A Massive Backlog of Book Reviews
So 2010 is turning out to be the year of utilizing my public library. They make it so very easy, since I’m able to request books and they’re delivered right to my front door. At one point, I had 12 library books stacked up on my desk. Fortunately, the to-read stack is only 4 high now, with two books currently being read. Progress!
But this means that I’m way, way behind on reporting what I’ve read. So here’s a huge glut of books I’ve read recently. I’ll leave them linkless, as I have faith that you can find them on Amazon or your other favorite book source if any sound interesting.
Nanny Return by Emma McLaughlin and Nikola Kraus – This follow-up of The Nanny Diaries (which I own, and have read several times) takes place 12 years later. Nan is married, pondering children of her own, weaving her way through a work-world that, again, seems a little too over-the-top to believe. She also gets tangled back up with her former charge, Grayer X (who has turned into a grade-A douche) and the rest of the X family. Just like in the first novel, nobody around Nanny is a likeable character, but for some reason I didn’t mind it in the first. I did mind it in this one, and found it to be a tolerable read, but I won’t ever need to read it again. 5 out of 10.
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby – What a shocker — a Nick Hornby book about an awkward relationship and something related to the music industry. In this one, a washed-up American singer/songwriter and the girlfriend of said s/s’s biggest fans strike up a sort of pen-pal email exchange. The characters were more uninteresting than unlikeable, and the ending left me wondering, What the heck? I don’t mind an ambiguous ending, but this one was ambiguous for no real reason. But I guess since I didn’t really care all that much for the characters, it was easy to walk away without caring too much what does, or doesn’t, happen to them. 5 out of 10.
Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran by Andy Taylor – How could I not pick this one up when I saw it on the shelf? Although Andy Taylor has always been, for me, the least important (and least swoonworthy) member of Duran Duran. Turns out, according to this autobiography, he was the driving force behind much of the writing, made most of the important decisions, regularly told the other lads when they were making huge mistakes, and just plain ended up having too much integrity to stick around when things got sour. Shocking, that the guy who paints himself as the most important member of the band is also the guy who is the only one who’s quit the band twice. There was some good history in the book, but it was all surrounded by a splash of douche. 5 out of 10.
Talking to Girls about Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield – Gang, this is NOT a book about Duran Duran. It’s one of those my-quirky-youth memoirs, tied together through the strange use of the music of the ’80s. Every chapter is titled with a different ’80s song, and Sheffield’s anecdotes from his teen years link loosely (or, sometimes, very loosely) with that song. Bottom line, he lived the life of a teenager in his teenage years, listening to music that a teenager of those teenage years would listen to. Oh, those crazy teens and the teen things they do! I quit one-third of the way through and tossed it on the go-back stack. 2 out of 10 (unfinished).
The Last Colony by John Scalzi – Third in the Old Man’s War series, this book picks up where the first two left off. With the lead Old Man, and one of the main characters from The Ghost Brigades. Scalzi’s universe continues to be a fun one to read, and this novel (like The Ghost Brigades) is more of a mystery than a space-war book. Characters, pace, and story were all great. I haven’t put the final book in the series on hold yet, partially because of the stack in front of me, and partially because I want to savor this universe. 8 out of 10.
Xenocide by Orson Scott Card – Third in the Ender series, and the worst so far of that series. The second book, Speaker for the Dead, left us in a cliffhanger that showed exactly what to expect for this third book. Sadly, the book is probably half again as long as it needs to be; too much of it is full of people wondering, people pondering, and people discussing what they’re wondering and pondering. And sometimes arguing about how what they’re wondering is in opposition to what someone else is pondering. Card covers the same questions several times, until finally at the end everything gets figured out surprisingly fast. I don’t think I can handle another book like this one, so I’ve gone ahead and read the Wikipedia synopsis of book four, Children of the Mind. Now I don’t need to read it. 6 out of 10.
Breathless by Dean Koontz – I picked this one up off the new-release shelf. I’ve liked quite a few of Koontz’s books in the past, but it seems like he’s really cranking them out these days, and the quality is going somewhat downhill. This book flashes between several unrelated characters, who (shockingly) all come together in the end. But a couple of those characters weren’t really all that interesting, and I only read their chapters because I was waiting to see how they related to the characters who were vaguely interesting. An uneventful first-contact-with-aliens story, but nothing to rush to the bookstore for. 6 out of 10.
The Gift of Fear and Other Survival Signals that Protect Us From Violence by Gavin de Becker – I’ve seen this book recommended many, many times, so I figured I’d give it a read. It’s actually quite good, showing how we’ve been taught that to be “polite”, we will frequently ignore our own instincts. And it’s true — the few people in my life who have triggered my spidey-sense, even though other people seem to like them and the look and seem normal, have turned out to be major creepazoids. Fortunately, I didn’t feel shy about telling the boob-grabber to back the hell off, and I didn’t have a problem personally blackballing the guy who told a work colleague that on an out-of-town trip he was “finally going to get some of [me].” This book is a good read for both genders, and will probably be a real eye-opener for both. 8 out of 10.
The New Space Opera 2 (Collection) – This is a volume of short stories from a variety of authors. I likes me the sci-fi, and I likes me the space opera, so this was a really good read. both John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow had entries in this volume, which was what made me check it out in the first place. Now I’ll have to get volume 1 as well. Out of 19 stories, I only sped past three, which is a really good ratio for me. The 16 I completed ranged from good to fantastic, with a couple that I wished were fleshed out into full novels. 7 out of 10.
WHEW! There we go, 9 more books down. Now I can toss the Post-It on which I was building a list, and start a whole new Post-It for the rest of this stack. Read on, easy readers!
