December books

[jinian]

Sixpence House, Paul Collins. Picked up because I liked Collins' Not Even Wrong. This is well written, and I was somewhat interested in the story of the author coming to live in Hay-on-Wye.

Mary Poppins, P. L. Travers. From http://www.marissalingen.com/013004.html (a piece of ruling embedded among other examples of ruling), which made me realize I never had read the book. Mary Poppins is a lot less sweet and a lot more inherently magical in the book than in the movie, so I liked the book a lot.

Beyond Choice, Alexander Sanger. Recommended by theatresm. Interesting for the first hundred pages or so. Attempts to give an updated rationale for abortion's being a personal choice, now that the sanctity of privacy isn't doing the job, which is that women need to be able to make choices to keep themselves and their kids prosperous rather than just alive for evolution to work correctly. (I am being flip, but that's basically it.) I think taking it to evolution is unuseful, and I'm not sure that saying prosperity is a social good will help either; shouldn't people already know that? He might persuade moderates, which is the audience he's after; nothing will work on extremists.

Fish Whistle, Daniel Pinkwater. diony recommended this collection of very short radio pieces by Pinkwater, which were all very entertaining. Some guy on the bus said, "You know it's a good book when two people are looking at it like that," and he was right.

The Child Goddess, Louise Marley. whileaway recommendation. Good alien-culture interaction, but I felt like the resolution of the anti-romance plot was a cheat. I want to see people have problems with their vows but come to creative solutions, not just plod along until events solve everything for them.

Midnight Is a Place, Joan Aiken. gwyneira read this. [edit to correct which book I'm talking about. sheesh.] This is the one with the kids who have to work terrible odd jobs in a factory and a sewer to support themselves, right? This one was good. Lots of detail and minor sustained suspense.

Nothing Human, Nancy Kress. Library shelf. Kress is quite good at writing plausible biology (at least, I haven't been able to catch her out so far) and what happens when you're human and you're not sure your children are. This one has interfering aliens, dynastic modification of humans, and ecological turmoil. Good stuff.

Enchantress From the Stars, Sylvia Engdahl. How many times did I see this recommended on rasfw? Borrowed from eub quite a while ago. Speaking of interfering aliens, this lot is humans with sufficiently advanced technology, specifically a young woman who learns a lot through masquerading as a sorceress. Very good.

Like the Red Panda, Andrea Seigel. I don't remember at all how I got this. Odds are it was mentioned in the LJ-and-blog world somehow. Mainstream teen novel, dark. I would like to spoil this for everyone, because I didn't like reading it unspoiled, but I will wait and do it in the comments.

The Woman in the Wall, Patrice Kindl. Found this used a while ago, and I adore Owl in Love. This one is odd still, in less of an alien way but more of a tempting one to someone who loves to be alone.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss. You have no idea how hard it is to write or type that title as it appears on the book. Lent by thatmathchick. British usage book, so irreverent as to border on unuseful, but amusing.

Gardens of the Moon, Steven Erikson. Seen in http://www.livejournal.com/users/sartorias/50026.html#cutid1 and in Powells' best of 2004. Not bad. Lots of plots, lots of characters, lots of setup, not too much comprehensible action at this point. Clearly the beginning of a whacking great epic; call me in several years if he's done and I might be interested.

The Enormous Egg, Oliver Butterworth. Part of ongoing project to read and return eub's lent books. I'd never read this as a kid, amazingly enough. Live Triceratops! Woo hoo!

Grass For His Pillow, Lian Hearn. Second in a trilogy. I actually think I liked the first one better, when it actually seemed like the star-crossed lovers were going to get absolutely nowhere, but the female lead is doing pretty well for herself in this version, which makes up for it somewhat.

The Tricksters, Margaret Mahy. Don't know where I got this either, and its skew in common with Like the Red Panda (very different directions, but about the same distance away from girl-teen-protagonist romance) suggests that I forgot to write down a single source. But who knows. This one is sensual and scary, with beautifully creepy men coming from we-don't-know-where and being charming or worrying, and a family with interesting interactions anyway, and a girl changing a lot. Very good.

Witch Week, Diana Wynne Jones. Comfort reading. I love this one, especially the misbehaving broom and the positive warren of witchery that the school turns out to be.

The Love Wife, Gish Jen. Found looking at author events. Mainstream novel about a racially mixed family taking in a Chinese relative and the stresses, new and pre-existing, on their relationships. Told in a play-like fashion, short monologues preceded by the name of the character who's telling what happened. I found it engaging, though the ending was a little flat.

Fushigi Yuugi #4, Yuu Watase. I think Miaka is a little less annoying on paper.

Welcome to Temptation, Jennifer Crusie. From that series of posts someone Sara Donati did about effective sex-scene writing (down a bit). This was so much fun! I liked the vividness of the setting even more than the sex scenes; the water tower's makeovers and the kitchen wallpaper are still fresh in my mind as I write this a shamefully long time after reading the book. The novel suffers a little from an annoying protagonist, but I sympathized with her for the most part. Fun! I can say no more than fun!

Little Sister, Kara Dalkey. desayunoencama rec, I think, perhaps as an antidote to the Lian Hearn books. A fairy tale in old Japan and a coming-of-age story too. Simple and good.

Inkheart, Cornelia Funke. This was not on the Powells top n list, but Dragon Rider reminded me I thought I had it on hold, so I did put it on hold. Hard to go wrong with a book about books and book-created worlds. It was interesting that the author's imagination was what defined facts in the book, even facts he never wrote down. I suppose there's nowhere else to draw an obvious line, since what's on paper can be crossed out and the printing press isn't exactly full of creative energy. I thought the girl protagonist was often just an accessory to the action, not doing very much even when she's an important influence on the situation, but that got better toward the end. Good, not great.

1000 Glass Beads, intro by Cathy Finegan. Beautiful and inspiring. I did wish for a glossary of technical terms, but the power of the internet allowed me to find out just what they meant by "inside-out technique".

Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli. From http://www.livejournal.com/users/jenett/353786.html. An approximate bodhisattva goes to high school, with some sadly predictable results and some unexpected ones. The ending made me wonder why I don't do good things for people more often. I should. It's hard to keep people from thinking you have an agenda, though.

Rite of Passage, Alexei Panshin. From http://www.livejournal.com/users/jenett/353786.html. A girl from a starship has to survive on her own for a month before she becomes an adult. She and her friends train for the ordeal, explore the ship, meet planet-living folks, and take the trip. An appropriate but not unadulteratedly happy ending. (Goes very well with Enchantress From the Stars, actually.)

Comments

Like the Red Panda SPOILER (rot13)

[jinian.livejournal.com]

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(Someone who rules has put up a coder/decoder at rot13.com (http://www.rot13.com/). awesoma powa!)

[gwyneira.livejournal.com]

Um, Midnight Is a Place isn't a Dido Twite book. Did you read Midwinter Nightingale, perchance? That's the only Dido book I can think of with a similar title to MIaP (which is sort of a Gothic novel for children).

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Actually, I got it confused with The Cuckoo Tree somehow. I liked this one much better. I'll go fix that now.

[eub.livejournal.com]

If I enumerate memorable educations that my junior high school did for the students (as opposed to educations that JHS students did for and to each other), it goes like:
- practice writing down Mr. Tuleja's flute melodies in musical notation.
- all read Rite of Passage in social studies(?) class.
- week of meditation in art class.

So that book makes up a non-trivial fraction of my effective formal education. I liked it. (Did we discuss it in school? Write essays? We must have, but that part doesn't seem to have educated me a bit.) It talked about "spear-carriers", I think? That stuck with me.

Oh,
- learn to spend a class period drawing a map of Western Europe in colored pencils
but that one really didn't stick at all. Too bad.