Best Skin Unit; In the Court of the Arctic Breathers; Yentl's Squid

[maribou]

Skin Trade, by Laurell K. Hamilton
WAY more plot and less sex than those awful middle-of-the-series books. I quite enjoyed this one! Seemed to have to ditch Jean-Claude and especially Richard almost entirely for it to work, but work it did. I'll be interested to see if she can keep it up back on Anita's home turf.
(173/275)

The Wandora Unit, by Jessy Randall
I really liked the author's book of poems and I really like YA so I figured this would be right up my alley and it was. So up my alley that I read it all straight through over supper and then a couple hours after that. If you like funny, charming, thinky novels about thinky teenagers who like poetry, but also like Thundercats, you should check this out!
(174/275)

Best Travel Writing 2009, edited by James O'Reilly et al
I feel like these were selected more for the quality of the story than the quality of the writing - a coherent strategy but not one that works for me. There were a few great stories in here but mostly I felt meh. Now I am wondering if it's the book or if I've gone off the travel-essay genre.... only one way to find out! *puts a hold on Best American Travel Writing 2009* - if Simon Winchester & the fab Best American brand can't put me back in the mood, it MUST be me... stay tuned.
(175/275)

Breathers, by S. G. Browne
It's a zombie retelling of Fight Club, in a lot of ways. I was bored silly for the first 50-75 pages but something kept me reading... and it did get much better before the end. I think there was too much boring stuff before the fun stuff though.
(176/275)

In the Court of the Crimson Kings, by S. M. Stirling
So there's this alternate timeline where Venus and Mars are inhabited? And because of the drive to get to them faster the USSR evolved rather than falling apart? And SM Stirling really loves old pulpy SF novels? Ok, at this point you're either intrigued or appalled. I was more intrigued than appalled so I not only read the first one (Venus) but continued on to this one (Mars) even though the first one wasn't all that great. THIS one is all that great; I enjoyed the heck out of it!!!! And I don't think you'd need to have read the first one, so I say you jump right in here:).
(177/275)

Yentl's Revenge, edited by Danya Ruttenberg
Fabulous collection of autobiographical essays about the intersections of feminism and Judaism. Highly recommended if you're interested in these subjects - once in a while an individual essay can get a bit jargony, but as these sorts of anthologies go, this is a very accessible AND very worthwhile one. Couldn't put it down.
(178/275)

Proust and the Squid, by Maryanne Wolf
An entertaining and very literary look at the history of reading and reading development in both typical and dyslexic cases. It all hangs together very well. While I was already aware of most of this information (hi, I have a biology degree and my mom's been a remedial reading teacher and/or school librarian her whole life), I still kept turning pages for the pleasure of seeing it all laid it in such a lovely fashion with such apposite quotes. And the author's insights and reporting of fresh research (ie the stuff I didn't already know) were fascinating. Very keen.
(179/275)

The Arctic Prairies, by Ernest Thompson Seton
This book was published in 1911 about a canoe trip along the Mackenzie River (and a few others) that took place in 1906/1907. The good: Seton is as engaging a writer here as in his animal stories and his sense of sheer wonder at the sights & wildlife he is seeing shine through in a delightful fashion. And his paintings, drawings, and photographs are very nifty. The bad: oh, the casual, cheerful racism. Sure, he actually says plenty of good stuff about some of his First Nations or Métis guides, and gives enough detail that a modern reader can't help but feel that THEY are the real heroes of most of this trip..... but he also says vicious & unjustified (even contradicted within his own text!) things about Natives in general (like paragraph after paragraph of them) and even manages to throw in a gratuitous n-word when complaining about the selection of music being played on a gramophone. Plus the constant praising of the paternal actions of the HBC wears thin and the part where he was talking about how WONDERFUL it was to meet up with other white men (complete with explicit explanations of just why white men are so much better than anyone else) .... ugh. It's not that the book isn't worth reading, it is, and it's a fascinating source for learning about the history of that area as well as being interesting for people who love older naturalist writers and can handle their cavalier attitude toward killing animals (Seton's actually more conflicted about this than many of his peers) - but it's definitely one of those books where the time period of the source material makes it Very Very Hard to read. It's just so damn racist-sexist-white-man. And, you know, I read a lot of Edwardian-and-even-much-earlier material, so I'm somewhat inured. Still made me wanna find ETS and shake him and say "WHY CAN YOU BE SO IMAGINATIVE AND EMPATHETIC ABOUT ANIMALS AND SO DUMB ABOUT PEOPLE??" I suppose it is somewhat of a wake-up call to read a whole book so full of that attitude by someone I otherwise admire, whom I had not previously ... I can sometimes really think "oh, that whole cheerfully upfrontly white male supremacist empire thing, that was AGES ago... " but really, 97 years? Not that long.
(180/275)

Comments

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

Oh, ugh, about the Seton. I grew up on those animal stories. :/

[maribou]

You might still want to read this one, if you stumble across it. After a certain point I got used to wanting to throttle him and there is a level on which it is really historically interesting to see someone who is so totally unabashed about his bigotry. He doesn't want to do anything horrible to anybody or anything.... he's just completely SURE that all the Natives suck and that white people and especially the HBC are awesome, with absolutely no qualms about residential schools and other such horrors.

