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Greetings, sportsfans. In an attempt to distract myself from more pressing concerns, I present some books of interest. Authors covered: Sarah Andrews, Maxx Barry, Michael Bronski, Lois McMaster Bujold, Jim Butcher, Jonathan Franzen, Daniel Handler, Dan Savage, and Don Winslow.
Sarah Andrews, Only Flesh and Bones: This mystery, featuring geologist and former ranch-kid Em Hansen, didn’t do much for me. Perhaps it would have been better if I’d read Em’s first appearance first, because she spends equal time in this book investigating the murder of an old friend/employer’s wife and complaining about her own tangled emotional life, which is largely described rather than lived. Em’s judgments of those she meets are pretty damn harsh, which can be entertaining but ultimately leaves me indifferent.
Maxx Barry, Syrup: Max Barry used “Maxx” as his first name until he figured out it made him sound like an asshole. His words, not mine. “Syrup,” written before “Jennifer Government,” is a slightly less biting satire centered around Coca-Cola, a basically nice but greedy guy who has some good marketing ideas, his ex-roommate and archnemesis Sneaky Pete, and the beautiful and ambitious 6. Because it lacks the over-the-topness of “Jennifer Government,” “Syrup” is less entertaining, though full of sad-but-true advertising stories that sound just like many of Barry’s invented events. The plot depends in part on a misunderstanding of trademark law that could have been fixed in a paragraph or two, but that’s just me and my obsessions. If you liked “Jennifer Government” and can get this cheap, it’s a decent few hours’ read.
Michael Bronski, Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps: I saw on the street today a guy wearing a T-shirt that said, “I do this gay shit 4 a hobby.” Yeah, me too. Bronski has anthologized, with extensive commentary, excerpts from – you guessed it – pulp fiction with gay themes from the late 40s to the mid70s. Bronski says some interesting and provocative things about these works; the excerpts themselves range from laughable to decent in quality. One, about a drag-queen-to-be who falls in love with with the high school quarterback and runs off to live happily ever after in New Orleans with him, made me ponder the universality of romantic fantasy. I won’t get into the Wittgensteinian debate over whether our fantasies are really “the same” and how we can ever know, but the expression of those fantasies is pretty consistent. On a rainy day, lonely teens all stare out their windows and dream the same dreams. Well worth reading for the commentary and the excerpts from works such as “Gay Whore” and the sf-themed story in which a creeping chemical turns everybody in the world gay. And when you consider that the explicit sex scenes seem to have been written by actual gay men, well, our offerings seem pretty good, Minotaur’s Sex Tips notwithstanding. I mean, I haven’t seen “blood-filled dagger” that often in slash, and let me tell you that nobody in these pulps seems to use lube.
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion: Bujold returns to fantasy in this story of feudal lands, loyal retainers, endangered princesses (royesses, in her terminology, but it’s tomato, tomahto), and dark magics. Her writing is engaging as usual, though I didn’t find it as deep in its examination of theology as some have suggested. At least with magic, she can explain the whopping big coincidences in this book; Bujold usually has to work harder to make her plots work.
Jim Butcher, Summer Knight: This is the fourth book in the Harry Dresden series, the first three of which I bought at the con I went to with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
vivwiley and mustangsally78, where Butcher was sitting there autographing them. Harry’s a wizard, though much more screwed up than the younger, happier Mr. Potter. I thought the first three books were okay – the cover design on all of them is clearly meant to make you think of Anita Blake, at least the old design before the covers got all artistic, and the writing is not quite the same, but is in the same basic range. The books are set in a Chicago much like our own, only magic is real; it's not as widely acknowledged as in the Blake books, though and Harry barely ekes out a living as the only wizard in the Yellow Pages. The plots go like this: Harry’s stupidly brave and backed into situations that no one thinks he should survive (presumably that's the real source of the Blake comparison), this time regarding the Faerie Courts, Midsummer, a not-quite-dead ex-lover, and a bunch of other complications that turn out all to be related. I enjoyed this book more than the first three, and I don’t know quite why. He has some very nice turns of phrase – I’m a sucker for a good quip – and the talking skull was quite good, as was the Summer Lady, the Queen Who Will Be of the Summer Court.
Jonathan Franzen, How to be Alone: This is a book of essays by the author of “The Corrections,” a book that famously was de-picked by Oprah because of Franzen’s snobbery w/r/t Oprah and her club. Franzen is an unreconstructed snob, and it’s hard to like the author who emerges from these essays, which cover topics from his father’s slow, Alzheimer’s-marred death to modern literature to the undeath of privacy. I’m keeping the book nonetheless because there’s a very nice piece on Chicago post offices, why they don’t run, and how that fits in to America’s overall abandonment of its cities. If you’re not into urban renewal and don’t want to read someone with whom you can share the joy of turning up your nose at the oceans of plebeians around you, skip it.
