• Fables: War and Pieces by Bill Willingham, with art by Mark Buckingham, et al. (graphic novel)
  
  This 11th collection brings to a close the primary story arc of the Fables series (i.e., the refugee Fables' war with the Homeland), but not the series itself. After 10 collections, it was a bit...not anticlimactic or disappointing, really, but a bit surprising to have the war suddenly end. Of course, previous books (Vol. 4: March of the Wooden Soldiers; Vol. 8: Wolves) detailed heavy, pivotal battles, so this was just the final wave, I guess. I enjoyed the story and the art, as always. Being invested in the characters and concept, I'm sure I'll continue with the series. (Volume 12: The Dark Ages becomes available in August '09.)
  
  
• Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling (479 pp.)
  first line (of the prologue): "Mouldering bone crumbled beneath their boots as Lord Mardus and Vargul Ashnazai lowered themselves down into the tiny chamber beneath the earthen mound."
  first line (of the first chapter): "Asengai's torturers were regular in their habits--they always left off at sunset."
  
  Having read the Tamir Cycle (the three prequel novels), I finally got around to the original Nightrunner novel. As evidenced by the opening lines, this is not your shiny, happy fantasy novel. That's right: no butterfly-chasing, unicorn-coaxing virgins need apply. (Well, I take that back. Alice Kohler's virgins might not mind.) I don't read much high fantasy these days, but Lynn Flewelling's good for tight stories with strong characters. And it's refreshing that someone's giving "alternate lifestyles" a prominent place in fantasy fiction.
  
  
• Stalking Darkness by Lynn Flewelling (501 pp.)
  first line (of the prologue): "The lean ship smashed through foaming crests, pounding southwest out of Keston toward Skala."
  first line (of the first chapter): "Sleet-laden winds lashed in off the winter sea, racketing through the dark streets of Rhiminee like a huge, angry child."
  
  "Bitter as gall," Stalking Darkness picks up where Luck in the Shadows left off. The two books actually work quite well as a duology, as the story arc launched in Luck is decided in Darkness. It's neither Sturm und Drang nor quite gloom-and-doom, but the book(s) would best be enjoyed by people who like their fantasy crossed with horror...and, of course, laced with pansexuality.
  
  
• No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July (201 pp.)
  stories: The Shared Patio / The Swim Team / Majesty / The Man on the Stairs / The Sister / This Person / It Was Romance / Something That Needs Nothing / I Kiss a Door / The Boy from Lam Kien / Making Love in 2003 / Ten True Things / The Moves / Mon Plaisir / Birthmark / How to Tell Stories to Children
  
  I feel like I say this a lot about contemporary short stories, but it still applies: these are vignettes more than stories. They're compelling, and there are turns of phrase and passages I really loved and will return to...but they just end. This can be really frustrating. I'm starting to think anthologies of this ilk should come with a warning label. All this aside, my favorite from this collection has to be "Majesty"...just because.
  
  
• Watchmen by Alan Moore, with art by Dave Gibbons (graphic novel)
  
  This runs darker than my normal tastes, but I can't deny that it's really well done. No Mary Sues to be seen. Plenty of tragic flaws. This has been around for a while, so I doubt there's much I could say that hasn't been said. For those who don't know, the superheroes of Watchmen don't have retractable claws or x-ray vision. Rather, they've got talent, tactics, training, drive, determination, no little bit of luck, and a whole lotta chutzpah...kinda like Batman...in a Shaolin martial arts movie.
  
  And speaking of movies, the screen adaptation of Watchmen is remarkably well cast, acted, and directed. Pity about the ending, though.
  
  
• Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland (249 pp.)
  first line: "I had always thought that a person born blind and given sight later on in life through the miracles of modern medicine would feel reborn."
  
  "Look at all the lonely people." Loneliness is definitely a prominent theme of this book: the experience of loneliness; the ways we cloak it; why and how we overcome it. It sounds like a real downer, but it's got some wonderful imagery and humor. One of my favorite quotes:
  
  "the gas station...employees were the handsomest men any of us had ever seen, sculpted from gold, and with voices like songs. And there they were, in a gas station in the middle of nowhere, going to waste. They ought to have been perched on jagged lava cliffs having their hearts ripped out as sacrifices to the gods."
  
  
• Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie by Holly Black (313 pp.)
  first line (of the prologue): "The tree woman choked on poison, the slow sap of her blood burning."
  first line (of the first chapter): "Valerie Russell felt something cold touch the small of her back and spun around, striking without thinking."
  
  Holly Black pulls no punches. Her Faeries are not for the faint of heart. Nor are her humans, for that matter. (See Lynn Flewelling, above. I'm starting to sense a trend among ConBust authors.) Her characters -- and their relationships and motivations -- are gritty and complex. Still, though, there's magic in the world. And while that doesn't candy-coat all the nastiness, it does help the medicine go down. Valiant easily stands alone, but I still recommend reading it in conjunction with the earlier Tithe and subsequent Ironside. (Tithe and Ironside are "Movie A," as it were; Valiant is the "B Side"...though no less compelling for that.)

I also attempted Mary Hoffman's Stravaganza: City of Masks, but I just couldn't get into it. I really can't pinpoint why. I don't think that the writing was poor or the characters and story bad. I stopped reading at the halfway point, or earlier, and then just skimmed along out of curiosity about plot resolution. I had this same problem with Melanie Gideon's The Map That Breathed, begun and abandoned more than once. Oh, well. If any F-lister thinks s/he might like either book (both children's fantasies, by the way), I still have both.

