just for grins.

Posted on May 13, 2011 by pagesofjulia

1. I know what I want for dinner.
2. I would take a nap right now if at all possible.
3. This weather has been great for sweating. And the grass.
4. Nothing is really a problem.
5. I’m really happy I have the ability to ride my bike!
6. Go read a book, or something to that effect.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to beer, tomorrow my plans include riding Rocky Hill Ranch and Sunday, I want to chillax, and take some pictures!

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book beginnings on Friday: Jersey Law by Ron Liebman

Posted on May 13, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate: Share the first line (or two) of the book you are currently reading on your blog or in the comments. Include the title and the author so we know what you’re reading. Then, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line, and let us know if you liked or did not like the sentence.

Jersey Law looks to be a funny legal thriller with a heavy New Jersey accent.

Reginald Shawn Dupree, inmate number 65392, Camden County Jail, is definitely not liking the situation he has found himself in.

He shrugs as best he can, given that Slippery Williams’s two beefy fellow inmates have effectively strapped him in place, each man firmly grasping Reginald’s muscled arms, just about lifting his feet off the ground.

I like my genre fiction hard-boiled, so we’re off to a fine start!

Note: I’m reading an advanced proof for review, so this book beginning is subject to change.

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I Remember

Posted on May 12, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I was struck today by a blog post I found at cakes, tea and dreams. Katie, the blogger there, got this idea from Lindsey at A Design So Vast. The idea is to write for 10-minutes, sort of free-flow, sentences beginning with “I remember.” I liked this so much that I did it, too. I was surprised at what came out.

I remember my father finally taking the training wheels off my bicycle.

I remember riding to day care on the back of my father’s bicycle. (Or maybe I just remember the story?)

I remember my neighborhood friends, Joshua and Jonathon. They were brothers. Joshua once got hit by a car on his bike; the lady stopped, asked if he was okay, and drove on.

I remember trying to come home on time – I was supposed to come home when the street lights came on – but I could never notice, and I was late, consistently.

I remember eating figs off the fig trees in the backyard.

I remember the day my parents came home with a kitten we named Katy.

I remember when our dog Eile came home as a puppy.

I remember a lizard latching on to my finger in the greenhouse. I was told it didn’t hurt; but I screamed and screamed. I guess I was just scared.

I remember my best friend Katie leaning out on my top bunk bed and hitting her head on the ceiling fan (which was on). She went to the hospital to get stitches above her eye.

I remember watching Square One and Mathnet and other educational tv shows after school.

I remember when our neighbor, Mrs. Evans, died. She was very old.

I remember our other elderly neighbors, the Spencers. They were nice. They had lots of interesting things in their garage.

I remember riding our bicycles down the outside, closed corridor of a church in the neighborhood, and yelling. They didn’t like that.

I remember the night my now-husband told me he had been watching and admiring me for years before (I thought) we even met. I remember my chin was on my chest.

I remember my foster brother, Eder.

I remember being SO SURE of what I wanted to be when I grew up. (It’s not what I am now, and that’s okay.)

I remember running at the track with my father running faster than me. He could keep an eye on me even with our two different paces, at the track, so it was a good place to go. There was a soccer game going on on the inside of the track and I really wanted to play soccer, but I didn’t think the grown men would want me.

I remember riding my bicycle with my father along the bayou paths while he ran, and telling him long stories.

I remember when I first learned to read, reading billboards aloud to my parents while they drove; I think I made them nuts.

I remember being told it wasn’t okay to read at the table at dinnertime.

I remember refusing to eat pickles, tomatoes, onions, squash, cheese that wasn’t yellow, olives, lots of things.

Feel free to play along; what do you remember?

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another day in the life of a librarian

Posted on May 12, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Remember my earlier post, about bringing home too many books? (sigh) I’m tempted every day, but today especially so. I got in a part of my early-May book order. In no particular order, I bought:

And of this order, I’m tempted by soooo many. I’d like to take home…

(…even though the cover looks awfully much like Clara and Mr. Tiffany, another book I want to read). The story of a developmentally disabled white woman and a deaf black man, their love story inside a state school, their subsequent escape, the delivery of their baby in the outside world, and their eventual reunion.

The story of Arthur and his difficulty relating to his con man father, and the lost Shakespeare manuscript that may or may not be legitimate.

Connors tells of the time he spent alone in a tiny tower as a wildfire lookout in New Mexico. Sounds Edward-Abbey-esque.

