Booklog 7: Words born of fire
Apparently it's AUGUST tomorrow, so... booklog. I seem to have managed more books than I thought this month!
- A Dance With Dragons by George RR Martin
I think it's actually pretty difficult to judge this book; I really enjoyed it, but it's very clearly setting stuff up for later, rather than being at all complete in itself. That's always going to be an issue with a story as hugely epic as this is, and to be honest I enjoy that!
I really enjoyed it though. I thought it was hilarious that so much of it seemed like Martin had been reading the fanboards and wanted to comment, I was deeply unsurprised yet amused that there was an apparent Aegon, and I loved that Melisandre wasn't evil from her own point of view. I liked that Tyrion got to see some of the other side of life and have a relationship with someone who could show him how lucky he has actually been and get him out of his (understandable) funk. I think Jon is, as some commenter said, exactly as dead as it takes to get him out of his job as Lord Commander (and probably into a role as Azor Ahai) and no more.
And mostly I reallyreally want the next one now. OMG.
- Five Red Herrings by Dorothy Sayers
I do love Lord Peter Wimsey! I'd been warned this installment was sub-par though, and it kind of is. Bunter is brilliant, of course, but the actual mystery is almost entirely dependent on LOTS OF INFORMATION ABOUT TRAIN TIMETABLES, which, bless you Dorothy Sayers, just isn't that interesting to somebody who isn't currently geeking out about how to have their murder mystery plot work. It was perfectly decent as a time-filler - sub-par Sayers is still more fun than most - but yeah. I missed Harriet, too.
- The State Counsellor by Boris Akunin
This is a Fandorin mystery, and I am told that each book with Fandorin is written deliberately to be a different genre or type. This one is of the political thriller sort - Fandorin is trying to stop some terrorists. It's absolutely fascinating to see Fandorin's response to state power here. He is kind of a Mary Sue, and he seems here to be standing in for the complicated relationship Russians generally seem to have with their country and its official machinery rather more explicitly than I was expecting. I liked that the terrorists are dealt with in such a multi-faceted way; there are a bunch of them and they are explicitly described as having different reasons for being where they are. I got the feeling there was some stuff I wasn't getting - apart from anything else, is the bit where "Fandorin" is a terrorist a reference to something specific, anybody? - but I really enjoyed it.
- The Princess Academy by Sharon Hale
I very nearly didn't read this because of the title, but it is actually surprisingly cute YA with a moral of "people are awesome in different ways". The writing is very... workmanlike, in a way that is initially offputting but then ended up being mostly invisible. And I liked the idea of "quarry-speech", and the mountain culture that made even the inevitable romantic sub-plot actually a bit better than bearable.
- The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
I'd been told I would love this and think Tiffany Aching was fabulous, and, well... all the people who said that were right. This was my favourite Pratchett in a long, long time, and it was all about how great Tiffany is. Her instinctive response, when told that bad shit is coming to hurt people and there's noone to stop them, is "There's ME." And she gets her frying pan and her brain and she does the best she can and she LEARNS and just oh, she's great. I love that her power is far more her intelligence and her ethics far more than any magic powers. This is a book about making choices and hard work, and Tiffany does both.
I was not so sure what to make of the Nac Mac Feegle... I did find them funny but I also felt a little bit like maybe I should be since they were, y'know, tiny little blue-painted stereotypical Glaswegians. But then I was thinking about whether the joke was that they were Glaswegians or whether they were a stereotype, and my gut feeling is that the joke is that they are the stereotype.
- Seventy Two Letters by Ted Chiang
This is a short story set in a world where two things are very different: golems are real, and human reproduction really does work by having tiny miniature humans in each sperm which is then given life by the egg. Those aren't things I'd ever have put together, but Chiang apparently did, and the result is actually fascinating. I can't actually describe it any better than that... it's thought-provoking and beautifully written, and I will absolutely be reading more Chiang. I can't believe I hadn't read any before!
