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!

The Hounds of Skaith by Leigh Brackett (1974)

After reading and loving The Ginger Star, I did the unusual (for me) move of immediately ordering the other two books in the series. While in some ways the second volume, The Hounds of Skaith by Leigh Brackett (1974), didn't quite live up to the first entry, it far surpassed every other book on the face of the planet with the awesomeness of its cover. There is a lot going on there, but it all makes perfect sense after you read the book.

As you may remember from the first volume, Eric John Stark (a human who was raised by the equivalent of wolves in an abandoned mining colony on Mars) travels to the dying planet of Skaith to rescue his foster father, Ashton. He does just that in volume 1, and now must lead his party back to the south of the planet to try and intercept a ship home before the leaders send them all away and destroy the space ports. Among his companions are Stark's lover Gerrith, a prophetess from Skaith; and a pack of scary Northhounds, vicious psychic dogs trained to kill with fear. Stark leads the group through dangers both environmental and Skaithian using his skills of independence, strength, confidence, and empathy. Along the way we are introduced to a whole new host of inhabitants of a planet that has grown diverse as living creatures struggle to reach into the few niches left for survival.

All that is perfectly great, and Brackett is just as good as writing sci-fi based adventure stories as ever, but where volume 2 disappoints is in the lack of involvement with Gerrith, the Skaithian seer who is a well-rounded and important female character in the first volume. It isn't because she doesn't feature in the story, because she is along for the ride almost the entire time, but somehow she is left out of almost all the dialogue and plot points except for a couple nights in bed with Stark and a brief scene at the end of the book. We can be thankful at least that that scene transitions us into the possibility of more Gerrith in volume 3. Let's hope that Brackett doesn't forget about her!

The Walking Dead, Volume 17: Something to Fear by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2012)

I've finally caught up with the end (so far) of the Walking Dead series with The Walking Dead, Volume 17: Something to Fear by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2012) [thanks, Dan!]. Luckily after the disappointment of Volume 16, the series comes back to violent life in this most recent addition. The Saviors are more than just a hypothetical target in this volume as they strike out against Rick and his community multiple times, even after being beaten back by Andrea's sharp-shooting. They prove that they have nothing to lose and the unexpected violence and death of beloved characters that we have grown to love over the past 17 volumes is in high form here. Great twist ending and none of the hacky dialogue of the last volume. Now, write another!

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson (2003)

People had been telling me that I would love The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson (2003) for years, but a copy never came into my grasp until the lovely Dr. M bought me my very own copy for my birthday. Thanks, dude!

The Devil in the White City tells the parallel stories of Daniel Burnham, a prominent Chicago architect, and his quest to create a successful World's Fair in Chicago in 1893 (one that would even top the Paris World's Fair that unveiled the Eiffel Tower a few years before), and Herman Webster Mudgett (aka Dr. H. H. Holmes), a charming and successful psychopathic serial killer who preyed, among others, on the single women who came to enjoy Burnham's fair.

While these two men and their dedication to their very different passions is fascinating, the best part for me are the two non-human characters that lean over everything, the city of Chicago and the fair itself. The fair introduced widespread use of electric light, the Midway, the Ferris wheel, a resurgence in classical architecture, the "there's a place in France where the naked ladies dance" tune, and tons more. And Chicago: the most American of all American cities, trying to prove it's own worth against the diamond of New York City by hosting a gigantic fair that seems to be doomed to failure almost from the start.

Larson's novelistic writing style makes this the perfect history book for people who don't like history, but his extensive and diligent research, documented in pages and pages of footnotes, will make archivists and historians happy as well. Last year, my good friend Corie lent me Larson's most recent book, In the Garden of the Beasts, and I liked that one quite a bit, but I liked this one even more. Where Larson's narrative lost steam a bit towards the end of the more recent book, here the parallel stories keep the pace moving steadily all the way through.

People, you were right: I did love this book!

The Walking Dead, Volume 16: A Larger World by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2012)

In The Walking Dead, Volume 16: A Larger World by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2012) Carl is doing better and a relative peace has come to the Alexandria Safe-Zone, but everyone can see that they are running out of food and pickings in the zombie-infested areas around the safe-zone are getting slim. Enter Jesus. Yep: Jesus. Could he be the group's savior? He certainly thinks so. After many suspicions are aired and tests are given a small group goes with him to the Hilltop community, a large group of over 200 survivors who also have their own farm. Cha ching! Jesus wants to open up a trade route between his colony and Rick's group, but a dirty secret is soon revealed: the Hilltop gang gives half of their harvest as a tariff to the mysterious and threatening gang called The Saviors (wait, who was the savior again?). Rick, naturally, decides to throw himself in the middle of everything.

