Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories edited by Michael Sims (2010)

My sweet Dr. Mystery got me a copy of Dracula's Guest: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Vampire Stories edited by Michael Sims* (2010) for my birthday last year, and since we are almost to my birthday this year, I figured I ought to read the thing.

This is a solid collection of vampire stories, both Victorian and near-Victorian, and is readable as much for the supernatural content as it is for a glimpse into historic popular fiction. Sims gives us a solid introduction to the book as a whole as well as brief introductory essays for each story in the book giving some information on the author and context to the story itself.

Most of these stories were new to me, although I had read Fitz-James O'Brien's "What Was It?" before (and OMG if you haven't ever read it, click on that link and check it out. So excellent and weird and sad and funny.) The other stories in the book feature both male and female and old school and new school vampires. There are a lot of academics making lonely journeys into tombs with ominous histories in order to study ancient frescoes (bad idea), and a lot of men and women in the prime of life quickly losing their vitality and dying. There are a few goofy stories and some serious potboilers, but the collection also includes a good number of legitimately freaky tales. Definitely recommended.

*I've read one other Michael Sims book, Adam's Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form (2003), which I really liked and wrote about in 2005 when I was very first starting to write book reviews on this blog (hey, remember when I used to write other stuff too -- those were the days...). And then, because there wasn't much on the internet in those days, Sims found my post and wrote me a nice e-mail about it, which I also wrote about.** All this goes to say that I'm predisposed to like the editor of this anthology, even though Josh did not remember that the author had contacted me personally eight years ago.

** In the link above there is also a super cute mention of Amanda linking to me from her Receptionista blog. If you are reading this, you seriously seemed like a celebrity to me in 2005! For anyone following that saga, I have met Amanda in person since then and can confirm that she is very fun and nice and I still read her blog and Tumblr all the time!

Habibi by Craig Thompson (2011)

So my other new book club is one a friend is putting together where we will read nothing but graphic novels (yay!), and our first selection is Habibi by Craig Thompson (2011). After reading Goodbye, Chunky Rice, Blankets, and Carnet de Voyage I knew that I would not be able to resist anything else that Thompson should ever choose to draw and write. And although it took me a couple years, this book club has finally given me the push to jump into Thompson's most recent book, Habibi, a long epic story of two orphans in a fictional Islamic country.

Dodola is 9 and Cham is 3 when they meet for the first time and she claims him as her brother in a slave market. When she escapes, she takes him with her and they live in an impoverished but happy peace out in the desert for six years before their partnership is brutally snatched away from them.

The first thing to say about this book is that it is absolutely gorgeous. The size and weight of it, the detail on the cover, and Thompson's wonderful drawings dare you to immerse yourself in the book and not come up for air until you've finished it.

The second thing to say about this book is that it is just as brutal as it is beautiful, and if you read it all in one chunk, you might have some kind of nervous breakdown. When I checked this one out from the library, the woman behind the desk said that she loved the book so much but that she could never read it again because it just hurt too much. I can understand how she felt, although the complexity of Thompson's drawings and story make me want to give this one another read where I can pay more attention to the page and less to the plot.

While some readers have taken issue with Thompson's portrayal of sexuality and Islamic culture, I think this book shows his own immersion in an unfamiliar world and his desire to share all he learned about the words and faith of Islam with the graphic-novel-reading West.

Finally: no one draws a naked woman quite like Craig Thompson.

[Check out some sketches and in-progress drawings here!]

Hiroshima by John Hersey (1946)

Okay, so I've joined another book club (actually, two other book clubs, but more on that in another post). This new book club is a mean and lean group of 3-5 friends who will get together to read and discus depressing books of fiction and non-fiction. We've dubbed it the Debbie Downer Book Club, and I'm pretty excited about it.

