Dead Reckoning & Hard Bitten Reviews

I'm still working on the ghost post (hee), and have gotten a couple good ghost stories. Submit yours to me if you haven't already!!


Today's post is a review of two vampire series titles released on the same day. The latest Sookie Stackhouse novel, Dead Reckoning, the eleventh book in the series, and Hard Bitten, the latest installment of the Chicagoland Vampire story. Most of the time my reviews are detailed but not spoilery. This time, I'm spoiling all over the place.

If you haven't read them and plan to, go away! Come back after you finish and tell me what you think.

If you haven't read these stories at all, go start at book one. Also, go away or you'll get all spoiled!

If you watch True Blood but never read the Sookie books, you can stay. They may or may not use the plot line or character development and really, 11 seasons? Doubtful. Meanwhile, 7 years from now you won't remember this blog post, so feel free.....




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Dead Reckoning: Sookie Gets Mistreated, and I Feel Bad About Ever Liking Any of These Characters

I think this book made me do something I never thought I'd do: get back on Team Bill. Can't believe it! Don't even feel comfortable here on Team Bill. Of course, where else to go? Oh yes, Team Sookie. I have many fantasies for the future of our dear Ms. Stackhouse. Most of them involve leaving Bon Temps and trying to make her way in the world under an assumed name. I picture her perhaps teaching English in some country where the buzz of other minds is practically gibberish and thus soothing. I see her getting a job in an office or at a library, getting a little apartment, having a cat. Maybe she meets a vampire turned after the Great Revelation, you know, someone who fulfills her guy qualifications, but isn't as ridiculous with the chivalry and politicking. Really, what would make her awesome is if she became a demon or something. Something where she can just say, "You know what guys, back off. I'm watching Golden Girls right now, and I'm going to eat this pizza, and if you don't like it, I'm going to fire blast you out of my house with my magical demon hands. Sookie needs a goddamn break."


This book is about Sookie's history, her lineage, and (yet again) a bunch of really blatant reasons why she can't trust any supe but Sam Merlotte (who I'm still mad at over his tryst with Callisto. Yeah, I've got old grudges).



Fairies: Untrustworthy Jerks

First off, the fairies: Her new roomies are her fairy cousins Dermot and Claude. They are comforted by being around other fairies, and she feels the magical comfort feelings as well. They admit that they are drawn somehow to her house. Turns out, there's a fairy trinket hiding there that belongs to Sookie. It was given to her by her grandmother, and it is like a 1-free-wish magical thingamabob. Typical Sookie, she gets a gift and its something that probably people will kill her over.

Sookie's grandmother, as it turns out, totally knew she was cheating on her husband with fairy Fintan. In an old letter hid in the attic, Adele Stackhouse admits to Sookie that she had children as a result of her liason with Fintan, and that the Stackhouse children since then have been visited in their  youth by their "sponsor," Mr. Cataliades (the demon lawyer).  It's revealed that Mr. Cataliades gave Sookie her telepathy as a gift because she's more fairy than the rest of her kin. Yeah, a great gift for a baby, right? How was Adele able to keep this immortal sin a secret from a telepathic child? If this tryst was at once the most amazing and awful thing she ever did, how did she keep it from Sookie? And how could she live with herself when she realized that Sookie was telepathic and yet never clued her in to any of this crap?! Adele Stackhouse, no longer awesome. Thanks. Really, that's just great. Now I have to be mad at a nice grandma whose only sin in life was wanting to have kids.

In this novel, her fear and caution around her cousins is palpable. Since she was gnawed on for hours by freakish homicidal fairies who filed their teeth into points, she's got good reason to be wary of all things fairy. She starts to think that Claude, Dermot, Niall, and the random assortment of fae creatures hanging out at Hooligans are not her people. There's a lot of groundwork laid for a bunch of fairy bullshit in the future. The fairies shut out of Faery (ugh) are trying to get back to their homeland. It's not going to be pretty.

Vampires: Not Immortal After All
So Victor bites the big one in this novel, and he reaches a bunch of new lows beforehand, making just about everybody wants to see his ashes. Not only does he buy two bars that directly compete with Merlottes and Fangtasia, he prevents Pam's girlfriend, Miriam, from being turned even though she's dying from leukemia. Poor Miriam, her existence served nothing more than to illustrate Victor's depravity. Truly, we get no depth to this character at all. And the idea that Pam could fall in love with someone so much that she wants to save them by making her own vampire child? And that this happens off page? It's pretty much cheating me out of important Sookieverse stuff. Pam's a central character! Her disdain for humanity and love of vampire life was tempered by this frail gal? I want to know about that! Pam herself gets throttled and choked by Eric. He also prevents her from saying/doing things with his master-commands-it mojo, which is dickish behavior if your vampire child is over a century old, in my opinion. I mean really, at this point, disobeying your commands to tell your secrets are her decision. Your job as a daddy is done.

Eric really took a backseat in this novel in terms of page time, but for me he hit center stage in a show called "Asshole". He was keeping a lot from Sookie (nothing new there), he was very tense, he seemed to have his usual arrogance about him, but he was being bested for a majority of the novel by Victor, who was taking away his Fangtasia revenue with his competing vampire bar. So he didn't get to be BMOC the whole time, which I like. Eric's love for Sookie was supposed to be transformative, getting him closer to humanity than he has been in a thousand years.

That's, I think, what draws people to the vampire-human love story. The idea that someone so hard and cold and calculating could be melted by looooove. It's a typical romance trope, adapted for the supernatural circumstance of immortality. Usually these guys have outdated views of gender roles, superiority complexes up the wazoo, and the obligatory giant penises. Not sure if this would work well in reverse. Powerful female vampire with outdated ideas about masculinity courts a human man who shows her that vulnerability and emotions are also male qualities. He tames her beast within and they fight important battles together. She learns to love him even though she must be the protector, not the protected. Also, her vagina sometimes squeezes his penis so hard that he needs to put frozen peas on his junk for 20 minutes after each session of lovemaking (yes, this is taken-in reverse-from the latest Sookie novel). Yeah, that story sounds like it sucks. The Pam-Miriam story would be much cooler.

