booktastic

I was harassing Mr. Hall a few minutes ago about getting behind on his blogging (he maintains the Toys 365 blog) when it suddenly struck me that I’ve let mine get away from me, too.

Of course, life has been rather interesting this past week or so. Our lease is up at the end of this month and we’re moving to a different state. This is a rather big change of course, and my mind is not unlike a several-years-old computer… You start up a new program, and then suddenly the whole thing sloooowwsss dowwwwnnnn.

So I haven’t been reading. I haven’t even been listening to books. Well, I have, but I’ve been doing it with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

I’ve been listening to The Camelot Caper by Elizabeth Peters. None of the Agatha Christie novels I wanted were available for download, so I clicked through the “If you liked ___, you will also like…” buttons (past dozens of Agatha Christie novels, I might add. So, Computer, so you think that if I enjoyed Agatha Christie I might like MORE Agatha Christie? What a deduction!!) until I came across this book. It’s apparently a parody of Gothic romance novels tied together with a mystery, which is not an unpromising combo. (I’ve only read one Gothic romance, Wuthering Heights, but I did enjoy it.) So, despite its rather crappy title, I downloaded The Camelot Caper.

The Plot: The heroine, whatshername, has been invited from America by her estranged grandfather to come to jolly old England and visit him before he dies. And bring the family heirloom ring, he adds. So she goes and almost as soon as getting off the plane she finds herself accosted by a mysterious man who seems to want to rob her or accost her in some way. He follows her around town until revealing his motive: he wants the ring. Well, she meets up with a skinny, big-nosed author of Gothic novels and they chase across England, avoiding and getting into scrapes and trying to figure out the significance of the ring.

Oh, it’s been light and enjoyable so far (I’m over 3/4 of the way through), but my heart just hasn’t been in it for the past few chapters. I don’t know why - maybe I’ve just been too distracted to really get into the book. I know that’s the problem I’ve been having with Dying for Chocolate - which, yes, I am still reading, one or two pages at a time. I got to a section in the book where not much was happening and got stuck.

I think our move is going to go relatively smoothly, so hopefully my brain will speed up again soon and I’ll be able to blog regularly on my bountiful reading. I had such a good momentum at the beginning of this year - I don’t want to lose it! — Mrs. Hall

P.S. Come to think of it, I really need to get back on track as far as reading goes - the mail yesterday brought not one but TWO books that I have to review in this blog. Not just for fun, mind you, but because I’m actually professionally employed to do so. Hooray for being a professional writer!

I was once in an Agatha Christie play; possibly her most famous play, The Mousetrap. I was featured as Molly, the young housewife (and, if I may say so without blushing too much, the ingenue of the play). It was an enjoyable experience, so it may come as somewhat of a surprise that, until last year (some eight years after the production of said play) - I had never, ever read an Agatha Christie novel.

I don’t know why. Possibly because I tend to avoid things that are overly popular on the supposition that “if everybody likes it, it can’t be any good” (a supposition that proves itself at least partially wrong when you consider the popularity of things like chocolate.)

But then I suddenly picked one up last year. I suppose it has to do with this mystery kick that I’ve been on: I was at the bookstore near where I worked at the time (Mustard Seed Christian Books - an unpromising name for a bookstore that I actually came to sincerely enjoy visiting) picking up a couple theological texts, when I happened to notice a copy of the Agatha Christie novel Murder at Hazelmoor (also published as The Murder at Sittaford) on the discount rack.

One dollar, it was tagged. I picked it up - it looked like a quick read, it was a mystery, and one couldn’t beat the price in this area of the world - so I threw it upon my stack of Thomas Mertons and beat a hasty retreat.

Oddly, of all the books I had picked up at that store, that was the one I was the most curious about… possibly because it was the one book I knew the least about. I had cracked it open and read the first couple pages before I even finished my lunch break that day.

The plot, as I recall it, is this: a group of people are at a dinner party and decide to have a seance (as they just randomly did in those days). It’s all fun and games until the “spirit” announces that a certain acquaintance of the group has just been murdered - which rather casts a pall over the party. Distressed, one of the party goers goes to check on the friend, and discovers that he has, indeed, just been murdered.

I wouldn’t say that Murder at Hazelmoor was the greatest work of fiction I’ve ever encountered - but it was an enjoyable book. Exciting in spots, intriguing in spots, and the mystery was fundamental to the plot (an issue I take with lots of modern mystery novels, as I’ve mentioned before, is that the mystery is almost incidental to the plot). It was good, light mystery reading.

However, despite my enjoyment of this book and the volume of Agatha Christie’s work, it has taken me several months to pick up another one… possibly because I really didn’t know where to start. I abhor reading books out of sequence, so I had to do some research before I could start with Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot. I picked up a Poirot novel a few months back under the impression that it was the first, and quickly discovered that it was not - and had to lay it aside as a consequence.

However, this year I am making solid progress. I found a book that was the first of three in a series by Christie - The Secret Adversary, a “Tommy and Tuppence” book. (Christie evidently only did three books featuring the characters of Tommy and Tuppence - a pity, as I rather enjoyed the characters in this first book.) I followed this up immediately with Murder at the Vicarage, the FIRST Miss Marple novel, which I have almost finished.

I suppose the point of this meandering is that Agatha Christie novels really are good. Oh, not good in the “well-honed brilliant writing” kind of good - in sheer writing quality I would say they are above average, but only just - but they are good mysteries. She keeps you guessing, gives you clues, eggs you on, lays out red herrings… and so far, of each book I’ve read, some aspect of the resolution has come as a surprise. I may have guessed the murderer once or twice - but something else still took me unawares, so I have to give her credit.

I guess that here is another instance of something being deservedly popular.

Somehow in the course of the first ten days of the year I have finished not one, not two, but four books. This is not because I have become an astoundingly voracious reader with the beginning of ‘09 - but because I had quite a few books already under way on January 1st. (Shh, don’t tell).

Well, that and the fact that two of the books were rather insubstantial. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus was only a hundred-something pages, and big print at that.

The Salmon of Doubt was not as insubstantial as that - technically speaking. It was about the length of a regular book. However, I found the description of the book (implying that it was the last Dirk Gently novel) entirely misleading: the majority of the book is made up of bits and snips, articles, forwards, introductions and the like, all written by Douglas Adams. There are exactly four chapters of the lost Dirk Gently novel, leaving us with a tantalizing non-ending while the story is still substantially and confusingly underway. Following the chapters are a brief summary of the planned book by Adams; a summary which gave us more details about how the story went but not how things finished up. So while I did enjoy those four chapters (they reminded me of what fun I had reading the first two Dirk Gently books, and made me sad that there won’t be any new adventures) - it was more tantalizing than anything else.

Incidentally, who else thinks that the cover of the book pictured here (describing this as “Hitchhiking the galaxy one last time”) is extremely misleading as well??

All and all, I would not advise Adams fans to go out of their way to pick this book up. Maybe, if you want to read a prolongued tribute to Douglas Adams, are interested in his non-fiction work and aren’t bothered by incomplete stories, you could look it up… but if you want a new complete Dirk Gently novel (or are misled by the cover into thinking that this is a last Hitchhiker novel) you can totally give it a miss. — Mrs. Hall

Well, today is the official last day of Christmas by the Catholic calendar (we celebrate Christmas officially on the 24th through the day of Christ’s Baptism, which this year falls on the 11th of January. This gave us an awkward 18 days of Christmas, but who can really complain about a couple extra days of Christmas? Mr. Hall and I were rather sad to discard our beloved tree and pack all the festive decorations away…)

But, in deference to the last day of Christmas, I have one last Christmas offering for you:  The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by Julie Lane. This is distinct and different from The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum (in spite of the identical names). I finished reading this one yesterday by the lingering light of our last Christmas tree’d night for the next twelve months.

