*Blush*

I can’t believe I just read this book.

Granted, it was for the Read Outside the Box thing for the library, and the premise — women from 20th century England travels back in time to 18th century Scotland and finds True Love there — sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a try.

But, still. *Blush* I can’t believe I just read this book. (There’s been a lot of that lately. I went from reading a high school vampire romance to a time traveling Scottish romance. I gotta stop.)

This book, by Diana Gabaldon, walked that fine line between literature and Harlequin Romance. It wasn’t quite the heaving bosoms and Fabio type, but it wasn’t far from it either. I would venture to guess that her audience while writing was women who were looking for something of an, um, escape from life.

Points off for excessive and weird uses of adverbs. Her feet sank moistly into the soil; he looked jaundicedly at her (love that one), and they blush crimsonly. Points off for excessive use of (though rather tasteful, and married) sex. Points off for bringing up an interesting ethical dilemma — what do you do if you’re married, and then travel back in time, and are forced to marry someone else — and then dropping it half way through only to have someone in the end just absolve the whole issue by saying it’s a will of God. (Granted, no one was reading this for the ethical dilemma. Except maybe me.) Points off for pointless, long and boring, conversations.

Points for making Claire an interesting heroine. How would you react if you got thrown through time? She managed quite well, and even made the best of a bad situation. Points for chemistry between Claire and Jamie. The heat came oozing out of the book. Points for not making 18th century Scotland into a romantic place. Murder, rape (of both men and women), torture, witch-burning, adultery. No, I dinna want to live there. (She wrote in dialect: I’ve been calling my girls “bonnie wee lassies” all week.) But, it fit the book, and it made the conflict that much more.

I can’t decide whether to give points or take them for making the bad guy — Randall — not just a Bad Guy, but a genuine Evil Man. The things he attempts to do, and does, are downright despicable. It gives the book some weight to it, but on the other hand, it was almost excessive, and often seemed out of place. Often, especially at the end, I felt like it was just too much. Enough, already.

Is it a piece of literature? No. Is it a melodrama, soap opera, guilty pleasure? Yes. Is it good? That depends, I guess, on what you’re looking for.

Confessions of Super Mom and Super Mom Saves the World, by Melanie Lynne Hauser

Imagine that you’re a single mom of two teenagers, you have a jerk for an ex-husband, and you work at the local supermarket as a cashier and bagger. You’re pretty happy with your life. And then, one morning, in the act of trying to get out a particularly difficult stain, you combine many different cleaning fluids, have a Horrible Swiffer Accident. And your life is Never The Same.

Meet Birdie Lee, aka Super Mom. Mild mannered cashier by day; champion of children in trouble (all kinds) anytime.

I am not a comic book geek. I enjoy the movies that come out, but I have absolutely no background in reading comic books. All that aside, I really enjoyed Confessions of a Super Mom. For me, the best part was the origin story, and Birdie trying to figure out the whole superhero thing.

There was a great balance between humor and discovery in the book. Birdie lets her son in on the secret first (he’s the comic book geek; he even designs her costume just like June Cleaver’s). Then she tells her best friend, and her almost-boyfriend. But she keeps her daughter out of the loop, mostly because she was afraid her daughter would tell Dr. Dan, the annoying jerk of an ex. All which provides entertainment and conflict (her daughter’s a bit miffed when she does find out), respectively.

Other good bits: the Justice League of America — you can join if you qualify to be a superhero, and it comes with a week at Club DC , the premier club for superheroes. And the Avengers — “The Marvel comics group — Captain America, Iron Man, those guys. Definitely low rent. Not good enough for the likes of Super Mom, in my opinion.” And then there’s the mechanics of being a superhero: quick changing in a bathroom stall, trying to fight crime in heels (“You cannot fight crime in heels.”), coming up with a catchphrase.

However, aside from the superhero discovery, the story itself was a bit weak.

The arch-nemisis is Lex, horrible baker turned self-made millionaire by selling overly sweet, but locally made (at New Cosmos), junk-food. The names are great: Patriot Pops, Liberty Lemonade ice pops, Democracy Drops, Betsy Ross-a-Roni in a cup (loved that one!). And the video game tie-in is called American Justice with Abe Lincolnators and George Washington Carve ‘Em Up. And the comments by parents are so true: “It’s patriotic”, “It’s educational”, “It’s locally made”. Birdie realizes that it’s all a plot… to… do something Evil. I have to say, I missed this entire section. There was something to do with increasing the amount of sugar so kids would be diagnosed with insulin dependent diabetes so that a pharmaceutical company could reveal that it has a type of insulin that could be taken orally but it was all being bankrolled by some offshore somebody, and I can’t even begin to remember how Lex the arch-nemesis fits into it all.
Got that? Neither did I. But it’s all forgiven, for the laughs along the way.

