Review: Crochet One-Skein Wonders

I...am a busy lazy blogger who has been otherwise occupied.  I have a lot of things I want to blog about right now: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Brad Paisley's new album, and Gail Simone's Batgirl #19.  This is, of course, in addition to the regular blogging that I normally do--I've just read Julie Garwood's Sweet Talk, and Janet Evanovich's Notorious Nineteen, some of my best friends are writing like maniacs, and in the meantime, I sent off a dissertation chapter two weeks ago to my director (which is awesome!).

But first things first.  I may get to these other subjects; I may not.  What I do have is a book review for you.

Durant, Judith and Edie Eckman. Crochet One-Skein Wonders: 101 Projects from Crocheters Around the World. Storey Publishing: 2013. Paperback. +288 pages.

Full Disclosure: I received a digital advanced reader's copy of this book for reviewing purposes.

I have but one complaint about this book: where are the difficulty guides?

This book is full of great projects, and as it says, they truly are projects from around the world--particularly, it features several amigurumi projects and several projects that feature Tunisian crochet.  Variety is certainly not lacking here--there are plenty of hat and scarf patterns, as part of the typical crochet fare (especially as you would expect for a book that focuses on one-skein projects)--but there are also pillows, jewelry, stuffed animals, baby clothes, and some neat projects like a water bottle holder, yoga mat bag, and e-reader holder.  And the authors have kindly added visual patterns as well as the usual scripted patterns for those who have difficulty following along with crochet patterns--they've thought of almost everything.

I tried my hand at a few projects, which is part of the reason this review has taken so long to come to light.  One of the first I tried was one of the fingerless gloves.  My hands are always freezing when I'm typing, so these were great.  I wasn't entirely sure that it was going to work when I was crocheting them, but they turned out.

I decided that I would try a few other projects out of the book as well.  The book is divided up into yarn weights, and I have a supply of worsted-weight yarn that makes my husband groan every time he sees it, so I thought I would try working with some of those projects, which was where I came straight into my complaint about this book.

I am not a novice crocheter.  I have made afghans and pillows, come up with my own amigurumi patterns, and to be honest, if Fox hadn't started sending cease and desist letters to Etsy shop owners who were selling versions of the Firefly 'Jayne' hat, I could churn those out without a problem.

Yet there are some real problems here with the fact that there aren't any clues on how difficult patterns are for crocheters.  Most of these patterns are for intermediate to expert crocheters, and even then, some might have problems, and I've wondered if there aren't any difficulty ratings because too many patterns would have a four or five out of five difficulty on them.

Still, for someone who's crocheted a long time and is looking for some variety, this book is a great resource.  A.

Book Review: The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards

Jansma, Kristopher. The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards. New York: Viking, 2013.  Hardcover. +272 pages. $26.95. Release Date: 21 March 2013.

Full Disclosure: I received an advance digital copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes.

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"THE UNCHANGEABLE SPOTS OF LEOPARDS follows the worldwide travels of a deliberately unreliable narrator and his two friends: Julian McGann, a brilliant but troubled collegiate literary rival, and the high-society Broadway actress Evelyn, also known as the girl who got away. Struggling to define themselves as individuals but inextricably bound together, the three chase love, success, and each other from jazz clubs in Manhattan to a writer’s colony in Iceland, from the mountains of Sri Lanka to a wedding on the lip of the Grand Canyon. After the trio has a disastrous falling out, the narrator weaves an intricate web of fiction around himself that allows him to dodge responsibility—but never fully escape it.   It is only once he is able to put aside his fictions and confess his own role that he is set free.

 As much a coming-of-age story about a young man and his friends trying to find their way in the world as an exploration of the nature of truth, Kristopher Jansma’s THE UNCHANGEABLE SPOTS OF LEOPARDS will appeal to readers of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and David Mitchell’s The Cloud Atlas, with its elegant study of the stories we tell to find out who we really are." - Viking Press Release

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I remember the first time a book reached out and, to use an Internet colloquialism, punched me right in the feels.  I was a teenager reading a book called The Mozart Season by Virginia Euwer Wolff, and when I was finished, I put it away, but the book stayed with me.  Six months later, I read it again.  Six months later, I read it yet again.  Each time, it kept making the emotional impact.

In graduate school, I recognized that feeling again when I picked up A.S. Byatt's Possession for a class.  I didn't have the luxury of putting it away, thinking about it, and picking it back up again months later; I had to sit down and write about in depth about it and pick apart the paradoxes and the tangles of plot.  I lived and breathed Possession for a semester until it infused my soul.

The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, like these other volumes, is one of those books that takes up residence right behind your breastbone and settles in, molding itself and wrapping itself around your heart and changing you, perhaps in a subtle way, until you are no longer quite the same person you were before you read it.  In the same way that Possession was about reading and literary study, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards is about writing.

Viking noted, in their blurb to me, that this book and its narrator follows Emily Dickinson's lines to "Tell the truth, but tell it slant."  It also reminded me of a remark attributed to Mark Twain: "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story," and something I've heard my father say: "In a room full of storytellers, the first liar never has a chance."

Simply put, this is a story about telling stories.  And it's intensely clever about doing so--at the beginning of the book, there's a note that asks the reader to contact "Haslett & Grouse Publishers" if the reader believes they are the author of the book.  I admit, I completely skipped over that--as most people would, I think--until I read a question and answer with Jansma.  The author's note is beautifully written, and I remember thinking, as I read the note, how much I would like to read that story, of how Jansma had lost his first novels.

It wasn't until I was well into the book that I realized the author's note was by the fictional narrator.  I paused, went back to the author's note, and read it again, suddenly realizing that I was reading the story I'd wanted to read, only that I'd made the cardinal mistake of literary criticism--one of the first things you learn not to do--to conflate the narrator and the author.  What's more--I'd been intended to.

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I've spent two weeks contemplating how to write this review.  There are so many insights about writing as a profession, from the adjunct professor to the professional plagiarist to the world-class novelist (writing from the perspective of a writer for a paper mill was particularly inspired, I thought, and as an academic, I've always wondered about that thought process).

That is not to say that the book is perfect.  There is a break at the midpoint of the novel that keeps the book from being seamless in its narrative that causes an abrupt shift as the reader struggles to catch back up with what's going on and tries to figure out if the characters now appearing are the same characters as before; if there is a main weakness in this novel, this is it.

This book, will, very simply, take more time.  I'm going to have to live with it, come back to it and re-read it, think about it, and yes, perhaps write about it some more, because it is a book that is worth being written about, if only to figure out where, in this postmodern morass of lies and fictions, the germ of truth is (if there is one) that I, as the reader, will choose to believe.

A-

Book Review: Scotsmen Prefer Blondes

Ramsey, Sara. Scotsmen Prefer Blondes. Spencerhill Associates, 2012. Paperback. +326 pages. $11.99. Release Date: 30 March 2012.

Full Disclosure: I received an ebook copy of this book for reviewing purposes.

I hate reading a bad romance novel, and I'm afraid this qualifies.  Granted, I'm being a little nitpicky here, and granted, I have to admit, once again, that I judge all Regency romances by Stephanie Laurens, which probably isn't fair.  But I didn't find this book, the second in Ramsey's Muses of Mayfair series terribly compelling.

The general plot is that two friends go to Scotland to meet Malcolm, our hero, who intends to marry one of them, but who promptly falls in love with Amelia, her best friend.  The expected hijinks ensue, though in a reversal of most romance novel tropes, Prudence, who hadn't wanted to marry Malcolm in the first place, is quite angry with Amelia for "stealing" her man.

There is one further complication--Malcolm has political tendencies, and Amelia, unbeknownst to most, writes Gothic novels and satires, a la Ann Radcliffe.  This inevitably causes a lot of problems.

So what's wrong with this book?  It does follow the general pattern of a romance novel well enough, after all.  But the main problem is that I never really connected with the characters.  Prudence's anger with Amelia was so unexpected that it threw me somewhat.  Amelia's concern for Prudence, while mentioned often, almost seemed like an afterthought.

Now, generally, I don't discuss the sex scenes of these novels.  This is partly because I know that my dad reads my blog occasionally, and I'd rather not embarrass him too much.  But this is just completely astonishing here, as Ramsey uses certain phrases in the scene that would make the gals at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books facepalm.

