Not that it seems like it; according to this I haven't read any books between May 8 and May 19 - but I have!
It's just that one of them I can't talk about, and then I'm in the middle of a couple of them so no single one gets finished.
But I did finish (and start) In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters. It was pretty good, especially for YA, I think - there were some "magical" elements, but also a lot about WWI and the Spanish Flu, and I thought the author did a nice job of incorporating her research and really setting the scene nicely. The story itself wasn't all that fascinating. An intriguing main character, and then some (not so) mysterious shenanigans.
Basically, she's the daughter of a man arrested for aiding draft dodgers and flees from Portland to her aunt in San Diego, where her childhood best friend / blossoming first love lived before he enlisted. Nobody's heard anything from him, then they hear he's dead, then he starts haunting her (after in a fit of rage at the desperation and hopelessness of life she goes and gets herself electrocuted) and it turns out things are not what they seem. Except...they kind of are. While I appreciated that in the end we didn't get the happy ending I thought was coming, the "twist" at the end wasn't much of one...unless the audience is supposed to spend the whole book yelling at the protagonist, "open your eyes, girlie!!" (I dunno, girlie seems period-appropriate). But I really did like Mary Shelley Black as the heroine - she loves science (and it's believable, not totally anachronistic, and not overly feisty) and does the right thing even when it's hard and/or dangerous.
Could be the start of a series - at least, MSB seemed way too well drawn, but also with hints at future developments, for a one-off. Not that a character in a non-series book couldn't or wouldn't be well-drawn, there's just something about it that feels like the author is setting her up for future escapades.
One major problem, though - the ghost non-sex sex scene was just LUDICROUS. I mean, seriously. So silly. And yet still a million times less stupid / hotter than the random 10-seconds-of-dry-humping orgasm in Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, so that's something.
And they day before I finished a really good - although not as excellent as I had hoped - book, which I can't talk about because it was an advance copy I got my hands on.
Showing posts with label YA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label YA. Show all posts
Monday, May 20, 2013
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Randoms
Today I read, in its entirety, Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. It was fine. Mostly I just had to power through it because I remembered this morning that I had signed up for a book club on it tomorrow evening... The story, about a young woman in the late thirties in New York, was interesting, and the main character and her friend were engaging. Interestingly, the male characters, in this book written by a man, all come across as pretty two dimensional. It's clear the author has a real interest in the culture (literature, art, and music) of the time, and took an interest in working it into the book in a significant but not obtrusive way. He never really explains enough about the protagonist's background, though, to account for her knowledge of the same. At one point near the end of the book a character explicitly says what much of the rest of the tale has been saying, that the main character, a bright, thoughtful, intellectually curious and informed young woman, is unusual in not being a drudge or housewife but pursuing a career instead. It's true, but I'm not sure that the life the author has mapped out for her can come about just through force of character and personality - I wanted to know, at least a little, or even just have acknowledged, how the daughter of a singe, Russian immigrant father is so familiar with some of the cultural aspects she translates into a better life...
The writing was quite good, though; there were some fantastic lines, and overall it was a very clean, bright, sharp prose, if not particularly lean.
I also finished Susan Hill's The Betrayal of Trust, which I read over the weekend. I do love a good English mystery, and this was one; well-written, anyway, for sure, and a decent plot although I did start too feel like there were too many story lines that were twisting around one another but not actually tying together. The "who dunnit" part was also pretty obvious. I picked it up at the Overlook Press table at the AWP on the recommendation of the two guys that were working there, and they said it was their favorite in the series. I am wondering if maybe the author is really just writing a long series about one man, and the people around him, and he just happens to be a policeman who solves crimes...
Grabbed a bunch of books at their table, though, because the guys were friendly and helpful, and the books seemed interesting and for the most part I really liked the covers. This is the first one I've read, and while I do think there were some sad copy-editing mistakes (including one on the back cover - that must EAT at them), I have high hopes.
