Thursday, January 25
So I made a pact with myself to keep track of my reading for this year and blog about it, and I have been doing the first faithfully. Only... if I do a month's worth of books in one post, as originally planned, y'all will hate me as the spammiest of spam spammers. At the current reading rate, anyway.
So I'm dividing the month in half. We'll see how that goes, shall we?
Books Read Jan 1 - 15
Rocket Science, by Jay Lake (aka jaylake).
This was a nifty little book and a good way to start off the new year. You can tell, I think, that this is a first novel and that Lake got his start doing short stories; the writing has a staccato feel to it, but remains free of most of the typical first novel errors. The real accomplishment in it, to my mind, was to recapture the breezy, optimistic, innocent feel of 40s and 50s science fiction (admittedly, by writing a bit of science fiction set in the 40s) without replicating the myriad category errors of the time. It was also a pleasure to read some positive science fiction for a change; despite the narrator being literally beset with Nazis, bootleggers, Russian spies, and the government, it was overall a cheerful and uplifting little book. If you miss Heinlein's early stuff (you know, pre-incest-kick) you should check this one out.
With Child by Laurie R. King
This is one of the good Kings -- the ones where she balances her fascination with character and her actual plot near-perfectly, to my ear at least. A warning to those who like linear plots: the atmospheric still far outweighs the action... but the atmosphere is so spot-on, the sense of being this cop watching children die so heart-breakingly clear at times, that one forgives the lack of a clear, beginning-to-end journey from Point A to Point B.
I remain fascinated with how well King deals with her lesbian protagonist in the Kate Martinelli mysteries. When something is quite so, hrm, contested, as homosexuality, it's difficult to write a homosexual character who isn't in some way a statement. But King does it; the Lesbian Issue slips in and out of Kate's life, present but generally less important than her issues with being a cop, fights with her lover, struggles with her case load. It's as if (heaven forbid!) a character could have a non-standard sexual orientation and yet not be defined entirely by it, but remain a person in her own right... which is in itself a statement, but a subtle one. (Subtle enough that the people who occasionally write King on her blog to whine that the Martinelli mysteries don't have a warning label seem to have entirely missed it, in fact.)
At any rate, most recommended if you enjoy beautiful characterization and rambling plot.
The Ghost Brigades by by John Scalzi
What I said above about Jay Lake? Also goes for this book. Except the set-in-the-40s bit and all that stuff about Nazis.
Seriously, this is a good, fun read, far better in my opinion than his debut Old Man's War. OMW was, for the most part, a great set of ideas and witty comebacks strung together with random incidents; Ghost Brigades is a great set of ideas and witty comebacks strung together with an actual plot. The difference is most pleasant.
It's also another book that ought to be downbeat, but strangely is not. I think the difference is in the feeling that the protagonists have sacrificed for a cause, that the world at large is a better place at the end of the book than at the beginning. I'm a fan of this, as you might have gathered. The world hands me enough dismal, conflicted resolutions. I like 'em in measured doses only in my fiction.
Tell Me Lies by Jennifer Crusie (Reread)
Crusie is one of the only romance writers I read. She's also a regular on my comfort-reading bookshelf for those times when I don't have the brainpower to delve into something new: just the right mix of fluff, funny, and frightening.
Tell Me Lies is pretty patented Crusie. On the one side of the coin is a cheeky, funny little romance... but flip it over and you've got the story of a woman trapped in a bad marriage by her daughter's needs and small-town expectations. I've come to the conclusion over the years that Crusie isn't afraid of much. She's not afraid to write sex scenes that will have you simultaneously turned on and howling with laughter. And she's also not afraid to write scenes like the wife-beating one in this book, scenes that make me want to crawl under the table and stay there until I stop feeling creeped out. It's a fearlessness I wish I had more of.
Whether you read romance or not, you should really check Jennifer Crusie out. She's candy with a hard centre.
Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold (Reread)
Another selection from my comfort reading shelf. I musta been having a bad week.
Someday I'm going to dissect a Bujold book as a study on writing a character novel with good, chunky plot, and if I do, it'll be this one. Because really? The whole blow-up-the-sky-mirror plot? Total filler and background for the character bits. And we don't care. The character bits are that good.
In related news, in like the tenth reread of this book, I have finally gotten to the end without Eskaterin making me cry. Now if I can just make it through the dinner party in Civil Campaign without ending up in a small, horrified ball of sympathetic humiliation, I'll be all set.
