in-reading notes: palimpsest

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3973532-palimpsest

So far, it's beautiful and confusing and complex and both real and utterly unreal, like a dream and the real world crashing into each other because they're in love.




12-11-10:

This book is distractingly gorgeous. I want to blow through it and absorb it whole, but in certain sections, every page has such beautiful language that I keep having to stop to write it down so I won't forget it, and the lines strung together sound like poetry. It's fantastically absorbing, incredibly involving, and at the same time, impossible to read quickly, so it's probably going to go on hold again until after the next few books that I'm required to read.



None of this is at all a bad thing, I just don't have the schedule for leisurely reading any more-- I've become a book-eating monster who gobbles them up in a few big bites over the course of a few days, and this one just refuses to be taken that way.
 
 
(from my Goodreads pages)

In-reading notes: pegasus

This is what I most like about Robin McKinley books: all these shy, awkward girls get to do wonderful things, and the whole book loves them as they figure out how. There's always a longing in them-- the books and the girls, and they get to go after it with grace and joy and stubbornness.

in-reading notes: black hole sun

The cover says it's like Mad Max, but it's totally not like that. It feels more like Firefly meets the down-fall side of 1984 or something like that-- the cleverness and moral ambiguity of Joss mashed up with the grey and crumbling distopias that are made of corporations and do their best to crush souls. Firefly if they were kids trapped on the Vogon homeworld by way of the Mars from Total Recall.

It's very interesting. My mind is already spinning off ideas for novels and histories and plotlines that could easily cover several books, and that's the sort of story I like best: the kind that sparks inspiration. Who wants a book that's closed and tells you everything? There's no room for your own ideas there.

I think this one will be done first (it's currently a rundown between this and Murder In Vein to see who gets read and reviewed first, but both are due by Sunday and come out on Sept 1).

in-reading notes: wintergirls

This book is harrowing. Not just because it's meant to be and has that built in contradiction between what she's saying and what she's doing (and I really love the strike-out in the text to show the disjunction between what she's thinking and what she's telling herself)-- but also because of how close to home it hits.

I was never intentionally anorexic, but it was ingrained enough that reading this book is hard. It's bringing up old thought patterns and the newer patterns that developed to deal with them-- while she's talking about not eating, all I want to do is eat to prove that I'm not like that anymore. It might be in part because I'm currently trying to lose weight, and the whole calorie-counting and food-choice-making feels a little too like anorexia sometimes, but this book is just too much sometimes.

But it's fiercely good. And frequently very beautiful. Which is part of the problem, I think. If it was relentlessly horrible, it wouldn't affect me so much.

in-reading notes: green rider, 2

I'm having trouble with this book. It's inconsistent, action is vague, and the structure is kind of basic-- short sentences, odd word choices, poor description and an idea that she didn't research how things work very well. I could have edited this into a really wonderful book, and I think that fact is annoying me. That, and I just can't bring myself to leave a book unfinished, and that the story is actually interesting enough that I don't want to leave it.

I just wish it was better. I can see what it wants to be, and it's bothering me that it isn't there.

There are two other books after this one, and I'll have to read them to get the rest of the story, so here's to hoping they aren't as beginner-y.

in-reading notes: perdito street station

I've only read the intro so far, but it's s striking difference from the last book. I finished Dead Until dark and wasn't ready to be done yet, so I started the next book on the pile, which was this one, and it's like night and day. The sentances are better, the words used are better, the descriptions are more complete and clearer and more interesting, the whole feel of the piece is better. And it's a relief. I like my crap fic, but I like good books more, and after two moderately frustrating vampire romances, it's good to have. And it's already lining up with the way City of Bones was, and I don't know if that even makes sense, but sometimes my brain makes it make sense...

in-reading notes: green rider

The cover is classic fantasy-- a girl on a horse in a misty wood, another horse on the back cover following her... The book, so far, is just enough off the norm to make it interesting, but it's certainly not the best book ever. Karrigan is of indeterminant age, and that annoys me a little; sometimes she seems to be in her teens and near adulthood, and sometimes she seems to be kind of too young in her reactions, and nothing has said that she's considered immature, so there's no reason for her to sometimes be flighty or impulsive and other times not. And so far, things are just sort of happening to her while she stands by and lets them. She's opinionated enough in her head, but in action, she's not terribly bold, and that's hopefully something that will change, or this book will get annoying. It's not there yet.

