The Field Guide by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi

After my disappointment with The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket, which I read just before I started the blog and really disliked, and my frustration with the forebludgeoning in The Sisters Grimm, I was kind of feeling like maybe I just wasn't up for reading fantastical series aimed at kids anymore. I was disappointed about it, too, because there's a lot of wonderful kids' lit out there.

Thus I picked up The Field Guide by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, the first in The Spiderwick Chronicles, with a little bit of trepidation. Funny how it took me about an hour and a half to read it, an hour that whizzed by so fast that I didn't even think I'd blinked. I thoroughly enjoyed it. If there was forebludgeoning, I didn't notice it (which is kind of the point of forebludgeoning, I think, so it's not there). It wasn't predictable, but it wasn't trying not to be, if that makes any sense. It felt incredibly short, but when I think back on it, a fair bit happened.

Mallory, Simon and Jared Grace have moved, after their parents' divorce, to an enormous ramshackle house out of the city with their mother. Mallory is the eldest, with a violent streak that I recognize ('cause I had an elder-sister violent streak, too), and Simon and Jared are twins. Simon adores his pets, and their mother allows him to have them (he even has mice! hooray!), but Jared's become a bit of a problem. He doesn't seem to have an outlet to deal with his frustration -- and he's been in a fight at school that has caused his entire family to look at him differently. They don't trust him, even though they still love him. So when really troublesome things start happening in the house, it's Jared who gets the blame. And it's from Jared's perspective that we view the ensuing events in the book.

Jared makes a great hero, even for adults. He's got that familiar "no one understands, no one listens, no one believes me!" thing happening. I know I identified with that as a kid. As an adult, I completely and fully understand where his mother is coming from, too, and I think that's the huge difference between this book and A Bad Beginning. Adults (or the one adult in the book) aren't portrayed as being stupid, cruel or ignorant. Helen Grace has a lot going on, and she's stressed out, and she's desperately worried about her kids, especially Jared, who seems to be acting out. We can see this in the very small part she plays and I like that. So I don't think she's being willfully ignorant or stupid when she blames Jared for what's happening; it's all very logical to an adult mind.

Mostly, though, Black and DiTerlizzi let the kids get on with things, as kids are liable to do. I love the setting and the premise. The black-and-white ink pictures that accompany the text remind me fondly of an edition of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe I had as a kid. They're simple, delicate, and enchanting, and compliment the text perfectly.

Most of all I love the characters. I'm already growing attached to them. I've ordered The Seeing Stone from the library, and am looking forward to reading it next week.

shameless blog adoration: Jo Walton at Tor

I have to admit that I have a bit of a blog crush. My blog crush is on Jo Walton over at tor.com. I tend to read the tor.com blog without a lot of reference to who it is I'm reading because I like most everything I read on there -- but about a week ago, I began to notice that every book that was reviewed over at tor.com that went on my list was a book reviewed by Walton. I went back over all the books I'd added to my list from tor.com reviews and all of them except one (we're talking double digits here) can be attributed to Jo Walton.

And now there's this excellent article about disappointing sequels, and why some sequels are just bad while other sequels ruin the books they follow. Guys, seriously, if tor.com isn't already plugged into your daily reads, go ahead and do it. I get something new or interesting out of them every day.

This makes me wonder if I should be mentioning other book blogs too, actually. I have a bunch that I read regularly and the list is growing. They're mostly on the right hand side of this page, but it might be a good exercise for me to try to articulate why I like the blogs I do. I've made up a tag for that exercise, so I almost have to do it now...

The Science of Sherlock Holmes by E. J. Wagner

Partly work-related and partly for fun, I'm on a bit of a mystery kick. We're watching Series Two of the British murder-and-gardening-in-one show, Rosemary and Thyme, and I'd finished Maisie Dobbs, and so I picked up The Science of Sherlock Holmes to give me a bit of nonfiction. I am a big Holmes fan, although not crazy (as sometimes happens with Holmes fans). I thoroughly enjoy Laurie R. King's Mary Russell, too, in spite of myself. And I've always found forensics fascinating.

This is a very quick, very easy read. Wagner goes about things in an organized fashion, looking at one or two aspects of forensics (trace evidence, autopsy, ballistics, etc.) per chapter, and taking us through the history of forensics as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would have known it. We meet some of the grandfathers of forensics (legal medicine, or medical jurisprudence, as it was called) and are taken, sometimes at length, through real-life cases where forensic science was first applied and making a difference. Sprinkled liberally throughout are quotes from various Holmes stories that highlight how important science is to criminal investigation. It's not so scientific that only experts could understand it; I think anyone with an interest in science, medicine, crime or Sherlock Holmes would be able to understand the vast bulk of this book.

The references to things Sherlockian are very endearing, although occasionally quotes or stories are reused in multiple chapters which makes me wonder why -- there are lots of stories to choose from. My favourite short, "Silver Blaze," gets a mention a couple of times, which pleased me to no end. Occasionally a point would be a little belaboured, as in how sloppy investigators can be when investigating crimes, or how bad science can lead to terrible judicial mistakes.

