Mumble Herder

I have never read the Stieg Larsson books, but today I mainlined the first two Swedish film adaptations based on them--they're on Netflix streaming, in case anyone is wondering, and the third will be streaming as of January 25th. They are better than I was expecting, and I have no doubt that the American versions will be inferior. (Actually that last bit I was pretty sure of before I watched the film, but then I am still bitter about "Let the Right One In.") The main takeaway from these films is HOLY SHIT NOOMI RAPACE. She has to carry the films, and she does more than that; she fucking lifts them up over her head, runs a hundred miles under their weight, and hurls them into orbit.

1. Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution In Music by Marisa Meltzer.

2. The Patriot Witch (Book One of the Traitor to the Crown trilogy) by C.C. Finlay. First of Charlie's three books about witchcraft (I think it's safe to say that it's magic, but in context it's witchcraft) and the American Revolutionary War. Proctor Brown has big ambitions, but they have to do with farming and marrying just slightly above his station, not with revolution and a shadow war between witches, so of course it's the latter that he ends up with. Brown knows little of his own powers, so when he stumbles into the middle of a struggle between British and Colonial magic, he's in completely over his head--this is the sort of story where power without knowledge can get you killed. It's fast-moving, smart, and well-researched; the period details feel genuine, and the historical events are presented with accuracy, as far as I can tell--at least, I was able to answer a question on "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?"* based entirely on what I learned from this book, so I'd say I was learning as I was entertained. Charlie manages to get his characters involved with historical events without making it feel forced, which is saying something.

I liked the Ohio joke, too, Charlie.

*No, I wasn't on the show, I was watching it.

I read 106 books, which does not count books that I started and gave up on or books that I read only portions of (sometimes large ones) for research. It also excludes my online and magazine-based short fiction reading, since the idea of discussing every short story I read in any sort of detail is overwhelming. It's not quite as many as last year, when I read 116; the main reason for that is probably that I was dating for a while this year, whereas in 2009 I didn't have much of a social life.

Last year I expressed disappointment at some of the books I hadn't gotten to during the year, specifically another Charles Dickens, and the Edith Grossman translation of the Quixote, and pledged to read both in 2010. I did read A Tale of Two Cities, and enjoyed it pretty well, though it's not my favorite Dickens; I also read (or re-read, though a different translation) the Quixote, and decided that it's my favorite book of all time, as of now.

This year I also started taking on particular writers as "projects" of a sort; it started with Walter Mosley (because I couldn't get enough of Easy Rawlins) and Robert Holdstock, who passed unexpectedly at the end of 2009, and who I wanted to revisit, because he had been so important to my re-conception of fantasy post-Tolkien, Lewis, etc. Both of those projects were rewarding in different ways. Mosley writes amazing noir with a convincing (and often depressing) depiction of racial dynamics throughout the forties, fifties, and sixties. Holdstock's strength is in the richness of his imagination and the way it blends with his research of legend and history to create a realistic and often frightening blend of horror and fantasy; his weaknesses (particularly characterization, and particularly of his female characters) are often easy to overlook--at least for me--because of how good he is otherwise.

The difficulty with those projects, I quickly realized, was that it was throwing off the gender balance of my reading that I had established in 2009; I didn't keep track of that as closely this year, but I made sure that after I finished Holdstock's Mythago Wood books and read as much Mosley as I dared without running out of some for later, the next two writers I tackled were women. I had never read Patricia Highsmith before, and not nearly enough Ursula K. Le Guin; working my way through the latter's books may be the highlight of this year's reading. I'm not nearly through with the work of either of those writers, so those projects will continue into 2011.

Other things I plan to read in 2011: another Dickens, The Canterbury Tales, and, for the first time in more than twenty years, The Lord of the Rings. Plus, hopefully, 100+ other books.

Here's the Top 16 (completely arbitrary number, and in no particular order; these were what jumped out when I was reviewing the list):

Lavondyss by Richard Holdstock
Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
Little Scarlet by Walter Mosley
Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression by Studs Terkel
All Star Superman by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant
Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak
Good News from Outer Space by John Kessel
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Life on Paper by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud
The Poison Eaters by Holly Black
The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

On to 2011.

[Poll #1660859]

It's been a while since we had a proper poll here, and this is nowhere near a proper poll. As penance, I promise to post one before the new year, but right now I NEED DATA.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. Old Fort Snelling: 1819-1858 by Marcus L. Hansen.
102. Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Volume 1 by Roger Landgridge, Chris Samnee, and Matthew Wilson.
103. Ripley Under Water by Patricia Highsmith.
104. Darkness Calls by Marjorie M. Liu.

105. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I've been hearing about this book for a while now, most notably from Kelly Link; I'm glad that I finally got around to reading it. It doesn't slot easily into any particular category (which is always good)--it's a little bit family saga, a little bit romance, and a great deal of bildungsroman. Aside from all that, it's a pretty extraordinary book. It's told as a series of journal entries by seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain, whose strong and idiosyncratic narrative voice is half the reason the novel succeeds so well. Her family--brother, sister, father, stepmother, and a servant lad/adopted son--live in a dilapidated castle in the English countryside in what might best be described as genteel poverty. Cassandra's family, and the other people in their story, are about the best cast of characters I've ever read about; arguably, the writer's lesson of this novel might be that there are no boring plots, just boring characters. And this novel is anything but boring--every time I thought it was headed down a familiar narrative path, it surprised me, even at the end. I'm trying not to give too much away, here; there are romantic misadventures with the flavor of Shakespearean comedy, tempered by some Middlemarch-like clear-headed perspective on how love can misfire. It's very good.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.
101. Old Fort Snelling: 1819-1858 by Marcus L. Hansen.
102. Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Volume 1 by Roger Landgridge, Chris Samnee, and Matthew Wilson.

103. Ripley Under Water by Patricia Highsmith. Maybe it's a function of having read all five Ripley books over the past two and a half months, or of having seen more than one mention of the last two as "lesser" works, but I didn't enjoy this book as much as the others. About halfway through I realized that I was muddling through it, and that I was in fact a bit bored with it. Part of the trouble here is that Tom's antagonist here, the obnoxious and obdurate Pritchard, is in some respects actually more interesting than Tom; even at the end of the book he's the person I have questions about, and not Tom. Perhaps because I wasn't feeling the tension, the eerie juxtaposition of Highsmith's prose about Ripley's domestic life with the violence and danger of his "other life" were less successful here. While I'm finished with Ripley, though, I'm looking forward to reading more Highsmith; Strangers On a Train is next.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
Books 91-100.

101. Old Fort Snelling: 1819-1858 by Marcus L. Hansen. Originally published in 1918, this book covers the first era of the fort, up to its (temporary) decommissioning before the Civil War and the Dakota War. It's a bit dry, honestly. There are a lot of dates and troop movements, a few personality sketches but little in the way of anecdotes or incidents that communicate any personality. Ah well.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
91. Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 by Duane Schultz.
92. Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith.
93. The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum.
94. The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin.
95. Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith.
96. A Fisherman of the Inland Sea: Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin.
97. The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.
98. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, translated by Edith Grossman (Re-read).

99. Four Ways to Forgiveness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Four interconnected short stories (I suspect that most if not all are technically novellas) about the worlds Werel and Yeowe, and their emergence from systems of slavery and gender imbalance. There are echoes here of Anarres and Urras, from The Dispossessed, but neither of these worlds has even the appearance of a utopia; the process of liberation is messy, heartbreaking, and bloody. Three of the four stories take a sort of Dickensian approach, taking in the scope of an entire life (or lives) in a way that could easily go wrong, but Le Guin--unsurprisingly--makes it all work. It's notable, too, that these stories all have an element of romance to them, or at least of coming together and mutual healing; this doesn't seem to me typical of her work, and I think it's symbolic of the forgiveness referenced in the title. More great stuff from Le Guin.

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
Books 71-80.
Books 81-90.
91. Over the Earth I Come: The Great Sioux Uprising of 1862 by Duane Schultz.
92. Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith.
93. The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum.
94. The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin.
95. Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith.
96. A Fisherman of the Inland Sea: Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin.

97. The Boy Who Followed Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Critical consensus seems to be that the last two books of the Ripliad (yeah, they really call it that) are somewhat weaker, potboilers which Highsmith mainly wrote for the paycheck. I won't speculate on the author's motives--that's one of the more irritating ways to "review" that I've encountered--but I will say that this was a little bit of a letdown, particularly after Ripley's Game. It's not as tightly written or as tensely plotted, and Highsmith backs off on the dark quite a bit; there are times when Tom seems genuinely compassionate, and at times his actions are unambiguously heroic. The problem with this is that it contradicts much of what we already know about his character. It's fair to say, though, that nearly anything would be a letdown after Ripley's Game, and I still take a lot of pleasure in Highsmith's language, especially her economy of description.

Needed to feel I've been accomplishing something, so I pasted the novel (current working title: City of Brass) into Wordle. Can you guess what the main characters' names are?