furyofvissarion (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
furyofvissarion) wrote2008-01-27 07:56 pm
furyofvissarion) wrote2008-01-27 07:56 pm
Entry tags:
- activism,
- anthology,
- cats,
- cynthia ribarich,
- david burns,
- elizabeth marie pope,
- ellen wittlinger,
- fantasy,
- filipino,
- games,
- go,
- incite! women of color against violence,
- janice kim,
- jenesha de rivera,
- jeong soo-hyun,
- kat richardson,
- kelley armstrong,
- luisa igloria,
- mental health,
- nalo hopkinson,
- nina kiriki hoffman,
- nnedi okorafor-mbachu,
- nonprofits,
- patricia justine tumang,
- queer,
- race,
- sara ryan,
- scarlett thomas,
- science fiction,
- scott westerfeld,
- smut,
- susan vaught,
- suzanne delzio,
- tanya huff,
- uppinder mehan,
- urban fantasy,
- vampires,
- vegan,
- ya
behind!
Starting off 2008 by letting this journal sit too long. Here are mostly-brief writeups of what I've read thus far:
Felinestein: Pampering the Genius in Your Cat - Suzanne Delzio and Cynthia Ribarich. The premise of this book is that by teaching your cat tricks & providing an enriching, interesting atmosphere in your home, your cat will be happier (not to mention healthier). I appreciated that--that playing w/your cat is the best thing to do not b/c it's amusing for you, but b/c if your cat is bored inside the house, it can lead to lots of behavioral & health problems. The book offers a plethora of suggestions, even beyond ones I've heard of before (which are a lot). I did hate that they kept referring to "buying" your cat from "a store"--no one should ever buy an animal from a pet store--& only incidentally mentioned shelters as places where cats get dumped when they misbehave (many times due to boredom/understimulation).
The Shadow Speaker - Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. In Niger in 2070, teenage Ejii is a metahuman, one of many humans born w/strange powers after worldwide nuclear war. She is a shadow speaker, a person who can hear & speak with shadows. Ejii finds herself traveling w/Jaa, the violent & powerful Red Queen, to Ginen, a separate world from Earth. Jaa's mission is supposedly to negotiate for peace between the five worlds now known to exist. Meanwhile, Ejii's powers are changing, in frightening & painful ways, & she doesn't quite know why she's along on this journey. I loved Zahrah the Windseeker, & this had a lot of the same elements that I enjoyed in that one. It was less wide-eyed than Zahrah, not that I minded that, although sometimes I thought it was a bit too much. Anyway--I loved this book, too, & look forward to future works!
Parrotfish - Ellen Wittlinger. I liked this one. It's the story of Grady, a high school junior recently come out as a female-to-male transgendered person. I thought Wittlinger did a decent job w/Grady's thoughts & story. Perhaps the relative ease of Grady's coming out is (at least from the experiences of the trans folks I've known) the most fictional part of the book, alas. One thing that irked me was the exotification of a mixed-race girl that Grady has a crush on.
Not Home, But Here: Writing from the Filipino Diaspora - Edited by Luisa A. Igloria. Disappointing; almost everything in this slim anthology left me cold. One piece I did like was Leny Mendoza-Strobel's, which talked about decolonizing yourself. The worst was Bino A. Realuyo ranting about how the Latinos working at the McDonald's where he gets his daily breakfast should just LEARN ENGLISH ALREADY. Augh.
Homelands: Women's Journeys Across Race, Place, and Time - Edited by Patricia Justine Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera. This is more what I was hoping for w/Not Home, But Here. I've read a lot of anthologies published by Seal, & most of them have at least a few amazing pieces, but often as a whole the books are somewhat disappointing (& yet they're one of the only publishers doing anthologies on topics that consistently interest me). This one is a happy exception. Also I appreciated the wider age range of contributors--sometimes w/Seal books I feel like everyone in it is my age. The pieces in this book talk about what home means to refugees, to exiles, to immigrants, to the children of immigrants who've never been back "home," etc. There's a decent geographical spread in what's talked about, too, & a lot of the pieces are wonderful.
