Achtung Booklog
I am revoltingly behind. Let's say no more about it.
31. Resenting the Hero, Moira J. Moore - Fantasy romance that tries to do the “we hate each other! By which we mean we secretly LOVE each other!” thing-but without much spark. I like how queer-friendly Moore's world is, but other than that there's not much that's terribly original about it. I wasn't interested in the plot, the setting, or the characters. However well-intentioned a work may be-and I think this one is full of good intentions-if you can't make me care, well. I'm going to read something else.
32. Boom!, Mark Haddon - Snazzy kids' sci-fi by the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. This was actually written before the book that made Haddon famous, but it's been reworked and repackaged-rather snazzily there, too. I liked how Haddon played off the typical kids' fear of no one-all those foolish adults!-believing them. I also really liked the realistically imperfect sibling relationship he portrays. I don't think this book has a ton of crossover appeal, but fans of the Hitchhiker's Guide will enjoy reading it with their kids-and I'll enjoy recommending it to them, too.
33. Al Capone Does My Shirts, Gennifer Choldenko - Kids’ historical fiction with a rather genius premise: 12-year-old baseball fanatic Moose has to move to the island of Alcatraz with his family because his father has gotten a job there as a prison guard. I loved the descriptions of the setting and this time in the island’s history, in which it played host to families as well as some of the country’s most dangerous criminals. (If you’re lucky enough to have visited the facility, as I was, this will seem even more unbelievable, although it’s true.) Moose’s relationship with his autistic sister, Natalie (who due to the time period is additionally burdened by not being able to be given a proper diagnosis) seemed to me accurate and moving. The shenanigans with the warden’s daughter were, however, of less interest to me, and I was frankly unnerved by how quickly the possible sexual molestation plot was dropped (even if it was borne entirely out of Moose’s fears). All in all, this is something I’m glad I read so I can recommend it to kids more than a book I personally relished.
34. The Innocence of Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton - Chesterton is perhaps best known for his Father Brown stories, so I was deeply disappointed to find that they represent him at his preachy, intolerant worst. If I’d started here, instead of with the wonderfully weird and delightfully dark The Man Who Was Thursday and The Napoleon of Notting Hill, I would have had no desire to pick up anything by Chesterton again. All of these stories seem to revolve around the irritatingly smug Father Brown proving that some type of non-Christian is wrong wrong WRONG about everything, the poor, deluded, and occasionally murderous souls.
Aside from being pious, preachy, and at times outright racist, these tales also just aren’t very good from the detective story standpoint, either. The Sherlock Holmes stories continue to be fascinating because Holmes is, because his relationship with Watson is, because the way he interacts with the world is. Father Brown’s character has less color than his name, and although Chesterton makes the occasional attempt at providing him with a sidekick, he’s never truly given anyone to confide in or bounce off of, as Holmes has in Watson. Father Brown is lost without his Boswell. And he can stay there, as far as I’m concerned.
35. Eternal, Cynthia Leitich Smith - Cynthia Leitich Smith read all that hoopla about angels being the new vampires and wings supplanting fangs as the primacy source of teen wangst, and she was like, “Whatever, bitches, I GOT BOTH.” She’s also got a sense of humor, which really, really helps a lot. Eternal features a guardian angel named Zachary, the highlight of whose life existence is “shower time” with his charge Miranda naked under the spray-at least until, whoopsidaisy, he lets Miranda get turned into a vamp. Pervy angels, legitimately murderous vampires: this book is just dark and twisted enough for me to enjoy it. Not love it-the ending gets mawkish and preachy in a way I could really do without-but I was amused. That’s really all I’m asking for with these things, anyway.
...Okay, all right, truthfully, it’s not. I really do want an epic supernatural love story, one that’s funny and dark and sexy and badass and that lacks the ooky gender stereotypes that are so prevalent in most teen fiction (though not this book, mostly, thank whatever). I want one of these silly books with their designed-by-Hot-Topic covers to make me feel like a good episode of Buffy could back in the day, like the world is something beautiful and tragic and still, somehow, worth fighting for-especially in a sleek leather jacket and kicky boots. That’s what I want, what I’m asking for every time I pick one of these things up.
But I have learned to take amusement.
36. The Piano Teacher, Janice Y.K. Lee - Historical fiction, covering the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II. Those aspects of the story were fascinating to me-I've read tons of WWII stories, but never one that covered this region. Lee's descriptions of life during the occupation are vivid and harrowing; she does a fantastic job realistically portraying the many ways people come together and fall apart under such horrific circumstances.
Unfortunately, as seems to be de rigueur for this sort of book these days, there's also a more modern component, and a *~*mystery*~* to be uncovered. This portion of the book, and even more notably the way the two relate, is much weaker. It doesn't help that, after everything, the BIG SECRET is revealed in such a hum-drum way. It's sort of as if the end of The Empire Strikes Back had gone like this:
Lando Calrissian invites Chewbacca and C-3PO to tea.
Lando: So, I heard that Vader is Luke's father.
C-3PO: I say!
Lando: Hey, just thought you should know.
Chewie: Rowarrrk!
But yes! The occupation scenes are seriously great, even if they don't have any Wookies in them. This is Lee's first novel, and it's got a lot to recommend it for a debut. I'll definitely be checking out her next one.
37. Achtung Baby, Stephen Catanzarite - I almost gave this two stars because I like the album so much, but ultimately I'm giving it one because I like the album so very much, and it deserves better. Catanzarite’s feeble analysis is sexist and proselytizing in the precise way that U2 is (99 percent of the time) not. I suspect we are not actually listening to the same album. Example one: Catanzarite fails to see (or possibly, desperately ignores) the intense homoeroticism of “Until the End of the World,” casting it as a conversation between a man and a woman instead of Jesus and Judas. COME ON. This is a song that, when they perform it, Bono and the Edge practically make out.
This is one of the tamer versions:
That is two men miming fucking with a guitar in the middle.
Whatever. Catanzarite can keep his version of this album; mine’s a lot more fun.
38. Union Atlantic, Adam Haslett - This book’s kind of a hard sell. “A novel about the financial crisis! Oh joy!” On top of the subject matter, it’s one of those books about a lot of unpleasant people being unpleasant to each other, so although it was deftly done, it’s definitely a book that I appreciated more than one that I enjoyed. Worth reading, by only if you’re in a very serious “Oh, ain’t modern society awful” mood.
39. Angel Time, Anne Rice - New to the list of things Misha Collins has made me do: read an Anne Rice book. I really never thought I would do that again. Even at the height of my Buffy-induced vamp craze, I didn't care for Rice; I dragged myself yawning through Interview With the Vampire. Of course, Rice'd probably just tell me that means I was interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. I do have to thank you for that one, Anne: that meme never gets old.
But then Anne Rice found God, and I found Supernatural's Castiel, and suddenly both of us were worshiping things that are at least vaguely angel-shaped. As much as I mocked Rice's new book for its ridiculous title (“Is it Thursday? Oh goody”-brandishes book-“it be angel tiem nao”), I also sort of wanted to read it. The angel in Angel Time, the internet informed me, is described as having dark hair and bright blue eyes-just like Castiel! The human he saves from perdition himself is a self-hating blond assassin-close enough to Dean for government work and/or idle fantasies. Hello, hilarious assassin AU in convenient “I can read it on the bus” book form!
The novel itself is actually not hilarious at all-it may be, in fact, one of the most self-serious books I've ever read. And yet...it's also not bad. Most of the narrative involves not-Cas sending not-Dean to save a medieval Jewish family from being falsely accused of murder. I didn't care about this part, particularly, especially not in contrast to the interesting glimmers of not-Cas and not-Dean's burgeoning relationship: not-Cas watched him grow up, watched all the tragedy in his life unfold, felt what he felt! It's kind of fabulously over the top, and I know that if I slashed it, Anne Rice would bring the whole internet down upon my head. I will not be posting this review on Amazon.com.
Seriously, though: I'm very aware that I am interrogating this text from the wrong perspective. I am not getting what Anne Rice likely wants me to get out of it at all. I'm okay with that, though. Hopefully, given time and the better angels of her nature, Anne herself will come around.
40. Spooky Little Girl, Laurie Notaro - Oh, this is bad. Familiar, old-fashioned, college creative writing course bad. The plot makes no sense, the characterization is thin or muddled, and the prose ranges from workmanlike to borderline incompetent. For example, here is one page (p. 239) of dialogue attributions:
Isis explained
Nola gave in
Nola said sharply
Isis investigated (this one’s totally my favorite!)
Isis continued
Nola confirmed
the psychic requested
Nola replied
Isis queried
“I think someone needed a more thorough editor,” Trin said. But anyway, the plot! Our heroine is Lucy Fisher-supposedly a free spirit, although when we meet her she’s living in a dull split level, engaged to a dull man, and working as a dental hygienist. (What a wild woman!) The book opens with Lucy coming back from a Hawaiian vacation on which she’s spent her entire inheritance and had a mostly miserable time to discover that her fiancé has kicked her out of the house with no explanation. The next morning, she is fired from her job for stealing and for failing a drug test. Then when she goes to stay with her sister to get away from it all, she is immediately hit by a bus and dies.
I don’t think I am out of line in suggesting that this is, perhaps, a little much? Especially considering that the plot of the book does not involve the gods being angry at Lucy and taking their vengeance upon her.
No, instead she has to go to ghost school, where many chapters are required for Lucy and her fellow students to learn a bunch of skills that Patrick Swayze figured out over the course of a fun montage. Lucy picks up all the stereotypical haunting tricks, and is even given the option of getting kitted out in whatever ghost gear might suit her fancy (woman in white? old-timey hooker? the choice is yours!). However, she is also instructed that she’s not supposed to frighten whoever she’s sent to haunt, she’s supposed to help them. If she scares them too much, she could get sucked into the white light, which is actually a portal to eternal torment. Then why is she being taught how to scare people, one might ask? Beats me!
Wait, no it doesn’t: it’s because without this sequence, the book would have no middle. We’d have to rush right on to the final third, wherein Lucy mildly torments and is mildly tormented by her personality-free ex-fiancé’s cartoonishly awful new girlfriend, who is also the woman who got Lucy fired (...right). Then the book ends and Lucy finally gets to move on to The State, which sounds just like Earth only you’re dead and get to eat as much brownie batter as you want. (This is the same State, by the way, that was frequently claimed to be “indescribable” to anyone who asked.) Was Lucy supposed to learn anything from this? Isn’t she supposed to be some sort of higher being now? I’m sorry, but I can’t trust any “higher being” whose idea of paradise involves raw brownie batter. Cookie dough maybe, but I’ve dipped many the wooden spoon and trust me, raw brownie batter is not worth dying for.
Sorry, this is probably a much more scathing review than this book truly deserves: it’s bad, but it’s not offensive-or at least no more offensive than any other bad published book. However, I read it as a favor to a friend, and he’s going to ask me about it, and I am going to have to equivocate so much. Best get the brutal honesty out of my system now, then, before I have to start practicing all the phrases I used in my actual college creative writing class, where we weren’t allowed to say anything mean.
Ahem.
“Gosh, Notaro sure was trying for something interesting with this!”
Total Reviews: 40/197 omg dear lord fuck fuck fuckity sweet jesus christ
Er. I mean, that’s totally doable, right?
31. Resenting the Hero, Moira J. Moore - Fantasy romance that tries to do the “we hate each other! By which we mean we secretly LOVE each other!” thing-but without much spark. I like how queer-friendly Moore's world is, but other than that there's not much that's terribly original about it. I wasn't interested in the plot, the setting, or the characters. However well-intentioned a work may be-and I think this one is full of good intentions-if you can't make me care, well. I'm going to read something else.
32. Boom!, Mark Haddon - Snazzy kids' sci-fi by the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. This was actually written before the book that made Haddon famous, but it's been reworked and repackaged-rather snazzily there, too. I liked how Haddon played off the typical kids' fear of no one-all those foolish adults!-believing them. I also really liked the realistically imperfect sibling relationship he portrays. I don't think this book has a ton of crossover appeal, but fans of the Hitchhiker's Guide will enjoy reading it with their kids-and I'll enjoy recommending it to them, too.
33. Al Capone Does My Shirts, Gennifer Choldenko - Kids’ historical fiction with a rather genius premise: 12-year-old baseball fanatic Moose has to move to the island of Alcatraz with his family because his father has gotten a job there as a prison guard. I loved the descriptions of the setting and this time in the island’s history, in which it played host to families as well as some of the country’s most dangerous criminals. (If you’re lucky enough to have visited the facility, as I was, this will seem even more unbelievable, although it’s true.) Moose’s relationship with his autistic sister, Natalie (who due to the time period is additionally burdened by not being able to be given a proper diagnosis) seemed to me accurate and moving. The shenanigans with the warden’s daughter were, however, of less interest to me, and I was frankly unnerved by how quickly the possible sexual molestation plot was dropped (even if it was borne entirely out of Moose’s fears). All in all, this is something I’m glad I read so I can recommend it to kids more than a book I personally relished.
34. The Innocence of Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton - Chesterton is perhaps best known for his Father Brown stories, so I was deeply disappointed to find that they represent him at his preachy, intolerant worst. If I’d started here, instead of with the wonderfully weird and delightfully dark The Man Who Was Thursday and The Napoleon of Notting Hill, I would have had no desire to pick up anything by Chesterton again. All of these stories seem to revolve around the irritatingly smug Father Brown proving that some type of non-Christian is wrong wrong WRONG about everything, the poor, deluded, and occasionally murderous souls.