I can see the need to expand the story, and when starting up a new arc there is nothing to be done but a bunch of exposition, but this volume was particularly heavy on the set-up and light on the pay off. In addition, the dialogue was hokier than usual and the drawing often seemed a little sloppy. Here is hoping for a return to form in Volume 17!

The New Central Texas Gardener by Cheryl Hazeltine and Barry Lovelace (1999)

The extremely lovely Joolie lent me her copy of The New Central Texas Gardener by Cheryl Hazeltine and Barry Lovelace (1999) shortly after I started attempting to put plants in the ground and keep them alive. I have a personal history of not being particularly great with plants (although a friend gave me some bulbine almost a year ago and it is so alive that it recently started making happiness flowers), and this book helped make the idea of gardening not quite so scary.

This book is logically organized into the big topics of gardening (climate / soil / trees / shrubs / fruits & veggies / flowers / pests / etc.), and the writing is a comfortable mix of friendly and authoritative. I really appreciated having a book where everything was geared to the hot, dry, rocky, clay-filled challenges of central Texas -- in so many gardening books and magazines half of the suggestions won't really work here since they are designed for the gardening paradise to our north.

The only thing I could have asked for would be more pictures, because who wouldn't want even more lovely pictures of lovely plants, but the combination of descriptions, line drawings, and some selected color plates do an adequate job of illustrating the plants and techniques that the authors discuss. Definitely a solid reference book for those attempting to become what the title suggests.

The Walking Dead, Volume 15: We Find Ourselves by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2011)

In The Walking Dead, Volume 15: We Find Ourselves by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2011) we get a breather after the hectically awesome events of Volume 14. Rick is nursing his son out of a coma, coordinating the reinforcement of their village, and taking over leadership of the community. And the community is adjusting to the big changes that Rick and his group have brought from the outside. Ordinarily the "treading water" volumes like this one haven't entirely done it for me, but in this case it seemed like it the characters (and readers) earned it, and while zombies weren't flying out on every page, the tension and pacing were still maintained.

"...And Ladies of the Club" by Helen Hooven Santmyer (1982)

"Astonishing how attached one can become to a group of essentially incompatible women." (p. 625)

My Aunt Charlotte lent me her copy of "...And Ladies of the Club" by Helen Hooven Santmyer (1982) last fall and I started reading it a little after Christmas. At 1176 pages, Santmyer gives George R. R. Martin a run for his money in the longest-books-I've-read-lately category, and it took me (a fast reader) a couple months to move through this one. While it was slow going early on, like many epics, this one caught me up in the lives of its characters and now that I've finished reading it, I miss reading about what's going on in Waynesboro, Ohio.

Santmyer's epic novel follows the lives of the citizens of Waynesboro from just after the Civil War in 1868 up into the heart of the Depression in 1932. While the cast of characters is extensive (sometimes, to be honest, a little too extensive to keep track of), the main focus of the book is on Anne Alexander Gordon (the daughter of the old town doctor who marries the new town doctor, John Gordon, recently back from the war), and Sally Cochran Rauch (the daughter of the town banker who marries a German entrepreneur, Ludwig Rauch, who has recently purchased a rope factory in Waynesboro). At the start of the book, both Anne and Sally have just graduated from the Waynesboro Female College, the local high school for girls. By the time the book ends, both women have born children, watched their grandchildren grow up, lost their husbands, and ultimately, died themselves.

Providing a structure to the book and to the lives of the intellectual women of Waynesboro is the Waynesboro ladies literary society, colloquially known as "The Club." Started by the headmistress of the Female College, the club consists of local teachers, seminary professor's wives, minister's wives from the various congregations in town, and well-bred women with the time and means to pursue literary culture. The Club meets every two weeks, at which time a paper is given by one of the members on a topic chosen by the program committee. The number of members is limited by the bylaws, and when a member dies or moves away, the selection of a new member is a hot topic. The one unbreakable rule is that the women can not let politics, gossip, or personal grudges enter into the confines of the Club meeting. Everyone must get along.

For me the book was occasionally slow going, particularly as I plowed through Santmyer's loving but extensive descriptions of the town layout, architectural style of the houses, and the decoration of everyone's drawing rooms, but her talent for developing strong characters and the occasional shake to the plot (affairs! Illness! Unwed mothers! Protestants marrying Catholics!) quickly pick up the pace. As a lover of history, the opportunity to read these close observations of American life from the 1860s through the 1930s was wonderful, and I feel like I have a stronger grasp on the changes in the lives of ordinary women as the decades pass by.

Politics is also a big part of this book, both on the national and local level. Her characters and sympathies are distinctly Republican, initially because of the rift of the Civil War, and later because of their tendency to be pro-capitalists, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. A nod is given to Socialism and the importance of treating the workers well, but in this book all factory owners are benevolent Republicans and unions just aren't necessary. Also, while Santmyer's detailed knowledge of local Ohio Republican politics was impressive, it occasionally slowed the narrative down, for this reader at least.

Santmyer herself grew up in a town much like the fictional Waynesboro. She was born in 1895, published a couple of books in the 1920s, and then spent 50 years working on this epic novel. It was published in 1982 when she was 87 and didn't sell that well until it was selected as a Book-of-the-Month Club book in 1984 and quickly went on to be a bestseller, making Santmyer the oldest best selling author at the time.

While this book is quite an investment of time, its strength is in its length and if you have a little patience, it really pays off.

The Walking Dead, Volume 14: No Way Out by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2011)

Oh hell yes. The Walking Dead, Volume 14: No Way Out by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2011) is the one I'd been waiting for. That whole "humans are the real monsters" thing was good for awhile, but it was about time that Kirkman got back to dancing with the ones what brung us to this spectacularly fucked up hoe down: THE ZOMBIES! And there are zombies a-plenty here when the Alexandria Safe-Zone is besieged by a zombie herd and the walls begin to fail. And besides all the zombie heads being axed, shot, and macheteed, there is plenty of time for all that juicy character development and moral quandries that we have come to love. Let's keep this up!

Horror Films of the 1990s by John Kenneth Muir (2011)

Oh, hi. Wonder where I've been? Mostly I've been simultaneously reading two gigantic books, and Horror Films of the 1990s by John Kenneth Muir (2011) is the one that I just finished! It may seem weird to read a reference book on 1990s horror movies cover-to-cover, but I got a copy through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, and I couldn't in good faith write a review of it without reading the whole thing.

The 1990s are generally known as being a rather weak period for horror movies, and while there are plenty of one star reviews in Muir's book (and, actually, those are pretty entertaining to read), there are a good crop of four star movies in there as well. It helps that Muir casts his net wide -- the usual suspects like Scream or The Blair Witch Project and standard series like Children of the Corn, Friday the 13th, and Child's Play are joined by movies like Lost Highway, Silence of the Lambs, Jurassic Park, and Eyes Wide Shut. I like that Muir has a broad definition of horror, and I also like that he watched and reviewed all of these hundreds of movies by himself. He has also written compendiums on horror movies of the 1970s and 1980s, so he presumably knew what he was getting into with this one.

While the book cover couldn't look more like a high school sociology textbook, the contents are nicely organized and well illustrated. Muir starts each year off with a timeline of events and then moves into an alphabetical listing of the films reviewed from that year. Each movie includes complete cast and crew information, and many movies also include quotes from external reviews (both contemporary and retrospective), some of which contradict Muir and each other. Enveloping all this detailed information is a well-written introductory essay on the 1990s and how current events influenced the horror movies of the decade, and some intriguing appendices, including common themes from the 1990s (the police procedural, the interloper, the "meta" horror movie, etc.), movie tag lines, and Muir's personal top ten.

That personal top ten goes a long way to explaining why I liked this book so much -- it is a personal look at a huge number of genre movies. I don't always agree with Muir (I didn't like Scream at all and he loved it), but even when I disagreed with him I was interested to see his reasoning. And he always has reasons!

The book loses steam as you get into the late 1990s -- reviews are shorter and sloppier -- and sometimes Muir's quirks can get a little annoying (he is a little nit-picky about plot details) -- but overall this is a coherent and very readable overview of a huge swath of film history. Definitely recommended for horror movie fans, and since I'm married to this guy, you know that I am one of those!

The Walking Dead, Volume 13: Too Far Gone by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2010)

Ah yes, much as I expected, things are starting to get interesting again in The Walking Dead, Volume 13: Too Far Gone by Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard, and Cliff Rathburn (2010). The Alexandria Safe Zone, a seemingly utopian community planned before the zombie crisis as a solar-powered mini-refuge, being filled as it was with those fallible humans, had some rifts and slime bubbling up under the surface. Naturally, our newly settled band of lovable survivors, particularly Rick, couldn't let things go unremarked (that's what we love about him!) and the big issues of justice, punishment, self-defense, and survival once again rise to the top.