To DNF Or Not To DNF? Laura Kinsale’s Lessons In French…
Saturday, April 17, 2010Posted in: Uncategorized
I’m currently in the middle of reading Laura Kinsale’s Lessons in French, and I have to say, I’m struggling with it. Big time.
As per most of the books that I intend to read, I didn’t bother looking at any reviews prior, so I don’t know what the general consensus has been up to this point, but boy it’s so far proving to be a real drag.
The heroine, Callie, is proving to be as dull as dishwater. The most exciting thing about her thus far is that she has a bull called Hubert, that she’s ever so fond of.
She seems to have neither the wit nor the mental agility of Kinsale’s other heroines. She’s a good soul of course, oh my but she’s good. So much so that she’s getting right on my tits.
As for the hero, Trev, well quite frankly the most interesting thing about him seems to be the scar from a whip, that lines his face. Other than that, he seems to be a faux bad-boy, who appears to have a shady history. To be honest though, I’ve seen this plot device executed far more effectively by other historical romance authors, and by Kinsale herself, in the past.
This was a book that I was really looking forward to, after reading Lisa Kleypas’ Smooth Talking Stranger, and thoroughly enjoying it.
Anyway, I find myself in a quandary – the question being should I persevere or not? I tried to force Ward’s Lover Avenged, but I just couldn’t finish it, and I fancy that Lessons In French will go exactly the same way. Bummer eh?
Marianne McA
April 17
12:12 pm
I haven’t read a lot of Kinsale, and I really liked this book, so, bearing that in mind…
From what I recall, the second half of the book was better than the first – that is, for me the first half was an enjoyable read, but the second half made me late for something-or-other, because I didn’t want to put the book down.
However, I don’t remember there being a sea-change in the middle of the book. I’d guess that if you’ve read that far without enjoyment, you wouldn’t enjoy the rest.
Shiloh Walker
April 17
12:59 pm
This has nothing to do with any particular author-just my take on books that aren’t holding my attention-my reading time is too limited. I generally can only read in in the evenings, usually after the kids have gone to bed. Since that’s the time I carve out to read, if I’m not enjoying a book, I don’t mess with finishing it.
The few exceptions might be if I think it’s my current state of mind-some books I do have to be in certain state of mind. Those books, I’ll hold on to until my frame of mind is right. The rest? I donate to Goodwill and move onto something else.
Kimberly Loomis
April 17
1:13 pm
I’ve gotta go with what Shiloh said above. Sure, a book sometimes starts slow but if after, I don’t know, 50 pages or so it doesn’t grip you then why persevere? That’s just my opinion of course, but life is a finite measure and so I don’t feel the need to push myself to read something in my leisure time that I am not getting something of perceptible value from.
Cindy
April 17
1:25 pm
I agree with Shiloh as well. I give it 3 chapters or 60 pages. Now I’ve read a few I didn’t care for but persevered because I had to know what happened. Otherwise, there’s way too many books in Mt. TBR for me to fight to finish every book I start. As for Laura Kinsale, I’ve never read anything by her.
Shelly @ Bewitched
April 17
2:09 pm
If you typically enjoy her you might want to put it aside and try again at a later date. I’m more of a Shiloh reader…ship it out. BUT it sounds like for you, the story is pretty dang dull. I’d ditch and move on!
Throwmearope
April 17
2:34 pm
Because of the rave reviews at SBTB, I tried 3 Kinsales. Two DNF and one wall banger. I try to give new-to-me authors a fair shot, but with this one, I’m done.
FD
April 17
3:37 pm
I gotta say, this wasn’t my favourite Kinsale either, although I enjoyed it. I also found it to be a slow starter. It’s a lot lighter than some of her others, more situational farce than tragi-comedic, which I gather from the author’s own comments is intentional.
When books don’t work for me, if it’s not because of serious plot defects / writing issues, I put them away and try again another day, because sometimes I’m just not in the right frame of mind. However I’ll only try rereading once or twice. After that they get donated to charity. Life is too short for boredom in my recreational reading.
Shelby Reed
April 17
3:47 pm
I adore Kinsale’s backlist, so I was excited to hear she finally had a new release after such a long silence. I haven’t read it yet–the premise didn’t particularly excite me–but I wonder if the not-so-fuzzy reception I’ve noticed she’s receiving has to do with the fact that she didn’t write for so long, and thus is a bit rusty? (That’s an assumption on my part–that she wasn’t writing. I thought I heard somewhere that she was terribly blocked.) If she WAS suffering a block for the last few years, I really feel for her. Having gone through the same experience, this makes me a bit nervous about putting my next novel out there after such a long time of no writing. However, there’s no way around the fire, only through it, so onward and upward. Hopefully Kinsale will keep releasing more stories and garner more positive reviews after this one.
