Book Logging
Nov. 1st, 2017 07:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckAndrews, Donna. Gone Gull - I had a lot of fun reading this. I even laughed out loud a couple of times. The mystery was kind of unconvincing, but I didn’t care so much about that as I did about the interactions of the characters. I stumbled over one factual thing that somebody should have caught-- If the kids start watching Star Wars: A New Hope at 6:45 and the adults start their meeting at 8:00, two hours into the meeting is not the point at which the kids should be ‘almost done with the movie.’ They’re not watching the extended edition of one of the LotR movies.
Andrews, Donna. How the Finch Stole Christmas - I enjoyed this one a bit more than I did Gone Gull (not that I didn't enjoy Gone Gull) because I had fewer moments of 'Wait. What?' in terms of the details of what was going on. I was also pleased that the story ended up being a little bit celebratory of the idea of friendships formed through common fandoms. That was a really minor thing, but it was there.
Astolat. Emblazoning - Merlin fic, about 19000 words. An AU in which Arthur, Gwen, and Morgana rescue Merlin after his powers are revealed and Uther condemns him to death. Then they have to find a life for themselves, together. Fic at AO3.
Basho. Moon Woke Me Up Nine Times: Selected Haiku of Basho (translated by David Young) - The translator didn't try to maintain the syllable count for these but went more for meaning. I think that was the right decision because I was reading to find out what Basho said rather than to appreciate the particular structure of a bunch of haiku. Translating poetry has got to be vastly difficult. I'm not sure that it even can be done, not properly, because part of poetry is the way that the specific sounds and meanings and rhythms come together. It's very hard to find the right words to do all three even approximately the same way in a different language.
Book of Night - This is an anthology of Charles Vess’s comics. The art is consistent. The stories less so. I like Vess’s art, so it was overall a win for me.
Case Closed 43-45 - It’s frustrating that these volumes are ending mid-case because it’s going to be months before I can get the next one. Things have backed off from the background story arc to go back to episodic stories, but I like the character development.
Collins, Billy. Billy Collins Live: A Performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space, April 20, 2005 - I wasn’t completely sure whether to count this as a book or not. This is about an hour of the poet reading his work and answering questions. I don’t know that his work is for me, but it might simply be that I was distracted. Collins read everything very evenly (not in a monotone or badly just nothing to make me pay attention), so it was easier than it should have been for me to tune out.
Courtney Crumrin 4: Monstrous Holiday - Our library only has the first three of these, and for a long time, I thought that was all there was. Of course, at this point, I’m going to have to wait four to six months to be able to request the next volume via interlibrary loan. I got cranky with this volume though because I’m not so big on either werewolves or vampires. I also keep hoping for something to happen to give Courtney connection and/or hope, and it keeps not happening.
5 Worlds: The Sand Warrior - This is a graphic novel aimed at kids. I think it wants to be Amulet. It’s not a copy, but it’s the same sort of very heavily serialized narrative with encroaching evil and a girl who’s on the run and trying to fix things without quite knowing what she’s supposed to do. There’re a lot of layers to the world building, and I’m sure that this volume (the first) doesn’t do more than scratch the surface. The color palette is quite different from that used in Amulet-- This one runs to brighter/softer colors.
Grandville - This graphic novel features anthropomorphized animals in a setting that's a European AU, Victorian/Edwardian-ish but with some very different history hinted at. Part spy story, part mystery. Very violent. I'm not sure I'd want to read anything else in the same setting.
Gray, Nicholas Stuart. The Edge of Evening - This is a book I’d love to own but can’t afford to buy and probably won’t be able to get via interlibrary loan again. There was one copy in the MelCat system (which is more copies than some of the other books I’ve looked for, but still). It still has an old fashioned date due slip in the back, and that shows that I’m the first check out since 2013. This is a collection of short fantasy stories aimed more or less at kids. Gray has a strong sense of the ridiculous and tends to take fairy tale tropes and tweak them heavily.
