October 2005 books

[jinian]

Bhagavati, Kara Dalkey. (Finally realized I could get this from the library instead of trying to find it used!) Third of three about a hapless but beautiful Englishman, who meets the Inquisition and no few supernatural (girl) troubles in India. You know how it's going to end, but it's fun getting there. Dalkey's details really get me at times: "perfect stone knucklebones protruded from finger shards", for instance.

Daughters of an Emerald Dusk, Katherine V. Forrest. Third in the trilogy I started reading in September. Continuing good relationships and personalities, though I found the plot-required contortion of physics annoying.

The Reading Group, Elizabeth Noble. Various women bond over high-prestige novels. Light enough that I kept reading even though I didn't really get into it.

Tainted Trail, Bitter Waters, Dog Warrior, Wen Spencer. The continuing entertaining adventures of a werewolflike hero, with accompanying revelations about his origins and antecedents. Fun stuff, even if it did get a woman at the bus stop to sneer and equate it to John Grisham.

French Women Don't Get Fat, Mireille Guiliano. And it's because they are so full of themselves that they can't possibly eat anything. Really a lot of this books is good sense about activity and eating reasonably, I just got annoyed by the Freanch fetish pretty quickly.

The Braided World, Kay Kenyon. Kenyon apparently really likes her Maximum Ice background (cloud of DARK MATTER cruises by Earth and sucks the information right out of everything, including DNA), and I really don't, but it's a lot more ignorable in this one.

Bitten, Pamela Nagani. From library web site. Scary! Loved it! All kinds of bites from all kinds of animals and what their friendly local venom and/or bacterial flora like to do to your flesh.
Maneater, Pamela Nagani. Doesn't suck, but goes much more into details and emotional involvement of just a few cases than Bitten, which I preferred for its loads of information.

Tinker, Wen Spencer. Due to a weird geographical swap, Pittsburgh now lives in Elfland almost all the time. Overall, pretty well thought out and fun, and I liked Tinker.

Valiant, Holly Black. From rachelmanija, since read by lots of people. Dark YA urban fantasy. I actually didn't like this very much; none of the characters were interesting to me.

The Queen's Necklace, Teresa Edgerton. oyceter read Goblin Moon, but the library just had this one. Good fantasy of politics.

Princess Academy, Shannon Hale. From gwyneira. Yay! Shannon Hale! Girls with relationships and ethics and courage and yay!

Ape and Essence, Aldous Huxley. New edition of a book I hadn't heard of, found at the library. In some ways the extrapolated "civilized" New Zealanders are more alarming than the mutant devil-worshippers, though the latter are certainly more overtly awful. One interesting section follows; Hots are throwbacks who don't have the socially approved one-month estrus period but want sex all the time (and are all wired for romantic monogamy, OF COURSE):

"If you want social solidarity, you've got to have either an external enemy or an oppressed minority. We have no external enemies, so we have to make the most of our Hots.... If anything goes wrong, it's always the fault of the Hots. I don't know what we'd do without them.... Second, if they're discreet, they won't get punished. All they've got to do is avoid having babies at the wrong season and to disguise the fact that they fall in love and make permanent connections with persons of the opposite sex. And, if they don't want to be discreet, they can always run away.... It's a dangerous journey, of course. Very little water on the way. And if we catch them, we bury them alive. But if they choose to take the risk, they're perfectly free to do so."

[Emphasis mine.] I doubt that Huxley meant homosexuals, writing in 1948. Or did he? His ideas about women are a bit appalling, but that wouldn't be unusual for historical gays.

Mountain Betty, Hannah McCouch. Short, light novel about a college-grad ski-bum who's trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life and relationships. Marred chiefly by the author's bizarre habit of referring to things only by brand names. I happen to know that her Thorlos must be socks, but that's only because I worked at the shoe place. Many references slipped by me completely, and I found all of them except the Nalgene bottle annoying rather than illuminating.

Winner of the National Book Award, Jincy Willett. From read_o_rama. I pretty much hated all the characters, but this is well written and I wanted to keep reading until I was done.

Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman. From oyceter (& liked the movie). Pretty good magic realism, and I liked the focus on the family's repeating relationships.

Touchwood, Karin Kallmaker. From coffeeandink/470347.html. Heterosexual romance novels require for resolution: the satisfactory conclusion of the First Fight; engagement or marriage; solving some mystery or whatever. Lesbian romances, judging by this one, require: First Fight; family acceptance of relationship, probably after difficulty; new angle on stalled vocation; vacation on Lesbos. I am amused, though not happy with what the differences say about our culture at the moment. (And I liked the book, though it was sort of earnest for me.)

Wizards at War, Diane Duane. This was really good until the very end. Remember when there was actual death in this universe? Now we get copouts, and no real moral dilemmas now that I think back on it -- sure they're avatars of ~evil, but only in the smallest way, does that mean you kill them without worrying? How about the mercenaries?

Kare Kano 3, Masami Tsuda.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2, Alan Moore et al. I wanted to enjoy the really long novelized exploits of traveling people at the end, but I just couldn't get into it. Funny satire in places, though.
Mars 7, Fuyumi Soryo. Have I mentioned that hattifattener always calls this "Ears" because of the dorky right-angled M the title uses?
Persepolis 2, Marjane Satrapi.
Queen Bee 1, Chynna Clugston. Fun fluff -- telekinetic teenagers. Clugston continues cheerfully cool.
Runaways 2 (Teenage Wasteland), Brian K. Vaughan et al.
Teenagers from Mars, Rick Spears and Rob G.
Transmetropolitan 1-2, Warren Ellis et al.
XXXholic 4, CLAMP.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Huxley's Hots are like the Perverts in Left Hand of Darkness. (Or I guess it's the other way around.)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Of course they had homosexuals in 1948. I mean, of course that would have been in Huxley's mind. The shadow of the Wilde case -- and Wilde's subsequent writing about it -- was long. Huxley knew Forster and Maugham and the way they lived and the fear they lived in. Also, the homosexuals in the Holocaust -- did you know the ones who survived the camps weren't freed afterwards but put into prison? I think more than anything he wanted to make a point about fascist social control in a way that would get through to "normal" people -- people who were content to let them come for the Jews and the queers, but had to identify with those monogamous "Hots".

I think Ape and Essence is a bad book, but that Huxley wrote it because he was a good man.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I haven't really adored the Holly Black books either, even though I wanted to. I dunno... too deliberately gritty or something?

And ooooo Edgerton! I didn't like the second book quite as much as the first.