From the outside, Tony, Charis, and Roz appear to be old college friends who reunite for the occasional ladies’ luncheon. In reality, they’re a survivors’ support group: they are wounded veterans of the interminable War of the Sexes, tattered survivors of a thermonuclear device named Zenia. They cling to one another as veterans of any war do: because they are the only ones who truly understand what they’ve been through. No amount of telling, had they the stomach to tell it, can ever sufficiently explain the hell of Zenia to someone who hasn’t experienced her first hand.
Zenia is a ravishingly beautiful woman with a gift for telling just the right lie to get her victims to open their doors, hearts, and lives to her. She mimics and mirrors her prey, flattering them while playing off their deepest fears and pain, ingratiating herself so thoroughly that they never see the knife coming. Zenia is well away with her prize (money and menfolk, generally) before the victim notices the protruding stiletto. Some, indeed, never recognize it for what it is, but go on believing Zenia’s lies, to their doom.
The title is a play on the Brothers Grimm tale ‘The Robber Bridegroom’, and the book is constructed like a fairy tale: three ’sisters’ undergo the trial of the Ogress, which increases in pain and difficulty with each iteration. Tony, the first to confront Zenia (and therefore the youngest), suffers a broken husband, but one that remains with her. Charis, who might have learned from Tony’s experience, had they been closer at the time, suffers a disappeared mate, fate unknown. Roz, who by the time she tangles with Zenia should have plenty of reason to know better, enters the challenge willingly, and suffers commensurately for her hubris.
The book reads like a gossipy, juicy piece of chick lit about women banding together in the face of perfidious men and traitorous frenemies, but it is still an Atwood: these characters and their interactions are more than they appear on the surface. Is Zenia the unstoppable man-eater of our heroines’ imaginations, or is she something much more complex, perhaps a fairy godmother in malevolent disguise? Her actions, for all the hurt and disruption they cause, rid the three friends of faithless, feckless men and encourage their bonds of sister-friendship. The end of the book leaves the interpretation up to the reader, but makes it pretty clear that something more (or possibly less?) was going on than the three friends perceived.
The structure of the book itself is mirrored, giving the reader the sense of descending into the underworld with the heroine and re-ascending with whatever trophies and scars she might bear. We enter through Tony’s perspective in Onset, proceed with the trio through The Toxique, into the three central tales of each woman’s encounter with Zenia, out through The Toxique once more, and end with our guide Tony, in Outcome. Have we progressed directly through the tale in an orderly manner? Have we gotten turned around somewhere in the middle and come out the way we came in? Are we back where we started, or does this exit just look like that entrance?
You can read the book at face value and enjoy a quick, engaging story about women you feel you could actually know. (The detailed, convincing characterization of the central trio is one of the book’s great strengths.) But I recommend reading it with an eye to the underlying mythology–I think you’ll find it rewarding.
Tagged:Book Reviews. | 1 Comment »
Flavia de Luce is a brilliant 11-year-old with a talent for annoying her older sisters and a gift for chemistry (the latter frequently put into service of the former.) She lives a rather circumscribed life at Buckshaw, the stately house that is the ancestral home of the de Luce family. Her father is a recluse who never recovered from her mother’s death ten years earlier, and her sisters Ophelia (“Feely”) and Daphne (“Daffy”) are too absorbed in boys and books, respectively, to pay her any but the most negative of attention. (Much of which she brings on her own head, what with the poisoned lipsticks and purloined pearls–she really is a terror!)
A strange sequence of events one summer day in 1950 shocks Flavia out of her potion-concocting and sister-tormenting, and sets her on a new path: detecting. First, the family cook discovers a dead bird on the kitchen doorstep; one look at the postage stamp curiously impaled on its beak sends Flavia’s normally imperturbable father reeling. That night, Flavia overhears her father in heated conversation with a stranger, who attempts to extort money in exchange for his silence about a murder that her father, shockingly, admits to. Then, at dawn the next day, Flavia discovers this same stranger breathing his last in Buckshaw’s back garden.
