Begin Again Part 2

Begin Again: The Brave Practice of Releasing Hurt and Receiving Rest by Leeana Tankersley
Read: 4/7/18-4/24/18

Last week I started to tell how I found this book, and about my grief with my mother in the late stages of dementia.

I left off with listening to The Next Right Thing podcast, the episode Be a Beginner.

I'd just been told, by multiple people, that I didn't know how to do this, how to proceed, because I'd never done it before.

So this week, if you're in your own grief, anxiety, or transition, I invite you in with these words from the transcript:

"If you are newly engaged or newly pregnant or if you are a new step-parent or just moved into a new house, you are grateful for the new role that you have and maybe excited about the future. But there’s a lot you don’t yet know and there isn’t a handbook to teach you.

Begin Again Part 1

Begin Again: The Brave Practice of Releasing Hurt and Receiving Rest by Leeana Tankersley
Read: 4/7/18-4/24/18

This book is based on/inspired by the line in the Rule of St. Benedict, "Always we begin again." I absolutely loved it and would recommend it to everyone, but especially anyone who's in transition now, and especially especially anyone who's grieving anything.

Why? It's not a book on grief, right? I mean, "Hurt" is in the title, but "Releasing Hurt?" What if you just lost someone and the thing you're beginning is grief, and you're not ready to be done with that process yet?

This isn't a book that only applies to happy beginnings. Beginnings also involve endings, even the "my world is falling apart" sort.

I could give you a beautiful quote from the introduction to prove it, but first, let me tell you a story.

Here's how I found Begin Again. What I've written so far, anyway, and we'll finish the story and review next week. (Hopefully, that's the plan.)


My mom isn't doing very well. Nothing especially new there, but she's at a stage of not doing well that seems to be closer to the end, and I've been surprised at how hard it's been hitting me.

A Time to Dance

A Time to Dance by Padma Venkatraman

Read: 10/17/15-10/24/15
This review mostly written on: 2/17/16

Beautiful, moving book in verse, a YA novel about a girl in India. For those looking for diverse books to read, this one fits the bill in multiple ways. I'm not going to tell you about one of the most important ways, however, as it's a little bit of a spoiler. The majority of the book is about it, but if you want to read those first 30 pages without knowing... Also, if you don't want that spoiler, be very careful to avoid the cover blurb, and don't read any of the Library of Congress classifications on the copyright page.

Or other reviews. Though many of them are better and more in-depth than mine, they do almost all have The Spoiler, so be warned.

I will say that I haven't read many books from a Hindu perspective, and I found it fascinating. I'd like to read more, as it's, um. Kind of a huge thing in our world.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Installment #6 in the Book Reviews for Melanie series.

"I remember my own childhood vividly ... I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them." -Maurice Sendak, quoted in the epigraph

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Read: 8/11/13-8/12/13
This review mostly written on: 5/22/14

"She was power incarnate, standing in the crackling air. She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty. She winked at me. ...

The Last Unicorn

Installment #5 in the Book Reviews for Melanie series.

Also a book review for The 48-Hour Book Challenge, though I began editing the review earlier. Obviously I'll only count the time I spent on it during the Challenge!


The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Read: 12/2/11-12/4/11

The Last Unicorn is so beautiful it hurts. It's a perfect little gem of a book. (And I love the cartoon, too, which if I'm recalling correctly I actually saw before the book. In some ways, contrary to more purist ideas and my own inclination, movies before books can be a good order, because it seems it can lead more often to loving both. And wow, the cartoon is cheap right now, I should get it...)

I need to read it again. I can't do it justice here, otherwise. Reading it again is no great sacrifice. I would do it before writing this review, but I'm attempting to write my reviews much faster, and will accept no excuses delaying any of them. So, bother.

Obviously I must read it again at some point, though, if not right this instant. Not only would I want to because the book is good, but Patrick Rothfuss says I should read it again. It's right there. On the cover.

Speaking of Patrick Rothfuss, as one can tell from the cover, he, um, very very much likes it. He talks about it a lot, but this is one of my favorites that I could find... language warning, but... yeah. The part at the top, before he gets to Tad Williams, though the whole thing is good.

Oh, one other thing. So beautiful it hurts, sure. But... there's humor, whimsy, silliness, too. It's not all dignified or quite what you would expect. It's an odd blend, but again, pretty much perfect.

I mean, the incompetent magician is named Schmendrick. Yeah. It's hard to be very dignified with a name like that. And he pretty much is the incompetent magician, the standard by whom all others shall be judged. In the words of my edition's generic blurb, "...a kind of poor man's Merlin whose devotion to the exquisite creature he follows is exceeded only by his mediocrity in magic."

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful book.


