I’m still in the middle of Absalom, Absalom! (ALWAYS in the middle, I’ve been reading for days!) and now, at page 200, there’s a new character with a whole new storyline and I’m like, wait a second, joker, can you do that? This is like, if you were reading Beowulf, and you get to the part where Beowulf kills Grendel’s mom (Spoiler Alert? Piss off.) and then when things start quieting down you learn that Grendel had some New Orleans French kid. And now you gotta read all about how horrible HE is.

Is there a payoff for reading this? At the end of the book is there a card you mail in and someone, I don’t care who, sends you a hundred-dollar bill?

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Tags: Beowulf, William Faulkner

I’m reading Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (not bragging.) and I’m in the middle of the book. Actually, the moment you start reading it you feel like you’re already in the middle of this book. And when you’ve read for an hour and you think, man, I’m really getting somewhere in this book, but you check and you’ve only read like, 12 pages, and you’re nowhere near the end of a chapter (or PARAGRAPH BREAK), there’s a defeat: “I’ve only read 12 pages? But I’m exhausted.”

One of my coworkers asked me if it was good. I said that I don’t know. I know it’s supposed to be good. The whole thing feels like I have a fever and there’s a mentally ill person trying to tell me a story, and I know that it’s not entirely my fault, cos I can’t help that the mentally ill person can’t seem to talk in normal and/or shorter sentences, but maybe if I didn’t have this fever I could understand better what she’s trying to tell me.

It’s very good.

But sometimes, I can’t help thinking that the men telling the story are a bunch of gossips, and that the woman telling the story, well, she’s just pitiful awful. It’s not her fault. As of the middle of the book, I cannot figure out what the point of it all is, but I expect at the end I’ll be all, “Ohhhh. I get it. DONE.”

Here’s the short version of the book, so far:

“Dad, the ol’ crazy lady up the street has sent for me. What should I do?”

“Welp, go see her.”

“Reckon what she wants?”

“Don’t matter. Just go. Do whatever she tells you.”

“Like what?”

“Like, if she says fix something, fix it. If she says move something, move it. If she says sit here in this dark, stuffy room and listen to me tell you the most sad, crazy-redundant story of your life, then do that.”

“What, sit there while she tells me a long, repetitive story?”

“Yep.”

“What do I say?”

“Nothing. Trust me, you won’t have to say anything.”

“Why am I doing this?”

“It’s the privilege of your youth to do so.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep. But look on the bright side, when it’s over you’ll have a story to tell.”

 

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Tags: William Faulkner

I found a wonderful letter in the book sale stuck in a book called Blessings on Thee, Clergy Wife. The book appeared to be a witty take on being a preacher’s wife written by Susanne Bowman, a preacher’s wife, and published in the year of our Lord, 1970. The letter in the book is from some lady in Texas. I have changed the names to protect, well, myself, mostly.

Dear Gaynelle,

I couldn’t resist getting this book for you. I have read it and found that it was delightful book. I met Mrs. Bowman one day this week. She came by the office to present her book to my boss, Dr. Smith. Dr. and Mrs. Smith are very close friends to the Rev. and Mrs. Bowman. Dr. Smith donated his book to our library, and we also put it on sale in our bookstore.

Good Shepherd Episcopal Church is a neighboring church, much smaller than ours. She refers to St. Michael’s Episcopal Church (page 55) in a rather harried way. St. Michael’s is a beautiful church and the people are beautiful people. There has been quite a bit of hard feelings placed in that chapter, and I am afraid the author has hurt a lot of people’s feelings. St. Michael’s (like us) is the other large parish in Dallas. It is a very wealthy church, and can be considered as the Incarnation’s (my church) rival. It is so sad to see one church downgrading another church, and I see a lot of that.

But overall, I liked the book. It is rather amusing to read all the things a clergy’s wife has to put up with – “I’m sure you know from experience.”

I hope you enjoy reading it. Let me know what you think about it.

Tell Bobby and the children to “straighten up” and “to take care.” Also tell Bobby that our church has just purchased a $20,000 pipe organ from Wick’s Organ Company in Illinois. It’s the most beautiful organ I have ever seen in my life. This organ went in our chapel — mind you not in our main church. There is no end to what this church can do.

Must close now. Take care and tell everyone I said hello.

Love,

Rayanne

P.S. Also tell Bobby that the organ came in a huge moving van in many thousand pieces, and they had to assemble it. Wish he could see it. It took 3 weeks to put together.

Wasn’t that delightful? This letter was dated 1970 and the organ was $20,000?!

ALSO, did the sentence, “There is no end to what this church can do.” sound as ominous to you as it did to me?

