need a bored now icon
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH I am so bored. I have started watching like three movies and then decided against all of them, and then like I kind of want to replay Jade Empire some more but at the same time, gah, that will make me want to fic. I don't really want to read my book or start any new books I NEED SOMETHING TO DO.
so I'm going to post this, and then edit it with talking about books, barring something more interesting happening.
p.s. Quarkie now that you're only part-time again can I bug you about betaing? :-D?
anyway
WHAT I HAVE READ THIS SUMMER
1. The Percy Jackson (Last Olympian?) Books by Rick Riordan
I love love LOVE this little series. He seamlessly interweaves Greek mythology with the modern-day world, often with hilarious effects. What's not to love about an Apollo who drives a red convertible and a Mt. Olympus sitting atop the Empire State Building? Also, Riordan cleverly skips over any religious difficulties in half a paragraph involving the word "metaphysics."
The series is done (five books), although at the end Riordan indicates he's interested in writing about other half-bloods. The basic premise is that Percy Jackson, your typical elevenish-year-old gets-in-trouble-all-the-time kid with dyslexia, discovers in a terrifying turn of events that his dad is not just some fisherman from upstate New York, but in fact Poseidon, king of the sea, Greek god, etc. etc. etc. He goes off to Camp Halfblood (not a Hogwarts for demigods, as it is very much a summer camp with minimal school-learning-stuff and more focus on canoeing across the nymph-infested lake, and fighting with swords), where he learns he's the (probable) subject of a prophecy about someone who will either make or break Olympus on their sixteenth birthday. On the "break Olympus" side is Kronos, Mr. Mean Old Titan himself, and his team of just about every nasty monster you can dig out of Greek mythology (really, he pulls out some that I hadn't heard of). On the "make Olympus" side are the gods, Percy, and the friends he makes at camp.
Percy is a great main character, and it's fun to watch him grow up over the course of the series; he's also a hilarious narrator. Obviously, the series is written more for kids, and the whole dyslexia thing is a neat (in multiple senses) way of helping kids identify with Percy, but the world is still fleshed out enough to interest everyone. The side characters, from Mr. D. the camp director (with his AWESOME speech about Ariadne, who I've always had a soft spot for) to Annabeth the Architect (she kicks ass AND designs buildings), are wonderfully entertaining, and some of the smaller characters still have poignant side stories. The last book is basically one big battle, but very well-paced (think Battle of Hogwarts) and gripping.
Also these books are just hilarious.
Anyway, highly recommending them.
2. Those Gemma Doyle Books by Libba Bray
Some of y'all may remember my post from when I was reading The Sweet Far Thing. I did end up finishing the book I LOVE MALOOONEEEE. Overall, the series definitely improves (in writing as well as clarity) as it goes on, and all the UST gets resolved (is that a spoiler? Forget you read that), and it's a very ambitious work.
Gemma herself, like I said, is an interesting character--Malone liked her because she kept screwing up, while I kept hitting a OH MY GOD CAN YOU KEEP GETTING IT WRONG WAIT THAT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION JUST--JUST STOP wall through most of the second book. In the third book, it explores her feelings--especially those regarding her family--more closely, and so I was able to understand her better. And also, she really is just such a teenager, in that "holy cow I remember when I thought like that" way (I find myself often referring to "teenagers" these days, not in a "that group I'm a part of and thus understand despite occasionally deviating from" way but in a "that group I now look on and want to go OMG NO STOP NOW BEFORE YOU HURT YOURSELF TRUST ME to because oh Lord I remember what that was like" way).
The books are written in present tense, which I really feel like...they didn't need to be. Seriously, in some sections, I would forget I was reading present tense--my brain would shift everything over until I hit a passage where it was like "oh, she 'says' not 'said' ooooooooooooooooh right!" Which would be the number one reason why it didn't need to be done in present tense--present tense is a deviation from the norm, and there ought to be a reason, otherwise it just gets in the way.
Also, Bray occasionally fell prey to that first-person trap of forgetting whether you're writing-while-happening or writing-with-reflection. fathomlesssky pointed it out to me in terms of this piece I wrote, where a couple times I slipped up and wrote a sentence* that seemed to be reflecting back on what was happening, rather than just writing what was happening with perhaps a little more depth than the moment originally contained. The problem with making this kind of slip in present-tense is that there IS no room for that sort of reflection, because it's happening as it's happening so how could future!Gemma know about it if present!Gemma is only just now experiencing it?
