"Carbon, Betteredge! mere carbon, my good friend, after all!"

[oloriel]

Well, the first twelfth of the year is over, and perhaps this year I'll actually manage to keep up the Reading List. Here, at any rate, is this month's reading, with my unqualified and subjective commentary.



January Reading
In order of reading; certainly not in order of quality.
Bolded are books I read for the first time.

Stephenie Meyers, Twilight
"Go and read books outside your normal reading horizon," they told us in Creative Writing class. "That'll broaden your scope. Even if it's not the kind of writing you want to do, it helps you – after all it'll give you a better idea of what you don't want to do. It'll tell you what works for you and what doesn't. All of that helps you to find your own voice."
It was partly this advice that made me read Twilight, and partly morbid curiosity. After all, I was hearing everywhere how unbelievably bad it was (and, from a few shocking corners, that it wasn't That Bad After All). I just had to see for myself.
Now I have to admit that the entire thing was unfair to begin with. I don't care for vampires at the best of times. I hated The Little Vampire as a kid, and I may be the only girl on the planet who counts Interview with the Vampire among the most tedious films she ever had to sit through, Brad Pitt or no. The only stories with vampires in them that I managed to enjoy were Blade and Underworld in the movie department, and Sergej Lukianenko's Watch series and works by Terry Pratchett – all of which have a decidedly unromantic (and occasionally trashy) view of vampires. Twilight - that I knew before reading – had romanticised vampires that shadowed even Anne Rice's masturbatory fantasies.
And --- it was not that bad after all.
Sure, the writing style is not overly impressive. Sure, the characters hardly deserve that name. Sure, there are paragraphs, even entire chapters, that could've used serious pruning. Sure, there were words that were repeated so often I cannot read them anywhere anymore without twitching ("chuckle", "dazzle"). But on the whole, it could have been worse. There was clearly a spark of potential in it. Had someone taken the time to improve the style, to flesh out the characters, and to properly edit the novel, it would be quite an enjoyable read. Nothing to make the world a better place, nothing that would lack if it hadn't been written, but harmless fluffy entertainment. Even so, it's mostly harmless. Like Malory Towers with sparkly vampires. Too annoying to be an enjoyable read, but I got through it without sobbing more than twice or anything. At least now I've read it. And, as our Creative Writing prof so nicely put it, I do indeed know what I don't want to do.
Read the sequels, for example.

Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson, The Folklore of Discworld
My brother got me this book for Christmas, which shows yet again that he knows me far better than, say, my parents do. It's a lovely mixture of Discworld and real-world folkloric information, half fictional, half factual, full of humour and snark.
Did you, for example, know that in the original real-world mythology, you could detain a vampire by throwing sand, poppyseed or some other small, multitudinous things at it, because vampires apparently are anal-retentive and will stop to pick up and count every single grain of sand? Did you know that, in the original real-world mythology, you can release a zombie from zombie-hood by giving it something salty to eat or drink? (This obviously doesn't work with pop-culture zombies, who eat salty bodily fluids without effect). Did you know about the many different wassailing traditions of England, or how many variants there are of the Magpie rhyme ("One for sorrow, two for joy...")? If yes, you may still enjoy this book, because finally someone's written about the things everyone should know. If not, you will enjoy it even more.
You may not enjoy the snark if you're deeply into esoterics, though. As in, taking The Successor/Phenomenon/The Next Uri Geller seriously. Then you might end up feeling offended.


