book list, April 2008
May. 1st, 2008 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingIt's time for the continuing adventures of Liz and her reading list! These are the books I read in April 2008. (Click on the cuts for summaries and reactions.)
New: 6
---Lungbarrow, Marc Platt (sci-fi: a Doctor Who tie-in novel, featuring the Seventh Doctor. I read this as an ebook on a BBC website. I found it kind of 'meh,' honestly. You can tell that Platt's trying to tie in a number of continuity threads that needed explanations or conclusions, and that interferes with the narrative flow. Also, this has the common fanfiction problem of assuming that you already know and like the characters; if you have no prior knowledge of them or their backstories, you're left a bit at sea emotionally, even if you can more or less work out who's who and what's going on.)
---Small Favor, Jim Butcher (fantasy: Book 10 of the Dresden Files. When unknown supernatural forces kidnap the ruler of Chicago's underworld, Mab, the Faerie Queen of Winter, calls in one of the two favors Harry owes her. Then things get complicated. I love this series. Each book can more or less stand on its own, but they also build on each other, so that each is a little deeper and richer than the last, and Harry's actions have consequences that he can't evade forever.)
---The Dragons of Babel, Michael Swanwick (fantasy: a companion novel to The Iron Dragon's Daughter. I read the first book when I was about eleven or twelve years old, which probably explains both why it hit me like a punch to the gut and why I only vaguely remember it now. It wasn't like anything else I'd ever read, and large chunks flew right over my head at the time, but the feel of the book -- earthy, hallucinatory, by hairpin turns grindingly prosaic and impossibly otherworldly, uncompromising, despairing, triumphant, haunting -- stuck with me. The Dragons of Babel has that same feel... only this time I'm old enough to understand as well as experience. And it is brilliant.)
---The Children of Húrin, J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien (fantasy: the novel-length and more 'present' version of the tragedy of Túrin and his family. The Silmarillion is still my favorite of all the Middle-Earth books -- I grew up reading fairy-tales and myths and religious stories, and the stories of the First Age have that same cut-down 'told' quality that is intensely familiar and soothing to me -- but I like this version too. It brings the people to life, and gives a much more poignant sense that maybe things didn't have to end so horribly, if a single thing here or there had gone just a shade differently. The beginning is bloody awful, though; the first pages are nothing but meaningless names and backstory, and if I hadn't already known what was going on and trusted Tolkien to go somewhere decent with the story, I would've given up in disgust.)
---Wild Adapter vol. 4, Kazuya Minekura (manga: two young men, a strange drug case, and various underworld machinations in greater metropolitan Tokyo. Film noir, horror, and science fiction run together through a blender, with generous subtext. In this volume, Kubota is arrested as a murder suspect; Tokito enlists a reporter and Kubota's old girlfriend in his attempt to figure out what's going on.)
---Godchild vol. 8, Kaori Yuki (manga: a young nobleman and his manservant in Victorian England, with poison, murder, and random supernatural elements. Creepy gothic weirdness, moral ambiguity, and very pretty art. In this volume, we reach the end of the story, with the predictable everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink climax and a Surprise Villain!!! twist, which is timed very badly and is not at all well foreshadowed, judging by the hideously clunky pages wherein said Secret Villain explains it all. Riff is love, though, and Cain refusing to leave him at the end... yeah, okay, I'll forgive the stupidity for that. Mostly.)
Old: 0
April Total: 6 books (plus a LOT of magazines, a few newspapers, and a LOT of fanfiction)
Year to Date: 47 books (30 new, 17 old)
...It's not quite as dire as last month -- 6 is more than 4 -- but still, this is annoying. I think I'll start bringing books to work again instead of reading magazines during slow hours.
New: 6
---Lungbarrow, Marc Platt (sci-fi: a Doctor Who tie-in novel, featuring the Seventh Doctor. I read this as an ebook on a BBC website. I found it kind of 'meh,' honestly. You can tell that Platt's trying to tie in a number of continuity threads that needed explanations or conclusions, and that interferes with the narrative flow. Also, this has the common fanfiction problem of assuming that you already know and like the characters; if you have no prior knowledge of them or their backstories, you're left a bit at sea emotionally, even if you can more or less work out who's who and what's going on.)
---Small Favor, Jim Butcher (fantasy: Book 10 of the Dresden Files. When unknown supernatural forces kidnap the ruler of Chicago's underworld, Mab, the Faerie Queen of Winter, calls in one of the two favors Harry owes her. Then things get complicated. I love this series. Each book can more or less stand on its own, but they also build on each other, so that each is a little deeper and richer than the last, and Harry's actions have consequences that he can't evade forever.)
---The Dragons of Babel, Michael Swanwick (fantasy: a companion novel to The Iron Dragon's Daughter. I read the first book when I was about eleven or twelve years old, which probably explains both why it hit me like a punch to the gut and why I only vaguely remember it now. It wasn't like anything else I'd ever read, and large chunks flew right over my head at the time, but the feel of the book -- earthy, hallucinatory, by hairpin turns grindingly prosaic and impossibly otherworldly, uncompromising, despairing, triumphant, haunting -- stuck with me. The Dragons of Babel has that same feel... only this time I'm old enough to understand as well as experience. And it is brilliant.)
---The Children of Húrin, J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Christopher Tolkien (fantasy: the novel-length and more 'present' version of the tragedy of Túrin and his family. The Silmarillion is still my favorite of all the Middle-Earth books -- I grew up reading fairy-tales and myths and religious stories, and the stories of the First Age have that same cut-down 'told' quality that is intensely familiar and soothing to me -- but I like this version too. It brings the people to life, and gives a much more poignant sense that maybe things didn't have to end so horribly, if a single thing here or there had gone just a shade differently. The beginning is bloody awful, though; the first pages are nothing but meaningless names and backstory, and if I hadn't already known what was going on and trusted Tolkien to go somewhere decent with the story, I would've given up in disgust.)
---Wild Adapter vol. 4, Kazuya Minekura (manga: two young men, a strange drug case, and various underworld machinations in greater metropolitan Tokyo. Film noir, horror, and science fiction run together through a blender, with generous subtext. In this volume, Kubota is arrested as a murder suspect; Tokito enlists a reporter and Kubota's old girlfriend in his attempt to figure out what's going on.)
---Godchild vol. 8, Kaori Yuki (manga: a young nobleman and his manservant in Victorian England, with poison, murder, and random supernatural elements. Creepy gothic weirdness, moral ambiguity, and very pretty art. In this volume, we reach the end of the story, with the predictable everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink climax and a Surprise Villain!!! twist, which is timed very badly and is not at all well foreshadowed, judging by the hideously clunky pages wherein said Secret Villain explains it all. Riff is love, though, and Cain refusing to leave him at the end... yeah, okay, I'll forgive the stupidity for that. Mostly.)
Old: 0
April Total: 6 books (plus a LOT of magazines, a few newspapers, and a LOT of fanfiction)
Year to Date: 47 books (30 new, 17 old)
...It's not quite as dire as last month -- 6 is more than 4 -- but still, this is annoying. I think I'll start bringing books to work again instead of reading magazines during slow hours.
