The All-New Bunrab

Stalking the Vampire by Mike Resnick - second in his series about PI John Justin Mallory; I liked it better than the first (Stalking the Unicorn) - it made more sense as a mystery, if one can say that about farcical fantasy. Anyway, John Justin, aided by ex-military Winifred Carruthers and 90-pound cat-girl Felina, have to determine why Winifred's nephew seems to be turning into a vampire. This winds up involving several funeral homes with odd names not to mention the Vampire State Building. This is definitely the other Manhattan.

The Anteater of Death by Betty Webb. Who could resist a title like that? Not I, certainly. I hadn't enjoyed what little I'd read of Webb's "Desert" series, but this is a new series, taking place in a small zoo in California. It's still not a great book, or a great murder mystery, but it's OK, and the details about the animals and their care are interesting enough and funny enough to make up for the stereotypical nasty rich people who populate the surrounding town. Among other things, we get a giraffe giving birth, as well as the banana-obsessed anteater giving birth. Spoiler: neither the anteater nor the butler did it.

The Handicap Principle by Amotz and Avishag Zahavi. Probably the most boring pop-science book I've read in a while, partly because very little has been done to turn it from academese to pop. Excessively long to convey a fairly simple idea, the authors insist on dragging EVERY possible feature of an animal into play as a handicap for mating competitions, including, for pete's sake, why men have beards and women don't. The authors claim, you see, that it's because men fight a lot, and having a beard makes it easier for other men to grab them, so by displaying one, a man is claiming that he can win any fistfight, even with the handicap, thereby making him a more attractive mate. Women don't have beards because they don't get into fistfights. Honest, the authors say this!! Also, besides dragging their premise to absurd lengths, the book has crappy illustrations that do nothing for it. Would be much improved by editing out the more outrageous half of their claims, and filling the space with photos of the animals and some side-by-side comparison illustrations. Also including more rodents, perhaps overlooked here because so many of them aren't flashy and aren't terribly dimorphic in size and therefore would be difficult to stretch into the authors' thesis.

Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin. Known for her work with livestock animals, Grandin here adds pet animals to the mix, discussing how improving our pets' lives by considering their evolutionary environment can also improve our own lives. Some of it is redundant stuff from her other books. The chapter on cats is interesting - a good explanation of why, although cats and dogs are both "domesticated" animals, a cat is a lot less domesticated than a dog.

The Van Rijn Method by Poul Anderson, edited by Hank Davis - a collection of some of the Van Rijn and Falkayn stories, nothing one hasn't read before, but with introductions to each explaining a little more of the big picture of Anderson's future history. Also, at the end, a very good timeline showing how the Polesotechnic League develops and dissolves and the eventual development of the Empire period of Ensign Flandry.

The Fourth Time is Murder by Steven Havill - grabbed at random off library shelves, looking for more to read, this turns out to be a recent volume in a long-established series. It takes place in the Southwest - New Mexico, near the Mexican border - but is NOT, thank goodness, another attempt to be a Hillerman clone. (I get tired of those - all the Hillerman wannabes who toss in a Navajo and a mention of Navajo religion, and then expect that we'll all enjoy their books just because of that, regardless of how superficial or unrealistic it otherwise is.) Main protagonist is a woman under-sheriff. Plot is based around a financial scam we only slowly find out about; side plots include illegal immigrants, perhaps unavoidable given the location.

The Golden Age of Novelty Songs by Steve Otfinoski. Although it hits most of the high points, I can't entirely agree with a book that devotes almost an entire chapter to Alvin and the Chipmunks and only a couple of sentences to "Camp Grenada." And in the chapter about Christmas novelty songs, he doesn't even MENTION "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" - hmph! Includes photos, and does include things you might not instantly think of in the novelty song genre - Cheech and Chong, and William Fries (better known as C.W. McColl), along with the ones you would instantly think of - Napoleon XIV, Homer & Jethro, The Chad Mitchell Trio (my favorites! for their song "Lizzie Borden.")

There, now I'm only a couple weeks behind on the news.

