Books Read for December 2009
Jan. 2nd, 2010 02:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ashnistrikeFinished up the year with a surprisingly media-diverse month:
The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Become Pregnant by Dan Savage. This is Savage's first book, and it kind of shows. A little more of the author being a jerk than I'd like, a little less interesting family building stuff. But enough detail on the latter to still be enjoyable.
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan. For the most part, Pollan's attitude is one I already hold: real food is better for your health, your happiness, and the planet than fake food. I enjoyed this for the insight into health and nutrition as sciences, and the better feel for them as dynamic fields with ongoing controversies. I don't feel like I understand a field unless I know what we don't know, and what no one can agree about whether or not we know.
Palimpsest by Catherine Valente. This took me a couple of tries to get into, but is absolutely gorgeous. Cities as characters is one of my serious narrative kinks. And this book takes that trope very literally.
Five Hundred Years After by Steven Brust. Several times in the past I picked up The Phoenix Guards, hoping desperately to enjoy it so that I could read book five, because Sethra Levode is awesome. Several times in the past I bounced off of it. But on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
papersky 's recommendation I pulled it off my swap shelf and tried again. I bounced again. And then tried this, which is Book 2, and fell absolutely in love. It doesn't hurt that there is much Sethra Lavode. And Mario! And Aliera! Also Paarfi being snarky, and cool meta-commentary on the processes of writing and studying history.
Jhereg by Steven Brust. Reread because Jo mentioned that the account of Adron's Disaster in this book conflicts with the one in Five Hundred Years After, and I couldn't remember the details. Boy does it ever. And in the overlap, one gets some idea of what is commonly known about those events, and where Paarfi's biases are.
Other Media Consumed:
Best of Jewish A Capella (Various artists.) I love a capella, and collect as many styles of Jewish music as I can find, so this was kind of made for me. Most of the Hebrew songs are gorgeous. The English songs tends towards the dippy, and the Bohemian Rhapsody parody is astonishingly awful.
Blessings (S.J. Tucker). One of her collections of Pagan songs. Some good stuff, but nothing else quite measures up to "Firebird's Child." I now have about five versions of that song; this is not a complaint.
Were the World Mind (soundtrack). Gorgeous countertenors. More outtakes of people speaking their lines than I tend to prefer, but otherwise excellent.
Leo Rosenbluth Sings Jewish Liturgical Music. Very high church, if you'll excuse the phrase--excellent cantorial baritone and lots of pipe organs. Oddly, this is the first CD I've owned with the sort of music played in my synagogue as a child.
Avatar. Okay, I actually loved this. There's some interesting worldbuilding underneath the What These People Need Is a Honky A-plot, that undermines the whole stupid trope. And I want to see what happens next.
Shadow Unit Season 3, Episode 0 ("On Faith"). Oh, such a nasty tease for the coming season! This is a flashback episode, and a bit of an origin episode as well. I also don't know if it was intentional, but the studied life and coming autopsy of Clemson McCain reminds me a good deal of HM.
Doctor Horrible's Singalong Blog. Just under the wire--we finished watching this at 11:30 on the 31st. Alas, I am not a fan--if I hadn't seen Joss Whedon pull the same damn trick fifty million other times, I might have liked it better. Or not: you know the way a geeky boy in high school thinks of himself, the school bully, and the girl he has a crush on? None of the characters ever go beyond that. And the geeky boy, while sympathetic, isn't right. I kept thinking of Jonathan Coulton's "The Future Soon," and how the song is aware of that difference between what you think of the world when you're young and lonely and have no social skills, and what the world is actually like. Buffy got it; Doctor Horrible is still in high school.
Macbeth (live theatre at U. Michigan Ann Arbor). This was not a good production of Macbeth, I am sorry to say. But even a bad Shakespeare production is interesting for what it tells you about how the play should be done. In this case:
-If the three witches are nuns the rest of the time, the nuns should still be somewhat ominous
-Lady Macbeth's speeches should be understated, not Shouted Dramatically.
-If the whole play takes place in one building... no. I honestly can't think of a good way to make that work.
-Don't replace any word in the original text with "urine." It never helps.
Total Books: 5
Recent Publication: 1/5
Rereads: 1/5
Recommended by Jo ratio: 1/5 (or 2 if you count the Jhereg reread)
New Music: 4 albums
New Media Produced: More in the second Aphra Marsh story.
