March books
Apr. 4th, 2004 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jinianFeeling like death warmed over today. Fortunately, it's sunny, so I will be kept warm enough that life may return by tomorrow, when I have to go to class. And now, the books.
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh. This was excellent. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jenett for the recommendation. I can see it being a comfort book, actually, despite being so downbeat, because of the detailed settings and personalities. I think my favorite part is the main character's relationship to his art.
Boys and Girls Forever, Alison Lurie. These essays on various authors of children's books and their work were mostly entertaining, and I got a few recommendations out of them. What I'd really like is for Lurie to post this stuff to Usenet so we could argue about it a bit, though. Some of her points weren't very well supported, and I'd like to see whether she had more reasons for concluding as she did.
Tithe, Holly Black. How could I not like a book that includes a description of yaoi manga, seme/uke and all? Good chapter-heading quotes, too. The fairy stuff was not very original, though, despite being in the more horrific mode. I would've liked to see some class issues showing up in the romantic plot, becasue they were certainly visible in the rest of the fairy society. The real-world parts of this were better. Also, protagonists who were just born special are getting on my nerves a bit lately. Still, pretty good YA urban fantasy.
The Little Prince, Antoine de St.-Exupery. I was probably the last person to read this. What does it say about me that, seeing all the out-of-context sig quotes from the fox, I had always thought it didn't want to be tamed?
The Octopus's Garden, Cindy Lee Van Dover. The first woman to pilot the research submersible ALVIN talks about how she managed to get to her position and what she saw once she was down there. Both are interesting, but I especially liked the descriptions of individual dives and her first sights of various animals and features. One disappointment: the illustrations look like they're watercolors, but they only appear in black and white in the book. I'd love to see a color-illustrated version.
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth. A big, heavy, LONG book that took forever to read because I couldn't carry it and schoolbooks at the same time. Almost completely enjoyable despite that. I skipped a little of the Parliamentary debate stuff, and there are enough characters that I'd occasionally get confused coming back to the book after more than a day away. It has no further faults. And there's the added bonus that it was one of the few books I was able to summarize in a few words when people asked me about it. "It's a novel about a family in India in the 1950s." It's sorely lacking as a description, of course, but it's easier to sum up when it's obvious that there's far too much to convey. Liked the ending very much.
Tomorrow, When the War Began; The Dead of Night; A Killing Frost; John Marsden. I'm sort of surprised that these don't seem to have been banned by anybody. After all, the guerrillas/terrorists are the good guys, and there's more moral ambiguity on top of that. Besides, teenagers have sex. This is a very believable portrayal of how rural Australian kids might react to an invasion, written with a lot of attention to emotional detail. It looks as though there are more of these, but the third was a logical place to stop for now.
The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend, Mabel Maney.
This is a very accurate pastiche of Nancy Drew and her chums, whom I probably read about when too young to really think they were lesbians. Nancy Clue and Cherry Aimless are definitely queer, as are all their friends. One wonders how any reproduction happens; maybe it's the villains. Unfortunately, accurate imitation yields the same insipid style as the originals.
The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd. This was a very good book to have when I was feeling ill, because it distracted me completely. Of course, my critical faculties were pretty much disengaged, so when I say how much I liked it and was emotionally drawn in, please use salt as needed.
The Dragon of an Ordinary Family, Margaret Mahy and Helen Oxenbury .
This came recommended, I think from overmelymbrosia's way, but I wasn't all that impressed. It's a fairly predictable, mildly amusing book for young children.
Tuesday, David Wiesner. I don't ordinarily put pure picture books on my read-books list, but no one I mentioned this to knew it. Go find this! It's utterly charming and has the kind of watercolor work that boggles my mind.
Six-Dinner Sid, Inga Moore; and Cat and Cat-Face, Chyng-Feng Sun and Lesley Liu. These are also books for quite young children, each with excellent art in completely different ways. I like stories with morals, as long as they're the right kinds of morals.
Dragon's Blood, Heart's Blood, and A Sending of Dragons; Jane Yolen. My only problem with these books is the humans. I love to read about these dragons, and I'm very satisfied with most of the dragon stuff. But, particularly considering how the trilogy ends, it seems like the books are intended to be about the humans, so it's a real annoyance to me that all the important character developments are so downplayed. Jakkin's opinion of Pit fighting changes when? Between books one and two? Somewhere in two? Love Just Happens, there's no building of a relationship. And what happened in book three to change their minds so drastically, and why is their choice the right one? I want a lot more information about what's going on in the humans' heads here.
The Deep, John Crowley. Confusing, but I think that's part of the point. What's true? To whom? I should read this again before I try to say anything coherent about it, I think.
New Skies, ed. Patrick Nielsen Hayden. It might seem that "An anthology of today's science fiction" would mean the stories in here would be at least somewhat new, but, on the contrary, the first one is They're Made Out of Meat. Some of the stories were new to me, so it wasn't a waste of time, but it's certainly more of a primer to the last twenty years of science fiction than a new exciting anthology along the lines of PNH's Starlights. Oh well.
Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh. This was excellent. Thanks to
jenett for the recommendation. I can see it being a comfort book, actually, despite being so downbeat, because of the detailed settings and personalities. I think my favorite part is the main character's relationship to his art.Boys and Girls Forever, Alison Lurie. These essays on various authors of children's books and their work were mostly entertaining, and I got a few recommendations out of them. What I'd really like is for Lurie to post this stuff to Usenet so we could argue about it a bit, though. Some of her points weren't very well supported, and I'd like to see whether she had more reasons for concluding as she did.
Tithe, Holly Black. How could I not like a book that includes a description of yaoi manga, seme/uke and all? Good chapter-heading quotes, too. The fairy stuff was not very original, though, despite being in the more horrific mode. I would've liked to see some class issues showing up in the romantic plot, becasue they were certainly visible in the rest of the fairy society. The real-world parts of this were better. Also, protagonists who were just born special are getting on my nerves a bit lately. Still, pretty good YA urban fantasy.
The Little Prince, Antoine de St.-Exupery. I was probably the last person to read this. What does it say about me that, seeing all the out-of-context sig quotes from the fox, I had always thought it didn't want to be tamed?
The Octopus's Garden, Cindy Lee Van Dover. The first woman to pilot the research submersible ALVIN talks about how she managed to get to her position and what she saw once she was down there. Both are interesting, but I especially liked the descriptions of individual dives and her first sights of various animals and features. One disappointment: the illustrations look like they're watercolors, but they only appear in black and white in the book. I'd love to see a color-illustrated version.
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth. A big, heavy, LONG book that took forever to read because I couldn't carry it and schoolbooks at the same time. Almost completely enjoyable despite that. I skipped a little of the Parliamentary debate stuff, and there are enough characters that I'd occasionally get confused coming back to the book after more than a day away. It has no further faults. And there's the added bonus that it was one of the few books I was able to summarize in a few words when people asked me about it. "It's a novel about a family in India in the 1950s." It's sorely lacking as a description, of course, but it's easier to sum up when it's obvious that there's far too much to convey. Liked the ending very much.
Tomorrow, When the War Began; The Dead of Night; A Killing Frost; John Marsden. I'm sort of surprised that these don't seem to have been banned by anybody. After all, the guerrillas/terrorists are the good guys, and there's more moral ambiguity on top of that. Besides, teenagers have sex. This is a very believable portrayal of how rural Australian kids might react to an invasion, written with a lot of attention to emotional detail. It looks as though there are more of these, but the third was a logical place to stop for now.
The Case of the Good-for-Nothing Girlfriend, Mabel Maney.
This is a very accurate pastiche of Nancy Drew and her chums, whom I probably read about when too young to really think they were lesbians. Nancy Clue and Cherry Aimless are definitely queer, as are all their friends. One wonders how any reproduction happens; maybe it's the villains. Unfortunately, accurate imitation yields the same insipid style as the originals.
The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd. This was a very good book to have when I was feeling ill, because it distracted me completely. Of course, my critical faculties were pretty much disengaged, so when I say how much I liked it and was emotionally drawn in, please use salt as needed.
The Dragon of an Ordinary Family, Margaret Mahy and Helen Oxenbury .
This came recommended, I think from over
melymbrosia's way, but I wasn't all that impressed. It's a fairly predictable, mildly amusing book for young children.Tuesday, David Wiesner. I don't ordinarily put pure picture books on my read-books list, but no one I mentioned this to knew it. Go find this! It's utterly charming and has the kind of watercolor work that boggles my mind.
Six-Dinner Sid, Inga Moore; and Cat and Cat-Face, Chyng-Feng Sun and Lesley Liu. These are also books for quite young children, each with excellent art in completely different ways. I like stories with morals, as long as they're the right kinds of morals.
Dragon's Blood, Heart's Blood, and A Sending of Dragons; Jane Yolen. My only problem with these books is the humans. I love to read about these dragons, and I'm very satisfied with most of the dragon stuff. But, particularly considering how the trilogy ends, it seems like the books are intended to be about the humans, so it's a real annoyance to me that all the important character developments are so downplayed. Jakkin's opinion of Pit fighting changes when? Between books one and two? Somewhere in two? Love Just Happens, there's no building of a relationship. And what happened in book three to change their minds so drastically, and why is their choice the right one? I want a lot more information about what's going on in the humans' heads here.
The Deep, John Crowley. Confusing, but I think that's part of the point. What's true? To whom? I should read this again before I try to say anything coherent about it, I think.
New Skies, ed. Patrick Nielsen Hayden. It might seem that "An anthology of today's science fiction" would mean the stories in here would be at least somewhat new, but, on the contrary, the first one is They're Made Out of Meat. Some of the stories were new to me, so it wasn't a waste of time, but it's certainly more of a primer to the last twenty years of science fiction than a new exciting anthology along the lines of PNH's Starlights. Oh well.
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-04 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-06 09:48 am (UTC)Dragons Blood, et al
Date: 2004-04-04 04:08 pm (UTC)Re: Dragons Blood, et al
Date: 2004-04-05 11:16 am (UTC)MacAvoy's Lens of the World trilogy has large spaces and happenings between the books, but there it fits together very well, IMO.
Re: Dragon's Blood, et al
Date: 2004-04-06 12:02 pm (UTC)Should I read these MacAvoy books? I have no knowledge of the author.
Re: Dragon's Blood, et al
Date: 2004-04-06 04:07 pm (UTC)Have you run across Tea with the Black Dragon? Short, fun, very 80s. What could go wrong?
Re: Dragon's Blood, et al
Date: 2004-04-06 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-06 11:56 am (UTC)