Still Reading

I'm continuing to slog through old pop culture criticism--which tends to be frustratingly elitist--and Middle English literature--today I get to read selections from Monmouth's "History of the Kings of Britain."  Also, I'm nearly finished with Torchwood, I'm working my way through Life on Mars (the British edition) as the discs come from Netflix, and I'm only 7 achievements away from completion on the Dragon Age games (but they're the hard ones.  Kill 1,000 darkspawn.  Kill the big bad monster in a DLC adventure on "hard" or "nightmare." HA).

Also, at some point, I've become a frappuccino addict.  Not sure when that happened; I used to hate cold coffee.  Now I'm buying the little bottles and chugging them every morning.

I have managed to "tentatively" secure a dissertation director (he even made the little quote marks in the air when he said "tentatively")--Dr. Viking--and I wrote a (very) rough proposal yesterday.  And then had a mini-panic attack.  This project is going to be huge (well, it's a freaking dissertation), and Dr. Viking is saying I get one year to write it.  That he won't let me go any longer than that.  Eeeeeeeeeeeeee.

So in 6 months, when I disappear off the face of the earth, don't worry.  I'm not dead; I'm just dissertating.

Book Review: Norse Code

Mist is a brand-new Valkyrie, tapped for the job after dying in a shooting robbery with her sister. Her job is to test men and recruit them for Odin's army of the dead to fight in Ragnarok. But what she really wants to do is travel to Helheim and rescue her sister. But the world is falling apart around her, preparing for Ragnarok, and loyalties are deeply uncertain.

I found the premise of this book very interesting, but it wasn't executed as well as it could have been. Too many characters with too many subplots in too small of a space kept me from connecting to any of them or caring about most of the plots. None of the characters were relateable, mostly because the reader doesn't get to spend enough time with any of them. The chemistry between characters was sorely lacking. And other than the overarching "Ragnarok is coming" plot, the threads of plots got tangled and difficult to follow due to all the interactions and characters involved.

I think this book needed to be about 100 pages longer, if not more, in order to add in more exposition, character building, and relationship building.

2/5

Book Review: The Age of Odin

Warning: This Review Contains Spoilers

James Lovegrove’s The Age of Odin is a modern fantasy novel set in England (and, arguably, Asgard).  Gideon Coxall is a retired British Army vet, let go after IED shrapnel left him deaf in one ear and with a titanium plate in his skull.  After leaving the army, he did time for assault, losing his wife and estranging his son in the process.  When his friend, nicknamed “Abortion,” tells him about the Valhalla Project, which promises £2,000 a week and doesn’t discriminate based on injury or history, Gideon decides to sign up.  On the way to Asgard Hall, ostensibly in the north of England, Abortion wrecks the car.  As the two escape the crash, Abortion is killed and eaten by wolves and Gideon rescued by three women on snowmobiles—the Valkyries.  He soon discovers that the Valhalla Project is run by Odin himself, and Odin is gathering an army to fight Loki, who is masquerading as the President of the United States, Lois Keener.

Lovegrove’s research definitely shows; he’s clearly read the Eddas several times very carefully.  The entirety of the Norse pantheon appears, all with histories and personalities accurate to what is described in the Eddas, but the setting is completely modern, with guns, snowmobiles, and a Chinook named Sleipnir.  Gideon helps the gods fight Ragnarok, with each of the prophecies about it coming to pass, though the monsters are replaced with mechanical equivalents (mostly because Loki found it easier to use the US DoD budget to build them rather than freeing the real Fenrir and Midgard serpent).  Along the way, Lovegrove inserts a few conversations that explore the nature of godhood, the death and waning of gods, and other mythological/religious/philosophical topics.

The book is a headlong rush to Ragnarok, led by a smartmouthed, fearless, berserker of a man who is aware of his own faults and intends to fix them.  Although I picked it up to read for a class on Norse mythology, I thoroughly enjoyed it as a work of fiction, as well.