Gray, Nicholas Stuart. Over the Hills to Fabylon - I wish this was available to buy at a price I could afford. The blurbs I found online made this sound like a single novel, but it’s more a linked set of short stories with recurring characters with occasional bits from earlier stories turning up to alter the outcome of later ones.
Heyer, Georgette. Snowdrift and Other Stories - Only three of these stories were new to me. The rest appeared in an anthology called Pistols for Two that I bought in the 1980s or 1990s. The library catalog record was pretty bare bones when I put the hold on the book because it had just been ordered for the collection. I expected that all or most of the stories would be new to me. I’d be more annoyed if I’d bought the book as opposed to getting it from the library. The three new to me stories are cute, but two of them were familiar in the sense that I’m pretty sure I could go downstairs and look at my Heyer collection and remind myself which novels were based on the exact situation.
Landon, William. Books that Matter: The Prince - Great Courses lecture series on CD by Professor William Landon of Northern Kentucky University. This gives a clear idea of how The Prince relates to Machiavelli’s life and hopes and explains the varying opinions of his work over the centuries. I had read the book in college, during the summer of 1986, but I don’t recall the instructor putting it in context quite so much as this. Part of that might be that the class was taught over half a semester instead of a full semester. Professor Landon’s voice is clear and has enough inflection to hold my attention.
Leach, Christopher. The Great Book Raid - This is a kids’ book in which a boy whose family is on the verge of losing their land to an unscrupulous developer gets help from an assortment of book characters who became real due to the popularity of their stories (and who will last as long as their stories are read and remembered). None of these characters are quite who they used to be. The group the boy picks aren’t the ones I’d pick, but I’m not a teenage boy, and I wouldn’t be picking characters with an author’s eye toward having eight year olds recognize most of them.
Lucy & Andy Neanderthal: The Stone Cold Age - This is the second book in a series of graphic novels by the guy who did Darth Vader and Son. The humor is similar, but the books are longer and have sustained story. There are some interpolated bits with a couple of scientists talking about what we actually know about Neanderthals. I enjoyed this.
Natsume’s Book of Friends 11-13 - i'm running into problems with tracking all of the character names. I mostly recognize recurring characters, but when I see people talking about the series, I can't place the names. I'm not sure, at this point, that I'm hoping for more ongoing story arc or if I'm content with the episodic stuff. Also, is there some sort of Japanese folkloric tradition of youkai hanging out with humans with the understanding that they get something after the human dies? To eat them (body and/or soul), to take something like the Book of Friends, and I'm sure I've seen some other things, too.
Prince of Tennis 29-30 - I’m stalled out on this series until the library finishes upgrading its online catalog and reconnects to the interlibrary loan system. The library has 34-35 and 37-40. These volumes are really, really fast reads because there’s not a lot of dialogue. Possibly, if I understood more about tennis, the action sequences wouldn’t feel quite so generic/repetitive. I don’t think that would help with my tendency to lose track of the characters, though; there are just too many of them. They don’t tend to look alike, but I still don’t remember who’s who.
rain_sleet_snow. The Edge Between the Sand and the Stars - SW:tFA fic. 124K words in 26 chapters. Rey POV. OT3. This is post-The Force Awakens and carries things through to the end point of the war with the First Order. There’s a good bit about the growing relationship between Rey, Finn, and Poe. Also about Rey’s training and her backstory. I enjoyed the story, but I never reached the point of compulsive reading. Fic at AO3.
Rust: Visitor in the Field - I was bored. This graphic novel doesn't cover much plot set up, so I can't guess what this will be about long term. The art is all shades of brown.
Stephen Colbert’s Midnight Confessions - This was a sentence a page sort of book. The binding’s pretty, but I’m glad I got it from the library. I laughed a bit, too, but there’s really not a point in rereading.
