Déjà Booklog
Home sick with a disgusting cold! At least I managed something semi-productive?
41. Hellblazer: All His Engines, Mike Carey - Huh. I saw this on the shelf at my friend John’s, flipped through it there, borrowed it, and read the whole thing, and I am still not sure if I have read it before or not. This may be attributable to my failing brain, but I’m sure it’s also due in part to the fact that All His Engines is a fairly standard John Constantine outing: there are creepy icky demony things, and John (Constantine, not my friend) snarks at them and gets in over his head but ultimately outwits everyone and is awesome. I like all of that, and Carey pulls off that formula here with aplomb. Still: this is obviously not a standout tale, as I’m still not 100% on whether I’ve read it before. (I think the answer must be yes, or at least yes in part, or else I’m simply experiencing some weirdly specific déjà vu.)
Since this review seems to be turning into an extended episode of someone tapping a microphone and saying, “Hello? Is this thing on?” I will now use this space to complain: why hasn’t any of Paul Jenkins’ run on this title been collected as trades? I loved that run. Am I the only one?
42. A Short History of Women, Kate Walbert - "Hey, guess what, Trin-being a lady is HARD!"
"Gee, book-I had NO IDEA. Thanks for telling me!"
If there's more to this book than that, I can't say I really got it. This is a novel about five generations of women and their general dissatisfaction with their lives-a better title might have been A Short History of Wealthy White Women and Their Ennui. Walbert's prose is occasionally stirring, but for the most part I found her style-short chapters that skip from character to character, bouncing from era to era-frustratingly elliptical. Maybe this is just not my feminism? In my feminism it absolutely needs to be acknowledged that things have sucked for women (of ALL races and classes) in the past, and they still often suck now, but instead of wallowing how 'bout try to be awesome? And maybe fight people with swords.
43. Fat Vampire, Adam Rex - Ugh. I have not been looking forward to writing this review. My feelings about this book are deeply conflicted. Let me try to break it down.
1. I don’t like this book as much as Rex’s previous novel, The True Meaning of Smekday, which is clever and funny and just...very near perfect. That’s hard to follow, and it was perhaps smart of Rex to try something completely different. However...
2. Goddamn, is this book dark. It’s still funny, because Rex is a funny writer, but for a book that could easily be mistaken for a satirical young adult vampire romp, this baby is pretty fucking bleak. I (think I) get where Rex was trying to go with the narrative, what he was trying to say about redemption coming too late, but it didn’t sit comfortably with me. My sort of gah! reaction inspires me to sort of warily admire the book, not actually like it.
3. The meta Rex employs is also sort of a double-edged sword. I like meta, generally, but it can turn on you very easily, and despite how they ultimately connected, the Sandman references seemed sort of weird in this context, and I honestly think that Fat Vampire would have been a stronger book if Rex had found a way to make those same points on his own, without relying on metatextuality. The best meta is like sprinkles on a sundae; it’s not the scoop of double fudge without which the whole thing falls down.
Okay, now I seem to be talking myself into liking this book less and less, and also I want ice cream. Um. Perhaps, to awkwardly switch metaphors, this book is best regarded as an experiment that didn’t entirely work. The process was interesting, and you can appreciate its contribution to science, but you really hope the slightly charred guy in the lab coat can do better next time. Maybe next time he’ll land that Nobel Prize.
44. Déjà Dead, Kathy Reichs - The TV show Bones is probably the best and worst thing to ever happen to this series. The best because it’s no doubt brought a whole slew of new, eager readers to these books-including ones like me, who are really only sporadic watchers of the show. And the worst because all those new readers will inevitably be hauling all their show-based expectations with them. At which point they will discover that this book is-to me, sadly-nothing like the show.
The main character both on TV and in print is called Temperance Brennan, and in both mediums she is a forensic anthropologist. That’s pretty much where the similarities end. TV Temperance is brilliant and socially oblivious-in short, she’s wonderfully weird. Apparently, her personality is based more on Reichs’ own than on anything in the novels (thanks, Wikipedia!), which makes me wish Reichs had stuck much more closely to writing what she knew, because book Temperance-or Tempe, as she prefers to be called-is far less entertaining. She’s just so...normal. Aside from her somewhat eccentric choice of career, she’s a fairly average woman with fairly average concerns (prior to getting caught up in the book’s serial killer plot, anyway) and tediously average thought processes, on which Reichs spends way too much time. (I’m not sure I as a reader ever need to hear about every stray song lyric that gets stuck in a character’s head.)
