Bookshelf, Updated
So, I have some thoughts on gender and genre, but before I get there, I want to update my bookshelf listing of what I've read so far this year:
Mindy, still looking for more hours in the day for reading
- SPOOK, by Mary Roach. This nonfiction book on the afterlife is an attempt to determine whether there are any scientific ways to prove life after death. I really liked Roach's STIFF (about how dead bodies are used in science, etc.) SPOOK was a bit too glib, and the topic proved a bit too easy to poke fingers at. I enjoyed the bits of discussion, though, about how to harness scientific method to measure the supernatural.
- THE TURNING, by Jennifer Armintrout. I don't read a lot of vampire fiction - in fact, aside from the first Sookie book, and SUNSHINE, and a couple of early Anne Rice's, I don't think I've read any of the endless contemporary vampire novels. This one was a gift, and I enjoyed it - I liked watching the first-person narrator grasp her change. The whole violent sex/blood thing, though, is purely a turnoff to me; I have trouble understanding the underlying attraction that brings so many readers into this sub-genre.
- SOMETHING WICKED, by Evelyn Waugh. This Silhouette Bombshell was also a gift; it's the only one that I've read in the late, lamented line. The plot involves twins, and I found it difficult to keep straight which was which - but that was my own fault, not the author's. (I do a lot of my reading late at night or on the Metro and I would forget the name of the good twin, juxtaposing it with the name of the bad one.
- BAREFOOT PRINCESS, by Christina Dodd. I got this book as a giveaway at RWA last year. I read very little romance, and this one felt like "classic" romance - it was pretty clear to me from page one who was going to play which roles throughout. This book didn't rock my world, but I certainly kept turning the pages, even though I've become rather impatient with a lot of what I read.
- MAGIC OR MADNESS, by Justine Larbalestier
- MAGIC LESSONS, by Justine Larbalestier
- MAGIC'S CHILD, by Justine Larbalestier. I read the MAGIC trilogy, in part, in response to the Scott Westerfeld UGLIES trilogy. (Scott and Justine are married, and they've both seen their work *explode* on the YA scene in the past few years.) I loved the otherworldliness-in-our-worldness of these books - the notion that there is magic just outside our reach. I also loved the very, very hard choices that Larbalestier gave her characters; we fantasy authors talk all the time about wanting to create a *cost* for magic, and Larbalestier does that with a vengeance. At one point toward the middle of the series, I thought that these books were going to go down a somewhat-familiar Phillip Pullman path; I was glad to see my expectations dashed. (Not that there's anything wrong with Pullman, just that these books should break new ground.) There was one plot inconsistency at the very end that bugged me, otherwise, I was quite, quite impressed.
- THE WOMAN AT THE WASHINGTON ZOO, by Marjorie Williams. Williams was a Washington Post and Vanity Fair columnist who died last year. At the time of her death, she was lionized for the power of her writing, which I did not remember ever having read. Mark gave me this collection of her essays for Valentines Day, and the gift turned out to be prescient. The collection was edited by Williams' husband, and it turns out to be a complicated Valentine, from him to her memory, from her to her adopted city of Washington, from her to her family... Some of these essays were beautiful little gems, and some were intricate castles. Well worth reading, especially for anyone interested in Washington and politics (usually, that doesn't include me.)
- HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS, by James A Owens (our own </a></b></a>
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coppervale). I dreaded writing about this book on this blog. As I started reading it, it was pleasant enough, but there wasn't anything flashy about it, and bits of it seemed rather derivative. I enjoyed the main characters, though, and so I stuck with it - and I am *thrilled* that I did. There's a twist at the end that makes the entire book more than worthwhile - I didn't see it coming (and neither did my college roommate :-) ). Also, it's the first time in ages that I've read an illustrated book, and I loved the picture-examination I got to do at the top of each chapter!- RUNNING WITH SCISSORS, by Augusten Burroughs. This book sickened me. With the exception of a couple of place-descriptions early on, I found nothing amusing about it - all of the back-cover flap about how Burroughs is one of the ten funniest people in America was a sick, sick lie, in my book. After reading the Vanity Fair article about Burroughs and some other web-based disputations, I think it likely that most of this book is fabricated, or at least extremely exaggerated, but I find it truly disturbing that someone would *think* of most of these things happening to a child. I didn't see the movie - I bought the book to read before seeing it - and now, I'm not looking forward to doing so.
