![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Did you know that there's a specific type of food poisoning associated with fried rice? Lesson: when you go to the funky hole-in-the-wall Chinese place, order from the funky regional menu that they care about, not the Americanized stuff they don't. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
misterrivkat and his dad had good meals, at least. And I eventually got my remix in, after I recovered. And I went to Pittsburgh for a conference. Still have to reschedule the class I cancelled while I was writhing in agony. Then I must write exams. Any fun trademark and First Amendment hypotheticals may be directed my way.
Jonathan Kellerman, Therapy: It's an Alex Delaware novel. There are bizarre killings in LA, involving a therapist Delaware locked horns with in the past, leading to the uncovering of some bizarre secrets. I like Delaware better than Kellerman's other protagonists; nothing stood out about the novel, but it delivered pretty much exactly the travel reading I'm looking for when I pick up a Kellerman book.
Brian Aldiss, Supertoys Last All Summer Long: Though this book is prominently marketed as containing the story that became the film A.I., the most interesting thing about it is the introductory essay, written before the movie came out, vehemently disclaiming responsibility. Aldiss didn't like the Blue Fairy. Join the club, I say. Still, I thought the movie was genius until the plunge into the water; some of the elements I liked are in the three linked short stories Aldiss wrote about David, the mechanical boy, but many aren't, including Jude Law's character. The essay recognizes that he's dissing a dead man's view, but pride evidently compelled him to speak anyway -- I respect that. The other stories in the collection are weaker, generally about versions of human society so changed from ours that sympathy is impossible, especially since Aldiss doesn't create characters I with whom I wanted to empathize.
Edith Wharton, The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton: Probably only for the completist. The stories are fine, not all that creepy, but often possessed of telling social details about the characters, as one would expect. Actually, the thing that exercised me most abou the book was the copyright information at the end, where stories in the public domain were presented as if they were still under copyright. Seems like trickery by indirection to me.
Diana Gabaldon, Lord John and the Private Matter: Okay, so I read this for the DC slash book club; it is not my usual thing at all. Lord John is a minor character from Gabaldon’s blockbuster series about a time-traveling nurse and the Scot who loves her. (Isn’t it funny how fandom’s Mary Sue can be adored if she gets her own book? The archetypes/stereotypes are so widely shared that the most crack-addled plots make perfect emotional sense. See also: recent Superman/Batman storylines, proving that fangirls and fanboys share the same desires to fix/fuck up Bruce Wayne.) Anyhow, this is Lord John’s first solo book, wherein he gets involved in political and personal intrigue when he discovers that a relative’s fiance has syphillis and is simultaneously corralled into a spy investigation. Did I mention that Lord John is gay? So we get some tours of upper-class homosexual hangouts, though not much in the way of explicitness. By the end, the villain shows some truly human aspects and Lord John has proved himself an appealing narrator, even if much of the plot feels mechanical. Gabaldon seems to have done her research, though I can’t speak to the accuracy of her portrayals. At times the research seems to show through the story, but you’ve got to respect her willingness to venture into new territory, especially since many of her het readers might be reluctant to follow.
Lawrence Block, The Burglar on the Prowl: A recent Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery; one mystery is how Bernie hasn’t aged much in thirty years. Block’s still got a lot of his snappy writing skills, though he’s decided to excuse an insane amount of coincidence by having characters announce, “Hey! What an insane amount of coincidence we have here!” This is less successful than he probably hopes. The plot wherein Bernie is dragged into a murder investigation because he was caught on tape casing the area for another, unrelated crime, then dragged further in when one set of bad guys assumes the cops know what they’re doing when they haul him in, is pretty good. The other plot, wherein Bernie breaks into a woman’s apartment just before she comes home and hides under the bed while she’s getting raped, is less good. It’s not that I don’t accept that there are women whose main reaction to being raped while drugged with Rohypnol would be anger and disgust without any self-blame. Rather, I don’t accept that a woman who then had sex with a man who subsequently revealed that he’d hidden under the bed during the rape would happily accept his explanation that he was afraid to come out and help her. In the book, she continues dating him! And that’s setting aside the whole “burgled her” thing. Bernie Rhodenbarr may be more attractive than James Bond and Indiana Jones together (mmm ... ) but charm doesn’t pay for everything.
