P. G. Wodehouse – Stanton Fenwick

Early Reviews and Ratings

It’s early days, but feedback from my LibraryThing book giveaway of An Aspiration to Lie Flat looks very promising.

Here are some excerpts from the reviews. (The full reviews and more can be found on LibraryThing.)

“This is a totally inane book that should be read by many.”

Edit: I couldn’t agree more.

“To me, it was a big joke, in a good way.”

“This story is hilarious, absurd, has a lot of heart, and is almost scary as in how I can imagine it could actually happen to someone.”

“What a fun whirlwind of a read! Keep in mind that at a quick 129 pages there simply isn’t a lot of time for nuance. Just enjoy the ride! I sure did!”

“I wasn’t sure what to expect from An Aspiration to Lie Flat, but it completely won me over. The humor is dry and understated, the kind that lingers and gets funnier the more you think about it. The main character is a disaster in the best way, yet you can’t help but root for him. The writing is sharp, fresh, and unlike most books I’ve picked up. If you enjoy offbeat, clever stories that break away from the usual formula, this one is definitely worth reading.”

If you enjoy this blog, you will almost assuredly enjoy this book!

What I Want From Fiction

I want different things from fiction than the market currently provides, at least in any great abundance.

For example, I don’t enjoy atmospherics. I especially dislike long passages describing a place everyone is already vaguely familiar with (even more so when the process is used by the author solely to demonstrate verbal wizardry.)

Though it is not recent, take this passage from Brideshead Revisited:

“Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman’s day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days—such as that day—when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning.”
— Evelyn Waugh

That is beautiful, highly evocative writing. It is much better than anything I can produce.

But it bores me when books go on and on that way.

(Also, please note that I’m passing up an easy ‘soft vapours’ joke about Waugh’s Brideshead prose in an effort to appear mature. This is a moment of personal growth.)

What about emotional depth and backstory?