cahn

If I Lie (Jackson) - 3+/5 - So this book surprised me over and over again -- it very much exceeded my expectations. On first glance, what with the title and all, and the fairly familiar tone of the first-person teen girl narrator, I figured it was your typical high school book. Then it turned out it was a high school book With a Secret. Then I figured out the secret, which didn't take that long. Then I thought I was going to be bored through the whole book as the author ham-handedly built up to the Big Secret Reveal. Then, a couple of pages later, the author... revealed the secret. Almost casually. Then I thought the book would be about how she was triumphantly vindicated. And then it wasn't. It's about how people are complicated. And then I thought it would be about Teen True Love. And it wasn't. It was about how people can love and hurt each other at the same time.

The one thing that Irks me about this book is how one character decides something is "wrong" or "messed up" with another character because he doesn't ask for sex even after they have dated for two whole years. IN HIGH SCHOOL. Um... I've dated three people for more than two years, two of them atheists, and none of them asked me for sex in the first two years. So there. I mean, yeah, I understand that you're maybe trying to deal with one set of messed-up expectations? But doing this by switching to another set of messed-up expectations, uh, no?

Ready Player One (Cline) - 3+/5 - Someone on my reading list said something along the lines of "This is basically an excuse for the author to talk about his obsessions from the 80's," and that's... just about right, in a way that's surprisingly entertaining, but that is probably more entertaining for those of us who lived through the 80's. The writing, even laying aside the nonsensical premise, is curiously full of flaws -- infodumps, telling-not-showing for large chunks of the action, random deus ex machinas showing up from time to time, somewhat cardboard characters, the usual cardboard dystopia-world-building (no worse, I suppose, than your usual dystopia YA), some totally random rants against religion (what?) in the beginning that seem unrelated to the rest of the book -- and yet the enthusiasm for the random 80's video games and so on is so genuine that I often found myself charmed despite myself. For example, the climactic puzzle of the book is kind of... silly; the way it's presented doesn't make any sense -- but it uses a song that was such an integral part of my geeky childhood that although the absurdity of it totally registered with me, I was still smiling with glee that it had appeared at all. So... the rating here is me trying to assign one number to one aspect I'd rate very high and another I'd rate rather low.

The Fault in Our Stars (Green) - 3+/5 - So apparently there was this whole thing where copies were released early and Green was terrified that people would GET SPOILERS OH NOES. Which strikes me as kind of hilarious, because around a third of the way in I refused to read any further UNTIL I got spoilers. Since I was reading a kindle version, I looked online, but if I had been reading a print book I would have flipped right to the end (and the middle). Anyway. I frequently have this problem with Green's books where I feel slightly, I dunno, detached from the characters, and I felt a little this way about this book too, but I found it much more moving than An Abundance of Katherines. I liked it a lot, although I definitely was glad I'd looked up the spoilers.

Incarnate (Meadows) - 3/5. Eh. I suppose it's not the book's fault, not totally, that its central conceit (a fantasy, or possibly a SF-fantasy-feel, that people get reincarnated and remember their past lives -- although how this is physically possible is not entirely clear to me -- and that there is a romance between an 18-year-old and a 5000-year-old. REALLY. Hey, you just hit my squick issue! (It's rather more the book's fault that the 5000-year-old came across as, maybe, a thirty-year-old at oldest.)

Guys and Dolls (Damon Runyon): 3+/5. Not much to say about this. If you like Guys and Dolls, the musical, and you like O. Henry, you'll like these stories. I very much like all three. I'd counsel against reading them all at once, like I did, because they do get a little wearisome one right after another (much like O. Henry, which I overdosed on in middle school and have not really gone back to since).

After the Apocalypse (Maureen McHugh): 3- to 3+/5. I dunno. I really, really liked the other collection of McHugh that I read, and this one I just... didn't. I don't know whether I was the one to blame or not; I suspect partially I'm to blame, as I think I read this when I wasn't in the mood for depressing. And, wow, these stories are depressing. And also involving characters who just give up, which I am not, I guess, that interested in reading about.