Nicole Mc
April 17
5:05 pm
this is ironic on 2 levels. First, I ALMOST bought that book yesterday. To be honest, I bought like 15 books….so now I cant remember if it actually made it into my basket or not. Maybe it did! :s I couldn’t decide if it sounded good or not. Second, I’m having trouble deciding to finish or not. It’s The Sword by Jean Johnson. It’s hard to make that call sometimes, because I really want to like things. Sometimes I think I’m just not in the mood for something and maybe another time I could try it again! Btw, I just found your blog…really enjoy it! 🙂
Karen Scott
April 17
5:22 pm
As it happens, the postman brought me a present. I finally got hold of Laura Leone’s Fallen From Grace. Fabulous book.
Karen Scott
April 17
5:23 pm
Hi Shelby and welcome to KKB Nicole!
Christine
April 17
5:48 pm
Karen, you aren’t the only person to put this book down. I did too and I know of two other readers who did as well. My story is that Lessons In French is my first Kinsale novel and I bought it on a whim because I thought the title was so catchy and I knew Kinsale is a big name in historical romance. Then when I started seeing so many wonderful reviews for it, I anticipated being swept away. I read the first 50 pages or so and while it wasn’t terrible, I wasn’t glued to it and had trouble getting pulled in to want to keep reading. So I put it down and picked up some other books that were calling me instead. I’ll probably give it another try–maybe later this month.
Shelby Reed
April 17
5:52 pm
Karen,
This is off-topic, but as soon as a reviewer compared one of my novels to Fallen From Grace a few years ago, I ordered a copy to see who else was brave enough to write about a male prostitute. LOL It’s a GREAT book! I’ve kept it and planned to reread soon. Leone is a wonderful writer.
Karen Scott
April 17
7:06 pm
Shelby, it totally reminds me of A Fine Work of Art. It’ such an emotional book, I love it so far.
Christine, you are so right, it’s not that the book was really bad, it was just so flipping boring. It might improve further in, but I was able to get sucked into Fallen From Grace after ten pages, so it’s not that I wasn’t in the mood to read.
DS
April 17
7:51 pm
Laura Leone is also Laura Resnick. She writes fantasy and urban fantasy/mystery.
From her blog posts on other sites, I think she is trying to get her op books online as ebooks but the latest try fell through.
As for Kinsale, I liked her earlier books, but I didn’t care for the one before this one and I didn’t even buy this one.
LizA
April 17
7:53 pm
Kinsale is a hit and miss author for me; I really liked some of her books and disliked some of the others. When I read about this new one, I thought it was great that there was a new Kinsale but that I would not read it because it just sounds… blah. I might give it a try if I come across it… generally, if I find genre fiction hard to read I will just not finish and move on. the whole point of genre fiction is entertainment and if I am not entertainted, it does not work. I used to keep pretty much all of my books but only changed my mind about a few writers (ie trying to read it again and finding I really liked it – I think there were two). These days i just give away all the books I do not finish/do not enjoy which is very liberating….
GrowlyCub
April 17
8:59 pm
Lessons in French was a dud for me. I finished it but it was just boring and melancholy. The author has said strongly that this is a funny book and not melancholy at all, but I’m not the only one who disagrees with her. When I read romance I want that feeling of optimism at the end and even though there is a HEA, I didn’t feel that at all with this Kinsale.
Interesting side note, I recently re-read 3 of her earlier books that I liked quite a bit when I read the first time (not too long ago, within the last couple of years) and I didn’t like any of them or nowhere near as much as I did on the first read. That’s very unusual for me, because the books I really loved on the first read usually stay keepers for life.
Naomi
April 18
1:16 am
@Throwmearope
I was wondering which three of her books did you try and which was the wall-banger? She’s one of those authors that is almost overhyped, I find. She can be great but is definitely not for everyone. For me her books run the gamut of eternal keeper (The Shadow and the Star) to teeth-grinding rage-inducing wall-banger (The Dream Hunter. I feel that Zenia is in the running for most irritating heroine of all time). And if you’re not a fan of angst, avoid like the plague.
@GrowlyCub
I’ve noticed that the author has been quite, uh, adamant in suggesting that various reviewers are WRONG WRONG WRONG in thinking that Lessons in French is a sad book. This rubbed me the wrong way, to be honest. I’m not sure it’s an author’s place to dictate or question readers’ gut emotional responses to their books. I think melancholy is the perfect word to describe the tone of it. It had some humour but the tone was hardly the fun-filled romp she seemed to think it was, though I did enjoy it.
GrowlyCub
April 18
1:23 am
Naomi!
Yeah, I didn’t appreciate the ‘reading, you R doin it wrong’ stuff she posted and the tone she used.
Really, really bad PR. And once more than one reader describes the same reaction, maybe it’s time to examine whether you were successful in writing that light-hearted romp you thought you wrote… time to self-examine, not lash out at readers.
Oh well, I didn’t really want to read it because I hate slapstick and ‘light-hearted romp’ means ‘do not want to read’ in my book anyway, but a friend lent me a copy.
And after I re-read ‘The Shadow and the Star’, ‘Hidden Treasures’ and ‘oops forgot which one lol’ and really more disliked than liked, I decided I was done with her. Now, I will admit I’m in a terrible reading slump of epic proportions, but I really have a thing about authors behaving inappropriately.
LizA
April 18
9:50 am
Naomi, sorry to barge in, but I hated the Dream Hunter too. Hated the heroine! My favourite Kinsale is “Prince of Midngight” which nobody else seems to love….
DS
April 18
12:29 pm
I really liked Prince of Midnight also. I read it shortly after I was reintroduced to romance books by a co-worker and liked the fact that the heroine was not a virgin (not a spoiler) and there was no trauma associated with that fact.
I don’t like the new covers though. While several of the older books had hilariously melodramatic Fabio covers, the very graphic representation of purple prose– especially the original release of Prince of Midnight– the latest book cover is bland and cliched. The publisher seems to have repackaged some of the other ones to match.
Throwmearope
April 18
12:56 pm
@Naomi–
I love angst, Elizabeth Lowell is one of my favorite authors, but Shadow and Star was a DNF.
Same wall banger as you. Not the most irritating heroine for me, that was one of JD’s early heroines. I wanted to choke that girl.
Can’t remember the third LK, it went to charity, which is what I do after the third try reading the same book unsuccessfully. I remember SB Candy absolutely lurved the book, whichever one it was.
Naomi
April 18
1:23 pm
@LizA
Please, barge away, any hate for The Dream Hunter makes me feel better about the fact that I read the whole thing. I don’t force myself to the bitter end of books any more but back then I felt like it was a moral failure to give up. When you’re concerned about the mental health of the heroine more than the romantic development… yeah, did not work for me.
Oh and @Throwmearope, I LOVE The Shadow and the Star and reread it all the time, but I can totally understand why it’s not for everyone. I lent it to a friend recently (major book snob who guiltily devoured and loved my Meredith Durans) and she thought she might give up. Didn’t suck her in, apparently! The perils of book recs.
Naomi
April 18
1:27 pm
@GrowlyCub
No I agree, though I love author presence online, I wouldn’t want it at the expense of honesty in reviews or good discussion.
SarahT
April 18
2:27 pm
I have too little time for reading to persevere with a dud. If I’m still struggling to engage with a book after 50 pages or so, I tend to put it aside and start something else.
Magdalen
April 18
7:33 pm
I felt about Lessons in French the way I felt about Stephen King’s pre-accident novel, Bag of Bones: that there was a good 100,000 word novel inside the much-longer book I was holding in my hands. That suggests the need for an editor. I think King has a great editor now: Lisey’s Story is very tight and effective. Let’s hope Laura Kinsale figures out how helpful an editor can be.
Randi
April 20
5:39 pm
I haven’t finished it either, Karen. I’d heard a lot of positive reviews for it, so I guess I had some fairly high expectations. Sadly, Lessons in French was frightfully boring. At least, the first 4 chapters were, which is how far I got before I put it down.
@GrowleyCub: “reading, you R doin it wrong’” = awesomest line ever. And LK joins the ranks of Anne Rice and LKH.
Karla
April 27
6:14 pm
Well, it’s nice to finally find a sizable group of people who aren’t all in a rosy glow about LK’s stuff. I’ve tried a couple but didn’t think they were all that. In fact, the only one I can remember (Uncertain Magic) was probably one of the worst books I’ve ever read. Then again, her forte seems to be perpetual wangst, and that’s just not my thing.