diana.n's 2014 readings

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diana.n's 2014 readings

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1LibraryPerilous
Feb 19, 2014, 10:21 pm

Hello, all:

This is my first time keeping a reading journal. I just returned from a lengthy vacation, so I'll start documenting from today on.

My reading interests lie mainly in literary classics and nonfiction, but I also enjoy sci-fi/fantasy and medieval literature. Nonfiction reading hobbies include: evolution; animal cognition; the history of science; marine wildlife conservation; travel and exploration (esp. of southern Africa and southwestern Asia); colonialism/post-colonialism (esp. vis-à-vis development); London; and, political philosophy (esp. the history of liberalism). I love baseball, the sea, surfing, cycling, hiking, jazz, and city walking, but I don't often read about those things.

A couple of loose reading goals for 2014 are to continue working through Heinemann's African Writers Series and the AUC Press's Arabic Literature titles. I also am planning on reading Arthurian and Homeric retellings this year.

I'm not much for writing reviews, but I do enjoy meandering conversations. If a book really stands out, I like to glean read-alikes. Conversely, if I dislike a book I think I should like, I try to understand why I've disliked it. So, feel free to chime in with title suggestions or to tell me I really missed the boat on a particular book you loved and I didn't.

Cheers!

On deck:
McTeague
Doktor Glass
The Luminaries

Best books read while on holiday:
Bridge of Birds
Things Fall Apart
The Age of Miracles

Favorite book:
Treasure Island

Only book I've ever Dorothy Parkered*:
Jane Eyre

*Although I did lightly toss Some Tame Gazelle

2dchaikin
Feb 19, 2014, 10:59 pm

I thought it was striking we had 734 books in common until I realized you had 26,700+ books catalogued, including 18,000+ on your TBR. Wow...

Somewhere in those stacks you have A Murder of Crows by Larry Thomas - a terrific poetry collection. Larry was my neighbor for a brief period when I was hip enough to live in town (in Houston).

I look forward to following your journaling here.

3LibraryPerilous
Editado: Feb 20, 2014, 11:40 am

>2 dchaikin: Ha! I fool fellow LTers often: "Ooh, we share 900 books ... Oh, pish! They're all in your TBR pile."

Thanks for the recommendation. I can't get Larry D. Thomas's book through ILL here--worldcat says only Texas libraries hold copies--so I'll add it to my 'books to buy' list. It sounds lovely, and I love reading about birds.

Thanks, dchaikin. I'll hop over and check out your thread, too.

4urania1
Feb 20, 2014, 11:58 am

Welcome. I love the expression "Dorothy Parkered :-)

5rebeccanyc
Feb 20, 2014, 1:08 pm

Do you actually own all those 18,000 books on your TBR, or are they books you'd like to read someday but don't own? Or a mixture?

6LibraryPerilous
Feb 20, 2014, 1:52 pm

>4 urania1: Thanks, urania1. And ;)--maybe we should start an LT movement: "This book was so terrible, I Dorothy Parkered it after page 20."

>5 rebeccanyc: Hi, rebeccanyc, I actually don't own any of them. I just have them listed as reading possibilities, but I suspect most will go unread. I use the TBR list as more of a general prompt for titles in categories I find interesting, so I have lots of books listed that probably repeat what others are saying, or probably aren't the best examples in their categories (especially true of science titles, I suspect).

I recently tried to winnow the titles to a manageable number, tag them, and pull out the books I thought were must-reads in my favorite categories, but the task was too daunting. I ended up deleting the tags. I did, however, also get rid of 3000 titles, so that was progress.

7rebeccanyc
Feb 20, 2014, 3:06 pm

I don't feel so bad then!

8urania1
Feb 20, 2014, 3:47 pm

diana,

A great idea!

9kidzdoc
Feb 20, 2014, 4:21 pm

Welcome to Club Read, Diana! It's good to see you here. I'll follow your thread with interest, especially the books from the African Writers Series and the American University in Cairo Press.

10avidmom
Feb 21, 2014, 8:40 pm

Welcome diana! I saw you liked medieval literature & so was going to recommend Jeri Westerson's Crispin Guest series starting with Veil of Lies but see you already have it. HA! (I've only read that one, although I keep telling myself I'll read the rest soon.) The author is local to our area so I was able to meet her in person. She seemed to know her medieval stuff!

11LibraryPerilous
Feb 23, 2014, 9:13 pm

>9 kidzdoc: Thanks, Darryl. I have your thread starred. I expect your jazz musings will have me running to YouTube to listen to tracks quite frequently.

>10 avidmom: Thanks, avidmom. My local library has some of Jeri Westerson's books, so I've borrowed one. I'm intrigued by the "Sam Spade for the Middle Ages" blurb on the cover. I've also borrowed Bruce Holsinger's A Burnable Book It will be interesting to compare the two mysteries.

12LibraryPerilous
Mar 3, 2014, 10:02 pm

Well, I started this thread a week ago and haven't yet read a book. I blame the time sink that is LT.

I've spent the last few days trying to manage my TBR titles, mostly by deleting the detritus, duplicates, and just plain 'why did I catalog this?' entries. I have a nasty habit of throwing anything and everything in the TBR list--even if it's not something I would read--if the title or cover is catchy: must stop that.

Sometimes, I pause to read reviews if I'm on the fence about a book or need to know plot details. Usually, the reviews are well-written and helpful. But, every now and then, I stumble across a review that reminds me LT has its fair share of dopes. A few months ago, I found a user whose every review was a variation on a theme: "The world is controlled by rich Jews"--all dog whistles within the TOS, of course. Today, I found this gem:

"But most of the chapters are other people who live there, including ... a teacher who has an affair with a 16-year-old student; black kids in the projects with outstanding vocabularies; students at a Catholic high school who are terribly cruel, even in front of their teachers; etc. In other words, this book is full of unlikely characters."

Catholic teenagers aren't ever bullies and African Americans living in 'projects' can't manage polysyllabic words? I'm almost tempted to read the book, just to spite this anonymous reviewer with whom I will never interact, but that would be dopey, too. Ugh. The internet is a silly place sometimes.

13baswood
Mar 4, 2014, 5:20 am

you sound like your enjoying yourself. LT is an intoxicating world.

14LibraryPerilous
Mar 12, 2014, 6:23 pm

Yes, baswood, it's cathartic to delete bad books from my TBR list!

I posted this in a Book Talk thread, too, but here's a fun March Madness with books contest:

http://outofprintclothing.com/book-madness/

Heroes are throwing down against villains.

15LibraryPerilous
Editado: Abr 24, 2014, 2:10 am

Harumph. I've not read many books since starting this thread. However, I did finish tagging my TBR books and cleaned up my 'Read but unowned' collections. I'm now in the process of normalizing my ratings and correcting ratty data.

Barry Hughart's Eight Skilled Gentlemen is the final entry in his Master Li/Number Ten Ox trilogy of fantasy-mystery hybrids set in "an Ancient China that never was ... but should have been." The first volume, Bridge of Birds, is one of my favorite books: a witty, elegiac pastiche of classical Chinese epic literature. The concept has worn thin by the third book, although the ending is Hughart's particular kind of bittersweet.

Depending on your source, Hughart either ended the series because he was burned out or because he was angry at the publisher for failing to market his books correctly. Either way, it probably is best that he left off. The concept could have been mined for other volumes, but Eight Skilled Gentlemen is lazily written and one can see Hughart's enthusiasm waning. Still, I'm glad I read all three of the books.

Alas, neither The Story of the Stone nor Eight Skilled Gentlemen relates the story of the Falcon Prince's fight with the Great White Serpent in the Mysterious Mountain Cavern of Winds, with which Number Ten Ox teases us in Bridge of Birds. That's now number two on my list of longed-for detective memoirs, right behind Dr. Watson's notes about a certain giant rat of Sumatra.

Edited: grammar

16LibraryPerilous
Abr 23, 2014, 10:52 pm

D. E. Stevenson's Miss Buncle's Book is a typical English village tale populated with the usual suspects. Standard hijinks ensue, caused by Miss Buncle's writing a book in which all the characters are thinly-veiled portrayals of the villagers in all their unvarnished glory.

Stevenson has the right idea, painting some characters as good, some as obnoxious, and some as in-between. Unfortunately, all of the characters are bland as written, so I didn't find myself rooting for or against any of them. Additionally, the farcical nature of the villagers' actions feels warmed over, even to someone like me who reads village tales infrequently (meaning, not at all). The milquetoast-y, middle-aged spinster Miss Buncle gets her happily ever after, but she doesn't exhibit any growth in the book, so it was hard to muster any satisfaction in--or even (dis)agreement with--this turn of events.

Miss Buncle's Book might be a fun, frothy read for lovers of Miss Read's or Jan Karon's village tales, or for those who enjoy books such as Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day or Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris.

17LibraryPerilous
Abr 27, 2014, 11:13 pm

Infrequently, I make an effort to read outside my comfort zones. This invariably means trying a romance novel or two, because sometimes the plots do sound interesting, but they usually are a miss.

Elizabeth Essex's Almost a Scandal sounded like it might hit on a few cylinders, because some of its themes match my regular reading interests: nautical stories, Napoleonic era maritime history, cross-dressing. Plus, the author is a former nautical archaeologist. Alas, the book still follows a publisher's outline and is written in a sort of chatty, postmodern tone, replete with incomplete sentences: "She hadn't been afraid of dying. ... Of living like a ghost in her own life. Of living on, alone. Of living without him."

The descriptions of life and battles at sea are minimal, the ship itself is thinly sketched, and the author seems most interested in using images of seafaring life as goofy, angsty metaphors: "She climbed to the deck slowly, as if the cannonballs that were being sewn into the shrouds for the dead Spaniards, to weigh them down to the bottom of the sea, were dragging at her feet instead."

The plot consists mainly of hand-wringing over their illicit relationship, most of which is shown by reciting the main characters' inner thoughts about one another. All other details, such as the act of dressing as a man to take a midshipman's berth, act as the merest of offhand catalysts. Yep, it's a romance novel, and they remain, on the whole, not my cuppa. I'm willing to try another one about a woman who cross-dresses to go to sea. It seems to be quite the romance novel trope, but this novel just didn't push my buttons.

18baswood
Editado: Abr 28, 2014, 7:20 am

The cover featured on the Book Page of Almost a Scandal probably says it all. However Elizabeth Essex is a great name for an author of Romances.

19rebeccanyc
Abr 28, 2014, 8:05 am

Nice to catch up with your reading, and I understand how LT "housekeeping" can take up a lot of time!

20LibraryPerilous
Abr 29, 2014, 10:08 pm

>18 baswood: Ha, I probably should have managed my expectations, but ... a nautical archaeologist named Elizabeth Essex! If the copyright page still is what one can go on, that's her real name.

>19 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca. Yes, my brain wanted only cotton candy for a few days.

21LibraryPerilous
Abr 29, 2014, 10:52 pm

"People tell boring lies about politics, God, and love. You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?" -- A. J. Fikry

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is not what I thought it would be. I thought it was a fantasy novel about an elderly bookstore owner who finds a mysterious package (a book, of course) and has an adventure. It's actually about a youngish, widowed bookstore owner in whose store a woman abandons her precocious toddler: "She will read the word damask in a book one day and think, Yes, of course that's what it's called. In contrast, the word wainscoting will come as a huge disappointment" (82).

The rest of this quick read deals with A. J. Fikry's growing relationship with the girl, whom he decides to adopt, and his slowly blossoming outlook on life: "It's a fact, Maya. There are murdering kinds of pirates, and there are researching kinds of pirates, and your daddy was the latter" (112). Fikry's business and other personal relationships grow, and he becomes less curmudgeonly. He does not abandon his crustiness; it just lessens. This feels real, and Gabrielle Zevin also does a nice job of describing his island town's insular, but friendly, community, and the way they become more interested in spending time with Fikry as he becomes nicer to them.

