Showing posts with label Books: Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books: Fiction. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Speaking Bookishly

Some books I recommend -

Solomon's Oak, By Jo-Ann Mapson

A young widow, struggling to hold onto her California farm famous for a large white oak, decides to earn money by hosting weddings in a chapel her husband built before he died. She also takes in a foster child, a 14-year-old with lots of issues. They meet up with a former New Mexico cop and crime lab photographer who wants to photograph the tree. Through lots of effort, healing takes place. I found this to be a good read about acceptance.

The Secret Book of Flora Lea, by Patti Callahan Henry

When a woman discovers a rare book that has connections to her past, long-held secrets about her missing sister and their childhood spent in the English countryside during World War II are revealed. This book made me think a lot about the things folks go through during wars, and the concept of family.

Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver (Pulitzer Prize winner)

This is the story of an Appalachian boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer. Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

A World of Curiosities, by Louise Penny (though you might want to start with the first book in the series; this is #18)

Darkly intricate plot and a good read by Louise Penny, who so far has not failed to entertain me and leave me with a book to think about for a long time.


These are books I've read in recent months and enjoyed. Some are thoughtful, some are thought-provoking, and some are a bit difficult, but they have value for most readers.


 

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Book Stuff

If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won't)
By Betty White
Copyright 2012
Audiobook 2.25 hrs

Foggy Mountain Breakdown
By Sharon McCrumb
Copyright 2008
Audiobook 4 hrs

Two short audiobooks, very different subjects.

Betty White's nonfiction book is a flip little advice/memoir book where she takes on topics such as fame, friendship, and of course, pets. She reads the book herself, at the age of 89. She makes fun of herself and offers up tidbits of life in the fast lane of Hollywood, but there are no secrets here. The writing is good and it was fun to listen to her read her book. When she started talking about one of her pets that had passed away, I could tell she was crying. You don't get that often in an audiobook.

Sharon McCrumb's fiction book was a series of short stories, none really related to one another. Several of them had Appalachian settings. She has a nice little twist at the end of each story that gives it its reason for existing. The writing is tight and well-done. The audiobook readers were multiple and did a good job.

I picked both of these because they were short and I had interest in the authors/topics. Betty White has died, but I still watch Golden Girls, and it's always interesting to see how something I know nothing about works. Sharon McCrumb lives locally and I follow her on Facebook.

These days I pick my audiobooks by length. Anything over 10-12 hours I dismiss as I am simply not eager to be exhausted by a long audiobook at the moment. Short ones? Yes!

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Another "Objectionable" Book

Will Grayson, Will Grayson
By John Green & David Levithan
Audiobook 8 hrs
Copyright 2011

YA, ages 14 & up

One thing the folks who are objecting to homosexual books in the local library have done is to get me to read books I otherwise would have overlooked. I don't read a lot of YA unless it's fantasy.

This book was one of the books they challenged, and when it came up as available while I was skimming for something new to listen to, I chose it.

It's not great literature, but I also didn't find anything objectionable about it. There were curse words, and yes, young men fell in love, they masturbated, they kissed. I was more upset with the fat shaming in the book than I was with anything else. One of the main characters, Tiny, is a huge overweight fellow and his size is commented on frequently. He is also a flamboyant homosexual who writes a play.

I found the book rather sweet in that most of the youth were accepting of these characters (some were not, but they weren't overly hateful), and it had a rather unrealistic but loving ending. If only people really were so accepting of one another.

In this story, two young men are both named Will Grayson. They do not know each other but eventually meet. They are quite different people. One Will Grayson is Tiny's best friend; later, the other Will Grayson becomes Tiny's boyfriend, though not for very long.
 
The story revolves around the growing up of these young men and how they handle themselves and deal with those around them. Neither is a jock, class clown, or superstar, but Will (1) has a better grasp on himself, his life, and his family than the other. He comes from an upper middle-class family. Will (2) lives with his mother and suffers from depression. The family is not poor but not middle class, either. He has no friends except for a person he has met online and a girl he doesn't want to talk to.

When Will (2) ventures into Chicago to meet his online friend, he instead meets Will (1) and discovers his cyber friend is not who he claimed to be. 

Throughout the story, Tiny's efforts to write a musical play and stage it forms a backdrop. The play is about love and acceptance.

Since I listened to this instead of reading it, I can't address issues I saw in some of the Amazon reviews about sentence grammar and such. I know there is a lot of instant messaging, chatroom talk, and emails in the book, which at times were hard to follow while I was listening. On the page they may not be so bad. I cannot address that aside from noting that it didn't take away from the story.

I do not set out to read books about homosexuality. It is not my thing. However, I also do not find it distasteful, sinful, abhorrent or anything else. What people do is their own business, and these books serve as an introduction to a lifestyle with which I am not familiar. They have, if anything, made me more aware of what the folks are dealing with and going through, and have made me more empathetic towards them. 

More accepting, even.

Maybe that's what the objection is: some people don't want others to be accepted.

Monday, June 19, 2023

Two Books

Girls They Write Songs About
By Carlene Bauer
Read by Cady Zuckerman
Copyright 2022
9 hrs

The Princess Bride
By William Goldman
Copyright 1970, et al
450 pages

I am not sure when I have managed to deal with two such totally opposite books at the same time. As I was reading The Princess Bride, I was listening to Girls They Write Songs About.

And they are very different books, written 50 years apart.

I did not like The Princess Bride. I'm not sure I would have finished it except for the glowing reviews friends had given it, and my sense that I'd somehow missed this piece of pop culture and should fill in that gap. (I still have not seen the movie.) I mean, the fellows on The Big Bang Theory quote from this book in one episode (and somehow I knew what they were quoting - thank heavens I read a lot). I'd been told it was funny, but I did not see the humor. I didn't like the author asides, or his personal side story that constantly interrupted the fantasy/fairy tale. I did not like Buttercup (the heroine, although the men were the heroes of this story) at all, who could have been a cardboard cutout, so little fleshed out was her character. I suppose the fact that this is a tale within a tale within a tale had something to do with it; as a device I didn't like it. I felt like I was dealing with an unreliable narrator, and I have never liked books with unreliable narrators.

