The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

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by Alexander McCall Smith
ages: adult
First sentence: “Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the food of Kgale Hill.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

People have been telling me for years that I ought to read this book. But as I always figured it was a mystery, I never really gave it much thought. I don’t like mysteries, after all. (Ha! Sometimes it’s true, but other times it’s not.)

The thing is: this really isn’t a mystery. Or at least not in the “traditional” sense. Sure, Mma Ramotswe (I had a hard time thinking of her as Precious, even if that was her name) is a detective, doing investigative work for people in her town in Botswana. But it’s not a mystery.

It is, however, a lovely portrait of a woman who loves her country, her people, and finds a niche for her self as an independent woman (after a very violent marriage thankfully failed) in her town. She is an observant woman, which helps in her business: she’s able to think about human nature (this book is quite down on most Botswanian men; they’re mostly no-good) in ways that
help her solve the little cases that come her way.

There is one big case that overshadows the novel; a boy is kidnapped, and they think that he’s been killed to make medicine. Mma Ramotswe doesn’t really want to take on the case, but she does because the police aren’t as reliable as they should be. Thankfully, it doesn’t end as sinister as it began.

It’s a delightful book, full of interesting, quirky characters. And Mma Ramotswe’s story is a good one to spend time with.

Southtown

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by Rick Riordan
ages: adult
First sentence: “Fourth of July morning, Will Stirman woke up with blood on his hands.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Two things before I get going: I still adore Rick Riordan. And there are things I just can’t read about. Serial murderers out for revenge are on that list.

I was 70 pages into this very gruesome book before I realized that I had to abandon it. I can handle lots of swearing (at least reading), I can handle dark and gritty. But the opening chapter involving a prison break pushed me almost to my limits. But when the main bad guy tried to kidnap Tres’s boss’s 8-year-old, Jem, I realized that was the end of the line for me. I just don’t do violence against children: it’s one of my secret terrors (secret in that I tend to bury it down deep), and I don’t like being reminded that there are bad people out there, and something could happen to my girls at any moment.

I did flip through the rest of the book, reading a bit near the end to see how it all resolved (thankfully Jem is kept safe; sorry for the spoiler, but it was something I needed to know). I know I missed some things, especially between Tres and his girlfriend Maia Lee. But, I’m not sure my life will be worse off for not finishing this one.

You can’t win them all.

Sunday Salon: Kidlit Con 2011 (Plus Bonus Bookish Quote)

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It’s that time of year again: in which I try to figure out a way to get to Kidlit Con. I’ve gone to the past two, and have had a fun and rewarding time connecting with blogging friends and learning how to do this whole thing better. The full information is up at Chasing Ray, but the basics are these:

DATE: September 16 – 17 (the 16th is a “pre conference”, registration for that is $30)

PLACE: Hotel Monaco, Seattle

Before July 1, the registration is $95, after July 1 it’s $100.

Can I tell you that I’m really excited for this, mostly because it’s on my birthday? I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday this year than with like-minded bookish people! I’d love to see you there!

On a completely unrelated note, Weekly Geeks this week is about our favorite bookish quotes. I try to change mine over there on the sidebar monthly (sometimes I forget), but I do have a couple of absolute favorites:

“A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.” — Mark Twain

“May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books.” — Thomas Carlyle

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” — Oscar Wilde

“When I discovered libraries, it was like having Christmas every day.” — Jean Fritz

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” — Jane Austen

Also: I’ve been trying to remember/find a quote from John Green’s story in Let It Snow, I think. The one about the happy middles instead of happy endings. Anyone know it?

Twelfth Night

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by William Shakespeare
ages: adult
First sentence: “If music be the food of love, play on.”
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This is an insane play.

Girl gets shipwrecked in a town, disguises herself as a boy (probably a good thing, considering the time period), and goes to work for the head guy. Head Guy is in luuuuuv with the most beautiful girl in town (think: Gaston, starting at about 3:15 of this video) who constantly spurns his, um, affections. (At this point, C, who watched the 1980 BBC production with me as I read, said, “He’s SUCH a brat and dork!”) So, Head Guy sends Girl dressed as guy to woo Beautiful for him, and beautiful ends up falling for Girl (whom she thinks is a guy).

With me so far?

