Who and when is Thursday Next?

I'm not really one for Science Fiction. The only two Science Fiction books I've liked in my long reading career are The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, which is more dystopia than Science Fiction, and Kindred by Octavia Butler.  Although, come to think of it, The Handmaid's Tale is one of my all time faves. And, now that I'm writing about it, I don't know that I've read many more Science Fiction books. Maybe I do like Science Fiction?

Recently I jumped from two Science Fiction books under my belt to four. It's not often a reader squares the number of books they've read in any particular genre, is it? The verdict?  I loved my new finds.

The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book are the first two in the Thursday Next Series by Jasper Fforde.  I happened upon the first book as I did a search for books about Jane Eyre. I didn't really know anything about the book, including its genre, but if it had Jane Eyre in the title, I figured it was worth a go. I hit the daily double when I not only loved it, but found out it was the first in a long series of books.

Thursday Next lives in London in the 1980s. It's not immediately clear what has happened to this world of ours, but things are different. Time travel is common, though highly illegal. Literature is one of the most important and hotly debated social and political issues of the time. Genetic engineering has left some strange creatures walking down the sidewalk. And, England has been engaged in a land dispute over the Crimea with Russia for the last hundred years.

Our girl, Thursday, is a veteran of the war and is now a Literary Detective. In the first installment, she is on a hot case that brings her face to face with her mortal enemy, Archeron Hades. This guy is sick. He possesses the power to change anyone's mind, he can't be captured on film and he delights in supremely evil acts. 

He has stolen a rare first edition and Thursday must get it back. Their game of cat and mouse leads them both into the original manuscript of Jane Eyre, where they have the power to change the plot, based on their actions and interactions with the characters. I loved getting to know Mr. Rochester off script.

A few subplots play themselves out as we progress: Thursday's long lost love reappears; we encounter her father (whose name she has never known) who is on the run from the ChronoGuard and keeps one step ahead of them through constant time travel; and Thursday must make some big life decisions, like stay in the big city or move back home to Swindon.

There are instances when the Science Fictiony parts of the story are tedious for me, and a few bits about the time travel and politics get confusing to the point that I began to skim. On the whole, though, it had everything I look for in a book: Jane Eyre, a strong female lead character, London and time travel. I can't wait to get the next Thursday Next from the library!

Do you have a favorite Science Fiction Book?

Photo credit: miss_leslie

The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray is life itself

I'm not secretive about my love for Walter Mosley.  I love him.  I love him.  I love him. So, one might be inclined to believe that I love everything about him.  Au contraire, mon frere. Like any good relationship, my love for Walter Mosley means I have to take the good with the bad.  I have not loved everything he has written.  In fact, a couple of his books bothered me so much that I considered breaking up with him. 

Fortunately, I did not act hastily and I wrote off Killing Johnny Frye and Diablerie as some very annoying habits that I decided I could live with. I'm not going to try to change him; I'm just going to accept him, flaws (and Johnny Fryes) and all. Today, our relationship is not only intact, it is stronger than ever.

Case in point, his latest work: The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray. Ptolemy Gray has a secret. It has to do with a pirate, his treasure and the location of a whole lot of buried gold.  Unfortunately, ninety-one year old Ptolemy can't quite remember where the treasure is buried, or if it is even real, for that matter.

When we meet Ptolemy, he has seen better days. His memory and reasoning skills are failing him. He has lost everyone he has loved. To keep his feelings of loss at bay, he cocoons himself inside his home with all the stuff he has collected throughout his lifetime. His apartment is not a pleasant place, though. The plumbing doesn't work and it is stuffed to the gills with trash and mementos. But what's really tripping him up is that he can never be sure where he is and whether he's merely dreaming about the past or actually reliving it. For Ptolemy, things have gone a bit haywire on the time-space continuum.

The only way Ptolemy gets by is a great-grand nephew that visits a few times a week to take him food shopping and use the toilet in a nearby diner.  As the story opens, this young man is murdered. Ptolemy suddenly feels a connection to the outside, present-day world that he has not felt for the last few decades.  He feels responsible for bringing peace to his nephew's soul by finding his killer. He must also find that treasure so he can take care of his nephew's family.

