Author Archives: Anna

Teeth

by Anna

Edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling

Book Cover: TeethI picked up this book as an impulse loan at the library when the title typeface caught my eye. (Design nerd moment: I really like how they were able to make the title actually look like teeth without being totally cheesy about it – very elegant, especially coupled with the lack of teeth in the image) I also had already heard of the book because one of my favorite blog writers, Genevieve Valentine, wrote one of the stories in the collection, and posted that story online. It was awesome, so I figured I wouldn’t mind reading it again and see if the other stories were of the same caliber.

Of course, some were and some weren’t. Well, Valentine’s was still the best, but there were others I really liked, too. In fact, Valentine’s story was first in the collection, and then the second story, All Smiles by Steve Berman, dealt with a vampire myth from a more unusual, non-European culture, as well, so I was pretty pleased. (Actually, both these first two stories are available in a preview of the book here.)

The problem with this type of anthology is that lots of people, me included, like to read about vampires, so it makes sense to collect stories about them. Good vampire stories, though, often use vampirism as a surprise twist in the story, so you see the problem. Just being included in this type of anthology spoils a lot of the stories, so there were certainly several that I think I would have liked a lot more if I hadn’t just been reading them waiting for the vampires to show up.

A not-so-brief gripe to close out this review: the book cover promises contributions from Cassandra Clare & Holly Black, Neil Gaiman, Melissa Marr, and more. Now, I’m a recent fan of Holly Black, and I really enjoyed her story here, co-written with Cassandra Clare; and I’m starting to think Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely was a fluke because I haven’t enjoyed any of her other writing nearly as much; but my real gripe is with Neil Gaiman. I love his Sandman graphic novels and every full-length novel he has ever written. I consider myself a huge fan of his. However, his short stories are crap. So, I knew not to actually consider his name on the cover to be any sort of selling point, but he must have disappointed legions of not-already-disappointed fans with his short and hasty-seeming poem that reads more like a pop song. Weak sauce, Gaiman, weak sauce.

—Anna

The Word Made Flesh

by Anna

I ran across this site somewhere on the internet, probably via my current addiction, pinterest: The Word Made Flesh, www.tattoolit.com, is just photos of tattoos that people have gotten that either are text or reference a piece of text. Some of them include short descriptions from the people on why they chose the tattoos. (Also, the site is mostly, but not entirely, safe for work; some of the tattoos get a tad intimate.)

The tattoos themselves are of varying quality, but I find the whole site really interesting for a number of reasons:

  • I love reading about what pieces of writing have really impacted a person’s life. (Some of them even make me a little misty-eyed, especially when it is clear that the person is using the tattoo as a visible reminder of recovery.)
  • It is super interesting to see which texts pop up over and over again (Catcher in the Rye, of course, lots of Kurt Vonnegut and e. e. cummings, and just tons of The Little Prince)
  • It is additionally interesting to read about someone being so inspired by a piece of text that I have also read but completely shrugged off. What is it about those books that just connected to these people and not to me? (My eventual mild enjoyment of the one Kurt Vonnegut book I have read is nowhere close to the adulation people feel for that same book, and I simply don’t get it.)
  • Some people have tattoos that I consider a little ridiculous (perhaps when you are a young adult, you shouldn’t get a Harry Potter tattoo until you’ve seen if it will continue to be such an impact in your adult life,* and that goes double for A Series of Unfortunate Events), while some people are just way, way cooler than me (the full-color pelvic tattoo of Aubrey Beardsley’s illustration of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, which is also the tattoo that kicked off this website and the photograph of which is totally NSFW)
  • Placement of tattoos is also important (an Ayn Rand quote on the upper thigh seems like it might be a bit of a turn off)

After wasting entirely too much time on the site, I have to say, though, that whatever my thoughts on the tattoos themselves, it just makes me happy to see all these people so inspired by such a range of books.

—Anna

*On the other hand, I didn’t grow up with Harry Potter, having started the series well out of college, and I’m told by my much younger cousins that it is a whole different experience reading each book as roughly the same age as Harry, which I guess I can see.

The Talisman Ring

by Anna

By Georgette Heyer

Book Cover: The Talisman RingComing back from vacation, I picked up an old favorite of mine, and a bit of a guilty pleasure. Georgette Heyer is known for her Regency romance novels (and, strangely, also for meticulously researched historical battles). My mother has all of her novels, so they were some of the first adult novels I started reading. Luckily for my tween sensibilities, the romance is actually quite light in these books, comparable in raciness to Jane Austen, I would say.

