Currently reading
Madame Bovary
Siddhartha
Civil Disobedience and Other Essays (Collected Essays)
The Children Star
Manstealing for Fat Girls
Undersong: Chosen Poems Old and New
Radio Crackling, Radio Gone
Radiant Days
Mythmakers and Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction
Footnotes in Gaza
Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man: A Memoir
Well I don't really like memoirs, but I've read a number of them and this one is no different. Like many of the addiction memoirs written since the early 90s, it's written in the present tense, with nonlinear chapters switching between first and third person. The writing is clear and compelling enough but not particularly deep or critical. The title says it all: it's a portrait of an addict, not of an addict's recovery. It's a sort of depressing picaresque, reminding me of one of the problems that can come with episodic narrative: repetition without change or insight. The author doesn't get sober until the last few pages of the book, and I genuinely wonder about the 200 pages of drugalogue before that. Is it narratively necessary to see so many scenes of the author using? There's very little character development, ultimately, so I don't care at the end that the author is maybe getting clean for real this time. I guess I kept reading it because I'm still curious about people with unlimited wealth and privilege. Why am I still curious about this? I wish I wasn't. I blame capitalism.
Refuse
I had to make my way past the heavy self-referentiality and teen angst to enjoy this story of the romantic travails of a group of contemporary queer and trans college kids. Dean, our hero, is a fey and contrary fellow who loves the Smiths and is rebelling against whatever you got, which I'm always going to appreciate. There's a real voice here, and a sharp ear for dialogue, but the novel as a whole wants editing, badly. Still, I'll be looking for more from this young writer Elliot DeLine.
The Land of the Silver Apples (Sea of Trolls Trilogy)
Young bard Jack is back, with Thorgil the shield-maiden, and new companions including Pega, a freed slave. This time there's elves, hobgoblins, scary monks and okay monks, Picts, and kelpies. For reals, people! If you like your YA fantasy full of earth-loving anti-slavery young people who eshew traditional gender roles and are critical of Christian religion without being dismissive of actual Christian thought, maybe you'll like this as much as I did.
The Sea of Trolls (Sea of Trolls Trilogy)
An ordinary Saxon farm boy with a kind of abusive dad is picked by the local bard/Druid to be his apprentice and promptly has an adventure involving some Norse pillagers, trolls, and a petulant "shield-maiden" warrior who passes as a boy. Good times!
Jumpstart the World
Hands down the best YA book with trans/genderqueer characters I've read, which is not to say perfect by any means but politically and emotionally smart. Okay!
Juliet, Naked: a novel
super-depressing. why am i reading this? hornby's tendency to be really hard on his male characters sometimes seems like honesty, but here it just feels like the one guy is a punching bag. maybe it's me, but i can't help thinking hornby loathes his own character, which makes the book less interesting to me. i guess i want to see the character's flaws in the larger context of his humanity, to have some compassion for someone i might not like. i appreciate a light touch, but i'm bored (and here actually pained) by caricature, if that makes sense.
For the Win
I read this as a free download but am going to buy multiple copies of the book as presents. If you love collective bargaining, rousing tales of union struggles, and speculations about the near future, I think you will love this too. I'm not even a gamer and I loved the gaming aspects. My only question was is Doctorow serious when he dedicates chapters to chain bookstores. Does anyone know? I love the dedications to independent bookstores, but the chains confused me.
The Vast Fields of Ordinary
A sweet but also painful coming of age story about a young gay kid in Iowa.
Halting State
I really liked the beginning and end of this book, and I think Stross is smart about technology and geo-politics. In fact, I had trouble following the middle because I needed my hand held through some of the gaming-infrastructure discussion, not because it wasn't smart. The characters seem complex but are actually sort of TV style stereotypes (a quiet career woman who secretly kicks LARPing ass, a disheveled game designer who's secretly socially awkward, nasty suits, a dyke cop--shocking!). I guess I just wanted more showing of the near-future world he imagines and less exposition + clunky characterization. But overall, decent. Oh, and I'm not a gamer (aside from my childhood adventures in D&D) so maybe this book is more exciting for gamers.
Bluets
Beautiful. Reminded me of Barthes' A Lover's Discourse. I think I'm going to go read it again right now.
Lonely Werewolf Girl
I keep trying to read this book because there aren't many good books about female werewolves (or werewolves in general) but I keep getting put off by the language/voice/words. Maybe it gets better further in, or maybe I got suckered by the blurbs (Neil Gaiman, etc).
Enclave
The concept--a school for kids supposedly saved by but really rejected by their parents in a dystopian near-future--is right up my alley. I was snookered by the jacket-copy into buying what turned out to be a weak (and incidently extremely transphobic) narrative. I'm returning it to the store.
The Quick and the Dead
Well Joy Williams sure writes beautiful sentences. I don't know what I thought of this book ultimately because I'm not sure I understood what happened (probably the wrong question) but the language and the characters stay with me. I like how Williams is angry and funny but not whimsical.
