a book a week

Wimbledon Green by Seth

2012-01-23T09:33:00.000-05:00

Wimbledon Green: the greatest comic book collector in the world
by Seth
Drawn & Quarterly, 2005
125 pages

When I said I went a completely different direction after The Bell at Sealey Head, I meant it. I went to a graphic novel about a fictionalized group of Canadian comic book collectors, and about one of those collectors in particular, a mysterious man by the name of Wimbledon Green.

I recently recommended this book to my friend Faith, and fishy promptly suggested that I should recommend something else by Seth, not this. Wimbledon Green is not his best work, I am told, not his most polished, not his most beautiful, not his most coherent. In fact, Seth himself tells us this; it's clear, from the foreword that should probably be an afterword, that Seth sets exceedingly high standards for himself. It's a story taken from his sketchbook, an experiment. Because of this, I add to this review the caveat that this may indeed not be Seth's best work. But it is an excellent little book, a really interesting work, and a really lovely piece of art. It stands on its own, all disclaimers aside.

I think I first have to mention the artwork. Seth has a pretty distinctive style. You may have seen it before; he designed the Peanuts anthologies, for example, and the Doug Wright anthology. It's got a sepia-toned nostalgic flavour, and an economy of line that belies how intricate and beautiful a finished panel is. The world created by his pen is consistent, complete and wide, much larger than the scope of the story he tells in it. His character work is unique and distinctive, and he knows how much he needs to show in a panel background in order for the reader to build a setting.

So, what is Wimbledon Green? Well, it's a tongue-in-cheek look at the world of comics collecting, often affectionate but also somewhat cynical. There are few entirely likeable characters -- even the titular fellow is not as charming or likeable as one might think. It's a story told in vignettes, a brief "biography" of Wimbledon Green as told by many people who knew him or knew of him, with some live action from Green's life plus a few other items of note relating to Green tossed in. It's put together in such a way that there's never a true narrative, but the larger picture emerges gradually. The added complication is that the multiple narrators are completely unreliable; it's difficult if not impossible to separate out truth from fiction. The unreliable narrator is a storytelling convention I normally dislike, but here it works for me incredibly well.

The multiple unreliable narrators here add a very active component to reading. The reader analyzes things carefully: does this person have a vested interest in being honest or dishonest? Does this person strike the reader as trustworthy? Is the character who seemed trustworthy previously now starting to seem less so? Even when we finally get to Wimbledon's own telling of his story, one feels there's a lot of omissions; whether those omissions are conscious on his part is another question for the reader to puzzle over. In the end, we never feel like we have a good handle on Wimbledon Green, much the same as all the other narrators, despite the fact that we do have more information than any of them. This may sound unsatisfying, and in some ways it is, but it's fitting: Wimbledon Green is a man of mystery, and he remains that way.

I can't quite finish the review without mentioning Jonah. This character is a dead ringer for Seth in appearance and certain foibles (exaggerated nostalgia for past eras, for example.) Though, I would hate to suggest that Seth is as thoroughly unpleasant as Jonah is. I don't know the author, but Jonah's a sneak, a cheat, an opportunist who has a deluded view of himself and the rest of the world. The rest of the characters have very little nice to say about him. It's an interesting choice for the author to put himself in there in such a way, but not without its humour. Put together with his foreword/afterword, and one begins to hypothesize a case of imposter syndrome, in the same way one has spent the rest of the book reading between the lines. I am sure this is all quite deliberate.

I'd like to recommend this book as an entree into Seth's work, though the author himself surely wouldn't thank me for it. I'll read more of his stuff, though from the snippets I've seen of his other work I suspect the melancholy that is merely hinted at in Wimbledon Green is out in full force in some of his other stuff. I am not always a fan of that sort of deep sadness without some sort of levity, and I thought that this book had a nice balance.

fishy's been re-reading this book, and published a much better, more in-depth blog entry on it than I have here. His point about Wimbledon Green being a superhero himself is well-made and I feel a little ... abashed, let's say, that I missed it myself the first time around.

The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia A. McKillip

2012-01-16T09:19:00.000-05:00

The Bell at Sealey Head
by Patricia A. McKillip
Ace Books, 2008
277 pages

The odd thing about people who had many books was how they always wanted more. Judd knew that about himself: just the sight of Ridley Dow's books unpacked and stacked in corners, on the desk and dresser, made him discontented and greedy. Here he was; there they were. Why were he and they not together somewhere private, they falling gently open under his fingers, he exploring their mysteries, they luring him, enthralling him, captivating him with every turn of phrase, every revealing page?

A short time ago, Aarti discussed the practice of "skimming" through books for one of her Sunday Salon posts. I do skim, several different ways and for several different reasons, but one of the bad skimming habits I have is when I'm so caught up in a book I have been known to skim through sections to get to the end so I can see what happens faster. This is probably just fine, as long as I re-read the book in question a second time to catch everything I missed. In some cases, I skim so badly I can't even remember what the book is about, through no fault of the book's. Such was the case with The Bell at Sealey Head.

I have such a hard time reviewing these books. I can't be objective, I can barely be intelligent; these books don't lend themselves to my kinds of reviews because they are complex and different and nuanced and beautiful and hard to talk about without feeling either trite or completely inadequate. I think I have mentioned my love for Patricia McKillip's writing before. Multiple times. So I probably don't need to spend a lot of time expostulating here. I had thought, as I was reviewing The Bards of Bone Plain, that perhaps I didn't remember The Bell at Sealey Head because it wasn't as good. This was an incorrect hypothesis. The book is excellent, but I must have read it so fast that none of it stuck. Embarrassing.

Here we have a book that explores some favourite themes of McKillip's: books and stories and storytelling and the power they hold, the lust for power and how destructive it can be, the lure of the sea, the lovely things to be found in the life of the everyday folk who often get passed over in fantasy stories, the passage of time, the parallel worlds that are sometimes accessible and sometimes not. Set in the small harbour town of Sealey Head, at its heart this book is a mystery as much as it is a fantasy: what and where is the bell that rings every sundown in the town, and what is happening at Aislinn House, the grand old manor on the hill?

The story is told from the perspectives of Judd Cauley, the innkeeper; Gwyneth Blair, the merchant's daughter, and Emma Wood, a young maid at Aislinn House, as well as Ysabo, a princess trapped in ritual in the magical other Aislinn House. Each has their own private worries and dreams, and each play a role in the solving of the mystery, though the actual solving of the whole is left to Ridley Dow, a mysterious travelling scholar who comes to stay at Judd's inn.

As in any old mystery there are clues left about the narratives for the reader to pick up, and as I read I started to remember a few things, so I started looking a little harder at details and discovered that they did, indeed, point me in the right direction once I knew what to look for.

The pace is slow, the effect cumulative, and the payoff is satisfying. I was left at the end of the book feeling rather bereft; what could I possibly read next that wasn't going to pale in comparison? (The answer to that: go a completely different direction. It worked.) In fact, I think The Bell at Sealey Head is actually one of McKillip's more straightforward books, and might be a good place for a person who has never read her work to start.

Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn

2012-01-09T08:44:00.000-05:00

Dark Road to Darjeeling
by Deanna Raybourn
Mira, 2010
~ 400 pages (it's a Kobo epub; I can't seem to find a way to figure out the full page count)

So, one of the things about eReading is that I can't partake of my habit (some say it's a bad, bad habit) of flipping to the end of a book that I'm not reading as quickly as I might. Yes, I do this with mysteries too. It doesn't really bother me to know how it turns out, and if I'm not swept into the book immediately I just... like to know. If it's worth it, or something. I can't really explain. Anyway.

It's a good thing I didn't do that with this book, I have to say, because I think I would have stopped reading. There are several dramatic twists, including one that, had I known it was coming, I might have quit up top to spare myself the pain. So perhaps this is a lesson: anything I want to read through regardless of the ending I should probably read on the Kobo.

This is the fourth book in Raybourn's Lady Julia Grey series. If you don't want spoilers for the first three (and I'd suggest you don't, if you're going to read this series) you'd be best to go start at my review of Silent in the Grave. This is one series you really should read in order: plot points and characters from previous books return to haunt the present book, and are sometimes quite pertinent to the current action. You could figure out what was going on by a combination of explicit recap and inference, but you wouldn't figure out everything, and there is a richness that would be lost if you skip books.

I do have to say, I didn't enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed the first three. It must partially be my situation, with significant sleep and attention deficits, but there are other books I've read in this period that I didn't have trouble getting through and that I enjoyed more. Because Lady Julia is away from London, we missed many of the London characters I've grown to enjoy, including her father, her brother Bellmont (he's fun as a straight man to every other March's eccentricities), Aquinas, Monk, and even the raven Grim. This is a significantly darker book than the first two, I would say even darker than the last. And yes, it's right there in the title. I'm a little afraid about the next one.

So, from here on in be spoilers for the first three books; I will try to keep spoilers for this book out.

Dark Road to Darjeeling takes us to India, as Julia and Brisbane are finishing up their honeymoon. Julia's sister Portia and brother Plum find the couple and entreat them to come to India to visit Jane, Portia's former lover. Her husband (who also happened to be distantly related to the Marchs via their mother's family) is dead, and Jane fears for the safety of her unborn child, since the motive for Freddie's murder could very easily have been the fact that he had inherited a large and successful tea plantation. Upon arrival, it turns out that there are indeed an excess of suspects and motives, but no clear murder. There's also a rampant man-eating tiger, a mysterious Englishman in the mountains, and any number of strange and interesting characters living in the valley for Julia and her companions to work around and figure out.

Part of the advantage, let's say, of having the first three books to establish things is that Raybourn can really get into the tangled web of relationships in this book. It's dramatic (at times melodramatic), convoluted, and very much a soap opera, which at times is quite a lot of fun and at other times seems a bit excessive. I might just be a little sour because of the aforementioned twist at the end, but I occasionally felt like things were just a bit over the top here. The tiger, introduced in the first chapter or two, of course does show up... but in such a way as to be the height of drama and at the expense of veracity. That whole storyline seemed a little forced and had little to do with the rest of the book, except perhaps to force a [resolution to a?] crisis point in Julia and Brisbane's relationship.

Speaking of relationships, that's one place where this book shines. The relationship between Julia and Brisbane continues to develop apace, and there are significant bumps in the road as well as some lovely moments between the two. We haven't got a happily ever after here, though the reader suspects that there's no need to fear that the relationship is going to fall apart, either. The relationship between Julia and Portia has some really lovely moments too, particularly one where Portia takes Julia to task for horning in on Brisbane's business -- a moment that was quite welcome, because Julia is foolishly headstrong and needlessly reckless and also irritatingly competitive for much of the novel, and the reader is really glad to see Portia be sensible on the subject.

I think what has me waffling a little about my feelings on this book is that it doesn't really fit into any categories easily, which is a good thing. It's not a romance series, though romance is an integral part of the story (and not just Julia and Brisbane's romance, either; we have Portia and Jane, and Plum and his tortured, unrequited love for his sister-in-law.) It's not a cozy mystery, though there are elements -- the closed circle of suspects, the incredibly bizarre crime, the somewhat unloveable victim whose murder is the catalyst for the story but not much mourned. It's too dark to be a cozy, and too reliant on previous books. But it's not a realistic psychological suspense read, either, though it also contains suspenseful elements -- it's too much a soap opera for that. So it's a little hard to pin down, but it's also pretty successful in what it sets out to do, which is tell a riviting story with a cast of interesting characters.

I will continue to recommend this series, and I'll certainly be reading Dark Enquiry, the fifth book starring Lady Julia and Nicholas Brisbane. I'm looking forward to seeing what they get up to, and what the extended March family gets up to. I'm a little nervous about the darkness, and whether or not I have the stomach for it, and more to the point I think I am starting to find the dramatic twists and soap-style relationships and reveals a bit much. But I'm going to keep going because I really do like these books and I am quite confident that Deanna Raybourn has a tale worth telling. I'm looking forward to finding ourselves back in London with the attendant cast of characters.

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

2012-01-02T18:10:00.000-05:00

Witches Abroad
by Sir Terry Pratchett
Corgi, 1991
286 pages

Witches Abroad was the Discworld novel I read just before I discovered how wonderful the Discworld is. I liked it well enough to decide that I would try The Wee Free Men when the opportunity arose, so while I say that it was The Wee Free Men that taught me I love Discworld, Witches Abroad was a necessary precursor. So it was interesting to read a second time, fully enamoured with the world rather than slightly skeptical.

Let me say, too, I think this is one of the better Discworld novels I've read, and is right up there with The Wee Free Men.

Upon the death of witch and fairy godmother Desidirata Hollow, witch and wet hen Magrat Garlick inherits a magic wand and a goddaughter. The goddaughter is named Ella and lives in Genua, a fair ways away from Lancre, and Desidirata instructs Magrat that Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are not to join her on her quest to make sure that the serving girl doesn't marry the prince. Of course, that means they will (precisely what Desidirata intended) and so the three set off on a journey to foreign parts. On the way they encounter several stories run amok, and find themselves pitched headlong into a nightmarish fairytale orchestrated by a formidable -- and strangely familiar -- foe.

I love the witches. My inclination is always to say that my favourite Discworld character is the one with whom I've most recently spent time, but the truth of the matter is that Granny Weatherwax tops them all. Rincewind I love, and Sam Vimes is great, and DEATH is wonderful, and Tiffany Aching will always hold a special place in my heart. But Granny is fierce and intelligent and cranky and full of depth and maddening and flat out terrifying. I feel comfortable with her, like I'm in good, if uncompromising, hands. And this is her book, very much, and so that makes this an excellent book for me. She has a number of moments in this book that are those rare moments in a book so on pitch and on character that they are perfect and they take my breath away.

Magrat, on the other hand, is a character I often find to be vaguely irritating and uncomfortable... largely, I think, because if I was a Discworld witch I would be Magrat, and it's not exactly a flattering comparison. She is good, and well-meaning, and thoughtful, and kind, which is all lovely, but unfortunately everything is out there on the surface; she doesn't think deeply, though she likes to think she does, and she doesn't notice things because she's so busy trying to understand. I like to think I would be a Granny Weatherwax type or even a Nanny Ogg type, but the truth is that I would be a Magrat. I will work with this, I suppose. I have a suspicion that in this world, which is spherical and orbits the sun, being a Magrat isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The book is very much about tensions: tensions between appearances and reality, between characters, between youthful enthusiasm and experience and wisdom, and between narratives and reality, to name just a few. The book is fraught. It's also really, really funny. Tension is offset by things like houses falling on witches and sly homages to (or lampooning of) familiar tales.

It's also about narratives, and how powerful they can be. Pratchett makes it explicit: fairytales and other stories are entities that have agency in Witches Abroad, creatures that, tentacle-like, attach themselves to people and events and twist them so that lives turn out in a particular way -- so that the story can have a "happy ever after." But as Granny points out, there is no such thing as a happy ending. Things keep going after the events in the story come to a close, and ever after is a long, long time. The story takes away the agency of the people involved, and nothing makes Granny Weatherwax angrier than something taking away an individual's agency to live and/or screw up their lives as they see fit.

We don't have fairytales running around amok (do we?) but we do all have narratives running in our head, stories we tell about ourselves and other people, stories about who we think we are, and who other people think we are, and how we behave in the world. These stories can be extremely powerful; they can be comforting, because we can carefully slot everything that happens to us into our personal narrative. They can also blind us to realities, and in their most vicious, pernicious form they can be incredibly destructive to ourselves and those around us. I spent a lot of time this re-read thinking about how our own personal stories can remove agency from us, if we let them and forget that the only reason they have power is because we feed it to them.

Ah, Discworld. Always making me think a little deeper than I realize I am. I'd happily recommend this to the right people (namely, fantasy fans with a sense of humour). This book pulled me out of a slump, and now that I've re-read it once and found it still excellent (perhaps even better the second time) I'll be coming back for more.

the year that went pear-shaped

2011-12-26T13:43:00.000-05:00

Because I also went pear-shaped. And then rather suddenly stopped being pear-shaped, well before I'd intended to. But a year it has been, making this the third year I have been blogging. It really doesn't seem like that long, but it seems like I've had this blog forever.

This was a weird reading year. A weird pregnancy can do that to one. Probably a regular one, too, but I wouldn't know... At any rate, I spent a lot of energy just trying to make it through the days and did not so much reading for significant periods of time from March - May. In June I got my second wind, but one book ate all of July, and then suddenly fishy and I were three.

Interestingly, being three has meant I do a fair bit more reading. Since at first we were spending a lot of time in the hospital just sitting, that makes sense. Now that smallfry is home, I certainly do spend less time reading, but not as much less as I'd expected at first. The big kicker is lack of energy, which is as bad now as it was in the first months of pregnancy, and my brain feels smooshier than I'd like to admit. But reading keeps me somewhat sane and in touch with things other than diapers and weight gains. Reviewing even more so. A lovely development these past few months sees fishy blogging his reading too, which has encouraged me to be a better blogger; there's a nice synergy happening.

(Incidentally, I am also really pleased to report that smallfry doesn't seem to be suffering much from her early entrance. She's growing normally, has no serious complications, and though she's about the size and developmental age of a two-month-old instead of a four-month-old, that kind of difference tends to be less and less noticeable as she gets older.)

So! Let's look at the numbers. Unsurprisingly, I haven't matched even last year's somewhat diminished output (input?) but what I've read I've generally enjoyed.

Books read in the past year: 47
Fiction read: 35
Nonfiction read: 12
Adult books read: 35
Young adult books read: 4
Middle-grade books read: 8
Canadian books read: 6
Graphic novels read: 3
Audiobooks listened to: 3
Series started: 9
Series completed: 1

And, because I've got Jean-Luc PiKobo now:
Ebooks read: 8

And, as I said I would last year, I did keep track of the nationality of the authors of the books I read, aside from the Canadian ones:
American books read: 27
British books read: 13
Japanese books read: 1

Next year I'd like to keep track of the decade the book was originally written in. Because I like numbers, you know, and it's interesting to keep track of this stuff. I used to say that I don't really read new releases, but it looks (from the brief overview I've done) that I read more newer books than I think I do. Keeping track of the nationality of the authors I read was interesting, too, because I didn't realize I was quite that American-heavy. Not that I plan to change my reading habits; life is too short for me to worry about that sort of thing, to be honest. But it's interesting to know what the shape of my reading is like, so that I'm aware of my biases when I'm helping other people find things to read.

As with last year, some of my favourite reads of the year, in the order that I read them:

Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson - Hands down my favourite book club read of the year (for my parent-child book club) and possibly one of the best books I've ever read. Sweet, gentle, quiet and slow and introspective without being boring. Read this touching little book even if you have no children to read it with.
Libraries in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson - I wouldn't recommend this for everyone because it's a bit dry and the topic is a little obscure, but I quite liked it. It was a very cool survey of collections of the written word in the precursors to Western culture from Ashurbanipal to the beginning of the Middle Ages. Not a long book, but great to read about the very beginnings of my chosen field.
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins - I've been meaning to read this for a while, and finally did. And am I ever glad I did! Despite the fact that Collins was a contemporary of Dickens, I found Collins much easier to swallow, and reading what is often considered to be the original detective novel was both instructive and a lot of fun.
The City and the City by China Miéville - As my first experience with Miéville, this couldn't have gone better. Combining my love of mystery and fantasy so elegantly, this book still worms its way into my head every once in a while so long after reading it.
Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf - A book that I read partially for work and partially for interest that I absolutely wish everyone could read; alas, I don't think it will happen. It's not an easy read, though inspiring in its challenges. Wonderfully written book about the way reading changes the brain and the way it changes our culture.
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis - Yet another book that I think may be a favourite read of all time (I've done really well this year!) It was a remarkable, smart book, with an interesting plot and really wonderful characters. Also very funny. A great case of the right book at the right time.
The Hotel Under the Sand by Kage Baker - A completely understated yet wonderful book written for the middle-grade reader. I'll be using this one with my parent-child book club if I can get funding to purchase enough copies. It's sweet, fascinating and a great adventure story, perfect for kids of all ages with good imaginations.
Witches Abroad by Sir Terry Pratchett (review pending) - Of course there has to be a Discworld book on this list! This book pulled me out of my latest slump in grand style. I love Granny Weatherwax, and this book is pretty well focused on her relationships with her fellow witches. Funny, clever, and meatier than appears at first glance. Had some excellent laugh-out-loud moments.

Overall, this was a pretty good year, I have to say. I've tried to trim the above list and there are still eight books on there. So, though my numbers were down, more of what I read was quality, I think.

Just for fun, let's have a look at the TBR to see what I have pending immediately. Of the nine books I reported being on tap last year, I actually managed to read five of them, and one I started but it turned out to be a DNF; this is pretty good, considering that I'll often have plans to read a book next and then find myself glaring at it for sitting there and mocking me for not being in the mood to read it when its turn is up. This year's list for what is coming up soon (followed by their TBR list number):

Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn (938)
Wimbledon Green by Seth (not on list)
A Room With a View by E. M. Forster (767)
The Mummy Case by Elizabeth Peters (918)
At Large and at Small by Anne Fadiman (not on list)
The ABCs of Literacy by Cynthia Dollins (662)
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje (959)
Reaper Man by Sir Terry Pratchett (891)

Thanks to everyone who reads this blog. I enjoy posting, and it helps me to keep reading and keep writing, which I think especially right now helps to keep my brain a little sharper than it would be otherwise. The fact that I have readers is a nice bonus, and those of you who comment are such lovely people! (I'm sure the rest of you are nice, too. You don't need to comment, but I'm glad you read. I'm a champion blog lurker myself.)

I hope you're all enjoying your holidays if you have them, and looking ahead to a fantastic new year filled with good books.

first lines meme 2011

2011-12-21T09:43:00.001-05:00

Wow, I can't believe I'm putting together this post already. But Melanie has already posted hers over at The Indextrious Reader, which makes me realize that yes, there are no more months in 2011... we are rapidly closing in on the end of the year.

And what a year. It's been significantly less reading for me, but I've still managed to post at least one review a month, so that's a good thing. And I've read some brilliant stuff this year. But that will be saved for my yearly "taking stock" post... this is just a fun exercise to have a look at where I was this year, month by month.

January
At one point I described this book to fishy as "Like Monty Python, but less subtle."

February
I like history, and I like libraries.

March
And now back to our regular programming.

April
Hello blog.

May
We went on vacation.

June
Mmm, good book hangover.

July
"How miraculous it is that the brain can go beyond itself, enlarging both its functions and our intellectual capacities in the process."

August
I find this book a little hard to review.

September
Well. So, this is an entry I didn't really expect to write for some time, which will tell you what the past two weeks of my life has been like.

October
This slim little volume is comprised of two stories: "Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy" and "The Bohemian Astrobleme" both of which feature a character named Lady Beatrice.

November
So, I can't say that it was Connie Willis who introduced me to the idea of reading Sayers; that was Nymeth, quite a long time ago.

December
I came across this title first in the Guardian, which was reporting that it had won the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance in 2009.

And that's it! I like this meme because it always gives me a chance to go over my reading year and reflect a little before I try to get detailed for my yearly celebration-of-the-year-past-blogiversary post. Actually, this year it's quite effective; you can see where I was struggling a bit March - August, and then the first entry of September explains quite effectively why. This year definitely feels a little pear-shaped, but as opposed to last year, I think the last four months of blogging have been a little more energized, compared to the way I fizzled out in the last half of last year. I'm certainly reading more, and I also have fishy to bounce ideas and entries off -- it's funny, now that he's reviewing more, I seem to feel I have to up my game a bit.

Head on over to Melanie's blog at The Indextrious Reader to see more first lines!

Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

2011-12-19T09:29:00.000-05:00

Talking About Detective Fiction
by P. D. James
Knopf, 2009
198 pages

When I was growing up, my mother had a shelf full of P.D. James. I used to take the books down and look at them, fascinated by the highly stylized and candy-coloured blood drops on the covers. I particularly liked Shroud for a Nightingale and Cover Her Face, if I recall correctly. Later on I read Cover Her Face, and enjoyed it quite a lot, though I haven't picked up anything else by her since. I can't say why.

But at night now, with smallfry being Very Awake because she prefers sleeping in to going to bed early (she is a child after her parents' own hearts) fishy and I have started reading to each other. And as we're both interested in reading and writing, and both fans of mysteries, P.D. James' Talking About Detective Fiction seemed like a great place to go. fishy had already read it once, but he was doing some thinking about detective stories and wanted to read it again anyways.

Really, one couldn't ask for a better, more well-informed and well-read overview of the genre. James has the additional advantage of a long life lived; for example, she was reading the Golden Age detective novels as they came out, long before she thought to write a mystery of her own. This book isn't what I would call a guide, exactly, though she certainly has recommendations and in-depth discussions about some of the key works and players in detective fiction over the years. It goes approximately chronologically from Wilkie Collins to the Golden Age to modern detective fiction, does a bit of a side-trip through the American hardboiled sub-genre and spends a good chunk of time talking about the four grand ladies of the Golden Age (Sayers, Marsh, Allingham, and Christie), offering personal notes and observations on the genre as well as the observations of other critics and writers, and observations on literature and writing in general.

What makes this book great as opposed to just good and interesting is James' writing. She has a wonderful, distinct style, somewhat chatty but always impeccable, and she also has a very dry sense of humour that sneaks its way into the writing. As we were reading to each other, every once in a while one of us would laugh out loud. It's not always an easy book to read aloud; some of her sentence structures are a little convoluted, such that you'd start reading a sentence and it would turn out to be something completely different and by the end you'd have lost where you were supposed to put the emphasis... but generally the writing is clear and smart. It gives me high hopes for Death Comes to Pemberley, which I am quite looking forward to reading at some point in the future -- my favourite Austen characters couldn't be in better hands.

It doesn't hurt to have one of the grand masters of the genre take you for a bit of a tour of the last hundred and fifty years; P.D. James knows her stuff, has read a lot of books, and is cheerfully opinionated about the topic. As a librarian, I know that mystery is one of the most enduring and popular genres on the shelves, and James gives a pretty good argument as to why this is and should be the case. All in all, I'd recommend this little volume to anyone interested in detective or crime fiction, or anyone interested in literature in general even if you're not (or don't think you are) a fan of detective novels. Particularly recommended for people who work with the reading public and can't figure out why mysteries are so popular; this book will give you a direct line to why.

Fer-de-lance by Rex Stout

2011-12-12T12:53:00.000-05:00

Fer-de-lance

by Rex Stout

Bantam, 2008 (originally published in 1934)

285 pages

This was, like White Rapids, another suggestion from fishy as a book we could both read and then discuss. We've both been enjoying crime fiction, and I've particularly been enjoying classic crime fiction (see: Sayers, Conan Doyle) and so he encouraged me to try this out. Rex Stout was America's answer to the Golden Age Brits, writing a detective novel set on this side of the pond with a unique creature at its heart. It's not quite of the Chandler/Hammett hardboiled persuasion, nor is it cozy like a Christie. It's somewhere in between.

One of Nero Wolfe's contract footmen comes by with a friend of his wife's. Maria's brother Carlos has gone missing, and she's worried something has happened to him, but the police are useless. Before long, it becomes clear that Carlos was a piece in a much bigger, more sinister, and more incredible puzzle. Archie Goodwin, our narrator and Nero Wolfe's right-hand (and both legs) man, sets off to bring the clues and his impressions to Wolfe, and Wolfe exercises his formidable intellect while remaining relatively stationary in his New York brownstone.

This book wasn't what I was expecting, either the plot or the characters. I was thinking it would be something closer to the lines of a cozy, Golden Age British novel, with a detective who does what he does out of joy or out of a sense of what is right. Wolfe, however, is far more mercenary than I ever expected. I'm much more used to the altrusitic detective, who does what he does because he can't let the bad guys win. I was thinking that Wolfe is probably the most self-interested detective I've encountered, but it occurs to me that Holmes is pretty self-interested too, just in different ways. Wolfe does what he does for money (maybe a bit for fun, but mostly for money) and Holmes does what he does because it's a compulsion to solve puzzles. Holmes only takes the interesting cases, and Wolfe, it appears, would only bother taking the cases where there was a chunk of cash in it for him. This, among other things, makes it difficult to like Wolfe, but he certainly is interesting.

Archie, on the other hand, is a little more familiar -- he works for Wolfe out of a passion for the work, I think, and out of a need to do right. He is our narrator, our Watson to Wolfe's Holmes, but he's also more than that. And I was quite enamoured with him. He's a little rough around the edges, and his descriptions and manner of speaking are more in line with something I would expect of Philip Marlowe. But he's got a big, surprisingly gentle heart, and his relationship with Wolfe is fascinating and rocky but with a deep affection at its core, and he's smart -- though, like Watson, his intelligence is deeply overshadowed by Wolfe's genius and he knows it. Also, unlike Watson, Archie isn't afraid to criticize the object of his admiration; far from it. I haven't met a character like Archie Goodwin before, and I really, really liked him.

