95 Books In 2006, George W. Bush read 95 books. We will do better.

I have been reading this book for months. Not because it’s long, but it is so heavy I read a few pages and then need days to come back to the text. The book is about a future in which everyone is dying of HIV/AIDS. Everyone. There is a rumour that a sexually transmitted cure exists. The economy functions, barely. Hospices care for the dying, kind of.

Boredom is the enemy. The only escape is a retreat into and out of the body, any body. This novel is grotesque, yes, even in the sense of carnivalesque, because the government puts on a show (to keep calm to keep a semblance of order to spread propaganda to distribute supplies that aren’t always adequate or appropriate). But the novel is also the opposite of grotesque - cold and realistic, sarcastic and unsatirical at the same time. This is how a person deals with illness in a sick society. This is how sense is achieved in nonsense.

The style ofOmholeis repetitive and disjunctive. Lists and numbers, the sterile language of health and unhealth, the plain language of piss and shit, the dirty words of the body, the ugly and gross, are occasionally marred by incredibly beautiful sentences. Temporary lyricism emerges and then is submerged again beneath the muck of living towards death.

This is an amazing take on the dystopian novel. It’s a movement away from the introspective and contemplative narrative. Ohmholeis visceral and horrifying, tragic, unrestrained. It’s exciting, but in a frightening and terrible way. The closest comparison I can think to make is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but Ohmholemore ambiguous: the world is less certain, there is no clear enemy to avoid, no big disaster to point to as the cause. A different kind of suspense because the violence is more drawn out, less immediately fatal. Which I find is ultimately scarier because it seems so much more likely.

Goddamn. Read it. And it just so happens that it’s currently 25% off at the Bookthug website.

~Claire

I have a huge amount of admiration for Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing. She is one of very few authors I can think of who can write descriptions of political systems without becoming dry. Perhaps it’s because the writing doesn’t feel overly didactic, or perhaps its because Le Guin is so good at detailing a world through a character’s point of view that the introspection works. The subtitle “An Ambiguous Utopia” is perhaps the most descriptive. Although this book is utopic science fiction, even Le Guin’s utopia reflects the nuances of human social systems. There is no perfection; just people.

I was having a conversation about why I didn’t like the one Game of Thrones book that I’ve read - I found it heavy-handed and boring. I started to think of the ways authors build worlds and expose the political machinations of those worlds; what is it about The Dispossessed that works for me when Game of Thrones doesn’t? A cleaner, more direct writing style is part of it. The depth of the characters is another - an epic with a large cast handles characterization very differently than a book that focuses on one character and explores the world through that character’s relationships. I tend to prefer the latter (in any genre). And even though Game of Thrones has more action, The Dispossessed is less predictable. Action doesn’t always create excitement.

~Claire

So March is nearly over and I’m 11 books behind the pace needed to hit 95 books this year. This will change soon, as I’m halfway through an Ursula K. Le Guin novel, three quarters of the way through Tyler Hayden’s Omhole (can’t wait to talk about this book!), just beginning Carla Harryman’s Animal Instincts, and waiting until I finish some of these to get into some Erin Moure and Juliana Spahr.

I tend to go through reading phases that alternate long periods of not doing much with intense bursts. Actually, this pattern only really established itself while I’ve been in graduate school; before that I was nearly always reading. Since I’ve finished, it’s easier to get distracted. I’m constantly close to my computer which offers short distracting texts. I have no deadlines to compel me to finish reading. But I’m getting bored. I’m ready to start reading challenging texts again; I’m done with the brain candy for a bit.*

That said, I might start including reviews of interesting graphic novel and comics collections, because although I won’t count them towards my total books read, some are just so good that they are worth talking about (for instance, I just finished B.P.R.D. Plague of Frogs Volume 3, and wow, what amazing storytelling).

*To clarify, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with brain candy. Fun, escapist books are an important part of literature; I don’t think that they are inferior to other types of literature, just different in purpose. I wanted to make that clear because I am aware that there is an impression that anyone coming from academia must have a bias against genre fiction. If you just look at my reading list, you can see I’m not that person. Good and bad writing exist along the entire spectrum of literature; just because something is considered more ‘literary’ does not mean it is inherently better or worse than any other book. But that’s a post for another time.

In The Crow, the narrative shifts to Hem, Maedred’s younger brother. The Singing splits the narrative between the two. I thought the split narrative technique was well used; I didn’t find myself favoring one voice over the other as sometimes happens if there is uneven handling of the characters involved. These books provided solid adventure & a satisfying conclusion to the story. I do think that they are more dependent on serial reading than the first two books of the series; I appreciate when an author does not spend too much time repeating the events of earlier novels in order to catch up the reader.

My major issue with these books was that a number of times words were used in slightly awkward ways. For instance, the word “tryst” typically has a connotation of a romantic rendezvous, and yet it was repeatedly used to refer to a meeting between characters who have a father-son type relationship. I found this pretty jarring.

But otherwise, these were decent examples of the fantasy genre: very readable, consistent characterization, a good dash of heroism, and enough uncertainty to keep the momentum.

~Claire

This is one of the very rare cases where a sequel is far superior to the first book in a series. The characterization is more consistent and the action has better pacing. Definitely a solid fantasy read, and I think it would probably stand without the first book.

These books start with a cute conceit about how they are a translation of an ancient epic text, and I almost wish that the translator were brought more into the text (through footnoting perhaps) to give the entire novel a more unique take on a common theme.

I’ve already started the third book, so I guess I’ll see if the better writing holds.

~Claire

The Naming is one of those books that starts off weak and gets better about halfway through. I nearly put it down and didn’t come back to it. One of the most irritating things, at least for me, is that the heroine Maerad begins the novel as a slave, but the book goes out of its way to make sure the reader knows she wasn’t raped. Because it is so important that a heroine is virginal, apparently. Now, I want to make it very clear that I don’t condone rape as a plot device, but this “I could have been raped but I wasn’t because the bad guys thought that maybe I would curse them” doesn’t strike me as a whole lot better.

This is a very typical orphan who seems ordinary until someone recognizes that this underfed teenager is The One who will save the world story. It’s nice to have a story where The One is a girl, but there are other books that do this plot line better.

There are some issues with more telling than showing, particularly with Maerad miraculously and instantly overcoming the physical and mental effects from her years of enslavement until it is useful to mention it again.

But by the end of the novel I was curious enough to borrow the second book in the series from the library. Whether that says more about my standards or the book’s appeal is anyone’s guess. What I can say definitively is that this book falls more into the “borrow from the library” than the “I want to own it to read again” category.

~Claire

I don’t have much to say: Mercedes Lackey writes straight-up fantasy stories. She writes about magic in interesting ways—I do think that the way magic works in this Elemental Mastersseries is pretty interesting. Each mage has an elemental type, and controls power by bargaining with (or if evil, compelling) creatures of that element. Different types of mages have different strengths and weaknesses which relate to the way the elements interact with one another.

I like reading these books as mindless relaxation. There are inconsistencies (really, the woman doctor is the first one who leaves the room at the sight of zombies? Really? As a turn of the century doctor, I’d say she’s probably seen just as bad in the operating room. Also, soldiers are going to bother sending a woman who is serving competently as a nurse home because she’s not qualified? I have trouble buying that given that it’s made clear that the person who is sending her home has a shortage of capable people…). The romance plots are predictable because they are typical idealistic fantasy romances.

There were a few moments in this particular book where I thought things were going to get really macabre (necromancy and WWI battlefields? lots of potential there). But the writing never gets scary, and the descriptions are never really gory or gross. So the creepiness really depends on the reader’s imagination; not necessarily a bad thing in a light read.

~Claire

I remember reading Cindy Pon’s first book for the 95 books blog two years ago. This is the sequel to that story, a young adult fantasy set in Xia, a fictional version of ancient China. I had some trouble with the beginning of Fury of the Phoenix because I could barely remember the plot of the previous novel. While this book avoids the boring repetition that other fantasy series often employ, I felt a little lost at times. This is definitely a series that needs to be read chronologically, and preferably without too much time in between readings. The action was well paced and the fantasy elements were enjoyable. I thought it was a bit more predictable than the first book and Chen Yong resolved his family troubles too easily—that plot line could have used more tension between secondary characters.

Still, I would highly recommend this book to young adult fiction readers. Cindy Pon writes in a nice clear style that I find very entertaining.

~Claire

So, I’m doing the 95 books again this year but have switched to Goodreads for the main event to network the reading with some of the others doing the challenge. I’ll post my list here for those not doing Goodreads (I’m still not completely sold on it, myself - not being able to add books that haven’t been read by others on the site is a drawback for an ephemera geek) but the reviews etc. will be posted there. 

The first five for the new year: 

1. Natalee Caple: How I Came to Haunt My Parents

2. Mario Goloboff, ed. Burning Reason: Literary Victims of the Military Dictatorship 1976-1983.

3. Janet Giltrow et al. Academic Writing, an Introduction

4. Eden Robinson: Monkey Beach

5. Sarah Orne Jewett: The Country of the Pointed Firs. 

~ Colin

This book is a very readable introduction to the game of roller derby. It goes over the sport’s history in a fairly comprehensive way, describes how derby works and briefly explains the rules, and then looks at what it takes to play derby, and the various levels of involvement a person can have with the sport. It even has an appendix with brief discussions of depictions of derby in movies and tv shows, which is a useful feature for folks looking for more information. I would have liked a similar appendix for books and magazines, or even a collection of online resources. My favourite element of this book were the interviews with players, refs, and other notable derby personalities. Those interviews really help to put a face on the sport without falling into stereotypes.

This is not the book to turn to for discussions of strategy or an in-depth breakdown of rules. It’s the basics of derby, explained in a fun and straightforward way. I can see myself giving this book to friends & family who ask ‘what exactly is this roller derby thing you’re doing?”

~Claire