26 July, 2006

Digging to America (Anne Tyler)

I like Anne Tyler's books. I think of them in the same category as Joanna Trollope and Mary Wesley - comfortable, quirky characters, stories that weave their way through a family's life. They're the sort of books I read when I want to feel cozy and contented. I don't spend days thinking about them after I've read them, but they burrow their way into my mind, and I find myself recalling scenes from them months later.

Digging to America is Tyler's latest, focussing on two children from Korea and the sometimes complex relationship between their two adoptive familes. Actually, the relationship between the families is the focus rather than the children themselves - we barely know the children by the book's end, but we know their parents and grandparents very intimately. That's what I love about these books - the drama all happens in the complex threads of people's relationships with each other, and I think that's enormously difficult to do. I admire writers who can entertain me with a story which might seem mundane if you were presented with a precis, but comes alive when you read it.

I don't think I'm explaining myself terribly well. If you like Tyler, I'm sure you'll enjoy Digging to America. If you've never read her before, I'd probably pick one of her novels to begin with; my favourite of her books so far has been Saint Maybe.

Prep (Curtis Sittenfield)

This is the second boarding school related book I've read this week - the first was the delightfully creepy A Great and Terrible Beauty, which is completely different to the neurotic, modern American world of Prep.

At first, I really empathised with Prep's heroine, the awkward, angsty outsider, Lee. She's a scholarship student at Ault, a boarding school filled with wealthy kids, and I think Sittenfield captures those neurotic, self-obsessed teenager years perfectly. I found, however, that my fondness for Lee waned as the novel progressed - while she travels through her years at school, she never seems to be touched by them, or changed by them. She stays, deliberately, on the periphery, and near the end does something which moves her even further away from many of her schoolmates. I found this frustrating; a character who, while she does learn and grow, does so after the story which we are being told.

Prep doesn't have a particular plot, as such. Characters drift in and out of the main narrative thread. Lee's obsession with popular basketballer Cross is a reoccuring theme, but mostly we walk through her school years with her, watching her classmates (Lee is always watching other people, which I relate to). Ault had become a very real place for me by the time I finished Prep, but it's not a place I'd particularly like to visit, and Lee isn't a character I'd really like to see again either. Despite this, Prep is a very enjoyable read, and very skilled as well - Sittenfield writes well, and as I said earlier, she does a great job of capturing those self-conscious teenage years.

Mystique: Drop Dead Gorgeous (Brian K Vaughan)

The title probably gives away the fact that Mystique: Drop Dead Gorgeous contains a lot of skimpily dressed Mystique with enormous breasts. In fact, the shape of her breasts in some scenes was so ridiculous as to be rather annoying.

However, this comic is a pretty cool espionage style thing, with Mystique working undercover for Charles Xavier, despite the fact that neither of them trust each other. While it's not ground-breaking stuff (and I enjoyed the Joss Whedon penned series more than this), it's enjoyable enough, and I'm going to be reading the rest of this series. Or whatever the correct term is when it comes to comic books - not series, I think. Story arc? Volumes? Whichever it is, I'll be checking them out.

More Asterix comics

I'm continuing to read them in order. So, next up is Asterix and the Golden Sickle. This one starts out with Getafix breaking his golden sickle (which he uses to collect mistletoe) right before a druid's conference. Disaster! So Asterix and Obelix travel to Lutetia (present-day Paris, according to Wikipedia) to buy another one from Obelix's cousin, Metallurgix. There's some sickle-trafficking and shady business going on, but all comes well in the end, naturally. I enjoyed this one, although I still think they improve as the series goes on.

Asterix and the Goths is the third book in the series. Getafix heads to his druid's conference, accompanied by Asterix and Obelix for protection. They don't do a very good job, as Getafix is kidnapped by Goths planning to use his magic for their own means. Asterix and Obelix infiltrating the Gothic camp is extremely funny, as is the way in which Getafix plots to get them out of there. My favourite character in this is the poor prison guard who gets more and more furious the more times Obelix breaks down the door of the prison to ask for something. I think this has been my favourite of the first three volumes.

25 July, 2006

Asterix the Gaul (Goscinny & Uderzo)

I wrote here about my love for Asterix comics, and have decided since then to read my way back through all the books in order.

Asterix the Gaul is a masterpiece brimming with underlying layers that delve to the core of humanity itself...

OK, it's a comic about Gauls who drink a potion that gives them superhuman strength which they use to bash up Romans, and then they have a big feast at the end. But it's enormously funny and clever and brimming with puns and silly jokes. I remember Asterix the Gaul as being one of the weaker Asterix stories, given that it's the first one, but it does everything you want it to do - it sets up the idea of the one Gaulish village holding out against the Romans, introduces all the characters, and you get to see Asterix and Getafix laughing themselves silly after dosing some Romans with a hair-growing potion. Good stuff.

