**Summer Knight: The Dresden Files, Book 4 by Jim Butcher (60) 11/3
Pick:
STILL trying to fill the time between finishing the last book and the arrival of my beloved Wheel of Time. Also enjoying Dresden immensely, so this made me put aside my Vine book for now in favor of Harry.
Story:
I had forgotten that this one began with Harry mired deep in depression, obsessed with saving Susan from her vampire curse. It irritated me that he blamed himself: she snuck into the party, dude. After you told her it was too dangerous and she shouldn't come. Her sneaking in was what got her into trouble, and that was a direct result of her mania for getting the scoop. Anyway, I did remember the ghoul assassin in the park, and it's a cool idea, but mine's better.
I like this one much more than the last; I like the parts about the White Council, I like the mystery of Mab and her decision to hire Harry, I love that Harry finally sits down (in Wal-Mart -- heh) and tells Murphy about everything. The Faerie monsters are great, and the final fight scene is wonderful, especially the way Harry finally beats the Faerie Queen over the Stone Table.
Thoughts:
I think this one is where Butcher hit his stride with Harry. In the overall story arc, this is when Harry hits his low point and then starts building up from here -- the war with the Red Court and his own culpability (and power, which is amply demonstrated by his ability to, well, save the world), and how he shoulders the burden of the war and attempts to do the same for Susan, this all adds up to Harry moving towards becoming a power player. I think the next big step for him is the Knights -- and I think that's the next one. Can't wait. Oh, but what is this that has come in the mail . . .
**The Gathering Storm: Book Twelve of the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (61) 11/11
Pick:
Yeah. I gotta explain why I picked this book. It exists, that's why. I didn't think it ever would, three years ago. Now it's here.
Story:
The first couple of pages were clearly not Jordan's writing -- Sanderson has a much leaner, choppier style, short sentences and abrupt paragraph breaks, with fewer details than Jordan lavished onto everything -- but by the time I finished the prologue and got to the actual story (the first chapter of which, I think, is Jordan's writing, at least the classic beginning paragraph and the few pages after that), I was already hooked.
Brandon Sanderson made the decision not to try to imitate Robert Jordan's style, and that was the right decision; the book worked much better this way than it would have if the reader had been forced to parse every paragraph, trying to decide how true it rang, looking hard for the false notes. As it was, once I had my moment of sorrow for the loss of a great wordsmith, I was able to throw myself into the story without any thought for the writing, with only one small annoyance -- Sanderson jumped storylines with nearly every chapter, where Jordan would have stayed with one point-of-view character for two to three chapters or even more, and Sanderson's chapters are a third of the length Jordan's were, so I was constantly pining for more about the one we just left when we moved on to the next. But the storylines were fantastic. All the characters were there, and more was revealed in this book than any other one -- which I think is a result of the looming approach of the climax and end of the series, rather than an artistic difference between the two authors.
I was very pleased that it focused on my two favorite story lines and characters (at least my two favorites of the last few books -- favorites change several times over a series this long), Rand and Egwene. Egwene's struggle with the White Tower was simply epic, building on the groundwork laid in Knife of Dreams and coming to a head in the Seanchan assault on the Tower which proved Egwene's ability in every possible way, and won her the Seat without equivocation. I love what happened to Elaida, as well -- most fitting, most satisfying. I was a bit saddened to watch Tuon return to her roots, because I can't stand the Seanchan and I hate to think of her as one of them and therefore incapable of being a partner to Mat, who loves Tuon; but this book certainly set her up as a bad guy. I'm now incredibly curious how Rand will be dealing with that little problem in the next book.
And Rand. Ah, Rand, you little idiot. The decision to harden himself, to make himself proof against all emotion, is finalized in this book, and the results are -- predictable. There is an impossibly hard-to-read scene, when Rand is forced by one of the Forsaken to do the worst thing imaginable, and the result of that is most surprising. And then every scene after that shows Rand's descent into seemingly irretrievable madness, which had me wondering: what if the Last Battle is not what we have thought? There are hints in this book that it won't be, that the Dark One's wishes are not what everyone expects them to be, and after watching Rand turn more and more despotic and even savage, I thought: what if the Dark One's only goal has been to drive Rand to this? What if the Last Battle is simply over Rand's allegiance, the soul of the Dragon Reborn? If that's the case, then evil comes perilously close to winning in this book. And the ending -- the ending actually made me choke up. First time I've cried over a book since Where the Red Fern Grows.
Thoughts:
Robert Jordan died, but the Wheel of Time turns, spinning memory into legend, and legend into myth. His death was not the ending; there are no beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time, but it was an ending. This book is not completely his book, and that is a loss because he was a better writer than Sanderson. But the book is still my book, as a reader; it is my story, these are my characters, it is the next step towards the completion of my favorite story of all time. I'm so very glad it exists, and I got to read it. And now I can't wait for the next one.
So a moment of silence for Robert Jordan, and three cheers for Brandon Sanderson (and Harriet Jacobs).
**The Unscratchables by Cornelius Kane (62) 11/14
Pick:
Vine Voice; this is one of the first ones I selected for the program, but it got lost in the mail and then brought to our door by the neighbor who received it (and might have read it, since the package was open, but what the hell -- I'm all for reading, even if it is pirate reading, and the book was in fine condition). By then the review was already three months late, so Toni and I decided to use it as one of our cooking storybooks, which I read aloud to her as she makes dinner.
Vine Review:
"The Unscratchables" is a satire of hard-boiled detective novels, with dogs and cats instead of human characters, and so it has exactly what one would expect: the author does quite a lot of playing around with cliches and standard motifs for the genre, keeping true to some and changing others to fit the unusual main characters; there are a tremendous lot of puns and pop culture references, everything from boxing promoter Don King to Hannibal Lecter from "Silence of the Lambs;" and the narrative voice is over the top, so hard boiled that you can't help reading in an angry growl. But what's surprising about the book is that there are also some fascinating and original ideas. The author has not simply replaced human characters with animals; the animals stay true to their natures, at the same time that they are acting like Sam Spade or Special Agent Pendergast.
The main character, Detective Max "Crusher" McNash of the San Bernardo Slaughter Unit, is nicely done: we explore enough of his past to understand just why he hates cats so much, but we don't dwell in the past so much that we lose track of the storyline. The focus in the book is definitely on the mystery: the slashing deaths of several dogs, apparently by some outrageously powerful and quick feline. This means that Crusher has to work with a partner, and not just any partner: he has to work with an agent from the Feline Bureau of Investigation, come straight over from Kathattan, a slick little Siamese named Cassius Lap. The problem is that Crusher fought in the war against the Siamese, and he may not be able to keep himself from giving Lap a death shake, let alone working alongside him.
Cassius Lap is also an excellent character, though the author took advantage of Lap's professionalism to downplay his animal tendencies; apart from a fear of water and a liking for soy milk (Lap is sadly lactose intolerant), Lap comes off simply as a dedicated and intelligent investigator. Most of the animal references are kept within Crusher's narrative voice, his thoughts and language are the most non-human parts of the book, often delightfully so -- I definitely enjoyed Crusher's description of driving in his "tooter (car)," with his head out the window because his windshield was cracked. But Lap's presence keeps the book focused on a genuine mystery, the solution of which played out quite nicely by the end. I especially liked the author's sociological thoughts, descriptions of the Mighty Lamb of societal pressure that has come to dominate its would-be shepherds, voiced through a particularly interesting character -- Quentin Riossitti. That one I'm going to leave for the book to explain. I highly recommend looking into it.
Thoughts:
It was a lot of fun to read, but maybe a bit too complicated for an out-loud story. Probably should stick to the YA stuff for that.
**V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd (63) 11/17
Pick:
I had put a picture of V on my ID tag for school on the Fifth, and still had it on a week later during parent conferences (And still have it on a week after that). While eating lunch with some of my colleagues, one of them noted it and asked if I had ever read the original graphic novel. I said no, I kept meaning to buy it but never had, and she offered to lend it to me, an offer I jumped on. Even though I should be reading my own shelf full of books, I couldn't turn down a chance at V.
Story:
I'm very glad I read it. It does change some things from the film, though the film stayed largely true to it, merely changing some things about the particular characters -- not V, of course, though he's a lot funnier and therefore more disturbing in the book. Evey is younger (she's 16 when it starts, about 18 when it ends), and there are different bad guys, including a particularly atrocious woman, power-hungry and cruel and completely manipulative. The art was wonderful, and one of the especially nice things about this comic is that there are no sound effects, no thought bubbles, and almost no narration at all -- everything happens in the action and dialogue. It's impressive work, and has an even stronger message about non-conformity and anarchy than did the film. I loved it.
Thoughts:
I definitely need my own copy of this.
**Queene of Light by Jennifer Armintrout (64) 11/21
Pick:
Vine Voice, picked it because I want to lean towards fantasy and paranormal stuff and Toni liked one of this woman's other books.
Vine Review:
I expect there are a number of people who loved this book, and many more who would love it were they to read it. I was not one of them. There are some clever ideas here, but for the most part, the setting is overdone and needlessly complex, but not sufficiently explained or described -- presumably to keep the book shorter and quicker, more within the realm of paranormal thriller than epic fantasy -- and the plot is weak. It seems that the purpose of this book is mainly to set up the next two, one of which has already been released by the time I'm writing this, with the other due to be released in two days; perhaps those novels will be superior. This one was not.
A few specifics: the idea of Lightworld and Darkworld is fine, normal Faerie novel fare, but in this case, neither the people of the Lightworld -- Faeries, Dragons, and Dwarves, though the Dwarves do not appear in this book -- nor the people of the Darkworld -- Elves, Gypsies, and rather inexplicably, vampires and werewolves, and even more inexplicably, Christian-based demons and angels(?) -- have ever seen the light. They all live underground, having been banished from the surface world by humans -- after they were all banished from their extradimensional homes by the destruction of the astral plane. That last part is clever, but there seems no reason at all to add the underground elements, other than it serves to make the setting that much darker, since now there can be a complete lack of sunlight and several descriptions of foul, brackish waste water. The Queene of the Faerie (Why, oh why, do authors feel the need to add an "e" to words that have no need of it?), Mabb (of course), is impossible to believe: she is insane and decadent and apparently incapable of and uninterested in ruling, and yet she has the absolute, unwavering loyalty of her subjects: the comment is made that the line of supplicants who wait for an audience with her are willing to wait until their deaths, and then have their children -- conceived and birthed and raised while waiting outside Mabb's palace -- wait as well. Yet Mabb never sees them. So this begs the question: what could they possibly want to ask the Queene about, that they are willing to die without an answer? None of the Faerie have consistent characters, despite some definitive statements about their inhuman ways. If anything, they were inhuman simply because they were more like cardboard cutouts than actual people: cardboard cutouts with odd shapes. I still can't fathom why Ayla, the main character, wants to help these people regain the surface world, or why the villain (an immortal Faerie) waited this long to put his plan into action. But the biggest unanswered question for me is this: why are the races, including Humans, all named with capital letters?