It's in Archie's characterization, his narration, that Stout's genius comes through. The writing is clever and full of vibrant life and great descriptions (thank you, Rex Stout, for reintroducing the word "corpulent" to my regular lexicon), but the author himself has disappeared; it's all Archie. There is a surfeit of telling here -- we are shown everything, from Wolfe's fascinating eccentricities to Archie's kindness and intelligence. The plot is a rather typical Golden Age-type plot, with a bizarre and incredible murder and melodramatic motive (and unfortunately, racist overtones that might have fit with the target readers at the time but jar with me now), but the narration elevates this book above many of its contemporaries, and it's easy for me to see why Stout's work is still in print.

Due almost entirely to Archie, I could see reading the next in the series, despite the fact that Fer-de-Lance was a little bit out of my usual comfort zones. Unfortunately, fishy has informed me that brilliant writing that I so admired in this first book begins to fade as Stout finds his groove and his audience a few books in, and so perhaps I will avoid reading too much further, to preserve my contentment.

The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama

2011-12-05T20:16:00.000-05:00

The Marriage Bureau for Rich People

by Farahad Zama

Amy Einhorn Books, 2009

293 pages

I came across this title first in the Guardian, which was reporting that it had won the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance in 2009. I like comedy romance. Plus it was set in India, plus it was written by a man. Both are rather unusual characteristics for romance, or at least the romances I usually read, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I am not sure I'd read it again, but I'd recommend it to someone who wanted a light romance that was a little different.

Mr. Ali is a retired gentleman who has decided, because his wife needs him to be doing something other than hanging around the house making her life difficult, to open a marriage bureau. Chapter by chapter we meet the characters who need his help finding a suitable match, as well as his wife, his son, and some of his friends. As he becomes busier, he needs some help around the office, and Mrs. Ali finds him an assistant in the young, talented Aruna. Aruna has her own troubles and own story.

I think the major problem was that, once again thanks to stupid blurbs, I was expecting something that this book simply is not. One of the blurbs on the back of the book suggests that "If Jane Austen had been lucky enough to set foot in modern-day India, she would have written The Marriage Bureau for Rich People." Which... no. Just no. It's an incredibly different piece from anything Austen wrote, different in style, different in feel, different in plot, different in character. It bears almost no resemblance to Austen aside from the fact that there is a romance between two young people and it's complicated by social mores. And maybe the fact that we don't get to the romance until much further along in the book.

My first impression was that The Marriage Bureau for Rich People reads like a book about India written for people who aren't from India, which I suspect is not far off the mark. It can be a little explainy: of customs, of behaviours, of attitudes, of religions, of foods, of daily life in the city of Vizag. Since I'm not from India, nor at all familiar with really any of it except the North-Americanized version of delicious Indian food and a very little bit of surface knowledge about some of the other aspects, I actually quite enjoyed this primer. I just wasn't expecting a primer, so it took me some time to get into it. And sometimes the book was a bit heavy on the telling versus the showing in general, as though the descriptions of Indian life spilled over into the descriptions of character and plot.

There's another comparison on the back of the jacket, this one to Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and this is much more apt. There is an episodic feel to the book: Mr. Ali, our matchmaker, meets prospective clients in each chapter and so we meet them too, and he solves a problem or finds a match or just generally interacts with them. Many of them pop up again later, but some don't. Then, in addition to these little vignettes, there are two overarching plots that get their starts early in the book but don't come to fruition until the end. Well, and one of the plots doesn't really resolve, exactly, though one thinks there might be a resolution on the horizon. I would definitely recommend this book to people who have liked Mma Ramotswe and the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.

Overall, a sweet story with interesting flavours, a pleasant pace, and a satisfying ending. Light but not necessarily fluffy, this is a charming book to while away an afternoon or three for someone looking for a romance that's a little different from the usual fare and not the central aspect of the book, or for those of you who really like descriptions of food, or someone looking for a window into daily life in Visakhapatnam, India.

The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever by Julia Quinn

2011-11-28T08:46:00.000-05:00

The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever

by Julia Quinn

HarperCollins, 2007

237 pages

This light and fluffy Regency Romance is one of Quinn's Bevelstokes series. I read What Happens in London some time ago, and absolutely enjoyed it. I thought The Secret Diaries was good, but not nearly as good as the former. I am realizing this about Quinn's writing: most of the time it's good, sometimes it's stellar, occasionally it's mediocre. I would put this in the good camp, which is always a little disappointing because I know what it could be.

Miss Miranda Cheever is the childhood BFF of Olivia Bevelstoke. Olivia is everything Miranda is not: beautiful, vivacious, and likely to marry very well. However, this doesn't get in the way of their relationship; Olivia relies on Miranda to keep her entertained and down-to-earth, because in addition to being gorgeous, Olivia's quite a bit more intelligent than most people expect. Miranda relies on Olivia for companionship; by extension, Miranda relies on the entire Bevelstoke family, because she is the only child of a very distracted father. She's practically part of the family. Which is why no one is particularly worried about her relationship with Olivia's elder brother Nigel being inappropriate. They're practically siblings, right? Well... not quite...

I really liked Miranda especially. She's got all the hallmarks of a good Quinn heroine; feisty, smart, funny, and pretty but not too pretty. She's also the closest to a modern woman in Regency clothing that I've seen Quinn write, at least in some ways. She's quite a feminist; there's a scene in a men's bookshop that would be funnier if it wasn't so believable. She's also a pragmatic woman, and a realist, with few illusions about the way her life will be. The thought of what will probably happen makes her quite wistful, though. I do like that this is a fell-in-love-as-a-child romance, where Miranda holds a torch for the hero from the moment she meets him, and it actually ends up happily for her. It's a sweet story, and the fantasy of every ten-year-old child who has a crush on someone.

Nigel (or Turner, as he prefers to be called), on the other hand, I found difficult to get a handle on. As did Miranda, so that makes sense. He's mercurial, and in contrast to Miranda's forward-thinking ways, Nigel's probably the most traditional male I've seen from Quinn. It's an interesting contrast, and it does make me examine my love of Regency romances a little. If most men were like Nigel, but more so, I find that ... an unpleasant set of characteristics. Paternalistic, protective, and uncommunicative. Not sexy. Nigel did have some redeeming qualities, mind you -- he is a hero, after all.

Once again, we have our conflict, which I think maybe went on a bit too long (this is why Secret Diaries is not as good as What Happens in London) because it really started to feel manufactured at the end. Then the rather dramatic climax, which... well, actually, was pretty believable as something that might have happened at that point in history, so points for that. It fits a bit better with the story and the time period than some of Quinn's climaxes do, and while dramatic isn't ridiculous.

Overall, a good bit of fun, even though I probably won't feel the need to read this one again. It does, however, make me want to read What Happens in London again. I do believe it's also available for e-lending. Off to the virtual library I go...

White Rapids by Pascal Blanchet

2011-11-21T17:00:00.000-05:00

White Rapids

by Pascal Blanchet (translated by Helge Dascher)

Drawn & Quarterly, 2007

156 pages

This was a somewhat random read for me. fishy has been bringing home various graphic novels from the library, and I knew nothing of this book before it appeared on the bedside table. Apparently, however, Pascal Blanchet is a rather famous graphic novelist in Quebec; this is, I believe, the first of his work to be translated into English. Because fishy and I read it so close together, and are reviewing it at nearly the same time, we're going to respond to the others' review, too -- fishy has his own blog over at Nominally Robotic, if you're curious to see what he thought (beyond what he's said below). We also tried not to contaminate the other's impressions prior to writing our own reviews, though we were only marginally successful. Since we're both home and spending a lot of time and brain energy looking after smallfry, one of the adult, intelligent conversations we tend to have is about whatever we're reading at the time.

I quite liked this book, overall. It's a very quick and easy read, and doesn't have much of a plot, exactly. It is more of a window on the real town of Rapide-Blanc, a town that was built by the Shawinigan Water and Power Company in the 1930s to house the workers needed to run an extremely remote hydroelectric dam, and their families. In the 1970s, when the dam was taken over by the Quebec public hydro utility and the dam automated, the town was shut down and the families forced to leave. White Rapids reflects on the construction of the town, life in it over the fifty years it was in existence, and the end.

What sticks out for me is the atmosphere of the book, and the depiction of the setting. The graphic work is very polished, deliberate, and absolutely gorgeous. It feels perfect for the era it is describing, right down to the faux-wood-panelled endpapers. The colouration is perfect, shades of orange plus white and black. The drawings of the buildings, particularly the dam, are absolutely stunning. I would describe a lot of the architectural drawings as elegant and very evocative. Blanchet is by far at his strongest when drawing the bold, static lines of man-made structures. His work with people is slightly less successful, but I think perhaps that's only because the setting is so very successful.

And unfortunately, I have to mention the font work. Which I hated. Every page has a different font, and I honestly can't imagine why. In some cases, the text is integrated right into the images, and while sometimes that made sense and worked well, at other times it didn't. Some of the fonts were nigh on impossible to read without squinting. I am sure there were reasons for the choice to do the fonts that way, but it was the only thing that really detracted from the enjoyment of the story for me.

White Rapids was charming and interesting, and I love the idea of it -- a peek into a time and place that no longer exists, without being overbearingly melancholy. Plus, I learned about a rather obscure piece of Canadian history, which is always a bonus. Font fiasco aside, this is a book well worth finding.

***

And now... husband-and-wife discussion time! fishy and I had a bit of a conversation via email regarding our reviews (his can be found here):

kiirstin: I like your thought of just having the book be about the views, as opposed to trying to stick in a plot and characters. I think maybe the views could have told the story, although to be fair I'm not sure the views alone would have done it -- the people are necessary to breathe narrative life into the tale. None of those buildings or structures existed in a vaccuum. The town was built to house the workers; you can't really have a book about the town of White Rapids without the workers.

fishy: Well, certainly you can have a book about the buildings of White Rapids, though. They have their own sort of narrative of place and style. The most human point in the whole piece for me was the moment with the empty bedroom which you can tell had been a child's room. It had atmosphere and history and narrative all in a single image.

There is no question if you took out the characters then you wouldn't know much about their lives and histories and personal stories, but... did you get any of that here? If you had just shown views of the hunting lodge and the porches and so on, then I think the reader would have substituted a more interesting reality than his explicit one. To be fair, there were a number of places where his depictions of humans was nice - the cocktail party would have been hard to do any other way, I think. Though there, as most places, the text could have gone.

kiirstin: I did love that image of the empty room; it was, for me, more memorable than pretty much any other image in the book. You're right, it had a perfect quality and told a whole story in just that panel.

The thing about taking the people away is that I'm not sure I would have bought the town as "lived-in" at that point. The empty room would have meant nothing if we didn't have a sense that there were humans behind it, that there had been someone who lived and loved in that room. I'm not sure that the previous scenery work had established enough to sell the sweet melancholy that the image otherwise provided.

The text is a different thing. Font aside, the text itself often didn't add much that couldn't have been done, and done more elegantly, with the images. I do wonder if something was lost in translation.

...

Drawn and Quarterly has published a book called The Native Trees of Canada which is just page after page of lovely painting of a single leaf. So perhaps plot is not necessary.

fishy: I don't think you need to discard the plot along with the humans. Chris Ware has frequently dedicated sections of story to just depicting place over time, or views of place in a narrative way, Seth has combined narration with objects to tell stories, I am sure many others have too. I think it would be hard in non-graphic fiction to tell a story with no human or anthropomorphized characters, but in graphic fiction you can tell fairly complex stories with images that don't contain the human form.

kiirstin: I can buy that, though not for this particular piece. I think that's why it felt imperfect: the place component was beautiful, but lacked (generally, not always) soul, and the people component was not quite up to the challenge of providing that soul.

...

Incidentally and a minor thing: I liked The General. Maybe because it was a cliched trope and I'm nothing if not forgiving of those, but I thought the fish added just the right touch where the human "characters" failed.

fishy: I could definitely enjoy a good story of man's struggle to catch the big one, right from Moby Dick on down. It was the ham-fisted symbolism of the fish that took me out of the story.

kiirstin: All right, I can concede that it was a bit heavy-handed. I still liked him. He probably wasn't necessary, and as you say in some cases may have detracted from the true story, but to me he added the soul that I felt was lacking elsewhere.

...

I wonder if we were trying to infuse this story with a gravitas Blanchet was never going for? I mean, the suspense at the beginning set a tone, but I wonder if the whole thing was meant to be more light-hearted than we took from it. Which may be a failing in the writing, but might also just be us.

fishy: It is possible, he did have a bunch of cartoony moments, right down to a couple of explicit Chuck Jones references. There is something very nice about a light comic romp with a nice sombre moment in the third act, and in some ways this does achieve that.

kiirstin: I think it might have achieved it better without the manufactured suspense at the beginning, but otherwise I think it succeeded in just that sort of lighthearted/bittersweet dichotomy.

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

2011-11-15T14:22:00.000-05:00

Hark! A Vagrant

by Kate Beaton

Drawn & Quarterly, 2011

166 pages

Whee! Kate Beaton! I preordered this when I knew it was coming out, and I loved pretty much every bit of it.

If you're not familiar with cartoonist Kate Beaton, get thee over to her website posthaste and remedy that. Her comics poke fun at literature (both the literature itself and the people who write it), history, and occasionally contemporary things. I can almost always get a laugh out of a Kate Beaton strip. In fact, I think some of her work -- enough of it to note -- is absolutely brilliant. Which is excellent, although it does mean that if she posts a rather mediocre strip it's even more devastating. Generally, the work in the book is the best, although there are one or two middling bits. I wouldn't worry about these, I only sigh because I know she can be so good.

The nice thing about the book, too, is that it compiles related strips in one place. So all of the French Revolution stuff is in one place, and all of the superhero bits, and all of the Teen Detectives bits, and (some of my favourites) the Goreys, where Beaton has taken a whole bunch of book covers drawn by Edward Gorey and then riffed on them -- judging books by their cover, to excellent effect. Often at the beginning of a set, there will be some commentary included, and what makes me happy about this is that it's not exactly that Beaton is explaining her jokes, so much as adding to them -- so what could be unfunny or too much information actually adds to the overall experience. Sometimes the strips are even better having read the commentary. Beaton is one funny lady.

Okay, so not a deep read by any means. But smarter than your average comic strip, and in some cases I even learned things. Those of you who like books, or history, or both, and have a sense of humour about things like the guillotine, should definitely check this collection out.

I leave you with this.

Seriously, go look at the website. Buy her stuff. Buy her book. Please make sure she keeps publishing stuff because a world without Kate Beaton's comics is a sad, sad world.

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

2011-11-08T10:17:00.000-05:00

The Hound of the Baskervilles

by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Penguin Classics, 2001 (originally published in 1902)

240 pages

No one can sate my appetite for mystery quite the way Sherlock Holmes can. As stated before, I love the character despite, or maybe because of, all of his flaws. I like Conan Doyle's writing, the the action and the unsolvable mysteries and the atmosphere of time and place. Actually, I think it sometimes gets lost in the shine of the Great Man, but Conan Doyle was really an excellent writer. He could sketch a character in just a few words (partially with the help of the idiotic pseudoscience of physiognomy; if one takes those tenets as truth in his stories, it's very easy to get a feel for a character just from their physical description), he could establish a mood for a piece very quickly, he could surprise with a very clever solution to a seemingly simple crime. The writing can somehow disappear, even though the narrator is talking directly to the reader. It makes me think I should be reading some of the other things he's written at some point, to see if I'm still as enamoured of his talents when Holmes isn't present.

About this novel itself: I have read this before, but it seemed an appropriate read for this time of year, and is my non-participatory nod to Carl's fantastic R.I.P. Challenge, which I believe finished a over week ago. I chose to read it instead of the short stories simply because of the fact that I happened to be browsing the library's e-shelves, and there The Hound was. I would argue it's Holmes' most famous case, at least somewhat familiar to everyone, even those who haven't read any Holmes and never will. And I, of course, couldn't remember what happened at all, other than that there was some sort of dire curse on the Baskerville family that involved a giant hound. It occurs to me as I write this that I think my family listened to it in the car on a road trip at some point, and perhaps I never read it myself.

For those who aren't familiar with the actual plot: Holmes is engaged by a country doctor named Dr. Mortimer to look into the circumstances surrounding the death of a baronet by the name of Sir Charles Baskerville. Dr. Mortimer was a personal friend of Sir Charles', and after his untimely demise, the last surviving heir to the Baskervilles' vast lands and wealth is coming home to claim his birthright -- and Dr. Mortimer is extremely concerned for his welfare. For the death of Sir Charles' was not at all natural, and the circumstances surrounding it were terribly sinister and perhaps even supernatural. Holmes, of course, scoffs at the idea of the supernatural, but the case is bizarre and unusual and certainly engages his interest; however, embroiled in important cases in London, he sends Dr. Watson to keep an eye on things in his stead.

Thus we end up with a Sherlock Holmes novel in which Sherlock is barely present for much of it. I'd forgotten that, specifically, and I loved spending time with Watson. Those who portray Watson as a bumbling idiot, well-meaning but dense, would do well to spend some time with this novel. Watson is hardly dense. He's a mere human, which would make anyone look somewhat dense next to Holmes. But Watson does some fine detecting in this story on his own, requiring only that Holmes confirm his suspicions.

I love the melodramatic setting, the foreboding, the use of the countryside to prey on the mood and courage of the characters. Everything here is bigger and more sinister, from the original curse, to the moor, to the solution of the mystery. It's ridiculous; I've read that some Holmes scholars view The Hound of the Baskervilles as being ridiculous and overly dramatic, a sign of how bored Conan Doyle was getting with the character that was taking over his writing life -- that the mystery in The Hound is bordering on ludicrous, along with Holmes' actions. I don't think I agree, however -- plenty of the early Holmes stories are as far-fetched as this one. And for me, only "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" can match this one for sinister good times.

Normally I strongly dislike the "supernatural" mystery that is wrapped up and explained away by logic and science, but Holmes (or should I say Conan Doyle?) can do no wrong. If you're a Holmes fan and have somehow managed to avoid this novel thus far, do pick it up. It's fun. If you're not a Holmes fan yet, you could do far worse than pick up this as an entree into the canon.

(Also, don't you love that cover? The cover I had on the e-book was just a giant Penguin, but this is an edition I'd love to have. It's one of the few that don't attempt to portray the hound, which is better left to the imagination; yet it still has a wonderful reference to the contents.)

Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers

2011-11-01T17:15:00.000-04:00

Strong Poison

by Dorothy Sayers

Harper & Row, 1930

252 pages

So, I can't say that it was Connie Willis who introduced me to the idea of reading Sayers; that was Nymeth, quite a long time ago. (She also introduced me to Connie Willis, incidentally, which I suppose means she's doubly responsible for me reading this right now.) For someone who considered herself to be quite up on the mystery genre, I'm ashamed to say I hadn't even heard of Sayers or Lord Peter Wimsey before that. It feels like a rather large omission. But thankfully, Nymeth and Connie Willis conspired to introduce me to another favourite mystery author, and here I am.

Harriet Vane is a young woman accused of murdering her ex-lover by arsenic. It doesn't help that she is a detective novelist, and her latest manuscript describes in detail a murder by arsenic; or that in the course of her research, she purchased it several times using pseudonyms shortly before the young man died. The police and prosecution believe the case is airtight; Lord Peter Wimsey doesn't believe a word of it. Luckily, neither do some on the jury, and Lord Peter has one month to investigate the case and prove Miss Vane's innocence.

I loved Strong Poison. I really, really enjoyed it. I loved the setting, I especially loved the characters, and I thoroughly enjoyed the mystery. The writing is charming and intricate, rife with slight details and hints that are easily dismissed unless one is paying attention. But even better than the mystery? The humour. This book was a good sight funnier than I expected, and not always in obvious ways. Once again, I've discovered an author with a dry, straight-faced delivery that cracks me right up. I wish I could provide you with an example of something that made me laugh out loud, but unfortunately the library only had one copy of Strong Poison, and it's got a steady rotation of holds on it. And no, I didn't have the foresight to write down my favourite parts.

My absolute favourite part? When the Dowager Duchess, Lord Peter's mother, holds forth on censorship. It's a little jab at those who would censor books couched neatly in dinnertime conversation, a remark made by a character who has a tendency to be a little verbose and wandering. It's perfect. It delighted me utterly.

Which brings me to the characters, which I think are this book's strongest point. Lord Peter, of course, is marvellous. He's not a perfect character by any stretch. In fact, Arachne Jericho did a splendid series on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in fiction over on Tor.com, and Lord Peter starred in one of her excellent articles. This particular aspect of his character doesn't make much of a show in Strong Poison, but it's enough to know that it's there. He can also have the appearance of shallowness, and a definite sense of entitlement that I suspect could be slightly irritating if he wasn't so damn charming.

Aside from Lord Peter, the supporting cast is excellent. I think one of the advantages of coming at a series from the middle (something I almost never do, and only did this time because Nymeth did it... lemming I am, yes) is that the long-running secondary characters are established and comfortable in their own skin. At least, if the author is good -- otherwise there is sometimes an assumption that the reader already knows the characters, and so sketches are found in place of true characterization. And Sayers is good. She takes the things she knows about her secondary characters at this stage in the series and uses this knowledge to create full portraits even if we only see the character once.

There was something about Lord Peter's family and the other secondary characters that reminded me strongly of Deanna Raybourn's March family in her Lady Julia Gray mysteries. The debt is of course the other way around, if indeed it is there at all. Suffice to say, I like me a well-fleshed-out, maybe quirky, maybe just distinct cast of secondary characters.

I am absolutely delighted to find a new-to-me mystery author I like so much, and I'm really looking forward to reading the rest of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries. I may go back and read them from the beginning, now that I've had a taste; I'd like to see Lord Peter's character arc through the series. Fans of mystery who have somehow, like me, missed out on Sayers shouldn't hesitate to pick this book up.

The Hotel Under the Sand by Kage Baker

2011-10-25T12:37:00.002-04:00

The Hotel Under the Sand

by Kage Baker

Tachyon Publications, 2009

117 pages

It was actually kind of accidental that I read this so soon after reading my first Kage Baker story ever. I saw this before Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy arrived at my house, and placed a hold on it simply because the summary was so compelling to me. And then it came up just after I finished Scarlet Spy.

This, unlike the previous story, is a children's book. And it is a wonderful, wonderful children's book. I am already planning to read it with my parent-child book club when I go back to work, and even more ridiculously I am planning to read it to smallfry when she is old enough to comprehend it. (Perhaps six? seven? years from now.)

The story begins with Emma, blown to the Dunes by a storm. And this is as much as we find out about Emma's past; we know that she has lost everything, though what "everything" is remains unspoken. I think this is a good choice, because unspoken the loss is more terrible, at least given the amount of space Baker had for creating a backstory for Emma. Despite her disaster, Emma is brave, resourceful, and not about to be beaten or cowed, not even when, upon her first night at the Dunes, she encounters a ghost.

This story is an exercise in simplicity that isn't the least bit simplistic. It has a straightforward plot and straightforward characters, without a lot of flowery embellishment; there is not a single unnecessary word in this story, I don't think. This style was evident in Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy, too, and it works wonderfully well for a children's story. But despite the simplicity of the writing and the plot, there are deep themes here: loss, loyalty, time, friendship, and family among them.

Emma is working through a terrible loss, and while it's not mentioned often it squats just off-stage to rear its head every once in a while. Each of the other characters, as they are introduced, have lost as well, some more than others. There is an interesting pragmatism about loss in this book, too; there is not a lot of dwelling on anguish or loneliness, but an acceptance of the pain for what it is. This means that though the mood of the story could have been melancholic or nostalgic, it is instead hopeful and forward-looking.

There's enough mystery and excitement to keep most readers riveted, I should think, and conflict as well as triumph for the characters. Not to mention that those with active imaginations are going to absolutely adore the idea of an entire hotel, an entire world almost, buried under a sand dune just waiting for the right person to come along to discover it. A thoroughly enchanting story and I'm so glad it caught my attention. Recommended for all ages, and this book has cemented Baker in my pantheon of authors I will be happy to read whenever the opportunity presents itself.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

2011-10-18T10:09:00.004-04:00

To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How we found the bishop's bird stump at last

by Connie Willis

Random House, 1998

448 pages

There's a lot I want to say about this book, but unfortunately the exhaustion of the past couple months is beginning to take a toll. I suspect reviews from now on may be a little [more] rambling, and I'm likely to forget important points, or harp on unimportant ones. This will clear up at some indeterminate point in the future.

It also doesn't help the rambling that I adored this book, and find it hard to be at all objective. One of my favourite reads of the year, certainly, and possibly ever. I would like to have this book's kittens. This sort of thing often leads to a rather poor review from me at the best of times, as I try to rein in my "aaljkbkjabhlksdfa LOOOOOVE BOOK" incoherent gabbling and try to elucidate what actually made me enjoy the book that much.

I have wanted to read it for a long time, and it's always such a pleasant feeling to realize that a book one has anticipated for literally years actually lives up to its reputation. This is a clever, sweet, intelligent, funny, vivid romp through the idea of time travel, the meaning of history, the love of literature, and Victorian high society.

Plus, cats. And dogs. And physics.

It [the cat] had been put into a box in Shrödinger's thought experiment, along with a doomsday device: a bottle of cyanide gas, a hammer hooked to a Geiger counter, and a chunk of uranium. If the uranium emitted an electron, it would trigger the hammer which would break the bottle. That would release the gas that would kill the cat that lived in the box that Schrödinger built.

Actually, this was one thing, perhaps minor but indicative of the quality and care taken in the details and characters of the story, not to mention the overall writing: there are animal characters, who do not speak, who are given fair treatment in the story. They don't get lost; Willis doesn't introduce them as a gimmick and then get tired of them (see, for example, Hedwig).

This could be partially because Ned Henry, our first-person narrator and protagonist, loves animals. It is an excellent case of showing and not telling, frankly: Ned never comes out and says "I happen to really like dogs." One just picked that up pretty quickly from the way Ned treats and enjoys Cyril, our canine companion.

So, before I go too much further: Ned Henry is an historian. Historians, in Willis' near future, are not dusty (or even animated) academics; they're time travellers, sent via "the net" back in time to observe history first-hand. However, the fact-finding, observational aspects of the historians of Oxford's jobs have been tossed by the wayside in favour of an all-consuming rebuild of Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in the Blitz in the 1940s. A certain Lady Schrapnell has commissioned the entirety the time travel department to ensure that every single detail of the reconstruction is exactly as it was the hour of the bombing; if the historians help her out, she will donate a considerable sum to the university, which will allow them to continue and expand their research. Ned's duty in this is to find out if the bishop's bird stump was in the cathedral during the bombing, and track it down in the present day. Easier said than done, as the bird stump appears to have disappeared improbably at some point during the bombing.

So... this is how the book starts out. This isn't really what the book is about, although it is certainly about the search for the bishop's bird stump. The truth is, what the book is about, and what happens, is far too complex to summarize in a review like this. So, I'm not going to try further; you'll just have to read the book yourself.

I had, for fun and because I knew I was going to read this book eventually, read Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat; I think it added to the experience of reading this one, but certainly wasn't necessary. Ned's excitement at being in the era when that book was written is infectious and instantly recognizeable to anyone who loves a particular book. There is something wonderful about exploring a place where a favourite book is set. Ned just happens to get to both the place and the time. Other literary references, particularly to classic mystery novels, are peppered throughout the book; Dorothy Sayers in particular gets plenty of time. This was the last straw for me -- I've now finally read Sayers too, thanks to To Say Nothing of the Dog reminding me that I really have wanted to for a while. The way the literature plays in to the plot is along the same lines as the animals above; it's not mentioned and then dropped, but has weight throughout.

Willis' writing is sharp, funny, and artful without being self-conscious or twee. One gets the impression that she really quite enjoyed writing this book, that she had fun with the ideas and characters and the tangled threads she created. It makes for an effortless, entertaining read that still has heft, which is a rare and precious thing.

Highly recommended, in case that wasn't obvious already.

Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy by Kage Baker

2011-10-07T10:49:00.001-04:00

Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy

by Kage Baker

Subterranean Press, 2011

168 pages

This slim little volume is comprised of two stories: "Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy" and "The Bohemian Astrobleme" both of which feature a character named Lady Beatrice. I got it for the first tale, which I had originally heard of as The Women of Nell Gwynne's, a novella that won a Hugo in 2010. Frankly, I think the original title is more fetching; luckily, my most excellent local indie bookstore was able to track down this volume, as the original novella was out of print. Very pleased, because I'd desperately wanted to read this story since I'd first heard about it.

