Nalini Singh - Caressed By Ice & Mine To Possess

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Another two Nalini Singh reviews. As a note, I'm wondering if multiple books in a series count as individual books for the '50 books in a year' challenge, or if they should just count as one? I'm feeling slightly guilty, as I'm working my way through this series quite quickly and it sort of feels like cheating.

If anyone wants to let me know, that would be lovely.

Anyway, on to the reviews!

( Reviews lie beneath, with many spoilers )

Whilst I'm posting - I'm looking for new cook books. Ideally not curries, or similar, as my partner is Sri Lankan and so we probably are fairly good for curry type recipes. Other than that, I'm totally open minded. Obviously, written by PoC, if possible. I only mention this as the userinfo actually states that cookery books are valid books to add to the 50 book challenge.

1 and 2: The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Spiral Road

[lyras.livejournal.com]

1. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid.

I enjoyed this - if you can use the word "enjoy" about such an uncomfortable book. It's a quick read, and I was immersed from the very beginning. Unlike other reviewers I've seen, the rather artificial set-up (Muslim man approaches Westerner sitting in cafe and keeps him talking by pouring out the story of his life in the USA) didn't bother me, because I was too interested in where the story was going.

( Cut for vague spoilers )

( The ending )

Overall, worth reading, but not a favourite.


2. Spiral Road by Adib Khan

"Masud Alam has lived in Australia for the past 30 of his 53 years. Now his father is dying‚ drifting in a haze of Alzheimer′s‚ and Masud has returned to Bangladesh to say goodbye and to reconnect with his family."

I know virtually nothing about Bangladesh, so I was always going to find this interesting, and the timing (post-911) made it even more fascinating. Masud is a fairly typical "blank" protagonist who has spent most of his life trying to escape his past, which includes fighting in Bangladesh's war of independence. As soon as he returns home, he is caught up in all sorts of intrigues, from his mother's attempted matchmaking to his brother's problematic business dealings to his nephew's worrying extremism.

I loved this book. The quietly wistful writing is just up my street, and despite knowing very little about the setting I was quickly drawn into Masud's world. I'll be looking for more of his work now.

Adib Khan was born in Bangladesh but has lived in Australia for over thirty years, and from what I can tell his stories focus on the clash of cultures and the question of home. He doesn't seem to be very well known, but I highly recommend him to people doing the 50 book challenge.

The God Box, Alex Sanchez

[sanguinity]

27. Alex Sanchez, The God Box.

Paul, his girlfriend, and all their friends are Christian; together, they make up the core of their high-school's Bible club. Paul genuinely loves his girlfriend -- they've been dating since middle school, and she's his best friend, to boot -- but he doesn't feel sexual passion for her. He has hopes that passion for her will kick in someday; after all, a footnote in his high school health ed book had suggested that "sexual curiosity toward others of the same sex" is only a "temporary phase." So Paul waits, and prays, and hopes that his prayers will be answered.

And so, perhaps, things would have continued, had not Manuel arrived in town. Manuel who wants to attend Bible club because he, too, is a Christian. Manuel who is gay, and out, and doesn't believe that homosexuality is a sin.

There is so very much I loved about this book. Because I intend to ramble in an ultra-spoilery way, let me first summarize my reasons for love: being queer isn't drawn as being in opposition to being Christian (even despite the ubiquitousness of the traditional queer/Christian tension driving the book); the characters are drawn with much compassion, making them a joy to read; coming out was portrayed as being about integrity and ethics in a very true-to-life way, and not as a quest to be understood and accepted by the larger society.

( In which I ramble, and drop many spoilers )

I would absolutely recommend The God Box, especially to Christian queer or questioning youth, as well as their allies, whether adult or youth, Christian or non-Christian, queer or straight. I'm not entirely sure how well The God Box would read outside the LGBQQ + allies group -- after all, it is definitely written to validate a particular experience of (allegedly) conflicting identities -- but for readers within that group, it could very well be one of those ever precious no estoy loco books.

"Kitchen" by Banana Yoshimoto

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Kitchen was very much off the beaten path for me - a gentle, dreamy, lilting 1988 novella of sadness and love (and lots of Japanese food and tea :). The delicate attention to details, especially colours, reminded me a bit of Sei Shōnagon's classic Pillow Book, which I read a little of now and again to soothe my tired mind.

Aya, Skim

[sanguinity]

28. Marguerite Abouet, Aya.
29. Marguerite Abouet, Aya of Yop City.

These didn't really resonate with me, I'm sorry to say -- they've gotten excellent reviews before on this comm, and I'm sure they will again in the future.

( But just not my thing. )

30. Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, Skim.

