What Happens in London by Julia Quinn

What Happens in London
by Julia Quinn
Avon, 2009
372 pages

In the interests of not having only ONE post in the month of May, I finished a book today! It actually wasn't a chore. It was quite delightful, and entertaining, and very light and sweet. But it also allows me to maintain my two books/month target, which is... well, not one book a week, but maybe we'll get up to three books next month?

This is a book from one of my go-to authors when I'm having trouble reading anything. This time it worked! I was a little worried; the last time I tried a Julia Quinn it was a DNF for me. But I think I might have been unduly influenced by being sandwiched on a plane home from a vacation.

But for me, this book was up there with my two Quinn favourites, The Lost Duke of Wyndham and An Offer from a Gentleman. In fact, it might... might... be better than either, though it would be hard pressed to top Lost Duke. It was a perfectly enjoyable regency romance, and it sparkled in a way that I've not found in too many other romance novels.

So, let's see. We have the stunning Olivia Bevelstoke, daughter of the Earl of Rutland, in London for the Season. Her new next door neighbour is Sir Harry Valentine, who is, unbeknownst to her (and most others) an operative and translator for the War Office. To society, Sir Harry is a rather mysterious figure, a baronet, very sober, very solitary, and not a lot of fun. Due to a nasty rumour, Olivia takes to spying on Sir Harry from her bedroom -- and of course, he notices. Needless to say, they don't really get off on the right foot.

The story is, of course, largely about Olivia and Harry getting back on the right foot.

What made this read so enjoyable for me was the interaction between Harry and Olivia. Both are flawed but ultimately lovely people, and they tweak each other in just the right ways to make the growth of their relationship believable and entertaining. They are hilarious together, to be honest, and I genuinely liked them individually and especially when they're sparring with each other. The things they goad each other about, the things they say to each other go from being superficial and not at all polite to a growing, deepening relationship that clearly means a lot to each. The book does rely a little bit on the physical attraction between the two to get them from high dudgeon to good friends, and the friendship does happen a little quickly; but Quinn makes it clear that each intrigues the other, gets under the other's skin, enough to make the fact that they salvage a friendship plausible.

All that aside, Quinn can write Society dialogue like no one else. It's not that her characters always know exactly the right thing to say, or always have a snappy comeback. No, it's that occasionally they do get mixed up or truculent or go silent, but they recover; and when they are on conversational form, they are a riot to observe. Even a discussion about the weather can be fraught with hidden meanings and emotion -- without being overwrought or overdeveloped.

As always, the climax was a wee bit melodramatic, and in this case I really didn't feel it was necessary. There was a villain but as in the best of her books the villain turns out to have hidden depth (I still didn't like him much, but I was somewhat convinced that he might be redeemable) and the relationship between Harry and Olivia didn't really need an extra shot in the arm, the way the climax often provides in romance novels. It was all there, and I would have believed in their Happily Ever After even without the events at the climax.

I really, really enjoyed myself throughout this book. I giggled out loud in places, the romance was sweet and genuine and satisfying, and the plot was (for a Quinn) generally understated and perfectly enjoyable. In fact, this may be one of the few romances I could seen picking up again and enjoying a second time through, so I'll be on the lookout for a copy of my own.

Saint Peter's Fair by Ellis Peters

We went on vacation. Last year, for this vacation, one of the days was a thunderstorm day. We spent the entirety of it ensconced in the camper, reading. It also helped that I was on antibiotics and miserable and not wanting to get out and hike, especially in the rain, so the reading felt like a reprieve. I read three books that day, for a total of five over the whole vacation.

This year I planned accordingly, and our combined reading material looked like this:


I remind you this is a five day trip, the overriding aim of which is hiking outdoors and watching birds (which was, I must say, extremely successful this year.)

I read one book. I read part of another one (Crocodile on the Sandbank, which turned out to be just on this side of too light for the brain, especially seeing as I knew exactly what was coming) and then switched to what turned out to be the perfect choice: the next Brother Cadfael mystery.

