More links, and why I sometimes don’t listen to people

by Kinsey

I’m not quite ready to talk about The Magicians yet (although it’s still awesome), so it’s links again. This time I thought I’d share another review site I like: Asking the Wrong Questions by Abigail Nussbaum. She reviews books and movies and TV, focusing mostly but not exclusively on science fiction. Her reviews are tremendously detailed and thoughtful, and I appreciate that she’s in Israel and provides a non-American, non-European point of view that I don’t come across that often. I have to admit that I sometimes choose not to read her when she’s reviewing something I really love (Doctor Who, Persuasion, Community), because she doesn’t pull any punches. I’ve been known to describe her as “not liking anything,” but that’s not really fair. She just expects a lot of her media and isn’t willing to give anything, even a show or book she likes, a pass when its lazy. Which is great, but I’m not very good at disregarding something once I’ve read it, and sometimes I just want to watch a Doctor Who episode without worrying about the character inconsistencies. But I am always interested to see what she’s reading and watching and you can damn sure that if she gives something a good review, it is a really solid piece of media.

Today I specifically want to point to a review she did at Strange Horizons comparing Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I haven’t read Mechanique yet but I love Valentine’s blog. (Her movie reviews are priceless, as are her critiques of Miss Universe contestants’ costumes and her theory that Keanu Reeves is immortal.) I did recently finish The Night Circus and I thought about reviewing it here, but could never quite figure out what I wanted to say about it. I enjoyed reading it. It was very well constructed and featured some beautiful set pieces. But even after reading hundreds of pages, I didn’t have any stronger reaction to it than that. Abigail captured it perfectly in her review when she said that The Night Circus doesn’t inspire much emotion because the characters don’t feel like human beings. And it’s true, at no point did I feel overwhelmingly invested in the characters (with the exception of Bailey and I ended up being worried about how his story ended–join me in the comments if you’ve read this and want to talk about my concerns about Bailey!). At one point Abigail says the book has a sense of “weightlessness” and I think that’s perfect. The Night Circus has some really stunning imagery in it, so I’d recommend it to people who enjoy that sort of it-paints-a-picture writing, but based on the Strange Horizons review I’m thinking that I’ll move on to Mechanique.

The Shining (Part III)

by Anna

Cover Image: The ShiningAlright, I know this is shamefully late, but here is the rest of the book in one long dump. I’m just so, so grateful to be done and moving on to other books!

Maybe I haven’t been giving Stephen King enough credit; perhaps he has been realistically recreating for the reader the sensation of being stuck in a miserable hotel for months on end with horrible people.

Anyway, here’s the final installment of my journal through The Shining (with spoilers, of course):

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Links, plus why I should start listening to people

by Kinsey

I’m not going to review anything right now, because the only book I can think about–one of the only things I can think about at all–is The Magicians by Lev Grossman and I’m not done with it yet. This is one of those books that I kept hearing was good, and hearing people rave about, but for some reason it just didn’t appeal to me. I don’t know if was the title, or the dull cover, or what, but any time I saw the book mentioned I had an overwhelming reaction of “Meh.”

That was really dumb. This book is awesome. So far it’s funny and smart and has magic and a boarding school and has me completely invested in and supportive of a teenage boy protagonist. (I often find teenage boys to be such a different species from me that I have trouble with stories told from their perspective.)

So while I’m off racing through The Magicians, I recommend checking out these two links.

Minimalist Posters for Your Favorite Children’s Stories are just awesome. If every wall of my apartment wasn’t already covered with cool things I found on the Internet, I would buy the Little Red Riding Hood one to put in my bedroom and creep me out.

Better Book Titles reimagines the covers of classic books with more direct titles. So The Great Gatsby is now Drink Responsibly, while Strunk and White becomes Correct Your Friends Like a Dick. Really funny.

I also just noticed tht Better Book Titles says that The Magicians should be called Harry Potter Says “Motherfucker.” If I’d known that I might have read it ages ago.

The Shining (Part II)

by Anna

Cover Image: The ShiningI’m halfway through the book now, and this is the point where I’ve started fantasizing about the light, funny book that I’ll read next, with characters I actually like and am interested in. I’m even starting to wish I’d chosen a different Stephen King book, though still not The Stand. Here’s my the blow-by-blow account of the second quarter of the book, with spoilers:

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The Leftovers

by Kinsey

In my last post I talked a bit about how hard it can be to find books that have elements of fantasy of science fiction, but are not cheesy genre fiction. By all accounts, Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers should be exactly my kind of book. Perrotta is a well-respected literary author probably most famous for Little Children, which was made into a move with Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson. (Topic for another day: while I liked Little Children, as far as I can tell, the only reason it wasn’t classified as chick lit is that it was written by a man. Had the author been named Tara Perrotta, I bet you money that thing would have had a pink cover. Possibly featuring shoes.) In The Leftovers, Perrotta is still focused on normal, middle American families, but he’s put a slightly supernatural spin on this time. Several years before the events of the book take place, a significant number of the earth’s population disappeared—vanished in an instant. While many people assume this was the Rapture, plenty of non-Christians disappeared as well, and nothing has happened since that day to provide any additional information.

It’s an intriguing concept and I was interested in reading a book that deals with a Rapture-like event without being overbearingly religious (in other words, not the Left Behind books). And the book does an excellent job of portraying what might really happen in this situation. Some people assume the world is ending and turn to religious cults, some lose their faith entirely, and some do their best to move forward and not think about it too much. (I would definitely be in that last category.)

But the thing is, this book really isn’t about the disappearance. It’s about normal, middle-class American families in a small town: people get together, people break up, a teenager makes a friend who might not be a good influence. Okay, there is a very creepy Doomsday cult involved, but even that comes off less as science fiction and more like a plot line about someone joining a strict new church. And the characters, even the ones in the cult, don’t even discuss the disappearance much at all. The Rapture wasn’t even necessary—using another significant disaster or trauma wouldn’t have caused that many changes in the book.

Perrotta is known for his detailed descriptions of emotional turmoil under the surface of normal life, and the book definitely does that well. I would have no issues recommending the book to someone like my sister, who hates science fiction books and doesn’t read them at all. But for me, there was a lot less supernatural excitement than I was expecting or hoping for. On the continuum of realistic to fantastical, The Leftovers falls too much on the everyday-life side of things for me.

“Jenny Pox” by J. L. Bryan

by Rebecca

The cover of Jenny PoxJenny Pox
by J. L. Bryan
(2010)

I thought about not reviewing this book because I do not want to give it additional name recognition. But such is procrastination from my work: I not only read the book, I am now gong to tell you all about the experience.

The book’s premise is a high school drama with a few magical powers thrown in. It seemed like a fun quick read.

After reading it, my final conclusion is that if this is common for young adult fiction, I can see why so many people like Twilight. I didn’t like Twilight but it is orders of magnitude better – in writing style, in characterization, and in plot – than Jenny Pox.

Despite being relatively short, Jenny Pox reads like three books. Not complete books, no, but three sections that have very different writers with very different opinions on character and style and plot. It starts off quite well and is enjoyable for about the first third of the book and then doesn’t so much go down hill as fall off the edge of a cliff and hit bottom a long ways down.

And because I think it was awful and not worth reading, I have no compunction about give spoilers.

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The Shining (Part I)

by Anna

Cover Image: The ShiningOoh, you guys are in for a treat (you are not in for a treat). This is perhaps the longest book review in the history of books! It is not as long as The Shining itself, only because that book is very, very long (it’s not actually hugely long, but it sure does read like it is).

I’ve always thought that I just don’t like Stephen King’s books, but to date, I’ve managed to only read his two most commonly disliked books, Dolores Claiborne and Thinner (actually I only read the first third or so of Thinner). Fans assure me that I need to retry King with one of his more famous works. In fact, several people have recommended The Stand, since it takes place in Boulder, but I’m not reading a 1000+ page Stephen King book.

This year for Tom’s* birthday I made us reservations for a night at The Stanley Hotel, where King was staying when he was inspired to write The Shining. (They also play the Jack Nicholson version on loop on one of the tv channels, leading me to rewatch it and scare the bejeesus out of myself on what was supposed to be a romantic weekend.) Watching Shelley Duvall sob and shriek her way through the movie, I was curious as to whether the novel has more nuanced characters, and decided to give it a shot.

Since The Shining is definitely going to take me more than a week to read, I thought I’d give semi-live-blogging a shot. This is a journal of sorts of my progress (absolutely with spoilers):

*I related a story to Tom in which I referred to him as “the dude I live with,” to which he took some exception. However, Tom is the dude I live with.

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A Discovery of Witches

by Kinsey

This is not exactly my proudest admission, but the number one place I get my book recommendations is the Entertainment Weekly Books section. It may not be the New York Review of Books, but EW’s book section tends to include a good mix of literary fiction, genre fiction, and nonfiction, and the reviews generally manage to assess the book without giving away the whole plot. They also tend to be pretty stringent with their grading–they have no issues giving C or D grades to big names or wildly-praised books such as Run by Ann Patchett  or Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross. Which is why I was excited to read their review of A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. EW gave it a B+ and the review made is sound like a solid, well-written book with believable characters that just happened to feature witches and vampires–in other words, exactly the sort of urban fanstay based in the modern-day world that I love.  I knew going in that it wasn’t Faulkner, but I had high hopes that I might have found another genre book that incorporates the supernatural while not being trashy or badly written. Which is why I was a little dismayed to realize that it was basically Twilight for grown-ups.

