Perfume or Tipping the Velvet - which one first?

[lucharl]

Just picked up both of these in a charity shop, need a new read - any recommendations?

they're both worth reading, but i had reservations about both!

Tipping the Velvet is ace, rollicking good fun. I found the first chapter or two hard going, but it is so worth persevering.

warthog - why reservations?

I love Perfume - haven't read Tipping...but really enjoyed her other one. Go for Perfume first as it's quite short I think?

i found perfume disturbing - it's meant to be of course, that's true. i was an impressionable teenager, ooh, about 20 years ago!

tipping the velvet i didn't enjoy as much as fingersmith.

still worth reading definitely. in fact - ignore me...

ta warthog!

reason I'm asking is because I know they're both rated but neither is grabbing me from a quick scan of the first page. Superficial, I know, but I'm a real sucker for a gripping opening paragraph.

As a rule I like a bit of dialogue or action, something immediate and effortless. Both of these are coming across as a bit wordy, Perfume says 'laborious translation' to me (and I am an occasional translator) and Tipping the velvet is sounding a bit simpering. And is all the 'oyster' stuff the obvious metaphor that it seems to be?

can't remember oyster bits...

oh yes - in tipping the velvet?

i gave up on perfume, i dont know why actually - now i can't find it But i enjoyed it actually. I felt very sorry for the main character, but i think by the time i stopped reading that had petered out somewhat.

Ive not read tipping the velvet but have read a few of her others and found them gripping.

I think TTV is a bit more full on with the muff munching though - which is fine, if you want a sexy book, her others were more sensitive and romantic. Saying that, ive only based that on the dramatisation, so maybe the book is more sensitive. I can't get into her most recent effort though. But then im all over the place with my reading on account of sleep deprivation

I quote: " Whitstable natives - as they are properly called - the largest and the juiciest, the savouriest yet the subtlest, oysters in the whole of England".

Nothing but oysters on first 3 pages, including oyster soup, oyster-man, oyster cook and oyster-juice

oh and 'oysterish'!

hmm you have an interesting pair. perfume has no real women characters and sarah walters doesn't do much with men.

read perfume first, then you can give up and chuck it across room.
tipping the velvet, can't remember it at all, victorian but not fingersmith?

they are in charity shops for a reason.

lucyellensmum! don't mind reading about muff-munching, as you accurately put it!

it was the oysterishness of it all that was making me queasy...

Ooh, both are fab - both very much pageturners. Agree that tipping the velvet isn't as good as fingersmith, though.

oh fishie, now you have put me off!

I was trying to break out of my usual reading habits and try stuff that I'd heard of but probably wouldn't have bought.

maybe you are right

I so need something good after tearing through Maya Angelou (my first read of her, shamefully)

maya angelou? tell me more!

oysters are particularly foul, especially the whitstable ones!!!

Fishie, i always try and put my good books in the charity shop as i like to feel they get more than one reader. Im a bit odd like that.

read perfume first, its quicker reading, iyswim. TTV might take some getting into.

wh, just read 'I know why the caged bird sings'. one of those books (and writers) that you have always heard of... but in my case never read. Beautifully written and totally engrossing. fantastic.

lem, I like oysters, actually. not metaphorically though...

still haven't decided though, and it's nearly bedtime!

I had coffee in the "oyster house" shown on the TV adaptation of TTV yesterday. Very posh don't you know. Its now a coffee shop over an over priced fish resturant

Perfume, is a fantastic book, the opening chapter where the author describes what France would have smelt like in that century is very descriptive! I really enjoyed this book and read in a couple of days.

Couldn't bear Perfume and didn't finish it despite rave reviews from a friend, but i think she may have read it in French, maybe it's not a good translation. I liked it at first but it seemed to get a bit lost after he left Paris, that's when I gave up. Tipping the velvet was OK, but nowhere near as good as her more recent one, was it The Night Watch, about WW2.