Fikry's pithy ideas about life, literature, and love read like a curmudgeon's commonplace book:
  • "Someday you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you're the only person in the room" (159)
  • "I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be" (13)
  • "He doesn't believe in "the one." There are zillions of people in the world; no one is that special" (103)
  • "He tries to avoid meeting the [authors] who've written books he loves for fear they will ruin their books for him" (37).
This isn't a book that breaks new ground, but it was a light, pleasant read. Still, it would have been better if there had been a magical book--or at least a unicorn, not just a unicorn topiary.

22LibraryPerilous
Editado: mayo 20, 2014, 8:09 pm

William Corbin's High Road Home is a charming, if dated (1953), YA road trip novel. Nico, a French boy, comes to the US after WWII to search for his father. He meets an older boy, Dud, who wants to be a journalist and thinks Nico's story might be his ticket to a job. They traipse the country, from Ohio to California, in search of Nico's father.

Nico is well-drawn. His experiences on the streets of Paris may have left him with a skill set beyond his fourteen years, but Corbin makes it clear he already had a high-spirited, flimflam heart. Nico is by turns funny, outgoing, clever, introspective, angry, cocky, unsure, or lonely. In short, he's a real boy, not a boy whom the author intentionally defines as shaped by adversity for melodrama's sake. Nico also loves Hollywood westerns because they assuaged him during the war. His boyish enthusiasm for going to the cinema, and his emotional reliance, during wartime, on the way the movies make him feel, reminds me of Calvino's essay, "A Cinema-Goer's Autobiography."

This is not a book that deals directly with serious themes. Rather, it's about a simpler time, when boys could travel the country together, seeking and finding hijinks and work. Corbin uses the simplicity and openness of the terrain they are traversing (the plains states) to grow his themes. The more Nico spends time with Dud, and, later, away from him, the more he realizes that family is self-defined. The more Nico meets and interacts with a variety of Americans, the more he realizes that not all of them are like the rude soldiers who treated him poorly in Paris. Corbin also addresses the more serious theme of Americans' blindness to their shortcomings, and he doesn't make Nico wrong for seeing these flaws.

Nico and Dud finally track down someone who knew Nico's father and learn he is deceased. Nico returns to the American family who adopted him and whom he already has learned to love. Dud gets a job with a newspaper, and they all live happily ever after. It's a little reductive, but one doesn't get the sense Corbin is positing Nico's new American life as superior, per se. Instead, it's one that is right for him because he has fallen in with good people who are kind, loving, and--like Nico--in possession of high-spirited, flimflam hearts.

ETA: Although the writing style of the book is a little dated, and the plot is, of course, not really possible in today's world, Corbin's book feels very forward-thinking for its time. He doesn't talk down to his juvenile readers. He allows complex themes to be explored organically within the story. Above all, he shows that it is proper to live your life with an open mind.

23avidmom
Editado: Abr 30, 2014, 1:05 am

it would have been better if there had been a magical book--or at least a unicorn, not just a unicorn topiary.

LOL!
Sounds like a good story even without the unicorn.

ETA: Have you read The Neverending Story?

24LibraryPerilous
Abr 30, 2014, 8:48 am

>23 avidmom: It was sweet. Not my normal style, but I read it in one go.

I've not read The Neverending Story, but I do remember liking the film very much. Do you recommend it?

25lesmel
Abr 30, 2014, 10:46 am

>24 LibraryPerilous: If you do read The Neverending Story, look for a copy with the text in various colors! I had no idea it was printed that way until a friend handed me his hardback copy. It's neat to see it. :)

26avidmom
Abr 30, 2014, 6:09 pm

I've not read The Neverending Story, but I do remember liking the film very much. Do you recommend it?
Most definitely!

27LibraryPerilous
mayo 2, 2014, 8:59 pm

Thanks, avidmom and lesmel. Lesmel, a book with multi-colored fonts does sound like fun!

I'm having trouble normalizing my ratings, which probably means I'm taking the process too seriously.

What are some of the approaches others on this thread take?

28LibraryPerilous
mayo 20, 2014, 8:08 pm

"I, to this day, hold to only one truth: if a man chooses to carry a gun he will get shot" (9).

Road to Reckoning is an odd book. It's marketed as literary fiction, but it really is a mainline western with rather a shopworn revenge plot. The plot is driven forward by situations that walk a fine line between pastiche and unintentional parody. The book has a magical realist feel to it in places, and this clearly is not the author's intention. The book also features numerous philosophical asides, written in the narrator's folksy voice, but they, too, jar with the main story. The author, Robert Lautner, works too hard at infusing gravitas to his story through these features. He should have shored up the story itself and allowed it to find its voice. Capable readers can draw their own conclusions about the justness of the moral dilemmas presented.

Lautner is an Englishman, and at times his rendering of the early frontier feels like a mash up of Hollywood tropes and European ideas about the American West. He relies heavily on Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis, in particular on the notion that democracy was to be found only in the libertarianism of expansionism. Characters who are for banks, God, regulation, law, order, or paperwork are portrayed as corrupt, emasculated, or inept. The ostensible hero of the story, Henry Stands, is an unlikable caricature of Rooster Cogburn.

Lautner also can't decide if he is pro- or anti-guns, but he wants the story to have parallels to today's gun control debates. His main character makes contradictory statements throughout the text, many of which feel like anachronistic moralizing. Offhand comments about the futility of the Civil War also struck a nerve with me. That's too reductive a view for a 237-page novel, and the main events of the novel take place in 1837. I understand what Lautner is trying to do, but Road to Reckoning is not that story.

Although my review is unfavorable, the novel is worth a read if you are a fan of westerns. It's more well-written than most. There are no 'Dagnabbit, Jim!' or 'Tarnation, I told ya to jest git down off that hoss!' lines here. However, Lautner would have been better served to write a straight-shooting story, rather than to veer into murky sociocultural waters about which he is irresolute. That sociocultural examination could have been brought to the forefront, but one should do their homework and take a stand on the issue at hand. Readers looking for this kind of nuanced portrayal of the complexities of the frontier will find more to like in Natalee Caple's In Calamity's Wake, which successfully blends historical fiction with magical realism and philosophizing. It also integrates its politics in a voice that sounds authentic to the era and yet resonates in today's world.

29LibraryPerilous
mayo 20, 2014, 9:46 pm

"You won't be yourself when you reach me but you will get the job done."

Rebecca Stead's Newbery-winning middle grade novel is marketed as sci-fi, but it really is a gentle mystery in which time travel features. Sixth grader Miranda tries to figure out who is leaving her cryptic notes and why that person writes that s/he is coming back in time to save someone and him/herself. Miranda is twelve and normal. She is funny, smart, happy, a little insecure, a little overconfident, and wholly herself at all times, even when that is the hardest person to be.

I was reminded of Karen Thompson Walker's Age of Miracles. Both books feature smart girls who navigate unfamiliar territory whilst beginning to come of age. The truest miracle in Walker's book is that one can grow up, change, become wiser, and yet still feel normal feelings, such as first crushes, in a wholly abnormal environment. I think Stead's book speaks to that as well. Something crazy and unusual is going on around Miranda, and she spends time dissecting it, but she also spends time living life and being herself. The best defense we have against chaos is normalcy. Or is it curiosity? Or a desire to solve the new puzzle in a creative way? Stead shows that a little of each is necessary to see it through. We are never as bold in the face of newness as when we are young. Both Stead and Walker capture the piquancy of this perfectly.

Whose Body?, by Dorothy Sayers: A bon vivant solves the mystery of just whose body was it that was found in an acquaintance's bathtub. Sayers writes badinage well, in particular Wimsey's interactions with his valet, Bunter. The mystery is solved rather early, leaving readers with about twenty pages of filler in the form of the dreaded 'long letter from the culprit' device.

I've noted elsewhere on LT that I find mysteries to be a dime a dozen. The genre lends itself to formulaic writing, no matter how talented the author. Lord Peter Wimsey is a likeable character, but the story is marred by Sayers' blatant prejudices and her general disdain for the mystery genre. There's nothing new here, but I can see why fans of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction like Sayers' work.

The Serpent and the Rose, by Kathleen Bryan (a pseudo. of Judith Tarr), is the first in a high fantasy trilogy set in a medieval kingdom that resembles France. In this kingdom, magic is filtered through beautiful glassworks, and orders of knights and ladies maintain centuries-old magic traditions and wards. Those traditions were formed after the Young God, son of God, cast down the Serpent, Chaos, and sacrificed his own life for eternal peace. Also lost after this great battle were the ancient pagan rites, celebrated through the so-called wild magic that runs through the earth and its elements. Creatures who practiced this magic were banished to the wildlands.

Parallels to Christianity and its rise are intentional, but that quickly ceases to be the focus of the work. Indeed, some of the themes Bryan explores are similar to the questions Elizabeth Marie Pope raises in The Perilous Gard, but The Perilous Gard is a much stronger, more tightly-woven story.

The strongest theme in The Serpent and the Rose is: What fealty do we owe to tradition when that tradition no longer is sustainable? Averil, the heir to the duchy, must learn when to embrace the systemic ideas she has been taught and when to let them go. The knights fall in battle with an evil king because they are incapable of adapting. Once their system of magic is infiltrated and sundered, they are powerless to react on the fly. They have no knowledge of the ancient magic their foe is channeling, precisely because it has been deemed worthless to know. When it is shown to be present in their world, and necessary, they resist because it is against their religion and not what they have been taught to need.

The magic system in Bryan's world is beautiful, and both the glass and the wild magic are lovingly described in lyrical detail. Bryan's prose elsewhere sometimes descends into telling, not showing. She might have been better served writing a prologue that told the story of the Young God's victory, rather than scattering pieces throughout the book. Still, Bryan does a workman-like job of world building and the plot moves at a brisk pace. This would be a good introduction to high fantasy for reluctant fantasy readers. I'll read the rest of the trilogy, but I'm not in a hurry.

30rebeccanyc
mayo 21, 2014, 7:01 am

Road to Reckoning does seem odd! Nice to see you back.

31baswood
mayo 22, 2014, 12:07 pm

Enjoyed your reviews Diana.n I could be tempted with the Age of Miracles

32Poquette
mayo 22, 2014, 4:46 pm

Hi Diane — enjoyed reading through your thread. Your comments about the compelling nature of LT probably strike a chord with everyone.

You have an attractive way of talking about books — not merely highlighting the plot but ferreting out the themes, if any.

D.E. Stevenson (Miss Buncle's Book) sounds like he might be an E.F. Benson wannabe. Have you read any of the Mapp and Lucia books?

As I was reading your commentary on The Serpent and the Rose, which hits a few notes with me by the way, I was wondering how you came to read that particular book. Did you hear about it on LT or elsewhere? Just curious . . .

33LibraryPerilous
mayo 23, 2014, 9:51 am

Thanks, Rebecca. Yes, I wanted to like Road to Reckoning more than I did. The strands were there, but the execution was off.

Thanks, baswood. The Age of Miracles quickly became a near-favorite of mine. It's best viewed as a coming of age story that just happens to have dystopian elements, rather than as sci-fi with a coming of age plot. Also, the science is not solid, which has bothered some reviewers. I didn't find that a hindrance.

Thanks, Poquette, and welcome. Although I moved on to poli sci, the former comp lit major in me likes to analyze and compare what I read!

I see you are a fellow Calvino lover. I have your thread starred. Thanks, also, for mentioning Mapp and Lucia. I've been meaning to try that series.

When I first became interested in expanding beyond Tolkien in the fantasy genre, I borrowed several what to read-type books and found Bryan's work listed in one. I recently bumped it up on the TBR pile because I love stained glass and religious architecture, so her concept of the magic system resonated with me. Plus, I love fantasy that focuses on religious orders.

