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books! with pages!
heyyyyyy internet! As you may know, I'm moving sometime toward the end of this summer (lsdkdfadfa;slfkasj;fEEEEEEE YAY, basically). As a result, I'm gradually going through my possessions and clearing out the things I don't want or need , and one of the things I have realized is that Jesus H Christ, I have a lot of books.
(This is a common problem in my family. The other day, I set a bunch of books on the counter to remind myself to take them to the secondhand store and try to sell them; I came back upstairs later to find that my mom had repatriated about half of the stack to the bookshelves in the living room, including such gems as the copy of Hamlet I read in my second quarter of college.
"I've never read it!" she said, when I confronted her. Which - okay, yes...but it's SHAKESPEARE. IT IS NOT GOING TO GO OUT OF PRINT, MOM. IT IS ON THE INTERNET.
My whole family is like this.)
So my solution to this is that I will - wait for it - READ THESE BOOKS. The ones that I like, or think my family might like, will stay on the shelves; the ones that I really like will come with me to Boston; the rest of them will be sold, if I can sneak them out of the house.
Note that I am not trying to do this to ALL of the books in the house. That would be madness. We have - a lot of books. I am just trying to do this to the books that I bought, or was given, or squirreled away in my room in the hope of someday reading.
This has left me with this:
I know, I know. But since I'm unemployed and carless, I have pretty high hopes as to the possibility of making a dent in this nonsense. To which end: book reviews!
• The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie, Alan Bradley - okay so technically this one doesn't count, because I listened to it in the car with my family as we drove to and from DC, but, whatever, we HAVE a paper copy and I COULD have read it, so I'm counting it. I am also reccing it! Because it was just delightful. The main character is Flavia DeLuce, age almost eleven, who likes chemistry (particularly poisons) and stymying the adults around her. It would have been really easy to write her as aggravatingly precocious, but she didn't come off that way at all, to me - she's smart and clever and kind of a sociopath in the way that only small children can be, but she doesn't come off as a mary-sue type at all.
• The Weed That Strings The Hangman's Bag - sequel to the above! Less exciting of a denouement (no actual mortal peril), but Flavia remains adorable (and kind of a sociopath), so I am not complaining.
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin - I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH, OMG. It has a pantheon of fucked-up and compelling gods, a heroine who's a badass while still being compelling as a person, and the kind of twisty-creepy plot that I absolutely adore. Plus - okay, I don't want to spoil anybody for anything, but the ending is AMAZING. A+++++ WOULD READ AGAIN. ...possibly this afternoon, even. [WARNING: a fair amount of violence, references to torture and incest.]
• A Madness Of Angels, Kate Griffin - I'm pretty sure I've checked this one out from the library before and just never got around to reading it, but this time I did! And it was good! Urban fantasy doesn't always work especially well for me - I love the idea, but the execution is so frequently crap. This one really did, though, and I enjoyed it a lot. [WARNINGS: violence, possession, zombies.]
• Heart's Blood, Juliet Marillier - It took me an embarassingly long time to realize that this one was an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast - like, several hundred pages. That said, I mostly liked it—the heroine is a scribe, cast out by horrible relatives after her father's death, and saves the day not by the ~~power of twoo luv~~ but by being a research nerd. I approve! I wasn't as fond of the use of the magical healing vagina—basically, he throws her out (FOR HER SAFETY), she goes off and confronts her relatives and finds her sister and then comes back because she's had a vision, and on the eve of the GREAT BATTLE they get it on, and the sex is GREAT. Why doesn't anybody ever have AWKWARD SEX? Still, overall pretty enjoyable. [WARNINGS: references to physical and emotional abuse and the aftermath thereof, magical healing vagina.]
• Rider and Mystic, Sharon Shinn - I was kind of disappointed by this one, tbh. I like Shinn's writing a lot, but her worldbuilding is a lot stronger in her other stuff. This one felt kind of cardboard-cutout-ish, and never really grabbed me. I have the sequels out from the library, but idthink I'll actually read them. [WARNINGS: generic fantasy nonsense.]
