Book: Australia's Strangest Mysteries by John Pinkney

Amazon - $2.99 or free with Kindle Unlimited
Non-fiction - Paranormal/Disappearances/Unexplained Phenomena

"DRIVER FRANK CLEWER sparked panic in his rural hometown - when he began to leave trails of scorchmarks and flames wherever he walked. 

The Baffling Burning Man's brush with the impossible occurred in September 2005, and was chronicled by TV news crews and hundreds of witnesses. Astonished scientists at the University of New South Wales found that Frank was generating 30,000 volts of static electricity: a charge powerful enough to melt synthetic carpets. 

But somehow he survived the mysterious ''ínner fire'' without the slightest lesion on his skin - the only visible evidence of the colossal voltage he'd carried being a charred hole in the knee of his jeans. 
Many media outlets treated the Clewer case as a one-off event. But SHC [Spontaneous Human Combustion] has been inexplicably occurring for more than 2000 years,with one of the earliest recorded events dated 52 BC. 

In this unique book, bestselling author and journalist John Pinkney describes the mysterious history of the' flames from heaven'' -a phenomenon which obsessed even Charles Dickens, who described it in his novel Bleak House. 

Pinkney also presents a new selection of some of the most tantalizing cases he has investigated during a lifetime's research: 

UNEXPLAINED DISAPPEARANCES, from the enigma of the vanishing heiress to the saga of the 'jinxed' ship, which disappeared with 130 people aboard. OUTBACK RIDDLES The desert aboriginals whose astonishing song saved trhe life of a dying woman 4000 kilometres away... the uncanny invasion of Lake Eyre...the monster that guarded an abandoned potato farm...the startling UFO íncursion in Queensland's Isla Gorge. 

MYSTERIOUS DEATHS, including the fate of John Friedrich, 'the man who never was''...;the horror in Sydney's dunes...and the American divers'' diaries of death. 

EERIE PHENOMENA Strange Case of the Shining Crosses...Magazine Foretells Death of JFK...Riddle of the Tiger that Rose from its Tomb...Lost, on a Road Without Shadows. And more.

These pages offer you intriguing insights into some of our planet's most perplexing mysteries."

I fairly recently subscribed to the whole Kindle Unlimited thing. A friend accidentally signed up for their month trial and I am a lemming so I jumped on board too.

It's basically fabulous for someone like me who reads a whole lot and occasionally has trashy tastes that she's not willing to spend real money on. So, for example, there's a whole bunch of books that kind of look interesting but are only 70 some odd pages for $2.99 or some ridiculous amount of money. That's not a good deal. But you pay $9.99 a month and you can read as many books as you can read if they're on the Kindle Unlimited library and there are a bunch of them.

And thus my trashy, trashy heart rejoices.

So many ridiculous books, so little time!

Okay, there's some legitimate books on there too, don't get me wrong. I, personally, am abusing the existence of this library in order to indulge myself.

I found Australia's Strangest Mysteries in the manner of all true book nerds who are on an insomniac bender: recommendations. The 'so you read this book, well you might like THESE FIFTY OTHER SIMILAR BOOKS THAT ARE ALSO INSANE' feature is dangerous. Pretty sure this one started at trucker ghost stories and ended in Australia. So.

This book actually turned out to be less ridiculous than you might suppose given the subject matter and the fact that it is most likely one of the self-published variety. Don't get me wrong, I have a deep and abiding love for the fact that people can basically get published now if they want it bad enough without ever having to go through a major publishing house. After all, this is how we got The Martian and that is a glorious piece of science-fiction. However, proof reading is somehow the first thing to go when people self publish and that...that can drag the whole thing down. '

ASM (it's too long to type the whole title out, I'm lazy, sue me) doesn't suffer from the worst of the sorts of errors that come through self publishing. It's not full of typos and misspellings and weird formatting. There are a couple of things here and there, but mistakes get through big name publishers sometimes, so I'm inclined to let a reasonable number of these sorts of things slide.

The stories are interesting, if you're into the weird fringes of reality, though some are less 'weird' than others. One of the later sections is about the possibility of the Tasmanian Tiger still being alive somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Australia, and given how many new species we discover every year, I find that less weird and more a really nice possibility since it would be one less species that humans have driven to extinction.

Lake monster stories definitely fall better into the weird and wonderful category, like UFOs and highways (or other stretches or road) that appear to take people on a really extreme detour into...another dimension, maybe? Most definitely more weird.

The man who was, briefly, slight on fire and leaving flames behind him where he walked? Weird. Very weird. I'm fascinated and horrified at the thought of spontaneous human combustion, because there's no way to prevent or predict it, assuming it's a real thing and not a series of conflated events that bear nothing in common with one another except for fiery death.

My favorite stories out of this book are the mysterious disappearances, though. There's the story of a heiress who lived in squalor in the last years of her life (due to being a spendthrift in her younger years) and apparently just wandered away one day to die. Or the young adventurer back in the late 1800s who went back to get water with which to save himself and the head of the expedition and was never seen again?

I think my absolute favorite story, though, is that of the SS Waratah, a luxury cruise ship that vanished in 1909 with something like 220 people aboard. There's the plain fact that clearly, the ship sank. That is, generally, what happens when a ship vanishes at sea. The fact that they've never found the wreck or any part of it is not even that odd, given the vastness of the ocean, the fact that no one is really sure where it was when it went down, and currents, etc. Recent tragedies have driven home how difficult it can be to find anything lost in the ocean, even when you have a pretty good idea of where it crashed/sank.

The eerie part comes in with the stories of how the ship was considered jinxed from the start (stories that were told even before the ship vanished, cutting off the possibility of this just being people wanting to say that they knew something was wrong). The captain, by all accounts an experienced sailor, urging the ship line to take the ship back to dry dock, that there was something wrong with it that made it unsafe to sail for long; or the prophetic dreams of an engineer that was berthed on the ship but chose to get off and make other arrangements as soon as he could, in spite of the extra cost of the lost fare. His concerns were recorded - he urged other passengers to get off as well, but in the end he was one of the few who survived having sailed on the SS Waratah because he listened to his fears.

What could have happened that the ship was unable to send out any sort of distress signal? Why did the captain choose to keep sailing even with his fears that there was something catastrophically wrong with the ship? In the larger sense of things, why do only some people get these warning premonitions of doom and death? Or do more people get them and we just don't know about it because they never tell anyone else and fail to listen to the warning and take the knowledge of it to their deaths?

Over all, I liked the book. It never goes too in depth to any one story, but gives a detailed over view and more information for some of them. There's never really any answer to any of it, which is why I guess the book isn't called 'Australia's Most Solved Mysteries'.

There's a sequel to this one, Australia's Strangest Mysteries 2, which I'll likely pick up some time in the future. It's also on Kindle Unlimited.

I'm giving this one a 3/5 because I enjoyed it quite a bit and it gave me new fodder for my Marie Celeste-esque obsession.

Book: Under His Kilt by Melissa Blue

Category: Contemporary Romance/Erotica
Amazon

"Jocelyn Pearson is determined to spend her last month as a twenty-something doing everything she's too busy or scared to try. Her imagination runs wild and then fixates on Ian Baird. He'll be working at the Langston Museum for a short stint as a consulting curator. He's Scottish. He believes sex is fun to be had. He's the perfect choice for a fling. She only has to get him break his rule about sleeping with co-workers. Seducing a man was on her bucket list...

Ian is no one's fool and knows exactly what Jocelyn wants—him. If she didn't work for the Langston Museum, he'd be more than happy to oblige any and every fantasy she desired, but she's the curator. She's sweet, inexperienced and well liked by everyone including the museum owner and director. Ian can't risk losing such an important contact for his consulting business. Not even when everything within in him craves a taste of her.

When Jocelyn sets her sights on him, there's no way Ian can deny her. They agree their affair will end in thirty days. No emotions, no entanglements, just sex. The closer the end date looms, they start to question if it's possible to walk away. They'll either have to come to terms of what they've become or stick to their original agreement."

*cracks knuckles*

Okay, let's try this.

I'm pretty sure that I heard about this book on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, which is a fabulous website and even more fabulous podcast. Even if you don't like romance so much, they're worth a listen. They cover a huge range of topics and they're hysterical and fun.

On the surface, this seemed like it would be a book I'd enjoy a lot. Both the main characters are mature, intelligent adults who have careers and are fairly well able to drive themselves as far as where they want to be and what they want to do.