It was odd reading this book back-to-back with Tell Me Lies, because they have a similar trapped-in-bad-marriage theme... I'd never noticed before how similar. It was interesting that both women defended their marriage with "he never hits me..." damnation by weak praise if there ever was. But the differences are striking too. In TML Maddie doesn't want a divorce because she fears what it will do to her reputation, her mother, and her daughter, in reverse order of importance. In Komarr Eskaterin is afraid of what divorce (which she regards as oathbreaking) will do to her, not to mention what it will do to her dependent, emotionally damaged husband. The Edie Brickell line "suicide to stay and murder to leave" sums up her situation rather aptly. They end up with cages that look quite different from the inside, all too similar from the out.
So that's my light, cheerful, fluffy reading. On to....
The Eyes of God by John Marco (Unfinished)
Well, there had to be one wash in the batch, and this was it. It was a WF freebie; I picked it up because I was in the mood for a bit of high fantasy, a genre I love dearly when done right. This wasn't.
The book did three major things wrong, each of which could have been made bearable by a success in other regions but which, piled on top of each other, made the book utterly unreadable. The writing was.... well, stylistically I can only call it workmanlike; there weren't any actual errors, but neither was there any sense that the author had any ear whatsoever for sentence rhythm or turns of phrase. The pacing was utter crap, and the author's apparent need to give readers every bit of information at least three times and in the most blatant way possible stretched the book's length to an unbelievable 779 pages. The setting and plot were both derivative, the first a regurgitation of generic-medieval with a few serial numbers filed off, the second an utterly predictable replay of the Arthurian love-triangle, with additional, um, predictability.
Now, both of these things could have been salvaged by good characters; I like me some character, and will forgive many sins if it is delivered. But alas. The Arthur-analogue is Good. This is his only defining characteristic. There is no indication as to how he became Good or why he's Good or anything else; no, he just sits there in the middle of the plot, smugly Good. The Guinevere-analogue is a chameleon, growing and discarding personality traits as best suits the plot. The Lancelot-analogue is the most consistent and believable of the three; too bad he's a consistent and believable asshole.
I think there may have been a decent book in here somewhere -- there were hints at a quest plot and some intriguing stuff about crippled children -- but with 779 pages to hide in, it wasn't worth my while looking.
(See? See? I knew what I was talking about. Now I am only... uh... a sort of medium f-list spammer. Maybe. *hangs head*)
So I'm dividing the month in half. We'll see how that goes, shall we?
Books Read Jan 1 - 15
Rocket Science, by Jay Lake (aka jaylake).
This was a nifty little book and a good way to start off the new year. You can tell, I think, that this is a first novel and that Lake got his start doing short stories; the writing has a staccato feel to it, but remains free of most of the typical first novel errors. The real accomplishment in it, to my mind, was to recapture the breezy, optimistic, innocent feel of 40s and 50s science fiction (admittedly, by writing a bit of science fiction set in the 40s) without replicating the myriad category errors of the time. It was also a pleasure to read some positive science fiction for a change; despite the narrator being literally beset with Nazis, bootleggers, Russian spies, and the government, it was overall a cheerful and uplifting little book. If you miss Heinlein's early stuff (you know, pre-incest-kick) you should check this one out.
With Child by Laurie R. King
This is one of the good Kings -- the ones where she balances her fascination with character and her actual plot near-perfectly, to my ear at least. A warning to those who like linear plots: the atmospheric still far outweighs the action... but the atmosphere is so spot-on, the sense of being this cop watching children die so heart-breakingly clear at times, that one forgives the lack of a clear, beginning-to-end journey from Point A to Point B.
I remain fascinated with how well King deals with her lesbian protagonist in the Kate Martinelli mysteries. When something is quite so, hrm, contested, as homosexuality, it's difficult to write a homosexual character who isn't in some way a statement. But King does it; the Lesbian Issue slips in and out of Kate's life, present but generally less important than her issues with being a cop, fights with her lover, struggles with her case load. It's as if (heaven forbid!) a character could have a non-standard sexual orientation and yet not be defined entirely by it, but remain a person in her own right... which is in itself a statement, but a subtle one. (Subtle enough that the people who occasionally write King on her blog to whine that the Martinelli mysteries don't have a warning label seem to have entirely missed it, in fact.)
At any rate, most recommended if you enjoy beautiful characterization and rambling plot.
The Ghost Brigades by by John Scalzi
What I said above about Jay Lake? Also goes for this book. Except the set-in-the-40s bit and all that stuff about Nazis.
