Catching Up on Books!
Friday, March 22nd, 2013 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
retsukoIn the midst of all the brouhaha that is life, I have been reading! Huzzah!
In Books:
Cold Days, by Jim Butcher: I have a running joke with myself that all I really want out of some narratives is to see the characters I love doing mundane activities together, not afraid for their lives or the lives of their loved ones. After this latest installment of the Dresden files, I can only hope that the bulk of the next book concerns Harry and Murphy sorting out their socks, drinking some good wine, and having what relations they want to without fear of monsters breaking down their door. I'm only half kidding--this book was SO high-powered and stress-filled that I found myself longing for the early days of the series when Harry was dealing with everyday problems or solving minor cases around Chicago.
The problematic, though, really came into the fore with the story's treatment of Molly. I've always had a soft spot for this character, and I guess that the crush she developed on Harry was mostly fairly reasonable--here's this cool older guy who knows a lot about something amazing that her parents (well, one of them, anyway) frown upon, and more than that, she can learn to do cool things, too, and he's willing to teach her... it makes a fair degree of sense, especially considering that she doesn't seem to have any other friends, or that the only other character to take an interest in her is a psychotic fairy queen with ulterior motives. But in this book... well, the whole house of cards started to wobble for me. Molly was so alone throughout (even though she'd secured a good apartment and allies, she didn't really have any friends), and Harry vacillated back and forth between wanting to protect her and wanting to hurt her (due to Plot Reasons--not a fundamental part of his character... this distinction was incredibly fine, and I think Butcher was skating on some very thin ice at more than a few turns in the story.) And then for the story to end the way it did... I wouldn't be surprised if Molly's first act is to declare war on Harry. Any agency she'd ever had was completely and utterly taken away from her in the space of one paragraph. I really hope that she gets a better ending, because I'm getting a Donna Noble ending vibe from this that I really do not like.
The other problematic was the whole treatment of Harry and the Winter Knight... persona (for lack of a better word) trying to corrupt him. Harry comes out of the whole thing looking noble and heroic, and certainly full of willpower for resisting the lure of power. I just have to wonder, though... why did the Winter Knight Power Persona (WKPP for short) become so fixated on Having All the Womenfolk (and why was so much of his internal monologue hung up on this)? It reminds me of that regrettable episode of "Angel" where particular demon's blood brings out all the male characters' SEKRIT LATENT MISOGYNY. (It was as if Camille Paglia and Andrea Dworkin had co-written the story.) In the case of WKPP, I was more annoyed than anything else: it was wasting time and detracting from the focus of the main narrative, which concerned a force so deadly it could wipe out the whole continent, and the rest of the Wardens were spending all their time fighting it, but with little success. So... I guess this is a messy and distracting meditation on the temptation of power to waste your time and not face the main battle... or something. And, yeah, honestly, I could have done without the talk about "I could have her, take her if I wanted." That gets really old in a hurry.
I don't want to make this sound as if I didn't like the book; I did, but I was distracted by side problems too often to really feel invested in the main problem. Thomas was my favorite character in this one, and Murphy gets plenty of kick-ass page time, much to my great satisfaction. I really do hope the next one is a little less frenetic, though.
A Local Habitation, by Seanan McGuire: This started slowly, but then it picked up quite a bit, with a tremendously gripping set piece in the middle of the narrative that was worth the price of admission alone. If the first book in this series was a tense thriller, this installment was more like a Miss Marple or Poirot locked room murder mystery... except that the violence was more visceral and the stakes were even higher for the heroine. There's an overarching sci-fi tone to this book that was lacking in the previous one, and I'm curious to see how that thread of plot will play out (if at all) in the future books.
American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld: Reading a fictionalized biography of Laura Bush presented some strange challenges; for example, I kept trying to substitute back in the names of the real people involved with dealing with the events of 9/11. In fact, that cognitive dissonance made the whole work read a little eerily--I'm reading aboutCharlie Blackwell no, George Bush, no, Laura Bush and Lindy Blackwell and the Blackwell clan, no... wait a minute, that can't be right... I went round and round in circles for a few minutes every time I picked the book back up after a pause. (This sensation reminded me of the semester at Smith where I took an immersion German literature class and a Japanese class back-to-back on Tuesday/Thursday mornings. For the first ten minutes of the second class, I would sit there, completely dazed, waiting for everything to start making sense in the other language again.) Still, regardless of the fiction vs. real life problem, this was a very good read, gripping and swift. If anything, it's the most compelling argument I've ever read for the continuation of the modern feminist movement, but it's also a good story of a woman who married a man who completely surprised her with the scope of his ambition.
In Illustrated Books:
Drawing From Memory, by Allen Say: This beautiful book chronicles Say's development as a very young artist, mostly immediately after WWII, as Japan rebuilt around him, up until his departure to the United States at age 15. As is always the case with Say's works, I was struck by the genuine sense of nostalgia and true emotion that suffuses the work with a larger than life quality that's very rare in children's books these days. This book has probably ended up on a lot of YA shelves, but I think this is an instance of a work that is truly "all ages" without being dull or condescending. I cannot recommend this enough.