"'How can it be?' she wondered. 'I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten unicorn [sic] or if they had changed so that they hated all unicorns now and tried to kill them when they saw them. But not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else--what do they look like to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own children?'

"Sometimes she thought, 'If men no longer know what they are looking at, there may well be unicorns in the world yet, unknown and glad of it.' But she knew beyond both hope and vanity that men had changed, and the world with them, because the unicorns were gone. Yet she went on along the hard road, although each day she wished a little more that she had never left her forest."


"'It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is,' he said. 'There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. Still I have read, or heard it sung, that uncorns [sic] when time was young, could tell the difference 'twixt the two--the false shining and the true, the lips' laugh and the heart's rue.'"

And on a smaller scale, a good representative phrase I noticed and loved: "When Schmendrick looked at her again he had managed to pull his face together, but it was still struggling to escape from him."

The rest of what I'm going to quote is scented faintly of spoilers, so to those who are sensitive to those strains, read no further. They are so good (and so sideways to any true spoilers) that I can't help myself. I quote on, for the beautiful, beautiful themes.


"'Fools, fools and children! It was a lie, like all magic! There is no such person as Robin Hood!' But the outlaws, wild with loss, went crashing into the woods after the shining archers, stumbling over logs, falling through thorn bushes, wailing hungrily as they ran.

"Only Molly Grue stopped and looked back. Her face was burning white.

"'Nay, Cully, you have it backward,' she called to him. 'There's no such a person as you, or me, or any of us. Robin and Marian are real, and we are the legend!'"


"'The hero has to make a prophecy come true, and the villain is the one who has to stop him--though in another kind of story, it's more often the other way around. And a hero has to be in trouble from the moment of his birth, or he's not a real hero. It's a great relief to find out about Prince Lír. I've been waiting for this tale to turn up a leading man.'

"The unicorn was there as a star is suddenly there, moving a little way ahead of them, a sail in the dark. Molly said, 'If Lír is the hero, what is she?'

"'That's different. Haggard and Lír and Drinn and you and I--we are in a fairy tale, and must go where it goes. But she is real. She is real.'"


"'...How can anything that is going to die be real? How can it be truly beautiful?'...

"'I was born mortal, and I have been immortal for a long, foolish time, and one day I will be mortal again; so I know something that a unicorn cannot know. Whatever can die is beautiful--more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world.'"


There. It's alright, you can come out now. I'm done.

Blackbringer

Installment #4 in the Book Reviews for Melanie series.

Blackbringer
(Dreamdark #1) by Laini Taylor
Read: 12/9/11-12/11/11
Click here for my sister Sondy's review


"Four pairs of battered canvas shoes were arranged around the table with their toes pointed inward, as if the fishermen had gathered here to open the bottle they'd pulled up in their nets. Whatever had been inside, it had been there for a long, long time, and it had come out hungry. Calypso whistled low. 'Snatched 'em right out of their slippers,' he said.

'Why'd they let it out?' Pup wanted to know. 'Why do they always?'

'I reckon they heard the story about the wishes,' replied Swig.

Magpie sighed. One devil, just one in all of devil history, had granted three wishes to the human who freed it. Magpie had caught that troublemaking snag five years ago and put him back, but the damage was already done. The mannies had a mania for it now, and every chance they got they freed some wicked thing back into the world, and they surely didn't get wishes for their trouble.

What had these fools gotten? Just their shoes left behind, and no one to spread that story. 'Poor dumb mannies,' she muttered.

'Curiosity killed the eejit,' Calypso replied with a shrug.

Magpie frowned at him. Usually pity was the last emotion humans inspired in her, but something about those empty shoes tugged at her heart."


Magpie Windwitch is a faerie who hunts devils with her crow friends. As the Holly Black quote on the cover says, "Laini Taylor's faeries are whimsical and tiny, but fierce. This book was so much fun."

"Many thousands of years ago, when the faeries had at long last won the wars, the seven champions had captured the devils in bottles and cast them into the sea. They had crafted elaborate magicks so that nothing could ever free them from their prisons--nothing then alive in the world, anyway. Not faerie nor dragon, elemental, snag, creature, imp, or finfolk could break those seals. But humans? Humans didn't exist. And then one millennium along they came, fishing the world's oceans, pulling up ancient bottles in their nets and uncorking them to see what was inside.

Now devils were creeping back into the world, faster and faster all the time, but the age of champions was long past, and little Magpie Windwitch found herself alone against them."

Blackbringer is, like The Name of the Star, the only book by its author that I've read, despite its excellence. Unfortunately, encouraging you to read Blackbringer seems a bit to me like encouraging you to watch a canceled TV show. Well, who am I kidding? How could I not demand you watch Firefly this instant, if you hadn't already?