5/5

Drowning in Reading Material

Today I had to sit down and begin drawing up a schedule for my reading this summer so I can keep up with the reading I have to do for 1) my Norse mythology directed reading; 2) my Old English/Middle English prelim; 3) my pop culture prelim; and 4) the American lit class I'm taking later this summer. I only scheduled two weeks so that I can adjust if necessary.

This is what this week looks like:
Tuesday: American Gods by Neil Gaiman, "Postmodernism" by Frederic Jameson, 3 Middle English poems
Wednesday: American Gods, "Visual Pressure" by Laura Mulvey, 3 Middle English poems
Thursday: Age of Odin by James Lovegrove, Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson, 3 Middle English poems
Friday: Age of Odin, Everything Bad, 3 Middle English poems
Saturday: Norse Code by Greg von Eckhout, Understanding Popular Culture by John Fiske, 3 Middle English poems

The week after looks pretty similar. Luckily for me, most of the Old and Middle English stuff is free from Google Books on the Nook.

Speaking of the Nook, I got the newest version this week.  So far, I love it even more than the older one. The navigation is much better, it's smaller and lighter, and it has a text setting called "publisher default" which sets the text so it looks the way the paperback does.

Since I can't just sit and read in utter silence, I've been using Netflix to stream or get DVDs of a lot of British TV. I watched all of Blackadder in the last few weeks, as well as the first season of Absolutely Fabulous and the first few episodes of Little Britain (I decided that one wasn't my thing). When I'm not doing that, I'm achievement hunting in Dragon Age and Dragon Age 2.  The great thing about RPG video games?  Really long cutscenes.  Not as long as the Final Fantasy games, but still pretty hefty.  So I can read while the characters are chattering about backstory to each other.

Now if you'll excuse me, I must go rescue the huge pile of books on my desk which my kitty is trying to knock over, then go back to reading.

Apathy, Cynicism, or Practicality?

Lately, I've noticed that I have less and less patience with books.  I used to power through stories I was only sort of interested in, partly in the hope that they would get better, partly because I was raised to finish a book if I started it (I'm mostly out of that, now, but I'd still read them as long as they didn't give me a good reason not to).  Not so much anymore.  Now I've found myself giving books between two and four chapters to grab my attention, sympathy, interest, or whatever else the book is going for before I drop it and move on to something else.  I have less and less patience with mediocre stories; I need good ones.  Fabulous ones.  Ones I'll want to give at least four stars.

I suspect that part of this is a time issue.  This summer I have three different reading lists, each as long as my arm, as I work on my directed reading and study for my preliminary exams.  I don't have much time for reading for pleasure, and by apostrophes, it had better be a pleasure if I'm going to read it.  Also, I'm reading a whole lot of stuff that isn't very interesting but is necessary (Roland Barthes.  There's a reason his name sounds like "barf."  Please don't kill me, fellow English majors).  Why in the world would I, during the little bit of time right before bed that I have to read something interesting, that I want to read, spend that time on something that's not going to suck me in and take me somewhere fun?  What's the point?

I think it's also linked to the incredibly huge TBR pile--consisting of physical, electronic, and virtual (they're on a list in my head but I haven't bought them yet) books--that's constantly staring me in the face.  I've taken to referring to this pile as my "bucket list," because hopefully I'll get to all of them before I die.  So, again, why waste my time and energy on something I'm not going to enjoy when I know that somewhere in that TBR pile is something I will enjoy--possibly my next favorite author?

Part of me feels kind of bad about this.  Maybe I'm not giving these books a fair shake.  Maybe I'm missing a really great author by giving up after a few chapters.  But part of me also feels freer.  I'm not forced to plow through a book I don't really enjoy.  Nobody's forcing me to read these books; they're not assigned and I can put them down whenever I want.  I don't have to finish them and then write a 20-page paper about them.  They're completely unnecessary and I can treat them as such.  Rather than munching through mediocre, unfrosted or -topped angel food cake during my nightly brain dessert time, I can enjoy a really big chocolate brownie sundae--and nobody can stop me from throwing out the mediocre angel food cake and never thinking about it again.

And now I'm hungry for a brownie sundae.  Figures.