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*looks at date*

Er. Better late than never?

Once again, I read fewer books this year. On the other hand, only two books less than last year, so I think that is not bad, considering that I started grad school and all! And I managed to blog every book I read, with the exception of rereads.

The biggest change for me in 2008 was starting the 50books_poc challenge; namely, to read 50 books by POC in a year. I had originally done it from IBARW to IBARW (August 2007 to August 2008), but it's nice to know that I met it for the calendar year of 2008 as well. If anyone's interested about why, I wrote up why I count and how the challenge affected me during IBARW 3. Next year, my goal is to increase the percentage of books by POC so that it's over 50% of all the books I read, total. I'm still trying to make it enough of a habit that I won't have to count, and it's rather embarrassing to see the huge jump in numbers once I started making an effort. The gap between 13 books by POC versus 64 is enormous and indicative of my own aversive racism; it didn't actually take that much effort to find those 51 additional books (although a large part of that is thanks to my local libraries, and aversive racism plays its own role in book selection in libraries as well).

It is nice to see that I do not have to worry much about the percentage of women I'm reading.

As always, feel free to ask about anything here.

• ( Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian )



• ( M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: The Pox Party )



• ( Atul Gawande, Complications and Better )



• ( Justina Chen Headley, Girl Overboard )



• ( Maggie Helwig, Where She Was Standing )



• ( Angela Johnson, The First Part Last )



• ( David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach )



• ( Andrea Smith, Conquest )



• ( Catherynne M. Valente, The Orphan's Tales )



• ( Elizabeth E. Wein, The Mark of Solomon )

( Also recommended )

Total read: 129 (6 rereads)
51 by women of color, 64 by POC, 104 by women

( Complete list of books read in 2008 )

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A girl falls down in the Toronto subway; no one is sure if it's the result of chemical terrorism, hysterics, or just random. But as more and more people begin falling down, tension in the city rises and people start getting hurt in retaliation. Meanwhile, Alex is trying to hold his life together even as his old flame Susie-Paul has returned.

I loved Helwig's Where She Was Standing, and I like this, although not quite as much. Part of it was because I'm not sure if I grasped how everything tied together in the end, from Alex's uncertainty about his failing eyesight to Susie-Paul's worries about her twin brother to the general uncertainty of the city as a whole. The language is beautiful, and the imagery is gorgeous, but possibly because the story is centered on uncertainty, sometimes it felt a little static.

On the other hand, Where She Was Standing is also about uncertainty, particularly about the uncertainty of information coming out of East Timor, but that had an overall narrative drive that I felt this book didn't. Possibly it's because Alex and Susie-Paul's search for her brother is less tightly connected to the girls falling down plot, or just because I am generally less interested in the plight of a medical photographer and his new chance at love than I am in the plight of human-rights workers.

Still, I did like it, and there's a quiet beauty to it. Also, it may be something I warm up to on a reread.

Links:
- rachelmanija's review

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I tend to do fairly poorly with short stories and with literary fiction, so please take my post with a grain of salt, or many!

The main story in this book, "White Snake," is about a ballet dancer who was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution for practicing decadent, Western, and bourgeois art. The others all concern the Cultural Revolution in some way or the other, which may account for another percentage of my reaction. I am rather sick of stories about the Cultural Revolution, thanks to having to watch many movies by Fifth Generation Directors back in high school. They were very good! They were just incredibly depressing, and they were accompanied by horror stories of the Cultural Revolution from my Chinese teachers.

I say this and note that of course, my Chinese teachers were very biased, given that this was in Taiwan, which was where the Nationalists fled to after losing the civil war to the Communists.

I also bounced off the translation. I'm not sure if it's the prose of the translation or the actual Chinese, but I can almost tell how the translation is attempting to stick to the original, and it didn't work for me. It feels like there is a lack of style and stylistic choices. Maybe some day I will attempt to read the original to see how much is the translation and how much is the prose.