As I was driving over the mountain today, a bear bounded in front of my car. When I first saw it on the left side of the road, I braked for the "big black dog." Nope, not a dog, but an adorable bear galumphing across the road and back into the woods on the other side. Maybe he was on his way down to the Easthampton Bear Fest...my photos from which, by the way, are here and here.

And that, folks, was pretty much the highlight of my day. Yesterday, I developed a sore throat, which I knew to be the harbinger of the lovely flu that's been kicking George's ass for the past several days. I worked for about 3-1/2 hours this morning...just long enough to finish transcribing a long file I couldn't complete yesterday. (That's what I am now: a legal transcriptionist. So much better than insurance agent. So much better. Oh, and I've been doing this since early January. I really need to update this journal more regularly.)

Anyway, the body aches began to set in while I was still typing the job. By the time I left work, I was dizzy, headache-y, weak, tired...fun, fun. (Driving home was a treat.) After over a week of feeling bad while my husband suffered, I am now in the oh-so-enviable position of knowing just what this thing has in store for me for the next week and then some. I'm taking tomorrow off, and the office is closed on Friday, so I'm hoping the worst of this thing will have passed by next week, and I won't miss any more work. (What sucks...among other things...is that Friday is the end of our pay period, so I can't make up the hours as I otherwise might.)

Well, I guess that's it. Anything more and this post will degenerate into mere sniveling...as opposed to sniveling interspersed with babble.

My high school English teacher was in my dream last night.

She had a beard.

My Yahoo! Inbox wants to introduce me to Local Christians and tell me my Credit Score.

To say nothing of whitening my teeth and flattening my stomach.

• The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney (343 pp.)
  first line: "When the Spook arrived, the light was already beginning to fail."
  
  The first in a children's fantasy series, this book follows the adventures of a boy who becomes apprenticed to "the Spook," a man who earns his living by traveling from village to village confronting, confining or confounding all manner of things that go bump in the night.
  
  
• 100 Cupboards by N. D. Wilson (289 pp.)
  first line: "Henry, Kansas, is a hot town."
  
  The first in another children's fantasy series, this book also follows the adventures of a boy -- in this case, a boy who discovers portals to other worlds as well as truths about his own heritage while visiting relatives in an otherwise sleepy-seeming small Kansas town.
  
  
• Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge (483 pp.)
  first line (of the prelude): "'But names are important!' the nursemaid protested."
  first line (of the "A" chapter): "It was often said that only divine flame could persuade anything to burn in Chough."
  
  This is the first book by Frances Hardinge, whose Verdigris Deep I greatly enjoyed. (Verdigris Deep, incidentally, has been published in the U.S. under the dumbed-down title Well Witched. Stupid publishers.) Fly by Night is a children's historical adventure with wonderful writing, appealing characters, and a tight, interesting plot. I really liked it and think I'd like to have Ms. Hardinge's babies...or, barring that, at least read her latest, Gullstruck Island.
  
  
• The Man in the Picture by Susan Hill (145 pp.)
  first line (of the prologue): "The story was told to me by my old tutor, Theo Parmitter, as we sat beside the fire in his college rooms one bitterly cold January night."
  first line (of the first chapter): "My story really begins some seventy years ago, in my boyhood."
  
  This is a brief little book with the feel of a ghost story despite the absence of any actual ghosts. I enjoyed it, though not as much as I seem to recall liking Hill's The Woman in Black. Both books pull off a wonderfully creepy mood, though, and I may give her other ghost stories, and possibly her crime/mystery/suspense series a go.
  
  
• Echo: Moon Lake by Terry Moore (graphic novel)
  
  Note to self: Never venture into the desert without an umbrella...because while it might not rain, you can't be too cautious about showers of liquefied radioactive bomb bits (or the like). It'll be interesting to see where Moore goes with this series, though this first collection is mostly just stage-setting.
  
  
• Survivors: A New Vision of Endangered Wildlife by James Balog (144 pp.) (photography)
  
  I found this online after seeing an article on it in an old National Geographic issue. I really liked seeing and reading about the various endangered species (some familiar, others not so much). Balog used white backdrops for a good number of the photos, which makes the colors and patterns of the animals themselves that much more striking...in addition to giving some of the portraits a Vogue sort of feel.
  
  
• Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link (266 pp.)
  stories: Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose / Water Off a Black Dog's Back / The Specialist's Hat / Flying Lessons / Travels with the Snow Queen / Vanishing Act / Survivor's Ball, or, The Donner Party / Shoe and Marriage / Most of My Friends Are Two-Thirds Water / Louise's Ghost / The Girl Detective
  
  This would be the third collection of Link's stories that I've read...though I believe it's the first she published. If I remember correctly, "Shoe and Marriage" and "Louise's Ghost" were among my favorites from this book. Had I not waited over three months to post this, I might have been able to elaborate as to why. As it is, however, I'll just say that I enjoyed the collection as a whole.

• World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks (342 pp.)
  first line (of the introduction): "It goes by many names: 'The Crisis,' 'The Dark Years,' 'The Walking Plague,' as well as newer and more 'hip' titles such as 'World War Z' or 'Z War One.'"
  