If you are interested in the religious theme as well, I do recommend The Perilous Gard, a retelling of Tam Lin written by a scholar of Elizabethan history. I also love Carol Berg's Lighthouse duology, Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone, which features well-developed religious systems and explores the dangers of fundamentalism. (Plus, it has another of my favorite themes: cartography.)

34LibraryPerilous
mayo 23, 2014, 10:39 am

Fables 19: Snow White: Fables jumped the shark a long time ago. The promise of a return to form that was Fables 18: Cubs in Toyland is gone, as is my goodwill toward this series, which once was groundbreaking and smart on multiple levels. The series is set to end early next year, at issue #150, and that is for the best. Willingham has been phoning in ludicrous plot lines for several arcs, and he has tried to juggle too many threads. One suspects there simply won't be enough issue space to resolve all of them.

Willingham already has said that Bigby, Snow, and Rose will be the final arc, so it's hard for me to care that Bigby dies in this one. Were Fables not ending, I would call the events in Snow White a game changer within the Fables world, and I also would praise Willingham for doing something no major comic ever does: killing off its main character.

However, since the series is ending, this just feels exploitative and unnecessary. Foreshadowing at the end of issue #129 suggests that Bigby may revert to his Big Bad Wolf persona, but that would sunder pretty much everything Fables has represented since it started, and for no good reason.

Additionally, the emotional, physical, and verbal violence perpetrated against Snow White in this arc feels exploitative and is unnecessary. Willingham has never been very successful at creating strong female characters who have agency outside the men in their lives. To have Snow's violently taken from her (while Bigby is away, naturally) is obnoxious, as is the series' constant dependence upon a child to "find your father to help me." There's always been a disconnect between the fatalist viewpoint the series takes and the bright colors of the artwork. Here, the arc mostly is colored in brown and gray tones, to highlight the oppression Snow faces, but again, it's a tactic that is too little too late.

Bottom line: This series has run its course, and Willingham doesn't seem to care anymore. I'll see it through to the end, but it's a disappointing start toward the end of what once was my favorite comic.

35Poquette
mayo 23, 2014, 4:04 pm

Diana — Thanks for your explanation. Fantasy per se is not a genre that I go for as a rule, but there are notable exceptions. So let's just say I'm kind of picky about what I choose to read. At this point in my life, time is precious. We do share a common interest in the medieval period, and I would extend that to include late antiquity and the Renaissance. I have been reading a lot of books over the past few years that relate to what I have dubbed "pagan influences," meaning how they survived despite all attempts by the religious establishment to squash them out. So-called pagan influences cover a lot of ground, and that includes to some extent the practice of magic and other esoteric interests in context.

Anyway, I'm enjoying reading what you have to say about the books you are reading, and I'm going to take a look at The Serpent and the Rose.

36LibraryPerilous
mayo 25, 2014, 7:16 pm

Thanks, Suzanne. Your reading on pagan influences sounds fascinating. I do love the medieval period.

So let's just say I'm kind of picky about what I choose to read.
Yes. I recently calculated the approximate number of books I have time left to read. It was a depressingly small number, especially vis-à-vis my TBR list. But I'm still young enough to chance it at this phase of my reading life.

37LibraryPerilous
mayo 25, 2014, 7:25 pm

My review of my April 2014 LTER win, This Crumbling Pageant, can be found here.

Short review: A bodice ripper masquerading as high fantasy still is a bodice ripper.

38LibraryPerilous
Jun 4, 2014, 8:10 pm

The knowledge of physics, mechanics, and mathematics that Andy Weir displays in The Martian is impressive, and he writes about these topics in an interesting, accessible way. Unfortunately, the unabashed libertarianism of the author, the Millennial Speak of literally all the characters, and the sexism and bigoted jokes of the main character--why weren't those redacted?--make The Martian a huge miss for me.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ably illustrates that creating a spooky atmosphere can be done without the need of pages of heavy-handed metaphors or the literary equivalent of curlicue sentences: "I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured ... at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow" (59). I'd forgotten how much I enjoy reading Stevenson's short prose, the economy of which is invigorating. I've borrowed The Body Snatcher and Other Tales to read next.

Reviews to come: Blacksad, Blacksad: A Silent Hell, Rabbit Hill, The Incrementalists, The Golden Rose, The Last Paladin, and When the King Comes Home.

39rebeccanyc
Jun 5, 2014, 7:24 am

You've certainly been busy reading with all those reviews to come!

40LibraryPerilous
Jun 18, 2014, 10:57 pm

>39 rebeccanyc: More reading, less LTing is my new motto!

The con is on in The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime, subtitled Con Artists, Burglars, Rogues, and Scoundrels from the Time of Sherlock Holmes. The era really is all they have in common with Sherlock. The stories in this collection focus on the criminals themselves, and readers follow the grifts as they are being plotted and committed. The stories don't present puzzles to solve. Rather, the fun is in laughing along with the flimflammers as they stay a step (or even a dozen steps) ahead of their hapless marks.

Most of the stories feature British gentlemen thieves who are bored with their inherited privilege or American businessmen who've conned their way into their 'self'-made millions. The usual suspects are here: Raffles, Cecil Thorold, and Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford all take a bow. O. Henry wins the prize for best quote, from his Jeff Peters story, "The Chair of Philanthromathematics": "[A]ll the philanthropists I ever knew had plenty of money. I ought to have looked into that matter long ago, and located which was the cause and which was the effect" (144).

My favorite selection was "The Episode of the Diamond Links," taken from Grant Allen's Colonel Clay stories, An African Millionaire, in which the original gentleman rogue cons the same man multiple times. In this particular story, Clay poses as a mousey priest and manages to convince his mark to buy the mark's own diamonds back from Clay.

Also of interest was Edgar Wallace's Four Square Jane. She's a latter-day Robin Hood who steals from rich, corrupt businessmen and gives almost all of the proceeds to various charitable endeavors in London. I particularly liked that Wallace gives her an admirable detective adversary; he is competent and smart, not bumbling. Also notable is that the detective makes no attempt to restrain his admiration for either Jane's techniques or her lofty goals.

Also read: The Body Snatcher and Other Tales. Robert Louis Stevenson's interest in the duality of human nature threads through "The Body Snatcher," "The Bottle Imp," and "The Merry Men." The protagonists in all three of the stories are highly unlikable, flawed men, who make wrong choices when faced with moral dilemmas. It's hard to sympathize with them or the choices they make, and Stevenson uses this to up the chill factor in his atmospheric tableaux. I'll read more of his stories soon.

41RidgewayGirl
Jun 19, 2014, 5:58 am

That sounds like a collection worth reading.

42rebeccanyc
Jun 19, 2014, 7:18 am

The Gaslight Crime collection sounds like fun.

43SassyLassy
Jun 19, 2014, 9:41 am

Robert Louis Stevenson is always worth reading, no matter what the subject. "The Bottle Imp" is one of my favourites of his short stories. When I reread Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde a couple of years ago, I was amazed at how contemporary his insights and descriptions were.

44LibraryPerilous
Jun 30, 2014, 12:53 pm

>41 RidgewayGirl:, >42 rebeccanyc: Michael Sims also edited another Penguin Crime collection, The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime, that looks fun. Gaslight Crime was a zippy read, perfect for reading outside on a sunny day.

>43 SassyLassy: What I like most about "The Bottle Imp" is the way that Stevenson portrays Keawe's redemption as less than fully benign. Keawe and Kokua love each other, to be sure, but they each crave a return to the honeymoon phase of their relationship. They aren't so much outbidding the other partner for the bottle to save each other as they are trying to preserve the good times. Stevenson implies that the couple gets their happily ever after, but I don't think he ever absolves them of their complicity.

45LibraryPerilous
Jun 30, 2014, 1:07 pm

My early summer reading plans have been derailed by an invitation to my childhood best friend's wedding and a request to visit my mom in Florida. I've had to return, unread, all twelve of my recent ILL requests, because I won't have time to read them before I leave for Florida. Fortunately, the local library in my mom's area has a great selection, so I'll be able to pick up some good beach reads when I arrive there.

The wedding was lovely. I felt very grown up, driving two states down on the interstate. It's been a while since I've taken a proper road trip. I usually fly and then take public transport, so it was grand to crank up the radio and the A/C and turn on the cruise. Road trips always feel extra adventurous even if the most exciting things you do during the day are stop for gas, get a fresh Diet Coke, and then check in to your hotel for the night. Of course, the pile of aforementioned books I brought went unread!

I blew my vegan diet at the wedding, but the spread was worth it: deviled eggs garnished with chow chow; grits with Asiago cheese; fried chicken breast sliders topped with slaw, pecans, and grapes and served on buttermilk biscuits; ginger cake with buttercream icing; Bloody Mary gazpacho shots with avocado and mango chutney; and, pineapple and lime punch that I'm sure had egg in it to make it froth so.

A couple of light reads that merit mention ...

46LibraryPerilous
Editado: Jun 30, 2014, 5:46 pm



In 1807 Istanbul, peaceful, shy, tea-loving Erdemoglu Selim is a lieutenant in the Janissary Corps. Under arrest on his watch is his polar opposite, freewheeling adventurer (adventuress?) Delilah Dirk. When she escapes, Selim's punishment is death. Delilah rescues him because, "Mr. Selim ... you make the finest tea in all of Europe." Selim's code of honor makes him feel obligated to repay his debt, but he soon comes to value their friendship. He finds the way Miss Dirk's gleeful bloodlust and lackadaisical strategizing lead them into constant trouble, if not charming, at least amusing, albeit in a frustrating way. When Selim and Dirk land in a peaceful village, Selim decides to stay. He eventually misses his zany companion and their open road lifestyle, so he rejoins her.

This first volume of Tony Cliff's Delilah Dirk stories, Delilah Dirk and the Turkish Lieutenant, ends with Mr. Selim and Miss Dirk, as they call one another, deciding to become bona fide "traveling companions" (165-66). Cliff's blog states that a second graphic novel is in the works. I dearly hope so. The juxtaposition of repartee and swordplay (complete with tasteful, sly drips of blood), combined with spreads that move from muted tones to bursts of color, make this an enjoyable start to a promising series. Plus, it helps that both characters are just so ... likeable, and perfectly suited to be each other's best friend.

At first, I was a bit put off by Delilah Dirk's dress, which can only be described as a teenage boy's dream of Aphrodite Barbie in bondage wear, complete with cleavage keyhole. However, Cliff is aware of this absurdity: "Why do you dress like this?" (14). It seems to be intentional on Cliff's part, although I think it's more just part and parcel of his interest in playing with time and harkening to pulpy adventure story antecedents, rather than any sort of crypto-feminist commentary.

Additionally, by situating his story in the Georgian era, right on the cusp of the Regency, Cliff is free of the constraints of the trope of Victorian female adventurers wearing long sleeves and skirts and genteely trekking. Delilah is more an amalgam of 18th century explorers and Calamity Jane. Similarly, his choice to make Delilah the daughter of an English diplomat and a Greek artisan doesn't seem to have been made so that Delilah can be labeled exotic or so that her behavior can be excused. Refreshingly, there is none of that. Cliff seems most interested in crafting a tale that recalls the fun of Adventure magazine.

Despite Delilah's silly outfit and the fact that she has macgyvered her ship to fly, this somewhat anachronistic tale is not steampunk or fantasy. Rather, it is more appropriately viewed as a tall tale. Delilah looks to be in her twenties, or early thirties at best, but she has, she claims, managed to be present at Australia's founding, fought Conquistadores, become a member of three royal courts, and traveled to the nascent US. That some of the tall tales Delilah tells, such as the ability of her boat to fly and her incredibly diverse sword fighting skills, turn out to be true only adds to the fun. I'm eager to see how Cliff blends this folkloric element in future issues. What is true and what is false? What is the reason behind his choice of time period and setting? As these Art Deco London railway poster-inspired travel posters show, Tony Cliff loves to play with chronology.

