Monday, April 26, 2004
Man, what to say about The Confusion by Neal Stephenson? It's the second book in his Baroque Trilogy and I wouldn't recommend even attempting it without first reading Quicksilver (possibly Cryptonomicon too. Although that one could also be read as a distant fourth entry in the series). The focus is a little tighter in this book - mostly on Jack and Eliza, without the jumping forward in time to follow Daniel Waterhouse attempting to go back to England. This means Daniel's cliffhanger from the first book will not be resolved until the third. But there's plenty of action without that storyline - Eliza and Jack's fortunes rise and fall every chapter and there are pirates, commerce, war, love, sex, death, religion, philosophy, science, and math to keep things moving along. Villains are punished, as are the good. And there are plenty of moments of lunacy and humor to keep things from getting too heavy.
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Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Finished Children of the Storm by Elizabeth Peters last night. I have been reading her books for 20 years and they still make me laugh. Man, I still remember reading Crocodile on the Sandbank for the first time. I must have been bugging my mom about not having anything to read and wanting to go to the library, so to shut me up she told me I could read one of her library books - Crocodile. That might've been the first real adult book I read. It was certainly the first adult book I checked out on my own. A few months after that I wanted to read it again and asked Mom to check it out for me but she refused (she had reached her checkout limit) and with one offhand sentence she opened up a whole world of books to me. She simply said, "go check it out yourself." I'm sure she doesn't remember and would laugh if I told her about it, but that was a total epiphany for me. All of a sudden the library changed from a small room of kids books that I could check out and endless inaccessible shelves where Mom hid from us for an hour to row after row of books that I was allowed to read. Anyway. By this, the 15th book in the series, the cast of regular characters has grown to encompass grandchildren, in-laws, friends, illegitimate relatives, and various locals and workers. I can't imagine someone making head or tail of all the connections without the background from the previous books. (There is a forward that sketches the family lines, but it doesn't include all the nuances that you get from the books.) Because of the large cast of characters the action isn't in the forefront this time around, but the personalities and family dynamics are enough to keep things moving. And I still wanted to cheer at the end.
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Monday, April 12, 2004
Yesterday I tried to read The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant, which has tons of holds on it in our system and got good reviews. It's set in Italy during the Renaissance and it's got painting, religion, sex, homosexuals... all stuff you'd think I'd love. But, yeah, not so much. The narrator bugged, the writing style was fairly pretentious, it coyly involved historical figures (Lorenzo de' Medici, Da Vinci, etc.)... I just couldn't settle into it. I managed about 40 pages before I started skimming, reading a few pages here and there to get the gist of the story and that still didn't convince me to give it a real go. So I pulled out Children of the Storm by Elizabeth Peters, which I should finish just in time to start the new Neal Stephenson tomorrow. You know, maybe that's one of the reasons I didn't like it - Neal Stephenson does all that stuff so much better and smarter so anything less when I'm anticipating his new one just won't suffice.
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I discovered Ridley Pearson and Dennis Lehane right around the same time. It was heaven finding two more excellent mystery authors to follow. Not to mention gorging on their back catalogues. Ridley Pearson's new one, The Body of David Hayes isn't his best, but his lesser books are still better than a lot of the mysteries out there. This one focuses primarily on Lou Boldt and his wife, as the guy with whom Liz had an affair comes back into their lives, blackmailing Liz to help him get the money he'd embezzled. There's not nearly enough LaMoia and barely any Daphne and Bobbi. Boldt is operating outside the lines for a good part of this one and it suffers as a result. So far, Lehane has the advantage because his last, Shutter Island, has had people cursing me for making them miss deadlines because I recommended they read it.
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Friday I finished what is quite possibly the longest YA novel I've ever read, Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier. At 500 pages, it's packed but never feels padded or too long. It's about one of those summers that change your life. There's A Boy, of course. And a friendship crisis. And discovering your parents are actual people. The main character is a first generation American - her parents are from India. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the emotional conflict there, but it sure felt real. While this is about Dimple discovering and coming to terms with her dual cultures, it is also about being a teenager with well-meaning parents and a best friend who can also be your worst enemy. I can vouch for the accuracy of that emotional conflict. There are nicely drawn parallels between Dimple's photography and her awakening to the world around her. And there are drag queens and gay relatives and subtle racism tells and clothes and shoes and lots and lots of music. Good stuff.
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Wednesday, April 07, 2004
I finished If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell yesterday. I remember my brother and I rented Army of Darkness back when I was in high school. We loved it, of course. I was an avid fan of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. (thus beginning my long history of becoming a fan of unjustly cancelled television shows). And a friend loaned me Evil Dead a few years ago to watch, which freaked me the hell out. Good stuff. So, I've always kinda known who Bruce Campbell is, but haven't been a devoted fan. I think this book made me one, though. He talks about growing up and making friends with Sam Raimi in high school and how they and their group of friends made Super 8 movies. We get the blow by blow of filming Evil Dead (and it's nice to see a cult figure acknowledge and show affection for the cultists who made the film and him a success) and his struggle to make a living as a B actor in Hollywood. He is able to show how most actors don't make the kind of money we usually imagine, but with humor and examples that had me laughing. He doesn't dish much on the people with whom he's worked (although he gets a dig or two in at Tom Arnold's expense) which is a little disappointing, but the guy still has to work, right? His voice is so appealing that it's like you're just hanging out, hearing him tell stories all day.
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Monday, April 05, 2004
Sunshine by Robin McKinley was next. I've had this book on my shelf ever since it came out, but haven't felt in the mood for it until now. Which is surprising, since this is a vampire book and she is one of my favorite authors. I attended a reading she did last fall for this book and she was really wonderful and opinionated. Knowing she's a fan of both Buffy and the Anita Blake books makes it easy to spot the influences (Sunshine owes a bit to Buffy and the world she inhabits has bits and pieces from the Anita Blake alternate United States, not to mention the amount of gore in the final battle). She says this is her "vampires for wimps" book and that does hold true - there's not as much gore or fighting (or sex) as in other vampire books. It isn't boring at all though, don't get me wrong. She creates a fascinating world and lets little hints about its history and culture out every so often. The characters are appealing and intriguing, which is good because the whole thing hangs on the main character, Sunshine, and her near constant inner monologue. Complaints? Almost none, actually. This definitely has the feel of an opening book to a series and if it were by any other author Amazon would have up a listing for the second book already. But that's not how McKinley writes. I hope her Story Gods gift her with a sequel because I would love to know more about Sunshine and her family.
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Next this weekend was True Believers by Joe Queenan. I'm a big fan of his movie and culture essays, but this was my first experience with his sports writing. In the book he mostly talks about the types of sports fans and how he became one. Unlike Fever Pitch, which he references more than once, Queenan doesn't attempt to say something larger about fandom in general. He is more interested in one-liners and in detailing his own observations on sports fans. This is a short, funny book, with a few really great laugh-out-loud moments. But don't look to it for serious or deep reflections.
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Who Killed My Daughter by Lois Duncan is another Daisy book. Lois Duncan's youngest daughter was killed in what the police insisted was a random shooting, but which Duncan and her family believe was drug and gang related. The opening chapters of this book were incredibly hard for me to get through because the one thing that will make me cry, no fail, is something happening to one of my brothers or sisters. The frustration of dealing with the police, the shock of learning of the activities in which her daughter was involved, and the grief were almost overwhelming to read about. Early on, she turns to psychics for help with discovering details of her daughter's murder and they prove to be helpful and insightful. I actually didn't have a problem with this part of the book. I'm the last one to say there is no communication between the dead and the living. There's a long history of precognition in my family (great-grandpa, grandpa, mother, etc), not to mention the beliefs of my religion. So, yeah.
I'm curious if there has been any progress made or some sort of follow-up written. Daisy?
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I'm curious if there has been any progress made or some sort of follow-up written. Daisy?
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Then I read The Books of Magic a collection of the first four comics of the same name by Neal Gaimen. This was cool, but is meant for a younger audience than the Sandman books, so it's not as dark. I think he stopped writing the line after this, so I don't know how much more of it I'll read. It covers ground that's very familiar (young boy told he is a magician) so I feel like I already know how it's going to turn out.
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Next was The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, which my aunt gave me for my birthday. So I kinda felt obligated to read it. It was okay. Not great, though. I mostly skimmed it, and it reminded me entirely too much of Encyclopedia Brown Goes To Africa for me to take it seriously. I'm not rushing out to get the others in the series, but it was cute.
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I had yesterday off, so I polished off a few books. The first was The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel, which I thought was beautiful. The specter of death hangs over the whole book and this, combined with recurring themes of grief, religion, seeing and being seen makes it a very moving read. Okay, I admit it - I cried. Through the entire thing. I loved the way she allowed her characters to be unlikable at times. I loved how characters kept surprising me (and the other characters in the book) with unexpected kindnesses or personality quirks, making me question my assumptions much like the characters must do. I loved the philosophy and the depth of thought required to follow the conversations. I loved how Amos and Langston had essentially the same problem, but had differing approaches when dealing with it. Oh, it has its faults - the ending seems a little rushed and the relationship between Amos and Langston (although inevitable) needed more development. But I loved it anyway. I loved that it made me think and cry, all at the same time.
Her next book is about a pool playing girl in New Orleans. Sound familiar?
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Her next book is about a pool playing girl in New Orleans. Sound familiar?
I've been plugging away at The Bronte Myth by Lucasta Miller for a week or so. Actually, that makes it sound like it's hard to read and it's wasn't. It's a sort of meta-biography; a biography of the various biographies of the Brontes (with most of the book being devoted to Charlotte and Emily). Miller does an excellent job of stripping back the layers of interpretation and myth that have formed around the sisters. She shows how the shaping of the myths began with Charlotte herself and her friend and biographer, Mary Gaskell. Gaskell was a novelist and had a definite agenda of redeeming her friend's character through a flattering portrayal. Unfortunately, this began a series of distortions and speculations that has continued through the years. This is especially true of Emily, about whom we know almost nothing. It is suspected that Charlotte, out of grief, burned most of her writings and diaries after her sister's death. This, combined with the spin Charlotte herself put on Emily has resulted in many, many misinterpretations of her character and her talent, even leading some to theorize that she never wrote Wuthering Heights, instead believing that Branwell did. She debunks the theories and myths that had the effect of putting Emily on a pedestal as a conduit for some higher power and denying her the true status of skilled author (and perhaps, genius). Very quickly the Brontes became legends and, like most legends, the stories grew more and more outrageous as time passed. This book is an excellent response to bringing us back to the truth about them.
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