Without giving too much away, the basic plot is that witches, vampires, and daemons are all real, but they live fairly normal lives alongside oblivious humans. (Side note: is it just me, or did the His Dark Materials series pretty much take over that spelling of daemon?) Diana is witch, part of powerful and famous witch family, who is trying to distance herself from her powers by living a quiet life as a graduate student at Oxford. Then she accidentally does something that attracts the attention of the supernatural community, she meets a dangerous yet irresistible vampire named Matthew, and her whole life starts racing away into adventure, danger, romance, etc.

Here are my three main issues with this book:

1) The lead character falls totally, immediately, and completely in love with a vampire, despite his vampiric nature, in exactly the same way Bella does in Twilight. In an adolescent this is annoying, but somewhat understandable and forgivable. In a grown-ass woman, it just seems like bad decision making.

2) The book is 592 pages long and it ends on a cliff hanger. After I read the book I learned that it’s the first in a planned trilogy. Look, I love a good book series, but I also pretty firmly believe that individual books should stand alone. Sure, plot threads may carry from one book to another, but it makes me grumpy when a book just stops in the middle of things. I like to think of a book as an entity both physically and in terms of the story telling. If the author can’t figure out how to make a single book at least somewhat satisfying and functional in and of itself, I start losing trust in them. (See also: Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis.)

3) The witches and vampires and daemons in Oxford all go to a special hot yoga class together. HOT YOGA.

Don’t get me wrong, I read it and enjoyed most of it and it was definitely better written than Twilight.  I suspect I’ll read the next one, if only to figure out what happens next since there was certainly no closure in this book. And there were some lovely parts–Diana’s family has a haunted house that is both creepy and considerate (creating new rooms when company is coming), and the descriptions of Oxford make me want to book a trip there–but I just feel like I need to warn other people who might be looking for more literary fantasy. Twilight for grown-ups.

But I hear good things about the new Colson Whitehead zombie book Zone One. His book The Intuitionist managed to be beautiful and heart-breaking and thrilling while describing an alternate reality in which elevators are glorified, so right now he’s got my trust. (Yes, elevators. And it’s about racism. It’s great.)

The Peter Grant Books

by Anna

Midnight Riot and Moon Over Soho
by Ben Aaronovitch

The cover of Midnight Riot, Ben Aaronovitch’s debut novel (he has previously written episodes of Doctor Who), has a praise blurb from Charlaine Harris. I get that Charlaine Harris is a popular bestseller, and I sincerely hope that her quote helped Aaronovitch sell more books, but it inspired in me similar outrage as Roger Ebert giving Nicholas Sparks my current favorite author burn:

“I resent the sacrilege Nicholas Sparks commits by even mentioning himself in the same sentence as Cormac McCarthy. I would not even allow him to say “Hello, bookstore? This is Nicholas Sparks. Could you send over the new Cormac McCarthy novel?” He should show respect by ordering anonymously.”

Now, I’m not daring to say that Ben Aaronovitch compares to Cormac McCarthy, but he is a significantly better author than Charlaine Harris.

The praise blurb on the back of the book says, “Midnight Riot is what would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the Fuzz.” (Diana Gabaldon) I would say rather it is like if The X Files was British and funny. I’m not entirely clear on what the difference between those two is, maybe that the magic elements are addressed in a practical, scientific manner.

Here’s the highest praise I can give a book: the protagonist, Peter Grant (“rookie cop and magical apprentice”) catches onto plot twists as quickly as I do as the reader. Pretty much as soon as I start to think, “hmm, that other character seems kind of suspicious,” Peter Grant thinks the same thing and acts on it. It is extremely satisfying as a reader.

The third book in the series, Whispers Under Ground, is due out in May 2012, and I can hardly wait!

A Night in the Lonesome October

by Anna

Cover Photo: A Night in the Lonesome OctoberOne of my comfort books, A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, is an especially good read this month, of course, leading up to Halloween. I reread it just about every year. (This year I’m working through a Stephen King book in honor of Halloween; review pending, but so far it’s falling far short of this book).

A Night in the Lonesome October is actually all the nights in October; it is broken up into 31 short chapters, one for each day in October, and is narrated by a dog. The writing and structure of the book both make it read like a book for young readers, but the plot is full of intrigue and murders that may not necessarily be appropriate for all ages. The dog narrator belongs to Jack the Ripper, who is also the protagonist while still doing the sort of things Jack the Ripper would do (however, no prostitutes are harmed in the making of this story).

For me, it is the perfect combination of the whimsy of a children’s book applied to an adult plot, but it is such an unusual combination that I think it wouldn’t be every reader’s cup of tea. Additionally, if you really love Roger Zelazny’s other works, like the Princes of Amber series, you may not love this one. It is so unlike any of his other works that it feels like it is from a different Roger Zelazny. I myself read this book first, and was subsequently disappointed in all his other works, which are much more serious, convoluted, and adult (less narrating dogs, too).

As you may have noticed, I haven’t even touched on the plot of the book; I don’t want to give away even the most superficial plot points—just read it and have a happy Halloween!