eh

Read another Rev. Merrily Watkins book over the weekend, The Smile of a Ghost.  Honestly, not much to say - I still enjoy the series, in as much as I'm somewhat attached to the recurring characters, or at least fond of them when they are on the page in front of me, but that's about it.  The series premise seemed unique and interesting at first, but it's getting pretty boring, and the twists and turns are pretty predictable. I think this was the sixth or so in the series, and I am sure I will get around to reading whichever other ones the library has, but it's not like I'm dying to.  Good for a T ride, though, and a rather emotionally draining family weekend.

MY BEST FRIEND IS ENGAGED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I didn't get that much reading done.  Because I was busy celebrating.  BECAUSE MY BEST FRIEND IS ENGAGED!!!!!!! 
In between celebrating R & M's engagement and doing research on being a MAID OF HONOR (BECAUSE MY BEST FRIEND IS GETTING MARRIED!) I did do a little reading.
Finished Phil Rickman's The Prayer of the Night Shepherd; usual Rickman stuff.



Also read The Cry of the Dove by Fadia Faqir, which T gave me a while ago when she was moving and deaccessioning.  I liked it, although it took me a little while to get into it.  It was definitely sad - the main character, Salma, is a Bedouin refugee in England, driven from home after getting pregnant while unmarried.  But it was well-written.  Faqir weaves strands from a variety of different times in Salma's life together, so one page might see memories spanning decades and continents.  It was a little uneven at first, but the author hit her stride fairly early on, and once she did, I really liked the effect.




Less impressive was The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland.  Set in a small village and beguinage in 1320s England, it was an interesting topic, but not particularly engaging.  Maitland tells the story from several different points of view, sort of like Faqir's overlapping time lines; also sort of like with Faqir, I wasn't sure it would work at first.  And, honestly, not sure my mind changed.  I was worried initially there would be too much going on, too many viewpoints, and it would be distracting or get in the way of the narrative.  It did and didn't.  It wasn't an insurmountable problem, but it wasn't the best reading experience ever, either.  I'm willing to give her another shot, though - just put her first novel on my to-read list, so we'll see.





MUCH more of a priority though: The Bridesmaid Guide: Etiquette, Parties, and Being Fabulous; The Bridesmaid's Guerrilla Handbook; the Fall 2010 issue of South Asian Bride (whoo!!!  so excited I found it!); and the Fall 2010 / Fashion Issue of Martha Stewart Weddings

Not too much going on...

...in my reading life - or real life, for that matter!  Quiet week, which I think I needed, so that was good.  Didn't get all that much reading done, though, since I mostly just curled up with my overstuffed DVR and old episodes of The Wire (new life goal: to be able to say "sheeeeeeeee-it" convincingly).

Library is making me return The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, by David Armitage, which is a bummer, since it's wicked interesting.  It also, at the same time, totally puts me to sleep, which is weird.  So I've been enjoying reading it for 20 minutes or so before bed - it's thought-provoking and fascinating, and then suddenly I'm out like a light.  Perfect-o!  Plus, I think Armitage is married to Joyce Chaplin, who is my academic girl-crush, so that's just kinda cool.

But I guess someone else at Harvard must be having trouble sleeping, and doesn't want to rely on melatonin, because it's been recalled.  Oh, well - more time to plow through Season 4!





Finished Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, which I've been meaning to read for a year or two (two, I think?), since it was listed in a "great books for Halloween" piece in Real Simple.  Finally got around to it, and I guess it was fine, but I really didn't find it very compelling.  The introductory notes said that it's been made into a movie twice (The Haunting and then House on Haunted Hill - although the author of the introduction said not to bother with the 1999 version, but I'm looking now, and it's got Taye Diggs, so, can you go wrong?) and that kind of makes sense - it seemed like a very visual book, but I just wasn't feeling the atmosphere, and was having a hard time picturing the setting.  But a haunted house is definitely appropriate for Halloween, so it was a good book for cuddling under my down comforter, heating pad at my feet, and reading with the faint sounds of little kids shrieking coming through the windows...
I also hadn't realized that Shirley Jackson is the same person who wrote that short story "The Lottery" which I read in middle school or high school (high school, maybe?) - AND which was a tv movie or something with Keri Russell, who I kinda loved because when I first saw her in something it was some God-awful teen soap (it was basically the O.C. before the O.C. was created, I think), but she had gorgeous, crazy curls.

