SBD: this and that

This:

I bought two books at The Strand this weekend, both non-fiction.

London Under by Peter Ackroyd.  I’ve never managed to finish Ackroyd’s history of London, but am creeping through his modernization of The Canterbury Tales.  Frankly, I blame Ben Aaronovitch’s Whispers Under Ground for my inability to put this back on the sale table.

A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich.

None of the fiction intrigued me.  My ennui remains.

Also, why did I buy paper books?  I’m going to be packing to move soon, and need to cull more books from my collection.

That:

Saw the Ballet Flamenco de Andalucia’s Metafora on Saturday.  It was amazing (third party review here).  The music, the costumes, the choreography.  I especially appreciated the costumes of the women:  the shawls used almost matador-style; the hugely ruffled dresses and skirts of an early dance; the streamlined yet still fluttery crimson gowns of a later act; the peasant-style costumes of the second half.

Also saw “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”.  It was my second choice — “Kinky Boots” was sold out.  It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Scarlet Johanssen in anything and been able to see the character rather than the actress.  The NYT theater critic wasn’t impressed by the rest of the cast, but I thought the actor playing Brick and Ciaran Hinds (Big Daddy) were pretty good.  Hinds’ southern accent has certainly improved since his stint as the Bill Clinton-ish president in Political Animals.

On my theater wishlist this spring:  Kinky Boots; MacBeth; Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike; and Ann.  I’m tempted by the idea of “The Testament of Mary” because I admire Fiona Shaw but I’m not sure about the content.  Must check reviews.

The other:

The DABWAHA tournament is gearing up.  I’ve read nine of the nominees and killed several others after reading a sample; those that I have read were mostly NOT books I would rate highly.  The books I liked best were Tigerland, Irregulars, Whispers Under Ground, and Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance — gay fiction and fantasy, which makes them less than likely to advance far in the tournament.

*shrug*

Most popular posts

WordPress is kind enough to prepare a little report telling users about their traffic, stats, etc.  I try NOT to pay attention to that, but one stat — most popular posts — bemuses me.  You never can tell what people will be most interested in, can you?

1.  If you can’t afford an editor, you shouldn’t be publishing — 435 views.  When I first posted this, I was very cranky about the lack of editorial polishing I’d been seeing in epublished books, and the authorial shrugging about readers who quibbled about such immaterial things as spelling, punctuation, etc.  I didn’t expect it to get that much attention.

2.  Black Wade: The Wild Side of Love – 421 views.  This is a review of an erotic graphic novel that I did back in 2010, but it seems very popular.

3.  SBD: Bared to You by Sylvia Day — 167 views.  I didn’t care for this book and made it pretty clear in my post.  But for some reason, web searches on the hero’s penis size and anal sex in the book bring readers to my blog.  I’ve forgotten, was there anal in that book?

4.  Groupon’s Ad Fail – 160 views.

5.  Bear, Otter and the Kid review — 123 views.  Another negative review, which contrasts to the general glowing reviews about this book.  The review was written in 2011, so I’m guessing the traffic is a function of the comparison to the movie Shelter.

6.  BOATK/Shelter comparison — 107 views.  Yes, I thought they were extremely similar.

7.  Barcelona: a city I’m going to want to visit again — 87 views.  My travel summary of my February 2012 holiday.  Had a lovely trip.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? –  Steppenwolf’s production is excellent:  the acting and the staging.  And yet I spent a fair amount of the play thinking about getting up and leaving.  George and Martha are so miserable toward one another and to Nick and Honey that it felt almost like watching reality television.  You know, where “contestants” constantly try to one-up each other and make each other uncomfortable in order to win points and remain on the show.  Line by line, there was a lot of black humor, and yet…  Not sorry to have seen the new production but also still no one of my favorite plays.

Dead Accounts — Theresa Rebeck’s new play.  Some of the stuff the lead actor was doing seemed playful and experimental, like he’s still figuring out the role, which makes sense since the show is still in previews.  The lead, Norbert Leo Butz, is incredible; the rest of the cast is good.  Katie Holmes, playing Lorna, the sister, is a little wooden and one-note, but I couldn’t tell if that was her acting or the way the character was written.  The play is a morality tale about the literal and metaphysical distance between New York City and so-called middle America, and the steps away from basic lessons of morality and humanity that we learn as children but eventually seem to forget as adults.  More Rebeck on Broadway, please?

Emptying the junk drawer

When I was a kid, my sister and I would spend part of the summer with my grandparents, who spoiled us rotten.  (I’m not exaggerating:  we were the first grandbabies and could do NO WRONG.)  One of the mysteries and treasures of the summer was Mommom’s junk drawer.  You could find amazing, magical, useful things in the drawer; whenever you needed something, it could be found there.  Spare keys, a screwdriver, twist-ties, lids for canning, a ruler, etc.  The drawer collected the flotsam of the household, the bits and bobs that wound up in the kitchen for some reason, and held it all securely until we needed it.  Because sooner or later someone would need that key chain or a green ink pen or whatever other oddity might’ve gotten added to the jumble.

As an adult, I recognize the pack-rat tendencies and Depression-era mentality of my grandmother that led to the junk drawer — don’t get rid of anything still usable because it might be useful at some point.  I’ve managed to avoid having my own junk drawer in the kitchen, but I still manage to have a sort of book related equivalent:  not just this blog, but a collection of notebooks, some expensive and some not, that reside in my shoulder bag, being filled with notes about books to buy, reviews to write, links to share, and things to look up.

• The Economist on the success of Nordic crime fiction
• An interview with Gore Vidal that was banned.  I have thoughts about Vidal’s play, The Best Man, and how it reflects on the current election season, but haven’t managed to string them together coherently other than to think that John Stamos’s character seems like a frighteningly accurate portrayal of the GOP veep nominee and also any tea party candidate.
• Matt Taibbi on Romney the archipelago man.
• This article on David Ferrer made me ::head desk:: when I read it.  Really? Has that journalist (assuming he is a legitimate sports journalist) paid more than cursory attention to professional tennis?

 

On the reading front, I’ve finished Aaronovitch’s first and third Peter Grant urban fantasy novels.  As I mentioned earlier, I found them at the Strand, but unfortunately could not find a copy of the second book of the series.  I’ve broken down and bought a copy of the ebook, but read #3 before doing so.  I’m kind of sorry I skipped around now, because some of Grant’s behavior in the second book changes my opinion of his reliability as a narrator and a detective/constable, which would make a difference to my reading of the third book (although it wouldn’t change my enjoyment of the series.)  Will have to reread book three once I’ve finished book two.

I’ve also fallen prey to the lure of Audible.com.  I used to borrow a lot of audiobooks from the library, but fell out of the habit.  A recommendation over at Dear Author in a comment thread got me started again.  ::sigh::  Just what I needed:  more books, just in another format…

 

Seen at The Strand Bookstore

In addition to visiting Flushing Meadows to watch supremely athletic people smack around  innocent, little, yellow tennis balls, I saw some theater and visited The Strand this week.  No trip to New York is complete without a visit to the bookstore.

I wound up with a copy of Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson, a Native American narrative set in Southern California after the Mexican-American War, two of Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant urban fantasy/mystery/procedural books, and Garcia Marquez’s The Story of A Shipwrecked Sailor.  Am tearing through Midnight Riot right now, love it.

In the half-price mass market paperback bin, I was tempted by a copy of Jennifer Probst’s The Marriage Bargain.  It looked worth the price point (half of $7.99), and I’d heard good things about it, but in the end it didn’t appeal as much as the other books in my basket, and I had a self-imposed limit of four books.  I noticed on my way out, though, a stack of trade paperback editions of The Marriage Bargain.  Someone in a hurry would see those first, and end up paying the slightly discounted tpb price of $11.69 over the $4 bargain bin price.  I guess it pays to be a bargain browser.

Also in the half price mmpb section were a bunch of YA paranormal and urban fantasy books, including nearly all of Tamora Pierce’s backlist dating back to the Alanna books…which I read and loved; I can remember checking out The Woman Who Rides Like A Man from the school library in hardback. (It was a favorite, along with L.M. Montgomery’s Anne books, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and Across Five Aprils.) Made me wonder if someone had cleared out a kid’s bedroom bookshelves after she headed off to college.

Read/reading now

I’ve recently read a few things that I’m not going to review in full or even in brief but I do want to mention them.

Kill You Twice by Chelsea Cain.  Book 5 of the Archie Sheridan series.  I commented over at AvidMysteryReader‘s blog that this is it for me with this series.  I started out loving the utterly twisted dynamic between Archie Sheridan and Gretchen Lowell, the serial killer who tortured him but chose not to kill him, because it was so different from anything else I had read in mysteries/thrillers.  It’s dysfunctional and fascinating but is growing stale for me as a reader:  I want the narrator/protagonist to progress as the series progresses, and it feels like Archie really isn’t, and that he doesn’t want to.  And at this point, I don’t trust that Cain will let him, because Gretchen as arch-nemesis sells books.  Beyond that, most of the major plot points felt extremely coincidental and/or utterly predictable and disappointing.  Not badly written, but not up to the standards of HeartSick.

He Speaks Dead by Adrienne Wilder.  M/m paranormal/horror.  The narrator is dead.  He’s a ghost, in love with a live guy who is psychic, and they have sex by taking possession of horny drunks, which seriously squicked me; not because of the sex but because the mental/ghost possession felt like a brain or psyche rape to me.  And their excuses parallel those of date rapists — she wanted it.  I found narrator pretty unsympathetic on the whole and the entire relationship seemed profoundly unhealthy — falling in love with a dead guy you never knew while he was alive?  The other hero needed serious therapy for a variety of things, not the least being his choice in lovers.   And the ending was a complete cop out.  If this had been a paper book, it would’ve hit the wall.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling.  This is the first Potter book that I read immediately upon publication, since I came to the series fairly late.  I haven’t re-read this book since it was published, and upon re-read the storytelling stands up but the writing does not.  Rowling could have stood a firmer editorial hand with this book, as well as the next two probably.

I’m working my way into Tana French’s new mystery, Broken Harbor.  I’ve never read her before.  Love the writing and the narrator’s voice, but I haven’t felt compelled to sit down and read the book cover to cover.  Perhaps this was the wrong place to start?

 

July’s reading

Looking over my reading, I’m trying to figure out if I forgot to record some books.  Must check the calendar — there must be a reason I skipped nearly a week without a single new book read…

It was a suspense/action/mystery-oriented month.

1.  Private Wars by Greg Rucka.  Action/suspense, first book of the Queen & Country series.  A.

2.  Queen & Country: Operation Broken Ground.  Graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Steve Rolston.  First Q&C publication of any sort, I think.

3.  Between Boyfriends by Michael Salvatore.  Gay lad lit.  Meh.

4.  Lessons for Survivors by Charlie Cochrane.  Gay mystery, Edwardian set.

5.  Indian Maidens Bust Loose by Vidya Samson.  Indian chick lit.  Liked it enough that I’ll try her YA book next.

6.  Call Me Princess by Sara Blaedel.  Mystery/suspense.  Really liked this book.

7.  Queen & Country:  Operation Storm Front.  Graphic novel by Rucka, et al.

8.  Queen & Country Declassified:  Sons & Daughters.

9.  Queen & Country: Operation Dandelion.

June in books

1.  The Taker by Alma Katsu.  It felt like literary fiction trying to horn in on genre fiction to bump up sales.  Post here.

2.  The Perfect Day by Josh Lanyon.  Extremely short story, standard Lanyon but way overpriced for what it was.

3.  One Man’s Treasure by Nicole Kimberling.  Mystery that I would’ve forgotten about but for LibraryThing.  I finished it, though, so it can’t have been terrible.

4.  Marriage of Mercy by Carla Kelly.  Harlequin Historical, set in the UK during the American War of 1812. I am not sure that Kelly has it in her to write a bad book.  Having said that, this is not her best work — it dragged in places and a couple of plot points stretched the bounds of credulity for me.  I’m curious now about the effect of getting an LDS publisher contract and doing other work (which she has said on her blog engages her more) on the last few HH’s she’ll publish.  While I expect publishing to be a money-making endeavour, knowing that an author has signed on for one last book just to remodel the kitchen does not inspire a huge amount of confidence.  TMI for me maybe.

5.  Tumble Turn by Charlie Cochrane.  Contemporary short with a para-Olympic athlete as narrator.  DNF.  Nothing wrong with it, just not engaged by the narrator who felt somewhat juvenile.

6.  That Summer by Sarah Dessen.  Standard YA from this author.

7.  A Gentleman’s Game by Greg Rucka.  Loved this book, wrote about it here.  Currently am reading the follow up, Private Wars.  I’ve got several of the Queen & Country graphic novels TBR now, too.

8.  Goldilocks and His Three Bears by A.M. Riley.  Bored by this book and disappointed, because I loved this author’s The Elegant Corpse. Thought the narrator was twee, irritating and uncharming, and there was a lack of plot development or character development.

