Neither bought nor borrowed
Feb. 6th, 2007 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraOne of the refinements of my reading habit is the tendency to read whole books in bookshops, which started back when I couldn’t afford all the books I wanted to read (I remember spending a happy afternoon wandering between three bookshops reading Stephen King’s Misery), and which also inculcated in me the ability to read paperbacks without breaking the spine. Additional variations include reading books in libraries (I can’t join, I’ve left my card behind, I’ve exceeded the ridiculously small borrowing limit or I’m blacklisted for overdue fines, this last being obviously purely hypothetical) and the particularly dubious reading books at book sales to reduce my pile to something I can actually carry.
Three of these are bookshop reads, one a library, I’m not counting an Australian thriller because I skipped a couple of chapters, and I’m also only about four chapters from the end of Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires, which I just note here to avoid forgetting about it and am also not counting (I bought the first two, but for some reason I am untempted by owing the third).
Darkly Dreaming Dexter. I watched the Showtime series over the course of about a week, earlier this month, and loved it with an unreasonable passion. (it also took me twelve episodes to recognise Darla, so so much for my Buffy/Angel watching cred). I’d previously picked up the book a couple of times and always put it down, and then I found it at the library while picking up my last-but-one Dalziel and Pascoe (and thus exceeding my limit, which is, in this benighted city, 10 items.)
It’s really not good. Lines that I liked when Michael C Hall said them come across badly on the page. The narrator’s voice is intensely irritating. None of the supporting cast have even half the development they do in the series (Angel, Doaks, Rita, LaGuerta), and Deb is described as “a centrefold”, with a “lush body”. Dexter commits one very sloppy murder, the gimmick is different, the wrong people die…. However. I do like that Deb knows more of what’s going on at the ending than she does in the series, because my unreasonable passion did have a slight problem with that. I am not reading the next one (this is an attempt to persuade myself rather than a flat-out statement, sadly) because I do not want to find out what they might be doing with the next season ahead of time, no matter how much I think I can use it as some sort of literary methadone.
A Candle for St Anthony. I think I had this one mixed up in my head with The Seventh Pebble (which I half-skim read at a book sale some years ago, as opposed to this one, which I read in a second-hand bookshop), because I thought it was about a small town and friendship between boys disrupted by religious fundamentalism. Instead, it’s a big city (Sydney), and an intense, carefully-phrased friendship between an Australian boy and another boy, born in Vienna and out of place in Australia. No-one kills themselves and/or is in a car crash at the end, which is a definite plus, but I’m not quite sure there’s enough there to really work for me.
There’s a school trip to Vienna in it that mapped oddly well to my own trip to Vienna. It’s not a city I have a desperate urge to go back to – I liked many things about being there, but I liked the other cities on my itinerary more. It does, however, have a definite character, and I felt that here.
Horse-Mad Academy. Third in a series about a girl (Ashleigh) who, yes, really likes horses. It’s Australian, but the setting’s low-key enough that I needed place names like Waratah to really get that. In this one, Ashleigh goes to an intense horse/rider training academy to learn eventing and, along the way, has to deal with her horse’s inexplicable fear of dressage, and one of those socially cruel evil girls they issue on a book-by-book basis, who will pretend to be your friend for x number of chapters before horribly turning on you (I think this is a perfectly valid trope, but it needs to feel less like someone called Central Casting for me to enjoy them). Unexceptional. I liked the plotline dealing with training Honey to cope with dressage, because it pushes both the horse and the rider beyond comfortable levels, and deals with the fact riding a horse means thinking for that animal rather than just blindly trusting, and the implications of this responsibility.
Faking Sweet. This takes the socially cruel evil girl and twists it – the main character has moved cities (Melbourne to Sydney, or possibly vice versa) and her best friend back home was horribly, horribly mistreated by another girl at the high school character one is now attending (pause while I google for the names, as this will shortly become way too confusing). Holly is the new girl, being coached by her best friend, Calypso, into taking revenge on Jess. The twist is obvious, but it’s well done. I particularly liked reading Jess’s diary extracts after all the Holly and Calypso plotting to frame her for theft and various evil-doing. (“Dear Diary, the new girl seems nice, she keeps putting little gifts into my bag when she thinks I’m not looking! so friendly. Must lend her some stuff for acne” or thereabouts). There’s an overly heavy-handed parallel with Much Ado about Nothing, and the conclusion pulls back, a little, from really pushing the characters. Plus I cannot stand the term “bestie” for best friend, but it seems unfair to blame the book for that.