Saint Peter's Fair
by Ellis Peters
Macmillan, 1981
324 pages

I have to confess, this is another book I'd started before and put back down again. For whatever reason, it just wasn't grabbing me, and I'll say right off the top that I don't think this is one of the best in this series I've read. That's not to say it's not thoroughly enjoyable. There were just a few things that stretched credibility well beyond my comfort zone this time.

The basic plot, without any spoilers: the abbey's annual Saint Peter's Fair is gearing up for what looks to be a successful year after a missed year due to the seige reported in One Corpse Too Many. However, the townsfolk, still struggling with major infrastructure problems after the battles, are unhappy that they see no direct part in the tithes and levies that come from the lucrative fair. When a visiting merchant strikes down one of the town's young men (an unfortunate, though not fatal, event) a riot breaks out. Brother Cadfael is, of course, in the thick of it. Then, later that night, the merchant goes missing and is found the next day, the victim of what appears to be a simple street robbery. But the pieces don't add up, some people know quite a lot more than they're telling, and the hunt is on for the perpetrators of the crime as the situation escalates.

As I commented to fishy at one point, I had the mystery (somewhat) solved by the time the murdered man was found, which is to say within the first fifty pages. This isn't ideal, with these books -- at least not in the way it happened here. The one I've enjoyed the most is One Corpse Too Many and that was in large part because I was completely in the dark about the murderer and even the motive for most of the book, despite the foreshadowing that was skillfully employed. I was still definitely in the dark about the motive on this one, as was our intrepid monk. What surprised me, though, and felt out of character, is that Brother Cadfael is normally so infallible at reading character -- and he missed this one completely even when I, as the reader, knew something was wrong. Same with the deputy sherrif, who is as sharp as one could hope in official law. Also, Brother Cadfael felt very much an observer rather than an active solver of this mystery, which also felt out of character. I don't think this is a problem with Cadfael so much as a problem with the plot and other characters, which points to it being an author misstep.

What I missed most, though, was the warmth of feeling I've had for many of the characters in these books in the past. I am not sure whether this was me, or the long break between this book and the last, or that the characters really did read less like people and more like cutouts in a template.

All of that said, this was still an extremely enjoyable way to spend a couple of evenings. I think I am only slightly dissatisfied because the previous entries in the series were so good. The historical part is still fascinating, with the sweeping political landscape -- the part of history that most of us are familiar with, the lives of the grand people -- providing a backdrop for the convincing detail of the lives of the little people. We are becoming familiar with some of the townspeople, and time is passing; characters enter and leave Cadfael's life in the way one would expect a small town and abbey to work. The plot, though I could easily see the bones of it, had enough meat to keep me engaged through the end.

Overall, I wouldn't necessarily start with this one if you've never read a Brother Cadfael mystery, and I wouldn't necessarily have wept to have missed it. But it provided the kind of read I needed at the moment, and I'll quite happily pick up the next in the series on the strength of the three preceeding books.

Earlier books in the Brother Cadfael chronicles:

1. A Morbid Taste for Bones
2. One Corpse Too Many
3. Monk's-Hood

Your Hate Mail will be Graded by John Scalzi

Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded

by John Scalzi

Tor Books, 2010

368 pages

I have to admit: I have never read any of John Scalzi's fiction. I keep meaning to get to Old Man's War, but you know how that goes. And yet, I am a huge fan of his blog, Whatever, and so it was kind of a no-brainer for me to pick up this book, a collection of archival Whatever entries, when I noticed it in the local bookstore. See, the thing is, there's a lot of great material in the Whatever archives, but I only started reading in 2009 and I'm not about to go back all the way to 1998 to see what I missed. So I thoroughly enjoyed having someone pull out the best of Whatever and plunk it in a book for me to read.