So anyway, Eric. Not only do we find out that he's been betrothed to some vampire queen and must give up Sookie to be with this new broad, it is revealed that he fucked up Sookie's life royally years ago by connecting her with Niall, paying Terry Bellefleur to spy on her, and spying on her himself well before they became "friends." He also spends a good deal of time preventing Pam from telling Sookie anything about his upcoming nuptials. Oh, and to top it all off, one of his last scenes involves him feeding from her and making it more painful than necessary! This is an abusive relationship, folks, and I'm officially out of love with Eric. Sookie manages to get the guts to break the blood bond, but feels bad about it. She feels that she should have consulted with him first on a decision that affects them both. Which would be true, if the decision wasn't "whether or not I should be magically tethered to your emotions based on a decision you made in secret and imposed upon me without my consent in the first place." Thankfully this blood bond is gone. Hopefully she'll see this Eric stuff in a different light without it. I don't think he's her


Witch Match Makers
Amelia comes into play in this book in order to break the blood bond. She finds out a spell that can break the bond and gets Sookie to agree to it pretty quickly, which I enjoyed. It's something Sookie would do, it was her instinct to be free of Eric, and it was nice to see someone specifically in Sookie's corner. Amelia's a bit tactless, and she hates learning from past mistakes, apparently. This is big magic, something that is going to piss of a very old, powerful vampire, and she's like "let's do it!" She also goads Alcide into seducing Sookie. Remember when she was all interested in setting Sookie up with this really cute guy and it turned out to be Dermot? WTF Amelia!? Stop setting Sookie up with horrible matches.


Shifters: Not Great Decision Makers
Alcide returns to make his play for Sookie's affections. How does he do this? He sleeps in her bed in what he thinks is sexy underwear, hoping she'll come home and take him up on the offer. She's pissed about this, obviously, but it made me laugh. Then I thought, what if that happened to me? What would I do? I'd be so livid! Not only do I have shitty roommates and a house guest who felt this was appropriate (they'd all be in the house, I presume when this impromptu sex-fest was going on, by the way, which, eww), but this dude has some real cojones to think that his mere presence in bed can make her forget about her vampire lover. I'd do just what she did. Kick the whole lot of them out and then begrudgingly let Dermot back in because he's kind of slow.

Sandra Pelt gets out of a jail we didn't know she was in and goes after Sookie in impersonal ways until all the loser assassins she paid don't do the job right and she has to actually do the job herself.  You can tell she's a crafty adversary when she decides to hijack Sam and Janalynn (a shifter and a werewolf enforcer) to get to Sookie. Not surprisingly it takes them like 5 minutes to kill her and shove her body into the fairy portal, where she's eaten presumably by black dogs/hell hounds. So glad to put the whole Pelt family in the ground. It seems like this book was all about running things into the ground. It's like reading about a plane crash, only in the middle of the plane crash there's a kindergarten open house and a baby shower.

Demons & Telepaths
Cataliades comes by to let Sookie in on her fae heritage and to explain the Cluviel Dor. It's a magical fairy trinket that gives her one wish, but it can't be used to wish away her telepathy (lame). She decides to hold of on wishing, and gives Cataliades a stern rebuke for all the "gifts" he has bestowed upon her. He leaves her house in a rush because something is following him. And he is later seen zipping around the yard being chased by..things...it seemed like a big deal to me, but it was given two sentences of page time, so maybe in the next book he'll make a reappearance or he'll be dead and leave her his demon estate. Missed Diantha not being there. I liked her insane club-kid outfits and machine-gun fire way of talking.

Hunter also enters the story here. As a side-note, how many damn characters can be shoe-horned in to this story?! Geez. Anyway, Hunter's about to go to kindergarten and Sookie goes with Remy to his school's open house, giving us a peek into teachers' minds, which now adds elementary school teachers to my list of creeps. Sookie seems to be helping Hunter deal with the telepathy in a group setting, trying to prevent him from making the same mistakes that led to her legacy in Bon Temps as "Crazy Sookie." I think this Hunter thing seemed like it was going to lead to Sookie possibly having a family. It really would be the only way she could have a child and have a vampire husband. But now I'm not so sure that's the direction the story is going.  Poor Hunter, he might have to get killed in book 12.

In conclusion:

You know when you finally realize that a friend you've had for a while isn't really your friend? That there was some ulterior motive for being around you? Yeah, so Sookie pretty much only has that going on right now. The most telling and poignant line in the entire novel was when she's riding in the car with Sam and tearily realizes, "I've been a fool." It's an indication that Sookie's growing up. I can't wait to see how grown-up Sookie deals with the bullshit coming her way.  I think it's time to put Eric out to pasture. He was an important step in her life, and a relationship that she can use to understand herself a little better, but in the long run, I think she'll end up with Sam.







Hard Bitten

I've been reading the Chicagoland Vampire Series since book one. This is the fourth entry, and its gone to places I didn't expect. I liked the idea of a grad student who gets turned and has to traverse a whole new universe of vampire politics and super strength. I also liked that the vampire universe is a little different in these novels. Vampires are organized into houses, kind of like fraternity houses. You get turned and become part of a vampire family of sorts. Merit, the central character, is a little different than other vamps in that she was turned in what seemed like a last-minute decision. She was dying and the head of the Cadogan vampire house, Ethan, turned her. So she didn't choose this life (or unlife). The writing is good, the character is fleshed out, and the love for Chicago in the story is palpable. Chicago is almost another character in the novel. Merit takes us through a lot of Chicago landmarks and helps us understand the local cuisine and culture.

This installment does some pretty gutsy things. It puts some things out there that I wasn't expecting. The mayor isn't human (but we don't know what he is yet), Celina takes a stake to the heart, and oh my god, Merit's love interest, the leader of Cadogan house, Ethan, dies. Since his relationship with his child/novitiate/underling/employee is totally inappropriate, I was cool with it. He will magically resurrect in future books, I'm sure, because his character arc is not complete and in a 7 book series, I doubt at the end of the 4th they'd trade in one soul mate for another. But in my fantasy universe, I'd have him resurrect as human, so Merit would be superior in terms of vampire hierarchy. It would be better if they were on equal terms, but these books hate that, apparently.

