Book Logging
Jan. 21st, 2009 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckThis is a partial list as I'm still trying to come up with things to say about a number of other books. As always, I welcome discussion.
Case Closed 16 - v.16 made me scream in frustration. The copy I got from the library is misprinted. At least, I assume it's misprinted. I can't imagine an editor deliberately cutting the pages that aren't there. The volume contains a Kaito Kid case, and the book is bound without several pages dead in the middle of the story. It goes from set up straight to Kid's escape at the end. I can't blame vandals with razor blades because there's no sign the pages were ever there.
Does anybody know-- Are there versions of v.16 out in the U.S. with the story complete?
Chase, Mary. Loretta Mason Potts - I suspect that I'd have loved this book when I was eight or nine. With luck, Cordelia will love it when she's a little older. I didn't dislike the book so much as suspect that I was too old to derive fullest enjoyment from it. My guess is that this is one of those books that derives something from children reading it and building on it as they do, thinking about what they'd do if and what's on the other side of that hill and about all of the things that could be in the text and aren't because an active imagination will fill them in.
I was a little hesitant to read this after I got it from BookMooch. I'd seen it recommended highly as a children's fantasy, but the blurb pasted inside (I have a withdrawn library copy) talks about a boy and his discovery that he has an older sister he's never heard of, a bad sister who no one talks about. The blurb doesn't indicate fantasy explicitly, so I was a little afraid that I wasn't going to find that there.
Fortunately, it's quite definitely there. The fantasy elements enter in little steps. First there's the question of why Loretta doesn't live with the family. It's quickly apparent that none of the adults understand it. Then the things that lured her away from her family to begin with follow her when she's forced to return. The boy from the blurb pulls his family and the other world much closer together as he tries to find out about Loretta.
My main disconnect was in the parents and their decisions in the backstory. As the mother of a five year old, I have difficulty imagining letting my daughter go live with acquaintances just because she throws a prolonged tantrum and refuses to eat. Out stubborning a child on something like that is a fundamental part of the job of parenting.
So I guess I also would have liked this book better if I'd read it before I'd become a parent.
del Franco, Mark. Unshapely Things - I only got a little way into this one before I concluded that it simply isn't for me. I don't like this style of mystery, and adding a fantasy layer to the story doesn't make me like it better. Nine times out of ten, nineteen times out of twenty, mysteries don't work for me, and hard edged mysteries with lots of violence and gritty street scenes and jaded cops-- I can't think of one case where that's worked for me. The closest I can get is Rex Stout's books, and I can only tolerate those in very small doses. Sometimes a full novel is too much, so I've read all the short stories and novellas I can find but only a small fraction of the novels.
DiTerlizzi, Tony and Holly Black. Spiderwick Chronicles 1: The Field Guide - I haven't decided yet whether to keep this around for Cordelia or to encourage her to get it from the library in a year or two when she's okay with this level of (not very) creepy. I know she'd have trouble, too, with the section where the young hero decides to risk further maternal wrath by sneaking out of bed to look for evidence to prove that he's not the one responsible for previous nocturnal mischief. Right now, she'd order me to stop reading the book and would refuse to allow it to be opened again in her presence.
For me, this was too slight. It felt like a first chapter of a real book. I kept waiting for the story to start. I may pick up later volumes if I think of it while I'm at the library. I also may not. I'm not sure.
Hauf, Michelle. Seraphim - I started this and didn't finish it. I knew before I finished the prologue that I wouldn't read much of it. The prologue starts out in present tense. Abruptly, in the middle of the third page of text, the prologue switches to past tense. There is no point of view change, no setting change, no chapter break, nothing to justify it. I suppose I should be glad that it happened between paragraphs instead of in the middle of one. At some other time, I might give this one more of a chance, but chapter one goes straight into the villain's point of view. That made me cranky.
Anybody out there read it? Is it worth keeping around and pushing through the things that have stopped me dead? Does the author pick a tense and stay with it?
Here Is Greenwood 2-4 - I have a problem here in that I still can't tell some of the characters apart. I'm working on it because connecting the right name to the right backstory and personality to the right people on the page is what makes the story work. I still enjoy the silliness and the touches of seriousness, but I have to skim along the top a bit because I'm not connecting the pieces. I'd put that down as my own fault rather than the manga-ka's.
