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:
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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.

The Harlequin (Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #15)

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by Laurell K. Hamilton

Reading a new book in a favorite series is like visiting old friends. You get to see how they’ve changed and developed since your last visit, and hopefully come away satisfied.

Unlike the previous installment in the saga of Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, The Harlequin has more plot than monster porn. Not that there isn’t sex, because it wouldn’t be an LKH novel without that, but the sex takes a back seat this time, and instead we’re treated to the return of Edward, the only man Anita doesn’t want to draw down on.

If hired killers can mellow, than Edward has, a little, in this outing, but then, fatherhood (even step-fatherhood) will do that to a person.

That aside, this is a great novel, and seems almost a return to the “old” Anita, the one who solved crimes. This time she’s going up against a secret sect of vampire enforcers, and trying to protect the members of the vampire church, of all things. Jean Claude is there, but not prominent, and the pack has actual development, and not just handsome body parts.

Great read, great to revisit Anita’s St. Louis.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

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by Malcolm Gladwell

There books you read that are mildly entertaining, which is great, but there are also books that completely change your perception of the world. For me Blink is one of the latter.

Describing it is difficult. It’s about improv, criminology, psychology, marriage counseling, body language and human interaction…sort of. But it’s also about – more than anything – the split second judgements we make all the time. The first impression that occurs before a first impression is even registered.

And it’s fascinating.

Gladwell’s informal style and self-effacing humor helps, of course, but mostly it’s the material that intrigues.

And, unfortunately, defies description.

Sister Carrie

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by Theodore Dreiser

Even a century ago writing about country folks moving to the big city and getting into trouble was a trend, and Sister Carrie does the genre well, in the story of a young girl who moves the city, falls into a relationship with a sleazy salesman, and then eventually leaves him and heads to New York with the bar manager (Hurstwood) she ends up marrying.

Hurstwood’s life begins to fall apart, but Carries soars in the opposite direction – she makes a name for herself as an actress, etc.

I’m almost certain this novel was assigned to me on a reading list at some point in my lift, but I’m equally certain that this was the first time I’ve ever read it.

The grittiness and depression is a bit relentless in this novel, but the characters are compelling.

The Lighthouse at the End of the World

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by Jules Verne

Reading translations always makes me wish I was more fluent in languages other than English. Oh, my Spanish is passable for getting directions and shopping, and my French is great when it comes to dance steps and cooking terms, but I don’t read enough of either to enjoy a deep conversation or a deep novel. Thus it was that I read The Lighthouse at the End of the World in English, and I suspect it lost a bit in translation.

If you love sea stories or action stories, pirates and treachery and that sort of thing, this is the novel for you. It’s an understated piece, and the language is fairly plain. It’s about a group of three lighthouse keepers sent to a remote island lighthouse. Said island is also inhabited by pirates who kill two of the keepers. The last must hold the light until help, in the form of soldiers, arrives.

Typically for me, I felt drenched while reading it (a very wet June may have helped.)

A classic.