As could probably be gathered from the title, this book is an account of Santa Claus’s life. It describes how the “filling the stockings” tradition came about, how the plant holly got named and put to its use, how he wound up with a red suit, sleigh, reindeer and so on.  It goes all the way from his tragic beginning (his parents and little sister all died in one night) to his own sad but miraculous end (yes, he does die at the end!)

There are some odd elements to the book. It was published (originally) in 1932, and is rather “of its time period” at times - like when young Nicholas’ father see Nicholas making his little sister a doll and complains to his wife, “Eh, Mother… I’d rather see Nicholas down at the boats with me learning to mend a net than fussing with little girls’ toys and forever carrying Katje about with him. ‘Tisn’t naturual for a boy to be so…”

My biggest problem with the book, however, is that it is essentially a realistic fictional account of Santa’s life. Why not, you ask? Well, if you want a realistic account of Santa’s life, why not just write a factual biography of the real St. Nicholas? Writing a realistic but fictional account just seems to be an (inadvertent) attempt to muddy the waters.

I’m not saying this is a terrible book. Quite the opposite - it was cute and had its charming moments, and I daresay child readers might enjoy it. It even had “discussion questions” after each chapter (which I must say I did find a bit odd, since this isn’t a factual, historical book) to increase the enjoyment and understanding of the book, I assume. If you’re a Christmas aficionado, you should probably check it out.

And with this review, the Christmas season of 08-09 comes to a close. I hope it was a good one for you! — Mrs. Hall

At that book sale last week, I happened to pick up a copy of a brand new children’s picture book called Ocean Wide, Ocean Deep, by Susan Lendroth, published August of this year by Tricycle Press.

Now, I didn’t buy it for myself, even though I have a “thing” for well-made children’s books (my minor at university actually focused on children’s literature. When my fellow students were struggling with Henry James, I was reading Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.) I picked it up for a baby I know.

I chose this book over several other picture books because this one had very nice illustrations and a sweet story. It’s about a girl, in the olden days, waiting for her Dad to get back from the sea.

Pretty simple story, right? Well, it’s a picture book for small children. It’s SUPPOSED to have a simple story. When your book is less than twenty pages long and has fewer words than this blog post, you have to be pretty concise in your story structure: You announce the problem, deal with the problem, and at the end of the book, resolve the problem. The problem is announced - girl’s dad is going away to sea. Deal with the problem: girl misses her dad. Resolve the problem: Dad comes home. Everybody’s happy.

Unfortunately, although I really like this book, I haven’t got a lot to say about it… because it’s less than twenty pages long and has fewer words than this blog posting. But let me reitterate: sweet story, BEAUTIFUL illustrations. If the book has one flaw, it’s that some of the vocabulary used in it is a bit advanced for the “picture book” age group… but I suppose that would be a good opportunity for vocab building, too, so I can’t even really complain about that.

So, to sum up - if you need a pretty, sweet, new picture book for a young lady you know this Christmas: pick up Ocean Wide, Ocean Deep. Definitely a keeper. (Although I’m not keeping mine, darn it. Lucky baby!) — Mrs. Hall

I have a shameful confession to make. When I was a child, I owned the complete set of Paddington Bear books…

And I never read them.

I don’t know why I never read them. After I learned to read I became a voracious reader and consumed almost every book I owned and many I didn’t (thanks, West Plains Public Library) - including an entire series of rather crappy “Solve it Yourself” mysteries and “Choose Your Own Adventure! ” books.

But not Paddington. There were just a handful of books I owned that I never read (including Misty and King of the Wind because I could just never get into a book about a horse. I liked horses, like all eight year old girls do, but I was never interested in reading stories exclusively about them. I mean, who cares what a horse is thinking about? In my experience growing up on a farm, horses think about two things: eating and finding things they can use to knock off/crush the people riding them. But I digress.)

I don’t remember why the books never interested me. I was always interested in the British Isles, so it kind of surprises me that I didn’t take to the books… I seem to recall, at some point, asking my Mother where they had come from and if she had ever read them; I don’t remember her reply, except that it can’t have inspired me to read them. But I do remember what happened to those books - I wound up giving them to the children of some friends of ours who were even more poor (poorer?) than we were (!!). They were excited to get them.

And so I have gone through my life Paddington-less. The story would have ended there, but for the fact that recently I was searching for audiobooks to download from the public library website. I searched, on a whim, for “Stephen Fry” (a British actor of whom I was overly fond at one time; he was half of the team of Fry and Laurie, the other half being Hugh Laurie of House fame)  - and discovered that Stephen Fry was the narrator for a copy of A Bear Called Paddington, available for download. Somebody else had it checked out, so I patiently waited my turn for it, and downloaded it last week.

It only took me a few hours at work (data entrying) to finish it… but it was delightful. This kind of story was made to be read by someone like Stephen Fry: so quaint and distinctly British, with lots of emphasis on subtle puns and wordplay. Mr. Fry has an amazing speaking voice and was able to do all the different characters (with different accents and intonations, depending on the case) perfectly.

As far as Paddington goes… I am very sorry, now, that I did not read these books as a child. This one at least was very cute and enjoyable, and I even chuckled out loud a couple times. As far as the narration by Stephen Fry goes - it was fabulous.

If you’re in the mood for a sweet, light, enjoyable, entertaining book - and want to hear it narrated by a great voice actor - buy or download this copy of A Bear Called Paddington!! – Mrs. Hall

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

Yesterday I got an exciting piece of mail: the Edward R. Hamilton’s Bargain Books Catalog. This may not seem all that exciting to you. But I will have you know: this catalog was the highlight of my life as a teenager. 

Yes, I probably was a pretty boring teenager. But the Edward R. Hamilton Bargain Books catalog isn’t! Hundreds of remainder books, priced to sell (usually between $3.95 and $7.95 with some exceptions), with a flat shipping rate of $3.50!!

(I think it was $2.50 when I was a teenager, but $1.00 isn’t that much of a hike when you consider how much postage costs have gone up in the past fifteen years…)

I haven’t really looked through one of these catalogs in years; I was distracted with school, getting married, having a job, not having money, and all those other great “grown up” things. However, like I said, I got one in the mail yesterday and it was Friday night (woo!) so I thought, “What better way to spend a Friday night than to spend it slowly paging through a Bargain Books catalog with a pen in hand?”

Bargain Books has changed a bit since I was a teen. For one thing, it’s an actual catalog now and has a color cover: when I used to receive it, it was in thick, B&W newspaper format. And as I mentioned, the flat shipping rate has gone up slightly. Plus, now they apparently sell DVDs too.

However, it’s still a delightful cross-section of former-bestsellers, never-was-bestsellers, never-heard-of-its and what-the-hell-somebody-actually-published-this-type selections. And now it has DVDs.

I would say that, in general, the prices are a bit higher than when I used to spend my afternoon sheafing through this thing. I saw more books above the $7.95 mark than before - but, honestly, what isn’t more expensive than it was ten years ago? All and all, these are still bargains and if you actually take the time to look through this catalog, you’re going to find some things that you want. Check out their website and request a catalog (there are extra shipping costs when you buy online for some reason, so getting the catalog is worth it). It’s free and fun and you’ll be glad you did. – Mrs. Hall

P.S. I’ve decided I’m not going back to “The Jane Austen Book Club” - the book simply wasn’t pulling me in, and it was an effort to read it, so I’m just going to put it on Bookmooch. So much for that one! Right now I’m working on that Joseph Campbell book and “The Cereal Murders” by Diane Mott Davidson…

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I finished In This Mountain yesterday. Despite having decided twenty pages-in that this was going to be the first Jan Karon book that failed to capture my attention, I wound up being completely captured and spending almost my entire Sunday finishing this book. (Hense the fact that I didn’t post on here yesterday).

