Books read in July
Aug. 4th, 2012 11:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lizbee[Forthcoming novel] - [an author]
Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times and Corruption of Atlantic City - Nelson Johnson
Gifts - Ursula K Le Guin
Worldshaker - Richard Harland
(Unfinished) If Walls Could Talk - Lucy Worsley
Virtuoso - Jessica Martinez
A Storm of Swords: Blood and Gold - George R R Martin
All That I Am - Anna Funder
(Unfinished) Katherine - Anya Seton
Bit of a mixed bag this month!
Boardwalk Empire started off well, but by the time it got into the modern era it was all a bit, AND THEN THERE WAS GAMBLING. GAMLING'S SO GREAT, YOU GUYS. SO GREAT.
Gifts was one for the book club, and (shamefully) the first Le Guin I ever read. (I tried Earthsea once, honestly!) I enjoyed it a lot, although I felt like the structure was a bit meandering. I shall, at some stage, read the sequels.
Worldshaker was enjoyable, especially since I picked it up shortly after Someone Whose Name I Forgot declared steampunk a genre for fascists, and this is a YA novel about an essentially marxist revolution in a steampunk world. Lots of good ideas and characters, but it was quite uneven -- the writing was quite simplistic, and sat awkwardly against the complexity of the situation and the rather shocking violence.
I don't usually list unfinished books, but I got a fair chunk into If Walls Could Talk and Katherine. I dropped Walls because, while it was an interesting-enough popular history (about the evolution of the European house, room by room), the author was incredibly irritating. I could live with her insistence that everyone in the modern age is middle-class and enjoys exactly the same lifestyle as she does, but when she expressed amazement that it took skill as well as brute strength to print William Morris wallpaper, I gave up.
Katherine is a 1950s novel about the life of Katherine Swynford, mistress and later wife of John of Gaunt. It was one of the very first popular historical romances, and I enjoyed what I read of it very much. But the print was tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiny, and giving me a headache. So I skipped ahead to see the outcomes for all the characters that I liked, and then stopped out of sheer self-preservation. That was the library's copy, and very old; apparently there's a new edition out with a foreword by Philippa Gregory that is presumably easier on the eyes.
Virtuoso was a perfectly good YA novel about a violin prodigy who, as she prepares for a competition that will decide her future career options, discovers a terrible secret. I really liked this a lot, but I would have liked it even more if it had contained more about the main character's rather interesting relationship with her father and his family (who are uninterested in her, the illegitimate daughter of a failed opera singer, until it turns out she's hugely talented) and maybe a bit less about her romance with a rival violinist. But the stuff about the pressure to succeed, the dependence on beta blockers and anti-anxiety medication, and her fraught relationship with her mother, were all great.
And All That I Am takes the prize for Best Book Last Month, which isn't surprising since it's winning all kinds of awards. It was quite slow to start off with, and annoyed me in a lot of ways, since large parts of it are basically ERNST TOLLER'S MANPAIN, LET HIM SHOW YOU IT, but it was a fascinating story -- about the left-wing intellectuals of 1920s Germany, the rise of the Nazis and their exile and ultimate betrayal in Britain. Most of the characters are based on real people, although some names are changed and several characters are composites.
It's told via two first person narrators: Toller, in New York in 1939, and Ruth, in Sydney in 2002. Amazon reviewers seemed to find this profoundly confusing and difficult to follow, on account of how it required the reader to pay attention. I'm not normally a fan of rotating first POV, but I liked it here.
Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times and Corruption of Atlantic City - Nelson Johnson
Gifts - Ursula K Le Guin
Worldshaker - Richard Harland
(Unfinished) If Walls Could Talk - Lucy Worsley
Virtuoso - Jessica Martinez
A Storm of Swords: Blood and Gold - George R R Martin
All That I Am - Anna Funder
(Unfinished) Katherine - Anya Seton
Bit of a mixed bag this month!
Boardwalk Empire started off well, but by the time it got into the modern era it was all a bit, AND THEN THERE WAS GAMBLING. GAMLING'S SO GREAT, YOU GUYS. SO GREAT.
Gifts was one for the book club, and (shamefully) the first Le Guin I ever read. (I tried Earthsea once, honestly!) I enjoyed it a lot, although I felt like the structure was a bit meandering. I shall, at some stage, read the sequels.
Worldshaker was enjoyable, especially since I picked it up shortly after Someone Whose Name I Forgot declared steampunk a genre for fascists, and this is a YA novel about an essentially marxist revolution in a steampunk world. Lots of good ideas and characters, but it was quite uneven -- the writing was quite simplistic, and sat awkwardly against the complexity of the situation and the rather shocking violence.
I don't usually list unfinished books, but I got a fair chunk into If Walls Could Talk and Katherine. I dropped Walls because, while it was an interesting-enough popular history (about the evolution of the European house, room by room), the author was incredibly irritating. I could live with her insistence that everyone in the modern age is middle-class and enjoys exactly the same lifestyle as she does, but when she expressed amazement that it took skill as well as brute strength to print William Morris wallpaper, I gave up.
Katherine is a 1950s novel about the life of Katherine Swynford, mistress and later wife of John of Gaunt. It was one of the very first popular historical romances, and I enjoyed what I read of it very much. But the print was tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiny, and giving me a headache. So I skipped ahead to see the outcomes for all the characters that I liked, and then stopped out of sheer self-preservation. That was the library's copy, and very old; apparently there's a new edition out with a foreword by Philippa Gregory that is presumably easier on the eyes.
Virtuoso was a perfectly good YA novel about a violin prodigy who, as she prepares for a competition that will decide her future career options, discovers a terrible secret. I really liked this a lot, but I would have liked it even more if it had contained more about the main character's rather interesting relationship with her father and his family (who are uninterested in her, the illegitimate daughter of a failed opera singer, until it turns out she's hugely talented) and maybe a bit less about her romance with a rival violinist. But the stuff about the pressure to succeed, the dependence on beta blockers and anti-anxiety medication, and her fraught relationship with her mother, were all great.
And All That I Am takes the prize for Best Book Last Month, which isn't surprising since it's winning all kinds of awards. It was quite slow to start off with, and annoyed me in a lot of ways, since large parts of it are basically ERNST TOLLER'S MANPAIN, LET HIM SHOW YOU IT, but it was a fascinating story -- about the left-wing intellectuals of 1920s Germany, the rise of the Nazis and their exile and ultimate betrayal in Britain. Most of the characters are based on real people, although some names are changed and several characters are composites.
It's told via two first person narrators: Toller, in New York in 1939, and Ruth, in Sydney in 2002. Amazon reviewers seemed to find this profoundly confusing and difficult to follow, on account of how it required the reader to pay attention. I'm not normally a fan of rotating first POV, but I liked it here.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-04 02:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-04 10:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-04 04:18 am (UTC)I keep meaning to try Katherine but never get around to it.
Hmm, Virtuouso sounds like it has stuff I like a lot but I'm getting tired of books that focus on romances. Is it a really hatesexy kind of rival-relationship, or do they just kind of happen to be rivals and have to deal with that?
no subject
Date: 2012-08-04 04:20 am (UTC)More the latter. There's a certain amount of attempted manipulation, but mostly they're people who would be friends if they weren't in such a strange social environment. I didn't dislike the romance, I just found it less interesting than the hints we got of her father's family.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-04 11:25 am (UTC)