And then there is Girls They Write Songs About, a feminist manifesto about friendship, betrayal, and women who take from other women without a second thought. In this book, Charlotte and Rose both want to be writers; they are different people, but they were people I used to be, of a sort. The author's literary prose flows through the pages, and I could relate to characters who would talk books for hours or discuss the merits of a song even if they could not sing it. She tossed out references to Anne of Greene Gables, Little Women, and other books as I once did, way back when I was in college, and the narrator (Charlotte) used the big words that I have been chastised for knowing and told not to use in either my writing or my verbal expressions, at least, not around here. I use them anyway, sometimes, but I am rusty. I envied the author the ease and flow of her style, and I do hate it when that little green monster of jealousy rears its vile little head.

The book also takes to task those of us who want to be writers but end up being something else. Like Charlotte and Rose, I had a freelance career, I have published extensively, but I've never written a book, never written much of importance, really. I have catalogued my community and left an impression, I suppose, but to have been a graduate of one of the most prestigious women's colleges, one with an extraordinary reputation as a college for writers, I must surely be a disappointment to some professor somewhere, should one remember me. 

The women in this book were fully drawn, perhaps overly drawn, while the men came across as caricatures, not as cardboard as Buttercup in The Princess Bride, but certainly not deftly drawn out to be anything more than men of certain types.

Politically, both books had something to say, as well - and they basically said the same thing. In The Princess Bride, the patriarchal desire for power and autocracy is greatly in play, as Buttercup's wedding to Prince Humperdinck is solely a device the prince is using to create a war between his country and a neighboring one. Men rule in this world; women have very little say and frankly, do not matter except as something to use. The only woman with any depth at all is deemed a witch, married to a man with the power to revive the dead. Doesn't this say a lot about how the sexes are perceived by some groups?

Politics is scarcely mentioned in Girls They Write Songs About, but it is there, nevertheless. And again, it's the patriarchy at play, the fact that despite the fact that these young women are second generation feminists, they are still, when it comes down to it, merely pawns to men, doing the bidding of men, keeping the houses for men, spawning the children, and losing themselves and their souls as one becomes the housewife and the other moves on to become the mistress, her body always a weapon for good or ill. It is not her words, her work, her productivity that make her a person, it is sex and sexuality, and motherhood. The settling, when the fight finally goes out of us, that most women end up with, because it is exhausting to try to fight a system that is so plainly and clearly set up to beat the shit out of us simply because we have no penis, as if that little piece of a body part actually matters. How did it come to rule the damn world?

Rose and Charlotte do not remain friends. This is not a spoiler, as the author has Charlotte say this plainly in what is probably the first paragraph of the book. One reads the book to find out why these two, so alike, so concerned for one another, so loving to one another at various times, are no longer friends, and even after learning the why of it, six hours into the book, one finishes the book with a secret hope that one or the other will pick up the phone and make the call that will bring them back together.

In the end, I must wonder, are we all only cardboard cutouts to one another? Where do we click? Where do we find ourselves when we cannot reach each other, when humanity sees only "other" and not "someone like me?" When we lose ourselves and look around for a mirror, and see that the world has changed, is the landscape of today the only answer to the politics of the patriarchal society that has ultimately created so much hatred and so much death? Does it ever actually perpetuate love, in all of its many forms, or does love scrape against that grain, and the love that we feel for one another, for however long or however short, however thin or thick, is this love the thing that fights the patriarchy as hard as it can? Do we overcome the many negligences of today by reaching out to a friend? And when we do save someone else, what or who are we saving them for? 



 

Wednesday, May 10, 2023

WWW.Wednesday

I have never participated in this meme. It asks the same three questions about books every Wednesday. The link to the meme is here, although I'm just using the questions and not actively participating.

1. What are you currently reading?

I am currently reading Out of the Corner, by Jennifer Grey. It is a memoir. It starts out immediately with information about the infamous "nose job" that allegedly derailed her acting career. 

I am listening to Holidays on Ice, by David Sedaris. I usually have a book on tape going along with one I am reading. I just started it, but I can already see it covers some material I've heard in other books of his I have listened to.

2. What did you recently finish reading?

I recently finished reading Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz. It is being "challenged" and reviewed for banning at my local library. I wrote a detailed review of the book here. The book did not offend me, nor would I hesitate to let a young person read it if I were the parent.

3. What do you think you’ll read next?

I will probably read or listen to another book that's on the "to be reviewed for banning" list. 

Here's the list of books the local library is currently reviewing. I am opposed to book banning, especially if the books are all as harmless as the one I just finished.

 • Sex, Puberty, and All That Stuff: A Guide to Growing Up by Jacqui Bailey (nonfiction)

Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality by Eliot Schrefer (nonfiction)

Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List: A Novel by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green

Georgia Peaches and Other Forbidden Fruit by Jaye Robin Brown

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Growing Up LGBTQ by Duchess Harris (nonfiction)

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake

Cool for the Summer by Dahlia Adler

Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan

Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy

The Every Body Book – Rachel Simon (nonfiction)

There is also a request to review a DVD called Bros.

Monday, May 08, 2023

They Are Offended by This?

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
By Benjamin Alire Saenz
Copyright 2012
Read by Lin-Manuel Miranda
8 hrs 8 minutes

A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021)


This book has been challenged in my local library. I have a list of 13 books that have been deemed inappropriate by the fascist Nazis who want to ban books. This was one of them.

This is the story of Ari and Dante, who meet when they are 15 years old. Dante teaches Ari how to swim. The book is very forward in examining feelings and relationships. The book is told from Ari's point of view, and he has many emotions, particularly pertaining to his parents and his absent and unspoken of older brother.

He is quite introspective and examines everything in detail. He and Dante become best friends and this relationship becomes stronger after Ari saves Dante's life. 

At first, I thought the problem with the book was that the boys are Mexican, or Mexican-American. This was something Ari also examined - how does being thought of as Mexican fit in when you live in the United States but are of Mexican descent. I liked the cultural aspect of the book and how it showed a view of this from a non-white perspective.

