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books read 2011
Due to the study required for my final year of med school, I didn't read as many books as I did last year, and I did a lot more rereads of old favourites. A lot of the book choices were informed by my Booker Prize project (and my vague intention to move on to the Pulitzers next) and my desire to get some more seminal scifi under my belt. I also rectified last year's lack of Shakespeare, and plan to continue with that next year :)
As usual, I did lists: seven I was most impressed with, seven I most enjoyed reading, and a handful of disappointments.
(* denotes a reread)
Amis, Kingsley -- The Old Devils
Austen, Jane -- Emma*
Barker, Pat -- Regeneration*
Barker, Pat -- The Eye in the Door*
Barker, Pat -- The Ghost Road*
Beagle, Peter S. -- The Last Unicorn
de Becker, Gavin -- The Gift of Fear
Bradbury, Ray -- Farenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray -- The Halloween Tree
Bradbury, Ray -- The October Country
Bradbury, Ray -- Zen in the Art of Writing
Brande, Dorothea -- Becoming a Writer
Brockmeier, Kevin -- The Brief History of the Dead
Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre
Brooks, Geraldine -- People of the Book
Card, Orson Scott -- Ender's Game
Carey, Peter -- True History of the Kelly Gang
Carroll, Lewis -- Alice in Wonderland*
Carroll, Lewis -- Through the Looking Glass*
Collins, Suzanne -- The Hunger Games
Cunningham, Michael -- Specimen Days
Curtis Klause, Annette -- Blood and Chocolate
Dean, Pamela -- Tam Lin*
Duane, Diane -- A Wizard Abroad
Duffy, Carol Ann -- New Selected Poems 1984-2004
Eggers, Dave -- How We Are Hungry
Farrell, J.G. -- The Siege of Krishnapur
Faulks, Sebastian -- Birdsong
Faulks, Sebastian -- A Week in December
Faulks, Sebastian -- Human Traces
Fforde, Jasper -- The Eyre Affair*
Fforde, Jasper -- Lost in a Good Book*
Fry, Christopher -- The Lady's Not For Burning*
Gaiman, Neil & Sarrantonio, Al (eds.) -- Stories
Gatiss, Mark -- The Vesuvius Club
Gawande, Atul -- The Checklist Manifesto
Gladwell, Malcolm -- Outliers
Grant, Mira -- Deadline
Harris, Russ -- The Happiness Trap
Healey, Karen -- Guardian of the Dead
Healey, Karen -- The Shattering
Heller, Joseph -- Catch-22
Hill, Susan -- Howards End is on the Landing
Huxley, Aldous -- Brave New World
Jacobson, Howard -- The Finkler Question
Keyes, Daniel -- Flowers for Algernon
King, Stephen -- On Writing*
Lanagan, Margo -- Black Juice
Lanagan, Margo -- Tender Morsels
Le Guin, Ursula -- Steering the Craft
Lively, Penelope -- Moon Tiger*
Meyer, Pamela -- Liespotting
Mieville, China -- Kraken
Morrison, Toni -- Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Murakami, Haruki -- After Dark
Okri, Ben -- The Famished Road
Pamuk, Orhan -- The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist
Plaidy, Jean -- Daughter of Satan
Pratchett, Terry -- Maskerade*
Pratchett, Terry -- Jingo*
Pratchett, Terry -- The Fifth Elephant*
Pratchett, Terry -- Night Watch*
Pratchett, Terry -- Thud!*
Pratchett, Terry -- The Wee Free Men*
Pratchett, Terry -- A Hat Full of Sky*
Pratchett, Terry -- Wintersmith
Pratchett, Terry -- I Shall Wear Midnight
Pratchett, Terry & Gaiman, Neil -- Good Omens*
Prawer Jhabvala, Ruth -- Heat and Dust
Rees Brennan, Sarah -- The Demon's Surrender
Renault, Mary -- The Friendly Young Ladies
Robinson, Marilynne -- Gilead
Rothfuss, Patrick -- The Name of the Wind
Rothfuss, Patrick -- The Wise Man's Fear
Rubens, Bernice -- The Elected Member
Russell, Bertrand -- History of Western Philosophy
Saramago, José -- Blindness
Sayers, Dorothy L. -- Hangman's Holiday
Shakespeare, William -- Much Ado About Nothing*
Shakespeare, William -- The Merchant of Venice*
Shakespeare, William -- Twelfth Night*
Shakespeare, William -- Julius Caesar*
Shakespeare, William -- As You Like It*
Shakespeare, William -- Othello*
Shakespeare, William -- A Midsummer Night's Dream*
Shakespeare, William -- Antony and Cleopatra
Shakespeare, William -- The Winter's Tale
Shakespeare, William -- Henry IV, Part 1
Shakespeare, William -- Henry V
Shakespeare, William -- King John
Shakespeare, William -- Love's Labour's Lost
Shriver, Lionel -- So Much For That
Stephenson, Neal -- Snow Crash
Stoppard, Tom -- The Real Thing
Sutherland, Stuart -- Irrationality
Swift, Graham -- Last Orders
Thomas, Dylan -- Quite Early One Morning
Thomas, Scarlett -- PopCo
Ung, Loung -- First They Killed My Father
Vonnegut, Kurt -- Cat's Cradle
Walter, Natasha -- Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism
Walters, Minette -- The Shape of Snakes
Walters, Minette -- Acid Row
Walters, Minette -- The Sculptress
Waugh, Evelyn -- Scoop
Williamson, David -- The Perfectionist
Willis, Connie -- To Say Nothing of the Dog*
Wiseman, Richard -- Quirkology
Wodehouse, P.G. -- Right Ho, Jeeves*
Wolf, Naomi -- The Beauty Myth
Woolf, Virginia -- The Waves
Wynne Jones, Diana -- Howl's Moving Castle*
Wynne Jones, Diana -- Castle in the Air*
Wynne Jones, Diana -- Conrad's Fate
Wynne Jones, Diana -- Eight Days Of Luke
Wynne Jones, Diana -- Unexpected Magic
Xiaolu, Guo -- 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
Xinran -- The Good Women of China
~
Some of these books I talked about extensively at Tightrope Waltzing (which is on hiatus while I gather up my mental energy again post-Yuletide).
~
Top seven (best)
Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre
When will I get it into my head that I usually enjoy classics? I'd seen screen adaptations but never read the book, and I loved every word of it; the descriptions are beautifully Gothic, the character interactions are interesting, and Jane is a wonderfully determined heroine.
Carey, Peter -- True History of the Kelly Gang
Reviewed here. I really should get around to working my way through the rest of Peter Carey's novels (I've only read the two Booker winners) because he's one of the few Australian authors whose style I whole-heartedly admire. I recommend this book in particular to anyone, especially if you're interested in picking up a bit of Australian history with your enjoyment of the prose.
Faulks, Sebastian -- A Week in December
Reviewed here. I read three books by Faulks this year, and this was the one that impressed me the most despite the fact that it was about neither WWI (Birdsong) or psychiatry (Human Traces); I think the use of both satire and multiple points of view work very well, the more modern setting means the language he uses is tighter, and it also reads as more trimmed-of-fat than the others.
Healey, Karen -- The Shattering
Karen Healey was one of my big discoveries this year; I plan to follow her career with a stalkerish eye, and leap upon everything she produces. Plus she's a New Zealander, and uses the country and its mythologies to great effect in her YA novels. I reviewed her first book, Guardian of the Dead, but The Shattering was far and away my favourite. It's about three teenagers in a coastal town investigating a series of suicides that they suspect are actually murders; it's tightly plotted and suspenseful, the fantasy element is creepy and brilliantly done, and its characters are genuine and complex.
Lanagan, Margo -- Tender Morsels
Reviewed here. Another of this year's discoveries! I am very pleased to be reading more books by people who live in my corner of the world, and I can only aspire to one day have half of Margo Lanagan's vivid power of imagination. Her short stories are fantastic, but this book is a dark, disturbing, fierce and beautiful critique of rape culture via the medium of fairy tale.
Saramago, José -- Blindness
For all that this book made me want to curl up into a ball and whimper, it is fantastic. It's about an epidemic of blindness that spreads rapidly, and the degeneration into chaos that occurs when the blind people are rounded up and locked in an unused asylum. It's shocking, and amazingly well-realised, and makes a lot of brutal and poignant observations about human nature. Even as I was wailing 'nooooooooo' at the pages, I couldn't put it down.
Shriver, Lionel -- So Much For That
Reviewed here. This is about the terrible unfairness of the American medical insurance system, and families, and facing death on your own terms, and -- reading it sometimes feels like being kicked repeatedly in the chest, I'll be honest, but it's SO. GOOD. (I seem to have a great capacity to read depressing books, even while I steer firmly clear of depressing films.)
