Entry tags:
Storytellers (November Reading)
It was not my intent to have an all-male reading list this month; in a possible first, it just fell out that way.
The Zanzibar Chest (Aidan Hartley): When I first acquired this, I thought it was a lighthearted boys' adventure, possibly with some father-son issues. ( Never in my life have I been so wrong. )
If there's a unifying theme, it's damage: Hartley in London mistakes thunder for bomb explosions; his father's friend's death in a quarrel of tribal and Imperial loyalty ends a life made narrow by English duty; African nations rip themselves apart in civil war, famine, and power grabs. This doesn't read as a story that the writer wanted to pen, but in some way felt obliged or compelled to set down. I'm not sure if liking is a useful way to assess this book: one cannot respond to such intensity with mildness.
How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else (Michael Gates Gill): Title is nearly longer than the book. The author, fired from the advertising firm he had worked for since graduating college, tries freelancing and eventually lands a Starbucks job - almost by accident - to make ends meet. Gill reflects on his emerging awareness of how the world works for people who aren't white male Yale graduates, but some of his stories lack the "and then I changed my behavior" that would really endear the book to me. It's also worth noting that Gill speaks highly of his Starbucks experience, but what I saw was a really good manager to bringing the most out in her employees. Crystal deserves a shoutout for working with Gill as he learned the ropes as a Starbucks employee.
Aye, and Gomorrah, and Other Stories (Samuel R. Delany): Short story collection. Oddly, short stories are a tougher read than novels, for me: I want to read fairly quickly and enjoy a 100-plus page immersive experience. Short stories require a different focus, more attention to the sentence and paragraph level. It's more energy-intensive to react to individual pieces. I most enjoyed "Omegahelm" because it's set in the same universe as Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. "Cage of Brass" actively annoyed me; most the the other stories fell in between. I like Delaney's grungy, "not everything works out for everyone" speculative fiction, but I'll have to give this another run when I'm ready to connect at the sentence level and reread to find the overarching themes between stories.
( Table of Contents, FMyI )
I reread Garth Nix's Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen trilogy. My, people spend a lot of time nauseated by magic gone wrong. I like Sabriel best, because it has the most worldbuilding; I don't like Lirael or Abhorsen nearly as much: the bloodline arguments feel incredibly silly in those two books, and Lirael's teenage suffering is taken to excesses in the novel bearing her name. These aren't quite bog-standard YA fantasy, but they bear a strong stamp of genre, not always in ways I appreciate.
Who Killed Mr. Chippendale? A Mystery in Poems (Mel Glenn): I picked this up for novelty value; I was hoping for a story in different poetic forms, but this was pure free-verse. It's more about school politics than playing with language, unfortunately; not what I was looking for.
Numbers game: 7 total finished. 4 new, 3 reread; 6 fiction, 1 nonfiction; 1 short story collection
The Zanzibar Chest (Aidan Hartley): When I first acquired this, I thought it was a lighthearted boys' adventure, possibly with some father-son issues. ( Never in my life have I been so wrong. )
If there's a unifying theme, it's damage: Hartley in London mistakes thunder for bomb explosions; his father's friend's death in a quarrel of tribal and Imperial loyalty ends a life made narrow by English duty; African nations rip themselves apart in civil war, famine, and power grabs. This doesn't read as a story that the writer wanted to pen, but in some way felt obliged or compelled to set down. I'm not sure if liking is a useful way to assess this book: one cannot respond to such intensity with mildness.
How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else (Michael Gates Gill): Title is nearly longer than the book. The author, fired from the advertising firm he had worked for since graduating college, tries freelancing and eventually lands a Starbucks job - almost by accident - to make ends meet. Gill reflects on his emerging awareness of how the world works for people who aren't white male Yale graduates, but some of his stories lack the "and then I changed my behavior" that would really endear the book to me. It's also worth noting that Gill speaks highly of his Starbucks experience, but what I saw was a really good manager to bringing the most out in her employees. Crystal deserves a shoutout for working with Gill as he learned the ropes as a Starbucks employee.
Aye, and Gomorrah, and Other Stories (Samuel R. Delany): Short story collection. Oddly, short stories are a tougher read than novels, for me: I want to read fairly quickly and enjoy a 100-plus page immersive experience. Short stories require a different focus, more attention to the sentence and paragraph level. It's more energy-intensive to react to individual pieces. I most enjoyed "Omegahelm" because it's set in the same universe as Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. "Cage of Brass" actively annoyed me; most the the other stories fell in between. I like Delaney's grungy, "not everything works out for everyone" speculative fiction, but I'll have to give this another run when I'm ready to connect at the sentence level and reread to find the overarching themes between stories.
( Table of Contents, FMyI )
I reread Garth Nix's Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen trilogy. My, people spend a lot of time nauseated by magic gone wrong. I like Sabriel best, because it has the most worldbuilding; I don't like Lirael or Abhorsen nearly as much: the bloodline arguments feel incredibly silly in those two books, and Lirael's teenage suffering is taken to excesses in the novel bearing her name. These aren't quite bog-standard YA fantasy, but they bear a strong stamp of genre, not always in ways I appreciate.
Who Killed Mr. Chippendale? A Mystery in Poems (Mel Glenn): I picked this up for novelty value; I was hoping for a story in different poetic forms, but this was pure free-verse. It's more about school politics than playing with language, unfortunately; not what I was looking for.
Numbers game: 7 total finished. 4 new, 3 reread; 6 fiction, 1 nonfiction; 1 short story collection