There was no sex in this book, but really, there was no time! Merit was on the go the entire book and manages to not only solve the mystery of the V trade, she also learns about her own history. Turns out her dad wanted to pay Ethan to secretly turn her, so she'd never die. Micromanage much?! Ethan declined the offer, but Celina decided to do it anyway. Once the offer was made to Ethan, he decided to protect Merit (secretly, vampirily, like they do). But he was really bad at this, and when she got mauled by one of Celina's vamps, Ethan had to be a big boy and decide whether she died or undied.




I liked the book, because it did make some abrupt and confusing changes to the story I wasn't expecting. That's a rarity in a genre book. But I'm always concerned about books that make the hero transform into a marshmallow of love and devotion. Ethan dies taking a stake meant for Merit, which only means he's coming back. I wonder what hot beefcake body he'll return in?


OK, folks, reviews are done. I know I'm a bit all over the place, but the books were both released Tuesday and I had to get something down. I'm sure I'll settle down and rethink a lot of this stuff, but this is my first reaction.

Book Love

 I've told you about my love for Mike Stilkey, right? He makes art out of old books. It's amazing:

I have dreams all the time about my future library, and I haven't been able to buy too many physical books lately (I've been downloading ebooks), so I'm feeling withdrawal. This post is about awesome book-related things. 


First up, bookends! They break up the space on your shelves, separate special books, and help out on those shelves without sides.

Bookend Women, $49.95 at Wrapables:

 

Bicycle Bookends, $24.99  by Knob Creek Metal Arts:

I've never heard of shelf pillows, but now I want them! These Victorian Women bookends are $22

from Etsy seller Two Stray Cats

$45 for this set of Shabby Chic Bookends in Turquoise from Pretty Darn Cute

Only $14 for a print of this awesome painting by Parada Creations:

Bookplates (with a BIRD on it!) $4.50 for 6 of em from the Paper Pumpkin:

I don't have the funds for something like this, but I would totally love it! $450 for a vintage card catalog.

Birds in a Book Club print by Barking Bird Art, $18

Book Reviews - Vampires and Witches, of Course

Thanks to my graduate school honed skill of speed reading, I got through two books this week. I'm happy to report my findings.


1st up, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith.

Gotta say, it wasn't a book that I felt like I needed to get my hands on at first. When it was first published, I liked the idea, but decided to keep it on the reading list for later. It's central characters are men, it's about killing vampires not loving them, and it wasn't written by an historian. And despite those things, it is a very interesting read. It's an epistolary novel, which is one of my favorite literary forms.


Epistolary novels are stories told through a series of letters or other written documents. They gained popularity in the mid 1700s, the most popular then being Samuel Richardson's Pamela and years later Clarissa, about young women who have their virtue continually tested by the world around them. Epistolary novels do some interesting things that other novels don't. They show you the story from one person's perspective, with 'factual' additions like newspaper clippings or historical documents, and without the value judgments of an omniscient narrator. In many ways this conveys a sense of realism.  You get the story in the character's own words. Some think that the popularity of epistolary novels coincides with the rise of democracy. These are stories that tended to focus on ordinary people, generally the trials and tribulations of the working class or servant class, and in doing so encourage a sense of empathy for the experiences of those who are not like you. I like epistolary novels. Dracula is one of the most famous, with letters and diary entries from the different characters creating the story.



Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter begins with the story of a young writer who has given up on his dream of writing a novel. He instead runs the counter at a small town hardware store. He is given a gift one day by a strange local customer: what appears to be the collected diaries of Abraham Lincoln, detailing his life as young boy, and moving all the way through to the days before his assassination.

The stranger asks him to write a novel based on the diaries. As he begins to read these journals, he realizes that Abraham Lincoln was obsessed with, and very good at, killing vampires. He devoted his entire life to ridding the country of them, and only stumbled into politics. Lincoln eventually surmises that the institution of slavery is not only reprehensible on the basis of denying human beings rights, but also because it is held in place by vampires, who buy up the slaves who are old or disabled in order to feed. He believes slavery and vampires go hand in hand, so he sets out to get rid of both.


Even though it's about hunting and killing vampires, there are your "good" vampires, though they aren't as fleshed out as they could be. His good vampire sends him a hit list every now and then, and the story moves forward as Lincoln tries to fulfill his assassinations of the vilest vampires. Lincoln is definitely given a fascinating voice, and a clear picture of him emerges as the novel goes on. He deals with a lot of conflicting values and ideas, and is thoughtful about them.  The novel's historical inaccuracies are plenty, but I didn't find this too troubling. I mean, it's a novel about Abraham Lincoln as a vampire hunter. Changing history to suit the story seems like a no brainer. I loved all of the doctored photos that point out "proof" of the vampire hunter aspect of Lincoln's life. I loved the moral anchor that was the Lincoln character. He doesn't always do the right thing, but he does explore his ideas and opinions.

There were some things that disappointed me, though. It's clear that the writer isn't an historian, and that really makes the novel less than what it could have been. You see it in places throughout the novel, but most of all in the way slavery and the abolitionist movement is presented. Slaves are talked about in the abstract mostly, and usually only as victims. The underground railroad, the work of free blacks in the north, and slave rebellions are all attributed to the "good" vampires who want to end the reign of vampires in the south. Only one of these "good" vampires is developed as a character, and even he is more of a way to move the plot forward than a real person. None of the characters are black, and I think a black "good" vampire would have given the story some depth and add a counterbalance to the depiction of black people as only slaves and only victims with no power over their own lives. Lincoln never encounters other vampire hunters, which is strange. And the story spends so much time on his life before politics, that it seems odd that his road to the presidency was so short and so convenient.


All in all, the book does paint an elaborate picture of Lincoln's life, with vampire stuff added in there. His marriage, children, and the Civil War are all explored in interesting ways. I think probably this could have been an epic story, rather than a whimsical little novel. It's worth it just for the cameo by Edgar Allen Poe, who knows about vampires and chats with Lincoln about it from an interesting perspective!



My second review is a book I found via the Barnes & Noble nook recommendations page. They saw that I liked The Phyisick Book of Deliverance Dane and Daughters of the Witching Hill, and handed me A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I was hungry for another novel after finishing Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, and I am glad I went back to witches for a time.

