2010 January » Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

Review: Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh

Posted by Anastasia on January 15, 2010 No Responses »

Jan 152010

6. Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh
Publication: Little, Brown and Company (under Berkley Medallion) (May 1978), Paperback, 245pp / ISBN 0425038602
Genre: Mystery
Rating:
Read: January 11-12, 2010
Source: Bought
Summary from Amazon:

Member of Parliament Florence Rubrick has the wool pulled over her eyes-quite literally. She’s been found dead, her body pressed into a bale of wool. When Inspector Alleyn pays a visit to her New Zealand country home, he meets two fine, handsome men and two lovely young women, all of whom have reason to be grateful to dear Flossie for saving their lives. But as Inspector Alleyn learns, there are secrets aplenty hiding in the floorboards of that sheep station, and one in particular conceals a murderous motive that has the look and smell of treason.

Review

I’ve never read a Ngaio Marsh book before, though I was familiar with her when I picked up five or six of her Inspector Alleyn books at a library book sale months ago. On my cover it there’s a quote that says “she writes better than Christie” and I’m actually inclined to agree.

Let me explain! Died in the Wool can be most closely compared to N or M?: it’s got spies, espionage, a murder, a small town in the middle of nowhere, Germans running amok, etc. In my review of N or M? I said that it was mostly slow and boring up until the near end, and some other things which in rereading that review now seem basically useless. However, I do remember that even the excitement at the end and the happiness of reading another story with Tommy and Tuppence (two of my favorite near-farcical characters ever to grace a mystery) couldn’t lift that book beyond a “oh, so that’s what happened. Bah.” In comparison, Died in the Wool made me feel– all throughout the book– alternatively happy, excited, scared, intrigued, interested, and gleeful (at the reveal).

I think the problem that most people have with Christie’s books is that she’s always having her character go off and do something behind the scenes and then show up at the spouting off on all these clues they’ve picked up when the reader wasn’t looking. Or rather, when the reader was having their eyes covered by Christie. Marsh’s books, however, don’t have that problem. I followed Inspector Alleyn through his whole investigation. I even got a bit of his inner thoughts about the mystery. And while I had some ideas about who the murderer/spy was, Marsh still managed to make me feel shock when he was revealed!

So while I like Christie’s stories, I can’t help but feel that Marsh’s a just a little bit better. They’re kinder to the reader, I think.

If I may be excused to compare Died in the Wool to another mystery once more, then I’d like to say Inspector Alleyn reminds me a whole bunch of DCI Barnaby from Midsomer Murders. He’s a quiet sort of detective (at least in Died in the Wool) who knows how people think and act, and who can put clues together marvelously. The rest of the characters ranged from practically faceless background characters to rather over-the-top annoyances (Ursula, for one, who acted like something out of a P.G. Wodehouse book). They weren’t the most fabulous people, but they suited their purposes.

My complaints are mostly the sort that pop up in mystery novels from the pre-1950s: not enough character depth, some colloquialisms that I don’t understand, and sometimes it all gets bogged down in the “was is that man? or maybe it was the girl! or maybe–!” sort of thing. Also, even though it takes place in New Zealand, it didn’t really feel like NZ. It felt like Britian-slightly-removed (which I suppose NZ was in the 1940s? But then, Marsh actually LIVED in NZ, so…I don’t know). But Died in the Wool was really nice in that I didn’t ever feel frustrated with the story (just some characters), the solution was workable and not stupendously weird, and I even managed to work some things out for myself! With help from Inspector Alleyn, of course.

It’s a short book, but everything ties up neatly and I didn’t ever feel like things were rushed or left out. If you’ve never tried a Ngaio Marsh book before, Died in the Wool might be a good one to start with.

And

Find your own copy @ Amazon or IndieBound

Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll link to it from mine!

Bad cover photo taken by myself and my Macbook.

In the back of my copy there’s an ad for energy conservation, with the slogan “we only have one Texas.” This edition was publish in the 1970s. Kinda scary!

