booktastic

I tried, with the title of this post, to give you an impression of my impression of that audiobook I finished yesterday - especially with the “shrug” part.

Bell, Book and Scandal totally succeeded in one area: it made me want to go to writer’s conferences, as they sound educational and fun. But in the mystery area I would say this book more or less failed. There was really no question of a mystery until about chapter twelve (!!). I know this for a fact because I had been waiting so impatiently for the mystery to start that I actually made a note of it.

And then, when the mystery finally started, all the heroine’s friends were kind of annoyed and bored with the subject - and honestly, I found myself rather annoyed and bored with it as well. The author telegraphed all the major plot devices so that nothing was really surprising. The characters (villains especially) were kind of cartoonish. And really, there was no murder or serious crime in this book - a couple people were mildly hurt, one thing was stolen but then returned - so there wasn’t a lot of tension as far as solving the mystery went.

While it succeeded in making me interested in attending a writer’s conference - the second part of the book, the part dealing with the mystery, felt like kind of a waste. So, while I did enjoy this book for the most part, I would have to say that my final feeling is a resounding “shrug”. I’m not sure that I care to look up any of the author’s other books if they’re all going to be like this.

The most interesting thing that came out of reading this book was that the title reminded me of the phrase “Bell, Book and Candle”, and I was like, “Hm… I wonder what that actually means? Where did that phrase come from?” So I looked it up. Apparently, it refers to an old-fashioned excommunication ceremony from the Catholic Church. (The picture at left is of Robert the Pious having just been excommunicated using a bell, a book, and a candle.) This meaning makes its partial use in the title of this book somewhat nonsensical. It would be a mild stretch to say that anyone was excommunicated in this book… Perhaps excommunicated from the world of publishing, but that was a minor part of the story and hardly worthy of generating the title of the book. Oh well. I won’t complain. Perhaps there’s another meaning, of which I’m ignorant.

I’m still reading The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and having much better luck with my motion sickness on the bus. The only problem with reading on the bus now is that it necessarily drags out my books a lot longer than they should go, since I can only read in two half-hour snatches a day. When I get home in the evening I have house-things to do, usually, and have to spend time with Mr. Hall, all of which necessarily detracts from my reading time. Such is the life of an employed person! – Mrs. Hall

P.S. By the way, on an unrelated topic: remember how I was expecting hoards of trick-or-treaters last night? Guess how many we had? FIVE! Oh well, I guess I’m just going to be forced to eat all this candy myself…

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