Books 26-27
The Ancestors, a collection of three novellas by L.A. Banks, Tananarive Due, and Brandon Massey.
I was seriously underwhelmed by this collection. I couldn't even manage to finish the stories by Banks or Massey.
In Banks' story, I just couldn't keep going when I hit the litany of stuff one of the characters is supposed to do to purify himself; it was pretty much a list of everything anyone has EVER come up with that made them think maybe it was cleansing, and it just went on, and on, and on. I just... well, I'm a pagan, so I'm pretty tolerant of what might seem like odd notions about such things, but I found some of it totally preposterous, and in any case, I found it absurd that ANYONE would need to do EVERYTHING on that list, which is compiled from a pretty complete set of "how to get shiny" from a variety of perspectives, each of which considers itself complete on its own (overkill, much?!). I also had a really hard time with the idea that Banks seemed to be running with that the idea "God loves everyone equally regardless of how they worship" is equivalent to "spiritual traditions are interchangeable," which wound up leading to a construct that was still REALLY Christian in its understanding of the universe, with lots of new-age bells and whistles frosted on top. Christianity historically has a tendency to come in and gobble up the local traditions and transform them to serve its own purposes, and it would be really okay with me if we could get away from the idea that the Christian world-view is normative and plays well with others.
In Massey's story, sadly, I hit the phrase "[she] enveloped me like a warm mitten" in the middle of a sex scene and just could never move past my ... WHAT? MITTEN? astonished and disturbed and vaguely squicked reaction to read the rest of what might have been a good story. Sooo, yeah.
Due's story was, at least, readable. I wouldn't go much further than that; it didn't do anything particularly interesting or original, I didn't really care much about the characters or what happened to them, and I was never once surprised by where the story went, so... yeah. Not her best work.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz.
This one is definitely worth reading. It wasn't really what I expected, at all, and I confess that I would've been happier had the ending been more... a resolution of the central issue in the story... but I'm learning that that desire for tidy closure is very much a product of growing up on European fairy tales and their ilk, so I'm trying to outgrow it. The book is full of intriguing characters, really pushed me to the limits of my comprehension of Spanish (I spent a lot of time with my dictionary!), was both spare and lyrical at the same time somehow, and was absolutely memorable. I highly recommend it.
(Edited to include tags:
authors: diaz junot, banks l.a., due tananarive, massey brandon
author&protagonist nationalities/ethnicities: dominican-american, african-american
genres: fiction, horror
subjects: I never know what to say here... Oscar Wao: curses, love, life, survival, heritage; Ancestors: ghosts, supernatural, demons, creepy things.)
I was seriously underwhelmed by this collection. I couldn't even manage to finish the stories by Banks or Massey.
In Banks' story, I just couldn't keep going when I hit the litany of stuff one of the characters is supposed to do to purify himself; it was pretty much a list of everything anyone has EVER come up with that made them think maybe it was cleansing, and it just went on, and on, and on. I just... well, I'm a pagan, so I'm pretty tolerant of what might seem like odd notions about such things, but I found some of it totally preposterous, and in any case, I found it absurd that ANYONE would need to do EVERYTHING on that list, which is compiled from a pretty complete set of "how to get shiny" from a variety of perspectives, each of which considers itself complete on its own (overkill, much?!). I also had a really hard time with the idea that Banks seemed to be running with that the idea "God loves everyone equally regardless of how they worship" is equivalent to "spiritual traditions are interchangeable," which wound up leading to a construct that was still REALLY Christian in its understanding of the universe, with lots of new-age bells and whistles frosted on top. Christianity historically has a tendency to come in and gobble up the local traditions and transform them to serve its own purposes, and it would be really okay with me if we could get away from the idea that the Christian world-view is normative and plays well with others.
In Massey's story, sadly, I hit the phrase "[she] enveloped me like a warm mitten" in the middle of a sex scene and just could never move past my ... WHAT? MITTEN? astonished and disturbed and vaguely squicked reaction to read the rest of what might have been a good story. Sooo, yeah.
Due's story was, at least, readable. I wouldn't go much further than that; it didn't do anything particularly interesting or original, I didn't really care much about the characters or what happened to them, and I was never once surprised by where the story went, so... yeah. Not her best work.
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz.
This one is definitely worth reading. It wasn't really what I expected, at all, and I confess that I would've been happier had the ending been more... a resolution of the central issue in the story... but I'm learning that that desire for tidy closure is very much a product of growing up on European fairy tales and their ilk, so I'm trying to outgrow it. The book is full of intriguing characters, really pushed me to the limits of my comprehension of Spanish (I spent a lot of time with my dictionary!), was both spare and lyrical at the same time somehow, and was absolutely memorable. I highly recommend it.
(Edited to include tags:
authors: diaz junot, banks l.a., due tananarive, massey brandon
author&protagonist nationalities/ethnicities: dominican-american, african-american
genres: fiction, horror
subjects: I never know what to say here... Oscar Wao: curses, love, life, survival, heritage; Ancestors: ghosts, supernatural, demons, creepy things.)