The book touches on some homosexuality issues somewhere after the first half (so 4 hours into the book) when Dante admits he has feelings for boys. But both young men have mixed emotions about sex and sexuality. At various times both are attracted to girls. As the book progresses, it is obvious Dante loves Ari, but Ari does not feel the same way until he grows up a good bit and has discussions with his parents.

Remember the relationship between Raj and Howard in The Big Bang Theory? That's basically what we have revealed in this book. There are no explicit sex scenes. The young men kiss. That is it. Not even a feel-up or a squeeze.

The book is also very well written.

It works both ways and it's a slippery slope when you start banning books. The Bible is offensive to some people. So is Christian literature.

Both are in the library. Should they be removed?

I don't know how we ended up with so much stupid in this country, but here we are.

At least I read the book so I would know what these people find offensive. Me? I find book banning offensive. And book banners are certainly not Christian by my definition of the word. (They said in the meeting that they were Christians and found this book and others offensive. That's not my inference, it is what was said.)

If you don't want to read a book, or have your child read a book, then don't check it out. It's as easy as the way I never have my TV turned to FAUX news. No one has the right to tell someone else they can or cannot read a book. (Or must have a baby, but that's another topic though along a similar line of thought.)

People apparently need more to do. And they need to mind their own business.


Wednesday, February 08, 2023

Playing Catch-Up

January is a horrid month, and I'm glad it's over. February isn't much better, but at least by now I have finished getting the paperwork together for the taxes and have that pain out of the way.

I have been remiss in my blog, though. I don't generally go two days and not write something. I couldn't think of anything to write yesterday that didn't make me tired when I thought about it, so I wrote nothing.

But today I'm not creatively tired, I am ready to write something.

So here goes.

Books

So far this year, I've read A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penny, which was one of the books in her series I skipped by accident, The Recovery Agent, by Janet Evanovich, which is a reworked version of a more competent Stephanie Plum with her ex-husband in Lula's role, Unf#ck Your Brain, by Dr. Faith Harper, a self-help book, Into the Glades, by Laura Sebastian, which is a young adult fantasy, and The Jasmine Throne, by Tasha Suri. 

The last book is an adult fantasy book, and like many of the fantasies I read, it takes on a political tone and examines the role of the feminine in power. The magic in the book was intriguing in that is a feminine magic - control of the Earth's soil and plants, along with another type of magic that involves telling the future. No fire wizards or things like that, although fire plays a big role in this story, wielded as a manly power. Swords and not guns. My only complaint was multiple points of views; I occasionally forgot who was talking and had to flip back to the beginning of the chapter to see whose name was on it. I recommend it if you prefer your books to have strong female characters and can imagine bucking the patriarchy one day.

The book I am currently reading is called Born with Teeth, by Kate Mulgrew. It is an autobiography (not a memoir), and I decided to read it because I try to read nonfiction and fiction alike. The last autobiography I read was Sally Field's. I prefer to read autobiographies or memoir of women, but dang if every woman who writes a memoir hasn't been raped at some point. I know that statistically something like 1 in every 3 women has been raped or a victim of incest or something, but I am not so sure that every single female in this world hasn't been manhandled at the crotch by some guy at some point. Mulgrew was robbed and raped not on a casting couch, but as she tried to fumble her way into her New York apartment with her hands full of grocery bags.

We do a poor job of raising men, if every woman is considered fair game. And apparently, we are.

The State of the Union

I did not watch The State of the Union address last night. I consider that political theater on the part of both sides. I have read varying synopses of is, and as best I can tell, some of the crazier Republicans acted like children and Dark Brandon handed them their ass on an environmentally friendly clay platter.

Since I read about the political scene almost every day, I know the state of the union without the drama and theater. I also buy groceries and gas, and listen to people, and read stuff from both sides of the aisle. The truth and the facts are in the middle. Sorting them out is a yeoman's task.

Contrary to popular belief, neither side represents me. I suspect a lot of people feel like that.

And that's all I have to say about that.

TV

I don't watch much TV, but I started a show on ABC called Alaska Daily that I want to recommend. It stars Hillary Swank and is about a newsroom in Anchorage. Very realistic and good acting. There are only six episodes available so far, but the show returns February 23. You can watch it on the ABC app.

Whose Line Is It Anyway? taped its last show last week. Since my husband and I are probably the only people left who watch the show, this is not unforeseen, but we enjoyed the interplay between the comedians. Also, it was on the CW, and I understand that channel is undergoing a revamp. The only other show I watched on that channel was Stargirl, and it's been cancelled. It had a good ending, though.

We've been watching the new version of Night Court with Melissa Rauch, but I can't decide if I like it or not. La Brae also returned on Tuesday nights. I like this show but have a feeling it's veering off into a direction that I may not like. 

On Thursdays, my husband watches Swamp People and tapes BattleBots. I read during Swamp People; once you've seen a few alligators killed, I don't need to see anymore. I like BattleBots because no one is getting hurt, you're just seeing robots fly to pieces. Too bad real-world problems can't be solved like that.


Life in General

We have re-rented the little house my mother left me, and I have high hopes for my new tenant. My husband on Saturday, on his way over there to finish some projects - every time someone leaves the house, we must spend money and time trying to fix things, replacing light bulbs, unstopping sinks, etc. - and swerved to miss a deer. He took out the mirror on his truck.

My leg is still swollen and tender, but it is no longer throbbing and purple, so it is getting better. I am unclear as to what I have - varicose veins, I think - or how to deal with it, other than stay off of my leg for a long while until things settle down. It is not my back, it's not a Charlie Horse, it's something in my veins. The fact that I am fat doesn't help, even if I did lose 15 pounds back in 2020. I need to lose a lot more.

The bird feeder is a great source of fun. We have lots of cardinals, blue jays, chickadees, etc. there, especially in the mornings. I like watching the birds. I haven't been taking pictures of them because it has been wet and damp, and like the Wicked Witch of the West, I melt in the rain.

