o hai

Dec. 30th, 2013 07:11 pm
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I've actually continued to read books since this summer! I just have been massively failing to post about them. Here is the first bit of the backlog.

The Summer Prince - Alaya Dawn Johnson. Read more... )

Kitty's Greatest Hits - Carrie Vaughn. Read more... )

Heart of Iron - Ekaterina Sedia. Read more... )

Fortress Europe: Dispatches from a Gated Continent - Matthew Carr. Read more... )

The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance - Edited by Tricia Telep. Read more... )
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The WisCon Chronicles Volume 5: Writing and Racial Identity - Edited by Nisi Shawl. Read more... )

Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai - Michael Dylan Foster. Read more... )
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The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity and Globalization - The Modern Girl Around the World Research Group. Read more... )

Live Through This: On Creativity & Self-Destruction - Edited by Sabrina Chapadjiev. Read more... )

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks - E. Lockhart. Read more... )

The WisCon Chronicles Volume 4: Voices of WisCon - Edited by Sylvia Kelso. Read more... )
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Gullstruck Island - Francis Hardinge. Read more... )

Of Wind & Sand - Sylvie Berard, translated by Sheryl Curtis. Read more... )

Slightly Behind & to the Left - Claire Light. Read more... )

Total Eclipse - Rachel Caine. Read more... )
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Half World - Hiromi Goto. Read more... )

Ash - Malinda Lo. Read more... )

Moxyland - Lauren Beukes. Read more... )

Returning My Sister's Face And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice - Eugie Foster. Read more... )

Liar - Justine Larbalestier. Read more... )

The Other Lands - David Anthony Durham. Read more... )

The Choir Boats - Daniel A. Rabuzzi. Read more... )

The Japanese Mind: Understanding Contemporary Japanese Culture - Edited by Roger J. Davies and Osamu Ikeno. Read more... )

Popco - Scarlett Thomas. Read more... )
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The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction Feminisms - Helen Merrick. Read more... )

Mechademia 2: Networks of Desire - Edited by Frenchy Lunning. Read more... )

Asleep - Banana Yoshimoto. Read more... )
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Talking to the Moon - Noel Alumit. Read more... )

Teaching Asian America: Diversity & the Problem of Community - Edited by Lane Ryo Hirabayashi. Read more... )

Flygirl - Sherri L. Smith. Read more... )

Small Island - Andrea Levy. Read more... )

The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness. Read more... )

Almost Dead - Charlie Huston. Read more... )
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From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain - Minister Faust. Read more... )

Face of the Enemy - Sandra Barret. Read more... )

Deep Wizardry - Diane Duane. Read more... )

So You Want to Be a Wizard - Diane Duane. Read more... )

Drowned Ammet - Diana Wynne Jones. Read more... )

Redemption: The Myth of Pet Overpopulation and the No Kill Revolution in America - Nathan Winograd. Read more... )
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Starbook - Ben Okri. Read more... )

The Heart of the Mirage - Glenda Larke. Read more... )

The New Moon's Arms - Nalo Hopkinson. Read more... )

Ragamuffin - Tobias Buckell. Read more... )

The Shadow Speaker - Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. Read more... )

Acacia - David Anthony Durham. Read more... )
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The Magic of Blood - Dagoberto Gilb. Read more... )

Tales from Outer Suburbia - Shaun Tan. Read more... )

Spaceman Blues: A Love Song - Brian Francis Slattery. Read more... )

Midnight Brunch - Marta Acosta. Read more... )

Flight - Sherman Alexie. Read more... )
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The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World - Vijay Prashad. Read more... )

Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang. Read more... )

Shanghai Tango: A Memoir - Jin Xing. Read more... )

Chinese Whispers: The true story behind Britain's hidden army of labour - Hsiao-Hung Pai. Read more... )

Mixed Feelings: The Complex Lives of Mixed-Race Britons - Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Read more... )

The Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain - Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe. Read more... )
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Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in England & Africa - Ekow Eshun. Read more... )

The Last Watch - Sergei Lukyanenko. Read more... )

Cereus Blooms at Night - Shani Mootoo. Read more... )

Crossing the Border: Voices of Refugee and Exiled Women - Edited by Jennifer Langer. Read more... )

Tescopoly: How one shop came out on top and why it matters - Andrew Simms. Read more... )
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Making More Waves: New Writing by Asian American Women - Edited by Elaine H. Kim, Lilia V. Villanueva, and Asian Women United of California. Read more... )

Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian Pacific America - Edited by Quang Bao and Hanya Yanagihara. Read more... )

Shadow Man - Melissa Scott. Read more... )
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Thanking the Monkey: Rethinking the Way We Treat Animals - Karen Dawn. Read more... )

The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3 - Edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith. Read more... )

Halfway to the Grave - Jeaniene Frost. Read more... )

Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing - Edited by Delia Sherman & Theodora Goss. Read more... )
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Air - Geoff Ryman. Read more... )

Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings By and About Asian American Women - Edited by Asian Women United of California. Read more... )

Succubus on Top - Richelle Mead. Read more... )

Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live - Martha Beck. Read more... )

Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage: The First Quarter Storm and Related Events - Jose F. Lacaba. Read more... )

Romancing the Dead - Tate Hallaway. Read more... )

Wolf Tales - Kate Douglas. Read more... )

Topography of War: Asian American Essays - Edited by Andrea Louie & Johnny Lew. Read more... )
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Crowded House: Something So Strong - Chris Bourke. Read more... )

Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers' Workshop - Kate Wilhelm. Read more... )

Of Love and Other Monsters - Vandana Singh. Read more... )

Filipino Women in Detroit: 1945-1955: Oral Histories from the Filipino American Oral History Project of Michigan - Joseph A. Galura & Emily P. Lawsin. Read more... )

Filter House - Nisi Shawl. Read more... )

The WisCon Chronicles, Volume Two: Provocative Essays on Feminism, Race, Revolution, and the Future - Edited by L. Timmel Duchamp & Eileen Gunn. Read more... )
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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... )
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The End of Mr. Y - Scarlett Thomas. Read more... )

Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights - Bob Torres. Read more... )

Super Brain: 101 Easy Ways to a More Agile Mind - Carol Vorderman. Read more... )

Refuse to Choose! A Revolutionary Program for Doing Everything That You Love - Barbara Sher. Read more... )

Raising the Peaceable Kingdom: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Social Origins of Tolerance & Friendship - Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. Read more... )
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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.

behind!

Jan. 27th, 2008 07:56 pm
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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. Read more... )

The Shadow Speaker - Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu. Read more... )

Parrotfish - Ellen Wittlinger. Read more... )

Not Home, But Here: Writing from the Filipino Diaspora - Edited by Luisa A. Igloria. Read more... )

Homelands: Women's Journeys Across Race, Place, and Time - Edited by Patricia Justine Tumang and Jenesha de Rivera. Read more... )

The Feeling Good Handbook - David D. Burns, M.D. Read more... )

Learn to Play Go: A Master's Guide to the Ultimate Game - Janice Kim and Jeong Soo-hyun. Read more... )

The Blood Books, Volume Three - Tanya Huff. Read more... )

The Thread That Binds the Bones - Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Read more... )

Extras - Scott Westerfeld. Read more... )

The Sherwood Ring - Elizabeth Marie Pope. Read more... )

Poltergeist - Kat Richardson. Read more... )

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex - Edited by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. Read more... )

Stormwitch - Susan Vaught. Read more... )

So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy - Edited by Nalo Hopkinson & Uppinder Mehan. Read more... )

The Rules for Hearts - Sara Ryan. Read more... )

Dime Store Magic - Kelley Armstrong. Read more... )

Industrial Magic - Kelley Armstrong. Read more... )

PopCo - Scarlett Thomas. Read more... )

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