Re Seventeen: I don't really understand why Voigt even bothers bringing in Cisco for a non-redemption arc, except maybe that she thought it would be interesting to see the flip side of it? (I don't find it interesting, which is why I question it. I'm kind of a sucker for redemption arc, though.)
I forgot to mention in my earlier wall of text, I'm not sure what the purpose of this is either. But I think I know why I find this book so boring: it contains so little of the Tillermans interacting. Dicey avoiding her family, avoiding Jeff, and talking to various strangers (to us, the readers) in the boat-building business is just not that engaging. And until just recently, Cisco was included in that. At least now, I can read some deeper meanings into their exchanges, which makes it more interesting.
But my favorite parts are and always have been where James is talking about college, or when Dicey is helping Maybeth with her school work. When the family's together. These are the characters I love, why so little of them?
Which makes me wonder why I love Runner so much. I guess Bullet, even when we're just inside his head, is engaging with way more interesting stuff,what with the draft and the school paper and race relations and cross-country, and he gets interesting interactions with Patrice and Tamer, and even with that one teacher who reads Housman to the class and makes them think. How many coats of paint Dicey can get on X boats in Y hours just doesn't measure up.
So yeah, that's why Seventeen is so boring for me. Not enough character interactions, too much detail of the boring, frustrating, stressful side of running an unsuccessful business. (If a sense of joy in her work permeated the book, my interest would be way higher, even if I had no interest in the topic per se.)
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Date: 2017-08-11 12:48 am (UTC)I forgot to mention in my earlier wall of text, I'm not sure what the purpose of this is either. But I think I know why I find this book so boring: it contains so little of the Tillermans interacting. Dicey avoiding her family, avoiding Jeff, and talking to various strangers (to us, the readers) in the boat-building business is just not that engaging. And until just recently, Cisco was included in that. At least now, I can read some deeper meanings into their exchanges, which makes it more interesting.
But my favorite parts are and always have been where James is talking about college, or when Dicey is helping Maybeth with her school work. When the family's together. These are the characters I love, why so little of them?
Which makes me wonder why I love Runner so much. I guess Bullet, even when we're just inside his head, is engaging with way more interesting stuff,what with the draft and the school paper and race relations and cross-country, and he gets interesting interactions with Patrice and Tamer, and even with that one teacher who reads Housman to the class and makes them think. How many coats of paint Dicey can get on X boats in Y hours just doesn't measure up.
So yeah, that's why Seventeen is so boring for me. Not enough character interactions, too much detail of the boring, frustrating, stressful side of running an unsuccessful business. (If a sense of joy in her work permeated the book, my interest would be way higher, even if I had no interest in the topic per se.)