Back in NJ, massive bookblogging
Aug. 26th, 2005 12:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedBalance, part 1 of 5. Go. Read. Now. It’s like there was an Hikaru-no-Go-swordmen-AU-written by-![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tarigwaemir shaped hole in my heart, and now it has been filled. My life is complete!
Ah, New Jersey! So good to see you again! Been back since Monday but was mostly locked up in the website and dentistry.
The website: has my name and photograph and address and résumé and two pages describing my personal and professional growth this summer (kdsjfhlskd what kind of crap requirement is that? It’s almost as bad as “must be entitled: sponsored by motorola” as if this isn’t my webspace, for which I have been paying for the last two years).
It’s also exactly where my fan-website used to be. Goodbye,anonymity wishful thinking.
Re-watched the end of original Gundam and all of Crest of the Stars; totally an avoidance and displacement mechanism for the Legend of Galactic Heroes drabbles I’m failing to write. But it was easier than dealing with Logh's kilometers of subtitles and anyway Crest of the Stars is worth re-watching. (Gundam? Ummmm. The Herr-Zabi-as-Hitler scene still makes me cringe.)
IN ANY CASE bookblogging. Thank-God-I’ve-always-been-able-to-read-in-the-car edition!
Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Ugh, it's full of ridiculous engineering metaphors. "Slipping away like a bubble in a fast-fuel crystal mold at low temperature" or something like that (I don't have the book in front of me right now). In a way I’m happy to see science considered as art, in the same way the main character, an engineer, is happy that the textbooks spend as long on a bridge as they do on a war. Overall, though, I’m not that happy because I am not that fond of engineers; and this sums up my feelings for the book as a whole.
Story of the book: MAIN CHARACTER is hired to teach safety at a space station so far away from civilization there are no laws, only company regulations. He finds a new race, created by the company, of four-armed people with no legs – useful for no-gravity work. And saves them from “decommission” when they become not-profitable. It’s a great premise and it’s got some great moments – for the most part, riffing on corporate bureaucracy and the kind of casual, petty evil that writes off the destruction of 20,000 sentient beings as a “bad investment.”
Mostly, though, I thought the approach was too narrow. I didn’t want to see grand ethics reduced to an engineering problem. I also wasn’t fond of the main character and his constant, “wow, I must really be a megalomaniac!” comments. Because, yeah, he was. Did he have to be so, so...self-aware, as well?
This is my first time reading Lois McMaster Bujold. I’ll probably pick up a few more just because I liked the premise of this one so much.
Prince of the Blood by Raymond E. Feist
Terrible. Garbage, junk, terrible, don’t read it. Good thing I bought it half-price. I wonder if they’ll buy it back?
Points:
1) I bought it for the cover, which was very pretty pretty and vaguely Arabian.
2) And gave it a head start because the main characters are a pair of irresponsible twins. But I hate being asked to like characters just ‘cuz of who their daddy is, and that is the feeling I get here.
3) To be fair, this is the third book in a series and I haven’t read the first two. Maybe that’s why the characterizations don’t make sense? There’s a royal arms master, for instance, who is I think meant to be a Gurney-Hallack-warrior-poet type. But he’s also supposed to be a thief saved from the streets by the current king, so half the time he speaks in clichés (the author’s approximation of Deep) and the other half, in rough slang. Very uneven.
4) The writing is awful. I though Raymond Feist couldn’t be that bad since he had almost two shelves to himself, but clearly I underestimated the market for royalist dreck.
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
This is a classic, and deservedly so. Starts with a description of Chandrapore; continues to the arrival of two Englishwomen; moves in a leisurely manner to the main plot, which is an inexplicable and potentially fatal muddle between the educated Indians and the Anglo-Indians. (“Muddle” is favorite word of the author.) Like pretty much every book written by an occupying British army officer it condemns English involvement in India, mostly in the silences. It’s like, the sentence goes this far and then the reader fills in the obvious moral conclusion.
The beginning is classic horror. Ordinary things, meaningless things, become terrifying; every step is a chance at a misstep. It’s very well written. A large part of why I read books-in-translation is to avoid Princes of the Blood-type writing, clichés arranged into the semblance of sentences. This book's better than a translation, because it’s got that same freshness of metaphor (credited by the author to Indian English), but it was written by a native English speaker so there’s no loss of meaning or awkwardness.
