Renee Contreras read and liked Ceridwen's review of Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse, #1):

"There are two reasons why I thought this book was alright: fanboats and gumbo, or the complete and total lack thereof. I'm going to use my kids as a shield again and try to cover up the real Scooby Doo fan in this scenario, but I've watched probably ...more There are two reasons why I thought this book was alright: fanboats and gumbo, or the complete and total lack thereof. I'm going to use my kids as a shield again and try to cover up the real Scooby Doo fan in this scenario, but I've watched probably hundreds of hours of Scooby Doo in my day. (Alright, line up, Mum needs a human shield again!)

Anyway, one of my favorite parts of a Scooby Doo episode is when the Mystery Inc gang lands in whatever foreign/ethnic land, and there's a scene where all the fun ethnic stereotypes are trotted out, you know, for authenticity. "We're in Australia, gang!" Fred says, loosening his ascot. Suddenly a surfer riding a kangaroo hops by the Sydney Opera house, and calls out "What a right sheila" to Daphne. Then Shaggy and Scoob pile some Vegemite onto their Scooby Snacks. We really are in Australia! Can't you feel it?

Anyway, Dead Until Dark is set in Louisiana, and there wasn't one fanboat, Voodoo priestess eating gumbo, or alligator. Sookie's semi-talking dog never ate a po' boy sandwich, no one called New Orleans "Nawlins", and not one peep of Zydeco could be heard floating over the bayou. The people in this story - and I mean this term specifically; I mean people, not supernatural beings - were from an ethnicity not generally visited by Scooby and the Gang*: the ethnicity of poverty.

So much of this romance-y chick-lit has a plucky middle-class heroine falling in love with a super hot rich guy. "She was sitting the library, having just done up her raven locks in a sensual twist using a pencil, which is how you can tell she's a librarian. Manly Hardsteed strode in the room, making altogether too much noise. She shushed him, and their eyes locked in combat" Sex ellipses. "Manly touched her face,** 'I'm not just hot and rich,' he said. 'I'm also a Duke.'" The occupations for these heroines amount to sartorial choices, a sort of Scooby Doo montage of their bourgeois worthiness.

Sookie's social milieu is the American working poor, and this felt kind of unexpected. In the little mystery part of the plot, someone is killing slutty, trashy poor women, and the cops pretty much don't care because these women are disposable tragedies who are asking for it. Vampires end up being this metaphor for the blood-sucking elite, who blow into town with their drugs and parties, and use up and discard the authentic locals. But the blood sucking elite aren't really real either; they're an urban legend used to scare the downtrodden into minding their place.

The thing that bugs me about Sookie is that I feel like Harris spends far too much time letting us know exactly how Sookie may look like one of these women, especially to a deranged killer, but she isn't really. She's a virgin, she has an income from something other than her waitressing job, she doesn't really drink like all the other floozies. I wonder if Vampire Bill isn't some sort of embodied noblesse oblige as a counter-point to the other inhuman richy riches. Is all the loving description of her fancy fashion choices - and I have to say the love scene where her banana clip features prominently is one of the most unintentionally funny things I've ever read - a sort of poor girl dress-up? Is Vampire Bill a hot, rich Duke?

I don't know. I think I've probably over-thought this, as usual. These sorts of stories are not about fancy prose or sparking dialogue or other literary whatnot; they're personal. Whether I like one of these things tends to come down to whether I like the main character. I hated Bella Swan because she seemed like one of those girls that doesn't really like other girls; the kind that disappears from your life when she gets a boyfriend because she doesn't see relationships with women as having any real value.

Sookie's not this bad, not even close. But I can't really see myself sliding on the jelly shoes and emptying a can of AquaNet into my full, lustrous blond hair before heading out for a night on the town with Sookie, because she seems to cultivate a casual cluelessness that I find truly frustrating. There are maybe 600 instances where Sookie puts on some hot mama outfit, prances in front of one of the guys who want to do the nasty with her, and then they guys get all still and look at her with darkened eyes. "What?" says Sookie, "Do I have something on my face? Why are looking at me like that?" Internal monologue: "Omg! I can't understand why all of these guys hate me." For a psychic, she seems awfully un-psychic. The men have gotten all still, Sookie, because they have transferred computer power from their brains to their throbbing manhoods. Of course he got a chubby when he looked at that one white dress with the little red flowers, matching red high-heeled shoes, and white plastic earrings. Of course.


*On of the more recent Scooby Doo movies takes place in Louisiana, and in addition to the things mentioned already there are also: catfish, hot peppers, a plantation, pirate treasure, zombies, and a vengeful Cat Goddess. It's called "Scooby Doo on Zombie Island" and features a slumming Adrienne Barbeau. Unlike Scooby Doo classic, the zombies and cat goddess are actually real, which made me have nightmares and a theological epiphany. I love Scooby Doo.

