state of the book pile

I was bewailing my lack of reading a while ago, and I think I have remedied it (much to the dismay of my comic book pile). This is what I have read in the past month or so (the only reason I know it's been about a month is that I had to get through the library books first):

lost boy, lost girl, Peter Straub

This was kind of cool, once it got rolling (that's my review of pretty much every Peter Straub book I've read); if you liked The Red Tree, you would like this.

The Safe-Keeper's Secret - Sharon Shinn
The Truth-Teller's Tale - Sharon Shinn
The Dream-Maker's Magic - Sharon Shinn

YA series, and I liked them all. Book 1 has some interesting moral quandries to it--there are people who have to keep secrets, no matter how awful they are, and there are people who have to tell the truth; they can't lie. This is some interesting tension, but a lot of it is background tension. Book 2 doesn't really start going until the boyfriend shows up. Book 3 ... well, there are some damaged people in these books, physically and mentally, and while I think there's an entirely other book that she could have written, that book is not a part of this series. :) I think Book 3 is the strongest, really just because of the stakes she raises in it and the threads she leaves loose at the end.

Atonement - Ian McEwan

Okay, I admit, I read about half of this, got disgusted at every single character in the book, and skipped to the end. I didn't care about the main character's atonement for her (huge-ass) sins. I thought the main guy was kind of an idiot. I thought the main character's sister needed to get over herself, even after she got over herself. Yes, yes, literary and blah blah blah. Pretty rich British people with problems that lead to Big Problems. Oh, and the war. Stephen Sondheim can write the musical.

Firebirds Rising - Sharyn November, ed.

I wasn't sure if I'd read this one already or not, and it turned out I had, so I just re-read some of the stories. There are three stories I love in this book: "In the House of the Seven Librarians" by Ellen Klages, "The House on the Planet" by Tanith Lee, and "I'll Give You My Word" by Dianna Wynne Jones.

The last one is pure Diana Wynne Jones, where the parents are decent but kind of clueless and the world begins to spiral completely out of control and the kids have to figure it out. It reminds me, in its cascading-into-chaos climax, of the library episode of the fourth-season Doctor Who. And I really kind of wish that Diana Wynne Jones would write a Doctor Who episode, with a disreputable kid who saves the day, and maybe the Doctor.

Oh, and the kid with the vocabulary in this story makes me wonder what the Zweeble's going to do with all his big words.

Chill - Elizabeth Bear (which meant going back and re-reading parts of Dust)

I love the backstory of these books a lot, so I tend to read them to hear the backstory and not because I'm all that interested in the front story.

The one thing that always strikes me with these books is the total lack of an incest taboo. I mean, the main characters are all something like 400-500 years old, the family tree is crazily convoluted, so the occasional great-great-uncle/neice thing isn't that shocking, but we're also talking brothers and sisters getting married and having children. But I suppose that when you take away the genetic problems of siblings having children--the Exalt, in these books, have symbionts that heal them quickly and can change their appearance, so I'm assuming that they'd be able to fix whatever genetic issues a kid might have--there's really not that much of a problem. So it makes sense, especially when you want to keep bloodlines "pure" (as the crazy-ass now-dead patriarch wanted to do).

A Drink Before the War - Dennis Lehane

I liked this book--I love all the Kenzie/Gennaro books. You can tell this one's the first, though, yowza. I mean, Lehane's always got Patrick Kenzie going on about social injustice and the ugliness of human nature, but usually it's integrated a lot more smoothly. There were a couple of scenes in this one where you could tell he just needed two people to argue, so he put them in a room together with just the barest string of motivation and let them go at it. Ker-thunk, there's your argument scene, organic or not.

I'm happy Bubba gets fleshed out more in the rest of the series. He's awesome.

Let me tell you, though, these books are dark. The one that has scenes in St. Pete involves murder, suicide, con artists, and premature burial--and it's the funny one.

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Now I'm working on The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin, which I'm enjoying a lot. It has some very familiar fantasy tropes, but she's placed them in a really neat setting and has added some other keen stuff to the mix, so we shall see.

Then I have Speaks the Nightbird by Robert Mccammon, Rebels & Traitors by Lindsey Davis, Quatrain by Sharon Shinn, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith, and a bunch of books my parents loaned me that I may or may not actually read.

Oh, and I bought the first season of Veronica Mars on DVD.

My comics pile is feeling a little resentful.

one quick thing about Atonement

Reading back over what I wrote, I realized something. I don't have to like the main character(s) of a novel--if I like a few, okay, if I like none, that's okay, too--but I do have to respect them, at least a bit. And that was just not happening with that book.