  For a book about a zombie pandemic, the resultant wars and defensive measures, and the aftermath of all these things, Brooks' documentary-style book is startlingly believable. The fact that he's the son of Mel Brooks and the author of the humorous Zombie Survival Guide makes the gravity of this effort that much more surprising. One of the things that makes this work so well is the fact that the zombies aren't the only horrors in the book: the inhumanity of many of the humans is just as horrific.
  
  And speaking of zombies, I thought I'd mention another novel, in case anyone reading this is not yet aware of the existence of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance - Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem! (I haven't read it, but I'm amused that it exists. And what a wonderful cover!)
  
  
• Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff (166 pp.)
  first line (of the prologue): "This picture has a dollop of peanut butter on one edge, a smear of grape jelly on the other, and an X across the whole thing."
  first line (of the first chapter): "The house was falling apart."
  
  This sad but ultimately hopeful children's book deals with a troubled foster child named Hollis Woods, who records important people and experiences in her life in a series of hand-drawn pictures...hence the title.
  
  
• Where the Deep Ones Are by Kenneth Hite, with illustrations by Andy Hopp (picture book)
  first line: "When Bobby would yell for seconds on fish / and thirds / his mother said his big mouth would give him brain fever like his cousin Larry Marsh and how would he like that? / and Bobby said just fine / and his mother sent him to his room without any fish at all."
  
  Here is a colorful parody of the children's classic Where the Wild Things Are, written expressly for Lovecraft fans. It's Mythos..."You know -- for kids!"
  
  
• St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Stories by Karen Russell (246 pp.)
  stories: Ava Wrestles the Alligator / Haunting Olivia / Z.Z.'s Sleep-Away Camp for Disordered Dreamers / The Star-Gazer's Log of Summer-Time Crime / from Children's Reminiscences of the Westward Migration / Lady Yeti and the Palace of Artificial Snows / The City of Shells / Out to Sea / Accident Brief, Occurrence # 00/422 / St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
  
  I loved, loved, loved the writing...but didn't much care for the fact that most of the stories just sort of stop. Often I'd become invested in the characters and story, only to come too quickly to the last line and wonder where the rest went. This would be more aptly titled: St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves: Vignettes. Still, the writing itself is beautiful, and I'd certainly read more by this author.
  
  
• Braving Home: Dispatches from the Underwater Town, the Lava-Side Inn, and Other Extreme Locales by Jake Halpern
  first line (of the introduction): "Every journalist has a niche -- it's inevitable -- and I was just a few days into my career when I stumbled upon mine."
  chapters: The Underwater Town: Princeville, North carolina / Tower of the Arctic: Whittier, Alaska / The Lava-Side Inn: Royal Gardens Subdivision, Hawaii / Canyon of the Firefighting Hillbillies: Malibu, California / Island of the Storm Riders: Grand Isle, Louisiana
  
  Halpern's book deals with some nice places to visit and the rare few persons who actually would want to live there, thank you very much...regardless of periodic and/or unpredictable ravages of water, snow, lava, fire, wind or what have you. It was interesting to read not only the descriptions of these sometimes isolated and often perilous places, but also the mini-biographies of individuals who choose to keep homes in them...in spite of (or for some, perhaps, because of) the isolation and danger.

Whodathunkit?

Yes, it's another book post.

• Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link (389 pp.)
  stories: The Wrong Grave / The Wizards of Perfil / Magic for Beginners / The Faery Handbag / The Specialist's Hat / Monster / The Surfer / The Constable of Abal / Pretty Monsters
  
  This is a collection of short stories for young adults. Two titles, "Magic for Beginners" and "The Faery Handbag," appear in Link's Magic for Beginners (which I've read and had autographed). And an earlier anthology Stranger Things Happen (which I happen to be reading at present) contains "The Specialist's Hat." Of the selections peculiar to Pretty Monsters, I think my favorites are the title story and "The Wrong Grave." At some point, I'll have to go back to Magic for Beginners and reread "Some Zombie Contingency Plans."
  
  
• Big Fish by Daniel Wallace (180 pp.)
  first line: "One one of our last car trips, near the end of my father's life as a man, we stopped by a river, and we took a walk to its banks, where we sat in the shade of an old oak tree."
  
  I enjoyed the book, though this is one of those rare cases in which I'm fonder of the movie adaptation. Of course, I'm a sucker for Tim Burton's aesthetic.
  
  
• Abbey Lubbers, Banshees & Boggarts: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Fairies by Katharine Briggs, with illustrations by Yvonne Gilbert (156 pp.)
  
  Though an encyclopedia, this book is brief enough to read cover-to-cover without much effort or loss of interest. It's better for the anecdotal snippets than as a resource for all things Fae.
  
  
• Every Dead Thing by John Connolly (467 pp.)
  first line (of the prologue): "It is cold in the car, cold as the grave. I prefer to leave the a/c on full, to let the falling temperature keep me alert."
  first line (of the first chapter): "The waitress was in her fifties, dressed in a tight black miniskirt, white blouse, and black high heels. Parts of her spilled out of every item of clothing she wore, making her look like she had swollen mysteriously sometime between dressing and arriving for work."
  
  The mystery/crime/suspense genre isn't my normal cup of tea. Still, I really enjoyed the other Connolly books I've read, The Book of Lost Things and especially Nocturnes, so I thought I'd give his Charlie Parker series a go. It's very dark, though if I couldn't have guessed as much from the title, then I deserved the many moments of squick. Unlike some genre fiction, the writing in Connolly's books is (with the exception of that "cold as the grave" bit) really strong, so I may continue with the series...now and again...when I want to feel horrified.
  
  
• Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme by Chris Roberts (202 pp.)
  
  A lot of the material here is highly speculative. Also, the nursery rhymes whose origins Roberts sets out to find end up feeling more like segues to essays on British history. In other words, I didn't like this as much as I thought I would. For straight nursery-rhyme reference material, I recommend Iona and Peter Opie's The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes.

.

time hurries on
and the leaves that are green turn to brown

and they wither in the wind
and they crumble in your hand

-- Simon & Garfunkel

Not particularly apt with regards to the season, I'll grant you, as the leaves have been brown for a good while now, and are mostly buried beneath the snow.

Nor especially suited to the current political climate, in my opinion, as I'm thrilled with and hopeful of the new Presidency.

Nonetheless, the lyrics seem unfortunately fitting in terms of how I've been feeling of late about lost friends. I'm not regretful of having severed ties so much as I am rueful that the relationships changed such that I would wish to.

I miss the way Andrea and I used to be mistaken for sisters. I miss how, when shopping, we'd often pick up the same thing at the same time, to show to the other. I miss our very ease in each other's company.

I miss my old gaming group, S.O.D.A. (Sisterhood of the Decahedral Arts), a.k.a. The Anomalous Players. I miss Jai's wit and Diane's dedication; Carole's warmth and Andee's cheerful audacity. I miss the sense of belonging.

The trouble is, the feelings -- the ease, the belonging -- didn't last.

This isn't really hard to grasp. After all, people are forever reinventing themselves, discovering new interests, shedding old identities like snakeskins. The wonder is that relationships ever endure. (I am inexpressibly grateful that Rachel is still such an important part of my life, after years of friendship, and I can only guess that this is due to our changing in the same ways...or else to our having enough fundamentally in common that our changes haven't broken us.)

I'm not sure why I felt the need to put..."finger to keyboard" just doesn't have the same oomph as "pen to paper," does it? Anyway. I don't know why I feel the need to write about this. It's not that I want to go shopping with Andrea...talk books with Jai...do some creative brainstorming with Diane...walk through the woods with Carole, or to Dunkin Donuts with Andee, for a late-night kvetching session. In nearly every case, I think such activities would be awkward at best, for one or both parties. Rather, I wish that we could each, however briefly, revisit our former self and society.

I don't know. Maybe this post is just a way for me to light candles for faded friendships: mere remembrance, sans castigation or recrimination. Very likely, other life changes have caused this crescendo of nostalgia, reverberating against my ribcage. Regardless, I guess this is my way of taking a smudge stick to it. And "that's all there is."

And the next batch...

• Lanterns and Lances by James Thurber (179 pp.)
  essays: How to Get through the Day / Midnight at Tim's Place / The Darlings at the Top of the Stairs / The Porcupines in the Artichokes / The Spreading "You Know" / Magical Lady / Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Ear Muffs / The Last Clock / Such a Phrase as Drifts through Dreams / A Moment with Mandy / The Tyranny of Trivia / The Wings of Henry James / Hark the "Herald Tribune," "Times," and All the Other Angels Sing / The New Vocabularianism / The Saving Grace / Come Across with the Facts / The Case for Comedy / Here Come the Dolphins / Conversation Piece: Connecticut / How the Kooks Crumble / The Watchers of the Night / My Senegalese Birds and Siamese Cats / The Trouble with Man is Man / The Duchess and the Bugs
  
  Loved the punniness and wordplay. Loathed the battle-of-the-sexes bullshit.
  
  
• Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson (247 pp.)
  first line (of the prologue): "As soon as he entered the room, Baines blurted out, 'We want you to find us a viable human heart, fast.'"
  first line (of the first chapter): "Ti-Jeanne could see with more than sight."
  
  Having heartily enjoyed the short stories in Hopkinson's Skin Folk, I thought I'd pick up one of her novels. I really liked this as well, but wish I'd come to the book with a bit of background in Caribbean folklore.
  
  
• Human Oddities: A Book of Nature's Anomalies by Martin Monestier, translated from the French by Robert Campbell (188 pp.)
  
  Some familiar material, some new. Good for its focus on historical perceptions of physically-anomalous persons. Great quality and quantity of photos. With no bibliography, though, some aspects seem apocryphal.
  
  
• The King in the Window by Adam Gopnik (410 pp.)
  first line: "If Oliver had simply smiled and joked with his parents while he was wearing the gold paper crown, or if he had just remembered to take it off after dinner, as he had always done before, the window wraiths might never have mistaken him for royalty."
  
  I liked this but didn't love it. The story is whimsical and entertaining, like Carroll's Wonderland books, which feature prominently in Gopnik's novel. Unfortunately, I think the world of The King in the Window would have been much stronger if it weren't so closely intertwined with Carroll's creation.
  
  
• Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins (172 pp.)
  from The Apple That Astonished Paris (1988) / from Questions About Angels (1991) / from The Art of Drowning (1995) / from Picnic, Lightning (1998) / New Poems
  
  Beautiful, enjoyable, approachable poems. My favorite, I think, is "Questions About Angels", which makes me smile and ache at the same time. Another favorite -- one not included in this collection -- is "The Lanyard". (And, for anyone who's interested, Collins' reading of the poem is worth a listen.)
  