- Children of Men by PD James
I read this because I kind of want to see the movie at some point and I felt I should read the book first.
...it's weird. It's about a world where there are no new children, and uses that to speak about how we deal with parents and babies in the present, and it's very obviously written by a woman. Except the main character is a man and it's all from that male POV. Which could be a comment about how those issues effect men, too, but it really doesn't feel that way. It feels like James couldn't actually imagine a female main character.
Partly this impression is because of the way it feels like it's stuck in the past. The novel is supposed to be set in the near future, but everybody in it talks - and acts, and the culture too - like it's stuck in the 50s/early 60s or something. I got the feeling, actually, that PD James had a really good idea but was not the person to write it... or was writing it at the wrong time. Like, it could be a brilliant story if it weren't written by someone who waits for half the novel to be over before introducing the last pregnant woman on earth. I dunno.
- Grandmother Death by Jane Yolen
An odd story about a child who has Death as a grandmother. I liked it, but I wasn't at all sure what I thought of the ending. Anybody read it?
- The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer
This is quite a weird Heyer - it's sort of trying to be a pastiche of gothic novels and Heyer-type romances at the same time while also being both, and I can see why that doesn't work for everybody. I find myself terribly endeared by it, though. I love Elinor and the fact she appreciates it sucks to be a governess, and I love the family of whackiness she falls in with. I think I especially love them because they're among the Heyer characters I can most easily believe actually love each other. And that makes up for all the genre miss-match, to me. ♥
- 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
Short stories that, despite being from someone who is known as a purely horror writer, are not all horror. While almost all of them are kind of creepy, that's also almost always a very human kind of creepiness. And they're really staggeringly good: I think it was wowbagger who mentioned Pop Art as a wonderful story, and it IS. If you only read one of these, read that one.
- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
This is still one of my favourite books, and a comfort re-read par excellence. This is a delightful and very funny mystery that turns out to be a perfectly planned and executed story about love and beauty and the importance of pizza. I love it. This was my "I moved house" treat and it is delightful.
- The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
I've read almost everything John Wyndham wrote. When I was a young teenager I went through a phase of being obsessed by his "cosy catastropes" as Jo Walton calls them, and I still find the whole thing weirdly compelling. Maybe it's the same reason I love murder mysteries: you take a very set stage (in Wyndham's case a very safe, set stage of Perfect Cosy Britain Roughly Post-War) and then you set Badness loose (here, creepy aliens who impregnate all the child-bearing women in a small English village) and see what happens.
This is a particularly weird one, even by famously weird Wyndham's standards, and it gets weirder the more you think about it. I kept going how the fuck would that work? and woooow, your weird assumptions are showing. I think I find it creepier than intended, mostly because I think the true horror is the "randomly being impregnated by aliens, whose spawn then controls your mind!" bit, rather than the "small village may be the seat of a take-over by aliens". And the comparisons to how he thinks it would have gone down in the USA are weird too. But still weirdly fascinating.
- The Dispossessed, Ursula K LeGuin
This is a fabulous novel about community and capitalism. I really loved it, although I can see why people who are less genuinely interested in philosophical approaches to politics and community-building and science might find it dry. Though to be honest, the main character's relationship with his world and the people in it also does a lot to make it fun, too, even when it's sad.
I do think that it might have benefitted from being in chronological order, though I can totally see why it wasn't. (The beginning is a great set-up, and it also echos the way that the main character thinks about time, but still.)
- Coming of Age in Karhide by Usula K LeGuin
This is a set of short stories. It is fabulously written, obviously, and despite a huge variety in many ways it manages to be cohesive by having as an overall theme the ways in which we decide who we are, and the ways other people decide that for us. I'd only read one of these before - the one about the communal dreams, which is in Changing Planes - but I loved them. All the cultures and people here stood out as real, and really showed why LeGuin has been considered a grand-master for so long.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/65705.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
- A Dance With Dragons by George RR Martin
I think it's actually pretty difficult to judge this book; I really enjoyed it, but it's very clearly setting stuff up for later, rather than being at all complete in itself. That's always going to be an issue with a story as hugely epic as this is, and to be honest I enjoy that!
