Books read, early December

[mrissa]

[brief note to 2008: Will you stop already? My friends have had enough of your bullshit. Thank you.]

[and to our grocery delivery fella: My name is not kiddo-uhhhh-ma'am. Nice attempted save, though. Sigh. (timprov: "No more of these kiddo-uhhhh-ma'ams, but lots of these here dwarves." Me: "No, they don't show up until the three o'clock hour and then only if the roads are okay." Him: "Those aren't dwarves, those are munchkins." Me: "Oh. Right.")]

Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Research for an odd story that might get written one of these days, or else not. Descartes amuses me, in part because he is sometimes so extremely earnest about what he thinks he's doing, and yet fails to do it.

Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book. I had good fun with this. If Robin was a little older, I'd have bought it for him for Christmas. Maybe his birthday will be enough of a wait. There is a moment where Bod explains his attitude towards his family's killer and I had a moment of quiet but intense satisfaction. That was my favorite bit.

Tony Hillerman, The Blessing Way and Dance Hall of the Dead. First two in a long mystery series set around Navajo and other Southwestern Native American groups. If I had gotten these from the library, I'm not sure if I would have read on. They were entertaining enough to read, but I'm not sure I would have felt motivated from this beginning to commit to another long mystery series. But happily, I did not get them from the library, but rather from a friend who is willing to vouch for their improvement, particularly on gender issues, so I will go on, and even look forward to it because of the vouching. And the cross-cultural stuff, along more than one crossing, is pretty cool.

Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe. This was not even slightly what I expected or, alas, hoped for. It was interesting enough for what it was, but what I wanted was a lot more Moorish Spain, and this was almost all after Spain was re-conquered. Ottoman relations with Europe, among other things. Also I'm not sure if Lewis's central thesis about human nature and curiosity (or rather, lack thereof) was correct, but it's depressing if it is.

Cherie Priest (cmpriest), Fathom. Discussed elsewhere.

Ruth Rendell, End in Tears and Not in the Flesh. The last two books of the Inspector Wexford series to this point. I find it fascinating that Rendell's empathy, which held up through the social shifts of hippies, punks, yuppies, and more, has finally failed with political correctness. I think Hannah Goldsmith is the worst misstep I've seen her make as a writer imagining characters, because Hannah constantly thinks, "She shouldn't say that because it's not politically correct," rather than, "She shouldn't say that because it's rude." Or disrespectful, impolite, bigoted, any of a number of other things. She reads to me as a caricature written by someone who just cannot wrap her mind around why I might prefer to be Ms. instead of Mrs. or Miss. Which would be fine if Rendell had said to herself that she really didn't get this and should just do it from an external perspective, but she didn't. This was better in Not in the Flesh, I thought, so I hope it's just a blip in an otherwise extremely well-drawn series.

Karl Schroeder, Pirate Sun. Swash! Also buckle! It took me awhile to get into the rhythm of the prose of this, but I had great fun with it once I did.

Comments

[columbina.livejournal.com]

No more of these kiddo-uhhhh-ma'ams, but lots of these here dwarves.

I like people who can make and appreciate a good burrahobbit joke.

(One of my favorite parts of that book. I always imagine the trolls sounding like the cast of "The Young Ones.")

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We are all about the burrahobbits here.

Also appropriate numbers of birds in appropriate numbers of fir trees.

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

Cue the instant replay in my mind of a tiny wee Roo singing "Fifteen birds..."

[clarentine]

The Hillerman books do get better, and then they get worse again (say, in the final two or three of the series) as his health and perhaps memory failed. Alas.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Duly noted. Sad when that happens, but on the other hand he got to keep writing, which is probably what he wanted to do. Hard to guess what's the best thing in that situation.

[pameladean]

Oh, dear. I just found the last three, and I was really wondering -- The Wailing Wind, besides having a horrific story and AND a resolution to a long-standing problem that can only make a feminist rend her hair, read like a rough draft.

Oh, well, I still have all the middle ones.

P.

[clarentine]

The middle ones are some of the best of their kind, IMO.

[clarentine]

I should also say: if you haven't read it already, you may like Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I don't like Hannah either. And it's odd, because she did seventies feminism (in the seventies) rather well. I fairly recently re-read An Unkindness of Ravens and I was expecting to have problems with it but didn't.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, that's just it: I've read most of the series already, chronologically, and she's done so well with multiple dimensions of different social questions. And then Hannah. Sigh.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Unkindness of Ravens may be my favorite Rendell. It certainly has one of the best bits of misdirection I've ever seen. Hmmm. I think I might re-read that over the holidays.

MKK

[pameladean]

You are now ahead of me with Rendell. I appreciate the warning.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It doesn't ruin the book for me--there are still good things about both of these, even End in Tears.

I was just glad it didn't end in End in Tears, because that would have been a very sour note for the last book of the series.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I checked out The Blessing Way on audio book from the library a few years back, and never finished it. It wasn't bad, but I just lost the urge to keep listening. If the series does get better, I might give it another go.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

pameladean says. I will report back.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Tony Hillerman, The Blessing Way and Dance Hall of the Dead. First two in a long mystery series set around Navajo and other Southwestern Native American groups. If I had gotten these from the library, I'm not sure if I would have read on.

Quite a long time ago, I did get The Blessing Way from the library, and did not bother to finish it. I look forward to seeing where it grabs you. Perhaps I'll pick it up there. I have very few compunctions about starting to read a series at the point where it gets good (and then maybe going back to pick up the rest when I already care about the characters.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I will surely say what I think of the next four, which is what I've committed to reading so far.

[joeboo-k.livejournal.com]

My copy of Fathom came today. I can't wait to read it.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Bernard Lewis, The Muslim Discovery of Europe. This was not even slightly what I expected or, alas, hoped for. It was interesting enough for what it was, but what I wanted was a lot more Moorish Spain

I've been desultorily looking for some of that myself. It seems ridiculously hard to find.

MKK

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have some relevant stuff, but I can't look at what it is because I've gone and lent it to dlandon.

[redbird]

No, your name is not "kiddo-uhhhh-ma'am," nor is anyone's. Furthermore, the person answering the door for the grocery delivery is never named "kiddo," even if they're actually eight years old. Not if the delivery person is polite, or hoping for a tip.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I wasn't annoyed with him, because I could tell what happened: we were making bits of polite chitchat about the weather and baking, as he brought stuff in, but he could almost certainly tell by the way I was moving that I had some health problem. So he had fatherly protective stuff kick in when he wasn't looking, and had to correct on the fly.

This is far better than many of the alternatives, even if it's rather suboptimal.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

If you leave out al-Andalus, you've left out the best parts of Muslim Europe. When I think of the Ottoman Empire, it's not so much Muslims moving into Europe as Muslims staying put while Europe draws and redraws its borders to include or exclude them.

When I'm home for break, I'm going to do some digging for my Arab Spain books. They're probably no help to anyone but me-- I know too few people who read Spanish-- but there is quite a lot of drama in there.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Moving into" was not, in this author's approach, the same as "discovering." So there's that, I guess. Still, starting after al-Andalus was Christian again is sort of leaving stuff until after the shouting is over.