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eruthrosAnd there may even be a part three. Oy. For rules of the game, take a look at part one. The basics are: claim as much or as little as you want. There are duplicates of some of these, so go ahead and ask even if someone else already has. Postage is free, too, but if you want to send us cookies we won't say no.
Pornology: One Nice Girl's Quest to Understand Strip Clubs, Sex Toys, Magazines, And Videos Before She Learned to Relax Because After All, It's Just Sex. Ayn Carrillo-Gailey. February 2007. Again, I haven't read it, but ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
m_shell has, and she says "a light, quick narrative romp through the author's adventures in porn -- sex toys, erotica, visiting a brothel and a strip club, meeting a porn star -- interlaced with her adventures on the LA singles scene. At first I thought it was going to be a bit too sex-in-the-city derivative, but ultimately I found it endearing and fun to read." I point out that she read it in one sitting, which probably means it's pretty good.
The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives from the New Testament. Theodore W. Jennings, Jr. May 2003. Haven't read this one either. Jennings is a United Methodist clergyman and a professor at Chicago Theological Seminary. I quote (from the preface): "If one surfs the Internet, one may find a number of sites through key words like 'gay Jesus.' But does that suggestion have any solid Biblical support? this book is an attempt to carefully and patiently explore texts from the Gospels that suggest something about Jesus' own erotic attachments and the attitude toward same-sex relationships that may be fairly extrapolated from the traditions about Jesus." The tone appears scholarly and not as over-the-top as one would fear from the title.
Trust. Charles Epping. June 2006. Another book with the words "the da Vinci Code" in the cover copy. Which I have skimmed, not read. Which is a reason to not read it, true; the reason to read it is that it was recommended by Richard Lupoff, who does the "Cover to Cover" book reviews for KPFA. A reason not to read it: it's a puzzle-thriller with its base in international finance. (Alex is a coder. She finds a hidden bank account opened for a Jewish family in WWII and tries to track said family down. And Epping has a background in international finance. Eep.) Except that it soon fades that bit out and turns into the usual suicide! no, murder! no, the mafia is using the account for money-laundering! no, here's another plot twist! The author suffers from adjective overuse, but appears to be an otherwise competent writer.
Haters. Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez (author of the Dirty Girls Social Club, but this is YA). October 2006. We're clearly in the 'haven't yet read it' post, because here we are again. I hesitate to use the word "chick lit," but dude: this book is being advertised in Elle and the Delia's catalogue, so Little, Brown and Co. clearly think it's chick lit. First line: "You know it's bad news when your dad comes back to Taos from a two-week business trip to Los Angeles wearing designer sunglasses and a velour Juicy men's tracksuit." And then her dad moves her to L.A., and then of course she has trouble fitting in, and then... other things happen.
Catalina. Markus Orths; trans. Helen Atkins. October 2006. The usual historic fiction about women. Meaning plenty of cross-dressing. This is based on the autobiography of Catalina d'Erauso, so you could theoretically call it "based on a true story," but it's presented as a novel. Catalina's older brother goes to the New World; Catalina wants to go too, so she becomes a nun to get an education. And then leaves the convent and starts pretending to be a boy, convinces her lovers that she's a boy, convinces herself that she's a boy, and eventually makes it to Peru. Also probably some other stuff happens.
Storm Thief. Chris Wooding. September 2006. YA, fantasy. Okay, it's lifted from Douglas Adams, but still: probability storms are a neat concept. Probability storms change the streets of the city of Orokos around, turn people into animals or glass or make them unable to breathe. This leads to dialogue like: "It hasn't changed. I checked it." "When?" "Ten days ago." "Ten days? Rail, ten days ago I was right handed." Neat. Main characters are thieves who get their hands on aMacGuffin Very Special Artifact. And obviously other people also want the MacGuffin Very Special Artifact. Thus: running around, fighting, hiding, trying to figure out who the Real Bad Guys are, why there are probability storms, what's going on with Orokos, whether amnesiac golems are fighting for the side of good, the usual. You know, like you do.
Stone Light. Kai Meyer, trans. Elizabeth Crawford. January 2007. YA fantasy. Winged stone lion army. I need describe no other plot points. Because: winged stone lion army. Okay, I'm over it. (I'm really not.) Pharoah sends sphinx commanders and mummy warriors to take over Venice. Folks from Venice want to kick the Egyptians out, so there are assassination plots, plots to journey into hell and find help, all the usual.
Firestorm. David Klass. September 2006. YA, adventure/fantasy. Guess what? Haven't read this one either, butm_shell has, and she says "YA adventure novel, employing the time honored device of plucking Our Hero out of his ordinary life into Fast Paced Adventure where a Mysterious Evil is Trying To Kill Him." Also there is apparently a cute ninja chick.