The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Become Pregnant by Dan Savage. This is Savage's first book, and it kind of shows. A little more of the author being a jerk than I'd like, a little less interesting family building stuff. But enough detail on the latter to still be enjoyable.
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan. For the most part, Pollan's attitude is one I already hold: real food is better for your health, your happiness, and the planet than fake food. I enjoyed this for the insight into health and nutrition as sciences, and the better feel for them as dynamic fields with ongoing controversies. I don't feel like I understand a field unless I know what we don't know, and what no one can agree about whether or not we know.
Palimpsest by Catherine Valente. This took me a couple of tries to get into, but is absolutely gorgeous. Cities as characters is one of my serious narrative kinks. And this book takes that trope very literally.
Five Hundred Years After by Steven Brust. Several times in the past I picked up The Phoenix Guards, hoping desperately to enjoy it so that I could read book five, because Sethra Levode is awesome. Several times in the past I bounced off of it. But on
papersky 's recommendation I pulled it off my swap shelf and tried again. I bounced again. And then tried this, which is Book 2, and fell absolutely in love. It doesn't hurt that there is much Sethra Lavode. And Mario! And Aliera! Also Paarfi being snarky, and cool meta-commentary on the processes of writing and studying history.Jhereg by Steven Brust. Reread because Jo mentioned that the account of Adron's Disaster in this book conflicts with the one in Five Hundred Years After, and I couldn't remember the details. Boy does it ever. And in the overlap, one gets some idea of what is commonly known about those events, and where Paarfi's biases are.
Other Media Consumed:
Best of Jewish A Capella (Various artists.) I love a capella, and collect as many styles of Jewish music as I can find, so this was kind of made for me. Most of the Hebrew songs are gorgeous. The English songs tends towards the dippy, and the Bohemian Rhapsody parody is astonishingly awful.
Blessings (S.J. Tucker). One of her collections of Pagan songs. Some good stuff, but nothing else quite measures up to "Firebird's Child." I now have about five versions of that song; this is not a complaint.
Were the World Mind (soundtrack). Gorgeous countertenors. More outtakes of people speaking their lines than I tend to prefer, but otherwise excellent.
Leo Rosenbluth Sings Jewish Liturgical Music. Very high church, if you'll excuse the phrase--excellent cantorial baritone and lots of pipe organs. Oddly, this is the first CD I've owned with the sort of music played in my synagogue as a child.
Avatar. Okay, I actually loved this. There's some interesting worldbuilding underneath the What These People Need Is a Honky A-plot, that undermines the whole stupid trope. And I want to see what happens next.
Shadow Unit Season 3, Episode 0 ("On Faith"). Oh, such a nasty tease for the coming season! This is a flashback episode, and a bit of an origin episode as well. I also don't know if it was intentional, but the studied life and coming autopsy of Clemson McCain reminds me a good deal of HM.
Doctor Horrible's Singalong Blog. Just under the wire--we finished watching this at 11:30 on the 31st. Alas, I am not a fan--if I hadn't seen Joss Whedon pull the same damn trick fifty million other times, I might have liked it better. Or not: you know the way a geeky boy in high school thinks of himself, the school bully, and the girl he has a crush on? None of the characters ever go beyond that. And the geeky boy, while sympathetic, isn't right. I kept thinking of Jonathan Coulton's "The Future Soon," and how the song is aware of that difference between what you think of the world when you're young and lonely and have no social skills, and what the world is actually like. Buffy got it; Doctor Horrible is still in high school.
Macbeth (live theatre at U. Michigan Ann Arbor). This was not a good production of Macbeth, I am sorry to say. But even a bad Shakespeare production is interesting for what it tells you about how the play should be done. In this case:
-If the three witches are nuns the rest of the time, the nuns should still be somewhat ominous
-Lady Macbeth's speeches should be understated, not Shouted Dramatically.
-If the whole play takes place in one building... no. I honestly can't think of a good way to make that work.
-Don't replace any word in the original text with "urine." It never helps.
Total Books: 5
Recent Publication: 1/5
Rereads: 1/5
Recommended by Jo ratio: 1/5 (or 2 if you count the Jhereg reread)
New Music: 4 albums
New Media Produced: More in the second Aphra Marsh story.