Daniel Handler, Watch Your Mouth: Daniel Handler may be better known nowadays as Lemony Snicket. This book has all the sex and swearing that the Snicket books lack, and not to its great benefit. Sex is central to the plot; sex nearly is the plot, except for the golem. Which is maybe a metaphor, but I think not. The coy sensibility that makes the Snicket books so much fun ended up exhausting me in this one, perhaps because of the explicitness – watch me alternate between talking dirty and snarking, ma! – and perhaps because too much self-consciousness is just grating to read and I’d just finished “Syrup” before I read “Watch Your Mouth.” Handler can write some seriously good, playful prose, and I wouldn’t discourage anyone but Jedediah Purdy from reading this, but you might want to bracket it with more uplifting stuff.
Dan Savage, Savage Love: Dan Savage wanted to call his column, “Hey, Faggot!” but was vetoed by his publisher. This is a collection of some of his columns, and they’re pretty fun to read. He’s a lot like Ann Landers if she didn’t care about fidelity or truth-telling in a relationship and liked to talk about boys she’d fucked. He wouldn’t blink at calling someone a pervy hobbit fancier, that’s for sure, though sadly the book does not include columns about his rather surprising animosity for furries. The best part of the book is his discussion of letters he calls “Hey! How’d that happen?” letters, in which the author claims some preposterous sexual thing happened by accident when clearly intention was involved, and asks if it was okay to like it.
Don Winslow, California Fire & Life: “The Straight Dope” recommended this for learning about fire investigation. It’s a mystery/thriller of sorts, about an insurance adjuster who specializes in fires as he investigates what looks like a real estate dealer’s murder of his estranged wife. I was entertained and engaged by the fire investigation, less so by the baroque plot surrounding the dealer and his business plans. The ending was both disappointing from a moral point of view and simultaneously too neat, I thought, and some side plots didn’t get resolved. Still, if you like the darker Westlakes and Blocks, and want to learn more about how fire reveals its origins, this wouldn’t be a worthless read.
I’m also 60 pages in to John Keegan’s Six Armies in Normandy, picked because I wanted to read about a nobler endeavor, and I’m really enjoying it. Those beautiful, complex, rounded British sentences – I love them, and the subject matter is fascinating. Ooh, and for bedside reading I have a SV novel with Lex on the cover. I’m not exactly a hard sell in matters touching Lex, and it was half off at the Strand (as was the Jim Butcher novel).
In other news, I took the “which Supreme Court Justice are you?” quiz at selectsmart, and got Ginsburg & Breyer before Souter, which shows how much the quizmaker knows. The questions weren’t really designed to sort as between Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter, or between O’Connor and Kennedy, or between Scalia and Thomas. The questions were also infelicitously worded: “Do you support racial gerrymandering?” Um, yeah, I think voting districts ought to be drawn so that minorities have a good chance at proportional representation in the legislature; what about you?
More Martha soon. And then more slash.
Sarah Andrews, Only Flesh and Bones: This mystery, featuring geologist and former ranch-kid Em Hansen, didn’t do much for me. Perhaps it would have been better if I’d read Em’s first appearance first, because she spends equal time in this book investigating the murder of an old friend/employer’s wife and complaining about her own tangled emotional life, which is largely described rather than lived. Em’s judgments of those she meets are pretty damn harsh, which can be entertaining but ultimately leaves me indifferent.
Maxx Barry, Syrup: Max Barry used “Maxx” as his first name until he figured out it made him sound like an asshole. His words, not mine. “Syrup,” written before “Jennifer Government,” is a slightly less biting satire centered around Coca-Cola, a basically nice but greedy guy who has some good marketing ideas, his ex-roommate and archnemesis Sneaky Pete, and the beautiful and ambitious 6. Because it lacks the over-the-topness of “Jennifer Government,” “Syrup” is less entertaining, though full of sad-but-true advertising stories that sound just like many of Barry’s invented events. The plot depends in part on a misunderstanding of trademark law that could have been fixed in a paragraph or two, but that’s just me and my obsessions. If you liked “Jennifer Government” and can get this cheap, it’s a decent few hours’ read.
Michael Bronski, Pulp Friction: Uncovering the Golden Age of Gay Male Pulps: I saw on the street today a guy wearing a T-shirt that said, “I do this gay shit 4 a hobby.” Yeah, me too. Bronski has anthologized, with extensive commentary, excerpts from – you guessed it – pulp fiction with gay themes from the late 40s to the mid70s. Bronski says some interesting and provocative things about these works; the excerpts themselves range from laughable to decent in quality. One, about a drag-queen-to-be who falls in love with with the high school quarterback and runs off to live happily ever after in New Orleans with him, made me ponder the universality of romantic fantasy. I won’t get into the Wittgensteinian debate over whether our fantasies are really “the same” and how we can ever know, but the expression of those fantasies is pretty consistent. On a rainy day, lonely teens all stare out their windows and dream the same dreams. Well worth reading for the commentary and the excerpts from works such as “Gay Whore” and the sf-themed story in which a creeping chemical turns everybody in the world gay. And when you consider that the explicit sex scenes seem to have been written by actual gay men, well, our offerings seem pretty good, Minotaur’s Sex Tips notwithstanding. I mean, I haven’t seen “blood-filled dagger” that often in slash, and let me tell you that nobody in these pulps seems to use lube.
