Esoterika

I am further astonished at how few books I read this year (I read ca. 4x as many in 2009!). One big reason is that I spent a lot more hours productively writing, thus less time seeking distraction/ inspiration/ entertainment, and also less time seeking reassurance from others' stories. Still, reading is an absolutely vital source of fuel for my creativity, so getting enough fiction fodder is important to me. Almost all of my major writing streaks have been catalyzed by something I read.

I also read more books in 2009 because I discovered some very enjoyable long series (Robin Hobb’s 6 Farseer and 3 Ship of Magic books, Patrick O’Brian’s many Aubrey-Maturin novels), whereas in 2010 I didn’t encounter anything so compelling. Another factor is that in the last two years I’ve discovered a lot of great webcomics (which I’ll review in another post), so apparently I’m getting more of my entertainment from those sources.

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*=best; bold = recommended

*Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan. Again*, astonishing. Who is this guy, and how can I be more like him? How has he remained so deeply and directly in touch with his inner child in all its aspects, both charming and unsettling? Magnificently original art and writing, by turns eerie and touching. Very highly recommended. (*cf. The Arrival)

*Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. Dickensian Gothic erotic suspense with Rashomon-style twists of perspective. Good stuff; dark, twisted, and fascinating. Waters truly nails the voice of the period, and pulls off an impressive series of four surprise reversals of the plot. Thanks to ceruleanfleur for recommending; I want to read more by this author, and see the BBC adaptation.

The Ionian Mission by Patrick O’Brian. In 2009 I hugely enjoyed the first several books of the Aubrey-Maturin Napoleonic Wars series, but this one did not seem at all unified, and did not draw me as much.

Strangers in Paradise: Love and Lies (graphic novel). Good stuff, a section of the story I had missed.  Part of an outstanding series.

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon. I ambivalently recommend this. The prose is brilliant, the premise is intriguingly bizarre (a detective noir set in an alternate universe where a post-WW II Jewish homeland was founded in Alaska), so one can’t help being curious about it, but the story is damned slow, unappealingly gloomy, and annoyingly inconclusive. It reminds me of Dirk Gently, but not as funny—a shambling absurdist screwup aimlessly pursuing a murder case that remains bizarre to the last. I adore Chabon’s masterpiece, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but none of his other novels have ever done it for me.

A River in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters. Completely disappointing, the only Peabody book I can recall being bored by. I hope that is a fluke, not a trend.

Re-read:
Port Eternity by C. J. Cherryh. I last read it in High School, so gave it another try. My recollection stands: not one of her better novels. Arthurian archetypes in space; repetitive and thinly characterized.

(part of) *Terrier by Tamora Pierce. I returned to this as narrative reassurance, at a point of insecurity with my own writing. A solid chewy gritty engaging fantasy; I think it’s one of her best.

Nonfiction
*Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon (essays). Given my lack of interest in reading nonfiction lately (other than instruction/ research), I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this—far more than his recent novels, to be sure. A hugely enjoyable read; fun, hilarious, profound, poignant, sarcastic, insightful, fearlessly revealing, and, as ever, brilliantly phrased with an acuity and originality that makes me feel hackneyed and unoriginal... Simply excellent stuff. If you’ve ever had the feeling that you’re only masquerading as an adult, or as a parent, then read this.

Sometimes the Magic Works - writing technique /autobio essays by fantasy author Terry Brooks. (I’ve never read any of his fiction.) An accurate portrayal of the writing brain, though it doesn’t offer any deep insights, to my perspective; I think it would be more revelatory for beginning writers. Mostly it’s just interesting to find kernels of recognition between my brain/ process and that of a successful author: not new information, just a sense of confirmation: yes, it is that way; yes, that can work professionally. For a fantasy superstar, Brooks is humble and down to earth, as I remember from seeing him at a con. He openly acknowledges the huge role that luck played in his success.

(parts of) *Knitting Rules! by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee. Warm, funny, reassuring, useful. This book taught me to successfully knit socks, and is lots of fun to read.  Recommended to me by elfie_chan.

Started to read, gave up on:

Treason’s Harbor by Patrick O’Brian - I’ll come back to this, I just kept getting distracted before I got fully into it.

Dragon Keeper by Robin Hobb - 150 pages in, I still didn’t care where it was going or what happened to the characters. It’s competently constructed, it’s just not any fun to read, freighted with endless dreary internal monologues. Very disappointing, given how much I enjoyed her stellar Farseer series.

Deerskin by Robin McKinley. She certainly captures fairy tale high style, but that doesn’t work so well at novel length. I’ve never seen so much telling (vs. showing) in my life... pages and pages that read like a character outline, not a novel.

The Bonesetters’ Daughter by Amy Tan. I found the historical Chinese part interesting but depressingly tragic, and the modern American part tediously mundane. I’m just not into modern realism!

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman (short stories). I tried five, found them all pointless and unappealing. None of them really give you access to a character, a personality. I loved Sandman, but so far, I have not liked Gaiman’s prose fiction, which I realize makes me a pariah in fantasy geekdom. (I don’t like A Song of Ice and Fire, either. I know, heresy!)

