To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis

To say nothing of the dog! This book kind of broke my brain, on account of it's about time travel and there is nothing simple about time travel and to make it worse Connie Willis invents a time travel science and when you actually try to explain time travel you are going to make brains explode.

But what I love about this book, and part of why I'm going to go find some more Connie Willis books and read them ASAP, is that the time travel totally breaks the brains of the people doing the time travelling. In multiple ways! First, they don't really understand it any better than I do, and second... oh, second.

"It's no wonder they call you man's best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the truest friend we ever have known, a better friend than we deserve. You have thrown in your lot with us, through thick and thin, on battlefield and hearthrug, refusing to leave your master even when death and destruction lie all around. Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by—"

And then the protagonist gets time travelled, but the point of it is that this whole soliloquy is part of the "maudlin sentimentality" that comes with time-lag, which encompasses many amusing (to the reader) symptoms and is a result of too much time travel. Willis writes these passages with obvious delight, and I can't help but love them.

The plot of the book is... simple... Ned Henry, our protagonist, is charged with finding this weird statue thing called the bishop's bird stump, which is apparently very ugly but which is required by a beast of a woman, Lady Schrapnell, to complete the rebuilding in 20... something... sometime in the mid-21st century... of a cathedral that burned down in 1940. Anyway, the vagaries of time travel mean that Henry and others can't get anywhere near the cathedral at the right time, and so they can't find this thing, but Lady Schrapnell is very persuasive and keeps sending Henry back in time until he gets totally time-lagged. The only cure is rest, which he can't get in the present time with Lady Schrapnell all a-crazy, and so he gets sent to the late 1800s instead to help return a cat that got mistakenly time-travelled when it should perhaps have been drowned. Then things start to get crazy.

I enjoyed the heck out of this book, which also features 1930s mystery novels, jumble sales, séances, crazy university professors, and many allusions to the book Three Men in a Boat which I must go read immediately, because it's got to be pretty awesome if it inspired this.

Recommendation: For those who enjoy being totally confused and bewildered.

Rating: 9/10
(TBR Challenge)

Booking Through Thursday — To Own or Borrow

Today's Booking Through Thursday asks, "All things being equal (money, space, etc), would you rather own copies of the books you read? Or borrow them?"

Well, I imagine that if I had more money and more space, I would buy more books. Because I like books, and I like authors, and I like supporting the books and authors I enjoy. And I do quite like owning the books that I love because a) I get to see them on a regular basis and b) I can easily loan them out to friends (read: force them upon unwitting victims).

But of course, I am also a longtime lover of the library, as you would know if you saw the shelf my husband just cleared out for me today just for my library books. I have a problem. But it's a good problem, I think, in that the books are free and when I go to read one and I don't like it or I realize that I no longer have an interest in reading it, I can go give it back to the library without hard feelings. And if I like it, I can wait a little longer to get the trade paperback (which is cheaper and lighter, which is good for my wallet and shelves) because I don't usually have an intense need to re-read things immediately.

So, all things being equal, I'd say that I still like my current method of obtaining books — checking millions out of the library, loving a handful, and showing off that handful on my shelf. If only I could afford bigger hands...

The Shining, by Stephen King

Here's another entry from my TBR Challenge... I saw this movie a while back and thought it was terrible, so I got it into my head that I should read the book because maybe it was better? And then my mother said, "No, really, the book is way better," and then I found the book at the used bookstore for cheap and THEN I totally didn't read it. Hence its addition to the challenge.

So! Now I've read it. Well, okay, I listened to it. And, in fact, it is way better than the movie, or at least what I remember of the movie — the problem with the movie is that it's just so middling that there's nothing to remember. Even after reading the book, my memory of the movie is this: Dude gets a job at a hotel. He goes all Jack Nicholson (see what I did there). He says, "Heeeeere's Johnny!" There is snow and possibly a snowmobile. The end.

The book, on the other hand, goes like this: Dude gets a job at a hotel, the only job he might even remotely get as a recovering alcoholic who, while sober beat the crap out of one of his students. His plan is to lay off the booze (which will be easy with no booze in the hotel), do some writing that will make him awesome and employable, and fix the problems with his family that are not all related to his alcoholism. This is a good plan. His wife and son come with him to take care of this hotel, which is closed for the winter, but the son has "the shining" which makes him a little bit psychic and a little too attuned to the horrors that have taken place in the hotel and that threaten to take place again. Dude is not attuned to these horrors, even as they start seeping into him, ruining his plan a little at a time until he goes all Jack Nicholson. He does not say "Heeeeere's Johnny!" There is lots and lots of snow and one too few snowmobiles.

I didn't exactly like the book, but compared to the movie it is downright wonderful. There's so much more backstory in the book that makes things make sense, and that also makes things more interesting and creepy. Like, the dad was an alcoholic until one night he and his bud ran over a bicycle in the middle of the road that may or may not have had a child on it; they can't find a kid but also can't figure out why there would be a tiny bicycle without a tiny human. And the psychic kid sees a lot more than just REDRUM; he sees what his dad has been and will be capable of and somehow does not pee his pants in fear. And the hotel is dang creepy with its dead people and midnight parties and moving shrubbery and I really don't think I'll be able to look at an animal topiary the same way again. Like, ever.

There's a lot more depth to the novel, is what I'm saying, and it allows King to be more subtle with the creepy and the psychological, which is just the way I like it. It didn't hurt that the audiobook narrator channeled a little Jack Nicholson into his reading — just enough to be fairly terrifying without going all Witches of Eastwick.

Unfortunately, the depth also comes with a lot of long boring bits, which made me not like this book so much. Also, an epilogue. I have been reading an inordinate number of epilogued books lately. Someday I will find a good one. Today is not that day.

Recommendation: Read this if you didn't like or don't remember the movie; it'll make you feel a little better. Not sure I would recommend it on its own strength.

Rating: 7/10
(TBR Challenge)

The Grim Grotto, by Lemony Snicket

This is the second and last of the Unfortunate Events books Scott and I made it through on our road trip... Scott spent too much time sleeping for us to listen more. That's right. I'm blaming him. I'm sure he cares.

Right, so, this is the one, as I recalled before we started it, that features horseradish. And a submarine. I have an excellent memory, you can see. But it is true that there is a submarine, and it is captained by a man who says "AYE!" a lot and crewed by AYE!-man's step-daughter and the optimistic dude from The Miserable Mill. And there is a fungus among us and it is super-deadly except that the deadliness can be cured by horseradish. And so of course it is. Spoiler.

I liked this better than the previous book largely because it seems to have more going on — there's the fungus and the sugar bowl and some capturing and releasing and only a few more questions and a decent number of answers, aye. But overall the series is getting more tedious than I remember and I am really hoping that it picks up in the last two books, or I am going to be apologizing to Scott for the next five years.

Recommendation: I think you know if you're going to read this one or not.

Rating: 7/10

Musing Mondays — Reading Nooks

Today's Musing Mondays question is... "Where is your favorite place to read?"

Well. Hmm. When it's nice outside (read: below 90 degrees [read: not now!]), I like to go hang out on my balcony, pictured here. Those chairs are surprisingly comfy.

But when it's like now, and the only safe place is indoors, I spend most of my time reading on the big leather couch in our living room. And then I have a nap on it. It's a pretty good deal, that. What's most fun is when Scott is playing video games on the TV and I can cuddle up with him while we're each doing our thing. That's really my favorite!

Strangely enough, the place where I do the most reading is my least favorite, because that's at work! I listen to all my audiobooks there, which sometimes takes quite a while because someone will make a super loud and prolonged noise and I'll have to just give up on trying to hear my book over it and instead wait and rewind back to where I think I was. Which is sometimes nowhere near where I actually was. Which is unfortunate, unless the book is really good, in which case it's just a second helping!

The Slippery Slope, by Lemony Snicket

Another road trip, another journey along the sad, sad path of the Baudelaire orphans! I'm not sure why that gets an exclamation mark, but it does.

Unfortunately (HA), I had forgotten how frightfully boring this installment is. After the violence and sloppy eating of The Carnivorous Carnival, this trip up a snow-covered mountain is just... meh.

What happens is this: Violet and Klaus have been separated from Sunny and are trying to find and rescue her, but they get sidetracked when they meet a wayward triplet and end up going to find the VFD headquarters, which has been set on fire. Meanwhile, Count Olaf is pretending it's The Bad Beginning all over again and making Sunny do chores. Yawn. Various secrets about the VFD are revealed, but of course they lead only to more secrets and more questions, and then in the end there is a very strange showdown that lets the orphans go on their not-so-merry way one more time.

I enjoyed it, certainly, because as always — TIM frickin' CURRY. But there is simply not enough exciting and treacherous in this story.

Recommendation: I mean, if you've read the other nine books already... :)

Rating: 7/10

The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor

A couple weeks ago, when I had run out of audiobooks to listen to at work (and just one day before a bunch of audiobooks I'd put on hold came in, of course!), I made an emergency trip to the library with my husband to find something to fill my time. I had no idea of what I wanted, so I just told Scott to grab the first thing that looked interesting. It was this, and I must say that Scott chooses very well!

Well, maybe. I adored this book, but from what the internets have told me, this is the kind of book that you're going to love or loathe, so be prepared!

What this is is a retelling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which I also liked quite a lot, largely because of Michael York. You know how it goes. Anyway, in Beddor's version, Alice is not just the overactively imagination-ed daughter of a friend of Charles Dodgson, but also Alyss Heart, Princess of Wonderland. After her not very nice aunt, Redd, comes out of exile, has Alyss's parents beheaded, and takes over Wonderland, Alyss is secretly shepherded out of Wonderland by Hatter Madigan, a Heart bodyguard and elite fighter. She ends up in late 19th-century London, where her story is mangled by Dodgson, and since no one believes her anyway she decides to forget all about having been a princess once. As these things go, of course, once she's grown up and about to be married, her wedding is crashed and she ends up back in Wonderland, where she has to fight Redd and try to win back the kingdom.

Or, to be brief, what this is is Alice with more action sequences.

And I liked it a lot. I'm always a fan of this kind of "true story" of a popular story, and I think Beddor does it quite well. Some of the conceits are a bit of a stretch (Dodgson inventing the White Rabbit from an anagrammatical counterpart, Bibwit Hare? Alyss and a boy being in love-ish at the age of, like, seven?), but for the most part I was totally on board with Beddor's world. I've seen some complaints about the writing, but I wasn't distracted by any of it while I was listening to this at work, so it can't be that terrible. If I ever get through all of the audiobooks that have subsequently arrived for me, I'm sure I will be dipping back into this series.

Recommendation: For readers of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland who thought, "Not enough heads are coming off, here."

Rating: 9/10
(A to Z Challenge)