books

July Reads: WWII Aliens are Responsible for Everything!

Everyday Adventures

Or so some of this month’s books would have you believe.

July reads--book cover images via Goodreads

July reads–book cover images via Goodreads

I started the month with the Origin Mystery series by AG Riddle:

  • The Atlantis Gene
  • The Atlantis Plague
  • The Atlantis World

What does genetic-level autism research have to do with the lost city of Atlantis? And what does a clandestine, worldwide paramilitary group have to do with either of the above? Excellent questions!

What started out sounding like your usual doctor does good, powerful people make something evil out of it, the world is about to end story trips its way into WWII Nazi weapons and a conspiracy that moves around the world in three books describing ancient races, extinction level events, and genetic experiments over millennia. Then it goes to space.

This trilogy is long and involved, but it definitely leaves you wondering what the author is going to pull out of his ass next. You have to suspend a lot of disbelief, but it’s not tough because the side of the world we see int he Origin Mysteries is complex and fleshed out and has just enough recognizable truth to it to make the lie that is fiction work.

Coincidentally I also started reading the Wayward Pines books about the same time:

  • Pines
  • Wayward
  • The Last Town

I’d watched the first several episodes and decided I was intrigued enough to find out “the rest of the story” as it was. Right around the time that Riddle was explaining about how a bigger portion of the earth was covered in water than currently, due to bombs set off in Antarctica (not really a spoiler, more a plot device, and an effective one), we have Crouch explaining how our DNA is degrading each generation and we’re going to die out.

Common elements of the two series are the extinction level events, bands of survivors, and suspension chambers that make the dead not exactly so (though in different ways).

Having completed both the book trilogy and the television version, I think I prefer the book’s “ending” over the screen adaptation. If you ever thought there was something… more to Pilcher and co., you definitely want the background that’s in the books.

The combination of these different dystopias is enough to make someone want to pack their bug out bag! Sheesh!

Needing a break from the doom and gloom, I went hunting for something lighthearted and came across the debut novel by Hunter Murphy: Imogene in New Orleans. It’s a murder mystery, sure, but set in one of my favorite places on earth and the main characters have a bulldog sidekick. It was a sure bet, right?

Wrong.

I had trouble connecting to the characters, they were all very one-note to me and far too many of them. It’s Character Soup! You have the titular character, an old woman from Alabama who is, at best, a caricature of the cantankerous spitfire; Miss Marple she is not. Her son, Billy, is the worrier, his partner, Jackson, is eventually revealed as the man of action among them, though his actions are often ill-considered. Their friends, whom they are visiting in New Orleans on holiday, Neil and Allen, are the hot-head and silent type, respectively, and despite being such close friends Billy and Jackson still can’t help but suspect them of doing-in their mutual friend Glennway–a supposedly brilliant artist beloved by many in the community.

Now, that’s a lot of people to meet in the first bit of a book, but soon we also have Lt. Rogers (a dirty cop–and, no, I’m not giving anything away, the fact that he’s not on the up and up is painfully transparent as soon as we meet him), hotelier Hill (snob), Lena (the local counterpart to Imogene, to the point that you could almost swap the two and make no impact on the story whatsoever) and the colorful (in name, at least) Buddy, Catfish, TH, Canebreak, and Blue Moon–code names bestowed upon friends and lovers in the dead man’s journal, which Imogene swipes from the crime scene.

Aside from the 2-dimensional characters and the stilted dialog, if the dead man is so freaking famous an artist in the city of New Orleans, exactly why wasn’t there more outcry when he died? Why was there only this one cop “handling” the investigation so ham-handedly than this Scooby Gang had to step in?

I put the book down several time, only finishing it because I hate to leave stories unfinished. There are, apparently, more books to come with the Billy, Jackson, Imogene and Goose (the bulldog–poor thing didn’t even get to stumble over any clues himself, he’s just barking window dressing). Maybe in future books the author will find his character’s other qualities, but I’m not curious enough to pledge my support at this time.

So it was back to history of varying degrees.

  • Miramont’s Ghost
  • Maude
  • War Brides

Miramont’s Ghost is a creative stringing together of some known events surrounding the Catholic priest (Jean Baptiste Francolon) who built Miramont Castle in Manitou Springs, Colorado, back in the late 1800s. Of course, it starts way before the castle is even a thought, back with the family in France, the grandmother and then granddaughter who had visions, and the lengths certain family members would go to protect their little (and not so little) secrets.

I didn’t know until the reading the author’s note at the end that this story was based on real people and real places. Even though there’s a lot of conjecture in the book based on what is known, it lends an already fantastical and macabre story some heft and credence!

About the time that Miramont’s story is ending, along comes Maude, a girl born at the turn of the century in the Midwest, loses her parents in a fire, and the tragedy doesn’t stop there. She lives through both wars, the loss of a husband, a then the child, nursing people through the Spanish flu (which, incidentally, was a pivot point in the Origin Mystery books, above–it’s more than a little disconcerting when book worlds collide like that), a second mother in law who literally wants her dead, the Dustbowl and the Depression, moving finally to Detroit where things pick up a bit for what’s left of her family, only to lose more sons to war and illness, respectively, and a daughter to a freak car accident. She supports herself and her family, first by taking in sewing as a young wife in the Midwest then, in Detroit, eventually buying property and running a series of boarding houses until she no longer had the strength to do so.

