Book Blogging Catch Up
I'm SO BEHIND on this oh my god. Further attempts to catch up on my book blogging below.
Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch: The latest in the Peter Grant Rivers of London series, which felt a bit filler-y after the last book, and was distinctly lacking in Nightingale to my dismay, but Peter is one of those narrators who it's just nice to spend time with. He has such an engaging, chatty voice as a narrator, and his architecture geekery continues to charm me. In Foxglove Summer, he's in the countryside investigating a case involving a missing child rather than in London, and it's a nice change of setting. Also nice to see more of Beverly and Peter together. I really liked it, though I found the ending to be super abrupt.
Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen: I "read" this as an audiobook, and took my sweet time with it, so I don't remember the specifics of it. An interwar mystery set in London (yes, this is still the incredibly niche genre of mystery that is my favorite), it was a charmingly enough read audiobook and the down on her luck Lady Georgiana is a fun protagonist. Lady Georgiana is thirty-fourth in line for the throne and flat broke, and ends up embroiled in a mystery when a dead man is found in her family's London residence. An inoffensive mystery that is neither boring nor particularly compelling.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: Why yes, I did read this because quotes from it were showing up all over Steve/Bucky gifsets on tumblr! (Said gifsets gave me an embarrassing amount of FEELINGS, I don't wanna talk about it.) A retelling of the Iliad from Patroclus's POV, and focused on Achilles/Patroclus, this makes Achilles about 10000x more likable, and is a nice blend of historical realism and epic. I liked it, in much the same way I like especially good Greek mythology Yuletide fics. The Achilles/Patroclus relationship is rendered with directness and beauty, and I really liked Patroclus's narrative voice, though it seemed distant at first.
The President's Daugther by Ellen Emerson White: Meg Powers' mother goes from senator to president, changing Meg's entire life in the process. This book goes to some predictable places, but it does so with skill and a keen attention to character, and I ended up really liking it. Meg struggles with the new spotlight of being the First Daughter, with seeing less and less of her mother, with making friends when her new position makes her somewhat isolated. I really enjoyed this book for its clear-eyed look at the Powers family. The best YA remembers that adults are fully formed people too with their own character arcs, not just obstacles and learning opportunities for the younger protagonists, and this book is particularly good at showing that. Meg's parents have some real struggles of their own, and there's genuine friction in the family that's not reduced to melodrama or stupid miscommunications. Everyone feels very real, reacting in very real ways. I absolutely loved the depiction of the mother daughter relationship here too. Also, real talk, I ended up kind of in love with Meg's mom. President Powers is awesome.
True Pretenses by Rose Lerner: Lerner's romances are always a breath of fresh air from the overdone alpha male rakes so prevalent through the rest of the genre. Hero Ash Cohen is a conman who raised his brother Rafe who's determined to give his brother the life he wants, free of the job. Heroine Lydia Reeves is an heiress who desperately wants to help her people with her philanthropy, but her money is tied up in her dowry. Ash sees a prime opportunity to matchmake and land a big score by setting his brother up with her, but of course Lydia and Ash end up falling for each other. This is a romance that does the work of building a relationship between Ash and Lydia, rather than just relying on sexual attraction and the demands of the genre. Ash and Lydia are likable people who communicate with each other like goddamn adults for the most part. Sadly, this is kind of a rarity in the genre, so I'm always thrilled to see it. Definitely a recommended romance.
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl: I feel like this is a microgenre but I can't quite think of any other examples of it, just that there's a lot of familiarity to the shape of the story: Blue Van Meer is a precocious and very smart teenager who falls in with a clique of variously interesting and damaged teenagers at her new school, the elite St. Gallway. Said teenagers hang out with the "cool" film professor who mentors them and has secrets of her own. Blue also has a famous-ish professor dad and a dead mother. It's a fun read with a great voice, full of references to various other movies and books and such, because Blue is a lot like her erudite father. Blah blah mystery happens, coming of age, father-daughter relationships, teenagers. There's some interesting twists, but ultimately there's nothing here that will really stay with you, because if you've read one book in this microgenre, you've probably read them all.
Adventure Time Vol. 5 by Ryan North: Delightful as usual. Even if you're not a fan of Adventure Time, Ryan North's voice is strong in these, and that makes them worth picking up if you like his other work.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: A somewhat kinder, gentler take on the post-apocalypse. This is a quiet and elegiac novel about what happens after a pandemic takes out most of humanity, and it lives in the small scale. This is ultimately a very literary take on the post-apocalyptic genre, and I mean that as both praise and criticism, because if you're looking for a kicky spec-fic take, this is assuredly not it. A significant amount of the novel is set pre-apocalypse, and follows an aging actor and the people whose lives he touched in ways both large and fleeting. The post-apocalypse part is mostly focused on a traveling company of musicians and actors, whose motto is "Survival is insufficient," and who bring art and beauty to the remains of civilization. I found myself carried along by the book's gentle pace and its mingled sorrows and beauties, and while I did really like it, I could also see all the ways in which, in a different mood, I could have hated it. Still, it gets a lot of points from me for being a literary post-apocalyptic tale that isn't unrelentingly grimdark.
Okay, this post is getting long and I still have five books left. More catching up later.
This entry was originally posted at http://yasaman.dreamwidth.org/464338.html, with
comments there.
Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch: The latest in the Peter Grant Rivers of London series, which felt a bit filler-y after the last book, and was distinctly lacking in Nightingale to my dismay, but Peter is one of those narrators who it's just nice to spend time with. He has such an engaging, chatty voice as a narrator, and his architecture geekery continues to charm me. In Foxglove Summer, he's in the countryside investigating a case involving a missing child rather than in London, and it's a nice change of setting. Also nice to see more of Beverly and Peter together. I really liked it, though I found the ending to be super abrupt.
Her Royal Spyness by Rhys Bowen: I "read" this as an audiobook, and took my sweet time with it, so I don't remember the specifics of it. An interwar mystery set in London (yes, this is still the incredibly niche genre of mystery that is my favorite), it was a charmingly enough read audiobook and the down on her luck Lady Georgiana is a fun protagonist. Lady Georgiana is thirty-fourth in line for the throne and flat broke, and ends up embroiled in a mystery when a dead man is found in her family's London residence. An inoffensive mystery that is neither boring nor particularly compelling.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: Why yes, I did read this because quotes from it were showing up all over Steve/Bucky gifsets on tumblr! (Said gifsets gave me an embarrassing amount of FEELINGS, I don't wanna talk about it.) A retelling of the Iliad from Patroclus's POV, and focused on Achilles/Patroclus, this makes Achilles about 10000x more likable, and is a nice blend of historical realism and epic. I liked it, in much the same way I like especially good Greek mythology Yuletide fics. The Achilles/Patroclus relationship is rendered with directness and beauty, and I really liked Patroclus's narrative voice, though it seemed distant at first.
The President's Daugther by Ellen Emerson White: Meg Powers' mother goes from senator to president, changing Meg's entire life in the process. This book goes to some predictable places, but it does so with skill and a keen attention to character, and I ended up really liking it. Meg struggles with the new spotlight of being the First Daughter, with seeing less and less of her mother, with making friends when her new position makes her somewhat isolated. I really enjoyed this book for its clear-eyed look at the Powers family. The best YA remembers that adults are fully formed people too with their own character arcs, not just obstacles and learning opportunities for the younger protagonists, and this book is particularly good at showing that. Meg's parents have some real struggles of their own, and there's genuine friction in the family that's not reduced to melodrama or stupid miscommunications. Everyone feels very real, reacting in very real ways. I absolutely loved the depiction of the mother daughter relationship here too. Also, real talk, I ended up kind of in love with Meg's mom. President Powers is awesome.
True Pretenses by Rose Lerner: Lerner's romances are always a breath of fresh air from the overdone alpha male rakes so prevalent through the rest of the genre. Hero Ash Cohen is a conman who raised his brother Rafe who's determined to give his brother the life he wants, free of the job. Heroine Lydia Reeves is an heiress who desperately wants to help her people with her philanthropy, but her money is tied up in her dowry. Ash sees a prime opportunity to matchmake and land a big score by setting his brother up with her, but of course Lydia and Ash end up falling for each other. This is a romance that does the work of building a relationship between Ash and Lydia, rather than just relying on sexual attraction and the demands of the genre. Ash and Lydia are likable people who communicate with each other like goddamn adults for the most part. Sadly, this is kind of a rarity in the genre, so I'm always thrilled to see it. Definitely a recommended romance.
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl: I feel like this is a microgenre but I can't quite think of any other examples of it, just that there's a lot of familiarity to the shape of the story: Blue Van Meer is a precocious and very smart teenager who falls in with a clique of variously interesting and damaged teenagers at her new school, the elite St. Gallway. Said teenagers hang out with the "cool" film professor who mentors them and has secrets of her own. Blue also has a famous-ish professor dad and a dead mother. It's a fun read with a great voice, full of references to various other movies and books and such, because Blue is a lot like her erudite father. Blah blah mystery happens, coming of age, father-daughter relationships, teenagers. There's some interesting twists, but ultimately there's nothing here that will really stay with you, because if you've read one book in this microgenre, you've probably read them all.
Adventure Time Vol. 5 by Ryan North: Delightful as usual. Even if you're not a fan of Adventure Time, Ryan North's voice is strong in these, and that makes them worth picking up if you like his other work.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: A somewhat kinder, gentler take on the post-apocalypse. This is a quiet and elegiac novel about what happens after a pandemic takes out most of humanity, and it lives in the small scale. This is ultimately a very literary take on the post-apocalyptic genre, and I mean that as both praise and criticism, because if you're looking for a kicky spec-fic take, this is assuredly not it. A significant amount of the novel is set pre-apocalypse, and follows an aging actor and the people whose lives he touched in ways both large and fleeting. The post-apocalypse part is mostly focused on a traveling company of musicians and actors, whose motto is "Survival is insufficient," and who bring art and beauty to the remains of civilization. I found myself carried along by the book's gentle pace and its mingled sorrows and beauties, and while I did really like it, I could also see all the ways in which, in a different mood, I could have hated it. Still, it gets a lot of points from me for being a literary post-apocalyptic tale that isn't unrelentingly grimdark.
Okay, this post is getting long and I still have five books left. More catching up later.
This entry was originally posted at http://yasaman.dreamwidth.org/464338.html, with
comments there.