octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

It was an interesting experience reading this book! My opinion of it changed as I read, and oddly, it had nothing to do with the fact that the characters are all insufferable. They're university drama students obsessed with Shakespeare; frankly I assume that "insufferable" is their basic state.

Of the seven main characters, one dies. It's murder. (This is a murder mystery book, so no surprises there.) And for the best part of a year, rehearsals and performances go on, as the six remaining students try and fail to cope, a state of affairs that's complicated by the fact that one of them is responsible for the death of their colleague, and all of them bear some culpability in covering it up. I understand that the author is a Shakespeare scholar themselves, and this explains why so much of the book is bound up with the plays - particularly Macbeth and King Lear - and why so much of the dialogue is these students talking with each other through Shakespeare quotes. It's very cleverly constructed, and for ninety percent of the book I was expecting to give it four stars. Then it all fell apart at the end for me, which is why it's gone down to three.

There's a small part of me that thinks that this ending is only possibly because these isolated obsessives have so immersed themselves in melodrama that their frankly ridiculous choices seem, to them, to be actually reasonable. And honestly, if I argue - as I do, frequently - that science students need a solid grounding in the humanities to keep them from reducing people to exploitable objects or collateral damage, then I have to say that this book is an argument for the reverse: arts students needing their studies leavened with science so they don't turn out to be completely irrational navel-gazers with no common sense. There's a larger part of me, though, that feels that so much attention was given, in this book, to the construction and integration of the dialogue that character work fell a little by the wayside. That, perhaps, is why I find the end so very unconvincing. 

At last! Like many people, I grew up reading Roald Dahl, and George's Marvellous Medicine was my favourite of his books. I have not read it for decades. It's never in the shops! Every time I wander into a bookstore and remember Dahl, it's always Matilda in the children's section, or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Good books both, but George was my favourite. I was in a secondhand bookstore yesterday, and had a quick look for Dahl just in case, and there it was! I snatched it up. I finally read it again today, and it's still my favourite. Grandma's a horrible bitch, but it was the mash-up between science experiment and cooking up terrible potions on the stove which made my sciencey, baking-mad self like this as a child, and nothing has changed in that respect. (I read this today while a meringue layer cake was in the oven.)

Nice one, George. 

I read the first book in this series last year, I think, and loved it, so I'm glad to say I liked the sequel just as much. I love that it's so based in fandom, which is really familiar to me, but mostly I love the characters. I'm picky with my romances. I have a very low tolerance for horrible characters, which is a problem in this particular genre especially, because I don't care if horrible people are happy. And when reading contemporary romances, I'm sorry to say that I've come across a lot of horrible people. There are a few authors, like Olivia Dade and Tessa Dare, who buck the trend and have actually likeable people falling in love, and it makes such a difference. 

It's not always the case that the arseholes in romance are men, but it's certainly skewed that way in many of the romances I've read, so the most appealing thing about this book is Alexander, who is thoroughly decent. He has his own issues - and again, I enjoy romances where each of the protagonists have their own storylines and personal challenges, which they navigate with the support of the other - but he is emotionally aware, because he's already done the work of deciding that he doesn't want to be an unkind and unprincipled person and actively takes steps to be a decent man instead. Not to win over the heroine, but because he thinks being a decent human being is more important than anything else. SO REFRESHING. I won't give the names of romance writers who could learn from this, but I'm certainly thinking them.

Funny and sympathetic, with lots of strong friendships. There's a third book in the series, or so I've just discovered, and hopefully the library has that one as well because these are flat-out heart-warming. 

One of the most entertaining things about the Internet Archive is that it gives you access to all sorts of terrible old books. This appalling thing, from 1878 no less, is absolutely hopeless but gets an extra point for the entertainment value of its awful advice. In ye olden times, sea-bathing was something done to improve the health, but as Dr. Durant makes plain, it is a terrible risk to well-being and should only be attempted under stringent conditions. Sometimes these conditions are not always clear, as in where he says sea-bathing is recommended to persons in the first stages of consumption (p. 33) but is completely unsuited for anyone suffering from consumption (p. 40).

He tries to back it all up with science, but the medical science of the day is frankly shit, and anyway I see very little backing for his claims that women are medically required to wear wool bathing suits, and the colours of those suits must be either blue or maroon in order to adequately resist the corrosive effects of the water, for instance. (Men merit no such consideration in their costumes.) Children under six, he informs his readers, should on no account spend more than 1-3 minutes in the water - as someone who grew up in an island nation, good fucking luck with that - and nursing infants may becomes so excited by sea air that their parents should be prepared to take them promptly inland if they show signs of energy or, presumably, enjoyment.

I suspect he is no fun at parties. I suspect he is also no fun as a doctor, given that he recommends sea-bathing for people with running sores caused by massive and improperly healed burns, which honestly sounds agonising. Although, given that he spends a lot of time telling readers that staying in water so cold they turn blue (or even purple) is bad for them, I frankly question the sense of some of them. If you're turning blue get out of the water, otherwise wear whatever colour you like and hope that sea water cures insanity. Durant seems fairly confident that it might. 

