The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-five Minutes in History and Imagination by Javier Cercas (2011)

I got a copy of The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-five Minutes in History and Imagination by Javier Cercas (published in Spain in 2009, and in an English translation in 2011) through the Library Thing EarlyReviewers program. I have to admit that even though I requested it and I do have some interest in modern Spanish politics, it took me awhile to bring this book about a failed 1981 coup d'etat up to the top of my list. And while it was slow going at first, this book really exceeded my expectations and turned into something very unique and exciting.

My first clue that this was no ordinary history or political science book should have been the first two blurbs on the back of the book: "The best history book of the year" and "A masterpiece of twenty-first century European literature." Cercas is an established novelist in Spain, and found himself moved by the half an hour of video footage of the attempted February 23, 1981 takeover of the government by a faction of the military (commonly referred to as 23-F). Although the vote of a new Prime Minister that was going on at the time was being broadcast live on the radio, a couple of cameras were in the room recording when the soldiers entered. They recorded, unmanned, for about half an hour before they were both shut off. This footage is played often in Spain on the anniversary of the coup, and the reactions of the participants, particularly the recently disgraced Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez, inspired Cercas to write a novel. After the novel was done, it just didn't work for him, so he translated his extensive research and endless thoughts into this non-fiction novel of the events of the coup and the men on either side of the standoff.

During the coup, when the soldiers, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero, entered the parliament floor and took the legislators hostage, three men refused to get down on the floor, even when the bullets started flying. I think wikipedia describes their reactions pretty well: "During the shooting of several machine gun rounds, whilst almost all deputies dropped terrified on the floor, three kept standing defiantly: acting Minister of Defense General Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado, who stood up and ordered Tejero to desist; acting President of the Government Adolfo Suárez, who remained sitting down instead of crouching on the floor; and Communist leader Santiago Carrillo, who, sitting down, calmly lit a cigarette and did not seem to be disturbed by the events." [You can get a hint of the coup here (and there is a lot more on You Tube -- search for "23 Febrero golpe de estado")]

But let's back up for a very tiny bit of Spanish history (feel free to skip the next two paragraphs if this is not your thing): In 1936, Francisco Franco led an unsuccessful coup against the left-wing Popular Front government. The coup started the Spanish Civil War, which pitted left against right and ended with Franco declaring himself the leader of Spain for life. And he lived for another 40 years. Knowing that he would need to take steps to carry on Francoism after his death, Franco allowed the heir of the Spanish monarchy, Juan Carlos, to return to Spain from Italy and be educated there. Franco was secure that Juan Carlos would continue his policies after his death and named him his official successor. He wasn't aware, however, that Juan Carlos had been meeting with political dissidents behind Franco's back, and when he came to power in 1975, he masterminded the transition of Spain from a dictatorship to a democracy.

The major creator of the new Spanish state was the first Prime Minister (who was initially appointed by the King but later elected democratically), Adolfo Suarez. Cercas describes Suarez as a "pure politician" and he did what seemed almost impossible -- got the Francoist legislature to vote their system out and a democratic one in, legalized political parties, including Communism, and extended autonomy to distinct regions of Spain. It was all going pretty great until Suarez leaned a little too far to the left from his centrist foundation, while international politics leaned heavily to the right (Thatcher, Reagan). Add in the oil crisis and increased terrorist activity from the ETA and you have a bunch of Spaniards who think that Franco wasn't so bad and another coup and a return to the right might not be a bad idea.

The background details and results of the coup (which are covered extensively in the book) are way too complicated to get into here, but I'll just say that Cercas does an amazing job of combining historical research with his novelist's eye for human psychology and emotion. The book has a wonderful structure -- each section starts with a detailed analysis of the existing video from inside the legislative chamber and ends with a step-by-step move through the action of the coup itself. In between we get the histories of all the major players, the cultural and political climate leading up to the coup, and the ultimate consequences of the military action.

Cercas' writing style takes a little getting used to, but as a lover of long sentences and multiple asides, I got into it pretty quickly. Here's a representative example: "I insist: I'm not saying that this was the only possible result of the coup for the monarchy if the King opposed it; what I'm saying is that, like any of the rest of the plotters, before joining the coup Cortina might have arrived at the conclusion that the risks the coup entailed for the monarchy were much fewer than the benefits it might bring in its wake, and that in consequence the coup was a good coup because it would triumph whether it triumphed or failed: the triumph of the coup would strengthen the Crown (that's at least what Cortina might have thought and what Armada and Milans were thinking); its failure would likewise do so."

Whew.

Obviously this isn't the book for everyone, and I have a little background in this kind of thing, so I might be a special audience (I was a Spanish minor in college and took a class all in Spanish about modern Spain), but if you have a little patience and some interest in Spanish politics, try picking this one up. I've never read anything else like it.

The Maeander Project

Do you remember watching Indiana Jones as a kid? And how cool being an archaeologist seemed? Obviously real archaeologists don't (always) act like Mr. Jones (Dr. Jones?), but they are still pretty cool. [Also, as an aside, I can see how constantly being reminded of Indiana Jones could get irritating for an archaeologist, but I sort of wish archivists had a parallel film hero.]

Two of my cool archaeologist friends (Colleen and John) are participating in a very interesting sounding project this August in the Maeander River area of Southwestern Turkey. When their funding stumbled, the group didn't give up, instead they started a Kickstarter page to raise $5,000 for the trip.

If you aren't familiar with Kickstarter, it is a neat system where people can pledge money to a project in exchange for a graduated level of thank you gifts (like when you contribute to PBS). If the project doesn't meet its funding goal within the designated time frame, no one pays anything. If it reaches its funding level, everyone contributes the bit they've pledged and project goes forward. I love the idea of crowdsourcing funding for good people to do interesting things. Some projects are never going to be attractive enough to big corporations, governments, or universities to support them, for whatever reason, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't get funding. Guys, we can fund them! With as little as $1!

The Maeander Project is up to 48 backers and $3,098 as of this posting, with two weeks to go. If they hit the $5,000 goal, they have a donor who has pledged to match it. Do me a favor and read their proposal and then contribute if you can. And even if you can't contribute, spread the word about this worthwhile project.

[Photo credit: Rol1000 on Flickr. Also I don't know much about Turkey or archaeology, but this is tagged as being in the Maeander River region with a Creative Commons license and I thought it was a nice illustration. So there.]

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)

No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice. Almost any house, caught unexpectedly or at an odd angle, can turn a deeply humorous look on a watching person; even a mischievous little chimney, or a dormer like a dimple, can catch up a beholder with a sense of fellowship; but a house arrogant and hating, never off guard, can only be evil. This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angles, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.

My super awesome friend Dan loaned me a copy of one of his favorite books, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959). This book was made into a movie called The Haunting in 1963 (which I have seen and which is awesome) [and remade in 1999 into a movie I haven't seen, but have heard kind of sucks]. And since I liked the old movie so much, I was very excited to check out the book. As you might expect, it was wonderfully great.

Dr. Montague is a supernatural researcher who has finally found the perfect haunted house -- Hill House -- so he rents it out (naturally no one was living there at the time) and writes letters to dozens of people who, for one reason or another, seem like they may be receptive to ghosts and hauntings. Only two people respond: the shy and inexperienced Eleanor, who spent the past decade caring for her sick and recently deceased mother, and who experienced a three day storm of stones on her house after her father died when she was a young girl; and the cynical and urbane and somewhat psychic Theodora who comes out to Hill House from the city on a whim after a big fight with her partner. The doctor and the two women are joined by Luke, the nephew of the woman who currently owns Hill House.

