Wonderland Books, Birds and Baking

Wildwood by Colin Meloy

2012-01-06T08:14:00.000-08:00

My first read of 2012 is Wildwood by Colin Meloy, lead singer and songwriter of quirky band, The Decemeberists. Anyone who has listened to the Decemberists knows their penchant for storytelling. Their albums do not cover the typical contemporary topics of getting drunk, getting laid and breaking up. Instead they draw their inspiration from fables, such as The Crane Wife. If ever a was a singer born to write YA novels, it is Colin Meloy. Thankfully, he doesn't disappoint.

Wildwood begins with 13-year-old Prue taking her infant brother, Mac, to the park in their quiet suburb of Portland, Oregon. All seems normal, until Prue notices a murder of crows gathered in the surrounding trees. Suddenly, the crows swoop down and abduct Mac. Prue jumps on her bike, following them as fast as she can peddle, but she is no match for their speed. As she watches, the crows, with Mac in tow, disappear into what is commonly referred to as "The Impassable Wilderness", a wooded area that all Portland residents know to avoid at all costs. Though she has been taught from birth to keep away, she knows she must enter the Impassable Wilderness if she ever hopes to find her brother.

On her way into the wood, Prue is waylaid by a classmate, a social outcast called Curtis. He insists on accompanying her into the wood. What follows is an adventurous fairytale in the vein of Narnia and Peter Pan. During their search for Mac, the pair of so-called "Outsiders" discover that an entire world beyond anything they could have imagined exists within the wood. It is complete with an evil queen, rowdy bandits, coyote soldiers, wise mystics, a luxurious city, an owl regent, and many more fantastical creatures and settings.

As a fan of YA lit and the Decemberists, I have had my eye on Wildwood for awhile. Overall, I enjoyed the book. Though I will admit it did drag a bit through the middle, I found the characters and situations interesting and the story enchanting. There were two things in particular I loved about the book: the illustrations and the ending.

The illustrations, by Meloy's wife and renowned children's book illustrator, Carson Ellis, are charming. The cartoon-ish, yet simple drawings are very well-suited to a modern day fairy tale set in a magical land on the periphery of Portland.

I enjoyed the end for a couple of reasons. It was well-developed and generally happy, but not perfect. And more importantly (for me anyway) it was not a cliffhanger. As a young adult librarian, it is damn near impossible for me to keep up with every single book in every single YA and children's series out there. It sometimes seems like all books written for the age group are part of a series. I am sick of it. Wildwood, according to the title page, is the first book in The Wildwood Chronicles. Blargh. But, the book ends well enough that I don't feel like I have to continue on with the story. It is a complete and satisfying story in and of itself. It is very likely that I will continue on with this series, but I don't feel like I have to. And I truly appreciate that.

Pajiba's Cannonball Read 4

2012-01-06T08:04:00.000-08:00

I have decided to take part in Pajiba's fourth annual Cannonball Read. I will attempt to read and write reviews of 25 books over the next year. The reading part is a easy (I am a librarian after all,) but the writing part proved to be more of a challange last time I attempted this. Here we go...

Simple Summer Salad

2011-07-16T10:31:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try this blog thing one more time. To kick it off, here is the recipe for my favorite summer salad. It is quick, easy, chock full of healthy stuff like antioxidants and vitamins, and most importantly, it is delicious. Happy eating!

Ingredients:
-Spinach
-Romaine lettuce
-Blueberries
-Lightly salted roasted almonds (I like Trader Joe's 50% Less Salt Dry Roasted and Salted Almonds)
-Freshly grated parmesan
-Extra virgin olive oil
-Balsamic vinegar
-Kosher sea salt
-Freshly ground black pepper

There are no measurements to this recipe, just add what you like. Mix handfuls of spinach, romaine, and blueberries. Sprinkle with chopped almonds, grated Parm, salt, and pepper. Drizzle lightly with olive oil and balsamic.

Afternoon Tea Punch

2010-06-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

So, it has been approximately 1,500 years since I posted, but now I am all graduated and done with my massive paper and stuff so I have some free time to devote to all things literary and culinary (and a few other things as well.) For my first post back I am putting up a much requested recipe for tea punch. It is similar to the delicious tea punch available at Nashville's classic lunch spot, the Picnic Cafe. Happy sipping!

