Time Enough At Last

The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

2011-01-05T17:08:00.000-06:00

Mark Twain said that (or something close to it), and it was the first thing I thought of when I contemplated what to write for this first post after my long hiatus. I don't know how or why I stopped blogging about my reading, but honestly, I have not been very dedicated with my reading over the past six months anyway. What reading I have accomplished has been quite fragmented and unsettled, like I didn't really know what I wanted to read. I get this way sometimes. I can walk into a bookstore with its millions of books, pick up several likely candidates for my next read, and put them all down in disgust as I feel no flicker of interest in them. And the weirdest thing is, this is often in inverse relationship to the amount of money I have to spend on books -- if I have some gift cards or other disposable income to spend on books, I can't find a single book that interests me enough to even take it off the shelf, let alone buy it. On the other hand, when I have no book money (or I really shouldn't be spending any money on books, which is not quite the same thing), every book in the bookstore jumps off the shelves and throws itself at my feet, begging me to take it home.

Anyway, I am back, hopefully to great joy and rejoicing (among my 3 followers, at least!) and I am currently reading Lamb by Christopher Moore. It will be my first review of the new year.

As for the next book on my list, I am in a quandary. I received a gift card to Amazon from my brother-in-law for Christmas, and I have been perusing my options on my Amazon wish list and on my Kindle app. But I have shelves and shelves of unread books in my library that I really would like to read also, for the simple reason that I really need to weed out my library, and I hate to get rid of books that I haven't read yet, just because I am likely to never read them. That feels like a cop-out somehow. Anyone have any suggestions?

A Touch of Dead -- Book Review

2010-07-07T20:40:00.000-05:00

A Touch of Dead
by Charlaine Harris
Rating: 4 out of 5

This book is a collection of five short stories featuring the telepathic waitress and friend of vampires, werewolves, and witches, Sookie Stackhouse. I have been looking at the novels in the Southern Vampire Mysteries series for some time now because the premise of them is so appealing, and because there's so many of them, which is always a nice prospect when one encounters a new author -- there won't be any waiting for the next book if you like the series, because the the next book has already been written!

So I chose this book, hoping that it would be the perfect introduction to the Sookie Stackhouse novels. I am glad to say that I was right; these stories, set in Sookie's world and falling in between the action of various novels in the series, introduce a lot of the major characters in the series. A true Sookie aficionado would probably have gotten more out of the stories than I did, but I really enjoyed them and am now more eager to tackle the actual novels, which I plan to do in very short order.

This book was a very quick read -- I read it in one day, which is not hard, even though I am one of the slowest readers in the universe. Each story comes in at around 5,000 words, so they are easily digestible nuggets.

The stories themselves run the gamut from basic detective-style stories with a twist ("Fairy Dust," about the murder of a fairy by dreaded lemon juice, and "Dracula Night," which concerns a stranger who says he is Dracula, but may not be) to an interesting Christmas story involving werewolves ("Gift Wrap"). The other two stories in the collection, "One Word Answer," and "Lucky," were also fun and not at all run-of-the-mill stories.

I borrowed this book from my local library (part of the 2010 Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge) and it occurred to me after I finished it that that was really the only way I would have read it. Not being a Sookie Stackhouse devotee, I probably would not have taken a chance on this book in a bookstore. It's a very small book that has a list price of $23.95. To be honest, that has always irked me. Shouldn't the size of the book be somehow related to the price one pays for it? I know the publisher is probably trying to capitalize on the popularity of this series and the new HBO series based on it -- there was an extremely prominent "True Blood" sticker pasted on the cover. I also know that some of the costs of book production and distribution are essentially the same no matter the size of the book. But please! This kind of pricing is just the tiniest bit ridiculous.

OK, soapbox mode off! I do recommend the book to anyone, and it is especially recommended to those who have already read some or all of the novels.

Dead Souls -- Book Review

2010-06-23T14:14:00.003-05:00

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

Rating: 3 out of 5

When I was younger (and I realize that this makes me sound way more decrepit than I actually am), I went through something of a Russophile period. (Yes, it's a real word, according to the Internet at least -- it means a person with a love of all things Russian.) I made attempts to read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, collected books about Russia, and just thoroughly immersed myself in it. I grew out of it, as most of us grow out of our younger passions. However, even though the only Russian literature I ever managed to actually get through was The Brothers Karamazov and a few short stories of Tolstoy's, I maintained an affection for the genre (if it can be called that) that persists to this day.