I am getting caught up on my backlog of posts/reading, finally.

Red as Blood (Tanith Lee) - 3 to 5. Reread. The title story is amazing, in my opinion, a tour-de-force of dark lush reimagined-Christian imagery. I'd forgotten exactly how good it was. The other stories range from quite good (I liked the Pied Piper one more than I'd remembered) to a bit silly (I'm sorry, I didn't find "Beauty" entirely convincing).

Going for Infinity: A Literary Journey (Poul Anderson) - 3+ to 4. Some of these stories were rereads. Poul Anderson is totally awesome, really: he's got the hard-science thing going and he also has the Scandinavian-myth thing going as well, and the stories where those things come together are made of awesome. "The Queen of Air and Darkness," complete with an actual ballad and a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, is a fantastic SF story (yeah, with that title and a ballad, were you expecting a fantasy story?), as are "Goat Song" and "Kyrie," all three of which have aged very well (okay, fine, occasionally one would wish for updated gender politics, but otherwise they are all very good). Some of the earlier stories are, well, they don't age nearly as well, but even those have interesting and well-worked-out ideas. The only thing is that his stories almost never viscerally grab me, but it might be impossible to do that with the careful working-out of ideas that is a hallmark of his stories.

A Sudden Wild Magic (Diana Wynne Jones) 3+/5 - Well, DWJ. Therefore, I liked it. I liked this one less than average, though, and wow, the romance was even worse than usual -- and i don't have very high expectations for DWJ romances.

What I Saw and How I Lied (Blundell) - 3/5. Teen after WWII finds all is not as it seems. I have nothing to say about this book, either good or bad.

Hybrid (O'Grady) 3/5. It was like The Passage, only with better medical jargon, and less with the woo-woo vampire mysticism. But the physics was just as bad. Also, maybe it was the Kindle version, but the ending was really abrupt. I mean, not even in the "plotlines didn't get wound up" way, but in the "it feels like this was cut off in the middle of a chapter" way. I'm betting the kindle version is missing a couple of end pages.

The Passage (Cronin) - 3/5. Oh yeah, I read this too, I forgot. Like Hybrid, only with woo-woo vampire mysticism. I really have a very hard time with vampire Ponzi schemes. Has someone explained exponential growth to Cronin? A quick calculation assuming each vampire needs to eat two people/day and the chance is 0.05 that person will become a vampire yields less than 300 days until the entire US is vampires...

Hawk of May (Bradshaw) 3+/5. Arthurian. A book from my childhood, and better than I remember. The first half was quite wonderful, and the second half had some nice surprises but overall lowered the rating. (Okay, in particular, that whole interlude with Lugh was a little... weird.) Also it is nice when your entire plot does not hinge on something that is super obvious if you have ever read any Arthurian stuff ever. However, overall passes my Arthurian test of "Bradshaw knows more about Arthurian mythos and Irish history than I do," though this is admittedly easier to do now than it was ten years ago. I'll definitely be picking up the sequels.

Edited: D points out I CANNOT DO SIMPLE EXPONENTIAL CALCULATIONS, bah. I have changed the numbers accordingly.

I think after this I'll be caught up on my reading. For now.

Before I Fall (Oliver) 3/5. YA mainstreamish. I almost typed "dystopia," I'm getting so used to using that word. Anyway. Car accidents and death and life and stuff like that. A bit on the problematic side (in my opinion Izzy Willy-Nilly did a similar kind of theme in a much less mawkish way), but gets points for recognizing the kinds of things that ought to be noticed and by doing it in what is, overall, a non-cliche kind of way. Good teenage read.

Delirium (Oliver) 2/5. It's hard for me to believe that Before I Fall was her first book and Delirium was her second. This is a mass of cliches about True Luv that never, ever even thinks about engaging with what ought to be the central question (that is, not "Is it evil to deny people True Love?" but rather, "Is it evil to deny people choices if it increases their happiness?"). When I start making up speeches for the villains because I think theirs are so poor... you know it's a bad sign.

