Snoop loggy (book)log
Sep. 24th, 2007 07:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityofoneWhat am I doing with these puns? PLEASE SOMEBODY TELL ME.
203. Y: The Last Man — Ring of Truth, Brian K. Vaughan — The first few chapters aren't as good as the series at its best (the "What's been going on with Hero in 30 Seconds" issue was something I took issue with) but it does pick up, and this volume deserves an enthusiastic response no matter what thanks to the revelation that Yorick used to write Knight Rider fanfic. *vbg*
204. Spaceman Blues, Brian Francis Slattery — Sort of Neverwhere meets Men in Black, if that can be believed. Wendell's lover Manuel disappears, and rather than grieve and let go, Wendell decides to dedicate himself to finding him, even if it means giving up everything he is and traveling deep into New York City's underworld, a city beneath the city populated by the forgotten and the dispossessed. Oh, and also, there are some aliens.
There was a lot I liked about this book. Slattery achieves some very moving moments, moments that say a ton about the relationships between people and about how hard—but also how important—it is to make a connection. Unfortunately, pretty much all of these moments happen between minor characters. I never felt like I really had enough of a handle on Wendell to feel the full weight of his transformation and his journey. Part of this, I think, is because I found Slattery's prose style a little difficult; he employs lots of long, loopy, dream-like sentences, and they can be a bit hard to follow. I also found the red-herring of Manuel's past and personality very frustrating; he's not, in the end, very important to the story at all, but it feels a little bait-and-switch to me, this holy grail at the end of the quest that not only isn't holy, but is manufactured by Dixie Cup. Maybe if Slattery had sold the ending better, or even just differently. Still: a lot about this book is memorable and strange and beautiful, and it says some interesting things about immigrants in America, and about love. It also has a pair of buddy-cops named Trout and Salmon. So much potential! Hopefully I'll be able to return to it in a few more years and get more out of it.
205. A Brother's Price, Wen Spencer — A fantasy whose only interesting feature is the bit of gender reversal it's got going on. Jerin lives in a world where men are extremely rare, and thus regarded as very precious, sold for high prices, and generally married off to an entire family of sisters. They're also not really allowed to do anything, lest it upset their delicate sensibilities; it's the women who get to go out there and perform acts of daring-do and have fun storming the castle and whatnot. It's an interesting set-up.
Unfortunately, what Spencer does with that premise is not especially interesting. I enjoyed it well enough while I was reading—the plot moves along at a nice clip. But ultimately I'm not really sure what Spencer was trying to say about the relationship between the sexes, either in her world or in ours; the characters in the book are actually fighting to maintain the status quo, but isn't (part of) the point that the status quo—this unequal treatment of men and women, no matter who is on top—is pretty shitty? If I were betaing this, I would have sent it back and asked her to think it through a bit more.
206. 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy, Gavin Edwards — A collection of humorously-misunderstood song lyrics, including "There's a bathroom on the right," which was for years what I thought John Fogerty was saying at a key point of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising." (I attributed this to my dad's frequent habit of playing his Best of CCR cassette on long road trips.) Funny, although I couldn't help feeling the would have been funnier—could have reached its full potential!—if there'd been commentary to go along with the lyrics, as in Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs, which is one of the most hilarious books I have ever read. A hard thing to live up to, in any case. Still, it would have been nice if they'd tried—though, in the book's favor, I must say that the illustrations were often genuinely funny themselves, and far beyond the quality of those usually found in this type of book.
207. Y: The Last Man — Girl on Girl, Brian K. Vaughan — So, Dr. Mann and 355 finally getting it on was very hot, if unfortunately not surprising, considering this volume's title. Still, certain things are starting to annoy me. First, the repetition of the "Yorick meets girl, Yorick and girl spark, girl dies" formula is getting really old; Vaughan "hangs on lantern on it" by having Yorick make much the same complaint, but that does not excuse you, mister! Also, I'm peeved that the Dr. Mann/355 relationship appears to be resolving itself by having them fuck the UST out of the way, leaving Dr. Mann free to find a cute, one-eyed Australian lesbian and 355 to go back to being "as straight as Richard Nixon." Now, Vaughan very well might not leave things this way, but it's how the volume ends, so until the library coughs up No. 7, I'm gonna have to stick with be peeved.
208. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris — Reread. There are some extremely funny and otherwise excellent essays in this collection—the one about Sedaris' sister Tiffany, the two about his brother, the final one about the drowned mouse. These are the ones I had so fondly remembered. Unfortunately, there are also a bunch of lesser pieces—ones that feel sort of like half an idea, unfinished essays that he hasn't quite gotten around to fleshing out yet. When Sedaris is at his best, he's funny and smart; he draws great connections. Some of the essays in this collection are like that; others are just amusing or odd incidents written up. They're still written well, but they don't show Sedaris at the top of his game. So: mixed bag here. Still glad I have it, but I would have much rather found Me Talk Pretty One Day for 50¢ and reread that.
209. Greenwitch, Susan Cooper — This is the last of the Dark Is Rising books that I own(ed); I made myself read it before I could allow myself to give them away. There was exciting crossover potential!!!1! in the Drews meeting Will, but they actually didn't interact very much; I'm not even really sure why Will was there. Or what Merriman needs the Drews for, really—they're kept out of the loop a lot and made to forget stuff, which I find creepy, even though I don't think we're meant to view it as such. Oddly, at the same time Cooper seems sincere when she has Merriman promise that nothing physically bad can happen to them. So where's the sense of danger? The Pevensies faced death, you know. *grumble*
I was pretty bored. I'm glad all three books are now on their way to people who, hopefully, will get more enjoyment out of them.
210. At Large and at Small, Anne Fadiman — So, last week I went out for sushi with my parents. I had just read the essay from this collection where Fadiman talks about being a night owl; my mom is a major night owl, so, thinking she'd appreciate it, I recommended the book to her. Turns out she knows Fadiman: they went to Harvard together, lived in Dunster House together, used to fly back on the same planes from Boston to where they lived in L.A. My mom wrinkled her nose as she told me this. She and Anne were not bestest buddies, apparently: "She was so pretentious," my mom said. "We had nothing at all in common." Um.
1. Night owls.
2. Lived in L.A.
3. Went to Harvard.
4. Lived in Dunster House.
5. Chilled food by leaving it out on the windowsill (my mom's told me for years that she used to do this with various Sara Lee cakes, and Fadiman mentions the technique in one of her essays).
6. At another time, lived in New York.
7. Fathers were writers.
8. Grew up to be writers.
9. Bibliophiles.
10. Fadiman named her daughter Susannah; my mom named her daughter...something very similar to Susannah.
11. Both aware that Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy and Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln!
I rest my case.
As for the book—I was kind of weirded out the rest of the time I was reading it, but it was still really good. This may be because Fadiman reminds me of my mom, but if so, neither of them needs to know that.
211. Farthing, Jo Walton — A rec from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wychwood, and a goodie. What seems like an ordinary English country house mystery has dark political motivations and implications, as Walton gradually reveals more and more about this alternate 1949, one in a world where Britain made peace with Hitler in early 1941. Brr.
Walton does a great job of showing how ordinary, and in some cases, perfectly decent people can be affected by prejudice and by the removal of certain freedoms. Lucy, who carries half the POV, is a wonderfully-constructed character, and I really enjoyed watching her develop. The other characters, though none were so clearly-drawn, are also captivating. However, Walton does make one character choice that puzzles me: almost everyone in this book is gay, or at least bisexual, to the point where it began to seem a little ridiculous and bad-fanficcy. Because unlike in real life, in a novel that kind of thing is a choice—on the part of the author, and I'm really not sure what Walton was trying to say with it. Except maybe that when they think nobody's looking, even the crustiest Tories are all indiscriminately schtupping each other, the bloody hypocrites. Okay, but I already got that they were hypocrites, and also racists and very bad people. They don't need to be hypocritical, racist, very bad gay people, do they? Though on second thought, that does sound increasingly like the Republican party in this country. Never mind.