Then, Girls twin brother (whom she thought was dead at sea) arrives in town and suddenly everything become really, really confusing. People think Brother is Girl, including Beautiful, who up and marries him the first time she comes across him (thinking he’s Girl (dressed as a guy)). And Girl, who’s fallen for Head Guy, is trying to sort things out and get out of Beautiful’s obsession with her, and something else happens that involves a really, really, really bad joke gotten way out of hand, and suddenly everyone is happily ever after.

Huh?

Like many of Shakespeare’s comedies, this one balances right between insanity and tragedy. There’s so much that could go wrong, if people’s attitudes had gone a completely different way. Malvolio — the guy who the really bad joke was played on — was given a sop at the end, and sent off though his parting words are “I’ll be reveng’d on the whole pack of you.” so who knows what could happen next. Besides, all these romances are built upon love at first sight, so who knows how any of them will turn out? I mean, Orsino is all pining for Olivia, but then he realizes she’s
married and Violet is a girl and he’s all of a sudden “Oh, I love you now, how about we hook up”?

Seriously?

I do wonder if Shakespeare was poking fun at something: love at first sight? Stupid nobles with nothing else to do? It wasn’t as funny as some of his other comedies. It was confusing, but lacked the inane hilarity of Midsummer Night’s Dream. And the wit of Much Ado About Nothing. It was a lot of silly people running around falling in luuuv.

But, I suppose, that’s not a bad thing on a hot summer day.

Runemarks

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by Joanne Harris
ages: 14+
First sentence: “Seven o’clock on a Monday morning, five hundred years after the End of the World, and goblins had been at the cellar again.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Maddy Smith is basically a nondescript resident of the small village of Malbry in the Middle Worlds. Except for the runemark on her hand, which brands her a bit of an outcast, but she doesn’t pay that much attention. She has no friends, except for a wandering traveler that goes by the name of One-Eye whom she only sees once a year at Harvest time.

Then, one day when she’s fourteen, her world shifts: all the things she’s been taught to believe about the Order and the Word — the religious organization that rules the Middle World — are put into question. The End of the World was just a new beginning, and there are powers she has that she never knew. One-Eye sends Maddy on an adventure that will lead to a new end and a new beginning for everyone.

If that sounds really confusing, don’t worry: it is really confusing to summarize this huge, 521 page, fantasy. It’s based on Norse mythology, something which I found fascinating, and is quite impossible to summarize. It’s a sprawling fantasy, in the Grand High Fantasy style: adventure, twists, turns, multi-perspectives, and even a somewhat confusing ending. It’s got it all. Maddy is an interesting main character to follow through the world; she ends up being a very powerful character, but because of her age and innocence, she’s not quite in tune with all the subtleties of the world. It helps guide the reader through some complex mythology and relationships between the old gods which helps with the flow of the book. It takes a while to sink into the rhythm of the world, and the pacing of the novel, but once the adventure truly gets underway it’s enough to keep you involved and interested.

It also felt very Neil Gaiman-esque. I can’t quite pinpoint why: perhaps it’s because it’s so sprawling, or perhaps because it’s just got that dark, gritty undertone that Gaiman is known far. Whatever the reason, it reminded me of Gaiman’s work, which is never a bad thing.

That said, I don’t think I truly loved it. It was interesting, and I’m glad I read it, but it was lacking that spark to make it truly great.

48 Hour Book Challenge: Finish Line

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So, shall we do stats, this lovely Sunday morning?

Start time: 7:30 a.m. Friday

Finish time: 7:30 a.m. Sunday (yes, I know this is later than that, but I had to get A breakfast.)

Hours spent reading: 20.5

Hours spent blogging/social media: 3 (my husband took the laptop in for some repairs during the middle, and I loathe the dinosaur downstairs. That really cut into computer time.)

Total time 23.5 (and that included getting K’s pictures taken and going downtown Friday evening to watch the Riverfest fireworks. Hooray for Hubby’s help!)

Books read: 9 (I wanted a dent, I got a dent. It’s still a big pile on the shelf, though.)

