Okay, tomorrow starts November. In November, I'm doing NaNoWriMo. So, less reading, less blogging, much much more writing. See you guys later!
Monday, October 31, 2011
A Month of Sequels
Looking over my spreadsheet of the month, I see a heck of a lot of sequels, which explains my lack of blogging. I've already talked about Joanna Bourne, Eloisa James, Jillian Larkin, George RR Martin, Louise Penny, Kathy Reichs, and Dorothy L Sayers. I don't want to bore you, after all - if I'm still reading them, I'm still enjoying them. (Oh, Louise Penny! You keep making me cry. Chief Inspector Gamache is - gasp! - topping even Inspector Lynley as my most beloved modern police officer.)
But I've got to talk about a book I'd meant to read forever, and finally listened to this month: Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone. Oh, y'all. This book is gorgeous, and tense, and loving, and sad, and vivid. I was constantly bereft, then hopeful, and then bereft again. Sunil Malhotra was the narrator, and his voice really resonated throughout the story of Dr. Marion Stone, his quiet twin Shiva, their adoptive parents, and their lives in Addis Ababa. The twins are literally inseparable until birth, a virtually inseparable afterwards, through much of their childhood. Then: things go awry. It's just great.
Okay, tomorrow starts November. In November, I'm doing NaNoWriMo. So, less reading, less blogging, much much more writing. See you guys later!
Okay, tomorrow starts November. In November, I'm doing NaNoWriMo. So, less reading, less blogging, much much more writing. See you guys later!
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Right Ho, AudioGo!
Another review on a title courtesy of Audiobook Jukebox.
Publisher: AudioGo, Pub. Date: September 13, 2011, Length: 4 hours, 48 minutes
I went through a gorgeously long P.G. Wodehouse phase in middle school - checked out every title in my local library. (Same branch I visit constantly now. Have I mentioned that I love my librarians? They are the nicest.) Periodically over the past couple of years, I've listened to some of the BBC full cast audio versions of Bertie and Jeeves tales, but haven't run across any of the titles as narrated by Ian Carmichael, until Jeeves in the Offing. (I've had the pleasure of Carmichael's narration on several Dorothy L Sayers novels, and he just screams Lord Peter to me - his voice is always in my head when I read Sayers in print.)
Publisher: AudioGo, Pub. Date: September 13, 2011, Length: 4 hours, 48 minutes
I went through a gorgeously long P.G. Wodehouse phase in middle school - checked out every title in my local library. (Same branch I visit constantly now. Have I mentioned that I love my librarians? They are the nicest.) Periodically over the past couple of years, I've listened to some of the BBC full cast audio versions of Bertie and Jeeves tales, but haven't run across any of the titles as narrated by Ian Carmichael, until Jeeves in the Offing. (I've had the pleasure of Carmichael's narration on several Dorothy L Sayers novels, and he just screams Lord Peter to me - his voice is always in my head when I read Sayers in print.)Carmichael is just as deft with Bertie Wooster - joyful, energetic, a tad daft, full of plummy rolling 'Rrrr's and glib onomatopoeia fun. Jeeves, Kipper Herring, Aunt Dahlia, Bobbie Wickham, and all the tertiary characters are equally well-rendered. It's all such a perfect complement to a classic Wodehousian farce - fake engagements, familial obligations, butlers who aren't butlers, a dachshund, and the infamous silver cow creamer all interact at cross-purposes. Unless the purpose is to get Bertie into deeper and deeper water, all while Jeeves is away on vacation. In that case, all the stars align perfectly.
Bertie finds he is unable to resist Aunt Dahlia's command that he keep her goddaughter from an unwise match. Although this involves falling off chairs, encountering his reviled old headmaster, falling in lakes, and encountering his erstwhile girlfriend, he gamely applies all the Wooster intellect to the proposition. If you're at all familiar with the Wooster intellect, you'll be happy to know that he eventually interrupts poor Jeeves's shrimping trip so that greater minds can prevail and save the day. It's an unchanging tale, but Wodehouse constantly managed to retell it with sharp dialogue and an unflagging commitment to the absurd, which makes those long Jeeves and Wooster phases so gorgeous whenever they come along.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Truth is More Sarcastic than Fiction
I've managed to get myself involved with reading / listening to 5 books at once. (Well, not simultaneously... you know what I mean.) Not to mention the one I'm writing. Since that leaves me without any fiction to blog about, I'm turning to real life instead.
