trinityofone | I am remiss! + Booklog of Doom

I have been terribly remiss! Some lovely anonymous person gifted me with two months paid LJ time, and I seemed to forget that squeeing about it to

siriaeve and

wychwood and thinking, "I should really post about this," does not equal actually posting about this. So anyway, thank you so much, anonymous person! It is truly appreciated and not especially deserved.

(If you want to comment anonymously with a fic prompt or anything, I will do my best to try to fulfill it. By...well, by 2008, possibly.)

Also, i haven't updated my booklog in a month. It was far from my best month (that moving thing really screwed me up) but still...brace yourselves.

Weeks 14, 15, 16, & 17: 2—29 April

85. Blood Lines, Tanya Huff — What surprised me the most about this book was finally getting to read about the "baby in the backpack" thing that clearly traumatized Tony so much that he thinks about it all the time in the Smoke books. All right, what actually surprised me that this ended up not having to do with a dead baby in, like, a knapsack, as I had thought, but in fact involved some sort of back-facing snuggly. Oh, those wacky Canadians! Anyway, besides my realization that I'd been an idiot, this particular volume of the series didn't do much for me. The parts where Vicki is falsely imprisoned did succeed in freaking me out, but in general I found the book too long and a bit blah. I'm still looking forward to reading the next one, though—especially since I finally found it the other day after fearing it lost in my move. But I'll count this one as far from my favorite of the series so far.

86. You Suck, Christopher Moore — Sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends; I've been looking forward to reading it for months. There were some things I really enjoyed about it, especially a new character, a hilarious teenage goth girl called Abby Normal. But the rest of the book is kind of bleh; most of the plot revolves around a Vegas hooker named Blue, and is, well, kind of dumb. Which would not necessarily be a problem, as you can totally get away with dumb in a book like this, but only if the book is consistently funny. Which, aside from the Abby Normal bits (she quotes The Smiths in her diary entries; it's cliché but awesome, I tell you!), this book really isn't.

Also, I didn't like the ending. Suckage indeed.

87. Remembering Denny, Calvin Trillin — Following the death by suicide of an old college friend, Trillin tells the story of Denny's life and analyzes the things that may have led him to end it. A Yale golden boy whose graduation was covered by Life magazine, Denny seemed to have limitless promise—his friends used to joke constantly (but semi-seriously) about him one day becoming president—but after two years at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and following a rejection from the Foreign Service, his career never seemed to reach the heights others had anticipated. In talking with Denny's post-college friends, Trillin is also surprised to discover that Denny's personal life was troubled; he struggled with his homosexuality—something Trillin himself never knew about—and suffered deep bouts of depression. Trillin's exploration of this singular, personal tragedy raises a lot of interesting questions about youthful pressures and expectations, about 1950s America, and about how destructive something like the country's negative attitude toward anything but perfectly conforming straightness can be. This book almost seems like what The Great Gatsby would have been if it was a) a true story, b) set three decades later, and c) starred Tom Buchanan—a much more sympathetic Tom Buchanan—as the main character. A truly fascinating read.

88-90. Fruits Basket (Vol. 4-6), Natsuki Takaya — Er. Not actually much to say here. These volumes represented the usual blend of sweetness with that interesting undercurrent of tragedy that makes the series interesting. (The stuff about Momiji's mother—oh!) Nevertheless, the weeks that have transpired since I read these have really taken their toll; they've kind of blended together, not just with each other, but with the series as a whole. So, um, I guess I'll just say—cute fuzzy animals FTW?

91. Street of the Five Moons, Elizabeth Peters — As promised, I decided to give this series another shot after not really liking Borrower of the Night all that much. This...really did not do anything to change my opinion. Although several people commented that the introduction of John Smythe (or "Smythe," really) improved things vastly, I didn't really find that to be the case. John is actually described on the basis that he looks like Peter Wimsey, but *cough* — Sir, you are no Peter Wimsey! And Vicky is not Harriet. Which, admittedly, is in general hardly a fair basis for comparison—if anyone could whip up characters as awesome as Dorothy L. Sayers', well, I'd have even more things I'd want to read than I already do. But Peters evokes the comparison herself, and then does not look favorable in light of it. The mystery failed to surprise or engage me, the various bits of alliance-switching were both predictable and lame, and the patina of "spooky" stuff was not even as freaky as an especially weak episode of Supernatural. Sadly, I'm afraid this just isn't an author who works for me.

92. Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary, Pamela Dean — Speaking of YMMV authors...man, are there few others who both delight and frustrate me as much as Pamela Dean! As usual, when it comes to the day-to-day minutiae of life—school, eating, interpersonal relations—Dean can be incredibly, incredibly compelling. But when it comes to actual plot, well...

As with Tam Lin, this novel's pacing is oddly backloaded; the same thing happens where the supernatural element doesn't emerge until almost the end.

vassilissa actually warned me about this, although I myself didn't find it "perfectly appropriate"—again, I felt that the book may have in fact been stronger were it not a fantasy at all. Dean actually has some amusing meta-commentary on this criticism in JGR, so it's something she's obviously aware of; however, I still couldn't shake the feeling that the metaphor underlying the novel's conclusion and its fantasy element was much stronger than what actually, on a tangible level, occurred. It's like...you know how on the early seasons of Buffy, the MotW would often be used to address some metaphorical concern about high school? Like, the girl who felt invisible would actually become invisible? In Dean's case, the metaphorical message of the book—sometimes friendships fracture and the various parties drift apart and you don't realize it's happened until after it's over (especially when BOYS are involved)—would have I think worked better if they'd just literally been allowed to happen, rather than been attached to a fantasy plotline that, in my opinion, didn't really hold up. Though it would have been cool if the fantasy elements had just worked better, too.

All in all, I prefer Tam Lin, which has more rewards for lesser levels of frustration.

93. The Stolen Child, Keith Donohue — I wish I'd written about this right after I'd finished it, when I was still caught in the world of the story, which is incredibly well-drawn. The book is told in two parallel first person narratives: one following a faery changeling in his new, human life; and one following the little boy he replaced in his life among the faeries. Donohue's depiction of faeries was really different and not what I was expecting; this is no grand court of Titania, but a hard, meager existence eked out in the woods—like an especially brutal version of Peter Pan's lost boys. Donohue doesn't flinch away from the brutality of this, or the more disturbing aspects of sexuality in people who grow older in mind but remain children in body. In contrast, the original changeling (who was also, once long ago, a human boy) gets his second chance at human life, discovering a remarkable gift for music. Donohue does a really good job showing the sadness and the beauty in both characters' situations, and the book, which could have been gut-wrenchingly tragic, maintains a wonderful sense of hope. A first novel, and a really fascinating one.

94. Intuition, Allegra Goodman — I was absolutely blown away by this novel. What initially attracted me was the premise: two young doctors involved in high-stakes cancer research come in conflict when one produces a new, potentially life-saving drug, causing the other to doubt the veracity of his results. What eventually impressed me so much was how incredibly well-drawn all of Goodman's characters are. When moving between POVs—from Cliff, the discoverer of the potential cure; to Robin, his colleague (and—uh-oh—ex-girlfriend) who fears he's lying about the effectiveness of his drug; to Sandy, the press-savvy lab director; to Marion, his much more tentative but also more ethically-minded partner—Goodman manages the incredible feat of making every point of view convincing, and making each set of motivations seem logical when you're inside the head of the person they belong to. It's not so much that she manages to keep the reader unable to choose who to believe; she makes you change your mind about who you think is right based on whose head you're currently in. It's a really fascinating look at human psychology and ethics, and about both inter-personal and societal responsibility. The one place the book falters, I think, is in depicting Cliff and Robin's romantic relationship; they fall apart as a couple before you can get any idea what (if anything) was good about them together, so later, when you're meant to feel a frisson of regret at that loss, it doesn't really work. However, everything else about this book does. It even has a note-perfect ending.

95. Zodiac, Robert Graysmith — I'm really rather embarrassed to have read this, but the recent film (all thirteen hours of it!) sufficiently intrigued me. Graysmith, as several people cautioned me, is not a very good writer; he has an odd tendency to sensationalize not especially sensational moments, and then describe parts that are naturally fantastic or terrifying in a strangely flat tone. In a way it served as a compliment to David Fincher, who included some legitimately nail-biting scenes in his 26-hour-long adaptation. It's intriguing, however, to see how Graysmith's seriously consuming interest in Zodiac manifests in this book; he draws some connections that seem like pretty lengthy reaches to me, and I'm not utterly convinced of the veracity of all his reporting. In a way this becomes a story not so much about a serial killer, but about a man obsessed with one. It was in the scenes with that element as their focus that Fincher's film became the most cohesive (and stopped making you feel every second of its 39-hour-length), and interestingly, the places in Graysmith's narrative where that subtext shines through are where it's the most compelling as well. In the end, neither is the best book or movie that could be made on the subject, but they're both very interesting in spots.

96. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith — I resisted reading any books by Alexander McCall Smith for a long time, based on the rather snotty and shallow reason that a lot of people bought them from the Barnes & Noble where I worked, and I have a tendency not to read books that lots of other people are buying (unless the protagonist's name rhymes with "Barry Trotter"—or, well, I feel like it). ANYWAY, I finally came across a copy of the first book in this series, available for the low low price of 50 cents! And I knew Doppelganger likes them. And I like Doppelganger. So.

Well, I can definitely see why she likes them, and why a lot of people like them. They're...very nice, and I mean that genuinely, not as a back-handed compliment. The books are quietly funny, and there's a good, sturdy backbone of perseverance and dignity in the face of great hardship and tragedy. Precious Ramotswe is a really interesting character—she has a fascinating background, and is clever, with a deeply moral center. I like her. I just wish...well, I wish there were more of a plot. The book is mostly anecdotal, and the few through-threads get resolved in a kind of half-assed way. Minor spoiler: Smith has Mme Ramotswe refuse several proposals of marriage, and then at the end, she just suddenly says yes. Bwah? He offers no clue as to why she suddenly changes her mind. Maybe it'll be explained in the next book in the series? Which, yes, I totally will be reading, because Smith is nothing if not addictive. More on that soon...

97. A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon — Okay, here's how this breaks down:

Book about a real-life serial killer
Trin: I think I'll read this my first night in a strange, new apartment, in an unfamiliar neighborhood, when I'm all alone, and almost all the lights are off! La la la!

Book featuring one plot thread about a man's slow descent into madness, including a scene of botched self-surgery
Trin: *hides under the bed* *whimpers*

Yeah. I found this novel very hard to get through—which, if anything, should I suppose be a compliment to Haddon. As he demonstrated with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, he has amazing skill when it comes to POV: while in the head of any given character (even an autistic boy, as in Incident, or a man slowly losing it, as in Bother), the reader is fully aware not only of how that character perceives the world, but of how that perception is subtly (or not-so-subtly) off. It's an incredible balancing act, and Haddon never stumbles. Just, if you're planning to read this book, know what you're getting into. It may be a light comic novel, but it is a light comic novel that will freak you the fuck out.

98. Killing Yourself to Live, Chuck Klosterman — Reread. Apparently I felt like a dose of rock 'n' roll death. Sadly, there's really not enough of that in here for my taste (oh man, that statement is so wrong); in many ways, this book is more about Klosterman's failed relationships than about its ostensible purpose: touring the sites of a bunch of famous rock 'n' roll demises (from the room at the Chelsea Hotel in New York where Nancy Spungen was killed, to the greenhouse in Seattle where Kurt Cobain shot himself) and analyzing what effects these early deaths had on the musicians' legacies. The whole thing is very entertaining while you're reading it, but at the end I found myself wishing (and remembering having wished the first time around) that there was more actual death discussed, and less "death of Chuck's love life." Klosterman skirts around some theories about how an early demise can actually bring a musician a weird sort of immortality (the discussions of Jeff Buckley, and yeah, Cobain, are particularly interesting) but he never really presents any kind of thesis and, I dunno, I'd've sort of appreciated even a half-assed one. He also, in his rant about why he hates L.A. and considers it the worst city in the country, seems to confuse "Los Angeles" with "Hollywood." BUT THAT IS ANOTHER RANT I WILL NOT TOUCH TODAY. *restrains self*

But ANYWAY...there's still a lot to enjoy in this book. Klosterman is, as always, a highly readable writer. (See? Watch me pillage one of his more fun devices!) Thus, if you're in even a slightly morbid mood, I really do recommend it.

99. The Terror, Dan Simmons — This novel takes a historical event I am already very interested in—the doomed Franklin Expedition to find the Northwest Passage—and turns it into a horror story. A lot of what Simmons does is interesting: the character arcs of two of the main players, Captain Francis Crozier and Dr. Goodsir, are very well done, and there are some excellent set pieces—in particular a staging of Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" amid the snow drifts and the polar ice. However, this was one of those books that I finished and immediately went, "Man! There is absolutely NO REASON for this thing to have been 800 pages long!"

Seriously. None. I got that the conditions were cold and nasty the first thousand times, and the atmosphere, while good, was nowhere near excellent enough to merit sustaining an 800-page narrative. At one point while reading and encountering an especially long action sequence, I joked to

wychwood, "Clearly, this is a MAN book." By which I meant: size, apparently, does matter, and very much.

So while there were aspects of this book I enjoyed, it never really moved, or even gripped, me. It was mostly just long, and kind of unpleasant. In conclusion: this version of the Franklin Expedition? I don't want Ray and Fraser anywhere near it. Go back to having sex in a sleeping bag, boys.

100. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman — Another reread, mostly because a story about Klosterman being friends with three people who were acquainted with serial killers that I thought was in Killing Yourself was in fact not in that book, but this one. (I wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy and imagining the whole thing. I'm not, though Graysmith's little obsession seems to be somewhat contagious, dammit.)

ANYWAY (and there I go again)...I've already said a lot about Klosterman in this booklog (both above and here), and I really do think that when it comes to his writing, you're either going to love him or hate him—and even if you love him, you may also hate him a little. I continue to be fascinated and annoyed by him, often at the exact same time. I keep wondering what would happen if we met at a party; I suspect there's a fifty-fifty chance we'd either a) get in a big, screaming fight, or b) end up having sex on top of the coats. Or again, maybe both.

So, yeah. If you're looking for some essays on pop culture that may one second have you nodding along and the next hurling the book against the wall, well: this bad boy's for you.

101. 44 Scotland Street, Alexander McCall Smith — Okay, so we're back to the point I started to make earlier about Alexander McCall Smith: his books are total craaaaaaack. Seriously. As I told

siriaeve, they're like cotton candy with endpapers. This particular book is not part of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, but in fact the start of another one. Smith explains in the introduction that it came about when he met Armistead Maupin, author of the Tales of the City books, at a party in San Francisco; he lamented the demise of the serial novel, and then was challenged to write his own. Since I really enjoyed the Tales of the City books [side rant] or at least the first three; after that, Maupin apparently concluded that any female characters who didn't decide to become hard-core lesbians—including ones who had previously been bisexual; no more cock for them, either!—had to instead become horrible monstrous bitches. I may have had, *cough*, a bit of a problem with that [/side rant] I was eager to read another series following the same principles: a bunch of wacky individuals, all residing or working in the same area of Edinburgh, get mixed up in crazy shenanigans (that ensue in clever daily installments, of course). This kind of storytelling fits Smith well; as I said before, even when he's not writing serially, he seems to be writing in incidents, rather than in one, smooth narrative. So in general I found this book quite enjoyable, if frothy, and I'll be looking forward to reading the next volume (the semi-appropriately-titled Espresso Tales—Latte Tales might be more accurate) as soon as the library chooses to bestow it upon me.

Semi-relevant note: Apparently, Maupin is coming out with a seventh Tales of the City book in June! Goddammit. In spite of everything I just said, I'm going to have to read it, aren't I?

102. Shopaholic & Baby, Sophie Kinsella — Ahh, how times have changed. I used to consider these books a good guilty pleasure; now I find there's a lot less pleasure and a lot more guilt. Kinsella is still an amusing, energetic writer, but Becky really grated on my nerves this time around. She's just so shallow and so frivolous, and while in the first few books she was also just a regular working girl, now that she's rich (thanks entirely to her husband), her insane overspending and materialism swiftly loses its charm and becomes...icky. It can be difficult to read a whole book about someone you would probably feel uncomfortable having lunch with.

So, while I still think there's a...certain charm to these books, and that they're in many ways better than a lot of chick lit, I also just don't think they're for me anymore. I've become too old and cranky to enjoy them. They belong to a part of my life that no longer exists (in which, for example, I also secretly owned an Avril Lavigne CD).

103. Portuguese Irregular Verbs, Alexander McCall Smith — And this is the first of a series about an eccentric and rather ineffective German philology professor. I don't know why I'm series-hopping like this. What can I say? Craaaaaaaaack.

Total Books: 103

Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: U2, "Holy Joe (Garage Mix)"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

tahariel.livejournal.com

I've only read the first two Vicki Nelson books, but I'm liking them. Glad to know they progress in a way that doesn't seem to be too awful :)

Have you read any of the Harry Dresden novels, by Jim Butcher? He's a wizard and a PI! And he has a talking skull! (It is not his own personal skull, if you follow.)

From:

trinityofone.livejournal.com

I absolutely adore (and secretly much prefer) the Smoke books, which spin off from the Vicki Nelson Blood books, so I would definitely say you have much to look forward to! (I read the spinoff first. Yes, I am bad.)

I've read the first seven Harry Dresden books and enjoyed them very much. Did you watch the TV series? I quite liked that, too!

From:

tahariel.livejournal.com

I started watching the tv series and found it quite disappointing, actually. I was hoping for something a little more like the books, which wasn't what I got. It wasn't bad, per se, just not what I wanted.

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