Meredith Pierce: Den fjortonde bruden/The Dark Angel

There's this thing going around Facebook right now (and NO ONE has nominated me, the feckers) where you list your ten favourite books, and a friend of mine had this on her list; a list she'd modified to be "ten most influential books". And I just was so struck with the memory of it. I immediately went to see if the library had it. They did, but only in Swedish. As a matter of fact, I think I might have read this very edition as a child, the cover art is the very same. 

My daughter thought this was so so lame, by the way. Almost as lame as me speaking doge. 

It's not very good, but it's hard to say if it's also the translation doing it no favours. This is high fantasy, so the language is supposed to be saga-like and formal - something that seldom translates well unless you have a terrific translator, more of an interpreter. I realised for example that the word quest is translated to spaning which is just no. But even in English I suspect it's lacking in lasting quality. A bit if a mix of Tolkien (the names definitely), Ray Bradbury (location: the moon?), even some Ursula LeGuin if I'm not way off... But I just don't get into this secondary universe. There are hints of science fiction but without scientific explanations - instead everything is solved by magic. It's a bit of a cop-out. Wouldn't mind reading it in English if it falls into my lap, but I won't go out of my way for it. Fun to revisit all the same! 

stuff I read this summer or up until like september or so

When we went to Ireland I ploughed through my sister's Agatha Christies and some kids' books they had. And when I got home I was still on an Agatha Christie kick so I borrowed some more at the library and have also been watching Miss Marple on Netflix like some mad thing (the Joan Hickson ones, natch). I tried the Hercule Poirot too but that was just too camp; I couldn't take it. I can't believe they spent (or spend!) so much time and effort at all these Agatha Christie series and made them so shite. Those stiff actors who seem to be sitting on set just waiting for their lines, which they then deliver with the most obvious of acting cues, in manner of school play. I'm surprised they know what to do with their hands, I wouldn't raise an eyebrow if they stood there with their appendages dangling limply or with fingesrs laced together awkwardly over their crotch area, like true amateurs do. Really dire. But after a terrible first four or so episodes the Joan Hickson series does pick up a bit, and she is an excellent Marple. The best, the tops. However, what I like about vintage detective fiction is that there really is a lot of subtext and information about society at the time going on under a repetitive sort of over-structure , and I don't see why they ever pick up on this and play it up a bit when they film the stories. They could easily tweak them darker, or turn a spotlight just ever-so-slightly on the implied gay relationships (I'm not asking for new storylines to be added, thus corrupting the original story, mind, just more interesting bits), or just do anything instead of falling into that god-awful trap of going bananas over the costumes.  Costume away, my dear friends, but think Mad Men instead - script and eye candy. Also - please be period correct!  And a lot of information needed to understand the characters involved seems to go missing in the filming - understandable, because you don't want a scene with somebody reciting the biography of X, Y and Z, in the way you can in a novel, but at the same time it's worth pointing out that it is possible to shed light on the background and motivations of people in films too without voice-overs or recitals. Scripts people, they need work.

Now, I still can't say Christie's my favourite. My previous grumbles do stand, but I'm warming to her. She's uneven though, isn't she? I still find it difficult to guess the killer, which I put down to needing more information than what is given. I am probably in the wrong, since I admittedly don't read carefully enough. Anyway, brief notes below based on memory alone - I'm writing this post in mid-September and half the books were read in mid-August.

4.50 from Paddington is one of my favourites. A great suspenseful killing on a train, that is only witnessed by accident. Maybe I'm just a sucker for train anything after commuting for so long and having a son who was train mad as a youngster. I also like the general set-up, the crumbling grand house in the middle of a changing community, the clever young woman who helps miss Marple by taking a post as housekeeper. Pleasing.

A Pocket Full of Rye is a little less good. A little too fantastical. Also, one has to make a few imaginative jumps here to guess the killer, surely? It's not obvious just from the clues in the text, is it? Or am I stupid? (Don't answer that.)

The Princess Bride: OMG OMG OMG I've wanted to read this for soooo long, why haven't I? And there it was, in my niece's bookshelf!

