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Jul. 13th, 2008 05:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionTempting Danger - Eileen Wilks. Oddly compelling werewolf crime novel, given that it contains one of my least favorite plot elements: the couple that is Mystically Meant to Be. Not to mention stupid names for various werewolf clan titles. However, there's also Lily Yu, a police detective in San Diego, who is somewhat cranky & suspicious & also has an awesome grandmother. Her Chosen One, however, is a werewolf prince w/a laughable first name: Rule. And he's the heir to the werewolf leader. Har har.
Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money & Achieving Financial Independence - Joe Dominguez & Vicki Robin. Famous in frugality & voluntary simplicity circles, this book still did the annoying things that other frugality books do.
Like denigrate travel--they say when you're happy w/your life, you'll probably not want to "vacate" anymore; that's based on the assumption that most people go on vacations purely because their daily lives are so stressful that they have to get away. Nevermind those of us who love to travel because, you know, we like seeing new places. Or we have loved ones elsewhere. They also suggest dropping your gym membership, as it's an unnecessary expense since you can work out by cleaning your house more vigorously. Barf. This tip would've been slightly more palatable had they said suggested spending your gym membership money to learn a skill--say, taking a martial arts class--or hanging out w/friends while getting exercise--playing tennis, joining a local volleyball league, etc.
I think I'm not quite the audience for this book, either, as they seem focused on people who buy big houses, fancy cars, & loads of expensive clothing because they feel it is necessary & expected to get ahead in their careers, or it is expected for people in the positions they have. Never having cared about that kind of thing, & never having had that kind of position, I guess I'm ahead of the game. It's not that I'm totally free of peer pressure--I doubt anyone, including the authors, truly is--but I felt very far away from the sorts of people who Dominguez & Robin seem to be writing for. I did like some of their ideas, such as figuring out your true hourly wage (after calculating in the cost of work clothes, take-out meals because you're too tired to cook or pack a lunch, commuting to work, etc.).
Lonely Werewolf Girl - Martin Millar. This book needed about 200 pages cut out of it; it's just too damn long at over 550 pages. Which is a shame, because there were funny bits in it.
Millar presents a parody of werewolves: the MacRinnalchs, a rich, bickering, superficial werewolf clan in Scotland, are feuding over who will be the next Thane. Central to this intrigue is Kalix, the titular lonely werewolf girl; she's addicted to laudanum & banned from the clan lands after attacking her father, the previous Thane. Also important are Butix & Delix, now self-named Beauty & Delicious, twins with pink & blue hair who've abandoned Scotland for the decadent life of struggling musicians in London. Kalix comes into play because there are werewolves calling for her death as a punishment for attacking the old Thane--& these werewolves have votes on the Great Council, who decides Thaneship. Beauty & Delicious have votes on the council too & thus must be brought back into the fold & courted. I find it silly that seats on the council are awarded by blood--relations of the Thane, etc.--& not age; Kalix, though only 17, rightfully has a seat also.
Anyway, so there's lots of amusing mockery of the rich & superficial, mostly centering around Thrix, Kalix's older sister who is an enchantress & also a fashion designer, & Thrix's friend Malveria, a fire elemental queen whose biggest concern is outshining everyone else with her clothes for an upcoming ball. Unfortunately, parodying the vapid rich means you have to read about them, which gets old.
Also, Kalix's angst--which is clearly meant to be hilariously overwrought--is portrayed as being expressed partly through her laudanum addiction, partly through an eating disorder, & partly through cutting herself. Ha ha, right? Except not. Anyway, despite all this, there were parts I really liked--Millar has some awesome kickass werewolf battle scenes, yay! But... ugh, too long, too one-trick pony after a while. And so very many typos.
The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege - Robert Jensen. Good concise (less than 100 small pages) book on white privilege by a white guy. Highlights: Jensen talking about how white folks need to stop trying to get a damn cookie for trying not to be racist, & simply accept that they are still racist & still have racist thoughts & habits to work through; also how white folks need to get angry about racism & white supremacy, instead of just feeling guilty. The book does some succinct breakdowns of myths white people often use to avoid confronting their own complicity in racism.
Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity & the Cultural Politics of Space - Rick Bonus. Another academic book of the sort that makes me go, "Well, duh," but I know academia thinks if something isn't documented & properly cited, it's not real. Anyway--Filipino "Oriental" stores in Filipino-American communities, as well as beauty pageants & local newspapers, help to form bonds--in terms of nostalgia for the home country, protection against racism in the US, etc. What a surprise, right? Still I enjoyed reading Bonus' analysis; it was just one of those books that seems terribly obvious.
America Is in the Heart - Carlos Bulosan. Bulosan's memoirs have been somewhat controversial; apparently they are suspect because so much bad stuff happens to him that it's unrealistic, & possibly Bulosan took some creative license & added in events that happened to other Filipinos he knew. He may have done, but reading the book I felt that what he went through was, sadly, not particularly unusual for Filipinos in the US during the pre-WWII period. As vulnerable laborers, ranging the West Coast in search of work harvesting crops or working in canneries, they faced incredible violence & hatred. I could well believe that everything in the book happened to him.
I was struck by his faith in the US, something that he was rudely disillusioned about almost upon his arrival in the country as a 17-year-old looking for work, but that he eventually regained. Also noted were his rather rude comments about both the Muslims in Mindanao & the Igorot tribe--yes, yes, common sentiments of the time, but still I don't think mandatory beliefs for all that. I also felt like he was a little patronizing towards other Filipinos who were not well-read, as he was, even though his background--poor peasant family--is pretty much the same as theirs.
What I found very shocking was the 1973 introduction, by Carey McWilliams, a leftist (& former editor of The Nation) that knew & worked w/Bulosan. He describes Bulosan--sometimes in his own words, sometimes quoting mutual friends--as a "child-man," as tiny & adorable, as having the "ready smile" & "innocent laughter of a precocious child." He also notes with a wink that Bulosan loved white women--without any context as to why, perhaps, he might love white women, such as, oh, I don't know, racist immigration laws that meant the Filipino community was almost entirely male, & not to mention imperialist socialization that might lead one to see white women as the epitome of beauty. And these were Bulosan's allies?
Magic Burns - Ilona Andrews. This is the 2nd in Andrews' Kate Daniels series, about a post-apocalyptic Atlanta where magic & technology are both unstable & liable to peter out at the most inconvenient moment. As with the first book, I was struck by how dark the tone was--not in a "oooh look how morbid I am" sort of way, but more genuine & disturbing. This Atlanta is not a pleasant place to live (or die). I'm also still fascinated by Andrews' take on vampires: they are undead humans piloted by necromancers, but if the necromancer's control slips, the vampire will go berserk & kill any humans in sight.
I was less enamoured w/the plot of this one--in part because anything Celtic-based in urban fantasy makes me yawn & roll my eyes at this point, & also because there are points where people die, or will possibly die, & Kate is really gutted by this & I don't find it believable. I also find Andrews' characters' habit of randomly abandoning contractions in their speech irritating; I thought inititally it was a quirk of Kate's, but other characters seem to do it spontaneously too, which is more intolerable. Still, I am enjoying the series & will read on.
The Stone Key - Isobelle Carmody. Someone get Carmody an editor to crack the whip: there is no reason for this book to be nearly 1000 pages. And no reason for the infuriating number of errors (swapping out place names, having a character engage in conversation right after being informed that he was on a boat that had not yet made it to shore, where the other characters he was ostensibly speaking w/were).
This is the 5th book in the Obernewtyn Chronicles, a series that falls firmly in the "so bad it's good" category. The books are super-indulgent; if I had been a preteen or tween or whatever reading them, I'd adore them: postapocalyptic low-tech society w/people persecuted for psychic powers... & these people are dubbed MISFITS. It's like teenage angst candy. I really did enjoy the first 3 books of the series, despite bad editing & not super great writing--the characters drew me in despite myself. The fourth book, only available in Australia (as w/this one--thank heavens for book swaps!), got a bit more tiresome, as did this one. And this was meant to be the final book in the series (9 years after the last installment was published), but... it was too long so they split it in half. The final final book (one hopes) is meant to come out next year, & I am definitely reading it only to wrap things up. This book didn't even have all the angsty deliciousness that pulled me through the rest of the series, & AUGH TOO LONG. All this is even more infuriating given that Carmody's short stories are, for the most part, beautiful & strange & lovely. And, um, concise.
