Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day

If you are looking for a book of short stories that are eerie, dreamy, whimsical, strange, unsettling, and sometimes just plain weird have I got a book for you!

Ben Loory's collection of stories, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, has a little something for everyone.  The tales range from the very short ("The Shadow") to much longer ("The Graveyard").  One is an homage to Ray Bradbury.  One reminds me of Stephen King.  A few remind me of Roald Dahl or Philip K. Dick.  "The Hat" reminds me of Gogol.

One ("The TV and Winston Churchill") made me laugh.  A lot.  It's my favorite.
As a bookseller, I found "The Book" meaningful in a time when we debate the future of books and literacy.

I read this with my friends from the bookstore and, through the magic of Kat's enthusiasm, we got to Facebook chat with the author.  It was a really nice hour or so - slightly complicated by needing to dictate our questions to Kat who was serving as amaneuensis - where we talked about influences, his imagery, and how much we all liked the cover.  Then Ben dropped an interesting tidbit - he really hadn't wanted to include "The TV", a longer piece that is included in an appendix at the back of the book.  There is a note saying it was included at the request of the publisher, even though it wasn't part of the same project that produced the other pieces, but I hadn't thought too much about it.  It is a different piece, stylistically, and it contrasts with the rest of the book.  I liked the story, and was glad to read it, but I got the feeling Ben wished he had fought the publisher/editor more to keep it out.  I can understand why the publisher would want to - this is a thin book already, so the inclusion of "The TV" added a few more pages at the end - but it does contrast a bit too much with the other stories so perhaps wasn't necessary.

For another perspective on Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, Goodreads users need to go read my friend Kat's review.  She wrote it as an homage to the author.  I think it's lovely.

Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously

Some of us knit to make small things, knitted-up while watching TV.  Some of us knit to learn a new technique.  Most of us knit to keep our sanity.  And then sometimes, we knit something to prove that we can despite our sanity.

Adrienne Martini decided to knit Alice Starmore's Mary Tudor sweater.  In one year.  And she wrote a book about is:  Sweater Quest: My Year of Knitting Dangerously. 

For those who don't know, Alice Starmore is the (in my opinion) undisputed Queen of Fair Isle colorwork and Aran knitting patterns.  Beautiful, complicated, gorgeous (sort-of boxy in fit, but that's just me).  Only Alice Starmore could take the colors she does and make such lovely patterns.  The Mary Tudor is like the Holy Grail of sweaters.  The pattern book, Tudor Roses, is out-of-print (Adrienne will tell you exactly how much she spent online...be ready to have a lie-down).  The exact colors of the yarn aren't available in the US and the yarn company actually quit making the original yarn.  You can substitute colors but it doesn't come out looking quite the same (Ravelry link - there aren't many users with completed projects). 

Adrienne recounts her adventures in finding yarn, finding substitutes, knitting such fine-gauge colorwork, keeping her family (kids, pets, husband) and work going while knitting this crazy sweater.  She's a really funny writer and I chuckled and groaned right along with her.  She interviews other knitters and visits a "con" for knitters - if you ever want crazy-amazing support from other knitters go to Rheinbeck, Sock Camp, Stitches...Ravelry (that would be me, since I have no travel moneys).  Sweater Quest was a great, fun book not just about knitting to finish a project, but knitting to appreciate the process.

Robin McKinley: Beauty and the Beast

"Beauty and the Beast" is one of my favorite fairy tales.  The Disney movie adaptation and the Jean Cocteau adaptation are two of my favorite movies.  I quite liked the TV series (when I was allowed to watch it) and even have a soft spot for that odd Rebecca DeMornay musical adaptation.

I read Robin McKinley's Beauty: A Retelling of Beauty and the Beast back in junior high.  It's a really great adaptation in that it gives Beauty's family more depth.  Her sisters aren't jealous and grasping as in the original and are quite good at the make-do scenario.  They all pitch in to help with housekeeping and earning money for the household.  When Beauty's father returns with the rose and she agrees to live with the Beast, McKinley's tale aligns with the fairy story.  Beauty and her Beast have their happy ending.

I decided to re-read Beauty because, while looking at McKinley's bibliography, I noticed she also wrote a second re-telling, Rose Daughter.  Say what?  Sunshine rekindled my interest in McKinley so reading both Beauty and the Beast retellings would be interesting.

Rose Daughter incorporates more magic into the story.  In this world roses must be grown with the help of magic and are, therefore, very rare.  Beauty's talent lies in making plants and flowers grow.  Beast's roses are dying which partially explains why he's so upset when Beauty's father picks a rose for her and demands that she come in his stead.  Although Beauty only stays seven days in Beast's palace caring for his roses, as months go by for her family, the alternate reality of the castle and garden allows McKinley to spend a great deal of time thoughtfully exploring the situation Beauty finds herself in.  The end of the tale carries a true twist.  Once she declares her love for Beast, Beauty is given a choice: choose between the handsome Prince (Beast's former human form) or the Beast as he is now.  Beauty has her happy ending, just in a different form.  It's quite refreshing.

DNF: Three Seconds

After slogging through about 100 pages of this as an ARC for BNBC's First Look program, I put it down.  Everytime I look at this book, it makes me heave a sigh of resigned "I really must finish this" sentiment.

Sadly, I have no desire to finish this - no sympathy for any of the characters, no identification, and I think the undercover-prisoner-drug-smuggler plot is far too nuts for my to follow.  I have so many books to read that I have to let this one go because the thought of reading it no longer brings my joy.  Just drudgery.

And that isn't very fun when I have shelves and shelves of books I would rather be reading.

Gratuitous Cat Picture Friday (4)

In the jungle, the mighty jungle,....

Bugs are good cat toys (not such good appetizers, once the little hunters finished catching the bug Dante chewed it up and spit it out so Mommy could throw it away).














Hey, whaddaya mean "hunters"?  We are very nice kittehs.

Sunshine

I was almost certain, putting down Breaking Dawn after yawning my way through the final boring chapter in the early hours of Breaking Dawn-day-after-release-party, that I'd read a much better vampire/human story several years before.  Or at least part of one.  But I couldn't remember what it was....  Hardcover....had things other than vampires in it....

Kate came to my rescue: Sunshine by Robin McKinley.

Aha.  I had borrowed it from the library in a sort of post-graduate-school-thesis-writing-defense-giving-induced fog.  I actually didn't remember reading it nor did I ever write it in my book journal (pre-blog).  Guess I was due for a true re-read.

Sunshine is the story of Rae Seddon, nicknamed Sunshine, and what happens to her when she ignores all sense of safety to visit her grandmother's old house out by the lake.  The vampires just appear out of nowhere - because they don't make any noise - and drag her off to a different abandoned house where she is forced to change into a blood-red silk dress and chained to the wall.  Next to another vampire, also chained to the wall.  She's apparently an apperitif...or a form of torture.  It turns out Constantine, the vampire chained to the wall isn't quite like the other vampires.  He would prefer not to kill her.  Rae isn't just a garden-variety human, her ability to make the best cinnamon rolls ever aside.  She has the latent power to use sunshine to transmute objects.  Using Rae's powers and Constantine's vampire senses the two forge an alliance and escape from the house.

But the story doesn't end here.  This is only about page 75 or so - the rest of the book is about how Rae deals with the aftermath of her kidnapping and the very unlikely bond that she and Constantine now share.  The Special Others Unit (because this world abounds with vampires, were-whatevers, demons, wardkeepers, etc., etc. - this is a post-VooDoo Wars world) is interested in Rae because she not only escaped from a gang of vampires (they can track humans by smell, obviously) but also because she wastes a vampire all on her own in an alley.  Rae's boyfriend, Mel, is heavily tattooed with magical ward signs from a past he doesn't reveal and she never asks about them.  Rae's absent/possibly dead father, Onyx Blaise, is a magic handler with mythic powers.  In essence: this world is crazy-balls and it all snowballs into an explosive (literally) show-down with the vampire gang.

There's a lot going on in this book.  Because the book is told in the first person, McKinley allows Rae to explain what she knows about her world, which is decently extensive in certain areas but lacking in others, particularly her own family history.  If Rae needs something explained to her, we get to hear it, too.  Even though the plot exposition gets a bit long on occasion it has to go somewhere.  The SOF officers are a riot, particularly in one scene where it is revealed that at least one of them isn't quite what he seems.  Even the little quirks of the world - like a vampire can't drink your blood without asking your permission, but they can hypnotize you by breathing on you (or something) so you'll just agree to whatever they want anyway...which would be to drink your blood - make for little jokes. 

There is so much unexplained in Rae's world that I wish there was a sequel.  Or maybe a prequel.

I think fans of Sookie Stackhouse would like Sunshine (this is less "sexy" but has that really crazy mix of supernatural elements) and this is definitely for Twilight fans looking to graduate to something with more of an edge.  From my Goodreads review:

"This is what Twilight wants to be when it grows up, but only if they jettison that whiney Bella and creeper Edward."

