Books read, early February

[mrissa]

Hanne Blank, Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality. I have been privy to some of the writing of this book, so I am very glad to see it in finished form, and it's got a lot more of the, "oh yes! this bit!" nature than novels I have been privy to the writing of. And I kept wailing, "Control groups, you people, control groups!" But I was wailing with Hanne, not against her, so.

Mike Carey, The Unwritten: On To Genesis. Or possibly Ontogenesis. The kerning is deliberately vague. Obscure Scribblies and their writing implements: yay. But oh, graphic novels of this sort are so short. Waiting impatiently for the more that is coming.

A. M. Dellamonica, Blue Magic. Discussed elsewhere.

Janet Gyatso and Hanna Havnevik, Women in Tibet. I don't recommend this unless you have substantial background about the region, which I don't, although with time I expect I will acquire it. It is a work for people with a specialist interest. The essay on women in modern Tibetan medicine, for example, lists by name the women in each of the first several graduating classes in medicine, which is all very well but rather dry, one might say. Also it does the thing that drives me just bazoo in the historical section, where it fails to distinguish between a society that is deeply sexist but better than its neighbors and one that is worse. Also this is not a book for people who want to maintain a belief that Tibetan Buddhism is a superior form of religion that has never had any of the difficulties between theory and practice that plague other forms of religion, or that Tibetans are in general deeply nice people who never upset each other or do anything bad unless the Chinese are directly to blame. Not that this is a book that will teach you that the Chinese are deeply nice people who just came into Tibet to take some vacation photos and have a few momos! Sigh. History. Not for the nice.

Barbara Hambly, Days of the Dead. This one moves from Louisiana to Mexico City. The departure ended up working all right but not fabulously for me, and the plot twists did not strike me as particularly twisty. Still interested in the series, though.

Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. I learned from 1491, you see. For ages, I kept having the same conversation at cons, where people would ask if I'd read 1491 and then tell me that I simply must. So this time I read 1493 early so I could have different conversations. The difference, though, is that while this book was interesting and had things that made my eyes do the O_O thing (malaria and the Mason-Dixon Line, wow wow wow), I feel like he could write a near-infinite number of books of the same title, whereas the same was not really true of 1491. The first one had an inevitability about it and its structure. This one was more...some stuff that was good and interesting. And it was good and interesting. But.

Sarah Monette (truepenny), Somewhere Beneath Those Waves. I keep trying to feel my way around the difference between dark fantasy and horror, because "horror is the stuff I don't like" feels like it's unfair, and then saying cheerfully, "Oh, this collection of Sarah's is mostly dark fantasy," is useful for people who have a sense of my personal boundaries and not really for anybody else. (Or, conversely, useful for people who have a sense of Sarah's short fiction and want to know about my personal boundaries.) I like the longer stuff better than the shorter stuff, and I am fascinated by how few of our periods of personal fascination overlap even slightly. And I think that is what I have to say about that for the moment, but there might be more later.

Daniel O'Malley, The Rook. Do not look in this book for subtlety. The sorts of small details that might add up to cool plot points in another, better fantasy spy novel: they are just things that O'Malley forgot or didn't mean anything by. If you want to tear through a fantasy spy novel and not pay too much attention, though, this will do fine.

Tim Powers, The Bible Repairman and Other Stories. This is not the end of Tim Powers stuff I like best, but it's Tim Powers, so of course it's all quite readable.

Jon Ronson The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry. What a weird book. Ronson wants to talk about what makes a psychopath in the sense of how we can tell, and then he wants to talk about what makes a psychopath in terms of who contributes to social concepts, and...there are neurologists and Scientologists and prisoners and whatever else he likes, and he seems to think of himself as a well-known writer and I don't, so that got strange too. It was short and fast and entertaining, but not really like much else.

Greg Rucka, Queen and Country Vol. 2 and 3. I know, I know, but I only got the borrowed copies of Sandbaggers yesterday. And this was fun, and I am amazed that I can actually see when it's a different comics artist I know from elsewhere, because I think of myself as Totally Ignorant. And also I will be interested to see where Volume 4 is going, but I don't quite want to be All Done that soon.

