2004 book round up

Sun, Jan. 9th, 2005 02:11 pm
oyceter: teruterubouzu default icon (Calvin and Hobbes comics)
Heh, the ability to do this post was the reason behind why I started book blogging last year, and of course, now it's about a week late and I don't have much energy to write it. But write it I will.

I am shamelessly copying [livejournal.com profile] coffee_and_ink's format (I hope you don't mind, Mely), whose posts are the main reason why I started book blogging at all.

This being the inaugural year, I have no idea how this matches up to my reading habits of previous year. Just off the top of my head, I would say that I feel like I've read a great deal of books this year, and most of them good. A big reason for that is because of LJ, because of all the recs that have come in, and for that, I am eternally grateful. I read many things I wouldn't have touched previously because of that. And now, my ten favorite books of the year, out of all the books I have read this year (excluding rereads), not out of all the books published this year. They may not be the best books I've read this year, or the most technically proficient, or the like, but they are books that grabbed me somehow and will most likely end up being reread very often. I'm cheating quite a bit on this list and including multiple books by authors and such, but hey, it's my list ;).

Listed alphabetically by author. I've blogged each book before, which you can find in my book memories section, if you want to read me blather on even more.


  1. Megan Chance, Fall From Grace

    Both romances on this list are ones that push the boundaries of the genre. I love Megan Chance's romances because she doesn't bother to whitewash history; her characters are rarely the rareified nobility that populate most romances. In this book, they are outlaws, and there is no romance at all in the way Chance portrays their lives. She also inverts the trope and makes the hard-living, hard-hearted character the heroine, with a hero painfully in love with her. This is not a fuzzy romance; it's on the smothering of dreams and hopes, on the choices that life gradually takes away.


  2. Michael Dirda, Readings

    Dirda is a kindred spirit in the book world, although I can only sit back and wish that I have read as broadly and as deeply as he has, as well as wish that I could write about the experience of reading and of books so beautifully as he does. But I can't, so I am incredibly glad that he exists in the world and writes the reviews he does. His book reviews are like recommendations from a close friend.


  3. Dorothy Dunnett, The Lymond Chronicles

    If I had to pick just one book of them, it would be Pawn in Frankincense, where all the build-up of the previous three books comes to head in a tense climax that left me breathless. Dunnett is very often manipulative, I still don't like Lymond as a person, and Checkmate is pretty flawed, especially when you look at how Dunnett throws in every single romance cliche in the book, but the series as a whole is so large and epic and grand that they occupied a very sizeable chunk of my head and heart for a very long period of time. And despite the criticism, nothing I've read this year has swallowed me whole the same way this series did -- I read the first book over a few months, the second in a week, and by the time I had gotten to Checkmate, I had spent an entire week reading till 5 in the morning, and was so sleep-deprived that I went home sick from work and finished the last book at home in a frenzied rush.

    Also, it's hard to beat Dunnett for sheer amount of influence on other authors.

    The Lymond books consist of The Game of Kings, Queen's Play, The Disorderly Knights, Pawn in Frankincense, The Ringed Castle, and Checkmate


  4. Kij Johnson, Fudoki

    This book is set in the same universe as Johnson's first book, The Fox Woman, and it has the same delicate touch in bringing Heian Japan to life in a way that feels very authentic to me. Finally, a fantasy set in Asia that doesn't grate on my nerves. The setting, while wonderfully done, is just one of the many beautiful parts of this book. The narrative centered on the dying princess Harueme is elegaic and full of regrets; the one on the cat-turned-warrior-woman is properly sharp around the edges, with charming touches like dreams of rice balls. A very good book that leaves a lingering sense of mono no aware.


  5. Laura Kinsale, Shadowheart

    After I read this, I was nearly incoherent with glee over how it smashes romance genre tropes left and right, with the added bonus of sex scenes that don't just develop the characters, but are also so intrinsic to the plot and the meat of the book that it is unimaginable without them. While the plot in and of itself doesn't make too much sense (though it is much more coherent than many Kinsale plots), the heart of the book is in the character dynamics and the exploration of gender roles and issues of power and control. Also, Kinsale manages to do all this while writing a scorching romance.


  6. Maureen F. McHugh, China Mountain Zhang

    Science fiction set in a world where China has become the one superpower and America has turned socialist. Instead of using the set up to explore overtly political issues in a larger setting, McHugh chooses narrate from the POV of the titular character and a few of the other people in the world whose lives he affects, no matter how obliquely. Because of this, the book has a much more intimate tone, even while it explores the larger issues of race, ethnicity, and cultural authenticity without ever losing sight of its characters, who are always human first.

  7. Patricia A. McKillip, multiple novels

    I discovered Patricia McKillip this year, after many years of never understanding her books, and it has been a joy going through her backlist. It's probably unnecessary praising McKillip to most people who read this LJ, but for anyone who hasn't read her books, the beauty of the prose and the images, the clarity of the visual metaphors and, above all, the underlying humanity in all her characters have completely won me over. My favorite of her books, Winter Rose, is actually a reread, although I don't actually remember my first read of it at all.

