Reading log!
I am so far behind. ;-)
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Summary: Mishmash of about six different interconnected novels in a sort of hyperrealistic stream-of-consciousness style; set half in WWII and half in the mid-'90s.
Reaction: This was recced me because I am very fond of advanced maths theory but know nothing about it. On that count, it did what it says on the tin; it has lots of very understandable explanations of many mathematical things, not all of which have anything to do with the plot. Also the writing style kicked my brain into overdrive, which was fun (I am prejudiced in favor of books that make me trip out like that. *g*)
Also, the portrayals of geeks and rednecks were pretty much spot-on and fairly nuanced - I say that as someone who is fond of, and a member of, both groups. And the author actually gets the point of online interaction, which impressed me rather.
On the downside... O_O THE SEXX. I can't remember if it's said that [most] guys think about sex seven times a minute or seven times a second, but I think the proportion is pretty carefully replicated here. And I kind of got a weird impression that, well, that all the women were there primarily for sexual purposes; the (I'm not even going to try to avoid the obvious terrible dirty pun) climax of each one's story arc was having sex with her assigned boyfriend, after which she mostly or completely disappeared. Except the one who was already married with five kids, who got shunted off to visit relatives while her hubby went adventuring. And I think every main guy had an assigned girlfriend / wife.
(And the straightness was kind of overwhelming. I mean, the author made a valiant effort with including Alan Turing and some et als, but they just didn't come across the same way, even in their POV scenes.)
TL;DR: Liked about a quarter of it. Disliked the other three-quarters. Am now grumping about asexuality and romance, again. ;P
Mr Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater (re-read)
Summary: Mr Popper and his family get some penguins (long story), train the penguins to do tricks, become famous. Eventually send the penguins to the North Pole.
Reaction: I hadn't read this since I was about six, because my mum bought it for us without reading it (it's a Children's Classic!) and then was shocked that Mr Popper leaves his family at the end to go to the North Pole with the penguins.
...my mum has a real knack of being shocked at the right things for interestingly minor reasons.
I didn't like it, because basically, it's one of those stories where the author said "this would be fun! and this! and this!" and gave no thought at all to the feasibility of most of the things, or to character growth, or anything. (I can kind of see the same habit in my own writing, so I understand - trying to make things realistic is a pain - but I don't forgive it on that account.) I mean, the mommy and daddy penguin have ten kids all at once. O_O And Mrs Popper's only reaction to Mr Popper leaving with the penguins is "well, we have enough money to live on now [from showing the penguins' tricks], and it IS so hard to clean with a man sitting around in the middle of the house all winter". If I had a wife and was asking her permission to leave for a year or two, I would not be happy about the second half of that at all. :P
(Also the taking the penguins to the North Pole "to be pets for the explorers there" and "because penguins would like it at the North Pole if only they could get there". I don't even, but it is not a proper attitude to ecological stability.)
All in all, I think the illustrations by Robert Lawson (of Rabbit Hill etc) are the best part.
By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie (re-read)
Summary: Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, now in their sixties, solve a mystery involving retirement homes and a whole lot of references to murdered children.
Reaction: Creepy. I don't usually like Agatha Christie, but I generally like her Tommy & Tuppence books - especially "N or M?", which was the first of hers I ever solved. (Only by having seen the misdirect used in a Marvel tie-in novel and therefore not being fooled by it.) But I did not like this one. It was CREEEEEEEEPY. Thankfully I remembered the surprise ending about halfway through, or I'd not be sleeping tonight. Again. Creepy as hell.
The Genie of Sutton Place by George Selden
Summary: Among his dead father's papers, a ten-year-old boy in 1970s New York finds a spell to summon a genie. Hijinks ensue.
Reaction: In and of itself - fairly fun, slightly predictable brain-candy. George Selden's best known for the Cricket in Times Square books, and you can tell; not only is his love of New York City and its people visible as ever, so is the odd not-exactly-homoerotic bromance vibe between the main characters. In this case it's a boy/dog/genie OT3 that takes center stage, although there are secondary het romances set up pretty obviously for some of the characters. (Which didn't bother me much, because they actually work with the characters and make sense in context. And there's even a lady character who doesn't have a romance storyline. And is awesome, ftr.)
What really struck me while reading this book, though, was how ridiculously much my own brain has been formed on some level by The Cricket in Times Square. I read it when I was... oh, tiny tiny... and I suspect so much of my love for odd-couple partnerships and clever people and self-sufficiency was cemented by that book. I am currently in the midst of a re-read.
Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
Summary: Sort of a stand-alone Discworld book involving Susan Sto Helit and the History Monks.
Reaction: I am sadface. I think I'm almost out of Discworld books to read. (Although I'm not likely to run out, because the library hasn't got "Sourcery". o_O) This one was interesting - I liked the insights about the nature of Time, and the Five Horsemen stuff. And I really, really enjoyed the reveal about the "twins" at the end, even though I'd guessed it. And Lu-Tze is absolutely adorable; I shall probably like "Night Watch" better now, I am thinking. (I was underimpressed by Night Watch because everyone praised it to me beforehand. Also I was reading the Guards books straight through and getting, by that point, just a wee bit jaded.)
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
Summary: A rebellious young orphan girl staying with Puritan relatives in witch-hunt-era New England befriends a Quaker lady suspected of witchcraft.
Reaction: So, so predictable. Possibly because it's a Newbery, so there've been a lot of rip-offs and stories on the same theme which run basically the same way - but SO predictable. The snobby protagonist learning to do manual labor; the equally snobby Puritan family learning to love and respect her; the Quaker "witch" getting in trouble, being rescued, and causing more trouble; the paths of all three romance storylines; yadda, yadda, Yoda. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, either.
A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett by Col. David Crockett
Summary: Davy Crockett's autobiography, written just before his political career collapsed. Nonfiction.
Reaction: I read Constance Rourke's biography of Davy Crockett when I was about three years old - Crockett and Paul Bunyan were my twin obsessions till I discovered LOTR - but I never got round to reading Colonel Crockett's own autobiography before.
It's fun. It's extremely politically motivated in spots, and I do recommend reading the foreword (by one Paul Andrew Hutton) in this edition which puts a few things in perspective, but... yeah, a whole lot of fun. The snark and the storytelling are both fantastic.
Next up: goodness knows. I seem to have abandoned my "one book at a time" habits; I'm in the middle of The Cricket in Times Square (re-read), Trent's Last Case, Salamandastron (re-read), Castaways of the Flying Dutchman (slightly difficult to read because I know Brian Jacques's stock tropes and voices so dang well; I have trouble seeing the characters as humanoid), poking intermittently at Peter Freuchen's Book of the Seven Seas, and looking speculatively at Moby Duck Dick.
Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
Summary: Mishmash of about six different interconnected novels in a sort of hyperrealistic stream-of-consciousness style; set half in WWII and half in the mid-'90s.
Reaction: This was recced me because I am very fond of advanced maths theory but know nothing about it. On that count, it did what it says on the tin; it has lots of very understandable explanations of many mathematical things, not all of which have anything to do with the plot. Also the writing style kicked my brain into overdrive, which was fun (I am prejudiced in favor of books that make me trip out like that. *g*)
Also, the portrayals of geeks and rednecks were pretty much spot-on and fairly nuanced - I say that as someone who is fond of, and a member of, both groups. And the author actually gets the point of online interaction, which impressed me rather.
On the downside... O_O THE SEXX. I can't remember if it's said that [most] guys think about sex seven times a minute or seven times a second, but I think the proportion is pretty carefully replicated here. And I kind of got a weird impression that, well, that all the women were there primarily for sexual purposes; the (I'm not even going to try to avoid the obvious terrible dirty pun) climax of each one's story arc was having sex with her assigned boyfriend, after which she mostly or completely disappeared. Except the one who was already married with five kids, who got shunted off to visit relatives while her hubby went adventuring. And I think every main guy had an assigned girlfriend / wife.
(And the straightness was kind of overwhelming. I mean, the author made a valiant effort with including Alan Turing and some et als, but they just didn't come across the same way, even in their POV scenes.)
TL;DR: Liked about a quarter of it. Disliked the other three-quarters. Am now grumping about asexuality and romance, again. ;P
Mr Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater (re-read)
Summary: Mr Popper and his family get some penguins (long story), train the penguins to do tricks, become famous. Eventually send the penguins to the North Pole.
Reaction: I hadn't read this since I was about six, because my mum bought it for us without reading it (it's a Children's Classic!) and then was shocked that Mr Popper leaves his family at the end to go to the North Pole with the penguins.
...my mum has a real knack of being shocked at the right things for interestingly minor reasons.
I didn't like it, because basically, it's one of those stories where the author said "this would be fun! and this! and this!" and gave no thought at all to the feasibility of most of the things, or to character growth, or anything. (I can kind of see the same habit in my own writing, so I understand - trying to make things realistic is a pain - but I don't forgive it on that account.) I mean, the mommy and daddy penguin have ten kids all at once. O_O And Mrs Popper's only reaction to Mr Popper leaving with the penguins is "well, we have enough money to live on now [from showing the penguins' tricks], and it IS so hard to clean with a man sitting around in the middle of the house all winter". If I had a wife and was asking her permission to leave for a year or two, I would not be happy about the second half of that at all. :P
(Also the taking the penguins to the North Pole "to be pets for the explorers there" and "because penguins would like it at the North Pole if only they could get there". I don't even, but it is not a proper attitude to ecological stability.)
All in all, I think the illustrations by Robert Lawson (of Rabbit Hill etc) are the best part.
By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie (re-read)
Summary: Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, now in their sixties, solve a mystery involving retirement homes and a whole lot of references to murdered children.
Reaction: Creepy. I don't usually like Agatha Christie, but I generally like her Tommy & Tuppence books - especially "N or M?", which was the first of hers I ever solved. (Only by having seen the misdirect used in a Marvel tie-in novel and therefore not being fooled by it.) But I did not like this one. It was CREEEEEEEEPY. Thankfully I remembered the surprise ending about halfway through, or I'd not be sleeping tonight. Again. Creepy as hell.
The Genie of Sutton Place by George Selden
Summary: Among his dead father's papers, a ten-year-old boy in 1970s New York finds a spell to summon a genie. Hijinks ensue.
Reaction: In and of itself - fairly fun, slightly predictable brain-candy. George Selden's best known for the Cricket in Times Square books, and you can tell; not only is his love of New York City and its people visible as ever, so is the odd not-exactly-homoerotic bromance vibe between the main characters. In this case it's a boy/dog/genie OT3 that takes center stage, although there are secondary het romances set up pretty obviously for some of the characters. (Which didn't bother me much, because they actually work with the characters and make sense in context. And there's even a lady character who doesn't have a romance storyline. And is awesome, ftr.)
What really struck me while reading this book, though, was how ridiculously much my own brain has been formed on some level by The Cricket in Times Square. I read it when I was... oh, tiny tiny... and I suspect so much of my love for odd-couple partnerships and clever people and self-sufficiency was cemented by that book. I am currently in the midst of a re-read.
Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
Summary: Sort of a stand-alone Discworld book involving Susan Sto Helit and the History Monks.
Reaction: I am sadface. I think I'm almost out of Discworld books to read. (Although I'm not likely to run out, because the library hasn't got "Sourcery". o_O) This one was interesting - I liked the insights about the nature of Time, and the Five Horsemen stuff. And I really, really enjoyed the reveal about the "twins" at the end, even though I'd guessed it. And Lu-Tze is absolutely adorable; I shall probably like "Night Watch" better now, I am thinking. (I was underimpressed by Night Watch because everyone praised it to me beforehand. Also I was reading the Guards books straight through and getting, by that point, just a wee bit jaded.)
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
Summary: A rebellious young orphan girl staying with Puritan relatives in witch-hunt-era New England befriends a Quaker lady suspected of witchcraft.
Reaction: So, so predictable. Possibly because it's a Newbery, so there've been a lot of rip-offs and stories on the same theme which run basically the same way - but SO predictable. The snobby protagonist learning to do manual labor; the equally snobby Puritan family learning to love and respect her; the Quaker "witch" getting in trouble, being rescued, and causing more trouble; the paths of all three romance storylines; yadda, yadda, Yoda. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it, either.
A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett by Col. David Crockett
Summary: Davy Crockett's autobiography, written just before his political career collapsed. Nonfiction.
Reaction: I read Constance Rourke's biography of Davy Crockett when I was about three years old - Crockett and Paul Bunyan were my twin obsessions till I discovered LOTR - but I never got round to reading Colonel Crockett's own autobiography before.
It's fun. It's extremely politically motivated in spots, and I do recommend reading the foreword (by one Paul Andrew Hutton) in this edition which puts a few things in perspective, but... yeah, a whole lot of fun. The snark and the storytelling are both fantastic.
Next up: goodness knows. I seem to have abandoned my "one book at a time" habits; I'm in the middle of The Cricket in Times Square (re-read), Trent's Last Case, Salamandastron (re-read), Castaways of the Flying Dutchman (slightly difficult to read because I know Brian Jacques's stock tropes and voices so dang well; I have trouble seeing the characters as humanoid), poking intermittently at Peter Freuchen's Book of the Seven Seas, and looking speculatively at Moby Duck Dick.