Things you might be interested in...

Recently I:

Met Jeanne from Necromancy Never Pays and her family: I was a lttle nervous about meeting a whole family all together, but they really put me at ease just because they were so full of things to talk about despite their serious jet lag. I took them to ‘The Dirty Duck’ where we talked about all the differences between US and UK stuff, which continue to amaze me, because we absorb so much US tv here that it sometimes seems like we must be one and the same country. Such nice people and it sounds like the rest of their Brit trip was a success.

Went to Madrid with its gorgeous 35 degree heat: Ah if only all life could be a holiday. Highlights were a return to The Prado Museum, a visit inside the Royal Palace, a trip to Retiro Park (home to the only statue to Lucifer and the most gorgeous lakes with waterfalls and black swans) and a look inside a really beautiful cathedral. Sunshine, beer, sangria... If only we hadn’t been caugth up in an international air traffic problem on the way out (which meant we missed a connecting flight, do not even egt me started on why we were on connecting flights) it would have been a holiday without real trouble. Eventually I will get my act together and post photos.


I was out of the country for the riots, so, eh this might seem weird because who cares about one more blogger talking about it, I’d like to acknowledge that think about them, but I don’t really plan on talking about them here.

Booked tickets to see The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Agh!



Agh!




I still can’t believe I’m going! I’m going to have serious ‘these are not real ticket’ nightmares just before that.

Booked tickets to see The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall: Look, while a band which shaped my teenage years and hasn’t done a UK tour in 6 years is clearly the most exciting event here I’m pretty psyched that I get to see Phantom and take my first tour around The Albert Hall all in one giant gulp of a night. It’s a 25th anniversary performance, so I anticipate seeing some hardcore fans there. I will be the newbie who has only seen the film.

Aside from that it’s been reasonably quiet since I last posted. So I’ve been reading a lot of books (and a ton of fanfic, because seriously Sherlock you are not coming back until 2012? What is this? Are you aware the reboot of Torchwood has been massively unfulfilling and Dr Who is meh this year?): Wait, what kind of blog is this again?;) I have a lot of reviews backed up. I’ve been trying to increase all the totals for the kinds of books I wanted to read more of and I think I’m doing pretty well (although I still want to read more sci-fi by women, more of this in the next few months I think). My ‘read more male authors’ target looked like it had gone bubye, but in the last month or so I’ve read enough male authors to almost make my binary author gender split even. Now that we’re past half way through the year I think the main thing I want to read more of is literary fiction, maybe crack open the Dawn Powell and William Maxwell soon?

I have a few books I received for review, which need to go first (‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’, ‘Portrait of the Mother as a Young Woman’ and damn, damn me and my procrastination, this is why I don’t take review copies often ‘85A’). There’s also a mini review post written where I talk quickly about ‘Iceland’ and my reread of ‘Jazz’ but after they’re up I was wondering which of these you’d want to hear about first:

‘The Vesuvius Club’ – Mark Gatiss (almost steam punk mystery spy stuff from the guy who needs to bring me my Sherlock)
‘Strong Poison’ – Dorothy L Sayers (mystery)
‘My Legendary Girlfriend’ – Mike Gayle (lad-lit)
‘Miss Hargreaves’ – Frank Baker (classic urban fantasy)
‘Tomorrow Pamplona’ – Jan Van Mersbergen (road trip, lit-fic)
‘Wrapped’ – Jennifer Bradbury (YA Regency mystery, with spies)
‘Behemoth’ – Scott Westerfeld (YA steam punk)
‘The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms’ – N K Jeminsen (fantasy)
‘The Knife of Never Letting Go’ – Patrick Ness (sci-fi)
And I’ll try to order the reviews by level of interest. I have made a lot of notes, so it should all be fine!

Current book reading: I just finished the posthumously published last novel of Eva Ibbotson, whose Secret of Platform 13 I read over and over when I was a kid. Nymeth and I will be discussing ‘One Dog and His Boy’ later in the year. And I hope I can elicit a squeal from her after she emerges from the fug of her thesis by announcing that I have finally started ‘Night Watch’ by Sarah Waters. I really want a big, squishy piece of lit-fic, before I begin the plot driven ‘Goliath’ (no more Deryn, no more Alec).

Like I said, it’s been a bit quietish. Hey, I know what I need, an intensive few weekends of festival going, hen do drinking and wedding attending back to back! This weekend began the end of the summers schedule of fun and the lack of sleep comes to its climax. I think this year was less busy than last year’s epic summer (probably because I’m not attending all three days of a festival) but not by much. Next summer – does nothing. See you in between the events!