9.  Bared to You by Sylvia Day.  I have a lot to say about this book, very little of it positive.  Working on a post.

10.  Shooting at Midnight by Greg Rucka.  Suspense/mystery.  Well-written, tightly plotted, with an independent, flawed heroine.  I struggled with this book because of the way addiction characterizes the MC and her behavior.  My issue isn’t the addiction itself but how the MC deals with it — she doesn’t accept that it’s a problem and that she needs help, she utterly isolates herself, and she puts herself into situations where she’ll be tempted to use again.  Her loyalty to her friend was…unconvincing, and felt like an excuse to use again.  Beyond that, she manufactured evidence, obstructed a police and DEA investigation, and perverted the legal system to get her guilty pal off.  In the end, I’m unconvinced that she’ll stay clean, and I don’t really believe how/why any of the relationships work (major or minor, professional or personal).

11.  Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold.  eARC — available at Baen.com now if you can’t wait until November for this last Barrayaran book.  It was worth the price, IMO, but it’s another book that I have a lot to say about.  I’ll probably hold that post until the final version is published, in case there are significant changes.

In which I am cranky (again)

I seldom write letters to editors, although I have been known to edit them for my colleagues.  But this article in The Economist had me first tweeting at the magazine and then sending off an email.  While I think the article has a point about the publisher’s model of “creating” bestsellers and its business model, it misses the point (or at least skips a couple of literary generations) when it compares FSoG to Jane Eyre, and also discounts the importance of Twi-fandom in the series’ success.  Will my letter make the electronic version or the print version?  I doubt it, but it makes me feel better to have vented.

~~~

The Avengers:  two thumbs up because of the humor and despite what felt like some heavy-handed propaganda.  I don’t have anything original to say about the film, other than the fact that I realized why I don’t care for Scarlett Johansson in nearly any film role:  because as a viewer, I never forget that she’s Scarlett Johansson, her performance never overrides her celebrity.  I have the same problem with Tom Hanks, Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts.  They (to me, YMMV) don’t inhabit the roles or disappear into them, and it’s distracting from the rest of the characters and the plot of the movie.  Stayed til the very end, loved the extra.

 

Loved, liked, and meh

Book I read last week that I loved: Novik’s latest Temeraire book, Crucible of Gold 

Several years and books ago, Novik hinted about the alternate history of the New World as a result of the existence of dragons, and in this book readers get to learn more.  But better than that, the dull, dragging narrative and clunky pacing of the last book have vanished.  While I understand intellectually that Tongues of Serpents was a set up book, it needed better editing and pacing.  (Like the second and third books, which felt like a single long book chopped in two for marketing/business purposes, I wondered a little if it would have been better off coupled with either Victory of Eagles or Crucible for better pacing and plotting because it was a disappointment on its own — that seems to be the general consensus among the readers I know.)

Anyway, I love the way the Inca and Tswana dragons and their view of their human families are a foil for the European mindset about dragon ownership, and yet at the same time highlight the possessive natures of the dragons in Temeraire’s coterie.

One particular part left me goggle-eyed and startled, because I did NOT see that coming.  Not shocked or offended in any manner and it sort of fits in retrospect, but just startled.  Sort of the way I felt when JK Rowling casually announced that Dumbledore was gay.

And the ending was good, circling back perhaps to clear up some dangling threads in the next book.

The book I liked well enough:  Fair Game by Patricia Briggs

I liked but didn’t love this book and I haven’t quite figured out why beyond a few general quibbles.  First, Anna’s development from cowering and fearful in the first book of the series to organizing and managing in this third book.  Told not shown, and not particularly believable to me given how hard Briggs worked to present her as hesitant, self-doubting and reticent.  Second, in the early books, Anna’s delicacy and short stature were made much of IIRC but in this book she is average height or taller.  Did she suddenly have a growth spurt after maturity?  Lastly, I’m growing uncomfortable with serial killers and rapists in urban fantasy and Briggs’ use of rape and/or threatened sexual assault to the female narrators and characters in her books in particular.  It’s all down to personal taste and YMMV, obviously, since a lot of other readers really loved this book.

The meh book:  Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History’s Most Notorious Women by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Some of the entries in this short survey are obvious (Joan of Arc); others are less so (Carry Nation); and still others are original and inspiring (Ida B. Wells).  The tone and style are extremely casual and informal, with the author making comparisons to Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, etc. — very pop culture referential, as if the author felt she had to equate each woman    It’s hard to condense the history of a complex character like Eleanor of Aquitaine to 15 pages or less, and the difficulty is very apparent here; in many of the biographies, the emphasis is on the trivial and the titillating rather than substance, which is an unfortunate waste of an opportunity.  There’s no significant analysis and the approach is not serious , and the bibliography and citations are somewhat lacking IMO.  Perhaps I’m the wrong audience; maybe a 20 year old who knows very little about history would be fascinated by this introduction to the wild women of days gone by.  Or maybe they could find the same information at Wikipedia for free.