the owl and the olive tree

One of the things that I have learned -- something I know that several of you already know -- is that sometimes a bad review can serve as more of a recommendation than a good review.

Bad reviews of books are often more entertaining to read, of course. Although the food porn elements of Ratatouille were why I went to see it, and a big part of why I loved it, my favorite line was one of the nasty critic, Anton Ego, who said toward the end, "We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read." It's true. I just finished reading Roger Ebert's Your Movie Sucks, and was entertained from start to finish, because watching him skewer bad movies with wit and grace is a delight. But often, too, a negative review will tell you more about a book than a positive one -- and sometimes that means that, quite against the intention of the negative reviewer, the negative review makes me want to read the book.

I've taken to reading the one-star reviews of books I'm considering first. Not because I'm an inherently negative person, I don't think, but because they often cut to the heart of the matter more quickly than the good or mediocre reviews. Not always in line with the reviewer's intention, either.

Of course, sometimes a negative review serves its intended purpose. I've been spared several dreadful books because I read reviews that noted that the author had a one-dimensional and misogynistic view of women and that showed in his female characters. I've been spared other dreadful books for more prosaic but still important reasons: if too many people think the characters are wooden and the prose clunks like a beat-up jalopy, I can probably give it a pass. True, negative reviews aren't always accurate, but if more than one or two people say the same thing, and it's something that's important to me... well, my time is finite.

But sometimes a bad review makes me hit "Order Now with One Click" faster than a good review ever could.

For instance. A while ago, I was considering buying a book, and I took a look at the one-star reviews. One of them ran along the lines of, "This book contains a homosexual relationship, and it's portrayed as positive and healthy! The characters even kiss! HOW PERVERSE!" That was enough to make me order the book, as it happens. (I think it was probably something by Lynn Flewelling, actually.)

Another example: often, middle-grade and YA books will have horrified parent reviews that say something like, "This book contains one swear word and mentions sex in a neutral and non-explicit way! PASS THE SMELLING SALTS." For one thing, to be honest with you, I find this hilarious, and it adds a moment of extra amusement to my book purchasing process, which is not a bad thing. But for another thing... well, I don't think that a swear word and a mention of sex makes a book a good book, but if that's the worst you can say about the book, well.

Most recently, after I read Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret, and made a sad face at discovering that Sport was out of print, I went poking around and found Nobody's Family Is Going To Change, also by Fitzhugh. I knew I'd read it, but I couldn't remember much about it -- I only read it once, and it was a long time ago. So I read the blurb and then I read the one-star review, which was an angry screed about how terrible this book was for portraying a father figure as less than perfect, for approving of children having aspirations that their parents didn't like, for approving of children having initiative and agency. It ended with a bluntly didactic note to children that they should ignore this book and realize that their parents know best and always, always have the best in mind for them.

It made me remember the book vividly, let me tell you, and once I remembered it I ordered it. Although I did wish there was some way that I could order a copy and send it to Mr./Ms. Your Parents Always Know Best And You Must Obey Them Unquestioningly's kid, if they have a kid.

Incidentally, this is part of why, if I don't like a book, I will say so in the review, and I will say why. Because if I make up platitudes about a book I don't like -- or don't review it at all -- then nobody gets any benefit; it's pap. But if I say, "This was a Middle-Aged, Middle-Class, Modern White Person With Ennui Contemplating An Affair book, and I am bored absolutely beyond tears by those," well, some people love those books. Some people eat them up, and go back for more. And that's fine; I don't expect everyone to share my tastes. And people who do love that stuff now know that such-and-such book is that type of book, and they can go order it, and good for them.

(There are other reasons I review the way I do, but I'll save those for another post.)

Most of the new-to-me books I've read recently I've read either because I've read the author before and liked them, or because I've read good reviews, which means most of my book reviews are generally good.

Today, I discovered a whole slew of books available for the Kindle for free! So I had a cross-section of the kinds of books I like (mostly fantasy, SFF, and romance) sent to my Kindle.

