Sunday Salon: the Snowglobe Post

I’m writing this in my bedroom, and I can look out the window and admire all of the pretty snow, which has made the evergreen tree out there beautiful. The sky’s solid white, like it always is with snow, and I feel like I’m in a snowglobe! I missed last Sunday’s salon, and I’ve been reading like crazy this month, but I didn’t want to talk about 23 books in one post. So I’ve divided up the books by theme, and whichever ones didn’t fall into any of the themes are the ones I’m talking about today! That’s twelve books! You might notice there isn’t as much nonfiction as usual: that’s because I barely had any out from the library. That’s been corrected now, and I’m wallowing in nonfic as much as fic. ;)

First, I read A Dark Dividing by Sarah Rayne. I had gotten this from the library, because Litlove did a marvelous review of another book of hers. Isn’t the cover of this creepy? And it deals with twins, and ghosts, and Victorians, and crazy women; the book definitely lives up to the cover. I really loved this one, although I think the ending wasn’t quite as good as most of the rest of the book (I think I expected a bigger, more dramatic plot climax-it was still really, really good). Anyway, the characters all felt so real, and the plots were quite fun (the twists were pretty transparent, but I don’t think that was the point, you know?), and the writing was marvelous. Also, many of the characters were readers, and so I loved having those little moments (reaching for comfort book in time of crisis, etc.) in the book. There are four main narrators, each telling their story in a different time (from Victorian England to just 20 years ago to 10 years ago to present), and that could have gotten complicated, but Rayne maintained each of their voices throughout, so I always knew when I was. All in all, if you love ghosts, and you love being a bit creeped out, definitely read this one. I just wish my library had more of Rayne’s books-I want to read them all now!

Next up was a reread: Queen of Sorcery by David Eddings, the second in the Belgariad series. As I mentioned when reviewing the first one, I adored Eddings in high school, especially this series, and was reluctant to reread them in case they didn’t stand up. I don’t think Queen of Sorcery is quite as good as Pawn of Prophecy-it suffers from the ‘middle of the series’ syndrome. It’s difficult for me to talk about it more than that without giving away much of Pawn of Prophecy, rather like reviewing The Subtle Knife or The Two Towers on their own. So I won’t say much. But I still really enjoyed spending more time with these characters, and I’ll definitely be rereading the other three this year.

Then a nonfiction selection: The Restless Sleep by Stacy Horn, which I read for Citizen Reader’s upcoming True Crime Book Menage. Now, true crime is one of my least favourite nonfiction genres, so keep that in mind. But this is the second book I’ve read by Horn (the other was Unbelievable, about the Duke parapsychology lab), and I just don’t think her writing works for me. It’s not bad, but both of these were simple average reads in my book. Part of the problem is Horn has a kind of ‘can’t see the forest for the trees’ syndrome. Her books include a lot of information, but instead of all of this information being organised into a cohesive whole, it’s as if Horn doesn’t have many bigger themes to short the information into. In Restless Sleep, I was often confused-it jumps back and forth between time periods and crimes and detectives, and while of course I’m intelligent enough to figure out what she’s talking about within a couple of paragraphs, it detracted from the reading experience. And, at the end of this book, I was left wondering why she had bothered writing it. The introduction was marvelous, about why Horn thought murder was evil. But after that, she seemed so determined to keep herself out of the book, that there was no spark. And there’s a lot of talk about the political machinations of the NYC Cold Case Squad, which could have been interesting if Horn had told me why I should care. But she didn’t. And she included a couple crimes for only a paragraph or so, that were incredibly upsetting and had me sobbing, but didn’t follow up on them, which felt odd. So, if you like true crime, you might want to give this a go. But I wouldn’t say it’s a must-read. I could feel a marvelous potential book while I was reading, but Horn didn’t shape it enough for my tastes.

