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Dec. 11th, 2005 02:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiercebunnyI've been lazy and haven't kept up on my books read list for awhile. Time to play ketchup.
October
Island by Richard Laymon - A coworker lent me this when I forgot my own book. Basically, a horny young college aged kid and a family of hot babes gets stranded on an island with with a killer on the loose. The kid records the events in his journal as he tries to protect the women and not-so-subtly ogle them. Actually, not that bad. It had a pretty decent sense of humor, was well-paced and a genuinely creepy ending. A pretty good thriller.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke - This is exactly what would happen if you crosse Jane Austen with Harry Potter. I can't think of a better way to describe it. It has all the social comedy of early 19th century writing, but set in a very quotidian world where magic exists. It's a really great fantasy and I'd recommend it to anyone who's a fan of Austen, Rowling or Gaiman, as well.
The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket - I'll be so sad when this series is over, but I can't wait to see how everything ties together. I read somewhere that the author had the intent of telling a children's story with no moral and I kind of wonder if the ending of this book is leading up to that in the next.
Queen of this Realm by Jean Plaidy (reread) - Of all the fictional "memoirs" out there, I think this one about Elizabeth I is one of my favorites. Plaidy does such an excellent job in historical detail and narrative voice, which is something you really notice if you read a lot of her books and you start going over the same events told by different characters. Elizabeth is a wise queen, but her vanity does occasionally affect her perspective. (At any rate, this is a much better portrait of Elizabeth than Phillipa Gregory's latest, The Virgin Queen where Elizabeth is non-ironically weak and indecisive, ugh.)
...in November
The Loves of Charles II by Jean Plaidy- A reprint of three novels set before and during the Restoration. I like the sympathy with which Plaidy regards Charles. He hates conflict so much that he generally refuses to take a stand, he breaks promises as often as he makes them, and he's a shameless womanizer who's considered by his public to have degenerated the morals of court and country, yet Plaidy never condemns him. Instead she focuses on why he is the way he is: Charles understand that inflexibility can be the ruin of a monarch; his genorosity and loyalty; and his preference for religious tolerance in the face of bigoted Puritanism. And if that doesn't have you interested, there's also a beheading, lots of wenching, plague, and scandal out the wazoo.
The Perfumed Sleeve by Laura Joh Rowland - Another in the Sano Ichiro mystery series set in Edo period Japan. This involves Sano having to investigate a powerful councilman's death during what may have been some apparently rough sex. I still like the series, although it has some anachronistic moments, like Sano allowing his wife to go undercover.
Also, I had my first book meltdown of the year so far.
I tried to read The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble and I hated it so much I still can't bring myself to finish it. I'm especially disappointed because there are so few books about Korean history, so I was looking forward to this one. It involves the story about the wife of a Korean prince, who suffered a Caligula-like fit of madness and went around killing people and getting obsessed with clothes and other crazyiness. (You can read about the actual story here, on Joan's Mad Monarchs Series.) I figured mad monarchs usually equal interesting, scandalous story. WRONG. Lady Hong (wife of the insane crown prince) narrates the story from beyond the grave, so she has all kinds of knowledge of things like the internets, Freud , psychotherapy and the like. To me, this just seems like a lazy tactic to avoid having to recreate the details involved with an unfamiliar historical setting. (Granted, there's probably not a lot of source material in English, but still, no excuse.) It breaks the rule every writing teacher forces down her students' throats: show don't tell. The first half of the book is just the crown princess droning on and on about how she couldn't save her crazy ass husband. She's pretty heavyhanded about how her husband's name was Sado, its connotation to sado-masochism, and the fact that he was sad. Gag. The second half of the book involves a middle-aged British academic visiting Korea on conference, reading about Lady Hong's story and having an affair with some famous Dutch anthropologist. At that point, I'd had enough and drove immediately to the bookstore to get the Plaidy book about Charles II and thank jebus, she didn't let me down.
