Reading Wednesday
Apr. 25th, 2013 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancingsingingWell, look at that! It's Wednesday and I'm posting about reading, all on schedule and everything
Recently Finished
I just read _Hungry Ghost_, the sequel to the one I just reviewed about the lesbian werewolves. I'll probably do a full Goodreads review sometime, but here's a little bit. This book was not as fun as the first one, with fewer sex scenes and more sexual angst on the part of the protagonist. It was still a fun read--I think I read it in maybe three days?
The things that really worked in it:
- Moon gets real about the less talked about stuff in GLBTQ culture, like sex work and BDSM and conflicted feelings about transgender issues and feminist in-fighting about porn and stripping.
- She has a transgender character and does it well.
- There's a neat theme about transcending the either/or bimodal paradigm (sorry, there are actual feminst theory academic words for that teasing my brain, but I'm not dredging them up right now). She ties together some neat stuff from academia with transgender issues and the whole werewolf thing. Interesting ideas and fun literary play.
- There's a little more in there about the protag's relationship with her father, which I was glad to see.
- One pretty hot BDSM sex scene
The things that pissed me off because of my issues:
- Her protagonist is a poor student. Smart, but whiny and easily distracted and completely unappreciative about the opportunity for education. Having gone to school with a bunch of wealthy, privileged kids who partied and had fun while I financed my half of the tuition my scholarship didn't cover, it just kind of hits a nerve. I get that Moon is probably making the character annoying so that there can be dynamic character growth, which leads me to my second pet-peeve point.
- A lot of the character's struggle is explained to the reader and only shown in a really fuzzy, confused way. You know, the whole "Lexie felt like she would never be able to have conviction about anything" type of writing. Which seems pretty common in brain-candy type books and doesn't bother a lot of people. But it really ticks me off because I never let myself do that in my writing but I haven't yet mastered how to pull off showing character growth in a smooth and natural way. So I think I get pissy that someone else gets to write it the easy way and still gets to have people read her stuff and like it.
The things that I think are more objectively places where the book is weak:
- The protag's father is pretty two-dimensional. For someone so important to the protagonist and to her character arc, I think he deserves more depth.
- The pacing is choppy. The character growth is shown in sort of jagged spurts and all the plot and action sort of stop dead while that happens.
- Dammit, not enough sex scenes! Or should I say, too many abortive sex scenes that could be great but stop in the middle because of the character having issues. But like, since the character arc isn't smooth or compelling, it doesn't seem fair to have that ruin the sex scenes. I know I seem to be obsessing about the sex! But since this book is a brain-candy book to me (I mean that in the good sense!) I feel like it should have fun-to-read scenes. And, seriously, one of Moon's greatest strengths as a writer are her awesome sex scenes.
I see that I've sort of ended on a downer here. So I'm just going to re-state my overall take, which is that this book was enjoyable to read and does things right (like trans stuff) that you don't often see done well.
Currently Reading
That Duchamp short story collection which is so good.
The other short story collection whose title and author I can't remember but which is also good.
I got Mieville's Embassytown in from the library and read a few pages. It's not really doing much for me, but neither did The Scar and so many people love that book. I think it's because I mostly read for characters and I just am not feeling anything for the characters. I'll probably slog through a little more before I decide whether to finish it.
Up Next
I just got a message from the library that _Seraphina_ is in. Looking forward to that one.
Recently Finished
I just read _Hungry Ghost_, the sequel to the one I just reviewed about the lesbian werewolves. I'll probably do a full Goodreads review sometime, but here's a little bit. This book was not as fun as the first one, with fewer sex scenes and more sexual angst on the part of the protagonist. It was still a fun read--I think I read it in maybe three days?
The things that really worked in it:
- Moon gets real about the less talked about stuff in GLBTQ culture, like sex work and BDSM and conflicted feelings about transgender issues and feminist in-fighting about porn and stripping.
- She has a transgender character and does it well.
- There's a neat theme about transcending the either/or bimodal paradigm (sorry, there are actual feminst theory academic words for that teasing my brain, but I'm not dredging them up right now). She ties together some neat stuff from academia with transgender issues and the whole werewolf thing. Interesting ideas and fun literary play.
- There's a little more in there about the protag's relationship with her father, which I was glad to see.
- One pretty hot BDSM sex scene
The things that pissed me off because of my issues:
- Her protagonist is a poor student. Smart, but whiny and easily distracted and completely unappreciative about the opportunity for education. Having gone to school with a bunch of wealthy, privileged kids who partied and had fun while I financed my half of the tuition my scholarship didn't cover, it just kind of hits a nerve. I get that Moon is probably making the character annoying so that there can be dynamic character growth, which leads me to my second pet-peeve point.
- A lot of the character's struggle is explained to the reader and only shown in a really fuzzy, confused way. You know, the whole "Lexie felt like she would never be able to have conviction about anything" type of writing. Which seems pretty common in brain-candy type books and doesn't bother a lot of people. But it really ticks me off because I never let myself do that in my writing but I haven't yet mastered how to pull off showing character growth in a smooth and natural way. So I think I get pissy that someone else gets to write it the easy way and still gets to have people read her stuff and like it.
The things that I think are more objectively places where the book is weak:
- The protag's father is pretty two-dimensional. For someone so important to the protagonist and to her character arc, I think he deserves more depth.
- The pacing is choppy. The character growth is shown in sort of jagged spurts and all the plot and action sort of stop dead while that happens.
- Dammit, not enough sex scenes! Or should I say, too many abortive sex scenes that could be great but stop in the middle because of the character having issues. But like, since the character arc isn't smooth or compelling, it doesn't seem fair to have that ruin the sex scenes. I know I seem to be obsessing about the sex! But since this book is a brain-candy book to me (I mean that in the good sense!) I feel like it should have fun-to-read scenes. And, seriously, one of Moon's greatest strengths as a writer are her awesome sex scenes.
I see that I've sort of ended on a downer here. So I'm just going to re-state my overall take, which is that this book was enjoyable to read and does things right (like trans stuff) that you don't often see done well.
Currently Reading
That Duchamp short story collection which is so good.
The other short story collection whose title and author I can't remember but which is also good.
I got Mieville's Embassytown in from the library and read a few pages. It's not really doing much for me, but neither did The Scar and so many people love that book. I think it's because I mostly read for characters and I just am not feeling anything for the characters. I'll probably slog through a little more before I decide whether to finish it.
Up Next
I just got a message from the library that _Seraphina_ is in. Looking forward to that one.
