**The Child Thief by Brom 8/7 (41)
Pick:
Vine Voice book, chosen because it's by Brom and I never got to read The Plucker.
Amazon Review:
I was in a small town theater's production of Peter Pan when I was young, playing Michael, Wendy's youngest brother, so I know the story pretty well. At least, I thought I did.
Then I opened The Child Thief, by Brom, and I found out that I didn't know Peter Pan's story at all.
That's not entirely true. I knew some of this story. In my Peter Pan, I knew that Peter was a trickster, that he brought children from our world into a magical land, where they joined his band of merry pranksters in fighting off the depredations of Captain Hook and his pirates. I knew that Peter hung out with fairies and never grew up. Those things are mostly true in this book. But I didn't know that the magical place was not Nevernever Land, but the magical Isle of Avalon, or that the captain and his pirates were trapped Puritans who got lost while seeking Jamestown in the 1600's, or that Peter's life was dedicated to protecting the Lady of Avalon, also known as the Lady of the Lake from the Arthurian legends. But that is how it goes in Brom's story.
I also didn't know that it was going to be this bloody, this dark, and this horrifying. Peter and his band of eternal youths are not fun-loving tricksters; they are fierce warriors involved in a fight to the death against an implacable and brutal foe. The reason Peter has to continually seek out new youths is because the ones he brings just keep dying, in horrible and brutal ways. And the children he brings to Avalon are happy to follow him, and happy to fight by his side no matter how nasty, brutish, and short their lives may be, because he rescues them from their lives in our world, which are even worse. These Lost Boys (though that's not the name they use) are victims of abuse and neglect and every other horrible circumstance one can imagine children growing up in. As was Peter himself, in the human life he left behind so long ago.
I did know this book was going to be dark, and I knew it was going to have beautiful illustrations, because I know something about the author, Brom, one of the premier illustrators in the world of fantasy and horror. Now I know that he can write, too, and nearly as well as he can draw and paint. There are some flaws in this book, some weak points -- but for the most part, it is a wonderfully fascinating and gloomy and disturbing and magical story, and I would recommend it highly for those who are not faint of heart -- and for those who don't mind a little savagery in their magic.
But don't look for that kid in the pajamas with a teddy bear. He's not in this one. Good thing, too -- because I don't want to know what would happen to that bear.
Thoughts:
It was good, maybe a little long, but quite well-written. Though it's really not as good as the art. Definitely a good read, though -- honestly disturbing in places, and I'm pretty tough to disturb. It also made me want to go back and read J.M. Barrie's original, which Brom's author's note makes out to be only slightly less bloody and disturbing than this novel was. Sounds interesting.
5. The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt 8/11 (42)
Pick:
Something non-fiction and maybe more sedate after that super-cool imaginative romp through a slaughterhouse. I liked Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil; I also realized, when trying to make this pick, that I have three different books focused on Italy, in different eras, so I thought I should get at least one out of the way. I also admit to wanting to knock hardcovers off of my shelf. Of course, my beloved library book sale is tomorrow, which means I get to buy a whole new stack of cheap hardcovers to put back on my shelf -- because the library book sale is the exception to the non-book-buying rule.
Story:
As with his first book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, this book doesn't have much of a specific story to tell. That one focused on a murder, as I recall; this one centers around a possible case of arson: the destruction by fire of the Fenice Opera House in Venice in 1996. But the fire is little more than a backdrop, a thread to tie the different stories together; the book is really about the city, the history, the culture, the people of Venice.
That is, it's about the people and the history and the culture and the city that John Berendt finds interesting, which basically means: rich white people. Preferably English speaking, since that would make it easier to interview them. Now, Berendt does excellent research, and is apparently a dogged and fearless interviewer, and some of the insights and admissions and candid details he gets are very interesting. In addition, the book is not exclusively about the elite: he does a long chapter on a poor and lonely poet, and another on a family of glassblowers, all of whom are native Venetians. He does a very nice piece on the public prosecutor who tried to investigate the fire at the Fenice, and his attempts to convict those he believes were responsible for the fire -- first for criminal negligence, and then for arson. And there are a lot of details about Venice itself, all of which were fascinating, honestly; makes me very much want to go visit, though I wouldn't really want to be a tourist: I'd like to be a part of the city's actual life, behind the tourist scene, if only for a little while.
The problem is that I don't believe Berendt actually made it into the backstage Venice, the Venice of the Venetians. He gets in at times, with certain people, but they're usually the fringe element, or again, the American and Anglo people who have relocated to Venice and been accepted themselves to some extent. But never all the way. This book never gets all the way in. It is interesting for as far as it goes, full of neat stories and beautiful descriptions and some very interesting characters -- I particularly liked the Rat Man of Treviso, who ran the most successful rat poison company in the Western world, because he alters the formula of his rat poison to match the predominant flavors of the area where he sells it. So the rat poison in Italy has olive oil, pasta, almonds, and several other flavors in it; in America, it's vanilla, granola, popcorn, and a little margarine, because Americans eat very little butter -- butter's in the French poison. He was great, as was the larger-than-life artist who kept trying to get arrested making his political and artistic statements. But I don't care enough about the fifth-generation American millionaires who were selling their family palazzo because two of the three siblings had moved away (though the one brother was completely nuts, and that was hilarious), nor do I care enough about the scummy American couple who took advantage of the senile 93-year-old former mistress of Ezra Pound. But both of those were very long chapters in the book. The only one longer was the chapter dedicated to the infighting between Larry Lovett and Bob Guthrie over who should be allowed to run the New York-based charity Save Venice, and who should get the credit for its success. Yeah. That's real Venetian.
It is a fascinating and wonderful place, and I hope to go there. I would like to see it for myself, and look at the things that John Berendt skipped over. But I won't have to wangle my way into English-speaking high society parties in Venice, because I've already heard all I need to know about those.
Thoughts:
Not bad, but not the parts of Venice I would have really liked to hear about, not for the most part. Some of it was great, and the writing was lovely. Much more fun to read than I thought it would be after the first chapter or two. Biggest problem was he didn't really make me care about the Fenice, but it is such a large part of the actual Venetian parts of the book, because it is a vital piece of the landscape to the Venetians. He really should have done a better job with that.
6. Blaze by Richard Bachman 8/14 (43)
Pick:
After the long slow non-fiction comes the fast fiction. I'm planning on reading White Witch, Black Curse, which is the one I've been working up to for months now, but I thought I would squeeze in one more shorty before that.
Story:
Well, this one is credited to Richard Bachman, which I always thought was kind of a running joke for Stephen King at this point -- because who doesn't know? But honestly, that was the right way to credit this novel. It doesn't really feel like a Stephen King novel, but it did remind me a lot of Thinner and Rage and The Running Man. The Bachman books tend to be faster, more brutal in some ways, because they have less description and far less soul-searching and character exploration. They have some, of course, because even if Bachman is a different side of King, he's still attached to the same brain, and description and character exploration are what King really does; the violence and horror are just ways to focus on the characters, to examine what people are really like in the harsh spotlight of a crisis, when they are fully out of their comfort zones.
Ironically, though, this would have been a better book if Stephen King had written it. It wasn't bad: I liked Blaze, the title character -- a 6'7" hulk with a very slow mind, thanks to the time his father threw him down the stairs. Three times. I liked the flashbacks to Blaze's youth, the stories of his life in the foster care system; I liked that Blaze was basically a good guy even if he did become a criminal. I liked that Blaze's life, other than the horrible story of his abuse at his father's hands, was basically happy and successful.
But I didn't like the way it ended, not for the last fifty pages. Still well-written, but I didn't like it. I think the imagination of Stephen King would have been able to pull out a better finish for a good character like Clayton Blaisdell, Jr.
Thoughts:
Pretty good, but probably not worth reading twice. On the other hand, I loved the short story that was in there right after it, and so now I want to read Duma Key -- the novel that came from that short story.
*Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines by Richard A. Muller 8/17 (44)
Pick:
This one doesn't count, because it came in the mail. That's right, my dad sent me a book, which I had to add to my TBR pile, a pile that I have barely made a dent in because I've been writing and working on the house and playing lots of video games. I already have new books coming in from Amazon twice a month -- now I have to read books from my dad?? About physics?!? Sheesh!
Story:
The book is a collection of explanatory articles about topics related to recent headlines and hot topics in the United States. The author, a physicist and professor at UC Berkeley, tries to explain everything in simple yet precise scientific terms, with the intention that any reader be able to understand the real facts behind these topics, rather than be forced to wade through the misinformation and exaggerations that abound.
Pardon me: his intention is actually to educate the future president, whom he addresses quite specifically as often as possible. Not that he gives a name of who will be our next president, being a scientist rather than a pundit or prognosticator, but it is clear that he considers this work to be nothing short of indispensable to any future leader of the United States. Each segment is concluded with a one- to two-page summary for the President; the sort of easy reference guide that all politicians should carry in their pockets to glance at whenever possible.
Pardon me again: his actual intention seems to be to prove to all readers that his erudition and insight make him the logical choice for the post of indispensable advisor to any future president. Not merely an authority on scientific matters, a claim that I would hardly dispute: he seems to see himself as the source of all logic, as the font of common sense, the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the scientifically blind. Despite claims that he has no particular ability to make political choices, and claims that he would never want to appear partisan on any political issue, still he does both of those things again and again. He makes it clear right in the introduction when he compliments the reader on finding the solution to the problem of figuring out the truth behind such diverse topics as global warming, nuclear power, and the next potential terrorist threat: the reader has picked up his book. The book is apparently based on his renowned course for non-physics students -- the wording comes from the book jacket, not from me -- that he has taught for years.
The science in the book is interesting. The pedantic posturing and weak attempts at humor, followed by even weaker attempts at intellectual camaraderie -- which invariably come off as mere elitism -- are less interesting, verging on annoying. I would have really enjoyed this book if someone else had written it.
Thoughts:
Thanks, Pop. At least it didn't take me too long to read. And I can stop worrying about dirty bombs. But the fact that this guy considers Yucca Mountain a solution to the problem of nuclear waste, based on his mathematical analysis of the acceptable risk of leakage, shows me that he is not, in fact, qualified to make political decisions, and he shouldn't have tried. The book should focus on current issues related to science, but the gimmick of advising the president was a mistake, made seemingly just to feed the dude's ego. NEXT!
7. White Witch, Black Curse by Kim Harrison 8/24 (45)
Pick:
I've been waiting to read this since I first tried, back in, Jeez, freakin' March when we got the book from Amazon. I think I've waited long enough.
Story:
Rachel Morgan is a witch, living with a vampire (who, fortunately, hasn't died yet) and a family of pixies (who, unfortunately, are about to die quite soon, of old age -- at least the parents will, though not the four dozen children), beholden and apprenticed to a demon, with an uneasy alliance to the last few elves alive in the world; she has dated a dishonest human thief who endangered her and stole from her, a noble living vampire who died protecting her, and, it turns out in this novel, an embodied ghost who died almost two hundred years before, who has now come back to -- well, maybe he has good intentions. And in this novel, Rachel decides the time has come to take on a whole new species: the banshee, the apex predator of this world of the Hollows and the Turn, the nastiest, deadliest, most powerful race in the world -- rivaled only by undead vampires and demons, but matched by neither.
Because the largest issue any of these races seems to have is -- issue. The elves are willing to do almost anything to repair the damage done to their genetic code by their ancient enemies, the demons; the demons are willing to do almost anything to seduce their one surviving female, and protect their one potential new female, a certain genetically altered (or perhaps re-altered) witch. The vampires have allowed Rachel to stay alive and unharmed, despite her vulnerability to vampire powers, because their master, Rynn Cormel, believes that the witch may have the ability to save the soul of all future vampires, starting with her roommate and best friend, Ivy Tamwood. If Rachel succeeds in saving Ivy's soul, then the vampires will be able to last into their undeath in greater numbers -- which will help to balance the growing power of the vampires' top supernatural rivals, the Weres, now that the Weres have the ability to make new Weres with bites, rather than the simple reproduction that has been the only source of new Weres for centuries. So naturally, the banshees have a very difficult time reproducing: the banshee subsists on the emotions, the auras, of other living creatures, which it can drain with a thought. Newborn banshees have the power, but not the control to turn it off -- which means that they are fatal to any living thing that touches them, other than their mothers. Not a good baby to have in Italy.
The banshee of Cincinnati -- there is only one, who has lived in the same area for 300 years and allowed no rivals to stay -- has found a way to have a child with the man she loves, and still keep that man alive despite her daughter's fatal touch. She has not found a way to spare innocent bystanders from being eaten by her adorable little bundle of evil, because she does not care to try. When the family puts one of Rachel's friends in the hospital, Rachel goes after them. This, in combination with Rachel's ongoing dealings with demons -- which have brought up a whole new storm of consequences -- and her and Ivy's continuing attempt to discover the identity of the vampire who murdered Rachel's lover Kisten, make up the bulk of the plot. But because these books are complex and genuine in their attempts to depict all of Rachel's life, there is also the issue of Rachel's mother and brother and their comings and goings; the debate between continued friendship with Marshall, the attractive but comfortable companion she has spent the last two months having platonic fun with, and the possibility of romance with a man who could, for the first time, be good for Rachel; the sad prospect of losing their pixy friend Matalina, and the slightly more distant prospect of losing Jenks, the best character in these books; and at least a little time spent with Trent and Rachel's past health issues. Oh yeah: and then there's the ghost that has been in love with Rachel for ten years. Or maybe it's that she's in love with him. Maybe both. Or neither. When it comes to Rachel's love life, none of us really know -- least of all Rachel.
The book is a little slow at first, even a little confusing, simply because there are so many plotlines to keep juggling. But some of these are resolved in this book, and perhaps resolved permanently; the banshee issue certainly is, along with the murderous vampire's identity. And once the book is settled into its groove, it chugs right along, as readable and entertaining and engrossing as all the rest in the series. Great twists, a better pace than some of the other books have had -- and an excellent ending. This one's a good'un.
Thoughts:
It was worth the wait, and mostly worth the re-read. I don't think these books are my favorite supernatural series, and I don't know if I'll be re-reading them all again -- but on first read, all of these have been a lot of fun, and this was no exception.
** Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran 8/27 (46)
Pick:
Amazon Vine book. I like historical fiction, especially ancient Rome and Egypt, and it sounded intriguing.
Vine Review:
Cleopatra's Daughter is many things: an adult historical novel, and a young adult novel split between coming of age and romance (as much as those two things can be separated in the teenage years). It's hard to tell in the end which aspect of this novel is the best; but all of them are good, and none of them are overwhelmed or watered down by the others. This balancing act earns the author high praise, and the book a recommendation for several different audiences.
The adult historical novel gives a nice view of the rise of the Roman empire; the book begins with Octavian Caesar, the heir and successor of Julius Caesar, defeating his last serious rival for power: Mark Antony and his wife, Kleopatra of Egypt (It was interesting to read of how Kleopatra's daughter was annoyed when an unfriendly Roman misspelled Kleopatra's name, using a C instead of a K, considering the book's title. But what are you going to do?). Octavian forces the couple to take their own lives, and then he takes their three children prisoner, bringing them to Rome for his Triumph. The book covers the next four years, culminating with Octavian's promotion to Emperor, and adoption of the name Augustus; Moran gives the reader an interesting perspective of Rome at the time, since the narrator is an observant young woman who moves in the highest circles of society, but who is nonetheless an outsider, a virtual prisoner who lives by the continued sufferance of a man renowned for his mercilessness and even cruelty. So we see some of the politics of the time, but more of the daily life; all of it is presented genuinely, with no lengthy discussions of Rome's cultural or historical significance and no textbookese; it was both fun and informative to read.
The young adult novel that runs through the historical setting is also well done, though the coming-of-age aspect was better than the romance. Selene is a good character: an educated, talented young woman in a time when women were little more than property; a beautiful and personable girl forced to live among strangers, conquerors, perhaps even enemies. Her life is turbulent, as should be expected, and though there are many tragedies, it does end quite well -- with perhaps just a taste of Hollywood happiness in terms of her love life. Though to be honest, that ending comes from history, and not from the author's imagination -- so perhaps it should be inspiring, rather than dubious.
All in all, Cleopatra's Daughter is well-written and quite outstanding in its mix of genres, and thus its appeal. A very good book.
Thoughts:
It was a touch hard to get into, a little difficult to read in terms of the effort spent, but it was definitely worth it -- a good payoff, and it made me want to read up on my history, which I think is always a good sign.
8. Clan Daughter by Morgan Howell (Queen of the Orcs, Book II) 8/28 (47)
Pick:
I was feeling like fantasy. Seems like it's been a while since I read something with swords and sorcery, omens and orcs, and I thought it was time to get back into it. I also want to finish this trilogy up before I start forgetting everything that happened in the first book and I have to re-read it. Like all the others. I have enough to read, thank you.
Story:
It turns out -- and I doubt this is a big secret -- that these books were written by a man, using an androgynous pseudonym presumably because the main character, and thus part of the audience, is female. Well, I'm assuming the William Hubbell who owns the copyright is the author. At any rate, the first book in the series, King's Property, is a good book and Dar is a good character (albeit with a bad name -- kept making me think of frustrated pirates), so the author's gender really hasn't made any difference to me. But I think it made a difference in this book.
This book picks up exactly where the first book left off: Dar and the five remaining orcs of the troop she served in King Kregant's army have left the battlefield that claimed the lives of all of their companions, and they are heading back to the orcs' homeland, the mountains far to the north. The orcs have accepted Dar as their leader, as their society is strongly matriarchal, and Dar has managed to impress them with her wisdom; they see her more as a woman and less as a human, and are therefore willing to accept her guidance. All but one: Zna-yat still hates and distrusts her for her humanity, and plots her death once again -- a goal he tried and failed to accomplish in the first book.
Unfortunately, Dar has no idea where she is going, apart from "thataway," and so the first third of the book describes the orcs' very difficult journey through human lands, trying to reach their home. Over the course of the trip, Dar uses a combination of wit and wisdom, luck and magic to guide them the right way, and they do win through to the orc lands. But that's when the trouble begins. On the trip, a new complication has arisen: Dar has fallen in love with one of her orcish companions, a love that is returned, but one that is also doomed, because no orc male would marry when his mother forbids the relationship -- and no orc mother would allow her son to marry a human, no matter how dearly the two love one another.
This is the only place where the author's gender, I think, has an impact on the story: this romance seems depicted as a man would think about it, not as a woman would. Once Dar has some physical contact with her lover (Have no fear, there are no nasty bits), it is all she can think about; her longing for him is described as a physical need like hunger and thirst, and whenever the two are together, all she thinks about is getting snuggly. The romance isn't bad, it just seemed a little off for a young woman's first love.
The plot takes a whole new turn once the group reaches the orc lands; some of the plotlines from the first book return, and are wrapped up, and the story also heads off in a whole new direction. The ending felt a wee bit rushed, though I'm sure the third book -- already out and waiting on my shelf to be read -- will expand and explain everything that comes in a rush at the end of this book. Overall, this was a fun, easy read; the best parts remain the depiction of the orc culture as different from, and superior to, the human culture; you definitely come out of this book wishing you were an orc, instead of some stinking washavoki.
Thoughts:
Good book. Romance should have been done differently, and the ending should have been expanded. I didn't like how the human suitor is given so much leeway to pursue Dar even though she loves Kovok-mah; if you want to do love triangle stuff, then you need to establish the other guy better, and he wasn't. Dar and Kovok-mah have been through far too much for Sevren to get any time with her, and while she doesn't flirt with him or lead him on, neither does she shut him down, and she should have. He could still respect her and be her friend and ally without loving her and thinking she might love him. But I'm hopeful the third book will make it all better. Those orcs better not turn out to be evil, or I'm going to be pissed.
9. The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Edited by Edward Seidensticker) (Unfinished) 8/31
Pick:
Another book I picked up at a library book sale because I had heard of this and was curious. The Tale of Genji is supposed to be the first novel ever written; it's a very long (many volumes in the original, apparently) romance about a nobleman in feudal Japan, written sometime around 1000 AD.
Thoughts:
I almost fell asleep three times in the first chapter. I was also disappointed to find out that this edition is abridged -- because if I were to read the thing, I'd want to read the whole thing. I'm in it for curiosity's sake, not for a rollicking good read -- sheesh! But I had to give up after that. This is just another book that I feel like I should read, somehow, but really don't want to -- and I have too many books to waste my time with that.
Another one off the shelf.
** Come Back, Como by Steven Winn 9/4/09 (48)
Pick:
Vine Voice book. Cute dog on the cover, story about winning the love of a reluctant pup, what could go wrong?
Vine Review:
Well-written and engaging, with a sweet ending, but this book has the wrong sub-title. It isn't about winning the heart of a reluctant dog, it is about winning the heart of a reluctant owner. This book was tough for me to read because of that, since I am the farthest thing from a reluctant dog owner: I am one of those people who always wanted a dog, a dog that I now count among my family members and love completely and irrationally. I am also one of those people who read books of dog advice and watch the dog whisperer, and so I knew right from the start what was wrong with the story of the Winns and Como: it was Steven Winn himself.
I don't have much criticism for the book itself; Winn is a good writer, excellent descriptions and some very nice insights towards the end of the story. But Mr. Winn and his wife never wanted a dog; they only get Como because their daughter Phoebe is desperate for a canine friend. I couldn't relate to that, and so I found myself disliking Winn for the tone of the narration, for his reluctance and anxiety about the dog. Both of these things are understandable, of course, and Como does turn out to be a challenging animal -- but I kept muttering under my breath, "You're doing it wrong, that's never going to work." I felt more sorry for the dog than the owner, and that wasn't the aim of the book. There are some parts that made me chuckle or smile, even laugh, but there were also some frowns and maybe even a little name-calling.