Hooper, Kay. Once Upon a Time... Golden Threads - I bounced hard off this romance in spite of often liking the author's other romances. In this case, I started bouncing when the cast of the production of Rapunzel was described and the actress playing the witch was described as sexy, 'exotic' and Asian and as having been cast explicitly to make the evil in the play Other. Then I peeked at the end and discovered that that actress is also the villain of the novel. ::bangs head as book hits wall:: At least I didn't give the author any money for it....
Hooper, Kay. Once Upon a Time... Through the Looking Glass - This fluffly little romance was just what I needed for reading during breaks while out and about on Tuesday. It didn't demand thought. The characters weren't at all deep, and the non-romance plot wasn't complicated, but the prose was fun enough to keep me going. I think I'll see if I can dig up the rest of this series on BookMooch. I'm not a big fan of Hooper's more recent books as they've gone further into suspense and horror, but I enjoy her old romances.
Jennewein, James and Tom S. Parker. Rune Warriors -This is another one I started and didn't finish. There were pieces that I think were supposed to be funny that simply fell flat for me, and I failed to connect with any of the characters. The prose also had a peculiar feeling to it, as if it were a bad translation of something that might have had life in the original. It's not a translation as far as I can tell.
I think the authors may have been trying to imitate the texture of an Icelandic saga or even of The Longships. The setting's definitely Nordic, Viking names, lots of cold weather, references to Thor and Odin.
It didn't work for me. It might work for its target audience which is, I think, the nine to thirteen crowd.
McCullough, Kelly. CodeSpell and Cybermancy - I can't write about these separately. I tried, and I can't. Some of that is that I read the second (third in the series) before the first (second in the series) because the earlier book set off my anxiety too much early on. I still love McCullough's world building, and I'm still reminded of Zelazny's Amber books to some extent (I said of the first book that it's what I wish the Merlin series had been). Ravirn is still doing things for the best of reasons but with mixed results and slowly finding out what being the Raven means. I have a suspicion that the Raven has a lot to do with free will and choice.
I look forward to seeing the further adventures of Ravirn. So far, although each book builds on events in previous books, they seem to be readable as standalones. Each one ends. There are background plot threads that aren't tied up, but they feel more like seeds for further stories than cliffhangers.
Neff, Henry H. The Second Siege - I tried to read this because I enjoyed the first book in the series quite a bit. I failed not so much because this one isn't good (I couldn't read enough to tell) as because this is a middle book in which everything falls apart in nasty, terrible ways. The main character is explicitly Cuchulainn reborn. One of his angst points is that he's read the stories and really, really doesn't want to repeat that life even though he's been told that events in his life will probably parallel the high points. This book includes his allies getting cursed with the equivalent of Macha's curse on the men of Ulster.
I'll probably try this one again when the series is complete.
Psychic Academy 6-9 - I still wish for more plot that doesn't involve romance. I like all three characters in the love triangle, but it's *boring*. I've seen it before in just about every iteration imaginable. I'd like to see it disappear or be moved into the background. The rest of the plot is (while not hugely original) right up my alley. I want more prophecy, more conspiracy, more politics. Oh, and many, many fewer boob shots. They're dull.
Shirahime-Syo - Why does the back cover blurb say there are 'five tragic tales' in this volume? I can stretch to seeing four, including the not tragic frame story, but the fifth story seems to be absent.
At any rate, grumbling about the cover aside, the art is pretty. That was about all I expected and really about all I got because I found the stories overly short and because I'm not a big fan of tragedy. This book sat on my shelf for over a year before I finally made myself read it by commenting to myself that it's short. I'm trying to decrease the size of my to-be-read pile, and lots of short books add up.
Train + Train 6 - I was disappointed in this, the final volume of the series. I didn't feel like the characters got to the end point organically. I'm not sure if it's that I was missing pieces that were there, things I should have understood, or if those pieces actually were missing. To some extent, I think the ending was rushed with too much squeezed into too small a space.
I was also disappointed in the heroine. She folded too entirely. I can understand her disappointment and devastation, but she came across as hollow. She had nothing but her goal. With that gone, she couldn't stand up, figuratively speaking, without somebody else (somebody male) giving her structure. That meant that the ending, with the hero rescuing her and giving her purpose again, only pissed me off.
So I have mixed feelings about this series. Bits of it had potential, but I don't like where it went with either plot or characters.
Case Closed 16 - v.16 made me scream in frustration. The copy I got from the library is misprinted. At least, I assume it's misprinted. I can't imagine an editor deliberately cutting the pages that aren't there. The volume contains a Kaito Kid case, and the book is bound without several pages dead in the middle of the story. It goes from set up straight to Kid's escape at the end. I can't blame vandals with razor blades because there's no sign the pages were ever there.
Does anybody know-- Are there versions of v.16 out in the U.S. with the story complete?
Chase, Mary. Loretta Mason Potts - I suspect that I'd have loved this book when I was eight or nine. With luck, Cordelia will love it when she's a little older. I didn't dislike the book so much as suspect that I was too old to derive fullest enjoyment from it. My guess is that this is one of those books that derives something from children reading it and building on it as they do, thinking about what they'd do if and what's on the other side of that hill and about all of the things that could be in the text and aren't because an active imagination will fill them in.
I was a little hesitant to read this after I got it from BookMooch. I'd seen it recommended highly as a children's fantasy, but the blurb pasted inside (I have a withdrawn library copy) talks about a boy and his discovery that he has an older sister he's never heard of, a bad sister who no one talks about. The blurb doesn't indicate fantasy explicitly, so I was a little afraid that I wasn't going to find that there.
Fortunately, it's quite definitely there. The fantasy elements enter in little steps. First there's the question of why Loretta doesn't live with the family. It's quickly apparent that none of the adults understand it. Then the things that lured her away from her family to begin with follow her when she's forced to return. The boy from the blurb pulls his family and the other world much closer together as he tries to find out about Loretta.
My main disconnect was in the parents and their decisions in the backstory. As the mother of a five year old, I have difficulty imagining letting my daughter go live with acquaintances just because she throws a prolonged tantrum and refuses to eat. Out stubborning a child on something like that is a fundamental part of the job of parenting.
So I guess I also would have liked this book better if I'd read it before I'd become a parent.
del Franco, Mark. Unshapely Things - I only got a little way into this one before I concluded that it simply isn't for me. I don't like this style of mystery, and adding a fantasy layer to the story doesn't make me like it better. Nine times out of ten, nineteen times out of twenty, mysteries don't work for me, and hard edged mysteries with lots of violence and gritty street scenes and jaded cops-- I can't think of one case where that's worked for me. The closest I can get is Rex Stout's books, and I can only tolerate those in very small doses. Sometimes a full novel is too much, so I've read all the short stories and novellas I can find but only a small fraction of the novels.
DiTerlizzi, Tony and Holly Black. Spiderwick Chronicles 1: The Field Guide - I haven't decided yet whether to keep this around for Cordelia or to encourage her to get it from the library in a year or two when she's okay with this level of (not very) creepy. I know she'd have trouble, too, with the section where the young hero decides to risk further maternal wrath by sneaking out of bed to look for evidence to prove that he's not the one responsible for previous nocturnal mischief. Right now, she'd order me to stop reading the book and would refuse to allow it to be opened again in her presence.
For me, this was too slight. It felt like a first chapter of a real book. I kept waiting for the story to start. I may pick up later volumes if I think of it while I'm at the library. I also may not. I'm not sure.
Hauf, Michelle. Seraphim - I started this and didn't finish it. I knew before I finished the prologue that I wouldn't read much of it. The prologue starts out in present tense. Abruptly, in the middle of the third page of text, the prologue switches to past tense. There is no point of view change, no setting change, no chapter break, nothing to justify it. I suppose I should be glad that it happened between paragraphs instead of in the middle of one. At some other time, I might give this one more of a chance, but chapter one goes straight into the villain's point of view. That made me cranky.
Anybody out there read it? Is it worth keeping around and pushing through the things that have stopped me dead? Does the author pick a tense and stay with it?
Here Is Greenwood 2-4 - I have a problem here in that I still can't tell some of the characters apart. I'm working on it because connecting the right name to the right backstory and personality to the right people on the page is what makes the story work. I still enjoy the silliness and the touches of seriousness, but I have to skim along the top a bit because I'm not connecting the pieces. I'd put that down as my own fault rather than the manga-ka's.