Anyway, that's probably my biggest complaint with the series. The characters are all brilliantly done, sometimes in a horrific way (Felicity is probably my favorite for sheer depth, likability-in-the-face-of-her-horrendous-ness, and just--ah. You may spend a lot of time hating her, but she's a brilliant character), and the magic clears up as it goes. Sweet Far Thing was particularly good, if just for showcasing Bray's growth as a writer--her descriptions of the guttersnipes and the shores of the Thames were simply amazing (and nauseating, in a I'm-having-a-visceral-reaction-to-your-writing way). There's a fairly heavy element of bodice ripper to the series, but there's also a fair amount of historical perceptive--she clearly did her research--and also a layer of commentary--especially regarding women's rights--not all of it judgemental; there is a certain amount of "this is how it is, but this is how it is changing, and this is how some women are coping, and some women embrace it and some don't"ness, if that makes sense. Nuanced, I suppose is what I want to say.
Oh, and I didn't like certain parts of the ending, but that's what you get with a book that quotes Macbeth. evilhanyou you and I can gush together about it now. XD
Also recommending, though with the catch that it has more problems (though granted, covers a deeper, wider scope) than Percy Jackson.
still going...
3. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Short, sweet, and adorable. Still haven't seen the movie. I am incredibly jealous of his ability to write fairy tales--it's like Stardust (did see movie, LOOOOOOOOOOVED it), only even more for kids. And he writes children so well. HOW DO YOU DO IT, NEIL. HOW.
4. The Possibilities of Sainthood by...somebody. I'll check on that one.
This book I picked up because it was about a girl obsessed with patron saints, and I went, "hey! A book about Catholics!" Of course, it ended up skimming over the belief stuff, and there was a gratuitous section wherein a OMG NEW SUPER LIBERAL POPE WITH A CRAZY AGENDA was elected, and both of those I think miss the point (especially the latter, talk about wishful thinking/avoidance of delving into serious issues--like, she should've just cut the papal election section out). BUT it did talk about saints, including my man St. Anthony, and involved lots of Italian cooking, a gradually escalating (but totally appropriate/hilarious use of capslock), and hot Irish guys. So, uh, one and a half thumbs way, way up.
5. Nobody's Princess by...somebody.
I most talked about this book in this post, so I'll sum it up: starts of promising, veers into cliche territory, heads back towards toeing the line, takes a spin right off a cliff. Mediocrely written (though I did like her attention to the Bronze-Age-ness), dumbly plotted in the end, won't be picking up the sequel unless I feel a real need to.
an aside--my mother thinks I'm crazy for seeing Harry/Hermione all over the sixth movie. JUST BECAUSE THEY HAVE RON/HERMIONE SCENES DOESN'T MEAN KLOVES IS SHIPPING IT.
6. Summer of My German Soldier
Spoiler alert--SHE'S TWELVE YEARS OLD. I picked this up as "books they tell you to read in middle school that I did not read" and wtf, she's twelve. A good book, covering a lot of different issues, and when I was twelve I probably would have interpreted it totally differently, but at my age, it's just [bitter]sweet.
another aside--Doggus is going to spend the next three hours begging me silently for a walk. WHY DOGGUS WHY.
7. T3h serious books
The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature--it is very frustrating to agree so much with someone's basic tenets and then watch them go off the deep end for a) the sake of "entertainment" and b) ideological brainwashing. Seriously, she had a whole little thing about how feminist theory completely strips books and twists them beyond recognition, and then proceeded to write a three-page-long essay on feminism that stripped it and twisted it beyond recognition. I agree that Jane Austen wasn't particularly subversive, but holy crap, that doesn't mean all feminist theory is wrong and stupid. You can be plenty politically incorrect with literature (hey, most of the big English stuff was written by dead white guys! Shakespeare was anti-Semitic! The Romantics thought sex was t3h bomb and all ended up dead!) without having to go crazy conservative. Psh.
American Heroes--a series of essays contextualizing events in early American history, and very worth reading simply for that fact. It's a lot of fun and very readable (aside from lots of quotes from our orthographically-challenged ancestors), and who WOULDN'T want to read about how Winthrop's "City on a Hill" speech was just one of many in a long line of "okay guys we have to spend six months on a tiny tiny ship together MAYBE WE SHOULD ALL GET ALONG" discourses?
