j – Page 10 – Triple Take

J’s Take on Halloween

So for October, we decided to read a book with ‘Halloween’ in the title. “How hard can that be?” we thought. There must be thousands and thousands of books. We’ll have our pick of length and genre and author. We could read practically anything we wanted! Oh, how wrong we were!

The only science fiction and fantasy book in my library with ‘Halloween’ in the title was in the teen room. An Isaac Asimov anthology of sf/f Halloween stories. “So what?” you say. “Sounds perfect for you!” Yes, well, so perfect that I read it already!

The next closest things were R. L. Stine books. Which, not so much with the adult-ness. Or sf/f really either. More horror. For adult books, apart from perhaps one mystery, I’m left pretty much with some nonfiction titles. Such as a history of Halloween, or Halloween crafts. (And I was told if I reviewed a craft or cooking book, I’d have to actually craft or cook something from it. Sounds like work!)
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J’s Take on The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages

We all hit on the scheme of each suggesting a book that the other two had to read. My suggestion was The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages. Little did I realize they’d want me to write a review of it too!

In the end, I decided not to reread the book. Not that I don’t have an interest in rereading it at some point. But I have too many books on my plate at the moment. Including a way-overdue review of my Alan Turing book. (Wait, was that really due in May?! Oops!)

So I’ll tell you why I suggested The Green Glass Sea and how I came to read it in the first place.

I first attended Wiscon in 2008. Although I had been thinking about it for a couple of years before that, when I’d see con reports and panel descriptions on my Livejournal friendslist. I even voted on panel suggestions in.. I think it was 2007. Though I didn’t attend that year. (I was unemployed and dead broke that year! So I took 6 weeks and went to California instead. ;) )
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J’s Take on The Great Typo Hunt

I didn’t know anything about these guys before I read the book. What I knew about it was pretty much solely from the front cover. Two friends, presumably guys, on a cross-country road trip to correct typos. It sounded cool.

It was cool. The story is told from Jeff Deck’s point of view, so I’m not sure how much of a hand Benjamin Herson had in the writing of it. At times I may say ‘he’ when it should rightfully be ‘they’. So, in this case, my next sentence was going to be: And Deck is actually pretty funny. But maybe it’s both of them that are, since they wrote it together.

Deck, and this time I do just mean him, hits on this idea of going cross-country correcting typos. I think it’s just the sort of thing a certain type of young guy decides to do. Road trip, nothing too new there. Correcting typos.. well, now you’re getting into geek territory. And I think the two of them are much more of the geek persuasion than they let come through in the text. Even references to Frodo can be passed off as literary rather than geeky.
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J’s Take on Geek Chic: The Zoey Zone

A very short book! Which is a nice change, since I was slogging through some 600 page books recently.

The basic premise? Zoey is trying to attract the attention of a fairy godmother so she can become cool before sixth grade. Because if you’re not cool before sixth grade, then you won’t be cool in sixth grade.

The format is different. There’s some cartoons and pictures. And sometimes the font is just crazy and all over the place. And in some cases, it’s even in screenplay format. It does really give you the sense that a nearly-11-year-old wrote it. To some extent, annoyingly so!
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J’s Take on Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos

This book is the first in a series by R. L. LaFevers. It’s 1906, London, and Theodosia lives mostly in a museum that her father is a curator of. Her mother goes to Egypt often to hunt for archeological finds. Theodosia can sense all the curses on the stuff her mother brings back and other stuff in the museum. And she’s taught herself how to deal with the curses and remove them. Mostly. And she gets caught up in a web of secret conspirators and blah blah blah.

Interestingly, when I read that she was the daughter of the museum’s curator, I thought that meant her mother was curator. I’m not sure why I thought that, but I was definitely surprised when it turned out to be her father. I shouldn’t have been. I knew it was 1906.

This book pretty quickly lost my interest. Theodosia was sneaking around the museum and I didn’t care. It’s not that I don’t like her. I do rather like her. It was more interesting when she was interacting with people. Except even that didn’t help after a certain point.
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