TWI Books: #23
Mar. 19th, 2007 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akujunkanI managed five books this week.
1) Endless Nights - Neil Gaiman
Discovering the newest edition to the Sandman series (published four years ago, who knew?) was certainly a pleasant surprise. Thankfully, Endless Nights doesn't attempt to continue the series story line; rather, it's a collection of stand alone tales featuring each of the Endless. The stories are as excellent as ever and of a much higher quality than those in Gaiman's recent one-offs. They also fit right into the Sandman universe, which was not necessarily a given seeing how much time elapsed between The Wake and the writing of Endless Nights. Apart from a few quibbles which are as much to do with the medium itself (take a look at Desire's chapter for an idea as to what I'm talking about), this is a consistently solid, intriguing book with great stories and equally stellar artwork.
2) Adam, Eve, And The Serpent - Elaine Pagels
Elaine Pagels is the author of the wonderful The Gnostic Gospels, and I was pleased to see that she'd also written a book about how interpretations of Genesis led to Western Christianity's current understanding of the two sexes and their respective roles and responsibilities. Unfortunately, the text of Adam, Eve, And The Serpent not only fails to explore these issues, it barely touches on them. While this may be the fault of a copy writer trying to sneak the book in under the more commercially viable Feminist/Gender Studies umbrella, it's disappointing all the same. What Pagels does talk about is how the growing dominance of Augustinian thought changed Western Christianity's understanding of individual liberty and free will 180 degrees in comparison to the worldview which had preceeded it. Pagels presents her argument carefully, and is much more charitable than I would have been (I believe that Augustine is the single worst thing to have ever happened to Christianity in its 2000-odd-year history). So, while Adam, Eve, And The Serpent is an interesting and well-written book, be warned that it is not what it is made out to be on the cover blurb.
3) Colors Of The Mountain - Da Chen
I originally thought I was going to dislike this book, the autobiography of a "black" Chinese growing up during the Cultural Revolution. The author's voice was flat and lifeless (even as it descended into gratuitous profanity), his anecdotes carefully chosen to shock but failing even at that, and his tale curiously devoid of any cultural context. The various personalities introduced by the narrative often failed to manifest any individualising traits beyond their names. And then the miraculous happened--Chen found his voice about midway through the text. I'm left with the impression that he slogged his way through his childhood and early adolescence in order to get to the story he really wanted to tell: how he turned his life around in an attempt to learn English and qualify for admittance into the national university system. The text is much more lively and focused from that point on, and becomes a much more enjoyable read because of it (although Chen remains unable to root his narrative in a larger socio-historical context). My final verdict is that Chen's book is a worthwhile edition to the growing body of Childhood-Under-Mao memoirs, but that it will only be a worthwhile read if one has already read other entries (Jung Chang's Wild Swans springs immediately to mind) capable of providing the cultural and historical background Colors Of The Mountain lacks.
4) Lady Friday - Garth Nix
This was certainly an interesting edition to Nix's ongoing Keys To The Kingdom series. Some old friends reappear while other friends are afforded much-expanded roles in the narrative. The background imagery and worldbuilding are as vivid as ever--I was especially enamoured of the Servants Of The Night. Oddly, I found Lady Friday utterly lacking in any sort of dramatic tension. I felt no fear whatsoever for any of the principals at any point in the story, a first for any book in this series. I have a feeling this is due to two factors: the amazing awesomeness that was Friday's predecessor, Sir Thursday; and my suspicion that Friday is mainly laying the groundwork for something big in the upcoming Superior Saturday. Otherwise, I enjoyed Nix's take on Friday's vice; I was wondering how he was going to handle it in a children's book. (Answer: by going back to its older incarnation.)
5) Geisha: A Life - Mineko Iwasaki
I was not expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did--figured it would be a bubblegum one-off capitalising on the popularity of Memoirs Of A Geisha (one of the few books I can't bring myself to continue reading). Instead I found the engaging autobiography of a famous geisha in postwar Kyoto. I use "engaging" here in the sense that it's hard to stop reading, and not to describe the author. In fact, one is left with the impression that she's a rather unpleasant person--a spoiled, catty, nasty bitch, to be exact. Conscious or not (my intuition points to the latter), this honesty is one of the book's greatest strengths, as it humanises Iwasaki, making her more than a fairytale princess in an exotic world, and I found myself identifying with her even as her behavior galled me. The world is still plenty exotic though; the powers that be have made the smart choice to leave much of the Japanese vocabulary intact, with appropriate descriptions in English included as necessary. This goes a long way toward grounding readers in Geisha's setting, and is to be commended. However, I can't unconditionally recommend this book for one reason: its co-author/translator/editor Rande Brown, whom I would not let within ten feet of anything I've written based on her performance in this book. For although her translation/edit/whatever is fluid, she consistently mistakes "it's" and "its" and "then" and "than." Not once or twice, in error. Consistently. Throughout the book. It's shocking for any writer to be ignorant of these simple grammatical distinctions, to say nothing of a professional translator. My final verdict is to read this book for its wonderful window into Japan, Kyoto, and genteel Gion culture, but to be prepared to grit your teeth as you do.
That will be all.
1) Endless Nights - Neil Gaiman
Discovering the newest edition to the Sandman series (published four years ago, who knew?) was certainly a pleasant surprise. Thankfully, Endless Nights doesn't attempt to continue the series story line; rather, it's a collection of stand alone tales featuring each of the Endless. The stories are as excellent as ever and of a much higher quality than those in Gaiman's recent one-offs. They also fit right into the Sandman universe, which was not necessarily a given seeing how much time elapsed between The Wake and the writing of Endless Nights. Apart from a few quibbles which are as much to do with the medium itself (take a look at Desire's chapter for an idea as to what I'm talking about), this is a consistently solid, intriguing book with great stories and equally stellar artwork.
2) Adam, Eve, And The Serpent - Elaine Pagels
Elaine Pagels is the author of the wonderful The Gnostic Gospels, and I was pleased to see that she'd also written a book about how interpretations of Genesis led to Western Christianity's current understanding of the two sexes and their respective roles and responsibilities. Unfortunately, the text of Adam, Eve, And The Serpent not only fails to explore these issues, it barely touches on them. While this may be the fault of a copy writer trying to sneak the book in under the more commercially viable Feminist/Gender Studies umbrella, it's disappointing all the same. What Pagels does talk about is how the growing dominance of Augustinian thought changed Western Christianity's understanding of individual liberty and free will 180 degrees in comparison to the worldview which had preceeded it. Pagels presents her argument carefully, and is much more charitable than I would have been (I believe that Augustine is the single worst thing to have ever happened to Christianity in its 2000-odd-year history). So, while Adam, Eve, And The Serpent is an interesting and well-written book, be warned that it is not what it is made out to be on the cover blurb.
3) Colors Of The Mountain - Da Chen
I originally thought I was going to dislike this book, the autobiography of a "black" Chinese growing up during the Cultural Revolution. The author's voice was flat and lifeless (even as it descended into gratuitous profanity), his anecdotes carefully chosen to shock but failing even at that, and his tale curiously devoid of any cultural context. The various personalities introduced by the narrative often failed to manifest any individualising traits beyond their names. And then the miraculous happened--Chen found his voice about midway through the text. I'm left with the impression that he slogged his way through his childhood and early adolescence in order to get to the story he really wanted to tell: how he turned his life around in an attempt to learn English and qualify for admittance into the national university system. The text is much more lively and focused from that point on, and becomes a much more enjoyable read because of it (although Chen remains unable to root his narrative in a larger socio-historical context). My final verdict is that Chen's book is a worthwhile edition to the growing body of Childhood-Under-Mao memoirs, but that it will only be a worthwhile read if one has already read other entries (Jung Chang's Wild Swans springs immediately to mind) capable of providing the cultural and historical background Colors Of The Mountain lacks.
4) Lady Friday - Garth Nix
This was certainly an interesting edition to Nix's ongoing Keys To The Kingdom series. Some old friends reappear while other friends are afforded much-expanded roles in the narrative. The background imagery and worldbuilding are as vivid as ever--I was especially enamoured of the Servants Of The Night. Oddly, I found Lady Friday utterly lacking in any sort of dramatic tension. I felt no fear whatsoever for any of the principals at any point in the story, a first for any book in this series. I have a feeling this is due to two factors: the amazing awesomeness that was Friday's predecessor, Sir Thursday; and my suspicion that Friday is mainly laying the groundwork for something big in the upcoming Superior Saturday. Otherwise, I enjoyed Nix's take on Friday's vice; I was wondering how he was going to handle it in a children's book. (Answer: by going back to its older incarnation.)
5) Geisha: A Life - Mineko Iwasaki
I was not expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did--figured it would be a bubblegum one-off capitalising on the popularity of Memoirs Of A Geisha (one of the few books I can't bring myself to continue reading). Instead I found the engaging autobiography of a famous geisha in postwar Kyoto. I use "engaging" here in the sense that it's hard to stop reading, and not to describe the author. In fact, one is left with the impression that she's a rather unpleasant person--a spoiled, catty, nasty bitch, to be exact. Conscious or not (my intuition points to the latter), this honesty is one of the book's greatest strengths, as it humanises Iwasaki, making her more than a fairytale princess in an exotic world, and I found myself identifying with her even as her behavior galled me. The world is still plenty exotic though; the powers that be have made the smart choice to leave much of the Japanese vocabulary intact, with appropriate descriptions in English included as necessary. This goes a long way toward grounding readers in Geisha's setting, and is to be commended. However, I can't unconditionally recommend this book for one reason: its co-author/translator/editor Rande Brown, whom I would not let within ten feet of anything I've written based on her performance in this book. For although her translation/edit/whatever is fluid, she consistently mistakes "it's" and "its" and "then" and "than." Not once or twice, in error. Consistently. Throughout the book. It's shocking for any writer to be ignorant of these simple grammatical distinctions, to say nothing of a professional translator. My final verdict is to read this book for its wonderful window into Japan, Kyoto, and genteel Gion culture, but to be prepared to grit your teeth as you do.
That will be all.