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30 Days of Books: Day 14
Aug. 9th, 2010 01:08 pmMirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.
Day 14 – Favorite character in a book
Gosh, how can I pick?
I was recently talking with someone on LJ about this who’d selected Locke Lamora from The Lies of Locke Lamora
Jean is a strapping big bruiser of a man who was taught as a child not to engage in sword play, but “how to kill a man with a sword.” He has “unruly” curly hair, a fierce and quick temper, eyeglasses to correct his far sightedness, and is extremely well educated. He’s good with math and loves literature and discussing it, especially plays and historical romances. He’s loyal and protective and an excellent cook.
Don’t you want to take him home with you?
He’s much more stable and down to earth than Locke is, a good right hand man who doesn’t get swept up in impossible dreams. He’s also armed at all times, and can defend himself and the people he cares about. To an extent.
If you asked me this question a week from now, though, I’d have an entirely different answer.
by Kristin Cashore. While it has its flaws (the central character, while female, has no female friends other than her much older mother-figure maid, causing it to fail the letter of 
literally in one day. Granted, it’s YA and not, say, 
(much longer, more going on, an appendix for people and places). But still. I read quickly.
. It felt like Hobb had written 2 books worth of story but was contractually obligated to stretch it into 3 books. It was really disappointing. A lot of the ideas were good and interesting, some of the characters were good and interesting, but the writing wasn’t good enough across the board. The books also deal quite a bit with very fat characters– weight gain is a plot point– and the writing (not just characters’ attitudes toward fat, but what felt like Authorial Voice) veered from “fat isn’t that bad, it’s just part of life, some people are fat and some aren’t” to “OH MY GOD BEING FAT IS TERRIBLE AND DISGUSTING WHAT THE HELL JUST DIE. DEATH IS BETTER THAN FATTY FATTY FATNESS.” And while some of that was characters’ attitudes, a lot of the negativity felt like the author’s voice. And I get enough fat hatred in my life as it is. (It’s kind of extra disappointing because you had a character get fat, and his dad’s all down on him, and treats it like a personal attack, and denies him food and makes him exercise… and he’s still fat. Which slots in nicely with a lot of experiences me and other fat people have, where we diet and exercise and don’t lose weight. So it was like hey… somebody gets it… I can identify with this… so the “fat is bad” authorial voice kind of hit extra hard.) But really the most disappointing part was 2 books stretched over 3. Lots of repetition. Lots of it. Was repeated. Over and over. Much of the story was repeated. Again and again. And retold. In different ways. Over and over. The good parts were really good, but not worth the bad parts.
, by Lois McMaster Bujold is a scifi story about a short, ugly supergenius with impulse control. I entered it all “oh, yeah, ok. Let me guess. He’s short and ugly/deformed but his giant brain and personality make up for all that and he gets the tall, sexy girl, right? WHATEVER.” And then it was actually GOOD, fast paced and compelling and one of the books (and series) that I return to frequently (although I prefer the Chalion books).
, by Robin Hobb, is the second of 3 trilogies. I’d just finished the 
and wanted to see more of where that was going. Ships? Another world? UGH! Give me more of what I’d signed up for the first time! But I wound up really loving the second trilogy, and loving the new bits of world and politics Hobb showed us.
, by Sarah Monette. It’s also the 4th book in a 4 book series.
by Margaret Atwood. It’s true, though. It’s a book that was published in 1985 and which still rings very true. It’s a cautionary tale about where our world just might be headed.
by Maurice Sendak. Like a lot of his books, it’s weird and kind of creepy.
by Cherie Priest.
by Theodora Goss is a collection of short stories. These are delicately, tightly crafted tales– artisanal, even– filled with magic and the mundane, mystery, lessons, and hidden depths. If you are a writer, this is something to be studied and learned from. If you enjoy stories, these are to be savored. And since they’re short stories, you can dip in and out as you have time.
