katedp - Kate Degelau-Pierce

I assume Terry Pratchett wasn’t a royalist

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books are always about something. Men at Arms is about power, which is a thing I enjoy reading about. Corporal Carrot, you see, is the last heir to the Kings of Ankh-Morpork. The kings have not been in power for a very long time. A disgruntled elite who wants to be in power decides to attempt to remove the actual ruler of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari. (A person with whom you should not trifle.) There are other things that happen, there’s a murder mystery, but Mr Prachett ably weaves the various storylines together.

The world-building is good, the story is entertaining, royalty (spoiler!) does not make a comeback and everyone is largely ok with that in the end. And it’s all done with a light hand. Overall: a win.

One of the best books I’ve read in awhile

I was expecting Rules of Civility to be a much flipper and lighter book than it was. It’s New Years Eve 1937, and Katy Kontent (yes really) is about to embark on a life changing year in Manhattan. How could this not be chick lit?!?

But it’s not. There’s a rich non-suitor, a car crash, two job changes, the discovery of her ambition, Dickens, and so much more. It’s a lovely portrait of how an ambitious woman could move through the publishing world in 1938. And it’s a lovely portrayal of people both rich and otherwise in a world that’s about to come out of the Great Depression.

I ended up really liking this book. Highly recommended.

A quest for a dozen eggs

City of Thieves is wonderful.

The plot: Lev and Kolya are both young men who are arrested in nazi-besieged Leningrad. A Soviet colonel is planning his daughter’s wedding and needs a dozen eggs. He makes them a deal: they can find a dozen eggs during the ultimate siege in a Soviet winter, they get their freedom.

City of Thieves made me feel cold and hungry and desperate. It also made me laugh and think about friendship and community and how we choose who to rely on. This is a wonderfully layered story. Highly recommended.

Maybe don’t read famous books, self

Imagine that it’s the Cultural Revolution, and your parents were intellectuals. You get sent off to be “re-educated”, which just means doing the menial labor no one else wants to do. It’s a small town, with no technology, no entertainment. Just work. You and your fellow male re-educate-ee discover two things: a pretty girl and a book by Balzac. What happens? What would you do to make your lives a little more enjoyable?

That’s the premise of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. It has been highly praised, and it was a fine book. My expectations, however, were too high. It was not as good as promised. I didn’t feel the weight of carrying buckets of shit up mountains each day, and I didn’t feel the relief of the occasional happy moment. I understand that a) menial labor sucks and b) getting a chance to relax after back-breaking work is a wonderful, wonderful feeling.

It’s a perfectly fine book. But I was expecting more.

Reader, I didn’t care

Another book that was just sort of meh. I didn’t love Murder on the Quai, nor did I hate it. I haven’t read the rest of the series, so I was maybe not the intended reader?

The mystery to be solved is a conspiracy that originated with the theft of some nazi gold in WWII and now is playing out amongst those same people in 1989. It’s a perfectly fine mystery, maybe a little convoluted at the end.

The book didn’t do much for me. I suspect if I’d read the rest of the series, it would be different.

Dragons and Discworld

Guards! Guards! is the first of the novels about the Night Watch, a group of police in Terry Pratchett’s extensive Discworld. (Discworld spans 40 novels of varying quality. This is one of the [many] good ones.) There are only three guards left at this point, but then they get a new recruit – Carrot Ironfoundresson. It’s hinted that he’s the last remaining descendant of the kings who once ruled Ankh-Morpork, the main city of Discworld. He doesn’t move the plot along, though. That has to wait for the next book. This one is about a dragon who keeps being summoned into existence (and then popping out of existence) before deciding to take matters into its own hands.

It’s enjoyable. I downloaded it for a bit of brain candy, and it hit the spot.

Enjoying the process

Is this where I reveal that I’m a sucker for a modern retelling of an older story? Or, particularly, of Jane Austen stories? I enjoy seeing how the situations change to keep the same characters and traits and dynamics amongst them.

Eligible is a retelling of Pride & Prejudice. It takes place in Cincinnati, Darcy is a neurosurgeon, Lizzy is a magazine writer. They are both almost 40, and Lizzy has her large family. She and yoga instructor Jane are back home from NYC because her father is recovering from a heart attack. Her family is as atrocious as you’d expect.

Sittenfeld ably handles the material, turning it into an enjoyable story even though you probably know how it goes. Sometimes the joy is in watching the process unfold.

History and myth

Ah, back to my interest in ancient Rome. The Rise of Rome is a basic, popular overview of the first 700-ish years of the Roman Kingdom and Republic. It’s all pre-Empire. It’s a good overview – and lets face it, a similar book sparked my own curiosity back in high school.

That said, there are a couple of not-so-small points. Sources are super-important, and the sources for history this far back are not great. In fact, the Goths sacked Rome in 387bce and destroyed all the records. All of it. So anything we have prior to that year is in the realm of mythology. The archaeology can help some, but there’s a lot that’s basically just legend – Cincinnatus, the original Brutus, Romulus, Remus, the rape of the Sabines… who knows if any of that really happened? The Rise of Rome doesn’t even mention that – it does talk about some of the more obviously made-up stories as such, but there’s a lot that we just don’t know.

That said, a lot of those stories are generally accepted as close to the truth; the later Romans certainly accepted many of them, which says a lot about how they wanted to be perceived. They’re interesting for other reasons.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a decent overview, this is certainly a good, readable one.

Adulthood and power

I have little to no basis for reviewing this particular comic. I’m 41. I’m white. I’m not really a comic book reader. So why, then, do it?

Because this series about Black Panther, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, has things to say. It has things to say about power, about what happens when those in power don’t pay enough attention to those they have power over, about how complicated it is to be an adult. Most of the time, from what I can tell, the Black Panther is an adult. Tony Stark? Nope. Steve Rogers? In a particular way, maybe. Captain America is uncomplicated, even if he’s put into complicated situations. Thor? No. Just… no.

These are interesting themes to me. I like exploring them. For that purpose, the main character happens to be black. That said, I know there is more to this story and character to black people and black culture – that is what I’m not in any way comfortable talking about. There’s a history I don’t know enough about (eg Black Panther is named after the organization) and it’s just not appropriate.

That said, it turns out that I’m terrible at reading serialized stories. I can’t remember what’s happened from one issue to the next; I’m considering just buying the full set in book form once the run is finished.

Shakespeare, updated

Vinegar Girl retells Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, which is always a tough proposition. Taming is sexist: here undomesticated woman, let me show you your proper place in the world. Which, what? No.

But Vinegar Girl does a decent job getting around it, making Kate an awkward (not adorkable – straight up awkward, and not very likable) girl in an awkward family, marrying not someone who needs to put her in her place (or who teaches her to fall in love), but rather someone who needs a green card. Someone who is also awkward. The marriage knocks her out of an overly introverted life taking care of her father. The book even manages to hit on the overly proscriptive roles men are offered in society.

It turns a fairly not-feminist tale into something more feminist. And it left me wanting more of the story fleshed out: what was the deal with Kate’s mother? Why did Kate feel the need to withdraw from her friends? I want to explore this backstory.

Overall: recommended