Wed Reading Meme....
Nov. 11th, 2015 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. What I just finished reading?
The One in My Heart by Sherry Thomas - I'll give Thomas credit for having somewhat decent romance titles. Even if they make no sense. This was a contemporary romance novel and like all of Thomas' romance novels - it subverts the genre in various ways. The male character gets many of the attributes that you normally see in the female characters of this genre, and the female character many of the attributes of the male character. Which is why I liked it. Granted we still had the guy richer than the gal, but not by that much -- she was far from broke.
Bennett is attempting to reunite with his family, who he has been estranged from for about 15 years or thereabouts. When he was 16 he got involved with a much older woman, and by older I mean in her 30s. (Subversion number #1 - usually the May-December romance was the 16/17 year old girl and the much older man.) Also, I can't help but wonder if Thomas read the Sylvia Day and EL James contemporary romance novels - and like Courtney Milan felt the need to put her own spin on it?
At 18, he moved in with his lover and they were doing quite well, until she dumped him because he wasn't rebellious enough for her. (She was also manic-depressive and a famous photographer, while he became a boring surgeon.) Anyhow, skip 10 years later - he arrives in NY, sets up digs on Park Avenue and hunts girlfriend. Low and behold he stumbles upon our heroine, Eva, who is a professor of materials science at Columbia University, who has various patents. (Milan and Thomas have their heroines as brainy science types - another subversion, normally in these books the heroines are ditzy fashion editors, personal assistants, secretaries, or models.) Turns out he stood Eva up 15 or so years ago, in Paris, when he was 18 - this is when he hooked up with the 38 year old woman. Eva is one or two months older than he is. Now, he's fallen for her at first sight, but she isn't so sure how much of what he says is an act, bullshit, or the real thing. Eva has her own issues. Her parents divorced when she was five or six. Her father was bitter and did not permit visitation, since her mother left him for a Vermont Farmer. Both are dead. Her closest relationship is to her manic-depressive step-mother, who is a sweetheart and a Lord of the Rings fanatic. There's a lot of allusions to Lord of the Rings in the novel. It's a heavy metaphor. Also, Eva, does not like to talk about her feelings, is a complete and utter commitment phobe, and is perfectly happy being Bennett's fake girl-friend, with lots of sex on the side. (Another subversion - it is usually the opposite.)
So fun book. If a little disappointing in the wrap-up. Thomas like everyone else in this genre, except for Courtney Milan, likes to wrap things up a wee bit too quickly and neatly. I always feel like something is missing.
More X-men comics. This round, the highly touted Second Coming - which I just found to be a bit busy and too much action not enough character development. To date the best of this arc is Messiah Complex. Also I wish they'd stop killing off main characters -- I know they'll bring them back. (Which of course they do, a year later. Both Nightcrawler and Cable are killed in this arc. Everyone is furious at Cyclops -- seriously? Cyclops wasn't responsible for either death. The nasty villains were -- this was sort of obvious. Also it's not like the characters haven't been in the same sort of danger before. Nor, is the possibility that they could be resurrected completely unheard of. The writing was clumsy there. (That's the problem with constantly bringing characters back to life whenever you feel like it -- your reader's find it difficult to care when you kill them off or understand why anyone else does. Empathy goes out the window.) Like I said, Messiah Complex was much better.
Cyclops arc however continues to be fascinating and well developed. This is a guy who was trained to be a warrior, a fighter, a general and a leader in difficult times with conflicting messages. He was also seriously abused as a child, and as an adult suffered an insane amount of personal trauma, much of it laid at his feet as his fault by his idiotic friends and mentors -- so he's internalized a lot of this. On top of all this - he merged for a bit with Apocalypse - an ageless entity who believes that change can only occur through warfare, violence and chaos. Granted he was separated from Apocalpyse eventually, but it did change his outlook on things. After that happened, he doesn't get a break -- instead he witnesses a mass genocide of his people at human hands, the death of his first love and wife at the hands of a man he saved and befriended, and not long after - the death of a friend, and his wife's entire family by aliens. After all of that - he learns that his father-figure and mentor hid things from him and played with his memories. Then his race, mutants, are rendered extinct by a crazy member of the superhero team - the Avengers.
