Overdue book post

[ellarien]

This is a worryingly short list, but I've had other things, mostly China, on my mind for most of the time since we got back from New Mexico, which was not exactly a marathon reading experience itself. Some of these were travel reading; some were things I left unfinished before I left for Beijing and picked up on my return. And I've probably forgotten something ...

Steven Brust, Agyar

The interesting thing about this is that though it's a vampire story, told from the point-of-view of the vampire, the word 'vampire' is never mentioned; it's a clever bit of indirection and unreliable narration. I didn't particularly care for the protagonist; he may be relatively civilized, but he does some appalling things in keeping with his nature, and I didn't feel that his falling in love with one of his victims was enough to counterbalance that.


Greer Gilman, Moonwise

Very strange book, in a dense, elliptical style, full of riddles and puns and poetry. Two women stumble into the fantasy world of their childhood games, a place of witches and stone circles, woods and bleak moors, and become enmeshed in the struggle between figures who seem to represent the new and full moon. It's probably churlish of me -- not to mention missing the point -- to note that the astronomy is all wrong; the winter solstice has nothing to do with the moon.

Rachel DeWoskin, Foreign Babes in Beijing


Memoir of a young American woman living in mid-90's Beijing, working as a publicist and stumbling into acting in the titular TV drama. It's a very different experience of Beijing from my sheltered tourist one, but it was an interesting and engaging read.


Jane Lindskold, Child of a Rainless Year

I sometimes think that Jane Lindskold has a knack for writing broken books -- engaging enough to read, full of lovely imagery and engaging characters, but the ending leaves me thinking, 'Yes, but,' for hours or days afterwards. After her very strange mother disappears, the protagonist is raised by foster parents, and only returns to her inheritance in a remote New Mexico town after they die, by which time she is a middle-aged but remarkably well-dressed art teacher with no life to speak of. She becomes engrossed in restoring the remarkable old house where she grew up, which turns out to be even more remarkable than it looks, and in searching for her vanished mother.

There's a lot about the magic of color and so-called liminal space; there are ghosts and ghostly servitors and magical kaleidoscopes. There's also romance, which is where the yes-but comes in: after carefully establishing that the house needs an heir, the author allows the past-childbearing-age heroine to pair off with the only person around who might have been able to father one. I don't see how this can end well, in the long term.



Elizabeth George, With No One as Witness

Fat, harrowing Inspector Lynley mystery, a surprisingly fast read for its size. It made me cry on the way back from Beijing, and it may be the last of the series.


Carole Nelson Douglas, Spider Dance

Another Irene Adler mystery, set in New York, where Irene is searching for her unknown mother and learning a lot about a notorious, long-dead dancer who might have been she. In the meantime, Sherlock Holmes is called in to investigate a nasy murder at the Vanderbildt mansion. Inevitably, the threads of the two mysteries turn out to be entangled. This is the last of the series, at least so far; I was rather annoyed to realize that I'd grabbed it instead of the earlier 'Femme Fatale'.


Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (reread)

I decided to read the book after seeing the movie again on DVD. The plot is slightly more complicated, and the cast list longer, than the movie would lead one to believe. I was much younger last time I read this, and I probably appreciated the wit and satire a little more this time through.

(The guide on the Chatsworth tour the other day pointed out that Mr. Darcy couldn't have afforded Chatsworth and its treasures on ten thousand a year -- the duke at the time had an income of about a hundred thousand a year.)



Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (reread)

At one point I was reading this and Pride and Prejudice in tandem, picking up whichever one came closest to hand. I didn't have any trouble keeping them straight, though. I think a lot of modern readers would find Fanny and Edmund unsufferably priggish, and it's strange, to a twenty-first century eye, to find nineteenth-century decorum so inextricably linked to morality. Henry Crawford is unusual among Austen villains in not being irredeemable before we ever see him; he comes very close to becoming the hero, but then makes a bad decision and blackens himself beyond saving.

Comments

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I adored the Elizabeth George - thought it was her best since _Playing for the Ashes_. I hope it's not the last in the series, though can see how you might think so... I agree with you about _Agyar_, too. I like his Vlad Taltos books a lot better.