I tell you all this by way of saying that I was truly excited when I learned that The Classics Circuit was going to be hosting a blog tour of Russian imperial literature, called "White Nights on the Neva." It seemed a perfect way for me to revisit my Russophile days of yore. For my review I chose an author whom I had heard of constantly -- Gogol -- and I chose one of his most famous books: Dead Souls.

Just a little biography that I found helpful: Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (one thing that made me a Russophile was the names!) lived from 1809 to 1852. Dead Souls was published in 1842 when he was 33. He had been publishing for 11 years at that point, so he was something of a matured author when this book came out.

Unfortunately, I have to say that I was not particularly impressed with the book (at least on a first reading), even though I really wanted to like it.

My problems with Gogol started with the prologue to the book. In the prologue, he worries that he has not gotten his characterizations right, or maybe he has misrepresented what the decor of Russian manor houses is really like. So he takes great pains to beseech readers with special knowledge to help him with "fact checking" in subsequent editions of the book. This was off-putting to me, since it's not something that authors normally do. But then it occurred to me that Gogol is generally regarded as a humorist/satirist, and that he was probably carrying this to such an extreme purely for the comedic effect. However, it didn't feel like he was doing that (or else he was being extremely subtle and I was being extremely dense) so that started me off on the wrong foot with him. However, I am really not one of these readers that expects the author to do ALL the heavy lifting, so I trudged on.

The problem was, it didn't really get any better the more I got into the story itself. This is an early 19th-century novel, so I realize it's not going to read like James Patterson (and I say that as no real fan of James Patterson) but it's harder to relate to this novel compared to Dickens, for example. The premise is intriguing to say the least: Chichikov, the main character, arrives in a town and begins visiting all the wealthy landowers, for two purposes: 1) to impress them and make vital business connections; and 2) to begin his scheme of acquiring the "dead souls" of the title. These are serfs that have been accounted for on a landowner's census and other records, but they have died. The landowner is still essentially paying taxes on them, however, so Chichikov's scheme is to buy them and take them off the landowners' hands. His hope is to amass enough of these dead souls to gain some influence and power thereby, and be able to use them as collateral for buying his own estate. It doesn't end well, of course, and Chichikov is, as the old-timers say, "run out of town on a rail." The novel is incomplete and essentially ends at this point -- the most common explanation seems to be that Gogol thought better of his satire in his later years and tore up part of the manuscript. Other sources simply state that the manuscript was never completed.

Even though I could not really get into this book, it was easy to see that there were actually layers there, and that I was (by necessity) reading the book too superficially to really appreciate or understand it. Gogol apparently wrote this as a type of allegorical satire, and there are lots of clues that jump out at the reader from the very start. Chichikov appears to be a kind of Everyman, in one way, and that is reflected in Gogol's initial description of him:

In the britchka was seated such a gentleman -- a man who, though not handsome, was not ill-favoured, not over-fat, and not over-thin. Also, though not over-elderly, he was not over-young.

Later on, when Chichikov is trying to impress the various officials and landowners as he embarks on his scheme of wriggling into their good graces, the same motif pops up again:

So dazed was Chichikov that scarcely did he realize that the Governor was taking him by the arm and presenting him to his (the Governor's) lady. Yet the newly-arrived guest kept his head sufficiently to contrive to murmur some such compliment as might fittingly come from a middle-aged individual of a rank neither excessively high nor excessively low.

Each official and landowner that Chichikov visits has his or her own idiosyncrasies, and it's clear that Gogol enjoys lampooning these people as well. There is some genuine humor here -- it's just buried rather deeply at times.

Overall, I am glad I read this book, just to see what the fuss was about, but the main conclusion that I reached from it was that I need to read it again to get everything out of it that Gogol put into it.

Farewell, My Lovely -- Book Review

2010-06-04T11:23:00.006-05:00

Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler

Rating: 4 out of 5

Today I am very happy for The Classics Circuit to visit my blog, in the guise of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction tour.

Farewell, My Lovely was published in 1940 by Raymond Chandler, the virtual inventor of the hard-boiled private detective. It’s the second novel he wrote, and features the iconic detective Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is not a very nice person sometimes (and one wouldn’t expect him to be, given the kind of people he has to deal with) but he’s honest, and strong, and brave to the point of foolishness. That’s what we want in a private eye, anyway, right?