  
• by George by Wesley Stace (378 pp.)
  first line (of the prologue): "Half an hour later, George was on his knees in his bedroom, the door locked."
  first line (of the first chapter): "I shall now do a little ventriloquism of my own."
  
  Engaging and entertaining, if a bit less enjoyable for me than Stace's Misfortune. I was dismayed at how some characters are too easily forgiven (Echo), others too long unpardoned (Queenie), and others all but crucified (Joe). Overall, though, this is really quite good, and I'd definitely read more by Stace.

And on to September!

• Story Time by Edward Bloor (424 pp.)
  first line: "Kate was flying. She was thinking beautiful thoughts, and she was flying."
  
  This is part children's horror story, part satire on the standardized-test-based approach to education. Not too surprisingly, the human villains are more despicable than the supernatural ones.
  
  
• I Saw Esau: The Schoolchild's Pocket Book ed. by Iona & Peter Opie, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak (160 pp.)
  
  I found this gem at Sage Books in Southampton. No collection of humorous children's verse would be complete without this anthology of amusingly-illustrated absurdity.
  
  
• Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories by Elizabeth Hand (240 pp.)
  stories: Cleopatra Brimstone / Pavane for a Prince of the Air / The Least Trumps / Wonderwall / The Lost Domain: Four Story Variations (Kronia / Calypso in Berlin / Echo / The Saffron Gatherers)
  
  It's hard to categorize this collection: general fiction, urban fantasy, magical realism, weird fiction, horror....However, I will say that I loved the author's voice; I really savored the language. Since reading this, I've picked up a copy of her '99 novel Black Light, but have yet to read it.
  
  
• A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb (282 pp.)
  first line: "Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you're dead."
  
  At first this novel struck me as a little too "writerly"...but somewhere along the line I became really invested in the story and devoured the book. It has an interesting take on ghosts: for example, ghosts can see and hear the living but remain oblivious to each other; only when a ghost is inhabiting the body of a person -- someone whose own soul has gone a-roving -- does s/he become cognizant of other ghosts. While the book deals much with the relationship between two such body-snatching spirits, the lives of their hosts factor largely into the storyline as well.
  
  
• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (498 pp.)
  first line (of the preface): "I'd never given much thought to how I would die -- though I'd had reason enough in the last few months -- but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this."
  first line (of the first chapter): "My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down."
  
  I enjoyed this for what it is: a fun read. At some point, I may get around to reading the rest of the series. I may also watch the movie. (I meant to go see it...but it's not something claxman had any desire to see, inle_rah saw it in her own neck of the woods, and I didn't want to face the squeeing tweeners all by myself.)
  
  
• The Collected Strangers in Paradise: Volume One by Terry Moore (graphic novel)
  
  My claxman picked this up for me, and I really enjoyed it. Years ago, I had friends who spoke well of these graphic novels, but at that time I was reluctant to commit myself to a new series. I'll probably read more, though, as it's well-drawn (in terms of both artwork and character development), engaging, and funny.
  
  
• Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff (227 pp.)
  first line: "It's a room an uninspired playwright might conjure while staring at a blank page: White walls. White ceiling. White floor."
  
  This is a not-quite-dystopian novel of psychological suspense, requiring readers to parse out truth from lies and good from evil. I can easily imagine a movie adaptation.
  
  
• Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner (79 pp.)
  stories: Little Red Riding Hood / The Emperor's New Clothes / The Three Little Pigs / Rumpelstiltskin / The Three Codependent Goats Gruff / Rapunzel / Cinderella / Goldilocks / Snow White / Chicken Little / The Frog Prince / Jack and the Beanstalk / The Pied Piper of Hamelin
  
  "Satirical and silly. A fun, light read." -- Extra Joker, January 2009.
  
  
• Feed by M.T. Anderson (236 pp.)
  first line: "We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."
  
  This is a disturbing dystopian novel for young adults. Anderson's future is one in which nearly everyone gets computer implants in their brains, allowing for Internet "feeds." Mentally, they instant-message their friends, look up words or facts, receive barrages of advertisements, and visit trippy web sites (a just-as-taboo equivalent to doing drugs). While everyone with the "feed" has access to the same education/information, there are still professionals -- business executives, politicians, doctors -- but they all talk pretty much like surfer dudes. (Imagine President Palin. Or Doctor Palin. Shuddersome, I know.) The planet has been so ravaged that people live in manufactured environments, suffer from open sores and hair loss, and...yeah, you get the point.
  
  
• Dances with Werewolves by Niki Flynn
  first line: "'Give me pain, Niki!'"
  
  This memoir of a spanking model (who acts in adult movies with corporal-punishment scenarios) includes stories from her personal and professional life, samples of her fan e-mails, and her own thoughts on what makes her kink-clock tick. While the raciest CP/S&M movie I've seen is Secretary, I still found this book relatively interesting.
  
  
• The Little World of Elves & Fairies: An Anthology of Verse with Illustrations by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite (58 pp.)
  
  This is...exactly what it professes to be. The poems are by various authors, but the pictures are all by Outhwaite (representative samples of whose oeuvre may be found here).

Yes, I know it's pathetic that I'm posting about my August reading in January. But at least the reviews are short....

• Fables: The Good Prince by Bill Willingham, with art by Mark Buckingham, et al. (graphic novel)
  
  I'm still enjoying the Fables series. And this particular collection offers an overdue fleshing-out of Flycatcher's character.
  
