Mystery author # 43: Rita Mae Brown

Here is series that may or may nor have been inspired by Lilian Jackson Braun’s Cat Who… series: the Mrs. Murphy books. The similarities are several: the cosy small town setting, the close-knit community full of colourful characters, and a smart cat that helps its owner solve mysteries. But this is not to say that this is clone of the Cat who… series, not at all. To start with, the reader is actually allowed to see into the mind of the animal characters, who have conversations that are often more sensible than those of the humans around them, thus firmly anthropomorphising them for the readers. The most obvious difference is that the sleuths are female and by no means rich like Braun’s Qwill. Additionally, the cats appear to be moggies rather than purebreeds, and several other species of animals are involved in the solving and resolution of the mysteries.

Series detective: Mary Minor Haristeen (“Harry”) and Mrs. Murphy, a tabby cat
Type of mystery: Murder
Type of investigator: Amateur, animal
Setting & time: Crozet, Virginia, USA; modern timeless
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Title 1: Rest in Pieces
No. in series: 2
Year of publication: 1992

Story:
It is autumn in Virginia and farmer and postmistress “Harry” Haristeen has a handsome new neighbour, a rich fashion model from New York who has bought the neighbouring farm. When Harry’s corgi, Tucker, finds severed body parts in the private graveyard by the newcomer’s farm, and more body parts begin to be found around the county, suspicion at first falls on the new guy, but when another body is discovered it begins to appear that a local resident is involved, and Harry, Mrs. Murphy, and Tucker wonder who the killer could be. A series of events leads him to reveal himself in a dramatic manner, but he doesn’t count on the smart cat and feisty corgi…

From here onward you may find SPOILERS

Review:
There is rather a nice little twist near the end of this tale, and there are enough clues to keep a traditionalist mystery reader happy, but not enough to give away the story right away. So far so good, but there is hardly any investigation, just a series of coincidences that lead Harry, the neighbour and a third person into the path of the killer, and a scene where the animals come to their rescue in a manner worthy of one of the dreadful modern Dr. Dolittle movies.

Rating: A sometimes funny and continually enjoyable little mystery, but not much sleuthing going on. 2+ stars.
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Title 2: Catch as Cat Can
No. in series: 10
Year of publication: 2002

Story: When 2 locals and a stranger are murdered in Crozet in a matter of days, it sets the town abuzz. Harry is no exception, and this time she takes an active hand in investigating the case, along with her 2 cats and corgi dog and a group of her friends. In co-operation with the police the killers are caught.

Review:
This novel, unlike Rest in Pieces, is a real sleuth story. Harry actively investigates the crimes throughout the story, prodded and sometimes helped by her pets, especially Mrs. Murphy. But some of the clues are clumsy and vague and the identity of one of the criminals is unconvincing and seems like it was decided on as the rather clumsy lead-up to the climactic scene was being written. A clue crucial to the understanding of that particular criminal’s identity is written in such a way that it can only be understood as a clue if you read it as observations by Mrs. Murphy, but as it is written in the third person omniscient style it is impossible to know that until afterwards, which breaks the rule of having the reader on an even footing with the sleuths.

Rating: An entertaining and past-paced funny mystery with some unfortunate fatal weaknesses. 2+ stars.
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Overall rating:
These entertaining books are recommended for 2 types of mystery fans: cat lovers and those who like fantasy. The writing is firmly in the cosy tradition, except for some rather gruesome but fortunately brief descriptions of corpses, which jar with the cosy atmosphere and give the stories a slightly gothic flavour. It is mostly the characters and their relationships that really make the stories interesting, along with some beautifully rendered descriptions of nature and the seasons, and of course the conversations, relationships and antics of the animals.

Brown is rather fond of using the expression “richer/older than God”, which is only amusing the first time you read it and does not bear repeating in the same book, especially not when applied to the same character as it is in Rest in Pieces. Fortunately it is only used once (that I noticed) in Catch as Cat Can, to good effect.

All in all, I liked the books in spite of their flaws, and will read more when and if I come across them.

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P.S.
I am not making good progress with The Canterbury Tales. The book is so big and stiff and unwieldy (not to mention heavy) that it is painful for my hands and wrists to hold it open for more than 10 minutes at a time, plus it just takes longer to read Middle English than the modern version when you’re not used to it.
It may therefore take me another month to finish it.

Reading report for April

Can someone please explain to me how I managed to lose a book the size of 2 bricks? I’m sure I’m not that disorganised, but I managed to lose it anyway. The book in question is my copy of the collected works of Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales being my classic of the month. I only found it (under my bed, if you must know) on Wednesday the 23 of April. “Fine” I thought, “I’ll have the holiday (April 24 was the Icelandic 1st day of summer and a bank holiday) and the weekend to read it”, but it was not to be: my parents arrived and on Thursday we visited relatives and the weekend was spent on quality time with my mother, something I wouldn’t have missed for any book, however important. Therefore, I will be reading 2 classics in May: The Canterbury Tales and a Saga I have yet to choose (probably one of the shorter ones).

April was a busy reading month for me, even if I didn’t get round to more than the prologue and first three Canterbury tales. I read 15 books, 3 of which were rereads:

Georgette Heyer’s The Corinthian and Terry Pratchett’s Men at Arms & Feet of Clay.

Last month I finally started reading Nora Roberts. I don’t know what took me so long to get going with her books – that is, the books published under that name. I discovered her J.D. Robb books several years ago and have been reading them in order of publication, taking care to do it slowly enough that I will not catch up with the series for a number of years. If the books in the In Death series continue to be as entertaining as they have been so far, I think I would be miserable if I didn’t have at least one of them to look forward to. But back to Nora – I accidentally bought the second book in one of her trilogies at the flea market and when I discovered it, I went to the library and checked out the other 2, plus another 2 trilogies and a book of her novellas, thinking I should have some choices. I ended up reading 2 trilogies, and am in the middle of the third. Roberts is an expert spinner of tales, and while they all focus on romance, her books are also full of strong characters, complicated non-romance relationships and adventure, and the ones I read also have supernatural elements.