Thompson, Laura. The Six - Audiobook read by Maggie Mash. This is a biography of the Mitford sisters that talks about the interactions between them and the very different paths they took, politically. I think that I’d have gotten more from this one if I’d had a cheat sheet listing the members of the family and their birth order with a word or two attached to each name. The narrative skips from sister to sister, going forward and back in time. I got the impression that the author assumed some pre-knowledge on the part of the reader.
Time Shifters - This graphic novel is aimed at kids and is pretty clearly first in a series. The book starts with a child death that I felt was gratuitous, but that death, at the end of the book, is the hook for making the main character continue traveling with the time travelers/dimension hoppers that he encountered shortly after his brother died. Also, much of the book takes place in a world with sentient spider-ish critters in an Old West setting, so if either of those things would bother you, give the book a pass. The group is traveling through time and space to protect a McGuffin that could be used for terrible things but that can’t be destroyed without destroying the universe. It’s pretty clearly a formula for ongoing and never ending adventures.
Vargas, Fred. The Chalk Circle Man - I enjoyed this mystery enough to put a hold on the next in the series when I was only halfway through this one. I’m not sure that the book would appeal to mystery readers looking for puzzles, but I liked spending time with the characters.
Vernon, Ursula. Dragonbreath: The Frozen Menace - Danny and his friends have to travel to the arctic in search of phoenix eggshells that can restart Danny’s internal fires. As with all of Vernon’s works, this manages to be both ridiculous and down-to-earth. I think it’s that the author commits to her premises and to the consequences of those while still maintaining a sense of humor. I don’t love the Dragonbreath books as much as I do the Hamster Princess books, but I still enjoy them massively.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? 9-11 - Amazon shows v.12 as being out already, but the local library doesn’t own it (yet). I shall have to request it. I’m still skimming the cooking sections because cooking isn’t my thing, but I really like the characters and relationships which tends to make or break the whole slice of life thing.
Started and not finished:
Bilderback, Leslie. Mug Meals - I thought I’d try this (from the library) as a sample of the growing genre of recipes for small serving, microwavable meals. Sadly, the parts of the cooking process that I have the most trouble with are still present, and many of these lean heavily on eggs which are a migraine trigger for me. But some of these recipes could be good if you don’t have issues with pre-cooking the meat and with chopping up tablespoon amounts of things like celery or carrots. Most recipe books run aground for me because I look at the recipes and need to find substitutions for two thirds of the main ingredients.
Brave - This is a graphic novel by Svetlana Chmakova about middle school, mostly about bullying in middle school. I couldn’t. Not right now. I like the characters and relationships and the art, but… I can’t deal with school anxiety and bullying as themes right now.
Cantero, Edgar. Meddling Kids - This just didn’t work for me. I like the premise as an idea for a tabletop RPG scenario, though.
Christie, Agatha. Three Act Tragedy - I got this from the library because someone told me that it had Mr Satterthwaite who I quite liked in The Mysterious Mr Quin, but once again, it’s been brought home to me that I like Christie’s short stories and almost never finish her novels. The book is kind of peculiarly structured, too. Mr Satterthwaite is the POV character for the first two acts, and then the POV switches to Poirot so that he can actually solve the mystery. Mr Satterthwaite seems to be there mostly to notice things but interpret them in a way that makes the story go on longer.
Flint, Eric, Gorg Huff, & Paula Goodlett. The Alexander Inheritance - I really wanted to know how they tweaked the history, but the focus of the bits I read was on things that didn’t interest me and characters I didn’t feel any empathy for. I have liked Flint’s solo books, but I find that his co-written books tend not to work for me.
The Good Neighbors: Book 1: Kin - I felt kind of like I’d read this same story before, in a dozen different versions. I think that it all wasn’t helped by me being cranky and stressed when I picked up the book.
How to Be Happy - Collection of comics by Eleanor Davis. I didn't quite like the art and I'm pretty sure I missed a good bit of what was going on. Gave up.
