Jun 24 2007
The Week In Books VII
Mel Brooks would call this “the short, short version.” Because, after all, I read SEVENTEEN BOOKS last week. Do I want to give you seventeen paragraphs of information, during which you’ll be like “OMG DOES IT EVER END?” No, of course not. I’m so sweet. So, quick reviews:
Wild Rock, by Kazusa Takashima - Gorgeous and somewhat moving guy-on-guy (yaoi) porn manga. Actually cared about the first story. Not so much for the second one, or the bonus at the end. Did I mention how gorgeous the art is? That’s pretty much the best part, if you’re not into yaoi. I forgot to mention, it’s “cave sex,” as a certain friend of mine would say. Yaoi is nothing if not diverse. For example, take…
Shinobi Kokoro by Temari Matsumoto, aka Ninja Porn. It’s not until the unrelated story at the end (about a snow spirit) that I cared at all. And then there’s…
Shout Out Loud! by Satosumi Takaguchi. (The link is to the second volume because there’s no Amazon entry for the first one, which is the one I read.) After all the adult stuff, this book was…kind of a tease, and ended up being a difficult read. After all, yaoi ends up kind of being the guy-on-guy romance novel–you’re basically building up to the sex. In this case, there’s a lot of plot and no sex. Huh? Was difficult for me to shift. Should’ve read it first, but even then I don’t think I would’ve been very interested.
To review my foray into yaoi:
1. I actually liked Wild Rock and Love Mode, once I repressed dealing with the whole “rape” aspect of Love Mode.
2. I think I could live without seeing another manga-style penis again in my life.
3. Even when it’s guy-on-guy, which you can’t get me to pay attention to most of the time even by waving money in front of it, I’m still a sucker for a good love story.
Moving on.
Then I read what might be my favorite fun read of the year: Karma Girl by Jennifer Estep (or the part of the year that doesn’t have a Jennifer Crusie release). I first read about the book here, and put in a request for my library to order it. They did so (bless them) and I picked it up last week and refused to put it down until I was done. Now I will count down to the release of the next book in the series, Hot Mama. Why? Here Estep does what all those other writers (I’m looking at YOU, Davidson) haven’t seemed to be able to do, take a genre (in this case, superheroes) and write a romance about them that’s funny, romantic, and just a little clever. Karen Healey pretty much slams the book, and she’s not wrong about its weaknesses. However, despite a few predictable plot twists, Karma Girl entertained me from the beginning. Perhaps it was easier for me, having read Healey’s subsequent interview, knowing that Estep grew up not on God Loves, Man Kills but the Wonder Woman TV show. Healey was right; she’s not the target audience for the book. I am, and I loved almost every second of it. This book does what a romance should do: make you laugh and make your stomach jump.
Then I read the first seven books in the Video Girl Ai series. Actually, they were pretty much a reread, I believe, but sadly, the books my friend sent me ran out around the same time the library’s collection did. Come on, why order only six books of a series that continues? Ocean County, sometimes you are SO WRONG. Video Girl Ai is not unlike a lot of older manga series: that is, they go on forever and get annoyingly repetitive. Now maybe if I were reading them in the original magazine format (since when do we do that? Doesn’t it make you miss Dickens?), I wouldn’t feel like it was repetitive but I gave up soap operas for a reason. Ai’s strengths, though, are the characters. I care about them. I believe they deserve a happy ending. I’d like to actually GET to that ending one day. One day. *sigh*
Then I read The Abandoned by Ross Campbell, also sent by my friend. It was probably the first non-Buffy zombie encounter that I’ve had that I know of, and it pretty much sums up what I’ve always thought that all zombie stories must be about: Kill or be killed, with everyone human dying, or everyone zombie dying, or some sort of ambiguous ending. There you go.
Lesse, then I finished the manga my friend sent with Battle Angel Alita by Yukito Kishiro. More gorgeous, if complicated and cyberpunky, artwork. The story was interesting. There isn’t much more to say. It’s not my usual genre choice, but if I were given more books in the series, I would definitely read them.
The Diamond Trap, Bethany Campbell. Old school Harlequin, no different than any other old school Harlequin. Campbell’s old miss-ish heroines strike again!
Perfect Match, Jodi Picoult. Entertaining to the end. I see why Picoult is so popular, but I don’t think she’s as good of a writer as I expected. She seems to be trying to find the balance between art and popular writing, and she’s doing a pretty good job, except for the times when someone’s doing or saying something so symbolic you just want to tell her to lighten up, we’ll still read her. Don’t read any of the reviews or the cover; just read the book. Just when it seems like it’s going to be obvious, the book finds ways to surprise you.
I finally got to Marge Piercy’s Three Women, and I’m glad I did because it was very very good. Three generations of women trying to deal with one another in a post-feminist world. (Sometimes I say these things and I wonder if I’m just pulling them out of thin air; I believe, though that everyone else does it too.) I look forward to reading more of Piercy in the future.
And last but not least, The World According to Garp. A reread for me. The problem with Irving books is that I’ve read them all about three times (until A Widow for One Year, or was it The Fourth Hand–my point is that The 158-Pound Marriage never gets any better upon rereading, ugh) and there are certain aspects that repeat themselves in the books (wrestling, bears, Vienna, whatever) so I spent most of the time trying to guess what happened next from memory. I don’t usually do this, like EVER, and if I weren’t confusing Hotel New Hampshire (second favorite!) with this one, I wouldn’t have done it here, but that’s what I did and it kind of made the whole thing suck. You could see where Irving was trying to skirt that Picoult popularity vs. art line as well, and it doesn’t work sometimes. Still, I love Irving (to a point), and it was good to revisit the work. But give me Hotel New Hampshire or Owen Meany over this one any day.
Okay, so they weren’t as short as I had hoped. Thanks for sticking around to the end. I promise not to read seventeen books next week.