Too often in romance you get a heroine who's been sheltered, blah, blah, blah so she can be magically virginal or at least so unaware of what she likes that the hero gets to show her the true glory of All the Things with his Magic Wand.

Sometimes you might get a virginal hero, but it's less common. Unless it's m/m romance, but that's a different topic and it's still not all that common in that, according to my experience.

I went into this thinking it would be a carefree kind of hook-up story, and of course at the end they'd wind up staying together because *romance*, but it honestly turned out to be a little too carefree for me.

Jocelyn and Ian get together almost from page one. The whole 'conflict' over Ian's rule about not sleeping with co-workers is more of a tiny speed bump than anything else. After all, he's a grown man who is almost literally helpless when faced with a woman who wants to do the do with him. Because he's so hot that never happens, or something. IDK. I wanted more plot.

The book is basically sex interrupted with random bits of life that don't really do anything.

They work at the museum together, but it's brief scenes and then back to one or the other of their apartments to work through Jocelyn's 'bucket list' which is just a list of pretty tame things she wants to do to/with Ian.

It's decently written, and I don't regret taking the time to read the book. I can't say 'buy' because it's free on Amazon. But it also wasn't very satisfying. I skimmed over the sex scenes after the first couple because they weren't all that interesting and not really what I was there for anyway. And since there wasn't much actual growth or discussion between the characters there wasn't actually a whole lot to the book. For me, anyway. It seemed very much like they both went from 'this is totally casual' to 'I want this person for forever' in the span of two or three pages. Character change without showing the development is not really the way to go.

I should say that it's also entirely possible that I became dis-enchanted with the characters really quickly and didn't give them much of a chance. Fairly early on in the book Ian talks about having taken his dog Sadie (whom he describes as the love of his life) to the shelter when he started this job that has him traveling a lot. And, I know that this is a fictional dog, and I know that these are fictional people, but that pissed me off.

I have a thing about animals, okay? Are you honestly telling me that he couldn't have found *someone* to take the dog? This is a fictional world, people, it would have cost the author nothing to say that he gave the dog to a friend. Nothing.

And then Jocelyn decided to randomly get a puppy, because Ian had had Sadie and abandoned her and Jocelyn had never had a pet before and this is not the right reason to get a dog, okay? This is selfish and childish and stupid and I have a problem with this, clearly.

Soooooo....I might not be the most neutral party when judging these two. Admittedly, this is probably a silly thing to get stuck on, but here we are.

Not a bad book, but not a good one either. There's at least four more books in this series, apparently, Under the Kilt. I won't be buying them, but they seem to have a fairly consistent 4 - 4.5 star review on Amazon and Goodreads, so other people enjoy them. Possibly the sex scenes are what the people are after, I don't know. I wasn't impressed, but to be perfectly honest I've read a lot of sex scenes in my long, long reader lifespan.

Rating: 2/5

Book: Deep & Wide - Andy Stanley

In my last position my desk was behind the customer service department in our office. I was kind of sort of but not really considered a part of that department because otherwise it was just me, myself and I in my own little department. So I spent most of my employee to employee interaction time with them.

Some of them are friends, some not so much.

For a while there was a woman in the front row who was very very Super Christian. But in an obnoxious way that grated on everyone around her. Because I am a terrible person I would occasionally bait her - not to start a fight but to try and draw out specifics of her beliefs. Partially because (like I said) I'm a terrible person. But also because it was completely obvious that this was a woman who had faith but little knowledge about history or theology or any of the things that I think are actually slightly important in any religion.

Here's the thing: it's apparently perfectly acceptable to just go, 'I have faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior' without having any freaking clue what that *actually* means. I have a friend who, until a couple of months ago when I told her, had NO IDEA that Jesus was God in Christian theology. She didn't believe that Jesus was God's son in the say, Zeus/Hercules manner but she also didn't know that Jesus is believed (in Trinitarian theology which is the branch that she theoretically belongs to) to be a part of a Trinitarian God. And this isn't just an isolated case - I know that there are more people out there who claim to be Christian that know mostly bupkiss about the history of the church (including Jewish history since that's what Christianity came out of - my God, how many people are *shocked* when they hear someone say 'Jesus was Jewish' or that he wasn't a blonde haired blue eyed Caucasian!) or the basics of theology.

They parrot 'Jesus died for my sins' or 'I am covered in the blood of the Lamb' and that they have a 'close personal relationship' with Jesus. But they don't know anything else. They follow their pastors because the pastors have personality or they preach a message that offers these people wealth and happiness.

And this hurts me and I can't stop poking at it when I see it.

It makes my head hurt. Seriously.

*looks at these people* HOOOOWWWWWW?????

Which is a really round about way of getting to this book. It was when this woman was trying to explain to me how her church was not a denomination but also not non-denominational and failing and also how her 'pastor' never went to a seminary but just 'felt the call of God' and started this church. She was reading this book and told me how this was their church model and this would explain it all. So I threw it on my wish list and figured I would get around to it eventually. And then I got it as a present for Christmas! :D

So it is, essentially, an exploration of how Stanley's church, North Point, works and the author/pastor trying to show other pastors how to apply their methods so that these other churches can have the success that North Point apparently enjoys. It's one of those megachurches and therefore I have automatic disdain for them I'm prejudiced, okay?

Since I'm not a pastor or interested in being one there was a lot of the book that while interesting was not really relevant for me. Which is not the fault of the book I'm just not the target audience but I went in knowing that. Still, it's very interesting to see the mentality of these people laid out.

"God responds to our private acts of righteousness. Jesus uses the term reward to describe his response. Ever had an answer to your prayer? What happened to your faith?...That person's faith got bigger, didn't it?

"The same thing transpires when individuals begin giving for the first time. Percentage giving is an invitation for God to get involved in our personal finances. The percentage isn't the issue. I tell new believers to pick a percentage and start there. The point is to learn to trust God financially. When people experience God's faithfulness in the realm of their personal finances, their faith expands. Money loses its grip. They are no longer possessed by their possessions."

"On the giving side of things, we are very upfront with the importance of what I refer to as priority, progressive, percentage giving. Priority as in: give first, save second, and live on the rest. Percentage as in: choose a percentage and give it consistently. Progressive is a challenge to up the amount by a percentage every year. While I'm a big believer in tithing, people who have never given away a percentage of their incomes are not going to begin with 10 percent. Sure, some will. But if you are going to teach people to tithe, you may have to start with some baby steps."

While Mr. Stanley purports to be against the prosperity gospel that so many of his megachurch/evangelical tv personality peers preach (and I don't know enough about him to gainsay this so we'll take him at his word) I find these passages trouble me.

On the one hand, the emphasis on giving before making sure that you have enough money to cover your bills or emergencies is just...not smart. It's not. I don't care that that makes me seem like I have less faith than those who just throw their money at a church or a Christian charity or whatever and trust that God will take care of them.

I'm a big believer in that old cliche, 'Trust God but tie up your camel.' There are so many people who have incredible amounts of faith but haven't got a pot to piss in. Because, in part, they haven't used the brains and the resources that God gave them to make their lives liveable. Meanwhile megachurch pastors and televangelists have million dollar homes and are asking their congregations for more and more and more. The disparity between the religious leaders of our day (and leaders of the past as well) and Jesus should be impossible to ignore. He did everything that he did with nothing.

'Well, but he's God!'

Maybe. But the people of his time didn't know or believe that. They followed him because of his message and because of how he lived out what he taught. Not because he had the nicest ass in Jerusalem or his robes were the best or his sandals blinged out.

And on the other hand, these passages and other parts of this book have just driven home how much of a business religion is. It's all about getting people into your building so that they can give you money so you can keep doing fancy programs and nicer surroundings and this that and the other thing so you can attract more people so they can...and the only people getting anything consistently out of this are the pastors at the top who seem to get rich in these set ups.

I mentioned something about this last night to Heather and she pointed out that this is why so many people are people of faith but no religion. But that's only a temporary solution in my mind. It's *hard* to have faith and no people around you who share in and support you. Humans are herd animals at heart. We want to be with others like us. We need human contact. How long do you think people last without a community to support them?

Faith leads to religion and religion in modern times is a business.

And oh, hey, remember that rant at the beginning that I was like 90% sure had nothing to actually do with the content of the book? Heh. I totally forgot this line:

"I'm partial to hungry, ignorant Christians myself. The kind who are content to love Jesus and the people he died for."