Due to this Nora Roberts spree and the 3 other romances I read, I read more romances in April than I think I have ever done in one month before. This is possibly due to it being spring, or possibly because I find that the prospect of a happy ending is very nice indeed when my mood barometer is on the downswing. Depression, even the mild sort, is a nasty thing to have and sometimes I need all the help I can get to make the mood barometer swing the other way.

I also managed to squeeze in one challenge author, and will review her once I have read the second book by her that I have lined up.

The rest of the books:
David Niven: Bring on the Empty Horses
Michael Palin: The New Europe (coincidentally, just as I finished the book, they started showing the TV series on national television)
Susan Elizabeth Phillips: This Heart of Mine & Heaven, Texas (coincidentally, one of these deals with depression)
J.D. Robb: Judgment in Death
Nora Roberts: The In the Garden trilogy: Blue Dahlia, Black Rose & Red Lily and the Keys trilogy: Key of Light, Key of Knowledge & Key of Valor
Margaret Truman: Murder at the Library of Congress

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I also watched one literary adaptation: Perfume, based on the novel by Patrick Süskind. It was a beautifully filmed but somewhat simplified version of the story told in the book. While I understand the film-maker’s desire to have a sympathetic protagonist in the film (which Grenouille is most assuredly not in the book) to boost its saleability, I still think the actor playing Grenouille, while skilful at his art, was too good looking. Having Grenouille understand the wrongness of his actions was, in my opinion, an unnecessary addition to the story, because the point of it, if any, was to create a totally unsympathetic character, which could only be done without allowing him to have even the slightest bit of regret for his actions. Some of the other actors were miscast as well, especially Dustin Hoffman who was far from convincing in the role of the Italian has-been perfumer. I also understand the necessity of fleshing out the story to plainly show things that were only hinted at in the story, but I don’t recall there having been even the slightest hint of detective story in the novel. I did enjoy how sight and sound were used to interpret what Grenouille was smelling, surely the most clever attempt to use synesthesia I have seen on the screen. Apart from the choice of actors and the simplification of the story, I felt that there was something else missing. For lack of a better word I will call it “soul” – that indescribable depth and sparkle that can make the difference between a movie being a mere passing fancy to it becoming a classic.

More additions to the library

Bought and received through BookMooch in the last 2 weeks:

The week's haul of books

I have been indulging in retail therapy, and since most of what I bought was dirt cheap second-hand books, I got off lightly and didn't even have to use my credit card.

I did have to restrain myself from buying all 20-something Ed McBain books I came across at the book section of the charity shop, and instead I only bought 6. If they are still there on Monday I may give in and buy the rest.

The Harry Kemelman and Erma Bombeck books also came from the charity shop. The 2 Tony Hillerman books and the J.D. Robb and co. book I got through BookMooch, and the Manuel Vazquez Montalban and Carol Anne O'Marie books are library culls.

A sorry sight

An abandoned library
(Note: this is a translation made with online translation software, and so is not perfect, but enough to understand what is going on.)

Makes you wonder what happened. Perhaps the books are simply outdated? Whatever the reason, I think they could at least be recycled instead of just letting them moulder.

Bookshop I want to visit

I love visiting unusual bookshops and libraries, and the Selexyz Dominicanen bookshop in Maastricht in the Netherlands is just such a place. It is located in an old church, which undeniably makes it unusual. Many old libraries have a somewhat church-like atmosphere, and I think it would be interesting to visit a bookshop with such an atmosphere.

Click the post title to read an article about this special bookshop.

Here is a link to Flickr images from the bookshop: Selexyz Dominicanen

Books I acquired last week

Missing from the photo are 3 books that my mother borrowed from me before I could photograph them.

The statuette on top of the stack is the latest addition to my owl collection. It's carved from coal (what will they think of next?).

Reading report for March 2008

In March I finished reading 10 books. Most I had started reading as far back as December of last year, so pagewise I am definitely below average.

One, Guards! Guards!, was a perennial reread (I am now reading the City Watch story arc within the Discworld series), and another, Metamorphosis, was a partial reread.

Metamorphosis was also my classic of the month. The Voyage of the Beagle will have to wait another couple of months for that honour, as I decided to read The Canterbury Tales in April and an Icelandic Saga in May – I haven’t decided which one, but possibly Laxdæla saga or a couple of the shorter ones.

I am working on some reviews and will post them when they are ready.

The books:
Eurydice: Satyricon U.S.A. (article collection): 2+
Tony Hillerman: Skinwalkers and Listening Woman (mysteries): 4 & 3+
Katie Macalister: A Girl's Guide To Vampires (paranormal romance): 2+
John D. Macdonald: One Fearful Yellow Eye (mystery): 4
Harry G. Nickles: Foods of the World: The Cooking of the Middle-East (cuisine and cooking): 3
Ovid : Metamorphosis (classic, myths): 4+
Terry Pratchett: Guards! Guards! (fantasy mystery): 4+
Nora Roberts: Sanctuary (romantic thriller): 3+
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: Cat's Cradle (satire): 4

Wanted: Travelogues off the modern travelogue writer’s trodden path

I would like to find modern (i.e. written in the last 40 years or so) travel books about the countries that don’t seem to be in vogue with travel writers/publishers. For example, I have read half a dozen travelogues (including ‘placelogues’) about Spain and France in the last five years, but the only travel account I have read about neighbouring Portugal was a chapter about slaughtering and eating a pig in Anthony Bourdain’s book A Cook’s Tour, and while it did give me some insight into the importance of pork in the Portugese diet, it told me very little else about the country and people.

It is relatively easy to find travelogues about Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Egypt, India, Thailand, Australia, Kenya, Peru, the USA (especially Alaska), Cuba, Russia, China, Mongolia and Norway. But where are the travelogues about Germany (Mark Twain wrote one, but what about new ones?), Switzerland, Finland, Portugal, Honduras, Libya, the UAE, Benin, Liberia, Malaysia, Georgia and Azerbaijan?

I would like to find travelogues with a least a chapter dedicated to one or more of those less-written-about countries (and other such countries you can think of), so please post some recommendations in the comments.