Hutchins, Hazel. The Prince of Tarn - I read the first couple of chapters of this and then the last five or so. I think that it's not the sort of middle grade fantasy that works well for adults. It could have been if there'd been a bit more depth to the characters and their development. The situation-- a prince from a fictional world somehow entering the real world-- could go in all sorts of directions, but the book wasn't very long or complex. People learned Lessons, not horribly preachy ones but still requiring the capital letter, and the fictional realm proved kind of real and in need of saving but not in any great detail.
Ichiro - I wanted to smack the main character early on. I skipped around a bit to see if I could get hooked, but I didn't manage it. There were a lot of kind of creepy looking creatures, too, which isn’t something that appeals to me.
King, Stephen. On Writing - Audiobook read by author. I made it through the first CD (out of seven) and hadn’t found anything that interested me. King’s work has not generally worked for me, but I was curious about his advice on writing but never actually reached anything that I thought counted.
Pauley, Kimberly. Cat Girl’s Day Off - There were parts of this that I really loved. The main character has the ability to speak to cats, and those cats were all individuals and very clearly cats. The main character had an edge of snark and of insecurity that made parts of the narrative skip right along. I just… There were a lot of moments of embarrassment, plot integral embarrassment since this is a comedy with teenagers being teenagers while trying to solve a crime no one else thinks has occurred. I wanted to read all of it, but I realized that I was getting kind of wound up about the embarrassment bits.
Saxena, Jaya and Jess Zimmerman. Basic Witches - This is a book of spells (or 'spells’) all aimed finding personal strength and balance and focus for relatively everyday things. The language refers to covens and magic without grounding it in any tradition or advocating anything but finding personal symbolism and using small rituals and visualizations to help with emotionally fraught bits of life. I only dipped in here and there, but I didn't see anything that couldn't be recast in, say, Christian terms (can't speak for other faiths). It occurs to me that this might be a useful tool for therapists working with teens with certain types of problems who might be more willing to try meditation or repatterning their thoughts if it's called something else, particularly if the language gives the impression that these are secret/rebellious techniques.
Schade, Susan and Jon Buller. Travels of Thelonious: The Fog Mound - I read about three quarters of this (working from both ends toward the middle) and enjoyed it when I could make myself stop picking at the world building/logistics. This is one of those mixed text and comics books and is aimed at late elementary school age kids. It’s a post-apocalyptic future in which humans have vanished and have been replaced by talking animals. The whole thing burbled along nicely with adventures, but I kept saying, “Where are they getting sugar?” “Shouldn’t they have run out of canned goods by now?” and “This settlement needs a lot more land to be completely self-sufficient in the ways that the authors say it is.” Eventually, I realized that all of those questions were interfering with my being able to read the story.
Shadows Over Baker Street - This is a collection of Cthulhu Mythos/Sherlock Holmes crossover stories. I got through about four of the stories before admitting that it was kind of ridiculous for me to be forcing myself to read things that combine something I don’t enjoy with something I’m more or less indifferent to. So, yeah. That.
Stross, Charles. Singularity Sky - Audiobook read by George Guidall. I listened to the first CD and didn’t care about any of the characters or events, so I deleted it. I’ve got a lot of other audiobooks that I want to listen to, and I mainly tried this one (from the library) because Stross is one of Scott’s favorite authors. I also enjoy Stross’s blog, so I thought that I should try another of his books. Sadly, this makes three bounces for three attempts.
Vixens, Vamps & Vipers: Lost Villainesses of Golden Age Comics - I just couldn’t get myself to focus enough to read this (mostly my eyes wouldn’t cooperate). Almost all of the book was reprinted comics. I was looking more for an encyclopedia. I ran out of renewals on this interlibrary loan book.
Zahler, Diane. Princess of the Wild Swans - I’ve liked Zahler’s books, but I renewed this twice and just couldn’t get myself to go beyond the last chapter. My guess is that it was just the wrong time for me to read this. I’m not sure why. I looked at the sample chapters at the end of the book, which are for another book by Zahler, and stumbled hard on the idea of it being difficult to get honey out of cloth when one has both hot water and soap. All of the honey I’ve encountered would come out with just the hot water, and I have never known honey to leave a stain, especially not one that would be enough to ruin a dress (if the dress were too delicate to wash at all, then yes, but this wasn’t described that way).
Andrews, Donna. How the Finch Stole Christmas - I enjoyed this one a bit more than I did Gone Gull (not that I didn't enjoy Gone Gull) because I had fewer moments of 'Wait. What?' in terms of the details of what was going on. I was also pleased that the story ended up being a little bit celebratory of the idea of friendships formed through common fandoms. That was a really minor thing, but it was there.
Astolat. Emblazoning - Merlin fic, about 19000 words. An AU in which Arthur, Gwen, and Morgana rescue Merlin after his powers are revealed and Uther condemns him to death. Then they have to find a life for themselves, together. Fic at AO3.
Basho. Moon Woke Me Up Nine Times: Selected Haiku of Basho (translated by David Young) - The translator didn't try to maintain the syllable count for these but went more for meaning. I think that was the right decision because I was reading to find out what Basho said rather than to appreciate the particular structure of a bunch of haiku. Translating poetry has got to be vastly difficult. I'm not sure that it even can be done, not properly, because part of poetry is the way that the specific sounds and meanings and rhythms come together. It's very hard to find the right words to do all three even approximately the same way in a different language.
Book of Night - This is an anthology of Charles Vess’s comics. The art is consistent. The stories less so. I like Vess’s art, so it was overall a win for me.
Case Closed 43-45 - It’s frustrating that these volumes are ending mid-case because it’s going to be months before I can get the next one. Things have backed off from the background story arc to go back to episodic stories, but I like the character development.
Collins, Billy. Billy Collins Live: A Performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space, April 20, 2005 - I wasn’t completely sure whether to count this as a book or not. This is about an hour of the poet reading his work and answering questions. I don’t know that his work is for me, but it might simply be that I was distracted. Collins read everything very evenly (not in a monotone or badly just nothing to make me pay attention), so it was easier than it should have been for me to tune out.
Courtney Crumrin 4: Monstrous Holiday - Our library only has the first three of these, and for a long time, I thought that was all there was. Of course, at this point, I’m going to have to wait four to six months to be able to request the next volume via interlibrary loan. I got cranky with this volume though because I’m not so big on either werewolves or vampires. I also keep hoping for something to happen to give Courtney connection and/or hope, and it keeps not happening.
5 Worlds: The Sand Warrior - This is a graphic novel aimed at kids. I think it wants to be Amulet. It’s not a copy, but it’s the same sort of very heavily serialized narrative with encroaching evil and a girl who’s on the run and trying to fix things without quite knowing what she’s supposed to do. There’re a lot of layers to the world building, and I’m sure that this volume (the first) doesn’t do more than scratch the surface. The color palette is quite different from that used in Amulet-- This one runs to brighter/softer colors.
Grandville - This graphic novel features anthropomorphized animals in a setting that's a European AU, Victorian/Edwardian-ish but with some very different history hinted at. Part spy story, part mystery. Very violent. I'm not sure I'd want to read anything else in the same setting.
Gray, Nicholas Stuart. The Edge of Evening - This is a book I’d love to own but can’t afford to buy and probably won’t be able to get via interlibrary loan again. There was one copy in the MelCat system (which is more copies than some of the other books I’ve looked for, but still). It still has an old fashioned date due slip in the back, and that shows that I’m the first check out since 2013. This is a collection of short fantasy stories aimed more or less at kids. Gray has a strong sense of the ridiculous and tends to take fairy tale tropes and tweak them heavily.
Gray, Nicholas Stuart. Over the Hills to Fabylon - I wish this was available to buy at a price I could afford. The blurbs I found online made this sound like a single novel, but it’s more a linked set of short stories with recurring characters with occasional bits from earlier stories turning up to alter the outcome of later ones.
Heyer, Georgette. Snowdrift and Other Stories - Only three of these stories were new to me. The rest appeared in an anthology called Pistols for Two that I bought in the 1980s or 1990s. The library catalog record was pretty bare bones when I put the hold on the book because it had just been ordered for the collection. I expected that all or most of the stories would be new to me. I’d be more annoyed if I’d bought the book as opposed to getting it from the library. The three new to me stories are cute, but two of them were familiar in the sense that I’m pretty sure I could go downstairs and look at my Heyer collection and remind myself which novels were based on the exact situation.
Landon, William. Books that Matter: The Prince - Great Courses lecture series on CD by Professor William Landon of Northern Kentucky University. This gives a clear idea of how The Prince relates to Machiavelli’s life and hopes and explains the varying opinions of his work over the centuries. I had read the book in college, during the summer of 1986, but I don’t recall the instructor putting it in context quite so much as this. Part of that might be that the class was taught over half a semester instead of a full semester. Professor Landon’s voice is clear and has enough inflection to hold my attention.
Leach, Christopher. The Great Book Raid - This is a kids’ book in which a boy whose family is on the verge of losing their land to an unscrupulous developer gets help from an assortment of book characters who became real due to the popularity of their stories (and who will last as long as their stories are read and remembered). None of these characters are quite who they used to be. The group the boy picks aren’t the ones I’d pick, but I’m not a teenage boy, and I wouldn’t be picking characters with an author’s eye toward having eight year olds recognize most of them.
Lucy & Andy Neanderthal: The Stone Cold Age - This is the second book in a series of graphic novels by the guy who did Darth Vader and Son. The humor is similar, but the books are longer and have sustained story. There are some interpolated bits with a couple of scientists talking about what we actually know about Neanderthals. I enjoyed this.
Natsume’s Book of Friends 11-13 - i'm running into problems with tracking all of the character names. I mostly recognize recurring characters, but when I see people talking about the series, I can't place the names. I'm not sure, at this point, that I'm hoping for more ongoing story arc or if I'm content with the episodic stuff. Also, is there some sort of Japanese folkloric tradition of youkai hanging out with humans with the understanding that they get something after the human dies? To eat them (body and/or soul), to take something like the Book of Friends, and I'm sure I've seen some other things, too.
Prince of Tennis 29-30 - I’m stalled out on this series until the library finishes upgrading its online catalog and reconnects to the interlibrary loan system. The library has 34-35 and 37-40. These volumes are really, really fast reads because there’s not a lot of dialogue. Possibly, if I understood more about tennis, the action sequences wouldn’t feel quite so generic/repetitive. I don’t think that would help with my tendency to lose track of the characters, though; there are just too many of them. They don’t tend to look alike, but I still don’t remember who’s who.
rain_sleet_snow. The Edge Between the Sand and the Stars - SW:tFA fic. 124K words in 26 chapters. Rey POV. OT3. This is post-The Force Awakens and carries things through to the end point of the war with the First Order. There’s a good bit about the growing relationship between Rey, Finn, and Poe. Also about Rey’s training and her backstory. I enjoyed the story, but I never reached the point of compulsive reading. Fic at AO3.
Rust: Visitor in the Field - I was bored. This graphic novel doesn't cover much plot set up, so I can't guess what this will be about long term. The art is all shades of brown.
Stephen Colbert’s Midnight Confessions - This was a sentence a page sort of book. The binding’s pretty, but I’m glad I got it from the library. I laughed a bit, too, but there’s really not a point in rereading.
Thompson, Laura. The Six - Audiobook read by Maggie Mash. This is a biography of the Mitford sisters that talks about the interactions between them and the very different paths they took, politically. I think that I’d have gotten more from this one if I’d had a cheat sheet listing the members of the family and their birth order with a word or two attached to each name. The narrative skips from sister to sister, going forward and back in time. I got the impression that the author assumed some pre-knowledge on the part of the reader.
Time Shifters - This graphic novel is aimed at kids and is pretty clearly first in a series. The book starts with a child death that I felt was gratuitous, but that death, at the end of the book, is the hook for making the main character continue traveling with the time travelers/dimension hoppers that he encountered shortly after his brother died. Also, much of the book takes place in a world with sentient spider-ish critters in an Old West setting, so if either of those things would bother you, give the book a pass. The group is traveling through time and space to protect a McGuffin that could be used for terrible things but that can’t be destroyed without destroying the universe. It’s pretty clearly a formula for ongoing and never ending adventures.
Vargas, Fred. The Chalk Circle Man - I enjoyed this mystery enough to put a hold on the next in the series when I was only halfway through this one. I’m not sure that the book would appeal to mystery readers looking for puzzles, but I liked spending time with the characters.
Vernon, Ursula. Dragonbreath: The Frozen Menace - Danny and his friends have to travel to the arctic in search of phoenix eggshells that can restart Danny’s internal fires. As with all of Vernon’s works, this manages to be both ridiculous and down-to-earth. I think it’s that the author commits to her premises and to the consequences of those while still maintaining a sense of humor. I don’t love the Dragonbreath books as much as I do the Hamster Princess books, but I still enjoy them massively.
What Did You Eat Yesterday? 9-11 - Amazon shows v.12 as being out already, but the local library doesn’t own it (yet). I shall have to request it. I’m still skimming the cooking sections because cooking isn’t my thing, but I really like the characters and relationships which tends to make or break the whole slice of life thing.
Started and not finished:
Bilderback, Leslie. Mug Meals - I thought I’d try this (from the library) as a sample of the growing genre of recipes for small serving, microwavable meals. Sadly, the parts of the cooking process that I have the most trouble with are still present, and many of these lean heavily on eggs which are a migraine trigger for me. But some of these recipes could be good if you don’t have issues with pre-cooking the meat and with chopping up tablespoon amounts of things like celery or carrots. Most recipe books run aground for me because I look at the recipes and need to find substitutions for two thirds of the main ingredients.
Brave - This is a graphic novel by Svetlana Chmakova about middle school, mostly about bullying in middle school. I couldn’t. Not right now. I like the characters and relationships and the art, but… I can’t deal with school anxiety and bullying as themes right now.
Cantero, Edgar. Meddling Kids - This just didn’t work for me. I like the premise as an idea for a tabletop RPG scenario, though.
Christie, Agatha. Three Act Tragedy - I got this from the library because someone told me that it had Mr Satterthwaite who I quite liked in The Mysterious Mr Quin, but once again, it’s been brought home to me that I like Christie’s short stories and almost never finish her novels. The book is kind of peculiarly structured, too. Mr Satterthwaite is the POV character for the first two acts, and then the POV switches to Poirot so that he can actually solve the mystery. Mr Satterthwaite seems to be there mostly to notice things but interpret them in a way that makes the story go on longer.
Flint, Eric, Gorg Huff, & Paula Goodlett. The Alexander Inheritance - I really wanted to know how they tweaked the history, but the focus of the bits I read was on things that didn’t interest me and characters I didn’t feel any empathy for. I have liked Flint’s solo books, but I find that his co-written books tend not to work for me.
The Good Neighbors: Book 1: Kin - I felt kind of like I’d read this same story before, in a dozen different versions. I think that it all wasn’t helped by me being cranky and stressed when I picked up the book.
How to Be Happy - Collection of comics by Eleanor Davis. I didn't quite like the art and I'm pretty sure I missed a good bit of what was going on. Gave up.
Hutchins, Hazel. The Prince of Tarn - I read the first couple of chapters of this and then the last five or so. I think that it's not the sort of middle grade fantasy that works well for adults. It could have been if there'd been a bit more depth to the characters and their development. The situation-- a prince from a fictional world somehow entering the real world-- could go in all sorts of directions, but the book wasn't very long or complex. People learned Lessons, not horribly preachy ones but still requiring the capital letter, and the fictional realm proved kind of real and in need of saving but not in any great detail.