Ptolemy's only hope of making sense of all the memories, feelings and facts floating around in his head is a doctor he's heard about. He meets with the doctor and enters into a classic Faustian bargain.  If Ptolemy takes the doctor's drugs, he will regain clarity, understanding, memory and reasoning. He will also be dead within a week, and the doctor will take possession of Ptolemy's body for scientific research. Ptolemy decides that finding the treasure is worth his soul, so he goes for it.

What the reader experiences next is Ptolemy's journey through past and present, in which love, loyalty, justice and intellect don't need to conform to a linear construct of time. They just are, as we just are.  Through Ptolemy's odyssey, the reader has the opportunity to drink in the very meaning of life.

Does Ptolemy find the treasure? Does good win out over evil?  Does the devil take Ptolemy Gray's soul? If you know Mr. Mosley, you can probably guess that the answer is not a simple yes or no, but somewhere in the "Gray"ish middle.

I love Walter Mosley, I loved The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray and I love side-stepping the time-space continuum, if only for a couple hundred pages.

What are your favorite tales of Faustian bargains?  What did you learn from them?

Photo Credit: David Shankbone

My brilliant friend Maisie

I love book series. I appreciate their pace. With the first book in a series I get to know a little bit about the character and the author begins to draw me in to what will hopefully be a lifelong relationship. As I read each subsequent book, I gradually get to know my new friend. What I especially like about a series is that I am shielded from the sadness that usually comes with the end of a good book because I know that with the next, I will get to spend more time with my pal. 

I sometimes ponder what my life would be like without Easy Rawlins or Precious Ramotswe, two of my favorite book series characters. They mean a lot to me. They are my teachers. They provide lessons on what goodness looks like, how to make a hard decision and live with the consequences, and how to learn from history. They also make me laugh.  A lot. I measure a book's worth by how much I would like to live in it. If only they would ask, I would kiss my husband goodbye and move in with Easy or Precious in a hot minute.

My latest series-love is Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. I have just finished reading the eighth (and at this point) last book in the series: A Lesson in Secrets. What can I tell you about Maisie? She comes from humble beginnings. Her father was a costermonger in pre-World War I London. What, prey tell, is a costermonger? Exactly! This is why I love Maisie. She introduces me to all sorts of things that I wouldn't otherwise know about. And,  they are all worth knowing.

Her mother died at an early age and her father sent her into service. At her employers' home, Maisie not only worked hard, she also had the opportunity to discover a world of intellectual opportunities through the mistress' library. When she was caught reading books in the middle of the night, she was afraid she would be fired, but instead was offered the chance to be mentored by a great scholar.

While it may sound like a typical Cinderella story, it is most decidedly, not. Maisie's life takes many twists and turns, including a stint as a nurse in World War I. After the War, Maisie must regroup and put her life back together. She becomes a private investigator and psychologist. A large part of her success is the result of the careful cultivation and reliance on her intuition. Maisie doesn't solve cases on facts alone. She has feelings and understandings that go beyond what can be observed. Maisie possesses extraordinary ways of knowing.

Doesn't she sound brilliant?

The books aren't just about Maisie. They are about English society before and after World War I; the changing role and position of women in that era; and how people persevere in the face of devastating loss and poverty. Maisie Dobbs novels are about London and the English countryside and how new technologies (namely the motor car and the telephone) changed them both. They are also about those who have, those who have not and the consequences of injustice.

I hope you will introduce yourself to Maisie and become acquainted.  Please tell her Huff sent you.

Do you like book series?  Why or why not?

Photo credit: Author

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was not for me

Due to academic pursuits, I have been imprisoned in an ivory tower for these last two months. I was unable to engage in any activity not residing at the bottom of Maslow's triangle, including reading.

After fulfilling my sentence, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, was my first read. Given its popularity, I may not need to justify my selection, but now having read the book, I feel compelled to do so. The first reason I chose this book was that I was at the airport about to board a plane empty-handed, and the airport book store had a limited selection. I was also curious what all the hype was about, and I don't recall ever reading a book set in Sweden.