    I read her The Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy, Alphabet of Thorn, The Book of Atrix Wolfe, The Changeling Sea, In the Forests of Serre, Ombria in Shadow, Song for the Basilisk, The Tower at Stony Wood, and Winter Rose this year.


  8. Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran

    While I wanted a non-Nafisi POV at times for balance, Nafisi's memoir is still an effective look at not only a woman's life in Iran, but also the importance of reading and imagination. For me, it works better as an investigation into why we read than a chronicle of post-revolution Iran, but that is largely because of the constraints of the memoir format. This book hit some very deep spots in me regarding questions of morality and art and why the great books are always revolutionary in some way. A perfect demonstration of how books at their best can push boundaries and shape the mind.


  9. Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis

    Like Nafisi's book, Satrapi's Persepolis is a memoir of the Islamic revolution in Iran; however, Persepolis is also a wonderful graphic novel with stark black-and-white art and an often bizarre sense of humor. Satrapi's memoir is much less overtly political than Nafisi's, and it is more effective for me because of that. Satrapi focuses on the commonplace, on the seemingly trifling changes that the revolutions causes, and because of this, the truly horrific things that happen in her country are made that much worse in context of the everyday. Smart, funny, and engaging.


  10. Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, Sorcery and Cecelia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot

    An epistolary fantasy Regency novel! This is the book that I've been pushing on all of my friends, to the point of buying a copy and bringing it all the way over to Taiwan just so I could make yet another person read it. There's something incredibly joyful about this book -- one can sense how much fun the authors had writing it, and it makes for a delightful reading experience.



Also recommended: Lloyd Alexander, the Westmark trilogy; Connie Brockway, The Bridal Season; Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa; Jennifer Crusie, Bet Me; Judy Cuevas, Bliss and Dance; Karen Cushman, Catherine, Called Birdy; Pamela Dean, the Secret Country trilogy; Patricia MacLachlan, The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt; Margaret Mahy, The Tricksters; Ellen Raskin, The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues; Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America; Elizabeth A. Wein, The Winter Prince

ETA: Added more books to the also recced list, because I am hare-brained and forgot a few.

Total read: 167 (8 rereads)

( Books finished in 2004 )
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Johnson, Kij - Fudoki

Wed, Feb. 4th, 2004 12:45 pm
oyceter: Stack of books with text "mmm... books!" (mmm books)
I really, really, really loved this book. Really. While I read and liked her The Fox Woman with some reservations, I loved this one. I think I read The Fox Woman during a trip elsewhere, and I never seem to like books I read like that... too much mental dislocation already while throwing in further mental dislocation by "visiting" Heian Japan. Also, in a love triangle, I always feel bad for the spurned wife (hello, Lauren), so that was in the way too.

This one though just worked the entire way through for me -- Princess Harueme's musings on her age, on her pending death, and of her fierce desire to live still, intermingled with memories of her life, of her lover, and all this twined with the tale of Kagaya-hime, the tortoiseshell cat without a fudoki (family story? clan?) who turns into a woman.

Beautiful prose. And I want to wave this book around as a way to do the whole "Asian" thing without falling into horrible cliches (imho). To me, I felt like I was at the court of Heian Japan, without bits of PC that tear me out of the story, like if Harueme ranted on about a woman's circumscribed life and escaping to be some sort of warrior, etc. She hated the boundaries around her life and the fact that she was penned in all the time, and yet, somehow, when she protests or has regrets, she does it within the cultural framework. Well, not that I know the cultural framework of Heian Japan ;). But you know, no horrible anachronisms of thought or anything.

Small bits that confused me -- while I liked how Johnson managed to stick in most Japanese words unobstrusively, sometimes I was a little confused as to which ones she kept. Why kaze-cold instead of just "cold"? Didn't quite see why that wouldn't just be straight out translated, as opposed to a concept as important as "fudoki." And I need to reread Fox Woman now to figure out Kitsune's story, because I've forgotten =(.

And not to damn the book with the faint praise that it does something not-wrong, because it succeeded on so many levels for me. Thoughts on age and memory and stories and especially the fragility of life and of memory and how the two are intertwined. I loved so many small things, like Harueme realizing her lover would never ever touch her on the neck again and that she was not that Harueme whose neck he touched anymore. I don't quite know how to talk about this book because it just stays with me. And nothing seems to happen with Harueme, and yet, everything does, and we get to read about her memories and her life and her thoughts, all of which takes on an incredible poignancy. Just... thoughts on life and love and friends and sex and family.

I'm very glad of the ending.

Links:
- [livejournal.com profile] rachelmanija's review
- [livejournal.com profile] sophia_helix's review
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