The Talisman Ring is one of my favorites, since it includes a murder mystery as well as romance. Heyer also does a bit of a switcheroo, where the first 50 pages features a young and somewhat insipid heroine before a more mature and much more interesting heroine is introduced, I believe in a conscious play on traditional romance tropes. Almost every review of Georgette Heyer mentions her humor, lively characters, and witty dialogue, and this one is no exception. Her characters and the farcical plot lines are what make her books such a pleasure to read.

What is not so much a pleasure to read is the racism. Heyer lived from 1902-1974, which of course was significantly more racist than today, and while most of her books don’t feature people of color at all, thereby avoiding racism by pure omission, a few are totally and irredeemably cringe-worthy. In fact, all of the reviews of Heyer’s novel The Grand Sophy are quite entertaining in how they start with how delightful all the characters and dialogue are, and you can just see each reviewer slowly winding down the praises in order to end up addressing the extreme bigotry. I just imagine all these slumped shoulders and heavy sighs, and the ominous tone in which they refer to the Goldhanger Chapter.

It can be quite appalling, and after rereading some of these scenes as a more culturally-aware adult (and an adult who couldn’t quite understand how I’d overlooked them as a tween), my pleasure in Heyer’s novels both diminished and became ethically confusing for me.

I was pleased to run across the essay “How to be a fan of problematic things” online just recently, and was somewhat comforted that I perhaps didn’t have to swear off all things Heyer as long as I stayed entirely open-eyed about the problematic things. Which, I mean, they are blatant enough that it would be really hard to try to explain them away.

The Talisman Ring doesn’t feature any people of color, but has some class issues instead. People of status and wealth are invariably smarter, kinder, and just better all-around human beings than middle- and lower-class people. My increasingly socialist heart couldn’t take quite the joy in seeing the aristocratic young smuggler best the poor working detectives that my teenage heart could.

So, this ended up being quite a negative review about a book that is very close to my heart, but I guess in the end, after all the very problematic issues, I can’t quite quit this author, and that says a lot, doesn’t it?

—Anna

White Cat

by Anna

By Holly Black

Book Cover: White CatThis Christmas, I’m spending the holiday with Tom’s family in Arizona, so I grabbed White Cat off of my to-read shelf on my way out the door to the airport. We had managed to get a nonstop, five-hour flight to Phoenix, and I had intended to take a nice long nap through most of it. Instead, I did nothing but read this book, and finished all but the last 50 pages by the time we landed, which I promptly finished that night.

Author Holly Black builds a very interesting world with crime families that deal in illegal magic that can control or kill others with just a touch of the hand.* Our protagonist (I don’t quite want to call him a hero) is introduced to us as the youngest son of a somewhat minor crime family and the only member without a magical ability, so he struggles to remain equal to the other members through mundane cons.

The brilliant thing about the book is that the whole thing is a string of cons, making up one giant one, and the reader is along for the ride. It is one of those rare narratives where each twist surprised me as it came up, but also made absolute sense in retrospect.

One of the praise blurbs on the inside cover of the book describes it as “part X-Men and part Sopranos,” and for some reason I find that really kind of off-putting, even though I enjoyed both of those. However, after having finished the book, I had to agree that it is a pretty good description, but instead of the amalgam of the kind of crappy parts of both, which is what I immediately feared, it takes the best of both and makes something even better.

The sequel, Red Glove, is already out, and I’m going to track that down as soon as I get home (although, I also now need a book for my flight home again), and then the third book of the trilogy, Black Heart, is due in April 2013.

Anyway, happy holidays to you all, and I hope you get lots of good books for presents!

—Anna

*Very minor spoiler and pet peeve: since a bare touch of a hand can be so dangerous, everyone is this world wears gloves, which I found vaguely interesting until they put in details like “licking the grease from the French fries off of the gloves” that both makes it so much more realistic, and somehow just really grosses the hell out of me.

Lincoln’s Dreams

by Anna

By Connie Willis

Book Cover: Lincoln's DreamsSo, with all the movies about Lincoln cropping up (I’m counting Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter as ‘all the movies’), I was inspired to reread Connie Willis’ Lincoln’s Dreams, which I’d only read once many years ago.

It is a bit of a mess, I’m afraid.

It also turns out to be just the second novel she wrote, which explains a lot.

There are four central characters to the book, and while there are other peripheral characters coming in and out of scenes, the whole book focuses on the tension between these four: an author writing a novel about the Civil War, his research assistant, a young woman having persistent dreams about the Civil War, and her doctor, who is also the old college roommate of the research assistant.

(With the limited characters and settings, it occurred to me that this could actually be made into an interesting stage play, though the script would definitely need some tightening-up. This is the one nice thing I’m going to say about it.)

