Book 25: Off Campus by Amy Jo Cousins

The setup of this romance novel is basically everything I love best: two college students with secrets in their past are roomed together, despite each of them having been told they would be living in a single. On top of that, one of them is openly gay, and the other has been so busy dealing with his disaster of a life to really consider things like his latent attraction to men as well as women.

The conflict starts immediately, with Tom simply wanting to have a bed he can fall asleep in and Reese determined to scare him off by having extremely frequent and obvious sex with men in their room whenever Tom wants to be there. This leads to Tom being there and "asleep" during some of those hookups, and eventually it leads to a late night hookup of their own.

I really enjoyed the beginning of their relationship, and how the two of them dealt together with Reese's need for control and PTSD from a past assault. It managed to be compelling and considerate while also being satisfying romantically. But as the novel progressed, their future conflicts and inability to ever actually listen to each other or have a real conversation made the story fall apart. They were both a bit too dumb and too demanding of each other at times, and it made the resolution at the end not quite land the way I wished it had. It needed more therapy and less romantic conflict, sadly. I still liked the characters, but while I think there was a good book somewhere within this one, the end result wasn't quite right.

Grade: C

Book 24: For Real by Alexis Hall

This is a BDSM romance that examines how to find a new relationship that both satisfies one's sexual desires and their emotional needs. It's relatively easy in a city like London to find a partner whose tastes in kink complement yours, but navigating a relationship that starts with kink and hopefully ends with love can be a difficult path.

37-year-old Laurie had his heart broken six years ago and has decided that it's easier and less risky to satisfy his need to submit sexually without attempting to find the depth of connection he once had with his partner Robert. Toby is new to the scene (and, at the age of nineteen, fairly new to adult life in general) and struggling to find a way to fulfill his dominant needs while he's still learning exactly how to dom. Somehow they find each other.

My favorite part of this novel was the dynamic between Laurie and Toby. An age difference of eighteen years (as well as a class difference that's just as large) is fairly common in BDSM romance, but it's much more unusual for the younger person in the relationship to be the dom, and it works beautifully. Their interactions convey Toby's natural inclination for domination and sadism while also showing his learning curve and the level of trust that must exist between the two of them for their relationship to work. And Laurie's instinctive responsiveness to him reads so well, leaving the reader with no doubt why he was drawn to Toby in the first place. Beyond that, the book does an incredible job of showing that any kind of sex or role can be submissive or dominant, depending on who's doing what. I can't remember the last book I read that so successfully separated the motivation from the act in a BDSM relationship, and it was wonderful.

The plot had one too many conflicts and crises for my taste, and there were details that existed outside of their relationship that didn't ring particularly true for me. But the dynamic of the pairing is so satisfying, and that's what I took away from this book in the end.

Grade: B  

Book 23: Under Contract by Helen Saito

Many romance novels (or erotica) approach kink and BDSM by depicting safe and responsible relationships between partners that could theoretically exist in a healthy real life setting. And then there are BDSM stories that deliberately exist in a universe that both isn't real and isn't desirable, all in the service of erotic satisfaction in what is clearly fantasy and not real life. Under Contract belongs in that second category.

In some presumably future dystopian society, sex slavery is legal, and functions as a sort of extended contract BDSM prostitution. The titular contract is a legally binding one between owner and slave, and there are brokers and trainers who prepare slaves for their jobs and also dissuade the interest of any "thrill-seekers," potential slaves who have other sources of income who think they want to be owned and used and give over their consent to be in a BDSM-style relationship without any kind of safe word to protect them.

The story focuses on Gavin, a former slave who is now a trainer, and his new trainee Alex, who he assumes is a thrill-seeker due to Alex's age (45) and the fact that he's been able to work and survive without selling himself into sex slavery before now. Gavin's opinion of the situation slowly changes as he puts Alex through the ropes, and their connection deepens and grows a bit complicated once emotions enter the picture.

The sex and the kink is very well written, and the fact that Alex is 45 and Gavin is in his early thirties also adds an unusual and welcome dynamic to the pairing and overall story. This isn't a good story for readers looking for one monogamous relationship at the heart of it; Gavin has a partner of four years independent of his training work, and Alex has very enthusiastic sex with numerous people throughout the story. The ending and final resolution felt a bit rushed to me, and occasionally I wanted to thwap a couple of the characters over the head with a newspaper until they stopped being quite so clueless about their own feelings, but overall I really enjoyed this book.