  
• The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey by Linda Greenlaw (265 pp.)
  first line (of the preface): "I have been fishing commercially for seventeen years, and up until the summer of 1997, nobody cared."
  first line (of the first chapter): "It was very early in the morning, very late in the month of August."
  
  This was a selection for my ill-fated book club...ill-fated because usually at least one of our small number failed to read the book or was unable to attend that month's meeting, and because our founder has recently moved across the country. (Which reminds me: heathersbike, I'd intented to keep you abreast of ConBust 2009 news, as I know you were interested in meeting Patricia Briggs. However, a visit to her web site, shows that she's to be reading and signing in Seattle on February 3rd.)
  
  
• The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia (303 pp.)
  first line: "She had long pale fingers, tapered like candles at the church."
  
  While the Neverwhere:London::The Secret History of Moscow:Moscow analogy is apt enough, Sedia's voice is quite unlike Gaiman's. I enjoyed this book, but felt it could have been a bit...fleshier. Reading this made me want to do a little exploratory reading of Russian folklore. I'd certainly read more by this author, as well.
  
  
• The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde (383 pp.)
  first line: "It was the week following Easter in Reading, and no one could remember the last sunny day."
  
  This is a tongue-in-cheek whodunnit by the author of the Thursday Next series (of which I've read only the first title, The Eyre Affair). Fforde's a funny-punny writer, but I find I have to be in the right mood for him. Of course, that's often true for me when it comes to humor writers.

An e-mail I recently received:

Hey Lori,

We're just checking in to see if you received your order...from Better World Books. If your order hasn't blessed your mailbox just yet, heads are gonna roll in the Mishawaka warehouse! Seriously though, if you haven't received your order or are less than 108.8% satisfied, please reply to this message. Let us know what we can do to flabbergast you with service.

Humbly Yours,

Indaba (our super-cool email robot)

Dear Self:

The next time it occurs to you that homemade frosting is A Good Idea...

Consider a decorating-tip clog, which you may think to be a lump of frosting but rightly fear to be a bit of shredded coconut (which, being coconut, won't just dissolve in hot water as would a lump of sugar...and which, being rather substantial compared to a cake tip, won't be coaxed out through a tiny sun-burst hole);

Pause to picture your hands squeezing vainly on an icing sleeve in hopes of dislodging the clog, until finally the tip bursts free and a jet of grainy brown goo spurts across the sink to land in a fecal heap on the countertop;

Please imagine chocolate streaks and droplets bespeckling your kitchen -- sink and table and stovetop and floor -- later to be sponged, toweled, or (if at first overlooked) smeared with hapless sock;

Recall a certain drippy, drizzly, sticky mess of sculpted sugarchocolatebutter -- which, for all it tastes of ambrosia, resembles nothing so much as a gritty mudpie --

and then go out and buy a tub of Duncan freakin' Hines.

Love, Lori

P.S. Seriously.

I keep meaning to update this journal. Unfortunately, whenever I set my mind to it, my mind seems to have shut down for routine maintenance.

Tonight is no exception, so I'll simply mention that last Tuesday, October 14th, was George and my 1st wedding anniversary. We took some time off of work for some quality time together.

Sunday, we went to the Connecticut Renaissance Faire with friends from his Saturday gaming group.

Monday, we visited my brother and sister-in-law.

Tuesday, we drove down to Mystic, CT. We visited Mystic Aquarium, had dinner at Margarita's, and spent the night at the Bellisimo Grande Hotel.

Wednesday, we visited Mystic Seaport before driving back home.

Thursday was pretty much a day of rest, and then it was back to work for me on Friday.

Anyway, that's about all I have the energy to write at the moment. But here is a link to my pictures from our visit to Mystic. Enjoy!

• Freaks: Alive, on the Inside! by Annette Curtis Klause (331 pp.)
  first line: "When a boy's first romantic interlude is with Phoebe the Dog-Faced Girl, he feels a need to get out into the world and find a new life."
  
  Narrator-protagonist Abel, the son of an armless woman and legless man, is an anatomically unremarkable teen living and working among "very special people" (see below). After coming into possession of an old Egyptian ring, he sets out to seek his fortune, accompanied only by his dreams of a mysterious dancing girl...and the naive young hypertrichosic boy who secretly follows him.
  
  Now, I'd've read this novel merely for the fact that it deals with sideshows and traveling carnivals. But even people who don't share my fascination with these things may appreciate Klause's coming-of-age adventure story filled with themes both human (courage, the desire to be understood and accepted, love, lust, and the perversion of greed) and supernatural (centuries-old magic, visions, and reincarnation).
  
  
• Very Special People by Frederick Drimmer (403 pp.)
  
  Here's another of several books in my library on the subject of real-life persons with unusual anatomical variations: conjoined twins, dwarfs, pituitary giants, hypertrichosics, Proteus syndrome sufferers, microcephalics, &c. Drimmer's writing style didn't much appeal to me, and most of the material (on both the lives and conditions of various people) was familiar to me. However, Very Special People offers more in-depth detail on certain historical individuals than I've read elsewhere, as well as a generous black-and-white photo section at the beginning of the book.
  