I really enjoyed it though. I thought it was hilarious that so much of it seemed like Martin had been reading the fanboards and wanted to comment, I was deeply unsurprised yet amused that there was an apparent Aegon, and I loved that Melisandre wasn't evil from her own point of view. I liked that Tyrion got to see some of the other side of life and have a relationship with someone who could show him how lucky he has actually been and get him out of his (understandable) funk. I think Jon is, as some commenter said, exactly as dead as it takes to get him out of his job as Lord Commander (and probably into a role as Azor Ahai) and no more.
And mostly I reallyreally want the next one now. OMG.
- Five Red Herrings by Dorothy Sayers
I do love Lord Peter Wimsey! I'd been warned this installment was sub-par though, and it kind of is. Bunter is brilliant, of course, but the actual mystery is almost entirely dependent on LOTS OF INFORMATION ABOUT TRAIN TIMETABLES, which, bless you Dorothy Sayers, just isn't that interesting to somebody who isn't currently geeking out about how to have their murder mystery plot work. It was perfectly decent as a time-filler - sub-par Sayers is still more fun than most - but yeah. I missed Harriet, too.
- The State Counsellor by Boris Akunin
This is a Fandorin mystery, and I am told that each book with Fandorin is written deliberately to be a different genre or type. This one is of the political thriller sort - Fandorin is trying to stop some terrorists. It's absolutely fascinating to see Fandorin's response to state power here. He is kind of a Mary Sue, and he seems here to be standing in for the complicated relationship Russians generally seem to have with their country and its official machinery rather more explicitly than I was expecting. I liked that the terrorists are dealt with in such a multi-faceted way; there are a bunch of them and they are explicitly described as having different reasons for being where they are. I got the feeling there was some stuff I wasn't getting - apart from anything else, is the bit where "Fandorin" is a terrorist a reference to something specific, anybody? - but I really enjoyed it.
- The Princess Academy by Sharon Hale
I very nearly didn't read this because of the title, but it is actually surprisingly cute YA with a moral of "people are awesome in different ways". The writing is very... workmanlike, in a way that is initially offputting but then ended up being mostly invisible. And I liked the idea of "quarry-speech", and the mountain culture that made even the inevitable romantic sub-plot actually a bit better than bearable.
- The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
I'd been told I would love this and think Tiffany Aching was fabulous, and, well... all the people who said that were right. This was my favourite Pratchett in a long, long time, and it was all about how great Tiffany is. Her instinctive response, when told that bad shit is coming to hurt people and there's noone to stop them, is "There's ME." And she gets her frying pan and her brain and she does the best she can and she LEARNS and just oh, she's great. I love that her power is far more her intelligence and her ethics far more than any magic powers. This is a book about making choices and hard work, and Tiffany does both.
I was not so sure what to make of the Nac Mac Feegle... I did find them funny but I also felt a little bit like maybe I should be since they were, y'know, tiny little blue-painted stereotypical Glaswegians. But then I was thinking about whether the joke was that they were Glaswegians or whether they were a stereotype, and my gut feeling is that the joke is that they are the stereotype.
- Seventy Two Letters by Ted Chiang
This is a short story set in a world where two things are very different: golems are real, and human reproduction really does work by having tiny miniature humans in each sperm which is then given life by the egg. Those aren't things I'd ever have put together, but Chiang apparently did, and the result is actually fascinating. I can't actually describe it any better than that... it's thought-provoking and beautifully written, and I will absolutely be reading more Chiang. I can't believe I hadn't read any before!
- Children of Men by PD James
I read this because I kind of want to see the movie at some point and I felt I should read the book first.
...it's weird. It's about a world where there are no new children, and uses that to speak about how we deal with parents and babies in the present, and it's very obviously written by a woman. Except the main character is a man and it's all from that male POV. Which could be a comment about how those issues effect men, too, but it really doesn't feel that way. It feels like James couldn't actually imagine a female main character.
Partly this impression is because of the way it feels like it's stuck in the past. The novel is supposed to be set in the near future, but everybody in it talks - and acts, and the culture too - like it's stuck in the 50s/early 60s or something. I got the feeling, actually, that PD James had a really good idea but was not the person to write it... or was writing it at the wrong time. Like, it could be a brilliant story if it weren't written by someone who waits for half the novel to be over before introducing the last pregnant woman on earth. I dunno.
- Grandmother Death by Jane Yolen
An odd story about a child who has Death as a grandmother. I liked it, but I wasn't at all sure what I thought of the ending. Anybody read it?
- The Reluctant Widow by Georgette Heyer
This is quite a weird Heyer - it's sort of trying to be a pastiche of gothic novels and Heyer-type romances at the same time while also being both, and I can see why that doesn't work for everybody. I find myself terribly endeared by it, though. I love Elinor and the fact she appreciates it sucks to be a governess, and I love the family of whackiness she falls in with. I think I especially love them because they're among the Heyer characters I can most easily believe actually love each other. And that makes up for all the genre miss-match, to me. ♥
- 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill
Short stories that, despite being from someone who is known as a purely horror writer, are not all horror. While almost all of them are kind of creepy, that's also almost always a very human kind of creepiness. And they're really staggeringly good: I think it was wowbagger who mentioned Pop Art as a wonderful story, and it IS. If you only read one of these, read that one.
- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams
This is still one of my favourite books, and a comfort re-read par excellence. This is a delightful and very funny mystery that turns out to be a perfectly planned and executed story about love and beauty and the importance of pizza. I love it. This was my "I moved house" treat and it is delightful.
- The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
I've read almost everything John Wyndham wrote. When I was a young teenager I went through a phase of being obsessed by his "cosy catastropes" as Jo Walton calls them, and I still find the whole thing weirdly compelling. Maybe it's the same reason I love murder mysteries: you take a very set stage (in Wyndham's case a very safe, set stage of Perfect Cosy Britain Roughly Post-War) and then you set Badness loose (here, creepy aliens who impregnate all the child-bearing women in a small English village) and see what happens.
This is a particularly weird one, even by famously weird Wyndham's standards, and it gets weirder the more you think about it. I kept going how the fuck would that work? and woooow, your weird assumptions are showing. I think I find it creepier than intended, mostly because I think the true horror is the "randomly being impregnated by aliens, whose spawn then controls your mind!" bit, rather than the "small village may be the seat of a take-over by aliens". And the comparisons to how he thinks it would have gone down in the USA are weird too. But still weirdly fascinating.
- The Dispossessed, Ursula K LeGuin
This is a fabulous novel about community and capitalism. I really loved it, although I can see why people who are less genuinely interested in philosophical approaches to politics and community-building and science might find it dry. Though to be honest, the main character's relationship with his world and the people in it also does a lot to make it fun, too, even when it's sad.
I do think that it might have benefitted from being in chronological order, though I can totally see why it wasn't. (The beginning is a great set-up, and it also echos the way that the main character thinks about time, but still.)
- Coming of Age in Karhide by Usula K LeGuin
This is a set of short stories. It is fabulously written, obviously, and despite a huge variety in many ways it manages to be cohesive by having as an overall theme the ways in which we decide who we are, and the ways other people decide that for us. I'd only read one of these before - the one about the communal dreams, which is in Changing Planes - but I loved them. All the cultures and people here stood out as real, and really showed why LeGuin has been considered a grand-master for so long.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/65705.html. Please comment there using OpenID.