(For those of you with either a Kindle or the Kindle iPhone or PC app, you can find the tag for Kindle freebies here. Be careful, though -- sometimes when a promotion is over, the price goes back to non-free, but the tag doesn't get removed right away.)

We'll see what this does to my recommended-to-not ratio. ;)

In the seven kingdoms of Graceling, some children develop eyes of two different colors—and those children will grow up to have extraordinary talents. Some are unparalleled cooks, some are inhumanly skilled acrobats, some can do complicated math in their heads, instantly. These people, called Gracelings, are given to the service of their country's royal family, where they use their skills to the benefit of the king.

Katsa has one blue eye and one green eye, and her Grace is killing. She is the weapon of her uncle, King Randa—and she hates it: hates being a killer, hates that he uses her to hurt and scare his people, hates that everyone looks at her with fear. So she decides, secretly, to use her power to help people instead of hurt them, which in turn embroils her in her country's politics.

My favorite thing about this book was Katsa: she is incredibly competent at some things (one of those being 'hurting and killing people,' to her dismay), but she's also incredibly not-competent at some other things, like understanding people and getting along with them. She's sharp and prickly, expects people to be afraid of her (and to some extent is afraid of them, not that they'll hurt her physically but that they'll act in ways she doesn't understand and can't control), tends towards isolation, and is kinder than she can give herself credit for. She's a good person, but not a particularly friendly one, and I liked that. I also liked that, while she has plenty of flaws and places where she's not the best ever, she gets to be super skilled at what she is super skilled at without being taken down a notch. (It also helps that, although she's supremely skilled, the challenges that the plot throws at her are appropriate for her skills. She still can't breeze through them.) And she gets more and more agency through the book, including through her romance subplot, which I liked.

I also liked her love interest, but I'll have to talk more about that behind the spoiler wall.

The Graces were a very interesting thing, too—similar to many other takes on 'magical powers granted at birth,' but with a few interesting twists. For one thing, just because you're Graced with something doesn't mean you like it. Someone Graced with cooking might very well hate cooking, just as Katsa, Graced with killing, isn't herself a sociopathic murderer. For another thing, the plot really does face the bad side of having some people born with incredible powers; when someone monstrous winds up with a strong Grace, the results are horrifying. (This is also something I liked in How To Ditch Your Fairy, which I'll write about later.) It was a nice change from books in which mages clearly could take over the world, but for some reason just... don't.

The book was not without flaws. While the prose style was very clean and readable, it fell flat in places, and sometimes seemed unpolished. (I am pleased to say that Fire is better in this regard; I think Cashore is learning as she goes, which makes sense for a first and second book.) The worldbuilding also felt generic medievalesque (heck, the countries are named Wester, Estill, Nander, Sunder, and Middluns, if that gives you an idea), with the exception of the Graces. Actually, one country -- Lienid -- gets more detail than the others, and I liked it better but I'm afraid the more detail there threw the flatter worldbuilding in the rest of the world into sharper relief. I think I am getting pickier about generic medievaloid—I don't mind medieval, as long as it has some actual flavor, rather than just horses-and-castles-okay-we're-done. But the flaws were minor enough that they didn't take away from what I loved, which was the characters.

This is a book that I think really merits from being unspoiled, so unless you've already read it or you're pretty sure you won't read the book, I'd avoid reading on.

( Spoilers have one blue eye and one green eye )

Recommended, especially if you like light-ish YA fantasy. This is one of the books that I read in one evening, and I grabbed the next book (which is actually a prequel) as soon as it came out.

I just posted a poll about book reading habits at my LJ, if you're curious.

My pre-ordered copy of Catching Fire just got here! Squee!

I haven't been this excited for a new book in a series in years and years. (I do recommend The Hunger Games, the first book in the series, to anyone who likes young adult or sf/f. It is very, very good.)

First, though, I have to finish Inda, because the poor boy is stuck in quite a tight spot and I can't just leave him there....

This is really only relevant for those of you who are local to me, but --

I've added some new tagging to my booklog posts: the format of the book. This is one of the following four:

format: paper book - a physical book that I own (and that can be borrowed from me)
format: borrowed/library - a physical book, but one that I can't loan out because it's not mine
format: kindle book - a kindle book, and therefore not borrow-able
format: other ebook - a non-kindle ebook that I can probably hook you up with, if you want

Now there's no guarantee that I'll still have a paper book (and if it's a book I hated, I'll probably get rid of it to free up bookshelf space), but if you're local enough to borrow books from me, you can always ask. :)

(As a side note, I've discovered that I read non-fiction very happily on the Kindle... but for some reason I'm happier reading fiction in physical book form. I certainly have read fiction on the Kindle, especially when traveling, but still, the difference is interesting.)

I have so many books on the to-read pile that I have to read ten of them for each new book I buy. (Alternately, I can buy a new one for every ten I get rid of or give away -- there are some I know I'm not going to read, at this point.)

Exceptions: books I'm buying for a special purpose (for instance, books I might buy in order to get them signed at cons are okay), and new books in continuing series (you can bet I'll pick up the next Fullmetal Alchemist volume, or, if there is one, the next Discworld book).

But otherwise, moratorium until I read some of this.

Up next: review of The Hunger Games.

For more, see: http://www.racebending.com

Whitewashing: not a pretty thing.

(For another example, see Ain't That A Shame, Justine Larbalestier's post about how one of her books, with an African American protagonist, was published with a cover depicting that character as white. Note that this was over her protest; authors don't get much say on book covers.)

In happier news, coffeeandink is hosting the Book Re-Covery Program, a repository for fan-created alternative/reimagined covers for books -- "Covers with people of color on them. Covers with cool but not stereotypical designs. Covers that demonstrate the diversity and richness that's already inside the text, or that reimagine white texts as more diverse, male-dominated texts as more feminist." I'm watching with interest, and may try my hand at a few, even though I'm not very good with graphics.

I am thoroughly behind on my bookblogging, so I'm going to do a quick roundup and then hopefully I'll get myself caught up with full-fledged entries later.

( Books for April 2009 )

I wound up doing a lot of rereading of books in March, and I'm not counting rereads against my 50, but I thought I'd blog 'em anyway. Mostly I wound up with so much rereading because I followed up Clay's Ark with a comfort reread of Witches Abroad, which -- as is often the case -- lead to me rereading all of the Discworld books in the 'witches' subseries. (Well, not quite all. I didn't reread Equal Rites or Wyrd Sisters, but I read all of them from there out.) So that's Witches Abroad, Lords and Ladies, Maskerade and Carpe Jugulum. (I didn't reread the Tiffany Aching witch books, but mostly that's because I realized that I don't actually have a copy of The Wee Free Men, which put a stop to the momentum -- although I did wind up ordering one.) And I also reread Going Postal and Making Money, the Moist von Lipwig books.

I can never decide which of the Discworld subseries are my favorites -- the witches, the guards, Death and Susan? But I definitely prefer the later books to the earlier ones, and I think the main reason for that is that I think Pratchett got better at characters. In the early books, many of the characters were archetypes, even caricatures; over time they grew out of those molds (it was particularly interesting to watch Nanny Ogg develop, reading the series in order -- although the most notable example of it is Vimes, who I adore, and whose character arc from Guards! Guards! through Night Watch is incredible). And the characters who were introduced later have the advantage of being developed when he was better at it. That's most obvious to me in comparing Agnes/Perdita to Magrat; they're very different characters, but the role they play in Lancre (and the coven) is similar, and I think Agnes is a lot more nuanced and dynamic. As though Pratchett had, at some point, actually figured out what he could do with a young female character. (I also felt that way in Monstrous Regiment, which I think is one of the more flawed of his recent books, but which has a young woman character I loved -- Polly, the protagonist.)

Anyway. I think I'm going to read Brown Girl in the Ring next, and get back onto new-to-me books, but it was a fun diversion.