The two women have an instant rapport, and Eleanor is fascinated by all her companions and amazed that they find her interesting and worth talking to. Even when the house starts acting up at night, Eleanor is more happy to be away from her family and out in the world than scared of the supernatural presence. The group spends most of their days joking with each other, exploring the grounds, and making fun of the dour housekeeper. Their nights are spent drinking brandy, playing chess, and eventually going to bed only to be woken up by strange noises in the hallways. Things escalate when Eleanor's name is written on the walls in chalk and blood. Eventually the tight-knit group blows apart -- but is it the fault of the ghosts or the fault of the humans?

Jackson's book is not only genuinely creepy, it is a masterful psychological thriller and a wonderful piece of literature. Our look at this group is through the eyes of Eleanor, a completely sympathetic (and yet also unreliable) narrator who journeys farther than any of the other characters in the book, even though she is only a few hours from her home in the city. And the ending is just perfect. I lovedlovedloved this book and I can't wait to read more of Shirley Jackson's work.

Thanks Dan!

[back cover available here, for all you book cover nerds.]

Abigail Adams by Woody Holton (2009)

My lovely aunt Charlotte lent me her copy of Woody Holton's recent biography of our second First Lady, Abigail Adams (2009).

I will be the first to admit that my geographical knowledge of New England and my ready knowledge about the Revolution is a little muddied. In fact, I always thought pre-Civil War US history was the most boring of the required history classes in high school and college. Sneaking up on the Boston Tea Party, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the Declaration of Independence, George Washington, the Constitution and all that through the lens of Abigail Adams' life was a nice way to ingest some of the timelines and politics that usually zip right past me.

Abigail was the daughter of a Congregationalist minister in Weymouth, Massachusetts, not far from Boston. As a young woman she met the young lawyer John Adams, who lived in Braintree, Massachusetts, a nearby town. He was initially put off by her outspoken and "giddy" nature, but later praised her for her being "saucy." And throughout their long marriage, the revolution, and John's political career, Abigail never lost the saucyness that she was known for.

Because John was frequently sent to political posts that kept him away from Abigail for months (or years) at a time, the two had a deep and extensive correspondence. There is, in fact, more surviving documentary evidence of Abigail Adams than almost any other 18th century American woman. And that correspondence shows a woman who never shied from decrying the lack of educational opportunities for women; shrewdly invested money that she managed to set aside as her own, often against the wishes of John (even though by law all her property and money belonged to her husband); and closely followed and offered her strong opinion on all the politics of the day.

This was actually a nice companion to World Enough and Time, since it pre-dates and then overlaps with the action of that novel. Of course, the furthest south Abigail goes most of the time is New York (with a few months in the newly constructed White House as its first occupant), and she holds a strong New England prejudice against the southern states (and the French, the English, blacks, foreigners, Catholics, Calvinists, the very rich, and the poor -- with exceptions made in all categories for people she knows personally).

This book is nicely researched and well written. A family tree might have been a nice addition, since the Adams family reproduces widely and everyone seems to have the same names. Holton pushes the feminist angle pretty strongly (Adams is well known for her "Remember the Ladies!" letter to her husband), and while Adams certainly displayed a lifelong interest in the rights and education of women, I think he sometimes holds her relationship with John up as more unusually egalitarian than it really was. Most of all, you get a real sense for the every day life of the period -- the problems that distance (even what now seems like a small distance) put on communication; the parallels between the federalists / anti-federalists and today's politicians; the economy crippling speculation and real estate bubbles after the war; and a truly moving exchange when Abigail's daughter finds a lump in her breast and has to be convinced to get a mastectomy. I'm very glad I had a chance to read this book.

[And if you'd like a taste of Abigail's "saucy" and extensive correspondence with her husband, you are in luck because the Massachusetts Historical Society has put 1160 of them online. And yesterday, while I was finishing this book, I saw a link to this news story of a newly uncovered letter from Abigail!]

Hate Annual #9 by Peter Bagge (2011)

In his latest installment in the Buddy and Lisa saga, Peter Bagge takes us back to Lisa's estranged homestead when her mom calls to tell her that her dad has Alzheimers. Lisa hasn't seen her parents in over a decade, and they've never met Buddy or Harold, so the whole family comes along and while they are there, more than one skeleton comes out of the closet. Best of all, though, are Bagge's expressive and exaggerated drawings and the goofy niceness of the Buddy that we've gotten to know over decades of comics. This one in particular made me want to go back and re-read our other anthologies. Go Buddy!

World Enough and Time by Robert Penn Warren (1950)

"Therefore I searched my books for what truth might be beyond the bustle of the hour and the empty lusts of time."

My next stop on the western canon caravan is Robert Penn Warren's delightfully melodramatic and engagingly uneven World Enough and Time (1950). Warren is best known for his novel about Louisiana politics, All the King's Men, and while I haven't read that one (although I will because it is also on this list, along with Warren's Selected Poems), I can only imagine that World Enough and Time does for 1820s Kentucky politics what All the King's Men did for 1930s Louisiana.

I mentioned that the book is uneven and melodramatic, and usually I'd view that as a negative, but in this case, the uneven and melodramatic narrative perfectly matches the uneven and melodramatic nature of the two main characters, Jeremiah Beaumont and his infatuation, and later wife, Rachael Jordon.

Jeremiah grows up in rural eastern Kentucky in the late 18th / early 19th century. It was a time when the state had just recently stopped being the wild frontier, where memories of wars with the Indians (and the British) were still fresh, and every tavern had an old uncivilized hunter sitting in the corner and spinning tales. It was a land of people who, for whatever reason, had to leave and strike west to make their fortune, which leads to a lot of dissatisfied wives clinging to their good family names and wishing they were back in Virginia. It was also, of course, a time of slavery, although Warren doesn't let that enter much into the story.

A learned neighbor of Jeremiah's sets up a school, and he proves to be a quick student. When he becomes a young man, his teacher introduces Jeremiah to one of his good friends, Colonel Cassius Fort, a lawyer and politician who invites Jeremiah to Frankfort to study law under Fort's instruction and mentorship. Jeremiah does just that, staying in Frankfort with the carefree Wilkie Barron and his widowed mother, and getting involved in some heated politics. When Wilkie gets into a passion over a girl named Rachael Jordon who has been taken advantage of and impregnated by Fort, Jeremiah drops everything to insinuate himself into her life and avenge her name.

The story is closely based on the almost too tragically romantic to be true "Kentucky Tragedy." If you want to keep the bulk of the plot a secret, you obviously shouldn't read the Wikipedia article about it, but I would argue that the strength of this book comes from its layered build-up and relentless punishment of its characters, and not from the actions of the crime or the findings of the trial. And if you agree with me, or if you don't think you'll ever read this book, then you should definitely read about the tragedy. The one part I'm unsure about liking in the novel is towards the end where it drastically swings away from the true story, but the more I think about it the more I like where Warren took me.

And even better than where he takes you, is how you get there. Just sample some of this, and try to resist reading it out loud:

"He belonged to that old race of Devil-breakers who were a terror and a blessing across the land, men who had been born to be the stomp-and-gouge bully of a tavern, the Indian fighter with warm scalps at his belt, the ice-eyed tubercular duelist of a county courthouse, the half-horse, half-alligator abomination of a keelboat, or a raper of women by the cow pen, but who got their hot prides and cold lusts short-circuited into obsessed hosannas and a ferocious striving for God's sake."