Top seven (most enjoyable)
Bradbury, Ray -- The Halloween Tree
Reviewed here. I want to turn this into a dressing gown and wear it next to my skin until the words sink in. It's a very short little book about a Halloween adventure, but something about the imagery and the way it's told got its hooks into me, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.
Brockmeier, Kevin -- The Brief History of the Dead
Ji sent me this one, in her infinite wisdom re: my taste in themes <3 It's a short but well-structured book that tells two stories: one of a woman trying to reach safety after being stranded in her Antarctic research base, and one of the city inhabited by the dead during the time that they're still remembered by people living on earth. The two narratives have a lot of interplay, and it's just -- quiet, and clever, and really lovely.
Card, Orson Scott -- Ender's Game
I refuse to say anything positive about OSC as a person, the homophobic prick, but I wish I'd read this book when I was of the age to identify with its characters; I think it would have helped me a lot. Reading it this year, all I could feel was a lot of aching vindication on the part of my childhood self. It's a really good science fiction story, well told (though I don't think I will read any of its sequels). PITY ABOUT THE AUTHOR.
Grant, Mira -- Deadline
AUGH. MY FEELINGS. This is the second book in Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy (the first being Feed) and I ripped through it like a starving beast. The trilogy is about online media, bloggers, politics and conspiracies in the world after the zombie apocalypse, and the books are creative and thrilling and full of exciting twists. And...you get seriously over-invested in the characters.
Pratchett, Terry -- I Shall Wear Midnight
This is the book that rocketed the Tiffany Aching books into the 'favourite Discworld subseries' spot in my heart, the spot that for years and years had been filled by the City Watch. Nope. No longer. I adore Pratchett's idea of witchcraft as shorthand for responsibility, and strength, and observation, and speaking for those without a voice, and I think showing these concepts through Tiffany as she grows up and faces more and more truths about the world is a fantastic technique. This book is pretty much perfect: it's dark, thoughtful, funny, poignant, and full of characters who are always more complicated and real than they appear.
Rees Brennan, Sarah -- The Demon's Surrender
Once again: feeeeelings. I enjoyed this book because it was the culmination of a YA fantasy trilogy (always good) and because Sarah Rees Brennan can make me fall for just about anyone, including -- hard and fast! -- Sin, this book's narrative character. In terms of plot and surprises I think the first book in the series is the strongest, but this one wrapped up the storylines well and made me wriggle with glee at many different points. If you haven't read these, DO IT NOW.
Rothfuss, Patrick -- The Name of the Wind / The Wise Man's Fear
Reviewed here. My relationship with things that smell like high fantasy is rocky at best, but these books are purely enjoyable: the worldbuilding is phenomenal, the writing style is chatty and fun and dry, there's enough of a backbone of suspense to keep you turning the (many, many) pages, and it's probably the first blatantly feminist high fantasy book by a male author that I've ever read. (Not female centred, but feminist. Definitely.)
Disappointments
Gatiss, Mark -- The Vesuvius Club
Oh, Mark Gatiss :( I wanted so much to like this book. And I did, for the first half of it -- fun, adventurous, silly, witty -- but to my dismay the second half devolved into a morass of racist stereotypes, transphobia and classism that left a nasty taste in my mouth.
Okri, Ben -- The Famished Road
It took me great strength of will to finish this one, despite the good writing. The problem with it was the almost complete lack of driving force behind the plot, and the fact that it was at least 300 pages too long.
Plaidy, Jean -- Daughter of Satan
I've already explained my dislike of this one at length.
Thomas, Scarlett -- PopCo
SIGH. I enjoyed Scarlett Thomas's book The End of Mr Y enough that I was prepared to overlook its use of homeopathy as a plot device, but PopCo, which began as a fairly enjoyable book about commercialism and creativity, turned into a blatant platform for Thomas to tell us that if we're not vegan and anti-corporate and in favour of ~natural~ healing methods like homeopathy, we are EVIL. It contained a horrible straw-man caricature of a doctor (pushy and paternalistic! money-obsessed and under the sway of Big Pharma! pushing drugs on you against your will! drugs that WON'T WORK!) that almost made me throw the book across the room.
As usual, I did lists: seven I was most impressed with, seven I most enjoyed reading, and a handful of disappointments.
(* denotes a reread)
Amis, Kingsley -- The Old Devils
Austen, Jane -- Emma*
Barker, Pat -- Regeneration*
Barker, Pat -- The Eye in the Door*
Barker, Pat -- The Ghost Road*
Beagle, Peter S. -- The Last Unicorn
de Becker, Gavin -- The Gift of Fear
Bradbury, Ray -- Farenheit 451
Bradbury, Ray -- The Halloween Tree
Bradbury, Ray -- The October Country
Bradbury, Ray -- Zen in the Art of Writing
Brande, Dorothea -- Becoming a Writer
Brockmeier, Kevin -- The Brief History of the Dead
Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre
Brooks, Geraldine -- People of the Book
Card, Orson Scott -- Ender's Game
Carey, Peter -- True History of the Kelly Gang
Carroll, Lewis -- Alice in Wonderland*
Carroll, Lewis -- Through the Looking Glass*
Collins, Suzanne -- The Hunger Games
Cunningham, Michael -- Specimen Days
Curtis Klause, Annette -- Blood and Chocolate
Dean, Pamela -- Tam Lin*
Duane, Diane -- A Wizard Abroad
Duffy, Carol Ann -- New Selected Poems 1984-2004
Eggers, Dave -- How We Are Hungry
Farrell, J.G. -- The Siege of Krishnapur
Faulks, Sebastian -- Birdsong
Faulks, Sebastian -- A Week in December
Faulks, Sebastian -- Human Traces
Fforde, Jasper -- The Eyre Affair*
Fforde, Jasper -- Lost in a Good Book*
Fry, Christopher -- The Lady's Not For Burning*
Gaiman, Neil & Sarrantonio, Al (eds.) -- Stories
Gatiss, Mark -- The Vesuvius Club
Gawande, Atul -- The Checklist Manifesto
Gladwell, Malcolm -- Outliers
Grant, Mira -- Deadline
Harris, Russ -- The Happiness Trap
Healey, Karen -- Guardian of the Dead
Healey, Karen -- The Shattering
Heller, Joseph -- Catch-22
Hill, Susan -- Howards End is on the Landing
Huxley, Aldous -- Brave New World
Jacobson, Howard -- The Finkler Question
Keyes, Daniel -- Flowers for Algernon
King, Stephen -- On Writing*
Lanagan, Margo -- Black Juice
Lanagan, Margo -- Tender Morsels
Le Guin, Ursula -- Steering the Craft
Lively, Penelope -- Moon Tiger*
Meyer, Pamela -- Liespotting
Mieville, China -- Kraken
Morrison, Toni -- Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Murakami, Haruki -- After Dark
Okri, Ben -- The Famished Road
Pamuk, Orhan -- The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist
Plaidy, Jean -- Daughter of Satan
Pratchett, Terry -- Maskerade*
Pratchett, Terry -- Jingo*
Pratchett, Terry -- The Fifth Elephant*
Pratchett, Terry -- Night Watch*
Pratchett, Terry -- Thud!*
Pratchett, Terry -- The Wee Free Men*
Pratchett, Terry -- A Hat Full of Sky*
Pratchett, Terry -- Wintersmith
Pratchett, Terry -- I Shall Wear Midnight
Pratchett, Terry & Gaiman, Neil -- Good Omens*
Prawer Jhabvala, Ruth -- Heat and Dust
Rees Brennan, Sarah -- The Demon's Surrender
Renault, Mary -- The Friendly Young Ladies
Robinson, Marilynne -- Gilead
Rothfuss, Patrick -- The Name of the Wind
Rothfuss, Patrick -- The Wise Man's Fear
Rubens, Bernice -- The Elected Member
Russell, Bertrand -- History of Western Philosophy
Saramago, José -- Blindness
Sayers, Dorothy L. -- Hangman's Holiday
Shakespeare, William -- Much Ado About Nothing*
Shakespeare, William -- The Merchant of Venice*
Shakespeare, William -- Twelfth Night*
Shakespeare, William -- Julius Caesar*
Shakespeare, William -- As You Like It*
Shakespeare, William -- Othello*
Shakespeare, William -- A Midsummer Night's Dream*
Shakespeare, William -- Antony and Cleopatra
Shakespeare, William -- The Winter's Tale
Shakespeare, William -- Henry IV, Part 1
Shakespeare, William -- Henry V
Shakespeare, William -- King John
Shakespeare, William -- Love's Labour's Lost
Shriver, Lionel -- So Much For That
Stephenson, Neal -- Snow Crash
Stoppard, Tom -- The Real Thing
Sutherland, Stuart -- Irrationality
Swift, Graham -- Last Orders
Thomas, Dylan -- Quite Early One Morning
Thomas, Scarlett -- PopCo
Ung, Loung -- First They Killed My Father
Vonnegut, Kurt -- Cat's Cradle
Walter, Natasha -- Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism
Walters, Minette -- The Shape of Snakes
Walters, Minette -- Acid Row
Walters, Minette -- The Sculptress
Waugh, Evelyn -- Scoop
Williamson, David -- The Perfectionist
Willis, Connie -- To Say Nothing of the Dog*
Wiseman, Richard -- Quirkology
Wodehouse, P.G. -- Right Ho, Jeeves*
Wolf, Naomi -- The Beauty Myth
Woolf, Virginia -- The Waves
Wynne Jones, Diana -- Howl's Moving Castle*
Wynne Jones, Diana -- Castle in the Air*
Wynne Jones, Diana -- Conrad's Fate
Wynne Jones, Diana -- Eight Days Of Luke
Wynne Jones, Diana -- Unexpected Magic
Xiaolu, Guo -- 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
Xinran -- The Good Women of China
~
Some of these books I talked about extensively at Tightrope Waltzing (which is on hiatus while I gather up my mental energy again post-Yuletide).
~
Top seven (best)
Bronte, Charlotte -- Jane Eyre
When will I get it into my head that I usually enjoy classics? I'd seen screen adaptations but never read the book, and I loved every word of it; the descriptions are beautifully Gothic, the character interactions are interesting, and Jane is a wonderfully determined heroine.
Carey, Peter -- True History of the Kelly Gang
Reviewed here. I really should get around to working my way through the rest of Peter Carey's novels (I've only read the two Booker winners) because he's one of the few Australian authors whose style I whole-heartedly admire. I recommend this book in particular to anyone, especially if you're interested in picking up a bit of Australian history with your enjoyment of the prose.
Faulks, Sebastian -- A Week in December
Reviewed here. I read three books by Faulks this year, and this was the one that impressed me the most despite the fact that it was about neither WWI (Birdsong) or psychiatry (Human Traces); I think the use of both satire and multiple points of view work very well, the more modern setting means the language he uses is tighter, and it also reads as more trimmed-of-fat than the others.
Healey, Karen -- The Shattering
Karen Healey was one of my big discoveries this year; I plan to follow her career with a stalkerish eye, and leap upon everything she produces. Plus she's a New Zealander, and uses the country and its mythologies to great effect in her YA novels. I reviewed her first book, Guardian of the Dead, but The Shattering was far and away my favourite. It's about three teenagers in a coastal town investigating a series of suicides that they suspect are actually murders; it's tightly plotted and suspenseful, the fantasy element is creepy and brilliantly done, and its characters are genuine and complex.
Lanagan, Margo -- Tender Morsels
Reviewed here. Another of this year's discoveries! I am very pleased to be reading more books by people who live in my corner of the world, and I can only aspire to one day have half of Margo Lanagan's vivid power of imagination. Her short stories are fantastic, but this book is a dark, disturbing, fierce and beautiful critique of rape culture via the medium of fairy tale.
Saramago, José -- Blindness
For all that this book made me want to curl up into a ball and whimper, it is fantastic. It's about an epidemic of blindness that spreads rapidly, and the degeneration into chaos that occurs when the blind people are rounded up and locked in an unused asylum. It's shocking, and amazingly well-realised, and makes a lot of brutal and poignant observations about human nature. Even as I was wailing 'nooooooooo' at the pages, I couldn't put it down.
Shriver, Lionel -- So Much For That
Reviewed here. This is about the terrible unfairness of the American medical insurance system, and families, and facing death on your own terms, and -- reading it sometimes feels like being kicked repeatedly in the chest, I'll be honest, but it's SO. GOOD. (I seem to have a great capacity to read depressing books, even while I steer firmly clear of depressing films.)
Top seven (most enjoyable)
Bradbury, Ray -- The Halloween Tree
Reviewed here. I want to turn this into a dressing gown and wear it next to my skin until the words sink in. It's a very short little book about a Halloween adventure, but something about the imagery and the way it's told got its hooks into me, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.
Brockmeier, Kevin -- The Brief History of the Dead
Ji sent me this one, in her infinite wisdom re: my taste in themes <3 It's a short but well-structured book that tells two stories: one of a woman trying to reach safety after being stranded in her Antarctic research base, and one of the city inhabited by the dead during the time that they're still remembered by people living on earth. The two narratives have a lot of interplay, and it's just -- quiet, and clever, and really lovely.
Card, Orson Scott -- Ender's Game
I refuse to say anything positive about OSC as a person, the homophobic prick, but I wish I'd read this book when I was of the age to identify with its characters; I think it would have helped me a lot. Reading it this year, all I could feel was a lot of aching vindication on the part of my childhood self. It's a really good science fiction story, well told (though I don't think I will read any of its sequels). PITY ABOUT THE AUTHOR.
Grant, Mira -- Deadline
AUGH. MY FEELINGS. This is the second book in Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy (the first being Feed) and I ripped through it like a starving beast. The trilogy is about online media, bloggers, politics and conspiracies in the world after the zombie apocalypse, and the books are creative and thrilling and full of exciting twists. And...you get seriously over-invested in the characters.
Pratchett, Terry -- I Shall Wear Midnight
This is the book that rocketed the Tiffany Aching books into the 'favourite Discworld subseries' spot in my heart, the spot that for years and years had been filled by the City Watch. Nope. No longer. I adore Pratchett's idea of witchcraft as shorthand for responsibility, and strength, and observation, and speaking for those without a voice, and I think showing these concepts through Tiffany as she grows up and faces more and more truths about the world is a fantastic technique. This book is pretty much perfect: it's dark, thoughtful, funny, poignant, and full of characters who are always more complicated and real than they appear.
Rees Brennan, Sarah -- The Demon's Surrender
Once again: feeeeelings. I enjoyed this book because it was the culmination of a YA fantasy trilogy (always good) and because Sarah Rees Brennan can make me fall for just about anyone, including -- hard and fast! -- Sin, this book's narrative character. In terms of plot and surprises I think the first book in the series is the strongest, but this one wrapped up the storylines well and made me wriggle with glee at many different points. If you haven't read these, DO IT NOW.
Rothfuss, Patrick -- The Name of the Wind / The Wise Man's Fear
Reviewed here. My relationship with things that smell like high fantasy is rocky at best, but these books are purely enjoyable: the worldbuilding is phenomenal, the writing style is chatty and fun and dry, there's enough of a backbone of suspense to keep you turning the (many, many) pages, and it's probably the first blatantly feminist high fantasy book by a male author that I've ever read. (Not female centred, but feminist. Definitely.)
Disappointments
Gatiss, Mark -- The Vesuvius Club
Oh, Mark Gatiss :( I wanted so much to like this book. And I did, for the first half of it -- fun, adventurous, silly, witty -- but to my dismay the second half devolved into a morass of racist stereotypes, transphobia and classism that left a nasty taste in my mouth.
Okri, Ben -- The Famished Road
It took me great strength of will to finish this one, despite the good writing. The problem with it was the almost complete lack of driving force behind the plot, and the fact that it was at least 300 pages too long.
Plaidy, Jean -- Daughter of Satan
I've already explained my dislike of this one at length.
Thomas, Scarlett -- PopCo
SIGH. I enjoyed Scarlett Thomas's book The End of Mr Y enough that I was prepared to overlook its use of homeopathy as a plot device, but PopCo, which began as a fairly enjoyable book about commercialism and creativity, turned into a blatant platform for Thomas to tell us that if we're not vegan and anti-corporate and in favour of ~natural~ healing methods like homeopathy, we are EVIL. It contained a horrible straw-man caricature of a doctor (pushy and paternalistic! money-obsessed and under the sway of Big Pharma! pushing drugs on you against your will! drugs that WON'T WORK!) that almost made me throw the book across the room.
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PS this is as good a post as any to mention it on (I'm no longer on LJ/DW really so who knows if there's been a better), but did you happen to see the eyai fic I posted back in April? No sweat if you did and didn't care to comment, I just felt obligated to mention it in case it got eaten by medical school :)
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YES. I noticed it at the time and was like MUST READ LATER but the way my life has been this year, if I don't read it at the time, I don't read it at all. Will rectify, I promise.
no subject