P.S.
(Don’t bother mentioning Michael Palin's travelogues – I have read all of them; or Paul Theroux's – I am working my way through those).

Bibliophile reviews A Girl’s Guide to Vampires by Katie MacAlister

Year published: 2003
Genre: Paranormal romance, mystery
Setting & time: The Czech Rebublic, modern timeless

The Story:
Joy Randall doesn’t believe in the existence of vampires. Nevertheless, she humours her best friend Roxy – who does believe – and goes with her to the Czech Republic to seek them out. The vampires Roxy wants to find are the “dark ones”, tortured but not really evil vampires that best-selling author C.J. Dante writes about. These dark ones are always male, and they can be saved from eternal damnation only if they find their Beloved, human women who are their soul-mates. Almost immediately after they arrive, one of those dark ones makes mental contact with Joy, and she has recurring visions where she shares his feelings and he calls her his beloved. He has to be one of the three men who are fighting for her attention, but which one? There is gorgeous Dominic, the owner of a travelling goth fair; handsome, smart, likeable Christian, a local resident; and tall, sexy Raphael, the head of security for the fair.
When a fair employee, a woman who hated Joy for the attention she was getting from Dominic, is gruesomely murdered, Joy becomes convinced that she and one of her suitors are at the top of the police’s list of suspects, and sets out to prove their innocence.

Technique and plot:
I liked Joy, the heroine of this story, to begin with. She is written as a strong woman who doesn’t let anyone give her any shit, but unfortunately it turns out late in the story that she has a TSTL streak in her that at times makes her behave like she left her brain at home. It takes skill to write a gothic heroine who isn’t TSTL, and Katie MacAlister fails that test in this book. Joy’s inability to trust the man she loves is used to create the main conflict in the story, but the way it is written, it comes across as fatal curiosity rather than as upset feelings because he seems not to love her enough to tell her his secret. (I can see several different ways in which external factors could have created a better cause of conflict).

There are several graphic sex scenes in the story, most of them gratuitous, something I don't particularly like. It’s not that sex scenes make me squeamish, I just find them tedious when they don’t serve to advance the story, however hot and steamy they may be. MacAlister does get a brownie point for writing what has to be the funniest sex scene I have ever read.

The mystery element in the story is not strong. An experienced reader of mysteries will have the villain or villains figured out long before the characters (well, except one of them turns out to have known all along but needed evidence), and likewise who the dark one is, but the pleasure lies not in trying to discover these facts, but in watching Joy do so, however stupidly.

Warning: The last paragraph of the review could be seen as a SPOILER, so here is the Rating: An enjoyable paranormal romance with teeth in it. 2+ stars.

Read on only if you don’t mind spoilers.





One thing that always annoys me is when authors get the facts wrong. I know this story takes place in an alternative reality that is much like ours except vampires (and presumably other paranormal creatures) exist in it, so other things could be different as well, but it still annoys me that MacAlister chooses to present Interpol as a global version of the FBI. I don’t want to accuse her of a blunder, as it is so laughably easy to get information about that estimable institution, so I am choosing to assume she did it knowingly because it served the story. I will say no more on this point, however, as I don’t want to turn this minor spoiler into a big one.

Bad book covers

Is this a sexy cover, or what?



This is the cover for the British edition of one of Katie MacAlister's paranormal romances.
It's well-designed and well-balanced and the red colour (my scanner didn't quite reproduce it as red as it really is), the woman with a crossbow and the gothic lettering (not to mention the title) leaves no-one in doubt that it is a vampire story, probably a thriller, possibly a horror story, while the title playfully suggests romance.
The only problem is, it‘s misleading. No woman in the book wears a dress covered with bats under a full moon, and there is certainly no female vampire (or even vampyre) killer in the story. This, in my book, is enough to make it a bad cover, however well-designed and sexy. The American cover, while cheesy as hell, at least isn't misleading, except maybe by overemphasising the romance aspect:



Honestly, though, if I had to choose, I think I would take the British cover, misleading as it is, because at least it's cool.

Books I acquired this week

I'm thinking of adding a new feature to the blog: Photos of all the books I acquired in a particular week or on a particular day. Here is the first stack:

The bottom three were delivered by the postman last night, an order from Amazon.
The next six volumes I bought second hand at my favourite used book shop today, and the rest are BookMooch trades. That makes 21 books in 17 volumes. Not bad at all ;-)

BTW, this is an unusual number of books for one week. Sometimes several weeks pass when I don't buy or receive any books at all.

Bibliophile reviews The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Year published: 2006
Genre: Novel
Setting & time: Britain; modern timeless

Margaret Lea, a young woman who works in her father’s antiquarian bookshop and occasionally writes short biographical essays about dead authors, gets an unexpected invitation from bestselling author Vida Winter to write her biography. Winter is well known for never telling the truth about her past, so Margaret is a bit suspicious, but Winter seems sincere and provides enough evidence of her real identity to satisfy Margaret. What unfolds is an incredible story about a childhood lived in a house full of madness, framed by Margaret’s own narrative about herself and her attempts to verify that Vida has been telling her the truth.

It would perhaps be repetitive to say that this is a brilliant piece of storytelling, since it is what most reviewers say about it. But it is undeniably a brilliantly told story, or perhaps I should say collection of stories, because Vida tells Margaret about her childhood in a series of interconnected tales that are framed by Margaret’s own experiences while writing them down. The history of the Angelfield family unfolds slowly through Vida’s tales and Margaret’s research, too slowly for a thriller but just right for a slow-brewing mystery. I am not even going to hint at the nature of the mystery, because it is one that needs to be allowed to unfold as the story progresses.

As I already mentioned, the story is well told, meaning it is well written, interesting, gripping and beautifully plotted. It is full of unexpected twists and turns, and just when you think you know where the plot is going, the story twists around and goes off in an unexpected direction.

Last weekend I watched my mother get sucked into this story after reading a few pages, after which she spent every available moment reading it, which is a big compliment from her.

Rating: If you like well-told tales with a gothic flavour, read this. 4+ stars.

Mystery author #42: Tony Hillerman

For this author I chose to review one book about each of the two detectives of the series and one about both of them, plus the Edgar award-winning Dance Hall of the Dead, which is the second book in the series.

