New Year, Old Friends (January Reading)
Jan. 31st, 2010 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseChanging the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar (Mercedes Lackey, ed.): I know someone who had a story in this, and after I read the one story, I was compelled to flip through the rest of the stories. If I had gotten more than a flicker of amusement from anything other than "Interview With a Companion", I would be less ashamed to admit I read this. Unfortunately, it reminded me of all the things those crazy kids can get up to when they're mind-bonded to a psychic spirit-horse and kicked off a Lackey binge.
My name is Asher Lev (Chaim Potok): Hasidic Jew's artistic passion sets him at odds with his family and the Orthodox Jewish community. Potok's novels sometimes show up on high school reading lists, so I picked this up in a spate of culture, and came away thinking certain family issues make a lot more sense in context of the Law, even if no one's been to temple in 30 years. As far as the book itself, I think Asher Lev was a bit of a self-centered brat, but his selfishness is in the context of a rigid and homogenous community (justifiably?) anxious about its future, so I am more interested in Asher as an insight into community or society, and where it breaks down, as well as the Jewish community in the late '40s through '60s, than I am interested in his art-related angst.
The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant (An Adoption Story) (Dan Savage): Dan Savage and then-boyfriend-now-husband-in-Canada adopt. The title is nearly longer than the book, but it's a funny take on the serious topic of open adoption.
The Valdemar binge of shame and overtime, or, what my brain could deal with during a 50 hour work week: the Arrows trilogy, the Last Herald-Mage trilogy, the Tarma and Kethry duology and collected short stories, and a special power-skim edition of By the Sword and the Winds trilogy.
The Arrows trilogy works because when you're thirteen, you're convinced that you are a special little thing; it isn't totally unreadable later because you can skip around to your favorite bits. There's a wonderful moment in one of Doris Egan's novels about that youthful belief in your specialness:
The Vanyel trilogy was never, ever a good idea, but Lackey's channeling some serious and compelling teenage emo. I image, if this were set in a different time and place, Savil would spend some time time griping about Vanyel's eyeliner and Fall Out Boy and Adam Lambert playlists. (And then he say, Aunt Savil, it wasn't me, it was the Genius playlist, I just gave Evanescence five stars, and that would go nowhere good.) I could write a very long separate post about the things I energetically dislike in this trilogy - especially the second book - and yet! And yet I have read it more than once of my own free will, and it not only survived several book cullings, it was purchased after the mid-college cuts. When Lackey is writing to her strengths, she is on fire. Tylendel's botched revenge and death scene is a fantastically overwrought emotional sequence, and I think the romance in Magic's Price is ridiculously cute - when I can ignore the age and insane reincarnation issues - so I put up with the technically not-so-great writing, iffy worldbuilding, painfully '80s approach to homosexuality, and my desire to rewrite the books for less brooding and more plot.
I had forgotten that when Lackey wrote the Winds trilogy, she abandoned anything resembling good writing, and also stopped playing to her strengths. I'm going to delete most of a long rant to that effect. If you really care, pick a chapter and I will tell you three things I dislike in that chapter. To make it harder, I'm suggesting you don't pick anything from Darkwind's POV, because Lackey likes the Tayledras much more than I do. At 16-ish all I noticed is that the Winds trilogy was damned tedious and cheesy, and the Storm trilogy was worse. After that I gave up on Lackey, other than rereads that make me question my life choices (keep popcorn books and give in to moping in times of stress, versus burn popcorn books and find a more productive coping mechanism in times of stress).
If I were really cool, I would reference my wiki-fu and Judeo-Christian notions of purity and the body, and somehow tie that into a Lackey "bodily assault on characters" rant that ends with me belting out, "I want your loving / all your love is revenge", but I don't think I'm up for that sort of textual analysis tonight.
My Lackey binge is over (I hope). There are exactly two trilogies, one duology, and one short story collection worth reading, so once you've read the Arrows trilogy, and the Vanyel trilogy, and the Tarma and Kethry stories, you can stop. Many of the books set in Velgarth have an overdose of Tayledras being like Native Americans, but awesomer. (See also XKCD.) Obviously, there are a number of drawbacks to that setup, none of which I feel the need to discuss at this time.