So...it's not surprising that he's become a wee bit paranoid and badass over time. Also, as Wolverine states, not clear on how to be leader without a war going on. From his perspective it never ends. There's always a war going on. What's great about these comics, particularly the one I'm currently reading Generation Hope - are the isolated character moments. Conversation in a bar between Cyclops and Wolverine. Or the conversation between Cyclops and Hope about his son and her adopted father, and biological mother. Cyclops sees Hope as his granddaughter and she has his last name.
Anyhow, the character moments are good. The action/plot convoluted and doesn't quite work. Not sure people read comics for the plots. I never have.
2. What I'm reading now
(Well outside of the X-men comic books...)
* Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - I've read 20 pages or thereabouts and this is rough going.
For one thing, it's not conducive to commuting by train or subway. It requires a certain amount of concentration and focus. Neither of which you really have when you commute by train or subway. There's lots of background noise and interruptions. The style reminds me a lot of Joyce's Ulysses...except he has footnotes. (ACK! Footnotes only belong in academic papers and legal briefs (because that's where you hide things) but not in Fiction. Unless of course you are Nabokov and are making fun of academia by putting the entire story in the footnotes.) Added to the above -it's not on the kindle, a big thick paperback, and with small lettering - so, difficult to lug around via subway/train not to mention hard to see without reading glasses. (My brother gave me the book for Christmas one year. He doesn't do most of his reading while commuting, he reads in a comfy chair at the beach or at home.)
At any rate, I think I'm going to have read this at home or while I'm in Hilton Head. And not on the way to work, church, etc...ie. while traveling by subway and train. Which means it's competing with the X-men comic books for my attention. Although - I can't read the X-men on my Ipad prior to bed, since it keeps me awake. But I could read Cloud Atlas - which puts me to sleep, at least so far.
The first chapter is written as a serious of journal logs by an 18th century dude who can't write and uses a lot of slang and dialect. Think text messaging by way of African dialect, and the 18th Century.
It's a lot of "&" and abbreviated words. In short it requires a lot of concentration - reminds me a little bit of reading James Joyce, Faulkner, and Zora Neal Thurston - who enjoyed playing with narrative style. Which I can appreciate, I do too. But it's hard to read to on the train. Airplane books this isn't.
* The Other Daughter by Lauren Willig - which I heard about via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shipperx. It's
not a romance novel. Or so the reviewers stated. It's a historical revenge fantasy - focusing on relationship drama. The book is about Rachel Woodley, who is busy being a governess in France when she gets a telegram that her mother is deathly ill. Rachel is forced to quit her job to get home. Returning to England, she discovers that her mother died five days ago. Then the shocks just keep coming. Apparently her father, who she thought was dead and a botanist, is in reality an Earl, very much alive, and with a family - including a grown son and daughter. Furious and aching for revenge on the father that left her mother and herself destitute, and illegitimate, (although personally, I think there's no such thing as illegitimate children, just irresponsible parents who refuse to take responsibility for sex - there's a lot of people out there that really should have been neutered at birth.) Anyhow, while visiting her cousin, she runs into one of his former students and apparently her distant cousin, three times removed or is that six times, who is a gossip columnist. This cousin hatches a revenge plot - where she can infiliterate her father's family and seek revenge. All she has to do is pretend to be the alluring and mysterious Vera Merton - one of his many cousins. So not entirely a lie. And he'll introduce her to society, remake her a bit first, and voila. It takes place during the breezy Edwardian Period or Jazz Age. Same period as the Great Gatsby and Jeeves and Wooster, although F. Scott Fitzgerald and PD Wodehouse, Willig is not. Her style is breezy and rather purple in places, ie, lots of adverbs. (Dear writers, please do not use adverbs after said. The word said does not need a modifier. Actually try to write said very little. Readers skip over it.)
* Flirting with Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran - which is a bit better written than the above.
3) What I'm reading next?