"'Ah, gentlemen,' [Lancaster] said, 'I trust that I do not intrude.' He spoke in a slow, very musical voice, which caressed the ear. But no one answered a word, and those lips which apparently were designed for 'An expression of melancholy, almost female sweetness, drew back as from long practice into a twisted, thinning smile which made you think of new silk being ripped by a careless blade for wantonness or in hatred and contempt.... 'And I'll remember what you said to me when we met,' Lancaster said, and smiled again, but this time a smile of pitying friendliness, so sweet and sincere that you took that face to be the face of your dearest other self.

It should come as no surprise that Warren is the only person that has won the Pulitzer Prize for both fiction and poetry.

This one takes some slogging, but it is necessary and so worth it. If you have any love for tragic romance, psychological drama, or Kentucky, then you should give it a shot.

[p.s. I can't believe I forgot to mention this above, but the whole book is narrated by a contemporary historian telling the story of Jeremiah and Rachael through archival documents and Jeremiah's prison narrative justifying his actions. That's right: Archives!]

Grasses of a Thousand Colors by Wallace Shawn (2009)

Our lovely friend Ike lent Dr. M a copy of Wallace Shawn's play "Grasses of a Thousand Colors" (2009) recently, and since it was readable and in my house, I decided to read it. I really like Wallace Shawn as an actor, and I enjoyed My Dinner with Andre (which Shawn wrote and costarred in with Andre Gregory, who happened to direct the stage version of "Grasses of a Thousand Colors"), so I was interested to read one of his plays. And I think I liked it! Or rather, I know I liked it, although I'm not always sure why.

In "Grasses of a Thousand Colors," our protagonist, Ben (who was played by Wallace Shawn), is a sexually obsessed scientist who made great breakthroughs in genetic modification of food. He is addressing the audience as the author of a memoir, looking back over his successes and failures, and criss-crossing it all with the females of his life: his wife, Cerise; his lovers Robin and Rose; and one very mysterious white cat named Blanche.

In the end, the play, and Ben's life, come down to two things: eating and sex. Eating is no good anymore because the genetic trick that solved the food crisis by letting animals survive on the dead corpses of other animals has poisoned the food supply and resulted in excessive vomiting, an inability to eat potatoes, and death. Sex is no good anymore because as soon as our hero finds a new woman to satisfy his often-described penis, things change and the sexual relationship drifts apart. In fact, the only consistent lover he has is the beautiful long-haired Blanche, but even she becomes standoffish and bored after Robin cuts her head off.

So you see: it is a confusing play. And it involves a lot of barfing, penis describing, and cat sex. And yet it is extremely enjoyable! There is, as you might expect, a lot of humor hidden in the psychological symbolism of this play, and it is impossible to read it without hearing Shawn's unique voice speaking all of Ben's lines. Three hours might seem a little long for live theatre, but I wish I could have seen Gregory's staging of the play -- I feel like even more of the humor and playfulness would come out in a live performance.

Thanks, Ike!

A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (1996)

I've always considered myself a science fiction reader and not a fantasy reader. Give me robots, aliens, and dystopian futures -- no dragons, elves, fairies, or magic for me, please! So, much like with the Harry Potter series, it took a huge number of my friends reading and loving A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (1996) for me to dip my toe into the A Song of Ice and Fire series. And now that I have, I'm lucky that I'm a fast reader, because I can't believe what I've gotten myself into.

But who am I kidding -- I love long novels and after about 100 pages, I was solidly hooked on this one. Of course there is the obligatory map at the beginning of the book guiding us through the imaginary kingdom, and a host of appendices giving family histories, genealogies, and alliances, but don't let that get you down. Martin makes it so easy to love: supernatural elements are just hinted at, or talked about as stories from the distant past; the present is full of violence and sex and political intrigue; and most of the story is more like straightforward adventure than mystical old fantasy.

The basic plot is something like this: Seven formerly independent kingdoms have been ruled over by a single king for three centuries. The first of these kings was a Targaryen, of the House of the Dragon, and his family stayed in power until a rebellion, about a dozen years ago, killed all of them but two exiled children, and put Robert Baratheon on the throne. Robert's best friend and fellow warrior is the Lord of Winterfell, the northernmost kingdom, Eddard Stark, and most of this first book comes to us from the perspective of Eddard, his wife, his two daughters, and three of his sons. When Robert calls Eddard south to rule at court as the Hand of the King, his family is divided and their comfortable (and peaceful) lives in the North are forever changed.

Shit, that makes it sound like a crappy fantasy novel. But I swear it is way more compelling than it sounds! For example, there are super creepy vampire/zombie-type creatures called The Others, extra smart and vicious direwolves, a nice sprinkling of sex, and tons and tons of unexpected death and betrayal. Martin is not afraid to hurt or kill off his characters, even ones that seem essential to the story, and I like that aura of unpredictable tragedy. He also writes an awesome villain.

It is unsurprising that this has been made into an HBO series, and while I haven't seen any of it, I'm sure it looks great. Martin has a way with landscapes and locations that ease the transition from book to film. A few of my favorites:

• A gigantic ice wall, built up over the centuries, dividing the northernmost kingdom from the untamed land "Beyond the Wall."
• The road leading to the central camp for a nomadic Eastern people, flanked on both sides with the statues and icons of the people they have conquered.
• An isolated castle so high on a mountain that no horses can reach it -- you have to crawl up or be hoisted in a bucket. And the dungeon cells aren't underneath -- they line a tower, are missing their outside wall, and have floors that are slightly tilted down towards a fall off the mountain.

Extra thanks to the always excellent John for lending this one to me, and here's hoping that I read the rest of them slowly enough that the series is finished before I catch up with Martin.

Renegade Craft Fair & PGT!

If you are in the Austin area this weekend, don't forget to stop by the Palmer Events center for the 2nd Annual Renegade Craft Fair! And while you are there, I know you won't want to miss the Pretty Good Things booth (booth #44), where me and the fabulous Mary P. will be selling her unique, vintage inspired hats, fascinators and hair do-dads. If you bring us a taco or a cup of coffee or a beer or a smile and some encouragement, you will be rewarded with giant hugs and good karma. Crafts!

Lexicon Injection

I've decided that the world needs to invent at least three new words.

1. When I check my Twitter or Facebook accounts, I don't scroll down to where I left off the last time and then scroll up to the present. Instead I start with the most recent updates and scroll back into the past until I meet where I ended the last time I checked in. There should be a word for reading about friends / reactions to world events in reverse.

2. The above sometimes leads to occasions where you realize something bad or good happened by the reactions, but you don't find out what it was until you scroll far enough back in time. I think we need a word for that too.

3. When I'm looking through RSS feeds, Facebook posts, and tweets, I always hover over a link before clicking on it and take a look at the full URL. Most of the time you can figure out the title or topic of the article / blog post / whatever is being linked to, and half of the time that is good enough for me and I never click through to read it. There should be a word for reading URLs instead of articles.

Or maybe these words already exist -- you are a smart crowd, can you help me out?

[photo credit]

Funeral for a Dog by Thomas Pletzinger (2011)

The always wonderful LibraryThing Early Reviewers program sent me a copy of the recent English translation of German author Thomas Pletzinger's debut novel, Funeral for a Dog (2011), and since my experience of contemporary German fiction is pretty slight, I'm quite glad they did.

This is the story of two men: Daniel Mandelkern, a budding ABD ethnologist turned journalist for his wife's magazine; and Dirk Svensson, the reclusive author of a hit children's book. Mandelkern gets the assignment to travel to Svensson's isolated lakeside home in Italy, interview the author, and write a 3000 word profile, and after walking out on his wife in the middle of a giant fight and heading to the airport, he is happy to go. When he meets Svensson at the marina he finds himself walking into the middle of a reunion between Svensson, a three legged dog, a young boy, and the beautiful chain-smoking stranger named Tuuli that Mandelkern has been admiring all the way from Germany.

Both Mandelkern and Svensson have their share of regrets, failed romances, and missed opportunities, and Pletzinger reveals their stories to us through alternating sections of Mandelkern's ethnographic notes on his investigations into Svensson's life and his reflections on his own relationships; and the text of Svensson's unpublished (and unfinished) autobiographical novel that tells the story of a three-person (and one dog) romance that travels from Brazil to New York to Italy. Mandelkern is isolated from his own problems and is quickly drawn into the story of his host (who wants Mandelkern to stay, but who doesn't want to answer any questions) and the Finnish woman with the sad eyes. Their tragic romance, and the death and melancholy that haunt the lonely house push Mandelkern to figure out his own desires at the same time that he unravels the mysteries of his companions.

Pletzinger's writing is fresh and engaging, even when the subject matter goes in circles or threatens to drag the reader down. The translation (by Ross Benjamin) is crisp and seems to retain the sometimes experimental tone of the original. Like many novels about men trying to figure out their relationships with women, the female characters in this book are all cool, collected, beautiful, and always say the perfect thing, while the men are flawed, uncertain, and floundering. While this often bothers me, in this case I think the structure and perspective of the book make those characterizations work, and what would ordinarily be a negative turns into a positive. This is an excellent debut novel, and definitely worth a read.

Slumber Party by Christopher Pike (1985)

It's hard to believe, but Christopher Pike's Slumber Party (1985) is the last Pike book in my childhood nostalgia pile! Of course, he has written many more books than the ones I bought in my youth, so maybe some more will come into my life some sweet day in the future.

Slumber Party is a good one to go out on, because I remember reading it in junior high and loving it. In this book, six friends reunite at an isolated ski cabin for a weekend of snow and fun. The last time all of them were together was eight years ago when they were at an ill-fated slumber party. A candlelit game (combined with a tragic mistake by our protagonist, Lara) leaves one girl, Nell, severely burned, and kills Nell's younger sister Nicole. Nell's family moved away after the incident and all the girls tried to put that night behind them. When Nell returns during their senior year of high school, who wouldn't want to go for a free ski weekend at her rich parent's deluxe ski cabin? Certainly no one would be plotting revenge!

Odd things start happening the moment the girls arrive at the cabin. First a snowman melts into a puddle of water in minutes even though it is below freezing outside. Then Lara's best friend Dana disappears when skiing back to the cabin, leaving behind one ski, no footprints, and a puddle of water. Lara has been distracting herself with her new crush, Percy (who is coming over with one of his friends for a party with this odd crew), and her new friend, Celeste who is younger than the other girls, and very mysterious -- she just showed up at school recently, and doesn't like to talk about her past. But those distractions can't put her suspicions about her friends' motives out of her mind.

Things escalate very quickly: incriminating conversations are overheard, Mindy is set on fire, Percy's friend gets extremely drunk, Lara tries to run back to the ski lodge and saves herself from frostbite by peeing on her hands, and soon everyone finds themselves tied up in the basement of the house with gasoline poured all around them and a gigantic propane tank ready to blow. Uh oh, who could have seen this happening?

This isn't really one of Pike's best books (the foreshadowing is blatant, the red herrings are irritating, and the pacing is off), but there are some good bits in there and the nostalgia factor is high if you liked this one as a kid. Probably not the best place to start, but definitely some good classic Pike.

Bloody Mary by Carolly Erickson (1978)

I swear I didn't forget about this blog, I've just been busy ready the rather long and dense, but extremely readable and enjoyable Bloody Mary by Carolly Erickson (1978). My always awesome friend Chad, who shares my love of the Tudors, kindly lent it to me, and I'm very glad he did.

While I've read quite a few books about Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and even the ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots, I'd never read that much about Mary. Her reign, squeezed between the brief reign of her younger half-brother Edward after Henry's death, and the very long and stable reign of her half-sister Elizabeth, is mostly remembered for the hundreds of Protestants that were burned at the stake as she tried to bring the country back to Catholicism. Mary's story, however, is much more complicated and tragic than just the five years that she served as the first official Queen of England, and Erickson's book paints a sympathetic portrait of this often demonized woman.

Mary was the only surviving child from the union of Henry VIII and the Spanish Catherine of Aragon. She was raised as a princess, although not as a potential ruler, since Henry always held out for the possibility of a son. Mary was 17 when Henry declared his marriage with Catherine to be invalid and broke with the church to marry Anne Boleyn. Princess Mary soon became both a bastard and a religious liability to her father. Mary was not allowed to see her mother, lost her royal privileges, and was routinely harassed about her faith. The marriage plans and engagements that were so much a part of her life up until that point were all severed, and although Mary's treatment and position at court became better through the course of Henry's four other wives, she led a stressful and unstable existence for the next eleven years.

When her father died and her nine-year-old brother took the throne, Mary's Catholicism became even more of a burden. England was run by a Council of Regents and corruption, famine, and religious turmoil further battered the country. Edward IV died in 1553, at the age of fifteen, and after brief skirmish, Mary became the Queen of England. Erickson gives us a view of Mary at the beginning of her reign as a strong and pragmatic ruler who inherited a lot of debt and religious confusion. She was determined to bring England back to Catholicism, but realized that she would need to move slowly. She was an excellent public speaker, and was initially beloved by her subjects, particularly those who wished to return to the Catholic faith.

You'd think everything would finally start going Mary's way, but she ended up deciding to marry Prince Philip of Spain, her cousin Charles V's son who was set to inherit much of his father's empire. Philip was a politically logical match, but he was eleven years younger than Mary's virginal 37, and the two had little in common besides their faith. For her part, Mary was desperately in love with Philip, and their marriage led her to make religious reforms and commit to foreign wars that she might not have otherwise considered. After two false pregnancies and a lot of grief, Philip went off to govern his other territories and never returned to England.

When Mary died in 1558 at the age of 42, England celebrated the accession of Queen Elizabeth I, re-embraced Protestantism, and did not particularly mourn the death of their barren Catholic queen. Mary had a hard life, but was an intelligent and strong ruler when she was given a chance, and its sad that she wasn't able to do more for England that she did.

Erickson's book is well-researched and very readable -- often more like a novel than a history book. My only qualm is that the photographs in the book include three pictures of Henry VIII, three pictures of Elizabeth I, and even a picture of Mary Queen of Scots (who hardly enters into Mary Tudor's story at all) but NO pictures of Mary I herself. The only picture of her is on the front of the book (and plenty of pictures are available). It's like the book designer just did a quick search for "Tudor dynasty" and put in the first eleven pictures that showed up.

Overall, though, this is a wonderful book, and a must-read for anyone interested in the Tudors. Thanks Chad!

Moving Archives: The Experiences of Eleven Archivists edited byJohn Newman and Walter Jones (2002)

Earlier this year I moved my office, processing area, and supplies up from the basement of the library to a recently vacated space on the third floor, and my repository of archival boxes, books, and what not is going to be moving up to a matching room sometime this year. I thought that instead of trying to figure all that box moving by myself, I'd get some hints from the archivists featured in Moving Archives: The Experiences of Eleven Archivists edited by John Newman and Walter Jones (2002).