When I finally picked up North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, I was incredibly excited. I watched the miniseries for the first time earlier this year (I think in April?), and it’s become my favourite BBC costume drama-I think I’ve watched it at least 5 times already. Unfortunately, that meant it was impossible for me to read the book without comparing it to the adaptation, and I think much of the time the adaptation won out. Usually, I prefer books to films, because I’m inside the character’s head, and there’s just so much more emotional immediacy. And in North and South you do spend time in Mr. Thornton’s head as well as Margaret Hale’s. But I didn’t particularly like being inside their thoughts, because they were a lot more judgmental-meaner, I would say, than the adaptation. In fact, most of the characters had more bad traits than good ones; while I smiled at the ending, I wasn’t emotionally involved in the book to even half the extent I was in the adaptation. This shocked me-I’ve read Cranford by Gaskell and loved it (and I just saw that adaptation last night-while it was marvelous, I don’t think it was better than the book), but in North and South the characters all just feel petty and problematic. Of course, I have no idea what I would have thought of the book if I hadn’t already seen the miniseries, so if you want to both watch and read North and South, I’d recommend trying the book first. The story itself, the plot, is still marvelous, and I don’t think the book was awful. But it wasn’t wonderful, and I’m not going to recommend it to everyone like I did Cranford. I’m glad I read it this once, but from now on I’ll stick to the adaptation whenever I want to visit Milton. (I’m listening to another Gaskell, Ruth, right now for the Classics Circuit and really enjoying it, so I suspect this is the BBC’s fault.)

The next book is difficult to classify…I suppose I’d call it something like auobiographical fiction. Where We Once Belonged by Sia Figiel is centered around a Samoan girl and her coming-of-age. But it’s not a novel, or novella, or short story collection. The plot isn’t super important, and while there are characters, they come and go a bit unpredictably. Really, this book is about place and culture, a culture that’s changing in the face of Western influence. But it’s not just a political book…yes, there’s a political consciousness to it, but the stories of the people on the island are what matter. I’m not talking about this very well. Anyway, I loved this. I got it because I was like ‘Samoa! I don’t know much at all about that! Let’s read an author from a new country!’ and it fulfilled that goal wonderfully. I felt like I was living in the village with Alofa, and I celebrated her triumphs and wanted to comfort her in her defeats. Figiel has a wonderful writing style-it’s descriptive and impressionistic, never heavy-handed. This is literary fiction of the best kind-it draws you into a new world and keeps you there until the book ends. I highly recommend it.

After that, I finally finished the Virago Book of Ghost Stories ed. by Richard Dalby, which I’d been drawing out over several weeks. I haven’t been as good at reviewing the stories as I would have liked to be, but I really loved this collection. It didn’t ever really creep me out…it’s dedicated to a quieter, classic style of ghost story. While each of the stories, and authors, had a different style of course, the volume felt really cohesive-I think if you enjoy a few of the stories included (which I linked to free copies in this post), you’ll enjoy them all. The kind of anthology that invites you to enjoy a story or two with your morning cup of tea, and that leaves a bit of a hole when you’ve finished them all. I highly recommend it to those who enjoy this genre (see the post I linked to earlier to find out more).

Speaking of comfort reads, when I’m sick, I love turning to a good mystery. And Unnatural Death by Dorothy Sayers, featuring one of my favourite sleuths, is that. I’ve read almost all of the Wimsey and Vane books now (as I mentioned yesterday, with my favourite authors, I like to leave a few books unread, just so that I know that they’re there when I need them)-the only two I have left are Busman’s Honeymoon and Five Red Herrings. Anyway, Unnatural Death has Peter but no Harriet, and while it wasn’t one of my favourites, I still enjoyed it. Wimsey hears about a cold case at his club one night, and sets out to prove that an old lady’s death was in fact murder. This doesn’t have much of a classic ‘whodunnit’ feel, in that the primary suspect emerges quite quickly and stays in that place throughout the book. It’s more of a ‘howdunnit,’ if that makes sense. Peter is always amusing, and while Harriet isn’t there, Miss Climpson is. She’s quite fun, a middle-aged spinster who works Miss Marple-style as Peter’s ‘intelligence agent,’ so I was delighted to see her again. If you’re a fan of the Wimsey books, I’m sure you’ll read this one eventually, but it’s not one I’d recommend to those who are new to the series (for you, I’d recommend Murder Must Advertise and/or Strong Poison as places to begin).