This book initially frustrated me, and I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy it. But after I finished it, I realized that this novel is an ideal mystery story. By that, I mean that it opens innocently enough, with Marlowe running into a hulk of a man named Moose Malloy, who happens to be searching for a former sweetheart named Little Velma. He just happens to be searching for her in the dive where she used to be a singer, however, and that’s where the problems start. The current employees and owner of the establishment are none too happy about Moose poking around there. Moose ends up killing the owner of the bar in a back room, and thus Marlowe gets sucked into the story, even though he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Moose vanishes and Marlowe begins to look for Velma, trying to track down the source of this mystery. Inevitably, of course, his questions lead to further questions, jewelry heists, gigolos, loose women, marijuana, a psychic who of course is not all he seems to be, more thugs than you can shake a stick at, crooked policemen, and murder. Even though it was initially frustrating because of the disjointed way things seemed to be developing, I think this story is the best kind of mystery story: the reader encounters a series of events that seem totally unconnected and don’t make very much (or any) sense, and the author manages to keep his audience off balance for a very long time until things start to be pieced together.

Even though Chandler finally pieces the puzzle together in a highly satisfactory way, one doesn’t read him merely for the story itself. His method of storytelling, along with his turns of phrase and imagery are as equally compelling as the plot itself. Take these examples, just a few of the MANY I highlighted as I read:

“Uh-huh,” the voice dragged itself out of her throat like a sick man getting out of bed.

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“Put it up – or I’ll blow it out of your hand!” I snarled. My voice sounded like somebody tearing slats off a chicken coop.

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It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.

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I left her laughing. The sound was like a hen having hiccups.

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The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building.

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A man in a striped vest and gilt buttons opened the door, bowed, took my hat and was through for the day.

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Mr. Grayle stood up and said he was very glad to have met me and that he would go and lie down for a while. He didn’t feel very well. He hoped I would excuse him. He was so polite I wanted to carry him out of the room just to show my appreciation.

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He smiled his first smile of the day. He probably allowed himself four.

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Randall and I took our hats off. In that neighborhood that probably ranked you with Valentino.

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The eighty-five cent dinner tasted like a discarded mail bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits, and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax.

If you like those, there’s way more than that, but I just got tired of highlighting and retyping all of the great passages.

Chandler also waxes poetic from time to time in his novels, and while it sometimes strikes a jarring note, it can be a ray of light in an otherwise dark tale:

Twenty minutes’ sleep. Just a nice doze. In that time I had muffed a job and lost eight thousand dollars. Well, why not? In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three or four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out. In twenty minutes you can even get up in the morning. You can get a glass of water at a night club – maybe.

So Chandler is fun to read, definitely, but keep in mind a caveat: this novel was published in 1940, and what was socially acceptable then makes the reader of today cringe at least a little bit (and sometimes a lot). I won’t go into all of the references that Chandler throws in – and yes, I know that this is not a story about a Sunday School picnic on the fourth of July – but the undercurrent of racism in this story is a sad reminder of where this country once was – and by some accounts, is headed again. There’s also quite a bit of rough language, but it’s not that much by our modern-day standards (you can hear just as rough language watching prime-time TV these days), although I am sure it was eye-opening and risky in Chandler’s day.

All in all, this was a rewarding read, and whetted my appetite to read more Chandler.

Science Book Challenge 2010

2010-05-10T06:22:00.000-05:00

At the risk of overextending myself on another challenge, I have decided to sign up for the Science Book Challenge 2010 being hosted for the third year by scienticity.net. However, I don't think it's a big deal because 1) it's only 3 books, 2) it lasts all year, and 3) I already started reading one of the books.

Here are my choices for this challenge:

1. The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism by Niles Eldredge
2. How It Ends: From You to the Universe by Chris Empey
3. What's Eating You?: People and Parasites by Eugene Kaplan

I love to read non-fiction books like science books (since that is what I do, after all) but I find that they very easily crowd out the fiction books if I'm not careful. When I was younger I gravitated more towards fiction -- I think in part because reading non-fiction felt too much like schoolwork. But now I seem to crave them!

Every Patient Tells a Story -- Book Review

2010-04-25T06:15:00.000-05:00

Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis
by Lisa Sanders, M.D.

Rating: 5 out of 5

The author, Dr. Lisa Sanders, is a professor at Yale Medical School. She is also a technical advisor to the TV show, "House, M.D." and a columnist for the New York Times Magazine. This is one of the most compelling books about medicine I have read in a long time; the only book that even comes close to it is Complications by Atul Gawande. That book had a different focus than this book, however. Sanders writes about the medical profession much more generally than Gawande, and from an internal medicine aspect. At one point she describes internal medicine as the most difficult specialty (I imagine that most specialists feel that way about their own specialties) because the cause of the patient's problems cannot be observed directly, making the art of diagnosis that much more important -- hence the subtitle of the book.

