April book post
Holy shit, it's May. How is it May already. I don't understand.
And if that sounds like a rather odd mix,
1) it was
2) I don't know what else you'd expect of me.
The Alienist, Caleb Carr
One of those CRIMINAL PROFILING SUSPENSE STORIES that it seems everyone in the universe is so crazy about nowadays, only set in New York City in the late 19th century. It does a good job of evoking the setting, generally - there are occasional moments of HERE LET ME GRATUITOUSLY THROW IN SOME FACTS FROM MY RESEARCH / HERE LET ME INTRUDE RANDOM HISTORICAL FIGURES ONTO THE SCENE BECAUSE I CAN AND MY PROTAGONISTS ARE SUCH WELL-CONNECTED DUDES OBVIOUSLY, but these mostly disappear once the investigation is underway. The killer's backstory and motives I did not find particularly novel, but our Five Man Band of investigators (well okay it doesn't fit exactly; the chick is the one who's of most use in a fight, the narrator is The Chick, and everyone else is varying degrees of The Smart Guy) gets a good amount of characterization, too, and they're pretty much cool and interesting people. Their methods vary from "OHO! LET US TRY THIS FRINGE SCIENCE KNOWN AS FINGERPRINTING, WHY HAS IT NOT CAUGHT ON YET" to some weird quaint 19th-century things that will obviously never work. So the investigation itself is interesting to read, and the murders suitably grisly.
(...I do find it a bit weird that for all the book's undercurrents of "IT IS COMPLETELY UNFAIR THAT THE POLICE DEPARTMENT DOES NOT CARE ABOUT IMMIGRANTS", IIRC every Irish person who appears is evil or violent? Or, okay, a very dapper mob boss who drives around being fabulous and mysterious and doing shittons of coke, but I'm filing that under "evil" with a question mark.)
A Local Habitation (Toby Daye #2) and An Artificial Night (Toby Daye #3), Seanan McGuire
Okay, so the pacing in A Local Habitation is wack, I solved one of the mysteries right off the bat, and the only reason I didn't know who the murderer was a million years in advance was that I'd already discarded that possibility as being too obvious. TOBY PLEASE LEARN TO SLEUTH BETTER ISN'T THIS YOUR JOB. Buuuut there continued to be a bunch of sass and occasional Tybalt (and I'm liking Quentin more than I expected to), so I continued on to book three, which just... WAS MUCH BETTER IN MANY WAYS. Better pacing, continued sass, Tybalt, creepy impressive magical things, Toby finally kindasorta addressing that "HEY I GUESS I DO RUN HEADLONG INTO CERTAIN DEATH PRETTY OFTEN" issue! And I like May. She's entertaining. So... it's been a bit uneven, but I continue to enjoy this series. Yes.
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
TOM RIPLEY, YOU... YOU ARE SOMETHING. This book is an interesting case - I have a thing about antiheroes, and protagonists who are unpleasant people, and protagonists who are outright evil. It is a thing where I like them a lot. Tom Ripley is an evil son of a bitch, and clever and resourceful, and I did not like him. I didn't care one way or the other, I didn't particularly want him to succeed or even survive when I really thought about it - and yet I was riveted anyway. I do not know how Highsmith made such a tense and fascinating read without making Ripley even the slightest bit sympathetic. He's not even a COOL fictional sociopath, he is just a creepy loser who is weirdly obsessed with class, and creepy, and a loser, and also totally ruthless. IT IS INTERESTING, is about all I can say concretely. I still don't know what to make of it all.
To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis
OH THIS IS A DELIGHTFUL ONE. It's got time travel and Victorians and people chucking each other into the Thames and cats and an awesome butler, and just... a bunch of comprehensively wacky nonsense. It's very confusing and disorienting for the first two chapters or so - intentionally so, and it's funny, but I wouldn't have kept with it if it had continued much longer - and there's a bit of weirdness about the token black dude, but overall it is clever and charming and I recommend it.
On the manga front, I'm still reading One Piece - just got through Thriller Bark. Still enjoying it entirely too much.
On the BBC Radio front, I HAVE SEVERAL FEELINGS ABOUT RAFFLES RIGHT NOW. Or perhaps it would be more to the point to say I have several feelings about Bunny Manders (WHO IS THE BEST BRO).
