I love the first season of Veronica Mars like I have loved almost no other television show, ever (Friday Night Lights, I guess, Farscape, Band of Brothers, NewsRadio). The second season has episodes worth watching and I don't talk about the third season, but the MOVIE WAS EVERYTHING, and so I've been delighted to read the post-movie books, where we explore Veronica's life as a P.I. and her relationship with Logan.
First things first: WHY ISN'T LOGAN IN THESE BOOKS MORE. I get that he's navy now, and it's great, and the scene at the end where he explains why he has to go back to the navy, yes, sure, was lovely and I love him. But he's BARELY IN these books, except when Veronica is panicking that their relationship won't work out.
Logan is great because he is Veronica's partner. In life, in crime, in love, whatever. He can keep up with her, he's as bad as she is, he's as twisted as she is, he's as soft inside as she is. LET LOGAN HELP VERONICA SOLVE MYSTERIES FFS, ROB THOMAS (whom, it must be said, I don't believe really wrote this book beyond the outline).
Yeah, I'm that kind of Veronica Mars fan.
Anyway, the mystery is typically Veronica Mars horrifying (a woman is nearly beaten to death and raped). It's hilarious how everyone in Neptune in these books is someone Veronica has met before, and hates. (Hey, Madison Sinclair.) It's not a book that is going to live forever as a classic mystery that will blow! your! mind! but it's a fun beach read, and I was at the beach. (Yes, the beach in April, where we sat inside and made a fire and watched TV. It was great.)
Grade: C
#32 in 2016
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Sunday, April 3, 2016
And Be A Villain, Rex Stout
I went away for the weekend and read and read and read (three books and 3/4 of a non-fiction book). One, because I needed a break, was the next Nero Wolfe. They are always easy and delightful.
On the other hand, two days later it's a little hard to remember which book was which, so let me try... Right, a lady works for a radio station, her guest gets poisoned. This one's a little weird, because Wolfe basically gives up and just tells the cops what he's figured out and Archie waits around impatiently. So there isn't a ton of detecting, although Archie does get to be great in one scene. There are barely even any ladies for him to hit on. The villain kind of comes out of nowhere, and it's the introduction of Wolfe's Moriarty (whom I don't care about) so.... ehhhhhhh. Nothing's wrong in this book, but it's not a must-read.
Grade: C
#31 in 2016
On the other hand, two days later it's a little hard to remember which book was which, so let me try... Right, a lady works for a radio station, her guest gets poisoned. This one's a little weird, because Wolfe basically gives up and just tells the cops what he's figured out and Archie waits around impatiently. So there isn't a ton of detecting, although Archie does get to be great in one scene. There are barely even any ladies for him to hit on. The villain kind of comes out of nowhere, and it's the introduction of Wolfe's Moriarty (whom I don't care about) so.... ehhhhhhh. Nothing's wrong in this book, but it's not a must-read.
Grade: C
#31 in 2016
Monday, March 14, 2016
Captive Prince, vol. 1- 3, C.S. Pacat
When migrating over all my old livejournal reviews I found my rec for this when it was a work in progress being posted in parts over on lj, in 2010. Six years later, it's FINALLY finished. I reread the first two books and then immediately read the third one, because these are the kind of books you read all of in a weekend without stopping for air.
It's a delightful story about my favorite character types; Laurent is cold and mean and secretly damaged and alone in the world, Damen is sweet and emotional and will destroy things to protect Laurent. Once they're friends, of course; they start out as enemies, then become grudging allies, and by the third book they are so delightfully in love that I could read just those parts over and over and be a really happy person. I'm just going to shout, cousin Charls! and if you've read the book you know why we're all so happy about it.
A couple of caveats -- the third book doesn't make a ton of sense if you think about it too carefully, and I've had a lot of really fun conversations about how to fix the pacing and a couple of plot holes. The author borrows heavily from both Dunnett and Guy Gavriel Kay in terms of characters and also plots, and it did occasionally make me go, "Oh, come on, this is fan fiction." Which isn't necessarily a complaint; Lymond could certainly use a nice boyfriend who will kill people for him (Jerrott). Oh, and the ending is a little abrupt, but apparently there will some follow-up stories or something.
If this is your kind of thing, it will be VERY much your kind of thing. It was certainly mine.
Grade: A
#6-8 in 2016
It's a delightful story about my favorite character types; Laurent is cold and mean and secretly damaged and alone in the world, Damen is sweet and emotional and will destroy things to protect Laurent. Once they're friends, of course; they start out as enemies, then become grudging allies, and by the third book they are so delightfully in love that I could read just those parts over and over and be a really happy person. I'm just going to shout, cousin Charls! and if you've read the book you know why we're all so happy about it.
A couple of caveats -- the third book doesn't make a ton of sense if you think about it too carefully, and I've had a lot of really fun conversations about how to fix the pacing and a couple of plot holes. The author borrows heavily from both Dunnett and Guy Gavriel Kay in terms of characters and also plots, and it did occasionally make me go, "Oh, come on, this is fan fiction." Which isn't necessarily a complaint; Lymond could certainly use a nice boyfriend who will kill people for him (Jerrott). Oh, and the ending is a little abrupt, but apparently there will some follow-up stories or something.
If this is your kind of thing, it will be VERY much your kind of thing. It was certainly mine.
Grade: A
#6-8 in 2016
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Reamde, Neal Stephenson
Just finished Neal Stephenson's Reamde. (It's slated to come out 9/20.) Like, I just finished it about 3 minutes ago and I just read 981 pages in four days so I'm trying to clear my head.
I will try to summarize the plot, because the back of the book doesn't really do much besides say, "High stakes technological thriller!!" which is SORT OF true. It's about Richard Forthrast, who runs an online computer game that competes with World of Warcraft. It's about some Chinese hacker kids who invent a virus to steal money from people in the game. (I wish it had been more about them, actually.) It's about Richard's niece, Zula, whose boyfriend makes a terrible deal with some mobsters. And it's about a bunch of international terrorists whose secret hideout in China just happens to be in the same run-down building as the hackers.
It's super typical Stephenson; there's computer stuff, there's shooting, there's traveling the world, there's about 500 pages of climax where I had to keep putting the book down or I would forget to breathe. (I had to flip to the last page to make sure my favorite character survived, and she did.) But then it's NOT typical Stephenson, at the same time; there are no 25 page digressions on obscure mathematical concepts or long flashbacks to how Newton invented the calculus. And weirdly, I found myself really missing those. This is like a Bourne movie or a Bond movie; it's all action and adventure and shooting. It's almost like he decided to redo Snow Crash for the 2010s but it's got even less "here is how technology works" than Snow Crash.
As an interesting note: this is the first Stephenson I can think of that has lots of important female narrators. Eliza was important in the Baroque Cycle but not as important as Jack. America Shaftoe was more of an idea than a character in Cryptonomicon. Same with Y.T. in Snow Crash. Reamde features three different female protagonists, all of whom have tremendous agency, smarts, and personality. AND not a single one of whom is white. Stephenson still can't write a convincing romantic relationship but this was a huge improvement, women-wise.
This is going to sound weird, but instead of 981 pages of excellent action-adventure I wish it had been 1,000 pages and included more weird technological digressions. I read Stephenson and I feel smarter afterwards, usually. Anathem is magical just because it spends so much time being about higher math concepts. I love the dense and weird history in Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle. This is JUST an action-adventure story.
Anyway, if you enjoy Stephenson this is great. And if you've never read his stuff this is probably his most approachable book in a long time -- the page count sounds intimidating but it reads really, really quickly and I found myself staying up until 1 or 2 to get to the next section.
Grade: A
originally posted 2011
I will try to summarize the plot, because the back of the book doesn't really do much besides say, "High stakes technological thriller!!" which is SORT OF true. It's about Richard Forthrast, who runs an online computer game that competes with World of Warcraft. It's about some Chinese hacker kids who invent a virus to steal money from people in the game. (I wish it had been more about them, actually.) It's about Richard's niece, Zula, whose boyfriend makes a terrible deal with some mobsters. And it's about a bunch of international terrorists whose secret hideout in China just happens to be in the same run-down building as the hackers.
It's super typical Stephenson; there's computer stuff, there's shooting, there's traveling the world, there's about 500 pages of climax where I had to keep putting the book down or I would forget to breathe. (I had to flip to the last page to make sure my favorite character survived, and she did.) But then it's NOT typical Stephenson, at the same time; there are no 25 page digressions on obscure mathematical concepts or long flashbacks to how Newton invented the calculus. And weirdly, I found myself really missing those. This is like a Bourne movie or a Bond movie; it's all action and adventure and shooting. It's almost like he decided to redo Snow Crash for the 2010s but it's got even less "here is how technology works" than Snow Crash.
As an interesting note: this is the first Stephenson I can think of that has lots of important female narrators. Eliza was important in the Baroque Cycle but not as important as Jack. America Shaftoe was more of an idea than a character in Cryptonomicon. Same with Y.T. in Snow Crash. Reamde features three different female protagonists, all of whom have tremendous agency, smarts, and personality. AND not a single one of whom is white. Stephenson still can't write a convincing romantic relationship but this was a huge improvement, women-wise.
This is going to sound weird, but instead of 981 pages of excellent action-adventure I wish it had been 1,000 pages and included more weird technological digressions. I read Stephenson and I feel smarter afterwards, usually. Anathem is magical just because it spends so much time being about higher math concepts. I love the dense and weird history in Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle. This is JUST an action-adventure story.
Anyway, if you enjoy Stephenson this is great. And if you've never read his stuff this is probably his most approachable book in a long time -- the page count sounds intimidating but it reads really, really quickly and I found myself staying up until 1 or 2 to get to the next section.
Grade: A
originally posted 2011
Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
This is a book about a deeply unhappy family, how they came to be unhappy, and how their unhappiness makes them treat each other. It has a sort of happy ending, although I would have liked one more wrap-up section with Joey, because teenage marriages based on cheating and misery don't usually go well. The narrative voice is really interesting and I liked the way the beginning of the book basically tells you everything that's going to happen because I'm the type to get confused during a sprawling three generation book. Selfish people make me really unhappy, so there were a bunch of passages about family interaction that made me wince and almost walk away.
Every time anyone used the word "freedom," whether they were talking about cheating on each other, dying, saving the South American birds, or the invasion of Iraq, I was I kept wanting to underline things, as if some English professor was going to jump out from behind a bush and demand I write a 20 page essay on the way "Freedom" affected each member of the Berglund family and whether Franzen is ultimately arguing that freedom is good or bad for them. (...bad? I think?) I came away with the same feeling I had in college lit seminars; I know I understood the book as a story about Patty and Walter's marriage. I am not sure I understood all the themes and meanings and I am going to have to ask some of my smarter friends to explain what I missed.
Grade: C
Originally posted 2010
Every time anyone used the word "freedom," whether they were talking about cheating on each other, dying, saving the South American birds, or the invasion of Iraq, I was I kept wanting to underline things, as if some English professor was going to jump out from behind a bush and demand I write a 20 page essay on the way "Freedom" affected each member of the Berglund family and whether Franzen is ultimately arguing that freedom is good or bad for them. (...bad? I think?) I came away with the same feeling I had in college lit seminars; I know I understood the book as a story about Patty and Walter's marriage. I am not sure I understood all the themes and meanings and I am going to have to ask some of my smarter friends to explain what I missed.
Grade: C
Originally posted 2010
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