Our first read truly qualifies for the book club theme. Hiroshima by John Hersey (1946) is a plainspoken account of the experiences of six survivors of the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima both before, during, and after the bomb fell. Hersey wrote the piece in four sections that were initially supposed to be published in four consecutive issues of The New Yorker, but when he read the work as a whole, editor William Shawn decided to devote the entire August 31, 1946 issue to Hersey's piece. Shortly thereafter the piece was published as a book which became a bestseller and has never since gone out of print. In 1985, Hersey went back to Hiroshima and followed up on the lives of his six protagonists, adding a fifth chapter to later printings of the book (which I didn't read, since my library had the 1946 edition).

I'm not sure why I had never heard of this influential book, and I'm so glad my book club members brought it to my attention. Hersey's straightforward writing style does nothing to hide the horror of that day and the direct impact the actions of the United States had on the people of Hiroshima. Small details and hints of every day life creep in here and there and are met by radiation sickness, melted eyeballs, vaporized people, and other unimaginable horrors. The cultural reactions of the Japanese to the tragedy are fascinating and surprising, and while the group of survivors that Hersey decides to follow are diverse, their experiences are relatable and moving.

Everyone should read this book. It's short and engrossing and widely available. If you'd like to check out the copy and don't mind reading things electronically, get yourself over to the Internet Archive where they have it available in a bunch oh formats, including PDF, EPUB, and Kindle.

A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century by Witold Rybczynski (1999)

My friend Jennifer loaned me her copy of A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century by Witold Rybczynski (1999) before our trip to New York this summer. I didn't get a chance to crack the book before we left, but I read it just after we came back. This is one of those books with a topic that I wouldn't have really thought I'd be that into, but which ended up being fascinating. Definitely recommended.

Rybczynski's sub title "and America in the 19th Century" is no joke. This is certainly a biography, and the reader gets a full picture of Olmsted and his influence on the landscape of the United States and the formation of landscape architecture as a profession, but there is so much more than that: Civil War, 19th century gentlemen, German settlers in Texas, European tours, early New York commerce, the Chicago World's Fair, and just about everything else that a New England man of property and good breeding could be expected to dabble in.

Rather than overwhelming the reader with detail and context, the author expertly weaves Olmsted's personal narrative with everything that is going on around him into a nicely readable and extremely educational text. Pick this one up, dudes!

The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1913)

The Monster Men by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1913) is a very enjoyable one-off novel that combines a classic horror set-up with Burroughs' eye for adventure.

Professor Maxon is a brilliant and ambitious scientist who has discovered the secret to creating life, although he hasn't quite perfected it yet. After a harrowing time disposing of a body of a failed not-actually-human human in the States, Maxon decides to take his beautiful daughter Virginia and a newly hired assistant, Dr. Van Horn, to a deserted Indonesian island where he can work on his experiments without raising any questions. To help them set up shop they bring a whole gang of natives from another island, as well as their extremely resourceful Chinese cook, Sing Lee. Maxon doesn't tell Virginia what he is up to, but lays everything out for Dr. Van Horn who, in the midst of a secret escape from some unpleasant circumstances, is happy to sign on.

The experiments continue, with Maxon creating a whole stable of unsuitable Frankensteins who he uncreatively names by the order of their appearance as Number 1, Number 2, etc. until he hits the jackpot with the perfectly beefcakey specimen of Number 13. By this point Maxon has gone completely crazy and divulges his ultimate plan of breeding a perfect man to mate with his lovely daughter.

At this point, everyone wants to get with Virginia: including Van Horn, Number 13, the chief of a tribe from near-by Borneo. This lust for the beautiful woman carries us into the second half of the novel where Number 13 leads a band of his deformed brothers against the various tribes of Borneo in a quest to rescue the woman he loves (and the only woman he has ever seen), while Van Horn shows his evil side and tries to get to Virginia and her family money before the monster can make his move.

