Category Archives: Books

Book Mini-Reviews

Any Given Doomsday, A Respectable Trade, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, The Thirteenth Tale, Drowning Ruth
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Dead Water Creek & Cold Dark Matter, Alex Brett (22, 23)

Dead Water Creek & Cold Dark Matter are mainstream mysteries about a woman who investigates scientific fraud for the Canadian government.

Dead Water Creek was not bad, but the depictions of life in a science department did not mesh with my experience, and there were a fair number of unnecessary bits, like the protagonist’s mother being an alcoholic, and her resulting bad memories of the city. They had no bearing on the story whatsoever.

The actual scientific mystery, involving salmon, was interesting, too, and believable.

Minor nit: All but one of the named female scientists in this book are bi or lesbian, and that one is debatable. Considering that that’s a stereotype of female scientists, and it had no effect on the plot (everyone could have been sleeping with everyone else if they were straight couples, or if the men were also bi or gay), it seemed like a weird choice. Though a nice change from all the other millions of books on the planet where everyone is straight.

Cold Dark Matter was *much* better than the first one, at least once I got to chapter 7 or 8, and once I accepted that it was about astronomers, but not astronomy. In some ways the plot was preposterous (too many hidden motivations seemed like coincidences), but if I focused on the mystery and ignored the investigator’s reasons for investigating, it was just fine.

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Little House series, Laura Ingalls Wilder (8, 9, 11-15)

(I skipped Farmer Boy and stopped after These Happy Golden Years.)

I hadn’t reread these since I was a kid, when Little House on the Prairie was one of my favorite books for ages. They’re as good as I remember them, though the racist attitude towards non-whites no longer sails over my head.

It’s interesting to watch how the books turn from the “what life was like then” of Little House in the Big Woods (which Laura wasn’t actually old enough to remember — I think the family left when she was 3, not 6) into actual stories in the later books.

I like the later books in the series better now than I did when I was 7 or so. I always liked running-around-the-frontier Laura much better than sewing-a-new-dress Laura. That said, why did Almanzo put up with Laura long enough to marry her? She wasn’t very nice to him at all. One wonders if there were no other eligible girls in town.

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Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke (10)

This is a fabulous book — best one I’ve read all year, and that seems unlikely to change. My only complaint is that it ended.

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A Secret Atlas, Michael A. Stackpole (7)

Picked up Michael A. Stackpole’s A Secret Atlas because I like the author’s podcast on writing (The Secrets), and I have a policy against taking writing advice from someone I’ve never read.

It’s a solid epic fantasy with some nice politics and interesting magic. The first in a trilogy, it’s far from self-contained, but it sets up a very interesting premise for the second book (far more interesting than the premise for the first).

My biggest complaint is that there are no women in A Secret Atlas. Well, there are a few — maybe three who appear often — and one (Nirati) is even a POV character, but they all exist to support the men. And Nirati has a…problematic character arc. I think the author’s purposes could have been served in a less misogynistic way.

The book I read after this one was similar in the number and roles of women, but in that case it didn’t bother me. That book was set in our world’s history. A Secret Atlas bothered me more, I think, because the lack of and use of the female characters seems to come from the author’s unexamined assumptions rather than because it’s based in a patriarchal era of history. Basically, I feel that if you’re going to make up a society, you’d better have good reasons for lack of equality between the sexes, or at least a lack of important and interesting women in your stories.

The second book in the series looks like it’ll add another woman who may be more independent. We’ll see.

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The Road, Cormac McCarthy (6)

Some months ago I asked what Cormac McCarthy’s The Road did differently from other post-apocalyptic novels.

The answer is “Nothing.”

The Road follows a man and his son as they travel towards the coast, years after a disaster caused fires that burned nearly everything to ash. There’s hardly any food, water, or quote marks anywhere. The man and the boy walk and walk and sometimes something almost happens.

Despite that, I read the whole thing in only two or three sittings; I kept reading to see if the characters would survive.

The quote on the front cover of my edition says it’s a tale of the “miracle of goodness.” I’m not sure how the San Francisco Chronicle defines goodness; it seemed more a tale of the self-centeredness needed to survive against impossible odds. I suppose they mean the goodness of the child, who wants to help other survivors, rather than that of the father, who knows they can’t spare the food or supplies to help others. Even so, it comes across more as a miracle of naivety.

I didn’t dislike the book, but it’s not even close to being one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Still, I want to read McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, though I see that one also suffers from a dearth of punctuation. (Anyone want to explain to me the reasoning behind that? Some sort of metaphor for the emptiness of life, or the landscape?)

I really enjoyed this blogger’s take on the book: In a world where punctuation barely survives, though he’s harsher on the book than I am, and I very much disagree with him about the writing. The Road is a very well-written novel, and the style (aside from the punctuation) is perfect for the setting. I suppose I’m missing some thematic resonance provided by the lack of punctuation, but mostly it felt like the author showing off how cool he is.

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Food, Harry Potter, and Links

Adventures in food labelling

Found at the grocery store:

Ready-to-Eat peaches — First, they still have to be washed, so technically they aren’t ready to eat. Second, what would constitute non-ready-to-eat peaches? Green ones? Blossoms? A potted peach tree (just add water)?

Canned tuna — After the ingredients list (tuna, broth, water), it helpfully warns, “Contains: Fish.” Yes. I should hope so. Perhaps they want to emphasize that it’s dolphin-safe.

Garden status

We ate our grape tomato this week. It was very tasty. If we’re lucky, the green tomatoes will ripen sometime this year (then we’ll have ready-to-eat tomatoes). We also had a couple very small heads of romaine (~ 5 leaves each), which actually looks like lettuce now. Our herbs and hot peppers have not yet achieved ready-to-eat status, though the basil is ok if we only want a couple leaves at a time.

I built a thread trellis for my morning glories, as the fence boards are too wide for them to climb. I should have bought flowers that bloom at night, though. I’m unlikely to see the morning glories very often.

Harry Potter

Reread the first 6 Harry Potter books. I timed it badly and left myself with two weeks to anticipate book 7.

Book 5 has really improved since the last time I read it, or maybe remembering that I didn’t like it lowered my expectations enough that it seemed better. Or maybe it was because I’d just finished 4, which is still my least favorite because of the gaping plot hole.

We saw the movie Order of the Phoenix yesterday — it was not good. Umbridge was spot on, but so many other characters did things that were out of character (or at least not supported by anything in the movie) that it was rather frustrating, sort of like watching shorthand. At times the dialogue-heavy scenes were boring.

Orson Scott Card has an interesting essay on Snape. He has some good points, although many of his arguments depend on figuring out what Rowling was thinking as she wrote the books, which I think requires too many assumptions about how she works and how skilled an author she has been at different times.

(I’m still fence-sitting on whether Snape’s good or evil. After reading book 6 the first time, I leaned towards good; after rereading all the books, I’m leaning towards evil. From a storytelling perspective, redemption might work better. If it were me, I’d think that’s too obvious.)

Random question: Where do British wizards go to school before they’re 11? It seems they must all be home-schooled: they don’t know enough about Muggles to have gone to Muggle schools, and unless there are a lot of wizard kids who don’t go to Hogwarts, there aren’t any wizard elementary schools.

Misc.

I finally got a library card, only 10 months after moving here. I’ve been spoiled — this is the first place I’ve lived as an adult where I have to drive to the library because it’s too far to walk.

Yesterday I went shopping and got my early birthday present from my boyfriend: a slipcover for the couch. It looks much nicer than the lack-of-cover we had before. Very thoughtful of him to get that for me. 🙂

Links

GalaxyZoo seeks people to categorize photos of spiral and elliptical galaxies because “the human brain is far better than a computer at recognising the patterns that divide ellipticals from spirals.” After you sign up, do a tutorial, and take a test, you look at photos and determine what they are. [Links to articles about it.]

PSA: Do not listen to your MP3 player outside during a storm.

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Devlin's Honor, Patricia Bray (5)

Devlin’s Honor is the sequel to Devlin’s Luck, which I liked.

Unfortunately, Honor has all of Luck‘s problems [1] and none of its charms.

[1] Chiefly this one: The prose is at times a little lengthy for the content, reemphasizing what was already clear, but without the “at times a little”.

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Valley of the Soul, Tamara Siler Jones (4)

What I enjoy most about Jones’ books isn’t the mystery plot — though they are interesting — so much as the characters. That was a good thing for this book, because the plot didn’t work for me and left me unsatisfied (and more annoyed the more I thought about it) at the end.

Valley of the Soul, the third about Dubric Byerly and his employees/friends, was a lot less gory than the second book, Threads of Malice, which made me happy. This one involves the hunt for a possible blood mage who’s been killing sheep, maybe for practice before starting on people.

The characters are great — they’re likeable, but not overly so, and they face real problems with realistic reactions (or overreactions). There was a little bit of the “if the characters actually talked about x, the plot would disappear” problem, but it didn’t seem too unlikely that they would avoid talking about x.

The plot problems:

First — I almost put it down very early, when a character did something a) stupid and b) out of character. Jones is usually very careful about motivations and actions, and this stuck out as something that the character only did because it was required by the plot. I made a conscious decision to pretend it hadn’t happened or that it was a clumsy way of introducing a red herring.

Second — Spoilers behind the cut! Continue reading

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Cast in Shadow, Michelle Sagara (3)

Cast in Shadow was even better than Cast in Courtlight.

The beginning felt a bit slow to me — probably because it stopped to explain things I’d already figured out while reading the second book in the series — but once the story got going, I was hooked.

Kaylin annoyed me a lot less in this book, and Severn enchanted me just as much, so that worked out well. (The scene where Kaylin explains why she’s mad at Severn was fairly chilling even already knowing the reason.)

And now I have to wait for the third one. Drat.

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