Early August books

[mrissa]

Elizabeth Bear (matociquala), New Amsterdam. My biggest complaint about this book is that I would have liked a table of contents in the front. Why? Because I use a hyphen in anal-retentive, thanks for asking. I'm interested in how people do the middle ground between novel and short story, but my incredibly insightful response here is that they should do it with a table of contents. If I hadn't known it was a collection of linked short stories, I would have been disappointed with the way some structural elements fell out -- where some characters were introduced relative to their departure, for example. I think what this means is that I give my heart more quickly if I'm aware that something is a short story. Make of that what you will.

Lois McMaster Bujold, The Sharing Knife: Legacy. There were all sorts of things I was glad Bujold avoided doing here, bits of triteness, bits of false sweetness. That's all very good. I was less than usually pleased with what she did do, though -- even my less-favorite Bujold books are well-done and well worth reading, but this was, in fact, in the less-favorite category. The central relationship was less interesting to me as a new relationship than I suspect it would be as an established one. Or maybe it's that I'm less interested in new relationships than in established ones, and this book was largely new relationships.

Emma Bull (coffeeem), Territory. For some people, having a story set in the Tombstone of the Earps is a gateway to enjoying it. For me, a hurdle. But coffeeem clears the hurdle with room to spare here. I'm not all that familiar with the Tombstone story -- I've seen the Val Kilmer movie and relished the Val Kilmer bits, is basically it -- but that wasn't required to see what was going on in the book. The parts of the book I did know about -- the 19th century Chinese immigrant stuff -- was dead on. The ending reminded me that the Matter of Tombstone was being treated like the Matter of Britain here: you wouldn't read an Arthurian novel and expect the ending to be independent of Arthur and his court. I hear tell there's more. I'll buy it right away when there is.

Colin Cotterill, Anarchy and Old Dogs. And speaking of buying it right away when there's more, wheee! This is the fourth book in the series, the ones I've been describing as historical Laotian magical realist murder mysteries. So very fond. This one was somewhat political for its characters. I think it might read all right if you hadn't read the three before it, but there is arc going on -- there is evolution of character relationships -- so I'd recommend starting at the beginning. I have the unpleasant sense that I'm going to spend the next N years recommending this series to people and expressing decreasing surprise and eventually resignation upon hearing they haven't read them. I hope I'm wrong about that. They deserve an audience.

Atul Gawande, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance. Oh, this one was good stuff, too. Gawande is approaching the question of how to make concrete and lasting improvements in the world. He's doing it through the prism of his own profession, but I think it's an interesting approach for others, and some of the tidbits that came up were fascinating. Highly recommended.

Rumer Godden, Kingfishers Catch Fire. This was a mostly quiet book, with a sense of what was to come hanging over it. I liked that. I liked how it didn't have to run around shouting in order to be vivid and compelling. I also loved the fact that the characters were allowed to find their own version of better choices in the end, to make small steps towards their own happy ending rather than being pulled into someone else's whole cloth.

Ellen Klages, Portable Childhoods. Short stories. Here is what I discovered about my reaction to Ellen Klages's work with this volume: it is predictably unpredictable. That is, the stories whose one-line description I would be most likely to pass on are the ones I really liked, and the ones that sound more intriguing in capsule form are the ones I bounced off of. How odd.

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So here's the thing: this book was written for people who had read the rest of the series and cared. And I was not those people; I read the last three Harry Potter books because I write YAs and didn't want to accidentally write something that would look "copied from Harry Potter" out of ignorance. I have often thought that one of the differences between fanfic and original fiction is that fanfic writers are starting with a presumption that the readers both know and care about their characters, and this frees them from some constraints (and creates others). But like all other lines between fanfic and original fiction, it's a big blur rather than a sharp, clear line, and this book was a counterexample. There's no reason it couldn't rely heavily on people already caring, of course, as millions of people worldwide clearly did. But within this book, I didn't think either detail or structure would pull in a reader who wasn't already committed -- and again, that's fine, because so many people clearly were that the pages upon pages of cranky camping were not a problem for them.

The strongest emotional reaction it got from me was, "Go, Neville's gran!"

