Catch-up: The Black Tower

The Black Tower
P.D. James

As always, I come away from P.D. James thinking "meh." I just don't know why she is so popular. I got this book last spring (or maybe even the spring before? Of 2010?) on the infamous day when I was super hung over and bought a whole bunch of books from the bargain trolleys outside Harvard Bookstore. I finally got around to reading it a while ago (last month? longer?) because I had nothing else to read and needed a paperback. Didn't really enjoy it, although I vaguely remember it improving (a little) as it went along, but I did apparently flag several pages, so I should go through them... Hmm, apparently all just words I wanted to look up.
New(-ish) words!
Accidie
Pudency
Rebarbative
Grumous
This last one I actually don't know at all, and context wasn't even that helpful; the rest I was familiar with, but didn't really "know."  

Catch-up: A Secret Alchemy

A Secret Alchemy
Emma Darwin


Seriously, have I not already written about this? Okay...um...the author has a cool name?
Elizabeth Woodville, semi-commoner (and widow) marries a king, he gets replaced, she gets screwed over, her boys get locked up killed, her daughters come out pretty okay, blah blah blah. Never my favorite historical period, although novelists seem to love it. A bunch of flags in the pages though - let's find out why!

P. 44 - what is a "golliwog"?

P. 52 - "It's people whose main use is as inheritors and rulers of land who have power when they're so young. That's why gentrywomen were married in their teens - twelve or thirteen, sometimes - and the boys the same. That's their value." A bit baldly stated, but true.

P. 74 - reference to "Wydvils" - ugh, I got really annoyed by the random ye olde spellings

P. 84 - what is "dripping" - is it gravy? It goes on bread? It sounds gross...

P. 86-87 - "Le Morte Darthur in a late-nineteenth-century art binding and wrapped like all the others in the crackling clear plastic of the antiquarian book dealer. The silvery whirl has spun my mind too. I don't open it, look at the title page, the dates, the colophon. A book's created to hold words, yet words are not what I am thinking. It's the weight in my hand as I take it from him, the corners pressing into my other palm. I turn it over, pull off the plastic clothing, run my finger down the spine, feeling the raised bands like vertebrae and the tooled dips of title and author. Then I turn it again, open it, and furl the pages so they tickle past my thumb, hesitating at each illustration plate, then flickering on, giving off a faint breath of paper and age. Under my palms the binding is smooth and warm and smells of beeswax. The brown calfskin is inlaid with green and amethyst leather and tooled with gold, the colours so cleanly cut that there's scarcely a join to be felt, only the slip from one to the next under my fingers, like the swell of muscles under a man's skin." Gorgeous, sensual description of books - double points for the author on this one.

P. 91 - why would a pilgrim's hat be "cockle-shelled from Compostela" - must check...

P. 227 - Oh my God, I am almost too embarrassed to admit this where someone might stumble upon it one day, but I had an epiphany when I read the phrase "A Dieu" - I honestly don't think it had ever occurred to me that saying "adieu," as a farewell, was related to the whole general, go with God, God bless you family. Ugh. Stupid.

More books, Pt. 1

Tired today (went to bed at 5:00 a.m., woke up at 10:30), so just the basics, so I can get rid of the pile of books under my desk...