“Yeah, we dropped 20 Gs on a pipe organ for the chapel, no bigs. There’s no end to what this church can do. WE CAN BUY OR SELL YOU. THESE ARE END TIMES. DEATH TO OUR RIVALS.”

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Scandi crime that takes place in Minnesota? Could this be as good as regular Scandi crime, with its use of landscape, tight mysteries involving history, and a slight hint of the supernatural?

Yes! Oh my gosh, yes!

This book was first released in Norway in 2008 and won the Riverton Prize for Best Norwegian Crime Fiction. So really, you don’t need me to tell you that this book is top-notch. But you guys? This book is top-notch.

This is the first in a trilogy set in a small Minnesota town on Lake Superior. Lance Hansen is a U.S. forest officer and local historian who finds a dead Norwegian tourist. Eirik Nyland is a detective from Norway sent to investigate along with the local authorities.

Sundstol makes wonderful use of the landscape as well as the history of the area, including the Native American history.  While Nyland is working on the recent murder investigation, Hansen, who found the body, is not involved in the investigation, but being the local historian he starts looking into a similar crime that happened 100 years earlier in the same area. The mix of the early Norwegian settlers and the native Ojibwe tribal history is excellent (as far as accuracy, I’ve no idea, but it made for good reading.).  I thought mixing the two might be too confusing, or rather, I’d have to remember too many things, but no, the storytelling is great.

This isn’t exactly a typical police procedural either. The murder investigation is peripheral to the real story, which, I’m not exactly clear what that is. This is not to say that it’s confusing, it’s just incomplete. This is the first book in a trilogy and while there is an ending to the first book, you can tell that it’s setting up the second book. Usually I’d feel cheated, but the author is telling a story is so massive, and so well-paced, that I can’t wait for the second book. This book isn’t a thriller nor action packed, so I could see how some people might lose their patience reading it. But it really is a great piece of storytelling, and I enjoyed the relaxed pace.

This book is available October 7, 2013.

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Tags: Scandinavian crime fiction

Talk about a psychological rollercoaster of thrilling/suspenseful goodness! Here’s from the book jacket:

Alex Connolly is ten years old, likes onions on toast, and can balance on the back legs of his chair for fourteen minutes. His best friend is a 9000-year-old demon called Ruen. When his depressive mother attempts suicide yet again, Alex meets child psychiatrist Anya. Still bearing the scars of her own daughter’s battle with schizophrenia, Anya fears for Alex’s mental health and attempts to convince him that Ruen doesn’t exist. But as she runs out of medical proof for many of Alex’s claims, she is faced with a question: does Alex suffer from schizophrenia, or can he really see demons?

I read this book in one day. That tells you two things. One, it’s not too long. Two, this damn book had me turning pages like a mofo. I honestly can’t remember the last book I read in a single day.

The chapters alternate between Alex and Anya telling the story. This is perfect because it gives you an unreliable narrator, which, I love. There’s even a bit of a social message to the book, as it takes place in Northern Ireland, the psychologists are into working out how growing up amongst so much violence will effect the younger generation.

The whole time you are rooting for Alex, does he see demons? Is he mentally ill? It doesn’t matter, you just want a better life for the poor kid. Then, you’re rooting for Anya, let her help Alex, let her get her life back on track. This book has the perfect amount of psychological and supernatural ingredients that blend to make a fantastic story.

And now the tricky bit, the ending.
I can’t tell if it’s brilliant or cheap. I have no doubt that the author knew exactly how she wanted the book to end from the moment she started writing it, so it’s not a sloppy ending. And I don’t mind being tricked, really, as long as the trick is clever, meaning maybe all the clues were there and I just missed them, like a Shyamalan ending. But this felt a little too much of a trick, like having an unforeseen evil twin come out at the end of a whodunit, or something. As a reader, you get involved in the story, the characters; there are stakes! But when an ending comes along and it nullifies everything, removes the stakes, you’re left feeling pretty hollow and cheated.

That being said, it was a hell of a good book.
(Oh! Didja see what I did there? Hell? Get it? Oh, me.)

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Tags: 50 books, fiction

When I saw this book on Netgalley I thought, “Hm, that sounds interesting.” It was these bits from the description that caught my eye:

And yet even as they reveled in their fandom, the authors were asking themselves whether it’s okay to be a fan, especially for grown women with careers and kids.
… But what Kathy and Lynn found was that most fans were very much like themselves: smart, capable women looking for something of their own that engages their brains and their libidos.

And this:

Fangasm pulls back the curtain on the secret worlds of fans and famous alike, revealing Supernatural behind the scenes and discovering just how much the cast and crew know about what the fans are up to. Anyone who’s been tempted to throw off the constraints of respectability and indulge a secret passion—or hit the road with a best friend—will want to come along.

