1. “Scherven van smaragd” (Jill Stolk)

[allangtegek.livejournal.com]

Scherven van smaragd (“Shards of Emerald”) is an autobiographical novel/collection of short stories by an Indo (Dutch Indonesian/mixed Asian-European) writer. It addresses, in its seven “intermissions”, written in the ‘present’ of ’82 or ’83 and eight “STORIES”, spanning the years of her youth, a variety of issues.

We’re treated to short sketches of Jill’s childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, alternated by commentaries from ‘later on’ (except the closing intermission, which stands alone). Due to its nature, it’s difficult to give a more detailed summary than that.

I’m not sure how much I liked this book. While I definitely think it’s well-written, I don’t like it as much as her second novel (coming up when I reread it again), and I find it difficult to say much of anything about it, really.

I have a longer review (also more stream-of-consciousness-y) up in my journal, in Dutch.

Iron Shadows, by Steven Barnes. 23.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Cat and Jax are private investigators, bad-ass martial artists, and exes. Though their marriage failed because of their inability to cope with their traumatic pasts, they still work beautifully together and have sizzling sexual chemistry. When they get hired to investigate the leaders of a cult - former conjoined twins Tomo and Joy, who have poorly defined psychic powers that may involve ectoplasmic tentacles - they must go undercover in the cult's sexual healing workshop for distressed couples!

Portions of this novel are just as excellent as it sounds. I am a total sucker for the "undercover at a leather bar/sex club/sexual healing retreat" scenario, and also love stories about bad-ass partners. And hey, not just psychic kids, but psychic conjoined twins! Steven Barnes, you just go on exploring your id - I will always be along for the ride.

Unfortunately, it's also sprawling and messy, often dissolving into overheated and hard-to-follow descriptions of sex and psychic experiences. It reads much like an early attempt at the much more successful Charisma (and has a cool link with the also more successful Blood Brothers.) I wouldn't recommend this to start with, but if you already like Barnes, it's worth a read.

Warning for violence, sexual abuse, racial slurs, and a brief but memorable instance of anal tentacle rape.

#15: "The Arrival" by Shaun Tan

[sweet-adelheid.livejournal.com]

The Arrival has been reviewed by people who are not me here, here, here, here, here and here.

(Did you ever get the feeling that it was a book you just really had to read?)

My review - should you want another one - is here.

(Hint: this book is awesome in its awesomness...)

The Calcutta Chromosome, Amitav Ghosh, 1/50

[cyphomandra.livejournal.com]

First post - I've picked up a lot of interesting recs from this community, but my first dozen or so books are going to be working through my own rather massive TBR pile, at least until I get distracted...

In the near future Antar, living alone in a crumbling New York apartment working as a cataloguer for an artifical intelligence network, finds an ID card for a business he used to work for, a card for a co-worker who disappeared in Calcutta in 1995. In that place and time period, Murgan (the co-worker) investigates the medical history of malaria, but he keeps bumping into an odd group of people who seem to know more about his research than he does. In the late 1880s, Elijah Farley, a British missionary with scientific training, visits a malarial research laboratory where the local assistants know far more about the disease than the British overseer…

The story twists between times, places and narrators, and it drew me along with it very successfully; the writing and the pacing all work well, and there are some great moments (I particularly enjoyed Urmila’s attempts to buy fish, which were vivid and frustrating and set up a large cast of distinct characters in a very small space. I had more problems were the overall McGuffin for the story, the Calcutta chromosome itself, and the ending, but I think much of these due to the type of story Ghosh is telling and my expectations about the story I wanted to read.

( Vaguely worded spoilers that still give away the ending. )

Despite these comments I enjoyed the book a lot, particularly Ghosh’s skill at creating vivid and believable characters. I think I have The Glass Palace hanging around somewhere, and will probably try that next – The Sea of Poppies, which looks fascinating, appears to be the first in a series, and I’m not sure whether the rest are out yet.

Google skillz failure: history books by POC

[holyschist.livejournal.com]

I hope this post is okay--I haven't seen many books of the type I'm looking for recommended or reviewed here and I'm running into Google trouble.

A lot of what I normally read is nonfiction history books, mostly pre-18th century. I mostly read about Europe and Asia, but I'm happy to branch out. I have a particular soft spot for books dealing with art, science, trade goods, and women's history.

The problem I'm running into is that the vast majority of these books are written by white people, even when they're about, say, China. I'm having trouble finding books about history written by POC in English--when I try searching I mostly come up with books about POC, but not usually by them. Unfortunately, I only read English fluently, or this might be easier.

Short of browsing shelf by shelf through the history section at the library and hoping I can figure out author ethnicities from the back cover, does anyone have ideas for how I can find history books written by POC?