Not Your Average Boy Detective

I'm off to Madrid for Sangria and sunshine on Monday everyone, but I didn't want to leave you on a negative review note, so just before I start manically trying to fit things in my luggage (So many other things to do before I go that are not holiday related! Why do I let things build up so?) I thought I'd leave you with a post full of positive book appreciation.




Despite Norah McClintock’s status as a well known mystery writer her Ryan Dooley series doesn’t seem to get that much attention. When a mystery series like the Theodore Boone books is getting a lot of press it seems unfortunate that Dooley isn’t finding more fans (look I haven’t read ‘Theodore Boone’ and I’ve nothing against Grisham’s adult books, but Leila shares some quotes that make the newest installment sound less than good). So, instead of reviewing the second book in the series, ‘Homicide Related’, let me try and explain why Ryan Dooley is a mystery lovers teenage dream.

The first book of the series, ‘Dooley Takes the Fall’, was focused on the development of the Ryan Dooley’s personality and history. McClintock provided a deep look into the heart of Dooley, the teenage ex-drug addict, criminal and alcholic whose life was reshaped by his strict uncle and a pager after he was released from juvenile detention. The specifics of Dooley’s character are interesting. He’s a realistic teenager and a individual character. At the same time his experiences, allow his character to logically contain typical elements of a certain kind of detective character. He’s a gruff, self-contained narrator, with a bit of a temper. By constructing her narrator’s background in a certain way, McClintock creates a logical reason for the inclusion of genre conventions and creates a stong link between this young adult crime series and a subgenre within the adult crime/detective genre which should encourage all kinds of mystery lovers to recognise Dooley as a great character and a great genre hero.

Dooley is also a sober addict who must work hard to combat the temptations placed before him, as his investigations progress. I tend to think of the addict detective as a pretty stock character, but there’s also a growing subgroup of recovering addict detective characters (although perhaps some of you can suggest some candidates for this group as my mind can not remember any specific characters – help!). Filling the ‘detective’ role (Dooley is really a civillian investigator, but detective tends to be used as kind of general term now), with a teenager allows McClintock to put a fresh twist on this stock detective type. The reader is suddenly alerted to just how devestating something like alchol addiction, can really be as they watching a teenage character think about how drinking used to feel:

‘Jesus, what he wouldn’t do fro a drink or a joint, anything to chase away that jangly feeling inside him. He got up and went into the kitchen. His uncle kept his booze in a cupboard above the counter. When he passed it, his hand shook. It would be so easy to reach up and take down a bottle of Jack.’

whereas alchol addiction is a lot easier to excuse, or ignore in adult crime novels.

His addiction also makes him a more, eh I hestiate to say vulnerable because eh bad connotations, maybe a less defensive character than your typical hard drinking adult detective. He has a lot of insecurities to overcome because of his past. The caring relationship he has with his girlfriend Beth in this second book is always a little bit fragile, or fraught because being more secure. Dooley’s uncertainty, prompts him to be incredibly loving (if at times a bit clingy) and that is very endearing in a male character, especially when he is so physically assured and intelligent. It’s kind of beautiful to see Beth attempt to help him through some of those insecurities, once she does understand them.

Sometimes I wished Beth could get Dooley’s situation better, for example in ‘Homicide Related’ she’s totally unable to understand his pretty reasonable detachment from his mother because her background is different from his. At the same time, wuhu for a female character who doesn’t always give him a total pass for dodgy behaviour, just because he’se been influenced by his bad past. Beth can be so forgiving, but she’s not about to be controlled by her love for Dooley anymore that she’ll be controlled by her mother’s expectations. Their relationship is one of my favourite things about the series so far.

Emotions, feelings, character – this series has them all! It also has some cool mystery plots for anyone who is more interested in story than character. In my review of the first book in the series, ‘Dooley Takes the Fall’ I said the plot resolution was a bit confused, but in ‘Homicide Related’ the resolution seemed to come from a much more logical chain of mystery building. The clues were all there for a reader to guess the ending, but there was enough obscuring mystery to keep the solution from being obvious. But as I said in my review of the first book, I’m the mystery dunce, so word + salt, you form the correct dish from that recipie.

See you all in a week, have lovely days :)

‘A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers’ – Xiaolu Guo

While I was reading 'A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers' I thought I’d have lots to talk about in my review.

The novel is entirely composed uses the sentence constructions of a Chinese protagonist (Zhuang or Z as she asks to be called for simplicity’s sake), who is learning English while staying in England on a student visa, so there’s the use of language to comment on. Xiaolu Guo uses the idea of someone coming from outside English culture to humorously critique what seems ordinary to those who are native to England, so I could talk about whether the humour is, or isn’t effective. At times Guo uses Z’s confusion over the way English people talk to expose deeper cultural differences and to make jabbing points about England’s inward focus. I found some of these comments exact and rather painful to look at, so I could talk a little about how effective/not effective the novel is at suggesting new ways of looking at English culture. Much of Z’s story revolves around her insecurity and her saddening encounters with men who are often disastrous for her, which could be interesting to pick at from a feminist point of view. And yet, to be honest I really can’t get up the interest to stir my hand and fully explore any of these issues.

I keep comparing Z’s narrative voice to that of Charlie in Chris Cleave’s ‘Little Bee’, because it drove me nuts for much the same reason. Like Charlie, Z’s narrative voice is deliberately naïve; the voice of an ingénue, who appears unaware of the way much of what she says will strike the reader, or the people around her. However, Z’s comments often double as profound cultural commentary, because ‘A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers’ is a novel that wants to achieve several artistic objectives, including awakening the British reader’s conscious to the contradictory nature of cultural commonplace. The wise nature of what Z is saying is concealed from her, by her own lack of understanding and is only fully accessible to the reader. This means the book sometimes feels self-consciously manicured in its break from regular spoken language. Z is manoeuvred into specific misunderstandings that teach the reader something about their unquestioning acceptance of cultural norms, rather than being allowed the freedom to have random misunderstandings that reflect no lesson back to the reader. While this isn’t a fault of the novel (many novels set up specific plot situations to explain particular cultural, or political points to readers) Z’s comments sometimes have a twee, cutesy feel to them as a result of this textual management.

Z’s lack of understanding of British culture is realistic, because she’s written as a Chinese peasant girl who has little knowledge of the world outside her village. Guo said in an interview that the book is based on diaries she kept when she first arrived in England and I’m not questioning her novel’s sense of realism. I’m just not a fan of innocent characters who keep delivering pearls of wisdom unknowingly. I much prefer characters that start off with limited knowledge, or access to expression, but then begin to puzzle out things in their own consciousness (I’m especially thinking of D J Schwenk, from ‘Dairy Queen’).

In the end Z’s naïve way of speaking, which is necessarily manipulated to give Z’s narrative wider significance, left me feeling estranged from her story and her character. I think the technique of a novel can be interesting to examine, even if I don’t really enjoy the experience of reading that novel. However, without feeling some kind of connection to Z’s character I find that my current mood keeps me from being really interested in such an undertaking. Instead I’ll link you to a couple of reviews that I found very interesting, where the reviewers get on with the work I'm too lazy to do:

Eve’s Alexandria
Torque Control

'The Ingenious Edgar Jones' - Elizabeth Gardner

Edgar Jones is born to a mother expecting a girl, while a strange comet shower rains down on Victorian Oxford. He emerges from the womb with hair down the length of his spine and a growing curiosity about everything around him. His mother finds him hard to love, while William, his father has great aspirations for him that are frustrated when Edgar won’t take to his lessons. By the time Edgar turns seven, he is acutely aware that he is a great disappointment, so he determines to make his own way in the world and make his father proud by inventing and engineering. Everything Edgar does widens the gap between father and son. Edgar’s desperate aspirations get him into real trouble.

‘The Ingenious Edgar Jones’ is a novel where the ideas the author wants to express are intriguing and complex. Edgar and William’s father/son relationship illustrates how a parent can estrange themselves from a very young child through unjustified disappointment. William believes in standardised education and books above all else, but Edgar seems to suffer from serious dyslexia and is better at creating mechanical things. Despite his admiration of learning William sees the devil in scientific inventions he feels seek to pry into God’s mysteries, while Edgar is a born scientific pioneer. The novel explores popular arguments about the conflict between science and religion and also looks at how religion and science might be joined together in harmony, through their relationship. The novel also contains a strong theme about how reputation and appearances of respectability can lure people into abandoning their sense of right and wrong.

Unfortunately the protagonist of this book is one creepy little kid and the disturbing shudder he sent through me with his uncaring, all knowing smiles kept me unsettled throughout the book. Although Edgar’s situation is easy to relate to and his frustrations with his father are very palpable, he’s not a character I ever felt at ease with. Unreasonably I kind of wanted him to be caught and staked, even though he is just a little boy and I felt none of the sympathy I usually do for misunderstood characters tied to supernatural happenings. I was convinced he was going to turn out to be a changeling, left in place of the girl his mother thought she was going to give birth to and although that never happened I still think of him as a changeling, swapped by the sinister neighbour present at his birth. Well done to Gardner for creating such an effective, unsettling character, but in my case Edgar made me eager to be done with the book and I rather rushed through to the end to escape him.