world of poo

When I first saw this small hardcover at the library I thought it may be a retelling of The Hundred Acre Wood tales, but a closer look at the title would have told me that Winnie's baser, homophonic namesake is the true celebrant in this farcical storybook tale. 

When Geoffrey visits his grandmother in Ankh-Morpork he decides to take advantage of her tolerance for odd hobbies and some space offered in the tool shed in the garden to expand on his burgeoning collection of poo. In fact, many adults he meets not only tolerate, but rather support his efforts to create an expansive poo museum in his grandmother's back garden, and he soon has samples in glass jars of monkey, hippo, various birds, even gargoyle and wyvern poo don't prove too difficult for him to procure, with a little help from grandmother's friends and acquaintances. 

Miss Felicity Beedle's: The World of Poo, by Terry Pratchett is apparently a volume in his Discworld series,* which I am unfamiliar with. Maybe it refers to a world where (or when) the common belief is (or was) that the world was flat. The time period seems like the late 1800s; a little late for flat worlders but then there are wyverns† at the zoo.

Children's book for grownups? This was in the adults collection at my library, so I guess so. It was a quick read and the illustrations are great, with hidden humor throughout. Have fun!

 

 

 

* a quick look on the internets shows that discworld is pretty complicated

† got to thinking about wyverns, going to write a post about them.

night school

Lee Child is at it again. My wife picked up two recent Jack Reacher novels, burned through both of them pretty quick, then suggested I read them too.

I have a little bit of a backlog of books that I've read now, and so by the time I get this posted some time will have probably gone by and I'll be reading (or have read) the next one.* This one is called Night School. And I get the impression this title is for lack of anything else, as it doesn't really give too much of a hint about the content of this one.

I haven't read all of the Reacher series, and I certainly haven't read them in order, but it appears that 'in order' may now be in question. If I'm not mistaken, this story was written and published later than some others, but does not fall 'after' in the overall timeline. Seems as though Child is going back into the timeline, and filling in some of the blanks. At the beginning of this story, Reacher is just back from a mission in the Balkans. This story may even represent a mission Reacher spoke about in an earlier story, and the Balkans mission may have also been an earlier book, but I'm not enough of a fan to know either of those things. But maybe the internet is; lets look.

Well, I looked, and it seems like this book is more of a prequel to the entire series. It may have been referred to in conversation, or some old file in an earlier (later?) book, but I don't find any reference to it.

Looks to me like, Child has taken this step back to keep Reacher from turning into that "Murder She Wrote" lady, who just seems to be minding her own business, and they someone is strangled with piano wire in the back of a New England, seaside curio shop she's visiting. Every week. she's like the fourth horsewoman of the apocalypse, or somethin'. it ain't right

So this was pretty good, but not great. A little slow in spots, and I guess I'm a little more used to the Reacher of the later novels, who usually works alone, and isn't as hemmed in by superiors and rules. That being said, I'm not quite sure how he can get away with executing someone, just for being a bad dude.

If you're a Reacher fan, you're going to read it anyway, if you aren't then, this is probably not the place to start.


* Update: It has been a week or two since I wrote this in draft form, after revising it for posting, I can confirm that I didn't go on to read the next one in the series. I've been reading some other things.

 

eros

Eros is perhaps what Alexander von Brücken feels about Sofie as he tells his life story to a young writer, as he lay dying, in his mansion outside Berlin. 

Obsession is a better word. Or maybe stalker is more apt.  

Von Brücken tells his story, beginning with his childhood, as the son of a wealthy manufacturer during World War II. VB wants a record of his love after he is gone, to insure that it is 'real.' Proof that it really happened; that the story survives him even if nothing else does.  

What the young author hears over his 8 day stay with this reclusive, eccentric billionaire is a history of joy, loss, yearning, love, sickness, politics, war, revolution, obsession, and death. Each day VB gets sicker, even as the workmen build his tomb in the garden outside the mansion, working day and night to complete it before the old man dies.   

It's a detailed look into what a man will do for love. How he can let it consume him, grind him down. VB seems to punish himself with it. It's also a story about how personal wealth and influence can be used (and abused) to accomplish things that most people can't. All this overlaid on the tapestry of WWII and it's aftermath in Germany.   

I read translations to get a different perspective than I normally do with American (and other English language) writing. And in that regard, this book didn't fail me. It was, however a little slow and tedious. Not least because if the fabricated VB weren't a very wealthy man, no one would hear his story. And regardless of his wealth making it available, no one really cares. Perhaps that is also one of Herr Helmut Krausser's points. 

Translation by Mike Mitchell.

the break

Pierto Grossi is an Italian writer and while this story could have been set anywhere, it feels Italian. That characters feel Italian. The culture does as well. 

Dino is not a talkative man. Not really an expressive man either but he is a thoughtful man. The Break, at its heart, is a story of change and how we deal with it. Some consider change a loss, regardless of what the change is. Even if many consider these changes progress. And that is a sentiment I found personally when I visited Italy, especially in the small towns, like the town Dino lives in with his wife Sofia, and works in as a stone paving mason. 

The writing takes its cues from, or at least reflects the character of, Dino and others like him. It's sparse, even terse. Grossi writes the minimum required to get his point across, and leaves some of the thinking to us. There are few places in the book where the translator, Howard Curtis, may have missed the mark, and based on my poor understanding of Italian I think it may be as simple as a misunderstanding of the way a particular word of phrase is used in Italian. I know that some words and concepts are difficult to translate but some of the terms and phrases--just a few--struck me as odd.

Grossi's last book won some awards so I'll have to keep my out for it. This is not an action packed, story driven book. It's an study of a man and how he deals with life and what it throws at him. It was a quick read though. If that's the kind of thing you're into, I'd recommend this one.

I read this a few weeks ago. I'm still catching up from my vacation in August!

time and again

Time and Again is a time travel adventure story from the 70s. I guess I'd call this soft SF. I'm not sure this one holds up, but maybe it's just the innocent quality it has. Time travel via the hippy era makes for a pretty touchy-feely trip, to say more risks a spoiler. 

Our man, Simon 'Si' Morley, is recruited by a super-secret, government funded, scientific organization looking into time travel technology based on the theory that because the past has indeed passed, its sort of still there, so we should be able to get to it somehow, and then, because the present represents the limit of the time that has passed, you should also be able to get back to the present once you're finished in the past. 

Simple, right? Oh, and future hasn't passed yet, so... yeah, no luck.

The touchy-feely part comes in here. The past is more accessible around, and among older things. no, not grandma This seems to grow out of that feeling one has when visiting old buildings and sites, that haven't been updated or renovated. Visitors feel more connected to the past in places like this; history seems more present. I think that small feeling we all have when visiting and old castle, the coliseum, or the House of Seven Gables, is what this book is based on.

Occasionally, the suspension of my disbelief is tested, when author Jack Finney seems to break, or at least stretch, the rules of his fanciful method of time travel, to suit the story arc. 

This book is illustrated, reportedly by the protagonist, as evidence of his travels, but the illustrations are vastly varied, and for the most part look like old photographs, or images from vintage greeting cards, with the story altered around them to explain how they came to be. In some cases, whole adventures appear to have bee written into the story to suit a good image the author happened upon. 

There was a few take-away stories about early New York that I was especially delighted with; things I didn't know. My favorite concerns the Statue of Liberty. 

If I've peaked your interest about these historical Easter eggs, then have at it. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother.

fifth angel

The Fifth Angel stunk.

Stink, stank, stunk.

The whole premise seems to be based on this thought: Man, child molesters/abusers really burn me up. I wish I could kick some ass, and you know, get away with it.

Tim Green dreams up a main character, who I pretty quickly assume is his avatar in this weird little snuff novel. Protagonist has had it pretty bad, his daughter was kidnapped, raped and abused for a week or something and the bad guy got off with a few years, and is now out of the slammer, and our guy's daughter is still in a mental hospital, and can't stand to see anyone, including dad. Our man is divorced, because the ex-wife blames him for not picking the daughter up on time. Busy with work, our lawyer man is.

Yeah, did you pick up on that? He's got it bad, poor him. Why isn't he spending his time trying to help his daughter? Worrying about how SHE feels? Ridiculous.

So, taking what he has learned being a kick ass lawyer, our guy goes on a killing spree of just molesters who go off easy. Part way thru said spree, our guy meets a beautiful young woman, and starts to re-built his life and a new love. How a corporate lawyer knows so much about criminal law, is never explained.

While killing people on business trips, and one time, while on a romantic get away with his brand new girlfriend. your eyes are like... pools of chum Love nest location chosen specifically to be close to next victim.

Finally gets caught by a die hard cop, with no life, and an FBI agent, who is a crime solving genius, but is having trouble balancing her job and family life. The new girlfriend takes off horrified after the arrest, of course.

Our guy ends up serving a ridiculous sentence for the only thing they can prove, and is out in 18 months, and who is there to pick him up? The estranged girlfriend! what!

'I may never understand, she gushes, but I love you.' what!

Fade to back, with our sick, sociopathic, murdering, serial killer, cum hero (?), thinking: Maybe I can have it all. no, you can't. no one should

And I'm sure he's cured, reticent, and well adjusted, after getting it all out of his system. Right? Are you kidding me!

At one point our man is shot by one of his victims, with a shotgun, from a few feet away, in the shoulder. This is while his girlfriend is sleeping in a cabin on the other side of the lake, where he took her for some romance, right across the water from his, like, tenth victim. I'm thinking; "How is he ever going to explain a shotgun blast to the shoulder, when he gets back in bed, naked, in a few minutes? Never mind not bleed to death! I'll tell her a fell on a branch in the woods, he thinks to himself. WHAT? No one would buy that, HOW is he going to get his character out of this. This is like, the first time, they've has sex together. wow, that was great. you know what I could go for right now...

Seems impossible right? Of course it is. So what does our intrepid writer do? How does he explain this ludicrous happenstance? He doesn't.

That's right, he just skips over it. Doesn't even mention it. End of chapter. A few days later, when thinking back on it, our protagonist thinks to himself, I'm glad she believed that story. Did he even pick the pellets out of his flesh? Don't know, Tim never says.