**I don't like it when people touch my face. Why does it always happen in these kinds of stories? Is there a whole sexual expectation of face-touching that I'm missing out on? Is it because I'm a Midwesterner, and we need something like 6 feet of personal space just to feel comfortable? (less) "

Renee Contreras read and liked Ceridwen's review of Bridget Jones's Diary:

"I'm not much for the beach read, or chick lit, or whatever this is called, which is fairly dumb of me. I can tell you from hard experience that Gravity's Rainbow + the Wisconsin Dells = EPIC FAIL. (Although, to be fair, Wisconsin Dells – Gravity's ...more I'm not much for the beach read, or chick lit, or whatever this is called, which is fairly dumb of me. I can tell you from hard experience that Gravity's Rainbow + the Wisconsin Dells = EPIC FAIL. (Although, to be fair, Wisconsin Dells – Gravity's Rainbow = regular fail.)

I just re-read this by accident, in a serendipitous fit of laziness and disorganization. I tried to loan my copy to someone, couldn't find it, checked it out of the library, gave it to her, went home, read the best book I've read in a while (The Thirteenth Tale, btw) and then didn't want to read again for a while. You know how that is? You have such a good time in a story that you know whatever comes next is going to look pale and wan and you're going to resent it just for not being the previous book.

Anyway, here I am bookless, a book teetotaler, a book purity pledger, and then I find my copy of Bridget Jones (yes!), and she beckons to me with a packet of Silk Cut and whatever the bloody hell an alcohol unit is, and my reading abstinence is over. I'm a book slut. Also, possibly a book drunk.

The story is a year in the life of a British, 30-something, unmarried, careerish girl. It's in diary form, as you may already have surmised. The plot, insofar as that matters at all, is cribbed from Pride and Prejudice, but not in a massively symbolic, look-at-what-I'm-doing-here way. (She also condenses Mrs. Bennett and Lydia into Bridget's mum, which is so funny/perfect.) The tone is over the top, self-deprecating, self-involved, hysterical.

What a perfectly brilliant snack of a book, but I don't mean that in a dissy, ironic, you're not really literature kind of way. Comedy is hard, maybe harder than drama. I absolutely loathe the third-act descent into treacle that plagues most comedies, like the writers woke up and thought, “You know, I've been doing a good job of a light, airy tone with mild observational humor and good characters, but what I really want to be doing is writing To the Lighthouse and showing how character determines our fates and that Love is the Answer.” Grrr. Fielding doesn't make this mistake, and it's a better book for it.

Fielding also has a nice ear for the way people talk and some of the inflections and innuendos of girlness. For example, there's a minor character called Rebecca who says things like: “She doesn't smile as much as you. That's probably why she hadn't got so many lines,” to Bridget, about a mutual friend who is the same age. Or “That dress makes you look very thin today!” If you can spot the problems with these sentences, then you are a girl. I know this may come as something of a shock for guys who can tell. Here have a Pimms; you'll feel better.

V. good.
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Renee Contreras read and liked Ceridwen's review of Brisingr (Inheritance, #3):

"So, the library is demanding that I return this tome. I think I may be done reading. If I hadn't lost my real book, I never would have gotten 200 pages in. I only managed that reading every third page.

I'm sad because Eragon is my favorite...more So, the library is demanding that I return this tome. I think I may be done reading. If I hadn't lost my real book, I never would have gotten 200 pages in. I only managed that reading every third page.

I'm sad because Eragon is my favorite book to love to hate. It's got so many things wrong with it: horrible sense of place, ridiculous "wisdom", bad magic, racial and gender assumptions that range from badly considered to offensive. But the book had a certain greasy charm. It's like your younger brother stole all your best fantasy fiction, and instead of learning how to masturbate most effectively like most 15 year olds, wrote this energetic, stupid, fun story. And when I say it's like that, what I mean is that's exactly what happened.

From the back flap: "Christopher Paolini...graduated from high school at fifteen after being homeschooled all his life." Really, Chris? Oh save me Jebus, there are too many jokes. I can't even decide. Anyway, enough ad hominem attacks. Let's move on to attacking his work.

At 17, Paolini writes the silly, stupid, but charmingly sincere Eragon. Now, in his third book, Paolini is maturing as a writer, and it's not a pretty sight. The energy of Eragon has been replaced by endless, leaden descriptions of landscape. Paolini clearly wants his main characters to change and grow through the book, but lacks both the skill and self-awareness to do this. What's left is a bunch of whingeing over how bad responsibility sucks and how mean authority figures are. And how, Chris. What it is, my brother.

In one of the essays in How to Travel with a Salmon, Umberto Eco proposes a novel way to identity pornography. The identification of pornography is one of those legally relevant needs, and usually comes down to "I know it when I see it." Eco dismisses the usual "intention" arguments, pointing out instead that most pornography is light on plot. Pornography then shows movement or travel from one place or another wholly in real time. The scene opens, the gardener drives to the rich woman's house, he rings the doorbell: all of this occurs without a cut. The real time movement both pads the running time and allows for a suitable refractory period. More than money shots and girls gone wild, real-time movement constitutes the true hallmark of pornography.

It is in this way that Brisingr is pornographic. I believe it to be the first book to be written almost entirely in real time. When Eragon runs through the desert for two days, it takes two days of thirst and deprivation for the reader to get through it. No doubt when I defend my thesis on post-modernism and the fractured narrative at Homeschool University, my readers will lob questions about Brisingr at me, pointing out how deeply experimental a traditional narrative can be.
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