Here's where this book essentially scares the crap out of me (in a good way, however). It's Sanders' contention that doctors are no longer being trained adequately in the art of the physical exam, and those older doctors that were trained in it are no longer taking advantage of it and using it to its full extent. The entire book is a series of case studies that present a variety of patients in dire straits, simply because many of them were misdiagnosed by some doctor. These are the cases that no one really discusses or thinks much about -- and yet, people die every day because of these issues. It's at this point that the reader suddenly sits up and thinks, that could be me!

Sanders' writing style is tremendously engaging, and she doesn't hesitate to describe episodes in her own training and medical practice that show her in a less-than-favorable light. She is definitely adept at showing the human side of the medical profession, and the tremendous, almost superhuman challenges they face in their training and practices.

While I devoured this book, it really made me want to be a doctor. Immediately. White coat and everything. But then, the reality kicked in -- age, four years of constant studying, blood -- and I calmed back down. However, for those people already headed for medical school in some form or fashion, this is an excellent, inspiring book that provokes thought. It should be read by everyone, but especially every pre-med student, medical student, resident, and patient.

The 2010 Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge

2010-04-24T09:30:00.003-05:00

I'm hungry to visit the library again. Anyone who has stumbled on this blog and is reading it knows EXACTLY what I mean. So I am very interested in this challenge, hosted by Home Girl's Book Blog: the 2010 Support Your Local Library Reading Challenge. The sign-up page is here, but here's a run-down of the rules:

1. Anyone can join. You don't need a blog to participate.

2. There are four levels:

--The Mini – Check out and read 25 library books.

--Just My Size – Check out and read 50 library books.

--Stepping It Up – Check out and read 75 library books.

--Super Size Me – Check out and read 100 library books.

(Aim high. As long as you read 25 by the end of 2010, you are a winner.)

3. Audio, Re-reads, eBooks, YA, Young Reader – any book as long as it is checked out from the library count. Checked out like with a library card, not purchased at a library sale.

4. No need to list your books in advance. You may select books as you go. Even if you list them now, you can change the list if needed.

5. Crossovers from other reading challenges count.

6. Challenge begins January 1st thru December, 2010.

(If you are currently participating in this challenge, or are going to join me in the pursuit, let me know in the comments!)

Given my reading pace and history, I will be doing well to complete the Mini level. But I think I'm up to the challenge! Here's my list (to be filled in as I proceed):

1. The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
2. A Touch of Dead by Charlaine Harris
3. Amen, Amen, Amen by Abby Sher
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In Honor of National Poetry Month

2010-04-18T07:51:00.003-05:00

One of my favorite poems -- I have no idea why. It's just visceral, I guess.

"The Pasture" by Robert Frost

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

The Edith Wharton Blog Tour: Madame de Treymes

2010-01-28T00:13:00.002-06:00

Rating: 2 out of 5

First Sentence: “John Durham, while he waited for Madame de Malrive to draw on her gloves, stood in the hotel doorway looking out across the Rue de Rivoli at the afternoon brightness of the Tuileries gardens.”

Major Characters: John Durham, an American in Paris (ha); Madame de Malrive, also known as the former Fanny Frisbee (also an American in Paris); and Madame de Treymes, Fanny’s sister-in-law

Synopsis: John is in love with Fanny, and has been for a long time. She is married but separated from her French husband, Monsieur de Malrive, and is in a sense trapped in France – she has custody of her son for the time being only if she agrees to stay in France. Although John and Fanny love each other (in their restrained, turn-of-the-century Wharton way), they cannot marry because Fanny’s in-laws will not consent to her divorce. They play an inordinately large role in family affairs such as marriage and divorce.

Madame de Treymes, Fanny’s sister-in-law, seems to be the most approachable member of the clan, and John decides to visit her and find out why the family objects to the divorce, and under what circumstances they might consent to it. After he secures a meeting with her at a social function, he learns that she is ready to help him obtain the necessary consent, in return for money to pay off her husband’s gambling debts (John supposes). He refuses to buy Fanny’s hand in marriage like that, and nothing further comes from the encounter.

A little later in the story, Madame de Treymes suddenly announces that the family has decided to let the divorce proceed. Fanny is overjoyed, of course, but John doesn’t quite trust this apparently unfounded change of heart. He later learns that Madame de Treymes’ husband has had to leave the country due to money problems. John feels a pang of guilt at having been unwilling to help her earlier, even if it did amount to a bribe. He decides to thank her personally for any part she may have had in the reversal of the family’s decision, and she responds in a very curious way. After an extended cat-and-mouse conversation between the two, it gradually comes to light that Madame de Treymes has been working behind the scenes so that her family manages to profit from the divorce in a way that John and Fanny did not forsee. This constitutes a sort of “twist” ending to the story, so I won’t go any further in my synopsis so as to avoid spoilers.

