A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness Could we just call this what it is? Twilight for women with Ph.D.’s. I hate to give this a bad review because it’s my wife’s favorite book, but I have to tell it like it is. A coat of sophistication and aristocracy doesn’t change when the female lead acts like a weak little moron. Granted, there’s no stupid stuff like ochre eyes or tween wool-gathering or sparkles. But the characters do the same things as their red-eyed counterparts. Despite the fact that the female is a witch, she does nothing to save herself. She has no control over her powers and no desire…
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The Books I Read: July – August 2016
Far Far Away by Tom McNeal Fans of Neil Gaiman will love this book. The closest I can call it is a modern fairy tale, but that word gets thrown around so much it’s become meaningless. I’ve never used it until now (I think). It felt like a combination of Stardust and Holes. Jacob Grimm has become a ghost and, after traveling the ethereal plane, attaches to the only boy who can hear him. A lonely boy struggling with a single Dad with a failing business. The thing keeping this good book from being a great book is that nothing happens until about 66% through. The first fifteen percent, the…
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The Books I Read: November – December 2015
My Little Brony by K.M. Hayes I found this book at the library and only grabbed it on a whim. I used to be into My Little Pony:FiM (until Lauren Faust left, but that’s another entry). I didn’t expect much of it. The idea reeked of self-publication and the fan art cover didn’t help. I was expecting sappy, amateur Dawson’s Creek drama with a cheap gimmick to draw in readers. But it turned out to be a great little novel. The teens speak realistically. They have plausible problems, not bulimia/my gay mother/sexually confused/vegetarian/alcoholism/pregnancy scare stuff you see in other teen drama books. Adults play a part — they’re not absent…
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The Books I Read: July – August 2015
The Complete Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson Every Calvin and Hobbes strip, beginning to end. It’s the likability of Peanuts with the humor of Dennis the Menace. I’ll never know how Bill Watterson came up with so many unique strips using only four characters — one of which is imaginary (or is he?). Peanuts added and dropped new faces all the time and Dennis the Menace was only one panel. When I was younger, I got my fix of C & H collections in the library, but reading them in chronological order, you can see the scatters and misfires in the beginning, the peaks in the middle, and the…
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The Books I Read: May – June 2015
Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul by various authors If you haven’t noticed, I could use a little pick-me-up for my writing these days. Or maybe a Phoenix Down or Philosopher’s Stone. We all need some motivation some times. I was hoping that this book could add a little gumption to my typing fingers. But the articles just don’t give much to inspire. In fact, a lot of them did the opposite. They told me just how much more others achieved with so little to start with. The “genius” authors as I call them — the ones whose success and talent cannot be duplicated or learned. It just comes naturally…
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The Books I Read: March – April 2015
The Maze Runner by James Dashner The book succeeds at being entertaining, but not at being satisfying. It’s a “this is the way we’ve always done it” story. You know those? Some new guy comes into a group or society that lives in a closed circle. He throws a spanner in the works, breaks all the rules. The leaders try to punish him and his friends pressure him to stop, but he becomes the hero anyway. Like if White Man’s Burden was a novel. Sword of Truth did it. And it’s a plot that I’m not thrilled with. Too heavy-handed with the Jesus-savior-chosen one having to save everyone from the…
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The Books I Read: January 2015 – February 2015
Joss Whedon: The Biography by Amy Pascale I’d been looking for a book about Joss Whedon since December. There had been a few biographies, but then I saw this one was about to come out. It looked the most official — even having a foreword by Nathan Fillion — so I waited. It becomes little more than an IMDB page after a while. I don’t read many biographies, so maybe this is what they’re like. I wanted to know more about his family life or his writing life, I didn’t need to know what happened with Firefly or The Avengers. I already follow the guy. I already knew that. Except…
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The Books I Read: May – June 2014
vN by Madeline Ashby In the first chapter, a five-year-old child robot eats her estranged grandmother, python-style, and goes from kindergartner to adult in an instant from the additional biomass. Good opening, and there are some interesting WTF circumstances (like robots were created to fill out the Earth after the rapture) but the rest stagnates. Once again, it’s a book where the robots don’t act like robots. They act like people. The only difference is they know they were artificially created. But other than that, they eat, they fall in love, they procreate. You can’t tell the difference. The interesting things are just background — they don’t come into play…
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The Books I Read: March – April 2014
Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction by Jeff VanDerMeer It took me a looooong time to read this. It’s built like a textbook, but I don’t think I’d ever see this is in a classroom. The illustrations are pretty, but all the same style, and a lot of them aren’t relevant. I was hoping for more charts, but there’s more “weird art” (which makes some sense, since the author’s wife was the editor for Weird Tales). It’s definitely comprehensive. Does it say anything new? Here and there. The exercises in the back look smart, but complex. The best part of the book are the essays from other writers…
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The Books I Read: January – February 2014
Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer by Jeff VanderMeer This was a fantastic resource for someone like me whose almost in the game but not quite. It’s one of the only books I’ve read that has more to do with the promotion/publishing game than what adverbs to choose. It provides much needed guidance on how to promote, how to plan for your future, how to have an effective public marketing appearance. This book tells you how to do that. The second half talks about how best to set up habits, mental health, and so on. But not so much about the nitty-gritty writing advice, which was just…