This is my little pumpkin, D. He turned 16 this month. This, of course, involved many moments of R & I saying, "We've been parents for that long?" and telling mortifying (to D) stories of his adorable toddlerhood and so forth. We're pretty happy with the guy, especially because he only grew one inch in the last year, and kept the same shoe size, which is a boon to those of us purchasing his clothing and footwear.
Also, of course, we had the Driver License Events.
We live in a Really Major Metropolitan Area, which means, among other things, very long lines at the DMV. The High School Information Network indicated that a trip to a nice rural town would mean 3-4 minutes in line rather than 3-4 hours. So driving an hour each way for the road test is a "good idea." Never mind factors like the high cost of gas, and that sitting in the DMV waiting room at least theoretically allows for reading or homework while driving doesn't. Still, a road test on quieter roads is a tad less stressful, and the boy's heart is set.
But wait! Road tests are only available via appointment. And appointments have to be made in person, by the test-ee. Somehow, Parental Logic pointing out that this would mean 4 hours of driving to and from the Rural DMV didn't hold water. Everybody jumping off bridges, and all that. Also, the Major Metropolitan DMV has a known 5+ week wait for the appointment, and who wants to wait that long? Not my 16 year old, that's for sure. There was some vague mention of potential lines when going back for the driving appointment, even though that was unsubstantiated by the High School Information Network. Probably because they all jumped off the bridge of the Rural DMVs.
So I'm looking up rural DMVs. Telling D that yes, mileage wise, that one by the beach is closer. But it involves driving through downtown and past one of the airports to get there, so it's not quicker. I pick one with a Google Map-estimated drive time of 48 minutes, and ascertain that it will be open on Columbus Day at 8 a.m.
D is eager to be the first one in the door, and I have to work that day, so I let him drag me out of bed at 6:00. We spent the day before parallel parking up and down our street for an hour, and he's been doing very well. We both feel ready. (His dream is that they'll say they have an appointment that same day if we'll wait around to take it.) He grabs the keys and heads out to the car.
Turns the key. Nothing. I explain about locking the ignition, but yanking on the steering wheel has no effect. Key in. Key out. Try to turn wheel. Check gear shift. Try to turn key. Press in brake. Turn wheel. Double-check gear shift. Key finally turns... and car alarm goes off.
HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK!
I'm in the passenger seat, attempting to stay level-headed and instructive and also to press the right buttons to turn off the damn alarm. And hoping my neighbors weren't planning to, you know, sleep in at all.
He was a little rattled. But he took a deep breath. Restarted the car. Successfully backed down our driveway (one of the toughest of the routine tasks.) We were on our way.
A quarter-mile later, he had to turn onto the feeder road of the freeway, ideally into a left lane so he could U-turn at the intersection. And yet. He chose a good moment to turn, he pulled out with good speed, but not only into the right lane, but up onto the curb. With both passenger side tires. Narrowly - and I mean narrowly - missing a fire hydrant before he plunked the car back down onto the street.
Plunk.
Ker-plunk. Ker-plunk, ker-plunk.
I had him pull into a parking lot. Ker-plunk, ker-plunk, ker-plunk.
So for future reference, son, that's what it feels like to drive on a flat tire.
We switched seats and I got the joy of the shoulder-wrenching teeth-clenching quarter-mile drive (ker-plunk, ker-plunk) back onto the feeder road, down the major thoroughfare, and into the mall parking lot to the Sears Auto, which opened at 8 a.m. As we abandoned the car and walked home, he finished the seventh stage of grief (the rage was something to behold! but my favorite was bargaining - it was pretty clear the Traffic Gods were just not in the mood to listen to his pleas.)
So we sat around for an hour, then went back to Sears where they'd have finished with us sooner if some something mechanical something something else tool-related hadn't intervened. But hey, it allowed us plenty of time to watch Jerry Springer "help" some nice people who were forced by the economic downturn to cheat on their spouses. Oddly, usually with their spouse's younger, hotter siblings, which must be a lesser-known side-effect of the recession. Who knew?