Gary Chapman, The Five Love Languages
Speaking of esoterics!
We got this book as a wedding gift, and since there's always the possibility that, you know, the people who give gifts ask you how you liked the book. So I read it. And was annoyed by the preface already because the author talked about how there were different language groups, like French, English, Spanish, German, Chinese, Japanese... and I was all NO. OH NO YOU DIDN'T.
Beyond that it was all right, if you don't mind frequent allusions to the Bible and various not quite succesful attempts at, what do they call it, "inclusive language". Some of the author's observations are in fact interesting or even useful, although on the whole there's a bit too much "Look, look, I found the Philosopher's Stone! No couple will ever divorce again with the help of this book!" for my taste, with many things he's so proud of noticing seeming rather common knowledge to me (that the madly-in-love feeling doesn't last forever, for example, or that a working relationship needs, well, work, or that different people have different ways of expressing or understanding love). I dunno, are there people (above the age of 16) who are surprised by that kind of information?
In conclusion: Not bad except for the language group fuck-up in the preface, but I didn't exactly need a book to tell me those things. Some of the strategies suggested by it are probably helpful, and I may put them to the test, but's that's about it.

Pam Houston, Die Wildnis im Herzen
(original title: A Little More About Me)
One of the last books my godfather gave me. It's a collection of essays by an adventure-addicted American woman. I have read it often enough to no longer know how often I've read it. This book invariably makes me hunger for a journey to some remote or at least reasonably wild place, to go on several weeks' hikes or climb mountains, go white-river rafting or dog-sledding or something similarly exciting. It makes me miss scouting (though we had preciously little adventures there) and our school canoeing trips.
Pam Houston loves what she's doing, and she's great at writing about it and bringing that love across. I am always partly jealous, partly glad of things I didn't and won't have to put up with, and partly just plain delighted to take part in her adventures by reading.

Neil Gaiman, Coraline
I actually hadn't read that one yet. Shocking, I know!
This is a modern fairytale that actually works even if the reader is rather traditionalist (like me :D). I am wondering whether it is actually more terrifying for grown-ups (the author and several of the reviewers seem to think so). It's not like it "frightened me to death" as Lemony Snicket (of all people!) testifies, but I did find it quite scary. It may be less scary for kids, because (or so the stereotype goes) kids know their fairytales, and they know there's a happy ending on the horizon, whereas jaded cynical readers like yours truly no longer unconditionally trust in the rules of fairytales, who know that stories do not always end well and that good doesn't always triumph over evil.
I am going to give this to my cousins. :D

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone
The best comes last!
I wish I could say I'd read this for the same pretentious reason I had for looking at Twilight. I wish I could say that I read this because it's an absolute classic, and pretty much the prototype of the detective novel genre, and as a student of English literature I should've read it long ago.
The truth is that I just couldn't resist laurenia's synopsis of the book. A bloody big shiny diamond? An ancient curse? Family tragedy? Lots of people trying to get their grubby paws on the Shiny? Consider me sold!
The book, to be fair, is awesome. Detective novels are not exactly my genre (ok, ok, I read Arnaldur Indriðason, but I got hooked on him only because of his name), but this one is amazing. With a prototype of the genre you'd expect that by now (150 years later) the plot and characters would have been copied so often that there's little suspense left. You'd expect the clichées of the genre to be especially obvious – they had to originate somewhere after all. You'd expect, on the whole, something that might be interesting for its historical value, but little beyond that.
Instead, you get a book written in captivating style, with a real mystery you can't guess at within the first fifty pages, with a full cast of delightfully whimsical characters, with changing narrators who, although several of them must be really disagreeable as people, nonetheless grow on you (even the religious spinster who keeps thrusting tracts at people). Faithful servants, social outcasts, convenient quicksands, false tracks, love, loss, betrayal, and all the delights and horrors of Victorian society. And, of course, that bloody Diamond that dazzles (hah!) everybody, and those three Indians determined to regain it.
I keep feeling guilty for never managing to like the Sherlock Holmes series. I am very pleased to report that I absolutely love this classic of the genre.

Comments

[gwehnwood.livejournal.com]

The Moonstone rules!:)) I just love it)

[furius.livejournal.com]

When I was eleven, I hid the library copy of Moonstone behind another book. I also hid Kidnapped with the intention of reading them. A continent and many school libraries later, I've never gotten around to either of those books in twelve years.....

It's going on my priority list.