  
• Jizzle by John Wyndham (191 pp.)
  stories: Jizzle / Technical Slip / A Present from Brunswick / Chinese Puzzle / Esmeralda / How Do I Do? / Una / Affair of the Heart / Confidence Trick / The Wheel / Look Natural, Please! / Perforce to Dream / Reservation Deferred / Heaven Scent / More Spinned Against
  
  This is a great collection of genre-crossing stories, each of which has at least a whiff of science fiction, fantasy, comedy, and/or horror, but still enough realism to satisfy readers who don't generally opt for whimsy in their fiction. Among Wyndham's subjects are: a mischievous monkey with a penchant for portraiture and homewrecking; the humorous introduction of a Chinese dragon to the home of a salt-of-the-earth Welsh couple; the effect of an encounter with a Frankensteinian horror on an animal-rights activist; the problem with creating the world's most potent perfume; and the consequences of switching places -- even for a day -- with the mythical Arachne. Great stuff. And, as it happens, my introduction to the writing of John Wyndham.
  
  
• The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell (245 pp.)
  first line: "Let us begin with two girls at a dance."
  
  This novel deals very effectively with themes of family secrets, mental illness, personal tragedy, and betrayal. It's a really engaging book that I thoroughly enjoyed while I was reading it. The ending, however, left me disappointed. Given the overall mood and storyline of the novel, the climactic events are probably inevitable. But, dammit, where's my denouement? Never underestimate the power of a good denouement.
  
  
• Danvers State: Memoirs Of A Nurse In The Asylum by Angelina Szot and Barbara Stilwell (146 pp.)
  first line: "It was in 1948 that I applied for a job at Danvers State Hospital, an asylum in Massachusetts."
  
  Interesting information, poorly presented. I feel kind of like a bitch for metaphorically kicking someone's grandma this way, but there it is.
  
  
• Secrets of the Maze: An Interactive Guide to the World's Most Amazing Mazes by Adrian Fisher & Howard Loxton (96 pp.)
  
  This beautiful photo-filled book would make a great pictorial companion to David Willis McCullough's The Unending Mystery: A Journey through Labyrinths And Mazes, which I read...last year? The year before, maybe? Included are photographs and illustrations of hedge mazes, cathedral labyrinths, corn mazes, and other examples of circuitous paths, both ancient and modern. Fellow puzzle geeks will enjoy the challenges of the several interactive puzzle-maze graphs.
  
  
• The Society of S by Susan Hubbard (304 pp.)
  first line (of the preface): "On a cool spring night in Savannah, my mother is walking."
  first line (of the first chapter): "I stood alone outside our house in deep blue twilight."
  
  A book with classic literary themes: coming of age; mother-daughter relationships; vampires....
  
  I was disappointed with the ending until I learned that Hubbard's written a sequel, The Year of Disappearances. I enjoyed the first one enough that I'll likely pick up the second sometime soon. From the Amazon reviews, I've gathered that it doesn't conclude the story...so now I'm wondering whether this will be a trilogy or an ongoing series.
  
  
• Oh, the Humanity! A Gentle Guide to Social Interaction for the Feeble Young Introvert by Jason Roeder (169 pp.)
  first line: "This may sound silly, but I want you to shake hands with yourself."
  
  Oh, the Humanity! is a snarky spin on self-help books -- a bit seamier than Dave Barry, and likely to amuse Dr. Phil detractors. (In other words, I enjoyed it.)
  
  
• Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome (197 pp.)
  first line: "There were four of us--George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency."
  
  Hmmm....This book, as a whole, doesn't really work for me. There are several beautiful passages describing the landscape along the Thames, as well as some really hilarious scenes poking fun at human behavior. Unfortunately, I found it jarring to switch between these two prominent aspects. Still, this is a classic of Victorian humor that I'm glad to have read.
  
  
• In the Forest of Forgetting by Theodora Goss (255 pp.)
  stories: The Rose in Twelve Petals / Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold / The Rapid Advance of Sorrow / Lily, With Clouds / Miss Emily Gray / In the Forest of Forgetting / Sleeping with Bears / Letters from Budapest / The Wings of Meister Wilhelm / Conrad / A Statement in the Case / Death Comes for Ervina / The Belt / Phalaenopsis / Pip and the Fairies / Lessons with Miss Gray
  
  Apparently, Goss's debut collection was The Rose in Twelve Petals and Other Stories, which contains some of the same stories as In the Forest of Forgetting, as well as a few poems, but seems to be out of print. (I may have to scrounge around for a copy.)
  
  In any event, I loved In the Forest of Forgetting and really hope she publishes more -- maybe a novel about Miss Emily Gray (a recurring character, appearing in "Conrad" as well as the two titles bearing her name). I love Goss's voice, her characters, her subjects and themes. I love the stories that play off of classic fairy tales, the ones set in Hungary (where Goss was born), and all the rest. They feel classic but original and are beautifully written.

I spent much of my weekend crafting and watching X-Files DVDs.

On Sunday afternoon, during the "Revelations" episode (in which Scully defends a little boy exhibiting the Stigmata against an evil killer who burns flesh with his touch), there was a soft knock at my door. I answered to two fresh-faced young men.

"Hi, we're missionaries with the Church of Jesus Christ...."

First off, thanks to kitkabbit for bringing this blog to my attention.

A few of my favorites:

Carrot Cake
Hosed!
A Cake's A Cake For A'That

Once in a while, I'll google someone I used to know, just to see what they're up to...assuming they're blogging or otherwise pimping themselves on the 'net doing anything newsworthy.

I did this the other night and -- wouldja believe it! -- one of my exes has written a book!

Bully for him!

