no book this week

Confession time: I have not finished a book this week. Well, I have finished one volume of Ranma 1/2, which does count, but I'm not posting about it until I have finished the second volume, which I may or may not do tonight. It's been a busy week. I'm currently reading The Secret Ministry of Frost by Nick Lake (thank you Mandy!) which is really quite awesome; it's not the book's fault my pace has been slow. No, I blame that on general tiredness and distraction. And maybe I will also blame it a little bit on the fact that we've been watching a lot of Mythbusters and I have been playing a fair bit of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Both of which are generally awesome too, but hard to do while reading.

I'll get back at things next week, I think, although we're now in the run-up to March Break at both my part-time jobs so we'll see how busy I really get.

Monk's-Hood by Ellis Peters

On this particular morning at the beginning of December, in the year 1138, Brother Cadfael came to chapter in tranquillity of mind, prepared to be tolerant even towards the dull, pedestrian reading of Brother Francis, and long-winded legal haverings of Brother Benedict the sacristan. Men were variable, fallible, and to be humoured.

So begins Monk's-Hood. And we all know that tranquillity is not exactly what Brother Cadfael is going to come away with this time...

There are few authors who have the gift of writing characters that I am so comfortable with that I feel as though I know them personally. I feel like I could pick [my vision of] Brother Cadfael out of a crowd and approach him like an old friend, head back to his workshop and have a cup of mulled wine and a good long chat, after which I would certainly feel better about the state of humankind and the world. Of course, this might be a challenge because I am female and he is certainly not supposed to be consorting with me in any way shape or form... but a girl can have dreams. There are lots of characters out there that I like, but Cadfael is familiar.

Monk's-Hood is the third of the Brother Cadfael mysteries, and it's easily as strong as the two that came before. A man who is granting his property to the abbey in return for retirement in one of the abbey's cottages ends up dead -- poisoned with one of Cadfael's own apothecary concoctions. Naturally, Cadfael is determined to discover the murderer, and save an innocent boy from being wrongly accused. There are twists and turns and complications, and Cadfael gets himself into more personal trouble that he has yet.

It was a surprisingly fast read -- I spent most of yesterday on it, and I found myself getting up and making tea with the book still in my hand and trying to watch the boiling water out of the corner of my eye while reading with the rest of my attention. Um. Safety first?

One thing I've discovered I really like about Ellis Peters' writing is that she knows how to foreshadow. With her, it's an art. I take exception to extremely heavy foreshadowing ("forebludgeoning") and so it's a bit incredible to me that I don't mind it when she does things that make me say "aha! one of these two is the murderer, and that will be the murder weapon" and then I turn out to be right. In fact, I actually get a bit of a kick out of being right. I think it's partially that sometimes her foreshadowing leads one in the wrong direction -- which turns out to be the right direction, just not in the way that I anticipated. The tangled web is so carefully placed that everything fits perfectly, but the shape of it is only revealed very close to the end.

Another thing I'm discovering as I move (slowly) along in this series is how deeply I feel for the characters. Some, like Prior Robert and his clerk Brother Jerome, inspire such deep irritation and aversion; others, like Abbot Heribert, inspire what I almost might term gentle love. When a character we were introduced to in One Corpse Too Many finally makes an appearance in Monk's-Hood, I physically experienced a huge sigh of grateful relief. I do get emotionally involved in a lot of books I read, don't get me wrong. I get very wrapped up in my reading and can be quite unbecomingly enthusiastic about a book when I'm in the moment. But I truly don't react this viscerally to characters often, and I wonder if it's partially because of the series aspect -- the further I read, the better I know these characters -- but I know it also has to be Peters' skill.

I really recommend these books to pretty much anyone. Reading them leaves me feeling very content. St. Peter's Fair is next and I'm looking forward to it.

Earlier books in the Brother Cadfael chronicles:

1. A Morbid Taste for Bones
2. One Corpse Too Many

FreeVerse: Snow Geese (Oliver)

Reason number 1001 why I like taking yoga classes: my instructor reads good poetry, unironically, to us. Today when she read this, I got goosebumps. Also, it was cold in the room... but seriously, the imagery is lovely and the sentiment is something I am working hard to take to heart.

Also, and I don't know whether this is an embarrassing thing to admit or not, but I believe Mary Oliver is new to me. I get the impression that a lot of people know who she is and have discovered her before. She's new to me but this won't be the last poem you see by her here, I suspect.

Today's poem I have snagged from Famous Poets and Poems. Thanks to Cara at Ooh... Books! for hosting FreeVerse!

Snow Geese
by Mary Oliver

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.
One fall day I heard
above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was
a flock of snow geese, winging it
faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the color of snow, catching the sun
so they were, in part at least, golden. I
held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us
as with a match,
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,
but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.
The geese
flew on,
I have never seen them again.
Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won't.
It doesn't matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

Ranma 1/2 Volumes 24 and 25 by Rumiko Takahashi

I generally really hate love triangles. I don't like being put through the emotional wringer like that and one person, inevitably, is always hurt. So the fact that I continue to love Ranma 1/2 the way I do somewhat surprises me. We're not just talking triangles, here -- the entanglement is so complete that I've lost track of how many points the geometric shape has. I believe it may also have to be three-dimensional at this point.

Within these next two volumes of Ranma 1/2, we see the two extremes that this series contains (such as they are): Volume 24 contains a relatively gentle story, with emotional growth and connections, as well as the trademark general silliness. Ranma starts to realize exactly what's at stake when Akane goes into the mountains on her own to fight a giant platypus. Akane's generally very sweet and kind nature gets her into trouble here, rather than her temper which is the usual trigger for conflict. And the teamwork at the end of the story, which coincides with the end of the volume, is extremely enjoyable to read.

Then it's like Takahashi needed to take a breather after two fairly deep storylines. Volume 25 is a collection of short, completely stupid stories that are absolutely hilarious. They're all completely silly, except that Shampoo, of all people, gets some character development and I actually enjoyed it. There's a family related story in which Kasumi (Akane's eldest sister) has a moment to shine, Nabiki is up to her old tricks, and school life and home life begin to cross in an extremely disturbing way. And then there's a cursed bathing suit, and an ending that just barely makes sense. Um, actually, it didn't, but there you go. Oh, and a cursed cave, too! And finally, we get some more of the ridiculous principal who showed up way back in Volume 10 and made me love Ranma 1/2 again with his attack lobsters. This time he has a mad scheme to make Ranma look bad by announcing his test scores in public. Needless to say, it doesn't really turn out well for anyone in the end.

I've had to ILL the next two volumes again. Extremely grateful that my library will ILL graphic novels, because the local library does not. And this would have been an expensive series to read all the way through if I hadn't that option. Yay libraries!

FreeVerse: three haiku by Basho in translation

Six more weeks of winter, and so today I am breaking out the winter haiku plus one that reminds me to look forward to summer. I picked up The Essential Basho, a collection of the writings of Matsuo Basho (1644 -1694) and there is some absolutely wonderful, wonderful stuff in here. I'm just getting started, but I leave you with three. Translation is by Sam Hamill, the book was published in 1999 by Shambhala. Sam Hamill also has a book of Issa's poetry that might be easier for me to find than The Autumn Wind.

Thanks to Cara for hosting FreeVerse over at Ooh... Books!

***

Normally spiteful --
but not even the crows
this snowy morning

***

All the stones are dead,
the waters withered and gone --
winter and nothing

***

Even these long days
are not nearly long enough
for the skylarks' song