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Let's see, what have I been up to lately...

I've got a couple of audiobooks that I'm listening to at the moment. I've started working my way through the Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy L Sayers and I like them, for the most part. I'm also listening to Audible's version of Dracula, which is narrated by a full cast including Alan Cumming as Dr. Seward and Tim Curry as Van Helsing.

As far as fan fiction goes, I've posted drabbles for the Fifth Doctor audio "The Kamelion Empire," the Seventh Doctor/Bernice Summerfield story "The Hesitation Deviation," and the Seventh Doctor TV serial "The Greatest Show in the Galaxy," which I watched for the first time this weekend. Of those three, "The Kamelion Empire" was the standout by far. It focused on the relationships between the Fifth Doctor, Kamelion, Tegan, and Turlough, which means lots of juicy conflict and hard-won friendship. The story's writer, Jonathan Morris, also gave a fairly good in-story explanation for why Kamelion disappears from the TV series for so long, which is a nice, geeky extra. "The Hesitation Deviation" is good also, but I'd listened to it for the first time months ago and am just now getting around to writing for it. As for "The Greatest Show on Earth"...well, I'd say it was a disappointment but I wasn't really expecting much based on the gif sets floating around. It's not a story I'll be in a hurry to watch again.

Today I finished listening to the audiodrama version of Love and War. I've tried to listen to it before but found it too depressing. This time it was fine - not a favorite, but okay. I'm starting to think the Virgin New Adventure books aren't really for me; the only one I've really liked has been Theatre of War. Anyway, I'll probably write drabbles for Love and War later this week.

"Hill House Eight" is not dead but it's...stuck. I keep trying to get it unstuck, but I'm starting to think I have some basic structural issues that need to be addressed/changed. I don't know...I guess we'll see.

Comments

[sanguinity]

If I know enough to be useful to you on Hill House Eight, be sure to let me know!

And yay, the Lord Peter novels! I read them for the first time last fall, and am just finishing a re-reading of the Harriet Vane ones, in loose tandem with a friend who's reading them for the first time.

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I'll relay my Hill House Eight woes in another post. You may not know enough about "The Haunting of Hill House" to help, but you can at least commiserate with me.

As for Lord Peter...well you see, it was like this...

I was only going to listen to Whose Body?, but I loved it so much that once I was done I had to pick up the next one. And, what with all the stress from February, I kept on doing that right through Unnatural Death. Unfortunately, Audible doesn't carry a copy of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club right now and there were issues with the audio for Strong Poison, so I've switched over to the radio dramas which come handily bundled in a pack of 4 stories. I just finished listening to Murder Must Advertise tonight.

What I want to know is why there isn't more Lord Peter/Charles Parker shipping in the fandom? I know Parker eventually marries Peter's sister and of course there's Harriet later, but there was a lot of chemistry in those first two novels. So much so that even I noticed and I rarely notice that sort of thing.

[sanguinity]

I can't speak for the rest of the fandom, I'm afraid. But for myself: on the recommendation of a friend I started at the other end, with the Harriet novels first, and then swung back around to the beginning. Parker doesn't have a very prominent role in the later novels, and consequently, I think my own shipping patterns were set by the time I'd swung back around to the beginning. I noticed the chemistry between them in those first novels, certainly, but coming from that end around it seemed more of an anomaly than a defining characteristic of the series.

[quipxotic]

Huh, that's fascinating. Particularly since I'm the one who usually reads things out of order and you aren't. :-)

What was your friend's reason for suggesting reading the Harriet novels first? Which one did you start with? What did you think of the early stories as compared to the later ones?

If I'm being too nosy feel free to ignore me, but I am interested.

[sanguinity]

Strictly speaking, my friend didn't recommend that reading order herself -- she is very attached to doing things in the Proper Order -- but she passed on to me advice she found elsewhere. Which was, in full:

"Strong Poison is a good starting place: it introduces Harriet Vane, who is awesome. Then you can move on to Have His Carcase, Murder Will Advertise (no Harriet but several awesome ladies are on the staff of a 1920s-30s advertising agency — Sayers worked in advertising herself), Gaudy Night, and Busman’s Honeymoon. Somewhere along there you should add Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, and The Nine Tailors, but those are best after you’re already familiar with Lord Peter. Whose Body (the first Lord Peter novel), The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, and The Five Red Herrings feel soulless in comparison to the Harriet books, but they’re clever mysteries.