8:30, Mel in the driver's seat and $170 poorer, we hit the road again. Once we got to Rural Town, D was confident enough to drive to the DMV, where we found a short-ish line in the most stereotypically tiny 3-person shack of an office ever imagined by whoever it is who goes about imagining these things.
After a wait while the nice women at the Rural DMV help a wheelchaired senior citizen who arrived after us (but that is part of the Rural DMV Stereotypical Way of Life), D is vision-checked, thumb-printed, relieved of $11, and then, the big moment arrives. DMV woman pulled out the giant "Road Test" binder.
Drum roll, please. (D's present from us was a drum set. Either because we love him and want to please him, or because we are a little cuckoo.)
4 weeks.
Right around the time school gets out.
An hour away.
Heaven forbid I should ever doubt the High School Information Network again.
This is my little pumpkin, D. He turned 16 this month. This, of course, involved many moments of R & I saying, "We've been parents for that long?" and telling mortifying (to D) stories of his adorable toddlerhood and so forth. We're pretty happy with the guy, especially because he only grew one inch in the last year, and kept the same shoe size, which is a boon to those of us purchasing his clothing and footwear. Also, of course, we had the Driver License Events.
We live in a Really Major Metropolitan Area, which means, among other things, very long lines at the DMV. The High School Information Network indicated that a trip to a nice rural town would mean 3-4 minutes in line rather than 3-4 hours. So driving an hour each way for the road test is a "good idea." Never mind factors like the high cost of gas, and that sitting in the DMV waiting room at least theoretically allows for reading or homework while driving doesn't. Still, a road test on quieter roads is a tad less stressful, and the boy's heart is set.
But wait! Road tests are only available via appointment. And appointments have to be made in person, by the test-ee. Somehow, Parental Logic pointing out that this would mean 4 hours of driving to and from the Rural DMV didn't hold water. Everybody jumping off bridges, and all that. Also, the Major Metropolitan DMV has a known 5+ week wait for the appointment, and who wants to wait that long? Not my 16 year old, that's for sure. There was some vague mention of potential lines when going back for the driving appointment, even though that was unsubstantiated by the High School Information Network. Probably because they all jumped off the bridge of the Rural DMVs.
So I'm looking up rural DMVs. Telling D that yes, mileage wise, that one by the beach is closer. But it involves driving through downtown and past one of the airports to get there, so it's not quicker. I pick one with a Google Map-estimated drive time of 48 minutes, and ascertain that it will be open on Columbus Day at 8 a.m.
D is eager to be the first one in the door, and I have to work that day, so I let him drag me out of bed at 6:00. We spent the day before parallel parking up and down our street for an hour, and he's been doing very well. We both feel ready. (His dream is that they'll say they have an appointment that same day if we'll wait around to take it.) He grabs the keys and heads out to the car.
Turns the key. Nothing. I explain about locking the ignition, but yanking on the steering wheel has no effect. Key in. Key out. Try to turn wheel. Check gear shift. Try to turn key. Press in brake. Turn wheel. Double-check gear shift. Key finally turns... and car alarm goes off.
HONK HONK HONK HONK HONK!
I'm in the passenger seat, attempting to stay level-headed and instructive and also to press the right buttons to turn off the damn alarm. And hoping my neighbors weren't planning to, you know, sleep in at all.
He was a little rattled. But he took a deep breath. Restarted the car. Successfully backed down our driveway (one of the toughest of the routine tasks.) We were on our way.
A quarter-mile later, he had to turn onto the feeder road of the freeway, ideally into a left lane so he could U-turn at the intersection. And yet. He chose a good moment to turn, he pulled out with good speed, but not only into the right lane, but up onto the curb. With both passenger side tires. Narrowly - and I mean narrowly - missing a fire hydrant before he plunked the car back down onto the street.
Plunk.
Ker-plunk. Ker-plunk, ker-plunk.
I had him pull into a parking lot. Ker-plunk, ker-plunk, ker-plunk.
So for future reference, son, that's what it feels like to drive on a flat tire.