This was one of Burroughs' early books, published just a year after he delivered the one-two punch of Tarzan of the Apes and A Princess of Mars (on an unrelated note, did you know Burroughs was 35 when he published his first novel!). You can tell that he is finding his path, but regardless of your love for John Carter or Tarzan, it is just fun to read some Burroughs that isn't a part of one of his landmark series. There are some racial stereotypes to crawl over (although, surprisingly, not as many as you would think), but even with that I can't believe this one was never made into a movie.

Want to read the whole thing for free right now? Well, thanks to the power of the public domain, you can do just that right here.


[And if you are a nerd who wonders this kind of thing, I believe the edition I have, from which comes this amazing cover, is the 1963 mass-market paperback by Ace Books.]

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)

For our latest read, my wonderful book club (go DAFFODILS!) decided to read something from a decade we had not yet explored, the 1980s. We had a democratic vote and ended up selecting a book that I suggested, and that I had read before, back in college, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989).

When I read this book almost 15 years ago, I thought it was amazing, and I still think it is very very good, although with my intense memories of how great it was I set myself a pretty high bar. The Remains of the Day tells the story of Mr. Stevens, a man who has been the butler in a wealthy and formerly well-respected house in England for over 30 years. His former employer, Lord Darlington, has died, and Stevens "came with the house" when a wealthy American recently bought it.

His new boss does the very American thing of telling Stevens to take a little road trip while he will be out of the country and not needing any buttling. He even loans Stevens his car and gives him a little traveling money. Stevens sets out to explore the English countryside, and to visit a former housekeeper who served during the reign of Lord Darlington, Miss Kenton.

Mr. Stevens narrates the book and takes us back and forth between his current travels and his memories of his years of service, the past grandeur of the house, and his colleague, Miss Kenton. Stevens is a classic unreliable narrator, not because he is crazy or deceptive, but because his own rigid codes of behavior don't allow him to see what has been happening around him, both with the people in his life and with his employer and his ill-informed dabblings in international politics.

Ishiguro uses Stevens' unreliability to slowly reveal to us what has happened in the past and what kind of man Stevens really is. That authorial control, the narrative voice, and the perfect structure of the novel are what makes this a great one, even if the ultimate message is a little disappointingly simple.

And just in case I've made this sound like some kind of boring writing exercise, be assured that the book has a lot of humor in it (like Stevens studiously studying the art of bantering, or Stevens trying to teach a young gentleman about the birds and the bees as ordered by his employer). This is a book that is both literary and fast-moving, and if it leaves the reader feeling a little cold, I think we can just blame that on Steven's surfeit of dignity.

The Family Handyman Home Improvement edited by Ken Collier (2012)

In my never-ending quest to become the perfect handy homeowner, I have read through yet another repair/renovation guide, this time the rather awkwardly titled The Family Handyman Home Improvement edited by Ken Collier (2012).

This book series is basically an annual compendium of selected articles that had previously been published in The Family Handyman magazine, loosely organized by topic. Each stand-alone article is well-illustrated and walks the theoretical handyman through the necessary tools and steps to get the job done.

I could see myself undertaking some of these projects, but more than a how-to guide, I like this book because it gives me an idea of what is possible and what isn't, and what questions I should be asking when I inevitably call my handyma'am to come make the repairs for me. No surprises here, and certainly not a complete guide to improving your home, but worth reading and keeping around as a reference.

Time Out Shortlist New York City (2012)

The lovely Jennifer LaSuprema loaned me yet another NYC travel guide before our big trip, the Time Out Shortlist New York City (2012). I have a weird love for travel guides, and I hadn't ever read a Time Out guide before, so I was interested to see how the series would roll.

This was a readable and very full introduction to all things NYC and all things 2012. A good mix of the tried and true and the up-to-the-moment, the guide also includes easy to read maps and lists of cultural, shopping, and food-based attractions.

 I did read the whole book before I went (I'm a completest nerd), but I didn't take it out much while I was there. Still, I feel like this guide, in tandem with the National Geographic walking guide and some internet research, gave me a good foundation for the NYC trip.

And the trip was so much fun! Photographic evidence here, if you are into that sort of thing...

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan (2004)

Our dear friend Alex thoughtfully gave us a copy of Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan (2004) as a housewarming present shortly after we moved into our new house with its increasingly hopeless seeming rat problem. It took us about eight months to figure out the solution (back flow valve in the main sewer line into the house!), and since then we have been completely rat free (9 months and counting!). Now that the rats are really really gone, I felt like I could finally handle this book.

Sullivan spent a year observing rats in a single alley in the financial district of Manhattan. What originally started as a magazine article was bulked up into a book-length work that covers the history of rats in New York, the history of the plague, the profession and life of the exterminator, and Sullivan's own many observations on the activities and preferences of his particular alley rats. His observations were interrupted by the attacks on the World Trade Center, and the book ends up exploring the effects of the collapse of the towers on both the people of New York and her rats.

Sullivan occasionally gets a little cute, and his comparisons of the activities of people to the activities of rats can get a little dull, but ultimately this is a pretty fascinating book, regardless of your feelings for rodents. As much a history of New York City as an exploration of a single animal, the wide-reaching nature of Sullivan's reporting is a real strength and keeps the book from getting too bogged down in a single corner.

Coincidentally, I'm about to head on my first trip to New York City (so excited!), so I'll be on the lookout for any rodents of unusual size. If nothing else, this book has given me some perspective on the little animals that drove me crazy for two thirds of last year.

Walking New York: The Best of the City by Katherine Cancila (2012)

The lovely Jennifer LaSuprema* loaned me this copy of Walking New York: The Best of the City by Katherine Cancila (2012) in preparation for an upcoming trip.

I've never been to New York City before and this was a nice overview of the different neighborhoods and main attractions. I tend to be pretty map-based, and this gave me a good sense of where things were in relation to other things and how Manhattan in general was laid out.

The book is published by National Geographic and is very nicely laid out and illustrated. It's also a perfect size for tossing in your bag before heading out into the city. I can't wait to try this one out on the ground and see how the recommendations hold up.

* Go to Jennifer's Austin Fanzine Project page right now and check out the cool work she is doing to crowdsource the transcription of local fanzines from the 1990s (starting with her own Geek Weekly). It's cool and fun and you can help!

My Brain is Hanging Upside Down by David Heatley (2008)

I was at the library the other week without much of a plan and started browsing through the graphic novels section for something to take home with me when My Brain is Hanging Upside Down by David Heatley (2008) caught my eye and I decided to take a pretty low-risk chance on an author I'd never heard of before.

Heatley's book is a memoir in comic form. He covers some big topics: sex, race, mother, father, family tree, and fatherhood, and although he is oftentimes brutally revealing about his own life, the mixture of humor and honestly keeps the book from drifting too far into either "big themes" or navel gazing territory.

Helping things along is Heatley's informal drawing style which is a perfect match for the often emotional content of the narrative. Delivered in a combination of small, memory-driven panels and lush full-color spreads illustrating Heatley's dreams, the full package gives us a sympathetic (and somewhat voyeuristic) view of Heatley and his family. This is worth checking out for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the adorable pink bars over the many many many penises in the Sex section.

The Beach at Galle Road: Stories from Sri Lanka by Joanna Luloff (2012)

The Beach at Galle Road: Stories from Sri Lanka, the debut book by Joanna Luloff (2012), was one of my recent finds through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. I've found that debut short story collections can be pretty hit or miss, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this one fell on the hit side of the equation.

Luloff gives us a collection of loosely interconnected stories that can either stand alone or be read as a single piece. The wide variety of protagonists (including old women, young mothers, teenage girls, little boys, adult men, and young American men and women serving in the Peace Corp in Sri Lanka) adds variety and depth to the book, but a theme of isolation, longing, and regret ties the wildly different lives of our different narrators together.

Luloff's book takes place in pre-tsunami Sri Lanka, much of it right in the middle of the breathtakingly violent civil war between the Sinhalese government and the Tamil insurgency. While there are elements of humor, love, and peace throughout the book, the circumstances of the country crawl deep into the lives of the characters. The arc of the book moves us masterfully into the final perfectly tragic story -- one of the most upsetting in the book -- where the lead character ultimately earns her twisted triumph, but it doesn't make the reader quite as happy as it makes her.

Definitely recommended, and I'll be very interested to see what Luloff does next.

Lost Austin by John H. Slate (2012)

I may be a little biased since acclaimed author and archivist for the City of Dallas, John Slate, is a close personal friend, but I'm pretty sure his book, Lost Austin (2012) is one of the best collections of historic photographs ever compiled.

The aim of this book is to document the buildings, businesses, and institutions that have been replaced, destroyed, faded away, or superseded in Austin's move from a small settlement on the Colorado river to the 11th biggest metropolitan area in the country.

John was helped out by the fabulous historic photograph collections at the Austin History Center and other local repositories, along with his own memories as a native Austinite. The real strength of this collection is in its sense of balance -- we see old old 19th century Austin buildings along with local hot spots from the 1970s and 1980s that lost the fight to development. We get a good mix of the important Hispanic and African American Austin heritage that has influenced our city in countless (sometimes ignored) ways. And we see both architectural and design marvels and the people who used to live with those buildings every day.

If you've lived in Austin for any amount of time, a common refrain is how great things used to be if you had been here X years ago (five, ten, twenty, fifty -- it was always better before than it is now). If you've ever gotten trapped by the blanket of Austin nostalgia, this book can help you catch up on what you've been missing, even if it hasn't been around since the 1920s!

[If you'd like to check out some cool archival pictures, take a look at the Austin History Centers online photographic collections here. You can keep track of John's book signings here. And if you are in Austin, run, don't walk, to your nearest bookstore to pick up your own copy of Lost Austin. Or order it here!]

Andersen's Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Mrs. E. V. Lucas and Mrs. H. B. Paull (circa 1953?)

Being half Danish, I've always had a soft spot for fairy tale-er Hans Christian Andersen. About  a year ago I won a big box of old books through the Forgotten Bookmarks blog (such a fun blog -- definitely worth adding to your reader), and in it was a copy of Andersen's Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, translated by Mrs. E. V. Lucas and Mrs. H. B. Paull (circa 1953*).

This was an interesting collection because while it featured some familiar stories ("The Ugly Duckling," "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Shepherdess and the Sweep," and one of my all-time favorites "The Snow Queen"), most of the 22 stores in the book were new to me. Many of these feature important (and harsh) lessons on the importance of being humble and kind. We get a lot of inanimate objects (like the tin soldier or the porcelain shepherdess) acting like humans and learning those lessons for us. My favorite new-to-me story in the collection is the rather odd tale "The Old Street Lamp." Do yourself a favor and click on that link -- it will only take a few minutes to read it, and how could you possibly resist a story that begins "Have you ever heard the story of the old Street Lamp? It's really not very amusing, but you might listen to it for once."

Oh, and if you really want to have some fun, click here for some amazing illustrations of Andersen's stories from 1920s Japan. 

* It is hard to pinpoint a publication year on this undated volume, since this translation has been reproduced about a million times. It was originally published in 1945 (although this isn't the first edition since it isn't illustrated), and there is a dedication ("1953 - Carole from Mother"), so this volume must have come out sometime between 1945 and 1953. I think this was originally published as a set with a volume of Grimm's fairy tales. And that's all I had patience to find -- I'm an archivist, not a cataloguer!

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (2012)

This might surprise you, but the archives / library profession tends to draw a lot of introverts. It's true! And because of that, Susan Cain's new book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (2012) has become de facto required reading among my colleagues and friends.

Cain synthesizes scientific and sociological research, case studies, and personal anecdotes into an exploration of the introvert/extrovert continuum in school, romantic relationships, work, parenthood, and life in general. 

 

I'm a definite introvert who has always talked a lot (some might say too much) and loudly (maybe too loudly) and who doesn't mind small talk and meeting new people. I've always felt before like my talkativeness might invalidate my introvert card, but reading Cain's book has given me an appreciation for all the different flavors of introversion out there.

 

The book also points out how the deck is stacked against introverts in modern America -- in the workplace, the media, and our school system, extroversion is seen as a positive and introversion as something to be hidden and improved. Cain describes study after study that shows that a more balanced system ends up being more successful in every situation. Make room for the introverts, jerks!

 

A few qualms: Some of the sections seem a little hurried; the chapter about introverts in other cultures that only focused on Asians seemed to delve a little into "all Asians are super smart" territory; I feel like she missed a chance to talk about personality and gender (that introverted tendencies are more often encouraged or tolerated in women than men); and I wish she spent more time exploring how introverts interact online (I know some of the quietest people I know are the biggest posters on Facebook).  

 

Still, I enjoyed reading this book and I feel like it gave me some insight into my own personality and into the personalities of the introverts and extroverts that I love, am related to, work with, and encounter. Even if you aren't a librarian or an introvert, this is worth picking up.

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life by Steve Martin (2007)

Our latest plan for the fabulous DAFFODILS book club was to read something that wasn't sad or tragic. Now, at first glance one might think that a memoir by a world-famous comedian would fit that bill, but while Born Standing Up by Steve Martin (2007) certainly has a lot of comedy in it, there is (like there is with a lot of comedians) also a lot of crappy childhood, self-doubt, and depression in there to back it up.

This biography covers Martin's life from his childhood through the filming of The Jerk and the self-imposed ending of his stand up career. Martin was born in Waco but grew up in California and had the extremely Californian first job of selling programs at Disneyland when he was ten. His interest in magic lead him from that auspicious beginning to working in one of the magic stores at the park demonstrating tricks to bring in customers and make sales. As he grew, his urge to perform grew with him and when he graduated from high school he took a job performing in the melodramas at Knott's Berry Farm and performing his vaudeville-like comedy/banjo/magic act at small clubs in the area. As the counterculture grew in the 1960s, Martin's interest in expanding and changing his comedy changed accordingly. After numerous false starts and dashed hopes and thousands and thousands of shows on the road, Martin built up a solid audience and eventually landed the spots on the Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live that would rocket him into fame and ultimately seal the casket on his stand up career.

Martin's biography gives us a lot of detail and a certain amount of introspection, but also carefully holds the reader at a safe distance. Steve Martin is not an open, revealing man, even when he is trying to explore his own past. This private nature makes the revealing parts of the book more meaningful than they would be in a standard tell-all celebrity biography, and in the end his reserve makes me like him even more.

And for a little taste of the good stuff, check this out:

Circuits of the Wind: A Legend of the Net Age, Volume 1 by Michael Stutz (2011)

I got a copy of Circuits of the Wind: A Legend of the Net Age, Volume 1 by Michael Stutz (2011) through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Somehow, its algorithm looked into my past and realized that I was once a modemer and that parts of this novel might click with me.

Stutz gives us the story of Raymond Valentine, his childhood, his family, his hobbies, his life, and the impact that the new-on-the-scene home computer had on all of them. Volume one starts us at the beginning, with a young Raymond fascinated by telephones, experimenting with chemicals, and immersing himself in books. Soon video games and then home computers hit the scene, and Raymond knows he must have one. He fills notebooks with practice programs before he ever gets a computer of his own, and once he does his friend's parents are asking him for help and advice. And then he gets his modem hooked up. And after hours of phreaking the system to get the codes to make free long-distance calls, the world's BBSs are his and he is no longer the geeky guy at school with no friends, instead he is The Wanderer with lots of friends and secrets, online.