Last time I updated I had six books pending, and now I've added seven reviews and I still have six books pending. Some sort of librarian version of Zeno's paradox, I expect. I shall ponder it over at least one of my current books...
Three of these are bookshop reads, one a library, I’m not counting an Australian thriller because I skipped a couple of chapters, and I’m also only about four chapters from the end of Ruth Reichl’s Garlic and Sapphires, which I just note here to avoid forgetting about it and am also not counting (I bought the first two, but for some reason I am untempted by owing the third).
Darkly Dreaming Dexter. I watched the Showtime series over the course of about a week, earlier this month, and loved it with an unreasonable passion. (it also took me twelve episodes to recognise Darla, so so much for my Buffy/Angel watching cred). I’d previously picked up the book a couple of times and always put it down, and then I found it at the library while picking up my last-but-one Dalziel and Pascoe (and thus exceeding my limit, which is, in this benighted city, 10 items.)
It’s really not good. Lines that I liked when Michael C Hall said them come across badly on the page. The narrator’s voice is intensely irritating. None of the supporting cast have even half the development they do in the series (Angel, Doaks, Rita, LaGuerta), and Deb is described as “a centrefold”, with a “lush body”. Dexter commits one very sloppy murder, the gimmick is different, the wrong people die…. However. I do like that Deb knows more of what’s going on at the ending than she does in the series, because my unreasonable passion did have a slight problem with that. I am not reading the next one (this is an attempt to persuade myself rather than a flat-out statement, sadly) because I do not want to find out what they might be doing with the next season ahead of time, no matter how much I think I can use it as some sort of literary methadone.
A Candle for St Anthony. I think I had this one mixed up in my head with The Seventh Pebble (which I half-skim read at a book sale some years ago, as opposed to this one, which I read in a second-hand bookshop), because I thought it was about a small town and friendship between boys disrupted by religious fundamentalism. Instead, it’s a big city (Sydney), and an intense, carefully-phrased friendship between an Australian boy and another boy, born in Vienna and out of place in Australia. No-one kills themselves and/or is in a car crash at the end, which is a definite plus, but I’m not quite sure there’s enough there to really work for me.
There’s a school trip to Vienna in it that mapped oddly well to my own trip to Vienna. It’s not a city I have a desperate urge to go back to – I liked many things about being there, but I liked the other cities on my itinerary more. It does, however, have a definite character, and I felt that here.
Horse-Mad Academy. Third in a series about a girl (Ashleigh) who, yes, really likes horses. It’s Australian, but the setting’s low-key enough that I needed place names like Waratah to really get that. In this one, Ashleigh goes to an intense horse/rider training academy to learn eventing and, along the way, has to deal with her horse’s inexplicable fear of dressage, and one of those socially cruel evil girls they issue on a book-by-book basis, who will pretend to be your friend for x number of chapters before horribly turning on you (I think this is a perfectly valid trope, but it needs to feel less like someone called Central Casting for me to enjoy them). Unexceptional. I liked the plotline dealing with training Honey to cope with dressage, because it pushes both the horse and the rider beyond comfortable levels, and deals with the fact riding a horse means thinking for that animal rather than just blindly trusting, and the implications of this responsibility.
Faking Sweet. This takes the socially cruel evil girl and twists it – the main character has moved cities (Melbourne to Sydney, or possibly vice versa) and her best friend back home was horribly, horribly mistreated by another girl at the high school character one is now attending (pause while I google for the names, as this will shortly become way too confusing). Holly is the new girl, being coached by her best friend, Calypso, into taking revenge on Jess. The twist is obvious, but it’s well done. I particularly liked reading Jess’s diary extracts after all the Holly and Calypso plotting to frame her for theft and various evil-doing. (“Dear Diary, the new girl seems nice, she keeps putting little gifts into my bag when she thinks I’m not looking! so friendly. Must lend her some stuff for acne” or thereabouts). There’s an overly heavy-handed parallel with Much Ado about Nothing, and the conclusion pulls back, a little, from really pushing the characters. Plus I cannot stand the term “bestie” for best friend, but it seems unfair to blame the book for that.
Last time I updated I had six books pending, and now I've added seven reviews and I still have six books pending. Some sort of librarian version of Zeno's paradox, I expect. I shall ponder it over at least one of my current books...
