Booklog: Goodwin and Pratchett

[nebroadwe]

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

A gracefully written popular narrative history of Abraham Lincoln's political career and a collective biography of the president and the chief figures of his cabinet (several of whom opposed him for the Republican nomination in 1860): William Seward, Salmon Chase, Edward Bates, Edwin Stanton, Gideon Welles, and various members of the Blair family. Nicely detailed and copiously footnoted, it seems a good read for someone (like me) not intimately familiar with the Civil War era. (I suspect Civil War buffs will find it more-of-the-same, though.)

Terry Pratchett, Faust Eric

Early Pratchett, which means that the story of thirteen-year-old demon summoner Eric, who accidental hauls Rincewind out of the Dungeon Dimensions and discovers why you have to be careful what you wish for, lacks the depth that would give the jokes that humane sting in the tail which makes his later books as thought-provoking as they are amusing. On the other hand, the man can turn a phrase like nobody's business: "Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken." On the shelf because I'm a completist.

Comments

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

I didn't enjoy Eric as much as the other ones just because... well I wasn't particularly familar with Faust (though I basically wikified myself on it before I started reading,) but I also have to admit that I have to work extra hard to get into the Rincewind books. (You can tell it's one of the ones my mother bought for me, knowing only "Hey! She has a billion Pratchett books! This one works!)

Still... I like the idea of posting reviews of books I'm reading. (Especially since I'm finishing up Strange and Norrell and... holy crap brain overloaded.)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I hear you about Rincewind. The only one of those that really grabbed me was Interesting Times. (And the last page or so of the Australian one, where the rain falls at last. If I ever engage in a Faustian bargain, it'll be for the ability to be silly and then turn right 'round and be heart-breakingly serious without giving my readers cognitive motion sickness.)

Good luck with Strange and Norrell. I finished that one on sheer willpower -- I kept waiting for something to happen or for one or the other of the protagonists to put the clues together and at least figure something out. Instead of which the story went to Italy and met Byron, just because He Was There. Augh. Either I don't get it, or inside that bloated behemoth is a lovely novella struggling to escape. But I bounce hard off most of Neil Gaiman, too, so my opinions may be suspect ...

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I'm notoriously easy to please? If there's something in there that I can focus on, then I'm willing to overlook a lot of flaws in a book. I adored American Gods with a white hot passion, because I love mythology and the whole idea of it tickled me endlessly, so a lot of legit criticisms that you posted before just... kinda went over my head? So I'm actually really enjoying Strange and Norrell - I'm only about 100 pages off of finishing - just because history! Historical figures! Mixed with magic! I'm so easy to entertain. It takes a lot for me to truly dislike a book, even if aspects of the story (Hi there Practical Demonkeeping!) disappointed me.

I think the only book I can honestly say in my entire life that I've hated was Catcher in the Rye - my loathing of that book knows no bounds - and I still think I might have been friendlier towards it if our teacher hadn't given it to us straight off of Catch 22, which is pretty much in my top 1- favorite books ever?

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

I admit that, as I get older and more curmudgeonly, I've gotten pickier about what I like (though not necessarily what I read). I have an overriding delight in books that GET SOMEWHERE -- I don't like plotless pieces, or stories that set up a situation and run it endlessly, or (unless the characterization or setting or something is really well done, as in Death Comes for the Archbishop) slice-of-life pieces. Or, for that matter, books in which style trumps content, like Ulysses (okay, except for the bit where Joyce recapitulates the history of English literature at a student meeting and the other bit where he runs a girl's romance novel-inspired stream of consciousness against Bloom's, um, earthier considerations) or some of Patricia McKillip's less plotty stories or the end of Robin McKinley's Deerskin. Other than that, though, I can be entranced even by the banal if it's done with reasonable flair (there's a reason some cliches become archetypes, after all). And sometimes I bounce right off things that I ought to like, because I've hit them at the wrong time or something. McKillip's Riddlemaster trilogy is the signal example here: read it at twelve and thought it was boring; read it again at twenty-eight and realized it was a heart-breaking work of staggering genius, because I finally had the experience to empathize with the characters).

I'm getting through books at a great rate these days, as I work my way down the Christmas pile -- next up, Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik. Now here's a series I can sink my teeth into: alt-hist SF with a decent grasp of the rhetorical style of the 18th century, enjoyable characters and a plot that is, indeed, Going Somewhere, though it's certain to take a while to get there. I don't mind as long as the quality of the rest keeps up. :-)