I think it was worth the wait; it was certainly diverting and well-written. It was a little more grim than I expected, but also funnier than I expected. Baker doesn't pull her punches, and though there's not a lot of graphic gore, there's a darkness to these stories that upon reflection makes a lot of sense -- the first story is an astute, if sideways, glimpse at a Victorian woman's life options. It's not a pretty picture. The second story is somewhat lighter, but the darkness blows in full force at the end. The humour is dark, too, in both of them, although it's also quite charming and often very dry in the way I particularly like. And both stories are exceedingly well-constructed.

"Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy" (aka "The Women of Nell Gwynne's") is almost a simple character study; at least, it starts out that way. Lady Beatrice -- not a lady, nor a Beatrice, but we never find out what name she used to go by -- was a soldier's daughter. After a pretty horrific, harrowing experience abroad, she ends up on the streets. She is brave, shrewd, and highly intelligent, though, and this gets her noticed by Mrs. Corvey, the proprietress of Nell Gwynne's, an exclusive brothel that serves customers by invitation only. It also happens to be connected to the Gentlemen's Speculative Society, a very secret group of highly intelligent men who are far, far ahead of their time. The women of Nell Gwynne's serve to gather secrets and occasionally blackmail the powerful into doing exactly what the Society wants them to do. In return, they have a relative measure of freedom, the opportunity to use their ample brains, and have use of some of the Society's fantastic inventions, not to mention a very comfortable living and an easy, early retirement.

"The Bohemian Astrobleme" is a story about what happens when the Society wants something. Lady Beatrice is involved, as is Ludbridge, a character we meet in the first story. It's an entertaining little piece, interesting and somewhat chilling, too. Because we like both Lady Beatrice and Ludbridge, and in this story they are pretty ruthless. There's a very good reason that this story was second in the pairing; characterization is very thin (it can be, because it is second) but the reader is left feeling a little alarmed by how easily we were charmed by both Lady Beatrice and Ludbridge, and how we still like and admire them.

There are a couple things that I liked about the first story especially: a) life as a Victorian woman isn't glamourized, nor is prostitution, which can be a trap historical fiction and fantasy of a certain kind falls into; and b) though there are steampunk elements, it also avoids the above glamour trap, which steampunk can certainly fall into. I felt like these stories both treated their time period respectfully -- affectionately, perhaps, and we weren't delving deeply into issues, but with a clear head.

Overall recommended, if you can get your hands on these stories. Definitely not for children or the prudish. I keep thinking of dark chocolate as a metaphor -- delicious, a little exotic, and slightly bitter in a way that makes the whole experience that much better. The writing is quietly excellent, and the story is original and diverting. I'll be reading more by Baker in the future.

Across the Great Barrier by Patricia C. Wrede

2011-09-30T14:36:00.001-04:00

Across the Great Barrier

by Patricia C. Wrede

Scholastic, 2011

352 pages

I have to report that I did re-read Thirteenth Child in preparation for this one. I don't think I would have had to; there was recap enough to make it fine to read Across the Great Barrier without reading Thirteenth Child first, but it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of days. And I think Across the Great Barrier is a much better book for having known Eff, Lan, Wash, and some of the other characters ahead of time. I'm not sure that Across the Great Barrier is as good as Thirteenth Child, either, although I am wondering why I think that. I think it does feel slightly less focused in its plot, though that's not necessarily a terrible thing, just different. It may also be that Thirteenth introduces such a novel new world, a world I was so enchanted with and excited to discover, that it has a slight shine over its sequel. The absolute strength of these two books is the world, particularly both the systems of magic and the natural history.

In this installment of Eff's story, she is trying very hard to find her place in the world. She knows what she doesn't want to do: go out East for more schooling, like her brother Lan. But she doesn't quite know what to do with herself beyond that. Frankly, I think most people who have been 18 and faced with Big Life Choices (that one feels, at the time, are going to either make or break the rest of one's life) can understand Eff's frustration and discontent -- there are options, she just doesn't want any of them, but she recognizes she has to make a choice at some point and soon. However -- an option does present itself that gets her excited, and that is to assist the new natural sciences professor at the college with a survey of the plants and animals in the dangerous lands west of the Great Barrier. While on the survey, Eff, Wash and Professor Torgeson (another excellent, strong, interesting female character from Wrede) discover many things, some unique, some tied in to the grubs that created the crisis in Thirteenth Child, and some more sinister that point to trouble ahead in what I hope will be a third book in this series.

Eff remains an excellent character, an honest mix of competence and anxiety, still working through some of the pain and nervousness associated with being a thirteenth child while recognizing logically that it doesn't matter. She still has a deep and important relationship with her twin Lan, and a warm and loving relationship, though complex, with the rest of her family too. We see much less of their friend William in this book, which I understand but feel is a lack -- he was one of my favourite characters from the last book, and I think there are some avenues to be investigated there, including his very rocky relationship with his father.

That said, I've never expected deep, serious, cathartic investigation of Emotional Issues from Wrede; not that she glosses over things, but they're not the focus of her tales, so much as the world and the plot. She writes a good character, but they're not terribly introspective. I think Eff might actually be the most introspective Wrede character I've ever encountered.

A worthy followup to Thirteenth Child, with more fantastic world-building and characters I enjoy spending time with. I would recommend reading the other first, as I think this book builds on that one. This series is fun and interesting, and though I did buy an electronic copy I'll be buying the paperback when it comes out -- just for a little more permanence.

The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood

2011-09-23T13:44:00.002-04:00

The Mysterious Howling (The Incorrigibles of Ashton Place 1)

by Maryrose Wood

Harper Collins, 2010

162 pages

How much fun was this book? A lot. A lot of fun, which was exactly what I wanted right now. It is light, short, and cute. And as advertised, the plot is sufficiently mysterious to keep one hooked (very important currently; for reasons one might expect, my focus is rather shot, and I am grateful for the distraction when I can find something that holds my attention).

Penelope Lumley is a recent graduate of the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, sent off on her own to Ashton Place to respond to the advertisement for a governess. Upon getting there, she finds the inhabitants peculiarily reluctant to discuss the three children she is to be in charge of, and things just get stranger from there. Luckily, Penelope has the gumption, cool head, and keen intelligence of a Swanburne girl, as well as the requisite love of animals and small children, and is not fazed by much. When she finally meets her charges, things are not at all what she expected, but she takes on the challenge -- a challenge that will include teaching three children how to appreciate fine literature, how to do math, and how to control themselves when a squirrel-chasing opportunity presents itself.

One will need to suspend disbelief pretty handily, but the story is so charming and fun and well-written that the suspension is not a challenge except in certain places where one thinks, Really? I just... really? Very occasionally -- especially towards the end -- I ran up against something or other that stretched even the very generous leash I'd given the internal logic of the book. I think my main problem with the one scene I couldn't get behind, no matter how I tried (and I tried; I liked the book enough to work at maintaining credulity) was that the villain(s) up to that point hadn't really presented themselves as being as villainous as their actions appeared. That's as specific as I can get without major spoilers.

The writing, especially, is what charmed me. Penelope is a great character, but the way the book is written, in a very cheerful, firmly tongue-in-cheek, and faintly sensational/melodramatic manner, is pitch-perfect. The narrator occasionally breaks the fourth wall with a clear understanding that kids reading the book nowadays are living in a very different historical moment. It allows for foreshadowing that is strong without seeming heavy-handed. The humour is dry and straight-faced, and I loved it to the point of gleeful out-loud giggles. This, along with the mystery (of which we are really just starting to get hints) kept me thoroughly entertained. Also, the multitude of references to classic literature? Probably over the target audience's head, but may inspire middle-graders to look up Longfellow and Shakespeare. (It may inspire me, too.)

Overall, a rather original idea, well-executed. Recommended for kids and adults who want something a little light and silly, but who are happy to get invested in a character or two -- however, very literal-minded children may not enjoy so much, because there are definite suspensions of disbelief that have to be maintained to make the book enjoyable. I'd recommend especially to those who have enjoyed A Series of Unfortunate Events, for example; I actually quite prefer this book to those, but there are parallels to be drawn. This is clearly the first in a series; as above, the reader only realizes at the end that there's a much deeper, more sinister game afoot than either the reader or Penelope has realized. The second book is The Hidden Gallery, which takes Penelope and the Incorrigibles to London.

The Bards of Bone Plain by Patricia McKillip

2011-09-16T11:16:00.001-04:00

The Bards of Bone Plain

by Patricia A. McKillip

Ace, 2010

329 pages

So, here is the review of the book I read in its entirety on bedrest. I have owned this book since it came out last year, McKillip being one of two authors on my autobuy list. Ondaatje is the other; I suspect it will take me as long to get to The Cat's Table, though it's sitting here beside me right now. As with all authors I love, I often resist reading the newest thing. It's an odd psychological block. What if it's not as good as the other stuff she's written? What if she doesn't publish anything ever again and this is the last new McKillip I will ever get to read? (Ignore the fact that there's still some McKillip backlist I have yet to get to.) Generally neither of these are particularly good reasons for not reading a book. It should go without saying that this review is unlikely to be particularly objective...

I'm happy to report that this was an excellent choice for reading, and it was also excellent good fortune that I had it in my purse when I was whisked off to the hospital, otherwise I would have been bored to tears before fishy was able to come home and pick reading material up for me (which, to his credit, he did; the latest Garden Making magazine, another gardening magazine, the Kobo and Wilkie Collins all came along after I was safely ensconced in bed).

It was also exactly what I have come to expect from McKillip: a gentle, beautiful story of wild, unpredictable and beautiful magic, and the people that magic touches, tinged with a sweet melancholy. I think, overall, this is a better book than The Bell at Sealey Head, her last release, which I quite enjoyed but seemed a little... forgettable? Good excuse to read it again, I guess. But The Bards of Bone Plain is a solid story, interestingly and carefully told.

The plot is twofold: the first plot involves three characters revolving around each other. Zoe and Phelan are senior students at the bardic school; Beatrice is the youngest daughter of the king, and an aspiring archaeologist working with Phelan's mercurial father Jonah. There isn't a lot more to this plot than watching Phelan unravel the mystery of his father, really, and the answer comes to us much faster than it comes to Phelan; if there is a flaw with this book that I can point to easily, it would be that. I knew what Phelan didn't in the first few chapters, and I'm not sure whether or not it took away an element of ... curiosity, maybe, that might have made for more engaged reading. That said, as with my favourite McKillips, it's not the end itself that makes this story worth reading; it's the journey.

The second plot revolves around another bard, the legendary (in Phelan's day) Nairn. We see his story through snippets of historical documents, ballads and poems, and then we read the true story, what really happened, in chapters that alternate with the first plot's chapters. It's an interesting, if not original, exercise in recognizing that real human beings lie behind legends. And then, of course, the two plots cross in a surprisingly tense confrontation at the end -- surprisingly, I think, because there's not really a true villain, and the stakes are only really high for a few of the characters, not for the fate of many or the world. And yet I was invested in what happened.

What can I say? I loved this book in the same way I've loved everything else I've read by McKillip over the years (Forgotten Beasts of Eld and Song for the Basilisk notwithstanding; I liked them both well enough, but didn't get sucked into their world in the same way. I'll be trying Song again, though, because I think that was more a mood thing than a book thing.) It had some familiar elements; I hesitate to say it, because the characters were interesting as individuals, but some of them might be viewed as extremely similar other characters she's written... but I like that in her work, for some reason, where it might really irritate me in another author's. And the world was a new one for her: elements of historical medieval-type fantasy, with elements of technology slipped in. The princess drives a car, a relatively new technology to her world, and there are steam-powered trams, and gaslights. This book is also about change, and history, and the progression of society over years. It's a little light on the examination of that, but it's a theme slipped in nonetheless.

And the writing. The writing, of course, is the key to my love of McKillips' work. It is beautiful, lyrical, leaving enough unexplained to give the whole story a hint of mystery and wonder, but detailed enough to paint the whole scene vividly in my mind. As a slight aside, I should mention that I think the marriage of McKillip's novels with Kinuko Craft's cover images is sheer brilliance; they compliment each other perfectly, and both the writing and the cover images give me the same gleeful, floaty, fairy-tale feeling.

I of course recommend this book to fans of McKillip; I'm not sure it's the best place to start with her writing if you haven't read anything by her before (I'd suggest Riddle-Master or The Changeling Sea for that) but it's a lovely gentle fantasy tale about a father and a son, and magic and the past, worth reading and worth reading again.

The Native Star by M. K. Hobson, and a new addition

2011-09-10T08:16:00.000-04:00

**I started this review the day I went into hospital with smallfry complications, but before there was any inkling of what was about to happen. Kobo couldn't have come at a better time. I have since grown extremely attached to it, as it functions as two books in one: one that I am reading, and one that fishy is reading. We can switch off -- one interacts with smallfry, the other reads.**

So, yes. I have crossed the line: I now own an e-reader. It was a birthday present from fishy, and a perfect one; I have been curious and attracted for a while now, perhaps not enough to buy one myself but more than enough to make it an excellent gift. It is a Kobo Touch, black and smooth and not at all shiny. It makes me feel like Jean-Luc Picard, sitting at my desk, drinking my tea, and reading documents on a little black pad.

Of course, upon receiving it, the first thing I had to do (after setting it up) was see if it really is as easy as I keep telling patrons it is to download library books. I am happy to report that with a minimal amount of effort and know-how, it is. Now, I realize my definition of "minimal" and the actual experience of "minimal" for many of our patrons may be worlds apart. However, it was so simple to do that walking people through it on the phone, as I have been doing, is not the challenging proposition it might have been. (For the record: iPads are easiest to help people setup for library e-book capacity, and thus far Sony Reader takes the cake for being the more challenging of the popular brands, if we discount Kindle which is impossible. Kobo is somewhere in the middle -- pretty easy, but not without its small, usually fixable quirks and problems.)

So what did I download? Here is the challenge: I have three books on hold now, three things I have wanted to read -- but a lot (read: the vast, vast majority) of the stuff I'm interested in and most of the stuff I'm not interested in was already checked out. I think our download system may be a victim of its own popularity. So I kept browsing until I saw something that tweaked a memory... The Native Star was nominated for a Nebula some time ago, I believe, and something lead me to believe it was an alternate history fantasy with a strong romance component. Just the sort of thing I might quite enjoy as an e-read.

The experience of reading on the e-reader itself is going to take some getting used to; I still have the same problems I mentioned before, though certainly not as pronounced and very easy to overcome on a dedicated e-reader versus my laptop. I miss the ability to flip back and forth through the book quickly and easily, is the big thing, and the dimensionality of a paper book. And the attractiveness of it. Kobo has its own kind of attraction, but it is not the same sort of attraction that a beautiful hardcover or trade paperback might have. Overall, though, so far I am growing rapidly quite fond of the thing; I may even resort to giving it a name. The idea of having multiple books at my fingertips for travelling and sitting in waiting rooms (a favourite occupation lately) without giving myself back problems from carrying the weight is really extremely attractive.

Technology aside, let us move on to the meat of the thing.

The Native Star
by M. K. Hobson
Dial, 2010
326 pages

I'd blame the fact that I was up too late reading this, couldn't sleep after stopping for the night for thinking about it, and woke up at an ungodly hour to finish the damn thing on the fact that I was reading it on my new toy, but... I think anyone who knows my reading habits would sniff out the lie immediately. It has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with my own inability to let an exciting plot be.

And this is a very exciting plot. It's a travel story, an adventure story, a quest really: Emily Edwards, small-town frontier witch in California, comes into possession of a strange magical stone after a series of questionable choices. Very shortly she becomes the target of some of the most powerful men in magic, all of whom want the stone for their own aims and don't seem to care to much about what happens to Emily in the process. One disgraced warlock, the improbably-named Dreadnought Stanton, makes it his mission to get Emily to New York to the one person who may be able to help her. But the journey is perilous -- pursued by government agents, bounty hunters, and mysterious factions that Emily has never heard of, Emily and Dreadnought are in for a very dangerous, very challenging cross-country trip.

One of the things that stood out for me from the beginning was how strangely unlikeable I found some of the characters, even the protagonists. Both Emily and Dreadnought (okay, that's it, I'm calling him Stanton from now on -- you will be glad to know that his name doesn't go without comment in the book, either) are prickly, unpleasant, and mulish to begin with; Stanton is insufferable, and Emily makes some really questionable decisions straight off the bat, and then continues to be stubborn and off-putting for chapters after. This is a brave choice, to have your protagonists be difficult right at the beginning of the book. But it works here, because gradually I found myself coming to enjoy and then really like both of them. Other characters have their own quirks; while many of them only show up briefly, they are all well-described. The villain, mind you, is thoroughly despicable and irredeemable, possibly to the extreme; I found nothing to recommend him, and he was a bit of a mouthpiece for a point Hobson wanted to make. I often like my villains with a bit of ambiguity, but it didn't take away from the story here -- the complexity of the other characters made up for it.

I didn't find the writing to be spectacular; the phrase "workmanlike" occurs to me. It's not inspired, but it's also not boring or lacklustre. It's just there, and it serves its masters Plot and Character well enough. The only thing that occasionally bothered me was that Hobson can be a little unsubtle in her Messages. You know, the ones where we're looking at "racism is bad" or "rabid patriotism is bad" or "greed is bad" -- that sort of thing. There are parallels drawn with oil, natural gas, and other non-renewable resources that are pretty blatant. It got a little heavy-handed at times, but again, frankly, the plotting can carry it; or at least it can for me, because I generally agree with Hobson's views on these issues.

The world-building, on the other hand, is excellent, and worthy of notice. I would love to find more alternate history fantasy set in the Wild West if it's done as well as Hobson has done here (Patricia C. Wrede's Thirteenth Child comes to mind, though they're completely different worlds; I have enjoyed the setting of both.) There are vague steampunky elements, but they're not terribly prevalent; really, I can only point to one section with a flying machine that I would think of as straight steampunk at all. The system of magic is interesting, if slightly predictable (can anyone recommend a good fantasy where blood magic is not automatically evil? I've seen a few where necromancy gets a fair shake, but nothing with blood) and well-integrated into society as a whole. There are even anti-magic factions, a religion that struck me as particularly recognizeable and realistic. These little details were nice touches as well as plot drivers.

Overall, I think Hobson's attention to detail is what makes the book as good as it is, giving it a ring of gritty veracity. Her realistic characters and settings mean it's a much simpler task for the reader to suspend disbelief and enter the book wholesale. I would recommend this to fans of fantasy and alternate histories; I would also recommend to fans of romance, though be aware that the romance isn't a central point of the story, more of a pleasing sidenote, despite the book jacket copy. It would be a good jumping-off place for fans of paranormal romance to slide into an adventure-based fantasy, for example. There will be a sequel, I believe it's possibly already published, but the book stands on its own -- it's just the epilogue that sets up the next tale.

unexpected August arrival

2011-09-03T13:26:00.001-04:00

Well. So, this is an entry I didn't really expect to write for some time, which will tell you what the past two weeks of my life has been like. You may have noticed that my productivity on this blog has dropped somewhat in the past year. Apparently pregnancy will do this to one, particularly a pregnancy as odd in some ways as mine has been; the first trimester was weird, the second trimester was great, and the third trimester started off perfectly fine and went rapidly wonky.

The productivity around here has dropped to zero in the past three weeks; something about having a baby multiple weeks earlier than one expects to have a baby will make reading anything more than a heart rate monitor really, really challenging. Luckily (for a whole suite of reasons) I had five days of bedrest before said baby made her appearance, which meant I finished two books and started a third and fourth. I even have most of a review typed up for the first of the two. We'll see if I ever get to the second review, or the rest of the third or fourth book. Right now I don't think I have the follow-through required for Wilkie Collins. So expect a review or two on the way, but until I have my brain on straight again there might be more silence from this corner. With reviews of awesome board books to follow. Blogging is a normal, adult-focused activity for me, and I could use some normality right now.

I think, for blog purposes, I will call her smallfry, with her father being fishy. She is indeed tremendously small, though growing more every day. And despite everything, she is feisty, active, and charming; she has outstripped expectations as far as growth and health. Doctors and nurses tell us how cute she is, and how impressive, both of which are very nice to hear. We can see for ourselves how well she is doing; she is growing, and she is perfect. Perhaps I am a bit biased, though.

The whole experience, aside from being hella stressful, has been surreal and full of wonderful and terrifying moments. The C-section was a surreal one, with my mind-shatteringly amazing husband giving me topics and me attempting to rhyme off which Dewey Decimal Number the topic might fit in to (I could remember that Sailing was under Sports, but I couldn't remember what number Sports might be, for some reason...) and the moment afterwards when I got to see my tiny baby for the first time (she looked like a miniature Walter Matthau.) I suspect surreality and wonder and terror are what are in store for us over the next months too, and probably beyond.

Alas, I am afraid she will have to remain cute in your imaginations, dear readers; I am going to continue with my policy of not posting photos of recognizeable faces online. But in the traditions of this blog, a photo of her feet seems appropriate.

The Bafut Beagles by Gerald Durrell

2011-08-02T09:06:00.000-04:00

The Bafut Beagles
by Gerald Durrell
Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954
232 pages

I find this book a little hard to review. It is third in my quest to read all of Gerald Durrell's autobiographical animal stories, and I am glad I read it; it had moments in it I would have been sorry to miss. The man writes beautifully. He has a great turn of phrase, a beautiful knack for description, and a dry, self-skewering sense of humour. These early books of his, at least, are a rich tapestry of love of place, love of animals, and deep curiousity about the world around him.

The Bafut Beagles, though, is a product of its historical moment; published in the early 1950s, the edition I have from the library is a first printing. He spends a lot more time here documenting the people around him than in the previous two, and not always to his credit in a contemporary light. As stated before, I do think that Durrell was likely extremely progressive given his station (a well-enough-off white British male) and I do think he had a healthy dose of respect and affection for the people he met and worked with in the British Cameroons; one realizes this as one reads, and it is quite clear. One also gets vaguely uncomfortable as one identifies a very faint paternalistic colonialism and a definite streak of sexism that rears its head every once in a while. I found it particularly jarring in The Bafut Beagles, thanks largely, I think, to one rather ugly incident that Durrell relates and plays a bit for laughs (though he is laughing at himself, mostly, and his own romantic colonialism, I think). I think also it's because he did spend less time talking about the animals, which is what I read for anyways. That said, as before, I was reading it knowing that it is a snapshot of a fascinating profession in a particular time, and so I was able to enjoy the best parts of the book, and move past the parts that occasionally made me cringe.

It does make me wonder if, when I was reading some of these books for the first time (this was not one of them; of the three I've read so far, only Three Singles to Adventure was a reread) some of the historical tenor of them was present but I missed it, or whether it was removed for political correctness in later editions (I am not sure how I feel about this), or whether his underlying, and (I suspect strongly) unconscious, attitudes changed as the times did -- most of the others of his that I've read were from the late 60s and 70s.

Anyway! As always, my favourite parts of this book were to do with the animals, and particularly the parts in which he is describing a behaviour or a proclivity that a particular animal has, rather than a capture. The simple pen-and-ink illustrations that accompany the text are actually quite helpful in showing the physical characteristics of the animals Durrell describes. He is clearly fascinated -- enamoured, really -- by animals in all of their forms, from the tiniest insects to the largest predators, and it shows. I think part of the reason I didn't like this book quite as well as the first two is that there was less of the animals than there had been previously. He is at his strongest, writing-wise, when he is talking about them, too.

I won't recommend this book, even in Durrell's canon, but I'm not sad to have read it, if that makes any sense. I think it could have been skipped comfortably and I wouldn't have missed too terribly much. It's an interesting read both for the intended subject matter and as an historical exercise, but reader beware, that's all. Aside from my squirming, politically correct caveats, I just don't think it's as strong a book as the previous two in the chronology.

The next book in the chronology is The New Noah, a book I can find very little about. I'm not even sure if I can find it, period, but I'll do what I can and I'm interested to see where -- and when -- Durrell takes me this time.

Other Durrell books reviewed here so far:
1. The Overloaded Ark
2. Three Singles to Adventure

Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf

2011-07-22T12:06:00.001-04:00

Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
by Maryanne Wolf
Harper Perennial, 2007
306 pages

How miraculous it is that the brain can go beyond itself, enlarging both its functions and our intellectual capacities in the process.

I confess: I am intellectually lazy. I like things easy-to-understand, gentle on my mind. A little, tiny bit of work is fun, but generally I want spoon-feeding. I don't say this as a mark of pride, and I know I have a tendency to laugh it off -- "oh, it's just one of those things about me, you know? I'm lazy." But frankly, it's something, when I do stare it in the face, that I regret -- not a source of embarrassment, but a source of wistfulness. One of the reasons I think this blog is good for me is because it forces me to think sometimes. And when I do think deeply, I enjoy it. Thinking deeply, critically, analytically about things is what I miss so much about being in school. The wider world does not call on me to think the way school does; it doesn't (necessarily) prevent it, but it rarely encourages incisive thinking from me. So one has rather fallen out of practice.

As with this book. Reading the first section was a combination of small problems for me: I am out of practice with reading more challenging things, and I think that perhaps the first section of Proust and the Squid is a bit drier than some of the rest of the book. It's hard to say exactly how much of each was a problem, but I had to work hard to read the first bit, and to understand it. I am fairly sure that I didn't understand pieces of it, and will likely go back and try again.

Do not take this as a criticism of the book. This is an excellent book. It's challenging not just in its subject, but also to its reader. It does not force the reader to become a deep thinker, but it invites it. The second section is a fascinating dissection of the individual process of learning to read, one that I think I will find quite handy in my work, and the third section is a comparison of the unusual differences between a "regular" reading brain and the brain of dyslexics, as well as some more recent research and a little bit of speculation (Wolf is eminently qualified to speculate) on what exactly dyslexia is. Hint: we don't quite know, but we do know that it's not exactly the same in every individual. Also, we know it definitively exists, and there is evidence directly in the structure of the brain, despite the fact that some people will insist on telling you it's one of those things that the medical/educational establishment has made up.

Another thing I enjoyed about this book is how playful Wolf can be. Her section headings in Chapter 5 amused me, and often referred back to things that I'd read in earlier chapters or sections. She picks very apt quotes and even recites, in its entirety, a rather amusing poem on the quirks of English language spellings. While I did find the first section -- with its discussion of the history of writing, reading, and the neurological changes that happened to allow the above innovations, somewhat tedious -- dry, and I think in many cases simply beyond me, there were parts of it that were extremely interesting. With more practice, I might be able to understand more of it. Moving into the second section, in which Wolf discusses the development of the reading brain in individual children, felt like a relief and one wonders if it was a bit of a relief to Wolf as well.

She uses examples exceedingly well to illustrate her points, which otherwise might be challenging to grasp; one of my favourites is from page 123:

Vocabulary contributes to the ease and speed of decoding. Here's an experiment to illustrate the same principle for adults. Try to read the following terms aloud: "periventricular nodular heterotopia"; "pedagogy"; "fiduciary"; "micron spectroscopy." How fast you read each of these words depends not only on your "decoding" ability but also on your background knowledge.

What a simple, yet effective way to demonstrate the point she is trying to make to adults, who have (as we are reading this book) long since learned to read and read well, and forgotten the challenges we might have had as beginning readers.

This blog entry is going to be rather long, so in case you want the short version and not the version in which I attempt to enshrine in memory particular aspects or facts: this book is about how reading, and in particular about how the changes reading has made in the human brain, have allowed us to become what we are today. It is about how the biological processes in the reading brain have allowed the intellectual leaps we were able to make as individuals and as a species. Wolf is curious, engaging, and in awe of the incredible plasticity and adaptability of the human brain, and she is in love with writing and reading. This makes for a fascinating, involved, and ultimately inspiring read, and I'd recommend this book to anyone with an interest in neuroscience, literacy, how reading develops in children, and how reading has come about and changed our societies. Work your way through the dry parts because the payoff is absolutely there.

***

One of the things that strikes me about this book is how both ambivalent and curious Wolf seems to be about the changes that are happening in the way we receive information, and particularly in the way the brain works as we navigate an increasingly visual medium, the internet, to glean information. One can hear her concern clearly, that we are losing integral neural connections in the brain, losing the ability to think deeply and engage with written material, as we become more accustomed to instant information and a visually-based digital world. It turns out I am not the only intellectually lazy person out there. As humans, we tend to like shortcuts in which we are fed the analysis, rather than come up with it on our own. This is not necessarily good for our brains.

But one can also hear her curiosity about what comes next; she compares those of us who are alarmed by these changes to Socrates and his vehement distrust of the written word and the Greek alphabet. Clearly, despite Socrates' concerns, writing has been a good thing. We have the luxury of centuries to know this. But Wolf cautions that we shouldn't dismiss Socrates' concerns, either -- his alarm was valid. We lost something in the transition from an oral culture to a written culture, just as we gained something else. The reader gets the feeling that Wolf sees us losing something as we move from written culture to visual culture, but that she also sees the possibility of gain. What that gain is we have yet to figure out, but Wolf wants to know what it is.

