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omnia_mutanturI was sicker than I've been in a while, so this month had a lot of fluffy reading and I forced myself through a couple unpleasant books as some sort of penance.
Fluff:
Storm Front, Fool Moon, Grave Peril, Summer Knight Death Masks, Blood Rites and Dead Beat by Jim Butcher. I admit, the sci-fi channel made me do it. Well, more precisely, the sci-fi channel made Light do it, and then I snatched them all from his grasp and devoured them like the yummy, indulgent magic-noir they are.
Summon the Keeper by Tanya Huff. I keep reading her and I can't tell why.
Moon Called and Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs. A girl mechanic named Mercedes who turns into a coyote when she wants to and hangs around with werewolves, fae and vampires. A little bit like Laurel Hamilton before she became, well, Laurel Hamilton. Hoochie covers, but not much hooch in the text.
Slogging:
The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt. When I say it is obvious exactly why AS Byatt recommends a book, I do not consider that a compliment. Painfully clever, lacking in quotation marks for all the conversations, a overly precious child learns a lot of languages, watches Seven Samurai too many times with his mildly psychotic single mother and seizes upon the idea of being able to choose his father (since his mother wouldn't tell him who his father was until he was eleven.) The book takes a startling upturn for the last fifty pages and becomes actively interesting, but the other 400 are exhausting.
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes was the complete opposite in terms of pacing. I quite liked the first half of the book, but when Arthur meets George, or when Arthur's first wife dies, I just sort of lost interest. I'm never entirely certain if I like Barnes, but a lingering fondness for A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters keeps me coming back.
Enjoyment (for the most part):
Jinx by Brian Michael Bendis. Graphic novel about a female bounty hunter, relationships and stuff. The art periodically distracted or muddled the story line, but the dialogue had moments of pure brilliance.
Mr Emerson's Wife by Amy Belding Brown. What I took away from this book was Ralph Waldo Emerson is kind of a dick, but Henry David Thoreau is dreamy. It was fun and dull in turns. The writing's a little awkward and the occasion sex scene is bizarre (not in a kinky way, but in an extra special awkward 'marital attentions' writing kind of way).
Life is Meals: a Food-Lover's Book of Days by James and Kay Salter. A christmas present from Light, courtesy of an NPR recommendation. Little tidbits about food, from traveling and eating to food science to recipes, broken up in a day-by-day journal style. Some were sweet, some were just sort of flat and affected.
All Families are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland. I still love reading things this man writes. The style of the ending was a little bit like a car crash, impossible to retain or understand, but very much an ending of something.
The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach. B had me read this. It begins by being about a society in which people make an entire life of making a single carpet of the hair of their wives, and then selling to the emperor for the money that will then support their sons as they do the same for the entirety of their lives, and onward. It becomes about three thousand other things as well, full of twisting subplots, but in the end everything gets tied into an awesome if eerie conclusion.
Fluff:
Storm Front, Fool Moon, Grave Peril, Summer Knight Death Masks, Blood Rites and Dead Beat by Jim Butcher. I admit, the sci-fi channel made me do it. Well, more precisely, the sci-fi channel made Light do it, and then I snatched them all from his grasp and devoured them like the yummy, indulgent magic-noir they are.
Summon the Keeper by Tanya Huff. I keep reading her and I can't tell why.
Moon Called and Blood Bound by Patricia Briggs. A girl mechanic named Mercedes who turns into a coyote when she wants to and hangs around with werewolves, fae and vampires. A little bit like Laurel Hamilton before she became, well, Laurel Hamilton. Hoochie covers, but not much hooch in the text.
Slogging:
The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt. When I say it is obvious exactly why AS Byatt recommends a book, I do not consider that a compliment. Painfully clever, lacking in quotation marks for all the conversations, a overly precious child learns a lot of languages, watches Seven Samurai too many times with his mildly psychotic single mother and seizes upon the idea of being able to choose his father (since his mother wouldn't tell him who his father was until he was eleven.) The book takes a startling upturn for the last fifty pages and becomes actively interesting, but the other 400 are exhausting.
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes was the complete opposite in terms of pacing. I quite liked the first half of the book, but when Arthur meets George, or when Arthur's first wife dies, I just sort of lost interest. I'm never entirely certain if I like Barnes, but a lingering fondness for A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters keeps me coming back.
Enjoyment (for the most part):
Jinx by Brian Michael Bendis. Graphic novel about a female bounty hunter, relationships and stuff. The art periodically distracted or muddled the story line, but the dialogue had moments of pure brilliance.
Mr Emerson's Wife by Amy Belding Brown. What I took away from this book was Ralph Waldo Emerson is kind of a dick, but Henry David Thoreau is dreamy. It was fun and dull in turns. The writing's a little awkward and the occasion sex scene is bizarre (not in a kinky way, but in an extra special awkward 'marital attentions' writing kind of way).
Life is Meals: a Food-Lover's Book of Days by James and Kay Salter. A christmas present from Light, courtesy of an NPR recommendation. Little tidbits about food, from traveling and eating to food science to recipes, broken up in a day-by-day journal style. Some were sweet, some were just sort of flat and affected.
All Families are Psychotic by Douglas Coupland. I still love reading things this man writes. The style of the ending was a little bit like a car crash, impossible to retain or understand, but very much an ending of something.
The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach. B had me read this. It begins by being about a society in which people make an entire life of making a single carpet of the hair of their wives, and then selling to the emperor for the money that will then support their sons as they do the same for the entirety of their lives, and onward. It becomes about three thousand other things as well, full of twisting subplots, but in the end everything gets tied into an awesome if eerie conclusion.