That little tangent aside: this was captivating and scary and much braver and true to itself than, say, Philip Roth's The Plot Against America; Roth kind of wusses out at the end of that one and makes everything okay again. Not so, here. Though there is a sequel coming—in just over a week, in fact. *wants*
212. One Red Paperclip, Kyle MacDonald — That guy who traded up from a red paperclip to a house in Saskatchewan tells his story. Unfortunately, he doesn't tell it particularly well. It's a great story, don't get me wrong, but MacDonald's style...I don't want to call it too "bloggy," as there are a lot of well-written blogs out there. But I could understand someone leveling that criticism, because MacDonald's writing, whether the product of blogging or not, is unfocused, not terribly descriptive—none of the places he visits ever came alive for me—and full of those painfully-awkward sentences and assemblages of sentences where the writer clearly thinks he is being very, very funny...but he is not. The whole book seems so strained, like MacDonald was rushed into Getting His Incredible Story Out There! Also, seriously not helping things: he ends every chapter with a few pieces of advice/"affirmation statements." Gag me. I think it's meant to be done ironically, but instead it comes across like those people who say they're watching Survivor or Big Brother or whatever "ironically," as if that somehow excuses their being glued to the television every week. Sorry, I don't buy it.
Luckily, I didn't buy this book, either—I traded for it, and I've since traded it for something else. I hope MacDonald is proud of me.
213. Snake Agent, Liz Williams — Really fantastic fantasy/sci-fi/mystery fusion. Wei Chen is a detective in the slightly futuristic Singapore Three; his area of expertise is the supernatural, specifically dealings between Earth, Heaven, and Hell. Investigating the reappearance as a ghost of a rich girl who supposedly died of anorexia-related complications gets Chen involved with a conspiracy whose origins lie somewhere in the vast bureaucracy of Hell, and also finds him entering into a reluctant and wary partnership with a demon Vice cop, Zhu Irzh.
Unsurprisingly, I love "two mismatched people fight crime!" stories, and this one works really well. The world Williams has created is fascinating and is revealed slowly; she has a nice touch with character, too, so I wasn't bored when the action was with, say, the somewhat hapless Sergeant Ma. And I loved the parts with Chen's demon wife Inari and her badger familiar. I wish we'd been given a bit more insight into Chen's past; we're told so little that when he at one point thinks of his mother in passing, I was surprised—he has a mother? Well, of course he does, but Chen is such an enigma that these details are a little hard to pin down in one's head—we don't know how he came to serve the goddess who is his protecter, or got involved in the affairs of Hell, or came to help Inari. Zhu Irzh isn't exactly an open book, either, but he gets to display more humor and thus seems more familiar. Still, despite everything that's being kept back—possibly as fodder for future books (there are already three more), which would be awesome—the relationships between the characters were dynamic and fun, and the hint of where they're going next makes me very excited. This was a well-plotted, exciting mystery with great character interaction; I can't wait to read the next one.
214. Eternals, Neil Gaiman — An update/relaunch of Jack Kirby's Eternals by my beloved Neil; sadly, I'm not loving it. There were aspects of it that I really liked—the first part of the plot involves amnesia, which is kind of a shoo-in for me—and I think Gaiman did amazing, creepy, tragic things with the character of Sprite. But frankly, the whole Eternals mythology is kind of stupid—it's based on Chariot of the Gods?, for Christ's sake. (And yes, I know: Stargate fan here. But trust me: in comparison to whatever's going on in this comic, Stargate makes a lot of sense.) I don't know if there's anything Gaiman could have really done with that, but whatever he did do just wasn't enough for me. That this storyline is supposed to serve to relaunch the title—that it's essentially the pilot for the series—doesn't help matters, either; there's a feeling at the end that things are just getting going, like all the really interesting stuff is yet to come. So while it's not terrible by any means, and is in fact occasionally fun, it's really not up to what I consider to be the usual Gaiman-standards. It's nothing to get excited about.
215. Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby — Memoir of Nick Hornby's life with football. Really, this is a book about fandom—Hornby could just as easily be talking about internet TV/book/movie/band fandom, except there's less gay sex and a lot more of people punching each other. The point is, this book, which would seem to be very much for the masculine sports fan, is actually scarily-relatable: Hornby talks about using his fannish obsession as the best and easiest way to make friends, about how he gets nauseated right before matches (please tell me I'm not the only one who feels sick to her stomach before a new episode of her favorite show), about the horrible panic he feels at the thought of missing a single game. The parallels go on and on; Hornby has, he says, measured out his life in football matches, and if I were to write a memoir, I could just as easily map my life so far over key episodes of whatever I was then-obsessing over on TV. It's a little freaky.
So what have I learned from this? Obviously that I need to find an obsessive sports fan to date. We'd be sympathetic to each other's obsessions, and could help one another nurture them, but since they wouldn't overlap, we wouldn't have to worry about, say, him having to stay home with our hypothetical child on game day, or me having to miss any of the season premiere because a pipe burst. PERFECT. Now why isn't there a dating service for people like us?
Total Books: 215
203. Y: The Last Man — Ring of Truth, Brian K. Vaughan — The first few chapters aren't as good as the series at its best (the "What's been going on with Hero in 30 Seconds" issue was something I took issue with) but it does pick up, and this volume deserves an enthusiastic response no matter what thanks to the revelation that Yorick used to write Knight Rider fanfic. *vbg*
204. Spaceman Blues, Brian Francis Slattery — Sort of Neverwhere meets Men in Black, if that can be believed. Wendell's lover Manuel disappears, and rather than grieve and let go, Wendell decides to dedicate himself to finding him, even if it means giving up everything he is and traveling deep into New York City's underworld, a city beneath the city populated by the forgotten and the dispossessed. Oh, and also, there are some aliens.
There was a lot I liked about this book. Slattery achieves some very moving moments, moments that say a ton about the relationships between people and about how hard—but also how important—it is to make a connection. Unfortunately, pretty much all of these moments happen between minor characters. I never felt like I really had enough of a handle on Wendell to feel the full weight of his transformation and his journey. Part of this, I think, is because I found Slattery's prose style a little difficult; he employs lots of long, loopy, dream-like sentences, and they can be a bit hard to follow. I also found the red-herring of Manuel's past and personality very frustrating; he's not, in the end, very important to the story at all, but it feels a little bait-and-switch to me, this holy grail at the end of the quest that not only isn't holy, but is manufactured by Dixie Cup. Maybe if Slattery had sold the ending better, or even just differently. Still: a lot about this book is memorable and strange and beautiful, and it says some interesting things about immigrants in America, and about love. It also has a pair of buddy-cops named Trout and Salmon. So much potential! Hopefully I'll be able to return to it in a few more years and get more out of it.
205. A Brother's Price, Wen Spencer — A fantasy whose only interesting feature is the bit of gender reversal it's got going on. Jerin lives in a world where men are extremely rare, and thus regarded as very precious, sold for high prices, and generally married off to an entire family of sisters. They're also not really allowed to do anything, lest it upset their delicate sensibilities; it's the women who get to go out there and perform acts of daring-do and have fun storming the castle and whatnot. It's an interesting set-up.
Unfortunately, what Spencer does with that premise is not especially interesting. I enjoyed it well enough while I was reading—the plot moves along at a nice clip. But ultimately I'm not really sure what Spencer was trying to say about the relationship between the sexes, either in her world or in ours; the characters in the book are actually fighting to maintain the status quo, but isn't (part of) the point that the status quo—this unequal treatment of men and women, no matter who is on top—is pretty shitty? If I were betaing this, I would have sent it back and asked her to think it through a bit more.
206. 'Scuse Me While I Kiss This Guy, Gavin Edwards — A collection of humorously-misunderstood song lyrics, including "There's a bathroom on the right," which was for years what I thought John Fogerty was saying at a key point of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising." (I attributed this to my dad's frequent habit of playing his Best of CCR cassette on long road trips.) Funny, although I couldn't help feeling the would have been funnier—could have reached its full potential!—if there'd been commentary to go along with the lyrics, as in Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs, which is one of the most hilarious books I have ever read. A hard thing to live up to, in any case. Still, it would have been nice if they'd tried—though, in the book's favor, I must say that the illustrations were often genuinely funny themselves, and far beyond the quality of those usually found in this type of book.
