Friday, September 13, 2013

Review: The Companions


The Companions
The Companions by R.A. Salvatore

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I received a copy of this title for review from Netgalley.

This is the first book by R.A. Salvatore that I've ever read, and I can understand this popularity better now. My husband has long been a fan of his, but I've found Salvatore intimidating because there are simply so many titles in his series. Thankfully, The Companions was a good entry point into the series.

As the novel opens, several characters meet again for the first time. They have all apparently died at one time or another, and they are in what seems to be a resting place before their final destination. They are offered a choice: they can go to the reward promised to them by their god, or they can choose to be reborn. Their friend Drizzt needs them, and if they choose rebirth, they will be able to be there for him.

The four friends--the Companions of the Hall--debate whether they want to return to life or seek out that final reward. What will it mean to turn their backs on the reward? What will their new lives be like?

Without getting too spoilery, I can't share much more detail. The novel follows the new lives these characters lead. They are reborn as infants, but with full memory and personality. While they may still see themselves as their past lives, their new lives and relationships will shape this new incarnation of themselves. How much can they hold onto the past? How can they live this new life, knowing that they're simply waiting to resume the old life that had died long ago?

Parts of this book did confuse me. The novel was quite clear about when the events were occurring; Salvatore provided both year names and numbers. However, since I'm unfamiliar with the Forgotten Realms calendar, neither of them mean much to me. I'm certain that I missed allusions to places and events that would have been quite meaningful for a fan of the series.

Salvatore's writing did irritate me a little. He's overly fond of exclamation marks, but I did adapt to that eventually.

Overall, I liked this book and found it to be a surprisingly deep and entertaining story.



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Sunday, September 08, 2013

Review: All These Things I've Done


All These Things I've Done
All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was an enjoyable book, but I hesitate to say much more than that about it. While it was a fun read, I found it a little too uneven for my taste. The writing style is relatively easy to read, which would indicate a younger audience, but the content (mafioso style executions, lust) was perhaps a bit much for that audience. Further, I wasn't certain I could buy into the concept of the story.

Anya lives in a future New York--about 60 years into the future. Her grandmother would have been one of today's teens. She, her older brother, her little sister, and her dying grandmother live together in an old penthouse. Anya's father was a leader of a crime family that dealt in illegal chocolate, and he was murdered by unknown persons. Her mother was also killed in a hit--a hit which damaged Anya's older brother, Leo, leaving him mentally unable to achieve adulthood. The city is unstable, and so is Anya's family. While she wants nothing to do with the business, she gradually finds herself caught by the mere connection of sharing a name.

The New York City of this novel is driven by scarcity. Water has been drying up, to the point where many lakes are dry, and it is expensive. Paper is taxed, although there seems to be enough to print all sorts of vouchers needed to buy luxury items like ice cream. Alcohol consumption is legal for all ages, but chocolate is banned. Dealing in chocolate is a serious crime. Speakeasies serve coffee at all hours.

The problem of this book lies in its concept. For a futuristic society like this to work well, there needs to be a reason for the unreasonable. The ban on chocolate is both bizarre and unexplained. Anya explains that chocolate is addictive, but that's not a good reason to ban it. The idea that the government would suddenly ban chocolate, and that otherwise ordinary confectioners would become gangsters as a result, simply doesn't work well. Zevin's picture of high school classrooms doesn't function well, either. While I would agree that it's a mistake to measure the high school of this book against ours today, I had a very difficult time suspending my disbelief in order to accept that it was common for a school to offer three years of Forensic Science classes.

While I did like the book, and I might look into borrowing the sequel, I did not like this book well enough to wholeheartedly recommend it to others.



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Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Say Nice Things About Detroit: A Meditation

"No one moves back to Hiroshima."*
On my way to and from my classes this last week, I've listened to Scott Lasser's book, Say Nice Things About Detroit.  It often irritated me more than most of the books I've read in years. 