I was certainly no mega-geek, but my family got a Commodore VIC-20 in the early 80s and my sisters and I spent a lot of time carefully typing in programs to get a little ball to bounce around the TV screen and playing shareware games from audio cassettes (I distinctly remember being fascinated by one that analyzed your biorhythms even though I had no idea what a biorhythm even was). Later I moved on to text based adventure games (Go left. Get trunk. Look trunk. Get key. Syntax error.), then Prodigy, and then, when I was about 15, I discovered it: modeming.

There was a local BBS in Lincoln, where I am from, called Cyberspace. It had ten lines, which meant 10 people could be on at once. You could chat live with the other people who were online or read and contribute to discussion boards. They also had some basic games, and a once a week live trivia that was hard to get into since the lines would all fill up. My handle was Omar (named after Omar and the Howlers, but mostly because I thought the name was funny). It kind of hid the fact that I was a girl, which sometimes worked to my advantage. By the time I was 16 a bunch of Cyberspace modemers would get together for midnight coffee on Saturday nights. We got kicked out of two different Perkins restaurants, and eventually moved to a rather shitty diner by the airport and later a late-night cool coffee shop downtown. I was working at a Barnes and Noble at the time and I'd get off at midnight and head straight to modemer coffee. I was in heaven -- all these people were friendly and fun and nothing like the people in my high school or my family. I was one of the only women and by far the youngest person, but I'd usually go with a good male friend who was a couple years older than me and I never had anything wildly inappropriate happen. When Stutz described Raymond's feelings of belonging and knowing something that his friends at school didn't know, I knew exactly what he meant.

However, while Stutz can bring back the era and write some compelling characters, he often gets lost in a lyrical narrative style that does not do his novel any favors:

The men we knew so many years ago as boys are far away. With a hand we wave to nothing but the wind, our cries have been deserted by the deaf, the blind will never see; a lion sleeps in gloom and there is a wounded whale plunging far below the ocean depths. (p. 169).

There was a change and it was sensed in confounding, unspoken ways: it was in the steady tick of time, it was in a speck of tockled time that ticked, and it was in the scattered moments that formed the broken sediment of ages -- the little things that slipped away, and sunk, and had drifted down into the rimings of a dark and deeper past. (p. 203)

In fact, the first chapter of the book is pages and pages of this lyrical style and I almost had to put the whole thing down. I'm glad I persevered, because there is a lot of good here, but I wish that Stutz had had an editor that would call him on his poetic prose and get him to tone it down a notch.

One other quibble: Raymond grows up in a state called Sohola, which is obviously Ohio (a teacher even refers to shooting of protesting students at "Sohola's Duke State University"). I don't have any idea why Stutz made up a fake state name when the rest of the book takes place in reality, and none of the other states have fake names.

Still, if you can get past a sprinkling of purple prose, this book is worth checking out if you have some memories of life before the World Wide Web. Not strongly recommended, but it did help scratch an itch I didn't even know I had...

The Family Handyman Whole House Repair Guide edited by Ken Collier (2012)

Now that I am a homeowner (one whole year, whoop!), I have a good excuse to read this kind of book, although I'll admit that I've always had a fascination for checking out "how to" and "helpful hint" books even when I didn't have anything to which I could apply my new found knowledge. In fact, even now that I own a house, I'd probably only attempt a small subset of these repairs myself -- things that involve an investment in tools, a large investment of time, or that could go horribly wrong if they aren't done right are the kinds of things that I'd rather hire someone to do for me. Still, this kind of book is helpful even for book-learning handywomen like me since it gives me a good idea of what would be involved in a wide variety of repairs even if I don't end up doing the repair myself.

This book is well organized with a broad coverage of common repairs taken from the pages of Family Handyman magazine. Each repair is nicely illustrated and gives you a good idea of the tools, skills, and time needed to complete it. While all of this information is also available for free on the old internet, I like having a reference book like this to refer to, especially if I need to use it for a project away from the computer. There are a lot of books like this out there, but this one did the trick for me.

The Reavers of Skaith by Leigh Brackett (1976)

To round out the three-part adventures of Eric John Stark on the planet of Skaith (previously reviewed here), the ever-wonderful Leigh Brackett brings us The Reavers of Skaith (1976). While there is no way that the cover could match the perfect science fiction vision of the second book in the series, the third volume is much more satisfying both in terms of its action and in its use of the main female character, the seer Gerrith, who is once again part of the action and not just along for the ride.

Stark and his compatriots find themselves betrayed at the start of volume three when the freelancing starship captain who had promised to take their delegation back to Pax double-crosses them, ransoms the party, and begins attacking and pillaging the defenseless planet.

As an off-worlder, Stark is seen by many as the cause of their misfortunes, and while he sets off on a cross-planet quest to reach a transmitter and call for inter-galactic help, he and his followers find themselves besieged by all forms of the inventively weird people that inhabit the dying planet of Skaith.

And Skaith, by the way, is really really dying now. Summer was extra short and winter blows into the far north and south with a vengeance. Crops die and workers and Farers surge into the cities and the fertile belt around the equator looking for food and shelter. Looks like Stark's ships and promise of transport to another planet are really going to come in handy for the people of Skaith -- if they can just hold on that long.

Brackett's combination of old-school science fiction adventure and 1970s environmentalism doesn't disappoint. Even though the second volume in this trilogy was a little weak, I'd highly recommend all three to any science fiction fan. And while the connections were a little lighter in the second volume, I stand by my assertion that these novels must have been an inspiration for George R. R. Martin. Winter is coming, indeed.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (2011)

Back in 2008, the lovely Joolie lent me a copy of Jeffrey Eugenides' book Middlesex, and I liked it quite a bit. Five years later, a friend at work lent me her copy of Eugenides' most recent book, The Marriage Plot (2011). I've got quite the Eugenides racket going on...

The Marriage Plot is, much like the plot it references, a bit of a love triangle. Madeleine, Leonard, and Mitchell are seniors at Brown in 1982. Madeleine is in love with Leonard, the very smart and interesting scholarship student from Portland, who is also manic depressive. Mitchell is in love with Madeleine, the super smart and beautiful, upper-class English major from New Jersey. No one is really in love with Mitchell, the super smart religion major from Michigan who is exploring his spiritual side. The book alternates between all three characters' perspectives, spending the majority of the time with Madeleine and Mitchell, and takes us into their first year as "adults" after graduation.

While I liked Middlesex quite a bit, I'm more mixed on The Marriage Plot. This book is peppered with references to literature, literary theory, and academia. I can see how that would be a turnoff for some readers, but I found it pretty well done and consistent with the Ivy League intellectualism of the main characters. What was a bit of a turnoff for me was the narcissism, elitism, and general unlikability of all three of our heroes. They are all, of course, meticulously developed, well-written, and sympathetic, but spending an entire book with them takes a lot of energy.

Honestly, much of the narcissism and unlikability of these characters is because they are in their early twenties, and part of my like/dislike of the book has to do with all the uncomfortable early twenties feelings it brought up in me. I had a good time in college, particularly my senior year when I finally felt comfortable and smart and had some friends, but it was also an awkward time, fraught with self-consciousness and bad (or no) dates. That same kind of intellectual openness and romantic confusion is splayed out all over The Marriage Plot, and it rings very true. Having lived with and loved more than one person diagnose with manic-depression made the portrayal of the disease and those who live with it and who live with them equally filled with memory bombs.

So maybe the weird feelings about this book just have to do with me and my weird life, but I'd still recommend it to frustrated English majors and anyone who has finally bid their twenties goodbye.

Now all I need to do is find someone who can loan me The Virgin Suicides, and I can be a Eugenides completest!