19 July, 2006

A Great and Terrible Beauty (Libba Bray)

Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty is a wonderfully lush Gothic/horror/fantasy tale set in a Victorian girl's boarding school. A boarding school! Naturally, I enjoyed it enormously.

Gemma is sent to school in England after her mother's mysterious death in India. She tries to find her feet in the hierarchical boarding school society, and at the same time is warned by a young man to ward off strange visions that have been plaguing her. There is a wonderfully creepy sense of menace that grows as the story progresses, and I became enormously fond of Gemma's friends, three somewhat unprepossessing girls whom she leads into danger, and temptation.

Enormously fun, and there's a sequel, which the library has not acquired yet. I'll definitely be reading anything else of Libba Bray's that I can get my hands on. Oh, wait, this was her first novel. Damn.

From Where You Dream (Robert Olen Butler)

I really didn't like From Where You Dream . This book on writing seems to be taken verbatim from lectures given by the author (which makes the style a little irritating to read), and the methods it mandates, such as writing in a trance-like state, didn't grab me at all. He doesn't touch on speculative fiction as a genre, which annoys me, and he doesn't seem to require writers to research either. It's all this dreamlike subconscious thing. Bleh.

17 July, 2006

Superhero Comics

I've recently become interested in the world of comics (beyond Sandman, my only real exposure to this medium), partly due to my discovery of a whole pile of excellent feminist blogs that focus on science fiction and comic fandoms. So last week I plunged into a variety of comics, including Wonder Woman, X-Men and Teen Titans.

Firstly, Wonder Woman: Down to Earth . This is a recent Wonder Woman comic by Greg Rucka, and given that the Booklist review on Amazon describes it as an "inventive attempt to make [Wonder Woman]... relevant to current readers", I imagine that it has departed somewhat from previous storylines. Wonder Woman is an ambassador from Themyscria, which seems to be a planet populated by Amazons. She spreads a message of peace and tolerance and in Down to Earth comes up against a group of people who claim she is destroying "family values". Sound familiar? I really enjoyed this, and it's very suitable for a reader who has no knowledge of the characters or their history. I had a couple of "um, what?" moments, like the appearance of Silver Swan, but overall, it was a very fun read, and I really loved the art.

I went on to read Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia , which was a shorter, self-contained story, and much darker than Down to Earth. The cover has Wonder Woman's booted foot on Batman's head, which looks very cool. (I must say that prior to this comics reading, I had no idea that superheroes had so much to do with each other. They all live in the same cities and everything. I had previously thought that they were all self contained stories.) In The Hiketeia, Wonder Woman is bound to protect a young woman who is accused of murder. It's a very touching story, and I really enjoyed it because Wonder Woman seemed much more human. I could see the difficulties she had. Again, I loved the artwork - the aforementioned stomping on Batman's head scene is especially fabulous.

After Wonder Woman (and I'm definitely going to explore the rest of Greg Rucka's stories with her), I grabbed Emma Frost: Higher Learning from the library. It's an X-Men offshoot, although given that my only contact with the X-Men universe is through the movies, I'd never actually heard of Emma Frost (and this slim book only covers part of her school years, so I'm not entirely sure about the full extent of her powers.) Higher Learning was OK. The story was a bit melodramatic, Emma's crush on her school teacher was offputting (she can hear him thinking things like, "she looks so sexy", which was disturbing), and I hated the way she was drawn - even when she's devastated about something, she looks vulnerable and gorgeous, all lips and eyes. Gah.

Still in the X-verse, I grabbed Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men - Gifted , which I loved. I had high hopes for it, given that I'm a big fan of Whedon's storytelling, and wasn't disappointed. All the characters were great, I loved the banter (even mid-battle) and I even enjoyed Emma Frost's character, despite thinking that I'd hate her after reading Higher Learning. The artwork was excellent - I loved it (and wondered how much it had been influenced by the movie characters, especially Wolverine.) Gifted has the Cure storyline which was used (in part) in the recent X-Men movie, and it does it with much more depth and style than the movie. It ends with some tantilising teasers for the next volume, which I can't wait to read.

I'm not quite sure why I picked up something called Teen Titans: The Future is Now , because it doesn't really seem like my thing at all. It wasn't half-bad, but I don't think picking up something that's Volume 4 in a series is a great idea - I found all the characters a bit hard to keep track of, and there were too many references to past events for me to really get into the storyline.

Runaways: True Believers is also Volume 4 in a series, but from the description on the back it seemed like an easier point to break into a storyline. It was fairly easy to get a handle on what had happened before, and everyone's relationships to each other, and it was a fun, tight story.

