Recent Reading
Dec. 22nd, 2003 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desayunoencamaSo, my best friend Keith back in New York, the most wonderful human being ever, has been kind enough to feed my addiction to two mystery series--Jane Haddam's Armenian-American detective Gregor Demarkian and Dana Stabenow's Aleutian sleuth Kate Shugak--by digging up the earlier volumes and sending them on to me here in Spain.
While I'm generally a fan of starting series at the beginning and methodically working my way through them, I think both of these work just fine if one starts at the tail end (as I did) and then goes back to fill in the rest, even though the relationships between the characters do grow and evolve over the course of the novels. (By contrast, with S.J. Rozan's Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, I'd strongly recommend starting with book one and proceeding from there. The series alternates viewpoints with each successive title, and I think that reading the series in order really enhances one's enjoyment of it.)
I've read more of the Haddams so far, having discovered that series earlier on (I think there are 19 titles so far). I find the books quite engaging, even when they're about subjects I've little interest in (such as the most recent installment whose title is also its subject: CONSPIRACY THEORY). Haddam has a way of putting you into the minds of multiple viewpoint characters, so that you begin to have sympathy even with the disagreeable sorts. She's very fair-minded in that way, and her Libertarian attitude also comes out in how pro-queer the books are. Some novels have overtly queer plots or subplots--such as TRUE BELIEVERS, which involves a conflict between various churches in Philadelphia, one of which has a gay priest and another of which is virulently anti-gay, or DEAR OLD DEAD in which, just before becoming a suspect in a murder, the celebrated director of an important free clinic in Harlem is arrested on a vice charge for engaging in public sex--but they're never simplistic, and the novels often have lesbian or gay characters scattered throughout other plots which have nothing to do with queer concerns.
A lot of the novels deal with organized religion in various manifestations, and it's been fascinating to read about the comparisons between different churches and the machineries thereof. (I think the only other novel set in an Abbey I've ever found so gripping was Rumer Godden's IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE, which I also recommend to anyone who hasn't read it. In Haddams books, however, the nuns are constantly commenting on the differences Vatican II wrought in their lives and orders...)
It's also really curious for me to be reading these Haddam novels in Spain, because the books are so quintessentially AMERICAN. They are snapshots of different aspects of American life. Her SOMEBODY ELSE'S MUSIC is so much about the prom, how in a small town that moment of high school is the pinnacle of life for so many.
The Stabenows are also appealing for their fascinating glimpse into all these Alaskan concerns which I knew nothing about, but which are extremely relevant/curious: Native rights and the industry surrounding anything happening on Native lands, the oil industry, commercial crab fishing, how morels are harvested, etc. But mostly for the struggle Kate Shugak has with her Aleutian roots and living half in the modern world and half in the tribal "past".
I'd recommend both series. The Haddams start off a bit "slow"; there are usually 50-60 pages of prologue, establishing in multiple viewpoints the various characters who're going to later be pivotal in the crime, but she handles it very well (think George R.R. Martin in a contemporary setting). The Shugaks are more traditional in structure, although morally they're often more complex. (Not so much as the S. J. Rozan's, say, which is a series I absolutely love but alas have read all of them so they're not really recent reading as the title of this point claims I'm talking about...)
While I'm generally a fan of starting series at the beginning and methodically working my way through them, I think both of these work just fine if one starts at the tail end (as I did) and then goes back to fill in the rest, even though the relationships between the characters do grow and evolve over the course of the novels. (By contrast, with S.J. Rozan's Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series, I'd strongly recommend starting with book one and proceeding from there. The series alternates viewpoints with each successive title, and I think that reading the series in order really enhances one's enjoyment of it.)
I've read more of the Haddams so far, having discovered that series earlier on (I think there are 19 titles so far). I find the books quite engaging, even when they're about subjects I've little interest in (such as the most recent installment whose title is also its subject: CONSPIRACY THEORY). Haddam has a way of putting you into the minds of multiple viewpoint characters, so that you begin to have sympathy even with the disagreeable sorts. She's very fair-minded in that way, and her Libertarian attitude also comes out in how pro-queer the books are. Some novels have overtly queer plots or subplots--such as TRUE BELIEVERS, which involves a conflict between various churches in Philadelphia, one of which has a gay priest and another of which is virulently anti-gay, or DEAR OLD DEAD in which, just before becoming a suspect in a murder, the celebrated director of an important free clinic in Harlem is arrested on a vice charge for engaging in public sex--but they're never simplistic, and the novels often have lesbian or gay characters scattered throughout other plots which have nothing to do with queer concerns.
A lot of the novels deal with organized religion in various manifestations, and it's been fascinating to read about the comparisons between different churches and the machineries thereof. (I think the only other novel set in an Abbey I've ever found so gripping was Rumer Godden's IN THIS HOUSE OF BREDE, which I also recommend to anyone who hasn't read it. In Haddams books, however, the nuns are constantly commenting on the differences Vatican II wrought in their lives and orders...)
It's also really curious for me to be reading these Haddam novels in Spain, because the books are so quintessentially AMERICAN. They are snapshots of different aspects of American life. Her SOMEBODY ELSE'S MUSIC is so much about the prom, how in a small town that moment of high school is the pinnacle of life for so many.
The Stabenows are also appealing for their fascinating glimpse into all these Alaskan concerns which I knew nothing about, but which are extremely relevant/curious: Native rights and the industry surrounding anything happening on Native lands, the oil industry, commercial crab fishing, how morels are harvested, etc. But mostly for the struggle Kate Shugak has with her Aleutian roots and living half in the modern world and half in the tribal "past".
I'd recommend both series. The Haddams start off a bit "slow"; there are usually 50-60 pages of prologue, establishing in multiple viewpoints the various characters who're going to later be pivotal in the crime, but she handles it very well (think George R.R. Martin in a contemporary setting). The Shugaks are more traditional in structure, although morally they're often more complex. (Not so much as the S. J. Rozan's, say, which is a series I absolutely love but alas have read all of them so they're not really recent reading as the title of this point claims I'm talking about...)
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-23 03:11 am (UTC)The first couple of chapters were a bit odd, but something made me press on. [The day-of-the-week hiccup that occurs when she first gets to the Slope still drives me nuts to this day.] By halfway through I was totally hooked.
I've since devoured everything of hers I can get my hands on. I read the 3 Star Svensdotter books she wrote early on; they're SF and they gave me a sneak preview of some of the stunts :-) Ms. Stabenow would pull with Kate.
Of all her series the Shugak series is and likely always be my all-time favorite. It's so rare, in my unhumble opinion, for fiction writers to get better with a series as it goes on. I just love her stuff.
{Er, Hi. I tripped across your LJ due to your putting Dana Stabenow in your interests. Hope you don't mind :-).}
Stabenow
Date: 2003-12-23 05:57 pm (UTC)I also started with A COLD-BLOODED BUSINESS, I think it's actually a really good one to start with. I am not sure if I'd started with book one if it would've grabbed me as strongly as CBB did... Although now I'm reading them all in order, and really enjoying all of them. Last night I read BREAKUP. Today I'm halfway through KILLING GROUNDS.
I think you can really start wit any of the novels before BLOOD WILL TELL. For me, that's the marker that you should read the earlier ones before reading that or those that come after.
I found the first few chapters of DEAD IN THE WATER a bit odd, but things pick up from chapter 3 or 4 on, as I recall, and it has a really satisfying end. I'd also never known all that commercial fishing stuff, which I found fascinating. For years, I'd wanted to be a marine biologist, but I'm deathly allergic to eating fish and it was just impractical for me to go out on a research expedition and not have an attack because I was stung by the spines of something, or just having fish everywhere and touching the corner of your mouth, etc.
I have a copy of one of the titles in her other mystery series here in Madrid, but am not sure if it can live up to how much I enjoy the Shugaks... And since, thanks to my wonderful friend Keith, I have five more Shugaks to go through (not included the second half of KILLING GROUNDS that I'll probably finish tonight) I'm in no rush.
I may have one of the Svendotter SF novels back in the States, but I don't recall. I know I haven't read them yet. Something to look for next time I'm back in the States...
In terms of writers getting better as the series go on, I'm not sure if I agree or not. I think the other series I mentioned, both the S.J. Rozan and the Jane Haddams, really grow as the series develops--one's enjoyment is greatly enhanced by knowing the interrelation, not just between the main characters but with all the secondary characters as well. And, say, the development of the relationship between Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane in the Dorothy Sayers books... (I thought A PRESUMPTION OF DEATH was much better, in terms of tone, than THRONES, DOMINATIONS, the two posthumous Wimsey/Vane titles by Jill Patton Walsh, although they're not in the same league as Sayers herself. But they were perfectly readable, unlike the travesty committed with the posthumous Archie Goodwin/Nero Wolfe novels... Feh!) Or Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone series.
Admittedly there are some series--including some perfectly enjoyable books--which are not cumulative in their effect. But the others are out there!
no subject
Date: 2003-12-23 01:16 pm (UTC)If you like the Haddams, let me recommend the series she wrote under the name of Orania Papazoglou, which are (loosely speaking) set in the world of romance writing and publishing and have titles such as Sweet Savage Murder. These used to be infuriatingly hard to come by but were recently reissued in a new paperback edition. (There's are also a couple of non-series works under that name which I did not like anything like as much, though nuns featured, as I recall.)
And thinking about people who write different things under different names, have you tried any of the mysteries by Sheri Tepper writing as either B J Oliphant or A J Orde?
no subject
Date: 2003-12-24 06:33 pm (UTC)But now that I know the SWEET SAVAGE MURDER and others are part of a series (I'd only seen standalones) and set in the world of romance writing/publishing, I'll definitely give them a try. (Besides, I like her writing and her moral worldview enough to follow her to her other work.)
