The Plaid Pladd

I got through books this month from my 2014 booklist, which means 22% of my goal is complete! Here they are, in order of me enjoying them:

Code Name Verity

Title: Code Name Verity
Author: Elizabeth Wein
Amount Read: All
Rating: 4/5
Why was this on my list?: I think I already had it on my list because of a review I read, but then it won just all the awards

The best thing about this book is the point of view. It starts off as the “confession” being written on scraps of paper by a Scottish spy in a Nazi interrogation headquarters in occupied France. Things get intense, as you can imagine. I also really enjoyed a look inside women’s lives during World War II: female wireless operators, female pilots, female spies, female special ops. It’s not a part of wartime life that gets a lot of press (did you even know there were lady pilots being badass back then?) and Wein deals with the issue with such humanity that it hardly feels like history. Her characters feel very real, which is part of why this book is so crushing because, yeah, they are in the middle of a brutal war, so most of it is also terrifying.

Letters from Skye

Title: Letters from Skye
Author: Jessica Brockmole
Amount Read: All
Rating: 4/5
Why was this on my list?: I read a review of it, and I love epistolary novels.

This novel is a series of letters telling one love story that spans 2 world wars. It begins when a cocky college boy sends a fan letter to his favorite poet, a semi-recluse who lives in the beautifully remote Isle of Sky, Scotland. Make anything an epistolary novel, and I will automatically like it more. It also kind of made me miss the rugged beauty of Scotland, and all those sheep fields and hills-not-mountains I used to tramp around.

Who Could That Be At This Hour?

Title: Who Could That Be At This Hour?
Author: Lemony Snicket
Amount Read: All
Rating: 3/5
Why was this on my list?: Leeeemoooooonyyyyy Sniiiiiickeeettttt

The Series of Unfortunate Events dragged on too much for me, but I’ve always enjoyed Lemony Snicket’s writing style (in manageable doses), and some of Daniel Handler’s adult novels are really enjoyable and well-written (particularly The Basic Eight, a mystery, and Adverbs, a confused fever dream). This first book in a new series takes place in the same universe as A Series of Unfortunate Events, just some years earlier. It has the usual Snicket kind of things: an ex-island (now mountain) that mines ink from terrified underground octopi, sneaky note passing through library book request cards, and a grim, Edward Gorey-like pall hanging over everything. Basically exactly what you’d expect, and sometimes that’s comforting.

Delusions of Gender

Title: Delusions of Gender
Author: Cordelia Fine
Amount Read: All
Rating: 3/5
Why was this on my list?: A review I read, probably on one of the blogs I follow about gender issues

This book was intensely interesting, and, of course, all about a subject I’m already very invested in. Cordelia Fine gives an overview of the various studies surrounding the “neuroscience of sexism,” the belief that there are two kinds of brains in the world and, say, the lady ones are somehow inherently bad at math and the guy ones just can’t grasp the concept of emotion unless it’s about bacon. Which you know is total bullshit, and it’s nice to have a more thorough understanding about some of the studies that supposedly back this up, and all of the ones that disprove it.

Gifts

Title: Gifts
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Amount Read: All
Rating: 3/5
Why was this on my list?: A book list about interesting kinds of magical systems in fantasy

This book was very atmospheric and odd, but unmistakably well-written, at least from a language standpoint. I got to the end and really felt like I knew the place she was writing about–I just wished more had happened there. It’s one of those slow-moving, world-building type of books, but at least the world is an interesting one. The poor hill clans each have magical “gifts” that help them survive, at least when bloodlines run true. The main character’s family birthright, just like his father’s, is to be able to unmake things with a glance and a gesture, at least it would be, if it would show up already. Sometimes waiting for puberty to turn you into a killing machine is such a drag.

The False Prince

Title: The False Prince
Author: Jennifer A. Nielsen
Amount Read: All
Rating: 3/5
Why was this on my list?: It was nominated for a Goodreads award

I feel like I would have been all about this book when I was like ten (except for the lack of badass ladies–ten-year-old me had standards), but unlike other children/YA books, it was harder to get into as an adult. The main character and a few other boys are being groomed to impersonate the crown prince of their fantasy-medieval country, which may be treason or may be Their Civic Duty. Also, the ones that don’t get picked get murdered, so it’s good motivation to study hard.

A Queer and Pleasant Danger

Title: A Queer and Pleasant Danger
Author: Kate Bornstein
Amount Read: All
Rating: 3/5
Why was this on my list?: It’s full title is A Queer and Pleasant Danger: The true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology and leaves twelve years later to become the lovely lady she is today

The best thing about this book is that on the first page there are a list of “Also By This Author” and the first thing my eye saw was Nearly Roadkill: An Infobahn Erotic Adventure. I was immediately thrown back in time to the single greatest thing I ever found while wandering the undisturbed stacks in Fondren. This book was insane. It was written entirely in chatroom transcripts, at a time when “Infobahn” was totally a word people thought would be used to describe the Internet in the future. I think I gave James Fox a copy for his birthday and reaching similar levels of ridiculousness is our yearly goal for Script Frenzy (alas, never achieved). I was BEYOND psyched to read its author’s memoir. Although looking back, that expectation set my sights a little too high. This book was crazy, but real-world crazy that was often just sad.

The Wedding Planner’s Daughter

Title: The Wedding Planner’s Daughter
Author: Coleen Paratore
Amount Read: All
Rating: 3/5
Why was this on my list?: I have no idea

This book was… okay. I can picture a certain kind of 8-year-old girl really liking it, although not 8-year-old me. It’s less about pretty dresses than you might suppose, but it’s more about everyday life drama of dealing with loss and moving on and making friends. Nothing all that exciting happens, although I enjoyed a lot of the descriptions of Cape Cod.

Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures

Title: Parenting: Illustrated with Crappy Pictures
Author: Amber Dusick
Amount Read: All except one chapter
Rating: 2/5
Why was this on my list?: Recommended on Goodreads because I liked the Hyperbole and a Half book

I didn’t like this book for two reasons, neither of which were its fault. The first is that, because of the style and the way it was recommended to me, I was comparing it to Hyperbole and a Half, which is a comparison no one can win. Allie Brosh is amazing in every way (writing style, comedic timing, explaining something that is so true and sad somehow in a funny way) and it’s unfair to hold anyone else to that standard. The second is that it’s about parenting (duh), but mostly the really gross unappealing parts. Which is like all of them, when you’re me. I was already feeling sick when I read this, so I ended up skipping the chapter about being sick since the other ones had still been too much about bodily fluids for my liking.

Every Day

Title: Every Day
Author: David Levithan
Amount Read: All
Rating: 1/5
Why was this on my list?: I think it was nominated for an award or something?

The idea for this book is interesting–the main character is a new person everyday, wearing their body and accessing their memories until midnight when he moves on to some other random body (always the same age as him and within a close proximity). This premise raises a lot of interesting issues, almost none of which are explored. Towards the end, almost off-handedly, the protagonist discovers there are more people like him, and that they can learn to control what they do. But he dismisses finding out anymore about that because, whatever it’s not boring enough or something. The bulk of the plot is about his creepy relationship with the girlfriend of one of the people he possesses. Maybe it’s just because I really hate the love at first sight trope, but their relationship struck me as superficial bullshit. “He looks at her and only he can see her secret sadness” uggggggggh no. You can’t use that as a shortcut to establishing a believable connection between two characters. Plus, the ethical implications of dragging your host body around, wrecking its life because it’s your vehicle for the day are only kind of acknowledged. We’re supposed to realize that his stalker-Nice Guy(TM) love trumps all those concerns, I guess. Also, he hops into a lot of different teen-problem-novel-esque situations that we’re supposed to Learn A Very Important Lesson about, even though these people are portrayed as strange cardboard cut-out minorities with almost no humanity of their own. Except the one fat guy he possesses, who is described as “the societal equivalent of a burp.” The protagonist makes a big show of how non-judgmental he is, except of the fat guy, because since you did this to yourself, you deserve society’s scorn. A GIANT NOPE TO BOTH THOSE ASSUMPTIONS, David Levithan. Ew.

Goblin Secrets

Title: Goblin Secrets
Author: William Alexander
Amount Read: One and a half chapters
Rating: ???
Why was this on my list?: It won some awards

I wanted to like this book! I love Baba Yaga, and people with clockwork robot legs, and fish that swim in dust. But somehow the beginning and the main character both failed to grab me, and I found myself really unenthused about reading anymore. Maybe it’s the higher level of commitment you have to make to a fantasy novel, all the time it takes to understand the world it’s set in. I’m not willing to make the effort for just anyone! Maybe that makes me lazy, or picky, or something. I guess I have pretty high standards. But there’re too many books I want to read, so no sense wasting time on something that doesn’t excite you.

Previously: January