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion: Bujold returns to fantasy in this story of feudal lands, loyal retainers, endangered princesses (royesses, in her terminology, but it’s tomato, tomahto), and dark magics. Her writing is engaging as usual, though I didn’t find it as deep in its examination of theology as some have suggested. At least with magic, she can explain the whopping big coincidences in this book; Bujold usually has to work harder to make her plots work.
Jim Butcher, Summer Knight: This is the fourth book in the Harry Dresden series, the first three of which I bought at the con I went to with
vivwiley and mustangsally78, where Butcher was sitting there autographing them. Harry’s a wizard, though much more screwed up than the younger, happier Mr. Potter. I thought the first three books were okay – the cover design on all of them is clearly meant to make you think of Anita Blake, at least the old design before the covers got all artistic, and the writing is not quite the same, but is in the same basic range. The books are set in a Chicago much like our own, only magic is real; it's not as widely acknowledged as in the Blake books, though and Harry barely ekes out a living as the only wizard in the Yellow Pages. The plots go like this: Harry’s stupidly brave and backed into situations that no one thinks he should survive (presumably that's the real source of the Blake comparison), this time regarding the Faerie Courts, Midsummer, a not-quite-dead ex-lover, and a bunch of other complications that turn out all to be related. I enjoyed this book more than the first three, and I don’t know quite why. He has some very nice turns of phrase – I’m a sucker for a good quip – and the talking skull was quite good, as was the Summer Lady, the Queen Who Will Be of the Summer Court.Jonathan Franzen, How to be Alone: This is a book of essays by the author of “The Corrections,” a book that famously was de-picked by Oprah because of Franzen’s snobbery w/r/t Oprah and her club. Franzen is an unreconstructed snob, and it’s hard to like the author who emerges from these essays, which cover topics from his father’s slow, Alzheimer’s-marred death to modern literature to the undeath of privacy. I’m keeping the book nonetheless because there’s a very nice piece on Chicago post offices, why they don’t run, and how that fits in to America’s overall abandonment of its cities. If you’re not into urban renewal and don’t want to read someone with whom you can share the joy of turning up your nose at the oceans of plebeians around you, skip it.
Daniel Handler, Watch Your Mouth: Daniel Handler may be better known nowadays as Lemony Snicket. This book has all the sex and swearing that the Snicket books lack, and not to its great benefit. Sex is central to the plot; sex nearly is the plot, except for the golem. Which is maybe a metaphor, but I think not. The coy sensibility that makes the Snicket books so much fun ended up exhausting me in this one, perhaps because of the explicitness – watch me alternate between talking dirty and snarking, ma! – and perhaps because too much self-consciousness is just grating to read and I’d just finished “Syrup” before I read “Watch Your Mouth.” Handler can write some seriously good, playful prose, and I wouldn’t discourage anyone but Jedediah Purdy from reading this, but you might want to bracket it with more uplifting stuff.
Dan Savage, Savage Love: Dan Savage wanted to call his column, “Hey, Faggot!” but was vetoed by his publisher. This is a collection of some of his columns, and they’re pretty fun to read. He’s a lot like Ann Landers if she didn’t care about fidelity or truth-telling in a relationship and liked to talk about boys she’d fucked. He wouldn’t blink at calling someone a pervy hobbit fancier, that’s for sure, though sadly the book does not include columns about his rather surprising animosity for furries. The best part of the book is his discussion of letters he calls “Hey! How’d that happen?” letters, in which the author claims some preposterous sexual thing happened by accident when clearly intention was involved, and asks if it was okay to like it.
Don Winslow, California Fire & Life: “The Straight Dope” recommended this for learning about fire investigation. It’s a mystery/thriller of sorts, about an insurance adjuster who specializes in fires as he investigates what looks like a real estate dealer’s murder of his estranged wife. I was entertained and engaged by the fire investigation, less so by the baroque plot surrounding the dealer and his business plans. The ending was both disappointing from a moral point of view and simultaneously too neat, I thought, and some side plots didn’t get resolved. Still, if you like the darker Westlakes and Blocks, and want to learn more about how fire reveals its origins, this wouldn’t be a worthless read.
I’m also 60 pages in to John Keegan’s Six Armies in Normandy, picked because I wanted to read about a nobler endeavor, and I’m really enjoying it. Those beautiful, complex, rounded British sentences – I love them, and the subject matter is fascinating. Ooh, and for bedside reading I have a SV novel with Lex on the cover. I’m not exactly a hard sell in matters touching Lex, and it was half off at the Strand (as was the Jim Butcher novel).
In other news, I took the “which Supreme Court Justice are you?” quiz at selectsmart, and got Ginsburg & Breyer before Souter, which shows how much the quizmaker knows. The questions weren’t really designed to sort as between Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter, or between O’Connor and Kennedy, or between Scalia and Thomas. The questions were also infelicitously worded: “Do you support racial gerrymandering?” Um, yeah, I think voting districts ought to be drawn so that minorities have a good chance at proportional representation in the legislature; what about you?
More Martha soon. And then more slash.