All together, it felt too familiar for some reason, and not interesting enough.

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I found this in the YA section of my library, and I have to say, I am very confused by this classification. Even though the heroine is Celaya, who grows from child to teenager in the book, the book itself is a giant, sprawling family saga of the Reyes, encompassing about three generations and at least ten side stories.

The beginning and the middle are about Celaya, including a family trip to Mexico to visit the Awful Grandmother and the Little Grandfather, her father's upholstery business, and her becoming a teenager and engaging in some teenage rebellion. I wasn't as caught up by them, as I had a very difficult time tracking the many time skips. Also, while the prose is gorgeous, the story of a young girl growing up and getting into trouble is not a particularly new one, though Cisneros does add great details.

But the middle! The middle is Celaya telling the Awful Grandmother's story, frequently embellished, often with digressions, and very often with the Awful Grandmother's interjections and protests over how Celaya is changing the story. I love it to pieces. I love the way it is deliberately pieced together to make a better story (the Awful Grandmother: "How can it be winter again? We met in the summer!" Celaya: "But there needs to be dramatic wind here, trust me."); I love the tidbits of Mexican history; I love how the lives of the Reyes intersect with celebrities (including Josephine Baker); I love the love Cisneros holds for Mexico and Mexican history; and I really love the way political history and personal history weave in and out of each other.

Though my interest was petering out a little in the end, when we're back with Celaya-the-teenager, Cisneros managed to save it for me by tying together the mid-section of the book with Celaya's portions. Also, it is a story about storytelling, which hits many of my buttons.

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I really disliked the first half of the book and was wondering why rachelmanija had recced it.

Gita Das is an Indian grad student at Berkeley, where she's overwhelmed by culture shock and her Aunty Saroj's astrologer's prediction that she will find her true love that March. My general impression of the first half of the book was an overwhelming sense of distance. Gita is perpetually at a loss as to the proper behavior, since all her scripts for India don't work in the US. It also doesn't help that she's shy, timid, and not inclined to stand up for herself; it was particularly painful watching her make up answers or pretend to laugh at jokes she didn't understand because she was too embarrassed to say she didn't know something.

Much of this isn't sparked by the dislike of Gita herself, but rather at my own discomfort as to how closely Gita resembles teen and college me. It's the embarrassment squick x1000. She has much of the same adolescent ideas about romance that I did, and the combination of culture shock, the desire for romance, and the complete lack of tools to deal with either is so painful to read about. It's even worse when everything combined leads Gita to make several bad decisions when it comes to romance.

On the other hand, I found the second half of the book charming, sweet, and uplifting. I'm not sure if there's a way to get to the second half without having gone through the first half, because much of the impact relies on the reader seeing Gita, five years later, older and more confident and grown into herself.

The pompous academics from the first half have largely gotten over themselves, or they're recognized as being stuck up; the foreign scariness of Berkeley gives way to great descriptions of Bombay and Delhi (I very much sympathized with how mold and humidity takes over everything); and Gita's loneliness has turned into a small circle of friends and relatives. I want to say something about Americanization and Westernization and immigration and living between two countries, except I'm not sure what, save that it was good reading about other people who also felt that divide.

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I first read this as an assignment in tenth grade, which was not optimal in many ways, one of the foremost being how tenth-grade boys will giggle at the mention of the word "fuck," particularly when it has to do with cows. The other is that Morrison's prose is very dense, so much so that I had a difficult time following it even now. Technically, it's not actually the prose that's dense, but the way Morrison will slip from one timeframe to another in a sentence, go on for a few pages, and then return.

I think I would have done much better had there been manga-esque black borders marking each flashback.

Sethe is an escaped slave with a past more horrifying than most, and when her old friend Paul D shows up, the ghostly presence haunting her house begins to get a little less ghostly and a little more physical. This is a story about how the past haunts us, figuratively and literally, how it can steal into the present and poison it, how something like slavery just keeps echoing and echoing and echoing.

