The elegance of the booklog
Dec. 11th, 2009 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityofoneSorry for the spammage. For some reason I am on a roll tonight.
71. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery — Painfully pretentious French novel that for some reason is selling like hotcakes at my store. The narrative is shared between two characters: a poor but brilliant concierge who feels she must play dumb lest the people who live in her building learn her TERRIBLE SECRET—that she, like, likes Anna Karenina and stuff (OH NOES?)—and an also-brilliant but disaffected 12-year-old girl who lives in the same building and plans to kill herself and burn down her parents’ apartment when she turns 13 because life is just NOT WORTH LIVING when people are just so shallow, you know?
No, I don’t know. I don’t know why Renée considers her genius to be such a horrible secret that she must desperately hide, or why we’re expected to feel sympathy for Paloma when she’s such a snobby, selfish brat. For a book that seems to be trying to argue that one should not dismiss people such as concierges or 12-year-old girls because they might be thinking deep thoughts and feeling deep things from their deep, precious souls, The Elegance of the Hedgehog is nevertheless incredibly elitist, looking down on and judging everyone who does not belong to Reneé and Paloma’s special little amateur philosophy club. At my worst, I know I can be a bit of a snob—turning up my nose at people buying Nicholas Sparks books and whatnot—but I still spent much of this novel wanting to punch those two. Especially Paloma: dude, you’re twelve, you’re smart, you’ve never had to want for anything, and I’m sorry your family’s obnoxious, but man up. Okay, part of the story does deal with you realizing that you’re being a little ridiculous, but first we have to wade through 300 pages of your faux-intellectual LIFE SO HARD rants? Shut up.
The plot also doesn’t really get going until about 150 pages in, and I found the ending—which I’m sure was supposed to be deeply moving—eyeroll-inducing. Yet the rich Brentwood ladies keep buying this book. Fine, whatever. I’m gonna go read something with spaceships or explosions with the rest of the plebes.
72. The Sharing Knife: Horizon, Lois McMaster Bujold — The final volume in the Sharing Knife quartet. This is not a bad book, but I did find it to be rather a let down, especially after the previous volume, which was possibly my favorite of the series and seemed to be taking the whole thing in a new, bold, darker direction. Yet in this one, the worries that Dag might be tapping into something dark and dangerous with his powers are quickly shrugged off, and all the cool hints about the fallen civilization that the current Lakewalker/Farmer communities have replaced are seemingly forgotten. There’s one cool battle, but in general not much actually happens. Talk about going out with a whimper instead of a bang!
Bujold is a good writer, and I pretty much enjoyed this book while I was reading it, but the more I think of it, the most frustrated I am by this as the conclusion to the series and by what that says about the priorities of the series in general.
73. Fear and Trembling, Amélie Nothomb — My reaction to this book probably says more about me than it does about the book itself. While I at times found Nothomb’s prose witty and the story in general to be consistently fast-paced and breezily written, the events it depicts frustrated me beyond belief. This autobiographical novel is about the horrible abuse Amélie suffers at a Japanese company where she’s originally hired as a translator and eventually demoted to bathroom attendant. You know how some people have an embarrassment squick, where they can’t stand to read about or watch people humiliate themselves—making the enjoyment of sitcoms rather tricky? I have an unfairness squick. Amélie’s treatment is just so appallingly out of line—and she puts up with it! I, on the other hand, squirmed in my seat and couldn’t enjoy this book at all. I might be interested in reading Nothomb on another topic, but this one made me vastly uncomfortable.
74. Crooked Little Vein, Warren Eliis — Warren Ellis’ first novel is kind of sketchy and underwritten, with its characters careening around the country from one piece of American Grotesque to another. Mike and Trix are likeable, if somewhat thinly presented—two lines of dialogue from Trix about why she likes Mike are probably the closest the narrative comes to conveying why we should root for the guy. In a more perfect world, Ellis would have spent less time on all the gross shit our heroes encounter (and there is a lot of gross shit—the novel opens with a mutant rat pissing in Mike’s coffee, and spirals downward from there) and more time developing the pair themselves. That said, what does make it to the page is strangely compelling, and Ellis is, as usual, a sharp and witty writer. The book kind of reads like Transmet Lite, but for what it is—for a book I finished in three bus rides and one lunch break—I enjoyed it, almost in spite of itself.
75. Repossessed, A.M. Jenkins — Fun YA novel in which a demon possesses a newly-deceased teen (like Supernatural’s Ruby, this dude recycles!) and realizes 1) he’s not as evil as he thinks he is, and 2) Team Humanity is where it’s at. If you’re anything like me (in which case, I am so sorry) you’ve probably read variations on this story a thousand times, but I continue to find them enjoyable, and this one is well done.
