Trying to miss the ground

Reading List:

I need to get back into the habit of writing but I’m always so easily distracted into doing something else.

So book reviews:

Keeping You a Secret by Julie Anne Peters
I bought it because it seemed to be one of those must-read lesbian coming-of-age books. But perhaps I shouldn't have expected too much of it. I lost interest real fast when it became clear to me the characters are not really engaging and the plot is predictable to say the least.

I appreciate her taking on rare topics like transgendered children and children of lesbian divorce in Luna and Between Mom & Jo. Although her writing is not much better in those two books, at least the premise and the characters are interesting enough to keep me going.

Psycop: Partners by Jordan Castillo Price
It’d been a long time since I read a novel I bought commercially that I can truly say is better than fanfiction (or least on a par with) that I can read for free. It’s the mark of truly good writing when the preface of sort is a half-page excerpt of the book and that alone has established the character and the premise and managed to grip me to read through the whole thing. Since the two paperback sequels are not available from bookdepository, I’ve bought the ebook version online and I planned to finish as soon as I can.

T Is for Television: The Small Screen Adventures of Russell T. Davies
I only came across this book via on-line bookstores. Thank God for them! I love RTD to bits. Especially because so many things about him resonate with me and inspire me - he's a much better version of what I wish I'd be. This book gives us an inside look at how various shows of his came about and developed. AND it tells us what the unmade Misfits series would be like - it's just a must-read for his fans & QAF fans!

Reading thenyxie's Ouroboros, I'm overwhelmed by the picture of Dean doing the Rose Tyler Time Vortex things. Seriously, how cool and how gorgeous would it be if Dean were the antichrist and get to do a glowing god-like trance thing?

I've just gone through all the SPN RPS podfics in the podfic archive and is making my way through the FPS podfics. They're like a short-cut for me now since I have no idea what the must-reads or hall-of-fame in this fandom are. Sometimes I just wish SPN fics are as easy to navigate as the SV fics were...

I love this book. It articulates exactly what I've wanted to say for a long time why I love TV so much more than film: Only with the length and the serial nature of TV can the complex, multi-layered stories I like be fully expressed. And it says that eloquently with examples of several genres too, and shows I've actually watched and loved, such as Queer as Folk, This Life and Cracker.

(...I know, it's a clear sign of procrastination when I'm posting so frequently.)

( rambling about mpreg )

(Edited because motherhood instinct is not mother nature. Watching Euro 2008 in a different time zone is a health hazard.)

ETA: Over at insanejournal, alchemia has posted a fascinating list of mainstream mpreg books and movies (among others). And it's a sure sign I should stop post the same thing to multiple journals.

Harry Potter will be required reading for A-level English in England. When will our public exam include works of contemporary significance?

 董啟章的書，除了練習簿之外，我最喜歡的就是地圖集。它一點也不沉重，也不像以性別為題材的那幾本小說那麼硬銷（男人寫性別小說，即是男性的女性主義者，也一定看得出是男人手筆），而且每一章都滲著幽默，香港人看到會會心微笑的幽默。你完全可以毫無機心、毫無準備地去看這本書，當它是掌故一樣開始去看 -- 其實這樣去看效果也許更好，因為當你把書看到一半，當你開始懷疑書中所言是否屬實，當你回想以前學過的／聽過的歷史，你便開始領略到它的奧妙。

crossposted to aNobii review

God this book is good! Yesterday I was going to follow up on my earlier comment and moan about the stock heroine-changing-a-man-with-love plot but in the rush I got from the marvellous ending of the story I think I can forget that bit. That's no way not to spoil anything if I'm to talk about what I like about this book. 

I don't know what I should do right now. I don't want to come down from this rush but the characters aren't really good enough for me to read the book again. I guess I'll just have to find something totally different to do - just to ride on this high for a while.

ETA. I never find the tags more apt. This book is really about reading, about the relationship between THE READER and THE WRITER. Although it seems to portray the relationship in a rather exaggerated and surreal way - no way can the reader bond with the writer like that in real life, can it? - it did make me think are we all writing for our Muses, our perfect readers?

I'd always thought the narrator was a woman.
Nothing in the 1st-person narrative had given me any doubt. I didn't even bat an eyelid when the narrator found a girlfriend. Actually it rather confirmed my pre-conception that it was a woman because I'd seen this book in the Big Gay Read. The unconventional girlfriend seemed just like those weird lesbian characters which occur quite common in LGBT film/tv (at least lesbian rebels are much more common than gay male rebels)
I was shocked when I read this on p.20:
The prospect of meeting your girlfriend's father, or at least one of her fathers, is very intimidating. I began to panic.
"Should I put on a tie? I haven't got a tie."

Huh? When I finally realised in the next paragraphs that the narrator really is a man, I was wondering whether I should've re-read those 20 pages because I'd had a totally different picture in my mind.

Nothing to see here. Just a post to keep track of the books I've read:

1. High Society by Ben Elton
2. 香港教育的故事：《從榕樹下到電腦前》
   
3. 1和0的故事 - 卓卓著
4. 蒲精列傳Vol.1 不能 - 葉志偉著
5. 蒲精列傳Vol.2 確認 - 葉志偉著
6. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
7. Bend Sinister: The Gay Times Book of Disturbing Stories
8. Bending the Landscape: Fantasy
9. 工廠．廚房．垃圾房 —— 香港女工十五年
10. 超越「小政府、大市場」—─ 批判新自由主義香港社運文集

Coming up next:

1. Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll - edited & translated by Lawrence Rogers
2. Life in the Cul-de-Sac by Senji Kuroi, translated by Philip Gabriel
3. Hallucinating Foucault by Patricia Duncker
4. Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division by Deborah Curtis

>>> Books read from the end of term 1 to 30 April 2007