Afternoon Tea Punch

8 cups water
1 large tea bag
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup frozen orange juice (thawed)
1/2 cup frozen lemonade
1 cinnamon stick
lemon slices or mint sprigs (optional)

1) Bring 4 cups water to a boil in a medium saucepan.
2) Remove from heat once boiling.
3) Add tea bag and cinnamon stick and cover. Let stand 5 minutes.
4) Remove tea bag and cinnamon stick.
5) Add sugar and stir until dissolved.
6) Stir in orange juice and lemonade.
7) Add remaining 4 cups of water.
8) Refrigerate.

Serve cold with slice of lemon or sprig of mint, and lots of gossip.

Book 9: The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie

2010-01-07T23:09:00.000-08:00

Agatha Christie novels are the standard against which all other detective novels I read are measured. Within her vast collection, I prefer the stories featuring Hercule Poirot, with his mustaches, love of hot chocolate and omelets, and his "little gray cells", but in a pinch I will pick up a Miss Marple. I always find Miss Marple novels to be a little bit sillier, but they are generally still rather clever and I get a huge kick out of Miss Marple's calling female characters who tend to date/marry often "nymphomaniacs." (Seriously, nymphomaniacs are brought up in almost every Miss Marple novel. It kind of makes me wonder what was going on with Dame Christie.) Sadly, no nymphomaniacs appear in The Body in the Library, but it still managed to be a highly entertaining read.

The Body in the Library begins with the corpse of a mysterious and unknown woman being discovered one morning in the library of a country manor near the English village of St. Mary Mead. The woman is dressed for an evening out in an evening gown and garish make-up, and has been strangled. The proprietor of the estate, Col. Bantry immediately falls under suspicion for the murder, but his wife, convinced of his innocence enlists the help of local spinster and amateur detective, Miss Marple, to help solve the case and clear his name and reputation.

This book was classic Christie fare. There are numerous suspects, both glamorous and crooked, all with motives and opportunities. The location shifts between an English country estate, a quaint village, and an expensive resort. The police bumble things up, and it comes down to Miss Marple to place all the pieces together and solve the mystery. It is comforting in its familiarity, though not entirely predictable. It is all things one expects from the queen of detective tales. Though I wish there had been a nymphomaniac.

Book 8: Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris

2010-01-06T23:57:00.000-08:00

Grave Sight is the first novel in Charlaine Harris (of Sookie Stackhouse/"True Blood" fame)'s Harper Connelly series.

Harper Connelly is not your average twenty-four-year-old woman. As a teenager, she was struck by lightening and left with a spiderweb like scar on her right leg, a susceptibility to migraines, and the ability to locate and see the last moments of dead bodies. Harper has taken her unique, but genuine ability and made a career out of it. With her step-brother Tolliver by her side as a business manager and , she travels the country and helps people find dead bodies. Though many people they come across think of Harper and Tolliver as charlatans preying on the grieving and broken, and many others find their acceptance of payment for services provided distasteful, Harper prefers to see it just as a job, like any other. Except her job has some unusual benefits and dangers.

Harper is booked for what should be a quick appointment in Sarne, a small town in the Ozark region of Arkansas. A teenage boy from a wealthy local family has committed suicide in the woods outside town, his other-side-of-the-tracks girlfriend is still missing months later, and people are beginning to talk about what the boy may have done to her. The boy's mother is anxious to prove her son's innocence in the girl's disappearance so she calls Harper in to search the are for the girl's body. In just a couple of hours of searching the area, Harper finds the girl and sees that she was running away from someone and was shot. It seems to be a pretty simple case, yet there are some pretty big secrets in Sarne that are trying to find their way into the light. Tolliver and Harper get in over their heads in a mystery that threatens to not only embroil them in crimes that have nothing to do with them, but just might end their lives.

This is the third series by Charlaine Harris that I have picked up. I loved the Sookie Stackhouse series, which is more supernatural romance with elements of mystery. I did not really care for the Aurora Teagarden series, which was more violent/true crime based. I really enjoyed the first in the Harper Connelly series. Harris is an excellent storyteller and she seems to be at her best when weaving in elements of the supernatural. I have read better detective novels, with more surprising surprise endings, but I did not think less of this book or of Harris for not shocking me completely. It was really more about the journey than the destination with this book.

Harper Connelly is an excellent main character. Harris has a way of creating female protagonists who are manage to be strong and resilient, yet vulnerable. It is a characteristic that makes her characters seem realistic. The powerhouse, no-fear, balls-to-the-wall warrior princess character can be fun, but she is not a character I can identify with. And I cannot stand the poor, woe-is-me heroines. They are simply irritating.