It’s an astonishing look of the day to day existence of someone who lived through the greater part of the last century. Maude’s granddaughter, Donna, wrote it all down at the urging of her own daughter when she went to retell the stories she’d been told on weekend and summer visits to her grandmother’s home.

Finally, War Brides.

I don’t know what it is, but the 1940s and WWII have fascinated me since my middle school years and continues to this day. I think it’s the whole triumph of the human spirit, thing, if I had to guess, and reading about how people dealt with daily life while juggling the needs of a country at war, well, it’s pretty impressive! Doesn’t hurt that the music and clothing styles back then were pretty awesome, too.

So War Brides is set, primarily, in a place called Cromarsh Priors on the Sussex coast of England. A little village that ends up being home to its native residents as well as an Admiral’s daughter (her godmother is one of the important ladies of the town), a New Orleans belle escaping bad situation (after tricking a Naval officer from another big family into marrying her and bringing her to England), and refugees from London (including a young Jewish girl who barely escaped Austria ahead of the mob by marrying a boy from their city who had a teaching position at Oxford). At first the book was just the day to day adjustments having to be made for rationing, air raids, etc., but instead of being dull and plodding, it was fascinating to get to know more about the characters and see the minutiae of their lives. As the war goes on and the possibility that a German sympathizer is in their midst, perhaps even aiding the air raids, things get even more interesting, and carry us through to the somewhat surprising, yet fitting, end.

And squeaking in before the end of the month, I also read The Sisterhood (not pictured above), by the same author as War Brides.

Like War Brides, it flips between the present and the past, but where War Brides was bookended by the present but spent the majority of the book in WWII, The Sisterhood flips back and forth a bit more. While some reviewers complained it was like reading two different books at once, I didn’t see it as quite that disparate, though I think the two parts of the narrative could have been woven together a bit more. The story revolves around a convent, more specifically an Order of nuns with locations in Spain and South America, their story told via their Chronicle, which is currently in the hands of a teenager who was adopted from the South American convent who, as an adult, goes to Spain to research an obscure artist for a scholarship thesis.

Her plane detoured, the naive Menina gets separated from the tour group she’s loosely connected to and attempts to make her way to Madrid via bus. Of course things don’t go smoothly and she winds up at, you guessed it, a little convent in the Spanish mountains, stranded there during the week before Easter, no phone, no electricity, and nothing to do but look through the old, dirt-encrusted paintings at the convent and maybe she can find something for the remaining nuns to sell so they can have a little money to fix up their crumbling convent.

I enjoyed the chronicle of the convent part of the story much more than Menina’s at least until she comes into her own near the end of the book–I have little patience with milquetoast heroines, which is what her sheltered, small-town upbringing created. By the end, though, I liked our main character far more and loved the way the author handled the not-exactly-an-epilogue. To say why would give away the ending, and this is one of those books I’d actually recommend to any fans of historical fiction. Though Catholics should be advised that there’s some Davinci Code-level alternate religious history speculation that seriously pissed off one Amazon reviewer. That just made me more curious to read it.

I’m looking forward to more historical fiction in August! What are you reading?

 

Three Book Habit

Everyday Adventures

In a recent discussion with other bibliophiles, I realized I have a bit of a book habit: one for my commute, one to read on my lunch breaks, and one to read before bed. Sometimes there’s overlap if I’m close to finishing one and just have to get to the end. But, yes, it’s completely normal for me to have three books going at the same time. Sometimes more, if there’s a research book I’m working my way through in spurts between more fun reading. I admit, part of the impetus is the 75 books I challenged myself to read by the end of the year–it’s good to have a goal, but I don’t think I’ll take up the challenge next year, I’m too competitive (with myself) and wanting to see the progress bar fill up makes me feel guilty if I choose to watch tv before bed instead of read, or even to flip through a magazine.

Silly the things we do to ourselves, right?

But otherwise I’m just generally a voracious reader. Always have been.

image via GoodReads

image via GoodReads

June’s conquered titles:

  • The Gemini Effect*
  • The Dead Key
  • The Coffee Legacy*
  • Dragon’s Triangle
  • The Confederacy of Heaven*
  • Kitchen Confidential
  • I Am Livia
  • Down the Rabbit Hole
  • Contagious*

(remember, the asterisk means it was an audio book)

I’m starting to catch up to the backlog of Kindle First books, so it’s lucky that I got an email about trying out Kindle Unlimited for a month. Granted, at first I thought I wouldn’t let it go past the 30 days because the books I searched for weren’t available through KU. But then I started to browse and found books that I’d never gotten around to reading (like Bourdain’s book) as well as others I was looking forward to reading, having read earlier books in the series.

What I was most excited about, though, was the narration feature on many of the titles. I don’t know if this was a product of Amazon purchasing Audible or not, but I’m loving it! Frankly, Audible’s $14.99 a month that only got you one book credit a month never seemed like a good deal to me, and hoped that the recent acquisition might mean Prime members would have free access to audiobooks. But for $10 a month you can get Kindle Unlimited, borrow up to 10 titles at a time (not per month, just at once, unless I misread), and download the narration, too. I was, at first, worried about what the streaming audiobook would do to my data usage, but it doesn’t appear to be doing anything untoward–just the initial download–and I can plug my phone into the auxiliary jack in my car the way I do my iPod and plug the phone into the car charger, as well, to prevent running the battery down to and from work. Though the replay isn’t perfect (occasional skips, that sort of thing), it certainly opens up many more titles to my commute entertainment–definitely worth $10 a month, at least for now!

A few notes about a few of the books I read or listened to this month:

I liked that the main character of The Dead Key was neither a perfect specimen or a burnout with a lucky streak–she was believably middle of the road and very likable. The time shifts in the book are handled quite well, and I was well-hooked throughout the book, wondering who all was really in cahoots with who, and where the missing “treasure” really ended up. I Am Livia had me thinking (mostly fondly) of my 4 years of high school Latin classes. Books like this would have been great helper materials when getting ready for competitions; great jumping off points for history lessons!

Contagious is part of series of books from the twisted mind of Scott Sigler. Ages ago I’d listen to a few of his podiobooks but, apparently, many have been reworked since then, a result of his signing with Crown Publishing. Good for him! I started with Contagious, remembering fairly well the events of Infection, and have Ancestor cued up next on my iPod. I remember parts of Ancestor, I believe, but knowing that they’ve undergone a revamp I’m going to give it a new listen to see if what I remember is still valid. But I needed something lighter before I could move onto more stories from him–a 7 year old as the big bad, in its strange and believable way, is a lot to take in. Though I’ll admit I was picturing a Chibi Usa-like figure as little Chelsea Jewell. Listen to it and, if you watch Sailor Moon, you’ll see what I mean. From a Q&A included in the podcast I’ve learned that all of his books seem to exist in the same universe, which makes me curious about his other titles.

Finally, Down the Rabbit Hole. I was a fan of Girls Next Door when it first aired and one of the reasons I liked it because it was fun and light on the drama. I followed the careers of Holly, Bridget, and Kendra for a while after they left the series (and the last season with Crystal and the twins was really not worth watching) and was happy to see them all doing what they set out to, more or less. I wasn’t as big of a Kendra fan, so I didn’t read her book, but when I heard Holly had written one, I thank ebooks for their instant gratification potential and devoured the book over a couple of days. Reading about the behind the scenes stuff makes me want to go back and watch the show again (I have the first three seasons on DVD) with new eyes. The only disappointment was how quickly she glossed over her relationship with her current husband–there were some rumors flying around when they were first together, and it would have been nice to get her take on that period, the way she delved into the Criss Angel months as well as her years at the mansion. I can see why she might not want to do so, but it did feel rushed at the end.

I’ve been catching up with my binge-watching as well. Wayward Pines is getting quite interesting, now that we know what the big secret is. I’m grateful that the recent season of OITNB not only continued to give us more background into the backstories of various characters (dude, I was actually sympathetic to Pensatucky!) but also managed to show some growth for Piper, namely that of a spine. I was so tired of her whiny attitude, the fact that she’s got a bit of steel to her, now, makes me look forward to Season 4, whenever we get that. And I finally watched Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and was surprised at how much I enjoyed the silliness of the first several episodes. But then we got to the trial plot line and amusement turned to absurdity, and I’ve never found the absurd that entertaining.

Younger Tom’s Tollbooth in the City of Windy Poplars… and Other Stories

Everyday Adventures

Which is to say, the books I read in April are (were? they still exist…):

  • Uncle Tom’s Cabin
  • Girl Who Owned a City
  • The Phantom Tollbooth
  • Anne of Windy Poplars
  • Younger

aprilmaybooks

And in May I added the following to the read:

  • The God Conspiracy*
  • Digital Magic*
  • Roses of Winter*
  • Into the Woods*
  • The Paying Guests
  • Big Little Lies
  • Brood of Bones*
  • Chasing the Bard*
  • The Seventh Child

Now, my book posts tend to run a bit long, so I’m going to try to keep this brief, by comparison, because I’ve been meaning to write this post since the beginning of May when I was otherwise distracted by Todd’s broken bones. It’s pretty much been hanging over my head as the one I needed to get out of the way so I can get back to blogging regularly, even though it’s more for me than anyone else: turns out I like recording what I’ve read!

This round of books started with finding a copy of Uncle Ton’s Cabin on my Kindle. Now, I thought I was pretty familiar with the story, having seen The King and I oodles of times since I was small and they’ve got that fabulous version of the story as the entertainment for the big important dinner party.

Not the movie version, but a very good rendition of it. (Direct link for the feed readers: Small House of Uncle Tom, Ballet from The King and I)

So I thought I knew what I’d be reading, right? Wrong! Rogers and Hammerstein took some serious liberties with the source material! Eliza? Never met Legree. Legree doesn’t even show up until probably 2/3 through the book! The other thing I was unprepared for was the outright preachiness of the book. I suppose it makes sense given the time it was written in, and the moral appeal Stowe was attempting to make (while being pretty patronizing at the same time), but still. Sheesh!

It also took me about 2 weeks to get through, reading before bed, which is where the graphic novel (Girl Who Owned a City) came in–I wanted a nice, quick read–a palate cleanser, if you will–and I also wanted to try out the public library ereader system. Because that was something else I did in April: got a library card! Of course, I’d hoped to be able to remotely check out the upcoming book club titles but, as with a lot of newer books, there was a waiting list. And when they finally did become available, wouldn’t you know they both popped up in the same week, with only 7 days allowed for each, overlapping? So I sped my way through The Paying Guests and Big Little Lies during the last week of May. I was okay with the Paying Guests (kinda feel about it the way I felt about The Awakening from an earlier month’s book club) but I absolutely adored Big Little Lies.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I also read a real-life paper-printed book in April–Anne of Windy Poplars–which led directly to receiving tickets to the local production of Anne of Green Gables at the end of the month for my birthday. Todd’s great at observational gifts like this. The funny thing about Windy Poplars, is that I have all the Anne stories in Kindle format except Windy Poplars. For some strange reason, at the time I purchased the collection, the publisher had not okayed that particular volume’s digital rights, so there was this gaping hole. And since her years teaching at the college and dealing with the Pringles, et al., are my favorite from the television shows, I was bummed that it was the Windy Poplars installment that held them. So, when I had a couple days off to run some errands in town and I happened to find this in The Bookshelf, I picked up a copy and started in while I enjoyed a leisurely lunch at Grassroots Coffee. That was an awesome day!

Rounding out the April books (back to digital) was a bit of old and new. The Phantom Tollbooth was also lurking about the Kindle files and I’m sad I never read this as a kid because I would have adored it! Having read it for the first time as an adult, though, I think I appreciate it differently. (Just like when I read A Wrinkle in Time a couple years ago–very different from if I’d read it at the intended age.) Younger was one of the Kindle First offerings and I really liked that it dealt with the issues of aging and beauty but turned the often-trod topics on its ear a bit by starting with an older protagonist and regressing her in a very curious way.

When May rolled around and I was spending a lot of time in waiting rooms and monitoring Todd’s recovery, reading was not something I was very good at. If you notice the asterisks on most of May’s reading list, those are all audiobooks–Podiobooks, technically speaking, books published in podcast form. I used to listen to these ages ago while at work, but I find it difficult to concentrate on narrative while working, these days. But! My 2+ hours spent in the car each day? Perfect for consuming audiobooks, and I can get through a book a week or so this way.

There are a couple of things to be aware of if you want to take advantage of Podiobook’s catalog of free audio books. First, the reader is often the author, and that doesn’t always work out so well. Sometimes it’s just the tone of voice that doesn’t sound right to me, so being able to listen to a bit of the first chapter is a good thing before I download the whole series. Other times it might be cruddy production value. Also, my ancient iPod (a 2nd gen Nano) has a default of sorting podcasts newest first and not autoplaying the next one. Because of that, I was focusing on books that had 30 minute or more chapters so that I wasn’t having to fumble with the player while on the highway. Safety first! Then I realized I could drag the podcast episodes into a playlist and put them in any order I wanted, and it’d auto play from one to the other. Success!

Despite my dislike of the preachiness of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I knowingly downloaded The God Prophecy–does that make me a hypocrite? I don’t think so. I just like knowing what I’m getting into! And end of the world stories are generally fast-paced and interesting. The Christian point of view is a natural one for this sort of story, though I gave the speakers a serious side-eye when the Big Bad’s real identity was revealed. You had to go there, huh? Sigh… Another standout was Brood of Bones. I mean, a narcoleptic priestess in a town where every female over 12 is pregnant all at once sounds like a dark comedy in the making, but turned out to be incredibly suspenseful, bordering on scary at times. The fact that this is but the first book in a series makes me very happy. The fact that the other books are not available in audio form, read by Henrietta Meire, makes me sad. But I will hear here voice in my head as I look up the rest of Marling’s work. After her, the Phillipa Ballentine books (read by the author) are both engaging and a aural pleasure. Seriously, these books make me look forward to driving to and from work.

And I finally finished The Seventh Child. Holy cats, y’all, but that was a slog. I really don’t like books with a slow start (The Paying Guests, this goes for you, too), but I’ve found that if I can stick it out, I’ll be rewarded. Eventually. The Seventh Child took a slow meander through several different orphans lives while building to any sort of real action. It was a good 70% through the book before the pace finally picked up and I wanted to power through to find out more, only to switch to another set of characters who were meandering their way through political machinations and, in the process, killing the momentum. Was the ending ultimately good? Yes, thankfully. There was even a little twist I didn’t expect (though not the ultimate plot answer: that I saw coming pretty much from the beginning, which is why slogging through this book for more than a month was just so excruciating).

Okay, so brief is relative, I guess. But I think that covers it all, more or less. Now I can get back to the other stuff I want to tell you guys about.

Next week!

On The Nightstand: March 2015

Everyday Adventures

That’s a loaded title, isn’t it? When I first envisioned this website (12 years ago, ahem) I always planned for their to be a little section on the sidebar with whatever book(s) I was currently reading and linked to my thoughts on said books. I suppose I could still do that (or use the Goodreads app/plugin or some such), but I’ll be honest: I only remember to check in with Goodreads at the end of the month, I’m not sure I’d be any better with a manual sidebar feature.

Enough blathering about blathering about books, let’s get to the more direct stuff!

Book covers snagged from GoodReads

Book covers snagged from GoodReads

In addition to everything else that was going on in March, I was really ripping through some books!

First up was the Traveler’s Gate Trilogy by Will Wight. Which started out as me just having House of Blades on my Kindle because I met the author’s brother at a convention the weekend it was being released and blah blah blah supporting other creators, etc. I read the first couple of chapters and reminded myself why I don’t read high fantasy as a general rule. That was 2013.

BUT! It was next up on the oldest unread books on my Kindle list, so I dove back in, waded through the world building and character soup, and damn if I wasn’t really interested in who these people were by the mid-point in the book. And by the end? Totally checking to see if book 2 was available. Not only was it, but it was available for borrowing via Prime, so I didn’t even have to break my spending diet to get it!

Oh, another thing, I actually read House of Blades in February, but after I wrote the last book round-up, and I didn’t realize I’d devour it quite so quickly! So I borrowed Book 2 at the very end of February and was able to borrow Book 3 a few days later once the counter had reset for March. Book binge!

Here’s the short version (but no spoilers): In this world, magic-users are called Travelers. Some are born to it, others trained to it. Travelers are affiliated with Territories (usually only one, but there are exceptions) and each Territory comes with certain pros and cons. (There’s a bit of vague Norse references in some of the names and all, but nothing truly one culture or another.) Simon is our main character, ordinary poor kid in his village after his dad is killed by a Traveler and his mother tortured into mindlessness. Cheerful so far, right? It gets better (no, really, it does). Simon’s village is raided and in the scuffle Leah appears to distract the baddies and get captured instead of Simon, so he feels honor-bound to try and rescue her. Now, back when his family had that run-in with dark side of magic, another Traveler stepped in and saved him and his mom (more or less). Simon decides to go back to the spot it all happened and see if he can get the Traveler to train him so he can rescue Leah.

While Simon makes great strides in his training out of necessity, I appreciated that it was accomplished more out of abject stubbornness instead of dumb luck or some hidden ability. Simon kinda sucks at being a Traveler at times, but he’s also not a complete anti-hero or a whiny brat complaining about finding himself in a situation. I respect the character, in other words, and that made it easy to get interested in him. He also doesn’t “drink the Kool-Aide” the way another character, Alin, does when it’s discovered he’s (Alin’s) the first natural-born Traveler of super-Territory Elysia, the prophesied one, and all that. Alin would have made a far less interesting main character, but as supporting character it works better. And Leah, well, she’s got her own secrets. We’ll just leave it at that.

It’s far from a perfect story, but I really enjoyed the hell out of it and so would definitely recommend it if you can get into a story and ignore the details.

Next up was Rushed, by Brain Harmon. Modern day setting with some fantastical/supernatural elements. What it wasn’t, despite the title, was a quick-moving story. 95% or more of the book takes place during a single day. And while there are definite signs of imagination on the part of the writer, there are also so blatant pop-culture reference drops (Steven King, the Shining, Curious George, and Indiana Jones) that work in some ways but not in others. And the perceived antagonist is just referred to as the foggy man. Oookay.

Basically, this guy starts having this dream that wakes him up with this urgency to GO (as in travel, not heed nature’s call). But where and why are elusive. He resists for a couple of nights and then, finally, gives in and decides to get in his car and drive wherever and get it out of his system. His wife takes all of this in stride, almost unbelievably calm. I think this is meant to underscore their loving, trusting relationship. And, again, he’s just gone a day so, really, I suppose you could give their dynamic the benefit of the doubt, once he starts encountering weird stuff in corn fields (of course) and sending her cell phone pictures of the same, I’d expect her to be a little more concerned! In any other book their banter would have been delightful, it just didn’t seem to work for me, here.

I was reminded, more than once, of King’s Dark Tower series–a series I enjoyed, by the way, until that piss-poor ending he threw at us after waiting more than a decade for the damn series to end (apparently I’m still very. opinionated. on that point, ahem). Our main character (whose name I cannot even recall, that should tell you something) is no Roland, but we have a very similar, frustrating, oh-you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me, side-eye up on side and down the other ending in store and I was not pleased. I don’t think I’ll be reading the other two books in the series.

Now for something totally different!

The peril in downloading book and letting them sit for a while is that you might not remember why you downloaded them in the first place. When I started on Connie Brockaway’s No Place for a Dame I really wondered what I was thinking–it starts out like your typical bodice ripper! With “dame” in the title I was thinking 1920s and here I was about a century off!

While it did turn out to be a historical romance, with all the usual (dare I say formulaic) elements, the characters were engaging and the premise was pretty good. A gamekeeper’s daughter is granted the gift of education by the master of the house. She has a talent for astronomy, discovers a comet, and wants to present it to the Royal Astrological Society (yes, I know, it’s that for reasons), only one thing stands in the way: the fact that she’s a she and not a he. So she enlists the help of Lord Strand in the usual subterfuge, hilarity ensues, and they eventually succumb to the expected attraction. (I really don’t consider that a spoiler, see again: formula).

Now, I did like the way they extricated themselves from the resulting scandal-to-be. And telling would be a spoiler, but I’ll say it was inventive and funny. Turns out this is book 3 in a series, but I don’t think I’ll go back and read the others. I feel like No Place for a Dame stands alone really well and I don’t want to tempt fate with another book in a genre I’m not a big fan of.

The book club selection for the month was The Awakening, a shocking book in its day by Kate Chopin, but like a lot of the “scandalous” books from decades past, it doesn’t hold the same power when read in modern times. It’s all about a woman who realizes that she is unhappy with her life, her husband, and the strictures of Victorian society. And while I can empathize with a need to change one’s situation, her “awakening” didn’t come with any sense of responsibility or purpose, she was just as self-centered and careless in the choices she makes to extricate herself from the unhappiness as she appeared at the beginning of the book.

As is often the case, the secondary characters were far more interesting to me, and the ending of the book was disappointing, but in a different way from Rushed (though I’d still call it a cop-out). The book’s been out for more than a century so I’m going to “spoil” the ending: she kills herself. Why? Because the alternate life she drifted towards didn’t turn out the way she planned. The man she left her husband for had a shred of decency and didn’t succumb to her charms–but not because he didn’t want to, because he knew it wasn’t the right thing to do–and she runs off and ends herself. Oh, sure, she spares a momentary thought for her two young children, but it ultimately didn’t matter.

Even the way she ended it was thoughless and self-centered. She arrives at the resort the frequent each summer unannounced, in the off-season, sending the few people on the island into a tizzy trying to make up a room and meal for her, while she heads off to the beach. She refused offers from friends for help (including a kind doctor that actually seemed to have a clue about what she was going through and appeared ready to listen and talk without judging her thoughts or actions). Even taking into consideration the mores of the day and the narrow roles women could fill, she was weak and lacked character. And that just makes for a frustrating end of a story.

Thank goodness the next book was more my style, featured a strong female lead, and included enough humor to keep things light but without cheapening the suspense of who was really responsible for the death of a student in the admiralty law professor’s office. Long Knives, by Charles Rosenberg, is a pretty interesting legal thriller. There’s sunken treasure ships (or at least the rumor of them), university politics, condo board scheming, and so on and so forth.

I was stymied for most of the book what the title had to do with anything. Again, I had no memory of the book’s description and was expecting something adverture-y, and then maybe pirate-adjacent when the sunken treasure because a plot point. But, no, it’s apparently a metaphor for treachery (a quick search reveals that it dates to the 12th century–guess I missed that one during my SCA days) and was finally mentioned by one of the antagonists during an informal academic hearing that ultimately revealed whodoneit.

Nothing about the book blew me away, but it was an enjoyable read. If there are more novels featuring Jenna James (the lawyer-turned-professor protagonist), I’d probably give them a try. (Oh, looks like this might have actually been a sequel. There’s a lot of history between some of the characters, history that apparently is fully discussed in Death on a High Floor.)

Just one more to go! Even though I finished Back on Murder in April, I’m liable to forget about it by the end of the month, so I’ll go ahead and cover it, now. It’s your basic police procedural starring a fallen-from-grace homicide cop, March, who really wants to get back on the regular rotation but it seems like he’s on his way out, not up. At first I was worried that he was going to be another anti-hero, but I discovered I like him well-enough by the end.

There’s a shoot-out at a drug house and Marsh, trying to make himself useful, actually discovers something at the scene that suggests there was another person there, definitely injured, possibly dead, but why is the body not there? Then there’s a fair haired do-gooder that goes missing, and March is convinced there’s a connection, as incongruous as it seems, and pins his hopes on it being the case that redeems him in the eyes of the department. Things don’t go as planned (it’d have been a short book if they had!) and another couple of opportunities present themself that also seem to fizzle (hope that doesn’t give too much away).

The fact that this is #1 is a series of March mysteries tells you right off that something eventually goes right, but it was pretty damn touch-and-go for a good long while. Would I read the rest of his series? Maybe. Once I catch up on all the other books still in my backlog I’ll consider it.

According to GoodReads I’m 2 books behind schedule my goal of 75 books read this year. Guess I need to step things up a bit more, huh?

Read and Watched: February Edition

Just for Fun

We pretty much covered what I’ve been crafting this month with the last post, so let’s talk books again, shall we?

(image snagged from Goodreads)

(image snagged from Goodreads)

Sourcery (Discworld Book 5), Terry Pratchett

I had one more Discworld book already on the Kindle, and unfortunately it was a Rincewind-centric story. Once again he’s the hapless hero, resisting all the way, and that just gets old after a while. Still, we got to see more of the Disc in this book and meet some new characters, and The Luggage had quite a good part (though in this one it reminded me of reading Cujo’s confused-by-rabies thoughts than anything else). Still, the ending of this particular book leads me to believe that the new few might be Rincewind-free, so I’ll come back to the series once I catch up with my book back-log.

Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon

This is a quick read, but that’s what makes it great. If you’re ever in need of a creative boost or pick-me-up, you could spend an hour reading Kleon’s thoughts on why and how artist’s “steal” from one another (I admit to strongly disliking the word choice, due to the connotations of steal, but understand why he uses is). He’s not promoting plagiarism or copyright infringement, but inspiration and learning. Here are some bits I highlighted to share:

Google everything. I mean everything. Google your dreams, Google your problems. Don’t ask a question before you Google it. You’ll either find the answer or you’ll come up with a better question.

Oh, man, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me something they could have just Googled, I could probably average a night out a month. Seriously. I grew up when “look it up” was a common response to questions, and the resources were our World Book Encyclopedias, a dictionary as big as an end table, or a trip to the public library. It’s such a valuable lesson to learn how to ask questions and find your own answers.

Not that I mind sharing what I know (obviously).

It’s in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are.

This. So much of this.

I Think it’s good to have a lot of projects going at once so you can bounce between them. When you get sick of one project, move over to another, and when you’re sick of that one, move back to the project you left. Practice productive procrastination.

If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably aware that this is pretty much my take on project management. I LOVE having multiple projects going for precisely this reason. And while I know that it works for me, and encourage others to try it, it’s always nice to have someone agree that this is a good thing.

Dining With the Doctor: The Unathorized Whovian Cookbook, Chris-Rachael Oseland

I’m sure there are plenty of folks who wouldn’t consider reading a cookbook for fun. I am not one of them, and I enjoy finding cookbooks that are more than just a mere collection of ingredient lists and itemized steps. Dining With the Doctor is a bit gimmicky, but several of the recipes selected (one for each episode of the recent Doctor Who reboot, plus an entire chapter of options inspired by Eleven’s post-regeneration meal of Fish Fingers and Custard) are clever pairings and well thought out. And then you get the other ones, where he’s suggesting you stick cotton swabs into food and relying on artificial food coloring over more natural ones. But reading about each episode reminded me of some of my favorites, and almost makes me want to watch the Eccleston episodes.

Almost.

Yes Please, Amy Poehler

Finally, the book club selection for this month. I generally enjoy memoirs, so was looking forward to reading this, even if I’d mostly stopped watching SNL by the time Poehler started her tenure there, and never got into Parks and Recreation. Yes, she “complains” about how hard writing a book is throughout the book, but she stopped just short of being truly annoying. I think of it more as the self-deprecation we do as a way of apologizing for not being better, more polished, more erudite.

And for someone who’s comedy is often big and a bit in your face, I was surprised at how sweet and calm her writing was. When she talks about her sons you can feel the genuine love and affection, but it’s not syrupy and certainly without a trace of mommy martyr complex like some celebrity mom’s portray. And sandwiched in between anecdotes that make me want to lose a day on YouTube looking up the sketches she mentions, there are these wonderful gems that remind you of how hard actors work on their craft, even when it seems effortless.

…what else are we going to do? Say no? Say no to an opportunity that may be slightly out of our comfort zone? Quiet our voice because we are worried it is not perfect? I believe great people do things before they are ready.

This reminded me of the launch-then-plan, or leap first sort of mantras so common in business coaching. Sometimes we have to commit to something in a big way to get to that next stage in our lives.

Decide what your currency is early. Let go of what you will never have. People who do this are happier and sexier.

It’s not about limiting ourselves, it’s about recognizing those awesome qualities we have and building on those and being satisfied in our own skins.

Treat your career like a bad boyfriend.

Here’s the thing. Your career won’t take care of you. It won’t call you back or introduce you to its parents. Your career will openly flirt with other people while you are around. It will forget your birthday and wreck your car. Your career will blow you off if you call it too much. It’s never going to leave its wife. Your career is fucking other people and everyone knows but you. Your career will never marry you.

Now, before I extend this metaphor, let me make a distinction between career and creativity. Creativity is connected to your passion, that light inside you that drives you. That joy that comes when you do something you love. That small voice that tells you, “I like this. Do this again. You are good at it. Keep going.” That is the juicy stuff that lubricates our lives and helps us feel less alone in the world. Your creativity is not a bad boyfriend. It is a really warm older Hispanic lady who has a beautiful laugh and loves to hug. If you are even a little bit nice to her she will make you feel great and maybe cook you delicious food.

Oh, man, I could have used the bad boyfriend metaphor a few months ago when a coworker was going through some serious issues. It’s so much better than the “it’s business, it’s not personal” mantra I had at hand. But the creativity bit? That’s totally in my wheelhouse and exactly how I feel about the power we each hold in ourselves to be creative and let that inform our day to day lives.

I read other passages out loud to Todd before he fell asleep each night. Notably the snippets about her years at SNL because those require the least amount of explanation. It’s not a perfect book, but Yes Please was a nice peek into Poehler’s life and I appreciated getting that inside scoop.

oOo     oOo     oOo

As for binge-watching, the only one on my February list was Parenthood. A series that I totally ignored until this month after hearing friends absolutely gush over it. These friends are also the ones who turned me onto How I Met Your Mother (and I will not blame them for their timing being just before that odd and only semi-satisfactory final season), which answered the often-posed question of what would Friends have been like if it were on today. And even though these same friends failed to get me into Friday Night Lights, I figured I’d give Parenthood a shot.

Why did I wait so long?!

Oh, right, I thought it was a case of Hollywood having run out of ideas and they were serializing the story from the Steve Martin movie of the same name. And while funny and a “modern classic” I suppose, my memories of that movie did not include a desire to see more of it. Which is why I missed out on the real-time airing of a show that really brought back, for me, the heyday of good television shows, where the characters are endearing and the humor doesn’t require a laugh track to tell you what belittling remark is supposed to be funny.

I really did enjoy this series, even though it made me tear up on more than one occasion (breaking my rule of not watching things that are trying to make me cry). Generally, though, it was the happy moments that had me tearing up (which is good, because the ending was definitely NOT a case of happy tears). My favorite couple was Joel and Julia, and I’m so happy they got their shit together in the end. I wanted to pinch the heads off all the teenagers around season 2, though that probably points to a more accurate portrayal than not. Crosby really had the best arc of all the middle generation, really growing into himself and his roles as father and, eventually, businessman. And it took me a couple of episodes to realize that the actress playing Jasmine played the best friend in Honey (I have a soft spot for dance movies and love that one more than is necessarily healthy); it was nice to see her on screen again.

Lauren Graham must have had a severe case of deja vu going on with the dating the daughter’s English teacher storyline. I won’t say that I liked Mark Cyr over Max Medina, but I definitely liked them both over Hank! I do not have a soft spot for grumpy old men, no matter how much the writers try to shoehorn that in. Though, for once, couldn’t they have let her be happy with the do-gooding doctor? Give that girl a break, why doncha!

As for Adam and Kristina. Well. I will allow that my opinion of them could be somewhat affected by watching 3 episodes at a time and, owing to how much time I spent at home sick this month, sometimes up to 8 in a day. That’s a lot of Bravermans. Regardless of the exposure rate, though, I’d say 80% of the episodes left me with the ongoing impression that Adam and Kristina were smug, self-righteous, sanctimonious twat-waffles. And I cannot TELL you how often I called them out for their bullshit and was so very glad that Dylan’s parents did just that in the last season. Yes, the writers threw more than one couple’s fair share of crazy at A&K, even for this show, but it just made me tired, not sympathetic.

(And, no, I’m not exactly sure what a twat-waffle is and I’ll be honest that I’m a bit scared to Google it as I’m not sure what would come up, safe search on or not. But it sounds ridiculous, which is what I thought of them, so in my mind it works.)

I finished the show on Monday night, watching the last three heartbreaking episodes, knowing full well what was coming as I do not bother to avoid spoilers, and was a already a bit emotionally compromised from earlier that day (which was maybe NOT the way to watch said episodes). I appreciated the way they handled the big goodbye, that it was in accordance with the character’s wishes and that it was a happy, high note in reality. The little glimpses we got of the future were enough to give us the satisfaction of a story continuing and with a few blanks to fill in on our own.

Oh, I also appreciated that they returned to Forever Young for the theme song in the last season–I remember thinking the soundtrack was easily one of the best things about the show in season 1, and loved the way they closed it out so well.

oOo     oOo     oOo

 

And speaking of endings, I’m a CSI fan from way back. At the end of this current season (which was cut short 4 episodes ostensibly to make room in the schedule for CSI: Cyber with Patricia Arquette; I’m still not sure how I feel about that, yet) the last original cast member left the show (the character got a promotion that is not currently leading to a spin-off; I’m so glad they didn’t kill him off!). I loved the way they handled his send-off, both in music choice as well as the montage:

(Direct link for the feed readers: Nick Stokes Leaves CSI )

Though you’d think with 10 years of footage to go through they could have included a bit more of the old cast, but I’m glad Gil and Warrick got their few seconds in there. Endings well done take the sting out of it being an ending, you know?

I have no clue what I’m going to binge-watch next. I’m open to suggestions.