Book Mini-Reviews
Oct. 10th, 2016 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThe Things We Wish Were True by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen - A Kindle First book that I appreciated as a random, fast read out of my usual wheelhouse. The movie genre this corresponds to is “Lifetime Channel,” as it features four different women at different stages of their lives, each coming to terms with their own and others’ secrets and perceived failures. The pacing plays out like a mystery crossed with a coming-of-age story (or perhaps four interwoven coming-of-different-ages stories).
I give big credit for having the most ridiculous realistic name I think I’ve ever seen in a book: One character is called “Jencey”, which I thought was just a pretentious white-girl name until it was pointed out that she was actually “Jennifer C.”—there had been a “Jen C.” and “Jen L.” in her elementary school, and the nickname stuck. (My father worked with a woman at CTY who everyone still calls “Lauren Bobstier”--pronounced like it’s French--because she was “Lauren, Bob’s TA.”)
Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain by Richard Roberts - Recommended to me by Bigscary, this is a ridiculous YA-superhero romp about a girl with super mad scientist powers who accidentally puts herself on the wrong side of the superhuman community. There are some plot holes and a few insane coincidences—even more so than the superhero-thick worldbuilding would allow—but overall it’s a fun little story. SCIENCE!
I think, actually, my biggest suspension of disbelief was that, in this age of helicopter parenting, not only do her parents let the 13-year-old protagonist roam around LA by herself, but they actually leave her home alone for several days while they go to a convention. And her mom’s entire power is being an overplanning control freak!
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi - I think I’ve generally just become a Scalzi fan; I really do like his worldbuilding. Definitely read Old Man’s War before you read this, because this brings you up to speed on that, but I think you’d lose a lot of the fun of that book if you’d been spoiled by this one first. He pays off everything he starts and foreshadows everything in the ending; it's a grand lesson in Chekov's gunmanship.
Pump Six And Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi - A collection of fascinating sci-fi worldbuilding with a lot of emphasis on body horror and environmental destruction. I read this in pieces on my phone, so had less opportunity to write down my thoughts about individual stories as I read them. It ranges from macabre to pitiful, but none of these are happy stories. Bacigalupi clearly follows the “humans are bastards” theory of spec-fi. There's also some very clear inspiration to some of them--two stories are set in a "Monsanto destroys the world" universe, another in a "California's drought destroys the world" setup. The former, incidentally, is a lovely introspection except that it posits that solar power doesn't exist--nothing happened to the sun, mind you, crops can grow just fine--but all energy is either plant or muscle-based, and that glaring scientific problem just threw me right out of the story. This book falls into the category of “interesting, but not necessarily enjoyable.”
I give big credit for having the most ridiculous realistic name I think I’ve ever seen in a book: One character is called “Jencey”, which I thought was just a pretentious white-girl name until it was pointed out that she was actually “Jennifer C.”—there had been a “Jen C.” and “Jen L.” in her elementary school, and the nickname stuck. (My father worked with a woman at CTY who everyone still calls “Lauren Bobstier”--pronounced like it’s French--because she was “Lauren, Bob’s TA.”)
Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain by Richard Roberts - Recommended to me by Bigscary, this is a ridiculous YA-superhero romp about a girl with super mad scientist powers who accidentally puts herself on the wrong side of the superhuman community. There are some plot holes and a few insane coincidences—even more so than the superhero-thick worldbuilding would allow—but overall it’s a fun little story. SCIENCE!
I think, actually, my biggest suspension of disbelief was that, in this age of helicopter parenting, not only do her parents let the 13-year-old protagonist roam around LA by herself, but they actually leave her home alone for several days while they go to a convention. And her mom’s entire power is being an overplanning control freak!
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi - I think I’ve generally just become a Scalzi fan; I really do like his worldbuilding. Definitely read Old Man’s War before you read this, because this brings you up to speed on that, but I think you’d lose a lot of the fun of that book if you’d been spoiled by this one first. He pays off everything he starts and foreshadows everything in the ending; it's a grand lesson in Chekov's gunmanship.
Pump Six And Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi - A collection of fascinating sci-fi worldbuilding with a lot of emphasis on body horror and environmental destruction. I read this in pieces on my phone, so had less opportunity to write down my thoughts about individual stories as I read them. It ranges from macabre to pitiful, but none of these are happy stories. Bacigalupi clearly follows the “humans are bastards” theory of spec-fi. There's also some very clear inspiration to some of them--two stories are set in a "Monsanto destroys the world" universe, another in a "California's drought destroys the world" setup. The former, incidentally, is a lovely introspection except that it posits that solar power doesn't exist--nothing happened to the sun, mind you, crops can grow just fine--but all energy is either plant or muscle-based, and that glaring scientific problem just threw me right out of the story. This book falls into the category of “interesting, but not necessarily enjoyable.”