Though I will admit, some of the corpse talk in the book (and the second one, which I will review as soon as I can) can be a little on the creepy side, I like how Harper not only does her job to get money, but as a way to help the dead. She says on more than one occasion that the dead want to be found, that they want the mysteries surrounding their deaths to be solved, and in this way, Harper is helping them, all the while treating them with the utmost respect. I look forward to spending more time with Harper and Tolliver in their interesting, if slightly macabre, world.

Book 7: Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

2010-01-06T22:54:00.000-08:00

Shannon Hale has a talent for updating and filling out lesser-known fairy tales. She first did it with 2003's Goose Girl based on the Grimm fairytale, and now has done it again with "Maid Maleen", another Grimm tale in Book of a Thousand Days.

Book of a Thousand Days is written in the form a journal. The "writer" of this journal is Dashti, a ladies' maid in "The Eight Realms", fictional time and place loosely based on Mongolia around the time of Genghis Khan. Dashti is peasant from the mouintainous region of the realm, but after the death of her father and mother, she sets out for the city of Titor's Garden, hoping to find a job. The healing skills she has learned from her mother help Dashti to acquire a spot in a training school for ladies' maids. She learns how to read, write, and serve. She is to be placed in the home of the most powerful family in Titor's Garden as the maid of the ruling lord's daughter, Lady Saren.

Upon arriving at the grand home of Lady Saren, Dashti finds that all is in a state of upheaval and Lady Saren is frantic. Lady Saren immediately makes Dashti promise she will not leave her, no matter what. Dashti, it turns out, has agreed to accompany Lady Saren when she is locked in a tower for seven years. Lady Saren is being locked away because she disobeyed her father's orders by refusing to marry Lord Khasar, the evil ruler of one of the other cities in the Eight Realms. Lady Saren instead wishes to marry the leader of yet another one of the cities.

Dashti is rather comfortable when they are first bricked in. Though there are no windows through which she can see the sky, there is ample food in the cellar, a comfortable bed, a warm fire, a well full of water, and fresh milk is brought by guards everyday. As the days stretch into months, then years, the food supply is depleted by rats, and the ravenous and an increasingly unstable Lady Saren. Events outside of the tower lead to further fear and confusion. It reaches a point where the only option for Dashti's and the mentally and physically depleted Lady Saren's survival is to break out of their prison, and forge their way by creating new lives for themselves.

When thinking of young adult novels, most peoples' minds inevitably turn to pop culture phenomenon's such as Twilight or Gossip Girl. While these books/movies/tv shows are entertaining and addictive, they are also vapid. I think it is a shame though to dismiss this whole huge area of literature based on these texts, because there is a lot of young adult literature that is fantastic. Book of a Thousand Days represents what a female character can and should be. Twilight's Bella is a co-dependent wet rag, and Gossip Girl's Blair Waldorf is a scheming bitch, but Book of a Thousand Days' Dashti was wonderful. She is strong under pressure, resourceful in times of crisis, compassionate, and still realistically imperfect. She does not depend on her looks, her sex appeal, her money, her social rank, or her stone cold boyfriend. Prince Charming will not always be able to break the princess out of the tower. Dashti shows that when it comes down to it, there are times in which you just have to be your own hero.

Book 6: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

2010-01-01T21:00:00.000-08:00

I loved this book. I bought a copy a few years ago at a used book store because I had heard really great things, and I started it a few times, but really had trouble getting into it. It should have really interested me right off the bat. I love detective stories, and I have always had a major interest in African history, but the start was very slow. My mom read it a few weeks ago and raved about it, so on my way home for Christmas I picked up the book on tape, and gave it a shot. (I don't know if books on tape break the Cannonball Read rules, but if it helps, I actually read the second half the book.)

Precious Ramotswe has always been a special woman. Born and reared in the African nation of Botswana, Mma Ramotswe is independent, kind, proud, and driven. After losing her mother to an accident at a young age, Precious was brought up by her father and her aunt. Both adults are very devoted Precious, and constantly encourage her learn about anything and everything that interests her. Precious's father spent most of his youth and early adulthood working in South Africa's diamond mines, but unlike many of his fellow miners, he saved up all of his wages, with which he buys cattle, a valuable commodity in Botswana.

The novel picks up around the time of Precious's father's death. Precious is in her thirties at this point, and as she is his only child and has devoted her adult life to caring for her father, she inherits his sizable herd of cattle. On his deathbed, her fathers bids Precious to use the money from the sale of the cattle to start a business. That is exactly her plan. She will buy a house, and start a small business, a detective agency. The first and only ladies' detective agency in Botswana.

The book is structured as a series of vignettes, some current, and some telling the histories of the characters in the novel. One section is devoted to Precious's father's time working in the mines. Another discusses Mma (the Botswana version of Ms.) Ramotswe's brief and volatile marriage as a young woman. But most of the chapters are devoted to the cases Mma Ramotswe takes on after opening her agency. The cases deal with everything from cheating husbands,odd doctors, missing dogs, to insurance fraud. There is one overarching storyline concerning a missing child suspected to have been abducted by witch doctors for sacrifice.

The book, though dealing with serious subjects such as the struggles of diamond mining, the effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Botswana, and child abduction, still manages to feel light and warm thanks to McCall Smith's deft storytelling abilities. Mma Ramotswe is clearly neither the most experienced, nor the best trained detective in literature, but she has common sense, natural intellect, a can-do attitude, and incredible amounts of confidence and optimism, all of which lead to her success. Mma Ramotswe is surrounded by an eccentric and often helpful group of friends, who provide both folly and humor. McCall Smith also does a beautiful job describing Botswana. Though McCall Smith was born in what is now Zimbabwe, and currently lives in Scotland, his sincere and deep connection with Botswana and its people manages to shine through in every line. It all comes together to make the book an incredibly fun read. After getting over the initial hump, I could not put the novel down, and when I had to put it down, I could not wait to pick it back up.

Book 5: Interred with their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell

2010-01-01T13:57:00.001-08:00

I found Interred with their Bones in the high school Reading List section of my local public library. Going into that section makes me feel as though I am a bit of a creeper, but if I am blanking on a book choice, they often have some interesting ideas (that reach beyond the expected reading list choices like Jane Eyre and the Chocolate War.

Interred with their Bones is a work of fiction, taking a whack at a mystery from history. It is stylistically similar to the DaVinci Code, except that it exchanges the works of DaVinci, for the works of Shakespeare.

Kate Stanely,a Harvard educated expert on the occult in Shakespeare, has ditched academia for a life directing Shakespeare's great works on stage. On the evening before the premier of the first play at the Globe, Roz, her mentor from Harvard, arrives at the theater and asks Kate to meet her later in the evening, saying she needs assistance with an important and mysterious task. When Kate goes to meet Roz, the woman is a no show, and Kate notices an ominous glow hanging over the skyline of London. After rushing back to work, Kate discovers that the Globe is on fire, Roz's murdered body has been found inside, and an extremely valuable and rare historical text is now missing.

It is now up to Kate to find the answer to the mystery which Roz died trying to discover. It is a journey that will take Kate to three different countries, and will place her in mortal peril again and again.

I like the idea of pretty much anything that will interest teens in reading or learning. Twilight? Sure, if it makes them actually pick up a book! The DaVinci Code? Why not? There is some (albeit not a lot of) actual art history involved. I was hoping that Interred with their Bones might be such a book, but sadly it is not. The premise is intriguing: a brilliant and brave female progtagonist is searching for what is the essentially the Holy Grail of Shakepearean lore, a surviving copy of Shakespeare's lost play "Cardenio." Along the way she teams up with a strong, and surprisingly sympathetic bodyguard. As they travel and change identities they are followed by a violent lunatic, more people are murdered (all murders mimicking murders from Shakespearean works), and Kate discovers the people she trusts are not always as they seem. It sounds fun, exciting, and vaguely intelligent, and it can be at times, but those times are too few and far between.

I think the biggest problem with Carrell's novel is not Kate's plotline, but instead, the second story she chose to attach. What second plotline, you might ask? Where is there room for a second story? There isn't. The book moves back and forth between the present, and Jacobean times. The plot in Jacobean times does not come up often enough to feel complete or fresh, but rears its ugly head just enough to take the reader out of the mindset of the Kate-story. I understand what Carrell was trying to do, give the book some more serious historical context, but it just feels tacked on and forced, and the sheer number of characters in a story that only comes up every hundred or so pages, leaves it more confusing than enlightening. It makes the pacing of the whole story feel off.

The other major problem I had with Interred with their Bones is that there was no solution to the mystery. Kate races along for over 400 pages searching for an answer, and just as it is within arm's reach it is destroyed forever. I felt like I had totally wasted my time. It is almost as though Carrell was not willing to commit herself to any of the possible answers, just in case she was wrong. But the beauty about a work of fiction, is that you can be wrong, and it is okay.

Book 4: Death of a Snob by M.C. Beaton

2009-12-22T08:35:00.000-08:00

Through being an English major, working in publishing and going to library school I have discovered an interesting thing about most serious book lovers: they have some sort of semi-secret trashy tendency. For some its romance novels, for others it is crime thrillers, or sci-fi. But almost every person I have met seems drawn to one genre of "pop" fiction or another. These are the kinds of people who will happily discuss Goethe or Delillo for hours, however, when they think no one is looking, they pick up a mass-market paperback. I do not exclude myself from their ranks. I love detective novels. This is a subject I briefly touched on before. When I am sick, stressed, or traveling I will always pick up a few.

This being the end of the semester with all the projects and presentations that always entails, I skittered over to the library and selected a few mysteries for my (scant) downtime. One of the titles that caught my eye was M.C. Beaton's Death of a Snob. It had a title reminiscent of an Agatha Christie book, and a quick review of the book jacket showed that it looked like a pretty classic type of detective tale. Contemporary detective stories seem to rely too much on science or technology for my tastes, I like a detective who is happy to use his or her brain. Death of a Snob seemed right up my alley.

Death of a Snob centers around Detective Hamish Macbeth, who lives in a small village in the Scottish Highlands. It is almost Christmas, Hamish thinks he is dying from the flu (when all he really has is a mild cold), and his family has asked him not to come for the holidays as an American aunt who can't stand him has made a surprise visit. He is miserable. But a solution for his desolation arrives in the form of Jane Weatherby, a glamorous divorcee who thinks someone is trying to kill her. She is the proprietor of a health spa on a remote Scottish island, where the locals are anything but friendly. As a solution for both of their problems, it is agreed that Hamish will come to the spa for the holidays to investigate. The spa is closed for the winter, but is not empty as Jane has invited some friends and acquaintances to join her for Christmas. Among this unusual lot are a couple of farmers with a shocking secret, Jane's bitter and wealthy ex-husband, a social climbing couple who have fallen on hard times, and a well-meaning cookbook author. Hamish slips into their presence under an assumed name and occupation, and proceeds to look into Jane's concerns. The group does not gel well, and after a particularly nasty afternoon, one of the party disappears and is later found dead, have hit (or been hit with) a large rock, and tumbling off a small precipice. The circumstances make it seem as though the death was an accident, and as it is Christmas, the local police are willing to write of as such, but Hamish is not willing to let the issue be settled so easily. With the assistance of Harriet, the cookbook author, he dives right in.

I liked Death of a Snob, very much, up to a certain point. The period up to the murder was excellent. The mounting frustration of the entire group at the spa was palpable. The characters were perfect for this sort of novel. Interesting, light, and all slightly off. No one could escape suspicion completely. However, after the murder, the plot takes a bizarre and unsatisfying turn. It as almost as though the first half of the novel was pointless. Hamish is a charming main character, both warm and quirky, and I would be happy to give M.C. Beaton another shot sometime in the future. But as for this particular novel? It was ruined by an overworked second half and too much effort in trying to keep the identity of the murderer a huge surprise.

Apple-Cranberry Scones

2009-12-07T11:41:00.000-08:00

Following along the cranberry theme, here is a recipe for apple-cranberry scones I adapted it for fall from the delicious basic scone recipe of Sara Foster of North Carolina's Foster Market:

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 pound (3 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into ¼-inch pieces
1 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk
1 1/2 cups chopped and peeled Granny Smith apples
1 cup dried cranberries
1 heaping tablespoon ground cinnamon
Egg wash: 1 large egg beaten with 2 tablespoons milk or water

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Lightly grease 2 baking sheets and set aside.

3. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.

4. Add the butter and cut it into the flour mixture using a pastry blender or 2 knives until the mixture resembles coarse meal. (Or use a food processor fitted with the metal blade to cut the butter into the flour mixture by pulsing 10 to 12 times. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl to continue making the dough.) Do not overwork the dough.

5. Add the apples, cranberries, and cinnamon and mix lightly.

6. Add 1¼ cups of the buttermilk and mix until just combined and the dough begins to stick together. Add the remaining buttermilk one tablespoon at a time if the dough is too dry.

7. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll or pat into two 6-inch rounds, about 1½ inches thick. Cut each round in half, then cut each half into 3 triangles (pie-shaped wedges) and place on the baking sheets. Brush the tops with the egg wash.

8. Bake 30 to 35 minutes, until golden brown and firm to touch. Remove from the oven and serve immediately.

Serve with Barry's Gold Blend Irish tea, butter, and jam. (I recommend Stonewall Kitchen's Orange-Cranberry Marmalade.)

Cranberry Tea

2009-11-22T10:40:00.000-08:00

One of the things I most look forward to about this time of year is homemade Cranberry Tea. My mom has made it for years so I have no idea where the recipe came from, but it is awesome!

Cranberry Tea

-1 10 to 12 oz bag of cranberries
-1 heaping Tbsp whole cloves
-1 cinnamon stick
-3 quarts water

Combine cranberries, water, cinnamon and cloves in a dutch oven. Set stove on high, and allow water and ingredients to boil. Wait for all the cranberries the cranberries to pop, then strain out cranberries, cinnamon stick and cloves. Mash in strainer to get out all juice. Then add:

-juice of three lemons
-juice of 2 oranges (or 1 cup orange juice)

Mix and serve. It is pretty tart, so keep some sugar handy so people can add to taste.

Birds and Baking

2009-11-17T13:01:00.000-08:00

Thus far, I have only touched on one area of the title of this blog: books. But I (finally!) got a new computer today, so hopefully the other two elements (and maybe even a few more) will be showing up on here really soon.

Book 3: Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman

2009-11-17T11:50:00.000-08:00

I don't care about the prizes a book wins, or the reviews it gets. What I want most in a novel is a great story. It is the reason I hate really stark, bare-bones type books. It is the reason I so enjoyed Alice Hoffman's Turtle Moon.

Turtle Moon takes place in Verity, Florida, a town chock-a-block full of divorced women from the northeast who are escaping not only from the cold, but also their sad pasts. The story begins in the month of May, which is considered by all the inhabitants of Verity, to be the most horrible month of the year. It is the month turtles crowd the streets and sidewalks and crunch beneath car tires. It is the month the heat and humidity make everyone's hair frizz and tempers flare. It is the month behaviors change and unusual things begin to happen. It is the month the unhappiest and unluckiest man in Verity was born, and also when an accident happened that changed his already tragic life. It is the month when a young mother, with a mysterious past is murdered, her baby girl kidnapped and their miserable twelve-year-old neighbor runs away from home. All of these circumstances come together to create a fantastic tale of love, loss, pain and redemption.

Hoffman is a masterful storyteller and legend in the field of magical realism. She deftly uses the magical elements, as well as the swampy, foggy setting to lend the story a dreamlike quality. Her characters are strong, well-developed and consistent. Once I started the book, I could not put it down. I rapidly became invested in the characters, their lives, and their futures. My only real criticism is that I feel Hoffman dropped the ball on one of the secondary character's threads. To go into much detail about it would ruin the resolutiuon of the book, but suffice it to say, the answer to a major question is discovered, then the thread is just dropped with no real punishment for the perpetrator. The only follow-up Hoffman offers is one word: "karma". In the end her story does not find all the characters totally happy, but they have all grown and changed, and in that way it feels right.

Book 2: Real Murders by Charlaine Harris

2009-11-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

This past week I have had the flu, and the week before my laptop died. So I have had a lot of free time on my hands. With this time I pretty much just slept, watched tv (46 episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" in two days!), played Tetris on my cell phone, and read. Since I was feeling pretty rotten, I did not have the attention span or energy to read anything terribly complex or serious. Over the summer, I spent a couple of weeks devouring Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse/ Southern Vampire series, now better known as the "True Blood" series, the HBO show is (loosely) based on.

I love a good mystery. I grew up reading Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie novels. When on vacation, I still gravitate towards this genre. I previously hadn't read any other of Harris's novels outside the Sookie set, so I thought I'd give one of her other series a try. I selected the Aurora Teagarden series for a couple of reasons. 1) The protagonist is a librarian in a small southern town (just like I hope to be!) and 2) The first book in the series was available at my favorite used book store.