I have, of course, loved the film since childhood, and I remember my cousin (who introduced me to it) saying that it was based on this book, and she'd heard that the ending was actually really sad and that the spells wore off so Wesley died and Buttercup returned to Humperdinck. I am very grateful that the ending isn't quite so sad. More ambiguous. This is funny, entertaining, and clever. I don't know what I'd have made of it as a child/teen, if I could have appreciated the way fact and fiction is melded; Goldman writes as though he's adapting an original novel, written by S. Morgenstern, and the book is riddled with notes on what Morgenstern's (boring) original is like, why Goldman is cutting those bits out, loads of commentary on Goldman's own private life (all lies), and this edition has the epilogue where Goldman is bypassed by Morgenstern's estate for the sequel in favour of Stephen King. It's just brilliant. I think I'd have swallowed all the lies, until clocking (being a European after all), that there are no such places as Florin and Guilder. The question is how long it would have taken me. I was confused even now, as an adult. Awesome.

A Wrinkle in Time: Why is this book a classic? One of the poorest works of fiction I've ever read. I am so confused. Not one proper character in the whole book.

Benny and Omar: This was fun to read, but I don't know if it's very good, really. It reads like Colfer went to Tunisia and thought he might make a book out of that, but not like a tonne of research went into it. It was funny to read while in Wexford and hearing the "syrupy accent", that the Tunisians fail to recognize as English, live.

Endless Night is an artsy Agatha Christie. Inside the mind of the killer and all that. Meh, really. Not badly written, just not interesting beyond the props.

Ask a Policeman was a bit of a disappointment. It's a collaboration between several members of The Detection Club:  Anthony Berkely, Milward Kennedy, Gladys Mitchell, John Rhode, Dorothy Sayers and Helen Simpson. Each writer (except Rhode who writes the general set-up first chapter and a concluding one if I remember correctly) wrote a chapter featuring another writer's favourite sleuth. This is a highly entertaining premise if you are accquainted with said sleuths already so you can appreciate the jokes even better - but sadly I am not. I've only read Mitchell and Sayers out of this lot (I borrowed the book because of Sayers, obviously). Frankly I was bored to tears by the end when Rhode worked through the "true" solution. Sayers's bit was very good though. It's worth reading the Goodread's reviews on the book, by the way. The preface in this edition is by Agatha Christie, but was originally written for a Soviet magazine or something so it's not book-specific. (Any mistakes in facts now are due to me having to return this book before writing any notes - someone had put in a reservation for it at the library. Imagine!)

I don't remember what this one is about at all. Let me google... Oh right! Now I remember!  There were bits of this that I quite liked, but I didn't like how everyone was perfectly okay with a child dying because he was "a horrid boy". So that's alright then, push him out the window. Right. Makes perfect sense. Put that in your Discovery channel documentary "What Made Britain a Sick Sick Place", thank you. It's all jolly good and I say and then KILL THE KIDS.

Ah, this was Christie being clever again, causing outrage among the readers I believe. She'd claim she's not breaking the whodunnit rules, but I don't know - she's definitely bending them. I was surprised at the solution but I don't know if I approve. Tut tut.







Aaannnnddd finally a Marian Keyes I picked up on a whim. This novel must have been written during her latest bout of depression. It's very sad in places, very moving. Unfortunately also a bit uneven. The story doesn't hang together all the way. I wonder why these aren't being filmed? If this was a Swedish writer in Sweden the film deals would have come so fast, you guys.

She should allow herself to not have to be funny, I think she could write a better book. That said, the depressing paint scheme of the missing singer's house is hilarious! I found a quote on Goodreads so I'm pasting it in here, since I don't have the book anymore: “He'd done his walls with paint from Holy Basil. God, I yearned for their colors. I hadn't been able to afford them myself but I knew their color chart like the back of my hand. His hall was done in Gangrene, his stairs in Agony and his living room--unless I was very much mistaken--in Dead Whale. Colors I personally very much approved of.”  Paint colours for the depressed! 

Marisha Pessl: Night Film

My eldest got this as part of a gift when she graduated from school this June. I told her great, I really enjoyed Special Topics of Calamity Physics, Pessl is really good! And apparently she thoroughly enjoyed Night Film herself. She was "gripped and hypnotised" as the covers promised - me not so much. Because a) why are random words emphasised in italics through the whole book? So annoying, like in comics! I stopped after half a chapter to read only the italicized words to see if they spelled a different story but if there is a code (there might still be) I didn't get it. Also, not one of the characters really came alive for me, so I didn't care thus didn't scare. A bit meh for me I'm afraid. Written like she wants a movie deal. 

Diana Wynne Jones: Enchanted Glass and The Lives of Christopher Chant

I had a hankering to read some Diana Wynne Jones. Christ, what an imagination that woman had! So much that if I'm truthful the stories aren't even finished, they're tacked together at the end with more bits of fantastic events and creations peeking in that we hardly get to know. Always ending with the feeling that there could be more - just perfect for kids. I wish I'd read all of hers as a child.

The pictures crack me up. Underneath Enchanted Glass you see the heat wave phenomenon of Swimming Towel Drying on Balcony and my pajama legs and bare toes. Christopher Chant is held by a hand already busy holding a sports bra. I am just the BEST at snapshots.

Rennie Airth: The Dead of Winter

Last I read a Rennie Airth book was back in 2006, and then I was in such a mindset that I liked it. I am in no such mindset now, instead the formula bores me. All these serial killer books are always written in the same way, I've long since stopped feeling any suspense. Airth isn't great at producing characters with personality either, it's more like he only tells us that they have personality (like the producers of Doctor Who, Torchwood and Sherlock do, they turn to the camera and say, hey, these people care about each other, ok? now we shall proceed with a television production that never makes  you feel it but that's ok because we're after telling you sure). You can see Airth's "this is personality" tricks a mile off. Anyway, serial killer, WWII, rations, snow, bombs. There you go. 

Vary the length of your sentences please

In my second to last post I gave out about staccato writing, and thanks to soshul meeja I've found this link to Gary Provost's 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing. Quote:

 This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It's like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals--sounds that say listen to this, it is important.

Got to love the internet - there's always someone out there who has already expressed what you were thinking in a coherent and succinct manner.

Tripe

Completely unreadable. Completely. I'm guessing this goes for the entirety of the authorship.

Ondvinter av Anders Björkelid (plus Eldbärare och Förbundsbryterskan)

Såvitt jag förstår är Björkelid oöversatt, så vi tar det väl på svenska då va. För omväxlings skull.

Faktum är att en av döttrarna haft författaren som lärare de senaste tre åren (hon tog studenten i år, hipp hipp och allt det där, och om detta var en normal blogg hade jag skrivit något smart om det då). Hon säger att han var väldigt bra, så det är ju kul. ("Har du haft den här Anders Björkelid som lärare förresten?" "Men mamma! Ja, i TRE ÅR. Jag har pratat jättemycket om honom! Varför lyssnar du inte?")

Boken är sådär, den är inte dålig men jag är inte helt såld. Jag ska läsa nästa så får jag se om det tar sig. Problemet är att det inte känns som om så mycket händer, fast huvudpersonernas liv vänds på ända när deras mystiska far dör och de attackeras av professionella strypare och monsterhundar och tvingas fly ut i vinternatten. Jag tror problemet är att allt är så mystiskt och de inte får svar på några frågor, vilket gör att berättelsen stampar. Först på slutet får de veta allt, men då är det fortsättning följer. Det blir lite lajvmanus över det hela, roligare att spela än att läsa kanske?

Uppdatering 2014-06-27: Nu har jag läst de följande två, Eldbärare och Förbundsbryterskan. Rättare sagt, jag har skummat dem, speciellt den senare. Och nu är jag inte snäll längre. Det är i stort sett omöjligt att få flyt i läsningen. Efter en tag upptäckte jag att jag läser den med rösten från killen som leder Barda på SVT i huvudet - något som är en bekräftelse på att boken känns som en lajvmanual. 
För så här går det, hela böckerna igenom: Någonting händer, dvs författaren lägger upp en scen som ska föra handlingen vidare - folk som träffas, dialoger, ev slagsmål - och därefter pratar huvudpersonerna Sunia och Wolf om vad som precis hänt, antingen med varandra eller i en inre monolog. Eller både ock. Det är precis som ett Barda-avsnitt! Och enormt tråkigt.

Språket är genomgående stackatoartat och upphugget, vilket gör läsningen monoton, och eftersom handlingen tydligen inte kan föras framåt utan att man pratar om den är det väldigt mycket dialog, något som också bidrar till en hackig läsupplevelse. Jag klarar inte av att läsa böcker där ingen mening tillåts vara längre än tio ord, jag minns att samma stilistiska grepp drev mig till vansinne den enda gången jag läste Ken Bruen. Det ska väl vara sparsmakat antar jag? Spända meningar = automatiskt spännande text? (Fast nej.)