See, there is a sequel, though it's out of print, but according to Laini Taylor's website, the third book... well, that's made it onto a very short FAQ list. However, it may be written, at some point! I can't say for sure, but I feel like when I first checked her site, after reading Blackbringer, there were publisher complications that made it sound much bleaker than "I have every intention of returning to complete the Dreamdark series." Still, "...it is not now on the slate." So. Sadly incomplete story. Well. I mean, it doesn't end on a cliffhanger, as I recall. It's complete, as far as it goes. One just... wants more.

That said, what a world, what characters, what a voice! Magpie is a faerie, but she's... well, in that severely overused phrase of paranormal romance and urban fantasy reviews, a "kickass heroine." But she doesn't at all give you that feeling some of them do, that someone's just trying so very hard to create a strong female character. She feels real, she's just a very feisty real. A tiny little warrior saving the world from demons. Yeah, I kind of fell in love with her.

Picked this one up used from the bookstore when I worked there, because I'd seen Laini Taylor's name before, on Shannon Hale's blog, I think. Ah yes, Shannon Hale interviewed her... five years ago, is all. I am so on top of things.

It should perhaps be noted that there are many other things this book does extremely well, as I started to remember when I looked through the quotes I'd marked down. That's what happens when you write about a book a year and a half after reading it, but I will leave as is. These are some of the things that stuck with me.

Must read again... get sequel...

The Name of the Star

Installment #3 in the Book Reviews for Melanie series.

The Name of the Star (Shades of London #1) by Maureen Johnson
Read: 12/17/11-12/18/11
Click here for my sister Sondy's review

I first heard of Maureen Johnson when I joined twitter and my sister Sondy told me to follow her because she was the funniest person on twitter. She was right.

And yet, for no apparent reason, I've only read one of her books so far. This must be remedied.

The Name of the Star is that one book. A friend gave it to me as an early Christmas present in 2011, for which I am grateful. Melanie, you should read it. It's even on our Kindle account. (I should read the sequel that came out a couple months ago, The Madness Underneath. And, well, her other books, in other series.)

Melanie, you know how when a book starts out in the "normal world" and then shifts to fantasy, the normal world part tends to be kind of boring and annoying, with the exception of The Chronicles of Narnia? Even books that I really really like, like Garth Nix's Abhorsen Trilogy?

Well, The Name of the Star doesn't move from one world to another, but the main character's eyes are opened to a different world underneath the surface of her normal world, so it more or less fits in with the category.

And I'll admit, the weirder it got, the more I liked it. It just got better and better. But boring normal world? Not so much. What saves it here is Maureen Johnson's voice. Of course, having followed her on twitter, I should've known her books would be funny, and the voice would be awesome! How could they not be?

For example, take this quote from the beginning of the book (only a map and the intro come before this):

"If you live around New Orleans and they think a hurricane might be coming, all hell breaks loose. Not among the residents, really, but on the news. The news wants us to worry desperately about hurricanes. In my town, Bénouville, Louisiana (pronounced locally as Ben-ah-VEEL; population 1,700), hurricane preparations generally include buying more beer, and ice to keep that beer cold when the power goes out. We do have a neighbor with a two-man rowboat lashed on top of the porch roof, all ready to go if the water rises--but that's Billy Mack, and he started his own religion in the garage, so he's got a lot more going on than just an extreme concern for personal safety.

"Anyway, Bénouville is an unstable place, built on a swamp. Everyone who lives there accepts that it was a terrible place to build a town, but since it's there, we just go on living in it. Every fifty years or so, everything but the old hotel gets wrecked by a flood or a hurricane--and the same bunch of lunatics comes back and builds new stuff."

Or, another long one... (I'm sorry, I read it again as I was going through my highlights, and I just can't resist!) Um, to understand some of the quotes that follow, you should know that the main character, Rory, leaves Louisiana to study abroad, in England. So.

"I know you're not supposed to judge people when you first meet them--but sometimes they give you lots of material to work with. For example, she kept looking sideways at my uniform. It would have been so easy for her to say, 'Take a second and change,' but she hadn't done that. I guess I could have demanded it, but I was cowed by her head girl status. Also, halfway down the stairs, she told me she was going to apply to Cambridge. Anyone who tells you their fancy college plans before they tell you their last name... these are people to watch out for. I once met a girl in line at Walmart who told me she was going to be on America's Next Top Model. When I next saw that girl, she was crashing a shopping cart into an old lady's car out in the parking lot. Signs. You have to read them.

"I was terrified for a few minutes that they would all be like this, but reassured myself that it probably took a certain type to become head girl. I decided to deflect her attitude by giving a long, Southern answer. I come from people who know how to draw things out. Annoy a Southerner, and we will drain away the moments of your life with our slow, detailed replies until you are nothing but a husk of your former self and that much closer to death."