Love is awesome. Whoo! I would much rather have Christians running around showing love to everyone rather than judging them by standards that they themselves don't even live up to. Which seems to be what a large portion of Christians do these days. But it's the 'ignorant' part that kills me. Ignorant Christians will swallow anything that a charismatic pastor tells them and assume that because he can find a verse in the Bible that seems to back him up that it's all good.

I can't stand ignorance.

Also, if you love someone, don't you want to know more (everything) about them? How can someone love Jesus and be content with ignorant?

One of the things that really grates on me that has less to do with theology is the fact that his church makes people make a three minute video before they're allowed to be baptised. This video chronicles this persons journey to the point of baptism and I guess hearing the convert story is uplifting but I'm just putting myself in that place and knowing that I would not do it. I would leave and find a different church rather than do that because my story is mine and there's a level of forced soul barring involved here that I don't like.

There's also the tie in that they do the baptisms directly before they start asking the congregation for money. Emotional manipulation right before an appeal. 'Look at this trick I performed! Give me more money so I can keep doing it!'

I do think that some things could be learned by churches from the care that this church takes in making sure that they're always ready and aware of their guests. From the descriptions that are given the staff goes out of their way to pay attention to first time visitors, to bring them into the congregation with that first visit.

Most churches (all the ones I've ever visited) don't do this. They may ask if they have any first time visitors (not all of them even do that) but that's about it. I can't tell you how many churches I have walked into and out of without anyone even saying hello to me.

Actually, funnily, the only place I've ever been acknowledged or asked if I was new was at the local mosque. To be fair it's a small community so I think I stood out but the simple fact of that one man stopping and asking me if I needed help or direction *did* make a good impression.

So, all in all. Well written book and I believe that people who followed this model would have successful modern churches. They're just not churches that I would attend or have any interest in. And it's kind of made me sad, reminding me of how impossible it is to have a faith community free of the business-model kind of religion we have today.

A couple of things, one of which is Book: Standing Alone in Mecca - Asra Q. Nomani (there's kind of sort of a theme...)

I kind of hate writing book reviews because I have a real problem walking the line between not telling people enough about the book and telling them too much. Also I tend to just talk about whatever comes to mind about the book, rather than doing it in some sort of actually helpful manner. You have been warned.

Also, I've been trying to write this post for a couple of days. The universe does not want this post written apparently.

AS A RANDOM (or maybe not so random) ASIDE:

I am thoroughly convinced that there is some sort of magical/mystical download that happens into the brains of women who convert to Islam and become hijabis. It's the only explanation for how they can all do it and make it look natural and perfect and I can't, no matter how many tutorials I watch. (Heather denies this, but I suspect that she's been sworn to secrecy vis a vis this process)

Lemme show you a thing:

This is the face of a woman who really wants her hijab to look good but knows that it doesn't. It is also the face of a woman whose one eye is red and swollen because Allergies and Florida, not because she has some horrible disease.

Admittedly I didn't bother pining it or anything, but still. This is a symptom of my disease. I love hijab, but it doesn't love me.

Also, glasses! Because my allergies are so bad right now that I can't wear my contacts. People tell me I look cute, but I think they're lying because they can see the seething hate behind my eyes.

Basically, I think I look like Bruce Banner when I wear glasses.

Which is fine, you know, if you're a guy. Which I am not.

GLASSES!!!! *shakes fist at sky*

Moving. On.

I picked up this book about four years ago and I'm sure there were a couple of reasons that I chose it, but mainly I recall picking it up because it was a description of someone going on Hajj. Why, you may ask? Because I REALLY would like to go to Mecca. Really a lot.

I will not, because non-Muslims aren't allowed, and I respect that even as I wish it wasn't so. Thusly, I have resigned myself to not ever going to see Mecca and have determined to get my fix vicariously. (As much as I ever resign myself to anything, which is not a whole lot, to be honest.) Still, you know, if they changed that rule (I know this won't happen) I would be there in a hot minute (assuming I could afford it) in spite of the fact that I hate crowds (it's very crowded) and dirt (from what everyone says there is a trash problem) and hotels and travel and....still. Mecca was the reason I picked this book up.

It is about Mecca, and the hajj, to a certain degree. But it's more about how the authors' experience in Mecca changed her and what she did with that change when she returned home. I should say that I've read nothing else by this author and while I'm aware that she's something of a polarizing figure in the American Muslim community I'm not up on any or all of the precise issues surrounding her. All I can talk about here is this particular book and my impressions from it.

Ms. Nomani was a newspaper reporter and it shows in the style of the book. The chapters are broken into sections that resemble newspaper articles more than anything else. They're concise episodes within the larger framework of the book and that makes it an easy book to pick up and read a bit, then set down and come back to later or to read through in longer chunks when you have the time.

I enjoyed the descriptions of Hajj, but I have to admit to being oddly dismayed to be told that the mosque has grown to include the path that Hagar took between Safa and Marwah. Why dismayed? Good question. I'm not entirely sure why this bothers me. Maybe it's because I, in my remove from the emotions of the event, am looking at it and thinking that they've sanitized this remembrance somehow. Does it take away from the impact of what they're doing for the people performing hajj? Probably not, or at least I hope not.

I was also maybe a little more than a bit freaked out by the crushing crowds that are described once or twice. Especially with the author having brought her infant son with her. I'm not claustrophobic, generally, but I think that would have been too much for me. Of course I also should like to think that I wouldn't bring an infant to a place like Mecca with all the possible diseases (not like ewwwwwwwwww *foreign* people, but whenever you travel there are strains of bacteria that you can encounter that are not native to your system, thus they hit you harder than the ones you're used to and with a baby...well. It's not the choice I would have made is all.) and the knowledge that people have died on Hajj due to fires and being crushed by the crowds (some people died during the Stoning of the Pillars on Ms. Nomani's Hajj).

Some of the depictions of Mecca itself made me sad, mostly the commercialization of the place with KFC's and other fast food type restaurants seemingly all over the place. I understand that it is a city and that there are millions of pilgrims, but in my head it's a holy city. KFC seems so out of place.

The question of the disconnect between the mixing of the genders at Mecca and the strict lines that can be encountered in other mosques all over the world stuck out to me too. Why is it okay for women and men to pray side my side in Mecca and not elsewhere?

I have to admit that I kept being surprised by how many things Ms. Nomani didn't seem to know about her own religion until she started looking into it due to the murder of her friend Daniel Pearl and the conception/birth of her son out of wedlock (and being abandoned by her son's father). It seems odd to me, but then I remember how many born Christians believe that the Bible was written in English originally.

My biggest problem, I guess, comes when Ms. Nomani returns home. She has, up until this point, not been involved in the local Muslim community. Due, it seems, to it not being a particularly inviting one to women. But I have to wonder if part of her perception, as a child, of it being uninviting is her mothers' aversion to the mosque. Her mother and father came from India and her mother came from a (according to the authors' book) very traditional area and family. She was never allowed or invited to participate in the community life of the mosque and never felt welcome. So I do wonder if that attitude trickled down to her daughter to a certain degree.

Ms. Nomani, on her return, goes to her local mosque and finds it wanting. Rather than become a part of the community and try and change things from the inside, she seems to appear and immediately begin demanding that things change and change right away to her way.

She refuses to use the women's section of the mosque but rather settles in the back of the men's section, refusing to leave when asked, ordered or threatened. While I can appreciate the point that there is no real reason for the women to be forced to pray in a room that leaves them feeling disconnected from the community, a room that is not equal in cleanliness or access, this felt so harsh to me, coming from someone who is basically a new comer to the community she is demanding change.

I was especially struck when Ms. Nomani describes a young woman who comes to the mosque to convert. She is not permitted to convert in the nice men's (main) hall, in front of the whole community, or even to have a microphone in the women's section so that the community can hear her take her shahadah. Instead she converts with only the other women present, and according to Ms. Nomani, laments that "This isn't the Islam I was promised." as she leaves. And I can relate, not to the specific circumstance, but to finding a religion not as promised.

I think we can all relate to that, to one degree or another.

*looks over 'review'*

I told you I was bad at this.

Anyway. Generally, I enjoyed the book. I'm not sure that I would like Ms. Nomani in person, but I found her writing to be easy to digest, informative, and it certainly kept my interest. Not so useful as an introduction to Islam (I have no impression that it was meant to be), it's definitely a memoir that gives you one point of view on the religion.

Book: The Book of Mormon Girl by Joanna Brooks

So obviously there have been no new Qur'an (or any other kind of) posts for a while. I've been busy, sorry. Work. Always with the wanting me to actually work. :p Bah.

And now I'm on a little mini-break, taking a four day weekend to just basically not go to work. Ahhh...

In order to not feel like a *complete* slacker, have a post!

I picked up The Book of Mormon Girl because I saw an interview that Joanna Brooks did with...it was either Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. I'm gonna go with Jon Stewart at this point, but I won't swear to it because it was a little while ago. Anyway. I saw the interview, enjoyed it, and I've read some of her posts on ReligionDispatches and her own blog. I like her style and I thought hey, the book would be interesting and informative.

And it was interesting. So there's that.

This is something of a strange position for me to be in, but here: I enjoyed this book, but I didn't *like* it. Maybe it's because I had certain expectations for it that it simply wasn't designed to meet?

I expected to learn something of Mormonism from this book and I didn't. Everything that was touched upon, and I feel touched upon very briefly, was something that I was already aware of. And I honestly don't think that I know all that much about Mormons. I don't, to my knowledge, know any Mormon's in real life. I live in a small Southern town. I don't even know if we have...hang on. To the Google!

Hey, lookit that. We have Mormons! Who knew? Okay.

Small, small town. I'm not even kidding.

Still. Without ever having met a Mormon, I feel like I live in a realm of relative ignorance about them. Joseph Smith, golden tablets, Jewish tribes that became Native Americans, bees, seagulls, polygamy, driving across the country to try and find someplace they could practice their faith, the US government cracking down on them, no African American priesthood (until recently), 'traditional' male/female roles, something about eternal pregnancies in the afterlife and getting to heaven through plural marriage. "Secret" (read sacred) temple ceremonies.

Baptism for the dead. All the dead. Even my ancestors, theoretically, I guess. If I have a relative who's a Mormon and does that.



PS, theoretical Mormon relatives: Don't.

And nothing in this book made me think any differently about Mormons or taught me anything I didn't know. It was a really easy read and like I said I did enjoy it but I came away feeling like it was a beach read. Girl grows up in fairly conservative, sheltered environment. Goes away to college, meets real world. Finds that she doesn't agree with everything her childhood culture taught her. Abandons much of it, feels guilt, waffles back and forth. Finds true love, marries. Babies, career, pretty good life. The end.

I'm seriously, honestly, left with only one thought or question.

Are these purity pledge things a real, actual, *thing*? Because I must have missed that somehow. I'm not saying it's a Mormon thing, because Rachel Held Evans mentioned that she signed a purity pledge at one point as well. But I just don't recall anyone ever coming up, even in my Southern Baptist run middle/high school, and telling us that we needed to pledge our virginity to God or our fathers or even ourselves. Every time I hear about them I'm just...confused.

Are these seriously a thing? REALLY? In the current century?

And then I remember that purity balls are a thing. And it just all becomes terribly depressing. And disturbing.

Mostly disturbing.

Book: A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans

I remember reading, and really enjoying, A.J. Jacobs' The Year of Living Biblically a couple of years ago. So when I heard mention of a woman who had done a similar project whose book was coming out I put it on my 'wishlist' (which is actually just a way of keeping track of things that are coming out that I want to read eventually) and waited.

When it finally came out I picked it up on my Kindle and read it while at the gym. So it took me a little while to finish it but not because it's a slow moving of boring book. Just because I was reading it in 30 - 60 minute chunks five days a week. I'd read some of the authors blog entries and knew that she had an engaging and personable style so I thought that at the least I wouldn't hate the book. The question was whether I'd like it or not because the author identifies as an evangelical which is a word that tends to send me skittering in the other direction.

It's (probably) a prejudiced misconception that I have but when I hear the word 'evangelical' I have a mental picture of people who are narrow minded and *angry* all the time. People who yell from the pulpit (I don't like that. I don't care who you are or what you're saying but if you yell from the pulpit I'm done. Unless you've just been stung by a wasp or found a spider crawling across your notes. Those would be acceptable exceptions.) and just wander around judging people and declaring that everyone who doesn't believe the way that they do is going to hell. But I picked up the book - it didn't hurt that it was on a really good sale - and I have to admit that I really enjoyed it. There's a combination of truth and humour that I think most people can relate to. She takes her project seriously but is aware enough to admit that there are some ridiculous moments in the course of the project.

"If God is the God of all pots and pans, then He is also the God of all shovels and computers and paints and assembly lines and executive offices and classrooms. Peace and joy belong not to the woman who finds the right vocation, but to the woman who finds God in any vocation, who looks for the divine around every corner." - on how God can be found in any vocation, not just the 'homemaker' vocation that 'Biblical womanhood' touts as being the be all and end all of God's plan for women

"None of this information is easy to swallow. In light of passages like these, I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven't actually read it." - after a list of some of the really truly terrible laws about women in the Bible. Wherein the author basically just says what I think.

"Jesus once said that his mission was not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And in this instance, fulfilling the law meant letting it go. It may serve as little comfort to those who have suffered abuse at the hand of Bible-wielding literalists, but the disturbing laws of Leviticus and Deuteronomy lose just a bit of their potency when God himself breaks them." - An interesting perspective. Did Jesus break the Law? Or did he break the law? If, as Jesus says, the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love one's neighbor, then in pursuit of fulfilling those commands if we break a 'law' (such as Jesus' healing on the Sabbath) are we guilty or vindicated by obeying the greater command?

"I took some comfort in the fact that the woman hailed as my model for submission wasn't any good at it either. Saint Peter chose an unlikely candidate in Sarah, who in a pivotal moment in Israel's history usurped the wishes of Abraham, and apparently won the support of God in her defiance." - when you think about it, the wives of the Patriarchs did kind of over rule their husbands when they wanted to. We remember them for being obedient or being wronged or being the mothers' of great men, but do we ever really think about what they themselves did?

On the 'Proverbs 31 woman':

"She's like the evangelical's Mary - venerated, idealized, glorified to the level of demigoddess, and yet expected to show up in every man's kitchen at dinnertime. Only unlike Mary, there is no indication that the Proverbs 31 woman actually existed."

"Like any good poem, the purpose of this one is to draw attention to the often over-looked glory of the everyday. The only instructive language it contains is directed toward men, with the admonition that a thankful husband honor his wife 'for all that her hands have done' (Proverbs 31:31). Old Testament scholar Ellen F. Davis notes that the poem was intended 'not to honor one particularly praiseworthy woman, but rather to underscore the central significance of women's skilled work in a household-based economy.' She concludes that 'it will not do to make facile comparisons between the biblical figure and the suburban housewife, or alternately between her and the modern career woman.'"

"But according to Ahava, the woman described in Proverbs 31 is not some ideal that exists out there; she is present in each one of us when we do even the smallest things with valor."

I didn't realize it until I started to make this post but I made 22 highlights in this book. I don't want this post to get excessively long so I'm leaving it at just the above couple of quotes.

It was fascinating for me to read through the months in this book and briefly meet some of the women around the country who live 'Biblical' lives in different ways.

I was deeply amused by the authors' repeated statement that she has trouble with multitasking. It's not a 'woman' or a 'man' thing, I think, but different from person to person. My amusement came mostly from reading what she was trying to do and laughing because I know I could do that with a lot less drama than what was going on on the page. :)

My one quibble, or I guess you could call it a wish, is that she didn't live the rules out for a full year. Not all of them. She broke them down into things to do from month to month and while I'm certain that that was instructive and helpful I think it would be interesting to see how someone unused to the lifestyle manages all of it for an entire year rather than a little bit at a time.

But all in all I enjoyed the book and I plan on picking up the authors other (first) book Evolving in Monkey Town at some point in the future. I've also started following her blog and I'm really looking forward to future posts in the year long series she's doing on sexuality and the church.

Book: The Submission by Amy Waldman

I've been working on this for a while but just never gotten around to finishing it up. It's hard for me to distill what I love about a book into a single post and not spoil the story in the process. I sometimes feel as though everyone should have read everything that I've read already so that I can just talk about them!

The novel is set ten years after 9/11 and centers around the efforts to design and build a memorial on the site where the towers once stood. The decision has been made to have the memorial chosen by jury, through an anonymous contest. When the book begins the jury has whittled the choices down to two.

The Void: "There was nothing void-like about it. A towering black granite rectangle, some twelve stories high, centered in a huge oval pool, it came off in the drawings as a great gash against the sky. The names of the dead were to be carved onto its surface, which would reflect into the water below."

and The Garden: "The concept was simple: a walled, square garden guided by rigorous geometry. At the center would be a raised pavilion meant for contemplation. Two broad, perpendicular canals quartered the six-acre space. Pathways within each quadrant imposed a grid on the trees, both living and steel, that were studded in orchard-like rows. A white perimeter wall, eighteen feet high, enclosed the entire space. The victims would be listed on the wall's interior, their named pattered to mimic the geometric cladding of the destroyed buildings. The steel trees reincarnated the buildings even more literally: they would be made from their salvaged scraps."

The jury, composed of artists, architects, historians and political appointees, is divided almost evenly between the two designs. Ariana, a self-important artist and critic, is set on the Void. Claire, the only family member of one of the victims on the jury, feels that it is too dark, too obscure, to bring anything to the families for whom the memorial will mean the most. She wants the Garden. She has promised her son the Garden - a place where he can go to find something of the father he has lost.

The two women lobby among the other jurors and then a final vote is taken.

Claire wins out and the Garden is chosen as the design for the memorial. Then, the reading of the winning architects name: Mohammed Khan.

The novel is told from multiple points of view, though the two main storytellers are Claire and Khan himself. From the moment that his name is revealed, there are people who want him to withdraw or be disqualified as 'unsuitable' for no reason other than that he is a Muslim. The story is 'accidentally' leaked to the press before the jury can decide what to do - Claire says that he won, so he won but others look at it from a wider point of view, anticipating the public reaction to a memorial built by a Muslim on that site.

I have to say, one of the things I like best about this novel is that none of the characters are innocent. They're not bad people, though an exception for me would be the leader of Save America From Islam (SAFI), Debbie Dawson. She's a representative of the real world anti-Islamic hate groups.

Claire, who starts out as a staunch supporter of the Garden and Khan 'no matter what', finds herself the target of the anger of some of the other families. She begins to question whether it's worth it, whether what the people are saying about Khan might be true. All she wants, at the core of things, is to be able to give her children something of their father to hold on to.

"As she walked to the front door from her car, she spotted what looked like a homeless man's encampment beneath the copper beech. Moving closer, she saw, in the milky light cast by house and moon, a box of Raisin Bran ("Daddy's favorite," she told the children, although she was no longer sure that Cal had loved Raisin Bran, only that saying so got William and Penelope to eat it); a pile of books pillaged from Cal's study; a stray tennis racket; his $2,000 wedding tuxedo - all of it arranged around the cairn. A child's necromancy; William believing he could coax the stones to life, or his father home."

Khan, who is a victim not only of the prejudice and cruelty of the people around him, but also of his own hubris and refusal to bend. He is not combative, precisely, but he is ambitious and willing to betray the trust of his closest friend in order to get the recognition that he deserves. He is saved from being only an overly ambitious artist by the fact that he does none of it out of cruelty. Or if he does, it's more like a child's unthinking need to be recognized than any sort of adult viciousness.

Sean, one of the family members opposed to the Garden once Khan's name is revealed, does some of the worst damage in the novel. He attacks a Muslim woman at a protest, yanking on her hijab and setting off a wave of similar attacks throughout the city. He comes off as petty, from the outside, but in the sections of the novel told from his point of view you come to see that he is a man whose life was destroyed long before the Tower's fell. He gained a purpose in life that day - taking the place of his older brother who was killed - but that purpose is wearing on him. He disappoints his mother simply by being himself, by not being Patrick and he spends most of the novel, you come to understand, flailing around, trying to find something to hold on to.

"His brother, Patrick, was somewhere here and Sean was conscious of wanting, a little too much, to be the one to find him, and of fearing he might not recognize him if he did. They hadn't seen each other in months, and Sean kept trying to call up Patrick's face, only to realize, as they came upon damaged bodies, that the faces of memory and death might not match."

The language of the novel is so wonderfully rich. There are some books that you feel as though they have so much weight that they should be real. For me, this is one of those. It's painful in places, to read about the blindness and anger that so many of the characters carry - born of the pain of loss for so many of them, and know that it is so true to life.

One of my favorite passages comes from Zahira, the woman whose hijab Sean yanked in an attempt to make himself relevant:

""Really?" Zahira said. "I thought it was just a garden. Honestly, Sean, even if it has elements in common with traditional Islamic gardens, that doesn't mean it's a paradise. And if he were consciously trying to invoke the afterlife, how do you know he's trying to encourage terrorists? For all you know he's reminding Muslims that we'll never reach paradise if we do what they did. Why is my theory any more far-fetched than yours?"


"Sean had no answer. She went on: "But for me, no architect can create paradise. Only God can. When Muslims think about paradise, the hope we feel about getting there, the exhilaration at the possibility - it's not about trees, or silks, or jewels, or beautiful women or boys or whatever you've been led to believe. It's about God. God. The description of paradise in the Quran is just a way to convey to our limited imaginations the ecstasy we will feel in God's presence. That's what should inspire us to live correctly.""

Better than LKH: Codex Alera by Jim Butcher

I'm not sticking strictly to 'urban' fantasy books, or even those set in modern times. FYI. Basically, this is just me telling you about fantasy novels/series that are *way* better than anything LKH has ever written. So, you know, *everything* else that's ever been written.

What? I'm not bitter. Stop shaking your head at me!

For today's entertainment, I present to you the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher.

Codex Alera is a six book series that is complete, so if you pick it up you at least know that you can read it from beginning to end without the gnawing, desperate need for *more*, *right now* that has to wait to be fulfilled for a year or two until the next book comes out. Not that that's not it's own brand of fun, mind you, but it's also insanity inducing. The series is more along the lines of high fantasy than anything else.

Okay, so Codex Alera is set on a world called Carna, where several races live in less than harmonious fashion. The Alerans are the main power on Carna and are essentially human but for the fact that each and every one of them has access to great powers through their relationships with elemental creatures known as Furies.

Furies live in everything and can be manipulated into different forms and uses. They've been categorised by the Alerans based on what elements they live in, so you have six different types: earth, wood, fire, air, water, and metal. Some of the furies are tiny and can't be seen, it takes a gathering up of a lot of this type in order to effect any change on the environment. Others are larger and can manifest themselves in various forms. They can cause real damage, when they put their minds to it, or when they're used to do so by an Aleran controlling them. There are also things called the Great Furies which, as only makes sense, are very old, very big, very powerful furies. Most people don't realize that they even exist, though they swear by them. It's more of a cultural habit than anything else.

The story starts in the Calderon Valley, a small and peaceful section of Alera along the border between Alera and their barbarian neighbors the Marat. Tavi is a small for his age apprentice shepherd who has been raised in the Valley by his Aunt Isana and Uncle Bernard (brother and sister, not a couple). He is quick and clever, though still very much a young man who does stupid things to impress girls, and Tavi is the only Aleran *ever* to not have any furies at all.

While out trying to recapture his Uncle Bernard's sheep, who were allowed to wander away and get lost while Tavi was off trying to impress that girl, Tavi is sucked into a plot to topple the First Lord of Alera. He finds himself trapped alone but for a scarred and unreliable slave in the land of the Marat, the people who had attacked and slaughtered the Princeps, the heir to the throne of Alera, years before and who look to be willing to repeat the performance on the First Lord.

Tavi has to use his brains to find a way to escape with his life in order to bring help to his family and the other people in the Valley and to ultimately help save the Empire.

This is just the first book and I'm not going to lie, it gets better and better as the series goes on.

One of my absolutely favorite things about this series is that it features a great variety of people being both good and evil without making one species *evil*. There are good and bad characters in all the different cultures that live on Carna.

I also love that the women are portrayed as being just as strong as the men. Yes, in Aleran society (which is based on and descended from ancient Roman culture), there are expected roles but there are women throughout the series who defy those roles and are working to gain equality with the men.

He shrugged beneath the blanket. “I can’t explain it. We just—we don’t treat our women the same way we do our men.”

“That’s stupid,” said Kitai.

There is some violence, of course, this is a high fantasy swords and armour kind of story after all, but no sexual content. Some characters, over the course of the series, are clearly pairing off and *having* sex, but it's all off screen.

Possible trigger warnings: There is discussion of slavery as it is legal and a large part of the Aleran economy. There is also use of mind control and the fall out from that, the damage that it does to a persons psyche as well as torture. My biggest warning would be that there is mention of rape and intention of certain characters to rape others. Nothing of the sort happens on screen however, and even the references are veiled and non-graphic.

I hate that these are so short but I really don't want to give away plot points and twists.

Books: Women of the Otherworld

Good morning, and welcome to the first in a (maybe, if I can pay attention to the idea long enough) series of posts about 'Series That Are Better Than LKH'.

We'll start with Kelley Armstrong's Otherworld series, more often called the Women of the Otherworld, though there are some short stories that focus on the male characters. Which is why I prefer just calling it Otherworld. And it's my blog, so I do what I want.

For proof of my Powers of Randomness, Random Thor!



First off, since this is a 'Better Than LKH' series, it's in the same genre. That being urban fantasy. What, I can hear at least one of you asking (and yes, I'm looking at you, Susanne), is urban fantasy. it's a genre of fantasy writing where most of the action takes place within an urban setting, a city. It is typically set in modern or future times, with the addition of magic or aliens, but it can be set in historical periods as well, provided that the action occurs primarily in a city.

Okay. I'm going to just talk about the first book in the series, and then a little general squee about the overall world and why I love it so.

The first book in the series is called Bitten and it is the story of Elena Michaels. Elena is a writer for a popular newspaper in Toronto. She lives with her boyfriend Philip and is, most of the year, a perfectly normal, relatively happy woman.

What no one else knows is that Elena is on the run from herself and her past. Bitten years ago by the man she loved, Elena is the only female werewolf in the world. Unable to forgive or understand Clay's reasons for changing her, a process that has killed every other woman it was tried on, Elena has left the Pack that sheltered and taught her to control her new instincts to try and live a normal life.

Jeremy, the Pack Alpha, has respected her desires and made certain that the other members of the Pack (Clay, we're looking at you) respect them as well. However, when people start showing up murdered on Pack land, drawing attention to the Pack and endangering the people that Elena knows and loves, she is drawn back to hunt down the threat.

Bitten could almost be a stand alone, in that the Pack in the book are the only supernatural characters that you meet. In fact, as far as they are aware, they are the only supernatural creatures that actually exist. It isn't until the second book, Stolen, that the wider world of this universe begins to be revealed.

Things that I love about this series:

The women are real women. They're not all 'manly tough', 'I can kick every guys ass'. Which, while it can be a little fun on occasion, is not realistic. And to be fair to Elena, she can kick more ass than your average person. What with being a werewolf and the combat training and all, but she has to work at it. The women have realistic issues with trying to find their place in the world and (in some cases) trying to change the cultural stereotypes of their own people that are holding them back. This is especially true in the case of the witches, who we meet in the second book. Paige Winterborne is the daughter of the head of the American Coven and part of her story is her struggle to do what she knows is best for her and for the other women of the Coven, breaking them away from old fashioned notions of what is 'appropriate' for witches (who are all women) to do and allowing them to be full participants in the world.

Men who do shit get called on their shit. And I'm looking at you, again, Clay. I won't tell you what happens between Clay and Elena because it's a major plot point, but unlike in many supernatural romance kind of situations, Elena doesn't go all gooey and doe eyed when Clay acts like a cave man around her. Seriously, I just read a book where the man essentially meets a woman and declares that if there weren't other people around he'd just pin her to the wall right then and there. And rather than kick him in the balls and run away, she melts and thinks that he's the hottest thing. *rolls eyes* And that's when I tossed the book. *sigh* Seriously. To be fair to Clay, that is not something he would ever do. Not just because he's more than aware that Elena can and will hand him his own spleen, but because even he's aware enough to know that that is Just Wrong.

Truth be told, Clay has enough issues on his own - he's the least human-thinking of the entire Pack, for reasons which I shall not disclose! :p Even knowing that, however, and to a point understanding why Clay is not as socialized as the rest of the Pack, he does not get a free pass for his inappropriate behavior. There is a very clear progression of Clay learning what is and is not acceptable and *why*, and you can also see that Clay *wants* to learn these things in order to make the people he cares about most, Elena and Jeremy, happy.

The books are well plotted, well written and the universe building is believable. For all that some of the characters have phenomenal cosmic powers, they are still very human in their flaws. There is some sex in the books, as several of the characters find people that they love and eventually pair off with them but it is not the focus or the driving impetus of the books. It's incidental and natural feeling given the characters and their story arcs. It is also not graphically depicted. There is some violence, but again it is not graphically depicted and it works within the story, being a natural consequence of the choices of the characters and not dictating the movements of the characters to justify the fight sequence or what have you.

Over all, I give the entire series a 4.5/5, just because I like some of the books and the characters that they focus on, less than others. But it's an excellent series and if you enjoy this genre I heartily recommend it.

Book: The Tribune by Patrick Larkin

This is another one of those books that I picked up a *million* years ago and just got around to reading. Seriously, I actually remember buying this book and I bought it from the bookstore in our mall, a Waldens Books. And they've been out of the area for probably five years. So I've had the book for a bit.

I have a *thing* for ancient Rome. I know, I know. I have 'things' about a lot of things. What can I say, my obsessions are many and varied. :) Anyway. That's why I picked this book up.

Right then.

So The Tribune centers around and is told from the point of view of legionnaire Lucius Aurelius Valens. We start off at a point where he is on duty in Syria, investigating a series of bloody raids. There is a band of marauders riding through the area, demanding protection money from the people living on the outlying farms. If they refuse or are unable to pay, the bandits return within a few nights and slaughter everyone in the house.

Lucius, being a veteran of the German frontier and an educated man from a military family, detects a pattern in the raids and suggests a plan that would hopefully capture these men before they can strike again. His commanding officer scoffs and shoots down the idea, his attitude and general incompetency giving Lucius suspicions that there is something more going on.

To punish Lucius for daring to think that he knows better than his seniors, he is sent to a remote outpost. Rather than go, Lucius sends a detachment of his men to man the outpost and takes the rest of them back to the area that is being preyed upon.

Of course, his gamble pays off and he encounters and defeats the bandits. Who, to the surprise of absolutely no one, turn out to be legionnaires under the command of the senior centurion. Driven by a sense of honor that apparently precludes being clever about the political situations around him, Lucius marches the centurion and the surviving members of the criminal band to the capital, thereby getting in the middle of a political pissing match between Germanicus (Lucius' friend and political sponsor) and a man named Piso who is a smaller power in the area.

He subsequently is marched off to Judea to keep him out of the grasp of the men that he's angered. It all becomes rather terribly predictable just as soon as Lucius is saddled with a random Jewish-Roman citizen boy named Paullus who insists on being called Saul. By which I mean, Larkin takes an interesting premise of a historical novel - that of an honorable man surrounded by corruption in the military ranks - and starts shoe horning New Testament characters into it.

Lucius, dragging Paullus/Saul and his conveniently incredibly loyal Greek doctor with him, as well as his cohort of legionnaires, becomes enmeshed in the murder of a Roman senator near the small town of Nazarra. The senator, Silanus, had been sent to Judea to find out the truth of the visions that Tiberius Caesar's seers have been having about a threat growing in the area. We also encounter a man named Nahum, a mother and son duo named Miryam and Yeshua, a kind of bipolar seeming woman named Marah in Magdalah and two random fishermen, one of whom is named Simon.

Look, I wanted to like this book. I really did. Rome! It should be hard to screw that up! But. It kind of felt like Larkin couldn't decide what kind of a novel he wanted this to be, or he didn't bother to take the time to really fill in the story to make it interesting. It is *absolutely* possible to write Biblical fiction and make it vibrant and interesting. This was not that book.

My major problem, though, is with Lucius. Really. He's unreal. He is an unbelievable character. He's kind of perfect. Lucius is approaching Marty Sue territory. His 'one flaw' is that he's so honorable that he's stupid with it. This *entire* book is based on that fact. Luckily for him, he seems to have come by it honestly. We're given a little anecdote of his grandfather to explain where this idiothonorable streak comes from. Lucius' grandfather fought under Augustus when he was battling for control of Rome with Mark Antony. In one of the battles, things weren't going very well. The standard bearer, the man carrying the Roman Eagle, falls and Augustus himself grabs it and uses it as a rallying point. Well, Lucius' grandfather fights off hoards of Antony's troops and is wounded in the process. When Augustus comes to visit him in the medical tent and commend him for his loyalty and bravery, grandpa tells Augustus that he wasn't defending Augustus, he was defending the Eagle.

Which...okay. I get that the Eagle is important. As a much better book (and the movie) says:

'The eagle is lost, honor is lost, and if honor is lost, all is lost.' The Eagle is Rome. BUT. When the guy who is one of the rulers of Rome (at that point) and your commanding officer, thanks you personally for being a badass, you TAKE THE COMPLIMENT AND SHUT UP. Of course, Grandpa gets rewarded for this with a gold ring which he passes on down to Lucius. Lucius also inherits his grandpa's idiocy.

As for the rest of it. It could have been good. I kept thinking that it would get better. I mean after all, it has the potential to be really interesting, if it's well done. But it wasn't. It just wasn't.

If you want to read good Biblical fiction, I point you to The Red Tent by Anita Diamant.

If you want to read good fiction set in ancient Rome, let me direct you to The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff. It's a YA book, actually, but it's a fun, engaging book. There's also a movie based on it which I enjoyed immensely. *sighs at Channing Tatum as Marcus*

Or, if you enjoy mysteries, the Marcus Didius Falco series is one of my absolute favorites. Steven Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa series is another delightful mystery series set in ancient Rome.

Or, if you like to mix your Rome with some high fantasy, the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher. It's a very clearly Roman based society, the reasons for which become clear throughout the series, but set in another world where the Romans have gained the ability to commune with and use creatures known as furies. There's also the giant-wolf creatures (Canim!), the Marat (Vikings!), and the BorgVord. All this with political intrigue and machinations thrown in. *cuddles books*

My tastes, they are random.

Anyway.

The Tribune = no stars. Not worth it, don't bother. Every other book I mentioned = go forth and read.

Book: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

"Winning means fame and fortune. Losing means certain death. The Hunger Games have begun."

These books have been recommended all over the place, forever. Becky did a Writer's Wednesday post on them and Googling them brings up a butt load of other rec's and reviews. If you do Google them, beware of spoilers, please.

The Hunger Games is the first book in The Hunger Games Trilogy, followed by Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I've been meaning to read them for a while but was putting it off until I'd finished the mystery series I'm reading on Murdock but then one of my co-worker's received a hard cover set of the trilogy for Christmas and loaned them to me. I read the books in two days, which, even given my typical reading speed, should tell you how much I enjoyed these books.

They are Young Adult and you should keep that in mind. The writing is good but it's not *excellent*. What really draws you through is the story. It's good enough to make you forget that it's YA and it's a fairly good treatment of some very heavy themes.

The Hunger Games is set in a dystopian future where America, and presumably the rest of the world, has destroyed itself. America has been replaced by a nation called Panem, a confederation of 12 Districts under the control of the Capitol. There used to be 13 Districts but the Districts rebelled 74 years before the beginning of this book. The thirteenth District was utterly destroyed, the remaining twelve defeated and enslaved by the Capitol.

"Happy Hunger Games and may the odds be ever in your favor."

In order to prevent any future rebellions the Capitol puts on the Hunger Games once each year. Two children, one boy and one girl, between the ages of 12 and 18 from each District are selected by lottery to participate. The twenty-four Tributes are taken to the Capitol, dressed up, paraded around and then dropped into an Arena where they fight to the death until there is only one left. The victor of the Hunger Games is set for life. They have food, comfort and pretty much anything that they could desire while the rest of the people of the Districts starve and slave away for the Capitol.

“What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by? What do they do all day, these people in the Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new shipment of tributes to roll in and die for their entertainment?”

Katniss Everdeen is from District 12, a strong hunter (which is outlawed) and the backbone of her family. Her father was killed in a mine explosion when she was 11, leaving her to find a way to keep her mother, her younger sister Primrose and herself alive. When Prim is chosen as Tribute from District 12, Katniss volunteers to take her place. Along with a boy named Peeta Mellark, who once saved her life right after her father was killed, she is taken to the Capitol to fight.

The first book is all about their struggle for survival in the arena. It's brutal, especially if you have a good imagination. The author doesn't dwell over every single death but the plain fact is that these are children, starving and desperate, taken from their homes and their families. Trained to fight and survive, then thrown into an arena designed to kill them or force them to kill. Their only way out is to kill. Some of the winners from previous Hunger Games have gone mad. There's at least one recorded instance of cannibalism within the Game. It's just as ugly as it should be.

These books suck you in. The world is so desperate, so ugly and still so filled with beautiful things, with people who are willing to fight for one another and sacrifice for the people that they love. It's wonderful, truly.

And I should warn you, I did a lot of crying towards the end of the last book. I spent most of the series going like this: O.O and screaming at characters in my head.

Also, I went to sleep one night in the middle of Catching Fire (because I just *had* to sleep at some point), thinking: 'Can't sleep, President Snow will get me.' which may only be funny to me. :)

Rating: All the stars! Realistically, let's go with a 4.75/5. Because no book is perfect.

And now, the trailer for the movie! Yes, I am going to see it when it comes out. I may even go to a midnight showing. Because it's just that wonderful.

Book: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

I loved this book. Loved. Unabashedly, unreservedly, loved.

Right then. I picked this up...a long time ago. It's one of those books that's been sitting on my shelf, waiting for me to get around to it. To be honest, I almost got rid of it years ago when I did my Great Purge. I held onto it for some reason, shallowly, probably because of the 'Oprah's Book Club' seal on the front.

I'm very glad that I did hold onto it. See above for my general level of :DDD - all the love for this book.

“The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.” 

It's told in the alternating point of views of the five Price women. The mother, Orleanna, and her four daughters; Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May.

Their lives revolve around the patriarch of the Price family, Reverend Nathan Price. The man, a Southern Baptist preacher turned missionary is driven by inner demons whose shapes become clear through the story of the book. Believing that he is on a mission from God, Price drags his family to the Congo in the late 1950s which I think most people know could be, in a massive understatement, called the beginning of a time of great upheaval in the region.

The Price family arrive in the Congo with no knowledge of the language and no idea of the political situation. Nathan has dragged them there against the advice of the people in charge of the mission, though his wife doesn't find that out until later. They arrive believing in their inherent superiority as whites, as civilized, Western people and as Christians. Their arrogance and utter lack of understanding or even a desire to understand the culture and the people that they are suddenly surrounded by is grating and sickening in places.

While the women of the family adapt to varying degrees, forced to learn how to survive in a completely alien environment, Nathan is focused and blind to the point of madness. He sees nothing but enemies all around him, even in his own family. Throughout the book we are shown the damage that his rampant misogyny has on his family. His wife, a strong and spirited woman in her youth when they first marry is beaten down and subjugated to the point where she becomes unable to stand strong enough to save her daughters until it is too late.

"God doesn’t have to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves."

There is action in this book, though not of the guns and knives sort. The tension, the driving force behind the book is the slow growing understanding of just how far out of control this family is. How at the mercy of a single man and his madness they have become. It's a novel about people and about how they can either bend or break.

It does start out slowly. I can't tell you the number of times that I was reading and thought about just putting it down and moving on at first. There are moments of dark hilarity, like when Nathan is finally told that the reason no one wants to be baptised is that they think he's trying to feed them to the crocodiles in the river that grow fewer and fewer as you read on and begin to understand exactly how delusional Nathan is, how determined he is that he is chosen by God and that he will stay his course no matter how many lives it costs.

"Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened. First, picture the forest. I want you to be its conscience, the eyes in the trees. The trees are columns of slick, brindled bark like muscular animals overgrown beyond all reason. Every space is filled with life: delicate, poisonous frogs, war-painted like skeletons, clutched in copulation, secreting their precious eggs onto dripping leaves. Vines strangling their own kin in the everlasting wrestle for sunlight. The breathing of monkeys. A glide of snake belly on branch. A single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen. And, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. This forest eats itself and lives forever."  

I know this is a short and kind of really vague review, but I always want to err on the side of not giving too much of the book away. Part of the wonder of books, the thing that draws us in, is not known what's coming on the next page.

This book is worth the time you spend on it. Go read it.

I give this book 4.5/5.

Book: Sabriel by Garth Nix

So back on my 2011 Books listing post, Sol asked if I'd ever read any Garth Nix, which I had not. Heather turned around and recommended Sabriel to me and agreed to my demands that she *finally* read Jane Eyre in return. How anyone can live as long as she has, love books as much as she does and not have already read Jane Eyre is incomprehensible to me.

Anyway...so I picked up Sabriel. I think it goes without saying that I finished it a while ago but I've been busy so I'm just getting around to posting. We had one of our women at work literally stand up and walk out on her job on Monday so it's been fun. :)

Right. On to the book!