We switched seats and I got the joy of the shoulder-wrenching teeth-clenching quarter-mile drive (ker-plunk, ker-plunk) back onto the feeder road, down the major thoroughfare, and into the mall parking lot to the Sears Auto, which opened at 8 a.m. As we abandoned the car and walked home, he finished the seventh stage of grief (the rage was something to behold! but my favorite was bargaining - it was pretty clear the Traffic Gods were just not in the mood to listen to his pleas.)
So we sat around for an hour, then went back to Sears where they'd have finished with us sooner if some something mechanical something something else tool-related hadn't intervened. But hey, it allowed us plenty of time to watch Jerry Springer "help" some nice people who were forced by the economic downturn to cheat on their spouses. Oddly, usually with their spouse's younger, hotter siblings, which must be a lesser-known side-effect of the recession. Who knew?
8:30, Mel in the driver's seat and $170 poorer, we hit the road again. Once we got to Rural Town, D was confident enough to drive to the DMV, where we found a short-ish line in the most stereotypically tiny 3-person shack of an office ever imagined by whoever it is who goes about imagining these things.
After a wait while the nice women at the Rural DMV help a wheelchaired senior citizen who arrived after us (but that is part of the Rural DMV Stereotypical Way of Life), D is vision-checked, thumb-printed, relieved of $11, and then, the big moment arrives. DMV woman pulled out the giant "Road Test" binder.
Drum roll, please. (D's present from us was a drum set. Either because we love him and want to please him, or because we are a little cuckoo.)
4 weeks.
Right around the time school gets out.
An hour away.
Heaven forbid I should ever doubt the High School Information Network again.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
A Plug for Plugged
Slight format change, since I'm reviewing this title for Audiobook Jukebox.
Publisher: AudioGo, Pub. Date: September 1, 2011, Length: 8 hours, 27 minutes
Eoin Colfer's Plugged is hilarious. (I say that while hearing narrator John Keating's sarcastic Irish accent, which puts a lot of emphasis on the 'hi' and doesn't mean what it says as much as I do.) I've read/listened to all of Colfer's Artemis Fowl books, and this adult novel has the same sensibility: adventure prompted by one unexpected event after another, situational humor, Our Hero scraping by with a little help from luck and a little help from law enforcement officials who would rather not be in the position Our Hero puts them in. Shades of Butler, Holly, Root, and much of the rest of the Fowl gang abound. This isn't a deep thoughts or tense mystery novel, but it is engaging and fun.
Our Hero is Daniel McEvoy, an Irish ex-military ex-pat working as a bouncer at a seedy New Jersey casino. His overriding concern is the progress of his hair implants - until he gets drawn into investigating the murder of one of the bikini-clad casino hostesses and the disappearance of his back-alley surgeon friend. In short order he's dealing with drug runners, corrupt cops, mobsters, and his crazy upstairs neighbor, and at no point does he feel particularly competent to handle any of it. He's an eminently likable Our Hero - smart, talented, acerbic. I was all over Keating's narration - it was bright and crisp and handled the pace of the narrative charmingly. (I think we all know by now that I'm a sucker for the Irish accent. My fear céile doesn't sound as Dublin as he did when I imported him, but it pops up delightfully at times.) (It means 'husband' in Irish. Yeah, I have an Irish dictionary in my study, jealous?)
My 16 year old saw the discs and claimed them next, and I wish him 8 1/2 hours of happy listening. Both boys are Colfer fans, but due to the ex-strippers and a certain amount of nude gun play (not an euphemism. Or, not entirely), I wouldn't let anyone younger get ahold of it.
Publisher: AudioGo, Pub. Date: September 1, 2011, Length: 8 hours, 27 minutes
Our Hero is Daniel McEvoy, an Irish ex-military ex-pat working as a bouncer at a seedy New Jersey casino. His overriding concern is the progress of his hair implants - until he gets drawn into investigating the murder of one of the bikini-clad casino hostesses and the disappearance of his back-alley surgeon friend. In short order he's dealing with drug runners, corrupt cops, mobsters, and his crazy upstairs neighbor, and at no point does he feel particularly competent to handle any of it. He's an eminently likable Our Hero - smart, talented, acerbic. I was all over Keating's narration - it was bright and crisp and handled the pace of the narrative charmingly. (I think we all know by now that I'm a sucker for the Irish accent. My fear céile doesn't sound as Dublin as he did when I imported him, but it pops up delightfully at times.) (It means 'husband' in Irish. Yeah, I have an Irish dictionary in my study, jealous?)
