August 01, 2005

She reads so I don't have to

My research into mid-seventeenth century England continues. One reason why my historical mystery is a pile of unpublishable carp (I meant to type "crap" but I think I prefer the image of a heap of big goldfish, because the novel is not exactly crappy, more shiny, damp and out of place) is my ignorance of the period, which I've been continuing to rectify for a while now. Believe it or not, I started rectifying the ignorance before I wrote the novel.

On my latest trip to the university library I turned up a neat book: The English Civil War Through the Restoration in Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography, 1625.1991. I got it to use as a resource and hadn't expected to find it entertaining in and of itself. This book is basically a list of other works related to the period in question and includes a short synopsis of each. I learned pretty quick to skip ahead to the last sentence of each to get a real sense of whether the book was worth reading.

"The book is written in the author's usual plodding style…"

"The story is told in gushing, rather childish prose…"

"The novel has a few incidents masquerading as a plot…"

I didn't just find out what to avoid, I also found a batch of books that I do want to read, including some of the less ghastly sounding historical romances which are out of print. "Out of print" does not, however, mean "not available." I discovered that you can order them online from people who must have stacks of them lying around. I'm really wondering about their business model, because they are selling the books for a penny. No fooling. $0.01 plus shipping. I can't imagine that they make enough off shipping to make it worth their while.

302 words | August 1, 2005 08:17 PM | Real true story
Comments

Of course, the trick with reviewers is that you have to calibrate to them. The Baltimore Sun movie reviewer (whose name escapes me and I don't think he works there anymore) who I grew up with never liked a movie I didn't and vice versa. The Boston Globe reviewer had really weird tastes (but wrote really well), and it took me a while before I figured out how to read the reviews so that I could figure out if I would like the movie or not.

Same thing with books, of course. As far as business models go, it may be that they really need the space more than they need the books, and that's the 'price point'....

Posted by: Jonathan Dresner at August 2, 2005 02:24 AM

Well, I agree with her assessments of authors who I've read. A number of the books are available at the public library, so I will read those and then decide whether I want to track down (and pay for) some of the harder to find titles.

As for the secondhand romance business model, I don't see how it could even be worthwhile to track your inventory. People must do this for reasons other than money. I remember seeing huge boxes of old romances at used bookstores and women coming in with bags full of them to exchange. It sort of takes the "store" out of "bookstore."

Posted by: Nee-chama at August 2, 2005 03:58 PM