Series detective(s): Navajo tribal police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee

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Title: The Blessing Way
Detective(s): Navajo tribal police officer Joe Leaphorn
No. in series: 1
Year of publication: 1970
Type of mystery: Murder, thriller
Type of investigator: Police
Setting & time: The Navajo Indian reservation, Four Corners area, USA; 1960s

Story:
Lieutenant Leaphorn investigates the death of a young man who had been on the run from the police after wounding a man in a fight. Leaphorn suspected strongly that he was hiding in a particular area, but the body was found far away from there, and so he deems the death suspicious. Meanwhile, an anthropologist who had been planning to gather stories in the area where Leaphorn believed the dead man had been hiding, discovers his partner gone and gets into serious trouble when he is cornered in a canyon. Naturally, this being a mystery thriller, the two story lines converge…

Review:
I started to read this book in bed one night. I generally give myself about half an hour to read before turning in, but once I started I was quickly pulled into the story and didn’t put it down until I finished it around 1 a.m. Fortunately it was on a weekend, so I could sleep in the next morning, but the book would have been worth the bleary eyes and being half-asleep at work.

Not only is this an excellent thriller and police procedural/mystery, it is also well written. The characters come alive and the descriptions of the landscape are very evocative. While I have not visited this exact area of the USA, I came pretty close and certainly saw enough of the similar landscapes in southern Utah for the landscapes being described to come vividly alive in my mind while I read. But it was not just because I knew what the landscape was like. It takes a really good writer to draw up such a good image of a place that you feel as if you have been there, as if you are there.

Rating: An excellent mystery-thriller, a genuine page-turner. 4+ stars.

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Title: Dance Hall of the Dead
Detective: Navajo tribal police officer Joe Leaphorn
No. in series: 2
Year of publication: 1970
Type of mystery: Murder
Type of investigator: Police
Setting & time: The Navajo Indian reservation, Four Corners area, USA; 1960s

Story:
When a Zuni boy disappears, later to be found murdered, and his Navajo friend disappears, the Zuni police contact Joe Leaphorn in the hope that he can track the boy down and find out what happened. The dead boy had been chosen to represent one of the Zuni gods in a religious procession, and Joe discovers that he may have told his friend some secrets that should not have been told to an outsider, and also that a figure dressed as a Kachina, a representation of a Zuni god, also seems to be looking for the boy, with evil intent. The search for the boy turns into a race between Joe and the Kachina-man.

Review:
This is a more pure-bred mystery than the previous book in the series, which was as much a thriller (of a specific kind which I will not mention in case it spoils the story for future readers) as it was a mystery. I enjoyed the snippets of Native American history and lore that are included in the narrative, and again the landscapes came alive in my mind’s eye.

Hillerman knows how to keep a reader interested all the way through, building up the tension without ever allowing the narrative to droop. This time it is not just the search for justice and the race against an unknown enemy that keeps the story going, but also an atmosphere of tension between the law enforcement agencies working in the area, sometimes seemingly at cross-purposes.

Rating: Another excellent page-turner. 4+ stars.

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Title: People of Darkness
Detective: Navajo tribal police officer Jim Chee
No. in series: 4
Year of publication: 1980
Type of mystery: Murder, thriller
Setting & time: The Navajo Indian reservation, Four Corners, USA, and neighbouring areas; 1970s

Story:
Sgt. Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police is called to the home of a very rich uranium mine owner and asked, by the man’s wife, to spend part of his leave to recover a box of keepsakes that was stolen from her husband. Shortly afterwards, the husband contacts him to call off the search, but by that time Jim’s curiosity has been aroused. He finds the thief, who tells him where the box is hidden, but when he gets there, a hitman has just murdered the man and stolen the box. Having got a good look at the hired killer, Jim and his companion, a woman school teacher, are now next on the hit list, as witnesses to be eliminated, but now Jim is more determined than ever to get to the bottom of the case before any more people get killed.

Review: There really isn’t much of a mystery in this story, as the killer’s identity is known all the time and the identity of his client is easily guessed, but it takes a while longer to figure out the why?, so genre-wise this would be a whydunnit crossed with a thriller. Getting to see a different part of the reservation than in the previous books I read was fun, and so was meeting a new lead character. The writing is excellent as before, and one gets interesting glimpses into the spiritual life of the Navajo, as Jim is training to be a yataalii, a traditional medicine man.

Rating: A good thriller, but short on mystery. 3+ stars.

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Title: Skinwalkers
Detectives: Navajo tribal police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee
No. in series: 7
Year of publication: 1986
Type of mystery: Murder
Setting & time: The Navajo Indian reservation, Four Corners, USA, and neighbouring areas; 1980s

Story: When Jim Chee narrowly escapes a murder attempt, Joe Leaphorn initially thinks he must have done something to someone to cause the attack. But Chee is as puzzled as Leaphorn is, and soon they are working together, investigating three murders that seem to be connected to the attack on Chee, but finding out the reasons for the attacks proves to be harder. Meanwhile, Chee’s attacker is planning a second attempt on his life…

Review: This is the first book in the series to feature Leaphorn and Chee together, and it is interesting to see how their investigative methods and personalities come together to form a team where each man’s strengths complement the other’s weaknesses. The writing, as before, is great and the plotting excellent.

Rating: Yet another page turner from Hillerman. 4 stars.

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I’m not going to write an author review, as I think my reviews for the books say all that needs to be said about the quality of Hillerman’s work. I may review some of the newer books once I get to them (I’m trying to read the series in order of publication) and perhaps compare them with these earlier books.

Bibliophile reviews Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

Year published: 2005
Genre: Fantasy for older children/younger teens (especially girls), coming of age story

The Story: In a medieval type fantasy country, Miri, a young girl, is coming of age among the quarry workers of the mountains. They quarry linder, a valuable kind of rock that is in demand as building material for palaces and fine houses in the lowlands. Traders come to the village once a year to trade food and other necessities for linder, but in Miri's 14th year a messenger comes from the king, proclaiming that a prophesy has foretold that the bride of the crown prince will come from the mountains. Therefore, all the mountain girls aged 12 to 17 must attend a princess academy to prepare them for meeting the prince, who will choose one of them as his bride once they are ready.
Miri's father has never allowed her to work in the quarry for reasons she doesn’t understand, making her feel like an outsider, so in a way she welcomes the chance to experience something different. She is still ambivalent as to whether it is because she wants to marry the prince (not out of any desire for power, but a simple desire to make her family comfortable), or if it’s because she wants a chance to see the world outside the mountains.
Education brings unexpected benefits to the girls and their families, but it also brings out the competitive streak in the girls. But things don’t always go as planned...

Review: Shannon Hale is perhaps best known for her spin on the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale of The Goose Girl, but here she has created a totally new world and characters. The book won a Newberry honour in 2006, which can only mean that the winner must have been very, very good.

The world Miri lives in is not the kind of fantasy world that is full of big magic and monsters – as a matter of fact, it resembles a medieval version of our own world – but Hale manages to make it real, and it does have some magical qualities that I will not mention because I would like other readers to discover them for themselves.

Hale’s characterisations are realistic and lively and while some of the girls are ‘types’, they do change and grow and the reasons for their behaviour, be it meanness, bossiness, xenophobia, shyness, etc. are explained, so they can’t really be called stereotypes. Miri is the focus of the story, i.e. the partially omniscient narrator tells the tale exclusively from her point of view, so the reader gets to sit inside her head and see the world through her eyes.

The writing is excellent and the plotting is good, and while I did see the big twist coming, it may still come as a pleasant surprise to a younger reader.

This is the sort of book that is liable to become a perennial read for girls, much like The Secret Garden and Anne of Green Gables. It is no coincidence that I mention these two books, because like them, Princess Academy is a gripping coming of age story about a girl who feels like she is an outsider, but who discovers unknown strengths and talents in herself and finds acceptance and friendship.

Rating: An excellent coming of age story for girls of all ages. 4+ stars.

Reading report for February 2008

I decided to include the genre and my star ratings with the books this time. Some reviews will follow later in the month.

As you can see, I am below average in my reading this month. It is not surprising, since an annoyed customer managed to put a damper on my reading activities. I got the big translation project I have mentioned before through a translation center that I do freelance work for and my middleman misunderstood the client’s deadline requirements, telling me I had 10 days longer than I really did. My plan had been to finish 3-4 days ahead of the deadline I thought I had, but an emergency call from the middleman changed all that and instead of finishing at a leisurely pace, I had a couple of long days of proofreading the translation at double my usual pace, resulting in a myalgia-related headache that lasted a week and two physiotherapy sessions. But I did it and now I have free time to read again.

Jennifer Crusie: Charlie all night (contemporary romance): 3+ stars
Susan Donovan: He loves Lucy (contemporary romance): 2+ stars
Elizabeth Gaskell: Cranford (classic novel): 3 stars (reviewed)
Shannon Hale: Princess academy (YA fantasy): 4+ stars (working on a review)
Cynthia Heimel: If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet? (essay collection): 3+ stars (may review)
Matthew Parris: Inca-Cola: A traveller's tale of Peru (travel): 3+ stars
Diane Setterfield: The Thirteenth Tale (novel): 4+ stars (working on a review)
Alan Taylor, ed.: Long Overdue (writings about libraries): 3+ stars

Reread:
JRR Tolkien: The Fellowship of the Ring (fantasy): 5+ stars

Upcoming reads:
I’m thinking about making Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle my classic for March, and I have Jonathan Strange and Mr. Morrell calling out to me from the TBR pile. It's hard to judge whether it's going to be a slow read or a fast one (not counted in pages per hour but number of reading sessions).

Bibliophile reviews Roughing It by Mark Twain

This was my classic for January and I should really have posted it before my review of Cranford (February’s classic, but I forgot I had written it.

Title: Roughing It
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens)
Year originally published: 1872
Genre: Memoir, travelogue
Setting & time: Western USA, mid-1800s


In Roughing It, Twain tells the story of how he left the east and travelled west, intending to stay for a few months and ending up staying several years. He tells of his own adventures: how he worked as a reporter, prospected for silver and attempted to start a lumber camp, among other things, ending up as a public lecturer. He also tells tales, both tall ones and ones that ring true, and most of all he describes the life in the silver mining towns and other places he lived in or visited, and the magnificent natural surroundings he saw, for example at Lake Tahoe and in Hawaii, which was then called the Sandwich Islands. The story is an entertaining mixture of fact and fiction, which can often not be told apart. Twain was a wonderful story teller and missed no opportunity to tell a good one, never mind whether it was true or not. He could also write wonderfully evocative descriptions of nature and people.

Rating: A funny and interesting account of Twain’s adventures in the wild west. 4 stars.

Bibliophile reviews Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

One long book at a time is enough for me, and since I had started reading The Thirteenth Tale when I remembered that I had been planning to read a classic, I decided to find a short one. The first short classic I found at the university bookstore was Cranford, so that’s what I decided to read. Gaskell did not feature in the course I took on the English 19th century novel, and to tell the truth I wouldn’t have known she ever existed if it hadn’t been for the TV series of her novel Wives and Daughters (which I unfortunately missed when it was shown on Icelandic TV). (North and South and Cranford have also been filmed for television).

The book was first published as a serial in a magazine in 1851-2, but in 1853 it was gathered together in one volume and published as a novel. It seems obvious that Gaskell originally merely intended to tell some interesting individual stories with only the central characters as a connection between them, which makes the first half or so of the book rather loose and episodic. It isn’t until the latter half of the book that a story begins to be told that continues from chapter to chapter, so in fact the ‘novel’ is really a collection of interconnected short stories and a novella. To the original has been added one extra story, and an essay by Gaskell that fits in well with the rest of the book’s material.

