booktastic

Okay, this year I have had a propensity for picking up series mysteries - and starting with the wrong one. This one wasn’t entirely my fault. I was looking for a book to download and listen to from the Chicago Public Library website - I was hoping to try one of those “The Cat Who…” books, but the earliest one in the series they had was 13 or something, and that’s just a bit too late in the series. Finally, after clicking through several pages of “If you like this book, you will also like..” I saw this, and there was no indication of whether it was the first, third or seventh in the series.

So I looked it up. Turns out The Cereal Murders was the third in the series. I remembered this book from a previous encounter: I was in the basement of Powell Books in Hyde Park Chicago (a marvelous used book store: I recommend it. It seems to go on forever) looking for inexpensive things to read, and saw this on a shelf. I contemplated it because the cover appealed to me, but I wasn’t really into mysteries at the time, and put it back.

I was reminded of that when I was on the library website, and decided to download the book. After all, it was only third in the series, that wasn’t so bad.

It’s an audiobook. (I apologize to those of you who don’t consider listening to audiobooks as “reading” - it’s really my only option at work, since if I sat there at the computer with a novel in hand my bosses might get suspicious). The thing about audiobooks is, I have begun to be of the notion that a lot of how much one enjoys an audiobook is due to how good the reader is. If the reader doesn’t quite work for you, it winds up being very distracting from the book. On a recent audiobook, I was distracted the every time she tried to do a “male” voice. All her “men” sounded exactly the same - because it was just her, the reader, doing a gruff, gravelly voice. Well, not all men are gruff and gravelly.

However, the reader for this book was very good. She didn’t try to “sound like” a man when she read the male parts - she just changed her tone or inflection, which worked beautifully. The only part where I was distracted by the author herself was when she had to re-enact someone’s scream and death gurgle (which she did quite well, I might add. It did make me laugh, but just because it was unexpected)… but, if that’s how it was written, that’s how she had to do it, so I don’t fault her that one.

Anyways, I suppose I’d better talk about the book itself. I enjoyed it! It’s the story of a caterer who becomes involved with a bizarre higher-education-related murder when, at an event she is catering, she finds the dead body of the valedictorian. Our heroine is Goldy Bear (yeah, yeah, perhaps the naming of characters in the book didn’t always work for me, but what can you say? That’s a minor issue), and the story is told from her viewpoint, first person (which helped the audiobook, I might add). The mystery was enough a focal-point of the story that I didn’t spend a whole lot of time wondering when she was going to get back to mystery solving… And the climax of the book was the solving of the mystery, and it was exciting. Although perhaps I wasn’t paying as much attention to the mystery element as I should have because I was distracted by another element.

Our heroine is a caterer, and spends the majority of the book talking about food. Manicotti, extreme nachos, chocolate dipped biscotti, slices of sourdough bread slathered with pesto… *Passes out, revives self several minutes later and goes on.* I was sitting there at work listening to this book and literally salivating. Now, I’m not sure how it would have come across if I’d read the book: there’s a certain amount of your reaction which is dictated by a reader when you listen to the audiobook rather than reading the novel itself. It could be she just made it all sound really good with her tone and inflection. But I can say this: I wanted to go home and cook. As an added bonus, this book includes the actual recipies for the most prominent foods mentioned. I didn’t listen to them (honestly, what fun is listening to a recipe? “Two cups flour. Two teaspoons cinnamon. One teaspoon sugar…”) - but now I want to buy (or bookmooch, or library) a copy so that I can check those recipes out.

So if you like food and enjoy cooking and reading mysteries, I can recommend this novel. I finished it at work today and promptly came home and made Alfredo pasta from scratch, and served it over some store-bought noodles that my Mother assured me were almost as good as “home made” - and they were. All and all, today brought both good reading and eating experiences. — Mrs. Hall

I would like to claim that there is some intensely literary reason why I am choosing to currently boycott the Twilight books - but, in all honesty, it’s just because they are too popular right now. They have become popular to the point of obnoxiousness, so I hereby decree that I will not be reading these books.

If I were to read them now, it would only be because everyone else in the world is reading them. And you know what? That’s no reason to read a book. You should read a book because it’s educational, enlightening, funny, entertaining - or in some way interesting to you - NOT because a billion teenage girls have purchased a book and are literature-gasming over the main character.