This book is a series of case studies written by archivists who managed large archival moves during their careers. In most cases their moves were very very very large, and between buildings (or across state lines) and not the kind of smaller move inside a single building that I'm contemplating. The case studies were all very readable, and some went into much more detail than others. I would have liked to see something in addition to the case studies -- maybe check lists or some distilled advice pulled out of the narratives. Still, there were some pieces of advice that are universal to any move, and I think I extracted some tidbits that will help me make my small-scale move as smooth as possible. Definitely recommended if you are planning an archival move and can easily get your hands on it.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004)

Our latest book club read (go DAFFODILS!), suggested by the always amazing Corie, is Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004). I sometimes feel like I gush a little too much on this blog (maybe because I'm easy to please, or maybe because I read things I know I'm going to like), but at the risk of overgushing and giving the hard sell to my fellow DAFFODILS, I loved loved loved loved loved this book.

If you and I get into a discussion about aesthetics, you will soon realize that my favorite aspect of a story is its structure. It isn't the only thing, but a crappy structure (or a bad ending) can ruin a movie or book for me, and a solid structure can lift up an ordinary story and make it into something worth exploring. Cloud Atlas has one of the most unique and well-executed structures I've seen in a long time, and that alone is enough to hook me as a reader.

Here is the structure in a nutshell, without giving too much away: six stories, each interrupted halfway through, except for the sixth, which is told in its entirety. After the center story ends, we finish the fifth story, then the fourth, then the third, then the second, then the first. Sometime during each story except the first, a connection between that story and the preceding story (which seem to have nothing to do with each other) is revealed.

Luckily, Mitchell offers way more than just structure in this engaging exploration of the past, present, and future; cultural domination; nuclear politics; and escape escape escape. And he does all that while juggling the stories of a 19th century notary on a ship in the south seas, a risk taking bisexual composer taking refuge from his debtors as an amanuensis in Belgium, a mid-70s California journalist investigating nuclear cover-ups, a snarky British publisher who has been locked up in a nursing home against his will, a revolutionary clone in corpratist future Korea, and a plucky young man and his mysterious visitor on post-apocalyptic Hawaii. Whew.

Mitchell writes all of that in a way that makes sense, sticks to the structure without being too cutesy, and tackles writing styles ranging from a mid-century epistolary novel to a clockwork-orange science fiction vocabulary explosion. Plus it is fun to read!

I'll set a discussion of the themes and many complexities of this novel aside for our book club meeting and leave it at this: you should read this book. And I should read it again.

Mutants by Gordon R. Dickson (1970)

Way back last summer I had an extremely fun Eastern Nebraska / Western Nebraska / Fort Collins vacation and while we were wandering around in Fort Collins, I picked up this wonderfully covered collection of short stories by Gordon R. Dickson called Mutants (1970). It finally migrated up to the top of my very slow-moving reading pile, and I'm happy to announce that the contents are just as great as the cover.

While some of the stories are a little dated, there are some very strong contenders included in this collection. One of my very favorites is the sci-fi / western story "Roofs of Silver," where a group of scientists from the home planet check in on a community of settlers who colonized a new mining planet 100 years ago and have been living as a closely knit group since then. One of the scientists "goes native," marries a settlers daughter, and leads the group to believe that he is a rehabilitated "wild one" -- one of the humans on the planet who is not part of the settled community. When the scientists' scans show that the community is becoming inbred and unstable, our protagonist refuses to believe the evidence and tries to conduct his own experiments to prove that the instability is in the wild people on the planet, and not in his new family.

Other stories include galactic space opera style battles, small environmental morality tales, and a prim and proper spinster who is given super human powers by a chance visitation from a little dude from a different dimension who makes her clock strike 13.

Dickson is particularly great at the first few sentences of his stories:

But you know, I could sense it coming a long time off. It was a little extra time taken in drinking a cup of coffee, it was lingering over the magazines in a drugstore as I picked out a handful. It was a girl I looked at twice as I ran out and down the steps of a library. ["Of the People"]

Reru did not like to see humans eat. So he was waiting in the living room while Taddy and his parents finished breakfast. ["Listen"]

The last dog on Earth was dying. ["By New Hearth Fires"]

Miss Lydia Prinks was somebody's aunt. Not the aunt of several somebodies, but the aunt of one person only and with no other living brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, or nieces to her name. A sort of singleton aunt. It would be possible to describe her further, but it would not be in good taste." ["Miss Prinks"]

Well, it was about four in the afternoon. You know how it is that time of day at Savannah Stand, with most of the day-charter flyers back in the ranks. All the hanging around and talking and the smell of cigarette smoke in the air, and the water stains drying back to the pale color of the concrete from the flyers that have just been washed down. You know what a good time of day that is. ["Home from the Shore"]

And it isn't just the beginnings of these stories that are good -- Dickson was a prolific and widely published science fiction writer, and there is no doubt that the man could write a solid story. While I have a slight preference for science fiction short story anthologies by a variety of authors, the stories in this collection are each unique and make up a very lovely book. With a very amazing cover.

[As an aside: My copy was printed in 1978 and it looks like it was printed last week. Maybe they used some super-special science fiction acid free buffered paper here, or maybe it came to Fort Collins from the fourth dimension!]

The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sarah Braunstein (2011)

Ah, the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program knows me so well. Their fancy algorithms put me in touch with another novel I had never heard of before that I absolutely loved. Sarah Braunstein's The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (2011) is not a fun and happy read, but it is a compelling and fulfilling one, and I'm very glad it was magically sent to my doorstep.

One of my favorite story elements is structure, and the structure of this novel is unique and perfectly suited to the interlinked characters, places, and times. The book is divided into parts, each of which begins with a chapter titled "Leonora." Leonora is twelve, and we know from the very first time that we hear from her that she is going to be kidnapped. Her story, popping up throughout the novel, anchors us as we drift between the other characters while the connections slowly become more concrete and inevitable.

The stories of the other characters initially seem like vignettes held together by the theme of missing children -- literally missing in the case of runaways and abortions, but also missing in the sense of disconnections, misunderstandings, and missed opportunities. Paul lives in an isolated cottage with his lonely mother Goldie, and Thomas, an abortion doctor's nurse, has been peeping through their windows for years. Judith is a surly teenager who runs away to the city with her sketchy boyfriend Q and calls to be rescued, or witnessed, by a family friend and his teenage son. Sam's mother drove her entire family into a train when he was three, killing everyone but him. Now he balances the goodness he wants to show to the aunt and uncle that raised him, and the anger and rebelliousness that eat at him from the inside.

This novel is filled with people who are lost, unsatisfied, and unsure what to do next. As the novel moves forward through time, characters age, intersect, lose each other, and find something else. Nothing is entirely resolved, but everything is settled, and the book comes together beautifully. Braunstein has a descriptive and empathetic writing style that fills out every character, even the most tangential, and the tension in the book's plots make this a fast and moving read. Highly recommended.

[p.s. Corie, I am totally going to lend this to you the next time I see you.]

Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov (1938)

Nabokov is one of those authors that I like too much to rush out and read all his books, because then there wouldn't be any more to read. Instead, I savor one every year or two and then set the rest aside for future enjoyment. Laughter in the Dark (1938) is such a perfect knife-twistingly hilarious story that I'm glad I finally picked it up off the shelf.

Every review of this book seems to quote the first couple of sentences, so I'll join the club and include them here. They do tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the story and why it is being told:

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man’s life, detail is always welcome.

This doomed love affair between the wealthy older Albinus and the vampy, sexual, and young Margot is often cited as being "practice" for Nabokov's most famous novel, Lolita. While there are definitely parallels between the two novels, the feel of the two is very different for me, and I don't think Laughter in the Dark should be thrown away as a lesser novel. This is a tragic story with a foregone conclusion, but Nabokov's insistence on heaping one misfortune after another on this group of fascinatingly unlikable people has a lot of humor in it. I don't want to spoil it, but the rescue scene towards the end of the book is one of the funniest things I've ever read, and I didn't expect to be that amused by this book.

The widely available English version of this novel was translated from the Russian by Nabokov himself in 1938 (after he was dissatisfied by the original English translation) and revised again in 1960. I couldn't imagine a different translation of this book where every word fits perfectly in its place. This is a fast read with a perfect balance of comedy and tragedy, and just enough moral lessons for a person to sink their teeth into.

***

Has anyone seen the 1969 film version of this with Anna Karina? I'm pretty interested in how it translates to the screen...

The World of the Ten Thousand Things: Poems 1980-1990 by Charles Wright (1990)

I have a dirty little secret: I am horrible at reading poetry. I read all the time. I love fiction, non-fiction, everything I get my hands on. But poetry is my downfall. I read it too fast, I can't tell if I like it or not, and my mind always starts to wander. I want to be good at reading it, but usually just get frustrated and put it down.

But not this time!

The World of the Ten Thousand Things by Charles Wright (1990) showed up on Harold Bloom's western canon list, and since I have made it a life-long project to work my way through the list, I figure now is as good a time as any to dive into some poetry.

Obviously the way I had been reading poetry (the same way I read fiction) wasn't working for me, so I decided I'd try something new: Every morning before work I would read one or two poems out loud, and then read them silently. Then I'd put the book down. The next day I would re-read silently the poems I read the day before, and then read another poem or two out loud. I essentially read the book three times (and it took three months), but I feel like spending that much time with the words -- and particularly reading them out loud -- really helped it all to sink in.

This book is actually a collection of four of Wright's poetry books, written between 1980 and 1990. Wright is a past winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, so as you might imagine, this is a nicely written collection. Wright's poems explore memory, language, death, time, seasons, nature, and all that good poetic stuff, but they are firmly rooted in experience, his personal past, and the geography and natural beauty of the places that surround him. Most of the poems are two or three pages long, although some are as short as half a page, and a few are much longer -- including a forty-page journey through a single year. While the themes and style are consistent across the collection, we still see Wright change his focus and play with different tones and formats as the collection progresses.

While I really enjoyed reading this collection, I'm not sure I've mastered the art of talking about what I like about poetry yet, but I'll keep practicing and see what I come up with next time...

***
I just spent twenty minutes flipping through the book and trying to find something to quote, but it is hard to find the perfect thing. Instead I'll just quote the first part of the first poem in the collection, which happens to be one of my favorites:

From "Homage to Paul Cézanne"

At night, in the fish-light of the moon, the dead wear our white shirts
To stay warm, and litter the fields.
We pick them up in the mornings, dewy pieces of paper and scraps of
cloth.
Like us, they refract themselves. Like us,
They keep on saying the same thing, trying to get it right.
Like us, the water unsettles their names.

Sometimes they lie like leaves in their little arks, and curl up at the
edges.
Sometimes they come inside, wearing our shoes, and walk
From mirror to mirror.
Or lie in our beds with their gloves off
And touch our bodies. Or talk
In a corner. Or wait like envelopes on a desk.

They reach up from the ice plant.
They shuttle their messengers through the oat grass.
Their answers rise like rust on the stalks and the spidery leaves.

We rub them off our hands.

Pulp Fiction: The Dames edited by Otto Penzler (2008)

I may have mentioned before that I have the best husband in the world. Part of the reason he is so great is that he can spot just the thing I would love to read. A case in point: Pulp Fiction: The Dames, edited by Otto Penzler with an introduction by Laura Lippman (2008). This book features 22 stories and one set of comics that were published in detective and mystery "pulps" of the 20s, 30s, and 40s. That would be pretty great in and of itself, but what brings this collection together is that each story features a woman -- sometimes as a simpering sap, sometimes as a hard-as-nails thief, and more often than not as a smart and sexy gal who uses her looks and her brains to either solve the case or get away with the loot.

There are a few well-known names in the collection (Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Cornell Woolrich), but most of the authors are either forgotten bestsellers of the past or untraceable hacks who wrote under a pseudonym. Penzler's introductions are wonderful -- providing just enough context about the author and the original publisher, without going overboard -- and they serve as a solid introduction to the world of pulpy publishing. The quality of the stories varies, but they are representative of a genre that included both the literary Hammett and the low-rent Spicy Detective.

While this is not a feminist collection by any means, there are a lot of spunky gals that can hold their own in the man's world of gangsters, police, journalists, and private eyes -- even if they do wear extremely tight dresses and bat their eyes a few times while doing so.

This is a really great collection -- highly recommended if you like mysteries, gangsters, or pulpy action and adventure.

Bubbles

I always suspected it.

Last Act by Christopher Pike (1988)

Lately I've been reading some later-period Christopher Pike books that I had never read before, but Pike's Last Act came out in 1988, when I was twelve -- perfectly timed for my post-Little House on the Prairie / Narnia love and my pre-Stephen King glut. But would the 34-year-old me like this as much as I did 22 years ago? (In addition: 22 years ago? How the hell did that happen?)

Well, I don't know that I liked it as much, but it still packs that Pike punch, and it is a much tighter and more enjoyable mystery than some of the later ones. In Last Act, Melanie Martin and her father have moved from San Francisco to a small town in Iowa after her parents' divorce. She is having a hard time making any friends until she impulsively helps popular Susan Trels with a trigonometry quiz, strikes up a conversation, and ends up going to audition for a play that Susan is directing at the high school. Melanie gets the part and is thrown into the tangled relationships of Rindy (beautiful, rich, and distant - she and Melanie got into a fender bender earlier in the year), Marc (handsome, athletic, Melanie's dream man), Carl (young and dorky, Rindy's brother), Jeramie (tall and crazy, but smart), and Tracy (ditzy and rude). Susan directs this group in a play filled with twisted relationships, unrequited love, injury, and jealousy that conveniently matches the real-life teenage emotions of this group from before Melanie came to town.

At the end of Act 2, Melanie's character shoots the beautiful Rindy. They had practiced the scene dozens of times, and Melanie loaded the blanks into the gun herself, but when Rindy falls there is way more blood than there should have been, and she never gets up. Melanie, with the help of a friendly detective, sets herself to untangling the twisted lives of her new friends and solving the murder of Rindy to clear her own name.

This book follows a lot of Pike's usual plot points: beautiful people who seem mean end up being nice; beautiful people who seem nice end up being evil; and perfectly ordinary teenage angst harnessed into elaborate plots of murder and revenge. Still, the hokey dialogue and descriptions are kept to a minimum here, the mystery is solid (although unrealistic), and the climactic scene is action-packed and suspenseful. If you have been thinking of re-reading some Christopher Pike, you couldn't do better than picking up Last Act.