Grade: B

Book 22: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Reading Fun Home was a fascinating experience. I have seen the musical adapted from this graphic novel (actually memoir) three times, and I also read collections of Bechdel's comics Dykes to Watch Out For back when I was a teenager and figuring out why her work resonated so deeply with me. So reading this book was deeply familiar from the very first page.

But it was also new, and unexpected, and it left me with an even greater appreciation for what an incredible adaptation the musical really is, because it is both unerringly faithful to the book and its own unique narrative. It's not just that there are parts of the book that aren't a part of the musical, although of course that's true, it's that the story changes with the form, and the relationship that theater (and musical theater in particular) has to its audience is different than the one an author has with their reader.

Bechdel uses so many different lenses to examine her father's life, and her relationship with him, and her future beyond him: the shared (yet tragically separate) sense of being an outsider, of queerness, their relationship and connection through literature and using the words of fiction and other people's experiences as a bridge between themselves, the use of design and art and maps, so many maps, to attempt to explain the unfathomable. She also shows how her own diaries attempted desperately to tell the story of her family in a way that made sense, either by omission or by telling the factual truth and avoiding all the emotion underneath. It's a brilliant, beautiful book.

Grade: A

Book 21: Children of Earth and Sky by Guy Gavriel Kay

This is a book that I've been waiting anxiously to read since Kay announced it last spring. Over the past thirty years Kay has published 13 novels, and I've read them all; he's a permanent entry on the list of my top five favorite authors, without question. I started reading him when I was a teenager, and I've felt like his work has grown and changed along with me.

I offer up all of this personal history of my relationship to his work because it's impossible for me to imagine how I would have responded to Children of Earth and Sky had it been the first Kay book I'd read. While he started his career writing fantasy novels set in various worlds that were evocative of Europe, he gradually moved in a direction of writing what I think of as historical fiction RPF with the serial numbers filed off. Five of his novels (of which Children is one) are set within a cohesive universe that is one quarter turn off from the history and geography and cultures of Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East. Children's setting is the Mediterranean Renaissance, and while there are fantastical elements in this novel (and his other historical fiction), the magic that exists does not serve to make the setting feel otherwordly; if anything, it more firmly grounds it in reality.

Clearly, Kay's writing has been in conversation with the narratives of history for many years now. But in Children, he is more explicitly in conversation with his own past works than he ever has been before. It is not strictly a sequel to the other four books; I believe it could still succeed as a story for someone with no familiarity of Kay's past works at all. But there are so many moments of exceptional power and resonance that could not possibly land in the same way if the reader hadn't read his past works, in particular Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors. Those moments go beyond being Easter eggs of sorts and end up being the foundation of my appreciation of the novel. It's possible I'm overstating the benefit of having read the other four novels (especially since I can never read Children while lacking that knowledge), and perhaps the general impact of those moments will still land, even if the reader doesn't know the specific reason why. But Kay's obvious interest in (and possibly even his need for) engaging in that sort of conversation with his own work means that if the reader doesn't have that knowledge, they are missing out on something fundamental, in my opinion.

None of the above is meant as a criticism, for the record; the moment I realized how explicit and deliberate the parallels were between a Children storyline and the main narrative arc of Sailing to Sarantium was one of my favorite moments in the novel, and it deepened my understanding of and appreciation for what he was doing as a storyteller. And of course, writers will often include references and motifs and parallels that not every reader will understand; a writer cannot demand (or expect) that readers will be familiar with all of their influences. But for me, Children is a story within an already established world, and the journey does not begin there. I would have a hard time recommending this book without also first recommending the four other books in the same geographic setting; I wouldn't call those five novels a series in the traditional sense, but they enrich each other, and I think reading any one of them in the absence of the others does a disservice to the story as a whole.

Other thoughts: this book has some of my favorite characters in all of Kay's works. It is more of an ensemble piece than some of his novels are, and there isn't a clear cut main character whose journey we follow most closely. But the characters hit the right balance of depth for me, with even minor characters landing after very little time on the page. The women in particular are fantastic; while he has always written complex and compelling female characters, the variety of women and their divergent motivations and actions in this book really struck me, from the two main female characters all the way down to characters who appear for a scene or two.