What Happened by Scott McClellan--I always had a soft spot for Scott while watching him being lampooned on The Daily Show, and so when he came out with this book last year I was incredibly proud of the backbone my little "how on earth did a nice teddy bear like you end up in this job?" managed to grow. The book is part mini-biography, part oh-my-God-I-was-so-stupid, part history, and part this-is-how-the-government-packages-and-markets things. The last bit is where its real value lies--I've always been wary of the media and the way the government reports things, but this really opened my eyes and helped me focus on what to look for, how the media cooperates with the press office, which is an interesting experiment as I watch some of Obama's stuff. Also, it's Scott McClellan! It's reading a critique of the Bush administration by someone who really believed in it and who has seen both sides of people from Mr. Bush to Karl Rove (evil incarnate is also a joking team leader? huh). So definitely, definitely recommend.
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher--mentally scarred me a bit, yes, but hilarious. And...mostly with the mental scarring.
The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose--READ THIS BOOK SO HARD. Empathetic, funny, hey-isn't-school-the-same-all-over, a little scary, entertaining AND informative--I really, really enjoyed this book on all levels. Made me think about things (I got a little uneasy with the fact that his exposure to Christianity was this flavor of it, which is like, my least favorite flavor, and I kept wanting to be like AH DOCTRINE WHY), made me laugh, and also made me incredibly jealous of Roose's journalistic and authorial instincts and ability. Dude. I wish I had had the idea to be an agnostic enrolling undercover at Liberty University for a semester. RECOMMEND.
I'm on the last book in the Dark Is Rising series, so I'll try to have a post about that one later.
Well, I guess it's time to find something else to do. Play a video game, maybe? *le sigh*
*e.g. the last sentence of this paragraph: I was instantly aware that he approached me, a sort of hyper-sensitivity that superseded even my tears, and I instinctively stiffened. I had no control over my reactions, and neither did I have the luxury of feeling the out-of-body jumpiness I had known earlier; I was painfully trapped within myself, feeling everything while unable to react. Never-never-have I felt so unlike myself, as in that moment.
so I'm going to post this, and then edit it with talking about books, barring something more interesting happening.
p.s. Quarkie now that you're only part-time again can I bug you about betaing? :-D?
anyway
WHAT I HAVE READ THIS SUMMER
1. The Percy Jackson (Last Olympian?) Books by Rick Riordan
I love love LOVE this little series. He seamlessly interweaves Greek mythology with the modern-day world, often with hilarious effects. What's not to love about an Apollo who drives a red convertible and a Mt. Olympus sitting atop the Empire State Building? Also, Riordan cleverly skips over any religious difficulties in half a paragraph involving the word "metaphysics."
The series is done (five books), although at the end Riordan indicates he's interested in writing about other half-bloods. The basic premise is that Percy Jackson, your typical elevenish-year-old gets-in-trouble-all-the-time kid with dyslexia, discovers in a terrifying turn of events that his dad is not just some fisherman from upstate New York, but in fact Poseidon, king of the sea, Greek god, etc. etc. etc. He goes off to Camp Halfblood (not a Hogwarts for demigods, as it is very much a summer camp with minimal school-learning-stuff and more focus on canoeing across the nymph-infested lake, and fighting with swords), where he learns he's the (probable) subject of a prophecy about someone who will either make or break Olympus on their sixteenth birthday. On the "break Olympus" side is Kronos, Mr. Mean Old Titan himself, and his team of just about every nasty monster you can dig out of Greek mythology (really, he pulls out some that I hadn't heard of). On the "make Olympus" side are the gods, Percy, and the friends he makes at camp.
Percy is a great main character, and it's fun to watch him grow up over the course of the series; he's also a hilarious narrator. Obviously, the series is written more for kids, and the whole dyslexia thing is a neat (in multiple senses) way of helping kids identify with Percy, but the world is still fleshed out enough to interest everyone. The side characters, from Mr. D. the camp director (with his AWESOME speech about Ariadne, who I've always had a soft spot for) to Annabeth the Architect (she kicks ass AND designs buildings), are wonderfully entertaining, and some of the smaller characters still have poignant side stories. The last book is basically one big battle, but very well-paced (think Battle of Hogwarts) and gripping.
