Larocque and Roll

Well-read in August September 6, 2007

Damn it. I just lost the post I’d started writing about what I read last month. And I just remembered I was supposed to call my sister tonight. Double damn. Sorry Rachelle!

Anyhoodle… on with the list!

~ J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (7)
The biggest disappointment about this book was that I didn’t try to get a copy the first weekend it came out so that I could participate in the grand shared experience of spending the weekend (or, in my case, the afternoon and evening) reading this book. As to the book, I liked it - it was darker and more intense. I thought the characters matured a lot, and that Ron got in some great one-liners (there was one about how impressing girl witches wasn’t all about “wand work” which had me cracking up). The saddest part was when Harry read Snape’s memories, and finding out where his patronus came from. However, I felt the epilogue was too short and rushed; there were a lot of other characters I would have liked finding out about. On the other hand, it gives me free reign to cling to the belief that Percy Weasley got a job at his brother’s joke shop eventually.

~ Jeffery Eugenidies, Middlesex (8.5)
This was a book club book. At first, I was concerned that I wouldn’t like it as much as I remembered (I stayed up all night reading it); fortunately, it was as good the second time around.

~Olivia Goldsmith, Dumping Billy (5.5)
After all that heavy reading, I needed something light and fluffy.

~ Alan Moore et al, The Watchmen (7.5)
Kind of creepy. The pirate story was seriously disturbing, but it was interesting to see “superheros” made out to be normal humans with flaws and appetites.

~ Neil Gaiman, Stardust (8.5)
It was like reading an olde-fashioned faerie tale written by someone with a sense of humour. It was the first book of his I read lo those many years ago (Neverwhere was the second). The movie, which took several liberties with the book, was also pretty awesome.

~ Ami McKay, The Birth House (8.5)
This is going to be our next book club book. A beautiful story about a midwife in rural Nova Scotia in the early 20th century.

~ Lauren Willig, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation (6.5)
Cheesy and a little over-the-top, all the while winking at the reader and wallowing in its bodice-ripping moments.

~ Stephen Fry, The Liar (8)
Dry, witty, and devious. Andrian Healey reminds me a lot of Nick Twisp, of the book Youth in Revolt. One of the characters is in the habit of recording messages for broadcast on the BBC, and all I could think was, “hey! He’s an early adopter of podcasting!” God, I am such a geek.

Oh Summer, where are you going? August 14, 2007

Seriously - one minute it was early June, then I blinked and all of a sudden it’s mid-August and the days seem shorter and the nights cooler. Pretty soon I’m going to have to remember where I put my snow shovel and figure out where I’m going to put all my clay pots from outside. Yeesh.

It’s been a busy summer, though. Between knitting and reading and bike rides and knitting and watching movies, time has fairly flown. And there’s only been a few really hot and humid days (by northern standards - they don’t come close to hot and humid days in the south, where we have two Great Lakes worth of humidity to contend with.) Overall, it’s been pretty quiet and unexciting, which is just the way I like it.

So here’s what I read in July:

~ Janet Evanovich, Metro Girl (5) - Why is it that complete amatures solve more crimes than the professionals? Otherwise, a fun, mindless read.

~ Jacquelin Carey, Kushiel’s Dart, Kushiel’s Chosen, Kushiel’s Avatar, Kushiel’s Scion - I tried reading the first book a few years ago, but gave up because I was too preoccupied with other things, and not able to focus on the action. Had I held on for a few more chapters, I would have found that it picked up considerably. Not that it was boring - the opposite, in fact - there was so much detail and so many plots, it was hard to keep track of them all at the time. This time, I breezed through the first book without much difficulty, and practically whipped through the next three books in the series, which was surprisingly good. I hadn’t expected much, and was pleasantly proven wrong.

~ J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (6) - Before I could read the last Harry Potter book, I had to reread the sixth book because I couldn’t remember what happened in this one. It was pretty much as I remembered it - Harry was a complete tool towards everyone, and I really didn’t think Snape was as evil as everyone said he was.

Right now, I’m still plugging away at my book club book, even though book club was last weekend (I read the book a few years ago, so I know what happens!)