Last Wednesday (Wed. before last?  1/12/11) I finished Valerio Massimo Manfredi's The Ides of March.  Enjoyed it, but definitely wasn't blown away.  As I recall, I read about this book, or possibly another one by the same author, in one of the Harvard Bookstore monthly newsletters, and was captivated by the awesomeness of the the name "Valerio Massimo Manfredi."  The book is interesting, a run down of the last day's before Ceasar's assasination, but I wasn't so impressed with the plot or writing (granted, it's a translation) that I would read another of Valerio Massimo Manfredi's other books. 
Then I picked back up a novel by Fiona Mountain (another great name) that I had abandoned weeks, if not longer, before and forgotten about - Lady of the Butterflies, a historical romance - I guess - inspired by the real Eleanor Glanville who was a Restoration-era entomologist.  I don't remember what made me request the book from deposit, but I do remember being totally embarassed when I checked it out, the cover of this particular edition being so freaking cheesy.  I read a couple chapters (in December, maybe?) and then put it aside until I stumbled across it after finishing The Ides of March and needing something else to read because I couldn't sleep.  Overall, I was really not a fan, and don't think I will read one of Ms. Mountain's books again.  I will say, I think she did a nice job of describing life in rural England, and London, from 1662 to 1695 - all the mud and muck and filth, the anxious neighbors of dawning reason and science with slow-to-die superstitions.  Even the politics, ever-present but frequently serving only as backdrop, or catalyst, for local and personal turmoil, was somewhat realistic.  But the story was just ridiculous.  Overwrought drama and romance and danger, with what seemed to me like clumsily interlaced sex scenes.  Mostly I think my issue was just that I kept wanting to shake all the characters and make them talk to each other.  I realize some of that is the time the book is set in, but Mountain goes out of her way to create a heroine, and some other characters, who are open-minded, advanced, and like to taaaaaaaalk, so it was frustrating when they just didn't talk to one another honestly and get on with their lives, without all the soap opera nonsense kicking in.  I didn't realize until the end of the book, when I reached the historical note, that Eleanor Glanville was a real person, and that some of the drama was real, so I suppose I should cut Mountain a little slack, but mostly it just makes me want to go read the actual biographies of the woman.  I did notice that Mountain referred to some very decent historical works (including David Cressy) in her acknowledgements, which also makes me feel a little more kindly towards her, if not towards the story.
Of course, I didn't enjoy the story so much that I didn't happily put it down when Kate Morton's The Distant Hours came into my hot little hands!  The two readers of this blog will know that I was a huge fan of her earlier books, The Forgotten Garden and The Shifting Fog (which I read when it was called The House at Riverton).  While in the end I don't think I liked this one as much as those two, I still really, really enjoyed it.  A whopping 497 pages (and hardcover!), I just poured myself into it.  It seems clear that Morton is stuck on the idea of two stories unfolding side by side, as the characters in the present seek to unravel the secrets of the past, but then device works for her, so I have no problem with her staying with it (God, that sounds pretentious!).  In this case a daughter in present(ish) day London sttumbles across her mother's hither-to secret time spent during World War II in a country house filled with loving (more or less) but strange characters - including the reclusive and mysterious author of a massively popular and influential horror story for children, which the protagonist fell in love with as a child.  From then on, the two stories circle around and through each other, with all the different plots and secrets tangling and untangling.  So - not my favorite of Morton's books, but still a great book, and I am just as eager as ever for her next one to come out.

more Regency mystery...

Finally read the second Tracy Grant mystery, Beneath a Silent Moon, starring Charles and Melanie Fraser.  I think I preferred the first book, but I don't really remember it all that well.  This one got a bit convoluted, and I, for one, have some problems sometimes with British books, particularly the Regency-era ones, because I get confused by the names - everyone has a first name, a last name, a title...  It was fun enough, though, and good for a cold, snowy day when I stayed home and mostly just slept and ate stew.  Not sure what is next on the list - strangely, I got NO books for Christmas, which has to be a first.  Of course, I have literally shelves-full of books I've bought and books I've borrowed from the library, but nothing's jumping out at me.  Which is maybe a good thing, since I REALLY need to clean my apartment today, rather than just sleep and read and eat...like, yesterday.  It was magical, but time to get back to real life.