First, Ramsey refers to a certain portion of the male anatomy as a "manroot."  While this does bring to mind certain images of tubers, I don't think that vegetation is necessarily the way you want your reader to think about a man.

It really sucked to be him after he had a lucky shot
that took out the U.S.S. Grissom. Both he and his manroot were
disintegrated by Captain Kruge.

.

The other part that bothered me came only two paragraphs later, when Ramsey notes that our heroine's "body disintegrated."  First, I heard Darth Vader warn Boba Fett not to disintegrate the crew of the Millennium Falcon.  Then I thought about Star Trek III.

I suppose that it's not that Scotsmen Prefer Blondes is a bad book, necessarily.  It's just not very good, and it's certainly not worth the $11.99 price point that Amazon currently has on the paperback.  If you're inclined to read it, go for the Kindle edition, which is selling for $3.99, because I wouldn't pay more than that for this book.

Scotsmen Prefer Blondes: D+

Book Review: Leaving Mundania

Stark, Lizzie. Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role-Playing Games. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2012. Paperback. +272 pages. $16.95. Release Date: 1 May 2012.

Full disclosure: I received an advance digital copy of this book for reviewing purposes.

Leaving Mundania was one of the more interesting books I've read in a while.  Being a geek myself, I'm familiar with live action role-playing games.  Many of my friends in college played, and while I never made it to an actual LARP event, I knew the basics of how to play, had my own boffer sword (think a homemade Nerf sword--a pool noodle carefully duct-taped around a PVC pipe), and enjoyed practicing beating the crap out of my friends with it.

I never went to a LARP event, because when you got right down to it, it meant camping and tromping through the woods, and well, I didn't want to go.  I've always been much more of a table-top gaming girl myself (which I loved doing with these same friends).  In the intervening years, the LARP that I knew has gone under, unfortunately, so my husband and his brother don't spend weekends "playing whoop-ass" (as my mother-in-law likes to refer to it).

This is the LARP I knew--going out, dressing up in funny costumes, and beating the crap out of your best buds with a Nerf sword while traipsing through the woods after "treasure."  It meant many weekends making swords and sewing costumes (We learned how to make spider legs out of pantyhose) and a lot of fun.  While I never went, I knew exactly what was going on, whose characters had done what, and what the plot was.

What I didn't realize until reading Leaving Mundania, is that is only one kind of LARP.

I suppose, in retrospect, I should have realized that.  After all, I've played more than one table-top RPG and they all come together different.  Star Wars and Star Trek play on two different systems (d20 and d6, respectively), while Dungeons and Dragons takes a different approach, and anything involving Cthulhu is completely different.  Stark moves through several different kinds of LARP, from the boffer weapon LARP, to one that exists in a Nexus and allows people to play any kind of character they want, to the Society for Creative Anachronism, Cthulhu, and the more intense and strange Scandinavian LARPs.

First of all, Stark gets credit for being a nerd herself, though she obviously didn't start out as a LARPing nerd (few of us do, after all).  She recognizes someone playing Susan from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, she cracks Star Trek and Star Wars jokes, and one of her chapters is titled "Cthulhu fhtagn!"  So what I really liked about this book was that Stark went into it with respect.  She even devotes an entire chapter to the misconceptions people have about LARPs, Dungeons and Dragons, and even Magic, after the 1980s and 1990s when parents were all told that these kinds of games were converting their children to devil worship, not realizing that a D&D game looks more like the 8-Bit re-enactment than something out of a bad Johnny Depp movie.

Despite her respect, there are a couple of problems--she highlights the polyamorous relationship of three players, which has very little to do with the actual game and is something that people who might be uncomfortable with LARPing to begin with could then use an an excuse not to get involved, if they were just exploring it based on Stark's book.  But I am assuming that the people in this relationship said it was okay to use their full names, as Stark respects the wishes of those she interviews and withholds their names, as they don't want to be outed as LARPers.  In the United States, she notes, LARPers can be outcasts even in the geek community.

What's of more interest to me was Stark's journey through LARP in history, which points out that entertainments put on for queens and kings of Britain mimicked LARPs.  She also spends some time with the military and the exercises they use to immerse soldiers as much in a real world combat simulation as possible.  And then she goes to Scandinavia to take part in more artistic LARPs that focus much more on emotional character development than anything else.

For all the time that Stark spends playing in LARPs and her conclusion, I'm still not sure that she would consider herself a LARPer, though.  This still feels very much like the tale of an outsider, carefully trying to negotiate her way through a strange, new society.  While granted, this may be true, I think I was hoping for an ending where she hadn't just gotten more comfortable with herself because she'd been around all these weirdos who had no problem dressing up, but an ending where she actually still felt like LARP would be part of her life.  For all the tales of acceptance and fun of the LARP community, it still sounds like she's not entirely comfortable with it.

And granted, that's okay.  LARP isn't for everyone.  And overall, this book really does open LARP up to more people.  If you're interested in learning about the different forms of LARP and LARPing, this is a great book to get you started.

Leaving Mundania - B+

Book Review: Gravity by Brian Clegg

Clegg, Brian.  Gravity: How the Weakest Force in the Universe Shaped Our Lives. New York: St. Martin's, 2012. Hardcover. +336 pages. $25.99.  Release date: 22 May 2012.

Full disclosure: I received a digital advance copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Gravity is one of those books that is trying to do two things and doing neither very well.  At once, it's attempting to be a history of gravity as we know it and to explain gravity as well as possible in layman's terms, but reading through it, I found it a huge disappointment on both sides.

This is partly because of the organization.  Clegg jumps around from historical ideas to explanation with little to no transition.  I'm not sure that there would have been a better way to organize the book--after all, one must understand Newton before one gets to Einstein, but it's not well done.

I think the largest problem is that Clegg is not a historian of science, and I'm inclined to think that he had a bad experience with one somewhere in his career--either that, or he is one of those unfortunate souls who got to college, realized that things did not work the way he'd been told in high school and has continued to resent it the rest of his life.  Most of the beginning part of the book is correcting misconceptions from high school science and history, which I truly have no problem with.  After all, Clegg does address the fact that the Greeks and the medieval world knew that the world was round, for example.  He points out that Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages did not repress science, but encouraged it, and he points out that the medieval world, while not yet at the point to recognize that the earth was not the center of the universe, did realize that the earth rotated.

Yet at the same time, Clegg's also correcting things that really don't matter.  No, according to the Gregorian calendar change, Galileo did not die the same year Newton was born.  But does it really matter?  And is the brief digression into Latin philology necessary?  And Clegg makes assumptions about the feelings of scientists without any evidence for them, sending him into one-sentence flights of fancy that is incredibly distracting from the rest of the text.  The same thing goes for a brief discussion about the inside-out nature of anti-space and his completely gratuitous mention of Galaxy Quest, without any real meat to the analogy.

Clegg is best at underscoring some of the newer developments, such as Horava Gravity, which he claims may, if future experiments work out, may someday reconcile Newtonian physics and general relativity.  These are relatively new developments, which I'd not heard of.  Granted, while I am an English professor, the history of science is one of my specialties, and I'm by no means ignorant of much of what he's saying.

One section which really bothered me was Clegg's digression regarding the rubber sheet analogy.  Oftentimes, physicists use the rubber sheet analogy to explain how space-time is warped by gravity.  Here's an illustration from Stanford (from an article about Gravity Probe B, which Clegg does discuss in the book) that might help explain.

If you want a really useful explanation, I'd click through to the article.  But the point is that everything with mass distorts space-time around it.  This is an example of it simply in one dimension.  But Clegg has problems with it, because in this illustration, if we pretend the probe in the picture is a marble rolling around to the center of the well, we forget that there is also a little distortion around the probe.

Clegg's point is not that this is necessarily wrong, but that it's overly simple--we forget that it's distorting space-time, not just space.  That's all well and good, but the digression wasn't necessary.  Clegg could have made the point without the need to attack the model. 

And I suppose that's the real problem with this book.  Clegg is constantly on the offense, either against bad history, bad illustrations, bad politicians who are cutting money from projects, and bad scientists who are letting them.  His explanations aren't clear, and the book itself would be immensely improved by illustrations for visual learners. 