Redigeringen är slarvig; kursiv stil används för att markera t.ex. en drömsekvens, men ibland kursiveras även det normala skeendet när korrekturläsningen inte fungerat. Och rent generellt hade hälften varit nog, böckerna hade mått bra av en riktigt sträng redaktör. Jag lämnas också med ett intryck av ett torftigt och enahanda språk, vilket jag misstänker kan vara orättvist för när jag söker på nätet ser jag att många uppskattar böckerna just för språkets skull. Själv hakar jag upp mig på att huvudpersonerna hela tiden utbrister och ropar. Nej, detta är ingen författare som målar bilder med sitt språk som Selma Lagerlöf, eller till och med Astrid Lindgren (som i ärlighetens namn kan vara mer än lovligt tjatig ibland) gör. I princip hela Förbundsbryterskan utspelar sig i underjorden, hos vittror och annat knytt, med referenser till sagor och de regler som finns i sagor, det är blod och mörker och det BORDE vara bra, men det är sååå trååååkigt. 

Kommer INTE att läsa den sista. Däremot barnböckerna var skojiga! De lånade jag och högläser för sjuåringen, så de är helt ok.

Traction man

This is one of our favourite books. We've borrowed it twice from the library - at the moment I'm forcing Minimus to listen to proper "chapter books" as we say in Swedish and have actually managed to make him PAY ATTENTION and ENJOY it, so we may be moving away from picture books. You never know, hope springs eternal. But Traction Man is a brilliant picture book, I highly recommend it. So funny, such a lot of little clues and extra information in the pictures, I love stuff like that. Sadly the library doesn't have the first Traction Man book - this is the second - and I was considering buying it but now that we are growing up, book-wise, I might not. We'll see. I should get it and donate it I suppose. I never blog about all those scores of kids' books I read for my son, but I thought I'd make an exception.

Fire and Bitterblue by Kristen Cashore

The second and  third part of the Graceling  series had to be read of course. My eldest daughter lolled and lolled at the covers of Fire and Graceling, which show the silhouettes of beautiful lithe girls ready to shoot arrows or something. Pretty lame, and they don’t really do the books justice. Somewhere on the internet someone has written something intelligent about this pervasive image of strong girls with bows or crossbows - as in, without one you're not strong, and you can't be strong in any other way. I don’t think these books are fantastic by any means, but they are, on the whole, well written and imaginative, with a strong ambition to discuss more difficult subjects – like how to forgive people who have been coerced to commit terrible acts of violence under an oppressive regime, with definite nods to the South African truth commissions (Bitterblue), or if a person whose parent was violent and tyrannical has a duty to atone for said parent, or a right to atone (Fire). The covers, however, are just pretty and shallow and kick-ass; elements that exist in the books, but aren't the most important by any means. The stories are darker than you'd imagine, but in my opinion they could have gone a little darker yet, and more philosophical.

Anything else I wanted to say I've long forgotten (this is another overdue draft being finished). 

Maze Runner by James Dashner (ha)

Enjoy my Paint skillz. Can't help but feeling my internet friend wasn't sharing my indignation enough.

Eld, Nyckeln

Oh lookit here, another crooked photo. Let's do this in English like I did for the first one, since they're also popular abroad. I read these for the book club, borrowed both and read them quickly. Like before, the strength is in the description of the inner lives of the teens and smalltown Swedish life. The fantasy bits are a bit so so. It's being filmed now and they've released a picture of the cast, which is all new talent. I hope a lot of the rest is new talent too because for some of this novel I was fecking casting it in my head, it felt a little predictable... Anyway, now the read is documented. 

Marie Phillips: Gods behaving badly

God, this has been sitting since March 28th too. I can hardly remember the plot at all. It wasn't as good as it wanted to be, I can tell you that. I was vividly reminded of Randall Garrett's Pagan Passions - read all about it if you click there, but you'll have to scroll down a bit there. This one is not at all as lurid as Pagan Passions, but ... anyway. Not too far off. Not very memorable. It was a spontaneous pick at the library, one must to that sometimes must one not.  

Jasper Fforde: The Song of the Quarkbeast

You know what? This post has been waiting to be written since the 28th of March, so the picture can just stay skew-ways. 

I do like a bit of Fforde, but I think I most often like the first book in a series - before he gets too clever. This is the second one of the Dragonslayer novels, I've already read the first. And well, the cleverness starts to take over sometimes and it gets a little masturbatory. Not literally omigod it's a kid's book. Come on. Anyway, that doesn't matter because it's a kid's book so it's not long enough for excessive punning and what have you, so I enjoyed it. That's all I remember. On to next draft, hey ho. 

Look what I found

And bought:

As actual novels to read they seem shite, but I bought them in Myrornas for ten kr each which beats three times the price as collectible items and they are cuuuute. 

