Long Awaited Reads Month

So, I did this, or my own version of it. I have so much to choose from, with books that I own that I want to read. I have a shelf full of them. I need to weed it. I'm in a weeding mood. I've historically been extremely reluctant to weed my own shelves, though, so we'll see how that goes.

But the thing is, on those shelves are a number of things that I keep putting off because for whatever reason, something else always seems more pressing. January, as Long Awaited Reads Month (thanks to Ana and Iris) was the perfect time to forget more pressing and just go with what I knew I could love.

Here's how I did:

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett
A Sand County Almanac and Essays from Round River by Aldo Leopold
Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill
Terrier by Tamora Peirce

That doesn't count me starting Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, which I abandoned around page 70 for the third time in my life because ffs, Walter Hartright. And I also read Susan Dennard's Truthwitch, which can't be a LAR because it was released this month, except that it kind of felt like the book I've been waiting for so I'm going to count it for a half point.

That's 4.5 books. In one month. That's amazing for me these days. It turns out reading books that fit like a comfortable pair of jeans helps me read more. And when I read more, I feel better about myself. So even though I have been as sick as possible without hospitalization this month - still coughing up goo and feeling exhausted five weeks in - I can't count this month as a total wash; I read some wonderful, wonderful books.

I'll do little mini reviews because that's as much as I'm up to at this moment, but I may have more to say about each of these books as time goes on.

Men at Arms: It's been a long time since I read a Discworld book. Too long, really. Plus it's a Night Watch novel, and I love the Night Watch. I read it in two days and it was the perfect way to start my reading year. Amazing how relevant Pratchett seems to be, no matter when he wrote the book.

A Sand County Almanac: Putting my thoughts together on this one is going to be hard. Good thing I took notes. It was brilliant, the best thing I've read this month, and that's saying something. It was also the longest awaited of the long awaited books. I think I first heard of it when I was doing my undergrad and that is longer ago than I care to admit. It's surprisingly easy to read, given how dense it gets sometimes; the Almanac section is beautiful but regrettably short, the essays from Round River are deep and thought-provoking. Another book that is startlingly, and sadly, as relevant now as it was when it was written... which was the 1940s.

Disco for the Departed: I can't believe how long it took me to get to this. I've had it home from the library at least four or five times, and never made it past the first couple of pages before it was due, entirely because of reading other things. Wonderful to be back in 1970s Laos with Dr. Siri. I'll go anywhere with Dr. Siri. One of my favourite characters of all time. Cotterill's writing remains just stellar and the characterization excellent.

Terrier: Oh Tamora Pierce. If Robin McKinley started my life-long love of fantasy, Tamora Pierce's Alanna cemented it. But I haven't read much of her since that series, and Terrier has kind of called to me, since it was published. The first time I tried to read it I stumbled on some of the formatting stuff - different fonts for different prologue journals and I didn't like the fonts, which is a stupid reason not to read a book - but once I got past that this time I was in for good. Beka Cooper is fantastic and Pierce's sense of place, and use of language (oh my stars the slang) is everything I love. This is essentially a police procedural set in a fantasy world, exactly my catnip, and all tangled up in a coming-of-age story. Will be reading Bloodhound, hopefully won't take me until next January to get to it.

I'll save ranting about how much I loved Truthwitch for later. I hope. I had meant to write up my thoughts on Almanac two weeks ago, which is not a great sign. I'll get to it! And this is technically the end of Long Awaited Reads Month for me, but... that's not going to stop me from sticking to things that will feel good to read. I need it right now, at least until my lungs stop pretending they belong to my grandfather.

Thirty-Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill

Thirty-Three Teeth

by Colin Cotterill

Soho, 2005

195 pages

This book grew on me. It had to; at the beginning, I wasn't at all happy with the direction things were taking after the first scene (which was excellent). I wasn't exactly bored, but I wasn't getting what I wanted to get out of the book. And yet, something kept me reading. By the time I was done, I was totally, happily satisfied.

