Books read in March 2019

[nou]

As discussed last month, I’m redirecting the energy I previously used for providing content warnings into writing a little bit about what I thought about the books.

(This isn’t why this post is late. There was minor Medical Drama involving unexpectedly low iron levels and some rather unpleasant tests to try to find out why — short version is my internal organs are fine, we still don’t know where all my iron went, but iron tablets are magic, and that’s good enough for me.)

Definitely recommend

Swordheart, T Kingfisher. I somehow wasn't expecting this to be a romance. But it is! As well as fantasy. I’d read it again.

The True Queen, Zen Cho. I loved the first book in this series (The Sorcerer to the Crown) and I love this one even more. Dragons! Powerful older women! Wit and banter that are actually funny! And other reasons to love it that would be SPOILERS.

The Martian, Andy Weir (re-read). I keep confusing bob by referring to this as “the potato book”, but honestly the POTATOES are the thing I love about it. There’s at least one potato reference that made me laugh out loud simply because of its precision and dryness (which may or may not have been intended by the author). Some of the book is a bit clumsy (the stereotypical German, the insistence that humanity never leaves anyone behind when it’s set in the near-future with no indication that the problems of poverty, famine, institutional racism, etc have been fixed) but overall I like it and may well read it again.

Maybe recommend

The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie (re-read). Hercule Poirot mystery with an unreliable narrator. I'd read this before many years ago so knew the twist, but enjoyed trying to figure out where the gaps in the story were and how it was all managed. The thing with Agatha Christie is that you can be reading along quite smoothly and then suddenly there's half a sentence of casual and entirely unnecessary racism, anti-semitism, ablism, etc, and then it goes back to being an interesting detective story. (Some of her books are worse than this, with the racism or rape-apologism embedded in the plot — I will never read Nemesis again.)

Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine, T Kingfisher (re-read). I decided to read these again after enjoying Swordheart, as they’re all set in the same universe and although I didn’t enjoy these two all that much the first time round, many other people seem to have loved them so I thought I’d give them another go. Still not my favourite: too much sexual longing, plot very slow. There are individual lines that are hilarious, though.

The King Must Die, Mary Renault (re-read). I read this when I was a kid and was absolutely astonished by it. It's still very readable, but although I'm aware of how pioneering it was in terms of retelling the Greek classics, I much prefer the more recent and less male-oriented works like Circe.

Wouldn’t recommend

The Valley At The Centre Of The World, Mallachy Tallack (DNF). This was just kind of boring. Also, there were too many short, choppy sentences that kept pushing me out of the story. I tried to work out if there was some pattern to these, some reason for them, but either there wasn't or it was too subtle for me. I got 27% of the way through and kept finding myself wishing I was reading something else, so I stopped.

The Invisible Library, Genevieve Cogman (DNF). This was kind of the opposite of The Valley in that it's all action and very little scenery. I again got fed up of it around the 27% mark and stopped reading.

Hot Money, Dick Francis (DNF). Not enough horses, too many unpleasant rich people. I stopped reading at the point where one of the main characters stated that a disabled person would have been better off dead.

Infomocracy, Malka Older (DNF). It's the future! Everyone has Wikipedia installed on their Google Glasses, police push their way through crowds by poking people with plastic triangles, and global elections are conducted with wards of exactly 100,000 people each. I decided not to buy this after reading the Kindle sample, so I don't know if the author ever explains what happens when someone dies or reaches voting age.

City Of Lies, Sam Hawke (DNF). I tried really hard to finish this! I should have liked it! It describes food and plants and technology, and has disabled protagonists! But I found it very boring and a little sanctimonious, and I kept forgetting which of the two POV protagonists was the current one, since aside from their disabilities and jobs they were fairly indistinguishable.

The Shipping News, Annie Proulx (re-read) (DNF). I read this years ago and remember liking it, so I thought I'd give it a re-read, but unfortunately I've also seen the film so was unable to get Kevin Spacey out of my head.

Flying Finish, Dick Francis. I appreciate that he included reproductive justice activists, but also hormonal contraception doesn't work like that. I liked all the detail about how you transport horses by air. But generally this isn't great. Too much about the perils of communism.

A Is For Alibi, Sue Grafton. This book is really weird about people's bodies, especially fat bodies. Aside from that, it's a fairly generic detective story with added tedious heterosexualling.

Comments

[booklectica]

I love The King Must Die and had the same response as you when I first read it.

We watched the TV adaptation of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd last night - I was curious to see how they’d manage it and I think it was well done, although it was hard to tell because I already knew the story.

[nou]

Have you read the sequel, The Bull From The Sea, and if so what do you think? I remember not discovering it for several years after reading the first one, and being a bit disappointed by it, but I can’t remember why. I have a sample of it on my Kindle but keep not-choosing it because of previous disappointment.

Re Roger Ackroyd, yes, agree about the TV adaptation!