At least Heinrich Harrer doesn't go on and on about how great the Nazi Party was.

Anyway there are a lot of very lovely parts (especially the illustrations which show his usual sensitivity) ... I find myself wishing (very unusual for me) that I could've read a bowdlerized version without all the AWFUL bits.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

I probably will pick it up if I come across it, yeah. :/

Have you read the Pepys diary? It's fascinating; he's very self aware about many things, and very honest in what he records, but... yeah.

[maribou]

Only in pieces, but yeah, I definitely will read more Pepys eventually. I think people from that era are somewhat easier for me to take because it seems SOOOOOOOO long ago that I don't take their stupid bigotedness so personally. Whereas here I'm all thinking that since SOME Edwardian white people knew much better than this, ALL Edwardian white people should've known better than this (despite understanding the irrationality of this belief, I still believe it), so I get much more frustrated.

[maribou]

PS I think with Elizabethan things I am SO AMAZED that I can still connect with / relate to ANY of this 400-year-old stuff that I give a lot more free passes... whereas with stuff from the last century (or the late 19th) I can relate very well to almost all of it so the offensive horrid stuff shocks me more (while giving me a better understanding that no, they really weren't just like me).

[maribou]

To add to the weirdness, it's really hard to find ANY modern discussion of Seton's attitudes toward First Nations folks *other* than people praising him to the skies for trying to get reservations for Natives (and wildlife) so they could live out the ideal imaginary noble savage lives he thought they should've had.... at least that's all the evidence anyone on the internets was giving for their claims that he was a civil rights for Indians pioneer.... He was very into the Idea of Native Americans and most of the boy scout stuff that tries to be Indian is because of his founding influence (he got more or less driven out of the boy scouts by this genteel white supremacist jerk who was one of the other founders).

Now I've come across this book Playing Indian by Philip Deloria that I really want to read....

[freakfish.livejournal.com]

"WHY CAN YOU BE SO IMAGINATIVE AND EMPATHETIC ABOUT ANIMALS AND SO DUMB ABOUT PEOPLE??"

You should start a conversation about Michael Vick with dog lovers some time!

[maribou]

Oh, you don't wanna get me started on Michael Vick either...

[(Anonymous)]

Hi! I followed you from Schuyler's Monster and oh man my son would just love what you are doing. Not the 3 year old. The 16 year old with his nose in a book all day long. Are you reading all these now? How do you have time? And how are you picking them? I'm a sci-fi/fantasy fan myself but with 4 kids I just don't read that much any more. Really enjoying the Dresden Files, but other than that, nada. Can't wait until the 3 year old is 4 or 5 and in school part of the day. I might start tackling your massive list.

[maribou]

Hi! I post these slightly after I read them, yes. Every year I read about 250-275 books ... last year I set a goal of 300 but wan't bothered when I didnt meet it. *Right* now, I've just finished a book called Unsuitable for Ladies which is an anthology of brief excerpts from the works of women travel writers, mostly historical stuff from the 18th and 19th centuries.... next up is an art book about Hokusai.
How I have time: 1) I am a VERY practiced reader (in English, at least, I'm much slower in other languages where I have less practice, regardless of fluency). When I was a teenager, and younger, I read AlL the time. I probably read 30 books a week, most weeks, back then, and more in the summer. So now, I read very quickly compared to most folks. 2) I still read ALL the time. Loading the dishwasher, in the bathtub, putting the laundry away, walking to work.... plus more normal sitting-down-with-a-good-book times. And, probably very relevant, I don't have any children and I work about 40 hours a week. I watch fewer than 10 hours of television/movies a week, most weeks. My 4 cats and my dear friends do take up a good amount of time, but the cats APPROVE of me sitting around reading, whereas kids would want my attention. My husband is equally interested in his own solitary-but-companionable pursuits as I am, so we spend a lot of time sitting around together companionably ignoring each other.
How I pick them:
I worked in a bookstore for a really long time. Not only did I stash a huge backlog of unread books I OWN, but I also got in the habit of reading trade publications (review magazines) and book blogs so that I could keep up on what was out that sounded interesting. Now I not only have those habits, I also work in a college library so I am CONSTANTLY exposed to fascinating things (the Seton was a random find while shelving one day). It's much harder for me to figure out which of the 1000's of things clamoring for my attention I should read next than to find a new thing that sounds good:) No shortage of those!! I also keep a (ridiculously long) list of all the things I'm interested in reading.

If you like the Dresden Files (as do I), have you tried Butcher's Codex Alera series? Very different from Dresden, being historically-tinged fantasy, but really good. The first one is called Furies of Calderon.

Good luck getting back into reading! Before I started keeping track, at one point I was down to only 30 or 40 books a year.... so I would say that paying attention definitely led to me reading more. Not because I was trying to hit some number, but just that it made me more mindful about how I was spending my time vs how I WANTED to be spending my time.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm getting ready to start the Codex, but haven't. I promised my daughter that I'd read Twilight first. I must be the last person on the planet to read it. I'm also hoping to find them in audio format on sale somewhere. I can't manage to read while I do other tasks, but I can listen and I enjoy that quite a bit.