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Half a Crown (Jo Walton / papersky): Third in the series. I... don't have a lot to say about this. British democracy is sort of saved from fascism by British debutante traditions? Maybe? I lost my focus somewhere in there, and can't see what the heck Walton was trying to do. I find myself engaged by the characters even while I want to beat them with their own flimsy assumptions - really, Carmichael, what made you think Elvira was anything like safe, standing in your shadow? - and I was entertained in my puzzlement, but the fact that I'm reacting on an in-book character level and not intuitively feeling the themes* means I'm in no rush to reread. There is a sensibility here that I appreciate (most ironic sedar in 2008 fiction), but also an approach to genre and story-telling that isn't meshing with my approach to reading. Also, between this and Little Brother, I am done with based-on-Gitmo headgames in my fiction for a while.

*I'm finding Watsonian and not Doylist reasons, in other words.

Y: the Last Man: 8-10: Kimono Dragons, Motherland, Whys and Wherefores (Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra): As previously mentioned, if you laid out a checklist of things I like in fiction, this hits pretty much every single one of them, right down to the bittersweet "sixty years later" epilogue. (Good news: humanity survives. Bad news: if you wait long enough, everyone dies.) charlie_ego and I had very different reactions to the McGuffin, because we approached it with different expectations, and if I were taking my time I would use this as an example of genre expectations and reader enjoyment, and will cheerfully expand if you give me an excuse.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Jared Diamond): Why did Europeans take over the world? Conversely, why did other aggregates of humanity not spread their influence across the globe? I think my comments to toraks pretty much sum my reaction: great idea, but so broad many details may be quibbled. I think it's important to remember that the book was published in 1997 and research keeps messing with Diamond's ideas. Corn dating, diseases we gave to cattle, other stuff I just haven't seen yet, but I'm sure is out there. Also, people other than me have complained they get bored with Diamond beating the reader over the head with his broad thesis (geography's influence on food production is the ultimate cause of The World As We Know It). I enjoyed seeing different examples of the same idea, but I can also see how other people might roll their eyes as he reiterates the Failure To Take Over The World checklist for the Americas, Africa, New Guinea, Australia, etc etc etc.So I think it's awesome, but I also think it should be read with a critical eye.

Uhura's Song (Janet Kagan): I mentioned to norabombay I was reading this, and she said, "oh, the proto-furry novel?" I think the original ST tie-in novels weren't as rigidly policed then as some franchises are now. ( Entertaining, but the most lightweight of fluff. )

I reread random parts of The Gate of Ivory (Doris Egan) because it's comfort reading. Lightweight, transparent prose, a sense of humor compatible with mine, a plot that doesn't challenge my attention span.

This very nearly wound up titled "Geniuses and Megalomania", because there seemed to be an awful lot of that this month, but the entry wound up bookended by lighter stuff. Thank goodness.

Monsoon Diary (Shoba Narayan): Autobiography about life as the bright daughter of a large South Indian family that loves food. Very lightweight, good bedtime reading - as long as you don't go to bed on an empty stomach. Food is a major focus of the book: common breakfasts, memorable feasts, a well-intentioned but fairly disastrous charity dinner; love expressed through lunches. The author includes recipes at chapter ends. It tempts me to cook, which I consider a good thing.

Cold Tom (Sally Prue): Tom of the Fae is - horrors - enslaved to humans by love. YA fluff with one interesting idea (love as a chain) and a whiff of Tam Lin. It suffers from the cuteness and over-tidiness seen in a lot of YA books - very small cast, who all wind up in close happy relationships - and the central theme's pretty standard YA stuff, but the perspective twist is kind of cool. Worth the dollar it cost at a library sale, but not necessarily worth the full price.

The Life of the World to Come (Kage Baker): Fifth novel in the Company series. (Finally!) It moves things along very nicely. Document D, Alec Checkerfield, time travel, weird and possibly metaphorical prophetic dreams. Things go boom! in bad ways, as they tend to around the botanist Mendoza.

For people unfamiliar with Kage Baker's novels: the Company series focuses on events in the lives of certain time traveling immortals who steal great cultural works and to-be-extinct species from their doomed fates and stash them in improbable places for the edification of future generations and profit of Dr. Zeus Inc., the company that created the immortals. Only there's a few hitches, like that distressing "things go boom! around Mendoza" pattern. Sometimes there are also little gray men. If someone wants to explain what was going on at the end of Graveyard Game (or send me a copy of the paperback), email or indicate spoiler-ness when commenting.

The style is fun, the plotting multi-novel, and attention to detail sometimes is really rewarding. Hooked? Find a copy of In the Garden of Eden and start catching up.

( Do you know how hard it is to talk without spoiling left, right and center? )

Reread bits of Cyteen. It's a stress thing.

Watchmen (Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons): Notable '80s graphic novel, noted for being an "adult" comic back when they weren't so much. Edward Blake, ex-superhero, is killed. Those who try to find out why discover they've got a thread into a Gordian knot of trouble.

It's, um, well. Picking this up for some light bedtime reading was really a mistake. (I have this problem quite often when I'm trying to read comics. Which is probably why I don't read them much.) There's an awful lot of blood and violence, I can't think of a major protagonist I'd want to spend time with, the art does what it's supposed to, the blocking is striking, and the plot is fabulous. All the byzantine twisting of now, history, minor characters, world events, and even interesting use of the use/abuse of power theme. It's cool. It's intricate. It's just... did Moore really have to throw someone out a skyscraper on the first page?

So. Major points for fabulous plotting, but... don't read this if you're convinced the world's in bad shape.

A Beautiful Mind (Sylvia Nasar): ( I really liked it. )

I also reread Mirabile (Janet Kagan) in random chunks. Comfort reading, With silly puns, off-the-wall biology, and nice characterization. Everyone means well, and it generally works out.

My last-weekend-of-the-month binge was Hellspark (Janet Kagan). Mirabile is a short story collection, and Hellspark I believe a first novel, and I think the difference shows. In brief, Tocohol Susumo, a red-haired golden-eyed Hellspark trader with a Really Special extrapolative computer, is asked to solve a murder and a question of sentience. I'm glad I read this when I was younger and less jaded by fandom, because I would've tossed this as a Mary Sue-ish if I'd read it after reading all that bad fic. I would have missed a very entertaining story that's just a bit larger than life, in that nifty space opera way. My other quibble with the book is the way everyone's good intentions work out for the best, but after some of the other stuff I read this week I can't say that's a bad thing, in fiction.

In February I read an awful lot of the fiction on the weekends, when I slept late and failed to get anything done that I'd planned on. I can either blame this on a disinclination to get up when it's cold out (and the circulation in the house is terrible; the upstairs is always ten degrees warmer than the downstairs) or my disinclination to do my homework. One of these can be solved by a heater. The real problem probably can be solved by willpower, or going to the school library, out of reach of all that pesky fiction.