First, some "real books" -
Living With the Dead by Kelley Armstrong. Her Women of the Otherworld series features various types of supernaturals living hidden in plain sight among humans. In this volume, several of the threads that have each been the subject of a separate book previously - the tabloid reporter, the rogue werewolf, the wizards' corporations, all get pulled together around a commune of clairvoyants and a completely ordinary human personal-assistant-to-a-celebrity whose celebrity gets murdered. If you like the series, you will like this one; if you haven't read any of the others, this is definitely NOT the place to start, since much depends on the reader already knowing about half-demons' powers, werewolf pack structure, etc.

Sojourn by Jana Oliver. Subtitled "Time Rovers, Book 1." Time travel agents of a private corporation have to sometimes drag the paying customers back from the eras they've gone to. Cynda has to retrieve someone from Victorian London during Jack the Ripper's spree - while also battling the fact that the company she works for is going bankrupt and trying to strand her away from her own time, to save money. And then there's the factor even Cynda didn't know about: the mysterious Transitives, who can change their appearance at will, though they have no other special powers. This serves as an OK murder mystery (one of the Time Rovers; although we're given some insight into the Ripper murders, the novel doesn't take on the issue of who did them or what his real motivations were) and a bit of Victorian romance. I started the sequel, Virtual Evil, but haven't finished it yet - it seems less interesting (for one thing, we're still in 1888 - no new time period, new characters not as interesting.)

And then there's a bunch of
Graphic novels/comics
Those of you who think you're not interested in graphic novels can skip this bunch of books - though you should think again; some of the best new science fiction and fantasy is coming out as graphic novels rather than plain-text novels. And other stuff.

Cryptozoo Crew, Vol. 1 by Allan Gross and Jerry Carr. Very funny - Tork and Tara Darwyn search for everything from cave monkeys to the abominable snowman, in a collection of several episodes of this comic book. No particular continuity from episode to episode - this is not a graphic novel - though once found, the cave monkeys do show up again as background characters in subsequent episodes. A lot of puns. An awful lot of very bad puns. The last episode features space aliens, with a funny epilog.

Serenity: Those Left Behind by Joss Whedon et al. A complete waste of the time it took to read it. Only worth looking at if you are a fanatic who must have every single Firefly item ever marketed. As a graphic book, it's a complete failure; the characters go unexplained, the plot is patchy to nonexistent, no background is provided, so we have no idea of what the pretty people in the drawings are about. The brief text introduction provides no useful information in that regard. Impossible to follow what might be the plot unless you've seen the movie, and difficult even then.

Bram Stoker's Dracula works quite well as a graphic novel. Stoker's original words are used; this isn't simplified. The drawing style is rather manga, with big heads and huge round eyes, but surprisingly, I didn't find that offputting. Catching Renfield, burying Lucy, and the death of Quincy Morris are all quite nicely done. In short, this is an arrangement of the original that carried most of the proper characterization and plot elements, and could indeed serve to draw younger readers in to the idea of reading the book. (Unlike, say, a recent graphic version of Merchant of Venice that I read, where the language was simplified, often right into totally inappropriate 21st century idiom, and where the contrast between the modern dress of the characters and the ships that were at risk rendered the plot less comprehensible, rather than more.) Heh - a first-rate estate agent is always prepared.

American Born Chinese - Gene Yuen Lang. Very nicely done semi-autobiographical graphic novel, mixing portions of everyday Chinese-American schoolchild with the WASP schoolchild he wishes he had and episodes of fantasy drawn from traditional Chinese myths and legends, to illustrate the problems of coming to terms with being a minority. All of which makes it sound terribly serious and sententious, and it isn't. It's a nice story, plot moves right along, neat characters, and I love the Monkey King stories. Not only is this a good story, it's one I don't think would work as a plain-text novel; it really does show the advantages of the graphic novel form to certain kinds of stories.

Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes. Subtitled "a comic-strip novel" rather than a graphic novel, each chapter of this book is a separate little two or four page episode, some of which don't seem to be connected at first. The different stories eventually twine together. As in a real mystery, a few threads are left unresolved. The characters include the comic book critic, the pompous would-be poet, the schoolchildren, the visiting niece, Leopold & Loeb - yes, Leopold & Loeb. You'll recognize the little kid David - if you've ever seen any of Clowes' work at all, even just illustrations in weekly free papers, you've seen the fuzzy-sweatered kid with no expression.