I admired the way Morrison slipped from past to present; even though it was confusing, it felt very appropriate for the book, since Sethe and Paul D can't keep themselves in the present all the time as well. I also liked the feeling of love so thick it suffocates, both Beloved's and Sethe's. Denver was always my favorite when I read it for class, and she remains so on rereading. I like that she's the one to not just avoid the past (Paul D) or succumb to it (Sethe), but goes out to do something about it, balancing between remembering the past without being consumed by it.

I wish I had more to say about this book -- I felt like I missed tons while reading it, as it is not a good book to read when one's brain is not working, like mine.

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Rachel, a harried human-rights worker in London, learns that a Canadian student may have been killed in a protest in East Timor. What follows is the story of how she died and how the information about the protest is uncovered and disseminated. (As Helwig notes, the events are loosely based on the Santa Cruz massacre but definitely not a historical retelling.)

While Rachel (white) is the main POV, we also get snippets from the student herself, her mother, her boyfriend, Rachel's sort-of love interest Edward the doctor, and Clementino and Hasan, both members of the East Timorese resistance. We do get some of Clementino and Hasan's stories, but not nearly as much as we get of everyone else's, particularly Rachel's -- their narratives are fragmented and short, unlike the long, lyrical passages for Rachel that deftly establish not only who she is and what she does, but also where she works and lives and a sense of history to her life. I'd normally protest the lack of that for Clementino and Hasan (we get a few looks, but not nearly as many), but there's a very interesting thing Helwig does in the book.

I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but much like how the book's title is about a formerly occupied space, much like how the book is about disappearances and people disappearing, but it feels like there are giant holes in the book. And not in the sense of gaping logic or missing pieces, but rather, very deliberate holes that call attention to precisely what we don't know. It very much echoes how information is passed from inside East Timor to the western world, how the human-rights workers in London simply cannot know exactly what it is like to live in Dili. Empty spaces have significance -- empty graves with headstones that lie, people outside of the camera's frame, faces in videos blurred over.

Helwig is also very good at building a picture of how many forces are implicated in the massacre and in the Indonesia takeover, from the Indonesian government, military and people to the western world, particularly the US and the UK. She doesn't look away from the role white privilege and western privilege play. I also like how Edward's plot line about a bomb threat to his clinic made by anti-abortionists contributed to the themes of disappearances and violence.

I know this now sounds like the kind of Problem Novel no one wants to read, but it's also a very effective thriller -- I read it in two days because I couldn't put it down. I didn't anticipate any of the reveals or twists in the book, even though they made perfect sense (one in particular).

( Spoilers )

Highly recommended.

Links:
- rachelmanija's review
- coffeeandink's review
- cofax7's review

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Lauren has Dave, the perfect boyfriend. She's not the most popular girl at school, but she's Dave's Girlfriend, and that counts for something. Furthermore, Dave himself is nice, loves his family, doesn't push her, isn't afraid of commitment, and wants to go to college with her. But Lauren just doesn't have the same passion for him that her best friend Katie does for her boyfriend Marcus. Even more, Lauren doesn't even really talk about this stuff with Katie, or with anyone really, including her lonely family life, in which her dad ignores her.

Enter Evan, and everything changes.

coffeeandink said this was Scott's first book; in some ways, it shows. The pacing's a bit off, and (I never thought I would say this) the book was a little too interior for me. As in, I wanted a little less of Lauren's thoughts and a little more action -- definitely not big action, as this is a book about moments and details, but at least something to move Lauren's development further. As it was, I felt like much of the book was about Lauren going over many of the same things (should she break up with Dave? What was this thing with Evan? How long could she avoid Katie?).

