Booklog 2: Rearranging the landscape of literature with a tractor
I read quite a lot this month; I had a bit more time on public transport etc than I was expecting, and also, yay books. I am not going to finish my current book by tomorrow, and also I need SOMETHING to do while I can’t watch the series premiere of The Americans! (Soon, my pretty, soooooon.)
So, booklog.
- A Cold Blooded Business, Play With Fire, Blood Will Tell and Breakup by Dana Stabenow
I am really loving these murder mysteries about Kate Shugak, an Aleut woman living in Alaska being awesome and kicking badguy ass. If these were typical noir mysteries, she’s the cynical wiseass hero who all the eyecandy in the bar try to chat up just before the shootout happens, but they’re not! And that’s great! So she’s not actually as cynical as all that, there’s a decent sense of the ridiculous, she has actual family and friends and even better? As this series goes on, stuff actually changes.
No, really. A major character died (not violently either) and as a result Kate’s role in the Park is changing. Her relationship with Jack is changing. She writes “private investigator” on her taxes for the first time and I actually sniffled! She’s getting more and more involved in running the Native politics of the Park, not just observing it. The way that the Native Association interacts with the other Alaskan issues is really interesting to me, and I think that’s being done better and better as the series goes on. And even other people who are not Kate make changes in their lives which matter. I love that too. These aren’t perfect novels - they’re sometimes a little overwritten, and there are probably criticisms of the Alaskan politics stuff that I don’t know enough to make - but man, they do something I’ve not really seen anywhere else. Plus, they’re fun, and getting more so. Bring it on.
(Oh, I will say that after the ridiculous - like, highlightedly ridiculous, ‘a plane fell on her house and then she was attacked by like four different bears and then got in MULTIPLE shootouts and then went on a rampage in a tractor with a murderer’ ridiculous - level of trauma in Breakup, including the only time I’ve seen a fictional character just Have Enough OMFG World Stop It, there had better be ongoing consequences. I trust there will be. But I’ve got my eye open, heh.)
- Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
This is a bok where fictionalised scenes from Soviet history are then talked about non-fictionally and with lots of references and footnotes. (Footnotes! And descriptions about what exactly he’s made up and what he hasn’t! You may guess at this point I really liked this book.) It’s described as the history of an idea - the idea that a planned economy is possible - and it is. But it’s much more rooted in people than that kind of implies. The aim is to talk about what the Soviet dream even was - what Communism meant to people who believed in it, who lived it, who tried to make that happen. Because it’s about the USSR, it’s also about the experience of that dream going horribly wrong.
My favourite thing about it is that it’s written very clearly from the point of view of the people involved: people who didn’t KNOW it was going to go horribly wrong. It’s got the fundamental view that things could have been different. I find that beautifully refreshing and more than that, it feels a lot more intellectually honest to me. It’s a way of addressing the subject matter that isn’t about Who Was Right (although it does say that the Communists weren’t, in some fundamentals, necessarily wrong), but about treating different perspectives with respect. And it does that without ever making excuses or forgetting the terrible things that happened in the name of that Soviet ideal. I found it completely compelling.
- Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
I think the fantastic
lamentables recced this to me ages ago, and it was indeed awesome. It’s epic fantasy set in a medieval-China-esque world rather than a medieval-Europe inspired one, and it’s executed well. I didn’t feel as emotionally engaged with it as much as I hoped - I think because the main love story involves a trope I am not a huge fan of. The secondary love story was ace though! I wanted more of that, and also for it not to end the way that it did because they were more interesting to me than the teenagers.
However there’s relatively little of the romance really, and I did enjoy all the secret clans and slinking around making yourself invisible and stuff. I will probably read more in this series - which I was surprised to discover existed, because this book ends like a stand-alone.
- Too Many Clients, Three Doors to Death, The Mother Hunt, and The Second Confession
A bunch of Rex Stout this month, that kind of really makes me want to write a story that makes sense of the weird timeline stuff, except that I have no real idea how. Because the aging is seriously whack.
I love the conceit of Too Many Clients, but it does have a really disturbing domestic violence scene that I am Not Okay with. (And even more specifically, I am Not Okay with Archie’s reaction to it, “different era” or not.) I liked the rest of it enough that I’m not going to give up on the series, but it did leave a really bad taste in my mouth and also make me think that the book needs trigger warnings at least. And Archie needs some home truths telling, omg.
Actually, he and probably Wolfe needs some truth telling in The Second Confession too, because daaaayum does Archie hate Communists! Come on, dude. I get you disagree, and also you are American and so there’s a whole lot of pressure on you to hate Communists, but being surprised that the Communists actually look like normal people? Seriously? I am choosing to go with Archie-as-author-is-being-an-ass there. Possibly because of the Zeck business, which is… really well done, actually. I do like the Zeck storyline. I suspect Stout went, well, Moriarty is epic but barely mentioned in the original canon, so I am going to have mine rather more an actual presence. And then did.
The Mother Hunt is mostly notable for the hilarious premise (Archie and Wolfe have to find a baby’s mother!) and also Archie getting involved with a mum. Well, adopted mum. I kind of get the feeling Archie’s weird issues wouldn’t let him get involved with a woman who had actually carried and given birth to a child. Too much icky ladybusiness, I suspect.
Three Doors to Death was probably my favourite, because Wolfe leaving the house is always epic! And this time Theodore had personal Stuff and there were actual personnel issues! My favourite stuff is always the domestic drama, and that made me happy.
- A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar
This is a fantasy novel about falling in love with words, and how those words are us and we are words and our culture and history can’t be separated from that. In it, a boy learns to read, and to appreciate a culture not his own, and his life is changed forever. It is way closer to prose-poetry than I usually read, but I really liked it; I thought it was beautiful. I was kind of surprised, because I was not a fan of the Cathryne Valente I’ve read and that’s what this seemed closest to in a bunch of ways. I guess the difference is that what with Valente read to me as purple prose of anvilliciousness, with Samatar read to me as poetry. You can’t quantify that, and I wouldn’t try. I would sure as hell read more by her though.
- The Woodvilles by Susan Higginbotham
This is one of those books on history that feels more like the author explaining how clever they are? Which I can usually handle fine as long as they’re saying interesting things in a readable way. This one… kind of wasn’t. I was hoping for interesting stuff about life as different Woodvilles might have experienced it, and, nope. There was a bit of that, but I felt way more like the author wrote it to vent about Richard III and how much she thinks he was a terrible person who murdered his wife and everybody did the poor Woodvilles wrong. She makes a decent case for the Woodvilles having some untrue rumours spread about them, and also for Richard having a ruthless streak, but she basically seems to think that is proof of all this other stuff. One does not necessarily follow from the other, lady. Plus, if you’re using ‘might have subsequently wanted to marry again’ as evidence, you’d better prove that that’s not, y’know, what any windowed monarch at the time would be expected to do.
I did at least finish this one, but it is not that well written and not doing what I wanted it to. So the search continues.
- Emily of New Moon by LM Montgomery
I discovered that this was a Montgomery I hadn’t previously read, up for grabs on Gutenberg Australia! So I went and had a read, because LM Montgomery is childhood to me and also a reliable quick lunchtime read of fluffy fun. Oh and wanting to go to Prince Edward Island.
Emily isn’t as funny as the Anne books, but her badly-spelt letters to her dad do have a certain similarity of charm. I enjoyed it. Emily herself is ace, and the whole thing was very cute. Well, up til the implication that her DAD’S FRIEND WHO LET ME BE VERY CLEAR WAS FRIENDS WITH HER DAD AND IS HER DAD’S AGE fancies her. Luckily nothing happened with that, and in my head there is no way in hell Emily grows up to marry him, but ew. Luckily that guy was not in it very much at all and I could ignore it to enjoy the New Moon stuff instead, but yeah. I am much more on the ‘Emily grows up and writes brilliant scathingly hilarious novels about whatever she wants to’ train.
In a non-book related note, Brooklyn Nine-Nine quietly did something really radical that I love in the latest episode. It just had an episode where all three storylines ended with the women being right. Not with any moralising or anything, but it didn’t need to: it just had three storylines where the solution was, the woman was right and ought to have been given more respect in the first place for being capable of being right. Jake took out his petulance on Gina, and was wrong. (And Gina was amazing and I love that they grew up together and that Jake acknowledged that she deserved the flat more than he currently did.) Santiago was totally a good cop and while she did need to learn to stand up for her own opinion, Holt was kind of mean in how he did that. And Rosa and Boyle had a loooooovely friendship thing because Boyle stopped being creepy at her and apologised for it. Like, properly. I LOVE THAT SO MUCH. I kind of love that the solution to Boyle being Boyle was for him to fall in love with a woman who is just as Boyle-y in the important ways as he is. And I love that Rosa was annoyed at the shaving dude for being too perfect! I love it so much. I am having way too much fun watching this show.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/131854.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
So, booklog.
- A Cold Blooded Business, Play With Fire, Blood Will Tell and Breakup by Dana Stabenow
I am really loving these murder mysteries about Kate Shugak, an Aleut woman living in Alaska being awesome and kicking badguy ass. If these were typical noir mysteries, she’s the cynical wiseass hero who all the eyecandy in the bar try to chat up just before the shootout happens, but they’re not! And that’s great! So she’s not actually as cynical as all that, there’s a decent sense of the ridiculous, she has actual family and friends and even better? As this series goes on, stuff actually changes.
No, really. A major character died (not violently either) and as a result Kate’s role in the Park is changing. Her relationship with Jack is changing. She writes “private investigator” on her taxes for the first time and I actually sniffled! She’s getting more and more involved in running the Native politics of the Park, not just observing it. The way that the Native Association interacts with the other Alaskan issues is really interesting to me, and I think that’s being done better and better as the series goes on. And even other people who are not Kate make changes in their lives which matter. I love that too. These aren’t perfect novels - they’re sometimes a little overwritten, and there are probably criticisms of the Alaskan politics stuff that I don’t know enough to make - but man, they do something I’ve not really seen anywhere else. Plus, they’re fun, and getting more so. Bring it on.
(Oh, I will say that after the ridiculous - like, highlightedly ridiculous, ‘a plane fell on her house and then she was attacked by like four different bears and then got in MULTIPLE shootouts and then went on a rampage in a tractor with a murderer’ ridiculous - level of trauma in Breakup, including the only time I’ve seen a fictional character just Have Enough OMFG World Stop It, there had better be ongoing consequences. I trust there will be. But I’ve got my eye open, heh.)
- Red Plenty by Francis Spufford
This is a bok where fictionalised scenes from Soviet history are then talked about non-fictionally and with lots of references and footnotes. (Footnotes! And descriptions about what exactly he’s made up and what he hasn’t! You may guess at this point I really liked this book.) It’s described as the history of an idea - the idea that a planned economy is possible - and it is. But it’s much more rooted in people than that kind of implies. The aim is to talk about what the Soviet dream even was - what Communism meant to people who believed in it, who lived it, who tried to make that happen. Because it’s about the USSR, it’s also about the experience of that dream going horribly wrong.
My favourite thing about it is that it’s written very clearly from the point of view of the people involved: people who didn’t KNOW it was going to go horribly wrong. It’s got the fundamental view that things could have been different. I find that beautifully refreshing and more than that, it feels a lot more intellectually honest to me. It’s a way of addressing the subject matter that isn’t about Who Was Right (although it does say that the Communists weren’t, in some fundamentals, necessarily wrong), but about treating different perspectives with respect. And it does that without ever making excuses or forgetting the terrible things that happened in the name of that Soviet ideal. I found it completely compelling.
- Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
I think the fantastic
lamentables recced this to me ages ago, and it was indeed awesome. It’s epic fantasy set in a medieval-China-esque world rather than a medieval-Europe inspired one, and it’s executed well. I didn’t feel as emotionally engaged with it as much as I hoped - I think because the main love story involves a trope I am not a huge fan of. The secondary love story was ace though! I wanted more of that, and also for it not to end the way that it did because they were more interesting to me than the teenagers.
However there’s relatively little of the romance really, and I did enjoy all the secret clans and slinking around making yourself invisible and stuff. I will probably read more in this series - which I was surprised to discover existed, because this book ends like a stand-alone.
- Too Many Clients, Three Doors to Death, The Mother Hunt, and The Second Confession
A bunch of Rex Stout this month, that kind of really makes me want to write a story that makes sense of the weird timeline stuff, except that I have no real idea how. Because the aging is seriously whack.
I love the conceit of Too Many Clients, but it does have a really disturbing domestic violence scene that I am Not Okay with. (And even more specifically, I am Not Okay with Archie’s reaction to it, “different era” or not.) I liked the rest of it enough that I’m not going to give up on the series, but it did leave a really bad taste in my mouth and also make me think that the book needs trigger warnings at least. And Archie needs some home truths telling, omg.
Actually, he and probably Wolfe needs some truth telling in The Second Confession too, because daaaayum does Archie hate Communists! Come on, dude. I get you disagree, and also you are American and so there’s a whole lot of pressure on you to hate Communists, but being surprised that the Communists actually look like normal people? Seriously? I am choosing to go with Archie-as-author-is-being-an-ass there. Possibly because of the Zeck business, which is… really well done, actually. I do like the Zeck storyline. I suspect Stout went, well, Moriarty is epic but barely mentioned in the original canon, so I am going to have mine rather more an actual presence. And then did.
The Mother Hunt is mostly notable for the hilarious premise (Archie and Wolfe have to find a baby’s mother!) and also Archie getting involved with a mum. Well, adopted mum. I kind of get the feeling Archie’s weird issues wouldn’t let him get involved with a woman who had actually carried and given birth to a child. Too much icky ladybusiness, I suspect.
Three Doors to Death was probably my favourite, because Wolfe leaving the house is always epic! And this time Theodore had personal Stuff and there were actual personnel issues! My favourite stuff is always the domestic drama, and that made me happy.
- A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar
This is a fantasy novel about falling in love with words, and how those words are us and we are words and our culture and history can’t be separated from that. In it, a boy learns to read, and to appreciate a culture not his own, and his life is changed forever. It is way closer to prose-poetry than I usually read, but I really liked it; I thought it was beautiful. I was kind of surprised, because I was not a fan of the Cathryne Valente I’ve read and that’s what this seemed closest to in a bunch of ways. I guess the difference is that what with Valente read to me as purple prose of anvilliciousness, with Samatar read to me as poetry. You can’t quantify that, and I wouldn’t try. I would sure as hell read more by her though.
- The Woodvilles by Susan Higginbotham
This is one of those books on history that feels more like the author explaining how clever they are? Which I can usually handle fine as long as they’re saying interesting things in a readable way. This one… kind of wasn’t. I was hoping for interesting stuff about life as different Woodvilles might have experienced it, and, nope. There was a bit of that, but I felt way more like the author wrote it to vent about Richard III and how much she thinks he was a terrible person who murdered his wife and everybody did the poor Woodvilles wrong. She makes a decent case for the Woodvilles having some untrue rumours spread about them, and also for Richard having a ruthless streak, but she basically seems to think that is proof of all this other stuff. One does not necessarily follow from the other, lady. Plus, if you’re using ‘might have subsequently wanted to marry again’ as evidence, you’d better prove that that’s not, y’know, what any windowed monarch at the time would be expected to do.
I did at least finish this one, but it is not that well written and not doing what I wanted it to. So the search continues.
- Emily of New Moon by LM Montgomery
I discovered that this was a Montgomery I hadn’t previously read, up for grabs on Gutenberg Australia! So I went and had a read, because LM Montgomery is childhood to me and also a reliable quick lunchtime read of fluffy fun. Oh and wanting to go to Prince Edward Island.
Emily isn’t as funny as the Anne books, but her badly-spelt letters to her dad do have a certain similarity of charm. I enjoyed it. Emily herself is ace, and the whole thing was very cute. Well, up til the implication that her DAD’S FRIEND WHO LET ME BE VERY CLEAR WAS FRIENDS WITH HER DAD AND IS HER DAD’S AGE fancies her. Luckily nothing happened with that, and in my head there is no way in hell Emily grows up to marry him, but ew. Luckily that guy was not in it very much at all and I could ignore it to enjoy the New Moon stuff instead, but yeah. I am much more on the ‘Emily grows up and writes brilliant scathingly hilarious novels about whatever she wants to’ train.
In a non-book related note, Brooklyn Nine-Nine quietly did something really radical that I love in the latest episode. It just had an episode where all three storylines ended with the women being right. Not with any moralising or anything, but it didn’t need to: it just had three storylines where the solution was, the woman was right and ought to have been given more respect in the first place for being capable of being right. Jake took out his petulance on Gina, and was wrong. (And Gina was amazing and I love that they grew up together and that Jake acknowledged that she deserved the flat more than he currently did.) Santiago was totally a good cop and while she did need to learn to stand up for her own opinion, Holt was kind of mean in how he did that. And Rosa and Boyle had a loooooovely friendship thing because Boyle stopped being creepy at her and apologised for it. Like, properly. I LOVE THAT SO MUCH. I kind of love that the solution to Boyle being Boyle was for him to fall in love with a woman who is just as Boyle-y in the important ways as he is. And I love that Rosa was annoyed at the shaving dude for being too perfect! I love it so much. I am having way too much fun watching this show.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/131854.html. Please comment there using OpenID.