Oh - and was just picking up and found A Vengeful Longing, by R.N. Morris, on the coffee table, under a pile of magazines and other books (including Dick Minear's latest offering!!!) - I think I read it at the same time as the Chevalier book? Don't really remember now, but I think I finished it and then moved on to Perdido Street.  In any case, I really enjoyed it.  It's the second, I believe, in the "St. Petersburg Mystery" series, starring Dostoyevsky's detective from Crime and Punishment (so freaking amazing), Porfiry Petrovich.  I remember I saw it on the outside bargain table at the Harvard Bookstore, and almost grabbed it, but then remembered I should really be spending my money on Christmas presents, so I held off until I could check Hollis, and sure enough, the library had it.  I'm wondering now if they didn't have the earlier book (A Gentle Axe), because I don't know why I wouldn't have started with that one...
I don't think it mattered all that much, but there were several references to events that happened prior to the opening of the book, and I wasn't sure if they were meant to be a bit mysterious, or if I would have understood them if I had read the first book.  In any case, I thought the writing was great: well-drawn, nuanced characters, that you get to know a little, but also stay at arm's length; wonderfully descriptive settings, with evocative details - the persistent flies buzzing throughout the story's hot, foetid summer were a great touch!

Not-so-Christmas-y reading

Finished China Mieville's Perdido Street Station the morning of Christmas Eve (or maybe the night before
that - I forget, things got a little...confused....Thursday night (12/23) when I went out with E all night and morning).  Mixed feelings.  For starters, and coming from a conversation I had with M & N on Christmas Eve (whoo!  both my brothers are home!), I definitely don't think the author phoned it it.  This is a super-complex world Mieville has created, with a politics and environments and history all it's own - if anything, I got the impression while I was reading that we were only scratching the surface of this made-up world of Bas-Lag.  I think the biggest problem for me was some of the steam-punk elements of imaginary science started zoning me out - I found myself skipping over the "mechanics" of a major plot development or two, because the physics and firewalls and blah-blah-blah don't interest me.  And, to be fair, most likely don't interest me because I didn't get them.  But maybe I didn't get them because I didn't try, so chicken/egg.  I'm also not a very visual reader, I don't necessarily "see" characters and scenes in my mind, but I was having a really hard time picturing the main characters.  Which in some ways is maybe a testament to Mieville's creativity (beetle heads, humanoid bodies?!) and also to my lack of imagination, but it was unsettling, and interrupted the flow of the narrative.  Oddly, the scenery and setting I had no problem pulling up images of - although I think the city of the walking, talking cacti was totally pulled from the high rise towers in season one of the Wire!

Starting Christmas Eve, before bed, and finishing up today, before my post-work nap, I read the fourth (yes?) Sebastian St. Cyr mystery, Where Serpents Sleep, by C.S. Harris (a/k/a Candice Proctor, and C.S.

Graham {with her husband}, apparently).  I ordered it from Amazon along with that Tracy Grant book, because I could never find either in the library or used - and it was actually cheaper from Amazon then it likely would have been used, which is just sad.  And yet I still love the Harvard Bookstore basement, so oh well.  I wasn't super excited to read this one, I just think they're decent time-killers, but I actually think this is my favorite so far, by far.  In previous books we were introduced to Hero Jarvis, the daughter of the series' gray eminence, the power behind Prinny's throne, but here she's a real character, and she's a good one.  Not a figure to go down in the annals of great literature, but better than the last female lead in this series.  The best part is she is initially described as practical, smart, no-nonsense, not looking for a man, and not that pretty - and she's pretty much the same way at the end, even after the inevitable hints of a slowly developing romantic entanglement.  I also give Harris credit for not jumping into the romance-y stuff.  It looks like she's going to let it develop over time, and maybe another book or two, which is not the easy answer, but a more plausible one. 

Don't think I read anything else (other than bridal magazines - yay, for R&M, and yay for being maid of honor!!!) since the last post.  Merry Christmas!

Before I forget...

I read Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures last week (?) - had to kind of rush through it, because I needed to have it back to the library by c.o.b. Friday (finished it around 1:45, on the T).  Liked it.  The writing was decent, and the story was interesting - although then I found out it was based on real people, and semi-real events, so I'm not sure how much credit Chevalier can get for the story.  But the suggested reading list she supplied at the end of the novel was nice, because I would like to go and read more at some point about Mary Anning, the working-class girl in 19th century Lyme Regis who was a prominent fossil "hunter."

SO behind...part 2

Yikes - okay, the books I've been reading since shortly before Thanksgiving:
I started Lauren Willig's latest, The Mischief of the Mistletoe, while I was on the bus back from Plymouth (Hatherly Family Reunion) to Boston (Charlesmark night with E).  Perfect for the bus, and then even MORE perfect for the world-class hangover I had the following morning.  Partied hard, J & E style, at Cmark (and before, and after), and for some reason known only to God, or maybe Satan, I DIDN'T EAT before going to bed.  Don't know what the f*** was wrong with me, but I woke up with the worst hangover I have had in years and years Sunday morning, and could just barely drag myself back and forth between the couch and my bed throughout the day.  The only thing that added any happiness to my day, or made my head/stomach/limbs hurt any less, was Willig - a particularly light, silly, and sweet Willig.  Jane Austen even makes a cameo, which was cute - and respectfully done [weird - feeling like I've written this before...].  And the "hero," such as he is, is "Turnip" Fitzhugh, from some of the other books, and he was written pretty adorably funny.  Obviously Willig had to man him up a little, but this story was a nice change from some of her other ones - the heroine wasn't privileged and confident, the hero wasn't dashing and strong.  I think this might actually be one of my favorites of the series, even though it's meant to be something of a side project.
The next stop on the book-train was The Savage Garden by Mark Mills.  I didn't love it, but it killed time well enough without feeling like it was dumb or a waste of time.  Set in the 1950s, at a villa in the Florence environs, it's about an English graduate student (I think...undergrad?  English academic systems confuse me) who is sent to research a unique Renaissance garden and who ends up stumbling onto a contemporary mystery (of course) that mirrors elements of one surrounding the garden's creation, and stumbling onto some romance (of course) with a free-spirited Italian girl.

What was kind of a waste of time was Gail Carriger's Blameless - and I should have
 known it.  In fact, I did know it, even before I started.  It's the third book in a really unimpressive series, but I wanted to learn the "science" behind the surprise pregnancy of the second book, and I saw it the other day at the bookstore, and it was cheap, and I have a coupon, so... sh*t happens.  This one was actually the best of the three, I think, though; at least, I don't really remember the first one at this point (it's been almost a year), but I definitely think this one was better than the last one (although I don't really remember the second one either).  Carriger digs into the "mythology" behind the whole soulless thing, with her heroine travelling to Italy (Florence, again!) to get more information about her situation and tangles with some Templars.

Went from a steampunk, alternative Victorian England to 14th century England with Susanna Gregory and
The Mark of a Murderer.  I mostly grabbed it from the library because I had decided to try and sell a copy of another book in the series that I had at home, and I remembered vaguely that I had enjoyed it, so I figured I'd find the earliest one in the series that the library had and see if I still liked it.  I guess the answer is yes?  It's okay, but not great.  Reminds me of all the other ye-olde-murder-mysteries, you know?  Brother Cadfael, or any of the others set in medieval Oxford and Cambridge.  Even that one I read a while ago about Giordano Bruno, Heresy, had a similar feel, but less of the cozy-vibe.

Last but definitely not least, after taking some time with it, last week I finished Russell Menard's Sweet Negotiations: Sugar, Slavery, and Plantation Agriculture in Early Barbados.  Such an enjoyable book.  Interesting and easy to read.  If I have a complaint, it's that it was too high-altitude - there was a lot of surface, and not a ton of depth.  It also lacked in "stories" and material/cultural history and social history, but over all, definitely very decent.  I wouldn't recommend it to people who aren't used to reading strictly history books, it's definitely not popular history, but it's not super academic or hard to digest by any means.

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

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, Part 2 and Other News

Finished Conspirata - it picked up towards the end a bit, but we'll see if I remember about the trilogy by the time the third book comes out, whenever that may be.
On a brighter note, C. listened to The Secret History of the Pink Carnation the other weekend when she had a long trip to a wedding, and is now embarked on The Deception of the Emerald Ring (and maybe, by now, The Masque of the Black Tulip).  I am pleased to report that she is feeling much better about the series now that the annoying narrator-voice is over with - and, as I assured her, Amy, from Pink, is the least appealing of all the heroines of the series, by far.

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).

A Pig in Sh*t

So, I am going to be happily wallowing soon - saw Noni this weekend and she gave me a brand-new, gorgeous looking copy of The Long Song, by Andrea Levy, which I have been meaning to read for a while.  And with that in mind, when I was reading a little piece about this year's Man Booker short-list in the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2010/sep/07/man-booker-prize-shortlist-2010), I started running through Hollis looking for what else is out there.  Managed to reserve the on-order copies of C (Tom McCarthy), The Finkler Question (Howard Jacobsen), and Parrot and Olivier in America (Peter Carey), which means I will have in my hot little hands 4 of the 6 nominees.  Room (Emma Donoghue) and In A Strange Room (Damon Galgut) were both checked out already, and I didn't think I should recall them...although one is due in 2 days anyhow, so maybe I should, before someone else get it...  That's probably enough to have on the shelf, thought, especially since - beyond the normal lack of space for my "to read" collection - I already today picked up Conspirata, the sequel to Imperium, and requested from deposit The Red Velvet Turnshoe (I don't even know what that is, but I like the name a lot!), the sequel to Hangman Blind.  Speaking of those two, I read both over the weekend.
Started Hangman Blind, by Cassandra Clark (can that really be her real name?  good for her if it is) after the Rickman book (hmm, should consider having some of those on hand for sick days).  I liked it, I guess.  A bit predictable, especially with the love interests, and some rather heavy-handed foreshadowing on the same for the next books (I was reading it and thinking, okay, it's like she's setting us up for fictional r&d ("revelations and developments" - yes, just coined that phrase...I think...) for another book, and then sure enough I was reading the quotes on the cover later, and one of them revealed that Hangman Blind was intended as the commencement of a series featuring the book's main character, Sister Hildegard.  Hildegard, a recent widow & nun in 1382 England is a decent character, not too prone to anachronistic independence or feminism.  And what she has of both (and I've read enough of these types of novels to know that you can't escape them in a heroine) is fairly legitimately explained by her being the widow of a rich man - thus, she has some exposure to the world, and learning, and also more freedom than as a married woman.  It's not perfect, by any means, but it works - enough so, clearly, that I'm going to read the sequel - and Clark does a nice job showing the unsettled nature of a time and place where Saxons struggle still against Norman overlords, even if the Conqueror is long since buried, and two popes vie for supremacy as Wat Tyler's followers look for a new direction, and a young king and his supporters and enemies try to rule England.
Imperium, by Robert Harris, was the next book, and it wasn't what I was expecting - in a good way.  Much less the toga-clad, murder-mystery pot-boiler I was expecting, and more a fun, super accessible tale of Cicero's rise to prominence.  I had put Imperium on the "to read" list because it's the predecessor to Conspirata which got a Select 70 mention in a Harvard Bookstore flyer this winter (I think this winter?) - and that, I thought, was a murder mystery that happened to be set in Cicero's Rome.  But this, purportedly the memoirs of Cicero's personal secretary/slave, Tiro, talks about how Cicero trained as an orator, prominent cases and speeches, and takes us from his initial entrance into Roman political life to his election as Consul in 64 BCE.  It really was quite fun - all the gossip and scandal and deal-mongering of today's elections and politics, but with togas :)  The issue of imperium in the Roman Republic could have been drawn out more, but that would have been a different book...

Might be time to take a break from the Tudors...

Finished Rory Clements' Martyr - An Elizabethan Thriller just now.  It wasn't terrible, but it definitely wasn't great, either.  Stock characters and fairly predictable.  Coming on the heels of the Shardlake books, this one, set a generation later, was not nearly as fun.  Passed the time though.  But I think I need to pick something different off the shelf for my next book.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaah

It is too freaking hot and sticky right now.  But, that is good "lay in bed with the fan directly on me while I read" weather, especially on a sore and crabby Saturday afternoon.  Hence, powered through Revelation by C. J. Sansom (good - seriously - not great literature, but I really am impressed that even if Sansom is kinda doing the same thing over and over again, at least he's getting a little better at it each time) and the Maisie Dobbs installment I had missed,
Among the Mad, by Jacqueline Winspear (also good, if not amazing).

I was wrong

About a plot issue in Dark Fire.  But still rather enjoyed it; I'll probably continue to read the series, but not this weekend, since the library has the latest Agent Pendergast installment for me - although since I am neither sick nor travelling, it seems a bit weird to read one of those!

ye olde mysteries

I might have missed a book in there somewhere, but I was back and forth to the hospital a lot last week/end, for my mom, so I didn't get a ton of reading done.
Finished Dissolution by C.J. Sansom the other day; it was a mildly fun book about a hunchbacked attorney in the days of Cromwell and Henry VIII (right after Jane Seymour died), by the name of Matthew Shardlake, who is sent by Cromwell to investigate a murder in an abbey (monastery?  I should really learn the difference, if there is one, and I think there is, as I feel rather ignorant right now) due to be shut down following Henry & Cromwell's "dissolution" (get it??) of the monasteries (and abbeys??).  Most importantly, it was a triumph for the blog system.  I came across the book somewhere, noted the title in the blog, and eventually checked it out of the library and read it.  Score!
Characters were decent, and while the plot was fairly straightforward, and the twists predictable, it suited the mood/energy level I was dealing with, and I enjoyed it.  Enjoyed it enough to pick up the sequel Dark Fire yesterday, in any case.  In this one Shardlake returns to solve a murder AND an unrelated case of some Greek Fire (and re-discovered formula) going missing in London.  Except I would bet money they will turn out to be related, but whatever.
OH, right.  Predictable.  After Dissolution (or before?  I'm confused now), I read the latest "Mistress of the Art of Death" book by Ariana Franklin, A Murderous Procession.  It was good, but nothing special.  I keep thinking the first one (Mistress of the Art of Death) was really good, and the second one was pretty good, and the third one was kinda crappy...I would say this one was decent?  At this point, as I discussed with my mom (who borrowed and read the first two from me, and gave back the third half done) the other day (Noni brought this latest one for me when we were all at the hospital for mom's surgery), I am reading them because I have become fond of the characters, not because the plot is so great.  And the writing would be okay EXCEPT FOR WHEN SHE TRIES TO INTRODUCE A SECOND, SCARY/CRAZY BAD-GUY VOICE.  Yuck.  So bad.  STOP.  Oh well.  Could have been worse.  Turns out C read Mistress at the beginning of the month, so if I can actually get places on time I will meet up with her and loan her the rest, so we'll see what she thinks.

it's been a week?

I could have sworn I wrote about the last Maisie Dobbs book I read last week - in any case, as expected, The Mapping of Love and Death, by Jacqueline Winspear, was quite enjoyable.  However, as I was reading this, the seventh book in the Maisie Dobbs series, I realized that I had not read the 6th, Among the Mad.  I know that I meant to, and, honestly, I would have sworn that I had read all the ones that have been published since I first discovered the series.  In fact, now that I consider it, I think I saw Among the Mad at Harvard Bookstore, then went and did a little digging, discovered it was the sixth in the series, and got the others out of the library.  So maybe I got distracted?  Still and all, the title seemed so familiar.  But the events that were referred to in Mapping were not familiar, and it was clear there was a gap between where I was in Maisie's & her companions' stories, and where Mapping picked up.  In any case, I have now checked Among the Mad out of the library, and I am sure I will be able to enjoy it despite knowing some of the major developments now.

But, as I was saying, Mapping of Love and Death was good.  Not the best as far as mysteries, but Winspear draws her characters and settings so well, it's just nice to escape into that world for a while.  I could use a place to escape to this week, so I am pleased to have Among the Mad at home.  Mapping did seem different from the other books in the series, though, in that there wasn't the usual setting out of Maisie's backstory (how she came to be a lady detective-cum-...psychologist?).  It was nice for me, because having read five other books about her, I didn't need the history lesson; that said, particularly given some of the circumstances of this story, I think that a reader new to the series would be a bit confused as to just what Maisie Dobbs does/is, how she got to be that way, and what some of the relationships between characters are all about.

After Mapping I read Jennifer Lee Carrell's Haunt Me Still - and, honestly, not sure I wish I had.  I really, really enjoyed Carrell's first book, The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling the Smallpox Epidemic, which I picked up from a  bargain bin at the COOP one day.  Now, that book, about the efforts to introduce "variolation" (inoculation - I think, sometimes I get inoculation and vaccination confused, but I THINK inoculation is giving a little bit of the smallpox virus, so you don't get full-blown smallpox, and vaccination is using the cowpox [cow/vacc-] virus as figured out by Jenner and then Pasteur) that were simultaneously undertaken in England by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (such a great character) and in Boston by Zabdiel Boylston, in the early 18th century, is fantastic.  I mean - really, really fun to read and super informative.  Now, in the end papers to Haunt Me Still, Speckled Monster is described as "a work of historical nonfiction" and that is absolute bullsh*t.  It's totally a novel - JLC follows Montagu and Boylston about their day-to-day lives and imagines feelings and conversations - but it is a great novel jam-packed with historical fact and "local color," as it were.  After reading it, I was excited to discover Interred with Their Bones, her novel featuring a Shakespeare scholar-cum-theater director [I am using cum a lot today, weird.] where there are lost manuscripts and murders and she goes racing around Widener to escape a killer!!!  Except it kinda sucked.  Not at all gripping, the bad guy turns out to be exactly who you thought all along, and it's just ludicrously improbable.  I mean, there is only so much disbelief I can willingly suspend.  At least, for that calibre of writing; maybe the same plot in another author's hands would be more compelling.  But she wrote one wicked awesome book, and has a great first name :) so I gave her another chance and grabbed Haunt Me Still from the library.  I...I don't even know.  Honestly, I am not even sure that the whole story makes sense to me, now that I've read it, and it could be that I'm just not smart enough, or was just missing something, in part because I read the second half after getting a bunch of bad news, and my concentration was completely shot, but I think the plot just didn't really hang together if you examine it at all closely.  Suffice it to say the Scottish Play turns out to be an actual guide to a black magic rite involving bloody (and bloody) sacrifice...oh, and let's throw John Dee in there too.  Okay.  Yeah.

Additionally, T(2) send me a link to a Boston Globe Magazine article, an excerpt from that new Emily Dickinson biography, so that reminded me I wanted to read it.  First, though, I should finish the book about the Pilgrims I started over the weekend.  Definitely not easy / escapist enough for me right now, though, so it will have to wait.  In the meantime, just started Dissolution by C. J. Sansom, which I think I saw / came across a reference to somewhere and wanted to read - and, because I then said that in this blog, I remembered!  And was able to track it down!  Honestly, I'm only a few pages in, but I'm not so sure it would have been a terrible thing if I had forgotten about it, but I am sure it'll be an acceptable time while-away-er (whiler away?).  It's a mystery set during Tom Cromwell's abbey-dissolving days under Henry VIII, featuring a hunchback, Protestant, lawyer-cum-detective [okay, that cum I put in just because I could - but, still, it works].

At least I used a coupon...

to buy the new Inspector Lynley book, This Body of Death, since I had just spent way too much money at Ann Taylor Loft (well, maybe not TOO much - I got two pairs of jeans, three sweaters, a dress, and a belt for $150.  Which is a lot to spend in 20 minutes, but I think I totally got good value for money).  I swear, I am trying not to spend money on books, since I work at a library, etc., but the Elizabeth George books are always being checked out of the library (and I should know, because after I stumbled on them, I whipped through evey one Widener had in quick succession), but I had an "additional 15% off" coupon for Barnes & Noble, and then I saw the book in the front of the store with ANOTHER 20% off (because it is a best seller), so...I mean, a really fat, brand-new hardcover for $19?  And one I can almost guarantee I will love AND that my mom will love when I pass it on to her?  I couldn't resist...