2011 March » Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

Thursday Tea (Mar. 31): No Wind of Blame

Posted by Anastasia on March 31, 2011 2 Responses »

Mar 312011

The book: I’m determined to finish a book today, although I DO keep getting distracted by internet things. So I’ve picked a short one: Georgette Heyer’s No Wind of Blame. Did you know G. Heyer wrote mysteries as well as historical romance? I didn’t, at least not before I got this book…somewhere. On the cover it says she’s right up there with Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Josephine Tey and Ngaio Marsh– and I’m going to agree with that blurb.

Like those other mystery writers, GH has got that interwar almost-humorous-but-not-quite thing going on in her writing. It strongly reminds me of A. Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence books, where if the writing was taken one step further and most of the mystery cut out it’d be a P.G. Wodehouse book. As I’ve just started reading No Wind of Blame I can’t make a comment on the mystery part of the story yet (I haven’t even gotten to the part where mysterious things start to happen), but I’m pretty sure I’m going to really enjoy this book.

The tea: My tea supply was mysteriously restocked with Earl Grey last week, so I’m drinking a nice cup of that.

Do they go together? Oh, absolutely. Since when does Earl Grey NOT go with an interwar (or nearly interwar, anyway) mystery novel, eh? It ALWAYS goes with an interwar-or-nearly mystery novel. So there.

REVIEW: Postmortem by Laurel Saville

Posted by Anastasia on March 30, 2011 4 Responses »

Mar 302011

16. Postmortem by Laurel Saville
Publication: iUniverse.com (September 25, 2009), Paperback, 196pp / ISBN 9781440161070
Genre: Memoir

Rating: Buy it
Read: February 1, 2011

Source: Publicist

Summary from Amazon:

Sadly, some lives cannot be understood until after death. So it was with Anne Ford. A charming beauty queen, model, and fashion designer during the 1950s, this glamour girl was poisoned by internal demons and the permissive Southern California culture of the 1960s and 70s. She ended her life as an alcoholic street person, stabbed and strangled in a burned-out building in West Hollywood. Years later, her daughter, the writer Laurel Saville, began the long process of unraveling the twin trajectories of this unusual life.

Postmortem takes the reader on an emotionally charged journey that ranges from her eccentric West Hollywood childhood to a top-secret, Depression-era airplane design. Whether describing the artists of the seminal Sunset Strip gallery where Andy Warhol got his start or the hippie parties at Barney’s Beanery, Saville’s distinctive prose lends insight into events and emotions. This candid exploration of one woman’s life and death ends up exposing unexpected and highly-charged truths about both mother and daughter.

Review

What is with these parents from the 1960′s? Why were so many of them absolutely horrible? What was it about the 60′s that said “yes, go and be a parent but only in name, and don’t forget to traumatize your kids a couple of times a week so they’ll turn into famous authors later on,” eh?

The only bright point to all these memoirs is that the kid does, normally, escape relatively sane from his or her parental unit’s grasping claws of insanity. Laurel Saville is just such an escapee, and her book is one of the better examples of these kind of memoirs.

In fact, it’s a really good book. I was enthralled for most of it, and though I’ve found myself tired lately of all the “oh how my parent(s) fucked me up as a kid” memoirs that have come out in the past ten years, I nevertheless think this one is worth reading if only for passages like this:

But I always feel I need to say more. Like I need to put this information into some kind of understandable context, to explain my mother’s life by explaining how she got to her death. I want to help other people assimilate this news, help them get over it, or let them feel they’re helping me get over it. I sense I need to reassert myself, to show somehow that I’m the same person after they got this information as they thought I was just before they got it. At the same time, I don’t want to explain anything at all. I’m still just a little wearied by the fact that of all the burdens my mother put on me while she was alive, the worst one continues after her death, precisely because of the way she died. I also don’t want to say anything more, because I don’t feel I have what I imagine are the appropriate emotions to attend to this information, the expected sensations of loss, horror, and sadness. I never have and still don’t see either of us as a victim of her murder, or her murderer. I don’t really fully understand what it means to be the daughter of my mother, much less the daughter of a murdered woman, anymore than any of us fully comprehends the myriad ways our parents shaped us. More often than not, I simply say that my mother is dead. But then, I feel like I’m lying. Sometimes I say she was killed. But that’s dissembling. Other times, I say I don’t want to talk about “it,” or say, “Some other time. Over a beer or six.” But then, I’m hiding something. Not just something about her, but something about me.

Sometimes, I don’t say anything at all. Then I feel invisible.