And then there's:

"These people didn't seem rich--at least, they weren't a kind of rich I was familiar with. Rich meant stupid cars and a ridiculous house and huge parties with limos to New Orleans on your sixteenth birthday to drink nonalcoholic Hurricanes, which you swap out for real Hurricanes in the bathroom, and then you steal a duck, and then you throw up in a fountain. Okay, I was thinking of someone very specific in that case, but that was the general idea of rich that I currently held."

"'You don't say much, do you?' Jerome asked me.

No one in my entire life had ever said this about me.

'You don't know me yet,' I said.

'Rory was telling me she lives in a swamp,' Charlotte said.

'That's right,' I said, turning up my accent a little. 'These are the first shoes I've ever owned. They sure do pinch my feet.'"

Okay, that's enough of that. I read some more of my highlights, but not all of them. I must not read all of them at this time, or this review will get too long. ("Goodbye, Thing. Your [review] is too long." No, I know it doesn't have quite the same ring to it.)

However, if you scroll back up to the top and click on the link to read Sondy's review (Oh, or wait, here it is again! Where'd that come from?), she does include another quote that I was tempted to use in mine. Two for the price of one! Or something. Overall, she more or less says the same things I do about the book, but in a different way, and better. And a little more of the plotty premise details.

What is the book actually about? Well, it's technically YA, though I generally don't concern myself much with those age categorizations. And it's a mystery involving Jack the Ripper lookalike murders. If you haven't read much about Jack the Ripper, his murders were pretty gruesome. I didn't realize. Um, don't google him, if you don't want to know more. The book seemed sufficient, to me. Anyway. The Name of the Star is also about... weird elements. I'm not going to specify more than that, to avoid giving even a teensy bit of a spoiler. But I really liked how the mechanics of the weird elements were worked out. Good strong worldbuilding.

Dang it, no teensy spoiler means I can't use one of the book review category tags I wanted to use. Oh well.

Have fun!

The Eyre Affair

Installment #2 in the Book Reviews for Melanie series!

Yeah, I'm behind. To do two a month, I should do five more before much time passes...

Well, here's another quick, non-perfectionistic one to get the ball rolling. I started talking about The Eyre Affair on facebook, recommending it to Melanie, and it occurred to me that I should have said those things here, instead. So when I thought of more comments to add, I restrained myself. Melanie, here's the rest of what I have to say about it. Well, not the rest of what I have to say for all time and eternity, but you know. For the moment.


The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next #1) by Jasper Fforde
Read: 2/12/13-2/18/13
Click here for my sister Sondy's review

The part from facebook:

So, I've only read the first one so far, The Eyre Affair, but I'm pretty sure it's among the most unique books I've read. It has... a bit of a familiar feel, but I think part of that is from the bits of the premise I've heard from other people. And partly because of the way anything really well done can feel familiar. I mean, it has time travel, alternate history (because of course! time travel!), a pliable barrier between fiction and reality occasionally allowing characters out and real people in, a world so full of bibliophiles that... well, put it this way:

"I was what we called an 'operative grad I' for SO-27, the Literary Detective Division of the Special Operations Network based in London. It's way less flash than it sounds. Since 1980 the big criminal gangs had moved in on the lucrative literary market and we had much to do and few funds to do it with."

Okay, since I started, a couple other amusing bits:

"'So Napoleon won at Waterloo, did he?' he asked slowly and with great intensity.
'Of course not,' I replied. 'Field Marshal Blücher's timely intervention saved the day.'
I narrowed my eyes.
'This is all O-level history, Dad. What are you up to?'
'Well, it's a bit of a coincidence, wouldn't you say?'
'What is?'
'Nelson and Wellington, two great English national heroes both being shot early on during their most important and decisive battles.'
'What are you suggesting?'
'That French revisionists might be involved.'
'But it didn't affect the outcome of either battle,' I asserted. 'We still won on both occasions!'
'I never said they were good at it.'"

Making this even more funny (to me, anyway), it's a bit of a throwaway scene, seemingly at least. Doesn't have much to do with the plot of this book, though it definitely could be setting up some things later.

"'I have lots of hobbies.'
'Name one.'
'Painting.'
'Really?'
'Yes, really. I'm currently painting a seascape.'
'How long has it taken you so far?'
'About seven years.'
'It must be very good.'
'It's a piece of crap.'"

"'Did the memory erasure device work, Uncle?'
'The what?'
'The memory erasure device. You were testing it when I last saw you.'
'Don't know what you're talking about, dear girl.'"