Thursday Tea (January 14): Quant by Quant

Posted by Anastasia on January 14, 2010 No Responses »

Jan 142010

Thursday Tea is a weekly meme hosted by yours truly. To play along, all you need is some tea, a book, and the answers to these questions: what tea are you drinking (and do you like it)? What book are you reading (and do you like it)? Tell us a little about your tea and your book, and whether or not the two go together.

The book: I’m still technically reading The Woman in White, but I’ve been reading shorter books during the day and leaving TWIW for before bedtime. Shorter books = less heavy in my purse = easier for me to carry with everything else I stuff in there.

Right now my shorter book is Quant by Quant, which is a 1960′s memoir by Mary Quant, the fashion designer who was at the forefront of the mod fashion back then. Or maybe swinging London is the correct phrase; I don’t know.

It’s a really enjoyable book, in a flighty sort of way (she doesn’t put any dates in). But I like it especially because she talks about all the mad things people were doing in the 60′s (and were still doing, I suppose, since she wrote it in 1966). The fashion world is one that changes rapidly and is forever moving. It’s vibrant and loud and wonderful, and I love reading about things that happen in that world even if I’m not in it.

The book itself reminds me of a 60′s thing, almost like whoever published it were trying to be too cool and unusual– there’s no chapter breaks. There’s no breaks of any kind. It’s like one continuous run-on sentence, with a few pictures sprinkled in. It’s actually very tiring, not having even any big spaces or anything, but it does seem like a 60′s thing to do. Though maybe I have an incorrect idea of what people were like in the 60′s. I tend to just think it was beat poets and drugs, and so anything radically different compared to 1950′s culture just sort of naturally flowed outward into books and art and things. The 1950′s had chapter breaks, I’m sure, so the 1960′s didn’t.

Anyway, I’ve just gotten to the point where Bazaar, Mary’s shop, has moved to Knightsbridge and her fashions have basically exploded onto the pages of Vogue and such.

The tea: Actually, I’m drinking coffee. It’s not very good coffee, but it’s drinkable, at least.

Do they go together? This is practically the first time I can say YES, they go together. In her book Mary talks about how coffee bars had become very popular in the late 1950′s, and that’s where all the hip cats and fashionistas hung out. Yay! A match!

What are you drinking/reading this Thursday?

Continuing thoughts of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (part 2)

Posted by Anastasia on January 13, 2010 No Responses »

Jan 132010

Previous editions: Walter I-X, Walter XI-Gilmore I

This bit’ll be continuing on with Mr Gilmore’s narrative and into Marian’s, up until the end of the first epoch. I probably won’t post again on TWIW until at least next week– I don’t want to get TOO ahead of everyone else.

Also, I should have mentioned this before, but these posts might make more sense if you’ve read TWIW or are currently reading it right now. I’m not entirely sure how much sense it’ll make if you’re not already familiar with the story.

Gilmore II.

It’s interesting how Gilmore talks about Glyde’s good points a lot, especially in regards to how he’s treating Laura. If we base our opinion solely on Gilmore’s narrative, Glyde seems like the perfect husband for Laura, one who’ll dote on her, take into consideration every need she has or wants, being respectful to the family, etc. It all sounds lovely, but because we’ve also been shown that Glyde may not be all he’s cracked up to be, it all has a very sinister edge to it. Is he being so lovely because he actually is lovely and Anne Catherick is truly insane (and thus accusing him of fiendishness falsely) or is he doing it to lure Laura into his clutches?
Anne’s mother’s letter? IT’S A TRAP! Bah.
Okay! Also! When Marian talks about Laura’s mentality about things, about how once she’s promised to do something she’ll do it even if she doesn’t want to– doesn’t that remind you of Ann Catherick’s problem? About how she can’t change her mind once something it put into it? Yes? Yes! Or at least it does to me.
Oh, and Laura’s dog: it’s a bad sign when animals don’t like you! Her dog likes Gilmore, which is appropriate. But he barked at Glyde! Bad sign! Bad sign! (As if we already didn’t know Glyde is the villain.)
Poor Laura, trying to clutch and keep Marian in her life. I understand wanting to keep one’s sibling near, but once you’re married you’ve got to grow up sometime, Laura. Gilmore says she and Marian cling to the past, and that’s definitely true. Just think of how their house hasn’t changed ever since their parents died.