Ichiro - I wanted to smack the main character early on. I skipped around a bit to see if I could get hooked, but I didn't manage it. There were a lot of kind of creepy looking creatures, too, which isn’t something that appeals to me.
King, Stephen. On Writing - Audiobook read by author. I made it through the first CD (out of seven) and hadn’t found anything that interested me. King’s work has not generally worked for me, but I was curious about his advice on writing but never actually reached anything that I thought counted.
Pauley, Kimberly. Cat Girl’s Day Off - There were parts of this that I really loved. The main character has the ability to speak to cats, and those cats were all individuals and very clearly cats. The main character had an edge of snark and of insecurity that made parts of the narrative skip right along. I just… There were a lot of moments of embarrassment, plot integral embarrassment since this is a comedy with teenagers being teenagers while trying to solve a crime no one else thinks has occurred. I wanted to read all of it, but I realized that I was getting kind of wound up about the embarrassment bits.
Saxena, Jaya and Jess Zimmerman. Basic Witches - This is a book of spells (or 'spells’) all aimed finding personal strength and balance and focus for relatively everyday things. The language refers to covens and magic without grounding it in any tradition or advocating anything but finding personal symbolism and using small rituals and visualizations to help with emotionally fraught bits of life. I only dipped in here and there, but I didn't see anything that couldn't be recast in, say, Christian terms (can't speak for other faiths). It occurs to me that this might be a useful tool for therapists working with teens with certain types of problems who might be more willing to try meditation or repatterning their thoughts if it's called something else, particularly if the language gives the impression that these are secret/rebellious techniques.
Schade, Susan and Jon Buller. Travels of Thelonious: The Fog Mound - I read about three quarters of this (working from both ends toward the middle) and enjoyed it when I could make myself stop picking at the world building/logistics. This is one of those mixed text and comics books and is aimed at late elementary school age kids. It’s a post-apocalyptic future in which humans have vanished and have been replaced by talking animals. The whole thing burbled along nicely with adventures, but I kept saying, “Where are they getting sugar?” “Shouldn’t they have run out of canned goods by now?” and “This settlement needs a lot more land to be completely self-sufficient in the ways that the authors say it is.” Eventually, I realized that all of those questions were interfering with my being able to read the story.
Shadows Over Baker Street - This is a collection of Cthulhu Mythos/Sherlock Holmes crossover stories. I got through about four of the stories before admitting that it was kind of ridiculous for me to be forcing myself to read things that combine something I don’t enjoy with something I’m more or less indifferent to. So, yeah. That.
Stross, Charles. Singularity Sky - Audiobook read by George Guidall. I listened to the first CD and didn’t care about any of the characters or events, so I deleted it. I’ve got a lot of other audiobooks that I want to listen to, and I mainly tried this one (from the library) because Stross is one of Scott’s favorite authors. I also enjoy Stross’s blog, so I thought that I should try another of his books. Sadly, this makes three bounces for three attempts.
Vixens, Vamps & Vipers: Lost Villainesses of Golden Age Comics - I just couldn’t get myself to focus enough to read this (mostly my eyes wouldn’t cooperate). Almost all of the book was reprinted comics. I was looking more for an encyclopedia. I ran out of renewals on this interlibrary loan book.
Zahler, Diane. Princess of the Wild Swans - I’ve liked Zahler’s books, but I renewed this twice and just couldn’t get myself to go beyond the last chapter. My guess is that it was just the wrong time for me to read this. I’m not sure why. I looked at the sample chapters at the end of the book, which are for another book by Zahler, and stumbled hard on the idea of it being difficult to get honey out of cloth when one has both hot water and soap. All of the honey I’ve encountered would come out with just the hot water, and I have never known honey to leave a stain, especially not one that would be enough to ruin a dress (if the dress were too delicate to wash at all, then yes, but this wasn’t described that way).
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Date: 2017-11-01 11:49 pm (UTC)I know a lot of people who like John Scalzi's blog but not his books. I generally try not to read the blog/etc. of authors I like and just stick to their books, because usually I find them annoying as people.