Books I Read in June

I forgot to post these back at the end of June so here they are now. I also read a couple of comics, but they were parts one and two of a trilogy and I'm planning to get to the third one so I'll review those all together when I finish them.

Mapril Books

 I read a lot of things in April and also one thing in March. I found a lot of them disappointing.

The last of last year's books

I wasn't reading as much and I forgot to keep posting reviews here, so here's a catch-up for the books I read last year, to be followed by a catch-up for the books I read this year, and then hyopefully more regular posts after that.

Books I Read in June - or Didn't

More book reviews.

April May Read

Some more book reviews for the stuff I read in April and May.

Bookmarch

Prince Valiant Volume 3: 1941-1942

Hal Foster & Dan Nadel

More fun adventures. Ogres, giant monsters and several dragons. Introduces some great characters (Boltar, Angor Wrack) and includes a bit of Gawain, which you love to see. And as for Val himself? I'll quote Angor Wrack: I like that hot-headed young idiot. 4/5

Books I Read in February

Murder in Mendocino

Mary Kittredge

This one was a decent cosy mystery with a solid cast of characters. I enjoyed it. 4/5

Books I Read in January

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory

David Graeber

Does a really good job of explaining the problem and how easily it could be solved but leaves me with little hope that it actually will be. 4/5, would recommend.

Alexandre Dumas

 A short dialogue in the style of:

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear

I hate this book. I'm absolutely certain that a really good book could have been written about these events and circumstances, so it's an absolute tragedy that this one was instead.

The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction, Vol. I

Did not finish book. Stopped at 14%. First, the translation is terrible. It all makes sense and seems to convey the meaning, but it's all written in a really dull, robotic style. Everything is described in the most straight-forward way. It's clearly doing the authors a disservice. Second, the two stories I read were not good. The first, Hurricane Vaij, is about a private investigator hired to locate a man who's been kidnapped, which he seems to do entirely by luck. And it's hard to tell, given the translation, but the author seems to have some very fucked-up morals and priorities. The client is a politician; the missing man is his son. And they're both power-hungry hypocrites, but I think we're supposed to see them as admirable? The protagonist is worse though. There's one point where he sexually assaults his sidekick and it seems to be played as a joke? Again, the translation makes it hard to tell the author's exact intent, but he certainly isn't supposed to be seen as a bad person for doing it.

With a Sword in My Hand

I automatically have a less positive impression of this book than I might have just because it's historical fiction, which makes me suspicious of it. I can't help but wonder, the entire time I'm reading, "how much of this is bullshit?" Creative non-fiction is a weaselly genre that gives you the cachet of non-fiction with the freedom of fiction, and makes it extremely easy to mislead your audience - whether you intend to or not. I was also a little thrown off by the way it's all written in first-person present tense but doesn't match with how the character would actually have written or spoken at the various points in her life at which it's set. Her voice doesn't change at all as she ages from 5 to 15. That aside, the book is easy to read and the characters are vivid and believable. Unfortunately, the protagonist is just not a person I liked or cared about - and I'm pretty sure I was supposed to. Her life seemed largely frivolous and she never seems to have any clear motivation other than to not do what's expected of her. That's a fine starting point, but what does she actually want instead? I've finished the book and I don't know.

We also don't get any sense of the larger historical context or Marguerite's place within it. She's born into power and politics but that's almost irrelevant to the book. It makes the entire story seem kind of a waste of time. What's all this leading to? Nothing that matters.

The Dispossessed

I asked for someone to recommend me an Ursula Le Guin book that's a stand-alone story (as opposed to a series or trilogy or whatever, because I know what fantasy authors are like) and they told me that this one, despite technically being part of a series, is entirely self-contained. And it is. I don't know that it was a good recommendation though, because now I don't know if I just didn't like it much or if I'd have gotten more out of it if I read them in order. It wasn't bad. It's certainly well-written. There are some engaging ideas in there. It's just that not much happens and then it just kind of ends. It's not like it leaves things unresolved or tries to bait you into reading the next one, it's just that it's a sort of naturalistic story so there's not really a clear "everything is resolved and he lived happily ever after (or didn't)" type ending. Shevek just continues to live his life, I guess.

I Can Transform You by Maurice Broaddus

I only finished this because it was very short. The plot was dumb and didn't hold together, and the setting seemed to get in the way of and confuse the message. Worse, anything good about it just reminded me of much better books.

Book Review: Elantris

I didn't mind this book, but it did remind me of other, better books - particularly The Sacrifice by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. The ending is extremely unsatisfying and was very obvious from early on. There was really no other way it could have gone. I read in the hope that I was wrong; that there was some twist coming. But there wasn't. There were bits and pieces I liked a lot, but because of the looming climax they never felt significant. Nothing did, really. All the struggles and conflicts are rather pointless, and although the characters don't realise that, we know it for a fact.

The Vaccinator

The Vaccinator by Michael Marshall Smith After a chequered and violent career, Eddie Kruger now lives in the Florida Keys. It’s a nice, quiet, peaceful life. Apart from the kidnappings. And the aliens.

Slaughterhouse-Five

If anyone wants to know what Kurt Vonnegut's books are like, this is the one to give them. It's not his best nor his most interesting (in my opinion) but it's the one that seems to be most representative of his style and what he was about.

I think I'd have like this one better if I'd read it as a teenager - or at least read it before Mother Night - but it's still good.

If you've read any of his other books and want more, you should definitely read this one. If you haven't read any of his books, this is probably a good one to start with.

Lessons from Lone Wolf: Choice and Consequence

I've been running a group playthrough (or let's play) of the Lone Wolf gamebook series on the Something Awful forums, and I've gone over the books in some depth in order to provide extra information and to attempt to make some bits work a little better (eg. not letting us get into stupid dead-man-walking states). In doing this I've come away with a few lessons that anyone thinking about writing a gamebook should follow. Here are some of them, in no particular order.

Amazon reviews are bullshit

OK, not really. But their system for moderating them certainly is, and that does raise a few issues relating to their accuracy and usefulness. But to get into this properly I'll need to go back to an email I got a few months ago. As happens from time to time, someone asked me to review a shitty book.

Fairy Tale: Rapunzel

In being rewritten and retold over the years, fairy tales are adapted and altered “to be more compatible with the ideological views of the audience” (Smith 2015, p. 424) or, because fairy tales are stories for children, the ideological views that the teller wishes to encourage in the audience. Embedding these values in stories makes them memorable and links them to seemingly concrete examples of reward and punishment. It also allows them to slip beneath the notice of otherwise vigilant parents on the basis that these stories are hallowed artefacts of our shared culture.