God only knows. I certainly don't.
The One in My Heart by Sherry Thomas - I'll give Thomas credit for having somewhat decent romance titles. Even if they make no sense. This was a contemporary romance novel and like all of Thomas' romance novels - it subverts the genre in various ways. The male character gets many of the attributes that you normally see in the female characters of this genre, and the female character many of the attributes of the male character. Which is why I liked it. Granted we still had the guy richer than the gal, but not by that much -- she was far from broke.
Bennett is attempting to reunite with his family, who he has been estranged from for about 15 years or thereabouts. When he was 16 he got involved with a much older woman, and by older I mean in her 30s. (Subversion number #1 - usually the May-December romance was the 16/17 year old girl and the much older man.) Also, I can't help but wonder if Thomas read the Sylvia Day and EL James contemporary romance novels - and like Courtney Milan felt the need to put her own spin on it?
At 18, he moved in with his lover and they were doing quite well, until she dumped him because he wasn't rebellious enough for her. (She was also manic-depressive and a famous photographer, while he became a boring surgeon.) Anyhow, skip 10 years later - he arrives in NY, sets up digs on Park Avenue and hunts girlfriend. Low and behold he stumbles upon our heroine, Eva, who is a professor of materials science at Columbia University, who has various patents. (Milan and Thomas have their heroines as brainy science types - another subversion, normally in these books the heroines are ditzy fashion editors, personal assistants, secretaries, or models.) Turns out he stood Eva up 15 or so years ago, in Paris, when he was 18 - this is when he hooked up with the 38 year old woman. Eva is one or two months older than he is. Now, he's fallen for her at first sight, but she isn't so sure how much of what he says is an act, bullshit, or the real thing. Eva has her own issues. Her parents divorced when she was five or six. Her father was bitter and did not permit visitation, since her mother left him for a Vermont Farmer. Both are dead. Her closest relationship is to her manic-depressive step-mother, who is a sweetheart and a Lord of the Rings fanatic. There's a lot of allusions to Lord of the Rings in the novel. It's a heavy metaphor. Also, Eva, does not like to talk about her feelings, is a complete and utter commitment phobe, and is perfectly happy being Bennett's fake girl-friend, with lots of sex on the side. (Another subversion - it is usually the opposite.)
So fun book. If a little disappointing in the wrap-up. Thomas like everyone else in this genre, except for Courtney Milan, likes to wrap things up a wee bit too quickly and neatly. I always feel like something is missing.
More X-men comics. This round, the highly touted Second Coming - which I just found to be a bit busy and too much action not enough character development. To date the best of this arc is Messiah Complex. Also I wish they'd stop killing off main characters -- I know they'll bring them back. (Which of course they do, a year later. Both Nightcrawler and Cable are killed in this arc. Everyone is furious at Cyclops -- seriously? Cyclops wasn't responsible for either death. The nasty villains were -- this was sort of obvious. Also it's not like the characters haven't been in the same sort of danger before. Nor, is the possibility that they could be resurrected completely unheard of. The writing was clumsy there. (That's the problem with constantly bringing characters back to life whenever you feel like it -- your reader's find it difficult to care when you kill them off or understand why anyone else does. Empathy goes out the window.) Like I said, Messiah Complex was much better.
Cyclops arc however continues to be fascinating and well developed. This is a guy who was trained to be a warrior, a fighter, a general and a leader in difficult times with conflicting messages. He was also seriously abused as a child, and as an adult suffered an insane amount of personal trauma, much of it laid at his feet as his fault by his idiotic friends and mentors -- so he's internalized a lot of this. On top of all this - he merged for a bit with Apocalypse - an ageless entity who believes that change can only occur through warfare, violence and chaos. Granted he was separated from Apocalpyse eventually, but it did change his outlook on things. After that happened, he doesn't get a break -- instead he witnesses a mass genocide of his people at human hands, the death of his first love and wife at the hands of a man he saved and befriended, and not long after - the death of a friend, and his wife's entire family by aliens. After all of that - he learns that his father-figure and mentor hid things from him and played with his memories. Then his race, mutants, are rendered extinct by a crazy member of the superhero team - the Avengers.