Ah, but I loved this. Beautiful, poignant graphic novel about a teenage, goth, lesbian, Japanese-Canadian pagan, trying to learn to love and feel and yet not be too deeply wounded by the world. Oh, she like to broke my heart.

There were many touches here that I loved. The artwork had a way of blindsiding me with panels that would betray a thought that Skim is unwilling to voice, not even in her internal monologue. Then there's the weird, grasping futility of being a teenager, of living life in borrowed spaces, on borrowed equipment, in other people's margins. And there were the lovely inter-character dynamics: the people who ostensibly care about you are too often the people who are the most casually cruel to you; the anti-whatever crusaders trampling and destroying those who they supposedly care about; the irresistable seduction of someone who "gets" you; the way one's feelings -- especially one's crushes -- don't respond to what one knows to be true; the isolation one can feel from people who supposedly share one's identities, belying the idea that it is one's identities that isolate one from others; how difficult it can be to find someone to trust, even in a world that is full of people clamoring at you that they can be trusted. And here is a portrayal of depression, pain, and surviving someone else's suicide that rings true.

I make it sound depressing, don't I? For some, I suppose, it might be. For others, though -- for me -- it's a portrait of pushing on, grasping for a way to live life around the pain, and to find the people who aren't afraid of your pain. The people who are willing to laugh with you, even in the face of what you both know.

Sly Mongoose

[sanguinity]

31. Tobias S. Buckell, Sly Mongoose

More space-opera-y Buckell goodness! This one is Azteca-centric and set on Chilo, the planet of the dense, poisonous, stormy atmosphere with the floating cities that showed up at the end of Ragamuffin. (Mm! I like stories where the environment has the force of a character.) This one is male-centric again, but didn't feel as men-all-the-time-men as Crystal Rain did -- the main character is a thirteen year-old-boy, his two foil characters are Pepper and a teenage girl from a wealthier city. (For the life of me, I cannot figure out what scene is portrayed on the cover -- is there a point where Pepper and Katerina are fighting together, outside the city, during the final battle? I can't remember it, if there is.)

Sly Mongoose is again a thematic shift from the first two -- I like that Buckell doesn't write the same book over and over -- with lots of thematic undercurrents about community-wide (nation-wide?) poverty, and trying to survive in an environment controlled by wealthy, powerful communities that don't much care if yours lives or dies (well, except that if the crisis gets too bad, they'd have to do something, and as much as they might resent that, their choices might well be intolerable to you). There are also discussions of how the privilege of wealth plays out on an interpersonal level, and women finding ways to get what they want despite the patriarchy they have to work around, past, and through. Buckell also continues a bit of the cyber-punkness of the previous novel, with thematic discussions of open-source democracy and consensus. (I kept expecting a stronger exploration/critique of that than I ever got; that's probably me projecting the book I want to read, rather than the books that Buckell has tended to write. There's chewiness in these books, but he generally goes heavy on the rollicking and light on the toothiness.)

And true to prediction, the story has telescoped out again from the previous books: again, there is more going on past the margins of the story than any of the characters can get a good look at. And because they can't get a good look at it, I can't get a good look at it. I crave book four.

The Diary of Ma Yan: The Life of a Chinese Schoolgirl (trans)

[stephiepenguin.livejournal.com]

The Diary of Ma Yan: the life of a Chinese schoolgirl is six(ish) months in the life of a young Hui girl in Ningxia Province in China. She went to school for a while, and then there was no money to send her and so she discontinued her schooling. Through a series of events (not detailed in her diary, though they are summarised by the introduction in my edition, and more details here), she ends up going back to school, and the publishing of her diary led to a lot of money being raised for children, particularly girls, in the district, to be sent to school. Ma Yan's life makes for an okay read, remembering that it is the diary of a 14 year old. She talks about the traveling to school, the distances people travel to work, and a lot of the current issues in this region of China. What frustrated me about the book was the editing.

The editor has removed any agency from Ma Yan. She has written her diary and he has annotated every page, often a page of notes for a page of diary. When Ma Yan writes, I don't know what she means by the word Mandarin, Haski explains it in footnotes to the reader, so that we ultimately have more knowledge than Ma. Even if I haven't got through the entrance exam this time, Ma writes, circumspect and hesitant to be more blatant about her failure. Haski will not give her this, explaining what this means in detail.

Although a number of the notes do seem like cultural explanation, probably necessary if this is your first introduction to China, and its Hui population, other notes make it clear that Haski feels he is pitching his editorial to morons. After spending many months fretting that she is not near to the top of the class, and therefore she is worthless, Ma finally comes second (behind someone who is repeating the class). She is so happy she is crying tears of joy. This detail is important to Ma Yan, the annotation tells us, as if we couldn't realise that from the tears of joy.

This was an interesting book. I just wish the editing hadn't let it down.