On a different note, I don't think I've ever made it though one of Kay's novels without crying, and Children is no exception to that. What is different is that one of the main emotions behind my tears this time around was that of relief. I wouldn't call Children a book that pulls its punches, but I do think it's a novel about finding grace and new beginnings and sometimes forgiveness out of an intended path of revenge and grief and intrigue. It left me feeling emotionally drained in a way I wasn't expecting to be from a Kay novel; it's lovely to know that after all these years, he can still surprise me.

Grade: A

State of the Union

It's May 17th, aka 25 weeks until Election Day!!! Let's take a look at how I'm doing.

In order to be on pace to read 132 books by November 8th, I needed to have read 32 books over the last eight weeks, or four per week.

In reality, I have read 20 books! Or 2.5 books per week. Which, while being pretty far off the necessary pace, is still pretty good. Especially since I am currently very close to being done with three different books, so hopefully I will start making some gains.

Of course, now that I am attempting to read 112 books in 25 weeks (rather than 100 books in that same time frame), I now need to be averaging 4.5 books per week in order to make up the lost ground. This is very challenging indeed, both because it will require me to read two additional books on top of the 2.5 books I've been averaging thus far, and because while I've read 20 books so far, only two of them have been books designated as Week books, aka books I expect to take longer to read than the average book on my list. What that means is that in order to make my goal, I will need to read two of those longer books in five weeks out of the 25 weeks left, and read one of those books per week every other week as well.

(Math is AWESOME you guys, I love this stuff.)

So, viewed one way, I am much further behind than I was eight weeks ago before I even started this project. Viewed another way, I have already achieved so much, and who knows what more I can accomplish! Well, I am an Arsenal fan, which means that I am hopelessly optimistic about things even when I rationally know I shouldn't be, and so I am definitely looking at it in the positive way. And I'm almost a quarter of the way through the larger challenge, which is Survive Election Year!

What I am unsure about now is how best to approach this. So far I've been reading multiple books at once, which has been fine from a reading retention/focus standpoint, and my method for choosing which books to read have been a mix of "ooooo shiny!" and "hey, this one's pretty short!" but now I'm wondering if I should be focusing on reading more of the W marked books now, since I'm so behind. I also don't want to be reading without enjoying the experience, either, so I haven't been reading just for speed. I've had the latest Guy Gavriel Kay book for eight days, and while I probably could have finished it in three, I wanted to savor it a bit more. I don't want to give that up, either. Hopefully I will come up with a better method, so I can pick up the pace and win this totally arbitrary challenge! 

Book 20: Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin

Given that the entire point of this project is to distract myself from the current presidential election, it might seem like a dubious decision to read a book that's all about the 2008 cycle. However, it is on the list, and I figured I'd better get it done early rather than try to read it in October...

I had a really mixed reaction to this book. Part of that reaction is just due to the fact that I had forgotten so much of the race, and how crazy it felt at the time, and eight years ago suddenly feels like a different time altogether. But it's also because this is a book that's all about The Narrative in politics. Everything is about how well (or how poorly) various people in the race played the game, and nothing is about demographics, or GOTV organizations, or data. That's really disorienting after spending years reading Nate Silver and focusing on those fundamentals, rather than on how the political press will spin every gaff or gotcha moment in a debate.

It also reads a bit like political RPF fanfic, if I'm honest. The authors take care to note at the beginning of the book that they did numerous interviews with "most" of the main people focused on in the book, and years of research and blah blah blah, and explain how they differentiate between quotes and paraphrasing conversations that often were between only two people with no other witnesses. And yet there is so much editorializing about how all of the main players FELT about everything, and the motives behind it all, that I came away from it feeling less convinced by its accuracy rather than more. There are many "she may have said this, but what she was really feeling was totally different" stories, and it's a bit hard to take while living through the media's current narrative spinning about Clinton in particular.

Having said that, I had forgotten just how insane the sequence of events around John Edwards was, and even without any narrative editorializing the fact that he was still running for president (and thought he might win!) while in the middle of a love child scandal is incredible. So that was fairly exciting to relive.

I think my biggest takeaway from this book was honestly to avoid reading the horse race updates according to D.C. pundits. As I so wisely realized eight weeks ago, paying close attention to the media's narrative neither adds to my own understanding nor improves my mood. Let's see how well I can follow my own advice.

Grade: C

Book 19: Lessons in Love by Charlie Cochrane

This is one of those books that I have no memory of buying and no idea how I found it. It's definitely in my wheelhouse, though, so at least I understand what past!me was thinking.