Passing the Time in the Loo. Steven Anderson, ed. July 2005. Summaries of classic stories, quotes by theme, instructions in the basic rules of soccer, a trivia section: yep, it's a bathroom book. Also there are sections like "unlocking your work team's potential," which ... I don't need managerial instructions in a bathroom book. (OTOH, the book summaries are organized into categories like "symbolic characterization and thought," which amuses me.)
Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette. Sena Jeter Naslund. October 2006. Yep, it's a fictional memoir of Marie Antoinette. Begins: "Like everyone, I am born naked. I do not refer to my actual birth, mercifully hidden in the silk folds of memory, but to my birth as a citizen of France--citoyenne, they would say. Having shed all my clothing, I stand in a room on an island in the middle of the Rhine River--naked. My bare feet occupy for this moment a spot considered to be neutral between beloved Austria and France. The sky-blue silk of my discarded skirt weathes my ankles, and I fancy I am standing barefooted in a puddle of pretty water." I feel that that's a fairly good indication of tone and style. Of course, as someone pointed out to me -- m_shell, probably -- this is like that kind of Greek tragedy that I can't remember the word for, because we already know how Marie Antoinette's story ends, and we'll know it even when the narrative is focusing on gowns and food and architecture and perfection.
Mary: A Novel. Janis Cooke Newman. September 2006. Yep, it's a fictional memoir of Mary Todd Lincoln. It's a theme! This is clearly very different than the Marie Antoinette fictional memoir. For one thing, it's longer. (A whopping 700 pages.) And, um, it's written as if from the Bellevue asylum. So there're Life in the Asylum bits, with chloral hydrate and so forth. Also, it gestures at nineteenth century style and diction: "unquiet whisper" or "he talks most forcefully against slavery," for example. And she calls her husband "Mr. Lincoln." There isn't much of Mr. Lincoln in this, as I understand it, so if you're just a Lincoln buff this probably isn't the book for you.
The Meaning of Night: A Confession. Michael Cox. September 2006. Murder! Revenge! Love! Victorian England! Also, and unreliable narrator: it begins, "After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off the Quinn's for an oyster supper." Again, a gesture at the style of a Victorian novel. (And footnotes after the names of authors and eateries and names of places and non-English language headings.)
Red River. Lalita Tademy (author of Cane River). January 2007. "Epic Work of Fiction" and all that jazz, this novel follows three generations of African Americans in Colfax, Louisiana, beginning more or less at the time of Reconstruction with a massacre of freed blacks that was billed as a "riot." It apparently requires a family tree to follow. And is written in the third-person present tense, if that sort of thing bugs you.
And... still more to come tomorrow morning.
m_shell has, and she says "a light, quick narrative romp through the author's adventures in porn -- sex toys, erotica, visiting a brothel and a strip club, meeting a porn star -- interlaced with her adventures on the LA singles scene. At first I thought it was going to be a bit too sex-in-the-city derivative, but ultimately I found it endearing and fun to read." I point out that she read it in one sitting, which probably means it's pretty good.The Man Jesus Loved: Homoerotic Narratives from the New Testament. Theodore W. Jennings, Jr. May 2003. Haven't read this one either. Jennings is a United Methodist clergyman and a professor at Chicago Theological Seminary. I quote (from the preface): "If one surfs the Internet, one may find a number of sites through key words like 'gay Jesus.' But does that suggestion have any solid Biblical support? this book is an attempt to carefully and patiently explore texts from the Gospels that suggest something about Jesus' own erotic attachments and the attitude toward same-sex relationships that may be fairly extrapolated from the traditions about Jesus." The tone appears scholarly and not as over-the-top as one would fear from the title.
Trust. Charles Epping. June 2006. Another book with the words "the da Vinci Code" in the cover copy. Which I have skimmed, not read. Which is a reason to not read it, true; the reason to read it is that it was recommended by Richard Lupoff, who does the "Cover to Cover" book reviews for KPFA. A reason not to read it: it's a puzzle-thriller with its base in international finance. (Alex is a coder. She finds a hidden bank account opened for a Jewish family in WWII and tries to track said family down. And Epping has a background in international finance. Eep.) Except that it soon fades that bit out and turns into the usual suicide! no, murder! no, the mafia is using the account for money-laundering! no, here's another plot twist! The author suffers from adjective overuse, but appears to be an otherwise competent writer.
