Archives - June 2007

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Sandra McDonald, The Outback Stars: I liked this a lot. After an unexplained disaster destroyed her last ship, Lt. Jodenny Scott has joined the crew of the Aral Sea. Once on board, she must straighten out the department she's assigned to, navigate the petty politics of the ship, and deal with her guilt over surviving the explosion of the Yangtze. On top of that, she's romantically drawn to Sergeant Terry Myell, with whom she stumbles upon a mystery which may explain what happened to her last ship. The characters are well-drawn, the shipboard culture convincing, and the worldbuilding fascinating, with hints of a mysterious alien culture and dreams from the folklore of the Australian aborigines. Apparently this is the first in a trilogy, but although there are some points not wholly wrapped up at the end, it does come to a satisfying conclusion, at least as regards its two main characters. I really look forward to reading the next book.
Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett, Point of Hopes, Point of Dreams: Nicolas Rathe is a pointsman in the city of Astreiant, responsible for keeping the peace and investigating crimes; Philip Eslingen is an out-of-work soldier searching for a job in the city. Together, they fight crime! Okay, sorry, couldn't resist. In any case, these books are an enjoyable mix of fantasy and mystery, with excellent worldbuilding; the city is so intimately described that it feels very real, down even to its smells and sounds. The books are a little slow-moving at times, particularly in the first book, where the mystery is drawn out through most of the book with little progress, then the resolution happens all at once, almost breathlessly, but the mysteries were intriguing enough to keep me interested. I liked the characters a lot and thus wished that certain developments in the personal lives of the protagonists which take place mostly between the two books had been shown more onstage.
Rosemary Ashton, Thomas and Jane Carlyle: Portrait of a Marriage: As I expected from Ashton (having read her biographies of George Eliot and G.H. Lewes), this is an excellent biography, thorough and well-researched. The Carlyles had a famously unhappy marriage, and Ashton is sympathetic to both of them, yet objective, never taking sides; she understands Carlyle's tortured genius and neglect of his wife as well as Jane's self-pity and repressed talents and astutely shows how their difficult personalities interacted with each other as well as with their friends and family. I am now dying to get my hands on some of the Carlyles' letters, especially Jane's.
Margo Rabb, Cures for Heartbreak: Mia Pearlman's mother has just died of cancer, twelve days after being diagnosed, and suddenly she, her older sister Alex, and her father must figure out how to survive together. Mia's story is poignant and sad, but leavened with hope and black humor, as she searches for a cure for her grief and for love. If you like Sarah Dessen, I'd strongly recommend this.
P.G. Wodehouse, Blandings Castle: I continue to indulge myself by the occasional purchase of a nice Collector's Wodehouse hardcover. This one is a collection of stories: six about Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle crowd, one about Bobbie Wickham (whom I'd only previously encountered in Jeeves and Wooster stories), and five Mulliner stories of Hollywood. I think that Wodehouse's talent for twisted, clever plots is best displayed in his novels, but I enjoyed the Emsworth stories (which are somewhat interrelated) quite a bit anyway, and also the Bobbie Wickham story. The Hollywood stories didn't work for me very well; the plots were unbelievable even for Wodehouse and the characters really never more than types.
Georgette Heyer, The Black Moth: Heyer's first novel, and although I can see the hints of better things to come, it was on the whole too melodramatic and lacking in humor. There are two big plot threads and neither gets enough time to develop it fully, and the characters are largely types. I mean, it's pretty good for a 17-year-old, true, but I'd rather read her later stuff.
Carla Kelly, The Wedding Journey: This was considerably grittier than the title and the cover led me to expect, and very good. Jesse Randall is a surgeon in the Duke of Wellington's Peninsular Army; Nell Mason is the daughter of a ne'er-do-well officer. When Nell's mother dies and her father makes a deal with another officer to give him Nell to settle his debts, Jesse, who's quietly loved her for years, comes to her rescue by marrying her. The well-developed, vivid characters are the best thing here, though there are lots of other things to like as well, especially the realistic, war-torn setting.
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers: This stayed just interesting enough to finish, but I thought seriously several times, particularly in the first hundred pages, about putting it down. I did like Mr. Pickwick and loved Sam Weller, but I wanted (unreasonable of me with Dickens, I know) to cut about a third of the excess scenes and verbiage. Sometimes I think I don't actually like Dickens as much as I think I do (or should).
Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels, What's Bred in the Bone, The Lyre of Orpheus: I read What's Bred in the Bone a couple of years ago and loved it; why it took me so long to reread the other two books in the trilogy, I don't know. (The books do stand alone pretty well, particularly What's Bred in the Bone.) The books are bound together by the life of one Francis Cornish, Canadian artist, critic, and collector, and by a host of other characters who are tied to him in one way or another.

What's Bred in the Bone tells Cornish's life story, starting from a conversation between his heirs and his biographer and featuring interjections from a pair of supernatural beings, the Lesser Zadkiel (the Angel of Biography) and Maimon, Francis's personal daimon. The daimons provide interesting analysis of Francis's life along the way, as well as inspiring thought about the nature of free will, whether one controls one's own life or whether it's truly shaped by outside forces and by "what's bred in the bone", a phrase that comes up often.

What's Bred in the Bone is sandwiched in between The Rebel Angels and The Lyre of Orpheus, which take place after Cornish has died, in the environs of a fictional Canadian university. In The Rebel Angels, his executors are trying to sort his immense collection, while graduate student Maria Theotoky, assistant to one of the executors, tries to deal with the obnoxious ex-monk Parlabane; academic mayhem ensues. In The Lyre of Orpheus, the Cornish Foundation for the arts has been established, and the board members decide to mount a production of an unfinished opera by E.T.A. Hoffmann; artistic mayhem ensues. They're both good (though The Lyre of Orpheus is a little scattered) and very much worth reading, but I definitely think What's Bred in the Bone is the standout of the three. All are full to the brim of drama and intrigue, vivid characters (though Maria is a little Maria-Sue-ish, really), and Davies' erudite, witty writing.
Michael Ruhlman, The Reach of a Chef: Professional Cooks in the Age of Celebrity: Here, Ruhlman examines the rise of the celebrity chef; he returns to Thomas Keller (memorably profiled in his The Soul of a Chef) and the Culinary Institute of America, explores the popularity of Emeril Lagasse, Rachael Ray, and the Food Network, and visits chefs Grant Achatz and Melissa Kelly in their very different kitchens and restaurants. I loved The Soul of a Chef; the wider focus of The Reach of a Chef was less intense and so less riveting, but I liked it a lot. Ruhlman's writing is crisp and witty, and he gets the chefs to open up with him and talk very personally about their lives and their cooking.
Maureen Johnson, 13 Little Blue Envelopes: reasonably entertaining, but I thought Devilish and The Bermudez Triangle were much better. Ginny's playing a game with her runaway aunt Peg; Peg has left Ginny a trail of little blue envelopes which will take her all over Europe, where Ginny has adventures and meets many strange and interesting people. It was fun to read, partly because I love reading books set in foreign cities, but didn't leave much of an impression; the characters are a little shallow and their development a little predictable.
Buzz Bissinger, Three Nights in August: Bissinger collaborated with Tony La Russa, currently the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals and one of the most respected managers in the game, to explore baseball through a detailed examination of a key three-game series in August 2005 between the Cardinals and their archrivals, the Chicago Cubs. The games serve as a framework in which Bissinger looks at the players, the plays, the coaches: every little detail which makes up a piece of this complex sport. If you're at all interested in baseball, I highly recommend this book; it's one of the best baseball books I've read, very well written and fascinatingly detailed.
P.G. Wodehouse, The Mating Season, Heavy Weather (reread): I can't believe I haven't read The Mating Season before; it's a primo Jeeves and Wooster novel, involving (of course) several sets of romantic entanglements, including the always amusing Gussie Fink-Nottle and Madeline Basset. Heavy Weather is a Blandings Castle novel, also a very good one.
Shannon Hale, Austenland: Jane Hayes is obsessed with Pride and Prejudice: specifically, with the BBC adaptation and Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. (Mmm, Colin Firth.) When an elderly relatives dies and bequeaths Jane a trip to England to visit Austenland, a resort which caters to the Austen-obsessed, Jane decides to go and have fun playing the role of a Regency maiden out to snare a husband. I suppose this could have been fun (although the idea of the resort sounds bloody awful to me), but there's next to no characterization, and the style is annoyingly arch. I didn't enjoy this nearly as much as Hale's very good YA novels; in fact, I barely made it through the book.
Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet: Nancy Astley is resigned to her life as a helper in her parents' oyster restaurant on the British seaside in the late 19th century...that is, until she goes to the local music hall and sees the seductive male impersonator Kitty Butler, who leads Nancy into a sensational life in London. It's a lovely romp and hard to put down; I was totally engaged with it until the very end, which was, oddly, preachy and also overly coincidental. Still, that detracted hardly at all from my enjoyment of the whole, although I think Fingersmith is better.
David Sedaris, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim: typically hilarious yet poignant Sedaris. I probably shouldn't read these in bed, because G. objects to all the giggling (particularly since I meanly won't generally read snippets aloud).
Marie Brennan, Doppelganger, Warrior and Witch: Mirage is a bounty hunter, one of the best there is. Miryo is a witch, studying for her initiation tests. When Miryo fails, her teachers tell her that it's because she has a double -- Mirage -- whom Miryo must kill in order to control her powers and pass her initiation. It's a captivating premise, and the books live up to it. The worldbuilding is excellent, particularly in the second book, when we learn more about the witches' community and organization, and the magical system is intriguing and original. The characters are complex and their interactions, decisions, and motivations equally so. Originally, I incautiously bought Doppelganger but not Warrior and Witch; just before I finished Doppelganger, I had to make an emergency evening run to our local B&N (we haven't got an independent within thirty miles), which happily had Warrior and Witch on the shelf, so that I could gobble it up as soon I finished the first book.
Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades: much better than The Black Moth, though interestingly a sequel of sorts -- names are changed, but the backstory is clearly the events of The Black Moth. Fortunately, Heyer has taken the most interesting character to build the story around, the notorious Duke of Avon, and given him a heroine worthy of his steel in Leonie, a French urchin masquerading as a boy who becomes Avon's page. The plot is a little on the improbable side, but I was entirely willing to forgive that for the sake of the characters.
Wen Spencer, A Brother's Price: In Jerin Whistler's world, males are a rarity, so it's not easy for him growing up as the eldest brother in the family, knowing that he'll be essentially sold off to become a husband to whichever family of sisters is the highest bidder. He's afraid this will mean the neighboring family, whom he despises, but when he and his sisters rescue a princess, he becomes entangled with her and her sisters, especially her eldest sister, Princess Rennsellaer. The premise is interesting, and it's an enjoyably fast-paced book with lots going on, but I wanted more from the worldbuilding: more examination of the culture and how it works, instead of the fairly shallow gender reversal. Also, there's at least one plot/character thread (Corelle) which frustratingly doesn't go anywhere after a fair amount of early setup. I'd mildly recommend it as a fun romp, but not much more than that.
Connie Willis, Bellwether: definitely not my favorite Willis, but a fun, fast, fluffy read about a couple of researchers on fads and chaos theory whose projects intersect in surprising ways.


Last updated 1 October 2007. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.