March Books, Part 1

Yes, it's official. I am not very good at keeping up with these updates. Nonetheless, they are being done, and I suppose that's the main thing. More to the point, they're all being done in the subsequent month, so I suppose they're not even technically late... Oh dear - why on earth do I have blog-absence guilt?

Anyway, without further ado, here is the March update:

March Books:

9. Coraline (graphic novel) - Neil Gaiman (adapted by P. Craig Russell)
10. Shadow Games - Glen Cook
11. Gifts - Ursula LeGuin
12. South of the Border, West of the Sun - Haruki Murakami
13. Voices - Ursula LeGuin
14. Let the Right One In - John Ajvide Lindqvist

Coraline: I've always liked Neil Gaiman, and I've been trying to get more into reading graphic novels/comics, since everyone always assured me that I was missing out on some awesome stuff by sticking mainly to books. So when I saw this one in the university library, it took approximately 3 seconds for me to grab it and borrow it.

In a nutshell, the book is about a girl called Coraline, who is spending her school holidays being quite thoroughly bored by her circumstances. Then she finds her way into an alternate world, her parents disappear, and everything get delightfully creepy and weird. I enjoyed it a lot, though I have to admit that one of the things I found most entertaining about it is really unique to my particular circumstances. The main character is a dead ringer for my brother's girlfriend (who for the record is thankfully not 11, but is of small stature and frequently gets mistaken for much younger than she is). And I mean dead ringer - right down to the facial expressions and the clothes that she's wearing. When I opened the book, all I could do was stare in amazement for a good few minutes. The similarity really was eerie, and went one to entertain me no end once I stopped being creeped out by it!

I very much enjoyed the story, for the same reasons that I enjoy most all of the Neil Gaiman that I read - it's a wonderful blend of weird humour, totally unsettling creepiness and raw imagination. I don't have very many intelligent things to say about its adaption into graphic novel format, since I haven't read the paperback version, but I definitely enjoyed the story in this form - the illustration went a long way to really enhance the creepy, slightly claustrophic atmosphere of the story. And yeah - Coraline looks like Lauren, which made me laugh...

Would I recommend this? Definitely, if you like comics, or if you like children's stories that are genuinely creepy and don't patronise. Or if you're a Neil Gaiman head like me. Just you wait until I get up to the April update...

Shadow Games: I'll keep this one brief, because this book was the sequel to the Glen Cook books that I reviewed for January, and most of what I said about the first Black Company books can also be said for this one. I enjoyed it, and have definitely grown fond of the characters by this point, but I think I'm going to take a break and read other things before I continue on with this series (there are still many books that follow on from this one). One day though...

Gifts and Voices: I love Ursula LeGuin - I think she's fantastic. So I really have no idea why I don't read her stuff more often. Really. I loved Wizard of Earthsea, but I never bothered to finish the sequel. I've dibbled and dabbled in some of her other books over the years, and enjoyed them well enough, yet it had been ages since I'd actually bothered to devote my full attention to them. Because I am an idiot, you see.

Gifts and Voices are the first two books in a trilogy - I'm on the third one now. And they're just wonderful. I won't get too bogged down in the ins and outs of the plot, because while the stories are great, these are books where the broader themes and the writing style had more resonance for me. These books, to me, were a lot about time, history, origins and familial legacies - and they explored a lot of these ideas wonderfully, especially with regard to individual freedom and responsibility. I've always loved both reading and writing stories that look at the past (near and distant) and the way that it shapes the present, and the way that it shapes the people that live in the present.

I suppose you could really say that all stories worth reading are about these things, but these books accomplished it better than most, all the more so because they did it so simply. I've already blathered on this year about how some books have a simplicity to them that makes them almost fable-like, even though the themes they explore are complicated. Well, that's what's going on here again. Especially with Ursula LeGuin. I can't believe I'm about to use these words, so cliched are they, but her writing really does have something magical about it. She can write in two sentences what would take another person five - there's just something rich about her words. She really is a pleasure to read.

Would I recommend these books. Yep. Wholeheartedly, to anyone who likes their stories pure and unadulterated.

South of the Border, West of the Sun: This was a reread, because it's quite short and I really love Haruki Murakami. I've just been prattling about how some authors can take the complex and make it sound so simple. Well, the thing that I like about Murakami is that he takes poetry and really abstract stuff and makes it really modern, really contemporary. His characters are just normal people, steeped in pop culture like the rest of us. His books are about real life as much as they're about the supernatural and the surreal. I dig that.

I don't have as much to say about this one, since it was more a reread on the side (really just to remind myself of whether or not a friend would like it) than a grand new undertaking, but I do love this book. Oh, and I find the prospect of 'hysteria siberiaca' fascinating, and wish I could find more about it.

Would I recommend it? I suppose. It's not one of the more popular of Murakami's books, but I definitely enjoyed it, and if you like quirky books that mix observations of real life with the weirder, more unsettling aspects of human relationships, then you'll probably like this one.

Let the Right One In: I'm one of those people. I read this after seeing the movie. But I suppose I can at least hold onto some pretense of lit-snobbery, because at least it was the Swedish version I saw, and not the English version that's currently being made.

Some people are calling this the Swedish version of Twilight, though really only because it involves adolescents and vampires - and the kids in this one are much younger than in that series (for the record, I haven't read the Twilight series, and don't really want to. Mostly because it looks kind of silly and people who have read it have assured me that I wouldn't like it, but also because I'm scared that if I did read it, a small part of me would enjoy it, and then I wouldn't get to be a literary snob who makes fun of Twilight any more... Yes, I'm lame, I know. And it's kind of odd that someone who loves Harry Potter as much as I do is still holding onto thoughts like this).

Anyway, this is indeed a book about vampires. Or vampire really. A Swedish vampire, who becomes friends with the boy who lives next door. It's a vampire book, but it's definitely different from most of its genre. For a start, as one astute viewer of the film pointed out (and the film is quite a faithful adaption, both in plot and theme), the vampire is definitely not the most unsettling character in the tale. It's as much a book about how frightening and dangerous real people in real situations can be as it is about creatures that drink blood. It's also about love and friendship, more so than you might expect, and not in a corny or cliched way. It also doesn't restrict itself only to positive manifestations of these feelings.

I definitely liked it. It's probably not for everyone, and definitely not for the sqeamish (this book is choc-full of violence, death, pedophilia, bullying, etc), but it is a good book. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who liked the film.

Whoops - I just spilled tea on my lap. So much for pretense and snobbery.

I'm going to make a run for it, before the Internet eats any more of my morning...