That final breath (” ‘Vale,’ it said.”) will be a critical clue to solving a whole patchwork of mysteries, ancient and modern. Along the way, Flavia (and we) will learn much about philately, Victorian assassination plots, village politics, and the dangers of life at elite British boys’ schools–and we, at least, will love every minute of it. Poor Flavia has rather a rougher time of it: the run-ins with police, the skulking about and trespassing, the imprison–ah, but no, I can say no more! You must pick it up and explore its delights for yourself.
When I was about two-thirds of the way through the book, I started hoping that this was the first in a series of novels. Flavia is such an interesting character, in a rich background, with so many tantalizing threads lying about with their ends just dangling: I had to hope Bradley harbored long-range plans for our brilliant little miss. Imagine my delight, then, to read this bit in the About the Author section: “In 2007, Bradley won the Debut Dagger Award of the Crimewriter’s Association for The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the first book in a new series featuring the brilliant young British sleuth Flavia de Luce.” Cheers, Alan Bradley; I shall enjoy following Flavia’s every investigation, whether into the poisonous potential of an English country garden, or the murderous impulses of English country folk. And thanks very much to Carl V. for the recommendation of this delightful novel!
Tagged:Book Reviews. | 4 Comments »
Rachel and I finally checked out the local swimwear boutique yesterday–she, to get something more suitable (hah!) for our frequent swimming schedule, and I to scope the possibilities for the next time I need a new suit. (And to buy great new flip-flops. And a cruise-worthy straw bag. And we both tried on hats, but nothing came of that. This time.)
I have much to be grateful to Rachel for; she’s brought many wonderful things into my life, and “swimmies” is way up high on the list. I have always loved to swim, so when she asked me last August if I might be interested in checking out the aqua aerobics classes at our local community center, I accepted immediately. The thing is, it’s just not something I ever would have gone to check out by myself; the buddy system is very important when you’re going back into a locker room for the first time since…huh…since whenever it was you last went to a gym….sometime in the 90s, maybe?
Anyway, we went, and we loved it. I bought two new, high-quality swimsuits that same week, confident that the expense would be justified by the amount of time I would be spending in the pool. Plus, my ratty old Wal-Mart tank was a serious passive barrier to participation: it was ugly, unflattering, and uncomfortable. Not wanting to wear it could (would!) discourage me from going to class. Conversely, having a suit that fit well AND made me feel pretty would encourage me all the more.
Flash forward six months and what do we find? Kari and Rachel, hitting the pool twice a week, most weeks. This, despite the fact our local pool closed for two weeks of refurbishment just when we started classes: no problem, we went to another community center a little further away until ours re-opened. Just after that, I came down with H1N1, which kept me out of the pool for about a month–two weeks to prevent spreading contagion, and two more getting over the cough. Still, the minute I felt well enough, I was back in the pool, exercising my way back to normal lung capacity. And never mind the constant wet towels and suits hanging in the bathroom, the lingering chlorine smell, the need for stronger moisturizers, the newly brittle hair, which is also showing off all its gray strands to sparkling effect, thanks to the chlorine. All worth it, for the pleasure of swimmies.
The thing about swimming, unlike any other exercise program I’ve ever tried, is that I will work to overcome my own excuses not to do it. Its emotional and social rewards are sufficient motivation to keep me at it; the physical rewards are a nice bonus, but not the goal. And THAT, as people tried to tell me innumerable times over the years, is the secret to staying active: find something you love to do, and it will be easy to stick to.
So many thanks to Rachel, for the initial impulse, and for being my partner on the trek. I owe you big, whirly girl!
Tagged:Friends, Health, Life, Swimmies. | 2 Comments »
A few notes as I lie in bed with coffee and the computer on this Sunday morning. First, I’m a bit surprised that it is only Sunday–yesterday was so long (7:00 a.m. to 1:00 a.m. the next day) and filled with such a variety of fun, it seems like it must have been at least two days.
I’ve added a new page to track all my reading in 2010–see the “2010 Reading List” at the top. The last thing on the list will generally be what I’m currently reading. There’s also a page to track my progress in the various reading challenges I’m working on.