When I read that I immediately thought of my friend, Laura, who just happens to be a fangirl. A fangirl of what, I will not say, for she has multiple fandoms and I’m sure I’d get something wrong. I too, am a fan, but my fandoms are too general for me to be a fangirl, I think. I love baseball and cartoons. (I LOVE baseball. I LOVE cartoons. LOVETY LOVE them.) But I don’t feel like a fangirl because I don’t have a community that I’ve joined. My Twitter is filled with baseball talk/news, but it’s not something I interact with, really, I mean, everyone hate-follows Jose Canseco, right?

So this book is about two college professors, who happen to be major fangirls of a show called Supernatural (which I have seen an episode, but thought it was too scary, although I did like their car.) and they talk candidly to other fans, the actors, the show runners, etc. about fans and being fans. There is a bit of discussion over the shame of being hardcore fans of TV shows, music, anything really, as well as some academic talk about fandom, but mostly it’s about Kathy and Lynn as they sort of Thelma and Louise it across the country (and into Canada) to go to various conventions and even to the Supernatural set. If you’re not a fan of the show, Supernatural, or if you’ve never seen it, I don’t think that will deter you from not enjoying the whole book. I really liked most of it. I especially loved the interviews with Jim Beaver (who was Ellsworth on the best show ever made, Deadwood.) And I love how, as fans, every time they got to do an interview with anyone who worked on the show they were always excited, always a fan, always believing that it was too good to be true, and that they’d have to psych themselves up to be pros and not fans while interviewing people.

It’s very interesting to see how their relationships with friends and families are affected by the time they give to their fandom. They get so caught up in their research for their book that several of their very important relationships are broken, I’m talking a spouse here. They have to weigh their choices of being wives, mothers, professionals, etc. with being fans and trying to write a book about being fans. One of the problems I had with this book is that it’s autobiographical, but they don’t want too many details about their friends and family in it, so those parts are glossed over even though that seems to be the most important part of the book.

See, it never adequately answers the question of is it okay to be a hardcore fan? These women alienated friends and family all in the name of fandom and in research and writing of a book. Certainly they are not the first people to do this, and trust me, I get that there were more problems with the relationships than just a TV show or writing a book, but still, we give our time to what we think is important. This book never talks about the pathology of obsession. And they never say if this fandom and pursuit of this book changed their lives for the better or worse. Because they gloss over their lives and broken relationships, the end of the book feels less than honest and very incomplete.

That being said, this is one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read in a long time. I wanted to write this whole book off and say, well, they didn’t do what they set out to do, they still feel shame for being fans, they constantly talk about slash fic and ask ALL the people EVERYWHERE, “What do you think about slash fic?” and I mean, give it a rest. And really, when none of the show business people cared or even had a problem with slash fic, and only other fans either loved or hated it, isn’t that your answer? Only you, the writers and readers of slash fic, give a shit about slash fic. So while the book frustrated me, I can’t help but admit it made me think a lot.

And it also made me call my friend Laura and apologize to her for ever making her feel ashamed for loving her TV shows so hardcore. Then we discussed how thankful we are for being best friends who have never been fangirls of the same thing. Cos then we’d probably just feed off each other and destroy all other meaningful relationships.

This book is available October 1, 2013 from University of Iowa Press

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Tags: nonfiction

Spoiler alert?

This is the final volume of the Hellblazer comic from Vertigo. This makes me sad because every December my Christmas present to myself would be to buy the Hellblazer collections that came out for the year and catch up on my favorite antihero, John Constantine. And now it’s over.

Peter Milligan is a fantastic author and he always does/did a great job on the Hellblazer story arcs. This last volume is no exception. In this volume I really loved the Suicide Bridge story and of course, The Curse of the Constantines.  I appreciated that they finished out the story of John finding his long-lost nephew.
With this being the final Hellblazer I was expecting John Constantine to die (or “die”, I guess.) because how else are you going to end a 25 year series? Go out with a bang, right? I was expecting some kind of huge, magic battle or something. That was not the case. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the ending. But it seems like he goes through an awful lot of trouble just to then… give up?

It was a really good book, and if you’ve been a Hellblazer fan, you’re gonna get it; how could you not? The very ending might be a bit of a flatline, but the other stories in it are really great.

Let’s dork out even further for a moment, shall we?

So Vertigo has cancelled John Constantine, Hellblazer. Meanwhile, DC Comics has rebooted the series to fit in the DCU putting John Constantine in their Justice League Dark series. And, they’ve given him his own comic, Constantine, where the story starts out with a much younger John Constantine. I am excited and apprehensive at the same time. I get it, a younger Constantine will be more appealing to younger readers, we’ll get to have more/different adventures, we’ll get to see Constantine interact with others in the DCU. These will all be fun things, yes?