Living and Working in Britain, 6th Edition - David Hampshire. What it says on the box. Very comprehensive guide to things silly foreigners probably won't know about the bizarre & incomprehensible British & their way of life. I could wish there were more specifics on job-hunting, but I suppose there are probably lots of other books focusing just on that, even for immigrants, & anyway there's always teh intarwebs.
Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship with Money & Achieving Financial Independence - Joe Dominguez & Vicki Robin. Famous in frugality & voluntary simplicity circles, this book still did the annoying things that other frugality books do.
Like denigrate travel--they say when you're happy w/your life, you'll probably not want to "vacate" anymore; that's based on the assumption that most people go on vacations purely because their daily lives are so stressful that they have to get away. Nevermind those of us who love to travel because, you know, we like seeing new places. Or we have loved ones elsewhere. They also suggest dropping your gym membership, as it's an unnecessary expense since you can work out by cleaning your house more vigorously. Barf. This tip would've been slightly more palatable had they said suggested spending your gym membership money to learn a skill--say, taking a martial arts class--or hanging out w/friends while getting exercise--playing tennis, joining a local volleyball league, etc.
I think I'm not quite the audience for this book, either, as they seem focused on people who buy big houses, fancy cars, & loads of expensive clothing because they feel it is necessary & expected to get ahead in their careers, or it is expected for people in the positions they have. Never having cared about that kind of thing, & never having had that kind of position, I guess I'm ahead of the game. It's not that I'm totally free of peer pressure--I doubt anyone, including the authors, truly is--but I felt very far away from the sorts of people who Dominguez & Robin seem to be writing for. I did like some of their ideas, such as figuring out your true hourly wage (after calculating in the cost of work clothes, take-out meals because you're too tired to cook or pack a lunch, commuting to work, etc.).
Lonely Werewolf Girl - Martin Millar. This book needed about 200 pages cut out of it; it's just too damn long at over 550 pages. Which is a shame, because there were funny bits in it.
Millar presents a parody of werewolves: the MacRinnalchs, a rich, bickering, superficial werewolf clan in Scotland, are feuding over who will be the next Thane. Central to this intrigue is Kalix, the titular lonely werewolf girl; she's addicted to laudanum & banned from the clan lands after attacking her father, the previous Thane. Also important are Butix & Delix, now self-named Beauty & Delicious, twins with pink & blue hair who've abandoned Scotland for the decadent life of struggling musicians in London. Kalix comes into play because there are werewolves calling for her death as a punishment for attacking the old Thane--& these werewolves have votes on the Great Council, who decides Thaneship. Beauty & Delicious have votes on the council too & thus must be brought back into the fold & courted. I find it silly that seats on the council are awarded by blood--relations of the Thane, etc.--& not age; Kalix, though only 17, rightfully has a seat also.
Anyway, so there's lots of amusing mockery of the rich & superficial, mostly centering around Thrix, Kalix's older sister who is an enchantress & also a fashion designer, & Thrix's friend Malveria, a fire elemental queen whose biggest concern is outshining everyone else with her clothes for an upcoming ball. Unfortunately, parodying the vapid rich means you have to read about them, which gets old.
Also, Kalix's angst--which is clearly meant to be hilariously overwrought--is portrayed as being expressed partly through her laudanum addiction, partly through an eating disorder, & partly through cutting herself. Ha ha, right? Except not. Anyway, despite all this, there were parts I really liked--Millar has some awesome kickass werewolf battle scenes, yay! But... ugh, too long, too one-trick pony after a while. And so very many typos.
The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege - Robert Jensen. Good concise (less than 100 small pages) book on white privilege by a white guy. Highlights: Jensen talking about how white folks need to stop trying to get a damn cookie for trying not to be racist, & simply accept that they are still racist & still have racist thoughts & habits to work through; also how white folks need to get angry about racism & white supremacy, instead of just feeling guilty. The book does some succinct breakdowns of myths white people often use to avoid confronting their own complicity in racism.
Locating Filipino Americans: Ethnicity & the Cultural Politics of Space - Rick Bonus. Another academic book of the sort that makes me go, "Well, duh," but I know academia thinks if something isn't documented & properly cited, it's not real. Anyway--Filipino "Oriental" stores in Filipino-American communities, as well as beauty pageants & local newspapers, help to form bonds--in terms of nostalgia for the home country, protection against racism in the US, etc. What a surprise, right? Still I enjoyed reading Bonus' analysis; it was just one of those books that seems terribly obvious.
America Is in the Heart - Carlos Bulosan. Bulosan's memoirs have been somewhat controversial; apparently they are suspect because so much bad stuff happens to him that it's unrealistic, & possibly Bulosan took some creative license & added in events that happened to other Filipinos he knew. He may have done, but reading the book I felt that what he went through was, sadly, not particularly unusual for Filipinos in the US during the pre-WWII period. As vulnerable laborers, ranging the West Coast in search of work harvesting crops or working in canneries, they faced incredible violence & hatred. I could well believe that everything in the book happened to him.
I was struck by his faith in the US, something that he was rudely disillusioned about almost upon his arrival in the country as a 17-year-old looking for work, but that he eventually regained. Also noted were his rather rude comments about both the Muslims in Mindanao & the Igorot tribe--yes, yes, common sentiments of the time, but still I don't think mandatory beliefs for all that. I also felt like he was a little patronizing towards other Filipinos who were not well-read, as he was, even though his background--poor peasant family--is pretty much the same as theirs.
What I found very shocking was the 1973 introduction, by Carey McWilliams, a leftist (& former editor of The Nation) that knew & worked w/Bulosan. He describes Bulosan--sometimes in his own words, sometimes quoting mutual friends--as a "child-man," as tiny & adorable, as having the "ready smile" & "innocent laughter of a precocious child." He also notes with a wink that Bulosan loved white women--without any context as to why, perhaps, he might love white women, such as, oh, I don't know, racist immigration laws that meant the Filipino community was almost entirely male, & not to mention imperialist socialization that might lead one to see white women as the epitome of beauty. And these were Bulosan's allies?
Magic Burns - Ilona Andrews. This is the 2nd in Andrews' Kate Daniels series, about a post-apocalyptic Atlanta where magic & technology are both unstable & liable to peter out at the most inconvenient moment. As with the first book, I was struck by how dark the tone was--not in a "oooh look how morbid I am" sort of way, but more genuine & disturbing. This Atlanta is not a pleasant place to live (or die). I'm also still fascinated by Andrews' take on vampires: they are undead humans piloted by necromancers, but if the necromancer's control slips, the vampire will go berserk & kill any humans in sight.
I was less enamoured w/the plot of this one--in part because anything Celtic-based in urban fantasy makes me yawn & roll my eyes at this point, & also because there are points where people die, or will possibly die, & Kate is really gutted by this & I don't find it believable. I also find Andrews' characters' habit of randomly abandoning contractions in their speech irritating; I thought inititally it was a quirk of Kate's, but other characters seem to do it spontaneously too, which is more intolerable. Still, I am enjoying the series & will read on.
The Stone Key - Isobelle Carmody. Someone get Carmody an editor to crack the whip: there is no reason for this book to be nearly 1000 pages. And no reason for the infuriating number of errors (swapping out place names, having a character engage in conversation right after being informed that he was on a boat that had not yet made it to shore, where the other characters he was ostensibly speaking w/were).
This is the 5th book in the Obernewtyn Chronicles, a series that falls firmly in the "so bad it's good" category. The books are super-indulgent; if I had been a preteen or tween or whatever reading them, I'd adore them: postapocalyptic low-tech society w/people persecuted for psychic powers... & these people are dubbed MISFITS. It's like teenage angst candy. I really did enjoy the first 3 books of the series, despite bad editing & not super great writing--the characters drew me in despite myself. The fourth book, only available in Australia (as w/this one--thank heavens for book swaps!), got a bit more tiresome, as did this one. And this was meant to be the final book in the series (9 years after the last installment was published), but... it was too long so they split it in half. The final final book (one hopes) is meant to come out next year, & I am definitely reading it only to wrap things up. This book didn't even have all the angsty deliciousness that pulled me through the rest of the series, & AUGH TOO LONG. All this is even more infuriating given that Carmody's short stories are, for the most part, beautiful & strange & lovely. And, um, concise.
Living and Working in Britain, 6th Edition - David Hampshire. What it says on the box. Very comprehensive guide to things silly foreigners probably won't know about the bizarre & incomprehensible British & their way of life. I could wish there were more specifics on job-hunting, but I suppose there are probably lots of other books focusing just on that, even for immigrants, & anyway there's always teh intarwebs.