Another interesting moment: Wolf is redefining the meaning of "fluency." It does not necessarily mean speed, exactly, so much as it means reading fast enough to provide the reader with time to think about, internalize, and examine what one is reading. Page 131:

Fluency does not ensure better comprehension; rather, fluency gives enough extra time to the executive system [of the brain] to direct attention where it is most needed -- to infer, to understand, to predict, or sometimes to repair discordant understanding and to interpret meaning afresh.

It appears, for example, that I may have to revise my vehement disagreement with the phrase "this book changed my life." Previously, I have been of the opinion that books don't change lives, that people change their own lives perhaps in response to a book. But Wolf makes a reasonable argument that reading (a book or otherwise) actually does cause measurable, physical changes in the brain -- which then, necessarily, does change one's life even if in minute ways we don't fully recognize day to day.

This book will have practical implications for the work I do with the very young at the library, and has re-fired my interest in pre-literacy, early literacy, and literacy in general. I am extremely glad I have read it, and will certainly be reading it again at some point in the future. I ordered my own copy so I can make margin notes and highlight things. Because I am going to try to think a little more deeply about it the second time through.

Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones

2011-06-30T08:32:00.003-04:00

Enchanted Glass
by Diana Wynne Jones
Harper Collins, 2010
332 pages

I haven't read any Diana Wynne Jones in a long time (evidence: she shows up nowhere on this blog) and I didn't read any of hers as a kid, when I probably would have loved them the most. As an adult, I enjoy her books very much, but I always feel a little wistful after reading something by her, like I have missed something truly wonderful by reading them so late and with an adult point of view. Something akin, perhaps, to the people who read L'Engle's Time Quartet as adults and realize, kind of sadly, that they have totally missed the point when they should have read those books. They see there's something there, but it's out of their reach.

It's not as pronounced as that, for me, here. But some authors really, truly write for kids without talking down to them, but in such a way that there is a point at which it becomes difficult for an adult to access the book. I don't think this is a bad thing, by the way -- authors who can do that are very, very special. It's just a matter of getting to the book at the right time.

Part of it may be that I find her books, and Enchanted Glass especially, to be a little... brief? I am not sure of the right word. It's hard, because I'm not sure I feel like this with any other books for kids, and I'm not sure why I do with this one. It's like I skip across the surface of her books lightly and easily, enjoying the trip as a tourist would, but knowing I will never be one of the locals. I desperately want to get deeper, to move into the courtyards and wear the appropriate clothes and eat the food, but I am stuck in the tour bus looking out, appreciating the view. It leaves me feeling a little wistful.

Anyway! On to this book specifically. My teeny tiny book club of 9 - 12 year-olds picked this one unanimously from a pile of suggestions I had. I'm glad they picked it, because I've wanted to read it since Darla did. In a world similar to our own, but steeped deeply in magic, a man by the name of Jocelyn Brandon dies. When he does, his grandson Andrew, an academic at a local university, inherits Brandon's house, grounds, and his field-of-care -- that is, a special magical place to be protected and cared for in a particular way. Andrew does know magic, but he has a hard time remembering much of what his grandfather taught him as a boy -- and he wants to work on his book, anyway. However, his plans are being constantly derailed by Mr. Stock, his groundskeeper, and Mrs. Stock, his housekeeper (completely unrelated, and barely even civil to each other). His poor book gets left aside completely when Aiden Cain, a twelve-year-old orphan boy shows up in rather dire straits on his doorstep.

The cast of characters is diverse and, as always, one of Jones' strengths. Not everyone is completely likeable or dislikeable, though there are some clear black-and-white characters too. No matter whether they are strongly on the side of right or wrong, they each make mistakes (some more than others) and they each have their strengths, and they are all somewhat quirky and eccentric in a way that I thoroughly enjoy. The perspective swings back and forth easily between Andrew and Aiden, often between paragraphs, which can be somewhat confusing if one is reading too fast. Both are excellent main characters. And I like that in a children's book, we get an adult as a main character, and even see events from his perspective. That doesn't happen very often, and I thought it was a great touch.

I also really enjoyed the magic, and the fact that Jones leaves so much to the imagination. She doesn't explain everything for us, and I think I've probably over-harped on how I don't like everything explained to me. I think it can have a detrimental effect on the world-building and authenticity. Even some plot points are left somewhat unexplained, leaving the reader to think for themselves, and I like this very much. I'll be interested to see if some of the more literal-minded kids in the group are as enamoured with this strategy as I am.

Overall, a light and original fantasy, a great romp really. I enjoyed it quite a bit, even if I spent most of my time feeling like I was somehow on the outside looking in. Recommended for all fantasy fans, but especially the younger ones.

Silent on the Moor by Deanna Raybourn, and a long comment on ebooks

2011-06-24T09:38:00.000-04:00

It's interesting reviewing an ebook vs. having read the other two in this series as paper books. When set so close together, the reading experience was a different one; not completely, not necessarily bad different. I prefer reading an ebook to not reading at all, for sure (er, how's that for a ringing endorsement?) but if I am honest with myself, I do prefer paper books. I like having the object in my hand, I like the feel of turning pages, and I like the, for lack of a better phrase, "mind-feel" of reading paper.

There is something about reading on a screen that blurs the experience for me. I've always been the sort of person who can remember exactly where on the page a certain thing was said or a certain thing happened; I don't tend to need bookmarks or dog ears to remind me where I've stopped reading. There is a 3-dimensional component for me in the reading experience, something that appears to be inextricably linked to the overall experience of the words and the story. That is entirely missing from the e-reading experience, at least on a laptop. It might be different with an actual e-reader, but the story blurs together for me. I can't tell you approximately how long a chapter is, or even how long the book is. I'm not sure where certain things took place, exactly; I can tell you what came first, and second, and third, but I can't tell you necessarily how close that was to the beginning, middle or end, unless it was something that was strongly dependent on internal chronology. For example, in Silent on the Moor there are puppies born; right now, I can't tell you whether that was closer to the middle or the end, and if I had to find it again I'd have to start somewhere around chapter... 18, maybe? And just keep clicking through until I found it.

This is not to say that I don't remember the story itself or that the experience of the story was somehow less vivid. As I say, reading on the laptop is better than not reading at all, and I'm not positive that it changed how the content sticks in my head, other than the structure of it. Though I'm not even sure about that. It is a faster reading experience, and it does feel like a less permanent one; but I do still remember large swathes of The City & The City, more of that than of many paper books I've read.

All of this to say that I am now confident in saying that I don't think all of my e-reading reluctance, my small anxieties when people proclaim that paper is finished and going the way of the LP, is based in curmudgeonly clinging to the past. Reading an ebook is a fundamentally different experience for me than reading a paper book, one with some distinct and identifiable changes to the way I experience reading flow if not necessarily the story (I will need to read a few more ebooks and maybe read the same couple books as paper before I can say whether or not my experience of story changes significantly). Whether or not these changes are something to bemoan is still up in the air, but I do know that my current preference still lies strongly with paper, and now I can point to why.

***

Silent on the Moor
by Deanna Raybourn
Mira, 2009
351 pages

As stated, I couldn't wait for the library system (both my local library and the library I work at have copies of this book, but in both cases they were checked out such that I would have to count on the person bringing it back on time, and still days from now even if they were on time) so I actually bought this book via eHarlequin. I am glad I did. It's a book worthy of ownership, like the previous two in the series (although I am, for reasons discussed above, more than likely to buy a paper copy eventually as well).

Fair warning: though it's not necessary to read the previous two books before this one, I think there are significant benefits to doing so and I would strongly encourage it. As such, the following paragraphs may contain unintentional spoilers for the first two books in the series. I don't think there's anything startling or unexpected, but they may be there.

Julia, with her sister Portia and their brother Valerius, are off to pay a surprise visit to Nicholas Brisbane at his new manor in Yorkshire, the ominously-named Grimsgrave. Portia was really the one invited to help Brisbane set up his household and get things in order because she's very, very good at that sort of thing; but Julia isn't about to let a chance to see Brisbane slip through her fingers despite the fact that he has explicitly instructed Portia that Julia is not to come. Julia's rather had it with not knowing where their relationship stands and she intends to figure it out once and for all. But perhaps Brisbane was right; when they arrive at Grimsgrave, they find it not only a terribly rundown, impoverished old place in the middle of nowhere, but a couple of unexpected inhabitants in addition to Brisbane. Before long there will be a mystery for Julia to solve beyond her relationship with Brisbane.

I've added the "romance" tag to this book, having left it off the other two, because the relationship between Julia and Brisbane is a significant focus. Not to the exclusion of everything else, but Julia states up front that she is going to Grimsgrave to sort things out with Brisbane, and so it is necessarily a major component of the story -- even though Brisbane himself is pretty scarce for significant portions of the book, particularly in the beginning.

Once again, the setting of the novel changes the tone. Here we have a much, much more gothic piece of writing than the previous two books. Grimsgrave is an ancient, crumbling hall on the moors of Yorkshire; the season is a rainy, grey spring; the unexpected inhabitants of Grimsgrave are themselves somewhat stereotypical Gothic players: the aging matriarch and beautiful, aloof daughter of a dying bloodline, along with a second daughter who is distinctly unfriendly (although Hilda isn't particularly menacing; I quite liked her). The tone is somber, dreary, and damp, and fraught with dark tensions that the reader feels but Julia is occasionally oblivious to.

The crime to be solved in this, or the main one, I suppose, is suitably gothic too. It's melodramatic and very, very creepy. Actually, it occurs to me that if you haven't read this book yet, even if you have read the first two you might want to stop here because I might be a little heavy-handed with the hints. Suffice to say I knew what was up well before Julia did.

Okay?

Interestingly, I knew almost right away what had happened; Raybourn wasn't as subtle with her clues, or perhaps because of the mood of the book I was already looking for something sordid and insane. The nice thing about the fact that there were sub-plots I was invested in, along with the main two of the crime and the relationship, was that though I solved the crime early it didn't really detract from my enjoyment of the book. I did get a little frustrated with Julia here and there, because it seemed so obvious to me, but I can excuse her inability to see the truth because I suspect in her place I wouldn't want to see it, or even consider it as an option.

/possible slight spoilers done

There are other things that happen in this book in relation to Julia's family that were as interesting to me as the first plots. The family was largely absent from this book, even though Valerius and Portia are around for portions of it, but what does happen is in some ways monumental and I believe sets up the fourth book in the series. It's sad, too, and a reminder that happy endings are not always possible, and not permanent. I wanted more of the family, but that's a good thing; it wasn't a problem with the book, just a marker of how much I enjoy these characters that Raybourn has created to surround her main two.

Dark Road to Darjeeling is sitting on my desk right now, but I am thinking that, having finished the first major arc of the series (many, many loose ends get tied up) I will maybe try to get some of the reading I have to do for work done first. I have a couple of books I've been meaning to get to, as well, that sort of died on the pile when I fell into my slump. Now that Deanna Raybourn seems to have pulled me full out of it, and in style, I might try something different for a bit before going back to see what Lady Julia and Brisbane get up to next. Well, that and the fact that book six isn't available yet, and book five is going to be a couple weeks in getting to me, so there's no point in rushing and putting myself through Potter-like agonies.

Other books in the Lady Julia Grey series:
1. Silent in the Grave
2. Silent in the Sanctuary

Silent in the Sanctuary by Deanna Raybourn

2011-06-23T11:13:00.000-04:00

Silent in the Sanctuary
by Deanna Raybourn
Mira, 2008
552 pages

Perhaps you thought I was kidding when I suggested I would be reading Silent in the Sanctuary almost immediately? Yes? I got it one day and I finished it the next, mostly by dint of being home sick in bed. The desire I had to read this book may make a sudden head cold and fever somewhat suspicious, but I swear whatever I have is unrelated.

So, here, Lady Julia Grey and her brothers, plus her brother's new Italian wife, and a young Italian count who has been a great friend to them in Florence, are summoned home in no uncertain terms for the Christmas holiday. Their father is extremely put out that Lysander has married in such a hurry, and Julia convinces (er, perhaps "bullies" might be the better word) everyone it would be by far the best course of action to go home and mollify the family patriarch. A number of surprises await, including the fact that Nicholas Brisbane (and his new fiancee, which is an even bigger surprise) have been invited to spend Christmas with the Marches, and also there happens to be a murder during a friendly family game of sardines.

What I found interesting about this book was how far the setting went to establishing a different tone for the story. Instead of the dark, crowded streets of London we have the bright, airy (read: "draughty") environs of the March country home, Bellmont Abbey. Julia is very comfortable with the space, and very fond of it, and that translates to the overall feeling of the book. Where she felt stifled in London at Grey House, as much as she loved the city itself, here we have a place where Julia is perfectly at home. Which is why it is such an affront to her, and why we understand her anger, when a body is found in her home space.

We know right off the top that something is going to happen; it is a mystery, and we know there will be a mystery to be solved. But once again, as with Silent in the Grave, Raybourn treats us to a slow, pleasant introduction, a study of Julia as we see how she's changed since the last book, and an introduction to new members of the group as well as a further growth of some of the characters we've met before. (Her elder sister Portia, a widow and unabashed bisexual living in a long-term relationship with her female partner, who I would peg as Julia's best friend, is a marvellously natural, charming character and I love her; on the other hand, I missed Valerius in this book, Julia's youngest sibling and aspiring surgeon, much to his father's dismay.) The family dynamics are engaging, the way they carry on is entertaining, and these secondary characters are one of the big reasons I enjoy these books so much.

Once again the interaction between Julia and Brisbane positively crackles, but though Julia thinks about him a lot and he chews the scenery any time he shows up, their relationship doesn't take centre stage. I thoroughly enjoy the interactions between them and how that changes and grows; I love that Julia is absolutely bound and determined that she will not let him coddle her or dismiss her, but that she will be his equal in whatever they do. It may seem a bit strange, a case of "modern woman, historical time," but I don't think that's fair to Raybourn's work here. She has quite carefully set up the March family to be a progressive, eccentric bunch, intelligent, educated and well-enough-off and established enough that they don't have to particularly care what society thinks of them, though there are often steps taken to keep the worst scandals under wraps. Julia is a product more of her family than of her time, a thing we see very clearly in the way she evolves throughout the first book. And her family is quite thoroughly believable.

Something Julia thinks about a lot is her privilege, the way that being the daughter of an Earl in a very old family affects her life. She thinks about this and money (they have poor relations visiting for Christmas, too), and through her we think about it too. She is well aware of the advantages she has, but she doesn't necessarily struggle with them so much as try to do her best to use those advantages to the good. It's not a focus, but it's present -- enough to make us realize that we are reading about a rarefied strata of society.

As for the mystery, again I had no clue, though I did this time have inklings of a motive that turned out to be well-founded. Not everything is tied up neatly, and some parts of the ultimate conclusion are fairly unsettling. These are not sad, cozy little murders; they are physically ugly, and the source of the discord is ugly, and the players, though not necessarily evil, are ugly, and the solutions are imperfect and sometimes ugly too. As it all should be.

I'll confess here that I've already read the third book. I wasn't going to get it soon enough from the library, so I actually bought an e-book and read it on the laptop. I am picking up the fourth book today and will likely have it read within the next 48 hours, which will leave me anxiously awaiting The Dark Enquiry, which I have placed on order at my favourite local book store.

Other books in the Lady Julia Grey mysteries:
1. Silent in the Grave

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn

2011-06-20T09:37:00.000-04:00

Silent in the Grave
by Deanna Raybourn
Mira Books, 2007
511 pages

I am trying to figure out if this book is what I expected. Actually, I am trying to figure out what I expected in the first place. I knew this was the first book of a set of mysteries with a female protagonist set in a Victorian era, and that there was a hint of romance, and that Raybourn has a fair following. It is possible I didn't expect to be quite as tangled in it as I became, nor did I expect to be quite as impressed as I am; I wouldn't say I have exacting standards, but I do expect a good story, characters I am interested in, and an actually mysterious mystery from my mystery novels. Silent in the Grave has surprised me, and I am hungry -- nay, ravenous -- for the next. I think I can claim my expectations were surpassed, because if I had known how much I was going to enjoy this book, I would have had Silent in the Sanctuary on hand so that I could start it immediately. As it is, I will have to wait until 9:30 Monday morning, when the local library opens. It's already on hold there, despite the fact that it is closed between then and now. I am taking no chances.

The best place to start is with a summary. Lady Julia Grey and her husband Sir Edward are hosting a musical evening when Edward collapses and subsequently dies. Sadly, this isn't an unexpected event; Edward has always had a weak heart, and he had grown quite a bit worse in the preceeding months. So Lady Julia is quite prepared to put the death down to natural causes, as is everyone around her -- everyone except Nicholas Brisbane, an inquiry agent engaged by Edward some time before his death. Edward was being threatened, increasingly ominously, and Brisbane believes that there was nothing natural about Edward's death.

Part of the charm of this book is the pace. One expects things to get off to a rather quick start, as Edward is dead nearly immediately. But it doesn't -- we are treated to a bit of a study of Julia and her incredibly eccentric, incredibly charming family first. Julia goes about her life, in mourning but increasingly being cozied out of her shell. It isn't until, quite some time later, she finds something while going through Edward's papers that she realizes that the warnings to her were true: something was amiss. She moves relatively quickly after that, though, and the plot starts to thicken immediately.

And thicken it does. There are ominous signs, a fair bit of "but I had no idea how dangerous things would get" sorts of foreshadowing (which is done sparingly enough and fits very well with Julia's character, so doesn't grow tiresome) and a crackling tension between Julia and Nicholas Brisbane that is absolutely fascinating. Julia grows throughout the book from a reserved and naive but frustrated wallflower to a somewhat daring, brave and lovely lady. She is intelligent from the beginning, but has not had any call to exercise her intelligence for the previous five years, and combined with the naivete she ends up doing some pretty frustratingly stupid things. The reader feels she's learned rather a lot about herself and the world by the end of the book, and it's a nice transformation.

As for the plot and mystery, no, I didn't figure out the culprit. At least not entirely. In hindsight I can say I looked at the murderer and thought, "Hmm, wouldn't that be an interesting twist?" but in all honesty, I couldn't imagine how it was done or why, so I pretty much dimissed the thought. There were other little mysteries and side-plots, some of which have been resolved at the end of this book (some rather too neatly, really) and some of which are left dangling for the next in the series, presumably. And things in the middle got thick. There was new information, red herrings, dangerous migraines, disguises, questionable parentage, and even a dash of [perfectly believable, perfectly situated] magic. There was something new and often outrageous happening at least each chapter. It felt like a lot, but Raybourn handled things deftly such that I never felt lost or overwhelmed.

Aside from Julia, the complexity of the characters was another reason I enjoyed this book so much. Brisbane is deep, dangerous, and full of contradictions, and spends relatively little time on screen for the supposed primary investigator of the mystery. Some of the mystery surrounding him is revealed by the end of the book, but much of it is not, and he's a rather infuriating puzzle for both the reader and Julia. We, like Julia, are sure we haven't seen the last of him by the end of the book, and the prospect of seeing him again is both thrilling and somewhat alarming. Julia's relationships with her family and Edward's ailing cousin Simon, as well as her servants, are complex too, and not everything about each person is on the surface. The richness of the family dynamic -- it's not a dysfunctional family, but it is an enormous one, and as all enormous groups go there are the little conflicts and politics to be played with -- is part of what I enjoyed so much about this book. I look forward to seeing what they get up to in the next one almost as much as I look forward to seeing Julia navigate her way about her relationship with Brisbane and solve a mystery.

The writing is clever, in that it hides in the background as needed and clicks along but is always apt and crystal clear. It is not often overdone, and when it is the excess can be put down to Julia, not to Raybourn; I am certain that Raybourn knows exactly how to use language to its best effect. I trust her to tell me a story I'm going to enjoy thoroughly, so I'm very much looking forward to the next one. Fans of British historical mysteries should check these books out, absolutely. One of my most enjoyable reading experiences in quite a while, and that's saying a fair bit as I haven't picked up a dud lately. See you on the other side of Silent in the Sanctuary...

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

2011-06-13T11:34:00.001-04:00

When You Reach Me
by Rebecca Stead
Random House Audio, 2009
4 discs

It was a long time ago that I first read about this book on Abby (the) Librarian's blog. I've wanted to read it since, and I kept seeing it on the shelf. So when the opportunity arose to read it with my very tiny book club for older kids (generally 9 - 12 years old) I figured that would be an excellent opportunity.

At first, I'll be honest, I worried I'd made a wrong choice, and that if I was kind of meh about the book, the kids would be especially meh. But the further I got into it, the more I liked it; and by the time the end rolled around, I did that thing again where I debate sitting in the car and finishing it before heading into work (I didn't. There wasn't enough time.) I think part of my reluctance at first was the reader; she is good, but there were several times where I took issue with her interpretation, and I also found her adult voices to be pretty jarring. That said, I tend to start and then drop a lot of kids' audiobooks based on unlistenable (for me) narrators, and this one I kept listening to rather than giving up and reading the book instead.

The basic premise is this: Miranda is a 12-year-old girl growing up in the late 1970s in New York. Her best friend lives in the same apartment building; she and Sal have been friends for as long as she can remember. But one day, out of the blue, Sal gets punched by another boy, and shuts Miranda out of his life entirely. And other strange things start happening, like the random notes Miranda begins to find, notes that seem to know more about her and what her future holds than they should. Miranda tells us this story in a very confessional, almost diary-like format, and we watch the world from her eyes. She is telling this story to each person who hears it or reads it individually; but also to one specific person in her life, someone we don't recognize until the very last chapters.

What is most interesting to me about this book is that it's often classified as fantasy, but the bit I would classify as fantasy is so miniscule, so incidental until the very end that it doesn't quite fit in that genre for me. The vast majority of the book is about Miranda's life, her mother, her challenges with making new friends and dealing with the others in her class, her first crush, and growing up over a period of several months in New York City. It was these sections of the book I found most engaging (which is good, because they were 90% of where we spent our time) and though I expected more magic, I wasn't dismayed. As in my last review, I rather enjoy books where the magic is not the driver for the story. Here it could have been, and that's what makes the choices Stead made as far as focus so interesting.

I did particularly appreciate the ending of this book; it wasn't wrapped up in an unbelievable way, it took just the right amount of time once we realized what was happening, and it didn't distance itself from the reader. I enjoyed watching the pieces of the puzzle slotted neatly where they needed to be, as much as Miranda did.

I've noticed myself thinking about this book regularly since I finished it, which is always a good sign. I enjoyed it as an adult, but I think I would have loved it as a kid, and I'll be very interested to see what the kids in the book club think about it. It gives us lots of fodder to talk about, even if they didn't like it as much as I hope they do. Recommended.

Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal

2011-06-05T17:51:00.000-04:00

Shades of Milk and Honey
by Mary Robinette Kowal
Tor, 2010
302 pages

Mmm, good book hangover. You know the one, where you've just read the last several chapters in a rush and you're not sure you were breathing properly the entire time, and then your brain is still stuck in that half-fog of pulling yourself out of the book. It's not an entirely pleasant feeling, but once it's passed, the feeling for the book is really quite glowing.

I have wanted to read Shades of Milk and Honey since I saw the Big Idea post on Scalzi's Whatever blog. And I am currently (in case you couldn't tell) on a bit of a historical kick, but I was wanting a bit of the spice that fantasy brings; this seemed like an excellent choice. I am very keen on books where magic is folded into the world seamlessly and isn't so much the means to ends as it is a mundane part of daily life.

Summarizing this book is a little bit of a challenge. There is a plot. It is more of a character study, though, than anything else; we are given the story through Jane Ellsworth's eyes, a very much on-the-shelf young woman with incredible talents for glamour and art (which is what the magic of this world is called) and a reasonable if modest dowry, and not much else -- she is very plain, not terribly graceful, and as before, she is rather a lot older than most marriageable women of her day. And Jane is very stiff and proper, too. She is good and kind to a fault, often leading to spasms of guilt when the least little bit of vanity or selfishness rears its head; I think part of Kowal's success in this book is that Jane is still a fascinating character to follow, and an extremely likeable one. A character like Jane could easily become a charicature, or an unbearable martyr. That she doesn't is a credit to her creator's skill.

It took me a chapter or two to become engaged, and though there were hints of secrets to be revealed, this was the largest indicator of the slow ramping up of the plot that would make the last several chapters nearly impossible to put down. It was a book that took me a bit by surprise, in how invested I became in Jane's life and happiness and by extension those around her. I did not expect it at the beginning, and I wouldn't even have noticed how invested I had become if I didn't start catching myself sitting at the desk at work during a slow period and wondering if, just this once, it would be okay for me to read on the job.

It's a very Austen-like read, but doesn't copy Austen slavishly; I think it's also due to Kowal's skill that the book feels of its period without feeling like a gimmick. Even some of the spellings are authentic to the time period (for example, "chuse" instead of "choose") and while at first I worried it would get old I found later that it added to the atmosphere, the feeling that Kowal clearly wanted to portray. I wouldn't have noticed, I suppose, if she'd used the modern spellings from the beginning, but I forgot about the period spellings later on and they're an added bonus to the overall sensation.

The other characters are well-rounded if occasionally a bit stereotypical (Jane's mother, particularly, reminds me of several Regency mothers I've read about) and the world itself is seamless, both familiar and beautifully strange.

My only quibble, and it is a small one, is the ending. After the intense closeness of the book, the intimate connection we have with Jane, the ending (post-climax) is very... distant. It isn't an unusual choice (I felt very much the same way about The Singing, I recall, and the Harry Potter epilogue), but it's one that always feels like a bit of a letdown. There were a couple of character arcs that felt completely unresolved, particularly one of Jane's friendships, and the swift retreat of the narrative felt a bit sudden. That said, it wasn't terribly glaring as it was in the above cases, and in no way diminishes my overall warm feeling for this story.

I really enjoyed this book. A slow start and a leisurely pace worked their way into my interest quite firmly, and as I said I discovered myself thinking of it when not reading it, in the same way I often think of some of my favourite books. I'll look forward to a re-read of this one, and I'm going to be on the lookout to purchase it for my personal library.

What Happens in London by Julia Quinn

2011-05-30T08:41:00.002-04:00

What Happens in London
by Julia Quinn
Avon, 2009
372 pages

In the interests of not having only ONE post in the month of May, I finished a book today! It actually wasn't a chore. It was quite delightful, and entertaining, and very light and sweet. But it also allows me to maintain my two books/month target, which is... well, not one book a week, but maybe we'll get up to three books next month?

This is a book from one of my go-to authors when I'm having trouble reading anything. This time it worked! I was a little worried; the last time I tried a Julia Quinn it was a DNF for me. But I think I might have been unduly influenced by being sandwiched on a plane home from a vacation.

But for me, this book was up there with my two Quinn favourites, The Lost Duke of Wyndham and An Offer from a Gentleman. In fact, it might... might... be better than either, though it would be hard pressed to top Lost Duke. It was a perfectly enjoyable regency romance, and it sparkled in a way that I've not found in too many other romance novels.

So, let's see. We have the stunning Olivia Bevelstoke, daughter of the Earl of Rutland, in London for the Season. Her new next door neighbour is Sir Harry Valentine, who is, unbeknownst to her (and most others) an operative and translator for the War Office. To society, Sir Harry is a rather mysterious figure, a baronet, very sober, very solitary, and not a lot of fun. Due to a nasty rumour, Olivia takes to spying on Sir Harry from her bedroom -- and of course, he notices. Needless to say, they don't really get off on the right foot.

The story is, of course, largely about Olivia and Harry getting back on the right foot.

What made this read so enjoyable for me was the interaction between Harry and Olivia. Both are flawed but ultimately lovely people, and they tweak each other in just the right ways to make the growth of their relationship believable and entertaining. They are hilarious together, to be honest, and I genuinely liked them individually and especially when they're sparring with each other. The things they goad each other about, the things they say to each other go from being superficial and not at all polite to a growing, deepening relationship that clearly means a lot to each. The book does rely a little bit on the physical attraction between the two to get them from high dudgeon to good friends, and the friendship does happen a little quickly; but Quinn makes it clear that each intrigues the other, gets under the other's skin, enough to make the fact that they salvage a friendship plausible.

All that aside, Quinn can write Society dialogue like no one else. It's not that her characters always know exactly the right thing to say, or always have a snappy comeback. No, it's that occasionally they do get mixed up or truculent or go silent, but they recover; and when they are on conversational form, they are a riot to observe. Even a discussion about the weather can be fraught with hidden meanings and emotion -- without being overwrought or overdeveloped.

As always, the climax was a wee bit melodramatic, and in this case I really didn't feel it was necessary. There was a villain but as in the best of her books the villain turns out to have hidden depth (I still didn't like him much, but I was somewhat convinced that he might be redeemable) and the relationship between Harry and Olivia didn't really need an extra shot in the arm, the way the climax often provides in romance novels. It was all there, and I would have believed in their Happily Ever After even without the events at the climax.

