Bookish Thoughts

And so the Saga continues, and actually takes some big steps forward. Well, maybe not big steps. But steps nonetheless. First, though, it backs up. The ending of the second volume jumped forward a week or so in order to end on a cliffhanger. This volume goes back to see how everyone ended up in place for that cliffhanger and spends time building up some relationships that make it even more tragic. It was those relationships that were at the center of this volume, with everyone finding love in the "wrong" place, mirroring Alana and Marko's relationship and beginning to pave the way for Heist's utopia. First we're introduced to a couple of gay reporters who have been exiled from their home world for pursuing a relationship with each other. Then we begin to see the early stages of Gwendolyn and The Will's attachment and Klara's growing feelings for Heist just weeks after the death for her husband. There are hints that none of this ends parti...

Oh my God, Benjamin Franklin is such a pompous blowhard. This book read like a 200+ page humblebrag, and the takeaway message was that Franklin was perfect and if we were all exactly like him the whole world would be perfect, too. Maybe that's a slight exaggeration. But only slight. And maybe part of my problem with this book was the style in which is was written, with Franklin holding himself up as a shining example of virtue and prosperity and Capitalizing every other Word for Emphasis or Something. I mean, as soon as he listed Daniel Defoe as one of his favorite authors I knew this book would be a struggle to get through. Thankfully it was short. And there was a lot of military stuff at the end that I basically just skipped. But for all that this book was a struggle, there were a few interesting things. Though Franklin fought to make even the interesting bits extremely dry and a tad repetitive. He was influential in even more ways than I remember learning about...

Promise me vampires, and I will follow you pretty much anywhere. To Mormon propaganda masquerading as teen angst in Washington or violent soap operas in Lousiana. To an apocalyptic future or a dense history. To whiny Louis and impulsive Lestat and the many repetitions of their love triangle with poor Claudia. And always, always, back to a Hellmouth in Southern California. I blame this on being exposed to Spike at a formative age. The point is that I was predisposed to like this book and am horribly biased in favor of it. The second I heard the Guillermo del Toro was tackling vampires on FX this summer, I got excited. Everything about that combination makes me think I'll like it. And then I found out that it's going to be based on a book (which was written after the initial television pitch failed), and I ran out to get my hands on it. This story is vampires meets CSI. The initial attack is broken down and studied by a couple of CDC doctors who go to great len...

I Shall Wear Midnight is the finally book in the Tiffany Aching YA subseries of Terry Pratchett's sprawling Discworld series. Or at least it's the latest. There doesn't need to be another one, which is good since Pratchett may not live to write one. But the door is open for another chapter in young Tiffany's life. Then again, this novel is a pretty fitting conclusion to Tiffany's story. In as much as any story on the Discworld gets a conclusion. Or any life really. The first of the four books in this miniseries began with Tiffany deciding to become a witch and setting down on that path. This book concludes with her being accepted as a peer by the other witches in Lancre. Along the way there have been plenty of adventures. The evil in this book is more insidious, harder to pin down and easier to spread. It's fitting that Tiffany doesn't destroy it so much as fight it off for another generation. The whispered rumors that turn people against ...

I first read Clan of the Cave Bear in high school, when my aunt got the fifth book for me as a Christmas present. I was, at that time, concerned about reading things in order so as not to miss anything. So I dutifully went out and tracked down the first four books and made my way through them in order to enjoy the fifth book, which I couldn't very well not read. I remember liking each book less than the one before, as the series progressively got weirder and weirder. There were some things about the feminism presented in these books that felt a little off, as formative as these books were for me in that sense. Still there was a lot that stuck with me, and I always remembered the first book fondly. I'd been meaning to revisit it for a while, but I was hesitant because I wasn't sure it would live up to my memory. This book both is and isn't as good as I remember it being. The language is flowery and often repetitive. When it dives into the internal mono...

I became aware of Phillip K Dick's work long before I knew enough to associate it with him. That's probably the mark of a great artist or influential person or something: someone whose work transcends their person and starts influencing culture on its own merits. This is something I see a lot in science fiction and new technology, but I'm sure it happens in other areas of society, too. In this case, it's easier for me to see because I came to see his influence after I'd reached adulthood (by legal standards anyway). Back in college, music visualizers were a big part of my life. My friends and I would often put on an album or playlist and spend minutes (or hours...) watching the abstract images that came up. At this point, these visualizers were starting to get pretty advanced. WinAmp and iTunes seemed to be in a constant race, each pulling ahead of the other with each new update. We tracked this and talked about it and it was generally a much bigger ...

I came to Narnia later than I probably should have, though there was no one to blame for that but myself. I'd been gifted the series twice before I finally got around to reading them sometime in middle school. And even then I was so lacking in a religious upbringing that the religious allegory went right over my head. I only barely understood why the humans might be referred to as Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve. After learning a bit more about the relationship between these books and Christianity, I decided to give the series another read. But that was derailed when I came across Harry Potter. I always sort of meant to revisit Narnia, but it never happened. And then we had a March snow day during which I was only half longing for Spring, and I decided it was the perfect time to pick up The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and experience the long, cold winter giving way to Spring at last. Several things surprised me on this re-read. The first was how short the ...

In the final installment in her Inheritance Trilogy, NK Jemisin greatly increases the scope, focusing not on a single week or month, but encompassing an entire mortal lifetime. The changes that were set in motion in the first book finally reach their inevitable conclusion here, in a pretty stunning and thoughtful book. I found myself torn between wanting to race to the end and wanting to savor every sentence, which is a pretty rare thing. But there are some hard truths in here, about privilege and tradition and the human condition, that Jemisin does a spectacular job of highlighting. Unlike the previous two books, our narrator this time around is a god. And a trickster god, at that. It makes for a story that tends to jump through time and space rather unexpectedly, because the narrator can't really be bothered with time on a mortal scale. It also means that I spent a great deal of the book waiting for the other shoe to drop, because why would a trickster just tell ...