Better Than Dead

Random quote of the day:

“Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.”

—Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, #248

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Finished in July:

1.  The Heart of Faerie Oracle by Wendy and Brian Froud

A beautifully-illustrated oracle that uses Faerie to explore relationships: to others, to oneself, to the universe. Lovely and approachable.

2.  Demon Blood by Meljean Brook

I love this series and this is a worthy entry into it. Ms. Brook has really hit her stride.

3.  The Keys to D’Espérance by Chaz Brenchley (Subterranean Press chapbook)

A short, fantastical, compelling read that leaves as many mysteries as it solves, winding around itself like the spiral staircase at the center of the story. Beautiful writing and a beautiful raveling and unraveling of a character.

4.  In a Strange City by Laura Lippman

The writing is good, the characterizations are mostly excellent, the premise was interesting, BUT I found the plot so transparent that I guessed the whodunit quite early on and much of the whydunit. As a result, the ending was flat and not particularly inspiring. The other plot element I didn’t care for centered around the main character, Tess Monaghan, doing stupid things. I realize that part of this is because Tess is a risk-taker, but she displayed such stupidity in some places (for an otherwise smart woman) that I felt it was more about authorial convenience in advancing the plot than true characterization.

It’s really a shame, because I was excited by that premise: a mystery centering around the Poe Toaster, an anonymous man who for sixty years (until 2010) left roses and cognac on the grave of Edgar Allen Poe each January 19 (Poe’s birthday).

I will probably read something else by Ms. Lippman because, as I said, the writing and characters were mostly well-handled, but I think maybe I’ll try one of her stand-alones rather than another from the the Tess Monaghan series.

Begun in July:

1. Demon Blood by Meljean Brook
2. Blood Noir by Laurell K. Hamilton
3. The Keys to D’Espérance by Chaz Brenchley (chapbook)
4. A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin (aka Catherine Webb)

Continued Reading This Month:

1. Serpent in the Thorns by Jeri Westerson
2. Walkers Between the Worlds: The Western Mysteries from Shaman to Magus by Caitlin and John Matthews
3. Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History by Owen Davies

Crazy busy days lately, at work, at home.  I’m having company for dinner tomorrow night and have spent the day cleaning and organizing.  We’re doing a low country boil and it should be fun.  Shrimp and sausage and halibut and potatoes and onions and spicy crab boil seasoning.  I won’t be able to have any beer with that, which is a great pity, as the only weekend we could all get together was the weekend before an important (but routine) blood test and I’ve given up sugar in all forms.

But none of that is the subject of this post or why I felt compelled to sit down a half hour before midnight to put it down.  I haven’t had much time to blog lately and there’s a build up of effluvia.  I was afraid if I didn’t take a moment now, some vitally important inane information might be lost to history.  So, here it is: what I’m done with is not housekeeping or cooking, it’s Laurell K. Hamilton.

I hadn’t read anything by her in a long time, but I found myself curious to see what was up with her.  The last Anita Blake book I read actually had some semblance of a plot, contrary to several of the ones that had come before.  I mean, a plot having more to do with being “forced” to have sex with dozens of men and endless discussions amongst the characters as to what had just happened, why it had happened, and why the sexcapades were totally, completely against her real true morality, but she couldn’t help it.  She just couldn’t help it.  At heart, she was really a “good girl.”

Uh, anyway, I stuck with LKH a lot longer than I should have, though most of my friends had given up on her, mostly because of the not-Anita characters.  I really loved some of them and wanted to know what was going on with them, although most of the ones I really liked got short shrift in the cavalcade of porn the books had become.  I’m stubborn, I guess.  So I picked up Blood Noir last night and decided I’d wallow in it, to see if that promise of actual plot in The Harlequin meant LKH was finally snapping out of her narrow focus.  The first several chapters were an extended sex scene between Anita and two guys, plus endless discussions of what had just happened, why it had happened, and why the sexcapades were totally, completely against her real true morality, but she couldn’t help it.  She just couldn’t help it.  At heart, she was really a “good girl.”

And I realized that I really no longer gave a damn about any of those characters.  Finding out what might be going on with them was no longer worth slogging through the slush these books have become.  I like me a good sex scene, have no trouble walking on the pervy side, but I do prefer to have my sexy fiction have some actual fiction in it to go along with the ol’ boogaloo.

I moved consequently LKH’s books from the TBR pile to the recycle pile.  I don’t think they’ll be wending their way back out again.

And no telling when I may get to set down more inane content again.  Watch this space.

What she said plus kittens with mittens!

1.  It’s been busy at work and I haven’t had time to do much else besides work.  What a bummer.

2.  The read-through on my WIP progresses nicely, but the first ten chapters or so are the easy part of the ms., the part I’d reworked several times before pushing on through the rest of the story.  This part holds up pretty well.  I shudder to think of the Middle to Come, or the Chaos of Ending.

3.  I finally got my DVD player hooked up after an embarrassingly long hiatus.   I don’t watch many DVDs, obviously, but I’d accumulated enough gifts that I thought I really should start looking at them.  “I haven’t got the DVD player hooked up yet,” was wearing kind of thin to those who queried.  Actually, the cable company had hooked it up when they installed my new DVR box, but it never worked properly and I knew the connections were wonky on the TV end.  I’ve got  one of those huge, honking old 27-inch TVs that weigh a ton, and I knew it would be a chore to shift it around to check those connections, so I was unmotivated.  Lazy swine, am I.  Sure enough, I finally hefted that monster around and it was “There’s your problem” all around.  In about two seconds I had DVD capacity.

4.  I made pork, onion, and green olive empanadas over the weekend.  Muy bueno, if I do say so myself.

5.  I also watched the first five episodes of True Blood, season one. I’d been leery of it, since I loved the books.  I’m actually quite liking it, with a couple of biggish exceptions.

General discussion of series, no real spoilers, but skip to #6 if you don’t want to know.

So far most of the episodes have pretty closely followed the story arc of the first book in the series, Dead Until Dark (which is probably still my favorite of the bunch).  All this time I couldn’t understand why everyone said, “Sam? Eww!” when I said I hoped Sookie wound up with him.  Now I understand: for some reason, the producers have decided to turn Sookie’s one true friend through all the books, the one who’s always loved her for who she is not what she can do for him, the one who’s always been at her back…into a skeevy guy who sleeps with all the women who work for him.  Very unhappy with that.  I also think the guy who plays Eric is seriously miscast.  He’s this tall, effete male modelish kind of guy, when Eric is a large, physically imposing, ex-Viking warrior.  It does not work for me.  This actor is, however, blond like Eric.  He knows how to put on a nice pout when I thinking brooding is more called for…but Bill does enough of that for twelve vampires, so perhaps the producers wanted…contrast.  Yeah, that must be it.

6. When in Ralph’s market Saturday shopping for empanada ingredients, I turned back to my shopping cart to find a woman with her hand in my purse.  I’ve been mugged three times.  I know better than to leave my purse unattended like that, but I had a brain fade, I guess.  When I turned and caught her, she said, “Oh!” and pushed the cart out of the way, like that was her intent all along and her hand just happened to slip into my purse.  She reached behind me, not the cart, to grab some crutons off a shelf and walked away.  I did a quick reconnoiter of my belongings and determined nothing was missing.  I kept close tabs on my purse for the rest of the shopping.

I had a hard time concentrating on reading during the first part of the month.  I kept picking up books and putting them down—not generally through any fault of the books themselves, just life and things.  So, I’ve only got two books to report on as finished this month:

Finished in May

1. and Falling, Fly by Skyler White

This is a different kind of paranormal romance, lushly written and densely plotted, with a distinct literary bent.  The story and worldbuilding are quite compelling—they drew me in and kept me reading. The characters, on the other hand, seemed rather flat through much of the first half of the book: representations of types rather than rounded people. But they found their feet about halfway through and grew some dimension.  The ultra-lush prose got in the way of the narrative at times, I thought, but when Ms. White settled down and just wrote her story, this was a great read.  I never thought of putting it down, so I’d say she did her job quite well.

1. Medicus by Ruth Downie

I loved this book. Told with heart and a great deal of humor, it had me buying the sequel before I’d even finished the first book.  Gaius Petreius Ruso, the hero of the story, is a doctor, known as a medicus, for the Twentieth Legion stationed in Deva (current day Chester) in Roman Britain ca 178 AD.  He’s a wonderful, well-rounded character: a man burdened with debt from his profligate farm family back in Gaul who is trying to earn a living as best he can and get the family out of trouble.  He’s a good man who tries earnestly to do the right thing, with maybe more curiosity than is politically expedient for him. He’s something of a schlemozzle—not the guy who’s always spilling the soup on people (the schlemiel) but the guy who is always having the soup spilled on him.  He can’t get a break.  Like the time he just wants to drown his sorrows with the few coin he’s got left in his purse, but on his way to the bar/brothel, he sees a native girl being badly mistreated by a slave trader.  She’s in bad shape—starved, beaten, her arm badly broken—but when she looks up at him with semi-comatose but beautiful eyes he uses the last of his money to buy her.  He comes to call her Tilla because he can’t pronounce her complex Celtic name, and nurses her back to health, but it’s always a close call as to who is the master and who the slave in this relationship.  Tilla is a beautiful force of nature.  She may have been beaten half to death, but she never really submitted to being a slave and lives for the day she can escape.  The interplay and growing relationship between Tilla and Ruso, the glimpse of the seedy side of the Roman empire, and Ruso’s attempts to solve the murder of two prostitutes—even though every official in town wants him to leave it alone—are the core of this book.  It’s well-written, well-researched, and endearingly entertaining.

Begun in May

1. Serpent in the Thorns by Jeri Westerson
2. and Falling, Fly by Skyler White
3. Terra Incognita by Ruth Downie
4. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert – I wanted to see what all the fuss is about.  Too early to tell.

Continued Reading in May

1. Spider-Touched by Jory Strong
2. Yesterday’s Sky by Steven Forrest
3. Memories, Dreams, Reflections by C. G. Jung
4. Notebooks, 1942-1951 by Albert Camus, tr. Justin O’Brien
5. Medicus by Ruth Downie