76. I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, Roger Ebert — My boss would probably hate this book. He’s a big fan of David Denby’s Snark, and thinks bitchy criticism is the devil. I think it’s hilarious, especially when it’s being dealt out by a clever writer like Ebert. (I specify clever writer because, although I enjoy Ebert’s reviews very much, I don’t always agree with his taste in movies. In that I tend to like even fewer of them than he does. If this were my book, it would be called I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, and Yes, That One Too.) Hopefully I’ll be able to get my hands on the second volume at some point, because reading a good excoriation of a stinky piece of crap is like a balm on my withered old snarky soul.
77. Star Trek: Countdown, Roberto Orci, et. al. — This is a prequel to the very fun Star Trek relaunch, and it’s, like, supposed to make the movie’s plot make more sense or something. (Dude. Like anybody watched that movie for the plot.) Instead, it just gives the film’s villain, Nero, the world’s most boring and cliché villain backstory ever—“My wife/girlfriend the plot device DIED! I be evil now.” See: Batman: The Killing Joke, Dr. Horrible, and, oh, basically everything EVER. Yawn. Also, every issues ends with the reveal of—surprise!—A Character You Will Recognize If You Watched NextGen. Which I haven’t. But I recognized them anyway. Thank you, fandom osmosis!
Anyway, complaints aside, this was very shiny. So there’s that.
78. Corner Shop, Roopa Farooki — Interesting multicultural family saga—I really liked Farooki’s prose and the way she got inside her characters’ heads. The ending felt a little tacked on, but I still enjoyed this and look forward to reading more of Farooki’s work.
79. The Wentworths, Katie Arnoldi — Tart satire about a family that's rich monetarily, but poor in human decency. This is set in the neighborhood where I work, and—along with some truly lovely people—I deal with folks like these all the time, so there's an element of local interest/schadenfreude involved for me here. Therefore I definitely got some enjoyment out of reading this, though I wasn't terribly fond of the ending and I thought that the book, in general, isn't quite as funny and clever as it thinks it is.
80. Quantum Lyrics, A. Van Jordan — Poetry. Jordan writes about science, superheros, and race in various combinations, some of which seem like they shouldn’t work but do, almost all of which are incredibly thinky and cool. As I’m writing this, I really wish I still had this book to look through and reread; it’s one I really wish I could have stolen from the library.
Total Books: 80/191
71. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery — Painfully pretentious French novel that for some reason is selling like hotcakes at my store. The narrative is shared between two characters: a poor but brilliant concierge who feels she must play dumb lest the people who live in her building learn her TERRIBLE SECRET—that she, like, likes Anna Karenina and stuff (OH NOES?)—and an also-brilliant but disaffected 12-year-old girl who lives in the same building and plans to kill herself and burn down her parents’ apartment when she turns 13 because life is just NOT WORTH LIVING when people are just so shallow, you know?
No, I don’t know. I don’t know why Renée considers her genius to be such a horrible secret that she must desperately hide, or why we’re expected to feel sympathy for Paloma when she’s such a snobby, selfish brat. For a book that seems to be trying to argue that one should not dismiss people such as concierges or 12-year-old girls because they might be thinking deep thoughts and feeling deep things from their deep, precious souls, The Elegance of the Hedgehog is nevertheless incredibly elitist, looking down on and judging everyone who does not belong to Reneé and Paloma’s special little amateur philosophy club. At my worst, I know I can be a bit of a snob—turning up my nose at people buying Nicholas Sparks books and whatnot—but I still spent much of this novel wanting to punch those two. Especially Paloma: dude, you’re twelve, you’re smart, you’ve never had to want for anything, and I’m sorry your family’s obnoxious, but man up. Okay, part of the story does deal with you realizing that you’re being a little ridiculous, but first we have to wade through 300 pages of your faux-intellectual LIFE SO HARD rants? Shut up.
The plot also doesn’t really get going until about 150 pages in, and I found the ending—which I’m sure was supposed to be deeply moving—eyeroll-inducing. Yet the rich Brentwood ladies keep buying this book. Fine, whatever. I’m gonna go read something with spaceships or explosions with the rest of the plebes.
72. The Sharing Knife: Horizon, Lois McMaster Bujold — The final volume in the Sharing Knife quartet. This is not a bad book, but I did find it to be rather a let down, especially after the previous volume, which was possibly my favorite of the series and seemed to be taking the whole thing in a new, bold, darker direction. Yet in this one, the worries that Dag might be tapping into something dark and dangerous with his powers are quickly shrugged off, and all the cool hints about the fallen civilization that the current Lakewalker/Farmer communities have replaced are seemingly forgotten. There’s one cool battle, but in general not much actually happens. Talk about going out with a whimper instead of a bang!
Bujold is a good writer, and I pretty much enjoyed this book while I was reading it, but the more I think of it, the most frustrated I am by this as the conclusion to the series and by what that says about the priorities of the series in general.
