Reading Update (John Adams: A Life, Floodtide, Legends & Lattes)

[jaggedwolf]

John Adams: A Life by John Ferling

Mr second president of the US of A. My prior knowledge was snippets from the Hamilton musical along with whatever mentions he got in Chernow’s Hamilton and Washington biographies. And osmosis from somewhere that he ditched the capital a bunch to go hang out with his wife, which meant that I was surprised by his treatment of said wife in the earlier parts of his career.

Solid biography for getting the sense of the man’s work, his personality, and his ultimate impact. Picked it off the recommendation of https://bestpresidentialbios.com/curriculum/ because if someone out there is going to read every single biography that exists for every single president, I’m okay with taking in their judgement of the bios.

May I say that for a man who spent so much time apart from his sons, I found it distressing how constrained by his wishes all of his sons felt? From the black sheep Charles to John Quincy who takes on the presidency while his father is still alive, none of them escaped the pressure of his judgement.

Anyway, let’s get to the guy himself. Personality-wise: Such a petty dude. Like, a well-read and hardworking learned dude, but sooooo petty. Love his diary entries where he’s soooo mad that the French like Franklin so much more than him. Love that this biography was constantly like, yeah, the only woman he was good at talking with was his wife. Unlike Washington and other contemporaries, Adams was bad at the regular charming conversation with women in social situations that was expected of him. Good at talking to dudes older than him, though, those guys loved him.

He was insecure about his masculinity. He was conflicted about about how he wasn’t a soldier in the Revolutionary War, despite his belief in the importance of said soldiers and kept justifying to himself why he couldn’t enlist. Uneasy about that contradiction even as he was doing valuable work in the Continental Congress, from the time he woke to the time went to bed. That insecurity extends into his presidency, where he does not want war with France but feels the need to posture that oh yeah, he’s totally ready to go to war if need be. It didn’t help that the Democratic-Republicans, who also didn’t want war, were convinced Adams did want war and made him reveal publicly what exactly happened with the ambassadors that were sent to France. And oops! Turns out the French were very rude to the diplomats, which got the public extra riled up for war and made Jefferson and co. go ah fuck bad move.

Naturally we dive into Adams’s political philosophies throughout his life. He had some desire for a much stronger executive branch and weaker legislative branch than America ended up having, which seems like a correct decision on America’s part. Not yet a legislature that has surrendered its abilities. Before he returns to the US from his stint as a diplomat in England, he writes a long treatise on the dual dangers to the new country — the very rich, who will desire to amass wealth and power and influence the government that way, and the rabble-rousing lower classes, who will y’know, group up and make demands and inconvenient things like that. He did see the former as more of as more of a threat. (At some point the author contrasts Adam’s philosophies with Jefferson’s slightly more egalitarian views, which on one level, I get, and on another level, uh, only one of these dudes owned and raped slaves.)

Adams was certain he’d be forgotten by history and his contributions would marginalized — like Washington, he was conscious of the legacy he’d leave — and that made him even pettier. The book concludes that while he’s not of The Greats if you’re ranking the presidents, he’s definitely one of the near greats. Inclined to agree. The type of lawyerly sort that mired himself in state constitutions and legal details, not the type with any flair for readable writing. I get the sense he’d have a far more effective presidency if he’d cultivated any kind of political coterie around himself, instead of being prickly, lonesome, running off constantly to Abigail and oh yeah, making the classic mistake of keeping on Washington’s cabinet secretaries. IDK I’m no politics-knower but I feel like no president should ever keep a different president’s cabinet picks when ascending to the position via an election, it seems bound to go wrong.

Speaking of Abigail, Adams sure sucked at writing to her when he was away in Philadelphia, and later in Europe. She wrote so much more to him than vice versa and you wanna shake the guy when years later, as president, he is constantly writing to her and going hey can you write more, because by that point Abigail has become more emotionally self-sufficient.

I dunno which president’s bio will be next (which will be a while in the future), either Jefferson’s or Lincoln’s.

Floodtide by Heather Rose Jones

While I enjoyed the drastically different perspective of a maid, unlike the fancier ladies we’ve followed, this book shared with its predecessor a lack of a satisfying ending and romance. My overall assessment is that the first two books of the Alpennia series are by far the best, and so are the romances therein.