One quote that particularly resonated, from Diane Wilson's "Dakota Homecoming":
The Feeling Good Handbook - David D. Burns, M.D. This is a really thick book about cognitive behavioral therapy. It's meant to be a self-help book for depressed people, & there seems to be some sound advice in here (in vast quantities). Also included are lots of exercises, some of which I completed; I kind of feel like this book will only help someone if they keep it to hand & are really diligent in using it for months on end--the kind of project that, perhaps, people struggling w/depression would find hard to commit to! I was interested to read that Burns does not believe that the chemical component of depression is proven. I thought the last section, which featured advice for therapists on dealing w/difficult patients, seemed out of place & would've been better spun off into a separate book.
Learn to Play Go: A Master's Guide to the Ultimate Game - Janice Kim and Jeong Soo-hyun. It seems every few years I make some sort of effort to learn a game like go or chess or something along those lines. Although even if I never end up playing, just reading this book is somehow soothing & interesting. They lay things out v. simply, & offer problems to test yourself w/. I wish they had more problems, actually, but I suppose there are other books I could get for that.
The Blood Books, Volume Three - Tanya Huff. This contains Blood Debt and all the Blood short stories, collected here under the title Blood Bank. Blood Debt is the typical suspenseful fun that I've come to expect from this series: someone's killing street people for their organs! Vicki and Henry have to put aside their vampiric territoriality & work together! Yay! The stories in Blood Bank. were a bit uneven, but mostly satisfying; I thought the last one, "So This Is Christmas," was good until it turned into yet another stupid version of A Christmas Carol.
The Thread That Binds the Bones - Nina Kiriki Hoffman. I got this after reading Spirits That Walk in Shadow & learning that Jaimie's backstory was in this book. She does appear as a side character, but the story focuses more on other members of her magically-talented family, who have twisted their powers to harass & intimidate the ordinary folks living in the nearby town. I had difficulty getting into this, partly because one of the major events is the marriage of two people who just met that day--& not in an arranged marriage sense, in a "I just met you but my magic tells me this is right, & so I guess I love you!" sort of way. I found it hard to believe in the love of Laura & Tom, even though they admit that they don't really know each other (but love each other anyway). Like with Hoffman's other books, this book deals w/power & the ethical use of, & abuse & redemption. The redemption of one of the more evil members of Jaimie & Laura's family struck me as unrealistic & unconvincing, too. And... there was something about the way everyone's magic was described that just rubbed me the wrong way. I guess I got tired of everything being described in terms of colorful tendrils or whatever.
Extras - Scott Westerfeld. In this fourth book in the series starting w/Uglies, Westerfeld once again creates a society that I find incredibly grating & repulsive, to the point where I wonder if I can continue reading, even though I know the characters are going to spend the book challenging the society I find so irritating. And then he pulls me in as the book does just that. This one takes place in Japan (I'm interested in hearing about why he chose to do that), where the "reputation economy" is the rule of the day--how famous you are determines how much access to resources you have. So most folks, including 15-year-old protagonist Aya Fuse, spend time trying to get their name on people's lips so their ranking will rise. Aya is a "kicker," who finds interesting stories or gossip & reports them on her feed. When she stumbles upon the Sly Girls, a gang of girls who perform dangerous stunts & deliberately try to keep their face ranking as low as possible, she decides she's secretly going to film them in order to kick their story. But together they discover something even more secretive & disturbing, potentially a threat to the whole city, or even the world. This is a fun & suspenseful action story, but it's not quite fluff (nothing wrong w/fluff, though), because of the whole issue of the reputation economy, & the question of how humans should live on the earth. I liked seeing Aya's changing opinion of fame, & the ethics of kicking stories. I also enjoyed the relationship she has w/her famous brother Hiro.
