j – Page 13 – Triple Take

J’s Take on Booked to Die

I suggested we read Booked to Die by John Dunning because it was about the world of books and it was a mystery. Not that I like mysteries, but my two other Takers do. I suppose, predictably, I enjoyed the book parts of it and not the mystery part.

The plot was a little odd. I haven’t read, or even watched, a lot of mysteries, but it still seems odd to me that we start with a dead body and a detective. And the detective goes off on some other tangent, seeking vengeance or justice or something on this guy who he couldn’t nail for previous crimes. And we’re supposed to be on the detective’s side when he kidnaps the guy and beats him up (in a fair fight, supposedly, but it’s off camera)?

So then the detective quits his job and starts a bookstore. But eventually he’s pulled back into the murder mystery when more people are killed. And then he goes and plays vigilante, basically because he wants to.

The women in the book get screwed. Usually literally. The main character’s treatment of them really bugs me, but then, if you think about it, he’s a jerk to nearly everyone. Under the guise of being a nice guy, with a heart, and guilt, but really, he’s a big jerk.

First he’s dating this cop, but we never really get to see her or know anything about her except that she’s a cop. Then when he runs off to be a bookstore owner, that ends. He hires a young chick to help run his store and you get to like her, so you know that can’t end well. Then he’s all older-guy, younger-girl angsting about her.

Then there’s the one-night stand, I guess, girl of the guy he hates. He messes with her head, and her life, and kidnaps her too. She would’ve been a whole lot better off with the guy beating her up than with the cop using her to get to him.

And finally there’s ‘love at first sight’ chick, who goes for bad boys. And that relationship is just totally messed up and freaking annoying. ‘I want to date you, but I shouldn’t, but I can’t.’ And somehow dating this guy makes her start eating meat and bad-for-you cinnamon rolls. And when they have sex, he’s holding his gun the entire time. Then they both joke about rape.

Yea, yea, yuck it up. Which is another problem. The main character thinks he’s funny. And I might actually think he was slightly funny if he didn’t make a point of saying he was funny and nobody gets it when he’s funny. (Old Man’s War by John Scalzi has the same thing, only his main char is actually funny. And not a jerk.)

I didn’t like the main character when he was seeking vengeance or justice or whatever on the evil bad guy I-have-to-take-your-word-for-it, so I didn’t enjoy reading those parts. When he’s all involved in the books and telling me how awesome rare books are and whatnot, that I found interesting. I’m not the sort to prize a valuable book over a nice readable paperback copy of the same book, but it was interesting to read anyway.

And then he goes tearing around the country, and not quite telling us what he’s thinking, and quite possibly going crazy for part of it. And that was deadly dull.

And then the book ended abruptly after the last final reveal.

Bleh.

If you’d asked me halfway through the book how many stars, I might’ve given it three. But the final overall impression inclines me to 1 star. Which is a crying shame, because the premise of a book-loving detective is a really good one.

J’s Take on Patience and Sarah

It’s been a couple of weeks now since I finished reading Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller. I totally should’ve written the review right after I finished it. Or, at the least, taken notes. I know this, yet I’ll probably repeat the same mistake anyway.
Patience and Sarah is a historical novel about two women on […]

It’s been a couple of weeks now since I finished reading Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller. I totally should’ve written the review right after I finished it. Or, at the least, taken notes. I know this, yet I’ll probably repeat the same mistake anyway.

Patience and Sarah is a historical novel about two women on neighboring farms who find each other and start making plans to move out “West”. And I have to put that in quotes, because if upstate New York is out West, then why didn’t anyone teach me how to lasso a dogie when I was growing up?

What struck me when I first started reading it was the rhythm. It put my head in a calm sort of place and after my first session or two of reading, the book hung around in my head as I was doing other things. I don’t know if that’s the sign of a good book, the sign of a book that’s something new and different for me, or maybe the sign of a book that I’m reading at the right place and time for the universe to align. I won’t say it rarely happens, but it doesn’t usually happen when I’m reading a book, that the world and characters stick with me and I’m eager to go back to reading.

