What Psychotherapists Should Know about Disability by Rhoda Olkin

Nonfiction. What the title says, and a whole lot more. This was, in a word, great. It's one of those books that doesn't pretend at any answers, and that
wants you to walk away better equipped to keep asking questions of your own. It's geared towards clinicians, obviously, and it addresses incredibly difficult
subjects head on, like what ethical/professional responsibilities a clinician has towards a client with a disability who is considering assisted suicide. This book is brilliant at untangling disability from pathology and putting them in their respective places, and for that alone it should be read by anybody with any serious contact with the community.

The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig by P. J. O’Rourk

Okay, yes, it's funny. Very much so, in places. But it's also one of those books that tries to be slick and hilarious by consciously making the most politically
incorrect jokes possible, with the result that it's by turns disgusting and actively repulsive. And, you know, I'll laugh at almost anything, as humor is one of the greatest forces of healing we have at our disposal. But the jokes here have a real bite to them, the face-saving retractions ring hollow, and I'm just not interested in wading through homophobia and sexism to get some whackily funny housekeeping tips.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Fiction. Two cousins embark on a joint career in comics against the backdrop of New York and World War II. Which does not sum this book up well at all. The thing is, Chabon had me from the very first page. He made me laugh, he made me angry, he nearly made me cry. One of the fundamental yardsticks I apply to everything I read is my own skill -- could I have written this? And the thing is, there's something so fundamentally daring about this book, in the way it plays with reality and superreality, with fiction and history that goes leaps and bounds beyond places I've ever comfortably gone in my own work. This
is written as a faux-historical account of the careers of the title characters, but with a simultaneous and intense intimacy to their lives. The theme here is escapism -- from the people who are killing your family for the crime of being Jewish, from your own desires which draw you to men instead of women, from poverty, from dullness, from pain. The message is beautifully executed with complication and tenderness: you can never get away, not entirely, and
that's what will save you. Chabon lost me in a few places with that exact daringness I spoke of, as Joe's storyline pushes the envelope of believability
and then busts it right open and leaps out, bold as life, daring you to still believe. But I know why Chabon chose this particular style, and he always
got me back with these wonderful, screwed up people who love each other so very much. Which is to say nothing of the writing, which was good enough to
throw me out of the narrative sometimes to go back and reread a passage (a particular description of the Brooklyn Bridge has stayed with me for weeks).

In short: highlight of the month. Brilliant, even if a few elements were more appreciable to me on an intellectual than a personal level due to my own tastes
in fiction. There was more than enough through the heart in the rest of the book.

The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde

Post-mastectomy reflections and journal entries from the former Poet Laureate. This is gorgeous, unsurprisingly. It's raw and pained and unapologetic about
both. But it also bothered me on a fundamental level, which I finally identified as the same place that will never be able to align itself with traditional feminism. Lorde's story is partly about a woman who refused to settle for prosthesis after her breast was removed, who believes that women don't need to have two breasts to be beautiful, that we don't need to conform to make everyone else comfortable, and further that immediate reconstruction or replacement ducks the fundamental need for healing and acceptance after cancer and surgery. And yep, she's absolutely right, and her stories of the chilly response
she received from her own doctor, who told her to wear a falsey because she might make the clinic look bad, really pissed me off. However, Lorde is also one of those feminists who never turned the critical eye back on herself, who never stopped to think that perhaps a false breast is important to some women. Maybe wanting to have two breasts again isn't bowing to the misogynist pressures of a domineering society, but is a simple, healthy need to reclaim part
of a lost and damaged self. In short, she's one of those feminists who is absolutely certain that every woman should stop unquestioningly believing in the male hegemonic propaganda, and start believing in hers. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?

And then again, on a more personal level, this book made me revisit my memories of my mothers battle with cancer, and of her reconstruction. And it made me wonder a little bit if the immediate recourse to a fake breast isn't part of the deep, inconsolable wound that she carries to this day. There are parts of her that have never recovered from cancer, that believe wholeheartedly that she will never be attractive again, and that wither a little more every
time she looks down. And yeah I wonder, if her doctors and everyone hadn't automatically assumed she wanted a reconstruction the very second her breast was removed, would she have had time to heal just a little bit?

Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner

Fiction, species chicklit. Snarky, plus-sized heroin deals with life and love and all that. There's a fair amount to criticize here -- the vast over reliance
on coincidence as a literary device, the unevenness of an author who started out to write a funny book and then realized halfway through that she had more
here to work with so maybe she should get a little serious. But that's just the thing, there's more here to work with. The endnotes to this book explained
a lot of my more spectacular eye roll moments; this is a first novel, and initially conceived as autobiography with a twist of what-if. Which pretty much
explains everything, right down to that indecisive hovering between writing the everywoman book and the escapist "don't you wish this happened to you?" book. But for all that? The writing is great. No, really, it's quick and funny and poignant and fundamentally good. There's a current of something alive and crackling and real through this book which carried me over the more amateur mistakes with only a few bumps. Weiner has published three novels since
this first one, and I intend to read them in chronological order. She's good, and I suspect she could be excellent and that she might be, with practice.

The Cat Who Saw Stars, The Cat Who Robbed a Bank, and The Private Life of the Cat Who

Fiction, murder mysteries. With cats. Cute. And actually that's all I have to say, which is funny because there are a few startling literary choices made
in this series, but this is the sort of reading which is below my level of analytical caring -- I put away one of these books in an afternoon when I want
to chill and not think very hard. Plus, the cats are cute.

Second April by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Poetry, from the middle period of Millay's life. I loved it, but then again I always do with her. I have a marked preference for her sonnets -- the longer
poems are equally beautiful in diction and image, but the repetitive, sing-songy pattern which made Millay famous and which I like very much is something
of a detriment over a hundred lines, pushing the poem down into consciousness so all you actively perceive is the rhythm. But yes, I love the sonnets and
Millay herself, her bravado, her cunning, her brazen sexuality, her wistful view of the human condition.

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire

Fiction. A Cinderella retelling in the perspective of an ugly stepsister, from the author of Wicked. Hmm. Okay, this book is just "not quite." Which I need to put in the proper scale -- the set-up is brilliant, as Maguire's generally are, and the follow-through is good, and the denouement is fine. But I didn't want fine. I wanted this book to walk up to me and knock me on my ass with a right hook to the gut. Instead it came up, dazzled me with some fancy footwork, and then asked me for a sedate waltz. Parts of this book are sheer genius -- the cleverness of the title which you don't realize until the very last page, the autistic ugly stepsister, the treatment of beauty in art and in life, Clara/Cinderella as a voluntary shut-in, the setting in sixteenth-century Holland, the reality of a prince searching for a wife. And the writing itself is outstanding, the sentence-by-sentence pace intricate and beautiful. But this book, which was excellent by the standards of fiction everywhere, fell just that tragic bit short of the extraordinary thing that it could have been, that feeling
when you read a book and it's as if the whole thing rings like a bell, the note perfect and clear and dazzling. And this sounded as if the author left his finger on the bell when he struck it, to over-extend the metaphor. I'm glad I read it, but I’m beginning to suspect this is Maguire's shortfall, and it makes me sad to see this beautifully conceived idea land in the realms of good and not blow-your-mind.

Eight Little Piggies by Stephen Jay Gould

Nonfiction. A collection of essays from the evolutionist. Strong writing, as always, with that fire of deep passion for natural history. Unfortunately, its one I dont share (yes, in fact, there are actually subjects Im not interested in, or at least not passionate about). Also, it took me all of Hens Teeth and Horse's Toes and most of this book to realize just what's going on with these essays. It's a strange feeling when you agree wholeheartedly with somebody, as I do in this case, but find their style of argumentation, well, smug and irritating. Many of these essays have the quality of speaking around
his fellow scientists, making very pointed comments on them and their theories in the guise of writing for the public. I'm overstating this sense and his general smugness, but I put the book down unfinished, and frankly I don't do that very often at all.

Exuberance: The Passion for Life by Kay Redfield Jamison

Nonfiction. Context and analysis on positive mood and passion. Chewy, verdant, wild and dense, like all of her books. She suffers from an extreme case of bipolar, and you can tell that many of her books are conceived and written at the height of controlled mania. It lends them a scope, a degree of lateral thinking, an inclusiveness that's pleasing and a little overwhelming. I tend to walk away from her books, including this one, with a deeper knowledge of
history, poetry, or literature. This book is particularly intense and associative, and it's a bit light on the psychological and psychopharmacological research for my taste. But I love what she writes irregardless of content, for the way she harnesses pathology and turns it into brilliance (her previous book on manic depression among famous artists and poets and the effect on the creative temperament and output could just as easily have featured an autobiographical chapter).