Oh, I read Harry Potter. Well, that is to say, I tried to read Harry Potter (twice) but I couldn’t get into them. I mean, they weren’t terrible: they were cute and written in a mildly amusing fashion… They just didn’t do anything for me. I’ve read books about wizard schools that were much funnier and more original (*cough* Terry Pratchett *cough*). I have a feeling that this is going to be the same sort of thing.

The Twilight books are apparently focused on a romance element (hence, the appeal to teenage girls and ostensibly women in general). I know a good number of girls in their twenties who are reading these books and professing a strong liking for them - my sister-in-law among them. Who knows? Maybe I would like them. I’ve enjoyed a Gothic romance in my time - Wuthering Heights was my favorite book for several years.

However, I highly doubt that this is a Gothic romance in the classic sense of the term, and is simply a book about a teenager lusting after a handsome, mysterious boy with magical powers. Let me guess - he’s a loner with the soul of a poet, and only she really understands him. (Well, we’ve never heard that story before, Have We?)

Yes, yes, yes, I’m sure Twilight is so much more than that. I can already hear the outraged cries of “No, you don’t understand - it really is good!” Perhaps it’s an “He’s an evil vampire, I’m a nice person, we can never be together,” or it’s a “Vampire? What’s a vampire? Wow, this boy is really exciting and handsome and - has fangs - and is sucking my blood… Hey, wait a second. Get away from me! But wait, you’re a loner with the soul of a poet…” or maybe it’s “He’s a vampire, and that’s cool, but I kind of don’t want to be a vampire yet so that we can drag the story out for another ten books.” (Please forgive the sarcasm, Twilight-lovers. I may be just a trifle jaded).

Now, let me make this clear: I do not have a problem with films, books, etc. that happen to feature vampires. In my time have enjoyed quite a number of films that featured vampires prominently; for instance, I recently had a good time watching Hammer’s The Horror of Dracula and The Brides of Dracula. 

But I do have a problem with people re-fashioning evil things and telling you that they’re not “evil” - they’re “cool”. You know what? Nothing is cool about vampirism. It’s distinctly un-cool. Know how I can prove this? Vampirisim suddenly becomes a whole lot less cool if the guy who appears in your room during the night and is leaning over you in the darkness looks like this. I somehow don’t see a lot of fan girls getting wobbly-at-the-knees over him (no offense, guy). I’m concerned about evil things being portrayed as attractive and glamorous (even a kind of silly, implausible, over-the-top evil like vampirism) because if enough evil things slide into your subconscious via interesting, attractive routes, you begin to get the subtle sense that evil is much more interesting and fun than good… Perhaps evil isn’t so evil after all… Maybe there is no such thing as evil.

This is a terrible, terrible danger. Would you want the person in charge of your bank account to believe there’s no such thing as evil? …. your doctor? … daycare provider? … President? That may seem like a rather dire, over-the-top scenario on my part, but you can never be too vigilant where evil is concerned.

All of this said…. Perhaps all my negative thoughts about the Twilight series ARE completely unfounded and this is a totally original, fascinating story - and not at all Buffy, The Vampire Slayer fashioned for fan girls rather than fan boys.

But… the simple truth is… I really just don’t want to read this book. Like I said, I would only be reading it because everybody else seems to like it…  But what I’ve heard about it just doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t think vampires are cool, I’m too old to find teenage boys attractive, I detest people making evil things appear glamorous - and I’m really not a romance reader or even much of a gothic novel reader.

And if I did pick up the first of these books and attempt to read it - and if it turns out to be any of the things that I suspect it is - I would just have to throw it against the wall, smack myself in the head and say, “Why did you try to read this? You knew what it was going to be!” - then return it to the library and resume my boycott.

So I think I’ll just give it a miss. That would be much simpler. — Mrs. Hall

I put on an audiobook this morning called 311 Pelican Court by Debbie Macomber. I thought it was… oh, I don’t know, a quaint little book about small-town life or something like that.

Imagine my surprise when I listened, in complete and utter blushing discomfort, to a passage that involved exposed nipples.

Yes, it turns out that this is a romance novel. Not a traditional romance novel in the sense that it’s about one couple… it’s about four or five couples. Old couples, middle-aged couples, young couples. Other than a minor sub-plot about Vietnam War guilt, it’s all about these couples working things out.

… I’ve heard about entirely too many nipples at this point. Granted, it was just one scene so far - and really just one nipple. And it’s not that I’m such a prude that I’m going to dump a book because it mentioned a nipple… It’s just that I really don’t need to be hearing about people’s nipples first thing in the morning. AT WORK.

Thank heavens I had my earphones in! I kept looking up at my two office mates, hoping sincerely that they couldn’t hear any residual sound that might be coming out of my earphones. It was definitely not office-appropriate.

But the nipple scene was over quickly enough, thank goodness, and I was able to stop blushing as I listened to the book. The problem is: I don’t know, now, if I really care to go on listening to it. I’m not really a fan of modern romance novels. Besides the smutty moments (which I do not appreciate), they seem to be filled with an inordinate amount of people making really dumb choices; choices that seem to exist only for the purpose of dragging out the plot. “She just couldn’t bring herself to call him, even though she knew it would smooth things out…” “He was irrationally jealous, and said nothing to her, in spite of the fact he knew she wanted to hear it…”

Granted people are dumb like that in real life sometimes, but its frequency in romance novels is excessive.

I suppose I must say that, unlike the majority of modern romance novels, this one does seem focused on the “romance” aspect, rather than the “let’s get our clothes off” aspect which makes most modern romances little more than porn with a story.

But I’m uncertain about whether I want to finish listening to this book. I suppose I might as well, since I’m about half way through it, but I really, really, really hope that no more nipple scenes crop up. I don’t think I can handle any more of that today. I have no desire to blush to death. — Mrs. Hall

I tried, with the title of this post, to give you an impression of my impression of that audiobook I finished yesterday - especially with the “shrug” part.

Bell, Book and Scandal totally succeeded in one area: it made me want to go to writer’s conferences, as they sound educational and fun. But in the mystery area I would say this book more or less failed. There was really no question of a mystery until about chapter twelve (!!). I know this for a fact because I had been waiting so impatiently for the mystery to start that I actually made a note of it.

And then, when the mystery finally started, all the heroine’s friends were kind of annoyed and bored with the subject - and honestly, I found myself rather annoyed and bored with it as well. The author telegraphed all the major plot devices so that nothing was really surprising. The characters (villains especially) were kind of cartoonish. And really, there was no murder or serious crime in this book - a couple people were mildly hurt, one thing was stolen but then returned - so there wasn’t a lot of tension as far as solving the mystery went.

While it succeeded in making me interested in attending a writer’s conference - the second part of the book, the part dealing with the mystery, felt like kind of a waste. So, while I did enjoy this book for the most part, I would have to say that my final feeling is a resounding “shrug”. I’m not sure that I care to look up any of the author’s other books if they’re all going to be like this.

The most interesting thing that came out of reading this book was that the title reminded me of the phrase “Bell, Book and Candle”, and I was like, “Hm… I wonder what that actually means? Where did that phrase come from?” So I looked it up. Apparently, it refers to an old-fashioned excommunication ceremony from the Catholic Church. (The picture at left is of Robert the Pious having just been excommunicated using a bell, a book, and a candle.) This meaning makes its partial use in the title of this book somewhat nonsensical. It would be a mild stretch to say that anyone was excommunicated in this book… Perhaps excommunicated from the world of publishing, but that was a minor part of the story and hardly worthy of generating the title of the book. Oh well. I won’t complain. Perhaps there’s another meaning, of which I’m ignorant.

I’m still reading The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and having much better luck with my motion sickness on the bus. The only problem with reading on the bus now is that it necessarily drags out my books a lot longer than they should go, since I can only read in two half-hour snatches a day. When I get home in the evening I have house-things to do, usually, and have to spend time with Mr. Hall, all of which necessarily detracts from my reading time. Such is the life of an employed person! – Mrs. Hall

P.S. By the way, on an unrelated topic: remember how I was expecting hoards of trick-or-treaters last night? Guess how many we had? FIVE! Oh well, I guess I’m just going to be forced to eat all this candy myself…

Well, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time didn’t work very well to fill up the time between now and whenever The Beekeeper’s Apprentice shows up… because I read the entire thing yesterday.