I think the ideal place for this book, and this is not an insult, would be the bathroom. (Ironic, as I know Scalzi does some work for the Uncle John series of readers, too, heh). The entries are generally no more than two or three pages long, and range in topic from political, to parenting, to writing, to financial, to clones, to cheese. Perfect lengths for bathroom reading, and rarely the same thing twice. Also, they can be read in any and all orders -- there is absolutely no order to the entries, as they're not arranged chronologically nor topically. So you can read the last one without feeling like you've missed anything.

There can be trouble in assuming that what one writes on a blog will translate well into a book. I think part of the success here is that Scalzi is interesting. He's got big opinions, he thinks about things thoroughly, and he doesn't just discuss the minutiae. But what makes Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded work is that not only is Scalzi interesting, he can write. He can write really, really well. Well enough that a book full of his blog entries don't start to feel repetitive or samey.

The entries are often informative, and always entertaining, even when I don't agree with everything Scalzi says. That said, I seem to agree with the vast portion of it, which perhaps makes me an ideal reader for this book. I could see his style grating a bit on people who don't agree with what he says, especially, but that's quite deliberate. The current tagline for Whatever is "Taunting the Tauntable since 1998." His style can be hyperbolic, his metaphors can be vulgar (not in a bad way, to my mind), his sense of humour is always pointed and very sarcastic, his arguments somewhat steam-roller-like. But the metaphors, if unexpected, are always apt, and the arguments he makes are exceedingly well-reasoned. And I laughed out loud and often while reading this.

I wouldn't recommend this for a straight read-through, if just because it starts to be a lot. It would be like spending a full day just reading blog entries; your brain goes numb after a while. As above, it's less likely to go numb with Scalzi at the helm than it would be with many other bloggers out there (I include myself in this; most of us aren't award-winning authors). For someone who is having trouble committing to an entire narrative, this is the perfect pick-it-up-put-it-down read. It had me giggling, it had me thinking, and it had me thoroughly engaged. The best part about it? Reading Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded, like reading Whatever, makes me have some hope for humanity, if there are people like Scalzi out there thinking and writing and being alive in this world.

3 short reviews for a short attention span

Hello blog. This is kind of embarrassing, but... the truth is, I've been neglecting you. Some stuff has come up. I've been really busy, and when not really busy, in a really weird brainspace. All will become clear in time, but suffice to say that not only have I not been writing reviews, I've only barely been reading. Thus, the longest break in our history together: almost a full month without an entry.

That said, I do have three books to talk about. I know I won't be able to squeeze full entries for each out of my poor brain, so we're going to do something new and do short reviews! Scattered and short attention span -- that's me right now.

The City of Words

by Alberto Manguel

CBC Audio, 2007

5 discs

This is actually a recording of the five 2007 Massey Lectures. If you don't know about the Massey Lectures, I do advise checking them out at some point -- they've been given lately by such luminaries as Margaret Atwood (about money, and debt) and Douglas Copeland (the first Lectures to be entirely a work of fiction) and Wade Davis (anthropology). This particular set was about the power of story and words in society, going back as far as Gilgamesh (my favourite lecture of the series) and bringing us into the future with HAL. I don't remember a lot of it at this point, I'll be honest, and as I was in the car listening to this I wasn't (much to the advantage of other drivers on the road, I am sure) taking notes as I listened. I think probably a better experience would have involved taking notes. It was tremendously fascinating, but extremely dense; and I do remember feeling that the final lecture stretches a bit too far and tries to do too much in fifty minutes. While the whole thing was interesting to listen to, I don't think it has quite the same coherence that some of the other series I've heard do. Or it's possible that my brain is out of shape from not being in classes where I've had to do a lot of critical thinking and/or literary analysis. Either way, I'm glad I listened and I think I will have to listen to them again to appreciate them fully. Recommended for people interested in stories, society, and culture, and not afraid to take on something intellectually challenging.

Not Love but Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy!

by Fumi Yoshinaga

Yen Press, 2010

159 pages

Of the three I'm reporting on here today, this is the book I loved. It's tremendously quirky in exactly the way I like it. With relationships and the manga artist's life as a (mostly very thinly sketched) background, this is a book about food. In fact, it's a love letter to 15 different Tokyo eating places, and to the food they serve. If I ever go to Tokyo, I will use this book as a guide to what I eat. It looks so. unbelievably. delicious. There's Japanese food, of course, but also Chinese food, baked goods, French cuisine -- it's wide-ranging, involving a lot of entrails (as Yoshinaga herself jokes) and beautifully drawn and described. Somehow, in between the food, we manage to get to know and enjoy Y-naga, the main character, foodie, and charmingly quirky lady, and a cast of characters around her, some just in for one story, others in for the long haul. It's very well done. The art is lovely and easy to follow, the characters very clearly differentiated, the sense of humour is sustained and light without being stupid, and did I mention the food? Loved this book, highly recommended to fans of food and/or manga.

Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang

by Mordecai Richler

Tundra Books, 2003 (original release in 1975)

87 pages

Another parent-child bookclub read, and quite a lot of fun. Jacob Two-Two is two plus two plus two years old, and has to say everything twice because he's so small that no one hears him the first time. In this, the first of his adventures, he is sent to prison for the worst crime of all -- insulting a grownup. I wasn't surprised to see that Richler is reported to have modeled the child characters in the book after his own children, or that the father character is modeled after himself. It reads like a bedtime story, the sort that a father might come up with on the spur of the moment with the kids themselves as the stars. This is not a bad thing, by any stretch -- it's a wonderful, imaginative, charming, and entertaining story that somehow manages not to be dated. It has things to say about children, adults, friendship, kindness, and creative thinking. Recommended as a great adventure for a bedtime story, or a very quick (an hour or two) read for an adult.

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

Because of Winn-Dixie

by Kate DiCamillo

Candlewick Press, 2000

192 pages

Sorry about the posting delay, all. I've been working through a very fractured-attention-span time, which leads to significantly less reading (I haven't read anything since this book) and less ability to write a coherent review, too. This may not get everything I wanted to say about this book, but I figured that a little review is better than no review at all.

This book is lovely. It's well-written. It's a little capsule of sweet and sad all rolled into 192 pages, and it is a perfect book club read for my parent-child group.

India Opal Buloni has moved to a small town in Florida with her single-parent father, a pastor at a small evangelical church. We meet her immediately as she is meeting Winn-Dixie, the titular dog, in the supermarket of the same name. He's causing quite a disruption, and she manages to convince everyone that he's hers, and she also manages to convince the pastor that they need a dog. Through the rest of the book, we follow India through her summer as she meets some very interesting people in the town, and starts to connect them to each other in ways they may not have foreseen before a girl and her dog showed up.

More than being about the hijinks between India and Winn-Dixie, though, this is a story of connection and friendship, and a story about loss and sadness, too. Which doesn't mean it's a sad book, or a downer in any way -- not a chance. But it is a book about the lives people lead that don't always show on the surface, and how beautiful and difficult those lives can be. I suppose in some ways, some of the characters might read like a heavy-handed moral -- "don't judge a book by it's cover!" and that sort of thing -- but I think DiCamillo handles it skillfully and gently, in a way that doesn't talk down to her readers. I enjoyed this book as much as an adult as I think the kids will enjoy it.

I definitely recommend this book for reading together. I think it's a fine read-alone for kids, too, but I think that there are a lot of themes that can be addressed here, making it an ideal read for the book club. I'd also recommend it for a light and quick, but not entirely fluffy, read for adults, too. DiCamillo writes in such a way that I could picture the southern atmosphere, I could feel the summer heat, and I could smell the wet dog. The story is simple, pleasant, and kind, but not without its touch of sadness, which I think makes the whole thing sweeter.