Reading Wednesday
Apr. 22nd, 2015 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhI missed writing up a post last week, so I have more books than usual to cover!
What did you just finish?
Tibet Wild: A Naturalist's Journey on the Roof of the World by George Schaller. An account of Schaller's time researching the chiru, a sort of antelope or gazelle found the Chang Tang, the northern plain of Tibet. Well, that's what the summary said. In reality, that only takes up about half of the book, with the rest being given over to random chapters on topics like snow leopards, Tibetan bears, wild sheep, pikas (sort of a wild hamster), and Schaller's personal life story. Since these chapters were mostly way more interesting than the fucking chiru, which I was tired of ten pages in, I didn't mind. Though I have to say an account of his childhood in WWII-era Germany was not what I expected from the cover.
This is possibly the most boring book I have ever read. If I hadn't needed to write a review for NetGalley, I would never have bothered to finish it. Schaller rarely bothers to tell the reader anything about the chiru - what it looks like, its biology, its behavior - but instead writes endless passages that read something like this: "Today we counted 115 chiru. The next morning the car got stuck in the mud. We counted 97 chiru. The next day it snowed. 103 chiru." On and on and on. There are no characters in the book except for Schaller himself; though he has companions on his trips and occasionally encounters politicians or locals or friends, no one sticks around long enough to have a personality or plot. Often they don't even get names or descriptions. Absolutely not recommended under any circumstances. If you have a strange urge to read about chiru, I'm sure you could find academic articles that are both more entertaining and more informative.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Psmith, Journalist by P.G. Wodehouse. This is such a strange book! I mean, yes, it's charming and funny, like all of the Psmith books (though this one has sadly not enough Mike), but what I was really fascinated by was the portrayal of a world before the US – or maybe just NYC - absolutely dominated media, and thus they were strange little places to be explained to one's readers. Other people deal with this all the time, I'm sure, but I'm not used to having things like Broadway or tenements or American slang explained as though they were foreign and baffling concepts, and when you only have to deal with it once a lifetime, it's exciting and amusing rather than annoying and othering. (Especially when he gets it wrong - I would have said cowboys and urban 'thugs' were opposed stereotypes, not basically the same thing, but maybe I know less about 1910's genre tropes than Wodehouse.)
Anyway. Mike and the rest of his cricket team go on a tour to the US; Psmith tags along and, after getting bored of cricket, decides to join a newspaper in New York. Looking for exciting stories to write about, he quickly gets involved in a scandal about the hidden identity of a slumlord, a new boxing champion, and gangsters' fondness for cats.
Knights of Ghosts and Shadows by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon. I decided to read because someone on FFA was recommending it for containing a canon OT3, and yes, it is a very pleasing book on that level. On every other level... oh my god, you guys, this book is so early 90s. Or maybe I should say so Mercedes Lackey? I haven't read enough of her books to judge. But it contains an abundance of Celtic music, Renaissance fairs, street kids (in the 'oh, I make a living busking for money' sense), elves in leather jackets, normal human beings inexplicably wandering around LA in cloaks and scarlet boots, names that sound like bad Tolkien rip-offs, battles with evil sorcerers that involve people throwing balls of magic at each other like a video game, and jazz flute. (Which I try to take seriously, because I am a mature adult, but all I can think of is this.)
On the other hand, it is a sweet, charming book with a lovely central relationship. It's absolutely the opposite of grimdark fantasy, and sometimes that's exactly what you need. Eric is working at a Renaissance fair, mourning the loss of his girlfriend and the upcoming loss of his job, since the land the fair is held on has been bought by developers. He accidentally awakens an elf named Korendil with his music, who recognizes Eric as a Bard, the only one with the power to save all the elves in LA. Meanwhile, Beth, a fellow musician, turns out to also be a witch. Together the three of them fightcrime the evil elf and his half-human daughter who are trying to destroy the magic that powers LA's creativity.
Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. This book was AMAZING. In the 1880s, Amelia Peabody unexpectedly inherits a great deal of money, and as she is a sensible woman with no dependents to leave it to, she decides to spend it on enjoying herself, and takes off on a trip to see the sights of the Ancient World, starting with Rome (where she adopts Evelyn, a pretty young lady, as her companion) and Egypt (where she invades the archaeological excavation of Radcliffe and Walter Emerson). Soon there is a mummy menacing everyone, ex-lovers running about, secret wills, mysterious disappearances, and much more. Amelia is a fantastic character, hilarious and stubborn and independent. Luckily this is the first book of a whole series, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest.
(There is some racism, which the setting allowed me to pretend belonged the characters, even though I suspect it really came from the author. At least it was mostly focused on Italians and their ~passionate Latin blood~, which is not a trope that offends me as much as some.)
What are you currently reading?
