Friday reading
I have been trying to reduce my in-progress pile to more manageable proportions.
Finished:
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, by Jeanette Winterson.
How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood, Jim Grimsley.
Both memoirs, the Winterson focussing on her childhood/adolescence and then skipping a whole lot to her investigation of her birth parents as an adult with a (slightly) better handle on things, the Grimsley also focussing on his adolescence, when the high schools in his small town became (racially) integrated. Both very good at specifics, as well as examining broader social structures; Winterson is more nostalgic about what has been lost (and bitter about Thatcher), while Grimsley, understandably, is more ironic than nostalgic, and not keen to return to the past. Both are also good at identifying the tendency towards shaping narrative from memoir, and resisting it when necessary. Winterson's has more vivid characters, Grimsley's is more muted, but I enjoyed them both.
House of Shattered Wings, by Aliette de Bodard. I am just not the right audience for fallen angels, magical drug addictions, and Houses in a decaying Paris that indulge in glittering political rivalries. I was also a bit irked by the revelation of the evil (actually, both revelations). I think I should go back and try her earlier Aztec murder mysteries, which sound more my thing.
A Silent Voice, v1, Yoshitoki Ōima. This did not end as badly as I feared, and in fact it did that narrative trope about bullying where the bully becomes the bullied, that I have disliked since we had Judy Blume's Blubber read to us as a class book when I was eleven. It offended me terribly then and I'm still not wild about it, because it seems to suggest that bullying is some sort of natural force, and only the target changes. What I did like about this was the pacing and tension in the first two-thirds or so, which were great, and I'm interested to see what happens next.
A Free Man of Color, Barbara Hambly. Benjamin January is the title character, a French-trained surgeon and musician who returns to his childhood home of New Orleans, 1833, and becomes entangled in a murder. Solving it is more difficult when he can be locked up on any flimsy pretence or, worse, sold as a slave if the authorities chose to ignore his papers. This has great characters, a solid (and solveable) mystery, and a lot of fascinating and even horrifying world-building, and I liked it a lot.
In the Woods, Tana French. Rob Ryan is a murder detective who, at the age of 12, was the only one of a group of 3 friends to emerge from the local woods; the other two were never found. Years later, he takes the case of a young girl murdered in the same area -without telling his superiors his background. So, two mysteries, but the main story is really Rob's disintegration, which is both as inevitable and as due to his choices as all the best Greek tragedies. I liked this a lot, even though it is impossible to get through the book without wanting to slap Rob at least once. I am about 4 holds away from getting the next one, which is from his partner's point of view, and I've just gone ahead and put holds on the other two while I was there.
Arabella of Mars, David D. Levine. I liked the bits where Arabella is learning to navigate and the moment when I realised Levine had got around the whole interplanetary travel by sailing boat thing by putting atmosphere throughout the universe, which means that when the ship runs low on coal they can put in at a passing asteroid and chop down the trees for charcoal. Unfortunately I didn't like much else. Arabella is one of those exceptional girls who is not like other women and has no time for girlish things, which amongst other things means that she is able to cross-dress successfully on a sailing ship for weeks without ever having a period or wearing a bra - the latter becomes apparent when she is forced to remove her shirt and the sight of her naked chest is enough to suppress a mutiny. The plot also creaks audibly - it is unclear why Arabella is sent to her relatives except in order to set their evil plot in motion, the egg-stealing plot is equally thin - and there's an awful lot of unexamined Empire going on. I am supporting Chaz Benchley's Chalet Girls on Mars Patreon, which I am mostly saving up to read once completed, and would recommend that and the associated short stories instead to anyone in the mood for Martians.
In progress:
The Ballad of Black Tom, by Victor LaValle - this is a very skinny book and I lost it on the bookcase for a couple of weeks. Found it again yesterday.
Fever Season, by Barbara Hambly.
Novel for critique.
Up next:
Hopefully more Tana French. Also, I should get back to Jane Duncan at some stage. And I still seem to have four other books on my library shelf, although I'm pretty sure I'm going to abandon The Red House .
This entry was originally posted at http://cyphomandra.dreamwidth.org/108825.html. Comment here or there.
Finished:
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, by Jeanette Winterson.
How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood, Jim Grimsley.
Both memoirs, the Winterson focussing on her childhood/adolescence and then skipping a whole lot to her investigation of her birth parents as an adult with a (slightly) better handle on things, the Grimsley also focussing on his adolescence, when the high schools in his small town became (racially) integrated. Both very good at specifics, as well as examining broader social structures; Winterson is more nostalgic about what has been lost (and bitter about Thatcher), while Grimsley, understandably, is more ironic than nostalgic, and not keen to return to the past. Both are also good at identifying the tendency towards shaping narrative from memoir, and resisting it when necessary. Winterson's has more vivid characters, Grimsley's is more muted, but I enjoyed them both.
House of Shattered Wings, by Aliette de Bodard. I am just not the right audience for fallen angels, magical drug addictions, and Houses in a decaying Paris that indulge in glittering political rivalries. I was also a bit irked by the revelation of the evil (actually, both revelations). I think I should go back and try her earlier Aztec murder mysteries, which sound more my thing.
A Silent Voice, v1, Yoshitoki Ōima. This did not end as badly as I feared, and in fact it did that narrative trope about bullying where the bully becomes the bullied, that I have disliked since we had Judy Blume's Blubber read to us as a class book when I was eleven. It offended me terribly then and I'm still not wild about it, because it seems to suggest that bullying is some sort of natural force, and only the target changes. What I did like about this was the pacing and tension in the first two-thirds or so, which were great, and I'm interested to see what happens next.
A Free Man of Color, Barbara Hambly. Benjamin January is the title character, a French-trained surgeon and musician who returns to his childhood home of New Orleans, 1833, and becomes entangled in a murder. Solving it is more difficult when he can be locked up on any flimsy pretence or, worse, sold as a slave if the authorities chose to ignore his papers. This has great characters, a solid (and solveable) mystery, and a lot of fascinating and even horrifying world-building, and I liked it a lot.
In the Woods, Tana French. Rob Ryan is a murder detective who, at the age of 12, was the only one of a group of 3 friends to emerge from the local woods; the other two were never found. Years later, he takes the case of a young girl murdered in the same area -without telling his superiors his background. So, two mysteries, but the main story is really Rob's disintegration, which is both as inevitable and as due to his choices as all the best Greek tragedies. I liked this a lot, even though it is impossible to get through the book without wanting to slap Rob at least once. I am about 4 holds away from getting the next one, which is from his partner's point of view, and I've just gone ahead and put holds on the other two while I was there.
Arabella of Mars, David D. Levine. I liked the bits where Arabella is learning to navigate and the moment when I realised Levine had got around the whole interplanetary travel by sailing boat thing by putting atmosphere throughout the universe, which means that when the ship runs low on coal they can put in at a passing asteroid and chop down the trees for charcoal. Unfortunately I didn't like much else. Arabella is one of those exceptional girls who is not like other women and has no time for girlish things, which amongst other things means that she is able to cross-dress successfully on a sailing ship for weeks without ever having a period or wearing a bra - the latter becomes apparent when she is forced to remove her shirt and the sight of her naked chest is enough to suppress a mutiny. The plot also creaks audibly - it is unclear why Arabella is sent to her relatives except in order to set their evil plot in motion, the egg-stealing plot is equally thin - and there's an awful lot of unexamined Empire going on. I am supporting Chaz Benchley's Chalet Girls on Mars Patreon, which I am mostly saving up to read once completed, and would recommend that and the associated short stories instead to anyone in the mood for Martians.
In progress:
The Ballad of Black Tom, by Victor LaValle - this is a very skinny book and I lost it on the bookcase for a couple of weeks. Found it again yesterday.
Fever Season, by Barbara Hambly.
Novel for critique.
Up next:
Hopefully more Tana French. Also, I should get back to Jane Duncan at some stage. And I still seem to have four other books on my library shelf, although I'm pretty sure I'm going to abandon The Red House .
This entry was originally posted at http://cyphomandra.dreamwidth.org/108825.html. Comment here or there.