Gentlemen of the Road by Michael Chabon.  I was hugely excited by the idea of Chabon tackling this period. Someday, I devoutly hope someone will write an epic historical novel about medieval Khazaria. But sadly, this ain’t it.

Instead, this seems to be Chabon kicking back from his usual Weighty Themes and goofing off with a purplescent evocation of Robert E. Howard, H. Rider Haggard, and other Golden Age overwrought pulp. Only a writer as skilled as Chabon could get away with such outrageous, audacious sentences ... kids, don’t try this at home.  But here, the bold magnificence of his sentences distracts from what he is actually saying. When you get to descriptions like ‘an archipelago of turds’, it’s clear that he’s playing around, taking the literary equivalent of a romp at the beach. It’s a gleeful indulgence, but perhaps not a story that sticks with you.

I’ll probably still give this one more try, but the endless baroque embellishment of every single phrase started getting on my nerves. He has distinctly drawn characters, but they’re cartoonish, with no sense of what makes them tick.  It was all very exuberant, but it didn't make me care.

This is so brilliant I can't even stand it. I would pay a LOT to see John Cusack in this role. To say nothing of David Bowie.

http://lucylou.livejournal.com/577791.html

Which reminds me I've been meaning to tell y'all about Lucy Knisley's comix. Which are awesome--clever, funny, poignant, cranky, and quite well drawn. As seen at the above LJ, and also at http://www.lucyknisley.com/

Interesting movie, I enjoyed it. An entertaining, if not entirely effective, conglomeration of parts: quirky, iconoclastic, offbeat, “complexly ornery” (-reviewer Rob Gonsalves). It strikes me as a movie that suffered a bit from passing through multiple hands and differing concepts—maybe one producer wanted to do a dark comedic parody of the superhero genre (which is how it starts), and another wanted to do a standard superhero blockbuster (there’s about one scene of that) and another wanted to do a mythology storyline like “Heroes” with a touch of “Unbreakable”. As a result, they don’t develop the latter part of the story and its ramifications as much as I wanted. There were some intriguing emotional possibilities in there, and I actually wish the movie had been a little longer in order to probe that territory. The ending fairly screamed “sequel” or even “series pilot”—and if one got made, I’d definitely watch it, in the hopes that some of that unexplored territory would emerge.

Despite the parody tone of the beginning, it strikes me as one of the more realistic treatments of super-strength I’ve seen—Hancock is constantly shattering pavement when he lands, breaking cars and windows with casual gestures because the world just isn’t built to handle his strength, and he just doesn’t care enough to rein it in. The enmity he earns from police and public strikes me as equally realistic. It’s superheroing minus the fantasy—in that sense, of course, clearly indebted to the Watchmen, Miller’s Batman, the Elementals, and other comics that bent the cleancut superhero tropes to fit the gritty, disappointing, unheroic frame of known reality.

From the beginning, you can’t help but enjoy this dilapidated, disreputable antihero, unshaven and Flying Under the Influence, as he slouches and staggers and curses his way through “heroic” feats that mean well but (ouch! that stings!) do more damage than the actual criminals incur. Hancock’s motivation is both simple and convincing: he is lonely, rejected by the world because he’s different and dangerous, and he doesn’t have the first clue how to make other people like him, so he has ceased to try. The unusually earnest PR man whose life he saves gives him a glimpse into the emotional alternative of belonging and family, and convinces him to try to mend his ways. (Meanwhile, the PR man’s wife is uneasy about having Hancock around.) After a stint in rehab, Hancock shaves (with his fingers), squeezes into a snazzy supersuit, and manages not to botch a rescue. The movie briefly looks like it’s going to get all belatedly noble and Jerry Bruckheimer on us. Fortunately, it doesn’t.

I did see the “big twist” a while before it arrived—not because it was necessarily predictable, but mainly because Charlize Theron (as the PR man’s wife) is a good enough actress that it became clear that her unease was not springing from the obvious reasons. Unlike the majority of reviewers, I don’t think the movie falls apart after that sudden swerve; I think that’s exactly where it gets more interesting, just when it’s starting to look like the straightforward parody has turned into a (yawn) straightforward Hollywood redemption and heroism story. It develops some potential depth, some emotional complexity which (in between requisite intervals of demolishing stuff) is handled with surprising delicacy. It examines how we define our heroes, what we expect of them and how easily they can fall from favor. It touches most gently on race issues, implying rather than spelling out. It raises and then complexifies and then backs off from what could have been a really interesting love triangle. And even the fact that it is a mishmash of parts, inconsistent and rough at the seams, is part of its appeal, because it disdains formula, keeps the viewer off balance, and keeps the texture varied. The contrast of the over-the-top comedic aspects, the real-life aspects, and the serious and thoughtful dramatic elements created a total effect that was enjoyably surreal, in which I was never quite sure what they were after or where they were going with it, but looked forward to finding out. I came out of it with a smile on my face and some interesting possibilities rolling around in my head, and by that it was worth seeing. And if nothing else, Will Smith fills out a supersuit quite well...