Now I’m all nostalgic July 6, 2007

The other day I wrote about it being summer (officially) now, and since then I started reflecting on all the memorable books I’d read (or tried to read) during summers past. Part of me wants to go back and reread a lot of them, and another part of me knows that I’ll never be able to recapture whatever it was that made it so memorable. And yet another part of me (I am large and I contain multitudes) bitch slaps the second part and tells it to stop being such a negative, whiny twerp.

The summer I was 8, I hid in the family camper and read Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles. From that point on, I was hopelessly hooked on the whole Fantasy genre.

The summer I was 12, I broke my leg and spent the better part of July and August in a cast. I’d been reading The Hobbit at the time, and the worst part of the hospital stay was not having anything to read while I was there. Because I didn’t have anything else to do, I read the whole Lord of the Rings series, and loved it. I started The Simarilion, and was getting bored when the cast finally came off.

I can’t remember how old I was the summer I read The Thornbirds (probably not old enough) and then moved on to other Collen McCullough books. I know I was on vacation at my grandparent’s in New Brunswick, and that I wasn’t really old enough to understand what was going on. I just remember that they were incredibly detailed and full of historical details.

Also while I was in NB one summer, I’d picked up The Handmaid’s Tale at a bookstore in Halifax (we started in Nova Scotia, and made our way north.) I know I was 16 at the time, and was intrigued by the book. For a long time, it was the only Margaret Atwood book I liked until I read Wilderness Tips, which is a collection of short stories about the great outdoors.

Then there were the summers between the end of high school and the start of grad school where I found new authors that I grew to love - Elizabeth Peters, Laurie R. King, Dorothy R. Sayers, Spider Robinson, Diane Mott Davidson, Piers Anthony (who I now despise because he is a dirty old man), Laurence Sanders.

There have been a couple of summers where I tried to get past the first book of Stephen R. Donaldson’s [1] Lord Foul’s Bane series. I tried three times, and couldn’t - the protagonist is so bitter and unlikeable (and a whiny bitch to boot) that I don’t even try anymore.

The summer between first and second year of library school, I had three separate memorable reading experiences. The first came on the last day of class, when I’d handed in my last assignment and had no exams left; a friend had loaned me the first three Harry Potter books (Harry Potter was just starting to get big then, but we hadn’t noticed) and I ran home from the library to start reading them. I had a migraine, and I intended to read until it got too bad, but I stopped noticing after the first 100 pages. Finally, at midnight, I finished the second book [2], put it down, and said, “wow.”

The second incident came a few weeks later. The same friend who loaned me the Harry Potter books suggested I might want to try Guy Gavriel Kay, specifically the Fionavar Tapestry. It’s three books, and they form the mythical/historical/semi-religious basis for a lot of his other books. I had never been so emotionally moved by a book until that point - there was one point during the story where I had to stop reading, put the book down, and walk away because I was so upset.[3] So, thanks Stuart - you got two thumbs way up for your recommendations that summer!

The third incident came later in the summer, at the Spring Garden branch of the library. Browsing through the new arrivals, a page was shelving books and asked if I was looking for something. I wasn’t really - I read all the Kay’s the library had and was waiting for others to arrive from other branches. He handed me a book and said, “Here - try this guy. He writes comic books, but this is a really good novel.” Since that day, I’ve wished a million blessings on that kid’s head because I don’t know how I would have found Neil Gaiman otherwise. Neverwhere was the first book I’d ever read from cover to cover two times in a row, and I can’t wait until the movie for Stardust comes out.

The last few summers haven’t seen anything really memorable, maybe because the summer doesn’t have the same meaning as it used to - a break between school years. Whatever I’m doing in the summer, I’ll still be doing it in the fall, the winter and next spring, so there’s not an urgency to get a lot of reading in while I can, before I have to start reading for classes again. I haven’t really taken any vacation time during the summer, and I’m not planning to in the foreseeable future [4]. This just means that there isn’t a chunk of time I get to sit around and do nothing but read. Which is what I plan on doing this weekend, because it’s going to rain anyways.