I would say that people who were unsure about their pets at first, or who are ambivalent in some way about their furry friends -- you love 'em, but they just keep eating your fershlugginer slippers! -- would enjoy this story. But if you, like me, consider your dog to be as wonderful as any human child -- maybe even a little better -- then this probably isn't the right book for you.
Thoughts:
The guy kept his daughter from having a dog until she was almost thirteen. I mean, my parents wouldn't let me have a dog either, but there were some differences: both my mother and my brother are allergic, and I myself was never completely obsessed with dogs, as the daughter is in this story. She wants nothing more than a dog -- and they have no good reason not to get her one. It pissed me off that they were so unwilling to do a good thing -- please their daughter, bring more life and love into their home, save a rescued animal's life. Why wouldn't you do that right away? This was only exacerbated as they got several lesser pets -- fish, a bird, that kind of thing -- for their daughter, who turns out to be responsible and reliable in caring for the pet, thus eliminating that argument about who will end up caring for the dog. When they get Como, the whole family has to care for him, of course, but he is fed, walked, and watched regularly and consistently by their daughter. Just makes me think they should have gotten her a dog sooner.
Then they get the dog, and the only thing the guy thinks about is how long they have left until they can return him to the shelter for a full refund. He jumps all over it when the shelter folks bring it up, and he keeps throwing meaningful glances at his wife when the dog misbehaves; his wife then whispers, "Twenty-eight." Which is how many days they have left until they can't return him. First of all: if you're still thinking about returning the dog, you shouldn't have gotten one in the first place; secondly, it's a shelter dog that cost you all of a hundred bucks. Do you really need the refund? And then he wonders why the dog doesn't love him as much as it loves his wife and daughter. Yeah: that would be because you're plotting to get rid of him, dude.
I held the owner responsible for pretty much all of Como's problems, so I liked the dog a lot more than the man on the other end of the leash (and behind the typewriter). I suppose that isn't a big surprise.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Reading for July -- and the Switch
July
33. Jim Butcher: Fool Moon
34. Christopher Moore: Fool
35. Daniel Wallace: Friends Like These
36. Kim Harrison: For a Few Demons More
Started A Friend of the Earth by T.C. Boyle; stopped because of the Sign.
Fool Moon
Pick:
I wanted to grab up my next Vine choice, since it sounds really interesting, but the last one was a wee bit of a slog, so I wanted something more fun, more casual, that I wouldn't have to worry terribly about reviewing -- because that last review was a real bitch to get right. So I went for the Simon R. Green Nightside book I just picked up -- I have three to read now, books 5-7 in the series -- but I wanted to check the ending of the previous book, which I read last year, because I remembered being pissed at the last line of book #4. I read it again, and then realized I didn't remember the background leading up to that line, so I looked back through the book a little. And realized I remembered almost nothing about the plot, even though it revealed quite a few things about the main character. And I said, "I'm going to have to read this again." At which point the wind wailed past the house, and the trees groaned like tortured souls; the sky turned black and I heard scrabbling in the wall like rats or locusts or the fingernails of the damned. And Toni turned to me with shocked eyes and said, "No! You can't! Dusty, don't do it -- you'll doom us all! NOOOOOOOO!!!!? and then ran from the room.
And I said, "Okay, fine, I won't read these then. Geez." And all the noises and portents stopped.
Then Toni, calm and serene once again, said, "Why don't you read a Harry Dresden book instead?"
So that's what I did.
True story.
Story:
Fool Moon might be the only Dresden book that isn't better than the one before it -- though that judgment will have to wait until I finish the series to become codified and definitive. It's a good book, but it's too damned busy.
There's that great scene near the beginning, when Harry and Murphy realize they are dealing with werewolves, and Harry asks Bob about them. It's great because Bob gives a wonderful answer, one that shows Butcher's imagination: there are several different kinds of werewolves. There are werewolves, who learn to transform themselves into wolves with magic; there are Hexenwulfs (Nice German usage, there), which are people who gain a magical talisman of some kind that allows them to transform into wolves; there are lycanthropes, which are people with the souls of beasts, who don't transform at all, but who can commit acts that might seem wolfish and who have some of the attributes of classic werewolves -- rapid healing, pack mentality, lose control around the full moon -- but are actually more like Viking berserkers; then there is the loup-garou, the most dangerous kind of werewolf, which is someone who has been cursed to turn into a wolf-like monster every full moon.
That's a great answer, which makes the old werewolf trope seem far more interesting and realistic than having werewolves adhere to the stereotypes. Butcher does the same thing with vampires, giving them three different breeds that each take on some, but not all, of the standard vampire attributes. The problem with the book is, every single kind of werewolf makes an appearance, along with one other kind that Bob doesn't mention: a wolf who has the mystical ability to transform into a human. Which is also damned clever.
But the sheer variety of werewolves is too much. It's like Butcher had a checklist and he made sure to hit every one: werewolves, Hexenwulfs, lycanthropes, loup-garou. Check, check, and double-check. It made it so there were too many bad guys -- especially since Gentleman Johnny Marcone is also involved -- too much danger, and it muddied up the waters and made it hard to enjoy. It also meant that things that would have made a great villain/enemy -- specifically the lycanthrope street gang -- get shorted, because there's not enough room in the story to really deal with them. The same goes for the werewolves, the Alphas, though at least they come back in subsequent books. The novel would have been better if he could have found a way to stick with the Hexenwulfs and the loup-garou.
Thoughts:
On the plus side, it's still a fun book and a good read. It was a nice break from Vine books, and I think I'll read the next one soon.
Fool
Pick:
Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday from Toni here's the newest book by your favorite author, Happy Birthday to Me!
And many moooooooooooooore!
Was it serendipity that I finished the Jim Butcher book on the morning of my birthday, when Toni gave me the newest book by Christopher Moore -- a story based on one of my all-time favorite literary characters, the Fool from King Lear? Or was it destiny? The will of the gods? Nah.
"As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport."
Story:
The book is brilliant, of course. The writing is hilarious -- right up there with Lamb and Dirty Job, much better than You Suck; this is one of Moore's best -- and the story is the right kind of multi-layered satire he does so well when he finds something he can sink his teeth into.
He said in his Author's note that he wanted to write about a jester because he loves writing rascals; when he asked his agent if he should do any random Fool or the Fool from Lear, she said, "Definitely Lear." I'm sure any fool would have worked fine, but I love that this one was based on the Shakespeare play. I won't say that Moore is anywhere near as good a writer as the Bard, but he has many of the same strengths: he can write a funny scene that has a touching undercurrent; he can switch from personal to universal from sentence to sentence and make them both work; he truly knows how to make a story his own. This is King Lear, but it's also not -- because it's Christopher Moore's King Lear, not William Shakespeare's.
Pocket is a wonderful character. I loved that we heard his entire life story, in flashback and out of order, because it all connects: his childhood and upbringing do much to explain the way he is and the way the other characters treat him; in addition, the way that Pocket's life has been intertwined with Lear's since before his birth gives a great view of the two sides of Lear: he is a cruel tyrant who deserves what he gets, and he is also a foolish old man who makes what would be an innocent mistake in anyone younger, but is either insanity or stupidity in him. I always felt that way about Shakespeare's Lear, and the character of Pocket gives a new lens to see Lear through, without changing the basic character of the king.
The other characters have been largely replaced with Moore's own: the women are classic Moore, smarter, wiser, more mature and much sexier than the men, except for the villainesses, who are still smarter than most of the men, but are cold and self-serving as well. The men are generally bumbling children, except for Pocket, and Kent, the one loyal man in the kingdom. Drool is a hilarious character, an excellent sidekick for Pocket, and Edmund makes a decent villain, though he could use some more fleshing out. The real villain, though, is Lear, and he is perfectly done -- and interestingly enough, he's not played humorously, even in this comic novel. Lear remains the same tragic, flawed fool he is in Shakespeare's play; this is much of what creates the multiple layers in the book, with the humor coming from the general cast, the serious notes from Lear and Cordelia, and Pocket working as the bridge between the two.
Exactly what a Fool should be.
Thoughts:
Great book. I loved it, I loved that it was the story of Lear with the right hero and the right ending. I do want to read Lear again, I think -- and I know I'll want to read this a second time, and a third, and probably more after that.
Friends Like These
Pick:
The last Vine Voice book I've got right now -- one apparently got lost in the mail. But I picked this one because I liked the idea, and because I looked up the author on Amazon UK and found that he has five bestselling books in Britain, including Yes Man (which the movie is based on). I love the concept, and I love that this guy started his own cult -- I'm going to have to look for that book now, too.
Amazon Review:
I'm sure that after reading this book, most people will want to imitate the author, and try to reconnect with old friends. I don't. I want to be Danny Wallace's friend, and have him come find me. Hopefully wearing a giant bunny head and a t-shirt with my face on it. And we'll say, "Potaaaatooooo!"
Wallace makes an excellent case for reconnecting with childhood friends. He has twelve that he seeks out, and though he does not have a joyous reunion with each and every one of them, he does have just such a reunion with most -- and the ones that don't work out quite so well are still a source of valuable insight. If I may simply list adjectives: the whole story is funny, poignant, and sweet, and heart-warming and thought-provoking as well. In fact, it is hard to say what is the most inspiring and fascinating part of this book: it could be the boundless optimism that informs both Wallace's actions and his writing; it could be the humor, which is simply wonderful -- there are many moments that made me smile, chortle, and even laugh out loud (a rarity when I read), but I think my favorite is Wallace's impression of a ten-year-old British boy's image of America. Apparently we all have guns, say things like "Hold the rye!" and use "a$$" in every sentence; the example given is the insult, "A$$ off!" Which I'm now going to start saying, of course. But the most fascinating part of the book could also be the insight into growing up and being a man. It is never preachy or artificial; it feels very much like a peek into someone else's mind as he goes through the watershed moment when he decides that he is ready to be a grownup, that he will not abandon his childish ways, but is ready to stop clinging to them. It's very sweet, and thoughtful, and, yes, inspiring.
The book is also a fantastic reminiscence about the 1980's and early 1990's, although the difference between a British boy's experience of youth and pop culture and my own American memories made it a little less than perfect, for me. But still: I remember the first time I heard Michael Jackson's music (It was "Billie Jean," in my case -- and I thought that light-up sidewalk was totally cool), and I remember being obsessed with "Ghostbusters," and I remember the Atari 2600 era and the rise of Nintendo, so there was a lot for me in this book. Even more than popular culture, though, the book is simply a tour through childhood and friendship, and those memories are universal. Anyone who has been a child, who had those short-lived but perfect friendships, with people who then disappeared from your life, should read this book. Anyone who worries about growing up, either too quickly or not quickly enough, should read this book. And really, anyone who likes a sweet, funny trip through the life of a bright, sensitive, quirky person -- you should read it, too.
Thoughts:
It didn't really make me want to track down my old friends. Partly because I have already looked up some of my old friends (Shoutout to Hotpants!), partly because I was never as social or as friend-oriented as this man seems to be. But it did make me want to reminisce with my old friends, to try to rebuild the memories of myself and of them at that age, and it gave me a clue (or maybe even an answer) to the question I've always had about memories: I don't recall very many specifics about my own childhood, and so many other people seem to remember more about their own lives than I know about my own. Maybe the details, the real specifics, need to be remembered through collaborators.
I also wondered, after reading this, why I didn't have the same crisis of confidence that Danny Wallace has just before his 30th birthday. Almost every person in the book has the same sort of issue with growing up and looking back at that same age, but I didn't. But then I remembered: I turned 30 in 2004. Which was the year I got married, after watching my wife go through more than a year of agonizing pain culminating in major abdominal surgery, and also the year we moved from California to Oregon, after our house in Escondido flooded when the pipes burst. My 29th year, when Wallace goes through his quest, was also when the 2003 San Diego wildfires happened, with fifty-foot-high flames within half a mile of my house. So maybe I was a little distracted.
For a Few Demons More
Pick:
Wanted to get back into my beloved fantasy books after reading a memoir, and I want to get through this series and finish reading the new one. Only one more book left to re-read.
Story:
This one has a strong story. Rachel has an incredibly powerful and turbulent artifact, and everybody comes after it, and her. Newt is the first to appear, and she shows Rachel (and the readers) that demons are much more than we might have thought, that many of the things we think they can't do, are simply things they don't do -- and Newt does them. After Rachel manages to get out of that pickle, with the help of Minias -- an interesting character, but I don't like that they played up Rachel's attraction to him. I know, she's attracted to dangerous men, but this is not a man, this is a demon: the association with Al and Newt should be enough to cool her ardor before the thought even crosses her mind. Is anybody really that much ruled by their gonads?
Oh, wait. Rachel wants to find a blood balance with Ivy, and even though she has not an inkling of homosexuality, she decides in this one that maybe a gay relationship, y'know, wouldn't be all bad. So apparently Rachel is completely ruled by her id, by her desire for complete and total pleasure. She's totally a Sim with the pleasure aspiration -- which would explain why she can be exasperating, just like Sims with the pleasure aspiration.
Anyway, there's the storyline with Trent's wedding, which is a hoot, especially the way it wraps up with Rachel coming to the wedding on a city bus, and not for the expected reasons; I'm extremely happy with how the Piscary storyline wraps up, but not for the events with Kisten. It annoys me that Kisten is so absent from this book, even with the explanation for it. I sort of think Harrison didn't know what to do with the relationship between Rachel and Kisten, because Rachel is not supposed to be seriously involved -- pleasure, not commitment -- but Kisten is too perfect for her in too many ways, just because of the way the character was written. So I wonder if she went this way with it to get out of the corner she wrote herself into. The mystery will be solved in the new book, when I get to that one -- so we'll just wait for that.
Thoughts:
This one was better than the last, except I don't like Rachel's confusion from kissing Ivy -- I think her sexuality should be pretty straightforward, since she is old enough and experienced enough, and adventurous enough, to know if she has interest in women, and I don't think any kiss no matter how good can overcome one's natural inclinations -- and I'm not happy with the Kisten story yet. Though reading this when I know the ending showed me that Harrison did an excellent job of writing Rachel's mental block concerning what happened.
When it's time to change, then it's time to change!
Going to a new system here. My goal now is to read all of the unread books I currently own, before I go out and buy any more. Exceptions will include the Wheel of Time, new installments on favorite series, maybe a graphic novel or two. I will also continue the re-reads I started on Butcher and Harrison, leading up to the new books.
But from here, I won't be numbering from the beginning of the year. I will be numbering from the Sign, the day my bookshelf collapsed under the weight of the books that I kept accumulating faster than I could read them -- a habit I always criticized my mother for, when she did the same with newspapers that she would save to look through, which ended up in six-foot piles of moldering yellow fire hazard. Well, I'm not going to do the same with my books. I'm going to read what I've got before I get more, and I'm going to get rid of all of the ones I don't finish. I am going to include the unfinished ones in the count, because now I'm trying to count just how many unread books I bought before I did this. But for the sake of my sanity and in order to not overcomplicate this, I'm going to keep the total for the year count in parentheses with the ones I finish.
So:
1. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (Unfinished)
Pick:
The story sounded interesting when I picked this one up, and it was very popular when it was new, so I've always wanted to read it. I've had it for probably two years without touching it until now because it is a massive tome: 800 pages in hardback, small print. I picked it first because it was the heaviest book on the shelf.
Story:
Too heavy. Too slow. 200 pages in four or five days, and I hadn't gotten to the main story line yet. I looked at the dust jacket again, and the story still sounded interesting, but the description of the book called it "exquisitely detailed" and "magisterial." Yeah. Sounds riveting, doesn't it? Enough already.
Thoughts:
The author was too self- indulgent. I think of long backstories for my characters, too -- but they stay in my notes, where they belong. The stuff that gets into the book is the stuff that is necessary for the story I'm telling, not a cycle of stories like a complete mythology of a time and a place. She picked scenes to include as if she was creating an entire world, but the story line is just a story line. Or maybe the problem is that the place she is creating is just too fucking boring all by itself -- high society 19th century England not being the hotbed of action-packed excitement. A whole lot of visiting and etiquette, fashion and frippery. This thing made the Silmarillion seem like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
2. Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go by Dale E. Basye 7/21 (37)
Pick:
I stopped reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell because it was too dense and slow and boring, so I wanted to go for something easy and fun and light. Hey, how about a book about where bad kids go when they die?
Story:
Milton and Marlo Fauster. Milton because John Milton wrote Paradise Lost about Lucifer's fall from Heaven, Marlo because Christopher Marlowe wrote a famous version of Johann Goethe's Faust, about a man who sells his soul to the devil; Faustus because of same. These are cheesy names. They are not good names. They are not good because a large number of people wouldn't get the references, and cheesy because the people who do get the references don't think these names are clever. Anyone who does think these names are clever had it ruined when the author included a small ferret named Lucky as the pet of Milton, and who had Lucky wear a collar that had a small set of dice hanging from it, and who had Lucky lose that collar solely so that he could have Milton post a sign that said, "Milton's Pair of Dice: Lost."
That is a bad pun. It isn't clever, it's totally labored, and it isn't funny. It also repeats the same joke made by choosing this kid's name. And that's the best example I can give of this book.
The concept is wonderful. The adventure story isn't too bad, really, though there's some things that make no sense whatsoever, and there's far too much time spent on poop. But the writing is not good, and the humor is terrible: dull, cliche, lame, reliant on gross-outs that aren't too terribly gross and puns and references as irritating as the names of the two main characters and Lucky's collar.
Another example: the idea here is that these two kids die, and because they are bad kids, they get darned to Heck, a piece of Limbo a step short of Purgatory, where bad kids go to pay for their sins. Actually, only Marlo is a bad kid; Milton gets dragged down with her because she made him her unknowing, unwilling accomplice. Beggar the fact that even the Old Testament God wouldn't have damned the kid for that, it happens. And we could live with that -- except Marlo thinks it's funny, and Milton is vaguely annoyed with her for a page before he forgets about it. No, I don;'t think so. If my sibling got me killed (Also Marlo's fault, largely) and sent to an afterlife of torture, I wouldn't think it was funny, and I wouldn't just let it go. Which makes these characters unrealistic, and since we are already suspending our disbelief for the sake of accepting the existence of Heck, there's very little left in this book that we can believe in, now that we've lost both the setting and the characters. Oh, and the plot doesn't work either, but I don't want to give that away. Anyway, the pun I was going to describe is the name of the demon in charge of Heck, which is ostensibly a school (though that makes no sense and isn't well handled in the book, either), and thus she is the principal. Her name is Bea "Elsa" Bubb. Get it? Beelzebub, Lord of Flies, one of the chief lieutenants of Hell or another name for Satan himself, depending on your source? Well, if you didn't get it, don't worry -- the full name, Bea "Elsa" Bubb, is repeated throughout the novel. I must have been forced to read that awkward phrase fifty times. Rarely Principal Bubb, never Elsa; over and over again, Bea "Elsa" Bubb. A joke that wasn't that good the first time and was annoying every time after that, repeated fifty times in a two-hundred page book. I felt like I was in Heck. And I wanted out.
Thoughts:
As Toni said, so I repeat: this is a great idea, I just wish someone else had written it, because this guy sucks. We'll try reading the second installment and see if he has taken any writing classes in the meantime.
3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon 7/23 (38)
Pick:
After a pair of clunkers, I had to read something good. So I went for a book that I was sure would be well-written; luckily for me, this time I was right.
Story:
Christopher John Francis Boone hates metaphors, because they are a kind of lie. He doesn't like lies or people who tell them. So for his sake, I will try to refrain from reporting anything about this book but the facts.
Christopher is special. It is never spelled out in the novel, but I believe he is autistic. His symptoms and behaviors match that diagnosis, to the best of my knowledge. I do not know if he has Asperger's Syndrome or one of the other autism spectrum disorders that have been recently described, because I do not know very much about autism. I do not believe that autism has increased in frequency lately; I think the diagnosis is more common now than it used to be, but the syndrome does not occur in a greater percentage of the population than it ever has. That is my opinion. It is also a tangent, because it is not the main purpose of this writing.
Christopher's neighbor had a dog named Wellington. Wellington was murdered, stabbed with a garden fork. Christopher discovered the body. Because Christopher admires policemen and Sherlock Holmes, and because he likes dogs more than people in most cases, Christopher decides to investigate the dog's killing. In the course of his investigation, he discovers many things other than who killed Wellington (He also discovers who killed Wellington.). Some of the things he discovers are very surprising, because they are not expected. Some of them are very sad, because the things that happen make Christopher very upset, and that made me upset when I read this book, because I liked Christopher. It made me feel sad for him. Some of the things that Christopher discovers are not so sad, and some turn out to be very happy. I should say that things that happen make me happy, because the events themselves are not happy or sad, they are simply a series of occurrences.
It is a very fun book to read, and a very good look at an unusual mind. I enjoyed it very much.
Thoughts:
It's not easy to write like that and make it come out right, and I'm sure I screwed it up. But Mark Haddon didn't, so I really did like this book. I even liked the maths. Though I hated both of Christopher's parents, the big idiots. I liked Siobhan, though -- but what really matters is, I really liked Christopher.
** The Outlaw Demon Wails by Kim Harrison (re-read) (39)
Pick:
Last one before I read the new book, which I'm excited about -- and I have to get off the TBR shelf. I also want to finish this series and get it out of the way, and move on to other books I want to read. Oh yeah: and I do like Rachel and Jenks and Al and Ceri and Quen -- but not Trent, the big dipstick -- and I wanted to read about all of them again.
