Random Day: January Books

You know how they say if you have a question, ask; because probably ten other people have the same question and are just too embarrassed to admit it? Don't. I was in a class today, and a hexadecimal question cratered my brain. So I asked for clarification, and the instructor wanted to know who else was confused. Turns out the class has seven engineers and two math tutors. I guess I'm the comic relief.

Moving on...

I read some amazing books last month, and I wanted to bask in the euphoria a little longer, so rather than try new books, I just reread old ones that I already love. Silly; I know. On the other hand, I tried a new movie and wished I hadn't. The movie is based on a totally hilarious book, but it seems the screenplay writer didn't actually get the appeal of the book. I'm assuming it didn't last much beyond opening weekend.

So on to the stuff I did like!

The Fault In Our Stars by John Green
Genre: YA

I know this is THE book John Green's been writing for something like a decade. But for me, THE John Green book will always be An Abundance of Katherines, a book I love so much that I hand-pimp it to anyone who talks to me for more than eight minutes, yet which I identify with so personally that I can't even write a blog post about it.

But I can see the brilliance of The Fault in Our Stars. I liked the characters. Yes, even the flawless love interest. I don't get the appeal of "manic pixie dream girls" who pepper stories written by men ( Zooey Deschanel, who is amazing, plays that role a lot. Weeds, 500 Days of Summer, and to a lesser extent The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and New Girl, from the 2.5 episodes I saw), but I do get the appeal of the hot, cheerful boy who always says unbelievably witty, brilliant things with perfect timing. That version of unrealistic love interest doesn't come up nearly often enough. In fact, the only other examples I can think of are all womanizing rakes from regency romances, a character trope I despise.

I'm babbling about Deschanel and regency rakes in order to avoid talking about The Fault In Our Stars. Because it's about kids dying of cancer. It's amazing. I cried and I laughed and I felt awful for laughing. I know many people have lived this story in their own painful, unique way. I think only John Green could have written about it like this.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Genre: literary/magical realism

Celia and Marco have trained their entire lives for an epic duel set up by their instructors, and the black-and-white Night Circus is the magical battle field. Despite their growing love for each other, leaving the fight is physically impossible, and only one of them can win.

This is one of very few books I've read that hurtled towards such a terrible ("terrible" as in "depressing", not "badly-written") end that I couldn't even begin to imagine how the author would resolve it. And then she did, and it wasn't tragic or ridiculous or eye-roll-inducing. It just made perfect sense. The world-building was amazing. And the magic seems to have no discernible rules, and yet feels completely believable.

Tangent: I've heard a lot about the tortured artists who supposedly make up the bulk of the writing world, the people who suffer for their craft and whatnot. I have to say Erin Morgenstern is my idea of what a writer would be if I were making one up. She's quirky and adorable and takes cool pictures and says cool things and does cool stuff. Authors tend to be very...normal. Which is not at all surprising. It just doesn't fit with the popular narrative. Oscar Wilde and J.D. Salinger and the like were so unusual that they've come to define what people picture when they think "writer".

The Future of Us by Jay Ashby and Carolyn Mackler
Genre: YA

It's 1996, and Josh gives Emma an AOL cd so she can log on to the internet. Except once it's installed, it logs them on to Facebook, fifteen years in the future. From the updates, they can see that 2011-Emma hates everything about her life (with good reason), and 2011-Josh is rich, successful, and married to the hottest girl in school. Emma's determined to change her future, but everything she does changes Josh's future, too, and he's not happy about it.

I'm so glad I've found another book by two authors! There's another I want to write about, and I couldn't think of any books to recommend along with it. I'll leave discussions of the merits/issues in this book to other reviewers, but I thought the concept was fascinating. I graduated from high school at the same time as the kids in The Future of Us, so the nostalgia factor totally works for me. I'm not sure who the target market is, though - one of my friends is in her early twenties, and was completely unmoved by the premise, which makes sense to me. I can only assume teenagers would feel even more so. But the book definitely reads like YA. On the other hand, I loved Ready Player One, and I certainly don't remember the 80s.

Okay, here's a list of all the books I reread this month:
The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells
The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan
The Demon's Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan
The Demon's Surrender by Sarah Rees Brennan
Lion of Senet by Jennifer Fallon
Eye of The Labyrinth by Jennifer Fallon
Lord of the Shadows by Jennifer Fallon
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Among Friends by Caroline B Cooney

All speculative fiction or YA. Well, Among Friends would probably be sold as middle grade now. I'll have to do a post on Among Friends at some point. It's crazy, going back to that book 22 years after I first read it, and seeing how much my sympathies with specific characters have changed now that I have an adult perspective.