I wasn’t as impressed by the plot. I liked the tension in the beginning, the idea that there could be trouble at any moment and for any reason, more than I liked the trouble itself. Too existentialist! (I like exisitentialism in moderation. But when a strange, uncharacteristic mood continues for hundreds of pages? It gave me a headache. (Or maybe that was just carsickness. XD But I don't accept that people do things for no reason. If you can't ind the reason, it's not because there is no reason, it's because you aren't looking hard enough.)) I did like the ending. I wonder if that wasn't a comfort-level thing; I really hope not.
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Follows the career of Nitta Sayuri of Kyoto, born Sakamoto Chiyou of Yoroiden. You can tell her profession is in trouble by the way so many characters -- even wealthy ones -- can’t appreciate the subtleties of her craft. XD. It doesn’t make any statements, but then again it never claims to. It’s a well-written, well-researched book on an interesting subject.
Something I liked:
The writing, especially when taken in small chunks. The book reads a bit like a collection of drabbles all strung together. Not the hundred-word-exactly type, of course; but the author’s really good at poignant endings and beginnings, and that's something I associate with drabbles.
Something I didn’t like:
The framing. The conceit is that Sayuri, who is one of the most famous Geisha ever, is dictating the book. So it starts with a translator’s foreword, and every now and the Sayuri will speak directly to the audience. So far, so good. Then it ends in a way I’d never have expected, without an afterward. It was like, here’s a row of books with only one bookend. I don’t think I can emphasize how much better it would have been if the author had only included a fake afterword to round things off.
The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Another book where the reader is left to fill things in. I can’t believe it took me so long to get around to it. It’s short and fun and unexpected! I can’t think of anyone who won’t like it. The author isn’t autistic, but has worked with autistic children for many years. It’s genuine – genuine enough, at least – and highly entertaining.
Also, I could do all the math problems. XD.
Right now I’m reading The Book of Salt by Monique Truong. Set in Paris; includes famous literary figures and lots and lots of food metaphors. Perfect! I thought. But for about the first thirty pages I couldn’t stand it, because the main guy is a girl and the writing is extremely claustrophobic, full of things that are supposed to be deep but aren’t.
Then I realized that the guy is not a girl but is a gay French-pastry chef, and that the writing is actually an excellent approximation of someone who can only talk to themselves because they don’t know enough French to talk to anyone else. And then I started to really like it.
Alex: So what you’re saying is, you thought it was bad until you realized it was supposed to be bad, and now you think it’s so good at being bad that it’s good?
Me: Exactly!
tarigwaemir shaped hole in my heart, and now it has been filled. My life is complete!Ah, New Jersey! So good to see you again! Been back since Monday but was mostly locked up in the website and dentistry.
The website: has my name and photograph and address and résumé and two pages describing my personal and professional growth this summer (kdsjfhlskd what kind of crap requirement is that? It’s almost as bad as “must be entitled: sponsored by motorola” as if this isn’t my webspace, for which I have been paying for the last two years).
It’s also exactly where my fan-website used to be. Goodbye,
Re-watched the end of original Gundam and all of Crest of the Stars; totally an avoidance and displacement mechanism for the Legend of Galactic Heroes drabbles I’m failing to write. But it was easier than dealing with Logh's kilometers of subtitles and anyway Crest of the Stars is worth re-watching. (Gundam? Ummmm. The Herr-Zabi-as-Hitler scene still makes me cringe.)
IN ANY CASE bookblogging. Thank-God-I’ve-always-been-able-to-read-in-the-car edition!
Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Ugh, it's full of ridiculous engineering metaphors. "Slipping away like a bubble in a fast-fuel crystal mold at low temperature" or something like that (I don't have the book in front of me right now). In a way I’m happy to see science considered as art, in the same way the main character, an engineer, is happy that the textbooks spend as long on a bridge as they do on a war. Overall, though, I’m not that happy because I am not that fond of engineers; and this sums up my feelings for the book as a whole.
Story of the book: MAIN CHARACTER is hired to teach safety at a space station so far away from civilization there are no laws, only company regulations. He finds a new race, created by the company, of four-armed people with no legs – useful for no-gravity work. And saves them from “decommission” when they become not-profitable. It’s a great premise and it’s got some great moments – for the most part, riffing on corporate bureaucracy and the kind of casual, petty evil that writes off the destruction of 20,000 sentient beings as a “bad investment.”
Mostly, though, I thought the approach was too narrow. I didn’t want to see grand ethics reduced to an engineering problem. I also wasn’t fond of the main character and his constant, “wow, I must really be a megalomaniac!” comments. Because, yeah, he was. Did he have to be so, so...self-aware, as well?
This is my first time reading Lois McMaster Bujold. I’ll probably pick up a few more just because I liked the premise of this one so much.
Prince of the Blood by Raymond E. Feist
Terrible. Garbage, junk, terrible, don’t read it. Good thing I bought it half-price. I wonder if they’ll buy it back?
Points:
1) I bought it for the cover, which was very pretty pretty and vaguely Arabian.
2) And gave it a head start because the main characters are a pair of irresponsible twins. But I hate being asked to like characters just ‘cuz of who their daddy is, and that is the feeling I get here.
3) To be fair, this is the third book in a series and I haven’t read the first two. Maybe that’s why the characterizations don’t make sense? There’s a royal arms master, for instance, who is I think meant to be a Gurney-Hallack-warrior-poet type. But he’s also supposed to be a thief saved from the streets by the current king, so half the time he speaks in clichés (the author’s approximation of Deep) and the other half, in rough slang. Very uneven.
4) The writing is awful. I though Raymond Feist couldn’t be that bad since he had almost two shelves to himself, but clearly I underestimated the market for royalist dreck.
A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
This is a classic, and deservedly so. Starts with a description of Chandrapore; continues to the arrival of two Englishwomen; moves in a leisurely manner to the main plot, which is an inexplicable and potentially fatal muddle between the educated Indians and the Anglo-Indians. (“Muddle” is favorite word of the author.) Like pretty much every book written by an occupying British army officer it condemns English involvement in India, mostly in the silences. It’s like, the sentence goes this far and then the reader fills in the obvious moral conclusion.
The beginning is classic horror. Ordinary things, meaningless things, become terrifying; every step is a chance at a misstep. It’s very well written. A large part of why I read books-in-translation is to avoid Princes of the Blood-type writing, clichés arranged into the semblance of sentences. This book's better than a translation, because it’s got that same freshness of metaphor (credited by the author to Indian English), but it was written by a native English speaker so there’s no loss of meaning or awkwardness.
I wasn’t as impressed by the plot. I liked the tension in the beginning, the idea that there could be trouble at any moment and for any reason, more than I liked the trouble itself. Too existentialist! (I like exisitentialism in moderation. But when a strange, uncharacteristic mood continues for hundreds of pages? It gave me a headache. (Or maybe that was just carsickness. XD But I don't accept that people do things for no reason. If you can't ind the reason, it's not because there is no reason, it's because you aren't looking hard enough.)) I did like the ending. I wonder if that wasn't a comfort-level thing; I really hope not.
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Follows the career of Nitta Sayuri of Kyoto, born Sakamoto Chiyou of Yoroiden. You can tell her profession is in trouble by the way so many characters -- even wealthy ones -- can’t appreciate the subtleties of her craft. XD. It doesn’t make any statements, but then again it never claims to. It’s a well-written, well-researched book on an interesting subject.
Something I liked:
The writing, especially when taken in small chunks. The book reads a bit like a collection of drabbles all strung together. Not the hundred-word-exactly type, of course; but the author’s really good at poignant endings and beginnings, and that's something I associate with drabbles.
Something I didn’t like:
The framing. The conceit is that Sayuri, who is one of the most famous Geisha ever, is dictating the book. So it starts with a translator’s foreword, and every now and the Sayuri will speak directly to the audience. So far, so good. Then it ends in a way I’d never have expected, without an afterward. It was like, here’s a row of books with only one bookend. I don’t think I can emphasize how much better it would have been if the author had only included a fake afterword to round things off.
The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Another book where the reader is left to fill things in. I can’t believe it took me so long to get around to it. It’s short and fun and unexpected! I can’t think of anyone who won’t like it. The author isn’t autistic, but has worked with autistic children for many years. It’s genuine – genuine enough, at least – and highly entertaining.
Also, I could do all the math problems. XD.
Right now I’m reading The Book of Salt by Monique Truong. Set in Paris; includes famous literary figures and lots and lots of food metaphors. Perfect! I thought. But for about the first thirty pages I couldn’t stand it, because the main guy is a girl and the writing is extremely claustrophobic, full of things that are supposed to be deep but aren’t.
Then I realized that the guy is not a girl but is a gay French-pastry chef, and that the writing is actually an excellent approximation of someone who can only talk to themselves because they don’t know enough French to talk to anyone else. And then I started to really like it.
Alex: So what you’re saying is, you thought it was bad until you realized it was supposed to be bad, and now you think it’s so good at being bad that it’s good?
Me: Exactly!