On that note, here’s what I read in June:

~ Fiona Patton, The Granite Shield and The Stone Prince (both 6). Nothing special, but lots of detail.
~ Anthony Bidulka, Flight of Aquavit (6). A nice, easy read - predictable, yet palatable.
~ Christopher Moore, A Dirty Job (8). For book club; even though I read it this past October, it was still pretty funny.
~ Adriana Trigiani, Rococo (4). I can’t tell you what posessed me to read this, let alone finish it. It wasn’t offensively bad or terribly written, it just didn’t interest me.
~ Mark Haddon, A Spot of Bother (9). Loved this book! The family all meant well, and just had trouble expressing it.
~ Brad Smtih, Big Man Coming Down the Road (8.5). I liked the fact I recognized a lot of the geography, and a specific incident alluded to in the story. Oh, and it’s a great modern western - y’all should read it!

[1] It seems like a lot of the authors I like have the middle initial R. I wonder if there’s a reason…
[2] Have I ever mentioned I read fast? Like, 100 pages an hour on average, remembering most of what I read. And yes, I’m bragging.
[3] And no, I won’t tell you why. Go read the book yourself!
[4] I know - gasp! People keep asking my why, and I just tell them it’s because it’s hot, I don’t have air conditioning, so I’d rather be inside where it is. Plus, I’d rather take time off in the fall, when everyone is back from their summer vacations.

May’s Read Books June 3, 2007

I haven’t been all that good a blogger lately. I blame it on the fact I now have a real backyard all to myself! With real gardens! And I can plant things in it! And it needs to be weeded! A lot, in fact! But! Plants and flowers! Wow! [1] Most evenings, I come home after work, acknowledge the existence of the cat, get changed into my grubby gardening clothes, and spend an hour or so out there. When I come inside, I eat, and then collapse on the nearest flat surface until it’s time to haul myself upstairs and collapse onto the flat surface that is my bed. Long story wrapped up - the blog has fallen to the wayside for the moment, along with other leisure activities like “housekeeping” [2] and “laundry” [3]. Also, I haven’t had a whole weekend to myself in weeks, and it’s going to be weeks until I do [4].

Reading this over again, I thought it sounds like I might be creatively and mentally drained by now; oddly, the opposite is true. I have three or four simultaneous knitting projects on the needles at the moment, including two pair of socks [6], a scarf and two baby projects. Then there’s the whole garden thing - already I’m making notes on what’s working and what isn’t for next year [7]. I also did some home decorating-type things - I set up what I like to call my “outer sanctum” in my porch for those (eventual) Saturday mornings to sit and drink coffee and read, or evenings to drink gin and tonics and read.

Finally, May was the month where I almost as many books in five weeks as I had all year so far.

~ Jeffery Moore, The Memory Artist (8)
A heartbreaking book about synthanesia and Alzheimer’s. It’s told from different perspectives, as if reading a journal compiled by the doctor who is studying the mother (Alzheimer’s) and the son (synthanesia); the doctor is a pompous ass, and the five protagonists as his lab rats, who succeed anyways.

~ Sarah Waters, Fingersmith (7)
At the first surprise plot twist, I had the strongest feeling of deja vu - I’d either read this book before, or I’d read a similar one in the past few years, before I started keeping track of what I read (this is year three). Very Victorian, very gothic, and pretty good.

~ Alexander McCall Smith, No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (8)
Okay, okay - I finally succumbed to the pressure of just about everyone, and was pleased to find I actually liked this one. Plain, simple, few distractions.

~ Tanya Huff, Smoke and Mirrors (7.5) and Smoke and Ashes (7.5)
A few years ago at a convention where I got to meet her and sign a book of hers I’d just bought [8]. She’s a lovely person, funny as hell, and I would read the phone book if she wrote it. These two are a continuation of the Henry Fitzroy/Blood series (so far there are three in this series.)

~ Stephanie Meyers, Twilight (7)
For a while, I was on a vampire tear. I thought the protagonist was naive and kind of dense, and the whole thing was repetitive [9]; still, I was disappointed when I finished this book.

