(no subject)
Apr. 12th, 2008 04:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionThe Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad - Minister Faust. Very very fun, but a bit too long. Real basic plot overview: Hamza & Yehat are best friends & roommates living in Edmonton. Hamza has an uncanny ability to find things, & Yehat is a technological whiz, always building new gadgets. One day Hamza meets Sherem, a beautiful & mysterious woman, & gets drawn into a battle to save the world.
Okay. One thing I loved about this book was the nerd factor. Hamza & Yehat are geeks, always spouting some comic book or science fiction movie reference, & all the major characters in the book are introduced by their own snarky character sheet. For example, here are some snippets from Hamza's: Bitterness, range/duration: Unlimited/unlimited....Bladder/colon carrying capacity: Ultraminimal/average....Trivia dexterity: General TV +10, superhero comics +49 (see Genre alignment). Genre alignment: SF (general), ST (original series), SW, Marvel, Alan Moore +79.
Somehow almost everyone else in the book is also a geek of some kind, & every character that gets a character sheet also narrates at some point. I think Faust does a really good job having so many (8-ish, maybe?) narrators; sometimes I find that annoying or confusing, but his characters have distinctive enough ways of speaking & thinking that I didn't have any trouble following, even though the chapters don't indicate in their title who's speaking (as sometimes multiple-narrator books do).
I also really love the fact that the book is set in a POC neighborhood--various groups of Africans, Asians, etc. It is always wonderful to see urban fantasy that centers people of color. With a lot of stuff, there may be a few non-white characters here & there, but the neighborhoods & the people still feel really culturally white. Or maybe the POC stuff gets all exotified. Anyway, I loved the lively community shown in Hamza & Yehat's neighborhood.
Also, they run an informal free summer camp for the neighborhood kids, where they teach them how to do things like launch model rockets. Awesome. Hamza & Yehat's friendship is another one of my favorite things about the book. I love seeing them interact w/each other. They are alternately hilarious & really touching.
I almost felt like the plot of the book was secondary to my enjoyment of it, or rather, I think the plot was my least favorite thing! I've had my fill of mystical drug dealer stories, & I felt like the book was kind of too long. Nevertheless, I did enjoy it, & the ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel, but also works fine as a stand-alone (which it may well be). I would read the sequel, for sure, if one existed.
Asian Americans: Oral Histories of First to Fourth Generation Americans from China, the Philippines, Japan, India, the Pacific Islands, Vietnam and Cambodia - Joann Faung Jean Lee. What the title says. Lee interviewed a whole bunch of Asian Americans & presents the results here--although I find it annoying that she broke up each person's interview into chunks so she could organize the book by topic (family, religion, etc.). I'd rather have a whole chapter be just one person's interview so I could get a better sense of how all the threads of the person's life weave together. The commonalities of circumstance & opinion, that Lee tries to highlight by instead having things arranged topically, would stand out regardless, I think. Anyway--I enjoy reading oral history, & these were pretty interesting, sometimes heartbreaking. I wish there had been more of a geographical representation, though; Lee lived in the NYC area when she wrote this book, & thus most of her interviewees do too. The book is from 1991; I'd love to see a book like this now, because I'm sure a fair bit of what folks said would change at least somewhat.
Cat Culture: The Social World of a Cat Shelter - Janet M. Alger and Steven F. Alger. This is what I think of as a "duh" book--one that talks about stuff that most people see as obvious already, but that apparently has to be written down & codified so science can take it seriously. It isn't at all a commentary on the quality of the book; in this case, I enjoyed reading it a lot.
Both Algers are volunteers at Whiskers, a no-kill cat shelter in Albany. They present here their observations about the ways in which cats at the shelter interact with each other & with human volunteers, in order to provide further evidence of animals, in this case cats, having self-concepts & personalities, being able to make choices, & create their own culture. This is the "duh" part--most people who've had any experience w/cats could tell you this; it's just scientists being stubborn.
Anyway, what the Algers document is that 50-60 cats can live together in a small adoption shelter (basically 3 small rooms) for months & be pretty darn sociable & cooperative w/each other. They describe in detail numerous friendships that spring up among the cats, as well as ways that new cats are taught the social norms & that the occasional infraction is dealt w/, both by human volunteers & by other cats. It was amazing to me, to hear that, with such a large number of cats loose in a small building, the general mood of the place was friendly & peaceful. Cats regularly snuggled in large piles together, for example. Take that, you haters who think that multicat homes &/or indoor-only cats will never be happy. Buuuuuusted. The Algers talk a little bit about what creates this harmony--the lack of competition for food (most of the cats were strays or even ferals), lack of sexual competition (everyone's spayed/neutered, as they should be), & the sheer number of cats in the shelter means that, for their own health & happiness, the cats had to learn to live more or less peacefully. They also point out that the ferals & semi-ferals living at the shelter undergirded the positive social dynamic; this is, they posit, because ferals live in colonies where they're used to forming affectionate bonds with other cats. This was especially notable because the ferals were usually unadoptable & thus their new permanent homes were at the shelter. It was most often cats who were being dumped by their guardians, who had lived in homes & not in colonies, who had issues adjusting.