So, yeah - that was Sunday, Monday I drank and thought about fun books, and on Tuesday or Wednesday I actually "sold" some paperbacks to the Harvard Bookstore, earning me a whopping $9 and change in store credit.  Totally worth it, even if it wasn't super lucrative: I'm sure to use the credit sooner rather than later (like on the days when I end up buying books because I'm waiting for Hong Kong to cook my take-out spicy green beans), and it got a stack of "never going to read again" books off my floor).  And now it's Friday, and I'm about two-thirds of the way through my other "scary" book that I started in the week before Halloween, The Prayer of the Night Shepherd.  I don't know exactly why I keep reading these Merrily Watkins books by Phil Rickman.  The mysteries aren't that mysterious, the literature ain't exactly great, and each time I finish one I think "huh, well, hmm" or something along those totally damned with faint praise lines.  They're really pretty much microwave popcorn.  Fills you up and kills some time, and at least it's not total junk, but it's not really great for you either.  But I am rather fond of the characters - and in this one we're dealing with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and a group calling itself The White Company, so that's fun.  Except the real White Company is so much better!

THE Award Winner...and stuff

Howard Jacobson won the 2010 Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question just about when I was finishing it - and I think it was the right call, at least based on the four (four and a couple chapters of a fifth, out of six) short-listed books I read.  Of course, I just loved Room, and I don't know that I had as visceral a reaction to The Finkler Question, but over all I think the latter was a better book (and C and Parrot and Olivier were both great, but not in the same class, in my not-all-that-humble-opinion; and this jury of one is still out on The Long Song).  Jacobson deftly combined humor (both subtle and very, very broad) and melancholy, and "threw in" - deliberately, with nuance and gravitas - politics and the continuing, if often overlooked these days, prejudice against Jews.  It's possible I was more attuned to some of the deeper, darker, icier currents because while I was in D.C. the week/end previous I had had a couple talks with E. about present day prejudices, and violence, against Jews around the world and here in the U.S., but I think Jacobson's writing would have had the same impact regardless.  And it's a credit to his writing that you can think so hard about something so serious and a page later - or even later in the page - be snorting over a character's incomprehensible, but hilarious, obliviousness.  The book is also quite British, but certainly lots of the situations are universal.  All in all, well done, judging panel!
Interesting talk with Jacobson in the New York Times following the win; a much better review than I could give, in the same journal.

Housekeeping: my new plan is to only read "scary" books between now (well, last Friday) and Halloween.  So I finished Phil Rickman's Lamp of the Wicked over the weekend (or was it last week?  I was sick most of last week, thank you plane-ride, so that helped, too): the usual.  I am fond of the characters, the plot is pretty predictable.  But when you're waiting for the CVS-brand Nyquil to kick in, that's a pretty solid combination.  And while it wasn't exactly "scary" it was all about things that go bump in the night, and so forth.
I'm making a sort of exception to the scary books marathon for Tana French's Faithful Place.  Faithful readers of this blog (which I'm pretty sure number zero, but I can't resist the faithful/faithful) will know that I just adore French's books, so when I picked it up from the circulation desk on Friday I would have had a hard time not starting it, in any case, and in this case I have ten days to read it, so I figure it's got dead bodies (okay, one so far, but there might be more), and rats, so that is scary.  Kinda. 
I've dropped P.D. James' The Black Tower: it was hardly gripping me Sunday (although, to be fair, I was drunk/sick and on a plane), but then I finished C, and then read The Finkler Question, and by then it had been almost a week and I had already forgotten all the character's names, so I figure I can just start from scratch some time in the future.  In any case, sure as hell not reading James instead of French!

More award winners and stuff

Sick today, so a little mentall foggy on what I've read recently...
Read another of the Booker books, C by Tom McCarthy; I really liked it, but hard to cartegorize for sure,
or even really to discuss.  I got a little lost with the radio stuff early on - maybe I just wasn't bright enough to understand it, but there was a decent section of book (maybe the second fifth?) that was prettty boggy going.  I got back into it once the scene shifted to the Bavaria, and enjoyed it from there on.  The C theme was a little over-worked, but okay.  Again, the early chapters were a little annoyingly verbose, but by the second half I was in love with the way McCarthy was writing, particularly the descriptions.






I read the latest Stephanie Barron mystery featuring Jane Austen, Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron, while I was on the way to and in D.C. for the Fall Meeting.  Of course, I enjoyed it - Barron has a great character in Jane Austen, Lady-Detective, and I remain impressed by how believeable the books are, but I was not as in love with this installment as I have been with others.  Barron seemed to be straining a bit to maintain the historical "voice" - I mean, seriously, how many times in one book can you use the word "goosecap"??  I get it, contemporary flavor.  But let it go, too...  I don't know.  I still liked it, definitely, but there was this nagging, tiny voice in the back of my head telling me that things could have been better, at least, even if they weren't bad.  Having Jane go head-to-head with her fellow author, Byron, was super fun, though, and it was interesting having this book be set after the anonymous author of Pride and Prejudice is getting famous.  Sad, though, that the Gentleman Rogue was a significant, albeit dead, presence in this story, and I miss him so much!!!