• The Stargazer, Michele Jaffe - OKAY SO THE THING IS. This was the first explicit novel I ever read, and I remember that because I borrowed it from my mom, and I remember at the time (I was...11? 12?) being utterly scandalized that she was letting me read it. Yeah, idek - I was kind of a prudish kid, although of course that didn't stop me from reading it until it actually fell apart and I stuffed it behind my bed in shame. FAST FORWARD, PRESENT DAY: I found it again and of course couldn't resist rereading it, and omg, internet, it is TERRIBLE. It has a lady doctor in 17th century venice! and lesbian whores! and the hero marries the heroine because he thinks she murdered a whore, and then continues to believe she's guilty in the face of all manner of evidence, right up until she's trapped in the dungeon of a building that's about to explode (or possibly flood?), at which point he realizes he truly loves her. YEAH. It's pretty terrible - the word "member" makes a number of appearances, and not once is it referring to a person who participates in a group - but at the same time it's GREAT. [WARNINGS: terrible porn, purple prose, LESBIAN WHORES.]
• The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo / The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson - ...I'm pretty conflicted about these two. On the one hand, they're well-written and engaging mystery novels; on the other hand, they are FULL OF RAPE. Seriously, I cannot stress this enough: there is a LOT of rape in these books, and a lot of it is pretty graphically described. To give the author credit, I think he did a better job than most mystery novelists of emphasizing the societal aspects of rape, of talking about how it's not just one dude's actions but the ways that society is set up to support those actions - but, still. Disturbing. [WARNINGS: RAPE.]
I also read as many of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books as I could find at the library, but I didn't bother reviewing them, because they are basically uniformly awful/amazing. COMFORT LIT IS THE BEST, OKAY.
What have you been reading, lj?
(This is a common problem in my family. The other day, I set a bunch of books on the counter to remind myself to take them to the secondhand store and try to sell them; I came back upstairs later to find that my mom had repatriated about half of the stack to the bookshelves in the living room, including such gems as the copy of Hamlet I read in my second quarter of college.
"I've never read it!" she said, when I confronted her. Which - okay, yes...but it's SHAKESPEARE. IT IS NOT GOING TO GO OUT OF PRINT, MOM. IT IS ON THE INTERNET.
My whole family is like this.)
So my solution to this is that I will - wait for it - READ THESE BOOKS. The ones that I like, or think my family might like, will stay on the shelves; the ones that I really like will come with me to Boston; the rest of them will be sold, if I can sneak them out of the house.
Note that I am not trying to do this to ALL of the books in the house. That would be madness. We have - a lot of books. I am just trying to do this to the books that I bought, or was given, or squirreled away in my room in the hope of someday reading.
This has left me with this:
I know, I know. But since I'm unemployed and carless, I have pretty high hopes as to the possibility of making a dent in this nonsense. To which end: book reviews!
• The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie, Alan Bradley - okay so technically this one doesn't count, because I listened to it in the car with my family as we drove to and from DC, but, whatever, we HAVE a paper copy and I COULD have read it, so I'm counting it. I am also reccing it! Because it was just delightful. The main character is Flavia DeLuce, age almost eleven, who likes chemistry (particularly poisons) and stymying the adults around her. It would have been really easy to write her as aggravatingly precocious, but she didn't come off that way at all, to me - she's smart and clever and kind of a sociopath in the way that only small children can be, but she doesn't come off as a mary-sue type at all.
• The Weed That Strings The Hangman's Bag - sequel to the above! Less exciting of a denouement (no actual mortal peril), but Flavia remains adorable (and kind of a sociopath), so I am not complaining.
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin - I LOVE THIS BOOK SO MUCH, OMG. It has a pantheon of fucked-up and compelling gods, a heroine who's a badass while still being compelling as a person, and the kind of twisty-creepy plot that I absolutely adore. Plus - okay, I don't want to spoil anybody for anything, but the ending is AMAZING. A+++++ WOULD READ AGAIN. ...possibly this afternoon, even. [WARNING: a fair amount of violence, references to torture and incest.]
• A Madness Of Angels, Kate Griffin - I'm pretty sure I've checked this one out from the library before and just never got around to reading it, but this time I did! And it was good! Urban fantasy doesn't always work especially well for me - I love the idea, but the execution is so frequently crap. This one really did, though, and I enjoyed it a lot. [WARNINGS: violence, possession, zombies.]
• Heart's Blood, Juliet Marillier - It took me an embarassingly long time to realize that this one was an adaptation of Beauty and the Beast - like, several hundred pages. That said, I mostly liked it—the heroine is a scribe, cast out by horrible relatives after her father's death, and saves the day not by the ~~power of twoo luv~~ but by being a research nerd. I approve! I wasn't as fond of the use of the magical healing vagina—basically, he throws her out (FOR HER SAFETY), she goes off and confronts her relatives and finds her sister and then comes back because she's had a vision, and on the eve of the GREAT BATTLE they get it on, and the sex is GREAT. Why doesn't anybody ever have AWKWARD SEX? Still, overall pretty enjoyable. [WARNINGS: references to physical and emotional abuse and the aftermath thereof, magical healing vagina.]