So kudos to Jan Karon; boo-dos to me.

And incidentally, I was wrong in my other post when I mentioned that this was the second-to-last book; it turns out that there are two more to read, Shepherds Abide and Light From Heaven… both of which I own. So It’s totally my call as to when I finish this series.  But I must admit I’m rather loath to finish it; I’ve had such a good time reading it. I’ll be rather sad when it’s all over.

My next book is going to be an unusual one for me: Holding Fast - The Untold Story of the Mount Hood Tragedy. I must admit that this is not a book I would normally pick up - mainly due to the word “Tragedy” in the title. (I won’t deny that the majority of the time I’m reading for escapism purposes, so my favorite materials are somewhat prelapsarian in nature. I get more than enough “tragedy” from the newspapers.) However, I’ve just started reviewing books for the company that published this, and this was the most likely of the bunch that was offered… So there you have it.  More on this one when it’s finished. – Mrs. Hall

As predicted, I finished A Christmas Story in roughly an hour and a half of straight reading. I feel kind of bad talking about it right now, as I was also recently reading the book Unplug the Christmas Machine, and one of the first things it mentioned was how Christmas is being messed up by the fact that people build up to it longer and longer but celebrate it less and less. (You know: stores encourage us to start building up to the day beginning in August now, so we build up and build up and build up - and then, BOOM, December 26th it’s all over, and we’re left depressed and empty feeling with a saggy tree that we feel obliged to leave up for a few extra days. Back in olden times, Christmas was a feast that you built up to for a limited amount of time [Advent] and then celebrated it for days and days… You know, I really should look up the exact quote from the book. My version is somewhat unwieldy.)

However, I also ascribe to the Ebeneezer Scrooge school of Christmas, which is that “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” So, rather than reading A Christmas Story as an attempt to build up to Christmas, I’m using it as a chance to make Christmas here, now, and every day. I feel even the authors of Unplug the Christmas Machine could agree with that sentiment.

… Anyway, I’ve rambled enough, so I’d better get back to the point, which is that I just read The Christmas Story. In case you didn’t know, this book actually did not exist before the movie: the movie was based on several short stories taken from Jean Shepherd’s book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash. However, the interest has been great enough that they finally took the stories out of that book and assembled them together under the title of the movie, e.g. The Christmas Story.

In this compendium, you’ll find the true stories of the Red Ryder BB gun, the Bumpuses, the Old Man’s “major award” and so on. Some facts are different from the film - for instance, the holiday feast that was consumed by the Bumpus hounds was actually an Easter Ham, not a Christmas Turkey.  But the stories also enlarge on facts stated in the film but not fully explained: who knew that the gifts featured prominently at Christmas (the can of Simonize, the zeppelin) were Ralphie’s gifts to his family?

Criticisms: I wouldn’t call this book “laugh out loud” funny - because I didn’t. However, I did smile a lot, and I did actually chuckle out loud at one point. Though it’s worth mentioning… I found some moments of the book darker than the film. The story of the bully Grover Dill (Scut Farkas in the film) read like an essay on the savagery of man… Of course, it’s possible that it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. And a minor criticism (not really of the writing, since this book wasn’t even compiled by the author - it may even have been assembled after his death) is that, with the exception of the story of the Red Ryder BB gun, the stories in this book are not actually Christmas stories. But, as I said, that’s not really a proper criticism of the writing.

In the end, would I recommend this book? Yes. It was a light, enjoyable (and FAST) read. As a Christmas book I would give it three out of five stars because only one of the stories has anything to do with Christmas - but don’t let that put you off. If you want to really get a Christmas experience out of it, I’d recommend you do the following: skip the Red Ryder BB gun story (which is the first in the book), read the others, and then finish the book by reading that. That’s how the publishers should have arranged it, if you ask me! — Mrs. Hall