Weasel.

Don't read this book! Or anything else this guy wrote.

alchemist's daughter

The Alchemist's Daughter follows the life of a young woman in 17th century England who lives alone with her father--the alchemist--on a remote estate with only a husband and wife manservant and housekeeper team. 

Emilie's father is, in addition to being an alchemist, a natural philosopher and a member of the Royal Society and makes an annual visit to London for a few weeks to attend lectures, present findings and papers, etc. leaving his daughter behind, because as a female, she would be unwelcome at the Society's proceedings, irregardless of the fact that since her birth, her father has been educating his daughter as a scientist, and she is at 19, a genius. 

Emilie has her own ideas which in some cases contradict with her father's and we as readers who have the benefit of history to tell us that she is often right, but is so enamored of her father she assumes that she is mistaken. 

Katharine McMahon takes us on an interesting journey through Emilie Selden's life, but I would have liked to hear more about her accomplishments. There is also a bit of Bronte sister's influence to the story as well read romance that seemed a little bit to me, like: 'well, she can't do science, so what will she do in her spare time' Not fair, I know, but then, it isn't supposed to be I guess.

I think I read this one while on vacation. I have a small back up of books I've read, but haven't written about due to the 3 or 4 books I read while away a few weeks ago.

wake of vultures

Wake of Vultures is the first of the The Shadow series by Lila Bowen, a pen name for Delilah Dawson, which sounds like the secret identity of a superhero. Not sure why its not written in her name.

Nettie Lonesome is pretty kick-ass. Orphaned under mysterious circumstances, and raised by the old west equivalent of foster parents--the kind that don't care about you, and treat you like a slave--Nettie uses her affinity for animals to eventually get a job at a nearby ranch, which allows her to leave her abusive home, and finally begin a life for herself. 

What she finds when she leaves is more than she bargained for--beginning with the man she meets the very night she leaves home.  And he ain't right. 

Soon after, Nettie finds that there are lots of folks who ain't quite right. Some good and some bad, but she also finds that there is something special about her too. Something that a shapeshifting brother and sister team agree to help her discover. 

You know, while trying to conquer and evil being that has been stealing children since before she was born. 

Nettie herself is a kind of mystery, she's not quite sure where she comes from, is pretty sure she's half black, and half native American, dresses in men's clothes, and typically passes as male (it keeps the questions to a minimum) and is pretty flexible about which sex she's attracted to.

Wake of Vultures is set in an alternative universe old west, mainly in and around Texas, it just isn't called Texas, its called Durango, in the Federal Republic of America. And there are plenty of monsters to go around. It wasn't great, but I'll read the second one and see where it goes.

domino i

I'm breaking this review into two parts for convenience, mainly because this book was dragging so badly that I decided to give up on it for a while and read something more fast-paced during my vacation. I spent the last two weeks at the beach, I'm happy to report, and I brought a handful of books to read, but Domino just wasn't doing it for me.

Domino is a novel written by Ross King, who is more famous for his non-fiction books, such as Brunelleschi's Dome. my personal favorite of his I have this vague memory of another fiction book by King, which I think is Ex-Libris. I read it a number of years ago, and its not included on this blog. I do, however, remember enjoying Ex-Libris, which is historical fiction, in a similar vein to Domino. Maybe by the time I get to the end of this book, I'll change my mind, and some of the things that have been nagging at me about it will be resolved.

Its taken a little bit to figure out the format of this tale. It is, as I've said, an historical fiction tale, told from the point-of-view (POV) of a young and impressionable painter named George Cautley, who meets a woman shortly after traveling to London to find/make his fortune. Lady Beauclair is above his station, but has a vague and probably checkered past. After agreeing to paint Lady Beauclair's portrait, mainly, we are led to believe, due to his infatuation with her, Cautley is slowly being told the history of another man--a now retired castrato singer from Italy, named Tristano, whom Cautley met briefly at the same party where he first met Lady Beauclair.

Lady Beauclair, in turn tells portions of her story second-hand, from the point-of-view of Tristano, when he was a younger man. Parts of Tristano's story include histories of others, told from their POV.

So here is a little POV tree to explain the Inception-like, story-within-a-story compartmentalization of this novel.

Ross King
-- George Cautley
--- Lady Beauclair
---- Tristano
----- Characters from Tristano's past and/or other characters from Beauclair's past.

The hard part, is keeping track of when the dialog is between Cautley and Beauclair, Beauclair and Tristano, (from Beauclair's POV), Tristano and character's from his past or character's from his present (from Tristano's POV) of between characters in either Tristano or Beauclair's pasts, from either of their POVs, respectively.

King uses quotes, within quotes, and in the deeper branches of the POV tree, he uses dashes at the beginnings of the dialog paragraphs, and forgoes quote marks all together.

There is also at least one mystery character, whose place in the narrative is still uncertain in my mind. I have about a hundred pages to go. The word Domino is from the French for a mask or disguise, which many of the characters wear at various points. This proxy of obscuration should have been more of a clue.

In the meantime I read one other book, and started a second on vacation. Reviews on those will come up first, and then I'll get back to Domino.