{"id":60,"date":"2008-07-28T12:54:38","date_gmt":"2008-07-28T17:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=60"},"modified":"2025-08-01T11:05:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T16:05:15","slug":"getting-the-job-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/getting-the-job-done\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting the job done"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my review of Phyllida<\/a>, I made a reference to an average review it earned at Amazon with the caveat that the reviewer \u201cstayed up all night to read the last two hundred pages, because I was engrossed with the characters\u2019 stories.\u201d To which my response was, that\u2019s the mother lode<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve thought a lot about this lately, what I pick up, what I put down. I\u2019ll finish a book regardless; it\u2019s just something I do. I can\u2019t stand to leave a book unfinished, no matter how torturous. Also, I\u2019m not one of those readers who has to be absolutely captivated by the first or third page. I\u2019ll give an author a good 50 pages to live up to the blurb (which is what would have hooked me enough to buy it), sink that hook in my mouth, and reel me in. (Which is kind of a moot point anyway, since I\u2019m going to finish it.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Right now, I\u2019m reading a series of Georgian romances (er, that would be when King George III ruled the world before he went nuts requiring the Prince Regent [aka Prinny] to step in his place, which then required every pannier-wearing woman in the Ton to adopt Empress Josephine\u2019s habit of sheer slip dresses and oh, you gorgeous Regency empire-waisted dress, how do I love thee, let me count the ways!).<\/p>\n

Oh. Ahem. Pardon my fashion drool.<\/p>\n

Back to the series. I started reading book #2 inadvertently, got about 100\/507 pages in (that\u2019s on my eBookwise reader; I don\u2019t know what that translates to for the dead-tree variety), then realized I\u2019d mistaken it for book #1.<\/p>\n

So let me address that one first.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s got problems that keep taking me out of the story. It\u2019s not as well edited as it should be, I suppose, but that might be me being able to see the man behind the curtain and finding him neither handsome nor ugly but simply not to my taste. Too, books suffer when they\u2019re edited with the goal of shaving word count, which is what I suspect to be the case here, but I understand that. Some days, it\u2019s all about the budget.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, even after I realized I was reading the wrong book, I still didn\u2019t want to put it down to save for later so I could catch up.<\/p>\n

Does that make it a good book? No.<\/p>\n

It means the writer did her job to my satisfaction.<\/p>\n

Now. On to book #1. It\u2019s obvious the writer grew from book #1 to book #2, but I\u2019ll tell you what. If I\u2019d picked up this one first, I\u2019d suffer through and not read the other ones I bought.1<\/a><\/sup> I\u2019m only getting through this one to be able to pick up #2 where I left off. It\u2019s got logical inconsistencies, continuity issues, language issues (as in, the language doesn\u2019t fit the Georgian era), and a not-very-bright heroine. She\u2019s not TSTL (too stupid to live), but one minute she realizes the hero\u2019s issue and the next, she\u2019s confuzzled. She shouldn\u2019t be able to realize the hero\u2019s issues one minute and then turn around and be bewildered when he acts consistently with those issues she\u2019s already sussed out. Were it not for my slight OCD on the issue of finishing books, I\u2019d just put it down.<\/p>\n

Which means the writer didn\u2019t do her job to my satisfaction.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

1<\/a>.<\/span>  So I actually bought all 3 books in the series at once, plus her fourth book, which is the beginning of a new series (everybody writes series anymore; everybody reads and likes series\u2014and I\u2019m no different).
\n          In the end, does it make a difference that I\u2019m equivocal about this author if I already spent the money on every book she\u2019s had published so far?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my review of Phyllida, I made a reference to an average review it earned at Amazon with the caveat that the reviewer \u201cstayed up all night to read the last two hundred pages, because I was engrossed with the characters\u2019 stories.\u201d To which my response was, that\u2019s the mother lode. I\u2019ve thought a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[532,424],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17259,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/17259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}