Comics still stacked too high, scaring me away from reviews.
misterrivkat and his dad had good meals, at least. And I eventually got my remix in, after I recovered. And I went to Pittsburgh for a conference. Still have to reschedule the class I cancelled while I was writhing in agony. Then I must write exams. Any fun trademark and First Amendment hypotheticals may be directed my way.Jonathan Kellerman, Therapy: It's an Alex Delaware novel. There are bizarre killings in LA, involving a therapist Delaware locked horns with in the past, leading to the uncovering of some bizarre secrets. I like Delaware better than Kellerman's other protagonists; nothing stood out about the novel, but it delivered pretty much exactly the travel reading I'm looking for when I pick up a Kellerman book.
Brian Aldiss, Supertoys Last All Summer Long: Though this book is prominently marketed as containing the story that became the film A.I., the most interesting thing about it is the introductory essay, written before the movie came out, vehemently disclaiming responsibility. Aldiss didn't like the Blue Fairy. Join the club, I say. Still, I thought the movie was genius until the plunge into the water; some of the elements I liked are in the three linked short stories Aldiss wrote about David, the mechanical boy, but many aren't, including Jude Law's character. The essay recognizes that he's dissing a dead man's view, but pride evidently compelled him to speak anyway -- I respect that. The other stories in the collection are weaker, generally about versions of human society so changed from ours that sympathy is impossible, especially since Aldiss doesn't create characters I with whom I wanted to empathize.
Edith Wharton, The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton: Probably only for the completist. The stories are fine, not all that creepy, but often possessed of telling social details about the characters, as one would expect. Actually, the thing that exercised me most abou the book was the copyright information at the end, where stories in the public domain were presented as if they were still under copyright. Seems like trickery by indirection to me.
Diana Gabaldon, Lord John and the Private Matter: Okay, so I read this for the DC slash book club; it is not my usual thing at all. Lord John is a minor character from Gabaldon’s blockbuster series about a time-traveling nurse and the Scot who loves her. (Isn’t it funny how fandom’s Mary Sue can be adored if she gets her own book? The archetypes/stereotypes are so widely shared that the most crack-addled plots make perfect emotional sense. See also: recent Superman/Batman storylines, proving that fangirls and fanboys share the same desires to fix/fuck up Bruce Wayne.) Anyhow, this is Lord John’s first solo book, wherein he gets involved in political and personal intrigue when he discovers that a relative’s fiance has syphillis and is simultaneously corralled into a spy investigation. Did I mention that Lord John is gay? So we get some tours of upper-class homosexual hangouts, though not much in the way of explicitness. By the end, the villain shows some truly human aspects and Lord John has proved himself an appealing narrator, even if much of the plot feels mechanical. Gabaldon seems to have done her research, though I can’t speak to the accuracy of her portrayals. At times the research seems to show through the story, but you’ve got to respect her willingness to venture into new territory, especially since many of her het readers might be reluctant to follow.
Lawrence Block, The Burglar on the Prowl: A recent Bernie Rhodenbarr mystery; one mystery is how Bernie hasn’t aged much in thirty years. Block’s still got a lot of his snappy writing skills, though he’s decided to excuse an insane amount of coincidence by having characters announce, “Hey! What an insane amount of coincidence we have here!” This is less successful than he probably hopes. The plot wherein Bernie is dragged into a murder investigation because he was caught on tape casing the area for another, unrelated crime, then dragged further in when one set of bad guys assumes the cops know what they’re doing when they haul him in, is pretty good. The other plot, wherein Bernie breaks into a woman’s apartment just before she comes home and hides under the bed while she’s getting raped, is less good. It’s not that I don’t accept that there are women whose main reaction to being raped while drugged with Rohypnol would be anger and disgust without any self-blame. Rather, I don’t accept that a woman who then had sex with a man who subsequently revealed that he’d hidden under the bed during the rape would happily accept his explanation that he was afraid to come out and help her. In the book, she continues dating him! And that’s setting aside the whole “burgled her” thing. Bernie Rhodenbarr may be more attractive than James Bond and Indiana Jones together (mmm ... ) but charm doesn’t pay for everything.
Comics still stacked too high, scaring me away from reviews.
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
About Lord John. GaryStu, all the way.
From:
no subject
You mean you actually try to make your exam hypotheticals FUN?!?!?!
(Backs away slowly)
From:
no subject
Hope you feel better soon, btw.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject