renaissance poisson

stephen greenleaf -- book case

a john marshall tanner mystery (he's a san francisco private detective).  a manuscript has been left with the publisher of a small press, which said publisher thinks will be a bestseller, destined to save his bankrupt business.  unfortunately, nobody knows who the author is.  JMT gets hired on to find out, and quickly comes to thinking that the manuscript is a roman à clef, that the events described really happened at a prestigious SF school, and that the author was wrongly accused.  so quickly that he sorta lost me there, but hey.

it was a decent read, with the requisite twistiness to absorb me for a night.  JMT is a wee bit much of a self-congratulatory smug liberal, but i'd probably rather hang out with him than with the literati at the small press publication party with which the book opens -- never having been to one, greenleaf describes it in a manner that makes me never want to go to one either.  :)

lisa appignanesi -- paris requiem

paris, 1899, la belle époque, is the setting for this novel that juggles murder, racial prejudice, dysfunctional families, medical research.  james norton, a boston lawyer comes to paris to convince his ex-pat reporter brother rafael and ailing sister ellie to return home to their mother.  the day he arrives his brother's fiancée olympe, a jewish actress, is found drowned.  was it murder or suicide?  rafael seems obsessed with finding out.  ellie behaves cryptically.  instead of packing up the siblings and returning home, james gets sucked into the maelstrom of paris's seedy underbelly.

sounds promising, no?  the milieu is brought to life well, including the entire style of the book.  alas, it didn't hold together well for me.  i never cared about any of the main characters; worse, i took a dislike to them.  i actively disliked ellie pretty much from the start, a passive-aggressive woman who trades on her illness, rafael remains flat and shallow, hurrying about without communicating what's going on in his mind, and james is a mostly ineffectual goody-two-shoe whom chief inspector durand should have tossed in jail when it became first obvious that he was interfering with the investigation.  we don't really find out enough about olympe for me to care, though what we do find out made me want to know more.  frustrating.  the only character i found really interesting is marguerite de landois, a wealthy comtesse who befriended olympe, and who takes james under her wing.

the great depiction of the milieu might makes this worth reading despite its flaws (and of course not everyone will dislike the characters as i did).  i came out of it adding a couple of non-fiction books on the period, and specifically on the dreyfus affair to my reading list.

still sick. still reading like there's no tomorrow.

the moon's shadow by catherine asaro. so sad, very bad. and i was looking forward to this one, being as it deals with jaibriol III's rule as emperor of the eubian concord. this could have been something, being as he's hiding being a telepath in a society where those are the lowest of the low, slaves. but it's all a waste. i didn't buy him getting away with it for a minute. he stumbles from one crisis to the next, he doesn't adapt whatsoever, and it's completely unrealistic that he's not caught out on the many occasions where he loses it due to telepathic pressure. i am peeved, because this was a great setup that totally tanked due to bad characterization.

booklist says "Asaro's vast, splendid Skolian Empire saga continues to successfully combine space opera, hard science, and romance." say what? space opera, yes. hard science? there is no hard science. oh wait, were they talking about the appendix in which asaro talks about the sizes of the moons? none of that has any bearing on the book. and the romance is of that asinine kind, the "strange attraction at first glance, impossible to resist" kind. *blech*. parts of the book read like it's cobbled together from notes of the other 7 books, and there are still rip marks at the edges where other books continue. no, all the nubile submissive slave girls with silver nipple rings couldn't save this one for me.

one small saving grace is tarquine iqhar, the finance minister who becomes jaibriol's empress, and who at least presents some interesting character choices -- tough, smart, duplicitous, ruthless with just a touch of compassion. i don't buy their romance just like i don't buy jai getting away with conning all of aristo society, but it could have worked. and no, i am not against it because she's 100-something years old and he's 17, though i admit that's stretching things, and i would have needed some extra intellectual interaction between the two to get over it. but not only am i not getting that, there is really nothing here about why those people would fall in love. just that irresistable attraction -- *feh*.

it's good that i don't rate books. this would probably go negative.

skyfall by catherine asaro. ok, so i had this already, otherwise i wouldn't have bought it, because the above mess turned me off permanently; i'm not buying another skolian empire book. the saga started out strong, but has been going downhill steadily. after the previous disaster i am probably viewing this as better than it deserves, but it was something of a relief.

this is the 9th book in the series, but on the timeline it's the first (so far). it fills out some backstory, on how roca and eldrin met. i think asaro has settled pretty firmly in the category of "romance with futuristic elements" instead of "science fiction with romance elements" now. which is a pity, because me, i'm tired of romance tropes. this novel uses a particularly egregious one -- woman gets abducted and falls in love with her kidnapper. of course she can't help it because she's a rhon, and he's a rhon and their pheromones make it nearly impossible to resist (asaro has never thought that one through, or we'd have a lot more incest in these books). nevermind that she was headed towards an assembly meeting to cast her vote for avoiding a war in which millions will die, which she will now miss -- eldrin is just a wonderful guy underneath his audacious behaviour, and so we frolic with the lavender ponies (with crystalline hooves and horns!) in the bubble grass.

i guess i am glad i found out the backstory, but i am really not happy about the execution. there's so much here that i could have done without, and the amazing dysfunction of the ruby dynasty people just boggles my mind -- they act worse than normal people without any telepathic powers. one might think they could act a little better, what with those amazing mindmelds and all.

so skyfall is better than the moon's shadow, but i don't think i'd be recommending it to anyone.

one thing that stands out about both is the prose, the purple prose! the attention to the amazing physique, the cascading hip-length hair, shimmering black with diamond glitter, or burgundy-wine with golden metallic highlights (actual metal, but oh-so-soft to the touch)! the golden skin! the striking green eyes! or red ones (colour-coordinated with the shimmering black hair, dont'cha know). or lavender. nobody who's anybody in these books has ordinary eyes or hair. i was laughing my ass off at imagining her and laurell k. hamilton co-writing something. it'd have to come wrapped in long, silken locks.

because these two books were so *bleh*, i decided to reward myself with spin, being as robert charles wilson is one of my "pick up on sight" authors. OMG -- wonderful. but review later; headache wants me to go back to bed.

so i've run into a problem with this heat -- since i read a lot more when it's hot because then i don't notice how hot it is, i've run out of lightweight material to inhale. i've run out so badly that i started rereading harry potter, much to the dismay of the *poing* (though part of why i started rereading it is that the recent wank has reminded me that there are two more books out that i haven't read yet). it actually holds up well to rereading -- yeah, the same stuff that bugged me the first time around is still there, but the stuff i liked hasn't suffered from being "discovered" twice.

anyway, today i went to replenish the stack. ( look here if you care )

scholars pursue the fragility of contentment. i went mostly "well, duh" at everything pulled from the first two books in this essay, but want to eventually get ahold of them anyway, and the last one might be interesting because, hey, history of any specific philosophical thought is kinda interesting to me.

Jonathan Haidt, “The Happiness Hypothesis”
Richard Layard, “Happiness: Lessons from a New Science”
Darrin McMahon, “Happiness: A History”

via ozarque.

yes, the juxtaposition of the subject with my mood is mildly amusing. :)

i've mostly been busy reading 2-3 months worth of back posts in alt.poly to catch up with the group a little.

there's the latest book haul:

andrei alexandrescu	modern c++ design: generic programming and design patterns applied (nf)
iain m. banks	the algebraist (sff)
erich gamma	design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software (nf)
john mace	beginner's arabic script (language)
elizabeth olver	the art of jewelry design (nf)
rachel pollack	temporary agency (sff)
philip pullman	the ruby in the smoke (sff)
philip pullman	the tin princess (sff)
shizuru seino	girl got game (manga)
shuri shiozu	eerie queerie! (manga)
edward r. tufte	envisioning informationi (nf)

marvelous and useful toy which enables one to find new writers one might like. i plugged in dorothy dunnett and it came up with some names i don't even recognise. exciting!

via matociquala.

i'm almost at 1000 books catalogued in librarything. i gotta say, this is the fastest i've ever gotten myself to enter books into a library program; it really makes it easier than any database i've used previously.

( but i have help! )

i have a worsening cough, but with none of the accompanying symptoms of a cold or anything similar. no fever either. just this crap sitting in my bronchial tubes. weird. maybe jill gave me something exotic!

went into the garden to harvest some horehound (evil-tasting, must be good for me), hyssop, fennel, and lemon thyme and gonna make an oxymel (honey and cider vinegar boiled into a syrup to cover up nasty-tasting herbs). i don't really feel like going to bed again, but the cough has given me a headache, so it's probably best.

books in progress

steve saylor, a mist of prophecies

books finished

ghod, so many since i last wrote about what i was reading. basically the entire lymond and niccolò series by dorothy dunnett; the latter first, except for the very last book, which i read after lymond. it had a major twist at the end, which i didn't see coming until fairly late. wow. (i am writing this mostly to tease the paramour.) then, because i didn't want to stop the dunnett streak, i read moroccan traffic which inspired me to get ahold of all her other mysteries -- it's not as complex as the two large series, but it is written from a very interesting viewpoint, and got enough complexity to allow me to slowly wean myself. which is probably best, since she's dead. :/

ha. actually accomplished some things. like depositing the latest checque that arrived from one of our clients (wow, the exchange rate is really not going in our favour right now). also dropped the zip.ca movies into the box; let's see how long it'll take this time. i think i'll keep notes on that after last time's 2 week delay between them email me that they had sent one, and it arriving here).

then we went bookstore browsing. had lunch at lila's bakery (good soup, uninspired crab cake (not, as previously mispelled "crap cake"; it wasn't that bad), to-die-for crème brulée and raspberry cream cheese muffin), and more bookstore browsing. they tore down an entire block on commercial street, which appears to have lost us two bookstores, *grump*. that's the site for the new nanaimo centre, which is supposed to "revitalise downtown". with a skyscrapy hotel and conference centre? uh huh. we'll see. i am not particularly invested in this town; i had forgotten all about them doing this.

and last but not least, picked up my latest powells order from the drugstore.

( the haul is just a click away )

and now onto watering the plants, and the day is done.

i should not be looking at food porn just before going to bed.

---

books in progress:

ralph mcinerny, the book of kills -- ha ha ha. pun in the title, how original for a mystery! :)

mandy aftel, essence and alchemy: a natural history of perfume -- i was right about the woowoo.

finished:

david m. pierce, angels in heaven -- ok, so this wasn't bad. a bit dated (late 80's; the narrator, a private eye, is proudly using an apple II and gets all excited about his first dot-matrix printer), but i don't generally mind. a wee bit heavy on the hard-boiled smartass commentary, but i liked the oddball characters and the banter between them. and -- the paramour should take note -- there's no killing in this mystery, though there's a wee bit of IMO gratuitous shooting, but hey, this is LA. the central case isn't a murder, but the narrator's childhood friend being imprisoned in a mexican jail for running contraband, and the inspired attempt to rescue him. also, that case, while central and providing for much of the plot, isn't consuming every worthwhile minute of the detecting; there's other stuff going on. the ending to the central case is almost ant-climactic which disconcerted me a bit at the time -- but that, and the assorted bits and pieces of the narrator's life also make the book feel real to me despite mucho oddball aspects. i think i might try and find other books by mr pierce.