Feed and Graceling

These are also from the list of the soon to be filmed. Quite popular books too, took a while for them to work their way down to me from other library aficionados, but then they showed up at the same time. 
Another cracking photo of my bed, I really do spoil my readers.

I quite liked Graceling. I didn't fall head over heels for the characters, but close. It lacked a little fleshing-out somehow. But it's a decent fantasy novel with a decent secondary universe, and towards the end when the plot was coming together it was genuinely exciting too. A good amount of violence, just there because the world is a violent place; a very excellent feminist theme and a great heroine. I put in reservations for the other two books in the not-really-a-series and am looking forward to it. Feed was not as much my cup of tea at all. I like that it's a zombie book without focusing on the zombie gore. Instead it's about how humans are living after the disaster. The medical side of it is well-crafted. Everyone is infected with the dormant virus and will reanimate after death or after being bitten/otherwise exposed to the live version. This is very realistic, a nice touch. I just found the whole thing a little too Aaron Sorkiny, it became a mix of The West Wing and Newsroom and just a bit too snappy. Despite every opportunity to make me care about the characters they faded into the background and became accessories to the one-liners and the technology. I don't think I'll read the others in the series, even though they apparently are better ( even better if you're a fan).

Divergent and sequels

Well, this was fun! Sort of. Not good but you know, entertaining if you don't mind not thinking too much about things. If you think too much you might not even think it was fun. I think I've changed my mind now. It wasn't great at all.

Please gaze ecstatically upon these library books upon my lap in my bed just before me nodding off. Can I take a picture or what, what.

So, teen dystopia. Fabulous genre. These books, well the first one for starters, are being filmed now (as you can see if you've got good eyesight and can make out the print on that little black sticker on the right-hand book). Because teen dystopia is Hot. Sizzling even. I borrowed Divergent because it's on the list I wrote about with books you have to read before they're filmed. It's one of the most popular ones so it took a while for the library to give it to me. Then I read it and thought ok, pretty fun, so I borrowed Insurgent too. But then I got bored so I've read the synopsis for part three, Allegiant, on Wikipedia and I'm alright with that, thanks.



Divergent is often compared, I’ve noticed, to The Hunger Games, reasons presumably being a sixteen-year-old girl as main character, a first person narrative, that it’s based in the US (more specifically in Divergent, in a future, ravaged version of Chicago, populated by only a fraction of the current population) after somthing cataclysmic has happened to destroy society as we know it now, and, most importantly, that a bunch of teens spend a lot of time fighting bloodily against each other in a large part of the book. However, where THG has a very clear message about the horror of violence as entertainment, how violence desensitizes and violates both victims and aggressors, about living under an oppressive government and how even a person of some resources is never free in a dictatorship, Divergent has a message of … well… I dunno. Sex? Because honestly, there’s a lot of ogling going on. Nothing happens beyond petting (it’s all a bit Twilight without the obvious preaching, and I can’t help wondering about that since her acknowledgments at the end of the book start with a big thank you to God. Which makes me, a secular sort of Catholic, squirm more than a bit), but oh boy are we ever obsessed with the taut young adolescent male physique. The strip of skin between his t-shirt and his trousers. His tattoos stretched over his muscles, blah blah blah. Drowning in his eyes. Pressing of lips. Hands on curve of hips and melting sensation in stomach. All the while he is eighteen and she sixteen which, although not Twilight standard, still means that any sex is statutory rape if consummated. But never mind that. I’m Swedish and we have a more laissez-faire attitude to teens having sex after all; it’s mostly the adult woman clearly revelling in the hotness of the teen bod that is a bit disturbing. I had a rant half written out about how weird it is that a presumably middle-aged or so woman is leering over young men like this but then I looked Veronica Roth up and she's born in 1988 which makes her ... math is hard ... not so old as too make the idea of sexing an eighteen-year-old revolting. Not that I judge. Much. However, I betcha it goes down well in the target audience. I wonder though if it doesn’t become more a girl book than a unisex book? Also, nuclear family FTW? Is that a message? I think that ”it’s not really good to kick ass but it sure looks cool” is a sort of message too. And "tattoos are cool and Have Meaning and people who have tattoos aren't necessarily bad people you know". It's all very "I just discovered MTV" in 1991 or so.