Review: Whom God Would Destroy by Commander Pants

Posted by Anastasia on January 13, 2010 No Responses »

Jan 132010

5. Whom God Would Destroy by Commander Pants
Publication: Pantsateria (May 15, 2009), Paperback, 288pp / ISBN 0578018896
Genre: Fiction, Satire/Humor
Rating:
Read: January 1-10, 2010
Source: Author
Summary from Amazon:

A novel to incite a Judeo-Christian Fatwa: When “God” decides to mess with humanity once more, he runs into some kinks he didn’t foresee… WHOM GOD WOULD DESTROY, it’s about God, insanity and the search for the Ultimate Orgasm.

Review

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this book. This indecision is making me anxious and a little confused, so I apologize now if this review isn’t as awesome as my others are normally. I want to like Whom God Would Destroy a lot, and indeed there are a lot of things to like about it. The whole thing is like a Shakespearean play with all the actors on LSD, and while that’s fun in short bursts it does tend to fall apart in the long run and leave you with a feeling of “wtf just happened?”

What I liked best about Whom God Would Destroy was the weird characters, the weird storyline, and the underlying ideas about humanity, religion, insanity, happiness, and so on. The characters were all kooky, of course, but often it was the sane people that were kookier than the “insane” people and that made an interesting dynamic. I didn’t particularly like any of the characters, but I could respect them for their weirdness. Of course, because it turns out that the “insane” people aren’t insane, I’m not entirely sure what that dynamic ends up being. Just more…insanity?

There’s a large bit near the end that is obviously the author’s views on religion and humanity, but it’s not a bad view and it’s one that seems to be pretty typical in modern humor-books-with-religion-stuck-in (see here or here or here). Basically it boils down to “stop taking the Bible so literally and everyone will be happier including you.” Except that God is an alien, and so I’m not sure now how valid and alien’s viewpoint on humanity is. Can an alien tell us how to live our lives when he’s not human and doesn’t understand us beyond sarcastic condemnations of our basic beings? (But then– God isn’t human, either. Uh. Okay, moving on.)

Somewhere around page 90 I thought “this is a strange book” and that’s true, too. It’s also fun and has some extremely humorous bits. If you enjoy books that jumble together a whole lot of stuff– stuff that doesn’t seem to go together– and makes it all work somehow, you’ll probably enjoy Whom God Would Destroy. I really liked it when Commander Pants connected a seemingly singular character or event to another one, then took up the whole thing and ran away with it. It was madcap fun, basically. Except when it got to the end and the plot ran off a cliff.

The reason I’m not raving about Whom God Would Destroy is that I think, while there was a lot of connections made inside the story, the whole framework seems like it could fall apart with a small tap. Not that there were plotholes– just, okay. In the book there were aliens, God coming back to Earth, insanity and the psychology profession (including topics like medication and therapy), sex, religion, the fallacies of mankind, why humans ultimately suck but are still somehow awesome. It’s a lot to have in one book, and I wasn’t entirely convinced that they all went together and made a cohesive whole. Commander Pants made a valiant effort to tie them all together in small ways, but I needed them tied together in a bigger way.