Haters. Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez (author of the Dirty Girls Social Club, but this is YA). October 2006. We're clearly in the 'haven't yet read it' post, because here we are again. I hesitate to use the word "chick lit," but dude: this book is being advertised in Elle and the Delia's catalogue, so Little, Brown and Co. clearly think it's chick lit. First line: "You know it's bad news when your dad comes back to Taos from a two-week business trip to Los Angeles wearing designer sunglasses and a velour Juicy men's tracksuit." And then her dad moves her to L.A., and then of course she has trouble fitting in, and then... other things happen.
Catalina. Markus Orths; trans. Helen Atkins. October 2006. The usual historic fiction about women. Meaning plenty of cross-dressing. This is based on the autobiography of Catalina d'Erauso, so you could theoretically call it "based on a true story," but it's presented as a novel. Catalina's older brother goes to the New World; Catalina wants to go too, so she becomes a nun to get an education. And then leaves the convent and starts pretending to be a boy, convinces her lovers that she's a boy, convinces herself that she's a boy, and eventually makes it to Peru. Also probably some other stuff happens.
Storm Thief. Chris Wooding. September 2006. YA, fantasy. Okay, it's lifted from Douglas Adams, but still: probability storms are a neat concept. Probability storms change the streets of the city of Orokos around, turn people into animals or glass or make them unable to breathe. This leads to dialogue like: "It hasn't changed. I checked it." "When?" "Ten days ago." "Ten days? Rail, ten days ago I was right handed." Neat. Main characters are thieves who get their hands on a
Stone Light. Kai Meyer, trans. Elizabeth Crawford. January 2007. YA fantasy. Winged stone lion army. I need describe no other plot points. Because: winged stone lion army. Okay, I'm over it. (I'm really not.) Pharoah sends sphinx commanders and mummy warriors to take over Venice. Folks from Venice want to kick the Egyptians out, so there are assassination plots, plots to journey into hell and find help, all the usual.
Firestorm. David Klass. September 2006. YA, adventure/fantasy. Guess what? Haven't read this one either, but
m_shell has, and she says "YA adventure novel, employing the time honored device of plucking Our Hero out of his ordinary life into Fast Paced Adventure where a Mysterious Evil is Trying To Kill Him." Also there is apparently a cute ninja chick.Passing the Time in the Loo. Steven Anderson, ed. July 2005. Summaries of classic stories, quotes by theme, instructions in the basic rules of soccer, a trivia section: yep, it's a bathroom book. Also there are sections like "unlocking your work team's potential," which ... I don't need managerial instructions in a bathroom book. (OTOH, the book summaries are organized into categories like "symbolic characterization and thought," which amuses me.)
m_shell, probably -- this is like that kind of Greek tragedy that I can't remember the word for, because we already know how Marie Antoinette's story ends, and we'll know it even when the narrative is focusing on gowns and food and architecture and perfection.Mary: A Novel. Janis Cooke Newman. September 2006. Yep, it's a fictional memoir of Mary Todd Lincoln. It's a theme! This is clearly very different than the Marie Antoinette fictional memoir. For one thing, it's longer. (A whopping 700 pages.) And, um, it's written as if from the Bellevue asylum. So there're Life in the Asylum bits, with chloral hydrate and so forth. Also, it gestures at nineteenth century style and diction: "unquiet whisper" or "he talks most forcefully against slavery," for example. And she calls her husband "Mr. Lincoln." There isn't much of Mr. Lincoln in this, as I understand it, so if you're just a Lincoln buff this probably isn't the book for you.
Red River. Lalita Tademy (author of Cane River). January 2007. "Epic Work of Fiction" and all that jazz, this novel follows three generations of African Americans in Colfax, Louisiana, beginning more or less at the time of Reconstruction with a massacre of freed blacks that was billed as a "riot." It apparently requires a family tree to follow. And is written in the third-person present tense, if that sort of thing bugs you.
And... still more to come tomorrow morning.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-31 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-31 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-31 08:01 am (UTC)I'm in the middle of a move so still learning my address. I'll probably make more requests soon as well as specify your desired dessert flavor when I verify my address. Off to sleep!
no subject
Date: 2006-07-31 04:57 pm (UTC)I've made the decisions, and now know where I live!
Date: 2006-08-02 06:44 am (UTC)- Pornology: One Nice Girl's Quest to Understand Strip Clubs...
- Knitting Rules
- Murder Across the Map
- Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days Volume 1
- An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers,...
- Here, There Be Dragons
no subject
Date: 2006-07-31 11:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-31 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-31 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-12 06:52 am (UTC)Trust, Charles Epping;
Storm Thief, Chris Wooding;
Stone Light, Kai Meyer, trans. Elizabeth Crawford;
Firestorm, David Klass.
All look interesting/fun.