Took the MPRE today, so needed something small to bring along. Georgette Heyer’s Arabella seemed to fit the bill just fine; lightweight in both senses of the word, just the thing for a possibly-stressful day. (Turns it out wasn’t, though knock on wood.) This burbled along in typical amusing Heyer fashion for most of it, but upon reflection I rather think the male protagonist was a bit of a jerk at the end. It wasn’t anywhere near as annoying as The Toll-Gate, though.
McCaffrey, Anne: Skies of Pern, The
I got Anne McCaffrey’s The Skies of Pern out of the library because, while I no longer like the books enough to buy them, I’m still vaguely interested in what’s going on with the world. I mean, I read (counts on fingers) about ten of the things all in a row when I was younger, and while a lot of the content now bothers me, I still feel some attachment to the world.
Alas, this latest book suggests that I shouldn’t bother reading them anymore, I should just find spoilers somewhere. The prose and the tell-don’t-show characters combined to leave me completely unengaged in the story, and the plot is very oddly paced. Also, I really don’t believe that in the hundreds of years since dragons have existed on Pern, a situation similar to the one in the book hasn’t come up.
Anyway. I got it out of the library, so I shall not regret the time spent; I just won’t read books about new events on Pern, as well as old ones (I skipped The Masterharper of Pern because how many times can one really read about the same events?).
Gabaldon, Diana: (104) Drums of Autumn
Drat. Finished re-reading Drums of Autumn almost a whole week before the next Diana Gabaldon book is going to arrive. Let’s see, ships on Tuesday, at least a couple of days in transit, but even if it got here before Friday I couldn’t read it, because I have this minor matter of a bar exam to take then (the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam; much shorter than the actual bar, but still have to pass it to practice). Hmph.
Oh well. I should have realized that since I’ve re-read Drums the most recently of the Outlander series, it would go faster even though I’ve been insanely busy. It’s hard to speak of “favorites” in a series that’s an ongoing story (easier where the books are separate stories about the same people, like Bujold’s fabulous Vorkosigan books), but I think you can say which are better done, at least. Drums, like the prior book, Voyager, does reasonably well at not having cliffhangers—unlike the prior two, which is why, while I’m twitching over the release of The Fiery Cross, I managed to restrain myself enough to go for the deep discount at Amazon rather than the instant gratification of walking into the local chain (besides which, I don’t like the local chain, and don’t trust them to get it on the shelves on time. I miss having a Borders nearby.). The books still aren’t self-contained in any meaningful sense, but I find them more satisfying to read when the story is rounded-off, I suppose, coming around to the beginning but leaving the characters at a natural break in their relationships. Also, the minor verbal tics that bothered me in Outlander have gone away, and the varied narrative voices are done quite well. (And did I mention that I really like John Grey?)
Anyway, I will just have to troll Gabaldon’s website looking for excerpts I might have somehow missed to tide me over until the new book arrives . . .
Wodehouse, P.G.: Something Fresh
It’s hard to convey adequately just how silly Something Fresh, by P.G. Wodehouse, is. Let’s try this.
Like many fathers in his rank of life, the Earl of Emsworth had suffered much through that problem which — with the exception of Mr Lloyd George — is practically the only fly in the British aristocratic amber — the problem of What To Do With The Younger Sons. It is useless to try to gloss over the fact, the Younger Son is not required. You might reason with a British peer by the hour — you might point out to him how, in the one hand, he is far better off than the male codfish, who may at any moment find itself in the distressing position of being called on to provide for a family of over a million; and remind him, on the other, that every additional child he acquires means a corresponding rise for him in the estimation of ex-President Roosevelt; but you would not cheer him up in the least. He does not want the Younger Son.
Or perhaps:
The reason why all we novelists with bulging foreheads and expensive educations are abandoning novels and taking to writing motion-picture scenarii is because the latter are so infinitely the more simple and pleasant.
If this narrative, for instance, were a film-drama, the operator at this point would flash on the screen the words:
MR. PETERS DISCOVERS THE LOSS OF THE SCARAB
and for a brief moment the audience would see an interior set, in which a little angry man with a sharp face and starting eyes would register first, Discovery; next Dismay. The whole thing would be over in an instant.
The printed word demands a greater elaboration.
It was Aline who had to bear the brunt of her father’s mental agony when he discovered, shortly after his guest had left him, that the gem of his collection of scarabs had done the same. It is always the innocent bystander who suffers.
[Mr. Peters yells at Aline.]
How pleasant it is, after assisting at a scene of violence and recrimination, to be transferred to one of peace and goodwill. It is with a sense of relief that I find that the snipe-like flight of this story takes us next, far from Mr. Peters and his angry outpourings, to the cosy smoking-room of Blandings Castle. . . .
It doesn’t seem as packed with plot as a Bertie/Jeeves novel, but it’s extremely entertaining all the same.
Lackey, Mercedes: Arrows of the Queen
Horrible insomnia last night, so dug out a brainless comfort book, Mercedes Lackey’s Arrows of the Queen. This was her first book, which shows in the little awkward fluctuations in narrative voice; it’s also firmly within certain subgenres, the confluence of which I am much less sympathetic to these days (namely the abused, completely beaten down child, the hopelessly naive fish out of water, and a girl and her horse). Though it kicks off a trilogy (and then a gazillion-book series), it actually stands fairly well alone, which is good because the next two have gratuitous torture and One True Destined Love angsting, so I shall not re-read those. There is a small comment about Skif that I hadn’t noticed before that almost makes me want to read the new book focused on his origins; perhaps the library will have it.
Bryson, Bill: I’m a Stranger Here Myself
I took the train from Albany to Boston yesterday, which reminded me of this passage from Bill Bryson’s I’m a Stranger Here Myself (a.k.a. Notes from a Big Country), about fall in New England:
Forgive me if I seem a tad effusive, but it is impossible to describe a spectacle this grand without babbling. Even the great naturalist Donald Culross Peattie, a man whose prose is so dry you could use it to mop spills, totally lost his head when he tried to convey the wonder of a New England autumn.
. . . Peattie drones on . . . in language that can most generously be called workmanlike . . . but when he at last turns his attention to the New England sugar maple and its vivid autumnal regalia, it is as if someone has spiked his cocoa. In a tumble of breathless metaphors he described the maple’s colors as “like the shout of a great army . . . like tongues of flame . . . like the mighty, marching melody that rides upon the crest of some symphonic weltering sea and, with its crying song, gives meaning to all the calculated dissonance of the orchestra.”
“Yes, Donald,” you can just about hear his wife saying, “now take your medication, dear.”
Even though towards Albany most of the leaves were off the trees, it was still an astonishingly pretty trip. Further into Massachusetts, more of the trees had their foliage, turning the rolling hills of the Berkshires into beautiful tapestries. The oft-leisurely pace of the train gave me ample time to consider the scenery, while taking breaks from reading Criminal Procedure (hey, I read over 200 pages of my textbook yesterday, my eyes deserved some breaks). I particularly liked the red fire hydrant sitting by all itself in a small grassy clearing in the woods; as best I could tell, the closest house was a quarter-mile away—on a pond. And the rusted farm equipment was more than compensated for by the thirty or so buffalo peacefully grazing in a field . . .
(The train ride itself was surprisingly pleasant, even for me—I usually prefer trains because I can read on them, whereas it’s even odds that just looking at a map in a moving car will make me ill. Because, I think, it was continuing from Chicago, there was even more leg room than usual, plus little footrests attached to the back of the seat in front of you and leg rests that flipped up from the edge of the seat bottom; it was basically a reclining chair without the remote control. I particularly liked this because I’m shorter than average and, consequently, most seats are a little longer than is comfortable. There were even curtains on the windows—and free soda and sandwiches. Granted, we were two hours late, but one can’t have everything.)
I flipped through the rest of Bryson’s book while looking for that quote. There’s some good stuff there, but the thing about collections of a weekly newspaper column is, as Bryson notes in the introduction, the column has to be written every week. This often shows. In particular, a few columns have that forced, trying-to-give-Dave-Barry-a-run-for-his-money feel, which doesn’t really work for me. A Walk in the Woods remains his best work, which I recommend to everyone.
Gabaldon, Diana: (103) Voyager
Completed the re-read of the third of Gabaldon’s Outlander series, Voyager. This catches us up on what Jamie and Claire did after they separated, Jamie intending to die on the field of Culloden and Claire going back to the 20th century to bear their child. (I like this bit particularly because we get to see one of my favorite characters, Lord John Grey, at some length).
This volume also includes Claire & Jamie’s reunion, which I think is done pretty well. I have a couple of minor quibbles—Jamie gets them all out of trouble one time, and it’s never explained how he was able to—but there’s a lot of good bits (“Never smile at a crocodile”) and I like how the ending comes full circle while being new again.
Since I’m reading pretty slowly because I’ve been busy with other things, hopefully I’ll finish my re-read of the fourth just as Amazon delivers the new volume to my door^Wpost office box . . .
Howard, Linda: Open Season
Read Linda Howard’s latest hardcover, Open Season, yesterday. This was fluff and far from her best effort, but still entertaining in a lightweight, don’t-think-about-this-too-hard kinda way—except that the last two pages were really, really weird, verging on revoltingly so. Eww.
Gabaldon, Diana: (102) Dragonfly in Amber
Finally finished re-reading Dragonfly in Amber, the second of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. I was correct in remembering that there’s some reasonably bleak stuff in this one, but I’d forgotten the framing device.
So. At the end of Outlander, Claire has saved Jamie from Jack Randall and they’ve escaped to France. They now have, as it were, dual obligations to the future: Claire is pregnant, and they know that Prince Charles’ attempt to take the throne is going to end at Culloden with the slaughter of the clans. Can history be changed? That, as they say, is the question—which they are going to try and answer.
I open up Dragonfly, and we’re in Inverness in 1968. Claire is visiting a young scholar, Roger Wakefield, with her daughter, Brianna, who is manifestly not related to Frank (Claire’s husband in the 20th century, now deceased) even though she thinks she is. Claire wants to know whether certain men survived Culloden.
I remember now the bewilderment I felt upon reading this for the first time. Claire decided to stay with Jamie in Outlander; what is she doing here with Jamie’s child, and what happened to him? A chapter and a half in, Claire tells Roger that Jamie Fraser died on Culloden, and oh did my heart sink.
So, having forgotten that the 20th-century story started up again here, I was initially surprised. As soon as I got past that, though, I remembered why the 20th-century story was there. We know, from just the first chapter, that Culloden happened. Which means a lot of heartache is ahead of us when we get back into the 18th-century part of the story, and a pretty high body count, most likely. But at least the beginning of the book lets us know that at least Claire and Brianna made it out safely. And the end of the book tells us that Jamie is Not Dead after all. The last page, actually—not quite a cliffhanger, but I’m glad I started these after the first three or four were out. (I hope this is not a big surprise to people, since I’ve said there are more of these.) So it’s necessary, though disorienting at first.
(As a side note: I persistently mis-type Jaime for Jamie. I have no idea why, but it’s a real pain to make sure I catch all the mis-typings, because it’s not an error that stands out well to my eyes. So if I missed one and you’re wondering who Jaime is, sorry.)
Zelazny, Roger: Night in the Lonesome October, A
Busy few days, but did manage to re-read A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. I was reminded that it was entirely appropriate to the season by a discussion on rec.arts.sf.written, and decided it would be a good book to take on the train, because it’s relatively small.
I would treasure this book if only for giving me the chance to utter the sentence, “The dog is a very low-key narrator.” (Well, he is.) But it’s also very well-constructed and quite entertaining. I almost think it would be best to read it for the first time without knowing what it was about, so that you get the fun of picking up all the clues in Snuff’s narration. (In fact, thinking about it, I’m not sure that you could successfully tell this story with any other narrator—including the same character but with a different style.)
October 12
Slow day. . . .
I took Jack his slippers this evening and lay at his feet before a roaring fire while he smoked his pipe, sipped sherry, and read the newspaper. He read aloud everything involving killings, arsons, mutilations, grave robberies, church desecrations, and unusual thefts. It is very pleasant just being domestic sometimes.