The most unfortunate part of the book is the romance, since it is one of those "I should hate you, but I can't understand why I am so drawn to you" sort, without explanation, without reason, and without much time spent on it before the main characters are pledging undying devotion. I have seen that sort of love done well, but only rarely -- and not in this case. The rest of the plot follows suit. This is a book that either should have been planned out at least twice as much as it was -- or put down before it made it this far.
Thoughts:
Wasn't terrible, but man, it wasn't good.
**The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. I by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill (65) 11/25
Pick:
This one and the sequel were loaned to me by the same teacher friend who loaned me V. Which is why she rocks hard. Know it. Live it. I read it now because I'm curious, and I wanted to return the books to Page.
Story:
This was, surprisingly, something of a disappointment. It wasn't bad, because it was quite well-written, but the art wasn't nearly as interesting as V -- back to standard comic book tropes; if this O'Neill guy didn't draw the later issues of Amazing Spider-Man when I was reading it, he's at least blood brother to the guy that did. The story did have some neat twists and turns; I liked that Quatermain was an opium addict, and the bad guy was excellent, as was his final doom. But for the most part, it seemed pretty standard comic fare. The end piece, a longer narrative with fewer illustrations, was more interesting: Quatermain takes a psychotropic drug and his soul goes on an extra-dimensional adventure with John Carter from Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars novels, his "nephew" (I think by dint of a name coincidence), a character from one of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories, and the Time Traveller from H.G. Wells. That one was quite cool.
Thoughts:
Meh. I put this one in line with The Dark Knight: a good graphic novel, but not one of the masterworks of the genre. Less interesting than The Watchmen or Sandman or V for Vendetta.
**The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. II by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill (66) 11/29
Pick:
Same as the last; I was hoping this volume would get better.
Story:
It didn't. The concept was clever -- they brought in the Martian invaders from War of the Worlds, as well as Dr. Moreau -- but the story dragged very badly. The extraordinary gentlemen still didn't do anything particularly interesting, apart from Hyde and the Invisible Man, which was the best part of the story. Quatermain does nothing but have an extremely awkward and uncomfortable-to-read tryst with Mina Harker, who never does anything interesting in the entire run of the comic -- not once! Not a scrap of vampire power! Totally lame! -- and Nemo was fine, but couldn't really bring the Nautilus to bear on the aliens. The only good part was when the Invisible Man turned traitor and allied himself with the aliens, trying to help them conquer and become Earth's overlord; he gets found out by Mina, whose ass he kicks; and Hyde, who can see T.I.M.'s body heat, takes his horrible, bloody vengeance for Mina's suffering. That was cool, especially the end of it. The end story on this one was long and boring, so I left it out.
Thoughts:
Not even as good as the first one. This one's more on par with The Preacher: I wouldn't throw it out, but I probably wouldn't read it very often.
**Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb (67) 12/5
Pick:
Vine choice. I had to grab it -- it's Robin Hobb. AND it's about dragons!
Review:
As a long-standing fan of Robin Hobb, I had to read this book; I'm glad I did.
I must admit to being behind on my Hobb; I still have two Tawny Man books to read, and I've never read the Soldier Son series, so there might be connections and correlations I missed in this book. But the important thing, I believe, is that I have read the Liveship Traders; this book takes up where those left off, after Bingtown won its war with Chalced, with the help of the dragon Tintaglia.
As always with Robin Hobb's books, the plot is too long and involved and interesting for me to try to recap it here. The best part of Hobb's books has always been her characters, and these are no different. It is fascinating to see the dragons, with their arrogance -- both reasonable and excessive -- from multiple points of view: both the dragons' own, and that of several humans who see them quite differently. Thymara wishes to be a friend to a dragon; Alise worships them; Sedric sees them as filthy and dangerous beasts. The dragons themselves, of course, see dragons as the greatest creatures who ever existed, the Lords of the Three Realms -- sky, sea, and land -- but that also hurts these dragons, as they know themselves to be somewhat less than dragons should be, a circumstance that is both poignant and inspiring. Let me note, as well, that these are probably the most interesting dragons I have ever seen in a fantasy book, both in complexity of character and in the imagining of their life cycle and biology.
I realized a trend with this book: Hobb seems to have a flair for creating cold-hearted, manipulative, deceitful, self-absorbed foppish villains. In the Farseer books it was Regal; in the Liveship Traders it was the Satrap of Jamaillia; in these books, it is Hest Finbok. (Another trend I have known about for a while with Hobb's books: she is terrible at coming up with character and place names. Alise and Thymara aren't bad, but Hest Finbok? Cedric with an "s?" A character with tattoos on his face -- named Tats? Yoinks.) Hest is, like Regal and the Satrap, wonderfully nasty, very easy to hate, and this gives sympathy to a character that could easily be a villain but isn't, whom Hest has, in some ways, corrupted. Alise is up and down as a character: she is annoyingly passive and naive some of the time, but that is exactly who her character is supposed to be, and the shell we hope she will break out of over the course of the books (This is the first of two, rather than Hobbs's usual trilogy.). Thymara is very well done, and the exploration of social interactions between the Dragon Keepers looks to be fascinating as it unfolds.
The book is a bit of a cliffhanger; it cuts off just about when the story really gets going. I would highly recommend that readers reserve judgment on the overall story until after reading the continuation; this book, while not boring, is much more about the characters and the setup, rather than the actual climax and resolution of the plot. This one certainly got me ready to read the second book, and find out what happens to all of these folks.
Especially the dragons.
Thoughts:
I liked it. I bet the black dragon who swoops out of nowhere to connect with Tintaglia and take her out of the story is actually Verity, and that is what happens in the Tawny Man books. Now I have to read those. And the Soldier Son books. And anything else she writes! Woo! Robin Hobb!
**The Big Book of Barry Ween, Boy Genius by Judd Winick (68) 12/9
Pick:
Even though we were only talking about Alan Moore, Page decided to throw this comic collection in there because she thought I'd like it. Told you she rocked hard.
Story:
Barry Ween surprised me. The concept of a boy genius world-conquering inventor is a bit of a cliche, what with Stewy Griffin and Pinky and the Brain, but Barry gives a whole different view of that experience: he doesn't like his brain, or his life, and while he certainly has the capacity to take over the world, and has built the inventions to do it, he doesn't want to.
Then you have another cliche: Barry makes use of the usual comic juxtaposition of a dirty old man in a child's body. He and his best friend, Jeremy, have outrageously filthy mouths, and Jeremy has an unholy obsession with sex and pornography, which Barry feeds. And yet there is quite a sweet story of young love developing here -- without ever crossing the line into actual romance, since these are ten-year-old kids, a 350 IQ notwithstanding.
The art is cartoonish, but very nicely executed; Judd Winick has a flair for facial expression, particularly in moments when the usually cantankerous Barry softens and smiles gently at his friends. The action panels could be overly busy sometimes -- it was hard to find Barry in some of his epic combats -- but the writing more than made up for it. The writing is hilarious, the stories nicely absurd, the characters consistent and many-layered; even the profanity was sometimes original and amusing. All in all, this was an excellent book, with a remarkably poignant ending page, followed by a short full-color episode that made a very satisfying closer. I hope there will be more Barry Ween in the future -- I'd love to keep reading it.
Thoughts:
This rocked; I might just buy my own copy.
17. The Darkness That Comes Before by R. Scott Bakker (Unfinished)
So this is the one that's been haunting me the longest, because four years ago, David Schmor gave it to me and asked me to read it and offer my opinion. I wasn't terribly interested in it then, since I have learned that fantasy is a very chancy genre for picking up new authors and stories, but I was game, and I said I would. And then it sat on the shelf, in its black-on-black-with-black-writing dust jacket, and its doomerrific subtitle (Prince of Nothing, Book One), and its massive tome-like size, and it intimidated me, and gloomed me, and warned me off in every way a book can. And I played along, and avoided reading it.
Until now. I read the first fifty pages, hit the most purple, overwrought, tortured prose I've read since Kushiel's Dart, the most annoying and over-complicated world building since Glen Cook's Instrumentalities of the Night, and the worst names since, well, the Robin Hobb book I read last week. Anasurimbor Celmcas? Really? With an accent over the i? That seems excessive. Just a bit. When I realized that the book held Appendices -- yep, plural -- and that the character was poorly rendered in addition to being badly named and inhabiting a complicated place in a complicated world (this is all within the first fifty pages, mind), I just couldn't go on.
Another one off the shelf.
18. Drinking, Smoking and Screwing, edited by Sara Nickles (69 -- heh) 12/14
Pick:
Something short, simple, immediately interesting after the lump of bombast I just finished. I picked this up off the bargain shelf at Powell's, because I liked the title and the concept. Nice and curmudgeony.
Story:
I expected this to be essays and memoirs and ponderings; actually, it was largely excerpts from longer works, long short stories and novels, chosen because they were about one or more of the three title issues -- smoking, drinking, or sex. The bit from Lolita was well-written but disturbing; the Bukowski snippet was just like the novel I read -- well-written but disturbing. The thing from Spalding Grey was pointless and annoying. I definitely enjoyed the Dorothy Parker story, and I loved the things that looked more like essays -- the piece on the vocabulary of drinking (mainly where mixed drinks get their name -- cocktail, martini, Mickey Finn, etc,) by H.L. Mencken, the one called "How Not To Smoke And Drink Quite So Much," which made me want to start smoking again -- only not so much -- and the pieces by Fran Lebowitz and Mark Twain, on how to deal with annoying people when you are a smoker. Overall it was a nice, quick, amusing read.
Thoughts:
Not bad. Not a keeper. I might want to look for longer pieces by some of these people. I will want to get copies/keep this copy of the Lebowitz and the Twain.
**Death Masks: Book 5 of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (70) 12/16
Pick:
What, I need a reason to read Dresden now?
Story:
This one is one of my favorites. I love Susan's expanded character, I love both plot lines -- the Denarians and the Shroud of Turin, as well as Count Ortega and the Red Court's attempt to kill Harry and end the war. This book is the introduction of Waldo Butters, and of the Archive and Kincaid, and Shiro and Sanya and the Denarians and oh man, does it rock.
Thoughts:
I need to read the others for comparison, but: this is the best in the series so far. No question.
19. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America by Phillip K. Howard (71) 12/19
Pick:
I got this one at a book sale, I don't remember which one though it was probably Scappoose library. I picked it up because I liked the title and the concept, but I've avoided reading it until now because it's a bit out of date, and I was afraid it was going to be hardcore Libertarianism, which I don't particularly like. But I wanted to read something quick before the end of school, since I'm running this reading challenge with my students over break, and I'm trying to knock down some of my Shelf. So I thought, what the heck. Worst case scenario is I put it down.
Story:
I didn't put it down. I almost want to read it again. This is a brilliant book, and one I really needed to read.
The basic concept is that we have allowed our common sense to slip away, in favor of laws. We got the idea that laws can handle every eventuality, if we just make them specific enough, and that once those laws are specific enough to take care of everything, then all will be well, as solutions to our problems will be taken out of the hands of untrustworthy human beings, with their flawed judgment and their biases and their tendency toward corruption.
I'm not sure how we missed the idea that the laws themselves would be made by those same fallible, biased, corrupt human beings, but there it is. I think it is because we trust the democratic process to keep any individual human from screwing up the laws, whereas we don't trust bureaucrats to actually make decisions -- especially not bureaucrats who were appointed, rather than elected.
The problem, of course, is that laws cannot predict every eventuality. The larger problem is our reaction to this initial problem, which I'm sure became obvious right away (this was a gradual process, of course, and there isn't one tipping point -- though the author glanced meaningfully at both FDR and LBJ), was to add more laws, with more specifics, in order to handle the situations we didn't think of before. But what ends up happening is that the more specific a law is, and the less leeway that is allowed to government officials to make decisions about individual cases, the more loopholes there are in the laws and the easier it is to get away with doing things completely counter to the intent of the law, but well within its letter. Like the tax laws, which allow rich fatcats to pay nothing at all, while I and my middle-class ilk shoulder the burden of paying for the United States. But we can fix that: how about some more laws?
Then there are other problems with our society. One is that government officials, freed from the burden of having to make decisions and then be responsible for those decisions -- because we don't want our government employees to make any decisions at all, since we don't trust them -- have become intentionally indecisive and dilatory, slowing down every government process in every way, and passing the buck whenever possible, so that no decisions ever get made, at all, because that way nobody will be held accountable for a decision. This has been exacerbated by our nation's decision to allow everyone and their mother to sue everyone else and their grandmother for any perceived slight at all: now not only will making a decision put you in danger of losing your comfortable government sinecure, but you just might get smacked with a lawsuit, as well. So nobody makes decisions, and nothing gets done. Issues and requests get sent from committee to committee to committee, where they eventually die of old age, while everything in our society just keeps on suckin'.
The last problem described in the book is probably the nearest and dearest to my teachin' heart. It is the idea that citizens in this country have the right to all services provided by our government, even if providing those services to every individual citizen means that the services themselves become useless, or are denied to other citizens because of the first set. Too confusing, I know. Take the Americans with Disabilities Act. Several examples were pulled out of this. Now, the idea behind it is all well and good; services should not be denied to someone only because of a disability. But there needs to be a certain caveat added to that sentence: when it is reasonable to provide those services to that person. And perhaps some inconvenience, such as a delay, should be expected.
But we refuse to accept that, because we believe we are entitled to all services -- and what's more, we are entitled to convenience in receiving those services. Thus lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit have ensured that every new building which grants access to the public has wheelchair ramps and elevators. Despite the simple fact that people in wheelchairs make up a miniscule portion of our population, and the installation of ramps and elevators and wheelchair-accessible hallways and doorways and restrooms costs an inordinate amount -- money that cannot then go towards providing services or amenities to the rest of us -- and is occasionally detrimental to other people -- such as old folks who have trouble going up ramps, who would be better served by staircases, especially in places that have ice in the winters.
You combine that entitlement, along with the government's unwillingness to make decisions and take responsibility for those decisions, AND our attempts to handle everything through universally applied laws that grow more and more infinitesimally specific -- and thus more gargantuan in written form -- every year, and you get: us. All fucked up and getting worse. Unable to pass universal health care because it is possible that someone, somewhere, could get fifty Federal cents put towards an abortion. Because there has to be codification of something as simple as an end-of-life consultation, which should just be done by a reasonable doctor, and paid for by a reasonable insurance auditor. Because we refuse to allow a government bureaucrat in between us and our doctors, since we don't trust those government people to make our medical decisions for us -- but we'll sure as hell let an insurance company bureaucrat do exactly that. Though of course, they won't be held accountable for their decisions. Because no one is.
And here we are. Without common sense, and dying off as a society because of it.
Happy book.
Thoughts:
The author's recommendation was that we start asking people to make decisions, and holding them accountable for those decisions. Makes sense to me. So I will continue to fail students, year after year after year, until the lazy bastards do their work. And if that ends up getting me, I don't know, chewed out or forced out, I will take responsibility for my decision, and I will do what I have to do. That will be my way of helping save our world.
Go me.
**Elantris by Brandon Sanderson (72) 12/23
Pick:
This one came from one of my students -- the one who reads the most, probably -- who is a fan of the Wheel of Time. He read this for his first book report for class, and we talked a little about it, so he loaned it to me along with another one over Christmas Break. I decided to read it now to make sure I got it done and could return his book (Though I didn't get through the other one yet, so he'll probably have to wait a little while, not that it matters.) and because the premise sounded interesting.
Story:
This book confirmed everything I thought about Brandon Sanderson based on Mistborn, which I read a while back to see how well I thought this guy would do with WoT: I decided then that Sanderson has some outstanding ideas, and is a decent but not a spectacular wordsmith. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well he did with Robert Jordan's characters and plot, but this one went back to Mistborn: it's a fantastic idea, with decent writing. Actually, since this one is Sanderson's first published novel, it isn't as well-written as Mistborn, though it isn't bad. A bit too long; there's a whole section that I thought could have been dropped entirely.
The idea is this: there is a city, called Elantris, peopled by demi-gods. The demi-gods were once human, and Elantris is surrounded by normal human towns, but every once in a while, a human will wake up and find that he has transformed overnight into an Elantrian: his skin and hair turn glowing silver-white, and he becomes nearly immortal and possessed of great magical power. The human goes to join his kind in Elantris, and they watch over the human people. Then, ten years ago, something happened: suddenly the magic of Elantris stopped working, overnight; the humans rioted as their benevolent overlords failed them, and most of the Elantrians were killed. Ever since then, whenever a human undergoes the change, he no longer becomes a god: now he becomes little more than a walking corpse, cursed instead of blessed. He is thrown into the now-rotting city of Elantris, and forgotten.
It's a nice premise, this idea that even gods could falter, and what would happen when they did so. It's actually built on another cool premise, which is that there are sigils, icons, that are the source of magic in this world; they are the magic the Elantrians had mastered, and which, it turns out, had failed them for a specific (only slightly cheesy) reason. I won't spoil it here, since these clever ideas are Sanderson's best attribute as a writer.
The characters are decent, though there is way too much time spent dealing with political intrigue, and especially with the slow realization of what is really going on. There is a point, maybe two-thirds through the book, when two characters decide to marry each other for political reasons, so they can have a legitimate claim on the throne of the country around Elantris. Stuff happens and they fail, but it takes a while for their plan to come to a head, and then fall apart -- and there is absolutely no reason for it to be in the book. It doesn't advance the plot at all, as at the end of this scheme, the characters are almost exactly where they were before this plan was hatched, and it takes up 100-150 pages of the nigh-700 page novel. Should have been dropped entirely, along with some of the more ponderous explorations of daily life in Elantris -- for instance, there are three gang leaders in Elantris. Why not just two? No reason, he just thought of three different ways the protagonist could overcome three gangs, so he threw all three of them in there.
But: I did like the ideas, I did like the bad guy (even if he was a poorly-disguised allegory for the Catholic Church, as the Mormon Sanderson worked out some personal issues through his characters), and I loved the ending -- except for what happens to the bad guy. Sorta lame. Could have been better. Pretty good book, though. I may try Sanderson's newest series, once I can buy new books freely, again.
Thoughts:
Already said 'em.
**The Doom Machine by Mark Teague (73) 12/26
Pick:
Amazon Vine. I dig YA, I dig sci-fi, I dig that this guy drew his own illustrations. I was curious about the Doom Machine.
Review:
When I first started this book, I was dubious. The characters were cliche and quite flat -- the Huck Finn uneducated independent free spirit, repeated both in ten-year-old Jack and his middle-aged Uncle Bud; the surly prejudiced cop and his dumb bully of a son; the heartless rational scientist, softened not at all by being female. I thought the aliens were silly, and the few jokes in the beginning were not the greatest. Even the illustrations seemed a bit tired.
But I continued on, and when the story left Earth, the book took off with the spaceship. The aliens became multi-dimensional and interesting, the characters gained depth and spirit, the world of outer space was vast and interesting and real, without being overwhelming. The book became a mix of adventure story, political allegory, scientific exploration, and imaginative storytelling, and it really became wonderful. Even the illustrations became more intriguing, when the author/illustrator got into depicting the stranger places and beings his characters encountered.
Much of the book takes place on an alien planet called Arboria, with three human characters trekking across its harsh and strange landscapes in search of help; meanwhile, the alien spaceship flies toward its home planet with two scientists on board -- one who thinks of Earth's best interests, and one who thinks only of his own. The contrast keeps the reader interested, as does Teague's forays into the mindset of the aliens themselves; while they are often cliche villains, the view of the alien culture, particularly the inner conflicts that fracture the society, are especially interesting, and easy enough for a young adult reader to grasp.
The first few chapters are a bit dull and clunky, but the majority of the book is excellent and entertaining. It was definitely worth the effort to get into it.
Thoughts:
He really should have tried harder to think up good human characters; even the aspects that were interesting, like the young girl's mixed race heritage in the 1950's, were not explored, because too much time was spent on young Jack's adventures souping up cars and playin' hooky. Lame sauce. Really were good aliens, though. Great ending -- until they got back to Earth. Then it was lame again.
20. The Verse by the Side of the Road by Frank Rowsome, Jr. (74) 12/27
Pick:
There was no good reason for this book. It's the history of the Burma-Shave signs, the ones that used to spin out a brief poem in five or six lines along highways in the time of Bugs Bunny (which is the only place I'd ever seen them myself, since they ended the campaign and the company in the 60's), which is not particularly fascinating, and has no connection to me personally. But I got it at the Scappoose Library Sale, and I've been using it as a bathroom reader for much of this year. I wanted to finish it up, I wanted to pad my book total -- hey, I really read this thing, so why not? -- and I only had twenty pages of sign limericks left. So there you are.
Story:
Kind of nice that the company was a mom-and-pop who created their own product, and used poetry and wit to sell it, and became not only very successful, but also a cultural icon. For the generation before me, admittedly, since I tried to make a Burma-Shave reference on Facebook and fell flat on my face . . . book, but still: they did it with puns and doggerel and wordplay, and I've got to like that. It was a short, easy book to read, probably would be more interesting for someone who knew the signs in person, so to speak, which means I think it will head over to me pops.
