furyofvissarion: (Default)
Deadlocked - Charlaine Harris. I still appreciate Sookie Stackhouse's pragmatic nature, & that Harris keeps class issues in the foreground; I still cringe whenever Harris writes about POCs. & despite that, I still manage to read around enough to enjoy this series. This one was pretty creepy -- writing this up a couple months later, I can't actually remember that much about it, but I enjoyed being back in Sookie's world.

Dead Ever After - Charlaine Harris. I made it to the last Sookie book! (Though I think I missed one along the way?) The issue of whoever (of her various & numerous supernatural suitors) Sookie was going to end up w/ (because you know she would end up w/someone) was resolved hugely satisfactorily to me.

Chime - Franny Billingsley. Briony is growing up in the rural Swampsea w/a secret: she's a witch & she's used her powers to harm her sister & stepmother. Devastating in its depiction of a young woman who thinks that she's inherently bad, she's just fucked up & harmful to those around her.

The Summer I Turned Pretty - Jenny Han. There were moments I liked in this book about how Belly (a childhood nickname for Isabel) spends the summer in a beach house with her mom & brother, her mom's best friend, and the latter's two sons. Least interesting to me were Belly's changing relationships with the two boys that she's spent every summer with for years; a pity, as that took up a lot of the book.
furyofvissarion: (Default)
Low Midnight - Carrie Vaughn. Read more... )

Dead Reckoning - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )

Go vegan!: Warum wir ohne tierische Produkte glücklicher und besser leben - edited by Marlene Halser. Read more... )

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz. Read more... )
furyofvissarion: (Default)
Between moving, extreme distraction, & cramming for a Japanese assessment test I haven't been doing v. much reading at all. Here are two things I've read, briefly, anyway:

Leche - R. Zamora Linmark. I felt really uneasy about this novel, which is a shame because I'd been anticipating it so much since having read Rolling the R's. This novel is a vague sequel, with Vince now grown up and returning to the Philippines (from which he moved to Hawaii as a child) in the wake of having won a community beauty pageant. I think there is a lot worth looking at in terms of claiming an identity (Filipino, in this case) as a third culture kid, as a diasporan, etc. & of course, of course a lot of that is going to be about culture clashes & stuff. But... I still felt like this book was written v. much from the perspective of a US American, & some of the "lol isn't how they do things here [in the Philippines] strange?" stuff, for me, crossed the line into patronizing & offensive.

Grave Secret - Charlaine Harris. This could possibly be the last of Harris' Harper Connelly books, as a lot of overarching plot threads get tied up here. It feels like it would be a good place to stop, anyway. I've enjoyed the other books in this series: suitably creepy novels about Harper, a woman who can sense the dead ever since she got hit by lightning as a teenager. She's parlayed this into a career as a private investigator, of sorts. The series shows her & her stepbrother/manager/now lover Tolliver dealing w/skeptics, true believers, people who don't want the secrets of the dead uncovered, & also, hey, making a living as a small entrepreneur & how both growing up poor & still not being v. class-privileged affect that. There's also a lot of stuff about going on w/your life after childhood abuse. Anyway: overall this book was v. satisfying, & I would be pleased if Harris ended here.
furyofvissarion: (Default)
Kitty's House of Horrors - Carrie Vaughn. Read more... )

Thoughtcrime Experiments: Nine Stories - Edited by Sumana Harihareswara & Leonard Richardson. Read more... )

Cape Storm - Rachel Caine. Read more... )

From Dead to Worse - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )

An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on Their Poor and Working-Class Roots - Edited by Lorraine M. Lopez. Read more... )
furyofvissarion: (Default)
Women, Race & Class - Angela Davis. Read more... )

Cyclecraft: The complete guide to safe and enjoyable cycling for adults and children - John Franklin. Read more... )

The Role of the Academic Librarian - Anne Langley, Edward Gray and KTL Vaughn. Read more... )

How I Live Now - Meg Rosoff. Read more... )

Blowout - Susan Vaught. Read more... )

Grave Sight - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )

From Outside In: Refugees and British Society - Edited by Nushin Arbabzadah. Read more... )

Dark Moon - Lori Handeland. Read more... )

Kobal: The Mysteries of the Septagram - Paul Bryers. Read more... )

The Self Sufficient-ish Bible: An Eco-Living Guide for the 21st Century - Andy & Dave Hamilton. Read more... )
furyofvissarion: (Default)
A Century of Migration (Bristol's Asian Communities) - Munawar Hussain. Read more... )