• The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory (514 pp.)
  first line: "Jane Boleyn, Blickling Hall, Norfolk, / July 1539 / It is hot today, the wind blows over the flat fields and marshes with the stink of the plague."
  
  This book made me curious about the prominent figures and events from the reign of Henry VIII. And I know much more now about the sequence and respective outcomes of his six marriages than I did prior to reading it. As a novel though, it didn't thrill me. The narration is shared among Jane Boleyn (widow of George and sister-in-law to Anne and Mary), Anne of Cleves (wife #4), and Katherine Howard (wife #5). While Gregory's Anne is a rather sympathetic character/narrator, her plotting and self-justifying Jane is despicable, and the sections from the viewpoint of her flibbertygibbety Katherine are all but unreadable.
  
  Also, some elements of the writing itself really turned me off. For one, Gregory introduces the phrase "Boleyn inheritance" about halfway through the book, then uses it repeatedly, such that it leaps distractingly from the text. Also, she overuses certain rhetorical devices (amplification & anaphora), which really grated on me -- both because it weakens the distinctions among the three narrative voices and because it makes many passages needlessly wordy.
  
  I know, I know. I can be picky; I can be overcritical; I can be a fussbudgety reader. In short, the book was interesting enough, but I doubt I'll pick up anything else by Philippa Gregory.
  
  
• Joyful Noise: Songs for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman (44 pp.)
  poems: Grasshoppers / Water Striders / Mayflies / Fireflies / Book Lice / The Moth's Serenade / Water Boatmen / The Digger Wasp / Cicadas / Honeybees / Whirligig Beetles / Requiem / House Crickets / Chrysalid Diary
  
  Though I read this alone (and, for the most part, silently), I could well imagine the effect of two people reciting the lines alternately by turn and in unison, as Fleischman intended. This Newbery Medal winner is a very brief collection of verse both humorous (e.g., "Book Lice") and thoughtful (e.g., "Chrysalid Diary"). And I have to admit, I almost got teary over "The Digger Wasp." (Who'd've thought it?)
  
  
• Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann (341 pp.)
  first line: "'He was healthy yesterday,' said Maude."
  
  This mystery, translated from German, is indeed about a flock of sheep who investigate the untimely death of their shepherd. The novel begins with a "DRAMATIS OVES" (including "Miss Maple," the main detective of the flock; "Othello," the sole black sheep; and "Melmoth" the ovine Wanderer), and it only gets odder from there. In anthropomorphizing the sheep, Swann also demonstrates the flock-like social needs and behaviors of humans. There are parts I didn't much like (such as the way an unknown sheep introduced late in the book acts as a sort of deus ex machina, if you will, in explaining the mystery to the main ovine characters). Overall, though, Three Bags Full is a well-written, entertaining, and even thought-provoking read.
  
  
• The Great Stink by Clare Clark (356 pp.)
  first line: "Where the channel snaked to the right it was no longer possible to stand upright, despite the abrupt drop in the gradient."
  
  This book gets really really dark in places. (Of course, I suppose one should expect that anything titled The Great Stink isn't likely to pull any punches....) The main characters are William (a PTSD-suffering veteran of the Crimean War) and Tom (one of London's poor, who makes his living collecting rats from the sewers and selling them for dog fights), whose paths cross briefly but significantly. There's a sort of Dickensian-Gothic sensibility to this novel, which is often quite disturbing (particularly to anyone sensitive to themes of self-mutilation or animal cruelty) but ultimately satisfying.
  
  
• The World to Come by Dara Horn (310 pp.)
  first line: "There used to be many families like the Ziskinds, families where each person always knew that his life was more than his alone."
  
  Both this book and The Boleyn Inheritance were book group reads, and (though they're very different novels) I feel similarly about both: they're interesting enough, and they made me curious about the historical figures and events that inspired them, but I'm not inclined to read anything else by either author.
  
  The World to Come deals with multiple generations of one fictional Jewish family of Russian descent, as well as historically-inspired fictional accounts of artist Marc Chagall and Yiddish writer "Der Nister." The novel is definitely engaging (if depressing), but it seemed that every time I started to become immersed in one character's timeline, the chapter would end and the narrative would continue with another person, place, and time. Being what one could call a "recovering Catholic" and agnostic, I tend to bristle against the very idea of self-denial for the sake of religion or tradition (e.g., formal mourning practices).
  
  Also, I wasn't satisfied by the resolution of the story. The final chapter reads like one of the many Yiddish folktales included in the body of the novel, but rather than being a story-within-a-story, it serves as the conclusion of the main story. This makes it feel rather tacked-on and surreal (though I imagine this latter effect is intentional).
  
  On the other hand, I really appreciated Dara Horn's prose, which often stirred me with its grace, beauty, and emotional power. My dissatisfaction with the novel results not from any lack of ability of the author; rather I think it's more a matter of the disparity between our personal philosophies.

Another book I read last month -- if you can call it "reading" when the book is a wordless graphic novel -- was:

• The Arrival by Shaun Tan
  
  I went through this book from cover to cover at the Emily Williston Memorial Library, but I'd love to own a copy and "read" it at greater leisure at some point. The art and story and art-as-vehicle-for-story are absolutely amazing. Tan pays great attention to detail -- both visual and narrative -- such that you simply don't miss the words. I felt this way about the graphic portions of Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret, but with The Arrival it's true of the entire book. Yeah, it's pretty awesome.