I also still haven't found the green comet. The moon has been full, so there's a lot of light, and it may be that even though this is a rural area, there's simply too much light pollution around me now to see it. Or I just can't find it. I found Mars. I found Polaris. I found all the markers I was supposed to find, but no green comet.

The weather has warmed, and the rain has stopped. I may have to go sit outside a spell. I suspect an early spring.


Wednesday, May 11, 2022

The Madness of Crowds

This is going to be mixed up, because I have a lot of mixing up in my head at the moment. I just finished listening to the audio version of The Madness of Crowds, by Louise Penny,* and this, along with the (very loud and frustrating) conversation on Roe v Wade has my head spinning.

So spoilers for the Louise Penny book - you've been warned. As for the rest, well, I like to use the word "fuck" a lot so you've been warned there, too.

In the book, Penny deals with life post-pandemic, but she takes on multiple heady topics, including, kind of, abortion.

The story is about a statistician who has determined that because of the decline in resources, statistics indicate that it should be mandatory to kill off the elderly at a certain age, and to kill off disabled people, including children. Only the healthy (whatever that is) should be allowed to live. 

The inspector is asked to protect the statistician when she has a talk near his home, someone tries to shoot her, someone else is murdered, he has to find the murderer, blah blah.

The underlining themes of this book are troubling and troublesome. We had people in the United States saying that grandmas should take one for the team and just die of Covid. These were Republican members of various state legislatures, if I remember correctly. I find the idea morally reprehensible, although I think if Grandma knows she has uncurable cancer and wants to take an early out, she should have the right to do that. But it shouldn't be forced on her.

This story is about the government forcing early death. That's the statistician's premise.

It gets mixed up even more because the inspector's second in command, Jean-Guy, has, in the previous book All the Devils Are Here, had a second child, one born with Down's Syndrome.

The reader (or listener, in my case), sees Jean-Guy's angst over his child in this latest book. At one point he calls her a burden and he is totally floored by his own words. He can't believe he called his daughter that. He loves his daughter - but.

There is talk about why Jean-Guy and Annie didn't abort early on when they learned the child had Down's Syndrome. He said he and his wife discussed it but decided against it. But, he also admits they weren't prepared for what raising a disabled child means. He questions the decision, but ultimately decides they made the choice appropriate for them, and he loves his daughter (without the "but"). He finds the statistician abhorrent because she would have his child "dismissed" from life.

So here we are with a fictional story that is hitting hard emotionally on all sorts of topics, from ridding the world of the elderly to disabled children and quality of life, and abortion. When is killing good? When is it bad? What constitutes a legitimate killing? Is a fetus a person?

And all around me I see fucking morons who have no idea what they're talking about trying to lay claim to the authority of women's bodies. Until a fetus is out of its mother's body, it's a parasite. It can't exist without the womb.

This is a decision that's nobody's business but the woman's and possibly the man she is involved with, but I have noticed men have simply taken three steps backwards and are out of this conversation, except for the big high-powered white assholes who are making the decisions for the little women anyway.

Over on Facebook, I'm involved in a discussion where two people who were unwanted wish they'd never been born, and being unwanted meant that they had severely crappy childhoods (sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse, etc.), another who was adopted who thinks we're all saying she shouldn't have been born, when no one is saying that at all, another who survived an ectopic pregnancy thanks to Roe v Wade (I wrote about a similar situation for myself last week), and a lawyer who's chimed in about bodily autonomy and how forcing a woman into pregnancy is similar to slavery.

This is a group of well-educated highly informed women discussing a very emotional and highly complex topic. We are doing it without name-calling, without yelling, without calling one another names, or being overly upset (except for the adoptee, although I think she understands that we're all glad her mother chose to have her and give her up. We're glad she had that choice.). 

And the questions we're really asking are these: if Roe v Wade is abolished, who is going to take care of all of these unwanted children? Who is going to see that the mothers receive appropriate prenatal care? Are we going to revive orphanages? Are we going to throw more money at a foster care system that doesn't work? What about the children with disabilities? Who is going to care for them? The Republicans already are working to undo all the social networks we have in place to keep people from dying of starvation. What are they going to do for these children they want to force women to have?

Are we going to look at the racism that is really behind this? If one traces the issues of abortion and current discussion back to its beginnings, we find the KKK and white nationalism and racism behind it. Nobody cares if there are black babies being aborted. It's the white women they're after here, and everyone knows that. It really is The Handmaid's Tale

The poor and minorities are going to be the ones suffering because some powerful white male and his wife want to adopt a sweet little white kid and they can't get one from Ukraine at the moment, because, you know, fucking fascists are over there bombing the place while the fucking fascists here in the US are undermining the Constitution at every turn and have made a mockery out of what once was a legitimate government. (Thanks a lot, GQP.)

In the meantime, we have these anti-human fuckers who really wouldn't care if certain people already living died. They want a war and they want blood. They're ready to shoot me because they think I'm a Democrat (I'm not, really, I'm what a Republican used to be, a very long time ago). They're ready to shoot me because I couldn't have children. They'll shoot me because I'm fat. They'll shoot me because I'm old. They'll shoot me because I used to be a journalist. They'll shoot me because they can because we're too fucking stupid to understand what the Second Amendment of the Constitution really says, because the fucking Supreme Court conveniently overlooked the "well-armed militia" part of the amendment.

I have a niece and a great-niece. Roe v Wade doesn't affect me personally, but it affects young people I care about. I don't want my niece to have to have a child if she should become pregnant before she's ready to raise that baby. I don't want my tiny little great-niece growing up thinking she is a second-class citizen simply because she is a girl. I want her to grow up thinking she's Wonder Woman and she can do whatever the hell she wants with her life (within reason, of course). If she wants to wait until she's 40 years old to have her first child because she wants to build up a law career and be a partner in a law firm, then I want her to be able to do that. I sure don't want her to have to have a child because some asshole convinces her to have sex when she's 14.

Mostly I want people to stop and think, use logic, and take emotions out of the law. Law is about thinking and rationality. Rational people believe murdering the elderly or disabled children is wrong. That isn't a liberal point of view (as someone said in the reviews of Penny's book on Amazon). That's a humanistic point of view. That's a moral point of view.

