Reading Wednesday
Jul. 8th, 2015 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Stranger at the Wedding by Barbara Hambly. Kyra is a wizard in training in a world where wizardry is disreputable and even illegal, outside of her college; she's practicing for her upcoming exams when she has a vision of her younger sister dying on her wedding night. Kyra travels back home to the family that kicked her out years ago, to try to delay or prevent the wedding by any means necessary, at least until she can figure out who's trying to kill her sister and stop them. I'd seen a lot of descriptions of this book as a comedy, and well... I mean, it does have funny parts! I can see where the Georgette Heyer comparisons come from! But I can't call a book "frothy" when its plot centrally involves an Inquisition, burning people at the stake, and pedophilia. That said, I did really enjoy reading it and do definitely recommend it! I just want people to know what they're getting into.
The worldbuilding is intricate and fleshed-out; the world doesn't feel anything like Generic Medieval Fantasy Europe, although I suppose it technically belongs to that category. But it's so rich and detailed and full of little grace-notes that it doesn't feel right to call it that.
This is an older book than most of Hambly's that I've read, and you can sort of tell; the writing is a bit more purple, a bit more melodramatic than her sharper, more precise recent books. Which is interesting! I mean, it's obviously the same person, but you can also tell how she's changed. Which I found fascinating, because "a bit too purple" probably describes my own writing, so I'm always intrigued by how other people deal with that tendency.
Headhunters On My Doorstep: A True Treasure Island Ghost Story by J. Maarten Troost. I liked this book a lot, but I feel it suffers from a disjunction between its content and its title/cover. It's actually mostly about Troost's difficulties with alcoholism, his stay in rehab, and the year since that he's spent sober. While he reflects on that topic, he takes a trip around the South Pacific, vaguely following in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson (and occasionally other white 19th century dudes). Because Troost spent so little time in the places he visits for this book, he doesn't have any deep insights to offer about them, just amusing vacation anecdotes. But honestly, I vastly prefer that to the sort of travel writers who write as though taking a commercial cruise somewhere has made them experts; Troost doesn't pretend to be anything he's not. The book's still very funny, with the self-deprecating humor of his earlier books, and full of interesting and random trivia and history. Highly recommended.
(He does mention that he had been planning to write a book on India that fell through due to troubles with his publishing company, which makes me sad. I want the India book!)
Any Other Name by Craig Johnson. The tenth book in the Longmire series, murder mysteries set in Wyoming. In this one, Sheriff Walt Longmire agrees to help his old mentor when one of the mentor's friends - a retired police officer - commits suicide. Everyone who knew him agrees that the man had no suicidal tendencies, but all of the forensic evidence insists that that's what happened. Eventually the investigation involves several missing women, a strip-club bouncer named Thor, the ghost of Calvin Coolidge's wife and her pet raccoon, a buffalo stampede, a very exciting show-down involving a coal train, lots of trivia about guns from the 1800s, a hit man, and a casino in Deadwood (yes, the Deadwood; Vic, Walt's sidekick/girlfriend, says, "I saw the TV series.”
“There was a TV series set in Deadwood?”
“Yeah. I liked it — they said ‘fuck’ a lot.”). And throughout the whole book, a clock is ticking: Walt only has a few days to solve the mystery before he has to leave to go be with his daughter, who is about to give birth to her first child.
Although this was a good book, I didn't like it as much as the previous books in the series. The mystery never quite made sense (why did these people get involved with such a crazy scheme?) and Walt was portrayed more as a TV cop (you know, the sort who's always shooting 'bad guys' because he's a ~hero~) than as the thoughtful weirdo he usually is.
The Reason for Flowers: Their History, Culture, and Biology, and How They Change Our Lives by Stephen Buchmann. A non-fiction book that covers nearly every topic possibly associated with flowers: their evolution, their biology, their relationships with animals and insects, the history of gardens, perfumes, flowers in art and poetry and mythology, the modern-day cut-flower industry, flower genetics, flowers as food (even including a few recipes!) and flowers as medicine and flowers' effect on human psychology. Unfortunately, all of this is not as well-integrated as it could be, and it ends up reading a bit like a very long Wikipedia article. Buchmann has make the effort to write a book that covers more of the world than a lot of books in the 'detailed history of a minor object' genre, but the focus is still quite clearly Western culture. An enjoyable read if you're interested in the topic, but not a stand-out.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley. (I actually read this book a while ago, but NetGalley asked for reviews to be posted closer to the publication date, so I've just been waiting to be able to put this up.
What are you currently reading?
Eric Walrond: A Life in the Harlem Renaissance and the Transatlantic Caribbean by James Davis. This book is never-ending.
Lily Among Thorns by Rose Lerner. Another Regency romance by a new author (well, new to me) that I'm into!
