book blather
Jun. 27th, 2004 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
daemonlunaSo I originally had some undoubtedly deep and insightful and oh-so-thought-provoking... er... thoughts on fannish online community and slash vs anime. But really, I'm too damn tired and stressed. (That admin assistant position? Fell through. So I have no potential source of income after Tues when school ends. Grrr.)
I wasted most of the afternoon wading through what promised to be a historical (slashy) fantasy and instead turned out to be a bland historical romance with no truly appealing characters. All four-hundred-some pages of it. I'm not quite sure why I kept going since my junk food reading of choice is nowhere near genre romance. Possibly because I kept hoping it would get better. I reread Sorcery and Cecilia last weekend, and was hoping for something genuinely clever. (Ooh! I should dig out Freedom and Necessity by Emma Bull and Stephen Brust.)
I also have a whole list of YA stuff that should get noted here. For now, it will suffice to say that I made it through Melvin Burgess's Doing It and it didn't take nearly as much effort as I was afraid.
For the record, Junk, all about British teen heroin addicts, was a huge slog through for me, I never made it through Lady: My Life as a Bitch (about a girl who gets turned into a dog), but The Earth Giant, his (only?) kids' novel as opposed to YA, was great.
Anyhow. Doing It is all about teenage boys and sex. And it's got Burgess's usual unflinchingness to it. These are teenage guys with all the crudity and lewdness that implies. But. There's genuine emotion there. The book isn't just about shocking and titillating.
There's the one bit where one of the boys is convinced that there's something terribly wrong with his penis. That it's got this unnatural bump. That it's cancer, that it's going to fall off, that if he has sex with his girlfriend SHE'LL get cancer. And when he finally summons up every scrap of courage and goes to the clinic, he gets a female doctor...)
It's not all just about the quest to get laid. One of the boys is sleeping with his (female) teacher, and there's all sorts of disturbing power imbalances going on there. Another one sees his mom mid-affair, and is completely unprepared for the earth-shaking effect of his parents' disintegrating marriage on his own life.
Obviously, this one's for older YA's. And you might be completely put off by some of the cruder stuff. But, and this sounds like damning faint praise but it's not, it wasn't nearly as bad as I was afraid.
My girl is watching L&O:SVU. I think I'll go try and find something else to read.
I wasted most of the afternoon wading through what promised to be a historical (slashy) fantasy and instead turned out to be a bland historical romance with no truly appealing characters. All four-hundred-some pages of it. I'm not quite sure why I kept going since my junk food reading of choice is nowhere near genre romance. Possibly because I kept hoping it would get better. I reread Sorcery and Cecilia last weekend, and was hoping for something genuinely clever. (Ooh! I should dig out Freedom and Necessity by Emma Bull and Stephen Brust.)
I also have a whole list of YA stuff that should get noted here. For now, it will suffice to say that I made it through Melvin Burgess's Doing It and it didn't take nearly as much effort as I was afraid.
For the record, Junk, all about British teen heroin addicts, was a huge slog through for me, I never made it through Lady: My Life as a Bitch (about a girl who gets turned into a dog), but The Earth Giant, his (only?) kids' novel as opposed to YA, was great.
Anyhow. Doing It is all about teenage boys and sex. And it's got Burgess's usual unflinchingness to it. These are teenage guys with all the crudity and lewdness that implies. But. There's genuine emotion there. The book isn't just about shocking and titillating.
There's the one bit where one of the boys is convinced that there's something terribly wrong with his penis. That it's got this unnatural bump. That it's cancer, that it's going to fall off, that if he has sex with his girlfriend SHE'LL get cancer. And when he finally summons up every scrap of courage and goes to the clinic, he gets a female doctor...)
It's not all just about the quest to get laid. One of the boys is sleeping with his (female) teacher, and there's all sorts of disturbing power imbalances going on there. Another one sees his mom mid-affair, and is completely unprepared for the earth-shaking effect of his parents' disintegrating marriage on his own life.
Obviously, this one's for older YA's. And you might be completely put off by some of the cruder stuff. But, and this sounds like damning faint praise but it's not, it wasn't nearly as bad as I was afraid.
My girl is watching L&O:SVU. I think I'll go try and find something else to read.
