j – Page 12 – Triple Take

J’s Take on Bujold’s The Sharing Knife #2: Legacy

So we pick up where we left off in part 1, and find our intrepid heroes on their wedding night. And it seems we’re not yet over with the naive girl’s firsts. Fawn’s now healed up enough from her miscarriage that they dare try to do IT. But of course Dag’s still got a broken […]

Fortunately there’s a bit of magic and plot point in the middle of this sex scene. And also fortunately, once we get it over with, the story seems free to move on from there. Much like how the story got much better in the first book after the first sex scene was over with.

In this book, we’re off to meet Dag’s family. And we find out more about the sharing knives. Which seemed to me to contradict things in the first book. I thought any bone knife could be primed by any Lakewalker’s heart. Both bones and hearts being in short supply, it’d seem to be rather essential. But apparently a knife has to be set up by a maker in advance for a particular person. It can be switched later, but still requires a maker, and still has to be before it gets stabbed into someone’s heart. Except later on, they’re talking about killing a bunch of people and regretting their lack of knives available for the task.. except none of those knives if they did have them would’ve been ready for any of the intended dead people.

Dag goes off to fight some more malices and stuff, and Fawn’s left back at camp to deal with the in-laws. We get a bunch of domestic stuff and political stuff from her end, and some battle and stuff from his end. In that way, it was reminding me quite a lot of the Vorkosigan books. Domestic stuff, political stuff, tricky dire survival situation stuff.

Dag also reminded me a bit of Miles, mostly in the way Bujold was treating him. He’s missing a hand to start with, then she breaks his other arm. Fortunately we have Lakewalker healers who can fix him right up soon enough (when the broken arm thing was getting old plotwise). Then he’s free to run off and get himself hurt even worse, in more interesting ways. And, again, the healer magic can do some, but not everything. Likewise with Miles, advanced medical technology can fix him up quite a bit, so then he has to go and get himself beat up in more interesting ways that’re harder to fix.

I liked this book better than the first one. And I actually can’t really predict where this series is going in the next book. So it’ll be interesting to find out.

J’s Take on Bujold’s The Sharing Knife #1: Beguilement

There are moderate spoilers within. Read at your peril.
I generally like Bujold’s books, the Vorkosigan ones in particular of course, so it was inevitable I’d read this series. She’s also an author I will definitely buy the books of, despite the ready availability at the library. Annoyingly, Borders had book 1 available, but not book […]

There are moderate spoilers within. Read at your peril.

I generally like Bujold’s books, the Vorkosigan ones in particular of course, so it was inevitable I’d read this series. She’s also an author I will definitely buy the books of, despite the ready availability at the library. Annoyingly, Borders had book 1 available, but not book 2. So I don’t yet have that in my hand. I did borrow 3 and 4 from the library. The fourth because it’s just out in hardcover, the third because I happened to see it. Hey, it boosts the circulation stats. I do intend to buy them all at some point.

But enough about that, how about about the book itself? The premise is, simply: Farmer girl gets into a bit a trouble, runs away, comes across a patrol of demon-hunters. Love ensues.

The story started off all right, from the girl’s point of view, though it was hard to know how old she was, which was annoying. I wouldn’t have cared, except she seemed to mind. But then we jump to the patrollers and there was a boring scene about tracking down a demony thing and arrows and whatnot. Action scenes don’t do it for me unless I already have something invested. I did not at that point. I didn’t care to learn how neat it was that a one-armed man could fire a bow. Did I mention “snooze”? No, I didn’t. Snoozzzzze.

Then we get to the eye-rolling bit, as one-armed heroic patroller dude saves farmer girl from a rape. Gee, thanks. That’s original. And after that, it’s sort of downhill, or at least not uphill. She’s all innocent and naive and near-as-to-virginal-as-to-not-matter-except-we-get-a-gory-miscarriage. So the kindly, older, angst-ridden, widowed, worldwise, awesome lover patroller gets to show her what sex is like and junk.

But! Once the inevitable sex scene is eye-rollingly over, the story does get better. Now the farmer girl’s smartened up a bit, I can see it as a more even relationship. Though when he breaks his other arm, to give her an excuse to be more dominant…

Then we get some supposedly comical scenes that I could picture very well. But that wasn’t a good thing, because I was picturing bad comedy movies. Someone hoisted out the door and thrown in the dirt with his hindquarters in the air just being one example. The other examples are in pretty much the climax of this part of the story (as this novel is only part of a story), and I’ve already spoiled enough. But they’re even sillier.

And yea, well.. if it wasn’t Bujold, I would probably stop at this point. But I did recall that the first book or two of the Vorkosigan Saga weren’t my cup of tea really either. So maybe she’s just warming up. Maybe they’ll have kids and their kids will be interesting?

Well, one can hope.

