It’s just about midnight as I start this update, which is basically two-thirds of the way through the readathon and basically my usual bedtime, give or take an hour. I’m not that sleepy yet, but I expect it’ll happen soon, so maybe a little more caffeine and some moving around will put it off.
I’ve only read two books since the last update, but they’re a bit longer: Narratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology, and Scripture by W. C. Placher and Murder in the Round by Dorothy Dunnett. The former was I think recommended or mentioned on The Bible for Normal People podcast, and it was an awesome book, at once scholarly and conversational. The ostensible central argument was about the vulnerability of God, but Placher also spent time on the nature of time and eternity, the Trinity, and quite a few other other fascinating concepts, taking a fairly balanced liberal-but-orthodox standpoint while acknowledging other views. Really enjoyed this. I shall have to check out some of his other works.
Dunnett’s mystery couldn’t be much more different from her historical fiction, but it’s equally immersive and much easier to read at a brisk clip. It turns out that I had read this one in 2016, but I hadn’t remembered much, so it was still enjoyable. A lot of the fun is the narrator’s voice, which is flippant and humorous yet really quite human and interestingly revealing. She comes off as a late sixties version of the “bright young thing,” but there’s a definite awareness of the dark side of the things she laughs off, which doesn’t reduce the humor, just gives it an edge.
I think I’m basically done with the snacking at this point, unless I feel like another handful of grapes. I had some chicken noodle soup for dinner and later a couple pizza puffs (supposedly “healthier,” due to the part-cauliflour crust), so I don’t expect to feel hungry, but who knows? At this point, I plan to stay awake as long as I feel like it, but even if I do manage the 24 hours, I doubt I’ll feel like updating here before some sleep. Good luck to everyone on the last few hours!
Series: The Lotus War (book 2)
The complete set of Facts On File Day By Day 1920s through 1990s–these are absolutely marvelous reference books, which means I never really need to read all of them, just dip into them when desired. They’ve got charts of categories on everything from sports to politics and what happened where on every day of each decade. Most decades are in two, quite large volumes, but for some odd reason the 1940s and 1950s ended up fitting into a single volume each. I got these from the library where I work after they were discarded. While I completely understand why they were not kept around (they’re pretty big and any really specific information required could probably be found on the internet), they are just so fun I felt kind of bad for snatching them up as soon as they appeared on the book sale shelves. But only kind of . . .
A quantity of Penguin Classics, mostly by Graham Greene—all the books were 25% off prices ranging from 22 to 88 cents, so I couldn’t really help it. I did feel rather good for not buying all of them, just the ones that sounded possibly good. I’ve thus far read one of them (Bennett’s Grand Babylon Hotel), and I expect to pick up another one pretty soon.
A variety of theological reads—pushing the bounds of theology a bit, I can include in this Madeleine L’Engle’s Genesis Trilogy, which I’m nearly finished with, plus a book of her poetry and Ladder of Angels, her children’s storybook of Bible stories. Also with Wheaton Special Collection connections: Webber’s Ancient-Future Faith, Siegal’s Whalesong (ok, it’s a novel, but still), and Calvin Miller’s Table of Inwardness. L’Engle blurbed Understanding the Human Jesus, which would pair nicely with Borg & Wright’s The Meaning of Jesus. And to go along with my current Genesis emphasis, I picked up Enns’s Genesis for Normal People and a Lenten devotional entited Genesis of Grace. Foster’s Streams of Living Water is a bit less obviously linked to the rest, but it sounded interesting and possibly helpful.
A few random non-fiction works—Kolata’s Flu on the 1918 flu epidemic and Eagleton’s Literary Theory both piqued my interest. Probably less likely to be read straight through are the Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes and Moers’s Literary Women, but the latter may be a good backdrop for Woolf’s Three Shillings, an extended essay I’d never heard of. Purchasing an early 1940s copy of Der Fuehrer will probably prove to be a mistake, but the idea intrigued me a lot; apparently the author was trying to convince Americans to enter the war before Pearl Harbor. Another Fine Math You’ve Gotten Me Into may also prove to be a little outside my scope as well, but it seemed fun at the time.
Two or three or four ARCs—I’ll admit it. I probably request more ARCs than I’ll ever review, so it’s good I don’t receive them all. In the past six or seven weeks alone I’ve gotten four and haven’t started any, though I keep planning to. If it weren’t for extenuating circumstances, I’d start The Winner’s Curse: the cover’s pretty grandiose, but the synopsis sounds interesting. But I am a little wary of dystopias at the moment and so am putting it off. I was probably overzealous in requesting The Weight of Blood, as it seems perhaps a little serial killer-esque, but perhaps not. I honestly don’t remember asking for The Divorce Papers, but it may be funny, at least in a satiric vein. Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy sounds pretty good, but having recently read Liesl & Po, I’d rather put it off to avoid unnecessary comparisons.
And some more novels and story collections—in reverse chronological order, I’ve added Joan Aiken’s The Serial Garden stories, Collected Stories by Carson McCullers (whose works I’ve never read but think I was once told I’d like . . . ), Lost & Found by Alan Dean Foster (a weird premise and a mostly unknown author, but hey, it was 25 cents!), Defending Jacob (I made the mistake of reading the last sentence, so now I’m not sure I want to read it), Simon de Beauvoir’s The Blood of Others (for next time I feel like being depressed, apparently), Dunnett’s Queens’ Play (I guess I want to get the whole series before starting it, or something), and Byatt’s Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (because I really did like The Children’s Book, even though I’ve not tried anything else of hers since).
A Stone For a Pillow by Madeleine L’Engle was a pretty solid book, though it didn’t feel quite as fresh as its predecessor (And It Was Good), and there was quite a lot of repetitious and seemingly unnecessary circuity. I don’t know whether it was the comparative lack of stories to comment on (Jacob’s really only a couple of chapters, in comparison with all of primeval history and Abraham) or L’Engle’s pet topics, but it got a little dull, sadly. I’ve started Sold into Egypt, after a short break, and thus far it seems rather more focused, which is good.
The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard was, on the other hand, remarkably fun. I often forget A.C. Doyle has a lighter side, and in this one, he really lets it shine. The Napoleonic hero tells the stories of his youthful adventures, in which he all to often finds himself in a scrape of his own making and fights his way out dashingly and absurdly. I almost felt sorry for the poor hero, once in a while, but he’s so conceited and yet tries so hard to be noble that it’s really quite silly. Some of the adventures are spine-tingling enough, but the fact that they’re being told in retrospect makes them more set pieces than thrill-a-minute sorts. Regardless, I look forward to reading the first book (this is the second) of these adventures.
The Sea-Hawk was a bit sillier, in a rather bad way. Rafael Sabatini tends to lean that way, I think, given the few I’ve read. In any case, unfortunate Cornwall privateer Sir Oliver is accidentally framed for murder and then purposefully shanghaied into galley-slavery. Fighting his way to freedom and fortune as a Muslim corsair, he returns to England to avenge himself on his randomly villainous younger brother, and the cold-blooded warrior finds himself in a pickle after he incidentally kidnaps his former sweetheart along the way. There’s plenty of exoticism going on here, what with the slave markets and “as Allah wills” and harem intrigue, and more than a bit of really weird character interactions. I was most puzzled by the younger-brother-as-villain, since he seems to have no reason to betray his brother other than narrative necessity. Other characters make similarly inexplicable about-faces just to cause trouble for the main character—who himself seems really wishy-washy about love, religion, patriotism, family ties, and pretty much everything thing else most people hold pretty strong views on. It was still an entertaining story of its type, but certainly nothing like realism.
Arnold Bennett’s The Grand Babylon Hotel tries for a bit more realism, but its secret tunnels and Balkan machinations and insanely wealthy Americans aren’t really much more likely. Said implausibly wealthy American, Mr. Theodore Racksole, is vacationing in London, and when the cook at The Grand Babylon Hotel won’t make the birthday dinner his daughter wants, he buys the hotel and gets his steak and beer. He also gets more than a little trouble, as princes and corpses start disappearing, and senior members of the staff start acting suspiciously. This book was written as a serial, and it does keep up the tension pretty well, though all in a light-hearted vein. There’s a little romance, a little wit, a little danger—all the elements needed for a lovely frothy story. I’m a little surprised, actually, that no one seems to have made a fun little movie out of it or at least the general idea of it. Or perhaps there is one, and I’ve just not heard of it. Not unlikely. In any case, it was fun.
Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver was perhaps less fun, though likely on purpose. Dealing with loss and grief ought to be less fun, and the tone is pretty spot on for a children’s novel. For whatever reason, this novel felt very like The Tale of Despereaux or something vaguely fairy tale-esque like that, which isn’t at all a bad thing. Newly orphaned Liesl befriends Po the ghost-child, who aids her in her quest to bury her father’s ashes near her mother’s in a far-off village; meanwhile, Will the apothecary’s orphaned assistant must flee when he accidentally delivers ashes instead of the promised Greatest Magic his master entrusted to him. I’m not sure the worldbuilding is especially logical, but for a mournful and yet ultimately optimistic fable of grief, it’s quite poignant.
Year Published: 2013
The Woman Who Died A Lot is the latest in what’s turning out to be a longish series, and while it’s a lot of fun, it didn’t quite hit the high notes (for me) that some of Thursday Next’s earlier adventures did. In this installment, she and her family attempt to deal once and for all with the nonexistent child Jenny, avert a prophesied “smiting” of Swindon, and try to undo the future murder Friday’s Letter of Destiny says he will commit in a few days. On top of that, Thursday hasn’t been herself lately (and someone from Goliath is, naturally, to blame). All lumped together, it’s quite a lot of imminent and foretold disaster to be preventing, and the underlying questions of identity, memory, and free will versus determinism are a bit dampening to the chaotic high jinks I expect from a Jasper Fforde novel. It’s all quite adroitly done, but I really missed Bookworld and all the off-the-wall literary pastiche it entails; there’s a little of that here (Thursday frustrates the machinations of an Enid Blyton fundamentalist, for instance), but the more serious stuff predominates, so while this is still a good book in a fun series, it wasn’t quite what I’d hoped.
I had no real idea what to expect from The X Factor, as I’d never read any of Andre Norton’s science fiction (though I’ve felt like I ought to), and I could only hope the cover image (the weird one to the right) wasn’t very accurate—it’s not, by the way. But I needed a little paperback that wouldn’t be missed if it were accidentally damaged and my dice rolling indicated the L to N shelf, so that’s what I ended up reading. Diskan Fentress (weird names—check!) is a misfit wherever he goes, and he went from feeling like an alien to being one when he joined his long-lost space exploring father on a new planet. When he happens on his father’s cache of flight recordings (antiquated futurist technology—check!), Diskan decamps to an unexplored planet, where he crashlands, tries to survive in a wasteland of mysterious creatures (unexplained semi-magical stuff—check!), and eventually finds himself in the middle of an archaeological “dig” beset by pirates. And all the while, he can’t help but feel the “brothers-in-fur” want him to do something in that strange pyramid… Yeah, this wasn’t my thing. I really, really, wanted the whole “brothers-in-fur” thing to be all in Diskan’s head–it’s too oddly presented and convenient for him–but a random burst of omniscient narration settled its reality, which was a mistake in my view. Another mistake was the pacing: Diskan literally doesn’t converse with anyone until halfway through the book (“And what is the use of a book,” methinks “without pictures or conversation?”), plus there are chapters of survival narrative-fodder in the first half that all seem pointless by the end, and the last couple chapters are frenetically paced by contrast. I actually wasn’t sure what was going on half the time, which could be partly my fault, but not wholly, I think. It seems this isn’t considered one of Norton’s best, so I’ll try another of hers later, but I don’t intend to keep this one.
I’m more on the fence about keeping a copy of Ibbotson’s A Company of Swans. The plot is pretty standard romance fare: girl runs away from loveless home, proves to be marvelously talented/beautiful/whatever, meets and falls for readily reformable (and fabulously wealthy) rake, endures stupid relational barriers, is pursued by straight-laced relations, and gets the guy in the end. I liked the fact that Harriet felt like a real human, but I wasn’t so sure about the awfully convenient Rom. For someone who apparently had a different woman every week without compunction, he was awfully prone to love at first sight—and not just lust either, since he’s the one who tries to put the brakes on their relationship when things get steamier. I do get the idea of trying to present a woman who’s in control of her own sexuality etc., but I’m not sure that’s what this was. It felt more to me that Harriet figured she was already “ruined” by social standards for having run away and been in “compromising” positions, so she might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. She and Rom were also really averse to “defining the relationship,” which caused way too much trouble for both of them. If they’re really so made for each other and so deeply whatever, why the heck can’t she tell him she’d rather not leave him and vice versa? Some of the dialogue was also quite nice, the other ballet girls were pretty well characterized, and I liked that the spurned suitor wasn’t presented as a mustache-twirler, so there were lots of nicer things about it. But “meet cute/romantic bliss/silly complications/extended romantic bliss” isn’t generally my thing, so I don’t know about this one.
Reading at whim 