Real Murders begins with the meeting of a group of people who enjoy studying famous murders from throughout history (such as Lizzie Borden or Jack the Ripper) with an academic eye. As the regular monthly meeting is about to begin, Aurora Teagarden notices one member is missing, even though her car is in the parking lot. Upon investigating the rest of the building Aurora finds the missing woman brutally murdered in a manner that replicates the murder the group was meant to discuss that night. A murder spree thus begins, all of the killings mimicking real life murders from the past. Signs point to different group members, leading up to a shocking finale. All the while, Aurora is trying to balance her job, two potential love interests, and her growing fear that she might be the next victim.

I rather enjoyed this book. Harris is a fun and competent writer. I noticed it with the Sookie books, and I breezed through Real Murders in one afternoon. Aurora is a pleasant character. Not perfect, gorgeous or glamarous in anyway, but kind and intelligent. The story itself was nothing revolutionary, but kept me guessing. It was more grisly than I was expecting, though, since I usually tend to read older, less gory mysteries. Also, Aurora is not much of a detective. She happens upon the crime scenes more than she actually investigates. Despite those minor complaints, I would certainly pick up the second book in the series.

Book 1: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

2009-11-05T13:02:00.000-08:00

I first read a Nick Hornby book in high school. As a sixteen-year-old girl living in the suburbs of a midsized southern city in the US, I could hardly be considered the target audience for Hornby's humorous sadsack variety of "dick lit." But I savored every word of High Fidelity. Perhaps it was because I was a sixteen-year-old girl that I identified so readily with such a melodramatic, romantic protagonist. I also really, really like lists.

Since then I have read all of Hornby's works, both fiction and non-fiction. As a whole, I find I enjoy his non-fiction more. The fiction tends to get bogged down in the characters' own sullenness and petty natures. Whereas when Hornby is writing in his own voice, he is generally more humorous, optimistic and warm, even when writing about difficult topics such as his son's autism.

As for his fiction, I loved both High Fidelity and About a Boy, enjoyed Slam!, and pretty much just wanted to shake all the characters in A Long Way Down until they got their heads out of their own asses. How to be Good was so wretched I prefer to forget I even read it. I suppose I continue to read and get excited about his books because I know that when he is on his game, he does realistic comedic novels better than almost anyone else out there. I can't help but hope for another About a Boy.

I picked up his newest work, Juliet, Naked, with some justifiable trepidation. It is a story of three pretty miserable people: Tucker Crowe, a once semi-famous musician who walked out on his career while it was at its peak with no explanation, and now finds himself with no career or ambition and half a dozen failed marriages and half-forgotten children; Duncan, a college professor who has been obsessed with Tucker Crowe and his music for nearly twenty years; and Annie, Duncan's longtime girlfriend who is beginning to wonder if she has wasted her whole life on a man she has little interest in, a career that bores her, and living in a town that is dying a slow death.

After a previously unreleased demo of Tucker's greatest album, "Juliet", finds its way to Duncan and Annie's doorstep, the cracks in their relationship become too clear to ignore any longer. Around this same time, Tucker begins communicating with Annie via e-mail after she posts a scathing (and in Tucker's mind, deservedly so) review of the new album now known as "Juliet, Naked" on the Tucker Crowe fanpage. From this point forward, the lines between the characters begin to shift, diverging and crossing where previously they had not done so.

It took me a couple of days to decide whether I liked this story or these characters. In a lot of ways I'm still not sure. Tucker's only true redeeming quality is his relationship with his six-year-old son, Jackson, the only one of his children he has not, nor will ever, abandon. I finished the book yesterday, and I barely remember Duncan. Annie, though, is the biggest puzzle to me. She yearns for a child, for a family, for something to prove that her life has not been a waste, but she seems to do little to change her situation. Well, I guess thinking back on it, that is not true. She makes some major changes to her life, and takes a few pretty substantial risks. The changes she makes just don't seem to move her all that far in any direction. None of the characters or plot lines are resolved by the end of the novel. This is both comfortingly realistic and totally frustrating. Hornby is one of those authors who likes to end with an ellipsis rather than a period. I like not knowing how it will all end up. There is something too artificial about having everything resolved and perfectly tied up in a little bow, but at the same time, after 400+ pages I want to feel as though I got somewhere, and with Juliet, Naked? I don't think I did.

RIP laptop

2009-11-02T16:11:00.001-08:00

Well, after having my lovely little laptop for nearly 5 years, it quietly passed away last Thursday. This has not helped my starting this little project. Neither is it helping me to get my school work finished in a timely manner, nor keep up with my favorites websites. I am sad to see it go, especially since I did not have any of my files backed up.