On the other hand, Scott does a nice take on YA tropes. Lauren thinks that if she were in a YA novel, she'd be ugly and quirky and smart (but not too ugly), battling against the pretty, rich girls. As it is, she's not really. She's just ordinary. And I like that the decision between Evan and Dave isn't the decision between being popular and not, although that of course is a part of it. It's much subtler than that, which I very much appreciated. I also liked that Dave wasn't bashed, no matter how stifling Lauren found him, nor was his devout Christianity.

Scott is also extremely good at portraying that headlong rush into attraction, how looks and smiles and just a few touches can mean so much, and she's also very good at writing about those small, important moments that look like nothing to outsiders.

The ending of the book really saved it for me; I was getting a little impatient with Lauren and waiting for her to break up with Dave. But I loved how her walls just broke, and I particularly loved Katie and her role in it. I think the book would have been even better had the first two-thirds gone with a little more action, and if there had been a few chapters after the climax, largely because I really wanted to see what Lauren would do afterward, how she would deal, if things would change, no matter how slowly.

Still, recommended, and I'm looking forward to what Scott writes next.

Links:
- gwyneira's review

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I randomly stumbled across this in the library while I was looking for more Pearl Cleage. I figure I should try and read more non-white, non-American focused books, so here we go!

This is a collection of interconnected short stories focusing on the lives, loves and tribulations (there are lots of tribulations) of members of around three families and their friends, all of whom are Chinese or Chinese-American. Most of the characters have connections with Hong Kong, and the short stories take place shortly before and after the 1997 Hong Kong handover.

I have historically had some issues with Amy Tan, which pretty much is all the Chinese-American literature I've read. I've read quite a bit of classical Chinese literature, often under great duress in preparation for a test or memorization, but I haven't read much contemporary Chinese literature at all.

I think much of this is because I was operating under the assumption that contemporary Chinese-American literature needed to somehow echo my own experiences or speak to them, but I think that's placing an unfair burden on the authors. The only reason I look to them for representation and for a voice is because there is still relatively little Chinese-American (or Chinese-other-nationality or third-culture-kid) literature out there, and so, there isn't that much in general fiction in America that speaks specifically to me.

I append this by saying that I do not think that people of other sexes, genders, races, ethnicities, ages, nationalities, etc. cannot identify with people unlike them. I frequently find myself identifying with white males. My issue is that there should be more options, not less, and for underrepresented people of any sort (be it sex-based, race-based, age-based, etc.), representation is emotionally important.

Anyway, back to the book. I'm not saying that the book isn't representative of the Chinese-American experience, because that is unfair to the book, and the only reason I ask it of the book is because I have so little exposure to a) the Chinese-American experience (am third-culture kid, so I sort of have a half-Chinese-American experience, if that makes any sort of sense) and b) Chinese-American or half-Chinese-American literature.

That said, I kept hoping to find myself represented somehow, but I kept being put off for the same reasons I kept being put off Amy Tan's books in the past. I knew that it wasn't fair to ask the book to represent me, but I kept looking for representation all the same, and that's how I was disappointed. Chiu is writing about people with problems, people that I sort of know, but people who aren't necessarily me.

Much of this is because the book is so firmly grounded in its characters, which is a good thing. It's just that the characters are connected to New York and Hong Kong, and I am not (Taiwan and California for me!).

To put all my personal issues to the side, I really admired the craft of the stories, particularly in how they intertwined. One character mentioned briefly in one story would show up as a supporting character in another and end up as the POV character in yet another. I also loved being able to see all the family dynamics from different POVs; Chiu balanced out everything by giving everyone a starring role and a supporting one, all at the same time.

I think this book would particularly reward re-reading; alas, I had to return it to the library before I could reread.

That said, it was a little too depressing for me. Chiu's characters deal with alienation, anorexia, problems with their sexuality, interpersonal relationship problems, and etc. Also, I wanted to slap some of the characters (particularly Jonathan). On the other hand, I can't tell if I feel this way because I don't want this to be seen as representative of the Chinese-American experience, because I am scared that people will read it and come away thinking that Chinese reserve hides all sorts of dysfunctions.