I said before that Commander Pants managed to connect things within the story, and he did. One character’s storyline would run into another character’s, and then that would tie into the overall story. I liked it when that happened. But I never got the feeling that everything was connected, like something was left out and kept the book from being as cohesive as it could be. I hope that makes sense– I can’t help but feel that maybe I’m picking at something that doesn’t exist, but it’s the only way I can explain why I felt sort of…underwhelmed when I finished it. I liked individual parts. But the aliens, God, insane-people-who-aren’t, etc, didn’t work together as smoothly for me as they probably needed to. Like they needed so WD40 in their cogs, or something. (Or maybe better-fitting cogs altogether? I’m getting off topic.)

Also, I was really grossed out when the Big Mac-addicted aliens (not the same ones that God came from) started farming humans by forcing them all to have sex together. Then when the women got pregnant and had kids, they’d surgically alter them back to the way they looked before they were pregnant and start the cycle over again. I just really find it disgusting that women were basically baby farms and, just. Ugh. Plus the aliens never got punished for that whole thing, or for their plan to take over Earth in a few hundred years. Moral retribution! C’mon, I need it.

Anyway, it’s a self-published book but it’s only got a few typos and punctuation errors in it (less than 10, I’d say). At the beginning I was frustrated by all the surplus dialogue tags, and sometimes the writing felt more like stuff you see in college creative writing classes instead of a professionally edited story (fyi, I have no idea if it was edited by a professional editor or not). But it got better by page 20, or else I just ignored the dialogue tags after that, and by the end I was only noticing the typos, not the writing. It does all move very quickly once you get past that small three-chapter bump.

So, in conclusion: this one isn’t entirely for me, but I’m sure it’s got an audience among those who like a stranger sort of tale. I’m not religious or suffering from a mental malady, so I can’t say if it’s insulting to anyone who is, but I’d say probably not. (Or, okay. Maybe a little to the more religious of us.) If you like to take chances, you might want to take a chance on Whom God Would Destroy. But if you’re not sure– don’t.

And

Find your own copy @ Amazon or IndieBound

Other reviews (all of which are better than my feeble attempt): Reading for Sanity | Eclectic/Eccentric | Illiterarty | Bookfetish | Ooh…Books!

You can read one of Commander Pants’ short stories on his blog if you’d like to get an idea of his writing.

LOTR readalong: The Hobbit (meme)

Posted by Anastasia on January 11, 2010 No Responses »

Jan 112010

Reading Beth‘s post has reminded me that I haven’t done Eva‘s q&a thing yet! Bah, I’m just behind on everything.

This is the copy I’m using:

I stole it off my brother before he left for colder pastures (i.e. Minnesota), and I think he got it from…my dad, maybe? You can see it’s been read a few times before, and I think my brother might have even read it. It doesn’t have any illustrations, unfortunately, but it’s easy to carry around with me.

When did you first hear of The Hobbit? I think it was either from my father or from my middle school best friend (the one who also got me into Diana Wynne Jones and Brian Jacques). My dad is a bit Tolkien geek and so was my friend (we’ll call her “S”), so I assume it was one of them who forced me to read The Hobbit.

What made you decide to join the read-a-long? I hadn’t reread The Hobbit in a very long time, since middle school or somewhere around there, and I haven’t read any of the other books. I feel like I’m missing something big by not having read them, so I joined. Plus it’s always fun doing readalongs with a bunch of other people!

Have you read it before? If so tell us about that experience. Ha! I really don’t remember. I assume I liked it– I’ve been saying I liked it for around ten years– but I honestly can’t remember how I felt after reading it for the first time. Just going by that, I assume it wasn’t a life-changing read, but who knows. Hopefully this time around the experience will be more memorable.

I do remember that in 9th grade S. tried to get me to read the other books in the series, but I was so bored by The Fellowship of the Ring that I had to give it up. And of course, when she kept bugging me about whether or not I liked it I had to deflect– usually by mentioning some Diana Wynne Jones thing. It was very stressful back then, let me tell you.