Numbers game: 12 total finished. 3 new, 9 reread; 11 fiction, 1 nonfiction; 2 short story collections.
My name is Asher Lev (Chaim Potok): Hasidic Jew's artistic passion sets him at odds with his family and the Orthodox Jewish community. Potok's novels sometimes show up on high school reading lists, so I picked this up in a spate of culture, and came away thinking certain family issues make a lot more sense in context of the Law, even if no one's been to temple in 30 years. As far as the book itself, I think Asher Lev was a bit of a self-centered brat, but his selfishness is in the context of a rigid and homogenous community (justifiably?) anxious about its future, so I am more interested in Asher as an insight into community or society, and where it breaks down, as well as the Jewish community in the late '40s through '60s, than I am interested in his art-related angst.
The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant (An Adoption Story) (Dan Savage): Dan Savage and then-boyfriend-now-husband-in-Canada adopt. The title is nearly longer than the book, but it's a funny take on the serious topic of open adoption.
The Valdemar binge of shame and overtime, or, what my brain could deal with during a 50 hour work week: the Arrows trilogy, the Last Herald-Mage trilogy, the Tarma and Kethry duology and collected short stories, and a special power-skim edition of By the Sword and the Winds trilogy.
The Arrows trilogy works because when you're thirteen, you're convinced that you are a special little thing; it isn't totally unreadable later because you can skip around to your favorite bits. There's a wonderful moment in one of Doris Egan's novels about that youthful belief in your specialness:
. . . it suddenly brought back a childish illusion of mine from about the age of six or seven: that if I was nice enough, I would never have to die. Teams of doctors would work round the clock to save me, donations would pour in from around the planet... What a charming thought - had I really ever believed that? (The Gate of Ivory)
The Vanyel trilogy was never, ever a good idea, but Lackey's channeling some serious and compelling teenage emo. I image, if this were set in a different time and place, Savil would spend some time time griping about Vanyel's eyeliner and Fall Out Boy and Adam Lambert playlists. (And then he say, Aunt Savil, it wasn't me, it was the Genius playlist, I just gave Evanescence five stars, and that would go nowhere good.) I could write a very long separate post about the things I energetically dislike in this trilogy - especially the second book - and yet! And yet I have read it more than once of my own free will, and it not only survived several book cullings, it was purchased after the mid-college cuts. When Lackey is writing to her strengths, she is on fire. Tylendel's botched revenge and death scene is a fantastically overwrought emotional sequence, and I think the romance in Magic's Price is ridiculously cute - when I can ignore the age and insane reincarnation issues - so I put up with the technically not-so-great writing, iffy worldbuilding, painfully '80s approach to homosexuality, and my desire to rewrite the books for less brooding and more plot.
I had forgotten that when Lackey wrote the Winds trilogy, she abandoned anything resembling good writing, and also stopped playing to her strengths. I'm going to delete most of a long rant to that effect. If you really care, pick a chapter and I will tell you three things I dislike in that chapter. To make it harder, I'm suggesting you don't pick anything from Darkwind's POV, because Lackey likes the Tayledras much more than I do. At 16-ish all I noticed is that the Winds trilogy was damned tedious and cheesy, and the Storm trilogy was worse. After that I gave up on Lackey, other than rereads that make me question my life choices (keep popcorn books and give in to moping in times of stress, versus burn popcorn books and find a more productive coping mechanism in times of stress).
If I were really cool, I would reference my wiki-fu and Judeo-Christian notions of purity and the body, and somehow tie that into a Lackey "bodily assault on characters" rant that ends with me belting out, "I want your loving / all your love is revenge", but I don't think I'm up for that sort of textual analysis tonight.
My Lackey binge is over (I hope). There are exactly two trilogies, one duology, and one short story collection worth reading, so once you've read the Arrows trilogy, and the Vanyel trilogy, and the Tarma and Kethry stories, you can stop. Many of the books set in Velgarth have an overdose of Tayledras being like Native Americans, but awesomer. (See also XKCD.) Obviously, there are a number of drawbacks to that setup, none of which I feel the need to discuss at this time.
Numbers game: 12 total finished. 3 new, 9 reread; 11 fiction, 1 nonfiction; 2 short story collections.