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July 09
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Jam
gave
 
to:
Dr. Chill (Piper)
by Thomas Hoobler
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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recommended for: people who like YA books and psychics
read in January, 1989
Jam said:
"I'm writing this up because I recently read another book with very similar themes, written about 20 years later.
The basic story line is pretty simple: Allie is in care and is sent to a new care home, where she learns she and the other kids all ...more
I'm writing this up because I recently read another book with very similar themes, written about 20 years later.
The basic story line is pretty simple: Allie is in care and is sent to a new care home, where she learns she and the other kids all have some kind of power. Classic storyline follows, where the kids -Allie (TK), Rose (precognition), Timmy (telepathic child) and Jay (techempath)- run away to avoid the dubious schemes of the quasi-governmental agency. Classic, right? Also along is Lew, another teenager who works with them at the home, but isn't part of it.
It's a simple story in that sense, but it's not simplistic. Whether Dr Chill himself is bad is actually pretty ambiguous. The home is a good place for the kids, better for most of them than where they were. Allie's parents (or at least, her mother), put her in an institution/care when she was little, Timmy has spent most of life as an (apparantly) severely autistic child, Rose's father used her gifts for gambling. Lew is not forced to join the centre or abducted by the government, even though I'd think any decent scary quasi-governmental agency would give their eyeteeth for someone who is able to charm people into going along with what he wants, who is psychically likeable.
Even Timmy's refusal to deal with his parent to the point where as far as they know, he's pretty much catatonic isn't entirely justified-- they're not bad people, but he's a small kid. Because he's a kid, he's not able to deal with emotions rationally, especially when they come from other people -he can read, but not necessarily understand, and then it becomes a feedback loop.
It's like quite a lot of YA books in that sense. The story is familiar (runaways!), but how it's treated makes it genuinely worth reading....less
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July 07
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Jam
marked as to-read:
Rapunzel's Revenge (Trade Paperback)
by Shannon Hale, Dean Hale, Nathan Hale
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Jam said:
"Something to keep an eye out for-- the sample pages look pretty good.
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Jam
marked as to-read:
Tales of Terror from the Black Ship (Hardcover)
by Chris Priestley
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Jam said:
"Something to keep an eye out for.
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May 27
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Jam
gave
to:
The Bone Key (Paperback)
by Sarah Monette
bookshelves:
genuinelyinteresting
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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recommended for: people that like creepy horror.
read in May, 2008
Jam said:
"Sarah Monette is a thinky writer and this definitely plays to that strength. In the introduction, Monette says that she wanted to write something with the feel of M. R. James and Lovecraft, but that acknwoldged things that are conspicuously absent i...more
Sarah Monette is a thinky writer and this definitely plays to that strength. In the introduction, Monette says that she wanted to write something with the feel of M. R. James and Lovecraft, but that acknwoldged things that are conspicuously absent in James and Lovecraft's works - things like strong women and sexuality.
And she succeeded remarkably well, to the point where I almost don't want to mention it because when I'm reading it, I don't have to think about it. It's a good thing, when you're reading a book (and after you finished), when you don't have to agree to ignore aspects of it.
It means you can concentrate on the fact that the stories are real, old-fashioned horror without having to hand-wave over the author's obvious issues with X, Y or Z. The style is that mixture of understated combined with very specific moments of precisely terrifying descriptions that is a feature of that type of horror. The monsters are often monstrous, are things that are genuinely creepy and dangerous, but most of the evil, the wrongness is human. Even the things that are dangerous and need to be resolved, are sometimes sympathetic.
The book is a collection of horror stories set about 1950, published separately and in different magazines, but with the same narrator. Later stories do refer to earlier ones, but you can see that they'd play well separately. The narrator, Kyle Murchison Booth, is an archivist, withdrawn by nature and socially awkward (and according to Monette, the most autobiographical of her characters) and a good narrator. Observant, on the outside and uncomfortable, but also unable to look away as much as he might like to.
Strongly recommended, especially for people who like their horror creepy-terrifying, rather than graphic.
...less
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May 23
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Jam
gave
to:
Vampire Babylon: Night Rising, Book I (Paperback)
by Chris Marie Green
bookshelves:
notworthit
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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recommended to Jam by:
amazon, the sadists.
recommended for: no-one I liked.
read in May, 2008
Jam said:
"I bought this book off amazon based on the blurb and my expectations weren't that high. I was looking for a fun read and I liked the idea of a stunt-woman heroine, so I was midling hopeful that I'd enjoy the book.
And wow, was I disappointed. Th...more
I bought this book off amazon based on the blurb and my expectations weren't that high. I was looking for a fun read and I liked the idea of a stunt-woman heroine, so I was midling hopeful that I'd enjoy the book.
And wow, was I disappointed. The first few pages in and I wanted the author to get her narratorial voice sorted out. She doesn't distinguish clearly between Dawn (or any other character's thoughts) and the general omnipotent narrator. Powering through that, and there were some potentially interesting characters, but they were let down by bad writing.
