I Don't Want a Bad Romance: Siren's Call

I chose Siren's Call: A Dark Tides Novel by Devyn Quinn from the Q shelf so I can swoop on through the last letters of the Alphabet Challenge, but it was hard to finish.  The romance was annoying in that the main obstacles between the characters were 1) they had no reason to like each other and 2) her ex boyfriend (whom everyone hated) shows up, so the new boyfriend sinks all his money into a partnership with him.

The writing had a bad habit of telling rather than showing, and often telling the opposite of what it was showing.  I shall invent some lines to describe what I mean: "She looked at him uncertainly.  Although she had never been comfortable with men, this one left her hesitant, unsure what she wanted to say or do. She said, 'Take off all your clothes so we can have sex right now.'"

To make matters more annoying, the science fiction aspects had me banging my head against any sturdy surface.  She's a mermaid, he's a rich handyman, and her ex-boyfriend is a treacherous scientist, so they all join together in a archaeological dive looking for traces of mermaid civilization.  She swims down to an ancient temple and accidentally summons the two men to this underwater site.  No one worries how they are going to get the air-breathers out because obviously the most immediate concern is to start excavating what looks like a tomb but is actually a portal to the mermaid dimension.  Sadly, the mermaids in that dimension are mostly mean types who want to take over our world with their super-powered magic ray guns.  The only way to stop them seems to be for our heroine to cross back to the bad dimension, but that would interfere with her new wedding plans so it's not really an option.  The end!  D-.

On the other hand, my twelve year old quite liked it.  He read from the discovery of the portal, because he came to ask why I was beating my head on the side of the car.  He did have to skip the sex parts, but since they are completely divorced from anything happening to the plot or characters, that wasn't hard.  (Oh no, they got thrown in a bare cell.  Time to have sex for several pages before the mermaid can remember some more previously unmentioned powers.)  He gave it a B.

Very quick trip this week, although I'm also going to include last week's haul, since I never got around to mentioning that.  I heroically avoided both the new book shelves and the quick picks, even resisting the tempting offers of the new kidlit books, and only checked out my holds, so many books in, only four books out.

My hold shelf offered up:

• Yu-gi-Oh #9, but it has already gone off with the boys so I won't be reading it.
• Dark and Stormy Knights, urban fantasy short stories about do-gooders
• Why Buffy Matters, by Rhonda Wilcox.  Literary analysis of a tv show
• Feed, Mira Grant.  For an online book club.

Last week I got: 

• Burndive, by Karin Lowachee.  Sequel to Warchild, I expect it to be extremely depressing.
• Crossfire, by Dick & Felix Francis.  I expect it to involve horses.
• Sinful in Satin, by Madeline Hunter.  I expect it to involve sex.
• A Wallflower Christmas, Lisas Kleypas.  Ditto, but with Christmas romance.

Total Books from Library Elf (counting all the kid stuff that I'm legally responsible for even if I hope not to read it): 48. Stuff on my card: 46.  I'm getting very close to my age!  A few more years and I'll be there.

I'll go sign up for Library Loot this week. That's a weekly event hosted in turns by Clare's The Captive Reader (this week's host) and Marg's The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader where bloggers can share their library finds of the week. Some of them make me look restrained.

More Lies My Teacher Told Me: The Wordy Shipmates

I've had Sarah Vowell on my reading list ever since reading Nick Hornby's reading reviews, and the need for a "V" author propelled her up the stack. The Wordy Shipmateslooks at the early years of the Puritan settlements in America, reading the diaries of Winthrop, Williams, and others to see what they thought as well as what they did. Vowell doesn't hesitate to make judgements or call even her favorite players on inconsistency, but she also shows a hearty respect for the people involved.

It's definitely a second order book; it helps to have a good idea of the general sweep of the history, because she tends to focus in on specific events and people. I enjoyed the history lesson with the spoonful of humor to make it tasty.  B+

Peaceful Adventures: Sky Burial

I'm now in the mad rush to finish the A-Z challenge, which I've been ignoring.  So I went to the library and hunted up books for the authors I am missing, which was a fun way to choose my reading.  For X, I had slim pickings, but I'm pleased with my choice: Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet, by Xinran.

All the books I've read that were translated from Chinese give me a sense of distance and calm, which I'm coming to associate with Chinese literature.  I have no idea whether the books read this way in the original, but I hope I'm getting a sense of the real story.  In this case, that effect is heightened by the many stories-within stories -- the frame of the book seems to be Xinran, but I'm not sure of that, and the book itself concerns itself with a woman's life story as told to her, which includes many of the stories of the people she meets.

The cover proclaims the book to be "an epic love story of Tibet" which I misunderstood as a romance between the narrator and her husband, but is really the love between Tibet and its inhabitants.  Shu Wen's husband is lost during the Tibet-Chinese war in the 1950's, but Wen hopes he may not be dead and goes to Tibet to looks for him. She suffers various misadventures in her first year, and is adopted by a wandering family. Thirty years later she continues her search.  In between and during the final search she learns to love the land and its religion, as well as the people she finds.