I’ve finished the first book of the year! Xenogenesis was a very interesting book, with some challenging ideas about interpersonal (and interspecies) relationships; it will deserve a post or two of its own, but they’re not going to come easily, and therefore, not soon. But trust that the ideas are bubbling away, deep down.
In a perfect bit of timing, the day after I finished that book, the library notified me they finally had a copy of Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie on hold for me. I waited on the reserve list for about five months for this book, so I’m really hoping it lives up to Carl V.’s high opinion of it. (With an 11-year-old mad genius for a sleuth, how could it not?)
Happy reading!
Tagged:Books, Progress. | 1 Comment »
The blogger in front of her To Be Read pile.
If my life has a lodestar, it’s books. They have been my constant companion for as long as I can remember, and the only topic of sufficient interest and variety I could devote a blog to. Other hobbies flourish and fade, and even they are a vehicle for more books in my life: captivated by volcanoes? Read a book (or six!) Learning to knit? There’s all kinds of interesting books for that! Contemplating skepticism, Buddhism, Wicca? Books, books, and more books! Sad, lonely, bored or bereft? Books to comfort, sustain, and entertain! Confused and ignorant? Boy, do you need some books!
Reading a book is about half the fun; discussing the book with others, exploring its meanings and themes, debating over differing interpretations, and letting the experiences of others enrich your understanding is the other, oh, 80%. The bookish life was once quite a solitary pursuit, but no longer–at least, not if you don’t want it to be. I’ve belonged to various real-life book clubs over the years, but they invariably fizzled out due to splintering interests, physical distances, and/or personality clashes. Lately, though, I’ve been drawn into a wider web of book blogs, and found them expanding my reading horizons and reigniting my passion for blogging what I read. It’s not as sociable as gathering the club to discuss this month’s selection over hors d’oeuvres, but it’s also not as problematic. There’s no scheduling problem–you join in the conversation whenever you can. You can participate only when the book is interesting to you and disregard uninteresting titles. If personality conflicts emerge, you can simply move on to another blog without a big “I’m quitting bookclub!” drama.
One of the ideas I have found really valuable is the Reading Challenge: organizing your reading around a theme for a defined period of time. There’s so much I want to read out there, that it gets a little daunting–call it the tyranny of choice. Putting a bit of structure around my reading is an idea that works for me rather like picking out an outfit for work the night before does: it eliminates the 5 or 10 (or 20!) minutes spent staring blankly at the closet without the first idea of what to wear. As Ken will tell you, I do a lot of sitting and staring at my bookshelves, wondering what to read next. Not this year! This year, I have taken on specific challenges that I hope will automate the selection process and motivate me to get some books read!
First challenge: the 2010 Chunkster Challenge. It looks like I’m going for the Mor-book-ly Obese level, with six 450+ page books picked out:
Xenogenesis, Octavia Butler (already underway)
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Clementine Churchill: the Biography of a Marriage, Mary Soames
Doubt: A History, Jennifer Michael Hecht
The Ozark Trilogy, Suzette Haden Elgin
The Eagle and the Raven, Pauline Gedge
As these are all part of my existing collection, they will do double duty and get me well on my way in challenge 2: Attacking the TBR Tome. I went through my shelves yesterday and pulled out 20 books that I’ve been “meaning to read” for ages, and put them all together on one shelf. I won’t list them all here, but it’s a nice mix of genres and lengths, so that whatever mood I find myself in, I should be able to pull something from that shelf to satisfy it. An additional level of challenge I’m setting for myself: once I’ve read them, I will put them into circulation via Bookmooch, unless they’re truly exceptional, and I know I’ll want to re-read them.
Challenge the Third: Science Book Challenge 2010. This is really a gimme, as I have piles of science books I’ve been meaning to read, and have salted the TBR shelf with them. Hey, no-one said we couldn’t make our challenge books do double duty–or even triple, like Doubt: A History, which rings all three challenge chimes. (Moving that one right up the priority list, I am.)
And of course, I need to get the bulk of this reading done by September, because I am definitely participating in Readers Imbibing Peril again, assuming Carl runs it this year.
