finally July
LJ isn't letting me post comments, for some reason. But I've been reading, and sending love to all of you.
***
June was a pretty craptastic month, around here. I spent all of five days at home without company. The entire rest of the month was a chaotic blur: Grandpa's funeral, Trinity's injury, a wedding, a family reunion, a birthday party, babysitting my difficult niece, another family reunion, friends from Switzerland, a family meeting...
I am exhausted. And my sister is now having a personal crisis, so we've decided to head to Colorado for a few days in the middle of July to... I don't know. Offer distraction? We're planning to fold the family visit into a wider vacation - maybe turning it into an epic road trip, if we can manage - but what I really want to do is help a friend finish a 50 mile endurance ride with her horse, lay about in the sunshine for a few days, and just... breathe the smells of horse sweat and leather. :S But she's my sister, and apparently this is my year for family obligations, so. (shrugs)
***
I... never thought I'd say it, but I'm kind of ready for winter already. As much as I hate cold weather, I'm ready to hibernate for a month or two.
***
Still! It hasn't been all bad... when I'm stressed, I can't sleep. And when I can't sleep, I read. Like, a lot. And after bouncing off a stack of books back in the spring, I've sort of hit a roll where I've loved almost everything I've picked up. (Which, upon reflection, may say more about my own headspace than it does about the actual quality of the books I've read, but still.)
Here are some of my favorites:
THE MEMORY GARDEN by Mary Rickert - similar in texture to Alice Hoffman or Sarah Addison Allen. It carries a darker subtext and thicker shadows than Allen's sugared charm, but brighter clarity than some of Hoffman's more ambiguous works. It's about life and living, death and dying, magic and memory - and about the ways in which the bonds of friendship hold us together. I loved it. From the back: "Bay Singer has bigger secrets than most." And when a trio of women visit unexpectedly, those secrets come to light. There's a shoe garden and a flower feast and ghosts and it's delightful. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
THE GIRLS AT THE KINGFISHER CLUB by Genevieve Valentine - my new favorite book. This is MARVELOUS. It's "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" framed in the speakeasies of 1920s Manhattan. I adored the way Valentine uses narrative distance to illustrate the position of the girls, and the way she slowly breaks the barriers as the girls seize chances to define themselves. Don't be fooled into thinking this is just another fairy tale retold in a modern version - Valentine has brilliantly re-imagined the entire thing and woven a perfect blend of history, romance, and sisterhood. (I had one tiny, tiny quibble involving the father, but it's a spoiler so I'll keep quiet. Really, this book is wonderful.) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. From the flap: "The Hamilton sisters weren't supposed to exist. Joseph Hamilton wanted a male heir, and his wife did her best. But in the end, he was disappointed, left with no son, no wife, and twelve girls..."
HARVEST by Jim Crace - best suited to rainy autumn evenings, I think, but lovely any time of year. It's a slow exploration of the inevitability of change and the price of progress set against a gorgeous backdrop of a small farming village. A whisper of intrigue, of magic, breathes through the lyrical prose and makes the quiet story utterly compelling. It's slightly... not sad, not exactly, but sort of nostalgic. Filled with soft regret and guilty shadows, but not without hope. From the back: "On the morning after harvest, a trio of outsiders arrives in a remote village and sets up camp, announcing themselves in smoke. That same night, however, the local manor house also catches ablaze." These two fires chart the course of the story...
BOLETO by Alyson Hagy - about a Wyoming cowboy and the fancy filly he intends to train as a polo pony. About class and expectation, family obligations, and horses. Always horses. Beautifully written and totally authentic - I swear, I met these characters at the ranches in Wyoming - and a pleasure to read, even though it isn't exactly a happy story. (The main horse doesn't die, but oh, there are a million ways for a horse to break your heart.) Bleak and beautiful, all at the same time.
CALIFORNIA BONES by Greg Van Eekhout - ack! Loved this book - and also hated it, and probably can't read the sequel because it gave me nightmares for three nights in a row. :P This is about an alternate Los Angeles, a place where blood-and-bone magic shapes the world and the stakes involve more than just survival. It's unlike anything else I've ever read - the premise is fascinating and well-imagined, the characters are mostly likeable, and the suspense will keep you turning pages. But, oh, I just... Well, here's the flap and you can see for yourself: "When Daniel Blackland was six, he ingested his first bone fragment, a bit of kraken spine plucked out of the sand during a visit with his demanding, brilliant, and powerful magician father, Sebastian." In the years that follow, Daniel is carefully fed bones to augment his own powers, ingesting attributes of the creatures he consumes. Which is... a cool idea, but terrifying. And since it involves cannibalism, I just... ick. But the ick is no reflection on the book or Van Eekhout's skill! Just... be warned. :P
THE MUSEUM OF EXTRAORDINARY THINGS by Alice Hoffman - not one of my favorite Hoffman works, I'll be honest. Set in 1911 New York, in a museum of "wonders" at Coney Island where a young girl confronts the truth about her father and herself and manages to find real love in a world of illusion. But it reads, too often, as a history lesson and some of the descriptive passages are repeated from one section to another. Still, it's an interesting premise and probably worth a read, if you're interested in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, Coney Island, and the growth of photography. Also, I loved the descriptions of swimming in the river.
THE STOCKHOLM OCTAVO by Karen Engelmann - another one of my new favorite books. This is GORGEOUS. Set against late-eighteenth-century Stockholm, this is historical fiction/fantasy at its best. Bright with the glitter of a gilded age and shadowed by the turbulence of the French Revolution, Engelmann has woven a complex story of love and loyalty, intrigue and the occult. The story revolves around a customs official trying to keep his job by finding a wife - he consults Mrs. Sparrow with her cards and insights and visions, and embarks upon a journey that will change him even as the course of his country changes. This book makes me covet - covet, I tell you - a lace fan. :) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
THE LOST SISTERHOOD by Anne Fortier - this involves a secret sisterhood of Amazon women, a society that has persisted even unto modern times to right the wrongs done against other women. Diana Morgan, an Oxford lecturer facing ridicule and professional censure for her obsession with the Amazons of antiquity, is drawn into a mystery when her eccentric grandmother vanishes, leaving her a notebook of symbols and their translations. Her grandmother claimed to be an Amazon, and when Diana is engaged to translate symbols found in a temple she discovers that her grandmother's ravings might have been more than just stories. It's a fun read, though ultimately disappointing for me because the history of the Amazons felt so simplistic and elementary. Of course, I've been pretty much immersed in Bronze Age history for... ahem... quite a while, so I've become intimately familiar with the stories she used as inspiration and wanted... more, I guess. Still, it's a good story for distraction - a quick, easy read and highly entertaining, if it lacks substance. And I did like some of the ways she shifted the Homeric traditions.
Also, reading the cheap/free stuff on kindle is HILARIOUS. Probably unintentionally so, more often than not, but when you need some entertainment, lo! There is a wide world out there... :P (Erm, no disrespect intended to anyone who self publishes on kindle, either. I've read some good stuff, too.)
Okay... that's probably enough for now. :)
***
June was a pretty craptastic month, around here. I spent all of five days at home without company. The entire rest of the month was a chaotic blur: Grandpa's funeral, Trinity's injury, a wedding, a family reunion, a birthday party, babysitting my difficult niece, another family reunion, friends from Switzerland, a family meeting...
I am exhausted. And my sister is now having a personal crisis, so we've decided to head to Colorado for a few days in the middle of July to... I don't know. Offer distraction? We're planning to fold the family visit into a wider vacation - maybe turning it into an epic road trip, if we can manage - but what I really want to do is help a friend finish a 50 mile endurance ride with her horse, lay about in the sunshine for a few days, and just... breathe the smells of horse sweat and leather. :S But she's my sister, and apparently this is my year for family obligations, so. (shrugs)
***
I... never thought I'd say it, but I'm kind of ready for winter already. As much as I hate cold weather, I'm ready to hibernate for a month or two.
***
Still! It hasn't been all bad... when I'm stressed, I can't sleep. And when I can't sleep, I read. Like, a lot. And after bouncing off a stack of books back in the spring, I've sort of hit a roll where I've loved almost everything I've picked up. (Which, upon reflection, may say more about my own headspace than it does about the actual quality of the books I've read, but still.)
Here are some of my favorites:
THE MEMORY GARDEN by Mary Rickert - similar in texture to Alice Hoffman or Sarah Addison Allen. It carries a darker subtext and thicker shadows than Allen's sugared charm, but brighter clarity than some of Hoffman's more ambiguous works. It's about life and living, death and dying, magic and memory - and about the ways in which the bonds of friendship hold us together. I loved it. From the back: "Bay Singer has bigger secrets than most." And when a trio of women visit unexpectedly, those secrets come to light. There's a shoe garden and a flower feast and ghosts and it's delightful. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
THE GIRLS AT THE KINGFISHER CLUB by Genevieve Valentine - my new favorite book. This is MARVELOUS. It's "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" framed in the speakeasies of 1920s Manhattan. I adored the way Valentine uses narrative distance to illustrate the position of the girls, and the way she slowly breaks the barriers as the girls seize chances to define themselves. Don't be fooled into thinking this is just another fairy tale retold in a modern version - Valentine has brilliantly re-imagined the entire thing and woven a perfect blend of history, romance, and sisterhood. (I had one tiny, tiny quibble involving the father, but it's a spoiler so I'll keep quiet. Really, this book is wonderful.) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. From the flap: "The Hamilton sisters weren't supposed to exist. Joseph Hamilton wanted a male heir, and his wife did her best. But in the end, he was disappointed, left with no son, no wife, and twelve girls..."
HARVEST by Jim Crace - best suited to rainy autumn evenings, I think, but lovely any time of year. It's a slow exploration of the inevitability of change and the price of progress set against a gorgeous backdrop of a small farming village. A whisper of intrigue, of magic, breathes through the lyrical prose and makes the quiet story utterly compelling. It's slightly... not sad, not exactly, but sort of nostalgic. Filled with soft regret and guilty shadows, but not without hope. From the back: "On the morning after harvest, a trio of outsiders arrives in a remote village and sets up camp, announcing themselves in smoke. That same night, however, the local manor house also catches ablaze." These two fires chart the course of the story...
BOLETO by Alyson Hagy - about a Wyoming cowboy and the fancy filly he intends to train as a polo pony. About class and expectation, family obligations, and horses. Always horses. Beautifully written and totally authentic - I swear, I met these characters at the ranches in Wyoming - and a pleasure to read, even though it isn't exactly a happy story. (The main horse doesn't die, but oh, there are a million ways for a horse to break your heart.) Bleak and beautiful, all at the same time.
CALIFORNIA BONES by Greg Van Eekhout - ack! Loved this book - and also hated it, and probably can't read the sequel because it gave me nightmares for three nights in a row. :P This is about an alternate Los Angeles, a place where blood-and-bone magic shapes the world and the stakes involve more than just survival. It's unlike anything else I've ever read - the premise is fascinating and well-imagined, the characters are mostly likeable, and the suspense will keep you turning pages. But, oh, I just... Well, here's the flap and you can see for yourself: "When Daniel Blackland was six, he ingested his first bone fragment, a bit of kraken spine plucked out of the sand during a visit with his demanding, brilliant, and powerful magician father, Sebastian." In the years that follow, Daniel is carefully fed bones to augment his own powers, ingesting attributes of the creatures he consumes. Which is... a cool idea, but terrifying. And since it involves cannibalism, I just... ick. But the ick is no reflection on the book or Van Eekhout's skill! Just... be warned. :P
THE MUSEUM OF EXTRAORDINARY THINGS by Alice Hoffman - not one of my favorite Hoffman works, I'll be honest. Set in 1911 New York, in a museum of "wonders" at Coney Island where a young girl confronts the truth about her father and herself and manages to find real love in a world of illusion. But it reads, too often, as a history lesson and some of the descriptive passages are repeated from one section to another. Still, it's an interesting premise and probably worth a read, if you're interested in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, Coney Island, and the growth of photography. Also, I loved the descriptions of swimming in the river.
THE STOCKHOLM OCTAVO by Karen Engelmann - another one of my new favorite books. This is GORGEOUS. Set against late-eighteenth-century Stockholm, this is historical fiction/fantasy at its best. Bright with the glitter of a gilded age and shadowed by the turbulence of the French Revolution, Engelmann has woven a complex story of love and loyalty, intrigue and the occult. The story revolves around a customs official trying to keep his job by finding a wife - he consults Mrs. Sparrow with her cards and insights and visions, and embarks upon a journey that will change him even as the course of his country changes. This book makes me covet - covet, I tell you - a lace fan. :) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
THE LOST SISTERHOOD by Anne Fortier - this involves a secret sisterhood of Amazon women, a society that has persisted even unto modern times to right the wrongs done against other women. Diana Morgan, an Oxford lecturer facing ridicule and professional censure for her obsession with the Amazons of antiquity, is drawn into a mystery when her eccentric grandmother vanishes, leaving her a notebook of symbols and their translations. Her grandmother claimed to be an Amazon, and when Diana is engaged to translate symbols found in a temple she discovers that her grandmother's ravings might have been more than just stories. It's a fun read, though ultimately disappointing for me because the history of the Amazons felt so simplistic and elementary. Of course, I've been pretty much immersed in Bronze Age history for... ahem... quite a while, so I've become intimately familiar with the stories she used as inspiration and wanted... more, I guess. Still, it's a good story for distraction - a quick, easy read and highly entertaining, if it lacks substance. And I did like some of the ways she shifted the Homeric traditions.
Also, reading the cheap/free stuff on kindle is HILARIOUS. Probably unintentionally so, more often than not, but when you need some entertainment, lo! There is a wide world out there... :P (Erm, no disrespect intended to anyone who self publishes on kindle, either. I've read some good stuff, too.)
Okay... that's probably enough for now. :)