Random Day: More of the currently-reading pile

I just finished a novella,
Once Upon A Winter's Eve by Tessa Dare
Genre: Regency romance

Violet's playing wallflower in the corner of an English ballroom when a gorgeous Frenchman stumbles in and falls at her feet. At the height of the Napoleonic Wars, this is not a good thing. Even tied up and waiting for the soldiers stationed at the garrison, the man isn't harmless - he represents exactly the danger Violet left London to escape.

I love Tessa Dare, and I like the background premise of the Spindle Cove books. Spindle Cove is basically a retreat for young ladies in Regency England whose parents have decided they aren't quite normal - they're more interested in reading or geology than in needlework and dancing, or maybe they got caught up in scandal and need to disappear until the gossip dies down. [Un]fortunately, a garrison's just been stationed at the once-abandoned castle at Spindle Cove, and the regiment has a number of good-looking young men from appropriate (and not-so-appropriate) backgrounds. Interesting women and hot guys in uniform; what's not to like?

For Tessa Dare's titles that blew me away, I recommend the first books in her other two trilogies, Goddess of the Hunt and One Dance with a Duke.

I'm reading The Flinch by Julien Smith
No idea how to categorize this book. "Self-examination" doesn't quite cover it, but neither does anything else I can think of.

Published by The Domino Project, here's their description:

The idea is simple: your flinch mechanism can save your life. It shortcircuits the conscious mind and allows you to pull back and avoid danger faster than you can even imagine it’s there.

But what if danger is exactly what you need?

The basic gist is that what's stopping you from achieving more isn't know-how; it's pain-avoidance. The instincts humans developed to keep from being eaten by velociraptors (just kidding!) are now keeping us from public speaking and joining gyms and taking other uncomfortable risks that could vastly improve our lives.

So far, the book assumes you've only got first world problems, but considering it's e-book only, that's not an unreasonable assumption about its readership. The Flinch is free, and so far, worth reading.

Because I had book-club books to read, I haven't finished
Witch by Marie Brennan
Genre: fantasy

I'm as impressed with it as I was with Warrior. One of the fascinating concepts in these books is the idea of meeting yourself as the product of a different upbringing. A twin, no matter how similar, is a completely different person. A clone is exactly the same person with the same memories. This is different. What would it be like to have grown up as, say, a street urchin, and then met your other self who spent her life at elite schools? You'd understand your other self well enough to know what you would or wouldn't do in certain circumstances, and yet you don't know what has shaped the other you, and so can't actually predict which one of a few likely choices the other you would make. What would it be like, arguing with someone who understands you perfectly and vice versa, but doesn't actually know you?

Something else I love is that there's no romance element. There might be one later, but not so far. I don't mind romance at all, as evidenced by my love of Tessa Dare and other romance writers, but I've heard disturbing stories of female authors being pushed by agents/editors to include strong romance elements in any book with a female protagonist. The existence of Warrior and Witch means someone recognized great storytelling on its own, without trying to shape it to their idea of what the market wants. The market wants everything!

There's so much more I like about the Doppelganger books. Lots of unlikely choices and impossible situations for the characters. The religious and philosophical details of the politics they're dealing with. And the Hunters - I would happily read a hundred stories set in the Hunter schools. Love that concept.

I like how these books deal with devastating news, too - Mirei's life has been upended, and then she finds out that the only people she can trust without reservation are lost to her. They're both alive, but unavailable in any way that counts - no conveniently-plotted deaths here. No wiping out entire families or villages, only for everyone to move on emotionally unscathed. I mentioned this about Warrior, but I REALLY appreciate that Marie Brennan doesn't write easy deaths. The body count in fiction has been steadily rising IMO (even if you don't count "armies-of-thousands" deaths typical of epic fantasy, which is a whole other issue). I'm far more interested in having a wide variety of books available than in having my personal tastes indulged, but I'm really happy with agents/editors who market fantasy books not dripping with blood. In fact, I'm still waiting for high fantasy where no one dies. :)

Random Day: early December reading

I'm pretty pleased with my books this week!

Lord John and the Scottish Prisoner by Diana Gabaldon

Genre: crossgenre fantasy/historical fiction

Lord John Grey is on a mission to track down spies and traitors threatening the Crown. He’s furious when his brother enlists Jamie Fraser to help him translate secret documents. Fraser, Scottish laird and prisoner of the English after the Jacobite Rising of 1745, has as much reason to hinder their cause as to help them. Also, things didn’t end well the last time Fraser and Grey met.