All in all, if you want a good explanation of gravity and the way quantum mechanics may work with relativity, go read Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe or watch the NOVA series.  It may not be as up-to-date as Clegg's, but you'll learn more and you'll learn it more easily.

Gravity- D+

The Pulitzers and Review: Pirate King

The Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today, and for the first time in 35 years, there has not been a fiction prize awarded.  I've not read any of the three finalists for the Pulitzer, but I find it odd that none of them won.  After all, if you're a finalist for the Pulitzer, doesn't that, on some level, suggest that you are an author of a high enough caliber to win?

In any case, perusing the list, I was excited to see fellow academic and father of the critical theory of New Historicism, Stephen Greenblatt on the list for his new book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.  I'm a fan of Greenblatt's for several reasons--I use the Norton Shakespeare, for one thing, and Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare is a delightful book.  That's not to mention that New Historicism is part of my own particular critical viewpoint (more folded in with cultural studies, though).  Obviously, anyone with as many honors as Greenblatt has doesn't need the help of a lowly graduate student blogger, but I think The Swerve is going to be a book I'm going to want to read. It deals with finding a manuscript by Lucretius called On the Nature of Things, which might be the first written work to definitively challenge the idea that nature required a God and which, among other things, posited the existence of atoms.  I think it might be helpful when it comes to my dissertation--at the very least, it's right up my scientific/literature alley.

On to the book review: Pirate King by Laurie King!  I've loved King's Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series ever since I picked up The Beekeeper's Apprentice five or six years ago.  Russell is Holmes apprentice of sorts, and she does eventually end up marrying him.  It's highly entertaining to watch Russell go through all sorts of madcap adventures (some more so than others), outwit Holmes at his own game, and generally solve all sorts of problems in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (though I have to wonder if Holmes isn't getting a bit old now, since Pirate King was set in 1924, though apparently only ten years have passed since the beginning of the series).

That said, Pirate King is definitely one of Russell's more madcap adventures, to the point where the plot is almost too tangled to pick apart.  But the plot is designed to be this way, as Russell (and Holmes, by extension) is investigating a mystery involving a silent film company who is making a movie which--if I understand this correctly, and I'm not sure that I do--is about a silent film company making an adaptation of Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance.

Yes, I'll let the silent film of a silent film of a musical part sink in for a moment.

In any case, hiring of pirates, an insane voyage over the Mediterranean where Russell must shepherd 13 young actresses, a kidnapping and heroic escape all ensue.  One thing I did notice was that there was quite a bit of what we academics would refer to as gender-bending.  One of the actresses is actually an actor dressed up as a girl.  There's also quite a bit of reference to some of the characters possibly being gay.

This strikes me as odd for one reason in particular.  Though sexual attitudes got progressively more open after the turn of the century, 1924 was still only thirty years after Oscar Wilde's trial.  While World War I had opened up a lot of new ideas, the odds of a proper lady thinking about the possibility of homosexual activity would have been unusual.  Now, granted, Mary Russell is never truly depicted as a proper lady, but the previous novels had been very much more in character with contemporary literature of the fin de siecle.

I'm not suggesting that people didn't know or talk about homosexuality in that era--obviously that's not true.  I suppose to a certain extent, I've been so deeply stuck in Victorian literature for the past several months that anything that would have been considered "transgressive" during that time period strikes me as odd--anything Sherlockian seems like it needs to be firmly Victorian, though Conan Doyle's original Sherlock Holmes stories were written from 1881-1927.  But I do think that this is symptomatic of a larger problem that King is having as she progresses through the Mary Russell series.  It almost feels as if the previous novels were more carefully researched and set than these later novels. King has said that Russell is what Holmes would be if he was a woman, of the twentieth century, and interested in theology.  I think the problem is in the twentieth century.  Mary Russell might be, dare I say it, too progressive for the time period?

Maybe I'm wrong, but something seemed a little bit off about this novel, and this was the only thing that straight out jumped out at me as being that little bit odd.  It still is a rip-roaring adventure, though a bit slower paced than I remember some of the other Mary Russell novels being (despite the seeming frenetic pace of the action Russell seems to be amidst), Holmes makes his surprise appearance, and Mary saves the day with her philological talents.  It's not the best of the Mary Russell novels, but it's hardly the worst detective story I've ever read. (I'm looking at you, Catherine Coulter and James Patterson).

Pirate King - B

Update and Copper Beach Review

1. Dear Google, I hate Blogger's new dashboard.  It sucks.

2. Well, as to where I've been the last few weeks, I've either been obsessively studying for prelims, taking prelims, or obsessively checking my email waiting for preliminary exam results.  The good news is that I passed the written exams!  I take my 18th Century oral exam on 19 April, and am still waiting for the Victorian exam to be scheduled, but I feel much more confident going into orals than I did going into the written exams.  It's one last hurdle.

3. In the meantime, I've really got to get cracking on my dissertation prospectus, as it's due at the end of the month, but let's face it, I kick ass when it comes to deadlines.

4. In other news this week, I was also awarded the McDaniel Award for Excellence in Teaching by my department, which recognizes excellence in teaching by graduate students.  This was a huge honor, and I was blessed to have a good friend and mentor present me with the award at the Liberal Arts Award Ceremony yesterday.  I certainly could not have asked for a better role model as either a grad student or a teacher.  Love you, A.T.!

5. I have so many reviews to catch up on.  In the next few weeks, I have several galley reviews to post for the following books:

Gravity: How the Weakest Force in the Universe Shaped Our Lives by Brian Clegg
Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role-Playing Games by Lizzie Stark
Star Trek FAQ: Everything Left to Know About the First Voyages of the Starship Enterprise by Mark Clark
Scotsmen Prefer Blondes by Sara Ramsay

So those are on the immediate to-do list for the next few weeks, starting with Brian Clegg's Gravity.

6. I've been able to take some really good advantage of the used bookstore and the used book section at Hastings recently.  I've come up with the first novels in some series by Christine Feehan and Kresley Cole, I managed to find my own copy of The Help, which I've been dying to read.  I got an awesome book called Star Trek and Philosophy: The Wrath of Kant (yes, it was the pun that won me over).  And I found one of Stephanie Lauren's Cynster novels that I've NEVER read.  I didn't think there was one out there I hadn't read, but I have a copy of it now too!

Plus, the university library has opened a new popular reading collection for new books that come in, which makes just browsing the shelves looking for something to read much easier.  Right now, I checked out Sherrilyn Kenyon's Retribution (again, since I didn't get to it last time) and Charlene Harris' Dead Reckoning.  Oh, and did I mention that I finally found a used paperback copy of Janet Evanovich's Smokin' Seventeen?  I realize that a lot of time my reviews are way behind the publication dates of novels, but there you go.

And--let's not forget that I've read Copper Beach by Jayne Ann Krentz recently too, and I need to review that as well.

7. Well, on that note, there's no time like the present.  So, Copper Beach!  I borrowed this from the library's popular reading collection as well, and I did enjoy it.  It's the first book in Krentz's Dark Legacy Trilogy and the plot is fairly standard--Abby is a rare book seller with psychic powers, Sam Coppersmith is after a book to help his family understand/keep bad guys from getting the power to unlock the psychic power in certain rocks his family owns.  The characters are your stock romance novel characters, and that's just fine--after all, that's what we read romance novels for--the feisty female who needs protection but doesn't want it, and the alpha male who is determined to provide that protection, be it from physical or emotional bad stuff.

What was difficult was transitioning from Krentz's Arcane Society series to this one, as this one doesn't seem to fit into the Arcane Society universe.  There is no mention of the aforementioned Arcane Society or Jones and Jones.  But Krentz seems to still be using a lot of the same ideas about psychic phenomenon that she developed while writing the Arcane Society books, such as dreamlight energy.  This makes me wonder if this will intersect back in with Arcane Society or if she's working on creating a new universe here.

To be honest, I'm not upset that Krentz is moving away from the Arcane Society.  The last few novels have been somewhat disappointing: you can see my reviews of Quicksilver and In Too Deep and  Canyons of the Night at the links provided.  But especially after reading In Too Deep and Canyons of the Night, I had really started to wonder if the Arcane Society stories were kind of played out, especially after In Too Deep, which just fell kind of flat for me.  Copper Beach was much more--I keep wanting to type flavorful here.  Flavorful in that you got lots of stuff besides the romance and mystery.  Sam had to come and help rescue Abby from her insane family, for example.  There was much more depth to this novel than there has been to the last few Arcane Society books, and that's a definite improvement in my view.

