Booklog 3: Something creepy, something great
Hey, check it, I'm posting March's booklog before March is even quite finished. Aw yeah.
- The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum
This is the sequel to The Drowning City that I posted about last time, and it really felt like Downum had had something click, had figured out what she wanted to do in her fictional universe, because this was way better! The plot was cooler, and generally everything worked better. I didn't like the sex-immediately-after-illness-or-injury scenes (like, more than one?! and also, people are not generally up for that when they have been stabbed/haven't eaten in a week because they've been too sick!) but that was pretty much my only complaint.
And there are trans people in this one! I am obviously not the arbiter of things that are and are not offensive to trans people, but I thought it did really well on that. Mostly because it allowed for a variety of trans experience. Not only does it specifically have more than one way of being gender-varient, it said that most of the people in this universe who break the gender binary have it rough because of that, but that exactly how, how much it affects them, and what that means to them is different based on all the other stuff about them and their life. I really liked that.
- Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer
I'd forgotten I'd read this. Man, Worth is WAY skeevier than I remembered: kissing somebody without their permission is not okay, dude! I like Judith, though, she's fun, and I like the murder mystery plot. Mostly because the audience realises their is one waaay before most of the characters do.
- Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper
This was really sweet old-school SF about how we might begin to translate alien languages when we don't have the equivalent of a Rosetta Stone. It has a female scientist as the main character (and this is not a Thing, it's just like Piper went, well duh they'd have female scientists in the future because they're not pathetic) and there's an Asian female scientist who helps and is just sciencey with everyone else. And it made me happy. :)
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
The two things I knew about this going in: this is the book Blade Runner was based on (which I have seen and liked all right, but not a lot) and that I HATED the only book I'd read by him before, A Scanner Darkly. Hated hated hated - I found it unreadable to the point where I didn't finish it and would never have picked this up if it hadn't been one of the set texts for my current course.
And I discovered that it is nothing like Blade Runner, it IS readable, and I enjoyed it a lot. It's all about reality and whether a good enough fake is the same as the real thing and how exactly we decide someone is 'human'. It's very good, and a deserved classic.
- Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
This is sort-of-post-modern Argentinian awesomeness about why art is important and ladies are great and love is great and oppression sucks. I loved it. It is sad, and some people won't like the post-modernist-y stuff (there are lots of fake academic footnotes, and the main text is nothing but dialogue) but I found it really worked for me. I loved that the main thing all the post-modernisty stuff does is make the argument that it doesn't matter why Molina is who he is or whether he's 'just gay' or actually wants to become a woman: it doesn't matter because he's a person, and treating him badly is still wrong. And I like that despite the fact it's a sad ending, the two main characters still kind of get what they wanted, in a weird way. Thoroughly recommended.
- Towards Zero by Agatha Christie
This is one I hadn't read before, and it is SO WEIRD. It's sort of about abusive relationships? Except not really, and it doesn't seem to know what it's actually saying about that except that your scary ex might try to kill you. The ending especially was kind of unsatisfying because of that, I think.
- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
This was also for my course, and it remains a steady favourite. This is brilliant absurdist almost-nihilism-but-not-quite, and I love the billions of possible readings and the combination of Vladimir and Estragon with the creepy creepiness of Lucky and Pozzo. It made me even more sad I didn't get to see the production with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.
- Selected Poems by Seamus Heaney
This was also for my course! I like Heaney fine, although I feel like I don't know enough about Ireland to appreciate a bunch of what he does properly. There's a lot of variety in these poems: I liked the Bog poems best (my inner child apparently wants to poke creepy things with a stick, and also I really like the way he uses the bog bodies as a way of talking about a history of violence) but most people who've ever enjoyed a poem would probably find something they liked in this, I think.
- Affinity by Sarah Waters
I hadn't read this before and it is very good if you like deliberately creepy Victorian lesbians. I kind of do, in a way where it still wasn't my favourite Waters book. I have a massive hate-on for Spiritualism (I feel really bad that so many people were conned, people who genuinely just wanted to feel better!) and so the is-it-real bit kind of rubbed me the wrong way, and then the ending, while sort of satisfying in a Hah I Knew It way, made me sad. I liked Margaret a lot, I liked her empathy for the prisoners (Waters clearly did research on how crappy it was to be a prisoner in Victorian times and it shows) and her desire for a different life, and wanted better for her.
- In The Teeth Of The Evidence and Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers
I wanted some Wimsey goodness, so I picked up In The Teeth Of The Evidence at the library. And omg, ONLY ONE STORY HAS ANY WIMSEY AT ALL IN IT. I was most miffed: the rest aren't bad or anything (although Sayers is way better at novels than short stories), but that wasn't what I wanted. So I finally went and found the one where Gerald is arrested on a murder charge. Which is waay more fun, even without Harriet, who is obviously the best thing ever. It's fairly straight-up murder mystery fare, but with a really fun look at the Denver clan, especially the Dowager Duchess, who is brilliant.
- Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, new Temeraire! I love it so. And for anyone who didn't like the sheer amount of flying-without-much-happening that went on in the last book, that was clearly all set-up for the next bit. Because LOTS happened here. Incas! (OMG Incas. I love that they're in it and I love that they have their own relationship to dragons and I love that the head Inca is a woman.) Lawrence reinstated! (That obviously was likely to happen sometime, but I still kind of laughed.) And oh, GRANBY.
No, really, my love for Granby let me show you it. First, Iskierka HAS been getting more and more frustrating in her inability to do anything but what occurs right off the top of her head, and I loved that he actually told her that that's not how adults behave and she needs to shape up because other people count too. And second, it was a coming-out story that ACTUALLY MADE SENSE, because he really wouldn't have ever said anything to Lawrence ever if he hadn't had to, but a believable situation came up where he did have to. And it was kind of great, and Lawrence is all well meaning and not really knowing what to do, and yay.
I really liked Lawrence's refusal to capitulate to slavery too; mostly because this is a world where not everybody DOES see it as a bad thing, so while it's a little anvillicious that the hero is the guy who believes in emancipation, it's also nice. I liked his insistence on the humanity of the Tswana, and his recognition that they'd be awesome allies, which they really need. I want more on that. Also, CHINA SOON. EEE. I am all excited about what's going to happen next.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/84340.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
- The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum
This is the sequel to The Drowning City that I posted about last time, and it really felt like Downum had had something click, had figured out what she wanted to do in her fictional universe, because this was way better! The plot was cooler, and generally everything worked better. I didn't like the sex-immediately-after-illness-or-injury scenes (like, more than one?! and also, people are not generally up for that when they have been stabbed/haven't eaten in a week because they've been too sick!) but that was pretty much my only complaint.
And there are trans people in this one! I am obviously not the arbiter of things that are and are not offensive to trans people, but I thought it did really well on that. Mostly because it allowed for a variety of trans experience. Not only does it specifically have more than one way of being gender-varient, it said that most of the people in this universe who break the gender binary have it rough because of that, but that exactly how, how much it affects them, and what that means to them is different based on all the other stuff about them and their life. I really liked that.
- Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer
I'd forgotten I'd read this. Man, Worth is WAY skeevier than I remembered: kissing somebody without their permission is not okay, dude! I like Judith, though, she's fun, and I like the murder mystery plot. Mostly because the audience realises their is one waaay before most of the characters do.
- Omnilingual by H. Beam Piper
This was really sweet old-school SF about how we might begin to translate alien languages when we don't have the equivalent of a Rosetta Stone. It has a female scientist as the main character (and this is not a Thing, it's just like Piper went, well duh they'd have female scientists in the future because they're not pathetic) and there's an Asian female scientist who helps and is just sciencey with everyone else. And it made me happy. :)
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
The two things I knew about this going in: this is the book Blade Runner was based on (which I have seen and liked all right, but not a lot) and that I HATED the only book I'd read by him before, A Scanner Darkly. Hated hated hated - I found it unreadable to the point where I didn't finish it and would never have picked this up if it hadn't been one of the set texts for my current course.
And I discovered that it is nothing like Blade Runner, it IS readable, and I enjoyed it a lot. It's all about reality and whether a good enough fake is the same as the real thing and how exactly we decide someone is 'human'. It's very good, and a deserved classic.
- Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig
This is sort-of-post-modern Argentinian awesomeness about why art is important and ladies are great and love is great and oppression sucks. I loved it. It is sad, and some people won't like the post-modernist-y stuff (there are lots of fake academic footnotes, and the main text is nothing but dialogue) but I found it really worked for me. I loved that the main thing all the post-modernisty stuff does is make the argument that it doesn't matter why Molina is who he is or whether he's 'just gay' or actually wants to become a woman: it doesn't matter because he's a person, and treating him badly is still wrong. And I like that despite the fact it's a sad ending, the two main characters still kind of get what they wanted, in a weird way. Thoroughly recommended.
- Towards Zero by Agatha Christie
This is one I hadn't read before, and it is SO WEIRD. It's sort of about abusive relationships? Except not really, and it doesn't seem to know what it's actually saying about that except that your scary ex might try to kill you. The ending especially was kind of unsatisfying because of that, I think.
- Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett
This was also for my course, and it remains a steady favourite. This is brilliant absurdist almost-nihilism-but-not-quite, and I love the billions of possible readings and the combination of Vladimir and Estragon with the creepy creepiness of Lucky and Pozzo. It made me even more sad I didn't get to see the production with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.
- Selected Poems by Seamus Heaney
This was also for my course! I like Heaney fine, although I feel like I don't know enough about Ireland to appreciate a bunch of what he does properly. There's a lot of variety in these poems: I liked the Bog poems best (my inner child apparently wants to poke creepy things with a stick, and also I really like the way he uses the bog bodies as a way of talking about a history of violence) but most people who've ever enjoyed a poem would probably find something they liked in this, I think.
- Affinity by Sarah Waters
I hadn't read this before and it is very good if you like deliberately creepy Victorian lesbians. I kind of do, in a way where it still wasn't my favourite Waters book. I have a massive hate-on for Spiritualism (I feel really bad that so many people were conned, people who genuinely just wanted to feel better!) and so the is-it-real bit kind of rubbed me the wrong way, and then the ending, while sort of satisfying in a Hah I Knew It way, made me sad. I liked Margaret a lot, I liked her empathy for the prisoners (Waters clearly did research on how crappy it was to be a prisoner in Victorian times and it shows) and her desire for a different life, and wanted better for her.
- In The Teeth Of The Evidence and Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers
I wanted some Wimsey goodness, so I picked up In The Teeth Of The Evidence at the library. And omg, ONLY ONE STORY HAS ANY WIMSEY AT ALL IN IT. I was most miffed: the rest aren't bad or anything (although Sayers is way better at novels than short stories), but that wasn't what I wanted. So I finally went and found the one where Gerald is arrested on a murder charge. Which is waay more fun, even without Harriet, who is obviously the best thing ever. It's fairly straight-up murder mystery fare, but with a really fun look at the Denver clan, especially the Dowager Duchess, who is brilliant.
- Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, new Temeraire! I love it so. And for anyone who didn't like the sheer amount of flying-without-much-happening that went on in the last book, that was clearly all set-up for the next bit. Because LOTS happened here. Incas! (OMG Incas. I love that they're in it and I love that they have their own relationship to dragons and I love that the head Inca is a woman.) Lawrence reinstated! (That obviously was likely to happen sometime, but I still kind of laughed.) And oh, GRANBY.
No, really, my love for Granby let me show you it. First, Iskierka HAS been getting more and more frustrating in her inability to do anything but what occurs right off the top of her head, and I loved that he actually told her that that's not how adults behave and she needs to shape up because other people count too. And second, it was a coming-out story that ACTUALLY MADE SENSE, because he really wouldn't have ever said anything to Lawrence ever if he hadn't had to, but a believable situation came up where he did have to. And it was kind of great, and Lawrence is all well meaning and not really knowing what to do, and yay.
I really liked Lawrence's refusal to capitulate to slavery too; mostly because this is a world where not everybody DOES see it as a bad thing, so while it's a little anvillicious that the hero is the guy who believes in emancipation, it's also nice. I liked his insistence on the humanity of the Tswana, and his recognition that they'd be awesome allies, which they really need. I want more on that. Also, CHINA SOON. EEE. I am all excited about what's going to happen next.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/84340.html. Please comment there using OpenID.