And as for Roe v Wade, we're not gods, and if women have to give up the right to abortion and their bodily autonomy, then I want a chastity belt slapped around the pelvis of every man on this dying, decaying, morally bankrupt planet, and the keys left on the wall of some female judge who lives 500 miles away. Because without that damn penis, we wouldn't be having this discussion. That's where the problem lies, so let's fix the problem that way, instead of placing it all on the woman.


*Also, I did not like this book as well as the others in the Three Pines series.*

Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Dune

Dune
By Frank Herbert
Copyright 1965
687 pages

I've been interested this year in going back and picking up classics that I overlooked or don't remember. This is one of them. Of course, when I was in high school, Dune was not yet a classic.

It has reached SF cult status, much like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. This is the first of six books in The Dune Chronicles. Whether or not I read the others remains to be seen; sometimes sequels disappoint.

At any rate, I understand why this is SF classic and a must-read even for fantasy readers. Basically a coming-of-age story, the book has multiple layers and much depth. One could pull commentary out of this book and adapt it to climate change, for example. It's a great study on religion. It even sheds light on today's terrifying issue of cult of personality.

Most of my fiction books go to the library as donations, but this one will stay on my shelf. It feels like a book I may reread from time to time.

Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Chiefs

Chiefs
By Stuart Woods
Copyright 1981

Stuart Woods in the last 20 years has been writing what one might call "trash novels" for men. The books focus on a single character, Stone Barrington, who has gone from NYC police detective to multi-millionaire lawyer who dates the president-elect. My husband reads these books (which means I do too, before they're donated to the library). I call them "wet dream" books because Barrington sleeps with nearly every woman he meets without a condom in sight.

Imagine my surprise then, when I went back into the archives of Stuart Woods and picked up Chiefs for my husband. This book won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for fiction and focuses on three separate men over a span of 50 years.

This is not one of the Stuart Woods books I know. This is a book worth reading.

The book is about the police chiefs in the southern town of Delano, Georgia. The story begins with the first man hired, William Lee, who has a murder on his hands not long after he becomes chief, and the murder (and those that follow) remains unsolved for 50 years, so it flows through the hands of several men before there is resolution.

This book stands out for its characterization and its explicit take on race relations. I had no trouble believing in the racism and biases in this book, which dominate much of the narrative, because this attitude continues today. I've heard men talk like the men in this book do.

This book also touches on politics and power. It is a good reflection of the world today even though it was written 40 years ago.

Unfortunately, we live in a time when there are people who want to take us back to the days when it was fine for the white man to call the black man "boy" and expect subservience from both blacks and women (of all colors). While the book shows the passage of time through changing race relations, it is instructional and enlightening to see how very little things have changed, especially in the southern United States.

This is excellent work, with great writing, and a good lesson for all who want to understand the history of where we were - and where we may be headed if we aren't careful.

Apparently in 1983, CBS made a mini-series out of this book. I have not seen this but may have to see if I can find it.

Monday, January 13, 2020

Books: Daughter of Smoke & Bone series

Daughter of Smoke & Bone
By Laini Taylor
Copyright 2011
418 pages

Days of Blood & Starlight
By Laini Taylor
Copyright 2012
513 pages

Dreams of Gods & Monsters
By Laini Taylor
Copyright 2014
613 pages


This is a trilogy by Laini Taylor that I recently finished. I read the first one in September and I've read the last two since Christmas, as they were presents from a friend.

While these are long, fat books, they read quickly.

There may be spoilers in this, so don't read it if you don't want to know anything about the series.

Basic premise: a race of humanoids who are called angels and a race of chimera, also called demons, live on a planet named Ertz. At one time there were portals through to earth, but those were lost to time. However, the chimera found a way into Earth and went back and forth between the planets. The angels and chimera were constantly at war.

Our heroine is Karou, who initially starts out as a very far-out young woman who loves art and lives in Prague. She was raised by the chimera who live in Earth, and frequently runs errands for them. She has a bit of super strength, stealth, and speed, and has been trained in many types of fighting. Her main errand is to collect teeth and take them to Brimstone, who is described very much like the archetypical devil.

However, the ways in and out of the world that Brimstone has created have been found out by angels, and they are destroyed. Karou attempts to find Brimstone but instead is confronted by an angel, Akiva, who means to kill her but finds something about her reminds him of an old love.

For he had once been in love with a chimera, but she was killed.

As the story unfolds over the books, we learn that chimera are revived many, many times, brought back to life magically into new bodies and sent forth to fight. Angels are bred by one man with many concubines, so that they are all half-brothers and sisters trained only to fight. They aren't allowed to have a life or anything, just fight chimera.

It's a Romeo and Juliet kind of thing. Akiva realizes Karou is his love of 18 years ago, only she was remade as a baby and then raised up by Brimstone, instead of being instantly put back into a body to fight. This was to hide her from the head Chimera wolf-like dude, who wanted her for his mate.

Akiva and Karou feel like they have a destiny to stop this long, long war between angels and chimera. The story revolves around their efforts to accomplish this, although like any story, they go the long way around. Of course, it takes a lot of convincing to have angels and demons on the same side, I suppose.

And as with any romance, whether it's fantasy or main stream literature, the characters have trouble being together and finding their true love.

The last book was what I expected except the author brought in a MacGuffin character whom I could have done without. I thought that took away from the story and ultimately added nothing, really.

All in all, though, good reads and very helpful for recovering from my upper respiratory infection. I will look up this author again.

5 stars for books 1 & 2
4 stars for book 3





Monday, December 30, 2019

Books: The Overstory

The Overstory: A Novel
By Richard Powers
2018
Kindle Edition
Print length: 502 pages
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize


Since this book won the Pulitzer and many other prizes, I think I'm supposed to have liked it.

I did not.

Maybe it's because I read it on the Kindle - but I think the Kindle helped me to see the failures in the book.

It's a nice book. Lots of pretty writing, and a strong environmental message. Thoreau would be pleased to read it, I think.

I found it tedious. I felt like it needed editing, and it could have lost about five of the nine characters in it. I had a difficult time keeping up with who was whom and why they were doing what they were doing; a circuitous route around the American Chestnut ended poorly and rather stupidly, if you ask me.

Some reviews say the book ended on a positive note, but I didn't see anything positive about it. Mostly the message is this: trees good, people bad. People are going to kill all trees and end life on earth as we know it.

The only way to save it is to make it a big virtual project, like taking the "catch a Pokémon" game and turn it into cleaning up a stream or something.

Ok, then.

Other reviewers thought the characters were well drawn; for the most part, I found them to be caricatures and not characters. They all represented the fringes of society, the people who don't fit into the cogs and run the mainframe of consumerism and capitalism that now drives the mechanisms governments have put in place to create a new species of human doings instead of human beings.

These can be interesting people, those who don't fit into the well-oiled machine, but Powers managed to make them rather uninteresting if not eye-rolling. The only character I liked was Patricia Westerford, a scientist who put forth the initial journal article that trees communicate and their roots intertwine and they protect and feed off of one another. She was belittled for her work and only later recognized as the pioneer in what is now a commonly held scientific theory - that trees and plants have their own ways of communicating.

One thing I've not seen mentioned in other reviews about this book is the treatment of women. Women are given the patriarchal treatment here; they are not heroines or heroes. In fact, of the four main female characters, two die, one is maimed and scarred, and the other is unable to have a child and forced to spend 20 years caring for her husband who has a stroke (and she's a faithless wife, too). The men all trundle off to live other lives until one guy stupidly writes down their escapades as activists and a young nameless woman finds his notes and turns him in. And then only two of them end up jailed.

One young man, a computer whiz, is portrayed as a brilliant mind trapped in a crippled body, and he is unable to understand the beauty of nature except through the lenses of his made-up virtual worlds. He ends up a multi-millionaire, though the author does not treat him especially kindly.

I had a difficult time getting into this book; it was a slog to read. If my book club hadn't been reading it, I would have put it down around a third of the way through and never finished it.

Personally, I would not have missed out on much. I already knew that trees talk to one another, that the forest and the natural world communicate in ways we simply do not yet understand. I have always known this, just as I know that whatever it is we are destroying will be returned in some form that we have yet to imagine. New and different trees, or different, more hardy vegetation, will eventually spring up and overtake our cities. I've seen it. I've been to the remains of local towns that were abandoned, and I've seen their structures overrun by nature's steady progress to retake the ground.

Maybe city dwellers, people who don't think outside of themselves, and folks who've never spent a lot of time in the woods will find this message endearing and take it to heart.

It is a good message.

I just wasn't entranced with the story or the method of storytelling.

Thursday, November 07, 2019

Thursday Thirteen

Bookish Questions and Deep Thoughts


1. In the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly, who is really the monster? The man who created life from dead body parts, or the thing created?

2. In the Ann of Green Gable series, by L. M. Montgomery, Ann Shirley is a curious child. Her curiosity causes her lots of trouble. Is curiosity a good thing?

3. In the Lord of the Rings, Frodo makes a decision to leave his home in order to protect it from great evil. He gives up everything to ensure that goodness survives. Would you leave your home to protect someone else? What would you give up to ensure the safety and security of humanity?

4. In the Harry Potter series, Hermione is a bookish character who actually knows the spells that Harry does not and often needs. However, her contribution is downplayed although her loyalty to Harry and protecting others is not. Is knowledge less than loyalty?

5. In the Stephanie Plum series of books, Stephanie is frequently kidnapped, shot, knocked unconscious, or otherwise hurt. She rebounds very quickly and doesn't suffer from PTSD. Do you think there are people who would not be bothered by such trials? Or is this portrayal of a resilient character unrealistic?

6. In the Stone Barrington series of books by Stuart Woods, the main character always gets his man in the mystery. He also always gets the woman - a different woman in nearly every book. The women are generally stereotypical characters and not rounded out. Do you think this is the way men see women, or is this a writer's shortcut?

7. In the Alphabet mysteries by Sue Grafton, Kinsey Milhone, her lead character, is a tough woman detective who doesn't delve into fashion, bake cakes, do needlework, or do other "womanly" things. Do you think it is necessary for a women to lose her "womanly" notions in order to function in a man's world?

8. In the book Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author takes herself completely away from her world in order to restore order to her soul. Have you ever taken a journey to find yourself? Do you think such a quest is necessary in order to grow as a person?

9. In her memoir, In Pieces, Sally Fields reveals that she was molested by her stepfather and that she has mental health problems stemming from an abusive childhood. Yet she went on to become a famous actress. Do you think that Fields' and her success is the norm for people who experience childhood trauma? Or is she an aberration?

10. In A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L'Engle, three children leave home to save an adult. Do you think children are capable of doing such actions in this day and age? Or is this pure fantasy?

11. In Alice in Wonderland, Alice finds a strange new world that does not resemble anything she knows as reality. In modern physics, the many worlds theory advocates that each decision we make creates a different universe, so that there are in fact thousands upon thousands of universes in existence. Do you believe there could be different universes? Could the rabbit hole simply be a writer's device that creates a portal into another universe? Or is Alice only dreaming?

12. In Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens, the main character is a young girl of about 7 who raises herself alone in the marsh. Is this believable? Do you think a child that young could survive all alone without assistance? The same instance occurs in Island of the Blue Dolphins, but that book is set in the 1800s and the heroine is a little older. Which book seems more believable?

13. In The Hunger Games series by Susan Collins, Katniss must kill or be killed. Do you think her befriending others as a strategy to stay alive is feasible? Is this similar to the show Survivor, where people "make friends" and then stab one another in the back? What does this say about humanity, that we can be friendly to someone and then turn around and shoot them? Are we, really, human?


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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 628th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Wednesday, July 03, 2019

The Hunger Games Trilogy

The Hunger Games (2009)
Catching Fire (2010)
Mockingjay (2010)
By Suzanne Collins

I recently completed the audiobooks of this trilogy. I have not seen the movies.