73. Fear and Trembling, Amélie Nothomb — My reaction to this book probably says more about me than it does about the book itself. While I at times found Nothomb’s prose witty and the story in general to be consistently fast-paced and breezily written, the events it depicts frustrated me beyond belief. This autobiographical novel is about the horrible abuse Amélie suffers at a Japanese company where she’s originally hired as a translator and eventually demoted to bathroom attendant. You know how some people have an embarrassment squick, where they can’t stand to read about or watch people humiliate themselves—making the enjoyment of sitcoms rather tricky? I have an unfairness squick. Amélie’s treatment is just so appallingly out of line—and she puts up with it! I, on the other hand, squirmed in my seat and couldn’t enjoy this book at all. I might be interested in reading Nothomb on another topic, but this one made me vastly uncomfortable.
74. Crooked Little Vein, Warren Eliis — Warren Ellis’ first novel is kind of sketchy and underwritten, with its characters careening around the country from one piece of American Grotesque to another. Mike and Trix are likeable, if somewhat thinly presented—two lines of dialogue from Trix about why she likes Mike are probably the closest the narrative comes to conveying why we should root for the guy. In a more perfect world, Ellis would have spent less time on all the gross shit our heroes encounter (and there is a lot of gross shit—the novel opens with a mutant rat pissing in Mike’s coffee, and spirals downward from there) and more time developing the pair themselves. That said, what does make it to the page is strangely compelling, and Ellis is, as usual, a sharp and witty writer. The book kind of reads like Transmet Lite, but for what it is—for a book I finished in three bus rides and one lunch break—I enjoyed it, almost in spite of itself.
75. Repossessed, A.M. Jenkins — Fun YA novel in which a demon possesses a newly-deceased teen (like Supernatural’s Ruby, this dude recycles!) and realizes 1) he’s not as evil as he thinks he is, and 2) Team Humanity is where it’s at. If you’re anything like me (in which case, I am so sorry) you’ve probably read variations on this story a thousand times, but I continue to find them enjoyable, and this one is well done.
76. I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, Roger Ebert — My boss would probably hate this book. He’s a big fan of David Denby’s Snark, and thinks bitchy criticism is the devil. I think it’s hilarious, especially when it’s being dealt out by a clever writer like Ebert. (I specify clever writer because, although I enjoy Ebert’s reviews very much, I don’t always agree with his taste in movies. In that I tend to like even fewer of them than he does. If this were my book, it would be called I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, and Yes, That One Too.) Hopefully I’ll be able to get my hands on the second volume at some point, because reading a good excoriation of a stinky piece of crap is like a balm on my withered old snarky soul.
77. Star Trek: Countdown, Roberto Orci, et. al. — This is a prequel to the very fun Star Trek relaunch, and it’s, like, supposed to make the movie’s plot make more sense or something. (Dude. Like anybody watched that movie for the plot.) Instead, it just gives the film’s villain, Nero, the world’s most boring and cliché villain backstory ever—“My wife/girlfriend the plot device DIED! I be evil now.” See: Batman: The Killing Joke, Dr. Horrible, and, oh, basically everything EVER. Yawn. Also, every issues ends with the reveal of—surprise!—A Character You Will Recognize If You Watched NextGen. Which I haven’t. But I recognized them anyway. Thank you, fandom osmosis!
Anyway, complaints aside, this was very shiny. So there’s that.
78. Corner Shop, Roopa Farooki — Interesting multicultural family saga—I really liked Farooki’s prose and the way she got inside her characters’ heads. The ending felt a little tacked on, but I still enjoyed this and look forward to reading more of Farooki’s work.
79. The Wentworths, Katie Arnoldi — Tart satire about a family that's rich monetarily, but poor in human decency. This is set in the neighborhood where I work, and—along with some truly lovely people—I deal with folks like these all the time, so there's an element of local interest/schadenfreude involved for me here. Therefore I definitely got some enjoyment out of reading this, though I wasn't terribly fond of the ending and I thought that the book, in general, isn't quite as funny and clever as it thinks it is.
80. Quantum Lyrics, A. Van Jordan — Poetry. Jordan writes about science, superheros, and race in various combinations, some of which seem like they shouldn’t work but do, almost all of which are incredibly thinky and cool. As I’m writing this, I really wish I still had this book to look through and reread; it’s one I really wish I could have stolen from the library.
Total Books: 80/191
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-12-12 05:45 am (UTC)Do you know of any other good ones?
I also was amused that basically the first thing Demonguy did with his shiny new human body was run off to masturbate.
How did I forget this hilarious detail? This seems accurate to me.
edited to fix borked html
Date: 2009-12-13 04:08 am (UTC)Wow, I love her hat in this picture on her wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%A9lie_Nothomb). *covets*
Re: edited to fix borked html
Date: 2009-12-13 05:16 am (UTC)She and Helena Bonham Carter look like they could be besties, don't they?