Book Logging (Paper, ebook) DNF
Dec. 6th, 2019 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckBooks started but not finished::
Biggle, Lloyd Jr. Grandfather Rastin Mysteries - Read 138 pages out of 225. Most of the stories here have not aged well. They're mysteries published between 1957 and 1972 (per the book flap). I read a lot of Biggle's SF in my childhood and still own quite a few of his books (some autographed). This was one I hadn't tried, so I got it through interlibrary loan. The portrayal of the female characters in these is particularly frustrating in as much as they never seem to get to be human beings. Most of the male characters don't either, but the text assumes that men have more of a footprint in life. Anyway, I think I may revisit some of Biggle's SF, very cautiously. Either the Suck Fairy will have been at them, and I should get rid of them, or I'll enjoy them more than this.
Chambers, Becky. To Be Taught, If Fortunate - I bounced hard from the middle of this novella because the third world they visited hit my phobia of deep water extremely hard. I wasn’t enthralled before that, but I was kind of interested.
de Bodard, Aliette. In the Vanishers' Palace - I read the first third and the last third of this and found myself utterly unwilling to read the middle because I was getting cranky at the characters for failure to communicate with each other. That failure was in character and fit the worldbuilding, but it upset me. I found the worldbuilding fascinating and would love something that dug into it more, not even necessarily stories, just more history.
Dietrich, Cale. The Love Interest - I had a major and immediate failure of disbelief with this YA book. Part of it was me not buying the financial aspects of the set up, and part of it was me not buying the human aspects of it. The premise is a centuries old (I also really didn't buy the historical aspect) company that ensnares important people, long before they become important, by dropping two potential love interests into their lives and making those two compete. Whoever fails dies. The successful ones act as spies on their spouses/lovers for the rest of their lives. All of this is under the surface of our everyday world. I kept feeling like there ought to be porn already because this was so very clearly iddy fantasy with really, really specific situational kinks.
Gailey, Sarah. Magic for Liars - I read about half of this, one third at the beginning and the rest at the end. I was intrigued by the worldbuilding, but I realized that I hate reading this sort of down on her luck PI story. Ivy being that sort of character fit the plot and the genre, but I didn't like her voice, and I really wasn't interested in how her as a POV character. I'd probably still have finished, eventually, but there are more than 30 people on the waitlist. I'm not going to bother getting it again.
Indian Fairy Tales - This is an old anthology edited by Joseph Jacobs. The version I read via Overdrive had a lot of scanning errors. Jacobs' forward said that he'd sourced the stories from translations done by other people into English and German (possibly another European language or two. I don't remember). He also states there that he was partly trying to demonstrate the universality of certain fairy tale elements while still limiting himself to stories appropriate for children. The stories I read felt flattened and rather like they could happen anywhere at all. I'm not sure of the publication date of this, but Jacobs died in 1916 (per Wikipedia), so it must have been put together before that. I've read some of Jacobs' fairy tale anthologies before and don't recall these problems, but those fairy tales were English, Scottish, and Irish stories, and I read them all before I was 20. I may have missed infelicities of style, or the style may have felt more natural because of less distance traveled in terms of culture and language. I didn't finish this because I ran out of time on it. I couldn't read much at once because the stories ran together into a gray blob.
Klein, Glasko. Attack on Earth: The Fallout - Novella aimed at teens. Terribly flat characters and nothing happening in the first sixth of the book.
Sawyer, Ruth. Roller Skates - I thought I'd read this, years ago, but I don't think I did. At any rate, I got kind of bored a little ways in and then looked at the end. I didn't feel like I'd get much joy out of forcing myself through.
Smith, Patti F. and Britain Woodman. Vanishing Ann Arbor - I was looking for specific information and saw this book among the new-to-the-collection items. I put a hold on it then discovered, on getting it home, that it doesn't discuss the history of churches/church buildings in Ann Arbor. There was a lot of interesting detail in the bits I looked at, but I really didn't have time for the whole book. This isn't something skimmable because most paragraphs reference multiple proper nouns. Tracking each item requires paying close attention.
Wilhelm, Kate. Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers' Workshop - I read about the first third of this which was entirely personal memoir about the history of Clarion. It looks like the writing exercises are the last 15 pages. I stopped reading because I got the impression that Wilhelm was being judgy about writers outside of a particular sort of commercially aimed fiction. There's a waitlist, so I thought I might as well return it and let someone else read it.
Wright, Jennifer Ashley. Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes who Fought Them - The author approaches the topic of historical pandemics with humor that I found readable, but I didn't feel strongly drawn to read more after I read about the Antonine Plague. It was more like an anthology of short stories.