Thomas Siddell, Gunnerkrigg Court Volume 3: Reason. LASER COWS OMG I WOULD TOTALLY HAVE LIKED CAMPING IF IT HAD COME WITH LASER COWS. Also, y'know. Forward plot momentum. Yay.

Laurel Snyder, Bigger Than a Bread Box. This was a great disappointment to me. It felt like it was emotionally hugely important to the author, but it read like her therapy over her parents' divorce. It was a kids' fantasy, and there was nothing fun about it, absolutely nothing. It was one dreary thing after another, and there were tedious Lessons to be Learned from the magic, and--Laurel Snyder, seriously? This is the woman who wrote that lovely wall book? I suppose I just don't understand how kids who are in the middle of a divorce process things, but on the other hand I find it entirely possible that kids who are in the middle of a divorce do not need gloom and lectures from an author who has previously written interesting fun books. I will try her next thing, but with far less sense of glee and excitement than I had.

Chris Van Allsburg, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: Fourteen Amazing Authors Tell the Tales. And to continue my incredibly judgy streak, I am going to just pretend this book does not exist, and let us never speak of it again. Actually I probably will speak of it again, because it's a very useful example of what it's doing, and what it's doing is ruining negative capability. The Harris Burdick prints were fun and awesome and interesting, and I have one hanging in my office and some more hanging above my piano. But part of what makes them interesting is the way they let you fill in all sorts of different stories. And it turns out that taking very famous writers and having them toss off mediocre stories does not actually improve on the what-ifs that tease the corners of one's mind when looking at the original Harris Burdick prints--at least, not the ones that teased the corners of my mind. This is like showing the Balrog on screen rather than having it lurk in the darkness; it's like giving the Sith rulebook instead of just referring to Darth Vader as Lord of the Sith and letting us fill in our imaginings of what that must mean the Sith are like. If you've spent years and years leaving things to people's imaginations, you should be awfully sure that what you're substituting is even half as good. With one or two exceptions, these just aren't.

Norman Vorano, Inuit Prints: Japanese Inspiration: Early Printmaking in the Canadian Arctic. markgritter and I saw this exhibit in Vancouver when we were there, and the book had some but not all of my favorite prints. It was really lovely stuff, highly recommended and somewhat weird, though the book did not capture some of my favorite weirdness.

Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America's Great Migration. I would say I read this in honor of Black History Month, but honestly I requested it in January and only got the library copy in February because everybody else wanted it in January also. And if you have any interest in contemporary US history, you should read it, too, in February or any other month. The "Great Migration" here refers to the way that African-Americans spread out from the US South to the North and West in the years from WWI to 1970ish. I was expecting this to be more trends and statistics, and there was some of that, but there was also a lot of individual example and personal story, and I found that really interesting and effective.

Walter Jon Williams, Aristoi. I did not find his use of multiple personality strands as multiple simultaneous narrative threads either convincing within the narrative or effective as a narrative device, which limited how much I enjoyed the book, but I did enjoy it somewhat, and would recommend it for people who are in the mood for a far-future of a particular kind. It feels like it was towards the beginning of something, but I'm having a hard time articulating what.

Comments

[toadnae.livejournal.com]

I finished the Warmth of Other Suns about a month ago - I found it very interesting and I learned a LOT. I think the balance of the statistics and the stories was well done. The structure didn't wow me, but I tend to prefer chronological history to cyclical or topic-related.

Currently, I am waffling on where or not to finish At Heaven's Command. Apparently it is written by a very old British historian who set out to write the history of the British Empire from Victoria's accession to the present. He started in 1969 and oh my, can I tell. There will be flaming bits of racism, classism, and every freaking racial stereotype on the planet, and then he throws in good stories and interesting information. Just about the point I'm ready to find another audiobook, another good story comes along. Determining if I can live with the attitudes to get the information is going to be interesting. On the upside, I now know that my assumptions about why there are a lot of French names south of Winnipeg were entirely wrong. I actually bookmarked that chapter in my audiobook so we can listen to it again on the way to Winnipeg in May.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Laser Cows! Gunnerkrigg is great (and is even better now that Mr. Siddell has learned how to draw people whose heads aren't shaped like almonds...).

I didn't realize you had a Harris Burdick print on your office wall. I will have to investigate this phenomenon when next I visit.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I had a pretty similar reaction to Bigger Than a Bread Box, especially after enjoying both Any Which Wall and Penny Dreadful. (Though in the latter, I think the resemblance to Edward Eager's Magic or Not and The Well-Wishers is supposed to be a feature, and to me it's a bug because I Do Not Like Those Books.)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

She.

I found that trilogy immensely readable, even with the winceworthy bits, and useful primary research because she'd been to all the places mentioned and had context. I haven't re-read it in a long while though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You show people the passage to Narnia on their first visit and they get lulled!

I would find this far less hilarious in an ordinary visitor who had not spent hours in my office writing stories.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do you not like Edward Eager in general, or just not those two?

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I am a big fan of his other books, and in fact that was one reason I liked Any Which Wall so much. I think the way I feel about those two is akin to the way you (and I) feel about "death of the magic" endings. If I'm reading a magic book, I want magic in it, dammit, not just a vague idea that well, there might be some, maybe, because sometimes things happen that you wish for. I have real life for that; I don't need it in books.

(Actually, I liked Penny Dreadful much better than those two Eager books, because aside from the maybe/maybe not magic the story and characters were pretty captivating. With bonus actual varied characters! Just off the top of my head, there's a deaf girl, a mixed-race kid or two, and same sex married couple who have one adorable kid and are working, and they're all written as a normal part of the community.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, when people go into the "was there magic or was he/she just insane" thing, I usually find that not only hostile but boringly hostile. And "was there magic or was it all just subtle coincidence" is less hostile but still frustrating and not very interesting.

[redbird]

The Psychopath Test did feel a bit like "I have these interesting bits and most of them fit together." I see why he included the section on Emmanuel Constant, the Haitian death squad leader (and convicted mortgage fraudster, which is why the interviews where in New York State prison), but he doesn't really make the connections well. In this case, I don't know whether I'd have benefited from knowing/remembering more about the case, or less (what I knew was from reading about him in local newspapers after Constant moved to New York).

There's room for another/different book on the history of the DSM, which is sort of lurking in the background of this one.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

That's exactly it - not hostile but frustrating and not very interesting. It doesn't help that the characters are mostly less interesting than the ones in his other books, and without actual magic so are their escapades.

[carbonel]

I know, I know, but I only got the borrowed copies of Sandbaggers yesterday.

I'm glad they got to their final destination. I'll be interested in hearing what you think of them.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, thank you.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

Yah, it turns out that I tend to be pretty focused on your computer screen when we are writing, akshully. I mean, I see why you're amused. I'm amused! But the glancing around in all directions while writing - it is not as common as one might think.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed Warmth of Other Suns too, but that's Wilkerson, not Wilderson. I helped build a bibliography for her wikipedia page. Quite a bit of her journalism has been reprinted in books, and I hope to check some of it out sometime.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Particularly if that one was me, since it's one of the things I do a bit compulsively while thinking of the next thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thank you for pointing out the tyop so I can fix it.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Sure thing!

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Migration is a topic that fascinates me.

I want to hear more about the 1490s books. 1492 used to mean Columbus discovers Americas. Now it means the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. (Both events did all kinds of bizarre things to music.) A big year.

Finally, I have intentionally not read the Harris Burdick book because when I was young, I used to write stories about these prints and I liked that they were mysterious and --- open --- illustrations. But the quality of Van Allsburg's works seems like it has gone down as of late (Queen of the Falls) and I suspect that this book may have been produced for financial rather than artistic reasons. Still, as you say, it's hard not to be judgy when one has such strong opinions about these things.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

For Charles Mann, 1492 still does mean Columbus Sailed The Ocean Blue. He does remarkably little with Judaism in these books. It's a lot more about cultural effects on biology, particularly botany and epidemiology. Which, y'know, is also good. I'm interested in both.