- GIRL'S NIGHT IN, edited by Lauren Henderson, Chris Manby, and Sarah Mlynowski. Chicklit short stories - I'm *still* not a short story person, and I likely never will be. There were a couple of amusing stories, but nothing of any great lasting import for my poor little author's brain to dwell on.
- DEATH AND JUDGMENT, by Donna Leon. Claudia Bishop (a mystery writer) recommended this book to me. I'd never heard of Leon before, but after I bought the book, I saw about a dozen people reading it on trains, planes (and, likely, automobiles.) I loved the main character (a Venetian policeman) - his stolid goodness in the face of much corruption, his utter resignation to the way things are and the way things should be. I will read more of these novels.
- SPECIALS, by Scott Westerfeld. I resisted reading the Westerfeld trilogy, because it's been so hyped on Boing Boing and elsewhere. I didn't think that it could possibly be as good as all the cool kids said it was. And you know what? I was totally, completely wrong. I LOVED this trilogy, with the passion that I loved books when I was a kid. It reminded me of the John Christopher Tripod books and - in a rougher way - of Madeleine L'Engle's Meg Murray books. It captures the angst of being fifteen/sixteen, and the weight of having a mission. It asks overwhelmingly pertinent questions about who we are, as children, friends, citizens, people.
- PRETTIES, by Scott Westerfeld.
- UGLIES, by Scott Westerfeld.
- DOPPELGANGER, by Marie Brennan. I'd been planning on reading this for a while - Marie and I frequent some of the same newsgroups some of the time. While I started reading this novel is a hyper-critical mood (the opening sentence describes weather, and that is one of my personal pet peeve annoyances), I rapidly got sucked into the story. The levels of magic and the carefully constructed social hierarchies illustrate that Marie is an anthropologist by training. Even in this day and age, when I have so little time for reading, I intend to search out the sequel.
- THE TALISMAN BAG, by Karen Wester Newton. No. You haven't heard of Karen. I read this book to blurb it for first-time author Karen Wester Newton, who happens to be in my once-and-possibly-future writing group. Karen has landed an agent and is shopping around this well-drawn quick-read of a fantasy novel, which walks the fine line of YA and adult fiction, with romance, magic, religion, and more than a bit of fun.
- THE PRINCESS DIARIES, by Meg Cabot. Picked up for the same study. I loved this book. I'd heard so much about it, avoided seeing the Disney flick, thought that it was over-hyped, etc. But I loved the character, loved her sense of humor, identified with the eye-rolling exasperation of adolescence, winced at the mistakes that I'd know enough not to make... I actually laughed out loud a couple of times, which does not happen often with me.
- DARK HORSE, by Tami Hoag.
- MATES, DATES, AND INFLATABLE BRAS, by Cathy Hopkins. A British YA novel, picked up as a study for a possible YA I'm thinking of writing. I've been intrigued, reading contemporary British YA and British chick-lit, to find a *ton* of colloquialisms that I don't know. Most are decipherable from the text, but these genres really get at the vernacular in a way that C.S. Lewis doesn't.
Mindy, still looking for more hours in the day for reading
You need some Patricia McKillip in there. See my list (complete with links) here.
Oh! And the Weetzie Bat books are very cool YA: Dangerous Angels.
I've heard good things about the Weezie Bat books, too.
That does it. I obviously need to quit my day job, and get a fast-paced, high-paying career as a reader. What? Those don't exist? Damn.
My recommends for McKillip: Ombria in Shadow (which I ADORE), Alphabet of thorn, Soltice Wood, and, probably, Od Magic.
I've given up on controlling my TBR stack. Just ain't gonna happen.
# MAGIC OR MADNESS, by Justine Larbalestier
# MAGIC LESSONS, by Justine Larbalestier
One of the things I read that amazed me about this trilogy is the writing style is in Australian or American depending on where they are! Talk about a challenge. I need to read the last one, and I'm looking forward to it!
I have this one.
I was actually at the bookstore myself yesterday and I almost bought "Scot on the Rocks". The newest book published by RDI.