In the end, I can't manage to separate my personal thoughts on race and representation from the book itself, which is again unfair to the book and to the author. Ergo, (and this is my conclusion to pretty much everything) must read more! Also, wish there was more published like this.

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Ehm, yes, this is the first time I've read this...

Anyhow! I actually knew all of the plot, having read Jenna Starborn (Sharon Shinn's sci-fi take on the tale) and The Eyre Affair. Mostly I was afraid that I would detest Mr. Rochester and thereby not respect Jane, largely because I completely failed to understand the attraction in either of the two books mentioned above. rachelmanija had also told me not to worry too much, because the book is more about Jane than the romance.

I really liked Jane. I wasn't expecting to, largely because the many romance takes on the story of poor governess meets rich employer, falls in love and is lifted out of poverty have left me cold. But I liked Jane's determination and her morals, I liked that she was never willing to compromise what she felt was right, even in the face of adversity.

In a romance (I shall compare this to romances, since this is probably the only gothic I've ever read), this would be termed "spunk" or "spirit" and make me roll my eyes and want to whack the heroine over the head. But Bronte characterizes Jane so that she isn't so much high-spirited as stubborn, and there's an underlying strength of character, even when she's head over heels in love with Mr. Rochester. I also like that Jane's aunt doesn't end up forgiving her, I like that Adele isn't a charming, adorable child who brings Jane and Rochester together, I like that Mr. Rochester's attempts to prettify Jane and give her expensive things is unambiguously disliked by both Jane and the narrator.

It's actually rather amusing seeing how many romance cliches Bronte subverts, even though she was writing a good many, many years before the contemporary romance industry was formed.

I still dislike Mr. Rochester, though not as vehemently as I expected to. At some points, I was even persuaded to like him by Jane! I forgave him for the incessant questioning of Jane in the beginning (I personally abhor being talked to like that, so he rubbed me the wrong way to start with) and grew to like him until he proposed to Jane. Then he drove me batty by continually attempting to remake Jane and force things on her that she obviously didn't want. Also, I seem to be completely not in tune with his angst, because the Big Revelation did not spark any sympathy at all toward his previously rakish behavior. But I fondly dislike him, if that makes sense.

And although Bronte and Austen are polar opposites in terms of romance and the level of emotion expressed, the characterization of the Reeds and the Ingrams reminded me of Austen.

I'm glad that the book was in first person POV and that it was so Jane-centric (I feel stupid saying that, given the book's title), but I was a little afraid that it would be extreme moodiness and angst and woe. But it really isn't. The elements are there, but at the core is Jane herself, sturdy, stubborn, small, plain, and in possession of herself.

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reading_genji is evil.

I'm not actually reading along with the book, because I had to read it once for a paper. My stupid university has this wonderful system for the fall semester in which classes end, students go on winter break, students come back from winter break and have a week and a half of Reading Period, in which they basically cram like mad for finals and write papers really fast. Reading Period ends on Dean's Day, which is when all papers for the semester absolutely must be turned in.

I borrowed the Seidensticker from the university library and basically read about one chapter prior to winter break, being a complete procrastinator. I dragged the book back to Taiwan with me too. This is no small fact! The thing was in hardcover and roughly the size (and weight) of two bricks! Also, I had to lug around other books to read for the paper (several books of and on Noh plays).

Surprise, surprise, I ended up reading only one more chapter at home. So I basically ended up reading all of The Tale of Genji on my 18-hour flight back to school, blearily keeping my eyes open and dutifully turning pages as fast as I could.

I felt like I was in a bit of trouble for my paper, since my one conclusion on finishing the book was, "OMG you skank!!"

In conclusion, attempting to speed-read a 1000+ page book is not a good idea.

Anyhow, I'm mostly just lurking around in the comments, dispensing completely random and unnecessary tidbits of whatever factoids I still remember from college and reccing books that I've only read a chapter of. But! I am having great fun with the snark.