I love how straightforward and blunt she is in the telling of her life with her mother. It makes the more horrific parts of her story somehow more bearable to read, and it makes the book move along really nicely. If you haven’t yet tired of memoirs by kids who have issues with their parents, I recommend picking up Postmortem and giving it a go.

And

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Other reviews: Wicked Little Pixie | Book Babe

REVIEW: Bloodshot by Cherie Priest

Posted by Anastasia on March 29, 2011 2 Responses »

Mar 292011

26. Bloodshot by Cherie Priest
Publication: Spectra (January 25, 2011), Paperback, 385pp / ISBN 0345520602
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Action

Rating: Borrow it
Read: March 5-15, 2011

Source: Contest win

Summary from Amazon:

Raylene Pendle (AKA Cheshire Red), a vampire and world-renowned thief, doesn’t usually hang with her own kind. She’s too busy stealing priceless art and rare jewels. But when the infuriatingly charming Ian Stott asks for help, Raylene finds him impossible to resist—even though Ian doesn’t want precious artifacts. He wants her to retrieve missing government files—documents that deal with the secret biological experiments that left Ian blind. What Raylene doesn’t bargain for is a case that takes her from the wilds of Minneapolis to the mean streets of Atlanta. And with a psychotic, power-hungry scientist on her trail, a kick-ass drag queen on her side, and Men in Black popping up at the most inconvenient moments, the case proves to be one hell of a ride.

Review

Man, thinking about having to write this review has given me (hypothetical) hives, because I adore Cherie Priest and I absolutely love her steampunk books and I know she’ll find this review somehow and I don’t want her to hate me. I put off writing a review for a while because of the (hypothetical) hives, because, you see…I’m just not enthusiastic about Bloodshot.

I was SO excited about it when she was posting updates re:plot/wordcount/etc on her blog. It sounded so cool! Drag queens and snarky vampires and secret government programs. Good stuff! Exciting stuff! And since I know Cherie Priest is an awesome writer I just knew I’d love Bloodshot. Right?

Wrong.

It’s not that I hate Bloodshot. It’s definitely way better than most of the other urban fantasies-with-vampires books I’ve read. It’s got an interesting lead– a paranoid ex-flapper vampire suffering from some sort of nervous condition who can nevertheless still a bunch of hard-to-steal stuff– and and interesting plot, and there’s very little romance so I didn’t feel like puking for once, and all in all it sort of reminds me of an Angel/X-Files combo TV series. It’s not a BAD book. It’s just…not as good as I was hoping it would be.

I think I’m disappointed mainly because of two things:
1. the ending is like what happens when a soufflé collapses just as you’re about to put it down on the dinner table.
2. Raylene was not as good a protagonist as the ladies in CP’s other books.

The first point speaks for itself, I think. The second point needs more expanding, so: Raylene. She’s an interesting lead, as I’ve said. I like that she wasn’t shy about killing people (so rare for a vampire nowadays), and I like that she was a bit of a lecher. I like that she has issues with privacy and safety and that despite her panic attacks she can still kick ass. But what I didn’t like was that she was only a vampire thief prone to panic attacks. She wasn’t anything else.

With Cherie Priest’s other female protagonists, you know they’re more than just what they seem on the outside. In Boneshaker, for instance, Briar is more than just a worried mom. In Dreadnought, Mercy was more than just a nurse with a dead husband. They had other things going for them, they had painful histories and hopeful futures. And in their stories they both grew in some way, they both changed from how they were at the beginning of the book.

But with Raylene? I didn’t see that. She stayed exactly the same as she was in the beginning and though there are hints to her past life (both pre-vampire and pre-book), it nevertheless felt like her life only began at the first page. For an urban fantasy vampire she’s got some depth, but for a Cherie Priest protagonist I think she fell a bit short.

Normally I think in this instance the secondary characters could pick up the slack of the protagonist, but even they were more boring than CP’s secondary characters usually are. The most interesting one only showed up for one phone conversation!

Anyway, I know Bloodshot is the start of a series and I’m still going to read the second book, if only to find out more about the government program. But I’ll be way more happy when the next Clockwork Century book comes out.

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Other reviews: Love Vampires | io9.com | Ruled By Books | King of the Nerds

TSS (Mar. 27): Road trip! & IMM (20)

Posted by Anastasia on March 27, 2011 3 Responses »

Mar 272011

The Sunday Salon (March 27)

I’m going on a road trip tomorrow! Sort of. I guess it doesn’t count as a proper road trip if the trip lasts only an hour each way. But it’s still a long-ish time spent in a car, and I’m going to bring at least two books because I can. (So there!)

