Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon

This is BOOK TWO of the Outlander series. If you care about spoilers and have not read book one [or if you have only seen the show (whyhaveyounotseentheshowjustlookathim)], you've been warned.

Amazon Link

I first read Outlander on the longest. planeride. ever. back in 2003, but somehow I didn't realize it was a series because I was in my "punk rock journalist" phase and wasn't reading books (that didn't last long, Music is loud.). So back when book 6? 7? came out, I read the whole extant series. Now that the show is happening and there's a new book out, I'm revisiting over the holidays.

Here is how you feel when you finish Outlander:

And here is what happens when you start chapter 1 of DiA:

Then you go to Goodreads or Amazon or Diana Gabaldon's website and check to see if somehow the publishers are calling any old follow-up a sequel these days, and what is the language coming to? But no, this is definitely book 2.

If you'd asked me before I started this re-read, I'd have said that one of the strengths of the Outlander series is how Gabaldon avoids the trap of having her characters interact with Famous People from the Past at every available opportunity. By-and-large, that's still true as far as I remember, but I had forgotten this book.

Errrrone be famous in here. It's like one of those movies with the poster full of Name Brand Actors, and I'm really glad that Gabaldon shifted away after this book. There are dukes and duchesses and Ladies of the Court, two kings (or rather, a Real King and a Boy Who Would Be King), a bunch of Highlander chieftains, and probably some other famous characters I didn't recognize. And all of them looooove Jamie and Claire. Which is fine but you have to be willing to take your disbelief and put it on a slow ship to somewhere Far Far Away (Madagascar? Sierra Leone? Rio?). I like fantasy and time travel so I am very experienced at this particular trick. Plus Jamie is an idealized man and Claire is, of course, all of us ladies who deserve an ideal husband, so of course everyone would simply adore them both.

This is the book where the Frasers try to change history so that the massacre at Culloden doesn't happen, and I'm a little embarrassed to say that as much of an Anglophile as I am, approximately 98.7% of my knowledge of Scottish history comes from these books; Austen, Bronte, Dickens, Gaskell, and Hardy have all failed me in this regard and should be properly ashamed of themselves. Needless to say, those of us acquainted with the Rules of Time Travel know that there are fixed points in history that have to happen, and apparently Culloden was one of them. Something something about being able to change little things but not major events, blah blah.

Most of the book is spent at the court of whichever Louis was king at that point - I've returned the book so I can't look it up - and we get some interesting observations about What Life Was Like Back Then. Mostly cold and smelly, it would seem. We also meet Fergus, who is one of my favorite characters; I have a thing for plucky orphans.

The story is crafted well enough that by the end, you've mostly forgotten the WTF moment at the beginning, so when it comes around again at the end, it's a bit of a shock. - quite the clever little device.

Outlander is great fluffy fun with a main course of Historical Fiction, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the whole thing. It is worth noting, however, that no one in these books gets the plague or sails down the river in a punt wearing a boater, so the Jury of Me is still out on whether Connie Willis still wins everything.

Just kidding. Of course Connie Willis wins everything. But the new show of Outlander has some pretty great knits in it, and also kilts.

8 out of 11 Highlanders in Full Regalia

I should also mention that I'm participating in the Cannonball Read 7's Full Cannon for 2015, wherein I intend to read and blog about 52 books. For those of you coming over here from there, a few notes:
- the alphabet tags are for the first letter of the title and the author's last name, respectively.
- I use my own rating system, which shifts around somewhat but always goes to 11.

The Girl who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There - Catherynne M. Valente

Sometimes you finish a book that was ohhhhhkay and you feel like all the good books were written in the past, and you're so woebegone that you ignore the somewhat glaring inconsistency that by definition ALL published books were written in the past.

"Books today," you think, "are just not what they used to be. I'm going to go back to classics and books with dragons on the covers.*"

And then you feel very smug with yourself and pick up this slim novel by Catherynne M. Valente, promising yourself that it's nothing but Brontes and Dickens and Collins after this because at least they weren't writing to be able to sell movie rights. This is when Valente - who is a year younger than you, what have you been doing with your life?!? - takes you by your smug nose and teaches an object lesson in Creative Writing.

Chapter 1: Exuent in a Rowboat, Pursued by Crows

 Valente's imagination should be a national treasure. Her work is full of the details that make Oz and Wonderland such indelible places.

"Once upon a time, a girl named September had a secret."

This is the second book in the The Girl Who series, which I'm sure has a better, more proper name but who cares about that. The point is, in theory you've already read the first book or at least heard its title, which is The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making. Thus it is not a spoiler to tell you that September's secret is that she has been to Fairyland before, and it's not much of a spoiler to tell you that - much like the rest of us would if we had been September - she spent a large portion of her time thinking about how to get back.