I have to say, I really prefer my main characters to be oddballs. This may be my predilection for socially awkward geniuses at play, but I really do think it’s especially important in a genre that can all-too-easily become formulaic: you know there’s going to be a bad guy, and in the end, you know he’s going to get caught. A good mystery is really all about the journey, so the person you are accompanying on that trip needs to be unusual in some way. Bones the TV show is full of weirdos and goofs, and is packed to the brim with surreal moments and humor and-at times, an overabundance of-wacky shenanigans. I was in the mood for something like that: a puzzle, some jokes, a dash of sexual tension to add a little spice. Instead I got a depressingly straightforward police procedural, anchored by a lot of stiff, mostly colorless characters and a protagonist who, in being rendered more “relatable,” becomes much less interesting than her TV counterpart.
45. Why Translation Matters, Edith Grossman - Interesting account/defense of the art of translation. At times I both sympathized with and was annoyed by how defensive Grossman occasionally became: it’s true that most people, from highly esteemed literary critics down to myself, don’t give translation enough thought, tending to ignore it when it’s done well and mention it only to criticize. (If you go back through my reviews of translated books, I’m sure you will indeed find that where I’ve mentioned the translation/translator at all, it’s to bitch about how clunky it is.) Do translators deserve more credit for what they do? Absolutely. Is translating a book the same as writing one, so that, for example, my copy of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle should read “A Novel by Haruki Murakami and Jay Rubin”? Every instinct of mine-half readerly, half writerly-screams no no NO.
And yet, as Grossman illustrates in this book-and as the aforementioned Rubin discusses in his quasi-bio, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words-the best translators, the ones whose work is not clunky, are the ones who are not literalists, who do the most shaping and rewriting. Now, I would argue that this is still not the same as writing a novel, but it’s a skill that I would agree is in need of more recognition. (It’s also one involving a degree of license that can be easily abused-I still remember with horror a French translation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere that I bought in Paris and struggled through back when my French was not so poor; the idiot translator had moved huge chunks of text around and added entirely new scenes. Sacrilege!) So yes, I would say that we should celebrate good translators, and put their names on the covers of books, and mention them in more than a cursory way in reviews, whenever possible. It’s either that or learn lots and lots of other languages.
...I wish I could do the latter, honestly, because when I start to think too much about how I’ve never really read Murakami or Marías or Tolstoy-not as they were really written, not truly-I start to feel panicky, like an existential crisis might be coming on. Um. When those instant language-learning chips become available, sign me right up.
46. Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin - Beautiful and heartbreaking-one of those classics that, upon reading for the first time, you can’t believe you haven’t read already. Baldwin combines many elements that I love in this subtle, restrained story: it’s all repressed gay ex-pats-sort of like a Henry James novel, if Henry James had actually been able to write about what he was actually writing about. This book probably deserves a more reverent write-up than that, but I have my own Jamesish moments, and true reverence makes me white-lightning uncomfortable.
Anyway, enough about me: you should read this.
47. Life After Life, Paul Jepson & Tony Parker - A play about people serving life sentences for murder in England, assembled from interviews with actual prisoners; in form in reminded me somewhat of The Laramie Project. Like Laramie, this play is effective and disturbing because it forces you to view people you might otherwise find repugnant as people: you sympathize and feel repulsed by them in turn, often within moments of each other.
48. Ramayana: Divine Loophole, Sanjay Patel - Fun and deeply vibrant illustrated adaptation of the Hindu epic. I will save analysis of the source text for folks better educated than I, and simply say that Patel’s art is immensely enjoyable, and that as the X-Men will also support, blue people are hot when James Cameron isn’t making them part of something politically and racially skeevy.
49. The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak - This book took me by complete surprise. I picked it up simply because Shafak was coming to read at my store; after the first few pages, which contain some painfully clunky prose, I was not particularly encouraged. However, I continued to give the book a chance, and for once it paid off. There are two parallel stories in this book: that of the relationship between the poet Rumi and the mystic Shams of Tabriz, and a contemporary narrative about a Jewish housewife in a failing marriage who falls in love, through letters, with a modern Sufi. Both, to my shock, ended up moving me considerably.
I don’t generally think of myself a spiritual person, but I was genuinely touched by the lives and beliefs of the characters in this book. Shams, as Shafak presents him, is an irresistible character, both impish and wise, and his relationship with Rumi rang my EPIC FRIENDSHIP bell like crazy. So while the writing in this book, on a nuts-and-bolts level, didn’t always work for me, the characters, general atmosphere, and message definitely did. It’s inspired me to read some of Rumi’s poetry, which is quite beautiful; I’d like to learn more about Sufism as well. Book recommendations, anybody?
50. Bill Bryson’s African Diary, Bill Bryson - More like Bill Bryson’s African Pamphlet. Fun for what it is, and very Brysony, but oh-so-very thin. However, all proceeds from sales of this book go to a good cause, so I’d recommend either thinking of the book as a gift-with-donation, or getting it from the library.
Total Books: 50/197
41. Hellblazer: All His Engines, Mike Carey - Huh. I saw this on the shelf at my friend John’s, flipped through it there, borrowed it, and read the whole thing, and I am still not sure if I have read it before or not. This may be attributable to my failing brain, but I’m sure it’s also due in part to the fact that All His Engines is a fairly standard John Constantine outing: there are creepy icky demony things, and John (Constantine, not my friend) snarks at them and gets in over his head but ultimately outwits everyone and is awesome. I like all of that, and Carey pulls off that formula here with aplomb. Still: this is obviously not a standout tale, as I’m still not 100% on whether I’ve read it before. (I think the answer must be yes, or at least yes in part, or else I’m simply experiencing some weirdly specific déjà vu.)
Since this review seems to be turning into an extended episode of someone tapping a microphone and saying, “Hello? Is this thing on?” I will now use this space to complain: why hasn’t any of Paul Jenkins’ run on this title been collected as trades? I loved that run. Am I the only one?
42. A Short History of Women, Kate Walbert - "Hey, guess what, Trin-being a lady is HARD!"
"Gee, book-I had NO IDEA. Thanks for telling me!"
If there's more to this book than that, I can't say I really got it. This is a novel about five generations of women and their general dissatisfaction with their lives-a better title might have been A Short History of Wealthy White Women and Their Ennui. Walbert's prose is occasionally stirring, but for the most part I found her style-short chapters that skip from character to character, bouncing from era to era-frustratingly elliptical. Maybe this is just not my feminism? In my feminism it absolutely needs to be acknowledged that things have sucked for women (of ALL races and classes) in the past, and they still often suck now, but instead of wallowing how 'bout try to be awesome? And maybe fight people with swords.
43. Fat Vampire, Adam Rex - Ugh. I have not been looking forward to writing this review. My feelings about this book are deeply conflicted. Let me try to break it down.
1. I don’t like this book as much as Rex’s previous novel, The True Meaning of Smekday, which is clever and funny and just...very near perfect. That’s hard to follow, and it was perhaps smart of Rex to try something completely different. However...
2. Goddamn, is this book dark. It’s still funny, because Rex is a funny writer, but for a book that could easily be mistaken for a satirical young adult vampire romp, this baby is pretty fucking bleak. I (think I) get where Rex was trying to go with the narrative, what he was trying to say about redemption coming too late, but it didn’t sit comfortably with me. My sort of gah! reaction inspires me to sort of warily admire the book, not actually like it.
3. The meta Rex employs is also sort of a double-edged sword. I like meta, generally, but it can turn on you very easily, and despite how they ultimately connected, the Sandman references seemed sort of weird in this context, and I honestly think that Fat Vampire would have been a stronger book if Rex had found a way to make those same points on his own, without relying on metatextuality. The best meta is like sprinkles on a sundae; it’s not the scoop of double fudge without which the whole thing falls down.
Okay, now I seem to be talking myself into liking this book less and less, and also I want ice cream. Um. Perhaps, to awkwardly switch metaphors, this book is best regarded as an experiment that didn’t entirely work. The process was interesting, and you can appreciate its contribution to science, but you really hope the slightly charred guy in the lab coat can do better next time. Maybe next time he’ll land that Nobel Prize.
44. Déjà Dead, Kathy Reichs - The TV show Bones is probably the best and worst thing to ever happen to this series. The best because it’s no doubt brought a whole slew of new, eager readers to these books-including ones like me, who are really only sporadic watchers of the show. And the worst because all those new readers will inevitably be hauling all their show-based expectations with them. At which point they will discover that this book is-to me, sadly-nothing like the show.
The main character both on TV and in print is called Temperance Brennan, and in both mediums she is a forensic anthropologist. That’s pretty much where the similarities end. TV Temperance is brilliant and socially oblivious-in short, she’s wonderfully weird. Apparently, her personality is based more on Reichs’ own than on anything in the novels (thanks, Wikipedia!), which makes me wish Reichs had stuck much more closely to writing what she knew, because book Temperance-or Tempe, as she prefers to be called-is far less entertaining. She’s just so...normal. Aside from her somewhat eccentric choice of career, she’s a fairly average woman with fairly average concerns (prior to getting caught up in the book’s serial killer plot, anyway) and tediously average thought processes, on which Reichs spends way too much time. (I’m not sure I as a reader ever need to hear about every stray song lyric that gets stuck in a character’s head.)
I have to say, I really prefer my main characters to be oddballs. This may be my predilection for socially awkward geniuses at play, but I really do think it’s especially important in a genre that can all-too-easily become formulaic: you know there’s going to be a bad guy, and in the end, you know he’s going to get caught. A good mystery is really all about the journey, so the person you are accompanying on that trip needs to be unusual in some way. Bones the TV show is full of weirdos and goofs, and is packed to the brim with surreal moments and humor and-at times, an overabundance of-wacky shenanigans. I was in the mood for something like that: a puzzle, some jokes, a dash of sexual tension to add a little spice. Instead I got a depressingly straightforward police procedural, anchored by a lot of stiff, mostly colorless characters and a protagonist who, in being rendered more “relatable,” becomes much less interesting than her TV counterpart.
45. Why Translation Matters, Edith Grossman - Interesting account/defense of the art of translation. At times I both sympathized with and was annoyed by how defensive Grossman occasionally became: it’s true that most people, from highly esteemed literary critics down to myself, don’t give translation enough thought, tending to ignore it when it’s done well and mention it only to criticize. (If you go back through my reviews of translated books, I’m sure you will indeed find that where I’ve mentioned the translation/translator at all, it’s to bitch about how clunky it is.) Do translators deserve more credit for what they do? Absolutely. Is translating a book the same as writing one, so that, for example, my copy of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle should read “A Novel by Haruki Murakami and Jay Rubin”? Every instinct of mine-half readerly, half writerly-screams no no NO.
And yet, as Grossman illustrates in this book-and as the aforementioned Rubin discusses in his quasi-bio, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words-the best translators, the ones whose work is not clunky, are the ones who are not literalists, who do the most shaping and rewriting. Now, I would argue that this is still not the same as writing a novel, but it’s a skill that I would agree is in need of more recognition. (It’s also one involving a degree of license that can be easily abused-I still remember with horror a French translation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere that I bought in Paris and struggled through back when my French was not so poor; the idiot translator had moved huge chunks of text around and added entirely new scenes. Sacrilege!) So yes, I would say that we should celebrate good translators, and put their names on the covers of books, and mention them in more than a cursory way in reviews, whenever possible. It’s either that or learn lots and lots of other languages.
...I wish I could do the latter, honestly, because when I start to think too much about how I’ve never really read Murakami or Marías or Tolstoy-not as they were really written, not truly-I start to feel panicky, like an existential crisis might be coming on. Um. When those instant language-learning chips become available, sign me right up.
46. Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin - Beautiful and heartbreaking-one of those classics that, upon reading for the first time, you can’t believe you haven’t read already. Baldwin combines many elements that I love in this subtle, restrained story: it’s all repressed gay ex-pats-sort of like a Henry James novel, if Henry James had actually been able to write about what he was actually writing about. This book probably deserves a more reverent write-up than that, but I have my own Jamesish moments, and true reverence makes me white-lightning uncomfortable.
Anyway, enough about me: you should read this.
47. Life After Life, Paul Jepson & Tony Parker - A play about people serving life sentences for murder in England, assembled from interviews with actual prisoners; in form in reminded me somewhat of The Laramie Project. Like Laramie, this play is effective and disturbing because it forces you to view people you might otherwise find repugnant as people: you sympathize and feel repulsed by them in turn, often within moments of each other.
48. Ramayana: Divine Loophole, Sanjay Patel - Fun and deeply vibrant illustrated adaptation of the Hindu epic. I will save analysis of the source text for folks better educated than I, and simply say that Patel’s art is immensely enjoyable, and that as the X-Men will also support, blue people are hot when James Cameron isn’t making them part of something politically and racially skeevy.
49. The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak - This book took me by complete surprise. I picked it up simply because Shafak was coming to read at my store; after the first few pages, which contain some painfully clunky prose, I was not particularly encouraged. However, I continued to give the book a chance, and for once it paid off. There are two parallel stories in this book: that of the relationship between the poet Rumi and the mystic Shams of Tabriz, and a contemporary narrative about a Jewish housewife in a failing marriage who falls in love, through letters, with a modern Sufi. Both, to my shock, ended up moving me considerably.
I don’t generally think of myself a spiritual person, but I was genuinely touched by the lives and beliefs of the characters in this book. Shams, as Shafak presents him, is an irresistible character, both impish and wise, and his relationship with Rumi rang my EPIC FRIENDSHIP bell like crazy. So while the writing in this book, on a nuts-and-bolts level, didn’t always work for me, the characters, general atmosphere, and message definitely did. It’s inspired me to read some of Rumi’s poetry, which is quite beautiful; I’d like to learn more about Sufism as well. Book recommendations, anybody?
50. Bill Bryson’s African Diary, Bill Bryson - More like Bill Bryson’s African Pamphlet. Fun for what it is, and very Brysony, but oh-so-very thin. However, all proceeds from sales of this book go to a good cause, so I’d recommend either thinking of the book as a gift-with-donation, or getting it from the library.
Total Books: 50/197