Patience is an old maid of 20-something (and if I hadn’t forgotten, I could tell you the exact number) living with her brother and his wife and their children. She’s got a pretty sweet setup, as her father cared enough about her to provide in his will for her. She’s guaranteed a room of her own and two cows and whatnot. Her only real problem is she doesn’t get along with her sister-in-law and feels obligated to help out with the chores rather than spend time painting as she’d like to. I started being interested in her at this point. She’s got an unusual setup and doesn’t seem to be all ‘woe is me, I’ll never get a man’. Breath of fresh air, that.

Then we, and Patience, meet Sarah. Sarah’s from a farming family that only managed to produce girls. So her father chose her as the biggest and strongest of the girls to turn into a boy. Their family doesn’t go to church or seem to interact much with their neighbors, so mostly being a boy means she helps out with the boy chores, and dresses in a practical boy fashion for doing so. Her hair’s long though.

They meet, they fall in love, they talk about moving to York State together, Sarah blabs about it, families get in an uproar. Sarah sets off on her own instead. And here’s the most annoying part of the book for me. I wanted them both to set off together and build a life together. I wanted the book to be about that. Instead we get Sarah going off as a man to make her way in the world and buy some land and set up a life for herself. But she’s rubbish at it. No one believes she’s 21. They all think she’s an escaped apprentice. So, rather than lie and say she’s 15 or a more reasonable age for a boy with no stubble, and make up a nice non-apprenticey story to go with it, she just keeps telling the truth and getting into trouble. But she meets up with someone who doesn’t care and her world is broadened. And then she goes home.

And Patience and Sarah clear up some misunderstanding or something stupid and angsty. And they start meeting regularly for makeout sessions on Patience’s bed. And here’s another annoying part of the book. Because I was never clear on how far they went. First base was obvious, second base is touched upon, but then it’s all vagueness. Grr. I don’t care if it’s all implied. Just make sure you’re implying in a way that’s clear to me.

More trouble ensues, but I’ll leave the rest in non-spoilery territory.

One very awesome thing in this book is the point of view. I think Miller actually taught me something here, as I came to realize what she was doing, rather than just noticing it. At first, the story is told by Patience in first person. She’s even the one to relate Sarah’s point of view, in a way that makes it clear Sarah must have told her about those parts at some point in the future. But she also slips in little comments about what Sarah must have been thinking or feeling, or how other characters must’ve been thinking or feeling, that contradict what Sarah told her about the situation.

When Sarah goes off on her own, we finally get her point of view straight from the horse’s mouth, and we see what we knew all along. That she’s not as ignorant and naive as Patience seems to think she is. Though she is a bit. It’s not a radical change.

Then when they meet up again, we get more of Patience’s little comments. So you come to really get a sense for Patience’s personality just from how Miller used point of view. Patience thinks she’s better than Sarah in a lot of ways; more well-bred, more sophisticated, older, smarter, wiser. You get the sense she’d like to think she’s in control of the relationship. While Sarah’s on the other side striving for equality and the give-and-take the relationship’s going to need if it’s going to last.

So, cool book. It’s one I’d read again. Even while wishing they’d gone out West to set up their little homestead in chapter 3. Maybe I’ll have to be the one to write that book.

J’s Take on The Happiest Days of Our Lives by Wil Wheaton

Did you know you can go to a science fiction convention and tell someone you’re going to read one of Wil Wheaton’s books and get asked ‘Who’s that?’
For those who don’t know, yet somehow manage to be cool anyway, Wil Wheaton was the kid version of the narrator in the movie “Stand By Me”, he […]

Did you know you can go to a science fiction convention and tell someone you’re going to read one of Wil Wheaton’s books and get asked ‘Who’s that?’

For those who don’t know, yet somehow manage to be cool anyway, Wil Wheaton was the kid version of the narrator in the movie “Stand By Me”, he was Wesley Crusher in what most people consider the second best Star Trek series, he’s a geek, he’s a blogger, he’s a poker player, he’s an author. He’s like one of the top people being followed on twitter. How do you not know who he is?!

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He wrote a book. Several, in fact. Collections of blog entries, loosely themed. If you haven’t visited his blog, it’s over here. Called Wil Wheaton Dot Net, though it’s not longer at dot net, or WWdN if you’re in the know. And now you’ve read this, you’re in the know.

The Happiest Days of Our Lives is one of the books he wrote. Or, if you prefer, collected. It’s a collection of some of his favorite blog entries, about being a big old geek, and about growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, and a bit about Star Trek. I gather more of the Star Trek and lots of other geeky stuff is in the other two books, which I had fully intended to buy, and to read. I cite lack of money at the time they came out and plethora of too many other interesting books coming to my attention since as to why I haven’t bought or read them.

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Summer, York Beach, Maine, near that cheesy animal park. In a camp right next to the cheesy animal park, so you could hear the lions and things at night. Which, okay, maybe made the camping experience a little more surreal and I shouldn’t call the park cheesy. It wouldn’t be, really, if it’s wasn’t the biggest amusement park in all of Maine. And that’s just pathetic. (I grew up near Great Escape; I am, perhaps, jaded.)

I had recently gotten into watching TOS and reading science fiction. I had and/or bought a copy of the novel Enterprise I was reading on that trip. But also, a Starlog. (Okay, I’m not entirely certain it was Starlog, but odds are pretty good it was Starlog and I just heard Starlog published its last issue this month, which totally bums me out, so.. if it wasn’t Starlog, it is now.) This Starlog had a whole big article on a NEW STAR TREK. Totally awesome. Totally confusing. Because I’m reading along, and it’s saying how the doctor has a son. And I’m like.. chyea, dudes, McCoy has a daughter okay. Get it right.

Somehow I totally didn’t spot the cast pictures going along with the article until I’d read more of it. So eventually it dawns on me that this is a whole new Trek. Android. Awesome. Kid. Awesome.

(Totally unrelated, but the other thing I remember when I think about this campsite is War and Peace. So I must have read that along about this time. Or, started to, all the names eventually bogged me down and bored me to tears, so I stopped.)

I’m not sure if I realized it then, but TNG was about to become my Star Trek.

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Back at school. Junior high cafeteria. Sitting at a table with some girls (with the girls may be pushing it) and they’re looking at Teen Beat. And there’s a picture. A full page picture of Wil “Stand By Me” Wheaton. My friend must’ve noticed me wanting it. I demurred. Much giggling. I didn’t want them to think I had a crush on him or anything, because I really didn’t. Not even on Wesley. But regardless of what they thought, I did want that picture. (Even though it shocked me that she’d even offer to tear a page out of bound, written material for any purpose!) It hung on my wall, with an accumulation of Star Trek posters, for a good long time.

I totally did not have a crush on him.

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Wesley was treated badly by the adults. Especially Picard. How can you hate kids?! How can you treat him like a kid? He’s my age! Probably even a bit older. He’s totally not in the same category as the little kids you made him run around with in a couple episodes. You suck, Picard.

But at least Wesley didn’t die and make me cry in the first season.

Stupid mumblegrumblegrr writers.

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I started going to Star Trek conventions with Dad. Mostly Creation run. This is probably about the time I started hearing rumors that people didn’t like Wesley. (Pre-Internet, at least pre-WWW) That kinda hurt. Because he was one of my favorite characters. And everyone seemed to hate him just because he was a kid. And/or smart.

You’d think Star Trek geeks would have more sympathy for the smart kid. But what do I know?

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Wil Wheaton, at a con. TNG is over by this point, I think. Wheaton’s only about a year older than me, but at this con, he seemed so far beyond my comprehension. He was dressed in what then I would’ve called a dangerous kind of punk style. I was afraid he’d turned into, or always was, one of those kids into drinking, smoking, music. I’m not sure if I thought him unChristian or unCool at this point, possibly both.

But he was involved with Video Toaster, which was used in seaQuest. And seaQuest, of course, is totally cool. And he was funny on stage. So I left that con not quite sure what to make of him.

I realize now that he was just being a teenage geek. I just couldn’t recognize it at the time.

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College – alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die and strek-l, and well, it’s college. I had moved on to DS9 and Pern MUSHing and occasional attendance of classes.

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At some point I started hearing about this blogging thing, which was somehow different from a website, but not. And I’m sure someone, possibly K, must have pointed me to Wil Wheaton’s blog. And I discovered all over again that he’s a geek. I started reading his blog pretty regularly.

But then he got into playing poker. And blogging about poker. Incessantly. I have little to no interest in poker. Though I did watch him in a game on TV. I stopped reading the blog. I haven’t actually gone back. Relying on other people to tell me he’s going to be in an upcoming episode of something. Or that his book is going to a new publisher, so it’s the last chance to get this version.

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There are two entries in this book that I read on his blog. And they’re very, very good ones, that I remember reading. How many blog entries do you remember years later?

The one is about being a stepfather to teenage and near-teenage boys, music, and the generation gap, and being a geek.

The other is about a beloved cat.

Yea, those freaking cats are everywhere around writers and bloggers. But it had me tearing up when I reread it in this book anyway.

****

Reading these, you feel like Wheaton is a fellow geek. A fellow child of the 70’s and 80’s. And I get a glimpse of what it’s like to be a father, and an actor, and even a boring old poker player.

I don’t know if it’s from growing up being an actor, how he was raised, his genes, or what, but he’s really, really good at telling an honest, emotional story.

All of the entries in this book are worth reading. All in one gulp, or one by one when you have a spare five minutes.

My least favorite is probably the last one, because it’s about poker. But it’s also about being a minor celebrity in the land of television. It’s a good wrapup to the book. And well, he did need to end it with something more light-hearted than the cat entry before it.

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Buy his book. Read his blog. Enjoy being a geek with him.

J’s Take on Sharing Knife: Horizon by Lois McMaster Bujold

Horizon is the fourth and final book in the Sharing Knife series by Lois McMaster Bujold.
Having reached the bottom of the river, Dag and Fawn go off to see if he can get some training from a Lakewalker healer. Wherein we learn a new term ‘groundsetter’, which I never did quite figure out. It seems […]

Horizon is the fourth and final book in the Sharing Knife series by Lois McMaster Bujold.

Having reached the bottom of the river, Dag and Fawn go off to see if he can get some training from a Lakewalker healer. Wherein we learn a new term ‘groundsetter’, which I never did quite figure out. It seems to be a specialty, somewhat like a surgeon. This guy, Arkady, takes on the unconventional Dag as his apprentice. But when Dag goes off to heal a farmer kid with lockjaw, this Lakewalker camp isn’t too keen on the idea. So Dag leaves, but he acquires Arkady and a patroller chick. And they all head up The Trace, which is basically a land path up the river back north. Naturally, along the way, they acquire more people, Lakewalker and farmer both.

So other than Dag being a little more educated, this is basically the plot of the last book. Heading on up the river instead of down, acquiring people as they go. I was enjoying the trip, but after awhile, I started wondering when the big, bad conflict would come along. So every time they encountered a new person or group or weird thing, I wondered if this was going to be it. Only, mostly it turned out not to be it.

When the big bad does show up, it’s pretty interesting. And everyone gets something to do. And people get hurt. And people do clever things.

Around about this time, I was having real trouble telling people apart. There were so many of them and they all had similar, one or two-syllable names, mostly nature-based. There’s Ash and Owlet and Sage and Berry and on and on. And just from the name, you couldn’t guess at gender. And just from the name, you couldn’t guess if they were Lakewalker or farmer. So I’d be staring at a name, trying to remember… Lakewalker or farmer? Male or female? Whose husband was that again?

The last chapter was an epilogue. An entire chapter of infodump to tell us what people had been up to and where they’ll go now that the story is over. Granted it’s not ‘As you know, Bob..’ because the Bob in this situation doesn’t know. They’re filling each other in on what they’ve missed while being apart. So while it’s effective enough, it’s a little inelegant.

One theme in this book is halfbloods. Some of the people they pick up along the way are half-Lakewalker, half-farmer, and of course Dag and Fawn are concerned how any of their children are going to get along in the world. And the final chapter really draws this out.

Which is kind of a shame, because I’m actually far more interested in the halfbloods.

All in all, a decent end to a decent story. Though nothing about the series really wowed me. If Bujold writes more in this world, I’ll definitely read it. But I won’t be going back to reread these anytime soon. Unlike the Vorkosigan books, which I really do need to go back and reread soon.

J’s Take on Flora Segunda by Ysabeau Wilce

The sequel to this book just made the Tiptree honor list, as this book did the year before, so it’s a good time to be reading it.
There’s a lot to like in this book. The female characters are good, and take roles you don’t normally expect to see. They’re in the military, just like the […]

The sequel to this book just made the Tiptree honor list, as this book did the year before, so it’s a good time to be reading it.

There’s a lot to like in this book. The female characters are good, and take roles you don’t normally expect to see. They’re in the military, just like the men and boys are, and one of them is even referred to as, I believe, ‘The Butcher’… or well, it was something bloody and unpleasant. Also, two thumbs up for them being called ‘sir’. I always liked that in Star Trek and was quite mad at Voyager and Janeway for insisting otherwise.

The setting is California.. at first I thought it was a future California and the references to magic was just technology that had been half-forgotten. But then I wasn’t so sure. It may be an alternate, fantastical California. There are Houses, which are not only the families that live in them, but the houses themselves, which have an AI (or a sentient magical demonal being thing) that is also the house and part of the family. Some alien invaders, or maybe they’re not alien, but they’re bird-like creatures, have come in. And there was a war, but they’re sort of in a truce at the moment.

Flora Segunda is the second Flora born into the family, the first one having died. Her father’s got PTSD and is generally loopy. Her mother is a General and is off doing General stuff most of the time. Leaving Flora to take care of the big house by herself. Her sister’s also off in the military. She’s almost 14 and preparing for her Catorcena party where she’ll be officially an adult and can go join the military herself. But she doesn’t want to. She wants to be a ranger. Which are cooler, sort of like spies, and they can use magic, and they’re more independent, I gather.

What’s the plot though? That’s the hard part. I had trouble following the plot. Flora seems to go off randomly in several directions, so that I can’t quite tell what her goal is half the time. She finds the denizen for her house, which has been locked up by her mother. And instead of asking her mother why, she just goes along with the plan of helping him out. Which involves giving him some of her Will. She doesn’t even seem to think twice about that.

So part of the time, she’s trying to help him get stronger and free himself from her mother’s banishment and whatnot. But then part of the time she’s gone off to try to save this Dainty Pirate guy that her mother has captured and sentenced to death. And all her attempts to do that fail spectacularly. But not for any particular reason arising from her actions or the actions of an antagonist. It’s just sort of.. fate, or coincidence. Or at least certainly seems to be. A maleficial deus ex machina if you will.

And in the middle of the muddle that the plot turns into, at least in my head, Flora’s being far too trusting of people. Especially when they’re not even people. She and her sidekick, whose name has already escaped me, meet this random mermaid guy and swallow his story whole without questioning it in the least. Or even questioning him in the least.

Now, yea, okay, they’re only 13, and maybe their lives and thoughts are a muddle. But it’s not enjoyable to try to follow. And I frequently wanted to shake her.

Interesting world and interesting society. And, like I said, some good things in here. I want to know more about these creatures and halfbreeds they’re at war with. I wonder if there’s more in the short stories that preceded this book. Or if there’s more in the sequel. So I’ll read more. But I don’t know that I’d recommend it to other people. Read it if it interests you, but if you’re looking for books to read, I have others I can suggest.