Bookish Thoughts

I don't read a lot of crime novels. I've picked up the occasional mystery, and I did get into the Girl With a Dragon Tattoo books (also known as the Millenium Trilogy, but apparently no one else knows that) when they were popular. I usually find them enjoyable, but they aren't the bread and butter of my reading. But when I found out JK Rowling had penned a book (soon to be series) in this genre, I had to check it out. Not urgently, obviously, but it's been floating on my to-read list, and I finally found a paperback copy. Not being an expert in the genre, I guess I can't really talk about how it stacks up against other crime and mystery novels. But I found it very enjoyable. The mystery was well-paced, and the clues scattered throughout. There were plenty of reasonable suspects, which kept me on my toes. And I came very close to figuring it out, but hadn't quite put all of the pieces together before Strike's big monologue reveal. (I may have ...

Susanna Clark's debut novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell , is a big, unwieldy book. It's slow, character driven is the term. The plot takes forever to show up, and once it does it still seems barely there. There are 200 hundred footnotes, used to contain exposition or go off on tangents. The characters are selfish and prickly. And I loved it. I loved this book so much, I took several breaks from it so that I wouldn't finish it too soon. Which isn't an experience you often have with a 1000+ page book. It was amazing how short it felt, how long I spent with it and how quickly I ended up reading it, despite myself. The book mostly deals with the relationship of two magicians in the early 1800s, their attempts to bring magic back to England, their dealings with the government and the Napoleonic Wars, and their ultimate falling out and its consequences. Around the edges of this we get the story of the woman Norrell sacrificed to further is career, of S...

Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear' Snuff has been sitting on my shelf for a while. It's towards the end of the Discworld series (only one, possibly two more after this), and I was waiting for the right time to pick it up. I'd even started re-reading the series already and was debating digging into this one around the time I got to Guards, Guards! so I could contrast Vimes at the beginning and end of his arc. But then the world went to shit, or maybe it's always been shit, but at any rate shit went down in Ferguson, MO, and I spent a lot of time reading tweets and first-hand accounts and critiques and criticisms and falling into a deep sadness. And one of the things I saw being circulated on the fringes was that quote up above. So ...

With the fourth Discworld book, we're really getting into the Discworld I recognize. Death is hanging out, trying to figure out humanity. The characters make epic mistakes out of ignorance and do their best to fix them. There are a ton of puns, some sadness that hits you right in the gut, and a few great observations about how the world and stories work. What's weird is that this isn't quite the Death I recognize. It's a little strange to think that Death has a character arc. He seems so unchangeable and final all of the time. But he definitely becomes more empathetic towards humanity over the course of the series. I think a lot of that happens in his next book Reaper Man , but you can see the beginnings of it here. He's curious and he's lonely and he turns to humans to help with this. Unfortunately that leaves an opening for his apprentice to royally screw things up. But then, fixing that is what reminds him of who he is. All in all this was ...

Unlike the other volumes in the Sin City series, the sixth one, Booze, Broads, and Bullets , is a collection of one-offs rather than a single arc. Each story is about 20 pages long, and this made it a lot easier to get through than most of the other books. There were a few stories in here that I actually really liked. There was an awesome female assassin who appeared in two, first becoming initiated and then going on a job. There was an actual story about the Old Town Ladies seeking revenge that didn't have a single man in it, except the creep they were killing. There were a couple of great stories starring Marv, who has strangely found a place in my heart. I like Marv. He might be my favorite character in this entire mess of a series. There were other stories that were less interesting, but at least they were over fast. Next up, the final volume in the series. It's been sitting on my shelf for years, but I've never worked up to actually reading it. That ...

I was surprised by how much I liked this installment of Sin City, which concerns the ladies of Old Town as they seek revenge on the mob for killing one of their own, likely sparking a mob war in the process. The premise was good, and it's nice to see acknowledgement that this is a chosen family, with ties as strong as any other family. Something of a haven for girls and women who have it much harder than the men of Sin City. That said, it'd be even better if the entire thing weren't framed as Dwight's story. It's not his story and he really has no place narrating it or driving the action. He says he's doing it as a favor to Gail (of course), but it would have been so much better if Gail had been leading the charge. If Miho had ever gotten a line of dialogue, or if she'd managed to kill all the mob goons without her breasts constantly falling out of her shirt. The entire fight scene was like a game of "spot the nipple". But like I s...