Also, I think Genji needs to have his own LJ. I volunteer to do the occasional LJ-translation of whatever chapter is being posted on, but since I'm not actually re-reading the thing, it will be entirely based on what everyone else reports. Which means... skanktitude and mockery! Er, also, is reading_genji the proper place to post something like that?

And... are there any random bits and pieces of information that people want to know? I have a general mishmash of Japanese history, linguistics and assorted other things in my head, and I can never tell what people may find interesting. Of course, given that the last random tidbit I had was about yang-sucking succubi and the ev0l yin power of the vagina, I make absolutely no guarantees as to scholarly knowledge, attitude, or demeanor.

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I am quite possibly the last person on LJ to read this book. Alas.

As you know, Bob, this is about Christopher, who is autistic, and finds his neighbor's dog dead. He decides to solve the mystery, and in the process of doing so, digs up several skeletons in his family's closet.

I was a little scared picking this up, just because it had been recced so often, but the prose is eminently readable and the plot is extremely gripping. I can't say how accurately Haddon captures the autistic mind, given that I know very little about the subject, but it feels pretty believable to me. Also, I like how matter-of-fact Christopher is about some of the things of his existence, such as the badness of the color yellow or the need to groan in a corner now and again.

And now, to the bits that probably only I care about. I felt so bad for Christopher's pet rat Toby! Toby gets lost in an Underground station, and I was wincing the whole time. So, eh, yes, a warning to the few rat-lovers out there. I'm hoping that's not spoiling anything, since obviously it's not the point of the book.

What's very good about the book is that the mystery of the dog's death is actually resolved fairly quickly, but the repercussions of what Christopher discovers affect his family and his neighbors. It's also just heart-breaking seeing his memories of his probably depressed mother trying to deal with an autistic child and his father's efforts to keep the family together.

Haddon also has to show how Christopher affects everyone around him even as Christopher himself doesn't so much notice the emotional effects, and he does so very well. Anyhow, I liked this book a great deal, and it was especially interesting being able to be in Christopher's POV, even for a few hours.

Links:
- tenemet's review

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Judging from the copyright page, these were all originally short stories about the same family and compiled into a novel. Novel? Group of short stories? They're all arranged chronologically so it's hard to tell.

Mostly it's about the Samuelson family -- Franny Samuelson has cancer, Jason is the promising son who gets way off track, Margo is the cousin who is constantly searching for love. Gretel is the daughter who observes all of this, starting from when her father divorces Franny.

I feel sort of bad complaining about the fact that pretty much everything goes wrong for this family; I know things like this do happen in real life. It just didn't work so well for me in this book, largely because I felt a bit as though Hoffman was just piling on tragedy after tragedy for the sake of itself. And while I could sort of connect the dots to some of the events, such as Jason throwing away his future as a reaction to his parents' troubles, Hoffman either deliberately or accidentally never makes these connections clear.

I suppose it's part of the style, but it still irks me.

There are some beautiful bits, at least. I was a little disappointed because I really loved her Practical Magic, from the imagery to the slightly dreamy fantasy quality. Some parts of Local Girls recaptures that feeling for me -- Franny sick with cancer, watching herself, Margo's plagues, etc. -- but not enough.

Ok, but a bit disappointing.

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I'm of two minds about reading introductions and whatnot before reading a book, particularly if they function as critical essays. I did that this time (the B&N edition), and now all I can think about are the points that the writer was making. Mostly the gist was that Marianne is a much more sympathetic and interesting character than Elinor because of Elinor's restraint and how Marianne seems to be later punished for her exuberance by having to marry the staid Colonel Brandon.