One final challenge to myself for 2010: to talk about every book I read here on Bookish Dark. Even if it’s off track; even if it’s just for fun (and a little embarrassing); even if it doesn’t deserve a full review. If it’s part of my reading life, it deserves at least a mention. I’m working on making my bookshelves a more accurate representation of my reading habits, and I would like this blog to be, too. Let’s not call it a resolution, as we all know those tend to fail by February; and let’s not say I have good intentions, as we know where those lead. Let’s just jump right in and make 2010 the most Bookish year yet!
Tagged:Books, Challenges, Life. | 3 Comments »
Blood Price–Tanya Huff
I watched the entire run of “Blood Ties”, the television show based on Tanya Huff’s Vicki Nelson novels. (Note: I freely admit that I have abysmal standards when it comes to vampire TV shows: if it’s got fangs, I’m probably there.) I enjoyed “Blood Ties” for what it was, and liked the basic premise of it: a human detective, constrained by a degenerative eye disease to work only by day (she was effectively blind at night), paired with a vampire (with the obvious daylight restrictions) to solve otherworldly crimes. The kicker: the vampire is Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, the bastard son of King Henry VIII–a nice historical flourish, as ol’ Hank Sixwives did, indeed, have an illegitimate son who died of a “wasting disease” (probably tuberculosis) at age 17.
An excellent premise, carried out reasonably well by TV-adaptation standards, although I always felt that the source novels were probably much deeper, perhaps darker, and almost certainly more textured. Imagine my disappointment, then, when I finally read the first novel, and found the TV series had done it quite a bit of justice. It’s a serviceable genre novel, but it felt like reading a script for the TV show. Forum discussions among fans who read the novel first led me to think there was a lot left out–primarily Tony, one of Henry’s regular donors. The level of outrage at Tony’s absence from the TV show made me think the Tony/Henry scenes must be pretty hot. Instead, they were kinda not: as, in mostly occurring offstage and leaving it to the readers’ imagination. Maybe if I’d gone into it expecting a Young Adult novel, rather than the Canadian Anne Rice, it wouldn’t have been such a letdown. As it was, I found I was mostly continuing to read it to compare the book to my memories of the TV show.
Oh, the plot? Well, there’s a dork who’s learned how to call up a demon, whom he uses to get ‘gear’ to make him ‘cooler’–and then later, to take revenge on all who have ever ‘wronged’ him (by laughing at him, or by refusing to go out with him, or by simply failing to recognize his inherent superiority). What the dork doesn’t realize is, the demon has plans of its own, related to loosing the greater demon it really serves upon the human world.
Blood Trail–Tanya Huff
Why, after my experience with Blood Price, would I launch into a second Tanya Huff book? Well, it was conveniently at hand, I wanted to be sure to get at least four RIP novels done, and I still really wanted to like this series–I like both Vicki Nelson and Henry Fitzroy quite a lot as characters. (In the books, Henry writes romances, not graphic novels, and does it under the name ‘Elizabeth Fitzroy’–a jab at his half-sister, whom he considers as much a bastard as he.) Plus, I figured I could always put it down, if it was really dull. I used to feel obligated to finish the books I started; I felt like a bad reader if I didn’t. As I’ve aged, though, I’ve gotten over that: time is too precious, and there are too many excellent books to be read, to waste even an hour on a book I don’t like. About 100 pages in, Blood Trail was looking like the latest in a pile of books deemed not worth the time. A funny thing happened, though, on the way to abandoning it: I found I couldn’t put it down.
One of things I like about these books is that Tanya Huff introduces us to her villains early on and lets us spend some time getting to know them. Vicki and Henry may be running around in the dark, but we know who the miscreants are, and what they’re up to. It helps to ratchet up tension in some places–when we see the investigators miss the significance of a clue they don’t know they’ve found, for instance–and in this case, it kept me reading all the way to the end, because the evildoers were such self-righteous pricks, I couldn’t wait to see exactly how they’d get their comeuppance.
