Review: TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG by Connie Willis

31Mar10

Title: To Say Nothing of the Dog
Author: Connie Willis
Publisher: Turtleback
Year published: 1999

Recommended: I lot of people adore this book with good reason. I’d suggest starting elsewhere with Willis; the books I’ve read by her are Bellwether (comedic, but tighter) and Passage (not so tight, more serious). Once you’re a devotee, and know whether you like her humor, pick this one up. And be prepared for a slow start.

First off, long silence due to finals, work, travel, other boring excuses. Onward. Short review, not much to say, been a few weeks since I read it.

I’ve tried to read this book a total of four times. The first three I got about thirty to fifty pages in before becoming frustrated and setting it aside (each time, intending to pick it back up). It finally ended up under my bathroom sink, languishing in solitude, until it came up as Calico Reaction’s book club selection. I decided to give it 100 pages this time.

And those 100 pages were a slog, I must admit. The character was confused, I was more confused, and the book seemed like a string of unconnected anecdotes and bizarre happenings. Luckily, on about page 96, Verity shows up. And she brings the plot with her.

I’ve read two of Connie Willis’ books previously, and if I hadn’t adored both of them I think I never would have finished this book. I’m glad I did. With the appearance of Verity and a sense of purpose and direction (still muddled, but now in an amusing, serves-the-story sort of way) I sank right into the voice and the madcap Victorian adventuring. I admit I still have very little idea of what happened to the bird stump and why, but by the end of the book I cared very little about the damn thing and its place in the story, and was far more concerned with the various romantic pairings history (and narrative) demanded, but I’m just a GIRL that way. In any case, I’m so woefully sloppy as a reader that if I figure things out ahead of time it’s a fair bet the mystery was incredibly obvious, so I’m generally used to being befuddled right up until the end. Willis explained things well enough at the conclusion to at least give me the illusion of understanding what the hell had been going on for four hundred or so pages, so I was satisfied.

It’s also worth noting that, unlike Calico Reaction, I love the Victorian era, which perhaps explains MY ambivalence about steampunk (I’m picky; also, I see way too much of it). I love the strict social code and all the ways it was exploited, contorted, and ignored to suit the situation. Part of this is my fascination with “social vocabulary,” which is a topic I won’t get into now. Anyhow, I’m not normally one for comedic books, but with the addition of a destination and trajectory this was right up my alley, and I do adore dogs and cats, so there’s that.

But really, and I don’t mean to harp on the same thing over and over, there’s no excuse for those first hundred pages. Unless you absolutely adore the wandering, purposeless humor from the start, and are willing to put up with utter confusion, they’re very difficult to get through. If I hadn’t known and trusted the author I would have abandoned it a fourth time, and that would have been a shame.

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No review, February reading, and random statistics

03Mar10

No review today because, among other things, I’m hip-deep in my own writing. I’ll put something together later this week to make up for it. Instead, I’m subjecting you to What I Read In February! I’ve linked to the reviews I’ve written.

You can find my January list here, at my personal journal.

22. Ice by Sarah Beth Durst
23. Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell
24. Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
25. Bury Me Standing by Isabel Fonseca
26. The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan
27. If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson
28. Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier
29. Monster by Walter Dean Myers
30. Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon
31. Crashed by Robin Wasserman
31. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
32. Kindred by Octavia Butler
33. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
34. Give Up the Ghost by Megan Crewe
35. Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs

Genre breakdown:

YA contemporary fantasy/supernatural (5), YA realistic/lit fic (2), YA science fiction (1), YA Fantasy (1), Nonfiction (1), Contemporary/urban fantasy (1), Science fiction (1), Realistic/lit fic (2), Misc (1)

Now, the science fiction title is Kindred, and that classification is borderline. I put it in there mostly because it does have a speculative element and it’s Butler, who I think of as a science fiction writer regardless of what’s actually on the page. The Lovely Bones has a supernatural element but I listed it as lit/realistic because I think that’s how it’s been marketed and viewed. And Fingersmith is historical fiction, which may deserve its own category.

I have to admit I am burned out on YA. I’ve been reading tons of it because a) it’s fun, and b) it’s what I’m writing at the moment, but I’m probably going to take a break from it for a while. I have a few YA books on my TBR pile, but once those are through I’m going to focus on other things. I’m also obviously behind on some of my “reading variety” goals, so I’d like to wrangle my list a bit more in line with that.