The book is funny, and sad, and scary, and interesting - and insightful. The author seems to have a very good grasp of the sort of things that fascinate (and fail to fascinate) an autistic person. Obviously, I found this book quite enjoyable and very fast to read.

The Amazon website describes it thusly: “Mark Haddon’s bitterly funny debut novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is a murder mystery of sorts–one told by an autistic version of Adrian Mole . …Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbor’s poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork. Wellington’s owner finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested. After spending a night in jail, Christopher resolves–against the objection of his father and neighbors–to discover just who has murdered Wellington.”

Yes, it is a sort of mystery, and I’m interested in mysteries at the moment… but that ceases to be the focus about half way through and after that is totally character-driven. I was interested in the book mostly because the book is told by the autistic main character, Christopher. He makes you understand something about why autistic people act the way they do; he describes things he does and his motivation - how being hugged by his parents makes him panic, and how he doesn’t understand people’s facial expressions, or humor.

That said - I did find myself scowling over several sections of the book. The character spent several pages (on several different occasions) discussing why he doesn’t believe in the existence of God. I thought perhaps this might be the author’s way of truthfully depicting this character - perhaps, due to the formation of his mind, he simply could not fathom the concept of something that exists outside the realm of matter. However, the character had no problem dealing with something as abstract as the concept of time: “…And this means that time is a mystery, and not even a thing, and no one has ever solved the puzzle of what time is, exactly” (p.158). If he could apply a concept like this to time, I see no reason why he couldn’t apply the exact same concept to God: like time, something that we can feel the effects of, but not quantify. Instead, the character goes on several rants about how believing in God is more or less just a stupid comfort for people who don’t want to die. I don’t know enough about autistic people to be able to say whether they commonly feel this way, or whether this is characterization, or whether it’s just the author projecting his own feelings. It did lend to characterization, so I can’t say it was just gratuitous religion-bashing… But there is a known spiritual malaise in modern Britain, so who knows? I’d be interested to hear the author’s thoughts on the matter.

By the by: many of the modern British works of fiction I’ve read seem to feature the main character’s parents getting divorced or committing adultery (or both). What does this mean? I mean, so many works of modern British fiction I’ve read seems to revolve around it: this, Adrian Mole, Bridget Jones … okay, not Harry Potter, but he doesn’t count - his parents are dead.  I don’t know what the answer is to this question, but it’s food for thought. (A side note: this book is similar in some ways to Adrian Mole, but I prefer this, actually.)

Anyway, I have always found books like this, about people whose minds work different from the norm, very interesting. I don’t know why this fascinates me so much; I hesitate to say that I find myself empathizing with them (although I do) because it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense… Let’s just say that, inexplicably, stories like this hold a tremendous attraction for me. That’s why I read Oliver Sacks’s books.

So I read this book in one day, and immediately needed something else. This morning, while relaxing and waiting to head out to an interview for a temp job, I started reading another book from my TBR pile: The Jane Austen Book Club . I like Jane Austen, hence the fact that I have two books with “Jane Austen” in the title in my TBR pile. I’m about two chapter into it at this point. It seems to be in the style of The Joy Luck Club: a group of women get together and have discussions which contrast and reflect in ways the intensely horrible events of their prior lives. I don’t think this book’s group of women is going to have as intensely horrible backgrounds as the women of the Joy Luck Club, but we shall see. I think it’s going to be more of a “women’s book” (you know, they drink tea and cry and support each other, while all the men go around being macho and stupid until they learn to cry and respect women) whereas The Joy Luck Club was more of a cultural book. I hope The Jane Austen Book Club isn’t too much of a women’s book, because I can only take so much of that “women are smart, men are dumb” stuff before I start crying foul. (I kind of hope it’s not too much like The Joy Luck Club either… I seem to recall getting queasy at times while reading that book, although I might be exaggerating). I just wanted a cute book about people who like to read Jane Austen! Oh well. We shall see. — Mrs. Hall