New Year, Old Books
May. 4th, 2024 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sultrybutdamagedHaven’t done a book post for a while, so it’s time to play catch up. Since it’s my first book post for 2024 and I’ve read a lot in the last few months, I’m going to do something a little different - I’m going to be positive and only list the books I loved, or at least really liked, since my last post.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig - This was an impulse purchase, which is something I rarely do anymore since I’m committed to cutting down my tbr, but I was unexpectedly stuck sitting around in a bookstore cafe for a couple of hours and my phone died. I picked it up because it has a trope I like, where a character gets to try out all the other possible lives they could have lived, and it ended up being possibly my favorite example of the genre. Instead of focusing on the mechanics of the multiple lives or concepts of the multiverse, the Midnight Library is about one seriously depressed woman trying to find a better, or at least tolerable, life. It ended up being a very hopeful book, largely because instead of making some vague point about finding happiness in the little things or whatever, it stayed focused on Nora’s experience of depression and how it had twisted all her multiple lives, and then found a way to shine a light against that without diminishing the struggle.
A Kind of Spark by Ellie McNicholl - My autism reads book club ends up covering a lot of MG and YA books, since that’s where the bulk of the representation is, and this is my favorite in that category. It’s the story of a girl on a quest to see her village build a memorial to the women who were killed during a period of witch trials, and it excels because of how it portrays Addie’s emotional experience. The intense empathy Addie feels, even for people who have been dead for centuries, doesn’t fit with what the people around her expect of an autistic kid and that mismatch causes a lot of Addie’s problems. I also really liked that Addie had an older sister who was also autistic; that’s such a common thing but I haven’t seen a lot of it in fiction.
Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu - Last year I was started reading through all the classics of 19th century vampire literature and I finally got to this one in January. It’s the only one that came close to equaling Dracula. Before I picked it up, I only knew Carmilla as the source of the lesbian vampire trope, but I was still somehow surprised that it was as gay as it was. Otherwise, it was a quieter and sadder book than I was expecting; maybe because of the stories it inspired, I expected Carmilla herself to be something less sympathetic.
The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson - This was my first book of 2024 and it might end up being my favorite. It’s a Norse-inspired fantasy, written in the 1950’s, that combines an older style of writing that makes it feel like a Viking saga with an approach to character that is more modern. It takes place in the 9th century, when pagan religions were fading before Christianity, and it works the real world religious changes into the plot of the story. There’s a nuance to the handling of the characters, especially the women and the “evil” troll characters, that was very enjoyable to see alongside the more traditional aspects of the genre.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - Dumas is probably my favorite classic author when it comes to plot and momentum. He takes a story that stretches over decades and a huge cast of characters and none of it ever drags. This book has so many twists and places for the reader to guess at what is going on. I had so much fun rereading it that I immediately went to watch the 2002 move and wow does that go off the rails in the second half.
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao - Another one of those cases where I read a really hyped book and was somehow surprised that it was good. I just loved the characters in this - they were angry and messed up and not very nice, and the journey the main trio went on to find compassion and love for each other was so satisfying even though I knew going in this wasn’t going to be a happy-ending type book. Other than the fact that the pacing got way off in the end and the last few chapters ran through a whole book’s worth of plot and emotion, I loved everything about Iron Widow. I also found it amusing that I enjoyed the way the plot riffed on Pacific Rim so much, since I have not actually ever watched Pacific Rim all the way through. But I have read a ton of Pacific-Rim themed fanfic and this reminded me a lot of that in the best way.
Dark Cities Underground by Lisa Goldstein - This book is like The Magicians meets Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. It follows Jerry, a sort of whiny, sad middle aged man as he discovers that as a child, he traveled through a portal into a world of magic he no longer remembers. Jerry and his companions, a journalist named Ruth and her young daughter, Gilly, are okay characters, but the thing that made me love this book was the way the magical world combined subway systems, Egyptian mythology, and the history of portal fantasy, and the way it played with the archetypes of myth and fairy tales.
Dark Apprentice by Val Neil - This book is traditional fantasy (technically it is set in the 1950’s but it might as well be a second-world fantasy), but instead of focusing on big plot elements, it is a very small story about an immortal magician who takes on a dangerous student and the relationship that develops between them. I haven’t read a book that focused so closely on a (non-romantic) relationship in a while and I really enjoyed that aspect. Medea, the magician, is autistic, as well as just really old and culturally out-of-touch with the world, and Nikolai, the student, has anti-social personality disorder (he’s a psychopath.) The book delves into the unique ways they each think and the incredible misunderstandings that come from that in ways that sometimes cause tension and are at other times extremely funny, in a black humor sort of way.
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride - This book was a Christmas present from my sister, so it was another case of not picking from my tbr. It’s a mystery, technically, but the mystery ends up not being the point; it’s really a story about a community, a mix of Black and Jewish families in 1930’s Pennsylvania, and the ways their lives overlap and their stories twine together. The author has a gift for character and unique voices and for portraying a community as a character in its own right.