J’s Take on Adrian Tomine’s Shortcomings

I have to say the cover of this graphic novel really does nothing for me. The color is a drab sort of olive brown, black, and white. And the artwork makes it look like an adult manga. Not that there’s anything wrong with adult manga in general, but I do prefer manga that’s aimed more […]

I didn’t really remember what this graphic novel was supposed to be about before I started reading it, so I was pretty much going in blind. K had warned me I should read the short little bios on the title page before I started reading. Which is good, because I’m about 50% likely to skip those. They’re usually irrelevant, useless data, or contain spoilers.

The bios do give you a hint as to the story, as well as clue you in as to who’s who. Most of the characters were born in the US, a large majority are Asian, and the names make them not uniformly Japanese. What a weird manga! :) Though it does become clear that this isn’t really a manga. The author is Asian American, as are most of the characters, and really, the art style is rather a mix of Japanese and American as well.

At first, I thought the story was really heavy on the Asian American experience thing. It sounded like the characters were preaching about it and going on and on about it. It didn’t even sound like natural dialogue to me, and I was pondering the review I’d write would include a rant on comics that just don’t get the concept of realistic dialogue. But then I read further into the story, and parts of it and some of the characters started to amuse me.

It’s still heavily about Asian American experiences, prejudices, and problems, but I came to realize that that was pretty much the point of the story. And a source of real angst for the main character. He has hangups. His largest one being that he fantasizes about white women and has trouble admitting that that’s his preference. Other characters tell him to just accept it, but it’s in conflict with the idea that American culture has indoctrinated him into believing white women to be superior and sexier.

He is, by the way, a total jerk. I don’t know why the smart and funny lesbian chick has him as a best friend. He even sucks as a beard, being Japanese in ancestry to her family’s Korean!

The story was nice to read in a ‘this is different from what I usually read’ sort of way, and you don’t hear nearly enough about Asian Americans in mainstream media, especially from the inside out. And I did find parts of it amusing, and I did rather like the lesbian character. But I didn’t like the main character at all, and I’m rather glad it was relatively short. It made its point, and then it stopped.

So, good story, and maybe I’ll read more by Adrian Tomine. I just hope he doesn’t have more books about this character. I’m not reading those.

J’s Take on The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum

I started reading this book from an edition borrowed from the library. Published in 1983 and illustrated by Mary Cowles Clark (ISBN 0517420627). Because I didn’t want to lug the book with me to my parents’ house, I finished reading it online at Page by Page Books.
I have vague memories of watching the cartoon of […]

I have vague memories of watching the cartoon of this on television. As I recall, I found it odd and boring. The book isn’t quite so boring, but it’s still odd. As a child, it seemed to me there should only be one story of Santa Claus. Oh, I suppose it could vary a little, as people tell stories differently, and some could get certain facts wrong — adults are frequently fallible this way — but the story should be essentially the same. And this one just falls far outside what I knew to be true about Santa Claus.

This Santa doesn’t have 9 reindeer, and their names are all wrong. He doesn’t have any elves. He doesn’t even live at the North Pole as far as I can tell!

I suppose I should give a summary before I continue. A nymph is bored one day and discovers and abandoned child and ask the great Ak if she can keep him and raise him as her own. Thus is born Santa Claus, an orphan raised in the woods by a bunch of Immortal creatures. When he’s older, he gets his first glimpse of mankind and decides the children need his help. So he slowly sets about his life’s work of making toys and delivering them to the kids. And this story relates how he gradually accrues various things he needs to help him.. mostly involving deer and a sledge.

This story just has the wrong feel to it. It may be a fantasy story, but it’s a fantasy mythos that doesn’t fit in with the Santa Claus one. At least not the Santa universe that I know. His reindeer don’t even fly!

Sometimes it also felt like the author was going out of his way to explain this or that inconsistency. Like, oh yea, and sometimes when the parents are kind and loving, Santa just drops the toys down in a heap and lets the parents arrange them nicely. Or, if the kids aren’t satisfied by what they got on Christmas, then Santa’s left some toys in toy stores so they can go and buy them(!).

I know this is an older story, and maybe he shouldn’t be expected to have the names of the reindeer ‘right’, and Rudolph’s absence is understandable, but.. where’d Mrs. Claus go? There’s not even any room for her in this story, because Santa uses up the only chance of any mortal becoming immortal.

Throughout the story, he’s known as Claus, which I had a lot of trouble getting over. In my head, I kept pronouncing it Klaus. Which just conjures up the image of a fish in a bowl.

The illustrations in the edition I started reading were rather annoying. There were spoilers! There’d be a picture of a cat with a bow, before the toy cat ever got a bow. There’d be pictures of dolls before Santa had ever made a doll. And there’s even a picture of a toy soldier. It doesn’t seem to fit with the text to me. I don’t think this Santa would be making toy soldiers for the kiddies. Especially ones that looked 18th century European. So bad marks on the illustrations all around.

One final thing that stood out to me, which isn’t unimportant, is that there is never any mention of what Christmas is. This head of all Rhyls guy just decides he’ll only loan his deer out to Santa on one night a year and that night will be Christmas Eve. And I’m wondering at this point, does Santa even know what Christmas celebrates? He wasn’t exactly raised by wolves, but almost may have well have been.