Bunch more library books to return, so here you go:
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the White House by Charles Osgood - a collection of campaign humor, or, as the subtitle puts it, "Humor, blunders, and other oddities from the presidential campaign trail," from the 1948 elections (Truman v Dewey) through the 2004 elections. Some of it is indeed more odd than funny. And some of it sadly reminds me that Richard Nixon, crook and bigot though he was, was at least more intelligent than Shrub. Easy to read bits of at a time - this was my bathroom reading for a couple weeks.
Me of Little Faith by Lewis Black - sorta disappointing, as Black turns out to be one of those "oh, organized religion is nonsense but I still believe in God" types, afraid to cross the line to atheism. Parts of it are funny, some are sorta blah; his accounts of his "spiritual" experiences with hallucinogenic drugs are both religious copouts and sad. But there are funny bits as well as stuff that would never have been printed if it wasn't Lewis Black saying it.
A Song For You by Betsy Thornton - a murder mystery grabbed randomly off the shelves in an effort to try more authors I haven't read before; verdict: it's OK. Features the daughter of a past-her-prime hippie mother who was a singer in a band, and the remaining members of the band, all old and worn out. And a murder from the old days, as well as a current one. A decent resolution, adequate writing, not super-exciting but I would try more books by her if I happened to run across them.
The Good Neighbors, Book 1: Kin by Holly Black and Ted Naifeh - fantasy graphic novel, mainly YA, as that is what Black writes when she writes regular books. Coming-of-age and our protagonist suddenly discovers that she can see people others can't, who turn out to be faeries, or "good neighbors." I like the artwork, and there's a good mix of panels where something is happening with the apparently mandatory panels where nothing happens except that some feature of someone's face or clothes gets enlarged. I like our heroine's group of goofy friends. Ends in mid-plot, sort of cliff-hanger, as the title might indicate. Things Are Not What They Seem!

More later - gotta get to band rehearsal early to hand out some more music.

Finally! A genuine post instead of a bunch of tweets!

First, the best book I've read in the past month is The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett - it's a really original fantasy. My Amazon.com review is here and as ever, I'd appreciate it if you read the review, voted Yes for it, and commented on it if you have the time and willingness to do so.*

Then, books that I tweeted, but haven't mentioned in more detail:
Salvation in Death - JD Robb, latest in her Eve Dallas series, not bad, has to do with a televangelist who suddenly goes honest.
Bones and Obsession - Jonathan Kellerman, latest in his Alex Delaware series; Alex and Milo sound more alike than ever, both of them frequently leaving any personal pronouns off the beginnings of sentences; the new sidekick that Milo acquires in Obsession shows some promise as a character.
The Best of Michael Swanwick - anthology of short stories, some of which I had already read when they appeared in SF magazines; perhaps the most famous is "The Feast of St. Janis."
A graphic novel of Thor based on the comic books of the same name; the book uses up quite a bit of space on the set-up of why Thor is coming back, and a lot of it is pretentious panels that show almost nothing. Thor establishes a new Asgard - hovering over a farm in Oklahoma. There are some good bits in here, such as when someone from the town wants to deliver an invitation to the residents of Asgard to attend a town hall meeting, and has to first install a mailbox under Asgard, so he has something to deliver it to. Also the scene where the gods come to the town meeting - that's where the quote "What unfortunate day's events are not made gladder by cake?" comes from.
Manga Shakespeare Julius Caesar - worst in the series so far; the artwork is so ugly it makes it nearly impossible to tell the characters apart. And having the characters wearing togae in one scene, and then put on zoomy helmets and hop on motorcycles, is so wrong. I can't see where anyone would ever be drawn to a deeper understanding of Shakespeare or toward reading more of his plays, from this presentation; if anything, it'll drive new readers away.
Cretaceous Dawn by L. and M. Graziano - sorta like Jurassic Park, except it involves the scientists actually being dumped back in time. A couple of characters seem real; others are cardboard, but overall it's readable. Manages to involve a turf war between OSHA and ONR (Office of Naval Research) and a couple of crooked physicists, to give more interest to the modern end of things. The entomologist gets the girl.
A Very Private Enterprise by Elizabeth Ironsides - from the cover illustration, and even the back cover blurb, I thought this was going to be a historical mystery, but it turned out to be modern, far too British for me to understand what was going on, and it had a totally implausible ending where after everything is over and one person is left packing up, the real killer just wanders in and confesses.

