Black Plumes, by Margery Allingham

Well, I mean, let's be real. After that whirlwind romance with The Night Circus (which I just very reluctantly took back to the library), no other suitor was going to compare at all. So it might be that. But I really did not like Black Plumes.

No, no, it's not that I didn't like it, it's that I didn't like it, and in fact really it's that I was and am completely apathetic toward it. I read the book, I learned whodunnit, and I was like, "Oh. Okay. That's cool, I guess."

Maybe I've been spoiled by the other "Golden Age Girls"? Sayers, Christie, and Marsh (or really just all the authors of the period that I've read) have given me some crazy death or other that seems impossible or is really weird or has, like, twelve people who could have done it. The murder in this novel just sort of happens and then someone comes to investigate and then everyone suspects everyone else and then at the end it was some other guy who was never suspected, which, I guess I should have called that?

And there was this sub-plot-line with a pretend engagement that I actually didn't like because it was just kind of annoying, and I didn't care about either of the parties or any of the parties in the whole book and I couldn't even tell you what the inspector's name is or anything about him besides that he doesn't say "just" or "joke" but rather "chust" and "choke" because apparently that's what they say wherever he's from and man that accent as done by this narrator was very distracting. So maybe it's an audiobook problem?

I don't know. I have really nothing else to say about this book, and that makes me kind of sad. Should I give Allingham another chance? Is this actually her worst book and I chust made a terrible decision? Please say it's so!

Recommendation: I just... I don't know.

Rating: 4/10
(RIP Challenge, Vintage Mystery Challenge)

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern

I don't want to talk about this book. I want to snuggle with it. Snuggle snuggle snugg—ow, those are some pointy edges! Okay, book, you can just stay over there a minute.

Okay, so, this book. I heard some folks bein' real excited about it earlier this year, and I was like, magicians? Circuses? Secret plots OF DOOM? I am so in. And so I put a hold on it at the library, some ridiculous amount of time in advance. And then in the intervening weeks this book seemed to get ALL the publicity, showing up on lots of blogs and in newspapers and on NPR, and everyone was like OMG THIS BOOK IS TEH AWESOMEST and I was like, ohlord. Because I've read those books before, and I have not liked them.

But as you can tell, this book I liked a ton, possibly because all those things that drew me into the story, and that made me worry that they would not be as good as everyone was shouting about, were really not that important. Yes, there are magicians. There is a mysterious contest so hush-hush that even the competitors have no idea what the contest is or how to win it. There is intrigue and subterfuge. But what I cared about was the circus.

The circus is this nearly completely black-and-white affair, with dozens of little tents with your usual circus fare and a few tents with really magical things — a magician disguised as an illusionist, a labyrinth, a wishing tree, a landscape made entirely of ice but still realistically aroma-ed. And what makes the circus truly special is that the author makes sure you know exactly what everything looks like and smells like and feels like and all those other sensory things. About a bonfire:

"As you walk closer, you can see that it sits in a wide black iron cauldron, balanced on a number of clawed feet. Where the rim of a cauldron would be, it breaks into long strips of curling iron, as though it has been melted and pulled apart like taffy. The curling iron continues up until it curls back into itself, weaving in and out amongst the other curls, giving it the cage-like effect. The flames are visible in the gaps between and rising slightly above. They are obscured only at the bottom, so it is impossible to tell what is burning, if it is wood or coal or something else entirely."

Morgenstern intersperses short sensory passages like that throughout the novel, but she writes all of her scenes in a similarly opulent way. At first I was a bit put off by this seemingly over-verbose writing, and in a few places it sort of gets away from Morgenstern, but in general she makes it work fantastically and it is absolutely my favorite aspect of the book. I really want to get my hands on the audiobook so that this writing and Jim Dale's voice can make beautiful babies in my brain.

Ahem.

If you're more of a story person, I'm not sure you'll be as enamored with the book; the plot is fairly simple, starts off quite slow, and ends abruptly AND with a not-declared-as-such-but-it-totally-is-and-can't-deny-it epilogue, but though I found myself saying more than once "If this goes one step farther I'm calling shenanigans," the book managed never to take that step, at least by my measurements.

I wrote on Twitter the other night that "I've read through the last page of The Night Circus, but I'm certainly not finished with it..." and that holds true today. I spent more than a week reading this book not because I didn't have time to devour it in one sitting but because I didn't want to. I wanted to savor that writing and put off leaving the circus as long as possible. And I'm not kidding about the audiobook. My library doesn't have it yet but when they do, you'll be seeing another post about The Night Circus right here.

