Books read, early April.

[mrissa]

Lloyd Alexander, The Kestrel. Discussed elsewhere.

Lois McMaster Bujold, The Sharing Knife: Horizon. Not a stand-alone book by any means. This is still my least favorite Bujold series, but I liked the way it ended pretty well.

Georgette Heyer, Devil's Cub and Arabella. Continuing diversions. None of them so far have measured up to The Grand Sophy, but luckily that is not their only success condition. Getting me through times when my concentration is low is good enough.

Tony Hillerman, Sacred Clowns. I'm still mostly enjoying the local color aspects of these, but the overall character arc is failing to arc so much as hang in the air and dither. There was a bit of decision at the end, so that's something.

Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories. In the copy Grandpa and I read together when I was little. I had forgotten a few we didn't read together as often as the others. It was good. I needed it, and here it was.

Gillian Linscott, Stage Fright. I found this to be mildly entertaining but nothing special. The period heroine who just happens to have modern opinions seemed to be a particularly strong feature. Do the rest in this series change in some direction, or is this a pretty good indication of what the others are like?

Elizabeth Moon, Command Decision. The fourth in the Vatta series. I thought it was the weakest so far--not that it was bad, but it felt to me very much like it was bridging book three and book five more than being its own thing. Still, I look forward to the thrilling conclusion etc., and would very much recommend this series to those who like space opera, or even those who don't dislike it.

Simon Schama, A History of Britain: The Fate of Empire, 1776-2002. I discovered with this one that my great difficulty in the 19th century is not that I don't know what happened in the early Victorian period and what happened in the late Victorian period. I just have difficulty making them join up in the middle. Many of the things that would help with that are outside the scope of this book, so I guess I know what I need to do about that. More Chartists! Always more Chartists! Well. Maybe not always. And actually what I mean is post-Chartists. Still.

Comments

[cissa.livejournal.com]

I REALLY liked Heyer's "The Talisman"- up there with "Sophy" in my opinion, though rather more farcical.

[carbonel]

Do you mean The Talisman Ring? That's fun, though IIRC I was startled to realize it wasn't a Regency at all, but Georgian.

[cissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's probably what I mean- it's been a couple of years since I read it, but I totally loved it.

Even if it was Georgian! It was just a delight.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I like the Georgian ones even better than the Regencies!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I prefer Leaphorn to Chee as well.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

The final Sharing Knife book made the middle two more okay with me. I still don't like them necessarily, and Sharing Knife III: In Which Fawn Is Useless will probably still make me angry a few years from now, but it had Fawn being not useless, not least because Dag was off on his own. I can accept the four books as a single work better than I can accept the third book as any kind of standalone.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah well, I don't think any of them stand alone, really. I think the title structure is very accurate there.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I think the 4 books are a really interesting experiment--not entirely successful, I don't think--and I enjoy them, but I can definitely see how other people wouldn't enjoy them.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I liked them, in general, but it was the same kind of like I had for Twilight, and for some of the same reasons. She built the world and the characters such that Fawn didn't get to be awesome very much at all.

I will admit, some of my dislike for the third is that I was running scenes in my head* for a while and had Fawn taken hostage by a bandit, and in my version, Fawn managed to put him on the ground while Dag dropped the bandits who were running (Copperhead also stomped on some of them; I like the horse). Seeing almost the same situation but with less satisfaction at the end... worse reaction than if I had read it cold, I think.


*this is my version of fanfic, never written down

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

The thing I really liked about the books was the smaller scope and the idea that people don't have to be extraordinary to create lasting change in the world. I love the Vorkosigan and Chalion books, but those two series feature characters who are extraordinary.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I can see that. I did like how homey the entire series felt.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I think the books that helped me most figuring out the Chartists and other reformers of that period (that is, what little I know about them) were Middlemarch and Freedom and Necessity, an odd pair. I also haven't figured out how those all were tied in to the Forty-Eighters on the Continent though IIRC the latter are covered well enough in A Brief History of the World, which I really ought to reread soon.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Actually it's those that are making it hard. I'm having great difficulty joining up Middlemarch's setting-time with its writing-time, and what were the Chartists doing in '58 or '68? This is what I have to find out. ("Have to" for my own edification rather than some project I have in mind.)

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Hm. Apparently the Chartists don't qualify as "cultural" enough to be mentioned in the index of Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence. Your history library is probably much better than anything I have here anyway. I'd have thought that whole series of changes from the enclosures of the commons to the rise of the House of Commons would have made a huge difference in people's lives, but if Barzun discusses it at all it's under some other term. (I've been reading the book a bit at a time for years, so I never remember what's there very well.)

By the way, I realize you've never had any trouble thinking of reasons why it's a Good Thing you moved from CA to MN, but I just learned a new one a few minutes ago: apparently earthquakes can feel very much like vertigo. Just what you don't need.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I was not vertiginous much when we lived there--when I was dizzy it was usually something else (anemia or low blood pressure or hypoglycemia). But yah: not needed, not wanted.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I just have difficulty making them join up in the middle.

That's me and Central Asia. I blame maps that put Europe(-and-Africa) on one page and Asia on another.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I've read - and enjoyed - several of Gillian Linscott's Nell Bray books, though not that one. As you say, entertaining. The period heroine with modern opinions didn't bother me as much as it does in [insert random medieval fantasy here], if only because the period is one when modern ideas were beginning to form. Anyway, all the books I've read are fairly similar, though of course you may have hot the odd one out!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Right, but Modern ideas (in the technical sense) did not get to their modern form (in the temporal sense) right away, not by a longshot.

Hmm. I am reading my least favorite of the Heyers so far (Bath Tangle), and I'm noticing how the Regency setting allows Heyer to have her cake and eat it too with regard to conventionality. Only the strictest social conservatives reading Heyer in the 20th or 21st century would find anything in particular wrong with Heyer's heroines driving phaetons or walking out with only a servant for company--so she gets to have behavior that is labeled as daring and outre without actually risking offending or shocking any readers across a broad spectrum. Neat trick.