General Information and Impressions: Overall, I enjoyed the plot of this story the most. I did not enjoy Wharton’s writing style so much. The mannerly atmosphere of the story was also something I didn’t enjoy, although I understand that this is one of Wharton’s hallmarks. Oddly enough, this story seemed very dated to me in ways that other classics do not. I don’t know why. I also got the impression that the characters in this story were not real people. They seemed more like actors playing roles on the stage, and I couldn’t imagine relating to these characters at all.

When I signed up for this spot on the Edith Wharton Blog Tour, a project of The Classics Circuit, I did so in hopes that I would have as good an experience with Mrs. Wharton as I did with Wilkie Collins, when I hosted him at the end of last year in another of The Classics Circuit’s author tours. And although it sounds quite lame, I picked Madame de Treymes, an early novella Wharton published in 1907, because it was short. It consists of 10 short chapters, and certainly could be read in one sitting. Having read very little, if any, Wharton in my past, I wanted to have a short and sweet introduction to her work. I am afraid I might have made a poor choice, because I just didn’t get that much out of Madame de Treymes. I didn’t hate it, but it also did not make me want to run out and get another Edith Wharton book to read. I do have a copy of The House of Mirth, though, so maybe it will find its way onto the TBR pile at some point.

The Thanksgiving Visitor

2009-11-26T09:09:00.001-06:00

Every Thanksgiving (including, soon, today) I make it a point to re-read "The Thanksgiving Visitor" by Truman Capote. This is a short story that is essentially a memoir of an event from his childhood as he grew up in Alabama in the household of some older unmarried relations. I have a copy of this story in a volume with his other more-famous memoir/short story, "A Christmas Memory." (This volume, which is also in a beautiful slipcover, is one of my most treasured possessions. If my house were burning down, I would have to fight not to go back in and get it.) If you are not familiar with this story, then drop EVERYTHING you are doing right now and go find a copy and READ! Seriously, it is not long and can be easily read in a pleasurable break from the hubbub of Thanksgiving Day.

In the story, the narrator Buddy has his worst nightmare come true when his friend and relative Miss Sook invites the school bully, Odd Henderson, to the Thanksgiving meal. This simple act casts a pall over what was supposed to be a magical and wonderful day for Buddy. This story is not moralistic by any means, but it teaches a great lesson about kindness that I think is what draws me back to it every year. It's a lesson we all need.

Wishing you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving!

A Rogue's Life -- The Wilkie Collins Blog Tour

2009-11-09T06:00:00.001-06:00

A Rogue's Life by Wilkie Collins

Pages: 156
Rating: 5 out of 5
First sentence: "I am going to try if I can't write something about myself."

Today I'm happy to welcome Wilkie Collins to my blog as part of the Wilkie Collins Blog Tour, the brainchild of Rebecca and her friends over at The Classics Circuit. Check this page for the rest of the stops on the tour, as well as stops previous to this one.

When I signed up for a spot on the tour, I did so with not a little fear and trembling. For one thing, although I had heard of Wilkie Collins and his more famous novels such as The Moonstone, I had never gotten around to actually reading any of his work. Part of it was an inability to believe that his writings could possibly be as good as the conventional wisdom thought they were -- this, despite the fact that his work has survived for the past 150 years or more.

So I signed up for the blog tour as a way of literally forcing myself to read some Collins. But then, which work should I choose? I picked A Rogue's Life not for its synopsis or characters, but for the most mundane reason of all: it is a short book. I figured that, if I just absolutely hated the book, it would be a limited torture. I am happy to report that that was not the case. Reading A Rogue's Life was a delightful experience and it whetted my appetite for more Collins.

A Rogue's Life was first published in installments in the weekly periodical Household Words in 1856. As might be anticipated from the opening sentence above, the novel is in the form of an autobiography of Frank Softly, the "rogue" of the title.

Frank is born into a well-connected family, but one that cannot give him much of a start in life as far as money is concerned. So his early adult life is a tale of bouncing from one profession to another, and failing or getting bored with all of them. He eventually ends up in debtor's prison.

It is here that Collins introduces the 19th-century equivalent of a running gag into the story. Frank's brother-in-law, a Mr. Batterbury, comes to visit him in prison to bring him word that Frank's grandmother, Lady Malkinshaw, has left an inheritance in her will to Frank's sister Annabella. There's one catch: Frank must outlive Lady Malkinshaw, or Annabella (along with her slightly odious husband) gets nothing. So the Batterburys suddenly take a sporadic but intense interest in Frank's welfare, bailing him out of prison and in general serving as a kind of humorous "deus ex machina" whenever Frank gets into a financial scrape, which is frequently.