Let's get one thing straight: I love Detroit.  Admittedly, I don't live in the city, so I haven't had to deal with the same problems the residents of the city have had to confront.  However, I've worked here for ten years.  At any time after those first four years or so, I could have easily taken a job elsewhere.  But I haven't.  Part of the reason for that is the fact that I love Detroit.  It's an amazing city.  When I first arrived in the city in 2002, it was in the middle of an "up swing," and the city was filled with hope.  The years when Dennis Archer was mayor had been good years, and Kwame Kilpatrick had only just taken office.  He was a charismatic leader, and it really seemed possible that Detroit was turning around.  Seemed is the operative word there.  What I didn't know at the time was that Detroit feeds on those cycles of hope.  Every few years, things will look better here, but then they'll go downhill again.  If not for the cycles of hope, the city would have collapsed long ago.  Some might think that it's collapsed now.  The bankruptcy is all over the news (both nationally and internationally--my friend in Vienna learned about it on her local news).  Some are trying to say that the bankruptcy is the ultimate proof that Detroit has fallen for good.  Others are trying to spin it that this is what will restore the city.  For me, I just see it as another stage in the cycle.  This is a dark stage, yes, but I think the riots may have been darker.  Why do I love this city if I can say such things about it?  Well, simply, I love the fact that, no matter how bad things are, Detroit doesn't give up.  That cycle of hope is addictive, and I find myself always thinking that Detroit can still have a prosperous future.  It won't look like the prosperity of the past, but that's probably a good thing.

How does all this relate to that passage from the book?  Well, that passage offended me.  It's from the point of view of David, one the main characters of the novel.  He's a 45-year-old lawyer, and his father has invited him to move back to Detroit.  His first response is think that there's nothing in the city for him or for anyone else.  For him, the destruction of Detroit is similar to that of Hiroshima, the first city destroyed by a nuclear bomb.  After the bomb struck Hiroshima, thousands of people continued to die due to the radiation given off by the buildings themselves.  The city was toxic and damaged those that tried to live in it.  Except that's not the end of the story.  The city rebuilt itself.  There's a park dedicated to peace in the city near the site of Ground Zero.  It's now a vibrant city, rebuilt from the rubble of the bomb.

While looking at the comparison that way makes Detroit seem better--as if it, too, can recover like Hiroshima has--I still don't like the metaphor.  Detroit is not broken, for one thing.  It's struggling, yes.  It's dangerous, yes.  But even though much of it has been abandoned, it is not broken.  The damage to Hiroshima was sudden and stunning.  The damage to Detroit has been creeping and slow, with a sudden boost of speed during and after the riots.  If it had been fast, we might have been able to "fix" it already.

Eventually, David does decide to return to Detroit.  He falls in love with the city again, and readers are supposed to think that hope has returned to the city with him (after all, he now has a baby son and an American car).  What Lasser might not realize is that his hero was just another part of that same old cycle.  Hope, followed by despair.  Followed by hope . . .

*I listened to this an audiobook, so I don't have a page or chapter information for the quotation.

Lasser, Scott.  Say Nice Things About Detroit: A Novel.  Narr. Kevin Kenerly. Blackstone Audio, 2012.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

New Beginnings

As the semester resumes tomorrow, I've decided to use this blog as a part of my class.

Students in two of my classes have been assigned "commonplace reading blogs."  These blogs will work much like the commonplace books of the colonial period in America.  In those historic documents, readers would write down various thoughts and proverbs they found important in their reading.  As this is a writing assignment, I am asking my students to write down a quotation that they find compelling.  They will also then take that a step further by writing their thoughts on that quotation.  This is not a response to the quote so much as a meditation upon it.

Whenever possible, I will also complete a commonplace blog entry and post it here.  I will also continue to post any book reviews that I feel have merit enough to display beyond goodreads.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Review: A Spear of Summer Grass


A Spear of Summer Grass
A Spear of Summer Grass by Deanna Raybourn

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is an extremely difficult book to review. I'll try to make this review as spoiler-free as possible. Most of the details I need to engage with are at the level of setting rather than plot, so that should not be to much of a problem with plot spoilers.

