book list, August 2008
Sep. 1st, 2008 02:16 am![[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 August 2008. (Click on the cuts for summaries and/or reactions.)
New: 9
---The Art of War, Sun Tzu, trans. and ed. Samuel B. Griffith (nonfiction: the classic Chinese study of warfare, complete with some useful historical introductions, a lot of footnotes, and some equally useful and/or interesting appendices. I do want to read another translation, though, since Griffith mentions several times that there are variant texts, and that he did some cut-and-paste to remove what he thinks are repetition errors, bits of commentary that were merged into the text, and copying errors that misplaced several verses out of their proper context.)
---The Snow Queen, Mercedes Lackey (fantasy: a 500 Kingdoms story. When Aleksia, the Godmother of a far-flung collection of northern kingdoms and regions, discovers that someone using her title -- the Snow Queen -- is destroying villages and kidnapping young men, she finds herself drawn into a story of her own rather than simply managing the stories of other people. I'm not sure all the subplots mesh as well as they should, and the not-quite romance between Aleksia and Ilmari feels tacked-on and undeveloped, but this is a sweet, easy summer read.)
---Wild Adapter vol. 5, Kazuya Minekura (manga: a long flashback to what happened when Tokito first woke up, amnesiac and paranoid, in Kubota's apartment.)
---The Sea Gull, Anton Chekhov, trans. Fred Eisemann (playscript: Konstantin Treplev, the son of a famous and self-centered actress, attempts to find a purpose for his life. He tries writing and love; when he encounters temporary setbacks in both ventures, he kills himself. This particular version -- the Boston International Pocket Library edition -- is a wince-inducing translation. Maybe Eisemann is not a native English speaker. Maybe his editor was drunk. [Possibly both options apply.] This edition also contains a short one-scene comedy called The Tragedian in Spite of Himself, translated by Olive Frances Murphy, who does a much better job than Eisemann.)
---Jhegaala, Steven Brust (fantasy: a Vlad Taltos novel, which relates the early days of Vlad's exile, and the real story of his lost finger. Brust has always liked to inform by implication rather than explanation, but I think he's slipping too far toward a self-indulgent lack of clarity. Nonetheless, I like the bits about mental states, and I like Vlad's attempts to rationalize and cope with the collapse of his marriage... and his even more strenuous attempts to not think about various issues at all. I also like the playscript snippets that head each chapter -- if "Six Parts Water" were a real play, I would love to watch it, even considering that it seems to take two days to perform. *grin*)
---The Devil's Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe, James Chambers (nonfiction: the subtitle is wrong -- "The Mongols' Western Campaigns" would be more accurate, since Chambers deals with Persia and the Middle East as well as Russia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe. This book is written for a general audience and as such has no footnotes -- which is a lack I regret -- and Chambers is also often geographically imprecise in his text, without having all the imprecision countered by his maps... but it's a good general overview of a fascinating period and area of history that is shamefully overlooked in most Western-centric views of world history, or even of European history.)
---Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America's Founding Fathers, Michael Barone (nonfiction: a history of the late Stuart monarchs and the Glorious Revolution, written from an American neoconservative perspective. [The Glorious Revolution is when William of Orange, the stadholder of the Netherlands, invaded England to kick out James II, more or less at the invitation of Parliament. This is an oversimplification; read the book for the full story.] Barone's neoconservatism makes very little difference until the last chapter, in which he attempts to equate 17th-century British opposition to France with the 21st-century War on Terror. The comparison does not fly. But until then, Barone's history is as unbiased as history ever gets, and opens a window onto an often overlooked period of history that established the social and political conditions that made the American Revolution possible. The appendices include a letter sent by conspirators to William of Orange, and William's propaganda pamphlets explaining the reasons behind his invasion; they are fascinating to read. In summary, I loved 95% of this book; it's just that I'd like to throw the other 5% violently across the room, which is rather difficult without taking a razor blade to the pages. *grin*)
---Victory of Eagles, Naomi Novik (fantasy: book 5 of the Temeraire series, in which Laurence and Temeraire suffer the consequences of their treason, and Napoleon invades Britain. Novik still has a relatively breezy tone to her narration, but the books are getting deeper and more complex as the series continues. This book introduces a lot of new dragon characters; seeing them interact on their own terms, from Temeraire's point of view, is illuminating. I particularly liked the darker passages in the last section of the book when Laurence and Temeraire were leading a raiding group for several weeks.)
