Booklog 2007: Weeks 18 & 19
May. 14th, 2007 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityofoneHaven't been reading much. Bad, bad headaches. *sticks head in a bucket of ice*
Weeks 18 & 19: 30 April—13 May
104. The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, Alexander McCall Smith — Second in the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series. This actually kind of bored me. I guess the narcotic effects are wearing off.
105. The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald — An English widow decides to open up a bookshop in her small town. That was all I knew of this book (well, and that my mom has a dozen of Fitzgerald's slim paperbacks strewn around her house) and that was what made me pick it up. So my reaction here is kind of a case of thwarted expectations: I was expecting something much more light and comic and—okay, I don't want to say life-affirming, because my vanity wants me to think I am not the sort of person who ever desires to read anything that could be described as "life-affirming" or "uplifting." But yeah: I wanted to read something that made me go, "Books and reading FTW!"
This is not that book. Really, it's a tiny, tightly-written tragedy, a story about how people can be really, truly awful to one another, with all the good people getting punished and bad people rewarded. It's very well-written and perfectly, plainly presented, and damn, does it hurt. I finished it just after midnight and went to bed whimpering.
106. Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space, Ed. by Isaac Asimov, et. al. —![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lilac_way was awesome enough to lend this hard-to-find anthology to me. As the title would suggest, it's a collection of sci-fi takes on the Great Detective. As with any anthology, the stories varied in quality—there was, for example, an interesting story about a time traveling Moriarty and an intriguing tale about a Holmes who may (or may not) have succumbed to senility. Mostly, though, there wasn't enough Sherlock Holmes in a collection that was nominally all about him! Instead there were stories about an alien race that has modeled itself after Victorian England (including a Holmes stand-in), or a highly-intelligent dog that solves crime, or a pair of children with the power to to evoke fictional creatures like the Hound of the Baskervilles to kill their parents. Okay, fine. But what I wanted was explorations of Holmes' (and Watson's) character, through the wonderful, slightly-distorted lens that sci-fi tropes can provide. I wanted to see Holmes' wonderful mind react to time travel or alien life; I want to see his and Watson's friendship stand the test of time and space, as promised by the title. But unfortunately, this collection remained sadly earthbound.
All right, so what I wanted was fanfic. What I wanted was a whole collection of stories as awesome as Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald." Thankfully, that, at least, is available online.
107. Espresso Tales, Alexander McCall Smith — Sequel to 44 Scotland Street. This book is actually kind of amazing: it's 345 pages long, and practically nothing happens in it. Which I suppose you could claim is like real life, but since the tone of the series is supposed to be soap opera-like (in part aping Tales of the City), the mixture of WACKINESS! and eh, idleness makes for a bizarre combination indeed. Potential storylines about a Glasgow gangster and a nudist colony fizzle out like defective firecrackers. Then the whole thing is wrapped up with startling abruptness. What was the point? I have no idea.
108. The Devil You Know, Mike Carey —tahariel told me about this new series of novels by Carey, whose Lucifer and Hellblazer runs I really like. Of course, they're not yet available in the U.S....but I lucked out and managed to get an ARC of the first book through BookMooch. *hearts BookMooch* The series is set in a world very like ours—except a few years ago, the dead started to come back: as ghosts, as zombies, and as were (possessed and altered animals). Our narrator and guide to this world is the improbably named Felix Castor, an exorcist who's always been able to see dead people and who communes with them through music—his exorcism ritual involves a tin whistle; he's like the Pied Piper of the deceased. I'll admit I had kind of expected Felix to be a somewhat disguised John Constantine—and actually, I would have been totally okay with that, because as far as I'm concerned, anyone who wants to write a series of novels about a somewhat disguised John Constantine should have free reign (as long as they preserve the cool comics version and don't buy into that wussy movie idiocy). But Felix is actually quite different—much less cocky and confident, more a person who's just trying to survive than someone who's out there willingly taking on the world.
Carey has an engaging writing style, full of wit and clever similes. The plot...is somewhat less engaging; it's actually a rather standard murder mystery, only with supernatural trappings. The "surprise!" bad guy is exactly who you would peg as the bad guy if you've read much of anything at all, and there's a very annoying chapter of exposition/confession that interrupts the action toward the end. All in all, I was left with the feeling that the world Carey has created is deserving of a more interesting storyline. The ending—the "Hey, in case you didn't catch it, this is the start of a series" ending—teases of one, and I would very much like to read the next book. Of course, it's not available in the States. Pooh.