Stranger at the Wedding by Barbara Hambly. Kyra is a wizard in training in a world where wizardry is disreputable and even illegal, outside of her college; she's practicing for her upcoming exams when she has a vision of her younger sister dying on her wedding night. Kyra travels back home to the family that kicked her out years ago, to try to delay or prevent the wedding by any means necessary, at least until she can figure out who's trying to kill her sister and stop them. I'd seen a lot of descriptions of this book as a comedy, and well... I mean, it does have funny parts! I can see where the Georgette Heyer comparisons come from! But I can't call a book "frothy" when its plot centrally involves an Inquisition, burning people at the stake, and pedophilia. That said, I did really enjoy reading it and do definitely recommend it! I just want people to know what they're getting into.
The worldbuilding is intricate and fleshed-out; the world doesn't feel anything like Generic Medieval Fantasy Europe, although I suppose it technically belongs to that category. But it's so rich and detailed and full of little grace-notes that it doesn't feel right to call it that.
This is an older book than most of Hambly's that I've read, and you can sort of tell; the writing is a bit more purple, a bit more melodramatic than her sharper, more precise recent books. Which is interesting! I mean, it's obviously the same person, but you can also tell how she's changed. Which I found fascinating, because "a bit too purple" probably describes my own writing, so I'm always intrigued by how other people deal with that tendency.
Headhunters On My Doorstep: A True Treasure Island Ghost Story by J. Maarten Troost. I liked this book a lot, but I feel it suffers from a disjunction between its content and its title/cover. It's actually mostly about Troost's difficulties with alcoholism, his stay in rehab, and the year since that he's spent sober. While he reflects on that topic, he takes a trip around the South Pacific, vaguely following in the footsteps of Robert Louis Stevenson (and occasionally other white 19th century dudes). Because Troost spent so little time in the places he visits for this book, he doesn't have any deep insights to offer about them, just amusing vacation anecdotes. But honestly, I vastly prefer that to the sort of travel writers who write as though taking a commercial cruise somewhere has made them experts; Troost doesn't pretend to be anything he's not. The book's still very funny, with the self-deprecating humor of his earlier books, and full of interesting and random trivia and history. Highly recommended.
(He does mention that he had been planning to write a book on India that fell through due to troubles with his publishing company, which makes me sad. I want the India book!)
Any Other Name by Craig Johnson. The tenth book in the Longmire series, murder mysteries set in Wyoming. In this one, Sheriff Walt Longmire agrees to help his old mentor when one of the mentor's friends - a retired police officer - commits suicide. Everyone who knew him agrees that the man had no suicidal tendencies, but all of the forensic evidence insists that that's what happened. Eventually the investigation involves several missing women, a strip-club bouncer named Thor, the ghost of Calvin Coolidge's wife and her pet raccoon, a buffalo stampede, a very exciting show-down involving a coal train, lots of trivia about guns from the 1800s, a hit man, and a casino in Deadwood (yes, the Deadwood; Vic, Walt's sidekick/girlfriend, says, "I saw the TV series.”
“There was a TV series set in Deadwood?”
“Yeah. I liked it — they said ‘fuck’ a lot.”). And throughout the whole book, a clock is ticking: Walt only has a few days to solve the mystery before he has to leave to go be with his daughter, who is about to give birth to her first child.
Although this was a good book, I didn't like it as much as the previous books in the series. The mystery never quite made sense (why did these people get involved with such a crazy scheme?) and Walt was portrayed more as a TV cop (you know, the sort who's always shooting 'bad guys' because he's a ~hero~) than as the thoughtful weirdo he usually is.
The Reason for Flowers: Their History, Culture, and Biology, and How They Change Our Lives by Stephen Buchmann. A non-fiction book that covers nearly every topic possibly associated with flowers: their evolution, their biology, their relationships with animals and insects, the history of gardens, perfumes, flowers in art and poetry and mythology, the modern-day cut-flower industry, flower genetics, flowers as food (even including a few recipes!) and flowers as medicine and flowers' effect on human psychology. Unfortunately, all of this is not as well-integrated as it could be, and it ends up reading a bit like a very long Wikipedia article. Buchmann has make the effort to write a book that covers more of the world than a lot of books in the 'detailed history of a minor object' genre, but the focus is still quite clearly Western culture. An enjoyable read if you're interested in the topic, but not a stand-out.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley. (I actually read this book a while ago, but NetGalley asked for reviews to be posted closer to the publication date, so I've just been waiting to be able to put this up.
What are you currently reading?
Eric Walrond: A Life in the Harlem Renaissance and the Transatlantic Caribbean by James Davis. This book is never-ending.
Lily Among Thorns by Rose Lerner. Another Regency romance by a new author (well, new to me) that I'm into!
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Date: 2015-07-08 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-08 08:41 pm (UTC)