The Adventure of the Incognito Countess by Cynthia Ward - I got this story as a free ebook a long time ago but I was waiting to read it until I’d finally read Carmilla. It’s one of those stories that mashes together all the conveniently public domain characters of 19th and early 20th century literature - Dracula, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, etc. The story is about Lucy Harker, Dracula’s daughter, who is working as a British secret agent on board the Titanic when she gets distracted from her job by her attraction to Clarimal Stein, aka Carmilla. I was glad I had waited to read Carmilla first because, rare for this type of story, she felt exactly like the character from her own novel transported into this one. The relationship between her and Lucy unfolded nicely, Lucy was an interesting character, and in this world the Titanic was powered by Martian technology, so that was fun.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig - This was an impulse purchase, which is something I rarely do anymore since I’m committed to cutting down my tbr, but I was unexpectedly stuck sitting around in a bookstore cafe for a couple of hours and my phone died. I picked it up because it has a trope I like, where a character gets to try out all the other possible lives they could have lived, and it ended up being possibly my favorite example of the genre. Instead of focusing on the mechanics of the multiple lives or concepts of the multiverse, the Midnight Library is about one seriously depressed woman trying to find a better, or at least tolerable, life. It ended up being a very hopeful book, largely because instead of making some vague point about finding happiness in the little things or whatever, it stayed focused on Nora’s experience of depression and how it had twisted all her multiple lives, and then found a way to shine a light against that without diminishing the struggle.
A Kind of Spark by Ellie McNicholl - My autism reads book club ends up covering a lot of MG and YA books, since that’s where the bulk of the representation is, and this is my favorite in that category. It’s the story of a girl on a quest to see her village build a memorial to the women who were killed during a period of witch trials, and it excels because of how it portrays Addie’s emotional experience. The intense empathy Addie feels, even for people who have been dead for centuries, doesn’t fit with what the people around her expect of an autistic kid and that mismatch causes a lot of Addie’s problems. I also really liked that Addie had an older sister who was also autistic; that’s such a common thing but I haven’t seen a lot of it in fiction.
Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu - Last year I was started reading through all the classics of 19th century vampire literature and I finally got to this one in January. It’s the only one that came close to equaling Dracula. Before I picked it up, I only knew Carmilla as the source of the lesbian vampire trope, but I was still somehow surprised that it was as gay as it was. Otherwise, it was a quieter and sadder book than I was expecting; maybe because of the stories it inspired, I expected Carmilla herself to be something less sympathetic.
The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson - This was my first book of 2024 and it might end up being my favorite. It’s a Norse-inspired fantasy, written in the 1950’s, that combines an older style of writing that makes it feel like a Viking saga with an approach to character that is more modern. It takes place in the 9th century, when pagan religions were fading before Christianity, and it works the real world religious changes into the plot of the story. There’s a nuance to the handling of the characters, especially the women and the “evil” troll characters, that was very enjoyable to see alongside the more traditional aspects of the genre.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - Dumas is probably my favorite classic author when it comes to plot and momentum. He takes a story that stretches over decades and a huge cast of characters and none of it ever drags. This book has so many twists and places for the reader to guess at what is going on. I had so much fun rereading it that I immediately went to watch the 2002 move and wow does that go off the rails in the second half.
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao - Another one of those cases where I read a really hyped book and was somehow surprised that it was good. I just loved the characters in this - they were angry and messed up and not very nice, and the journey the main trio went on to find compassion and love for each other was so satisfying even though I knew going in this wasn’t going to be a happy-ending type book. Other than the fact that the pacing got way off in the end and the last few chapters ran through a whole book’s worth of plot and emotion, I loved everything about Iron Widow. I also found it amusing that I enjoyed the way the plot riffed on Pacific Rim so much, since I have not actually ever watched Pacific Rim all the way through. But I have read a ton of Pacific-Rim themed fanfic and this reminded me a lot of that in the best way.
Dark Cities Underground by Lisa Goldstein - This book is like The Magicians meets Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. It follows Jerry, a sort of whiny, sad middle aged man as he discovers that as a child, he traveled through a portal into a world of magic he no longer remembers. Jerry and his companions, a journalist named Ruth and her young daughter, Gilly, are okay characters, but the thing that made me love this book was the way the magical world combined subway systems, Egyptian mythology, and the history of portal fantasy, and the way it played with the archetypes of myth and fairy tales.
Dark Apprentice by Val Neil - This book is traditional fantasy (technically it is set in the 1950’s but it might as well be a second-world fantasy), but instead of focusing on big plot elements, it is a very small story about an immortal magician who takes on a dangerous student and the relationship that develops between them. I haven’t read a book that focused so closely on a (non-romantic) relationship in a while and I really enjoyed that aspect. Medea, the magician, is autistic, as well as just really old and culturally out-of-touch with the world, and Nikolai, the student, has anti-social personality disorder (he’s a psychopath.) The book delves into the unique ways they each think and the incredible misunderstandings that come from that in ways that sometimes cause tension and are at other times extremely funny, in a black humor sort of way.
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride - This book was a Christmas present from my sister, so it was another case of not picking from my tbr. It’s a mystery, technically, but the mystery ends up not being the point; it’s really a story about a community, a mix of Black and Jewish families in 1930’s Pennsylvania, and the ways their lives overlap and their stories twine together. The author has a gift for character and unique voices and for portraying a community as a character in its own right.
The Adventure of the Incognito Countess by Cynthia Ward - I got this story as a free ebook a long time ago but I was waiting to read it until I’d finally read Carmilla. It’s one of those stories that mashes together all the conveniently public domain characters of 19th and early 20th century literature - Dracula, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, etc. The story is about Lucy Harker, Dracula’s daughter, who is working as a British secret agent on board the Titanic when she gets distracted from her job by her attraction to Clarimal Stein, aka Carmilla. I was glad I had waited to read Carmilla first because, rare for this type of story, she felt exactly like the character from her own novel transported into this one. The relationship between her and Lucy unfolded nicely, Lucy was an interesting character, and in this world the Titanic was powered by Martian technology, so that was fun.
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