February Media Report: Books

[rachelmanija]

Mely jumped off the bridge, so I will too. Since I despair of ever having time to write up everything individually, I have given brief reviews to the whole month below.

If anything's missing an author, it is because I am too lazy to look them up. If there's no comment, I already reviewed it here.

Comments

[oyceter]

Yaaaay! More people blogging about books!

I'll have to check out the Koja and the Wicker.

I... wasn't caught by Tall, Dark and Dead as well. Mostly because I didn't like the hero. And I usually like vampires!

[rachelmanija]

Um... I actually don't think you'd like either of those! The Wicker is really, really 101, in an irritating newspaper way that made me skip large portions, and for the hoodoo parts, you'd probably prefer reading Zora Neale Hurston (whom Wicker references a lot). The Koja, to get unfairly reductionistic, is about a female friendship that breaks up over a man.

I am now reading the tiger shapeshifter meets electric man Liu novel! Blue is a sweetheart.

[oyceter]

Oh ok, doh. Yeah, the friendship thing would bug me. Yay friends who know my tastes!

Blue is so cute. And I love Iris and how she doesn't like people. I think it is my favorite of her books so far.

[coffeeandink]

Yeah, I usually like Koja, and I was really frustrated by the plot of this one and the implication that who you are when you're 18 determines your emotional fate for life. It was ... I felt like the girl who was dumped was unfairly demonized by both Koja and the narrator.

On the plus side, it did have casually Jewish characters. You know, it was a big deal, they just were.

[gwyneira]

I was so disappointed by the McKinley. I tried to talk myself into liking it, but I just couldn't, really. Nothing happened in it.

I think The Keys to the Golden Firebird might be my favorite Maureen Johnson, after The Bermudez Triangle.

[oyceter]

I have had this for months and still not gotten around to reading it, despite the multiple positive reviews. Maybe once I have free time...

[gwyneira]

I held off on it for a while, because it was the last of hers I hadn't read and I hate being out of authors I like. (I managed to string Sarah Dessen out for more than a year, through iron self-control.)

Also, I had a weird idea that it was fantasy (because of the title), and it's not, which required some readjusting of expectations. :)

[rilina]

There's a new one coming out! I have an ARC which I haven't gotten to read yet!

[coyotegoth]

For me, the Wild Cards series peaked with the Astronomer. Great villain (if a silly name), and they bump him off in Book Two.

[wildgreentide]

I was really disappointed with Dragonhaven, and only made myself finish it because I was on vacation and running out of books. (This is what happens, of course, the one time I *don't* bring three times the amount of reading material I think I might need.) There were sentences in that book that I had to reread several times just to make sure I understood what they meant -- and not because they were brilliantly elaborate or used fancy words, but just because the narrative voice was totally incoherent and dull. Blah.

[chomiji]

Wow, two horrible books by favorite childhood authors ... although truthfully, I have been disappointed by just about everything Zilpha Keatley Snyder wrote after she broke through with The Egypt Game.

(And the McKinley reviews are making me feel teary-eyed. There's never before been a book of hers that I've decided to ignore. I wonder if something in her RL is going wrong ... holy crud, she has an LJ! Didn't know that 'til this minute.)

[cofax7]

My unfair response to reading Dragonhaven was that ... it read like her LJ.

For some writers, that would work fine: here, not so much. LJ is not a novel, and the writing styles do not necessarily transfer well.

[nestra]

Yeah -- not that I've read Dragonhaven, but I found I could barely read her LJ. *sigh*