[LMB] ACC as Romance, was Elli

[Peter H. Granzeau]

At 11:07 AM 12/11/2007, Ed Burkhead wrote:

>Jennifer Sessions <sessiojr at uwec.edu> wrote:
> > Oh yes. the dinner party is still hard for me to voluntarily read
> > precisely for the cringe inducing impending doom nature of the 
> fiasco. . . .
>Dan answered:
> > I thought the dinner party scene was brilliantly farcical.
>
>Humor does often involve levels of painful situations.  I could empathize with
>EVERYONE at the dinner party.  For the first ten times I read that section, I
>laughed so hard I leaked tears of humor and empathic-pain.  (I don't otherwise
>EVER leak tears over books.)
>
>Yeah, Miles's and Mark's aftermath is a painful couple of pages but the book
>gets really good after that and I think you will feel that way about the rest
>of the book, too, Jennifer.
>
>I do like the galactic adventures and I'm basically a hard-SF person.  But I
>still think of ACC as my favorite Vorkosigan book.
>
>For me, Barrayar is a close second.  The shopping present from the capital,
>delivery scene is also a favorite due to the painful humor eliciting
>out-loud-laughs and tears-of-empathy on the same page.

I have to admit that I have been unable to re-read the entire dinner 
party scene, although I managed to get through it once.  It was so 
painful, I couldn't stand it.  But I'm the guy who, as a kid, would 
get up and leave a movie for a while when the drama got too 
excruciating--or, sometimes, too exciting.

However, I was able to handle Miles's redemption and all the rest.  I 
loved the letter of apology, and, later, the scene in the 
attics.  For me, the best scene was actually Nikki's use of Gregor's 
invitation to call him at need.  And, of course, there was Miles's 
comment to Roic that he appeared to be out of uniform. . . .


-- 
Regards, Pete
pgranzeau at cox.net