207. Y: The Last Man — Girl on Girl, Brian K. Vaughan — So, Dr. Mann and 355 finally getting it on was very hot, if unfortunately not surprising, considering this volume's title. Still, certain things are starting to annoy me. First, the repetition of the "Yorick meets girl, Yorick and girl spark, girl dies" formula is getting really old; Vaughan "hangs on lantern on it" by having Yorick make much the same complaint, but that does not excuse you, mister! Also, I'm peeved that the Dr. Mann/355 relationship appears to be resolving itself by having them fuck the UST out of the way, leaving Dr. Mann free to find a cute, one-eyed Australian lesbian and 355 to go back to being "as straight as Richard Nixon." Now, Vaughan very well might not leave things this way, but it's how the volume ends, so until the library coughs up No. 7, I'm gonna have to stick with be peeved.
208. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris — Reread. There are some extremely funny and otherwise excellent essays in this collection—the one about Sedaris' sister Tiffany, the two about his brother, the final one about the drowned mouse. These are the ones I had so fondly remembered. Unfortunately, there are also a bunch of lesser pieces—ones that feel sort of like half an idea, unfinished essays that he hasn't quite gotten around to fleshing out yet. When Sedaris is at his best, he's funny and smart; he draws great connections. Some of the essays in this collection are like that; others are just amusing or odd incidents written up. They're still written well, but they don't show Sedaris at the top of his game. So: mixed bag here. Still glad I have it, but I would have much rather found Me Talk Pretty One Day for 50¢ and reread that.
209. Greenwitch, Susan Cooper — This is the last of the Dark Is Rising books that I own(ed); I made myself read it before I could allow myself to give them away. There was exciting crossover potential!!!1! in the Drews meeting Will, but they actually didn't interact very much; I'm not even really sure why Will was there. Or what Merriman needs the Drews for, really—they're kept out of the loop a lot and made to forget stuff, which I find creepy, even though I don't think we're meant to view it as such. Oddly, at the same time Cooper seems sincere when she has Merriman promise that nothing physically bad can happen to them. So where's the sense of danger? The Pevensies faced death, you know. *grumble*
I was pretty bored. I'm glad all three books are now on their way to people who, hopefully, will get more enjoyment out of them.
210. At Large and at Small, Anne Fadiman — So, last week I went out for sushi with my parents. I had just read the essay from this collection where Fadiman talks about being a night owl; my mom is a major night owl, so, thinking she'd appreciate it, I recommended the book to her. Turns out she knows Fadiman: they went to Harvard together, lived in Dunster House together, used to fly back on the same planes from Boston to where they lived in L.A. My mom wrinkled her nose as she told me this. She and Anne were not bestest buddies, apparently: "She was so pretentious," my mom said. "We had nothing at all in common." Um.
1. Night owls.
2. Lived in L.A.
3. Went to Harvard.
4. Lived in Dunster House.
5. Chilled food by leaving it out on the windowsill (my mom's told me for years that she used to do this with various Sara Lee cakes, and Fadiman mentions the technique in one of her essays).
6. At another time, lived in New York.
7. Fathers were writers.
8. Grew up to be writers.
9. Bibliophiles.
10. Fadiman named her daughter Susannah; my mom named her daughter...something very similar to Susannah.
11. Both aware that Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy and Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln!
I rest my case.
As for the book—I was kind of weirded out the rest of the time I was reading it, but it was still really good. This may be because Fadiman reminds me of my mom, but if so, neither of them needs to know that.