"I read the books in publication order, but Sayers improves so much over the course of her career that starting at the beginning is kind of difficult for many. But, if you’re a completist, start with Whose Body."

(And I honestly don't remember what conversation we had that led her to pass on that advice to me: I think it's likely that I was more interested in Harriet than in Peter, and was uncertain if I wanted to read a half-dozen Peter novels just to get to Harriet.)

Anyway, that's the order I followed: Strong Poison, Carcase, Murder Must Advertise, Gaudy Night, Busman's Honeymoon, then back to the beginning and straight through. And now that I've read them all...? I adore Carcase and Busman's Honeymoon. I found Strong Poison a bit rough going -- there's something about the structure of the novel that feels off to me, and it continued to feel so on re-read. I think it's the weakest of the four Harriet novels: it introduces Harriet, but it's not Harriet-POV, unlike the other three Harriet novels. Happily, it's redeeming feature is Miss Climpson and Miss Murchison -- it would be a crying shame to miss them, and I'm so glad I didn't!

I do agree that Sayers improved over her career, but it's not like she was egregious at the beginning. Also, there's a strong throughline through her novels, what with secondary characters coming back in later stories, and also sometimes Peter or Harriet mentioning an earlier case in relation to the current one -- given all that, there's a definite reward to reading the series in order. But would Peter alone have been enough to hook me? I'm really not at all sure that "Whose Body?" was a strong enough bid to lead me on to the next two, or that the first three together were strong enough to keep going until we got to Harriet. But it's hard to say. I actually thought better of Bellona Club than the advice giver did, although I found Red Herrings a terrible grind -- it's the only one of the series that I think is a real stinker. (That said, I'm not as enchanted with Nine Tailors as the rest of the world seems to be? Eh.)

Btw, the ones that I've re-read hold up really well on second reading: Sayers has enough character work going on that they're enjoyable even if you know the solution, and in many cases, it's fascinating to see how she alludes to the solution early on: often, how the detectives keep missing it because of an incorrect assumption they made somewhere. (And often that's a character-driven assumption, although I can't discuss that without spoilers.)

[quipxotic]

Strong Poison is my least favorite of the series so far. I liked Harriet fine, but Peter was incredibly creepy in that novel - especially in the prison scenes. I kept wanting to yell, "Leave her alone! You don't know her! You've concocted a version of her in your head and 'fallen in love' with that. Stop forcing your romantic fantasies on this poor woman who's charged with a crime she didn't commit and can't get away from you." Often things in books that are supposed to be romantic fall flat with me, but this one was particularly surprising since I knew of the Peter/Harriet relationship before starting the series. Another thing I found annoying is that, following after Unnatural Death where Peter's playing with detection leads inadvertently to some terrible consequences (even if he wasn't to blame for them), there wasn't any growth in Lord Peter's personality. He ends one book wishing he hadn't got involved and being terribly down on himself and then starts the next one in full arrogant meddling mode. It just felt jarring. Anyway, I love Miss Climpson (who in my head is Miss Clemson because that's how her name sounds in the audiobooks) and Miss Murchison, so they were at least highlights.

Another of my least favorites was Murder Must Advertise. The story is fine, but I've got a squick about people pretending to be who they aren't so even the audiodrama was a slog to get through.

Anyway, I'm up to Gaudy Night now so we'll see how the rest of it goes.

[sanguinity]

Yeah, one of the things I got told early on by someone, is that Sayers brought in Harriet to be Peter's romantic interest, and then realized that Peter wasn't good enough for her. So Sayers had to have Peter do some growing first -- that's one of the reasons it's five or six years between their meeting and their getting together. Because I agree with you (and eventually Peter does, too): the way he behaved in Strong Poison is NOT ON.

Another thing I found annoying is that, following after Unnatural Death where Peter's playing with detection leads inadvertently to some terrible consequences (even if he wasn't to blame for them), there wasn't any growth in Lord Peter's personality. He ends one book wishing he hadn't got involved and being terribly down on himself and then starts the next one in full arrogant meddling mode.