And a few I hadn't mentioned at all yet:
Stat-Spotting by Joel Best - lightweight, but good summaries. Perhaps his best chapter is the idea of knowing benchmarks - there are about 300m americans, 4m babies born each year in US, 2.4m die each year and a few other general ones - so that you can recognize totally bogus stats (like one claim I heard, from a relative, that there are 150 million abortions a year in the US - oh yes, 50% of every man, woman, and child in the country had an abortion last year? Really?)

Free-Range Knitter by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee - a lot about her daughters. No sense anyone who doesn't knit or haunt yarn shops reading it. It's humorous, but only for yarn addicts.

Ageless Memory - Harry Lorayne - a reminder of the old trick of putting absurd images to things you need to remember. I used to do that and then didn't and now Lorayne has reminded me that it works.

A Just Determination - John Hemry (not Henry) - well-written and fascinating, and at the same time way too much detail of every sentence needed to launch a ship or start a court-martial. He's best known for a particular mil-fic series, which I haven't read and which this isn't in. This one has a touch of Young Adult coming-of-age stuff in it, but it isn't juvenile. I liked it. Our boy is a newly minted lawyer (well, that's not what they call it, but that's what it is) on a battleship on a supposedly peaceful mission. Which of course goes awry. Warning: unless you're already deeply into Navy stuff, you'll spend a while getting straight about the difference between Captains and Commanders and whatnot, and the exact chain of command, and who isn't on the usual chain, and more of that nature.

Gaaah, and there's still a short stack of books here - I'll include the 4 remaining in a second post, before this one gets big enough to invade a small nation.

OK, people, finally the review at Amazon.com of Odysseus on the Rhine is up. Pretty please go read the review, and comment on it... thanks.

I suppose that if one is supposed to begin as one means to go on, then the new year got off to a good start: I finished a classic nonfiction book (Steinbeck's Travels With Charley), finished a knitting project (a shawl, for me, in an absurdly simple lace pattern), and made supper at home, using leftovers (leftover turkey frozen from Thanksgiving, turned into turkey-noodle casserole, which is tuna-noodle casserole only with turkey) instead of eating out. And then on the 2nd, I finished another book, albeit not so classic or important (Benjamin Nugent's American Nerd), got a few inches done on another piece of knitting that was already in progress (rather than restlessly starting yet another new project), and made supper at home again, using still more leftovers (leftover mashed potatoes turned into fried potato cakes, to go with crabcakes from Trader Joe's, all topped with low-sodium but zingy Texas Sassy Tequila Ketchup). So I suppose I'm on a roll of good habits.

Not that I'm making any resolutions for 2009. I have a couple of aspirations, but I'm not going to go so far as to call them resolutions. One is to get the garage and storage shed organized enough that we can get everything out of the rented storage unit, and not have to pay rent on that any more. Another is to get rid of some stuff - say, 25 things: books that aren't among the paperbacks I automatically trade in/give to friends/BookCross; skeins of yarn that I will never do anything with; yardages of fabric ditto; stuff like that. I already have in mind a pair of boots I bought years ago, and have only worn a couple of times, which were quite expensive and very nice and made on a last that doesn't match my feet at ALL, so that every time I wore them, I had feet that hurt so badly at night that I had trouble going to sleep. But I have never gotten rid of them, because, well, they are expensive, well-made, nearly-new boots!! Now I am going to get rid of them. (Speak up, flist, if anyone wants a pair of Clarks, black leather, size 8M, side-zip, just-over-the-ankle boots. I'll ship 'em parcel post if you really want 'em; otherwise, they will go to a local charity.)

It was interesting reading Travels With Charley - I don't know why I've never read it before; possibly because it was assigned in school, which of course would have made me avoid it. Anyway, since the book takes place during the 1960 campaign season, leading up to the Kennedy election, it has a rather peculiar resonance right now, especially when Steinbeck goes through the deep South and talks to people about race. And there's a postscript about the Kennedy inauguration that's sort of nice.