I’m being facetious. Albeit with a heavy hand Roth wants to tell us that selflessness and bravery are good values and often amount to the same thing. How true courage is about being able to say you’re afraid and to stand up to peer pressure. Stuff like that. I just don't think it's very well done. She's a sort of competent writer (especially for her age) but not very original and a bit messy. Her writing is very sparse and brief (which fits the general emo moping mood) so you'd be excused for mistaking the style for clarity of thought. Her plot lines and entire secondary universe, however, lacks structure and cohesion, in my opinion. If you think about it, it's just not that believable.

One of my big issues with the books are that Roth is clearly incapable of truly imagining a world with different values than the one she lives in. You therefore have an unspecified future, after society has been turned upside down by wars and other horrors - but basic male-female gender roles of contemporary America remain the same, for example. Which means that her attitude to sex sucks. You might think – and I think she thinks -  that she is sex-positive, since she acknowledges sexual desire. It is however clear that to her abstinence is a virtue. Tris and Four can indulge in some heavy groping and then stop, and the only reason for them stopping seems to be that it isn’t right to do the sex. And there is no forthcoming explanation for why it isn’t right. And I’m not going to swear to it because I didn’t keep count or anything, but I do believe that the shifting is interrupted by Tris, who takes a deep breath and pulls down her t-shirt past her hips again, like. Now, I’m all for her backing out of sex if she loses the hots, and I would have gone whoop-whoop if that is what happened, but it’s not. She (and Four, who is a Good Guy you see and Respectful) backs off by exercising self-control. Which I can also be fine with but I’d appreciate some reasoning behind why this is important. Otherwise, the message is that sure, you get all hot and bothered and shift like mad but don’t go all the way girl, and most importantly, girl. This is not sex-positive. Fundamentally the idea that a promiscuous woman is a slut remains, a morality not at all so definite when it comes to men. Anyway, gender roles and views on sex were not the only examples I had of Roth's lack of imagination, but it'll have to do for now. Mostly because after a while I got a really icky feeling off it, like this book truly could have a negative impact on young people because it's so insidious.

That said, the two youngsters maybe do the deed in Insurgent,  the second book. But it’s a bit Asimov (I haven’t read Asimov really. But my husband told me once that he is meticulous about not writing sex scenes. Instead the two approach each other, and then new paragraph and ”Afterwards …”) so I’m not sure.

Right, this post has been sitting here for a month now I think without being posted, waiting for me to wrap up with something smart. Since that's not gonna happen I'll publish now. Oh, I'm obviously going to see the film - I'm not proud, also I'm a hypocrite. But I'll wait until it hits the television.

Decisions decisions...

Which one to start with?

reservations

Update: this was written yonks ago, I just fixed the link and suddenly publication date changes? Don't understand why.

So I read this Buzzfeed list  and put a number of books on reservation because why the hell not, some YF always goes down. The first one to arrive was Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy, a book so lame (I assumed) that my teenagers showed zero interest in it (unlike that book Divergent which has a Hype). Well, it is quite lame. As nothing more than competent entertaining literature it's okay, just lacking in that certain something that can make even so-so books a bit more than average. It's always the characters that have to be so interesting that you want more of them. Somehow they have to be imbued with real traits and the at least hint of the complexity of actual people. Vampire Academy has none of that, sadly. Worse than that though is how sexist it is. Our main character, Rose, is a half human half vampire hybrid, who is gorgeous and curvy (unlike full-blood vampires) which makes her desirable to all men (no gay relationships in this book) at the vampire boarding school she attends together with the full-blood vampire Lissa that she has sworn to protect. However, exploring your sexuality and enjoying sex will brand you a slut and start some malicious gossip, as Rose soon discovers. After all, we can't have women uncrossing their legs all over the place, can we. She immediately accepts this and starts modifying her behaviour so people finally can respect her as an honourable woman. Oh I haven't the energy to even analyse this shit, but it's bad. Here's a picture instead.

Iain M. Banks: Consider Phlebas

After reading Ela's post on how much she likes Banks' books I borrowed the first one in the Culture series - but I am so bored. Half way through and I DO NOT CARE. Hang on, not half way, only about a quarter. I misremembered because it feels like I've been plodding through this forever. Should I persevere? Is it worth it? Boo. Re-reading the post I see that this is the (only) one she didn't care for much. Should I chuck it in and try a different one just? I thought it'd be good because it starts with an execution (not that I enjoy executions per se, but because I enjoy novelty of thought) done by slowly drowning the victim in sewage. But it didn't pick up. Also, it reminds me of a Douglas Adams universe, Vogons and all. I just can't take it seriously. Douglas Adams without the humour. What.