What already is true is that this is an absurdly entertaining start to a graphic novel series. I smiled through the whole story. Cliff's insistence on self-contained stories is a relief in a genre that traffics in cliffhangers. The gentle arc of the story, with its focus on friendship first and fighting second, is refreshing. I also like the way Cliff shows that the life of adventure is both exciting and exhilarating yet perilous and lonely. The only other graphic novel I've read that has captured this blend of whimsy and wistfulness so clearly is Joann Sfar's The Professor's Daughter although that one was set, to great effect, in the Victorian Era. Interesting that both creators are male. ...

This is one series I'll be following, and I want these posters: http://www.inprnt.com/gallery/tangocharlie/



47baswood
Jun 30, 2014, 4:42 pm

Yes the posters are great.

48rebeccanyc
Jun 30, 2014, 4:44 pm

>46 LibraryPerilous: Sounds like fun! And a series I never heard of.

49LibraryPerilous
Editado: Jun 30, 2014, 7:21 pm

I needed an antidote to today's (latest) SCOTUS rightwing asshattery, about which I just found because I was playing on LT for most of the day. Thankfully, my FB feed (which was filled with outrage about everyone's favorite cabal of trolls deciding 'Murika is a theocracy--just call it Scalia law) also had this charming article:

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-27945483

Here's Neil Gaiman as Badger from The Wind in the Willows, doing his best Nicolas Cage impression:



I wish the article had displayed a little more diversity, and that the black female author, Malorie Blackman, had not been portrayed as the Wicked Witch of the West, but these are, overall, great. Actually, now that I've read the article again, all of the female characters portrayed are wicked. What's that say about classic children's literature?

Edited: punctuation

50LibraryPerilous
Editado: Jun 30, 2014, 5:34 pm

And here is some double cream chive cheese from Miyoko's Kitchen, an artisan vegan cheese company launching soon. Looks yummy! I feel better now.



I've read, and drooled over, Artisan Vegan Cheese, and now I will not have to attempt the recipes myself. I can just order online. Huzzah!

51LolaWalser
Jun 30, 2014, 7:04 pm

This June was my first attempt at vegan eating, but I didn't try any cheese substitutes. I thought it would be easier if I steered away from anything that could make me crave "the real thing". But that certainly looks "real" enough.

Delilah Dirk sounds interesting, thanks, just ordered it from the library. (I'm now constantly looking for possible stuff for my niece.)

52LibraryPerilous
Jun 30, 2014, 7:28 pm

>51 LolaWalser: I've never been successful at making vegan cheese, because I'm not that good in the kitchen, but this looks a cut above the preservative-laden slices you can find at Whole Foods. I think you have the right idea to steer away from analogues in the early stages. They don't ever replicate the taste as well as they do the texture. I actually first became a vegan because I don't like the taste of meats or dairy, but I do sometimes find myself craving the tang/creamy feel cheese has, especially as something to spread on toast.

I'll be interested in your thoughts on Delilah Dirk, and/or your niece's impression of it. I liked that it was all "Girl Power!" without being explicit about that--once you get past the outfit. ;)

53LolaWalser
Jun 30, 2014, 7:50 pm

My biggest obstacle in going fully vegan is my love for fish, novelty, and the sheer convenience of some animal foods, eggs and cheese being prime examples. Meat I can do without easily and thankfully there's no veggie I don't like.

Speaking of things to spread on toast, have you tried Marmite? Not creamy, but tangy it is (caveat: apply thinly). There's also Vegemite but I have not tried it recently.

I'll let you know about Delilah. I'm a long distance aunt so I try to be delicate about indoctrinating the kiddies--they grow so fast. There was a boy band phase last year, but that's over, I understand she's into metal now. (Twelve! Then again, I remember a best friend into AC/DC and Van Halen at that age...)

54LibraryPerilous
Jun 30, 2014, 8:31 pm

Seven Lives and One Great Love is one of the nastiest, most mean-spirited books I have read. In fact, the only book I've read within the past five years that is comparable on the nasty scale is Treasure Island!!!!. It, too, is published by Europa Editions, who normally are more reliable. Had Seven Lives not been brief (136 pages), it would have been a DNF for me.

The book is narrated by Sugar Zack, a cat on his seventh and final life--why seven, not nine, is unexplained--who is reincarnated in this iteration as a white kitten in a litter of brown cats. Sugar Zack refers to himself as Pure Whiteness¹ and muses that anyone would love him when juxtaposed with the dark riffraff in the litter. Sugar Zack also feels he is more sophisticated than his alley cat family because he taught himself to read in a past life. However, Zack's racism and class snobbery are the least of the book's problems, as we shall see, and Zack is the sympathetic character in this monstrosity of a novel.

Zack decides to target The Damsel, a temperamental author, until The Damsel and her spouse, another writer, take him home. The Damsel thinks that Zack will interrupt her work and her sleep, so he is forbidden from her office and bedroom. When Zack does gain entry, or does something else wrong, The Damsel physically throws him out, yells at him, calls him names, and throws things at him. Zack justifies this as being necessary because he is teaching The Damsel to learn to love him. It gets even worse, as we shall see.

Toward the middle of the book, The Damsel and her husband get a divorce. Instead of going with the man, who loves him kindly, Zack feels it is more heroic to stay with The Damsel. After all, she might someday write him into her novels, and she needs him more than does the man. What The Damsel really needs is someone at whom she can hurl abuse, which she proceeds to do in ever-increasing increments. The Damsel also starts using Zack as entertainment at her parties: throwing him in the air so he can 'land on his feet'; dragging him in circles by his tail; and (worst, per Zack) making him come when she calls so she can pet him in front of her friends, even though she doesn't pet him otherwise. She shows him little to no kindness at any time. However, it could be worse, as we shall see.

Toward the end of a lifetime claiming that The Damsel's treatment of him is love and, as such, it is necessary to accept her actions because it is his duty to show her how to love, Sugar Zack becomes ill. His kidneys begin to fail, and one of The Damsel's friends tells her to take him to the vet. Instead, The Damsel leaves town for a three-week trip because she cannot be bothered to deal with Zack's illness. It's too upsetting to her, per Zack's rationalizing of her abuse. By the time The Damsel returns, Zack is at death's door, and he is unable to clean himself, drink, or eat. The Damsel does not take him to the vet. Rather, she books another trip and asks a friend to take care of it; again, because it upsets her too much. Poor Zack has to wait even longer to be relieved of his pain.

When he finally is taken to a vet to be euthanized, he makes an angelic-like trip across Europe to find The Damsel at her friend's home in Berlin. The Damsel is crying over him, so Zack gives her the gift of his memories. The novel ends with The Damsel saying she will honor Zack's life and her feelings for him by writing his memoirs. So, have we seen Sugar Zack's life through the eyes of his abuser this entire time? Is this why her behavior constantly is rationalized and compared to true love? Or is Sugar Zack a classic abuse victim?

Whether Zack or The Damsel is the true storyteller, Lena Divani finds domestic abuse and animal cruelty funny. She seems to think it's perfectly normal to control, abuse, or withhold affection from someone you love. Worse, she justifies this behavior as acceptable by explaining that some people just aren't good at showing their true feelings. At one point, Zack admonishes readers, "If you sense liberalism in love, my dears, it's not really love." In other words, control is okay as long as you mean well. This is classic abuser behavior. The author very obviously is not trying to critique abuse; she clearly thinks it makes for great comedy. Her writing style reminds me of rude comments one sees on the internet, of the kind written by people who call you stupid because you don't like their favorite TV show.

I hope that Ms. Divani does not own any pets or is ever near even a zoo. I cannot imagine treating another creature of any species this way. Plus, why have a pet if you don't want to share your life with it? I couldn't even cry while reading this book; I was too angry, especially toward the end. I'd had enough of the author's crass, callous attitude. Of all the awful things in the book, the one that angered me the most was the lack of compassion shown to a dying cat. When my own kitty girl, Tiger, became ill last summer and had to be euthanized, the necropsy revealed cancer. My very first comment was, "How long did she suffer and what can I watch for so that another cat I might have someday doesn't?" I cannot fathom going on holiday for three weeks while your cat is in pain because you can't or won't deal with it.

¹I've misplaced my notebook with quotes from the book in it, so I can't provide specific citations. I'll edit this post if I find my notes.

55LibraryPerilous
Jun 30, 2014, 9:00 pm

>53 LolaWalser: Metal! That's great. Hmm, I definitely went through an AC/DC phase myself, and Cinderella. I saw Van Halen in concert a few years ago and was surprised that most of the audience was not made up of more people like me. It was mostly biker dudes and rednecks. The boy band of my childhood, I'm sorry to say, was New Kids on the Block. Their music has not aged well. I had the gigantic Joey McIntyre button. Embarrassingly, I wore it on the back of my shirts.



Re: vegan, I think even going vegetarian, or having a few vegetarian or vegan days a week, helps both personal health and the environment immensely. Ethical vegans feel more strongly about the need to be more stringent; certainly, being a vegan has led me to a more compassionate viewpoint toward animal rights. But I have a rule that, when I travel, especially to somewhere known for delicious cuisine, I can try the local dishes without beating myself up over it. And I've yet to find anything that can approximate a melty, gooey grilled cheese sandwich.

Do you bake? Eggs definitely are convenient for cookies and cakes. I used to own a copy of The Joy of Vegan Baking. A friend made some of the recipes for me, and they weren't as dense as most vegan baked goods are. One of my goals for this summer is to learn how to make vegan zucchini bread that actually is moist. We'll see how that turns out.

A couple of recently-published vegan cookbooks that feature simple recipes and lots of whole foods--especially fresh veggies--are The Oh She Glows Cookbook and Salad Samurai.

I sniffed Marmite once; does that count? I do like the British tradition of beans on toast.

56Poquette
Jul 1, 2014, 12:58 am

Sorry to interrupt the food fest!

The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime and "See Constantinople by Sea"! What a hoot! I have not read any graphic novels, but I can see how Delila Dirk could be very entertaining! Your reviews make these sound tempting!

57baswood
Editado: Jul 1, 2014, 7:42 am

Your review of Seven Lives and One Great Love sounds a whole lot better than the book.

I have had to cook for Vegan friends on occasion - what a pain. Still I usually enjoyed the food. I am almost vegetarian in the summer living off the produce in my vegetable patch, but I could not contemplate living without cheese. Well done to you.

58RidgewayGirl
Jul 1, 2014, 7:28 am

Seven Lives and One Great Love is clearly one to avoid. Thanks for reading it so I won't -- I like Europa Editions and so would likely have picked this up had I run across it.

Out of curiosity, what is in vegan cheese?

59LolaWalser
Jul 1, 2014, 12:10 pm

>55 LibraryPerilous:

Thanks for the cookbook recs, they'll come in handy. I've deliberately avoided getting any as I wanted to keep the menu change as unobtrusive as possible. Not sure I'll ever graduate to vegan cheese making and the like, though!

Heh, I know better than to push Marmite past the first shy try... :)

60LibraryPerilous
Jul 2, 2014, 10:51 am

>58 RidgewayGirl: I took one for the team. It looks like you are about to start Falling to Earth, which I plan to read soon. What other Europa Editions books do you recommend?

>57 baswood: I envy you your vegetable garden. Fresh produce tastes better.

>56 Poquette: Suzanne, it only took me about an hour to read Delilah Dirk. Of course, I then spent considerable time musing on the course my own adventures would take; but, the book itself is a short read. I recommend it.

>59 LolaWalser: Stealth health; I like it.

Out of curiosity, what is in vegan cheese?
Most homemade vegan cheese recipes that are for wheel cheeses--i.e., not cream cheeses--use nuts as their base and a thickener. Depending on the other ingredients, they might or might not melt or shred well.

If you buy the disgusting processed vegan cheeses you can find in groceries, they usually are made with soy, oil, and preservatives. Also, they usually taste greasy and have a rubbery texture.

I've never made proper vegan cheese; I'm not good enough in the kitchen. It's similar to baking in that you are relying on the chemical reactions of the ingredients to make the right texture.

Fake vegan cream cheese is easier: tofu mashed with a little nut milk or oil, lemon juice, and herbs. I say fake because most vegan cream cheese recipes also use a thickener, and this one doesn't.

Vegan cheeses, unfortunately, and like their dairy counterparts, usually are high in fat, but they do lack cholesterol.

Here's a recipe for vegan brie baked in a puff pastry.


61SassyLassy
Jul 3, 2014, 3:39 pm

>45 LibraryPerilous: I initially read crank up the radio and the A/C as crank up the radio and the AC/DC and thought about a long stretch of highway with lots of curves. After all, who can resist a good road trip? Yours sounds great. I'm just back from another one myself, but you're absolutely right... it certainly plays havoc with the reading although it may certainly increase the TBR. This one did, slightly.

As for Marmite, does anyone apart from my father actually eat it willingly?

62LolaWalser
Jul 3, 2014, 3:46 pm

Sassy, Sassy, Sassy. Where were you in 2012? Obviously not in New Zealand:

'Marmageddon' over as New Zealand shops restock Marmite

63SassyLassy
Editado: Jul 4, 2014, 10:29 am

>62 LolaWalser: That was really funny, made funnier by my first scan, reading it as Marmite has returned to supermarket shelves in New Zealand for the first time in over a year, after shortages caused the Christchurch quake!!! Thanks for that.

In the interests of fairness, I will try the NZ Marmite some time if I ever encounter it, as the article clearly states that the recipe used in NZ is different from the UK one loved by my father. The addition of sugar and caramel in NZ may help. After all, it couldn't be worse!

But Lola, perhaps the Danes were on to something when it was reported (sadly erroneously) that they had banned it: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13536479 and http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-13541148

_______________________

ETA Diana, I will say no more on this topic unless of course I come across a book on the subject that I can review for LT!

64LibraryPerilous
Editado: Jul 4, 2014, 10:40 am

>63 SassyLassy: Heh. Edited: Sassy, you could review The Marmite Cookbook for us.

Happy Fourth of July, fellow US residents. It's my favorite holiday, and the American Revolution is one of my favorite eras about which to read. I'll be continuing my tradition of reading a history book about the Revolutionary War later today, when I reread A. J. Langguth's Patriots.

Book lists always are fraught with controversy, but this one was interesting. My own comments can be found in the linked article under my nom de plume, MetsGal. What are some substitutions or additions you would make?

65rebeccanyc
Jul 4, 2014, 11:29 am

>64 LibraryPerilous: I haven't read much about the revolutionary war era, but I highly recommend Jill Lepore's The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History which looks at the misuse of "the founders" and their beliefs by the far right.

66LibraryPerilous
Jul 4, 2014, 11:44 am

65 Thanks! I have that one on my TBR list. I'll give it a bump later this year when I return to reading about politics. I'm taking a break this summer to keep my head from exploding.

Lepore wrote one of my favorite history books, The Name of War, which examines both the heartbreak of King Philip's War as well as 19th-century "Indian" stereotypes that can be traced to it. I read it around the same time I read Philip Deloria's Playing Indian.

67rebeccanyc
Jul 4, 2014, 2:42 pm

I love Lepore. I've had The Name of War on my TBR for eons, but your mentioning it reminds me I want to read it. Have you read New York Burning, about slavery in New York in the 1700s? Another great book.

68LolaWalser
Jul 4, 2014, 8:47 pm

>63 SassyLassy:

Oooh, you cracked me up!

>64 LibraryPerilous:

I've read less than half of that list and never heard of Kantor and Momaday, glad to make the acquaintance. Of those I've read, only Alvarez was decidedly underwhelming to me, and I'm the only person on LT who doesn't think Stoner is the cat's whiskers.

Agree with losing Ayn Rand--surely some standard of the craft ought to be observed? Otherwise, why not have The Clansman up there.

I'm sorry to see Donald Barthelme didn't make the cut. I've never read Irving but on hearsay I'd have no problem kicking off him, say, to make a spot for my fave.

69LibraryPerilous
Jul 5, 2014, 9:27 am

>68 LolaWalser: Right, the list was about books that are influential from a literary standpoint. I can't think of any authors Rand has influenced, except in the SFF world--and they aren't good SFF authors--although I can name lots of politicians who claim to have read Rand.

I've never read Barthelme (or his brother!). What would you recommend as a good place to start?

I've read less than a quarter of the list, although for a few other authors I've read different works by them. Alvarez's book was a DNF for me. Stoner looks awful; it's buried on my TBR list. One thing I did notice about the list is that it contains a paltry number of minority authors who aren't African American, Jewish American, or Native American. When I tried to think of other, e.g., Chinese American authors to include, outside of Amy Tan, I came up blank.

That's one way best of lists can be important. They can show us what we lack. We are living in a publishing era that has a greater than ever number of diverse minorities writing and being published. Even better, many of those authors are writing about sociocultural backgrounds not their own, which is something white people always have done. Imagine, for all its richness, how much richer American literature would be if this had happened earlier! Of course, that would mean that the trajectory of history itself ran differently.

>67 rebeccanyc: That one looks good as well. Thanks, Rebecca. She also co-wrote a novel, Blindspot, with historian Jane Kamensky, that my local library has.

70LolaWalser
Editado: Jul 6, 2014, 10:56 am

>69 LibraryPerilous:

I like to suggest Snow White--it was my first Barthelme, it's possibly the easiest of his books to find, it's a high demonstration of his gift and style, while short.

I haven't read Frederick Barthelme either, not sure why, I do come across his books occasionally. Now that I think of it, I remember reading a story in a magazine, gamblers, South; good one, but nothing to do with Donald's world.

71LibraryPerilous
Jul 15, 2014, 3:52 pm

72LibraryPerilous
Editado: Jul 22, 2014, 1:11 am

My brain is in pre-vacation mode, so my recent reads have been fluffy novels.

The search continues for a good shipboard mystery. A Burial at Sea doesn't fit the bill as there is too little description of the ship, its workings, or the feel of the sea. The author, Charles Finch, also doesn't evolve the mystery very well, nor capture the claustrophobia that being aboard a ship with a murderer on it would bring. The detective, Victorian gentleman Charles Lenox, spends lots of time ruminating while other people stand around waiting for him to speak. The mystery is solved in one of those 'aha!' moments: Suddenly, Mary knew the murderer's identity. She would tell everyone at the tea party tomorrow, etc., etc.

It's a pity that Finch didn't write just a sea story. When he does take the time to describe the nautical setting, the story comes alive, and his detailing is pitch perfect. In one vivid scene, the captain schedules an impromptu game night (with double rations of rum all around, of course). Finch describes a game of "Follow the Leader"; the joy with which the sailors participate and cheer on their shipmates is palpable, as is the way the officers join with the rank and file for a night of fun, even overlooking the verboten shipboard gambling-- though not, of course, placing bets themselves, Lieutenant Callow is quick to note.

In another evocative scene, Finch captures the wistful camaraderie with strangers that arises during long voyages. The ship meets a friendly American vessel and the officers board her for dinner; wine and conversation flow with a sense of urgency. After all, the ships must go their own ways in the morning. The officers discuss the bygone days, when navies participated in scientific exploration: "Scientific discovery has always been the second-greatest adornment of our navy" (179). Lenox is reading The Voyage of the Beagle and an amusing Victorian Era debate on evolution then briefly arises: "Unfortunate that Darwin lost his mind subsequently ... Apes indeed" (180). The British seamen depart full of good cheer and the "men of the Constellation, among them her own officers, were lined along the rail of the ship, waving back and shouting messages of goodwill, of good sailing, and of good luck" (181).

The story takes place during the Victorian era, when steam power is changing the face of travel. Lenox is traveling to the Suez Canal on a corvette; she uses coal for power in certain situations but remains under sail in most. On the return voyage, Lenox muses, "there was a feeling of majesty to sailing ... of wide distances traversed. Though he loved progress, part of him hoped the steamship wouldn't make Egypt a mere two-day voyage away, and take that feeling of majesty with it" (303).

73LibraryPerilous
Jul 21, 2014, 11:42 pm

The Sanctuary Sparrow and The Devil's Novice are the seventh and eighth chronicles of Brother Cadfael. Peters does an excellent job of working historical tidbits into her narratives. She's particularly good at dumping information about the Anarchy into the text--almost gleefully describing the double- and triple-crosses of that affair--as well as describing the differences between Welsh and English social systems and detailing the lives of tradesmen. She's a bit lax in her descriptions of the calling behind monastery life, but she does work the daily offices into her stories, and some of the Benedictine Order's regulations and restrictions are explored.

Peters gets a little bit away from this in The Sanctuary Sparrow, to its detriment. There's more inner rumination from Cadfael and less detail about the world in which he lives, and I had to look up the main plot just two days after reading it. Notably, the customary map of Shrewsbury is absent from this entry, at least in the edition I read. The Devil's Novice marks a return to her usual form. Interestingly, the heretofore neutral Cadfael finds himself favoring Stephen in it. I'm curious to see if Peters develops that in future stories.

I had an online conversation with an LTer who feels that Peters' work is anachronistic. I disagree strongly with this: The Middle Ages aren't quite the backwater we like to imagine, and I don't feel that Cadfael exhibits ideas that were not found in the 1100s. That they were less common, or even uncommon, does not render them incorrect. And, for me, the correctness of her historical details more than makes up for the sometimes modern way of speaking her characters do have.

This is one series I'm happy to read in order, a few at a time, and there are several to which I will return someday. Cadfael is a bit annoying, because he's a Mary Sue, and because he has a (ahem) habit of ogling pretty girls. The mystery plots themselves are repetitive--all involving young love and youthful indiscretion--but Peters' enthusiasm for the era makes up for this. As always though, I came away from these books wanting slightly less Cadfael and lots more Hugh Beringar. He's dreamy.

74LibraryPerilous
Editado: Jul 22, 2014, 1:26 pm

Bronze Gods is marketed as steampunk noir, but, despite the menacing undertones of the magic system and the somewhat grotesque killings, this one reads more as a cozy mystery with a nascent romance. There is witty banter and romantic tension between the detectives, Mikani and Ritsuko: He has sixth sense; she has OCD. It's shades of Moonlighting and The X-Files, but Bronze Gods doesn't match the quality of either, of course.

Still, it was an enjoyable start to the series, with interesting supporting characters, elemental magic, entrapped and banished fey someone wants to release, and older, long forgotten magic rearing its powerful, not entirely benign head. The worldbuilding promises to be meaty, too, if it's fleshed out: Hy Breasil, where the native fey population has been conquered and displaced by humans whose ships were lost between the worlds. In order to save the society, it was necessary for fairies to marry humans, so the pure fey bloodlines were tainted. As this was diluted over generations, magic fell out of favor and became something not to be trusted, so most of the current citizenry looks down upon it. However, a few strong fairy Houses remain, and they assist in creating inventions that can utilize the elemental magic on which the realm runs. Consequently, magic controls most everything but is highly regulated and is the purview of the wealthy or the powerful. The society's marginalized who retain Ferisher (fairy) blood eke out a living performing small magic--glamours and the like--for a few pennies on the black market. Mikani is forbidden from mentioning his magical skills in official reports, but he is allowed to use his skills on the sly to further investigations.

The second book, Silver Mirrors, apparently is an adventure story with pirates, so I shall be reading it.

A Taste Fur Murder is the first entry in a new cozy paranormal mystery series. (Yes, that's a thing now.) Deirdre "Foxtrot" Lancaster works for an eccentric heiress who lives on an estate that has both a menagerie and a pet cemetery. Foxtrot stumbles home from a bizarre day at work to find her previously dead cat, Tango, reincarnated and communicating with her telepathically. Additionally, Tiny, a shapeshifting ghost dog, also is waiting for her. She must protect the pet cemetery, they inform her, and save someone from dying.

Foxtrot discovers that she has been chosen as the gatekeeper for the pet cemetery, which serves as a 'mystical nexus' for dead pets to visit their equally deceased humans. The catch, she finds out, is that the human must have loved and treated their pets well enough to be loved in return. The other species make the choice to visit their human friends because love trumps death. It's sweet: Who among us hasn't loved a pet and wished to see him or her again? The humans can receive visits from their pets, but they cannot initiate the visits. As Tango observes, humans own pets while they're alive, but they do not have that fiat in death. It's a subtle commentary, one of many that the author, Dixie Lyle, makes, on the nature of humankind's relationships with other species. She also works in quite a bit of zoology. For instance, I learned that a female hyena has a pseudo-penis and gives birth through it. Additionally, Topsy, the real life elephant who deserved better, makes an appearance and is given some relief.

This is a fun book, and it's well-written for what it is. Foxy questions Two-Notch, a shark who's in limbo because her owners didn't love her:

"You tried to eat me!"
i answered questions
"And you think that's a fair trade?"
yes

As with most cozy mystery series, there's a mysterious, hunky man mucking about the premises. He turns out to be a Thunderbird. Apparently, the mystical nexus attracts all kinds of magic to its presence. He's a bit of an annoying character as written, vaguely stalkerish, and he seems a bit dim. Personally, I would have picked the brooding, British rock star with the tender heart and the drug problem.

The next volume in the series, To Die Fur, comes out this August, and I'm interested to see where the series goes. By the end of the first book, Foxtrot has discovered she has been assigned the gatekeeping duties because she can see and communicate with the dead animals, but also because she can act as a conduit if they need to interact with living humans. Indeed, Topsy uses this attribute to exact a spark (pun intended) of revenge in A Taste Fur Murder.

Edited: touchstone shenanigans

75baswood
Editado: Jul 22, 2014, 4:43 am

I enjoyed reading your reviews of those fluffy novel. I am sure I have a Brother Cadfael knocking around here somewhere and Bronze Gods sounds interesting. When I am in the mood for a cozy read, I will come back to these two.

76LolaWalser
Jul 23, 2014, 6:13 pm

Dropping in to say Delilah Dirk is a hit! Very interesting setting, and it's nice how friendly and not at all flirty the two main characters are.

77Poquette
Jul 25, 2014, 1:21 pm

Enjoying your recent reviews. Now I have a great source of "fluffy" reading when I run out of what is already at hand!

78LibraryPerilous
Jul 25, 2014, 3:30 pm

Thanks, Barry and Suzanne. I enjoy my fluffy interludes, although they can't hold a candle to a fluffy singularity.

I do recommend the Cadfael series. It's a pleasant diversion, but it's peppered with enough historical minutiae to feel a little meatier.

>76 LolaWalser: I'm glad you liked Delilah's adventure; hope your niece does/did, too! I agree with you: Their relationship should stay platonic.

79LibraryPerilous
Jul 29, 2014, 12:05 pm

Some more frippery:

Indiana Jones falls hard for art historian Mara Rogers. When she cancels their summer fling, Indy heads to the Southwest anyway, with plans to look at the area's Anasazi ruins. Indy discovers Mara has been kidnapped by an old nemesis who wants to steal an alicorn that the Rogers family possesses. Mara's acquaintance, a Navajo mystic named Aquila, senses the alicorn's malevolence and secrets it in the canyons. Why does Mara herself want to retrieve the alicorn, and why does everyone who possesses it die violently?

If you like your adventure fiction to include fedoras, fisticuffs, and far-flung locales that are unrelated to the relic in question, you might enjoy Indiana Jones and the Unicorn's Legacy. I find the Indiana Jones series an enjoyable way to while away a few hours. Plus, it's good fodder for my daydreams. It's always fun to imagine myself high-stepping it around the world and discovering a long-lost tomb while nattily dressed in khakis, an Oxford, and a jaunty fedora.

Berkley's Prime Crime cozies follow a publisher's outline--I have that on good authority from a Berkley author next to whom I was seated on a flight--and it shows. There's very little to distinguish one from another. Most are written in a chatty style and the plots careen from one ludicrous point to the next. Cat Nap is a servicable entry, and it does feature two good things: a New England harbor town and a rescued cat, Shadow. The passages written from Shadow's point of view show how cats use their olfactory senses to identify their surroundings. Shadow doesn't solve the crime or uncover a clue, but he does recognize the killer's scent.

I quickly grew tired of the high school pettiness of the main character and of her father's constant grousing. The killer makes attempts on the detective's life at least three, maybe four or five times. There's a running joke that the inept killer is like Wile E. Coyote. In a move as subtle as a sledgehammer, the joke is explained to all the poor readers who are unable to ascertain its meaning from either context clues or from their knowledge of the actual cartoon. With characters who are juvenile even by Berkley's standards, and a cat protagonist who is not really involved in the storyline, I'll pass on this series. There are better cat cozies out there.

When Patricia Brent, Spinster overhears two of her fellow boardinghouse denizens commenting on her unfortunate unmarried status, she decides to exact revenge. At dinner, Patricia announces that she will be dining out the next day. The other residents goad her into telling a deeper lie: She will be going to the Quadrant Club and meeting her fiancé, Major Brown, who has just returned from the fighting fields of France. Patricia realizes she must carry through with her charade--the boardinghouse residents are a nosy lot--so she resigns herself to the expenditure: "is a major in the British Army worth ten shillings?" Well, no, but her pride is, so off Patricia goes the next night, with plans to take her meal at the Club and then dodge questions about it later.

There's a hitch, though, as three of the other residents just happen to be dining at the Club at the same time, too. In fact, their taxi follows hers to the Quadrant. They expect to catch Patricia in her bald-faced lie, but Patricia's pride makes her rustle up her courage. She casts about for a safety net and, as luck would have it, a nice looking single man is dining at the Club. She rushes up to him and tells him she needs a fiancé, stat. He's amused by the situation and helps her. Conveniently, his name is Peter Bowen and he has just been promoted from major to lieutenant-colonel. He also is a lord. Bowen is charmed by Patricia's joie de vivre and they spend the rest of the evening in pleasant conspiracy against the old coots from the home.

However, Patricia's pride resurfaces and she tells Bowen she doesn't want to see him again. Bowen, meanwhile, has fallen for Pat and tries to woo her with flowers and chocolate: "The King's Regulations do not provide for Patricias, and I had to try. That is how I knew." Eventually, Peter involves his sister, Tanagra, who is named after the figurines their father collects. Lady Tan, as she is known, is the ultimate madcap heiress, and she rushes in headlong to save the day. Her solution: Don't call or write Patricia and she'll figure out she loves you. Pat then spends the rest of the novel complaining that Bowen has forsaken her, even though she told him to, until a couple of events show her the error of her ways and she rushes to Bowen's side.

Patricia's pride is the issue. Although she claims to be embarrassed by the situation, she isn't really mortified that she propositioned a man--after all, she works as secretary to a politician and wears skirts that the other boarders cluck are "two inches too short." (Plus, both Peter and his sister think it a meet cute and are sure their mother will, too.) No, she's mortified that she got caught in a position to need a man's help. (She was raised by a distant father and a spinster aunt who hates men.) She is shown to be in love with Peter from their first meeting. At one point, Tanagra asks Pat, "You are causing a lot of unnecessary unhappiness. Is it worth it?" Pat responds that, "One's self-respect is always worth any sacrifice." Tanagra drily rejoins, "Except when you are in love, and then you take pride in trampling it underfoot."

I'm of two minds about this novel. On one hand, I really enjoyed it and was guffawing at the caricatures of British classism, social climbing, and stiff upper lip attitudes throughout. The author skewers everyone's pretensions, even the heroine's. Everyone in the story acts like a madcap heiress, even the penniless characters, and it's grand fun. The book is a fine farce from start to finish. It's also a fable: Tan, Peter, and their friends and relatives embrace Patricia on the spot because she is smart, fun, and interesting. Peter loves her, so they love her. Class distinctions are irrelevant to them, and the author--a liberal writing in 1918 when British attitudes toward class and women's rights were being changed by WWI--leverages commentary about these changing times into the text.

On the other hand, Patricia Brent is a mean-spirited heroine. It's hard to root for her happiness when she spends every other moment berating Bowen. Even when she finally tells Peter she loves him, she tells him he hurt her by leaving her alone and asks him why he did so! I think we're meant to follow her transformation from lonely cynic to someone who can embrace her happiness while still being true to her own self. However, it feels like swathes of that novel were left on the editing room floor. Quite truthfully, Patricia's mean to just about everyone, and none of the other characters really deserves her vitriol. Patricia finally realizes that she has been "a beast" to Peter because she is lonely, stubborn, and proud, but she never quite figures out that this is also why she treats others so contemptuously. The novel does end on a reasonably nice note, with all the characters invited to the wedding. One hopes Patricia will learn to be more patient with their foibles, since she certainly has her share of unpleasant traits, too.

Still, I enjoyed this novel and probably will read it again someday. It's in the public domain and available to download for e-readers.

80baswood
Ago 1, 2014, 7:15 am

>79 LibraryPerilous:. Oh! it's so good to find some gems in the public domain.

81LibraryPerilous
Editado: Ago 2, 2014, 4:08 pm

>80 baswood: Yes, definitely, and here's another cute find:

The Siege of the Seven Suitors is frothy fun. Eccentric Aunt Octavia is a wealthy spinster who believes in pirates, ghosts, and chivalry: "I am bent upon adventure ... the right turn at any corner may bring me face to face with the most stirring encounters." She engages a clipping bureau to inform her of shipwrecks and treasure because, "Why should one read the news of the day when the news of all time was available!" Aunt Octavia wants her nieces to be married to men of imagination and romance. She stages an elaborate courtship ritual for the elder, Cecilia, who pledges to marry the seventh man who asks for her hand.

Into this fray steps Arnold Ames, an architect turned chimney doctor whom Aunt Octavia invites to her upstate New York country estate ostensibly to fix a faulty flue. Cecilia and Ames' best mate, Wiggins, are in love. Aunt Octavia realizes this, so she contemplates calling off the charade. Ames dearly loves Aunt Octavia, and he doesn't want her daydream to be spoiled: "No one should be disappointed who has heard ... the timbers creaking in the stout old caravel of romance as it wallows in the seas that wash the happy isles." He takes the matter into his own hand, with the help of Cecilia's zany sister, Hezekiah, to ensure that Cecilia and Wiggins get married and that Aunt Octavia's faith in adventure remains intact.

Along the way, a buried chest that contains important information about Wiggins' family history is unearthed, two 'ghosts' are discovered in the house, and a secret passage is found. Everyone generally gets by on whimsy and high-spirited resourcefulness by "combining the maddest quixotism [sic], with the bold spirit of the Elizabethan mariners." It's all very silly and outrageous. Aunt Octavia is a madcap heiress extraordinaire, but she also is an indulgent aunt. Of course, her motive for Ames' visit isn't really the chimney, but a second matchmaking, so Aunt Octavia is pleased to no end when Ames and Hezekiah forge their alliance. In the end, everyone gets their desired form of happily ever after and all continues to be right in the fairy tale world Aunt Octavia has created.

Also read:

Solo, William Boyd's entry in the Bond series, is the first of the Bond novels I've read. Just going off the films, it seems that Boyd's Bond is more ill-tempered and revenge-minded than Fleming's suave creation. The adventure does careen rapidly from locale to locale, but the story is hampered by Boyd's arrogant, vaguely imperialist, use of a fictional country (the war-torn Zanzarim, in West Africa), and by the thin rationale given for the villain's actions. A wealthy arms dealer decides to hang his hat on a faction of rebels trying to create a new country in their oil-rich delta because he wants to smuggle heroin, not because he wants the oil: Bollocks, I say. Boyd also displays a tone-deaf attitude toward the colonialism he is trying to skewer. At one point, a Zanzarim refugee notes that the Zanzarim ideas of kinship and home are very different from that of an Englishman's. "I understand that," Bond says, "don't patronise me." Yuck. Bond also is a peeping Tom in this story. Also yuck. I'd like to read one of Fleming's original novels to see how it compares.

