It's raining books!
Dec. 29th, 2008 11:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI've been ill the last couple of days (a mild flu, nothing major) so I've been catching up on reading.
1. Breaking Dawn, the fourth Twilight book (really, she should have just called them Twilights 1, 2, 3, and 4, it's not like the titles are useful). I'm halfway through it. I'm so, so tired of Bella being angsty and pregnant and Jacob being angsty and in love with her for no reason that I'm hoping her vampire spawn will kick her too death, but I don't think that's going to happen.
2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows, which is an epistolary novel that describes the situation on the Channel Isles during World War II. Did you know that Germany occupied the Channel Isles during the war? I hadn't. And while I had known that rationing continued in Britain after the war, I didn't think what that must have been like.
While the book has a lot going for it (characters, plot, beautiful setting) I think its biggest asset is its use of history. The book is set in 1946, after all the big events are through, which is odd timing for a historical novel. But I think it's a good choice; the novel isn't about big events, it's about a woman who writes magazine articles and decides she wants to write one about Guernsey, and gets caught up in the Islanders' stories. It gives the flavor of the history, instead of names and dates and nothingness like a history book.
Also, the writing style reminds me very much of mid-century British books - I Capture the Castle and that sort of thing.
3. Spirits that Walk in Shadow, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. I've enjoyed the other Hoffman books I've read (A Stir of Bones and A Fistful of Sky), so I was disappointed when this book couldn't even scrape itself into mediocrity.
The biggest problem is that the book alternates first person narrators - magic-girl Jaimie and her new college roommate, normal (albeit very depressed) Kim - and they have the exact same voice, except that one of them occasionally uses made-up magical terms. Other than that it was impossible to tell who was speaking.
The second problem is that the book lacks tension. Within hours of meeting, Kim figures out Jaimie has magic. Ah, she says. You can turn me into a toad? Rock on. A few hours more, and Jaimie and Kim discover that Kim's depression is in fact caused by, essentially, an emotional vampire creature. Well, shucks. Before they even reach their first classes, the vampire creature is defeated.
It's way too easy, and that makes it boring.
Just about the only interesting thing about the book is that it's set in college, and that's interesting only because college is not a popular setting for novels.
Why isn't college a more popular setting for novels? Because college students don't have time to read? Because high school students, unlike middle/elementary school students, don't want to read about the probable contents of the next few years of their lives?
Or have I just missed all the college novels? I stopped reading school novels midway through high school, because the high school books, unlike the elementary school books, usually bore no resemblance to my life. But still, I think I would have noticed college novels on the bookstore shelves.
1. Breaking Dawn, the fourth Twilight book (really, she should have just called them Twilights 1, 2, 3, and 4, it's not like the titles are useful). I'm halfway through it. I'm so, so tired of Bella being angsty and pregnant and Jacob being angsty and in love with her for no reason that I'm hoping her vampire spawn will kick her too death, but I don't think that's going to happen.
2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows, which is an epistolary novel that describes the situation on the Channel Isles during World War II. Did you know that Germany occupied the Channel Isles during the war? I hadn't. And while I had known that rationing continued in Britain after the war, I didn't think what that must have been like.
While the book has a lot going for it (characters, plot, beautiful setting) I think its biggest asset is its use of history. The book is set in 1946, after all the big events are through, which is odd timing for a historical novel. But I think it's a good choice; the novel isn't about big events, it's about a woman who writes magazine articles and decides she wants to write one about Guernsey, and gets caught up in the Islanders' stories. It gives the flavor of the history, instead of names and dates and nothingness like a history book.
Also, the writing style reminds me very much of mid-century British books - I Capture the Castle and that sort of thing.
3. Spirits that Walk in Shadow, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. I've enjoyed the other Hoffman books I've read (A Stir of Bones and A Fistful of Sky), so I was disappointed when this book couldn't even scrape itself into mediocrity.
The biggest problem is that the book alternates first person narrators - magic-girl Jaimie and her new college roommate, normal (albeit very depressed) Kim - and they have the exact same voice, except that one of them occasionally uses made-up magical terms. Other than that it was impossible to tell who was speaking.
The second problem is that the book lacks tension. Within hours of meeting, Kim figures out Jaimie has magic. Ah, she says. You can turn me into a toad? Rock on. A few hours more, and Jaimie and Kim discover that Kim's depression is in fact caused by, essentially, an emotional vampire creature. Well, shucks. Before they even reach their first classes, the vampire creature is defeated.