The Sherwood Ring - Elizabeth Marie Pope. Peggy, recently orphaned in the UK, has been sent to live w/her cranky Uncle Enos at their family's ancestral home in upstate New York. In trying to discover the root of Enos' antipathy towards Pat, a young graduate student researching the Revolutionary War, Peggy is visited by several ghosts, who tell her their experiences during the war. Something about this book didn't really work for me; the long stories of the ghosts, maybe. Also, there's unconvincing romance, always a pet peeve of mine... especially when one of them has the male in question talking to Peggy about how she'll be knitting socks or something after they get married--seems a bit different from the spirited, curious Peggy who unraveled the whole mystery surrounding Pat & Uncle Enos!
Poltergeist - Kat Richardson. I didn't like the first book in this series, Greywalker, much, but this one was so much better. Harper Blaine has been hired to investigate a university experiment with a poltergeist; the professor wants to find out who's faking it, but Harper, of course, finds out that the spirit is real. Lots of fun stuff about table-tapping & other ways to fake things in seances. There were some phrases here & there that made me grit my teeth, though: she refers to an Asian woman as losing "[a]ny claim to Oriental mystery" (b/c she smiles) & also Harper gets "fed enough food to fatten up most of Ethiopia." I hate this crap so much. And yes, these things throw me out of the flow of reading a book. They matter, & they bug me. On a related note, is it me, or are there a lot of folks putting in oh-so-old-country Irish folks who are wise in the Olde Ways in their books? Maybe I'm just reacting to Charles de Lint, but I get irked @ that in Richardson's books too.
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex - Edited by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. I was interested in reading this book b/c last year I got rather spectacularly burned-out on working in nonprofits, & as it turned out, this book hit on a lot of the reasons why. This anthology critiques the 501(c) 3 system of nonprofits in the US. Named for the tax code section they fall under, these organizations are eligible for tax breaks and to receive funding from foundations & government. In return, they have strict limits on lobbying, they can't advocate for candidates, & they hand over a lot of their autonomy to the foundations (who decide what they're going to fund, & require tedious progress reports & site visits). Companies & families that set up foundations receive tax breaks as well--so instead of millions of dollars going into the public coffers, it remains in the hands of a few rich folks who decide where it's going to be spent. Foundation money has historically also divided social justice activists into two categories: the "good" ones (eligible for funding, nonviolent, do more reformist work) & the "bad" ones (radicals, those critiquing capitalism, etc.). The many nonprofits in the US also have served to professionalize the movement--now organizers & policy makers & community workers have to have degrees, & are often not from the communities they are working on behalf of. All this is v. different from how movements work in many other parts of the world (they talk a lot about South America specifically).
The first few essays tend to the dull academic stuff I have less of a tolerance for these days; it's ironic considering the book's issue w/the elitism generated by the US nonprofit system. Luckily, the rest of the book was much more readable. I ended up feeling quite vindicated for the grief I went through after several years in nonprofits after I was done.
Stormwitch - Susan Vaught. So good! Ruba has recently moved from Haiti to Mississippi to live w/her grandmother. It's the 1960s, & despite civil rights gains, it's still dangerous for black people. In Haiti, Ruba trained with her other grandmother in weather magic, as they strove to tame the storms that often battered the island. In Mississippi, not only does Grandmother Jones think that witchcraft is evil, she thinks Ruba takes too many risks in how she behaves around whites. The tension around the animosity of a local KKK leader & his son is paired with the malevolence of a powerful hurricane--guided by a vengeful witch spirit--heading towards Mississippi. Ruba is a great, tough character (but some of her letters to her grandmother in Haiti show real poignancy), & I really like how the book explores the questions of tactics--whether you're protesting for civil rights or trying to protect your land with magic.
