Reading March
Jun. 21st, 2018 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraRoxane Gay, Hunger: a memoir of (my) body
Ruth Arthur, A Candle In Her Room
Lois Lowry, Anastasia on Her Own
Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage
Courtney Milan, The Suffragette Scandal
Courtney Milan, Talk Sweetly to Me
Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect
Courtney Milan, The Governess Affair
Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy
Lee Child, The Midnight Line
Roxane Gay, Hunger: a memoir of (my) body. Roxane Gay's book is a painful and compelling read; it's about being fat, or more particularly being a fat woman who became so in response to others taking her body away from her. It is exactingly particular on the shame she suffers for doing so, and the desires - the hungers - that also make up her life. It's not right to say I enjoyed reading it, but I'm glad I did; what I'd like to read next are her Black Panther comics, and I've just ordered World of Wakanda from the library.
Ruth Arthur, A Candle in Her Room. I thought I'd read this but having done so I'm no longer sure. I have found dolls creepy for a long time but the fictional origins of that are largely due to a short story I read when I was seven and waiting for a train somewhere in Wales; I retain only a few vivid details (the father, I think, seizes the doll from his daughter to fling it on to a bonfire, and as he is about to do so hesitates; the doll is so harmless, so sweet, and he can hear his daughter sobbing upstairs; he goes to hug it, when it comes to life and begins tearing at his neck with its teeth) and the memory of a nightmare I had shortly after reading it in which the doll was one of my sister's toys. Anyway. Now that I've inflicted that on all of you, Arthur's story is atmospheric and extending the story down the generations worked better here for me than the one I read last month.
Lois Lowry, Anastasia on Her Own (re-read). Anastasia's mother, a children's book illustrator, flies out to California to consult on a film project; Anastasia and her father figure that taking care of the household will be simple, especially once Anastasia makes a list. Naturally, her younger brother Sam gets chickenpox and Anastasia has to stay home to look after him, and the domestic disasters mount up to a final dinner party with Anastasia's putative boyfriend (she has a cordon bleu romantic dinner planned) and an annoying ex of her father's. Although I like the personalities of the family and their interactions I think the time in which I would have found the overall plot funny is now well past.
Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage. The title is the name of a boat belonging to Malcolm, a pot-boy in his parents' inn up-river from Oxford; unhelpful schoolmates repeatedly change the v to an s. This is the story of Lyra as a very young baby, left at the local priory; Malcolm meets her and is entranced by her, and this entangles him and Alice, a slightly older girl who works with him and is initially antagonistic, in all manner of dangerous events. I liked this more than I expected to. Malcolm is great, as is Dr Hannah Relf, a scholar studying alethiometers. There is an impressive set-piece flood that has a slightly jarring fairy encounter halfway through, and the main bad guy is a creepy sexual predator with an abusive relationship with his daemon, an hyena, and I could have done with quite a bit less sexual predation in favour of more of the concrete fantastic (the bears, the witches) that we got in The Golden Compass/Northern Lights rather than watery allusions. I did feel it fell apart a bit towards the end and I'm still not sure how I feel about Alice as a character/plotline.
Lee Child, The Midnight Line. Reacher sees a West Point class ring in a small-town pawn shop window, deduces a few things about the woman it must have belonged to and sets out to track her down. The Reacher books have some of the worst titles ever in terms of my ability to link the title with what happens in the book and in addition it's been a long time since I really enjoyed one. This is not great. It's not as bad as Make Me and there are a few nice moments, but I'd be much better off trying to work out which Dick Francis books I haven't read yet.
Courtney Milan, The Suffragette Scandal, Talk Sweetly to Me, The Governess Affair, The Countess Conspiracy. . In that order, which is not chronological at all but reflects my own confusion and library availability, and omits The Heiress Effect, which I've read previously. I like Milan's historicals more than her contemporaries, and I like that she has scientific (The Countess Conspiracy) and mathematical (Talk Sweetly to Me) female leads, and her characters manage to be dramatic but capable of talking to each other like adults a significant percentage of the time. Her actual romances, however, don't usually get me all that invested. Suffragette is my favourite of these, largely for Frederica "Free" Marshall and her Women's Free Press, and I do end up wanting both leads to get together; the f/f side story is a sweet bonus.
Ruth Arthur, A Candle In Her Room
Lois Lowry, Anastasia on Her Own
Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage
Courtney Milan, The Suffragette Scandal
Courtney Milan, Talk Sweetly to Me
Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect
Courtney Milan, The Governess Affair
Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy
Lee Child, The Midnight Line
Roxane Gay, Hunger: a memoir of (my) body. Roxane Gay's book is a painful and compelling read; it's about being fat, or more particularly being a fat woman who became so in response to others taking her body away from her. It is exactingly particular on the shame she suffers for doing so, and the desires - the hungers - that also make up her life. It's not right to say I enjoyed reading it, but I'm glad I did; what I'd like to read next are her Black Panther comics, and I've just ordered World of Wakanda from the library.
Ruth Arthur, A Candle in Her Room. I thought I'd read this but having done so I'm no longer sure. I have found dolls creepy for a long time but the fictional origins of that are largely due to a short story I read when I was seven and waiting for a train somewhere in Wales; I retain only a few vivid details (the father, I think, seizes the doll from his daughter to fling it on to a bonfire, and as he is about to do so hesitates; the doll is so harmless, so sweet, and he can hear his daughter sobbing upstairs; he goes to hug it, when it comes to life and begins tearing at his neck with its teeth) and the memory of a nightmare I had shortly after reading it in which the doll was one of my sister's toys. Anyway. Now that I've inflicted that on all of you, Arthur's story is atmospheric and extending the story down the generations worked better here for me than the one I read last month.
