant to the characters and all of their massive amounts of mysterious despair than the un-directed journey does.

I have no problems with a story taking a while to get started, and, since I have the omnibus edition of Clover, I'll keep reading it until the end. For now, though, it seems much more concerned with being pretty and atmospheric than it does with telling a story. When I was first buying manga, I'd always look at it in stores, wanting very much to read it, but instead buying other books, since it was both the most expensive and shortest of anything on the shelf at Waldenbooks. Now that it's come out at a lower price and I finally have it, I think that I was probably better off reading Paradise Kiss after all. Still, I'm hoping that the next three volumes are better, and, regardless of their quality, will continue to write about them here.

About Me and This Blog

Hello! I already have a cross stitch blog, so it's probably not that interesting that I want to keep a blog about reading, too. However, Shelfari has not been behaving properly for me lately, so this seemed like it could work just as well. Most of the stuff that I read is sort of silly, so it's not like I'll be expounding on the wonders of great literature, or even recent stuff that's decently respected. If you would like to read about a bunch of strange books that I dig up on free ebook link sites, fluffheaded novels that get made into anime, comics that I find on sale, and things that I find at used stores, however, I hope that you enjoy this blog!