I turned to yet another mystery, this one as part of the Canadian Challenge: Still Life by Louise Penny. And here I’m going to admit something that makes me sad, since some of my very favourite bloggers love Penny: I didn’t like this book. Penny, in my opinion, overwrote it. I remember reading somewhere that the magic of reading is in the interaction between the reader and the author, how the reader brings life to the ‘white spaces’ of the page. With Still Life, there weren’t any white spaces. Penny was constantly telling me exactly why a character did something (like make a facial expression), exactly what they were thinking, all of their motivation, etc. My favourite authors are those who trust the readers to fill in the blanks on their own; that never happens here. I suppose the plot itself was pretty good, but many of the characters felt almost too quirky and original, if that makes sense. But really, for me to boiled down to Penny giving way too much information and detail about what everyone was doing; she switches point of view a lot to accomplish that, and I’ve noticed I strongly prefer mysteries all told from one, maybe two, viewpoints. So I’m sure it’s a personal thing. Please don’t hate me, all you Canadian bloggers! ;)

Since I’m being negative, I might as well just come out and say that the next book I read, The Lady, the Chef, and the Courtesan by Marisol is probably the worst one I’ve read all year. Usually, I would have stopped reading after about twenty pages, but it’s set in Venezuela (where the author’s from), and I wanted to learn more about the country, so I told myself it might get better. Um, no. It just kept getting worse and worse. It’s like every stereotype of Latin American literature rolled into one. I’m going to stop talking about it now, because I don’t like being mean about books, but I would advice everyone to steer well away from this.

Then Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger arrived from the library, so I wanted to read it quickly so I could return it and let others read it (does anyone else feel obligated to read books with a long queue faster?). I know this book has been reviewed to death, so I’ll keep my thoughts short. I loved The Time Traveller’s Wife. I didn’t love this one. I thought the first half was pretty entertaining, atmospheric and all that. But in the second half, I started to become more and more skeptical of the characters’s motivations, and by the end I didn’t feel Niffenegger had justified the decision that the whole book hangs on at all. The characters in this one didn’t live and breathe for me the way the ones in The Time Traveller’s Wife did. So while the writing was still wonderful, the book felt kind of ‘meh.’ I thought the final ending was quite cute, though-there is that. I wouldn’t not recommend this one, but I won’t be pressing it urgently into friends’ hands either.

Fortunately, the last two books really impressed me! A Secret for Julia by Patricia Sagastizabal is about an Argentinian woman who was part of the resistance, and escaped Argentina and settled in England as a political refugee. It’s narrated in first person, and Sagastizabal perfectly captures the voice and thoughts of a woman obviously suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s kind of like Speak or Wintergirls, but about a grown woman instead. We see as she starts to rebuild her life from the ground up, and since her love is philosophy, the way she describes her story reflects that. It’s told in flashbacks, that aren’t quite chronological, but they work. The pulse of the story is her relationship with her daughter, Julia, but I won’t say more than that. This book really, really impressed me, although of course at times it was difficult to read. Sagastizabal’s writing, her ability to create such a genuine character, is wonderful, and I only wish she had other books for me to read.

And finally, I finished The Girl Who Played Go by Shan Sa before I went to sleep last night. This was one of my books for the China Challenge, and I really loved it. It’s a small book-300 pages, but the hardcover dimensions are maybe two-thirds that of an ordinary hardcover. Plus, each chapter is only 2-5 pages, so there’s quite a bit of blank space; it’s a quick read. The novel is set in Manchuria, during the Japanese invasion of 1931. There are two main characters, who each tell their stories in first person, via alternating chapters. One is a 16-year-old Manchurian girl, who is skilled at playing Go. The other is a young Japanese soldier. I’m not going to tell you more than that, but I really loved this. The stories were intriguing, the two characters made me feel like I was inside their heads, and there’s the delicate, fluid writing style I’ve noticed in many of the East Asian authors I’ve read. If you enjoy books set in China, or if you’d like to read a Chinese author but aren’t sure where to start, I think Shan Sa would be a wonderful choice. She’s written several books in French (she was born in Bejing but moved to Paris when she was 18), but her only other translated-into-English novel is Empress. You can bet I’ll be reading it!

And there you go! As you see, when I start feeling sick, I tend to ignore challenges completely, and just read books the whim takes me. ;) When you’re sick, what kind of books do you turn to?