Books that I have read lately
Feb. 28th, 2016 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretGentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold.
I mean... if you're going to write fanfic of your own characters, this is a pretty great way to do it. It has even less plot and action than Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, and that's fine and all, but I did actually like those parts of the Miles books and I miss it a little. Bujold is pretty good at space opera plot. But in terms of characterization and building depth and emotional resonance from beloved characters, Gentleman Jole is extremely satisfying. If this is the kind of book Bujold wants to write, I'm totally fine with that.
The Golem and the Jinii by Helene Wecker.
Explicitly inspired by Kavalier and Clay, it's hard to see how I could have failed to enjoy this. It's about the titular two mythical creatures, each accidentally embedded in the life of early 20th century Lower Manhattan immigrant communities, transported to the New World along with Arab and Jewish immigrants. Wecker did her homework like a boss and what's more important, thought deep and hard about how to tell resonant, accurate, versions of the traditional myths that still make sense in their new setting. The execution is marvelous: Chava is a brilliant character. I have a long rant about all the things most contemporary tellers of Golem stories do wrong; I have a suspicion Wecker does too, because her version does not fail according to any criteria of my rant. And the Jinni has clearly had similar attention paid to him: Wecker's afterward notes her determination that Ahmad would never fulfill a wish.
The human characters who populate Wecker's world are as rich as her mythological creatures: Michael and Anna and Sophia and Avram and Arbeely and Maryam and ICE CREAM SALEH!!! Their stories felt real in that rarest of fictive ways- their endings did not feel predetermined, driven by the plot. I was truly surprised to learn which of them survived and didn't survive the ending, and in which shape they did.
An American Plague by Jim Murray
Inspired bycahn's reading of Ron Chernoff's Alexander Hamilton biography, I've been reading as much as I can find about the 1793 Phildelphia yellow fever epidemic that Hamilton caught. Because that's the part of the Hamilton story that fascinates me, because I'm me. Also, because I read The Federalist Papers when I was fifteen and that's when I went through my Alexander Hamilton phase, and part of me is bemused as hell that suddenly fandom is into him.
But did you know that in 1793 the federal government basically shut down because Philadelphia, the national capital, was afflicted with a terrible yellow fever epidemic and this was pre-germ theory and the medical establishment was incompetent to deal with it other than to say "If we wait until winter it'll probably freeze out."... and the Constitution seemed to suggest that the President couldn't convene Congress except in the capital (apparently for fear that the President could convene a partial Congress in a remote location to do bad anti-democratic things?) so President Washington spent months basically unable to do anything? HOLY SHIT THAT'S FUCKED UP.
This book is not as interesting from the medical side as some other accounts of early epidemics I've read, but the history is completely fascinating. I've moved on to some of the primary sources now- Matthew Carey's definitive pamphlet, as well as a response to Carey by some of the black nurses who cared for Philadelphia's sick and of course never received the credit due to them.
Vengeance in Death, Holiday in Death, Midnight in Death, Conspiracy in Death by J.D. Robb
Yup, still racing through them, still not really liking them. Vengeance was my least favorite in the series, with gaudily gruesome murders that felt disproportionate to the pain that inspired them, and with way too much Roarke. Holiday was silly but basically fine. Conspiracy in Death is one of the better ones so far in terms of intricacy of crime, though with an ending that fails to wrap up all the loose ends satisfyingly. If this means that we'll revisit some of the antagonists in later books, that's okay with me, but if it just means that the ending trails off unsatisfyingly, it'll annoy me.
I mean... if you're going to write fanfic of your own characters, this is a pretty great way to do it. It has even less plot and action than Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, and that's fine and all, but I did actually like those parts of the Miles books and I miss it a little. Bujold is pretty good at space opera plot. But in terms of characterization and building depth and emotional resonance from beloved characters, Gentleman Jole is extremely satisfying. If this is the kind of book Bujold wants to write, I'm totally fine with that.
The Golem and the Jinii by Helene Wecker.
Explicitly inspired by Kavalier and Clay, it's hard to see how I could have failed to enjoy this. It's about the titular two mythical creatures, each accidentally embedded in the life of early 20th century Lower Manhattan immigrant communities, transported to the New World along with Arab and Jewish immigrants. Wecker did her homework like a boss and what's more important, thought deep and hard about how to tell resonant, accurate, versions of the traditional myths that still make sense in their new setting. The execution is marvelous: Chava is a brilliant character. I have a long rant about all the things most contemporary tellers of Golem stories do wrong; I have a suspicion Wecker does too, because her version does not fail according to any criteria of my rant. And the Jinni has clearly had similar attention paid to him: Wecker's afterward notes her determination that Ahmad would never fulfill a wish.
The human characters who populate Wecker's world are as rich as her mythological creatures: Michael and Anna and Sophia and Avram and Arbeely and Maryam and ICE CREAM SALEH!!! Their stories felt real in that rarest of fictive ways- their endings did not feel predetermined, driven by the plot. I was truly surprised to learn which of them survived and didn't survive the ending, and in which shape they did.
An American Plague by Jim Murray
Inspired by
cahn's reading of Ron Chernoff's Alexander Hamilton biography, I've been reading as much as I can find about the 1793 Phildelphia yellow fever epidemic that Hamilton caught. Because that's the part of the Hamilton story that fascinates me, because I'm me. Also, because I read The Federalist Papers when I was fifteen and that's when I went through my Alexander Hamilton phase, and part of me is bemused as hell that suddenly fandom is into him. But did you know that in 1793 the federal government basically shut down because Philadelphia, the national capital, was afflicted with a terrible yellow fever epidemic and this was pre-germ theory and the medical establishment was incompetent to deal with it other than to say "If we wait until winter it'll probably freeze out."... and the Constitution seemed to suggest that the President couldn't convene Congress except in the capital (apparently for fear that the President could convene a partial Congress in a remote location to do bad anti-democratic things?) so President Washington spent months basically unable to do anything? HOLY SHIT THAT'S FUCKED UP.
This book is not as interesting from the medical side as some other accounts of early epidemics I've read, but the history is completely fascinating. I've moved on to some of the primary sources now- Matthew Carey's definitive pamphlet, as well as a response to Carey by some of the black nurses who cared for Philadelphia's sick and of course never received the credit due to them.
Vengeance in Death, Holiday in Death, Midnight in Death, Conspiracy in Death by J.D. Robb
Yup, still racing through them, still not really liking them. Vengeance was my least favorite in the series, with gaudily gruesome murders that felt disproportionate to the pain that inspired them, and with way too much Roarke. Holiday was silly but basically fine. Conspiracy in Death is one of the better ones so far in terms of intricacy of crime, though with an ending that fails to wrap up all the loose ends satisfyingly. If this means that we'll revisit some of the antagonists in later books, that's okay with me, but if it just means that the ending trails off unsatisfyingly, it'll annoy me.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-02-28 11:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-02-29 04:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-02-29 04:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-03-03 03:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2016-03-03 05:30 am (UTC)