Lonely Werewolf Girl

Title: Lonely Werewolf Girl
Author: Martin Millar
Published: 2007. This one's by Soft Skull Press
Genre: Urban fantasyyyyyy!
Pages: 558


I started reading this on my trip to London last July, but then got distracted by A Song of Ice and Fire. Now I decided to pick it up again, and finish it! Yay! So I did just that.

Like all Mr. Millar's books (at least the ones I've read so far), Lonely Werewolf Girl is written in shortish chapters which alternate between the many characters filling the book. Our title character is the laudanum-addicted teenage werewolf Kalix MacRinnalch, a member of the ruling family of the Scottish clan of MacRinnalch werewolves, born in wolf-form on a full moon. She's living on the streets of London after she attempted to kill her father, the Thane, and is being pursued by not only the werewolves who are just a tad upset over this, but also werewolf hunters.

Once the Thane dies, the whole clan is pushed on the brink of war: Kalix's brothers Sarapen and Markus want the title, while their sister Thrix would rather just concentrate on the clothes she's designing for the Fire Queen Malveria and have this family business sorted out as soon as possible. There are many other members of the clan in the book -the cousins which the family does not talk about probably my personal favourites- and also two human students, Daniel and Moonglow, who end up rescuing Kalix from the streets and protecting her. Well, as far as two humans can, from powerful werewolves and a guild of werewolf hunters. They succeed quite admirably!

Oh, and there's a sequel! Curse of the Wolf Girl, if I remember correctly, which I just bought yesterday from that big internets bookshop.

It's most likely due to the fact that I started the book in July, and just glanced through the first 90 or so pages when I picked it up again, but I got to a bit of a slow start with this one. But soon enough I was swept up with werewolf politics though, and the lovely Millarish characters. Looking forward to the sequel, though I guess I have to find something else to read until it arrives...


"Kalix felt that she really should be moving on. She wasn't safe here. But she wasn't safe anywhere. She gazed longingly at the bath, white and clean, then nodded. While Moonglow ran the water Kalix slipped out of her rags and for the first time since Moonglow had met her, something resembling a smile appeared on her face. Moonglow went to hunt through her boxes for her shampoo and bath oils. Downstairs Daniel was finally bringing in the last of their possessions. He was very red in the face. As a first year English student he wasn't used to a lot of exercise. Two days a week his lectures started at nine in the morning and he always felt that this deprived him of a lot of sleep."

Sky Coyote

Title: Sky Coyote
Author: Kage Baker
Published: Originally in 1999, this ed. 2007 by Tor
Genre: Historical science fiction!
Pages: 310


Remember when I said I'd take it slow with this series? Yeah...

Sky Coyote is the second book in Kage Baker's Company-series, and I picked it up as soon as I'd finished A World without End. Read it in a week or two, buuuuut didn't get around to updating. So I'm doing it now. Yeah.

The lead of this book is Joseph, who had a small role in the first book (an important one, though). The Company has decided to save a whole Chumash tribe with most of their belongings before ze Europeans get there, and Joseph, masked as one of their gods, the trickster Sky Coyote, is sent in to prepare the snarky tribe for their fate.

The book is light and pretty humorous, a joy to read, even though there are undercurrents of immortals becoming increasingly concerned over what exactly is going to happen in the year 2355, and the fact that some old immortal operatives have gone inexplicalby missing. And then there's the penis puppet show. It's very hard trying to keep a straight face when riding a full, traffic hour bus and reading about the penis puppet show.


"So here I am, Mr. Sky Coyote.
" I like this role. Trot trot trot on my new feet, leaving strange prints along the creek bed. A seagull floating inland gives a high far-off cry, and I cock my ear most comically. Up the winding canyon, and any real beast meeting me here in the gloom under teh oak trees will have the fright of its life. If I wanted to give chase, I wonder how I'd do? The muzzle points, the sharp teeth bare, and they snap and slash. We had to compromise on the tongue so I could speak, but I've practised panting in the mirror. I'm confident I'll make a good impression."

World Without End

Title: World Without End
Author: Ken Follett
Published: 2007 by Pan Books (at least this edition is...)
Genre: Historical fiction!
Pages: 1237


It says on both covers something along the lines of You can't put this book down once you pick it up, and, well, that's pretty much 100% accurate. This epic just suck you in.

It's been, oh, some 12 or 13 years since I first read Follett's medieval epic Pillars of the Earth. I was really into things medieval back then, and even used the book as a part of my Finnish matriculant essay exam. World Without End is its sequel, as in it's set in the same place, Kingbridge, around the same cathedral which was built during Pillars of the Earth, but some 200 years later. It's Halloween 1327, and four young children happen to witness the murder of two men in a forest near the cathedral. World Without End follows these four kids, the ups and downs of their lives.