Ozma and her father made a promise to read together every night for 100 days; but the tradition continued long beyond that commitment. She tells their story through books.

A service dog helps a veteran live a normal life; but more important is the relationship they come to share.

Which newly-released books are YOU especially interested in?

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The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne

Posted on May 11, 2011 by pagesofjulia

What a little treat! This slim volume informs me, on the back, that it’s the only detective novel ever written by Milne, best known as the author of the Winnie the Pooh books. I love Pooh, and I love detective novels, so this seemed like an obvious choice. I noted a few weeks ago that it begins with a tone very like Pooh. I was encouraged.

I thought this was a delightful little book. For starters, I have the Vintage Books “Rediscovered Classic” (as pictured), which opens with a new-for-the-edition introduction by the author. These 3 1/2 pages are worth reading in themselves. Milne is clever and funny, and bothered by the trends of literary taste. He discusses the merits of what he believes to be the perfect murder-mystery. I thought his brief critique of the genre and his own book were very funny and ironic.

This is a mystery in the amateur-sleuth-plus-sidekick tradition. (Holmes and Watson are constantly referenced.) Our protagonist, Antony Gillingham, is a gentleman of leisure who happens upon the Red House just as a murder has apparently taken place in a locked room. Assisted by his friend, Bill, a guest at the Red House (his Watson), Tony sets upon the mystery. Who killed Robert, evil brother to the man of the house, Mark? Where has Mark disappeared to? And what is Cayley, Mark’s right-hand man, up to? There are secret passageways and croquet sets involved. It’s very classic. Tony and Bill make a cute team, and Milne’s tone remains remarkably faithful to what I love about Pooh: tongue-in-cheek, self-deprecating, and picturesque. It’s great fun.

When it was over, I felt sad. I do have other reading to do, but this was such an enjoyable experience. I liked that it was short; it was just right for my weekend and just right for the moment in the way that books sometimes are. But I’m also sorry it’s over. I may have to go hunt up some Wodehouse next, what ho!

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Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (audio)

Posted on May 10, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Full title:

Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children’s Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death

It seems a little odd to me that I’ve never read this book, and in fact I wondered if maybe I had, and had just forgotten. But as soon as we started listening to this audiobook (my parents and I, on the way home from New Orleans) I knew I’d never heard or read this book before. Vonnegut is always thrilling and fascinating! I know I really enjoyed his Cat’s Cradle and Breakfast of Champions, and Slaughterhouse-Five shares with them a very surreal, time-warped, rambling, fantastical tone. It feels like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, particularly the scene in the movie where they take the ether and things turn on their sides.

For those who don’t know, this is Vonnegut’s autobiographical story of the bombing of Dresden, which he experienced, like his protagonist Billy Pilgrim, as a POW in a slaughterhouse. Vonnegut, and Billy, survived only because they were holed up in the meat locker there, while the vast majority of the city burned.

Billy’s story involves war, bullying, sex, time travel, optometry, drinking, and misunderstanding. Overarching themes of death and timelessness tie the winding threads together. The world does not believe that Billy travels in time or that he was kidnapped by little green aliens from the planet of Tralfamadore. We hear of Billy’s whole life, as a small child, as a student, as a soldier in the war, as a young husband, as a professional optometrist, as a feature in a zoo on Tralfamadore, and as an old man. Like Billy, we don’t keep these experiences in sequence, but drop in here and there.

Billy’s story is preceded by a long intro in which Vonnegut narrates, not his experience as a soldier or a POW, but as a writer, many years later, struggling to write about Dresden. He visits an old war buddy and learns of this buddy’s wife’s fear of war. She’s concerned that he’ll write a book glorifying the experience and thereby encouraging future generations to make war. He reassures her that “there won’t be a part for Frank Sinatra or John Wayne” in his book, if he even ever finishes it. He also promises her he’ll call it “The Children’s Crusade”, agreeing with her that they were just babies over there.

This is a very powerful story. Descriptions of the horrors of war are evocative, perhaps even more so the depiction of the POW’s in the railroad cars passing steel helmets filled with their excrement to the men standing near the ventilation slots. War is bad. But there’s much more to this book than the point that war is bad; it’s also a fascinating story about family and relationships. (I’m reminded of Breakfast of Champions with its bizarre family structures and roles and dysfunction.) And the world of Tralfamadore is fantastical, incredibly imaginative, and so fully-developed in its details, I just wonder at Vonnegut. Where does he get this stuff? The turns of phrase are memorable. A drinking man’s breath smells of mustard gas and roses. That’s poetry.