~ Sam Enthoven, The Black Tattoo (3)
If you read this book, you won’t need ever read any classic British sci-fi/fantasy books because this one does a great job of borrowing bits and pieces from all of them.

~ Tanya Huff, Long Hot Summoning (6)
The last in the Keeper Chronicles, and the one that drags on at the end.

~ Fiona Patton, The Golden Sword (6)
Didn’t care much for the protagonist, but it was one of those fantasy books you don’t need to have read the three previous books in the series to know what’s going on.

~ Anthony Bidulka, Amuse Bouche (6.5)
Given that the title hints at a possible foodie angle, I was disappointed that it wasn’t about crime in the kitchen world. It was a fairly solid book once I got past that, a bit predictable, yet well-paced.

[1] And, with that, I officially use up my quota of exclamation marks for the month.
[2] Lordy, you should see the cat hair everywhere… on the other hand, maybe not…
[3] My flimsy excuse for this is I like to hang it on the clothes line instead of using the drier, so there has to be enough daylight left for me to do it.
[4] A single day here and there, but nothing so decadent as two! whole! days! [5]
[5] Aaaand now I start on next month’s quota of exclamation marks.
[6] Normally, I’m lucky if I can focus on one at a time.
[7] i.e. working: snapdragons as a border, the begonias; not working: planting the impatience too early, the bleeding hearts in their current spot - move them to the front next spring because now they’re almost completely hidden by The Hosta That Ate My Garden and The Iris That’s Helping It.
[8] It was also the same convention where I got to stand in line for four hours to get Neil Gaiman to autograph a couple of books for me. It was the best four hours ever, and I still swoon when I hear him do readings.
[9] “I love you!” “I love you too, but you should be scared of me! Grrr!” “I know! But I still love you!” “I love you too, but…” etc.

April Books May 4, 2007

By now, you’re probably wondering if I was kidnapped by a band of evildoers, but I assure you, I am still safe and sound at home. It is quiet here, and no one has caused me any untoward problems. (Except for the person who picked a bunch of my tulips from the side of my house - I am going to find you and kick your ass, you tulip-stealing imbicile!)

Where was I? Oh, right…

So April was long - or at least it felt very long. But it’s over now, bringing with it May which will be…. longer, if at all possible, than April. Then June and July, which are looking gnarly, and August isn’t looking much better. This brings us to September. Can it be September already? Please? Pretty please?

Oh well…

Anyways! So, mostly I’ve been playing in my gardens - that’s right! “Garden” with a plural! - and knitting this or that, and working on a presentation for a conference. But! I also did get to read a bunch of books this month, and they were all pretty good.

~ Meg Cabot, Queen of Babel (5)
Make a liar of me, why don’t you. Okay, this one was just okay, but it was strongly reminicent of a stinker I read earlier this year, Sophie Kinsella’s Can You Keep a Secret?

~ Anthony Bourdain, Nasty Bits (8.5)
An excellent collection of essays and articles. Don’t read while hungry, or you may get really jealous.

~ Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith (8.5)
The third book in the Tiffany Aching series, which is a Discworld spin-off. Meant for kids, but still pretty hilarious.

~ Lolly Winston, Good Grief (6.5)
I couldn’t really relate to the grief of the main character, but I can imagine how that much sorrow would cause such distress.

March Something-ness April 10, 2007

March wasn’t a good month for reading. I was restless, and my moods were capricious. At least four books I started never got finished, including The Omnivore’s Dilemna, which is what I was reading at the beginning of the month. Don’t get me wrong - it’s an interesting book if you’re interested in where your food comes from, and learning more about agri-business.

~ Carl Hiaasen, Nature Girl (5)

I was really disappointed because I’m a huge Hiassen fan. However, this book suffered from an abundance of characters with a myriad of personality quirks and a deficit of geography [1].

Speaking of abundances…

~ John Green, An Abundance of Katherines (7.5)

Quirky. I liked it more than Alaska.

~ Tanya Huff, Summon the Keeper (8) and Second Summoning (7.5)

Whenever I read these two (and the third book), it’s the long weekend in August 2003 all over again. I’m listening to Sam Roberts and drinking something I made up called a Funky Monkey (vanilla ice cream, milk, bananas, and Bailey’s Irish Cream), and I have the house to myself.

~ Christopher Moore, You Suck! (8.5)

I would read the phone book if Moore wrote it. This one is a sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends, runs parallel to the action in A Dirty Job, and has a tragi-romantic ending that didn’t feel cheap or like a cop-out.

[1] Why, yes I did swallow a dictionary this evening. Why do you ask?

February’s catch February 28, 2007

I’m not likely to finish the book I’m currently reading before the end of the day, and I have some time to kill, so here are the books I read in February.

~ Heather O’Neil, Lullabies for Little Criminals (6) (It’s one of the Canada Reads books. I’m afraid I didn’t like it all that much - I found the narrator to be too precocious, too prone to exaggeration, and too bleak.)

~ John Green, Looking for Alaska (7)
~ Gordon Korman, Born to Rock (7)
~ Poppy Z. Brite, D*U*C*K (8)

(These three I read in two days; none of them were very long, and they were all pretty good.)

~ Christopher Rice, Light Before Day (8) (SO much better than the first book of his which I read, despite very dark themes.)

~ Sue Haasler, Time After Time (4)
~ Sophie Kinsella, Can You Keep A Secret? (3.5)

I feel stupider for having read these two. At the time, I wanted something fluffy to read, but this just turned my brains to mush. (Note to Julie: Put down the Shopaholic book, and back away slowly!)

~ Charles de Lint, The Blue Girl (7) (Like meeting up with an old friend and finding out nothing has changed, but they have all sorts of new stories to tell you.)

Right now, I’m working my way through Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and it’s a facinating read.

Beware the Books of January! February 5, 2007

I read four books this month, and nothing really lept out and captured my interest.

Jacklyn Moriarity, A Year of Secret Assignments (4)
Gordon Korman, Son of Interflux (6)
Libby Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty (6)
Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Match Me If You Can (7)

The Korman book I read multiple times in my youth, and I’m struck how well it stands up. There are some dated references, but not all that many.

Best books of 2006 January 21, 2007

Over at Steel White Table, Phillip is counting down his ten favourite movies from last year. Now, usually I’m lucky if I can remember the last two movies I saw, let alone the ten best. However, I did keep track of all the books I read last year, so I can tell you which ones I liked the best. It’s not in any particular order of greatness; rather, I’ll go in chronological order.

1. Sarah Vowell, Partly Cloudy Patriot
A very earnest and heartfelt tribute to the United States - she’s not overly sentimental, nor is she harsh towards those who tarnish that golden image she paints of her homeland. Her chapter on Al Gore is excellent, and explains how his run for the presidency wasn’t only a battle of liberals vs. conservatives, but a war between nerds and jocks.

2. Dan Savage, The Commitment
This is a scathing indictment of the whole anti-gay marriage movement, as well as a look at the personal choices he and his boyfriend made. It’s no-holds-barred, blunt, and sometimes shocking, but meaningful at the same time.

3. Anthony Bourdain, Tyhopid Mary: An Urban Historical
I love Bourdain. If he wrote the phone book, I’d be sure to get a copy and read it all in one sitting. In this book, he turns an otherwise colourless story about a woman who was a one-woman typhoid factory into a story about the history of kitchens, food prep and the servant class at the turn of the 20th century.

4. Poppy Z. Brite, Drawing Blood
Brite is another of my phone book authors. It’s gory and messy, and there is violence and unbridled emotion in this story, but it’s one of my favourites, and I read it almost every summer.

5. Pamela Ribon, Why Moms are Weird
Loved loved loved this book! I sat down and read this book from cover to cover in one go. There were passages that cracked me up, and others that just ripped my heart out.

6. Terry Pratchett, Thud
The world can be divided into people who love and “get” Pratchett, and those who feel obligated to read Pratchett to humour those in the first category, but don’t really like it or “get” it. That’s not really relevant to anything, but I just felt the need to get that out there. Anyways. I always feel smarter after I finish one of his books because he manages to make current events or political situations understandable by simplifying them and then breaking it down.