How Do You Kiss a Blind Girl? By Sally Wagner

Nonfiction. Reflection and autobiography from a woman who lost her sight in adulthood. This book Is interesting pretty much only as a typification of that vast, unbridged divide in the blind community between those congenitally blind from birth or early childhood, and those who lose their sight much later. Wagner's day-to-day life looks an awful lot like mine, and I grinned in recognition through some of her rueful reflections of more spectacular stumbles (note: do not trash someone until you are positive they are not in the room with you). But we just think differently, in a global sense. Wagner thinks
like a sighted person who has suffered a tragic loss, and I think like a blind person, and that's as well as I can characterize it. She's okay with forms of patronization and coddling that set my teeth on edge because they "make me feel safer," and I nearly tossed the Bookport across the room when she explained how horrible she finds all these "accommodation lawsuits" because "you don't make friends by suing people. Um no, no you don't, but since when do I want
to make friends with the apartment manager who refuses to rent to me because of my dog? Yes, yes, I know, she doubtless feels alienated by the blind and sighted communities alike now, and she doesn't understand us as stubbornly as we don't understand her, but I'm right and you're wrong so there neener neener.

Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manors by Ellen Kushner (<lj site="livejournal.com" user="ellen_kushner"

Fiction, historical/fantasy, depending on how you look at it. Politics, class, sword fighting, and an intense, subtle M/M romance. This book just made me happy. It's clever but not baroque, emotionally resonant, sweet and bitter and tense. I get the impression this was Kushner's first published novel, and there are a few missteps -- most notably a belief that the reader will be as interested in secondary characters as in the protagonists. But what protagonists they are -- subversive, unfitting, sympathetic. It's also complex and nuanced, and I suspect when I read it again (which I will) it will be a new experience
and angle all over again. By leaps and bounds my favorite out of the month.

The Vanished Man and The Stone Monkey by Jeffery Deaver

Fiction, mysteries. Quadriplegic forensic scientist chases criminals. And wow how much do these books piss me off? It's not just the handling of the disability (which is rather ham-handed and painful) or the plotting (baroque to the point of near incomprehensibility and to the detriment of any consistent characterization). It's mostly the grating style, the ad nauseum use of a select few storytelling devices (show black hats planning something nefarious, show white hats walking into trap unawares, switch to black hat narration and watch white hats save the day followed by painful "this is how" explanation). Mostly, I'm resentful of writers who are frankly mediocre, but who sell books hand-over-fist. I keep waiting for this guy to get better, because there really are flashes of hope: the fact that the quad actually has a partner and sex life, the very occasional bit of evocative or lovely writing. But he's just not cluing in, and eventually I'll run out of patience and bail on the whole thing.

The Tiger’s Child by Torey Hayden

Nonfiction, memoir. One in a series in which Hayden recalls her work as a teacher and therapist for psychologically disturbed children. In this particular book, she reconnects with Sheila, a six-year-old girl she worked with in a previous book who was prone to violent rages and elective mutism. Sheila is a teenager now, and by tracking the course of her life this book squarely confronts some of the difficulties inherent in the 1-year school approach, and in Hayden's books themselves. It's incredibly meta-analytical (Hayden gives Sheila a pre-publication copy of the previous book about her, and they discuss
the different ways they remember things and personal motivations). Clever, complicated, self-reflective, a little rueful.

Trumps of Doom, Blood of Amber, Sign of Chaos, Knight of Shadows, Prince of Chaos

Fiction, fantasy. Books 1 and 6-10 of a series. Rereads, actually, from many a year ago. I like these for the quirky, snarky first-person narration, for the fantastically original worldbuilding. The last two really piss me off because the story is left dangling in so many places and there clearly needs to be another book, but the aforementioned positives outweigh many a sin in my eyes. Also, who doesn't love an exploration of just what can happen when a reality-shifter drops acid.

Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

">Fiction, serial killers. I'm assuming this book was once shocking and groundbreaking. And okay, yes, eww with the eating people and the skinning. But also? Shut the fuck up, Thomas Harris. There are few things more obnoxious than a male author with a hard-on for his female protagonist. Worth reading for Hannibal the Cannibal, because I dig that abnormal psychology stuff, but did I mention the objectification? The sexism? The way the reader is never allowed to forget
about gender? How every male she meets falls for the heroin? Yeah, as it turns out, the unnamed and hovering Harris narrator is by far the most hateful and creepy personality around, and that's including the aforementioned cannibal.

