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This may come as a shock to you, Harry, but I don't have an ax with me
Today has been marked mostly by hours of pre-holiday errands and a vision-troubling level of headache, which may somewhat foreshorten this post. The evening has been marked by reading four books starring Harry Dresden. I believe I have hurt myself.
Between the weird casual chauvinism and the general air of having been written by a yak that wanted to be Raymond Chandler (I am insulting either Chandler or yaks), I was not impressed with Storm Front (2000). There was a reason I didn't read these books at the time.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks had promised me a character I would love, however, and so I persevered. Fortunately, the library was missing the next three volumes and by the time of Death Masks (2003), Butcher's style had improved to the point where it was no longer actively contributing to my headache and Rush was quite right about the character; I warmed to him instantly, even though he was more of a cameo. And then there was a lot of confused vampirism and I got to Dead Beat (2005). Rush—
"If I tell you this," I said quietly, "it could be bad for you."
"Bad how?"
"It could force you to keep secrets that people would kill you for knowing. It could change the way you think and feel. It could really screw up your life."
"Screw up my life?" He stared at me for a second and then said, deadpan, "I'm a five-foot-three, thirty-seven-year-old, single Jewish medical examiner who needs to pick up his lederhosen from the cleaners so that he can play in a one-man polka band at Oktoberfest tomorrow." He pushed up his glasses with his forefinger, folded his arms and said, "Do your worst."
Waldo Butters is also brilliant enough that he thinks of forensic science as something anyone can pick up if they don't mind the technical terms, geeky enough to forget how terrified he is of zombies when given the chance to research them, and he has mildly mad science hair ("[it] gave him a perpetual look of surprise that stopped just short of being a perpetual look of recent electrocution"). Apparently I have some kind of type.
I don't think I will be eagerly scouring the bookstores for the rest of this series, but someone should tell me whether they're the sort of thing worth persisting with just for love of supporting characters. It is quite likely that I will keep an eye out for a secondhand copy of Dead Beat, even if the Latin is consistently ungrammatical and the mysterious book should really have been called Das Lied des Erlkönigs. The Tyrannosaur was pretty crowningly awesome.
And now I am going to shower, because I don't feel well at all.
Between the weird casual chauvinism and the general air of having been written by a yak that wanted to be Raymond Chandler (I am insulting either Chandler or yaks), I was not impressed with Storm Front (2000). There was a reason I didn't read these books at the time.
rushthatspeaks had promised me a character I would love, however, and so I persevered. Fortunately, the library was missing the next three volumes and by the time of Death Masks (2003), Butcher's style had improved to the point where it was no longer actively contributing to my headache and Rush was quite right about the character; I warmed to him instantly, even though he was more of a cameo. And then there was a lot of confused vampirism and I got to Dead Beat (2005). Rush—"If I tell you this," I said quietly, "it could be bad for you."
"Bad how?"
"It could force you to keep secrets that people would kill you for knowing. It could change the way you think and feel. It could really screw up your life."
"Screw up my life?" He stared at me for a second and then said, deadpan, "I'm a five-foot-three, thirty-seven-year-old, single Jewish medical examiner who needs to pick up his lederhosen from the cleaners so that he can play in a one-man polka band at Oktoberfest tomorrow." He pushed up his glasses with his forefinger, folded his arms and said, "Do your worst."
Waldo Butters is also brilliant enough that he thinks of forensic science as something anyone can pick up if they don't mind the technical terms, geeky enough to forget how terrified he is of zombies when given the chance to research them, and he has mildly mad science hair ("[it] gave him a perpetual look of surprise that stopped just short of being a perpetual look of recent electrocution"). Apparently I have some kind of type.
I don't think I will be eagerly scouring the bookstores for the rest of this series, but someone should tell me whether they're the sort of thing worth persisting with just for love of supporting characters. It is quite likely that I will keep an eye out for a secondhand copy of Dead Beat, even if the Latin is consistently ungrammatical and the mysterious book should really have been called Das Lied des Erlkönigs. The Tyrannosaur was pretty crowningly awesome.
And now I am going to shower, because I don't feel well at all.
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Yeah. We do get some amusingly concatenated profanity from Harry in Blood Rites ("Hell's holy stars and freaking stones shit bells!"), but there is way less swearing than there should be for the amount of massively weird shit going down.
(The most profane Butters ever gets in the face of things that scare him incoherent is "Holy crap," but that feels in character.)
I far preferred the live-action version of him in the short-lived, shot-in-Canada (natch) TV show.
What's he like on the show? I did see that a version of Bob was played by Terrence Mann, which I approved of.
That said, Butters does indeed sound awesome, and damn but you have a type. Still, it's a type I share.
You would like him.
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no subject
I never did; my grandfather died less than a week after this post, which rather derailed things. Thanks for the data point!