This Week In Books: Week #8

[akujunkan]

And lo, it came to pass on the eighth week, that ajk posted TWIB early. Why, you ask? Because the next book up in the queue is Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, and there's no way I'm finishing that one by midnight tonight.

1) Inkheart - Cornelia Funke
This one was a real mixed bag. I'd read Funke's The Thief Lord over the course of two years while in Japan, and yes it took two years to finish, because it was that bad. Luckily, she's got a new translator for this book, and it helped, but didn't entirely solve the problem. Funke has some really awesome plot ideas: Inkheart involves a man whose voice can read characters out of books into our universe, the catch being that he always ends up reading someone or something from our world into the book. Cool idea, and the universe of the book in question (from which most of Inkheart's antagonists were summoned) is intriguing. Unfortately, we never see much of it. The story drags at times, and it irks me that Funke's female protagonists, while active, are either unsuccessful at their endeavors or never as active as are the males. I also wish the book had been written for a slightly older audience; like Harry Potter or Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series, it flirts with darkness and terror but never really confronts it, teasingly proffering narrative tension while never making good on the promise. And I'm not quite sure if it's to do with the fact that I'm reading in translation, the characters never quite managed to breathe like they should have. Still, I'm quite taken with the character of Dustfinger, and will probably be found cautiously checking out Inkspell, the sequel.

2) The Ladies of Grace Adieu - Susanna Clarke
Many, many, many thanks to metal_dog5 for alterting me to the existence of this book, which I suspect is composed of a series of outtakes from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. In fact, the first story in the collection features a cameo appearance by none other than Mr Strange himself (while also answering the question as to where all the women magicians are). To be frank, some of the stories deserved to be outtakes--while generally well written and interesting to read, they're nothing amazing. Others are, my favorites being the Tam Lin-inspired "Mrs Mabb" and "Mr Simonelli or The Fairy Widower" which pits a country curate against a lord of faerie. And although it fell short for me as a story, the last chapter features John Uskglass, and as we all know from JSMN, he is the smex.

3) The One Percent Doctrine - Ron Suskind
One Percent Doctrine deals with the people Suskind calls the "invisibles", the members of the FBI, NSA, and CIA who are the foot soldiers in the "war on terror" and their inevitible clashes with the president and his people, who consistently value message and appearances over actual results in the race to find and stop terrorists. As such, it makes good companion reading for House of Bush, featuring many of the same players but focusing on entirely different sets of motivations, interactions, and outcomes. I was surprised by what a sympathetic figure George Tenet became; Suskind does a good job of pointing out the ways in which the Executive branch betrayed his loyalty and used him as their go-to fall man. It was also interesting to read the behind the scenes overreactions that led to all the increased threat levels and presidential allegations of "terrorist activities" that seemingly came out of the blue and then went away again just as suddenly during much of the lead-up to 2004. Equally enraging are the accounts of identified threats and liabilities that were left unchecked in order to advance the short term goals of the president. Which isn't to say that the book is without its faults. First of all, it's written in a sort of spy-thriller narrative style, and the lack of notes (of any sort) left me wondering how many of the events really did occur as described, how many of the quotations are real, and how much of both are just Suskind's attempt at dramatic reenactments. Suskind's sentence structure also leaves something to be desired; at times it's hard to tell who is doing what in a sentence, or to who or what a given clause or digression actually applies. And finally, Suskind relies heavily on jargon, for which the index is all but useless. Can you keep terms like DI, DCI, DO, TTIC, sigint, finint, JI, and so forth straight? I hope so, because they aren't in the index. But for all its faults, this book is ultimately well worth reading.


So, there you have it for week eight. Only three books, (not counting all the manga!) but they were pretty good ones.

That will be all.

Comments

[suriru.livejournal.com]

yeah... eye openers are nice. i think that's what caught my attention about it ^__^ thanks!