The narrator is Mary Smith, a younger woman who frequently visits her friends, the Misses Deborah and Matty Jenkyns, two elderly spinster sisters who live in the town of Cranford. Miss Matty is the central character, but around her there revolves a group of women, all of whom are either widows or spinsters. Men do not feature largely in the story – as a matter of fact they are viewed with some suspicion by the women – but some of the turning points do revolve around them. The world of these upper-class women is genteel and rather innocent, and all behaviour is controlled by rigid rules that are meant to ensure that things continue to be nice and comfortable and changeless in the face of impending change (e.g. the arrival of the railroad). The value of friendship is the chief message.

I found Cranford to be a sweet and gentle read, sometimes funny, sometimes melodramatic, but always entertaining. It would be interesting to read one of her novels (that were intended as such) to see how she handles a longer narrative structure.

3 stars.

Read Cranford online.

Free online book by Neil Gaiman

The best part is: it is absolutely legal. Neil Gaiman and his publisher will be offering American Gods for free online. Fans were given the vote, and the majority wanted AG. It wasn’t my choice (I voted for one of the short story collections), but I applaud the gesture and hope it will lead many more readers to discover his work.

The book will be available from February 28th. Further information: Neil’s blog

My reading journal

I have been keeping a reading journal for about three years now, and it has become a routine for me. I have started writing a regular journal or diary several times, but the only time I have been able to keep it up for longer than a couple of weeks is when I have been travelling, but somehow I have been able to stick to the reading journal, perhaps because it doesn’t call for daily entries. My only regret is that I didn’t start it a long time ago. I have estimated that I have read at least 5000 books in my lifetime – probably more – and it would have been fun to be able to compile a list of them all and to analyse how my reading habits and tastes have changed through the years.

As I mentioned in the January reading report, I decided at the beginning of the year to start keeping the journal in a real book instead of loose-leaf binders, and so far it is working out well. The book has blank pages, so the writing is not always in a completely straight line, but it somehow feels better to be writing in a book than on loose sheets of paper, even if the paper was lined. Of course it feels even better because I actually made the journal.

Into the journal goes some basic information about each book I read: date read, genre, title, author/editor, reader (if an audio book), illustrator/photographer (is there is one), translator (if it’s translated), publisher, year published, country, no of pages, format, a short plot summary and a one line review with star rating. The rating and everything but the summary and short review goes into an Excel file as well, to help me analyse the information statistically.

Well, enough about the contents - here is the journal:

I put some information about how it was made and what materials I used, in my bookbinding blog

Is it any wonder?

I have occasionally mentioned that I hate literary snobbery, especially the kind that makes people declare that a whole genre of literature (be it fantasy, science fiction, thrillers, romance or whatever) is no good without having read any of it, or at the most merely sampled it a bit. Romance has especially been reviled as stereotyped and inane, called the female equivalent of porn and its readers dismissed as being entirely female, with little education, a small income, who read it to escape their daily drudgery and dream of marrying a [insert Mediterranean ethnicity of your choice] billionaire prince.

I may be exaggerating somewhat, but you get the picture.

But, I really do have to ask myself: Is it any wonder people think this way when they see the titles of many of the romances available?

I am referring to the type of book known as a category romance. These are short romances written to specific standards and formulas that pertain to sub-genre, setting, time and certain other guidelines, like level of sensuality, type of conflict or type of couple and so on, and published under a category name. Examples from Harlequin Enterprises include Everlasting Love, American Romance, Blaze, Medical Romance, Intrigue and Superromance, to name a few that are published under their imprint. They have a limited print run and usually only stay on the shelves for about a month before they are removed (if there are any left) to make way for the next batch.

Now, I realise that when you publish over 100 titles every month like Harlequin – most of which are romances – it is probably hard to come up with decent titles for each and every book, and in addition you want to make sure the customers can easily find a book in the sub-genre they prefer, so you give them titles that suggest what the book is about. The books also have a short shelf life and each title generally sells a few thousand copies at best, so they must be produced cheaply, meaning you're not about to pay someone to think up original titles for the books.

(BTW, if you thought the writer gives the book its title, you're mostly wrong. According to an article I read somewhere – possibly in the At the Back Fence romance reader's e-column – it is generally only the really popular writers who are allowed to do that. It looks like the rest have to suffer the indignity of having their book reduced to a few keywords that are then fed into a romance title generator. At least that's what it felt like to browse some of the category titles available through Amazon.com.)

The majority of the titles below, randomly taken from a search of the Amazon website, are Harlequin romances that take place in a modern setting, under different categories. I only chose descriptive titles (which are in the majority) because they are the ones I think give romances a bad reputation.

Please note that while I may ridicule the choice of title, I am not placing any judgment on the stories told in the books and how they are written. I am merely lamenting the unoriginality of the titles.

Read through it the list and you will quickly see patterns emerging, mostly involving virgins, mistresses, brides, wives, pregnancies, babies (usually secret babies, a popular sub-genre), rich men, exotic men (generally Italians, Greeks, Spaniards or ‘Sheikhs’), dominant men, weddings and marriages of convenience. Many titles also suggest reluctance on behalf of the women and use of force by the men.