The House of Tomorrow

Peter Bognanni (and every time I type this I want to type "Peter Bogdanovich") is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop.  His first novel The House of Tomorrow is set in Eastern Iowa - all the towns are easily recognizable even though he changes the place names.  The main character is a teenage boy, Sebastian, who has been raised by his grandmother.  She is a follower (read: devotee/acolyte/worshipper/disciple) of futurist and architect R. Buckminster Fuller and has homeschooled Sebastian following Bucky's philosophies of synergetics, efficiency, and sustainability - they live in a geodesic dome. 

I'm down for that.

Sebastian's life is turned up-side down when his grandmother has a stroke while a family - the Whitcombs - is touring the dome.  The mother takes Sebastian in during his grandmother's hospitalization, rather than turn him over to Child Services, and it is through Jared Whitcomb that Sebastian learns about being a teenager: smoking, girls, and punk rock (or at least Jared's version of punk rock). 

The characters in this book are very interesting.  Nana has an almost fanatical desire to isolate Sebastian so he can fulfill his potential.  Jared is a post-heart transplant teenager who has been sheltered nearly as much as Sebastian but tenaciously clings to his rebellious side.  Janice Whitcomb has reacted to her son's illness and survival and husband's abandonment by turning to God.  Meredith Whitcomb has donned a textbook teenage-tough-girl skin, hiding her hurt feelings and fears under a blase exterior.  Sebastian is a really bright kid, excelling in subjects like math and science, yet has almost no functional social skills.  When Jared decides that he and Sebastian should form a punk band (The Rash) to win the church talent show (as readers we know how THAT will go over, but Sebastian doesn't have a clue what talents are expected at a church function), Sebastian's worldview expands at an exponential rate.

This is definitely a coming-of-age novel but one of the mind, really, rather than the body.  Many ideas and paths are laid before Sebastian once he sees what lies outside of the dome.  Was his Nana right to keep him so sheltered?  Is she in her right mind when she checks out of the hospital and decides to paint the exterior of the dome in a representation of the globe (Bucky's "Spaceship Earth")?  Should Sebastian return to the dome and the life his grandmother set out for him in Bucky's image?  Is the fuck-the-establishment of punk rock the way to go?  What about school?  College?  What about girls?  Meredith is definitely an exotic species - the first girl Sebastian has ever interacted with - and he becomes a bit obsessed with her.

Definitely read this with an open mind as to philosophy.  I was ready too early to dismiss Nana's isolation of Sebastian (I feel very strongly that so much social deprivation does odd things to kids, they need some interaction with other kids, to run around and play, etc) but the very-generous sprinkling of Bucky's philosophy goes quite a long way toward explaining why she acted they way she did.

The House of Tomorrow is  B&N Discover New Writers pick as the winner of the Los Angeles Times 2010 Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

A Dance with Dragons

OMG, it's here!  I have read it!  It was amazing!  I need more!!!!  (Ugh, I need some sleep, too.)

Having read through book four of George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, I could finally understand why people were getting really twitchy about his fifth book.  Why we'd get yet another person coming into the store looking for A Dance With Dragons and then heaving a tremendous sigh of disappointment when we said there wasn't a publication date available.

I get it now, I really do.

And that is why I read 1100+ pages in six days.  I'm probably going to spoil some things so you're forewarned.

We catch back up with Jon and the "rock and another rock and a hard place" situation of being Lord Commander of the Night's Watch when Stannis is trying to get him to reneg on his vows by offering him Winterfell, dead things walk in the night and try to kill people, and the sudden influx of Wildings causing a dire need for more food, shelter, and discipline, as well as distrust from half his Sworn Brothers.  Roose Bolton and his really, REALLY sadistic son also cause problems.  Tyrion has been smuggled out of King's Landing by Varys and sent to Illyrio (whom we haven't really seen since A Game of Thrones).  From there he is sent on a journey toward Daenerys and Mereen in the company of "Griff" and "Young Griff"... but gets waylaid and captured in a brothel (of all places) by Jorah Mormont.  He also meets another dwarf, Penny, whose brother was killed by men eager to claim Cersei's promised lordship, and she provides a new perspective on being a dwarf for Tyrion.  Daenerys has got herself into royally (pun intended) hot water by establishing herself at Mereen to keep the slave trade from reopening there and a guerilla war by the Sons of the Harpy forces her to make some really dense choices.  Her dragons are also causing serious trouble because, guess what, they have grown a great deal and seem to have started eating people (children at least).  At the end of the North and Essos chapters we start catching up with other characters, chiefly Jaime, Cersei, and Arya (Cersei's punishment...never, EVER could have guessed that, ever).

GRRM gives us great perspective chapters from old/new characters like Ser Barristan Selmy (yay!), Ser John Connington, Quentyn Martell, Asha Greyjoy and Melisandre (wtf! - need more from her/her history).  And THEN we get perspective chapters from Reek, aka the wreck-that-used-to-be-Theon-that-douche-who-double-crossed-Robb, AND DAVOS!!!  Can I just tell you how happy I was that Davos is still around?  Granted, his storyline just got wierder because he has to go find Rickon and Osha, whom we haven't seen since they parted company with Bran, Hodor, Jojen, and Meera, but he's not dead and he's one of my favorite POV characters.

Speaking of Bran, he's got really boring chapters.  As does Victarion Greyjoy.  We all have our favorite characters/characters we love to hate and I found myself starting to skim the POVs that I didn't care much for.  Although...GRRM did toss up something odd in one of Bran's chapters that I had to go back and re-read:  Bran can "jump" into the heart-tree at Winterfell and see its whole history and there was a brief flash of Eddard Stark praying something about Jon's mom....  And that was it!  I was like, wait, what???  Tell us more!!  People have some seriously crazy ideas about Jon being Lyanna and Rhaegar's kid (I'm fence-y, given that Jon would need to be at least a year older than Robb and it's acknowledged that he's younger because Eddard knocked up Catelyn before he went off to war) - when is someone going to let Jon know where he comes from??  All those chapters from characters I don't care so much about...they are important, just don't know why as yet.

However, two important characters didn't make an appearance at all in A Dance with Dragons:  Sam, now forging his chain in the Citadel, and Sansa, hiding in the Vale with Petyr.  Sam just has a great voice and I want to see how Maesters are trained.  Sansa, however, is a character I didn't like in A Game of Thrones but have come to be very invested in her outcome.  Her situation is just as dangerous as Arya's: she's masquerading as Petyr's illegitimate daughter, accused by Cersei of helping Tyrion poison Joffrey (it was really Petyr/Margery's kooky grandma), but GRRM makes it clear that Petyr thinks Sansa is as beautiful as her mom.  And Petyr still has a thing for Catelyn, as evidenced by how easily he pitched Lysa out the moon door in A Storm of Swords.

So...now I wait like everyone else.  What would I like to see in Book 6 (please GRRM, write fast!)?  Since we're giving out POV chapters to a wider range of characters I'd like to see ones from Jeyne Poole (poor girl), Jorah Mormont (dudes, he is OVERDUE for a chapter), Osha, Petyr (how does that sneaky little mind work), and Varys (how does HIS sneaky little mind work).  I'd love a chapter from Kevan's POV, but he got taken out by Varys's "birds" in the Epilogue.  ADDITIONALLY, I would really, REALLY like to see Daenerys take everyone (the dragons, Ser Barristan, Jorah, Tyrion, Penny, her Unsullied, etc) and get the heck out of Mereen, perhaps by way of Old Valyria - the Doom of Valyria keeps being mentioned, as well as how no one goes there anymore, and that seems important.

And then I'd like to see Arya let loose on Westeros.  She is now officially the scariest child-character in fiction.

(Apologies for the fangirl review)

There Is No Year

I kept hearing about Blake Butler's new novel - innovative, haunting, artistic, poetic.  When HarperCollins offered a copy of the novel in their summer blogger email I decided to take the plunge.

There is No Year is a novel that defies description.  At minimum, it is the story of a family that moves into a new house.  They find a motionless, emotionless "copy family" - mother, father, child - and a room filled with hair.  The house is mysterious, mazelike, eerie.  Butler's writing worms its way into your imagination.

There is no obvious narrative structure making the book an interlinked series of prose poem-like chapters.  I was reminded a bit of Coraline, a bit of House of Leaves, a bit of the Winchester Mystery House, a bit of the movie Orphanage, and a bit of Donald Barthelme, particularly The Dead Father.  I couldn't just sit down and read this book cover to cover.  I read a chapter/poem or two, puttered around the house a bit, then sit down and read a few more.  I would love to hear Butler read this aloud because the beauty of this book is how the words evoke a situation where nothing is "right" - while the house is not menacing, it certainly is not welcoming.

*Dear FTC: I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

Reasons I have not updated the blog...

1.  Not entirely sure, it suddenly became less appealing than previous.  I think this is called "burn-out".

2.  I read all four extant books in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire in a little under ten days.  That's about 3,000 pages.  I may have fried my brain.  I think I am in love.

3.  I obsessed about the Game of Thrones TV show because I don't get HBO not does my cable provider participate in HBO Go.  (Note to HBO: I would PAY MONEY for online subscriptions to episodes, you can do it through HBO.com or iTunes, your choice - and then I would buy the DVD set ASAP;  PS: what's the release date for that bad boy of a Season 1?)

4.  I've been working a lot.  Work=teh suck.

5.  I was trying to read The Bone People by Keri Hulme for "Literature by Women" - it pushed the wrong buttons in me.  Normally, books with major issues like child abuse don't freak me out too much but something in this one hit me at the wrong time.  It is well-written and that probably is what's making the subject freak me the frak right out.

6.  I've been working on some deadlines for Alpha Chi Sigma....still got one coming actually.

and in the biggest surprise of all...

7.  I've been writing a book.  Un-freaking-believable.  I haven't written anything since high school (I do not recommend peer-review writing groups when one kid reads at a college level and the rest are somewhere back in junior high) and before Memorial Day I just sat down, opened a journal, and started writing out a plot I've had in my head for years.  I've got most of a first re-write done then I think I might be able to let it rest for a bit.  (And no, I'm not sharing, yet.  It's currently contained in three journals of nasty long-hand scribbling because I can't think at the computer, oddly enough.)  And then I have to read a book about dialogue because my lead-ins and lead-outs are getting repetitive.

So I've got some reviews in the hopper and they need a bit of polishing - don't be surprised if some reviews appear backdated.  If I accepted a book for review (*cough* HarperCollins *cough*), I'll get to it as soon as I can (good thing I stopped responding to my email, no new review copies piling up).  If I haven't yet responded to an email (*cough* My Friend Amy *cough*), I'll get to that soon, too.

Back to writing and plotting to rejoin the land of the interwebs.

X-Men: First Class

I have to admit, I was pretty "meh" on the announcement of X-men: First Class.  After The Last Stand and Wolverine I just wasn't interested in the universe anymore.

And then they cast Michael Fassbender as Magneto.

I'm game.

Mediazombie (and her brother) and I hit up a matinee.  The movie is a lot of fun and a good way to re-boot the franchise.  The sixties period styling is nice as is the tie-in with the real-world Cuban Missle crisis (President Kenney's archival footage makes an appearance).  There's a montage sequence during "mutant training" that looks very mod with the boxes bringing in the scene in an out.

I thought Fassbender did an excellent job as Erik/Magneto.  His eyes are so expressive that even when he wears the helmet you can still see the emotion, he doesn't overdo it.  James McAvoy was also good as Charles/Professor X - he even got a few digs in about how the character is bald in the original.  Although it seemed a bit hammy at times, Kevin Bacon does make a nice villain, very slimy (didn't like his henchwoman January Jones much - looked nice but given very little to do).

It was a fun afternoon.

(Forgot to write down the previews, sorry).

The Other Boleyn Girl (Eric Bana-style)

Just a short note:

I haven't read the Phillippa Gregory novel the movie is based on but I have read a good number of histories of the Tudors as well as Alison Weir's biographies and histories.  I am quite familiar with Henry VIII and his wives and mistresses.

I watched The Other Boleyn Girl because Eric Bana was cast as Henry....  He's a good actor but I was unimpressed that the famous red-haired king, whose younger daughter Elizabeth had the same red hair, was portrayed as having nearly black hair. 

According to historians, Mary Boleyn apparently made the rounds of the men at the French court (most also probably King Francis I) before returning home to marry Sir William Carey, already a well-known courtier (Henry VIII attended their wedding) and her first child was a girl, not a boy.  She was also banished from court for marrying a commoner after the death of her first husband and certainly did not kidnap her niece, Elizabeth, to keep the child from Henry.  So the image of Mary as a sweet, innocent, docile young woman who was forced by her nefarious uncle, Thomas Howard (who was probably up to no good in reality), to become the King's mistress to advance the family standing at Court is a complete fabrication.  In addition, ScarJo really didn't do it for me.

I did quite like Natalie Portman, though.  She even looked a bit like Anne with her dark hair.

Overall, I disliked the movie for its inaccuracies although it did have excellent costumes.