It tries to find a position for itself among very troubling imperialist (and racist) fiction set in colonial Kenya without triggering so many of the elements that make those books unsettling for a modern audience. I'm not certain that it always succeeds.

I am not an expert on Kenyan (or African) fiction by any means. I have taken classes on African fiction, and the professor that taught those classes was a Fulbright scholar that taught in Kenya. With that history, I started reading this book aware of the complicated position in which it is situated.

Delilah Drummond, our heroine, is a scion of two wealthy families--Louisiana planters and British gentry. Her mother is scandalous, having been married and divorced several times. Edith Wharton's fiction was written at the same time in which this novel is set, and Wharton was strongly interested in studying the changing attitudes toward divorce among American and European aristocracy. Delilah's mother, using Wharton's fiction as a guide to history, would then be something of an outlier--freely marrying and divorcing several times before it was even potentially acceptable. Delilah is scandalous as well. She is nearing 30 (if my estimates are correct), and she's been married three times. The last marriage ended in death and scandal, and her family decides that the best thing to do is to send her to Africa until the scandal dies down. In order to convince her to leave France, they threaten her allowance.

Her poorer cousin, Dora (called Dodo) accompanies her as a chaperone--an ineffectual one at that. Once in Kenya, Delilah finds herself among people that she's known for years--other aristocrats that have been outcast by society. There's Kit, the painter with a insatiable sexual appetite. Rex and Helen are a married couple that understand the need to look to someone other than one's spouse at times. Others--Tusker, Jude, Anthony, and Ryder--are new to Delilah. There are missionaries and a few others as well. The society of wealthy white planters in Kenya is limited, so they all know each other well.

The cover copy for the novel is quite clear that is the story of one woman's journey to find something that matters in life--something worthy of personal sacrifice. Delilah does not enter that journey willingly. She is, often, a repulsive character. Like Hemingway's characters, she has been scarred by World War I, and she disguises those scars with alcohol and sex.

The problems with this novel start with the idea of a colonizer finding him/herself in a colony. That sort of story has long been a part of the imperialist project justifying the growth of empire. Isak Dineson's Out of Africa is one such book. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, in his essay "Her Cook, Her Dog: Karen Blixen's Africa," outlines the racist attitudes that laid at the heart of Dineson's characterization of Africans. He states that the Africa of European fiction is especially dangerous due to its embedded racism and the beauty of its presentation which allows the racism to be swallowed unnoticed.

Raybourn, on the other hand, tries to avoid the problem by presenting Delilah as a relatively enlightened woman willing to talk with and work beside Africans. She tries to learn native languages, including Swahili and Maas. The other characters (with the exception of Ryder) have slightly more historically accurate attitudes. Dodo, in particular, seems to embody the opinions of the establishment, as a chaperone should.

The problems in the book get more complicated by the fact that the white settlers are agitating for independence from Britain, just as Rhodesia was able to become independent a few years prior. The opinions of the local tribespeople never enter into the matter. The characters all state the part of the reason that Britain doesn't want to release Kenya is due to the number of Indian shopkeepers that have settled in the colony to do business; therefore, one of the very minor characters is an extremely stereotypical Indian shopkeeper.

Further, Ryder is the male lead for the book. He's a hunter, but he's not a "bad" hunter. He's not a hunter for profit, although he will lead safaris for the wealthy. Instead, he's more of a gameskeeper, worried about sustaining the viability of the African environment. When hunting, he only goes after man-killers and predators that attack livestock. He does not poach or hunt for ivory. He is, in a word, anachronistic. There may have been men like him in Kenya in 1923, but I don't think it's that likely. His respect for predators and the environment is based in modern knowledge about ecosystems, and I just can't see a hunter embracing some of the things he believes.

Raybourn walks a number of fine lines in this book, to use a very old cliche. She wants to embrace the romance of living in a wild colonial environment without embracing the social structures and racism at the heart of imperialism. She wants to present a narrative of personal fulfillment in Africa without glorifying empire. I'm not certain that she succeeds at anything she tries to do in this novel.