We quickly learn that our man, a journalist, has been convicted of libel for a story he wrote about a billionaire's shady business dealings. He subsequently leaves his job as publisher of the magazine and accepts a contract position to write the family biography of an aging tycoon. He will also be looking into the disappearance of the tycoon's niece which occurred some decades ago. The job pays handsomely and seems easy enough, so he sets about his work.

There are many layers to what goes on next. The family he is chronicling turns out to be harboring a number of awful secrets, including more than its fair share of Nazis and alcoholics. Some of these secrets just might play into the disappearance and suspected murder of the niece. Through a contrived series of events, our journalist teams up with an unlikely private investigator (who happens to have a dragon tattoo). Their relationship develops into both a professional one, in that they both become obsessed with solving the mystery of the disappearing niece; and a personal (and predictable) one, in that they could be falling in love, or something along those lines.

A couple other themes emerge in the telling: the unmitigated corruption of industry and its leaders, supported by the collusion of investigative journalists; and ethical quandaries faced by writers when they are provided with incendiary material by anonymous sources. 

The mystery is interesting. It spans six decades and involves an intricate web of characters. So, yes, I enjoyed the unraveling of the mystery. But, the violence in the book is beyond what I wanted to endure. It is too much and it just keeps coming. It is gruesome, happens in unexpected places and frequent. I just kept thinking: please stop!

I've read that Mr. Larsson witnessed an extreme act of violence against a woman when he was young and spent some of his life trying to atone for not helping the victim. I applaud him for bringing the issue of the frequency and severity of violence against women to light, but enough already. 

The characters are the second problem I had with the book. In addition to the journalist and the girl with the dragon tattoo, there are a few other central players. Very few of them are likable, or even interesting. They lack depth and are fairly predictable. 

I can only recommend this book if you don't mind horrific violence, don't care much about characters and enjoy a good mystery. 

The original Swedish title of the book, translated to English, is Men who Hate Women. This is a far more apt title, given its content. I guess the publishers didn't think American audiences could swallow it. Well, this one couldn't.

Did you like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Photo Credit: katrineholmskommun

The Autograph Man is the last Zadie Smith novel I will read

Zadie Smith is one of those authors that each time I read one of her books, I make a promise to myself NOT to read another one.  Reading The Autograph man only strengthened my resolve.

Why then, is this the third Zadie Smith novel I have read?  Just like many questions raised in the book, this remains unanswered.

The Autograph Man is about some messed up people. Not "regular" messed up, like you and me. I mean they are OUT THERE. The setting is London. Alex is our twenty-something protagonist and his issue is that he can't get beyond the death of his father, who died when he was a teenager. Alex's mother is Jewish and his father was Chinese. His best friend is Black and Jewish, and his best friend's sister is his girlfriend, who he clearly under appreciates. The whole lot of them is into drugs on some level. Religion and faith loom large as an unspoken character in the novel.

I liked the premise. I was with her in the beginning. As we delve deeper, we accompany Alex on a drug binge, hanging out with his friends, avoiding his faithful girlfriend and pursing the object of his obsession, Kitty Alexander, a has-been Hollywood actress from whom he just wants an autograph. 

Alex and his friends have a lot going on in their heads about cultural identity. They are having a hard time figuring out who they are and how that affects their lives and their choices. They are struggling with faith, commitment, responsibility and grief.

All of these issues are interesting to me. But after raising these issues, Ms. Smith just leaves us hangin'. Her characters have some pretty deep things to say, but they only half finish them. She jumps from subject to subject, from problem to problem and we never really get anywhere. About halfway through the novel, I started to get that "where are we going and why are we in this hand basket?" feeling.

I was interested in The Autograph Man and his friends and what they had to say. I almost got a lot out of this book, but then, I just didn't. So, seriously, I am NOT reading anymore Zadie Smith novels.  This, I promise myself. Does anyone know when she has a new one coming out?

Did you read The Autograph Man? What did you think?

Photo credit:  Sweet Mustache

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: Foot binding, love and a secret language

I was prepared not to like Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Call me crazy, but foot binding and the soul-deadening drudgery of women's lives in ancient China just didn't seem like something I wanted to know more about. I hate it when I'm wrong. I loved this story.

We are drawn into Lily's life when she is a young girl. The story takes us through her childhood, which does include foot binding as well as a long list of abuses to which women and girls are subjected. But, Lily's life also includes a surprising joy: her laotong, Snow Flower. The author describes the laotong or "old same" as akin to a female soul mate. Stronger than the bond of marriage, a laotong relationship lasts forever, continuing even after death. Another bright spot in the women's lives is nu shu. This was a secret, written language, unbeknownst to men, in which women subversively communicated. 

Lisa See, the author, conducted extensive research in rural China on the history, use and revival of nu shu. I was fascinated. Women who were completely disenfranchised and thought to be as worthless as animals raised for slaughter, found a way to love and support each other. Their nu shu communications gave them an iota of hope that there may be things that make life worth living.

The story goes beyond sharing the cultural and political context of women's lives in 19th century, rural China. It is also a personal story of love, misunderstanding, regret and redemption. By the conclusion, Lily is a very old woman and has learned that being a true friend requires one to let go of prescribed roles and go beyond what is taught as a proper response to a given situation. In other words, if love is true, it must be unconditional. It is left to the reader to decide whether Lily learns this lesson too late.

It took me a while to get into this book, but by the middle, I was looking forward to reading more, needing to know what would become of Lily and her laotong, Snow Flower. 

Have you read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan?  What did you think?

Photo credit: Lucius Beebe Memorial Library

Tales that send shivers up and down my spine

I just started reading The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. This book was on display at the library, presumably because Halloween is upon us. I chose it for two reasons: 1) Edith Wharton is one of my all-time favorite writers, House of Mirth being at the top of my list; and 2) I have had a few experiences with ghosts, so I like to compare my experiences with other people's tales of the supernatural.

When I pick up a new book, I'm usually eager to start reading and I get impatient with forewords, prologues and the like. Ms. Wharton's preface caught my attention, however, as she began with the question, "Do you believe in ghosts?" Since I do, I was interested to find out what she had to say on the topic. One tidbit she shared was, "Ghosts, to make themselves manifest, require two conditions abhorrent to the modern mind: silence and continuity." She goes on to say that the only true measure of worth of a ghost story is if it sends shivers up and down one's spine.

Those thoughts called to mind an experience I had with another great writer, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Although the story I'm thinking of isn't a ghost story, it is a sort of thriller and has elements of the supernatural.

When I was in graduate school, once a week, I had to drive two hours to class and two more hours back home. My commute included some pretty desolate locales on the border between New York State and Pennsylvania. Late one night, as I drove home, I was listening to a short story on tape, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This is a seminal work of feminist fiction about the role of women in society, the medical establishment's misdiagnosis and (mis)treatment of women, what happens when a woman becomes a wife and a mother, etc., etc., you get the idea.

I don't mean to belittle the social and political import of the tale, but on that night, The Yellow Wallpaper was nothing more than a story that scared the BEJEEZUS out of me. I was alone, in the car, in a dark, creepy, and seemingly-abandoned land. The narrator conjured Ms. Perkins Gilman's images of what lived on the other side of the protagonist's wallpaper: women crawling around on all fours trying to get out of the prison that was the wallpaper. 

The author may have intended the wallpaper to serve as a metaphor for women being incarcerated by a sexist society, but the only message I was getting from the story was: get home as soon as possible before the women start coming after me!

It might not sound that scary now, but had you been in Lisle, NY at 11:30 on that Thursday night, it would have sent shivers up and down your spine, too. As the story reached its climax, I was terrified. I checked to make sure all the car doors were locked. Then I thought, HELLO, the terror is inside my car, inside the tape player. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say it was inside my imagination. I got home about an hour later, but I don't think I fell into sleep easily.

If you are familiar with The Yellow Wallpaper, you know there is a lot more to be scared of than the supernatural elements. The point of the story is more about what a terrifyingly androcentric society we live in, not really so much about the scary women crawling around behind the wallpaper. I will save that aspect of the story for another day. On that night, I was just plain scared out of my mind!

What have you read that sends shivers up and down your spine?

Photo credit: Totally Severe