Favorite reads: Waiting for Normal, Dragonfly and A Thousand Days in Tuscany

Things learned: It really does help to take breaks every couple of hours. That, and getting outside helps for me. I thoroughly enjoyed taking Friday evening off and watching the fireworks with my family, and my total time didn’t suffer for that. That, and eating an entire box of Oreos, while good, is not something I really should do anymore.

I always look forward to this weekend: it’s so nice to get away (maybe someday I’ll actually get away away; we were talking yesterday about things I’d like to do for my 40th birthday if we had the money…) and do nothing but focus on the books for a couple of days. However, I always enjoy coming back to real life when I’m done. I guess extremes are good for appreciation.

As always, thanks Pam! It was a blast.

Sean Griswold’s Head

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by Lindsey Leavett
ages: 12+
First sentence: “Nothing creates a buzz like an Executive Deluxe day planner.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.

Payton Gritas has been sitting behind Sean Griswold pretty much every day since third grade (it’s an alphabetical order thing), but has never really noticed him. Then, she’s thrown a bombshell at home: her dad has had MS for the last six months, and they’ve not bothered to tell Payton. No, he’s not dying, but his life is going to change, and she’s not happy that they excluded her from the loop.

Her parents insist upon her going to counseling when she gets sullen around them (completely understandable, though), and the counselor (it really is just the high school counselor) suggests Payton pick a Focus Object to write about as a way to work through her feelings. Payton, for lack of a better thing (well, there were probably better things, but there wouldn’t be a book if she chose a pencil sharpener), she picks Sean Griswold’s head. At first it’s just an exercise, but with a little pushing from her friend Jac, soon an exercise becomes a crush. And it turns out that Sean Griswold may just be as interested in Payton as she’s becoming in him.

This is a sweet little book. There are some laugh-out-loud moments, the romance is sweet, and the crisis is, thankfully, not cancer. It’s interesting to see a different disease tackled, one that changes lives as much as cancer does, but in a different way. It’s refreshing to have a good, positive family dynamic, one in which they’re dealing with mistakes, sure, but for the most part, the family is healthy and intact. It’s nice to see first love blossoming, and to deal with Payton’s awkwardness. She’s not fat, she’s not anorexic, she’s smart but not nerdy: she’s just a good half-Latina girl who’s trying to adjust to the fact that her dad has MS, there’s nothing she can do about it, and by the way the boy who’s sat in front of her for years is actually really pretty cute. And nice. And fun.

Sweet without being cloying, a disease book without being issuey. Gotta love that.

Scones and Sensibility

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by Linday Eland
ages: 10+
First sentence: “It was upon turning the last delicate page of my leather-bound copy of Pride and Prejudice that my transformation into a delicate lady of quality was complete.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy sent to me for the Cybils (2010, I think.)

Polly is a twelve year old girl, with aspirations to live in the nineteenth century, stuck in the twenty first. She is also a bit of a budding matchmaker. And a lover of All Things Austin.

My thought process as I read this book went something like this:

“Oh, Polly’s talking like she’s in an Austin book. Though maybe it’s more like Anne Shirley. I loved Anne Shirley. Maybe this will be cute.”

(reads about 30 pages)

“Okay, this stilted dialogue out of a 12-year-old’s mouth, even one who’s going through an Anne Shirley phase sounds a bit, well, forced.”

(reads about 30 more pages)

“No, not forced. Dang annoying.”

(reads about 30 more pages)

“I wish Polly would just shut up now. And stop trying to set everyone else up. This is just like Emma but not nearly as well written.”

(reads about 2o more pages)

“GAH! She’s driving me INSANE! I quit.”

(Reads the end to figure out if what I thought would happen, happens. It does.)

The end.

A Thousand Days in Tuscany

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A Bittersweet Adventure
by Marlena de Blasi
Ages: adult
First sentence: “Ce l’abbiamo fatta, Chou-Chou, we did it,” he says, using the name he gave to me, clutching the steering wheel of the old BMW with both hands, elbows out straight like wings, shoulders hunched in glee, wheezing up a conspiratorial laugh.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

A friend of mine loaned this to me last October, when I was effusing about my reread of Under the Tuscan Sun. I let it sit on the shelf for months, figuring I’ll get to it when the time is right.