Stand-out favorites for this month were The Lovely Bones, in part because I expected to hate it; Fingersmith, which is the book Wilkie Collins would write if he was alive today writing about the Victorian era and also a lesbian; Kindred, because yaknow, Octavia Butler, how can you go wrong; and The Demon’s Lexicon, because it was just so much damn fun.

And now, to work.

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Review: GIVE UP THE GHOST by Megan Crewe

24Feb10

Title: Give Up the Ghost
Author: Megan Crewe
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Year Published: 2009

Recommended: Yes, with the usual caveats about YA. This is a very high-school-centric book, so if you’re not keen to return to those dingy halls, you probably want to skip it, but otherwise it’s a short, interesting read with a sense of humor but a serious handling of some difficult issues.

Spoilers: Yes, in fairly general terms, but specific enough that if you avoid spoilers religiously, you shouldn’t go beyond the first two paragraphs (after the jump).

This conversation (mostly) occurred yesterday:

Me: So I read this book today–
Caroline: FREAK
Me: –that’s about this girl who can talk to ghosts, so she uses them as spies to get blackmail material, because admit it, that’s what you do with powers like that.
Caroline: I’d use them to get peoples’ pin numbers.
Me: I’m glad that I’m your friend, and also that you can’t actual talk to ghosts.
Caroline: *looks mysterious*

Ahem. So, I think the premise of this novel is kind of brilliant, because I may be a bad person but I would totally use ghosts as spies. Granted, Cass has the excuse of revenge—her best friend turned on her in middle school, and Cass has been a social outcast ever since. Her blackmail is as much a defense mechanism as anything else, since it’s the one thing that gives her power over her tormentors.

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies – Editorial Assistant

23Feb10

As of this past week, I’m serving as the Editorial Assistant/Slush Slave for Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Very exciting! My picture is up on the website and everything!

For those that don’t know, BCS is an online magazine for secondary-world fantasy (exact guidelines here). It’s an SFWA-qualified market, which means that sales to BCS will count towards membership qualifications. So if you have something that suits, submit away!

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News and Other Nonsense

18Feb10

First off, I’d like to point you all to Unleaded: Fuel for Writers, a blog run by my friends Renee and Day. With podcasts! The theme is 60 seconds of writerly inspiration. I’ll be lending my pen keyboard to the cause by writing 60-word mini-reviews either twice a month or once a week. My first one is up now, so check it out. Pretty please!

Secondly, writing! I’m doing it. The last few months have been pretty dry on the writing front; I’ve spent a lot of time noodling with various projects, trying to figure out which one I want to work on next. And then I glanced back at my finished manuscript (following a very nice rejection), gasped, and frantically scribbled three pages of handwritten notes about things that NEEDED TO CHANGE RIGHT NOW. So, it’s not exactly forward progress, but it’s progress. The overhaul should be done within about a month (hopefully) and THEN I’ll have to decide what to work on next.

Except, of course, that I’m going to be doing a brainstorming workshop thingamajig (ok, how awesome is it that spellcheck recognizes that as a word?), for which I need a synopsis of a project. I thought I’d decided which one, and then I started to actually work on it, and then I started to hate it. So now I’m back to poking at my infinity+1 novel ideas and hoping that one transforms into a bootiful butterfly sometime in the next few days. So, I’m looking at: an Urban Fantasy (with demons! and badass grandmothers! and a girl with blue hair [who dies]!), a YA small-town fantasy/murder mystery (with a boy mc! and high school drama! and bigotry!), a fantasy (with not-Spartans! and an evil empire who might actually be the good guys! and sex with gods!), or a YA werewolf novel (with liberal arts colleges! and feminism! and brooding!). There are others, but they’re not at the point where I could do anything but “this is the concept, and then things happen but I’m not sure what” as a synopsis.

Maybe I’ll roll a die for it.

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Review: SKINNED and CRASHED by Robin Wasserman

17Feb10

Title: SKINNED and CRASHED
Author: Robin Wasserman
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Year Published: 2008 & 2009

Recommended: There is a lot of teenage stupidity (and adult stupidity) on display, which can get frustrating, and the books hit on one of my biggest pet peeves (religious zealotry with no balancing moderates), but they’re engaging stories, and I’m excited to see where the series goes. Because of the intense teenagerness (it’s a word), I don’t think non-YA readers would really get into these, but afficianados of the psuedo-genre should be safe giving these a shot.

Spoilers: Very general spoilers, nothing that I think would diminish the experience.

The basic premise: Lia Kahn is rich, beautiful, and popular. And then she dies. Her parents opt to have her mind uploaded into a mechanical body. The process is still fairly new, and most people seem to agree that she may have Lia’s memories, she may think she’s Lia, but she’s just a machine. In SKINNED, Lia struggles to come to terms with her transformation and tries to reclaim her old life. In CRASHED, Lia lives with other mechs, working to carve out a place in the world for people like her, who may not be people at all.

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Review: THE DEMON’S LEXICON by Sarah Rees Brennan

10Feb10

Title: The Demon’s Lexicon
Author: Sarah Rees Brennan
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Year Published: 2009

Recommended: Most certainly, to those who can stand a little angst and are interested in the concept/genre. If you don’t tend to like urban fantasy (or, to a lesser extent, YA) this isn’t going to be the book to astound all genre expectations, but I don’t see that as a problem. I’ve heard enough about “transcending the genre” to last a lifetime.

Spoilers: I avoid them, I really do I swear. Mostly. I’m bad at this, aren’t I? But I won’t give away the ending.

I think perhaps I should surrender myself to the fact that whatever else I read in between, it’s the YA that I want to review, or at least that I feel most qualified to comment on.

The Demon’s Lexicon has been buzzing around my brain for a while, annoying me into reading it. I heard about it ages ago, before it actually came out, and then I started to see its eye-searing cover (oh god the colors oh god) at the book store. (There will apparently be a new cover released, which while still not my cup of tea at least looks like it hasn’t been stained by the guts of evil clowns.) Then I wandered over to the author’s blog, and found her sense of humor right up my alley, chuckled my way through some of her reviews (which contributed no little amount to my insane library stack) and finally succumbed and put the Demon’s Lexicon on hold at Ye Olde Splorg.*

The basic premise: Nick travels around with his older brother Alan and his mother. Dear old mum, who hates and fears Nick, used to be a human-sacrificing, demon-summoning magician, and now the trio are on the run from a bunch of other magicians, who like to kill people and cause lots of property damage. Meanwhile, the fairly innocent Mae and Jamie are looking for help after Jaime has been marked by a demon, priming him for possession. They go to Nick and Alan for help just as a magician shows up, and what with the dead body on the floor and all it’s a bit hard for the boys to pretend they have no idea what Mae and Jaime are talking about. Cue hijinks.

Apologies for being more blather-y than usual, it’s the schoolwork.

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Review: ICE by Sarah Beth Durst

03Feb10

Title: ICE

Author: Sarah Beth Durst

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Year Published: 2009

Recommended: This is difficult. I had some big problems with this book that kept me from enjoying it, but if those things don’t bother you, it’s otherwise an engaging read. And the only way to explain those problems is through some spoilers.

Spoilers: Er, yes. Quite a few. Although as with Ash, knowledge of the source tale pretty much makes ‘spoilers’ irrelevent, since it follows the basics pretty closely (curse, trolls, etc).

I only finished this book last night, so I don’t have a great deal of perspective on it, but I wanted to get everything down while it’s fresh in my mind. When I was a wee lass, one of my favorite movies was The Polar Bear King, which is an adaptation of the same fairy tale ICE is based on. A princess is wed to a polar bear who becomes a man at night, but because of the nature of his curse she can never see his face. When she disobeys this command, he is whisked away from her to wed a troll princess, and she must rescue him. The fairy tale is in turn a version of the Psyche myth, which always appealed to me because in the end, the princess rescues the prince, even if it was her mistake that got him into trouble in the first place–but really, if she hadn’t broken the rules, she wouldn’t have been able to break the curse either.

In ICE, Cassie’s mother is supposedly dead, but her grandmother tells a story about the daughter of the north wind, and there’s something complicated about a curse and reasons for refusal to marry the polar bear, and promising her daughter, and being kidnapped and taken to a troll castle, etc. It’s been a while since I read the actual fairy tale, and the compressed version presented in ICE never stuck with me, so I’m still not sure quite what was going on. But the idea is that Cassie’s now supposed to marry the polar bear, and since she lives in the arctic at a research station it’s pretty easy for him to show up to claim her. She agrees to marry him if he will rescue her mother from the trolls, because extortion is the best beginning to any healthy relationship.

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19 books

27Jan10

Sometimes I just can’t help myself. Often those times involve books. I put a whole bunch of books on hold, which isn’t unusual; what is unusual is that they were available right away. Normally, by virtue of scant copies and high demand, I have to wait quite a while for my holds to come in. Instead, this time around I have far more books than I can possibly read in three weeks. Thankfully, I also have the ability to renew books. So here are the nineteen books I either have out or am about to pick up from the library:
1. Bury Me Standing: the Gypsies and Their Journey by Isabel Fonseca – For research
2. Crashed by Robin Wasserman – Because the ending of Skinned is so freaking depressing, I want to see if it gets better.
3. Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier – after reading Liar I’m interested in her earlier work.
4. Ice by Sarah Beth Durst – A retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, which was my favorite fairy-tale for a very long time
5. Shadowed Summer by Saundra Mitchell – Random rec on a blog. Sounded interesting. Cover is truly awful, though.
6. The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld – I hadn’t even realized this series existed, and since I’ve enjoyed Westerfeld in the past I picked it up. I read it last night (it’s short) and wasn’t overly impressed.
7. Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale – Another random blog-endorsed book. Plus, non-western/non-white character.
8. The Demon’s Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan – I’ve heard various things about this book and just got curious. Plus, the author’s blog is very charming.
9. Children of the Waters by Carleen Brice – Has been on a scribbled list for a few months. I can’t even remember what it’s about.
10. Monster by Walter Dean Myers – It’s been on my radar for a very long time, and I finally got around to putting a hold on it. There was a waiting list, so I didn’t think it would show up with this crop. Oh well.
11. Columbine by David Cullen – I’ve heard a lot about this, and I was young enough when the massacre occurred that I don’t actually know that much about it or the reactions to it. This is what I’m reading at the moment. So far, it’s intense.
12. We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch – In case Columbine doesn’t leave me depressed enough.
13. Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon – Another non-Western fantasy. Yay!
14. If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson – Saw this endorsed one too many times to pass it by.
15. Give Up the Ghost by Megan Crewe – I have a soft spot for ghosts and bitter teens.
16. Fire by Kristin Cashore – I adored Graceling and would have bought this book if I had the funds. But I don’t. Hasn’t actually come in yet, since the waitlist is INTENSE.
17. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters – I’ve wanted to read this in a passive “I’ll pick it up someday” way for years.
18. Devil’s Kiss by Chadda Sarwat – I know little about this book except that it embraces the dark and scary side of urban fantasy, which intrigues me. Could be crap. Could be awesome. I’ll let you know.
19. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare – Another random blog rec.

I picked up most of these yesterday, and I finished the first one last night. I’ll keep you posted on the rest.

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Review: THE MEMORY KEEPER’S DAUGHTER by Kim Edwards

27Jan10

Title: THE MEMORY KEEPER’S DAUGHTER
Author: Kim Edwards
Publisher: Penguin
Year Published: 2006

Recommended: No. I know plenty of people love it, but I found very, very little to appreciate in this novel, and given its length (400 dense pages with obese paragraphs) it’s quite an investment for so little pay-off.

Spoilers: In the second-to-last paragraph, although I don’t think knowing some of the basics of the ending makes that much of a difference to the story.

As part of a personal challenge to myself, I am making an effort this year to read more literary/realistic fiction–somewhat loosely defined, as I’m including YA fiction that qualifies, where I normally keep YA in its own, separate category. I’m trying to keep the proportion at about 25%–one in four. I hit book number four and realized I didn’t have a lit fic book out from the library, so I did the rare shelf-scrounge and came up with something lent to my mother: The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.

I was predisposed to dislike this book, mainly because of the title. The ______’s Daughter or The ________’s Wife, etc, was used originally to title folk tales because the women had no names; their characters were defined by their relations, usually men. The popularity of this scheme is troubling to me for that reason; the central characters are not defined by themselves, but rather by the men (and sometimes women) in their lives. When’s the last time you saw The ________’s Son, or The _______’s Husband? I can’t think of a single such title, though I’m sure there are a few. Men define themselves. Women must be defined in relation to others.

But titles are often not within the control of the author, and even if they are I’m willing to cut a book some slack. There are some truly abysmal titles attached to some wonderful books out there. So I dove in.

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