Hooper, Kay. Once Upon a Time... Golden Threads - I bounced hard off this romance in spite of often liking the author's other romances. In this case, I started bouncing when the cast of the production of Rapunzel was described and the actress playing the witch was described as sexy, 'exotic' and Asian and as having been cast explicitly to make the evil in the play Other. Then I peeked at the end and discovered that that actress is also the villain of the novel. ::bangs head as book hits wall:: At least I didn't give the author any money for it....
Hooper, Kay. Once Upon a Time... Through the Looking Glass - This fluffly little romance was just what I needed for reading during breaks while out and about on Tuesday. It didn't demand thought. The characters weren't at all deep, and the non-romance plot wasn't complicated, but the prose was fun enough to keep me going. I think I'll see if I can dig up the rest of this series on BookMooch. I'm not a big fan of Hooper's more recent books as they've gone further into suspense and horror, but I enjoy her old romances.
Jennewein, James and Tom S. Parker. Rune Warriors -This is another one I started and didn't finish. There were pieces that I think were supposed to be funny that simply fell flat for me, and I failed to connect with any of the characters. The prose also had a peculiar feeling to it, as if it were a bad translation of something that might have had life in the original. It's not a translation as far as I can tell.
I think the authors may have been trying to imitate the texture of an Icelandic saga or even of The Longships. The setting's definitely Nordic, Viking names, lots of cold weather, references to Thor and Odin.
It didn't work for me. It might work for its target audience which is, I think, the nine to thirteen crowd.
McCullough, Kelly. CodeSpell and Cybermancy - I can't write about these separately. I tried, and I can't. Some of that is that I read the second (third in the series) before the first (second in the series) because the earlier book set off my anxiety too much early on. I still love McCullough's world building, and I'm still reminded of Zelazny's Amber books to some extent (I said of the first book that it's what I wish the Merlin series had been). Ravirn is still doing things for the best of reasons but with mixed results and slowly finding out what being the Raven means. I have a suspicion that the Raven has a lot to do with free will and choice.
I look forward to seeing the further adventures of Ravirn. So far, although each book builds on events in previous books, they seem to be readable as standalones. Each one ends. There are background plot threads that aren't tied up, but they feel more like seeds for further stories than cliffhangers.
Neff, Henry H. The Second Siege - I tried to read this because I enjoyed the first book in the series quite a bit. I failed not so much because this one isn't good (I couldn't read enough to tell) as because this is a middle book in which everything falls apart in nasty, terrible ways. The main character is explicitly Cuchulainn reborn. One of his angst points is that he's read the stories and really, really doesn't want to repeat that life even though he's been told that events in his life will probably parallel the high points. This book includes his allies getting cursed with the equivalent of Macha's curse on the men of Ulster.
I'll probably try this one again when the series is complete.
Psychic Academy 6-9 - I still wish for more plot that doesn't involve romance. I like all three characters in the love triangle, but it's *boring*. I've seen it before in just about every iteration imaginable. I'd like to see it disappear or be moved into the background. The rest of the plot is (while not hugely original) right up my alley. I want more prophecy, more conspiracy, more politics. Oh, and many, many fewer boob shots. They're dull.
Shirahime-Syo - Why does the back cover blurb say there are 'five tragic tales' in this volume? I can stretch to seeing four, including the not tragic frame story, but the fifth story seems to be absent.
At any rate, grumbling about the cover aside, the art is pretty. That was about all I expected and really about all I got because I found the stories overly short and because I'm not a big fan of tragedy. This book sat on my shelf for over a year before I finally made myself read it by commenting to myself that it's short. I'm trying to decrease the size of my to-be-read pile, and lots of short books add up.
Train + Train 6 - I was disappointed in this, the final volume of the series. I didn't feel like the characters got to the end point organically. I'm not sure if it's that I was missing pieces that were there, things I should have understood, or if those pieces actually were missing. To some extent, I think the ending was rushed with too much squeezed into too small a space.
I was also disappointed in the heroine. She folded too entirely. I can understand her disappointment and devastation, but she came across as hollow. She had nothing but her goal. With that gone, she couldn't stand up, figuratively speaking, without somebody else (somebody male) giving her structure. That meant that the ending, with the hero rescuing her and giving her purpose again, only pissed me off.
So I have mixed feelings about this series. Bits of it had potential, but I don't like where it went with either plot or characters.
