Author: katenepveu

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Westlake, Donald E.: Put A Lid On It

In the interests of clearing up some of my backlog, here are some quick hits on books that I don’t have much to say about (there are a few things that I’m just skipping completely as not worth the electrons):

[note: split into five parts for MT import; use “next” if you’re here via an old link]

Donald E. Westlake, Put A Lid On It. This is a caper novel that’s not quite as comic as the Dortmunder books, but is still pretty light-hearted. It’s a well-constructed, low-key take on a Watergate-style scenario: some political hacks want to steal something incriminating about the President, but have learned from past mistakes and tap a professional robber (using his pending criminal trial as carrot). Not his best work, but there are considerably worse ways to spend an afternoon. And for Dortmunder fans, there’s an amusing commentary on planning:

Meehan had noticed over the years that crooks in stories and movies always make all kinds of plans, contingencies, maps, timetables, charts, maybe even scale models of things. He’d also noticed over the years that he himself and the guys he knew never did any of that, wouldn’t have the first idea how to go about it. You work up a general idea of what you want and how you think you might want to go about it, and then when you get there you improvise, based on the situation, which is never exactly, precisely what you thought the situation was going to be.

That’s the way it had always worked with him and the guys he’d met along the way, though he could see sometimes that those careful plans had a lot to be said for them. Like as though you were building a house, you’d certainly want that plan, but in fact they never were building a house. Robbing a house is a different kind of thing.

Also, people who make plans in their lives and people who make robberies are two pretty distinctive character types. People who make plans are likely to make plans that eliminate the necessity of having to make a robbery in the first place. So Meehan and company, not being planners, would just get a general idea, knock back a little bourbon right before the job to calm the nerves, and invent to suit once the job got under way.

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Bujold, Lois McMaster: (201) The Curse of Chalion (audio)

[originally part of an audiobook roundup post, which is where the comments all are, and split up for MT import; use the previous links]

The current audiobook is The Curse of Chalion, because I was going through these 6-8 hour audiobooks too quickly. The narrator isn’t so good at the female voices, but his portrayal of Cazaril is growing on me, and I like the book quite a bit. After that, I may try some Austen, or maybe The Orchid Thief. Anyone have favorite unabridged audiobooks to recommend?

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Hiaasen, Carl: Hoot (audio)

[originally part of an audiobook roundup post, which is where the comments all are, and split into five parts for MT import; use the previous and next links]

The other new thing, also from the library, was Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot, read by Chad Lowe. Hoot is my first Hiaasen, and probably my last unless he writes another YA, as Chad tells me that his adult novels tend to have bloody and unpleasant endings for the bad guys. This was both well-read and well-written; it was the one that tempted me to drive around the block to keep listening. Chad’s summed up the premise of this in his own book log entry (of the print version), so I’ll just say that I liked the oddities of the characters and the way that they mostly stayed odd, and also that Roy (our point-of-view character) actually had a good relationship with his parents. It’s nice to see that the absent adult is no longer a necessary characteristic of the YA genre.

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King, Stephen: “L.T.’s Theory of Pets” (audio)

[originally part of an audiobook roundup post, which is where the comments all are, and split into five parts for MT import; use the previous and next links]

One of two new things I listened was to Stephen King’s “L.T.’s Theory of Pets”, a one-hour live reading of a short story, from the library.

The King was well-read as always, but I’d somehow acquired completely the wrong impression of it from the CD jacket, which made it a distracting hour. It’s certainly got its strong points—who hasn’t known that their pet likes someone else better?—but on the whole, I think I would have liked it better with an actual resolution.

It is quite bawdy, by the way, if that bothers you.

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Pierce, Tamora: (201-204) Circle of Magic series (audio)

[originally part of an audiobook roundup post, which is where the comments all are, and split into five parts for MT import; use the previous and next links]

Another set of four short books I listened to is Full Cast Audio’s performances of the Circle of Magic books, by Tamora Pierce. As the name suggestions, these are narrated by the author, but with a different actor for each major character. In addition, these are YA novels, with the Circle of the title made up of four young mages, and those parts are played by young people (though not as young as the characters).

Obviously, this is a cool way to do audiobooks if you can manage it. (Pierce has a longish essay on the recording experience that I found interesting.) It’s more natural-sounding, and if you’ve cast properly, it will reduce the “which character is that?” confusion that even good readers sometimes fall afoul of. For the Circle books, some of the casting was very good indeed; particularly spot-on were Niko and Rosethorn of the adults, and Tris and Sandry of the kids (for the first three books; different actresses were used for the fourth). Of the other kids, there was nothing wrong with the actress playing Daja; it’s just that the “lilting” accent her character has seems to translate as “snippy and sarcastic” to my ear. The other main child character, Briar, was also played by someone different in the fourth book, who was somewhat stiff.

I actually know these books quite well—they’re comfort reads—but as the first set I listened to, they were still an interesting example of how listening is different. There turned out, for instance, to be a key scene in one book that I’d been mis-visualizing, somehow managing to skim over a couple of key words every time. And they were a good example of the perils of audiobooks: I’m going to hear Daja with that annoying lilt in my head from now on, where before I had no clear idea what it sounded like, and that was just fine. (I don’t usually visualize appearances either, or try to figure out what music sounds like.)

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Adams, Douglas: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The; Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe, and Everything; So Long and Thanks for All the Fish (audio)

I’ve taken to listening to audiobooks on my iPod during my commute, some from the library, some from Audible.com. My prior audiobook experience had been limited to solo trips to Massachusetts, but these are turning out to be a good way to decompress and keep me awake.

So far on this new spate of listening, I’ve only listened to two things that I hadn’t read before. I am a die-hard re-reader, as you will have noticed, and actually I’m finding listening to books to be a good way of re-experiencing them, because I tend to skim when I get really involved in what-happens-next. (I’m planning to try The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (the unabridged Rob Inglis versions) after the turn of the year; I think it might be an interesting way of getting back to the text.) On my daily commute, I find that new stuff is almost too involving—I’ve yet to circle the block so I can listen to the end of the chapter, but I’ve been tempted; also, if I’m distracted for a moment by traffic, it’s slightly inconvenient to skip back and listen again.

On the other hand, I sometimes feel guilty about spending so much time on familiar works. A sort of compromise is to listen to things that I’ve read before but don’t remember well. Douglas Adams’ first four Hitchhiker books turned out to be a good example of this: I had no recollection of the third, Life, the Universe, and Everything. None whatsoever. Which is somewhat odd, since it’s the most like an actual book of the first four, with a plot and pace and a reasonably coherent story. (The first in particular is lumps of exposition with a beginning and a (very abrupt) end; it doesn’t have so much middle, as I’d seen remarked about the adaptations for the forthcoming movie. But when it’s such cool exposition, you can get away with it. The fifth is not a book; it’s a giant slap in the face of the reader, an abomination whose very existence pains me. ) I’d remembered Life as the least good of the first four, and I’m still not sure what I think of it, but I think now I’ll remember what it’s about.

(I’m weird and like the fourth the best, always have, probably because I’m a sap and slightly uncomfortable with the misanthropy in the others, particularly the second. I really don’t want to hear why you dislike it, if you do, because I want to keep it as my favorite.)

Adams, by the way, is very bad at transitions, and this flaw is really pointed up by the audio format. The worst is one transition in Life, because it simply isn’t there; I thought maybe I’d spaced out, or the audio file was glitchy, but no, the book has the same lack.

These are read by Adams, who does a fabulous job of it. There are a few minor infelicities: in Restaurant at the End of the Universe, his voices for the robot characters are run through some kind of special effect filter, which makes the lovely confrontation between Marvin and the war robot unfortunately hard to follow; the overall sound quality isn’t quite as sharp as more recently recorded audiobooks; and occasionally they seem to speed up a bit, as if to fit on a certain number of tapes. But overall I liked these a lot, and I’m quite looking forward to getting the Dirk Gently books, which I also don’t remember at all (these are all available from Audible).

[split into multiple posts for import into MT; hit “next”]

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Sayers, Dorothy L.: (06) Strong Poison [2004 read]; (07) The Five Red Herrings

My Sayers re-read has stalled out after the next two in the series, Strong Poison and The Five Red Herrings. I’ve logged Strong Poison fairly recently, so I’ll just say that in spite of its flaws, I will forever adore it for the seance bits, the lock-picking bits, and for not marrying off Peter and Harriet at the end, because what a disaster that would have been.

The Five Red Herrings, however, I just do not care about. Harriet is not to be seen or even heard of; instead we get a (nearly) emotion-free venture for Peter into a positive orgy of timetables, and I just don’t care. Timetable mysteries aren’t my favorite anyway, but this is such whiplash after Strong Poison, and such a step back in terms of Peter’s development as a character, that I can not think well of it.

Also, there is an egregious trick early in the book, where Peter tells the police a critical deduction, and instead of the conversation, the reader is given an otherwise-blank page with a note at the top: ” . . . as the intelligent reader will readily supply these details for himself, they are omitted from this page.”

I have never thrown a book at the wall. I do not expect to ever throw a book at the wall. But sometimes I read a line and my hands twitch convulsively, without conscious direction, as though they’d really like to get this book away from them. (If I were Vlad Taltos, this would be when Loiosh says, “Can I eat him, boss?”) The Five Red Herrings came very close to leaping away from me when I read that line.

Have His Carcase is next, which is why I’m stalled on the re-read; yes, it has Harriet, but I recall it as being extremely long, dreary, and contrived. Maybe I’m wrong; Truepenny had a lot to say about it in her series of Sayers posts (warning: huge spoilers in all of those posts). But it’s hard to work up the enthusiasm for it.

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Bryson, Bill: In a Sunburned Country; A Short History of Nearly Everything (audio)

In a Sunburned Country is Bill Bryson’s Australia book. Bryson is probably best known for A Walk in the Woods, which is still my favorite of his books. In a Sunburned Country is much in the mode of his travel books generally: Bryson bops around the area he’s chosen, whether the Appalachian Trail or Australia, and offers up frequently-funny descriptions of his travels along with bits of social, economic, and political history.

As Chad has said offline, the problem with this book is that Bryson likes Australia too much. He explicitly says it’s part and parcel of his nostalgia for 1950s America, which I frankly distrust [*]; and that colors my reaction to his assertions about Australia’s recent immigration history, for instance (though to his credit he does discuss the history and current status of Australia’s aborigines). It wasn’t a major part of the book, and most of the time I was happy laughing about cricket or the very many ways you can get killed in Australia, but every now and again he’d go into nostalgia rapture and I would twitch.

[*] The xenophobic moment at the start of the book doesn’t help. Did he really say that after traveling so far, he instinctively expects “swarthy men in robes . . . and a real possibility of disease on everything you touch,” but instead is pleasantly surprised to find that “these people are just like you and me”? I’m afraid he really did. Ugh.

Australia still sounds like a very cool place, mind, and as soon as they invent reliable teleportation (and personal force-field shields to keep the spiders and snakes and so forth away), I’ll be there.

(I listened to this as an audiobook, read by the author. Other than the occasional dialogue that was a little too deadpan, and the footnotes that weren’t read (I’ve read it before), it was excellently done. I’m just annoyed that A Walk in the Woods is only available in abridged format read by Bryson; I know that book too well to listen to an abridged version, even if I cared for such things, but it would be wrong listening to anyone else narrating it.)

(I also have listened to part of A Short History of Nearly Everything on audio since then. It’s narrated by someone who has an unfortunately snooty British-accented voice, and I’m not in any hurry to get back to listening.)

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McKinley, Robin: Deerskin

Robin McKinley’s Deerskin is her “except” book; any description of her accumulated novels will probably include an “ . . . except Deerskin.” It’s a re-write of “Donkeyskin” in its Charles Perrault version, in which a widowed king wants to marry his daughter. (McKinley talks about her problems with Perrault’s version on her website.)

In case you don’t follow those links, Deerskin gets an “except” because the pivotal event is the beating and rape of the princess, Lissar, by her father. It’s a brutal yet non-exploitative piece of writing: an amazing sense of foreboding and dread before, and very little physical detail during, just reactions and effects—which are more than sufficient. I have heard that Lissar’s reactions ring very true to people who have been severely traumatized; I personally couldn’t say, but the force of her trauma, and the distance she must travel to healing, makes the book a powerful and lingering one.

That said, I still want to argue with quite a lot of it. It’s possible that fairy tales—particularly the kind with helpful goddesses—might not fit very well with psychologically realistic trauma. It’s not that Lissar couldn’t use the help, or wasn’t due for something easier than her life to date—but I can’t help but obscurely feel that the magical help diminishes her very real accomplishment of recovering (partly this is because I think some of the magical help wouldn’t actually have worked). The conflation of her with the Moonwoman also makes me slightly uncomfortable in ways I am unable to articulate.

I should point out that there’s at least one way in which this isn’t an “except” book for McKinley: the ending jumps up several levels of abstraction, going as mythic or more as Spindle’s End, which is to say, very mythic. I think I followed it, but it’s too bad that because it went so mythic, it couldn’t answer a few practical questions I had about the aftermath.

(I think I’m going to put spoilers over on my LiveJournal, for people who’ve read the book and are wondering what I’m talking about. I’ll leave the link in comments.)

For people interested in taking apart fairy tales and getting them to work as stories, Deerskin is worth looking at. I’m not convinced that it succeeds, but I freely admit my reaction may be idiosyncratic.

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Pratchett, Terry: (32) A Hat Full of Sky

My reaction on finishing Terry Pratchett’s A Hat Full of Sky was two-part:

  1. Gosh, you’d think he’d have run out of things to say about the nature of witches, after six books about the Lancre witches and the prior nominally-YA book about Tiffany Aching, The Wee Free Men.
  2. And yet he doesn’t appear to have. That’s kind of impressive.

Tiffany is now eleven and leaving home to start her formal education in witching. She knows sheep, and cheese, and the Chalk. She doesn’t know status-conscious girls, or how to make a shamble, or how to deal with having her body taken over when she casually left it empty for a moment—so she’d better learn fast.

Tiffany is only eleven, which helps differentiate this book from prior Witches books: because of her youth and inexperience, she’s prone to mistakes that Granny Weatherwax just wouldn’t make. Tiffany may be Granny’s apparent successor, but she’s no Mary Sue and she has a long road ahead of her to get there.

(I continue to be curious if Pratchett has an end in mind for Granny. In the unlikely event I get to talk to him at Worldcon (I imagine he’ll be mobbed constantly), I may well ask.)

Oh, and the Nac Mac Feegle are back. Good stuff, nothing earth-shaking but solid and enjoyable.

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