A Mother for the Tycoon's Child
A Virgin for the Taking
Aristides' Convenient Wife
Arranged Marriage
At the French Baron's Bidding
At the Greek Tycoon's Pleasure
At the Spaniard's Convenience
Bedded by the Desert King
Bought for the Greek's Bed
Bought for the Marriage Bed
Bought: The Greek's Bride
Bride for the Taking
Claiming the Cattleman's Heart
Convenient Wife
Cowboy's Woman
Executive Bodyguard
Expecting the Playboy's Heir
Exposed: The Sheikh's Mistress
Finn's Pregnant Bride
For the Sheikh's Pleasure
Her Honorable Playboy
Her Italian Boss's Agenda
Her Parenthood Assignment
Her Secret, His Child
Her Sister's Children
His Pregnant Mistress
His Private Mistress
His Wedding Ring of Revenge
Husband by Request
Husband of Convenience
In the Venetian's Bed
Kept by the Spanish Billionaire
Longshadow's Woman
Love-Slave to the Sheikh
Marine & the Princess
McCavett's Bride
Million-Dollar Love-Child
Mistress for a Weekend
Mistress on Loan
Possessed by the Sheikh
Pregnant by the Millionaire
Purchased by the Billionaire
Reluctant Mistress, Blackmailed Wife
Royally Bedded, Regally Wedded
Saying Yes to the Boss
Seduction of an English Beauty
Surgeon Prince, Ordinary Wife
Taken by the Sheikh
Taken: The Spaniard's Virgin
The Australians Convenient Bride
The Australian's Housekeeper Bride
The Billionaire Boss's Bride
The Billionaire's Marriage Bargain
The Billionaire's Scandalous Marriage
The Boss and his Secretary
The Boss's Pregnancy Proposal
The Brazilian's Blackmail Bargain
The Defiant Mistress
The Disobedient Bride
The Doctor's Mistress
The Forced Bride
The Future King's Bride
The Greek Boss's Bride
The Greek Millionaire's Mistress
The Greek Tycoon's Virgin Wife
The Greek's Chosen Wife
The Greek's Christmas Baby
The Greek's Virgin
The Italian Boss's Secretary Mistress
The Italian Millionaire's Virgin Wife
The Italian Prince's Pregnant Bride
The Italian's Convenient Wife
The Italian's Forced Bride
The Italian's Future Bride
The Italian's Virgin Princess
The Italian's Wedding Ultimatum
The King's Mistress
The Kouvaris Marriage
The Kristallis Baby
The Lawyer's Contract Marriage
The Marchese's Love-Child
The Marriage Bed
The Mighty Quinns (series)
The Millionaire Boss's Baby
The Millionaire's Runaway Bride
The Millionaire's Virgin Mistress
The Mistress's Child
The Petrakos Bride
The Pleasure King's Bride
The Prince's Convenient Bride
The Ranger's Woman
The Rich Man's Baby
The Rich Man's Royal Mistress
The Rich Man's Virgin
The Roman's Virgin Mistress
The Santorini Bride
The Secret Baby Bargain
The Seduction of Sara
The Sheikh's Bartered Bride
The Sheikh's Convenient Bride
The Sheikh's Disobedient Bride
The Sheikh's Innocent Bride
The Sheikh's Ransomed Bride
The Sheikh's Reluctant Bride
The Sicilian's Christmas Bride
The Sicilian's Marriage Arrangement
The Sicilian's Red-Hot Revenge
The Spaniard's Blackmailed Bride
The Spaniard's Marriage Demand
The Spaniard's Passion
The Sultan's Virgin Bride
The Taming of Jessi Rose
The Ultimate Seduction
The Wealthy Man's Mistress
Traded to the Sheikh
Wife By Contract, Mistress By Demand

A couple of others that I want to comment on specially:
It's a Wonderfully Sexy Life (pun on the movie title that makes it sound like a sex manual)
Slow Hand Luke (another movie/book title pun that sounds more like porn than romance)

Bibliophile’s reading report for 2007

I finally got my act together and compiled the annual report.

Total books read in 2007:
142. This is 18 books fewer than in 2006, and 140 fewer than in 2005 (an exceptional reading year for me), but still pretty good when you consider that it makes nearly 3 books a week.

Last year I was very focused on cookbooks and skimmed through 18 of them in search of interesting recipes, reading all the titles and a number of recipes from each book, but as I can’t claim to have actually read any of them all the way through, they are not included in the tally. Also not included are the books I began reading in 2007 and will hopefully finish in 2008.

Breakdown:

Fiction: 97 (68,3%)
Non-fiction: 43 (30,3%)
Mixed: 2 (1,4%)

The mixed books are The Literary Gourmet, which combines real recipes and passages from novels, and The Science of Discworld which combines popular science with fantasy. In addition there are 3 books that are ostensibly autobiographies, but have a distinct flavour of being more or less fictionalised. However, since the Icelandic National Library classifies them as non-fiction, so will I.
My non-fiction percentage is up 4,7% from 2006. I would like to make it to 35% non-fiction this year.

Total no. of pages read: 38901.
Average number of pages per book: 274. This is 22 pages (on average) longer than in 2006.
Number of books under 100 pages long: 1. I think I will leave this item out of the next report, unless I get a job reviewing children’s books ;-)
Number of books 300+ pages long:70 (49%). This percentage was only 26,8% in 2006.

Re-reads: 8 (5,6%).
Library and loan books: 21 (14,8%)
E-books: 4
Audio books: 0
Translated books: 13 (9%)
I re-read fewer books in 2007 that in 2006, and much fewer library books (down to 14,8% from 21,25%).

Books published before 1900: 4. I aim to read at least 12 this year (see my New Year’s reading resolution).
Books published after 2000: 31 (21,8%). This is 4,9% more than in 2006.

Average rating per book (out of a possible 5+): 3+
Most common rating (out of a possible 5+): 4 (45 books, 31,7%)

Languages: English (132: 93%), Icelandic (10: 7%). My percentage of Icelandic books is up by 6,3% since last year, which is good, but could be better.

Breakdown by genre:
As I said (in a lot more words) last year, this breakdown is by main genre, so genre-crossing books get classified under one genre even if they could possibly belong to as many as three. Non-fiction where I only read a few books in the genre is collected under "miscellaneous non-fiction" . The only time I use a fuller genre classification is when there are enough of them to be statistically interesting.
A few books were very hard to classify, not only the two mixed fiction and non-fiction books, but also a book about “true” supernatural events. I ended up classifying that one under non-fiction, since there is such a strong belief in the veracity of the stories therein. The other two ended up under the fiction category, just to simplify matters. Cookoff ended up in the travel category, since, although it is about cooking and eating, it is just as much about travel to different places.
The non-travel biographies and memoirs were too few to warrant a category of their own this year.

Crime, mystery and action, including one non-fiction popular criminology book: 62 (43,7%, up by 3,1%)
Romance: 10 (7%, down by 1,75%)
Fantasy, sci-fi, fairy tales and supernatural horror: 19 (13,4%, down by 1,6%)
Miscellaneous fiction, incl. novels, short story collections, etc.: 10 (7% down by 10%)
Travel, memoirs of places and geography: 17 (12%, down by 0,5%)
Miscellaneous non-fiction, minus that one criminology book included in the crime category: 24 (16,9 %, up by 8,15%)

Out of these, 12 were written with teenagers or children in mind. They belong to various genres and are counted in the relevant categories.