I know almost nothing of the conflict between China and Tibet, so I was as much in the dark as the rural people who barely know of the existence of China. And the distance of the text lulled me into a gentle read, so that I was a bit astonished to realize thirty years had gone by in the mountains. An interesting and lyrical story that I'm glad I stumbled into.  B+

Slacker Round-Up

Although I've been neglecting my blog so studiously, I've read a few books.  Not that many, since I accidentally rediscovered Spaceward Ho! on my computer.  I'm not sure I'll have time for small things this year, such as celebrating Christmas, what with my renewed obsession and all.  Galaxy conquering takes time, after all.

What have I read this month?  And actually I recommend all of these.

• Pegasus by Robin McKinley.  I enjoyed it, but it is clearly half a book.  Every sentence was tasty, but I did get the feeling that the book was a bit long for the story it told.  
• Wolfsbane (Aralorn), by Patricia Briggs.  Fun fantasy, with strong guy complete with emotional problems, just the way I like 'em.  I did find out that my understanding of the ages of the characters from the previous book was all wrong.
• Things That Are, by Andrew Clements.  Gosh darn it, I thought this was the second in this series, and it's the third.  Oops. 
• Warchild, Karin Lowachee.  Great first person characterization, which was hard because the narrator was a horrifically abused child in the midst of several wars.  Not a typical light-hearted space-opera type war story.  
• What Would Buffy Do: The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide, by Jana Reiss.  Ethical and moral dilemma of our times, as expressed by Buffy and her co-stars.
• Zach's Lie, by Roland Smith.  It's tough to be a seventh grader when your dad is arrested for drug smuggling and his crime-lord bosses want to kidnap you to prevent him from turning on them.  Zach deals with the witness-protection program, but knowing his dad is a crook is hard.  More adventuring than angsty, though.
• Gil's All Fright Diner, by A. Lee Martinez.  Book club for Dirty Sexy Books (which this book doesn't qualify as).  Amusing book about a small town with a lot of demons.
• Touched by an Alien, Gini Koch.   Science fiction romance about aliens working to protect the world, as our heroine discovers.  They are all gorgeous, but only the women are super smart.  Which makes the men a bit insecure.  Frivilous fun with some sex thrown in.

Jumping Jellybeans: Jack of Clubs

Barbara Metzger loves to play with words, making jokes and twists with almost every sentence.  It's fun to read her books, which are mostly historical romances playing in the Regency.  But the setting in Jack of Clubs is so fragile that it's hard to keep the gossamer plot alive.  Even the characters don't seem to believe in their world, so their problems aren't big enough even to giggle at.

It's a fun book at the sentence level, but doesn't work at any scale bigger than that.  C-

Still Reading Along In My Library

Although I've kept it a secret from my blog, I'm still reading along in my library.  I took a brief break in an attempt to get my library count down, but now I've happily relapsed into pretending I'm eligible for all AARP related discounts, based on the rule that you can't check out more items then your age.  Hey, perhaps I was born on Mercury, you know.  Or I count in dog-years.  

I'm on the M-P's in picture books, with some happy choices and some draggers:

• Captain Raptor and the Space Pirates, by Kevin O'Malley and Patrick O'Brien.   Dinosaur pirates in SPPPPAAAACE.  Picture books just don't come much better than this comic-book style adventure tale.
• Do Not Open This Book!, by Michaela Muntean.  We all loved this meta-story about a book not yet read for reading, with words lying messily around and inspiration unhappily gone missing.  Both the fourth grader and the sixth grader guffawed loudly, and then insisted I read it as well.  I particularly liked the warnings to avoid turning particular pages.

• Just In Case, by Yuri Morales.  I picked this book for its timeliness, since we read it in early November, but I hadn't noticed that it was an alphabet book.  None of us really like alphabet books, so we grumped through it.  It was interesting to learn all the letters in the Spanish alphabet, and I amazed the fourth grader by guessing the final twist, but even the colorful illustrations weren't enough to overlook the dreary march through the letters.  It's good at what it does, we just didn't want it to do it.
• We Planted a Tree, Diane Muldrow.  A surprisingly fun book about the benefits of tree planting.  Despite the clear didactic intent, the bright and detailed pictures of families enjoying trees all over the world, from Paris to deserts to New England gladdened our hearts.  Although P smirked at the factoids ("The sunshine went into the leaves.") he agreed that it was a pleasant read.
• Good As Goldie, by Margie Palatini.  We've long enjoyed the companion book about a toddler and her baby book (Goldie is MAD!), but I think I missed this one.  It resonates because the baby is named Nicky, just lie our cousin.  And now we can all look nostalgically at the young toddler thinking she is big, when clearly everyone under six is really an infant.  
• The Moonglow Roll-O-Rama, Dav Pilkey. Lush pictures and charming quatrains reveal the secret lives of animals under the full moon.  Our favorite was the littlest duckling, who didn't see as much of the event as his siblings.  I balked at the pillow under the dog's head at the end -- my suspension of disbelief doesn't go that far.
• Book Fair Day, by Lynn Plourde.  This bait and switch tale follows a small bibliophile tragically stuck at the end of the book fair line.  Although clearly meant as a funny story and without ever allowing a doubt of the happy ending to surface, I admit I found it a bit nightmarish.  I mean, imagine being the LAST class to go to the book fair, and imagine peeking in all day to see all the books selling out, and the evil forces of bureaucracy yanking you away, and...  Perhaps I have issues.  P thought it was funny.