A family of peaceable, sheep-ranching werewolves (“¦yes”¦) are being picked off by someone who has discovered their secret and, apparently, takes exception to having werewolves in the neighborhood. They can’t go to the police, because the murderer has been careful to only shoot them in their “dog” form. Anyway, they don’t want the killer arrested and jailed–they want to deal with the problem the pack way. So they ask their old friend Henry Fitzroy to help them figure out who’s committing the murders, and Henry brings Vicki Nelson along–both for her investigative skills, and because he knows she can be trusted with the weres’ secret. The explorations of pack life and the difficulties of being a werewolf clan trying to get along in the modern world were interesting, but as I said, I was in it for blood. Of which: not nearly enough, at the end. People really could have been rent limb from limb much more than they were, to please me.
Sharp Teeth–Toby Barlow
Now this was a satisfying, disturbing, creepy, funny, and above all, bloody werewolf novel. My goodness, what a fantastic reading experience! Do not let the next thing I say put you off the book: it’s written in verse. No, come back here! Listen, after a couple of pages, you’re so deep into the story that you stop noticing the poetry. It’s blank verse, so it’s not all rhymey and precious and annoying, like the file full of junior high poetry I–er, some people–have stuffed in the back of their drawers. No, this is vital stuff, pulsing with life and lust and anger. The book practically throbs with primal urges.
There are (at least) two werewolf packs in Los Angeles, struggling for territorial dominance. One pack is headed by Lark, a very smart werewolf/businessman with big plans for his pack, but he is betrayed and overthrown by a lieutenant before he can put the plan into motion. He escapes, and finds a clever hiding place while he considers his options. His thuggish, but not stupid, successor is left to contemplate the pieces of the plan and make of it what he will.
Against these machinations, we have lone-wolf Anthony, just trying to get by in life, and working as a dog-catcher–a job that suddenly has a shockingly high mortality rate. Anthony is in the wrong place at the right time, and is unwittingly drawn into local pack politics. He also falls for a mysterious woman who we know as the female of Lark’s destroyed pack. (Two things: in this book, packs only ever have one female in them–they expand the pack by means of a ‘blood brother’ ceremony, not reproduction. Two: this was my biggest problem with the story: on the one hand, we’ve got weres with a sense of smell so acute, they know when a cop is staking them out from blocks away. On the other hand, you’ve got two weres living together, and neither ever realizes the other IS a werewolf. Uh…huh?)
How the dog shelters figure into the plan, and what it all has to do with an Odd Couple-ish pair of tournament bridge players and a Mexican drug gang, are mysteries best solved by reading the book yourself. There’s some artful misdirection that keeps a major piece of the puzzle hidden in plain sight right up to the moment the author chooses to reveal it–very nice!–and a few glosses over plot holes and contrivances that I was happy to forgive . This was a thrilling read: very much the high point of my first RIP Challenge.
White is for Witching–Helen Oyeyemi
Miranda Silver, the protagonist of this strange, chilly novel, is a 17-year-old girl stricken with the family curse of pica, which is a compulsion to eat non-food items like dirt, plastic, and (Miranda’s favorite) chalk. Miranda has just returned home from a lengthy institutionalization for a break-down brought on by her mother’s death a year earlier. But pica isn’t the only curse haunting the Silver women, and returning to the family home means returning to the influences that precipitated Miranda’s crisis. Miri has little will to resist the ghosts of Silver House, and is soon back to her unhealthy habits. Her father and twin brother are frightened for her, but make only ineffectual efforts at halting her decline.
The story is told from multiple viewpoints, including that of the house itself, and the reliability of all of them is cast into doubt. Our most reliable narrator is Ore, a girl Miri meets at school and starts a complicated affair with. Ore has ghosts of her own, and they have well prepared for her entanglement with Miri. Ore knows perfectly well how to deal with a devouring female spirit; the question is, will she be able to save Miri, along with herself?
The book is indirect and ambiguous; much is hinted at, gestured toward, and elided; little is explained. The reader feels herself, like Miri, surrounded by swooping shadows and half-seen horrors, with the picture never quite coming clear enough to make out the truth of the situation. There are brief flashes of light, but what they reveal is even stranger than what we were imagining was out there. Perfectly sane-seeming witnesses proffer impossible, unimaginable testimony, and we are left to wonder what, if anything, is real.
The ending left me a bit flat; I thought we were leading up to a rather different conclusion. (Although, it’s less a conclusion than a turning of the wheel to begin a new cycle of obsession and compulsion.) But there was so much wonder and terror, such beauty and repulsion, on the way there that I didn’t mind making the journey.
Let the Right One In–John Ajvide Lindqvist
Twelve-year-old Oskar is a deeply troubled child: he’s bullied at school, he has a pants-wetting problem, he shoplifts, and he keeps a scrapbook of news stories about murders–the better to fantasize about revenge on his tormentors. Eli is a girl who moves in next door, and they quickly become friends. Although Oskar notices several odd things about Eli–he never sees her going to school, and only sees her at night; she’s unaffected by the cold of a Stockholm winter; she’s even more socially inept than Oskar himself–he doesn’t realize quite how unusual Eli really is. Not, at least, until he begins to suspect that she may be connected to the gruesome serial killings he’s been following so avidly in the papers.
I’d been looking forward to reading Let the Right One In since I watched the movie adaptation. It’s one of the best vampire movies I’ve ever seen, atmospheric and unnerving, keeping most of the horror just out of frame, and trusting in the viewer’s intelligence. It does a beautiful job conveying the bleak emptiness of Oskar’s life, and makes us sympathetic to Eli without glamorizing her. She may be the monster terrorizing the city, but she’s kinder to Oskar than his bullying classmates, and more responsive to his needs than his distracted mother. Everyone is damaged in some way; everyone struggles with dependence on others for things they may not willingly give: love, respect, kindness, blood. Is Eli really so different, so much more terrible, than her ‘innocent’ victims?
Given how good the movie was, I expected great things from the book–and was surprised to find it didn’t improve on the movie at all. It was a good book, an enjoyable read, but it never once chilled me the way the movie did. It did offer more depth on Eli’s background, which was interesting, and lengthy diversions into the subplots of secondary characters, which were not. Lindqvist did the screenplay adaptation, and perhaps he should consider working in the format more often: its constraints seem to help him refine and focus on his themes. The book really didn’t add anything critical to my understanding of the story, and the movie was far more engaging emotionally. By all means, experience both if you can and wish to; but if you have to choose, see the movie, definitely.
Tagged:Book Reviews, Challenges. | No Comments »
Did you need to curse a blue streak today, only to open your mouth and find no words coming out? Or if they did, they were unsatisfyingly mild, like “darn” and “heck”? Yeah, sorry about that–Ken and I used up the daily allotment of the really bad four-letter words, trying to wrap our brains (and hands, and needles) around this:
The Mad Monster Party Purse is complete, finally! I found the pattern and fabulous fabrics while visiting Ramona in June. Creston, IA, is graced with a wonderful fabric store, Quilts and Other Notions; it’s packed to the rafters with gorgeous materials in all colors and for all seasons. It wasn’t easy limiting myself to buying fabric for just this one project; if it weren’t for suitcase space restrictions, I might have come out of there with bolts of stuff.
Put together one novice seamstress (“Uh…where does the thread go, again?”) and one experienced seamster who prefers to work off-pattern, and have them whip up a handbag. Sure, no problem! She can read the instructions, he can interpret what she says into something actually possible. She can do the cutting, pinning, and straight seams; he can step in on the trickier parts. And that’s pretty much how it went, if you sprinkle in multiple pin pricks, a few seams ripped out and re-done, two snapped needles, many bent pins, lots of salty language, and several turnings inside-and-out of the entire project.
Not all the accidents were unhappy ones; the fabric at one end matched up to form a lively tête-à -tête:
This useful little pocket wasn’t in the pattern–Ken suggested it, and it turned out great:
All told, a day’s work well spent. I love my little work of art, and it’s only appropriate a Halloween handbag should be thoroughly cursed, right?
Tagged:Crafts, Holidays. | 6 Comments »
(Ophelia's Going Mad Again, by Jennifer Gordon, altered with permission by Carl V.)