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy - Edited by Nalo Hopkinson & Uppinder Mehan. This was a strong collection, & so needed. As Nalo Hopkinson says in the introduction, "one of the most familiar memes of science fiction is that of going to foreign countries and colonizing the natives... for many of us, that's not a thrilling adventure story; it's non-fiction, and we are on the wrong side of the strange-looking ship that appears out of nowhere." There were so many pieces I really liked from this anthology that I can't really name them, or it'd be most of the table of contents.
The Rules for Hearts - Sara Ryan. I really enjoyed the prequel to this book, Empress of the World--queer awakening during summer nerd camp (oh, the parallels to my own life)--but I was disappointed in this one. It's told from the point of view of Battle Hall Davies, who ended up being the first girlfriend of Empress's protagonist, Nicola Lancaster. Battle has moved to Portland for the summer before starting Reed College; one of the folks she's living w/is her brother Nick, who ran away from home several years ago & secretly contacted her on the internet. The house they live in is full of bohemian theater types, & Nick is blatantly involved in some dodgy stuff, but yet no one calls him out on it or throws him out. I could see Battle being hesitant to do so, given their fragile relationship, but why everyone else puts up w/it is beyond me. This kind of soured the whole book for me, b/c I thought the whole Nick situation was so ridiculous.
Dime Store Magic - Kelley Armstrong. Re-read. Fluffy, delicious brain candy. Armstrong generally does romantic urban fantasy really pleasingly. Witch Paige Winterbourne is struggling to deal w/rebellious coven members (she's ostensibly the coven's leader, having inherited the position when her mother died), as well as teenage Savannah, a witch not that much younger than Paige herself, but that Paige has become the guardian for. When Savannah's father, a half-demon, tries to get custody of her, things get ugly. Also smutty, as sorcerer Lucas Cortez offers Paige a hand, & they eventually fall into bed. Yay!
Industrial Magic - Kelley Armstrong. Re-read. More delicious fluff. I'm not planning on rereading all Armstrong's Otherworld books right now, but this follows on nicely from the last one, so I burned through it. Also, it introduces Jaime Vegas, a necromancer who has a day job as a TV psychic. I like Jaime a lot, & also I like how Armstrong talks about the down sides of being a necromancer (having to pretend to a girl in a coma that she's going to wake up, when you realize quickly that it's already too late). And I like that Armstrong works in a quick jab @ Dubya too, & how witch's magic is scorned as weak woman stuff, but that Paige is determined to prove this wrong (& has already started to).
PopCo - Scarlett Thomas. Brilliant. Alice Butler works @ the mammoth corporation PopCo, designing toys. Everything @ PopCo is about cynically figuring out how to market to children, a fact which Alice originally kind of shrugs off. The novel takes place @ a special PopCo retreat in Dartmoor; the narrative alternates between that & Alice's childhood, living w/her grandparents, one of whom is a mathematician & the other a cryptanalyst who writes crosswords & other puzzles for the newspaper on the side. There's a lot of smart commentary about marketing, & identity, & how people create their identities through what they buy, as well as examining how justified it is to cause harm (to humans or animals) for profit. I wasn't sure I would like this book, because I thought I would hate reading about the gross tactics deployed by PopCo (based on real tactics, I know). I thought there'd be some irony & winking & "yeah, it sucks to manipulate kids like this, but we like our shiny consumerist lives too much, so too bad!" And I did find PopCo's tactics nasty, but they were necessary to the plot. Which, btw, also includes Alice's grandfather breaking the code that leads to a treasure, secret messages to Alice while @ the PopCo "Thought Camp," lots of vignettes about adolescent peer pressure that are bitterly true, & sailing. And hill forts. And go, & chess. And lots of other stuff. The back of the book has a list of the first thousand prime numbers & a cake recipe, among other things. Yay! I know Thomas was pretty much preaching to the choir to me w/this book, but I don't actually think it was a preachy book, anyway. I feel like the conclusions that Alice draws come pretty organically from the experiences she's had & the conversations she has.