That'll come up again in Gaudy Night -- he brings up that exact outcome from Unnatural Death, in a discussion about inadvertent consequences and guilt and what one's responsibility for them is. But I'd also say that he often feels like that toward the end of a novel -- wishes he hadn't meddled, feels guilt about his role in things, doesn't want to have to give the murderer up to the police, and so on. Sayers eventually gets around to explaining where that's coming from, and given that eventual explanation, I'd argue that character growth for Peter isn't "learning from the experience" and meddling less, but the opposite: becoming less in thrall to that negative reaction when it's time to put away the murderer.

But ultimately, I think this is one of the things that people mean when they say Sayers' writing improves over the series: at the beginning, Peter is all shallow wish-fulfillment fantasy. Very static, with very little growth and change from book to book. Happily, that changes as one gets farther into the series: he becomes a much deeper character, and he starts evincing growth and change. I think that's particularly noticeable over the run of the Harriet books, for the reasons noted above: he's NOT good enough for her at the beginning of those four novels, and needs to learn to get his act together.

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One of the downsides of listening to the audiodramas is that it's hard to get a sense of change from book to book. Since they're necessarily abridged, every audio is like the best version of the story with all the least interesting bits edited out. I suspect that's part of why there doesn't seem to be much change for Peter from "Strong Poison" to "Murder Must Advertise." There's a little in "The Nine Tailors" but, like you, that book didn't impress me much. But "Gaudy Night" - wow that one is interesting. Makes me want to find an unabridged copy somewhere.

One of the other downsides for the audiodramas is that unless I'm wrong, and I don't think I am because I have a pretty good ear for voices, they keep changing the voice actors from story to story. Peter and Bunter remain the same but Parker and Harriet change, among others. Anyway, all of that is to say that I doubt I'm getting as clear a view of Sayer's writing from them as I might from the unabridged audiobooks. On the other hand, even the least interesting stories seem to move quicker when they're read by a full cast.

I know very little about Sayers outside of a few minutes that the series "A Very British Murder" spent covering her. She sounds like someone who would be interesting to read about in and of herself.

[sanguinity]

Since they're necessarily abridged, every audio is like the best version of the story with all the least interesting bits edited out.

Unless it's the plottiest version of the story, with all the interesting bits cut out. Because I've met audiodramas like that. And the television adaptation of Gaudy Night was def like that: heavy on the murder mystery, and light on Harriet's developing feelings re Peter.

But "Gaudy Night" - wow that one is interesting. Makes me want to find an unabridged copy somewhere.

Gaudy Night is a monster of a book, too, compared to at least some of the others. I wonder how much they had to pare it down for the audiodrama. (Tell me, did they include the dog collar??)

[quipxotic]

True. I remember you saying something similar about Big Finish's Hound.

But yes, they included the dog collar, the chess pieces, Peter reviewing Harriet's notes as she watches him, and some other scenes like that. It's probably not as much as what you'd get in the unabridged audiobook, but they seemed to make an effort to show that aspect.

Oh that's right, it is long. Well so much for trying to read the print version. If I had a dollar for every long book I started with the best of intentions and never finished...I'd have a good bit more money to buy audiobooks with. :-)

[sanguinity]

Well, his buying her a dog collar is just so wtf, I was wondering if they left it in or not. Although Sayers hangs enough things on it that it makes sense to leave it in. That, and it's certainly memorable -- people would notice it being left out. But one does wonder if the whole dog collar business had quite the same connotations in nineteen-thirty-whatever.

[quipxotic]

It's interesting what they leave in vs what they take out. Going back and listening to the first stories in audio drama form has given me something to compare them to. In "Clouds of Witness" they act out Peter getting the letter from the mistress in America, but skip a lot of the court proceedings. In "Whose Body?" they completely skip Freke's attempt to kill Parker and only mention a few of the highlights from his suicide letter.

I have to say, I much prefer the unabridged audiobooks for the first two books over the audio dramas. There's just something...lacking. It's like the major events are there but the soul of the thing isn't.