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"Too much traffic"
About Me
- Jenny Davidson
- I have published four novels and four books of literary criticism; I'm currently at work on a book called FOR THE LOVE OF BROKEN THINGS: MY FATHER, EDWARD GIBBON AND THE RUINS OF ROME. I teach in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
A few pieces
Books
My other blogs
Blog Archive
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2006
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July
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- And now for something completely different
- On Mel Gibson's anti-Semitism
- Dr Jekyll and Mr Fucking Hyde
- Reading with the eye
- The sloth's pilgrimage
- Hex!
- Daedalus, or, Science and the Future
- An intellectual drink
- It is hard to say
- Molecular gastronomy
- Of the soul
- The conquest of Peru
- It's Pelecanos week
- Book in a bog
- Just a quick detour
- Slightly destructive
- Dispatches from Beirut
- Stacy Schiff on Wikipedia
- On domestication
- Of ARCs and bribes
- Like a Henry James story
- Just tired
- A great Syd Barrett post
- The way she writes now
- Cat-sitting noir
- Comic
- The cultivation of a moral intelligence
- Victory
- A word of warning
- Wordsworth among the peasantry
- The problem was the pink sweater
- Hay fever
- It is after midnight
- Bones bones bones
- Jane/Jane
- How fun....
- I am SO totally
- Good things at the TLS
- Close your eyes and think of feminism
- The vale of tears ethos
- The trouble with book reviewing
- The art of criticism
- An amazing and slightly bizarre website
- This whole EggFusion thing
- If you have ever tried to read
- In the thick
- A leopard on the other side of a bit of canvas
- Colson Whitehead
- Why Poppy Z. Brite
- At the Guardian Review
- Nature-nurture polemics
- Oh no, not the ironing board
- More on Shelley
- Not an angel
- Simile!
- Ethics and education
- Julia Kristeva=Julie Christie
- Ivy league chick lit
- Fathers and daughters
- RIP Syd Barrett
- I almost bought this last week
- This new book about M. Night Shyamalan
- Regular readers
- At the Washington Post
- I have been reading
- Pico Iyer at the Guardian
- A fine fleece and a fat carcass
- An invitation
- Walking ashes, talking earth
- At the TLS
- Annoyingly
- n+1 editors and associates
- Drugstore noir
- Salacious advertisements
- Tim Adams on Bill Buford's maddening/charming ways
- Dans ce val de larmes/Oslo-Seville
- Déjà vécu
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July
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I find her books so clogged up that I don't think I could actually bear to even look at a parody.
ReplyDeleteShe's going just like P. Cornwell...when is something going to happen, darn it, the reader is always thinking.
Other writers of the genre can write about not much happening and it is good, page-turning stuff. (Karin Slaughter). What is it with Reichs? The plot runs out of steam one-third way through and the book cannot recover. (Bit like after the interval in most modern plays.)
I don't care so much about the plot, it's the prose style I can't stomach; and also I really, really hate the melodramatic one-sentence paragraphs where TB reflects on her erstwhile drinking problem. I'm, like, "I don't care that you're a reformed alcoholic! Big deal!" It's like she looked up the instruction book and it said "your main character has to have overcome an obstacle with which she still struggles" and stuck a pin onto substance abuse....
ReplyDeleteOK, I'll 'fess up. I love KR in spite of her somewhat artificial intensity. Unlike her far more popular rival Patricia Cornwell, Ms. Reichs has walked the walk. Her character is not her wannabe, but basically her. In person she's witty and gracious, and if you accept that within this genre of crime fiction the forensics get top billing, she delivers better than Cornwell or any of the others. Just one guy’s opinion.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Ralph, for your kinder-spirited comments! I have been gratuitously snarky here, against my common habit, and feel duly reproached--I wish Ms. Reichs all the best, and I know many readers who greatly enjoy her books....
ReplyDelete