And man. Every time, EVERY SINGLE TIME someone gets an up, they immediately get whacked down. Oh hey, he's doing good, isn't he? Nope, not anymore. But she's figured out how to--- Nope. Well how about him, is he--Nope. Oh come on, at leas---NOPE!!! And then it's HAPPY FUN PLAGUE TIME! \o/ Fun fact: this was the first time ever I actually shouted "Fuck!" out loud because someone sneezed in a book.

Don't get me wrong, I loved every fricking second of reading this book. I spent one weekend on the sofa reading it. Well, some 500 pages of it. I got anxious around page 900 because it would be over soon! World Without End sucked me in good and proper: the characters were such that every time one was whacked down, I had to keep on reading to see that they'd get up again. I think I'll miss them, now that it's over.

So yeah. Good times!


"I'll keep your secret, if you'll keep mine."

In the Garden of Iden

Title: In the Garden of Iden
Author: Kage Baker
Published: 1997 by Avon Books
Genre: Historical science fiction!
Pages: 294


My better half's been telling me to READ THIS SERIES!!! for a long while now, and I finally obeyed! In the Garden of Iden's the first book of Kage Baker's Company-series. Let's see if I can explain it a little.

Okay, so, a few centuries in the future, there's this organisation, the Company, who aim to preserve extinct species and plants, protect works of art and so on. They do this by traveling in time, to the past, taking orphans and making them immortal. These kids are brought up to work for the Company; for example Iden's main character, botanist Mendoza, on her first assignment rescues valuable plants from extinction from Sir Walter Iden's famous garden in Elizabethan England. She and a few other operatives stay as Sir Walter's guests, and young Mendoza is immediately smitten with the Sir's gloom cookie of a secretary, Nicholas Harpole.

So, it's kind of a historical romance -Baker being an expert in Elizabethan England- with lots of science fiction elements. And a fake unicorn. And nice amounts of humour.

According to the SO, the series gets better along the way, the first few books taking it slow. But I really liked this one, too, with all its introductoriness, so the series is looking to be pretty darn good. Like with the Song of Ice and Fire, I'm going to try to take this slowly. Read a book now, another in a while. Make it last. Like with the Song of Ice and Fire, I'm most likely going to fail fantabulously in this endeavour and finish the series before summer.


We crossed a lot of water and flew over a dry red land, remote and silent. We touched down within the high walls of Terra Australis Training Compound 32-1800. It had been there about fifteen hundred years when I was enrolled, and had had time to install all the little amenities: air conditioning, laser defense, a piano in the gymnasium. Within its towering walls were gardens and playgrounds and the domes of cool subterranean classrooms. And hospitals. And warehouses. In fact, most of the place was underground.
It wasn't all that different from any particularly demanding boarding school, except that of course nobody ever went home for the holidays and we had a lot of brain surgery.

Haunted

Title: Haunted
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Published: Originally in 2005, this edition by Vintage in 2006. I seem to have a lot of books by Vintage.
Genre: Chuck does scary stories
Pages: 404 + afterword.


Well well well. About a decade since I've become acquainted to Mr. Palahniuk's work by seeing Fight Club for the first time, and he finally makes me want to take a bath between my ears. Well played, Chuck. But not with Guts, the infamous story from this book, reading of which has caused over 70 people to faint. That one made me laugh out loud nigh hysterically. No, it was Speaking Bitterness, and also, to a lesser degree, Hot Potting. I was eating while I read the latter one. Not a good idea, that.

Soooo, Haunted. It's about a bunch of people saying goodbye to the world for three months, while they go on a writer's retreat to finally write That One Book Which Will Make Them Famous And Rich. Or, at least, that was the idea. What actually happens is very different. The book consists of short introductory poems of characters before they tell their big stories to the others while waiting for death or salvation. Between these the unnamed narrator tells what goes on at the retreat, which is, basically, a wave of mutilation.

This book is awesome. Chuck is awesome. I don't know where he pulls these ideas and stories from, but just when you think that the one you just read is the most horrifying/funny/gory thing you've read, on comes the next one. And the scariest thing is, it's all pretty much just... human nature. What a fucked-up bunch we are.


"And someday soon, any day now, the world will come open that door and rescue us. The world will listen. Starting on that sun-glorious day, the whole world is going to love us."

Goodbye to Berlin

Title: Goodbye to Berlin
Author: Christopher Isherwood
Published: Originally in 1939, this edition by Vintage considerably later.
Genre: Drama!
Pages: 256


Okay, so THIS is blog post #100! Yay! Nice way to start 2012! And it's a classy book, too!

2/2 of the books Santa brought me. I discovered I like Mr. Isherwood's style while reading A Single Man last year, and these new editions have absolutely gorgeous cover art. This one is a collection of short stories which tie together through people in the early 1930's Berlin. There's six stories altogether, told in first person. The person's name happens to be Christopher Isherwood, but the reader apparently shouldn't assume this to mean that the stories are purely autobiographical.

The book tells in honest details how people of that time lived, when Hitler didn't really seem all that bad yet. There are, for instance, the Nowaks, a family of five living in an inhabitable attic room where Christopher also stays for a while, and the Landauers, wealthy Jewish family who own a famous department store. The bottom and top of the society, and oh, the society can be so decadent. There's also the rather mismatched couple of Peter and Otto, and Sally Bowles, perhaps Isherwood's most famous character, an upper-class English girl trying to make a legend of herself in Berlin.

What else could I say... well, nothing smart, apparently, since I've erased every attempt I've made so far, and I have to run in a minute! So, a small quote:


Sally made no reply. She lit a cigarette, slightly frowning.
'You say I seem to have changed,' I continued. 'To be quite frank, I've been thinking the same thing about you.'
Sally didn't seem surprised: 'Have you, Christopher? Perhaps you're right. I don't know... or perhaps we've neither of us changed. Perhaps we're just seeing each other as we really are. We're awfully different in lots of ways, you know.'
'Yes, I've noticed that.'
'I think,' said Sally, smoking meditatively, her eyes on her shoes, 'that we may have sort of outgrown each other, a bit.'

Book meme thing for 2011

Right-o! I snagged this from http://blog.catherinepope.co.uk/2011/12/end-of-year-book-meme-2/


How many books read in 2011?
23. 23?! I’m ashamed of myself. But, in my defense, I’ve also drawn a few dozen comic pages this year, plus written ~20 short stories and one 170-page long one. And I read most of the books on lunch breaks at work, and on the buses home. Plus, full-time job. So not too much free time for reading. Which makes me sad. Except that drawing and writing makes me really happy.
Also, I’ve left out all the comics I’ve read/re-read, since I haven’t kept tabs on those.

Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio?
All fiction, although Paul is Undead is music history. Kind of. With zombies.

Male/Female authors?
Oh gosh, only 3 females versus 15 male. Although I don’t know for sure how many people had their pencils in Teleny, and whether any of them were female.

Favourite book read?
I can’t decide. There’s books in the list I’ve read so many times, and new favourites, too. Let’s say, though, that it’s a tie between Chuck Palahniuk’s Invisible Monsters and Martin Millar’s Lux the Poet. Both re-reads.

Least favourite?
Paul Hoffman’s The Left Hand of God. I wanted several times to just quit reading because… I don’t remember what it was exactly with the book, but something just was off. Maybe it was because of the fact that it was so hard to get a grip of the main characters, although that was how they had been brought up. To be unreadable. But I finished it since it kept going in surprising directions all the time. There’s a sequel out there, but I think I’ll skip it. Too many other things to read.

Oldest book read?
Must be Teleny, from 1893, written by Oscar Wilde and friends. Victorian porn of all sorts, and then some.

Newest?
Alan Goldsher’s Paul is Undead, from 2010. A zombie Beatles history.

Longest book title?
The above: its full title is Paul is Undead – The British ZomBie Invasion.

Shortest title?
Teleny with six letters.

How many re-reads?
Let’s see… Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk, Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, The Night Watch by Sarah Waters and Pedestrian Wolves by James L. Grant for the second time, Lux the Poet by Martin Millar for the third, and I’ve no idea how many times I’ve read Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, or parts of it.

Most books read by one author this year?
George R. R. Martin wins, with the first three huuuuuge bricks from the Song of Ice and Fire saga. Third one was separated into two volumes, though, so one could argue it was four books. But one will not.
Chuck Palahniuk, James Lear and Martin Millar take shared second place, all with two books each, although if I’d finished Millar’s Lonely Werewolf Girl instead of hopping into Martin’s A Game of Thrones on my visit to London, dear Mr. Millar would be on the shared first spot.

Any in translation? *
Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen is translated from its original Japanese: I read the English translation this time, but I’ve read it in Finnish as well. John Irving’s Garpin maailma, The World According to Garp, and Neil Gaiman’s Unohdetut Jumalat, American Gods, plus Teleny were also translated into Finnish from their original English.
I liked Garp’s translation, and Kitchen, was a bit iffy about American Gods, but enjoyed the Finnish version, too. Teleny? Sooo much purple prose. And porn. Would be interesting to read in the original language, but this Finnish version fell into my lap for one euro. One does not look near-free porn in the… uhh… yeah. Next question.

And how many of this year’s books were from the library?
None. I own them all. ALTHOUGH. I did borrow four gay and lesbian anthologies over the summer from the local library –which is a very small one- but I didn’t blog about them, since I didn’t read the whole things, just a story here, another there.
I really should go to one of the bigger libraries in Helsinki more often. I mean, I went last week and found ElfQuest collections from the beginning of the 80’s. In practically mint condition, for their age. So, who knows what the hell else I could find there!


Onwards to 2012!


* This question may have meant how many the original blogger had translated herself, I'm not sure. I just mentioned all the translations I'd read.