This is the first in a series of books of mysteries that take place at Cambridge in the early 20th Century. It's one part murder mystery, one part gay romance, both of which I enjoy a lot. The couple at the center of the story are two teaching fellows at the university, who fall in love while trying to solve a series of murders. But are they putting themselves in danger by investigating matters? I bet you know the answer to that.

The relationship is a classic opposites attract romance between the outgoing and daring Jorty Stewart and the more restrained and uncertain Orlando Coppersmith. There isn't a huge amount of tension in their budding relationship beyond Orlando's naiveté, and in some ways the murder mystery starts too soon in the book; there isn't really any sleuthing the reader can do to figure out who's behind the murders and why, so it's harder to engage with the plot than is ideal for a murder mystery. It's a book that doesn't quite know what it wants to be, and as a result it left me feeling a bit muddled as well. 

Grade: C

Book 18: The Boss by Abigail Barnette

Some of the books on this reading list have been there for so long that I don't remember their origin stories anymore; I can't trace back how I heard about them or why I bought them in the first place. But some of them I remember perfectly, like this one. You tend to remember a book that Mara Wilson of Matilda fame recommended on her twitter as a good alternative to Fifty Shades of Grey :D

This book feels like a cross between a version of Fifty Shades that's not terrible about consent with The Devil Wears Prada, with a good dose of Secretary in there as well. The first two thirds of the book is a pretty compelling fantasy about a relationship between an older, obscenely rich dom and a young, ambitious sub that is sexually fulfilling for both of them, and that never loses sight of the game at the heart of BDSM. There are no contracts to be signed, it's clear from the POV that the sub is always very happy about the pain she experiences, and while the writing style isn't exactly to my taste I definitely understood why this book would be suggested as a good alternative to Fifty Shades.

And then, in the final third of the book, the entire plot goes completely off the rails. I had already been getting a bit fed up with the terminal reluctance of both characters to admit that their relationship wasn't just about the sex, and the work drama seemed to be totally beside the point and yet kept on going. But the final narrative twists in the last couple of chapters were frankly baffling, and completely out of keeping with the genre, whether you consider this to be romance or erotica. I discovered at the end of the book that it was the first in a trilogy (which in retrospect I probably should have guessed), and from the blurbs of the second and third books, my issues with the sudden plot twists would not lesson if I read any further. So, I am not reading the next two books, and sadly I can't really second Mara Wilson's recommendation of this one, either. It certainly doesn't have the same failings as Fifty Shades, but it still doesn't succeed for many other reasons.

Grade: D

Book 17: The Music Box by Elaine Atwell

I had some major problems with this book. Which is a SHAME, because I really wanted to like it.

The central premise is definitely compelling: two lady spies both working for the Allies in WWII meet on a mission and fall in love (or at least lust) while thwarting evil! What's not to love? Well, a lot, as it turns out.

This book tries to be both too small and too big at the same time. It's definitely a novella, which is fine in the sense that the central relationship arc can be easily summed up in one sentence. But the backdrop of the early days of WWII feels far too big as a result--the length of the story doesn't fit the enormity of the historical setting, especially since the information each of the spies is attempting to obtain is hugely significant. The book also suffers from a flaw in its overall POV; the reader obviously knows how WWII ended, but no one in the story could possibly know that. It throws off the whole tension of the story (and my ability to engage with it) when characters in the book are behaving as if they know that the Allies would eventually defeat the Axis powers, which was not at all the case.

This becomes even less excusable when the information the spies obtain is so significant that it would change the entire course of the war, but the book makes no effort to actually demonstrate that it would result in quicker victory for the Allies. If anything, it's entirely likely that the new information could have prolonged or even permanently swung the course of the war in the favor of the Axis powers. The suggested change in history is too serious to be treated so lightly. Alternate histories can be fascinating, but they only work if the author actually works through the potential impact of a change, and this was done so casually in a novella that's clearly not built to tell that kind of alternate history that it made the entire story fall apart for me. It also made it much harder for me to handwave other historical details and moments in the novel which felt suspect to me; suddenly the entire book was clearly just a house of cards, and I didn't want to play anymore.

So in the end, this was a novella with lots of elements I love, and none of the necessary execution to make the actual story work. Bah.  

Grade: D

Book 16: The Bohemian and the Banker by Summer Devon and Bonnie Dee

So there's this bohemian, you see, and he meets--you'll never believe this--a banker!