I finished Lord John and the Scottish Prisoner, and it didn't disappoint. I adore Lord John Grey himself (especially as a secondary character in the Outlander series), but must admit I've been ambivalent about the series on his own life. Unlike the Outlander books, the Lord John books are mysteries a la Sherlock Holmes (for lack of a better comparison), and they've always left me vaguely puzzled when I got to the end and couldn't figure out all the jumps made to solve whatever he'd been sent out to handle. I loved being steeped in Gabaldon's rich descriptions of the Georgian era, but the plots I could take or leave.

Until now. The Scottish Prisoner is by far my favorite of the Lord John books. It's also a bit more...I believe the term we use in the USA is "explicit"... than I recall the others being, but I doubt blushing's ever killed anyone, so I'll be all right. They're supposed to be standalones, but involve a lot of names, relationships, and backstory. Hard to say how difficult the background details are to keep straight, since I've read all the previous books.

Now I'm reading
The Silence of Trees by Valya Dudycz Lupescu
Genre: Historical fiction

I'm not sure how I found this book. I may have clicked on an ad, or it might have been recommended on Goodreads or Amazon or something. The writing is so lush, the beginning so fairy-tale like, I thought I was reading something like Laini Taylor's Lips Touch.

It starts out with a dreamy girl sneaking out of her house against her parents' wishes, to consult the fortune teller in the woods just like all her friends have done. I was instantly enthralled.

And then someone mentioned the Nazis.

I'm still reading, but now I'm tense, with my shoulders hunched up around my ears, waiting for something horrible to happen. I went through a phase in high school where I read stacks of books about WWII. I got a good education in man's cruelty to man. It boggles the mind that people could do such horrible things to other people they knew, and have continued to do so, in Bosnia, in Rwanda, in Sudan, in Syria, everywhere. One person hurting another in secret is bad enough. Large groups hurting other large groups, out in the open...we should know better by now. We should be able to talk each other into doing the right thing. But we don't, and it's really depressing. So The Silence of Trees is gorgeously written, but I may finding it too sad to finish. We'll see.

One more book.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Genre: YA

I mentioned Lips Touch: Three Times, a book of short stories, magical in content and effect. But until I heard Laini read a short story at the Sirens Conference, I hadn't realized just how much her writing makes me swoon.

Sometimes you can feel how hard a writer worked to come up with a brilliant description or metaphor. But Laini's writing is so right and so effortless, which is of course incredibly hard to accomplish. For instance:

Page 29 He looked like an escapee from a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

Page 121 "There, there," he said, his voice ringing hollow of compassion. "He can't see it. It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him."

Page 258 She had the dead eyes of a jihadist.

Laini looks like she belongs in one of her stories, with pink hair and a sweet smile. She spins magic and longing and anticipation into exquisite tales. It seems like an odd choice even to me, but I would describe her writing as "fearless". Such naked hope and unabashed wistfulness, building into either delight or crushing disappointment over and over, and no warning of which one's coming. I think the depth of longing her characters embody isn't something adults are comfortable admitting to feeling. Which is probably why her books touch us so deeply. And why her books are sold as YA.

For a proper review of the book, read Rachel Hanley's take.


So that's this week's selection. What are you reading?

In the beginning...

Nothing makes me happier than a good story, except getting to gush about it. So that's what I'll do - talk about stories (usually books, occasionally movies or TV shows if they make the cut). I'll focus on an aspect of the story that impressed me. Of course, books I love impress me in all sorts of ways, so some stories will show up more than once. Not many. But it'll happen.

I'll start with a random day where I list what I'm reading now. First, two books I read earlier this week:

Warrior by Marie Brennan
Genre: fantasy

Miryo has just failed her initiation test. The urge to use her magic will overwhelm and kill her (along with innocent bystanders), unless she hunts down and kills her doppelganger, Mirage. Unfortunately for Miryo, Mirage has spent her life training as a hunter and fighter.

This book is teeming with good-book traits - women who fight and think and aren't primarily seeking or worrying about romance, a world that feels ancient, where the consequences of misremembered history are real and painful. Needless to say, I'll be giving this book its own post in the future.

Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn

Genre: YA science fiction



I'm just going to borrow the tag line here, because it's brilliant:

"When everyone reads minds, a secret is a dangerous thing to keep."


This book will also be getting its own post at some point, but in the meantime I highly recommend it.

And the book I'm currently reading:

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Genre: general fiction

 

I'll probably finish this in the next couple of hours. It's hurtling towards a point I'm desperately hoping it won't really end up, but we'll see. Exquisitely written. And certainly the first book I've read set in the admissions office of an ivy league school.

So there you have it. What are you reading?