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New books--and those sick Victorians
January 31, 2003 (10:37 PM) ( link ) After a fascinating dinner conversation, I've added several new books to the Books I Plan to Read page, including Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring, Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Nick Hornby's About a Boy, Martha Beck's Expecting Adam, and some others.
I just started reading Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery, which, I'm happy to note, is much better than The Andromeda Strain. Its most interesting bits by far are the little details about Victorian England that Crichton throws in. So far the sickest detail is the belief of Victorian English gentlemen that venereal disease, supposedly brought on by "over-activity," could be cured by having sex with a virgin. Combine this with the fact that the age of consent in Victorian England was something like 12 or 13 years old, and what you basically have are a lot of upper-class English men raping children and thus infecting them with whatever disease (besides moral degeneracy) they're afflicted with.
If you don't happen to have a copy of the book, some of the relevant facts can be found here.
This disturbing bit of history has some interesting parallels with the urban myth, widely reported, that in South Africa men are raping children in the mistaken belief that sex with a virgin will cure AIDS. A thorough investigation of this myth, with a fair exploration of its origins, can be found here.
As for the English--well, let's just that I don't think colonialism is the only terrible thing that they did.
New Review: Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana
January 29, 2003 (8:27 PM) ( link ) ADDED a review of Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana.
Tigana was another bad fantasy novel. Looking back over my most recently reviewed books, I think the last, good, serious fantasy novel I read (thus discounting Mort, which was good but not serious) has to be Robin Hobb's Ship of Destiny, the final novel in the Liveship Traders Trilogy. That was back at the end of October, and now we're at the end of January, exactly three months later. That's a long, cold period without a good fantasy novel.
In part because of my now-serious disaffection with speculative fiction, I'm reading something decidedly non-speculative right now: Robertson Davies's The Fifth Business, the first book in his Deptford Trilogy. I honestly have no idea what the trilogy is about--the only reason I'm reading it is that Davies is a famous Canadian writer whom I've never heard of--but so far Davies writes like a dream, infusing ordinary events and ordinary characters with that special quality that only truly gifted writers can create. In other words, I don't have the faintest clue why The Fifth Business is good (so far), but it is good.
If The Fifth Business ends up as good as it has begun, then I'll probably read the rest of the Deptford Trilogy next, before resuming my normal forays into speculative fiction.
Another book blog
January 20, 2003 (2:52 PM) ( link ) After my last post I decided to take a few minutes' break from studying for my civil procedure final to see if I could find book reviewers online who have (1) read a lot of books I haven't read, (2) share my tastes. And I was fortunate enough to find what looks like a fantastic book log, Outside of a Dog.
What made me like this site were a couple of reviews: she disliked Ender's Shadow and American Gods, but liked Bridge of Birds and A Night in the Lonesome October. (Her post for Ender's Shadow also suggests that she's a fellow law student--unless, of course, she just enjoys reading Wills, Trusts, and Estates textbooks on the side. UPDATE: Actually, it looks like she's a practicing lawyer.)
So anyway, I'm likely to follow up on a couple of her suggestions: some Ellis Peters mysteries, perhaps, and even another stab at Lois McMaster Bujold.
(Just a random thought: Since "web log" becomes "blog," shouldn't "book log" become "klog"?)
SF Site's Top 10 Books
January 20, 2003 (2:25 PM) ( link ) Lisa DuMond of The SF Site has posted her Top 10 Books of 2002. I haven't read a single one of them, so (after skimming through the reviews) I've added a couple of them to my Books I Plan to Read page.
This is just one reviewer's "best of" list, which makes it hard for me to evaluate: does she have the same tastes that I do, or is she the type who enjoys speculative fiction that I would never touch (e.g., Anne Rice)? To find out, I went to Lisa DuMond's book reviews page and looked up some sample reviews on books that I've already read.
Disturbingly, she seems to have read a huge number of books--very few of which overlap with my own reading. She did like The Forever War, which I was less than thrilled about; raves about The Stars My Destination, which was merely ok; and her review of I Am Legend is a little more effusive than mine. Not to mention that she (like many others) seemed to like American Gods, which is not one of my favorite novels.
So the signs don't look great. On the other hand, some of the books she lists look pretty good on their own, and it's probably better to rely on the thoughts of even just one other person, rather than reading whatever book you pick off the shelf. (In fact, I don't believe I've read any good books using that method.)
A thousand pages of Harry Potter
January 15, 2003 (4:41 PM) ( link ) So both Reuters and AP report that the new Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) is coming out June 21 (the weekend after my birthday!).
What's most noteworthy about this fifth book is that it is one-third longer than the fourth book. The publisher claims the book will be only 768 pages long, but clearly the text has shrunk; if the text were the same size as in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the book would be almost a thousand pages long (976, to be exact).
That's insane. But I suppose it makes sense if J.K. Rowling's goal is to escalate the book for the growing age of her readers. This is a lot more like a hefty young adult novel than a children's book. Perhaps by the time the seventh book comes around, we can expect a multi-volume angst-filled epic.
New Review: Jeffrey Archer's Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less
January 6, 2003 (9:22 PM) ( link ) ADDED a review of Jeffrey Archer's Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less.
Inspired by Archer's caper novel, I think I'm going to track down a copy of Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery, as well as the film, The Sting. It might also be worth it to see Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, though I don't know how well that film represents the genre.
At the moment, though, I'm going to risk Guy Gavriel Kay again (despite his atrocious The Fionavar Tapestry) and read Tigana, one of his most famous novels. If that's good, then I'll probably also read his The Lions of Al-Rassan some time soon, and then give him up for good (the rest of his novels are supposed to be ok--and I think I deserve better after slogging through his first horrid trilogy).
My recent reading has left my Books I Plan to Read page sadly depleted. At some point I'll look at online "must-read" lists and the public library's stacks to see if I can compile a few more titles to put up.
Of course, I could also study for my finals.
New Reviews: A lot of them
January 5, 2003 (5:11 AM) ( link ) ADDED reviews of Iain M Banks's Against a Dark Background, CS Friedman's Crown of Shadows, David Gemmell's Legend, Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, Tim Powers's Anubis Gates, Terry Pratchett's Mort, Michael Marshall Smith's Only Forward, and Margaret Weis's Elven Star.
This should bring me up to date, at last!
It's another month anniversary for this book review site, amazingly enough. In the past month I've read 3 books and written 3 reviews for a total of 88 books read since I started and 117 reviews total.
Finally, the traditional Top 5 and Bottom 5 requested book reviews for the latter half of the month of December (numbers = # of times transmitted).
Top 5 Requested Book Reviews - Jostien Gaarder's Sophie's World [86]
- Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's [86]
- John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany [73]
- Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone [73]
- Stephen King's Dreamcatcher [69]
Bottom 5 Requested Book Reviews- Glen Cook's The Dragon Never Sleeps
- Barry Hughart's Eight Skilled Gentlemen
- Robert Charles Wilson's Harvest
- Tim Powers's Expiration Date
- Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake
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