All The Books!

I blog about books and some times other things! I've also put this blog up on WordPress Dog Ears Over Bookmarks Juuuust in case tumblr impoldes... dogearshardoverbookmarks.wordpress.com I don't get paid to do this, I am just a big nerd who likes to write.

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Book blogging tag master

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The Devil's Novice, by Ellis Peters

A day late, know what makes writing difficult? Two days worth of insomnia.

I skipped Dead Man's Ransom because it dreadfully boring and only serves to get the Shariff out of the way so Hugh Barrigar could take over.

Anyway, The book opens with Father Abbott, Prior Robert and his Toady Jarome discussing whether or not to take very young children in as novices. It is something of a tradition in some families to give children barely weaned to the monastery.

The Abbott has misshivings about this as children that young can't make an informed choice to join the monastic life for themselves.

It is decided that the Abbey will no longer take these children.

The Abbott may have regretted making that call as the Abbey rejects the four year old postulant but accepts the teenager Meriet Aspley

Meriet is quickly nicknamed the " Devil's Novice" because of his next terrors and withdrawn mood both of which make the other novices very uncomfortable. After he attacks brother Jerome in a rage, he is sent to St. Giles hospice. He attacks Brother Jarome because he burned a keepsake the boy had, but let's be fair here, Jarome has been building to someone trying to kick his ass since he encouraged religious hysteria in a sociopath way back in the first book.

Cadfael suspects that there is something off about Meriet's devotion to the cowel, and it soon proves true when a couple of murders come about and the boy seems to be tangled up in the plots.

This is another one of these books that is just sort

of - there?

It might be because of the hospice setting, but it strongly reminds me of The Leper of St. Giles. Brother Mark works magic on troubled youngsters, and one thing that bothered me at the end if St. Giles, I felt like Joscelin Lucy really should have entered the Benedictine Brotherhood. There was just something about the tone that made me feel like, that was where the character wanted to go, but he had strayed away from what the plot needed so it didn't happen.

I felt a little like that in this book, though it would habe really thrown things into a mess had Meriet decided to do that.

Course, it could just be that I want more Brother Mark. Following him from the time he went to St. Giles all the way through his studies to become a priest would have been an interesting side series!

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The Bible Says So, by Dan McClellan

Reading this, I felt like I was back in my first Anthropology class in college, which was the first time anything outside of a history channel documentary even hinted at a historical reading of the Bible.

My professor looked at a lot of stuff that the Bible was supposed to be against and put into historical and cultural context, and it was fascinating.

This book was recommended to me by one of our chaplains who has a wonderful and unorthodox approach to faith, which is honestly what you want for a hospice chap., in my opinion.

The author looks at a bunch of things that the Bible "says" and examines them linguisticly and in the context of the culture of the time. Looking at everything from slavery, abortion, and homosexuality to woman's rights, the form, and mindset God and the nature of Hell.

This book is fantastic, shining a light on circular logic, readings and translation choices that likely would have made no sense at all to the people who were contemporary to the text.

I love that the author acknowledges his bias up front, and makes no excuses for when the Bible doesn't agree with how he feels. And through all of it the absolute respect and affection he has for the text shines through. This is not a man arguing with, or trying to force the shape of this book. His passion is to understand it, learn from it. He doesn't feel that to have faith he needs to agree with everything nor does he seem to feel that trying for force the culture of the time from the text somehow negates any wisdom that the Bible has.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with analyzing a text while still believing in the value that it has. Now granted it is a hard balance to walk, but the author does it.

This is an amazing book, and does a great job analyzing the Bible and doing it in a relatable way.

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Pilgrim of Hate by Ellis Peters

The first time I read this I found it boring - I’m not sure why.

The second time it caught my attention more.

Before the events of the story the Civil War claimed the life of a knight loyal to Empress Maude who saved a messenger of King Stephen's wife from a group of his fellow Maude loyalists.

It is once again time for the celebration of St. Winifred and the Abbey is preparing for the flood of pilgrims that come to honor their little Welsh saint.

The story mainly focuses on two particular travelers.

The first, Rhun - a teenage boy who was born with a bad leg and can only get around on crutches and with the help of his older sister and his aunt.

Cadfael takes him under his wing and helps him with his leg hoping to at least help the boy sleep without pain. Rhun is reluctant to ask for a miracle, for himself. Generally he is far more concerned with the impact that caring for him makes on his family.

The other pilgrim (Ciaran) is a young man who has vowed to make the journey to a holy site in Wales without shoes and with a heavy cross around his neck. Ciaran claims that Wales is his goal and that his intent is to die there in peace. It is assumed that he has some sort of fatal disease. This is reinforced by his friend Matthew who is at his side every minute, seemingly to make sure that Ciaran completes his journey.

Cadfael finds the pair to be odd, and can't put his finger on just what is off.

Along with the faithful, gatherings like the one the Abbey is preparing for attracts the unsavory element as well and when the ring given to Ciaran by the bishop to travel safely in the war torn country goes missing, Hugh Barrigar is already setting a net for a group of theives.

There is also a call out for a missing man, and Cadfael's son makes a short appearance.

More information comes slowly to light about Ciaran and Matthew and it isn't pretty.

Honestly, there really isn't anything wrong with this one, though it isn't the most riveting.

The biggest issue I think I have with it is that the focus is very fractured. You have the murder of the knight, you have Olivier making an appearance, you have the group of theives, you have Rhun's pilgrimage and Ciaran's journey.

And I find Ciaran and Matthew (especially Matthew) to be really irratating.