There is mention of a being who created all the Immortals, so God is definitely mentioned, if not by that particular name. You’d think there’d be some nod to Jesus. Some link between Christmas Eve and Santa other than it being a conveniently close date for the Rhyl King dude to be a jerk about. I mean, if I wanted to be a jerk about granting the request for the use of my deer, I’d pick the shortest night of the year, not close to the longest. (Being northern hemisphere-centric in that remark, yes.)

So, all in all, eh.

Was I still giving out stars? He almost doesn’t deserve a Christmas star for this, but I’ll give him 2. Okay story, but it’s not Santa, I don’t feel any Christmas magic, and it’s not a light-hearted romp or anything particularly enjoyable or amusing.

J’s Take on Sixpence House by Paul Collins

I can’t remember how Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books caught my attention, but it’s clear why it did. It’s a book about a little town full of used/antiquarian bookstores. And that town is in Wales! It’s Hay-on-Wye, and I’m afraid now any trip to the UK is not only not going to be complete without a trip to the Platform 9 3/4’s sign and an even geekier trip to Cardiff, but now I need to at least spend an hour or two in Hay-on-Wye.

It’s easier to describe this book before you’ve read it. Like, I probably would’ve called it a travelogue, except… for ‘travel’ there’s the assumption that you’re going to a place for a finite amount of time and then going home, or alternatively, traveling on to another place and another in a continental or world tour. But in this book, the author and his wife and small child pack up to sell their home in San Francisco and move to Wales. Without, apparently, a whole lot of research. They supposedly know the UK and Hay-on-Wye in particular, from relatives born there and from past trips, yet they’re surprised that they don’t get a real estate agent because they’re buyers, not sellers? Even I knew the real estate market there was rather goofy. And then they’re also rather surprised when all the cool, old buildings they’re interested in need a lot of upkeep, and they realize they’re not prepared for that. Heckuvan expensive and time-consuming learning experience, if you ask me.

But the book is full of random bits of information, gleaned from old books. Facts, anecdotes, quotes, and just interesting little tidbits. So you really get a sense of this town just from the way he’s written the book. A couple really stood out to me. Right at the start, we learn that the Harry Potter printruns used up most of the publishing industry’s paper for a brief period of time. Logical, amazing, amusing, and something I hadn’t heard before. True? Or just something that should be true?

Because when I finished the book, I wasn’t sure what was true and what wasn’t. Yes, this is a real town, so you might assume names have been changed to protect the innocent, but he doesn’t say this up front. And how do you write about such a small town and mention it by name and still disguise the identities of the people you’re talking about? At the end, he tells us some of the names of people and places are made up. But we don’t know which ones!

There are other parts where I questioned the honesty of what I was being presented. Where there’s a bit of dialogue in which a vital bit of information is shared in an amusing way. Did he really not know that information before that moment? Are the conversations all really that pithy and eccentric? My disbelief has trouble being suspended when I’m supposedly reading a nonfiction book, so my credulity was strained.

Interspersed with talk of the UK, Hay-on-Wye, and books, is mention of his own books. He’s in the middle of the publishing aspects of his first book. We hear about his first reading, sort of. We hear about his proof edits. We also hear about a couple of his novels that weren’t published.

Which leads into a quote I wanted to share.

… that twee little fable that writers like to pass off on gullible readers, that a character can develop a will of his own and “take over a book.” This makes writing sound supernatural and mysterious, like possession by the faeries. The reality tends to involve a spare room, a pirated copy of MS Word, and a table bought on sale at Target. A character can no more take over your novel than an eggplant and a jar of cumin can take over your kitchen.

He’s dead wrong here. Not all novels are written this way, and some are more about plot, setting, or theme than they are about three-dimensional characters, but many are. Once you know a character well enough, you know what they’ll say and do, and what they won’t say and won’t do, even if you need them to for the purposes of the plot. This topic is probably an essay in itself, involving references to psychology and neuroscience and our mental constructions of other people. Suffice it to say that I feel sorry for him that he doesn’t grasp this essential truth, and that it didn’t surprise me to learn that his novels had yet to be published.

At the end of the book, I rather wondered what the whole point of it was. It was like a journey without a destination. You may say the whole point is the journey, but there’s still something unsatisfying about not arriving anywhere at the end of it.

It was an amusing, entertaining read, and made me wish I cared more about old books. Unfortunately, the science fiction genre is relatively new as far as old books go, and I prefer modern fantasies to very old ones, so I have trouble coming up with any topic or author I’d be seeking out in old bookstores in Wales. Honestly, I don’t care to own an old copy of a book I already have a new copy of. It’s still the same book. So if I was seeking anything out, it’d be obscure books. How do you find obscure books of quality?

For the readability and entertainment, I’ll give this three stars. For the ending and the author’s low, for lack of a better word, likeability factor, I’m only giving it three stars.