Biggle, Lloyd Jr. Grandfather Rastin Mysteries - Read 138 pages out of 225. Most of the stories here have not aged well. They're mysteries published between 1957 and 1972 (per the book flap). I read a lot of Biggle's SF in my childhood and still own quite a few of his books (some autographed). This was one I hadn't tried, so I got it through interlibrary loan. The portrayal of the female characters in these is particularly frustrating in as much as they never seem to get to be human beings. Most of the male characters don't either, but the text assumes that men have more of a footprint in life. Anyway, I think I may revisit some of Biggle's SF, very cautiously. Either the Suck Fairy will have been at them, and I should get rid of them, or I'll enjoy them more than this.
Chambers, Becky. To Be Taught, If Fortunate - I bounced hard from the middle of this novella because the third world they visited hit my phobia of deep water extremely hard. I wasn’t enthralled before that, but I was kind of interested.
de Bodard, Aliette. In the Vanishers' Palace - I read the first third and the last third of this and found myself utterly unwilling to read the middle because I was getting cranky at the characters for failure to communicate with each other. That failure was in character and fit the worldbuilding, but it upset me. I found the worldbuilding fascinating and would love something that dug into it more, not even necessarily stories, just more history.
Dietrich, Cale. The Love Interest - I had a major and immediate failure of disbelief with this YA book. Part of it was me not buying the financial aspects of the set up, and part of it was me not buying the human aspects of it. The premise is a centuries old (I also really didn't buy the historical aspect) company that ensnares important people, long before they become important, by dropping two potential love interests into their lives and making those two compete. Whoever fails dies. The successful ones act as spies on their spouses/lovers for the rest of their lives. All of this is under the surface of our everyday world. I kept feeling like there ought to be porn already because this was so very clearly iddy fantasy with really, really specific situational kinks.
Gailey, Sarah. Magic for Liars - I read about half of this, one third at the beginning and the rest at the end. I was intrigued by the worldbuilding, but I realized that I hate reading this sort of down on her luck PI story. Ivy being that sort of character fit the plot and the genre, but I didn't like her voice, and I really wasn't interested in how her as a POV character. I'd probably still have finished, eventually, but there are more than 30 people on the waitlist. I'm not going to bother getting it again.
Indian Fairy Tales - This is an old anthology edited by Joseph Jacobs. The version I read via Overdrive had a lot of scanning errors. Jacobs' forward said that he'd sourced the stories from translations done by other people into English and German (possibly another European language or two. I don't remember). He also states there that he was partly trying to demonstrate the universality of certain fairy tale elements while still limiting himself to stories appropriate for children. The stories I read felt flattened and rather like they could happen anywhere at all. I'm not sure of the publication date of this, but Jacobs died in 1916 (per Wikipedia), so it must have been put together before that. I've read some of Jacobs' fairy tale anthologies before and don't recall these problems, but those fairy tales were English, Scottish, and Irish stories, and I read them all before I was 20. I may have missed infelicities of style, or the style may have felt more natural because of less distance traveled in terms of culture and language. I didn't finish this because I ran out of time on it. I couldn't read much at once because the stories ran together into a gray blob.
Klein, Glasko. Attack on Earth: The Fallout - Novella aimed at teens. Terribly flat characters and nothing happening in the first sixth of the book.
Sawyer, Ruth. Roller Skates - I thought I'd read this, years ago, but I don't think I did. At any rate, I got kind of bored a little ways in and then looked at the end. I didn't feel like I'd get much joy out of forcing myself through.
Smith, Patti F. and Britain Woodman. Vanishing Ann Arbor - I was looking for specific information and saw this book among the new-to-the-collection items. I put a hold on it then discovered, on getting it home, that it doesn't discuss the history of churches/church buildings in Ann Arbor. There was a lot of interesting detail in the bits I looked at, but I really didn't have time for the whole book. This isn't something skimmable because most paragraphs reference multiple proper nouns. Tracking each item requires paying close attention.
Wilhelm, Kate. Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers' Workshop - I read about the first third of this which was entirely personal memoir about the history of Clarion. It looks like the writing exercises are the last 15 pages. I stopped reading because I got the impression that Wilhelm was being judgy about writers outside of a particular sort of commercially aimed fiction. There's a waitlist, so I thought I might as well return it and let someone else read it.
Wright, Jennifer Ashley. Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes who Fought Them - The author approaches the topic of historical pandemics with humor that I found readable, but I didn't feel strongly drawn to read more after I read about the Antonine Plague. It was more like an anthology of short stories.
