Books! An update
Aug. 10th, 2012 06:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricI have read books recently. Shocking, innit.
Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust
At least it was short? I abandoned it in Heathrow, I hope someone else found it marginally less boring than waiting for their plane.
Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
I picked this up in Heathrow and nommed the whole thing on the way through to Bangkok.
This is a book about secret circus magicians in a secret steampunk circus contest. It's charming and delightful and in many ways it's exactly like the magical circus displays the magicians construct: all artifice and wonder, no substance. That's ok. It's lovely. My favourite part was the vivid description of the circus fans who form a secret circus fanclub with their own communication network and modes of identification. Ms Morgenstern, if she is not fen herself, gets what it is to be a fan. <3<3<3
China Miéville, Kraken
Not enough urban fantasy features molluscs. Or, indeed, curators. I liked this book: it had a research geek as its hero, it had that fabulous alt-universe London which I vastly prefer to visit over the real one, and it had a lot of interesting sideways ideas in it about the nature of belief, religion, and so on. The alt-London is inhabited by whacky cults, of which the Krakenists are among the more sensible.
I loved loved loved the idea of the Angels of Memory. Yes. Yes yes yes. I loved that the London Stone showed up. I loved the idea of the Londonmancers, for that matter. I was initially taken with Vardy and his ex-creationist angst, but was disappointed in the end. I feel like more could've been done with him.
Note/warning: Aside from Vardy's angst, which hit my buttons but mostly in the good way, Miéville's world-building with whacky cults goes into some potentially problematic territory. There's the Chaos Nazi cult, for instance, means a section of the narrative has bonus anti-Semitic language and Holocaust references. I wasn't under the impression that there's authorial ickyness going on, but you mightn't want to read it anyway. I'm also not sure if his messing about creating whacky cults out of mainstream religions might get appropriative at times, especially considering that *most* of the whacky cults are either of a loosely Christian pattern or a loosely European-pagan pattern. So while the Jesus Bhuddists are almost plausible (especially given the existence of RL syncretic faiths, eg, the Bahai'i), hmm... I dunno, given the multiculturality of London these days, why aren't there whacky Sufis in this book, say? Djinn? Not sure if that would be better or worse, though. ANYWAY. If that's a thing that particularly bothers you, basically I can't tell if this will annoy you or not.
Thomas Thurman, Not Ordinarily Borrowable
Jon had a copy of this, which his son's mother had loaned him - the author being an old friend of theirs. I almost didn't read it, but fortunately Jon made me read it on the train and it was wonderful in every respect. It's about Maria, who is an Asnac, and needs to find out what Geoffrey of Monmouth said about dragons, in order to put it in her thesis. BUT A DRAGON HAS STOLEN THE 12th CENTURY SECTION OF THE LIBRARY. So she gets her bicycle and goes on a quest.
Jon posted me a copy, I have re-read it already, it is full of adorable and wit and ADORABLE. As soon as Brooke is old enough for chapter books I'm buying her and Dad a copy for their collective birthdays.
Evelyn Waugh, A Handful of Dust
At least it was short? I abandoned it in Heathrow, I hope someone else found it marginally less boring than waiting for their plane.
Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus
I picked this up in Heathrow and nommed the whole thing on the way through to Bangkok.
This is a book about secret circus magicians in a secret steampunk circus contest. It's charming and delightful and in many ways it's exactly like the magical circus displays the magicians construct: all artifice and wonder, no substance. That's ok. It's lovely. My favourite part was the vivid description of the circus fans who form a secret circus fanclub with their own communication network and modes of identification. Ms Morgenstern, if she is not fen herself, gets what it is to be a fan. <3<3<3
China Miéville, Kraken
Not enough urban fantasy features molluscs. Or, indeed, curators. I liked this book: it had a research geek as its hero, it had that fabulous alt-universe London which I vastly prefer to visit over the real one, and it had a lot of interesting sideways ideas in it about the nature of belief, religion, and so on. The alt-London is inhabited by whacky cults, of which the Krakenists are among the more sensible.
I loved loved loved the idea of the Angels of Memory. Yes. Yes yes yes. I loved that the London Stone showed up. I loved the idea of the Londonmancers, for that matter. I was initially taken with Vardy and his ex-creationist angst, but was disappointed in the end. I feel like more could've been done with him.
Note/warning: Aside from Vardy's angst, which hit my buttons but mostly in the good way, Miéville's world-building with whacky cults goes into some potentially problematic territory. There's the Chaos Nazi cult, for instance, means a section of the narrative has bonus anti-Semitic language and Holocaust references. I wasn't under the impression that there's authorial ickyness going on, but you mightn't want to read it anyway. I'm also not sure if his messing about creating whacky cults out of mainstream religions might get appropriative at times, especially considering that *most* of the whacky cults are either of a loosely Christian pattern or a loosely European-pagan pattern. So while the Jesus Bhuddists are almost plausible (especially given the existence of RL syncretic faiths, eg, the Bahai'i), hmm... I dunno, given the multiculturality of London these days, why aren't there whacky Sufis in this book, say? Djinn? Not sure if that would be better or worse, though. ANYWAY. If that's a thing that particularly bothers you, basically I can't tell if this will annoy you or not.
Thomas Thurman, Not Ordinarily Borrowable
Jon had a copy of this, which his son's mother had loaned him - the author being an old friend of theirs. I almost didn't read it, but fortunately Jon made me read it on the train and it was wonderful in every respect. It's about Maria, who is an Asnac, and needs to find out what Geoffrey of Monmouth said about dragons, in order to put it in her thesis. BUT A DRAGON HAS STOLEN THE 12th CENTURY SECTION OF THE LIBRARY. So she gets her bicycle and goes on a quest.
Jon posted me a copy, I have re-read it already, it is full of adorable and wit and ADORABLE. As soon as Brooke is old enough for chapter books I'm buying her and Dad a copy for their collective birthdays.