My 16 year old saw the discs and claimed them next, and I wish him 8 1/2 hours of happy listening. Both boys are Colfer fans, but due to the ex-strippers and a certain amount of nude gun play (not an euphemism. Or, not entirely), I wouldn't let anyone younger get ahold of it.
Friday, September 30, 2011
A Grab Bag, if that bag was full of stuff from my bedside table
(Functionality issues: usually the pics are hyperlinks to Amazon, but their handy little widget isn't working. Now I have boring old static pics instead of dynamic ones. I bet you'll boycott my site until it works, huh? Damnit.)
On to the latest in Mel's books!
First up, in the "well, ain't that a little peculiar?" category, Kevin Wilson's The Family Fang. Okay, you've got Child A (Annie) and Child B (Buster), who are the progeny of the Fangs, a couple of performance artists who have been staging unexpected pieces using their children since they first saw the fascinated horror on the faces of the patrons waiting in line behind baby Annie as she wailed on Santa's lap. As adults, Annie and Buster turn to more conventional forms of self-expression (acting and writing) but are still inexorably drawn into their parents' weird and weirdly compelling orbit. Does it sound weird? It's weird. But not precious or "quirky," which I feared reading the premise. I trusted the recommendations, though, and was so glad I did. Despite the Art, this is ultimately a very good novel about families, growing into your own identity, and how people screw each other up and shore each other up, sometimes at the same time.
I am surprised that this is the first time I've actually blogged about Susan Mallery, since I've read basically every word she's ever published. In particular, I've gobbled up all of her Fool's Gold series (a small town in California with a sever man shortage, leading to a nicely empowered town full of pretty single women who gradually pair off with hunky men who drift in.) Her latest about this town is a trilogy about the Hendrix triplets: Only Mine, Only Yours, and Only His. This month I listened to all three of these, narrated by Tanya Eby. so that was approximately 25 hours of Dakota, Nevada, Montana (the triplets) and their men. She's a brightly-voiced narrator with great pacing, so I routinely enjoy her work. The only down side in all this was that Eby's voices for each hero-heroine pair are basically the same, so listening to these all together got a bit run-on-ish. I was therefore particularly impressed with Mallery, giving them all such distinct but interwoven characteristics - in the previous Fool's Gold books, I couldn't really keep them straight (not that it was necessary), so I feared they would be too similar when it came to their own stories. Mallery uses their time off in college wisely - especially with the last novel - to make their issues unique and their romances well-tailored to each woman. Now I need to keep an eye out for the next ones, to see whether the new librarian, the fire chief, or the goat farmer will be the woman to hook up with the remaining Hendrix siblings - the single dad math teacher and the heretofore-unseen deployed soldier. (My bet: math + goat, army + library, and someone tertiary for the fire chief.)
And for further adventures in series reading, I grabbed I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett. This is his YA take on his Discworld books, centering around young witch Tiffany Aching. Now, I haven't read much of the adult Discworld stuff, but I do so enjoy the Hag o' the Hills and her many adventures with frying pans and stick-on warts and underworld creatures. My kids did, too, and normally I'd try to get this on audio so we could listen during a road trip, but: no road trips, and the library only had hardcover, so. (That's my subtle way of saying I'd rather read than spend time with my sons, even if I'm reading to them during that time. What? They know I love them and stuff.) Once I'm through the next 800 hours of the Game of Thrones books, and then everything I put off reading / listening to so I could enjoy/slog through Martin's stuff, I may just have to figure out how to enter Discworld without the whole thing toppling me through sheer volume. (Which, to Pratchett's credit, is probably a big side effect of YA and adult readers both who encounter Tiffany Aching's stories.)
On to the latest in Mel's books!