My reading habits follow seasonal trends: in the heat of summer, I want to read lightweight chick lit or popcorn mysteries. I save more serious works for deep winter, when it’s easy to curl up in a warm sweater and read for hours on end. And when the leaves start turning and the days noticeably shorten, I crave the supernatural: vampires, witches, ghosts and werewolves–and all the other creatures of the night. So imagine my delight when I discovered the blog of another seasonally-affected reader, who is hosting his fourth annual Readers Imbibing Peril Challenge. The idea, simply, is to read fiction in the autumnal categories: mystery, horror, supernatural, gothic, thrillers, etc., and to share your reading with other participants–either through commenting at his blog or posting links to entries on your own. This is my favorite kind of competition: the kind where I was gonna do it anyway, so why not join in the fun?
I’m undertaking Peril the First: to read four books in various scary genres by October 31st. I’ll likely add in a smattering of Short Story Peril, as well: ’tis the season for ghost stories, after all! Here’s my pool of books under consideration:
Blood Price, Tanya Huff (already completed)
Blood Trail, Tanya Huff
Sharp Teeth, Toby Barlow (on order at the library, on CountessZ’s recommendation)
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
The Historian is on the list through pure wishful thinking; I do want to re-read it soon, but I don’t know about getting it done (along with at least two other novels) by Oct. 31st. It’s not a book I want to rush, even the second time through.
Short story candidates include H.P. Lovecraft, Neil Gaiman, Shirley Jackson, and Angela Carter. Oh, and probably some Tanith Lee, because it’s been years since I read her, and I recall really enjoying her stories.
So that’s vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and unspeakable ancient horrors covered: other suggestions, anyone? Got a good witch book or story to recommend? Want to play along? We can all get good and creeped out together: after all, the dark is less scary when you have a hand to hold!
Tagged:Books, Challenges. | 1 Comment »
…is a virtue, one I value and must actively work on in my life. There’s so much falling-in-love, head-rushy fun in succumbing to impulse, and the pleasures of patience are an acquired taste.
Penelope Lively is doing her part to teaching me patience. I threw her book Judgment Day into my bag on the way out the door to PAX last Friday. A slim novel by an author of proven interest: perfect for a road trip where I didn’t expect much reading to get done (but one cannot leave the house for days without some sort of reading material in hand. One was raised properly.) A quick read, a quick post, et voila! Or so I thought. But, as with Moon Tiger, I can tell I’m going to have to let this one stew a while and then read it a second time to parse out all the signs and portents. For a graceful writer of swift prose, the woman does pack a frightful lot of symbolism in. All I can say for now is it was a good book, very moving, and did the classic Lively trick of giving us scenes from multiple viewpoints, so we understand how very little the characters are understanding of each other and the events around them. I’m hesitant to even put a stake in the sand about what I think the novel was ‘about’, given how the second read of Moon Tiger turned out. So, you’ll just have to stand by for Judgment Day. (Can I tell you how much I value an author with the ability to do this to me? To not only require a second read, but to reward it as richly as Lively does? She’s swoony, that’s what she is.)
Speaking of second reads, the Multnomah County Library finally coughed up a copy of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, after a 3-month wait, and I eagerly dove into it last night. Some 45 minutes later, I realized the book wasn’t going to put itself down, I would have to do it, if I expected any sleep at all. I was swept right back into the story, and I realized that even borrowing the book twice wouldn’t be enough: I will have to buy a copy of my own. Oh, perhaps I can practice this virtue of which I preach, and wait for it come around on Bookmooch…but even as I write that, I sense my patience isn’t great enough. It’s one for the ages, my dears; I might as well put some money into a good hardcover edition and be done with it. I can hardly wait to get a write-up of this one done for you, so I’m dashing through the second read much as I did the first (when I was up against an end-of-vacation deadline.) And then I’ll read it again, for myself alone, and I will savor it as carefully as I may. It will be my own copy, and I’ll notate the margins as does the heroine herself–a rare act of vandalism in my library, but this is a book that will never move on from my collection until I’m gone from the world, and why not leave my thoughts to my bookish heir, whomever that will be? Why not write my little bit of story in alongside Juliet’s and Elizabeth’s? It feels appropriate, somehow. But you will have to read the book yourselves, or at least wait until I get my review posted, to understand how.