These are dystopian books with a young heroine, Katniss Everdeen, who knows how to shoot a bow. In this world, the Capital (a crazy evil place - think Oz in orange and on steroids) holds The Hunger Games every year. Names are chosen from each of the 12 districts that surround the Capital, and a young man or woman must go to the games and fight for his or her life.

Katniss's sister, Prim, who is just of age to go, is chosen and Katniss takes her place instead. Katniss is about 15, I think, when she goes through her first Hunger Game.

Long story short, she and her fellow competitor from District 12 team up, which apparently is a first, and in an act of defiance vow to kill themselves rather than destroy one another. They both win the Hunger Games.

But the next year is the 75th year celebrating the Hunger Games, and the President, whose name is Snow (and his breath smells like blood), declares that former victors in the Hunger Games will return a second time to fight to the death. So Katniss and Petre (not sure of spelling since I listened and didn't read the book) go off to the games a second time.

Only this time the rebels have found the face of their cause: Katniss, whose mockingjay pin has become a symbol of the resistance of the strong arm of the Capital. The resistance intervenes and saves Katniss, but Petre is caught by the Capital and tortured.

Katniss is taken to District 13, an area the Capital has long proclaimed as a dead zone, but it has an entire world underground. Here the rebels have a stronghold and they set about to make Katniss the face of the rebellion. This means a lot of TV promos, but Katniss is having a difficult time with all that has gone on. She's killed people, people have died because of her, and District 12, where she lived, was blown up at the end of book 2. She's a bit distraught (you think?).

Anyway, she finally pulls it together and the rebels take each District, and then head for the Capital. Katniss is determined to kill President Snow. Along the way, though, she has begun to have misgivings about President Coin, the woman ruler of District 13, and her ability to lead. After the rebels take the Capital, killing Katniss's sister Prim in the process, Coin takes over and Snow is put on trial. Katniss had been promised she could kill Snow, but as she aims her bow at Snow, she suddenly turns and puts an arrow in the heart of Coin.

Months later, she's been found not guilty (although she didn't go to any trial, I guess they didn't do it that way), and she goes back to her house where she holes up. Petre finally reaches her and they marry and have children, who play on the meadow which is really a mass grave.

It was well written and an intriguing story. I found some of Robin Hood in there, somewhere, although the author says at the end of the audiobook that the story is based on Greek mythology. It was the kind of book I could listen to while I was driving or folding clothes.

And then I wondered if I were going to write a dystopian novel, what kind of world would I create, and I looked at the newspaper this morning. My only thought? The world we live in now. That's dystopia.

Friday, February 02, 2018

I Blame Rowling

Recently I read two books, one completely self-published and another that was published through what is an imprint of Amazon publishing.

The completely self-published book, Haven, by Kate Roshon, was well-done although I could see where it could have benefited from an editor. There were very few typographical errors, which was great, but there were a few areas where I wanted to say "show don't tell." However, it was a good story and I applaud the author (whose husband plays in a video game with me, just so you know), for nice work. For a totally self-published book, this was good and well done, and one of the few self-published books I would recommend if you read science fiction. If I should chose to publish in this manner, I can only hope I do as well with all of the editing and creating a cover and all that goes into making such a book.

Haven was a dystopian tale with hope. I'll leave it at that because I don't want to give away much of the story.

The other book went through a total editing process with a team of editors via Amazon. The book was free to me as a Kindle First book (if you belong to Prime, you get a free book at the beginning of each month; the books so far have all been from Amazon's own publishing imprint, Lake Union Publishing). Daughters of the Night Sky, by Aimee K. Runyon, was a historical tale about women who flew planes for Russia during World War II. It was an interesting fictional look at a historical fact I knew nothing about, and I enjoyed the read.

However, both of the books had what I have come to call the Rowling Syndrome. It's actually a literary device known as an epilogue. She didn't invent it and it is not unique to her, but the ending of her series of children's books is the most famous example I can think of.

In J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Rowling ended the story (and series) not where it should have ended - with Hogwarts retaken, the Death Eaters defeated, and Harry saving the world, but with an epilogue that I (and a few others) disliked. The epilogue took away any imagination of the characters' future lives by writing about how Harry married Gini and Ron married Hermione and they had little kids and lived happily ever after.

These two books I recently read had the same sort of endings. The stories reached points where they should have ended, but the authors went forward in time to each main character's old age and showed how their life played out.

I know some people like this kind of completeness in an ending, but I rather prefer the idea of the story ending in a good place - but with room left for one to imagine what else might have happened, rather than being told how things went on to end.

In Harry Potter, for example, I would have preferred to not know who married whom, or what they ended up doing with their lives. I would have liked to have imagined that for myself (and I would never have married Hermione to Ron). It is the same with these two books I just read. I'd rather have imagined the futures of the two women in each story from a certain point, and not seen how things turned out for them.

Sometimes it is good to let the reader use her imagination. If the character has any appeal, I like to fantasize about what might have happened, who she ended up with, how the rest of her life might have played out. Having it all laid out for me there on the page seems to take something from me.

What do you think?

Wednesday, November 02, 2016

Books: X

X
By Sue Grafton
Copyright 2016
Read by Judy Kaye
Unabridged Audio
13 1/2 hours

I have read or listened to all of Sue Grafton's novels. The last couple have left me wondering what she was doing. Stretching her wings as a writer, I suppose. Unfortunately, all of this flapping has left Kinsey Milhone, the much-loved female detective of the alphabet series, a bit lost.

In X, Grafton has three subplots going, but no main plot. Even my husband, who listened to the first part of this book with me on our drive to Pennsylvania and back in September, noted the lack of a plot. Trust me, he is no book connoisseur, and if he noticed, then there was no plot.

Apparently as the series winds down, Grafton wants to bring back old characters - I know she brought up the name of several minor characters throughout this book - and I felt like she was trying to wrap up not only the books but her story world, too.

Maybe Kinsey will find some other way to fill her time by the time we hit the final two books.

