The Castiron Reading Journal

Steven Brust:
Taltos

Neil Gaiman:
Neverwhere

Michael Guillen:
Five Equations that Changed the World

Louisa May Alcott:
Jo's Boys

Duvie Clark:
The Peculiar Truth

5 September 2002

Yes, I apparently am starting a rereading of the Vlad Taltos series; I read Taltos Saturday evening. Vlad gets started in his career, makes new friends, gains a weapon, and beats up lots of people. Taltos has a neat structure, and it's interesting seeing how the various vignettes fit together. (I wonder, though -- if Brust does ultimately do seventeen books in the series, since he's used "Taltos" as a title, which of the Dragaeran houses is he going to leave out? Or is he going to do eighteen, just to throw people's assumptions out the window? Or say the heck with it on book twelve?)

Started Gaiman's Neverwhere a while back, and then real life got in the way, but I've finally finished it. When Richard helps a young woman named Door escape from pursuers, he finds that he's disappeared from the "real world" and become part of London Below. Neverwhere one of those extremely good books that I admire greatly but probably won't read again -- I don't like horror, because particularly macabre images get stuck in my head and won't go away. But it's highly imaginative, with fascinating worldbuilding, exceptionally evil characters, and moments of highly dry humor.

A little nonfiction for a change -- Five Equations that Changed the World tells about five scientists who derived important equations. This is the kind of book that should be used as a supplemental course text in Intro To Science classes for humanities majors -- Guillen explains what the scientists of the day were trying to figure out, and what the equation says, and how the particular scientist came up with it; he uses a very little math, but mostly he's explaining in plain English. This is far, far preferable to giving such students physics problems that look little different from the homework in the physics course for science and engineering majors. The book also has some of the personal histories of the scientists, which I found very interesting. I knew nothing about Faraday beyond his name, for example, so it was fascinating to learn that he was a member of a strict simple Christian sect and that he overcame incredible class boundaries to become a great scientist. This'd be a good book to give a kid with a budding science interest, or an adult who says wistfully that they wish they understood more about science.

Having reread Little Women and Little Men, of course I had to finish off with Jo's Boys -- the Plumfield boys are adults now, starting on careers, finding love, and occasionally suffering tragedy. The book reads like it was initially published chapter-by-chapter in a magazine; I wonder whether it was, or whether Alcott just wrote that way because she'd absorbed the style from authors who did write that way.

It's the weakest of the three, the more I think about it. Some of the characters are very well drawn indeed; others are cardboard, and have a flattening effect on their surroundings. Dora West didn't need to have much personality, but Alice Heath should have had more development; we don't even know what she studied in the college, or how she plans to support her ailing parents, or what her faults and virtues are. We just know that one person is in love with her, and that Jo Bhaer thinks enough of her to consider her part of her Plumfield dozen.

But there's still good moments. Rob, Ted, and Dan's dog; Josie (one of the more interesting new characters) and Miss Cameron; Emil's shipwreck; Nat's first months on his own; Dan's sin and repentance, in spite of the treacly bits. It's still a fun read, and it's nice to know what happened to all the characters I care about.

And compared to The Peculiar Truth.... Since I loved Clark's non-fiction book The Not-So-Terrible Move so much, I wanted to check this out and see whether it was any good. Thank the gods for Inter-library Loan, because if I'd paid money for this book, I'd be kicking myself up and down the stairs. I read the first forty pages, and oh dear gods.

It's apparently the story of Maray, an interior decorator who leaves one dismal marriage for another dismal marriage and who needs a hopper of clue bricks dropped over her head. I don't know whether it's thinly disguised autobiography or just "writing what one knows", but it doesn't work. Maray has no discernible personality; her husbands are jerks, and she tries to be a good wife and put up with it, especially with her second husband because he "loves" her so much. There is no apparent plot, as far as I can tell; just a chronological narration of "this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened." There are three pages devoted to her husband's efforts to make her act as a dominatrix, with loving detail as to what her clothes don't cover. Yawn. I finally flipped through the later pages to see if it'd get any better. Nope. Apparently she has an affair with some guy, and eventually she finally divorces. Wheehaw. Yippee. The thrills. The excitement.

Methinks I shall yak up my Wheaties^TM.

The sad thing is, Clark has some writing talent. There are some very nice descriptive passages here and there, and Maray does seem to notice details of interiors, which one would expect for an interior designer. But overall there's so little character development and so little plot, I finally gave up. I don't give a damn what happens to these people.

I wish she'd written The Not-So-Terrible Move II instead.

Louisa May Alcott:
Little Men

Steven Brust:
Yendi

31 August 2002

Well, Little Men follows naturally after Little Women. It's still corny, it's still got some amazingly flat characters and massive inconsistencies, but I still like it.

I considered starting a reread of Lord of the Rings, now that I have copies again (note to self: should I ever marry again, I'm keeping any duplicates of important books instead of purging the joint libraries), but I was running a fever, so I picked up Yendi instead. (Yeah, like that's got an easier plotline for the fevered brain to understand....) Very entertaining, very tangled, nice and snarky. I had fun. (Am I starting a reread of the series after all?)

Rumer Godden:
An Episode of Sparrows
Miss Happiness and Miss Flower
Little Plum

Maud Hart Lovelace:
Carney's House Party

Louisa May Alcott:
Little Women

27 August 2002

There are some authors whose books I will buy sight unread, because I've so consistently liked everything they've written; there are others whose books I want to check out from the library first, no matter how much I may have liked some of their previous offerings. If Rumer Godden were still living, she'd be in the latter category. Some of her books I love, absolutely love -- In This House of Brede is one of the best books I have ever read -- and others, well, just leave me cold. It's not the nostalgia effect, or not just the nostalgia effect; there's Godden books I read as a child that I didn't like, and there's some I read as an adult that I think will grow on me.

An Episode of Sparrows is one that doesn't work for me. It's well-written; it's got Godden's usual well-done omniscient viewpoint; it has unique and interesting characters; and I just don't like it that much. Maybe it's the grim setting, or the fact that even though there's a "happy" ending, it's not enough to hide the fact that most of the people we run into will still lead unhappy lives. I don't know.

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower (which has recently been reissued, hurrah!) and Little Plum (which has not yet been reissued, alas!), on the other hand, work for me very well indeed. The storylines aren't very deep, but the dolls are wonderful. I'm fascinated as much by the descriptions of how they make the dollhouse things as anything else. (Hey, that's interesting. I've never really thought I responded that much to description in stories, but these would be counterexamples.) (And hmm, these would have been among my earliest exposures to Britishisms. For a long time my image of a "cotton reel" was one of those film reels that you have on microfilm readers, and I thought "wadding" was rather like polyester stuffing rather than what I call "batting", so I had a really odd mental image of the dolls' lamp and coats.)

In a lot of ways, Maud Hart Lovelace's 1900s' Minnesota is as much an alien culture to me as Bujold's Beta Colony or Austen's 1810 England. I'm particularly reminded of this reading Carney's House Party, a book that's not in the famous Betsy-Tacy series but that involves many of the same characters. (Sleeping porches? Worrying about being seen kissing a boy that you aren't engaged to? People who actually sing school songs?) But it's a nice story, and Carney's an interesting person to get to know better, with her qualms about showing her Midwestern home to an Eastern friend, and her dilemma over whether she really loves her longtime sweetheart enough to marry him. Even though my copy is a used library edition, I'm very thrilled that HarperTrophy decided to reprint Lovelace's books.

And speaking of older times and alien cultures...okay, yes, I can see the schmaltz and sappiness, and the hammering in of morals, when I reread it as an adult. But the opening lines of Little Women are brilliant capsule characterizations:

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

"It's so dreadful to be poor!" sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.

"I don't think it's fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all," added little Amy, with an injured sniff.

"We've got Father and Mother, and each other," said Beth contentedly from her corner

Right there, you have the four main characters, with their personalities in a nutshell. Alcott will go on at great length about them later, but you've already got enough starter information to hang the later facts on; they're individuals from the beginning.

And in part II (occasionally published separately as Good Wives), Alcott has good advice for the new mother, in spite of being a childless spinster herself:

"You have only made the mistake that most young wives make -- forgotten your duty to your husband in your love for your children. A very natural and forgivable mistake, Meg, but one that had better be remedied before you take to different ways, for children should draw you nearer than ever, not separate you, as if they were all yours, and John had nothing to do but support them. I've seen it for some weeks, but have not spoken, feeling sure it would come right in time."

"I'm afraid it won't. If I ask him to stay, he'll think I'm jealous, and I wouldn't insult him by such an idea. He doesn't see that I want him, and I don't know how to tell him without words."

"Make it so pleasant he won't want to go away. My dear, he's longing for his little home, but it isn't home without you, and you are always in the nursery."

"Oughtn't I to be there?"

"Not all the time, too much confinement makes you nervous, and then you are unfitted for everything. Besides, you owe something to John as well as to the babies. Don't neglect husband for children, don't shut him out of the nursery, but teach him how to help in it. His place is there as well as yours, and the children need him. Let him feel that he has a part to do, and he will do it gladly and faithfully, and it will be better for you all."

Kids need their daddies, 1869 version.

Anne McCaffrey:
Dragonsinger

Elizabeth Goudge:
The Little White Horse

21 August 2002

It's always interesting testing earlier favorites to see if they're still favorites. I was in the mood for a quick comfort read last night, so I picked up Dragonsinger. Haven't read this one in, oh, six or seven years.

Dragonsinger is a childhood favorite of mine; I read it for the first time when I was ten or eleven. (It's a sequel to Dragonsong, but either Dragonsong was checked out at the time or I didn't realize they were a series; anyway, I had no trouble getting into Dragonsinger cold.) The themes really resonated for me throughout middle and high school -- formerly ostracized girl finds a place where she's accepted; love of music bringing joy to one's life. I took this book with me to Lutheran Summer Music Camp when I was in high school; it went extremely well with that setting.

These days, I can see parts that would drive me up the wall if I were reading it for the first time. Menolly is practically faultless, or at best her only fault is modesty taken to an extreme. It seems like all the Good people like her and all the Nasty people dislike her; even the Good people who seem slightly crusty towards her at first warm up as they see her brilliance. (Note to self: reread thy Works In Progress and heal thyself.) But reading it at eleven, these bugs were really features, and reading it twenty years later, the world and the wonders of Menolly's new life do compensate for the flaws. I can still capture that wistful whiff of the Harper Hall, from the days when I thought I might have been good enough for a place there if I'd been on Pern. This one's still a keeper.

In my pile of late July and early August rereads, I forgot to mention Goudge's The Little White Horse. I snagged this book from my sister's bookshelf discards; I assume that she bought it (or someone gave it to her) because she's into horses. (Just because someone likes some animal or subject, doesn't mean that they'll like any book vaguely related to it. I like cats, but I have no plans to read Williams's Tailchaser's Song again. For that matter, I've learned to avoid on principle any book that's blurbed "This is Watership Down for [species X]!" There is only one Watership Down, and it is about rabbits, and anyone else writing a book about sentient animals living their real animal lives needs to come up with a new story.)

Er. Ahem. Anyway, I'd never heard of Goudge before, but I found this book quite charming, and I still enjoy rereading it. Maria Merriwether, newly orphaned, comes to live with her distant cousin Sir Benjamin, and finds that there's a long sad story at Moonacre that she may be called upon to remedy. The book's borderline treacly, but the world is fantastic enough to keep me interested. I'd love to visit Moonacre Manor, and see Maria's tiny room, and go through the tunnel into Loveday's house, and watch the little white horses of the sea drawing the boats in. The characters are all out-of-the-ordinary, and the bits of the story fall together quite nicely.

Joan Aiken:
Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home

Duvie Clark:
The Not-So-Terrible Move

19 August 2002

This weekend I got stuck on campus for two hours, due to an appointment being a week later than I thought (note to self: check to be sure the date I think it is matches the date it actually is), so I whiled away the time in the youth collection at the library.

Joan Aiken's Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home has been on my to-read list for several years now. I can definitely see why it was so heartily recommended. It's a collection of stories about the Armitage family, who have odd things happen to them all the time. Part of the beauty of it is how the characters take all these weird events completely in stride, as if it were completely normal (which, granted, for them is kinda true). Unicorn licenses, an annoying uncle and a visit from the Furies, a tree that makes its climbers fall asleep, peeved elderly fairies who don't NEED charitable help thankyouverymuch.... Wacky and wonderful.

But the ending of the very last story...I won't say it ruined the book for me, but it was so much darker in tone than the other stories that it colored the rest of the reading experience. I put down the book feeling unsettled.

It's well worth reading. Just don't expect the last story to end as chipperly as the rest.

I also reread one of my most cherished comfort books, Duvie Clark's The Not-So-Terrible Move, Or What Do You Do With The Bed? It's an essay collection on interior decorating, basically; each chapter tells about a woman going through a different change in her life, and how she dealt with this change by redecorating her home. I read it for the first time when I was nine or ten, and sorely missed it when the public library in my new city didn't have it, and occasionally got to reread bits when visiting other libraries that did, and finally found my own copy a few years back. Why I love this book so much, I don't know. It's not deep, and it doesn't give much immediately practical advice for my own decorating needs. I suppose it's just because the style is so friendly and chatty, and I'm the kind of person who would probably enjoy a short story whose plot is interior decorating. (Hmm. Must ponder that.) Or maybe it's just that it is a book I read and reread when I was nine or ten, and it's good enough to hold up to adult rereading. Whatever the reason, I love this book. I reread this book on a regular basis. This is one of the ten books I would take to a desert island. This is a book I'd pack if I had ten minutes to grab possessions before fleeing my house. I want my ashes to be buried with this book, if none of my relatives like it enough to snag it for themselves.

Jane Austen:
Pride and Prejudice
Mansfield Park
(yes, again!)

Isaac Asimov:
various mystery collections

Diana Wynne Jones:
Witch Week

Lars Eighner:
The Elements of Arousal

Steven Brust:
Jhereg

Karl Taube:
Aztec Myths

Robin McKinley:
The Blue Sword
The Hero and the Crown
Spindle's End

16 August 2002

Finally reread Pride & Prejudice too. (And watched my newly acquired DVD of it.) Still fun. I am eternally grateful to Norma Smock, my ninth-grade English teacher, for putting that on the syllabus; this is my one counter-example to "nothing ruins a book like being forced to read it for class".

And I couldn't resist. When I finished P&P, I read Mansfield Park again. So I like the book, okay?

Other reading in the past month: I like Isaac Asimov's mystery collections for quick bathroom reading or for other intermittent time fragments. I've reread The Union Club Mysteries, Tales of the Black Widowers, More Tales of the Black Widowers, and Banquets of the Black Widowers. (Eventually I need to track down Casebook of the Black Widowers, to complete the set.) They're fun mysteries; the characters aren't especially deep, but the gimmicks are entertaining.

Diana Wynne Jones's Witch Week has been a favorite of mine since I was in middle school, and it still holds up well to rereading. It's a great example of a book where the good characters aren't 100% perfect and the bad characters still have sympathetic traits.

On rec.arts.sf.composition, Patricia Wrede occasionally recommends Lars Eighner's The Elements of Arousal as a good book on writing for those who aren't immediately turned off by its focus -- writing gay male erotica. I finally tracked down a copy, and it's great fun. (And actually, though my own writing is sf with mostly straight characters, I found the chapter on the comeshot thought-provoking -- yes, the base concept does have applications in other fiction.)

While I haven't started a full-scale reread of Brust's Vlad Taltos series (must buy Issola one of these days), I did reread Jhereg this week. Entertaining, tangled, fascinating. Someday I'll have to try to reread it to figure out how Brust pulls it off, making you like this guy who is not a Nice Person.

Robin McKinley is one of my favorite authors. She's good at writing prosaic magic, events that are ordinary to the characters even if they're weird to us. (Then when things weird to the characters start happening, we notice.) She also has a knack for writing climactic scenes that seem almost deus ex machina, and yet feel right.

Lately I've reread The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown, and Spindle's End. The first two are longtime favorites, taking place at different times in the mythical kingdom of Damar. In The Blue Sword, Harry Crewe (is her surname an intentional nod to Burnett's Sara Crewe in A Little Princess?), newly orphaned, leaves her birth country for the province of Daria to live with friends of her brother's. (Harry's birth country is never named, but it very definitely evokes England, as Daria evokes an eastern British colony.) She struggles to settle in, but later, when she is kidnapped by the king of Damar, she finds that she has a deeper connection with this country than she'd thought.... It's a wonderful story. My only complaint is that this one has the most deus ex machina climax of any of her stories that I've read. It fits, barely -- it's already been established that kelar can make people do useful things that don't appear useful at the time -- but....

The Hero and the Crown works much better for me in that respect. Aerin, daughter of King Arlbeth, changes from the clumsy daughter of a dubious foreign woman, to a princess with a grudgingly admitted skill, to a genuine hero. Aerin's victories come about because of Aerin's previous struggles, not just because she happens to have kelar or carry a magic sword or makes friends with a mage. Aerin and Harry are both people who have more inherent ability than they realize at first, but oddly, it's more believable in Aerin, in spite of the fact that Aerin's power is more extraordinary than Harry's.

Spindle's End is McKinley's most recent book, I think; this is my second reading of it. It's a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, and it's quite well done. I enjoy the depiction of the country, and the everyday oddity of it, and the fairies necessary to everyday life, and the baby magic, and the way the fairies' blessings on Rosie turn out.

Jane Austen:
Mansfield Park
Persuasion
Sense and Sensibility
Northhanger Abbey
Emma

Rumer Godden:
The Diddakoi

Steven Brust:
Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill

11 July 2002

Had another Austen binge recently -- in the past couple weeks, I've reread five of the six novels. I suppose I should reread Pride and Prejudice just for completeness.... Mansfield Park is still my favorite, with Persuasion and S&S close runners-up. I found that I liked Emma better on this reread than I usually do, and Northhanger less. I'm also noticing Austen's foreshadowing and irony more with every reread.

Godden was one of my favorite authors as a kid. The Diddakoi is not one of her doll books, but rather the story of a part-Gypsy girl who's taken in by local quirky characters when her Gran dies. It's a fun read; the other kids accept Kizzy a little too completely at the end for me to believe it, but that doesn't hurt the story.

Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill was another reasonably fun read, in spite of being set in a depressing situation. I like Brust's Dragaera books better, but this one was worth a few hours.

Baroness Orczy:
The Scarlet Pimpernell

14 June 2002

"They seek him here, they seek him there, those Frenchies seek him everywhere...." The Scarlet Pimpernel is such a fun book. The writing is occasionally awkward, at least by modern standards, and I skim the long passages about Marguerite's intense emotional reactions, but the basic story is still great. Marguerite Blakeney, the beautiful society woman, married to a wealthy but stupid husband, fascinated by the stories of the Scarlet Pimpernel and how he bravely rescues condemned aristocrats and their families from revolutionary France...and then she discovers who the Scarlet Pimpernel really is.

I also like the CD that was released a couple years in advance of the musical.

23 May 2002

Ah, the joys of real life. Somehow it's easier to find the time to read the books than to write them up, which is probably better than the other way around....Anyway, a capsule summary:

February:

• Patricia Moyes, Dead Men Don't Ski. A pleasant mystery, with a very nice detective couple. I'll probably read more in this series later.
• John Marquand, Thank you, Mr. Moto. An early 20th-century mysterious-Orient thriller. Wasn't bad, but hasn't aged that well; if I feel like reading a mystery in an Asian setting, I think I'll try van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries instead.
• Scott O'Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins. The kids' classic. It's still a good reread -- brings up those urges to go out back, make a shelter under the branches of a convenient tree, and pull up a bunch of weeds to use as pretend food.

March:

• Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely. Philip Marlowe strikes again. I particularly liked the bit with the pink bug.
• Steven Brust, The Phoenix Guards. A wonderful Dumas pastiche, set in Brust's Dragaeran universe.
• Deniece Schofield, various books on home management. I like her tone; she's not too "Everything Must Be Done This Way", and she sounds like the kind of person who can sympathize with every household disaster you've had.
• Various Asterix comics: Asterix & the Big Fight, Cauldron, Normans, Roman Agent, Soothsayer, Legionary, Banquet, Gladiator, Cleopatra, Mansions of the Gods. My very favorite so far is Asterix the Legionary -- the translator is such a great character.
• Victor Whitechurch, Murder at the Pageant. An early 20th century "locked-room" mystery, where the locked room is a sedan-chair-ish thing; fairly interesting.

April:

• Andre Norton, Operation Time Search. This was one of the first science fiction novels I ever read, and I still enjoy it a lot.
• Patricia Wentworth, The Chinese Shawl. A fun mystery with entertaining characters. I laughed at Miss Silver's comment on bloodstains. I'll have to read some more of her sometime.
• Harry Kemelman, Friday the Rabbi Slept Late. The mystery is okay; the culture is very interesting.
• Steven Brust, 500 Years After. The sequel to Phoenix Guards, much darker in tone. My favorite bit is still Sethra talking to Tazendra on what it means to be a Dzurlord. (When, oh when, is he going to write the next stories?)

May:

• Frances H. Bennett, That Lass O' Lowrie's. Yes, the author of The Secret Garden. This is one of her books for adults. Kind of sappy, but charming nonetheless.
• Elizabeth Zimmermann, Knitting Around. I'm not as crazy about this book as I was about Zimmermann's Knitting Without Tears, but it was moderately interesting to read her autobiographical sketches.
• Elizabeth Enright, The Saturdays, The Four-Story Mistake, and And Then There Were Five. The classic stories of the Melendy family, four kids who have a fabulous time living their extraordinary ordinary lives. I'd love to have an Office of my own.
• Michelle Passof, Lighten Up! Eventually I'll get around to making the decluttering/organizing book review page that I've dreamed of. In the meantime, I'll say I've found this book a little more useful than I did first time around, but I still find the tone a bit too authoritarian (I happen to like the busy look of various colored hangers in the closet, thank you very much), and I strongly doubt that the author has kids. (No one with small kids would ever say "if you can't block out at least two uninterrupted hours to work on decluttering, and preferably four, then you obviously aren't emotionally ready to do it yet.")