Technically I suppose it'd be fantasy or science fiction (with the time travel, and other things explained as science, SF I suppose), but it's normally shelved with general fiction, as it doesn't exactly feel like normal fantasy or sci-fi. But it's good. Invites comparisons to all sorts of other things, but isn't really quite like any of them. I think they're mostly brought up because it's unique, and thus hard to describe in the normal ways. So you have reviews that say things like, "...combines elements of Monty Python, Harry Potter, Stephen Hawking and Buffy the Vampire Slayer." (Wall Street Journal)

Now for the non-facebook part:

First, another fun quote:

"...Several people have asked me where I find the large quantity of prepositions that I need to keep my Bookworms fit and well. The answer is, of course, that I use omitted prepositions, of which, when mixed with dropped definite articles, make a nourishing food. There are a superabundance of these in the English language. Journey's end, for instance, has one omitted preposition and two definite articles: the end of the journey. There are many other examples, too, such as bedside (the side of the  bed) and streetcorner (the corner of the street), and so forth. If I run short I head to my local newspapers, where omitted prepositions can be found in The Toad's headlines every day. As for the worm's waste products, these are chiefly composed of apostrophes--something that is becoming a problem--I saw a notice yesterday that read: Cauliflower's, three shilling's each..."

Personally, I find the beginning bit about "omitted prepositions" a little silly, as the other is a perfectly viable alternative genitive form. But the bit about the headlines is amusing, and I definitely like the bit about the apostrophes as waste products!

The book reminded me a little, I thought, of The Phantom Tollbooth, but I wasn't very sure of that, as it's probably been decades since I've read it. (A problem to rectify, especially as it was one of my 2012 Christmas presents.) But I mentioned it to another friend who's read both, and she confirmed my suspicions. There are similarities. No wonder The Eyre Affair feels both so familiar and unique! Among other reasons.

Quite a whimsical, enjoyable book. Thoroughly fun. Especially the better you know your literature and history. I had a feeling there were many jokes I wasn't getting, but it works either way. Fforde scatters his jokes liberally, not pausing to make sure you get them, and there's no harm if you don't catch some. They only improve an already great read.

I like the style of the humor -- I thought the passages I quoted above were even more funny, given that, as I said for one of them, they were almost throwaway scenes, not made much of. He just goes on. After, "'Don't know what you're talking about, dear girl,'" they immediately talk about something completely different. It's awesome.

That style with the alternate history, too -- I love that we get Thursday's (the main character's) POV, not her father's (who time travels), and the changes are just things that seem normal to her. We don't even know her full "normal," how she'll react to her father's questions. Nor do we know which differences from our timeline will be a result of certain time tamperings, and which will be different before time travel actions. And which will just stay the way they are, or not be explained. It's all, as I said, pretty awesome. More than I'm making it sound.

I've heard some of the sequels are better, and I believe it -- don't get me wrong, this one is very good, but there's a feeling in it of potential, not fully tapped.

So go, read, have fun. I have so many books I'm in the middle of right now, but I really need to get my hands on the sequels.

Book of Enchantments

I didn't give many Christmas presents this year. At least, not yet. And by "many" I mean "more than one." See, there was this baby...

But my sister Melanie had a present on her wish list that I just couldn't resist. She said she had so many books available to read, especially on our family's Kindle account, that she'd like someone to give her the gift of time by reviewing some of those Kindle books, or other favorites of theirs; helping her to decide which ones to read. So I sent her a long list of books I've been meaning to review, and she told me which ones she hadn't read.

I didn't promise many, or well, any, really. I didn't want to make a promise I can't keep, and being a new mother, I'm pretty unsure about how much I could possibly promise and keep. But I'm going to aim to review a couple books every month for this whole year. I'm looking forward to telling you what to read, Melanie!

Maybe occasionally I'll also review something she has read, a couple of those books on my sidebar. Be nice for that to-review list to stop growing longer and longer and longer...

Melanie, I hope you don't have too hard of a time obtaining copies of the books I review. Many of them may not be on the Kindle account, so I may not help you much with selecting books there after all... meh.

I'm going to start the series out with an easy one, a review that I'd drafted which had moldered away on here without getting posted for no apparent reason. Last date I edited it was 10/5/10, that may be when I wrote most of it. Melanie, enjoy! And the rest of you, too!


Book of Enchantments by Patricia C. Wrede
Read: 7/29/10-8/26/10
Click here for my sister Sondy's review

If you like Patricia C. Wrede (and why wouldn't you?) I recommend picking up this collection of short stories sometime. If you've never read any of her books, I suggest starting with Dealing with Dragons, although you don't have to, and although I haven't read all her books, so I don't say that with complete authority. It's just that there were a few stories in the collection I wasn't crazy about, which makes Dealing with Dragons of a higher consistent quality. And there was a story about the Enchanted Forest characters which "spoils" who ends up with who. I put it in quotation marks because it's one of those obvious pairings, and the suspense in that respect isn't what makes the stories.