Seriously, this is a good, fun read, far better in my opinion than his debut Old Man's War. OMW was, for the most part, a great set of ideas and witty comebacks strung together with random incidents; Ghost Brigades is a great set of ideas and witty comebacks strung together with an actual plot. The difference is most pleasant.
It's also another book that ought to be downbeat, but strangely is not. I think the difference is in the feeling that the protagonists have sacrificed for a cause, that the world at large is a better place at the end of the book than at the beginning. I'm a fan of this, as you might have gathered. The world hands me enough dismal, conflicted resolutions. I like 'em in measured doses only in my fiction.
Tell Me Lies by Jennifer Crusie (Reread)
Crusie is one of the only romance writers I read. She's also a regular on my comfort-reading bookshelf for those times when I don't have the brainpower to delve into something new: just the right mix of fluff, funny, and frightening.
Tell Me Lies is pretty patented Crusie. On the one side of the coin is a cheeky, funny little romance... but flip it over and you've got the story of a woman trapped in a bad marriage by her daughter's needs and small-town expectations. I've come to the conclusion over the years that Crusie isn't afraid of much. She's not afraid to write sex scenes that will have you simultaneously turned on and howling with laughter. And she's also not afraid to write scenes like the wife-beating one in this book, scenes that make me want to crawl under the table and stay there until I stop feeling creeped out. It's a fearlessness I wish I had more of.
Whether you read romance or not, you should really check Jennifer Crusie out. She's candy with a hard centre.
Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold (Reread)
Another selection from my comfort reading shelf. I musta been having a bad week.
Someday I'm going to dissect a Bujold book as a study on writing a character novel with good, chunky plot, and if I do, it'll be this one. Because really? The whole blow-up-the-sky-mirror plot? Total filler and background for the character bits. And we don't care. The character bits are that good.
In related news, in like the tenth reread of this book, I have finally gotten to the end without Eskaterin making me cry. Now if I can just make it through the dinner party in Civil Campaign without ending up in a small, horrified ball of sympathetic humiliation, I'll be all set.
It was odd reading this book back-to-back with Tell Me Lies, because they have a similar trapped-in-bad-marriage theme... I'd never noticed before how similar. It was interesting that both women defended their marriage with "he never hits me..." damnation by weak praise if there ever was. But the differences are striking too. In TML Maddie doesn't want a divorce because she fears what it will do to her reputation, her mother, and her daughter, in reverse order of importance. In Komarr Eskaterin is afraid of what divorce (which she regards as oathbreaking) will do to her, not to mention what it will do to her dependent, emotionally damaged husband. The Edie Brickell line "suicide to stay and murder to leave" sums up her situation rather aptly. They end up with cages that look quite different from the inside, all too similar from the out.
So that's my light, cheerful, fluffy reading. On to....
The Eyes of God by John Marco (Unfinished)
Well, there had to be one wash in the batch, and this was it. It was a WF freebie; I picked it up because I was in the mood for a bit of high fantasy, a genre I love dearly when done right. This wasn't.
The book did three major things wrong, each of which could have been made bearable by a success in other regions but which, piled on top of each other, made the book utterly unreadable. The writing was.... well, stylistically I can only call it workmanlike; there weren't any actual errors, but neither was there any sense that the author had any ear whatsoever for sentence rhythm or turns of phrase. The pacing was utter crap, and the author's apparent need to give readers every bit of information at least three times and in the most blatant way possible stretched the book's length to an unbelievable 779 pages. The setting and plot were both derivative, the first a regurgitation of generic-medieval with a few serial numbers filed off, the second an utterly predictable replay of the Arthurian love-triangle, with additional, um, predictability.
Now, both of these things could have been salvaged by good characters; I like me some character, and will forgive many sins if it is delivered. But alas. The Arthur-analogue is Good. This is his only defining characteristic. There is no indication as to how he became Good or why he's Good or anything else; no, he just sits there in the middle of the plot, smugly Good. The Guinevere-analogue is a chameleon, growing and discarding personality traits as best suits the plot. The Lancelot-analogue is the most consistent and believable of the three; too bad he's a consistent and believable asshole.
I think there may have been a decent book in here somewhere -- there were hints at a quest plot and some intriguing stuff about crippled children -- but with 779 pages to hide in, it wasn't worth my while looking.
(See? See? I knew what I was talking about. Now I am only... uh... a sort of medium f-list spammer. Maybe. *hangs head*)
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