Thoughts:
Here are some of the best (including one promoting highway safety, which was another cool thing about the company):
Does your husband
Misbehave
Grunt and grumble
Rant and rave?
Shoot the brute some
Burma-Shave.
The safest rule
No ifs or buts
Just drive
Like everyone else
Is nuts!
Burma-shave
Said Juliet
To Romeo
If you
Won't shave
Go homeo.
Burma-Shave
Drinking drivers --
Nothing worse.
They put
The quart
Before the hearse.
Burma-Shave
Good stuff.
**The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs (75) 12/28
Pick:
Christmas present from Toni. (And for Toni.) Something non-fiction, short pieces, after a bit of a slog to get through Elantris? Perfect.
Story:
And you thought A.J. Jacobs could only do year-long experiments in alternative living. Hah! This book is nine month-long experiments, some that A.J. thought up in between reading the entire encyclopedia and living Biblically, and some that were suggested to him by readers or editors or family members. The experiments are: living as a beautiful woman, when A.J. created an online profile, screened the e-mails, and set up dates for his nanny Michelle; outsourcing his personal life to a pair of firms in India; a month of Extreme Honesty, when A.J. tried to tell everyone the absolute truth with no filtering at all; his experience impersonating an actor at the Oscars; an attempt to live life completely rationally, without any biases or unthinking prejudices; his nude photo shoot for Esquire magazine as part of a piece by Mary-Louise Parker (Yep, Weeds woman) on how it feels to be photographed in the nude; an attempt to live according to the personal rules of behavior endorsed by George Washington; a month spent doing only one thing at a time without any multi-tasking at all; and finally, a month doing whatever his wife Julie asked of him.
Thoughts:
The book is great. But since I already blogged about the best parts, I'm going to let it go at that.
21. I Hate Myself and Want to Die by Tom Reynolds (76) 12/28
Pick:
We found this one at Powell's while waiting in the checkout line, I believe; it was marked down and looked/sounded very amusing. I started reading it to her on the way home, and then put it down for probably a year; I picked it up again fairly recently and read it as a bathroom book -- a use to which it was well-suited -- and then decided to finish it up to, well, pad my total for the year. And also so I could be done with it and start something new.
Story:
So this book goes through the 52 most depressing songs ever made, as chosen by the author -- a music critic and musician from LA. His criteria for being a depressing song came down to these: first, is it about a depressing subject? Death, or drug use, or rejection, or loss? Secondly, does it wallow in that depressing theme until you just about want to kill yourself? Third, is it pretentious, either in its attempt to be overtly, shockingly depressing, or in its failed attempt to be grandiose and moving? If it matches all of those, then it made the list.
Reynolds divides the songs into several different categories, rather than offering one a week -- which seemed an odd choice, considering his list includes 52 songs, a pointless number unless you are counting off weeks of the year. Or cards in a deck, I suppose, but there was no connection there. The categories included: She Hates Me, I Hate Her; I Had No Idea That Song Was So Morbid; I Mope, Therefore I Am; I'm Trying To Be Profound And Touching, But I Really Suck At It, and the title group, I Hate Myself And Want To Die. Among others. He lists the song under each category, and then dissects it: he describes the song, both music and lyric; gives its history, as much as is relevant or interesting (read: depressing), and then explains why this song specifically is depressing.
It's not bad. Some of his choices are right on the money -- "Strange Fruit" by Billie Holiday, "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd, and the Mighty Trio: Celine Dion's "All By Myself," Mariah Carey's "Without You," and Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You." He declares the most depressing song ever made to be "The Christmas Shoes" by Newsong, and that is one thousand percent accurate. The only problem is that he is a bit too much of a music snob, and so is too forgiving of artists that he thinks are good musicians, and too harsh on artists he doesn't like -- he chose "One," by Metallica, which is definitely depressing (especially including the video, a large part of why he picked it), but the song doesn't fit his criteria -- he just doesn't like Metallica's music very much. Same goes for Nine Inch Nails's "Hurt," which he thinks is wonderful in the remade version by Johnny Cash, but horrid in Trent Reznor's original -- and I thought the opposite. His criticism gets a bit too snippy, even caustic and mean at times, and that was sometimes troubling. He did make an odd, and maybe intentionally humbling, choice to keep in the chapter on the song "Brick," by the Ben Folds Five, even after he found out that he had misinterpreted the song; he added some editorial comments pointing out where he had later realized he sounded like an idiot, and kept the chapter in the book. Which was interesting, but a little odd to read.
The biggest problem with the writing was simply that he ran out of ways to say the song was really, really depressing, and yet he felt the need to say it about every one, in the explanation of why the song is depressing. He went the same route almost every time, saying that the song was so depressing it made you want to kill yourself in some terrible painful way -- it felt like someone was "peeling the skin off your skull with a sardine key," for instance. It got very, very tired.
Thoughts:
In some ways it was interesting, but it was too one-dimensional and there were too many depressing songs. The book would have been better if he had included horrifying songs, or sad songs (He did make a nice distinction between sad and depressing, but then I disagreed with his example), or even happy songs. Or if it had been, say, the 26 most depressing songs you've ever heard.
**Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer (77) 12/30
Pick:
Toni found this one in the St. Helens Bookshop and said we should buy it; then she read it first, and insisted I should read it now, instead of something less full of pirate-y goodness. And by gum, she was right.
Story:
This is the tale of Mary "Jacky" Faber, a poor lost orphan girl from the streets of London who found her way onto a British Navy ship under pretense of boyhood, and genuine ability to read --earning her a spot as ship's boy and assistant to the clerk and shipboard tutor. She gains the trust and friendship of her fellow ship's boys, and learns to love the sea and her ship as they sail the Atlantic hunting pirates.
This is a hell of an adventure story. The twist of Mary's concealed gender doesn't dominate the story; much more important and moving was her time as a starving orphan, following the death of her entire family in one of the plagues that constantly sweep London during the 18th century, when the book is set. But the fact that Mary is a girl does add suspense, and some real depth to her character. The depiction of shipboard life is interesting, historically accurate and informative as far as I can tell, and the story drew me in and kept me rolling along. Definitely recommend this, especially to adventurous young women.
Thoughts:
Hey, I read it in a day, and I'm going to be buying the rest of the series. Part of me wishes that Mary was a pirate, but this works very nicely, anyway.
**Blood Rites: Book Six of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (78! Woot!) 12/31
Pick:
I love Dresden, so it seemed a good way to end the year. Plus I was pretty sure I could burn through the book in less than 24 hours and get it on my 2009 list.
Story:
While this one is clever, in the connection between the White Court and the porn industry, it really isn't one of my favorites. It brings some great characters sharply to life: I really like Thomas's place in this series, and this is the book where he steps up and becomes an important character; I think Kincaid is a fascinating shades-of-gray hero/villain; and this is where Harry meets Mouse -- and who doesn't love Mouse?
The most interesting part of the story line -- apart from Thomas and Harry, of course -- is what Harry finds out about Ebenezar McCoy. I love how Harry grows more into the shades of gray in this series, and then (though I haven't read the most recent book and the series isn't over yet) seems to come out the other side with an even stronger sense of morality, of right and wrong, and this revelation is a big part of that journey. I think it's cool.
Thoughts:
At least I was write in my reasons for picking it. And I do like what happens to Thomas's father, Lord Raith. The big twerp.
The main thing is, this finishes a year in books -- a year that featured a pair of collapses, first of our computer, and then of my book shelf. The second one, funnily enough, had the bigger impact for me, I think. Though I am still trying to recover from the loss of my writing, so maybe they both mattered.
At any rate, this year's finished. On to the next!
The Wrap Up:
You know, overall this seemed like a pretty mediocre year for reading. There were some high points, but between the twin catastrophes that screwed this list up -- the collapse of our computer and my book shelf -- and the Amazon Vine program, which has certainly expanded my reading horizons and (one hopes) is doing good things for my career, but which also puts a fair number of cruddyish books in my hands, there seem like a lot of books that I just wasn't that excited about. Maybe it wasn't my fault that my reading slowed down towards the end of the year, there.
Best Book of the Year:
The Gathering Storm, Book Twelve of the Wheel of Time. Fool was great, too, as was Travels With Charley and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and A Wrinkle in Time. But it's all about WoT.
Worst Book That I Finished:
Probably Magician's Apprentice. Maybe School of Fear.
Worst Book That I Didn't Finish:
Oh, that would probably be The Company of Dogs. Though I tried to read a number of massive tomes/weighty authoring, between Genji, Strange/Norrell, and The Darkness That Comes Before.
Book That Was Most Fun To Make Fun Of:
Magician's Apprentice
Most Surprisingly Enjoyable Book:
Actually reading The Pirate Primer, or The Cleft And Other Tales
Most Inspiring Book:
Travels With Charley
Most Demoralizing Book:
The Death of Common Sense
Book That Made Me Laugh The Most:
Fool
Saddest Book:
Dry
Best Vine book:
The Magicians
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Friday, November 13, 2009
September & October
A wee bit late. I've been kinda busy. The sad thing is that I've been reading pretty well for the last two months, but I'm only four books farther along on my Read All My Books quest. Well, six if you count the two I didn't finish. At least they're off the shelf. But I should probably focus more on the shelf, and less on re-reads and Vine books. And then there's those pesky student essays.
10. The Pirate Primer by George Choundas (49) 9/12
Pick:
I wasn't going to read this entire book, just glance through it a bit every now and again. But Talk Like a Pirate Day was coming up, and I wanted something that wasn't too mentally involved, since it's back to school time, as well. So I figured what the heck.
Story:
There's not really a story here, of course, since the Primer is a dictionary. I originally started reading it by scanning the piratey phrases and their definitions -- though most of the definitions re pretty self-explanatory; how do you mistake what's meant by "I come from Hell, and I'll take ye back with me presently." But then I realized that the most interesting part of each entry wasn't the phrase, nor its definition: it was the source. Every entry in here is documented, given in its original context, usually with some background. Most of them came from the Treasure Island movies and a few similar cinematic masterworks -- Blackbeard the Pirate, Captain Blood and so on -- or from a few pirate novels. The largest contributors, by far, were the pirate works of one Jeffery Farnol, which I now intend to find and read, with great gusto.
The Primer is interesting and informative, and, if you can get into the spirit, a lot of fun to read. Made me laugh several times. Of course, you have to really like pirates.
Thoughts:
Luckily, I really like pirates. And words. This was great -- I'll still have to keep referring to it now and again for refreshers, but for now: Let me drown and perish in blood, ye blasted limpet! All hands to rigging -- full canvas, and straight for the Pirate Round!