More reading recently accomplished, to be posted soonly.

Read a whole bunch of xmas-themed short story and novella anthologies, not worth mentioning (although Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, werewolf Christmas stories, is a pretty funny concept, erractically implemented) and I'll mention one xmas novel, Donna Andrews' Six Geese a-Slaying - it's the latest in her Meg Lanslow series, and it's back to being funny, which the previous volume wasn't, which is why I mention it even though it's a series book.

And Jim Butcher's Welcome to the Jungle, a Harry Dresden graphic novel, which I felt was eh. I mean, OK, but thinnish on plot and I really like having more detail in these; in this case, the pictures were NOT worth a thousand words to me, and I much would have preferred a good ol'-fashioned text novel. Oh, and when it has a cape/mantle, people, it's not a duster any more, it's a freakin' greatcoat, OK??

And a graphic novel I didn't finish, Preacher, Vo. 1: Welcome to Texas - not my cup o' tea, too weird, with a plot line that has too little coherence and too much violence and profanity just for the sake of violence and profanity. Though I do sorta like the Irish vampire character. But I'm not gonna bother finishing this or looking for the rest of the series.

So we went to the Winterthur on Saturday. They have really nice lunches in their cafeteria, including a fancy dessert table. I spent more time on the "Who's Your Daddy" exhibit than squirrel_magnet or Cindythelibrarian did. We all enjoyed the "Feeding Desire" exhibit - if you're anywhere in the area, that's a great one to go see. Of course right now, the house tour includes Winterfest, which is always beautiful. And mid-afternoon, there was a concert by a Sa"ngerbund - I forget the name of the group, but it was a chorus of about 30 people. Mostly songs we did not know, many of them in German. When we crossed the driveway to the gift shop, we noticed the largest holly tree I have ever seen, somewhere over 30 feet and full of berries. I am used to holly trees being spindly 10 or 12 foot things, and in Texas holly is a shrub; this was most definitely a tree! We got a good deal of holiday present shopping done in the gift shop. On the way home we avoided the evil Delaware toll plaza - on the way up, we were so busy talking, we missed the exit for easiest toll avoidance.

Backing up a bit. I did not wind up making the corn pudding for Thanksgiving. It would have been the last thing to get started, and when I got to that point, I realized that I had every single inch of space in my oven and my toaster oven completely filled with stuff already, more stuff than 8 people could possibly eat. (So I used the corn to make corn chowder late at night for S & I for supper - so we didn't have to eat the leftovers the same day!) We had a nice Auslese Riesling and a lot of apple cider. The day went well. My 7-month-old nephew Luke seems to be attempting to bypass crawling altogether and trying to stand up by himself and learn to walk. We watched "Babe" after dinner, which was popular not only with almost-2 Kyla, but also with my dad. My stepmom gave us a housewarming present, a Tensor floor lamp with a daylight-spectrum bulb in it - and it's dimmable! That will be useful not only for all my needlework but also for S's fiddling with stereo pieces and with gadgets.

Currently reading: Grease Monkey by Tim Eldred - very funny SF graphic novel - and The Eight by Katharine Neville, a thriller about Charlemagne, chess, the French Revolution, and auditing. The number 8 has many meanings in the book, and one of them is the "Big Eight" accounting firms, back when there were still such. Our heroine works for one that is a roman-a-clef Peat Marwick, often known as KPMG; in the book, the names of the firm form an acronym of FCK-U, which pretty much describes the firm's attitude toward its clients, its employees, and everything else.

I love museum gift stores.