I started reading Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go way back in college. Or possibly just after college. I remember hearing that Joss Whedon has used it as partial inspiration for Dollhouse , which didn't premiere until 2009, and I think that's why my mom bought it. But things are hazy. The point is that, for one reason or another, I got 2/3 of the way through the book and then stopped reading it. It's haunted me vaguely ever since, so when I found a cheap copy at McKay's I had to buy it. This book is something of a mystery with some mild science-fiction elements. Really mild. I'd hardly classify it as sci-fi at all, really. Sure it's about advanced technology and its ramifications on humanity and society. But it's much more personal than that. More intimate than the books I typically classify as science-fiction. The narrator, Kathy, is a carer and has been for many years when the novel opens. She's approaching the end of her career...

This may have been the most disappointing story yet. I remember liking it well enough in the movie, but it may just be that I liked Jessica Alba. Because here, Nancy is nothing more than a male fantasy. Specifically, Hartigan's fantasy. And is there anything grosser than a 60+ year old man obsessing over an 11 year old girl? I can't decide whether it makes this story better or worse if you pretend the back half is just a coma dream of Hartigan's. Skinny little Nancy Callahan, waiting for him for all those years. Nancy occupies an interesting place of being both virgin and whore. She begins the story as an eleven year old kidnapping victim. A girl Hartigan saves from being raped. Then she grows up to be a stripper, the reason most of these lowlifes come to Kadie's in the first place. But as soon as Hartigan's back she flips back to innocent naivete while also seducing him. It's such an obvious, awful fantasy. The story itself also failed to come...

The third Sin City story leaves me torn. We being with Dwight, some time after the events of A Dame to Kill For , threatening Shellie's ex-boyfriend. He chases him to Old Town, where the ladies set him up and kill him, only to discover he's a cop. So they plan to hide his body, only a snitch tells the mob anyway, and then they have to deal with that. It's so twisty and turny that even right after reading it I'm wondering how all the pieces fit together. Mostly what I like is the ladies of Old Town. They protect themselves and each other. They have claimed their territory and will fight like hell to defend it from anyone who tries to tell them what to do. They're pretty awesome (if also constantly posing in scantily clad costumes, because they are also, ultimately, just here to fulfill male fantasies). What don't I like? Pretty much everything else. I hate that Dwight is even a part of this story, and that he continues to be able to commit to one ...

I came at this book from an interesting angle. At my mother-in-law's suggestion I watched the movie before reading the book so that I could experience the various layers of the text.  I can't really judge, having never experienced this story any other way, but I'm gonna go ahead and say she was right. Knowing the ending made certain scenes much more horrific. And it made it easier to follow what was going on. The story in the movie is far more linear than the one presented in the book. It makes sense for the book. For the bulk of the story, time has no real meaning or relevance. And presenting the action as a series of disjointed events which may have happened in any order fits with the frame of Pi remembering this journey. That said, it bugged me that Richard Parker was named, but not revealed to be a tiger, until well after he arrived on the life boat. Though that's probably just because I knew he was a tiger and was waiting impatiently for that reveal....

This story was not adapted in the first Sin City movie, which I remember throwing me off the first time I read it. Especially because its sequel, contained in the next book, I think, was in the movie. Which means that while we get Dwight interacting with Shelly, Gail, and Manute, they're at a different point in their relationships. And Dwight still has his original face. I must say that Dwight is an asshole. A killer and a monster without even the skewed moral code of Marv. Somehow he manages to string a number of women along, which is especially weird in a story about the one who got away. The one he'll never stop loving. Dwight may have a soft spot for Ava, the eponymous Dame, but he also has ongoing relationships with both Shelly and Gail. Relationships into which he seems to put nothing but apologies ("I'm a jerk. I'm sorry."), but out of which he takes cover, alibis, and extensive surgery. It's not a very flattering picture of women. ...