Aside from being pious, preachy, and at times outright racist, these tales also just aren’t very good from the detective story standpoint, either. The Sherlock Holmes stories continue to be fascinating because Holmes is, because his relationship with Watson is, because the way he interacts with the world is. Father Brown’s character has less color than his name, and although Chesterton makes the occasional attempt at providing him with a sidekick, he’s never truly given anyone to confide in or bounce off of, as Holmes has in Watson. Father Brown is lost without his Boswell. And he can stay there, as far as I’m concerned.
35. Eternal, Cynthia Leitich Smith - Cynthia Leitich Smith read all that hoopla about angels being the new vampires and wings supplanting fangs as the primacy source of teen wangst, and she was like, “Whatever, bitches, I GOT BOTH.” She’s also got a sense of humor, which really, really helps a lot. Eternal features a guardian angel named Zachary, the highlight of whose life existence is “shower time” with his charge Miranda naked under the spray-at least until, whoopsidaisy, he lets Miranda get turned into a vamp. Pervy angels, legitimately murderous vampires: this book is just dark and twisted enough for me to enjoy it. Not love it-the ending gets mawkish and preachy in a way I could really do without-but I was amused. That’s really all I’m asking for with these things, anyway.
...Okay, all right, truthfully, it’s not. I really do want an epic supernatural love story, one that’s funny and dark and sexy and badass and that lacks the ooky gender stereotypes that are so prevalent in most teen fiction (though not this book, mostly, thank whatever). I want one of these silly books with their designed-by-Hot-Topic covers to make me feel like a good episode of Buffy could back in the day, like the world is something beautiful and tragic and still, somehow, worth fighting for-especially in a sleek leather jacket and kicky boots. That’s what I want, what I’m asking for every time I pick one of these things up.
But I have learned to take amusement.
36. The Piano Teacher, Janice Y.K. Lee - Historical fiction, covering the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong during World War II. Those aspects of the story were fascinating to me-I've read tons of WWII stories, but never one that covered this region. Lee's descriptions of life during the occupation are vivid and harrowing; she does a fantastic job realistically portraying the many ways people come together and fall apart under such horrific circumstances.
Unfortunately, as seems to be de rigueur for this sort of book these days, there's also a more modern component, and a *~*mystery*~* to be uncovered. This portion of the book, and even more notably the way the two relate, is much weaker. It doesn't help that, after everything, the BIG SECRET is revealed in such a hum-drum way. It's sort of as if the end of The Empire Strikes Back had gone like this:
Lando Calrissian invites Chewbacca and C-3PO to tea.
Lando: So, I heard that Vader is Luke's father.
C-3PO: I say!
Lando: Hey, just thought you should know.
Chewie: Rowarrrk!
But yes! The occupation scenes are seriously great, even if they don't have any Wookies in them. This is Lee's first novel, and it's got a lot to recommend it for a debut. I'll definitely be checking out her next one.
37. Achtung Baby, Stephen Catanzarite - I almost gave this two stars because I like the album so much, but ultimately I'm giving it one because I like the album so very much, and it deserves better. Catanzarite’s feeble analysis is sexist and proselytizing in the precise way that U2 is (99 percent of the time) not. I suspect we are not actually listening to the same album. Example one: Catanzarite fails to see (or possibly, desperately ignores) the intense homoeroticism of “Until the End of the World,” casting it as a conversation between a man and a woman instead of Jesus and Judas. COME ON. This is a song that, when they perform it, Bono and the Edge practically make out.
This is one of the tamer versions:
Click to viewThat is two men miming fucking with a guitar in the middle.
Whatever. Catanzarite can keep his version of this album; mine’s a lot more fun.
38. Union Atlantic, Adam Haslett - This book’s kind of a hard sell. “A novel about the financial crisis! Oh joy!” On top of the subject matter, it’s one of those books about a lot of unpleasant people being unpleasant to each other, so although it was deftly done, it’s definitely a book that I appreciated more than one that I enjoyed. Worth reading, by only if you’re in a very serious “Oh, ain’t modern society awful” mood.
39. Angel Time, Anne Rice - New to the list of things Misha Collins has made me do: read an Anne Rice book. I really never thought I would do that again. Even at the height of my Buffy-induced vamp craze, I didn't care for Rice; I dragged myself yawning through Interview With the Vampire. Of course, Rice'd probably just tell me that means I was interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. I do have to thank you for that one, Anne: that meme never gets old.
