Book Blog: November 2008
The Zeppelin in the Atomic Age: E. J. Kirschner
November 30, 2008
This looked like an interesting book, but within the first four pages I’d already spotted two glaring errors: 1) a picture of Joseph Montgolfier (excerpted from a newspaper article, which had his name displayed prominently below it) captioned as “James Montgolfier”, and 2) a sentence referring to the Montgolfier brothers as first appearing “around 1872”, which might be a flip-around of “1782”, because the Montgolfier brothers were stricly an 18th-century phenomenon. Such blatant mistakes, let alone mistakes made right at the beginning of a book, are entirely unforgivable; back to the library it goes.
Bluebeard: The Life and Crimes of Gilles de Rais: Leonard Wolf
November 25, 2008
The legend of Bluebeard fascinates me because it’s one of the rare cases where the truth is far worse than the myth: compare the myth of the wife-killing, corpse-hoarding husband to the reality of the child-raping, child-killing, corpse-hoarding, Satanistic necrophiliac and tell me which freaks you out more. This book does not shy away from the reality of de Rais’s crimes or attempt to exonerate him using childhood/wartime traumas as excuses, but neither does it dismiss him as a raving lunatic, which would be unjustly (and dangerously) simplistic. It’s always more comforting to assume that only monsters are capable of monstrous deeds; the scariest thing about Gilles de Rais is that he was human.
Midnight Never Come: Marie Brennan
November 22, 2008
Stupid title, gorgeous cover; I spent more time cooing over the great montage than I spent actually reading the book — which was good, but very, very slow. It’s probably better that way, since I know I would have bitched even louder had the story moved too fast; still, I could have used less explanation of faerie customs, which are necessary for the story but nevertheless come off as somewhat awkward world-building. The relationship between the mortal Deven and the faerie Lune is well-written and intricate, more mature than the usual fantasy romances I’ve come across. A nice blend of historical fiction and fantasy; worth a read for fans of both.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: Robert A. Heinlein
November 16, 2008
TOO AWESOME. DOES NOT COMPUTE. NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE. WILL DIE OF SATISFACTION NOW.
Paris in the Terror, June 1793–July 1794: Stanley Loomis
November 10, 2008
Wow. That whole French Revolution thing was no joke, let me tell you. And here I thought it was all set up so we could have miniature guillotines on our desk to cut the ends off cigars. Turns out we should also have a bunch of miniature priests to slaughter, and miniature gutters to literally run red with blood, and a bunch of miniature anarchists that rise to power and then get knocked off by other miniature anarchists, who get knocked off by other miniature anarchists, who get knocked off by Robespierre (in his teeny-tiny green spectacles), who then gets knocked off himself.
Man. I am going to need a bigger desk.
Eclipse: Stephenie Meyer
November 8, 2008
Oh dear God, this series is dull. The first book was okay in a trashy-airplane-read kind of way; the second was repetitive but threw in werewolves for some new action, but this… this is just the first two books rehashed. Bella is still incapable of using her own neck muscles (the men in her life keep having to turn her face this way and that with their strong, gentle hands), Edward is still glittery and tortured, Jacob is still carrying a torch for Bella, and that red-haired vamp is still haunting the Washington woods. 600+ pages, and the whole story arc of the series moves forward about a millimeter. If these books weren’t such quick reads (two hours or less), I would skip the last book altogether. (But something has to happen there, right? I mean, there has to be some sort of resolution?…)
The Last Dive: Bernie Chowdhury
November 5, 2008
Please slap my face mask and cut my regulator if I ever decide to go diving after reading this book, because I do not want to die like this. If I die underwater, it will be in a knife fight with James Bond, not because my blood got filled with gas bubbles. My love of adventure ends where almost-certain death begins.
The Quiet American: Graham Greene
November 2, 2008
Graham Greene never disappoints. That’s why I try to read his books when I’m in the midst of reading crap, like the Twilight series. Those are love stories for babies; this is a love story for grown-ups.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey: Thornton Wilder
November 2, 2008
Good, but short — maybe too short. Like this post. Heh.
Albatross: The True Story of a Woman’s Survival at Sea: Deborah Scaling Kiley
November 1, 2008
Better-written than a lot of the told-by-the-survivor disaster stories I’ve read; my one quibble is that Kiley and her fellow survivor come off a bit too… clean? Not exactly the word I want, but I can’t think of a better one right now; what I mean is, the two survivors are written as decent, hard-working folk who know more about the risks of sailing than the other three victims put together, and Kiley in particular is the only survivor who can see when the others are making bad sailing decisions (and yet she does nothing to stop them). Of course, these could be legitimate character traits that helped the two survivors make it while the others, lacking such habits, died; me being a cynic, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a wee bit of personal retconning going on. It’s still a good story; it just makes my skeptical eyebrow lift ever so slightly when I read it.
Fresh Offerings: New & Updated
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