Other bits and pieces
May. 17th, 2009 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jmc_bksI'm returning these books to the library unread/unfinished:
The Manny Files/Hit the Road, Manny byChris Christian Burch. These are labeled as YA fiction, but the voice of the narrator was weirdly not YA. In some places it was much more juvenile than YA, and in other places oddly mature. The inconsistencies were hard to reconcile, and eventually I set the first book aside and never picked it up again.
Always by Nicola Griffiths. A sample of Griffiths' The Blue Place intrigued me. My library does not have a copy of that book, but they carry a copy of a later book in the series. I dunno; after reading maybe the first 100 pages, Aud as narrator doesn't thrill me. In fact, she comes across (to me) as rather smug and patronizing, which doesn't make her a narrator I'm interested in following.
In other reading news, La Nora's Vision in White has been waiting for my attention for a week, but I've found other things to read or re-read instead. I think it's because the wedding industry does not intrigue me; in fact, I feel rather cynical about the industry, which makes me disinterested in this heroine and her friends. Despite the beautiful packaging of the book.
On the otherhand, Ann Aguirre's Blue Diablo sucked me right in. I can't really explain it -- her Sirantha Jax series doesn't really work for me, but this one does. Maybe it is the difference between urban fantasy and science fiction? Urban fantasy is set within an already known world, albeit with some fantastical changes a la magic or whatever twist the author has invisioned, which in many ways leaves less world building for the author, while SF requires massive amounts of world building which usually falls short somewhere? Maybe.
Unrelated: these photos and their captions crack me up. Especially #12 and #13.
The Manny Files/Hit the Road, Manny by
Always by Nicola Griffiths. A sample of Griffiths' The Blue Place intrigued me. My library does not have a copy of that book, but they carry a copy of a later book in the series. I dunno; after reading maybe the first 100 pages, Aud as narrator doesn't thrill me. In fact, she comes across (to me) as rather smug and patronizing, which doesn't make her a narrator I'm interested in following.
In other reading news, La Nora's Vision in White has been waiting for my attention for a week, but I've found other things to read or re-read instead. I think it's because the wedding industry does not intrigue me; in fact, I feel rather cynical about the industry, which makes me disinterested in this heroine and her friends. Despite the beautiful packaging of the book.
On the otherhand, Ann Aguirre's Blue Diablo sucked me right in. I can't really explain it -- her Sirantha Jax series doesn't really work for me, but this one does. Maybe it is the difference between urban fantasy and science fiction? Urban fantasy is set within an already known world, albeit with some fantastical changes a la magic or whatever twist the author has invisioned, which in many ways leaves less world building for the author, while SF requires massive amounts of world building which usually falls short somewhere? Maybe.
Unrelated: these photos and their captions crack me up. Especially #12 and #13.
The Manny Files/ Hit the Road, Manny
Date: 2009-05-18 03:41 am (UTC)Re: The Manny Files/ Hit the Road, Manny
Date: 2009-05-18 06:26 pm (UTC)Maybe I'll swing back around and try them again later; they weren't working for me when I tried them earlier this week.