I think out of all of these, Astonishing X-Men and Wonder Woman were the ones I enjoyed most, and I'll definitely be getting more volumes of these.

12 July, 2006

Forbidden (Judy Waite)

I'm half-hearted about Forbidden (which I picked up from the YA section of the library purely due to the cover and the "I grew up in a cult" blurb). On one hand, I'm enormously attracted to fiction that examines cults (one of the best I've ever read is Red Shoes by Carmel Bird). On the other hand, Forbidden suffered from several things, including over-capitalisation (stuff like "She know that she should feel Ecstatic, but instead she was overtaken by Grief. She would have to undergo Punishment." Not a direct quote from the book, by the way).

I was disappointed by the ending - without giving too much away, Elinor has been sexually abused, and is rescued from the cult, where her rescuers tell her she's wonderful, and give her lots of different coloured clothing and unfamiliar jeans. I found it rather strange - I would expect people to speak to her about more important issues than, "You're out of the cult, yay! Here's some clothes." Then again, we're seeing these people through a very confused teenager's eyes, which may explain it. But it just sat wrongly with me.

So yeah - mediocre YA cult fiction, basically. A fun way to spend an hour, if you have a free one.

Novel Without a Name (Duong Thu Huong)

I'm ashamed to say that it has been months and months since I finished this book (a book club read), and that it has faded sufficiently from my memory to prevent me doing justice to it with a review. I enjoyed it very much, although it was an intense read. And now I will link to Oanh's thoughts on it, and thereby avoid having to actual write anything else.

The River Midnight (Lilian Nattel)

The River Midnight is a wonderfully seductive book, set in a Polish shtetl named Blaszka. For about a year, we follow the lives of the men and women within the village, their interlinked histories, and their relationships with the midwife Misha, who is the common thread among many of the stories.

The River Midnight has a faintly magic realist thread - there's a mysterious Traveller who meddles in the lives of the villagers - but the appeal of this novel for me was how strongly it evoked a small Jewish village in Russian-occupied Poland, and the intricate details of everyday life. I felt immersed in this novel, and by the end was immensely fond of many of the characters therein. I knew them intimately, what they thought about in bed at night lying next to their wives, what they thought of when they prayed.

To be honest, my general fascination with Jewish culture (Almonds and Raisins by Maisie Mosco, a Jewish family saga, and Leon Uris's Exodus were two books I passionately adored as a teenager) probably influenced my enjoyment of this book, but not so much that I would hesitate recommending it to others.

Vengeance of Dragons; Courage of Falcons (Holly Lisle)

After reading Diplomacy of Wolves, I polished off the remaining two novels in the series very quickly - I guess I was more into the story than I thought.

Vengeance of Dragons picks up at Diplomacy's cliffhanger ending, and we follow Kait, her companions and the Mirror of Souls back to Calimekka. Kait and Ry dance around their attraction to each other, but in a very genuine way. There's plenty of plot, and the storyline jumps around various characters throughout the book, but it's not overly confusing. Tightly plotted, lots of action and adventure - a very enjoyable read, despite another cliffhanger ending.

Courage of Falcons is the last book in the Secret Texts series, and again, it immediately picks up the story. (I should mention that both Vengeance and Courage have rather lengthy summaries of the previous books, but I don't think that would be enough to compensate if you hadn't read the previous books in the trilogy. They're definitely not the sort of books you can plunge into without a knowledge of the backstory.) I'm incapable of going very far into the plot without spoiling moments from the previous two books, but suffice to say that the adventure continues, and as per the previous books, it's immensely enjoyable fun, without being life changing or (unfortunately) sticking around in my head too long.

03 July, 2006

Runaway (Alice Munro)

Our next book club book is an author (Alice Munro) rather than a book as such, as Runaway was my choice for this month. There has been some interesting blog discussion of Alice Munro in recent months - 50 Books wrote about Runaway here, and Munro more generally here. Diablevert also writes about Runaway here.

I really enjoyed Runaway - I hadn't read any short stories for a long time, and I'd forgotten how fabulously convenient they are to pick up and put down, and read several stories over your lunch hour. And Munro is an amazing author, who creates characters who claw at your heart within a few pages of meeting them. I don't think anyone should go through life without reading some Alice Munro.

Hopefully, book club will help me clamber to some other dizzying intellectual heights in analysing this collection ("Well, you know, I just thought it was like, really real, you know?") but I'll leave it here for now. Incredible collection of short stories - go read some Munro now, for the sake of your health.