Actually, one more compliment: each chapter begins with a piece of trivia about the Civil War, and the research assistant describes more within the chapters. For those readers like me who want a lot of narrative with their nonfiction, this is the most palatable way to take in Civil War facts. (I also know from Connie Willis’ other books that she is extremely interested in history and does meticulous research for her novels, so I trust her historical accuracy.)

Okay, now on to the savaging. About a third into the book, I started noticing that the single female character didn’t have very many actual lines, and when she does speak she is often interrupted or instructed by a male character.* The woman is pretty much the central character, around which the three male characters orbit, so it took me longer than it should have to notice what an extremely passive character she was, really more of a target for the male characters’ expressions of emotion than a character in her own right. Even the final climax of the book, in which the cause of her dreams is discovered, supports the idea of her as a vessel to be filled with male ideas rather than a fully functioning person.

From reading Willis’ other books, I trust that she was actually doing this on purpose, and making a commentary on how, by trying to protect people we care about, we can end up marginalizing them, and thus doing more harm than good. It ends up being kind of a pat observation, though, and is not sufficiently explored enough for me. I have to admit that I might be being a bit unfair to Willis, though; I find that I am judging her early books in comparison to her later books, and then criticizing them for not being nearly as good.

The final thing is, though, that I would actually continue to recommend this book to people. Certainly not as an introduction to Connie Willis (for that, read To Say Nothing of the Dog), and not even as a good read, necessarily, but definitely a book that gives a different and interesting viewpoint of the Civil War and even wars in general, and for that I still consider it completely worth-while.

—Anna

*This is becoming a bit of a bee in my bonnet, actually. I’ve just recently started noticing that female television pundits get interrupted and talked over a lot more than male pundits. I know that shouldn’t surprise me, and it doesn’t, really; it just makes me really mad at how blatant it all is.

Steel’s Edge (excerpt)

by Anna

By Ilona Andrews

Book cover: Steel's EdgeSo, Rebecca has previously reviewed the third book in Ilona Andrew’s Edge Series, and in her review she wrote that she thought each book in the series was better than the preceding one, which I disagreed with. The third book was actually my least favorite and had pretty much convinced me to bow out of this series.

Then, I was bored one day and noticed that Andrews had posted a lengthy excerpt from the brand new fourth book, Steel’s Edge, on her website; I figured it couldn’t hurt to read it, just to congratulate myself on my decision not to read any more of them.

However, as you have probably noticed from this lead-in, it is really good! Each books features a male protagonist introduced in a previous book and a new female protagonist, and I was almost immediately interested in the new female character. Both characters are also in their early- to mid-30s, which is both refreshing and increasingly more relatable to me. I’m now very much looking forward to reading this one, though I’m at least sticking to my guns on not buying it, so I’ll await the library.

—Anna

Sunshine

by Anna

By Robin McKinley

Book cover: SunshineYou know those Eat This, Not That books? This is a Read This, Not That book review. During the height of the Twilight craze, whenever I saw someone reading or talking about the Twilight books, I wanted to grab them and shout, “Go read Sunshine!”

It is definitively the best spunky-young-heroine-and-vampire novel I’ve yet read, and that is saying a lot considering both how saturated that market is and how many of them I’ve read. McKinley has a long history of writing strong female leads (The Blue Sword was one of my favorites growing up), but lately she’s been sort of dicking around with dragons and pegasus, when she must know perfectly well that her fans all want a sequel to Sunshine.

The heroine, nicknamed “Sunshine,” is just out of high school and working as a baker in her family’s cafe (there are lots of extraneous but delightful descriptions of pastries) in a post-magic-war world where various magical creatures are an acknowledged reality but avoided if possible. The world-building is solid and interesting, and the action begins fairly quickly when she gets randomly kidnapped by a gang of vampires.

Avoiding spoilers, but attempting to describe what makes this book so much better than the Twilight series, especially for teen female readers: Sunshine acts almost entirely on her own recognizance at all times, relying on her own intelligence and summoning up unexpected personal strengths when the situations call for it. The particular vampire she aligns with is both frightening and intelligent, and their alliance is born out of need and not romantic in any sense (at least not right off the bat).

Sunshine actually takes three-dimensional characters, puts them in fraught situations, and then fleshes out how that changes and matures them. It is seriously the anti-Twilight, and everyone should read it (although perhaps not young kids, because it does have sex and violence).

—Anna

Willful Impropriety

by Anna

Edited by Ekaterina Sedia

Book Cover: Willful ImproprietyIn spite of considering myself an avid reader, I don’t actually buy books very often. I have a history of moving every 4-5 years, and after a couple of times moving countless heavy boxes of books, a large personal library just seems cumbersome. However, when I saw a copy of Willful Impropriety in the store, I bought it without a second thought. Young adult fiction, with some Fantasy elements, set in the Victorian Era? Yes, please!

