currently reading

[kaigou]

Paper Butterfly — Diane Wei Liang
...trying to, at least. It's slow going, and the protagonist (a private eye in Beijing) is a little too reticent or introverted to get a handle on her. Cautious, as well, and the third-person POV is a little distant, and all of it's creating distance where I think I'm supposed to find sympathy. But I want to like the story, so I may keep trying.

Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad — Minister Faust
This is a book I can't review with any kind of distance. It was just that good, and caught me that much. Tore through it in an evening, because I simply could not stop. Now I want his next books. Like, fifteen minutes ago.

Chinatown Beat — Henry Chang
Not sure if I'll keep with this one. Decent writing, solid, but there are starting to be hints of misogyny. Not sexism (where women are less capable/able than men) but outright don't-like-women-that-much. Haven't read enough to pinpoint whether this is the narration/author or the character in particular. Problem is, not sure I want to keep reading to find out.

Southland — Nina Revoyr
I'm four or five chapters into this one, and I'm starting to get that feeling, the same one I got at this stage of The Hero's Walk, that something marvelous is unfolding in front of me. Stay tuned, will report in later.

Comments

[shadowsong]

Apropos of China: have you read Barry Hughart's books? They're brilliant. You might also like Paper Mage by Leah Cutter, and Liz Williams's Detective Inspector Chen series. (Although that last one's Singapore, not China.)

[7scimitarroll.livejournal.com]

I thought the Detective Inspector Chen series was China, the city was just a special economic zone like Hong Kong and had a weird franchise-like relationship with the original Singapore.

[shadowsong]

You're right. It's set in Singapore Three, which is located in China. Obviously I haven't re-read in a while. :)

[7scimitarroll.livejournal.com]

It's been a few years since my last reading, too.

[kaigou]

I'll look up Hughart's and Cutter's work, though this go-round I've been trying to focus on stories by people who grew up in the culture getting the focus (mostly of the culture, though in one case it's a family of emigres). I've read the first and second stories in William's Chen series; liked the first, had minor doubts about the second (due to not being personally familiar with Hong Kong or Singapore, and some of her story just didn't jive with what I'd been told by folks who grew up in those cultures), and then ran into a narrative thread in the second that made me throw the book against the wall.

[kaigou]

Based on the descriptions and setting, it sure sounded like a clone of Hong Kong itself, especially in terms of some of the mentioned landmarks. I never got a good sense of where the city itself was physically located, and by the second book (as more HK-like landmarks and geographic descriptions crept in), it started feeling like it was getting the multicultural-happening-place-urban cachet of Singapore, but it was HK underneath. Which, frankly, kind of annoyed me, because from all I've heard, HK is a pretty multicultural-happening-place of its own.

That wasn't what made me throw the book, though -- that came from disgust with the plotline of an apparently-happy lesbian whose girlfriend gets stuffed into a fridge, after which the lesbian... gradually falls in love with a male character. When you strip back all the superfluous parts of the story and get right down to who does what, the mystery itself was flimsy, and the anti-GLBT message was fierce. No, thanks. There are too many good writers out there for me to waste my time on someone pushing (intentionally or blindly/stupidly) a plotline that fridge-stuffs and orientation-shifts for the sake of heteronormativity.

[7scimitarroll.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. I read it in high school, so I rolled my eyes and glossed over that part as the author not thinking. Doesn't make it better.

[kaigou]

I'm also more likely to attribute to stupidity rather than malice, but still. I can't help but deconstruct and see the greater implications. Brain won't turn off, and all that.