But my concern is, by moving to DC, the Constantine story will lose much of its edge, be dumbed down, and it won’t have him railing against British government/politics. So on one hand, I’m excited for a reboot. I’m excited to start a new comic (it started some months ago, but they’re only on issue #4, so I can catch up pretty fast.) but I’m scared it’s going to be too clean-cut and vanilla. I need my Constantine to be angry, shameless, with a smoke in one hand and a pint in the other.

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Tags: comic books, Constantine

Okay, I’ve got to be really careful how I talk about this book as to not give away the really cool twists and turns that happen in this book.

The MacBrides are a well-to-do family in a fancy small village in England. The father is a bigwig at the local fancy school. The mother is a magistrate. The kids are all smart and everyone grows up to have perfect lives. Sort of.

Darcy is a ragamuffin kid with a chance to get a scholarship to the fancy school. Darcy doesn’t get in, and thus begins a life of obsession and secret revenge towards the MacBrides.

The book starts out with the Macbrides, then Darcy gets the middle part, and the book ends with all of them together. It is a crazy, wild ride. It’s dark, and at times, really sad. And there is a twist in the middle that shot me straight up out of my chair.

The writing is good, the plot moves along, but I’m not sure about the ending. I did not understand the motivation of the family at the end. That said, it was still a good book and I’d recommend it to all who like a dark, twisted mystery.

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Tags: fiction

Well, congratulations to me! I finally broke down and joined the smartphone club. I feel like I’ve finally made it!… to 2010.
Shut up.

So I have a new iPhone 5. So far this is the coolest toy ever! Now Big Brother and control me more completely.

The only thing I have trouble with is USING IT AS A PHONE. I can’t figure out speed dial. I know it’s prolly there, but where? And SIRI isn’t helping me at all.

“SIRI, please call my husband.”

“Okay, who is your Husband?”

“Jimmy Jones.”

“Okay, Jimmy Jones is your husband. Do you want me to remember this relationship?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Calling Jimmy Jones.”

Then the next time I have to go through the whole damn thing again. She NEVER remembers.

*

Then I’m all, “SIRI, do these jeans make my ass look big?”

And she’s all, “Do you want me to search for clothing stores in your area that sell jeans?”

And I’m all, “No, SIRI, I would like, for once, if you’d just answer my damn question instead of always deflecting to the internet. How are we supposed to build an honest relationship if you keep doing that?”

And she’s all, “No, perhaps not.”

I keep trying to believe that SIRI is this awesome robot who lives in my phone, but so far she’s a cagey wonk. It’s like she knows the answers to my questions, but rarely tells me anything.

“SIRI, what is your job?”

“Jaimie, you aren’t supposed to ask your assistant those types of questions.”

*GASP* how did it know my name?

After she called me by name, I knew I had better be polite to her, this way, when the killer robots from outer space come to kill us, maybe she’ll put in a good word for me, and my death will be swift and painless.

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Tags: iPhone, SIRI

Duberman’s classic work of nonfiction on the Stonewall Inn riots and the early years of the gay rights movement is now available as an e-book.  I had heard of the Stonewall riots but never really learned anything about it so I thought I’d give this book a go. I am so glad I did. I had NO IDEA just how tough it had been for gay people in the 20th century. (Hi. I live in a bubble, but I’m trying, okay?) I mean, the stigma and shame and abuse, my God, how did they have the courage to wake up every morning let alone leave the house and live a life?  I am embarrassed that we treated/treat human beings that way.

Not only does the author provide a great overview of gay rights and important moments in American history, but he does it with an interesting narrative that keeps you turning pages. Duberman follows the lives of 6 individuals (two lesbians, one transvestite, and three gay men) from their childhoods up through the riots and a bit beyond, really adding a human element to a historical book.

I will say that reading the men’s chapters was a little lacking. I don’t know why, I just wasn’t as interested in their stories. The ladies’ stories were more interesting, and I really loved the Yvonne chapters because she showed that not only was it tough to be gay, but being gay and black and a woman was even more tough. But I have to be honest, Sylvia, the transvestite, stole the show. I loved her spirit. Talk about a go-getter and an unstoppable force! I loved her chapters the most.

I found the historical parts to be interesting but the Stonewall riots themselves weren’t really the main focus of the book. It looks at the movement as a whole, which is fantastic, but if you were wanting a book JUST about the Stonewall riots and it’s aftermath, this is far more exhaustive than that.

This is a great book, especially if you’re interested in the history of the gay rights movement, and how far it has come in the last 50 -60 years.

 

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Tags: nonfiction

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