Booklog 5: The merry merry month of something
May is nearly over, and I don't think I'm going to finish a book tomorrow, so, here be the log.
-Asking for Trouble by Ann Granger
This is a murder mystery, set in a London squat/council estate. The main character, Fran Varady... she's very likeable, and quite badass while also being realistically inept at some things, but I also felt like Ann Granger hadn't quite figured out how she wanted to express some of the stuff she was trying to say about class and so on. I mean, that's a topic we British are generally rendered kind of incoherent by anyway, but yeah. Has anyone read any of the other books with Fran in? Apparently there are some, and if the conflict between Fran's family history and her current life is rendered better in those I think I will pick them up. Otherwise, I'm not sure.
-The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
Time travel! Magical shenannigans! I thoroughly enjoyed this. Once it gets going, it's a really fun romp of a book. Plus, it makes (affectionate) fun of Lord Byron, which I also always enjoy.
If anything, though, there wasn't enough use of the time-travel thing: the stuff about how the protagonist dealt with being in a different time was by far the most fun, for me, and I kind of resented the plot for catching up with him. It wasn't a bad plot or anything, but I would have liked one that included more time just messing and having fun. Like, whole massive chunks were skipped over that I wanted to hear about, dammit. There's a fantastic bit where the protagonist realises there must be other people from the future about, and that sort of thing being used more would have integrated the different elements a bit more, too.
Also, I don't like the habit a lot of authors have of having their characters-who-speak-something-other-than-English use perfect English dialogue except for a few key nouns. It's irritating and the use of it in this book nearly stopped me reading past the prologue. Which would have been a shame, cause this really is good!
-Regeneration and The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker
Very good novels about masculinity and culture and responsibility set in World War 1. They can be read on their own - I've read the third one in the trilogy, The Ghost Road, more than once without realising it was a trilogy! - but as a whole they really are a Serious Literary Tour de Force. Except they're not as po-faced as that implies: both Billy Prior and William Rivers, the two main characters, are both way more fun than a very serious discussion of them as serious characters implies. They ARE - but I like that these are novels which are meant to be read, as well as to be analysed.
Also, I weirdly love Siegfried Sassoon in this. I like her use of real people generally (and real events, like the Pemberton Billing libel case), actually. Thoroughly recommended if you have any interest in men or war or historical novels or queerness at all. Oh, or mental illness. This is one of the very few books I can think of with a queer mentally ill person as a major character who is supposed to be sympathetic!
- Shinju by Laura Joh Rowland
I nabbed this one because it is a murder mystery set in 17th century Japan, with a samurai as the detective. Enjoyable and interesting - there is definitely a level on which it's clearly written for people who know nothing about the period, but since that includes me I am not going to whine too much about it. My main complaint was that the main character's initial reason for suspecting murder (even though the reader KNOWS it's murder) is kind of rubbish and arbitrary - I would have liked longer where he's not sure, I think. Otherwise this is good alternative murder mystery fare.
- Love Letters by Katie Fforde
I was lent this on the argument that it was about a book nerd and I'd like that. It actual fact I found it excruciatingly embarrassing. I just... you DON'T ask a celebrity author hideously awful personal questions AT A Q&A SESSION AT A CON. NO. NO. NO. NO. ESPECIALLY not when someone you are supposedly friends with might have had sex with said celebrity author AND said celebrity author is their favourite author ever wot they did their dissertation on. NO NO NO NO NO. NOT ENOUGH NO IN THE WORLD.
- Death of a Dude
Apparently I was on a murder mystery kick this month even more than usual, and I couldn't remember if I'd read this or not. I had, but it was still fun. Wolfe actually treks out into the middle of nowhere, Montana, and eats trout! For Archie! Also, I had forgotten that Lily refers to herself as a "dudine", which I rather like.
- The Family Trade by Charles Stross
I like Stross a lot, so I finally gave this a chance, despite me thinking it would not be my thing at all. (If only because Stross is all SF and this sounded like an ill-advised nosedive into bad fantasy.) But no, this book about a woman who finds out she's actually quasi-royalty from an alternate universe is really fun. I love that the heroine does what she does well because she has good business sense. Oh, and bothers to be nice to other women. This was actually really refreshing and generally WAY more fun in execution than I had dared to hope.
(It does have a little bit of Stross' patented theory-dropping, where a character talks a bunch of theory and how it works in practice. But I like how Stross does that, and this actually has a minimum of it.)
- Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
This is an oral history of recent life in North Korea, as told/interpreted by the current Beijing bureau chief of the LA Times. I had been told that this was the book to get if I was interested in what ordinary people are like in North Korea, and it REALLY REALLY IS. (Er, in the absence of being able to read Korean: I would imagine there're more options if you can!) This is both harrowing and heart-warming and informative, and it manages most of that by being very straightforward.
I would have liked a little more first-person, or at least a little more explanation of what she was actually told by the people whose stories she features here and what gaps she's filling in. But it is generally pretty good at pointing out that even the variety she covers probably doesn't cover everything, that there are SO many things that we don't have any reliable information on that it's all practically hearsay. She is also very careful not to be judge-y: I mean, not that she gives the Kims equal weighting or whatever, but some of the people she talks about did things which could be considered pretty bad, by a lot of standards. They are absolutely compelling, though. The doctor's story in particular really got to me. If you have any interest in North Korea or life under extreme conditions at all, you need this book.
-Short Stories and Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell
These are funny murder mysteries where the point is that the reader doesn't know if Hilary Tamar, the detective, is male or female or other. That could be very gimicky - especially since some bits are set up so that you think about how they might be different depending on how you see Hilary and their gender. But it's actually very smoothly and engagingly done. Hilary is a hilarious narrator, and the style and the way it's all very arch and snarky appealed to me. Like: "The truth is, I think, that she did not, in her heart of hearts, really believe in income tax. It was a subject which she had studied for examinations and on which she had thereafter advised a number of clients: she naturally did not suppose, in these circumstances, that it had anything to do with real life." LOL! Very good fun.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/87990.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
-Asking for Trouble by Ann Granger
This is a murder mystery, set in a London squat/council estate. The main character, Fran Varady... she's very likeable, and quite badass while also being realistically inept at some things, but I also felt like Ann Granger hadn't quite figured out how she wanted to express some of the stuff she was trying to say about class and so on. I mean, that's a topic we British are generally rendered kind of incoherent by anyway, but yeah. Has anyone read any of the other books with Fran in? Apparently there are some, and if the conflict between Fran's family history and her current life is rendered better in those I think I will pick them up. Otherwise, I'm not sure.
-The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
Time travel! Magical shenannigans! I thoroughly enjoyed this. Once it gets going, it's a really fun romp of a book. Plus, it makes (affectionate) fun of Lord Byron, which I also always enjoy.
If anything, though, there wasn't enough use of the time-travel thing: the stuff about how the protagonist dealt with being in a different time was by far the most fun, for me, and I kind of resented the plot for catching up with him. It wasn't a bad plot or anything, but I would have liked one that included more time just messing and having fun. Like, whole massive chunks were skipped over that I wanted to hear about, dammit. There's a fantastic bit where the protagonist realises there must be other people from the future about, and that sort of thing being used more would have integrated the different elements a bit more, too.
Also, I don't like the habit a lot of authors have of having their characters-who-speak-something-other-than-English use perfect English dialogue except for a few key nouns. It's irritating and the use of it in this book nearly stopped me reading past the prologue. Which would have been a shame, cause this really is good!
-Regeneration and The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker
Very good novels about masculinity and culture and responsibility set in World War 1. They can be read on their own - I've read the third one in the trilogy, The Ghost Road, more than once without realising it was a trilogy! - but as a whole they really are a Serious Literary Tour de Force. Except they're not as po-faced as that implies: both Billy Prior and William Rivers, the two main characters, are both way more fun than a very serious discussion of them as serious characters implies. They ARE - but I like that these are novels which are meant to be read, as well as to be analysed.
Also, I weirdly love Siegfried Sassoon in this. I like her use of real people generally (and real events, like the Pemberton Billing libel case), actually. Thoroughly recommended if you have any interest in men or war or historical novels or queerness at all. Oh, or mental illness. This is one of the very few books I can think of with a queer mentally ill person as a major character who is supposed to be sympathetic!
- Shinju by Laura Joh Rowland
I nabbed this one because it is a murder mystery set in 17th century Japan, with a samurai as the detective. Enjoyable and interesting - there is definitely a level on which it's clearly written for people who know nothing about the period, but since that includes me I am not going to whine too much about it. My main complaint was that the main character's initial reason for suspecting murder (even though the reader KNOWS it's murder) is kind of rubbish and arbitrary - I would have liked longer where he's not sure, I think. Otherwise this is good alternative murder mystery fare.
- Love Letters by Katie Fforde
I was lent this on the argument that it was about a book nerd and I'd like that. It actual fact I found it excruciatingly embarrassing. I just... you DON'T ask a celebrity author hideously awful personal questions AT A Q&A SESSION AT A CON. NO. NO. NO. NO. ESPECIALLY not when someone you are supposedly friends with might have had sex with said celebrity author AND said celebrity author is their favourite author ever wot they did their dissertation on. NO NO NO NO NO. NOT ENOUGH NO IN THE WORLD.
- Death of a Dude
Apparently I was on a murder mystery kick this month even more than usual, and I couldn't remember if I'd read this or not. I had, but it was still fun. Wolfe actually treks out into the middle of nowhere, Montana, and eats trout! For Archie! Also, I had forgotten that Lily refers to herself as a "dudine", which I rather like.
- The Family Trade by Charles Stross
I like Stross a lot, so I finally gave this a chance, despite me thinking it would not be my thing at all. (If only because Stross is all SF and this sounded like an ill-advised nosedive into bad fantasy.) But no, this book about a woman who finds out she's actually quasi-royalty from an alternate universe is really fun. I love that the heroine does what she does well because she has good business sense. Oh, and bothers to be nice to other women. This was actually really refreshing and generally WAY more fun in execution than I had dared to hope.
(It does have a little bit of Stross' patented theory-dropping, where a character talks a bunch of theory and how it works in practice. But I like how Stross does that, and this actually has a minimum of it.)
- Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
This is an oral history of recent life in North Korea, as told/interpreted by the current Beijing bureau chief of the LA Times. I had been told that this was the book to get if I was interested in what ordinary people are like in North Korea, and it REALLY REALLY IS. (Er, in the absence of being able to read Korean: I would imagine there're more options if you can!) This is both harrowing and heart-warming and informative, and it manages most of that by being very straightforward.
I would have liked a little more first-person, or at least a little more explanation of what she was actually told by the people whose stories she features here and what gaps she's filling in. But it is generally pretty good at pointing out that even the variety she covers probably doesn't cover everything, that there are SO many things that we don't have any reliable information on that it's all practically hearsay. She is also very careful not to be judge-y: I mean, not that she gives the Kims equal weighting or whatever, but some of the people she talks about did things which could be considered pretty bad, by a lot of standards. They are absolutely compelling, though. The doctor's story in particular really got to me. If you have any interest in North Korea or life under extreme conditions at all, you need this book.
-Short Stories and Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell
These are funny murder mysteries where the point is that the reader doesn't know if Hilary Tamar, the detective, is male or female or other. That could be very gimicky - especially since some bits are set up so that you think about how they might be different depending on how you see Hilary and their gender. But it's actually very smoothly and engagingly done. Hilary is a hilarious narrator, and the style and the way it's all very arch and snarky appealed to me. Like: "The truth is, I think, that she did not, in her heart of hearts, really believe in income tax. It was a subject which she had studied for examinations and on which she had thereafter advised a number of clients: she naturally did not suppose, in these circumstances, that it had anything to do with real life." LOL! Very good fun.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/87990.html. Please comment there using OpenID.