A Blessing of Toads by Sharon Lovejoy

I've been wanting to read and review this book since Nan posted about it months ago. I won it in her generous giveaway but it seemed to arrive at a particularly low point in my non-fic reading abilities, and I didn't want to ruin the book by reading it in the wrong mood.

I'm so glad I waited. This is a lovely book, and while it was a good book to read all at once, I think it would also be a good candidate for picking up and reading a little bit at a time. A Blessing of Toads is a collection of Sharon Lovejoy's articles from Country Living Gardener magazine, little bite-sized pieces (none longer than five pages) all smushed together into one book. To be honest, I've never read Country Living Gardener and I've never read anything by Lovejoy, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Whatever my expectations were, they were surpassed.

I learned a lot. I've been in outdoor education for the past eight years, and I grew up in a very nature-conscious family. I've been surrounded by naturalists my entire life, and so Lovejoy didn't have to convince me of the wonders of having nature in the garden -- to me, that's the point. But I learned a lot from her about nature, and also about things I could be doing to attract further critters to the backyard. Even more, she reminded me (I knew, but sometimes it's hard to remember) to just take the time to watch. I know there are amazing things happening in my garden every day, I just need to look for them. So I was envious of her stories -- of her family of crows, of her garter snake, of her phoebe nest -- but I realize I am just starting. I've got a long way to go, and I've also got some time to catch up.

Lovejoy also has the perfect gardening philosophy for me:

I like this laissez-faire gardening attitude. Newman's words of wisdom coupled with Julian Donahue's comment, "A lazy gardener is one of the best friends of wildlife," leads me to believe that I may have found my gardening niche.

She calls hornworms unicornworms. I'm going to start using this, and maybe I won't be so squicked out by them (because I can handle almost anything, but a hornworm is a big, twitchy, squishy thing with a horn, people -- a unicornworm is the trusty steed of the tomato flower sprite, and noble, not terrifying). She also coins the title term, "a blessing of toads" to replace the term "a knot of toads" for a group of the trusty little amphibians. I like the way she thinks.

A few of the other things I learned:

• syrphid flies (flowerflies) have voraceous larvae called "aphid tigers" that will eat a plant clean of aphids and other garden pests
• Nashville warblers can eat three tent caterpillars a minute -- now, not saying they do that every minute of every day, but that warbler is really moving

I also liked:

"Crepuscular" is a great word that rolls around in my mouth like a handful of jawbreakers.

She's humble, enthusiastic, and energetic -- her personality bubbles through the pages, sometimes factual, sometimes whimsical, always informative. I am giving this book to my co-worker Joanne to read, because I know she'll love it.

Thanks again, Nan. We have some of Lovejoy's other work at the library and I'll be checking it out. I love finding a new garden writer who both inspires and relaxes me.

Claymore Volume 1 by Norihiro Yagi

There's a graphic novel series at our library that's flying off the shelves. Or doing what passes for "flying off the shelves" for manga in a small conservative town. I thought I'd better check it out.

Claymore Volume 1 is centred around the itinerant warrior Clare, a woman who looks entirely human except for her silver eyes. She is a "silver-eyed witch," a "claymore" -- half-human, half-yoma. The yoma are monsters that can take human forms, preying on humans; up until the claymores were created, humans had no defence. Clare and her claymore sisters are able to fight back, and they are both needed and feared by the humans they protect.

The first volume introduces Clare, the concept of the claymores, the concept of the yoma, and Raki, a human boy whose family is killed by the yoma and to whom Clare seems to take a liking. I say "seems" because Clare is very closed, calm, and unemotional -- but in Raki's case, her actions speak louder than her words or facial expressions.

The art is mostly well-done, and the action, plot and concept is very easy to follow. Norihiro Yagi does a great job of balancing exposition with action with character development, so that by the end of the first volume the reader is emotionally invested. We begin to understand what's at stake, even though we don't know the full picture yet. We do know that it's going to be big. Epic, even. There are 15 volumes in English in this series so far and it's ongoing.

I did really like this manga, and the concept and the characters; and I would follow it, I think -- except that it's so dark. It's unrelentingly serious, a true drama, and therefore not really my kind of thing. I want my serious leavened with a bit of humour here and there, and there was next-to-none to be found in the first volume. I don't think I can go through 15 volumes of blood, pain, heartache and sorrow, even though I know it would be really good. I suspect, although I don't know, that it gets better as it goes along.

But that's just me. It's a very well-done manga, with a deep plot and fascinating, sympathetic characters and I'd encourage people to check it out. Even beginners to manga will find this one relatively easy to get into.

Teaser Tuesday: A Blessing of Toads, again

Still reading A Blessing of Toads. When did I get to be such a slow reader? I used to polish off several books a week. I guess there's adult summer things distracting me now, like working and maintaining a house and planning showers and hiking and... gardening. So much weeding. So little time. Luckily, Sharon Lovejoy just makes me enjoy gardening more, so that works.