Story:
I wrote this up just last year, so I don't have a lot to add. It was easier to follow having the rest of the series fresh in my mind; I remember finding the Kisten subplot a little annoying in this one because I didn't like how everything that Rachel and Ivy did revolved around Kisten's death. I know how much it affects your life when somebody close to you dies (especially today) but the problem with this one is that they don't make any progress. They don't decide to deal with it, they don't come to terms with it, and while Rachel recovers one vague memory -- and finds out that she probably doesn't want to try the spell that will bring back other memories (Pandora Charm -- good name) -- and Ivy tries to investigate throughout the book, it doesn't go anywhere. At the end of the book we're as much in the dark as to what happened to Kisten, and what they will do about it, as we were at the beginning. It does make sense to me this way, because this book deals with all the other loose ends: the elves get what they want, Rachel has (presumably) come to a final settlement with Al, and we find out what seems to be the final solution to the puzzle of witches and demons and Rachel's blood disease. Now that all that's handled, I know from Toni that the next book deals with Kisten's death, which is completely resolved by the end. But in the process of dealing with this stuff, the Kisten stuff kept coming up over and over and over again, and it made me irritated with their grief. Not a good feeling.
Thoughts:
I did like this one more than the two before it; I hate the one with the almighty Piscary doing anything he wants, with absolutely no repercussions. I thought Rynn Cormel's appearance here was interesting; it was good to find out the limitation on undead vampires -- glad to know they actually have a limitation -- and I do like their need for love and inability to create it. That makes sense. But otherwise, the vampires are still way overpowered here. Ah, well. These things seem to get dealt with, after all. I wonder: after she's whacked Piscary, dealt with Kisten's killer and come to terms with Al, who's going to be the major villain?
Newt, anyone?
** School of Fear by Gitty Daneshvari 7/31 (39)
Pick:
Vine choice; I liked the cover and the concept. Short and simple after a long read.
Amazon review:
I picked this book out because I liked the cover art (That's right -- I judge books by their covers. What's it to ya?) and I decided to read it because I very much liked the concept: I thought a lot could be done with the idea of getting a group of children to get over their fears. I was hoping to see some basic psychoanalysis, some exploration of where phobias come from, and some depictions of various ways to get over them. I was hoping that, since this is a children's/YA book, the exploration of phobias and their treatments would be basic enough for me to understand, and also fictionalized and imaginative enough to keep me interested.
Unfortunately, what the author seemed to want to do was show, over and over and over again, how strange and quirky someone can be when he or she has a severe phobia and lives in an imagined world. Two-thirds of this book was descriptions of the characters' quirks, their strange behavior and appearance and obsessions based on their pathologies; unfortunately, each character is fairly flat and simplified, and so the descriptions of their eccentricities become very repetitive, very fast. The worst part is that when the phobias were insufficient to make the characters wacky enough, they were simply given wacky and eccentric traits, just because.
There are eight main characters if you count the dog (and I do). Four of them are the kids with their phobias: Madeleine is afraid of bugs, Lulu is claustrophobic, Garrison is afraid of drowning, and Theo is afraid of death. Then there are the three adults in charge of the School of Fear: Mrs. Wellington, the headmistress; Schmidty, her handyman and major domo; and Munchauser, her lawyer. Mrs. Wellington's beloved bulldog, Macaroni, is the most likable of all of these, mainly because he's just a dog who eats too much. With the rest of them, it got extremely tiresome to read about Madeleine's constant overuse of bug spray, and Garrison's copious sweating (inserted presumably because he could not freak out about large bodies of water at all times), and Lulu's annoying sarcasm and eye-rolling (Again, her claustrophobia is not general enough for her to be dealing with that all the time, so instead she says "Whatever" in almost every conversation. and yes, that is like many teenagers, but these are not realistic characters, and if you want to include one example of verisimilitude -- why that one? Whatever.). The worst, though, were Theo and Mrs. Wellington: Theo because he is made obnoxious in every way, whiny and weak and also precocious and very, very precious. He's a 17th century fop reduced in height and given a morbid fascination with death, and he is the most vocal and therefore the central linchpin of the phobic students. And all he does is whine, whine, whine.
The reason Mrs. Wellington was equally obnoxious as a character is that she stood in my mind for everything wrong with the School of Fear itself. Because she was obsessed with beauty pageants. Not fear, not dealing with fear, not teaching children, not even the money she is paid for her services: beauty pageants. And Casu Fragizu -- maggot cheese -- which she loves so much that she insists that every piece of food she eats be flavored with maggot cheese. Yeah, it didn't make sense to me, either, but there's that wackiness for the sake of wackiness. She calls the kids "contestants," and makes every piece of advice connect to being a beauty queen. She wears prodigious amounts of makeup, yet she allows Schmidty to put it on her for no good reason other than a vague joke about the old man's poor eyesight, and because it makes Mrs. Wellington quirkier. You'd think a woman obsessed with her own beauty, and a lifetime of beauty pageant experience, would wear makeup well, but apparently she's too quirky. Munchauser suffers the same fate: he is shown in the beginning of the book as the scariest, most ruthless lawyer imaginable -- it is he who keeps the School of Fear secret, by threatening legal action against anyone who whispers a word of it in public. But when he appears, he is a destitute compulsive gambler who talks about nothing but betting and trying to wheedle his way into Mrs. Wellington's fortune.
Oh, and then there's Abernathy. Mrs. Wellington's sole failure, the one child she could not make better (Apparently psychoanalysis with a beauty pageant theme couldn't reach this one child. All the others, though -- works perfectly.). That's all I can say about him, because even though he appears twice in the book and is talked about several times in very ominous tones, there is nothing else that happens concerning him. He's her failure. That's it.
So much time is spent on the characters that the plot suffers; there's a weak twist at the end, but the resolution of the phobias is a thorough letdown. Really the most interesting part of the book was that every chapter starts with the official name of a phobia, and after reading this book, I'm glad to know that I have hydrophobia and mottephobia. And that's all I'm glad about.
After all of that, I must add that some people will probably think the characters are funny, and in that case, they will probably like the book, because the characters are almost the only thing in it. So if you like reading about wacky characters in wacky situations, maybe you'll enjoy this one more than I did.
Thoughts:
Yeah, it was crap. First Vine book I didn't like. Had to happen, I guess.
4. Bigfoot: I Not Dead by Graham Roumieu 7/31 (40)
Pick:
I wanted something simple and mindless to read, because yesterday was a very hard day.
Story:
This book is a sort of comic strip: every two-page spread is a single stand-alone bit, combining art and writing to show a vignette about Bigfoot. Bigfoot is a savage man-animal, who has become a celebrity; the humor of the book is in the combination of animal traits and Hollywood sellout values. Bigfoot advises other forest beasts not to give their work away for free, because he regrets now the video of him "shaking his junk" on the internet from his youth; he also gives us the inside scoop on the other animals of the forest, because Bigfoot knows all the dirt -- apparently Danny, the Eastern Gray Squirrel, is a fuckwit. There's not an actual plot, just a collection of Bigfoot's musings and advice and memories. But of all the celebrity memoirs that get published every year, this is probably the only one I'll ever read -- and I have not doubt that it's the cream of the crop.
Thoughts:
It's pretty damn funny, though there are some poop jokes that are pretty dumb and some very uncomfortable off-color images -- I have no idea why the songbird Bigfoot interviews for his Action News segment has a large human penis, but it does. Hey, it probably seemed funny at the time. My favorite part? The off-Broadway musical based on Bigfoot's life. The wolverine neighbor was funny, too. And really, Bigfoot gives some good advice. My favorite piece of advice is this:
"Well, if want truth, Bigfoot have bad days too. Not always feel like rainbow and sparkle inside. When feeling blue always find good belly laugh and beat something to death brighten day. Just pick weakest in pack, stalk mercilessly, catch and bash all me blues into they face. Think, not so much helpless victim; rather, Moist Towelette For The Soul.
(Note: no eat thing after therapy kill, it now be full of evil spirit. Evil spirit taste like artificial watermelon. Nobody likes this.)"
33. Jim Butcher: Fool Moon
34. Christopher Moore: Fool
35. Daniel Wallace: Friends Like These
36. Kim Harrison: For a Few Demons More
Started A Friend of the Earth by T.C. Boyle; stopped because of the Sign.
Fool Moon
Pick:
I wanted to grab up my next Vine choice, since it sounds really interesting, but the last one was a wee bit of a slog, so I wanted something more fun, more casual, that I wouldn't have to worry terribly about reviewing -- because that last review was a real bitch to get right. So I went for the Simon R. Green Nightside book I just picked up -- I have three to read now, books 5-7 in the series -- but I wanted to check the ending of the previous book, which I read last year, because I remembered being pissed at the last line of book #4. I read it again, and then realized I didn't remember the background leading up to that line, so I looked back through the book a little. And realized I remembered almost nothing about the plot, even though it revealed quite a few things about the main character. And I said, "I'm going to have to read this again." At which point the wind wailed past the house, and the trees groaned like tortured souls; the sky turned black and I heard scrabbling in the wall like rats or locusts or the fingernails of the damned. And Toni turned to me with shocked eyes and said, "No! You can't! Dusty, don't do it -- you'll doom us all! NOOOOOOOO!!!!? and then ran from the room.
And I said, "Okay, fine, I won't read these then. Geez." And all the noises and portents stopped.
Then Toni, calm and serene once again, said, "Why don't you read a Harry Dresden book instead?"
So that's what I did.
True story.
Story:
Fool Moon might be the only Dresden book that isn't better than the one before it -- though that judgment will have to wait until I finish the series to become codified and definitive. It's a good book, but it's too damned busy.
There's that great scene near the beginning, when Harry and Murphy realize they are dealing with werewolves, and Harry asks Bob about them. It's great because Bob gives a wonderful answer, one that shows Butcher's imagination: there are several different kinds of werewolves. There are werewolves, who learn to transform themselves into wolves with magic; there are Hexenwulfs (Nice German usage, there), which are people who gain a magical talisman of some kind that allows them to transform into wolves; there are lycanthropes, which are people with the souls of beasts, who don't transform at all, but who can commit acts that might seem wolfish and who have some of the attributes of classic werewolves -- rapid healing, pack mentality, lose control around the full moon -- but are actually more like Viking berserkers; then there is the loup-garou, the most dangerous kind of werewolf, which is someone who has been cursed to turn into a wolf-like monster every full moon.
That's a great answer, which makes the old werewolf trope seem far more interesting and realistic than having werewolves adhere to the stereotypes. Butcher does the same thing with vampires, giving them three different breeds that each take on some, but not all, of the standard vampire attributes. The problem with the book is, every single kind of werewolf makes an appearance, along with one other kind that Bob doesn't mention: a wolf who has the mystical ability to transform into a human. Which is also damned clever.
But the sheer variety of werewolves is too much. It's like Butcher had a checklist and he made sure to hit every one: werewolves, Hexenwulfs, lycanthropes, loup-garou. Check, check, and double-check. It made it so there were too many bad guys -- especially since Gentleman Johnny Marcone is also involved -- too much danger, and it muddied up the waters and made it hard to enjoy. It also meant that things that would have made a great villain/enemy -- specifically the lycanthrope street gang -- get shorted, because there's not enough room in the story to really deal with them. The same goes for the werewolves, the Alphas, though at least they come back in subsequent books. The novel would have been better if he could have found a way to stick with the Hexenwulfs and the loup-garou.
Thoughts:
On the plus side, it's still a fun book and a good read. It was a nice break from Vine books, and I think I'll read the next one soon.
Fool
Pick:
Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday from Toni here's the newest book by your favorite author, Happy Birthday to Me!
And many moooooooooooooore!
Was it serendipity that I finished the Jim Butcher book on the morning of my birthday, when Toni gave me the newest book by Christopher Moore -- a story based on one of my all-time favorite literary characters, the Fool from King Lear? Or was it destiny? The will of the gods? Nah.
"As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport."
Story:
The book is brilliant, of course. The writing is hilarious -- right up there with Lamb and Dirty Job, much better than You Suck; this is one of Moore's best -- and the story is the right kind of multi-layered satire he does so well when he finds something he can sink his teeth into.
He said in his Author's note that he wanted to write about a jester because he loves writing rascals; when he asked his agent if he should do any random Fool or the Fool from Lear, she said, "Definitely Lear." I'm sure any fool would have worked fine, but I love that this one was based on the Shakespeare play. I won't say that Moore is anywhere near as good a writer as the Bard, but he has many of the same strengths: he can write a funny scene that has a touching undercurrent; he can switch from personal to universal from sentence to sentence and make them both work; he truly knows how to make a story his own. This is King Lear, but it's also not -- because it's Christopher Moore's King Lear, not William Shakespeare's.
Pocket is a wonderful character. I loved that we heard his entire life story, in flashback and out of order, because it all connects: his childhood and upbringing do much to explain the way he is and the way the other characters treat him; in addition, the way that Pocket's life has been intertwined with Lear's since before his birth gives a great view of the two sides of Lear: he is a cruel tyrant who deserves what he gets, and he is also a foolish old man who makes what would be an innocent mistake in anyone younger, but is either insanity or stupidity in him. I always felt that way about Shakespeare's Lear, and the character of Pocket gives a new lens to see Lear through, without changing the basic character of the king.
The other characters have been largely replaced with Moore's own: the women are classic Moore, smarter, wiser, more mature and much sexier than the men, except for the villainesses, who are still smarter than most of the men, but are cold and self-serving as well. The men are generally bumbling children, except for Pocket, and Kent, the one loyal man in the kingdom. Drool is a hilarious character, an excellent sidekick for Pocket, and Edmund makes a decent villain, though he could use some more fleshing out. The real villain, though, is Lear, and he is perfectly done -- and interestingly enough, he's not played humorously, even in this comic novel. Lear remains the same tragic, flawed fool he is in Shakespeare's play; this is much of what creates the multiple layers in the book, with the humor coming from the general cast, the serious notes from Lear and Cordelia, and Pocket working as the bridge between the two.
Exactly what a Fool should be.
Thoughts:
Great book. I loved it, I loved that it was the story of Lear with the right hero and the right ending. I do want to read Lear again, I think -- and I know I'll want to read this a second time, and a third, and probably more after that.
Friends Like These
Pick:
The last Vine Voice book I've got right now -- one apparently got lost in the mail. But I picked this one because I liked the idea, and because I looked up the author on Amazon UK and found that he has five bestselling books in Britain, including Yes Man (which the movie is based on). I love the concept, and I love that this guy started his own cult -- I'm going to have to look for that book now, too.
Amazon Review:
I'm sure that after reading this book, most people will want to imitate the author, and try to reconnect with old friends. I don't. I want to be Danny Wallace's friend, and have him come find me. Hopefully wearing a giant bunny head and a t-shirt with my face on it. And we'll say, "Potaaaatooooo!"
Wallace makes an excellent case for reconnecting with childhood friends. He has twelve that he seeks out, and though he does not have a joyous reunion with each and every one of them, he does have just such a reunion with most -- and the ones that don't work out quite so well are still a source of valuable insight. If I may simply list adjectives: the whole story is funny, poignant, and sweet, and heart-warming and thought-provoking as well. In fact, it is hard to say what is the most inspiring and fascinating part of this book: it could be the boundless optimism that informs both Wallace's actions and his writing; it could be the humor, which is simply wonderful -- there are many moments that made me smile, chortle, and even laugh out loud (a rarity when I read), but I think my favorite is Wallace's impression of a ten-year-old British boy's image of America. Apparently we all have guns, say things like "Hold the rye!" and use "a$$" in every sentence; the example given is the insult, "A$$ off!" Which I'm now going to start saying, of course. But the most fascinating part of the book could also be the insight into growing up and being a man. It is never preachy or artificial; it feels very much like a peek into someone else's mind as he goes through the watershed moment when he decides that he is ready to be a grownup, that he will not abandon his childish ways, but is ready to stop clinging to them. It's very sweet, and thoughtful, and, yes, inspiring.
The book is also a fantastic reminiscence about the 1980's and early 1990's, although the difference between a British boy's experience of youth and pop culture and my own American memories made it a little less than perfect, for me. But still: I remember the first time I heard Michael Jackson's music (It was "Billie Jean," in my case -- and I thought that light-up sidewalk was totally cool), and I remember being obsessed with "Ghostbusters," and I remember the Atari 2600 era and the rise of Nintendo, so there was a lot for me in this book. Even more than popular culture, though, the book is simply a tour through childhood and friendship, and those memories are universal. Anyone who has been a child, who had those short-lived but perfect friendships, with people who then disappeared from your life, should read this book. Anyone who worries about growing up, either too quickly or not quickly enough, should read this book. And really, anyone who likes a sweet, funny trip through the life of a bright, sensitive, quirky person -- you should read it, too.
Thoughts:
It didn't really make me want to track down my old friends. Partly because I have already looked up some of my old friends (Shoutout to Hotpants!), partly because I was never as social or as friend-oriented as this man seems to be. But it did make me want to reminisce with my old friends, to try to rebuild the memories of myself and of them at that age, and it gave me a clue (or maybe even an answer) to the question I've always had about memories: I don't recall very many specifics about my own childhood, and so many other people seem to remember more about their own lives than I know about my own. Maybe the details, the real specifics, need to be remembered through collaborators.
I also wondered, after reading this, why I didn't have the same crisis of confidence that Danny Wallace has just before his 30th birthday. Almost every person in the book has the same sort of issue with growing up and looking back at that same age, but I didn't. But then I remembered: I turned 30 in 2004. Which was the year I got married, after watching my wife go through more than a year of agonizing pain culminating in major abdominal surgery, and also the year we moved from California to Oregon, after our house in Escondido flooded when the pipes burst. My 29th year, when Wallace goes through his quest, was also when the 2003 San Diego wildfires happened, with fifty-foot-high flames within half a mile of my house. So maybe I was a little distracted.
For a Few Demons More
Pick:
Wanted to get back into my beloved fantasy books after reading a memoir, and I want to get through this series and finish reading the new one. Only one more book left to re-read.
Story:
This one has a strong story. Rachel has an incredibly powerful and turbulent artifact, and everybody comes after it, and her. Newt is the first to appear, and she shows Rachel (and the readers) that demons are much more than we might have thought, that many of the things we think they can't do, are simply things they don't do -- and Newt does them. After Rachel manages to get out of that pickle, with the help of Minias -- an interesting character, but I don't like that they played up Rachel's attraction to him. I know, she's attracted to dangerous men, but this is not a man, this is a demon: the association with Al and Newt should be enough to cool her ardor before the thought even crosses her mind. Is anybody really that much ruled by their gonads?
Oh, wait. Rachel wants to find a blood balance with Ivy, and even though she has not an inkling of homosexuality, she decides in this one that maybe a gay relationship, y'know, wouldn't be all bad. So apparently Rachel is completely ruled by her id, by her desire for complete and total pleasure. She's totally a Sim with the pleasure aspiration -- which would explain why she can be exasperating, just like Sims with the pleasure aspiration.
Anyway, there's the storyline with Trent's wedding, which is a hoot, especially the way it wraps up with Rachel coming to the wedding on a city bus, and not for the expected reasons; I'm extremely happy with how the Piscary storyline wraps up, but not for the events with Kisten. It annoys me that Kisten is so absent from this book, even with the explanation for it. I sort of think Harrison didn't know what to do with the relationship between Rachel and Kisten, because Rachel is not supposed to be seriously involved -- pleasure, not commitment -- but Kisten is too perfect for her in too many ways, just because of the way the character was written. So I wonder if she went this way with it to get out of the corner she wrote herself into. The mystery will be solved in the new book, when I get to that one -- so we'll just wait for that.
Thoughts:
This one was better than the last, except I don't like Rachel's confusion from kissing Ivy -- I think her sexuality should be pretty straightforward, since she is old enough and experienced enough, and adventurous enough, to know if she has interest in women, and I don't think any kiss no matter how good can overcome one's natural inclinations -- and I'm not happy with the Kisten story yet. Though reading this when I know the ending showed me that Harrison did an excellent job of writing Rachel's mental block concerning what happened.
When it's time to change, then it's time to change!
Going to a new system here. My goal now is to read all of the unread books I currently own, before I go out and buy any more. Exceptions will include the Wheel of Time, new installments on favorite series, maybe a graphic novel or two. I will also continue the re-reads I started on Butcher and Harrison, leading up to the new books.
But from here, I won't be numbering from the beginning of the year. I will be numbering from the Sign, the day my bookshelf collapsed under the weight of the books that I kept accumulating faster than I could read them -- a habit I always criticized my mother for, when she did the same with newspapers that she would save to look through, which ended up in six-foot piles of moldering yellow fire hazard. Well, I'm not going to do the same with my books. I'm going to read what I've got before I get more, and I'm going to get rid of all of the ones I don't finish. I am going to include the unfinished ones in the count, because now I'm trying to count just how many unread books I bought before I did this. But for the sake of my sanity and in order to not overcomplicate this, I'm going to keep the total for the year count in parentheses with the ones I finish.
So:
1. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (Unfinished)
Pick:
The story sounded interesting when I picked this one up, and it was very popular when it was new, so I've always wanted to read it. I've had it for probably two years without touching it until now because it is a massive tome: 800 pages in hardback, small print. I picked it first because it was the heaviest book on the shelf.
Story:
Too heavy. Too slow. 200 pages in four or five days, and I hadn't gotten to the main story line yet. I looked at the dust jacket again, and the story still sounded interesting, but the description of the book called it "exquisitely detailed" and "magisterial." Yeah. Sounds riveting, doesn't it? Enough already.