First up, in the "well, ain't that a little peculiar?" category, Kevin Wilson's The Family Fang. Okay, you've got Child A (Annie) and Child B (Buster), who are the progeny of the Fangs, a couple of performance artists who have been staging unexpected pieces using their children since they first saw the fascinated horror on the faces of the patrons waiting in line behind baby Annie as she wailed on Santa's lap. As adults, Annie and Buster turn to more conventional forms of self-expression (acting and writing) but are still inexorably drawn into their parents' weird and weirdly compelling orbit. Does it sound weird? It's weird. But not precious or "quirky," which I feared reading the premise. I trusted the recommendations, though, and was so glad I did. Despite the Art, this is ultimately a very good novel about families, growing into your own identity, and how people screw each other up and shore each other up, sometimes at the same time.
I am surprised that this is the first time I've actually blogged about Susan Mallery, since I've read basically every word she's ever published. In particular, I've gobbled up all of her Fool's Gold series (a small town in California with a sever man shortage, leading to a nicely empowered town full of pretty single women who gradually pair off with hunky men who drift in.) Her latest about this town is a trilogy about the Hendrix triplets: Only Mine, Only Yours, and Only His. This month I listened to all three of these, narrated by Tanya Eby. so that was approximately 25 hours of Dakota, Nevada, Montana (the triplets) and their men. She's a brightly-voiced narrator with great pacing, so I routinely enjoy her work. The only down side in all this was that Eby's voices for each hero-heroine pair are basically the same, so listening to these all together got a bit run-on-ish. I was therefore particularly impressed with Mallery, giving them all such distinct but interwoven characteristics - in the previous Fool's Gold books, I couldn't really keep them straight (not that it was necessary), so I feared they would be too similar when it came to their own stories. Mallery uses their time off in college wisely - especially with the last novel - to make their issues unique and their romances well-tailored to each woman. Now I need to keep an eye out for the next ones, to see whether the new librarian, the fire chief, or the goat farmer will be the woman to hook up with the remaining Hendrix siblings - the single dad math teacher and the heretofore-unseen deployed soldier. (My bet: math + goat, army + library, and someone tertiary for the fire chief.) And for further adventures in series reading, I grabbed I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett. This is his YA take on his Discworld books, centering around young witch Tiffany Aching. Now, I haven't read much of the adult Discworld stuff, but I do so enjoy the Hag o' the Hills and her many adventures with frying pans and stick-on warts and underworld creatures. My kids did, too, and normally I'd try to get this on audio so we could listen during a road trip, but: no road trips, and the library only had hardcover, so. (That's my subtle way of saying I'd rather read than spend time with my sons, even if I'm reading to them during that time. What? They know I love them and stuff.) Once I'm through the next 800 hours of the Game of Thrones books, and then everything I put off reading / listening to so I could enjoy/slog through Martin's stuff, I may just have to figure out how to enter Discworld without the whole thing toppling me through sheer volume. (Which, to Pratchett's credit, is probably a big side effect of YA and adult readers both who encounter Tiffany Aching's stories.)
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Tey Time!
One of the authors I've read tons of in the past couple of months is Josephine Tey, a Scottish mystery writer who died in 1952. Tey's primary character is Scotland Yard's Inspector Alan Grant, a handsome poetry-loving detective with an interest in history and a predilection for gut feelings that drive his superior a bit mad. Although Tey is sometimes a little too rooted in her time (mostly to do with social morays), the mysteries are unconventional and a great deal of fun. Each novel is only around 200 pages, and the writing has a very lyrical quality as well as a sardonic wit. (If you know nothing else of me by now, you should know that I love me some sardonic wit.)
I pulled some "speak to Mel" quotes from the novels I returned to the library this week to share here. Enjoy!
To Love and Be Wise, Chapter 6: Lavinia on trying to define the appeal of the disconcerting Leslie Searle: "He has a nice gentle voice and an engaging drawl; but so have half the inhabitants of Texas and a large part of the population of Ireland."
(The Irish-Texan voices in my own household vary in their gentleness, but all are engaging.)
To Love and Be Wise, Chapter 14: Grant on a quiet morning in the countryside: "People who get up at the crack of dawn during the week, and had no animals to get them up on Sunday, must be glad to sleep late. He had grumbled often when his police duties had broken into his private life... but to spend one's life in bondage to the predilections of animals must be a sad waste of a free man's time."
(No, the cat never wakes me up at seven every Sunday. At least, not if the dogs get me up first.)
The Daughter of Time, Chapter 6: Marta on acquiring books: "No T. More in any of the bookshops, so tried Public Library. Can't think why one never thinks of Public Libraries. Probably because books expected to be soupy. Think this looks quite clean and unsoupy. You get fourteen days. Sounds like a sentence rather than a loan."
(Hi, Harris County Public Library and Houston Public Library - thanks for all of the unsoupy books!)
I pulled some "speak to Mel" quotes from the novels I returned to the library this week to share here. Enjoy!
To Love and Be Wise, Chapter 6: Lavinia on trying to define the appeal of the disconcerting Leslie Searle: "He has a nice gentle voice and an engaging drawl; but so have half the inhabitants of Texas and a large part of the population of Ireland."
(The Irish-Texan voices in my own household vary in their gentleness, but all are engaging.)
To Love and Be Wise, Chapter 14: Grant on a quiet morning in the countryside: "People who get up at the crack of dawn during the week, and had no animals to get them up on Sunday, must be glad to sleep late. He had grumbled often when his police duties had broken into his private life... but to spend one's life in bondage to the predilections of animals must be a sad waste of a free man's time."
(No, the cat never wakes me up at seven every Sunday. At least, not if the dogs get me up first.)
The Daughter of Time, Chapter 6: Marta on acquiring books: "No T. More in any of the bookshops, so tried Public Library. Can't think why one never thinks of Public Libraries. Probably because books expected to be soupy. Think this looks quite clean and unsoupy. You get fourteen days. Sounds like a sentence rather than a loan."
(Hi, Harris County Public Library and Houston Public Library - thanks for all of the unsoupy books!)
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Updates - I know you've all been wondering!
First of all, my desk. You'll all be relieved to know that, inspired by Nicole Krauss's Great House, I did finally finish the Great Desk Unburying Project of 2011, and am now sitting at a very orderly, very work-friendly antique roll-top desk. Ain't she a beaut? 
Also, my smart, charming, handsome husband conducted the on-stage interview of Krauss and Francisco Goldman this week for Inprint Houston, and he told her about my desk project. She told him she'd had people name children after Alma in her The History of Love, but since Great House doesn't lend itself to that kind of homage, mine was the best. Yeah, that's right, the best. (I may be paraphrasing.)
Next up, my son. Although he still has War and Peace on his bedside table, K hasn't gotten much further with it since my initial blog post about it. He's read no shortage of other novels since, most of which far exceed the average reading level for his age (lest you think I think he's anything short of brilliant!) My brother-in-law, who is a journalist covering the publishing industry, wrote about K in his newsletter in August, which was fun. Also, it was great for my Blogger Stats, which, not to put too much pressure on you lovely readers or anything, I like to view probably too often. I broke into the elusive South American market thanks to him - now I've either been read or "read" in six continents. As soon as I crack Antarctica, I'll be, like, rich and famous and stuff.
At any rate, here K is this morning playing his new saxophone. He's in middle school now, so we won't even stress me out by mentioning all the different things he's doing with his after-school time. (Naturally, he is phenomenally talented and successful at all of them. And beloved by his friends and his mentors. And his not in the least biased parents.)
(For the record, the other son, who is closing in on his 16th birthday, is ALSO brilliant, talented, adorable, charming, loving, and successful. I'd give you a pic of him, if only I ever saw him. Between school, orchestra commitments, his band - oh, wait, two bands now - practices (original band has another paid gig this weekend!), soccer, the girlfriend, and now, since he wasn't busy, the school musical, I'm only sure he still lives here due to the ever waxing and waning supplies of Nutella and bananas we have to keep in stock for his daily peanutellanana sandwiches.)
Oh, yeah, and books. I haven't posted a lot about what I'm reading lately, not because I've suddenly stopped or anything (as if), but because I've been reading / listening to a ton of sequels to previously blogged about novels. More Meyer, more Penny, more James, more Sayers, more Heyer, more Martin. (I just downloaded the third Fire and Ice book - almost 50 hours! I'll start it... soon.) Never you fear, though, I've got a couple of things in progress that I'll blog about soon.
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