And that was April.
And if that sounds like a rather odd mix,
1) it was
2) I don't know what else you'd expect of me.
The Alienist, Caleb Carr
One of those CRIMINAL PROFILING SUSPENSE STORIES that it seems everyone in the universe is so crazy about nowadays, only set in New York City in the late 19th century. It does a good job of evoking the setting, generally - there are occasional moments of HERE LET ME GRATUITOUSLY THROW IN SOME FACTS FROM MY RESEARCH / HERE LET ME INTRUDE RANDOM HISTORICAL FIGURES ONTO THE SCENE BECAUSE I CAN AND MY PROTAGONISTS ARE SUCH WELL-CONNECTED DUDES OBVIOUSLY, but these mostly disappear once the investigation is underway. The killer's backstory and motives I did not find particularly novel, but our Five Man Band of investigators (well okay it doesn't fit exactly; the chick is the one who's of most use in a fight, the narrator is The Chick, and everyone else is varying degrees of The Smart Guy) gets a good amount of characterization, too, and they're pretty much cool and interesting people. Their methods vary from "OHO! LET US TRY THIS FRINGE SCIENCE KNOWN AS FINGERPRINTING, WHY HAS IT NOT CAUGHT ON YET" to some weird quaint 19th-century things that will obviously never work. So the investigation itself is interesting to read, and the murders suitably grisly.
(...I do find it a bit weird that for all the book's undercurrents of "IT IS COMPLETELY UNFAIR THAT THE POLICE DEPARTMENT DOES NOT CARE ABOUT IMMIGRANTS", IIRC every Irish person who appears is evil or violent? Or, okay, a very dapper mob boss who drives around being fabulous and mysterious and doing shittons of coke, but I'm filing that under "evil" with a question mark.)
A Local Habitation (Toby Daye #2) and An Artificial Night (Toby Daye #3), Seanan McGuire
Okay, so the pacing in A Local Habitation is wack, I solved one of the mysteries right off the bat, and the only reason I didn't know who the murderer was a million years in advance was that I'd already discarded that possibility as being too obvious. TOBY PLEASE LEARN TO SLEUTH BETTER ISN'T THIS YOUR JOB. Buuuut there continued to be a bunch of sass and occasional Tybalt (and I'm liking Quentin more than I expected to), so I continued on to book three, which just... WAS MUCH BETTER IN MANY WAYS. Better pacing, continued sass, Tybalt, creepy impressive magical things, Toby finally kindasorta addressing that "HEY I GUESS I DO RUN HEADLONG INTO CERTAIN DEATH PRETTY OFTEN" issue! And I like May. She's entertaining. So... it's been a bit uneven, but I continue to enjoy this series. Yes.
The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith
TOM RIPLEY, YOU... YOU ARE SOMETHING. This book is an interesting case - I have a thing about antiheroes, and protagonists who are unpleasant people, and protagonists who are outright evil. It is a thing where I like them a lot. Tom Ripley is an evil son of a bitch, and clever and resourceful, and I did not like him. I didn't care one way or the other, I didn't particularly want him to succeed or even survive when I really thought about it - and yet I was riveted anyway. I do not know how Highsmith made such a tense and fascinating read without making Ripley even the slightest bit sympathetic. He's not even a COOL fictional sociopath, he is just a creepy loser who is weirdly obsessed with class, and creepy, and a loser, and also totally ruthless. IT IS INTERESTING, is about all I can say concretely. I still don't know what to make of it all.
To Say Nothing of the Dog, Connie Willis
OH THIS IS A DELIGHTFUL ONE. It's got time travel and Victorians and people chucking each other into the Thames and cats and an awesome butler, and just... a bunch of comprehensively wacky nonsense. It's very confusing and disorienting for the first two chapters or so - intentionally so, and it's funny, but I wouldn't have kept with it if it had continued much longer - and there's a bit of weirdness about the token black dude, but overall it is clever and charming and I recommend it.
On the manga front, I'm still reading One Piece - just got through Thriller Bark. Still enjoying it entirely too much.
On the BBC Radio front, I HAVE SEVERAL FEELINGS ABOUT RAFFLES RIGHT NOW. Or perhaps it would be more to the point to say I have several feelings about Bunny Manders (WHO IS THE BEST BRO).
And that was April.