Felinestein: Pampering the Genius in Your Cat - Suzanne Delzio and Cynthia Ribarich. The premise of this book is that by teaching your cat tricks & providing an enriching, interesting atmosphere in your home, your cat will be happier (not to mention healthier). I appreciated that--that playing w/your cat is the best thing to do not b/c it's amusing for you, but b/c if your cat is bored inside the house, it can lead to lots of behavioral & health problems. The book offers a plethora of suggestions, even beyond ones I've heard of before (which are a lot). I did hate that they kept referring to "buying" your cat from "a store"--no one should ever buy an animal from a pet store--& only incidentally mentioned shelters as places where cats get dumped when they misbehave (many times due to boredom/understimulation).
The Shadow Speaker - Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. In Niger in 2070, teenage Ejii is a metahuman, one of many humans born w/strange powers after worldwide nuclear war. She is a shadow speaker, a person who can hear & speak with shadows. Ejii finds herself traveling w/Jaa, the violent & powerful Red Queen, to Ginen, a separate world from Earth. Jaa's mission is supposedly to negotiate for peace between the five worlds now known to exist. Meanwhile, Ejii's powers are changing, in frightening & painful ways, & she doesn't quite know why she's along on this journey. I loved Zahrah the Windseeker, & this had a lot of the same elements that I enjoyed in that one. It was less wide-eyed than Zahrah, not that I minded that, although sometimes I thought it was a bit too much. Anyway--I loved this book, too, & look forward to future works!
Parrotfish - Ellen Wittlinger. I liked this one. It's the story of Grady, a high school junior recently come out as a female-to-male transgendered person. I thought Wittlinger did a decent job w/Grady's thoughts & story. Perhaps the relative ease of Grady's coming out is (at least from the experiences of the trans folks I've known) the most fictional part of the book, alas. One thing that irked me was the exotification of a mixed-race girl that Grady has a crush on.
Not Home, But Here: Writing from the Filipino Diaspora - Edited by Luisa A. Igloria. Disappointing; almost everything in this slim anthology left me cold. One piece I did like was Leny Mendoza-Strobel's, which talked about decolonizing yourself. The worst was Bino A. Realuyo ranting about how the Latinos working at the McDonald's where he gets his daily breakfast should just LEARN ENGLISH ALREADY. Augh.
Homelands: Women's Journeys Across Race, Place, and Time - Edited by Patricia Justine Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera. This is more what I was hoping for w/Not Home, But Here. I've read a lot of anthologies published by Seal, & most of them have at least a few amazing pieces, but often as a whole the books are somewhat disappointing (& yet they're one of the only publishers doing anthologies on topics that consistently interest me). This one is a happy exception. Also I appreciated the wider age range of contributors--sometimes w/Seal books I feel like everyone in it is my age. The pieces in this book talk about what home means to refugees, to exiles, to immigrants, to the children of immigrants who've never been back "home," etc. There's a decent geographical spread in what's talked about, too, & a lot of the pieces are wonderful.
One quote that particularly resonated, from Diane Wilson's "Dakota Homecoming":
As a witness to my family's experience, and that of our people, I finally understood that our daily lives are only the tip of a mountain that rises above hundreds of years of generations whose experience--acknowledged or not--has everything to do with the people we have become. We are the sum of those who have come before us: good, bad, wise, and indifferent. We build our lives on top of that mountain.
The Feeling Good Handbook - David D. Burns, M.D. This is a really thick book about cognitive behavioral therapy. It's meant to be a self-help book for depressed people, & there seems to be some sound advice in here (in vast quantities). Also included are lots of exercises, some of which I completed; I kind of feel like this book will only help someone if they keep it to hand & are really diligent in using it for months on end--the kind of project that, perhaps, people struggling w/depression would find hard to commit to! I was interested to read that Burns does not believe that the chemical component of depression is proven. I thought the last section, which featured advice for therapists on dealing w/difficult patients, seemed out of place & would've been better spun off into a separate book.
