Reading Wed– Thursday
Feb. 4th, 2016 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari. A non-fiction book written with sociologist Eric Klinenberg, this is supposedly an analysis of "modern romance" (mainly as experienced in the US, though there are short case studies of Tokyo, Paris, UAE, and Buenos Aries) rather than a book about Ansari's personal experiences. Despite it's fairly scientific goal, the voice of narration is definitely Ansari's, and so is packed with the same sort of jokes and self-deprecating humor of his stand up and TV roles. He looks at things like the role of texting in dating, dating websites, dating apps like Tinder, and sexting. It's not a dating advice book – which I would not be interested in, given that I'm not really looking to date anyone new – but rather one that looks at how our society deals with finding a mate.
There's lot of neat little facts packed in here. For instance, did you know that in Philadelphia in 1930, one third of marriages were between couples who lived within a five block radius of each other? One third! That's crazy to me. I also liked his analysis of how texting or emailing can lead to more social anxiety than face-to-face conversation. To summarize a lot of research: when you say something to someone, you get an immediate response. But when it's written, you might have to wait minutes, hours, even days to have any idea of if they're offended, amused, bored, interested, etc. And it's that uncertainty that can send your brain into spirals of worry. He gets into the "paradox of choice" – basically, that having lots of choices can actually make it harder to pick one.
So, it's a book with elements of humor, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and history. I don't think it's going to change the world, but it was a fun read.
Eric by Terry Pratchett. A Discworld novel! I'd kind of fallen out of my plan to reread the whole series, not because I was getting bored of them, but because this particular one was originally issued as an illustrated novel. Unfortunately, that version is now out of print, but I was hoping if I hung around the local used book stores long enough I would find a copy. Alas, such was not the case, but I got tired of waiting and went ahead and read the non-illustrated version.
Eric is a parody of Faust in which a 13-year-old, hoping to summon a demon, accidentally gets Rincewind instead. He makes the standard wishes of wanting to rule the world, have the most beautiful woman in history, and live forever, but this being the Discworld, his wishes do not exactly work out. And then everything culminates in a coup d'etat in Hell.
This is definitely one of the lesser Discworld books, literally as well as figuratively – it's more a novella than a novel, running only about 90 pages. But there are some wonderful moments nonetheless; I've always remembered the depiction of Helen of Troy as a middle-aged woman, surrounded by the children she had with Paris, completely unremarkable-looking. This is hardly the first depiction of an older Helen, ambivalent about the outcome of the war, but it's the first one I read, and it's stuck in my mind all the years since I first read this book.
Hap and Leonard by Joe Lansdale. This is the latest book in a series of... well, I'm not sure what to call them, actually. Mystery novels? Thrillers? There does seem to be as much focus on the action and fight scenes as on figuring out who did it. Apparently Wikipedia is calling it "suspense", so let's go with that.
Anyway. I'd heard a bit about this series before, and had vaguely been meaning to get around to checking it out for a while now. This has been made more convenient by the fact that the series is being made into a TV show, to start in March on the Sundance channel. And therefore: Hap and Leonard, a new collection of previously-published short stories that's being billed as an introduction to the series. So I have two aspects to comment on: the stories themselves, and how well they work as an introduction.
The stories themselves: pretty good! Hap is a white, poor, ex-hippie and current "freelance troublemaker". Leonard is a black, gay, conservative Vietnam vet. Together, they fight crime! Well, actually, they do. Various sorts of crimes feature in these stories: they stop a bank robbery, solve a murder, deal with a kidnapping, act as bodyguards, and take on drug dealers. A lot of the enjoyment of the book is the dry humor of the two characters, and the rural East Texas setting. I enjoyed reading the stories a lot; they're not the deepest ones I've ever read, but they were fun and charming, and I'd definitely read more.
Now, on to the use of this particular book as an introduction to the series: it sucks. Totally. I have no idea why they decided on this order for the stories; they're not in publication order, they're definitely not in chronological order within-story; they're not in any order that would seem to help the reader. For instance, the story about how Hap and Leonard met as children seems like a really obvious place to open the book! Instead, it was placed 6th out of 7. It took me until the third story to figure out that the characters were neither cops nor private detectives, which was my original assumption. Hap has a live-in girlfriend who appears and disappears from the stories randomly without explanation – clearly some of them are set either before he met her or after they broke up, but I have no idea which it is. I had lots of difficulty figuring out the relationship between characters, or motivations, or setting. All of that is to be expected when starting with the 12th book in a series, but then don't bill it as an introduction!
So overall, I liked the stories, but I would not recommend this as a place to start reading about Hap and Leonard.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal. A novel that is basically Jane Austen with magic. Very, very explicitly Jane Austen, and mostly Pride and Prejudice. There's plenty of deliberate references, from the flighty mother and serious, caring father; the rich girl with a dark past of having nearly eloped; the bookish older sister and pretty, flirtatious younger sister; the untrustworthy soldier; etc, etc. I didn't really have a problem with that – there's plenty of Austen pastiches out there, and if you're in the right mood, they can be quite fun. This one was not a particularly deep example of the genre, but I needed some light, mindless reading, and it fit the bill.
One thing I didn't like was that the magic literally added nothing to the plot or setting. It was such a cool premise, but you could have replaced it with music or painting it would have literally changed nothing. There's also the love triangle, or well, love septangle. Is septangle a word? Whatever shape encompasses at least seven people involved in a romantic mess of "he loves her, but she loves him, but he's involved with two women" and so forth. I don't really mind love triangles, or at least not as much as many people seem to, but even I had to say that this was a bit excessive. And then the guy the main character ends up with in the end hardly ever interacted with her! I did not see that resolution coming at all.
I don't know. I can't really recommend this, because it was such a slight nothing of a book with plenty of problems, and yet I enjoyed myself while I was reading.
What are you currently reading?
Patriot Hearts by Barbara Hambly. A novel about Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolly Madison, and Sally Hemmings. I've been listening to Hamilton a lot again recently, and it seemed like an appropriate choice. Also, I always love a reason to read a book that's been taking up space on my physical shelves for too long.
Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari. A non-fiction book written with sociologist Eric Klinenberg, this is supposedly an analysis of "modern romance" (mainly as experienced in the US, though there are short case studies of Tokyo, Paris, UAE, and Buenos Aries) rather than a book about Ansari's personal experiences. Despite it's fairly scientific goal, the voice of narration is definitely Ansari's, and so is packed with the same sort of jokes and self-deprecating humor of his stand up and TV roles. He looks at things like the role of texting in dating, dating websites, dating apps like Tinder, and sexting. It's not a dating advice book – which I would not be interested in, given that I'm not really looking to date anyone new – but rather one that looks at how our society deals with finding a mate.
There's lot of neat little facts packed in here. For instance, did you know that in Philadelphia in 1930, one third of marriages were between couples who lived within a five block radius of each other? One third! That's crazy to me. I also liked his analysis of how texting or emailing can lead to more social anxiety than face-to-face conversation. To summarize a lot of research: when you say something to someone, you get an immediate response. But when it's written, you might have to wait minutes, hours, even days to have any idea of if they're offended, amused, bored, interested, etc. And it's that uncertainty that can send your brain into spirals of worry. He gets into the "paradox of choice" – basically, that having lots of choices can actually make it harder to pick one.
So, it's a book with elements of humor, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and history. I don't think it's going to change the world, but it was a fun read.
Eric by Terry Pratchett. A Discworld novel! I'd kind of fallen out of my plan to reread the whole series, not because I was getting bored of them, but because this particular one was originally issued as an illustrated novel. Unfortunately, that version is now out of print, but I was hoping if I hung around the local used book stores long enough I would find a copy. Alas, such was not the case, but I got tired of waiting and went ahead and read the non-illustrated version.
Eric is a parody of Faust in which a 13-year-old, hoping to summon a demon, accidentally gets Rincewind instead. He makes the standard wishes of wanting to rule the world, have the most beautiful woman in history, and live forever, but this being the Discworld, his wishes do not exactly work out. And then everything culminates in a coup d'etat in Hell.
This is definitely one of the lesser Discworld books, literally as well as figuratively – it's more a novella than a novel, running only about 90 pages. But there are some wonderful moments nonetheless; I've always remembered the depiction of Helen of Troy as a middle-aged woman, surrounded by the children she had with Paris, completely unremarkable-looking. This is hardly the first depiction of an older Helen, ambivalent about the outcome of the war, but it's the first one I read, and it's stuck in my mind all the years since I first read this book.
Hap and Leonard by Joe Lansdale. This is the latest book in a series of... well, I'm not sure what to call them, actually. Mystery novels? Thrillers? There does seem to be as much focus on the action and fight scenes as on figuring out who did it. Apparently Wikipedia is calling it "suspense", so let's go with that.
Anyway. I'd heard a bit about this series before, and had vaguely been meaning to get around to checking it out for a while now. This has been made more convenient by the fact that the series is being made into a TV show, to start in March on the Sundance channel. And therefore: Hap and Leonard, a new collection of previously-published short stories that's being billed as an introduction to the series. So I have two aspects to comment on: the stories themselves, and how well they work as an introduction.
The stories themselves: pretty good! Hap is a white, poor, ex-hippie and current "freelance troublemaker". Leonard is a black, gay, conservative Vietnam vet. Together, they fight crime! Well, actually, they do. Various sorts of crimes feature in these stories: they stop a bank robbery, solve a murder, deal with a kidnapping, act as bodyguards, and take on drug dealers. A lot of the enjoyment of the book is the dry humor of the two characters, and the rural East Texas setting. I enjoyed reading the stories a lot; they're not the deepest ones I've ever read, but they were fun and charming, and I'd definitely read more.
Now, on to the use of this particular book as an introduction to the series: it sucks. Totally. I have no idea why they decided on this order for the stories; they're not in publication order, they're definitely not in chronological order within-story; they're not in any order that would seem to help the reader. For instance, the story about how Hap and Leonard met as children seems like a really obvious place to open the book! Instead, it was placed 6th out of 7. It took me until the third story to figure out that the characters were neither cops nor private detectives, which was my original assumption. Hap has a live-in girlfriend who appears and disappears from the stories randomly without explanation – clearly some of them are set either before he met her or after they broke up, but I have no idea which it is. I had lots of difficulty figuring out the relationship between characters, or motivations, or setting. All of that is to be expected when starting with the 12th book in a series, but then don't bill it as an introduction!
So overall, I liked the stories, but I would not recommend this as a place to start reading about Hap and Leonard.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal. A novel that is basically Jane Austen with magic. Very, very explicitly Jane Austen, and mostly Pride and Prejudice. There's plenty of deliberate references, from the flighty mother and serious, caring father; the rich girl with a dark past of having nearly eloped; the bookish older sister and pretty, flirtatious younger sister; the untrustworthy soldier; etc, etc. I didn't really have a problem with that – there's plenty of Austen pastiches out there, and if you're in the right mood, they can be quite fun. This one was not a particularly deep example of the genre, but I needed some light, mindless reading, and it fit the bill.
One thing I didn't like was that the magic literally added nothing to the plot or setting. It was such a cool premise, but you could have replaced it with music or painting it would have literally changed nothing. There's also the love triangle, or well, love septangle. Is septangle a word? Whatever shape encompasses at least seven people involved in a romantic mess of "he loves her, but she loves him, but he's involved with two women" and so forth. I don't really mind love triangles, or at least not as much as many people seem to, but even I had to say that this was a bit excessive. And then the guy the main character ends up with in the end hardly ever interacted with her! I did not see that resolution coming at all.
I don't know. I can't really recommend this, because it was such a slight nothing of a book with plenty of problems, and yet I enjoyed myself while I was reading.
What are you currently reading?
Patriot Hearts by Barbara Hambly. A novel about Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolly Madison, and Sally Hemmings. I've been listening to Hamilton a lot again recently, and it seemed like an appropriate choice. Also, I always love a reason to read a book that's been taking up space on my physical shelves for too long.
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no subject
Date: 2016-02-06 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-06 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-07 04:56 am (UTC)Thank you! I'm thinking about checking it out. Good to know about the relationship especially, because yeah, I totally did not expect Jane to end up with him!
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Date: 2016-02-05 02:59 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2016-02-07 04:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-05 03:27 am (UTC)That sounds amazing. And 90 pages is short enough that I don't have to feel guilty for reading it when I have a to-read list!
Aziz Ansari's book sounds interesting, too. I haven't seen his new show, but I loved him in Parks & Rec and thought his standup was pretty good, too.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-05 10:51 pm (UTC)It's not really the best introduction to the Discworld series (it is very, very slight, and doesn't have any of the social satire that is the backbone of the best books), but it does make an easy place to start! And "short" is definitely a good recommendation when you're talking about a series that is 41 books long.
I haven't seen his new show, but I loved him in Parks & Rec and thought his standup was pretty good, too.
Same here! I have his new show on my to-watch list, but I make my way through that much, much slower than my to-read list.
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Date: 2016-02-05 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-05 10:52 pm (UTC)I did end up liking the characters and the writing enough that I'll be checking out more of the series, though I probably should have waited and started somewhere else. Oh, well!
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Date: 2016-02-05 09:47 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2016-02-09 04:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-10 02:35 am (UTC)I have started to explore her short stories! The Ben January ones were fantastic.