Speaking of expectations AND English policemen who solve mysteries in series just as much concerned with their personal lives, last weekend I read Elizabeth George's The Edge of Nowhere. Unlike her other books - and what I thought I was picking up from the library - this was not an Inspector Lynley mystery. It was, I guess, a mystery of sorts, but it's also a somewhat paranormal teen romance adventure story? The story is set in the Pacific Northwest, and George does a fantastic job of describing the setting, but she doesn't know how to replicate teenagers' words. I may still read the next ones in teh series whenever they come out, but I hope she gets back to Lynley - and Havers!
The writing was quite good, though; there were some fantastic lines, and overall it was a very clean, bright, sharp prose, if not particularly lean.
I also finished Susan Hill's The Betrayal of Trust, which I read over the weekend. I do love a good English mystery, and this was one; well-written, anyway, for sure, and a decent plot although I did start too feel like there were too many story lines that were twisting around one another but not actually tying together. The "who dunnit" part was also pretty obvious. I picked it up at the Overlook Press table at the AWP on the recommendation of the two guys that were working there, and they said it was their favorite in the series. I am wondering if maybe the author is really just writing a long series about one man, and the people around him, and he just happens to be a policeman who solves crimes...
Grabbed a bunch of books at their table, though, because the guys were friendly and helpful, and the books seemed interesting and for the most part I really liked the covers. This is the first one I've read, and while I do think there were some sad copy-editing mistakes (including one on the back cover - that must EAT at them), I have high hopes.
Speaking of expectations AND English policemen who solve mysteries in series just as much concerned with their personal lives, last weekend I read Elizabeth George's The Edge of Nowhere. Unlike her other books - and what I thought I was picking up from the library - this was not an Inspector Lynley mystery. It was, I guess, a mystery of sorts, but it's also a somewhat paranormal teen romance adventure story? The story is set in the Pacific Northwest, and George does a fantastic job of describing the setting, but she doesn't know how to replicate teenagers' words. I may still read the next ones in teh series whenever they come out, but I hope she gets back to Lynley - and Havers!
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Orgies
Of reading, obviously.
I plowed through a ton of books this week/end, at least that's what it feels like.
Started Justice Sotomayor's memoir, but I was taking cold medicine for most of the last week, so I didn't want to really get into it, excited as I was to get my hands on it. So more on that later, when I really read it.
What I DID read, and is perfect for when you're not feeling great and spending a lot of time curled up in bed, was the latest Agent Pendergast book, Two Graves. It's pretty much what you'd expect - actually, it's exactly what you'd expect - but that's just fine - it's what I wanted. I will say, I give Preston & Child credit for not recapping the first two books in the trilogy (to say nothing of the entire Pendergast series), and basically just jumping into this particular story. It was schlocky, belief-stretching fun, although way over the top, of course. But who doesn't love when a Nazi hive gets blown up?
After Two Graves I continued on in the same vein with The Third Gate, by half of the same duo, in this case Lincoln Child. It was...fine? It's set at an Egyptian archaeological dig site, so maybe I was extra harsh, given my childhood love for the subject, but I felt like there were a lot of flaws. like the Preston & Child books, a LOT was crammed in - lots of different plot strands, random comments about cars and guns and machines that are maybe boy-brain-action-porn, but weren't doing it for me, and waaaay too much description of the man-made physical setting. Now, about that last maybe part of that is how I read. I generally don't "see" what's being described in my mind's eye, at least not always at the level of detail given, so when you go on and on about how the joists of a particular platform are connected, I get bored. But I think most people would have in this case.
The biggest problem was the huge twist at the end, or at least what I suppose was meant to be a huge twist, was super obvious and I saw it coming right away. Then again, I saw it coming because of clues in the text, so maybe we were supposed to get it, and then saying "you idiots! Don't you see?" to the characters would have ramped up the tension. But instead I just said "you idiots" and then was mildly annoyed when the revelation hit them, because I had been waiting for so long.
The end of the book, too, just seemed very abrupt and unsatisfying. Well, not unsatisfying, because I didn't want anything more, but not satisfying either.
Finished that yesterday, Saturday late afternoon, then started a book called The Apothecary's House (Adrian Mathews) - fine, about art stolen by the Nazis, but it was sloooooow going, so I gave it up, since I started it around 11 p.m. (stayed in last night, long story), and wanted something fast and easy.