I've had discussions with several people in the last few months about whether the Harry Potter books still "really" were children's books. And "really," yes, I think they are. The epilogue to the last book is exactly what I mean: rather than talking about what the surviving characters of interest were doing later in their lives, it told us who had married, how many children they had, what their ages were. This is how most 13-year-olds approach the world: kids are the center of it, kids are the interesting part. Rather than finding out who tamed what dragon and who invented what potion, we are shown who had which kids to have more Hogwarts adventures in the future. This is exactly how everyone in my group in Ms. Kolbaum's eighth grade English approached the task of writing a sequel to a favorite book: the important part, the central part, was not the characters we had known and loved, if they were no longer kids at the end of the last book. It was the kids who would follow them. This is the epilogue of a book for children. (Anyone who thinks that it's derogatory for me to call something a children's book doesn't know me very well, and can leave now.)

Also, the wizarding world is built so that the people you meet when you're 11 are the important people for the rest of your life. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part it's not a world where the people you met in adolescence -- the best friends or the worst enemies -- fade out of your life. Everything feels eternally important when you're in junior high, and in the wizarding world, it is -- the people at your lunch table on your first day of seventh grade are with you for the rest of your life. Our world? Not really like that. In the wizarding world, your best friend's parents don't get jobs in a different city or have to move to a different school district because a death or a divorce makes them unable to afford their current place. Your best friend doesn't decide to go to a college/university across the country from you. You can choose different paths, but they'll be adjacent paths. For my money, one of the biggest pieces of magic in the Harry Potter universe is that, as long as they're alive, you don't have to let people go. The down side of this, of course, is that the kid who picked on you in Chem Potions lab is still there when you're in your late 30s -- not "in some form" and not "someone like them" and not "by some freak coincidence," but as a matter of course. You know they will be, unless they have some horrible mishap featuring a basilisk. Of course, the hope of horrible basilisk-related mishaps to one's enemies is much higher in the wizarding world than it is here, so that's probably a comfort.

Nina Stritzler-Levine, editor. Finnish Modern Design. Large book, lotsa pictures. As usual, once you have a nutbar theory -- in my case an explicitly fictional one -- the pieces continue to fall into place wherever you look. The section on the Finnish postwar jewelry-making industry was particularly useful that way.

David J. Sturdy, Richelieu and Mazarin. About...Richelieu...and also Mazarin. As statesmen, not as people, as one might expect. It was not at all the traditional puppetmaster view of Richelieu. I will be interested to see how it compares to the other Richelieu-related book on my to-be-read pile.

Comments

Wizarding world being small

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

That's something of a feature of lots of stories from early 20th Century England anyway; everybody who mattered went to a good private school and then Oxford or Cambridge, so you did in fact run into them all the time if you were in that world.

Re: Wizarding world being small

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

And since in the wizarding world there's apparently only one school in Britain anyway . . . .

Re: Wizarding world being small

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

And no "university" level training, either.

Re: Wizarding world being small

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

And you spend eight years training in order to fight some classmate you hate, when you're grown.

Re: Wizarding world being small

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Now I'll tell you what I would have been setting up if it was me: a situation that forced the Order of the Phoenix and the Death-Eaters to work together sincerely and thoroughly for a common goal. Because I am still obsessed with Finland, and it fascinates me that the Reds and Whites (either group of whom contained people who were convinced that the other group was utter evil) came together for the Winter War. They didn't forget -- many of them didn't forgive -- but they worked together anyway. Because as little as each liked the other, both liked Stalin and the prospect of being a Russian Grand Duchy (renamed the Finnish SSR, of course) far less. That, to me, is interesting. And it's not just to me as a grown-up: I would have been absolutely captivated by it at age 8.

Blood, love, and rhetoric, is what.

Re: Wizarding world being small

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yupyupyup.

Re: Wizarding world being small

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Watching Spider-Man 3, I found myself really hankering for a story where Harry (Osborn, not Potter) would be right to bear a grudge against Peter . . . but would still rise above it to work with him when it became necessary. Rather than the grudge being unfounded, as it usually is.

A story that did that well would be awesome beyond words.

Re: Wizarding world being small

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes. That would be good.

Even as it stood, having to work with your half-crazy and occasionally evil best friend who was trying to win the heart of the same person you were after -- that's a hell of a story. But noooo, we had to go for the "you take care of her...*cough*...I love you, pal...*dies*," ending that every other thing even remotely similar has used. Bah! Bah, I say!

Re: Wizarding world being small

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I think I'm a sucker for stories that turn best friends/brothers/what-have-you against each other. It's why, despite my general disinterest in Arthurian retellings, I still find the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot triangle powerful: the relationship between Arthur and Lancelot is compelling, rather than filler, and it makes the betrayal all the worse.

If you happen to know of any other good stories of the close-friend-betrayal sort, let me know. I've got a hankering for those right now. (Just rewatched parts of the anime series X: 1999, which does a fabulous job with a few such plots.)

Re: Wizarding world being small

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For me it's not betrayal in specific that pushes the buttons, it's complication. And it's having to go on after complication of whatever sort, which some Arthurian stuff has and some doesn't.

Re: Wizarding world being small

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Interesting: I was thinking it was deliberately cozy, but it may be deliberately nostalgic instead.

Or accidental, I suppose.

[jkahane.livejournal.com]

Thanks for offering the reviews, much appreciated.

I love the work that Emma Bull has done over the years, but wasn't sure about picking up Territory, but this review of the book and others that I've read recently have convinced me to do so. Keep up the terrific blog, Marissa. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

My sense is that, in Sweden, the real world is quite a bit more like Rowling's wizarding world than it is in the US. That is, kids being in the same cohort year in and year out form allegiances/gangs of friends as tweens or teens that all go out together, substitute for one-on-one dating, and often last well into adulthood. It isn't a freak coincidence there either. I have no idea how this compares to normal experiences of boarding school kids in Britain, but there may be a culture gap acting there.

Not that I want to defend Rowling particularly. I gave up in disgust after book 4 or so, because she was clearly disregarding relationships and established character in the service of plot. Ptui.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"This is not like the world we live in" is not necessarily criticism from me, either.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Ellen Klages, Portable Childhoods. Short stories. Here is what I discovered about my reaction to Ellen Klages's work with this volume: it is predictably unpredictable. That is, the stories whose one-line description I would be most likely to pass on are the ones I really liked, and the ones that sound more intriguing in capsule form are the ones I bounced off of. How odd.

If you did not really hate the narrative voice in "The Green Glass Sea," I recommend the novel by that name. (I'm not recommending it to everyone, quite. It seems like something you'd like.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I did read the novel. I liked it but didn't love it. I wanted to love it. Still, liking it is good.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I found I really liked Green Glass Sea mostly because it is one of those books that really captured the child's perspective, not the adult author's version of the child's perspective. Other authors I would put in this category include Hilary McKay, and um, some other authors I love, but forget.

The thing about Klages is there is a definite sense that she is still coming into her own as a writer. I didn't realize she had other work out there. I will have to check it out.

(P.S. I believe she has an LJ, it being a small world and all that.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have the sense that she's coming into her own, too -- I expect to be interested in whatever it is she chooses to do next.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm... Val Kilmer....

I just put about half of the books you mentioned on my to read list. Esp. the Cotterill, Gawande (I'm currently fascinated with the medical use of language, as I'm temping in a hospital) and Godden.

I've always loved Godden, but I've never read this book. She is part of a subtle generation of well crafted writing. I put Elizabeth Enright in this category. The stories are good, but the writing is really exquisite. It's not something one encounters so much anymore, that level of gentility, drama, and well-craftedness. (Sorry for the repetition, but I can't think of a better word.)

And BTW, I think you're right about HP as a book for young people. It doesn't have the moral complexity that we encounter as adult readers. Snape was about as complicated as it got, and even then his motives were flat. Dumbledore showed some promise in the last book as a morally complex character, but he is vindicated in his decisions, which actually made me really angry. (Greater Good is not something we want people chasing blindly.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Seriously, it's been a wonderful fortnight for books. And the one I'm reading now is awesome, too.

The thing about the type of writing you're talking about -- and two points determine a line here, I know exactly what you mean when you include Godden and Enright -- is that it's not self-consciously gorgeous. It's not the book equivalent of fluffing its hair every five seconds.

Yah, the flattening of the potentially complex motives made me roll my eyes on more than one front.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean with the Bujold. I liked it, I'll read it again, but I don't think I was reading the book I thought I was reading. It was fun to be reading, but not as much fun to have read, if that makes sense.

Territory has been recommended to my father with the phrase, "It's a good book, as far as I can tell, but I don't know nearly enough about the Earps to really get it."

Also! You have mentioned Sorcery and Cecelia here, have you not? I finally found it and enjoyed it quite a bit. So many thanks for offhandedly (or not) mentioning it.

Hey, the library opens in half an hour. It'll take me that long to get dressed and together. Hmmm....

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have indeed mentioned Sorcery and Cecelia, probably more than once. Glad you liked it!