Do you know Susan Rogers Cooper's series featuring romance novelist E.J. Pugh? I think the first novel is brilliant, a very human novel about trying to make sense of death. (Written in a completely different tone, but which affected me the same way, was one of Barbara Wilsons' feminist mystery series--MURDER IN THE COLLECTIVE, THE DOG COLLAR MURDERS, etc.--in which her protagonist, unable to make sense of her parents' random death in a car accident, winds up solving other deaths as an outgrowth of her grief, as a way of restoring order.) The rest of the S.R.C. series is perfectly readable, but the first book is a very poignant novel about grief and finding hope and embracing life, totally apart from the mystery.
In terms of Tepper, I have read two of the Ordes (A LONG TIME DEAD and DEATH AND THE DOG WALKER) and liked them just fine. I found them perfectly readable, although nothing special--sort of like Ellen Hart, although I'd probably pick up another Orde to read before a Hart title. Tepper's other series didn't really click with me, though.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-27 10:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-29 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-24 12:09 am (UTC)I was spurred over here following
no subject
Date: 2003-12-24 06:46 pm (UTC)Hope you do enjoy the above, although for HP fans I'd probably recommend you read all of Diana Wynne Jones (starting with HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE) if you hadn't already done so.
And if you can find 'em, Mary Frances Zambreno's A PLAGUE OF SORCERER'S and JOURNEYMAN WIZARD.
And (although different in tone) Patrice Kindl's OWL IN LOVE (beautiful, lyric, only one flawed page but otherwise the voice is so perfect, both when the narrator is an owl who is a young girl and when she is a young girl who is sometimes an owl) and GOOSE CHASE (fun subversive fairy tale).
And... (Let me know if I should go on raving about YA/MG fantasies?)
no subject
Date: 2003-12-24 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-26 02:20 pm (UTC)In terms of YA fantasies dealing with these issues, off the top of my head:
The Magic Shop Books by Bruce Coville, especially THE SKULL OF TRUTH maybe, but all of them grapple with learning morality.
(Also, his non-genre collaboration with Jane Yolen, ARMAGEDDON SUMMER, is really good in this regard, especially in terms of learning a different morality than one's fundamentalist parents...)
Pamela Dean's THE DUBIOUS HILLS: would it count as YA? I don't know. It's brilliant. It's very difficult. It presents a really interesting alternative moral structure/worldview.
Diane Duane's So You Want to be a Wizard? series
David Lubar's HIDDEN TALENTS
Alas, I don't have most of my library here in Madrid to consult... But maybe others who read here can recommend additional titles.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-24 01:13 am (UTC)It's also really curious for me to be reading these Haddam novels in Spain, because the books are so quintessentially AMERICAN. They are snapshots of different aspects of American life. Her SOMEBODY ELSE'S MUSIC is so much about the prom, how in a small town that moment of high school is the pinnacle of life for so many.
Mmm... or the nadir, just depending.
*nodding* I only spent a year overseas, and it was a while ago '89 or '90, I think. Very different feel reading there. And even more so watching the one American TV show they bought that year (Dallas) with non-American friends and family, through their eyes.
And I still remember the sometimes edgy feeling of trying to keep my reading habits fed; I can track most of my junk food reading back to that point, at some points I really would have read soup labels had they been in English. I also recall the difficulty of trying to explain "life at home." Don't want to give the wrong impression, I wouldn't trade that experience away; I still miss the place, and the people, and I'm very grateful for that chance to have not just travelled but lived immersed elsewhere for a bit.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-24 06:21 pm (UTC)Sometimes I get to piggy-back something I like (say, going to Wiscon next year) with a book-business obligation (like going to BookExpo, which is the week after Wiscon).
(Actually, it was doing that this fall with World Fantasy in D.C., a few days before a gig at a library in New Jersey that was paying my way, that got me onto LJ.)
I find the American-ness of the Haddams, or moreso, the value system, both so alien and so curious, now that I've been away long enough to have distance from and about it. I marvel that she has such an accurate eye fr it from WITHIN the culture she's writing about. But reading the books make me so happy not to be living in the U.S. any longer!
It's actually pretty easy to get English-language books over here. There's a second hand English-language bookshop nearby, and two or three chains/stores (FNAC, Casa del Libro, etc.) that have a large English-language section, mostly U.K. editions, but not only... Also, Gigamesh, the SF specialty store in Barcelona, or Berkana, the local queer bookshop here in Madrid, have English-language sections.
And, of course, I h ave the aforementioned wonderful friend who ships me stuff.
Not to mention that, whenever I'm back in the States, I stock up on books. (I read, on average, 150 books a year, mostly in English if it's pleasure reading, since when I'm translating I'm work...)
no subject
Date: 2003-12-25 09:22 pm (UTC)That's incredibly difficult to do, I agree and one reason the online has such high value for me even though available time is pretty consistently an issue.
I read about the same amount, minus a fair quantity of time with downloaded material now which I still seem to prefer in hard copy. I'm pretty old school with the internet, for the longest time I surfed graphics off. Actually, I probably still would if I could.