Yet More Books and Books

Yes, I haven't been blogging very well/much, so here's a big ol' book entry! It helped that I took a trip to visit my family in Kansas, so there was bus time and airport time and airplane time in which to read. (I read two and half books on the trip back alone.) This batch has fewer recommendations and more dis-recommendations than previous incarnations; my book luck was pretty bad there for a week or so before it turned around. Anyway:

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
You may have heard of this from that Russell Crowe movie, although it's actually based on a later book in the series. I wasn't aware of it, but the series that Master and Commander begins is well known (and extensive. If I'd liked the first one more, it could have kept me busy for quite awhile). On the one hand, I enjoyed the way he wrote the characters. They were distinctive and engaging. On the other hand, there's just so much boat. I don't care about mizzens and prizes and whatnot. I just don't. I stopped reading maybe 2/3 of the way through, because my caring about the characters was finally overwhelmed by my not-caring about the boat.

My Life in France by Julia Child
Like most everyone else, I preferred the Julia Child parts of Julie and Julia, and since this is the book they were drawn from, I assumed I'd enjoy it, too. I was partially right. It's an extremely good-natured book; Julia Child's cheerfulness radiates from the page. However, it's also kind of boring. She loves France! She loves to cook! She loves her friends! After awhile, I had the feeling of "I get it already" and so I turned it back in to the library when I was about halfway through. Pleasant, but not super interesting.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
And here's another book that I didn't finish. I was intrigued because it had sort of a Harry-Potter-for-grownups feel. Magic exists in a world otherwise like our own; people are British. But it's over 1,000 pages long, and it takes its sweet time getting to anything good. I stuck it out long enough for a few cool magical things to finally happen, but I bailed out when I got annoyed that many of the magical events were of the people-experience-them-but-then-immediately-forget-about-them variety. (The device where a character has an adventure but then for some reason has to forget the adventure is one of my pet peeves, up there with "It was all a dream!") I was also annoyed that I had gotten a few hundred pages in and Jonathan Strange had barely been introduced yet. If he's in the title, why do I have to wait so long to meet him?!

No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (followed by Tears of the Giraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls, The Kalahari Typing School for Men, The Full Cupboard of Life, In the Company of Cheeful Ladies, and Blue Shoes and Happiness) by Alexander McCall Smith
These books are about a lady detective who lives in Botswana. (Because "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" is a mouthful, I refer to them as "African lady detective" books, which is slightly less of a mouthful.) As my co-worker Nancie put it, they're very nice books. Niceness abounds. These are not books you can sink your teeth into; they're snack books. The first one is a little weightier, because it gets to give the lead character's backstory, but from there on out, each one just has a little bit of incident and not much character development, and if you were to ask me to describe what happened in each of the ones I've read, I'd probably fail. But when I want to read something that will reliably be pretty good and, you know, nice, I'll go back to these. (McCall Smith is ridiculously prolific--I've still got two African lady detective books to go, and he has two or three other series as well as some stand-alones. It's crazy.) One final note about these--Mma Ramotswe (the titular lady detective) is always drinking "bush tea," which is rooibos tea, so I often make myself a cup of rooibos when I settle in to read one of these.

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
I liked The Time Traveler's Wife very much, so it was given that I was going to read this. Like The Time Traveler's Wife, it sucks you in and reads really fast. The downside of that is that I was halfway through before I realized most of the characters were stupid. (Really stupid.) I was two-thirds through before I realized that the book itself was stupid. (Really stupid!) And since I'd gone that far, I felt obligated to finish. And it kept getting stupider. But I guess if you like way-too-cutesy twins (who sleep in the same bed and hold hands in public even though they're in their twenties), blindingly obvious plot twists (multiple), and pointless OCD subplots (although to be fair, Pointless OCD Guy was my favorite character), then you'd probably like this book better than I did.

The Greatest Knight: The Story of William Marshal by Elizabeth Chadwick
This was pretty good. I like that Elizabeth Chadwick likes William Marshal in sort of the same way I like Henry VII--it's a "Hey, this guy was totally awesome--why doesn't anybody else care?!" (And, admittedly, it's probably much easier to argue for William Marshal's awesomeness than Henry VII's.) However, I've started to realize that all of the books I've read by Ms. Chadwick start very strong but about halfway or two-thirds through, they feel like they start to meander. They begin to drag, I think, because she doesn't impose much of an overarching narrative structure onto the history. She'd rather tell a person's story, including all the best historical incidents, than force the story into an artificial beginning, middle, and end. While I think that is in some ways admirable, it also bogs me down when I read the books. I want to feel like the book is going somewhere; her books often feel like they're going somewhere, they get there, and then they keep going. Other than that, though, they're very good--vivid characters, exciting incidents, believable dialogue--all very strong.

Dead Until Dark (followed by Living Dead in Dallas, Club Dead, Dead to the World, Dead as a Doonail, Definitely Dead, All Together Dead, From Dead to Worse, and Dead and Gone) a.k.a. "The Southern Vampire Novels," "Sookie books," and "Those Ones True Blood is Based On" by Charlaine Harris
I've asserted before that certain book series ate my life for a few days/weeks; it happened again with these. I decided to check out the first books, expecting a trashy/guilty-pleasure sort of read. I was therefore surprised when it turned out to be really funny, endearing, and totally engrossing. There is a certain trashiness to these books--there's a lot of violence and some really dirty stuff (not as much dirty stuff as I thought there would be, but pretty dirty when it happens), but it's sort of a charming trashiness. I also find the protagonist, Sookie Stackhouse, really relatable. Not that I date vampires or am telepathic (thank goodness--although if anything, with my overly-expressive face [it's a real problem] I have the opposite problem Sookie does in that other people can tell what I'm thinking), but I know what it's like to be from a small town/buy most of your clothes at Walmart/not know what it's like to ride in an airplane. I feel like Harris writes "small town" really well. Also hanging out with vampires. She writes that well, too. These books are great. I think I'm going to buy them on Amazon.