I really, really enjoyed myself throughout this book. I giggled out loud in places, the romance was sweet and genuine and satisfying, and the plot was (for a Quinn) generally understated and perfectly enjoyable. In fact, this may be one of the few romances I could seen picking up again and enjoying a second time through, so I'll be on the lookout for a copy of my own.

Saint Peter's Fair by Ellis Peters

2011-05-09T08:38:00.000-04:00

We went on vacation. Last year, for this vacation, one of the days was a thunderstorm day. We spent the entirety of it ensconced in the camper, reading. It also helped that I was on antibiotics and miserable and not wanting to get out and hike, especially in the rain, so the reading felt like a reprieve. I read three books that day, for a total of five over the whole vacation.

This year I planned accordingly, and our combined reading material looked like this:

I remind you this is a five day trip, the overriding aim of which is hiking outdoors and watching birds (which was, I must say, extremely successful this year.)

I read one book. I read part of another one (Crocodile on the Sandbank, which turned out to be just on this side of too light for the brain, especially seeing as I knew exactly what was coming) and then switched to what turned out to be the perfect choice: the next Brother Cadfael mystery.

Saint Peter's Fair
by Ellis Peters
Macmillan, 1981
324 pages

I have to confess, this is another book I'd started before and put back down again. For whatever reason, it just wasn't grabbing me, and I'll say right off the top that I don't think this is one of the best in this series I've read. That's not to say it's not thoroughly enjoyable. There were just a few things that stretched credibility well beyond my comfort zone this time.

The basic plot, without any spoilers: the abbey's annual Saint Peter's Fair is gearing up for what looks to be a successful year after a missed year due to the seige reported in One Corpse Too Many. However, the townsfolk, still struggling with major infrastructure problems after the battles, are unhappy that they see no direct part in the tithes and levies that come from the lucrative fair. When a visiting merchant strikes down one of the town's young men (an unfortunate, though not fatal, event) a riot breaks out. Brother Cadfael is, of course, in the thick of it. Then, later that night, the merchant goes missing and is found the next day, the victim of what appears to be a simple street robbery. But the pieces don't add up, some people know quite a lot more than they're telling, and the hunt is on for the perpetrators of the crime as the situation escalates.

As I commented to fishy at one point, I had the mystery (somewhat) solved by the time the murdered man was found, which is to say within the first fifty pages. This isn't ideal, with these books -- at least not in the way it happened here. The one I've enjoyed the most is One Corpse Too Many and that was in large part because I was completely in the dark about the murderer and even the motive for most of the book, despite the foreshadowing that was skillfully employed. I was still definitely in the dark about the motive on this one, as was our intrepid monk. What surprised me, though, and felt out of character, is that Brother Cadfael is normally so infallible at reading character -- and he missed this one completely even when I, as the reader, knew something was wrong. Same with the deputy sherrif, who is as sharp as one could hope in official law. Also, Brother Cadfael felt very much an observer rather than an active solver of this mystery, which also felt out of character. I don't think this is a problem with Cadfael so much as a problem with the plot and other characters, which points to it being an author misstep.

What I missed most, though, was the warmth of feeling I've had for many of the characters in these books in the past. I am not sure whether this was me, or the long break between this book and the last, or that the characters really did read less like people and more like cutouts in a template.

All of that said, this was still an extremely enjoyable way to spend a couple of evenings. I think I am only slightly dissatisfied because the previous entries in the series were so good. The historical part is still fascinating, with the sweeping political landscape -- the part of history that most of us are familiar with, the lives of the grand people -- providing a backdrop for the convincing detail of the lives of the little people. We are becoming familiar with some of the townspeople, and time is passing; characters enter and leave Cadfael's life in the way one would expect a small town and abbey to work. The plot, though I could easily see the bones of it, had enough meat to keep me engaged through the end.

Overall, I wouldn't necessarily start with this one if you've never read a Brother Cadfael mystery, and I wouldn't necessarily have wept to have missed it. But it provided the kind of read I needed at the moment, and I'll quite happily pick up the next in the series on the strength of the three preceeding books.

Earlier books in the Brother Cadfael chronicles:

1. A Morbid Taste for Bones
2. One Corpse Too Many
3. Monk's-Hood

Your Hate Mail will be Graded by John Scalzi

2011-04-22T10:19:00.004-04:00

Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded

by John Scalzi

Tor Books, 2010

368 pages

I have to admit: I have never read any of John Scalzi's fiction. I keep meaning to get to Old Man's War, but you know how that goes. And yet, I am a huge fan of his blog, Whatever, and so it was kind of a no-brainer for me to pick up this book, a collection of archival Whatever entries, when I noticed it in the local bookstore. See, the thing is, there's a lot of great material in the Whatever archives, but I only started reading in 2009 and I'm not about to go back all the way to 1998 to see what I missed. So I thoroughly enjoyed having someone pull out the best of Whatever and plunk it in a book for me to read.

I think the ideal place for this book, and this is not an insult, would be the bathroom. (Ironic, as I know Scalzi does some work for the Uncle John series of readers, too, heh). The entries are generally no more than two or three pages long, and range in topic from political, to parenting, to writing, to financial, to clones, to cheese. Perfect lengths for bathroom reading, and rarely the same thing twice. Also, they can be read in any and all orders -- there is absolutely no order to the entries, as they're not arranged chronologically nor topically. So you can read the last one without feeling like you've missed anything.

There can be trouble in assuming that what one writes on a blog will translate well into a book. I think part of the success here is that Scalzi is interesting. He's got big opinions, he thinks about things thoroughly, and he doesn't just discuss the minutiae. But what makes Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded work is that not only is Scalzi interesting, he can write. He can write really, really well. Well enough that a book full of his blog entries don't start to feel repetitive or samey.

The entries are often informative, and always entertaining, even when I don't agree with everything Scalzi says. That said, I seem to agree with the vast portion of it, which perhaps makes me an ideal reader for this book. I could see his style grating a bit on people who don't agree with what he says, especially, but that's quite deliberate. The current tagline for Whatever is "Taunting the Tauntable since 1998." His style can be hyperbolic, his metaphors can be vulgar (not in a bad way, to my mind), his sense of humour is always pointed and very sarcastic, his arguments somewhat steam-roller-like. But the metaphors, if unexpected, are always apt, and the arguments he makes are exceedingly well-reasoned. And I laughed out loud and often while reading this.

I wouldn't recommend this for a straight read-through, if just because it starts to be a lot. It would be like spending a full day just reading blog entries; your brain goes numb after a while. As above, it's less likely to go numb with Scalzi at the helm than it would be with many other bloggers out there (I include myself in this; most of us aren't award-winning authors). For someone who is having trouble committing to an entire narrative, this is the perfect pick-it-up-put-it-down read. It had me giggling, it had me thinking, and it had me thoroughly engaged. The best part about it? Reading Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, like reading Whatever, makes me have some hope for humanity, if there are people like Scalzi out there thinking and writing and being alive in this world.

3 short reviews for a short attention span

2011-04-12T07:59:00.012-04:00

Hello blog. This is kind of embarrassing, but... the truth is, I've been neglecting you. Some stuff has come up. I've been really busy, and when not really busy, in a really weird brainspace. All will become clear in time, but suffice to say that not only have I not been writing reviews, I've only barely been reading. Thus, the longest break in our history together: almost a full month without an entry.

That said, I do have three books to talk about. I know I won't be able to squeeze full entries for each out of my poor brain, so we're going to do something new and do short reviews! Scattered and short attention span -- that's me right now.

The City of Words

by Alberto Manguel

CBC Audio, 2007

5 discs

This is actually a recording of the five 2007 Massey Lectures. If you don't know about the Massey Lectures, I do advise checking them out at some point -- they've been given lately by such luminaries as Margaret Atwood (about money, and debt) and Douglas Copeland (the first Lectures to be entirely a work of fiction) and Wade Davis (anthropology). This particular set was about the power of story and words in society, going back as far as Gilgamesh (my favourite lecture of the series) and bringing us into the future with HAL. I don't remember a lot of it at this point, I'll be honest, and as I was in the car listening to this I wasn't (much to the advantage of other drivers on the road, I am sure) taking notes as I listened. I think probably a better experience would have involved taking notes. It was tremendously fascinating, but extremely dense; and I do remember feeling that the final lecture stretches a bit too far and tries to do too much in fifty minutes. While the whole thing was interesting to listen to, I don't think it has quite the same coherence that some of the other series I've heard do. Or it's possible that my brain is out of shape from not being in classes where I've had to do a lot of critical thinking and/or literary analysis. Either way, I'm glad I listened and I think I will have to listen to them again to appreciate them fully. Recommended for people interested in stories, society, and culture, and not afraid to take on something intellectually challenging.

Not Love but Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy!

by Fumi Yoshinaga

Yen Press, 2010

159 pages

Of the three I'm reporting on here today, this is the book I loved. It's tremendously quirky in exactly the way I like it. With relationships and the manga artist's life as a (mostly very thinly sketched) background, this is a book about food. In fact, it's a love letter to 15 different Tokyo eating places, and to the food they serve. If I ever go to Tokyo, I will use this book as a guide to what I eat. It looks so. unbelievably. delicious. There's Japanese food, of course, but also Chinese food, baked goods, French cuisine -- it's wide-ranging, involving a lot of entrails (as Yoshinaga herself jokes) and beautifully drawn and described. Somehow, in between the food, we manage to get to know and enjoy Y-naga, the main character, foodie, and charmingly quirky lady, and a cast of characters around her, some just in for one story, others in for the long haul. It's very well done. The art is lovely and easy to follow, the characters very clearly differentiated, the sense of humour is sustained and light without being stupid, and did I mention the food? Loved this book, highly recommended to fans of food and/or manga.

Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang

by Mordecai Richler

Tundra Books, 2003 (original release in 1975)

87 pages

Another parent-child bookclub read, and quite a lot of fun. Jacob Two-Two is two plus two plus two years old, and has to say everything twice because he's so small that no one hears him the first time. In this, the first of his adventures, he is sent to prison for the worst crime of all -- insulting a grownup. I wasn't surprised to see that Richler is reported to have modeled the child characters in the book after his own children, or that the father character is modeled after himself. It reads like a bedtime story, the sort that a father might come up with on the spur of the moment with the kids themselves as the stars. This is not a bad thing, by any stretch -- it's a wonderful, imaginative, charming, and entertaining story that somehow manages not to be dated. It has things to say about children, adults, friendship, kindness, and creative thinking. Recommended as a great adventure for a bedtime story, or a very quick (an hour or two) read for an adult.

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

2011-03-14T09:26:00.000-04:00

Because of Winn-Dixie

by Kate DiCamillo

Candlewick Press, 2000

192 pages

Sorry about the posting delay, all. I've been working through a very fractured-attention-span time, which leads to significantly less reading (I haven't read anything since this book) and less ability to write a coherent review, too. This may not get everything I wanted to say about this book, but I figured that a little review is better than no review at all.

This book is lovely. It's well-written. It's a little capsule of sweet and sad all rolled into 192 pages, and it is a perfect book club read for my parent-child group.

India Opal Buloni has moved to a small town in Florida with her single-parent father, a pastor at a small evangelical church. We meet her immediately as she is meeting Winn-Dixie, the titular dog, in the supermarket of the same name. He's causing quite a disruption, and she manages to convince everyone that he's hers, and she also manages to convince the pastor that they need a dog. Through the rest of the book, we follow India through her summer as she meets some very interesting people in the town, and starts to connect them to each other in ways they may not have foreseen before a girl and her dog showed up.

More than being about the hijinks between India and Winn-Dixie, though, this is a story of connection and friendship, and a story about loss and sadness, too. Which doesn't mean it's a sad book, or a downer in any way -- not a chance. But it is a book about the lives people lead that don't always show on the surface, and how beautiful and difficult those lives can be. I suppose in some ways, some of the characters might read like a heavy-handed moral -- "don't judge a book by it's cover!" and that sort of thing -- but I think DiCamillo handles it skillfully and gently, in a way that doesn't talk down to her readers. I enjoyed this book as much as an adult as I think the kids will enjoy it.

I definitely recommend this book for reading together. I think it's a fine read-alone for kids, too, but I think that there are a lot of themes that can be addressed here, making it an ideal read for the book club. I'd also recommend it for a light and quick, but not entirely fluffy, read for adults, too. DiCamillo writes in such a way that I could picture the southern atmosphere, I could feel the summer heat, and I could smell the wet dog. The story is simple, pleasant, and kind, but not without its touch of sadness, which I think makes the whole thing sweeter.

The City and the City by China Miéville

2011-03-03T09:36:00.000-05:00

The City and the City

by China Miéville

Del Rey, 2009

312 pages

And now back to our regular programming. Seriously though, everyone, the battle for book ownership isn't over yet -- if you haven't ever thought about who actually owns that book you're reading on your screen of choice, you should really start thinking about it now. And deciding what you think about how much you're paying for a license rather than ownership.

Okay, really, now back to our regular programming.

In a mind-bogglingly ironic move, here we have it: my first e-book reviewed on this site. (It isn't a HarperCollins book, mind you, but Random House, who so far have behaved rather admirably in this brave new world. I'll be buying this book. Maybe even in hardcover.) And it was kind of an accident; I didn't mean to read it, at all. I intended to download it as a test from the library's e-book collection, and then figure out how to return a borrowed e-book early, so that I can then train people on that in the upcoming weeks. It was to be a dummy book, a guinea pig book. Only I downloaded it and thought, I wonder what Miéville's writing is actually like. I've heard good things. So I decided I'd read the first page.

And then it was suddenly Chapter 9 and I was in no way planning to return that book until I had finished reading it, thank you very much. It took me three short days of staring at my computer screen, because I haven't purchased an e-reader yet, and sitting in an uncomfortable position staring at the screen didn't even register with me most of the time. I haven't been feeling well lately, and even that didn't really register while I was reading.

This book. If you haven't read it yet, my god, what are you waiting for? It is a brilliant piece of work, and I don't say that lightly or use "brilliant" as hyperbole. It's brilliant in the sense of incredibly intelligent, and brilliant in the sense of a shining example of great writing, great plotting, great character development -- all of these, in fact, out of the ordinary. Though I'm not sure I would call it "brilliant" in the luminous sense, as that would be misleading; this is a somewhat dark book, a tense book, a gritty mystery that can delve into the uglier side of humanity.

It's hard to write a summary without giving anything away. Part of the joy of this book is the way the layers are peeled back slowly for the reader, the way we start out as we would with a regular genre mystery, with the discovery of a woman's body and a detailed, grinding investigation, hints of drugs and prostitution and seedy back alleys. Inspector Tyador Borlú is our first-person guide, an experienced and immediately recognizable police detective. We don't know exactly what country we're in, or what city, or what laws and customs we're dealing with. Some of the terminology is a bit skewed and unfamiliar, and the names almost Eastern European. We know very quickly that Borlú and his colleagues don't converse in English. And we realize slowly, with the unfolding of both the plot and scenery, that nothing is as it seems. Both grow, at first imperceptibly, to something larger and stranger.

Things are never so strange, though, that the reader becomes lost, and we never really lose sight, thanks to our dedicated detective, of the plot: this is a murder mystery. But by the time we are well into the mystery, we are also well into the world Mieville has created to house it, and it is a fascinating, dangerous, foreign, strange place. Things Borlú knows are mentioned, dropped like clues and sometimes never picked up. But it all contributes to the flavour of the story and the world.

What I think I loved most, aside from everything, was the solution to the mystery. There are labyrinthine twists and turns throughout the whole story, red herrings aplenty, some of which are immediately discarded by both the reader and the Inspector, some of which are discarded by one or the other, and some of which are believed in doggedly until they are simply clearly not plausible any more. Barrelling towards the conclusion, even right in the climax, no one is quite sure what or who to believe anymore -- not the Inspector, and not the reader. I was in total suspense. And I don't think I can tell you anything else without ruining something, so I won't. But if anyone has read this book and wants to tell me what you thought of the way the crime is solved and what really happened, by all means do so in the comments. Rest assured that the way Miéville handles his story is perfect in every way. I am still marveling over it days later.

Most remarkable in all of this is that while this book is a fantasy, and couldn't be what it is without the fantastic elements, it's absolutely at heart a gritty murder mystery and conspiracy thriller. If you don't like fantasy, or are scared to try it, try this book anyways. It may not change your mind about fantasy, but you will have read a superlative mystery.

So, as you can see, highly, highly, highly recommended. An absolutely remarkable book. One of my best reading experiences in ages, and that is saying something. I will not only be buying it for myself, but I'll be buying it for several people I know, too.

on the HarperCollins/OverDrive lending limits

2011-02-28T12:39:00.006-05:00

I don't like to get political here, and I think I've maybe only done it one other time in the past two years that I've been writing this blog. But because of the timing of all of this, and because I think e-books and digital libraries a lot (ask fishy) I have a multitude of thoughts on the whole HarperCollins/OverDrive fiasco that is being plastered all over the library social media world today. I think Jessamyn over at librarian.net does a better summary and round-up than I can, so I point you in that direction.

But there are a couple things I want to say. First of all is that anyone who reads books, be they paper or electronic, needs to take note of this. Yes, those of us who don't have e-readers yet, who still love our paper books, we are safe from idiotic moves such as those by HarperCollins, Amazon, MacMillan and Simon and Schuster to limit lending and/or ownership rights for e-books. But let's face it: the way the world is changing, e-books are here to stay. And that means that paper books, while I doubt they will disappear entirely in my lifetime, are going to become harder to find and more expensive to purchase. Unless something dramatic changes, I don't think it's fair to ourselves to pretend this is not the case.

So cases like this, where publishers want to put heavy restrictions on the use of e-books, are important. They set precedents. And while I think it's in the best interests of the publishers to stop copying the music industry heavyweights by panicking and doing things that are counter to good business practices (and then blaming the rise in piracy on Those Damn Kids) I also think that we as consumers do bear some responsibility for letting them get away with it. The fact that Amazon, despite their innumberable sins against intellectual freedom and property rights, are still North American market leaders in e-reader and e-book sales is my case in point.

Not that I think libraries are coming up roses in this either. The immediate reaction among many has been to set up a boycott of HarperCollins until the situation is resolved. Counterproductive, in my opinion, not to mention counter to everything libraries stand for. I'm not wild about a boycott at this stage for two reasons, the first of which is key for me:

1) We limit patron access because of an "internal" (to the world of books) dispute. While some patrons may understand why, the vast majority won't care beyond the fact that they can't get the latest title when they want it. Along with the fact that I am philosophically opposed to limiting reader access for any reason, as should any professional librarian be, we will damage our own standing with our patrons by voluntarily limiting access. Alienating the people who pay our wages and provide the money to build our collections? It's both hypocritical and bad business.

2) The speed with with this boycott call has happened screams kneejerk reaction. It is an adversarial stance, furthering the problem rather than solving it. While a boycott may be an appropriate tool at some stage in negotiations (though again, see my first point), at this point it reads like a playground fight: "You stole my ball! I am kicking over your sandcastle!" We need to give HarperCollins good reasons to get along with us, rather than screaming bloody murder. It is to libraries' detriment when publishers die; it is (though many don't seem to believe it yet) to publishers' detriment when libraries die. Kneejerk boycotts are not helpful in getting this point across forcefully.

Yes, that first point of mine handicaps libraries by taking away a key bargaining chip. But no one said that being a professional librarian would be easy. I'm not suggesting we sit by and weep and gnash our teeth and whine about how mean the publishers are because they won't play with us, either.

There's a really excellent document being disseminated through the library blogosphere right now, and I'm going to post it here. It's not the whole solution, but publicising the problem -- taking it beyond library walls and to the people who this sort of problem really affects, the readers and the future readers -- this is one way to make it clear that we believe that there's a better way. This is not how e-books are working now, but it's absolutely how I believe they should be working.

I originally saw it on the Librarian by Day blog, but have also seen it since on Information Wants to be Free and Confessions of a Science Librarian. The original document was written by Sarah Houghton-Jan of the superlative Librarian in Black blog.

***

The E-Book User's Bill of Rights

Every eBook user should have the following rights:

the right to use eBooks under guidelines that favor access over proprietary limitations
the right to access eBooks on any technological platform, including the hardware and software the user chooses
the right to annotate, quote passages, print, and share eBook content within the spirit of fair use and copyright
the right of the first-sale doctrine extended to digital content, allowing the eBook owner the right to retain, archive, share, and re-sell purchased eBooks

I believe in the free market of information and ideas.

I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can flourish when their works are readily available on the widest range of media. I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can thrive when readers are given the maximum amount of freedom to access, annotate, and share with other readers, helping this content find new audiences and markets. I believe that eBook purchasers should enjoy the rights of the first-sale doctrine because eBooks are part of the greater cultural cornerstone of literacy, education, and information access.

Digital Rights Management (DRM), like a tariff, acts as a mechanism to inhibit this free exchange of ideas, literature, and information. Likewise, the current licensing arrangements mean that readers never possess ultimate control over their own personal reading material. These are not acceptable conditions for eBooks.

I am a reader. As a customer, I am entitled to be treated with respect and not as a potential criminal. As a consumer, I am entitled to make my own decisions about the eBooks that I buy or borrow.

I am concerned about the future of access to literature and information in eBooks. I ask readers, authors, publishers, retailers, librarians, software developers, and device manufacturers to support these eBook users’ rights.

These rights are yours. Now it is your turn to take a stand. To help spread the word, copy this entire post, add your own comments, remix it, and distribute it to others. Blog it, Tweet it (#ebookrights), Facebook it, email it, and post it on a telephone pole.

To the extent possible under law, the person who associated CC0 with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

***

re-read The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

2011-02-28T09:16:00.001-05:00

The Wee Free Men

by Sir Terry Pratchett

Random House, 2004

317 pages

I love this book. I don't think there's anything much else I can say; I love it. I love it as much this time around as when I first read it, and was finally convinced that perhaps the Discworld was a place I might like to spend significant brain time in.

My book club, the one that reads genre fiction, is reading this. This is definitely one of the big advantages of running a book club where the members are basically all, "You pick! We'll try anything once!" It has come at a fortuitous time for me, when I'm not really feeling like reading at all and when I am in the need of something to cheer me. This book cheers me, but not in a sappy or vacant way (not that there's anything wrong with books that do that -- I am all for a sappy, vacant pick-me-up sometimes). It is funny, very funny, and it is linguistically a pleasure to read, and it is also touching and thoughtful. One of the few books that has made me both laugh out loud and cry a little. I didn't cry this time because I knew what to expect, and I was on lunch break at work. If I had been at home I think it probably would have been a different scene.

Upon re-reading, I am so pleased to report that it holds up to my initial adoration. Tiffany is the character I remembered, a little too clever but sometimes only nine years old, and well aware of her oddness; the Nac Mac Feegle are incredible and hilarious and both very wise and very unwise and extremely not-human. This time through, I picked up more on the themes of belonging and loss than I did the first time, I think. The inevitable passing of time and change and loss and how difficult it is, but also how universal. And while a book dealing with that might seem a little too heavy to be cheering, it's also very much about making full use of the time that we have -- enjoying it thoroughly, and making our mark in whatever way is available to us.

And did I mention this book is funny? I have not encountered too many authors who can get that perfect balance between the serious and the absurd, the funny and the sad. Not in a way that gives full honour to both sides of the coin, rather than deprecating one at the expense of the other. The humour isn't dark, it is full of amazement and joy, and the sadness isn't silly or played down. Because of this, the book feels real, despite its fantasy setting, in a way that sometimes other fantasy does not. This book is one of the best arguments I have for taking fantasy seriously.

I'm not exactly sure what we'll talk about at the book club. The discussion questions (and there are some!) are very geared towards the YA audience, and not really meaty enough for this group that I have. One of the members has the illustrated version; I can see discussing whether or not her reading experience was different. We have some fantasy fans and others who have never picked up a fantasy in their lives; and we have some who grumbled a little (very politely) about reading a YA book. So I'd like to see if this bucked expectations, or entrenched the Pratchett neophytes in their relative positions. I am a little nervous that someone (or all of them) might have hated it, although I can't really see how that would be possible. I suppose if they did, discussing their reactions will lend me a little bit of perspective I clearly don't have!

Overall, my gushing from the previous time I read this book stands. I love it; I think everyone should give it a chance and read it once, whether you think you like fantasy or not. It stands out for me as one of the best books I've ever read in my life, from many different perspectives (writing, characters, content, philosophy), and I would recommend it to anyone with an open mind.

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

2011-02-21T09:39:00.000-05:00

The Thief

by Megan Whalen Turner

Puffin Books, 1996

219 pages

I have been hearing about this book, and this series, for years. As long as I've been reading book blogs. It crops up throughout the blogosphere every once in a while, which is a fair bit of staying power for a YA book; when I first heard about it, I expected it to be a recent publication. Turns out it was a Newbery Honour book in 1997, which is about the time I would have read it happily as a teen if I had known it existed.

I think, unfortunately, there were a few expectations in play here. I have not heard anything from anyone who dislikes this book, and plenty from people who adore it and Gen, the main character, unreservedly. The praise is well deserved, as the book is excellent. It's not that there was anything wrong, or bad. I just didn't fall in love with it the way I had hoped to, which is always a bit of a disappointment.

So. We meet Gen as he is called out of prison into the magus' office, where he is recruited for a secret mission to steal a jewel so old as to be mythical. He has made a boast to the wrong people: "I can steal anything." And he backed that up with stealing something he shouldn't have on a dare, and then bragging about it publicly. After a too-long stint in the king's prison, he and the magus, the magus' two apprentices, and a soldier head off into the mountains, into the wilds of the enemy country of Attolia, to find and steal the jewel.

It's a simple adventure/quest storyline, and its success is in the telling and the world-building. The world is based, we are told in the author's note (which happily appears after the story, as is always preferrable), on ancient Greece. Reading this so shortly after reading Libraries in the Ancient World made the world seem almost sharper and more real to me; the smells, the sights, the baking heat, all of which I already had on the brain. I suspect that the world is strong enough to stand on its own without help, though, strengthened by the myths sprinkled liberally throughout the text. These are given to us as stories told to the characters by each other, and it worked really well.

It's hard for me to write a lot more about this book without spoilers, and believe me, you do not want spoilers. I had carefully avoided reading any myself, and I'm not about to ruin anything for anyone reading this. Suffice to say that what Turner set out to do, she accomplished magnificently with me, leaving me at the end of the book to admire her skill and forethought with what I can only describe as awe.

Despite the fact that I didn't love it the way I wanted to, I do recommend this book to anyone, really. It will be enjoyed by teens through adults, particularly those who like either history or fantasy, but I don't think either are a requirement. Gen is a bit of a prickly, slippery character, but a fascinating one without good analogues in other fantasy I've read lately. It's always good to discover something new, and I'm glad I did. This book deserves the accolades it gets, and I am not surprised at all at its staying power.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

2011-02-14T10:30:00.000-05:00

The Moonstone

by Wilkie Collins

Oxford University Press, 1999 (originally published 1868)

552 pages

This book took me forever to read. Happily, not in a bad way -- I've just been experiencing a definite slow-down in reading speed and down-turn in interest. Again. Sigh. It will change, I am sure. All that said, I have rarely stuck with a book as long as I did with The Moonstone, and there are several reasons I did.

First of all, it's excellent. This is an entertaining, interesting, easy read. It does start out a bit slowly -- a lot slowly, in a lot of ways -- but never once did "slow" equate to "boring." That's a feat in itself. Second, it was written (as @xicanti reminded me on Twitter, when I was feeling like a reading lump) as a serial. It works really well with periodic breaks in the reading. I never felt like I'd forgotten what was happening, or who people were, or what clues had gone before. This is with sometimes several days between picking it up, or even a week. I always settled back in quickly and easily. And that was really cool. In fact, it's kind of an ideal sort of read for me right now -- something really short that can be read in a matter of hours, or something of an indeterminate length that I can pick up and put down as necessary without feeling lost.

So! For those of you who don't know, The Moonstone is a mystery. It is often listed as the original mystery/detective novel. Wilkie Collins, that fascinating man, wrote it in 1868 as a serial published in his friend Charles Dickens' publication All the Year Round. A fantastic diamond of sinister, possibly cursed origins is left to Rachel Verinder, a young noblewoman, by her nefarious uncle upon his death. She wears it the night of her twenty-first birthday party, despite her mother's, cousin's, and closest servants' wishes. That night, it is stolen from her cabinet by a thief unknown. This sets into motion a series of dramatic events around the household, a tangle of relationships, events, and clues that even the greatest detective in England is hard-pressed to unravel.