Patience, dear reader.
Tagged:Books, Life. | 1 Comment »
I remember it well: we were at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market on a beautiful September morning in 2008, and I was sick with envy. Twitter was full of people talking about all the fun they were having at PAX, and then came the killing blow: “You know who’s at PAX?” Ken asked me. “Yes, JoCo’s there. With Paul and Storm.” I said. “And Wil Wheaton!” he added. Wil Wheat–ARGH! There was major geekery happening practically in our back yard, and we weren’t in on it. A resolution bloomed in my heart, and hardened: next year, PAX would be ours!
The thought lay fallow through the busy and exciting months that closed out ‘08 and led in ‘09, but never quite went away. Soon enough, chatter about PAX 09 started up, and I was ready for it. One tweet, “Hey Tweeps, are we doing PAX this year?” and the ball was rolling. We had a Team PAX meeting in mid-June to coordinate registration and hotels. We were DOING this thing. And this weekend, we DID this thing. Although, a reasonable argument could be made that this thing did us.
You can prepare for PAX, but you can’t really Be Prepared for it, the first time you go. We made smart choices in casual clothing, comfortable shoes, a close-by hotel for convenient napping, etc. And yet, walking into the din and crush of the expo hall was a daunting experience; I wanted to run away. I felt that way a lot, the first day: we’d made a mistake, this wasn’t our scene, there wasn’t anything there for us. I had to fight those impressions and work my way into a different mindset. I made it into a game: there is good stuff here, but you must seek it out, hidden amongst the dross. It took a while to find the prizes of PAX, but they were there, and they were worth the search.
The three panels I attended were excellent. The panelists were intelligent, funny, and thoughtful, and the discussions were interesting. All of them ended well before the topics were exhausted, leaving me with the sense of unfinished sentences hanging in the air. They are all discussions I want to continue, and I hope I don’t have to wait until PAX ‘10 to do it.
I didn’t get to meet Wil Wheaton, as I’d hoped, but I was there for the great Wil Wheaton moment: when Jonathan Coulton changed the words of “My Monkey” and sang the whole thing as “Wil Wheaton” (it’s up on YouTube, and it’s adorable.) It was cute and funny, Wil being the duly elected King of the Nerd Prom and all, but what made it great was Wil’s reaction: he looked like an abashed little boy, all shiny eyes and pleased grin; he was surprised and maybe a little starstruck at having JoCo sing about him. That’s what I love about Wil: the fame and fandom haven’t eclipsed the plain old normal guy. He’s just a geek, albeit Geek Prime; just as big a fan of the stuff we’re all fans of, and not afraid to show it. He doesn’t put up a cool front or hold himself at a distance from hoi polloi; he’s right there in the mix, Fanning out with the rest of us.
There’s a new star in my personal firmament, too: Deirdra Kiai, who utterly rocked the two panels I saw her on. So smart, so funny, so…well, I’m gonna have to drag out the big words for this small woman: so perspicacious. She has a way of saying the things that need to be said; I was grateful for several well-placed comments she made during panel discussions. CountessZ and I half-jokingly (and more than half-seriously) formed the Deirdra Kiai Fan Club; we are entirely-seriously agitating for Deirdra to have her own Awesome Hour next year. She was great on the panels, but she has enough to say that she deserves time of her own to say it. (Deirdra, whatever support/encouragement you need to make that happen, your Fan Club stands ready to provide it!)
It was a weekend of highs and lows (and maybe I’ll do a post on the lows: there were some doozies!); a weekend of vacillation between never wanting to go to another PAX, and never wanting to leave it; a weekend of feeling excluded and feeling connected; a weekend of exhaustion and exhilaration. During a discussion of how we talk about gameplay, Nels Anderson drew a distinction between ‘fun’ (tra-la, happy funtime!) and ‘engaging’ (holding the gamer’s attention and being worthy of the time invested). I think that sums up my PAX09 experience perfectly: it wasn’t really Fun (though it had its moments), so much as it was Engaging.
So, Tweeps, are we doing PAX next year?
Tagged:Geekery, Travel, Video Games. | 4 Comments »