book list, January 2009
Feb. 2nd, 2009 11:42 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 January 2009. (Click on the cuts for summaries and reactions. I reserve the right to spoil all hell out of any book if spoilery bits are what I feel like talking about.)
New: 3
---The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, Henry Hitchings (nonfiction: a history of the English language, organized largely by areas and periods of influence -- i.e., the sources of new words and/or grammar structures. Interesting, if a bit tedious at times -- the lists of words can get wearing. Also, Hitchings makes some effort to deal with language as cultural appropriation, but there were times in the various chapters that deal with colonialism and imperialism when I wanted to beat my head against the wall and remind him that one reason English can BE so blithe about adopting words from other languages is that native English-speakers are on top of the world order. He's not always clear enough about that point.)
---The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (fantasy: in which Nobody Owens grows up in a graveyard, adopted by ghosts, after his birth family is murdered by a man named Jack. It's nearly as much a collection of short stories as it is a novel, and several incidents in the plot are telegraphed by a lullaby sung in the first chapter, both of which are tricks I loved because I am a sucker for structural games. Weirdly, for a story about death and ghosts and ghouls and so on, with revenge and the petty venality of living humans as quiet running themes, this is an amazingly sweet and low-key book. It's just won the Newberry Medal, apparently. I think the award is deserved. *grin*)
---Yesterday's Magic, Pamela F. Service (fantasy: sequel to Winter of Magic's Return and Tomorrow's Magic. The conceit of this series is that five centuries after a nuclear war and the resulting social and environmental collapse, Merlin and Arthur return and begin to reunite Britain, with the help of Heather and Welly, two children who befriended Merlin while he was young and amnesiac. [It's much less stupid than it sounds, trust me!] Anyway, after nearly twenty years, Service has written a third book, in which Morgan Le Fay kidnaps Heather; Merlin, Welly, Troll, and a dragon named Blanche promptly set off around the world to rescue her.
It was an odd book to read, in some ways. First, it's a children's series, so the writing is... mmm... a little more superficial in tone, shall we say. I tend to erase that in my memory of the books; I remember the story rather than the telling of the story. Second, the long gap between books gave me time to imagine my own ideas of 'what happens next' and become rather attached to them; since my version and Service's version are rather different, I had to work to resolve the dissonance. [This is not to say Yesterday's Magic is in any way an illogical continuation. It's just that, left to my own devices, I would not have gone for some of Service's favorite tropes, such as mental links and blithely mixed mythologies.]
Third, Service has her questing party travel to Transylvania, northwestern India, Tibet or Mongolia, and somewhere on the west coast North America, but except for the central Asian region, I didn't get a very good sense of those setting either geographically or culturally; this is disappointing after the relative specificity with which Service treats Britain. [In a somewhat related point, I also didn't get a good sense of why Baba Yaga was hanging around Dracula's castle instead of being off in Ukraine, Belarus, or Russia.]
Fourth, it bothered me that North America has apparently gone back to being, culturally and ethnically, entirely pre-Columbus Native American. I don't expect Anglos in Mexico, but I do expect Spanish influence, if only in people's names, and for all I could tell, those scenes might have taken place in southern Oregon or northern California, in which case I would expect Anglo influence. The complete erasure of five centuries of settlement and cultural imposition/appropriation/assimilation/whatever feels very odd, and, weirdly, rather patronizing, as if Service is saying, "Oh look, you can get your land and culture back; you just have to wait for a nuclear war!" [On that note, I'm also a little twitchy about Service's use and interpretation of Kali.]
But it's a well-written book, it's a fun adventure story, and while the 'psychic connection' trope feels a bit hastily retconned in, it works well with the themes Service has been weaving throughout the series: the importance of love and understanding over the blind attachment to possessions and unliving things. Also, Heather and Merlin are very sweet together. [It's interesting that the series started out with Welly and Heather as equals and Merlin off in his own plotline, but by now Heather and Merlin are sharing a plotline while Welly has become a secondary character. I'd love a fourth book to hopefully bring them all back into balance.])
Old: 2
---Winter of Magic's Return, Pamela F. Service (fantasy: five centuries after nuclear war destroyed the environment and the social fabric of Britain, three misfit children become friends at a boarding school for the upper class. Heather is dreamy and plain, Welly is clumsy but longs for glory, and Earl is awkward and has no memory of his past. When a strange woman claims to be his aunt, it kicks off an adventure stranger than they could ever have imagined... because Earl, it turns out, was once called Merlin...)
---Tomorrow's Magic, Pamela F. Service (fantasy: in which Arthur begins to reunite Britain, aided by a tense alliance with Margaret, the Queen of Scotland, but is drawn to the southeast to face Morgan Le Fay's growing army of, well, darkness. Meanwhile, Heather is troubled by the discovery of her own magic, Merlin furiously tries to both fit into the new world and stop history from diving down the same war-obsessed path that led to the nuclear Devastation, and Welly is... kind of along for the ride. *sigh*)
January Total: 5 books (plus several magazines, a few newspapers, and a ridiculous amount of fanfiction)
Year to Date: 5 books (3 new, 2 old)
...I sense a continuation of my massive fail from last year. *sigh* Damn the internet and its seductive wiles!
