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Latest Reading
Feb. 6th, 2008 11:01 amBirds of America by Lorrie Moore
Summary: collection of short stories written by Lorrie Moore
Opinion: Wealthy White People With Problems. Urf. The writing was gorgeous. Moore has a gift for finding unexpected yet absolutely perfect words. A baby's dirty ears were "fudgy".
The level of craft was the only thing that kept me reading. The stories with the exception of a few were dullsville. Academics cheating or not cheating, then fretting about it. One story had a particularily dull dude aligning his "problems" with cosmic and religious ones. I couldn't tell if the story got away from Moore and ran smack into laughable melodrama, or if that was her point: this guy has it so good that he had to oversell his minor issue to himself in order to feel that's it a problem. Like, he's so self-involed that his cheating issues feel cosmic to him, melodramatic to the rest of us.
One story, the baby with cancer one, is grueling. I can't call it good, because baby with cancer. Saddest thing ever. Wow, though. Understated until it shivs you in the liver. The happy end felt sorta cop out ish. Sort of like she used up all her writing guts in writing the piece, and just couldn't let herself write a terrible ending.
Check the book out of the library for that story. The rest is good for craft, but it's not compelling reading.
Journey Into Darkness: The Unauthorized History of Kane by Michael Chiappetta
Summary: a fake bio of Kane.
Opinion: WTF. No wonder our fandom writes such bullshit fanfic. The authorized stuff is just as bad. Kane starts out as "Glen Calloway" He's a kid with a disease that prevents him from feeling pain. His mom's a nutcase who believer her family "The Kanes" are all doomed witches. She's also cheating on his husband with Paul Grimm.
The family house/funeral parlour burns down. Glen is badly burnt. His mom and pop are dead, his brother Mark is missing and presumed dead. There are lots of other bodies in the house that apparently the police don't care to indentify. Also, they don't bother interviewing Paul Grimm. Nor do they care or make him a person of interest when he hightails it out of town hours after the fire.
Kane goes through a series of adoptions and foster homes. Most of the time he's beaten or ignored. Which, I guess I feel sympathetic toward a kid who's getting smacked around, but otoh, the first chapter went into great and boring detail about Kane's inability to feel pain. So I felt sorry, but not terribly so.
Along the way, he re-connects with his first case worker, Melissa Vick. Melissa has a daughter, Katie. Totally Mary Sue. Kane crushes big time. Even stops being a loner, and gets his big ass on the football team for her. Lots of 80's era moments-- Kane listening to Guns and Roses while he and his teenage buddies get drunk. Katie gets lit off of wine coolers.
The dumb car accident happens, and Kane runs off to live in the woods. The woods. To live. Like Bigfoot. Then he gets a job on the docks. There he sees wrestling on TV, and wrestling on that TV is his brother Mark now known as the Undertaker and PaulGrimm Bearer. Revenge, Kane must have it.
Instead of revenge, he gets a drug addiction which allows Paul Bearer to mind control him. He also goes to Spain to learn to wrestle. Then he says no to drugs and he and Taker defeat Bearer. The end.
One not-really-interesting tidbit. Until I saw No Country For Old Men a few weeks ago, I had never heard of Marfa, Tx. Kane's book is set in Marfa. Why is Marfa stalking me????1
Food and Feast in Medieval England by Peter Hammond.
Summary: pretty much what the title implies
Opinion: Not useful at all for research purposes, too under-detailed and skippy around-y. Very much an overview work. I picked it up because there were two huge looking chapters on manners, and I thought there'd be some good fic fodder in that. Interesting tidbits on how much work it took to set a medieval banquet table, and how sitting was detirmined by rank, but other than that it was a lot of words not saying much of anything.
Summary: collection of short stories written by Lorrie Moore
Opinion: Wealthy White People With Problems. Urf. The writing was gorgeous. Moore has a gift for finding unexpected yet absolutely perfect words. A baby's dirty ears were "fudgy".
The level of craft was the only thing that kept me reading. The stories with the exception of a few were dullsville. Academics cheating or not cheating, then fretting about it. One story had a particularily dull dude aligning his "problems" with cosmic and religious ones. I couldn't tell if the story got away from Moore and ran smack into laughable melodrama, or if that was her point: this guy has it so good that he had to oversell his minor issue to himself in order to feel that's it a problem. Like, he's so self-involed that his cheating issues feel cosmic to him, melodramatic to the rest of us.
One story, the baby with cancer one, is grueling. I can't call it good, because baby with cancer. Saddest thing ever. Wow, though. Understated until it shivs you in the liver. The happy end felt sorta cop out ish. Sort of like she used up all her writing guts in writing the piece, and just couldn't let herself write a terrible ending.
Check the book out of the library for that story. The rest is good for craft, but it's not compelling reading.
Journey Into Darkness: The Unauthorized History of Kane by Michael Chiappetta
Summary: a fake bio of Kane.
Opinion: WTF. No wonder our fandom writes such bullshit fanfic. The authorized stuff is just as bad. Kane starts out as "Glen Calloway" He's a kid with a disease that prevents him from feeling pain. His mom's a nutcase who believer her family "The Kanes" are all doomed witches. She's also cheating on his husband with Paul Grimm.
The family house/funeral parlour burns down. Glen is badly burnt. His mom and pop are dead, his brother Mark is missing and presumed dead. There are lots of other bodies in the house that apparently the police don't care to indentify. Also, they don't bother interviewing Paul Grimm. Nor do they care or make him a person of interest when he hightails it out of town hours after the fire.
Kane goes through a series of adoptions and foster homes. Most of the time he's beaten or ignored. Which, I guess I feel sympathetic toward a kid who's getting smacked around, but otoh, the first chapter went into great and boring detail about Kane's inability to feel pain. So I felt sorry, but not terribly so.
Along the way, he re-connects with his first case worker, Melissa Vick. Melissa has a daughter, Katie. Totally Mary Sue. Kane crushes big time. Even stops being a loner, and gets his big ass on the football team for her. Lots of 80's era moments-- Kane listening to Guns and Roses while he and his teenage buddies get drunk. Katie gets lit off of wine coolers.
The dumb car accident happens, and Kane runs off to live in the woods. The woods. To live. Like Bigfoot. Then he gets a job on the docks. There he sees wrestling on TV, and wrestling on that TV is his brother Mark now known as the Undertaker and Paul
Instead of revenge, he gets a drug addiction which allows Paul Bearer to mind control him. He also goes to Spain to learn to wrestle. Then he says no to drugs and he and Taker defeat Bearer. The end.
One not-really-interesting tidbit. Until I saw No Country For Old Men a few weeks ago, I had never heard of Marfa, Tx. Kane's book is set in Marfa. Why is Marfa stalking me????1
Food and Feast in Medieval England by Peter Hammond.
Summary: pretty much what the title implies
Opinion: Not useful at all for research purposes, too under-detailed and skippy around-y. Very much an overview work. I picked it up because there were two huge looking chapters on manners, and I thought there'd be some good fic fodder in that. Interesting tidbits on how much work it took to set a medieval banquet table, and how sitting was detirmined by rank, but other than that it was a lot of words not saying much of anything.
