catchup book post

[maribou]

Welcome to Lizard Motel, by Barbara Feinberg
Hm. In theory (and according to the introduction), this is a book about how depressing award-winning kid's lit has become. I'm not sure how statistically accurate that is, but it doesn't matter, because really it's more a book about the importance of cherishing the positive uses of imagination, and about the necessity of imaginative freedom, particularly in children. As such, I loved it. As a personal story, also loved it.
(72/200)

The Final Solution, by Michael Chabon
A Sherlock Holmes tribute novel, elegiac and carefully written. I quite liked it; I wish he would write another big thick thumping adventure of a novel though.
(73/200)

Half the Day Is Night, by Maureen McHugh
This is rather good. The characters' complexity reveals itself slowly and one ends up not wanting to put the book down. I didn't find it particularly original, but it did what it was doing extremely well.
(74/200)

Winter Oak, by James Hetley
Apparently a number of other reviewers didn't like this because it was ever so much more dark and depressing and hopeless than The Summer Country. I am baffled because I thought it was ever so much less harsh and depressing than The Summer Country, in a fitting balances-the-first-book sort of way. (Note: this is a relative statement and I do not mean to imply fluffy unicorns and rainbows.) At any rate, I really liked it and really recommend it to lovers of modern Celtic fantasy and will probably be reading anything Mr. Hetley writes for the foreseeable future. So there?
(75/200)

The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger
I read this book because I had cramps and I didn't want to read anything I had been planning to read when I wasn't in pain - whatever I read would probably be better in a non-ache-filled state. That said, I enjoyed this more than I expected to - it was funnier, smarter, and more sympathetic than I had misanticipated.
(76/200)

Swinging on the Garden Gate, by Elizabeth Andrew
I was entranced by this book. I want to be friends with the author, in the vague and nonstalkerish way that I sometimes have that impulse. I think her writing is glorious, and I must find more of it in the next few months. It made my brain burst with little fireworks of related thoughts, sometimes entire reveries of them.
(77/200)

Attitude!: Eight Young Dancers Come of Age at the Ailey School
, by Katherine Davis Fishman
For a sociologist/psychologist, this author certainly has a handle on 'show, don't tell'. Very lucid and engaging exploration of her subject matter. I really enjoy dance books by dancers, and it was interesting to read a more 'outsider' perspective for a change.
(78/200)

In Service to the Horse, by Susan Nusser
Interesting look at grooms, mostly, along with other horsey topics. I think I read horse books to get back to the frame of mind I had when I was 7,8,9,10 and devouring Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry over and over again. This book very much put me into that headspace, so I am quite fond of it. I think it's a good book generally, also - its earthy perspective is balanced by a good deal of history and discussion of various expert opinions - but what I liked were the stories about people and horses.
(79/200)

The Return of the King, by J. R. R. Tolkien (unabridged audiobook) (reread)
Not much to say about these that hasn't already been said. I really think the recordings do the books justice - I was particularly impressed this time around by what a good job the narrator did with the various appendices.
(80/200)

Stroke of Midnight, Laurell K Hamilton
Whee, next installment of My Platonic Smut. Strangely, as the Anita Blake books get more about the sex and less about the plot/worldbuilding, these ones get more about the plot/worldbuilding and less about the sex. Still a lot of sex though.
(81/200)

Comments

[doctorpepper.livejournal.com]

Whee, next installment of My Platonic Smut. Strangely, as the Anita Blake books get more about the sex and less about the plot/worldbuilding, these ones get more about the plot/worldbuilding and less about the sex. Still a lot of sex though.
(81/200)

That's Scout's take, too, although she only just picked up SoM and hasn't read it yet (and as for me, I've only read the first one, and have to admit I felt prudishly taken aback). The way she described it to me when I was bitching about Anita Blake and hadn't yet read Merry was that the sex-driven plots of the later Blake books aren't really "native" to the setting and series as they were first presented to us, they feel tacked on, whereas in the Merry books that drive is built in from the start. So even if you have two identical sets of tailfins (okay this is my analogy), Merry's are on a sports car, where they belong, and Anita's have been stuck to a squirrel.

Or something. It's the middle of the night.

[maribou]

Makes sense, actually. But maybe Anita's are stuck on something more like a puma than a squirrel - they're not (IMO) completely without reason, but ... they don't really fit. Personally, the smut in the Blake books is even more to my taste than the stuff in the Merry books (tmi?) so even though it's dumb and the books are very poorly edited, I give it a pass.

Oh, hey, I just realized the copy-editing in the Merry books is 800X better than in the Blake ones - maybe Hamilton's heart is really in the former these days and she just keeps churning out the latter for $?