So then I flew through another book with NO twist (although, again, when it's that obvious, is it even meant to be a twist?) and a really abrupt and in this case very unsatisfying ending, The Poison Diaries by Maryrose Wood (and inspired by, or something, the work of the Duchess of Northumberland). It's a slim YA book about a girl in eighteenth century England whose father is an herbalist who keeps a locked garden of poisonous plants and about a mysterious young man (heh, I feel cheesy just writing that, but there's no other way) - who's also hot, obviously - who comes to live with them. The main character, even the two main characters, are appealing, and there's so much room in the plot to really explore, but virtually nothing happens and what does happen is incredibly obvious.
And, maybe this is a YA thing, but much like when I watch The Vampire Diaries or Pretty Little Liars on TV, I just want to scream/scold "you stupid adolescent idiot - just TALK to him/her/them and you'll get this all figured out a million times sooner than if you run around trying to do everything on your own and secretly." I guess wisdom comes with age.
Then the end is just like "okay, and now we're done. The end." Dunno. Found myself wishing a better author had taken the same story and made an adult novel out of it.
So then it was 1:30 a.m. (I read it in under 90 minutes), and I had napped from 5:30-7 p.m., so I was awake, so I sped through Lauren Willig's The Mischief of the Mistletoe, which is just such a sweet, adorable little thing (well, almost 400 pages, so maybe not that little...but they are small pages), and then I was happy again, so I went to bed.
N.B. - looked up The Poison Diaries to the author, and it looks like it's the first in a series. So that may account for the abrupt ending.
I plowed through a ton of books this week/end, at least that's what it feels like.
Started Justice Sotomayor's memoir, but I was taking cold medicine for most of the last week, so I didn't want to really get into it, excited as I was to get my hands on it. So more on that later, when I really read it.
What I DID read, and is perfect for when you're not feeling great and spending a lot of time curled up in bed, was the latest Agent Pendergast book, Two Graves. It's pretty much what you'd expect - actually, it's exactly what you'd expect - but that's just fine - it's what I wanted. I will say, I give Preston & Child credit for not recapping the first two books in the trilogy (to say nothing of the entire Pendergast series), and basically just jumping into this particular story. It was schlocky, belief-stretching fun, although way over the top, of course. But who doesn't love when a Nazi hive gets blown up?
After Two Graves I continued on in the same vein with The Third Gate, by half of the same duo, in this case Lincoln Child. It was...fine? It's set at an Egyptian archaeological dig site, so maybe I was extra harsh, given my childhood love for the subject, but I felt like there were a lot of flaws. like the Preston & Child books, a LOT was crammed in - lots of different plot strands, random comments about cars and guns and machines that are maybe boy-brain-action-porn, but weren't doing it for me, and waaaay too much description of the man-made physical setting. Now, about that last maybe part of that is how I read. I generally don't "see" what's being described in my mind's eye, at least not always at the level of detail given, so when you go on and on about how the joists of a particular platform are connected, I get bored. But I think most people would have in this case.
The biggest problem was the huge twist at the end, or at least what I suppose was meant to be a huge twist, was super obvious and I saw it coming right away. Then again, I saw it coming because of clues in the text, so maybe we were supposed to get it, and then saying "you idiots! Don't you see?" to the characters would have ramped up the tension. But instead I just said "you idiots" and then was mildly annoyed when the revelation hit them, because I had been waiting for so long.
The end of the book, too, just seemed very abrupt and unsatisfying. Well, not unsatisfying, because I didn't want anything more, but not satisfying either.
Finished that yesterday, Saturday late afternoon, then started a book called The Apothecary's House (Adrian Mathews) - fine, about art stolen by the Nazis, but it was sloooooow going, so I gave it up, since I started it around 11 p.m. (stayed in last night, long story), and wanted something fast and easy.
