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Jun. 28th, 2010 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
opusculusBah, I'm going to get absolutely nothing done today because everyone I need to talk to is busy or not here. So I might as well catch up on my book list while I can actually remember it, I guess.
Half-World by Hirumi Goto, about a girl who stumbles into...call it a fairyland, I guess. I really liked this by the end, but to be honest I almost gave up repeatedly halfway through because it was such an ugly world. I mean, I got that that was the point, and what she was trying to do, but I still found myself getting squicked repeatedly, and I'm not a huge fan of authors trying to gross me out. I liked the fact that the main character was unapologetically everything we don't expect out of a heroine (fat, Japanese, ugly, poor, no special talents, etc.), and was still completely awesome and capable of heroism. You don't see that enough in fiction, really.
Call of the Mall by Paco Underhill, a book by a retail anthropologist and shopping scientist on malls. Lacked focus and generally kinda sucked, to be honest. I thought his first book was really interesting and have been vaguely meaning to get around to reading this book for years, so this was a disappointment. It was mostly him going with people on trips to the mall and interviewing them interspersed with his research on malls, and never really felt like it had a coherent theme underlying it. Also, he assumed that you'd read his first one at a couple points when it would've taken a few extra sentences to avoid it, which was just clumsy. Mostly, it felt like it needed a lot more editing, a lot less padding, and a lot more material.
Half-World by Hirumi Goto, about a girl who stumbles into...call it a fairyland, I guess. I really liked this by the end, but to be honest I almost gave up repeatedly halfway through because it was such an ugly world. I mean, I got that that was the point, and what she was trying to do, but I still found myself getting squicked repeatedly, and I'm not a huge fan of authors trying to gross me out. I liked the fact that the main character was unapologetically everything we don't expect out of a heroine (fat, Japanese, ugly, poor, no special talents, etc.), and was still completely awesome and capable of heroism. You don't see that enough in fiction, really.
Call of the Mall by Paco Underhill, a book by a retail anthropologist and shopping scientist on malls. Lacked focus and generally kinda sucked, to be honest. I thought his first book was really interesting and have been vaguely meaning to get around to reading this book for years, so this was a disappointment. It was mostly him going with people on trips to the mall and interviewing them interspersed with his research on malls, and never really felt like it had a coherent theme underlying it. Also, he assumed that you'd read his first one at a couple points when it would've taken a few extra sentences to avoid it, which was just clumsy. Mostly, it felt like it needed a lot more editing, a lot less padding, and a lot more material.