Monstrous Regiment (Terry Pratchett)

The first time I read Monstrous Regiment (yes, this is a re-read), I was a little disappointed with it. I gulped it down with my usual new-Pratchett haste, which does occasionally end in disappointment as I simply don't spend enough time with the book. Which doesn't really matter, as I always end up re-reading (and re-reading) them at some point.

Anyway, I was hoping for another City Guard book, and didn't really get into Monstrous Regiment the first time around. The second time around I enjoyed it much more, although I still find that I love the earlier Discworld books more so than the later ones. Monstrous Regiment might be a good place to start if you've never read a Discworld book before (although if I was Queen of All the World I'd order people to begin their Pratchett appreciation on novels earlier in the series) - and if you've read Discworld novels before, you know exactly what you're in for.

Wifework (Susan Maushart)

Wifework is a very interesting study of the work women do within marriages, both physical and emotional. Maushart seems to claim that it is the institution of marriage in which this work occurs - I would argue that it happens in defacto relationships as well. I don't believe the act of marriage creates drastic changes with a relationship, although Maushart seems to disagree.

Interestingly enough, I found Kidding Ourselves, which I read a few months ago, a more useful and relevant book than Wifework, despite the fact that Kidding Ourselves was written several years before Wifework was.

Wifework does bring up some interesting points, but I've heard them all before in other places. Maushart is also very negative about marriage as a whole - the Publishers Weekly review quotes her saying, "marriage entails a sort of base level of unhappiness that couples need to learn to anticipate and accept." I don't really believe that, and if it's true, would rather find out for myself than enter into marriage with Maushart's grim outlook. So, interesting book, but I think Kidding Ourselves approaches similar material in a superior way.

Living the Good Life (Linda Cockburn)

This diary-style book, interspersed with recipes and snippets of information, is about a family who try to live for 6 months on their suburban block of land without spending any money. They grow their own food, barter their goats milk, cheese and eggs for staples that they can't grow themselves, and do so relatively successfully for 6 months.

Living the Good Life didn't particularly grab me - mostly, I think, because I've read similar books by Jackie French, and vastly prefer Jackie's writing style (and outlook on life as well). However, if you're interested in self-sufficient (or 'self reliant', the phrase that Cockburn prefers) living, and the environmental impact of the average Australian's lifestyle, then you might find this interesting. And if you enjoy it, you'll probably love Jackie French's books as well. Linda Cockburn's family are now living in Tasmania building their own house and plan to write another book on that. I doubt that I'll be reading it - I'm fascinated by gardening stories, but building houses puts me to sleep.

Diplomacy of Wolves (Holly Lisle)

It took me a little while to get into Diplomacy of Wolves - from the first page, we're plunged into a very complex world, full of political machinations, and I was so busy figuring all that out that I didn't feel that I was connecting to the characters. However, as the story moved along, I became much more intimately involved. Diplomacy ends on a complete cliffhanger, so I'm definitely going to be reading its sequel.

I felt that Diplomacy was a less mature work than Talyn, which is the first book I've read of Lisle's - this didn't prevent me enjoying it, but I think she's definitely grown as a writer since these books. Diplomacy revolves around Kait, a young diplomat with secrets, who goes on a search for the ancient Mirror of Souls. She is guided by the spirit of an ancestor, who may not be what she seems, and a young magician. As I mention above, it took me a little while to warm to Kait, but it did happen. I think my enjoyment of Diplomacy was affected by the fact that I was reading Temeraire at the same time. Temeraire was a book that reached into my chest and ripped part of my heart out. Diplomacy didn't affect me in nearly the same way - it was simply a very enjoyable read - and I think it suffered a little in my mental comparison. However, despite that, it was a great fantasy read, and I'm definitely going to be finishing the series - I just can't see myself weeping over their pages.

Temeraire (Naomi Novik)

I burst into terrific sobs towards the end of this book, so you can be sure that it was a story I enjoyed, or at least was intensely involved in. To distil Temeraire into one sentence - it's a book set in the Napoleonic wars, with one small difference - dragons.

Naomi Novik's dragons are wonderful. What fantastic creations - probably my favourite fictional evocation of dragons, I think. And the way they're used in warfare - I spent a lot of time while reading this book gasping, "Wow, that's just so cool."

I suppose my one quibble with Temeraire would be that I felt at times like I was reading a YA novel (which I don't think it's intended to be). I just felt at times that the dialogue could be more complex - but perhaps its written that way intentionally - it generally fits into the period Novik's trying to evoke. It feels a little "Boys Own", but I think it's meant to - and it's certainly not difficult to let yourself be utterly drawn into Novik's world.

So, despite a few tiny quibbles, I loved and adored it, and can't wait until the sequels arrive at the library. This is a series I'm sure I'll end up buying for myself, as I can tell it's one I'm going to want to re-read many times in the future. Delicious.