Recommendation: If you like shiny pretty things or magic or clown-less circuses, you'll probably be happy here.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge, A to Z Challenge)

Fragile Things Read-Along, Part the Third

Well, I am pleased to report that we do not have a repeat last week's intense befuddlement and annoyance. These stories are certainly not any more cut and dried, because that would be no fun, but at least I feel more internal sense-making and also some intrigue. I like to be intrigued.

Here's where we stand:

"Going Wodwo"
I liked this the least of this week's stories, probably because it's one of those poem things and I'm still working on being a poetry person. It may happen, someday, but it hasn't happened yet. But anyway, this twenty-line poem describes a person, well, "going wodwo," or becoming, as the intro says, "a wild man of the woods." I don't quite follow the path of the story of the poem, nor does it have the delightful cadence of "The Fairy Reel", but I will give the poem props for imagery. The first stanza reeled me in — "Shedding my shirt, my book, my coat, my life / Leaving them, empty husks and fallen leaves / Going in search of food and for a spring / Of sweet water" — and even though I don't really get it, I really like the phrase "My skin will be / my face now." Well, if by "like" I mean "am sort of really creeped out by." Which I do.

"Bitter Grounds"
There is a lot going on in this story. The main plot, I suppose, is that there's a fellow who up and runs away from his life, stops running temporarily to help out a random guy who subsequently completely disappears, then sort of decides to be this guy for a while. As you do. But there's so much interesting stuff to think about as this plot moves along — the disappeared guy leaves behind an abandoned, totalled car that our narrator minutes previously had seen as intact if broken down. Disappeared Guy was an academic writing about zombies. Our narrator, while pretending to be DG, makes a new friend who also disappears, and some other new friends who may or may not exist. Like last week's "Closing Time", this story has an ending that I don't quite understand, but this time I felt like the confusing ending at least fit with the story, instead of being completely jarring. Or possibly I am more forgiving when there are potential zombies involved.

"Other People"
As soon as I heard Gaiman say, in his fantastic voice, "'Other People,'" I said to myself, "Hell is?" And I was SO RIGHT. I love it when that happens. There are no "other people" in this story, but there is Hell, and it is very hellish. There's a guy, and he wanders into Hell, and he meets a demon who proceeds to beat the crap out of him with 211 different instruments of OW. And then, for good measure, the demon forces the guy to admit to himself every bad thing he's ever done or said or thought or probably thought about thinking, over and over and over again. And from what I can tell, that is a LOT of bad things. Interestingly, I missed the important point of the story while ears-reading because I apparently had the attention span of a goldfish that day, but as soon as I started eyes-reading it yesterday I decided that this story was fantastic. This week's favorite!

"Keepsakes and Treasures"
Oh, goodness, I am turning into one of those Parents Television Council people, aren't I? I was all for the story when I thought it was going to be violence and sloppy eating, but then it took a turn toward the sex intercourse and I was like, "Oh, that's gross." I mean, I still read the story, but I really wanted more gruesome killing. Please don't tell me what that means about me. Ahem. Anyway. Here's an example of a story where I don't know any of the background (Gaiman notes in the intro that this story is based on characters from a comic that I've never heard of), but the story was just fine anyway. To spoil everything, there's an unnamed dude who works for this guy called Mr. Alice, and Unnamed Dude spends a lot of time and effort and Alice's money to procure for Alice the most beautiful boy in the world for the sex intercourse and then after not very long the beautiful boy gets the flu and dies. And so this is really just a very rated-R way of telling a very universal truth, and even though I was like, "ew, cooties," the way that Gaiman wrote the heck out of this story really sold it to me. There's the setup of our unnamed narrator being a bit of a serial killer (sidenote: I did a small but very literal spit take at the dissonance between these consecutive sentences: "She was a looker, my mum. I didn't know which one of the four was my dad, so I killed all of them." FANTASTIC), and so also really completely disaffected by all the bad and/or weird stuff Alice has him hired to do, and there's one scene that Gaiman wrote where I read it and I was like, "That's weird, a little bit," and then a couple pages later Gaiman writes this other little scene where I'm like, "Ew," and then I remember that first scene and I'm like, "Okay, now I need to go take a shower, euucchh." In a good way? I don't know.