Plus, I had originally heard of the book on the blog of one of the contributing authors, Genevieve Valentine, of whom I’m a big fan. (Also, she tends to contribute stories to more esoteric collections that are not picked up by my library.) Valentine is a bit of a conundrum for me, though. I love both her blog and her fictional writing, but they are shockingly different. Her blog is very funny with acute analysis of current popular culture, while her fiction has a lyrical and melancholy tone, and her story in this collection is no exception.

I was also pleasantly surprised that another of the authors, Caroline Stevermer, was the co-author, along with Partricia C. Wrede, of Sorcery & Cecilia, which I’ve already raved about here. Her story was probably my favorite of this collection, and has inspired me to track down some more of her books Another author, M. K. Hobson, whose story felt a bit like a P.G. Wodehouse story but with magic, also wrote The Native Star, which Kinsey recommended to me a while ago, and while is definitely going on my to-read list.

The introduction to the book describes that young adult literature set in the Victorian Age seemed like a complimentary match, since YA Lit is often about rebelling against the status quo to establish an individual identity, and the Victorian Age sure had a lot of status quo to rebel against. But after more than a dozen stories, I was a little saddened by how many of them ended with the heroine finding a solution in a relationship with a man.

Which, of course, is one of the few historically accurate ‘happy endings’ for women, but the stories didn’t stay so rigidly accurate in other features, so having them return to that trope was a bit of a bummer. The stories that did not include such a pat ending stood out all the more, though.

— Anna

The Handmaild’s Tale

by Anna

By Margaret Atwood

Book cover: The Handmaid's TaleWarning: this is going to be a blatantly and quite politically biased post. As everyone, left- and right-leaning, has been saying, Tuesday is going to be quite a deciding factor for our country, and will take us in one of two very different directions. (I’m feeling a bit guilty myself for having moved my vote away from a key swing state this year.)

Early on in the campaigns, I was so taken aback by the backlash against Sandra Fluke and the willingness of conservative women to outrageously slut-shame other women with no awareness of how such language could eventually come back to bite them as well. In discussing this very fact, I read the below comment on Videogum, one of the blogs I read daily:

Has everyone read “The Handmaid’s Tale”? It’s a. GREAT, and b. set in a future America where a very repressive regime that is pretty shitty to women has taken over. There is a passing moment where the narrator talks about how a woman she knows used to be a great big televangelist who would always talk about how a woman’s place should be at home is turned into a chattel slave like every other lady once the new regime takes over, and how she seems mad that someone “took her at her word”.

After reading this comment, I thought perhaps The Handmaiden’s Tale could give me more insight into this kind of mindset.

This book is terrifying, far scarier than any horror story I could have picked for Halloween. My only comfort was that it seems unrealistic that such a drastic change could happen all within one generation. In the novel, the narrator went to college, got married, and had a daughter, all before she was restricted to being a “handmaiden,” a fertile woman supplied to couples unable to have children in order to surrogate for them by government orders, in her mid-30s. Although maybe Atwood’s point is that if you aren’t paying attention or participating in politics, it could run right over you before you even notice.

In addition to terrifying, though, the book is enthralling; I couldn’t put it down. I’d worried that it would be painful to read, but the narrator takes such a matter-of-fact tone that even the most stressful scenes had a comfortably numb tone that both made them easier to read and reflected the mental state one would have to be in to survive. I’d thought about ‘live-blogging’ my progress through it, but I devoured it in a matter of days, and then spent the next couple of weeks trying to write a post that encapsulates all of my feelings about it, which turns out to be impossible. Instead I’ve compiled a little game for you – it will be fun!

Here is a list of quotes, some from The Handmaid’s Tale and some from a variety of political leaders and pundits; can you tell the difference?

  1. “If you look at the Scriptures, I believe it’s clear that God has designed men to exercise authority in the home, in the church, in society, and in government.“
  2. “Our country might have been better off if it was still just men voting. There is nothing worse than a bunch of mean, hateful women. They are diabolical in how than can skewer a person.”
  3. “Money was the only measure of worth, for everyone, they got no respect as mothers. No wonder they were giving up on the whole business. This way they’re protected, they can fulfill their biological destinies in peace. With full support and encouragement.”
  4. “Nature demands variety, for men. It stands to reason, it’s part of the procreational strategy. It’s Nature’s plan. Women know that instinctively.”
  5. “The problem with women voting is that women have no capacity to understand how money is earned. They have a lot of ideas on how to spend it. And when they take these polls, it’s always more money on education, more money on child care, more money on day care.”
  6. “What we’re aiming for is a spirit of camaraderie among women. We must all pull together.”

Answers after the break.

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