The Trouble with Post-Blackness, edited by Houston A. Baker and K. Merinda Simmons. Another NetGalley book!
What did you just finish?
Tibet Wild: A Naturalist's Journey on the Roof of the World by George Schaller. An account of Schaller's time researching the chiru, a sort of antelope or gazelle found the Chang Tang, the northern plain of Tibet. Well, that's what the summary said. In reality, that only takes up about half of the book, with the rest being given over to random chapters on topics like snow leopards, Tibetan bears, wild sheep, pikas (sort of a wild hamster), and Schaller's personal life story. Since these chapters were mostly way more interesting than the fucking chiru, which I was tired of ten pages in, I didn't mind. Though I have to say an account of his childhood in WWII-era Germany was not what I expected from the cover.
This is possibly the most boring book I have ever read. If I hadn't needed to write a review for NetGalley, I would never have bothered to finish it. Schaller rarely bothers to tell the reader anything about the chiru - what it looks like, its biology, its behavior - but instead writes endless passages that read something like this: "Today we counted 115 chiru. The next morning the car got stuck in the mud. We counted 97 chiru. The next day it snowed. 103 chiru." On and on and on. There are no characters in the book except for Schaller himself; though he has companions on his trips and occasionally encounters politicians or locals or friends, no one sticks around long enough to have a personality or plot. Often they don't even get names or descriptions. Absolutely not recommended under any circumstances. If you have a strange urge to read about chiru, I'm sure you could find academic articles that are both more entertaining and more informative.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Psmith, Journalist by P.G. Wodehouse. This is such a strange book! I mean, yes, it's charming and funny, like all of the Psmith books (though this one has sadly not enough Mike), but what I was really fascinated by was the portrayal of a world before the US – or maybe just NYC - absolutely dominated media, and thus they were strange little places to be explained to one's readers. Other people deal with this all the time, I'm sure, but I'm not used to having things like Broadway or tenements or American slang explained as though they were foreign and baffling concepts, and when you only have to deal with it once a lifetime, it's exciting and amusing rather than annoying and othering. (Especially when he gets it wrong - I would have said cowboys and urban 'thugs' were opposed stereotypes, not basically the same thing, but maybe I know less about 1910's genre tropes than Wodehouse.)
Anyway. Mike and the rest of his cricket team go on a tour to the US; Psmith tags along and, after getting bored of cricket, decides to join a newspaper in New York. Looking for exciting stories to write about, he quickly gets involved in a scandal about the hidden identity of a slumlord, a new boxing champion, and gangsters' fondness for cats.
Knights of Ghosts and Shadows by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon. I decided to read because someone on FFA was recommending it for containing a canon OT3, and yes, it is a very pleasing book on that level. On every other level... oh my god, you guys, this book is so early 90s. Or maybe I should say so Mercedes Lackey? I haven't read enough of her books to judge. But it contains an abundance of Celtic music, Renaissance fairs, street kids (in the 'oh, I make a living busking for money' sense), elves in leather jackets, normal human beings inexplicably wandering around LA in cloaks and scarlet boots, names that sound like bad Tolkien rip-offs, battles with evil sorcerers that involve people throwing balls of magic at each other like a video game, and jazz flute. (Which I try to take seriously, because I am a mature adult, but all I can think of is this.)
On the other hand, it is a sweet, charming book with a lovely central relationship. It's absolutely the opposite of grimdark fantasy, and sometimes that's exactly what you need. Eric is working at a Renaissance fair, mourning the loss of his girlfriend and the upcoming loss of his job, since the land the fair is held on has been bought by developers. He accidentally awakens an elf named Korendil with his music, who recognizes Eric as a Bard, the only one with the power to save all the elves in LA. Meanwhile, Beth, a fellow musician, turns out to also be a witch. Together the three of them fight
Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. This book was AMAZING. In the 1880s, Amelia Peabody unexpectedly inherits a great deal of money, and as she is a sensible woman with no dependents to leave it to, she decides to spend it on enjoying herself, and takes off on a trip to see the sights of the Ancient World, starting with Rome (where she adopts Evelyn, a pretty young lady, as her companion) and Egypt (where she invades the archaeological excavation of Radcliffe and Walter Emerson). Soon there is a mummy menacing everyone, ex-lovers running about, secret wills, mysterious disappearances, and much more. Amelia is a fantastic character, hilarious and stubborn and independent. Luckily this is the first book of a whole series, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest.
(There is some racism, which the setting allowed me to pretend belonged the characters, even though I suspect it really came from the author. At least it was mostly focused on Italians and their ~passionate Latin blood~, which is not a trope that offends me as much as some.)
What are you currently reading?
The Trouble with Post-Blackness, edited by Houston A. Baker and K. Merinda Simmons. Another NetGalley book!
