Road trip 2017: Day six

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Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR

Road trip 2017: Day five

Toured a working salt mine in Hutchinson, KS

Road trip 2017: Day four

Total solar eclipse, seen from Scottsbluff, NE!

Road trip 2017: Day three

The world's largest Czech egg ...

... and the world's largest Van Gogh painting

Road trip 2017: Day two

Day two, it was on to Hutchinson, KS and the Cosmosphere.

This is the command module from Apollo 13...

... and a real LEM.

Road trip 2017: Day one

It's not a Texas road trip without a stop at Buc-ee's.

Then it was on to Science Museum Oklahoma.

Book review: How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster

The forty-fourth book I read in 2017 was How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form by Thomas C. Foster.  Having read his approach to literature in general, I decided to look into a more specialized work.

Ultimately, however, I felt that the previous work was more helpful.  Foster seemed somewhat hamstrung by the necessity not simply to repeat himself so the subject matter of How to Read Literature Like a Professor is not broached, no matter how much of it may be applicable to the novel. 

Foster lists eighteen things about a novel which can be gleaned from the first page or two (style, tone, mood, narrative attitude, time frame, time management, place, motif, theme, irony, rhythm, pace, expectations, character and instructions on how to read the novel -- and if you think some of those overlap with each other, you're not alone).  He lists points of view (third person omniscient, third person limited, third person objective, stream of consciousness, second person, first person central, and first person secondary). 

And then he just kind of ... meanders.  Many of the chapters, to me, seem more like meditations on particular novels he likes than tools applicable to many novels.  As such, I found this book less valuable than his previous work.

Book review: Death Comes to Pemberley by P. D. James

The forty-third book I read in 2017 was Death Comes to Pemberley, a Pride and Prejudice sequel-cum-mystery by P. D. James.  James has an impressive reputation as a mystery author, and I was hopeful that this book would rise above the usual low standard set by Austen sequels.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed.  Darcy and Elizabeth witness, at various times, clues that might throw light on the murder that pollutes the shades of Pemberley and are always wishing to themselves that they had the time to converse with their spouse.  James, however, perversely keeps them apart, perhaps knowing that she hasn't the talent to write dialogue between two of the most beloved characters in the canon.  What she passes over, however, is the inevitable truth that, between the scenes which she chooses to depict in her novel, Darcy and Elizabeth would absolutely have time to talk to one another "off-stage," as it were, but they apparently fail to do that either so that they can both be flabbergasted by the facts which they failed ever to uncover to one another, as they apparently ceased to exist when the author wasn't using them.

The second disappointment is like unto the first: Darcy and Elizabeth are reduced to passive ciphers in their own home.  The Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mysteries are far from great, but at least Darcy and Lizzy are active agents in the plot.  Here, they merely stand by, wringing their hands and apparently never speaking to one another, as they leave the detecting to the local authorities.

The deficiencies do not stop there.  Darcy's sister is interchangeably referred to as "Miss Darcy" and "Miss Georgiana," the author seemingly unaware that an eldest (or only) unmarried sister would never be addressed by her first name without intimacy first being established.  Colonel Fitzwilliam is vilely slandered by his depiction here.  And James "fixes" Austen by devoting the entire last chapter to a long and detailed apology by Darcy for everything he did "wrong" in Pride and Prejudice.  Between this and the two First Impressionss, it's been a very bad run of Austeniana.