maribou | Riding with Sharp Lavinia; Bitten Lying Captivity

Captivity, by Debbie Lee Wesselmann
This novel uses sharply observant multi-sensory descriptions and very precise emotional language to convey an absorbing and moving story. I really enjoyed this, though I confess I would've enjoyed it more if I didn't have the impression (from external hype, not from the story itself) that I'm supposed to think this is some sort of High Literature which sets itself about the common run of novels. It's really not anything other than an excellent contemporary novel with consistently satisfying characterizations and lots of subtle-but-didactic speechifying about primates in it. That's more than enough! No need for unreasonable hype!!
(77/300)

Riding with Rilke, by Ted Bishop
Right, so don't go reading this looking for lots of Rilke in, there's almost none till the very end. But there's lots of interesting anecdotes about traveling up/down the corridor vaguely defined by the space between the Rocky Mountains and the Cascades (actually from Edmonton down to Austin and back - is there a word for the entire region? There should be maybe). Also lots of interesting literary chat, mostly but not exclusively about Woolf and Joyce. Also some interesting talk about motorcycles, though the dude's no expert or anything - just someone who loves his bike and likes to talk to people about them. Oh, and there's a bad crash, so if you get squicked by hospitally stuff, you probably won't want to read it. Anyway, it was the sort of book I am particularly delighted by and I'm glad I found it.
(78/300)

Bitten, by Kelly Armstrong
Meh. It was like reading a not-played-for-laughs chick lit novel that happened to be set in a world populated by werewolves. I have no problem with reading chick lit, and I actively seek out werewolf stuff, but the juxtaposition was jarring. The problem with having read Captivity and Sharp Teeth so recently, and A Companion to Wolves not so long before that, is that I'm currently operating with high expectations vis-a-vis the embodiedness of characters who are purported to have a high amount of physical awareness. It doesn't make sense to me, intuitively, that the main character, the first-person-narrator werewolf main character, of this novel, mostly only operates in her head or with her eyes. Her voice is way too abstract and chattery and repetitive and psychologizing, IMO - it becomes a distraction. (It's the sort of voice that I don't mind at ALL in some sorts of novels. I just didn't like it in this one.) That Patricia Briggs novel I read (which made no pretensions to be other than fluff) sure didn't have this problem. And, really, all the OTHER werewolves in this novel don't have this problem - they were more than sufficiently plausible as these things go. I hear the series gets better, and this one did pass the 'all will be forgiven if the plot is sufficiently engrossing and SOME of the characters are well-made' test, and the prose was quite readable, so I'll try the next one. But doubtfully.
(79/300)

Lavinia, by Ursula K. LeGuin
I was weirded out by the premise of this book - it's explicitly told by the fictional Lavinia, come to life and enfleshed from the glimpses of her in Virgil's Aeneid - and I've never even read the Aeneid. But about 30 pages in I got over it. Should just trust LeGuin, at this point. It's not as immersive as some of her other novels, because she's paying homage as much as she is telling a story, but it's very lovely. She picks her words better than anyone else I read.
(80/300)

Twelve Sharp, by Janet Evanovich
Entertaining fluff. Still enjoying these! I'm slightly surprised they haven't worn thin. There's not much there there - and yet, what's there still works.
(81/300)

Freedom, Fame, Lying, and Betrayal: Essays on Everyday Life, by Leszek Kolakowski
Very short essays of moral philosophy - more interesting for the stimulus they provide than for what they actually have to say for themselves. Only got non-productively irritated once or twice.
(82/300)