books roundup
Dec. 16th, 2014 12:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraPennyroyal Academy, M.A. Larson. Cute YA where "princess" is a job and that job is witch-fighter. Reads very much as an attempt to salvage and justify the whole princess thing from (what I think are) very legitimate criticisms thereof, but there's some nice training montage bits that fans of Tamora Pierce's Alanna or Kel books might enjoy, and (without giving too much away) one of the big reveals *wasn't* exactly what I thought it was going to be, which is always nice.
Love Is The Drug, Alaya Dawn Johnson. I was very excited about this given how much I loved Summer Prince but I think I'm just less excited, in general, about near-future thrillers than far-future SF. There's some really strong character stuff in here and a couple of killer moments but there were also stretches where I kind of felt unsure about the momentum or direction of the plot. I would recommend this to people who like dystopian YA, but not necessarily everybody who liked Summer Prince.
Love Is The Drug was particularly interesting to read right now since (without specifying outcomes for any specific characters) the conclusion was more or less that the most anybody could hope for with respect to the United States of the near future is to get out of it. Justice/reform/stuff like that aren't even in the picture. And... yeah, I have to ask myself, are we at that point? I mean, we have a government that tortures and murders and is either incapable or unwilling to make real changes in the world. For a privileged person like me, the status quo is very likely to be fine, and even for most people, how bad are the odds of falling victim to the state, really? Well, I guess we incarcerate like one in three black men, so those odds are pretty terrible, but it doesn't seem implausible that a lot of people would be able to view the government as just one of those terrible things that sometimes strikes for no reason, like, you know, there's meningitis, brain tumors, cops, the CIA, lightning, etc. Honestly we seem more likely to be able to cure brain tumors than police militarization, gun proliferation, unlivable wages, climate change, agents of the government not being subject to any kind of law or oversight or restraint - brain tumors don't have a big faction in favor. I don't really have a point here except that I think Johnson is doing something very bold and important in painting emigration/self-exile from the US as the happy ending to be sought in Love Is The Drug.
This One Summer, Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. YA graphic novel about being on the cusp of adolescence and the uneasy balance between being a kid and wanting to try out "adult" things. And also parents and communication and the ways they fail and just some very vivid, specific slice-of-life stuff, and... yeah.
Are You My Mother?, Alison Bechdel. Man, I don't know. Bechdel's art is *so* good - the facial expressions she captures, wow - and yet I kind of hate that she's pouring so much time and energy and talent into this stupid navel-gazing project. I mean - obviously! she needs to write whatever she's moved to write, work on whatever she finds it meaningful to work on, but I don't know, *I* don't really care about her fraught relationship with her mother and her work with her therapist and all the meta meta stuff about wanting to write the book and needing to write the book and what it means to write the book. I just found myself hoping she was getting all of this out of her system and might actually write some actual fiction again some day, or, I don't know, a nice biography at least.
Love Is The Drug, Alaya Dawn Johnson. I was very excited about this given how much I loved Summer Prince but I think I'm just less excited, in general, about near-future thrillers than far-future SF. There's some really strong character stuff in here and a couple of killer moments but there were also stretches where I kind of felt unsure about the momentum or direction of the plot. I would recommend this to people who like dystopian YA, but not necessarily everybody who liked Summer Prince.
Love Is The Drug was particularly interesting to read right now since (without specifying outcomes for any specific characters) the conclusion was more or less that the most anybody could hope for with respect to the United States of the near future is to get out of it. Justice/reform/stuff like that aren't even in the picture. And... yeah, I have to ask myself, are we at that point? I mean, we have a government that tortures and murders and is either incapable or unwilling to make real changes in the world. For a privileged person like me, the status quo is very likely to be fine, and even for most people, how bad are the odds of falling victim to the state, really? Well, I guess we incarcerate like one in three black men, so those odds are pretty terrible, but it doesn't seem implausible that a lot of people would be able to view the government as just one of those terrible things that sometimes strikes for no reason, like, you know, there's meningitis, brain tumors, cops, the CIA, lightning, etc. Honestly we seem more likely to be able to cure brain tumors than police militarization, gun proliferation, unlivable wages, climate change, agents of the government not being subject to any kind of law or oversight or restraint - brain tumors don't have a big faction in favor. I don't really have a point here except that I think Johnson is doing something very bold and important in painting emigration/self-exile from the US as the happy ending to be sought in Love Is The Drug.
This One Summer, Jillian and Mariko Tamaki. YA graphic novel about being on the cusp of adolescence and the uneasy balance between being a kid and wanting to try out "adult" things. And also parents and communication and the ways they fail and just some very vivid, specific slice-of-life stuff, and... yeah.
Are You My Mother?, Alison Bechdel. Man, I don't know. Bechdel's art is *so* good - the facial expressions she captures, wow - and yet I kind of hate that she's pouring so much time and energy and talent into this stupid navel-gazing project. I mean - obviously! she needs to write whatever she's moved to write, work on whatever she finds it meaningful to work on, but I don't know, *I* don't really care about her fraught relationship with her mother and her work with her therapist and all the meta meta stuff about wanting to write the book and needing to write the book and what it means to write the book. I just found myself hoping she was getting all of this out of her system and might actually write some actual fiction again some day, or, I don't know, a nice biography at least.