The cover of this novel isn't bad, but it isn't good. I would have preferred it to look like a page from an illuminated manuscript, because it features so prominently in the story, but I don't work in book cover design. I should though. I sometimes wonder what the hell those people are thinking. This is a big one at 592 pages, but I was fascinated the whole way through. It's a witch story, but unlike the last two I reviewed, this one takes place in the contemporary world, without a lot of flashbacks to the past. It's about a world where witches, daemons and vampires have worked hard to keep their existence secret from humans. It's also a world where the three creature groups are insular, and never mix across "species." It's also about the weird world of academics. In this case, however, some of the academics are relics themselves.

Diana Bishop is a witch, but has worked hard to create an academic life without witchcraft. A descendant of one of the Salem witches, she knows the fear and hysteria around witchcraft. She wanted to make a name for herself without resorting to magic, and manages to become a well known historian teaching at Yale. At the start of the novel, she is on a sabbatical doing research at Oxford, analyzing alchemical texts and illuminated manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. Her life changes forever when she requests a particular manuscript from the collection that was once thought lost. It's a book that is sealed shut with a spell, and Diana manages to open it. It seems like a confusing alchemy text that has magic running through it. When she sees the magical aspect of the text, she suddenly decides to return it and tries to forget the experience. The creatures in Oxford take notice, and pretty soon they are hovering around her, waiting for her to recall the manuscript, which is rumored to have secrets about the origins of the supernatural species and powerful spells. Another academic at Oxford seems to be most interested in her and her stack of books at the Bodleian, Matthew Clairmont, a vampire.

This is not your usual vampire romance, but it does go to similar places. What makes this novel different is the careful eye to science and history (the author is an historian of science and medicine at USC). It's not simply the history background that makes Harkness's work great. It's also her ability to create a lush, detailed world, with characters that have flaws and quirks. Even tertiary characters seem modeled on real people. Matthew, the vampire, is a great character, but I had a bad feeling about him at the beginning of the novel when he found Diana's smell to be too intoxicating. These vamps also don't have fangs. Which is stupid. I'm sorry but vampires have fangs. It's the way of things. I won't see them without. Anyway, I was worried he'd head into Edward Cullen territory, but things go a different, more mature way.

I guess that's what I liked best about this novel. It's central character, Diana, is a woman who is "different" like Bella and Sookie and so many others, but she isn't naive or prone to do ridiculous thins to prove she's independent. She is a thinker and mature about her actions. Whereas many other vampire romances are about vampires sweeping women up into their vampire bullshit, this story is about the communal bullshit of supernaturals, and Diana takes control of her life in beautiful and surprising (and sometimes wrong) ways.

The novel is long, but I didn't feel like it when I was reading it, and I wanted it to continue after it was over. If you are reading it and having a hard time moving through it, you should at least push forward to Diana's visit home to her family's witchy house. I could have read a whole novel about that house.

If you liked The Historian, there are elements of academic life, research and travel that are interesting, but it isn't a treasure hunt so much. If you liked The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and Daughters of the Witching Hill, the culture of witchcraft is fun and fantastical, but the balance of power is not with humans here. If you like vampire romances, this book will provide you with a romance, but you'll have to deal with more than a few mysteries and side-journeys that take away from the romance part. Oh, and the sex is minimal. As in the supe couple never consummate their relationship. Which is the only part that I really disagreed with. Well, that and the princess fairy tale that features in a very small but annoying part of the story.

I'm hoping Harkness writes a sequel, but even if this is the last of Diana Bishop's story, it was a worthwhile trip. It's about time someone capitalized on the fact that real vampires (and people who know they exist) would be excellent academics.

I've got only academic books on the horizon, but I'm hoping to go in a different (but still supernatural) direction. I'm thinking less professor characters and more fuck-ups. A decent fuck-up centric vampire story, incidentally, is Christopher Moore's Bite Me!

Book Review - The Daughters of the Witching Hill

 

Well, you know it's been a while when you have to actually log in to Blogger to post a new entry! Good things are afoot people. I am getting transferred out of my crappy department to one where I will no longer be the bringer of sadness. Yes, a great move for me, since I have been dealing with intense stress and anger over being the American Dreamkiller. "Hi, I'm Sweet Lady, you have to pay 100 zillions of dollars by this time next week or your house will be sold at an auction and all your neighbors will see postings about it on your lawn and in the paper. Have a nice day!!"  I have had serious TMJ problems, like so bad that whatever is misaligned in my jaw is messing with the nerves in my neck and shoulders, leading to numbness in my left hand. I stopped sketching and painting. It was a bad scene.  It's not like I won't still be part of the dream killing tangentially, so that still bums me out, but I can't put effort into getting another job until I'm done with the dissertation. My constant refrain. Anyway, in two weeks, I'm moving my cube and enjoying the silence. No phone calls.

I thought I'd drop in on all of you and let you in on a review of a book I recently read. I got some Barnes and Noble gift certificates for the holidays and I have been too busy to use them. CRAZY, I know. But I realized I hadn't read a novel in a while, and I thought that maybe it was part of the reason I wasn't feeling much like myself (other than the job). So I set out to read something new. I had good luck with historical novels, and especially those steeped in real historical research, but with supernatural or paranormal elements. The Historian, Devil in the White City, and The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane were recent favorites, so I tried to see who bought books similar to those on Amazon and B&N's website. It led me to Mary Sharratt's Daughters of the Witching Hill. Excellent choice!

It is based on the real Pendle Hill witch hunts of 1612 in Lancashire, England. Taken primarily from the very detailed and strange testimony of the trials recounted by a contemporary court clerk, it pieces together a magical and tragic (tragical, if you will) story of Elizabeth Southerns, a poor woman who lived in a tower on the outskirts of town and acted as a "cunning woman," someone who practiced folk magic. Sharratt uses social and political history as her background for the story, placing it in this interesting time when Catholicism was under attack by the last two royals. The mysticism and ritual of Catholicism was seen as particularly vile to James I, who had a thing about witches. He wrote Daemonologie, a text defining and denouncing witchcraft. It specifically encouraged witch hunts, and was focused on ousting. Here's an excerpt focusing on the kind of work witches do:

"I mean by such kind of charms as commonly daft wives use, for healing of forspoken [bewitched] goods, for preserving them from evil eyes, by knitting . . . sundry kinds of herbs to the hair or tails of the goods; by curing the worm, by stemming of blood, by healing of horse-crooks, . . . or doing of such like innumerable things by words, without applying anything meet to the part offended, as mediciners do."

The book itself is not so much about the hunts themselves (it gets there, and it's a realistic treatment of it), but more about the belief in magic and its uses, the daily lives of women, and the ways women sought power over their lives when they had virtually none. 

Elisabeth Southerns is poor. So poor that she must beg for food and does hard labor for little pay around town. She has a magical experience one day when she's confronted with a beautiful man, Tibb, who she knows isn't real, but who convinces her that he can predict the future and help her gain some measure of control over her life. He claims that his "Lady" sent him to watch over her. Tibb helps Elizabeth, known as Bess and later as "Old Demdike,"  learn the ways of cunning folk. Using herbs, poultices, and prayers to heal and protect, she manages to turn it into a way to make a living. And some crazy shit happens. 

No seriously, crazy shit happens. Cool magical stuff, regular "people are shitty" stuff.  I found it totally engrossing. I enjoyed being there, in that book, and after Deliverance Dane, it was interesting to see a tale of witchcraft outside of America and connected so clearly to the real political and social history of the time. It was also really cool to see explanations of the spells used, with specific recipes drawn from the literature of the time. 

So, in summation, it has magic (awesome), a female protagonist (necessary), a story of powerful women but not so powerful as to be fantastical (refreshing), and a real tie to history and respect for the people represented (bonus)! I was sad to let them go at the end of the book. You know a book touches you when that's the feeling you get at the end. It's why I love lengthy series. 

Next up, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. On account of President's day and stuff. Aren't you excited about that one?

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

I love reading anything about the Salem witch trials. While at Barnes & Noble, I came across a book on the discount fiction table and was instantly in love. If you liked The Historian and read paranormal fiction, this would be a great little novel to read.

It's about Connie Goodwin, a graduate student who just passed her doctoral exams in the history department at Harvard. She has a summer before embarking on her dissertation, and rather than doing research like she planned, she ends up having to take charge of repairing and selling her grandmother's long abandoned house near Salem. 

She happens upon a key in an old 17th century family bible in one of the rooms that has a small slip of paper in the hollow that reads: Deliverance Dane. Connie sets out to find out who or what this paper means and in the process learns about her family's connection to the Salem witch trials. What follows is part intellectual quest, part family history, part magical experience.

It was nice to read a stand-alone book. It was nice to read a historical novel by someone well versed in the history. Kathleen Howe is herself a descendant of two of the Salem witches and holds a doctorate in American and New England studies.

And wonder of wonders, not one vampire in the whole novel.

In other news, today was my first day at work. Not much happened, I'm exhausted, but employed, so yay! I don't have new employee orientation until tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure it's exactly like working in every other office in America. And maybe Canada.

In the words of some of my new coworkers, see youse tomorrah!

Dante Valentine

The internet is slow today. It could be our internet company, though, which sucks big time. Anyway, that's why this took so long to upload!

As you can guess by the book in the "Sweet Lady Reads" section on the sidebar,  I'm reading Working for the Devil by Lilith Saintcrow.  Like most paranormal series, this one totally owns me until I'm finished, which luckily is only in another couple books. There are 5 in the series:


Working for the Devil (2005)
Dead Man Rising (2006)
The Devil's Right Hand (2007)
Saint City Sinners (2007)
To Hell and Back (2008)


All of the covers seem to have the red/black/white style, which is a nice reprieve from the "bare-midriff-leather-clad-seductress" cover on every other paranormal book ever.

I can only vouch for books 1-3, but man they are totally addictive. This series isn't about vampires. Well, there are vampires, but they aren't in the foreground (at least not yet). The books are about a necromancer named Dante Valentine. She also goes by "Danny" Valentine. In a future (seemingly) where paranormal creatures have come out, humans with what we would call a "sixth sense" are called "psions."

Psions are people with all kinds of magical abilities: witchy spellcasting, precognition, raising the dead, all kinds of stuff. Psions in this new world (and it is new, with different kinds of political formations and religious groups) are not exactly popular. They are mostly feared, but legally tolerated.  What makes a necromancer different is that they are instantly recognizable. They have a face tattoo and are legally allowed to carry weapons. They are all forced to dye their hair black in order to maintain some kind of united front and also to certify that you are dealing with the real thing. They have an gemstone implanted into their tattoo that sparks when they get angry. It's not really very earth-mothery. Somehow it reads to me like sci-fi. I can't explain why just yet.

Dante, our heroine, is a necromancer, she can raise the dead to ask it questions. She does it for money, and she's considered one of the best. She can raise the dead from ashes, which is apparently a big deal. You usually need most of a corpse, and she once raised hundreds of dead to account for the victims of a huge disaster. So people know her in the paranormal world. She is also a bounty hunter, specializing in bringing in paranormal bad guys. And since I just read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and saw the movie, I pretty much pretended she looked like Lisbeth Salander the whole time I've been reading the series.

Also, because of the futuristic setting, with its weird language and dystopian elements, I also think of the Whedon comic Fray, about a vampire slayer in the future. 

What I don't think really of is Harry Potter, and even though there is a magic academy, and hints of horcruxing, it's definitely darker and more subtle. I was going to write about the magic academy here and then I started to see parallels to Hogwarts that might really mess with your brain when you're trying to read the story. Not Hogwarts. Remember that, ok?

In the first book, Dante gets roped into working a bounty that poses some emotional and physical challenge. She is supposed to take on a serial killer who is also a demon. Did I mention the Devil makes her do it? I guess you can figure that one out by the title. He assigns her a demon bodyguard. Anyway, great story, full of action, a kick ass heroine who has some serious anger issues. I love it. There is a romance element, but it is very small in the first book. The subsequent books deal with it more, and it goes places I wasn't expecting. When you're dealing with futuristic necromancers and demons, though, who can make predictions?

Oh, and I almost forgot, if you hate cliffhangers, these books are not for you. There are all kinds of questions brought up that don't get answered until the following book. Some answers I'm still waiting for. Plan to read the whole thing or nothing at all!


If you're looking to pass the time...I'd say get reading.

Molasses

Don't know why things are so slow going the past two days, but it could be that I'm not 100%. Still feeling achy and tired, but I got my butt up and went grocery shopping, which was desperately necessary. I also managed to do some painting today. I'm working on tiny paintings of vampire librarians. It's a niche market, but I'm taking a chance! Lately, I've decided to make things I would want, rather than trying to create what I think people would like. We'll see how that goes. I bought an ad in Bust Magazine for their Oct/Nov issue. Just a tiny image in their product showcase, but hopefully it will drive people to the shop. I have got to get back to blogging about that kind of stuff on the SLS blog...Slow as molasses, I swear. At least I've made time for reading this summer.

I finished a series of vampire books, the Undead series by MaryJanice Davidson. Yes, I read all the books, even though I disliked the central character intensely. I wanted to see where she took the story (hoping Betsy would get better), and to read a chick-lit vampire story. She started a genre, or at least mixed two together that hadn't really been mixed before.

Summary of the plotline:

Elizabeth "Betsy" Taylor,  has a very bad birthday. She gets laid off from her administrative assistant job, then promptly gets hit by a car and wakes up undead. After a few attempts to make herself dead-dead, she realizes she's a vampire and finds herself embroiled in vampire politics immediately. It seems that she isn't like other vamps, she can handle sunlight, doesn't get burned by holy water, and is much stronger and in control of her hunger than a young vamp should be. In fact, according to a couple of vampires she just met, she's not just a weirdo, she's the prophesied Queen of the Vampires. This, not surprisingly, pisses a lot of vamps in power off to an alarming degree.

With the help of her two vampire friends (Sinclair and Tina), her human friend (and billionaire) Jessica, and a guy she saved from suicide (Marc), she navigates her new situation. Oh, and she's obsessed with shoes. Like Carrie Bradshaw obsessed. It's a sickness.

Pros:

• Betsy is a ballsy lady, who won't take no for an answer. 
• I like that it's set in Minnesota, and has a midwestern sensibility
• Vampires are blood drinkers, with fangs, who grow more powerful with time and can't go out in the sun. Like they should. 
• Even when Betsy gets involved with a romantic partner, she doesn't do the googly-eyed romance stuff. In fact, she saves that for shoes and wedding stuff (see cons).
• Her love interest is not as powerful as she is and never will be!
• Betsy's best friend Jessica is an African American billionaire who rules in many ways. 
• Vampire Tina is really amazing.
  The devil (Lucifer, the Morningstar, Baal, etc) makes good appearances, and looks like Lena Olin, which I kind of expected. 
• Betsy's speaking style is really fun sometimes, she talks like Busy Phillips talked in Dawson's Creek. Super sarcasticy. In fact, in my brain, she's totally Busy Phillips.
• Her stepmom is awful and a great character.

Cons:

• For someone who's existence is prophesied and constantly in danger, Betsy doesn't ask good questions. Sometimes she doesn't ask any questions. It's a failure that is pointed out to her all the time. ALL. THE. TIME.
• Betsy is a narcissistic a-hole and it actually made me want to quit the series in book one. 
• Seriously, so many characters could have good, elaborate stories, but since it's in first person from Betsy's perspective, and she doesn't give a shit about her friends until they are almost dead, we never find out their cool histories.  Not a cool gal. Not at all.
• The shoe thing is stupid and goes on and on in each book. Sometimes to the detriment of story lines, which are summed up in severely short sentences

A much better series (in my humble opinion) is the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, but that's really about werewolves more than vampires. I wasn't really super into weres of any kind, but Mercy is a really amazing character. A definite contribution to the list of great warrior women characters, Mercy is a Volkswagen auto mechanic who happens to turn into a coyote. She was raised by werewolves and makes fun of them a great deal, which I love, but also has good relationships and does encounter vampires from time to time. Her vampire friend is actually an interesting guy. If you are looking for a relatively short series that isn't finished yet, I'd definitely check it out. Oh, and don't mind the covers, they suck big time.

What's with her constantly changing tattoos? The character does have a paw print tattoo and I think some tribal arm bands (she's part Native-American), but not on the scale of these images, which are all different! Also, she is never described as working on her cars in this way. She's always wearing coveralls and all grubby. Arg! Do publishers believe they are selling these books to men? Boys? The heretofore uncornered lesbian fantasy reader? I don't understand.

Good Advice

This week was kind of crazy, what with dropping my iPhone at the gym and rendering it useless, dealing with feeling really run down, a vitamin that has destroyed my skin, and other apartment related things that suck. But I held fast and managed to feel optimistic despite it all. I know, a true American heroine, right?

Some great things about the week? I read a funny book, called I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux-Sensitive Hipsters, and Other Guys I've Dated by Julie Klausner.
Not all books about dating losers are good. In fact, a lot of them are more like cautionary tales for married ladies. Like, "stay married, the single life is frightening!!" But this one was really great. There's a lot of funny stuff in there that I could totally relate to, and I like that the author seemed to understand there was a difference between dating losers because you have low self-esteem and dating losers because you are optimistic about someone's potential. She does both, but knows the difference. I am a sucker for these kinds of books because I have made my share of bad romantic choices. I am a blogger, a sarcastic one at that, so this is right up my alley, but I could never do this kind of writing. I guess because I didn't do a lot of dating before I met my husband, so not only would it be a short book, but it would be really obvious who I'm talking about! I couldn't be this revealing, because the internet bites back you know. All in good time.

Anyway, some gems from the book:

After a narcissistic asshole explains to her (lying in her bed no less) that they can't go out that night because he has a date, she gets furious with him, and he does the worst thing ever. He cries.

"Have you ever seen a grown man in the act of working himself up into a lather so that he can cry real tears in front of you? It's an excellent cure for being attracted to someone."

She starts one story with the excuse that she was drunk and says, "I know stories about "how wasted you were" are little-league, but the truth remains that when you drink, stupid things become silly, and who doesn't like laughing at things that are silly? That's right, nobody, and assholes."

It's not all quips and jokes, though. She gives some good advice. This one kind of embodies her optimism in the face of all these losers:

"If I'm iffy about being attracted to somebody right away, but he goes about pursuing me in a way I think is upstanding, I always give the guy a second chance. It's a way about being strict about your standards, but open minded about your contenders. Men are way more likely to become more appealing to you over time than they are to magically grow manners."

On dating a guy in a band, she reminisces on how boring it is to go to your boyfriends shows, and to talk to people about music. She also discusses that girlfriends will already be outsiders to the band comraderie, because "if you're going to be a musician's girlfriend, you have to know that your man will always love his band mates in a way you can't touch, because they are the guys that help him create music. You can only help him create a living human being, with your dumb uterus."

She then implores women who like guys in bands to try and learn an instrument and play in a band, because only then will they realize that a) it's not hard, and b) maybe it turns out you are more into musicians because you want to be one. Excellent advice!

I loved it. You should get it. The end.

Lately

What am I only posting once a week now? Sorry for the lag in consistent posts, but the dissertation is getting written people! For REALS. I'm like a machine, getting stuff done on full blast. I have submitted two more chapters, filled out paperwork for graduation in summer, and talked with my committee chair about the defense. I'm hoping it happens in June, when jerkoffs are not around to be ornery at my defense, which will be the scariest day of my life. Even scarier than the night I came home from Paranormal Activity. Or the time someone called my name in my empty house when I was 12. Or the time I was dragged to a Christian youth music festival. Well, let's be realistic, it probably won't top the music festival.

I am doing great with the "get healthy" plan. Going to the gym every other da, eating sensibly, no Coke. I think this is the longest I've ever gone without a Coke. When I did Nutrisystem I made a big stink about having to drink Diet Cokes. It was like I had to go from Marlboro reds to light menthols or something. And here I am, gone cold turkey without a problem. The doctor thing threw me for a loop, and I'm still on the fence about her, but I do have an appointment in 3 weeks, and if she still makes me feel uncomfortable, I'll switch. If she was just trying to impress upon me the consequences of my actions, I'll stay.

Funny thing about exercising, you feel more energized in general. I have been in a better mood the past two weeks, I've gotten better writing done, I've boxed up all my books and (with the help of M. of course) moved those heavy boxes down to the garage. I spent today cleaning out my office at home and getting things ready for our eventual garage sale.

It's sad to see my empty bookshelves, and even sadder to know all my books are downstairs in boxes. I feel comforted when I'm surrounded by my books. I don't think I'd enjoy an all-digital world. I like books. I like to see the covers, to feel the binding, to hold it in my hand and write all over it if I want to. I like seeing all my different weird interests on the shelf, hanging out together. I have a copy of A People's History of the United States that was purchased for an AP History class in high school. It has all of my highlighter marks, notes, and dog eared pages. Even though I bought the updates to it, and even a special hardcover edition, when I went to see Howard Zinn speak in the late 90s, I brought my battered copy for him to sign. I have a fantasy of one day having a library in my house. A room or part of my office that has floor to ceiling shelves and a rolling ladder. I really want the rolling ladder. If we have kids, I think it would be neat for them to grow up with a bunch of interesting books around. I mean, they're going to be little weirdos anyway, they might as well be well informed.

As more of our stuff gets put into boxes and moved downstairs, we seem to be having a variety of reactions about it. I like being surrounded by the little ephemera from throughout my life. M. is more into the streamlined, clutterlessness of our temporary arrangement. Once we saw an episode of MTV Cribs, the one with Moby and his minimalist loft. He also had some kind of house in the woods that was all wood and no furniture. I found it desolate and unlivable, and M. was like, in awe. So he's feeling like there's a lot more room in the house, and I'm feeling like the house is getting emptier. But soon, I'll have my stuff back, and I've got no time to mope.

All Out of Love

"I'm all out of love/
I'm so lost without you"
Air Supply, 1980

When you think about your purpose, your calling, whatever it is that draws you to your chosen profession, whatever it is that you are just good at, you should bottle up that feeling and save it for days when other stuff gets in the way. That "other stuff" can make you rethink everything. Make you wonder if you even want to do what makes you happy anymore. This semester has me thinking about changes.

This past week was a roller coaster, and I never really left my house. It encapsulates fully the reason why this semester is tougher than most. To begin with, it was the week of our mandated faculty furlough days at my university. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, no faculty were to show up on campus and teach. We weren't supposed to answer emails or grade or prep anything. We experienced a 10% reduction in pay this year, which means we are supposed to reduce our course work load by 10% as well. This comes in the form of fewer assignments (so as to produce less work to grade), reduction in class time, and these three mandated days off. All of this is supposed to make it so I have less work to do, but really, it doesn't work that way.

When you change the number of available class days, you have to shorten some topics, eliminate readings, and restructure your exams accordingly. You have to think about how your students are going to acquire the tools and grasp the concepts from your original course now that they have less material to analyze and less of the reading that illuminates these kinds of things.

I eliminated the big paper for my large GE courses, which was the best way to limit my workload and not sacrifice course topics. But the mandated furlough days were tough to work around. They were right smack dab in the middle of the semester, when I give my midterm exams. So I decided that I would just make my exams online midterms, to fully use the Blackboard digital classroom. I could also avoid showing up to campus just to sit in a room while students take exams. Since midterm weeks don't really have much lecture, this mandated vacation might just allow me to have the diminished workload and yet still keep on track.

Yeah, well, Blackboard's online exams are buggy at best, and rather than working on my dissertation, it was a three day exam giving experience, in which many emails were sent letting me know that exams weren't working, that even though students had 24 hours to complete it, some managed to wait until the last minute and their computers "crashed." Some even plum forgot that they had to take an exam. All of these kinds of excuses are hard to give a professor in person, but very easy via email. Sigh. I had a mini-breakdown. While students were having Furlough Fest on campus, I was at home, figuring out how to fix the buggiest exam, emailing students with a more polite but very exasperated version of "this is why I told you to type up your answers in Word and copy & paste into the exam." After working to adjust the exam to the new, more limited course, I had hoped that my work was done. Not so.

Students of course, are feeling the burden of the semester as well. Furloughs were only part of the University's response to the economic crisis. Students also have to pay more tuition per semester. Full time students in my classes have told me that they are paying $500 more a semester. More money for less class time, less access to professors, and really, 10% less of an education. Classes were also cut, which means that there are more students in my classes than ever that didn't really want to be there, but the class fit their schedule and fulfills graduation requirements. If they didn't like my syllabus or teaching style in the first few weeks, there weren't exactly a lot of classes to choose from as alternatives.

All of this: low morale, limited choices, financial worries has combined to make this a sad semester. I used to walk into class and forget my troubles. For that hour and 15 minutes, my lecture, which I had meticulously crafted over the last 5 years and enjoyably prepared, was the thing that made up for the lack of pay. Students seem to dig my lectures and are talkative. This semester, I saw immediately that they are all taxed in many ways and not as jazzed about me. I, also am not as jazzed about the lectures, not as interested in the process. I give them and enjoy them, but they don't have that transcendent quality they used to have. I miss that.

Luckily, when I wasn't doing work for courses this week, I was reading The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova. It taught me how to love again, which doesn't mean I'm no longer in "sad semester," but at least I'm not breaking up with academia.


Here's the Publisher's Weekly blurb about the novel:

In 1972, a 16-year-old American living in Amsterdam finds a mysterious book in her diplomat father's library. The book is ancient, blank except for a sinister woodcut of a dragon and the word "Drakulya," but it's the letters tucked inside, dated 1930 and addressed to "My dear and unfortunate successor," that really pique her curiosity. Her widowed father, Paul, reluctantly provides pieces of a chilling story; it seems this ominous little book has a way of forcing itself on its owners, with terrifying results.

Paul's former adviser at Oxford, Professor Rossi, became obsessed with researching Dracula and was convinced that he remained alive. When Rossi disappeared, Paul continued his quest with the help of another scholar, Helen, who had her own reasons for seeking the truth. As Paul relates these stories to his daughter, she secretly begins her own research.

This is a lot of different kinds of novels - thriller, horror, historical fiction, suspense, mystery, but most importantly for me, an almost-epistolary novel. A novel that uses letters, notes, and other "primary documents" to tell its story.

It's a mystery about the final resting place of Vlad Tepes, the 15th century Wallachian prince known as Vlad the Impaler, or alternatively, Dracula. The characters come to believe, despite being incredibly rational and disbelieving historians, that vampires might be real. Or that at least Dracula is a real vampire intent on harming various scholars for some unknown reason. The curiosity of the historian is the force that moves this novel forward, even more than the disappearance of one of the characters early on, which is supposed to provide the emotional pull towards the topic of Dracula for the researchers. Normally, they wouldn't study Dracula as anything other than a dead political figure or folkloric fantasy. But you see, stuff starts happening.

The Historian is long (900 pages), but so full of what historians love that I enjoyed it and found the pacing to be just right. The characters explore the kinds of libraries and archives I have always wanted to explore. Original scrolls, parchments, illuminated manuscripts, all laid out for them by librarians throughout Europe. They leap-frog through time via letters, scholars notes, and excerpts from the original documents. Through these documents, they piece together the disturbing historical events that created the Dracula myth. His favored technique of torture was impalement, but he also skinned, roasted, and buried people alive. He once rid his principality of poverty and disease by inviting the poor and infirm to a dinner, then closing the doors and setting the building on fire. As much as the vampire is supposed to be the fearsome creature, other atrocities of that era and beyond are described as the true horror. Humans did, and still do, horrible things to each other.

The book had me by page 50, where the narrator's father, Paul, reminisces that even though his story is horrific, "writing a dissertation's the really grisly thing."

Vlad Tepes, enjoying a meal in full view of his impaled enemies.
Apparently a favorite pastime of his.

This story allowed me to live out a fantasy for a few hundred pages. The fantasy I used to have about what it would be like to be a graduate student, what it would be like to be a college professor, what research is like. It was about giant sprawling libraries covered in ivy, where students would lay out their books and notes on heavy wooden tables that had been there for over a century. Spending all your time on your studies and as a result, being an expert on many things. About professors who know their students well, and ask about their lives, because everyone's life is the university and all things revolve around academia. About handling original documents and seeing how deep the pen left marks in parchment. About late night reading or conversations about a topic that interested you. About how it's normal to be anxious about your work and presenting it in front of others, but also that people are excited to learn about what you found. In The Historian, there was a sense of camaraderie, even amongst the scholars of different cultures and nationalities, all on the basis of love of historical research - the pursuit of knowledge.

It was not about faculty furlough days and campuses that look more like industrial parks than scholarly buildings. It was not about having to work a couple jobs while going to school, or having a full time teaching gig while trying to write your dissertation that pays less than $2k a month. It was not about crippling student loans, or the anxiety I feel when I look up department faculty webpages at universities I'd like to apply to and see that if I was hired, I'd be a quite lonely person of color there.

So it was a nice mental vacation, that, like most of my mental vacations, are really about the world I live in and not vacations at all. The end of the book (which I won't give away) reminded me of something I have to look forward to. Philadelphia, where colleges look like my fantasy colleges. But also where the Rosenbach Museum and Library houses Bram Stoker's notes on Dracula. I'd love to handle these things in my own little hands. It's now on my list of things to do when we move! Which means I'm still into research, still into learning, and an excitable girl. I'm all out of money, and almost out of energy, but not love, or at least not yet. Ask me again after next semester, another furlough semester....

Banned Books Week!

Hey folks, it's Banned Books Week! The American Library Association celebrates Banned Books Week each year as a way of celebrating the First Amendment and the freedom to read. And also to let everyone know that despite the First Amendment, people still call for censorship of certain materials, especially in schools.

Click HERE for the ALA's official list of banned books. You can sort through them by year, author, statistics, and other random searches.

They even have a list of the most frequently challenged authors of color (Here). Toni Morrisson pretty much rules that list.

Top 10 Challenged books of 2008:

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group

2. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence

3. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

4. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence

5. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence

6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group

7. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

8. Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group

9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group

10. Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group