Bookish Thoughts

My book club decided on Helen Oyeyemi's  White is for Witching  this month, and I was excited to have an excuse to revisit it. This is a difficult book that I was confounded by when I first read it. I figured going in knowing more or less what happened would make it easier to digest. It did and it didn't. I think I understood a lot more of this book by virtue of knowing what was coming. But I still feel like I missed a whole lot. Part of this is probably because Oyeyemi packs so much into a really short book. At less than 230 pages, there isn't room for a lot to happen. And really, not much does. Miranda's pica is exacerbated by her mother's untimely death. She spends some time recovering in a psychiatric hospital, finishes high school, and spends a semester at college before her health forces her to drop out again. It's barely a plot at all, more like a slice of life. Around the edges, Oyeyemi explores a number of themes, many of which at least overlap. The...

I don't remember liking  Eric  the first time around, and a second read through didn't change my mind. I used to think it was just that I didn't understand the Faust references, but I have a decent handle on those now. It's more Rincewind. Not Rincewind the character, who remains reasonabley likable in all his cowardice and practicality. But the Rincewind books and vehicles for Pratchett to poke fun at other culture, which is offensive at worst and just falls flat at best. Really, the best that can be said about this book is that it's the shortest in the  Discworld  series. Which is a good quality for the worst book to have.

One of my favorite things about warmer weather is being able to spend a few lazy hours outside reading comic books. I'm not sure how or when I got it into my head that comic books are better enjoyed out in the sun, but it definitely stuck. Which puts me in a weird place where I hear about all these great comics and then wait forever until the weather is actually warm enough (for me) to read them. All this to say that I've been looking forward to  Ms. Marvel  for over a year, and I finally got around to it. I'd seen a few scenes online and read more than a few gushing essays about this or that aspect of the story. When you wait that long to read something, absorbing all the hype in the meantime, there's a very, very good chance that it will let you down. But  Ms. Marvel  didn't. It was exactly what I expected and wanted it to be. And there's something special and perfect about that. This is the story of a teenager who is already struggling with her identity w...

Maya Angelou's first autobiography,  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , is a quick but intense read. The language flows the way you'd expect from a world-renowned poet. And then it cuts. The words are light enough to let you skip down the page and heavy enough to punch you in the gut and make you really feel it. This book is less a cohesive story and more a series of vignettes that paint the picture of Angelou's childhood. It begins when she is three years old, being sent to live with her grandmother in Arkansas and ends when at the age of seventeen, she graduates high school and gives birth to her first child within a month. Along the way she moves between the strict discipline of her grandmother and the much more relaxed but empowering guidance of her mom. She encounters problems with her parents' lovers and learns how to rely on herself to get what she wants. I had a slight problem with some of the sudden time jumps leaving me a bit confused. But mostly this is a ...

I do a pretty good job of paying attention to what's happening in the book world. I may be constantly 2-3 years behind because of my tendency to wait for paper backs or even for books to make it to the used book store. But I at least know what's coming out and what everyone's talking about. So when my mother-in-law gave me  The Flight of the Silvers  for Christmas this past year, the biggest surprise of all was that I hadn't ever heard of it. Even though it was on a few "best sci-fi of 2014" lists. I was actually blown away by how much I enjoyed this book. At the beginning of the story, the world ends. A handful of people are transported to a parallel Earth that's similar but different to the world their familiar to. They eventually come to find each other and learn about the key differences in the two parallel earths. They also discover some handy new powers. On the new earth, a cataclysmic event in 1912 led physicists to a much deeper understanding o...

The Spirit Ring  was Lois McMaster Bujold's first foray into fantasy, and it kind of shows. This book is fun and has some interesting characters and a truly lovely romance. But it's simply not as good as the Chalion books. Everything is pretty straightforward, with clear demarcations between the good guys (stalwart, true, and pure of heart) and the bad guys (greedy, power-mad, and deceptive). What is most interesting about this book is the early shades of Chalion's religion and magic system. This book is set in our past, with such famous people as the Borgia's and Medici's populating the cast. There are fantastical elements, and magic is certainly real in this alternate history, but it's tied to the Catholic church. Bujold's ideas about souls and demons and morality are confined by Catholocism's doctrines. They don't really flourish here the way they do in the Chalion books. But it's still fun to see those ideas in this earlier form. All in a...

I first attempted to read  The Blind Assassin  a few years ago. But then I hit an epic reading slump and abandoned it in the hopes that something lighter or faster would help me get back in the habit of reading. It took me over a month to actually finish a book and nearly two years to return to this one. But I finally did. And I had to laugh when I managed to read in a single day what it had previously taken me nearly a week to muddle through. Like the  MaddAddam  trilogy, this book alternates between past and present. Between two different stories and two seemingly different points of view that are ultimately revealed to be the same. I enjoy this structure, though I found myself preferring the book-within-a-book to Iris' reflections on her youth and life. But that's just the sci-fi fan in me. The Blind Assassin  is ultimately a tragedy. The story of a woman who has reached the end of her life to discover that she is deeply unhappy and is wondering where it ...

It's funny the sense memories I get with these books. I read the majority of  Guards! Guards!  lying in the bleachers of a baseball field in Arlington. I was visiting Kevin (for the first time!) and he was umpiring a game. The library in Ballston was closed, and the mall sucks, so I just read for hours. It's funny to think that I now work just a few blocks from that baseball field. To be honest, I didn't remember a ton about this book. There was a tiny, beaten down police force and a dragon and a long-lost king (both a fake one and a real one). It wasn't until much later in the series that I began to appreciate Sam Vimes as a character or really become interested in the City Watch. I just wanted more books about the witches and was tearing through the rest to get there faster. On re-read, this book is fantastic. I have more experience with Pratchett's style so a lot of the twists became obvious to me, in a fun, familiar way. It was great to go back and see the b...

LE Modisett, Jr is, it turns out, a beloved and prolific author. Though I hadn't heard of him until Kevin got me one of his recent books,  Empress of Eternity , for Christmas. It turns out this is probably not the greatest entry point to his work. Although that may be for the best, since I do not have time to follow another author right now. I'm never going to work through my to-read list as it is. It's not that this book is bad. But it is difficult. It had a very steep learning curve, throwing the reader into three different cultures, each with their own only slightly-related techno jargon. The book flips between three different timelines, with barely enough pages for the reader to get used to one before the story switches to another. It helps that the three stories proceed mostly in parallel, but it still took a lot of brain power to sort through everything and keep the characters straight. In the back half of the book, the timelines start bleeding into each other, an...