Rhun and his family are much more likable and how they get tangled up with Ciaran and Matthew feels forced.

I felt like there was a story hidden with Rhun, his sister, and his aunt and I wanted to know that rather than deal with everything else.

It wasn't bad, I just wanted something else out of it.

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A Journey to the New World, by Kathryn Lasky

Okay, I had a free book on Thriftbooks so I ordered four of this series. For a series aimed at kids, they are very well written. Makes me wonder when quality started showing up in kid lit, or if maybe my local and school libraries in the 90's just sucked.

Anyway this one is the diary of Remember Patience Whipple. It opens with Mem on the Mayflower on her way from Holland to The New World. Mem, her parents and little sister are Puritans and heading for a life of religious freedom.

The voyage is not easy, and is full of sickness, conflict, and eventually death. When they finally reach land, things are really no easier. Mem faces loss and changes along with adjusting to the hardships of settling in a land new to the settlers.

The whole story is a lead uo to the first Thanksgiving.

Honestly this story lacks the deep character development that Standing in the Light had. For the most part, Mem does mature and grow, but other characters don't. In Standing, through Caty we saw development in her brother, in her Lenape family, in her parents. We don't see a lot of that through Mem's diary. What we do see that I think would be helpful in a classroom is the fact that it points out things I was not taught in school.

I was taught that all of the passengers of the Mayflower were Pilgrims, and that they came from England. I didn't learn until I found it myself that they came from Holland after leaving England, and that they were backed by merchants in England who expected a return on their investment.

The underlying message of teaching that all of those aboard were Puritans was that the country was founded on religious freedom. For some reason we were supposed to forget about Jamestown which was established to find gold, which suggests that the country was founded on the search for money.

This book points out that most of the people on the Mayflower were not Pilgroams, but people not of that faith looking for new beginnings.

I think this kind of context is important. I don't know about anyone else, but growing up in a small town that had 15 churches and one bookstore, and being one of the only kids who did not go to church, I noticed that when they spoke of religious freedom, and how it applied to every American I thought that it was strange that for something so baked into our culture, it really wasn't true from a social standpoint.

I was seen as weird for not going to church to the point that some kids simply refused to believe it because they were told that everyone had to go to church.

So the idea that a large portion of the Mayflower passengers came for non religious reasons was comforting to me when I learned it as a teenager.

Anyway, this one wasn't bad, but tended to lag in spots and lacks brightness that came across in Caty's story.

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It Ends With Us, by Colleen Hoover

Okay, going to preface this one with a couple of things.

1. I went into this book expecting not to like it much, but it has been everywhere for years and I was curious.

2. I am not in any way well versed enough in psychology or domestic violence to make comments on how the characters act in this story and will be sticking to how I feel about the writing

3. I have read more than once that the author romanticizes abuse, in general. I didn't get that from this book. Don't get me wrong, the book being billed as a romance is misleading in the extreme, but I don't see any romanticizing of abuse... minimizing, trivializing, yeah, but that's a different thing.

Now, all that being said:

Guys, what the fuck was this?

On the one hand, it feels like the author is trying to be earnest in her discussion of a very serious issue. On the other hand she is doing it with the most hackneyed characters and tropes. Which, to me, makes the issues seem like plot points, rather than serious commentary.

Let's start with the start, shall we?

Our main character Lily is up on the roof of an apartment building, sitting on the wide ledge thinking about thr funeral sge just went to, and about life and death in general.

Next a guy comes up on the roof and before seeing her, beats up on a deck chair before lighting a joint.

When the guy sees her he gets all tense and demands she get off the ledge because she could fall.

Couple of things so far. We find out that Lily isn't sitting on *her* roof, she has climbed to the top of an apartment building she found on Google earth

Um... okay, I have never attempted to climb a building I didn't live in, is this something that is done, or is this manic pixie dream girl logic at work?

Also? The response to a guy demanding she get off a ledge because it is making him twitchy is "I was just leaving." And then *leave* because dude who goes berserker on a lawn chair and then gets all intense at a stranger is not a guy who considers what he just did odd, or even socially out of place once he realizes another person is there. This is a guy who finds this *normal* and is ready to impose that normal on someone else.

Instead of leaving, Lily and Ryle have an exposition off. Each telling the other the highlights of their life story.

Lily: father just kicked it, was an asshole who beat her mother, disaster of a eulogy at the funeral. She once fell in love with a homeless guy, Wants to open a flower shop.

Ryle: neurosurgeon, doesn't do romance, does one night stands, wants social and financial success, wants to be the best doctor in his field. Tells a story of a dramatic case where two little boys were playing with a gun and the younger of the two accidentally shoots and kills his brother. Sister lives in the building, she is married to a millionaire. Oh and he flat out tells Lily he wants to fuck her. This is not me going blue for the sake of humor, he says those words.

Side note, Lily is shocked because she says you never think of doctors saying "fuck" so casually. This actually made me snort. Clearly, no one involved in this book has ever spent ten minutes in a medical environment when there are no clients around. I would lay bets that it is said more than "STAT".

Course "fuck"is usually said in frustration, while laughing, or just as verbal scenery. Not as a creepy proposition, so I can see how it sounded wrong to Lily.

The two talk, end up making out before he gets called back to work. Before he leaves he takes a picture of her.

So let's unpack this.

First, from the way Lily reacts to Ryle, the author is not trying to craft a serial killer. However, this just makes Lily seem monumentally stupid.

This is Bella Swan level of stupid

It is "dude does unhinged stuff, but... he's so CUTE!"

Whatever, this kind of brain dead is typical in romance books built on shortcuts.

However, it is also typical for the bad boy to actually end up being just a whiny tool that everyone thinks is profound.

Don't get me wrong, other genres have the "don't think too hard about this" tricks as well. This one just layered it on top of other things that annoy me.

Lily thinks or says that her father just died three or four times before we even get off the roof. What kind of short term memory loss does the book think we have?

The exposition vomit, gotta front load all the stuff into the first scene because we can't have character development get in the way of the detailed texting descriptions later.

Stories that I think are supposed to be set ups for dramatic reveals are not dramatic. They are visible from this rooftop. Hell, they are visible from space.

I knew from the second Ryle told the story about the kid dying, that Lily was going to be shocked to discover that it was Ryle that had accidentally killed his brother.

Also, this might be part of the unintentional "I have body parts in my basement " vibe that was built, but my first thought was the "I had this case at work..." story was likely something he trotted out to pick up girls. Didn't rope them in with handsome neurosurgeon, he would go for the pity bang.

When we finally leave the roof, we go to Lily's apartment, her roommate is very insensitive about the death of the father that Lily hated, which serves to remind us that he did, in fact, die.

Whew, that was close almost had some forward momentum there!

And then we have the weirdest framing device, that I have ever read. At least I can say I didn't see it coming.

We meet teenage Lily and the story of her first love, a homeless boy named Atlas, from her school, through a journal 15 year old Lily wrote... to Ellen DeGeneres.

Yep, when I think traumatized kid writing out her feelings to an imaginary confidant, I think Ellen. What? You don't? What are you? Normal?

I will admit that I almost stopped reading after this. The writing doesn't know what it wants to be. We have melodrama pulling against rom com beats, with the tone of serious themes. This is the reading equivalent of manic violins playing on a movie soundtrack.

I had to change perspective and I figured out how, by considering the characters' names.

Lily Blossom Bloom

Ryle Kincade

Atlas Corrigan

These are soap opera names.

Lily who loves flowers

Ryle who seems to have trouble with emotional regulation

Atlas who has the weight of the world on his shoulders.

These are soap characters

This means that the story isn't about them. It happens to them.

For this type of thing to work at all, the characters need to be believable as people who can do a quick personality change in a phone booth. They have to be flexible to the point of silly putty, and able to pick up whatever the plot presses into them.

This is why, (along with suspension of disbelief) you can buy that a soap character can be kidnapped multiple times, go to prison, end up possessed by a demon, and still be a practicing doctor. Honestly it takes some skill to write a character like that without them simply becoming the human equivalent of a loading screen. Soap writing isn't amazing writing, but it is comfortable with what it is.

Once I tried that lens, the story became easier to read, I only sprained my face a little rolling my eyes when, after buying a building to open her flower shop Lily has a woman who just happened to be walking by, who just happened to be a hobby interior designer, comes in and asks for a job.

Alyssa is character equivalent of a lock pick. The story put Lily into the role of business owner who has a dream, but no help to actually make it happen.

Enter Alyssa who not only can offer that help, but only works because she is bored, so Lily doesn't have to pay her! To add to the ridiculous amount of serendipity, I bet you can guess who her brother is!

Anyway Lily falls off a ladder, twists her ankle, so Ryle enters stage drunk.

Ryle, by the way exhibited extremely normal behavior in regards to Lily, like knocking on 29 doors to try and find her.

Yep, that's a thing she finds out.

The two eventually start dating.

One night, Lily runs into Atlas, her first love, but he's involved with someone.

Ryle and Lily get married in Vegas after 6 months together.

The soap lens stops being effective around the time things try to get serious. Things like domestic violence do show up in melodrama, but it is done with an exaggeration that makes sure it is never grounded in reality. This is not how this story feels to me

First came a hit.

Then came a push down the stairs.

Then came an attempted rape, a headbutt and six stitches in Lily's forehead.

In between the first and the second, there were apologies.

Between the second and the third, Ryle is set off by finding out about Atlas. Ryle also reveals his traumatic past.

After the third, Lily leaves and finds out that she is pregnant.

Much of this echos Lily's mother and father's relationship.

I get what the story is trying to do here, but while the characters can swing between convenient personalities, the tone is still pulling against itself.

It is all at once, a story about lost first loves, messy romantic relationships, childhood trauma, and domestic violence.

That is a lot to shove into one plot line with a bunch of characters who are not crafted in a way that you don't notice when they have decided to change who they are for a few pages.

For me, the writing is just too clunky, too forced to allow for me to believe that Lily would behave this way.

The writing doesn't allow me to believe that Ryle is emotionally stable enough to have these bouts of rage and be stable enough to be a *neurosurgeon*.

And Atlas? At best he's a martyr with a problem feeling inferior which would cause a whole different set of problems. At worse he's just a cardboard cutout "nice guy" which from a writing standpoint is just annoying.

Think about it, he promised he would come back for Lily. And he did, but what stopped him?

Saw her when she was in college with a guy and didn't even go over and say hi because she "looked happy". Dude, entered and exited her life in very dramatic ways and you don't even go and say "Hey! I'm alive, nice to see you!" If she is truly happy with college boyfriend, you existing wouldn't derail her.

Sees her years later, talks to her this time, but she "Looks happy" so he makes up a girlfriend? Jesus you ever consider that maybe looking a certain way doesn't indicate a deep core truth? Maybe she looked happy in college because the guy she was with was a nice guy, but she was psyched because they were going to go to a great concert, or because she passed a bitch of a test.