And I don't know what sor tof a time-period it's set in, either. It has a Medieval feel to it, but there's a Victorian-feeling mannor house and bits of Renaissance-ish-ness that sort of all clash and don't feel unified-- I don't know if maybe she's just using the wrong descriptor words and I'm making the wrong associations, or if there really isn't a sensical timeframe, but the magic of the world seems to make sense, and that's something in it's favor. It feels like a first book. I think it is one. I wonder if she's got anything afterward, and if they're more cohesive? This one feels like a pale imitation of things like Ice & Fire and quest narratives and maybe Shadowmarch. It's probably not such a good idea to be so transparent about what you've read... I don't know. It feels... unfocused sometimes, a good idea but not quite the execution I'd like. Maybe I'm being too harsh; we'll see how it ends before I pass judgement.

in-reading notes: dead until dark

I loved True Blood, and I wanted to read the books it was based on, and so far, it seems like the first book is basically the same as the first season, but there's some differences, too: No Tara, for one, which makes some of the scenes where she's picking fights either much calmer or non-existent, and makes Jason less of a character overall, and there's alot less sex because of it. LaFayette is hardly there at all, not even mentioned until almost half way through the book, which means his drug-dealing subplots are gone / never existed. Bill is much darker and stranger and more opaque, and it's harder to tell why he likes Sookie then it is in the show. Terry was in Vietnam, not in Iraq, and is much older, and he and Arlene apparently had a fling once, which isn't in the show. It's not quite a chapter per episode, which sort of makes things seem a little fast when you're thinking of the show, but it makes sense to the pacing of the book and shows just how quickly things do happen-- in the show, it seems like more time passed between the Meeting and Gran's murder, for instance. And there's alot of discriptions that aren't the same at all: Sam look different, Bill looks different, Sheriff Dearborne, Mike the Coroner, everyone is about as different in description as they can be except Sookie-- but the characters are right. Pretty much spot-on. Eric is exactly the same so far, but Pam is supposed to have looked like a milkmaid, and may have been combined with another woman called the bouncer at the bar; in the show, it's the same one.

I'm liking the book, but it's like I've seen it all before because I have-- there's kind of a feeling that things might turn out different in the end because of the changes the show made, and that'd be pretty sweet, a nice payoff for reading the book. The unrelenting southerness gets a little annoying, but as they're largely commenting on that, I can deal. And I am enjoying the read so far.

in-reading notes: city of bones

I've been meaning to read this book for years, since I was an LJ fan of Cassie Claire after discovering the Very Secret Diaries and her wonderful potter-fic (there's a reference in one of the chapters that made me happy that I was a fan beforehand-- see if you can catch it). I don't know why I didn't pick it up before; I think it's just because I never saw it before-- until I was at some backwater WalMart with my brother, and they happened to have a really good (and cheap) specfic YA section, featuring all three of the books. I wish I could have afforded all of them, and I was reasonably sure I'd like them, having read some of her other stuff, but I couldn't get them all and I wanted to save what little money I had just in case I didn't like it inexplicably.

Now I wish I'd been able to get them all, because now I'll have to hunt them all down (probably on Amazon, where they'll cost more, since our walmart has nothing and our B&N leaves much to be desired), because I'm really loving this book.

The characters are all interesting, teenagers in a way that feels honest and real-- and best of all, makes sense. When you're actually a teen, all your reactions seem normal and honest, and when you're older you're all, like, what the crap was I thinking?? But these kids make sense, being kids and a weird world that shouldn't make sense to people so young, and they make do with what they have. I love Clary. I want to name a daughter after her in hopes that she'd be as strong and compassionate and understanding and persistent. All their interractions are interesting to me, and I'm not sure who I want to root for as my shippy little brain looks for an OTP to ship-- which is good, because it means the book isn't predictable. I'm sad I have to go to work later; it means I'll have to stop reading.

in-reading notes: little, big

This is a gorgeous book. It flows and spreads and moves around like a river in my head... and half the time, I have no idea waht's going on. The most ordinary parts of the story are treated like extremely deep mysteries, and the really weird parts-- girls talking to fish and getting answers, mystical happenings that lead to dynasties-- are about as stright-forward as the story gets, but don't make any more sense for thier straightforwardness. I've been reading it in snippets between the chapters of other books. I want to sink into it, to read it until it's done, but after ten or so pages, I feel like I've grown old and senile reading it, like I can't make sense of it anymore, and I'm left with this really fun and nostagic and magical sweetness in my brain, but several chapters in, I still can't tell you what it's about.

I want to love it, but it's frustrating not being able to navigate it. I love it anyway. I just can't read it all at once. I'm hoping it'll make sense at the end, like the way anime does...

in-reading notes: a year of living biblically

This is all about following the rules the Bible lays down, and I knew that going in, but it's strange how many there are-- and it's strange how I feel about it. Sometimes I feel that same sense of bridling and strangling that I felt right before I decided to stop going to church (but that's probably a reaction to the subject matter, rather than the book), and sometimes I feel sharp little stabs of guilt-- usually as he talks about being nicer and taking care of people and giving of himself and his income... and sometimes I feel like I shouldn't have stopped being Christian, or that I should have done more research beforehand, but that's mostly in a regretfully-looking-back-way, and that weirds me out the most. I've never regretted my decision before, and I don't think I really regret it now, and it's a testament to the openness of his writing that he can get me to feel that way.

I like the way it's arranged, though, like a diary, but with more forethought and more information. I think I'll aim for something like that when I write up my chapters for A Year Of Eating Adventurously. Or A Year of Eating Seasonally. Or whatever I decide to call it.