J.R.R. Tolkien pretty much founded the modern fantasy genre. So let’s take a moment to think about the genre as a whole; have you always loved fantasy? Or perhaps you still feel rather skeptical towards the whole idea of wizards and dwarfs and magic? I’ve always loved fantasy (and sci-fi), and though I’ve gotten quite cynical towards the swords-and-sorcerers kind of fantasy lately, I still have fond memories of the early fantasy books I read. However, my favorite sorts of fantasies are the kinds that take the tropes from epic fantasies and do something new and interesting with them. Sort of a difficult thing to do, it seems, especially when things like elves and wizards can become so cliched and boring so quickly.

(There Will Be Dragons does that “change things up” thing a bit, though it’s more of a sci-fi/fantasy meld than a true fantasy manipulation.)

What was your introduction to the genre? The earliest fantasy I can remember reading is one of those 1960′s kids books with a friendly witch/teacher character who took kids on adventures and so on. I found it tucked away in one of the school’s bookshelves, along with The Phantom Tollbooth and some Roald Dahl books. Actually, now that I think about it, the fantasies I read as a kid and the kind I love to read now aren’t swords-and-sorcerers kind of fantasies. Hm.

In middle school my friend S. kept pushing epic fantasies onto me, so I started reading more of them then. I remember reading one of the later books in the Dark is Rising sequence and not understand anything at all (it was book three or four, so that’s not really surprising), and another time I read a Dragonriders of Pern book and nearly expired with embarrassment from the mentioned sexuality. So I had a rather rough start with epic fantasies, haha.

Do you have a certain plan for reading it? A few pages a day, spacing it out over the month? Or are you just going to race through it? I’m currently reading about three other books along with The Hobbit, so it’s going a few pages at a time, currently. But I’ve just hit the halfway mark and I think I’m going to try and finish it all in the next few days– hopefully before school starts again!

Okay, now I have a question for you all: have you been reading the poems/songs? Or do you just skim them like I do? (I just really have no patience for poems in the middle of an adventure, so I skip them more often than not. Am I missing something important by doing that?)

Review: Dead Clever by Scarlett Thomas

Posted by Anastasia on January 11, 2010 No Responses »

Jan 112010

4. Dead Clever by Scarlett Thomas
Publication: Justin, Charles & Co. (February 25, 2003), Hardcover, 275pp / ISBN 1932112014
Genre: Mystery
Rating:
Challenges: A to Z Challenge (T)
Read: January 5-6, 2010
Source: Library
Summary from Amazon:

Meet Lily Pascale, London party girl and brash young thing, who throws in the towel on her job, her boyfriend and her London flat to move back to the wild coast of Devon. Smart, willful, incautious and nearly terminally curious, Lily arrives at her new job at the local college on the same day student Stephanie Duncan is brutally murdered there. Suddenly, Lily finds herself smack in the middle of a real life crime, and Stephanie’s murder is just the beginning. Fenn Baker, the rather attractive Victorian Fiction specialist has disappeared (just as Lily was hoping to get to know him better), a student is going completely bonkers, and Lily’s weirdo boss Professor Valentine is behaving very strangely. Then another body is found and the questions start piling up.

Review

I started reading this book at the recommendation of a coworker, and I’m a little conflicted about how I feel. On the one hand, I liked the writing and the mystery. I LOVED the mystery. It was scary and kinda ridiculous and would make an excellent episode of Law & Order: SVU. Or maybe Midsomer Murders– it has that “small town gone nutso” feeling to it.

The problem I had was with Lily herself. I was following her along her story, rooting her on, a little worried in case her love interest turned out to be the murderer (as they so often do in murder mysteries), waiting to see how she’d become involved with the case and end up solving it. But then. Oh, but then she did something unforgivable.

Warning you now for spoilers. Continue reading »

APFOL: January 3-9

Posted by Anastasia on January 10, 2010 No Responses »

Jan 102010

Interesting posts and other things that have caught my eye this week. It isn’t actually everything, since I didn’t want to kill myself copy-pasting, so for the entire link collection check out my Delicious page.