Upon getting out of prison, Frank takes up with a forgery ring that specializes in forgeries of old masters such as Rembrandt. It's at the offices of the leader of this ring that he first sets eyes on the love of his life, a beautiful but mysterious young woman who remains a mystery, since he has no way of finding out her name or where she lives. The forgery ring soon falls apart, and Mr.Batterbury steps in again to save Frank from ruin by arranging his employment as secretary to a Literary and Scientific Institute. (Part of the humor of the Mr.Batterbury gag is that he shows up only when Lady Malkinshaw's health has taken an unexpected and undesirable turn for the better, or has had some catastrophe happen to her and has survived it better than anyone would have thought.)

Frank's efforts to sell tickets to a ball being sponsored by the Institute put him in the path of the young woman again, and he finally learns her name -- Alicia Dulcifer . This encounter begins the central and most exciting part of the novel. Alicia's father appears to be a scientist and former physician, but Frank learns that he is looked upon by the community with fear and distrust, with the result that Dr. Dulcifer and his daughter are essentially pariahs. Frank is told by an associate that Dr. Dulcifer is hiding something in his country home, and Frank eventually discovers what it is: Dr. Dulcifer runs a complex counterfeiting operation out of his home, where he and three other men turn out near-perfect copies of gold coins.

It's in this section of the novel that Collins shows his mastery of the art of storytelling. What had been a pleasant, albeit antiquated, story in the early part of the novel suddenly turns into a page-turning thriller worthy of a James Patterson or a John Grisham . (OK, I suppose I am exaggerating just the tiniest bit. But I found the page-turning part to be absolutely true.) At the risk of spoiling any more of the story than I already have, I'll say no more about the plot. But the story does have a completely unexpected but entirely satisfying happy ending.

One thing in general that pleasantly surprised me about Wilkie Collins (besides his prodigious storytelling skills) was his deft use of humor. This novel is not actually a comedy, but still Collins slyly injects humorous episodes and even just funny turns of phrase into the story. The scenes concerning Lady Malkinshaw's escapes from death are genuinely funny, and they definitely increase the reader's enjoyment in what might otherwise be a slightly darker book.

Collins also does a wonderful job with the main courtship scene between Frank and Alicia in the book. Suffice it to say that he takes a scene that has the potential to devolve into something quite maudlin and turns it into an utterly charming episode.

All in all (in case you couldn't tell), I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it to anyone, whether they are a Wilkie Collins fan or not. If you enjoy a well-told tale, you will enjoy this book, and who knows -- it might turn you into a brand-new Collins fan, like me. Thanks, Wilkie!

The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Volume 14 -- Book Review

2009-11-03T21:51:00.002-06:00

Pages: 590 (although I didn't read the whole thing)
Stars: 4 out of 5

I picked this book up from the library a few weeks ago, in hopes that it would be the perfect companion for some dark October nights. In general, I would say it fulfilled that need. Edited by Stephen Jones, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (Volume 14) has a variety of short-story (and not-so-short-story) offerings that are somewhat uneven in their appeal. Some were not appealing to me at all, and I suppose that is the inevitable result of every anthology -- the editor is doomed to give everyone something to hate.

I am not familiar with this series, but in addition to being a yearly anthology of the best horror stories, it is evidently also a review of the Year in Horror, as it were. A large portion of the book is devoted to two sections: "Horror in 2002," a review of publishing activity in the horror genre; and "Necrology: 2002," a listing of people in the field who passed away during 2002. I didn't read either one of these. I think only the most die-hard horror fan would.