Thirty-Three Teeth is the second in Colin Cotterill's series about Dr. Siri Paiboon, Head Coroner in Communist Laos in the seventies. We start with the disappearance of an old, abused bear from her cage at the local "luxury" hotel (the scene I loved) and subsequent maulings -- an open-and-shut case, one might think, except that nothing in a Siri Paiboon mystery is as it seems. And just when things are getting interesting in Vientiane, Siri is spirited off to Luang Prabang in the north of the country to investigate a couple of very, very crispy corpses under the direction of one nasty, rude governor. Then it's back to Vientiane to save his friend Inspector Phosy, Dtui the nurse gets to do some investigation of her own, a close call with the fledgling justice system, and righting various wrongs, both spiritual and mundane.

What worried me at the beginning was twofold: there was some rather clumpsy recapping of earlier events (necessary, perhaps, though I'm not even sure of that; I think Cotterill could trust his readers to hang on even if they're not quite sure what's going on, because he writes that well.) The second problem is that a chunk of this book is spent with Siri learning more about his newfound spiritual powers, and we edge pretty firmly across the line from magic realism to outright fantasy, except that... well, I don't want to spoil much for you, but the explanations for many of the happenings turn out to be less magical and more mundane than I expected. And where they are magical, they are still rather mundane, and always deeply rooted in the culture and beliefs of the Laotian people. A favourite scene: the obnoxious general in Luang Prabang tries to get the shamans to let the royal spirits know that they're expected to conform under the new communist rules (take up residence as working spirits in designated temples, that sort of thing, or be exiled to the north) -- which simultaneously says an awful lot about how seriously the spirits are taken, as well as how ridiculous politics can get very quickly. The scene is also very funny and full of tension.

It's that kind of twisty unravelling, dry humour, and mixture of melancholy, darkness, and light that kept me reading, even when I was feeling like we were spending a lot more time on magical shenanigans than I wanted to in a mystery novel. Cotterill knows how to balance the distressing with the amusing with the moving with the absurd, and he can keep the plot moving, and he provides wonderful, full characters to boot. I have never really read anything quite like these novels and I am tremendously glad there are more of them out there for me to dig into.

A note on the writing itself, too: Cotterill has a knack for a marvellously odd turn of phrase, particularly metaphor. I am sure some of this comes straight out of the Laotian language and the culture, and I am also sure that Cotterill comes up with a few of his own; he uses them unashamedly, and even though some of them are odd and perhaps a bit too florid, they also cause this reader to stop and think -- "huh, I know exactly what he means." Another example of Cotterill's ability to make wonderful connections are his titles. The man knows how to title a book. The titles are odd, attention-catching, and perfectly, perfectly apt. It's a small thing, but very pleasing.

As with the previous book in the series, highly recommended. This one is not quite as good, but stick with it and you'll be rewarded. For armchair travellers, mystery lovers, fans of the tangled and complex, those who love a good, observant, level-headed, kind, and charming lead character wrapped up in excellent writing and really interesting plots. I'd start at the beginning, just because The Coroner's Lunch is the better book. Looking forward to Disco for the Departed, when the chance arises.

Other books in the Dr. Siri Paiboon series:

1. The Coroner's Lunch

The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill

The Coroner's Lunch
by Colin Cotterill
Soho, 2004
272 pages

I don't think I could have asked for a better way to start the year. This series of mysteries about Dr. Siri Paiboon, Head Coroner for the fledgling communist regime in Laos in the 1970s, has been on my radar for a long time. I decided to pick the first one up for my mother for Christmas, as she's always on the lookout for new mystery series; I decided I'd better read it first before I gave it to her, to make sure it was as good as the internet whispers suggested. (In my defence: I read a library copy, not the shiny new one that arrived for her!) And it was as good as I had hoped. Maybe even better.

A lot of the buzz around Dr. Siri suggests some sort of relation to Mma Ramotswe of No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency fame. I find this a bit misleading, because though there are some similarities, the tone of the books is completely different. Both do feature protagonists who have lived full lives before coming to their own as detectives, who aren't particularly concerned about the establishment and authority, and both are set in locales far different from the vast, vast majority of English-language mysteries out there. But I think the similarities stop there, really, and I almost find it a bit... irksome that because these two series are set in different "exotic" locations they get lumped together by critics.

This book, at least, was a lot darker, and the pacing was faster, and the stakes were higher than I recall from No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (and yes, I did really like that book too, but it's a very different animal.) People die. In unpleasant ways. Siri is doing a complex dance of trying to get to the truth and trying to work within a new system that hasn't really figured itself out yet. He's dealing with political intrigue as much as individual cases. In some ways, though, it is also deceptively gentle; Siri himself is a wryly observant, obstinate, and compassionate soul with a crusty exterior. He's not afraid of much, even the things he should be, but he does worry about those around him.

Dr. Siri Paiboon happens to be the last qualified (and we use this term loosely) person left in Laos to be head coroner after the victory of the communist rebels over the monarchy. Everyone else with the necessary education has fled the country. After being part of the cause for 40 years, he had assumed he'd get to rest to the end of his days -- he is 72, after all, decades older than the average life expectancy of his countrymen. But he is pressed into service despite the fact that he's never performed an autopsy in his life, and he's not particularly pleased to have to start now. Hampered by lack of supplies, experience, and co-operation from his superiors at the Justice Department, Siri sets out to do the best job he can with what he has. Things plod along slowly until one Mrs. Nitnoy, wife of a senior official in the new government, shows up in his freezer -- and is just as quickly hustled out by her now widowed husband, before Siri has the chance to finish his autopsy and his report.

And that's not all. Before long, Siri has someone who might have been a top-secret Vietnamese diplomat on his table, and a couple of senior military officials who died very, very strangely are waiting for him in the south of the country... and Siri is about to be busier, and in a lot more trouble, than he has been in a long, long time.

I am having trouble writing this review largely because I don't want it to be ten thousand words long. The summary is bare-bones, and look at the size of it! There is a lot of complexity here in this relatively short book.

I really, really enjoyed this read, more than I expected to once I realized that it wasn't just straight forensic mystery. Because Siri isn't just a coroner and a scientist and a very sharp amateur detective, but he also happens to see the spirits of the dead in his dreams. I wasn't sure how that was going to work for me when it popped up pretty much in the second chapter. And then it got weirder and I was carried along with the flow, because it all grew out of the plot and characters and setting so organically. I have nothing against fantasy, but I do have trouble when I'm not expecting my straight-up mysteries and fantasy to cross (see: Maisie Dobbs.) But here, Siri's visions didn't feel out of place or odd, nor did they feel at all deus ex machina. Even when things got really weird in the middle of the book, I was right there along for the ride. It didn't have a fantasy feel to me. And I think I can put this down to two things: it felt culturally appropriate, and the fact that even though he gets visions, nothing is spelled out for Siri. He still has to figure the clues out, and so does the reader. It's just that some of the clues don't happen to have been spotted in the corporeal realm.

The bones of this book are excellent. Cotterill has a real grasp on the time and place and culture, and he's creative with his characters, and his plots (there are several) are twisted and thrilling and deftly managed. The writing is funny (often very funny) without making fun, descriptive while managing a wonderful concision, and there is a dry factuality about all of it, mixed with the colour of the Laotian language and culture, that really works. The setting feels foreign, as it should to me, but without ever making me feel like I couldn't understand what was going on, or that I couldn't connect with the humans populating the story. Cotterill is both clear-eyed and respectful.

The only thing that didn't work for me, although I can understand why he did it, was the extreme ending of the story. The last few lines. And the reason those didn't work was because it felt a little forced-cliffhanger to me, where I could have been quite happy if those same few lines had turned up at the beginning of the next book. I wouldn't have felt manipulated. That said, it's a small transgression, relatively, and easily forgiven. I can hardly wait to read the next book, Thirty-Three Teeth. Except that I have about a million other series I really should try to read from, too...

Recommended for mystery readers, and armchair travellers. Yes, if you liked Mma Ramotswe, you'll probably like this too. But you'll also like it if you like political intrigue, forensic mysteries, and historical fiction.