This is a pretty classic fish-out-of-water, two-worlds-colliding sort of romance. It's set in Paris and then London (and then Paris again) in 1901, and it's about a staid, by-the-rules banker who meets and falls in love with a bohemian performer at a gay version of Moulin Rouge. You know exactly what the attraction (and the conflict) at the center of this story will be just from the title, but I really liked the time and attention the book gave to how their feelings progressed. There was an immediate chemistry between them, but I could also see why their feelings for each other deepened into something beyond a single encounter.

That said, the book had a bit of trouble when it came to the major conflict between their two lives--in order for the two of them to live together happily, one of them had to dramatically overhaul his life. The final resolution worked for me, but it came together so easily in the end that it made the conflict leading up to that point seem needlessly overwrought. I ran into the problem that I do with a lot of gay historical romances, which is that I either wanted it to be more of a fantasy or more grounded in what it would actually take to make a relationship like theirs work. This book tries to split the difference, which is fine for a momentary diversion but means it's not a book that is likely to linger in my mind.

The other issue I had with the book is that in some of the sex scenes, the language choices felt odd to me. It can be very challenging to find the right balance between explicit anatomical descriptions and vague euphemisms or slang, and for me this book definitely did not always succeed at this.

Grade: B

Book 15: Serpentine by Cindy Pon

This book was given to me for Christmas by one of my brothers. The reason he heard about the book is because it was blurbed by Kristin Cashore, who is one of his (and my) favorite authors. I'm really glad that it was brought to his and then my attention, because I enjoyed it a lot.

Serpentine is YA fantasy/horror that takes place in a universe inspired by the Xia Dynasty. The main character is Skybright, who is a handmaiden to Zhen Ni. The two girls are very close friends, but there is also a fundamental inequality to their friendship. Skybright was left on the doorstep of Zhen Ni's family's home when she was a baby, and they took her in as a servant. The focus of the book quickly expands beyond the domestic when Skybright discovers that she is a serpent demon, an awakening that takes place just as a battle between the unborn and the monks erupts.

I loved this universe. It was so nice to read a fantasy world written by a Chinese-American author that explored Ancient China rather than the standard pseudo-European setting that's so common in fantasy. The friendship between Skybright and Zhen Ni is central to the book, as are blossoming romances for each of them. One of the main subplots of the book focuses on a romantic relationship between two women, which was a lovely surprise. Skybright's POV and character voice is very strong, and the writing is precise and has a beautiful flow.

The only drawback to this book was that I didn't realize when I started it that it was the first in a series; there will be at least two sequels, and possibly more. This made the end of this book feel incredibly abrupt and much more negative than I was expecting. The cliffhanger isn't too terrible, but it left me feeling frustrated, which is a shame since I enjoyed the rest of the narrative so much. I am definitely looking forward to reading the next book in the series, but I do wish it had been a standalone (or that I had known going into that it was the start of a series). I am not going to let that momentary disappointment affect the grade I'm assigning it, however, because I do think it lived up to its potential overall.

Grade: A

Book 14: Save the Cat! by Blake Synder

The subtitle of this book is "The Last Book On Screenwriting That You'll Ever Need." Given that I've never had any real interest in writing a screenplay, one might think I didn't need any book on screenwriting at all. But a number of friends of mine who write novels are big fans of this book, because what it's really about is how to structure the beats of a story so that your narrative builds and lands the way you want it to. And after the last novel I read lost the plot entirely in my view, it was very nice to read something which helped me identify why and how that happened.

The best part of this book, and the thing that my friends primarily recommended it for, is the author's beat sheet, which divides every screenplay up into a three act structure with set beats within each of the acts. Because the second (or middle) act also has a midpoint break by which point the narrative should have reached a certain moment within the story, I actually think of this structure as having four acts rather than three, but that's just how it breaks down mentally for me. The beat sheet and the storyboard visualization based on that beat sheet are the main methods he explores; there are a couple of other tips for creating characters and building tension that he mentions, but I found most of those to be either very basic or not particularly helpful for how I think about writing.

The style of the author's writing can be a bit grating, and in his view if a movie makes money it's automatically successful, and if it doesn't it's because the screenplay doesn't adhere to his laws. I don't actually think that how much money a movie (or a book) makes directly corresponds to how successful the story is narratively, but I do think his narrative structures are worth thinking about while writing. Not all of his tips can be applied to fiction writing, but enough of them can be that I think it was a useful book on writing for me to have read.

Grade: B