Although I have been knitting for years and years, it may surprise you to know that I have only ever finished ONE sweater - and that was a long time ago. I started several sweaters during my years in Austin, but never got anywhere near finishing any of them. In fact, when we were packing up to move from TX to MD, I pulled the needles out of three unfinished pieces of sweaters and gave the yarn to Goodwill: one I had lost the pattern to so I couldn't ever finish it, another in a scratchy wool I hated and would be too heavy even in Baltimore never mind Texas, and the third in a color that would not look good on ANYONE on earth, and I have no idea why I ever bought yarn that color. Another two unfinished sweaters came with me, though I don't know where they are at the moment. So I started another sweater, for NaKniSweMo. I haven't officially joined the Ravelry group for it, though I have a Ravelry account, because for one thing, I'm not making a 50,000-stitch sweater, and for another, I would be highly surprised if I did finish it. My personal goal is to see if I have the patience to finish at least one side during this month, patience having been the biggest reason I haven't knit anything larger than a hat or a sock in years. I am older now, and perhaps I am a bit more patient - we'll find out. I have only finished 12 rows so far - it was more, but I had to tink 4 rows, because the abbreviations used in the pattern are nonstandard and I had to guess at what they meant, and then go back when it was clear I had guessed wrong. Bernat's pattern sheet says to see their web site for a glossary of abbreviations, but guess what? The abbreviations on this particular pattern sheet are NOT on their glossary page. I have fixed the problem now, by experimentation, but I am going to drop them a nasty note about that. Also, the pattern is printed on half a sheet of paper - in both English and French! - so you can imagine how small the print is, and how hard it is to even find the next row. In the process of formulating that sentence for this post, earlier, I realized that what I'm going to do Friday is go to a copy shop and enlarge the damn thing, so I can stop wasting time peering all over it. The yarn is Cot'n Corn, and as you knitters know, all those exotic-ish yarns made of soy and corn and bamboo are really just viscose (rayon) whose cellulose happens to come from some plant other than a tree. So it has all the weaknesses of a viscose blend, including splitting, and fraying at the ends. But it does feel nice to the hand, and it will be a pleasure to wear.

After 6 weeks, I am only halfway through The Sot-Weed Factor and I don't think I'm going to be able to finish it before it's due. It is funny, but nonetheless very trying. Most of the action happens by way of discussing it, and most things have to be discussed several times, at least once with someone who doesn't understand what the protagonist is saying, another time with someone who disapproves, and a third time with someone who is reminded of something else by it and therefore has to digress to THEIR tale. Anyway, I have reached the Traveling Whore of Dorset. Maybe if I spot a used copy in a bookstore for real cheap, I will pick it up so that I can finish it over the course of, say, a year.

Speaking of books, what I am reading right now is Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm which is very funny, a parody of a certain class of English idealistic novels of rural life, of which DH Lawrence's were perhaps the most literary. The surprising thing to me isn't that it's funny - I knew it would be; the cover to this edition is by Roz Chast! - but that it suddenly puts Tobacco Road in perspective. I had read Tobacco Road a month or so ago, and mainly thought "ewwww" but now I can see that even though all the reviewers took it seriously, and even Caldwell himself claimed to be seriously exposing American Southern rural life, in fact he was really perpetrating the same kind of parody upon the American versions of the same sort of novels. (Cold Comfort Farm and Tobacco Road were written the same year!) So, in retrospect I suddenly find TR much funnier.

A few posts ago, I mentioned Dave Freer's A Mankind Witch, and in truth it was a bit from that, as much as Granny Ogg's writings, that inspired the post "To Serve Rat." Oddly enough, *after* that was when I ran across the book Rats: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, from whence came yesterday's tweets about rats. And then, AFTER I had twittered those, I read the newspaper, and lo! an article about rats in Baltimore! The city is proposing a rat census, as the first step in reducing Baltimore's rat problem; the initial estimate of the number of rats in Baltimore City is 3 million! Which is quite a bit more than one for every fifteen people - Baltimore City is only about 700,000 people, although the metro area of much of Baltimore County is well over a million.

And the slightly odd tone of the above paragraph may be explained by the fact that I am currently reading John Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor - a book that had never held the slightest interest for me, until 1001 Books for Every Mood happened to mention that it wasn't just a detailed historical novel of colonial America, it was also a hysterically funny soap opera of a tale. And indeed, in Barth's introduction to the edition I happened to get from the library, he states right out that his intent was to write as much in the style of Henry Fielding (Tom Jones) as he could. So far I am having fun reading it, although it has to be gone at only a couple dozen pages at a time, and it is a great fat book, so it will take a while. And for that while, it will undoubtedly continue to influence my writing style. Perhaps not quite as wordy as when I read Steven Brust's The Phoenix Guards, which had me talking funny for weeks, as well as writing, but still funnier than ordinary twenty-first century Kelly.