Books Read, November 2010
Dec. 8th, 2010 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ashnistrikeLast week I had a letter-writer for a fellowship application gone AWOL, and mysterious itchy hives all over my neck and ears. This week I have a completed application and prednisone. In spite of two large piles of papers and a stack of final exams to grade, life is very good.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. Henrietta Lacks was a poor African-American woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Her cancer cells were taken without her knowledge and turned into the first immortal line of human cells for research. The polio vaccine, along with more or less every useful cancer treatment, was developed using those cells. This book is about the author, a white biologist, working with the Lacks family to track down her story and the story of her cells. It gets into issues of racism, social justice, and research ethics--including a lot of background on some studies that get glossed over every year in my human subjects training. It's awesome and you should read it.
Betrayed and Chosen, by P.C. and Kristin Cast. The Skloot book is also pretty heavy reading, so after that I went back to the silly vampire books. They do get progressively less silly--there are still distinct Mary Sue tendencies, but they are toned down and people start acting in ways that don't match the protagonist's expectations. In particular, the just-there-to-be-obnoxious bad girl has developed a personality and a conscience that were not apparent in Book 1. So that's all good.
In Ashes Lie, by Marie Brennan. Sequel to Midnight Never Come, and just as good--maybe better. The first book falls into the Elizabethan Faerie Queen sub-subgenre and has a sweet romance between the Faerie Queen and a mortal. This book is about the trouble and politics resulting from the solutions in the first book, which is one of my favorite sequel plots. (See "why I liked the last season of Babylon 5.") The mortal has died, but due to the promises she's made to him she needs to continue to have new, non-romantic mortal consorts. We see two generations of them, and it's nifty to see how she has a different relationship with each, and how each reacts differently to their time among the Fae. There are wars and negotiations with the other British faerie royals, who have their power due to her but don't necessarily like her. There are explorations of what sovereignty means, and POV characters who believe passionately in the divine right of kings. Recommended.
NOT Embers, by Laura Bickle. I was sort of annoyed with the main character, and sort of annoyed with her obnoxious fire elemental familiar. (I took some notes on how not to handle a character who magically interferes with electronics, because I'm writing one.) Then I was annoyed that the author tried to make White the unmarked state while setting a book in Detroit, and that the main character and the love interest just happened to be white. Then the love interest boasted about developing the facial recognition system for Homeland Security--the one that doesn't work, you may remember but the author doesn't--and this is presented as a sign of his intelligence and romantically dangerous nature, and I threw the book against the wall.
Other media Consumed:
Farscape (Season 2, episodes 18-22). Once again, this gets good at the end of the season. I did spend half of the final episode discussing its neurobiological credibility, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Criminal Minds (Season 5, episodes 5-12). Oh, I did miss this show. You can see some directorial interference here, mostly in the increasingly unsubtle crime scene shots, but the character development and ability to hold a theme together are still brilliant.
Windycon concerts: S. J. Tucker, Alexander James Adams, Alexander James Adams doing bits from Insh'Allah with Steve Barnes, Tricky Pixie, and the secret Tom Smith concert that was billed as the Masquerade. All very good. I've been wanting to hear Alexander Adams for a while and was delighted to find that he has an excellent voice and that his fiddle playing has gotten absolutely amazing.
Unseelie Self (Alexander James Adams). A bunch of Heather Alexander's darker older songs, now redone by Adams, a few new songs, and a few good songs that I never listened to before because they were the only good things on their CDs. Good stuff, although for the sake of not rolling my eyes, I tend to class "Daughters of Angels" as "the unseelie like to make trouble." There's no other reasonable explanation for this particular artist engaging in massive gender essentialism.
Wintertide (Alexander James Adams and Heather Alexander). Have you ever wondered what would happen if the unseelie court heard about door-to-door caroling? Are you wondering now? It's awesome, that's what happens. There's a dark version of "Little Drummer Boy" with a bodrhan background. There are a couple of cool pieces of Christopagan syncretism. There's a line in "Here We Come A Wassailing" that goes "We are neighbor's children who you have seen before," and this is the first version I've heard where my reaction is, "The hell you say."