It's way too easy, and that makes it boring.
Just about the only interesting thing about the book is that it's set in college, and that's interesting only because college is not a popular setting for novels.
Why isn't college a more popular setting for novels? Because college students don't have time to read? Because high school students, unlike middle/elementary school students, don't want to read about the probable contents of the next few years of their lives?
Or have I just missed all the college novels? I stopped reading school novels midway through high school, because the high school books, unlike the elementary school books, usually bore no resemblance to my life. But still, I think I would have noticed college novels on the bookstore shelves.
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no subject
Date: 2008-12-30 02:05 pm (UTC)I sort of willingly suspended my disbelief, read Twilight, which annoyed me, and then watched the film, which made me laugh. I just have no sympathy for Bella; she's such an annoying, humourless character. I can't imagine how whiny she'd be pregnant.
Rant over.
There are very few college/University books, aren't there, when you think on it? Seems odd, because students are in new situations, meeting new people, have access to lots of information - it would make plot exposition easy, you'd think. Maybe the authors thik students are too busy studying to have a book-worthy adventure. Or that nobody wants to read about students.
PS - Shadow Unit! Shadow Unit! I'm half way through reading and I can't begin to say how fantastic it is - thank you so much for the rec.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-30 04:51 pm (UTC)Re: college books: maybe it's just that the book industry has no apparatus for books set in colleges (they would be harder to market, after all) so authors don't write them and thus no one knows if they'd like to read about college students or not?
Because I would think high school students, especially the ones who hate high school (which probably has a broad overlap with the ones who read), would want to read about what happens next - there's a light at the end of the tunnel! sort of thing.
Yay Shadow Unit! I'd love to hear what you think in more detail - do you have a favorite character? Or a Unified Field Theory of the Anomaly? What do you think of the Bureau's policy of keeping the anomaly hidden? (I think it's foolish, personally, and Falkner's justification in the first episode sounds good but doesn't really hold water.)
no subject
Date: 2008-12-30 08:03 pm (UTC)Shadow Unit - I'm liking Brady, a lot, actually, and his dynamic with Lau, and I can't help but like Chaz. In fact the relationships within the team are all really interesting. I would like more explanation of the anomaly - magic, ghosts, aliens, demons? - but it fits that the team don't know what it is, so how can the reader? I will have better comments when I've read more.
I love the TV premise - I am awful at TV, I get distracted and wander off in the middle of a series, but serial writing seems to work. The episodes are big enough to be satisfying, but compact enough that you finish them, and you can read when you choose. Not a new idea, but as reading for a time poor generation, it's great.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-31 03:12 am (UTC)It's a little embarrassing (and it makes it hard to squee about TV on LJ, because everyone else saw whatever-it-is months ago), but there you have it.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-31 01:38 am (UTC)As far as college novels, I present The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis and a few recs (http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2008/10/college_novels.php) for books I've never actually heard of, just to prove that they exist.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-31 03:18 am (UTC)And Mr. Ellis appears to have published that novel when he was 23. I feel like a total underachiever now.
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Date: 2009-01-01 01:21 am (UTC)I seem to remember reading a discussion about this topic, and I think people could think of college-aged protagonists, but not so many books where they were actually in college.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society sounds interesting. I'm generally not too keen on epistolary novels, but I may look this one up.
I read the first two Twilight novels, and I had enough time before the third one came out to realize that I couldn't waste anymore time on them. From what I've heard, I didn't miss anything. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-01 01:33 am (UTC)The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is wonderful, and it took me less than a day to read it. It reminds me of I Capture the Castle, if you've ever read that, not in any particular plot details or characters but because it has a similarly marvelous mid-century British voice.
I'm feeling pretty good. Hopefully my New Year's revels won't destroy all the good that resting has done for my health.
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Date: 2009-01-01 03:49 pm (UTC)I haven't read I Capture the Castle, but I have read plenty of Agatha Christie! Similar voice?
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Date: 2009-01-01 04:24 pm (UTC)I should just make a post about "Mid-Century British Writers and Why They're Awesome," because I've clearly read too many of them.
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Date: 2009-01-04 02:34 am (UTC)I would be interested in reading that hypothetical post. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2009-01-04 03:33 am (UTC)Concerning the hypothetical post, it may happen sometime in the next six months. I'm fabulously bad at following through on these things.