And also, a picture of mini-Blythe amid Japanese miniatures, to cleanse the palate after that last book rant.
October
Island by Richard Laymon - A coworker lent me this when I forgot my own book. Basically, a horny young college aged kid and a family of hot babes gets stranded on an island with with a killer on the loose. The kid records the events in his journal as he tries to protect the women and not-so-subtly ogle them. Actually, not that bad. It had a pretty decent sense of humor, was well-paced and a genuinely creepy ending. A pretty good thriller.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke - This is exactly what would happen if you crosse Jane Austen with Harry Potter. I can't think of a better way to describe it. It has all the social comedy of early 19th century writing, but set in a very quotidian world where magic exists. It's a really great fantasy and I'd recommend it to anyone who's a fan of Austen, Rowling or Gaiman, as well.
The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket - I'll be so sad when this series is over, but I can't wait to see how everything ties together. I read somewhere that the author had the intent of telling a children's story with no moral and I kind of wonder if the ending of this book is leading up to that in the next.
Queen of this Realm by Jean Plaidy (reread) - Of all the fictional "memoirs" out there, I think this one about Elizabeth I is one of my favorites. Plaidy does such an excellent job in historical detail and narrative voice, which is something you really notice if you read a lot of her books and you start going over the same events told by different characters. Elizabeth is a wise queen, but her vanity does occasionally affect her perspective. (At any rate, this is a much better portrait of Elizabeth than Phillipa Gregory's latest, The Virgin Queen where Elizabeth is non-ironically weak and indecisive, ugh.)
...in November
The Loves of Charles II by Jean Plaidy- A reprint of three novels set before and during the Restoration. I like the sympathy with which Plaidy regards Charles. He hates conflict so much that he generally refuses to take a stand, he breaks promises as often as he makes them, and he's a shameless womanizer who's considered by his public to have degenerated the morals of court and country, yet Plaidy never condemns him. Instead she focuses on why he is the way he is: Charles understand that inflexibility can be the ruin of a monarch; his genorosity and loyalty; and his preference for religious tolerance in the face of bigoted Puritanism. And if that doesn't have you interested, there's also a beheading, lots of wenching, plague, and scandal out the wazoo.
The Perfumed Sleeve by Laura Joh Rowland - Another in the Sano Ichiro mystery series set in Edo period Japan. This involves Sano having to investigate a powerful councilman's death during what may have been some apparently rough sex. I still like the series, although it has some anachronistic moments, like Sano allowing his wife to go undercover.
Also, I had my first book meltdown of the year so far.
I tried to read The Red Queen by Margaret Drabble and I hated it so much I still can't bring myself to finish it. I'm especially disappointed because there are so few books about Korean history, so I was looking forward to this one. It involves the story about the wife of a Korean prince, who suffered a Caligula-like fit of madness and went around killing people and getting obsessed with clothes and other crazyiness. (You can read about the actual story here, on Joan's Mad Monarchs Series.) I figured mad monarchs usually equal interesting, scandalous story. WRONG. Lady Hong (wife of the insane crown prince) narrates the story from beyond the grave, so she has all kinds of knowledge of things like the internets, Freud , psychotherapy and the like. To me, this just seems like a lazy tactic to avoid having to recreate the details involved with an unfamiliar historical setting. (Granted, there's probably not a lot of source material in English, but still, no excuse.) It breaks the rule every writing teacher forces down her students' throats: show don't tell. The first half of the book is just the crown princess droning on and on about how she couldn't save her crazy ass husband. She's pretty heavyhanded about how her husband's name was Sado, its connotation to sado-masochism, and the fact that he was sad. Gag. The second half of the book involves a middle-aged British academic visiting Korea on conference, reading about Lady Hong's story and having an affair with some famous Dutch anthropologist. At that point, I'd had enough and drove immediately to the bookstore to get the Plaidy book about Charles II and thank jebus, she didn't let me down.
And also, a picture of mini-Blythe amid Japanese miniatures, to cleanse the palate after that last book rant.
