February was a light month for reading
And yet, I've been putting off writing about the few books I read because I'm having trouble articulating what I thought about one of the books I read, A Companion to Wolves, by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear (
truepenny and
matociquala ). Don't get me wrong, I loved it; in fact, I read it twice before I had to take it back to the library, and I just ordered it off of Amazon. It made me cry twice, which I hadn't been expecting, always a sign that I am wholly absorbed in the world (Iskyrne, the world, is lovingly detailed, and recalled many of my favorite Norse myths, as well as the troll story Nicola Griffith tells in The Blue Place, which she has up on her web site here). I'm not going to do a huge plot summary: basically, in this society, chosen men partner with wolves in order to defend their towns from trolls, and there's a long history of it; when the story starts, there are less men (boys, really) available for this important duty and yet the trolls are suddenly numerous and threatening; Isolfr is one of the boys sent to fulfill this role, and he turns out to be key to saving his people from the trolls (though, perhaps, the trolls will return in another book?).
While also being absorbing, the book gave me a lot to think about in its the commentary on the companion animal fantasy, gender roles, matriarchal and patriarchal societies, the structure of the wolf pack, and the value in trying to understand those different from you. Isolfr (the main character), at least, begins to recognize elements of value in creatures he has been taught to think of as lesser beings, commonalities between his culture and the Trolls, like evidence of higher-ordered thinking: worship, artisanship, storytelling. And he can recognize those similarities in an alien species, I think, because his whole way of life as the wolfsprechend is to take care of everybody: understand them, work with them, get them to work with each other, maintain the balance, etc. And he saves his people from the trolls by winning the respect of yet another species, the svartalfar, who I'd like to see more of if there is another book.
I also like that the authors went there with the sex (I expect nothing less from those two), though two of the scenes made me cringe (yes, those were the two times I cried, as well, mostly because they did such a good job of making me feel Isolfr's horror and yet the inevitability of this way of life). I found it really, really hard to read those two scenes, actually. I think I am sensitive to the rape aspect (I never see movies or read books in which I know ahead of time that this will be an issue, so I was taken aback here), though I do think "rape" isn't really the right word to use, since the characters submitting to the heat of the wolf pack do so willingly and knowingly -- but it was still hard to read, because there is an air of inescapable inevitability as well as the element of choice. If that makes sense. I do not claim it does, because I had an emotional, visceral reaction to the scenes that I didn't expect and then had to try to figure out.
So, there ya go. Maybe I didn't read a lot in February because I read this book twice and thought so much about it. Good job, guys!
I also reread To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis, a book I return to frequently when I need a pick-me-up, because it is so freakin' hilarious. I read it while on vacation in Guatemala -- it was the first time I'd ever been out of the country, and I needed something fun yet intelligent yet familiar to read. I'm not sure how many times I've read this book, certainly enough that I shouldn't laugh so hard -- but I do. A plot summary will be hard for this convoluted narrative, with all the jumping back and forth through time and the many complications that ensure, but basically: Ned Henry, a historian in 2047 (or something like that), is looking for this horribly ugly artifact called the Bishop's Bird Stump for Lady Schrapnell, who wants it because she's rebuilding Coventry Cathedral, a church destroyed in WW2 in the Nazi Blitz. Lady Schrapnell is a holy terror, and she has all the historians leaping around in time looking for the thing, and Ned Henry has done so many time jumps that he has time-lag, which provides many of the hilarious moments in the book. (One of the main side-effects of time-lag is a tendency to sentimentalize and end up sounding very much like a bad Victorian poet.) Ned Henry needs to get away from Lady Schrapnell so that he can recover from his time-lag, so his bosses send him to the Victorian era to rest and hide, and oh yeah, he's also supposed to perform one small but very important task -- which he is too time-lagged to remember, of course. Besides the scavenger hunt through time, the Victorian comedy of manners, and all the history, there is also a nice romance that never takes up too much of the plot. The book also references Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, which I keep meaning to read but keep forgetting.
Finally, I also read Catherine Jink's Evil Genius, my YA novel for the month. The first half of the book went so slowly that I almost gave up, but my fortitude was rewarded with the latter half, when we got out of the growing-up backstory of the isolated genius boy, Cadel, and into his unusual training at the Axis Institute for World Domination. This book surprised me by not being the out-and-out comedy I expected, and by not being "Harry Potter But With Evil Spies Instead Of Wizards And Evil Spy School Instead Of Wizard School", which is also what I expected. I should have known better, because Jinks wrote the Pagan series, one of the few historical fiction series that I enjoy because of its humor and sensitivity. (And I hate historical fiction.) Anyway. The book didn't take off for me until Cadel is 13 and starts at the Axis Institute, which is also when he realizes that his father, in prison, and his therapist (who is more of an adviser, and who is his father's second-in-command), are conspiring together to make him carry out his father's evil plans, and essentially the free life he thought he had was all manipulated by these two. Also, he meets someone who makes him think about right and wrong, and how some of the stuff he's done growing up (he went from harmless but effective school sabatoge acts to large-scale emotionally and financially harmful manipulation of people) was too far to the "wrong" side to make him a good person, but not enough to the "wrong" side for him to be evil, either. It turned out to be quite a sympathetic portrait of Cadel, who starts out seeming kind of sociopathic but ends up turning out to be just plain lonely, with nowhere to belong. The second half of the book also had a lot more action, and there's a sequel coming that I will have to read now.