*flees to read another chapter of Nicholas Nicastro's Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the Globe*
New: 3
---The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, Henry Hitchings (nonfiction: a history of the English language, organized largely by areas and periods of influence -- i.e., the sources of new words and/or grammar structures. Interesting, if a bit tedious at times -- the lists of words can get wearing. Also, Hitchings makes some effort to deal with language as cultural appropriation, but there were times in the various chapters that deal with colonialism and imperialism when I wanted to beat my head against the wall and remind him that one reason English can BE so blithe about adopting words from other languages is that native English-speakers are on top of the world order. He's not always clear enough about that point.)
---The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman (fantasy: in which Nobody Owens grows up in a graveyard, adopted by ghosts, after his birth family is murdered by a man named Jack. It's nearly as much a collection of short stories as it is a novel, and several incidents in the plot are telegraphed by a lullaby sung in the first chapter, both of which are tricks I loved because I am a sucker for structural games. Weirdly, for a story about death and ghosts and ghouls and so on, with revenge and the petty venality of living humans as quiet running themes, this is an amazingly sweet and low-key book. It's just won the Newberry Medal, apparently. I think the award is deserved. *grin*)
---Yesterday's Magic, Pamela F. Service (fantasy: sequel to Winter of Magic's Return and Tomorrow's Magic. The conceit of this series is that five centuries after a nuclear war and the resulting social and environmental collapse, Merlin and Arthur return and begin to reunite Britain, with the help of Heather and Welly, two children who befriended Merlin while he was young and amnesiac. [It's much less stupid than it sounds, trust me!] Anyway, after nearly twenty years, Service has written a third book, in which Morgan Le Fay kidnaps Heather; Merlin, Welly, Troll, and a dragon named Blanche promptly set off around the world to rescue her.
It was an odd book to read, in some ways. First, it's a children's series, so the writing is... mmm... a little more superficial in tone, shall we say. I tend to erase that in my memory of the books; I remember the story rather than the telling of the story. Second, the long gap between books gave me time to imagine my own ideas of 'what happens next' and become rather attached to them; since my version and Service's version are rather different, I had to work to resolve the dissonance. [This is not to say Yesterday's Magic is in any way an illogical continuation. It's just that, left to my own devices, I would not have gone for some of Service's favorite tropes, such as mental links and blithely mixed mythologies.]
Third, Service has her questing party travel to Transylvania, northwestern India, Tibet or Mongolia, and somewhere on the west coast North America, but except for the central Asian region, I didn't get a very good sense of those setting either geographically or culturally; this is disappointing after the relative specificity with which Service treats Britain. [In a somewhat related point, I also didn't get a good sense of why Baba Yaga was hanging around Dracula's castle instead of being off in Ukraine, Belarus, or Russia.]
Fourth, it bothered me that North America has apparently gone back to being, culturally and ethnically, entirely pre-Columbus Native American. I don't expect Anglos in Mexico, but I do expect Spanish influence, if only in people's names, and for all I could tell, those scenes might have taken place in southern Oregon or northern California, in which case I would expect Anglo influence. The complete erasure of five centuries of settlement and cultural imposition/appropriation/assimilation/whatever feels very odd, and, weirdly, rather patronizing, as if Service is saying, "Oh look, you can get your land and culture back; you just have to wait for a nuclear war!" [On that note, I'm also a little twitchy about Service's use and interpretation of Kali.]
But it's a well-written book, it's a fun adventure story, and while the 'psychic connection' trope feels a bit hastily retconned in, it works well with the themes Service has been weaving throughout the series: the importance of love and understanding over the blind attachment to possessions and unliving things. Also, Heather and Merlin are very sweet together. [It's interesting that the series started out with Welly and Heather as equals and Merlin off in his own plotline, but by now Heather and Merlin are sharing a plotline while Welly has become a secondary character. I'd love a fourth book to hopefully bring them all back into balance.])
Old: 2
---Winter of Magic's Return, Pamela F. Service (fantasy: five centuries after nuclear war destroyed the environment and the social fabric of Britain, three misfit children become friends at a boarding school for the upper class. Heather is dreamy and plain, Welly is clumsy but longs for glory, and Earl is awkward and has no memory of his past. When a strange woman claims to be his aunt, it kicks off an adventure stranger than they could ever have imagined... because Earl, it turns out, was once called Merlin...)
---Tomorrow's Magic, Pamela F. Service (fantasy: in which Arthur begins to reunite Britain, aided by a tense alliance with Margaret, the Queen of Scotland, but is drawn to the southeast to face Morgan Le Fay's growing army of, well, darkness. Meanwhile, Heather is troubled by the discovery of her own magic, Merlin furiously tries to both fit into the new world and stop history from diving down the same war-obsessed path that led to the nuclear Devastation, and Welly is... kind of along for the ride. *sigh*)
January Total: 5 books (plus several magazines, a few newspapers, and a ridiculous amount of fanfiction)
Year to Date: 5 books (3 new, 2 old)
...I sense a continuation of my massive fail from last year. *sigh* Damn the internet and its seductive wiles!
*flees to read another chapter of Nicholas Nicastro's Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the Globe*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2009-02-03 12:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-03 11:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-03 11:17 pm (UTC)Thank you again!