S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton

Fiction, mystery. Erg. Other people remember when this series was good, right? I mean, there was a time (perhaps in the Cambrian Period) when it wasn't dull, predictable, and irritating, yes? I shall leave it there, except to note that the narrator has become about as reflective and interesting as freshly scrubbed glass, and that the character has not changed one iota in nineteen books. Also, Ms. Grafton clearly wants to be writing something, anything else, to judge by the ill-chosen departures from usual series style, and she should. Please.

Love Works Like This: Moving from One Kind of Life to Another by Lauren Slater

Nonfiction. Diary entries from a psychologist and mental illness sufferer as her pregnancy progresses. Intense, fragmented, strangely refractive, like the book is a giant crystal set to catch the light of her story. She's a talented writer in that imagistic way which I can appreciate but never quite adore, and she struggles with questions of motherhood and responsibility that I find deeply compelling. Worth it for the personal face on the surprisingly common
phenomenon of pregnancy-amplified mental illness, and for a mature grappling with the ethics of psychotropic medication while expecting.

1776 by David Mccullough

Nonfiction. History of military action at the start of the Revolutionary War. Well-researched and packed with great anecdotes, but unfortunately lacking in that more global vision which makes military history most compelling. This is a book best suited to period buffs, as a decent level of contextual politics and sociology is necessary to really enjoy it. Still, a fascinating glimpse of the tiny handful of untrained, resource-depleted men on whose genius and mistakes history turned.

Survivor’s Quest by Timothy Zahn and Before the Storm by Michael P. Kube-McDowell

Fiction. Star Wars expanded universe novels. Operatic, amusing, rather brainless. This is the point of Star Wars, so I got what I wanted.

What Blind People Wish Sighted People Knew About Blindness by Harry Martin

Nonfiction. Utter, unredeemable crap. Written for sighted people, and I can't tell if the author really is that stupid or if he's trying some not-so-clever PR. I particularly like the part where he explains how blind people show greater moral development, and how they are not subject to the sort of socialized judgmentalism that sighted people exercise. Because, you know, blind people are never racists, that's all a visual phenomenon based on appearance, didn't
you know? My absolute favorite moment came in a section where he points out a number of assumptions sighted people make (some of them even accurate) and quotes from letters written by blind people to describe them. He explains how frustrating it is to be spoken around ("what does your friend want to order?") and quotes from a letter that goes, "my husband is blind, and he finds it very offensive when people talk around him or for him." . . . yeah. Tragically not irony, either.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Fiction. Speculative history about the Vermeer painting of the same name, narrated by the girl herself. The highlight here is the portrayal of this deeply erotic relationship conducted entirely through gesture and art, so that the narrator's loss of virginity to her butcher fiance is pedestrian compared to the simple act of dawning the earrings to sit for the painting. They never say a word, but the book crackles with wanting, an intensity of desire which is not just physical but also about the creation of enduring art. I liked it for this conceit alone, though the narrator is something of a Mary-Sue and
the style is occasionally clumsy.

A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

Fiction. Third in the epic A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series. GIBBER! FLAIL! I love this with the quivering adoration of a kicked puppy. Make me love them all! Scare me half to death! Break my heart! And then do it again, pretty please. This is unexpected and twisted and brilliant, and I need to stop talking now because I want to save this series for a post of its own. Except to say that I love the way he contravenes standard fantasy tropes and makes them fascinating or horrible, and I pretty much adore every single one of his characters, including the hateful ones, and I gawp at the way he writes without
flourishes, with smooth simplicity that is spare but vivid (how does he do that?).

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

Fiction. First in her famous Merlin series. It's funny -- somehow I managed to miss this one until now, though I had a pretty solid grounding in genre classics. So I'm reading this and it's fine, whatever, interesting here and there, but mostly old hat. Until I realize that actually this is the prototype on which so much of the current canon is based, and from that lens it's really quite fascinating. I think my favorite element thus far is when she toys with this question of greatness. Merlin, after all, is by his own admission little more than a vessel for the will of the gods, and so in a real sense he is a nobody.
And who is the hero: the man with a God in his head, or the one following him with nothing but his sword and his plain, human courage?