Teaser Tuesdays are hosted by Should Be Reading. It works as follows:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share two teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
• Be careful not to include spoilers!
• Include the title and author.

From A Blessing of Toads by Sharon Lovejoy, p246:

"When the sunflowers, with their nectar-rich central disk, began to flaunt their winsome faces, the cast of characters that performed on our porch changed dramatically. Monarchs, eastern checkerspots, orange crescents, swallowtails, painted ladys (who deposited single, pale green eggs on many of the leaves), and little wood satyr butterflies drifted lazily between the porch railings, then settled atop the broad faces and probed the disk flowers for their cargo of nectar."

Scott Pilgrim Volume 3 by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Scott Pilgrim strikes again.

Mostly ineffectually.

This is why we love him.

I finally got tired of waiting for the book order to go through, and picked up Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness (Vol. 3) via interlibrary loan a few weeks ago. It took me a bit to get back into things, since it's been ages since I read volumes 1 and 2. But it didn't take that long, and then I went back and re-read the bits I'd read while being slightly confused. Then I continued re-reading because it is awesome.

For those new to my book crush on the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series, the basic idea of the series is this: Scott is on his way to defeating ninja delivery girl Ramona Flowers' seven evil ex-boyfriends in street-fighter-esque combat, in a quest to be able to call her his girlfriend. It's set in an alternate Toronto (Ontario) and there are awesome references to all sorts of things I recognize. Where a Toronto Public Library branch was the scene of a battle in the second volume, both Honest Ed's (an iconic deep-discount department store) and Lee's Palace (a popular club and bar with great live shows) show up in volume 3. For those of you wondering (as Darla was) yes, Honest Ed's is a real place. I have never been in. It is impressively daunting enough from outside.

The storyline in volume 3, as might be guessed from the title, is a little more serious. There are some fairly painful moments, and tender moments, between different characters. The pacing was definitely slower and more introspective. I didn't mind it; I didn't think it was quite as good as the first two volumes, but it still kept my attention and my heart. My husband, who also reads these, found it dragged a bit too much for him -- spent too much time moping and not enough time moving the plot along -- and I can certainly see his point. I think some of O'Malley's characters also see his point. They're pretty aware of their graphic novel format, which I thought was cute (says Envy at one point: "Right. It's almost 3:30, and we've been here for a quarter of this book. Let's call it a night.")

But there is more depth to most of the characters now, and there's a bit more intrigue surrounding Ramona. Who is she really? What is she up to? Because she's up to something and one suspects it might be problematic for all concerned in future volumes. Which I've ordered from the library! No more waiting around for me. Up next: Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

"Above literature?" said the Queen. "Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity."

This little book has a wonderful premise: one day, as the Queen is out rounding up her dogs, she stumbles upon the City of Westminster traveling library in her own backyard. To be polite, she takes out a book. The next week, when the library returns, she takes out another, again for politeness -- and one thing leads to another and Her Majesty becomes a voracious reader. Unfortunately, not everyone surrounding the Queen thinks this is a good thing... reading can lead to all sorts of trouble, you know.

The best words to describe this little gem are delightful, charming, very funny, and thoughtful. It is, of course, a celebration of reading and literature (and libraries!); it's also a meditation on aging, on loneliness, and on public faces versus private lives. It's tremendously uplifting and, as above, it's very subversively funny in a perfect dry way. I don't want to say too much more; there is a plot and it's best not to give too much away. Unlike my last read, don't be expecting heart-pounding action. This was a perfectly civilized read for a quiet rainy day.

All-in-all, the book is a little silly, with a hint of serious -- and sometimes quite cutting:

"The prime minister did not wholly believe in the past or in any lessons that might be drawn from it."

Zing! Just so you know, the prime minister is never named. One is given the impression that individual names don't so much matter in this case.

While Bennett's portrayal of those surrounding the Queen is often quite pointed, the way Her Majesty is portrayed is intensely sympathetic while still being firmly tongue-in-cheek. She comes across as both naive and incredibly wise, wiser as the book goes on. I liked this very much, as a note from Her Majesty's [fictional] notebook, because I thought it was very poignant:

"I was giving the CH once, I think it was to Anthony Powell, and we were discussing bad behaviour. Notably well behaved himself and even conventional, he remarked that being a writer didn't excuse one from being a human being. Whereas (one didn't say this) being Queen does. I have to seem like a human being all the time, but I seldom have to be one. I have people to do that for me."

It was Nymeth's review of this book that caught my eye, and I'm glad it did because I'm not sure I would have picked it up otherwise. So, thank you Nymeth! I'll be passing this one on.