Sakura of DOOM

*looks at date*

Er. Better late than never?

Once again, I read fewer books this year. On the other hand, only two books less than last year, so I think that is not bad, considering that I started grad school and all! And I managed to blog every book I read, with the exception of rereads.

The biggest change for me in 2008 was starting the 50books_poc challenge; namely, to read 50 books by POC in a year. I had originally done it from IBARW to IBARW (August 2007 to August 2008), but it's nice to know that I met it for the calendar year of 2008 as well. If anyone's interested about why, I wrote up why I count and how the challenge affected me during IBARW 3. Next year, my goal is to increase the percentage of books by POC so that it's over 50% of all the books I read, total. I'm still trying to make it enough of a habit that I won't have to count, and it's rather embarrassing to see the huge jump in numbers once I started making an effort. The gap between 13 books by POC versus 64 is enormous and indicative of my own aversive racism; it didn't actually take that much effort to find those 51 additional books (although a large part of that is thanks to my local libraries, and aversive racism plays its own role in book selection in libraries as well).

It is nice to see that I do not have to worry much about the percentage of women I'm reading.

As always, feel free to ask about anything here.

• ( Sherman Alexie, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian )



• ( M.T. Anderson, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: The Pox Party )



• ( Atul Gawande, Complications and Better )



• ( Justina Chen Headley, Girl Overboard )



• ( Maggie Helwig, Where She Was Standing )



• ( Angela Johnson, The First Part Last )



• ( David Mas Masumoto, Epitaph for a Peach )



• ( Andrea Smith, Conquest )



• ( Catherynne M. Valente, The Orphan's Tales )



• ( Elizabeth E. Wein, The Mark of Solomon )

( Also recommended )

Total read: 129 (6 rereads)
51 by women of color, 64 by POC, 104 by women

( Complete list of books read in 2008 )

This is for books and Western comics only; manga and manhwa get a separate post.

( Thoughts about the year in books )

Amazingly, I managed to blog about every single book I read this year! I didn't link the full list, but you can always look in my tags or memories.

The below are my favorites out of all the books I read this year, not books published this year.

1. ( Emily Bernard, Some of My Best Friends )


2. ( Emma Donoghue, Kissing the Witch )


3. ( Ursula K. Le Guin, Voices )


4. ( Megan Lindholm, Harpy's Flight )


5. ( Laurie J. Marks, Elemental Logic series )


6. ( Susan Beth Pfeffer, Life as We Knew It )


7. ( Joann Sfar, The Rabbi's Cat )


8. ( Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore )


9. ( Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens )


10. ( Elizabeth E. Wein, The Sunbird )

Also recommended: Carl Chu, Chinese Food Finder: The Bay Area and San Francisco; Brenda Dixon Gottschild, The Black Dancing Body: A Geography from Coon to Cool and Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era; Theodora Goss, In the Forest of Forgetting; Margo Rabb, Cures for Heartbreak; Madeleine E. Robins, Point of Honour; Joanna Russ, What Are We Fighting For?: Sex, Race, Class, and the Future of Feminism; Sarah Smith, The Vanished Child; Beverly Daniel Tatum, Can We Talk about Race?: And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation; Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology; Ysabeau S. Wilce, Flora Segunda; Helen Zia, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People

Total read: 131 (6 rereads)

( Complete list of books read in 2007 )

I adored The Winter Prince, was completely indifferent toward A Coalitions of Lions, and I love this one.

Telemakos is the son of Medraut and the nephew of Goewin, but he's also the grandson of an important Aksumite politician and a cousin or close relation to the new king of Aksum. I loved Winter Prince for what it did with the Arthur mythos; I love this book for its depictions of Aksum, for how distant it gets from the Arthur mythos. I was dissatisfied by A Coalition of Lions because I wanted more of Medraut and Lleu and the Arthur mythos and less of Aksum, but The Sunbird has more distance from the events of The Winter Prince while also being closer in other ways.

Plague is spreading, and to stave it off, Goewin, the British ambassador, convinces the king to quarantine his kingdom. But some traders are sneaking around the quarantine, and it's up to twelve-year-old Telemakos to find out who.

Twelve-year-olds spying should sound utterly implausible, but Telemakos is a wonderful character. I love how clever he is, but in ways that aren't difficult to believe, I love that he is afraid and unsure and that he is loved by Goewin and Turunesh (his mother) and even cold, mute Medraut. I love how Medraut's love-hate relationship with Lleu affects his relationship with Telemakos and Goewin, but in a way that informs Telemakos' story and doesn't overtake it. I love how much Telemakos wants to be loved by his stern father, how he deals with being a multiracial child, and most of all, how clever and real and bright and brave he is.

I also love all the political intrigue in this book; it hits all the spots that Megan Whalen Turner's Attolia books do. And while intrigue about salt trade doesn't sound all that twisty, it is, and oh, when Telemakos goes undercover to find out more? It's wonderful and harrowing and real in a way that slick spy stories often aren't.

The side characters are also great; Goewin is a force to be reckoned with here in a way that she wasn't in A Coalition of Lions, Medraut is just as angsty and sometimes emotionally stupid, and I love all the new Aksumite characters, Kidane and Turunesh and Sofya and the king.

I'm not sure at all how to sum up the book, save that I love it to pieces and that it is entirely different from The Winter Prince in that Telemakos is loved and doesn't have his own traumas, until the events of the books. And yet, it's very similar in the complexity of the relationships and politics.

And! As if all that weren't enough, it is a historical novel set in Africa! In Aksum! With details and politics and complications!

Go read this.

Er. So. Why did no one mention that this is the slashiest book ever?

Anyway. I rejoice at finding a version of the Arthur story that I like! Of course, it's probably because it focuses on Medraut/Mordred and his extremely conflicted relationship with his half-brother Lleu (Artos' son) and his mother Morgause. And the fact that it takes advantage of the incest in the legend.

The book is written from Medraut's POV as a letter or speech or something directed at Morgause -- I'm not quite sure why the author decided to have the book addressed to Morgause, and it sort of confused me when she actually entered into the scene. I kept forgetting who the "you" was for some reason. It's on Medraut's unsure position within Artos' court at Camlann, on his love-hate relationship with Lleu. Lleu is the golden child, sickly at birth, who has been protected his entire life. Medraut, on the other hand, was forced to grow up too quickly as Artos' illegitimate son born of a shameful union, and he resents Lleu's position as heir and as the apple of everyone's eye even as he protects and helps raise Lleu.

The book actually reminded me a great deal of A Separate Peace, which I really need to reread someday.

While the book is very good, it really goes into high gear when an act on Medraut's part brings all the simmering tension beneath his relationship with Lleu to a breaking point (alas, mixed metaphors), which is also the point at which I started really clueing in to the slashiness. And right at the moment when my brain went, "Wow, this is slashy, isn't it?" Medraut leaned down and kissed Lleu and my brain may have imploded.

I really liked how Wein allowed Medraut and Lleu and Goewin (Lleu's sister, whom I also liked, but wanted to see more of) to be complicated. Lleu is spoiled, and Medraut's resentment is very believable, but Lleu is also very powerful in his own way. And Wein doesn't whitewash Medraut so that his horrible childhood with Morgause is to blame, although it too plays a role in the relationship. And I have no critical thoughts at all on the conclusion because my brain just sort of melted.