It’s A Wednesday Thing: Of Song and Water

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Sometimes, even if a book is good, you have to put it aside for a while, because it just doesn’t fit the right mood. I’m in the middle of reading Of Song and Water, and it’s a beautiful book, with vivid descriptions and haunting characters. Sort of a blues riff in textual form, all about jazz and shipping, prohibition and personality conflicts. It’s lovely to look at, I like the texture of the paper, and the words are well chosen.

But it’s also sad, and as much as I appreciate the quality of the book and am interested to know what happens to the characters, I need to put it aside for a while.

Of Song and Water was written by Joseph Coulson

Island of the Sequined Love Nun

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by Christopher Moore

I borrowed this book, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, from one of my ComedySportz troupemates, without quite knowing what I was getting into. What I found was an hilarious trip that had plane crashes, hard luck stories, and off-kilter romance. If Clive Cussler wrote chick lit, this would be it.

The main character, Tuck, is a pilot for a company that is clearly supposed to be Mary Kay cosmetics, right down to pervasive use of the color pink. He crashes the plane, gets sent to a tropical island that is loosely affiliated with the Federated States of Micronesia, meets a male drag queen prostitute and a talking bat, and ends up involved with a doctor and his wife, who has taken on the role of the Sky Priestess for a tribe of natives who have become a cargo cult.

At times poignant, sad, funny, exciting, action-packed, horrifying, and romantic, sometimes all at once this book is a must read for anyone who has ever thought that chick-lit needs more gunfights.

Persian Pictorials – Rostam: Tales of the Shahnameh

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There are comic books that exist merely to entertain, and there are graphic novels which are a bit more artistic. Either way the medium is one that has gained newfound respect in recent years, with ever widening subject matter. Television shows are given virtual seasons beyond their last air date, popular heroes are given new adventures, and mythological figures come to life via paper and ink.

An interesting example of the latter is the Rostam Comic Book. Rostam: Tales of the Shahnameh is an interpretation of Persian (Iranian) legend in modern comic book format. (The Shahnameh, by the way, is the Epic of Kings, a collection of mythological stories from before Iran was under Islamic influence.)

The website: http://www.theshahnameh.com does not offer the actual graphic novels (you have to buy them) but it does have downloads of the featured characters, a history of the project, and news about upcoming works.

The site is worth checking out, and the comics themselves are a beautiful blending of history, folk lore, and modern media.

Five for Friday: Beach Reading

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Welcome to a new weekly post here at Bibliotica: a list of five books on a theme, each Friday. This week, to usher in August, I’m sharing five of my favorite beach books.

While some people think of beach reading as anything light that one might read at the beach, for me, beach reading involves books that are set at or near the shore. Here are five of my favorites, alphabetically by author:

Beaches, by Iris R. Dart
We all know the movie, but the novel it was based on is richer, as novels tend to be.

The Mermaid Chair, by Sue Monk Kidd
Vivid imagery, and an excellent depiction of a coastal town.

Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas, by James Patterson
A quiet, sweet, sentimental little novel. The movie (direct to DVD, I think) couldn’t approach it in tone or poignancy.

Three Sisters Island Trilogy, by Nora Roberts
These three novels, Dance Upon the Air, Heaven and Earth and Face the Fire all take place on a cute and charming fictional island, with each novel focusing on one woman, though their stories are interwoven. It has everything I love in novels – a cafe/bookstore, the beach, and romance.

Up Island, by Anne Rivers Siddons
Actually, Ms. Siddons has written many beach books – Colony, Low Country, and Outer Banks are three others – she’s amazing at capturing the Carolinas, and the Gullah culture, as well as just general beachiness.

Your Turn: What does “beach reading” mean to you? What are some of your favorite beach books?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus (Vol. I)

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Since the Buffy Season Eight graphic novels were on hiatus for July, I needed to get my fix somehow, and since this omnibus of the original Buffy graphic novels (comic books to those of us born before 1980) was advertised in the back of the last issue, I had to have it.

I took it home, intending to wait until morning to read it, and ended up reading the whole thing in one sitting. It’s a great collection – the graphic version of the movie as Joss Whedon intended it to play, and an adventure from between the movie and the show. An episode in the Spike and Dru chronicles was there also.

Altogether, it was enjoyable, though it made me miss the television show more than I expected it to.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

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by J. K. Rowling

And so it ends – the series that has gripped children and adults alike for ten years now has come to a close. I read it overnight, after having to put it aside for several hours and leave the house (actually, I took it with me, but there was no opportunity to read). I was expecting to either love it or hate it. Instead, while there are a few elements I would change, if I could, I left the book feeling satisfied.

As I discussed with a friend, the Harry Potter books are not high art, but that’s okay, because we need mind candy. We need to sometimes read things just for the pleasure of falling into the story. These books are great for that, because whether it’s Hermione, the ultimate geek girl, Harry, the orphan who overcomes his upbringing, Ron the perfectly normal kid, or even Tonks, who hates her “normal” image, or silky, snarky Severus Snape, we find someone to identify with. For me, it was a blend, for others it’s one character, but the identification is there.

With this book, there is no more tossing it off as kiddie lit, though. This book is bloody, and violent. Our heros are fighting a war, and while they may use wands and magic instead of guns and bombs, people are still getting hurt and killed.

Spoilers Abound:
Continue reading →

Blood Rites

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Another visit to the life of professional wizard Harry Dresden, this time finds him trying to protect the women involved with an erotic filmmaker from an entropy curse. There are hints of sex, of course, and seduction, and Harry, being human, can’t help but react, but really this is not a novel about sex as much as it is about family and willpower.

Family? Oh yeah, Harry finds some in an unexpected place.

As usual there are two plots, tightly intertwined. The “B” plot has to do with a rogue vampire trying to kill Harry. Kincaid, the body guard from book 5, makes a repeat appearance in this novel.

Oh, yeah, and Harry acquires a dog.

His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (aka Northern Lights)

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by Philip Pullman

I chose to read this book without quite knowing what it was. I’d heard of the series His Dark Materials but somehow thought they were about another boy wizard, and not a curious young girl. I was attracted to the UK title Northern Lights but didn’t really connect that it was one and the same with The Golden Compass. I like the UK title better, by the way, as it’s more accurate and more mysterious.

In any case, it was the movie that made me want to read the books. Oh, I know, the movie’s not out yet, but I’ve seen the trailer, and it looks fantastic.

And so I sat down with the first book and got to know Philip Pullman’s characters, especially spunky Lyra, and his alternative history with great air ships (dirigibles, essentially), and daemon spirit guides, and talking bears, and such. It’s such a richly created world, and the writing is amazing – all the scenes in the arctic felt cold to me, and I kept wishing it wasn’t 90 degrees outside so I could justify sipping hot cocoa while I read.

And now I’m hooked, but I promised myself I wouldn’t read books two and three until I’d finished the rest of my stack.

Death Masks

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by Jim Butcher

A visit to Harry Dresden’s Chicago is like putting on the perfect pair of faded jeans. You know the denim is old, and you know the seat’s about to rip out, but you just don’t care, because they make you happy. These books are the same way: you know that Harry’s going to take a beating, and you know there’s going to be financial angst and lots of mayhem, but Harry is such a likable fellow, and the writing is just so real, that even if you’re the type who cringes whenever the hero takes a punch, you keep reading.

In this installment, we find Harry chasing after the shroud of Turin. No, I’m not kidding. Along the way, of course, there are demons and mafiosos to deal with and oh, did we mention that one of the Vampire Courts is trying to engage him in a duel that will trigger the all-out final battle between the vamps and the White Council.

Oh, and then there’s the fact that Susan, the almost-vamp lover Harry still pines for is not only back, but in the thick of the action.

At this point, such rock-and-hard-place situations should be no surprise.

It should also be no surprise that this book is completely riveting, and great fun.

The Last Summer (of You and Me)

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by Ann Brashares

In her first novel written for the general population instead of the young adult market, Ann Brashares shows us that she can spin a tale as compelling as her earlier work and just as satisfying. In truth, her better-known Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants novels are truly ageless, so that rather than graduating from “kiddie lit” to the adult fiction, the author has mainly deepened her tone, and added a few more sophisticated nuances to her subject matter.

Brashares is equally deft with creating people and places. In The Last Summer, she gives us a picture of summer life on Fire Island so vivid that I could actually smell the salt air and feel gritty sand between my toes. Likewise, her trio of main characters, 21-year-old Alice, her older sister Riley (age 24) and their best friend from childhood, Paul, are sketched well enough that each becomes fairly real. If Riley is a little blurrier than the other two, I see it as design, rather than a flaw, for an integral part of the plot is Riley’s sudden extremely serious illness, and the scarcity of long scenes with her seems to foreshadow the end of the story.

When describing this book to friends, I referred to it as “beachy and lyrical,” and I stick by that description. Reading this book, one can feel the ebb and flow of tides and time.

I look forward to more of Brashare’s work.