"Now, secrets are delicate things. They can fill you up with sweetness and leave you like a cat who has found a particularly fat sparrow to eat and did not get clawed or bitten even once while she was about it."

Nice job, Puss.

But they can also get stuck inside you, and very slowly boil up your bones for their bitter soup. So we may be very glad that September had the better of her secret...

Those are some Trufax (TM), you guys, and it's only page 1.  Observe page 180, if you please:

Wit laughed, which for a crow is a loud, rough sound. Crows look down a bit on birds that make pretty, trilling sounds. Pandering to humans, they say. Just shameless.

I gobbled this book up and ordered the third one from the library, tout de suite.

10.5 out of 11 Mazes that wouldn't be caught dead without a minotaur. It's not done!

*Can we please have a moment of silence for Anne McCaffrey, without whom  I would probably not be here - either as a writer or as a reader of books. Pern is a much beloved mark on my soul, and if the future doesn't bring me a fire lizard then what, I ask you, is science even for?

The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon

I picked this up after my cat knocked The Interestings off of my nightstand on the very day I was considering DNF'ing it. "Just a few pages," I thought to myself. "It's important to know if this is a reading rut or if it's just that book in particular."

Yea, fuck you glasses case!

Well, it was that book in particular.

Wolitzer's use of language was fantastic, but I found her story to be lacking. Similarly, Lyon's writing is engaging, but the story wasn't the crazy revelation of ancient hijinks that I was (for no particular reason) expecting. Instead, it was what I can only describe as... hazy. As if Aristotle were telling his story through the fog of old age, describing events and loves of his life without regard to things that didn't really affect him.

Things that affect teenaged me: Jared Leto's earnest face. And eyeliner.

Also hazy in that sense of, everything felt really hot and languid - that's the word, languid! Don't say it too many times or it won't sound like a word at all. It was a fascinating re-telling, in which Alexander the Great figured hardly at all - a bold choice for a story about the time in Aristotle's life when he was Alexander's tutor.

A tutor who neglected to explain about hairstyles, obvs. LORD that is some bad hair.

And Aristotle himself? Noooooot super-likeable. He was kind of a dick to his wife, Pythias, and there was this weird homoerotic tension between him and... well, everyone else. And then there was this awesome maid but she said something snappish to Aristotle while his wife was having their baby, so she got dismissed, end of her part in the story.

This is the weird thing about writing based on the actual life events of people: there's not really a purpose for a lot of things that happen IRL (as kids these days say), but I like fiction and tidy bows on things and emotionful reasons for dismissing your wife's favorite servant who may or may not have saved her life that one time. But instead? Aristotle dismissed her and we hear no more about her at all.

This is not why I read books.

But EVEN SO, I liked the writing and the book didn't make me grumpy even though I sound that way. ARISTOTLE makes me grumpy, with his servant-dismissing ways and his bizarre treatment of Alexander the Not-Yet-Great's seriously fucking weird behavior. How much of that is based on historical record? It sounds like that guy was seriously disturbed. Everything I know about him, I learned from reading Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George, and now this strange novel.

You would think I would know more about Alexander; many of my paternal relatives carry that name, and I have not one but TWO brothers named after Mr. the Great. But the more I learn, the more I think that maybe... not such a great guy.

Staaaahp being such a jerk, Alexander the Worst.

You'll have to forgive me, I've been watching New Girl all day and I'm feeling witty after a couple of glasses of wine and a very successful experience with my new Le Creuset stockpot. It'll pass soon.

7.5 out of 11 Literal Caves - Not Those Mind Caves Like Plato, Who Was Aristotle's Teacher

Sapphire Blue - Kerstin Gier

I want to kiss whoever designed these covers on the mouth.

Remember how I got all excitable about The Fire Chronicle being a Good Middle Book in a trilogy, and how that is rare? (Review of Book 1 here)

This is another example! I am tickled pink. I may like this one even better than the first book, but at the very least it’s a photo finish. 

So do you, David. So. Do. You.

All right. There have been 10 time travelers before Gwen (the Ruby) and Gideon (the... Diamond? I had to return the book to the library...), and two of them went rogue. They - Lucy and Paul who went rogue, not Gwen and Gideon - stole the chronograph with the blood samples of nearly all of the previous time travelers and disappeared with it into the past so that the final travelers couldn’t be “read” in - that is, put their blood in the machine - and complete the Circle of Twelve, which we learn could be a Very Bad Thing instead of the Goal of the Circle as we previously thought. Those of us who have read Justin Cronin's books will immediately recognize the number twelve as a very. bad. number. indeed.

There’s a page in the book where all the gemstones are attached to their correct people, along with their musical notes, spirit animals, and a VERY VAGUE reference to their specific magical power. I am lazy and forgot to mark it, but Gwen’s magical power is something about speaking with the voice of the raven, and I am like “I KNOW WHAT THAT POWER IS” because waaaaaay back at the beginning of book 1, Gwen reveals that she sees and interacts with ghosts. And ravens, in case you come from a different place where this is not canon, are messengers between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

This guy also saw ghosts!   

Ok, but lest we forget, Gwen is a teenager, so she is ALSO busy figuring out what on earth Gideon is doing, because he makes out with her one day and then berates her for not knowing how to properly gavotte the next – and really, who can blame him? Doesn’t everyone know how to gavotte? Silly Gwen.

I imagine it looks something like this.

And in the mean time, there is more time travel and more costuming and more creepy 18^th century shenanigans, along with the Drinking of Punch at a Ball! And Gwen gets adopted by the ghost of a gargoyle named Xemerius, who says things like this:

“Leave her alone, can’t you see she’s unhappy in love, bonehead? All because of you!”

I need one of these little guys to follow me around and yell hilarious things at bonehead dudes. Or just people in general, even if I'm the only one who can hear him.

I basically laid in bed for an entire Saturday and read this book, and I wasn't even sick! The pacing is brilliant, the Golden Rule of Show-Don't-Tell is followed scrupulously, and everything is brilliant. Book three can be published any time now. Do you hear me publishers? ANY. TIME.

8.5 out of 11 Glasses of 18th c. Punch - Alcohol Included for Fun! 

Ruby Red - Kerstin Gier

Well hello there, Young Adult Novel Cover. You’re looking very pretty today! Oh, what? You’ve got an interesting story between your covers?  Well don’t we all, sweetheart.  Don’t. We. All.

The way time travel works in this book is similar to the way time travel works in The Time Traveler’s Wife except for the minor difference that this book is awesome and that other book sucked. What I mean to say is that in this world, if you have the time traveling gene, you will travel in time without knowing where you’re going or when you are going there, so it makes living a regular life a wee bit difficult.

Especially when you don’t know you’re the one with the gene, and your snooty cousin has been preparing for her time travelling future for her entire life while you’ve been watching movies with your friends.

Someone at some point in time

created a chronograph that allows time travellers to  burn off their need to be in a different time in a safe place – or, y’know, in 18^th century London. Whichever. But it’s powered by the blood of the time travelers, and there are mysteries, and a creepy dude with mind powers, and it’s just pretty great.

It turns out that Kerstin Gier is a big chick-lit novelist in her native Germany, and the Ruby Red trilogy is her foray into young adult literature. And foray she does, meinen damen und herren. I thoroughly enjoyed this one – enough that when my cousin [who emigrated to Germany and married a Czech guy – she’s very international (hi Paige!)] asked for book recommendations for her sister, I suggested this one without knowing about Gier’s German roots. Paige hauled off and read ALL THREE BOOKS in German, which I feel is distinctly unfair as the third book isn’t out in English until next year.

And speaking of translations, a HUGE shout-out to Anthea Bell, whose translation is utterly flawless. I tip my fan to you, madam.

8.5 out of 11 Fancy Feathered 18^th Century Hats 

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn

My experience with reading Gone Girl was long and sporadic. I got the book from my library's 7-Day Checkout shelf back in July, then returned it unread because I didn't want to read anything disturbing. I put my name in the hold queue (#65 of 65) and forgot about it. Then in December it showed up again on the 7-Day shelf, but I had to stop reading 90 pages before the end because I have a very wibbly relationship with time. And then 2 days ago, my turn in the queue came up and I got to finish the book, so yay serendipity?

Megs has read this, and so has Alice. I think mostly everyone has? But for those of you who have not, I am declaring this post AND the comments a Safe Zone for Spoilers, because  I want to talk about the rampant Whiskey Tango Foxtrot that happened in this book and no one else has been able to do it.

You've been warned.

All right, People Who Are Left. What a roller coaster ride that was. I think I might have whiplash. 

First, we sympathize with Amy because she’s smart and trying so hard, isn’t she? How sad it is that her relationship is so different from how it seemed. And then BAM! Somewhere around page 140 we find out she’s the elected president of the Democratic Republic of Liarland and we start to sympathize more with Nick, who after all isn’t really thaaaaat bad. And then Desi comes along and we’re like, holy shitballs, that guy has a Bates complex and his Mommy Dearest is a little overbearing, isnt’t she? But he’s not sooooo bad – just a minor character who’s a little obsessed, and who hasn’t been a little obsessed with someone, y’know? Remember when she threw herself down the stairs?

And then Amy gets robbed and we’re like, YES! You deserved that, you whorecrux! And then… wow Desi ends up being cah-razy. Like, Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood crazy, drinking milkshakes out of other people’s yards and such, and we think, maybe Amy’s not so awful that she deserves THIS.

And meantime, Nick is planning to kill her when she comes back and we still kind of think she deserves it a little, but she shows up and then we think she pretty much DEFINITELY deserves it, that crazy bitch. And then we’re not sure who is awfuler, but maybe Nick will get out of there and Amy will go to jail because she murdered someone in cold blood and faked rape wounds now we have to feel sorry for that crazy, horrible mother about her crazy, horrible son, which is distinctly uncomfortable.  

BUT she does not go to jail because Nick decides to stop pursuing this line of thought because – oh my sweet nutbar Aunt Matchi, you guys, the Crazy Train stops twice a day in this town – Amy is preggers despite them not having sex for eeeehver. She is a psychopath whom I have to admire a little – that bitch thinks of everything. 

And in the end, I was strangely satisfied that they ended up together because that amount of sociopathy should NOT be loose upon the world at large. 

8 out of 11 Romantic Treasure Hunts

Grapes of Wrath RAL - The Annoyance

Well helloooooo, Steinbeck, you old stick! We haven't spent as much time together as some other people ::coughEveryoneinthisread-a-longcough::, but I'm sure you'll forgive me. You see, I got distracted by being in California's wine country, which I'm sure you will agree is an acceptable reason not to read anything except terrible romance novels. I'm not sure how this book will end - although people keep threatening tears - and I really canNOT handle tears while I'm drinking wine.

SO. Let's discuss your first three two* chapters and overlook the fact that I am obviously still That Girl in class who never did the reading and got an A anyway. My future PhD in Lit Crit is virtually assured by my ability to bullshit my way through just about any literary discussion using the double-barrelled shotgun that is Betty Friedan and Sylvia Plath. But I digress (shocking)!

CHAPTER 1:

In which things are grey and dreary and pre-Oz black-and-white, and then there's this amazing, almost Biblical description of  how people survive under such conditions without some ruby shoes:

"Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent and they did not move often, And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men - to feel whether this time the men would break." 

UGGGHHHHH the bleakness and the stillness and the general depressiveness gives me a pre-emptive sad because technically NOTHING HAS HAPPENED YET.

Bring it, JStein.

CHAPTER 2:

In which a guy skilfully entraps a truck driver into giving him a ride in a truck that says, "No Rides" right on the window, and then reveals that he (the hitchhiker) is a murderer, sentenced to 7 years but "sprung in four for keepin' my nose clean."

Okay, Steinbeck. You got me. I skimmed through the first 19 pages again today in order to write this post, and found myself stopping to actually read over and over again. I was planning to play video games tonight because it's Tuesday, but I think instead...

*I opened my book to my bookmark and found it in the first page of chapter 3, meaning I stopped 19 pages in and didn't even get to the land turtle. Honestly, this is just embarrassing.

Grapes of Wrath - The Perplexment

The Cult of Wilkie is branching out into other authors (I KNOW!) and Laura over at Devouring Texts is hosting and I am, as per usual, late to the party even though I have been anticipating this read-a-long for weeks and Laura and Alice have been reminding me via Twitter that I need to buy the book.

Which I did! And only at the Best Bookstore Ever, thankyouverymuch.

And while at that bookstore I also bought some other cool stuff like more books and a blank notebook with a snarky quote by Oscar Wilde (is there any other kind?) which I then crammed into my suitcase and squished the dress I wore to my cousin's wedding, which I then had to IRON!

But it's okay because some guy at the wedding said I looked amazing in polka dots (I was wearing stripes) and then stared at my boobs the entire time we danced, which was most of the night because everyone else was already married.

Clearly the ironing was worth it.

Anyway, this post is supposed to be about how we feel about STEINBECK!* I'm hedging mightily because it turns out I managed to avoid Steinbeck in both high school and college, and so my opinions can mostly be summed up as "I went to Cannery Row in Monterey once and got drunk with my best friend."

It was a positive experience and I have a soft spot for Monterey because my mom lived in a teeeeeeny tiny red house there when she was "my age" (meaning before she married my dad and had kids, which means around 22. I am no longer 22).

Laura has promised that this book will rock my world. My hooks: they are tentered.

Tenterhooks!

*I was originally going to read all the rest of your posts and then poach from them, but I thought that would be lame and make my post late(r). Also, I just got back from the aforementioned wedding and had 500 meetings to schedule instead of blogging at work. Don't they understand I have a blogging calendar to maintain? RUDE!