• Rider and Mystic, Sharon Shinn - I was kind of disappointed by this one, tbh. I like Shinn's writing a lot, but her worldbuilding is a lot stronger in her other stuff. This one felt kind of cardboard-cutout-ish, and never really grabbed me. I have the sequels out from the library, but idthink I'll actually read them. [WARNINGS: generic fantasy nonsense.]
• The Stargazer, Michele Jaffe - OKAY SO THE THING IS. This was the first explicit novel I ever read, and I remember that because I borrowed it from my mom, and I remember at the time (I was...11? 12?) being utterly scandalized that she was letting me read it. Yeah, idek - I was kind of a prudish kid, although of course that didn't stop me from reading it until it actually fell apart and I stuffed it behind my bed in shame. FAST FORWARD, PRESENT DAY: I found it again and of course couldn't resist rereading it, and omg, internet, it is TERRIBLE. It has a lady doctor in 17th century venice! and lesbian whores! and the hero marries the heroine because he thinks she murdered a whore, and then continues to believe she's guilty in the face of all manner of evidence, right up until she's trapped in the dungeon of a building that's about to explode (or possibly flood?), at which point he realizes he truly loves her. YEAH. It's pretty terrible - the word "member" makes a number of appearances, and not once is it referring to a person who participates in a group - but at the same time it's GREAT. [WARNINGS: terrible porn, purple prose, LESBIAN WHORES.]
• The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo / The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson - ...I'm pretty conflicted about these two. On the one hand, they're well-written and engaging mystery novels; on the other hand, they are FULL OF RAPE. Seriously, I cannot stress this enough: there is a LOT of rape in these books, and a lot of it is pretty graphically described. To give the author credit, I think he did a better job than most mystery novelists of emphasizing the societal aspects of rape, of talking about how it's not just one dude's actions but the ways that society is set up to support those actions - but, still. Disturbing. [WARNINGS: RAPE.]
I also read as many of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books as I could find at the library, but I didn't bother reviewing them, because they are basically uniformly awful/amazing. COMFORT LIT IS THE BEST, OKAY.
What have you been reading, lj?
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I REMEMBER FEELING THAT WAY ABOUT THE FIRST BOOK I READ LIKE THAT, ONLY IT WAS MY TEACHER. Also on rereading at an older age, I realized that it was more fade to black than I had thought at the time. And yay for recs! I'm definitely going to check that first one out and I'm pretty sure I already have Heart's Blood, I've just been wishy washy about actually reading it for some reason.
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The Flavia DeLuce books are A++++! IL all tiny sociopaths. And Heart's Blood was definitely worth reading too!
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I have been rereading 1632 (alt history where present day Virginia town gets sent back in time to... 1632) and 1633 (imaginatively titled sequel!) lately, the first of which is really really good and the latter of which is still pretty good if not quite as excellent. And I have also been reading a lot of SM Stirling's No Electricity Everyone Dies* series, although I took a break for a little while.
*Chris' sobriquet to describe the series. It is essentially accurate! I think they're properly called Novels of the Change, though.
And, oh, I just finished Havemercy by Jaida Jones and Danielle Bennett, which is about metal dragons and a mostly-unexplained war and was very interesting and also had gay characters, hooray, if sadly little to no women. (Though I have high hopes for the sequel.)
Good luck with your project, yo.
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Those sound like interesting books all! Clearly I will have to come back to this entry when I am eventually allowed to check books out from the library again.
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And that seems like a good plan, I think. *g* You have read Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan-verse, right?
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I've been listening to Elinor Lipman books in the car, because they crack me up out loud; The Family Man was awesome. I'm trying to read At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon, because I try to have some idea of what the
kids these dayssweet old ladies at the library are reading, but OH MY GOD IS IT BORING. I'm okay with stories with no sex! But it's a steady stream of plotlines that I think are supposed to be funny or touching, like "the Episcopal priest promises his housekeeper that he won't get his shoes dirty, but then he helps a sick cow and gets mud all over his shoes and cuffs! so he cleans them himself", and I think maybe 100 pages of it is enough for me.no subject
I used to shelve the Mitford books when I was a teenie working at the library, and every so often I would try to read one—they got a lot of circulation! clearly they were interesting!—and kept getting bored before I'd read the first page. ZZZZZZZZ.