More books, Pt. 2

Can NOT say the same (see Kate Morton entry, below) for the latest Tasha Alexander "Lady Emily" mystery, Dangerous to Know.  I think I picked up the first book in the series, And Only to Deceive) used or something, cheap paperback for sure, maybe before a trip?  And I enjoyed it; not the most original or brilliant book, but I liked it, and it was fun, in that "independent before her (Victorian) time" genre.  I know I read the second and third ones, but I don't really remember them; I guess they were fine enough, though, because as I recall (and as I could check in this blog, I think - go, online record keeping!) I was kind of itching to get the fourth in the series, Tears of Pearl, when it came out.  Also don't remember much about what I thought of it, except that I knew the next book would be demoted to a lower-anticipation-level.  And now I'm done.  This most recent book was a fine, if workman-like affair, but I'm over it.  Neither the characters nor the plot really held me at all, and while I wouldn't say I will never read another book starring Lady Emily and Colin,  I have no desire to seek the next one out.


The other book I got at the same time, and another entry in a series I've enjoyed in the past, fared better - A Stranger in Mayfair, by Charles Finch.   I liked the other three books in the series; again, nothing super new here, I am sure there is a massive library of Victorian gentleman / amateur detective books, but there are several nicely delineated characters, in addition to the hero, and I appreciated that they were all developed over the course of the series.  My issue with this book is that it was just so f***ing obvious from very early on who the killer was, so it was a little boring as far as the mystery.  And while there were some momentous (and gratifying) events in the main characters' lives, no significant character development.  But it was a fun read - I started it a little before 5:00 a.m. this moring, before going to bed, and then read it on and off (mostly on) throughout the rest of the day, finishing around 4:00 p.m. (it's a slim volume, obviously).  Good for a not hungover, but sleepy, kinda cold, under the covers sort of day.  And no gratuitous sex, thank God, so I may recommend it to my dad - I gave him the first two books to read when I finished them (I had bought them; this one and the last I got from the library.)
And....that's it.  That's what I've been reading the last week and a half or so.  I think - can't think of anything else I might have missed, anyhow.  I've been super busy with work, both jobs, so I imagine that's all of them.

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.

January 7, 2011 post

Normally I love a good snowstorm - so peaceful and pretty! Plus, I don't drive/park, and Boston's d**m good at keeping up with snow removal, which helps. Tonight, however, since NY and CT apparently can NOT handle snow, my dear friend S has been stuck on a bus from NYC for hours (I think we're approaching 7, as I type this), and may never make it to Boston - last update, they were still in CT, and the bus driver has taken to walking up and down the aisle of the bus, cursing the CT governor...because why sit behind the wheel when you're at a dead stop, I suppose...

So, to kill some time, and kill the pile of books by my bed, here's what I've been plowing through (no pun intended) recently:

Emma Brown by Clare Boylan, based on an unfinished (20 pages, I think?) manuscript by Charlotte Bronte {how do I do accents in this thing?}. Entertaining, but nothing super special. It was a little hard to really sink into the story because it seemed so anachronistic - I'm using that word wrong, but I can't think of a better way to say it at the moment; basically, there are a lot of references to sex, prostitution, child exploitation, etc. They're handled well, and more or less subtly, but they're still more present than they would have been if the book were really written in Bronte's time. Boylan's handle on the language - words, structure - is nice, though. I had read this before (it's one of the ones I took from home to try and sell), but I didn't remember it at all, so it was like reading it for the first time, so that was good! Forget now exactly when I read it (this time), but I think it was the day before and day of New Year's Eve, and maybe after.
Definitely read What Remains of Heaven, the 5th (?) Sebastian St. Cyr mystery by C. S. Harris on the second of January. Was out until 10 a.m. on the first, then came home and pretty much passed out for the rest of the day, so I can't remember if I started the book on the first or not. But I definitely read it when I was recuperating on the second, and it was perfect for that! The new heroine is really growing on me; I like her, and the hero with her, SO much better than the last one. I think I might be all caught up with the series now, which is actually making me kind of sad; considering at first I would only read the books if I could get them from the library or used & cheap, and if I were really bored, that's saying something. AH - the next is due out March 1, 2011, apparently. Good to know.
Next came yet another Tracy Chevalier book (I have GOT to be caught up on these by now - but d*mn, that woman is prolific!) - this one, The Lady and the Unicorn, like Girl with a Pearl Earring, is inspired by a piece of art, in this case the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. I really liked this book - totally different from the last Chevalier I read (I picked it up at the same time, because I liked the cover [the tapestries], but had no idea what it was about, although I kind of guessed from the title), about the fossil hunter, but it was engaging and interesting. It made me want to go learn more about the time and skills, as well as the people, described in the book, which is always a good thing. The chapters switching back and forth between several different character points of view could have been distracting, or interrupt the flow of the narrative, but it didn't. One issue I did have, though, and it's one I have with a lot of books set in the Middle Ages (late 1400s is the Middle Ages, right?): I hate when the liturgical season is used instead of normal dates. I mean, maybe I should just learn it, to be a more generally well-educated and -read person or something, but while Easter is a useful reference point for me, or Lent, "Septuagesima" means nothing to me...
A couple hundred years later a band of misfit, enraging and endearing players were wandering Italy and France in Francine Prose' The Glorious Ones. A quick, easy read with familiar nods to lots of classics, Dante most prominently, I had fun with it, but it didn't make much of an impression. I think I am just not really a short story kind of person, and I thought the links between these stories/chapters were too tenuous for my tastes, but there is no denying Prose does a masterful job with the writing here. The voices were distinct and evocative, and she suggests a vital setting without painting it in too much detail.

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."

New York Times - The Ten Best Books of 2010

As printed December 12th, they are:
[Fiction]
Freedom, Jonathan Franzen - on my list, haven't read yet
The New Yorker Stories, Ann Beattie - probably
Room, Emma Donoghue - SO amazing
Selected Stories, William Trevor - eh
A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan - meh
[Non-Fiction]
Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet, Jennifer Homans - have been considering
Cleopatra: A Life, Stacy Schiff - on my list, haven't read yet
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee - maybe when mom's better
Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) With Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes, Stephen Sondheim - no interest, really
The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson - on the list, waiting for it to be available

Additionally, the "100 Notable Books of 2010" have a bunch I read, have been meaning to read, or now want to read!