I read about 75% of the stories in this volume, and liked about half of them. Here's a list of my favorites, with an extremely brief analysis/synopsis of each one:
1. "October in the Chair" by Neil Gaiman: At the monthly meeting of the months of the year, October tells a dark tale of a runaway who decides to permanently join his newfound playmate from the graveyard.
2. "The Wretched Thicket of Thorn" by Don Tumasonis: A short pleasant day trip by boat to a forbidden island soon turns dark and bloody.
3. "The Absolute Last of the Ultra-Spooky, Super-Scary Hallowe'en Horror Nights" by David Schow: My absolute favorite kind of story -- a fun-filled romp with pretend monsters terrorizing a theme park on Halloween night. Except that most of the monsters turn out to be real. A healthy dose of obnoxious people getting what's coming to them, too.
4. "Little Dead Girl Singing" by Stephen Gallagher: A well-written story with great atmosphere and perfect foreshadowing. A tale of a little girl singing in a dress that looks like funeral home curtains, and a mother who has a strange power over her.
5. "Nesting Instincts" by Brian Hodge: One of the most perfect (and creepiest) stories I've read in a long time. A real page turner about a young boy whose mother goes through a surprising transformation at the hands of her live-in boyfriend. This story actually had my heart racing as I approached its climax.
6. "Hides" by Jay Russell: Robert Louis Stevenson is a prominent character in this story set in the old West. A group of stagecoach passengers (including Stevenson) find themselves stranded in a lonesome, out-of-the way rest stop with visions of the Donner Party dancing in their heads.
7. 20th Century Ghost" by Joe Hill: A captivating story about the ghost of a young girl who proves to be the salvation of an aging moviehouse and its owner. A perfect plot.
8. "Egyptian Avenue" by Kim Newman: A slow, strange start to this story about evil that persists throughout the decades, and about tombs that come in all shapes and sizes.
9. "The Boy Behind the Gate" by James Van Pelt: Excellent story about a father whose son is missing and a father from a different time who gradually realizes his son is a monster. These two families are inextricably and inexplicably linked in time and space by an old mine, with disastrous results.

Overall this was an entertaining collection for this time of year, but I find that short story collections are relatively hard for me to read. I finish one story and then am reluctant to go on to the next. If the story I just finished was a good, satisfying read, I want to savor it, and not spoil the atmosphere of the story with another totally unrelated plot and set of characters. I guess this is a kind of reader's OCD.

Dewey's Read-a-Thon is Coming!

2009-10-03T10:02:00.001-05:00

The date for Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-Thon is rapidly approaching: it begins October 24, 2009 at 7 AM Central Daylight Time (1 PM GMT). Information about the rules, details, etc. can be found here. I am going to do my part by helping to publicize it, but that's about all I will be doing, unfortunately. I will be deep in the throes of a Haunted House fundraiser for my daughter's showchoir that weekend, so I will be both too busy and too exhausted to train my eyes on a book for any length of time. I am a little disappointed, because the Read-a-Thon sounds like great fun, and I would love the challenge as well. But I guess I will just have to look forward to the next one in April!

I Knew It Was Too Good To Be True

2009-09-28T19:58:00.000-05:00

The title of this post refers to the fact that tonight I ran across another books and reading blog called "Time Enough At Last." Shoot! I suppose it was inevitable, given the significance of the title. But the good news is, that other blog went defunct in March 2006, so it's high time the title was used again! Onward and upward!

Speaking of onward, I simply cannot wait to use this picture:

Probably some of you are familiar with this image, which is from the famous WPA posters collection from the late 1930's and early 1940's. A good many of them have to do with reading, and I love them all, but especially this one. To me, it perfectly captures the feeling you get as the weather turns a little colder (and here in South Mississippi, the occurrence of cooler weather in October is a cause for general rejoicing) and you want nothing more than to be left alone with a good book, spooky or otherwise.

I like this one for September too, but it's too late to use it (sigh):

What kinds of things do you associate with Autumn and reading?

Sunday Salon

2009-09-27T18:18:00.002-05:00

OK, guys, I am adding to my list of firsts as a budding book blogger (say that ten times fast -- and you'll sound really silly) and participating in my first Sunday Salon.

For the uninitiated, Sunday Salon is a virtual reading room where bloggers talk about what they are reading (click the badge above to go to the Sunday Salon home page and read more about it).

I have been reading two books, and I am not reviewing either one of them yet because I am not finished with them. But they are both ones that I plan to keep on reading, although one is harder going than the other.

First up is a book I got from the library, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Volume 14. It's a collection of horror short stories from various authors. So far they have been a mixed bag, as you invariably get in a collection of this sort, but the best has been a story that is now something of a classic, as far as I can tell -- "October in the Chair" by Neil Gaiman. It's a story about the months of the year sitting around a campfire, telling stories at a monthly meeting they have, and as the story opens, they are getting ready to hear October's story, which (of course) is a spooky little tale about a boy whom we know only as "the Runt" who runs away from home and meets up with a new friend named Dearly outside a graveyard. It's a memorable story although it's very short. I have never read any of Gaiman's longer works, but I know he is extremely popular. This story makes me want to read some of his other stuff. (If you have any suggestions, I'd welcome them in the comments.)

Another story I enjoyed from this collection was "The Wretched Thicket of Thorn" by Don Tumasonis. It was a slow starter, but I enjoyed the way the author began with a sense of dread and kept it as a subtle undercurrent throughout the story, all the way to its unfortunate (for the characters) conclusion. Suffice it to say, this story is a variation on the basic horror story theme: Don't open that door -- they open that door -- they pay for opening the door. It's a story that definitely calls for a rereading, to catch the small touches and details that I probably missed the first time through.

The other book I am in the midst of is Monopoly: The World's Most Famous Game and How It Got That Way by Philip Orbanes. It's a history of Monopoly from its beginnings as a homegrown game from 1904 called the Landlord's Game. The book is a whole lot drier than I thought it would be, but one very interesting thing about the book is the way the author weaves the social and political history of the time into the story of the development of Monopoly as a game (through its many incarnations, which were surprisingly many). Guess what? The political and financial climate of that time (the early 1900's) mirrors ours so closely as to be positively uncanny. So that makes this a timely read as well. Another interesting aspect of the book is the discussion of game history and development, told from the viewpoint of an insider -- the author served as a Vice President of Research and Development at Parker Brothers and also has judged many Monopoly tournaments. All in all, although it is not exactly what I expected, I am eager to get further into the book at this point.

Happy reading!

"Fall Into Reading" Challenge 2009: My List

2009-09-22T06:00:00.001-05:00

My main goal for this challenge (hosted by Katrina at Callapidder Days) is to read some books that I have been interested in reading for a very long time. A secondary goal is to read books from my personal library (since a book that sits on a shelf and is never touched, let alone read, is worse than worthless, in my opinion). One or two of these books have been on my shelves for literally decades, so it’s high time they were read (since I can’t seem to get rid of them).

I decided to pick a single book from each of the following categories:

Non-fiction, Science: Adam’s Curse: A Future Without Men by Bryan Sykes (This one is actually not from my personal library. It suddenly popped into my head today as I was thinking about what I might want to put on my list, so I hunted it down and checked it out from the university library. I started it a year or so ago, and never finished it for some reason, so my goal with this one is simply to finish it.)
Non-fiction, History: Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy
Non-fiction, General: Monopoly: The World’s Most Famous Game and How It Got That Way by Philip Orbanes
Fiction, Short Stories: The Littlest Hitler by Ryan Boudinot
Fiction, Mystery: Real Murders by Charlaine Harris
Fiction, Horror: Floating Dragon by Peter Straub
Fiction, Humor: Snobs by Julian Fellowes
Fiction, Fantasy/SciFi: Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Fiction, Classic: A Death in the Family by James Agee

Optional goals: As I finish each book, I want to write some sort of review or thoughts about the book. They will probably not be very long reviews, but I think it will be good practice for me to do that.

Looking back over this, it strikes me that I have ended up with a very long list. I am not a fast reader when I am reading for pleasure, and I don't have a lot of reading time some days, as we have already established. But I like the organization of it. And there’s only 9 books on the list, and I have 3 months, right?

Library Loot -- September 19, 2009

2009-09-19T20:31:00.000-05:00

So I am very new at this, of course, but I did go to the library today, so I have to do my first Library Loot! (In going to the library, I ignored the fact that I already have a TBR pile that would stretch to the moon and back.)

This book, Everything Matters! by Ron Currie, Jr., caught my eye and I had to pick it up. I am not familiar with this author (and Amazon says he has written just one other book), but the interior of this book sold me. It is formatted in an interesting and somewhat bizarre way, which I am sure is part of its unconventional storyline. I feel like I have been in a reading rut for quite some time, so I think this book will break me out of that.

This looked intriguing: You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe by Christopher Potter. Very sciencey non-fiction, but as I leafed through it, many of the pages I alighted on had a rather "gee-whiz" flavor to them, and I am sucker for that kind of science book.

In honor of the upcoming spooky season, I had to check this out: The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Volume Fourteen, edited by Stephen Jones. It's full of short stories, which are always seductive to me -- "Look, I can just read one or two and not have to finish the whole book! Of COURSE I'll add it to the pile!"

A very small list, I know -- but I just can't let myself bring a lot of books home from the library when there are SO MANY to be read in my personal library. I think I should make a definite reading list for the rest of this year. I don't feel up to doing challenges yet like so many other book bloggers do, but I'll get there!

Greetings

2009-09-19T18:16:00.000-05:00

This is a quick post to introduce myself and my blog. Having been inspired by the many excellent book blogs out there, and feeling the strong desire to blog about something interesting, I am starting this blog. If you are an avid reader and a Twilight Zone fan, you have already recognized the reference to the episode that shares the same title as this blog. (I really hope there are no copyright issues involved there -- I don't think one can copyright a title, however.) Here is a link to part 1 of the episode on YouTube, if you want to see it. In fact, I think I may have to watch it again soon!

Currently reading (almost finished): The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs