2011 book list

[tamnonlinear]

A bit long, since this is the first book post of the year. There were at least a few books between the last book post of 2010 and the first books of 2011, but I won't count them. Also skipping some rereads that I only reread my favorite bits (granted, some of this amounted to more than half the books in question, but still) and a lot of fanfic, as

Comments

[juliansinger]

I felt almost exactly the same way about Reflex. The thing with Jumper was that there was angst and sadness and everything, but there was agency and it didn't /marinate/ in it.

Reflex was just... overdone and excessive.

(And, hee. I love new people finding Harriet Vane books. Have His Carcass isn't quite as good, but that just means it's not /the best thing ever/.)

[tamnonlinear]

A lot of the point of Jumper, for me, was that you had the balance of this kid with amazing powers and yet little life experience, and much of it bad. So Jumper is really about a kid with amazing potential figuring out the much more difficult business of how to be a human being, to the point that the powers seem more of a tool to that end rather than the central focus of who he is. Then Reflex goes and undoes a lot of that- it makes Davy into someone's tool and less than a person. I hated that aspect of it, and besides that, there's almost never a good conclusion to Shadow Conspiracy stories, as there's always more shadow and more conspiracy to be had, and in the end they all rely on our willingness to believe that the forces of evil are allied against us, and that's not something I look for in my fiction.

I am currently reading Five Red Herrings, and while I'm sad not to see more of Harriet yet, I'm enjoying the book immensely, and quite adore Lord Peter. I'm intentionally spacing the books out so I can get to know each one

[juliansinger]

Yes, what I found exceptional about Jumper was that it was Davy's own journey into, not necessarily health, but a way to find healing (and how to be a person), on his own terms.

Reflex made it into a standard spy-and-cloak-and-dagger story. And (I haven't read it in awhile, so I'm a little vague on the details), the problem is that then Davy-the-character has to work within those restrictions, and it was just less than good.

I haven't actually read Five Red Herrings. Or the Nine Tailors. They're not her best, but I'm still kind of saving them to savor, eventually.

[tamnonlinear]

Five Red Herrings had a few jokes in the first couple of pages that had me scaring the cats with my whoops of laughter, although I will say that I found it advantageous to have read a lot of Scottish poetry and therefore be able to make it through the dialects.

Although I plan to quote it when I review the book in my next book post, here's a great bit from Five Red Herrings, just to encourage you. Peter, out in the country, has given a very fast car ride to the little girl of a family so he can ask her some questions about her family, and she is making comments about what fun it would be to scare the cows by driving past at a fast pace (shortly after having had a discussion about how much she likes getting in a good fist fight with the other schoolchildren).

"That would be very naughty," said Wimsey, "It isn't good for cows to run fast. You are an impertinent, bloodthirsty, greedy, and unkind young person, and one of these days you'll be a menace to society

[sovay]

It's not quite another retelling of Beauty and the Beast, but it has shades of that story over it rather heavily, and it's ground she's trod a bit flat at this point.

I became very fond of the Grand Seneschal, but I'd have liked the main story (which I do classify as Beauty and the Beast) much better if it hadn't included the transformation at the end, especially after all the emphasis on the irreversible nature of Fire: learning to go on from what one has become, not what one was used to be.

If the romance continues like this, I am certain to be enthralled for the rest of their relationship.

I think it holds. Gaudy Night is a book I have been known to give people in order to talk about relationships with them.

[tamnonlinear]

Well, McKinley has done Beauty and the Beast several times before, with and without the transformation at the end- I prefer without, as I think it's a lousy trick to spend a book with a character learning to be who he is and then to change that. I wish they had given a little more time to the Grand Seneschal as well.

I like McKinley, but she tends to get a bit hand wavey at the end of her books, and have them solved by use of something not previously present in the stories, in mad attacks of symbolism, rather than a linear denouement foreshadowed in earlier events. It's a bit frustrating. It's not always quite clear what actually happened. It her better books, it's forgivable, but this one felt a bit threadbare.

[sovay]

Well, McKinley has done Beauty and the Beast several times before, with and without the transformation at the end- I prefer without, as I think it's a lousy trick to spend a book with a character learning to be who he is and then to change that.

Agreed. It works for me in Beauty (partly, I think, because unbeknownst to herself the narrator has also been transforming), but its absence from Rose Daughter is one of the things I remember liking about the book.

It her better books, it's forgivable, but this one felt a bit threadbare.

I don't suppose you've read her most recent one, with pegasi? I have not, and am trying to find out whether it's worth the attempt.

[tamnonlinear]

I haven't. Chalice just put me off a bit, and I may try the next one after I read other's reviews.

I said over at DW- McKinley has a tendency to write as if the story were a dream- full of symbolic, nonlinear actions and settings where little is explicitly explained by there are great swaths of inference and things are just sort of known, or important information comes out in odd drabbles. When it works (I love Sunshine, for instance, as that sort of flow worked perfectly with the main character) it's great, but when the overall feel of the story is off, it's deeply frustrating, because it underlines the feel that there's something good there and the author is just failing to convey it properly, you're off just a titch on the station dial, and you're missing the bits that provide the underlying continuity.

[skreidle]

I need need need to read The Lost Dogs and Oogy. Srsly.

[tamnonlinear]

They are both very good and very heartbreaking books in their way. I'm surprised (quite honestly) that you haven't read them, as I started following the Pit Bull rescue blogs, and eventually found these books, through your posts.

I'd be happy to lend you my copy of Lost Dogs. Oogy I got on kindle, so loaning is not an option (AFAIK).

In both cases, I am glad to have read the books in the modern age, where I could google for pictures and videos and followups to find out more about the animals and how they are now. It helped.

[skreidle]

I know, I know.. I've lauded both books, and asked for both for Christmas, and my mom provided two other great pit bull books, but inexplicably not those two.

I think Kindles -can- loan, but only for two weeks, and only once for the life of the e-book, which is ridiculous.

[tamnonlinear]

Yes, and the loaned book has to be marked as loanable, which I am too old to figure out.