Thoughts:
The author was too self- indulgent. I think of long backstories for my characters, too -- but they stay in my notes, where they belong. The stuff that gets into the book is the stuff that is necessary for the story I'm telling, not a cycle of stories like a complete mythology of a time and a place. She picked scenes to include as if she was creating an entire world, but the story line is just a story line. Or maybe the problem is that the place she is creating is just too fucking boring all by itself -- high society 19th century England not being the hotbed of action-packed excitement. A whole lot of visiting and etiquette, fashion and frippery. This thing made the Silmarillion seem like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
2. Heck: Where the Bad Kids Go by Dale E. Basye 7/21 (37)
Pick:
I stopped reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell because it was too dense and slow and boring, so I wanted to go for something easy and fun and light. Hey, how about a book about where bad kids go when they die?
Story:
Milton and Marlo Fauster. Milton because John Milton wrote Paradise Lost about Lucifer's fall from Heaven, Marlo because Christopher Marlowe wrote a famous version of Johann Goethe's Faust, about a man who sells his soul to the devil; Faustus because of same. These are cheesy names. They are not good names. They are not good because a large number of people wouldn't get the references, and cheesy because the people who do get the references don't think these names are clever. Anyone who does think these names are clever had it ruined when the author included a small ferret named Lucky as the pet of Milton, and who had Lucky wear a collar that had a small set of dice hanging from it, and who had Lucky lose that collar solely so that he could have Milton post a sign that said, "Milton's Pair of Dice: Lost."
That is a bad pun. It isn't clever, it's totally labored, and it isn't funny. It also repeats the same joke made by choosing this kid's name. And that's the best example I can give of this book.
The concept is wonderful. The adventure story isn't too bad, really, though there's some things that make no sense whatsoever, and there's far too much time spent on poop. But the writing is not good, and the humor is terrible: dull, cliche, lame, reliant on gross-outs that aren't too terribly gross and puns and references as irritating as the names of the two main characters and Lucky's collar.
Another example: the idea here is that these two kids die, and because they are bad kids, they get darned to Heck, a piece of Limbo a step short of Purgatory, where bad kids go to pay for their sins. Actually, only Marlo is a bad kid; Milton gets dragged down with her because she made him her unknowing, unwilling accomplice. Beggar the fact that even the Old Testament God wouldn't have damned the kid for that, it happens. And we could live with that -- except Marlo thinks it's funny, and Milton is vaguely annoyed with her for a page before he forgets about it. No, I don;'t think so. If my sibling got me killed (Also Marlo's fault, largely) and sent to an afterlife of torture, I wouldn't think it was funny, and I wouldn't just let it go. Which makes these characters unrealistic, and since we are already suspending our disbelief for the sake of accepting the existence of Heck, there's very little left in this book that we can believe in, now that we've lost both the setting and the characters. Oh, and the plot doesn't work either, but I don't want to give that away. Anyway, the pun I was going to describe is the name of the demon in charge of Heck, which is ostensibly a school (though that makes no sense and isn't well handled in the book, either), and thus she is the principal. Her name is Bea "Elsa" Bubb. Get it? Beelzebub, Lord of Flies, one of the chief lieutenants of Hell or another name for Satan himself, depending on your source? Well, if you didn't get it, don't worry -- the full name, Bea "Elsa" Bubb, is repeated throughout the novel. I must have been forced to read that awkward phrase fifty times. Rarely Principal Bubb, never Elsa; over and over again, Bea "Elsa" Bubb. A joke that wasn't that good the first time and was annoying every time after that, repeated fifty times in a two-hundred page book. I felt like I was in Heck. And I wanted out.
Thoughts:
As Toni said, so I repeat: this is a great idea, I just wish someone else had written it, because this guy sucks. We'll try reading the second installment and see if he has taken any writing classes in the meantime.
3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon 7/23 (38)
Pick:
After a pair of clunkers, I had to read something good. So I went for a book that I was sure would be well-written; luckily for me, this time I was right.
Story:
Christopher John Francis Boone hates metaphors, because they are a kind of lie. He doesn't like lies or people who tell them. So for his sake, I will try to refrain from reporting anything about this book but the facts.
Christopher is special. It is never spelled out in the novel, but I believe he is autistic. His symptoms and behaviors match that diagnosis, to the best of my knowledge. I do not know if he has Asperger's Syndrome or one of the other autism spectrum disorders that have been recently described, because I do not know very much about autism. I do not believe that autism has increased in frequency lately; I think the diagnosis is more common now than it used to be, but the syndrome does not occur in a greater percentage of the population than it ever has. That is my opinion. It is also a tangent, because it is not the main purpose of this writing.
Christopher's neighbor had a dog named Wellington. Wellington was murdered, stabbed with a garden fork. Christopher discovered the body. Because Christopher admires policemen and Sherlock Holmes, and because he likes dogs more than people in most cases, Christopher decides to investigate the dog's killing. In the course of his investigation, he discovers many things other than who killed Wellington (He also discovers who killed Wellington.). Some of the things he discovers are very surprising, because they are not expected. Some of them are very sad, because the things that happen make Christopher very upset, and that made me upset when I read this book, because I liked Christopher. It made me feel sad for him. Some of the things that Christopher discovers are not so sad, and some turn out to be very happy. I should say that things that happen make me happy, because the events themselves are not happy or sad, they are simply a series of occurrences.
It is a very fun book to read, and a very good look at an unusual mind. I enjoyed it very much.
Thoughts:
It's not easy to write like that and make it come out right, and I'm sure I screwed it up. But Mark Haddon didn't, so I really did like this book. I even liked the maths. Though I hated both of Christopher's parents, the big idiots. I liked Siobhan, though -- but what really matters is, I really liked Christopher.
** The Outlaw Demon Wails by Kim Harrison (re-read) (39)
Pick:
Last one before I read the new book, which I'm excited about -- and I have to get off the TBR shelf. I also want to finish this series and get it out of the way, and move on to other books I want to read. Oh yeah: and I do like Rachel and Jenks and Al and Ceri and Quen -- but not Trent, the big dipstick -- and I wanted to read about all of them again.
Story:
I wrote this up just last year, so I don't have a lot to add. It was easier to follow having the rest of the series fresh in my mind; I remember finding the Kisten subplot a little annoying in this one because I didn't like how everything that Rachel and Ivy did revolved around Kisten's death. I know how much it affects your life when somebody close to you dies (especially today) but the problem with this one is that they don't make any progress. They don't decide to deal with it, they don't come to terms with it, and while Rachel recovers one vague memory -- and finds out that she probably doesn't want to try the spell that will bring back other memories (Pandora Charm -- good name) -- and Ivy tries to investigate throughout the book, it doesn't go anywhere. At the end of the book we're as much in the dark as to what happened to Kisten, and what they will do about it, as we were at the beginning. It does make sense to me this way, because this book deals with all the other loose ends: the elves get what they want, Rachel has (presumably) come to a final settlement with Al, and we find out what seems to be the final solution to the puzzle of witches and demons and Rachel's blood disease. Now that all that's handled, I know from Toni that the next book deals with Kisten's death, which is completely resolved by the end. But in the process of dealing with this stuff, the Kisten stuff kept coming up over and over and over again, and it made me irritated with their grief. Not a good feeling.
Thoughts:
I did like this one more than the two before it; I hate the one with the almighty Piscary doing anything he wants, with absolutely no repercussions. I thought Rynn Cormel's appearance here was interesting; it was good to find out the limitation on undead vampires -- glad to know they actually have a limitation -- and I do like their need for love and inability to create it. That makes sense. But otherwise, the vampires are still way overpowered here. Ah, well. These things seem to get dealt with, after all. I wonder: after she's whacked Piscary, dealt with Kisten's killer and come to terms with Al, who's going to be the major villain?
Newt, anyone?
** School of Fear by Gitty Daneshvari 7/31 (39)
Pick:
Vine choice; I liked the cover and the concept. Short and simple after a long read.
Amazon review:
I picked this book out because I liked the cover art (That's right -- I judge books by their covers. What's it to ya?) and I decided to read it because I very much liked the concept: I thought a lot could be done with the idea of getting a group of children to get over their fears. I was hoping to see some basic psychoanalysis, some exploration of where phobias come from, and some depictions of various ways to get over them. I was hoping that, since this is a children's/YA book, the exploration of phobias and their treatments would be basic enough for me to understand, and also fictionalized and imaginative enough to keep me interested.
Unfortunately, what the author seemed to want to do was show, over and over and over again, how strange and quirky someone can be when he or she has a severe phobia and lives in an imagined world. Two-thirds of this book was descriptions of the characters' quirks, their strange behavior and appearance and obsessions based on their pathologies; unfortunately, each character is fairly flat and simplified, and so the descriptions of their eccentricities become very repetitive, very fast. The worst part is that when the phobias were insufficient to make the characters wacky enough, they were simply given wacky and eccentric traits, just because.
There are eight main characters if you count the dog (and I do). Four of them are the kids with their phobias: Madeleine is afraid of bugs, Lulu is claustrophobic, Garrison is afraid of drowning, and Theo is afraid of death. Then there are the three adults in charge of the School of Fear: Mrs. Wellington, the headmistress; Schmidty, her handyman and major domo; and Munchauser, her lawyer. Mrs. Wellington's beloved bulldog, Macaroni, is the most likable of all of these, mainly because he's just a dog who eats too much. With the rest of them, it got extremely tiresome to read about Madeleine's constant overuse of bug spray, and Garrison's copious sweating (inserted presumably because he could not freak out about large bodies of water at all times), and Lulu's annoying sarcasm and eye-rolling (Again, her claustrophobia is not general enough for her to be dealing with that all the time, so instead she says "Whatever" in almost every conversation. and yes, that is like many teenagers, but these are not realistic characters, and if you want to include one example of verisimilitude -- why that one? Whatever.). The worst, though, were Theo and Mrs. Wellington: Theo because he is made obnoxious in every way, whiny and weak and also precocious and very, very precious. He's a 17th century fop reduced in height and given a morbid fascination with death, and he is the most vocal and therefore the central linchpin of the phobic students. And all he does is whine, whine, whine.
The reason Mrs. Wellington was equally obnoxious as a character is that she stood in my mind for everything wrong with the School of Fear itself. Because she was obsessed with beauty pageants. Not fear, not dealing with fear, not teaching children, not even the money she is paid for her services: beauty pageants. And Casu Fragizu -- maggot cheese -- which she loves so much that she insists that every piece of food she eats be flavored with maggot cheese. Yeah, it didn't make sense to me, either, but there's that wackiness for the sake of wackiness. She calls the kids "contestants," and makes every piece of advice connect to being a beauty queen. She wears prodigious amounts of makeup, yet she allows Schmidty to put it on her for no good reason other than a vague joke about the old man's poor eyesight, and because it makes Mrs. Wellington quirkier. You'd think a woman obsessed with her own beauty, and a lifetime of beauty pageant experience, would wear makeup well, but apparently she's too quirky. Munchauser suffers the same fate: he is shown in the beginning of the book as the scariest, most ruthless lawyer imaginable -- it is he who keeps the School of Fear secret, by threatening legal action against anyone who whispers a word of it in public. But when he appears, he is a destitute compulsive gambler who talks about nothing but betting and trying to wheedle his way into Mrs. Wellington's fortune.
Oh, and then there's Abernathy. Mrs. Wellington's sole failure, the one child she could not make better (Apparently psychoanalysis with a beauty pageant theme couldn't reach this one child. All the others, though -- works perfectly.). That's all I can say about him, because even though he appears twice in the book and is talked about several times in very ominous tones, there is nothing else that happens concerning him. He's her failure. That's it.
So much time is spent on the characters that the plot suffers; there's a weak twist at the end, but the resolution of the phobias is a thorough letdown. Really the most interesting part of the book was that every chapter starts with the official name of a phobia, and after reading this book, I'm glad to know that I have hydrophobia and mottephobia. And that's all I'm glad about.
After all of that, I must add that some people will probably think the characters are funny, and in that case, they will probably like the book, because the characters are almost the only thing in it. So if you like reading about wacky characters in wacky situations, maybe you'll enjoy this one more than I did.
Thoughts:
Yeah, it was crap. First Vine book I didn't like. Had to happen, I guess.
4. Bigfoot: I Not Dead by Graham Roumieu 7/31 (40)
Pick:
I wanted something simple and mindless to read, because yesterday was a very hard day.
Story:
This book is a sort of comic strip: every two-page spread is a single stand-alone bit, combining art and writing to show a vignette about Bigfoot. Bigfoot is a savage man-animal, who has become a celebrity; the humor of the book is in the combination of animal traits and Hollywood sellout values. Bigfoot advises other forest beasts not to give their work away for free, because he regrets now the video of him "shaking his junk" on the internet from his youth; he also gives us the inside scoop on the other animals of the forest, because Bigfoot knows all the dirt -- apparently Danny, the Eastern Gray Squirrel, is a fuckwit. There's not an actual plot, just a collection of Bigfoot's musings and advice and memories. But of all the celebrity memoirs that get published every year, this is probably the only one I'll ever read -- and I have not doubt that it's the cream of the crop.
Thoughts:
It's pretty damn funny, though there are some poop jokes that are pretty dumb and some very uncomfortable off-color images -- I have no idea why the songbird Bigfoot interviews for his Action News segment has a large human penis, but it does. Hey, it probably seemed funny at the time. My favorite part? The off-Broadway musical based on Bigfoot's life. The wolverine neighbor was funny, too. And really, Bigfoot gives some good advice. My favorite piece of advice is this:
"Well, if want truth, Bigfoot have bad days too. Not always feel like rainbow and sparkle inside. When feeling blue always find good belly laugh and beat something to death brighten day. Just pick weakest in pack, stalk mercilessly, catch and bash all me blues into they face. Think, not so much helpless victim; rather, Moist Towelette For The Soul.
(Note: no eat thing after therapy kill, it now be full of evil spirit. Evil spirit taste like artificial watermelon. Nobody likes this.)"
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
The Rest of June (And a few hours of July)
I dunno why I started the count over; I think I remembered all of the books I've read that I missed a proper write-up for, so I've gone back to what should be the correct total number. The Magicians is #32 for the year. Here's the last four for June, including the one I finished today, the first of July. Hey, I read most of it in June.
A Fistful of Charms
by Kim Harrison
Pick:
Wanted to knock another book off my TBR list, wanted to read something a little sweeter than all the horrible mangled bloody death of Anita Blake. Maybe not the best choice. Heh
Story:
Toni says this is her least favorite book in the series, and I can see why. Rachel gets pretty damned annoying, pretty damned fast. The opening scene, when she gets jumped by the Weres because she is David's Alpha, starts off the annoyance, though the Weres are the annoying part of that one. What the hell is their problem? Why can't David do what he wants? Why do they have to take it out on Rachel? Smug bastards. From there we go to Rachel and Kisten, and Rachel is immediately annoying because she teases Kisten by mixing their scents; more of that whole need-danger-for-sexy-feeling thing of Rachel's, combined with her unconditional demand that everyone around her have all of the willpower she apparently doesn't have, so they can take up the slack and keep her safe from her own stupidity. Then it's Jenks being pissy over the whole Trent-elf-secret thing. Then it's Rachel freaking out about the smut on her soul from twisting the curses for herself and Jenks.
Then the book is good for a while. I like the part when Jenks is learning how to be big, when they rescue Jax and find his new kitty cat, and when they go after the Weres on the island and Rachel wins the fight against their Alpha.
But then Ivy shows up. Which is fine at first, until she and Rachel fool around with Rachel's blood. That scene, and the aftermath, are just totally obnoxious. But not as obnoxious as DeLavine (Whose name I hate, because it reminds me too much of Laverne and Shirley, and that just isn't intimidating and vampire-y) with his arrogant attempt to claim Rachel simply because he's more powerful than Ivy. You know, I understand that the undead vampires are utterly inhuman because they are dead, and they are also very powerful. But nobody can get away with being that in-your-face obnoxious, not and expect to live a thousand years. Not when you're unconscious and trapped inside during the day. None of these fuckers would be alive, because all of their underlings would have turned on them. Like Piscary -- who also has a terrible and non-intimidating name -- and how much he fucks with Ivy. Tell me somebody wouldn't have staked his undead ass. So on one level, it's good, because clearly the characters that are supposed to bother me do so quite successfully. On another level, I hate those goddamn vampires and I want them all dead. Which doesn't fit well with Ivy and Kisten being sympathetic characters. Anyway, then Rachel starts whining about killing Peter (and this is after a good amount of whining about taking Brimstone even though it's more medicine than drug and she needs it if she's going to share blood), the living vampire who has agreed to take Nick's place in the fake accident, even though it was his choice to do this and it isn't freaking up to her, and screw all that "You have so much to live for!" jazz. This coming from a young, healthy, independent woman in a loving relationship with very dear friends. Yeah, YOU'VE got plenty to live for. Doesn't mean Peter does, ya twit.
But then I like the death hoax and I like when Jenks comes back to the firm. So it ended okay.
Thoughts:
I may skip this one next time I read through all of these. Probably why I wrote so much.
Sandman Slim
by Richard Kadrey
Pick:
Vine Voice choice, picked because it sounded badass.
Amazon Review:
Sandman Slim is metal. By that I mean: he is equal parts destructive rage, self-loathing melancholy, stubborn stick-it-to-the-man rebellion -- always willing to fight despite the futility of it, just to spit out a tooth and see blood on his knuckles -- and ironic amused nihilism. It wasn't always the most pleasant book to read, but Judas Priest, it was METTULL.
First impression: the writing is brilliant. The ideas are fantastic, original and intriguing and yet close enough to known mythology/religion/fantasy concepts to be tangible. Slim is a former magician named Stark who was sent to Hell where he becomes an arena fighter for the amusement of the damned. He survives, which nobody expected, and so graduates from gladiator to goon: he goes to work for Azazel, one of Lucifer's generals, killing Azazel's enemies for him. Azazel gives him the best tool an assassin could have: the key to the Room of Thirteen Doors, which can open to anywhere in the universe that Stark needs to go. Stark eventually turns on his master, moving from hellhound to loose cannon, and he escapes from what he calls Downtown, going to an even worse place -- Los Angeles. There he begins work on his own pet project: the murder of the people who sent him to Hell, and killed his lost love. And all of that is background.
Second impression: the characters are generally excellent, particularly the bit players. Stark has one friend still around, an alchemist named Vidocq, and he meets a few more, including Carlos, his new favorite bartender, and Allegra, his employee and supernatural intern. The villains are not so interesting, though Stark's unique perspective makes enemies out of those who should be allies and vice-versa; but the main bad guys, the true enemies that Stark spends the book hunting, are a bit of a letdown. They're either too bad or not bad enough. But the reason for that is:
Third impression: the story is stuck in a bit of limbo. On one level, it seemed the author was trying to trying to begin a series, and so some things happen to lay down a foundation for an ongoing story; on another level, the author tried to make this book a full-speed head-on train wreck of an action scene. So at times the book moved slowly, establishing Stark's character and motives, giving him time to ponder things and explore the world around him and his place in it -- and at times he was going from fight to fight, each time against bigger and badder monsters, until the final fight scene takes place (figuratively) on the field called Armageddon. The problem with this is that the two levels didn't mesh: the enemies and the specific problem are too big, and the characters' lives are too small. Either level would have worked just fine, because both are done well, but it was hard to reconcile Stark driving around smoking and eating donuts, getting crushes on every punk rock girl he sees (Hey, he's been in Hell for eleven years), with the end of the world. The resolution, which does leave room for a sequel, can't help but be an anti-climax.
Final impression: Great idea, good characters, great writing -- okay story. If this becomes a series and Sandman Slim finds his niche, watch out.
Thoughts:
Like I said: stuck between two different kinds of book, occasionally annoying to read, but generally pretty good. It wraps up really well apart from the anti-climax with Stark's main enemy. The fight scenes are excellent, especially the last one. The author really should have kept it small -- I keep thinking of the first Harry Dresden book, which introduces all of these large elements and enemies, the White Council, Johnny Marcone, and so forth -- but only resolves the conflict with this one little guy, the Shadowman, and solves one problem of Dresden's, the Doom of Damocles. To build a good setup for a series, you have to keep it small in the first book. Sandman Slim doesn't.
Dead and Gone
by Charlaine Harris
Pick:
I needed Sookie. I love these books, and it's the new one and we've had it for like a month and I hadn't read it yet. Of course, I still haven't read the new Rachel Morgan or the new Harry Dresden, and I have a hundred other books to read, not counting all my new Vine Voice books with their fast turnaround time. Don't care. Wanted Sookie.
Story:
Wow, this one got pretty damned bleak. I mean, you have Arlene finally leaving the bar because of her racism; you've got a crucifixion; you've got three important characters dying and one at death's door, and you've got the main character being horribly, brutally tortured -- and now, methinks, brought right to the edge of being a vampire. That comment at the end makes me think that if Sookie dies, she won't stay dead for long.
I like that the Weres are out; I look forward to seeing how it works from here. I like that Sookie has to deal with her growing renown, though I fear for her ability to keep her small happy life. I like that her little cousin is starting to need her -- I love that he told his father's girlfriend that he knew she didn't really like him, and she should stop picturing his daddy without any clothes on -- and I'm really looking forward to that storyline picking up in the next book. I like the revelation we got about Sookie's past, and I like how the Faerie stuff gets resolved in this book. I wonder how much of this book's action was the author's reaction to the criticism from the last book about the Were war fizzling out with a minimum of violence. Because this book had all the violence you could need. Though I'm sure that people will now complain about that. And even though he pisses me off -- stupid high-handed vampire with his little knife ceremony! -- I'm actually very glad that Sookie is moving forward with Eric. Quinn needs to get over it and move on. Yeah, I understand that Sookie's the best -- but she doesn't want you, dude. Find somebody else. Pouting and begging? Not going to win fair maiden's heart.
Thoughts:
Yay Sookie!
The Magicians
by Lev Grossman
Pick:
Amazon Vine book, picked at the same time as Sandman Slim. I read this one second because it was more daunting, but I read it now because I want to knock off my Vine choices -- I need to have 75% of them reviewed before I can order more, so the more I review, the more new things I can pick off of the newsletters, and after I picked these two books it turns out that you can also pick incredibly cool electronics and such, stuff like digital cameras and MP3 players, but I couldn't because I already had two books waiting to review and only two done. So now I will have reviewed four Vine books, and I've got two more to go -- and then I'll be able to pick three items, because even if I have two waiting, I'll have reviewed six out of eight, and when the new newsletter comes, I'll be able to pick. So I want to get through these. Plus this one still sounds very interesting.
Amazon Review:
Stop thinking this is a fantasy book. I know, I know, it's called The Magicians, the plot synopsis references all three of the most famous fantasy series and describes a handful of familiar fantasy tropes, including the school of magic and the fairy tale land come to actual life. But forget all of that. I have read more fantasy books than I can remember -- I'm named for a character in perhaps the most famous fantasy series of all time -- and I'm telling you: The Magicians is not a fantasy.
It has fantastic elements, yes. There is magic; there is a school for magic, where the characters learn to cast spells, using hand gestures and arcane language and strange mystical components -- Ziploc bag full of mutton fat, anyone? -- and there is a voyage from this world to another, a land of naiads and fauns and magical speaking animals, gods and demons, kings and queens, quests and wishes. But this book is something very different from the usual fantasy novel: in The Magicians, Lev Grossman has done something unusual, and remarkable, perhaps even unique: this is a grown-up fantasy. This book is to fantasy what The Grapes of Wrath is to travel books, what The Metamorphosis is to self-help: so much more depressing and visceral and funny and horrifying, and genuine, and fascinating, and hard to read and therefore valuable, that it doesn't belong in the same category despite sharing some central traits. The setting is imagined, and there are supernatural things that happen, but make no mistake: this is a serious novel.
Where most fantasy books provide an escape from our reality, this book does not: the characters are too close to plain old humanity, flawed, contradictory, foolish and foolhardy, to stand in as idealized versions of ourselves. In point of fact, the moral of this book is that escape is not only impossible, but dangerous and harmful to attempt. The hero, Quentin Coldwater, attempts to escape every serious situation he faces, and every time, he ends up worse off than he would have been if he had just been able to deal with it, honestly and sincerely. But his response to his worsened circumstances is to try to escape again -- with predictable results. Every step Quentin takes is the wrong one, and every step sinks him deeper and deeper into a quagmire. The book gets hard to read: not because the writing is anything less than excellent, as it is top notch from first page to last, but because the urge to reach into the page and slap, shake, and eventually throttle the main character becomes overwhelming. But that desire, that feeling, should be familiar to every adult who has thought back on his or her life, and shook his or her head, thinking, "Why did I do that? How could I be that stupid?" That desire to smack Quentin is no different from the desire to smack our younger selves.
The real triumph of this book, however, is that it is not only a serious novel, despite what I have been saying. Grossman is able to describe a world of wonder and imagination, and populate it with characters who are utterly unworthy of the magic all around them, who appreciate nothing, who completely flub their great chance -- just like I would have done if I lived through this experience, just as most of us do with our great chances in our real, mundane, unfantastic lives, which are also as full of wonder as any dreamed by a teller of tales. And because the characters are so real, so easy to relate to, it makes the fantasy seem just as real -- which makes the real world just as fantastic. Brakebills reminded me of my own college experience, and yet it is a magical place. Fillory is indeed a fairy tale land come to life in this book, and I found myself wishing that I could believe I would have handled Fillory better than Quentin does -- but knowing that I would have done almost precisely the same things, made the same choices and the same mistakes.
I won't say that this is a great book, on par with Of Mice and Men and Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird, but I will say that it is closer to those than it is to The Hobbit or the Xanth books. If you are a fan of literature, of thinking about your reading, then you must get this book, especially if you enjoy fantasy. If you are just looking for an escape, look elsewhere -- because this is not a fantasy. Or at least, it isn't only a fantasy. It's a wonder.
Thoughts:
I actually started to despise Quentin, and the reason is quite clear: I made many of the same choices in my own life, for many of the same reasons, and with many of the same results. Up until the point when there was a situation that Quentin got wrong, that I got right: because I knew it when I met the woman of my dreams, and I made sure I never screwed it up. I wanted that to be one of a hundred things that Quentin gets wrong that I got right, or that I would have gotten right if I were in the same situation, but it was maybe the only thing. Stupid kid. Stupid book, making me think about stuff, think about myself and my life and my shortcomings. Stupid brilliant author. Oh, one funny note: I'm reading this, and I'm thinking it's a fabulous idea and the writing is really wonderful (this was before it got annoying, of course), and at first I was thinking, Dammit, why can't I write like that? Then I looked on the back of the book: Lev Grossman is a senior editor and the chief book critic for Time magazine, and the man holds degrees in comparative literature from Yale AND Harvard.
Then I thought, Oh. That's why I can't write like that.
A Fistful of Charms
by Kim Harrison
Pick:
Wanted to knock another book off my TBR list, wanted to read something a little sweeter than all the horrible mangled bloody death of Anita Blake. Maybe not the best choice. Heh
Story:
Toni says this is her least favorite book in the series, and I can see why. Rachel gets pretty damned annoying, pretty damned fast. The opening scene, when she gets jumped by the Weres because she is David's Alpha, starts off the annoyance, though the Weres are the annoying part of that one. What the hell is their problem? Why can't David do what he wants? Why do they have to take it out on Rachel? Smug bastards. From there we go to Rachel and Kisten, and Rachel is immediately annoying because she teases Kisten by mixing their scents; more of that whole need-danger-for-sexy-feeling thing of Rachel's, combined with her unconditional demand that everyone around her have all of the willpower she apparently doesn't have, so they can take up the slack and keep her safe from her own stupidity. Then it's Jenks being pissy over the whole Trent-elf-secret thing. Then it's Rachel freaking out about the smut on her soul from twisting the curses for herself and Jenks.
Then the book is good for a while. I like the part when Jenks is learning how to be big, when they rescue Jax and find his new kitty cat, and when they go after the Weres on the island and Rachel wins the fight against their Alpha.
But then Ivy shows up. Which is fine at first, until she and Rachel fool around with Rachel's blood. That scene, and the aftermath, are just totally obnoxious. But not as obnoxious as DeLavine (Whose name I hate, because it reminds me too much of Laverne and Shirley, and that just isn't intimidating and vampire-y) with his arrogant attempt to claim Rachel simply because he's more powerful than Ivy. You know, I understand that the undead vampires are utterly inhuman because they are dead, and they are also very powerful. But nobody can get away with being that in-your-face obnoxious, not and expect to live a thousand years. Not when you're unconscious and trapped inside during the day. None of these fuckers would be alive, because all of their underlings would have turned on them. Like Piscary -- who also has a terrible and non-intimidating name -- and how much he fucks with Ivy. Tell me somebody wouldn't have staked his undead ass. So on one level, it's good, because clearly the characters that are supposed to bother me do so quite successfully. On another level, I hate those goddamn vampires and I want them all dead. Which doesn't fit well with Ivy and Kisten being sympathetic characters. Anyway, then Rachel starts whining about killing Peter (and this is after a good amount of whining about taking Brimstone even though it's more medicine than drug and she needs it if she's going to share blood), the living vampire who has agreed to take Nick's place in the fake accident, even though it was his choice to do this and it isn't freaking up to her, and screw all that "You have so much to live for!" jazz. This coming from a young, healthy, independent woman in a loving relationship with very dear friends. Yeah, YOU'VE got plenty to live for. Doesn't mean Peter does, ya twit.
But then I like the death hoax and I like when Jenks comes back to the firm. So it ended okay.
Thoughts:
I may skip this one next time I read through all of these. Probably why I wrote so much.
Sandman Slim
by Richard Kadrey
Pick:
Vine Voice choice, picked because it sounded badass.
Amazon Review:
Sandman Slim is metal. By that I mean: he is equal parts destructive rage, self-loathing melancholy, stubborn stick-it-to-the-man rebellion -- always willing to fight despite the futility of it, just to spit out a tooth and see blood on his knuckles -- and ironic amused nihilism. It wasn't always the most pleasant book to read, but Judas Priest, it was METTULL.
First impression: the writing is brilliant. The ideas are fantastic, original and intriguing and yet close enough to known mythology/religion/fantasy concepts to be tangible. Slim is a former magician named Stark who was sent to Hell where he becomes an arena fighter for the amusement of the damned. He survives, which nobody expected, and so graduates from gladiator to goon: he goes to work for Azazel, one of Lucifer's generals, killing Azazel's enemies for him. Azazel gives him the best tool an assassin could have: the key to the Room of Thirteen Doors, which can open to anywhere in the universe that Stark needs to go. Stark eventually turns on his master, moving from hellhound to loose cannon, and he escapes from what he calls Downtown, going to an even worse place -- Los Angeles. There he begins work on his own pet project: the murder of the people who sent him to Hell, and killed his lost love. And all of that is background.
Second impression: the characters are generally excellent, particularly the bit players. Stark has one friend still around, an alchemist named Vidocq, and he meets a few more, including Carlos, his new favorite bartender, and Allegra, his employee and supernatural intern. The villains are not so interesting, though Stark's unique perspective makes enemies out of those who should be allies and vice-versa; but the main bad guys, the true enemies that Stark spends the book hunting, are a bit of a letdown. They're either too bad or not bad enough. But the reason for that is:
Third impression: the story is stuck in a bit of limbo. On one level, it seemed the author was trying to trying to begin a series, and so some things happen to lay down a foundation for an ongoing story; on another level, the author tried to make this book a full-speed head-on train wreck of an action scene. So at times the book moved slowly, establishing Stark's character and motives, giving him time to ponder things and explore the world around him and his place in it -- and at times he was going from fight to fight, each time against bigger and badder monsters, until the final fight scene takes place (figuratively) on the field called Armageddon. The problem with this is that the two levels didn't mesh: the enemies and the specific problem are too big, and the characters' lives are too small. Either level would have worked just fine, because both are done well, but it was hard to reconcile Stark driving around smoking and eating donuts, getting crushes on every punk rock girl he sees (Hey, he's been in Hell for eleven years), with the end of the world. The resolution, which does leave room for a sequel, can't help but be an anti-climax.
Final impression: Great idea, good characters, great writing -- okay story. If this becomes a series and Sandman Slim finds his niche, watch out.
Thoughts:
Like I said: stuck between two different kinds of book, occasionally annoying to read, but generally pretty good. It wraps up really well apart from the anti-climax with Stark's main enemy. The fight scenes are excellent, especially the last one. The author really should have kept it small -- I keep thinking of the first Harry Dresden book, which introduces all of these large elements and enemies, the White Council, Johnny Marcone, and so forth -- but only resolves the conflict with this one little guy, the Shadowman, and solves one problem of Dresden's, the Doom of Damocles. To build a good setup for a series, you have to keep it small in the first book. Sandman Slim doesn't.
Dead and Gone
by Charlaine Harris
Pick:
I needed Sookie. I love these books, and it's the new one and we've had it for like a month and I hadn't read it yet. Of course, I still haven't read the new Rachel Morgan or the new Harry Dresden, and I have a hundred other books to read, not counting all my new Vine Voice books with their fast turnaround time. Don't care. Wanted Sookie.
Story:
Wow, this one got pretty damned bleak. I mean, you have Arlene finally leaving the bar because of her racism; you've got a crucifixion; you've got three important characters dying and one at death's door, and you've got the main character being horribly, brutally tortured -- and now, methinks, brought right to the edge of being a vampire. That comment at the end makes me think that if Sookie dies, she won't stay dead for long.
I like that the Weres are out; I look forward to seeing how it works from here. I like that Sookie has to deal with her growing renown, though I fear for her ability to keep her small happy life. I like that her little cousin is starting to need her -- I love that he told his father's girlfriend that he knew she didn't really like him, and she should stop picturing his daddy without any clothes on -- and I'm really looking forward to that storyline picking up in the next book. I like the revelation we got about Sookie's past, and I like how the Faerie stuff gets resolved in this book. I wonder how much of this book's action was the author's reaction to the criticism from the last book about the Were war fizzling out with a minimum of violence. Because this book had all the violence you could need. Though I'm sure that people will now complain about that. And even though he pisses me off -- stupid high-handed vampire with his little knife ceremony! -- I'm actually very glad that Sookie is moving forward with Eric. Quinn needs to get over it and move on. Yeah, I understand that Sookie's the best -- but she doesn't want you, dude. Find somebody else. Pouting and begging? Not going to win fair maiden's heart.
Thoughts:
Yay Sookie!
The Magicians
by Lev Grossman
Pick:
Amazon Vine book, picked at the same time as Sandman Slim. I read this one second because it was more daunting, but I read it now because I want to knock off my Vine choices -- I need to have 75% of them reviewed before I can order more, so the more I review, the more new things I can pick off of the newsletters, and after I picked these two books it turns out that you can also pick incredibly cool electronics and such, stuff like digital cameras and MP3 players, but I couldn't because I already had two books waiting to review and only two done. So now I will have reviewed four Vine books, and I've got two more to go -- and then I'll be able to pick three items, because even if I have two waiting, I'll have reviewed six out of eight, and when the new newsletter comes, I'll be able to pick. So I want to get through these. Plus this one still sounds very interesting.
Amazon Review:
Stop thinking this is a fantasy book. I know, I know, it's called The Magicians, the plot synopsis references all three of the most famous fantasy series and describes a handful of familiar fantasy tropes, including the school of magic and the fairy tale land come to actual life. But forget all of that. I have read more fantasy books than I can remember -- I'm named for a character in perhaps the most famous fantasy series of all time -- and I'm telling you: The Magicians is not a fantasy.
It has fantastic elements, yes. There is magic; there is a school for magic, where the characters learn to cast spells, using hand gestures and arcane language and strange mystical components -- Ziploc bag full of mutton fat, anyone? -- and there is a voyage from this world to another, a land of naiads and fauns and magical speaking animals, gods and demons, kings and queens, quests and wishes. But this book is something very different from the usual fantasy novel: in The Magicians, Lev Grossman has done something unusual, and remarkable, perhaps even unique: this is a grown-up fantasy. This book is to fantasy what The Grapes of Wrath is to travel books, what The Metamorphosis is to self-help: so much more depressing and visceral and funny and horrifying, and genuine, and fascinating, and hard to read and therefore valuable, that it doesn't belong in the same category despite sharing some central traits. The setting is imagined, and there are supernatural things that happen, but make no mistake: this is a serious novel.
Where most fantasy books provide an escape from our reality, this book does not: the characters are too close to plain old humanity, flawed, contradictory, foolish and foolhardy, to stand in as idealized versions of ourselves. In point of fact, the moral of this book is that escape is not only impossible, but dangerous and harmful to attempt. The hero, Quentin Coldwater, attempts to escape every serious situation he faces, and every time, he ends up worse off than he would have been if he had just been able to deal with it, honestly and sincerely. But his response to his worsened circumstances is to try to escape again -- with predictable results. Every step Quentin takes is the wrong one, and every step sinks him deeper and deeper into a quagmire. The book gets hard to read: not because the writing is anything less than excellent, as it is top notch from first page to last, but because the urge to reach into the page and slap, shake, and eventually throttle the main character becomes overwhelming. But that desire, that feeling, should be familiar to every adult who has thought back on his or her life, and shook his or her head, thinking, "Why did I do that? How could I be that stupid?" That desire to smack Quentin is no different from the desire to smack our younger selves.
The real triumph of this book, however, is that it is not only a serious novel, despite what I have been saying. Grossman is able to describe a world of wonder and imagination, and populate it with characters who are utterly unworthy of the magic all around them, who appreciate nothing, who completely flub their great chance -- just like I would have done if I lived through this experience, just as most of us do with our great chances in our real, mundane, unfantastic lives, which are also as full of wonder as any dreamed by a teller of tales. And because the characters are so real, so easy to relate to, it makes the fantasy seem just as real -- which makes the real world just as fantastic. Brakebills reminded me of my own college experience, and yet it is a magical place. Fillory is indeed a fairy tale land come to life in this book, and I found myself wishing that I could believe I would have handled Fillory better than Quentin does -- but knowing that I would have done almost precisely the same things, made the same choices and the same mistakes.
I won't say that this is a great book, on par with Of Mice and Men and Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird, but I will say that it is closer to those than it is to The Hobbit or the Xanth books. If you are a fan of literature, of thinking about your reading, then you must get this book, especially if you enjoy fantasy. If you are just looking for an escape, look elsewhere -- because this is not a fantasy. Or at least, it isn't only a fantasy. It's a wonder.
Thoughts:
I actually started to despise Quentin, and the reason is quite clear: I made many of the same choices in my own life, for many of the same reasons, and with many of the same results. Up until the point when there was a situation that Quentin got wrong, that I got right: because I knew it when I met the woman of my dreams, and I made sure I never screwed it up. I wanted that to be one of a hundred things that Quentin gets wrong that I got right, or that I would have gotten right if I were in the same situation, but it was maybe the only thing. Stupid kid. Stupid book, making me think about stuff, think about myself and my life and my shortcomings. Stupid brilliant author. Oh, one funny note: I'm reading this, and I'm thinking it's a fabulous idea and the writing is really wonderful (this was before it got annoying, of course), and at first I was thinking, Dammit, why can't I write like that? Then I looked on the back of the book: Lev Grossman is a senior editor and the chief book critic for Time magazine, and the man holds degrees in comparative literature from Yale AND Harvard.
Then I thought, Oh. That's why I can't write like that.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
It's been a while
This is to make up for, and explain, the lack of a post since April 4. Here's what I have for the months of April and May, and part of June; the rest of June -- which is shaping up to be the best reading month so far this year -- will come at the end of the month, as before.
Booklist 2009 (After The Fall)
Our computer melted, and destroyed our hard drive and everything we had saved. Including the books I had been writing up, though I confess I was weeks behind when the whole thing went kerplooey. Toni suffered much worse than I, since mine were online. But here's my attempt to reconstruct what I had before, and to take the thread back up now that the new computer is installed and I'm ready to get rolling again.
Back Before the Fall:
(These are the ones that I meant to write up but hadn't -- other than the Amazon reviews. This is the best I could do.)
The Good, the Bad, and the Undead by Kim Harrison
I liked the book, I love Algaliarept, and Jenks, and Trent and his cronies. This time through I like Ivy more, and Rachel a little bit less -- I like the way she pouts, but she does it a little too much, and I still have trouble relating to the danger-loving adrenaline junkie thing. Makes me feel like she's just stupid, and that's no good.
Tales of Terror from the Black Freighter by Chris Priestly
Great kid's book of scary stories. Really creepy. I reviewed it on Amazon.
When Skateboards Will Be Free by Said Sayrafiezadeh
Best thing about the book is the guy's name. The rest of it was fair-to-cruddy. Reviewed this one, too, though it made everyone hate me.
American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent
Love the title and the concept, but the book was a little overly concerned with the origin of the term nerd and the development of the popular image of same. I wanted more sociology and history, more analysis of famous nerds. But has some great insights into nerdishness, and made me reminisce about my own nerdy childhood. And my nerdy teenage years. Young adulthood, too -- oh yeah, and every other part of the last 34 (almost 35) years. I dug it, overall.
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
I had a student who was reading this leave it in my class after a Philosophy Club meeting; I've always wondered about Bukowski's writing, since he's such a cult icon in the literature world, so, after the student recommended it highly, I gave it a shot. And the end result: Bukowski was indeed a truly wonderful writer, but holy shit: what a depressing book. I think this is another one I can check off my lifetime list, and call it good.
After the Fall:
1. Kim Harrison: Every Which Way But Dead
2. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Emerson's Essays
3. Carrie Vaughn: Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand
4. Vivian Vande Velde: Stolen
5. Jamila Gavin: See No Evil
6. Julia Gregson: East of the Sun
7. Charlaine Harris: From Dead to Worse
8. Dale Peck: Sprout
9. Laurell K. Hamilton: Skin Trade
I will try to get back to my old method of analyzing the books, but for now, it's early, and I want to play Sims. So:
Every Which Way But Dead
I like this one, because I like the character of Lee and how everything turns out. I find Ceri fascinating as well, and Kisten's okay in this one. I still have trouble with the vampires: too much strength, not enough detractions apart from being really, really, whiny and self-absorbed, and Ivy's still a pain in the ass. I didn't like David, what with all his judging of Rachel. But I love the ending.
Emerson's Essays
Yeah: by the time I finished this, I felt like I had run an intellectual marathon, and the last ten miles I had two broken ankles. Way too hard to actually follow everything Emerson said. But it helped when the introduction talked about how Emerson is not meant to be grasped as a whole, the his real genius was at the level of the sentence, and so you need to sift through looking for the gems. There were gems in all of the essays, and I plan to go back and read them again, with more depth. Just not all of them. And I'm glad I read it.
Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand
This was a nice one. I thought she did an excellent job getting Kitty out of her comfort zone and yet still keeping the character the same; I liked the bad guys, particularly the ones who weren't so bad -- Ben's bounty hunter friends and the "king" of Las Vegas. I thought the Babylonian thing was cool, especially when they managed to take out so many of the weres who served Tiamat -- but somebody just stepped up to take their place and continue it on. Shades of the Long Game. I like that these are getting deeper and more serious in some ways, and yet still Kitty is a talk show host who does a pretty goofy show, really, and who has a somewhat troubled relationship with her now-husband, who she maybe doesn't know all that well. These are good books.
Stolen by Vivian Vande Velde
Pick:
Jaime asked me to give a quick read to a pair of little YA books she had just finished herself; sadly, since I am still not in heavy reading mode, those two quick little books took me, mm, three weeks? Maybe only two and a half. I went for this one first because it has the more interesting cover, by which I judged the book.
Story:
Stolen is about a girl who wakes up running through the woods, being chased by dogs. She "wakes up" because she has no memory, none at all -- she remembers running through the woods, being chased by dogs. She is treed and lightly mauled by the dogs, but is rescued by their owner, who hears them barking wildly -- as excited as if they had tracked down quarry that had long eluded them. The man, a farmer named Browley, takes the girl home so his wife, Avis, can treat her wounds. There the girl meets their granddaughter, Ravyn, and her dog, Hercules Turnip -- and the only reason I included their names is so I could write that one, it's so good.
The family does not know the girl, but they take her in, hoping that her amnesia will be temporary and she will remember her name and where she came from, and why she was running through empty woods near a village where she does not live. Once word of the girl reaches town, there seems to be an answer: Mady and her husband Frayne had lost their daughter Isabelle six years before, when the witch who lived in the woods apparently stole her. Isabelle would be the same age as this girl is now, so Mady comes to see -- and is overjoyed to find that her daughter is returned at last!
Maybe. Despite Mady's assurances, her face and voice, and the name Isabelle, and the reminiscences she showers on the girl, do not spark a single memory from her. But since Mady seems so sure, the girl goes home with her, hoping that seeing the farmhouse where she may have been raised will ring a bell.
That doesn't do it either, though the situation quickly raises suspicions once the girl meets Mady's oldest daughter, the spoiled and self-centered Honey, and Mady's aunt, the wealthy and cantankerous Isabelle -- for whom the girl, if she is indeed the stolen daughter, was named. But Mady coaches the girl before she meets the aunt, telling her fond memories of the missing Isabelle's childhood so she can react as if she remembers for herself. It becomes clear that Mady tried very hard to place her daughter to become Aunt Isabelle's heir, and despite differences in appearance and the continued lack of true memories, she is determined to put this girl right back in Isabelle's place.
And as it turns out, she succeeds, though not in a way she had ever imagined.
Thoughts:
It's a nice little book, with an outstanding twist at the end. I expected a surprise, but never the actual solution, which comes complete with several surprises. There is a tease in the first chapter of the book that led me down the wrong path, as the author intended, and that was very nicely resolved in the end. I didn't think there was enough comeuppance for the villains, but justice is served, nonetheless -- and how can you go wrong when there's a dog named Hercules Turnip? It was a fast but satisfying read.
See No Evil by Jamila Gavin
Pick:
This was the second of the books Jaime asked me to glance over. This one was tougher to get through, because it sucked more.
Story:
Everybody knows the classic surprise princess story, the one about the girl who dreams that she is a princess, with a fairy tale life, whose real parents are loving and wonderful people who will whisk her away from the terror and squalor of her present meager circumstances and give her everything she ever wanted -- and in the end, it turns out that reality is just as she had dreamed it. But what if the story went the other way? What if a girl was a princess, with a fairy tale life, complete with swimming pools and movie stars and ponies, maids and chauffeurs and personal chefs and everything she could ever want, including two parents who are so sweet and loving that no child could ever be happier? And what if it turned out that the reality was something rather different, and far more horrible, than the girl ever imagined?
That would make a good story. And if that was the only story told in See No Evil, it would be a great book. Where the book focuses on that story, it is a nice one: Jamila Gavin writes it well, giving a realistic and touching portrait of the princess-who-is-not, Nettie Roberts; Nettie is sympathetic and genuine, and a lovely character in an interesting and poignant story. But that story is somewhat hard to read, because Gavin apparently didn't feel that telling one good story was enough.
This book also tells the story of a young girl, isolated by wealth and privilege, who has no friends, until a tutor comes to educate her, and the two of them bond, quickly and completely -- and then the tutor vanishes, without a reason, without a trace, without a goodbye. Nettie is despondent, and desperately wishes for an explanation -- especially when she sees someone who looks like her missing tutor, and her mother lies about what happened to her, and Nettie finds a hidden clue in her tutor's former rooms.
It also tells the story of a young girl who has no friends, isolated by wealth and privilege, until she meets the Boy: a young man, whom she had thought to be a ghost, who sneaks through the hidden passages and doorways of her palatial home, exploring the world that he only touches upon from his and his father's basement apartment: his father is the night doorman for the lonely girl's father, and the boy knows a secret that the girl must hear -- but his father has taught him that in order to survive, they must follow the rule of the three monkeys: see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil.
It also tells the story of a young girl who loves to dance, and her aged and failing great-aunt, who was once the greatest ballet dancer in the world: beloved and sought after by wealthy suitors across the globe. When the old woman comes to live with the young girl -- who is lonely, without friends, isolated by wealth and privilege -- the girl is at first intimidated and confused by the old woman's behavior. But once the girl sees her dance, she can't help but ask for lessons; and once the old woman sees the girl dance, and recognizes her potential, she can't help but begin to mold her great-niece into her successor. And Nettie will dance Swan Lake some day.
The book also tells the story of a desperate and hopeless young immigrant, deceived by the man who said he would help her, dumped alone and pregnant and lost on the shores of England. She is picked up by a man who, mysteriously, knows her name and everything about her, and who offers her a ride . . .
This book tells all of those stories. And more: there is the mysterious hint that the girl's father is nicknamed Vlad the Impaler; there is Nettie's first trip on the London Underground; there is her first day at school and the development of her first real school friend -- and oh, so much more. Unfortunately, since it is a young adult book -- and therefore tends to avoid overly complex and lengthy expositions -- and since it is only 200 pages long, it cannot tell all of these stories well. They run into and over each other, and threads get dropped and lost from every one. The mystery man who picks up the pregnant immigrant, for example, is never explained: who he is, how he knows all about her, why he was driving down that empty road at night, why he picked her up, why he left her unconscious in a ditch -- I dunno. The book never says. By the time the climactic moment arrives, it seems like small potatoes, because one event simply cannot tie up all of these tales -- and it seems terribly false and manufactured, because too much of the book leading up to that moment was dedicated to exploring the other plotlines, and the main story was never completely developed.
Thoughts:
Because the story was too full of ideas, and because those ideas are all fairly shallow, I didn't like the book. It was hard to get into, and then once the third or fourth plot line came up, I just wanted to get through it. The author does write well, and Nettie is nicely characterized and very sympathetic -- but there were just too many stories here. Since I am not the target audience, however, the book may be very successful for those who like complicated stories, simply told, that involve wealth and privilege, and friendship, and dark hidden secrets. I hope people like that exist, so that they can enjoy this book more than I did.
East of the Sun by Julia Gregson
Pick:
My very first Vine Voice book! Amazon invited me to join the Vine program, when they send out books and various other goods before they are released to the public in order to get advance reviews; my first newsletter had maybe a dozen books I was interested in reviewing, and this was one. It wasn't my first choice, but my first several choices were already taken -- those book people jump on free books faster than Charlie pouncing on something disgusting and edible -- and it sounded good.
Review for Amazon:
When you look at this book, what do you see? You see a historical novel, a romance, a tale of adventure and excitement, of upright and proper young women who are given a chance to spread their wings and fly, and they seize it. You see a story of a tumultuous and fascinating place, at a pivotal moment in history, as depicted through the very human eyes of people who were immersed in it, but whose lives were not controlled by it. You see a narrative rich in color and texture, noise and scent, that approaches sensory overload for the reader, much like the lives of the characters in that place at that time. You see an excellent reading experience.
"East of the Sun" is like an onion. Or maybe a cake would be a better metaphor -- or parfait. Everybody likes parfait. (Forgive the completely inappropriate Shrek reference.) At any rate, it has many layers, and thus offers readers not only a pleasant way to pass the time, but also a series of surprises that adds excitement to the otherwise mellow reading experience. In that, the experience of reading the book resembles the book's plot: in "East of the Sun," a controlled, stoic, even staid group of characters are taken out of their normal circumstances and given a chance to jaunt off on a bit of a wild ride. Perhaps the book is like an onion parfait: sweet and tasty, and also pungent; definitely not what one would expect, and sometimes, maybe a bad mix of flavors -- those onions are just a little too strong.
Enough of the metaphors. The story revolves around three young women: one already engaged, one seeking to become engaged, and one who has not a shred of interest in becoming engaged, but who wishes to find herself, to be herself, free from the weight of others' expectations and perceptions. These three characters are the book's best feature: every reader should be able to find a reflection of himself or herself in one or all of them, from the naive and ever-pleasant Rose, to the foolish and courageous Tor (Short for Victoria, not named for the obscure word for a rocky hilltop, more's the pity), to the mysterious and wounded Viva. The characters are both genuine and universal, and so the reader not only identifies with them, but wishes them all the best: as if they were friends, or past selves, glimpsed through a crystal ball, and we find it all too easy to imagine ourselves in their places, shaking our heads at their foolishness, smiling fondly at their successes.
The book is a great piece of writing, though without real brilliance; the shine is in the story and the characters, rather than the wordsmithing. The plot drags in the middle; none of the three characters receives short shrift, and so the book is lengthy, and all three of them go through their darkest times just before the dawn at the same point in the narrative, which made it a little hard to keep on reading. But the dawn comes and the story ends well, without absurdity. A great book for those fond of romantic fiction (Not of the pirate/sheik/viking bodice-ripper kind) and/or historical fiction set in the last hundred years.
Thoughts:
It really is a good book for people who like what I said, romance and history. I liked it fine. I identified with Viva, of course, the would-be writer who doesn't trust herself in a romance, but I also liked Tor, who falls head over heels for the one who ends up being her soulmate. And though I didn't think a whole lot of Rose, having almost no personal connection to her story, I liked the realistic glimpse of a life that isn't mine, a family that isn't like my own.
From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
Pick:
I wanted to read something light and fun after that big serious novel and the end of the school year. This is one book back in the Sookie series, so that I can refresh my memory before reading the newest one. Yay Sookie!
Story:
I read this one last year and it's on my list in greater depth -- I think. Yep, looked good to me. I'll leave it at that.
Thoughts:
Perfect book to read at this point: finished it in about a day, had a wonderful time reading it. Gotta love Sookie.
Sprout by Dale Peck
Pick:
The second book I have read which I ordered from Amazon Vine, but the first I chose. Young adult, and I like the cover -- a picture of a boy's hair and scalp, the hair dyed bright green. I wasn't totally clear what the book was about when I picked it; I didn't realize until I checked the other reviews on Amazon that it was about a gay teenager -- I thought the main character would be younger. But sometimes those random choices work out.
Amazon Review:
I've read a fair number of young adult books. I've read a larger number of books about people who don't quite fit in, outsiders and outcasts and outlandish outlaws, the out-of-the-way, the outrageous, and the outre. That sentence was a lot of fun to write. Turns out we have quite a few words in English that begin with "out." And I looked them up in my pocket dictionary, which the main character of Sprout would fully appreciate. The fact that the main character in this book is gay is totally coincidental to this out-of-sync monologue; I actually had no idea that homosexuality was an element of this book when I picked it -- out. And none of this matters because the point is: I loved Sprout.
The place I meant to go before I got caught on my own words was this: out of all the YA fiction I've read, this book came closest to my own experience. The character was extraordinary, fascinating and insightful and brilliant, and also completely, miserably blind about himself and his life and his interactions with those around him. Just as I was, just as thousands or millions or maybe only two other teenagers are. Those two teenagers should get this book and read it.
The story was poignant and heartbreaking and difficult, just as the teen years always are; it starts in one place, goes somewhere unexpected, jumps around in several directions, landing on spots you would never think would hold weight, and yet they do. The narration was utterly brilliant: sharp and witty, hilarious and beautiful, and dorky and self-conscious, all at the same time. This is an engaging and powerful book, both fun and necessary. Dale Peck has won a fan.
Thoughts:
Yup, I liked it. Sweet and funny and everything a good novel should be, including easy and fun to read. Highly recommended, especially to people who are or were sensitive teenagers.
Skin Trade by Laurell K. Hamilton
Pick:
I read a book for Amazon -- a sweet, funny, young adult coming-of-age type book -- so I had to read one for myself, and it had to be evil and dirty and horrifying. So that would be Anita Blake, then. Mwahahahaha.
Story:
So what are the major complaints people have about Anita Blake? First, that she is too powerful: there are constant rumors that this character is a Mary Sue, an idealized version of the author herself, and thus the author cannot stand to have the character lose or fail because that would hurt the author's ego too much. Personally, I have no idea how they got this idea -- every time Anita starts listing her scars, a list that is seemingly increased with every book and was brutally long to begin with, it seems to me that this character loses quite a lot -- but it is a common complaint. The second is that Anita Blake's sexual prowess is overdone: that it takes over too much of the storyline, and that her abilities which focus around sex give her too much power. These two seem the main complaints. There are others, of course -- the writing and/or editing is subpar; the character and/or the author. and/or fans of the book are too fascinated by bondage, violent sex, rape, and pedophilia; the male characters are too weak and too whiny and also too beautiful and sexy to be realistic; none of the important characters ever die -- but all of these complaints are stupid. Well, no: they're stupid, facile, simplistic, spurious lumps of bullshit that show the ignorance and self-righteous arrogance of the would-be critics of the series, who have found themselves unable to show genuine flaws in these books beyond the first two (Anita's power and the preponderance of sex in the books), and thus have turned to, basically, making shit up and then screaming at the top of their lungs that it's true, absolutely true, a position they defend mainly by being so shitty to anyone who disagrees with them that their opponents give up in disgust -- which action they take as further proof that their "criticisms" are valid.
If we may ignore (and I do) the bullshit arguments, this book addresses the first two problems quite well. Though there is sex (as there has to be -- Anita is a succubus, after all, who feeds on lust; without sex she quite literally would die, after killing Nathaniel and Damian and maybe several others), it doesn't happen until the last hundred or so pages of the book, and even then it isn't over the top (though it certainly is steamy, like all of Laurell Hamilton's visceral scenes, as describing things that are sexy and/or violent being one of the author's strengths) and doesn't take over the story as it has in past books. And though Anita is certainly powerful, as she has many natural advantages and gifts that have allowed her to gain power over the course of the series, her power is not the story here. The story here is her vulnerability, and her self-doubt.
This book is about Anita being in trouble. She is in trouble because she is losing control in her relationships -- not something that is necessarily a threat, but something that the control-obsessed Anita is certainly troubled by -- and so she reacts badly, as this character often does when threatened, and she runs away from her family to be on her own and try to regain the life she has very nearly left behind. It works about as well as running away always does: her problems follow her, and she gains a few new ones on top of it -- most notably Jean-Claude's anger and attempted manipulation by the weretiger queen and then by a powerful vampire. She is also in trouble because the ardeur and her need to feed, along with her reputation and the inevitable change in her feelings about her job as the Executioner, now that she is in love with several of the monsters and has become one herself by almost any definition, have begun to inhibit her ability to be an effective vampire hunter. She spends much of the book questioning whether she is, in fact, still able to hunt monsters effectively -- and if she is not, whether she should give up the career that has defined her and made her who she is. Finally, she is in trouble because she is the target: not only of the villain in this book, Vittorio the serial killing vampire, but also of the Mother of All Darkness, who still seeks to possess Anita and thus escape her own decrepit and much-hunted body, as well as the lovely and personable Olaf, who decides in this book that he not only wants to hunt Anita, but wants to be her steady boyfriend in the most mundane sense -- and that he is jealous of anyone else who has a claim on her. Which means he is really, really, jealous. Which, since he is a highly trained assassin and a violent sexual sadist and serial killer who hates women and targets women who look like Anita, is, y'know, really bad.
So the point is this: there is very little sex in this book, all of it at the end, though Anita has to deal with the consequences of her sex life before that. Anita is far more powerless than powerful in this book: she is scared and flustered by Olaf, she is nearly overpowered by the weretiger queen and is entirely overpowered by the vampiric villains, and she kills -- nothing. She actually saves the lives of ten vampires who were victimized by the true villain, Vittorio. Of course, some see that as a flaw as well, because they share the bigoted view of Sheriff Shaw (the main non-supernatural adversary that Anita faces in this book) that Anita is a slut who will have sex with anyone, and also share Shaw's blindness to any evidence that might contradict their conclusion -- like the number of men who express an interest in Anita who she DOESN'T sleep with, a fairly frequent occurrence -- and so think that Anita should be killing every vampire she sees because they are monsters and nothing more, ever. Fortunately, Anita has evolved, something these people seem incapable of doing, and she recognizes vampires as no different from people: some are monsters like Olaf, some are good people like the innocent stripper Brianna in this book, and some are in between, like Edward, Bernardo, herself, and the SWAT operative Cannibal, a very nice little mirror for Anita.
This book is, in some ways, a response to the criticisms against Anita Blake, and I hope it satisfies those non-idiot critics who have voiced genuine concerns with the books. I also hope it drives the idiots to distraction with the intentional pushing of their buttons: Anita sleeps with a 16-year-old, who then becomes infatuated with her; as I said, she kills nothing but does have sex; she uses her sexual powers to defeat the villain. This also seems to me an intentional response to the overblown and almost insane criticism of these books on the part of Laurell Hamilton, and I congratulate her for her courage in doing so. Give 'em hell, Laurell and Anita!
Thoughts:
I loved this book as I have loved the others: imperfectly, but pretty damned deeply. It was slow at first, I was annoyed by some minor things (like Jean-Claude throwing a hissy-fit about Anita not being his servant -- like that's freaking news, JC!), but I very quickly got wrapped up in it and read almost all of it in 24 hours. The ending was too abrupt, and felt like it was done to appease a deadline, but I am hopeful that later books will continue the apparently-ended story lines, especially the MOAD, who can't end up like that. Just can't. But the main characters were outstanding as always, I liked the new complications and concepts for the most part -- specifically, I liked the Wiccans and the black dog, Michael, and the experience he shared with Anita, but the blue tiger is completely lame -- and I look forward to reading the next book. Now I just have to decide if I want to put this on Amazon and get into a fight. Nah, probably not worth it. We'll just throw it on the book blog and if any of the haters want to comment, bring it on, jerkass!
Booklist 2009 (After The Fall)
Our computer melted, and destroyed our hard drive and everything we had saved. Including the books I had been writing up, though I confess I was weeks behind when the whole thing went kerplooey. Toni suffered much worse than I, since mine were online. But here's my attempt to reconstruct what I had before, and to take the thread back up now that the new computer is installed and I'm ready to get rolling again.
Back Before the Fall:
(These are the ones that I meant to write up but hadn't -- other than the Amazon reviews. This is the best I could do.)
The Good, the Bad, and the Undead by Kim Harrison
I liked the book, I love Algaliarept, and Jenks, and Trent and his cronies. This time through I like Ivy more, and Rachel a little bit less -- I like the way she pouts, but she does it a little too much, and I still have trouble relating to the danger-loving adrenaline junkie thing. Makes me feel like she's just stupid, and that's no good.
Tales of Terror from the Black Freighter by Chris Priestly
Great kid's book of scary stories. Really creepy. I reviewed it on Amazon.
When Skateboards Will Be Free by Said Sayrafiezadeh
Best thing about the book is the guy's name. The rest of it was fair-to-cruddy. Reviewed this one, too, though it made everyone hate me.
American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent
Love the title and the concept, but the book was a little overly concerned with the origin of the term nerd and the development of the popular image of same. I wanted more sociology and history, more analysis of famous nerds. But has some great insights into nerdishness, and made me reminisce about my own nerdy childhood. And my nerdy teenage years. Young adulthood, too -- oh yeah, and every other part of the last 34 (almost 35) years. I dug it, overall.
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
I had a student who was reading this leave it in my class after a Philosophy Club meeting; I've always wondered about Bukowski's writing, since he's such a cult icon in the literature world, so, after the student recommended it highly, I gave it a shot. And the end result: Bukowski was indeed a truly wonderful writer, but holy shit: what a depressing book. I think this is another one I can check off my lifetime list, and call it good.
After the Fall:
1. Kim Harrison: Every Which Way But Dead
2. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Emerson's Essays
3. Carrie Vaughn: Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand
4. Vivian Vande Velde: Stolen
5. Jamila Gavin: See No Evil
6. Julia Gregson: East of the Sun
7. Charlaine Harris: From Dead to Worse
8. Dale Peck: Sprout
9. Laurell K. Hamilton: Skin Trade
I will try to get back to my old method of analyzing the books, but for now, it's early, and I want to play Sims. So:
Every Which Way But Dead
I like this one, because I like the character of Lee and how everything turns out. I find Ceri fascinating as well, and Kisten's okay in this one. I still have trouble with the vampires: too much strength, not enough detractions apart from being really, really, whiny and self-absorbed, and Ivy's still a pain in the ass. I didn't like David, what with all his judging of Rachel. But I love the ending.
Emerson's Essays
Yeah: by the time I finished this, I felt like I had run an intellectual marathon, and the last ten miles I had two broken ankles. Way too hard to actually follow everything Emerson said. But it helped when the introduction talked about how Emerson is not meant to be grasped as a whole, the his real genius was at the level of the sentence, and so you need to sift through looking for the gems. There were gems in all of the essays, and I plan to go back and read them again, with more depth. Just not all of them. And I'm glad I read it.
Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand
This was a nice one. I thought she did an excellent job getting Kitty out of her comfort zone and yet still keeping the character the same; I liked the bad guys, particularly the ones who weren't so bad -- Ben's bounty hunter friends and the "king" of Las Vegas. I thought the Babylonian thing was cool, especially when they managed to take out so many of the weres who served Tiamat -- but somebody just stepped up to take their place and continue it on. Shades of the Long Game. I like that these are getting deeper and more serious in some ways, and yet still Kitty is a talk show host who does a pretty goofy show, really, and who has a somewhat troubled relationship with her now-husband, who she maybe doesn't know all that well. These are good books.
Stolen by Vivian Vande Velde
Pick:
Jaime asked me to give a quick read to a pair of little YA books she had just finished herself; sadly, since I am still not in heavy reading mode, those two quick little books took me, mm, three weeks? Maybe only two and a half. I went for this one first because it has the more interesting cover, by which I judged the book.
Story:
Stolen is about a girl who wakes up running through the woods, being chased by dogs. She "wakes up" because she has no memory, none at all -- she remembers running through the woods, being chased by dogs. She is treed and lightly mauled by the dogs, but is rescued by their owner, who hears them barking wildly -- as excited as if they had tracked down quarry that had long eluded them. The man, a farmer named Browley, takes the girl home so his wife, Avis, can treat her wounds. There the girl meets their granddaughter, Ravyn, and her dog, Hercules Turnip -- and the only reason I included their names is so I could write that one, it's so good.
The family does not know the girl, but they take her in, hoping that her amnesia will be temporary and she will remember her name and where she came from, and why she was running through empty woods near a village where she does not live. Once word of the girl reaches town, there seems to be an answer: Mady and her husband Frayne had lost their daughter Isabelle six years before, when the witch who lived in the woods apparently stole her. Isabelle would be the same age as this girl is now, so Mady comes to see -- and is overjoyed to find that her daughter is returned at last!
Maybe. Despite Mady's assurances, her face and voice, and the name Isabelle, and the reminiscences she showers on the girl, do not spark a single memory from her. But since Mady seems so sure, the girl goes home with her, hoping that seeing the farmhouse where she may have been raised will ring a bell.
That doesn't do it either, though the situation quickly raises suspicions once the girl meets Mady's oldest daughter, the spoiled and self-centered Honey, and Mady's aunt, the wealthy and cantankerous Isabelle -- for whom the girl, if she is indeed the stolen daughter, was named. But Mady coaches the girl before she meets the aunt, telling her fond memories of the missing Isabelle's childhood so she can react as if she remembers for herself. It becomes clear that Mady tried very hard to place her daughter to become Aunt Isabelle's heir, and despite differences in appearance and the continued lack of true memories, she is determined to put this girl right back in Isabelle's place.
And as it turns out, she succeeds, though not in a way she had ever imagined.
Thoughts:
It's a nice little book, with an outstanding twist at the end. I expected a surprise, but never the actual solution, which comes complete with several surprises. There is a tease in the first chapter of the book that led me down the wrong path, as the author intended, and that was very nicely resolved in the end. I didn't think there was enough comeuppance for the villains, but justice is served, nonetheless -- and how can you go wrong when there's a dog named Hercules Turnip? It was a fast but satisfying read.
See No Evil by Jamila Gavin
Pick:
This was the second of the books Jaime asked me to glance over. This one was tougher to get through, because it sucked more.
Story:
Everybody knows the classic surprise princess story, the one about the girl who dreams that she is a princess, with a fairy tale life, whose real parents are loving and wonderful people who will whisk her away from the terror and squalor of her present meager circumstances and give her everything she ever wanted -- and in the end, it turns out that reality is just as she had dreamed it. But what if the story went the other way? What if a girl was a princess, with a fairy tale life, complete with swimming pools and movie stars and ponies, maids and chauffeurs and personal chefs and everything she could ever want, including two parents who are so sweet and loving that no child could ever be happier? And what if it turned out that the reality was something rather different, and far more horrible, than the girl ever imagined?
That would make a good story. And if that was the only story told in See No Evil, it would be a great book. Where the book focuses on that story, it is a nice one: Jamila Gavin writes it well, giving a realistic and touching portrait of the princess-who-is-not, Nettie Roberts; Nettie is sympathetic and genuine, and a lovely character in an interesting and poignant story. But that story is somewhat hard to read, because Gavin apparently didn't feel that telling one good story was enough.
This book also tells the story of a young girl, isolated by wealth and privilege, who has no friends, until a tutor comes to educate her, and the two of them bond, quickly and completely -- and then the tutor vanishes, without a reason, without a trace, without a goodbye. Nettie is despondent, and desperately wishes for an explanation -- especially when she sees someone who looks like her missing tutor, and her mother lies about what happened to her, and Nettie finds a hidden clue in her tutor's former rooms.
It also tells the story of a young girl who has no friends, isolated by wealth and privilege, until she meets the Boy: a young man, whom she had thought to be a ghost, who sneaks through the hidden passages and doorways of her palatial home, exploring the world that he only touches upon from his and his father's basement apartment: his father is the night doorman for the lonely girl's father, and the boy knows a secret that the girl must hear -- but his father has taught him that in order to survive, they must follow the rule of the three monkeys: see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil.
It also tells the story of a young girl who loves to dance, and her aged and failing great-aunt, who was once the greatest ballet dancer in the world: beloved and sought after by wealthy suitors across the globe. When the old woman comes to live with the young girl -- who is lonely, without friends, isolated by wealth and privilege -- the girl is at first intimidated and confused by the old woman's behavior. But once the girl sees her dance, she can't help but ask for lessons; and once the old woman sees the girl dance, and recognizes her potential, she can't help but begin to mold her great-niece into her successor. And Nettie will dance Swan Lake some day.
The book also tells the story of a desperate and hopeless young immigrant, deceived by the man who said he would help her, dumped alone and pregnant and lost on the shores of England. She is picked up by a man who, mysteriously, knows her name and everything about her, and who offers her a ride . . .
This book tells all of those stories. And more: there is the mysterious hint that the girl's father is nicknamed Vlad the Impaler; there is Nettie's first trip on the London Underground; there is her first day at school and the development of her first real school friend -- and oh, so much more. Unfortunately, since it is a young adult book -- and therefore tends to avoid overly complex and lengthy expositions -- and since it is only 200 pages long, it cannot tell all of these stories well. They run into and over each other, and threads get dropped and lost from every one. The mystery man who picks up the pregnant immigrant, for example, is never explained: who he is, how he knows all about her, why he was driving down that empty road at night, why he picked her up, why he left her unconscious in a ditch -- I dunno. The book never says. By the time the climactic moment arrives, it seems like small potatoes, because one event simply cannot tie up all of these tales -- and it seems terribly false and manufactured, because too much of the book leading up to that moment was dedicated to exploring the other plotlines, and the main story was never completely developed.
Thoughts:
Because the story was too full of ideas, and because those ideas are all fairly shallow, I didn't like the book. It was hard to get into, and then once the third or fourth plot line came up, I just wanted to get through it. The author does write well, and Nettie is nicely characterized and very sympathetic -- but there were just too many stories here. Since I am not the target audience, however, the book may be very successful for those who like complicated stories, simply told, that involve wealth and privilege, and friendship, and dark hidden secrets. I hope people like that exist, so that they can enjoy this book more than I did.
East of the Sun by Julia Gregson
Pick:
My very first Vine Voice book! Amazon invited me to join the Vine program, when they send out books and various other goods before they are released to the public in order to get advance reviews; my first newsletter had maybe a dozen books I was interested in reviewing, and this was one. It wasn't my first choice, but my first several choices were already taken -- those book people jump on free books faster than Charlie pouncing on something disgusting and edible -- and it sounded good.
Review for Amazon:
When you look at this book, what do you see? You see a historical novel, a romance, a tale of adventure and excitement, of upright and proper young women who are given a chance to spread their wings and fly, and they seize it. You see a story of a tumultuous and fascinating place, at a pivotal moment in history, as depicted through the very human eyes of people who were immersed in it, but whose lives were not controlled by it. You see a narrative rich in color and texture, noise and scent, that approaches sensory overload for the reader, much like the lives of the characters in that place at that time. You see an excellent reading experience.
"East of the Sun" is like an onion. Or maybe a cake would be a better metaphor -- or parfait. Everybody likes parfait. (Forgive the completely inappropriate Shrek reference.) At any rate, it has many layers, and thus offers readers not only a pleasant way to pass the time, but also a series of surprises that adds excitement to the otherwise mellow reading experience. In that, the experience of reading the book resembles the book's plot: in "East of the Sun," a controlled, stoic, even staid group of characters are taken out of their normal circumstances and given a chance to jaunt off on a bit of a wild ride. Perhaps the book is like an onion parfait: sweet and tasty, and also pungent; definitely not what one would expect, and sometimes, maybe a bad mix of flavors -- those onions are just a little too strong.
Enough of the metaphors. The story revolves around three young women: one already engaged, one seeking to become engaged, and one who has not a shred of interest in becoming engaged, but who wishes to find herself, to be herself, free from the weight of others' expectations and perceptions. These three characters are the book's best feature: every reader should be able to find a reflection of himself or herself in one or all of them, from the naive and ever-pleasant Rose, to the foolish and courageous Tor (Short for Victoria, not named for the obscure word for a rocky hilltop, more's the pity), to the mysterious and wounded Viva. The characters are both genuine and universal, and so the reader not only identifies with them, but wishes them all the best: as if they were friends, or past selves, glimpsed through a crystal ball, and we find it all too easy to imagine ourselves in their places, shaking our heads at their foolishness, smiling fondly at their successes.
The book is a great piece of writing, though without real brilliance; the shine is in the story and the characters, rather than the wordsmithing. The plot drags in the middle; none of the three characters receives short shrift, and so the book is lengthy, and all three of them go through their darkest times just before the dawn at the same point in the narrative, which made it a little hard to keep on reading. But the dawn comes and the story ends well, without absurdity. A great book for those fond of romantic fiction (Not of the pirate/sheik/viking bodice-ripper kind) and/or historical fiction set in the last hundred years.
Thoughts:
It really is a good book for people who like what I said, romance and history. I liked it fine. I identified with Viva, of course, the would-be writer who doesn't trust herself in a romance, but I also liked Tor, who falls head over heels for the one who ends up being her soulmate. And though I didn't think a whole lot of Rose, having almost no personal connection to her story, I liked the realistic glimpse of a life that isn't mine, a family that isn't like my own.
From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris
Pick:
I wanted to read something light and fun after that big serious novel and the end of the school year. This is one book back in the Sookie series, so that I can refresh my memory before reading the newest one. Yay Sookie!
Story:
I read this one last year and it's on my list in greater depth -- I think. Yep, looked good to me. I'll leave it at that.
Thoughts:
Perfect book to read at this point: finished it in about a day, had a wonderful time reading it. Gotta love Sookie.
Sprout by Dale Peck
Pick:
The second book I have read which I ordered from Amazon Vine, but the first I chose. Young adult, and I like the cover -- a picture of a boy's hair and scalp, the hair dyed bright green. I wasn't totally clear what the book was about when I picked it; I didn't realize until I checked the other reviews on Amazon that it was about a gay teenager -- I thought the main character would be younger. But sometimes those random choices work out.
Amazon Review:
I've read a fair number of young adult books. I've read a larger number of books about people who don't quite fit in, outsiders and outcasts and outlandish outlaws, the out-of-the-way, the outrageous, and the outre. That sentence was a lot of fun to write. Turns out we have quite a few words in English that begin with "out." And I looked them up in my pocket dictionary, which the main character of Sprout would fully appreciate. The fact that the main character in this book is gay is totally coincidental to this out-of-sync monologue; I actually had no idea that homosexuality was an element of this book when I picked it -- out. And none of this matters because the point is: I loved Sprout.
The place I meant to go before I got caught on my own words was this: out of all the YA fiction I've read, this book came closest to my own experience. The character was extraordinary, fascinating and insightful and brilliant, and also completely, miserably blind about himself and his life and his interactions with those around him. Just as I was, just as thousands or millions or maybe only two other teenagers are. Those two teenagers should get this book and read it.
The story was poignant and heartbreaking and difficult, just as the teen years always are; it starts in one place, goes somewhere unexpected, jumps around in several directions, landing on spots you would never think would hold weight, and yet they do. The narration was utterly brilliant: sharp and witty, hilarious and beautiful, and dorky and self-conscious, all at the same time. This is an engaging and powerful book, both fun and necessary. Dale Peck has won a fan.
Thoughts:
Yup, I liked it. Sweet and funny and everything a good novel should be, including easy and fun to read. Highly recommended, especially to people who are or were sensitive teenagers.
Skin Trade by Laurell K. Hamilton
Pick:
I read a book for Amazon -- a sweet, funny, young adult coming-of-age type book -- so I had to read one for myself, and it had to be evil and dirty and horrifying. So that would be Anita Blake, then. Mwahahahaha.
Story:
So what are the major complaints people have about Anita Blake? First, that she is too powerful: there are constant rumors that this character is a Mary Sue, an idealized version of the author herself, and thus the author cannot stand to have the character lose or fail because that would hurt the author's ego too much. Personally, I have no idea how they got this idea -- every time Anita starts listing her scars, a list that is seemingly increased with every book and was brutally long to begin with, it seems to me that this character loses quite a lot -- but it is a common complaint. The second is that Anita Blake's sexual prowess is overdone: that it takes over too much of the storyline, and that her abilities which focus around sex give her too much power. These two seem the main complaints. There are others, of course -- the writing and/or editing is subpar; the character and/or the author. and/or fans of the book are too fascinated by bondage, violent sex, rape, and pedophilia; the male characters are too weak and too whiny and also too beautiful and sexy to be realistic; none of the important characters ever die -- but all of these complaints are stupid. Well, no: they're stupid, facile, simplistic, spurious lumps of bullshit that show the ignorance and self-righteous arrogance of the would-be critics of the series, who have found themselves unable to show genuine flaws in these books beyond the first two (Anita's power and the preponderance of sex in the books), and thus have turned to, basically, making shit up and then screaming at the top of their lungs that it's true, absolutely true, a position they defend mainly by being so shitty to anyone who disagrees with them that their opponents give up in disgust -- which action they take as further proof that their "criticisms" are valid.
If we may ignore (and I do) the bullshit arguments, this book addresses the first two problems quite well. Though there is sex (as there has to be -- Anita is a succubus, after all, who feeds on lust; without sex she quite literally would die, after killing Nathaniel and Damian and maybe several others), it doesn't happen until the last hundred or so pages of the book, and even then it isn't over the top (though it certainly is steamy, like all of Laurell Hamilton's visceral scenes, as describing things that are sexy and/or violent being one of the author's strengths) and doesn't take over the story as it has in past books. And though Anita is certainly powerful, as she has many natural advantages and gifts that have allowed her to gain power over the course of the series, her power is not the story here. The story here is her vulnerability, and her self-doubt.
This book is about Anita being in trouble. She is in trouble because she is losing control in her relationships -- not something that is necessarily a threat, but something that the control-obsessed Anita is certainly troubled by -- and so she reacts badly, as this character often does when threatened, and she runs away from her family to be on her own and try to regain the life she has very nearly left behind. It works about as well as running away always does: her problems follow her, and she gains a few new ones on top of it -- most notably Jean-Claude's anger and attempted manipulation by the weretiger queen and then by a powerful vampire. She is also in trouble because the ardeur and her need to feed, along with her reputation and the inevitable change in her feelings about her job as the Executioner, now that she is in love with several of the monsters and has become one herself by almost any definition, have begun to inhibit her ability to be an effective vampire hunter. She spends much of the book questioning whether she is, in fact, still able to hunt monsters effectively -- and if she is not, whether she should give up the career that has defined her and made her who she is. Finally, she is in trouble because she is the target: not only of the villain in this book, Vittorio the serial killing vampire, but also of the Mother of All Darkness, who still seeks to possess Anita and thus escape her own decrepit and much-hunted body, as well as the lovely and personable Olaf, who decides in this book that he not only wants to hunt Anita, but wants to be her steady boyfriend in the most mundane sense -- and that he is jealous of anyone else who has a claim on her. Which means he is really, really, jealous. Which, since he is a highly trained assassin and a violent sexual sadist and serial killer who hates women and targets women who look like Anita, is, y'know, really bad.
So the point is this: there is very little sex in this book, all of it at the end, though Anita has to deal with the consequences of her sex life before that. Anita is far more powerless than powerful in this book: she is scared and flustered by Olaf, she is nearly overpowered by the weretiger queen and is entirely overpowered by the vampiric villains, and she kills -- nothing. She actually saves the lives of ten vampires who were victimized by the true villain, Vittorio. Of course, some see that as a flaw as well, because they share the bigoted view of Sheriff Shaw (the main non-supernatural adversary that Anita faces in this book) that Anita is a slut who will have sex with anyone, and also share Shaw's blindness to any evidence that might contradict their conclusion -- like the number of men who express an interest in Anita who she DOESN'T sleep with, a fairly frequent occurrence -- and so think that Anita should be killing every vampire she sees because they are monsters and nothing more, ever. Fortunately, Anita has evolved, something these people seem incapable of doing, and she recognizes vampires as no different from people: some are monsters like Olaf, some are good people like the innocent stripper Brianna in this book, and some are in between, like Edward, Bernardo, herself, and the SWAT operative Cannibal, a very nice little mirror for Anita.
This book is, in some ways, a response to the criticisms against Anita Blake, and I hope it satisfies those non-idiot critics who have voiced genuine concerns with the books. I also hope it drives the idiots to distraction with the intentional pushing of their buttons: Anita sleeps with a 16-year-old, who then becomes infatuated with her; as I said, she kills nothing but does have sex; she uses her sexual powers to defeat the villain. This also seems to me an intentional response to the overblown and almost insane criticism of these books on the part of Laurell Hamilton, and I congratulate her for her courage in doing so. Give 'em hell, Laurell and Anita!
Thoughts:
I loved this book as I have loved the others: imperfectly, but pretty damned deeply. It was slow at first, I was annoyed by some minor things (like Jean-Claude throwing a hissy-fit about Anita not being his servant -- like that's freaking news, JC!), but I very quickly got wrapped up in it and read almost all of it in 24 hours. The ending was too abrupt, and felt like it was done to appease a deadline, but I am hopeful that later books will continue the apparently-ended story lines, especially the MOAD, who can't end up like that. Just can't. But the main characters were outstanding as always, I liked the new complications and concepts for the most part -- specifically, I liked the Wiccans and the black dog, Michael, and the experience he shared with Anita, but the blue tiger is completely lame -- and I look forward to reading the next book. Now I just have to decide if I want to put this on Amazon and get into a fight. Nah, probably not worth it. We'll just throw it on the book blog and if any of the haters want to comment, bring it on, jerkass!
Saturday, April 4, 2009
The Reading Marches On!
I'm still reading slowly -- damn those Sims! (No, I don't mean that. I love my Sims. I'm going to go play with them right now.) and I fell behind in writing these books up, so I forgot the exact dates I finished them. Ah, well. I'll try to be better in the springtime.
11. Carrie Vaughn: Kitty and the Silver Bullet 3/6
12. Gahan Wilson: The Cleft and Other Odd Tales 3/I dunno
13. Jim Butcher: Storm Front (Sometime in March)
14. Kate Wilhelm: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang 3/27
(Started White Witch, Black Curse. Stopped to re-read the series, as I couldn't remember enough of the past plotlines.)
(Started The Joyluck Club, for school. Stopped because it was boring.)
Kitty and the Silver Bullet
Pick:
As much as I enjoyed reading Travels with Charley, it was still tough to get into -- mainly because of the twin pressures of work and Sim temptation, but still. So I wanted something fantastical and light, and here's this Kitty book that Toni liked so much, and I've enjoyed the first three in the series immensely, so what the heck?
Story:
This was a very nice book. I like how these books start out so seemingly light and end up very serious, at least in the paranormal plotlines; like the first book ends with a pair of murders, the second ends with Kitty changing on national television, the third ends with Cormac going to jail for killing the bad person -- and then there's this one, which ends with a pair of righteous killings. The difference was that this book pretty much starts out heavy and stays that way; the only light plotline is when Kitty is picked to reveal on The Midnight Hour that a certain very successful stage actress is actually a vampire -- and that plotline didn't stay light for long, as the vampire is revealed to be evil. Seriously evil. A bitch that needs a good staking, and I'm not making a sexual innuendo there. Where's Buffy when you need her?
I liked the war between Kitty and Carl, though Toni's right that the vampire war was a little too brief. The biggest problem there was that the old master's vampires just went along with the new guy being in charge, as far as we know. But I think the point is that we don't get to see a whole lot of the vampire politics, and after Arturo gives up and Ricardo takes over, they go back into the shadows and we're left looking at Kitty. But that's okay, because I'm not reading these books for the vampires, and I don't think the author is writing them for the vampires, either. The vampire war just made for a nice excuse to force Kitty into fighting -- though now that I think about it, what forced her into fighting was her mother's illness and the latest victim of the current pack leader. Rick doesn't really do much for her, in the end -- so why even include the vamps? Meh.
Thoughts:
Anyway, I liked the book, I like how it ended up, I love the concept of the Long Game, and I'm pissed that Carrie Vaughn is taking my ghoul idea of having a bar/safe haven for supernaturals. That's okay -- seeing as they made the reference to Casablanca for me, I'm already aware that the idea is not a new one, for me or for Vaughn. And mine will be -- not exactly what it seems. So that's okay.
The Cleft and Other Odd Tales
Pick:
I have had this one for quite a while; it was one of those fortuitous finds at a book sale. I got it because I have fond memories of reading Gahan Wilson's cartoons -- for those who don't know, Gahan Wilson has been drawing those single-panel cartoons, like political cartoons but not political in this case, that grace the pages of The New Yorker and Playboy, for what, forty years? -- in compilation books that my childhood friend Benjy Grossman had. So when I saw a collection of odd tales by the man who drew the original Addams Family strips, I couldn't pass it up. As for reading it right now, if it is not too much information, I thought it would make good bathroom reading -- short stories, strange but not too involved -- but halfway through the first story, I decided I just wanted to read the book. So I did.
Stories:
There were many that were odd, some that were utterly fascinating, and none that were bad. Now that's a good collection of short stories. The title one, The Cleft, is about a monastery in Tibet that can only be reached by climbing up through a chimney in the mountain atop which the monastery sits; the chimney -- the Cleft -- is so narrow that only one person can go up or down at a time, so the monks have designed a simple system to let someone know if there is already someone going up or down the cleft. The simple ritual becomes more and more complex, until it takes so much time and effort to walk up or down -- one must stop and pray at multiple shrines, while playing various musical instruments and carrying huge amounts of ritual material, and so on -- that one day, a monk finally snaps and makes a rope ladder. He unfurls the ladder down the side of the mountain, climbs down and walks away, never to return. The rest of the monks decide his statement shows unique wisdom -- and they immediately begin gilding the rope ladder in his honor, thus starting the cycle over again. It's one of the finest criticisms of organized religion I've ever seen, and yet it's only a few pages long, and funny to boot.
Most of the stories were gruesome and disturbing; some were even gratuitous, which can be fun. The Casino Mirago is a brilliant idea -- about a casino that only opens for a few weeks a year, and in which you can gamble whatever you wish, including your health, your youth, your status, etc. The Manuscript of Dr. Arness has a wonderful interpretation of immortality -- the Doctor discovers how to halt the aging process, but by so doing, he slows down his own reaction time so much that he appears to be a statue, forever young. Sea Gulls is an exquisitely written murder tale, and Them Bleaks has an outstanding twist. But the best two for me were The Sea Was Wet as Wet Could Be and Mister Ice Cold. The first is about a group of party people who run into the Walrus and the Carpenter from Through the Looking Glass, and Wilson manages to show all of the horror in that original poem by recreating it here; the second is just a fantastic, lyrical description of an ice cream man who carries more than ice cream in his truck. Mwa ha ha ha. I don't read a lot of short stories, being more of a novel man myself, but these are probably the best I've read since Stephen King.
Thoughts:
They were wonderful: great ideas, outstanding writing, some with a purpose, some just as vignettes. They span almost thirty years, so I'm not sure that Gahan Wilson has other books of short stories out, but this one is absolutely worth having and reading, and keeping and re-reading, which I will do, too.
Storm Front
Pick:
I decided to re-read the Dresden Files this year, as this still holds the top spot as my favorite paranormal series, yet I think I've only read the books once -- clearly this situation cannot stand! I love the way Butcher writes; I admire his ability to keep two series in two different genres going at once and make both of them excellent in their own way. Harry is also a great character, complex and honest and genuine, and I would love to go back through and find more details of his personality, hints and allegations that I'm sure Butcher snuck in there.
Story:
This one's pretty well-known, I would think, since the two people that I'm sure read this have both read these books and seen the Sci-Fi series based on them, which used this storyline as a season finale. For Hotpants, though, here's the basics: Harry Dresden is a wizard, a strong but still young and inexperienced caster of spells and concocter of potions. Being the brash and rebellious type, he has defied the usual expectations of secrecy and hung out a shingle in Chicago -- as a wizard. It says it on his door, it says it in his Yellow Pages ad. (Is that reference now dead, by the way? Does anyone under 20 still use a phonebook? Have any idea of the difference between white pages and yellow pages? If not: no great loss. I always hated phonebooks, for everything except laughing at the goofy names -- a pleasure I get now from my class roll sheets and the birth announcements in our local paper. Hey folks: stop naming your fucking kids Michaela, or Makayla, or Mickayla, or McKayla, or any of the other horrific variations on a bad theme I have seen over the past few years.) Harry does not get a lot of business, though, most of his calls being along the lines of either, "Do you do kids' parties?" or "Are you for real?" The answers, respectively, are no, and yes. But Harry does work for the police, who have recently formed a unit intended to solve the strange and incomprehensible crimes that sometimes pop up in a city the size of Chicago.
Like the crime that opens the book: two people, while in the throes of passion, suddenly had their hearts explode out of their chests. Both were in perfect health, and nobody else was in the hotel room at the time. So how did it happen? Magic, of course. So Harry is called in to investigate, and while he is investigating, he is himself under suspicion, because Harry has a rather checkered past in the wizarding community, having broken the First Law of Magic: thou shalt not use magic to kill. So Harry has to track down a powerful and immoral magician-murderer, while dodging the powerful and closed-minded authorities of the mages' White Council. Oh, and since the two people who died were a high-priced call girl, who worked for a vampiress named Bianca, and a mafia hitman who worked for the boss of the Chicago rackets, the issue gets pretty tangled, and odds end up looking pretty grim. Fortunately, Harry has help: a spirit living in a human skull, who has a perfect memory and centuries of experience working with human magicians, and so who knows more about magic than Harry ever will. His name is Bob. He is a lech. He and Harry are two of the best characters I have encountered in fantasy/paranormal literature.
Thoughts:
I liked this book even more the second time around, and I can't wait to read the rest of the series. Well, I can, since I have a few other books to read too -- but these are going to be my happy relaxing books for this year, I think. I'm so glad there are so many of them, with a new one coming out! Yay Harry!
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Pick:
I've been looking for a book to teach my Credit Recovery class. I was going to go with the Joy Luck Club, but I started reading it over Spring Break, and found out: it's a lovely work, but it's also pretty danged boring. I had looked into this book, Kate Wilhelm's Hugo-winning sci-fi novel, when I first got to St. Helens, because there are fifty or so copies in the textbook room, and I was looking for class novels then, too. But since the first page says "shit," and around about twenty pages in there is a -- "graphic" is the wrong word; perhaps "clear and indisputable" -- sex scene, between two cousins, I didn't feel comfortable teaching the book to ninth graders for my very first year at this new, fairly conservative, school. But hey, the class I'm looking for now is all juniors and seniors, and I'm more willing to be edgy now that my job is secure and all, so what the heck? I'd love to teach something a little more challenging.
Story:
It's challenging, all right. Not because it's so terribly shocking -- it is to some extent, as the incest theme intensifies rather than fading away -- but because the book is so dense. It starts with a large extended family in Virginia who are pulling in to the valley where they originated, like the fronds of a sea anemone when touched by a human hand. They are pulling in to the center because they can see the signs: the world is falling apart, through environmental disasters and societal breakdown accelerated by plague and famine worldwide. The family has been hugely successful, spawning doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs, and with their great resources and knowledge, they create an enclave that will survive the coming collapse. So right at the beginning you have themes of environmentalism, and social order, and isolationism, in addition to the question of love: two of the members of the family, who grew up together in this valley, have been in love all of their lives -- but because they are cousins, this is a love that can never be realized, and they know it. The woman, Celia, leaves home to study in South America, at least partially to avoid the heartbreak of seeing David every day, feeling as she does for him.
She has gone at exactly the wrong time: the impending collapse arrives, and Celia is lost in South American turmoil for three years. Meanwhile, David, who is a biologist, has been recruited to help his family build laboratories for genetic studies, so that the clan will be prepared for any diseases or blights that make it into their valley. Celia manages to come home, though she has suffered a near-fatal illness, and she and David at last consummate their relationship, since the end of the world tends to make former taboos moot. They are partially forgiven by the fact that there will be no children: not only is Celia ailing, her heart damaged by the virus she survived, but David has been studying the family, and has realized something: every man in the valley is now sterile. The women who were pregnant before the plague have miscarried or had stillbirths. There will be no more children, for anyone, perhaps ever again.
But the family is undaunted, because they have the knowledge and the technology to clone animals for livestock -- and David and his relatives set about trying to clone humans. They do succeed, and soon there are newer, younger versions of David, and his uncle Walt, and even Celia running around, often in multiples of two and three. But there is a problem: the clones are not reliably fertile, and past the third generation (the copy of a copy of a copy) they are deformed and genetically non-viable. So it looks as though the end of the human race has only been delayed, not averted. David continues to work, though, and to hope, and after a time he is assisted by -- himself, and himself, and himself again. And so we have the issue of cloning, both as a moral question and as a particularly freaky image.
Then things get even stranger: the clones, it turns out, are not exactly individuals. They have a sort of collective consciousness, a hive mind, with a quasi-telepathic bond similar to the well-known twin bond. And they recognize that their progenitors, the sexually reproduced and full-born humans, do not; therefore, the clones consider themselves different, albeit related, and when it comes down to it, they stage a coup and take over the valley, intending to reproduce themselves, solve the fertility and cloning problems, and repopulate the Earth with their species, not ours.
And that's just Book One.
Thoughts:
It is an interesting novel. The writing is quite lovely, particularly in the pathos of the various characters who take center stage, and the plot is intriguing and imaginative, to say the least. I think the book will be even better as a center of discussion than as an individual read, and I look forward to teaching it.
Though my students are going to suffer one major case of the wiggins. Heh. That just makes it more fun for me.
11. Carrie Vaughn: Kitty and the Silver Bullet 3/6
12. Gahan Wilson: The Cleft and Other Odd Tales 3/I dunno
13. Jim Butcher: Storm Front (Sometime in March)
14. Kate Wilhelm: Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang 3/27
(Started White Witch, Black Curse. Stopped to re-read the series, as I couldn't remember enough of the past plotlines.)
(Started The Joyluck Club, for school. Stopped because it was boring.)
Kitty and the Silver Bullet
Pick:
As much as I enjoyed reading Travels with Charley, it was still tough to get into -- mainly because of the twin pressures of work and Sim temptation, but still. So I wanted something fantastical and light, and here's this Kitty book that Toni liked so much, and I've enjoyed the first three in the series immensely, so what the heck?
Story:
This was a very nice book. I like how these books start out so seemingly light and end up very serious, at least in the paranormal plotlines; like the first book ends with a pair of murders, the second ends with Kitty changing on national television, the third ends with Cormac going to jail for killing the bad person -- and then there's this one, which ends with a pair of righteous killings. The difference was that this book pretty much starts out heavy and stays that way; the only light plotline is when Kitty is picked to reveal on The Midnight Hour that a certain very successful stage actress is actually a vampire -- and that plotline didn't stay light for long, as the vampire is revealed to be evil. Seriously evil. A bitch that needs a good staking, and I'm not making a sexual innuendo there. Where's Buffy when you need her?
I liked the war between Kitty and Carl, though Toni's right that the vampire war was a little too brief. The biggest problem there was that the old master's vampires just went along with the new guy being in charge, as far as we know. But I think the point is that we don't get to see a whole lot of the vampire politics, and after Arturo gives up and Ricardo takes over, they go back into the shadows and we're left looking at Kitty. But that's okay, because I'm not reading these books for the vampires, and I don't think the author is writing them for the vampires, either. The vampire war just made for a nice excuse to force Kitty into fighting -- though now that I think about it, what forced her into fighting was her mother's illness and the latest victim of the current pack leader. Rick doesn't really do much for her, in the end -- so why even include the vamps? Meh.
Thoughts:
Anyway, I liked the book, I like how it ended up, I love the concept of the Long Game, and I'm pissed that Carrie Vaughn is taking my ghoul idea of having a bar/safe haven for supernaturals. That's okay -- seeing as they made the reference to Casablanca for me, I'm already aware that the idea is not a new one, for me or for Vaughn. And mine will be -- not exactly what it seems. So that's okay.
The Cleft and Other Odd Tales
Pick:
I have had this one for quite a while; it was one of those fortuitous finds at a book sale. I got it because I have fond memories of reading Gahan Wilson's cartoons -- for those who don't know, Gahan Wilson has been drawing those single-panel cartoons, like political cartoons but not political in this case, that grace the pages of The New Yorker and Playboy, for what, forty years? -- in compilation books that my childhood friend Benjy Grossman had. So when I saw a collection of odd tales by the man who drew the original Addams Family strips, I couldn't pass it up. As for reading it right now, if it is not too much information, I thought it would make good bathroom reading -- short stories, strange but not too involved -- but halfway through the first story, I decided I just wanted to read the book. So I did.
Stories:
There were many that were odd, some that were utterly fascinating, and none that were bad. Now that's a good collection of short stories. The title one, The Cleft, is about a monastery in Tibet that can only be reached by climbing up through a chimney in the mountain atop which the monastery sits; the chimney -- the Cleft -- is so narrow that only one person can go up or down at a time, so the monks have designed a simple system to let someone know if there is already someone going up or down the cleft. The simple ritual becomes more and more complex, until it takes so much time and effort to walk up or down -- one must stop and pray at multiple shrines, while playing various musical instruments and carrying huge amounts of ritual material, and so on -- that one day, a monk finally snaps and makes a rope ladder. He unfurls the ladder down the side of the mountain, climbs down and walks away, never to return. The rest of the monks decide his statement shows unique wisdom -- and they immediately begin gilding the rope ladder in his honor, thus starting the cycle over again. It's one of the finest criticisms of organized religion I've ever seen, and yet it's only a few pages long, and funny to boot.
Most of the stories were gruesome and disturbing; some were even gratuitous, which can be fun. The Casino Mirago is a brilliant idea -- about a casino that only opens for a few weeks a year, and in which you can gamble whatever you wish, including your health, your youth, your status, etc. The Manuscript of Dr. Arness has a wonderful interpretation of immortality -- the Doctor discovers how to halt the aging process, but by so doing, he slows down his own reaction time so much that he appears to be a statue, forever young. Sea Gulls is an exquisitely written murder tale, and Them Bleaks has an outstanding twist. But the best two for me were The Sea Was Wet as Wet Could Be and Mister Ice Cold. The first is about a group of party people who run into the Walrus and the Carpenter from Through the Looking Glass, and Wilson manages to show all of the horror in that original poem by recreating it here; the second is just a fantastic, lyrical description of an ice cream man who carries more than ice cream in his truck. Mwa ha ha ha. I don't read a lot of short stories, being more of a novel man myself, but these are probably the best I've read since Stephen King.
Thoughts:
They were wonderful: great ideas, outstanding writing, some with a purpose, some just as vignettes. They span almost thirty years, so I'm not sure that Gahan Wilson has other books of short stories out, but this one is absolutely worth having and reading, and keeping and re-reading, which I will do, too.
Storm Front
Pick:
I decided to re-read the Dresden Files this year, as this still holds the top spot as my favorite paranormal series, yet I think I've only read the books once -- clearly this situation cannot stand! I love the way Butcher writes; I admire his ability to keep two series in two different genres going at once and make both of them excellent in their own way. Harry is also a great character, complex and honest and genuine, and I would love to go back through and find more details of his personality, hints and allegations that I'm sure Butcher snuck in there.
Story:
This one's pretty well-known, I would think, since the two people that I'm sure read this have both read these books and seen the Sci-Fi series based on them, which used this storyline as a season finale. For Hotpants, though, here's the basics: Harry Dresden is a wizard, a strong but still young and inexperienced caster of spells and concocter of potions. Being the brash and rebellious type, he has defied the usual expectations of secrecy and hung out a shingle in Chicago -- as a wizard. It says it on his door, it says it in his Yellow Pages ad. (Is that reference now dead, by the way? Does anyone under 20 still use a phonebook? Have any idea of the difference between white pages and yellow pages? If not: no great loss. I always hated phonebooks, for everything except laughing at the goofy names -- a pleasure I get now from my class roll sheets and the birth announcements in our local paper. Hey folks: stop naming your fucking kids Michaela, or Makayla, or Mickayla, or McKayla, or any of the other horrific variations on a bad theme I have seen over the past few years.) Harry does not get a lot of business, though, most of his calls being along the lines of either, "Do you do kids' parties?" or "Are you for real?" The answers, respectively, are no, and yes. But Harry does work for the police, who have recently formed a unit intended to solve the strange and incomprehensible crimes that sometimes pop up in a city the size of Chicago.
Like the crime that opens the book: two people, while in the throes of passion, suddenly had their hearts explode out of their chests. Both were in perfect health, and nobody else was in the hotel room at the time. So how did it happen? Magic, of course. So Harry is called in to investigate, and while he is investigating, he is himself under suspicion, because Harry has a rather checkered past in the wizarding community, having broken the First Law of Magic: thou shalt not use magic to kill. So Harry has to track down a powerful and immoral magician-murderer, while dodging the powerful and closed-minded authorities of the mages' White Council. Oh, and since the two people who died were a high-priced call girl, who worked for a vampiress named Bianca, and a mafia hitman who worked for the boss of the Chicago rackets, the issue gets pretty tangled, and odds end up looking pretty grim. Fortunately, Harry has help: a spirit living in a human skull, who has a perfect memory and centuries of experience working with human magicians, and so who knows more about magic than Harry ever will. His name is Bob. He is a lech. He and Harry are two of the best characters I have encountered in fantasy/paranormal literature.
Thoughts:
I liked this book even more the second time around, and I can't wait to read the rest of the series. Well, I can, since I have a few other books to read too -- but these are going to be my happy relaxing books for this year, I think. I'm so glad there are so many of them, with a new one coming out! Yay Harry!
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Pick:
I've been looking for a book to teach my Credit Recovery class. I was going to go with the Joy Luck Club, but I started reading it over Spring Break, and found out: it's a lovely work, but it's also pretty danged boring. I had looked into this book, Kate Wilhelm's Hugo-winning sci-fi novel, when I first got to St. Helens, because there are fifty or so copies in the textbook room, and I was looking for class novels then, too. But since the first page says "shit," and around about twenty pages in there is a -- "graphic" is the wrong word; perhaps "clear and indisputable" -- sex scene, between two cousins, I didn't feel comfortable teaching the book to ninth graders for my very first year at this new, fairly conservative, school. But hey, the class I'm looking for now is all juniors and seniors, and I'm more willing to be edgy now that my job is secure and all, so what the heck? I'd love to teach something a little more challenging.
Story:
It's challenging, all right. Not because it's so terribly shocking -- it is to some extent, as the incest theme intensifies rather than fading away -- but because the book is so dense. It starts with a large extended family in Virginia who are pulling in to the valley where they originated, like the fronds of a sea anemone when touched by a human hand. They are pulling in to the center because they can see the signs: the world is falling apart, through environmental disasters and societal breakdown accelerated by plague and famine worldwide. The family has been hugely successful, spawning doctors and lawyers and entrepreneurs, and with their great resources and knowledge, they create an enclave that will survive the coming collapse. So right at the beginning you have themes of environmentalism, and social order, and isolationism, in addition to the question of love: two of the members of the family, who grew up together in this valley, have been in love all of their lives -- but because they are cousins, this is a love that can never be realized, and they know it. The woman, Celia, leaves home to study in South America, at least partially to avoid the heartbreak of seeing David every day, feeling as she does for him.
She has gone at exactly the wrong time: the impending collapse arrives, and Celia is lost in South American turmoil for three years. Meanwhile, David, who is a biologist, has been recruited to help his family build laboratories for genetic studies, so that the clan will be prepared for any diseases or blights that make it into their valley. Celia manages to come home, though she has suffered a near-fatal illness, and she and David at last consummate their relationship, since the end of the world tends to make former taboos moot. They are partially forgiven by the fact that there will be no children: not only is Celia ailing, her heart damaged by the virus she survived, but David has been studying the family, and has realized something: every man in the valley is now sterile. The women who were pregnant before the plague have miscarried or had stillbirths. There will be no more children, for anyone, perhaps ever again.
But the family is undaunted, because they have the knowledge and the technology to clone animals for livestock -- and David and his relatives set about trying to clone humans. They do succeed, and soon there are newer, younger versions of David, and his uncle Walt, and even Celia running around, often in multiples of two and three. But there is a problem: the clones are not reliably fertile, and past the third generation (the copy of a copy of a copy) they are deformed and genetically non-viable. So it looks as though the end of the human race has only been delayed, not averted. David continues to work, though, and to hope, and after a time he is assisted by -- himself, and himself, and himself again. And so we have the issue of cloning, both as a moral question and as a particularly freaky image.
Then things get even stranger: the clones, it turns out, are not exactly individuals. They have a sort of collective consciousness, a hive mind, with a quasi-telepathic bond similar to the well-known twin bond. And they recognize that their progenitors, the sexually reproduced and full-born humans, do not; therefore, the clones consider themselves different, albeit related, and when it comes down to it, they stage a coup and take over the valley, intending to reproduce themselves, solve the fertility and cloning problems, and repopulate the Earth with their species, not ours.
And that's just Book One.
Thoughts:
It is an interesting novel. The writing is quite lovely, particularly in the pathos of the various characters who take center stage, and the plot is intriguing and imaginative, to say the least. I think the book will be even better as a center of discussion than as an individual read, and I look forward to teaching it.
Though my students are going to suffer one major case of the wiggins. Heh. That just makes it more fun for me.
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