Also these books are just hilarious.
Anyway, highly recommending them.
2. Those Gemma Doyle Books by Libba Bray
Some of y'all may remember my post from when I was reading The Sweet Far Thing. I did end up finishing the book I LOVE MALOOONEEEE. Overall, the series definitely improves (in writing as well as clarity) as it goes on, and all the UST gets resolved (is that a spoiler? Forget you read that), and it's a very ambitious work.
Gemma herself, like I said, is an interesting character--Malone liked her because she kept screwing up, while I kept hitting a OH MY GOD CAN YOU KEEP GETTING IT WRONG WAIT THAT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION JUST--JUST STOP wall through most of the second book. In the third book, it explores her feelings--especially those regarding her family--more closely, and so I was able to understand her better. And also, she really is just such a teenager, in that "holy cow I remember when I thought like that" way (I find myself often referring to "teenagers" these days, not in a "that group I'm a part of and thus understand despite occasionally deviating from" way but in a "that group I now look on and want to go OMG NO STOP NOW BEFORE YOU HURT YOURSELF TRUST ME to because oh Lord I remember what that was like" way).
The books are written in present tense, which I really feel like...they didn't need to be. Seriously, in some sections, I would forget I was reading present tense--my brain would shift everything over until I hit a passage where it was like "oh, she 'says' not 'said' ooooooooooooooooh right!" Which would be the number one reason why it didn't need to be done in present tense--present tense is a deviation from the norm, and there ought to be a reason, otherwise it just gets in the way.
Also, Bray occasionally fell prey to that first-person trap of forgetting whether you're writing-while-happening or writing-with-reflection. fathomlesssky pointed it out to me in terms of this piece I wrote, where a couple times I slipped up and wrote a sentence* that seemed to be reflecting back on what was happening, rather than just writing what was happening with perhaps a little more depth than the moment originally contained. The problem with making this kind of slip in present-tense is that there IS no room for that sort of reflection, because it's happening as it's happening so how could future!Gemma know about it if present!Gemma is only just now experiencing it?
Anyway, that's probably my biggest complaint with the series. The characters are all brilliantly done, sometimes in a horrific way (Felicity is probably my favorite for sheer depth, likability-in-the-face-of-her-horrendous-ness, and just--ah. You may spend a lot of time hating her, but she's a brilliant character), and the magic clears up as it goes. Sweet Far Thing was particularly good, if just for showcasing Bray's growth as a writer--her descriptions of the guttersnipes and the shores of the Thames were simply amazing (and nauseating, in a I'm-having-a-visceral-reaction-to-your-writing way). There's a fairly heavy element of bodice ripper to the series, but there's also a fair amount of historical perceptive--she clearly did her research--and also a layer of commentary--especially regarding women's rights--not all of it judgemental; there is a certain amount of "this is how it is, but this is how it is changing, and this is how some women are coping, and some women embrace it and some don't"ness, if that makes sense. Nuanced, I suppose is what I want to say.
Oh, and I didn't like certain parts of the ending, but that's what you get with a book that quotes Macbeth. evilhanyou you and I can gush together about it now. XD
Also recommending, though with the catch that it has more problems (though granted, covers a deeper, wider scope) than Percy Jackson.
still going...
3. Coraline by Neil Gaiman
Short, sweet, and adorable. Still haven't seen the movie. I am incredibly jealous of his ability to write fairy tales--it's like Stardust (did see movie, LOOOOOOOOOOVED it), only even more for kids. And he writes children so well. HOW DO YOU DO IT, NEIL. HOW.
4. The Possibilities of Sainthood by...somebody. I'll check on that one.
This book I picked up because it was about a girl obsessed with patron saints, and I went, "hey! A book about Catholics!" Of course, it ended up skimming over the belief stuff, and there was a gratuitous section wherein a OMG NEW SUPER LIBERAL POPE WITH A CRAZY AGENDA was elected, and both of those I think miss the point (especially the latter, talk about wishful thinking/avoidance of delving into serious issues--like, she should've just cut the papal election section out). BUT it did talk about saints, including my man St. Anthony, and involved lots of Italian cooking, a gradually escalating (but totally appropriate/hilarious use of capslock), and hot Irish guys. So, uh, one and a half thumbs way, way up.