I keep meaning to finally work my way through Le Guin's Hainish series, and this short story is part of that. As in a couple of novels I've read from her, Le Guin's family background in anthropology comes through here, and it's more successful in short story form than it is in the longer works. That distancing effect of scholarship is less intrusive in bite-sized pieces, or at least it is for me. 

The real interest, though, lies in how gender and sexuality is treated on Karhide. Children and old people are essentially androgynous, but when an adolescent comes into sexual maturity, they develop the ability to present as either male or female, and neither of these states are permanent. What this means for the individual, for the community, and for sexual relationships within that community is explored in a way that is thoughtful, affecting, and not remotely exploitative. It's just very well done, although I do think the story could have lost the prologue bit. (I don't much care for prologues in speculative novels, and it seems half a punishment to have to slog through irrelevant histories in short stories as well!) 

Chatty, likeable memoir about a woman who learns to appreciate her own mother when acting as a nanny for two children who have recently lost theirs. Corrigan's short-term stint working in Australia, on her OE, made her somewhat more sympathetic to the determined pragmatism with which she was raised... by her mother, at least. Like many people, Corrigan's childhood was one where the practical realities of childrearing fell mainly on her mum, leaving her dad to be the glittery, fun parent while her mum was the glue that held the family together, and was subsequently - to a child - rather less appealing. As she looks after other people's children, though, and as she eventually has her own, Corrigan's relationship with her mother becomes one of unrelenting appreciation and mutual support. It's an easy read, one that's recognisable if not especially original.

I have to admit, though, my main reaction was to Corrigan's reading material. One of her mum's favourite books is My Antonia by Willa Cather, and she spends the entire five months of her nannying experience attempting to read this book, which is found on the Australian family's bookshelves. She doesn't finish, and is given a copy as a leaving present. I'm sorry to say that all I could think every time this book is brought up (and it's brought up a lot) was "It's only 220 pages long, how much time are you wasting that you can't get through it in five fucking months, Jesus Christ," which I promptly realised made me sound like her mother, albeit considerably more blasphemous. And which reminded me that I have it on my Kindle - albeit it's only 130 pages there - and I still haven't read it yet either. Yes, hypocrisy, thy name is me. 

Short story from the Percy Jackson series that's free to read on the author's website. Percy escapes science class to help retrieve a stolen chariot from a zoo, and it's as chaos-inducing as it sounds (the otters are not happy, although an escaped leopard does get to snack on some pigeons so at least something is). Granted, I've only read a couple of books in the series but I don't think there's anything in here that's necessary to read to understand what's going on in the novels; it's a fun bonus more than anything else. I enjoyed it. 

This is a sweet, utterly good-natured story about two teen boys who are slowly falling for each other. I have to admit that my favourite of the pair is Nick, the rugby player, because he's just so against the stereotype of the star athelete. (I knew he was my favourite when he was trying to find the photo of the cheesecake he'd made his granny, and got distracted by pictures of his dog instead.) I smiled nearly all the way through this, but the end is a little bit of a downer, which dropped it down from the four full stars. I understand that this is only the first volume in the series, so I'm confident the boys will work it out, but still... so much of this was kind and supportive and happy that I would have liked a happy ending as well. 

 

I read the first in this series just long enough ago to have forgotten most of it, and the second has horrified me so much that I clearly have to go out and read more history, because if I knew more of it I wouldn't have been so surprised at the depths that some people will sink to in order to enforce their prejudice. Granted, this all took place in a country not my own, and before I was born at that. If ignorance is bliss, however, it is not really excusable when it comes to something so important as civil rights.

Must read better. 

There's such an appealing idea behind this book: that a librarian takes on a part-time job answering letters from people of all ends of the political spectrum who are worried about climate. I read that blurb and thought "Sold!"... but what the blurb describes is a very, very small part of the book. It's such a small part that the blurb comes across as honestly a little bit deceptive. 

Instead, Lizzie the librarian produces an almost stream of consciousness of mild fretting that mashes up anxieties about climate change against the recent (at time of publishing) election of Donald Trump. Lizzie muddles along with the idea of doomsday prepping, and she muddles along trying to prop up her struggling brother and muddles along in her mostly contented marriage. She just muddles, basically, wandering from one point and one incipient crisis to the next, constantly petering out, and if this book suffers from anything other than that deceptive blurb it suffers from its rather amorphous shape, a lack of focus - deliberately constructed, I'm sure - that doesn't do much to really grab me as a reader.

I don't want to say that the book's not well-written, because it is. Despite that very unfocused structure, the prose is very effective. I don't want to say that I didn't enjoy it, because I did. I just feel as if I didn't get the book I was promised, and - likeable as the actual book is - I still find myself, on completion, feeling a little disappointed at what could have been.