---The Dark Knight, Dennis O'Neil (film novelization: I am going to quote my full amazon.com review at you:
The sad truth about novelizations is that they start out handicapped. Usually the writer is working from the script rather than the finished film; you can't get the book published close enough to the film's release date otherwise.
That explains both the rushed copy-editing [for example, "He looked first at the prisoner's ferry, laying maybe a hundred yards off the port bow..." -- note the singular possessive and the incorrect verb] and the obvious 'factual' errors [for example, the ferry radios work and the captains contact each other, which was wisely cut from the film version to heighten tension and remove a plot hole] in Dennis O'Neil's adaptation of The Dark Knight. It also helps explain the stripped feel to the narrative. Because O'Neil didn't know how the actors would perform their lines, he presents dialogue with hardly any attempt to convey its sound or pacing, and because he didn't know what the costumes, sets, blocking, and special effects would look like, he skimps on describing both appearances and action scenes.
Unfortunately, a book written that way is like a stool with only two and a half legs; it wobbles something awful. For me, Dennis O'Neil's version of The Dark Knight feels like a comic script before it's turned over the the artist. Half of the story is, therefore, missing. This is understandable -- O'Neil wrote comics long before he ventured into novels -- but I find it sad that he didn't stretch to master a new form.
On the good side, O'Neil provides backstory for Harvey Dent, explaining why he's so desperate for the world to make sense and be fair. He also makes explicit some of the film's subtext on terrorism, torture, and the ethical lines Bruce is sliding over. But the backstory elements front-weight the book, leaving nowhere near enough page time to convey the full impact of the main plot, and especially shortchanging the climax and denouement.
Overall, The Dark Knight is a tolerable way to kill a few hours, but I wouldn't advise buying it.)
Old: 0
August Total: 9 books (plus several magazines, a few newspapers, and a lot of fanfiction)
Year to Date: 79 books (51 new, 28 old)
New: 9
---The Art of War, Sun Tzu, trans. and ed. Samuel B. Griffith (nonfiction: the classic Chinese study of warfare, complete with some useful historical introductions, a lot of footnotes, and some equally useful and/or interesting appendices. I do want to read another translation, though, since Griffith mentions several times that there are variant texts, and that he did some cut-and-paste to remove what he thinks are repetition errors, bits of commentary that were merged into the text, and copying errors that misplaced several verses out of their proper context.)
---The Snow Queen, Mercedes Lackey (fantasy: a 500 Kingdoms story. When Aleksia, the Godmother of a far-flung collection of northern kingdoms and regions, discovers that someone using her title -- the Snow Queen -- is destroying villages and kidnapping young men, she finds herself drawn into a story of her own rather than simply managing the stories of other people. I'm not sure all the subplots mesh as well as they should, and the not-quite romance between Aleksia and Ilmari feels tacked-on and undeveloped, but this is a sweet, easy summer read.)
---Wild Adapter vol. 5, Kazuya Minekura (manga: a long flashback to what happened when Tokito first woke up, amnesiac and paranoid, in Kubota's apartment.)
---The Sea Gull, Anton Chekhov, trans. Fred Eisemann (playscript: Konstantin Treplev, the son of a famous and self-centered actress, attempts to find a purpose for his life. He tries writing and love; when he encounters temporary setbacks in both ventures, he kills himself. This particular version -- the Boston International Pocket Library edition -- is a wince-inducing translation. Maybe Eisemann is not a native English speaker. Maybe his editor was drunk. [Possibly both options apply.] This edition also contains a short one-scene comedy called The Tragedian in Spite of Himself, translated by Olive Frances Murphy, who does a much better job than Eisemann.)