And now I realize it's April, so I have to get to writing about the books I read in March before I can be caught up. Sigh and le sigh.
truepenny and
matociquala ). Don't get me wrong, I loved it; in fact, I read it twice before I had to take it back to the library, and I just ordered it off of Amazon. It made me cry twice, which I hadn't been expecting, always a sign that I am wholly absorbed in the world (Iskyrne, the world, is lovingly detailed, and recalled many of my favorite Norse myths, as well as the troll story Nicola Griffith tells in The Blue Place, which she has up on her web site here). I'm not going to do a huge plot summary: basically, in this society, chosen men partner with wolves in order to defend their towns from trolls, and there's a long history of it; when the story starts, there are less men (boys, really) available for this important duty and yet the trolls are suddenly numerous and threatening; Isolfr is one of the boys sent to fulfill this role, and he turns out to be key to saving his people from the trolls (though, perhaps, the trolls will return in another book?).
While also being absorbing, the book gave me a lot to think about in its the commentary on the companion animal fantasy, gender roles, matriarchal and patriarchal societies, the structure of the wolf pack, and the value in trying to understand those different from you. Isolfr (the main character), at least, begins to recognize elements of value in creatures he has been taught to think of as lesser beings, commonalities between his culture and the Trolls, like evidence of higher-ordered thinking: worship, artisanship, storytelling. And he can recognize those similarities in an alien species, I think, because his whole way of life as the wolfsprechend is to take care of everybody: understand them, work with them, get them to work with each other, maintain the balance, etc. And he saves his people from the trolls by winning the respect of yet another species, the svartalfar, who I'd like to see more of if there is another book.
I also like that the authors went there with the sex (I expect nothing less from those two), though two of the scenes made me cringe (yes, those were the two times I cried, as well, mostly because they did such a good job of making me feel Isolfr's horror and yet the inevitability of this way of life). I found it really, really hard to read those two scenes, actually. I think I am sensitive to the rape aspect (I never see movies or read books in which I know ahead of time that this will be an issue, so I was taken aback here), though I do think "rape" isn't really the right word to use, since the characters submitting to the heat of the wolf pack do so willingly and knowingly -- but it was still hard to read, because there is an air of inescapable inevitability as well as the element of choice. If that makes sense. I do not claim it does, because I had an emotional, visceral reaction to the scenes that I didn't expect and then had to try to figure out.
So, there ya go. Maybe I didn't read a lot in February because I read this book twice and thought so much about it. Good job, guys!
I also reread To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis, a book I return to frequently when I need a pick-me-up, because it is so freakin' hilarious. I read it while on vacation in Guatemala -- it was the first time I'd ever been out of the country, and I needed something fun yet intelligent yet familiar to read. I'm not sure how many times I've read this book, certainly enough that I shouldn't laugh so hard -- but I do. A plot summary will be hard for this convoluted narrative, with all the jumping back and forth through time and the many complications that ensure, but basically: Ned Henry, a historian in 2047 (or something like that), is looking for this horribly ugly artifact called the Bishop's Bird Stump for Lady Schrapnell, who wants it because she's rebuilding Coventry Cathedral, a church destroyed in WW2 in the Nazi Blitz. Lady Schrapnell is a holy terror, and she has all the historians leaping around in time looking for the thing, and Ned Henry has done so many time jumps that he has time-lag, which provides many of the hilarious moments in the book. (One of the main side-effects of time-lag is a tendency to sentimentalize and end up sounding very much like a bad Victorian poet.) Ned Henry needs to get away from Lady Schrapnell so that he can recover from his time-lag, so his bosses send him to the Victorian era to rest and hide, and oh yeah, he's also supposed to perform one small but very important task -- which he is too time-lagged to remember, of course. Besides the scavenger hunt through time, the Victorian comedy of manners, and all the history, there is also a nice romance that never takes up too much of the plot. The book also references Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, which I keep meaning to read but keep forgetting.
Finally, I also read Catherine Jink's Evil Genius, my YA novel for the month. The first half of the book went so slowly that I almost gave up, but my fortitude was rewarded with the latter half, when we got out of the growing-up backstory of the isolated genius boy, Cadel, and into his unusual training at the Axis Institute for World Domination. This book surprised me by not being the out-and-out comedy I expected, and by not being "Harry Potter But With Evil Spies Instead Of Wizards And Evil Spy School Instead Of Wizard School", which is also what I expected. I should have known better, because Jinks wrote the Pagan series, one of the few historical fiction series that I enjoy because of its humor and sensitivity. (And I hate historical fiction.) Anyway. The book didn't take off for me until Cadel is 13 and starts at the Axis Institute, which is also when he realizes that his father, in prison, and his therapist (who is more of an adviser, and who is his father's second-in-command), are conspiring together to make him carry out his father's evil plans, and essentially the free life he thought he had was all manipulated by these two. Also, he meets someone who makes him think about right and wrong, and how some of the stuff he's done growing up (he went from harmless but effective school sabatoge acts to large-scale emotionally and financially harmful manipulation of people) was too far to the "wrong" side to make him a good person, but not enough to the "wrong" side for him to be evil, either. It turned out to be quite a sympathetic portrait of Cadel, who starts out seeming kind of sociopathic but ends up turning out to be just plain lonely, with nowhere to belong. The second half of the book also had a lot more action, and there's a sequel coming that I will have to read now.
And now I realize it's April, so I have to get to writing about the books I read in March before I can be caught up. Sigh and le sigh.