In this story, a betrayed spouse outwits Kinsey by pretending she's someone she's not in order to steal a valuable painting from the former husband. The new folks who have moved in next door to Kinsey and Henry do not seem to be who they say they are. Kinsey has a banker's box with an envelope in it that seems to mean something, but she's not sure.

The latter subplot was probably meant to be the real mystery, but there wasn't enough meat on that story to make a book. It also ended with a thud. I will say no more in case you want to read the story.

The reviews on Amazon are all over the place on this one - some people give it a four, some give it a two. I don't think it was one of Grafton's best novels, by any stretch of the imagination, and I think she is searching for a way to wrap up this series. She started writing it in 1982 and with the last books staring her in the face, she has to be wondering what's next. This book felt like a writer wandering, trying to figure out what's next.

I also thought Kinsey did a few things in this book that a good, ethical detective would not have done, and that bothered me.

Of course I will read the next books, just like I plodded through Janet Evanovich's bad books in the teens of the Stephanie Plum series (though I admit I am a few books behind on that now).

If you've never read Grafton's books, go back and start at the beginning. If you pick up with X, you will be lost and left wondering what all the fuss is about.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Books: The Collector

The Collector
By Nora Roberts
Read by Julia Whelan
16 hours
Unabridged
Copyright 2014


The Collector by Nora Roberts brings us the story of Lila Emerson, a professional house sister and novelist with an unabashed habit of looking out the window with binoculars to see the little "movie stories" of the lives of the people who live in the next apartment complex over.

Unfortunately, she sees a woman murdered, and things go downhill - and uphill - from there. Roberts brings us an interesting and intriguing story of murder for art, and two strong central characters to carry the story through to its deserved, if not unexpected, ending.

She meets Ashton Archer, brother of one of the other victims murdered in the apartment, and together they set out to solve the mystery of the brother's death. Roberts does a nice job exploring the art world, and is close on her facts. She talks about eight missing "Imperial Eggs" made by Faberge for the Russian imperial family - mostly true, except the Faberge website says there are only seven missing eggs. She also overstates their value a bit - but it's fiction, and it rings true, so what the heck. How many people google the objets d'arts mentioned in books, anyway?

Additionally, Roberts brings in the story of  Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, the lost girl who many thought was not killed by secret police in 1918. It's a nice touch and an interesting bit of history to bring to the fore.

The story kept me interested and I consider it one of Roberts better books. Her later books seem to me to be better written, anyway - certainly showing that practice makes perfect, or at least better craft.

A Roberts book is always a decent way to pass the time, and this book is no exception. While I never missed my exit when I was listening to it, I did occasionally sit in the garage to finish a section before I came back into the house.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Books: Island of the Blue Dolphins

Island of the Blue Dolphins
By Scott O'Dell
Copyright 1960, 1988
177 pages

Recently I decided to revisit childhood classics - those Newberry Medal winners that made such an impression on me when I was younger.

Island of the Blue Dolphins was my first choice. The title has always stuck with me, and the idea of a young girl, alone on an island, a cast away with no recourse but to survive via her wits, has always appealed to me.

If I were still in college, I would choose this book to write a paper on. I could easily write a treatise on societies for one of my social science courses, or a study of femininity and females for a feminism class, or a study of writing for a writing course, from this small yet noble classic.

The story is based upon a truth - sometime in 1853, white men found a lone woman on a island off of the California coast. She is known to history as the Lost Woman of San Nicolas. Her rescuers, such as they were, named her Juana Maria. Wikipedia at the link has an extensive entry about the real person. She died within 7 weeks of her "saving" from her lonely vigil on her island.

O'Dell's book also was made into a movie, which would add further fodder to a college paper. If I have seen the movie, I do not remember it.

The author named his heroine Karana. She was a young girl of 12 who lived with her tribe on a large island off the coast. The tribe was annoyed by a pack of wild dogs but otherwise lived in harmony with animal inhabitants that included fox, otters, pelicans, and other birds.

Man, it seemed, would be their undoing. The Aleuts, another tribe from the north, led by a white man (O'Dell calls him Russian, I think, which would make sense given the time he wrote the book), visits the island. They come for otter and agree to a trade, but the chief, who is also Karana's father, does not like the trade. Suddenly fighting breaks out and after all is said and done, the men of Karana's tribe are mostly dead, save the old and very young.

The elder tribesman who takes over as leader decides to take a canoe and go for help from the mainland. A year (or two) passes and finally another ship shows up to take the entire remnants of the tribe away from their ancestral home. As the ship leaves, a gale blows up, and Karana realizes her brother has been left behind. She jumps from the ship and swims ashore, thinking the boat will turn around.

But the white men move on, afraid of the dark seas and the strong winds.

Shortly thereafter, Karana's brother is killed by the wild dogs, and the young woman is left alone.

The real Juana Maria apparently was left on the island alone for nearly 20 years. The young woman in O'Dell's book is there a long time - countless summers pass and she is no longer a girl when finally a ship comes for her. But the reader is unsure how long she exists alone.

The scene that makes me shudder in indignation is near the end, when the men sew together trousers to more sufficiently cover the girl, who is brilliant in her skirt of feathers and a special necklace. Of course she must be covered. Of course.

It is difficult to write a book about a single character. Characters must interact with one another. Dialogue? Not happening unless a character talks to herself. O'Dell manages to bypass this burden with animals - a dog here, birds there, and the land itself, which Karana talks to almost like a lover. She makes discoveries and learns how to do things she had seen men do, daring to use tools that only men were supposed to use. She is the epitome of a human, surviving, thinking, and being. Forced to live in the day because she had long given up hope of rescue, her needs were few. In O'Dell's book, anyway, she is not unhappy.

In rereading this book, only one thing struck me as out of place. Why did the young woman tame an older wild dog and not take one of the pups when she had the chance? Surely a pup would have been easier to tame. While I found this part off the mark, the story still holds together as well today as it did when I first read it 45 years ago.

It is an interesting exercise, going back to worlds I once I knew but which are now murky in my memory. I am not sure what my next book will be, but I look forward to the visit.