Total Books: 4
Recent Publication: 1/4
Rereads: 0/4
Recommended by Jo ratio: 0/4
New Music: 2 CDs, 5 concerts
New Media Produced: Mostly non-fiction and grading, this month.o
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. Henrietta Lacks was a poor African-American woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Her cancer cells were taken without her knowledge and turned into the first immortal line of human cells for research. The polio vaccine, along with more or less every useful cancer treatment, was developed using those cells. This book is about the author, a white biologist, working with the Lacks family to track down her story and the story of her cells. It gets into issues of racism, social justice, and research ethics--including a lot of background on some studies that get glossed over every year in my human subjects training. It's awesome and you should read it.
Betrayed and Chosen, by P.C. and Kristin Cast. The Skloot book is also pretty heavy reading, so after that I went back to the silly vampire books. They do get progressively less silly--there are still distinct Mary Sue tendencies, but they are toned down and people start acting in ways that don't match the protagonist's expectations. In particular, the just-there-to-be-obnoxious bad girl has developed a personality and a conscience that were not apparent in Book 1. So that's all good.
In Ashes Lie, by Marie Brennan. Sequel to Midnight Never Come, and just as good--maybe better. The first book falls into the Elizabethan Faerie Queen sub-subgenre and has a sweet romance between the Faerie Queen and a mortal. This book is about the trouble and politics resulting from the solutions in the first book, which is one of my favorite sequel plots. (See "why I liked the last season of Babylon 5.") The mortal has died, but due to the promises she's made to him she needs to continue to have new, non-romantic mortal consorts. We see two generations of them, and it's nifty to see how she has a different relationship with each, and how each reacts differently to their time among the Fae. There are wars and negotiations with the other British faerie royals, who have their power due to her but don't necessarily like her. There are explorations of what sovereignty means, and POV characters who believe passionately in the divine right of kings. Recommended.
NOT Embers, by Laura Bickle. I was sort of annoyed with the main character, and sort of annoyed with her obnoxious fire elemental familiar. (I took some notes on how not to handle a character who magically interferes with electronics, because I'm writing one.) Then I was annoyed that the author tried to make White the unmarked state while setting a book in Detroit, and that the main character and the love interest just happened to be white. Then the love interest boasted about developing the facial recognition system for Homeland Security--the one that doesn't work, you may remember but the author doesn't--and this is presented as a sign of his intelligence and romantically dangerous nature, and I threw the book against the wall.
Other media Consumed:
Farscape (Season 2, episodes 18-22). Once again, this gets good at the end of the season. I did spend half of the final episode discussing its neurobiological credibility, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Criminal Minds (Season 5, episodes 5-12). Oh, I did miss this show. You can see some directorial interference here, mostly in the increasingly unsubtle crime scene shots, but the character development and ability to hold a theme together are still brilliant.
Windycon concerts: S. J. Tucker, Alexander James Adams, Alexander James Adams doing bits from Insh'Allah with Steve Barnes, Tricky Pixie, and the secret Tom Smith concert that was billed as the Masquerade. All very good. I've been wanting to hear Alexander Adams for a while and was delighted to find that he has an excellent voice and that his fiddle playing has gotten absolutely amazing.
Unseelie Self (Alexander James Adams). A bunch of Heather Alexander's darker older songs, now redone by Adams, a few new songs, and a few good songs that I never listened to before because they were the only good things on their CDs. Good stuff, although for the sake of not rolling my eyes, I tend to class "Daughters of Angels" as "the unseelie like to make trouble." There's no other reasonable explanation for this particular artist engaging in massive gender essentialism.
Wintertide (Alexander James Adams and Heather Alexander). Have you ever wondered what would happen if the unseelie court heard about door-to-door caroling? Are you wondering now? It's awesome, that's what happens. There's a dark version of "Little Drummer Boy" with a bodrhan background. There are a couple of cool pieces of Christopagan syncretism. There's a line in "Here We Come A Wassailing" that goes "We are neighbor's children who you have seen before," and this is the first version I've heard where my reaction is, "The hell you say."
Total Books: 4
Recent Publication: 1/4
Rereads: 0/4
Recommended by Jo ratio: 0/4
New Music: 2 CDs, 5 concerts
New Media Produced: Mostly non-fiction and grading, this month.o
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Date: 2010-12-09 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-09 03:54 pm (UTC)