109. U.S.!, Chris Bachelder — Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle and dozens of other books advocating socialism and social reform, is resurrected periodically to fight the good fight—resurrected and assassinated, both with bullets and bad press. This is not only an incredibly imaginative novel, it's an incredibly imaginative political novel, that touches on how hard it is to keep fighting for what you believe in such a fucked up world. The story is told first in fragments—snatches of narrative interspersed with letters and jokes and interview clips and songs—and then with a climactic narrative showdown in a small American town. Bachelder does an amazing job making everyone—even, at times, various assassins and other unlikable folk—sympathetic, while also keeping them realistically flawed. Sinclair—as Bachelder portrays him and as he doubtless was in real life—is far, far from a saint; he's mostly just a tired old man. As someone who at 23 already feels exhausted with the political machine, I found this book incredibly moving and painful and funny and inspiring. It's far more interesting and weird than I could possibly describe it. You should give it a read.
110. The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield — This is another hard book to describe. Vida Winter is a bestselling author—a modern day Charles Dickens—but her past is entirely unknown; she gives one interview per year and always lies. Then, out of the blue, she hires bookstore clerk and amateur biographer Margaret Lea to take down her life story. The majority of the novel comprises Winter's history as transcribed by Margaret, and Margaret's own life and investigations. The mood of the piece intentionally harkens back to various gothic novels, particularly Jane Eyre; the plot involves a family in a mouldering manner house, plagued by madness, a ghost, and unworldly twins who are possibly the product of incest. This is all dynamically presented, and the twist, when it arrives, is quite clever, exactly the type of narrative trick I admire; if I weren't so lazy, I would check back and do things like track pronouns, see how the book could be reread in light of new knowledge, and I'm sure it would all work perfectly. However, despite the novel's excellent atmosphere and underlying cleverness, it failed to emotionally engage me. The ending both goes on forever and seems too pat, and I was simply never...moved? Stirred? The sweeping emotions that a good gothic novel can evoke—the kind that make you want to take a wander on the moors even if you yourself live in sunny California—were unfortunately absent. This book never moved beyond the intellectual for me; it never affected my heart.
Total Books: 110
Tonight I am going to see a musical about Superman. My guess? It's gonna be kinda gay.
Weeks 18 & 19: 30 April—13 May
104. The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, Alexander McCall Smith — Second in the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series. This actually kind of bored me. I guess the narcotic effects are wearing off.
105. The Bookshop, Penelope Fitzgerald — An English widow decides to open up a bookshop in her small town. That was all I knew of this book (well, and that my mom has a dozen of Fitzgerald's slim paperbacks strewn around her house) and that was what made me pick it up. So my reaction here is kind of a case of thwarted expectations: I was expecting something much more light and comic and—okay, I don't want to say life-affirming, because my vanity wants me to think I am not the sort of person who ever desires to read anything that could be described as "life-affirming" or "uplifting." But yeah: I wanted to read something that made me go, "Books and reading FTW!"
This is not that book. Really, it's a tiny, tightly-written tragedy, a story about how people can be really, truly awful to one another, with all the good people getting punished and bad people rewarded. It's very well-written and perfectly, plainly presented, and damn, does it hurt. I finished it just after midnight and went to bed whimpering.
106. Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space, Ed. by Isaac Asimov, et. al. —
lilac_way was awesome enough to lend this hard-to-find anthology to me. As the title would suggest, it's a collection of sci-fi takes on the Great Detective. As with any anthology, the stories varied in quality—there was, for example, an interesting story about a time traveling Moriarty and an intriguing tale about a Holmes who may (or may not) have succumbed to senility. Mostly, though, there wasn't enough Sherlock Holmes in a collection that was nominally all about him! Instead there were stories about an alien race that has modeled itself after Victorian England (including a Holmes stand-in), or a highly-intelligent dog that solves crime, or a pair of children with the power to to evoke fictional creatures like the Hound of the Baskervilles to kill their parents. Okay, fine. But what I wanted was explorations of Holmes' (and Watson's) character, through the wonderful, slightly-distorted lens that sci-fi tropes can provide. I wanted to see Holmes' wonderful mind react to time travel or alien life; I want to see his and Watson's friendship stand the test of time and space, as promised by the title. But unfortunately, this collection remained sadly earthbound.All right, so what I wanted was fanfic. What I wanted was a whole collection of stories as awesome as Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald." Thankfully, that, at least, is available online.
107. Espresso Tales, Alexander McCall Smith — Sequel to 44 Scotland Street. This book is actually kind of amazing: it's 345 pages long, and practically nothing happens in it. Which I suppose you could claim is like real life, but since the tone of the series is supposed to be soap opera-like (in part aping Tales of the City), the mixture of WACKINESS! and eh, idleness makes for a bizarre combination indeed. Potential storylines about a Glasgow gangster and a nudist colony fizzle out like defective firecrackers. Then the whole thing is wrapped up with startling abruptness. What was the point? I have no idea.