I'm still sort of thinking about that -- when I was reading it, I was much more interested in Marianne's story, and to be honest, I did find Elinor a bit boring. But I can't tell how much of this is because of the remnants of the Ang Lee movie in my mind. I remember liking Elinor in the movie, but I really dislike Hugh Grant when he's playing the shy, affable Englishman (he's much more fun as the skeevy Daniel in Bridget Jones). And I fell very hard for Alan Rickman as Colonel Brandon. So I kept thinking there were some scenes in the book that were in the movie, but there wasn't.

Part of me was also a little resentful because I remember how much I liked Marianne and Mrs. Dashwood in the movie, and it was a bit jarring at times seeing Austen poke fun of their excessive emotions. I think I need to see the movie again as well, just to compare with a recent reread.

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Pi Patel is stranded at sea one day when the ship carrying his family and an assortment of zoo animals sinks. He's left on a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra and a very large tiger, and soon, it's just down to him and the tiger (Richard Parker). Various extremely strange experiences ensue as Pi attempts to stay alive, and there are many interesting digressions into the nature of story, zookeeping, animal behavior, and religion.

I'm not quite sure why this is a story that is supposed to make me believe in God, but then, I'm rather cynical about that to begin with. It's a very interesting book, definitely, and Pi has a sort of wide-eyed yet pragmatic narrative voice that makes for quite compulsive reading. I personally really liked the digressions, which branch into some very assorted topics (the swimming pools of Paris being one), but I suppose it could feel a little too exposition-y for others. I especially liked reading about Pi's attempts to train Richard Parker in an effort to stay alive. While it's a fun book, I'm still a bit confused as to why it won the Booker. I suppose it's because of the ending. But to be honest, I didn't think the ending was quite as mind-blowing as the author intended it to be.

Spoilers for the ending ( here: )

So, entertaining, but not stupendously mindblowing.

Links:
- minnow1212's review

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I actually starting out not really wanting to read this. It wasn't because of the book itself, but rather, Fowler goes into Jocelyn's past, and there was just too many date-rape-esque situations and uncomfortable sexual situations for me. It didn't feel exploitative or anything, but it was extremely uncomfortable reading. Luckily, the sob-story tendencies died early on. I knew I fell for the book when it gets to:

"Grigg had never read Pride and Prejudice.
Grigg had never read Pride and Prejudice.
Grigg had read The Mysteries of Udolpho and God knows how much science fiction -- there were books all over the cottage -- but he'd never found the time or the inclination to read Pride and Prejudice. We really didn't know what to say."

Tee hee hee.

I think my favorite chapter was the one on Grigg and his childhood growing up with three (very cool) older sisters and reading science fiction. I only realized Karen Joy Fowler also wrote sci-fi when I saw a few discussions on her new short story (or something) that prompted discussion at Worldcon. Also, I loved that Grigg went to cons and read Ursula K. LeGuin and the like. And bonus points for the gratuitous mention of Buffy ;).

There is probably a lot more to say on the meta-ness of the book, on Sylvia pondering how she would feel as a character in a book, and other circumstances like that, but in the end, I was just bowled over by the book love. I loved how the five ladies held Austen in such regard, how they made her a part of their lives, and Grigg's initiation into the Jane Austen club.

Links:
- sophia_helix's review
- buymeaclue's review
- tenemet's review

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Henry DeTamble is born with some sort of genetic defect that causes him to travel involuntarily through time, but he is in love with (and loved by) Clare, whose life proceeds one way through time like most people's. It's a very interesting love story in which we get to see not only the falling-in-love period so often focused on by romance novels, but also what comes later through the years.

While the dialogue at first felt a little clunky, I settled into the book easily and was extremely caught up in the narrative. The narrative is, given the topic, fairly linear -- I liked how we mostly start through Clare's experiences, chronologically, with small bits of the future interspersed as Future!Henry returns from a rendevouz with Past!Clare. It also makes for very interesting dramatic reveals. Mostly I am in awe of how the author managed to juggle the timelines, as Clare meets Future!Henry when she's just a child, while Henry meets Clare in real time, without any past knowledge of her. The structure of the book itself makes it fascinating.