So...it's not surprising that he's become a wee bit paranoid and badass over time. Also, as Wolverine states, not clear on how to be leader without a war going on. From his perspective it never ends. There's always a war going on. What's great about these comics, particularly the one I'm currently reading Generation Hope - are the isolated character moments. Conversation in a bar between Cyclops and Wolverine. Or the conversation between Cyclops and Hope about his son and her adopted father, and biological mother. Cyclops sees Hope as his granddaughter and she has his last name.
Anyhow, the character moments are good. The action/plot convoluted and doesn't quite work. Not sure people read comics for the plots. I never have.
2. What I'm reading now
(Well outside of the X-men comic books...)
* Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - I've read 20 pages or thereabouts and this is rough going.
For one thing, it's not conducive to commuting by train or subway. It requires a certain amount of concentration and focus. Neither of which you really have when you commute by train or subway. There's lots of background noise and interruptions. The style reminds me a lot of Joyce's Ulysses...except he has footnotes. (ACK! Footnotes only belong in academic papers and legal briefs (because that's where you hide things) but not in Fiction. Unless of course you are Nabokov and are making fun of academia by putting the entire story in the footnotes.) Added to the above -it's not on the kindle, a big thick paperback, and with small lettering - so, difficult to lug around via subway/train not to mention hard to see without reading glasses. (My brother gave me the book for Christmas one year. He doesn't do most of his reading while commuting, he reads in a comfy chair at the beach or at home.)
At any rate, I think I'm going to have read this at home or while I'm in Hilton Head. And not on the way to work, church, etc...ie. while traveling by subway and train. Which means it's competing with the X-men comic books for my attention. Although - I can't read the X-men on my Ipad prior to bed, since it keeps me awake. But I could read Cloud Atlas - which puts me to sleep, at least so far.
The first chapter is written as a serious of journal logs by an 18th century dude who can't write and uses a lot of slang and dialect. Think text messaging by way of African dialect, and the 18th Century.
It's a lot of "&" and abbreviated words. In short it requires a lot of concentration - reminds me a little bit of reading James Joyce, Faulkner, and Zora Neal Thurston - who enjoyed playing with narrative style. Which I can appreciate, I do too. But it's hard to read to on the train. Airplane books this isn't.
* The Other Daughter by Lauren Willig - which I heard about via
shipperx. It'snot a romance novel. Or so the reviewers stated. It's a historical revenge fantasy - focusing on relationship drama. The book is about Rachel Woodley, who is busy being a governess in France when she gets a telegram that her mother is deathly ill. Rachel is forced to quit her job to get home. Returning to England, she discovers that her mother died five days ago. Then the shocks just keep coming. Apparently her father, who she thought was dead and a botanist, is in reality an Earl, very much alive, and with a family - including a grown son and daughter. Furious and aching for revenge on the father that left her mother and herself destitute, and illegitimate, (although personally, I think there's no such thing as illegitimate children, just irresponsible parents who refuse to take responsibility for sex - there's a lot of people out there that really should have been neutered at birth.) Anyhow, while visiting her cousin, she runs into one of his former students and apparently her distant cousin, three times removed or is that six times, who is a gossip columnist. This cousin hatches a revenge plot - where she can infiliterate her father's family and seek revenge. All she has to do is pretend to be the alluring and mysterious Vera Merton - one of his many cousins. So not entirely a lie. And he'll introduce her to society, remake her a bit first, and voila. It takes place during the breezy Edwardian Period or Jazz Age. Same period as the Great Gatsby and Jeeves and Wooster, although F. Scott Fitzgerald and PD Wodehouse, Willig is not. Her style is breezy and rather purple in places, ie, lots of adverbs. (Dear writers, please do not use adverbs after said. The word said does not need a modifier. Actually try to write said very little. Readers skip over it.)
* Flirting with Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran - which is a bit better written than the above.
3) What I'm reading next?
God only knows. I certainly don't.