Anyway--an enjoyable read (although the occasional bits about sociological terminology & stuff were rather dull); lots of cute kitty stories (as well as infuriating ones about asshole animal guardians). As for the Algers belief that sociology & science need to pay more attention to animal relationships, & animal-human relationships, & take them seriously? Yes!
Okay. One thing I loved about this book was the nerd factor. Hamza & Yehat are geeks, always spouting some comic book or science fiction movie reference, & all the major characters in the book are introduced by their own snarky character sheet. For example, here are some snippets from Hamza's: Bitterness, range/duration: Unlimited/unlimited....Bladder/colon carrying capacity: Ultraminimal/average....Trivia dexterity: General TV +10, superhero comics +49 (see Genre alignment). Genre alignment: SF (general), ST (original series), SW, Marvel, Alan Moore +79.
Somehow almost everyone else in the book is also a geek of some kind, & every character that gets a character sheet also narrates at some point. I think Faust does a really good job having so many (8-ish, maybe?) narrators; sometimes I find that annoying or confusing, but his characters have distinctive enough ways of speaking & thinking that I didn't have any trouble following, even though the chapters don't indicate in their title who's speaking (as sometimes multiple-narrator books do).
I also really love the fact that the book is set in a POC neighborhood--various groups of Africans, Asians, etc. It is always wonderful to see urban fantasy that centers people of color. With a lot of stuff, there may be a few non-white characters here & there, but the neighborhoods & the people still feel really culturally white. Or maybe the POC stuff gets all exotified. Anyway, I loved the lively community shown in Hamza & Yehat's neighborhood.
Also, they run an informal free summer camp for the neighborhood kids, where they teach them how to do things like launch model rockets. Awesome. Hamza & Yehat's friendship is another one of my favorite things about the book. I love seeing them interact w/each other. They are alternately hilarious & really touching.
I almost felt like the plot of the book was secondary to my enjoyment of it, or rather, I think the plot was my least favorite thing! I've had my fill of mystical drug dealer stories, & I felt like the book was kind of too long. Nevertheless, I did enjoy it, & the ending leaves open the possibility of a sequel, but also works fine as a stand-alone (which it may well be). I would read the sequel, for sure, if one existed.
Asian Americans: Oral Histories of First to Fourth Generation Americans from China, the Philippines, Japan, India, the Pacific Islands, Vietnam and Cambodia - Joann Faung Jean Lee. What the title says. Lee interviewed a whole bunch of Asian Americans & presents the results here--although I find it annoying that she broke up each person's interview into chunks so she could organize the book by topic (family, religion, etc.). I'd rather have a whole chapter be just one person's interview so I could get a better sense of how all the threads of the person's life weave together. The commonalities of circumstance & opinion, that Lee tries to highlight by instead having things arranged topically, would stand out regardless, I think. Anyway--I enjoy reading oral history, & these were pretty interesting, sometimes heartbreaking. I wish there had been more of a geographical representation, though; Lee lived in the NYC area when she wrote this book, & thus most of her interviewees do too. The book is from 1991; I'd love to see a book like this now, because I'm sure a fair bit of what folks said would change at least somewhat.
Cat Culture: The Social World of a Cat Shelter - Janet M. Alger and Steven F. Alger. This is what I think of as a "duh" book--one that talks about stuff that most people see as obvious already, but that apparently has to be written down & codified so science can take it seriously. It isn't at all a commentary on the quality of the book; in this case, I enjoyed reading it a lot.
Both Algers are volunteers at Whiskers, a no-kill cat shelter in Albany. They present here their observations about the ways in which cats at the shelter interact with each other & with human volunteers, in order to provide further evidence of animals, in this case cats, having self-concepts & personalities, being able to make choices, & create their own culture. This is the "duh" part--most people who've had any experience w/cats could tell you this; it's just scientists being stubborn.
Anyway, what the Algers document is that 50-60 cats can live together in a small adoption shelter (basically 3 small rooms) for months & be pretty darn sociable & cooperative w/each other. They describe in detail numerous friendships that spring up among the cats, as well as ways that new cats are taught the social norms & that the occasional infraction is dealt w/, both by human volunteers & by other cats. It was amazing to me, to hear that, with such a large number of cats loose in a small building, the general mood of the place was friendly & peaceful. Cats regularly snuggled in large piles together, for example. Take that, you haters who think that multicat homes &/or indoor-only cats will never be happy. Buuuuuusted. The Algers talk a little bit about what creates this harmony--the lack of competition for food (most of the cats were strays or even ferals), lack of sexual competition (everyone's spayed/neutered, as they should be), & the sheer number of cats in the shelter means that, for their own health & happiness, the cats had to learn to live more or less peacefully. They also point out that the ferals & semi-ferals living at the shelter undergirded the positive social dynamic; this is, they posit, because ferals live in colonies where they're used to forming affectionate bonds with other cats. This was especially notable because the ferals were usually unadoptable & thus their new permanent homes were at the shelter. It was most often cats who were being dumped by their guardians, who had lived in homes & not in colonies, who had issues adjusting.
Anyway--an enjoyable read (although the occasional bits about sociological terminology & stuff were rather dull); lots of cute kitty stories (as well as infuriating ones about asshole animal guardians). As for the Algers belief that sociology & science need to pay more attention to animal relationships, & animal-human relationships, & take them seriously? Yes!