Moonlight Downs is an exciting crime novel and a good example of Outback noir. Emily Tempest is half-Aboriginal, half-white, and all spitfire. She returns to her childhood home, Moonlight Downs, in the middle of the Northern Territory's Outback. When the Warlpuju tribe's leader is murdered in ritualized fashion, suspicion falls on another Aborigine, Blakie, who is passionate about preserving the area's sacred places. Emily becomes convinced that Blakie is innocent and brazenly begins hunting clues to the killer, all while facing racism, misogyny, and her own conflicted feelings about where she belongs.

Moonlight Downs also is more than a standard crime novel. It explores the changing face of the Outback: As mining veins become depleted, the livelihood on which many white settlers have depended is ending. Systemic poverty is rampant among both black and white Outbackers: Everyone is stuck there with nowhere else to go. Racism against the Aborigines is endemic and everyone hates and distrusts everyone else. The wealthy station owners are still embittered about the Aboriginal Land Rights Act of 1976, which transferred land rights, often of political and economic value, back to Aboriginal tribes. Additionally, Aboriginal leaders are trying to keep the younger generations interested in tribal ways. Many sacred sites have been mined or otherwise defiled, and station owners are constantly harassing the Indigenous Land Corporation to encroach on territory that has been marked off-limits.

This sounds bleak, and it is, but Emily faces all of these issues and her own sense of displacement with humor, sarcasm, and wits. Adrian Hyland doesn't sugarcoat the harshness of the Outback, but he is sympathetic to the plight of everyone who is mired in poverty. The lethargy that has set in is on full display here, but so is the tempestuous beauty of the desert. Descriptions of the geography and its lonely vastness--and both the claustrophobia and libertarianism* that it induces--are vivid. Hyland also gives us memorable insight into Aboriginal Dreaming, and how it's used to connect to one's natural surroundings on a deep level, but also into how it's used to renew and strengthen the kinship ties that are integral to Aboriginal culture. Hyland also peppers the story with the geology of the Outback. Emily's father is a miner, and she shares his love of rocks. It's a unique way on which to hang clues to the mystery.

The mystery itself is resolved in a little bit of a deus ex machina fashion, but Emily's hunting of clues is realistic. The resourceful ways she tracks down the information she needs are funny and introduce us to a host of well-drawn, interesting secondary characters, each with their own agendas and outré Outback personalities. Brashness is essential to survival here, and the sense that everyone is pulled in multiple directions by the myriad influences on Outback lifestyles contributes to the intelligence of the narrative. In one memorable scene, Emily and her antagonist, the racist station owner Earl Marsh, briefly bond over their shared love of Slim Dusty's Outback songs. Emily wryly notes that much of what the white settlers base their cowboy notions on is a romanticized image of life in the Outback as a fun, easy adventure; but, she also notes that many of these tropes are true. No one is wholly evil or wholly good. Everyone just is. New friends are met and new enemies are made, sometimes in the same person; all the while the desert rolls on and on.

*It's intriguing how the westward expansions of the Australian and American frontiers seem to mirror each other. I'd like to know more about the history of the Outback and its politics. Americans think Westerns are unique to our culture, but Australia also has its own robust cowboy literature, from Voss to The Sundowners to The Untold, as well as a strong country music tradition. (The gauchos of southern South America also come to mind, but I don't know if there is a body of literature devoted to the cowboy experience in Argentina, et al.) And, too, the contemporary Outback, with its shoot-'em-up, saloon-style justice, more closely mirrors the romanticized visions of the American West than does the contemporary Southwest or Rocky Mountain US regions, despite Cliven Bundy's recent old college try.

82baswood
Ago 2, 2014, 3:54 pm

Careful Diana.n too much vintage romance could addle the brain.

Enjoyed your excellent review of Moonlight Downs and a mention of one of my favourite novel Voss

83LibraryPerilous
Editado: Ago 2, 2014, 5:28 pm

>82 baswood: Thanks, Barry, and I'll try not to become too addlepated!

People seem to love or hate Voss. I've been wavering on reading it because it sounds very bleak. On the other hand, it also sounds like a compelling book. It's good to know that it's a Club Read member's favorite.

Edited: grammar

84rebeccanyc
Ago 2, 2014, 9:48 pm

Just catching up with your recent reading and enjoying your reviews, in particular your review of Moonlight Downs now that I've read a couple of books about Australia's aboriginal peoples. And as for South America, the only book I've read about the gauchos is The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas!

85LolaWalser
Ago 2, 2014, 10:28 pm

It's difficult to believe that anyone's take on Bond could be more repellent than Fleming's own! I'd suggest to try the very first, Casino Royale. It has less racism than other titles, but the sexism and misogyny are turned on full blast. If Boyd's worse than that, well... it would be an achievement of sorts.

86LibraryPerilous
Ago 2, 2014, 10:55 pm

>84 rebeccanyc: Thanks, Rebecca! The Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas looks very charming.

>85 LolaWalser: Ah, that helps to put Boyd's take in better context; thanks. My only experience has been with the Brosnan and Craig iterations on film. I'll try Casino Royale.

87LibraryPerilous
Editado: Nov 30, 2014, 2:35 pm



Lucie Brock-Broido's Stay, Illusion is many things: a modern Medieval tapestry; a latter-day Book of Hours; a revisionist folklore; a new kind of chivalry; an alchemy of past myths and present realities; a tableaux of not always benign fantastical elements. Yet it also is a review of the mundanity of the everyday and the mortality that is the fate of us all. The poems give voices to the marginalized: farm animals awaiting slaughter, death row inmates, recently deflowered virgins in meadows, resigned spinsters, terminally ill suicides, endangered species. These voices must be heard and respected, because, as Brock-Broido makes clear, they have been at the center of the story all along. After all, the hero cannot rescue the maiden if there is no maiden awaiting rescue. "Are we not noble?" these heroes ask. "By whose standards?" Brock-Broido's protagonists rejoin.

Brock-Broido uses folkloric motifs to explore the banality of the everyday. We break up the days, she implies, with shots of cruelty and jolts of passions; otherwise, we would all be in a perpetual catatonic state: "By morning, you will be invisible, mon dream ... / Now, you are distracting Moi" (73). She explores the tensions between remembering the past and idealizing it too much so that progress is stagnated. How true is the past we do remember, if we do not allow everyone to have their say in the collective memory?: "If the water had been potable, so easily— / What more is it that you never would have wished for than this is?" (79). The poems strip away the veneer of civility behind which we hide: "Don't be coy with me. You / Were mean and you were plump. Dove, / Mistaken. You are not good" (69). In this, I was reminded of Elizabeth Bishop's poem, "Trouvée," but with a mystical bent.

The poems weave in and out, as if in a rondo, and are organized under loosely-themed sections—e.g., medieval religion, the waning of autumn—but the same stories are retold from different angles in each of the sections. Brock-Broido also repeats the same imagery, and even words, throughout the book. The poems are full of lyricism and are packaged with illusions, metaphors, religious and mythological allusions, and literary allusions. "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" retells Shirley Jackson's novel thus: "Of my own venatic arts, everything I ever killed had never been alive. / Then there's the incessant scrubbing of the sugarbowl for arsenic, and guile, / After any hope of fact, forensically. / I'm not bored yet. / And all the dark I did is done" (86).

For Brock-Broido, the most important idea is that "[i]f it is written down, you can't rescind it" (3). Each poem in this collection feels vital and uplifting, even if the words themselves, or the subjects of the poem, are sad or connote death and loss. No person ever is truly "rescinded" if there is a memory recorded. To that end, Brock-Broido senses the urgency in physically recording one's memories of knowledge and feelings, so that they can contribute to humanity's collective re-imagining of the past as its future: "I have read religiously, mostly texts which have red spines. / I had dreams that were inhumane to me. / The smaller the light to write to becomes, the more / I have to say to you" (88).

In Stay, Illusion, the pursued also is the pursuer. Everyone acts selfishly, to ensure their own survival, but this is shown to be its own kind of humanity. No one is singularly evil; we're each of us reacting to the forces of life that surround us. There are shades of Marge Piercy's "Song of the Fucked Duck" in Brock-Broido's "A Cage Goes in Search of a Bird." The cage notes: "Be good, they said, and so too I was / Good until I was not" (94). It's all on display in these poems: the savagery of life; the violence of the natural order of things; the fragile threads of hope to which some of us cling and some of us decide to let go. There is no judgement of the choices made. What matters is that there are choices at all. It's a little like the ending to Ever After, in which Jeanne Moreau's character tells the Brothers Grimm that the point of the story is not that there was, indeed, a happily ever after. Rather, "the point, gentlemen, is that they lived."

This is a beautiful collection of poems to which my review does not do justice. I was provoked on every page, usually in concert with the author but occasionally in strong disagreement. Each poem can be read on its own, but each also is a thread in Brock-Broido's tapestry of her view of humankind's place in the world. It's a collection to which I will return again and it has gone on my to own list. I can't think of the last time a contemporary poetry collection affected me this strongly. I'm surprised the shortlisted Stay, Illusion did not win the National Book Award for poetry, although I've yet to read the winning book, Incarnadine.

The book's lovely cover image is from the hypnotic and mysterious Wilton Diptych.

Interview with Lucie-Brock Broido

Review from The New Yorker: Points for calling this a grimoire and seeing the pre-Raphaelite connection that I missed on the first read

Vocabulary words learned: sejant; venatic; syrinx

"For a Snow Leopard in October"

"Scarinish, Minginish, Griminish"

You will not be a sepia hound in my dream at Trotternish, even
     One more time. Not a lighthouse keeper

Landlocked in at Insch, nor the deep sea diver with the metal
     Brain in the icy umbraged waters of the Outer Hebrides.

Not at the Firth of Lorne, where each man downed is a tricycle
     Turned over, most of his spokes blown off, not even, were

You luckier, in the heap of small black mussels
     Washed up on the Isle of Skye, huddling but still whole.

You will come back as a starfish, two arms lopped off,

Scooped up by the mop-topped schoolboy, Fearghas,
     Who will take you home to Dingwall when the blotted tide is low,

Collect you with his blush balloons, his tin Sienna soldiers,
     Coloring your endoskeleton with a spot of Maize and Timberwolf

From his set of crayons, flattering you with a Thistle touch, then some
     Dandelion flourishes until his suppertime, one last dab of Fern--

After which he will go on to his maroon arithmetic and Dostoyevsky
     And his other sullen Prussian Blue and Orchid arts.

88rebeccanyc
Editado: Ago 5, 2014, 7:39 am

Wonderful review, and Brock-Broido sounds like a fascinating poet. I wish I had more time to really get into poetry enough to understand and appreciate it; I loved it as a teenager but have mostly avoided it as an adult.

PS You should post your review on the book page.

89LibraryPerilous
Ago 5, 2014, 12:21 pm

>88 rebeccanyc: Thanks! Yes, I don't read much poetry as an adult, either, although I still have my thick binder of poems that I collected while in high school. Contemporary poetry often is too abstract for my brain, and many of the more recent pop culture allusions are lost on me, as is the pervasive need of people my age and younger to be sardonically ironic all the time. I read Alien vs Predator and thought: 1) To what is this reference alluding? and 2) No one is that cynical all the time without slitting their wrists or going postal. That might have been the point of the poems, but, if so, it was lost on me.

One thing about Brock-Broido's poems I like is that they are meant to be read aloud. In this, she reminds me of Frank O'Hara. Brock-Broido is abstract in the extreme, and O'Hara wrote in everyday language--his meaning is clear enough that the poems almost are concrete-- but the cadences are similar.

90Poquette
Ago 5, 2014, 6:04 pm

>87 LibraryPerilous: — Just on the basis of the cover and the title, Stay, Illusion has almost got me sold. I second what Rebecca said about reading poetry as an adult. It takes some real investment of time to get into it, and perhaps that is why I feel as though I simply don't understand it. But you have written an excellent review and I am really tempted in this case!

91LibraryPerilous
Ago 5, 2014, 6:22 pm

>90 Poquette: Thanks, and I will confess to not understanding all of the poems myself!

I hope you do read it: I would be interested in your thoughts on the collection, because some of the poems reference medieval attitudes toward religion and folklore. I feel like there also might be allusions to alchemy in a few of them, although I don't know enough about that subject to say for certain.

92baswood
Editado: Ago 6, 2014, 8:46 am

Excellent review of Stay, Illusion, Lucie Brock-Broido. There is much there that I might like. It's on my wishlist.

I have seen the Wilton Dyptich at the National Gallery in London, one of the earliest of a fine collection of late medieval renaissance art. Well worth a look if you are in town.

93LibraryPerilous
Ago 6, 2014, 3:06 pm

>92 baswood: Yes, it's one of my favorites in the National Gallery, which I think is one of the best art museums around. It has a far less cramped feel to its layout than does the Met.

Thanks, baswood. I think you would find many of her reference points interesting.

94LibraryPerilous
Editado: Ago 8, 2014, 2:29 am

The inscrutable LTER algorithm selected me as a reviewer of Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft. I have very little horror in my library, and I've not read a single Lovecraft story. My Early Reviewers' review is copied here:

"Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft contains a selection of stories that allude to Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. In his afterword, Lovecraft specialist S. T. Joshi notes that the contributors to this collection have used Lovecraft's ideas as a springboard and that the stories take a more "allusive approach," often with "only the most tangential allusions to ... Lovecraft's work." I've not read any of Lovecraft's oeuvre to state whether or not the stories are successful in this method, or even if it's a good approach to take. (Before: Cthulhu is an Elder God with a squid-like appearance and malevolent intentions. Now: Cthulhu also is primordial, indestructible, and its tentacles spread worldwide.) I can critique whether or not the stories are entertaining, and whether or not they are, as advertised, eldritch.

Horror takes two main forms. On one hand, you can create a Gothic tableau of dark and stormy nights, forests dark and deep, or houses dilapidated and haunted, and a primeval malevolence contained deep within. You can use these tropes as shorthand to create atmosphere, à la Poe or Washington Irving. On the other hand, you can show how the mundanity of the everyday slowly brings out malevolence or insanity, or how the repetitive nature of life can drive people to jolts of passion, as did Robert Louis Stevenson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Both can be successful tropes, and both are represented in Cthulhu Lives!. However, several of the stories, while interesting, are too brief or too nebulous to immerse oneself in their creepiness. Perhaps the authors are mimicking Lovecraft's writing style; but, even if one is writing a story based on allusive imagery, there still should be some fleshing of either the plot or the scene. The underlying menace depicted in "Elmwood" (Tim Dedopulos), "Dark Waters" (Adam Vidler), and "Ink" (Iain Lowson) is interesting. All three stories feature passing references to what happens when Cthulhu consumes(?) you. "Dark Waters," particularly, takes place in an atmospheric location, and the contrast between the claustrophobia of the great outdoors and the cramped city apartment to which the protagonist retreats is very good. When Kat is pulled into the lake and eaten(?) by Cthulhu, the story mentions in passing the way her body disintegrates and that she sees the long history of Cthulhu's evil as this is happening, but none of this is described in detail. "Ink" has the same problem: I want to know what, specifically, the nasty art critic sees and feels as he falls prey to the eldest of the Elder Gods. This vagueness serves to stymie the horror, not enhance it, in these particular stories.

Other stories do flesh out the Cthulhu mythology or explain the visceral reactions people have when encountering Cthulhu. "Demon in Glass" (E. Dane Anderson), "Visiting Rights" (Joff Brown), and "The Thing in the Printer" (Peter Tupper) benefit from a willingness to write the terror directly, rather than just allude to it. The latter two also are enjoyable stories, with interesting characters, and "The Thing in the Printer" contains a witty commentary on the place of reason in the human imagination.

Two standouts are Michael Grey's "1884" and Gethin A. Lynes' "The Highland Air." Both are set in the Victorian era and leavened with small details that add to the stories' atmospherics. "1884" is Cthulhu steampunk, and it features a little match girl whose fate is far worse than freezing to death. The introduction of this second folklore is successful, as is the steampunk setting. Both these elements would make for a successful novel, and the poignancy with which the protagonist expresses the realization that the world is doomed is affecting. One shares his resignation. "The Highland Air" traverses Victorian Australia, London, and Scotland.. The travel between the far-flung locales intensifies the narrative and Lynes captures a Victorian gentleman's diary voice with authenticity. A casual implication that the influence of Cthulhu is, in part, responsible for the Kelly Gang's rampaging neatly illustrates the timelessness of Cthulhu's power and the vastness of its reach. It would make for heady stuff in a novel. One does wonder, given the ending, how the narrator is alive to narrate past events. Again, a novel would afford time to flesh out this aspect of the story.

Most of the stories explore the question: What happens when a regular Joe, neither good nor bad, comes in contact with Cthulhu or its arbiters? Who can resist its pull? The answer is: not many. Those who can resist still find their lives destroyed by their contact with Cthulhu's evil appendages. By dint of this, the stories in Cthulhu Lives! are bleak because resistance to Cthulhu is, ultimately, futile. Sometimes this bleakness feels forced, or it feels as if the writers are too earnest in their assignment. The collection could have benefited from the inclusion of a couple of parodies or, at least, a couple of sardonic narrators. "Elmwood," with its jaunty, amiable narrator, comes closest to this tone. One also wonders at the ability of a couple of the first-person narrators, such as the one in "Scales from Balor's Eye," to tell their stories coherently and in detail, if they are so scarred by their interactions with Cthulhu as to be incapacitated and perpetually nervous.

Cthulhu Lives! is an entertaining collection, but most of the stories are not scary, per se. They are intriguing, and the sense of futility in the face of great evil is food for thought. The collection isn't very eldritch either: Many of the stories put the onus on readers to create an eerie atmosphere from their knowledge of the Cthulhu ethos, rather than by the authors riffing on this themselves. The navel-gazing foreword by "Ask Lovecraft" creator Leeman Kessler can be skipped, but "1884" and "The Highland Air" are worth the price of admission, and most of the other stories in the collection are fun reads. Several of the authors piqued my interest, and I'll look for more stories by them.

(This review is based on an ARC e-book received from the publisher.)"

Edited: touchstone difficulties

95rebeccanyc
Ago 8, 2014, 7:58 am

Better you than me! But I enjoyed your review and its insight into a book I will never read.

96baswood
Ago 9, 2014, 7:12 am

Interesting

97LibraryPerilous
Editado: Ago 10, 2014, 12:08 am

Thanks, Rebecca and Barry. I did enjoy the stories, and they were quick reads. The LTER algorithm is a puzzle sometimes!

In the far future, after a tenuous peace agreement has ended a long galactic war, a dilapidated starship of fools traverses to the edges of known space. The motley crew and passengers of the Geoffrey prepare to Jump to an uncharted spiral arm in search of a Transcendental Machine that the Prophet has promised can physically alter matter to a state of perfection (transcendence). Riley, a human former mercenary who was kidnapped and implanted with a symbiotic pedia that has fused to his brain, poses amongst the passengers as one of the pilgrims. He is under orders from an unknown employer to eliminate the Prophet and find the Machine before anyone else does. Why? His employer tells him this will preserve the peace, but Riley is doubtful. During the long journey, the other passengers share stories of their species' evolutionary journeys to sapience and the reasons they are seeking transcendence. Riley comes to realize that they, too, are agents who have been paid to eliminate the Prophet and find the Machine. As he and all the other pilgrims make their way to this outer space Canterbury, suspect alliances are formed and agents are double- and even triple-crossed. Can any of the pilgrims learn to trust each other long enough to reach their date with destiny?

James Gunn's Transcendental is one of my favorite reads of 2014. It's a fast-paced story written in crisp prose and full of snappy dialogue. This is a zippy adventure story, but it's also a novel of big ideas. Gunn tackles important themes, such as stasis, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and imperialism, in an understated manner. No character is a hero, although Riley is the protagonist, and Gunn's alien creations are believable both in their actions and in their biology. I cared about every single one of them. Transcendental is a sad book, but it also is an uplifting one. The ending leaves hanging the fates of the main characters. I hope Gunn's publisher greenlights the sequel.

Edited: clarity

98baswood
Ago 10, 2014, 11:06 am

I might not like the snappy dialogue or the zippy adventure story but Transcendental looks to be a good science fiction read and one I might understand.

99valkyrdeath
Ago 10, 2014, 11:48 am

I'm always on the lookout for more recent good science fiction. Transcendental sounds like something that might interest me, but I was put off a bit when I got to the part about the ending. I'm a bit tired if books that just end with a hook for a sequel rather than resolving things. I find I just can't face reading books anymore when I don't know if there's ever going to be a conclusion or not. Is the ending completely open, or does it resolve the main points and just leave some threads open for the future?

100LolaWalser
Ago 10, 2014, 1:18 pm

>87 LibraryPerilous:

Most intriguing review. I wish someone would initiate me into the Orchid Arts.

101LibraryPerilous
Editado: Ago 10, 2014, 9:47 pm

>98 baswood: Yes, I've not done much reading in the genre, but I was able to parse the themes. Gunn strikes me as a Golden Age throwback. Riley's constant distrust of the aliens was tiresome, as was his continual amazement at other species' sentience and sapience. Even in that, I felt that Gunn was using his characterization to create a more complex story, and none of it felt forced or too overt.

>99 valkyrdeath: Hmm, I would say that the ending answers the technical questions raised in the story, but that it leaves room to expand on the moral dilemmas Gunn raises. I didn't find the ending a cliffhanger or unsatisfying, but it was a bit rushed. Gunn--who has never written a series-- doesn't seem to be toying with readers. It doesn't feel like a blatant ploy to get you to buy the next volume. I just liked all of the alien characters so well that I wanted their stories to continue, and I got the sense that Gunn feels that way, too.

Like you, I prefer not to start a series unless all the books have been published. That way, if I like the story, I can gorge on it in one sitting!

>100 LolaWalser: Ha! Perhaps I was bad at math in high school because I used navy ink, not maroon.

It was a very intriguing collection. I plan to buy a copy. I think it will hold up well to multiple rereads. Her earlier collections, Trouble in Mind and The Master Letters, sound interesting too: http://www.bookslut.com/poetry/2006_03_008135.php.

Edited: touchstone issues, of course

102LibraryPerilous
Ago 11, 2014, 10:26 pm

"Now we are come to the cold time
when the ice and the snow and the mud
and the birds' beaks are mute"
—Azalais de Porcairages, translated by Meg Bogin



Iron: Or the War After is a bleak, yet beautiful, graphic novel. It tells, in muted, pastel ink wash watercolors and minimal dialogue, the story of what happens when the war is over but the soldiers carry on.

There were many things about which to think while reading this book, and I found myself both saddened and uplifted by the story's ending. S. M. Vidaurri has mentioned that he might create further stories in his wintery world. I hope he does.

103valkyrdeath
Ago 12, 2014, 1:15 pm

>102 LibraryPerilous: That's a new one to me, but I really like the look of it. None of the libraries here seem to have it, but I'll keep a look out. I like the look of the artwork.

104LibraryPerilous
Ago 12, 2014, 1:44 pm

>103 valkyrdeath: It's one of my favorite reads of 2014, and also one of the best graphic novels I've ever read. You might be able to get it through interlibrary loan if your state/region of the world offers that.

Archaia Entertainment puts out beautiful books. I've not read a dud yet: http://www.archaia.com/titles/