Copper Beach - B+

ETA: I should also note that I need to review Laurie King's Pirate King, but that'll have to wait until later.  :D

Book Review: Knits for Nerds

Full Disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher.

Take a look at what's out today, everyone! Toni Carr's Knits for Nerds was published today, and never, in my life, have I regretted being a crappy knitter before.

Until today.

The first thing I noticed was from the introduction--all the pictures were taken at NEIL GAIMAN'S HOUSE.

I can has?

There are only five patterns labeled "Easy" out of the 30+ patterns in the book, three of which are scarves--but really cool scarves. One is an easier version of the classic Dr. Who scarf:--basically this, but skinnier (and perhaps a little shorter). Unfortunately for me (but fortunate for all those who are more skilled knitters out there), there are some truly awesome patterns in here.

If I'm going through what I desperately want to add a +5 modifier to my knitting skill for, the number one thing is Carr's "Aim to Misbehave Brown Jacket." It's gorgeous, and I want it! Based on Firefly's Browncoat pattern, I couldn't help but think that River Tam would have had a Browncoat in this pattern. And as long as I'm on the Firefly themed patterns, the cunning scarf (one of the easy patterns) and the cunning socks might go well with the Jayne hat I crocheted for my brother-in-law a few years ago. Yeah. You know you want one (and knit patterns for the hat can be found all over the internet).

Other beautiful things I loved? The "Secret Beaded Bag." Done in purple tweedy yarn and embellished with some really pretty beads, it's inspired by Herminone Granger's Bag of Holding from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The "Light of Earendil" shrug is delicate and beautiful, and way beyond my skill level. It features a leaf pattern and beading, and makes me wish I was the kind of English teacher who could get away with the ethereal kind of clothing (all I can get away with is my tie-dyed skirt). One particular strength of this collection is the number of bags--including a laptop bag which can be spread out to make a chessboard.

My enthusiasm for these patterns not withstanding, there are a few bombs, which one would expect. The Princess hats (all based on Star Wars hairstyles) are a bit silly (though I can definitely see how "Padme's Battle Cape" would work for roller girls), and the Catwoman hat is patently ridiculous. And to be honest, I wasn't much of a fan of many of the patterns in the third section of the book that dealt with comics and manga, but that's more of a style thing on my part than a reflection on the patterns. Also, the sci-fi trivia used to fill in blank spaces at the ends of patterns is a bit hokey--if you've bought this book, you know the answers to these questions.

There is a fairly good how-to section at the back of the book to assist those novice knitters, like myself. Now if I can just get to where my purling doesn't look like a cat has taken its claws to my yarn.....

Overall, there is more good than bad in this book, and the "Aim to Misbehave Brown Jacket" is worth the price of admission alone. If you're a geek crafter, this is definitely a book for you. Grade: A-

Huh?

What is this? Where am I? Why can't I breathe through my nose?

In all seriousness, I have done almost nothing but read and fret in the last week. What have I been through? The Origin of Species (amazing), Darwin's Plots (academically interesting), a couple of books on 18th century history (in order to help calm my nerves about the exams at the end of March), a book on Victorian ideas, Lisa Kleypas' Because You're Mine and Eloisa James' This Duchess of Mine. Plus some Matthew Arnold for my dissertation. This upcoming week has more 18th century study, plus Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and a study of Victorian and modern poetics.

I had a very productive trip to Half Price Books this weekend. My husband and I had headed home for a family wedding (which was incredibly beautiful) and took three giant boxes of books to sell back while we were there (for which we got a grand total of $20. At least that paid for some of the books we bought and got the boxes out of the house. Half Price is a wonderful place, but it does not pay well). But I came away with three Eloisa James novels and a cross stitch book for fun, and several books that I think will come in handy for dissertation and exam studying--a book on general Victorian culture - What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew - the Norton 18th century anthology, a book about Herschel's discoveries, and a book called Apes, Angels and Victorians about Victorian perceptions of evolution, which is not a bad haul.

In the meantime, I'm also waiting for books to come from Amazon that I've ordered for my dissertation as well. I've ordered copies of some of the major Victorian scientific works of the era - Paley's Natural Theology, Chambers' Vestiges of the Natural Creation, and Lyell's Principles of Geology. At the same time, I've also ordered The Kristeva Reader and Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition to help me develop the theoretical underpinnings of my argument.

And yes, I am perfectly aware of how boring all that sounds and what an English nerd I am. In any case, I have a preliminary outline of how I want my first chapter of my dissertation to go, which is surprising in and of itself. Also, I really need to be working more on my prospectus instead, but my first focus really needs to be exams. Naturally, I'm hiding in romance novels. The Kleypas and James novels were pretty good, though I much preferred the Eloisa James novel--for one, it had much more of a seemingly conceivable plot.

No, what I really wanted to talk about today was Darwin. Most people who have talked to me in the last few weeks have heard this spiel already, but The Origin of Species is one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read.

Having been brought up in a semi-evangelical household, I'm not sure what I was expecting when I began Darwin. My parents never pushed creationism on us--certainly not literal creationism, but when you're homeschooled, you get some of it by osmosis through some of your textbooks and I certainly had friends who did take a very literal interpretation of it. In some aspects, I think I expected to open up The Origin of Species and find the devil waiting to pounce. I also think that I expected a very dry, dusty scientific tome that I was going to have to slog through to get anything out of.

I could not have been more wrong on both counts. Darwin was very respectful of the religious aspect. He never denies God, and he's very careful in The Origin of Species not to make any conclusions involving man (that's another book). Darwin was, by no means, an atheist out to eliminate God from the world. He was actually a devoted churchman who was buried in Westminster Abbey. And yes, he realized that there were going to be repercussions from the theory--he discusses them somewhat in the book. But he never dismisses the idea of a Creator. He is moving away from a literal interpretation of Genesis in order to make the geological and cosmological record fit with Christianity.

I've been having a discussion about this with Dr. K, and she says that this is no different than what John Henry Newman was doing. An Anglican turned Catholic who was looking for what he felt was the best, closest way to doing things the way Christ wanted, Newman felt that something had to change in the way that we conceived of the Old Testament. It couldn't be God, because God was perfect from the beginning. So what he came up with was instead the idea that it was not God who had changed, but humanity. Genesis makes sense for a less educated people who could not comprehend the intricacies of the universe. Like Christ does in the New Testament, the Old Testament teaches through stories, metaphor and analogy. Humanity is changing and becoming more advanced and increasing in their understanding. The only difference is that Darwin was coming at it from the scientific view and Newman from a religious view.

And in doing so, Darwin establishes a natural world in some of the most beautiful language. It's almost poetic in spots--how else could it be when you're describing something completely new and wondrous to the world?

Yes, I still realize that I'm an English nerd.

In any case, I feel like we should do with The Origin of Species what I've always felt we should do about other books, like Harry Potter and Twilight -- read it before making a decision about the merit of it. And I think we should do one more thing--take Darwin as he wanted to be taken, not as the a) evil of all mankind or b) the savior of the agnostics/atheists/evolutionists. Darwin falls somewhere in the middle of the creationism/evolution debate, and it's always in the middle where I look for truth.

*clunk*

So, I've been doing a lot of reading lately, and I do not have time or inclination to go into major reviews of what I've been reading. This is partly because it's late and I need to go get in the shower, partly because my head is so full of dissertation stuff that I can barely think, partly because I am frustrated with emails that have been coming in the last day and a half, and partly because for some strange reason I am hearing what sounds like muted guitar-thrashing solos in my right ear which is clearly either a sign of my impending mental breakdown or aliens trying to contact me through my teeth, both of which are equally likely.

So what does that mean? Quick and dirty book reviews!

Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas. Entertaining and witty. B+

A Duke of Her Own by Eloisa James. I remember this being entertaining enough at the time, but for the life of me, I can't remember--oh, wait, it was about Villiers. Okay, so it was actually pretty good, though it obviously didn't stick with me as well as her others. B-

Bitten by Kelley Armstrong. I almost didn't stick with this one as it started out so slow, but it was intriguing enough a take on werewolves and enough of a train wreck that I couldn't stop reading and have since started (but not finished) Stolen and have borrowed more/obtained more from Snarky Writer. B-

The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae by Stephanie Laurens. Oh, Stephanie Laurens, my love for you knows no bounds, and you have continued to blow me away in yet more of the best romance novels there are. The book just came out today, and my ever-patient and loving husband took me to Hastings to get it and then put up with my effectively ignoring him the rest of the evening and delving into the last book in the Cynster sisters trilogy where we finally get to meet the mysterious laird and learn why he's been so determined to kidnap one of the Cynster girls. And of course, it all turns out happily ever after. In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster might have my favorite hero in Jeremy Carling (because he reminds me so much of my own Prince Charming), but The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae hits every romance reader with one of the best stories I've read in a while. A+ (Yes, I'm a fangirl. Get over it.)

In other news, I've been doing a ridiculous amount of reading for my dissertation, but I am (obviously) trying to read something a little more light-hearted than discourse on Browning (though I'm so oddly excited by the prospect of dissertation research that I have determined, incontrovertibly, that I am the biggest nerd EVER). To that effect, I've checked out Sherrilyn Kenyon's Retribution and Richard Castle's Heat Rises (though I've not read Naked Heat yet either, but let's face it, they're basically episodes of Castle, so I think I can manage). I have already renewed them once, as I can't help feeling a little guilty for reading non-dissertation stuff. With the exception of The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae, which, let's face it, I would have started reading in the car on the way home if it a) hadn't been dark already and b) I didn't get carsick.

Anyway. Time for the shower and hopefully the guitar to stop shredding in my ear. It's so weird.

Book Review: The 9th Judgment

This book should have taken me three hours to read.

Instead, it took me three days.

Now, most of you know that this in and of itself is unusual. More unusual was the fact that I seriously considered not finishing it at all.

I've enjoyed the Women's Murder Club series for quite a while. It's been entertaining enough, and while I know that I've been behind, per usual, I finally got a copy of this and borrowed my grandmother's copy of 10th Anniversary and have been meaning to read them both for a while.

So what's the problem? This book commits the cardinal literary sin. It is boring as hell.

Let's start here: we know who the villains are in the first ten pages. We know exactly who they are, and within twenty-five pages, we know how the two cases are intricately connected in one of the most idiotic plots ever. Pete, a Iraq vet with some serious problems, is married to Heidi and has two kids. Pete is killing women and their babies because he can. Heidi is carrying on a lesbian relationship with Sarah, who is a teacher living a second life as a jewel thief and who is similarly married to an abusive husband. She breaks into a house and and the husband, Marcus, an actor, uses the opportunity to kill his wife (who is a friend of Heidi's, oddly enough).

Don't yell at me for spoilers. Almost all of this is outlined in the first twenty pages of the book. Only Pete's seeming 'reason' is held back, and it's contrived beyond belief, as is the ending, where Heidi goes into witness protection and is allowed to take Sarah with her (Sarah, who then mails all the jewels she's stolen back to Boxer, partly because she now has an out from her abusive marriage and partly because she doesn't want to take the rap for the murder of Marcus' wife).

Then there's the problems with the shift in perspective. We keep going from third person limited in Pete and Sarah's POVs, to Lindsey Boxer's first person point of view. It's enough to make your head spin.

It has more white space than type--chapters should last longer than two or three hundred words. A two or three hundred word chapter isn't artistic. It's lazy.

Things only pick up at the end of the book in the last two sections--after the case has wrapped up--when Boxer thinks Joe's been killed in a plane crash. Only he hasn't. So then they take some time off, and it turns out that she may have just inadvertently passed up her opportunity at promotion by being incommunicado. What happens next? You'll have to read 10th Anniversary to find out!

Uh, no. I won't. I'm sorry, but even though there is a little piece of me wanting to peek at the opening pages of 10th Anniversary to see what happened, I refuse. I simply refuse. The only reason I finished this book was pure stubbornness.

The odd thing is, I've liked James Patterson before. I remember liking the previous installments of the Women's Murder Club. I've only read the first two Alex Cross books--sorry, serial killers tend to prey on young women, which I still am, so I think I'll pass--but they also struck me as being well-written, despite the incongruity of James Patterson writing a black man. I don't know if the problem is Patterson or Maxine Paetro, the co-writer of the WMC books (and, who I suspect, is the main force behind them at this point, given Patterson's penchant for farming books out to co-writers, much the way that Clive Cussler has done). And perhaps it's me--it's been quite a while since I've read a WMC book, and it's possible that my taste has changed, but The 9th Judgment is not a good read.

Final Grade: D+

Year-End Wrap-Up

It's that time again--the time of year to review what's gone on in the reading world as it revolves around me. The official book total for the year: 68 new books read. (I don't count the number of books I read over and over again, otherwise Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards! would be on the list a hundred and fifty times by now). Most of these books were for school, and since I had to transfer from LivingSocial to Good Reads, I can only accurately describe the books that I read from July as books from this year. In any case, the best books (that I read) of 2011 (in no particular order except for the first one):

1. Snuff - Terry Pratchett. As I said in my review before, while this is not the funniest or my favorite Terry Pratchett book, it is, without a doubt, the best book he's ever written.

2. Heir to the Empire - 20th Anniversary Edition - Timothy Zahn. Okay, so I realize that this kind of skirts my rules on books, but you know what? There's so much new stuff in this edition that it qualifies. It's amazing to go behind the scenes and get a glimpse of Zahn's thought process as he relaunched Star Wars for the next generation--and I'd like to point out that it's a sight better than anything else that has come out of Del Rey for Star Wars in a long time. I've quit reading the Fate of the Jedi series, as I discussed with a friend via texting today.

3. Choices of One - Timothy Zahn. The above statement, of course, does not apply to anything Tim Zahn writes. Thrawn being badass? Yes, please.

4. Ghost Story- Jim Butcher. It's not my favorite Dresden book--and things have gotten a whole lot darker. But it was still great and I'm still panting for more.

5. Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin. I read this for my American expatriate novel class, and I'm still struck by how hauntingly beautiful it is.

6. Gabriel's Ghost - Linnea Sinclair. I'm continually disappointed that I can't find more of her books in the bookstore. Though this is a romance novel, I'm amazing at her world-building ability.

7. Twilight's Dawn - Anne Bishop. Black Jewels' verse short stories. This is one that I've kept coming back to since I got it--especially the last story, set after Janelle's death.


On the other end of the spectrum, books I hated this year:

1. Knockout - Catherine Coulter. STOP WRITING PARANORMAL NOVELS WHEN THE SERIES HASN'T BEEN PARANORMAL BEFORE.

2. Death Echo - Elizabeth Lowell. I usually love Elizabeth Lowell, but this was just painful to read.

3. Just Like Heaven - Julia Quinn. It's not that this book was bad, necessarily. But when I look back, it really was one of the biggest disappointments--I had much higher hopes for this book than there was material to fulfill it.

Lastly, the discovery of the year? Eloisa James. I can't wait to read more of her stuff.

What's that? I'm posting before the end of the year? I have time to read a book tomorrow?

Buahaha. My husband bought me a WoW subscription for Christmas and my sister-in-law updated my subscription to Just Cross Stitch magazine. Yeah, right, I'm going to read anything but cross stitch patterns tomorrow.

It's Fall Break!

And what have I done? Approximately nothing. I turned my Fulbright into the State Department on Friday, and now I have nothing to do but wait until January. So I've nothing since then.

That's not entirely true. I finished one cross stitch project and have moved on to this one. I have no real idea why I've wanted to cross stitch this rooster so badly, but I have, and therefore, I have started, thanks partly to my sister-in-law who gave me my subscription for Christmas last year (which has been delightful), and thanks partly to Snarky Writer who toted me around town Friday, since I'd not had enough sleep the night before to be driving (and who also very kindly not only dragged me around town, but hit three craft stores with me, looking for the proper fabric for this project in a reasonable price range, because I refuse to pay $20 for a piece of 32 count linen).

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In other news, I hate AT&T. My phone broke the other night, and then AT&T, in attempting to fix it, broke it more--it now won't turn on it on. Their solution after that was for me to go buy a new phone. Fortunately, I have a very kind friend who is more than generous and who is sending me his old iPhone, though it won't be here until next week. In the meantime, I've been contemplating a response to AT&T. Though it's for bad PR, I thought about sending them a picture of Wil Wheaton collating papers. Still, it's not quite appropriate. I wonder if I could get a ragequit picture of Wil Wheaton shouting into his iPhone.

Actually...*goes running to Twitter for a minute* I should point out that while Wesley Crusher was an annoying little prick, Wil Wheaton is a nerd god.

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I noticed something odd when I went to the library to tutor a client of mine. I was looking around and saw some new books that just came out that I would have liked to have checked out. However, the library here does something odd: they charge two dollars to check a new fiction book out for a week.

Being a cheap-ass, and only having made ten dollars tutoring, I didn't come away with any of them, because if I've waited long enough for them not to buy them, then I can wait long enough for it to be free at the library. And Lord knows I have no problem with a library trying to raise some revenue for themselves, especially since I know that the great state of Tennessee is just so incredibly devoted to education and literacy. But something about that seemed just a little bit wrong to me. I did manage to get Kim Harrison's Pale Demon without having to pay extra for it. It joins the stack with Joanna Lindsey's That Perfect Someone. In the meantime this week, I've also got to work on Boswell's London Journal, and some poetry for 18th century and work on studying for a midterm.

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Anyway. I'm really behind on reviews, so here is a quick and dirty review of three books I just recently read, and then one really detailed review:

In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster: Fantastic. Generally speaking, Stephanie Laurens follows a certain pattern in her books where the heroine refuses to marry the hero until she gets a declaration of love from him. There is nothing like this here--it's real. They gradually fall in love. The hero is not just a warrior alpha male. He's also a scholar, but one who can kick butt when he needs to. In some ways, he reminded me very much of my husband. I have to say, this truly is my favorite of all of Laurens' novels that I've read, and I've read a good number of them. A+

When Strangers Marry: I've never read any of Lisa Kleypas' work before, and I was very entertained by this novel, in particular because while it's set during the early 19th century, it's not set in Regency England; instead, she sets the novel in a newly American New Orleans. That alone is incredibly interesting, because there are a whole other different set of conventions. Is it the best written novel? No, probably not. To be fair, it was a rewrite of her first novel, Only In Your Arms. B-

Wildest Hearts: This goes under the oldie but goodie category. It was a Jayne Ann Krentz paperback I scored from my mom, and I've read it before. It's really interesting to see something from the early 90s from her; the male character is very different from some of her other heroes. Something about her male characters in her earlier books are rather stuck-up. This one, Oliver, focuses on two things: business and ferns. That does seem to be one thing I remember from her earlier work: the heroes have some odd enthusiasms. Now that I've gone back to it: C.

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Now, on to the most important bit of this blog post. Terry Pratchett's Snuff was just released last Thursday, and in our jaunt around town, Snarky Writer took me to Barnes and Noble where I obtained said Discworld book. This one is especially important to me. Not only is it a new Discworld book, but it's a new Watch book, and given that I wrote my master's thesis on the Watch books, you can imagine just how excited I was.

So to my review. SPOILER ALERT. (That means close your browser, Dad, I'll bring it to you the next time I'm home.)



Sam Vimes has been forced to take a vacation, and when the Vimeses go out to Ramkin Hall, trouble invariably ensues when Vimes discovers a murder scene on the property--a young goblin woman. He's out of his jurisdiction, but that has never stopped him before and won't stop him now. We get a interesting look into a new society that Pratchett has put into the Disc, and the goblins are demanding justice--not just for the dead girl, but also for the way that other goblins have been rounded up and taken off.

Vimes, of course, won't let anything like this stand. He discovers that Lord Rust's son is involved, and this brings up one of the main themes of the book: rich versus poor. It's fairly obvious that this was written during the middle of the recession, because the struggle between rich and poor and what someone in Vimes' position--as the Duke of Ankh-Morpork--does to help out those less fortunate. It becomes part of what both Vimes and Carrot term "the terrible algebra of necessity." Goblin mothers, when they cannot feed their children, eat them instead. Then they build a pot, put the soul of the baby in it, and wait for it to return at a better time.

It turns out that Gravid Rust is transporting goblins away to work as slaves on tobacco plantations in Howondaland, where they are all dying, assisted by one rather awful character known as Stratford. One pot makes its way into a cigar, picked up by Fred Colon, who then becomes possessed, as if a goblin. Vimes, through all of this, is assisted by the quasi-demon that he picked up in Thud!, The Summoning Dark, which has left its mark on him and who he can interact with in his own head, Feeney, the somewhat inept country constable who is still learning how to be a policeman, and Willikins, his gentleman's gentleman who grew up in a street gang only a few lanes down from Vimes and who still retains all of his skills.

Stratford, though, is crazy, and does something that no man should ever do if he wants to live--try to kill Young Sam Vimes. But the elder Sam Vimes is a good man and simply would have taken him to jail. Willkins, though, is not a good man, and takes very unkindly to someone trying to hurt his family.

There are a couple of things that I really liked, small things. Vetinari is frustrated as hell with the Ankh-Morpork Times' crossword compiler. Willikins and Vimes have real conversations that are very friendly, even though Willikins works for Vimes. For the first time, it seems like Vimes has a real friend. Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs have been his friends, but he can't talk to them about everything; they don't understand his position between the street and the aristocracy; Willikins does.

I was glad to see that Angua's promotion to Captain has finally taken hold permanently. Wee Mad Arthur's reappearance was fantastic and wonderful. I liked seeing that Vimes is really in love with Sibyl. I would have liked to have seen more of Carrot--the question of what Carrot will actually do as far as the kingship goes remains unanswered. But that's the only criticism that I have of this book.

The last two books, Making Money and Unseen Academicals, had a couple of problems. They weren't tightly plotted, and they relied far too much on poop jokes. That's not to say that there aren't some of those in Snuff, but they're reserved for Young Sam, who at six years old, is interested in very little else, which makes sense. This novel is so tightly put together that you can't see Pratchett's Alzheimer's at all.

At the same time, this is not a light novel. While there are some really great funny lines, the way that there are in all Pratchett novels, this is far more serious than any of his other novels. It's darker than Night Watch, even. It's dark, it's serious, and it's good. While Men at Arms will always be my favorite Discworld novel, I think Snuff has just become the best. This book is an A+, hands down.

One of those huge updates

First of all, I have good news.

I actually have outstanding news, and it occurred to me (via my husband) that it ought to go in this blog, and the more I thought about, the more it seems, he's right. After all, this blog is about the trials, tribulations and triumphs of being a graduate student in English. Lately, it's been mostly about the romance novels I read to escape all of that. Part of the reason is also that I don't want to complain. First of all, I really don't have much to complain about, and second, it's never a good idea to complain in a public forum.

But when I have awesome news, I have to share. I went to meet with Dr. K yesterday to see if she would be willing to, well, basically, do me several favors in a row, starting with being the director for my dissertation. I posited the idea to her that we might begin with a directed reading next semester that would have two goals--the first to help me prepare for the preliminary exam in Victorian literature, and the second being to help me do quite a bit of preliminary research for my dissertation. My idea was to focus the first part of the semester on what I needed for the exam, the second my half more on dissertation, and do several short exploratory papers throughout the semester to help me focus my ideas for my dissertation, with the end goal of the semester being to have a dissertation proposal completed.

She thought this was a great idea. Then I mentioned how I was working on applying for the Fulbright scholarship, and she was also ecstatic about the prospect. As I noted I was still having difficulty coming up with an affiliation, she suggested the Tennyson Research Centre in Lincolnshire. I hadn't considered that (it was a fantastic idea), and she sent off an email to them right then.

I ended up sending a text to Snarky Writer with the message "My dissertation director is cooler than yours."

The day only got better, as we discovered that my husband had been hired for a temporary position at a local party store to get them through Halloween! This is great, and it gives him retail experience to put on his resume as well. So he's been off to work today (!), and I'm waiting for him to get home right now. I'm planning a ham steak, green beans, mac and cheese and biscuits for dinner. I'd thought about chicken and dumplings, but trying to get the recipe out of my mom was a little difficult, and she doesn't put chicken in hers anyway. As I didn't want to give my husband salmonella poisoning his first week of work (or, you know, ever), I figured I'd stick to something I couldn't screw up!

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Book review! I just finished Julia Quinn's Just Like Heaven, the first in her Smythe-Smith quartet, and anyone who has ever read her Bridgerton series knows exactly just how disastrous the Smythe-Smith musicales are. The poor four girls who take part in the musicale are the heroines of this quartet. Our heroine, Honoria, desperately does not want to take part, to the point where she digs a hole in the garden, hoping that she can get out of rehearsal by "tripping" in a mole-hole. What she doesn't plan on is Marcus, our hero, accidentally tripping in it instead, badly turning his ankle.

Quinn uses a quirk of Regency fashion as the hinge for her plot. Men's boots at the time required assistance to take on and off without a sprained and swollen ankle, and Marcus' boot actually has to be cut off his foot. He comes down with pneumonia from sitting out in the rain for a while (since Honoria can't carry him home), but what no one realizes is that his leg was cut when the boot came off and is now infected.

The dedication to the book is, as always, dedicated to Quinn's husband, who apparently told her under no circumstances that there was no way Marcus could survive such an injury. But miracles do happen, and Honoria and her mother nurse him back to health, just in time for him to hear their genuinely disastrous musicale. Those who've read Quinn before might remember in one of the Bridgerton novels, Lady Danbury knocks a Smythe-Smith violin off a piano, shattering it and insists on buying a new one (that might take up to a year to come in). Honoria, it seems, is the owner of that violin, which ties this story nicely into the greater universe Quinn has created.

Is it a great novel? No, probably not. Quinn is certainly not the queen of Regency romance--I maintain that crown very firmly belongs to Stephanie Laurens (and I'm sure others would argue Georgette Heyer, but I've not read any of hers). If I'm judging against Laurens, Quinn simply can't compare. She's good enough that I'll continue reading her books, but not so good that her books are a must have the day they come out.

Just Like Heaven - C+

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Hastings had another sale on, and in celebration of employment, my husband and I went out last night. Speaking of Stephanie Laurens and books that I desperately want the day they're released, I now have obtained a copy of In Pursuit of Miss Eliza Cynster. (I do want to know what is up with her titles these days, though. Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue? This? Are the Harlequin editors--those responsible for, I kid you not, Pregnesia--titling her novels?) In any case, I am very much looking forward for that.

I also bought, since it was again 2 paperbacks for $10, Lisa Kleypas' When Strangers Marry. It was originally her first novel ever published with Avon Romance, as Only In Your Arms, and she has since revised and retitled it. I figure this way I'm getting it the way she wants it. It's the first Kleypas book I've ever had, so I'm looking forward to reading it.

But first, I have some 18th century drama to get through, and I have to start Maria Edgeworth's Belinda. I think I'd rather read romance.

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On one final note: Amazon has just begun taking preorders for the Kindle Fire. Why is this important? Well, first, here are some of the details from Mashable regarding the Fire.

Then there's the part where Barnes and Noble's stock fell 9% on the announcement of the Fire, the fact that the original Kindle just dropped dramatically in price, and the fact that Amazon is also taking orders for the new Kindle Touch, to be released not quite two weeks after the Fire.

What bothers me about this is that Amazon, essentially, is copying Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble gives us the Nook Color--Amazon comes along and makes the Kindle Fire, which is meant less to compete with the Nook and more with the iPad. Barnes and Noble gives us the new version of the Nook, completely e-ink and touch based. Amazon ends up with the Kindle Touch. And yet, it's the company that's innovating--Barnes and Noble--that's suffering.

Here's an idea--and the companies can keep it. Give me a tablet computer that can switch between a backlit display for computer work and an e-ink display (for reading books). Do that, and you'll have me hooked.

Read read read read read

I have spent quite a bit of time reading in the last week--more so, in fact, that I have in quite a while. To a certain extent, I've felt of late that I've been doing absolutely nothing but reading. I realize that's not true, but when your eyes are burning from too many words, it's hard to figure out otherwise.

So what has the roundup been? First off, Humphry Clinker, an 18th century epistolary and picaresque novel by Tobias Smollett. In case you don't know what picaresque means (as I did not until it was explained to me), it's an example of a novel, following the Spanish example, where you have at lot of noteworthy events following each other again and again and again, with the only real connection between them being that they happen to the same (or same set) of character(s). It was entertaining enough, but I wouldn't recommend reading an un-annotated version, as Smollett's novels tend to be extremely contemporary and reference a lot of things that aren't easily understandable without a degree in history. I recommend the authoritative version published by the University of Georgia.

I have, fortunately, had time to read my two new romance novels that I picked up at Hastings. The first one I read was by Stephanie Laurens, the first in her new Cynster sister trilogy, Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue. (Incidentally, another piece of information I picked up--the 's' in viscount isn't pronounced. It's vy-count. Don't look at me like that, I'm American, I've never heard the word said aloud.) The rather simplistic title aside, the book was wonderful. Heather Cynster (one of Gabriel and Lucifer's younger sisters) decides to follow her cousin Amanda's example from On a Wild Night and seek out a husband in the less socially acceptable venues frequented by the ton. Instead, she is kidnapped by someone who simply has an order to kidnap one of the Cynster sisters, and Breckenridge follows in hot pursuit. She stays with her captors a while to get as much information as possible, in order to protect her sisters, and eventually escapes with Breckenridge, walking across parts of Scotland to the Vale where her cousin Richard and his wife live, and adventures ensue forthwith.

It's an excellent addition to the Cynster series, even though I'd had a moment at the beginning where I thought this was going to be far too similar to On a Wild Night, and I was pleasantly surprised. It really was a good adventure, and in true Cynster fashion, Breckenridge has to admit that he loves Heather before she'll marry him. A- on Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue.

I also read Jayne Castle's Canyons of Night, and was unfortunately somewhat disappointed in it. It didn't have nearly the connection with the rest of the Looking Glass trilogy (already reviewed here) that I was hoping for--in fact, you could barely tell that there was a connection, other than the fact that one of Mrs. Bridewell's clockwork curiosities was at the center of the mystery. Heroine Charlotte has taken over her aunt's antique store near Rainshadow Preserve, and old friend Slade has taken the job of sheriff while he recovers from a potentially psychically crippling injury. He's actually coming into a new Arcane talent (or strengthening of the old one) which isn't explained well. One of Charlotte's old clients is after a snow globe in her possession (that she doesn't know she has), and it turns out that one of the people on the island is in with him on it (which is the only part of this that we really didn't see coming). The snow globe is what Bridewell used to infuse her curiosities with the psychic power to make them weapons, but it's not explained any more than that. In fact, the book centers more on something strange happening in the preserve which isn't explained. Canyons of Night serves more as a setup for something to come than it does a conclusion to the Looking Glass trilogy. There was, however, one saving grace. It's what makes all of Krentz's Harmony novels so wonderfully humorous and charming--a dust bunny. Rex is cute, steals anything shiny, including a purse he decides to carry around with him, and he's overprotective of Slade. And he's adorable, as always. Don't believe me? Go watch the trailer for Silver Master again. Rex, I give an A. The novel gets a C.

Krentz does have a new book coming out in January called Copper Beach. It appears to be paranormal, but not related to the Arcane Society, so I'm curious as to how this will turn out. It claims to be a "Dark Legacy" novel, but I'm not sure what that means. Obviously, we'll find out.

I picked up Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn at Target for 25% off today. It's a quartet following along with the Bridgerton series, only this time starting to focus on the beleaguered and musically deficient Smythe-Smith girls. Quinn's books are also Regency-era, and while they definitely aren't as good as Stephanie Laurens (and let's face it, very few are), they're charming in their own way. It's also been interesting in places to find that Quinn borrows (with permission, of course) characters from Stephanie Laurens and Lisa Kleypas' Regency novels. I just wish that the characters borrowed would have been like Laurens' Lady Osbaldestone. Putting her in the same room with Quinn's Lady Danbury would frighten the most devilish of rakes.

Checking out Quinn's site, I've found that there are second epilogues for some of her Bridgerton books; however, you have to order them as ebooks. They're about 30 pages apiece, and there are plans to put all eight in a collection and print them as a paperback when all eight are completed. This should be interesting.

All right, I'll stop typing now. I'd probably do better to update more often than update in these sprawling posts. In any case, the next post should be a review of Just Like Heaven. That can wait until tomorrow, though.

