Archives - August 2005 archives -- index by author -- index by category -- favorite books -- links

Search Now:

1 August 2005

• Fire Sale is the latest in Sara Paretsky's mystery series about Chicago detective V.I. Warshawski. I've been impressed at the high standard Paretsky has managed to maintain in what has turned into a fairly long-running series (13 books by my count), and Fire Sale is no exception. When V.I. returns to her old South Chicago neighborhood to fill in for her old high school basketball coach, she's quickly drawn into a web of mystery centered on giant discount retailer By-Smart. As always, V.I. is her old crusading self and can't resist the opportunity to investigate both By-Smart and the mysterious burning of a local company, as well as aid a pair of star-crossed lovers. It's vintage Paretsky, with a tight mystery, vivid setting, and the complex characters her readers have grown to expect.

Books read: 1

3 August 2005

• After reading Tamora Pierce's excellent Circle of Magic series, I was eager to read the followup series, The Circle Opens (comprising Magic Steps, Street Magic, Cold Fire, Shatterglass). As with the first series, each book focuses on one of the four young mages: Sandry, whose power is in weaving; Briar, a nature mage; Daja, who works with metal; and Tris, who can control the weather. This time, though, the friends are separated, allowing for even more focus; each has gone on a journey with his or her mentor, to a different part of the world, where each must take on a student in magecraft.
  
  I thought these were even better than the first series. It was interesting there to see how the four protagonists turned into a team; here, it was even more interesting to see how they functioned when apart from the support of their friends, and to see how they learned how to pass on their knowledge to their own students. Shatterglass was perhaps the best in this respect, as Tris, the most impatient of the four, ends up with an adult student, Keth, who was already gifted at his former craft, glassmaking, before gaining lightning magic; thus Tris has to rein herself in and adapt herself perhaps more than any of her friends.
  
  Plot-wise, the books all share a compelling theme: serial criminals. The most interesting of these is Cold Fire, in which Daja, the metal mage, befriends a heroic firefighter and tracks down an arsonist; the way Pierce handled the psychology of the criminal in this book was head and shoulders above the other books (good as they were). Anyway, it's all really good stuff, and I'm now looking forward to the release of Pierce's next book in this universe, The Will of the Empress, slated for publication in November.

Books read: 4

4 August 2005

• A.N. Wilson's Eminent Victorians (the title is obviously a nod to Lytton Strachey's classic book of that name) is a collection of short biographies of notable Victorians: Prince Albert, Charlotte Brontë, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman, Josephine Butler, and Julia Margaret Cameron. It was interesting enough to hold my attention, but thirty to forty pages per subject simply wasn't sufficient to delve into their lives in the kind of detail I like. Still, it left me inspired to read more, particularly about Butler and Cameron, so that made it worth reading.

Books read: 1

6 August 2005

• Laure Permon Junot was a longtime friend of the Bonaparte family; she eventually married one of Napoleon's closest friends, General Andoche Junot, and was intimate with the Napoleonic court. Years after Napoleon's defeat and death, the novelist Honoré de Balzac encouraged her to write her memoirs, when she was in desperate need of a source of income; happily for her, the memoirs were extremely successful, and for good reason.
  
  At the Court of Napoleon: Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantes reproduces only a fraction of the eighteen volumes she produced, but it's fascinating nonetheless, full of juicy gossip about Napoleon, Josephine, and Napoleon's family. One feels that Laure Junot would have been a wonderful companion at court; she was possessed of a scathing wit and didn't hesitate to level it at any available target. Here's a particularly good zinger, directed at Josephine: "Madame Bonaparte was an astonishing woman, and must have formerly been extremely pretty, for though now no longer in the first bloom of youth, her personal charms were still striking. Had she only possessed teeth, she would certainly have outvied nearly all the ladies of the consular court."
  
  All is not sarcasm and wit, though; Laure often acknowledges good qualities in the people around her. Toothless or not, Josephine's charm shines through (particularly in comparison to Napoleon's second Empress, the bovine Marie Louise of Austria), and her daughter Hortense de Beauharnais comes off well enough to make me want to read more about her. I'd love to get a more complete edition of these memoirs, but in the meantime, even this relatively short version offers an instant trip back to the brilliant, scandalous court of Napoleonic France.

Books read: 1

7 August 2005

• I think I might finally be getting tired of Robert B. Parker's Spenser series. The latest, Cold Service, just didn't do much for me. The premise was interesting enough -- Spenser's friend Hawk is shot and seriously injured, whereupon he and Spenser must track down those responsible -- but too much of the narrative feels old and tired. The pages of Spenser and his longtime lover Susan discussing Spenser's characters, the repetitive comments on Susan's beauty and eating habits, their dog Pearl...all of this feels like filler, and filler we've read before. The focus on Hawk in the actual plot was welcome and provided a little new depth to his character, long one of the most interesting in the series, but it was just not enough to keep my attention focused. I do generally get these from the library rather than buying them, but I might stop doing even that if the next book isn't a little more original.

Books read: 1

8 August 2005

• I originally read Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There a number of years ago and picked it up again in anticipation of my upcoming London trip (having conveniently forgotten that it actually deals with London or England almost not at all). Bryson sets out to retrace the European journey of his youth, traveling from Scandinavia to Turkey by way of France, Germany, Austria, and a lot of other places; along the way, he also recalls details of his earlier trip, made with the irascible Stephen Katz (familiar to readers of Bryson's A Walk in the Woods). Bryson has lots of funny zingers for the people and countries he encounters along the way -- "The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience" -- but happily, his cranky xenophobia is somewhat tempered by a real appreciation for the beauty and richness he encounters along the way.

Books read: 1

9 August 2005

• Amanda Foreman's biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire is one of the best biographies I've read in a long time. Georgiana was one of the most prominent women in 18th century British society. She began as a social hostess and leader of fashion, before becoming active and influential in the world of politics; she was also a talented writer (Foreman quotes some witty poetry) and, later in life, interested in geology, amassing an impressive collection of rocks. Lest this make her sound a paragon, she was also highly insecure, addicted to gambling, and sometimes adulterous (as was her husband).
  
  In presenting Georgiana's life, Foreman strikes an excellent balance between facts, analysis, and speculation, and she adds just enough context to be informative without overwhelming. The only small minus is that she's so taken with Georgiana that she occasionally loses her perspective; this is particularly apparent when she's writing about Georgiana's best friend and the Duke's longtime mistress, Lady Elizabeth Foster, who despite committing sins really no worse than Georgiana's comes off as a devious, manipulative parasite. However, this is really a minor thing; overall, Foreman's enthusiasm for her subject has produced a vital, fascinating biography of an equally vital and fascinating woman.

Books read: 1

10 August 2005

• Me Talk Pretty One Day was the first David Sedaris I read, several years ago, and I still remember laughing so hard while reading it in bed that my husband kept leaning over to ask what was so funny - I always had to hand him the book, because I couldn't possibly have read it aloud without becoming hysterical. The first part is focused on Sedaris himself and his family; the second deals with Sedaris's struggles with life in France with his new lover. The bits in the second half about his language classes are worth the price of admission all by themselves, particularly "Jesus Shaves", wherein the class tries to explain (in French) Easter and Jesus to a Moroccan Muslim: "He calls his self Jesus and then he die one day on two...morsels of...lumbers." Okay, now I'm laughing again, so I'll stop there. Just go read the book, but not anywhere you can't laugh out loud.

Books read: 1

11 August 2005

• What if George Gordon, Lord Byron, had written a novel? He started one, of course, on that famous night in Italy with Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley, but quickly abandoned it. Instead, John Crowley asks in Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land, what if he'd finished it, and it had come into the hands of his daughter, Ada, Countess of Lovelace? Lord Byron's Novel is an intricately intertwined three-part story: Byron's novel, which we get in its entirety; his daughter's annotations and notes; and the researchers who discover the novel.
  
  For me, the earlier parts worked better than the modern-day ones. The novel felt convincingly Byronic; I've read little of his poetry and can't speak to his use of language, but the themes were certainly there: the Albanian setting of much of the novel, the brother-sister incest, and the thinly disguised version of his own wife. Even more convincing, and heartrending, were Ada's annotations; she barely knew her father, who separated from her mother when Ada was very young, and Crowley beautifully portrays her attempts to establish a connection with Byron through the pages of his novel.
  
  The modern-day sections didn't work as well, at least not for me. Smith, the researcher who discovers the novel, just happens to have an estranged father, who just happens to be a Byron scholar; in the course of their email correspondence about the novel, we find out more about Smith and Lee's history. I just felt that it was too pat and predictable in its parallelism with Byron and Ada's relationship, which I was more interested in anyway. I'd have been much happier with more Ada and less Smith and Lee (and Smith's annoying lover, Thea). Overall, though, I did enjoy the book, and I might well read it again for the Byron and Ada parts, which were marvelous.

Books read: 1

12 August 2005

• I think I'm glad that when I decided to try Tamora Pierce, I started with the Circle of Magic series, rather than the Alanna books (Alanna: The First Adventure, In the Hand of the Goddess, The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, Lioness Rampant), which I just finished. I did like them, but I'm sorry that I didn't encounter them as a teenager, when the kickass girl heroine would have felt more inspirational and real -- as an older reader, she's just a little too perfect: a powerful magician and outstanding fighter, able to beat men twice her size, and with red hair and purple eyes, too. That said, I did enjoy the books. The characterization and plots got more interesting after the first book, and there's certainly something to be said for kickass empowering heroines. I've heard Pierce's second series in this world (Protector of the Small) is better, and I'll certainly be looking out for them.

Books read: 4

13 August 2005

• Cape Perdido is the third of Marcia Muller's series of standalone mystery novels set in coastal California, in the fictional Soledad County. The residents of Cape Perdido, an old lumber town, are up in arms against a proposed plan to send water from the Perdido River to southern California, which could destroy the town's already precarious livelihood as a recreation area; the conflict between the corporation and the town intersects with the secrets several of the town's residents are keeping about a long-ago death. Muller does a good job spinning out the mystery, but the characters are on the flat side, and switching the point of view every couple of pages doesn't help. I haven't so far been very impressed with any of the books in this series, though I keep reading them because I know Muller's capable of better work (witness her long-running series about San Francisco PI Sharon McCone, which are consistently of a high standard). I'll try the next one, but likely not any more unless they get more interesting.

Books read: 1

14 August 2005

• The Victorians is A.N. Wilson's magisterial overview of, well, the Victorians: the politics, society, and culture of that long period (1837-1901) when Queen Victoria was on the throne of England. Wilson does assume a certain level of knowledge about the period; he does provide short biographies and summaries sometimes, but he just as often assumes that the reader knows whereof he speaks, which I generally did (though not always). The book is organized chronologically, but it doesn't pretend to be a thorough history of over sixty years; Wilson chooses his subjects and themes as he likes, covering the spectrum of Victorian life from the Crimean War to the Boer War, from Gladstone to Disraeli, from Dickens to Kipling. I found it better read in chunks than straight through; though it was often fascinating, it was also exhausting trying to absorb the almost overwhelming amount of information, organized in a thematically idiosyncratic, almost chaotic style. It was a worthy read, but I think I'd still like to read a straight-up history of the period.

Books read: 1

15 August 2005

• Adéle Geras's Troy is a good retelling of the Trojan War from essentially the beginning of Homer's Iliad to just after the fall of Troy. Geras's heroines are Xanthe, nurse to the son of Hector and Andromache, and Marpessa, handmaiden to Helen; she weaves her own characters skillfully into the tapestry of the characters familiar from Greek mythology. We all know how the story ends, but by providing her own characters and making them sympathetic, so that the reader wants to find out what happens to them, Geras instills new interest in the inevitable fall of Troy. I also liked how Geras handled the gods; Marpessa has God-sight and can always see and speak to them when they're present, but generally, the gods appear in visions to the characters, reveal what they've come to reveal, and disappear again, upon which the character they've spoken to forgets the encounter, though often retaining a feeling of foreboding. I'm picky about my Greek mythology retellings, and I thought Troy worked very well.

Books read: 1

17 August 2005

• Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels is an appealing historical romance set in the early 19th century. When bluestocking Jessica Trent sets out to free her brother from the ruinous clutches of the notorious Marquess of Dain, she gets more than she bargains for. The plot is secondary, though, to the romance; how Chase works out the attraction between the two, delving into Dain's scarred psyche, is the real interest here. I liked how Jessica never makes excuses for Dain's bad behavior and never gives in to him; Dain is saved from being annoyingly whiny and pathetic by the real trauma of his past. I think this is my favorite of the three Chase novels I've read so far.
  
  The Last Hellion is a sequel of sorts to Lord of Scoundrels. The eponymous hero is Vere Mallory, Duke of Ainswood, and Dain's best friend; he appears briefly (and not to good advantage) in Lord of Scoundrels. He falls hard, though unwillingly, for the beautiful Lydia Grenville, a journalist who specializes in social issues and who has a mysterious family connection to the Marquess of Dain. Though the dialogue is witty as usual and the characters nicely drawn, I wasn't compelled by the plot, particularly by the issues in Ainswood's past which caused him to become a hellion, as it was all a little too similar to Dain's family angst. Still, it was a quick, enjoyable read.

Books read: 2

18 August 2005

• At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much is a small, funny, enjoyable book by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (otherwise known as the Yarn Harlot). There are no instructions or patterns, just Pearl-McPhee's witty anecdotes and observations on knitting and life. I'd quote some, to prove how funny it is, but I had to take it back to the library and haven't gotten a copy of my own yet. Still, how could I not like someone who quotes the Tick? This would be a perfect small gift (or stocking stuffer, since Christmas is only a few months away) for the obsessive (or even non-obsessive) knitter in your life.

Books read: 1

19 August 2005

• In Shannon Hale's Princess Academy, a group of girls from a mountain mining town are taken to a school to learn how to be princesses after a prophecy that someone from the town will marry the prince. Sounds like a recipe for frivolous fun, doesn't it? Well, in the capable hands of Hale (who also wrote the excellent The Goose Girl and Enna Burning), it's quite a bit more than that. There is infighting among the girls, as you might expect, but also a surprising amount of solidarity, support, and learning; the interactions between the girls, both positive and negative, are nicely observed. The heroine, Miri, becomes the top student through intelligence and hard work, but it's never taken for granted that she'll go off happily and wed the prince; Hale makes sure that this isn't a standard, predictable fairy tale. I don't think I liked this quite as much as her previous two books, but it was still an excellent book and a good read for anyone who likes young adult fantasy with strong heroines.

Books read: 1

21 August 2005

• Dorothy Dunnett's King Hereafter is a towering, beautifully written historical epic about Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney, whom Dunnett identifies also as Macbeth, the king of Scotland made famous by Shakespeare's play. (This identification is not widely accepted by historians, I should note, though Dunnett certainly paints a picture that works well within the confines of her story.) The politics are sufficiently intricate that I was very glad to have a working knowledge of at least the English politics of the period (just pre-Norman Conquest); without that, I would have floundered, and even with it, the book was never easy going. Though the complexity of Thorfinn's plots and plans made it interesting to see how they would work out, I never became particularly attached with the character (as I eventually became to Lymond, the similarly complex hero of Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles). I did like Thorfinn's wife Groa, his stepson Lulach, and several of the supporting characters, but overall, I was more intellectually than emotionally engaged with King Hereafter. If you've read and enjoyed the Lymond Chronicles, I'd recommend King Hereafter; otherwise, it might be better to start your acquaintance with Dunnett somewhere else.

Books read: 1

22 August 2005

• An Earthly Knight is Janet McNaughton's retelling of the old Scottish ballad of Tam Lin, the mortal chosen by the faerie queen to be her payment to hell. McNaughton's version is set in 12th-century Scotland, where her heroine, Jenny, is the daughter of a baron and the sister of disgraced Isabel, who ran off with a knight. (In an interesting twist, Isabel turns out to be the heroine of a different ballad, which I didn't recognize until she tells her story to Jenny late in the book.)
  
  Readers who aren't very familiar with the ballad would most likely enjoy An Earthly Knight. The Scottish setting is interesting and well-done, though occasionally too heavy on historical details, and the heroine is likeably spunky. For me, though, the plot didn't have much interest or suspense -- it's a fairly straight retelling of the ballad, with very little faerie presence (and what on earth is the point of "Tam Lin" with not much faerie in it?). The faerie queen doesn't appear until near the end, and with the faeries being so played down, the threat to Tam Lin doesn't feel very real. I've read books which did much more original things with this ballad -- among them Pamela Dean's Tam Lin and Diana Wynne Jones's Fire and Hemlock, both of which I would recommend over An Earthly Knight for readers interested in the Tam Lin ballad.

Books read: 1

23 August 2005

• Pamela Dean's Tam Lin is on my favorites page.

Books read: 1

24 August 2005

• At the age of 67, English teacher Jane Juska placed a personal ad in the New York Review of Books that read, ""Before I turn 67--next March--I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me." A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance is her memoir of the results of her ad. It's very funny in spots, and I admired Juska's courage in both placing the ad and then writing up the results, but I thought it suffered occasionally from lack of focus. Juska spends at least half the book in recounting the events of her earlier life, which are certainly relevant but not nearly so interesting as the present-day parts. With the exception of the chapter about her stints teaching writing to prison inmates, which were utterly fascinating, I was almost skimming the digressions into her past. Still, Juska's adventures in romance and her candid, witty voice are certainly worth reading.

Books read: 1

26 August 2005

• I first read Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White in March of last year and decided to read it again after listening to the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical based on it (to see how much they'd changed the plot - the answer is a lot; "freely adapted" is an understatement). I really have nothing to say about it that I didn't say last time, other than that the suspense of the plot held up surprisingly well on the reread, and I was even more struck this time by the odd, triangular relationship between Hartright, Marian, and Laura.

Books read: 1

31 August 2005

• I've just finished an orgy of Tamora Pierce. After reading the Alanna books earlier this month, I decided to read all of Pierce's other books set in that universe (called the Tortall universe, after the kingdom in which Alanna and the others live): The Immortals (Wild Magic, Wolf Speaker, Emperor Mage, The Realms of the Gods); Protector of the Small (First Test, Page, Squire, Lady Knight); and the two Trickster books (Trickster's Choice and Trickster's Queen). These all follow on chronologically from the Alanna books, in the order I've listed them.
  
  The Immortals follows the adventures of Daine, a girl who discovers that she has powerful animal magic - she can speak to animals, command them, and even shape-shift, eventually. I liked the characters and the nicely cohesive overarching plot, carried out through all four books, and I appreciated the thought given to the ethics of animal magic, of being able to control them for human purposes. By the end, though, Daine and her cohorts are almost too powerful, which caused a certain lack of suspense in the outcome.
  
  In the Protector of the Small series, Keladry of Mindelan is the first girl to train for knighthood since Alanna herself, but in spite of the royal decree allowing this, the training master (along with many others) does not think that girls should be knights and puts Kel on probation for a year. Kel is smart, strong, and determined, but she lacks Alanna's magical gift, and that makes her travails much more believable; she really has to work hard to prove herself. Even the characters acknowledge this; in book three, Alanna herself tells Kel that her triumph is more real to other girls than Alanna's was. I also liked the books' focus on teamwork over individual achievement; Kel pulls off a lot of amazing things, but she usually has a team of others helping her, and her talent for command and cooperation is just as important as her individual strengths. This series is easily my favorite of the Tortall universe books.
  
  The Trickster books are about Alanna's daughter Alianne (Aly for short). I began by finding Aly offputtingly cocksure and annoying, and Pierce throws her into the plot before even letting the reader get to know her much. After a little bit of interplay between Aly and her parents, she sets sail in her boat; two paragraphs later, she's been captured by pirates and taken to be sold as a slave in the Copper Isles. Fortunately, it does get better from there, as Aly joins the household of the Balitang family, who are caught up in the politics of their kingdom, where the ruling luarin people hold sway over the native raka. There's some interest in seeing Aly's character develop, and more in the plot, which has a lot of interesting political intrigue. I probably liked these books less than any of the other Tortall books, but they were certainly worth reading.

Books read: 10

Total books read this month: 38
Total books read this year: 278

Last updated 29 November 2005. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.