Currently plowing my way through The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson: another one of the Booker contestants, which I have to finish in 24 hours so I can get it back, because someone else requested it.
I started The Lamp of the Wicked, Phil Rickman, longer ago than I can remember, and started The Black Tower, P.D. James, when I was in D.C., but I was too drunk (that includes on the plane home) to really focus on it...which is funny, because it was one of the ones I picked up for less than a song at the Harvard Bookstore one day when I was too drunk/hungover to deal with life...

The good, the bad, and the beautiful

Read & finished two more Merrily Watkins books over last week & weekend (and this week, finished the second of the two on the #1 bus this morning); I don't know why I keep reading them, exactly.  They're not terribly well written, and, beyond the basic premise, not all that original.  But I've grown fond of the characters, I guess, and they're easy to read without being too easy.  Plus, I was kind of dreading Sunday (helping my mother move out of our family home and into a new place is not exactly the weekend you dream of - and I HATE getting up before 10 on the weekend!), and they were a good distraction. 
A Crown of Lights (which I think is #3 in the series?) was really kind of silly, with a Wicca theme, but it was okay.  Some decent characters, and it does a good job of dealing with the increasing public-ness of Merrily's job.  I think the setting probably could have been played up more, and the local/cultural history, which is clearly important, but not explored as much as I would have liked.  One of the strengths of the series is the settings, so it would be nice to see more of that.  Maybe a little less of Jane, too; she is getting a little annoying, although as soon as I realized the whole white witchery crap was coming, I knew she'd be getting on my nerves.







I enjoyed The Cure of Souls - which dealt with the Roma and hop farming, among other things - more.  Lol comes into his own a bit more, which is a relief, although there's virtually no Gomer, after his being a rather important character in Crown of Lights, and that's a disappointment!  Less Jane was what I was hoping for after the last book, though, and in that, Rickman came through for me.  She figures into the plot, certainly, but it's a less prominent role than in other books, and it's a much less annoying role, thank goodness. 

I had actually started The Long Song after I finished Crown of Lights, but then picked up Cure of Souls, because it was just better suited for my mood on Saturday, and I'm glad I did.  I am eager to get back to Long Song at some point in the near future, maybe tonight, but it just wasn't what I needed to be reading then.  Funny, yes, but more serious and I was down enough to not want to deal with that - thinking, no, escapism, yes.

Was still feeling like hell Sunday night, when I unloaded on poor R when we talked on the phone, and on Monday morning...until the most gorgeous bouquet arrived from Twig, with the most perfect, simple & sweet note from R!!!  I went from being on the verge of tears Sunday night because I was sad, and scared, and stressed, to being all choked up on Monday again, but because I have such an amazing best friend, and I am so grateful to have her love and support and joyful presence in my life.  I put them right on my desk and they looked - and smelled! - absolutely beautiful...and everyone who saw them asked, and agreed that I have the greatest BFF ever :)
Of course, carrying home a vase of flowers made my grocery shopping a little harder (trying to balance the flowers in one hand while I got all the stuff out of my basket and onto the checkout conveyor belt was a challenge), but I managed it - AND then stopped off at cmark on the way home, where yet more people were awed by the lovely flowers.

Second rounds

This was the week/end of going with the obvious answers...
Read the second Rev. Merrily Watkins book, Midwinter of the Spirit, by Phil Rickman.  Better than the one before it, but still not great.  Slower going, strangely - it dragged a bit.  In this one the experiences Merrily had in the Wine of Angels have led her to become an exorcist - the premise of the rest of the series, apparenly.  It's a little silly, but I like the idea of a modern-day exorcist bopping about rural-ish England.  Plus, the characters are appealing  - I'm growing fond enough of them to keep reading. 



The same is true of Cassandra Clark's The Red Velvet Turnshoe: not great, but I like the main character, Hildegarde, and the political and social setting is drawn well.












Almost done with the sequel to Imperium, Conspirata, by Robert Harris.  Oddly, I liked Imperium more than any of the other "firsts" in these series, but the second in the trilogy (I think it's meant to be a trilogy) is pretty damn boring, considering it should be more exciting - Cicero's consular years, the Catiline conspiracy, etc.  Weird.  Am plugging through, but actually read Velvet Turnshoe in the middle of Conspirata.  Not sure if I'll care enough to read the third when it comes out (I assume it's not out yet, since I think Conspirata came out this winter).