When I started it yesterday, I despaired: perhaps I was destined to like only one book about Tuscany. But, where Frances Mayes book is about a love of a house and finding a place, de Blasi’s book is about a love of the people and the food of that place. It took me a while to understand what de Blasi was trying to tell me, but by the end I was hooked, luxuriating in the descriptions of the food, and submersing myself in the stories of the people.

She and her Venetian husband, Fernando, uproot their somewhat comfortable Venetian lives and head for Tuscany, somewhat on a whim: they need something new, something different to feel alive again. It’s scary and intimidating and exhilarating all at once. And once they got to their rented house in Tuscany, they find so much more than they bargained for: a friend in Barlozzo, an old curmudgeon who has opinions about everything, and yet is generous with his time and knowledge about the countryside and its charms (especially food-related!). They find a community in the town they’re living in, friends, kindred spirits, family. They find solace in simplicity and rusticness. (Okay, not a word, but you get what I mean.)

One quote that I thoroughly liked (she’s talking about her former profession as a food writer), and think is a good example of the goodness of simplicity:

Enticed neither by swirls of kiwi puree forced from a plastic bottle nor by teetering constructions built from a puff of pastry upon which rested a grilled lamb chop upon which was piled a roasted pear, the pillar secured by spears of asparagus, which leaned fetchingly against it, a few hard-cooked lentils strewn casually about with petals of a zinnia, I’ve always wanted food that sent a current straight to my loins. I’d find it exhausting, having to break down a still life before getting to my supper… And so it was that as chefs began to decompose the very molecular structure of food, recasting it into ever more bizarre forms and substances, it became harder and harder to stay excited about my job…. And now I’m wishing could I scoop up all those men and women who began their chef lives as purists and bring them here to wander these markets, to stand in front of the burners with some of these chefs who change their menus every night so as to reflect that morning’s market, and who are not quietly amazed by this fact as a proof of their own genius.

While the book is slow to show it’s charms (at least for me), it’s like an old friend, sitting down over a glass of wine (for those who drink wine, anyway), talking about everything and nothing all at once. It speaks to your soul (well, at least mine), and invites you to look at what you have and need, to reflect upon what is truly important.

And what better kind of book is that?

Dragonfly

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by Julia Golding
ages: 12+
First sentence: “The Fourth Crown Princess of the Blue Crescent Islands had sixteen rituals to observe from the moment of waking to when she broke her fast.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.

This book has a lot going on; I’m going to do my best to summarize it without giving too much away. A lot of the enjoyment I had with this book was because I didn’t know where it was going next.

Taoshiri was just a goat girl in the furthest reaches of the Blue Crescent Islands until, one day four years ago, she was chosen to be the fourth of the Four Crown Princesses. She was surprised, of course, but accepted the Mother Goddess’s will, trying to be the best princess she could. Then, because of impending war with a bloodthirsty emperor, she’s sent to Gerfal to marry the crown prince Ramil. Not exactly something Taoshiri wants to do, especially when, once she gets there, she finds Ramil to be uncouth, rude, and plain unattractive.

Then — because you know these sorts of things have to happen — they were kidnapped, thrown into all sorts of unpleasant situations, forced to fight for their lives and their countries.

I won’t give away much more than that, because the twists and turns are quite delightful. As is the relationship between Taoshiri and Ramil. But, I think what really made this novel (which I’m still trying to decide whether it was too wordy or just right, and probably wasn’t all that well-written, but I really didn’t care), was the layers of political positioning and religious discussion that went on. It was never spelled out, exactly, but Golding spent a lot of time with religious tolerance and prejudices, with an underlying heartfelt plea for understanding. Much of the conflict in the novel comes from the snap judgements people make about different cultures, in this case the Goddess-worshiping Western culture of the Islands (as opposed to the God-worshiping Eastern cultures). Golding also flips the racial divide: the strangers are the fair-haired, fair-skinned ones, standing out in a darker culture. Though there is some brutality in the Eastern religions, one is never led to believe that worshiping one God (or Goddess) is better than the other, something which I found refreshing.

As for the politics, Golding spent time balancing the love story with the duties a ruler has to make for the good of the state. It was an interesting balance, and I think she managed to play it all out quite well.

One final note: this is a fantasy only because it’s set in the past, in a made-up land. There’s no magic, just adventure, wits, and some grand action. Which made it a lot more fun that I was expecting.