Chinatown Beat - Henry Chang. Read more... )

Once Upon a Time in the North - Phillip Pullman. Read more... )

The Summoning - Kelley Armstrong. Read more... )

Club Dead - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )

Definitely Dead - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )
furyofvissarion: (Default)
Coming Full Circle: The Process of Decolonization among Post-1965 Filipino Americans - Leny Mendoza Strobel. Read more... )

Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction - Edited by Nalo Hopkinson. Read more... )

She's Fantastical: The First Anthology of Australian Women's Speculative Fiction, Magical Realism and Fantasy - Edited by Lucy Sussex and Judith Raphael Buckrich. Read more... )

From Dead to Worse - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )

Best New Romantic Fantasy 2 - Edited by Paula Guran. Read more... )
furyofvissarion: (Default)
The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA - Norm Phelps. Read more... )

Aftershock: Confronting Trauma in a Violent World: A Guide for Activists and Their Allies - pattrice jones. Read more... )

Poppy Done to Death - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )
furyofvissarion: (Default)
Cries and Whiskers - Clea Simon. Read more... )

Stealing Buddha's Dinner - Bich Minh Nguyen. Read more... )

Speciesism - Joan Dunayer. Read more... )

Father of the Four Passages - Lois-Ann Yamanaka. Read more... )

Last Scene Alive - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )
furyofvissarion: (Default)
Grave Surprise - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )

Real Murders - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )

Fourth Comings - Megan McCafferty. Read more... )

An Ice Cold Grave - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )

On the Prowl - Patricia Briggs, Eileen Wilks, Karen Chance, & Sunny. Read more... )

Smoke and Mirrors - Tanya Huff. Read more... )
furyofvissarion: (Default)
No More Bull! The Mad Cowboy Targets America's Worst Enemy: Our Diet - Howard F. Lyman with Glen Merzer and Joanna Samorow-Merzer. This short book felt like it didn't really provide a ton of information not covered in other books, like Mad Cowboy (Lyman's previous book), but it was quick & readable. I didn't know about the possible connection between Alzheimer's & meat & dairy, though--v. frightening. There's also an extensive recipe section, which has a lot of basic stuff for beginners.

Brother, I'm Dying - Edwidge Danticat. Absolutely wrenching. Haitian-American novelist Danticat gives us an account of her father & uncle's lives, looking backwards from their deaths: her father's of pulmonary fibrosis, & her Uncle Joseph of pancreatis, which occurred while he was in detention in Miami after requesting asylum. Even though Joseph was 81 & ailing, & had just had his church in Haiti burned down & his life threatened by gangs, he was thrown into detention & didn't receive proper medical care (I actually remember writing letters through Amnesty International requesting an investigation into the circumstances of his death, when this happened).

Joseph was a second father to Danticat for years, while her parents were in the US working. The book portrays the agony of families separated this way really well--& also what it feels like when Danticat & her brother are sent to rejoin their parents in New York:
"Uncle seemed sad," Bob answered for me. "I think he was sad to see us leave."
"I suppose that's how it is sometimes," my father said in a whisper of a voice. "One papa happy, one papa sad."

Others in Danticat's family make multiple migrations as well, spurred in part by the political turbulence going on in Haiti: to Cuba, to the Dominican Republic, to the US, sometimes leaving & reclaiming children in the same way. And even though this is obviously sad & painful, it also shows the strength of family bonds, how people are willing to step up & take care of children who need it, how supportive of each other Danticat's family is.

The writing is clear & simple; Danticat doesn't need to use fancy tricks in order to break your heart.

Smoke and Shadows - Tanya Huff. This book is the first in a new series following Tony & Henry from Huff's Blood series. Unfortunately, it left me kind of cold. I think that's partly because Vicki & Mike are missing, & the interplay between all four of them adds more interest than when it's just Tony & Henry. Also, the premise: seven years ago, a wizard fleeing the destruction of her world opened a gate into ours. Now, the gate is open again & the Shadowlord is trying to destroy this world, too. It just made me feel like, weren't vampires & zombies etc. on Earth enough? The secondary-world stuff just felt kind of annoying. Also, the wizard, a woman named Arra who works in the same TV studio as Tony, is really irritating. I'll probably end up reading the next Smoke book, anyway, but if it's like this one I'll probably put it down.

