(no subject)

This was a pretty decent month for books.

Gentleman and Players by Joanne Harris was my only complete wash of the month. I'm pretty sure I spent at least two months slogging towards the end of it. Sometimes I really like Harris. Sometimes I don't.

Resurrection by Tucker Malarkey. (An awesome last name). Light bought me this based on NPR's recommendation. It claimed to be a smart person's Da Vinci Code. To some extent, this was true. The history was more in depth, and the questions had more cryptic answers than "look at it upside down in a mirror." (secretly, I almost wish I could enjoy Da Vinci Code since it seems so trendy to dislike it. Sadly, I cannot.) This did not, however, disguise the annoying heroine or the clunky, clunky sentence structure.

Children's books and graphic novels. I bought Angela Carter's Sea Cat and Dragon King at the local bookstore because I could. It doesn't really count as a book read, but it was fricking adorable. I'd been holding off on reading China Mieville's Un Lun Dun as long as I could, like saving the best bite of dessert for last, and just like everything else he's done, it was full of awesome. Perseoplis and Perseopolis 2 were everything I had expected them to be, based on someone whose taste I respect raving about them. Sometimes graphic novels annoy me, the art and the storylines can both be lovely, but feel disconnected. These meshed perfectly.

The livejournal community whatwasthatbook reunited me with my absolute favorite children's/young adult novel The Dancing Meteorite by Anne Mason. I'm pretty sure there were about three solid years of my life when I had either this book, its sequel, or at least one book of the Susan Cooper series checked out. Rereading it was exactly as soothing as I could have hoped.

And now onto the whee! books. On the scifi/fantasy front I deeply enjoyed both Jane Lindskold's Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls and Melissa Scott's Point of Dreams, though if I had to pick only one to have read, I'd definitely go with Scott's. I've been a giant fan of hers since reading Trouble and Her Friends in a lesbian novel class I read. Now, to find out she does alternate-history Elizabetian drama with added socially acceptable gayness? Whee, I say. This was the second book in a series, but still followable and I intend to find the first.

And for the not-scifi/fantasy whee front, The Effects of Living Backwards by Heidi Julvaits is almost as intriguing as its title promises. Hard to say what it is about, exactly, but identity and siblings and terrorism and hostage psychology are definitely all on the list. Life Mask by Emma Donoghue was dense and charming, and everything The Crimson Petal and the White wasn't.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl was pretty much just full of awesome. I've been describing it to people as being what would happen if Brick was a book, written by a woman, about something else entirely, but also about kind of the same thing. It suffers from the same "look at me being clever" billboard-like moments, but with the same sort of giddy pacing.

(no subject)

This was a pretty decent month for books.

Gentleman and Players by Joanne Harris was my only complete wash of the month. I'm pretty sure I spent at least two months slogging towards the end of it. Sometimes I really like Harris. Sometimes I don't.

Resurrection by Tucker Malarkey. (An awesome last name). Light bought me this based on NPR's recommendation. It claimed to be a smart person's Da Vinci Code. To some extent, this was true. The history was more in depth, and the questions had more cryptic answers than "look at it upside down in a mirror." (secretly, I almost wish I could enjoy Da Vinci Code since it seems so trendy to dislike it. Sadly, I cannot.) This did not, however, disguise the annoying heroine or the clunky, clunky sentence structure.

Children's books and graphic novels. I bought Angela Carter's Sea Cat and Dragon King at the local bookstore because I could. It doesn't really count as a book read, but it was fricking adorable. I'd been holding off on reading China Mieville's Un Lun Dun as long as I could, like saving the best bite of dessert for last, and just like everything else he's done, it was full of awesome. Perseoplis and Perseopolis 2 were everything I had expected them to be, based on someone whose taste I respect raving about them. Sometimes graphic novels annoy me, the art and the storylines can both be lovely, but feel disconnected. These meshed perfectly.

The livejournal community whatwasthatbook reunited me with my absolute favorite children's/young adult novel The Dancing Meteorite by Anne Mason. I'm pretty sure there were about three solid years of my life when I had either this book, its sequel, or at least one book of the Susan Cooper series checked out. Rereading it was exactly as soothing as I could have hoped.

And now onto the whee! books. On the scifi/fantasy front I deeply enjoyed both Jane Lindskold's Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls and Melissa Scott's Point of Dreams, though if I had to pick only one to have read, I'd definitely go with Scott's. I've been a giant fan of hers since reading Trouble and Her Friends in a lesbian novel class I read. Now, to find out she does alternate-history Elizabetian drama with added socially acceptable gayness? Whee, I say. This was the second book in a series, but still followable and I intend to find the first.

And for the not-scifi/fantasy whee front, The Effects of Living Backwards by Heidi Julvaits is almost as intriguing as its title promises. Hard to say what it is about, exactly, but identity and siblings and terrorism and hostage psychology are definitely all on the list. Life Mask by Emma Donoghue was dense and charming, and everything The Crimson Petal and the White wasn't.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl was pretty much just full of awesome. I've been describing it to people as being what would happen if Brick was a book, written by a woman, about something else entirely, but also about kind of the same thing. It suffers from the same "look at me being clever" billboard-like moments, but with the same sort of giddy pacing.