I was growing a bit weary of the last chapter, in which Wagner talks about bad science and how "expert" testimony can be disastrous (another favourite point) but then I recalled the massive amounts of damage so-called pathologist Dr. Charles Smith managed to do with bad science and expert testimony here in Canada. His expert testimony imprisoned multiple innocent people for the murders (which have since turned out to be, in some cases, accidental deaths) of children, destroying lives. And the judicial system let him get away with it; this is another point that Wagner makes, although that one only in passing. So maybe it's a point that needs to be made more than once.

It is a little chilling how easily people will believe in the infallibility of science. Science itself is great -- but sometimes the people who practice it are not. Sometimes they make genuine mistakes. Sometimes they are lazy. Sometimes they don't have all the information and spring to conclusions. Sometimes they are deliberately dishonest. Sometimes they're just misguided. To be honest, before I read this book, I still believed that hair and nails grow after death -- a myth, apparently, disproved quite a long time ago. Now, it's not my business to know that sort of thing, but I suspect that if someone had asked me whether or not it was true I might have said yes, thus perpetuating myth when science has proved otherwise.

When more is at stake than some kid going home and saying "guess what I learned today!", as is the case in a criminal investigation and court case, it is so important to get it right. These are people's lives here. Wagner mentions several cases where the wrong people are convicted -- or when the right people are not convicted, and end up taking more lives before they're finally caught. All based on science, or lack thereof.

At any rate, it's a fascinating read, and I recommend it as an introduction to the history of forensic science for the casual reader. This book just really scrapes the surface, but serves as an excellent, interesting, engaging, and fun entry.

Maisie Dobbs by Jaqueline Winspear

I have such mixed feelings here, although I've ended the book with a general positive feeling, so that's good. I wanted to like it and I'm glad I eventually, mostly did. Maisie Dobbs came to my attention through Darla, and we seem to have very similar tastes in many bookish things...

Maisie Dobbs begins with us meeting the titular character through the eyes of a London newspaper seller, allowing us to observe her from a distance. She is setting up shop and trying to figure out what she should call herself; is she a private investigator? A psychic? Healer? We see her take on a case involving a woman who is apparently cheating on her husband -- only, of course, things are not as they seem, and Maisie must dig deeper.

The year is 1929, and Maisie is a Cambridge-educated woman who worked as a nurse in France during the Great War. By virtue of her extraordinary intelligence and observational skills, she's worked her way from her working-class roots to a woman who has the confidence and respect of people all over the place, from all walks of life.

I think I'll start with what didn't work for me at first, and then wrap up with what did.

In general, I think the problems I had were some strange language decisions on the part of the author, although my first problem was not of style, but of substance. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for books that include a little bit of the unexplained -- but I was a bit put off by the mystical way in which Maisie works at solving the mystery. And the reason I have trouble with this is that so much is made of Maisie's bookish intelligence, but she doesn't appear to rely on more than a highly trained sense of observation, some vague premonitions, and a knack for copying people's body language that gives her an incredible level of insight into their emotional state. Furthermore, the premonitions give us a bit of heavy foreshadowing (not forebludgeoning, but a little too close for comfort). This was extremely prevalent in the first seven chapters and I was pretty irritated by it. Because -- and this leads right into my second problem -- I didn't think the writing was good enough to convince me of anything.

The original problem for me, before I could put my finger on any of the other things that were annoying me, was the description. I couldn't get into the book because I had no mental pictures of place. But it's not like there were no attempts made; a particularly egregious example reads like someone giving directions through downtown London, as we follow Maisie from her office to a place where she is to observe her target. I have never been to London in the 1920s. Street names and tube station names mean absolutely nothing to me, particularly when listed off and given no attached characteristics whatsoever. I want description to give me a feel for the place. What I got was worse than no description at all. That particular passage made me want to chuck the book at the wall. And I was enough out of the story to think, "Her editor let her get away with this? What were they thinking?"

Another odd choice, but one I can forgive as possibly having a motive, nearly cost me the book. The first seven chapters are "present" -- set in the spring of 1929 -- and then there is an extended flashback to Maisie's childhood and on through the war years. I wasn't at all engaged by Maisie or the mystery for the first five chapters because I was too frustrated with the style, and was just starting to get into the mystery when all of a sudden I was thrown back into the past. I was highly irritated at what I perceived to be a complete momentum-killer.

But it turns out it was a good thing. Because around the middle of chapter eight, I was suddenly hooked. Here was all the background on Maisie I was missing -- here was the character I could like and enjoy. I grew, very quickly, to like Maisie. I grew, very quickly, to understand what made her tick. That flashback interlude gave me everything I'd hoped to find at the beginning of the book, everything I had been searching for in vain. Maisie's unexplained premonitions and intuitions were not treated so heavy-handedly, and I grew used to that, too. I don't know what was behind the decision to make this a flashback and not put it all at the beginning, although I wonder if it was so that we did see Maisie as an observer might see her, as opposed to empathizing with her; or so that we would be looking for clues ourselves in Maisie's past. I don't know, but it came really close to not working because I almost gave up before I got to the good bits.

That said, things really looked up from there. I got into Maisie's story, the descriptions were at least enough for me to insert my own ideas of place and people (mostly gleaned from watching a lot of BBC programming), and I started to get a feel for what was at stake, rather than being told what was at stake and feeling guilty for not really caring. There were still a few odd moments that read like a writer who needs a better editor (how can someone standing in a very nice restaurant "inspect the soles of their feet"? I translated it as "looking down intently" but this is not Pynchon; I shouldn't have to translate because it takes me out of the story again) but overall I was really pleased that I'd continued reading.

Especially because Winspear pulls off a bit of a twist that I did not see coming. Another irritation for me was that I thought I had the mystery figured by the end of chapter seven. But I wasn't totally right, and that was refreshing. And though I didn't feel the full emotional wallop that I get the impression I was supposed to feel at the end, I was emotionally engaged.

I think Maisie's an original character, and I like the historical period in which the series is set. I'd like to see Maisie use her book smarts a bit more and her intuition a bit less, but that might just be the Sherlock Holmes addict in me. Now that I have a better idea of what to expect, and a fuller background on Maisie, I'll certainly pick up Birds of a Feather to see how Maisie and Billy fare next.

An Ecology of Enchantment by Des Kennedy

I am afraid that I might go on at length about this book. I suspect it is best enjoyed by people who have gardens of their own, or wish they did, or have had in the past. But I hesitate to say that no one else would enjoy it -- it might be just the book to convince you that you should grow a thing or two after all. I'm already convinced that I should probably try to grow kale, which was not the case before I read this book, for example. It's hard to say no in the face of such enthusiastic praise for a lowly brassica.

Des Kennedy is another one of those famous Canadian gardeners. He and his wife Sandy garden out on the West Coast, which is probably the best place to garden in Canada -- they have longer summers and warmer winters than the rest of us, meaning they can grow a huge variety of plants, and leave their root vegetables in the ground over winter. That said, it's not without its challenges, which Kennedy describes alongside the joys.

The book is structured, as its subtitle advertises, as a year in the life of Kennedy's garden. He has written an essay per week for an entire year, about 10 years ago and published them as a record -- sometimes practical, sometimes advertising favourite plants (as with the kale), sometimes musing on the spiritual aspects of gardening and gardeners. 52 short essays and almost all of them entirely quotable. I'll get to that in a minute.

There are a couple of overall things that I enjoyed about this book, which may or may not conflict with people's reading tastes. I really don't think this book is for everyone despite how much I loved it. For one thing, Kennedy likes words. He likes big or obscure words and he's not afraid to use them. For instance, does anyone know what "inveigle" means? Now I do. It's synonymous with entice; also to gain something by flattery. What I really appreciate here is that I don't often run into words I've not met before. At least not when reading something written in modern English in the past 10 years. But I've always loved that feeling of running across words I don't recognize and having to puzzle it out based on context or etymology. I used to do that all the time as a kid.

Another thing I enjoyed but might not be to everyone's taste is the hyperbole and prose that occasionally veers past purple into indigo. What makes this enjoyable, as opposed to unbearable, is that Kennedy is a very self-aware writer, so you never get the impression that he's doing this innocently. He knows exactly what's going on, and even devotes one chapter to pointing out how flamboyant garden writing often is, at least on the subject of poppies. He just clearly enjoys playing with language as much as he enjoys gardening.

But the best thing about this book, by far, is how humane it is. I am just starting my gardening career, really, and it's mostly trial and error. More error than anything else. An Ecology of Enchantment follows the ups and downs, both the joys and the frustration of a mature garden. These experiences parallel my own limited gardening experience, and rather than being disheartening, it's nice to know that despite heartbreak and discouragement the garden largely keeps on growing. More than any other gardening book I've read, this one seems to invoke a sense of both ongoing, steady continuity and ongoing, sometimes unplanned change. Kennedy's writing is humble, self-deprecating, hilarious, and always optimistic.

As I said before, there are a large number of quotable bits, so I'm only going to give you a smattering.

On the feverishly garden-deprived gardener in winter:

Thus the bleak days of winter can be whiled away in trenchant analysis and stirring plans for action, the bulk of which can be abandoned with the onset of spring before any permanent damage is done.

On daffodils:

I think the most frequently seen big yellow trumpet types work best at a distance where they're free to excite the romantic poet's imagination from half a mile away without yellowing us to death.

On the bewildering, daunting world of roses and their never-ending hybrids:

Anarchy seems the order of the day, with wild-eyed hybridizers running riot in the streets while tactical squads of classifiers bang their shields to try to maintain some semblance of order.

He also has a habit of dropping a description here and there that seems somehow perfect. From the rose chapter:

Rambling Albertine and long-limbed New Dawn reclining against the old woodshed like two beautiful sisters, arms outstretched to touch one another's fingers.

and the introduction:

a hummingbird appears in an irridescent commotion

The book I have was borrowed from my mother, who was borrowing it from my grandmother, who received it from me for Christmas (on the off chance that she would probably like it, since I get my gardening genes from her). I'm going to have to get myself my own copy. This one is a keeper.