dog days of summer

and luckily, we're not really in them right now because my heatpump stopped working sometime yesterday while I was at work. It was about 85 degrees in the house when I got home so I turned it off and hoped it would reconsider while I was at work today. No such luck so I'll have another sleepless night in the stifling house.

I have 4 fans to battle it with AND Katie graciously offered me accomodation for the evening but the repairman promised I'd be the first stop in the morning so I want to be on hand to see what the damage is. I'm currently going through my random stacks of paper records to see if I can find the receipt from where I replaced the unit a couple of years ago. Not that it has a snowball's chance in hell of still being under warranty, but I'd just like to know.

I really wanted to get back in the car, drive to an air conditioned restaurant, and console myself with food I can't afford, but I battled it back. There's no need to punish myself for something I can't control. My mom has offered to pay for the repairs since I can't. As often as we disagree and for all the fights we've had about horrible things in the past, I don't know what I'd do without her. I'll just tell her to consider this my Christmas and birthday presents combined.

This incident just goes to reiterate how much harder I need to work at some sort of nest egg. It's never really worked out for me in the past because something like this just keeps cropping up every time I think I'm approaching a level point. I seriously wish some of my petsitting clients would call. I have a couple of jobs lined up for Oct and Nov but that's just too far off to help me. I say that, but I don't want new clients. I just want the ones I already have to suddenly need to leave town for two weeks...on alternating schedules of course :-)

Doesn't anyone have a pet I can look after?

Abandon by Blake Crouch

The book begins with a great quote: "In the West, the past is very close. In many places, it still believes it's the present." --John Masters

On Christmas Day in 1893 the entire town of Abandon, Colorado disappeared without a trace. Present day finds a team of six people, two paranormal photographers, a journalist, a prominent university historian, and two guides, hiking their way in to the isolated ghost town. The story alternates between 1893 and 2009, giving the reader the story behind the town's disappearance and the unsettling events going on their now. The 1893 residents encountered an evil they never saw coming and the recent explorers will experience the same, though it is two different evils brought on by one common theme. See if you can unravel the mystery!

What Abandon reminds me of most is Clint Eastwood's superb film, Unforgiven, with a seasoning of the film Wolf Creek thrown in to give you that slightly foul taste in the back of your throat.

I definitely am not saying that this is not a great book, it is quite good, but merely that it showcases, proudly showcases, some of the worst parts of the human psyche. The characters in this book range wildly from good and innocent to mad and out-of-control to evil and sadistic, but even the sadists in the cast show glimpses of what might have been.

It was not what I'd call a pleasant read but it is, in my opinion, a shining psychological thriller with heavy doses of creepiness thrown in to sweeten the mix. Other books that come to mind are Dean Koontz's Intensity, Anne Matthews' The Cave, and David Morrell's Creepers. Intensity was my fav of those three.

Abandon is gory, violent, and contains a lot of equally violent language, as I usually say, just so you know ahead of time.

One Jump Ahead by Mark L. Van Name

Jon Moore has some body mods that he certainly didn't ask for but makes the most of nonetheless. After the disasterous experiments that introduced nanomachines into his body, he escaped from the lab and is, hopefully, presumed dead by all involved. He wants nothing more than to be left alone to live as peacefully as he can manage. Unfortunately he becomes deeply involved in some particularly nasty politcal/corporate espionage.

With Jon, the aggressor in this campaign has unknowingly bitten off more than they can chew and Jon will bring all the weapons he can find, external AND internal, to bear on the problem...including the AI-equipped Predator class assualt vehicle Lobo, who (as opposed to "which" as he is a fully realized character in his own right) acts as a rather more emotional that Jon would like sidekick in their adventures.

I truly love being introduced to new books that I myself do not select and this is the main reason I love book groups, as I'm sure I've mentioned before. So, Inner Worlds, the sci-fi book group I started going to back in May, selected One Jump Ahead as the September selection.

We just finished my pick, John Scalzi's Old Man's War, so I was excited to read another military sci-fi selection for comparison. They are both excellent! Scalzi's book has a more slapstick humor to it, but I love the interplay between Jon and Lobo in Van Name's novel and the involved plot pulls in intergallactic politics, corporate backbiting, combat loyalty, and some truly great battle strategy discussions! The next book in the series is called Slanted Jack and I have already put in a reserve for it at my library! Between this and Robert Buettner's Jason Wander series, I am fully emersed in military science fiction right now :-)

Benny & Shrimp by Katarina Mazetti

I cannot pass up a book about a librarian. I don't know why that is, but if there's a librarian in the story I'm going to read it. That is how I found Benny & Shrimp and it sounded SO promising!

From the front cover:

It started in a cemetery, where they begrudgingly share a bench. "Shrimp," the childless young widow and librarian with a sharp intellect and a home so tidy that her jam jars are in alphabetical order, meets Benny, the gentle, overworked milk farmer who fears becoming the village's Old Bachelor. Both driven by an enormous longing and loudly ticking biological clocks, they can't escape the powerful attraction between them.

This is Katarina Mazetti's first novel for adults and is translated from Swedish by Sarah Death(!!!). It was, as some of the endorsements have said, offbeat and quirky but in the end I was disappointed. I believe the fault lies not with the author or the story but with my perception of it. I'll be honest. I was expecting a funny, sweet romance between a librarian and a dairy farmer. What you get instead is an offbeat and quirky story of two incompatible people trying desperately to fall in love. I should have known there'd be trouble when I noticed there was a reader's guide and discussion questions in the back. Easy, uncomplicated, feel-good books do not often come with reader's guides and discussion questions. The book ends rather abruptly and I noticed in the author interview that she mentions writing a sequel but there is no mention of the title nor can I find any additional information from the modest amount of digging I've done. arghhh!

So, to sum up. Benny & Shrimp is offbeat and quirky but don't go into it in a particularly romantic frame of mind.

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

One of my book groups is discussing In the Time of the Butterflies and I was frankly glad of it. This is a book I’ve heard about off and on for many years but never really felt compelled to pick up and that is one of the main reasons why I love being in a bookgroup! Everyone would benefit from joining a book group as long as they read the selection. I won’t even say you have to do it without complaint because what kind of fun discussion would that be?

This novel is loosely based on the story of Mirabal sisters who lived in the Dominican Republic under the Trujillo dictatorship. The four lively sisters were in a reasonably well off family and had a relatively quiet childhood up until their father began a more or less open relationship, complete with children, with another woman. They grew up under the shadow of Trujillo’s rule and became amazingly independent women for their time, going to school and university as well as getting involved with the revolution to overthrow Trujillo…a movement that ultimately, and sadly, led to their own downfall.

Stories like this always leave me melancholy simply because of the kernel of truth they are based on. Most of the worst of the action happens off the page but it is the imagining that sometimes makes it worse. I am not terribly fond of the arrangement with different chapters from different perspectives told in different persons. It reminded me of what I didn’t like about The Time Traveler’s Wife and made it hard to focus on what I did like. I believe the story of the Mirabal sisters is an important one and I would definitely like to know more about them.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Dr. Faraday remembers Hundreds Hall from visits there as a child when his mother was on the nursery staff. He loves the house and the gardens and surrounding parks so when he is called there in his capacity as a doctor many years later, he is dismayed by the amount of decay and decline that has taken place. Only Mrs. Ayers and her two adult children, Roderick and Caroline, live there now and it is slowly draining what little remains of the family fortune. Dr. Faraday is called in to see the new parlor maid, Betty. Betty is young and excitable and is not really very sick but instead tells Dr. Faraday that she doesn’t like being in the house, that something bad is in it. Dr. Faraday scoffs at her claims, prescribes some mild digestive medicine she clearly doesn’t need, and doesn’t think too much more about it. However, something is amiss at Hundreds Hall. A dinner party goes terribly wrong and a young girl is horribly disfigured. Roderick claims to see movement where there can surely be none. A host of creepy noises and vague shadows permeate the house and terrorize the residents.

Are you scared yet?

There is very little I enjoy more in life than a good case of the creeps. I may complain about it and spend a few sleepless nights, but I love creepy movies. I love creepy books even more. Which brings me around to Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger. ..I would SO love a good British director (NOT a Hollywood one, witness the 28 Days Later/28 Weeks Later difference!) to get ahold of this and run with it. This is so atmospheric and gothic with none of the gore/monster/vampire/zombie fetishes that other horror tends to run to. This is ExCeLlEnT horror is you like that sort of thing AND it is on the Man Booker Longlist for the 2009 awards! The shortlist will be announced in September and I will be heartbroken if it is not on there. I think, based on a conversation that Katie and I had earlier today, that it would make an excellent book group selection.

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

In a post-apocalyptic United States called Panem there now exists only the Capitol and 12 districts. Each year, the Capitol requires two Tributes from each district, a boy and a girl, to compete in the televised Hunger Games in a battle to the death. The winner receives fame, fortune, food, and a life of relative ease. Children are eligible for the Hunger Games from ages 12-18 and sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen has avoided the Reaping for 4 years now, every year standing strained and anxious expecting to hear her name called. To her horror, this year it is her 12 year old sister’s name which rings out across the square. She lurches forward to put herself in Prim’s place and so begins the 74^th Hunger Games.

Hunger Games is a rising star in young adult literature right now and will no doubt get even more popular when the next book in the series, Catching Fire, is published next month. Katniss is a wonderfully complex young heroine who finds herself on shaky ground physically AND mentally in the Hunger Games Arena yet manages to remain true to herself the entire time. The choices she is forced to make will often make you cringe, but admiration is hot on that cringe’s heels! I can hardly believe I haven’t cracked the cover on the advanced reading copy I picked up in Chicago, but such is the life of a librarian…too much to read and not enough eyeballs to shoehorn it all in.

Starred reviews all over the place, celebrity endorsements out the wazoo (Stephenie Meyers AND Stephen King), a strong and intelligent heroine and some pretty decent world building make this novel a must read for the year. Do yourself a favor and grab a copy!

family trees, shallow roots

It's kind of odd to stand back and, from a slight distance, watch your family slowly rot and topple. It all begins, as much as I hate to say it, when one whole generation has girls. My maternal aunt had girls, not that the boys would have carried on the family name anyway. What an ambiguous proposition family names are. All my uncles who had children had girls. My brother died.

My half brother carries the load now since he had a boy. And that's it for the family name. There were no boys on my mom's side of the family, or at least none I've met. One little boy to carry on the family name. This is not important to me as I don't have plans for a family myself but I can feel the brittleness when the paternal side, the name carrying side, of my family gets together for holidays. It's aging, decaying, and getting increasingly fragile year after year. I can see, or imagine I see, a sense of betrayal in my paternal grandmother's eyes when she looks at her progeny for she herself gave birth to four healthy boys. Ironically, she appears to blame the wives for the trouble and I thought that was no longer a problem in this age of science. I often am tempted to ask her if she understands how such things work but in the end it isn't important enough to me to pose the question.

All our family gatherings are quiet, awkward affairs so I find happier families to join for the holidays. I like Thanksgiving with friends and Christmas with the side of my halfbrother's family to which I am not related. They seem to like me too and always treat me like a full sister when I visit. Don't get me wrong, I do love my family but we are almost like character actors in a low budget made-for-tv movie when we get together. Long silences, strained small talk, heavy glances loaded with unnamed guilt...oh, it's quite comical when you think about it objectively.

Sometimes I feel so different from the rest of them that I think surely I must have been adopted and no one has told me. How common is that, I wonder? Surely other people in the world must feel that way. I've read novels describing the same thing but don't all novels contain at least a kernel of truth, a little grain of sand in an oyster? Have you ever felt like a stranger in your own family?

Mop Men by Alan Emmins

Mop Men I happened upon by chance. This takes more effort in a library than you might imagine since I work here and I don’t browse. The last thing I’m hurting for, trust me, is reading material. But, the bloody “Wet Floor”-type sign snagged my attention and I can never turn down the possibility of gore.

In Mop Men, Denmark-dwelling Englishman Alan Emmins travels to California to follow Crime Scene Cleaners, Inc. CEO Neal Smither around for one month as Neal cleans up the messiest of other peoples’ messes.

The side of his truck says it all:

Crime Scene Cleaners, Inc.

Homicides, Suicides & Accidental Deaths

This book is so descriptive, it almost physically stinks. Just so you know ahead of time. I loved it and read it in one afternoon. Ironically, the afternoon where I finished A Bride In the Bargain and The Posthuman Dada Guide. That in itself is very dada.

The Posthuman Dada Guide by Andrei Codrescu

I count myself among the lucky ones who can finish a Christian historical romance and The Posthuman Dada Guide in the same day and still retain my sanity!

I will usually snap up anything having to do with Dada ever since I studied it in grad school. It was actually a class on the era of the little magazine and my classmate and I had the good fortune of being assigned to Broom. Don’t worry, most people have never heard of it.

I had my first taste of Dada then and fell in love with it. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t stand for anything. It takes no side but its own. It would be offended that I’m trying to label it with a description.

It was a movement of artists, writers, poets, and thinkers rebelling against the Great War, any other movement, and itself. In The Posthuman Dada Guide, Andrei Codrescu ponders the beginnings of the movement and its infiltration of daily life through a hypothetical game of chess between Tristan Tzara and Lenin. This is not done in any roundabout way that I can sum up for you. I will only say that if you like literary, philosophical, contemplative essays, give it a whirl!

One of Tristan Tzara’s favorite poetic methods was the cutup: to take a newspaper/magazine article or a page from a book, cut out the individual words and put them in a hat, then write the words down in the order he drew them out. At Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, the group would pick two members to read two different poems at the same time while someone played loud, discordant music. I love these guys! I would love to have been one of them. I like things that are out of sync with the world around them, and that certainly describes Dada. This is a book I’ll definitely have to add to my personal collection!