A Geography of Secrets by Frederick Reuss (2010)

I recently received a review copy of A Geography of Secrets (2010), the fifth novel by Frederick Reuss, through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program. The books I get through the Early Reviewers program are always interesting to read, but only rarely do I luck on one as beautifully written and nicely constructed as this.

A Geography of Secrets is told in alternating chapters -- the third person story of Noel Leonard, a federal defense analyst; and the first person story of our unnamed narrator, a mapmaker whose father, retired from the Foreign Service, has recently died in Switzerland. Both men are based in Washington, D.C. and the city and its bureaucracies, and their influence on the two men, are lovingly described by Reuss.

Noel is feeling disconnected from his only child, a daughter, who recently left home for college and won't return his calls, and he and his wife are drifting apart. He can't tell them (or anyone) about his job analyzing maps and drone footage to plan military attacks with the defense department, and when his decisions lead to a school being bombed in Pakistan, his delicate balance of routine is irrevocably shifted.

Our narrator travels to Switzerland for his father's funeral and meets a friend of his father's that he had never seen before. This pushes him to dig into the past and learn the truth about the work his father did for the government and the real implications of the end of his parent's marriage when the family was living in Germany.

The two narratives intersect briefly at the beginning of the book and then unexpectedly (and perfectly) at the end. Choosing to structure the book in a back and forth switch between first and third person provides a satisfying foundation to this exploration of the things we say and the things we withhold. Reuss is a beautiful writer -- descriptive without being flowery, with (for the most part) realistic dialogue and convincing interactions. The male mid-life crisis has been explored over and over again in literature, and while I like a lot of those novels, I generally have a hard time relating to them. Reuss does the genre justice, and this book was a pleasure to read.

Frommer's Montréal & Québec City by Leslie Brokaw (2010)

I've always wanted to take a trip north of the border, so I recently picked up a travel guide to Montréal and Québec City, because if you are going to go to Canada, shouldn't you go to the part with the oldest buildings, the different language, and the exciting separatist movement? Of course you should!

Montréal is very appealing as an urban and kind of cosmopolitan getaway, but I think in my ideal trip I'd spend a day or two there at the start and end of the visit, and spend the rest of the time in Québec City and the little towns nearby. If you don't ski and aren't particularly interested in shopping, it seems the big things to do in Québec City are stroll around the old streets looking at old buildings, sit down and look at the river, or sit in a café, restaurant, or bar and eat and drink tasty things. These happen to be some of my favorite activities ever!

This Frommer's guide was a great introduction to the region -- it was nicely written with clear maps, gave just enough detail without being overwhelming, and included a pretty detailed section on the history of the region, which is something I really like to have in a travel guide.

Also, the national dish in Québec is the amazing sounding poutine. I seriously can't think of any better reason to go to Canada and I wish I had a big bowl of gravy and cheese curd covered french fries in front of me right now.

A Killing Frost (The Tomorrow Series #3) by John Marsden (1995)

Dr. M got this book free at the end of one of his teaching classes, and while I don't usually like to start a series in the middle, I wanted to put the book in my "sell" pile* and just couldn't let myself do that until I'd read it. It's really kind of a compulsion.

I didn't know until I started exploring things that A Killing Frost (1995) (originally titled The Third Day, The Frost) is the third book in Australian author John Marsden's extremely popular Tomorrow Series.

In the first book in the series, Ellie Linton (our narrator), a rural Australian teenager, and six of her friends go camping in the bush outside of their small town. When they get back, they quickly notice that there are no people around and all the farm animals are starving. After finding a warning from her father, Ellie and the other teens learn that the country was invaded by a foreign army (never named in the book) who wants to imprison the Australians and colonize the country. They go back into hiding and end up fighting a guerrilla war against the invaders, with their actions building up and becoming more and more ambitious.

By the time we get to this third book, some of the group is dead and some are imprisoned. Ellie and the remaining friends are extremely bored in hiding and decide to walk to the big regional port, which is being used by the enemy to bring in people and weapons. They come up with a plan to attack the port, but at great risk to themselves. And if they survive the explosion, they realize the enemy won't be able to ignore them any longer.

While I almost certainly would have enjoyed this book more if I had read the first two books in the series, Marsden gives enough background that the book works reasonably well on its own. Motivations and emotions are sometimes spelled out a little too clearly, and sometimes the characters and dialogue are pretty broad, but I think that can be forgiven in a young adult book. The action and suspense scenes are very well written and make the book hard to put down -- I can see why the series has been such a success with young readers. I didn't like the book enough to seek out the rest of the books in the series (which was initially supposed to be a trilogy, but ended up having seven books plus a follow-up series called The Ellie Chronicles), but if one landed in my lap I'd probably give it a read.

[* holy shit, I just looked the trade paperback version that I have of this up on Amazon and its going for at least 50 bucks! Mayhaps I will get lucky...]

Instead of a Letter by Diana Athill (1962)

My good friend Corie recently lent me a pile of books which included Diana Athill's 1962 memoir Instead of a Letter. I hadn't heard of Athill, who has had a long career as a editor and publisher in England, but I've definitely heard of the authors she has worked with, including Jean Rhys, Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, and Simone de Beauvoir. While she has written several other memoirs, this one, her first, doesn't focus on her publishing career. Instead, it tells the story of her growing up, her young adulthood, and her relatively lonely life up until her early 40s when she writes the book, all of which hinge on a devastatingly failed relationship.

Athill grew up in a well-off family in East Anglia that didn't have nearly as much money as it used to, but still had its name and a big family estate in the country. She was always a big reader, but never that interested in school. Still, the family decided she would go to Oxford and when she was 15 they hired an Oxford undergraduate to come tutor her and her siblings. This was Paul, and Diana fell in love with him before she even saw him. Her adolescent admiration turned into friendship and later a mutual love. They slept together, went to parties and pubs, and eventually, when Diana was herself at Oxford, they got engaged. Paul joined the Royal Air Force and went off to spend a year abroad while Diana finished up school. They had a passionate correspondence which suddenly stopped on Paul's end. Diana kept sending letters -- pleading ones, angry ones, questioning ones, but he didn't write back. For two years. And when he did, it was a cool letter requesting that she release him from their engagement because he was going to marry someone else.

This confusing and cruel treatment would be a blow to anyone, but particularly so to a passionate young woman who had seen her life goals as marrying Paul, being a military wife, and having children. Her confidence was shocked and her ability to enter into another open and trusting relationship was hurt. Even more so when Paul dies in the war and she never gets to confront him or ask him why.

The book goes on and Athill gets a job at the BBC, meets her friend and publishing partner André Deutsch, travels, reads, thinks, and eventually starts writing. The back of the book (and honestly, my description of it above) makes this sound like it is about nothing but her relationship with Paul, whereas the book is really much more philosophical and self-reflective than that. Athill has obviously spent a lot of time thinking about her personality, her actions, and her desires, and that thoughtfulness is spread thickly amongst the anecdotes and happenings of her youth.

While Athill's experiences as a young woman are unique, very British, rather upper class, and happened in the 1930s, her descriptions of adolescent longing, sexuality, intellectual exploration, and family dynamics are relatable and universal. The book has a distant, well crafted tone that is missing from many memoirs (which today tend to be much more flashy and winky), which made it relaxing and enjoyable to read.

I'd definitely like to check out more of Athill's autobiographical work, including her most recent book Somewhere Towards the End about her old age. Here's to classy British ladies of letters!

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie (1959)

The always amazingly awesome Dan likes to read Agatha Christie books, and since she wrote so many of them, he sometimes accidentally buys one he already has. This worked out great for me, because he recently gave me his extra copy of Christie's Cat Among the Pigeons (1959), and I've really liked all the Christie I've read so I was quite happy to read it.

Cat Among the Pigeons takes place at Meadowbank, an exclusive English girls school run by the formidable Miss Bulstrode. But it starts in the middle eastern kingdom of Ramat where the ruling price is about to be ousted in a revolution and asks Bob Rawlinson his best friend, pilot, and friend from his school days in England to take care of his family nest egg -- a small but very valuable cache of exquisite jewels.

At the start of the new term at Meadowbank there are many returning students and staff, as well as a few new faces. However, not everyone is what they seem on the surface, and at least one of them is a cold blooded killer. When a school mistress gets in between the killer and the treasure, the murders begin.

Christie does a wonderful job of drawing a convincing proper boarding school and juggles the personalities and motives of a couple dozen characters masterfully. The key to the mystery isn't too hard to figure out, but there are a couple of secondary twists that are very satisfying and no pesky loose ends are left at the end of the book. This is billed as "A Hercule Poirot Murder Mystery," and Poirot does show up in the last third of the book to perfunctorily sift through clues and explain it all for us. I really like the character of Poirot, but in this book his presence seems tacked on and unnecessary and he really isn't given much to do.

So, don't read this one for the Poirot angle, but do read it for a satisfying mystery with a complex stable of characters and an oh-so-British setting. Thumbs up!

[Note: this isn't the cover of the book that I read, which is an 80s-tastic Pocket Books edition, but I like this one better. Photo credit.]

tweet tweet

If you like that new-fangled Twitter thing that is all the rage amongst the youngsters, you must follow @DrMystery99, who happens to be both the funniest man on Twitter and the love of my life. You will not be disappointed.

Achewood Volume 3: A Home for Scared People by Chris Onstad (2010)

I don't like book signings, author readings, or literary events. I just like sitting and reading books. And yet, I did walk to a local comic book store with my husband (and had "nerds!" yelled at us by some dudes in a car) so that I could stand in line for a couple hours, briefly meet Chris Onstad, and have him sign a couple of books. And it was totally worth it. Achewood is one of the best parts of the internet, and it just keeps getting smarter and more elegant with every strip. Plus there are still cuss words and the occasional crude joke.

Achewood Volume 3: A Home for Scared People is the third Achewood collection put out by Dark Horse Books, and includes the strips from May through October 2002. This happens to include my favorite strip of all time. Just look at it -- I defy you to find anything else as funny on the entire internet!

Much like Volume 2, all of the strips are presented with the alt text from the web site, and annotated by Onstad. And, once again, the strips are accompanied by a few wonderful character-based prose pieces -- one of Onstad's biggest strengths is the depth of his characters and their voices, and his ability to bring out those voices both in the comics and in the longer pieces.

If you like Achewood, or even if you just like very nice looking books, then Achewood Volume 3 should probably find a place on your shelf right next to Volume 1 and Volume 2. I know that's where I'm putting mine...

[note: I realized after looking up my review of Volume 2 that I opened it with the same story of going to the comic store, but its a pretty good story, so it won't hurt you to hear it twice.]

Lost Lustre by Josh Karlen (2010)

I received a copy of Josh Karlen's collection of biographical essays, Lost Lustre: A New York Memoir (2010), as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Despite some flaws, and a rough beginning, I ended up liking this one.

Karlen was born in 1964 and grew up split between his father's place in the bohemian, intellectual, and relatively well-off Village, and his mother's place in a new housing development right in the middle of Alphabet City, a poor, drug-filled, crime-ridden neighborhood that wouldn't really be gentrified for another twenty years. He went to an arts-focused public high school, flunked out, drank a lot, did some drugs, went to lots of punk clubs, graduated from an alternative high school, worked some crappy jobs, briefly visited the Amazon, and then was accepted to a college program in Wisconsin. He eventually went on to work as a journalist and then a lawyer, get married and move back to the city, and make some time for some serious reflection on his childhood, adolescence, and the nature of memory itself.

Karlen is at his best when he describes the experiences, people, and places of his youth. Sometimes his descriptions can get a little out of control, but for the most part his narrative is evocative and intriguing. Where he falters is when he gives into his overwhelming desire for self reflection and philosophizing on the nature of his life, the passing of time, and the act of remembering (particularly in the first essay, "My Sixties," which made me think I wasn't going to like the rest of the book at all). Of course any memoir springs from a need for self-reflection, but the best ones walk the balance between sharing experiences and ideas that reflect the human experience and devolving into "me me me me me me me."

The essays in this memoir seem to have been written for different purposes and collected later under one title, and there is some repetition of details between pieces which leads to a choppy flow for the book. On the plus side, this means that each essay can pretty much stand on its own, including the title piece, the longest and most developed part of the book, which describes Karlan's relationship with his boyhood friend who grew into a charming front man for a band and a horrible alcoholic who ended up dying when he was 29. Karlan loses touch with his friend and doesn't find out that he died until 14 years have passed, at which time he looks up all their old friends and tries to reconstruct the magic of their friendship and the downhill slide that Karlan missed while he was living his life and assuming that his friend was doing fine.

Having never even been to New York, I'm not sure how Karlan's descriptions and experiences compare to other city-dwellers, but for the most part I found them interesting and this would be a fun and quick read if you are a big fan of memoirs, self-reflection, or New York City.

The Life of Elizabeth I by Alison Weir (1998)

I have a bit of a thing for royalty, particularly English royalty, and most of all, the queens. I've read quite a few fiction and non-fiction books that cover the reign of the Tudors in England, but I've never read a whole biography just of the exceedingly influential and interesting Elizabeth I until I picked up Alison Weir's The Life of Elizabeth I (1998).

This book primarily covers Elizabeth's time as queen of England, starting at the age of 25, although there is some discussion of her early life and her life under the reign of her sister, Mary Tudor. Those interested in more information on Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (Elizabeth's parents) will have to turn to another book, and although their story is pretty damn interesting, Elizabeth's reign is full enough to fill multiple volumes so Weir made a wise decision to limit the scope of the book.

Weir's book is well researched and very readable -- giving you enough social and political context to understand Elizabeth's actions and motivations, without drowning you in dates, details, and battles. Weir seems to focus more on the personal life of Elizabeth than the political one (although in many cases they are inseparable) and much of the book is devoted to Elizabeth's "will she or won't she" negotiations of marriage.

Beyond the question of marriage, a big focus in Elizabeth's life was her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, who she corresponded with extensively, imprisoned in England for 17 years, and eventually executed. Since I read a rather comprehensive biography of Mary of a few years ago, it was really fascinating to see their relationship described from the other side.

Overall, Elizabeth comes off as a very smart, funny, vain, powerful, and private woman who kept peace in England for 45 years during a period of religious upheaval in Europe, a task few other sovereigns could handle, and Weir's book provides a comprehensive and engaging look at both the woman and her reign.

Of course, it isn't all fighting the Spanish Armada, flirting with courtiers, and saving Shakespearean theatre from the Puritans. Weir makes sure to throw in some pretty amusing anecdotes. Like the time an Italian pyrotechnics expert had to be dissuaded from shooting live cats and dogs into the air as part of a display honoring a visit by Elizabeth.

Or this one:
When the Earl of Oxford broke wind when bowing before her, he was so ashamed that he went into self-imposed exile for seven years; upon his return, Elizabeth warmly received him, then said, with a mischievous twinkle, 'My Lord, I had forgot the fart.'