Daisy Kutter: The Last Train, by Kazu Kibuishi: I really love Kibuishi's sense of style and layout; the characters in this sepia-toned story inhabit a world of robots and gunslingers--a Deadlands game come to life. My major problem with the narrative is that the story that's told starts without a lot of preamble, which would normally be fine, except that vital parts of the story are somehow untold, and therefore confusing. Daisy Kutter, gunslinger/outlaw turned shopclerk, is bored silly with her new (to her, anyway) life and volunteers/is coerced into taking the proverbial One Last Train Job... except, of course, that it's not what it seems. The story that unfolds has some pretty predictable betrayals and twists, but the characters seem flat and underdeveloped. I far prefer the short story at the end of the volume, which better showcases Daisy's strengths and spins a tenser, more gripping tale in a shorter space of time.
In Books:
Cold Days, by Jim Butcher: I have a running joke with myself that all I really want out of some narratives is to see the characters I love doing mundane activities together, not afraid for their lives or the lives of their loved ones. After this latest installment of the Dresden files, I can only hope that the bulk of the next book concerns Harry and Murphy sorting out their socks, drinking some good wine, and having what relations they want to without fear of monsters breaking down their door. I'm only half kidding--this book was SO high-powered and stress-filled that I found myself longing for the early days of the series when Harry was dealing with everyday problems or solving minor cases around Chicago.
The problematic, though, really came into the fore with the story's treatment of Molly. I've always had a soft spot for this character, and I guess that the crush she developed on Harry was mostly fairly reasonable--here's this cool older guy who knows a lot about something amazing that her parents (well, one of them, anyway) frown upon, and more than that, she can learn to do cool things, too, and he's willing to teach her... it makes a fair degree of sense, especially considering that she doesn't seem to have any other friends, or that the only other character to take an interest in her is a psychotic fairy queen with ulterior motives. But in this book... well, the whole house of cards started to wobble for me. Molly was so alone throughout (even though she'd secured a good apartment and allies, she didn't really have any friends), and Harry vacillated back and forth between wanting to protect her and wanting to hurt her (due to Plot Reasons--not a fundamental part of his character... this distinction was incredibly fine, and I think Butcher was skating on some very thin ice at more than a few turns in the story.) And then for the story to end the way it did... I wouldn't be surprised if Molly's first act is to declare war on Harry. Any agency she'd ever had was completely and utterly taken away from her in the space of one paragraph. I really hope that she gets a better ending, because I'm getting a Donna Noble ending vibe from this that I really do not like.
The other problematic was the whole treatment of Harry and the Winter Knight... persona (for lack of a better word) trying to corrupt him. Harry comes out of the whole thing looking noble and heroic, and certainly full of willpower for resisting the lure of power. I just have to wonder, though... why did the Winter Knight Power Persona (WKPP for short) become so fixated on Having All the Womenfolk (and why was so much of his internal monologue hung up on this)? It reminds me of that regrettable episode of "Angel" where particular demon's blood brings out all the male characters' SEKRIT LATENT MISOGYNY. (It was as if Camille Paglia and Andrea Dworkin had co-written the story.) In the case of WKPP, I was more annoyed than anything else: it was wasting time and detracting from the focus of the main narrative, which concerned a force so deadly it could wipe out the whole continent, and the rest of the Wardens were spending all their time fighting it, but with little success. So... I guess this is a messy and distracting meditation on the temptation of power to waste your time and not face the main battle... or something. And, yeah, honestly, I could have done without the talk about "I could have her, take her if I wanted." That gets really old in a hurry.
I don't want to make this sound as if I didn't like the book; I did, but I was distracted by side problems too often to really feel invested in the main problem. Thomas was my favorite character in this one, and Murphy gets plenty of kick-ass page time, much to my great satisfaction. I really do hope the next one is a little less frenetic, though.
A Local Habitation, by Seanan McGuire: This started slowly, but then it picked up quite a bit, with a tremendously gripping set piece in the middle of the narrative that was worth the price of admission alone. If the first book in this series was a tense thriller, this installment was more like a Miss Marple or Poirot locked room murder mystery... except that the violence was more visceral and the stakes were even higher for the heroine. There's an overarching sci-fi tone to this book that was lacking in the previous one, and I'm curious to see how that thread of plot will play out (if at all) in the future books.
American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld: Reading a fictionalized biography of Laura Bush presented some strange challenges; for example, I kept trying to substitute back in the names of the real people involved with dealing with the events of 9/11. In fact, that cognitive dissonance made the whole work read a little eerily--I'm reading about
In Illustrated Books:
Drawing From Memory, by Allen Say: This beautiful book chronicles Say's development as a very young artist, mostly immediately after WWII, as Japan rebuilt around him, up until his departure to the United States at age 15. As is always the case with Say's works, I was struck by the genuine sense of nostalgia and true emotion that suffuses the work with a larger than life quality that's very rare in children's books these days. This book has probably ended up on a lot of YA shelves, but I think this is an instance of a work that is truly "all ages" without being dull or condescending. I cannot recommend this enough.
Daisy Kutter: The Last Train, by Kazu Kibuishi: I really love Kibuishi's sense of style and layout; the characters in this sepia-toned story inhabit a world of robots and gunslingers--a Deadlands game come to life. My major problem with the narrative is that the story that's told starts without a lot of preamble, which would normally be fine, except that vital parts of the story are somehow untold, and therefore confusing. Daisy Kutter, gunslinger/outlaw turned shopclerk, is bored silly with her new (to her, anyway) life and volunteers/is coerced into taking the proverbial One Last Train Job... except, of course, that it's not what it seems. The story that unfolds has some pretty predictable betrayals and twists, but the characters seem flat and underdeveloped. I far prefer the short story at the end of the volume, which better showcases Daisy's strengths and spins a tenser, more gripping tale in a shorter space of time.
