November and December book reviews
Teach Yourself to Meditate: Over 20 Exercises for Peace, Health and Clarity of Mind - Eric Harrison (non-fiction, health) (****)
Ever counted sheep in an attempt to fall asleep? Ever taken a deep breath and counted to ten when you’re angry?
It occurred to me while I was reading the excellent and thought-provoking Teach Yourself to Meditate that these standard techniques are really just bastardized meditation.
I went into this book with a fair amount of trepidation. No one wants to be beaten over the head with new age spirituality bullshit, after all. However, Eric Harrison makes a reassuringly down-to-earth narrator. The result is an engaging, no-frills guide to the various strands of meditation.
Even just reading the book - and not yet trying out the basic meditations described - I found myself paying more attention to my mental state and how I react to situations. Recommended even if you’re not a meditation ‘type’.
(I really want to give everyone I know copies of both this book and Andrew Weil’s Eating Well for Optimum Health for Christmas. Alas, I can’t bring myself to be that much of a self-righteous asshole.)
Diving In (Art & Coll, #1) - Kate Cann (fiction, YA) (***)
Diving In’s protagonist Coll is a keen swimmer, but that’s not really the point of the novel, because swimming is a metaphor - A METAPHOR - for her awakening sexuality.
Coll is athletic and down-to-earth, from a family of working-class lefties. Art is rich and callous, content to skate by on his good looks. The plotline of Diving In is an old chestnut of a trope: when they fall in love, Coll’s innate goodness “fixes” Art’s innate badness. The thing is, I don’t hate tropes if they’re well done. Kate Cann actually manages to pull off a diverting YA novel. And it’s one that’s a lot sexier than most teen fare.
You know what I love to read about? UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension). It’s everywhere in TV and movies, and yet most novelists fail miserably at it. Either romance is non-existent or it’s overblown. (Edward. Bella. Meadow. Ahem.) I’m mentioning this because Kate Caan is really good at UST. Her writing is flawed in other respects - the story’s set-up is plodding and she switches tenses like a crazy person - but I have to give her props for her UST.
Teenage!me thought that Diving In was sogreatOMG, and even old-enough-to-know-better!me thinks that it’s a pretty good read.
A Dance With Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5) - George R.R. Martin (fiction, fantasy) (*)
I FINALLY FINISHED IT. Someone give me a medal.
By the end, I wasn’t so much ‘reading’ as angrily paging through and yelling, “I ONLY CARE ABOUT DAENERYS! TELL ME ABOUT DAENERYS!”
I actually had to go on Wikipedia after I’d finished to look up what happened in the final scene, because it made no sense to me.
Much like its predecessor, A Dance With Dragons is bloated with new and pointless characters. The action, once again, consists of numerous journeys across land and sea that never seem to end. For the first time, however, characters begin acting wildly OOC to serve the plot.
Part of me feels sorry for George RR Martin. It must be tough to invest 20 years (more?) in creating a universe and not be tempted to endlessly embellish: create new customs, new words, and of course, new characters. But he is an author first and foremost; not the creator of his own RPG.
It’s true that Martin has created an admirably textured fantasy universe, but I no longer know what story he wants to tell.
Is the series’ theme supposed to be Man vs. the supernatural? I’m not sure. The white walkers are terrifying, but they only pop up occasionally, and any sense of impending menace has ebbed away as a result.
Naively, at the outset, I thought the theme might be emancipation. Throwing off the shackles of the overlords who only want to play the ‘game of thrones’! LOL, NOPE. I think Martin loves the game of thrones just as much as Cersei and all the others.
There are so many cult-like religions in the series that, for a while, I wondered if the series wasn’t trying to skewer the idea of religious zeal. I think Rhllor and all the other crazy gods are just a sideshow attraction, though.
Maybe I’m overthinking it, and the series is simply ‘the battle for Westeros’. But, if so, why has Westeros seemed so sidelined by the Free Cities in later books?
The trouble is, I think Martin is trying to tell ALL THE STORIES and, as a result, he’s telling none of them very well.
(Spoilerific version of this review.)
This month, I also re-read Void by wax_jism (AU version of 90s B-movie, The Faculty, without aliens, but with lots of angsty threesome sex). Better than most of the novels I read this year. Recommended with bells on.
Ever counted sheep in an attempt to fall asleep? Ever taken a deep breath and counted to ten when you’re angry?
It occurred to me while I was reading the excellent and thought-provoking Teach Yourself to Meditate that these standard techniques are really just bastardized meditation.
I went into this book with a fair amount of trepidation. No one wants to be beaten over the head with new age spirituality bullshit, after all. However, Eric Harrison makes a reassuringly down-to-earth narrator. The result is an engaging, no-frills guide to the various strands of meditation.
Even just reading the book - and not yet trying out the basic meditations described - I found myself paying more attention to my mental state and how I react to situations. Recommended even if you’re not a meditation ‘type’.
(I really want to give everyone I know copies of both this book and Andrew Weil’s Eating Well for Optimum Health for Christmas. Alas, I can’t bring myself to be that much of a self-righteous asshole.)
Diving In (Art & Coll, #1) - Kate Cann (fiction, YA) (***)
Diving In’s protagonist Coll is a keen swimmer, but that’s not really the point of the novel, because swimming is a metaphor - A METAPHOR - for her awakening sexuality.
Coll is athletic and down-to-earth, from a family of working-class lefties. Art is rich and callous, content to skate by on his good looks. The plotline of Diving In is an old chestnut of a trope: when they fall in love, Coll’s innate goodness “fixes” Art’s innate badness. The thing is, I don’t hate tropes if they’re well done. Kate Cann actually manages to pull off a diverting YA novel. And it’s one that’s a lot sexier than most teen fare.
You know what I love to read about? UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension). It’s everywhere in TV and movies, and yet most novelists fail miserably at it. Either romance is non-existent or it’s overblown. (Edward. Bella. Meadow. Ahem.) I’m mentioning this because Kate Caan is really good at UST. Her writing is flawed in other respects - the story’s set-up is plodding and she switches tenses like a crazy person - but I have to give her props for her UST.
Teenage!me thought that Diving In was sogreatOMG, and even old-enough-to-know-better!me thinks that it’s a pretty good read.
A Dance With Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5) - George R.R. Martin (fiction, fantasy) (*)
I FINALLY FINISHED IT. Someone give me a medal.
By the end, I wasn’t so much ‘reading’ as angrily paging through and yelling, “I ONLY CARE ABOUT DAENERYS! TELL ME ABOUT DAENERYS!”
I actually had to go on Wikipedia after I’d finished to look up what happened in the final scene, because it made no sense to me.
Much like its predecessor, A Dance With Dragons is bloated with new and pointless characters. The action, once again, consists of numerous journeys across land and sea that never seem to end. For the first time, however, characters begin acting wildly OOC to serve the plot.
Part of me feels sorry for George RR Martin. It must be tough to invest 20 years (more?) in creating a universe and not be tempted to endlessly embellish: create new customs, new words, and of course, new characters. But he is an author first and foremost; not the creator of his own RPG.
It’s true that Martin has created an admirably textured fantasy universe, but I no longer know what story he wants to tell.
Is the series’ theme supposed to be Man vs. the supernatural? I’m not sure. The white walkers are terrifying, but they only pop up occasionally, and any sense of impending menace has ebbed away as a result.
Naively, at the outset, I thought the theme might be emancipation. Throwing off the shackles of the overlords who only want to play the ‘game of thrones’! LOL, NOPE. I think Martin loves the game of thrones just as much as Cersei and all the others.
There are so many cult-like religions in the series that, for a while, I wondered if the series wasn’t trying to skewer the idea of religious zeal. I think Rhllor and all the other crazy gods are just a sideshow attraction, though.
Maybe I’m overthinking it, and the series is simply ‘the battle for Westeros’. But, if so, why has Westeros seemed so sidelined by the Free Cities in later books?
The trouble is, I think Martin is trying to tell ALL THE STORIES and, as a result, he’s telling none of them very well.
(Spoilerific version of this review.)
This month, I also re-read Void by wax_jism (AU version of 90s B-movie, The Faculty, without aliens, but with lots of angsty threesome sex). Better than most of the novels I read this year. Recommended with bells on.