Super Mom Saves the World wasn’t nearly as fun. I don’t know if it was because I read them right in a row; sometimes that effects my judgment. I really enjoyed the first one; the second didn’t live up to my expectations. Or maybe because it really isn’t as much fun. But, it just seemed to me that Saves the World tried too hard. Took itself too seriously.

Six months have passed since Birdie Lee, aka Super Mom, put New Cosmos out of business, laying off half the town. People are grumpy with her (Super Mom, not Birdie). Her relationship with her kids isn’t that great; her best friend is psychiatrist for the Justice League of America and so is always trying to psychoanalyze Birdie; her relationship with her boyfriend went from almost to fiance, which totally freaks her out. Then, on top of all that, her ex starts hitting on her again (mostly because he’s getting a divorce from his second wife). It’s not pretty.

Interestingly, the good-versus-evil plot was actually weightier and made more sense. Mayor Linseed is all gung-ho to build the Astro Park-O-Dome Field for the local Little League team. He wants revenue for the town, especially now that Super Mom has put out half the town out of work (closing the New Cosmos plant and all). He will spare no expense, apparently, for the dome or for the team because everyone — parents, town, mayor — wants a championship team. So, the mayor fires the local beloved coach, and hires Coach Bluto to coach the team.

As it turns out, Super Mom (with some help from an ace 7th grade reporter named… wait for it… Lois Blane) finds out that the Dome is built over old salt mines, which collects natural gas which will spell Certain Doom for the town and the team if Super Mom doesn’t save the day.

There were lots of charming little asides in this one, too. Just not as many as in Confessions. My absolute favorite was when, after being hit with some super-intense Swiffer fluid, Birdie not only gains a super sense of smell (she helps out on prom night in place of a Breathalyzer), but gets to meet Mr. Clean and the scientists at the super secret New Improved University.

But, it seemed to me that there was more turmoil than humor. Birdie was on the defensive for most of the book: people didn’t appreciate all she’d done for the town; people kept thinking she was on the rag whenever she got upset; she had marriage jitters, and they were trying to figure out just how to blend her family with his; her ex-husband kept hitting on her, and involving the kids, getting their hopes up that they’d get back together; her best friend didn’t, or wouldn’t, believe Birdie’s story about Mr. Clean being real; not to mention that her son wouldn’t talk to her and her daughter was hanging out with questionable people; and so on… It’s not that it was bad, or even uninteresting. It just was the light, fun Super Mom that I was expecting from the first book.

On top of all that, the product placement drove me nuts. Off the top of my head, there was: Swiffer (of course), Wet Ones, L’eggs, Starbucks, Mr. Clean, Scrubbing Bubbles, Ajax, McDonald’s, Gatorade, Tums, Febreze… Mr. Clean and Scrubbing Bubbles didn’t bug me so much, since they actually played a role in the plot. But most of the product placement seemed like it was just that: products worked into the story. Highly unnecessary. And, then there was the Pop Culture references: the whole American Idol crew, George Clooney, Kelly Clarkston, and a slew of women’s magazines. All this is fine and good, but it tends to date the book. Twenty years from now, are we even going to care who Ryan Seacrest and Simon Cowell were?

In the end, though, these are stories primarily for mothers. I don’t have teenagers yet, but I could appreciate the whole mother feel of the books. Mothers being under appreciated. Mothers trying to deal with kids and jobs and personal life. The need for mothers to protect those they love from both big and little dangers. It’s all there. I’m sure someone who hasn’t had kids would enjoy the stories; but I know that a mother would appreciate them more. It’s about time someone wrote a book where a mom’s the hero. And a super hero at that.

I chose to read the Odyssey for the Classics Challenge because I didn’t get around to it in college (being a journalism major, we weren’t required to read huge Greek classics), and I’ve always wondered about this one. Now I can say that I’ve read all 24 books and 462 pages of English translation (by Robert Fitzgerald).

Some thoughts:

• It’s incredibly violent. People get eaten by the Cyclops (it drove me nuts that they spelled it Kyklops) and by someone else (when you go wandering through a forest, beware: you might get eaten!). And then there’s the huge slaughter of the suitors at the end. Not to mention killing off the women servants that helped the suitors.
• I didn’t think it was fair that Odysseus gets to sleep with everyone (Kalypso and Kirke among others) just because he’s a man, and Penelope had to stay faithful. But then, this is now and that was then. Actually, when I told hubby about how Odysseus got Kirke to change his shipmates back from pigs into humans by sleeping with her, he said, “Well. He certainly knows how to get the job done.”
• While we’re on the subject of Penelope, she spent the entire book crying or sleeping or inciting lust among the suitors. Her one claim to fame was her “trick”: saying she couldn’t get married until she finishd a death shroud, and then unweaving it every night. It went on for three years, until one of her servants gave her away. She needs get get better help.
• It was surprisingly easy to read. I’m not much for poetry, but this was more like prose in column form. Once I got used to that — and to all the names that I wasn’t even going to try to sort out — then it wasn’t hard to read at all.
• I found it interesting that the gods were so involved in Odysseus’ life. Spurring on his son, helping Penelope deal (Athena was always putting her in a deep sleep), helping Odysseus get revenge. I guess the worst thing in Greek life was to offend someone, thereby offending the gods. And I guess that’s why hanging out at Odysseus’ palace for several years eating his food (beeves, I love that word!) is worth the death sentance.
• Odysseus was too dang perfect. I never really liked him. Or cared that much for his adventures.
• I can’t say I’m going to ever read it again.

One down, four to go.

I got this book because the title makes me smile. Go ahead, say it: Frangipani. See?

This book, by Celestine Hitiura Vaite, made me smile, too. There’s really not much of a plot. It’s about a mom (Materena) in Tahiti, and her daughter Leilani. It’s about her hopes and fears for her daughter (and two sons, though she doesn’t really have many hopes for her oldest). It’s about her changing relationship with her daughter from infancy (I liked how she “welcomed the baby into her womb” and spent hours talking to her and telling her all about the world she was going to be born into.) through teenager (God help me: I’ll have four!) and into adulthood.

The picture Vaite (who herself is Taihitian) gave of Tahiti is simultaneously hopeful and depressing. Why is it that islander men are always portrayed as slackers? Are they, really? The common sense wisdom in Tahiti is not to marry a man until you’ve had at least one child with him because there’s less of a chance he’ll up and walk out on you. In fact, Materena’s man, Pito, walks out on her because she collects his pay so he won’t spent it all at the bar. And so they can have something to eat. The women are strong, though (they have to be, they say), and passionate, and wise, and, well, wonderful.

I loved the island lilt to the book (“girlfriend, eh?” “oh, bon cherie” — the French scattered throughout was fun). I loved Materena. She’s a wonderful character. I even liked Leilani, though not as much. And it had a good, satisfying ending.

A good read.

Not being a complete die-hard Monty Python fan, I didn’t get the reference in the title of this book by Sarah-Kate Lynch. Completely missed it (Hhubby, on the other hand, picked it up immediatly). The opening quote clued me in: “What’s so special about the cheesemakers?”

Unfortunately, this kind of warped my expecations of the book. I guess I expected it to be a bit sillier (I mean, it’s Monty Python folks. They’re not exactly serious) than it was. Granted, it wasn’t a straight up anything, so I guess I wasn’t too far off the mark. I guess I wanted more belly laughs, though.

The basic plot is a bit convuluted. There’s Corrie and Fee (who has a tendancy to “know” what’s going to happen) who make Coolarney cheese in Ireland. There’s Avis and the pregnant vegetarian singing milkmaids (that’s a funny concept) who help run the cheese farm. (Well, they milk the cows, and thereby are the “secret ingredient”.) There’s Abbey, who’s Corrie’s granddaughter, and running from a real schlep of a husband. There’s Kit, who’s trying to dry out after going on a drinking binge after he “lost” his wife. There’s Jesus, Mary and All The Saints, the three cats. Who really don’t have much to do with the story, except for their funny names. And somehow, they all come together and make cheese.

When Hubby asked me how I liked this book, I said that it wasn’t great but it didn’t suck. I know that’s a wide range there, but really, that’s how I felt. It’s not the worst book I’ve ever read, but it’s not the best. Maybe more silliness would have helped.

I can’t find enough good to say about this book. It was simple, poignant, honest, beautifully written, and totally engaging. However, when one asks, “What is this book about?”, it’s hard to say. It’s about a boy becoming a man. It’s about love. It’s about family. It’s about the disadvantage the worker has with the owners. It’s about coal mining. It’s about… life.

I felt a real connection to this book. My “people” as my grandmother calls them were coal miners in England. In fact, that’s why my mother’s side of the family came to America. Things weren’t going so well in the mines in England (something which Richard Llewellyn touches on in the book), so they immigrated to America to work in the mines in Wyoming. They were probably much like the characters in the book. At one point, Huw (don’t ask me how to pronounce that; in fact, if someone could tell me, I’d appreciate it), loses his chance at a scholarship to Oxford because he beats up a teacher. (Long story. Read the book to find out). His father laments because he wanted something “better”. Huw wants to work in the mines. His mother supports him in that: it’s been good enough for her husband and all her other sons, why not Huw? I got to thinking about how my family got out of the coal mines. Accidents, illness… I wonder if any left by choice?

My only complaints were the lack of information about time passing, but I think that’s nitpicking on my part. That, and I felt like it just petered out at the end, rather than having a good solid ending. But the rest of the book was so wonderful, I can forgive the little things. A great book.