---Jhegaala, Steven Brust (fantasy: a Vlad Taltos novel, which relates the early days of Vlad's exile, and the real story of his lost finger. Brust has always liked to inform by implication rather than explanation, but I think he's slipping too far toward a self-indulgent lack of clarity. Nonetheless, I like the bits about mental states, and I like Vlad's attempts to rationalize and cope with the collapse of his marriage... and his even more strenuous attempts to not think about various issues at all. I also like the playscript snippets that head each chapter -- if "Six Parts Water" were a real play, I would love to watch it, even considering that it seems to take two days to perform. *grin*)
---The Devil's Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe, James Chambers (nonfiction: the subtitle is wrong -- "The Mongols' Western Campaigns" would be more accurate, since Chambers deals with Persia and the Middle East as well as Russia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe. This book is written for a general audience and as such has no footnotes -- which is a lack I regret -- and Chambers is also often geographically imprecise in his text, without having all the imprecision countered by his maps... but it's a good general overview of a fascinating period and area of history that is shamefully overlooked in most Western-centric views of world history, or even of European history.)
---Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval That Inspired America's Founding Fathers, Michael Barone (nonfiction: a history of the late Stuart monarchs and the Glorious Revolution, written from an American neoconservative perspective. [The Glorious Revolution is when William of Orange, the stadholder of the Netherlands, invaded England to kick out James II, more or less at the invitation of Parliament. This is an oversimplification; read the book for the full story.] Barone's neoconservatism makes very little difference until the last chapter, in which he attempts to equate 17th-century British opposition to France with the 21st-century War on Terror. The comparison does not fly. But until then, Barone's history is as unbiased as history ever gets, and opens a window onto an often overlooked period of history that established the social and political conditions that made the American Revolution possible. The appendices include a letter sent by conspirators to William of Orange, and William's propaganda pamphlets explaining the reasons behind his invasion; they are fascinating to read. In summary, I loved 95% of this book; it's just that I'd like to throw the other 5% violently across the room, which is rather difficult without taking a razor blade to the pages. *grin*)
---Victory of Eagles, Naomi Novik (fantasy: book 5 of the Temeraire series, in which Laurence and Temeraire suffer the consequences of their treason, and Napoleon invades Britain. Novik still has a relatively breezy tone to her narration, but the books are getting deeper and more complex as the series continues. This book introduces a lot of new dragon characters; seeing them interact on their own terms, from Temeraire's point of view, is illuminating. I particularly liked the darker passages in the last section of the book when Laurence and Temeraire were leading a raiding group for several weeks.)
---The Dark Knight, Dennis O'Neil (film novelization: I am going to quote my full amazon.com review at you:
The sad truth about novelizations is that they start out handicapped. Usually the writer is working from the script rather than the finished film; you can't get the book published close enough to the film's release date otherwise.
That explains both the rushed copy-editing [for example, "He looked first at the prisoner's ferry, laying maybe a hundred yards off the port bow..." -- note the singular possessive and the incorrect verb] and the obvious 'factual' errors [for example, the ferry radios work and the captains contact each other, which was wisely cut from the film version to heighten tension and remove a plot hole] in Dennis O'Neil's adaptation of The Dark Knight. It also helps explain the stripped feel to the narrative. Because O'Neil didn't know how the actors would perform their lines, he presents dialogue with hardly any attempt to convey its sound or pacing, and because he didn't know what the costumes, sets, blocking, and special effects would look like, he skimps on describing both appearances and action scenes.
Unfortunately, a book written that way is like a stool with only two and a half legs; it wobbles something awful. For me, Dennis O'Neil's version of The Dark Knight feels like a comic script before it's turned over the the artist. Half of the story is, therefore, missing. This is understandable -- O'Neil wrote comics long before he ventured into novels -- but I find it sad that he didn't stretch to master a new form.
On the good side, O'Neil provides backstory for Harvey Dent, explaining why he's so desperate for the world to make sense and be fair. He also makes explicit some of the film's subtext on terrorism, torture, and the ethical lines Bruce is sliding over. But the backstory elements front-weight the book, leaving nowhere near enough page time to convey the full impact of the main plot, and especially shortchanging the climax and denouement.
Overall, The Dark Knight is a tolerable way to kill a few hours, but I wouldn't advise buying it.)
Old: 0
August Total: 9 books (plus several magazines, a few newspapers, and a lot of fanfiction)
Year to Date: 79 books (51 new, 28 old)