And the next time? Maybe she was happy just because her happiness isn't tied to your "I'm good enough for you now" ass.

The rest of the book is just bad. Between Ryle running off to England, Alyssa being the emotional backbone with the "don't take my brother back" and in the next breath going all rom com best friend about Lily's pregnancy, Atlas being "For the love of you, I shall be emo" and Lily losing every ounce of personality she had to begin with.

Like everything else, the end was telegraphed hard.

If she would have gone back to Ryle, this would have been a prequel to a book where a handsome neurosurgeon moves to England with his daughter after his ex-wife "runs off" and popular local restaurant owner goes missing...

Ending with Lily leaving Ryle for the best of their daughter and her running to Atlas is how this was always going to end.

I respect what the author was trying to do, but this just felt like a book written by two different people who didn't talk to each other.

Obviously I’m not against melodrama, and I’m not a reader who needs every book to be an expression of pure craft. Melodrama has its place, and it can be incredibly effective, when a story commits to it and uses it consistently.

That’s really the issue here. Not the tropes, not the genre, but the lack of consistency in tone, character, and logic.

This book never quite decides what it wants to be.

Definitely not for me.

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Standing in the Light, by Mary Pope Osborne

I was spacing out after work and I thought of an old show I found when I was a teenager.

Dear America and Royal Diaries were interesting to me because at the time, I was a couple of years into my time in hybrid home schooling through a Christian private school. I was getting more and more interested in history because what I was learning at the Christian school was slanted very differently than what I had learned in public school. This was my first experience having something I learned presented in a different way. I started seeing history as stories, and started studying it for fun. So when I came across the series on HBO that told a story from history through diaries and letters, it caught my attention and gave me more things to look up.

Not sure what made it pop into my head, but I do what I always do, I took to the library, and lo and behold, they are a book series!

Am I going to read a bunch of books meant for grade schoolers? Damn right! I was 12 going on 13 when these books first came out and had I known they existed, I would have totally read them.

Anyway, forward with the nostalgia!

Standing in the Light follows Catherine (Caty) a young Quaker girl living in Pennsylvania in 1763. The Quakers are a religious community who doesn't approve of the settlers treatment of the native American people. Caty's father in particular is affected by how the people are treated. Caty tries to feel the way her father does, but she, her younger siblings and her mother live in fear of attacks by the local tribes in retaliation for what other white settlements had done.

When not worried about being attacked, Caty is a typical 13 year old. Dealing with school, family and community expectations. She struggles with the strict social rules of the Quakers and worries for the health of her siblings.

The entries in the diary cut off abruptly with only a sentence stating that she and her younger brother Thomas had been captured.

It picks up again, without dates, as Caty writes of her time in the camp with the Lanape. The story unfolds that she and her brother have been adopted into the community. She is scared and very resistant, venting her anger at a teenaged Lanape named Snow Hunter who she soon realizes understands English, and an fact had been taken from an English settlement and adopted by the tribe years before.

Slowly, Caty and her brother adjust to their life with the Lenape and bond with them. Caty realizes that the God the Quakers speak to is the same as The Great Spirit and she loves the Lanape as she loves her family.

The diary continues, detailing every day life in the camp, until the conflicts find Caty and Thomas and turn their lives upside down again.

These books seem designed to get kids interested in history, and I think it does a great job of putting human faces on historical happenings. This book was also very well written. Caty isn't just a flat cut out, she struggles with things, she holds contradictions in her mind without really seeing tension. She knows that the Quakers believe that all people and things have God in them, that it isn't only the Quakers who are chosen. However, when she is faced with the fact that she is in love with Snow Hunter, she knows that she will be rejected by the Quakers if she marries him. Both of these things are true, but she doesn't examine how they don't line up. Teenagers generally, sort of do this, they are at the age where they still see the world through the lens they are brought up with, but they also are noticing new and different perspectives. Some will butt right up against a belief or norm, while others will just start to add dimension to the way those beliefs and norms are considered. And so, you have this messy period where "My Quaker family loves and sees God in everything" and "My Quaker family would excile me for marrying a savage" are two things that can exist because Caty has started to realize that there is a difference between their view of God in theory, and their view in paractice.

The book also does a very good job of providing a compare and contrast of everyday life in a Quaker settlement and a Lenape camp. Both have daily chores and rituals, they may be different, but serve the same functions - to ensure that food, clothing, shelter, and we'll being are maintained.

Because Caty spend so much time, at first, being afraid and angry, the reader is really invited to see the similarities before she is ready to acknowledge them. I feel like this could be used as a way to educate kids not only in tolerance, but also in analytical reading and critical thinking.

I mean, a discussion question about what the the kid reading might have noticed that Caty hadn't, and why might it have taken Caty longer to notice these things could help kids to think of stories, and history beyond what is written on the page. The very human way the characters are present could be used to apply this line of thinking to the real world. Maybe realize that when someone is upset, they might not see things in the same way as someone who isn't and maybe they should keep that in mind when someone is emotional and not seeming to listen.

This is all the was I think this book could be used in an educational way. As a story, I think it is well worth the read. It is interesting that other than the Nameless almost faceless people who commit violence, this book has no villian, it is just an examination of life at the time from two different perspectives, and though written in a straightforward style, I never feel like it is talking down to the reader.

Glad I found this series!

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How To Be Okay, When Nothing is Okay, by Jenny Lawson

New book from one of my favorite authors!

I love Jenny Lawson, I was recommended her second book Furiously Happy by my library app, I think sometime in 2016. Even though her depression and anxiety manifest in different ways than mine, I had never felt so seen reading about these topics. And the book was fucking hilarious. That book lead me to her first book, Let's Pretend This Never Happened, which lead me to her blog. I have been following her books and her blog since.

This new one is a bit different from her three memoirs and her coloring book.

This one is really more of a book of strategies for when your brain is being an asshole.

It is still darkly hilarious and even takes a swipe at Freud, which is my favorite!

This isn't a typical "you should do this with these things in mind because I know about these things" and more "My brain likes to glitch and be mean to me, this is shit helps, also, you are up right today, that is amazing!"

I loved this from start to finish!

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Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

This book is so cool!

I have always loved the con man makes good plot line, and I have always enjoyed a conman who does it for the love of the game more than any financial gain.

And in Moist Von Lipwig, we have precisely that, and when the Patrician "executes" one of his alternate identities and gives him the choice of either actual death or revive the Ankh-Morpork postal system as himself, Moist, being an intelligent man chooses the latter. Of course he has an eye on returning to his old ways, if he can just shake the Golem that the Patrician has rented to keep him in line.

Of course, this being Ankh-Morpork, the decades and decades worth of undelivered mail has grown consciousness, there is a secret society of postmen, and other than the two odd(er)balls that work in the post office, anyone who tries to come in and clean things up, tend to end up meeting Death a lot faster than most.

I love that while Moist does end up seeing the error of his ways, he doesn't *become* a different person. He still manipulates situations, and people when it suits his needs, but his needs are no longer to fool people, commit the crime and get away clean. His needs go from doing what he has to to stay alive, to doing what he has to do the job he has been tasked with, to finally doing what is right.

And the whole time he was still himself, he was still reading people and figuring out the best way to make things go his way. In short he started to use his abilities for good of others and not just for himself.

And all of this plays out in the Discworld way. No preaching, no cheesy redemption moment. Just a guy realizing that the people he conned weren't pieces in a game.

Basically he stepped back from the trap of evil that Granny Weatherwax told us about - seeing people as things.

I would argue that he didn't realize he was doing this., Moist seems like he had a rule to never physically hurt anyone, he isn't amoral, he is incomplete moral. When he is confronted with the fact that his actions can cause harm without leaving a mark, is is like his conscience stopped playing solitaire, sat up and took notice.

And he tries not to realize that playing a situation to benefit others is more satisfying than conning. Because he is self aware enough to know that if he is going to keep being effective in his new role, he basically has to pull a long con on himself.

I love that because the crux of Moist's character is to observe, plan, and adapt, the reader is watching him actively learn. When something new hits him, it doesn't shake his foundations like it does Vimes, Moist has no foundations, so he just incorporates the new information into the roledex of his mind. Like when he learns about Golems, their function, and their belief system, even his first mocking jokes about all of it read less like distain and more like someone trying to find a slot to put this information so it could be built upon later.

You have to hand it to Vetinari, acknowledging that there is a fine line between being in public office and being a con man, and knowing that to best design a system crooks can't manipulate, have a crook design it.

It is all very Catch Me if You Can in feel.

This book is so much fun.

[darklingichor]

The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse, by Alan Bradley

I am currently reading the second in the Flavia de Luce series, but this short story popped up on my Kindle app.

11 year old Flavia's Sunday chemistry experiment is interrupted by a letter from a boy at Greyminster, the local boy's boarding school. The letter begs her for help on a murder.

Flavia jumps on her trusty bicycle, Gladys and the game is afoot!

Once she sneaks into the school, she is met by the student that wrote her, and the investigation into a dead faculty member begins.

Honestly, this was a good bite sized tale, but I am more impressed by the way it managed to capture Flavia's personality, and skill as a detective, and be a mystery that could keep you guessing - all in only 25 pages. In fact, this one could technically be read before the first book and it would be a decent introduction.

Damn good short story!

[darklingichor]

The Sactuary Sparrow, by Ellis Peters

I try not to do too many in the same series in a row, but these are the easiest I can listen to at work.

You know, what I have discovered about myself through this whole restructuring of my job thing? Open ended tasks make my brain itch.

I cannot believe how much scheduling depends on arguing and faith.

Arguing because to just get one person's schedule figured out, it is like I am in a negotiation where no one will be satisfied because the only way for that to happen, someone would have to defy the laws of physics and invent teleportation. And faith, because even though I have spent 45 minutes on the phone with this person solidifying what is going to happen, that person is creating an abridgment of the conversation, in real time, and is not checking for accuracy. So suddenly

"You're going here,and here ,and here today? You're going to see XYZ, ABC and 123, today? Okay, so that is happening today, the 3rd of March. I have this schedule on you for today. "

Becomes "You're going to drive 150 miles in the opposite direction of where you know you need to go, get lost on a bridge, and end up in Middle Earth, after which you will call me say that you thought that we were talking about the schedule for next leap year even though I said "today" multiple times and even said the date."

Customer service is really difficult, but, me personally, I would take client phone calls over the process of herding hyper cats with short term memory loss, that is scheduling.

This is a sentiment that the characters in this book might disagree with, as it starts with a nightmare of a customer service job.

The story opens with night prayers in the Abbey.

Suddenly a slight young man, who has been beaten comes running in, collapsing as he touches the alter, to declare sactuary.

A mob of drunk party goers from the wedding of the goldsmith son.

The young man is a performer, named Liliwin, hired for the wedding who was clocked over the head and thrown out by the groom's grandmother for breaking a jug. The family matriarch shorted him his pay. This is why the mob says that the boy came back and killed the goldsmith.

The Abbott grants the performer sanctuary, and lectures the men about bringing violence into the church.

Morning comes and it is discovered that the mob may have acted rashly as the goldsmith isn't dead, but he was cracked over the head and a portion of his money had been stolen.

Lilliwin insists that he hurt no one and stole nothing, but an investigation has to be performed and Lilliwin cannot leave the Abbey or he will be arrested.

Cadfael believes the Lilliwin, and has a bit of a reason to investigate as he is being asked to come and look after the health of the woman who threw Lillwin out an 80 year old woman as mean as she is tight fisted

He sees the family dynamic that is causing considerable tension in the house. The goldsmith more concerned with money than he his is newly married son, and his daughter, unmarried, undowlerd, and about to be replaced as keeper of the house by her new sister in law.

In the middle of all of this, the locksmith turns up dead. The towns folk are keen to blame Lilliwin.

Cadfael and Hugh Barrigar have their work cut out for them as the pieces of this puzzle do not fit together in a simple way.

I like this one a lot, but it does lean a bit darker. As I said in the entries on Monk's Hood and Virgin in the Ice, even though the books deal with murder and war on the regular, they usually tend to emphasize the action surrounding the accused and innocent, or the process of solving the mystery.

This one really focuses on the disfuction in the family and the emotional toil thay greed can cause.

There is never any doubt about Lilliwin's innocence and his development while in the Abbey is a good counterbalance to the tension that is embedded in the goldsmith's house.

The story ends in a way that reads as both unfair and fitting for the goldsmith's household. For Lilliwin, it ends with hope and happiness, but also with a touch of uncertainty.

A different story for the series, but still really good.

[darklingichor]

The Virgin in the Ice, by Ellis Peters

This is one of the Cadfael books that reminds me of Monk's Hood. Very serious set up, almost farcical execution. And I mean that in a good way.

It is the winter of 1139, King Stephen and Empress Maude are still duking it out over who will wear the crown. Stephen has the upper hand again and two noble children, in the care of a Benedictine convent have gone missing, their Maude loyal uncle wants to send his envoy to search for them. The sheriff of sherwsberry says that any Maude supporters found in the area will be arrested, but does volunteer his resources to help find the 18 year old and her 13 year old brother, with the promise of returning them to their uncle.

Cadfael gets pulled along because he is sent to care for an injured and ill, brother.

The search for the kids, and the healing of the injured monk, turns into a murder mystery when a young woman is found under the frozen ice of a lake.

Where are the children? Who is the woman in the lake, and who killed her?

Missing kids, a frozen murdered woman, an injured monk, and a war in the back ground. You wouldn't think thos would be a place where there would be a lot of amusement, but the way all of this plays out is slightly goofy if you look at it from the right angle.

See, everyone keeps moving around. The searchers and Cadfael find the boy, but his sister had run off with a guy she liked, while they are looking for her the injured monk wanders away, they find the girl and then they can't find her brother because he got kidnapped, then there is a scene where someone wanders into the middle of a hostage negotiation and starts making demands that seem ever so slightly unhinged while everyone just sort of stares at them. In the middle of all of this is a mysterious equivalent to The Man in Black that is just trying to set things right.

This, to me is the perfect example of what makes the Cadfael books great. mystery, action, characters with moral compasses, and just enough awareness of human nature to pick up on traces of its absurdity.

[darklingichor]

The Leper of St. Giles, by Ellis Peters

This is going to be short because, as much as I like this book, my brain has been at half mast after five every day, in memory of the energy I used to have.

I skipped St. Peter's Fair because it was sort of boring now that I knew what was coming next. I like this one a lot

The biggest plot in this one is an 18 year old heiress being married off to a 60 year old jerkwad at the insistence of her aunt and uncle who went to the same twatwaffle training that the groom did.

The bride is in love with someone else, but is too beaten down by her aunt and uncle.

Through various happenings the perspective groom ends up dead the bride's true love is a suspect.

Also going on is the appearance of a mysterious Leper at the Abbey's hospice house. He is one of the lepers that wonder from place to place, his disease isn't active, but he is scared and must be veiled and isolated based on the culture of the time.

Cadfael must help solve the murder and help the timid girl out from under her aunt and uncle.

The mystery in this one is great, but the most interesting thing for me is the time spent at the hospice. Brother Mark is one of my favorite side characters and I love how he interacts with all of the people under his care.

This one is less about the mystery and more about the characters, even ones we will never see again are richly developed, but we get more from Mark and we are introduced to a lovely woman that will appear again and make a huge impression on Cadfael.

One of the best ones!

[darklingichor]

Taming the Star Runner, by S.E. Hinton

I loved this one so much when I was a kid, it was easily my favorite after The Outsiders.

Not sure why, really, I think it was the fact that Travis was a writer, and the descriptions of him sitting in his room with his typewriter and his cat on his lap was one that I actually related to. Though replace typewriter with journal. It could have been that the time frame was closer to mine.

All of that being said I haven't read it since I was in my late teens. I still like it a lot, but reading this time I can kind of see why this is the only one of this group of books not to be made into a movie. It is sort of too patchwork to be made coherent on the screen. It might make a good miniseries because it mostly works in episodes.

Travis is a little like Ponyboy. Except Pony was less angry, used toughness as a defense against the way others saw him. Travis, is angry before he is anything else and that is what got him into the mess he is in.

I mean, he has every reason to be angry, his mom, a battered woman, to scared to stand up to her husband who gleefully torments her son.

As weird as it sounds this read through, I kept seeing parallels to Little Women in the parts dealing with Travis's family.

Travis is a writer, hot tempered. He doesn't have a family like the Marches but he does go through things that eventually help him settle without breaking his spirit.

Before the story starts, Travis was sent to juvie for beating the shit out if his stepfather with a fireplace poker. The attack was prompted by his stepfather going into his room, gathering up all his writing and burning it.

Travis went further than Jo did on Amy, but considering that there was never any love lost between the two, that isn't surprising.

Travis is sent to live with his uncle, on a ranch, who is going through his own life challanges. Now this doesn't perfectly align with Jo going to New York to put distance between herself and Laurie, but it still reminded me of it.

Travis has actually written a novel that ends up with a publishing deal, but is blocked because he is underage and his stepfather won't allow his mother to sign papers without reading the book first. Travis knows that his stepfather would never approve and his mother would never go against him.

He has an outburst that puts his living situation with his uncle on the line.

Now, again, this doesn't perfectly line up with Jo and Mr. Beahr 's disagreement over Jo's writing, but it did remind me of it. Ir reminded me of it because I always thought that Jo should have told Friedrich Bhaer to go to hell when he told her how to write, because she could write both the personal project and the stories that made her money. Pen names are a thing for a reason. I mean principles are great, but so is eating.

The fact that Travis refuses to let someone else's opinion dictate how his story would be presented is the correct way to approach it... without violent outbursts though.

The part where his mother actually stands up to her husband and let's the book publishing go forward is a pretty good light at the end of the tunnel moment.

Another plot in the book is about 18 year old Casey and her riding school that she teaches on Travis's uncle's ranch. Travis is attracted to Casey, but Casey really only has time for her riding school and training for her equestrian events with her horse The Star Runner.

This part is interesting as the reader gets to see City kid Travis interact with horses and all the various things that come a long with them. It's funny, years and years later when I would attempt to watch Gilmore Girls, I would think of Travis every time I would see Jess... only Jess stayed annoying.

In the third plot on the book, we suddenly get the backend of a crime story. One of Travis's friends. Joe, shows up on the ranch and tells the story about how he and two other friends have been running with a local thug and bugulrizing houses. Joe ran away when one of the other friends was shot and killed by the thug.

I remember thinking when ai read it as a kid, that I wanted to be in that story instead of reading about equestrian events. This time, I felt the same. I wanted to see that play out, not just as a story told by Joe.

All in all, I didn't like this one as much as I did when I was a kid. It is still good, it is just not as cohesive as the others - with the exception of Rumble Fish which feels disjointed by design.

[darklingichor]

Anima Rising, by Christopher Moore *spoilers *

This book asks: What if the story of Frankenstein ran into the art scene in pre WWI Vienna, snagging the father's of psychoanalysis along the way?

And throws in mythology, trickster gods and a dog named Geoff for goos measure.

This was my favorite book of last year.

There are very few of Moore's books that aren't a home run for me, but this one is in the realm of the Fool series.

Moore always writes strong woman characters, they are funny and usually the reasonable center of of the story, even when they aren't they are seldom the the engine of silliness (possible exception being Abby in the vampire books).

This one is different, Judith and Wally are both strong and smart and goofy as all get out.

Judith is more in line with Pocket than she is with a character like Julliet from Sacre Bleu.

Pocket is a rascal with humor shaped by a varied and often painful life. He survives by his wits and his humor, but he can and does do dumb things. His humor is both in born and taught, he is a performer under it all. Judith spends much of the book in an in-between space of remembering her past and trying to figure out her future. She is funny and a little dingy but still self assured and intelligent.

Wally has had to do what she has had to do to make it. She is practical and pragmatic smart beyond her 17 years, but still positive and happy she balances doing what she needs to with the wild potential of still figuring out what she wants to be when she grows up.

Together, they model, and navigate various weirdness.

Honestly while Judith reminds me of Pocket, the story feels a little like if we flipped the perspective of Sacre Bleu.

In Bleu we followed artists and how they get inspiration, Anima Rising follows the models.

And seeing how Wally navigates the moody artists and still stays herself is really interesting. Judith as a model is sort of insedetal because the big thing is her finding out who she is and how. She is basically the perfect subject for Freud and Jung.

A blank slate for Freud to impose his theories onto, an uncomfortable confirmation for Jung.

Judith perceiving that Freud is judging and looking down on her is perfect because she accepts his help to learn about her past without internalizing his bullshit. Her interactions with Jung are warmer and more collaborative, but that makes sense considering that she is the unintentional personification of the collective unconscious.

I love that we see the early stages of psychoanalysis through the lens of this slightly buggy woman!

Unlike in Sacre Bleu, where art was the focus, in this one art is in the background d and only a couple of artists are main characters.

Gustav Klimt in this book is basically a kind and slightly bumbling person. He gives money freely and willingly takes care of anyone in his life. Now, granted he has four kids around the city that he is supporting but not raising, the impression, though is this is less through a lack of responsibility and more a lack of focus on anything but art and it was generally known that if a woman modeled for Klimt it was a given that she was willing to share his bed. Though on the book this is not the case for Judith.

There are some uncomfortable elements of the book. After all, when writing about actual people and actual lives, you can't ignore parts that don't fit with the current culture. The age of consent in Vienna at the time was 14, that is too young, but that's what it was, and it does come up in the story where Klimt and other artists are concerned.

Sexual assault is also in this book, but it isn't described in detail and is used as another layer to the horror of the events.

I really like using Frankenstein as a framing device.

I like Frankenstein, but it has never been one of my favorites

I like how Moore takes the story and turns it a tad sideways. I know that in most readings, the monster is the sympathetic character and that works. Moore takes it in a different direction. The monster is miserable, not because he is lonely, not because he has been rejected, but because he is not supposed to exist. Adam is definitely one of the villains in the book, he has no redeeming qualities and lives in torment because he has no soul. He doesn't want a companion to be happy, he wants someone to live in torment with him, even if he has to make her hell himself.

Frankenstein on the other hand isn't as visibly evil, but his casual disregard for human life as long as it wasn't someone close to him is evident. And Judith is just caught up in allnof this mess trying to make the best of things.

All in all, the blending genres, humor, psychoanalysis, mythology and culture make a book that manages to be thoughtful, funny, and deeply satisfying. When everything wraps up, bad guys have been punished and our heroines have found purpose and peace.

Such a great book!

[darklingichor]

Monks Hood, by Ellis Peters

Things are changing at the Abbey. Father Harribit is called away to have his role as Abbott reassessed. While he's away Prior Robert is left in charge. Robert... how shall I put this? He stands very tall, likely because he has a stick jammed up a certain area. And he is just itching for "Prior" to be replaced with "Abbott". And his shadow, Brother Jerome is very happy to ride some coat tails.

There is also a household moving into the Abbey for the master's retirement. They gave their manor to the Abbey in exchange for the Abbey taking care of their needs.

When the master of the house falls ill and dies of poison, the sherif is convinced that the only suspect is the victim's 14 year old stepson who had been recently disinherited.

Hugh Barrigar, deputy sheriff, is away and unable to convince him to look beyond the easy.

Cadfael finds himself involved because, the murder weapon was the monk's hood oil he made for topical use on sore muscles, and it turns out the victim's widow is the girl he was engaged to as a teenager, just before he went to the crusades. She asks him to please help her so who she knows is innocent.

What follows is a tangle of inheritance laws, and past verses present loyalties.

This is one of my favorite books in the series. Much like the first book, you don't expect it to be as funny as it is. I mean, if you take the plot, make Cadfeal a detective and update the setting, and leave everything else alone, and it would be a thriller.

It is the two boys that give it the feel of an adventure. Edwin, the stepson who is a suspect in the murder, and his nephew Edwy are the same age and act like brothers, and look like twins to anyone not familiar with them. This is used to great effect when Edwin needs a distraction, decoy or just a little misdirection. Also any interaction between the two quickly turns into a session of brotherly name calling, character assassination, and wrestling. It gives just enough humor to the action that the reader isn't stuck on the poisoning death of a disagreeable man and the fact that the law is targeting a kid.

This is also one of the few books that we get a look back at Cadfeal's life before the monastery, with any kind of detail.

I love that it doesn't turn into a tired story of a man who is tempted by a past romance and has to struggle with his calling.

For all that everyone thinks that Cadfeal must be pained by the reintroduction to the woman he was commited to before going to the Crusades, everyone being all a twitter about it is just ridiculous to Cadfeal. He basically says that he forgot about her and she him, he was too focused on the war and then the adventure, and he was in no way faithful to the idea of marrying her while he was in the Holy Land or working as a man at arms, and he hadn't expected her to be either.

It's interesting, through the series, Cadfeal is witness to various love stories that begin at first sight, or very soon after, and nearly all of these love stories end with a start to happily ever after. But his own love story that seems to have started the same way petered out once the two lost sight of each other.

Cadfeal seems mostly amused about the pity and concern over this, you can hear the eye rolls in the way he spoke about it. Basically saying "Oh come on, we were kids, let it go!" That is until brother Jarome sticks his nose into things and he and Prior Robert make it seem like Cadfael's devotion to his calling was in question. Then you can tell he is just out and out annoyed. This makes sense, Cadfael has always been clear that his past is past and he is happy in his life. Course, his late in life call to the cowel had always made Jerome and Robert uncomfortable, and raising doubt about it is just the sort of power move they would make.

This book looks at a lot of things, but the biggest of them is loyalty, power and how both can shift and change, and how little power actually means.

[darklingichor]

poyums annaw, by Len Pennie

Okay, this is going to be short, because the very best thing I can say about this book of poetry, is simply that it is more than woth the read, even if you hate poetry. It is just as good as the first one Len Pennie wrote. I love that she writes in both English and Scots.

I said of the last one that even though I don't know Scots, I had no problem understanding the poems written in the language. I don't want ro make it sound like I think that Scots is just English with an accent. It isn't, it is a fascinating language. It does have a lot in common with English, so I think that is why I can mostly figure out what is being said through context. But that isn't always the case and some of the poems in this book are a bit of a mystery to me. There is one where I'm pretty sure it is a tongue in cheek ode to Rabbie Burns and hagis, or an ode to the author not liking hagis...

What I am saying is that even though I don't understand everything I love the look and feel of the words and it makes the meaning I do catch that much more memorable. Plus it gives me a reason to learn more about the language and it is really cool!

I love that the author writes about the environment, and politics - the latter done with such a biting mix of metaphor, and word play.

The poems about the way women are treated inspire righteous anger in me. The poems about her own struggles are real and raw and beautiful, even when they describe ugly things.

I hope everyone reads her work.