Sunday 28 April 2013

Book blog, part II

Well, I spent a year blogging about every book that I read over the course of a year:  Feb. 2012 to Feb. 2013, roughly.  And then I stopped.

Why did I stop?  Well, it was good discipline to write about every book and I found it interesting to try to think of something to say about all of them.  I was also interested to see how the totals of book numbers and types would come out, and it was fun to record the page counts and dates so that I could do that.  But.... as silly as it is, I found the whole process a bit inhibiting too.  More than once I found myself hesitating at the bookshelf or the library, thinking..."oh, I can't read ANOTHER one of those".  Or "I guess I HAVE to finish this one so I can blog about it."  I even found myself turning to video games or Netflix to avoid the issue.  So, at the end of February, I finished my "last blog book", wrote a summary blog post, and had done.

Except that I wasn't.  I enjoy reading.  I enjoy writing.  And my blog gave me a little place to share what I was reading and what I was thinking about those books with the interwebs.  So, I've decided to continue, but on a more casual basis.  Rather than committing to writing about every book that I read in 2013, I'm going to write about every book that inspires me to write, for whatever reason.  I'm also considering other writing projects.   But we'll see how that goes.

If you were following my blog before my "concluding post", you can catch up by reading about Sing the Warmth, Sussex Drive, and Naked Brunch.

Naked Brunch by Sparkle Hayter

April 2013

Sparkle Hayter is funny, and she writes with an insider's knowledge of the media industry.  Her Robin Hudson mysteries (like The Last Manly Man and The Chelsea Girl Murders) are actually laugh-out-loud funny -- and how often does that really happen?   Not to mention that they are categorized as "Tart Noir".  Who could possibly resist?

So I'm always happy to pick up a Hayter when I run across one.

Naked Brunch didn't disappoint, although it's not a mystery and is not laugh-out-loud funny like some of her previous work.  But it's an entertaining tale of some crazy-mixed-up werewolves and their werewolvian evisceration adventures in modern New York City.  Note to self:  if you wake up naked, covered in blood, and with disturbing nightmares, don't just shrug it off and assume that you had one too many drinks at that art opening last night.   That dog fur caught on your fire escape is your first clue that there might be Something Going On that you should be paying attention to.




Sunday 14 April 2013

Sing the Warmth by Louse Marley

Finished:  Sometime in March
Pages:  xx

ABC Books and Comics closed for good in January of this year.  RIP ABC.   They had the best SF and fantasy selection of any bookstore I have ever visited, anywhere, any time.  And yes, it was better than any of the specialist SF bookstores that I've ever had the fortune to visit too.  But when their lease was up their landlord decided to more than double the rent, and ABC was no more.

I restrained myself, and only bought a few armloads of books during the sell-off,  mostly buying books by authors I'd read before.  The whole process was kind of random, so I'm never sure what I'm going to find when I visit the bookshelves that I filled with my plunder.

Which is how I came to read "Sing the Warmth".  I'd previously read  Marley's "The Maquisarde", and while it wasn't a stunningly good book it was interesting enough that I thought I'd try some more.  But what I didn't notice is was that I'd purchased books 1 and 2 of a trilogy, and that this was book 2.

Book 2 of any trilogy is problematic.  Book 1 is the introduction.  It introduces the characters, sets up the conflict, and launches the plot.  Book 3 concludes the story.  Book 2....is all of that stuff in the middle.  If you're going to read ONLY book 2, you have to take a Zen approach....I see and appreciate the slice of life in front of me.  Be here now.  Don't regret the past, and don't anticipate the future.  Live in the now.

Apparently the trilogy is about cultural change in a closed medieval society whose very existence is made possible by the talents of a caste of telekinetic singers who protect the human population of the planet from its extreme climate.    Or so I gathered from the slice of story I had.  How the story began....how the story ends...  Well, I could make a pretty good guess in both cases.  The plot line wasn't stunningly original.  But it was reasonably well told, except for a fundamental flaw.  The ECOLOGY OF THE PLANET MADE NO SENSE!!!!  Whew, had to get that off my chest.  I could be generous and assume that either the beginning or the end of the story explained how it was possible that native plants and animals survived a year with a 1 year summer and a 4 year-long fierce and snowy winter, and why it was that hunger and food shortages never seemed to be a problem for the non-native human population.  Or I could be irked that the author wasn't clever enough to see this gaping hole in the story she was trying to tell.

Ommmm.....Oooommmm...Nope.  I'm not that good at Zen.  I'm afraid that I mentally picked door number 2.  :-)

Sussex Drive by Linda Svendsen

Started: 9 Feb 2013
Finished: not finished
Pages: 350

No, I didn't finish this one. I only read the first 50 pages or so before giving up.

The problem is that the book was supposed to be a comedy but wasn't remotely funny.  The comedy consisted of the"naughtiness" of writing about Steven Harper, Lauren Harper, and Michelle Jaen using characters with different names but unmissable parallels with the real people and the real events around the prorogation of parliament.  And by making the people and events just a little more extreme than real life.   Umm...so?  

Maybe it improved afterwards, but I lost interest.