This is a well-written novel. Delilah is a complicated, rounded character. Ryder is less well-developed, but he's also not the heart of the book. Delilah is often unpleasant, but she's also fun with it. Her sarcasm is entertaining even as she cuts those nearest to her. The journey she makes--from debauched divorcee to something else--is powerful. As a novel, it functions well, and that's why I've given it four stars.

That said, I'm not sure that there is a place for a novel of this kind, one that embraces and ultimately romanticizes the colonial past so thoroughly. I desperately hope this is not a new frontier in romance, as "captive narratives" set in eighteenth and nineteenth century America were in the 1980s. Raybourn's project in this novel is ambitious, but I'm not willing to say it was successful.

I received a review copy of this book through the Goodreads First Reads giveaway program.



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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Review: Forever


Forever
Forever by Maggie Stiefvater

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Once again, I think Cole and Isabelle saved this book series.

This time, I took an unfortunate week off of listening to this audiobook while I was on Spring Break. Without my Ridiculous Commute (TM) to and from work, I had no reason to listen, so I took a break in the early part of Disk 8. That break wound up being a problem, as it interupted the emotional connection I had with the book. By the time I listened to the last disks last night and this morning, I kept waiting impatiently for Cole and Isabelle to narrate, and I was getting impatient with them, too. After having taken a break from the book, when I went back to it, Cole's voice seemed too sly at times and it didn't sit well with my understanding of his character. Sam and Grace, as always, were just a little to earnest.

A long time ago, I read a short story in [b:Tales of the Witch World Volume 3]. In the headnote to that story, the author explained how she got stuck while writing it. Unable to get the story moving, she resorted to an old writing trick and inserted a character that was just as disgusted with the events as the story as she was. Cole and Isabelle serve that function in the Shiver stories. While Sam and Grace's story is great in the first book, their constancy and devotion gets wearying to read. While I did find Grace's parents despicable, I almost sympathized with them for forbidding Grace to see Sam. They had their own reasons for doing so, but I thought that the fact that he made their daughter boring was perhaps one of them. Cole and Isabelle are the cynical foils to Sam and Grace's sweetness. As a critic once said of Fanny and Edmund in[b:Mansfield Park|45032|Mansfield Park|Jane Austen|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309203298s/45032.jpg|2722329], I'd hate to go a dinner party at their house. Cole and Isabelle, on the other hand, would host great get-togethers.



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Saturday, March 16, 2013

Review: The Wadsworth Guide to Research


The Wadsworth Guide to Research
The Wadsworth Guide to Research by Susan K. Miller-Cochran

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



The approach to teaching students how to research is well-thought out and well-explained. At times, it is painfully simplistic, as students will have encountered thesis statements well before approaching a research project of this complexity. However, it does serve to reinforce what's been taught in other classes, so that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Unfortunately, the section on MLA format is atrocious. They create their own language for the documentation styles (concerned with whether or not an online source is "dynamic" or "stable," for instance). This language then becomes confusing as it does not match the vocabulary used in [b:The MLA Handbook|110592|The Penguin Handbook (MLA Update) (Paperbound)|Lester Faigley|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1171642224s/110592.jpg|1357283]. They fail to explain things like what to do when a source has more than three authors (there is no mention of "et al," and not a single example features its use!).

While I liked parts of the book, especially the assignments, I am not certain that I would reuse it if given a choice.



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Thursday, February 14, 2013

Review: Shiver


Shiver
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



The first time I read this book, I adored it. However, it's been a few years since that first time, and I hadn't reread it in a long time.

When the opportunity came to check out an audio edition of it from my local library, I jumped at the chance. I have a Ridiculous Commute (TM). Two days of the week, I drive three hours. The other two days, I drive two hours. Spending ten hours a week driving cuts into my reading time quite a bit, so I've been turning to audiobooks for the last year in order to give me the fiction fix that I need.

Since this book has been out so long (and I'm fairly certain I wrote a review for the text version), this review is solely of the audiobook.

This was one of the best audiobooks I've ever listened to. There are two narrators--one for Grace, and one for Sam. The Grace narrator has a suitably wistful tone to her voice, especially when she talks about "my wolf" in the first few chapters. The Sam narrator is also excellent. His voice lends a believable credibility to the character, making him seem slightly less emo. Sam's song lyrics are still rather obnoxious, and it would we nice if the narrator had actually sung at least one set of them ("Summer Girl," for example, since Sam the character sings that song in the book). Since I'm not musical, I can't look at lyrics and imagine the sound of them set to music very well.

Overall, the performance of this book was top-notch. If you're only vaguely interested in this book, I'd recommend this audiobook to you. While I can't say that the audio was better than the book itself (so those that hate the book will likely still hate the audio), I can say that the audio minimizes the book's flaws nicely.



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Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Review: Glass Houses


Glass Houses
Glass Houses by Rachel Caine

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I've loved this book ever since the first time I read it. It's been years since my last reread, though, and when I saw that my library had an mp3 copy available for download, I was thrilled. (Not only are mp3 audio difficult to find, but since they're the only kind that my library will lend that works with my iPhone, I couldn't help but be excited.)

After listening to this book over the course of a week, I remembered all over again just why I love the series so much. The narrator was slightly irritating (her Michael voice was Terrible), but I was able to let that go after a while. Overall, I was happy to visit the beginning of Morganville again.



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Monday, January 21, 2013

Review: The Duke Is Mine


The Duke Is Mine
The Duke Is Mine by Eloisa James

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This book as a test case for me, to see if I really did like Eloisa James. The cover did nothing for me, and the cover copy wasn't interesting either. The fact that this was a retelling of "The Princess and the Pea" didn't do anything for me, either. I'd always disliked that story. According to James' afterward, there's apparently a pun in the story that I missed as a child and never considered as an adult. (With the pun, Andersen's story does improve.) Susan Palwick's version of the story, "The Real Princess," asks readers to question what "sinister motives" might lie behind a man's search for a woman so delicate that a pea beneath so many mattresses could bruise her. Once that story was in my head, I was never able to let it go, and I came to hate "The Princess and the Pea." (Palwick's story is collected in Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears.)

You can see I came to this story will all sorts of baggage. I used that baggage to determine if I liked James well enough to trust her with material that did not initially seem appealing. She did a wonderful job with it. James wove the fairy tale in and out of the story expertly, and she did it in such a way that it rarely felt forced. Her language was typically fun and engaging, mixing anachronisms like the phrase "wardrobe malfunction" in with references to contemporary fiction like The Castle of Otranto. Her heroine was expertly drawn. Olivia was in a difficult position, betrothed to a man that she could not love, but her honor forced her to accept her fate. When she has a real chance at love, rather than chasing it down, she tries to make everyone else happy. Her self sacrifice is almost absurd, but she's been trained all of her life to be a representative of the best sort of nobility. While her parents believe that the training has not stuck, they cannot see just how deeply it is ingrained in her.

I've now come to the conclusion that James is awesome. Not all of her books are five stars for me, but I can trust her to create heroines that I care about, to be playful with anachronisms and allusions, to be the sort of romance writer that I wholeheartedly enjoy.



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Tuesday, January 08, 2013

RAD

The university where I work is hosting yet another "Rape Aggression Defense" class. 

I am well and thoroughly sick of this shit.

Earlier tonight, I read a thoughtful blog post from Seanan McGuire where she explained why she will not write a scene where her characters are raped.  (Google the post--it's worth reading.)  I applaud her stance.  I'm sick of the rape that fills urban fantasy novels, as if the only way that a woman can be a strong character is because her body has been violated.  McGuire's post got me thinking about rape again, and the email from my university just made me even angrier.

I'm sick of this shit.

I hate the idea of rape defense classes because they put the burden of preventing rape on the victim.  You know what the leading cause of rape is?  It's not walking alone at night, failing to protect a drink at a party, or wearing a short skirt. 