As a fan of mysteries, particularly cozies and Sherlock Holmes, it was really quite fun to see some of the conventions pop up, knowing that this was probably the first or one of the first instances, and knowing that the original readers would have been drawn in to the twists and turns of the labyrinthine plot. At this point, I've read enough in the genre that some of the outcomes were clear to me at the beginning (not all, though!) and yet that didn't deter from my enjoyment.

Some of the specific conventions I noticed were, of course, the red herrings -- so many! And so skillfully deployed. The closed circle of suspects, all available and under suspicion thanks to a dinner party the night before the theft. And the detective! Sergeant Cuff, a man who could easily have been Sherlock Holmes' grandfather. He clearly deserves some of the credit for The Great Man: his slightly off-putting manner, his careful observation of the evidence and his attention to the slightest detail, his exasperation with the local constables, his clear intellectual superiority. There was a dramatic twist near the end, and a denouement that satisfied all the remaining questions.

But there were also things that made this read fresh and interesting. For one thing, I had no idea before I started that this was an epistolary novel, in the form of reports written for the record by the participants in the case. Collins' attention to his characters' voices was meticulous. There are several different narrators, though the longest portion of the tale is told by Gabriel Betteredge, the chief steward of the manor house in which the theft takes place. We can get a lot from what Betteredge tells us, even when he doesn't realize what he is revealing -- and he also reveals a lot about himself as a person, in what he says, how he says it, and what he doesn't say. This is the case for each of the narrators, but especially for Betteredge, from whom we hear the most. He can be sexist, extremely xenophobic, and astonishingly self-absorbed -- but he's a fully-developed, fully-rounded character and I found myself liking him for his good points while still being aware of his flaws. Given that his flaws are a difficult sort for me to get over, it's no small feat that I generally didn't mind spending time in his head.

Contained within these narratives are some surprisingly modern views. Collins' female characters are strong; and if they seem a little melodramatic, well, the entire book is written to be a bit over-the-top (it was a sensational novel, after all.) The foreign characters, the Indians, are treated with respect by the author as well -- they are operating under different cultural mores than the narrators, but they treat those they meet with dignity and respect except for those who stand in their way. It's not an entirely flattering treatment, but it's a startlingly even-handed one for the time. The treatment of the character Ezra Jennings, the mysterious and strange doctor's assistant, is even more compassionate and clearly out of character for the times; the poor man is deeply shunned by all in the small rural community where he resides. In Jennings we get the impression that Collins is directly challenging commonly held attitudes and conceptions on class and social conformity; the man is clearly an intelligent, compassionate, decent human being who has been hounded his entire life by a dark secret in his past that has destroyed his present. Held against him by some of the characters and others in the town is not so much his past but his odd appearance, his lack of roots in the local area, and his mysterious lack of history.

Sadly, sometimes one wonders if we've really changed all that much.

Highly, highly recommended book. Don't let the fact that Collins was a contemporary of Dickens scare you off, if you are (as I am) extremely wary of Dickens and other authors who were paid by the word/installment. Collins was an extremely talented writer, and The Moonstone reads easily. It's fun to read for its history and as a snapshot of English society, and even more fun for a fan of mystery and detective novels. But it stands on its own merits as well, and it's easy to see why it has stood the test of time.

Libraries in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson

2011-02-07T13:01:00.001-05:00

Libraries in the Ancient World

by Lionel Casson

Yale University Press, 2001

177 pages

I like history, and I like libraries. This book has been on my radar since 2008, when it was reviewed at Bookwyrme's Lair. Just that brief little blurb rocketed this book onto my list, because: history, libraries. Yes.

It's not a very long book. The page count includes several pages of notes and an index. The writing is mostly quite readable if sometimes (infrequently) a little stilted in the way of academic writing. The descriptions are often evocative enough that with the accompanying (grainy, black and white) pictures, I can visualize what an ancient Roman or Greek library might have looked like. I can picture the people, the books, the spaces.

I like that Casson leaves some things to us to infer, as well, as when discussing theft and/or damage in the private libraries of Assyria. He just goes straight to the source text for us, with an ancient version of a book plate and theft policy:

Clay tablet of Ashurbanipal, King of the World, King of Assyria, who trusts in Ashur and Ninlil. Your lordship is without equal, Ashur, King of the Gods! Whoever removes [the tablet], writes his name in place of my name, may Ashur and Ninlil, angered and grim, cast him down, erase his name, his seed, in the land.

Or perhaps one prefers the caution against damaging a book (this one is my favourite, because it was clearly written by one hella pissed off librarian):

He who breaks this tablet or puts it in water or rubs it until you cannot recognize it [and] cannot make it be understood, may Ashur, Sin, Shamash, Adad and Ishtar, Bel, Nergal, Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela, Ishtar of Bit Kidmurri, the gods of heaven and earth and the gods of Assyria, may all these curse him with a curse which cannot be relieved, terrible and merciless, as long as he lives, may they let his name, his seed, be carried off from the land, may they put his flesh in a dog's mouth!

You can bet that put the fear of the gods in some careless library patron. It's a good reminder that there really is nothing new under the sun.

Actually, that said, the public library as we might recognize it was really an invention of the Greeks, quite some time after Ashurbanipal was cursing the seed out of the rascals who stole and desecrated his private books. And though Casson works his way through the Assyrians and slightly before all the way through to the beginning of the Middle Ages, the bulk of his time is spent showing us Greek and Roman libraries, both private and public. This is, one realizes, because that's where a lot of the evidence is -- earlier and there's not a lot to go on, later and we're out of the Ancient period Casson is investigating.

Which leads me to two things: the first is that this is a great book that investigates one aspect of a culture I know less about than I wish I did. My study of Greek culture is... extremely limited to say the least, and my study of Roman culture is limited to a Grade 10 Latin class. I took a Classics course in first year uni, but there we mostly looked at mythology, not culture (to the extent that it can be separated, which is actually quite a bit.) Therefore, I think this book will be a good re-read once I've done a bit more investigating into those cultures. I'm particularly taken with the pre-Greek cultures. I got a lot out of this little book, but I think I would have gotten even more if I had a better depth of knowledge of the time periods and cultures covered.

The second is that the cultures covered are Western precursors, which is of course the tradition in which I stand here today. I would love to read something similar about Eastern precursors. Well, to be honest, I would probably do well to read something about contemporary Eastern libraries. I don't even know if there is such a thing, though I assume there must be something like what we have here. Anyone have any suggested readings for me?

Overall, I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in libraries, or anyone interested in the history of books or reading or literature in ancient Western cultures. Anyone who knows ancient Greek and/or Roman will find this an interesting addition and in-depth investigation into one aspect of those cultures, too. Extremely fascinating, generally well-written, and I'm very glad fishy was able to find it for me.

The Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters

2011-01-31T09:19:00.001-05:00

The Curse of the Pharaohs

by Elizabeth Peters, read by Susan O'Malley

Blackstone Audio, 2005

9 discs (unabridged)

I have a habit of downloading things a bit at a time -- that is, with the Elizabeth Peters mysteries, I tend to download and burn only three discs at once, for some reason. Well, for several reasons, none of which compensate for the fact that I get through three discs just quickly enough for my online library download to expire, such that I then have to wait another week or two to download and burn the next three discs.

Which is why it's taken me so long to listen to this. It's not that book wasn't good or enjoyable. It was great. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I just had to wait between downloads. I'm still working through the Susan O'Malley books since that's what I have access to currently, but I'm keeping an eye out for the Recorded Books versions done by Barbara Rosenblat, as per Nan's instructions.

So, this is the second of the Amelia Peabody mysteries by Elizabeth Peters. It didn't disappoint. I'm avoiding summarizing and other spoilers for the first book in this review, but when I continue with the series I don't necessarily expect that to be possible. We'll enjoy it while it lasts.

I really enjoyed this book, almost as much as I enjoyed the first. The sophomore effort in a longstanding series is always a hump that I, as a reader, am anxious about -- sometimes the second book just really can't possibly live up to the shininess of the first book, and that's always disappointing. But if The Curse of the Pharaohs wasn't quite as good as Crocodile on the Sandbank, that doesn't mean it was bad. It was quite a lot of fun, of the sort that I had expected to come from Amelia, and the mystery in this one was even slightly harder to figure out than the first one. An extra abundance of suspects helps with that, as does the fact that the foreshadowing is handled a little more gently. And when I say a little, I mean just the tiniest bit, really. Subtle foreshadowing is not an Elizabeth Peters strong point. Or perhaps I should say an Amelia Peabody strong point, because it is in Amelia's voice that we receive the entire story. These books are written almost like a diary, but more a report; dispatches from the field, perhaps, with Amelia the first person limited narrator.

One thing I noticed in this book slightly more than the first was that Peters handles Amelia with gentle hands, but isn't above letting the reader see where Amelia's faults -- and faulty reasonings -- lie. There are occasions where Amelia will suggest something and the reader (or in my case, listener) will know that there is a different explanation, or she will tell us something and we will immediately grasp the significance of what she is saying but she will not, and sometimes never does. I like this about the books -- it's not that I like feeling superior to my narrator (there is no chance of that; Amelia is just too delightful) but that it requires me to do some thinking on my own, rather than having Amelia spoonfeed me everything.

The reasons I don't think this book is quite what the first was? Well, the murder mystery isn't quite as original as the sort of mystery Amelia was solving in the first book. And the secondary characters, perhaps because there were several more and varied, weren't nearly as well-fleshed as the first set. As with the first, this one was slow to get started (though charming from the beginning, too) and I found I didn't care quite as much about anyone except the recurring characters by the end of this book the way I had cared for the secondary characters in the end of the first book. I am hoping that does change in the third book, because it was part of the reason I loved Crocodile on the Sandbank so much.

I'm still recommending this series to anyone looking for a lighter cozy mystery with a fascinating, out-of-the-ordinary setting. Amelia's love of place (and perhaps Elizabeth Peters'?) shines through in her descriptions of Victorian-era Egypt. One doesn't have to have an interest in classical Egyptian archaeology to enjoy the characters and plot, and my knowledge is very rudimentary, though growing thanks to these books. For anyone who has read these books and is interested in the archaeology, I'd recommend Harry Thurston's excellent and readable (if long) book on the Dakhleh Oasis Project, Island of the Blessed. It's an archaeological project of which Amelia would thoroughly approve, I think.

Japanese Gardening by Charles Chesshire, photos by Alex Ramsay

2011-01-25T09:08:00.008-05:00

Japanese Gardening

by Charles Chesshire, photos by Alex Ramsay

Aquamarine, 2006

160 pages

It must be late January. Every year, like clockwork, the seed catalogues come and we have a few gorgeous, somewhat warm sunny days (which soon tilt back into frigidly appropriate dead-of-winter temperatures), and I start to feel the draw of the garden again. January is far too early to start planting even the earliest seeds indoors around here. I've got at least until mid-March before I dare to attempt that. So the next best thing is garden books, and I expect there will be a smattering of them from here on out until I'm actually out in the garden in the sun and soil.

I've always really liked the traditional Japanese garden ethic. I didn't know anything about it, really, except that there is something I appreciate instinctively about it. So this book, with its absolutely gorgeous cover and beginner attitude, appealed to me strongly when it came back across the desk.

Having not read any Japanese gardening books before, this appears to me to be a good entry into the aesthetic. It's very basic in some ways, although it's not at all a basic gardening book. There is an understanding that you, as a reader, have gardened before in a Western style, probably for a while, and are now turning your sights towards designing a Japanese-style garden. It's hard to say whether or not it fulfills its purpose, as I don't have the kind of space, time, or (most important) restraint to implement almost any of the ideas in this book. Generally, these are big gardens for big properties, and only a very few ideas for smaller gardens were briefly touched on. Which in a way is odd, because it's not like most Japanese gardeners have acres of space to play with.

As garden porn, it fulfills its purpose -- the photos are beautiful, and the layout of the book itself is very pretty. As garden erotica, perhaps not so much -- I was left wanting quite a lot more. I was lead to believe, for example, that there would be some discussion of contemporary Japanese gardening, and there were perhaps one or two glancing blows, mostly in captions of photographs. Along the same lines, there were sometimes photographs that were very incompletely explained; one caption discusses a photograph of a "bandaged" pine, which was probably very symbolic and/or functional, but there was nothing at all in the text to explain anything about it.

Done well, on the other hand, was a good chronology of design styles and a good explanation of design influences through history. It wasn't in-depth, but it was good enough that I now know I want to know more, and could at least name and explain a little bit about the four traditional Japanese garden styles and where they came from. Also, while Chesshire explains the design ethic, he touches often on the fact that to really understand the Japanese garden, one needs to understand the spiritual influences and not just the hard design. I think that's probably very important for Western gardeners to at least acknowledge as a major part of a Japanese garden, when attempting to design one of their own; Chesshire feels the same.

Also good were the glossary and plant lists. The bibliography was very small, which was a bit of a disappointment.

Overall, far too brief, I think, but nice to look at and a fine entry point for someone interested but not committed to the traditional Japanese garden. It was enough for me to recognize that while I appreciate the ideas, they really won't work for me. Not at this point in my gardening life, anyways. I don't have enough restraint. I love my flowers and my colours and my scents. The search for my own garden design ethic continues...

Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson

2011-01-17T13:45:00.000-05:00

Feathers

by Jacqueline Woodson

G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2007

118 pages

This is a beautiful, simple, complex, shining little book. It's a book that I'm sure would mean different things to me at different ages -- it's got so many layers, some of which I haven't sorted yet. When I suggested we read it for the parent-child book club, I'd only read pieces and several reviews. I'm a little scared now, because it is a very complex book, and the main character is older by years than the kids in the group -- I have some as young as six -- but I'm also really happy, because I think the adults are going to get a lot out of this, and at the same time there is plenty of fodder there for the kids to think about. And lots of fodder for discussion both between kid and parent and between our group.

The story is a relatively simple thing: Frannie is eleven years old and in school at Price Elementary in New York. It's the seventies, and the schools are still segregated, if informally -- Frannie and her family are black, and they live on one side of the highway. All the white people live on the other side and go to school there. But one day a white boy walks into Frannie's class, and that's the beginning of a really gorgeous story about family, friendship, fitting in, bullying, memory, and hope.

Woodson has language wrapped around her little finger. I believe the woman could do whatever she wanted with it and I would follow happily. More than that, she has that feeling of what it's like to be a child dealing with big questions and difficult situations down. Frannie is often confused, worried, sad, and frustrated, but she's also happy, hopeful, and funny. She's self-involved, but she's starting to look at the world around her with more awareness, beginning to empathize with other kids, and trying to do the right thing.

Add another layer, now: Frannie's older brother Sean is deaf. The relationship between the two kids is beautiful, too. Frannie has the mixture of overprotectiveness and awe for Sean that one might expect to find in a younger sibling who can hear. Sean puts up with her, but more than that, obviously loves her deeply too. They play games, talk, help each other, and occasionally get on each other's nerves. Further, they support each other through a difficult family time: their father is a long-haul trucker (though this is never explicit -- one of the things I like about this book is that Woodson lets the reader figure things out for themselves) and so not often home, and their mother is pregnant again, after several high-risk and ultimately miscarried pregnancies, including an infant that died between Sean and Frannie. The two kids have different perspectives on this, but stick together through it. Aside from their relationship, the little glimpse into the world of a congenitally deaf teenager adds something special to this already special book.

I could keep going, keep digging deeper. The bullying storyline is pretty straightforward, and I think will probably form a core for our discussion of this book next month. Then there's the relationship between Frannie and her best friend Samantha. Sam is extremely religious, the daughter of an evangelical pastor. Frannie's not so much.

This was another aspect I worried about a bit, as we are a public library and I have no idea at all about the religious proclivities of our book club members. I knew that there were Christianity-based religious discussions in it ahead of time, but I decided to go ahead with it anyways for two reasons: one, the kids in the group will already be having the kinds of conversations with others about religion that Frannie is having with Sam; and two, this aspect of the book deals with respect for others' beliefs, not with conversions or Jesus-pushing. This is not a preachy book, and if you're the sort of person (like me) who shies away hard from inspirational or Christian fiction, have no fear. I suspect, frankly, that it's the sort of book that will let people take from it what they will.

I may try to find a good book about a Muslim or Jewish family just for kicks. My feeling from this book club is that they'd totally be in to that. Anyone have any suggestions? Something under 100 pages is best, and though this book had an older protagonist I usually try to keep the protagonists in the 7 - 10 year old range.

The main driver for my choice of this book was that I wanted, for February, a book dealing with black history that wasn't about slavery, the Underground Railroad, or segregation. Those are all topics that the kids will get in school, and it was important to me that they get another dimension of black culture in history, that they know that there's a heck of a lot more to black history than that. There aren't a lot of books for this age group depicting black families or black culture in a way that doesn't explicitly deal with slavery or immediate post-slavery. Feathers was perfect in that respect.

Seriously, this is a kids' book that should be read by everyone, not just kids. I got an incredible amount out of this book, and I don't think I can stress how absolutely perfect, how beautiful this story is. I think that if you have children in your life between the ages of eight and twelve, you should get them this book, and read it with them. If you don't have children in your life, read it anyways. It's a hopeful, multifaceted, gorgeous book, written in such a shining way.

Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen

2011-01-15T11:29:00.001-05:00

Skinny Dip

by Carl Hiaasen

Knopf, 2004

368 pages

I am on a roll with actually reading book club books. I consider two read all the way through a roll, yes, why do you ask?

Especially since this is an adult book even. It's longer than 100 pages! Woot!

And I liked it. I really did. It's a fair ways off my usual beaten path, that of fantasy and/or romance. That said, it included, in some ways, a bit of both. Skinny Dip is a revenge fantasy, and there's a hint of very satisfying, if very peripheral, romance throughout the thing. Plus, this book is funny. It might even be, for some people, laugh out loud funny. I didn't laugh out loud, but that didn't mean I wasn't grinning or appreciating the humour.

Chaz Perrone is a screw-up. He's a biologist who hates all living things, except for beautiful women and the grass on his golf greens. He's married, but not faithfully, and he's a lousy son. He has no ambition, unless you can count making lots of money with as little effort as possible ambitious. Currently, he's doing this by faking water samples in the Florida Everglades to keep a very crooked, very rich industrial farmer in the polluting business. And he's pretty sure his wildlife-loving wife has caught on, so it's over the side of a cruise ship with her. It all seems to have gone perfectly.

Except that Chaz is a screw-up, and Joey's not dead. She's also a champion swimmer. And now that she's been "murdered," she's about to make Chaz's life really miserable.

Hiaasen's sense of humour, which is part of his attraction to many I think, is dark and absurd. Example #1: Joey Perrone's first husband was killed by being flattened by a skydiver whose parachute didn't open. Example #2: Tool, a bodyguard stuck on Chaz by the criminal he works for, is extremely hairy and was mistaken for a bear by a hunter, and now lives with a bullet lodged in his posterior crack. The way the entire story unfolds is like this; unlikely-but-just-likely-enough coincidences and events butting up against each other to make for a gleeful black comedy. Somehow, I enjoy the central characters enough -- larger-than-life though many of them were -- and the plot enough that I wanted to suspend disbelief long enough to get to the end of the story. Of course things like that would never happen (would they?) but for the sake of an enjoyable reading experience, I'll let it pass. And then, by the time I'm halfway through, I'm gobbling it all up.

Because of the things I want to talk about, the this review does include some spoilers. It's really unavoidable in this case. I can say that I think this book in particular is about the journey, not the destination, but if you want to be left wondering about the ultimate fates of the various characters as I was, you're better off stopping here. But first, the recommendations:

Entertaining and smart, I'd recommend this book for adults looking for a funny, somewhat dark but never truly dark story. Those with a weak stomach for a bit of violence, any swearing (there's a lot of it) or sex (though not sexy sex) will not enjoy this book, but those who have ever wanted to see real slimeballs get put through the wringer will. Those who like a bit of an environmental bent to their stories (not always easy to find) will like this book, possibly a lot. As for me, it's not really the sort of thing I would search out, not because it's not well-written or enjoyable, but because it's way far out of my usual reading zones. I'm glad I read it. I don't know that I'll be reading a lot more Hiaasen in the future, but I wouldn't rule it out. Based on this book, I know I'd enjoy something else he's written.

/spoilers begin!

This is a good reading experience. Hiaasen has done such a wonderful job with his characters, both good and bad, that there is quite a lot of delight in seeing things turn out the way the reader hopes they will. Everyone, barring no one, gets what they deserve by the end of the book. It's so incredibly satisfying. The journey to get there is entertaining and very twisted. It's as though Hiaasen took a cast of characters from his head and said to himself, "If I was to write a book set in the kind of world where karma works perfectly in a relatively short amount of time, what would happen to each of these characters?"

And if he is unkind to some of his characters -- Chaz in particular, of course -- the reader can't help but watch with a very satisfied smirk and yes, an incredible amount of schadenfreude. Not just because of what he did to Joey, which was despicable enough (though not despicable enough to merit everything he goes through, I suspect) but because of his entire outlook on life, because of everything he has done or not done that we know about, and because of everything that we don't explicitly know about but suspect. Frankly, the only character who I think got off easy for his crimes was the big bad himself, Red Hammernutt.

Conversely, when we meet and then get to know Tool, the extremely hairy and unpleasant bodyguard, Hiaasen has written him in such a way that the reader actually finds herself sympathizing with the guy and hoping things go better for them than the karmic setup suggests they might. And as we go along in his story, one hopes more and more that things will go all right for the guy, despite the fact that he's almost (but never entirely) repellant. There's a moment when that hope appears dashed -- although one realizes later that one was set up to know it couldn't end like that -- and when Tool gets his happy ending, the reader is relieved and very pleased.

This is the reader's fantasy that Hiaasen is manipulating. He knows that every person out there has entertained the fervent but hopeless desire that people would always get what they deserve. He gives us that in such a way that we don't feel like we're being pandered to, or that he's taking the easy way out. It's an explicit goal of the story. But this is also Hiaasen's fantasy: Hiaasen is a big fan of the Everglades, an advocate for environmental responsibility and sustainable practices. One gets the feeling that Joey's not the only one getting revenge on Chaz, and that Tool's not the only one dealing with Red Hammernutt. Anyone at all who has any feeling for the environment and has often despaired about how it's treated has wished that the people who don't seem to care at all would get a wake-up call, or at least disappear. This adds an extra dimension of catharsis for us. Hiaasen hasn't just wished it, he's written it. I can appreciate that.

All of that said, the very ending, the last paragraphs, did make me squirm just a little. I haven't decided yet whether or not Chaz deserved the open-ended that. It might have gone just a little, just a touch too far. Which I think may have been intentional. Chaz still isn't taking responsibility for anything, and he's still a jerk, but... well. By pushing it that extra little step, Hiaasen has added just a little bit of weight to the gloating reader. Because yes, you wished the worst for him, but did you wish him that?

Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat

2011-01-11T22:34:00.002-05:00

Owls in the Family

by Farley Mowat

Yearling Books, 1996 (originally published in 1962)

91 pages

So, my parent-child book club loved this book, pretty unanimously. The adults had different views on it than the kids did, and I have to say that as someone who had read it both as a kid and as an adult, I had an interesting perspective on it.

I loved this book as a kid. I remembered it as being hilarious, and sometimes a little touching, and just flat out amazing. It started a lifelong love of owls (which, coming from a family of seriously dedicated birdwatchers, I'll admit I was primed for). I remembered it being a lot longer, and there were a lot of things I'd forgotten. Like how Billy (a thinly disguised stand in for Mowat) found the second owl, Weeps. Or the part with the crows. Or the ending, which caused some of the most interesting discussion tonight -- most of us agreed it was way too abrupt, and not nearly as elegant as the rest of the book.

As an adult, the humour doesn't seem as funny, and the discovery of Weeps as well as the crow chapter really stuck out more. And the ultra casual attitude towards wildlife life and death, either at the hands of nature or the hands of humans. And the keeping of ground squirrels and rats in conditions unlikely to make a humane society officer very happy today. In fact, the entire idea of going out into the wild to catch animals to keep as pets makes my inner former environmental educator froth at the mouth. Such a bad idea. But I digress into no-fun-adult-territory.

It is still funny, and as an adult, it's definitely worth reading, if only for an appreciation of how much things have changed, and in some ways, how much poorer we are for that. How many kids get to disappear onto the prairie for a day with a pal, wandering around and looking for wildlife? How many kids get to hang out in an old cave dug by a long-gone itinerant next to a river, and maybe stay the night by themselves? Next to none, certainly around here, though we never really had much in Ontario to speak of anyways -- nothing like they have out West. There is a sense of wonder about this book, a casual wisdom about the wild Billy has that seems very unusual, and very precious, to me now.

The prairie really lives in this book, and the abundance of wildlife is remarkable. The casual attitude taken towards it comes from its abundance; wildlife is everywhere, largely a nuisance or alternatively, an entertainment. While it's clear that Billy and his friends love animals, it's a childlike, utilitarian love -- the sort of love, though, that matures into something deep and meaningful and much more respectful, if encouraged carefully by the adults in a child's life. This book made me reflect on how the way we treat other living things, and each other, really changes as we grow up. The way we relate to the world around us changes, too.

And I think that's part of what makes this book so valuable, is that it is told in such a pitch-perfect way for both its times and its protagonist's age. There are no excuses made for what I can see as an adult might have been a... well, a way of relating to the natural world that I might have winced at, if not actively disapproved. The more I think about it, the more I realize that this is one of the reasons this book is so loved by children, and such a valuable story to have in the children's classics canon. Highly recommended for reading and discussing with the children in your life.

ps. from the former outdoor ed teacher: Owls? Make terrible, terrible pets. Please, for the love of all that is holy, don't ever get a child an owl for a pet.

The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe

2011-01-07T13:20:00.001-05:00

The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists

by Gideon Defoe

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004

131 pages

At one point I described this book to fishy as "Like Monty Python, but less subtle." Take from that what you will. It perhaps goes without saying that it's also not as good as Monty Python, but there: I said it anyways.

They would have hugged right there and then, but were interrupted by a further crash as first another cannonball and then a pirate screamed in through the window. The two men stood stock-still.

"Don't make any sudden movements," whispered FitzRoy to his companion. "Remember -- he's more scared of us than we are of him."

"That's bears, you idiot," hissed Darwin out of the side of his mouth. "I don't think it applies to pirates."

That's right: the scientists of whom the title speaks are none other than Captain FitzRoy (who apparently had some interest in meteorology; I actually learned something from this book) and Charles Darwin. Put on to the Beagle by a tricksy fellow pirate who assures them the little ship is carrying all the gold from the Bank of England, our intrepid, and incredibly stupid, pirate crew sinks the famous ship. Feeling somewhat badly about it, they invite the crew aboard and set sail for England, taking Darwin, FitzRoy, and the first Man-panzee in the world, Mister Bobo. This is because Darwin's brother Erasmus has been kidnapped by the villainous Bishop of Oxford, and dire consequences are hinted at if Darwin presents Mister Bobo to society. The pirates, who were in need of an adventure anyways, decide to help.

It's madcap, certainly, and at the beginning I was worried it would be so incredibly gimmicky and maybe even too silly for me, which is saying something. I had no feeling for any of the characters, the plot seemed hazy at best, and the humour felt like it would wear thin with neither plot nor characters to work with. But the thing is, Defoe seems to know the line. He doesn't overstay his welcome. This little book is exactly the right length, and a plot does surface; and what do you know, I actually developed enough of an idea of who the characters were to take an interest in them. I became particularly fond of the pirate with a scarf, who never has a name but is the Pirate Captain's second in command. Actually, the Pirate Captain grew on me too, despite myself.

I had come into reading this with some idea that it might be Pratchett-like, being British satire, and I'm pretty sure something I read somewhere lead me in that direction. I think that's where any feelings of letdown come from. I don't think there's a lot to say about society at large or really any deep themes running through it, despite the vague promise that there might be something about science versus religion. Or if there is, I wasn't induced to read closely enough to pick them out. I did learn a few things -- the footnotes, rather than being hilarious asides, are actually largely factual, adding historical context and even explaining jokes. Which... well, it seemed a little incongruous, really, and in many cases completely pointless. Though did you know that the reason our fingers go pruny in water is that the oily, waterproof layer on our skin washes off, leading water to enter our epidermis through osmosis, thus making it larger and therefore wrinkly? I think I did know that at one point, but now I know it again.

The point being, I don't think it's the book's fault that I didn't get quite what I wanted or expected. Once in my hands, it never really pretended to be anything other than what it was: a very silly adventure story with maybe enough information to tweak an interest in actually finding out more about the real Darwin. Perhaps I will finally pick up The Voyage of the Beagle.