108. The Devil You Know, Mike Carey —
tahariel told me about this new series of novels by Carey, whose Lucifer and Hellblazer runs I really like. Of course, they're not yet available in the U.S....but I lucked out and managed to get an ARC of the first book through BookMooch. *hearts BookMooch* The series is set in a world very like ours—except a few years ago, the dead started to come back: as ghosts, as zombies, and as were (possessed and altered animals). Our narrator and guide to this world is the improbably named Felix Castor, an exorcist who's always been able to see dead people and who communes with them through music—his exorcism ritual involves a tin whistle; he's like the Pied Piper of the deceased. I'll admit I had kind of expected Felix to be a somewhat disguised John Constantine—and actually, I would have been totally okay with that, because as far as I'm concerned, anyone who wants to write a series of novels about a somewhat disguised John Constantine should have free reign (as long as they preserve the cool comics version and don't buy into that wussy movie idiocy). But Felix is actually quite different—much less cocky and confident, more a person who's just trying to survive than someone who's out there willingly taking on the world.Carey has an engaging writing style, full of wit and clever similes. The plot...is somewhat less engaging; it's actually a rather standard murder mystery, only with supernatural trappings. The "surprise!" bad guy is exactly who you would peg as the bad guy if you've read much of anything at all, and there's a very annoying chapter of exposition/confession that interrupts the action toward the end. All in all, I was left with the feeling that the world Carey has created is deserving of a more interesting storyline. The ending—the "Hey, in case you didn't catch it, this is the start of a series" ending—teases of one, and I would very much like to read the next book. Of course, it's not available in the States. Pooh.
109. U.S.!, Chris Bachelder — Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle and dozens of other books advocating socialism and social reform, is resurrected periodically to fight the good fight—resurrected and assassinated, both with bullets and bad press. This is not only an incredibly imaginative novel, it's an incredibly imaginative political novel, that touches on how hard it is to keep fighting for what you believe in such a fucked up world. The story is told first in fragments—snatches of narrative interspersed with letters and jokes and interview clips and songs—and then with a climactic narrative showdown in a small American town. Bachelder does an amazing job making everyone—even, at times, various assassins and other unlikable folk—sympathetic, while also keeping them realistically flawed. Sinclair—as Bachelder portrays him and as he doubtless was in real life—is far, far from a saint; he's mostly just a tired old man. As someone who at 23 already feels exhausted with the political machine, I found this book incredibly moving and painful and funny and inspiring. It's far more interesting and weird than I could possibly describe it. You should give it a read.
110. The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield — This is another hard book to describe. Vida Winter is a bestselling author—a modern day Charles Dickens—but her past is entirely unknown; she gives one interview per year and always lies. Then, out of the blue, she hires bookstore clerk and amateur biographer Margaret Lea to take down her life story. The majority of the novel comprises Winter's history as transcribed by Margaret, and Margaret's own life and investigations. The mood of the piece intentionally harkens back to various gothic novels, particularly Jane Eyre; the plot involves a family in a mouldering manner house, plagued by madness, a ghost, and unworldly twins who are possibly the product of incest. This is all dynamically presented, and the twist, when it arrives, is quite clever, exactly the type of narrative trick I admire; if I weren't so lazy, I would check back and do things like track pronouns, see how the book could be reread in light of new knowledge, and I'm sure it would all work perfectly. However, despite the novel's excellent atmosphere and underlying cleverness, it failed to emotionally engage me. The ending both goes on forever and seems too pat, and I was simply never...moved? Stirred? The sweeping emotions that a good gothic novel can evoke—the kind that make you want to take a wander on the moors even if you yourself live in sunny California—were unfortunately absent. This book never moved beyond the intellectual for me; it never affected my heart.
Total Books: 110
Tonight I am going to see a musical about Superman. My guess? It's gonna be kinda gay.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-14 08:56 pm (UTC)*adds the Bachelder to reading list*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-14 09:21 pm (UTC)I hope you can find the Bachelder. It was hard to get ahold of, even here!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-14 09:03 pm (UTC)My brain's thoughts on a Superman musical:
CLARK: La la la, wearing spandex means you can all see how hot I am for Lex every time he comes in the room, la la la!
(My lyrical abilities amaze even me.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-14 09:24 pm (UTC)(My lyrical abilities amaze even me.)
Hey, you could translate those lyrics into Italian and you'd have a perfectly good Superman opera!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-15 03:30 pm (UTC)This damn door sticks
This damn door sticks
This damn door sticks no matter what I do
This door is marked pull and indeed I am pulling
Perhaps it should be marked push
XD
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-15 10:37 pm (UTC)BARITONE: Say you love me!
Say you love me!
SOPRANO: I love you.
BARITONE: Oh! I'm so happy!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-15 11:09 pm (UTC)I wanna watch Superman stuff now... but I'm not sure I'm desperate enough to turn to Lois and Clark again just yet, no matter how ridiculously funny it was (and not on purpose, if you catch my drift.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-14 09:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-14 09:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-14 09:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-15 09:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-14 10:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-15 09:18 pm (UTC)Did you read The Devil You Know already then? What did you think?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-15 12:29 am (UTC)If you don't know Xanadu, oh my. Likely just as well. Unless you thrive on kitch, which, actually, I do, so... the thing may have an audience at that.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-15 02:27 am (UTC)