counting down
Jan. 5th, 2010 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraEighteen books to go after these. Reviews of ones I like seem to be getting longer, so I'm trying to cut back.
Morris Gleitzman, Grace. Entertaining but not his best (on the other hand, his best books – Then and Two Weeks with the Queen – are brilliant). Conflict within small religious group filtered through cheerfully pro-active protagonist. Nice moments and characters, but a bit slight, and Grace's siblings are also weirdly non-developed. A "weird fundamentalist sect" book that actually contains real families.
TT Garland, Judy carries on. Read in a café. I think this is about 1930s (written and published) and set in Auckland. The adventures of Judy and her family, who live in a house probably not dissimilar to the last one I flatted in there (elderly villa, meatsafe – now unusable – on the outside, handy for the trams). Plot a bit dubious, especially class assumptions and social place of single elderly aunts, but some nice social history stuff. I have flagged the use of the phrase "hard case" to describe someone approvingly (which I didn't encounter until I headed quite far south in NZ, possibly where it's lingered…), "Ngaire" as a suggested baby name (this and Ngaio – both Maori – very common around that time for Pakeha) and stewed tree tomatoes as a dessert (also known as tamarillos, or see user name).
John Krakauer, Into thin air. About Everest, and the 1996 attempt on the summit that left 8 climbers dead. Vivid, especially in conveying the detail of just how much effort it takes to even exist up there, let alone do anything, and also in conveying the conflicts between safety and the desire to meet client expectations that plague professional guides. Very good.
Matthew Reilly, The five greatest warriors. What I like about this one is the way that the discovery of Jesus' actual body - entombed in a hidden cavity in the wall of an abandoned Roman salt mine - is just a minor barely covered sideline to the main plot, despite the whole challenge to major tenets of equally major religions aspect. More unbelievably complex ancient traps, more jet-setting, more massively surprising revelations. Ties up most of the major plot from the earlier two (the imminent destruction of Earth by its evil anti-matter twin, if I remember correctly) but still leaves things hanging for numbers 3, 2 and 1. I read both this and Into Thin Air in a large chain bookstore with unhelpfully comfortable chairs.
Morris Gleitzman, Grace. Entertaining but not his best (on the other hand, his best books – Then and Two Weeks with the Queen – are brilliant). Conflict within small religious group filtered through cheerfully pro-active protagonist. Nice moments and characters, but a bit slight, and Grace's siblings are also weirdly non-developed. A "weird fundamentalist sect" book that actually contains real families.
TT Garland, Judy carries on. Read in a café. I think this is about 1930s (written and published) and set in Auckland. The adventures of Judy and her family, who live in a house probably not dissimilar to the last one I flatted in there (elderly villa, meatsafe – now unusable – on the outside, handy for the trams). Plot a bit dubious, especially class assumptions and social place of single elderly aunts, but some nice social history stuff. I have flagged the use of the phrase "hard case" to describe someone approvingly (which I didn't encounter until I headed quite far south in NZ, possibly where it's lingered…), "Ngaire" as a suggested baby name (this and Ngaio – both Maori – very common around that time for Pakeha) and stewed tree tomatoes as a dessert (also known as tamarillos, or see user name).
John Krakauer, Into thin air. About Everest, and the 1996 attempt on the summit that left 8 climbers dead. Vivid, especially in conveying the detail of just how much effort it takes to even exist up there, let alone do anything, and also in conveying the conflicts between safety and the desire to meet client expectations that plague professional guides. Very good.
Matthew Reilly, The five greatest warriors. What I like about this one is the way that the discovery of Jesus' actual body - entombed in a hidden cavity in the wall of an abandoned Roman salt mine - is just a minor barely covered sideline to the main plot, despite the whole challenge to major tenets of equally major religions aspect. More unbelievably complex ancient traps, more jet-setting, more massively surprising revelations. Ties up most of the major plot from the earlier two (the imminent destruction of Earth by its evil anti-matter twin, if I remember correctly) but still leaves things hanging for numbers 3, 2 and 1. I read both this and Into Thin Air in a large chain bookstore with unhelpfully comfortable chairs.
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Date: 2010-01-06 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-06 05:09 am (UTC)