211. Farthing, Jo Walton — A rec from
wychwood, and a goodie. What seems like an ordinary English country house mystery has dark political motivations and implications, as Walton gradually reveals more and more about this alternate 1949, one in a world where Britain made peace with Hitler in early 1941. Brr.Walton does a great job of showing how ordinary, and in some cases, perfectly decent people can be affected by prejudice and by the removal of certain freedoms. Lucy, who carries half the POV, is a wonderfully-constructed character, and I really enjoyed watching her develop. The other characters, though none were so clearly-drawn, are also captivating. However, Walton does make one character choice that puzzles me: almost everyone in this book is gay, or at least bisexual, to the point where it began to seem a little ridiculous and bad-fanficcy. Because unlike in real life, in a novel that kind of thing is a choice—on the part of the author, and I'm really not sure what Walton was trying to say with it. Except maybe that when they think nobody's looking, even the crustiest Tories are all indiscriminately schtupping each other, the bloody hypocrites. Okay, but I already got that they were hypocrites, and also racists and very bad people. They don't need to be hypocritical, racist, very bad gay people, do they? Though on second thought, that does sound increasingly like the Republican party in this country. Never mind.
That little tangent aside: this was captivating and scary and much braver and true to itself than, say, Philip Roth's The Plot Against America; Roth kind of wusses out at the end of that one and makes everything okay again. Not so, here. Though there is a sequel coming—in just over a week, in fact. *wants*
212. One Red Paperclip, Kyle MacDonald — That guy who traded up from a red paperclip to a house in Saskatchewan tells his story. Unfortunately, he doesn't tell it particularly well. It's a great story, don't get me wrong, but MacDonald's style...I don't want to call it too "bloggy," as there are a lot of well-written blogs out there. But I could understand someone leveling that criticism, because MacDonald's writing, whether the product of blogging or not, is unfocused, not terribly descriptive—none of the places he visits ever came alive for me—and full of those painfully-awkward sentences and assemblages of sentences where the writer clearly thinks he is being very, very funny...but he is not. The whole book seems so strained, like MacDonald was rushed into Getting His Incredible Story Out There! Also, seriously not helping things: he ends every chapter with a few pieces of advice/"affirmation statements." Gag me. I think it's meant to be done ironically, but instead it comes across like those people who say they're watching Survivor or Big Brother or whatever "ironically," as if that somehow excuses their being glued to the television every week. Sorry, I don't buy it.
Luckily, I didn't buy this book, either—I traded for it, and I've since traded it for something else. I hope MacDonald is proud of me.
213. Snake Agent, Liz Williams — Really fantastic fantasy/sci-fi/mystery fusion. Wei Chen is a detective in the slightly futuristic Singapore Three; his area of expertise is the supernatural, specifically dealings between Earth, Heaven, and Hell. Investigating the reappearance as a ghost of a rich girl who supposedly died of anorexia-related complications gets Chen involved with a conspiracy whose origins lie somewhere in the vast bureaucracy of Hell, and also finds him entering into a reluctant and wary partnership with a demon Vice cop, Zhu Irzh.
Unsurprisingly, I love "two mismatched people fight crime!" stories, and this one works really well. The world Williams has created is fascinating and is revealed slowly; she has a nice touch with character, too, so I wasn't bored when the action was with, say, the somewhat hapless Sergeant Ma. And I loved the parts with Chen's demon wife Inari and her badger familiar. I wish we'd been given a bit more insight into Chen's past; we're told so little that when he at one point thinks of his mother in passing, I was surprised—he has a mother? Well, of course he does, but Chen is such an enigma that these details are a little hard to pin down in one's head—we don't know how he came to serve the goddess who is his protecter, or got involved in the affairs of Hell, or came to help Inari. Zhu Irzh isn't exactly an open book, either, but he gets to display more humor and thus seems more familiar. Still, despite everything that's being kept back—possibly as fodder for future books (there are already three more), which would be awesome—the relationships between the characters were dynamic and fun, and the hint of where they're going next makes me very excited. This was a well-plotted, exciting mystery with great character interaction; I can't wait to read the next one.