That's the thing, this book reads like badfic. Everything is expositioned, too many things happen with no sense of flow and often, no reason that's not as obvious as The Author Wanted A Sex Scene, The Author Wanted To Say This Statement, The Author...
Dawn is anguished. We hear this a lot. Many are her issues and it's not that these aren't shown, but then they're also explained right after.
As an example?
Dawn gave up. "Kik, she's a starlet. They're here today, gone yesterday. What's the use?"
Even as she said it, she knew she was being too harsh. But excuses were so much easier than getting down to the truth: the anguish of knowing that her mother had been one of them. The fact that the gorgeous masses, like Eva, made life hard for the average girl in America by creating an impossible standard of beauty to compete with.
What? Firstly, the gorgeous masses? Secondly, Hello there, Author! Nice of your to take time to speak to the audience directly about how the media-promoted ideas of beauty are bad. Thirdly, Dawn knows she's being unfair and she choses to be unfair because it's easier.
Dawn kind of sucks.
And it's all like that. The dialogue is clunky, you're never left in any doubt of someone's motivations because it's all explained to you and, just in case you forgot, the text will remind you of Dawn's anguish. Again.
"So you think... a vampire... killed your parents?"
"The police reports said it was some raging psycho who belonged in the mental ward. But they didn't see the guy, his bared teeth, the inhumanity of him. That's why I decided that they were full of crap and I was going to work my way around the system."
[...]
His clear-cut reminder of a parent's death weighed her to the spot. But it also linked her to him, because they were both struggling to shed a child's misery and loss.
It's just-- the book is bad, and it's not even bad the way a lot of paranormal romantic (or erotic) books are, because the characters are so damn cliché, although that is part of it. It's bad because it's badly written, because the book should have had an editor go through it and point out that the readers aren't stupid, that dialogue should sound natural and that knowing when it's the character thinking instead of the author is pretty damn important.
Aside from that, the plot is predictable, which isn't that surprising, but does mean that it's even less worth fighting through the prose....less
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April 25
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New comment on Fiona's review of
The Other Boleyn Girl
(see all 2 comments)
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April 17
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New comment on sage's review of
The Other Boleyn Girl
reply to this comment
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April 11
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Jam
read and liked
Trin's
review of Heart of a Dog:
"Early 20th-century Russian satire. Like Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, I don’t feel like I fully get this book, and yet I still really enjoyed it. I guess in some ways...more
Early 20th-century Russian satire. Like Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, I don’t feel like I fully get this book, and yet I still really enjoyed it. I guess in some ways, that’s a ringing endorsement! Seriously, though, I would recommend this. Especially to people I suspect are smarter than I am. *coughSiriacough*...less
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March 05
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New comment on Jam's review of
Art of Murder
(see all 3 comments)
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February 29
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Jam
gave
to:
Art of Murder (Paperback)
by Jose Carlos Somoza
bookshelves:
genuinelyinteresting
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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recommended to Jam by:
Meg
recommended for: people who like speculative worlds and mysteries.
read in November, 2007
Jam said:
"The basic premise of the book is that at some point around the 1950s, it became common for artists to use people as canvases.
A canvas stays in one position for hours, is prepped to become a blank state, physically and mentally, so the artist ca...more
The basic premise of the book is that at some point around the 1950s, it became common for artists to use people as canvases.
A canvas stays in one position for hours, is prepped to become a blank state, physically and mentally, so the artist can use them to create art. The canvas is, wants to be, perfect for the artist to work on and aims to give up their *self* for the eight hours a day they are that painting, for the time that painting is on show, until someone else becomes the canvas and the original canvas becomes a different piece of art.
And someone is destroying art, murdering the greatest pieces (starting with arguably the most valuable canvas who is also 14-year old girl and moving on).
It's murder, but also, and much more of a priority for most of the people involved, it's the destruction of art worth millions.
The canvases have personality, history, when they're not on. It's the appetite to lose that and become art that makes it more disturbing. They want to have their skin dyed, to stand absolutely still and void, showing only what the artist has put there, those emotions, to be the first canvas for a piece. They want to becomes things, and that's leaving aside Objects, people who become chairs, lights, tables.
What they get out of it are wages, but mostly what they get is being this piece of Art. The ambition is to be the first canvas of a famous piece of painting, the one that people remember as it, even if a hundred other canvases become that painting later.
What it takes from them is devotion and sometimes health, because people are not meant to hold positions like that for hours on end. It takes them letting themelves be broken down into blankness and remade into something else-- and then when that painting is done, being prepped and "stretched" again for the next painting.
The mystery is interesting, not for who did it or who dies, but for how it reflects this world.
It's disturbing, it's well-written and the translation is pretty good. Not 100% natural, but that wasn't a problem for me since the characters are meant to come from different countries so quirks of language make sense.
The thing that didn't work for me was that this art had become pretty much the only significant kind. Part of that is the perspective of the people in the book, canvases, collectors, artists, etc.
But music is barely mentioned, oldfashioned artists are strange. Dance isn't covered. These things exists, but the only thing that's really Art is this particular style. The lack of music, of acknowledgement of anything outside of it just seems so bizarre to me. ...less
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The Canongate Books Advance Review Club
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