If some clever troupe of actors with a bent for Pythonesque humour got hold of these stories, I would watch them. As a book, Pirates! with Scientists is entertaining but probably ultimately forgettable; ultra-light. I would read another Pirates! adventure, or even this one again, if it was easily handy, but to be honest I don't see myself bothering with interlibrary loan again. Not quite enough substance or hilarity to make it worth the work for our technician, but there is enough there that I don't regret reading it. Other adventures the pirates undertake include joining Ahab and going after a certain white whale, hanging out with communists, and meeting Napoleon.

first lines meme 2010

2010-12-31T13:56:00.001-05:00

Once again, I thought I'd pull together the first sentence of every month on this blog. I do like going back and looking at old entries; it's narcissistic, sure, but it's also interesting to see what I was thinking -- and what I was writing. I tend to feel like I was better at blogging in the past, and sometimes looking back reminds me that I'm not a worse writer now, I'm just lazier. Which is true. Particularly towards the end of the year, they got much shorter, less detailed, and I think, less useful even to me when I'm trying to figure out whether I recommend a book I've read to someone or not (it's true -- I use my own blog for those purposes sometimes.)

January

Has anyone else out there ever laughed so hard they cried at a passage in a book that, upon inspection, others do not find so funny?

February

Six more weeks of winter, and so today I am breaking out the winter haiku plus one that reminds me to look forward to summer.

March

I have to say, as much as I enjoy the series, I am sort of running out of things to say about Ranma 1/2.

April

Some books are good.

May

Impulse buys.

June

It's probably too rarely that I review children's picture books here (um, I think I have done it once before).

July

There's something a little daunting about writing a review of this series so late in the game.

August

This is the first of a series, the Chronicles of the Necromancer.

September

And now for something completely different.

October

If you were not already aware (and very few were) we've been away for a week.

November

I. Heart. This. Book.

December

There has been a delay; I don't deny it.

I look at this and wonder if somewhere around the end of March I'd stopped paying attention to the first lines of my blog entries again -- it seems I must have. There appears to be a noticeable cutoff! Also, this exercise has confirmed for me that I am possibly a bit too fond of the parentheses, a suspicion I have had for a little while. Perhaps a parenthetical diet is necessary. Perhaps that will be my New Year's Resolution: Stop and Think Before Adding that Parenthetical Clause.

So here we go -- onward through year three. Happy New Year, everyone! May your 2011 be your best year yet.

Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman

2010-12-29T17:49:00.000-05:00

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

by Anne Fadiman

Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1998

157 pages

A sonnet might look dinky, but it was somehow big enough to accommodate love, war, death, and O. J. Simpson. You could fit the whole world in there if you shoved hard enough.

The above quote could just as easily describe this wonderful book of essays as sonnets. It is a small book, but so large in bookish scope and quotable bits and things to think about that I am afraid this review may be fairly long. It's a book that makes me excited about reading. I don't need much encouragement, it's true, but maybe I have lately; maybe this book has hit me at just the right time.

Ex Libris is a smallish collection of essays on books, reading, literature, and literary lives by editor and writer Anne Fadiman. The essays are short -- five or six pages each -- and they fly by too quickly. I actually felt quite saddened that there were no more at the end, and that's always a good feeling when it comes to books.

I think what I like most is that I don't always agree with Fadiman; I felt more like I was having a discussion with her as I read -- well, she was persuading and orating, and I was interjecting and commenting. I think she's fascinating, I learned many things, I love her outlook on reading and most things literary, but. This is a woman, who in the same essay, can write the absolutely marvelous sentence:

I can think of few better ways to introduce a child to books than to let her stack them, upend them, rearrange them, and get her fingerprints all over them.

And then she will go on to write in the same essay,

Our father's library spanned the globe and three millenia, although it was particularly strong in English poetry and fiction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The only junk, relatively speaking, was science fiction;

Which makes me want to bash the book against the wall. It's not just that it's a horribly snobby thing to write (because I have come, at this point, to the conclusion that Fadiman comes by her literary snobbery honestly, and some people are like that, and fine) but it makes me sad for her. If an entire genre like science fiction (and what must she think of fantasy? or god forbid, romance?) can be dismissed so easily, how much she is missing. The remarkable, brain-tingling writing of Samuel Delany, for example, is better than most literary fiction I have read. Ursula K. Le Guin, with things to say about gender and belonging and truth and loyalty in the most creative ways. Entire challenging, interesting, shining works of art dismissed as junk because they happen to be written in genre. I know I can be a bit sensitive to this, but that sort of thing always feels like a punch in the gut, a complete dismissal of something that I both enjoy for fun and intellectually.

It is a testament to how much I enjoy these essays that I didn't throw the book, and in fact just shook my head in bemusement and kept reading. Because, like there is more to science fiction than space ships and aliens, there is far more to these essays than one throwaway comment, telling though it is. And it doesn't hurt, once in a while, to think about what it is I love about reading, and why I like reading what I do, and what books mean to me. And think, in detail, about how I might defend that position to someone like Fadiman -- or whether or not it needs to be defended at all.

Other essays are about books as objects, about used bookstores, about compulsive proofreading, about personalized inscriptions, about marrying personal libraries when the owners marry, and one of my favourites: an essay about the his/her dilemma. It deals with Fadiman's personal wrestling with gendered language, about the difficulty of sometimes placing equality over beauty in a sentence, and why it is necessary. From that came the following passage:

Long ago, my father wrote something similar: "The best essays [do not] develop original themes. The develop original men, their composers." Since my father, unlike E. B. White, is still around to testify, I called him up last night and said, "Be honest. What was really in your mind when you wrote those sentences?" He replied, "Males. I was thinking about males. I viewed the world of literature -- indeed, the entire world of artistic creation -- as a world of males, and so did most writers. Any writer of fifty years ago who denies that is lying. Any male writer, I mean."

I believe that although my father and E. B. White were not misogynists, they didn't really see women, and their language reflected and reinforced that blind spot.

This is particularly interesting to me given that Fadiman's father and E. B. White were both married to very accomplished women of letters, and both relied on them for artistic assistance and delighted in sharing the world of literature with them. Fascinating, thought-provoking stuff.

Fadiman is not a common reader, nor is she a common writer. She is erudite, clever, interesting, funny, and replete with new and unusual words (I am going to follow her example and list words in this book that I have never encountered before -- it is going to be a long one). It occurs to me that someone less talented may have come off as patronizing or full-of-herself, but Fadiman's essays come off instead as full of joie de vivre and completely, head-over-heels in love with language and the written word. She isn't using her fancy words to impress. She is using them because they exactly embody what she wants to say, and she just happens to have them handy for use. Her vocabulary becomes a gift to the reader.

This book is delightful, and I need to find my own copy. I'll also be keeping an eye out for her newer collection of essays, At Large and at Small. I recommend Ex Libris highly to anyone who loves reading, language, and most especially books.

another year of blogging successfully, though slightly less so

2010-12-26T09:53:00.000-05:00

Has it really been two years? Really?

I suppose so. This year has been marked, or perhaps I should say marred, by a significant drop in reading volume. From often two books a week or more, I am sometimes struggling to get even one book a week read. I'm just not reading as much, and I'm not exactly sure why. I did notice a slight increase in book reading when my online reading decreased, so that's an encouraging sign. I don't think my lack of book reading is permanent. I think it's just a slump, of the sort that everyone goes through every once in a while, and I think I'll pull out of it eventually with careful handling and management. And probably with some Discworld, which seems to be a magic cure for me!

On the bright side, a new experience that I had was listening to -- and enjoying -- audiobooks. Always kind of iffy in the past, I seem to have really taken to them this time around, and I'm starting to get a list of things I want to listen to as much as read. So that's very cool.

As with last year, I'm curious about my numbers, so here we go:

Books read in the past year: 77

Fiction read: 66

Nonfiction read: 11

Adult books read: 38

Young adult books read: 29

Children's books read: 10

Canadian books read: 11

Graphic novels read: 24

And some new categories:

Audiobooks listened to: 4

Series started: 18

Series completed: 2

Hm. The series thing is not really looking sustainable. Though I did count series that I don't intend to finish, having read the first book. Let's just say that the number of those is pretty small, compared to the overall number of series I started this year.

Next year I plan to keep track of the nationality of all the authors I read, not just the Canadian ones, though that probably won't show up on the blog as a tag. It's more out of curiosity.

Also, you'll notice that I haven't mentioned the challenge I started. That is because, in a fit of self-defeating defeatism, I didn't even read one poetry book. Sigh. I did read some poetry, just not an entire volume. Lesson learned? We shall see.

A quick round up of some favourites, in no particular order:

Cardcaptor Sakura Omnibus Volume 1 by CLAMP - I loved this read. The entire experience of it, thinking about it, sharing my love of it on the blog. This is a wonderful, wonderful book and I'm really looking forward to the next three volumes.
Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation by Tom Siddell - Have not been so wrapped up in a story since Harry Potter, and never in a graphic novel. Enough said.
Pyramids by Terry Pratchett - The Discworld books I've read this year generally stand out as being some of my favourite reads, so I thought I'd pick just one. Pyramids, for some reason, keeps cropping up in my head every once in a while when I'm thinking of something completely unrelated. Possibly one of the best books I have ever read, certainly one of the best fantasies.
Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah - So, since I wrote that post, it has consistently been the most popular post on my site. I am thinking a number of kids in the States have this as required reading, judging from the search strings. Thought-provoking, and generally enjoyable humourous read, that may in fact have helped change my worldview a bit.
Sorcery and Cecelia by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer - The only book I have read through completely twice this year, and has become one of my comfort read staples. Epistolary Jane-Austen-like romance + magic = happy me.
The Secret Ministry of Frost by Nick Lake - Except for the ending, which still doesn't sit quite well with me, this is a biting, exhilarating, scary, moving read set in a locale that doesn't get nearly enough fiction. Main character may actually be my favourite of the year.

And a look at what is coming up on my to read list. Oh, that's another thing I did this year: I digitized my TBR, rather than keeping it in the back of multiple notebooks. I currently have well over 900 books on that list. It is not getting any smaller. I'll put the number that the book is on my list beside it just for kicks. You will notice that there are some (er, most) that aren't on the list yet.

Waiting for me to read at this moment:

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (368)
The Magician's Guild by Trudi Canavan (6)
The Thief by Megan Whelan Turner (437)
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (118)
The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer (not on list)
Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson (not on list)
Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen (not on list)
The Education of Hailey Kendrick by Eileen Cook (not on list)
The Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters (871)

Small wonder my TBR list is so long -- I never seem to get to things that are on it!

A heartfelt thanks to my faithful readers, who have put up with my general slack-assery for the past six months, and still read what I have to say. The blog started out as something I write for me, and it still is -- but it's a lot more fun with you around. I hope you are all having a wonderful, well-fed, joyful holiday season!

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett

2010-12-22T17:56:00.001-05:00

Moving Pictures

by Sir Terry Pratchett

Harper, 2008 (originally published by Victor Gollancz, 1990)

337 pages

It rose up in his memory like the suddenly-discovered bit of suspicious tentacle just when you thought it was safe to eat the paella.

At this stage, I shouldn't be amazed at how a Discworld book can envelop me, even when I'm at my busiest or in my worst moods. Right now, it seems to me that they're nearly unique in that way; there is nothing else out there, in my experience so far, that can do for me what Discworld does. It's not a must-read-to-end-right-now book, in the same panicked or imperious way of some of my favourites, which is lots of fun but hard on the emotions and energy and very hard on the notion of picking a book up for fifteen minutes on my lunch break. It's not a slog, rewarding or otherwise -- these are not books that glare at me from the bookshelf or bedside table because I'm only three chapters in and not terribly enthused about picking them up. These are not even books I have to be in the right mood for. These are patient books, friendly books, supremely enjoyable books with no expectations or manipulations. I can pick a Discworld book up and know I'm going to like it, I'm going to have fun, I'm going to be moved, and I can read it at a comfortable pace whenever I feel like reading anything.

The plot of Moving Pictures is driven by a wild idea: the idea of running pictures, all the same except with infinitesimally small changes between them, very quickly past a light source and projecting them on to a screen. This may sound familiar. It is not an idea that's new to Discworld, either, but it hasn't been around for a very long time, and with good reason, which the reader will understand nearly immediately but the characters will take much longer to figure out. You see, the problem with this idea is that it creates a reality leak, and there's really not enough reality to go around. And a hole that lets something like reality leak out of the Discworld is bound to let something else, something very unpleasant, leak in. But no one is paying attention, because Holy Wood madness and magic is taking over the Disc.

This book is extremely enjoyable, the pacing is quite good, the book is very clever and the characters are thoroughly excellent, vintage Pratchett. There are laugh-out-loud moments and moments to think about. I am getting to the point with this series that I recognize characters now, and am familiar with the world and the people; I could probably start reading out of order, if I wanted, but I'm happy to keep going in order too. Every time I read another Discworld book I am deeper in awe of what Terry Pratchett has created. It's astounding.

For this book specifically, I don't think it is my favourite; there were a few parts at the end especially that seemed a little... loose? forced? I'm not exactly sure. The climax didn't work particularly well for me, but as I've said before and will say again (I'm sure) a Discworld book that didn't work particularly well for me is kind of like suggesting that lemon meringue pie doesn't work particularly well for me: it works better than pretty much any other food except for other pies. And I appreciated the climax intellectually; I just wonder if it was too much of a good thing, perhaps; too much happening all at once in a small space.

At any rate, I will read it again someday, and almost certainly enjoy it as much if not more. Next up will be Reaper Man, which I have a suspicion I may be getting for Christmas. Woot!

The End of the Beginning by Avi (and some book club prattle)

2010-12-16T22:24:00.001-05:00

I may have a spate of book club reads coming up here, but I make no promises. Many of my book club reads over the past two months have been getting cursory glances, a scan-through, a detailed reading of first, middle and end chapters at best. At worst (oh, the shame) I've been reading Wikipedia summaries. If any members of my three library book clubs read this blog, I'm sorry: now you know the truth. It's not that I don't want to read the books we've chosen, it's that my reading attention span has been so limited lately that I've had to go for the books I'm in sweet love with, not the books that I think are probably quite interesting and good.

But a change is in the wind, I feel it, with The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade coming up for my 9 - 12s, and Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat for my parent-child group, and I'm even really quite keen to get started on Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen for my adult genre book club.

The End of the Beginning

by Avi

Harcourt, 2004

143 pages

And then, as a prelude to spring, I jumped ahead and read The End of the Beginning by Avi, which is my parent-child group's March read. This may prove to have been folly, as I'm not likely to remember everything I need to for an in-depth discussion with razor-sharp children, but there we go -- it's read and out of the way. And it was a charming little detour.

Avon Snail reads a book a day, and becomes quite depressed because he is sure he will never have adventures like the ones he reads about. A gentle prod from a passing newt encourages Avon to begin his adventure as soon as possible, and as Avon is leaving, he encounters a chatty ant named Edward. The two become fast friends and set out together. This little book is an exercise in realizing that everything can be an adventure if one has the right mindset, that endings are just beginnings, and heroes and heroics come in many different shapes and sizes. It's also full of plays on words, simple but profound little philosophical nuggets, and silly advice that shouldn't work but somehow does.

I'm really looking forward to discussing this one with the kids. I rather wish I had one to read it to (or to read it to me, as I know some of the kids in the group do with their parents). I am sure that they're going to get different things out of it than I have, and that they're going to have strong opinions on Avon and Edward and the experiences the two have. This is a book that is best discussed. As a read-aloud, I think it would be superior, and delightful. The illustrations throughout are whimsical and lovely, accompanying the whimsy in the text perfectly.

As a read-to-my-adult-self, it is charming. It occasionally slips past charming into too twee, but one might expect that from a book subtitled "Being the Adventures of a Small Snail (and an Even Smaller Ant)" and I was in the mood for twee. It is not long, and any longer would be too long. A larger flaw, from my perspective, is that neither of the characters seem to grow or change fundamentally from their experience, which is a bit of a surprise in a book that is a gentle parody of the heroic journey. That said, I think it must be purposeful -- Edward never gets his comeuppance, really, and Avon doesn't seem to learn anything -- so that the reader can notice this and think about it and discuss the dissonance. Because I certainly expected Edward (who is a great little character, flawed and bossy and daft) to get a comeuppance at some point, and I expected Avon to learn a little something. But they're both as bright as a sack of doorknobs, and that doesn't change. Edward even has a bit of a selfishly mean streak, to match Avon's selflessly kind streak, but nothing ever comes of it in the story, which is where I think discussion comes in.

So, yes. Overall, as a read for an adult -- perhaps not my first choice. But as something to read and discuss with kids who are reading about others' adventures, and thinking about the meaning of life and friendship and starting to figure things out, I think this is a great little story in the grand tradition of animal fables. The language is something that early readers will be able to understand and the chapters are short. The humour will definitely appeal to kids' sense of the absurd (a worm who can't figure out which end is head and which is tail, or a cricket who sings to himself about cheese), and some of the jokes that will be above their heads will be easily explained by a parent. I am looking forward to hearing about what the group has to say.

Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters

2010-12-08T22:40:00.000-05:00

Crocodile on the Sandbank

by Elizabeth Peters, read by Susan O'Malley

Blackstone Audio, 2005

8 discs (unabridged)

A departure! This is an audiobook, but it's not by Bill Bryson. I enjoyed it anyway, and thoroughly. So thoroughly, in fact, that I had to sit in my car after arriving at work (early, I had to run some errands beforehand that took less time than anticipated) and finish listening to the final disc. It was about 25 minutes of sitting in a rapidly cooling car in the snow, but don't think I noticed the cold. I just had to know how it all turned out.

I have been wanting to read Elizabeth Peters for quite a while now. These books were another set of mysteries that kept turning up on my mother's piles, much like the Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael mysteries. My mother has good taste. But I am not reading as much as I would like, lately, and I happen to be spending more time than I would like in a car. Seeing a way I could mitigate these problems in one swift move, I dug out the information on how to download audiobooks through the library I work at, and lo and behold what should turn up but Crocodile on the Sandbank. Experiment: success! Also, now I can tell people how to download and use our digital audiobooks from experience, rather than following vague directions. Bonus.

Amelia Peabody is a Victorian lady of independent means after her father passes away. He was a scholar, with a particular emphasis on ancient history, and Amelia has spent her life caring for him (as the only girl child, and no other woman in the house), during which time she has also become very interested in antiquities. She knows several languages, living and dead, and has more than enough money to live the rest of her life on her own quite comfortably, travelling to see the places she and her father have studied about. On her first trip, to Rome, she encounters a young woman nearly dying of exposure near one of the ancient ruins. In her no-nonsense fashion, Amelia saves the girl Evelyn and collects her as a companion for her travels. As they reach Egypt, and through a series of events become attached to a very small archaeological dig, it becomes clear that one of their little group is being targeted by persons -- or perhaps vengeful spirits -- unknown. Amelia must now bend all her considerable powers of intellect to discovering the culprits before someone gets seriously hurt, or worse.

I had some difficulty getting into this one, at the start. As I've stated before, I'm not wild about fiction in audiobook format; too often the narrator doesn't work for me, whereas in nonfiction I can usually put up with a fair bit (my present nonfiction listen excepted; for some reason, the narrator has such an odd inflection and word pacing that I can't help but think of Futurama's Zapp Brannigan, and I have had to stop listening to it). In this case, though, I didn't mind the narrator, though sometimes her male voices were a bit grating.

As to the story itself, it starts off a bit slowly, but tension keeps ratcheting up until one cannot possibly stop listening until one finishes the story. Amelia is a delightful character, absolutely flawed but believably and endearingly so. She is headstrong to the point of ridiculousness, but it was somehow charming; and she is still a somewhat believable Victorian lady -- given her background, a little bit of eccentricity is to be expected. The other characters are charming and well-fleshed-out.

The mystery is a little predictable; the foreshadowing is a bit on the blunt side, occasionally, and I figured I knew the culprit somewhere near the halfway point, and even the motive, though it took Amelia until the very end of the book to figure it out herself. Usually this can be a deal-killer for me in a mystery, but I was enjoying everything else so much that I didn't feel the need to stop. An occasional eye roll may have occurred. For my part, I wanted to know how, because that wasn't at all clear to me or Amelia, which I think is what lead her to her frustrating inability to solve the case until so late in the game. Me, I was following Holmes -- once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Speaking of impossible and improbable -- well, there are a few times where the plotline and character motivations leap from somewhat incredible to beyond the pale. I was prepared to forgive these leaps for the most part. They were, in large part, some of the fun. This is not a realistic book, and shouldn't be read that way.

I quite enjoyed this one, enough that I am now listening to the second book in the series and enjoying it too. The humour, the adventure, the romance, and the exotic location (Egypt is wonderfully and lovingly described) all combined to make this an excellent listen for me. I could see finding and owning a copy of this one in paper. I certainly will want to read it, or at least listen to it, again.

His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

2010-12-02T10:28:00.000-05:00

There has been a delay; I don't deny it. Illness and family things and so forth, and I have not felt much like reading lately. And that is not because of the book. I have only finished one since my last post (well, and before, really) and I'm about to review it, if one can call an extended fangirl squee a review. All others I have picked up were pretty much skimmed through and dropped.

His Majesty's Dragon

by Naomi Novik

Del Rey, 2006

342 pages

Anyhow. I am rambling, because what can I say that doesn't sound delirious about Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon? I love this book. I read it, and then flipped back and read parts of it, and I then did that thing I know I shouldn't do and read the first chapter of the next book in the series and now I desperately need to know what happens next.

For a brief summary, take history. Take Britain during the Napoleonic Wars. Take one very talented, principled, and dutiful captain in Nelson's Navy. Then add dragons. Actually, add one specific dragon egg, captured by that dutiful captain (let's call him Laurence) from a French man-of-war, that happens to hatch on his ship. The resulting dragon picks Laurence to be his aviator, and you have one very alarmed and disgruntled captain, a very charming and erudite dragon, and a series of extremely entertaining and somehow entirely believable adventures as they learn together how to become part of Britain's aerial defence against the dragon corps of Napoleon's army.

I love this book so much I want to eat it.

This is a book that has been carefully, skillfully crafted such that the writing fades into the background (not an easy feat), the plot sweeps you along, and the characters -- even, perhaps especially, the non-human ones -- worm their way into your heart and consciousness. The partnership of Laurence and the dragon Temeraire is so incredibly genuine and warm and wonderful, so honest and touching, that it absolutely shines in my experience of fictional friendships. Separately, they are fantastic characters and I think I love them both, but together they are unstoppable.

The world is ours but a bit sideways, and the careful work Novik has done to create it is never in-your-face evident, but always a completely reasonable and believable framework from which the story hangs. I think one of the things I can't quite understand, but absolutely appreciate, is how believable everything is. I think it may be partially how everything is so understated, related to the reader as common-place, and also that we experience most of the fantasy elements through an outsider's eyes. Laurence has always been aware of dragons and the Aerial Corps, but that has not been his world up to the beginning of the book. As it begins to become his world, we are slowly accustomed to the changes as he begins to grow accustomed to them, too.

It is a great adventure, and a stirring one. There is little to no romance, for those who find that tiresome, and for those of us who usually prefer to have at least a hint of it somewhere, I can solemnly swear that I did not miss it in the slightest. There are things to be said about the nature of duty and loyalty and friendship, about civility and honesty, kindness, and the sorrows and horrors of war. None of it is said in a preachy or intrusive way. It is integral to the characters and plot. All of this -- the world, the relationships, the philosophy, could be clumsy or over-the-top in the hands of the wrong writer. But this one gets it right.

What saddens me is that while I have seen this book crop up various places over the past two years, if our library statistics are anything to go by, not nearly enough people are reading this series. If you are a history buff looking for fiction out of the norm, try this. If you are a fantasy fan but aren't sure you're a fan of historical fiction, try this. If you're a fantasy fan who has read everything and want something new, try this. If you want a great, well-crafted, entertaining, heartening story, read this book. I might even try it on my father, who doesn't really go for fantasy -- but I think there are elements in here that he, as a reader of James Clavell and Wilbur Smith will like. You will be hearing about more Novik from me shortly, and if Throne of Jade is any bit as good as its predecessor, you can bet that Novik will be the next on my list of authors to autobuy. If I can stand Laurence and Temeraire being thrust into more danger for foolish political reasons, that is...

Cardcaptor Sakura Omnibus Volume 1 by CLAMP

2010-11-19T17:40:00.001-05:00

Cardcaptor Sakura Omnibus Volume 1
by CLAMP
Dark Horse, 2010
576 pages

Dark Horse Comics has my undying love. Just like Cardcaptor Sakura the anime, and now Cardcaptor Sakura the manga, a classic of the shojo "magical girl" genre, and one that anyone seeking to round out their manga experience should probably read.

Some background:

I have been keeping my eye out for this one for a while. Not an omnibus volume, per se, but the entire Cardcaptor Sakura manga from the beginning. When I somehow stumbled upon the fact that Dark Horse was going to do an omnibus edition, I just about fangirl squee'd myself hoarse. And then I was informed that Volume 1 had been preordered for me for my birthday, and you can well imagine the heights of excitement I reached.

I can't recall when my love affair with this story started, or how it came to be exactly. I had been watching Inuyasha (the neverending story, but awesome) for some time, and we watched the entire series of Last Exile (interesting premise, never reached its potential). But then somehow this one came into the mix, and it took one episode only for me to be hooked. This is my favourite television show ever. It beats out Mythbusters, and that is saying something, considering that my desktop background is currently a walrus photoshopped to look like Jamie Hyneman. That's probably too much information. ANYWAYS.

So yes, I was predisposed to like this as a read. I wasn't even really worried that it might not follow the anime (and really, it would be that the anime didn't follow the manga, which came first.) I was prepared for some pretty significant departures, even. There aren't many, and the details that are different are pretty insignificant, at least in this first volume of two. The most noticeable differences are that there are a few battles present in the anime that are only mentioned in passing in the manga, and the relationships are much more clearly spelled out earlier in the manga, I think.

And oh, the relationships... but wait, I should probably summarize for those of you who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.

Okay, so. This is all told in flashback in the manga, but the basic premise is this: Sakura Kinamoto is an ordinary third-grader when she accidentally opens a strange book in the basement of her house (and what a basement! it's a FREAKING LIBRARY). Out of this book fly dozens of strange cards, leaving Sakura with nothing but an empty case -- and a strange, adorable flying teddybear named Cerberus (hereafter known as Kero, the nickname Sakura gives to him, which he protests strongly). Kero informs Sakura that a) he's the guardian of the cards, and b) she must have strong magic to be able to open the book, and d) if the cards he guards escape, a disaster of unmentionable proportions will befall the world. So... oops. Now Sakura is going to have to get them all back, with the help of a very pink magic staff and the attention-loving Kero-chan at her side. The trouble is, the cards have minds of their own, and many of them aren't so keen to be returned to card-shape and be stuck in a book, so there are plenty of episodic adventures to go around as Sakura attempts to capture them all. By the end of the first volume, we're nearing her summer before fifth grade and she hasn't captured all that many cards yet, but it appears there may be some competition coming. (Also: volume ends on a brutal cliffhanger. Be warned. I am not getting Volume 2 until Christmas *wails*)

BUT. The cards aren't really what this story is about. This is the plot driver, but what we're really looking at here are the relationships, at love in all its forms from friendship to family to crushes and hero-worship to the romantic ideal of true love. There are not just love triangles here. There is a love geometry of astounding complexity. There are opposite-sex crushes, same-sex crushes, teacher-student relationships (there are at least three, one of which seems very iffy but somehow also not? I guess I was suspending disbelief pretty hard there, because if I wasn't I might have been pretty upset and as it was I winced a lot), loyal friendships, wonderful family relationships, love lost through death or marriage to another, and of course the glimmerings of true love.

As an example, we have Sakura's crush, which is probably the most straight-forward relationship in the book. All of us who have been in middle school remember the absolute heart-pounding, terrifying and yet somehow wonderful, all-consuming crush, and the desperate fear as well as the desperate hope that the object of our obsession might find out. Sakura handles hers with a lot more balls than I ever did and is veeeery adorably transparent. But then we also have a quieter, more mature crush on Sakura from her best friend Tomoyo. Sakura here is completely oblivious, but it's pretty clear to the reader how that relationship works. It's also pretty clear that Tomoyo has no illusions about Sakura's sexuality, and that she's okay with Sakura crushing on someone else. That relationship is one of those "pure, courtly love" kinds, never to be consummated and barely to be spoken of. Lest you worry that this might be the only form of same-sex relationship in the book, rest assured it's not, and that the other same-sex storyline is really, really sweet and entirely romantic. But to tell you more would be spoiling things, so I leave it for you to discover.

(most of the book is black and white, but there are some really lovely colour panels throughout)

Anyway. It's complicated, and affirming of love in all its forms. Another of my favourite relationships is between Sakura and her older brother Toya. They're at each other's throats constantly, with Toya pushing all sorts of buttons and driving Sakura nuts, and Sakura giving back as much as she can given her age and size. But when it comes down to it, they adore each other. Toya has some awesome (and hilarious) protective big brother moments, and there's a very touching story in which the tables are turned and it's up to Sakura to save him.