Learn to Play Go: A Master's Guide to the Ultimate Game - Janice Kim and Jeong Soo-hyun. It seems every few years I make some sort of effort to learn a game like go or chess or something along those lines. Although even if I never end up playing, just reading this book is somehow soothing & interesting. They lay things out v. simply, & offer problems to test yourself w/. I wish they had more problems, actually, but I suppose there are other books I could get for that.
The Blood Books, Volume Three - Tanya Huff. This contains Blood Debt and all the Blood short stories, collected here under the title Blood Bank. Blood Debt is the typical suspenseful fun that I've come to expect from this series: someone's killing street people for their organs! Vicki and Henry have to put aside their vampiric territoriality & work together! Yay! The stories in Blood Bank. were a bit uneven, but mostly satisfying; I thought the last one, "So This Is Christmas," was good until it turned into yet another stupid version of A Christmas Carol.
The Thread That Binds the Bones - Nina Kiriki Hoffman. I got this after reading Spirits That Walk in Shadow & learning that Jaimie's backstory was in this book. She does appear as a side character, but the story focuses more on other members of her magically-talented family, who have twisted their powers to harass & intimidate the ordinary folks living in the nearby town. I had difficulty getting into this, partly because one of the major events is the marriage of two people who just met that day--& not in an arranged marriage sense, in a "I just met you but my magic tells me this is right, & so I guess I love you!" sort of way. I found it hard to believe in the love of Laura & Tom, even though they admit that they don't really know each other (but love each other anyway). Like with Hoffman's other books, this book deals w/power & the ethical use of, & abuse & redemption. The redemption of one of the more evil members of Jaimie & Laura's family struck me as unrealistic & unconvincing, too. And... there was something about the way everyone's magic was described that just rubbed me the wrong way. I guess I got tired of everything being described in terms of colorful tendrils or whatever.
Extras - Scott Westerfeld. In this fourth book in the series starting w/Uglies, Westerfeld once again creates a society that I find incredibly grating & repulsive, to the point where I wonder if I can continue reading, even though I know the characters are going to spend the book challenging the society I find so irritating. And then he pulls me in as the book does just that. This one takes place in Japan (I'm interested in hearing about why he chose to do that), where the "reputation economy" is the rule of the day--how famous you are determines how much access to resources you have. So most folks, including 15-year-old protagonist Aya Fuse, spend time trying to get their name on people's lips so their ranking will rise. Aya is a "kicker," who finds interesting stories or gossip & reports them on her feed. When she stumbles upon the Sly Girls, a gang of girls who perform dangerous stunts & deliberately try to keep their face ranking as low as possible, she decides she's secretly going to film them in order to kick their story. But together they discover something even more secretive & disturbing, potentially a threat to the whole city, or even the world. This is a fun & suspenseful action story, but it's not quite fluff (nothing wrong w/fluff, though), because of the whole issue of the reputation economy, & the question of how humans should live on the earth. I liked seeing Aya's changing opinion of fame, & the ethics of kicking stories. I also enjoyed the relationship she has w/her famous brother Hiro.
The Sherwood Ring - Elizabeth Marie Pope. Peggy, recently orphaned in the UK, has been sent to live w/her cranky Uncle Enos at their family's ancestral home in upstate New York. In trying to discover the root of Enos' antipathy towards Pat, a young graduate student researching the Revolutionary War, Peggy is visited by several ghosts, who tell her their experiences during the war. Something about this book didn't really work for me; the long stories of the ghosts, maybe. Also, there's unconvincing romance, always a pet peeve of mine... especially when one of them has the male in question talking to Peggy about how she'll be knitting socks or something after they get married--seems a bit different from the spirited, curious Peggy who unraveled the whole mystery surrounding Pat & Uncle Enos!
Poltergeist - Kat Richardson. I didn't like the first book in this series, Greywalker, much, but this one was so much better. Harper Blaine has been hired to investigate a university experiment with a poltergeist; the professor wants to find out who's faking it, but Harper, of course, finds out that the spirit is real. Lots of fun stuff about table-tapping & other ways to fake things in seances. There were some phrases here & there that made me grit my teeth, though: she refers to an Asian woman as losing "[a]ny claim to Oriental mystery" (b/c she smiles) & also Harper gets "fed enough food to fatten up most of Ethiopia." I hate this crap so much. And yes, these things throw me out of the flow of reading a book. They matter, & they bug me. On a related note, is it me, or are there a lot of folks putting in oh-so-old-country Irish folks who are wise in the Olde Ways in their books? Maybe I'm just reacting to Charles de Lint, but I get irked @ that in Richardson's books too.
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex - Edited by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. I was interested in reading this book b/c last year I got rather spectacularly burned-out on working in nonprofits, & as it turned out, this book hit on a lot of the reasons why. This anthology critiques the 501(c) 3 system of nonprofits in the US. Named for the tax code section they fall under, these organizations are eligible for tax breaks and to receive funding from foundations & government. In return, they have strict limits on lobbying, they can't advocate for candidates, & they hand over a lot of their autonomy to the foundations (who decide what they're going to fund, & require tedious progress reports & site visits). Companies & families that set up foundations receive tax breaks as well--so instead of millions of dollars going into the public coffers, it remains in the hands of a few rich folks who decide where it's going to be spent. Foundation money has historically also divided social justice activists into two categories: the "good" ones (eligible for funding, nonviolent, do more reformist work) & the "bad" ones (radicals, those critiquing capitalism, etc.). The many nonprofits in the US also have served to professionalize the movement--now organizers & policy makers & community workers have to have degrees, & are often not from the communities they are working on behalf of. All this is v. different from how movements work in many other parts of the world (they talk a lot about South America specifically).
The first few essays tend to the dull academic stuff I have less of a tolerance for these days; it's ironic considering the book's issue w/the elitism generated by the US nonprofit system. Luckily, the rest of the book was much more readable. I ended up feeling quite vindicated for the grief I went through after several years in nonprofits after I was done.
Stormwitch - Susan Vaught. So good! Ruba has recently moved from Haiti to Mississippi to live w/her grandmother. It's the 1960s, & despite civil rights gains, it's still dangerous for black people. In Haiti, Ruba trained with her other grandmother in weather magic, as they strove to tame the storms that often battered the island. In Mississippi, not only does Grandmother Jones think that witchcraft is evil, she thinks Ruba takes too many risks in how she behaves around whites. The tension around the animosity of a local KKK leader & his son is paired with the malevolence of a powerful hurricane--guided by a vengeful witch spirit--heading towards Mississippi. Ruba is a great, tough character (but some of her letters to her grandmother in Haiti show real poignancy), & I really like how the book explores the questions of tactics--whether you're protesting for civil rights or trying to protect your land with magic.
So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy - Edited by Nalo Hopkinson & Uppinder Mehan. This was a strong collection, & so needed. As Nalo Hopkinson says in the introduction, "one of the most familiar memes of science fiction is that of going to foreign countries and colonizing the natives... for many of us, that's not a thrilling adventure story; it's non-fiction, and we are on the wrong side of the strange-looking ship that appears out of nowhere." There were so many pieces I really liked from this anthology that I can't really name them, or it'd be most of the table of contents.