Across the Universe (Revis) 3/5. YA dystopian-spaceship SF. This gets huuuuuge brownie points from me by being just about the only YA dystopia I've read lately where the characters actually realize that, hey, you know, maybe there are reasons why the oppressive non-freedom-loving rules are there other than "we want to stomp on your face forever, thanks!" I mean, sure, absolute corruption and all that, but I was getting really bored at reading about nothing but absolute corruption. Also props for having the main character not necessarily be Extreme Beacon of Truth and Light Compared to Absolute Corruption.

Enclave (Aguirre) 3/5. I liked this a little more than the other YA dystopias I've been reading lately -- I think partially because the writing seems just a hair better (like, Aguirre doesn't seem completely tone-deaf) and partially because I was reacting to Divergent's silly let's-coopt-SF-so-I-can-sound-gritty-even-though-this-is-really-fantasy -- at least this one engages with its post-apocalyptic landscape, you know? She even tried to put some thought into how it worked, as well as into Deuce herself (who seems to be able to talk about her hunting skills semi-knowledgably). And there's even a character arc for more than one character (reeeeally rare in these things), though it's somewhat brief and truncated. The whole thing did end kind of abruptly, in a way that almost makes me think that she got to the end of the material she'd thought about carefully and so had to wrap everything up.

A Wizard of Mars (Duane) 3+/5 - I thought this held together a lot better than Wizards at War, though without the "10-year reunion!!" feel of the latter. Just as well, I suppose. The emotional arc at the core reminded me a bit of one of the most moving parts of Bujold's Paladin of Souls, which I then had to go back and reread. Of course, the Bujold is better and more adult (neither of which implies the other, of course!), not least because Ista's speech is waaaaay shorter than Nita's, but I still liked the Duane quite a bit. Also, more Dairine, please! (She's clearly gearing up for gettting more screen time in another book or two, but I want it sooner rather than later!) Also, it was somewhat refreshing to find an alien race that behaves worse than humans; I haven't seen one of those in a while, it seems. Anyway, a solid addition to the canon. Not one of my favorites, but not one of the worst either.

There was a dead silence. In fact, the silence was so very dead that Abdullah realized that the sixty ears... [mild spoilers redacted]... anyway, that all these ears were at that moment focused entirely upon what he and Flower-in-the-Night were saying.

"Talk among yourselves!" he shouted.

The silence became uneasy. It was broken by the elderly princess saying, "The most distressing thing about being up here above the clouds is that there is no weather to make conversation out of." -Castle in the Air

Of course I liked all of these. I've never met a DWJ I didn't like! (Um, well, okay, a couple with squicky large-age-power-disparity relationships, but that just meant I hated the romance, not the writing.)

Enchanted Glass: A nice sweet little book, though nothing special. The thing I like about DWJ is that even when you're old enough you can guess the plot far quicker and easier than when you were little, it's still worth reading.

Castle in the Air: Reread. This book was way more charming than I remembered -- I think part of my previous disappointment was that I was expecting it, well, to be a straight sequel to Howl's Moving Castle. But, of course, DWJ doesn't do straight sequels. Much better to think of it as a book that takes place in the universe of HMC, with some shared characters, as I did this time around, and I really liked it.

House of Many Ways: I liked Castle in the Air better, but this one did have the quality, rare in DWJ books, that there was no extra-powerful character come to save the day in the end. (Think about it. Almost all her books are like this. The Undying, the Chrestomanci, etc. Howl counts in HMC, since from the POV of the main character he's extra-powerful.)

I blame my sister for the fact that I read these at all! That and running out of other books to read. But no fear, I just ordered Cryoburn!

The Compound (Bodeen) - Hiding out from nuclear war. This book was so full of gigantic plot holes I can't even tell you. A "subtle" comment in the first chapter or so means it is very easy to guess the entire plot of the book, such as it is, though I could not have guessed beforehand that the plot would also depend on a guy who runs a multibillion dollar computer company setting up a local wireless network in his nuclear shelter to connect to the Interweb in his private office that presumably has some sort of hardwired connection, while trying to hide from everyone else who is there the fact that there is a working Interweb. Uh?

I am Number Four (Pitticus Lore) - ahahahaha. Message: If you recycle, your (sentient) planet will give you Awesome Superpowers! No, I'm not making this up, Saving the Planet from Pollution is the reason given why the main character and his compatriots have magic superpowers. (On the other hand, if you pollute, you get to be an extra-super-strong-awesome-if-ugly soldier type who can kick the butt of Superpower!Nonpolluters, so there isn't really a tremendously huge motivation to recycle.) This book was hilariously bad, full of random infodumps, random magic with even more random explanations, blatant audience manipulation, and a three-month-duration-teenage Twu Luv romance. It did have its moments of Teenage Wish Fulfillment (having Awesome Superpowers really comes in handy when confronting the school bully, it turns out), but I do not recommend it.

I am currently working on a monster post on Mockingjay, which it turns out I have a lot to say about.

So after two not-very-pleasant months working too much finishing up projects and proposals (very pleasant months from the baby standpoint, though I didn't have enough time with her), I am at loose ends work-wise. (Not out of a job; but job pays by the hour and they have no hours for me.) Which is nice because I can hang out more with the baby and not be so stressed out, and less nice in that we are, maybe not hemorrhaging, but certainly dripping money right now, which kind of bothers me. (We've got savings, and this situation will hopefully not last more than a month or so, so right now the annoyance is not so much practical distress as it is pure mental "I'm not used to this!" -- the last time I spent more than I made in a month was the first month of grad school.)

Anyhow. More time to spend talking about books!

Dragonhaven (McKinley) -- I read this when nursing still took forever and was awful, and before E. could sleep through the night, and from that sleep-deprived state it was hilarious. It seems clear to me that McKinley was thinking, "Hey, I want to write a book about how awful taking care of a newborn baby is! And about having kids! And about watching a kid grow up! But I can't sell that to the YA market... I know! I'll make it about dragons!" Yeah. Oh, my baby didn't burn me when she was feeding (and has been a really good baby in general), but the narrator's half-delirious state was... pretty familiar. I can hardly say whether I recommend this or not, given the circumstances. I just thought it was interesting that she did that. And apparently got away with it.

Poison Study (Snyder) -- The book itself was fine, the usual fantasy fluff, plotwise and characterwise nothing special either good or bad, spunky girl hero, etc. -- but the romance made me beat my head against the wall. I found it both annoying (severe power disparities in relationships give me a headache) and badly written.

The Girl Who ... (Larsson) -- I read the second and third of these. Kind of. That is, at the point where Blomkvist has his second bout of complete middle-aged irresistibility to women, or maybe the third, I started to determinedly skim. I'm not sure I missed much except more product placement (yes, thanks, I really wanted to know Lisbeth had a titanium G4) and more of Blomkvist's sexual conquests. Though as someone who knows a bit of math, it bothered me more that Larsson has some really weird idea of Fermat's Last Theorem. (Briefly, he seems obsessed with x^3 + y^3 = z^3 being the problem, and not x^n + y^n = z^n. I believe the former can be proved pretty easily, though don't ask me to do it.)

I think I know why they are so popular, though. There's some really great villains-getting-their-comeuppance that just feels so very satisfying, the best example being Bjurman in the first book. Although I love this too, I'm not sure I think this is entirely healthy. I think the books I have liked best are ones where the villains don't get their proper comeuppance -- not that they necessarily get off scot-free, but sometimes they don't get satisfyingly punished. Because sometimes it's about other things... like the heroes. Or forgiveness. Or not forgiving, but getting on with life. Or what-have-you. Like life itself.

Next up: YA dystopias on the kindle! (Not Mockingjay, sorry. I'm supposed to get my hands on the copy around Thanksgiving.)

Sherwood Smith kept being recommended to me as something I would like given that I like Megan Whalen Turner, Diana Wynne Jones, and the like. So I got all the books our library had by her (a grand total of two... as I keep remarking, our library is a bit hit-or-miss), which are the two in the title.

Crown Duel was an early book, I think; at least, it feels very much like it. I never really did get into this one. I think part of it is that I need to read the sequel, but still, it never quite... went deeply enough.

A Posse of Princesses was picked up by our babysitter (college freshman) before I got to it, and she really liked it. And, you know, I did too. It's really really cute. It's like... Pride and Prejudice written for teenagers, with magic and princesses. I mean, it's definitely a kid's book, no doubt. But it's adorable, like a kitten, as is the main character, and doesn't pretend to be horribly serious (whereas I kind of got the impression that Crown Duel was supposed to be serious, but it wasn't). Also, kudos for having an important supporting character who is both an airhead and is seriously talented. Because people are really like that!

...Yeah, I have a backlog of posts... these date back from first trimester, in fact. These are sorted by how much I enjoyed them (from most to least):

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (Wilhelm) - I've been on a Wilhelm kick recently. This one started slow but I thought was a strong book, though the science is... um... a little suspect. (I get the impression Wilhelm is not, er, a hard scientist; about three books in a row now I have been rolling my eyes, the worst being in Smart House where she talks about the big million-dollar question in computing being melding digital and analog computing. Er? Granted I believe she wrote it in 1989, but, what?) It's about the end of the world, and clones, and individuality, and honestly rather a Gary Stu type whom I quite enjoyed. I recommend it highly if you can get by the iffy science and treat it as entertainment rather than as A Classic Of Yore (in which case you are sure to be disappointed).

Dreamsongs, vol. 1 - I enjoy George R.R. Martin a lot, though I can't say I actually like his stories, and I realized why after reading this. I don't know about now, but at least for the part of his life these stories cover, he was not exactly successful in love, and these stories reflect that -- maybe half of them weren't about disillusionment and dysfunctional relationships, but a whole lot of them were.

The Host (Meyer) - Oh, yeah. I read this quite a while ago at the behest of the Kid, but forgot to post. It was much, much better than Twilight. I actually enjoyed it, though as usual with Meyer's stuff there was some disturbing relationship/gender subtext.

Fairie Wars (Herbie Brennan) - not to be confused with Sarah Rees Brennan, of course! - I think this is a first book? Anyway, it's got a lot of energy, and there's a lot going on. As usual in fantasy, the "science" is cheesy and stupid, and I have to say the nomenclature of "Fairies of the Light/Fairies of the Night" made me laugh hilariously, but I liked it!

Purple Emperor (Herbie Brennan) - Sequel to Fairie Wars (and, I think, the second in a trilogy). Well. He certainly has the can't-catch-your-breath plot going full speed in this one as well. I'm a little less enamoured of this one, because I noticed more that the plot seemed to crowd out things like, oh, any kind of character development at all. Still, I did finish it.

The Emperor's Children, Claire Messaud - Mainstream. People interact in New York; hilarity ensues, or something. This was, well, better than I thought after reading the first twenty pages, and by the late middle I thought it was quite good. Then the end happened, and I was all, "That's it?" I guess it's pretty good, but being the mean evil person I am, I totally wanted more of the characters to get a satisfying comeuppance. Warning for preponderance of unlikeable characters. (I think I have yet to read a mainstream book set in New York with a preponderance of likeable characters.) Better, go read Edith Wharton instead; Messaud just wants to be Wharton.

Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, Alison Goodman- It's of note because the mythology involved is Chinese-oriented rather than Western-oriented, and I feel like I should support non-Western-based fantasy in general. However, the prose seemed a bit clunky to me (it wasn't horrible, just a little too much first-book-ish), and the ending was completely cheesy; I said aloud, "That's it? That's the answer?" Interesting enough that I'll probably pick up the sequel from the library, but probably not enough that I'll more than skim it. I read a couple of good reviews of it, though, so YMMV.