Book Logging
Jun. 14th, 2015 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckCalamity Jack - I didn't like this as well as I did Rapunzel's Revenge. It wasn't terrible or anything, just not quite as good. It's been a long time since I read the first book, but I feel like the color palette, especially for the first sections, was very different. I think that part of my trouble (to the extent that there was trouble) with this book came from wanting very much to take Jack by the shoulders and shake him. I liked that Rapunzel remained thoroughly competent, and the villains were genuinely intimidating.
Captain Raptor and the Moon Mystery - GoodReads recommended this, and it was definitely a bad match for me. It's a graphic novel, but it read a lot like a picture book (enough so that I suspect that's what it is. It's the right size and shape and length). There wasn't any character development, and the plot was extremely thin. I don't think, as a book for fairly young children, it would be a bad book. I just didn't enjoy it at all.
Coville, Bruce. My Teacher Is an Alien - This was a very quick read. I didn't get particularly invested in the characters or the situation, but I'm going to try the rest of the series and see if things build up.
Jones, Dan. The War of the Roses - This was interesting and relatively easy to read. I don't know how trustworthy it is because I know nothing about the author except that, in the other book of his I read, he was adamant that no Plantagenet king of England ever had a same sex relationship. My main irritation with this book was that he wasn't very clear in distinguishing various Edwards from each other. This was especially a difficulty in his recounting of one battle where one side was led by a King Edward (referred to as Edward in the text) and the other side by a Prince Edward (also referred to as Edward in the text). I couldn't follow who was doing what. I did like that this book gave me a clear idea of where the Tudors came from. I hadn't known.
Kendall, Laurel. Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits: Women in Korean Ritual Life - The anthropological study was published in 1985. It wasn't clear to me when the actual field work was done. I had mixed feelings about this as I read it because I felt like I really lacked sufficient context to understand what was being described. I wasn't sure the author had sufficient context to understand what she was describing. She wasn't particularly disrespectful as far as I could tell (and I'm not sure I could tell). She didn't mock the religion she was talking about, didn't treat it as untrue or the people who believed in it as foolish. I just couldn't get away from feeling like I was intruding in some way, as if the book were something like a zoo exhibit. I would make a very poor anthropologist.
Vernon, Ursula. Castle Hangnail - I utterly adored this book. I loved every single character who appeared, even the ones I hated. Molly was very sweet for a wicked witch, and I enjoyed seeing her come into her power. Highly, highly recommended.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography - I found the annotations more interesting than the main text. The autobiography itself was very thin, sweeping over months in a sentence or two. I was surprised at how short the thing would be without the annotations; at least half of the book was annotations, forward, index, etc. There weren't any major surprises, but it was interesting to see what Wilder fictionalized and what she kept very close to her actual memories.
Started but not finished:
Balogh, Mary. The Escape - This was a completely inoffensive romance. I just wasn't in the right mood to read it straight through. I read the first few chapters and about the last quarter. I think my problem with romances is that I'm not as interested in how couples come together as in how they make lives after that. Most romances stop just as they're getting interesting.
Jansen, Marius B. The Making of Modern Japan - I never expected to read all of this as I wanted it for information on the Meiji Restoration and on the next twenty or thirty years. The book covers considerably more ground than that, but for once, our local library let me down-- This was all it had on the subject. I did run into the problem that I hit with most detailed histories. I couldn't track the names very well. (I've had this problems in books on English history, too, so I don't think it just has to do with the names being strange to me.) I suspect I missed a lot because I wasn't able to track individuals very well.
Mayor, Adrienne. The Poison King - I got about three quarters of the way through this. It's a biography of someone I'd never heard of-- Mithradates of Pontus who fought the Roman Republic on and off for decades. The author admits up front that all of the sources on his life are Roman and therefore biased and that there are a lot of gaps in what we do know. She's fairly clear about when she's speculating and when she's drawing on definite sources. I don't think I'd have wanted to spend any time with Mithradates-- He was ruthless and capable of being quite nasty. A lot of his relatives died because they crossed him or because he thought they might. I did look at the end of the book. The author goes off into what she admits is a fantasy about how it's possible that Mithradates faked his own death and went off to live in anonymity, beyond the reach of Rome. While it's certainly possible, I'm not convinced it's probable. He was fairly old at that point, and he'd fought really hard to keep his throne. I'm not sure he'd have been willing to give that up, not even to stay alive.
Ms. Marvel - I really wanted to love this. I'd heard great things about it, and it's the sort of endeavor I want to see more of. The problem is that I forgot that I don't really enjoy most superhero books, not unless they're seriously tongue in cheek. (I've enjoyed several superhero cartoons, generally those with a lot of humor, but there are other superhero cartoons that I've tried and hated even though other people have told me they're wonderful. Superhero movies and TV shows are more of a thing that I can share with Scott than a thing I outright enjoy.) I wasn't prepared for the (totally realistic) conflicts between the main character and her parents, for example. I have a hard time with that sort of thing because, while I know I'm expected to sympathize with the main character, I have a lot more in common with the parents and can really see where they're coming from. With my own daughter being twelve, sixteen doesn't feel so very old.
I also read a couple of old issues of Discover, but I neglected to note down which ones they were before I recycled them.
Captain Raptor and the Moon Mystery - GoodReads recommended this, and it was definitely a bad match for me. It's a graphic novel, but it read a lot like a picture book (enough so that I suspect that's what it is. It's the right size and shape and length). There wasn't any character development, and the plot was extremely thin. I don't think, as a book for fairly young children, it would be a bad book. I just didn't enjoy it at all.
Coville, Bruce. My Teacher Is an Alien - This was a very quick read. I didn't get particularly invested in the characters or the situation, but I'm going to try the rest of the series and see if things build up.
Jones, Dan. The War of the Roses - This was interesting and relatively easy to read. I don't know how trustworthy it is because I know nothing about the author except that, in the other book of his I read, he was adamant that no Plantagenet king of England ever had a same sex relationship. My main irritation with this book was that he wasn't very clear in distinguishing various Edwards from each other. This was especially a difficulty in his recounting of one battle where one side was led by a King Edward (referred to as Edward in the text) and the other side by a Prince Edward (also referred to as Edward in the text). I couldn't follow who was doing what. I did like that this book gave me a clear idea of where the Tudors came from. I hadn't known.
Kendall, Laurel. Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits: Women in Korean Ritual Life - The anthropological study was published in 1985. It wasn't clear to me when the actual field work was done. I had mixed feelings about this as I read it because I felt like I really lacked sufficient context to understand what was being described. I wasn't sure the author had sufficient context to understand what she was describing. She wasn't particularly disrespectful as far as I could tell (and I'm not sure I could tell). She didn't mock the religion she was talking about, didn't treat it as untrue or the people who believed in it as foolish. I just couldn't get away from feeling like I was intruding in some way, as if the book were something like a zoo exhibit. I would make a very poor anthropologist.
Vernon, Ursula. Castle Hangnail - I utterly adored this book. I loved every single character who appeared, even the ones I hated. Molly was very sweet for a wicked witch, and I enjoyed seeing her come into her power. Highly, highly recommended.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls. Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography - I found the annotations more interesting than the main text. The autobiography itself was very thin, sweeping over months in a sentence or two. I was surprised at how short the thing would be without the annotations; at least half of the book was annotations, forward, index, etc. There weren't any major surprises, but it was interesting to see what Wilder fictionalized and what she kept very close to her actual memories.
Started but not finished:
Balogh, Mary. The Escape - This was a completely inoffensive romance. I just wasn't in the right mood to read it straight through. I read the first few chapters and about the last quarter. I think my problem with romances is that I'm not as interested in how couples come together as in how they make lives after that. Most romances stop just as they're getting interesting.
Jansen, Marius B. The Making of Modern Japan - I never expected to read all of this as I wanted it for information on the Meiji Restoration and on the next twenty or thirty years. The book covers considerably more ground than that, but for once, our local library let me down-- This was all it had on the subject. I did run into the problem that I hit with most detailed histories. I couldn't track the names very well. (I've had this problems in books on English history, too, so I don't think it just has to do with the names being strange to me.) I suspect I missed a lot because I wasn't able to track individuals very well.
Mayor, Adrienne. The Poison King - I got about three quarters of the way through this. It's a biography of someone I'd never heard of-- Mithradates of Pontus who fought the Roman Republic on and off for decades. The author admits up front that all of the sources on his life are Roman and therefore biased and that there are a lot of gaps in what we do know. She's fairly clear about when she's speculating and when she's drawing on definite sources. I don't think I'd have wanted to spend any time with Mithradates-- He was ruthless and capable of being quite nasty. A lot of his relatives died because they crossed him or because he thought they might. I did look at the end of the book. The author goes off into what she admits is a fantasy about how it's possible that Mithradates faked his own death and went off to live in anonymity, beyond the reach of Rome. While it's certainly possible, I'm not convinced it's probable. He was fairly old at that point, and he'd fought really hard to keep his throne. I'm not sure he'd have been willing to give that up, not even to stay alive.
Ms. Marvel - I really wanted to love this. I'd heard great things about it, and it's the sort of endeavor I want to see more of. The problem is that I forgot that I don't really enjoy most superhero books, not unless they're seriously tongue in cheek. (I've enjoyed several superhero cartoons, generally those with a lot of humor, but there are other superhero cartoons that I've tried and hated even though other people have told me they're wonderful. Superhero movies and TV shows are more of a thing that I can share with Scott than a thing I outright enjoy.) I wasn't prepared for the (totally realistic) conflicts between the main character and her parents, for example. I have a hard time with that sort of thing because, while I know I'm expected to sympathize with the main character, I have a lot more in common with the parents and can really see where they're coming from. With my own daughter being twelve, sixteen doesn't feel so very old.
I also read a couple of old issues of Discover, but I neglected to note down which ones they were before I recycled them.
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Date: 2015-06-15 07:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-15 06:56 pm (UTC)