July books

[jinian]

Some of these are even shorter than my usual lame reviews, but I really want to catch up! Ask if you have any questions.

A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews. Powell's best of the year list. In which my experience with Like the Red Panda serves me well by making me suspicious that these literary novels about teenaged girls may not have happy endings. This one is kind of cathartic rather than merely bitter, but it wasn't fun. I'm glad I read the blurbs or I might not have noticed that the author was castigating religious fundamentalism in general.

Garden Plants of Japan, Ran Levy-Yamamori and Gerard Taaffe. Failed to answer the question at coffee_and_ink/444777.html, but now I really want my own copy of this. It has a good number of photos and very interesting plants, plus notes on suitable bonsai techniques if any, some cultural notes, and the Japanese plant names as well as the Latinate binomials and English-language names. I had to start a new plant wishlist.

Heal Your Headache, David Buchholz. Gave me a vastly expanded list of migraine triggers to watch out for. Unfortunately, some of my main ones seem to be internally produced. Working on it.

Alchemy of Fire, Gillian Bradshaw. Good fun with a little perfumery.

Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones. I still kind of love movie-Howl, but the book is miles better for pretty much everyone else.

Juniper, Monica Furlong. I liked Wise Child way better than either of the other books in the set, even if it didn't end satisfyingly. This was all right but didn't have the same charm somehow.

Case Histories, Kate Atkinson. Powell's best of the year list. Engaging characters are the main good part, but the plot is interesting too.

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell. Gorgeously, intricately structured, and interesting in all its parts. Read this.

The Birth of Venus, Sarah Dunant. gwyneira read this. It was okay. I felt that the Very Famous Painter aspect was dumb enough to cheapen the book as a whole.

The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Sarah Vowell. Fun short pieces.

Nightingales, Gillian Gill. Powell's best of the year list. Just too long and not interesting enough for me to get through it before it was due.

Tiptree Award Anthology 1. Mostly things I'd read, but I was glad to see "The Catgirl Manifesto" again, fsvo glad that includes disturbed.

An Alchemy of Mind, Diane Ackerman. Powell's best of the year list. "I'm an Earth ecstatic, and my creed is simple: All life is sacred, life loves life, and we are capable of improving our behavior toward one another. As basic as that is, for me it's also tonic and deeply spiritual, glorifying the smallest life-form and embracing the most distant stars." Ackerman's writing is always pretty, but I just wasn't in the mood for it this time.

Fat White Vampire Blues, Andrew Fox. There are two sympathetic characters in the entire book, who get maybe ten pages' combined appearance. Everyone else is repellent, though the protagonist gets less so by the end. Furthermore, the cover and copy are offensive and inaccurate; the titular fat guy has no problem whatsoever getting dates. (One might argue that homeless women are more likely to agree to being bought dinner, while bar chicks aren't likely to go anywhere with someone unattractive. Okay, but we never see the guy get turned down.) Is there a genre of "evil schmuck gets slightly better" books that I just haven't seen? Do people read such things by choice? I wish I'd noted where I found this.

To the King a Daughter, Andre Norton and Sasha Miller. Oops, I left the house without a book. The library shelf offered fluff, and this was it. Mildly interesting fluff, but without any especially compelling characterization or plot. No need to read the sequels.

Replay, Ken Grimmwood. This reminds me of Richard Bach's The Bridge Across Forever in tone, somehow, but I really liked this one. I was intrigued by the different replays, especially gaming the system, and later my empathy was engaged. Good book.

The White Rose, Jean Hanff Korelitz. It appears that every mainstream novel must have at least one affair. Are they that common, or is it like spaceships, sort of a hanky code for books? This is, at least, a very good mainstream novel. The climax goes differently that I was expecting it to, which got my attention, but it does miss one thing: I want to know what happens to the rose babies. Yes, it's all very metaphorical, but clearly the plants should be the important characters here.

Courtney Crumrin and the Twilight Kingdom, Ted Naifeh.
Fables 1-5, Willingham et al. Library shelf. Solid, involving plot and nicely tweaked mythic characters. I like it.
Hana Yori Dango 4-10. I seem to lose my tolerance for soap opera (drama with no plot advancement) around volume 8.
Kare Kano 2, Manami Tsuda. Sweet, if repetitive, his-and-hers perspective. Some very cute moments.
Mars 9, Fuyumi Soryo. Someday Mars 7 will come in and I'll feel at liberty to read the rest of the series all at once instead of one grudging volume at a time.
Naruto 1, Masashi Kishimoto. Took some getting used to, especially after all that HYD -- from very high-contrast black ink and white paper, with just a few transferred tones, to almost all gray (computer-colored?) shades. Kind of dumb in that way that underestimates boys especially (LOOK. A CUTE GIRL. LOOK. A FART JOKE.), but I think it shows potential.
XXXholic 2, CLAMP. I like the series better now that I've had a little time to get used to its premise.

Comments

[firecat]

I disliked Fat White Vampire Blues too. I really wanted to like it. [sigh]

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, some of my main ones seem to be internally produced. Working on it.

Heh. Mine too, you know. The first time I told someone I could WATCH myself give myself a headache she was really shocked, like somehow people think we're all separate from how we respond to stuff too.

Good luck. *hug*

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Naruto gets much better after the first volume.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I assumed it must, since people actually like it, so I just read volume 2. It's an improvement, but I'm not happy with the way Sakura has no biography apart from liking or not liking the boys. Does that get better, or should I just steel myself against the annoyance?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Steel yourself. Sakura does do some interesting things and some cool women show up in the supporting cast later on, but this book is basically all about the boys.