subdee

I thinnnnnk I've read twenty-one books since last bookblog -- six fiction and fifteen nonfiction -- but I dunno, I could be forgetting a few. Anyway, fiction in this post, non-fiction in the next, though really I want to crawl into a hole and not blog the nonfiction at all. (Laziness, or cowardice? You decide!)

The Ministry of Pain, Dubravka Ugresic
Good book: complicated, insightful, and disturbing. ^^ The narrator, Tanja Lucić, has a doctorate in Serb/Croat/Slovene/Albanian/Macedonian literature (taught together for political reasons -- or is it for political reasons that they are now taught apart?). When Yugoslavia starts to dissolve, she leaves Zagreb with her husband, a Serb professor of mathematics. They live in Germany for a few years before her husband is offered a position in Japan. Tanja refuses to go with him. Instead, they separate, and she moves to Amsterdam, where she's offered a temporary position teaching Serbo-Croatian literature at the University of Amsterdam. Her students are mostly fellow-exiles not much older than she is, and many are taking her course as a cover for their student visas, while also working low-wage jobs as housecleaners or assemblers of cheap bondage gear.

That's the set-up. The story is about Tanja's occasionally misguided attempts to use the class as a springboard for sharing memories of the old Yugoslavia, and about her relationships with her students and with Amsterdam. Plus, some really shocking events later on, which I won't spoil for you. The main draw of this book are the essays Tanja composes in her head about The Yugoslav Exile Experience. ( Read more... )


The Will of the Empress, Tamora Pierce
Finally, a return to form! I knew I liked Tamora Pierce for a reason. What's great about this book is that the Empress -- technically the villain -- is an admirable character, unexpectedly. It's like...Sandry is anti-Empress because she's been successfully undermining the nobility, and now has her eyes on Sandry's hereditary estate. But at the same time, there's no denying that her reign has been very, very good for the Empire.

Oh right, plot. Sandry goes north to inspect her ancestral lands in Namorn, and Tris, Briar, and Daja go with her. Court intrigue, moral lessons ensue. Namorn is kind of like Imperial Russia, but not really. ( Things I liked, things I didn't like )

The End by Lemony Snickett.
Paged through purely out of curiosity XD I read The Bad Beginning and The Reptile Room a few years ago, when you could still buy them in paperback. Though I liked the author's challenge-the-reader approach and dark sense of humor, I didn't continue...not sure why. Maybe because the plot did, indeed, consist of one horrible event following after another in sequence.

The End: not so great when read alone, but seems like a good end to the series. On the surface, it's about finding the antidote to a deadly fungus before everyone dies, but really it's about facing unpleasant truths and not settling for easy, ignorant, drugged happiness; doing what's right even when the (short-term) result is conflict; taking responsibility; and thinking independently. All of which themes are POUNDED INTO THE HEAD OF THE READER by the last chapter, but that's okay -- it is a children's book.

Now that the series is over, maybe I'll go back and read from the beginning...no, probably not.

***

Ah, company! Sorry, got to go. TO BE CONTINUED IN NEXT POST:

English, August
Things Fall Apart
The Things They Carried

And THEN the nonfiction. *dies*

Keiki has a deadpan sense of humor. Less prissy, more dryly sarcastic. Meanwhile Rakushun is nawght but simple country folk if he don't say so himself. It definitely works but at the same time it's kind of disorienting: weren't these characters different in the Japanese? Or am I wrong? I haven't read the original so this is just going by gut and, and second-hand reports of excessive keigo usage, not to mention canis_m's Yoko/Keiki fanfics.

Here's what I mean:

( Keiki )
( Rakushun )

Which is to say, it does work. It might not even be that far off: what do I know, anyway?

As long as I've written this much I might as well do Shoryu and Enki:

( Shoryu and Enki )

I'd planned to talk a little about chapters 4-8 here, but this is getting a little long. (Aha.) Guess I'll save it for next time. (Homework, what's that?)

Okay so I couldn't resist after all. Worry about papers tomorrow, read today! I've been at it for three hours and I'm 150 pages in, with 309 left to go. It's not as long as it sounds -- the pages are small (tokyopop-sized) and the print is large, so there are probably only around 250 words per page. It's also a very easy read, slightly easier than Diana Wynn Jones, definitely easier than Tanith Lee. I just happen to be an extremely slow reader. (You wouldn't believe how long it takes me to read for class. Four-five hours a day, these days.)

Oh right, The Sea of Shadows is the first novel in Fuyumi Ono's Twelve Kingdoms series, translated by by everyone's favorite videogame dialog artist Alexander O. Smith (should I wave?) and adapted into English by Elye J. Alexander. If I had to say in one line what Sea of Shadows is about, I'd say it's about learning to live up to your potential -- in this case, learning to be a kick-ass assertive female lead.

( Comments )
( Favorite scenes from the first three chapters )

Annnd the the computer lab people are kicking me out, so I'll stop here. Spoileriffic commentary to come once I've finished the book.

EDIT- Got to the end and I've got a host of things to talk about, but for now I'll just say this: did Keiki have that kind of personality in the original? I submit that he did not.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
Twelve Kingdoms (novel translation)
Pearl Pink
Mushishi

Quick comments on some others:

Land of the Blindfolded: This got really, really good in volumes 5-8, but sadly the author backs off in the final volume and returns to WAFF (and what’s worse, “standard” oneshot storylines). Still, it was fun.

NANA: Binged up to the latest chapter and ugh. It’s dragging, the mangaka’s started to draw flashbacks and future-flashes with no warning (confusing!) and above all I’m getting really annoyed with the treatment of the female characters. On the other hand it’s fun reading about a “punk” band who have become stars before even releasing an album, and the endless rounds of gameshows they’re replaced their musical careers with. And their fanclub, OH MY GOD. It’s run like a paramilitary organization, I’m really not kidding.

Overall I think NANA’s main selling point is “realism” and that it’s a pretty realistic look at the Japanese music industry, though dramatized, of course. I like the way the relationships are handled, where they don’t go in foreseeable directions. But I liked Parakiss better because it was a lot tighter.

Silver Diamond: What I love most about this series is that every chapter is sixty pages long with tons of dialog. So when a new chapter comes out, I can enjoy it for up to twenty minutes before I get to the end and have to suffer waiting for the next one. ^__^

What makes it really great is that the mangaka doesn’t forget anything. I hear she only plans two or three chapters in advance? But considering the size of the chapters this is like planning an entire volume in advance. Anyway I’m horribly tempted to make yet another One Piece comparison even though I’m pretty sure I went over my quota, like, months ago. It’s that solid.

Silver Diamond, by the way, is the mildest of mild BL. It’s a fantasy set in another world where clouds cover the sun, but it never rains, so all the plants are dying and the world is slowly turning into a desert. Also: guns, clocks, and flashlights grow on trees. The Prince is secretly a demon sucking the life out of everything, but luckily there is this high school student, Rakan, who looks just like him but lives in our world. (Hobbies include: cooking, cleaning, laundry) Rakkan has the ability to make plants grow. One day, the semi-immortal “monstrous traitor” Senrou Chigusa falls through a hole between the worlds to land in Rakan’s flower garden, and…

Originally published at SD Alternative. You can comment here or there.

( a list )

Comments!

( Bleach )
( Land of the Blindfolded )
( NANA )
( Silver Diamond (spoilers for chapter 16) )