But then Anne Rice found God, and I found Supernatural's Castiel, and suddenly both of us were worshiping things that are at least vaguely angel-shaped. As much as I mocked Rice's new book for its ridiculous title (“Is it Thursday? Oh goody”-brandishes book-“it be angel tiem nao”), I also sort of wanted to read it. The angel in Angel Time, the internet informed me, is described as having dark hair and bright blue eyes-just like Castiel! The human he saves from perdition himself is a self-hating blond assassin-close enough to Dean for government work and/or idle fantasies. Hello, hilarious assassin AU in convenient “I can read it on the bus” book form!
The novel itself is actually not hilarious at all-it may be, in fact, one of the most self-serious books I've ever read. And yet...it's also not bad. Most of the narrative involves not-Cas sending not-Dean to save a medieval Jewish family from being falsely accused of murder. I didn't care about this part, particularly, especially not in contrast to the interesting glimmers of not-Cas and not-Dean's burgeoning relationship: not-Cas watched him grow up, watched all the tragedy in his life unfold, felt what he felt! It's kind of fabulously over the top, and I know that if I slashed it, Anne Rice would bring the whole internet down upon my head. I will not be posting this review on Amazon.com.
Seriously, though: I'm very aware that I am interrogating this text from the wrong perspective. I am not getting what Anne Rice likely wants me to get out of it at all. I'm okay with that, though. Hopefully, given time and the better angels of her nature, Anne herself will come around.
40. Spooky Little Girl, Laurie Notaro - Oh, this is bad. Familiar, old-fashioned, college creative writing course bad. The plot makes no sense, the characterization is thin or muddled, and the prose ranges from workmanlike to borderline incompetent. For example, here is one page (p. 239) of dialogue attributions:
Isis explained
Nola gave in
Nola said sharply
Isis investigated (this one’s totally my favorite!)
Isis continued
Nola confirmed
the psychic requested
Nola replied
Isis queried
“I think someone needed a more thorough editor,” Trin said. But anyway, the plot! Our heroine is Lucy Fisher-supposedly a free spirit, although when we meet her she’s living in a dull split level, engaged to a dull man, and working as a dental hygienist. (What a wild woman!) The book opens with Lucy coming back from a Hawaiian vacation on which she’s spent her entire inheritance and had a mostly miserable time to discover that her fiancé has kicked her out of the house with no explanation. The next morning, she is fired from her job for stealing and for failing a drug test. Then when she goes to stay with her sister to get away from it all, she is immediately hit by a bus and dies.
I don’t think I am out of line in suggesting that this is, perhaps, a little much? Especially considering that the plot of the book does not involve the gods being angry at Lucy and taking their vengeance upon her.
No, instead she has to go to ghost school, where many chapters are required for Lucy and her fellow students to learn a bunch of skills that Patrick Swayze figured out over the course of a fun montage. Lucy picks up all the stereotypical haunting tricks, and is even given the option of getting kitted out in whatever ghost gear might suit her fancy (woman in white? old-timey hooker? the choice is yours!). However, she is also instructed that she’s not supposed to frighten whoever she’s sent to haunt, she’s supposed to help them. If she scares them too much, she could get sucked into the white light, which is actually a portal to eternal torment. Then why is she being taught how to scare people, one might ask? Beats me!
Wait, no it doesn’t: it’s because without this sequence, the book would have no middle. We’d have to rush right on to the final third, wherein Lucy mildly torments and is mildly tormented by her personality-free ex-fiancé’s cartoonishly awful new girlfriend, who is also the woman who got Lucy fired (...right). Then the book ends and Lucy finally gets to move on to The State, which sounds just like Earth only you’re dead and get to eat as much brownie batter as you want. (This is the same State, by the way, that was frequently claimed to be “indescribable” to anyone who asked.) Was Lucy supposed to learn anything from this? Isn’t she supposed to be some sort of higher being now? I’m sorry, but I can’t trust any “higher being” whose idea of paradise involves raw brownie batter. Cookie dough maybe, but I’ve dipped many the wooden spoon and trust me, raw brownie batter is not worth dying for.
Sorry, this is probably a much more scathing review than this book truly deserves: it’s bad, but it’s not offensive-or at least no more offensive than any other bad published book. However, I read it as a favor to a friend, and he’s going to ask me about it, and I am going to have to equivocate so much. Best get the brutal honesty out of my system now, then, before I have to start practicing all the phrases I used in my actual college creative writing class, where we weren’t allowed to say anything mean.
Ahem.
“Gosh, Notaro sure was trying for something interesting with this!”
Total Reviews: 40/197 omg dear lord fuck fuck fuckity sweet jesus christ
Er. I mean, that’s totally doable, right?