half-August books

[jinian]

Once a Hero, Elizabeth Moon. Fun military SF with lots of details, on which I thrive.

Sweets: a History of Candy, Tim Richardson. From read_o_rama. I have a dozen different bookmarks in this book, things I wanted to tell you and candies I wanted to look up later, ordering from foreign countries if necessary. (Uwajimaya will probably suffice for "Everyburger" but where will I get a "Cuberdon"?) Sweets is much more scholarly and British than Candyfreak, with more history and less memoir about it, and roughly twice as long. The obsessive feeling is similar, though. Richardson's wordplay was overall amusing and only fell flat once (desert/dessert/deserts -- he just did it wrong, I don't know). Several mysteries about British candy were solved for me, but at least one was created: do you really have pink marshmallows? Tidbits such as "the tradition of making lewd wafers for Easter Day communion" and "It's okay to eat chocolate. Believe me. I am an international confectionery historian." are lovely, and his description of the evils of chewing-gum is worth the read in itself.

Also, there is a book The Anthropology of Sweetmeats. Must read. Not to mention June di Schino's "essential essay" "The Waning of Sexually Allusive Monastic Confectionery in Southern Italy." I am happy just knowing that one exists.

Dark Places, Jon Evans. From papersky. Remarkably good thriller, actually creepy and with realistic net use. No one was a complete idiot for no reason, which is an excellent change from the usual mystery or thriller plot, and it was disturbing but not gruesome. I liked the way the ending handed the reader some moral issues and then stepped back, but even if you don't care about that I'd recommend the book for its great narrative style and plot.

Spook, Mary Roach. From oyceter. I had a harder time getting into this one than Stiff; Roach seemed too deliberately snarky and irreverent for the earlier part of the book, but either she found her feet or I got into the mood, because I zipped happily through the later chapters. She relates, among other excellent anecdotes, a little tale of the effluviograph, in which heat effects on photo developer were supposed to be spiritual but worked equally well in parodies such as "Electrograph of the antipathy between two Vienna sausages."

Snake Agent, Liz Williams. From hattifattener. Great supernatural near-future-SF police procedural with demons and humor. Beautifully put together world drawing from Chinese culture and myth. My only problem is that one character is called Inari when (a) she is not the sort of being that would imply and (b) nothing else in the entire book, including her family, is Japanese. (I am not so sure that "Zhu Irzh" is well-formed Chinese either, but it could be; it fits a whole lot better than "Inari" does.) But I urge you to read this one. It is way fun.

All the Fishes Come Home to Roost, Rachel Manija Brown. The library didn't get this the first two times I asked them, and the copy I bought went for a present before I got to read it, so this was my first time through rachelmanija's childhood memoir about living in an ashram in India. It's hilarious and horrifying and really well written. More please!

Fruits Basket, Natsuki Takaya. Raw scans with summary/translation to chapter 131. I now intend to use my molecular biology skills to have Takaya's babies.
Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto. Scanslations to chapter 195.
Planet Ladder, Yuri Harushima. Complete. Somewhat incoherent, but shows a lot of good complexity. I'll watch for a future series.
Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, CLAMP. Chapter 50-125. Scans, some repeated after extended absence. Tomoyo's sunglasses ladies in 71! And true Tomoyo-nature, too. Hee. Also coffeeandink was totally right about this Shaoran, he's wonderful. Things after about 120 are getting remarkably cracked-out, though, and gruesome too. Is that inevitable when characters from X show up?

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The trawling-through-weblogs bit of detection in Dark Places was really odd to me because in my last place of work doing pretty much exactly that was one of my monthly jobs.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Yes, we have pink marshmallows. I think they have them here, don't they? Not that I've looked, because I haven't been camping or making hot chocolate much, and while I do like them it's not as if they're good for me. There are definitely as many pink as there are white marshmallows in Britain, bags are always mixed. I thought they just grew that way.

[hattifattener]

We get pale blue and pale pink marhmallows around Easter, but it's definitely a "look! we can dye things funny colors!" kind of thing.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me, Richardson turns out to be a fan of Peeps. He cites the textures as a plus, with which I totally disagree, and the pathos as another.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Thank you too! It's a great book. Plus, I mentioned Project Blue Rose to my fellow undergrad researcher when I was telling him about Fishes, and he wants to read that too.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

We are now accepting reservations for the next printing, which should be out by early September. Tell him to paypal his name, mailing address, and $10 to sfolse@cepheid.org.

Plus we're pitching it as a series to regular manga publishers in September, so with luck, it will be picked up and continued.

[gwyneira.livejournal.com]

There are those horrifying bags of pastel color mini-marshmallows, which my husband always refers to as "fish bait". I think I've seen peppermint-flavored pink marshmallows, too, but certainly not commonly.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I saw a bag of "sour marshmallows" once. Its contents were unsettlingly pastel. It may have given me a horror of the whole colored-marshmallow concept.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I didn't like Roach's second book as much as her first, although I was quite amused by anecdotes about ectoplasm.

Also, I just realized that I have failed you once again wrt Furuba! I'm so sorry!

[jinian.livejournal.com]

It's okay, I went hunting when I wanted to read it and found Nemuidesu: raws and links to summaries/translations too, yay. And THEN I went and read your post. It seemed a little late to comment, though.

Are you interested in Snake Agent at all? I remember some talk about Asian-influenced fantasy a while ago, and this certainly is one. It'd be nice to have more people to talk about it with.

[oyceter]

Ooo, I totally skipped over Snake Agent the first time round, thanks for the tip! I'm always looking for more Asian-influenced fantasy, particularly ones that don't make me chuck them against walls ;).

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Can't promise non-chuckability for sure, but nothing screamed wrongness to me at least. Hope you like it!