It’s been a kind of up and down week, but I think the ups are winning. Here are three of the beautiful moments from the past week:
1. On Monday afternoon, I skipped out of work early to catch author Michael Scott’s appearance up at Politics & Prose. Although I missed his talk and reading, I did catch most of the q&a, where he answered kids’ questions about The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series. With his lilting Irish accent and quiet demeanor, he gave thoughtful replies to questions ranging from how to become an author (read all sorts of books, write every day, know most of your early writing will be terrible, force yourself to finish, and find a comfortable chair because you’re going to be sitting an awful lot) to the origins of some of his lesser known mythologicallybased characters (he draws from South America and Ireland, as well as more traditional Latin, Greek, Norse, and Egyptian sources). When the bookstore employee tasked with keeping him on schedule so he wouldn’t miss his train back to New York shut down the question period, Michael encouraged anyone who hadn’t had a chance to ask something to bring it up when they got their book signed. He chatted with everyone in line and seemed to remember several fans from previous visits, including an excited teenage football player. (And, yes, I do have a shiny (literally), signed copy of The Warlock to read this weekend when Rudi’s off on his cycling holiday.)
2. Passing through a dark park with a mirror-like reflecting pool, Rudi realizes the last duck at the sidewalk’s edge is perched over her fluffy baby ducklings, keeping them safe from predators and chatty pedestrians. The ducklings want to know why their sleep is being disturbed, so after a few minutes of night birdwatching, we move along.
3. A baby new to walking has squeakers in her shoes, so she beeps with every rapid, toddling step she takes on the sidewalk.
And this was so crazily beautiful it needed the distinction of being a rare fourth beautiful thing:
4. As I mentioned on Monday, last night we went to DAR Constitution Hall to see Paul Simon perform. What a joyful show! The band worked well together, the show as a whole had what I think of as an upbeat New Orleans vibe (mind you, that’s without ever having been to New Orleans), the audience was dancing in the aisles, and Paul himself seemed to be having a great time, shaking audience members’ hands each time he left the stage. Plus, Paul sang some great songs (including “Mother and Child Reunion,” “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes” (we almost called, Mum and Dad, but we were holding out for a song that didn’t end up getting played, “Only Living Boy in New York” (we nearly called you, Rebs), and “Here Comes the Sun”). And then, just when you were thinking, what a great, well-oiled concert, he missed his cue to come in on a song. A fan up front must not have, though, because all of a sudden, Paul was motioning him up on stage to come and sing “Gumboots” with him. The two of them had a blast performing together and the audience just went wild. It was just one of those moments where you’re lucky to be in the room.
This is the best of the videos that have surfaced thus far. None is complete, but this catches the event earlier on than the rest, even if the camera work is a bit shaky at the beginning:
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?
The Book I Am Currently Reading
I am stuck a third of the way into Jasper Fforde’s One of Our Thursdays Is Missing, just before Thursday gets thrust into a dangerous position. I seem unwilling to commit her to danger. And I just picked up Erin Bow’s Plain Katehalf an hour ago and read the first chapter.
The Book I Finished Last Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. That’s the last 2011 book review I owe before I’m caught up to date here on the blog.
The Next Book I Want to Read Tea: A Global History by Helen Saberi, which Rudi gave to me for Christmas.
The Last Book I Bought The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, in part because I had kept the library copy out past its due date and still hadn’t started it. This paperback copy will fit nicely in my bag.
The Last Book I Was Given Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer — a birthday gift from a coworker.
From the jacket: “Seven Stones of Power. No one knows when they were created or by whom, each said to represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins. For centuries, treasure hunters have been eager to possess the stones, undeterred by their corrupting nature…. Now the Stones have found their way to Salem, Massachusetts, and so has Gerwulf Grimoire, adding himself to this rogues’ gallery of power seekers. He’s an uncommonly dangerous man, with a hunger for the forbidden, and a set of abilities that are way beyond ordinary. Abilities that he feels entitle him to possess anything he might desire. That would include Elizabeth Tucker, … [whose] life is pretty much on track …until it’s suddenly derailed by a guy named Diesel, a rude monkey, and a ninja cat.” [Lifted from the author’s website, since I forgot to copy it down before returning the book to the library.]
My take: For three weeks in March, I stopped reading altogether. Nothing appealed and I just couldn’t bring myself to force my way through my reader’s block and malaise. My library books came due and I packed them up to take back unread after work.
I don’t remember why, exactly, I cracked this book open while waiting for the train, but I’m glad I did. It was light. It was funny. Cupcake baking was a major focus. It was perfect to pull me back from the doldrums. I returned the copy (which was from another branch) that was due and took home a second copy the library had on the shelves.
The reason I picked up the book in the first place is because Mum mentioned to me that Janet Evanovich, author of the Stephanie Plum mystery series, had a new series out, featuring Diesel, an occasional and other-worldly visitor to Newark. I admit to being intrigued since Diesel appeared in both Stephanie Plum books I’d finished and his character offered what I considered to be a lot of depth for expansion.
In this new series, Diesel, who’s sort of a bounty hunter of/detective for immortals, is seeking a supernatural stone. Unfortunately, while he’s great at locating people, he’s not gifted at finding magical objects. So he needs to track down someone who can. Enter Lizzie Tucker, whose cupcake baking skills are out of this world. Finding life as a chef in New York to be too stressful, she has carved out a quiet life in Salem, Mass., landed a gig baking cupcakes for a local bakery every morning, and settled into the rambling house her great aunt bequeathed her while she tries to compile a cookbook for publication.
In other words, she’s content with her life before Diesel, who would be the first to admit he has a way with women, waltzes into her life, bringing with him a long line of increasingly uncomfortable situations as they race to track down a collection of gluttony charms before Diesel’s dangerous cousin, the lupine Gerwulf Grimoire, can steal them away for his own dastardly purposes.
Lizzie is tremendously relatable. Diesel is hilarious and suave. There’s an attack-cat, a chimp with an attitude problem, and an amateur, unskilled spell-caster. Plus, did I mention the cupcakes?
If things are going to start hiding in the places where they belong (like books in a bookshelf), I’m never going to find anything.
Plain Kate has been located on a bookshelf — the one under my desk that I sit and look at every day. It was cleverly hidden right next to another book I got the same day.
Interestingly, right next to them is another advance reader copy from last summer of a book that I have picked up and put down at the library at least three times.
From the jacket: “At twenty-nine Valency had never been in love, and it seemed romance had passed her by. Living with her overbearing mother and meddlesome aunt, she found her only consolations in the ‘forbidden’ books of John Foster and her daydreams of the Blue Castle. Then a letter arrived from Dr. Trent — and Valency decided to throw caution to the winds. For the first time in her life Valency did and said exactly what she wanted. Soon she discovered a surprising new world, full of love and adventures far beyond her most secret dreams.”
My take: Last fall, raidergirl3 reviewed this novel and then offered it up to anyone who’d yet to read it. It came to me and sat on the shelf patiently waiting for me to choose it. Early last month, it jumped out at me as being the perfect read for the dreary transition to March we were having.
And it was. Valency wakes up on the morning of her 29th birthday with chest pains and despair about her life ever getting better. The good, obedient daughter of a domineering mother and overly involved, unkind, Victorian-era extended family, Valency has spent her life trying to live up to everyone’s expectations of her, whether it’s reading books only as often as her mother permits or serving as the straight man to her uncle’s mocking jokes or rubbing her cousin’s aching back before bed. But when she learns that she doesn’t have much time to live, she decides it’s time for a change. A total change. She answers her family back. She moves into the town drunk’s home to serve as housekeeper and nursemaid to his disgraced daughter. And, most scandalous of all, she’s seen interacting with Barney Snaith, who’s rumored to have done any number of terrible things.
If you’re anything like me, you spend the first bit of the novel chafing at the treatment Valency is subjected to and wondering why she doesn’t stand up for herself. Certainly some of it can be brushed off as being more fitting of the time the novel takes place (the early 1920s), but she really does suffer because of her stuffy family. And then you remember all the stupid or mundane things you do (or don’t do) yourself because “it’s expected” or “that’s just how it is.” Says who?
Valency finds it’s possible to carve out a life worth living without adhering to each “thou shalt” that comes along. But will she be able to remain true to herself when life throws up roadblocks or as she gets closer to the end of the time frame the doctor has given her?
L.M. Montgomery, as many of you probably know, wrote the Anne of Green Gables series as well as a number of other books. If you’ve read any of her Anne or Emily books, you know that she harbors a not-so-secret fondness for gothic fiction, and it seems like this novel is in keeping with it. But, as with Montgomery’s other works, it only dabbles in it here and there, with references to Blackbeard and certain romantic elements.
If you’ve enjoyed Montgomery’s other works or need a smidge of rebellion in your own life, I highly recommend adding this to your to-read pile. Even if you can pinpoint how the book will end pretty much from the start, it won’t stop you from taking in the sights and enjoying the journey.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
From the jacket: “In his wickedly brilliant first novel, Debut Dagger Award winner Alan Bradley introduces one of the most singular and engaging heroines in recent fiction: eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison. It is the summer of 1950 — and a series of inexplicable events has struck Buckshaw, the decaying English mansion that Flavia’s family calls home. A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted, life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. ‘I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life.’”
My take: Nestled outside of the village of Bishop Lacey sits the manor house of Buckshaw. Its inhabitants include the absent-minded widower (and avid philatelist) Colonel de Luce; his three somewhat annoying daughters, Daphne, Ophelia, and Flavia; and the Colonel’s factotum, Dogger, who suffers from the occasional bout of PTSD, stemming from the war. The story centers around the precocious youngest daughter, Flavia, who is a budding scientist, as was her mother, Harriet, who died while Flavia was quite young but whose presence still looms large around the estate.
The same curiosity and attention to detail that serve Flavia in her experiments prove useful when unusual events start to occur. First, a dead bird is left on the doorstep with an unusual stamp pierced by its beak. Then a stranger is overheard arguing with her father in his study late at night. Finally, she discovers a man dying in the garden.
When the police arrest Flavia’s father for the man’s murder, it is up to his youngest, know-it-all child to piece together a complete story from random facts, odd scientific know-how, and bits of 30-year-old stories from the Colonel and other residents of Bishop Lacey. But will the truth be revealed before it’s too late for the de Luce family?
I guess it would be fair to say I liked this book, but I found the heroine to be more than a little annoying. Perhaps she cut a little close to home in some of her attributes? Nonetheless, there was something gripping about Flavia’s tenacious quest for the truth, her overtly ambitious quest to be the person to solve the mystery, and her deductive grasp of facts. And it was impossible to read the story without being at least occasionally affected by the competition between the three girls for their father’s rare attention and their desperate desire to find an expression of love in their emotionally stunted lives.
I offer a tentative endorsement of the book. If you like other self-absorbed sleuths (Poirot and Holmes spring immediately to mind), I feel Flavia will suit you well. I liked it well enough that I will probably read the second book in the series, but not so much that I will run right out to request it.
Wicked Appetite, by Janet Evanovich