There's something about this story that makes me so happy to be loved by the people who love me. It's not that there's a single terrible relationship in Cardcaptor Sakura (except maybe the aforementioned teacher-student one, which you will notice when you get to it, and it's more that it seems like a terrible idea) -- it's not a "there but for the grace of god go I" kind of feeling, it's more a warm and fuzzy appreciation of the fact that I've got good people around me, and that I'm lucky to do so. It's an interesting and pleasant side-effect even if I'm not sure exactly where it comes from.

The story is light-hearted, mostly, and humourous, mostly, with depth at the right parts. It's a little silly and a little over-the-top (nothing like Ranma 1/2, not that I think it's even possible for any other work to touch that) but there are touching moments that are a pleasant counter-balance, and a reminder of what is at stake. Though one might suspect at first glance this story would be too saccharine, there's way more to it than that, and it's absolutely worth a second look.

Highly, highly recommended. Some of the humour is very manga-conventional, especially around Kero, and the art is intricate and often beautiful in a very manga way, which occasionally makes it a little hard to follow. On the other hand, the characters are easily distinguishable if highly stylized (I think Toya has to be around, like, 11 feet tall, or Sakura is perhaps only 2 feet tall?) and the facial expressions are perfection itself. No cookie-cutter, hard-to-read characters here. I would actually recommend watching the anime first if you can get your hands on it, and then reading this after; it adds dimension and a lot more depth to the anime, and makes the action very easy to understand. I'm about to start watching the entire thing again.

Just a quick practical caveat that I feel I should mention, lest anyone feels the need to jump out and buy this immediately: if you are international to the US, don't be ordering these volumes through the company linked at Dark Horse. The shipping fees are astronomical and not stated up front. The Book Depository or your favourite local store are probably much, much more economical options.

Also: my desktop image has changed over the course of writing. Just saying.

Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog) by Jerome K. Jerome

2010-11-12T21:40:00.000-05:00

Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)

by Jerome K. Jerome

Collins Classics, 1970 (originally published in 1889)

222 pages

It has taken me quite a while now to finish this book, wanting to read it before I delve back in to Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog. I have enjoyed it, but found it slow. I think it is maybe one of those books that get better with sitting. I like it more now that I've had time to think on it. I'm not going to offer much of a summary, because there's not much to summarize, other than perhaps point to the title, and mention that the boat is on the Thames, and the time is Victorian. That's about it, really.

There are a lot of references to places and history I know nothing about, and most of the time it makes me wish to know more, and very occasionally I had trouble discerning between what's exaggerated for fun and what might actually be historically accurate. Also, while I do find Jerome's sense of humour to be funny, I did find a lot the humourous parts to be a little samey. On the other hand, there are some flashes of brilliance both when he's being funny and when he's being serious that have made me very glad to read this book. For example, upon stepping out into the night:

They awe us, these strange stars, so cold, so clear. We are as children whose small feet have strayed into some dim-lit temple of the god they have been taught to worship but know not; and, standing where the echoing dome spans the long vista of the shadowy light, glance up, half hoping, half afraid to see some awful vision hovering there.

Just for that passage alone I am glad to have read this book.

In the same way that much of the description and humour is overstated, much of the action is understated. One gets the impression that J. and his friends George and Harris (to say nothing of fox terrier Montemorency) are on their way down the Thames, and that things are happening, but one is never quite sure until very occasionally something of note happens. And once I realized that it was going to continue in that vein, with more asides about stories J. has heard and flights of fancy about history and a few memories, the happier I was to just settle in. It has a bit of a feel of a long dinner-table conversation, over which plenty of delicious food is consumed and the wine glasses keep getting refilled. Some things get mentioned that I wish were filled out a bit more, and other stories take strange but almost always amusing and interesting tangential turns. I got a tantalizing taste of the Victorian, in a way that makes me feel steeped in that moment. This is a relaxed read with almost no plot, and when approached that way is very satisfying.

One thing of note, that made me realize just how human this book is and that not much fundamental has changed: How many of us have, when confronted with a series of symptoms, looked up those symptoms on Wikipedia or some other internet site? And then read on, convinced that one has contracted something absolutely horrifying and likely exceedingly contagious? I've heard it mentioned that this is a particular problem of the internet: it feeds hypochondriacs. Not so. There is an extended moment (they usually are) near the beginning of Three Men in a Boat in which the narrator, upon looking up a condition in a medical tome in a library, becomes convinced that he has everything in the book, save housemaid's knee. It was a passage I recognized myself in, even if my tools are different.

Overall, it's an excellent armchair travel book, both in time and in geography even if you're not familiar with the locations Jerome talks about, although it wouldn't hurt to be prepared that you might feel a bit lost every once in a while. It's charming (and the illustrations by Elizabeth Odling in my edition add to that charm), it's very readable, and it makes me wish quite strongly for a river trip. We don't have a navigable Thames here in Canada, but I've heard good things about the Rideau...

A thanks to Nymeth, who originally brought this book to my attention well before I was told to read the Connie Willis. If you want to read it and can't find yourself a paper copy, which proved rather challenging for me, the Gutenberg Project has a copy online for free.

Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

2010-11-08T11:59:00.001-05:00

Shakespeare: The World as Stage

written and read by Bill Bryson

HarperAudio, 2008

5 discs (unabridged)

So, you may have noticed a theme with these audiobooks. I appear to be hooked on Bill Bryson. It's possible the next audiobook I'm going to look into will be written and read by him, too. No promises, but sometimes when I find a good thing I like to stick to it.

This was one of those serendipitous finds; someone brought it back to the library and I just happened to be on the desk. I had no idea Bryson had written a biography of Shakespeare. But how could it go wrong, I thought, and signed it out myself.

What I got was a very concise, rather informative, and mostly quite entertaining biography of Shakespeare. In short, just what I was hoping for. It kept me interested for a good week of commuting, which is about as much as any audiobook can hope to do. And this time, unlike the first Bryson audiobook I listened to, I knew what to expect with his delivery, so it took me no time at all to get into the flow of things.

One may wonder what the heck Bryson has to add to the piles and piles of Shakespeare biographies out there, and the answer is: not substantially much, which is kind of the point. This is a bare-bones biography, with Bryson mostly looking for the established facts from primary evidence, and fastidiously avoiding speculation, myth, legend, and heresy, of which we are informed there is a surplus. Actually, we're informed of this multiple times; the one irritation I had with this book is that there is a substantial amount of repetition of certain themes and phrases. How many surviving signatures are there? Six you say? I'm sorry, I thought there were six. Oh yes, only six signatures in Shakespeare's own hand survive. Three signatures might not even be in Shakespeare's own hand, which would be rather a blow, as that would be half of the six surviving signatures.

You perhaps get the idea. It's possible I'm exaggerating for effect.

That said, I suspect the repetition wouldn't be so obvious in a printed version, and may seem thematic or like tying up loose ends instead. I have a pretty decent auditory memory, so it's possible that I'm a little sensitive. I am much less likely to notice repetition in print.

We are taken chronologically through the little we know about Shakespeare's life, with copious asides about life, language, literature and culture in Elizabethan England at various important moments. Each of these asides attaches itself to some critical point about Shakespeare, his family, his contemporaries, the atmosphere he would have been working in, and so forth; there really isn't anything superfluous in here. The pace of the book isn't breakneck, but it's definitely snappy, which helps in keeping my attention, though it will be interesting to see how much of what I learned (which was quite a lot) gets retained. After a while, I got pretty good at keeping track of dates in my head. And remembering what went before -- because while there is excessive repetition of some facts, others are of the blink-and-it's-gone type.

Bryson also spends some time telling us about Shakespearean scholars, mostly in relation to either their expert opinions on some facet of Shakespearean knowledge, or to skewer their more fanciful suppositions and speculations. Occasionally he delves a little deeper into their eccentricities, of which Shakespearean scholars seem to have many; he clearly finds the people who have devoted their lives to Shakespearean scholarship to be fascinating, and fairly so.

I think my absolute favourite chapter was the final one, in which Bryson systematically and thoroughly debunks any suggestion that Shakespeare may not have in fact written his plays himself. It's a perfect structure; he has just spent the entire book laying out the various facts of Shakespeare's life, so it seems ludicrous to the reader in the first place that anyone would doubt the authorship of the plays, poems and sonnets. But Bryson gives each major theory careful (and really funny) consideration, and this section provided some of my favourite passages of the entire book. Because it's so simple, and because it's so concise, I must say Bryson has me completely convinced that Shakespeare was the only one who could have authored the work his name is on, and it would take something pretty earth-shattering to move me from that position.

All in all, a very worthwhile and interesting book, and I'm very glad I decided to pick it up. The next Bryson audiobook that passes by me will almost certainly be snapped up for my listening pleasure.

Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation by Tom Siddell

2010-11-02T21:01:00.002-04:00

I. Heart. This. Book.

It has been since the last Harry Potter, folks. It has been that long since I was so wrapped up in a story. I loved this, and then I went online and proceeded to read the rest of the story, and loved that too. And now I am stuck because Siddell publishes updates every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I desperately need to know more. It's like waiting for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows except that it's released one page at a time. I knew, when I finished the book, that I should have controlled myself and just waited for the next published copy so I could read it all at once. But self-discipline is not one of my strong suits.

I'm not sure how to summarize it, either, especially since the story is ongoing, but I guess I can stick to the first published on-paper volume. Antimony Carver is sent to Gunnerkrigg Court, nominally an English-style boarding school, after her mother's death. Antimony had been living with her mother in the hospital, and it was her mother's wish that she would attend Gunnerkrigg Court. Antimony's father is completely absent, in a way that makes the reader angrier the more we know. We meet Antimony when she's first breaking school rules, less than two weeks into her stay, by helping a shadow creature escape the school. We meet her friend Kat as Antimony meets her, and start to untangle various mysteries about the school that all seem to be leading to one overarching mystery beginning in the Court, or perhaps beginning in Gillitie Wood, which is forbidden territory across the bridge from the school.

I can't be much clearer without getting into spoilers and/or taking up several hundred more words. This is an extremely complex story, with themes of love, betrayal, friendship, grief, humanity, technology, and magic all tangled up in it. Suffice to say, seeing it through Annie's eyes is helpful, as she's clever, witty, dry and trying her best to stay neutral while being extremely loyal to the few friends she has. Annie's a bit of an outsider, on account of her coming to the school a bit late, and especially on account of the fact that she has the ability to see spirits and interact with them and doesn't seem to care to hide it. It means that we see quite a lot of the picture, while still being mostly limited to Annie's perspective. And did I mention the wit? Annie's generally really funny, and there's a really wonderful mix of very moving moments, frightening moments, and very funny moments throughout the story. I laughed out loud a couple of times. I also got a little teary at points, too.

The supporting cast is just fantastic. They're also complex; I'm 31 chapters in and still completely confused about most of their motivations, but not in a bad way. I'm also thrilled to report that we're not that close to solving the big mystery yet, nor even really knowing fully what shape it takes (or even if it's one big mystery, or two or three loosely connected mysteries), so there's likely to be more of Annie and Kat to keep me enthralled in the future. I certainly don't want to let these characters or this story go any time soon. Each chapter can usually stand alone as its own story, but we're building towards something. My concern is that it will be pretty anticlimactic when we get there.

Anyone with an open mind about graphic novels and fantasy will find something to love here. The art is just lovely, the story blows my mind. If you can't find a paper copy, be prepared to spend a couple days in a row sneaking a peek at the website every time you have a free minute at a computer. And be prepared that your mind will wander its way into the story when you're not reading it, too. Many thanks go to darla for the heads-up on this one. I wouldn't have even known it existed otherwise, and her enthusiastic review encouraged me to recommend it for purchase at our library sight unseen.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

2010-10-29T08:44:00.000-04:00

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Dial Press, 2008
274 pages

Though you've likely already heard this from many other people by this point, I must add my voice to the chorus: this is a really lovely book. It is funny, sweet, moving, and sometimes deeply sad. I think one of the things I appreciated most about it, though, was how the humour and healing were injected after the darkest moments; the dark parts were not glossed over, but they were moved past once they'd had their time. Some of the story seems a little improbable; I don't know how closely it follows what really happened on Guernsey and the other Channel Islands during the war, but I imagine many of the facts about life in an occupied territory were quite closely observed. I also imagine that some of the people during the Occupation handled themselves with the grace and aplomb of the Literary Society.

Juliet is the author of a successful series of humour columns, published throughout the war (World War II) under a pen name. She's working her way through a book tour now that the war is over, and stressing over what to write next. Simply put, this is the story, told in letters, telegrams, and a few journal entries, of how Juliet finds her next book topic. Underneath, it's a story of survival and grace under terrible conditions, of love of reading and literature, of how reaching out to strangers can have unexpected and wonderful consequences. It's also a story of a community grieving and trying to heal itself after deep hurts have been inflicted upon it.

The writing is skillful. I have come to the conclusion that I am extremely predisposed to like epistolary novels, but it's not always easy to give a full sense of character through letters only, or a full sense of plot without it coming off as contrived. Books that do it, and do it well, make me so happy. This one -- it's like unwrapping a gift. I prefer the slower storyline and reveal in an epistolary novel versus a regular novel, because in the regular novel I'm far more likely to become impatient with a slower pace. With letters, I'm happy to follow wherever the writer wishes to take me.

It's not so hard with these characters, as charming and full as they are. I dearly liked Juliet, and I missed many of the Society's letters when (small spoiler!) Juliet makes it to Guernsey. I was impressed with how large and diverse the cast of characters was, and how I was able to keep track of who was who and probably would have been able to even without names attached. They had distinctive voices and styles.

My only complaint is that there is one point, near the very end, when we switch from letters to a secondary character's journal, and I would much have preferred to see the events from the point of view of the participants themselves. So I was quite disappointed, but I think I understand how difficult it might have been to contrive for Juliet, for example, to have written about the events in a letter.

Overall, a really gentle and lively book, well worth its accolades. Very glad to have read it. Recommended to fans of war stories who are not really fans of gore; also for those who like epistolary novels, humour, and a slightly slower pace to their story.

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume I by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

2010-10-19T18:15:00.001-04:00

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume I
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Bantam Classic edition, 1986
924 pages

How does one review Sherlock Holmes? I mean, these are classic stories. And reading them, one recognizes why they are. Holmes is a compelling character, and the crimes he solves are improbable and often quirky; the stories themselves are generally short and satisfying. The relationship between Holmes and Watson is charming, sort of.

This volume I have encompasses the earliest Holmes stories from A Study in Scarlet to The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes, which ends with the somewhat unmemorable "The Adventure of the Second Stain". I have been reading it for probably two years now, picking it up now and then when I need something diverting, and I was finding that I was having a hard time getting in to anything else with the gorgeous reef fish distracting me.

(Seriously, I did spend copious amounts of time just lying on our deck looking down into the water to watch the fish. It was tremendously relaxing.)

Let me state upfront, I am an unabashed Sherlock Holmes fan. He is an ornery bastard, cocky and arrogant, and sexist, classist, and racist in the ways a highly-educated Victorian bachelor gentleman could be. He insults Watson frequently and Watson, in awe as he is, just rolls over. So why do I love the man? I can't explain it. I think it's largely because he is so sure of himself, and both intelligence and a strong sense of justice are sexy. But even more, I think it is that I have such a crystal clear sense of his character, and did from A Study in Scarlet on. As a character he is complete and fully-formed and fascinating. And my final thought is that it's almost as if Watson infects me as a reader; I don't care that some of Holmes' deductions are based on the extremely ridiculous pseudo-science of physiognomy. I don't care that his opinion of women is generally obnoxious. I just want more. I love that he solves the crimes so easily, generally, and that he only wants the mysteries that have a little quirk or oddness to them, and that he has a slightly insecure need for applause.

Some of the stories are weaker than others, of course. Among my favourites are the classic funny "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" and the frankly frightening "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" -- combined with my absolute favourite, "Silver Blaze", I would say that these three consist of the must-reads of the canon. I'm also partial to "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" and "Five Orange Pips" is certainly creepy in its own right.

Before getting through this collection, I'd never read "The Final Problem" in which Holmes was to have met his match in Moriarty, and his demise. I'd thus never realized that Moriarty was only ever present in one story, and I kept waiting to meet him; I'd always built him up to be a much more consistent character across the canon. So it was a bit of a surprise to me that he only appears in one short story -- and not a very good one, at that, to be honest. It smacks of the worst sort of deus ex machina -- "Hey Watson, all these crimes I've investigated over the years, it was this dude running the show! Who I never mentioned before! And I've never mentioned that I think there might be some sort of ringleader! I've never even alluded to it!" And once they're over the Falls, Moriarty is done, though he certainly does cast his shadow over a few of the following short stories.

This surprises me a little, in that I'd heard that the stories following "The Final Problem" were mostly ridiculous and slapdash because Conan Doyle didn't really want to keep writing Holmes, but I actually found "The Final Problem" to be the worst of the group, where the one immediately following, "The Adventure of the Empty House" is actually pretty decent for a feat of narrative gymnastics in which you bring a character back from the dead. I don't dislike "The Final Problem" because Holmes "dies," but because of the way it's done. It's very much Doyle being done with his character and getting rid of him as conveniently as possible, and it comes across as lazy. I don't know if I would have found it to be as thin and see-through if I hadn't known there were more stories coming; but I can certainly believe I would have been shocked and appalled as a reader, because the "final" story really doesn't do the character justice. It's no wonder to me that Conan Doyle was forced to bring him back, and I must admit I think it serves him a little bit right for being so sloppy in the writing of "The Final Problem".

I have The Hound of the Baskervilles sitting on my desk at work, and I'm rather itching to get back to Mary Russell in Laurie R. King's wonderful series (though I do not like her treatment of Watson). The above short stories, save "The Final Problem", are the ones I recommend to first-time Holmes readers, as giving a sense of both the character and the author at his best. And I recommend everyone reading some Holmes at some point, because his influence appears everywhere in our culture. I wouldn't recommend reading this collection straight through, as it is MASSIVE and towards the end, especially, some of the stories start to run together. But as a pick-up-put-down diversion, I'm not sure Sherlock Holmes can be beat.

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

2010-10-12T17:23:00.006-04:00

Coraline

by Neil Gaiman

HarperCollins, 2002

162 pages

So, I picked this as our parent-kid book club read for October, thinking "It's a little scary and quite atmospheric for Hallowe'en!" Apparently I had no idea how right I was, as I had a number of parents say "We had to stop reading this! It was too scary!" and a couple who said, "We decided not to read this to our kids; we didn't want to deal with the nightmares."

And of course, the kids who did end up reading it loved it. But what can you do? I am not a book slave-driver. I am not going to make kids read books that frighten them. I am not going to make parents deal with nightmares; every parent knows their kid best. That is not really the reading experience I want to provide kids with. So, instead of focusing mostly on the book, we're going to focus on what scary is, and whether we like to be scared, and why some people like scary books and some don't.

I usually fall into the "don't" category myself, but I really liked Coraline. It definitely had its creepy moments, but as I was reading it in bright sunshine on a deck overlooking the Caribbean, I was able to deal with them reasonably well. And it is a kids' book, so it's not like the creepyness is overboard. And it's Neil Gaiman, so it's handled with panache.

Coraline (not Caroline, thank you very much) is bored. They've just moved into a new flat, and her parents are too busy to take much mind of her. School doesn't start for a week, and it's raining outside -- so it's time to explore. When Coraline opens a door that leads to a world that is the exact mirror image of her flat, she finds it's populated with mirror images of her parents, her neighbours, and the exact same black cat. Only things are not all they seem, and despite her other mother's promises to make Coraline perfectly happy, something just doesn't feel right. Perhaps it's the fact that the black cat talks in the other mother's world, or that everyone has buttons for eyes... or perhaps it's that when Coraline returns to her own world, she finds that her real parents seem to have disappeared...

I really enjoyed this story. The little girl off to rescue her parents, frightened but brave, reminded me a lot of the Miyazaki movie Spirited Away which is one of my favourite movies of all time. The setting is tremendously atmospheric, and the magic seems to have rules but they're not explained to us, nor to Coraline; she just feels things out and uses her ample wits to make her way through the world. Which is what life is like, I find, as much for an adult as it is for kids. I liked Coraline very much, and she felt genuine: kids that age do get bored, and the world seems grey and drab, and the adults seem too busy to care about the big problems, such as finding something to do.

This is definitely a recommended read, and I'd recommend it to anyone over the age of six. Of course, some of those people are going to find it too scary, and some of their parents will be rather vocal about how it's not appropriate for that age (sigh) but it really is; it provides lots to talk about, and if you have a reader who likes something a little spooky, then this is an excellent, beautifully written choice. Also: cats.

The cat yawned slowly, carefully, revealing a mouth and tongue of astounding pinkness. "Cats don't have names," it said.

"No?" said Coraline.

"No," said the cat. "Now, you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names."

Still Life by Louise Penny

2010-10-05T08:18:00.009-04:00

(enjoying Panama's rainy season)

If you were not already aware (and very few were) we've been away for a week. In Panama. It was a bird-watching thing, and a canal thing, and a beach thing, and a reading thing, and a no-computer thing, and a general "get the hell out of here for a bit" thing. We've been planning it for months, and then suddenly it happened, and it was really lovely. And one of the things that happened is that, in a small way, I started reading again. Not as much as I'd hoped for (I packed my allowed 8 lbs of books and only got through about 4 lbs of them), but enough that I'm going to have reviews for a couple of weeks, anyways.

Still Life
by Louise Penny
Headline, 2005
312 pages

The first book I read, started on the plane there, was Still Life by Louise Penny. This was a pick for my library-based genre book club, and of course fit the ticket as a mystery. Also, it's an award-winner, and it's Canadian. Plus, it helps greatly that I've been meaning to read this book for quite a while, and I'm very pleased to say that it doesn't disappoint.

The book, as many mysteries do, begins with a murder. It's a shocking murder because the victim was someone everyone loved, and even upon inspection appears to have been one of those genuinely good and decent people. There are red herrings, everyone's a suspect, and some are more suspicious than others. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surite du Quebec is called in with his team to investigate, and so begins Louise Penny's most excellent Three Pines Mystery series. This is a series that has been garnering a lot of attention in certain circles, and so I was really quite keen to introduce it to my adventuresome group of genre readers.

The characters, both the residents of the village of Three Pines in the Eastern Townships of Quebec and the police officers called in to investigate the murder, are generally fascinating. Some are much more likeable than others. The cast is large and varied, a great ensemble. Some of them were immensely, immediately likeable -- I particularly liked Gamache, and his deputy, and Myrna the bookshop owner. Some of them were exceedingly difficult; here I'm thinking of Agent Nichol, a detective trainee who refuses to be trained. Actually, I had a fair bit of trouble with her character in that she was almost -- almost -- unbelievably dense for someone who is supposed to be good enough to be included on Gamache's team. I don't know if she shows up further down the line, though I can't imagine that things are left with her the way they were. Her insistence on ignoring guidance and refusing to take responsibility, and her complete self-absorption, not to mention her complete inability to read people, seems almost pathological. I wondered if maybe it was, or if she was set up as a foil to the murderer, or both; at any rate, I felt it was maybe a bit overdone, in that while she seemed to have shades of grey at first she kept creeping further and further into something that was almost farcical.

The story is told from multiple viewpoints, often within the same paragraph. This can be a bit confusing, and occassionally I had to stop and wonder whose head I was in this time, and it's not always done particularly gracefully. Also, some of the philisophical discussions between characters, particularly towards the beginning of the book seems a bit long-winded and clumsy. That may partially have been me trying to get into the style of the book. Some of the later ones I thought were quite well done.

The mystery itself is really quite excellent. I had suspicions about most of the characters and it turned out that I was never actually on to the real killer; the red herrings are generally subtle though not always, and the clues do lead in the right direction if one picks up on them. It did not come completely out of left field. There's even a really masterful piece of misdirection midway through, but with that much of the book remaining one sort of figured it couldn't be over yet. I like that there is a definite showing of procedure; Gamache does some of the footwork, but he also does a lot of delegation. Some of the results of this we see, and some we don't. But we know that it's not just Gamache working on the murder case -- it's a whole team, which seems like it would be very true-to-life.

There's a fair bit going on in this book, mystery aside. There's marital strife, though a really beautiful relationship there, too. There's small-town community and the difficulties of it (though this book is generally much more positive on small towns than most Canadian fiction I've read). There's gay-bashing, there's art and discussions about what it is and is not, there's change and things not changing, maturity and immaturity. Being also that Three Pines is an Anglo village in Quebec, the book touches on the topic of Anglophone-Francophone relations, and I would be completely unsurprised if this series touches on that a fair bit more in the books ahead. The book is packed, and I'm looking forward to unpacking it tonight with the book club.

It's not exactly a standard cozy mystery, in that Jane Neal has a true personality and we actually do care that she was killed; and things are changed, forever, in Three Pines because of the murder. Those closest to Jane are going to be forever scarred, and some of them even damaged beyond repair. So it will be very interesting to see how this progresses in the next book of the series, A Fatal Grace.

Grazing by Julie Van Rosendaal

2010-09-22T07:30:00.006-04:00

Grazing
by Julie Van Rosendaal
Whitecap Books, 2005
213 pages

I like snacking. There are no two ways around this; finger foods, salty snacks, candy, pickles, grapes, cut veggies -- I love them all. Well, and to be fair, I especially love salty snacks. Chips, tortillas with guacamole, pretzel bites with flavouring: I would try to survive on these alone and indeed have had dreams to this effect. So when the cookbook titled Grazing crossed the desk at work, it was an automatic take-home for me. If I'm going to subsist entirely on snackfood, I should probably make an attempt at healthy snackfood.

Cookbooks like this are excellent for the recipes but also for the ideas. The "oh yeah, I could use that leftover pita that is going to moulder on the counter to make delicious and longer-lasting pita chips!" moments abound in this one. The recipes go from the really easy -- pita chips would rank as one of the easiest -- to much more involved, like Vietnamese rice paper rolls, for when you want to impress your friends with your snack-making prowess.

I recently attempted homemade crackers, a flax seed wafer cracker that ended up looking like something I might buy at a high-end grocery store in a fancy box, and tasted lovely although probably would have been even better if I'd added a touch of salt to the top for seasoning. They're a little nutty, a little sweet, and definitely delicious. The same recipe can be adapted for sesame-parmesan wafters, which will probably be my next outing in an apparent attempt to make them less healthy. Seriously, though, it was extremely easy and despite my habitual anxiousness when trying a new recipe, I think they turned out really well. I can see making these regularly so that I have something to munch on hand at all times.

Add all the good things a good cookbook should have, including nice photos, easy-to-follow directions, good descriptions of what you're making, lots of alternative ingredient options, conversion tables and a complete index (both by recipe title and ingredient) and we have a cookbook that I will be purchasing shortly. Recommended for habitual snackers with a vested interest in avoiding arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, and all those other good things that come with a steady diet of store-bought potato chips.

a book a week

Wimbledon Green by Seth

The Bell at Sealey Head by Patricia A. McKillip

Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

the year that went pear-shaped

first lines meme 2011

Talking About Detective Fiction by P. D. James

Fer-de-lance by Rex Stout

The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama

The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever by Julia Quinn

White Rapids by Pascal Blanchet

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers

The Hotel Under the Sand by Kage Baker

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

Nell Gwynne's Scarlet Spy by Kage Baker

Across the Great Barrier by Patricia C. Wrede

The Mysterious Howling by Maryrose Wood

The Bards of Bone Plain by Patricia McKillip

The Native Star by M. K. Hobson, and a new addition

unexpected August arrival

The Bafut Beagles by Gerald Durrell

Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf

Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones

Silent on the Moor by Deanna Raybourn, and a long comment on ebooks

Silent in the Sanctuary by Deanna Raybourn

Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal

What Happens in London by Julia Quinn

Saint Peter's Fair by Ellis Peters

Your Hate Mail will be Graded by John Scalzi

3 short reviews for a short attention span

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

The City and the City by China Miéville

on the HarperCollins/OverDrive lending limits

*re-read* The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Libraries in the Ancient World by Lionel Casson

The Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters

Japanese Gardening by Charles Chesshire, photos by Alex Ramsay

Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson

Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen

Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat

The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists by Gideon Defoe

first lines meme 2010

Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman

another year of blogging successfully, though slightly less so

Moving Pictures by Terry Pratchett

The End of the Beginning by Avi (and some book club prattle)

Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters

His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

Cardcaptor Sakura Omnibus Volume 1 by CLAMP

Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog) by Jerome K. Jerome

Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

Gunnerkrigg Court: Orientation by Tom Siddell

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories Volume I by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Still Life by Louise Penny

Grazing by Julie Van Rosendaal

re-read The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett