The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson

How I loathe that kind of novel which is about a lot of sisters. It is usually called They Were Seven, or Three-Not Out, and one spends one’s entire time trying to sort them all, and muttering, ‘Was it Isobel who drank, or Gertie? And which was it who ran away with the gigolo, Amy or Pauline? And which of their separate husbands was Lionel, Isobel’s or Amy’s?

I feel that there isn’t much I can add to this opening paragraph. But what if I tell you that, also on page one, we have:

A woman at one of mother’s parties once said to me, ‘Do you like reading?’ which smote us all to silence, for how could one tell her that books are liking having a bath or sleeping, or eating bread – absolute necessities which one never thinks of in terms of appreciation.

I might as well call it a day at this point, no? Unsurprisingly, The Brontës Went to Woolworths is about sisters, but there are only three of them and they couldn’t be easier to tell apart. Deidre, a journalist and aspiring novelist, is our narrator. Her older sister Katrine is an actress, and the third sister is Sheil, still in her childhood.

The three sisters and their mother have the habit of making up stories. Nothing unusual so far, right? Only the stories they make up are often about real people – they have a series of ongoing jokes, a sort of family mythology really, in which they pretend to know intimately people they haven’t actually met. Among them is Judge Toddington, a high-court judge they often read about in the papers, and his wife, Lady Mildred. But when Deidre actually meets Lady Mildred and is invited to the Toddington’s home, the friends they have been imagining for years inevitably clash with the real friends they’re just starting to get to know.

The Brontës Went to Woolworths is such a delight. It’s quirky and charming and unique, and it made me laugh out loud several times. I should probably give you a little bit of context: this novel was originally published in 1931, and has recently been reprinted as part of the Bloomsbury Group series of lost classics from the first half of the twentieth century (previously, it had been reprinted as a Virago Modern Classic).

I had heard a lot about how funny this book was, but I confess that part of me wondered how much of the humour required knowledge of certain cultural references – a kind of knowledge that I lack. I needn’t have worried – there’s absolutely nothing about this book that is impenetrable. It’s very English, and possibly also very 30’s, but I never really felt lost. Part of its charm comes from the language, which is dated, but in a charming way. Most of it, however, comes from a cast of characters who are eccentric, witty, not afraid to be silly, and fun to spend time with.

The world of The Brontës Went to Woolsworth is a world of writers, theatre people, and creative types. Rachel Ferguson was a first wave feminist, and it shows: this is also a world of smart, imaginative girls who are having too much fun to ever worry about Behaving Like Proper Ladies, much to the scandal of Sheil’s governess. Unfortunately, another thing that shows is her blatant class prejudice, which adds an ugly streak to an otherwise flawless novel.

I loved this book for what it said about storytelling, the role of the imagination, and the clash between actual people and our idealized images of them. But most of all, I loved it for the family dynamics: there’s such tenderness and real affection between the three sisters and their mother. And the way this affection is conveyed is both heartwarming and completely unsentimental.

And where do the Brontës come in? you ask. Well, I can’t tell you everything, but it involves a holiday in Yorkshire, eerie happenings in All Souls’ Eve, and new additions to the family mythology. If you’re curious, I strongly recommend that you pick up this book and find out for yourself.

More bits I liked:

I adore the autumn and all its smells, and the schoolroom would soon be dark enough to be lit for tea. This October was doing and being all the right things: warm as a June night, and full of subdued colour.

I wonder, if I were dead and allowed to return once a year, whether I should like best to look in at windows I knew and see the living having fun and playing games, or whether I should feel less forgotten if they were sitting there being sad about me? All Souls’ Eve should never have been put into November, because of the chilly doubts in the hearts of the dead. They should have been allowed to come to us in high summer, when the air is still, and smelling of hot grass and sweet peas, and the moon is large and bland.

Reviewed at:
Stuck in a Book
A Work in Progress
Dovegreyreader Scribbles
A Lady Bug's Books
Cornflower
Jenny's Books
Passionate Booklover

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You can read the first chapter of The Brontës Went to Woolworths here.

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Not Quite The Sunday Salon - Day Off

It occurred to me that I've been spending far too much time on the computer lately (yes, really), so I'm shamelessly stealing Staci's idea from a few weeks ago and staying off the internet today. (And in case you're wondering, I'm writing this on Saturday).

I thought I'd leave you with a video by my latest musical obsession, Fanfarlo. They're good! They're very, very good! And look what they list under influences: "David Lynch, Kurt Vonnegut, Talking Heads, Television, Sufjan Stevens." Hearts.



Have a great Sunday, everyone!

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By the pricking of my thumbs...

The RIP Challenge has become a tradition I very much look forward to. I'm participating for the third year now, but I must confess that this year I've been feeling a little despondent. The reason is that the perfect RIP books, the ones I feel like reading the most, are of course ones I don't own. And my book buying ban means that I can't get them. Isn't that silly? Why do books I can't have always sound more exciting than the ones I have?

I do, of course, have several perfectly decent RIPish books sitting on my shelves, and I'm hoping that putting this list together will remind me that I do, in fact, really want to read them. My goal is to read four of these between now and Halloween, but if I manage more, all the better.

• Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman - I got this one because Aickman has been highly recommended by Neil Gaiman. (See Ana? You do want to read it!)
  
  
• Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand - I'm actually very excited about this book, possibly because I got it just before my book buying ban began. The only problem is that I'm not sure if it's dark fantasy or just plain fantasy. I'll let you know.
  
  
• 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill - I've been saving it for RIP all year!
  
  
• The Virago Book of Ghost Stories edited by Richard Dalby - I read a few stories from it for RIP two years ago, but somehow or other I never actually finished it. Now's the time!
  
  
• McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories edited by Michael Chabon - Another collection I've partially read. It includes stories by authors like Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Lethem, Joyce Carol Oates, Roddy Doyle, Stephen King and David Mitchell. (Side note: I bought it in Inverness, and I've just found a neat map of a historical trail I'd completely forgotten about tucked inside. Don't you love it when that happens?)

• The Sandman: Book of Dreams edited by Neil Gaiman and Ed Kramer - a collection of stories inspired by the Sandman universe by authors like Caitlín R. Kiernan (whose The Red Tree I'm very much coveting for RIP - sigh), Gene Wolfe, Delia Sherman, Susanna Clarke and Tori Amos. Why haven't I read it yet?!
  
  
• The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - I got this years ago, and I seem to go back and forth about whether or not I actually want to read it. It's not long or anything, so I might as well give it a try.
  
  
• The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux - Another one I've had for years - specifically since I read Maskerade by Terry Pratchett, which is a sort of parody of it.
  
  
• Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link - Again, I'm not sure: dark fantasy or just fantasy? The few Kelly Link stories I've read were all quite dark. And also quite awesome.
  
  
• The Ghost of Thomas Kempe by Penelope Lively - I've actually started this already, and so far it's not very spooky. But it is a ghost story - a Carnegie Medal winning one!

• The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake - I know I want to read this, but I also know it will take commitment, and I'm not sure if now's the time. Besides...
  
  
• The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - ...can I handle more than one chunkster?
  
  
• Drood by Dan Simmons - ...more than TWO chunksters? I really want to read this book. I've been dying to ever since it came out, and Amy was sweet enough to send it to me as a gift all the way across the ocean even though it weights a lot. So I'd better read it. However, I've heard it has spoilers for...
  
  
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins - ...so I'd better read that first, no? Another Victorian chunkster. Surely I'm insane.
  
  
• Count Karlstein, or the Ride of the Demon Huntsman by Philip Pullman - I don't actually know much about this one, but it's by Pullman, and "demon huntsman" sounds promising.
  
  
• The Shadow in the North by Philip Pullman - book two in the Sally Lockhart series of Gothic Victorian mysteries. The first book was very atmospheric, if not all that mysterious. I hear that this is not the best in the series, but I have to read them in order, so...
  
  
• Cemetery Stories by Katherine Ramsland - A non-fiction title that sounds similar to Stiff by Mary Roach. It's actually older than Stiff, though, so it's not an attempt to imitate it or anything.
  
  
• Moon Called by Patricia Briggs - Rhinoa is making me read this one, and since it's a challenge book I can't replace, it's exempt from the rules.

• The Dust of Wonderland by Lee Thomas - Same, mwahahaha. This is a Lambda Award winning ghost story set in New Orleans.
  
  
• Black Juice by Margo Lanagan - I've been slowly reading this short story collection for a while, actually. It doesn't get much darker than "Red Nose Day". I eek'ed out loud.
  

That's it, unless The Secret History by Donna Tart qualifies. Does it? And you know, I think it worked: I feel my enthusiasm for these books returning.

---

I thought I'd wrap-up Persephone Reading Week by putting together a short list of Persephones I've been coveting. These are some of the books I discovered this week, either through other participant's reviews or by exploring of the Persephone site this week, - something which was very much encouraged by Verity and Claire's quizzes. The list:

• Doreen by Barbara Noble - like Saplings, this is about a child evacuated from London during WW2, and about the consequences of the long separation from their families. these children had to endure. Fleur Fisher wrote about it, and she's giving away a copy!
  
  
• Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary by Ruby Ferguson - Most definitely the Persephone I'm covering the most. Both Claires wrote about it, and phrases like "fairy-tale for adults", "Victorian" and "love-letter to Scotland" were used. Need I say more?
  
  
• Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson - The reason why I want this one is because once I was done with my books, I dealt with my Persephone deprivation by reading this author's charming The Brontës Went to Woolworths (which I can't wait to tell you about, by the way). Alas, Poor Lady sounds even better: it's about the fate that often awaited Victorian so-called "spinsters".
  
  
• The World That Was Ours by Hilda Bernstein - a political memoir about a dark period in South African history: the Rivonia Trial.

I very much enjoyed Persephone week, and I'm already looking forward to next time. Also, just today I got the splendid news that I won one of the copies of Good Evening, Mrs Craven by Mollie Panter-Donnes that were being given away - a collection of stories about English domestic life during WW2. This sounds like a perfect follow-up to Saplings and The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, both of which left me wanting more. The dilemma is, do I save it or do I read it right away?

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Copper Sun by Sharon M. Draper

Amari is nearly fifteen when a group of white men visits her village. A traditional welcome ceremony is organized for them, but halfway through it the shooting begins. In a short amount of time, nearly everyone Amari has ever loved is taken away from her, and her life changes forever. She and the remaining survivors are marched to the shore, where a slave ship awaits then. Copper Sun follows Amari on her journey from her African village to the colony of Carolina. There, as many before her and after her, she’s sold as a slave.

The story is told not only from Amari’s point of view, but also from Polly’s – Polly is a white girl of about the same age as Amari, who, after her parents’ deaths, is forced to become an indentured servant to pay their debts. The different point of views work very well, and one of my favourite things about Copper Sun was watching Polly and Amari overcome the suspicion with which they regarded each other and become true friends. They learn to see each other as people, not simply as members of a different race.

Another one of the book’s strengths is that it shows how people who are powerless in different ways and for different reasons can work together, can show one another support and kindness. Amari is doubly powerless because she is a young woman and a slave – she’s bought as a birthday present for Clay Derby, the plantation master’s son. Clay makes sure to call her to his room most nights, as had the sailors on the slave ship before him. Polly is a white girl who, while temporarily enslaved, has freedom to look forward to. Still, her situation as an indentured servant is also not a pleasant one. And even Mrs Derby, despite her social position, is powerless because of her gender.

Of course that of all these characters, Amari is the most vulnerable and the one who’s treated with the most disrespect, but the point here is not to measure different kinds of suffering against each other, but to see how people who are subjugated can try to join efforts to make things better for everyone – a point that is definitely still relevant today.

Sharon Draper doesn’t try to sugarcoat history, and Copper Sun was at times very difficult to read. There was a scene in particularly after which I had to put the book aside for a while and try to calm myself down. But as comforting as it would be to think she was exaggerating for dramatic effect, I know that this is not the case. Copper Sun reminded me of two non-fiction books I read last year, Black Ivory by James Walvin and To Be Slave by Julius Lester. My edition of Copper Sun includes an interview with Sharon Draper in which she says that in her research she came across much worse things than those she describes in this book – and even judging by those two books alone, yes, she most definitely did.

Amari and Polly’s story is far from being completely bleak, though. There’s what could optimistically be called a happy ending, though not an unrealistic one; there’s kindness and survival as well as cruelty and death. This is a book that matters, and it matters especially because it’s aimed at young people. It matters not only because it makes history come to life – because it brilliantly concretizes the brutal but abstract reality of slavery into the story of a smart, brave, resourceful girl – but also because all over the world people continue to treat fellow human beings as things. Sometimes we have to stop and take a good look at what the consequences of that may be, and fiction achieves that better than anything else.

Memorable Passages:

Amari gradually grew accustomed to the dim light and looked around the room. She spotted a woman in a corner who was rocking a child who was not there. She sang to it and caressed it gently, but her arms were empty. The woman’s sorrow was raw and palpable, like spoiled meat.

Isabelle Derby sat pale and quiet, her eyes cast down through most of the meal. It was as if she were one of the many room decorations. Unhappiness seemed to ooze from her like perspiration on a humid day. Polly shook her head as she realized that being a fine lady didn’t necessarily mean finding joy.

Reviewed at:
the hidden side of a leaf
Book Lover’s Blog
One Librarian's Book Reviews
Good Books & Good Wine
Interview with Sharon Draper at The Brown Bookshelf

(Let me know if I missed yours.)

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Saplings by Noel Streatfeild

Saplings tells the story of the Wiltshire family, focusing specifically on the children, Laurel, Tony, Kim and Tuesday, who grow up during WW2. In 1939, the eldest is eleven and the youngest is four. The book opens with the whole family on a seaside holiday just before the start of the war, and everyone is evidently happy. When the London bombings begin, the Wiltshire children, like many others, are evacuated. First they are sent to to their grandparents’ house in the country; later to boarding schools or to stay with several different aunts. Saplings chronicles the psychological effect these separations, this uncertainly and instability, had on those who had to grow up with them.

What a brilliant book Saplings is. I had never read Noel Streatfeild before (no, not even Ballet Shoes), so I had no idea what to expect. Well, it turns out that she is an excellent writer: subtle, perceptive, sensitive, occasionally ironic, everything that I love. Saplings reminded me a little of A.S. Byatt and (don’t laugh!) of D.H. Lawrence. It was something about the way she uses multiple points of view, jumping from one perspective to another quite frequently, and yet still managing to make it work. I always admire writers who can pull that off, as I imagine that it takes a lot of skill. But most of all, it was the way she wrote about her characters with such tenderness, such care. I loved them; I felt for each and every one of them, no matter how flawed they were.

Another thing I loved about Saplings was how well it captured a child’s perspective and understanding of the world. Noel Streatfeild never underestimates her young characters, and part of what makes this story so sad is that even the most caring adults tend to. When the book opens, Tuesday, the youngest of the children, is only four. But we are told that she was more anxious than any of her older siblings, because the adults always misjudged her and discussed their concerns about the war freely in front of her. She did not, of course, understand all the social and political implications, but she understood the fear, as children always do.

What was for me the most moving part of the book has to do with something Tony sees, something he shouldn’t have seen and which haunts him for over a year. It’s all described so respectfully – what bothers him is not at all a silly fear, or a childish thing to believe. The tragedy is that he becomes so upset he withdraws, and so he suffers alone for a long time until finally, after a conversation with his uncle, he begins to recover.

Another reason why the multiple points of view so enriched the book is because by seeing everyone’s thoughts processes, we are aware of everything that goes wrong, of where each misunderstanding arises. Most of the time people mean well, but somebody still gets hurt. So many times I wanted to scream, “No, no, no!”; I wanted to step into the story and undo a gesture or take back a word. The Wiltshire children are sensitive, especially Laurel, and it is a mark of Noel Streatfeild’s great skill that their pains and concerns never seem silly, not even when played against the backdrop of the war. The children are actually very well-off, in the sense that they are physically safe, they never go hungry, and they don't suffer discomforts. And yet my heart still broke for them: I couldn't not take their pains seriously.

Saplings is a story about ordinary tragedies. Separated families and everyday losses were, understandably enough, forgotten in the face of the unimaginable horror of the Holocaust, of nuclear bombs, of destruction and death. Still, these are stories that deserve to be told, and I’m grateful that Noel Streatfeild gave us a glimpse of this hidden side of WWII. The book ends on an ironical note, with Mrs Oliver, who works at the Wiltshire’s home, saying,

‘Turns you over, don’t it, to think of the children? I was saying to my daughter only yesterday, “We got a lot to be thankful for in this country. Our kids ‘aven’t suffered’o-ever else’as.”’

It is not, of course, the same kind of suffering, but it’s suffering all the same. I wholeheartedly recommend Saplings, even to those who normally find the phrase “psychological realism” off-putting. I was hardly able to put it down, and these characters and their story will stay with me for a very long time.

( A side note: if you happen to get a hold of the beautiful Persephone Classics edition of this book, and if you care about knowing plot details in advance, do not read the back cover. It reveals something that happens over two hundred pages into the book, and which I’d much rather have found out when I got there.)

Favourite passages:

To both Laurel and Tony that sentry was the most memorable part of the day. He left them excited and yet with a cold feeling in their stomachs. Anything might happen in a world where sentries turned you back in country lanes. Before, war at home was hearsay, now it was real. It was as surprising as if the ground under their feet had begun to shake, or cats had voices and could talk.

Alex did not answer. Every fibre of the Colonel must be protesting. Odd how, in a world where such unnameable horrors were commonplace, a simple thing like taking his home from an old man could still wring your heart.

There was Mustard. Impossible to exaggerate the comfort he brought. He talked, in what Tony called to himself, a safe way. To him there always had been gardens and there always would be gardens, and there always would be wild things to fight, and that was natural and nothing, as he said, ‘to be upsettin’ of ourselves for’. Wars, and all that were attached to them, were passing inconveniences, but they did not change the pulse of his world.

At school he would wake knowing that he was about to have an attack of fright. He saw the attacks as if they had shape. Huge, black and soft, ready to fall on him. Sometimes, from the time he knew an attack was waiting, it was hours before it came. In the waiting time he was lethargic, dulled by fright.

They read it too:
A Book a Week
A Comfy Chair and a Good Book

(Did I miss yours?)

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the first part last by Angela Johnson

But I figure if the world were really tight, humans would live life backwards and do the first part last. They’d be all knowing in the beginning and innocent in the end.
Then everybody could end their life on their momma or daddy’s stomach in a warm room, waiting for the soft morning light.

Bobby, aged sixteen, is a father. His sixteenth birthday was the day when his girlfriend Nia told him that she was pregnant. Now, for reasons the reader finds out as s/he read on, Nia is not around, and Bobby has to coordinate being a high school student with changing diapers, sleepless nights, arranging for babysitters, taking baby Feather to the doctor, and all the other demands of parenthood. Not to mention, of course, growing up himself.

The story is told through alternating sections, titled “now” and “then”. As we watch Bobby coming to terms with parenthood and all the ways in which his life has changed forever, we also watch the story of Nia’s pregnancy unfold, and we learn just what led to the situation Bobby’s currently in.

I love the fact that even though the first part last is about teen pregnancy, it doesn’t read like a cautionary tale: it doesn't moralize, it’s never emotionally manipulative and it doesn’t demonize sex. But it doesn’t romanticize parenthood either. What it does is show what can happen to teenagers for several reasons, what does happen to countless teens everywhere. The story is told wisely and compassionately, without pointing fingers or punishing the characters.

And it’s a sad story, yes, but it’s also a story about endurance and love. I mean, the bad things that happen are really bad (and I can’t tell you what those are without spoilers), and the good ones are mixed blessings. But people, young people in particular, have a remarkable ability to adapt and make the most of their circumstances.

Making the most of his circumstances is what Bobby learns to do, and in the end readers are not left thinking that his life is ruined, or that Feather will be an unhappy child. He loves her, he has parents and friends who support him, and even though his life will be different from most young people’s, it won’t necessarily be less satisfying or complete.

One more down for the Printz Project. They never disappoint, do they? On a side note, thanks to the awesome Jodie I have Slam by Nick Hornby, another story about teen pregnancy told from a male perspective, on my tbr pile. I look forward to seeing how the two compare.

Other Opinions:
1 More Chapter
Thoughts of Joy

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The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski

Happy Persephone Week, everyone! In case you’re going “huh?”, Persephone Week is being hosted by Claire at Paperback Reader and Verity at The B Files, and the goal is to read and celebrate Persephone Books, a publisher of neglected and forgotten twentieth-century classics, most by women. This morning, I read my very first Persephone. And no, I didn’t pick it because it happens to the shortest book on the Persephone catalogue, but rather because Claire recommended it to me, and because I can’t resist the words “Victorian” and “time-travel”. Of course, the fact that I finished it in a little over an hour was a plus.

Originally published in 1953, The Victorian Chaise-Longue is the story of Melanie Langdon. Early in her pregnancy Melanie was diagnosed with tuberculosis, but thanks to the care of her doctor both she and her child are doing okay. But she hasn’t been allowed to leave her bedroom in months, nor to touch the baby since its birth. The book opens with good news for Melanie – as she’s beginning to recover, she is to finally leave her bedroom and be moved to the living room.

There, she falls asleep on a Victorian chaise-longue she found at a vintage furniture store. When she wakes up, she realizes she has been transported from the 1950’s to the 1860’s, into the body of someone by the name of Milly Baines. Sounds just like a nightmare, right? But try as she might, Melanie can’t wake up.


The Victorian Chaise-Longue is a chilling, atmospheric and suffocating novella. Melanie’s helplessness and entrapment felt all too real, and it was easy to transport the emotions she was experiencing to things other than being stuck in the past. I want to share a passage that, to me, is at the core of what this story is about. Addressing Milly in her thoughts, Melanie says:

We seem to be together now, she explained, you and I, both hopeless. I think we did the same things, she told her, we loved a man and we flirted and we took little drinks, but when I did those things there was nothing wrong, and for you it was a terrible punishable sin.

As we read on, we (along with Melanie herself) find out more about Milly’s life: why her sister treats her with such contempt, why the Vicar keeps asking her if she doesn’t want to confess, why everyone acts as if the illness that is killing her is a just punishment. The things Milly is supposedly guilty of are all things Melanie has done herself. The two women are in fact very similar, but in Milly's time, her circunstances were enough to turn her into someone who was hopeless and pitiable in the eyes of some, and wicked and despicable in the eyes of others.

The Victorian Chaise-Longue's greatest strength is that it brings the weight of history to life. The device that it uses to place someone with twentieth-century sensibilities in the past is effective (though I have no doubt that a similar novella could be written today with a woman going back to the 1950's, and optimistically I believe that the same will be true in fifty year's time). As a result, readers get to truly feel the oppressiveness of Victorian sexual mores.

This is a fantastic and very unsettling book, and my first experience with Persephone was most definitely a successful one. I thought I’d leave you with the covers to a few other editions of the book – unsurprisingly, they’re a lot more dramatic than the sober Persephone cover, but what I thought was interesting is how they seem to change the reader’s expectations of the book:


I actually like them, though, especially the middle one. What do you think?

Favourite bits:

She said, Perhaps Milly Baines died here. Then – Milly Baines must surely be dead now, she said blankly, Milly and Adelaide and Lizzie, all dead and rotten long ago. This body I am in, it must have rotted filthily, this pillowcase must be a tatter of rag, the coverlet corrupt with moth, crisp and sticky with matted moths’ eggs, falling away into dirty crumbling scraps. It’s all dead and rotten, the barley-water tainted, the nightgown threadbare and thrown away, these hands, all this body stinking, rotten, dead. She shuddered, and knew she was shuddering in a body long ago dead.

I have got to prove myself to Mr. Endworthy, prove that I really come from the future. I should know what is just going to happen – but what is? If I was one of those educated women, she thought angrily, an old resentment, long buried in marriage, rearing its head again. I know what the Victorian age was like, of course I do, except that being here, it isn’t like that at all.

Other Opinions:
A Book A Week
Farm Lane Books
Green Road Books

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The Sunday Salon - Favourite Etsy Artists (and a Dare!)

Hello Sunday Saloners. Today's post is one I've been meaning to write for ages: I thought I'd share some of my favourite Etsy artists with you so that you can covet their lovely stuff along with me, and perhaps hate me a little bit for tempting you. But feel free to retaliate by telling me about your favourites. And before you start wondering why this is a Sunday Salon post, well, they're all more or less bookish, in a roundabout way.

My number one favourite is Hidden Eloise, who has both an Etsy store and a blog. This UK artist makes, in her own words, "art of fairytales, wild bears and dark forest creatures." What's not to love? Her store has prints, postcards, stationary, pocket mirrors, etc. And though she doesn't sell them, she's been known to include bookmarks in her packages. Just saying. And she's having a sale right now.

A sample:


(Okay, so it helps that the art reminds me a little bit of Tender Morsels. But I loved her before I read the book.)

The Mymble's Daughter makes jewellery, stationary and lovely book plates, many of them also inspired by fairy tales. Here's a picture of a gorgeous Alice in Wonderland pendant I got a while ago:


Blacklilypie sells cute Gothic art, paper goods and bookmarks. It's funny: hers is a kind of art that I can find myself either loving or hating, but in this case I most definitely love it. Especially the bookmarks: look at them!

Finally, at birdzNbeez you can find fairy tale-ish and steampunkish lockets and pendants. Some of them are a bit too pricey for me, but wow, I love them.

I may regret asking this, but as I said earlier, feel free to retaliate. Who are your favourite Etsy artists?

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In other news, I hereby officially accept Amy's dare: she's given me a year to watch the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If I fail, I must write a public apology. If I succeed, Amy will read any book I choose for her (mwahahah). And in my turns, I must come up with a dare for someone else. I've been giving this some thought while I stroke my imaginary beard with one hand and pet my hairless cat with another, but I haven't come up with anything so far. I'll let you know, though.

But in all seriousness, Amy's dare is pretty generous, and I had been meaning to watch Buffy anyway. Too many people whose taste is similar to mine have promised that I'll love it for it not to be true!

And last but not least, I wanted to thank everyone who included me in their Book Blogger Appreciation Week nominations. You're too kind, and if I could I'd buy you all icecream.

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Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

Alias Grace is a fictional account of the true story of Grace Marks, a woman who was condemned to life imprisonment for murder in nineteenth-century Canada. Grace was only sixteen at the time of the crimes – she and her supposed accomplice, James McDermott, were accused of murdering the man they worked for, as well as his housekeeper. At the time of the autopsy, the housekeeper was discovered to be pregnant. Initially both Grace and McDermott were sentenced to hang, but Grace’s death sentence was commuted.

Alias Grace opens some ten years after the crimes. A doctor by the name of Simon Jordan, who is investigating criminal behaviour, visits Grace in prison. She tells him her life story, from her early life in Ireland to her immigration and her years as a maid, first in a big house in Toronto and eventually on the farm house where the murders took place. The reader can often tell that Grace is not telling the whole story, but what exactly she’s holding only becomes clearer as the story moves on. Though never completely clear: Atwood also makes readers aware that Grace has fully entered the role of a storyteller – and her true story belongs to no one but herself.

Alias Grace is also never quite clear on the question of whether Grace Marks was innocent or guilty, but her guilt or lack thereof isn’t really the point. In the afterword, Margaret Atwood says she found Grace Marks’ story fascinating because attitudes towards her reflected general attitudes towards women, and this really shows in Alias Grace. She’s thought of as either an evil murderess or an almost half-witted, helpless innocent. There’s no inbetween, and there’s barely anyone at all who’s willing to think of her as a real and complex human being.

Alias Grace has some of the same suffocating quality of Sarah Waters’ Affinity, even if it’s about a completely different set of experiences. Unlike Margaret Prior, Grace is a poor woman, and she has to earn a living from a very young age. But what the two have in common is that they live in a world in which their gender severely limits the choices that are available to them. This isn’t true of only Grace, but also of several other characters in the story: her mother, her best friend Mary Whitney, Nancy Montgomery – the murdered housekeeper, and Mrs Humphrey, who is Dr Jordan’s landlady.

There is a passage very near the end that helped me make up my mind about what I think happens in this book. I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t read Alias Grace yet, so I won’t quote it. But it’s the passage in which Grace discusses forgiveness and the roles of victims and perpetrators. I found it very revealing of her feelings about both Nancy and Mary Whitney, and of the rage she felt about the situation these women found themselves in, as well as about the inevitability of their fate and the social structure that made it inevitable – a rage that she never quit admits, not even to herself.

You know, I think Alias Grace may have surpassed The Handmaid’s Tale as my favourite Atwood. I’m barely scratching the surface here, but this is a beautiful, subtle, complex novel – everything, from the writing to the way it’s structured, is so beautifully done. The novel is divided into different sections, each named after different quilt patterns, and each preceded by quotes from Grace and McDermott’s testimonies, from other people’s accounts of the case, and from Victorian literature – Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Emily Brontë, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and even that unforgettable classic, “The Angel in the House” (which is cleverly and very ironically placed). As for the writing, I am once again in awe of Margaret Atwood. I marked close to twenty passages to share, and it took me forever to select my favourite four.

I’m still trying to understand why I loved this book more than any other Atwood I’ve read. There’s the beautiful writing, but that’s there all the time. in her books And there’s the historical setting – I have to admit that the word “Victorian” is always a selling point for me. But mostly I loved that she wrote a book that’s not only completely gripping and easy to read, but also very smart, perceptive and complex. And I love how it takes a good, serious look at gender, sexuality, social hypocrisy and double standards, the burden of having other people’s stories and definitions imposed on you, the concept of madness, and many other things, while still managing to be very funny at times. But along with stunning writing, if there’s one thing Margaret Atwood can always be relied on for it’s irony and dark humour.

Favourite passages:

All the same, Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word – musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor.

It was raining, and a huge crowd was standing in the mud, some of them come from miles away. If my own death sentence had not been commuted at the last minute, they would have watched me hang with the same greedy pleasure. There were many women and ladies there; everyone wanted to stare, they wanted to breathe death in like fine perfume, and when I read of it I thought, If this is a lesson to me, what is it I am supposed to be learning?

Gone mad is what they say, and sometimes Run Mad, as if mad is a direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don’t go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.

While he writes, I feel as if he is drawing me; or not drawing me – drawing on my skin – not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.
But underneath that there is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-eyed awake and watchful. It’s like being wakened suddenly in the middle of the night, by a hand over your face, and you sit up with your heart going fast, and no one is there. And underneath that there is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but too ripe and splitting open of its own accord.
And inside the peach there’s a stone.

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Who Killed Amanda Palmer

Who Killed Amanda Palmer: A Collection of Photographic Evidence is a big and beautiful book filled with photography, song lyrics by musician Amanda Palmer, and short stories by Neil Gaiman. The pictures, by Kyle Cassidy, Beth Hommel, and many others, are of Amanda Palmer dead in difference places and from different causes. The lyrics are to Amanda Palmer's album of the same name, to which this book is a companion. And Neil Gaiman's short stories, which accompany some of the pictures, imagine scenarios that might have lead to Amanda Palmer's death. Sometimes they pose more questions than they give answers, but that only makes them more fun.

You might be wondering if you need to already be familiar with Amanda Palmer's music to be able to appreciate this book. The answer is probably no, but you'll appreciate it more if you are, and if you're not, the book will make you want to listen to the album. Which is a very good thing. Trust me, it is:


One of my favourite stories was the one accompanying the picture below, in which three young girls find the body of their governess, Miss Palmer, floating in a lake. The good news is that you can read it online. Other highlights were the gritty, urban retelling of the fairy tale "Diamonds and Toads", the creepy love letter "Modern Love", and "The Sword", in which a time-travelling Amanda kills her younger self.


Which brings me to another thing I wanted to mention: Who Killed Amanda Palmer is actually very funny. Really, it is. It's dark humour of a kind that perhaps not everyone will like, but it's most definitely my kind of humour. I think the book wouldn't work nearly as well as it does without the humour: the whole thing seems to have been done with the awareness that good art doesn't need to take itself too seriously to be serious, or evoke emotional responses. The laughter is there, but so are the horror and the occasional sadness. The overall tone is far from melancholy, though. This isn't so much a book about death as it is a book that celebrates life.

I'll leave you with a few more pictures (sadly I couldn't find my very favourites, but they're all stunning so there's no way to go wrong) and an excerpt:






(Oh, and also! There's a picture with Regina Spektor! This made me very happy, because I love her to bits - almost as much as I love Amanda.)

Very young children made up songs about the different ways Amanda died, killing her happily at the end of every verse, too young to understand the horror. Maybe it really was how she would have wanted to go.
If you see Amanda Palmer on the street, kill her, said the graffiti under the bridge in Boston. And beneath that somebody else wrote, That way she'll live forever.

Visit the album's official site to find out more, stream songs, and watch awesome videos.

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Miracle's Boys by Jacqueline Woodson

Since his mother died, Lafayette has been living alone with his two brothers. Ty’ree, the eldest, takes care of Lafayette and Charlie. Lafayette’s nickname for Charlie, to whom he was once very close, is Newcharlie: since his brother returned from Rahway, a detention centre, he can no longer recognize the Charlie he used to love. As Lafayette tells us his story, we learn about how these three boys are dealing with loneliness and loss, with anger and vulnerability, with being orphaned at such a young age, with living in poverty, and simply with growing up.

This is only a quick outline – the book is a very short one, so if I tell you more I’ll be telling you too much. But despite only being 130 pages long, Miracle’s Boys packs a lot. There are flashbacks to Lafayette’s father’s death, which happened before he was born; there’s the story of why Charlie was sent to Rahway; there’s everything Ty’ree had to give up to raise his brothers on his own; there are the boys’ different emotional responses to the situation they’re in.

What I liked the most about Miracle’s Boys was the depth of the characterization. The characters are all so human – they're not perfect, but they're never vilified either, despite the mistakes they make. Indeed, one of the main things Lafayette learns is that his brothers are human, neither monsters nor saints; that despite being older than he is, they too are young boys who are scared and alone.

The fact that all three of the characters are boys allows Jacqueline Woodson to explore how outside expectations of rough and so-called manly behaviour clash with the grief they’re feeling. This is particularly noticeable with Charlie, once a stray-animal-saving boy, who now deals with his emotions by treating everyone with hostility and by hanging out with gang members he used to cross the street to avoid. Miracle's Boys takes a look at what some of the consequences of this idealization of violence can be, and it provides an alternative in the end.

Miracle’s Boys had quite a strong emotional impact on me. Even though bad things happen to these kids, it’s not a bleak book by any means, and it didn’t leave me sad. But it did make me count my blessings, and it made think about how we can come to expect those who are close to us to be superhuman without even realizing we’re doing it.

Favourite passages:

Sometimes I stared in the mirror and was surprised to see how little and lost I looked. That was how Ty’ree looked now—like he was waiting for somebody to take his hand and show him the way home.

Ty’ree was all right after Mama died. But I was all wrong. The year before, I’d seen this show about snakes. They showed this one snake slipping out of its old skin and then leaving the old skin on the ground behind him. That’s how I felt—like Mama’d been my skin. But I hadn’t grown a new skin underneath, like the snake had. I twas just blood and bones spreading all over the place.

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Twilight of Avalon by Anna Elliott

Twilight of Avalon is the first book in a trilogy that retells the story of Tristan and Isolde – though “retell” might not be quite the right word, as what Anna Elliott does is use the familiar Arthurian frame to build a brand new story. Her source is Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth-century version of the myth: a version in which Lancelot is absent, and Guinevere’s famous love affair is with Arthur’s illegitimate son and nemesis, Mordred.

In Twilight of Avalon, Isolde is the daughter of that union. Both her parents are dead and gone, as is King Arthur. She lives in a world of constant conflict between Saxons and Britons, and, as a healer, she sees the effects of war from up close every day. The story opens in Tintagel, shortly after the passing of Isolde’s husband, the High King. As Isolde well knows, this gap in power leaves the Britons particularly vulnerable – and not just to dangers that come from outside.

Though Tristan and Isolde are famous for their love story, Twilight of Avalon focuses more on political intrigue than it does on romance, which to me was a good thing. The book deals with several topics I care about: the role of women in society, the effects of sexism, the consequences of war and of a culture of violence, and how all of the aforementioned things are affected by a limiting definition of masculinity that renders acts of aggression mandatory, and considers anyone who behaves otherwise, male or female, weak and inferior.

It’s a complex book, and I really liked that. There’s no “us” and “them” dichotomy; there are just people, some well-meaning, some greedy and selfish, some confused and scared, some angry and hurt. But they’re human, all of them, even the villains. It’s also a book that is filled with empathy: I particularly liked the scenes that show Isolde at work as a healer. Though concepts like “shell shock” are nearly a century old, we are only just beginning to acknowledge that fear in a military context is a natural human reaction, not an illness or a sign of cowardice. But the stigmatization is still there even now. Twilight of Avalon takes a look at how things might have been all those centuries ago; how scared, and how lonely in their fear, those men who were sent to war time and again must have been.

I also liked the fact that Isolde was not a healer because she was particularly given to being caring and nurturing. I imagine that placing a character in a traditional role such as this and not having it turn out stereotypical to be hard, but Anna Elliott succeeds, and she manages to question gender roles into the bargain. Isolde does one of the few things that were available to her as a woman, but she's far from being a universal maternal figure. She's a person: no more, no less.

The world of this novel reminded me of the world of books like The Mists of Avalon or Daughter of the Forest. They’re very different stories, but they deal with some of the same themes, and furthermore they seem to display a similar kind of sensibility and worldview. Some of these similarities include the coexistence of, and sometimes conflict between, the new Christian faith and the old Pagan ways, the backdrop of Celtic mythology, the importance of storytelling, and the fact that all these stories are told from a female perspective.

Even though Twilight of Avalon is the first book in a series, the ending isn’t too frustrating, which was a relief. We leave the characters at a point where the immediate tension has been resolved, and what we know will be a new source of tension is still a long way off. I’m sorry if this sounds vague, but I’m trying to avoid spoilers. Another thing I’ll have to be vague about is the one thing that did frustrate me: sometimes suspense is achieved by withholding knowledge the characters have from the reader, and this is a technique I’m not always a fan of.

But, that aside, Twilight of Avalon was a great read. I actually haven’t read any other retellings of the story of Tristan and Isolde (though Rosalind Miles’ has been on my radar for ages) so I can’t really say how this compares. But in any case, I think that the detailed characterization, the complexity, and the focus on power dynamics make this series stand out.

Favourite bits:

Myrddin stopped, and then added in a different tone, “Few of the tales told of those times are true, child. No man—or woman, either—is entirely villain or hero, except perhaps in the memories of those who remain.”

Isolde’s eyes moved again to the altar. Despite the voices, she’d never once felt any sense that the dead yet lived somewhere—much less that any were with her still. She shivered, unsure which was worse. To believe that the dead were swallowed by blackness, vanishing to nothing. Or that they were trapped somewhere like flies in amber, endlessly repeating their stories to the wind.

All about them, the dusk was drawing in. Twilight, the time of changing, when the selkies swam in from the ocean and shed their sealskins to become the fairest of men. And if a mortal fell in love with a selkie and wished him to return, she must go to the shore and cry seven tears into the sea.

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Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God is the story of Janie Crawford, a woman in her forties who tells her best friend Pheoby about her life, so she can then tell the truth to the town and put an end to all the gossip about Janie. The reason why the town is gossiping is because Janie had last been seen leaving Eatonville with Teacake, a younger man, and rumour has it that he took all her money and left her behind.

As often happens with rumours, this has little resemblance to the truth. But what Janie tells Pheoby is more than the truth about herself and Teacake – it’s the story of her life, of her previous two marriages, of how she came to live in Eatonville, the first American all-black community. And most importantly, it’s the story of how she found herself.

Janie’s youth was dominated by others: first by her grandmother, a woman whose every choice in life was determined by the desire to live up to an ideal of respectability, and then by the men she married. But gradually, Janie begins to learn that being a woman doesn’t mean she has no right to a voice, to a will, to individuality or self-determination. Or, for that matter, to love.

I was expecting to have some trouble with the use of Ebonics in this book, but to my surprise I found it easy to read. I was immediately won over by Zora Neale Hurston’s beautiful writing, by how masterfully she switches between first and third person, and by the book’s intimate tone. Jeanie’s story is one of passion, will to live, and increasing self-awareness. It’s touching, humorous at times, and ultimately very human. I loved the fact that she never let others tell her that her life was over, not even in the end. Nor what to feel, how to act, where to go.

Teacake was also quite an interesting character. At a certain moment in the story – those of you who have read it will be able to guess when – he lost a good deal of my sympathy, but this is a gut reaction, not a judgement on the book. There isn’t much more I can tell you without giving away this particular plot detail, but I can say it concerns the extent to which he actually saw Janie as an equal. Edwidge Dandicatt (an author I now really want to read) addresses this point in this edition’s foreword, and I found what she had to say quite interesting. Among other things, she says that the characters’ flaws render them more human, more nuanced, which I agree with.

Their Eyes Were Watching God is many things, and one of them is a very readable piece of good old storytelling. Janie and Teacake’s life at the Everglades in particular had me riveted – the community life, their work in the fields, the description of the hurricane. I read the last fifty pages or so in a single sitting.

After finishing the book, I was taking a took at the Virago Reading Guide, and I came across an interesting quote by Valerie Boyd, Zora Neale Hurston’s biographer. Their Eyes Were Watching God was quite controversial at the time it was published, one of the reasons being that its use of Ebonics was considered demeaning. And there was also the fact that some found it shallow because it ignored racial issues. Valerie Boyd thinks that the fact that the novel doesn’t directly address the predominant oppression of the 30’s doesn’t mean it doesn’t protest it. Rather, it does so by showing a community that is lively and whole; a group of people who are fully human and whose concerns go beyond racial conflicts. She says:

Hurston wrote about life within a particular black community – not about that community’s reactions to white oppression. She was interested in what black people felt and said and did after they’d banished the white man from their minds and turned their thoughts to more interesting things … It protests white oppression by stripping it of its potency, by denying its all-powerfulness in black people’s lives.

Favourite passages:

There is a basin in the mind where words float around on thought and thought on sound and sight. Then there is a depth of thought untouched by words, and deeper still a gulf of formless feelings untouched by thought. Nanny entered this infinity of conscious pain again on her old knees. Towards morning she muttered, “Lawd, you know mah heart. Ah done de best Ah could do. De rest is left to you.” She scuffled up from her knees and fell heavily across the bed. A month later she was dead.

Times and scenes like that put Janie to thinking about the inside state of her marriage. Time came when she fought back with her tongue as best she could, but it didn’t do her any good. It just made Joe do more. He wanted her submission and he’d keep on fighting until he felt he had it.
So gradually, she pressed her teeth together and learned to hush. The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again. So she put something in there to represent the spirit like a Virgin Mary image in a church. The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired.

“Dat’s all right, Pheoby, tell‘em. Dey gointuh make ‘mirations ‘cause mah love didn’t work lak they love, if dey ever had any. Then you must tell ‘em dat love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shores it meets, and it’s different with every shore.”

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The Sunday Salon - Operation Climb Mt TBR Begins Now

Hello Sunday Saloners. I know you've probably heard me say this before, but I'm determined to do something about my out of control tbr pile. (Yeah, yeah, you say and snicker.) No, seriously: I've never had as many unread books in the house as I do right now, and if my Life Plans go well, I'll be moving away to go to library school in less than a year. I won't be able to take all these books with me, not at first anyway, so the reasonable, logical thing to do is to focus on getting them read now.

I know myself, though, and I know that a complete book buying ban is not likely to work. I also know that one of the keys to success is to establish reasonable goals. And so, inspired by Memory's tbr rules, I decided to come up with some of my own:

• No impulse buys. No more getting a book just because I like the cover, or because one of you made me want it, or because I feel the sudden need to own it right now.

• I am allowed to continue to use Bookmooch as long as I have points. However, I will not buy bargain books just to add them to my inventory and get more points.

• I will not enter giveaways - an exception will be made for both Persephone Week and Book Blogger Appreciation Week, because I'm not made of iron. But after that, they're out. And even during these, I'll only enter giveaways for books I really want to read.
  

• No more review copies. I receive very few, but a book here and a book there still add up.

• Now for reinforcement: I'm allowed one new book for every twenty I knock out of the tbr pile.

• These books, however, will have to be books I know for sure I'll read within no more than a month of their arrival, rather than books I'll doom to tbr purgatory for who knows how long.

• I'm allowed three new releases until the end of the year. This means I have to choose the three I want the most between Unseen Academicals, Her Fearful Symmetry, Juliet, Naked, Ash, Liar, The Little Stranger...oh dear.

• An interesting twist I thought of: when I get the shakes, which will inevitably happen after a few months of not buying books, I'll allow myself a poetry book. Maybe this will motivate me to finally get those Mary Oliver or Billy Collins books I've been meaning to get my hands on for ages. However, I can't do this more than a total of three times.
  

• I'm allowed to buy books that are on my challenge lists and that I don't own yet only when they can't be replaced. This is the case with Moon Called by Patricia Briggs, for example, which Rhinoa picked for our mutual challenge. However, the ones that can be replaced will be.
  

• I have the habit of always buying books when I travel, and if I happen to go anywhere in the next few months, I'll allow myself a few days exempt from the rules. However, I will not get more than a total of 5 books per trip. This won't be much of a problem, as I'm most likely staying put for a long while

• I want to keep on reading comics and non-fiction, and I don't have many of these on my tbr pile. So if I completely run out and the library can't help me (which sadly is always the case with comics), I'll be allowed one for every ten tbr books I get read. The rule about reading them within a month still applies.
  

• And because a good behavioural plan also requires penalties: If I cave and buy a bargain book (which I'm defining as anything under €5), I'll donate a Bookmooch point to charity.

• If I cave and buy a non-bargain book, I'll give away one of my books on Bookmooch. This could have the perverse effect of making me want to fail so I could get points to acquire yet more books, and so to make it an actual penalty and not a disguised reward, I'll make it a book I really don't want to part with.

Wish me luck! And please don't laugh at me if I fail spectacularly.

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Geektastic edited by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci

As the title indicates, Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd is a collection of short stories that celebrate geekiness in its many forms. The list of contributors includes names like John Green, David Levithan, Garth Nix, Libba Bray, Kelly Link, Scott Westerfeld and M.T. Anderson - you can see a full list of contributors here.

There are stories about Star Trek geeks, about Buffy geeks, about science and astronomy and dinosaur geeks. There are MMORPGs, live action RPGs, quizz shows, comics, weekly costumed sessions of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, conventions, reclusive fantasy writers and their fans, and the list goes on. The anthology has a total of fifteen stories, so I'd probably bore you if I told you about them all in detail. Instead, I'll highlight a few that stood out for me:

My absolute favourite was "The Starts at the Finish Line" by Wendy Mass (an author I hadn't read before but must read again.) The narrator, Peter, has had a silent competition going with the other really smart kid in class, Tabitha Bell, since fourth grade. Back then, both of them said they wanted to be astronauts, and, well, NASA only hires the absolute best. So since then, they've both been trying very hard to be the best. In all these years they've only exchanged a few words, but one day,they go to together to a Messier Marathon - an all-night astronomy session in which they're supposed to spot 110 deep-sky objects.

It's not hard to guess that their rivalry will turn into something entirely different, but the romance, if predictable, is still very well done, and the story is smart, sweet and fun. Also, it's full of little astronomy facts, and astronomy is awesome. It made me want to go to the middle of nowhere and watch the night sky. It made watch yesterday's meteor shower with extra gusto (I only spotted two, but it was nice anyway).

My second favourite story was, unsurprisingly, John Green's "Freak the Geek". Lauren and her best friend Kayley go to Hoover Preparatory School for Girls, in which Freak the Geek is a remarkably stupid tradition, even for a school tradition. Basically, the whole school picks a geek or two to harass en masse, and this year Lauren and Kayley are the lucky ones. I absolutely loved the story's final paragraph:

There's a single lipstick-red splotch of paintball goo on the front frill of my car. It doesn't wash off for months, but I don't mind. It is not my scarlet letter. It's theirs.

Other highlights were "Quix Bowl Antichrist" by David Levithan - I love how he makes the same-sex romance sound so natural - "Secret Identity" by Kelly Link, and "It's Just a Jump to the Left" by Libba Bray. These last two were quite sad. The stories all had different emotional tones, which makes sense as there are several different ways of being a geek - just like there were several different ways of being a person. But I liked the fact that even if a few of the stories are sad, the tone of the anthology truly is celebratory - these geeks feel comfortable in their own skins. They're not poor little misfits whose greatest dream is to be popular. They're too busy caring about things that go beyond high school popularity.

As with all anthologies, I liked some stories better than others, but the only one I seriously disliked was "The Truth about Dino Girl" by Barry Lyga. I really want to explain why, but to do so will involve spoilers, so read the rest of this paragraph and the next one at your own risk. The story is about a geeky girl, Katherine aka Katya, who takes revenge on a popular, pretty girl, Andi. Andi treats everyone who isn't "cool" enough for her like crap. I think prank stories can be fun, but the way in which this was done really disturbed me: Katya and her best friend take a picture of Andi naked in the locker room, photoshop the background out and add in a "sleazy hotel room", add captions like "Do you like sex? She does!!!! Call Andi!", and anonymously distribute it to the whole school. As this is irrefutable evidence that Andi is "a slut", her boyfriend (on whom Katya has a crush) breaks up with her, her friends shun her, and we last see her eating lunch on her own. A triumphant end - geek girl wins the day.

No, I am not kidding. What bothered me was not that this episode was included in the story, but that this was done completely unquestioningly. We are expected to sympathize with Katya and cheer along with her when she brings Andi down. The story never pauses to question the use of a teen girl's sexuality against her, or what the wider implications of ruining a girl's reputation by branding her a "slut" are. This really, really upset me. Try as I might, I'm unable to take something like this lightly, or to see any humour in it. No one, no matter how arrogant and mean they are, deserves something like this. It does every teen girl, every woman, a huge disservice.

Okay, rant over. Barry Lyga story aside, Geektastic was amazing - as the title promises, both geeky and fantastic. Because my copy was an ARC I won from Lenore, it didn't include Sara Zarr's short story, which wasn't ready in time. Also, the stories are alternated by mini-comics by awesome couple Hope Larson and Bryan Lee O'Malley, but the ARC only includes Hope Larson's illustrations. I may have shed a tear or two over this, but hey, I was going to buy a finished copy anyway. This is just one extra reason to do so.

Even though I know next to nothing about Star Trek, have never watched Buffy (I know), and have equally limited knowledge in several other areas of geekiness, I could still really related to most of these characters: they are passionate and enthusiastic, and they're not afraid to show it. This John Green video explains why being a geek is awesome better than I could, so I'll leave you with it:



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One Shot Southeast Asia - Trese and Filipino Myths

As many of you probably know, a one shot on Southeast Asia is being hosted at Chasing Ray today. You can click the link for a full explanation, but basically, the idea is to have a group of bloggers (anyone who wants to participate) feature authors from or books set in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia or the Philippines today.

The book I decided to read was Trese: Unreported Murders by Budjette Tan and Kajo Baldisimo. This is the second book in a Filipino comic book series; you can click here to read my thoughts on book one. The series is set in Manila, and its protagonist, Alexandra Trese, is a club-owner and police consultant. As the back of the book tells us, When crime takes a turn for the weird, the police call Alexandra Trese.

Like the first book in the series, Trese: Unreported Murders collects four stories, each of them a different case. Because each story stands on its own, I don't think they necessarily have to be read in order. These are supernatural mysteries, yes, but what makes them so interesting is that they're based on Filipino mythology and folklore. Like her father before her, Alexandra Trese knows how to deal with the mysterious world that hides beneath the surface of Manila. Within these pages we encounter duwendes, the Laman Lupa, the tikanak, lightening elemental spirits, and even dragons and zombies.

The four stories collected in this book are not very long, which makes me worry that if I tell you about them in detail I'll be saying too much. So I'll just briefly highlight my two favourites: in "A Little Known Murder in Studio 4", Trese helps the police investigate the death of a young actress, and ends up discovering what the cost of fame may be. And in "The Association Dues of Livewell Village", she investigates a village whose inhabits are uncommonly fortunate, except for one mysterious death each year.

Let me show you the art - the style is actually quite different from what I normally enjoy, but I think it really suits the gritty, noir feel of the series:



I don't think Trese is available outside the Philippines yet (my friend and book twin, Lightheaded, was kind enough to send me the first two books), but the good news is that it can be read in its entirety online. Also, the book left me in the mood for more Filipino myths and folktales, which fortunately are also available at sites like Surlalune, Project Guntenberg, and Professor D. L. Ashliman's folktales library. This means I can follow my reading whims without breaking my book-buying ban, hooray.

I'll leave you with a quote from the afterword, written by Karen Kunawicz:

Moreover, at the core, the stories of Trese deal with very real emotions—fear, vengefulness, desire, restlessness, and heartbreak, whether it's a human or a mythical creature feeling it.

To learn more about books and authors from Southeast Asia, visit the link round-up at Chasing Ray. Have you read any good books from or set in any of these countries? If so, I'd love to hear about them.

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The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

The History of Love’s two narrators are fourteen-year-old Alma Singer, named after a character from an obscure book named The History of Love, and Leo Gursky, a retired locksmith and Holocaust survivor. Alma has been trying to make her widowed mother feel less sad for years, while also worrying about survival in the wild, her brother, who everyone calls Bird due to his tendency to jump from high places, and her friendship and maybe something more with Misha.

As for Leo, he fears that he’s disappearing, and so every day he comes up with a plan to make himself noticed. His biggest fear is to die in a day when he hasn’t been seen by anyone, so when he goes out he does goofy or clumsy things to make sure people actually see him. Leo still often thinks of Alma, a girl he loved as a young man in Poland long ago. Like Alma Singer, the book The History of Love is at the centre of his life.

I think it takes a lot of talent to write a book that deals with loneliness this deep, with losses this immense, without actually being depressing. It takes a lot to combine sadness and humour as well as Nicole Krauss does. The writing is what makes this book so perfect: it’s so tender, so funny, so moving. Both narrators’ voices are so unique. Reading this I was reminded of Eleanor Rigby by Douglas Coupland, one of my all-time favourite books. The books aren't actually all that similar, but this should give you an idea of how much I enjoyed The History of Love.

I love quirky, smart young narrators, and Alma is nothing if not one. And I love older narrators, and often wish there were more of them in fiction. I should specify that I love them if they’re real and complex and not just a token old person, and Leo Gursky absolutely is. Finally, I love stories about stories, and, among many other things, The History of Love is one: a story about the power of writing and memory, about how stories make us real, about how they are real in their own unique way.

And another thing The History of Love is about is, well, human connections of all kinds: falling in love, family ties, friendship, small gestures of kindness between strangers, anything you can think of, really. Nicole Krauss brilliantly explores their importance, and the gap their absence leaves in people's lives.

The one thing about this novel I was less than thrilled about was the ending. I didn’t know what to make of it, and so I waited a while to write this post. Over a week later, I still don’t know what to think. This is not a novel that asks for a neat resolution, I don’t think, but the way it ended felt a little too abrupt to me. I suspect that was part of the point, though, and that I’ll appreciate the ending more on a second read.

Favourite passages:

The idea of evolution is so beautiful and sad. Since the earliest life on earth, there have been somewhere between five and fifty billion species, only five to fifty million of which are alive today. So, ninety-nine percent of all the species that have ever lived on earth are extinct.

He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it. It was like living with an elephant. His room was tiny, and every morning he had to squeeze around the truth to go to the bathroom. To reach the armoire to get a pair of underpants he had to crawl under the truth, praying it wouldn’t choose that moment to sit on his face. At night, when he closed his eyes, he felt it looming above him.

At the end, all that’s left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that’s why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.

Other Opinions:
Shelf Love
Vulpe Libris
Books.Lists.Life
Kiss a Cloud
B&B Ex-Libris
A Reader’s Journal
In Spring it is the Dawn

(Did I miss yours?)

And here’s a video of Nicole Krauss talking about writing:

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