The main character is a young woman named Sabriel, daughter of Abhorsen. She has been raised, since she was about four years old in the land of Ancelstierre at a boarding school that seems to be set along British boarding school lines. Ancelstierre is the more modern of the two countries in the book, the second being known as the Old Kingdom. Ancelstierre is a place of growing technology while the Old Kingdom, separated from Ancelstierre by the Wall, is a place of magic. The two forces do not get along. Magic won't work too far into Ancelstierre and too close to the Wall or inside of the Old Kingdom technology stops working properly.

The book opens with Sabriel being visited by a magical construct sent from her father, bringing the tools of his trade to her. Abhorsen is a necromancer, but one who lays the dead to rest rather than raises them. So someone who uses potentially dark magic in order to combat darker magic. He has sent his bells, which are used to control the dead in various ways, and his sword to Sabriel, essentially passing on the torch to her.

I think we all know where this is going, right? Sabriel rushes over the Wall (well through, technically, she has a passport and everything so she doesn't have to try and sneak past the army guarding the Wall from the Ancelstierre side or anything) to find her father and try to save him before he's too long in Death for her to bring back. He's not really dead, see, not yet because necromancers can 'step over' into Death, separating their spirits from their bodies for a time. Of course, too long separated from his body and he'll be truly dead.

Sabriel goes back to the country of her birth, finding it over run with the dead and worse things, all signs of a Greater Dead rising. This is a powerful spirit that is trying to claw its way back into life, one of the things that Abhorsen worked to stop.

*handwave* Plot things I don't want to give away...yadda...Sabriel runs all over the place trying to find her father, meets a cat who I adore named Mogget. Well, sort of a cat.Whatever. Mogget is awesome. Saves a handsome young man named Touchstone who then follows her around as a servant/bodyguard/annoying but helpful dogsbody.

Action, adventure, romance, ancient secrets and surprising revelations! All the good stuff.

Now, it's a YA fantasy novel and that's rather obvious in the writing style and the content. There's nothing extremely violent, no graphic anything, really though there are one or two hints to characters having romantic and/or sexual feelings towards one another and a mention of two unknown characters having sex. YA, back in the day before YA became the hot new thing.

Which is just my opinion of it of course. I find it funny, looking for a picture of the cover I stumbled over a couple of other reviews and people are calling it all Dark and Gory and Intense. I...thought it was fun and kind of fluffy. Not that dark, not gory and not all that intense. Clearly, the people who find it Dark and Intense have not read what I have read. I think it comes from being a horror/fantasy/dark things fan in the first place. After a while, you either have to be really dark or really skilled in order to wig me out. Very few people manage that. Stephen King has ceased to wig me out, okay? Dean Koontz *never* wigged me out. I've only ever failed to complete one book due to ick factor and that was American Psycho. And even then it was less the ick and more that it was unnecessarily and gratuitously violent.

So YMMV and you've been warned. It may be darker than I think of it.

The pacing of the story isn't bad, though it does get off to a slow start. It definitely picks up about a quarter of the way through, once the adventure has really started.

There are enough hints at the backgrounds and interplay of the characters to get you interested in them. They could have been explored more fully but not without making the book longer or extending it into more books. It is part of a trilogy but from reading the blurbs for the other two they don't focus on Sabriel or Touchstone.

Over all I enjoyed the book quite a lot and am planning on reading the second book in the series at some point as well. It's in my theoretical To Be Read pile, along with so very many other books!

4/5

Book: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I actually finished this book four days ago and have read another book since and am on to yet another book. What can I say, I'm lazy!

First of all, I really enjoyed the book and since I'm more of a horror/sci-fi/fantasy fan that's kind of saying something.

I'm not going to go over the plot too much because I'm fairly certain that everyone knows it in the broad strokes by now.

Skeeter Phelan is a Southern girl who comes back home from college with a degree rather than a husband. She wants to get into writing but is rejected from the first job she applies for (an editors position) due to lack of experience. Blah blah, she winds up deciding to write a book about the black maids in her town and what it's like to be working for white families who mostly look down on them and think of them as 'less than'.

That's the vehicle for the story, and I've head people complain that the book makes it seem like the women who speak to Skeeter were unable to help themselves until she came along. That is not the impression that I got at all. Skeeter comes up with the idea in order to further her own career, a fairly selfish motive. She doesn't think of the consequences until they're pointed out to her repeatedly. If it came out that these women were speaking to her they would be murdered and she'd be driven out of town at the best and killed herself at the worst. The fact that Skeeter wouldn't get an automatic death sentence from the local 'justice' just points out the difference between blacks and whites in that time and place.

But the book isn't about Skeeter except in the periphery. Her learning that the easy, fluffy and priviledged world she lives on is built on top of the remnants of slavery and cruelty toward other human beings. The story of the book is built on two maids, Aibileen and Minnie. They're the true driving force of the stories and the gathering of the other maids to tell their tales and they're the driving force of the book.

It's a fact that I think gets lost in the movie. The movie, for all that I enjoyed it *does* fall victim to the slant that Skeeter is the driving force. It comes across far more clearly in the novel that she is a side note to the lives and the stories of these women. She is a tool that they use to try and make a change, to make people aware of the reality that they all seem to want to ignore.

To give an example of the major changes from book to movie: Minnie leaves her abusive husband toward the end. In the movie, she is given the strength to do so because the woman that she is working for treats her just like any other human being and they become friends. The impetus to leave is seemingly provided by the act of Celia cooking Minnie a huge meal and Johnny (Celia's husband), Celia and Minnie all sitting down to dinner together. In the book, it is not an act of Celia or anyone else, but the fact that Minnie (due to her own actions and care for others) has made it possible for her to live independent of her husband and take care of her children. Were Celia, Johnny and Skeeter involved in the events that led to that? Yes. But they were the acted upon, in many ways, rather than the actors.

And that's that. It's a good book. Read it. End of story.

For those interested, the next book I read the The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly (very good!). And now I'm reading The Eagle by Rosemary Sutcliff.

Book Review: The Haunting by Shirley Jackson

This is an older book, originally published in 1959 under the title The Haunting of Hill House. It's what I would consider to be classic horror. There's not blood dripping from the walls, no slasher elements (Jason & Freddy as examples). It's all about the psychological horror.

The plot is fairly simple, and you've seen it done a million times. But I believe that all the ones that came after The Haunting were just imitations. Even Stephen King did one with the tv movie Rose Red. Same set up, essentially, with only the details being different.

There's an old, magnificent house with a history of violence/questionable activity and death. Years after it has been last lived in, a professor/researcher with an interest in the paranormal gets a group together to go stay in the house for a night/week/month/the summer. He gathers people who have had paranormal experiences before, whether those are the uncanny ability to know things that they couldn't possibly know or a rain of stones on their house when they were a child. Typically some scion of the family that owns the house is present as well, to make certain that the visitors don't accidentally burn the place down.

And then the activity starts. The thing that makes, in my opinion, The Haunting one of the best examples of this is that there is always the question of whether or not any of the 'paranormal' activity is actually happening at all. You have the four main characters, Dr. Montague, Luke Sanderson, Theodora, and Eleanor Vance who spend most of a week in the house. They all experience the classic feelings of being watched, the knocking, banging, etc. Classic haunted house stuff. But the house, Hill House, is really just a creepy, weird place. It's built slightly off of true. None of the walls or angles are perfectly straight and it's built rather like a maze. It's drafty and very easy to get lost in. In addition, you have a group of people coming to a house that they believe to be haunted for the express purpose of trying to experience ghostly phenomenon. Nothing that happens can't be explained by simple unfamiliarity with the house, the noises of a normal house and the power of suggestion combined with the mental state of some of the people in the house.

That, I think, is what makes it such a great horror novel. The most frightening things aren't about blood and guts. Those are great for gross out factors and for making you cringe as you involuntarily imagine the pain and shock of the wounds. But for real horror, you want to play with the mind. Make people question what is real and what's not. Let their own imaginations trick them. That's what makes a scary story really scary. And I honestly think that The Haunting does that the best of anything I've ever read.

There've been two film adaptations of the book. One, in 1963, which is fairly true to the original work. There are, as always, some differences, but for the most part I think they did a really good job. The second, done in 1999, not so much. It was made to be more like a modern horror movie, where it's very definitely a ghost and there's all these fancy special effects. Fine and dandy, but you've lost the thing that makes the story excellent. And honestly, the 1999 movie just wasn't very good. In spite of having Liam Neeson in it.

"Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."