Bento Box in the Heartland: My Japanese Girlhood in Whitebread America - Linda Furiya. Furiya grew up in the only Japanese American family in Versailles, Indiana. Her memoir has some good insights about shame, & how white friends alternately acted like her family's cultural differences were exotically exciting or anathema. I got frustrated w/the zillion typos & other errors (for example, each chapter ends w/a recipe, & one recipe appears twice; also, who was the fact-checker that thought that Finland was famous for its hot springs???), though. The writing is decent enough, but I finished the book feeling like something had been missing.

Mortal Engines - Philip Reeve. I knew I had to read this book when I saw the first sentence: "It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea." In this book, Municipal Darwinism holds sway over Europe--now the Great Hunting Ground; cities & towns chase each other & devour the weaker ones. The barbarian static cities of the Anti-Traction League--that include China & India--are behind a huge wall. London has plans, however, to open up that part of the world. Tom Natsworthy, a Third Class Apprentice in the Guild of Historians, gets caught up in these plans inadvertently when he saves the city hero, Head Historian Thaddeus Valentine, from girl assassin Hester Shaw. The book is fundamentally a fun adventure story, & it succeeds on this one. There's also some critique of imperialism & war & growth for growth's sake, which was reassuring, since it was set out pretty quickly that the non-European nations were barbaric for not having traction cities. This is the first book in a series, & I'll be continuing on to read the next one for sure.

Grave Sight - Charlaine Harris. After being hit by lightning as a teenager, Harper Connolly can sense dead people, & how they died. She & her stepbrother Tolliver use this unique skill to make their living, although often the same people who hire them are disgusted & disbelieving. Harper & Tolliver are in Sarne, Arkansas, paid to locate the body of a teenage girl. But when the body is found, & that of her boyfriend, someone else is killed, Harper gets threatened multiple times, & the sheriff advises them not to leave town just yet. In all of Harris' books that I've read, I like that she writes about small towns like someone who knows them well (as I believe she does): with a good eye for both their charms & their weaknesses; she doesn't condescend, either. Here she captures the oppressive atmosphere of a small town where most of the people seem to have it in for you (Harper's talent must come from the devil, & why did she stir up all this stuff, etc. etc.). I also like that her characters are people who have to work for a living, & that they tend to be rather matter-of-fact. Sometimes this means they end up sounding a bit similar, though; I'm not sure that Harper sounds all the different from Lily Bard or Sookie Stackhouse to me just yet.
furyofvissarion: (Default)
Hell's Belles - Jackie Kessler. Read more... )

The Language of Baklava - Diana Abu-Jaber. Read more... )

The Nymphos of Rocky Flats - Mario Acevedo. Read more... )

Crown Duel - Sherwood Smith. Read more... )

Gods and Pawns: Stories of the Company - Kage Baker. Read more... )

The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense - Suzette Haden Elgin. Read more... )

Twilight Watch - Sergei Lukyanenko. Read more... )

The Mirador - Sarah Monette. Read more... )

Vampire Academy - Richelle Mead. Read more... )

Many Bloody Returns: Tales of Birthdays with Bite - Edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner. Read more... )

Devilish - Maureen Johnson. Read more... )

Prom Dates from Hell - Rosemary Clement-Moore. Read more... )

Fly on the Wall - E. Lockhart. Read more... )

Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience - Edited by Chandra Prasad. Read more... )
furyofvissarion: (Default)
Why We Love the Dogs We Do: How to Find the Dog that Matches Your Personality - Stanley Coren. Read more... )

All Together Dead - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )

Half Life - Shelley Jackson. Read more... )

The Autumn Castle - Kim Wilkins. Read more... )

Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics - Cynthia Enloe. Read more... )
furyofvissarion: (Default)
Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime - Kenneth L. Helphand. Read more... )

America's Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money - Steve and Annette Economides.Read more... )

The Saskiad - Brian Hall. Read more... )

Shakespeare's Champion - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )

Introduction to Public Librarianship - Kathleen de la Peña McCook. Read more... )

The Green Glass Sea - Ellen Klages. Read more... )

Literacy, Access, & Libraries Among the Language Minority Population - Edited by Rebecca Constantino. Read more... )
furyofvissarion: (Default)
Developing an Outstanding Core Collection: A Guide for Libraries - Carol Alabaster. Read more... )

The Voice That Thunders - Alan Garner. Read more... )

Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin. Read more... )

Shakespeare's Landlord - Charlaine Harris. Read more... )

The Barbed Rose - Gail Dayton. Read more... )

47 - Walter Mosley. Read more... )

In the Coils of the Snake - Clare B. Dunkle. Read more... )

Zahrah the Windseeker - Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. Read more... )
furyofvissarion: (Default)
I tried to read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but couldn't get more than 100 pages or so into it before I just got so sick of the cloyingness. Blech. So it became my first abandoned book of 2007. Classic, schmassic.