The first one is going to be whatever book I don’t finish reading today, and the other one is going to be The Dracula Dossier because I feel like reading another vampire book. I’ll probably also end up bringing my Kindle, “just in case.” Over-prepared? Me? Nah.

I actually wish we were driving for a longer amount of time, long enough for our trip to be counted as an actual road trip instead of just a baby one. One of my favorite things to do is pack up a bunch of books, a blanket, and some snacks and read in the car while someone else is driving. It’s a nice way to get in some solid hours of reading without any distractions!

Do you like reading on road trips? What sort of books do you bring with you?

Also, Diana Wynne Jones died yesterday. It actually kind of hurts more than I thought it would, so I’ll just say this: I’ll miss you, DWJ.

Books read this week:
27. Dead End Gene Pool – Wendy Burden [rating: Buy it] R
28. More Than Mortal – Mick Farren [rating: TBD]
29. Journey to the River Sea – Eva Ibbotson [rating: Buy it]

Books reviewed this week:
23. Human.4 – Mike A. Lancaster [rating: Buy it] R
24. The Bloomswell Diaries – Louis L. Buitendag [rating: Borrow it] R

Currently reading:
I’m about 100 pages in To A Mountain in Tibet, a travel memoir about a trip to a mountain in Tibet. It’s nice, although the writing and pacing is so ponderous I think it’s actually making me feel tired. To wake myself back up I started reading No One Belongs Here More Than You, a collection of strange and entertaining short stories by Miranda July.

In My Mailbox (#20)

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren (who was inspired by Alea of Pop Culture Junkie‘s This Week in Books). Basically you just post about new books that came into your house over the past week, whether in the mail or by getting them at the library or by buying them in a store. Capiche?

For review:

Bought/Downloaded:

Also: A whole bunch of Mercedes Lackey books from Baen’s newest CD full of free books!

Out Soon (April 2011)

Posted by Anastasia on March 26, 2011 No Responses »

Mar 262011

I, like many other people, have an intense need to know what’s being released soon in the book world. Otherwise I might miss something, and that would be disastrous! So here’s a list of some interesting-looking books that are coming out next month. I hope y’all find it useful! And if I’ve missed something? Let me know in the comments!

(Partially inspired by The Story Siren’s New Reads feature, except I’m not ambitious enough to do it weekly.)

Apr. 1st:

This Girl Is Different by JJ Johnson (YA fiction).
This Thing Called the Future by J.L. Powers (YA fiction).
The Undertakers: Rise of the Corpses by Ty Drago (YA sci-fi/fantasy).

Apr. 5th:

Cleopatra the Great: The Woman Behind the Legend by Joann Fletcher (non-fiction).
Flip by Martyn Bedford (YA sci-fi).
Huntress by Malinda Lo (YA fantasy).
Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis (YA fantasy).
Plague: A Gone Novel by Michael Grant (YA sci-fi).
The Time-Traveling Fashionista by Biana Turetsky (YA sci-fi/historical fiction).

Apr. 14th:

The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie by Wendy McClure (non-fiction).

Apr. 26th:

Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff (non-fiction).
My New American Life: A Novel by Francine Prose (memoir).

For a bigger list of books that are coming out beyond next month, check out the Out Soon page!

REVIEW: The Bloomswell Diaries by Louis L. Buitendag

Posted by Anastasia on March 25, 2011 7 Responses »

Mar 252011

24. The Bloomswell Diaries by Louis L. Buitendag
Publication: Kane/Miller Book Publishers (March 2011), Hardcover, 258pp / ISBN 1935279823
Genre: MG Action/Adventure (with a bit of steampunk)

Rating: Borrow it
Read: February 26-27, 2011

Source: Publisher

Summary from Amazon:

Benjamin Bloomswell is pleased to be staying with his uncle in America while his parents are off on another business trip. But when a series of newspaper articles, telephone calls and mysterious disappearances result in his being sent to – and having to escape from – a sinister orphanage and the criminals who run it, he knows he’s got to find a way back to England. He has to get to his sister’s boarding school before anyone else does. And somehow, he has to find his parents, who are also in trouble. But how?

Review

This is such a cute book. It reminds me a lot of the Pseudonymous Bosch books, A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Mysterious Benedict Society series– by which I mean it’s got great kid protagonists, secret-mysterious things going on, action and adventure, and fun illustrations.

