I'm back, sort of?
Sep. 6th, 2013 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnOkay. I think Busy Month is over, yay. Of course, now I have to go back and do all the things I was supposed to be doing last month and was putting off, which by this time has stacked up to be, well, a lot of stuff. So, yes, I probably owe you a call or email or comment.
But instead of my actually doing any of that, here, have some nattering about books!
Eleanor and Park (Rowell)
3+/5. This was good. This was very good, and accurate as to what it was like to be an adolescent in love. (It is not at all the book's fault that it's sort of painful for me to think about (my) adolescent relationships, which this book very much reminded me of — not that my adolescent relationships were anything like this one, but the feel is right.) I was so afraid, as the book went on, that it wouldn't stick the landing — but it totally did.
Digger (Vernon)
4/5. This was awesome. It took me a while to get into it. I was in Chapter 3 (which, given that there are a total of 12 chapters, is fairly far into it) before I got utterly hooked. But yeah.nolly made me read these after I said I liked Gunnerkrigg Court, and although there's something about Gunnerkrigg Court that pings my unconditional love button, I do think Digger is better written and more tightly plotted.
(By the way, D read this long before I did, and kept pestering me to read it, which he never does.)
One of the really neat things about it is how most of the main powerful-knowledgeable-plot-important characters are casually female, in the same way that most main characters are casually male. The main character is a (female) wombat who grumbles about engineering a lot. Can I tell you how many main-character female engineers I have ever read about? *thinks* Zero, maybe? And the warrior hyenas. I kept thinking they were male and having to check my assumptions at the door. Very well done.
Interestingly, E has already internalized this: she found the book and kept calling Digger "he." *rolls eyes* So… good thing we have Digger to counteract that. (For some reason she finds the opening pages absolutely hilarious. "It is a digger." "We will eat it." "Yes." "Yes." sends her into paroxysms of delight. It may just be because she can read all those words, and she's not used to Mommy's books having things in it that she can actually read. But I think for some reason she also thinks eating it is some sort of joke.)
Zelda (Milford)
3+/5. Really interesting biography of Zelda Fitzgerald and, of necessity, F. Scott as well. I was always aware that they were in kind of a co-dependent dysfunctional relationship, but this book made it really clear. Also, it was rather hilarious to find out exactly how much of their lives made it into Scott's books. I mean, I knew it already about Tender is the Night, but I didn't know how much… and I confess I laughed when I found out Zelda dated a handsome Ivy-League football star of whom Scott was tremendously jealous. (Hi Gatsby and Tom!)
But instead of my actually doing any of that, here, have some nattering about books!
Eleanor and Park (Rowell)
3+/5. This was good. This was very good, and accurate as to what it was like to be an adolescent in love. (It is not at all the book's fault that it's sort of painful for me to think about (my) adolescent relationships, which this book very much reminded me of — not that my adolescent relationships were anything like this one, but the feel is right.) I was so afraid, as the book went on, that it wouldn't stick the landing — but it totally did.
Digger (Vernon)
4/5. This was awesome. It took me a while to get into it. I was in Chapter 3 (which, given that there are a total of 12 chapters, is fairly far into it) before I got utterly hooked. But yeah.
nolly made me read these after I said I liked Gunnerkrigg Court, and although there's something about Gunnerkrigg Court that pings my unconditional love button, I do think Digger is better written and more tightly plotted.(By the way, D read this long before I did, and kept pestering me to read it, which he never does.)
One of the really neat things about it is how most of the main powerful-knowledgeable-plot-important characters are casually female, in the same way that most main characters are casually male. The main character is a (female) wombat who grumbles about engineering a lot. Can I tell you how many main-character female engineers I have ever read about? *thinks* Zero, maybe? And the warrior hyenas. I kept thinking they were male and having to check my assumptions at the door. Very well done.
Interestingly, E has already internalized this: she found the book and kept calling Digger "he." *rolls eyes* So… good thing we have Digger to counteract that. (For some reason she finds the opening pages absolutely hilarious. "It is a digger." "We will eat it." "Yes." "Yes." sends her into paroxysms of delight. It may just be because she can read all those words, and she's not used to Mommy's books having things in it that she can actually read. But I think for some reason she also thinks eating it is some sort of joke.)
Zelda (Milford)
3+/5. Really interesting biography of Zelda Fitzgerald and, of necessity, F. Scott as well. I was always aware that they were in kind of a co-dependent dysfunctional relationship, but this book made it really clear. Also, it was rather hilarious to find out exactly how much of their lives made it into Scott's books. I mean, I knew it already about Tender is the Night, but I didn't know how much… and I confess I laughed when I found out Zelda dated a handsome Ivy-League football star of whom Scott was tremendously jealous. (Hi Gatsby and Tom!)
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Date: 2013-09-07 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-07 10:11 pm (UTC)Huh... At the time, I thought they were sort of creepy and off-putting. (I actually stopped at the first two pages for quite a while.) Now, with the benefit of hindsight, they are hilarious :)
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Date: 2013-09-07 04:15 am (UTC)"Digger" sounds really intriguing. I've been flirting with buying Gunnerkreig Court but haven't made the plunge. You somehow always manage to have the best books!
Or perhaps you don't review the dull ones...
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Date: 2013-09-07 10:17 pm (UTC)Have you read Gunnerkrigg Court online? I'm not sure I would advise someone to buy without having read it first, it's not that cheap :) (I love my hardcopy, though!) Digger is really quite good. I will confess GC pings some buttons in me that I don't even entirely understand, and D thought it was "okay" (his blanket statement for basically all media unless he's super-impressed with it), but my whole family is apparently enthralled with Digger :) It's available to read online here.
Hmmmmm. This year has been a pretty good year for me reading-wise; I think for somewhat random reasons people have been reccing me a lot of good books this year (all the above were recs from friends or trusted blogs). But yeah, sometimes I just either don't finish or am bored enough not to write a review for the bad/dull ones :) (Though if you check out my books:ya tag, you'll see a couple of stinkers on there...)
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Date: 2013-09-07 10:31 pm (UTC)There's a hard copy of GC at my local books-by-the-pound store, and it's the first compilation, and it's been sitting there waiting for me for a month. So I feel like that should be some kind of sign... but the book itself is three pounds, so it's still not that cheap. :/ It's tough for me to do comics online, as I get distracted easily. But I haven't attempted webcomics since I got a smartphone, so that might be a game-changer.
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Date: 2013-09-08 04:14 am (UTC)Can you sit in the bookstore and read a bit before you decide to take the plunge or not? :) The other good thing with reading GC online is that he tends to have little asides at the end of each cartoon, which aren't in the hard copy.
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Date: 2013-09-13 11:44 pm (UTC)The books-by-the-pound had a discount, and I had a Very Bad Day at work, so I picked up the GC hard copy for $8. It's nice to have real pages, and I got a deal. I really like the images, which make or break a graphic novel for me! So I count it as a success, though I'm not hooked on the story yet.
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Date: 2013-09-17 04:20 pm (UTC)I started reading GC again from the beginning, just cause, and yeah, it starts pretty slowly. It gets better, though! At least, I think so.
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Date: 2013-09-08 07:32 pm (UTC)As for female main characters who are engineers, I immediately think of Nadia Cherneshevsky in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books. She is awesome. : )
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Date: 2013-09-09 01:58 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-09-12 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-09 02:24 am (UTC)The first that comes to mind are the heroes of a couple of Melissa Scott's cyberpunk novels. Certainly Trouble and her Friends and The Jazz and that other one I read when I was in high school.
Naomi Nagata is the female lead in Leviathan Wakes and she's awesome even though the book desperately tries to turn her into a conventional love interest.
Fraa Erasmas's sister Cord is a major character if not a main character in Anathem.
Um... there have to be others, right? I'm sure more will occur to me.
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Date: 2013-09-09 02:00 pm (UTC)(Interestingly, I don't feel like this about books with female scientist (rather than engineer) characters, although when I actually sit down and try to name them I come up with... Dreamsnake, Pastwatch, ... there must be others.)
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Date: 2013-09-09 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-09 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-09-17 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-17 07:39 pm (UTC)Haven't read it, can't vouch for the rec, but definitely stars a female engineer.