Club Dead - Charlaine Harris. Yay, more Weres! This may have been the book that has me wanting to write a post discussing whether or not Sookie Stackhouse is a Mary Sue (I don't think she is). Anyway, I love finding out more about different supernatural communities in this book.

Dead to the World - Charlaine Harris. I think this one might be my favorite--the situation of vampire Eric Northman losing his memory is just too much fun (& pleasantly smutty--hey, that's definitely one reason I love these books: quality smut!). Also, hey, I enjoyed seeing all the supes overcoming old tensions to go to war on the renegade witches.

Dead as a Doornail - Charlaine Harris. The darkest one in the series to this point, I think. A sniper is picking off shapeshifters, Sookie's house gets burned, & Sookie's friend Tara is in some creepy abusive relationship w/a vampire that scares even Eric. This installment of the Southern Vampire books feels less playful, more urgent. Also I felt myself making comparisons between the position of cook at Merlotte's bar (or for that matter, the bartender at Fangtasia) & the Defense Against Dark Arts teacher in Harry Potter--only because no one ever seems to last in that position. Hehehehe.

The Book of Lost Things - John Connolly. Wonderful. Reading this felt very much like Pan's Labyrinth in some ways, w/The Neverending Story (the movie--I don't remember the book so well), & in little bits, even Monty Python mixed in. Here we have David, a young boy during WWII, whose mother has just died & who becomes obsessed with fairy tales. As aspects of these tales become intertwined with his real life, he's dragged first to a psychologist & then into the world of the tales. These fairy tales are dark, & dangerous, not comforting at all. A creepily delicious read that I tore through.

more smut!

Feb. 19th, 2007 10:31 pm
furyofvissarion: (Default)
No Quarter - Tanya Huff. The sequel to Fifth Quarter, which I also read recently. More angst! Less smut, alas. But everyone is still seemingly bisexual & polyamorous, which makes for a satisfying read on that note, at least. I still don't really get the whole Vree/Gyhard thing, but this book was worth a Sunday afternoon read, anyway.

Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris. I adore Harris' Southern Vampire books, of which this is the first. I found it just as charming & funny & fun as the first time I read it. I love Harris' sense of humor, & I love that she presents working-class characters that are real, interesting, & likeable--without being smarmed up like, say, Charles DeLint would do. I think these are the vampire books for folks who think they don't like reading about vampires, & the romances for people who think they don't like romances. Or... at least, the romances for people who read fantasy but think they don't like romances, I guess.

Here's a brief plot summary: Sookie Stackhouse is a barmaid in small-town Louisiana. She doesn't really have much of a social life, never mind a sex life, because she's telepathic & most folks know it (even if they won't admit it), which makes things a bit awkward, especially when you're trying to get it on w/someone. Then Bill Compton, vampire, strolls into town. Sookie can't read his mind, which is a blessed relief to her. But of course having a vampire boyfriend brings all kinds of complications, blah blah blah.

Living Dead in Dallas - Charlaine Harris. The second Southern Vampire book. Still intensely great, but unsettling too. The Fellowship of the Sun is a creepy cult church dedicated to violently eradicating vampires; they make their series debut here in a suitably creepy plot about a missing vampire in Dallas. I love Sookie's nerve, & willingness to stand up for herself. Also: more shapeshifters in this one! And more Eric! Even though this book is, I think, the one I like least in the series (in part because it's unsettling), these books have quickly grown to be real comfort books for me. Sookie is such a good person--in the way that you don't see enough these days--that I love reading about her, & I love reading about her slightly wide-eyed forays into sex & discovering supernaturals. And I love that all this comes w/a dollop of odd humor that really does have me laughing out loud (which doesn't happen all that much w/books).

Profile

furyofvissarion: (Default)
furyofvissarion

March 2017

S M T W T F S
   1234
567891011
121314151617 18
19202122232425
262728293031 

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 27th, 2025 04:00 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios