Favorite Lines Friday

Here is an amusing thought from a character in Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, one who happens to be in a position to know...

“Human beings do not like being pushed about by gods. They may seem to, on the surface, but somewhere on the inside, underneath it all, they sense it and they resent it.”

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

How do I write about a great mystery story? How do I tell you my favorite parts and what I figured out and what I didn’t figure out and what completely surprised me without spoiling the whole story? Because, trust me, I don’t want to spoil the story if you happen not to have read this one.

 

I will say that the setting and characters of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd are interesting and well-devised. Christie’s writing makes for fun reading even before she sucks you into a seemingly impossible mystery. Hercule Poirot is his usual pompously genius self and, despite the efforts of the intelligent and observant narrator, it is only Poirot’s little gray cells that can solve this complicated affair.

 

Of course, if you’ve ever read an Agatha Christie mystery before, none of that is the least bit new. Such is pretty much the formula for most of her stories. There are plenty of surprises in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, however, with each character having something to hide (as Poirot knew they would). Nearly everyone is a suspect with the motive and means of doing away with the recently departed Ackroyd. Everyone has a secret. Everyone lives a lie.

This is a delightful mystery, which is strange to say, since it is loaded with so much of the worst of humanity: blackmail, poison, narcotic addiction, theft, prejudice, lies, lies and more lies…not to mention the murder itself. While I love the puzzles mystery stories present, I can overdose on all the death and evil and filthiness of humanity if I read too many of them one after the other. I was glad I took the time with this one, however, because it not only keep my heart pounding and my fingers turning the pages, but also satisfied my search for quality and uniqueness. I haven’t read a mystery quite like this one, even a copycat, and I enjoyed the word choice, phrasing, character development (concise as it must be) and dialogue as much as the puzzle.

I’d love to discuss further how this story is unique and interesting, but I’d be giving too much away! Much as it pains me to keep the secret, you’ll get no spoilers here!

 

 

 

A Year (Plus) of Books I Should Have Read by Now

Thursday Thoughts

A Year (Plus)

 

Yes. My Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now ended with the month of October. It seems kind of silly to end now, though. The end of the year would be a much better time to end a project. The beginning of a new year would be a much better time to begin a new one.

Besides, I’ve barely put a dent in my shelves and boxes and stacks of books I’d like to get through. I might as well give myself a few more months….

 

 

Coming soon: The Murder of Roger Akroyd by Agatha Christie and  Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

A Year (Plus) of Books I Should Have Read by Now

Favorite Lines Friday

Here is a fabulous excerpt from the essay “On Some Functions of Literature” from On Literature by Umberto Eco"
  

As far as the world is concerned, we find that the laws of universal gravitation are those established by Newton, or that it is true that Napoleon died on Saint Helena on 5 May 1821. And yet, if we keep an open mind, we will always be prepared to revise our convictions the day science formulates the great laws of the cosmos differently, or a historian discovers unpublished documents proving that Napoleon died on a Bonapartist ship as he attempted to escape. On the other hand, as far as the world of books is concerned, propositions like “Sherlock Holmes was a bachelor,” “Little Red Riding-Hood is eaten by the wolf and then freed by the woodcutter,” or “Anna Karenina commits suicide” will remain true for eternity, and no one will ever be able to refute them. There are people who deny that Jesus was the son of God, others who doubt his historical existence, others who claim he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and still others who believe that the Messiah is yet to come, and however we might think about such questions, we treat these opinions with respect. But there is little respect for those who claim that Hamlet married Ophelia, or that Superman is not Clark Kent.

 

 

On Literature by Umberto Eco

I love books about books. This collection of essays about literature is no exception. The fact that it comes from Umberto Eco, someone I practically worship when it comes to words on paper, doesn’t hurt either, of course.

This collection includes commentaries on specific works, such as the Paradiso, The Communist Manifesto and Aristotle’s Poetics. Well, um, I haven’t actually read any of these works, but I still feel like I learned a great deal from reading Eco’s essays. That’s part of the beauty of reading Eco for me. I can start out not knowing what the heck he’s talking about, but still feel invited to join in because he’s pretty friendly to the ignorant masses to which I belong.

There are also enjoyable and thought-provoking essays on concepts like the function of literature, style, symbolism, and, my personal favorite of this collection, intertextual irony. These ideas from Eco fascinate me and have opened more doors in my personal armchair exploration of literature. I need stuff like this: engaging to read, and packed with the kind of ideas that were previously foreign to me since, let’s face it, I’ve made no real formal study of literature.

I always feel both a little smarter and a little dumber each time I read Eco. I feel smarter because I learn so much and have so many new and interesting thoughts provoked. I feel dumber because I also learn how much I don’t know, how much more there is to learn. I suppose I’m becoming a more positive person, however, since, upon reading On Literature I feel more inspiration than exasperation. I am even more fascinated by the cultural functions of story-telling and fiction. I am curious about particular works of literature I used to fear. I am willing to give the idea of deep analysis of literature for connections and symbols a chance (although, I don’t think I’ll ever let go of the idea of just reading a good, entertaining story.)

There are also essays about Eco's own background, influences and writing process that are inspriational. I, however, have come to the conclusion that I cannot be much like Umberto Eco. He is a genius, an expert on literature and symbolism and culture and philosophy, and I’m just a Distractible Reader. My view of intellectual reality always gets a bit of a positive shift after I read his work, though, and my active interest in literature, culture and history accelerates. In fact, I’m already seeing cases of intertextual irony just about everywhere.

You might also like The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco


A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo

Everybody has heard of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, and everybody has heard of Quasimodo, the novel’s namesake (in the English version of the title anyway), and everybody has heard of Quasimodo’s cry of “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” Since the existence of a version of this story in the form of an animated family film, something decent people would let their children watch, has been tolerated, I’m guessing that not everybody has actually read this book.

That being said, this is a fascinating story (…for adults.)  Hugo wove some colorful characters who are continuously crossing paths, their lives intertwining, into the backdrop of a past Paris about which our disembodied narrator seems to be an expert. The setting is crucial to the story with the Notre-Dame cathedral as almost a character itself, and few details seem to have been spared.

The intensity of the raw human emotion, however, is even stronger than that of the detailed setting. The idiosyncrasies of each character are extreme: Quasimodo’s ugliness and pain, La Esmeralda’s innocence and beauty, archdeacon Frollo’s obsession and hypocrisy. They are all caricatures, but curiously believable ones with pasts and experiences that have shaped who they are. While the emotional natures of the characters may be somewhat exaggerated, they are rarely comic, with the exception, perhaps, of Pierre Gringoire, a philosopher-playwright who functions not unlike a Shakespearean fool.

That is not to say that much of the story is not amusing. The style is engaging and even entertaining. While I felt like I probably missed a lot of satire by being less in the know than a contemporary reader, there was still plenty of it to latch onto, proving that there are many aspects of human foolishness that never go out of fashion.

The plot of the novel is driven largely by the passions of the characters and by the ironies of a basically unjust world. (Anyone who wants to believe that the world is fair is likely to totally hate this book.) It is also characterized by a tremendous amount of violence, to which the writer/narrator seems curiously immune. Folks are tortured, hanged, smashed and crushed and meet other equally bad ends, and the complete lack of genuine justice is prominent enough to serve as a sort of violence itself.

Despite all of that horror, I was surprised at how much fun this book was to read. I had expected it to be a somewhat dry example of what we are told is important literature, but instead found it quite wonderful. I was disappointed with La Esmeralda, who I thought was kind of stupid, but had never heard of Pierre Gringoire, who I found to be a delightfully amusing character. While (minor spoiler alert) the ending of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a bit of a bummer, the intensity and pace of the story kept me turning pages from the inviting beginning right up to that bitter end.

You might also like The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

 

 

Coming soon: On Literature by Umberto Eco and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

 

 

A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny

Book 5 of the Amber Chronicles

 

Rumors of the death of this blog have been highly exaggerated! It’s just that any attempt at a writing schedule far too much resembles the title of the Roger Zelazny Amber novel I read most recently. Unfortunately, “most recently” in this case means weeks ago, but I still remember the book well as a fine installment in this entertaining series.

Oberon, “Dad” to Corwin, our narrator, is back, but since one of his sons is madly bent on destroying Amber so he can re-create it as he wishes, it’s not exactly a properly celebrated homecoming. The Courts of Chaos, a realm in a precarious balance with Amber, is taking advantage of a breach in the barriers between itself and Amber. Complete and total destruction seems imminent.

Corwin, who has had as his only goals the restoration of his own position in Amber and an eventual takeover of the king’s crown itself, has changed, grown and had plenty of time to think about his motivations. He exerts everything he has within himself, which turns out to be quite a lot, trying to save Amber. His adventures are full of the surreal twistings of reality that are so common among the blood of amber, and his especial prowess has him coming out on top as we’ve come to expect. Corwin has become less self-serving, however, and his pursuits are for the restoration of the land he loves and not for his own glory.

This book is as much fun as the rest of the Amber Chronicles that I’ve read, and really, these first five books are one long(-ish) story.  The fact that Corwin as a person changes throughout his adventures lends a credible depth to the series. While the fantasy elements are creative and interesting, the development of a sound, solid, believable character gives these books even greater quality.

I hope to get back to the pages of The Distractible Reader more often in the weeks ahead. I recently finished On Literature, a collection of essays by Umberto Eco, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo. I feel like I’ve got a lot to say about both of these, so, with any luck, I’ll be able to organize those thoughts into readable sentences and paragraphs and post them here soon.

 

You might also like: Sign of the Unicorn and The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny

 

A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

Death Masks by Jim Butcher

Book 5 of The Dresden Files

Another Harry Dresden adventure. And another reading experience with complete and total lack of disappointment! These books are so much fun to read!

I’m beginning to expect a somewhat reliable pattern to the novels in The Dresden Files: Harry takes on a job that turns out to be much more important than he realizes; he gets himself into big, big trouble in the course of the job itself and/or with any number of the other enemies he has made throughout the series; he makes some new friends/enemies/frenemies; he gets beat up or tortured, almost killed, exhausted, as do most of his allies; he finds some way to keep from losing hope, usually by being more stubborn than anyone could have guessed. This formula is far from boring, and, for a formula, isn’t all that predictable, really. And I love to see Harry get buried up to his neck, and how he’s going to get out of it this time.

Harry turns out to be an inferior hero in Death Masks, inferior to both his friends and his enemies. His allies, very serious soldiers of God and his old girlfriend, Susan, who now has some new talents of her own, are stronger and more dedicated to their personal missions than Harry could ever be. Harry’s slight unscrupulousness and inability to take orders (or sometimes even listen to reason) allow him to break through the seriously hard-core situation threatening, well, all of humanity. Where the others would back off, he soldiers on. He cannot do it on his own, of course, and his friends’ sacrifices must save him. He also must make some difficult decisions and it remains to be seen what kind of trouble that slight unscrupulousness of his will lead to in future stories.

There’s nothing less than the Shroud of Turin, fallen angels and their followers, a plague curse, and a wickedly powerful vampire to contend with in Death Masks. There’s also plenty of sword fighting, fiery explosions, sexual tension, and Harry’s special brand of wizarding magic. It’s exhausting being Harry Dresden, but very entertaining to read Butcher’s accounts of his unusual life.

 

Coming next: The Courts of Chaos by Roger Zelazny


A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

Favorite Lines Friday

The following is a short but extremely wise line from Butters, the medical examiner and new friend of Harry Dresden in Death Masks (Book 5 of The Dresden Files):

 

"Sleep is god. Go worship."

 

 

Coming next: Death Masks by Jim Butcher

Favorite Lines Friday

Here's a line from Corwin of Amber, narrator of The Hand of Oberon...one of the many reasons reading these books is so much fun.

“It was my turn to be silent while a small family of moments crossed my path, single file, from the left, sticking their tongues out at me.”

Coming next: Death Masks (The Dresden Files, Book 5) by Jim Butcher

The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny

The Amber Chronicles Book 4

 

I’ve been away from the pages of The Distractible Reader for far too long. I’d been away from the Amber Chronicles for too long as well. Luckily, Zelazny and Corwin of Amber, his narrator, are happy to recap and remind us of what has gone before as we plunge into the next volume.

 

There is no time lost, however, between the end of Sign of the Unicorn and the beginning of The Hand of Oberon. This installment in the adventure is just as packed with intrigue and action as the previous books. Corwin is still trying to figure out how to save his beloved homeland from terrorizing enemies arriving via a path known as the black road. Of course he also has to deal with the other members of his monumentally untrustworthy family, some of whom are plotting against him personally but also have much greater and more destructive plans. In addition to dangerous, life-threatening action complete with magic The Hand of Oberon also gives us (as well as the narrator) some valuable clues as to the nature of Amber, how it might have been created, and what its fate might be if the wrong people have access to that information.

While the structure, foundation and magic of Amber are, well, totally cool, the depth of the characters of the Amber Chronicles make it even more pleasurable reading. We see each character skewed at least slightly from Corwin’s point of view, but by this time in the series I for one have come to find Corwin an honest narrator if not exactly a model of trustworthiness to the other players in this big game. We are given almost enough information to draw our own conclusions about these colorful people, but are also guided in our analysis by the characters who give us their opinions without being allowed to forget that sometimes, the antagonists really are just insane.

I had put this book down for a while when I was about halfway through (no excuse, just distractible), so I feared I had missed something when I neared the end of the book and still did not know why it was given its title. It isn’t until just the end that its meaning became clear with a bit of a twist, although I’d bet that if I reread the book, I’d find a clue or two. The Hand of Oberon was yet another fun Amber book, and I think I’ll dive into Book Five as soon as I can.

You might also like Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny

Coming soon: Death Masks (Book 5 of the Dresden Files) by Jim Butcher

 

 

A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Being a pretty sturdy Barbara Kingsolver fan already (I really enjoyed Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and The Lacuna and I love The Poisonwood Bible) I was expecting great things from Prodigal Summer. I was not disappointed. This is a truly wonderful novel.

Prodigal Summer is about so many characters, places and things, all created with Kingsolver’s usual skill and attention to detail. Everyone and everything, however, cannot help coming together in some way, whether they like it or not, under the inevitable power of the natural forces that govern the universe. It is really a story about connections. Whether it be Luna moths, coyotes, misunderstood children, or chestnut trees, everyone and everything comes together, leans on each other, and drives each other.

There are three point-of-view characters in Prodigal Summer, a young, intellectual woman living on a farm, a middle-aged woman who prefers to live alone on the mountain and study coyotes, and an old man, set in his ways and seemingly unmovable. Each of their voices is strong and unique, each is interesting and sympathetic, and each has a lot to learn about him or herself and about the people, places and things that interweave to create the physical, emotional and spiritual environment in which they live. Their habitat, if you will.

I love the theme of “connectedness” that pervades this novel. The story finds ways to tie each character to the others and there are constant strong reminders of how we are all connected to the natural world. Whether it’s how we are driven to reproduce ourselves, or what happens when we use large amounts of pesticides, or the results of overhunting of predators, we cannot escape the power of biological forces or the results of our meddling with them. There is also a strong promotion of healthy environmental practices throughout the story, so if you aren’t in favor of that, you probably won’t like this book.

Prodigal Summer was so enjoyable that I was sad to see the characters go when I came to the end. They were still in the midst of their circles and cycles of connections, whether those connections came about by surprise, had been there all along only waiting to be acknowledged, or had to be worked at and achieved. There was a lot more story to be lived, but I was no longer anxious or worried for them. They all seemed to be headed in the right direction and I had to be content.

A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

Smiley's People by John Le Carre'

George Smiley is after Karla, the Soviet spy-master again. It’s his obsession. His life. The way he defines himself.

He wondered, as so often before, how he would have turned out if he had had Karla’s childhood, had been fired in the same kilns of revolutionary upheaval. He tried but, as so often before, failed to resist his own fascination at the sheer scale of the Russian suffering, its careless savagery, its flights of heroism. He felt small in the face of it, and soft by comparison, even though he did not consider his own life wanting in pains.

Smiley’s People takes place a few years after The Honourable Schoolboy. Smiley is supposed to be retired, but new, and very troubling events put him back on Karla’s trail. The story is dominated by Smiley’s solo detective work, which he carries out in his usual quiet, unassuming and very competent way. Of course he has valuable resources, including his “people,” but, really, he’s practically a superhero. Okay, so not a very flashy superhero, but a short and pudgy one who polishes his glasses with the fat end of his tie.

I think that the characters who serve as “Smiley’s people” are not adequately defined as the folks whose talents are at his disposal. Several familiar characters from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy make appearances not just as Smiley’s resources, but as his protégés and devotees. They respect him – practically worship him – trust him, would do anything for him at any time. They even are happy for him when he is not happy for himself, celebrate excitedly for him when he cannot. It’s loyalty to Smiley that makes them “Smiley’s people.” He does not necessarily claim them as his own so much as they claim him as theirs.

This novel was so entertaining to read. It is full of nonstop intrigue and a sort of stewing, practically action-less suspense (another “heartburn thriller”!). It’s also characteristically loaded with Le Carré’s brilliant, engaging language, phrasing and descriptions. Light and succinct lines like, “Hilda was a divorced woman of some speed,” and “ ‘George has got too many heads under his hat’” (spoken with sympathy by one of his people) make this great story roll along even more enjoyably.  I was quite sorry when this novel was over. And I don’t think I’m giving too much away if I say that George Smiley seemed a little sorry that it was over, too.

You might also like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy

Coming soon: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

  

A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

The Honourable Schoolboy by John Le Carre'

I finished reading this book some time ago, but I haven’t been able to sit down and write about it. It could be that the story exhausted me! Not that I don’t enjoy that, especially in a spy novel.

The Honourable Schoolboy is a follow-up novel to Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Everybody’s favorite spy (well, mine anyway), George Smiley and his people at “the Circus” have a lead on Karla, Smiley’s particular Soviet nemesis. A very convoluted trail is uncovered, mostly in Asia and Jerry Westerby, the “Honourable Schoolboy” of the story, does most of the footwork.

I think it was Westerby’s hard and often pointless work that was so exhausting to me as I read this novel. I somehow was induced to willingly follow him along as he skillfully pulled off some dirty but necessary deeds, bravely burrowed into war-torn Southeast Asia on a somewhat Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now-style quest, unwisely fell in love, and eventually spiraled downward into a sort of justified madness.

Often, I get pretty angry with characters who make the kinds of decisions Westerby makes in this novel and even at the authors who created them. (This happened when I read Blue Angel by Francine Prose.) But, somehow, John Le Carré made me understand Westerby and many of the other ultra-paranoid, just-about-to-crack characters. I felt more like I was invited to learn something than implored to feel something. Sure, I felt the heartburn and exhaustion of this story, but I also was made to understand it. I didn’t just empathize with the characters, but was given a subtle but complete study of them to ponder. Nothing was gratuitously graphic, but everything was informatively detailed. I was taken on the mad, paranoid journey with these exceptional characters. With Le Carré’s skill, I couldn’t help but believe every word of The Honourable Schoolboy.

Some people might come out of a novel like this feeling depressed or fearful about the scummy-ness of humanity, and, I suppose they are entitled to that. Somehow, I really enjoy the sneakiness and spookiness, the paranoia and the pulled-out rugs. Yes, the intrigue and action and pain and uncertainty can be exhausting to read, but for me, it’s a good tired. I’m already deep into Smiley’s People, and am thoroughly enjoying that one too.

  

You might also like Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré

A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now

Wednesday Word

squill (skwil) n. the dried bulb of white varieties of a plant (Urginea maritima) of the lily family, formerly used in medicine


I first saw the word squill used by a clever player (not me) in an electronic Scrabble game. Since the all-knowing Scrabble program accepted the word, I had to assume it really was a word. My paper and ink dictionary agreed. Then, I came across the word in The Patchwork Garden by Sydney Eddison. It seems that I can no longer be skeptical. Squill is a real word for a real thing.

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack is the first in a series of steampunk-style adventure novels by Mark Hodder. It is set in Victorian England (well, sort of), and is filled with mechanical and genetic improbabilities. The heroes of the story are Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Charles Swinburne, guys who actually existed, though not exactly in the way they do in this novel.

There are a few overlapping plots in this story, and they all become in some way connected to the strange being known as Spring Heeled Jack, a frightening character who has been attacking and abusing young women. Burton, formerly a famous explorer and adventurer, has been given a special position by the king (yes, the king…that’s as close to a spoiler as I’m willing to give). He finds himself in the middle of all of this and applies his unique abilities and strengths to try to get to the bottom of the whole affair. His oddball poet friend Swinburne eventually helps him out and ends up being a valuable partner, if a bit eccentric and unpredictable.

The story is action-packed and fun, with elements of old-fashion pulp adventure, suspense, and hard science fiction. The setting is stuffed with funky machinery, such as roto-chairs and steam-powered penny farthing bicycles as well as genetically-modified animals, such as foul-mouthed messenger parakeets. These anachronisms really add a lot of fun to the story, especially since Hodder gives us so much detail about the steampunk props and the attitudes and philosophies that gave rise to those wonderful inventions. Here is a description of an engineer named Brunel, who has been modified to exist well beyond his natural life:

He stood on three triple-jointed metal legs. These were attached to a horizontal disk-shaped chassis affixed to the bottom of the main body, which, shaped like a barrel lying on its side, appeared to be constructed from wood and banded with strips of studded brass. There were domed protrusions at either end of it, each bearing nine multijointed arms, each arm ending in a different tool, ranging from delicate fingers to slashing blades, drills to hammers, spanners to welders…

            At various places around the body, revolving cogwheels poked through slots in the wood, and on one shoulder – it was impossible to say whether it was the left or right because Brunel had no discernible front or back – a pistonlike device slowly rose and fell. On the other, something resembling a bellows pumped up and down, making a ghastly wheezing noise. Small exhaust pipes expelled puffs of white vapour from either end of the barrel.

There are other historical figures in this novel besides Burton and Swinburne (and the Brunel mentioned above), such as Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, and Oscar Wilde. They each receive their own amusing (often darkly so) twists by Hodder. Spring Heeled Jack is also based on someone, or a few someones, who terrorized women in Victorian London. (He was mentioned in Her Little Majesty by Carolly Erickson.) Since the real Jack was never caught, nor really very well understood, he provided the greatest opportunity for the author to take liberties with his story, and Hodder does so with great creativity and high entertainment.

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack was my first introduction to the steampunk genre, and there are two more books so far in the Burton and Swinburne series that I’m looking forward to reading as well. This was really a great piece of escapist speculative fiction to kick off some lazy summer reading.

A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now

Wednesday Word

I recently finished reading The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder. There's one word that succintly describes what kind of book this is:

Steampunk: a subgenre of speculative fiction, usually set in an anachronistic quasi-Victorian alternate history setting. It could be described by the slogan “What the past would look like if the future had happened sooner.” It includes fiction with science fiction, fantasy or horror themes.

from Urban Dictionary

More on The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack soon.

The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. LeGuin

The conclusion to the Earthsea Trilogy

The Farthest Shore is loaded with even more of the same beautiful writing that I so enjoyed in A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan. Sparrowhawk, the great wizard and now the Archmage of Roke, has become aged, uniquely experienced and wise over the many years not covered by any of these novels. A greater problem than ever is brought before him: a problem with the function of magic and wizardry itself.

Sparrowhawk and a young prince travel long distances and to many exotic places. (My favorite is a floating civilization of people who live their entire lives on rafts far from any land.) The travelers consort with dragons, and face death many times and in many forms. As always, Sparrowhawk’s great abilities with magic must be the key to victory, but it is his bravery, self-control, intelligence and wisdom, along with those of his companion, that even make that possible.

The imagery and narrative style are really the most enjoyable aspects of this novel for me, even as they were in the other Earthsea novels. I think I’d love to read about a trip to the grocery store if it was written like this. The book is short but the journey of which it tells is long and hard. The descriptions are often dreamy, but still somehow lucid and richly detailed. There is a deep history in Earthsea from which to draw and a worthy future to protect.

I just love these books, and I’m sorry I did not read them earlier. LeGuin has created such a wonderful world full of fantastic places, relatable characters, bittersweet memories and powerful magic. I’d love to read the Earthsea trilogy again, but, alas, I have so many other books I should have read by now.

 You might also like: AWizard of Earthsea, and The Tombs ofAtuan

A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder

By the Shores of Silver Lake is a bit less quaint and a bit more hard-core than the preceding books in the Little House series. Before the first two pages are over, we learn that the family has been sick, is still weak from that illness, and Mary is blind. The hunting has become poor near Plum Creek and the farm has not produced a good wheat crop. The Ingalls’s decide to sell the farm and move west toward a homestead in Dakota Territory.

The style of this story is colored not only by the transitions in the American West brought on by the rush to settle the empty spaces and the breaking of ground for the railroad, but also by Laura’s own changes in maturity and understanding. In some of the earlier books, Laura Ingalls Wilder, the writer, is giving us hints about the seriousness of situations that maybe the less mature Laura of the story does not understand. In By the Shores of Silver Lake, we can see that Laura has grown up enough to understand, worry, fear, and desire to participate in some of the more difficult situations. She is still a free spirit and bravely meets new challenges such as being “eyes for Mary” and “seeing aloud” for her, and quickly learning to walk steadily in a moving car during her first train ride.

The Ingalls’s life in their new home seems like it will be more challenging than ever, although not just because of the necessity of braving the elements under relatively primitive conditions. The world now seems to be full of what Caroline Ingalls calls “rough men,” the kind of people from which Laura and her sisters have been sheltered for most of their life. Caroline’s worries, warnings, and attempts to keep her daughters proper young women seem to be symbolic of another transition, that of decent American society itself. From my point of view, it seems like sheltered, genteel girls wouldn’t have much of a chance of survival in the environment in which the Ingalls end up in Dakota Territory.

Laura’s plucky spirit is probably up to the challenge. There are some foreshadows of her future life (she decides she must be a teacher to help pay for Mary’s education, and she gets her first glimpse of Almanzo Wilder, though she is more interested in his horses.) It seems that being the eyes of her blind sister helped to make her such and observant and descriptive writer. She is adventurous, more like her father, and, even if I knew nothing about these stories ahead of time, I think I’d be convinced she’s going to be just fine. Her poor mother, on the other hand, faithful and hard-working as she is, still seems to be in for a bumpy ride.


You might also like On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder

A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now

The Ruth Stout No-Work Garden Book by Ruth Stout and Richard Clemence

I didn’t think I would be including gardening books in this reading journal. For one thing, I rarely read them cover to cover. I usually use them as reference material and inspiration (which I tend to forget or ignore), but Ruth Stout’s No-Work Garden Book was an exception.

It is wise to view the concept of “no work” gardening with a bit of skepticism, of course, and I didn’t really read this book hoping to master the secrets of growing vegetables without lifting a finger. I had heard of Stout through other gardening journals and sources and found her attitudes refreshing, her methods intriguing, and her words highly amusing. When I came across this book at the local library, I gave into my curiosity. When I had read the first few chapters, I knew I was going to read the whole book.

Stout’s “no work” gardening system involved permanently mulching her entire vegetable garden with leaves and hay. She just pushed aside the mulch to plant, never tilled, and pushed the mulch back around the plants as they grew. Since this mulch was organic matter, it constantly decayed and degraded and effectively served as a nutritive compost that continuously fed the soil and the plants. She did this for many years with fabulous success, much to the delight and dismay of other organic gardeners, experts, scientists and, eventually, followers and fans.

As intriguing as Stout’s methods are, the delightfully cheerful and sometimes quirky way she engages the reader is what made this book worth reading from beginning to end. Some of her anecdotes and phrasings are really funny and the text is surprisingly devoid of any of the crankiness or I-told-you-so gloating you might expect from a successful gardener of a certain age who has become (deservedly) set in her ways. The book was fun to read and I felt like I would have loved to have a conversation or two about gardening, or anything else, really, with Ruth Stout.



Coming soon: On the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder


A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now

Favorite Lines Friday

I've been messing around in the garden at least as much as I've been reading lately. Recently, I found this good piece of advice about gardening and reading in The Ruth Stout No-work Garden Book by Ruth Stout and Richard Clemence:

Read one garden book, if you must, but better not make it two, for they are almost sure to contradict each other, then you're sunk.

Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard

A Love Story with Recipes

I thought I had read all of the food memoirs that I owned, so I borrowed Lunch in Paris from my aunt in order to have something “foodie” to read in this year of books I hadn’t read before. (I did find something else that I’d forgotten about and hope to get to soon.)

Elizabeth Bard decided to move to Paris for her fabulous man, and found that language was not the only obstacle to her easily fitting in. Among other things with which she struggled, she addresses values, medical care, careers, and politics in Lunch in Paris. The book is not, however, a few hundred pages of whining about how things are different in other places than they are in the good ol’ USA. It’s also not about how things are better in other places. It’s about finding a way.

Bard not only found her way through the markets and bistros and teeny-tiny apartment kitchens in Paris, but also a way to make her die-hard American ambition and optimism work in a place where such concepts were so foreign as to be nearly alien. In the end, it seems she neither gave up, gave in, nor forced her way through. She influenced her husband to successfully pursue a dream career that he had not been convinced was possible, but had to be more patient with her own success. She did things her more American way when she could, but often had to just accept it when “FWA, baby.” France wins again.

She also has a lot of great things to eat through the course of this story, and many recipes are included. What is most fun about this memoir, however, is the engaging style in which it is written. It is funny, ironic, witty and conversational. Bard’s optimism never seems to have waned, and, while I won’t say she gives us an exact formula for making difficult things work, she offers us a great personal example of how bravery, boldness and a little audacity can be combined with just the right kind of open-mindedness and compromise to create a meaningful life in an unfamiliar place. Perhaps a love of great food, however, can get one a little further in a place like Paris.

  

A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

Wednesday Words

There's a whole different vocabulary in the field of philosophy. Here are a few of the words I'm sure I'll be casually using now that I've read The Philosophers.

epistemology - the study or theory of the origin, nature, methods, and limits of knowledge

teleology - 1. the study of final causes.  2. the factor or quality of being directed toward a definite end or of having an ultimate purpose, esp. as attributed to natural processes...4. Ethics. the evaluation of conduct, as in utilitarianism, in relatioin to the end or ends it serves

metaphysics - 1. the branch of philosophy that deals with first principles and seeks to explain the nature of being or reality and of the origin and structure of the world  2. speculative philosophy in general  3. the theory or principles (of some branch of knowledge)  4. popularly, any very subtle or difficult reasoning

The Philosophers edited by Ted Honderich

Introducing Great Western Thinkers

I grabbed this book from the library hoping to give myself a quick introduction to these guys (and they’re all guys) so many people talk about. There are 28 philosophers covered in this volume, from Socrates to Sartre, and each gets a brief treatment in his own chapter.

Each chapter has a different author, so has a different style and a different focus. Most of them give a little bit about the personal background of the philosopher, a very brief description of his major works, and something about the types of arguments he tried to make. I was hoping to finish my reading with a feeling for what each of these great thinkers stood for, to be able to associate a name with a few iconic ideas or defining quotations.

Unfortunately, my experience didn’t quite go that way. After just one reading, I can’t remember most of the philosophical ideas put forward. I don’t remember who was most associated with logic or mathematics or linguistics or metaphysics or whatever. All that I am able to remember are things like these: Just about everything we know about Socrates comes from the writings of Plato, and it’s hard to tell in these writings where Socrates’s ideas end and Plato’s begin. Descartes concluded that he thought, therefore he was (I’m happy for him), and also invented graphing, which probably separates those of us who love math from those of you who hate it.  Marx is largely misunderstood (especially by Marxists). Kant almost never left his hometown. Bentham looked kind of like Ben Franklin. And Schopenhauer could have benefited from a twenty-first century cocktail of anti-depressants (or, as my husband declares, probably even just a cocktail).

I found myself most fascinated by Spinoza and Sartre, and not much interested in all the arguments about how to prove that we, or anything else in the universe, or in our imaginations, actually exists. I found it interesting to see how, historically, Western philosophy has included science, mathematics, linguistics, psychology, and other fields of knowledge and reason that are now their own branches of study (though I don’t mean to imply that science, psychology, etc. cannot have their own philosophy and philosophers.) These days, most of us probably would agree with the statement at the end of the chapter on Wittgenstein by Peter Hacker: “The goal of philosophy is not knowledge but understanding.”

While I wish I could have committed more to memory from a single reading of The Philosophers, the book has a nearly 15-page “Guide to Further Reading” at the end that seems to be quite valuable. As if I needed to expand my list of Books I Should Have Read by Now.

A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

Favorite Lines Friday

Here is a wonderful description of a view from the observation room on a ship leaving the earth from The Stars Like Dust by Isaac Asimov:

The Earth was suspended there below, a gigantic and gleaming orange-and-blue-and-white-patched balloon. The hemisphere showing was almost entirely sunlit; the continents between the clouds, a desert orange, with thin, scattered lines of green. The seas were blue, standing out sharply against the black of space where they met the horizon. And all around in the black, undusted sky were the stars.

Very nice. We’ve probably all seen a photo or video of this (I doubt anyone reading this has experienced this view from orbit), and Asimov gives a beautiful, detailed description. There’s just one thing: you see, The Stars Like Dust was published in 1950. Sputnik 1, the first anything to be launched into orbit, didn’t go up until 1957. Asimov was seeing this view in his mind’s eye. His very creative mind’s eye.

The Stars Like Dust by Isaac Asimov

My misspent reading youth must have been followed by a misspent young-adulthood. This is the only explanation I can think of for the fact that I’ve read so little Isaac Asimov. I can’t even remember what I knew of Asimov before I met my husband, a true Asimov enthusiast. Eventually, our merged libraries came to contain an overflowing box of Asimov’s work, mostly science fiction, but many, many mysteries and an astonishing array of nonfiction works as well.

Now that my adulthood isn’t so young, I thought I’d begin remedying my inexcusable lack of Asimov experience. (I did read the Foundation trilogy a while back, so I’m not a complete dunderhead!) The Stars Like Dust, a short but full novel, shuffled itself to the top of the “to be read” stack, so I started there.

The Stars Like Dust is the high-flying (as in way, way beyond the earth’s atmosphere) adventure of Biron Farrill, a young man about to graduate from an earth university. The story begins with him realizing that his life is in danger, and he spends the rest of the story running, hiding, hijacking, navigating in spherical co-ordinates (space is three-dimensional, after all), finding out who his real enemies are, and falling in love. He does all of this in the exotic setting of outer space and distant planets, but, since he was created by an author of sound scientific mind, he never seems to break the known laws of physics.

Characters are not who they seem to be. Whole planets, lost and found, are full of surprises. Farrill learns to navigate the political intrigue as well as the darkest nebulae and the deepest psychologies. The complex battle of wits is as exciting as the chase through space, and our hero is revealed to be a particularly good player. Of course, he is also a fairly realistic character, who cannot know absolutely everything about everyone, for “There are depths in feminine psychology, which, without experience, defy analysis.”

Asimov’s style manages to be to-the-point but never lacking in appropriate levels of detail or even humor. This makes the story skip along without any layovers or delays. Asimov’s sense of setting and perspective, however, make this story mind-bogglingly huge in scope. The universe is big and old and only those who have a firm grasp of that (as well as the politics of a humongous far-future empire) have any hope of finding what they are looking for in the void and dust of space or in time and history.

  

You might also like Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

 

A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

Thursday Thoughts

Hemingway as (dare I say) Role Model

I recently read this passage in an essay by Harry Golden titled “Are Writers Born?” (published in The Writer’s Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing, 1970, out of print, I think.)

Ernest Hemingway did something of a disservice to young writers when he had himself photographed with a bottle of gin and a fishing pole and when he talked of how he cheered at the bull fights and of the adventures he had in Spain, in Cuba, in France and in Africa. Hemingway was a great writer, perhaps one of the greatest of this century, and it would have been just as nice to have had as many photographs of him reading as fishing or hunting. For he did more reading than he did fishing; he did more reading than he did drinking. He read every day of his life in a soundproof room for at least three hours. Pictures of him reading would certainly have done young writers as much good as those pictures of him triumphant over a fallen water buffalo. Ernest Hemingway read everything of consequence as fast as it came off the presses.

My first thought was that perhaps my tendency to desire long periods of solitude in which I can concentrate as much as my distractible mind allows on a book or story or article will lead me to greatness. Then, I thought, perhaps it will lead me to suicidal alcoholism.

I’ll take the risk of revealing my shame by admitting that I’ve read almost no Hemingway. I was “assigned” along with the rest of my class to read “The Big Two-Hearted River” in high school, largely, I think, because it takes place in the same general part of the world* in which we were learning our three R’s. I didn’t really “get it” back then, and a glance at it now still leaves me far less interested or inspired than I would like to be. Still, I can’t help but admire (actually, sit blinking in amazement at) the way the story manages to be minimalist and intricately detailed at the same time.

The point of the above quotation is that Hemingway was smart, well-read, and intensely familiar with the craft of the written word, and those characteristics informed his writing at least as well as his grand adventures did. Who wouldn’t want such a writer as a role model? Assuming one can pick and choose which parts of that model to emulate.

If I am to copy Hemingway in any way it is going to have to be in trying to become a voracious reader, or at least as voracious as my slow and distracted reading abilities allow. Three hours a day? I’m not sure I can make that happen (as much as I would like to), but a big pile of reading material and as much quiet as I can get definitely suit me more than a trout stream or a bullfighting ring. Oh, and I really can’t stand to drink gin.


*Here is a short piece about Seney, MI as related to "The Big Two-Hearted River." Note: the article refers to Michigan's Upper Penninsula as the Northern Penninsula. I've never seen that anywhere else. Nobody who actually lives there calls it that.


Coming next: The Stars Like Dust by Isaac Asimov

Blue Angel by Francine Prose

After reading some good things about writing by Francine Prose (specifically her book Reading Like a Writer and an interview with her in The Writer magazine) I decided to see how she puts her great analysis to work by seeking out one of her novels to read. My local library had Blue Angel on the shelf, so Blue Angel it would be.

Blue Angel is the story of Ted Swenson, a novelist teaching writing at a small liberal arts college in Vermont. He demonstrates early on that he is a bit of a fish out of water, clearly uncomfortable in a tired and tiresome academic setting. The school’s newly-adopted hypersensitivity to political incorrectness and sexual harassment simply adds to Swenson’s irritation. And then (Spoiler Alert!) when one reads, “No, what really bothers him…is that he was too stupid or timid or scared to sleep with those students,” one suspects it will all go downhill from there, and it does.

This novel is almost a self-contained clinic on novel writing. If I hadn’t read Reading Like a Writer I may not have been able to see this and probably would not have cared to follow Swenson on his downward-spiraling journey. The narrative is brilliantly crafted with stereotypical characters that fill somewhat symbolic roles, yet manage to maintain their believability. Prose’s use of language is wonderfully descriptive, ironic, metaphorical and funny, sometimes all at once like in this description of the smoking section of a restaurant:

At the far end of the restaurant is a sort of greenhouse, its windows fogged with the cigar smoke produced by the happy crowd inside, each patron a polluter, a factory unto himself, while the nonsmokers outside can watch the brave cigar puffers slowly -proudly- snuffing themselves, their gradual public suicides like some gladiatorial entertainment.

I found myself enjoying this book even though I wasn’t enjoying Swenson’s self-destructive story. I was frustrated and irritated that Swenson was “that bored, that weird, that pathetic.” I didn’t want to see what stupid thing he was going to do next. I did, however, want to read what Francine Prose had written next, what language she was going to use to describe something I didn’t want to know. That aspect of this novel was its greatest reward and made it worth my time to read.


Coming soon: The Stars Like Dust by Isaac Asimov (A rather different experience than Blue Angel!)

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

When I read Dracula by Bram Stoker, I figured it was going to be really difficult for any other vampire story to measure up. Dracula set a very high standard, and as a novel it had everything it needed: a strong literary core, mystery, suspense, a perfectly evil, shadowy villain, and smart, tenacious protagonists. I didn’t need to read any other vampire stories, and was not interested in the newer trends in this micro-genre. (I just made up the term “micro-genre.” I hope you like it.) It’s hard to ignore the popularity of the “Sookie Stackhouse” novels by Charlaine Harris, however, so I thought I’d give Dead Until Dark, the first in this series, a try.

Well. Ahem. Perhaps it’s best to say I have “mixed feelings” about this novel. First of all (and best of all), I loved the first chapter. That first chapter is a complete, very good short story that almost entirely stands alone from the rest of the book. I’m not saying that it isn’t relevant to the rest of the book. In fact, it is essential and serves as a fine introduction. It’s just that with the exception of one detail that gets resolved late in the novel, Chapter 1 is a complete, and, I’ll say it again, very good short story. The rest of the book needs Chapter 1, but Chapter 1 doesn’t need the rest of the book.

The end of the book is also pretty good, with a lot of action, danger, and suspense. The greater part of the remainder of the novel, however, confirmed a suspicion about myself that I had not needed to articulate before: vampire erotica is not for me. I enjoyed the setup of Sookie as the point of view character, and her plucky and engaging style as a narrator (reminiscent of Stephanie Plum if you’re a Janet Evanovich fan). I just couldn’t follow her everywhere.

No, while there were some fun things in this novel, and the first chapter was great, you can have Vampire Bill. I think I’ll keep Dracula.


A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

Favorite Lines Friday

Here’s an amusing line spoken by Corwin of Amber in Sign of the Unicorn:

“To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys,” I said, “I wish I had known this some time ago.”



Coming next: Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny

The Amber Chronicles Book 3

I had read Nine Princes in Amber some time ago, but knowing that each subsequent novel in the Amber series by Roger Zelazny is heavily dependent on the events of the previous novel, I broke my rule of only reading books I Should Have Read by Now to read a book I had read before. It was to be a quick re-cap, an introduction to The Guns of Avalon, the second book, but as I got about halfway into that one, I realized I had read it before, too. Oh well. At least I knew for sure that I had never read Sign of the Unicorn, or any of the other Amber novels. (All of the Amber books are available in one volume, by the way, and that's how I've been reading them.)

Sign of the Unicorn picks up very soon after the conclusion (which is rather dramatic) of The Guns of Avalon. Corwin of Amber, the protagonist of these novels, probably sums up the situation best a few paragraphs into the story:

Me, back less than a week. Most things, still unresolved. The court of Amber, full of suspicion and unrest. This, now: a death to further jeopardize the brief, unhappy prereign of Corwin I: me.

Yes, Corwin is more or less in charge in his homeland of Amber now, but he has had quite a struggle against, among other things, a few-hundred-year bout of amnesia, long-term imprisonment, and some rather significant injuries. Okay, so they’re rather horrific injuries. As he implies in the quote above, there’s a lot more to do if he is to be king, and the greatest collective obstacle will be his ambitious, conniving, untrustworthy brothers and sisters.

Corwin’s not that great of a guy himself, but he’s still our hero, with his irreverence coming across as charming and amusing in Zelazny’s light, engaging story-telling style. Sign of the Unicorn was really fun to read (as were the first two books) with plenty of action, stories within stories told by other characters, and a few sort of dreamy sequences as Corwin navigates “Shadow” (everything we think of as the real world and every other possibility as well, all reflections of Amber) and as he goes to a place called Tir-na Nog’th (“reasonable behavior for any Amberite with a serious problem.”).

In Sign of the Unicorn, we get a bit of explanation and gain some more understanding of how serious and complex the conspiracies have been among Corwin’s siblings to take over the throne of Amber. They’re all so nasty, we really want Corwin to win. We’re left hanging at the end of this story, however, with Corwin and his friends lost and confused. But “All roads lead to Amber,” so there is some hope that our irreverent hero will survive to fight the conspiracies at least a while longer.


A Year of Books I Should Have Read by Now

Thursday Theater

Since the 2011 film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy never did come to a theater near me, I finally rented the 1979 television mini-series starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley. Now, I’m probably not the person with whom you would want to watch a film based on something I’ve read. I constantly compare the film to the book, often out loud, and I’m always disappointed. Well, almost always.

The Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy mini-series is the most satisfying adaptation of a novel that I have encountered. It captures the essence of the “heartburn thriller,” not with mood music or fancy film techniques, but with supreme acting by well-cast actors. These guys (especially Alec Guinness, of course) manage to convey their heartburn to their tense, anticipating audience with a mere wiggle of an eyebrow or twitch of the lip. Of course, any filmmakers that respect the story they are telling enough to cast Patrick Stewart as a guy who says absolutely nothing can be trusted to put good, strong, well-played characters on the screen.

I believe, however, that the real advantage of this, or possibly any mini-series adaptation of a novel, is that of time. Most novels, at least most good novels, cannot be given justice in a feature-length film simply because there is too much story to tell. The Tinker Tailor mini-series takes 290 minutes to represent John Le Carre’s complex (though relatively short with regard to words and pages) novel, and that is time much needed and very well spent. I fully intend to watch the 2011 feature-length film when I can get a hold of it (hopefully in April) and it will be interesting to see how well this story really can be represented in 127 minutes.

It’ll also be interesting to see how well Gary Oldman represents George Smiley compared to Alec Guinness. It is, literally, a tough act to follow, but Oldman’s Oscar nomination gives me some hope for a good show.

Not that I needed another thing to be comparing and contrasting while I try to enjoy a film. You definitely do not want to watch this movie with me. Someday, I hope to learn from some of my favorite movie people: “Repeat to yourself it’s just a show/You should really just relax.”


Coming next: thoughts on Sign of the Unicorn, the third Amber novel by Roger Zelazny

Her Little Majesty by Carolly Erickson

The Life of Queen Victoria

I had read other biographies of British monarchs by Carolly Erickson, so I had high expectations for the quality of the research and the writing in Her Little Majesty. I was not the least bit disappointed. What I was also expecting, however, was to finish reading this book with a clear understanding of what made Queen Victoria great: how she balanced marriage and motherhood with the demands of politics and statecraft; how she managed, as such a physically small woman, to rule such a large empire for such a long time; how she endured so much criticism and ridicule to end her reign with such public popularity and endearment. I these areas, I’m still a little confused.

On the surface, the life of Queen Victoria seems like one of opulent privilege and indulgence. She seemed to lack nothing, but still had a great deal to complain about and much to lose her temper over. She did, however, manage to earn the respect of many statesmen with her knowledge of the situation of Europe and her grasp of politics. It was somewhat difficult for me to tell from this particular account, however, exactly how she did earn that respect.

Victoria’s childhood was really pretty nightmarish, with her mother and her mother’s financial advisor (probably really a con man) selfishly manipulating her life for their own personal gains. She was only eighteen years old when she became queen. Most of her life after that seems to be characterized by obsessive, and often unwise, attachment to one person or another, dramatic displays of temper, and constant struggles against various emotional burdens. She absolutely hated not getting her own way and couldn’t stand it when anyone, especially one of her nine children, did not do everything exactly how she wanted them to.

Something that completely baffled me, and disappointed me as well, was that Queen Victoria agreed with the sentiment of her time that characterized women as inferior to men. She seemed to believe that she was not cut out for her inherited job, not because it was extremely complicated, or because she had nine children, or because she was kind of a drama queen, but because a man would be better for it than a woman. I was hoping that she had had more strength, perhaps even more of a chip on her shoulder, trying to prove that she could do what no one thought women could do.

So, I was mostly through the book and I still didn’t understand why Queen Victoria was “great.” Then, I came to a particularly informative passage about the celebration of her Diamond Jubilee (sixty years of rule). This is not only a great example of Erickson’s high-quality, engaging prose, but also a demonstration of the most positive answer to the question, “But, what have you done for me lately?” that I have ever seen.


The frail, child-sized figure in her carriage was the focus of all eyes, the tender object of all hearts. No one in the crowd now thought of the dark years when the queen had been criticized for hiding herself away, or ridiculed for clinging to John Brown, or scoffed at as a quaint, naïve relic of the past in an increasingly sophisticated world. Instead the overwhelming feeling was a desire to cherish the precious sovereign who represented tradition, stability, worldwide authority. Victoria was the crown. Victoria was the empire. Victoria was the royal family. Victoria was Britain, her glory Britain’s glory, her endurance Britain’s triumphant durability in a world of change.


Huh. Well, in this era of too many people who are famous simply for being famous, I suppose I’m pretty content that Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, has been remembered well for something of more significant substance, at least on a sentimental level. She represented the end of an age, whether anyone likes to admit it or not. Nothing has been quite the same since she’s been gone.


A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now

Wednesday Word

Rama (rä' mə) any of three of the incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu, esp. the seventh


In Rendezvous with Rama and again in Rama II, the alien object entering our solar system was named Rama by the people who get to decide these things. They delved into the Hindu deity names because they were all out of Greek and Roman ones.

Rama, however, just sounds cool.  It's easy to say and finds a good place in the alliterative phrase "rendezvous with Rama." I find myself wondering if the sound of that phrase alone could have sparked the idea for this science fiction series.



Coming soon: Her Little Majesty by Carolly Erickson

Rama II by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee

I really enjoyed Rendezvous with Rama and was hoping for the same kind of intensity and excitement in Rama II. I had a hard time getting through Rama II, however, though it is a good science fiction story.

As was foreshadowed in Rendezvous, there is indeed a second Rama spacecraft visiting the solar system. This time, the people of earth are somewhat more prepared, and a second rendezvous is carefully planned with a well-trained crew. The first part of the novel is spent getting to know the characters that make up this crew, which includes military, engineering and medical specialists. I think what threw the novel out of balance for me, however, was the inclusion of journalists, who really ended up dominating the priorities of the mission. In fact, I hated Francesca Sabatini, the rude, manipulating, self-absorbed model-turned-journalist so much that she nearly ruined the book for me.

Once the crew gets into the second Rama ship, there’s a whole new and fascinating story of technology and mystery. They’re starting with the knowledge gained from the exploration of the first Rama craft, and must face many of the same challenges as well as plenty of new ones. Unfortunately, the greatest challenges involve the people in the crew themselves. They don’t get along so well together, and aggressive, self-serving personal agendas drive the plot and the conflicts.

There are quite likeable characters, however, which saved the book for me. It wasn’t so much that I could relate to them (they’re all much, much smarter than me and have lived more interesting lives even before going into space), but I could understand how their lives and attitudes affected their motives and decisions. Also, for a “hard” science fiction novel, this one contains an especially kind and sympathetic treatment of the most devoutly religious character. Michael O’Toole, a Catholic, really is a good, wise, and fair guy, and does not behave as the unkind, stereotypically misguided and intolerant religious fanatics in many other science fiction stories. His actions are in contrast to those of the more fearful or financially driven characters and give us something to think about.

Overall, this is more a book about what drives people to particular actions and the way they work together, or don’t as the case may be, than it is about space travel or contact with sophisticated alien beings. As Nicole de Jardins, the character we probably get to know best in the novel, muses, “It’s a shame that we humans are never able to pull in the same direction. Not even when confronted by infinity.” Now, I loved Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre, which are also about the less positive aspects of human nature. Rama II, however, just didn’t seem to work as well as this kind of character study for me. It needed to be different than Rendezvous with Rama, I suppose, but I did not like it nearly as much.

As I said, it is a pretty good science fiction story, and I’m looking forward to reading the next sequel, The Garden of Rama….some day.


You might also like: Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke


A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now

Favorite Lines Friday

I am cheating for this Favorite Lines post. I simply refer you to this fabulous list of the 100 Best First Lines from Novels from American Book Review:

100 Best First Lines From Novels

There are all the old familiar lines, like "Call me Ishmael," "It was a dark and stormy night...", and "Happy families are all alike..." but there are, of course many with which I was not familiar. I particularly like the short, punchy lines that not only make me desire to read what is next, but are also particularly wise. Like:


"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board." from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston(1937)

and

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there." from The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley (1953)

And here's one that I'm a little afraid might apply directly to me all too soon:

"Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature." from The Debut by Anita Brookner (1981)


Of course, I was a little disappointed that "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." did not make the list, since, concise and wonderful as it is, that line not only launched an epic tale, but also an epic appreciation for well-done fantasy literature.

So far, my favorite first line from the novels I have written about on The Distractible Reader is from Summer Knight by Jim Butcher:

"It rained toads the day the White Council came to town."


How about you? Any favorite first lines from novels that you'd like to share? Please "Comment" below if you do. I'd love to read them.