Things I read in April
May. 12th, 2012 09:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cloudsinveniceI've been meaning for ages to make this more of a regular thing. I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of these...
Under the cut:
The Fry Chronicles - Stephen Fry
There And Back Again: An Actor's Tale - Sean Astin
Friendly Fire - Patrick Gale *favourite of the month*
Blood Is The New Black - Valerie Stivers
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
What's The Best You Can Do? First-Hand Recollections Of A Second-Hand Bookseller - Derek Rowlinson
The Fry Chronicles - Stephen Fry
I loved Moab Is My Washpot, and this sequel didn't disappoint. It picks up after he gets out of prison aged 17(?), gets a job as a boarding school teacher, and then goes on to Cambridge and thence to Footlights and telly-writing glory.
I did sigh a bit over his complaints about being judged by his projected class image. Yes, class prejudice can hurt both ways (and Robbie Coltrane evidently had no business playing Fry's hurt social inferior - the revelation of the fauxness of his ordinary bloke image was juicy indeed), but the harm done is asymmetric.
It's forgivable, though, in light of the thorough dissection he gives his own character, and the recurring message that almost nobody is as confident as they seem is worth the repeating.
There And Back Again: An Actor's Tale - Sean Astin
I'm far from experienced in the ways of LotR canon - reading The Hobbit and watching the films a few times is so far the extent of it, though I do intend to read LotR one day. But I found Sean Astin's book really engaging and enjoyable, due as much to his refreshing, non-celebby frankness as to seeing such an ambitious film adaptation come together. Astin is very frank about how much he gets paid/how actor earnings break down (everyone needs their cut) and about his own ambitions and insecurities.
Maybe sometimes he's a little too honest for his own good, such as when he's disappointed that Ian McKellen doesn't show more interest in him, but we're so used to actors being cautiously inoffensive that it's sort of endearing. He comes across as a fundamentally nice, decent person with (as we say here) 'no side to him', which is more than I can say for the author of the celebrity autobiography I've just finished...
Friendly Fire - Patrick Gale
After earning a scholarship, Sophie goes from life at a children's home to life at a prestigious boarding school. She's a wonderfully believable character: reserved, watchful, in love with learning and with the unfolding of her life as she feeds her intellect and gets drawn into the sometimes dangerous social world of her classmates and teachers expose her to, accompanied by gay best friends Lucas and Charlie.
One really nice aspect of the book is how Patrick Gale represents the openly gay world of 70s British public schools - he's drawing a lot on his own experience at Winchester, and at the back of the book he talks more about that and shares his fictional influences for Friendly Fire. A word of warning, though: part of Gale's inspiration was how the discovery of a teacher/student relationship at his old school led to a suicide, and there is an unbelievably upsetting (to me at least, 9 months after a friend's suicide) corresponding scene in the novel. If you can bear that, however, it's a wonderful book for people who love character-driven novels, and coming-of-age/shaping-of-identity stories.
Blood Is The New Black - Valerie Stivers
I went all snooty about my vampire books for a few years there, having initially read every vampire novel I could get my hands on in post-Ricean fervour, and then been turned off almost all of them by the fulfilment of the "95% of everything is crap" axiom. But I got this for Christmas and it was there for me when I wanted something undemanding. The gist is that protagonist Kate reluctantly takes up an internship at a prestigious fashion mag, hoping that her personal style, family background (her mum was THE hot designer of the previous generation, but dropped out of sight, and Kate's life, when Kate was 16) and life as she knows it won't get eaten alive by her snooty colleagues. Unfortunately, it turns out that they're more interesting in drinking her blood...
Some fun things about this novel:
1. I have little personal interest in fashion, but I liked that it didn't reduce all fashionistas to bitchy stereotypes: Kate knows her Miiyake from her Monsoon, and her conflict about embracing the fashion world due to what it did to her mother and family life is a nice touch.
2. Valerie Stivers isn't just diving into a bankable genre and reinventing the wheel: when Kate's best friend gets roped in to advise on anti-vampire defenses, the references to Anne Rice, Laurell K. Hamilton et al (Jean-Claude even gets name-checked) make it clear that the author knows her onions, vampire-wise.
3. The vampshionistas (I'm sorry, that portmanteau was uncalled for) are oddly loveable despite being the last people you'd want as work colleagues.
All that, and there's romantic tension that requires further exploration. I wouldn't mind if Kate became a sort of globe-trotting, catwalk-stalking Buffy figure in a sequel...
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
I've been holding off on reading this for ages, and I only wish I'd picked it up sooner, since it's every bit as hooky as I've been hearing. I'd been burnt before on the new YA dystopia wave (and I adored the old 70s/80s wave of teen dystopias and post apocalyptic wasteland books), with Uglies, but The Hunger Games worked for me because I could believe in the setting and social world being built up.
But I think it would be much more forgettable if the characters didn't work so well - Katniss's isolation and self-sufficiency, as a child betrayed by her mother's breakdown, is very convincing. If her voice is a tad flat and undistinctive, that actually works for such a pragmatic character with no time or inclination for frills or fancies. Also, I've always had a thing for characters who are hunters (Anita Blake, in the good old days, or mortal!Lestat in TVL), and I enjoyed that aspect of Katniss's identity a lot.
I am a little uncertain as to how Catching Fire will handle the shift from the adrenalin of the Games to the more ideological/media manipulation-oriented plot the preview leads me to expect, but I'm really looking forward to reading it and finding out.
What's The Best You Can Do? First-Hand Recollections Of A Second-Hand Bookseller - Derek Rowlinson
From this and a particularly hilarious blog I read on the same subject (I'll have to dig the link out), I get the impression that running a secondhand bookshop is not unlike being a writer: almost every book-lover's dream career, but considerably more irritating in reality. Rowlinson has some good stories to tell, and you end up being impressed that he stuck at it as long as he did. It's definitely not all long wine-fuelled lunches and entertaining customer-beratings, a la Bernard Black...
Under the cut:
The Fry Chronicles - Stephen Fry
There And Back Again: An Actor's Tale - Sean Astin
Friendly Fire - Patrick Gale *favourite of the month*
Blood Is The New Black - Valerie Stivers
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
What's The Best You Can Do? First-Hand Recollections Of A Second-Hand Bookseller - Derek Rowlinson
The Fry Chronicles - Stephen Fry
I loved Moab Is My Washpot, and this sequel didn't disappoint. It picks up after he gets out of prison aged 17(?), gets a job as a boarding school teacher, and then goes on to Cambridge and thence to Footlights and telly-writing glory.
I did sigh a bit over his complaints about being judged by his projected class image. Yes, class prejudice can hurt both ways (and Robbie Coltrane evidently had no business playing Fry's hurt social inferior - the revelation of the fauxness of his ordinary bloke image was juicy indeed), but the harm done is asymmetric.
It's forgivable, though, in light of the thorough dissection he gives his own character, and the recurring message that almost nobody is as confident as they seem is worth the repeating.
There And Back Again: An Actor's Tale - Sean Astin
I'm far from experienced in the ways of LotR canon - reading The Hobbit and watching the films a few times is so far the extent of it, though I do intend to read LotR one day. But I found Sean Astin's book really engaging and enjoyable, due as much to his refreshing, non-celebby frankness as to seeing such an ambitious film adaptation come together. Astin is very frank about how much he gets paid/how actor earnings break down (everyone needs their cut) and about his own ambitions and insecurities.
Maybe sometimes he's a little too honest for his own good, such as when he's disappointed that Ian McKellen doesn't show more interest in him, but we're so used to actors being cautiously inoffensive that it's sort of endearing. He comes across as a fundamentally nice, decent person with (as we say here) 'no side to him', which is more than I can say for the author of the celebrity autobiography I've just finished...
Friendly Fire - Patrick Gale
After earning a scholarship, Sophie goes from life at a children's home to life at a prestigious boarding school. She's a wonderfully believable character: reserved, watchful, in love with learning and with the unfolding of her life as she feeds her intellect and gets drawn into the sometimes dangerous social world of her classmates and teachers expose her to, accompanied by gay best friends Lucas and Charlie.
One really nice aspect of the book is how Patrick Gale represents the openly gay world of 70s British public schools - he's drawing a lot on his own experience at Winchester, and at the back of the book he talks more about that and shares his fictional influences for Friendly Fire. A word of warning, though: part of Gale's inspiration was how the discovery of a teacher/student relationship at his old school led to a suicide, and there is an unbelievably upsetting (to me at least, 9 months after a friend's suicide) corresponding scene in the novel. If you can bear that, however, it's a wonderful book for people who love character-driven novels, and coming-of-age/shaping-of-identity stories.
Blood Is The New Black - Valerie Stivers
I went all snooty about my vampire books for a few years there, having initially read every vampire novel I could get my hands on in post-Ricean fervour, and then been turned off almost all of them by the fulfilment of the "95% of everything is crap" axiom. But I got this for Christmas and it was there for me when I wanted something undemanding. The gist is that protagonist Kate reluctantly takes up an internship at a prestigious fashion mag, hoping that her personal style, family background (her mum was THE hot designer of the previous generation, but dropped out of sight, and Kate's life, when Kate was 16) and life as she knows it won't get eaten alive by her snooty colleagues. Unfortunately, it turns out that they're more interesting in drinking her blood...
Some fun things about this novel:
1. I have little personal interest in fashion, but I liked that it didn't reduce all fashionistas to bitchy stereotypes: Kate knows her Miiyake from her Monsoon, and her conflict about embracing the fashion world due to what it did to her mother and family life is a nice touch.
2. Valerie Stivers isn't just diving into a bankable genre and reinventing the wheel: when Kate's best friend gets roped in to advise on anti-vampire defenses, the references to Anne Rice, Laurell K. Hamilton et al (Jean-Claude even gets name-checked) make it clear that the author knows her onions, vampire-wise.
3. The vampshionistas (I'm sorry, that portmanteau was uncalled for) are oddly loveable despite being the last people you'd want as work colleagues.
All that, and there's romantic tension that requires further exploration. I wouldn't mind if Kate became a sort of globe-trotting, catwalk-stalking Buffy figure in a sequel...
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
I've been holding off on reading this for ages, and I only wish I'd picked it up sooner, since it's every bit as hooky as I've been hearing. I'd been burnt before on the new YA dystopia wave (and I adored the old 70s/80s wave of teen dystopias and post apocalyptic wasteland books), with Uglies, but The Hunger Games worked for me because I could believe in the setting and social world being built up.
But I think it would be much more forgettable if the characters didn't work so well - Katniss's isolation and self-sufficiency, as a child betrayed by her mother's breakdown, is very convincing. If her voice is a tad flat and undistinctive, that actually works for such a pragmatic character with no time or inclination for frills or fancies. Also, I've always had a thing for characters who are hunters (Anita Blake, in the good old days, or mortal!Lestat in TVL), and I enjoyed that aspect of Katniss's identity a lot.
I am a little uncertain as to how Catching Fire will handle the shift from the adrenalin of the Games to the more ideological/media manipulation-oriented plot the preview leads me to expect, but I'm really looking forward to reading it and finding out.
What's The Best You Can Do? First-Hand Recollections Of A Second-Hand Bookseller - Derek Rowlinson
From this and a particularly hilarious blog I read on the same subject (I'll have to dig the link out), I get the impression that running a secondhand bookshop is not unlike being a writer: almost every book-lover's dream career, but considerably more irritating in reality. Rowlinson has some good stories to tell, and you end up being impressed that he stuck at it as long as he did. It's definitely not all long wine-fuelled lunches and entertaining customer-beratings, a la Bernard Black...