The Rules for Hearts - Sara Ryan. I really enjoyed the prequel to this book, Empress of the World--queer awakening during summer nerd camp (oh, the parallels to my own life)--but I was disappointed in this one. It's told from the point of view of Battle Hall Davies, who ended up being the first girlfriend of Empress's protagonist, Nicola Lancaster. Battle has moved to Portland for the summer before starting Reed College; one of the folks she's living w/is her brother Nick, who ran away from home several years ago & secretly contacted her on the internet. The house they live in is full of bohemian theater types, & Nick is blatantly involved in some dodgy stuff, but yet no one calls him out on it or throws him out. I could see Battle being hesitant to do so, given their fragile relationship, but why everyone else puts up w/it is beyond me. This kind of soured the whole book for me, b/c I thought the whole Nick situation was so ridiculous.
Dime Store Magic - Kelley Armstrong. Re-read. Fluffy, delicious brain candy. Armstrong generally does romantic urban fantasy really pleasingly. Witch Paige Winterbourne is struggling to deal w/rebellious coven members (she's ostensibly the coven's leader, having inherited the position when her mother died), as well as teenage Savannah, a witch not that much younger than Paige herself, but that Paige has become the guardian for. When Savannah's father, a half-demon, tries to get custody of her, things get ugly. Also smutty, as sorcerer Lucas Cortez offers Paige a hand, & they eventually fall into bed. Yay!
Industrial Magic - Kelley Armstrong. Re-read. More delicious fluff. I'm not planning on rereading all Armstrong's Otherworld books right now, but this follows on nicely from the last one, so I burned through it. Also, it introduces Jaime Vegas, a necromancer who has a day job as a TV psychic. I like Jaime a lot, & also I like how Armstrong talks about the down sides of being a necromancer (having to pretend to a girl in a coma that she's going to wake up, when you realize quickly that it's already too late). And I like that Armstrong works in a quick jab @ Dubya too, & how witch's magic is scorned as weak woman stuff, but that Paige is determined to prove this wrong (& has already started to).
PopCo - Scarlett Thomas. Brilliant. Alice Butler works @ the mammoth corporation PopCo, designing toys. Everything @ PopCo is about cynically figuring out how to market to children, a fact which Alice originally kind of shrugs off. The novel takes place @ a special PopCo retreat in Dartmoor; the narrative alternates between that & Alice's childhood, living w/her grandparents, one of whom is a mathematician & the other a cryptanalyst who writes crosswords & other puzzles for the newspaper on the side. There's a lot of smart commentary about marketing, & identity, & how people create their identities through what they buy, as well as examining how justified it is to cause harm (to humans or animals) for profit. I wasn't sure I would like this book, because I thought I would hate reading about the gross tactics deployed by PopCo (based on real tactics, I know). I thought there'd be some irony & winking & "yeah, it sucks to manipulate kids like this, but we like our shiny consumerist lives too much, so too bad!" And I did find PopCo's tactics nasty, but they were necessary to the plot. Which, btw, also includes Alice's grandfather breaking the code that leads to a treasure, secret messages to Alice while @ the PopCo "Thought Camp," lots of vignettes about adolescent peer pressure that are bitterly true, & sailing. And hill forts. And go, & chess. And lots of other stuff. The back of the book has a list of the first thousand prime numbers & a cake recipe, among other things. Yay! I know Thomas was pretty much preaching to the choir to me w/this book, but I don't actually think it was a preachy book, anyway. I feel like the conclusions that Alice draws come pretty organically from the experiences she's had & the conversations she has.
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Absolutely. Although there are a few things in the book that are short enough and concise enough to be helpful immediately (list of examples of distorted thinking comes to mind), much of it often gives me that sinking "well, this would be great if I weren't so tired/bottomed-out to actually DO it". Which, in some ways, kind of points to there being more than just a cognitive element to depression.
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That's just a nice side-effect. (Our cats just look at us like we're insane when we try to play with them, and then go and climb the garage. Floyd, occasionally, will deign to chase something. He gets his thrills laying in wait for the next door neighbour's dog.)
I'll have to try and find The Sherwood Ring, it'll be like harking back to the glory days of my childhood reading which had a disproportionate number of books about orphaned girls.