11. The Sandman: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman (50) 9/13
Pick:
I was jonesing for a story, but I didn't want to read anything long and involved. So this seemed perfect.
Story:
This installment of The Sandman series focuses on Hell. It starts out with the Endless -- Dream (the Sandman) and his siblings Death, Destiny, Desire, Despair, and Delirium -- all having a family meeting. At the meeting, the Endless accuse Dream of being unfair to his human lover, Nada, whom he had banished to Hell 10,000 years before, because she had spurned his love, choosing to kill herself rather than become his immortal queen in the Dreaming. They point out that this was a terrible and unjust thing to do to her, and he should fix it. Dream finally agrees, and decides to travel to Hell. Unfortunately, he was in Hell not long ago -- in the first book, Preludes and Nocturnes -- to retrieve his Dream-helm from the demon that held it, and while there, Lucifer had taken insult and told Dream not to come back to the Abyss. So it seems we're leading up to a confrontation, and one that won't work out well for Dream, since Lucifer is the second-most-powerful being in the multiverse, and far stronger than some undying embodiment of human dreams.
But then Lucifer decides to quit. He empties Hell, throws out all the demons and the damned, and locks the gates. He then gives the key to -- Dream. To do with as he will. The rest of the book is dedicated to Dream's attempt to decide who, of the many godlings and powers who come to claim it, will receive the key to Hell. Will it be Odin of the Aesir? Anubis, of the gods of Egypt? The embodiment of Chaos? Of Order? (Those last two are hilarious: the Chaos representative is named Shivering Jemmy of the Shallow Brigade; she appears as a small child holding a balloon and in dress-up costume. She tries to threaten Dream, to intimidate him into giving her the key by swelling up into a horrible demon with promises of dire consequences, but when Dream is unimpressed, she goes right back to little girl and gives him her balloon. The Order representative takes the form of the perfect avatar of order: an empty cardboard box. Seems pretty clear where Gaiman's loyalties lie on this continuum.) Or will he give it back to the former Hellions, represented by Azazel -- who dangles the soul of Nada in front of Dream as a carrot, and a stick?
You'll have to read it yourself to find out.
Thoughts:
It's a good story, with the right ending -- if not the most amusing one -- and it all works out well for the Sandman. Though now I really want to know who Dream's missing sibling is, since there are supposed to be seven of the Endless, and this book talks about the one brother that has decided to cut all ties to his family. It isn't Death or Destiny; is it Doom? Darkness? Deep thoughts? I dunno.
12. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (51) 9/15
Pick:
I wanted something more weighty after reading a comic book -- which still doesn't feel completely like reading a book to me, despite my definite stance on the literary merits of The Watchmen, and Maus, and, yes, Neil Gaiman's Sandman -- but I still wasn't up for anything too long or involved. So I picked something literary, but short: only 114 pages.
Story:
This was a little tough for me to follow, but it was still brilliant. Woolf lost me early on when she moved into her imagined persona of Mary Seton -- or was it Beton? -- and began describing life as an author. I thought it was a brief episode in the beginning, given to show the difference between men's colleges and women's, and it was -- but then near the end, she steps back out of the persona into herself, which I thought she had done long before. So I'm not sure how exactly it worked. I also got distracted by life a time or two, since I don't have a room of my own and 500 a year (Not that I'm complaining about what I do have, which is more than most would-be artists), and you really can't read Woolf with anything less than full and complete attention.
But in essence, the idea is this: artists cannot create their art when they have to spend their time working for money, playing office politics, serving the needs and wants of other people. Because those other influences and demands on an artist's time and energy come through in the work. She cited a passage from Emily Bronte, in Jane Eyre, when the character thinks about how awful it is to be trapped, never given the freedom to explore the world, relying only on a single female companion for all of one's friendly interactions; it is pretty clear from this that the author is speaking here, not the character. This is how Emily Bronte felt, and it made her bitter and angry, too bitter and angry to stick to what she should have been saying with her character, what would have best served her story's purpose, and so she lost the thread of the narrative and jarred the reader. And so the art suffers because the artist is not free to pursue it completely.
This, it seems to me, is absolutely true.
Her second point is that women need to take advantage of their newly found freedom (The piece was written in 1928, just after women's enfranchisement in both Britain and America) to write, because there is not a literary tradition of female writers for new women authors to build on. She talks about how the predominant examples of writing in England are (almost) all male writers, all of whom write very male sentences; there is no one for a woman to emulate in creating a feminine fiction. And though I can't relate to it, it makes sense to me; I believe that fantasy and science fiction authors still face this problem today. There are great authors in sci-fi, but not a lot; the preponderance of fantasy lit is still pulp. It makes it harder to tell a good story in a fantastic world. Of course, I may be a pulp author and a fan of the pulp myself, as I can never persist all the way through a literary fantasy novel. The only question is: is that because I am a fantasy Philistine? Or because the authors who want to write great literary fantasy kinda . . . suck?
Since I've read Tolkien, and Gaiman, and Zelazny, and Bradbury, I'm going with the latter.
Thoughts:
I did like it quite a lot; I plan to read it again in the future, see if even more of it makes sense to me. Though I'll probably wait until I am a writer and reader, but no longer a teacher.
**Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay (52) 9/18
Pick:
Bought this at Fred Meyer (Buy two get one sale) because we love the show so much, and I wanted to know if the books would stack up. Just bought it a week or so ago, so it isn't part of the Great Mission. But it is the 52nd book this year -- and only in September! Woo hoo!
Story:
Okay: so the first thing people probably want to know is this: this book is just as good as the show, and in some ways better. As brilliant as Michael C. Hall is in the title role -- and he is brilliant, the single largest reason the show is as good as it is -- you get even more of Dexter's mindset, an even deeper look into the abyss that is Dexter, in Jeff Lindsay's books, and that is both disturbing and fascinating, like everything else about this series.
The second thing people probably want to know is: this book is not the same as the series. It follows the same basic storyline as the first season of Dexter, focusing on Dexter's attempt to track down the Ice Truck Killer while helping his foster sister Deborah move from vice to homicide, dealing with his own demons, and finding new and unusual emotions in his relationship with Rita. But the supporting cast are not quite the same, and the ending of this book is very, very different from the ending of the first season of Dexter. If I have any complaint about this book, it is in the ending, which confused me -- but part of that confusion comes from my knowledge of the TV show; I went into this book with certain expectations, and so wasn't starting from Square One in trying to follow the book's twists and turns.
The book was, if anything, a little too short, but there the show actually helped, because much of the character and plot development was already done for me. It did, as I said, make the ending more confusing, but that only means I very much want to read the second book, which I hope will make everything clear -- and I desperately want to know if the storyline continues to parallel that of the show, and if so, how.
Thoughts:
If you like the show (And how could you not?), you'll like the book. I did. I hope the rest of the books have the same effect on me, and judging just from the writing of this one, they will.
13. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (53) 9/23
Pick:
I wanted to read a book about pirates, because of Talk Like a Pirate Day. I would have gone for Treasure Island, but we don't have a copy, so I picked up this one instead, because Toni said it had pirates.
Story:
David Balfour sets off to seek his fortune, but he makes a mistake: he goes to see an uncle, who he didn't even know he had. This uncle, it turns out, is such the misanthropic miser that he sees his nephew as a threat to his property -- so he pays to have his nephew kidnapped and transported to the Colonies for a life of indentured servitude. But the ship encounters a boat full of men -- actually, the ship runs it down -- and only one man survives: Alan Breck, Highlander and Jacobite (This takes place in 1750, just after Bonnie Prince Charlie's attempt at the throne of England.). Breck and Balfour unite against their common foes, the captain and crew, and there is a fantastic scene when the two barricade themselves in the ship's cabin and fight off the entire ship's crew.
The ship wrecks, and David is swept to a small island on the coast of Scotland (Another wonderful scene, with a great twist), and then makes it to the mainland. There he is quickly caught up in the tensions between the clans and the oppressive English rulers, and is accused of complicity in the murder of a prominent British official. He is saved by Alan Breck, who also survived the shipwreck, and the two of them begin a long and arduous flight to the lowlands of Scotland, trying to avoid British soldiers and enemy Highlanders along the way.
This is a great adventure story, realistic and genuine and informative as well as entertaining. The original illustrations, by the great N.C. Wyeth, made it all the more real, all the more entertaining. A wonderful book.
Thoughts:
Well, it only had a little piratin' in it, but that was enough. This is a pretty interesting book, though much of the interest relies on the idea that the main character should be a landowner, but he's trapped in the Highlands of Scotland. I didn't really feel like the desire to get back to his estate was enough motivation for me to care about -- I actually would have liked it more if he was trying to get home, to people who loved him. But man, it was cool -- seems like people don't write action scenes like that any more. I wonder why.
**Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (Unfinished)
Pick:
Mistake. I should have read more of the synopsis. But it was first on the targeted Vine letter, and this is one of those names that I leap at, thinking, "Ooh, Jonathan Lethem! Gun, with Occasional Music was great! I bet this one would be good, too!" But I couldn't finish Motherless Brooklyn, and now I couldn't finish this one. Well, I could have, but it's taking too long, and I have to spend too much effort, and it makes me not want to read, which is no good. Hopefully this will not happen too often with the Vine books -- I'll choose a little more carefully now.
Review:
There's nothing wrong with this book, but it was a mistake for me. I got it because I am an admirer of Jonathan Lethem -- and I still am -- but while I loved "Gun, With Occasional Music" and "The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye," his literary novels are just too post-modern for me to enjoy. I love the way he writes, and there are some wonderful flourishes in this book -- I particularly liked Laird Noteless, the "sculptor" whose works are nothing more than enormous holes in the ground in awkward places, and the moment when the main character, Chase Insteadman, has one of those classic hypochondriacal synaesthetic attacks, when he is overwhelmed by sensation and alienation -- and it turns out he has the flu.
But for the most part, the book felt wrong to me. I need more of a narrative and less self-aware humor. I have also known people like Perkus Tooth, and I don't like them, so sympathy for this guy was hard to drum up. For those who enjoy postmodernist literature, I think this book would probably be a wonderful experience, but I couldn't finish it. Which, of course, makes me feel like a semi-literate buffoon, but there are too many books out there to read, and enjoy reading, for me to spend more time slogging through something that I can't get a handle on.
Thoughts:
I think I'm done with Jonathan Lethem now, unless he writes another short science fiction novel. Maybe I could go for short stories again.
**Crossroads of Twilight: Book 10 of the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan 10/13 (54)
Pick:
The Gathering Storm is coming! October 27 is the release date, and then as soon as Amazon ships it to me, I have to be ready to read. I had been planning on going back one more, to Winter's Heart -- which is where I left off the series last year -- but I had loaned it to Tia, who hadn't been able to return it to me until this past week. So I skipped it for now, going straight to this one.
Story:
This isn't the most eventful of the books: nothing, really, gets resolved, and Rand doesn't even make an appearance, other than one short bit when he sends Bashere and Logain to make a peace treaty with the Seanchan. But there's quite a bit on Elayne, and Egwene, and Perrin, and Mat, which I think was meant to balance out the fact that Rand was predominant in Winter's Heart, when he and Nynaeve cleanse saidin. This one moves the story along, setting up a number of things to happen in the next few books -- not the least of which is Rand's decision to deal with the worst threat other than the Dark One, the Hailene.
Yeah, I know none of this makes sense to anyone who hasn't read the books. Too bad.
Thoughts:
Not the best, but I liked it better than the two before it -- though I need to re-read Winter's Heart to get a clearer grasp on it. But that's going to have to wait, probably until Book 13 comes out. For now, I must move on, read a Vine book, and then Knife of Dreams -- because the Gathering Storm is coming! Woot!
**Peter and Max: A Fables Novel by Bill Willingham 10/18 (55)
Pick:
It sounded interesting. I picked it back before I started reading WoT again, and before I spent nearly two weeks trying to slog through Chronic City, so I'm glad that it was a short and easy read.
Amazon Review:
The operative question here is, does this book stand alone, or is it necessary for one to have read the Fables comics in order to understand and enjoy this book?
My answer is: yes.
The book is good all by itself; the concept is extremely clever, and the characters are mostly well-done; the villain, Max, is a the best of the lot, as we get to watch him descend into madness. If anything, the descent was a little too quick; I would have enjoyed more of the backstory there, a better glimpse of the timeline. As it was, Max seemed to fall off the precipice a bit too quickly, though his fall from there, from the moment when he just crosses the line into badness to the end game, when he is a monster, was wonderfully entertaining and disturbing. I wanted a bit more buildup before Max' first truly villainous act.
The flashback sequences were excellent, giving a nice view of a story in a medieval setting, though there was, once again, a difficult transition: the move from that part of the story to the next, when the Fables come over to this world from theirs, seemed a little too quick. It made sense, it just wasn't explored as much as the early parts of the back story were. So in essence, Max's story was too quick and then very well done, and Peter's story was very well done -- and then too quick.
On the other hand, there were so many tantalizing hints about the larger world of the Fables that it made me very much want to explore the comic series that led to this book. Which, after all, might have been the point. But I'd recommend the book for people that don't mind being lured in by the tempting tune of the author's piping, which leads into -- a dark and forbidding place? A great adventure? Certainly a whole new series of books to read. And I say: there's nothing wrong with that.
Thoughts:
Not excellent, but a nice, fun story. Really does make me want to at least check out the Fables, which I will do when we head to Powell's.
**Knife of Dreams: Book Eleven of the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan 10/24 (56)
Pick:
Last one before Gathering Storm gets here. Tomorrow is Release Day! Woot!
Story:
This one is better than I remembered; it was nice that I had forgotten so many of the specifics from the last time I read it, what, three years ago when it was released? I remembered Rand's injury but not how it happened, and I remembered the climax between Mat and Tuon but not everything that led up to it -- or how much she annoyed me in the process. That's funny, actually, because the only reason she annoys me (well, no, there are two) is because she sees herself as the heir of the Seanchan empire, and therefore acts superior to everyone, and also plots against the characters I like. She's a bad guy, so I don't like her; otherwise the character is written just fine, very interesting.
But I definitely don't like the Seanchan, though I recognize the temptation of the people to accept their rule, and even long for it: they're fascists. Absolute law and order, which is nice and peaceful -- as long as you're not one of the unforgivables, which in the case of the Seanchan are people who can use the power, and anyone who doesn't live to serve the Empress. I have no doubt that, if they took over the nations on this side of the ocean, they would find another group to persecute -- most likely the Tinkers and the Sea Folk.
I did remember the end of Perrin's story, and I'm ever so glad that all the bad guys got their comeuppance in that one.
Now I can't wait. What happens to Perrin and Faile? Where does Mat take the Band -- do they defeat the Seanchan, or does Rand's truce hold? What will happen with the Black Tower? Is Egwene finally going to defeat Elaida, and bring her down? Because it's about time. I also realized in this reading that Egwene is probably my favorite character to read. She rocks.
Thoughts:
Tomorrow is release day! Tomorrow!
**Break by Hannah Moskowitz 10/26 (57)
Pick:
Vine Voice; I took this one because I love the concept.
Review:
It's a great concept: Jonah McNab wants to get stronger, so he decides to do something drastic. He starts breaking his bones, knowing that a broken bone grows back stronger than it was before. He breaks his wrist and two ribs "falling" of of his skateboard; he breaks the hand on the end of the wrist; he breaks several more bones with another intentional fall. His count gets above 30 bones broken; not a bad start on the way to his goal of all 206.
But there are other factors. There is his brother, Jesse, who is deathly allergic to most foods, who cannot eat, nor touch, nor even be in the same room as eggs or peanuts or milk -- the last one being the most dangerous for Jesse right now, as Jonah and Jesse have a baby brother, Will, and therefore the house is full of milk. Will brings his own set of problems into Jonah's life, as he is eight months old and has yet to stop crying. Their parents argue all the time, which only adds to the stress in the lives of all three sons -- which only increases the burdens they already carry, in dealing with each other.
It is a great concept, especially once the thought process behind Jonah's breaking is revealed, near the end of the book. The writing doesn't quite come up to the same level, but Moskowitz certainly pulls it off, especially considering her age. There are some moments when the reader raises an eyebrow, wondering at this metaphor or that phrasing; in the beginning the characters' banter seems a bit too witty to me, though perhaps the author is around wittier teenagers than I. Some of the book struck me as overly dramatic, but the climactic scene turned that around: it was very well done, and gave the book a good ending without wrapping everything up in a neat little package -- a possibility that was lost long before the ending. Overall, it's a well-done book, impressive for a debut, and would get my recommendation, especially for teenagers who like drama in their novels.
Thoughts:
I'll have to go through and find some of those metaphors, but mostly, the biggest flaw was that she uses the heavy proclamation style of writing too much: one sentence paragraphs, short chapters that end with heavy thoughts, in order to give things more weight. Not to sound overly snotty, but -- beginner writing stuff. Since she wrote this while in high school -- and it's LEAGUES beyond frickin' Eragon -- I figure she'll turn into a hell of a writer over time.
**Grave Peril: The Dresden Files, Book 3 by Jim Butcher (58) 10/29
Pick:
The book didn't arrive on the day it was released -- something about needing to ship it from the publisher to me. Whatever. They're just trying to hold me back from my Jordan, man. So I read something I wanted to read -- or re-read, rather.
Thoughts:
This one isn't the best Dresden. I love Michael, and this is when he is introduced along with Harry's Faerie godmother Lea, who's a cool villain and a nice mystery, and Thomas Raith, a great idea for a vampire and an excellent character-to-be. But the spirit of the Nightmare is, well, lame, and the final struggle at Bianca's is unsatisfying to me, because I hate what happens to Susan, and to Harry because of his reaction. Fourth book is way better.
14. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (59) 10/31
Pick:
The Book still hasn't arrived, and I've been reading as quickly as I can so I can be ready to jump into it when it does get here -- because even for WoT, I won't stop a good book in the middle. Not if I can help it. So I had to pick another book, and I've had this one on the shelf for years. I never read it, I always should have, and it should be quick and easy.
Story:
I had no idea (never having looked into Rudyard Kipling's work other than "Gunga Din," which Dad read to us when I was a kid) that this book was more than one storyline; I always thought it was nothing but Mowgli. And I had heard the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, but also had no idea where it came from -- now I know! These are all sweet stories, and would have completely fascinated me when I was young; I particularly liked the idea of the elephants' dance, though I was less pleased that it was so centered on the elephant riders, who seem to me secondary characters. Same with the military animals discussing their roles; I liked that they all had a different idea of how to fight a battle and why the other animals have jobs they each would never want -- but I didn't care as much for how subservient they were to their masters. Maybe it's just my dog, but as much as he loves his master and mistress, I feel like he has his own life, sniffing doggie mail, chasing squirrels, barking at passersby. But I liked the book.
Thoughts:
I'm glad I've read this now. One of the better classics I've gone through -- probably because it's a children's book.
15. The Company of Dogs : 21 Short Stories collected by Michael J. Rosen (Unfinished)
I tried reading this once over the summer, as well, but the introduction is so long and drawn out and over-the-top snotty that I couldn't get through it -- but then, do I really need to know how Michael J. Rosen sees the oeuvre of dogs in literature? Not so much. I tried it again while waiting for The Book (I honestly can't remember where in the sequence -- maybe after the first Dresden and before Jungle Book? After Break? I dunno) because I figured hey, short stories -- that I can stop reading when The Book gets here. But after the first two stories nearly put me to sleep, I thought, you know, maybe the stories that Mr. Rosen thinks are worthwhile, maybe those aren't the ones I want to read. So forget it.
Off the shelf.
16. Faithful by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King (Unfinished)
Once again, I tried to read this right after I found it at the Scappoose Library book sale, and was disappointed to find out that what I thought would be the STORY of two authors following their beloved Red Sox through the 2004 championship season was actually just a collection of random thoughts and memories and e-mails between them. Mainly by the less interesting author. Now I tried to read it again, partly because I could start and stop this one, too (I actually planned to make it a bathroom reader), and partly because I feel a little sad that I couldn't be in the middle of the excitement when the Sox Reversed the Curse. I used to follow the BoSox; I went to games (Two? Or three?); I'm a fan. I wanted to catch a little of the experience, even if it was five years too late. But once I started reading the stories of the games and the players, I realized: I don't want to be a fan any more. I want nothing to do with organized sports, not even accompanied by enjoyable nostalgia. They're boring, and destructive to our culture and the things I actually care about. So, onto the Discard pile this one goes, too, even if it is Stephen King.
10. The Pirate Primer by George Choundas (49) 9/12
Pick:
I wasn't going to read this entire book, just glance through it a bit every now and again. But Talk Like a Pirate Day was coming up, and I wanted something that wasn't too mentally involved, since it's back to school time, as well. So I figured what the heck.
Story:
There's not really a story here, of course, since the Primer is a dictionary. I originally started reading it by scanning the piratey phrases and their definitions -- though most of the definitions re pretty self-explanatory; how do you mistake what's meant by "I come from Hell, and I'll take ye back with me presently." But then I realized that the most interesting part of each entry wasn't the phrase, nor its definition: it was the source. Every entry in here is documented, given in its original context, usually with some background. Most of them came from the Treasure Island movies and a few similar cinematic masterworks -- Blackbeard the Pirate, Captain Blood and so on -- or from a few pirate novels. The largest contributors, by far, were the pirate works of one Jeffery Farnol, which I now intend to find and read, with great gusto.
The Primer is interesting and informative, and, if you can get into the spirit, a lot of fun to read. Made me laugh several times. Of course, you have to really like pirates.
Thoughts:
Luckily, I really like pirates. And words. This was great -- I'll still have to keep referring to it now and again for refreshers, but for now: Let me drown and perish in blood, ye blasted limpet! All hands to rigging -- full canvas, and straight for the Pirate Round!
11. The Sandman: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman (50) 9/13
Pick:
I was jonesing for a story, but I didn't want to read anything long and involved. So this seemed perfect.
Story:
This installment of The Sandman series focuses on Hell. It starts out with the Endless -- Dream (the Sandman) and his siblings Death, Destiny, Desire, Despair, and Delirium -- all having a family meeting. At the meeting, the Endless accuse Dream of being unfair to his human lover, Nada, whom he had banished to Hell 10,000 years before, because she had spurned his love, choosing to kill herself rather than become his immortal queen in the Dreaming. They point out that this was a terrible and unjust thing to do to her, and he should fix it. Dream finally agrees, and decides to travel to Hell. Unfortunately, he was in Hell not long ago -- in the first book, Preludes and Nocturnes -- to retrieve his Dream-helm from the demon that held it, and while there, Lucifer had taken insult and told Dream not to come back to the Abyss. So it seems we're leading up to a confrontation, and one that won't work out well for Dream, since Lucifer is the second-most-powerful being in the multiverse, and far stronger than some undying embodiment of human dreams.
But then Lucifer decides to quit. He empties Hell, throws out all the demons and the damned, and locks the gates. He then gives the key to -- Dream. To do with as he will. The rest of the book is dedicated to Dream's attempt to decide who, of the many godlings and powers who come to claim it, will receive the key to Hell. Will it be Odin of the Aesir? Anubis, of the gods of Egypt? The embodiment of Chaos? Of Order? (Those last two are hilarious: the Chaos representative is named Shivering Jemmy of the Shallow Brigade; she appears as a small child holding a balloon and in dress-up costume. She tries to threaten Dream, to intimidate him into giving her the key by swelling up into a horrible demon with promises of dire consequences, but when Dream is unimpressed, she goes right back to little girl and gives him her balloon. The Order representative takes the form of the perfect avatar of order: an empty cardboard box. Seems pretty clear where Gaiman's loyalties lie on this continuum.) Or will he give it back to the former Hellions, represented by Azazel -- who dangles the soul of Nada in front of Dream as a carrot, and a stick?
You'll have to read it yourself to find out.
Thoughts:
It's a good story, with the right ending -- if not the most amusing one -- and it all works out well for the Sandman. Though now I really want to know who Dream's missing sibling is, since there are supposed to be seven of the Endless, and this book talks about the one brother that has decided to cut all ties to his family. It isn't Death or Destiny; is it Doom? Darkness? Deep thoughts? I dunno.
12. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (51) 9/15
Pick:
I wanted something more weighty after reading a comic book -- which still doesn't feel completely like reading a book to me, despite my definite stance on the literary merits of The Watchmen, and Maus, and, yes, Neil Gaiman's Sandman -- but I still wasn't up for anything too long or involved. So I picked something literary, but short: only 114 pages.
Story:
This was a little tough for me to follow, but it was still brilliant. Woolf lost me early on when she moved into her imagined persona of Mary Seton -- or was it Beton? -- and began describing life as an author. I thought it was a brief episode in the beginning, given to show the difference between men's colleges and women's, and it was -- but then near the end, she steps back out of the persona into herself, which I thought she had done long before. So I'm not sure how exactly it worked. I also got distracted by life a time or two, since I don't have a room of my own and 500 a year (Not that I'm complaining about what I do have, which is more than most would-be artists), and you really can't read Woolf with anything less than full and complete attention.
But in essence, the idea is this: artists cannot create their art when they have to spend their time working for money, playing office politics, serving the needs and wants of other people. Because those other influences and demands on an artist's time and energy come through in the work. She cited a passage from Emily Bronte, in Jane Eyre, when the character thinks about how awful it is to be trapped, never given the freedom to explore the world, relying only on a single female companion for all of one's friendly interactions; it is pretty clear from this that the author is speaking here, not the character. This is how Emily Bronte felt, and it made her bitter and angry, too bitter and angry to stick to what she should have been saying with her character, what would have best served her story's purpose, and so she lost the thread of the narrative and jarred the reader. And so the art suffers because the artist is not free to pursue it completely.
This, it seems to me, is absolutely true.
Her second point is that women need to take advantage of their newly found freedom (The piece was written in 1928, just after women's enfranchisement in both Britain and America) to write, because there is not a literary tradition of female writers for new women authors to build on. She talks about how the predominant examples of writing in England are (almost) all male writers, all of whom write very male sentences; there is no one for a woman to emulate in creating a feminine fiction. And though I can't relate to it, it makes sense to me; I believe that fantasy and science fiction authors still face this problem today. There are great authors in sci-fi, but not a lot; the preponderance of fantasy lit is still pulp. It makes it harder to tell a good story in a fantastic world. Of course, I may be a pulp author and a fan of the pulp myself, as I can never persist all the way through a literary fantasy novel. The only question is: is that because I am a fantasy Philistine? Or because the authors who want to write great literary fantasy kinda . . . suck?
Since I've read Tolkien, and Gaiman, and Zelazny, and Bradbury, I'm going with the latter.
Thoughts:
I did like it quite a lot; I plan to read it again in the future, see if even more of it makes sense to me. Though I'll probably wait until I am a writer and reader, but no longer a teacher.
**Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay (52) 9/18
Pick:
Bought this at Fred Meyer (Buy two get one sale) because we love the show so much, and I wanted to know if the books would stack up. Just bought it a week or so ago, so it isn't part of the Great Mission. But it is the 52nd book this year -- and only in September! Woo hoo!
Story:
Okay: so the first thing people probably want to know is this: this book is just as good as the show, and in some ways better. As brilliant as Michael C. Hall is in the title role -- and he is brilliant, the single largest reason the show is as good as it is -- you get even more of Dexter's mindset, an even deeper look into the abyss that is Dexter, in Jeff Lindsay's books, and that is both disturbing and fascinating, like everything else about this series.
The second thing people probably want to know is: this book is not the same as the series. It follows the same basic storyline as the first season of Dexter, focusing on Dexter's attempt to track down the Ice Truck Killer while helping his foster sister Deborah move from vice to homicide, dealing with his own demons, and finding new and unusual emotions in his relationship with Rita. But the supporting cast are not quite the same, and the ending of this book is very, very different from the ending of the first season of Dexter. If I have any complaint about this book, it is in the ending, which confused me -- but part of that confusion comes from my knowledge of the TV show; I went into this book with certain expectations, and so wasn't starting from Square One in trying to follow the book's twists and turns.
The book was, if anything, a little too short, but there the show actually helped, because much of the character and plot development was already done for me. It did, as I said, make the ending more confusing, but that only means I very much want to read the second book, which I hope will make everything clear -- and I desperately want to know if the storyline continues to parallel that of the show, and if so, how.
Thoughts:
If you like the show (And how could you not?), you'll like the book. I did. I hope the rest of the books have the same effect on me, and judging just from the writing of this one, they will.
13. Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (53) 9/23
Pick:
I wanted to read a book about pirates, because of Talk Like a Pirate Day. I would have gone for Treasure Island, but we don't have a copy, so I picked up this one instead, because Toni said it had pirates.
Story:
David Balfour sets off to seek his fortune, but he makes a mistake: he goes to see an uncle, who he didn't even know he had. This uncle, it turns out, is such the misanthropic miser that he sees his nephew as a threat to his property -- so he pays to have his nephew kidnapped and transported to the Colonies for a life of indentured servitude. But the ship encounters a boat full of men -- actually, the ship runs it down -- and only one man survives: Alan Breck, Highlander and Jacobite (This takes place in 1750, just after Bonnie Prince Charlie's attempt at the throne of England.). Breck and Balfour unite against their common foes, the captain and crew, and there is a fantastic scene when the two barricade themselves in the ship's cabin and fight off the entire ship's crew.
The ship wrecks, and David is swept to a small island on the coast of Scotland (Another wonderful scene, with a great twist), and then makes it to the mainland. There he is quickly caught up in the tensions between the clans and the oppressive English rulers, and is accused of complicity in the murder of a prominent British official. He is saved by Alan Breck, who also survived the shipwreck, and the two of them begin a long and arduous flight to the lowlands of Scotland, trying to avoid British soldiers and enemy Highlanders along the way.
This is a great adventure story, realistic and genuine and informative as well as entertaining. The original illustrations, by the great N.C. Wyeth, made it all the more real, all the more entertaining. A wonderful book.
Thoughts:
Well, it only had a little piratin' in it, but that was enough. This is a pretty interesting book, though much of the interest relies on the idea that the main character should be a landowner, but he's trapped in the Highlands of Scotland. I didn't really feel like the desire to get back to his estate was enough motivation for me to care about -- I actually would have liked it more if he was trying to get home, to people who loved him. But man, it was cool -- seems like people don't write action scenes like that any more. I wonder why.
**Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (Unfinished)
Pick:
Mistake. I should have read more of the synopsis. But it was first on the targeted Vine letter, and this is one of those names that I leap at, thinking, "Ooh, Jonathan Lethem! Gun, with Occasional Music was great! I bet this one would be good, too!" But I couldn't finish Motherless Brooklyn, and now I couldn't finish this one. Well, I could have, but it's taking too long, and I have to spend too much effort, and it makes me not want to read, which is no good. Hopefully this will not happen too often with the Vine books -- I'll choose a little more carefully now.
Review:
There's nothing wrong with this book, but it was a mistake for me. I got it because I am an admirer of Jonathan Lethem -- and I still am -- but while I loved "Gun, With Occasional Music" and "The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye," his literary novels are just too post-modern for me to enjoy. I love the way he writes, and there are some wonderful flourishes in this book -- I particularly liked Laird Noteless, the "sculptor" whose works are nothing more than enormous holes in the ground in awkward places, and the moment when the main character, Chase Insteadman, has one of those classic hypochondriacal synaesthetic attacks, when he is overwhelmed by sensation and alienation -- and it turns out he has the flu.
But for the most part, the book felt wrong to me. I need more of a narrative and less self-aware humor. I have also known people like Perkus Tooth, and I don't like them, so sympathy for this guy was hard to drum up. For those who enjoy postmodernist literature, I think this book would probably be a wonderful experience, but I couldn't finish it. Which, of course, makes me feel like a semi-literate buffoon, but there are too many books out there to read, and enjoy reading, for me to spend more time slogging through something that I can't get a handle on.
Thoughts:
I think I'm done with Jonathan Lethem now, unless he writes another short science fiction novel. Maybe I could go for short stories again.
**Crossroads of Twilight: Book 10 of the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan 10/13 (54)
Pick:
The Gathering Storm is coming! October 27 is the release date, and then as soon as Amazon ships it to me, I have to be ready to read. I had been planning on going back one more, to Winter's Heart -- which is where I left off the series last year -- but I had loaned it to Tia, who hadn't been able to return it to me until this past week. So I skipped it for now, going straight to this one.
Story:
This isn't the most eventful of the books: nothing, really, gets resolved, and Rand doesn't even make an appearance, other than one short bit when he sends Bashere and Logain to make a peace treaty with the Seanchan. But there's quite a bit on Elayne, and Egwene, and Perrin, and Mat, which I think was meant to balance out the fact that Rand was predominant in Winter's Heart, when he and Nynaeve cleanse saidin. This one moves the story along, setting up a number of things to happen in the next few books -- not the least of which is Rand's decision to deal with the worst threat other than the Dark One, the Hailene.
Yeah, I know none of this makes sense to anyone who hasn't read the books. Too bad.
Thoughts:
Not the best, but I liked it better than the two before it -- though I need to re-read Winter's Heart to get a clearer grasp on it. But that's going to have to wait, probably until Book 13 comes out. For now, I must move on, read a Vine book, and then Knife of Dreams -- because the Gathering Storm is coming! Woot!
**Peter and Max: A Fables Novel by Bill Willingham 10/18 (55)
Pick:
It sounded interesting. I picked it back before I started reading WoT again, and before I spent nearly two weeks trying to slog through Chronic City, so I'm glad that it was a short and easy read.
Amazon Review:
The operative question here is, does this book stand alone, or is it necessary for one to have read the Fables comics in order to understand and enjoy this book?
My answer is: yes.
The book is good all by itself; the concept is extremely clever, and the characters are mostly well-done; the villain, Max, is a the best of the lot, as we get to watch him descend into madness. If anything, the descent was a little too quick; I would have enjoyed more of the backstory there, a better glimpse of the timeline. As it was, Max seemed to fall off the precipice a bit too quickly, though his fall from there, from the moment when he just crosses the line into badness to the end game, when he is a monster, was wonderfully entertaining and disturbing. I wanted a bit more buildup before Max' first truly villainous act.
The flashback sequences were excellent, giving a nice view of a story in a medieval setting, though there was, once again, a difficult transition: the move from that part of the story to the next, when the Fables come over to this world from theirs, seemed a little too quick. It made sense, it just wasn't explored as much as the early parts of the back story were. So in essence, Max's story was too quick and then very well done, and Peter's story was very well done -- and then too quick.
On the other hand, there were so many tantalizing hints about the larger world of the Fables that it made me very much want to explore the comic series that led to this book. Which, after all, might have been the point. But I'd recommend the book for people that don't mind being lured in by the tempting tune of the author's piping, which leads into -- a dark and forbidding place? A great adventure? Certainly a whole new series of books to read. And I say: there's nothing wrong with that.
Thoughts:
Not excellent, but a nice, fun story. Really does make me want to at least check out the Fables, which I will do when we head to Powell's.
**Knife of Dreams: Book Eleven of the Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan 10/24 (56)
Pick:
Last one before Gathering Storm gets here. Tomorrow is Release Day! Woot!
Story:
This one is better than I remembered; it was nice that I had forgotten so many of the specifics from the last time I read it, what, three years ago when it was released? I remembered Rand's injury but not how it happened, and I remembered the climax between Mat and Tuon but not everything that led up to it -- or how much she annoyed me in the process. That's funny, actually, because the only reason she annoys me (well, no, there are two) is because she sees herself as the heir of the Seanchan empire, and therefore acts superior to everyone, and also plots against the characters I like. She's a bad guy, so I don't like her; otherwise the character is written just fine, very interesting.
But I definitely don't like the Seanchan, though I recognize the temptation of the people to accept their rule, and even long for it: they're fascists. Absolute law and order, which is nice and peaceful -- as long as you're not one of the unforgivables, which in the case of the Seanchan are people who can use the power, and anyone who doesn't live to serve the Empress. I have no doubt that, if they took over the nations on this side of the ocean, they would find another group to persecute -- most likely the Tinkers and the Sea Folk.
I did remember the end of Perrin's story, and I'm ever so glad that all the bad guys got their comeuppance in that one.
Now I can't wait. What happens to Perrin and Faile? Where does Mat take the Band -- do they defeat the Seanchan, or does Rand's truce hold? What will happen with the Black Tower? Is Egwene finally going to defeat Elaida, and bring her down? Because it's about time. I also realized in this reading that Egwene is probably my favorite character to read. She rocks.
Thoughts:
Tomorrow is release day! Tomorrow!
**Break by Hannah Moskowitz 10/26 (57)
Pick:
Vine Voice; I took this one because I love the concept.
Review:
It's a great concept: Jonah McNab wants to get stronger, so he decides to do something drastic. He starts breaking his bones, knowing that a broken bone grows back stronger than it was before. He breaks his wrist and two ribs "falling" of of his skateboard; he breaks the hand on the end of the wrist; he breaks several more bones with another intentional fall. His count gets above 30 bones broken; not a bad start on the way to his goal of all 206.
But there are other factors. There is his brother, Jesse, who is deathly allergic to most foods, who cannot eat, nor touch, nor even be in the same room as eggs or peanuts or milk -- the last one being the most dangerous for Jesse right now, as Jonah and Jesse have a baby brother, Will, and therefore the house is full of milk. Will brings his own set of problems into Jonah's life, as he is eight months old and has yet to stop crying. Their parents argue all the time, which only adds to the stress in the lives of all three sons -- which only increases the burdens they already carry, in dealing with each other.
It is a great concept, especially once the thought process behind Jonah's breaking is revealed, near the end of the book. The writing doesn't quite come up to the same level, but Moskowitz certainly pulls it off, especially considering her age. There are some moments when the reader raises an eyebrow, wondering at this metaphor or that phrasing; in the beginning the characters' banter seems a bit too witty to me, though perhaps the author is around wittier teenagers than I. Some of the book struck me as overly dramatic, but the climactic scene turned that around: it was very well done, and gave the book a good ending without wrapping everything up in a neat little package -- a possibility that was lost long before the ending. Overall, it's a well-done book, impressive for a debut, and would get my recommendation, especially for teenagers who like drama in their novels.
Thoughts:
I'll have to go through and find some of those metaphors, but mostly, the biggest flaw was that she uses the heavy proclamation style of writing too much: one sentence paragraphs, short chapters that end with heavy thoughts, in order to give things more weight. Not to sound overly snotty, but -- beginner writing stuff. Since she wrote this while in high school -- and it's LEAGUES beyond frickin' Eragon -- I figure she'll turn into a hell of a writer over time.
**Grave Peril: The Dresden Files, Book 3 by Jim Butcher (58) 10/29
Pick:
The book didn't arrive on the day it was released -- something about needing to ship it from the publisher to me. Whatever. They're just trying to hold me back from my Jordan, man. So I read something I wanted to read -- or re-read, rather.
Thoughts:
This one isn't the best Dresden. I love Michael, and this is when he is introduced along with Harry's Faerie godmother Lea, who's a cool villain and a nice mystery, and Thomas Raith, a great idea for a vampire and an excellent character-to-be. But the spirit of the Nightmare is, well, lame, and the final struggle at Bianca's is unsatisfying to me, because I hate what happens to Susan, and to Harry because of his reaction. Fourth book is way better.
14. The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (59) 10/31
Pick:
The Book still hasn't arrived, and I've been reading as quickly as I can so I can be ready to jump into it when it does get here -- because even for WoT, I won't stop a good book in the middle. Not if I can help it. So I had to pick another book, and I've had this one on the shelf for years. I never read it, I always should have, and it should be quick and easy.
Story:
I had no idea (never having looked into Rudyard Kipling's work other than "Gunga Din," which Dad read to us when I was a kid) that this book was more than one storyline; I always thought it was nothing but Mowgli. And I had heard the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, but also had no idea where it came from -- now I know! These are all sweet stories, and would have completely fascinated me when I was young; I particularly liked the idea of the elephants' dance, though I was less pleased that it was so centered on the elephant riders, who seem to me secondary characters. Same with the military animals discussing their roles; I liked that they all had a different idea of how to fight a battle and why the other animals have jobs they each would never want -- but I didn't care as much for how subservient they were to their masters. Maybe it's just my dog, but as much as he loves his master and mistress, I feel like he has his own life, sniffing doggie mail, chasing squirrels, barking at passersby. But I liked the book.
Thoughts:
I'm glad I've read this now. One of the better classics I've gone through -- probably because it's a children's book.
15. The Company of Dogs : 21 Short Stories collected by Michael J. Rosen (Unfinished)
I tried reading this once over the summer, as well, but the introduction is so long and drawn out and over-the-top snotty that I couldn't get through it -- but then, do I really need to know how Michael J. Rosen sees the oeuvre of dogs in literature? Not so much. I tried it again while waiting for The Book (I honestly can't remember where in the sequence -- maybe after the first Dresden and before Jungle Book? After Break? I dunno) because I figured hey, short stories -- that I can stop reading when The Book gets here. But after the first two stories nearly put me to sleep, I thought, you know, maybe the stories that Mr. Rosen thinks are worthwhile, maybe those aren't the ones I want to read. So forget it.
Off the shelf.
16. Faithful by Stewart O'Nan and Stephen King (Unfinished)
Once again, I tried to read this right after I found it at the Scappoose Library book sale, and was disappointed to find out that what I thought would be the STORY of two authors following their beloved Red Sox through the 2004 championship season was actually just a collection of random thoughts and memories and e-mails between them. Mainly by the less interesting author. Now I tried to read it again, partly because I could start and stop this one, too (I actually planned to make it a bathroom reader), and partly because I feel a little sad that I couldn't be in the middle of the excitement when the Sox Reversed the Curse. I used to follow the BoSox; I went to games (Two? Or three?); I'm a fan. I wanted to catch a little of the experience, even if it was five years too late. But once I started reading the stories of the games and the players, I realized: I don't want to be a fan any more. I want nothing to do with organized sports, not even accompanied by enjoyable nostalgia. They're boring, and destructive to our culture and the things I actually care about. So, onto the Discard pile this one goes, too, even if it is Stephen King.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
August -- No Rush
**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.
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.
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.)"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