The Passion of Alice by Stephanie Grant

Fiction. Narrative of anorexia, hospitalization, sexuality, and love. The smartest thing about this book is the way it repossesses anorexia from popular conception, transforming it from an external "you are sick because you are a woman and you want us to see you thinner" into a deeply internal experience of control, which is far closer to the truth when you're talking about five foot eight women who are ninety pounds and who are dying and who will not eat. Unfortunately, the last quarter of the book falls flat in that way it does when the author realizes she needs something clear and decisive to happen, but can't commit herself to anything. Clever, though, with some complex religious overtones and some interesting, if confused, attempts to draw it all together into a narrative of suffering and beauty and deprivation and control and love. First novel, I suspect.

The Hollow Hills by Mary Stewart

Fiction. Sequel to The Crystal Cave. This one introduces Arthur and takes us up through the events of his coronation. I'm still stuck on these questions of man and God, power and destiny, but I want to hold off until I'm done with the series. Except to say that I personally find man-made so much more compelling than God-made, even though God-made is dazzling and extraordinary. Destiny is such a cheap storytelling trick (yeah, you too, JKR) and
Stewart conducts a razor dance of intention and fate and volition with the Gods' vessel Merlin as her narrator and Arthur his perfectly designed charge.

Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think?

Nonfiction. Recollections from the physicist, teacher, and Nobel Prize winner, somewhere in the hinterland between sketch biography and memoir. Chatty,comfortably first person, amusing. I suspect it's an unfortunate consequence of the books' geneses -- transcriptions of some of Feynman's oral retellings -- but he comes across as rather self-centered, out to show everybody how he thinks differently and his way is better. Also, I think if I had ever met him
in real life, I would have adored him at first breath and then strangled him within five minutes. A good time, though, particularly the first one, with some pricelessly funny anecdotes about the stranger side of life at Los Alamos in the years before the bomb.

The Empty Chair by Jeffery Deaver

Fiction. Another in his Lincoln Rhyme series, with the paralyzed forensic scientist who solves crimes. Seventh verse, same as the first -- painfully overdone plotting, inconsistent characters, and ham-fisted handling of disability. So, Light, you may ask, why do you keep reading these books if they piss you off so much? Why, I may answer, because sometimes I like a good seethe.

The Dawn of Amber by John Gregory Betancourt

Fiction. Authorized prequel to Roger Zelazny's Amber double-quintet. Like a mediocre fanfiction writer, Betancourt opts for regurgitation and repetition rather than innovation, with painful results. I got through a fourth of this, found its plot precisely matches the trajectory of Zelazny's first Amber
book only with different names, and dropped it in disgust. Note for future reference: imitation is cheap, and good derivative fiction requires some actual derivation.

The Pandora Principle by Carolyn Clowes

Fiction. Original series Star Trek book. Eh, you know, these things go through you like water. This one at least has some lovely personality complexities, touching as it does on some of the more troubling aspects of Kirk's nature by sidelining him for the entire story. Also, I know I'm in the vast minority here, but I actually enjoy Spock and Saavik.

Eleven on Top, Ten Big Ones, To the Nines, Hard Eight . . .

Fiction. Trouble-magnet bounty hunter Stephanie Plum chases fugitives, blows up cars, attracts homicidal maniacs, and regularly fucks up her love life. Rereads. I picked up the last one as a bit of a pallet cleanser, and ended up barreling through the entire series backwards. These are ungodly funny books with sparkling dialogue and characters drawn with comic boldness. For all that, these books manage to take themselves seriously to just the right degree, slipping in moments of fear and tenderness and familial outrage. The romances are funny and sometimes sizzling, the supporting cast strong, and everything always comes out okay in the end. Someone, I don't remember who, once complained to me about the female protagonist being such a professional screw-up (she sorta forgets to load her gun all the time) and so I went looking for feminist and other analyses. Unfortunately, I found them. It's a crap argument -- she fails to live up to male standards of kickassedness, so she's a bad female protagonist because those are the standards that really matter, and good female protagonists do it just like the boys do. And men can be screw-ups, but wymyn can't because it's just really bad wymyn PR, yo. Never mind that said protagonist has an uncanny instinct for tracing people and the tenacity of a mad dog. *shakes head*. It's good light reading that'll lift your spirits, and that's about as analytical as I want to get.

The Field Guide and The Seeing Stone by Holly Black (blackholly)

Fiction. First two books of the Spiderwick Chronicles for young readers about children's adventures with faerie. You can tell these are good kids books because I found them excruciatingly boring -- the really good kidlit doesn't get swamped by the sort of adult-directed social commentary which made Sesame Street so fun but so educationally ineffective. Props for employing an unconventional family and a socially maladjusted protagonist, though. I think I'll get more out of her young adult fiction.

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean (pameladean

Fiction. A retelling of the old folk ballad, starring a small liberal arts college in the early seventies. I really dug this clever book, intended for lit geeks much like myself. The heroin is so vibrantly a literature major that I want to alternately hug her and smack her. My one complaint is structural -- this is the sort of book which accumulates 400 pages of weird happenings and saves up the explanation for the last 30 pages, ensuring that you will miss
details and some of the deeper emotional resonances of moments that the narrator didn't entirely understand. To be fair it is a retelling, but I don't know how reasonable it is to expect people to know the bones of this story (I didn't). Definitely worthwhile, though, and I'll be rereading to catch those very moments I missed.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Fiction. Kidlit where bored young girl goes through a mysterious door and falls out in a different universe controlled by the creepifying "other mother." Rather formulaic, but with glimmers of edges that come from kidlit with a gloss of adult implication (the other mother says a few things about "forgiving the sinner, not the sin" that make me wonder just what she's supposed to represent). Still very much kidlit, though, which means I enjoyed but will shortly forget. Because like Blues Clues, writing for children which is actually comprehensible and fun for children is pretty staggeringly dull.

Flesh and Blood, Blood Test, Private Eyes and Bad Love by Jonathan Kellerman

Fiction. Four mysteries in Kellerman's series featuring a child psychologist and police consultant. I probably shouldn’t have started at random like I did,because the first I tried (and most recently published of the bunch) was disappointing. I kept on, though, and I'm glad I did. Kellerman's strengths are with his original calling in psychology, aberrant behavior, and children. He has a deft, vivid hand with dysfunction, and a keen understanding of the system. The earlier published books I read employ this to the hilt, building compelling mysteries around family and illness and avoiding the pitfalls of improbable
plots, complete lack of children and patients in general, and frankly dull detective work from Flesh and Blood. If I wanted to read a formula detective story I'd -- oh, wait, I wouldn't want to at all. I'm hoping this isn't a general series trend.

Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore

Nonfiction, memoir. A novelist, recovering from cancer, takes a part-time job in an independent bookstore. This is brilliant, in that understated way which creeps up on you. She's got that trick of describing entirely ordinary things like constructing holiday book displays with deep, resonant emotion. The conceit is bibliophilic and beautiful: books and the people who love them as a healing force. In between insights on the publishing and marketing worlds and discussions of customer satisfaction, there are little glimpses of a shattered life slowly mending. Subtle, quietly chatty, informative, intensely
but unobtrusively personal.

The Blue Nowhere by Jeffery Deaver

Fiction. Murder mystery with hackers and an online killing game that gets too real. I read this a few years ago, and it's the single reason I persist withDeaver's other work. It's got the irritating narrative tricks that drive me nuts, but he’s stumbled on a set of characters who are wonderful (and incredibly slashable). The technology is now dated and laughable, and the portrayal of the internet as an inevitably destructive addiction is irritating, but the thing where the quietly brilliant cop gets the disillusioned young hacker out of prison to help solve crime and then takes him home with him totally gets
me. I can't help wondering whether the quality here is due to the fact that these are not Deaver's regular series characters, and so it's not so glaringly obvious when he repeatedly does unbelievable things to their portrayals in the name of plot.

The Cat Who Smelled a Rat, The Cat Who Went up the Creek, The Cat Who Brought Down the House . . .

Fiction. Billionaire and his psychic cats solve mysteries. Ya'll were right -- the last half dozen are really awful. I hop-scotched my way through these, looking for originality, content, or even some cute, and came up empty. And when did the whole "we do things different in the country" routine get so obnoxious?

Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture by <lj site="livejournal.com" user="henr

Nonfiction. A review of fan culture, including writers, vidders, and filkers. This is great just as sociological snapshots and a repository of many of the classically understood theories of fandom and how it operates. It's rather uncomfortably outdated, though, appearing before the internet became a fannish locus. I'm also pretty unhappy with the ways Jenkins fails to push this "poaching" model -- he's a media studies guy, and he never once questions the models
of commercial ownership and audience disenfranchisement implicit in his own damn title. I suspect both these faults will be addressed in his upcoming books due out this summer. And on an entirely different note, how cool was it to see my friends like Shoshanna Green quoted and referenced here.

Dead Witch Walking, The Good, the Bad, and the Undead, and Every Witch Way But Dead by Kim Harrison

Fiction. Science fiction/fantasy. The first three of a series. A generation ago, a bio-engineered plague swept around the world, decimating the human population but leaving witches, vampires, weres, and other species alone. In the aftermath, these groups made themselves known to humans. Decades later, Rachel Morgan, a witch, embarks on a career of freelance private investigating and general mayhem, against a backdrop of a world uncertain about the place of all its
peoples, tormented living vampires, uppity pixies, and a universal, crippling terror of bio-engineering and genetic manipulation. The first book is a bit of a popcorn read, though the touted resemblance to the Stephanie Plum novels fades after the first hundred pages. It's worth sticking out the airily skeletal world building to get to the second book, where Harrison finds her feet and really takes off with some seriously compelling long-range plotting, and a demonstrated commitment to playing out some of the moral ambiguities built into the universe (she's taking all the time she needs, with a nine book contract). Rachel is brash, kickass, and competent, and many of her relationships are intense and sweet, and occasionally sizzling (yay textual femslash and kinkiness!). I do have complaints -- Rachel is a bit too often the center of everyone's concerns, and there are still some sloppy sociological threads dangling -- but I like these a whole lot and I'm definitely sticking it out for the long haul.

Tinker by Wen spencer (wen_spencer)

Fiction. Sci-Fi/fantasy. Due to unexpected consequences of building a transdimensional gate in orbit over Earth, our Pittsburgh spends all but one day of each month on Elfhome. Our intrepid heroin runs a junkyard, builds things, and tangles with elves and other interdimensional troubles. Good God, this is vile. The pseudoscientific set-up is actually sort of interesting, and there was potential in the interdimensional relations aspects of having a piece of the United States on foreign soil, but these things are ignored in favor of transformative!sex!magic, gratuitous romantic entanglements for Mary-Sue Tinker, and truly disgusting racial politics. I kept reading due to a rubbernecking impulse, and indeed it really is terrible to the predictable, patronizing end. After spending the whole book angsting about going to Earth for college because she just cannot choose, Tinker highs off and makes that choice for the entire city after she's turned into an elf by the power of magic!elf!sex (oops, did I ruin that for you?). Also, big points off for the author listing,
yep, Wen Spencer as one of her LJ interests.

Monster and When the Bough Breaks by Jonathan Kellerman

Fiction. Mysteries. Two more in his Alex Delaware series about child psychologist turned police consultant, the former from the middle and the latter the series introduction. I dug Monster -- it plays to the series strengths, sticking to the psychopathology as a tool for understanding crimes, and interesting crimes at that. Unfortunately, When the Bough Breaks did not play nearly so well with me. Kellerman's later dab hand with interesting secondary characters is undeveloped here, and Delaware's clinical evaluations of the people around him which make the later books interesting are clumsy, patronizing, and sometimes offensive here. Also, the last page of this book pissed me off so much with its disgusting, amateur respect for vigilante justice that I was literally speechless with outrage. I'm glad Kellerman found his feet later on, because this early attempt is deeply uninspiring.

Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich

Fiction. Humor/romance/mystery. Latest release in the Stephanie Plum series, and a disappointment. After breaking half out of the formula last time, she returns to it without a single variation. So, you know, it's funny and enjoyable and occasionally sexy, but everything is exactly the same on page 300 as it was on page 1. If I had more faith I'd put stock in the hints that she's actually going to set up the threesome, but it's never going to happen. Someone really needs to sit her down and explain the finer points of writing a successful, sustainable series.

Whose Body? And Clouds of Witness by Dorothy Sayers

Fiction. Historical murder mysteries. The first two Lord Peter Wimsey books, and wow can I ever see how these influenced Bujold. Peter is very much a proto Miles Vorkosigan in that way where most people think he's crazy, but that's just because he's moving so fast. Charming, exasperating, bemusing -- the books, and the character.

How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen

Nonfiction. An extended essay, really, autobiographical and bibliophilic. It made me happy because hi, it's talking all about books. Also, it merrily stomps all over some of that MFA, academic snottiness about books which is just so ridiculous.