7. Sarah Dessen, Just Listen
What I love about her novels are the emotional breakthrough her characters go through, and how support usually comes from unexpected sources. Her characters are real, and their pain and problems are real, and that even though they come through the crisis, they still need support. (I also love that her male characters are arty and creative, independent creatures, and sweet and understanding souls. Why aren’t there more men like that in the real world?)

8. Christopher Moore, A Dirty Job
Not only is Moore strange and funny, he can also write about sorrow with deftness. But it’s a mostly funny book.

9. Rachel Cohn and David Levitan, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
It’s a great story about two wild and crazy kids, and the fateful night they met. No matter what happened to them after the story ended, it would have made a great story to tell the grandkids.

10. Kevin Brockmeir, A Brief History of the Dead
Mildly creepy - definitely one I shouldn’t have started reading after 10pm, because I ended up having to stay up until I finished reading it, and then also regretted that decision. Still! It’s an interesting story about what happens to us after we die, and what might happen if everyone dies.

11. Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
No matter how many people had great things to say about this one, I was always worried that the time travelling aspect and non-linear storyline would throw me off. However, it’s a beautiful love story, and I won’t say anything else lest I spoil the ending.

12. Keith Miller, The Book of Flying
A story about stories, and the young man who collects them. And I swear I didn’t love this book just because the main character is a librarian!

It’s still Wednesday somewhere January 11, 2007

While this won’t be the most random post ever, it’s going to come close.

For the last few weeks, we’ve been enduring warmish, unseasonable weather here in the “frozen” north. This is my third winter up here, and there have been precious few days where I’ve thought to myself, “Colder than a witch’s teat out there, it is.” [1] So, Sunday night it starts snowing - big, fluffy flakes. It’s all pretty and winter-like outside, and I should be happy it’s starting to look and feel seasonal out there.

Except…

Sunday night I watched “Perfect Storm” on the Discovery Channel, and they were focusing on the ice storm in Montreal a few years ago, and what could have made it worse. Lovely! Now I’m looking at all that beautiful, fluffy snow on the branches of the trees, and thinking, “what if it starts to freezing rain? What then?” [2]
~

Looking back at my efforts to track what I read last year, again I failed miserably. At least I managed to make it to the June books before the end of the year. The problem is that I failed to record the books I read from October on. I have a quick list on a post-it note on the front of the notebook I use to track these things, but I’m sure I’m missing at least two, plus the one I read at the beginning of December, which I’ve totally forgotten, and the two I read over the Christmas holidays (The Time Traveler’s Wife - absolutely stunning; and A Brief History of the Dead - eerie and riveting). [3]

So I’m not sure what to do with regards to recording my reading progress. I could try and keep up with that blog, but only doing the books that really left an impression on me, and doing a complete, but brief, monthly list over here. That way, it feels less like homework and more like me telling you “you should read this! And here’s why!”

~

I’d like to open all my windows and blare Sleater-Kinney’s “Entertain” to the neighbourhood. However, it’s -26 out there at the moment, and my laptop speakers aren’t all that powerful, so it wouldn’t make that much of an impact. But it feels like one of those songs you need to play loud and throw the horns at. Then follow it up with Le Tigre’s “TKO.” [4]

~

Another thing I used to keep track of was what I was knitting. I know this because I was tagging my archives a few months ago[5] when I switched over to this site, and came across my works in progress updates. I should start doing that again, because I’m still knitting a lot, but just not showing much of anything. My most recent project?

This was supposed to be for my mother for Christmas, but I wasn’t finished. I’m well over halfway done the second sock now.

~

Anyhow. That’s enough randomness for one evening. Maybe I’ll do some more knitting stuff tomorrow.

~

[1] Yes, I talk like Yoda when I’m thinking to myself. Problem with that have you?
[2] All my fears are rational!
[3] I have a feeling there was another one in there, but it’s also been forgotten.
[4] Which I used to hate, but it’s really grown on me.
[5] Um, I’m still not done. I sort of crapped out during April 2005, I think.