Book of Enchantments was copyright 1996. There are ten stories from rather various sources, conveniently detailed in Notes from the Author at the back. The original stories range all the way from 1981 up to the one story written for the collection, which I'm guessing, even if the publishing process was long (well, of course, it would be, it always is), would have been written in 1995 at the earliest. She talks about them in the order she wrote them rather than the order they're presented in the book -- it isn't the same order, although there are rough similarities. Swap a couple of the middle ones, move the oldest story in between them, move one of the newer ones towards the start, and you're all good. But anyway.

Four of the stories were written for anthologies -- a Liavek "shared world" anthology, a unicorn anthology put together by Bruce Coville, a Witch World anthology and a werewolf anthology put together by Jane Yolen, although it didn't end up making the cut for reasons of a humorous story not fitting with the tone. Oddly enough, of those four stories, only the Witch World one, "The Sword-Seller," felt very unlike Wrede's normal style. It was more dramatic and less humorous than her norm, but still good. I wouldn't pick up the book just for that one, but nonetheless, likable. On the other hand, out of the six stories not written for anthologies, maybe as many as four of them felt a little un-Wrede-like to me. Obviously I am not familiar with all the styles of Wrede. And I know, she is allowed to do dramatic and not just humorous. But I think I would prefer longer work for her dramatic, novels instead. Still, I guess some of the dramatic stories with nice premises or twists worked quite well. "Stronger Than Time" was a great Sleeping Beauty twist. But then, maybe because it was connected to a fairy tale, it was one of the ones that felt Wrede-like to me, despite not being laugh-out-loud funny. Meh. I'm so putting her in a box. Sorry, Patricia C. Wrede!

My favorites were the ones that felt totally like her to me -- "Rikiki and the Wizard," "The Princess, the Cat, and the Unicorn," and "Utensile Strength." Probably in fourth would be "The Sixty-Two Curses of Caliph Arenschadd." These stories were awesome.

"Rikiki and the Wizard" was the one I mentioned earlier was written for a Liavek anthology, which is why its subtitle is "A S'Rian Folk Story" -- I never would have guessed that the blue chipmunk god in this story was not Wrede's own creation, but no, she says in the Notes, "I had spent a good portion of one morning reading a book of American Indian folktales and had started wondering what sort of folk stories the Liavekans might tell each other, particularly about their not-too-bright chipmunk god, Rikiki."  Who would have thought someone else would have thought of such a thing?  At any rate, the story was hilarious. I ended up starting to read portions aloud to others in the room, but then going back and reading the tiny bit at the beginning I'd skipped and then reading the whole thing aloud. It was good.

It's more obviously understandable why I recognize and love the style in "The Princess, the Cat, and the Unicorn" and "Utensile Strength," as they're both set in the Enchanted Forest. The first was another read-aloud good one -- the cat of the title is so wonderfully cat-like ("'How would you like to have your tail stepped on?' 'I don't have a tail,' Elyssa said, considerably startled. 'And if you hadn't been lying in front of me, I wouldn't have stepped on you.' 'Cat's privilege,' said the cat, and began furiously washing his injured tail.'"), the unicorn is... well, to quote the Notes,

"Naturally, Enchanted Forest unicorns would be beautiful and magical and intelligent—but, being intelligent, they would certainly know just how beautiful and magical they were, and would expect to be treated accordingly..." ("'Gracious!' Elyssa said. 'Yes I am, aren't I?' said the unicorn complacently.')

And as for "The Princess" part of the title, I think I shall simply quote again, from the beginning of the story, this time. That seems best and most enjoyable.

"Princess Elyssa and her sisters lived in the tiny, comfortable kingdom of Oslett, where nothing ever seemed to go quite the way it was supposed to. The castle garden grew splendid dandelions, but refused to produce either columbine or deadly nightshade. The magic carpet had a bad case of moths and the King's prized seven-league boots only went five-and-a-half leagues at a step (six leagues, with a good tailwind).

There were, of course, compensations. None of the fairies lived close enough to come to the Princesses' christenings (though they were all most carefully invited) so there were no evil enchantments laid on any of the three Princesses. The King's second wife was neither a wicked witch nor an ogress, but a plump, motherly woman who was very fond of her stepdaughters. And the only giant in the neighborhood was a kind and elderly Frost Giant who was always invited to the castle during the hottest part of the summer (his presence cooled things off wonderfully, and he rather liked being useful).

The King's councillors, however, complained bitterly about the situation. They felt it was beneath their dignity to run a kingdom where nothing ever behaved quite as it should. They grumbled about the moths and dandelions, muttered about the five-and-a-half-league boots, and remonstrated with the Queen and the three Princesses about their duties...

'It's all very well for a middle Princess to be ordinary,' the chief of the King's councillors told her in exasperation. 'But this is going too far!'...

But the councillors refused to give up. They badgered and pestered and hounded poor Elyssa until she simply could not bear it anymore. Finally she went to her stepmother, the Queen, and complained.

'Hmmph,' said the Queen. 'They're being ridiculous, as usual. I could have your father talk to them, if you wish.'

'It won't do any good,' Elyssa said.

'You're probably right,' the Queen agreed, and they sat for a moment in gloomy silence.

'I wish I could just run off to seek my fortune,' Elyssa said with a sigh.

Her stepmother straightened up suddenly. 'Of course!  The very thing. Why didn't I think of that?'

'But I'm the middle Princess,' Elyssa said. 'It's youngest Princesses who go off to seek their fortunes.'

'You've been listening to those councillors too much,' the Queen said. 'They won't like it, of course, but that will be good for them.' The Queen was not at all fond of the councillors because they kept trying to persuade her to turn her stepdaughters into swans or throw them out of the castle while the King was away."


And as for "Utensile Strength," well, it's a story about the Frying Pan of Doom. Need I say more?  No, but you can count on me wanting to. I mean, it's just so quotable.

"'And Mother says it was her best frying pan and now she's going to have to start all over breaking in a new one, because you can't cook chicken in the Frying Pan of Doom. It just wouldn't be right.'"

"'Heroes want a weapon that sounds heroic and magical—the Thunder Mace or the Sword of Stars—not the Frying Pan of Doom. And on top of that... Well, here, try to touch it. But be careful.'

Gingerly, Daystar reached out and touched the side of the pan. 'Ow!  It's hot!'

Tamriff nodded. 'Nobody can pick it up unless they're wearing an oven mitt. And no hero wants to go into battle wearing an oven mitt and swinging a frying pan—or at least, none of the fifty-seven heroes Father has checked with so far.'"


Heh heh.

Book Review Tags

If you come to my blog instead of reading posts in an RSS reader, you may notice I've added an annoyingly long list of links to my sidebar, a list of "Book Reviews by Tags." I'm looking into getting it changed to its own separate page, like the "Book Reviews by Author" one, but so far I don't see a way to do that. As far as I can tell, Blogger will only allow gadgets to be added to all pages on a blog at once, not to specific ones. And without a gadget, I'd have to link to every single category and every single book by hand. That is not going to happen. Unh-uh. The mind boggles. Heh, I'm only about halfway through adding the tags to my book reviews as it is. I did "Book Reviews by Author" by hand, but there's just one author and one link per book -- so much easier!

Anyway, despite how much space it's taking up in my sidebar, I like it. I'm hoping it will be helpful, that it'll be a handy way to find some other books that might interest you. Plus I just like tagging books for its own sake, and I'd like to have some native tags instead of the LibraryThing ones. Sorry about the "br:" at the beginning of all of them. Since Blogger doesn't have sub-labels, it was the only way to keep them all together (for my own sanity as I check the boxes to get the two gadgets to display either the book review tags or the regular labels) and to distinguish them from the regular tags/labels (because I might tag a post about "Suffering," and that isn't the same as tagging a book I review about "Suffering").

My book reviews from here on out won't have that section at the top telling you how I'd tag them in LibraryThing, those tags will just be with the regular labels down at the bottom of the post. But I'm not going to go back through all my old reviews and remove the LibraryThing tag section. That'd be silly. And I'm never silly.

In related news, I see I haven't actually written and posted a new book review here in almost two years! Yikes! Sorry about that! I knew it'd been a long time, but I didn't realize it was that long! I think I'll start posting some new ones soon. Any day now. Honest.

I'd started thinking of book reviews as much harder than other kinds of posts. (Not the reading part. I almost always do that obsessively, with only the sorts of exceptions that prove the rule.) I'll try to scale back on my perfectionism in that area, take them less seriously, and see if that helps. They ain't gonna be perfect anyway! And it's not like I won't still compulsively edit. There's a little room for slack, I think. Better than not posting any in two years (cue disgusted face).

Of course, there have also been other things on my plate, things that provided plenty of their own material to post about, like this and this. I suppose there's a reason the very last review I posted was of Home. Naahhh. Couldn't be. Um.

So, what do you think? Do you want to see more book reviews? Like the tags? Dislike them? Ideas on how to move them? Don't care and you're really not even sure why you're here? Can't believe I would spend so much of my time going on and on about this? Completely unrelated suggestions? Talk to me. Bonus points for commenting here instead of on my facebook page, so I don't look so lonely. :)

Alphabetized Book Reviews

averagecats.com: 3295 

I think I shall make alphabetized lists of my book reviews. One by author, one by title, like Sondy used to do for Sonderbooks. I like that better than a search box -- depending on the search technology, it can be hard to be sure you haven't missed a book, to prove a negative. It's pretty easy with alphabetization. I can never remember whether Alexander McCall Smith is properly filed under "M" or "S," but all I have to do is check both places.

I don't post nearly as many reviews as I mean to, and at times I go quite a while without adding any new ones, but nonetheless, it's not something I'm going to stop doing entirely any time soon. It makes sense to me to have them organized by a little more than a loose chronology ("loose" because it doesn't necessarily even correspond to the order I originally read the books, or when I started writing about them).

Oh, and I hadn't noticed, apparently blogspot now has a thing about publishing pages as well as posts. I was thinking that possibly the next two posts would be beginnings of lists, and I'd create links to them in my sidebar, then update those posts as I added reviews. A little clunky, but it seemed like the way to go, using a blogging website rather than an independent website. And I like blogspot. But I guess now I won't be doing that. Still linking to each review and alphabetizing it by hand, since I don't want to go through all the trouble of finding an easier way, but that shouldn't be that bad, especially once I'm done with the old reviews. Besides, I'm not working at a bookstore or a library right now. If I can't mess with my own book organization, I just might go crazy.

Of course, if you're reading this on facebook, you'd have to click the link to the original post for any of this to be relevant. Clearly you should do that. At least, you know, if you've heard of a book, you're not sure yet if you're intrigued enough to read it, and so you think, "I wonder what Marcy thinks of that book?  I wonder if she's written a review of it?  Does she think I should read it?  I should go check!"  Yeah... I mean, I know that happens to me all the time. Ooh, or if you want to buy a book and you remember that I reviewed it and that if you buy it on amazon and use my link to get to amazon and purchase said book I get a teeny bit of money. It's never happened yet, but it could, darn it. Especially with handy alphabetized lists for easier reference. Uh-huh.

Home

averagecats.com: Individuality

Home by Marilynne Robinson

Read: 4/20/10-5/2/10

LibraryThing tags, if I had put this on LibraryThing: Family, Dysfunction, Grace, SLOBS

This book wasn't quite satisfying to me, but I decided to share about it anyway because of a couple compelling features: first, it's one of the only books I can think of about people from a big family -- after the kids are all grown up. An obvious hole in the existing literature, for people like me... not that there are many of us, but still. I thought it might interest my siblings. In Home they're all dispersed, the book is only really about three of the family members, but the large family still changes things, affects their memories and so on.

Second, the father in this book is... growing at least a little senile. I related to that too, although I feel funny saying much about it on my blog. But for those who don't know, I, being the next-to-youngest in a very large family, have older parents than people would expect for someone of my age. Like Glory, the main character in Home (although she's actually the youngest, and there were only... eight in the family, I think). My mother... seems to be losing some of her memory.

It was weird, seeing things I've never even put into words, skillfully and even lovingly portrayed in a fictional character completely unconnected to my family. To see in someone else's character some of the things I think odd about my mother in particular, apparently a possible general feature of someone growing old, even where it's only a more extreme version of a trait that was already there. Sorry, it's not easy to be more specific.

It was a hard book to read, but I liked it; or at least some of the time I liked it. I still want to read Gilead before I come to a final verdict -- the book jacket claimed Home is an "entirely independent" work, but I'm not sure I trust it. The father in Home is the best friend of the main character in Gilead. Apparently.

Oh, by the way, as to what the book's really about, as opposed to what I personally identified with about it -- it's about a son who fills the prodigal son and rebellious preacher's kid roles, but not exactly; it's about a father and retired preacher who loves him, but is sometimes horrible; and about a grown woman who has come back home because her own dreams have fallen down around her, watching the father-son relationship, wanting to be important somehow to her big older brother she's always admired but... Um. She's not the narrator, it's in third person, but it's still from her perspective. The book's not really about her, but it is. Yeah, a helpful description, I know. Anyway. And, of course, it's about home, in all its glory or lack thereof. So many things about home. Marilynne Robinson is very, very good (in this novel, at least) at showing the ambiguities and complexities of human relationships. There aren't a lot of dramatic, earth-shattering events in Home, but she makes even a person over-analyzing a situation totally engaging. She packs a lot of emotion into very simple sentences and scenes. So yeah, I think I liked it.

"'It is an oddly patient beast, my carnal self. I call it Snowflake. For, you know, its intractable whiteness. Among other things.'"