The problem I had with the book was that I never quite understood why Henry and Clare were in love. Clare as a child was obviously enamoured of older Henry (it skirted around my squick buttons, but it was a little close there), and when she finally meets Henry in real life, Henry speaks of her sort of molding him into her memory of future!Henry. While Henry, on the other hand, seems to be in love with Clare at first simply because they are fated to be in love. Later on in his life, when he starts traveling back to visit child!Clare, he sort of molds her into his memory of future!Clare. So there is a sense of fate in the relationship that I'm not sure if I buy. Maybe it's the point of the love story? Not sure, but the little dropped lines about molding people felt too Pygmalion-ish for me to really read as romantic.

Also, in the back of my head, there was a constant little voice wondering why it was Henry who got to be all adventurous and dash around through time, while Clare was the one who waited and worried and stayed behind.

But I did like the book; it's just much more difficult to say why I like something than to pick at the problems, sadly. I might not reread it often, however, given some rather depressing bits.

ETA: Spoilers in comments

Links:
- rilina's review
- minnow1212's review
- tenemet's review
- shewhohashope's review

add to memories

Errr... thanks to strange inability to concentrate on anything for over five minutes, I honestly don't remember very much of what goes on. So, no real impression of the character of either Anne Elliott or Captain Wentworth, sadly.

It did seem like something I would have liked, given the entire lost love angle. I also really desperately wanted for someone to ask me what I was reading so I could hold it up and say, "Oh, just a Regency."

I was incredibly surprised at Louisa Musgrove's fate -- it seems like much more action than normally takes place in an Austen book, but perhaps I say that because I have only read three. I also squeed over Captain Wentworth's letter in the end. I find it interesting that many of the climactic moments in Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice are told or happen because of letters.

Er. Anyhow. Perhaps I will have more intelligent comments when I reread it sometime.

ETA:
coffeeandink's review

add to memories

Very intense book about spies during the Regency, a marriage and the consequences of secrets.

I've read coffeeandink's comment that the book twisted various Regency conventions and showed a darker side of the era, but not having read many Regencies or knowing much about the era itself, I really can't attest to that.

Charles and Melanie Fraser are a happily married couple who met during the Napoleonic wars, living well in London while Charles holds a seat in the Parliament. Their son is kidnapped one day, which eventually leads them on a wild chase for a legendary ring to meet the ransom demand.

The book has more plot twists that I could shake a fist at, almost all of them unanticipated (although eventually I managed to partially guess one of the villains of the piece). The first big reveal is a jawdropper. The Very Big Secret comes out in the first few chapters, and the consequences of it and of keeping it through seven years of marriage resonate throughout the book. Thinking of this from a romance point of view, or even from a general thriller/suspense point of view, it's very nice to see that even after Grant gets her big moment of surprise with its revelation, she allows it to keep affecting Melanie and Charles, not just dropping it like a moot plot point.

That's what I liked the most about the book, the underlying examination of a marriage and of what holds it up or tears it down, the examination of childhood pains and the real effects of secrets in a way that most romances brush off. It is a Big Secret plot in a way, but Grant gets away with it because there's a very good reason the secret was kept for so long and a very good reason to finally have it out in the open.

The part I didn't like as much was that by the end, it felt like there were almost too many plot twists and big reveals, so I was almost rolling my eyes at some of the last of it.

Bonus: some twisty sexual politics, if one stops to really think about all of it.

Links:
- coffeeandink's review
- rilina's review
- pocketgarden's review

add to memories

I have my computer back! Now on to reinstalling everything....

Also, hopefully now I can play with Premiere and maybe be a Buffy vidder. Course, might give up halfway because Premiere scares me or something, but we'll see. It's bad... I've already got four vid ideas, sigh.

I also finished reading War of the Flowers. ( Spoilers )

Also read The Da Vinci Code and had a splendid time mocking the writing. ( More spoilers and snark )