Roz was such a stressful PoV for me. Yes, I suppose Barbara and Margerit were teenagers back in Daughter of Mystery, but the stakes are so much higher for Roz and yet she keeps making impulsive decisions, like kissing Liv or ringing the bell and getting Celeste in trouble.

I liked the crew of young people we ended up following — Roz, Celeste, Liv, Iulin, Brandel, the Alpennia prince whose name I cannot recall — all of them earnest and eager to figure out the mysteries of the canals and floodtide and how to help people. We get to see the downsides of the victory of the previous book, where the rising waters causes fever to spread among the poorer populations, which was a cool shift in perspective. As were the various discussions on saints.

That said, as someone who did read the previous book this year, I would have very much appreciated a recap on the Alpennia politics, because I could barely remember which lady was which prince’s mother and how they were connected and what the previous drama between them all was.

Roz finding a place for herself in the world, in both dressmaking and in supporting Celeste’s charms, was a sweet journey. I only wish we’d gotten to see the actual ending of it. We don’t see Iulin’s or Margerit’s reaction to her declaring that she’ll work for Celeste’s mother fulltime at no pay, or the consequences of her no longer having money to send to her family, nor is the possible romance with Celeste ever actuated on page. A sudden end.

Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

Bro this felt like reading a coffeeshop AU without the benefit of having prior affection for or backstory knowledge of any of the characters. A solid Meh. I am vulnerable to the sort of story this book is aiming to be but uh, it needed to do more work to grab me. (I am not vulnerable to the idea that everyone who tries coffee loves it immediately, as someone who does not drink it.)

Honestly, the comparison might be unfair to coffeeshop AUs as a fic genre — I’ve read a number with more effort to their worldbuilding and backstory development than this novel has.

Again, I am not immune to the story of someone whose main occupation is violence deciding to put down their weapon and pick up a vocation that causes no harm. Rad trope. Down for that shit. Buuuuuut, the book is completely uninterested in Viv’s interiority when it comes to that decisions. How did Viv get into the adventuring game? What made her finally decide to turn away from it other than a love of coffee? Did she turn away because of the kind of person it made her or because of the consequences of her adventuring?

Who cares! It’s time to watch them reinvent a coffeeshop menu with :s/technology/magic everywhere. This lack of grounding extends to the other characters of our ~found family~. Cal’s not too bad since he does the construction and isn’t there all the time. There’s a mild effort with Tandri and her previous experiences at the Academy, but like, was she jobless when she randomly picked up a food service ad with no prior experience? I’m willing to allow that per the magic luck stone or whatever, but fucking Thimble the ratkin made me have ten billion questions. What was this genius baker doing before Viv rolled up to him? How was he making a living? Was he selling baked goods elsewhere? Working elsewhere? Doesn’t matter, he just works here now and we’ll never know.

Also got annoyed with the nicknaming of the Academy student against his will, it does not make your cozy fantasy protagonist more charming to have her ignore what a dude wants to be called, even if the dude had bad manners at the start. He’s buying your stuff now and doing wards for you, isn’t he? Speaking of which, Viv’s shop-related decisionmaking repeatedly confounded me on both a moral and practical level. She does not want to pay the protection racket money but will give them baked goods, apparently oblivious to the concept of payments in kind?? She thinks the head of a protection racket isn’t an asshole??? When the aforementioned ward goes off one time and alerts her of bad adventurer’s presence she doesn’t bother putting down the ward again, thus getting surprised when it burns the fuck down???

When she gets all moody post-fire and rejecting of her friends’ help, that didn’t really hit because again, we’re not given enough information to see it as a regression in behaviour or something else.

That moment is when I started comparing this novel to Arcade Spirits and its sequel, It’s a fair comparison. They’re incredibly earnest and unsubtle dating sims, where in the first game, the protagonist starts working at an arcade, and in the second game, a different protagonist forms an esports team. Somehow, despite the constraints of the dating sim format, those protagonists have a stronger sense of character motivations than Viv, strong enough for their failure modes to hit. In the first game, we’re engulfed by the protagonist’s self-perception as someone who always fails and never sees the point in dreaming. In the second game, we instead have a protagonist who attaches all their self-worth to winning. These are not complicated characters, but they make sense in the context of the story and provide challenges for the protagonist to overcome. (Another point of comparison is that these games did feel as if they were written by someone who adores arcades and ten billion details about their histories and nuances, while this book felt like it was written by someone who... likes sitting in a coffee shop.)