Lois Lowry, Anastasia on Her Own (re-read). Anastasia's mother, a children's book illustrator, flies out to California to consult on a film project; Anastasia and her father figure that taking care of the household will be simple, especially once Anastasia makes a list. Naturally, her younger brother Sam gets chickenpox and Anastasia has to stay home to look after him, and the domestic disasters mount up to a final dinner party with Anastasia's putative boyfriend (she has a cordon bleu romantic dinner planned) and an annoying ex of her father's. Although I like the personalities of the family and their interactions I think the time in which I would have found the overall plot funny is now well past.
Philip Pullman, La Belle Sauvage. The title is the name of a boat belonging to Malcolm, a pot-boy in his parents' inn up-river from Oxford; unhelpful schoolmates repeatedly change the v to an s. This is the story of Lyra as a very young baby, left at the local priory; Malcolm meets her and is entranced by her, and this entangles him and Alice, a slightly older girl who works with him and is initially antagonistic, in all manner of dangerous events. I liked this more than I expected to. Malcolm is great, as is Dr Hannah Relf, a scholar studying alethiometers. There is an impressive set-piece flood that has a slightly jarring fairy encounter halfway through, and the main bad guy is a creepy sexual predator with an abusive relationship with his daemon, an hyena, and I could have done with quite a bit less sexual predation in favour of more of the concrete fantastic (the bears, the witches) that we got in The Golden Compass/Northern Lights rather than watery allusions. I did feel it fell apart a bit towards the end and I'm still not sure how I feel about Alice as a character/plotline.
Lee Child, The Midnight Line. Reacher sees a West Point class ring in a small-town pawn shop window, deduces a few things about the woman it must have belonged to and sets out to track her down. The Reacher books have some of the worst titles ever in terms of my ability to link the title with what happens in the book and in addition it's been a long time since I really enjoyed one. This is not great. It's not as bad as Make Me and there are a few nice moments, but I'd be much better off trying to work out which Dick Francis books I haven't read yet.
Courtney Milan, The Suffragette Scandal, Talk Sweetly to Me, The Governess Affair, The Countess Conspiracy. . In that order, which is not chronological at all but reflects my own confusion and library availability, and omits The Heiress Effect, which I've read previously. I like Milan's historicals more than her contemporaries, and I like that she has scientific (The Countess Conspiracy) and mathematical (Talk Sweetly to Me) female leads, and her characters manage to be dramatic but capable of talking to each other like adults a significant percentage of the time. Her actual romances, however, don't usually get me all that invested. Suffragette is my favourite of these, largely for Frederica "Free" Marshall and her Women's Free Press, and I do end up wanting both leads to get together; the f/f side story is a sweet bonus.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-21 12:53 am (UTC)This is scratching at me in the way of things that sound familiar, but I have nothing else to go on. I did once find a novel that way, though, so I'll let you know if I turn anything up.
Naturally, her younger brother Sam gets chickenpox and Anastasia has to stay home to look after him, and the domestic disasters mount up to a final dinner party with Anastasia's putative boyfriend (she has a cordon bleu romantic dinner planned)
And I could not have told you which one of the Anastasia books these events belong to, but I remember them vividly. I had totally forgotten the annoying ex.
a slightly jarring fairy encounter halfway through
I don't think I'd realized Pullman's world had fairies.
Suffragette is my favourite of these, largely for Frederica "Free" Marshall and her Women's Free Press, and I do end up wanting both leads to get together; the f/f side story is a sweet bonus.
I still need to read that one!
I really liked "The Governess Affair."
no subject
Date: 2018-06-21 01:44 am (UTC)Which I think was my problem - not necessarily inconsistent (there's a river giant as well, and a country house full of people who are forgetting things), but it felt unexpected and as if it should have been signalled earlier. I was thinking of Susan Cooper, actually, and although Pullman is good his strengths are not in that sense of countryside as myth/history that I think he was going for.
I really liked "The Governess Affair."
This one might have suffered a bit because of my reading order; I loved the set-up, with Serena's protest and the guy's dilemma, but as a romance I would have actually been quite happy if they'd ended up really good friends.
(and yes, do let me know if any likely dolls occur to you!)
no subject
Date: 2018-06-21 02:23 am (UTC)No, I think of him as good with fictional cities and history, but landscape in his books has always been something that characters travel over, not a character itself.
Why are the people in the country house forgetting things? Are they in Fairy, or is something else going on?
I loved the set-up, with Serena's protest and the guy's dilemma, but as a romance I would have actually been quite happy if they'd ended up really good friends.
That was how I ended up feeling about The Countess Conspiracy! I liked the protagonists, I liked how they were together, and I felt no need whatsoever to see them get together. I don't know what makes the difference for me. Some of her romances I have liked very much as romances.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-23 10:00 am (UTC)I am not sure - the book's back at the library, but to be honest I think it's hazy in the text. Possibly some of them are dead? Possibly it's another poke at institutional memory forgetting the inconvenient harms inflicted?
That was how I ended up feeling about The Countess Conspiracy! I liked the protagonists, I liked how they were together, and I felt no need whatsoever to see them get together. I don't know what makes the difference for me. Some of her romances I have liked very much as romances.
I think some of it for me is the romance novel trope of instant attraction, in that I don't always find it that likely and I'm much more fond of gradual realisation; I suspect some of my disbelief transfers to my impression of the characters themselves.