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a_reader_is_me2009-07-01 05:54 pm
potted_music) wrote in a_reader_is_me2009-07-01 05:54 pm
66-70/150
Title: Lady Susan
Author: Jane Austen
Book Number/Goal: 66/150
An epistolary novel (which was an immediate hook for me as I love experiments with form) about a cunning widow who is: (a) a shameless flirt; (b) egotistical beyond belief; (c) intent on marrying her daughter off against her will. And she's every bit as black-and-white & one-dimensional as it sounds.
The characterization & plot were a lot more straight-forward than what I usually expect of Austen. The characters were denied basic changes and developments, and the plot hinged on withholding information from some protagonists (though not from the readers). Not a very satisfying read, and the ending seemed a little too rushed to me.
Title: Hourou Musuko [English scanlation up to ch.73 = ~9 volumes?]
Author: Shimura Takako
Book Number/Goal: 67/150
I found this manga viatorachan's rec (which says it all way more succintly than I possibly could). It is a story about trans kids that deals with issues without once becoming a heavy-handed message story; on the technical level, I liked the sort of circular thing it does with its composition - the way certain events get repeated again & again to showcase the changes in the characters' psyche as they grow up through showing how their reactions change over the years.
Title: What is Cultural History?
Author: Peter Burke
Book Number/Goal: 68/150
Basically, this is a short comprehensive overview of the history of cultural history, with brief delineations of the main trends, scholars & works, and the possible future developments of the discipline. This is a good place to start investigating the field, as the author himself is a prominent scholar, but what I liked most about it is the way Burke treated cultural history itself as the subject of cultural history (or the history of ideas, if you will), placing it in the broader intellectual context.
Title: City of Glass [the 3d book of the Mortal Instruments trilogy]
Author: Cassandra Clare
Genre: YA urban fantasy
Book Number/Goal: 69/150
I neither liked nor disliked the trilogy - it's entertaining enough, given that the reader is a fan of either YA or urban fantasy, and the overall mythos of this world is interesting enough. The plot seems a little bit too formulaic & paint-by-the-numbers though - it's quickly paced & builds up the suspence well, but does not hold any special surprises.
Most characters didn't do it for me though; the main couple were your standard angsty yet heroic melodramatic protags, and witticisms their dialogues were ridden with got tiring pretty soon.
Title: Man, Oh Man! Writing M/M for Kinks and Ca$h
Author: Josh Lanyon
Book Number/Goal: 70/150
1) Lanyon seems like a really cool guy, what with his acknowledgment of the existence of fandom, and addressment of some shifty assumptions that run rampant in the M/M reading community (for example, he finds the assumptions that "creating realistic and complex male characters would somehow be a different process than creating any other character or that what would be true of one man would be true of all men" inherently wrong - to which I can only say "yay to that", as I have never seen assumptions that male writers should not or could not tackle female characters). I could like him for that alone, even if I had not enjoyed his fiction.
2) I come from a culture where discussing writing as a commercial enterprise is still frowned upon, and so I found many aspects of this book uncomfortable. On a theoretical level (as I write only fanfiction, if even that, so I'm pretty removed from the practical matters here), I support a very romantic concept of writing, so pigeonholing such a sacred act according to the target audience's demands and strict marketing rules seems OMG so wrong to me XD I oppose to writing following strict genre rules as a reader too, but that, I guess, is a matter for another rant altogether.
Author: Jane Austen
Book Number/Goal: 66/150
An epistolary novel (which was an immediate hook for me as I love experiments with form) about a cunning widow who is: (a) a shameless flirt; (b) egotistical beyond belief; (c) intent on marrying her daughter off against her will. And she's every bit as black-and-white & one-dimensional as it sounds.
The characterization & plot were a lot more straight-forward than what I usually expect of Austen. The characters were denied basic changes and developments, and the plot hinged on withholding information from some protagonists (though not from the readers). Not a very satisfying read, and the ending seemed a little too rushed to me.
Title: Hourou Musuko [English scanlation up to ch.73 = ~9 volumes?]
Author: Shimura Takako
Book Number/Goal: 67/150
I found this manga via
torachan's rec (which says it all way more succintly than I possibly could). It is a story about trans kids that deals with issues without once becoming a heavy-handed message story; on the technical level, I liked the sort of circular thing it does with its composition - the way certain events get repeated again & again to showcase the changes in the characters' psyche as they grow up through showing how their reactions change over the years.Title: What is Cultural History?
Author: Peter Burke
Book Number/Goal: 68/150
Basically, this is a short comprehensive overview of the history of cultural history, with brief delineations of the main trends, scholars & works, and the possible future developments of the discipline. This is a good place to start investigating the field, as the author himself is a prominent scholar, but what I liked most about it is the way Burke treated cultural history itself as the subject of cultural history (or the history of ideas, if you will), placing it in the broader intellectual context.
Title: City of Glass [the 3d book of the Mortal Instruments trilogy]
Author: Cassandra Clare
Genre: YA urban fantasy
Book Number/Goal: 69/150
I neither liked nor disliked the trilogy - it's entertaining enough, given that the reader is a fan of either YA or urban fantasy, and the overall mythos of this world is interesting enough. The plot seems a little bit too formulaic & paint-by-the-numbers though - it's quickly paced & builds up the suspence well, but does not hold any special surprises.
Most characters didn't do it for me though; the main couple were your standard angsty yet heroic melodramatic protags, and witticisms their dialogues were ridden with got tiring pretty soon.
Title: Man, Oh Man! Writing M/M for Kinks and Ca$h
Author: Josh Lanyon
Book Number/Goal: 70/150
1) Lanyon seems like a really cool guy, what with his acknowledgment of the existence of fandom, and addressment of some shifty assumptions that run rampant in the M/M reading community (for example, he finds the assumptions that "creating realistic and complex male characters would somehow be a different process than creating any other character or that what would be true of one man would be true of all men" inherently wrong - to which I can only say "yay to that", as I have never seen assumptions that male writers should not or could not tackle female characters). I could like him for that alone, even if I had not enjoyed his fiction.
2) I come from a culture where discussing writing as a commercial enterprise is still frowned upon, and so I found many aspects of this book uncomfortable. On a theoretical level (as I write only fanfiction, if even that, so I'm pretty removed from the practical matters here), I support a very romantic concept of writing, so pigeonholing such a sacred act according to the target audience's demands and strict marketing rules seems OMG so wrong to me XD I oppose to writing following strict genre rules as a reader too, but that, I guess, is a matter for another rant altogether.