Most read authors:
My most read author in 2007 was Ngaio Marsh. At the end of 2007 I had acquired all 32 of her Roderick Alleyn detective novels, and I have been reading them in the order of publication. I am taking a break from her for a while in order to concentrate on finishing the 52 mystery authors challenge, but she may still come out as my most read author of 2008.
As I continued my rereading of Terry Pratchett’s books that I started in 2006, he came second.

Ngaio Marsh: 11
Terry Pratchett: 6
Georges Simenon: 5
Madeleine L'Engle, Jennifer Crusie: 4
Rex Stout, Hendrik Ottósson: 3
Tess Gerritsen, Ruth Rendell, Ruth Reichl, Robert B. Parker, Nancy Pearl, Nancy Martin, Jill Ker Conway, J.D. Robb, Eric Newby, Andrea Camilleri: 2

A useful new term...

Property porn.
Apparently the Collins English Dictionary defines it as:

a genre of escapist TV programmes, magazine features, etc showing desirable properties for sale, especially those in idyllic locations, or in need of renovation, or both.

I first saw it used on the Guardian book blog in a slightly different but related meaning as a term for the travel sub-genre I call “fixer-upper” stories, i.e. one of those “I bought a dilapidated dream house in France/Italy/Spain and fixed it up and I want the world to know I did it. Incidentally I’d also like to tell you about how wonderful/crazy/quaint the locals are”.

I wonder if House Invaders and the Big, Strong Girls/Boys shows could be called property porn as well? The outcomes of all those renovations are certainly offensive often enough.

Desert island books

This post was inspired by a posting on a reading board I occasionally visit. The original poster called for the members to nominate 10 books they would take with them for a year’s stay on a desert island. All survival necessities would be taken care of, giving you plenty of time to read. In addition to 10 self-chosen books, we could take the collected works of William Shakespeare and the Bible or another religious book.

Shakespeare was made mandatory in that particular challenge, which is not surprising as the board is frequented mostly by native speakers of English. Since I am not a native speaker of English and Shakespeare has not had much influence on my native literature, I nominate instead the equivalent in Icelandic literature: The Sagas. As to a religious book, I would choose the Mahabaratha.

I chose a blend of old favourites and books I have wanted to read but not got around to. I have changed the list a bit from what I posted to the board, as I have had some time to mull it over.

The List:

• The Jón Árnason collected Icelandic folk tales (technically one book, although it is in several volumes).
• Dalalíf by Guðrún frá Lundi (an Icelandic novel of country life in several volumes).
• The Arabian Nights (read it as a teenager and would like to revisit it).
• Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais.
• The collected d'Artagnan romances by Dumas (The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later).
• The Once and Future King by T.H. White.
• Small Gods by Terry Pratchett.
• The Norton Anthology of English Literature.
  
• London: A biography by Peter Ackroyd.
• The condensed edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (there is some fascinating reading to be found in the OED if you are interested in etymology).

This is just what I would choose if I was leaving today. Tomorrow it might be totally different. As a matter of fact, I might revisit this subject again next year, since several of the books are actually on my TBR list.

You may have noticed that these are mostly very long books. That is because I don’t see the point of taking short ones when you can only take so few. I would rather take the long ones and risk not having finished them all at the end of the year rather than having to re-read a number of short books to keep myself occupied.

Dear Reader: Which books would you choose for a year’s stay on a desert island? Would you replace the Bible and collected works of Shakespeare with something else? (has to be one religious book and one pillar of your national literature).

Reading report for January 2008

Before I begin listing books:
For 2008, I decided to make a bit of a change in my reading statistics compilation. Instead of writing my reading reports on loose sheets of A5 paper and inserting them into folders in alphabetical order (by author) like I have been doing for the past couple of years, I used my newly learned bookbinding skills and made a hand-bound reading journal into which I write the information I want to keep track off as I finish each book. I decided to do this because the folders take up a lot of space and look ugly on the shelves, whereas an even halfway well-made hand-bound book is a joy to behold and easier to stack. As I put everything except the summary and a one-sentence review into the computer as well, what I wrote about each book will still be easy to find. All I need to do is to open the relevant computer file and then I will know approximately whereabouts in the journal to find what I wrote about the book.

Since the journal is 336 pages long and I am able to fit information about two books (on average) on a page, the book should last me over 4 years. Even if I start writing down more information, like words I learned from reading the book and longer reviews, it should still last over 2 years. To make the books easier to find in the journal without starting up the computer, I plan to tip in an index at the end of each year, with the books alphabetised by author and the month I read them in.

I still haven’t found the perfect covering for the journal, so the boards are currently only bound with blue Rexine (fake leather) on the spine and corners, but I will post a photo of it once I do find the right paper for finishing it (something that goes with blue and has a book theme).

And now for the reading report:

January’s reading was a mixture of mystery and romance, with a couple of other genres thrown in for good measure.

Suzanne Brockmann: Forever Blue
Kristine Grayson: Thoroughly kissed
Tony Hillerman: Dance hall of the dead
Miranda Jarrett: The Very comely countess
Nagio Marsh: Colour scheme, Died in the wool, Final curtain, Swing, brother, swing, Night at the Vulcan
Katherine Hall Page: The Body in the bog
Scott Rice, ed.: Son of "It was a dark and stormy night"
Joyce Stranger: Two's company
Mark Twain: Roughing It. (The month's classic).

Son of "It was a dark and stormy night" deserves a special mention. It is a collection of opening sentences to imaginary books, entries in the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest. This is a great read for those who can tell the difference between good writing and bad and have the sense of humour to laugh rather than cry when they meet with the latter. As the passages are short it makes perfect toilet reading material for those who go in for that sort of thing.

New Year’s reading resolutions

I have two this year:

No. 1 is to finish the 52 mystery authors challenge before the end of the year. This should be easy, and in fact I would have finished it before the end of last year if I had not got that big translation job.

No. 2 is to read at least one classic per month. For the purpose of the resolution, I am defining a classic as any novel or non-fiction book written before 1900 that is still in