Based on the first 36 pages I do not recommend Special Topics in Calamity Physics, though I will be interested in seeing if "Jane Mansfield" makes it into the final edition or if that reference is just eliminated.
I am not sure if the narrator's claim that her father's succession of visiting professorships was secured by dint of his impressive scholarly reputation and desirability is meant to reflect naïveté or self-deception on the narrator's part, or is the result of genuine confusion on the part of the author. I also question the wisdom of claiming on the jacket that the author has "the storytelling gifts of Donna Tartt" when (obviously, not having read the book, I can't be very secure in this claim) it seems that what she really has is the basic plot of Donna Tartt.
I'd answer your question, but... probably shouldn't finish the sentence, if you're going to finish the book. Her style gets marginally less annoying as you go along.
Posted by: ac | September 17, 2006 at 12:09 PM
About Jayne Mansfield? (I have an uncorrected proof—noticed a punctuational error which I now can't relocate, in fact—so it's possible that will get changed, though I don't know how realistic that is.) Or about the narrator? The narrator is obviously quite enamored of herself and what she takes to be her precocity, but the fact that the history of her gloriously eccentric and oh so offbeat and precocious upbringing (as recounted, as said, in the first 36 pages) takes the particular form it does also makes me think that the author can't be trusted as far as she can be thrown.
The style would have to get a lot more than marginally less annoying, and rapidly, too, for me to seriously consider finishing the book. Maybe I should allow the plot to actually happen start, though.
Posted by: ben wolfson | September 17, 2006 at 12:19 PM
I meant the question about the narrator. Most people reading it seem to agree that her showing off relaxes somewhere around the quarter-mark, and it becomes more pleasurable after that. I wasn't so into it, but kept going because it was described as having a good ending, which it may, actually. I couldn't be firm about that, but it's not bad, at any rate.
Posted by: ac | September 17, 2006 at 12:30 PM
So I take it youse folks come into contact with uncorrected proofs? How is this accomplished? Since we are all pretend internet friends, could I call upon our pretend internet bond in furtherance of getting a manuscript read/published?
Posted by: text | September 18, 2006 at 11:14 AM
I come into contact with uncorrected proofs every time I go to my mom's house, because she gets tons of 'em, having been a manager of a succession of independent bookstores and now the buyer for two of them. She gives me copies if she thinks I'll be interested.
Posted by: ben wolfson | September 18, 2006 at 11:46 AM
That is how I got Bérubé's new book, for example.
Posted by: ben wolfson | September 18, 2006 at 12:56 PM
I will soon be in possession of an uncorrected proof written by a clever internet personality, but as of yet, I am only in possession of roughly 90% of it. And it's quite uncorrected. Any chance you'd read it?
Posted by: text | September 18, 2006 at 01:55 PM
Are you addressing me? I'll read it, sure.
Posted by: ben wolfson | September 18, 2006 at 10:33 PM
Then I'll send it to you when it's 100% complete.
Posted by: text | September 19, 2006 at 06:53 AM
Text, are you planning to be the next Scott Turrow?
Posted by: washerdreyer | September 20, 2006 at 02:14 PM
Pretty sure that's "Scott Turow".
Posted by: ben wolfson | September 20, 2006 at 06:07 PM
I was planning on writing an excessively whiny book about my first year of law school, but I couldn't summon the right level of wimpy self-importance. So sadly, no, I'll never be Scott Turow.
Posted by: text | September 21, 2006 at 06:29 PM
More's the pity.
Posted by: teofilo | September 21, 2006 at 06:42 PM