The DIscreet Book Club

Hey there!

So beah and I are going to read The Discreet Hero by Mario Varaas Llosa as a sort of ad hoc book club. No regular meetings or anything, but we just think it'd be fun to read a book and then turn around and talk to someone else about it who has also read the book (and recently to boot).

So if you want to play along, feel free to snag a copy (I've linked to Amazon below, but you can probably get it at your favorite local bookshop as well). Leah expects her copy to arrive on the 8th or thereabouts so that's when we'll get started. Again, the timeframe is pretty loose. If you finish up by New Year's that's probably more than fine.

later
Tom

The Pleasure Review

Hey,

Do you ever wish Jane Austen and Charles Dickens got together and churned out some sexy fiction together? You might be interested in The Pleasure Merchant by Molly Tanzer.

The book mostly follows young Tom Dawne, an apprentice wig-maker in Victorian London. One day, while working on an expensive commission, Tom receives an unusual customer. Shortly thereafter, there's a bit of a wig scandal and Tom loses his job. But then he's rescued by the very man he believes set him up in the first place. And then there's the man's very odd cousin and his wife. Then other complications arise.

Although Tom is sort of the character we follow around, he's not necessarily the protagonist. That honor probably belongs to the narrator who we don't meet until at least halfway through, but even then it's a bit of a toss-up.

The book is a bit scattered. It mostly follows Tom for half the book then hares off to follow the narrator for a third and then back to Tom. Also, Tom doesn't have the best of character arcs. Not heroic, not tragic, mostly just a wallowing in his own issues. Maybe if he wasn't called Tom I wouldn't have noticed/minded. So there's a bit of a bias on my part, but I do think the book will be a fun read for the aforementioned Austen/Dickens fans who like a bit of risque fun in their tales.

later
Tom