eleneariel | October Booklist

Oh hey, I read some books in October.

1. Immortal: love stories with bite, P.C. Cast, editor

I read this in preparation for our teen programs focusing on "Books that Bite", and I have to say this book made me realize that I don't really care for vampire fiction in general - I just like Twilight. So there. It also reminded me of why I don't care for horror stories, either - a lot of these short stories were just sort of lip-curlingly horrifying in a way I didn't expect from a book marketed as being, yanno, love stories.

2. Ever, Gail Carson Levine

The plot was great, but the writing didn't strike my fancy. Levine can write so much better than this! Interesting take on sort-of-not-really-greek-gods, though.

3. Homeschooling: a family's journey, Gregory and Martine Millman

Interesting for my homeschooling family to read, though nothing new was learned - but I appreciate it as being a great introduction to what we're all about to those people who are, perhaps, still stuck in the dark-ages view that parents can't possibly educate their own children without bringing them up to be repressed, socially backwards ignorant souls who won't be able to make their way in the world. (Clearly, my education has made me all of these things, can't you tell?) I didn't agree with everything the Millman's had to say, but then again, what homeschooling family would? As they repeatedly point out, we're a bunch of resolutely independent people.

4. Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care, John McWhorter

Ah, if only he wasn't married, I would so admit to having a huge linguistic crush on the man. I love the way he speaks, I love the way he writes, I love his crotchety diatribes about the devolution of English. Also, thanks to this man, I now incorporate glottal stops into my speech as often as possible.

5. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

Graphic novel; I "had" to read it for work to see whether we wanted it in YA or adult. It's a very neat exploration of the author's childhood observations of growing up under the increasingly oppressive Iranian regime.

6. Ex-Libris, Ross King

I must have heard about this somewhere or from someone, because a long time ago I ordered it from paperbackswap.com, and it has been sitting unread on my bookstack since. Until now! For some reason I was under the misconception that it was a modern-day novel involving international espionage/books/mysteries, sort of along the lines of The DaVinci Code, only more literary and hopefully, much better written. Except for the book part, it wasn't really anything like I expected, but once I got over that it turned out very well indeed.

7. Redeeming Love, Francine Rivers

I've heard about this for so long and never had the chance to read it until now. I appreciated the message of this book (no one is beyond redemption), as well as the handling of the subject matter, yet something felt flat to me. Neither Michael nor Angel felt completely real as characters. However, I can see how it would be particularly meaningful to people who struggle with whether they are "good enough" to be loved by God, or who have a hard time moving forward from sinful pasts.

8. Inklings, Melanie M. Jeschke

I saw this reviewed in WORLD magazine when it first came out. As I recall, it was a flattering review, which makes me wonder: I thought the WORLD reviewers had higher literary standards than this.

Let me be frank: the writing is appallingly bad. It's a sweet idea (young American woman comes to study at Oxford shortly after C.S. Lewis's death, meets handsome tutor, falls in love), but I was first bothered that it had been billed as a must-have book for any Lewis/Tolkien fan, and yet it appears written for those who have little knowledge of either man. Certainly few readers who glory in the skilled prose of Tolkien or Lewis could consider this novel well written. Consider:

* Except for a few random references to the beehive hairstyle and the free love movement, there is little to identify the time period as being in the 1960s. I could as easily have believed it was a present-day setting. There was no feel for the time period, and little enough for the geographic location.

* It has a GLOSSARY. And not a glossary of esoteric terms one might find in a Oxford don's vocabulary, but words like "cuppa" and "cheerio". Not only that, but almost each word in said glossary is also is explained (very artificially) in the text. "Would you like a cuppa? That means a cup of tea in England, you know." ARGH.

* At one point David (the abnormally young Oxford don - could anyone really reach that position by the tender age of 25, anyway?) is talking Kate, who is supposedly quite the Lewis fan. He tells her about studying under Lewis, and at one point calls him Jack. "Jack?" she says. "I thought his name was Clive Staples!" Later he spends paragraphs telling her that Lewis lived in a house called the Kilns, married an American named Joy, and so forth. One has to believe that Kate would have known all this, so it must be a very clumsy attempt to get the information to the (apparently clueless) reader ... in a book marketed to Lewis fans.

* The author needs to learn the concept of "show, not tell."

* Most reviewers of this book seem so enamored of the fact that it's a romance that glorifies chastity and physical restraint in a relationship that they are willing to completely overlook the poor writing. Well yes, that sort of a relationship is a fabulous thing and certainly unusual in modern fiction. But I as a Christian have a problem with excusing bad writing just because the main characters make a commitment to save their first kiss until their wedding (which is far from being a Biblical mandate or necessary for a "good Christian courtship") - or for any other moral issue. We as Christians should be producing better fiction (and art, movies, poetry) than the world. We should have higher standards and produce a superior product. We do ourselves no favors by churning out heavy-handed drivel like this. There is a way to weave morality naturally into a story: this isn't it. The whole book feels like nothing more than a platform for pushing the author's particular brand of courtship.

9. The Third Sister, Julia Barnett

A continuation of Sense and Sensibility, focusing on the story of Margaret. I hardly ever find a really good Austen 'sequel', but I always feel compelled to read them just in case. There wasn't anything terribly wrong with this one, but it just wasn't that good and I had to force myself to finish it.

10. Wordwatching, Julian Burnside

A totally awesome book for liguistic freaks. :)

11. I'm A Stranger Here Myself, Bill Bryson

A collection of Bryson's newspaper columns written after he returned to America after twenty years abroad. They are rather hit and miss but the ones that are a hit are fabulous. Yes,

ruthette , I'll loan this to you. :)

12. Candyfreak, Steve Almond

I think it's subtitled "a journey through American's chocolate underbelly". Mmmm. It made me hungry, reading it, and also jealous of the author's apparently unstoppable metabolism, although I also don't have any desire to be him in twenty years once a life of excessive candy consumption has caught up to him. But anyway. A little too introspective and pop-psych for me, but you can almost smell chocolate wafting up from the pages.

13. Nation, Terry Pratchett

It's ... it's not Discworld! I don't think he's written a non-Discworld book since the Johnny books. o_O I almost didn't know what to do with myself. Also, it had CHAPTERS. Yes, I know that Making Money and Going Postal had chapters to, but that doesn't count because they were old fashioned chapters with lots of "in which so and so did this, and then this happened, and there was a cat" following. These are just plain old normal chapters. .... weird.

So it took me some time, but it was good. Probably near the bottom of my list of Pratchett favorites, but you know. Anything Pratchett is good, even the "bad" ones.

But I really, really hope he writes more proper Discworld books before he stops writing. Anybody heard anything about how the alzheimer's is going?

Current Mood: hopeful

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

pansyprincess.livejournal.com

Oh my gosh, those were my exact feelings about Inklings! And I was SO mad and disappointed that it was SO darn awful, because the cover excited me muchly when I spotted it in the library. =P

I really have come to despise Christian fiction with all of my being. Ninety-five percent (and perhaps even that is a generous figure?) of it sucks!

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