[oursin]

It's years since I read those two Renaults, but I had the same feeling, and on reflection, I think it may be that The Bull from the Sea doesn't really have a compelling arc the way The King Must Die does - it has several different episodes and covers a much longer time, so it lacks the intensity?? I'm almost afraid to reread them because I think I'm much more sensitised to Renault's internalised misogyny these days (compare and contrast with Naomi Mitchison, ahem).

[nou]

Mm, yes, that might be it.

The internalised misogyny in The King Must Die didn’t register for me when I first read it, but I could certainly see it this time. I didn’t find it ruined the book for me, but I think I might wait to re-read The Bull from the Sea until I’m in the right kind of mood to deal with all that.

[selki]

I've gotten hooked on listening to the many Christie audio adaptations on YouTube (most originally from BBC productions), and just recently listened to a good reading of *Endless Night* which has some similarities with TMoRA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc1tYv1ll6Y

[thekumquat]

I just read the second Grafton book (B is for Burglar) and agree. Also there was a twist that was obvious to anyone who's ever read a detective novel, and it was an excellent example of a book dating because the clothes are described in detail. We're clearly meant to know what is implied by x brand and y fabric, but actually it just makes no sense. Won't be reading any more of them.

[nou]

What a shame. I can’t quite remember why I read this one, but I think it was after seeing someone praising one of the later ones, and I got quite excited about there being an entire new-to-me series that I might like (I read so fast that I’m constantly worrying about running out of books). But no!

[rmc28]

I fell in with them around the time E or F came out, and I have stuck with them in the 25+ years since. Back about the time I started dating Tony (so, er 15+ years ago, gosh), the whole series-so-far was on some special offer at WHSmith and I ended up buying some every time I went through Kings Cross until I had the lot (and then continued to fill in from charity shops, where they always seem to turn up).

I do think the writing quality gets better as the series goes on, but I'm pretty sure the weirdness about weight and the relentless heterosexuality doesn't. She also experimented a bit with structure and narrative viewpoint in the last few, and I was sad to read that she'd died having written all of A-Y but not Z. I think I have W and X in my to-read pile somewhere but haven't rushed to them.

I may have latched hard onto them as a teen because in the late 80s/early 90s it was a novelty to me to read a woman investigator at all; I think the field is rather fuller now.


Which is all a very long-winded way of saying "I like this author and I'm sorry you didn't but I can totally see why" !

[nou]

Yes, I did wonder if she got better as time went on. And I think I’d probably have been much more forgiving of them in the ’80s too!

[selki]

I was more interested in the character's family history than the mysteries
a) which is not a great sign for a mystery series for the folks who like *mysteries*
b) and it felt like she caught on to readers' interest and kept doling it out in teeny tiny dribbets to keep them reading.

But the books did have interesting bits now and then.

[oursin]

I'm just reading one of the later Amanda Cross novels, and in it the narrator (a woman PI who is fat and unashamed and finds it actually useful in her work and is perfectly fit and capable of taking down mooks if necessary) calls out the fat-shaming in something by Grafton she's just read.

[nou]

Ha, excellent! And Amanda Cross is new to me, thanks — I’ve downloaded a sample of her first one and look forward to trying it.

[selki]

I'm glad the iron tablets are working for you!

[nou]

Thank you!

[selki]

I've liked the Renault I read but it was a while ago and I'm sure it had problematic parts. More recently I've enjoyed Jo Graham's and Judith Tarr's takes on ancient worlds. And I'm on CD 9 of 10 of an audio recording of Circe! I skipped over most of the tracks of her first love (after the fish delivery), though, I could see how it was going. June 1 I'm seeing a production of *The Oresteia* (condensed into less than three hours, I'll be interested to see how it does) at the DC Shakespeare Theater.

[nou]

More recently I've enjoyed Jo Graham's and Judith Tarr's takes on ancient worlds.

Thanks! I will investigate. I also found a Wikipedia list of fiction set in Ancient Greece, which looks promising.

[miss_newham]

Huh, nice to know that 'The Martian' is a good read. I quite enjoyed the film, but suspected the book might be better. And the potatoes were the thing I enjoyed most in the film!

I think I finally got the point of content warnings recently, while I was reading 'The Long Song' by Andrea Levy. It was a pretty powerful book about slavery in Jamaica, but blimey - so much violence with quite grisly descriptions, a LOT of fat phobia, and obviously the whole book was about racism. I ploughed on with it because I figured that was what people really went through, but it was not a comfortable read!

Rah for iron tablets.

[nou]

Ooh, if you liked the film you should definitely read the book. I’m not sure the book is exactly better, just different.

POTATOES.

(I don’t even particularly like potatoes as a thing to eat!)

I don’t actually find content warnings massively helpful myself — as I said to naraht last month they flatten things out too much to give me the kind of information I’d find useful — but I know a lot of people do. I would happily contribute to a central repository of them, if one existed.