5. Nobody's Princess by...somebody.
I most talked about this book in this post, so I'll sum it up: starts of promising, veers into cliche territory, heads back towards toeing the line, takes a spin right off a cliff. Mediocrely written (though I did like her attention to the Bronze-Age-ness), dumbly plotted in the end, won't be picking up the sequel unless I feel a real need to.
an aside--my mother thinks I'm crazy for seeing Harry/Hermione all over the sixth movie. JUST BECAUSE THEY HAVE RON/HERMIONE SCENES DOESN'T MEAN KLOVES IS SHIPPING IT.
6. Summer of My German Soldier
Spoiler alert--SHE'S TWELVE YEARS OLD. I picked this up as "books they tell you to read in middle school that I did not read" and wtf, she's twelve. A good book, covering a lot of different issues, and when I was twelve I probably would have interpreted it totally differently, but at my age, it's just [bitter]sweet.
another aside--Doggus is going to spend the next three hours begging me silently for a walk. WHY DOGGUS WHY.
7. T3h serious books
The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature--it is very frustrating to agree so much with someone's basic tenets and then watch them go off the deep end for a) the sake of "entertainment" and b) ideological brainwashing. Seriously, she had a whole little thing about how feminist theory completely strips books and twists them beyond recognition, and then proceeded to write a three-page-long essay on feminism that stripped it and twisted it beyond recognition. I agree that Jane Austen wasn't particularly subversive, but holy crap, that doesn't mean all feminist theory is wrong and stupid. You can be plenty politically incorrect with literature (hey, most of the big English stuff was written by dead white guys! Shakespeare was anti-Semitic! The Romantics thought sex was t3h bomb and all ended up dead!) without having to go crazy conservative. Psh.
American Heroes--a series of essays contextualizing events in early American history, and very worth reading simply for that fact. It's a lot of fun and very readable (aside from lots of quotes from our orthographically-challenged ancestors), and who WOULDN'T want to read about how Winthrop's "City on a Hill" speech was just one of many in a long line of "okay guys we have to spend six months on a tiny tiny ship together MAYBE WE SHOULD ALL GET ALONG" discourses?
What Happened by Scott McClellan--I always had a soft spot for Scott while watching him being lampooned on The Daily Show, and so when he came out with this book last year I was incredibly proud of the backbone my little "how on earth did a nice teddy bear like you end up in this job?" managed to grow. The book is part mini-biography, part oh-my-God-I-was-so-stupid, part history, and part this-is-how-the-government-packages-and-markets things. The last bit is where its real value lies--I've always been wary of the media and the way the government reports things, but this really opened my eyes and helped me focus on what to look for, how the media cooperates with the press office, which is an interesting experiment as I watch some of Obama's stuff. Also, it's Scott McClellan! It's reading a critique of the Bush administration by someone who really believed in it and who has seen both sides of people from Mr. Bush to Karl Rove (evil incarnate is also a joking team leader? huh). So definitely, definitely recommend.
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher--mentally scarred me a bit, yes, but hilarious. And...mostly with the mental scarring.
The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose--READ THIS BOOK SO HARD. Empathetic, funny, hey-isn't-school-the-same-all-over, a little scary, entertaining AND informative--I really, really enjoyed this book on all levels. Made me think about things (I got a little uneasy with the fact that his exposure to Christianity was this flavor of it, which is like, my least favorite flavor, and I kept wanting to be like AH DOCTRINE WHY), made me laugh, and also made me incredibly jealous of Roose's journalistic and authorial instincts and ability. Dude. I wish I had had the idea to be an agnostic enrolling undercover at Liberty University for a semester. RECOMMEND.
I'm on the last book in the Dark Is Rising series, so I'll try to have a post about that one later.
Well, I guess it's time to find something else to do. Play a video game, maybe? *le sigh*
*e.g. the last sentence of this paragraph: I was instantly aware that he approached me, a sort of hyper-sensitivity that superseded even my tears, and I instinctively stiffened. I had no control over my reactions, and neither did I have the luxury of feeling the out-of-body jumpiness I had known earlier; I was painfully trapped within myself, feeling everything while unable to react. Never-never-have I felt so unlike myself, as in that moment.