Book Review: A Dash of Style

Lukeman, Noah. A Dash of Style: The Art and Mastery of Punctuation. New York: Norton, 2006. Paperback. +201 pages. $13.95.

I should, up front, note that this book did not cost me $13.95. Rather, I got a free copy of it from the local Norton rep. I'd looked at the back and thought that perhaps this book might give me some good ideas for teaching grammar in my composition classes. The book is mostly designed for creative writing classes, but I thought that I could perhaps adapt some of the exercises for my comp classes.

I doubt that I will do this however. There are some brilliant pieces to this book and some not-so-brilliant pieces. Here's the rundown.

The Good:

As a creative writer, the sections on quotation marks and paragraph and section breaks were great. It helped underscore some concerns I've had about my own writing recently--one, that I was incorporating too much dialogue and not enough introspection and other actions. Lukeman identifies an over-reliance on dialogue as a problem with pacing, and while I'm happy with the first chapter, as far as dialogue goes, I'm much less happy with the second chapter.

The section on paragraph breaks may end up getting copied and taken to my students, because many of the lessons there can be applied to academic writing. This is really the only section of the book that I think can be adequately applied to a composition classroom, rather than a creative writing classroom. It also helped with some thoughts I'd had about changing viewpoints between scenes. While I'll still use section breaks to delineate a break in time and place--in the morning at the gym to the afternoon at the library--I'll stick with one point of view per chapter if possible.

This flipping points of view has always been a problem for me, and it was something I didn't notice until several years ago when my friend Carmen was kindly betaing a short story for me and pointed out that I was switching points of view between paragraphs. It was something I'd never really picked up before, and I am so grateful that she pointed it out to me. It's a lesson that I've kept in mind ever since (so thank you, once again, Carmen!). Lukeman suggested that I not flip point of view even between scenes and save that for chapters instead. I think he's probably right.

The Bad:

The first sections on the most often used punctuation marks: period, comma, and semi-colon, felt a little unnecessary. Here's the thing--if you're going to be a creative writer, there's one thing you should be doing.

Reading.

I'm not saying that Lukeman is downplaying this point--he's definitely not. What bothers me about this book is that it seems to have two audiences in the newbie creative writer and the experienced creative writer. The first half of the book, focusing on these base punctuation marks, is for newbies, and I can't help but feel that newbies would be better served by reading examples of what they want to write in order to pick up punctuation rules than they would this book. The second half, which goes into colons, dashes (which I overuse, I know), parentheses (lookit here), and the aforementioned quotation marks and paragraph and section breaks (and I do think referring to paragraph and section breaks as part of punctuation was freaking brilliant). There's also a brief chapter on less used punctuation marks--exclamation points, question marks, ellipses, brackets, etc.

This was what I found useful. The stuff about periods, commas, and semi-colons I found heavy-handed and too much for an experienced writer, but I felt that latter half of the book would overwhelm a newbie. But if you're using it as a reference book? That's different, but it's not set up as a reference book, which makes it odd.

The Ugly:

If you go to the book's website, you'll find that there's a list of the universities that use A Dash of Style in their creative writing programs. My objection here is really to the way that creative writing is taught (though Lukeman is complicit in this).

Creative writing is taught in American universities as "literary" creative writing. Genre writing is looked down upon by the academic establishment, unless you are so lucky as to be in a program like mine which focuses heavily on pop culture, and even then, I can't speak to the way creative writing is taught. What I do know is that at some universities (I have heard of several through some of my friends), creative writing is expected, oddly enough, to conform to some academic notion of non-conformity.

Horse hockey. Genre writing can be just as influential, if not more so, than anything that will end up in the canon in fifty years. Harry Potter is never going to end up in the "literary" canon (nor would I argue, should it. For example, it ignores many of Lukeman's punctuation rules!), but to ignore the impact that it has had on the last two generations of readers would be idiotic. The same could be said of Twilight as a cult phenomenon, despite all of the objections that I have to it.

Lukeman is complicit in that all of his examples are drawn from literary fiction, and the general tenor of the book suggests that he's expecting his readers to write literary fiction. Well, some of us don't. Some of us write genre fiction very happily, and one thing that Lukeman fails to acknowledge is that some of these genres have conventions of their own. He's so busy focusing on how some writers have distorted the use of certain punctuation marks (Hemingway used emphatic periods! Joyce exiled the poor defenseless quotation mark!) that sometimes I felt that standard conventions were getting overlooked. This is probably not fair, because he does make note of the standard ways some punctuation should be used.

Anyway, back to my point. We need a more expansive definition of creative writing (perhaps one that recognizes that all writing, academic, fiction and non-fiction is creative?) both in and out of academia, and books like this aren't helping.

Everything else:

All this said, it's a good book to read. I wouldn't use it in a beginning creative writing class, I don't imagine. (Of course, I would rather not teach a creative writing class at all.) But it's interesting, and it has some good reminders for more experienced writers. And I would very much like to pick up one of Lukeman's previous books, The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying out of the Rejection Pile. But I'd like to know what Lukeman, as a literary agent, tends to buy himself first. If he's not buying genre fiction, then I don't know that all of his advice would work.

A Dash of Style: B-

Reading Roundup and Reviews

1. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin.

One of my expat novels--this was so beautiful. It shows a man struggling with and trying to come to terms with his sexuality in 1950's Paris in the most beautiful, elegant prose. I don't even have words to describe how hauntingly beautiful this novel is, but it's absolutely amazing. A.

2. Extraordinary Renditions by Andrew Ervin.

Dude. WTF. This book is best described by one word: dissonance. The first and third sections of the book are absolutely beautiful (though Ervin's agenda is bothersome in places, as I have a hard time believing that a Holocaust survivor would compare Gitmo to a concentration camp. Yes, the United States has done some horrible things in the course of the War on Terror, but comparing it to the wholesale extermination of Jews during World War II is beyond the pale.). When Ervin sticks to music, the book is, in fact, musical. The second section, which follows a young, black Marine through Budapest as he delivers illegal weapons for his CO in order to keep from being booted out of the military through trumped up DADT charges, doesn't fit. It has no real linkage with the first and third pieces.

One of the reviews my professor read had to do with the fact that the links between the three novellas seemed contrived. Well, he's right. Linking the first to the second and the second to the third are completely contrived, while the first and third are perfectly done. Apparently, the second novella had been a story the author wrote during college and admitted was bad--in which case, it should have been left out and he should have written something else for the middle section. C-.

3. Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris

I took a break from expat reading to have some fun with Sookie Stackhouse--and was fairly disappointed by it. It felt like nothing happened. The only real action took place in the last twenty pages or so, and the rest of the novel was really not that great.

I hate saying things like this about authors that I enjoy, and I really hate saying it about someone like Charlaine Harris, who from all accounts is one of the most genuinely nice people you'll ever meet (according to Jim Butcher). Now, is it as bad as what has been made of the most recent season of True Blood? Well, not if I take my favorite Snarky Writer's word for it (as I don't watch the show, but she does), and her own blog posts on the subject have been hilarious. And I should be fair--1. I haven't re-read the book before this one in quite a while, so it did take me a while to get into the book and try to remember what was going on. Since I typically borrow the books from SW, I didn't have it handy. 2. Sookie, Eric (yay, Eric!) and Bill (boo, Bill) were all still recovering from fairly severe injuries from the previous book, so an action-packed novel isn't necessarily realistic. (Although, I should mention that I'm glad that Bill's 'sister' has showed up, because if he's with Judith, then Sookie can stay with Eric, which I heartily approve of.) Anyway, the book had so little going on that I can't really summarize the plot, as I'm not dead sure of what it was, other than a fairy trying to make Sookie's life miserable and some problems with the Were's leadership. Also the government trying to make Weres miserable. B-.

Up next, Sherrilyn Kenyon's No Mercy, as well as the first batch of reading for my directed reading, which includes Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (which I've read before) and Roxana. It's almost time for school to start back (and yes, I am wishing that there was more than two weeks between now and then and that one of those weeks wasn't taken up with TA orientation, but that's a problem with the university's scheduling. *shakes fist*).

One last note--I was reviewing blog stats, and as I was looking through where posts came from, I found that I had a reader from Germany and one from India. Now, either I have readers in other countries, or someone is using Tor to send their IP address around the world. Whichever it is, please leave me a note! I love meeting new people. :D