![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
one two three reviewski
Aug. 16th, 2016 11:57 pmDelilah Dirk and the King's Shilling. Delilah Dirk is one of those things for me that, the instant I heard there was a second Delilah Dirk book out, I was looking up what library I could go get it at in the morning. (Okay, it might have been the afternoon.) Partnership! The travails of living a double life! Swordfighting in a dress! God I love them so much. (I bet Junie will love these in a couple of years, if she keeps reading comics...) 2016 graphic work.
The Core of the Sun, Johanna Sinisalo, translated from Finnish by Lola Rogers. In alternate-history dystopic Finland where women have been domesticated, one throwback woman pursues the illicit high of capsaicin... I enjoyed this a lot, the gender stuff is not really anything new if you already hate gender/compulsory femininity/etc, but I assume as long as women have to live in patriarchies they're going to want to write pissed-off books about that. The dystopia is nicely presented through found-text type insertions, there's some really neat writing in the synasthesic way the main character perceives emotions/sensations, and the whole chili-as-controlled-substance thing was great. 2013 book, 2016 translation.
Deadline for McGurk and The Case of the Condemned Cat, E. W. Hildick. There's a very good chance the McGurk Organization was the fictional universe of my very first imaginary self-insert character - I can't remember anything about her now, but I very dimly recall being a little embarrassed when I read Vanishing Ventriloquist and it added a talented, exotic new girl member to the club, like, hey, I knew this story. (And already knew to be embarrassed by it, apparently.) Anyways, I thought of the McGurk mysteries when Junie got into the A to Z Mysteries recently, and of course I'm rereading them, both for nostalgia and to see how they hold up a generation later. They're not bad! A little gender antiquated (Wanda, the Girl of the Five Man Band - although they won't actually meet the Nerd for another four books, so right now it's a Four Man Band - "can climb trees as well as any boy", which is "strange for a girl"), and everyone is white, but the mysteries are good, and the period details might be interesting. (McGurk's yard is full of litter, primarily cigarette butts - can you imagine a kid's book mentioning smoking now? And the solution to the second mystery hinges on someone buying an unplucked pigeon from the meat department of a supermarket - I guess in 1975 that was something you could do?) Junie has requested more of them and I intend to keep reading too; we haven't hit any of the ones I remember anything about yet, so that should be fun when we do.
The Core of the Sun, Johanna Sinisalo, translated from Finnish by Lola Rogers. In alternate-history dystopic Finland where women have been domesticated, one throwback woman pursues the illicit high of capsaicin... I enjoyed this a lot, the gender stuff is not really anything new if you already hate gender/compulsory femininity/etc, but I assume as long as women have to live in patriarchies they're going to want to write pissed-off books about that. The dystopia is nicely presented through found-text type insertions, there's some really neat writing in the synasthesic way the main character perceives emotions/sensations, and the whole chili-as-controlled-substance thing was great. 2013 book, 2016 translation.
Deadline for McGurk and The Case of the Condemned Cat, E. W. Hildick. There's a very good chance the McGurk Organization was the fictional universe of my very first imaginary self-insert character - I can't remember anything about her now, but I very dimly recall being a little embarrassed when I read Vanishing Ventriloquist and it added a talented, exotic new girl member to the club, like, hey, I knew this story. (And already knew to be embarrassed by it, apparently.) Anyways, I thought of the McGurk mysteries when Junie got into the A to Z Mysteries recently, and of course I'm rereading them, both for nostalgia and to see how they hold up a generation later. They're not bad! A little gender antiquated (Wanda, the Girl of the Five Man Band - although they won't actually meet the Nerd for another four books, so right now it's a Four Man Band - "can climb trees as well as any boy", which is "strange for a girl"), and everyone is white, but the mysteries are good, and the period details might be interesting. (McGurk's yard is full of litter, primarily cigarette butts - can you imagine a kid's book mentioning smoking now? And the solution to the second mystery hinges on someone buying an unplucked pigeon from the meat department of a supermarket - I guess in 1975 that was something you could do?) Junie has requested more of them and I intend to keep reading too; we haven't hit any of the ones I remember anything about yet, so that should be fun when we do.