I will say that I do think it fell prey to the “shove as much possible in the first book to make it easier on the subsequent books” syndrome. It started off great! Ben’s brought to New York to live with his mysterious uncle while his parents go off to do something equally mysterious, and Ben has to adjust to living with an uncle he doesn’t really know about. Then things go to pot. His uncle is killed, his parents are dead, and apparently he has no other family who can take him so he has to go to an orphanage. Then he has to run for his life from some Serious Baddies and their Killer Robot (awesome!).

There’s a quick stop-off at an evil children’s orphanage, and here’s where the pacing started to falter. We spend so little time at the orphanage that it’s barely a blip in Ben’s life, and I don’t entirely see the point of even going there except for Ben to make a new friend (who never shows up again in this book). His new friend also just so happens to know how to escape the orphanage with minimal trouble and is happy to show Ben how to do it (what?). This whole sequence moved very quickly, so quickly I was left wondering why it was even in the book at all. I’m assuming either the orphanage or his new friend will have a bigger part in the next book, but really all it did in this one was temporarily frighten Ben and show off how nasty the baddies are.

Then, a chapter or two later, Ben escapes the orphanage and the pacing gets much better. He stows away on a ship bound for England, and just so happens to run into some circus people who not only know his parents but are also ex-spies or something. They start teaching Ben the stuff he needs to know to survive the Baddies and their Killer Robot and it’s a pretty cool part of the plot, actually.

After the ship Ben goes to live with the rest of the circus people, who agree to take him in and, later, help him rescue his sister, who’s stuck in a girls’ boarding school in Switzerland.

I really like Ben’s sister. She’s WONDERFUL and, to be honest, I wish she was the protagonist of the book instead of Ben. Ben’s an okay character; he’s gotsome pizzazz and he’ll no doubt turn out to be an excellent spy or secret agent. But he’s also kind of bland, and his sister was so much cooler. She and her boarding school friends have this whole system worked out to get around the Evil Nuns running their school, and they have escape routes and secret societies and it’s just awesome. I may have a slight prejudice against Ben because of my deep love for boarding schools and the girls who go to them, but I won’t apologize! Ahem.

Anyway, I enjoyed The Bloomswell Diaries, although I wish it had slowed down a bit instead of rushing from one plot point to another. Not that I wanted it to be SO slow that it was another Mysterious Benedict Society, just that I wish some more time had been spent on, like, everything. Especially the worldbuilding, because I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with the robots and whatnot. Is it actually steampunk? Is it set in the future or the past? How did the robots come to be? What’s the purpose of them besides just being cool? Are there other steampunk-y things in existence?

The Bloomswell Diaries is a good first book to a fun new kids series, and I think if you like any of the other book series I listed above you’ll like this one. Just be prepared for some bumps along the way.

And

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Other reviews: Charlotte’s Library

Thursday Tea (Mar. 24): More Than Mortal

Posted by Anastasia on March 24, 2011 2 Responses »

Mar 242011

The book: I’ve just started the third book in the Victor Renquist series by Mick Farren. I really like these books, although sometimes the descriptions of what vampires do to their victims make me so uncomfortable I have to skim. It’s still better than having to slog through another urban fantasy book where the vampires are all cuddly and not evil and barely even act like “proper” vampires at all. After reading so many books with cuddly vampires, it’s nice to read one where the vampires would sooner rip my throat out than join me for a tea party.

The Victor Renquist books are interesting not only because the vampires act like monsters in them, but also because Mick Farren still somehow makes you care about them. Yes, they eat people and cause a lot of havoc and they’re basically evil, but nevertheless I still somehow care about whether or not they get staked.

Partly I think this is because Victor himself is the most “human” of the vampires– he still acts like a “proper” vampire, but he has these little bits of humanity in him that make him an actual anti-hero instead of just a villain. For instance, he only eats people that want to die anyway. And he has existential crises! He tends to not be as violent and crude as the other vampires, and he gives great “here is why you should do as I say” speeches. He’s still definitely not a cuddly bunny, but there is a somewhat-maybe-possibly-cuddly side to him. (The balance between villain and hero is really good, is what I think I’m trying to say.)

I’m kind of sad I’ve only got one more book to go in the series before it’s over. Does anyone know of more books with non-cuddly vampires in them? I don’t need it to be a bloodfest or torture porn or anything like that. I just want a proper anti-hero vampire like Victor Renquist. Bloodshot could count, I guess. Any others?

The tea: I seriously just woke up an hour ago, okay. I’m drinking coffee.

Do they go together? As blood gives vampires energy to face the day (or night), so too does coffee give me energy? How’s that?