So then I flew through another book with NO twist (although, again, when it's that obvious, is it even meant to be a twist?) and a really abrupt and in this case very unsatisfying ending, The Poison Diaries by Maryrose Wood (and inspired by, or something, the work of the Duchess of Northumberland). It's a slim YA book about a girl in eighteenth century England whose father is an herbalist who keeps a locked garden of poisonous plants and about a mysterious young man (heh, I feel cheesy just writing that, but there's no other way) - who's also hot, obviously - who comes to live with them. The main character, even the two main characters, are appealing, and there's so much room in the plot to really explore, but virtually nothing happens and what does happen is incredibly obvious.
And, maybe this is a YA thing, but much like when I watch The Vampire Diaries or Pretty Little Liars on TV, I just want to scream/scold "you stupid adolescent idiot - just TALK to him/her/them and you'll get this all figured out a million times sooner than if you run around trying to do everything on your own and secretly." I guess wisdom comes with age.
Then the end is just like "okay, and now we're done. The end." Dunno. Found myself wishing a better author had taken the same story and made an adult novel out of it.
So then it was 1:30 a.m. (I read it in under 90 minutes), and I had napped from 5:30-7 p.m., so I was awake, so I sped through Lauren Willig's The Mischief of the Mistletoe, which is just such a sweet, adorable little thing (well, almost 400 pages, so maybe not that little...but they are small pages), and then I was happy again, so I went to bed.
N.B. - looked up The Poison Diaries to the author, and it looks like it's the first in a series. So that may account for the abrupt ending.
Friday, January 4, 2013
Cleaning house - Beauty Queens
Another Young Adult book!
This one is Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray.
I first read Bray's trilogy about girls playing with magic - and then losing control of it - at a boarding school at the close of the nineteenth century. It was a while ago, so I don't think I talked about it (or the later ones?), but I loved the title when I walked by the book one day (A Great and Terrible Beauty) and there were elements that seemed, and were, appealing.
Besides also being about teenage girls, and teenage girls facing up to serious crises, Beauty Queens is totally different, but I still really enjoyed it. This one is about a bunch of beauty pageant contestants stranded on a desert island, and forced to survive on their wits and handiness with a curling iron and homemade tanning beds. Just that premise alone would be funny enough, and Bray is definitely funny. But then she adds on to it a Corporation, with its hand in every pie in America - corporate, political - that needs to take out the teen queens before they ruin its plans to infiltrate a small dictatorship and the rest of America it doesn't yet own.
The overall book isn't quite as hilarious as it thinks it is. The "inserts," fake ads for Corporation products, get to be a little much, and feel a bit like heated over Fforde (then again, even Jasper Fforde re-hashes are still better than a lot of other stuff), but not really a problem. One character, the leader of the pageant pack, is just hilarious, utterly memorable. The character who I think is supposed to be the main character wasn't my favorite, but she has some good moments. What I really liked about the book, puns and lame-awesome jokes aside, is that all of the main characters actually grow and develop, not just one or two. It's really a ensemble piece, and Bray's girls are a strong team. And since they are, of course they thrive and then start kicking some a**.The lessons are kind of predictable, but it doesn't matter; even if we know where we're going, there are some twists along the way, and getting there is fun (secret bad-guy lair in a volcano!).
I'm still waiting to get my hands on Bray's other book, Going Bovine, but so far we're 4 for 4!
This one is Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray.
I first read Bray's trilogy about girls playing with magic - and then losing control of it - at a boarding school at the close of the nineteenth century. It was a while ago, so I don't think I talked about it (or the later ones?), but I loved the title when I walked by the book one day (A Great and Terrible Beauty) and there were elements that seemed, and were, appealing.
Besides also being about teenage girls, and teenage girls facing up to serious crises, Beauty Queens is totally different, but I still really enjoyed it. This one is about a bunch of beauty pageant contestants stranded on a desert island, and forced to survive on their wits and handiness with a curling iron and homemade tanning beds. Just that premise alone would be funny enough, and Bray is definitely funny. But then she adds on to it a Corporation, with its hand in every pie in America - corporate, political - that needs to take out the teen queens before they ruin its plans to infiltrate a small dictatorship and the rest of America it doesn't yet own.