Books in General

Bookshops Are Dead: And I Killed Them « Eoin Purcell’s Blog
“So there will be demand for print books but at a much reduced level (because many others will shift to digital as will casual readers and new readers) and the economics of bookshops will become completely skewed favouring the online Emporia. Booksellers can react by hand-selling to customers and making themselves relevant as Ravenbooks has (I am increasingly sure of finding a pile of relevant books there every time I walk in) and no doubt this will mean concentrating on older books, out-of-print books and second-hand books, books that appeal directly to the customer, and print-on-demand books printed directly on site (though I am less convinced of the economic case for this).”
The Problem With the Follow-up Memoir – Newsweek.com
“The biggest challenge is, you had a really good, resonant story to tell, why should you expect there to be another one so quickly?” says Ben Yagoda, author of Memoir: A History. “It seems there might be a half-life effect. With Frank McCourt, each successive book had a fraction of the sales and artistic impact as the earlier books.” (Thanks, Kim! sophisticateddorkiness.com)
Religion and Science Fiction: Asking the Right Questions / Tor.com
“Most people who debate science vs. religion tend to ask the same boring question. Does God exist? Yawn. However, the question in all of these stories is never “Do these beings really exist?” The question is “What do we call them?” It’s never “Does this force actually exist?” It’s, “What do we call it?” Or “How do we treat it?” Or “How do we interact with it?” One of the many things that fascinates me about these stories is that the thing, whatever it is—a being, a force—always exists.”

Authors & Publishers

Top Ten Question Dutton Editors Ask Themselves « Writing and Illustrating
Filing this under my “learn how to be an editor” thingy.
BABBLING ABOUT BOOKS, AND MORE!: When An Author Doesn’t Want You To Review Their Book
“Book review blogs are for the reader and quite honestly, I rather post a positive review for a book and “pimp” it to the clouds over posting a negative review. But just as book review blogs are here to promote the best in books and authors, they are also here to do a service, to give balance and very bluntly warn readers about books that are not the best they can be ( in their own opinion).”
Kirkus Reviews: “Working toward an arrangement with an acquiring company” – mediabistro.com: GalleyCat
“According to an internal memo obtained by Daily Finance, Kirkus Reviews has found a potential buyer and will continue publication.” Yay!!
Richard Nash: Book Publishing 10 Years in the Future – mediabistro.com: GalleyCat
“Former publisher, Richard Nash has never been one to hold back his voice on how he feels the book publishing industry needs to make dramatic changes. We asked him what he sees happening in the next 10 years and here is what he had to say” My favorite: “In 2020 the disaffected twentysomethings of the burgeoning middle classes of India, China, Brazil, Indonesia will be producing novels faster than any of us can possibly imagine.”

(Book) Blogging

Introducing GalleyCat Reviews – mediabistro.com: GalleyCat
“In addition, we would like to build a directory of online outlets for book reviews, sharing this valuable information with our readers. As traditional review outlets disappear, online communities may be one of the last places where readers can go to find out about new books. If you would like to be included on that book review directory or participate in GalleyCat Reviews, email us today.”
Presenting Lenore: My episode on That’s How I Blog is available now!
Yay!

Book Wishlist

Cold by Bill Streever. Nymeth says: “t’s a science book, yes. But it’s also a natural history; a social history of Arctic exploration; a book about our relationship not only with cold weather and cold places but with our idea of them; an environmental plea; and a personal account of one man’s passion for cold and all the natural wonders that surround it.” WOW.
8th Grade Superzero by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich. I originally spotted this on an editor’s website because they were highlighting the author’s awesome query letter (see: link), but it’s been getting good reviews on the blogs lately, too.
Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey. Trisha says “it’s set in New Zealand and features Maori mythology” and I want to read it, too! It’s not coming out until April, though.
Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart. Tal says: “It’s an A to Z of plants that kill, maim, intoxicate, and otherwise offend. A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that triggered a war.”

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