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For the most part the fiction I consume tends to be fairly low brow, lots of scifi and romance novels and what have you. Literature tends to leave me cold, while I'm not entirely immune to Metaphor and Subtle Meditations On The Nature of Human Existence etc they usually aren't enough to keep my interest unless combined with a happy ending, likeable characters, dragons etc.

But sometimes I expand my horizons a little!
( Fire, Hardboiled and Hard Luck )

To help me keep track, and because some of you might be interested, I reviewed 23 and 24 of my 50books_poc at my Dreamwidth: The Wild Road and The Last Twilight.

She's a fiddle player with Voodoo magic, he's a sex slave Merman(*). They fight crime!

I'm sure this was a perfectly good book but it wasn't my thing.
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This is a part of Marjorie Liu's "Dirk and Steele" supernatural romance series. I'd heard they were "like X-men with magic and Romance" and (from this one book) while I'd say that's not literally true there's certainly the right mix of fun, thrills, drama, and romance I was expecting. This is apparently one of the weaker books but I still quite liked it, neither the romance nor the fantasy was spectacular but I can't think of that may other books which combine both so well, and it was nice knowing I had a guaranteed happy romantic ending and that the supernatural plot wouldn't be dropped once the romance got going.

The overall premise is that there's a supernatural detective agency "Dirk and Steele" which hires people with secret magical gifts and then sends them off to solve mysteries, fight bad guys etc. Each book is part of the continuing series but is also a stand alone romance with protagonists who are either new or only played supporting roles in previous books.

"Red Heart of Jade" is about a energy-reading psychic Dean who works for the agency and is hunting a supernatural murderer in Taiwan. In the process he seems to discover evidence that his childhood sweetheart Miri, dead at 16, is still alive. Is it her? How is she alive? And what has she got to do with the murders?

And then there's dragons and ancient mummies and immortals and lots of excitement :)

It didn't do too much of the creepy stuff that put me off in other romance novels I've tried reading, either. Dean is jealous and protective, but it makes sense in context, and for example there's a scene where she wants to go do something alone and he says "No! I can't let you out of my sight! What if something bad happens?" and she says "Dude, I need SOME independence, I'll be fine" and she goes off and does her thing and ISN'T CAPTURED BY BADGUYS. (I mean she is at other times, but it's never her fault for being too headstrong or whatever)

So now I'm going to go off and reserve the others they have in the library system.

If you're interested here's a summary of the series.

I've been on a bit of a murder mystery bender recently.

Books:
"Grave Sight" and "Dead Until Dark" by Charlaine Harris: Good character study and drama, painfully predictable cliched mystery. Both centre on a young woman with a psychic gift which causes more trouble than good and are nicely understated and realistic given their fantastical elements. "Dead Until Dark" is also a vampire romance and this aspect was done pretty well, I liked that the fact that he's older and more old fashioned was dealt with sensibly rather than being totally fetishised (he gives a talk at the Civil War society meeting. How awesome is that?) The basis for the "True Blood" tv show.

Sex, Murder, and a Double Latte by Kyra Davis: Fairly straight forward but not entirely shallow chick lit mystery. Engaging, funny, and a good mystery. Much less interesting characters and premise than the Charlaine Harris books though.

TV

Psych: A good natured layabout has fantastic Holmes-esque observational abilities, but any time he tries to solve a mystery he gets suspected for "knowing too much". So he starts a psychic detective agency with his (much more sensible) best friend. Very silly, and the mysteries are pretty crap, but light and fluffy and funny.

Bones: More police procedural than mystery, but I love it anyway.

So recently I have watched/read:

( The absolutely true story of a part-time indian )
( Stars in my Pockets like grains of sand )

Also, I watched a little bit of Jeeves and Wooster starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. I think they inhabited the characters perfectly, and it was true to the books: which is to say, inoffensive and dull. Ah well.

Summary: a unique and enjoyable novel from the POV of a young female vampire with amnesia.

This was intended to be the first in a trilogy, but then she died :( I have a thing against unfinished series, but I really enjoyed "Parable of the Sower/Talents" and this was the only other book of hers in the library system. There are a lot of similarities: the POV character is a young black american woman who is charismatic, driven, pragmatic, and wise beyond her (apparent) years. The plot again revolves around the desire to create community in a world of misunderstanding and danger. Something I found incredibly refreshing about this book is that it doesn't fall into the same old cliches about vampires. For a start, we have a female vampire POV, and there isn't that whole thing (as in Every Vampire Romance Ever) of the seductive yet deadly Man As Predator and woman as Willing Victim. Instead you have a weird symbiosis between vampire and "victim", creating a strange, intense, mutually beneficial relationship which is not entirely a matter of choice. It feels like the author is replacing the usual vampirism-as-sex metaphor with one that better explores the actual complexities (and creepy/scary-ness) of sex and relationships.

The major plot points and mysteries of the book were thankfully all wrapped up at the end of the book, though I am still sad I won't get to read any more. One thing I found a bit squicky was that while mentally fairly adult the protagonist has the physical appearance of a 12 year old girl, something I tried not to think about during all the sex scenes (which at least didn't feel like they were trying to be sexy). Overall the various power relationships, including the whole nature of vampire society, are interesting if a bit odd and sometimes creepy.

Still, if the idea of "Pragmatic female vampire protagonist" makes you go "Finally!" rather than "What's the fun of that?" you should give this book a go :) (Are there any other books with such a main character? I can't think of any. The best I can think of is movies about sexy female vampires who spend a lot of time posing in corsets etc, which isn't really the same thing)

This is a fantastic book. It's a collection of essays on topics from the history of aboriginal servants in Queensland to her personal experiences with feminism and the public service, and it was like a clear shining light of truth on a bunch of topics I've been unclear on. I'm going to hunt down and buy a copy and read it again, then force it on as many of my friends and family as I can manage :) Big thanks to fire_fly for recommending it to me while I was trying to put together my post about feminism and race in australia.

The author has an academic background but makes a strong effort to use simple, easily comprehended language so that her words are as accessible as possible. The spare style took me a little while to get used to but overall I found very readable (and I have trouble with a lot of humanities academic language) especially given the many moments of engaging personal autobiography and humour.
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Man, there are so many good links on and coming out of ibarw.

Anyway: Anyone who's interesting in Steampunk should check out this discussion, since as well as getting somewhat into some of the underlying racism it also has very pretty pictures, plus some cool ideas.

Two IBARW posts about australia: By strangedave and on a similar theme Australia doesn't have racism? (Actually tielan's whole race tag has a lot of interesting stuff)

Also from her lj, and in order to inspire the engaged couples on my flist: Cake Wrecks

I have joined 50books_poc, since it nicely dovetails with my desire to read a wider variety of good books, and be better educated. I have a list of books to reserve at the library, assuming I get around to getting out of the house before it closes...

I had a sudden (probably rather obvious) thought last night: a common tactic of those trying to derail/dismiss discussions about some injustice (from feminism to animal rights and the environment) is "Why are you picking on this one minor injustice A instead of focussing on major injustice B?"
There's a lot of good rebuttals to this, one of which is that the people making this argument almost certainly are doing less to fight injustice B than the person they're criticising.

But I think one motivation for using this argument is: "I am aware that B is a problem, and deep down think I should do more to fix it. This makes me feel guilty. If you are right, and A is also a problem, then I need to feel guilty about that too. And probably lots of other stuff. And I don't feel like feeling even more bad! Life is hard enough as it is!" Which isn't a very good argument, but it isn't deliberately trolling either, just...selfish I guess.

(I decided this post was too chatty and vague to count towards IBARW)