I'm not quite hooked on Fragile Things again, but I am feeling much much better about its chances for being awesome. How about you guys?

Eight further reasons to lock up my library card

I mean, there are WAY more than eight reasons. My husband just gives me a Look every time I bring a new library book home now, because he's bored of admonishing me. But whatever.

Here are eight more books that I have collected from the library solely because I saw them while cataloging, in roughly chronological retrieval order. Again, I have failed to read any so far, but that's not the point, right? The point is pretty books!



1. These Children Who Come at You With Knives, by Jim Knipfel. Nuts! I'm only one book in, and already there's an exception. Technically, it doesn't count because I didn't catalog this book, but I'm counting it because I only heard about from cataloging anther Knipfel book I don't recall anything about. I was wondering if that other book would get a genre label, so I looked up the author, and then I saw this title and I was like, "OoooOOOOoooh." Short stories? Retold fairy tales? I was intrigued. And then it promised me "a magical snowman wrestling with the horror of being alive," and I was like take THAT, evil snowmen, and put a hold on it. I should be reading it for RIP, so maybe you'll hear about it soon?

2. Mice, by Gordon Reece. This could probably go for RIP, too! This one has fog and a lone tree on the cover, combined in a deliciously creepy way, and the jacket copy promises more creepy: "At first, they [the main characters] flourish in their cottage haven, drinking hot chocolate and listening to Brahms by the fire. But on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Shelley wakes to hear a creak on the stairs. Someone is in the house...." Augh! Someone in the house! Interruption of BRAHMS! It is meant to be both scary and funny, so I'm intrigued.

3. The Edinburgh Dead, by Brian Ruckley. I might be sensing a theme here. Whatever. The back cover offers grisly medical experiments on corpses, and also more "sinister" forces, but it's really the tagline on the cover that got me here: "There is a law against murder. But there are no laws for the dead." What does that even mean? I must find out! Also, it's got an 1820s setting and is allegedly gothic. They've got me!

4. The Postmortal, by Drew Magary. I almost set this book aside because it has a bit of a trying-too-hard cover and a blurb from the Shit My Dad Says guy that includes a reference to facial urination. Riiiiiight, moving on? But then I read the book's description, which basically describes the most recent season of Torchwood without all the parts I hated — the world figures out how to stop aging, although death is still allowed, and it leads to all sorts of weird stuff like religious cults and government euthanasia. Please, tell me more.

5. Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward. Confession: even though I was intrigued by this book from the moment I saw it, when I found out that it was going to get an "African American" sticker, I got the image of all those terrible-looking romance novels that plague that section and I very nearly put this book right out of my mind. But then I was like, "ALISON. BAD." So here it is! Salvage the Bones is, according to the dust jacket, a book about a poor family in Mississippi threatened by an approaching hurricane and also dealing with a crap father, teen pregnancy, a lack of food, and a new litter of pit bulls. The book spans only twelve days, so I'm anticipating a very suspenseful read.

6. Death of the Mantis, by Michael Stanley. It's a murder mystery. That's all I really know. But the writers (Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip) are out of Johannesburg, so this is totally going to count for the Global Reading Challenge, and that (along with, you know, MURDER) is good enough for me!

7. Paper Covers Rock, by Jenny Hubbard. Huh. The back cover of this book doesn't really tell me anything about why I put a hold on this book... but if I recall correctly the answer is twofold: a) boarding school, and b) mysteriously dead person. I am so easy to please. Also, the guy on the cover is wearing a knitted tie. I have no idea why.

8. My Beautiful Genome, by Lone Frank. Look! A book with no death in it! It's not even fiction! WHAT. This is a book all about genomics and designer babies and what your genes can really say about you, and I kind of adore Gattaca and if there's no reference to it I'll be quite sad. Also, Mary Roach says (of her own free will, I presume) that it's "sharp and funny." So that's a bonus point right there.

The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Here's a true story for you: The Hobbit is the first book I ever lied about reading, way back when I was but a young Alison looking to score some Summer Reading Club points. My parents totally did not believe my lies, but they allowed said lies to stand anyway, leading to DECADES of shame and regret. Well, not really. Most of the time I forget it even happened. But I've never lied about a Summer Reading Club book since! (Summer reading in general, yes, totally.)

But now I have read it, and I can speak with authority on the subjects of Misplaced Heroism and Wizards That Are Not Very Nice. Seriously, I had no idea Gandalf was such a jerk! Blah blah blah, grand adventures, blah, self-confidence, blah, endless treasure, whatever. No means no, Gandalf!

I know I'm not the last person to read this book, so here's the plot: jerky wizard recruits homebody hobbit to go help some dwarves steal all the treasures from a talking dragon. Said gang wanders toward dragon and gets swept up in some side-quests along the way; a ring is tricked away from a creeper. The gang finally gets to the dragon and fails at stealing all the treasures until someone kills the dragon for them. There is fighting. Eventually, Homebody Hobbit returns home with a handful of treasure, which doesn't last long for an amusing reason.

So. It's a Quest Novel. I'm not always a big fan of these, and I'd have to say this one is all right, I guess. The scrapes they get into are interesting, especially when they ignore directions and go wandering in the woods, and of course I was intrigued by the Gollum aspect of things having seen the LOTR movies (I'll get around to the books someday, maybe). I was a little concerned by the GI-Joe-like refusal to let anyone die, but then everyone started dying and I was like, hey, hold on, this is going a little overboard. But it's really not a quest until someone dies, right?

Of course, the best part was that the audiobook cover had the same picture that graces my engagement puzzle (read: the puzzle my then-boyfriend and I were putting together when I completely ignored his proposal [accidentally, I swear!]), so when things got boring I could just think back on adorable times. I may be a huge sap.

The second-best part was that ears-reading the book meant that the narrator SANG to me, which was absolutely fantastic because a) I always want to know how songs in books go and b) Rob Inglis is probably a way better singer than those dwarves and goblins and whatnot. If he could have sung the whole book to me, that would have been just fine.

And even though I wasn't a huge fan of the book, I liked it enough that I am very interested in seeing the movie — I was going to watch it eventually if only for Martin Freeman, but now I might actually pay to see it, which is just ridiculous. There had better be singing!

Recommendation: You probably already know if you want to read it, but if you're on the fence you should think about how much you like quests, goblins, and riddles.

Rating: 7/10
(TBR Challenge)

Thinner, by Richard Bachman

I'm always a little confused by authors who use pseudonyms but are also like, "I am totally this person," so people will read their books. Like I've cataloged a few books that are authored by NORA ROBERTS (writing as J.D. Robb) or... someone whose name I forget where her author bio is like "This Person is the pseudonym of That Other Person." Why are we bothering with the pseudonym, then?

All this is to say that I didn't actually realize this was a Richard Bachman book until well after I started listening, because everything I looked at was all STEPHEN EFFING KING all the time. It is also to say that when people know they are reading a Stephen King book it is a little weird to hear the narrator talking about how it's like he's in a Stephen King book, but according to my friend Cory this is not an unusual thing to happen in a King novel. I don't know if that's good or bad.

Aaaaanyway the novel. I had actually thought this was a short story, because the plot — a heavy guy gets cursed to become thinner, which is cool until all of a sudden he can barely eat enough to survive — did not seem like a story that could be sustained over 10 hours(!). And indeed, there were a few parts where I was like, "Okay I get it let's move it along now?"

But on the whole the story was delightfully horror-ful. It starts with a guy, Billy, who's like, "That creepy gypsy guy was creepy. Why did he say 'THINNER' at me?" And then he's all losing weight, and you find out that the creepy gypsy guy said that because Billy ran over the gypsy's daughter who ran out into the street and so he was found not guilty of manslaughter or whatever except that then it turns out that maybe he wasn't quite so not guilty after all? And maybe the gypsy isn't only targeting him? But Billy is a lawyer, so he's gonna fight back, even if he has to drive all the way up to Maine (you knew Maine was in here somewhere, didn't you?) to find these gypsies and bitch at them. Because that's really what it boils down to.

And really, the driving up I-95 bit could have just been completely excised from the story, because I really do understand that gypsies are creepy, and also why is it that everyone is like "Man, I haven't seen a gypsy in like 25 years" and then at the EXACT SAME TIME like "Oh, gypsies. You know how they roll." Do you? Are you sure?

But the whole cursing aspect is interesting, and Billy's visits to the other afflicted-types are quite creepy, and the ending is the only possible ending I would have accepted for Billy so it's fine that it's pretty well telegraphed. Also, I knew I liked Joe Mantegna, the audiobook narrator, from his work on the teevee, but seriously that man can read a book. He did some fantastic voice work to the point where I was sometimes like, "Isn't Joe Mantegna reading this book? Who is this guy? That is Joe Mantegna? Are you sure?" I think he should probably read every Stephen King book, because he can make with the spooky and terrifying. Maybe he should do a version of The Turn of the Screw! How much would it cost to commission that?

Recommendation: On the whole, I enjoyed my ten hours with Stephen and Joe. Especially Joe. And while I think the novel should be much much shorter, I do still think it's worth a read if you're in the mood for some gruesome.

Rating: 8.5/10 (bonus points for Joe!)
(RIP Challenge, What's in a Name Challenge)

Fragile Things Read-Along, Part the Second

Whaaaaaaaaat is going on here? After a stunning round of stories last week, I am feeling utterly lost this week. I mean, I listened to all of these stories at least twice and read them once, and I still don't get 75 percent of them. That's not good!

On the plus side, they're still read by Neil Gaiman and he can still read me the phone book if he wants.

"The Hidden Chamber"
According to the introduction, this is supposed to be a Bluebeard story. And Bluebeard is a... pirate? Let me go check Wikipedia. That is not a pirate. I am totally thinking of Blackbeard, aren't I? Things are starting to make so much more sense. Let me read this entry a bit more. ... Okay, I'm back, and this is actually pretty okay. Let me change my previous statement to 50 percent. Soooooo this is a sort of poem thing (which doesn't quite come across in the audio because it's free verse) about this fella Bluebeard who, as I just learned, is traditionally a guy what likes to kill his wives. But in Gaiman's version, he's all, no, no, don't worry about the ghosts, and I totally don't have one room in my house you're not allowed into I don't know what you're talking about, and also I'm so misunderstood. He's reformed, you see, but not in the way you might think, and the poem takes a turn toward the creeptastic at the end. I may need to take out a preemptive restraining order on anyone with a blue beard.

"Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire"
Well, okay, maybe 25 percent, because I think I get this story, I just don't like it. It opens with the a "chapter" that goes, "Somewhere in the night, someone was writing." Excellent start! Then it moves over to what is being written, which also doesn't quite come across in the audio and it took me a second listen to figure out exactly how that worked. And what is being written is a sort of send-up of every horror/ghost/creepy story ever written, with an allusion to The Turn of the Screw and probably many other things that I can't quite pin down. And it's predictably bad, and then we go back to the writer, and the writer is all "I am failing at writing this slice-of-life Great American Novel where "American" equals "weird alternate universe where life is creepy all the time and those nice young men etc." And so at first I am like, "Oh I see how this is a satire of creepy stories," but then I am like, "Oh I see what you did there and I am not quite in." Because the author is complaining about how his writing is just a send-up of the "classics" and not a view into daily tedium or whatever, except that Gaiman also writes the Auteur's actual life as a send-up of the "classics" and so I think he's doing a great job. And then, when the Auteur (spoiler!) decides to write "fantasy" instead, he's just sending up a different genre so I don't think he has improved anything. Okay, maybe 37.5 percent?

"The Flints of Memory Lane"
I get this one! And I kind of like it! But I can't write as much about it because it's so short! Anyway, this is just a quick telling of an anecdote from Gaiman's life where he may or may not have seen a real live ghost faffing about in front of his family's house. This of course doesn't do justice to Gaiman's writing, which conveys the creepiness of seeing a strange woman hanging around under a sodium lamplight, all oddly colored and also silent and also capable of disappearing while your back is turned. I've never had quite such a vivid experience, but I'm sure it would scare the pants off of me.

"Closing Time"
I absolutely do not get this story and I need someone to explain it to me. Please. From what I have gathered, this is a story wherein Our Narrator is swapping ghost stories with a group of friends. Check. Then he tells one wherein he meets a group of boys and the boys dare Our Narrator to knock on a playhouse door and then Our Narrator dares them to go into the playhouse, whose door opens and closes by itself, and the boys are never seen again and that's creepy. And then after the story is told, it turns out that one of the listeners is one of the story's boys and he's all, "our dad was kind of a weirdo and my one brother killed himself and I just got out of the loony bin." And I just... I don't get it. I don't understand how this latter bit goes with the narrator's story, and I don't understand how all these tangents the narrator goes on have anything to do with anything and... yeah. I got nothing. Help?

I am so not excited for reading the next four stories, because I fear they will be as baffling as most of these, but I have a feeling that as soon as I start the next one I'll be hooked again. What do you guys think?