The leading cause of rape is a rapist.

Instead of classes telling our young woman how to defend themselves, we should be teaching how to not rape.  That sounds silly, doesn't it?  How to not rape.  Part of the problem with hosting a class like this is that it acknowledges that anyone can be a rapist.  Women can be rapists, too, although that's not something that we really talk about too much.  It all depends on the definition of rape.  Just over a year ago, the FBI updated its definition of rape.  Now, the definition reads: “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”  As you can see, anyone can be a rapist--no penis required.  This new definition is not perfect, but it's a start.

Part of the problem with teaching how not to rape is that issue of consent.  The new FBI definition allows the states to establish what consent means as a matter of statute.  From a legal perspective, that's fine.  The problems occur outside of a courtroom, when rape is occurring.

Instead of teaching women how to defend themselves against strangers in the dark, we should be teaching everyone about consent, what it means, and how to respect it.  We should be teaching people to only  have sex with someone that says "YES!" enthusiastically.  Instead of "no means no," we should teach "yes means yes."  When someone is at all hesitant and not saying "YES!" that should be an absolute stop sign.  Not a yield.  Not a "well, let me convince you."  We need to teach people to seek out partners that say "yes."

If you want to play consent games, that's one thing.  However, that's something that you do with a partner after having established that both of you agree to the consent games (which, in and of itself, is a form of consent that can be revoked at any time).

That gets us back to the issue of rape again.  Part of the problem with rape is that it's a crime defined by the victim. Only s/he knows whether or not s/he consented.  Despite what some people want to believe, there are very very few false accusations of rape.  The problem is that a victim can perceive that s/he has been raped but it may not fit the legal definition of rape (bringing us back to that legal issue again) or the evidence may not be enough to convict someone in a court of law.  When the district attorneys choose not to press charges, that does not mean that rape did not occur.  It means that they don't think they could win in court.

Since rape is a victim-defined crime, it is entirely possible for someone to rape another person without realizing it.  That's where this idea of teaching people not to rape comes into play.  It's a way to make all of us--men and women--aware of our partner's (or partners') needs.  It's a way to make certain that everyone engaged in sexual activities is willing to do so and to cut down on regret.  (Regret and rape are not the same thing.  People often try to confuse them in order to lessen the legitimate emotional burden that comes with rape.  But that's another blog post.) 

It's time to stop telling victims that  they could have prevented the rape if only they'd done something differently or fought just a bit harder. 

That shit doesn't work.

It's time to talk to the potential rapists out there.  Which, honestly, can be any one of us.

Saturday, January 05, 2013

Review: The Bandit King


The Bandit King
The Bandit King by Lilith Saintcrow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really liked this book despite having several reservations about it.

As the teaser at the back of [b:The Hedgewitch Queen|11287858|The Hedgewitch Queen (Romances of Arquitaine, #1 )|Lilith Saintcrow|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1319587813s/11287858.jpg|16215244] implied, this novel was entirely from Tristan's point of view. I don't want to get into spoilers, so I can't discuss the plot in any meaningful way.

What I can say is that this novel changed the way I thought about Tristan. After finishing it, I went back and did a quick reread of HQ, and I could see that he does display behavior that provides clues into his thoughts. However, in that book, Vianne is too innocent to read him, and since it's told in a tight first person format, her POV is all that we get. In BK, the situation is reversed, and we're stuck in Tristan's head. While I didn't find it a problem in the first book, this time, I had a a very difficult time with the restriction. It could be because I didn't like Tristan so well as I did Vianne, but I'm not certain. At the very least, I wanted to understand her thoughts.

This novel also forced me to question the nature of love and obsession. That's something that I tend to focus on in any romance, but it was strongly evident here. Just how much does Tristan love anyone? Why does he love Vianne?

I don't think the book really answers those questions, which is part of the reason why I think I like it so much. Despite understanding himself very well, and having few blind-spots when it comes to his understanding of the world, Tristan is not perfect. He is extremely flawed, and not everything is wrapped up in a bow at the end. That's a good thing.



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