214. Eternals, Neil Gaiman — An update/relaunch of Jack Kirby's Eternals by my beloved Neil; sadly, I'm not loving it. There were aspects of it that I really liked—the first part of the plot involves amnesia, which is kind of a shoo-in for me—and I think Gaiman did amazing, creepy, tragic things with the character of Sprite. But frankly, the whole Eternals mythology is kind of stupid—it's based on Chariot of the Gods?, for Christ's sake. (And yes, I know: Stargate fan here. But trust me: in comparison to whatever's going on in this comic, Stargate makes a lot of sense.) I don't know if there's anything Gaiman could have really done with that, but whatever he did do just wasn't enough for me. That this storyline is supposed to serve to relaunch the title—that it's essentially the pilot for the series—doesn't help matters, either; there's a feeling at the end that things are just getting going, like all the really interesting stuff is yet to come. So while it's not terrible by any means, and is in fact occasionally fun, it's really not up to what I consider to be the usual Gaiman-standards. It's nothing to get excited about.
215. Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby — Memoir of Nick Hornby's life with football. Really, this is a book about fandom—Hornby could just as easily be talking about internet TV/book/movie/band fandom, except there's less gay sex and a lot more of people punching each other. The point is, this book, which would seem to be very much for the masculine sports fan, is actually scarily-relatable: Hornby talks about using his fannish obsession as the best and easiest way to make friends, about how he gets nauseated right before matches (please tell me I'm not the only one who feels sick to her stomach before a new episode of her favorite show), about the horrible panic he feels at the thought of missing a single game. The parallels go on and on; Hornby has, he says, measured out his life in football matches, and if I were to write a memoir, I could just as easily map my life so far over key episodes of whatever I was then-obsessing over on TV. It's a little freaky.
So what have I learned from this? Obviously that I need to find an obsessive sports fan to date. We'd be sympathetic to each other's obsessions, and could help one another nurture them, but since they wouldn't overlap, we wouldn't have to worry about, say, him having to stay home with our hypothetical child on game day, or me having to miss any of the season premiere because a pipe burst. PERFECT. Now why isn't there a dating service for people like us?
Total Books: 215
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 03:12 pm (UTC)And hogod I love Nick Hornby for that book. (Well, most of his books, really, but that one is up there.) It is totally the quintessential geek book. I loved how it kind of pointed out the root of obsessive geekiness, especially: not that every fan has the same things driving that need - not every fan's parents are divorced or whatever - but the slow, weird way these outside things gain so much more importance than they have to other people rang very true to me as something that pretty much all fans could relate to. I also loved that he, again probably like most fans, has such mixed feelings about it; reading the bit where he worries about what might happen if there's a medical emergency during an Arsenal match was kind of uncomfortable, cause I think most of us get quite good at ignoring how irrational some of our obsessiveness is/can be.
I was really glad he didn't end there, though - it would be quite easy to write a book about how awful crazy obsessiveness can be, but giving it context, pointing out how fans are people too and their obsessiveness is part of them and that that can bring joy and genius just as much as sadness and craziness, is a much harder job.
[/ramble]
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 04:24 pm (UTC)So the Drews and Bran, and numerous minor human characters such as the Black Rider, are needed in order to make certain key decisions at the right time. Also, certain magical creatures - sometimes even other Old Ones - will only respond to the humans, IIRC. (Wasn't Jane required in order to invoke the Greenwitch's power or something like that?) That's why those four in particular are included in almost all of the prophecies throughout all of the books.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 04:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 05:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 06:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 04:40 pm (UTC)And Farthing is going to have at least two sequels; Ha'penny is out soon, and I think she's still writing Half a Crown.
*makes notes of interesting-looking titles*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 04:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 05:00 pm (UTC)(PS: AIM HATES me and will not let me make a screenname though lo I have tried these many many times over. I will try again tomorrow or something.)
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Date: 2007-09-24 04:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 10:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-24 11:22 pm (UTC)I'd be curious to hear what you ultimately think about it. Do you write about books on your LJ?
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Date: 2007-09-25 03:08 am (UTC)Lately I've just been whining about work in my livejournal. That's not as much fun as books though!
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Date: 2007-09-25 01:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-02 03:54 pm (UTC)You could ask her, you know. I feel like I recall her saying something about it once, but she doesn't use tags, so I'd never be able to find it amidst the last couple years' posts.