The overall book isn't quite as hilarious as it thinks it is. The "inserts," fake ads for Corporation products, get to be a little much, and feel a bit like heated over Fforde (then again, even Jasper Fforde re-hashes are still better than a lot of other stuff), but not really a problem. One character, the leader of the pageant pack, is just hilarious, utterly memorable. The character who I think is supposed to be the main character wasn't my favorite, but she has some good moments. What I really liked about the book, puns and lame-awesome jokes aside, is that all of the main characters actually grow and develop, not just one or two. It's really a ensemble piece, and Bray's girls are a strong team. And since they are, of course they thrive and then start kicking some a**.The lessons are kind of predictable, but it doesn't matter; even if we know where we're going, there are some twists along the way, and getting there is fun (secret bad-guy lair in a volcano!).
I'm still waiting to get my hands on Bray's other book, Going Bovine, but so far we're 4 for 4!
Cleaning house - Grave Mercy
I've been going a little nutty at the BPL/Copley recently, so I've got to get down some notes about stuff and then get rid of the books - my bookcase & bedside table are overflowing!
A long time ago (shortly after my trip to San Diego, so mid- to late-November?) I read the first installment in the "His Fair Assassin" series, Grave Mercy (Robin LaFevers, 2012). Normally a paranormal young adult book would not exactly be up my alley, but there was an intriguing review in the New York Times, and the idea of a band of teenage girl assassins running around fifteenth-century Brittany is kind of hilarious.
The protagonist, Ismae, is a young woman who was nearly aborted by her mother and left with horrible scars and is more or less an outcast from her village and abused by her father. After she's sold in marriage to a boor who attempts to rape her, and she violently defends herself, she is packed off, through the aid of some semi-mysterious semi-strangers, to an island abbey where she is healed and then taught that she was actually fathered by the god of death (more or less), who the initiates of the abbey serve, travelling throughout the countryside killing people who need to be killed.
Ismae, as it turns out, is naturally immune to poison, so she's apprenticed to the poison-mistress, as well as being trained in martial arts, stiletto-play, and seduction (glossed over). Of course, just how you know (or the abbess knows) who needs to be killed is a bit trickier, as Ismae learns when she is sent on her first assignment, to the court of Anne of Brittany. And of course the hot-but-grumpy guy she has to both work with and spy on, Anne's b*stard half-brother, complicates things too.
There were a lot of cute, snappy little one liners and the politics of the court read believably, although I only know the very barest of outlines of the actual history, so I couldn't speak to the author's accuracy. The romantic angle was suuuuper predictable, but it didn't distract too much from the main (or other) story line. Hell, I just like titular puns :)
Overall, I'm definitely going to try to remember to read the next book in the series when it comes out in April.
A long time ago (shortly after my trip to San Diego, so mid- to late-November?) I read the first installment in the "His Fair Assassin" series, Grave Mercy (Robin LaFevers, 2012). Normally a paranormal young adult book would not exactly be up my alley, but there was an intriguing review in the New York Times, and the idea of a band of teenage girl assassins running around fifteenth-century Brittany is kind of hilarious.
The protagonist, Ismae, is a young woman who was nearly aborted by her mother and left with horrible scars and is more or less an outcast from her village and abused by her father. After she's sold in marriage to a boor who attempts to rape her, and she violently defends herself, she is packed off, through the aid of some semi-mysterious semi-strangers, to an island abbey where she is healed and then taught that she was actually fathered by the god of death (more or less), who the initiates of the abbey serve, travelling throughout the countryside killing people who need to be killed.
Ismae, as it turns out, is naturally immune to poison, so she's apprenticed to the poison-mistress, as well as being trained in martial arts, stiletto-play, and seduction (glossed over). Of course, just how you know (or the abbess knows) who needs to be killed is a bit trickier, as Ismae learns when she is sent on her first assignment, to the court of Anne of Brittany. And of course the hot-but-grumpy guy she has to both work with and spy on, Anne's b*stard half-brother, complicates things too.
There were a lot of cute, snappy little one liners and the politics of the court read believably, although I only know the very barest of outlines of the actual history, so I couldn't speak to the author's accuracy. The romantic angle was suuuuper predictable, but it didn't distract too much from the main (or other) story line. Hell, I just like titular puns :)
Overall, I'm definitely going to try to remember to read the next book in the series when it comes out in April.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)