Entry tags:

books, let's get literate! 2010

I am not keeping a public reading log this year, for I am a) lazy, and b) it doesn't have spreadsheet functions. However, I never hesitate to talk about what I'm reading, so alas! Everyone that subscribes to me will have to suffer it once more!

Fire, Kristin Cashore: It is no secret I loved Graceling, even with its weak writing and emotional unavailable text. I was worried Fire wouldn't live up to that, but I was wrong. Fire felt like a more mature text. I think what surprised me the most was how the story shamelessly went down paths other YA doesn't: about women and sexuality and agency and oh NO women fuck men outside of marriage and it's not the end of the world. The absence of slut-shaming was nice, unless it was there and I just missed it. I found the relationship between Fire and her father fascinating, but then, hello daddy issues! They get me every time, I am a sucker.

I found the brief mention of homosexuality a trite piece of pandering shoehorned down into the narrative in an otherwise awesome novel. Cashore, just do it already. They're not going to take away your shiny awards if you write about boys kissing or girls kissing outright. If you can brush off the institution of marriage in your first book, THE GAY isn't going to cost you that many readers.

I loved the first part of the book the most, but the politicking toward the end made me tired. I don't know if this is because I recognized that the other shoe was about to drop and I just wanted it to be gotten on with, or what, but I will admit to some skimming to get past those bits to find out what happened to Fire, and her family. I did go back and finish, but can't say I really enjoyed the aside; it felt like it was only there to create drama and heartache in a book that already had plenty of political and personal drama, an excuse to use a character from Graceling to make the books "connect", to show that Fire wasn't going to get to have her cake and eat it too. The compare/contrast between Fire and the other character wasn't really worth it. I was already on her side.

What I really want now is Bitterblue, so I can know if I need to write some revisionist history fanfic to placate my heart (Raffin/Bann OTP!).

Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen: Surprise! I like Austen. While the majority of my class summed this book up in terms like "IT SUCKS" and "MOST BORING PIECE OF FICTION I'VE EVER READ!" and "WHAT A HACK." and "SHE'S DOIN IT WRONG." and other thoughtful and considered pieces of literary criticism, I actually enjoyed the hell out of it. I submit with no commentary the fact that the people who found it horrid enough to vocalize their displeasure were all dudes.

Also, the majority of my class seems to think that Henry was constantly, at every point, manipulating Catherine for his own ends, whether it be to boost his own ego or to piss his father off, or to get off on his own cleverness. Everyone denied Catherine's agency in every aspect of the relationship, despite the narrator telling us at least once and insinuating several times that Henry did enjoy Catherine's company and enjoyed her for herself. I love how they peg Tilney as the master manipulator deserving of derision when all around Catherine people were trying to use her: John Thorpe, Isabella, General Tilney. I feel that all in all they missed the point. Whoops!

Hilarious bit: when Catherine is placed into a carriage and driven AWAY from the Abbey. Ah, Austen. I have come to appreciate you! Hearts. Now I just have to decide which Austen to read next.

Flood, Stephen Baxter: I caught wind of this book when it was just coming out in the U.K., I believe. The cover interested me and I saved it, then promptly forgot about it until I saw Thea's review.

(Aside: for some reason the cover reminds me a lot of Susan Beth Pfeffer's the dead and the gone—like someone rotated the photo, or something! Weird. When apocalyptic fiction covers collide!)

I went into this book and just tossed all my "...but what about SCIENCE?" protests out the window. I am naturally skeptic (hence why I can't read ghost stories as anything but fantasy, even when they're presented as TOTES REALS) so I think this was a good choice for me to make. The premise was excellent, people who have been kidnapped being reintroduced to a drowning world. I imagine anything else would have been hard to do, because Baxter uses Lily, Gary, Helen and Piers as vehicles for his story, because info-dumps are okay when a character is explaining something to another character that has missed the last five years as a hostage. IT got to me toward the end, though, where a character would start talking, drift off, and the narrator would butt back in to dilvuge some new shiny piece of science.

That's my only complaint—that the characters lost a good way to be made more human because oftentimes it felt like the narrator more than the character. In Thea's review, she raises this point, and I think it's excellent: the narrator (whether Baxter or otherwise) shared the passing of events in very tl;dr, emotionless terms. London drowns and refugees are abused, New York is ripped to shreds by storms, the ocean sneaks toward the American Midwest, people flee from their homes as the water approaches and have nowhere to go. If it had been the character's noting these things, it would have allowed for some emotion, but instead the narrator does it. It's like watching a documentary, the horror of it, shared by a passive, uncaring voice. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered if, besides being a technical tool to share information, if it was done on purpose, if the narrator was created with that in mind. It's the only explanation I've got and I'm apparently not the only one! If that wasn't the purpose then Baxter cheated himself right out of some awesome chances for characterization...but perhaps we're not supposed to pity the people. Perhaps the real story is of a Earth, reborn. It does have that feeling, to me, in some places, that the earth is being reborn, but so are people, in a sense—Nathan's worry toward the end of the book, come to pass.

In the end I enjoyed it a lot. I don't normally read hard SF or even slightly firm SF so it was a nice surprise to be able to understand what was going on. I am really frustrated my library doesn't have the sequel yet! Come on, library! :D

The Art of Fiction, Henry James: Totally available online! The essay that made me want a ton of Henry James/Robert Louis Stevenson RPF. :|

Oedipus Rex, Sophocles: Dude. I hope iteration four of reading this thing becomes the last. ._.

A Ton of Fanfic, various authors: I am totally counting fanfiction in my reading totals this year, because I read a lot and think those page numbers should count. I am terrible at reviewing the pieces I like (and especially the ones I did not like). Forgive me writers, you are awesome. ;_; Maybe I can SHAME MYSELF into it by posting about it! I have created a tag on delicious for it, and don't think it's necessary to make copypasta here. XD

January totals
These totals reflect all of my reading, fanfic included. :P

Inches read 4.3 / 68
Female authors: 5
Male authors: 3
Unknown: 6
New Authors: 5
Re-reads: 6
Pages: 1,650 / 150,000 (I can totally make it to 150,000 pages read)


Onward, toward February! I swear I am going to defeat you, Dickens!