This story is beautiful, strange, and strangely feels endless. It finishes with a question-mark; loose ends are not entirely tied up. How could they be, when events are presented out of sequence, and Tralfamadorian concepts teach that no one moment ever ends? Vonnegut was a genius, and I want to keep reading him all my life. (There are still a number of titles I haven’t touched, and were you aware? just this January, a new volume of his previously unpublished short fiction came out. It’s called While Mortals Sleep.) Oh, and I want to mention the reader of this audio version. He speaks in a strange whisper, and his style is very, very effective for this book. Guess who? None other than Ethan Hawke. I was surprised, and tried throughout to place this handsome actor behind the voice I was hearing; but I couldn’t put the guy I know from Reality Bites and Training Day into Vonnegut’s world. Very strange. I guess that’s the mark of a great actor, that he can fill different roles believably. I’m impressed.

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Teaser Tuesdays: One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina

Posted on May 10, 2011 by pagesofjulia


Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Would you look at this beautiful, complex cover? Very interesting – perhaps overwhelming, or perhaps thought-provoking, depending on your day! I found it a bit intimidating at first but after just a few pages, I feel that it fits the story. This book is a memoir of the author’s life in Africa, and his growth as a writer. My teaser is a good example of what I’ve found, and like, so far. From page 10 (of my pre-publication proof, so pending change before final publication):

…just when your marble is wheeling along, groovily swinging up the walls of your trough and back down again, challenging the edge, whistling and gum chewing and downhill biking and yo-yo bouncy and American – gravel pounded by rain outside your bedroom window becomes sausages frying, and sausages frying can shift and become squirming bloody intestines or an army of bristling mustachioed accordions chasing you, laughing like Idi Amin.

I am finding this a most interesting read.

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Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Posted on May 9, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Here’s yet another book I can’t believe I waited so long to read! I struggle to categorize this book. I think I thought it was genre romance, and I still tend to shelve it that way, but I also feel that sells it short. (Sorry, romance readers. Bear with me. I’m not trying to be ugly.) Of course, categorization is often problematic, and often doesn’t do a book justice. But we persist in trying to do it, for several good reasons. Labels are helpful in describing a book to your friends, and grouping like items together on a shelf assists browsing. So, I thought Rebecca was romance, or romantic suspense, as it says right on the cover of my paperback copy. And to me, this sounds like genre fiction: readable, easy, even “light”, entertaining, and in accordance with a known structure or format. Not a bad thing – I love a lot of genre fiction (although mostly mystery, and not romance). But I’ve also heard this book referred to as a classic. I’ve seen it written about and referred to repeatedly as a standard of sorts. My curiosity grew, and I had to pick it up.

And what a delicious little treasure it is! From the first page, I was transfixed. The mood is outstanding. I had only the vaguest of notions that something bad happened in this book, and I could feel the ghostly mist creeping unseen around my shoulders from literally the first few sentences. There is an air of foreboding that is absolutely unexplainable, as the plot proceeds in an outwardly staid and steady fashion. How does she do it?

Our narrator, who I believe remains unnamed throughout, is living a painfully awkward underprivileged youth when she meets a striking and tragic widower who abruptly proposes to her after a brief quasi-courtship. (This is not a spoiler, I don’t think, or not a very bad one. It is fairly well known from the first pages.) Anticipating this proposal was great fun for me. She accompanies him back to his famous (or infamous?) estate, and the legacy of the dead first wife looms.

Now I shall stop telling you the story. I might have known this much going in (at a maximum) and it was a real pleasure to breathlessly turn pages in ignorance of what was to come. It is suspense, people, as the cover says! If you haven’t read this, avoid spoilers with great care! And go get yourself a copy immediately! Here, you can borrow mine. (The library has several.)

The suspense is outstanding. The narrator’s awkwardness occasionally gets a little frustrating but it’s so REAL – my frustration is entirely realistic because she is realistic. The bad-guy characters are infuriatingly, in a juicy-delicious fictional way. The striking husband remains tragically striking, sort of admirable and obnoxious by turns, but I suppose the romance part drew me in, because I was right there with the nameless wife, wanting him to love us. And the background moodiness, the ghost-story feel, the gothic mists about my shoulders were entirely pleasurable.

I wish I could read this book again for the first time! I know du Maurier has written much else. I hope it is up to this standard because I thought it was outstanding. Genre fiction? I don’t know, I’m stumped, but whatever it is, it’s worth reading.

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Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child (audio)

Posted on May 8, 2011 by pagesofjulia

YAY for Lee Child as usual! Especially after a couple of unimpressive audiobooks in a row, it’s been such sweet relief to hear Dick Hill’s deadpan narrative. I feel like he suits Jack Reacher very well.

Backstory: Jack Reacher is a serial character. He’s a former MP (military policeman), fairly decorated, who’s retired young to travel the country at random. He has enough money to get by just wandering, and seems to want to be left alone (although it’s not clear what would occupy him if it weren’t for the circumstances that keep drawing him in). He is repeatedly pulled, against his will, into events of dangerous or criminal intrigue, and he uses his general bad-ass-ness to beat up the bad guys and uplift the righteous little people.

I really appreciate Reacher. He’s a character that works for me very well. He’s almost a superhero – big, strong, smart, quick-thinking, and with a general inclination to do the right thing. He has integrity. He’s just about perfect; but just when he starts to really look like a caricature, we find he’s not so perfect after all. In Worth Dying For, the bad guys got him tied up and hurt for a little while; I was surprised to see him thwarted. But you can’t keep Reacher down. In Gone Tomorrow, too, he gets captured and held, but not forever! I’m not saying he’s an entirely realistic character or anything, but for my tastes, Child pulls back just in time, right before I say “oh, come on…”

And he’s not just a physical hero – although he is enormous, very strong, has no body fat, is a highly skilled gunman, a formidable hand-to-hand fighter, etc. He’s also smart, and an expert in all things military as well as in many other obscure areas of knowledge. It’s a bit uncanny, how much he knows and how much he can figure out. But in this area, too, he’s pulled back from the brink of cartoonish superiority: for example, Lila Hoth convinces him of the American military’s role in a time and place he didn’t think it was possible. I like that in this conversation he listens, asks discerning questions, and isn’t afraid to learn, even to be wrong. In short, Reacher is, to me, a real hero: almost perfect but with a few human deficiencies and – best of all – aware of them (rare though they be).

I also get these little nuggets of information. Like, he muses that there are experts out there who could look at the dimensions of the bricks, and the arrangement of them, in his unknown little dungeon-cell, and know pretty precisely where the building is and when it was built. But Reacher’s not one of those experts. (I’m paraphrasing the audiobook from memory.) See what I mean? It might have been just a little too much if Reacher had been the brick expert, too, on top of everything else. And what a cool little historical nugget. Of course there are brick experts; it makes perfect sense. It had never occurred to me, though.

At any rate, aside from my ramblings about the wonder that is Reacher, this is a good book. I love the little details. When Reacher wakes up after being drugged, he wonders how long he’s been out; with all four limbs bound, he ducks his head to rub his chin against his shirt, thereby feeling how much stubble he has. Now he can make an educated guess. This is a neat detail – evocative, realistic, and also impressive. Reiterates how proficient this guy is. I just hope we really do have guys this effective in our military and/or law enforcement systems.

I came across just one or two points of contention. I think the 9/11 aftermath and international politics was rather clever but also rather pat; 9/11 politics is a fairly common thread in mystery-intrigue genre fiction, and I was a little disappointed and a little bored there for a minute, although Child handled it fairly uniquely. And I was a little bothered by a certain person, for whom English is not a native language, uttering sentences like “…you employed a deductive process. Do you think you are uniquely talented? Do you think that deductive processes are unavailable to others?” This didn’t sound very realistic for this character to me.

But overall this was another great Reacher story. Fast-paced, gritty, suspenseful, funny and witty, and, for me, just the right balance of realism and hero-worshipping-fantasy. Go get you some Jack Reacher right now if you have any interest in action-adventure, mysteries, intrigue, or loveable heroes.

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birthday weekend.

Posted on May 7, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Not my blogoversary, silly! That’s still a ways away. But today, May 7, is *my* birthday, and tomorrow, May 8, is the Husband’s! Together we are 70 years old this weekend. (Whew.)

Today I hope for a beautiful bike ride before the Texas Beer Festival with my parents. Tomorrow I hope for a beautiful bike ride before lunch with an old friend. And I hope for some pleasant reading time, too (although I don’t know where that fits in, actually.) So I invite you to raise a glass, ride a bike, and/or read a book with me! Here’s to another fabulous year.

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