Dead Ever After / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

Sookie Stackhouse finds it easy to turn down the request of former barmaid Arlene when she wants her job back at Merlotte’s. After all, Arlene tried to have Sookie killed. But her relationship with Eric Northman is not so clearcut. He and his vampires are keeping their distance…and a cold silence. And when Sookie learns the reason why, she is devastated.

Then a shocking murder rocks Bon Temps, and Sookie is arrested for the crime.

But the evidence against Sookie is weak, and she makes bail. Investigating the killing, she’ll learn that what passes for truth in Bon Temps is only a convenient lie. What passes for justice is more spilled blood. And what passes for love is never enough...

2019 Re-Read

I have been heard to say (not seriously, but when having a hissy fit) that when a woman is done with a man, he should die. That would be how he knew that the relationship was over. Now, may I also say that I’ve never enforced this idea of mine, it was temporary insanity after the end of a particularly frustrating pseudo-relationship. But it would seem that Sookie agrees with me:

“In books, the hero was gone after the big blowup. He didn’t stick around in the vicinity doing mysterious shit, sending messages to the heroine by a third party. He hauled his ass into oblivion. And that was the way things should be, as far as I was concerned. Life should imitate romance literature far more often.”

I anticipated this ending practically from the first book. It’s not how I would have ended the series, but I was just the reader, not the writer. I’m proclaiming my undying love for Bill! But that’s just me. When I read this series the first time, I read the last three books in a frantic binge. As a result, I didn’t remember a lot of details, so it was pleasant to read a little slower this time around and soak in the final moments of a pleasurable series. I have absolutely no doubt that I will read this series again at some point, but now I hope to get on with other books, due at the library in a few days.

Bill forever, y'all.

Deadlocked / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

Growing up with telepathic abilities, Sookie Stackhouse realized early on that there are things she'd rather not know. An now that she's an adult, she also realizes that some things she knows about, she'd rather not see--like Eric Northman feeding off another woman. A younger one.

There's a thing or two she'd like to say about that, but she has to keep quiet--Felipe de Castro, the vampire king of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), is in town. It's the worst possible time for a human body to show up in Eric's front yard--especially the body of the woman whose blood he just drank.

Now it's up to Sookie and Bill, the official Area Five investigator, to solve the murder. Sookie thinks that, at least this time, the dead girl's fate has nothing to do with her. But she is wrong. She has an enemy, one far more devious than she would ever suspect, who's set out to make Sookie's world come crashing down.

2019 Re-Read

Sookie is trying to wish away some aspects of her life and makes the mistake of asking Bill about his favourite fantasy:

“My favorite fantasy? You come down into my daytime resting place stark naked," he said, and I could see the gleam of his teeth as he smiled. "Oh, wait," Bill said. "That's already happened.”
“And that's your fantasy? That I come into your house naked and have sex with you?"
"After that, you tell me that you have sent Eric on his way, that you want to be mine forever, and that to share my life you will permit me to make you a vampire like me."
The silence now was thick, and the fun had drained out of the fantasy.
Then Bill added, "You know what I'd say when you told me this? I'd tell you I would never do such a thing. Because I love you.”

This is where Bill proves to me that he understands Sookie perfectly. He knows that she’s a creature of the sun and would never be happy in the darkness of the undead world. And that he still loves her.

It’s Sookie’s birthday, and she receives a delegation of the undead when darkness falls:

“We came to wish you a happy day,” Eric said. “And I suppose, as usual, Bill will want to express his undying love that surpasses my love, as he’ll tell you—and Pam will want to say something sarcastic and nearly painful, while reminding you that she loves you, too.”
Bill and Pam looked decidedly miffed at Eric’s preemptive strike, but I wasn’t going to let anything dim my mood.
“And what about you, Eric?” I asked on counterattack. “Are you going to tell me that you love me just as much as Bill, but in a practical way, while finding some way to subtly threaten me and simultaneously remind me that you may be leaving with Freyda?”

Once again, Pam is perfect: “Sookie, I brought you something too. I never thought I’d want to spend time with a human, but you’re more tolerable than most.”

There’s also a showdown with Freyda, the Queen who is courting Eric. She visits Sookie to size up her competition. Bubba is perfect as her guide—when she asks what people see in Ms. Stackhouse, the normally addled Bubba speaks right up, telling Freyda that Sookie is kind. And that’s it in a nutshell. She’s kind to everyone who allows it—even when they don’t really deserve it. Forget being a Christian, Sookie, you’re working on being a good Buddhist.

Almost there—I will be free of this re-reading trap with one more book!

Dead Reckoning / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

With her knack for being in trouble's way, Sookie witnesses the firebombing of Merlotte's, the bar where she works. Since Sam Merlotte is now known to be two-natured, suspicion falls immediately on the anti-shifters in the area. Sookie suspects otherwise, but her attention is divided when she realizes that her lover Eric Northman and his "child" Pam are plotting to kill the vampire who is now their master. Gradually, Sookie is drawn into the plot-which is much more complicated than she knows...

2019 Re-Read

You can get whiplash trying to keep up with Sookie Stackhouse’s life—one day you’re planning a vampire assassination, the next it’s a mundane baby shower. One evening you hand out sharpened stakes, the next cake and napkins.

This is the volume of the series where Sookie realizes how much her life has changed—how much she has changed. For several books now, Sookie has noted that she’s a “bad Christian.” Now she knows where her telepathic talent comes from (an indiscretion of her grandmother’s) and her world has expanded to include all sorts of supernatural creatures. She has left behind her “nice girl next door” persona and is becoming a woman to be conjured with.

It’s inevitable that this will change her relationship with Eric, who is used to being the vampire in charge. He’s getting surly and pouty, not liking this change in his ‘wife.’ She’s standing up for herself and for others, something that controlling spouses find disconcerting.

I amazed, actually, at how many human relationship issues that Harris manages to tackle through this urban fantasy soap-opera. As Sookie learns more about herself and managing her feelings & expectations, we all get to review these life lessons through her interior monologue. How often women are expected to ‘be nice’ and acquiesce to the demands of men, plus how they get labelled as bitches when they don’t follow this script.

Still loving Pam, still carrying a torch for Bill, really appreciating Bubba.

Dead in the Family / Charlaine Harris

4 stars out of 5

Sookie Stackhouse is dealing with a whole host of family problems, ranging from her own kin (a non-human fairy and a telepathic second cousin) demanding a place in her life, to her lover Eric's vampire sire, an ancient being who arrives with Eric's 'brother' in tow at a most inopportune moment. And Sookie's tracking down a distant relation of her ailing neighbour (and ex), Vampire Bill Compton.

In addition to the multitude of family issues complicating her life, the werewolf pack of Shreveport has asked Sookie for a special favour, and since Sookie is an obliging young woman, she agrees. But this favour for the wolves has dire results for Sookie, who is still recovering from the trauma of her abduction during the Fairy War.

2019 Re-Read

The “Pam is Awesome” volume.

'Pam. Listen.'
'The phone is pressed to my ear. Speak.'
'Appius Livius Ocella just dropped in.'
'Fuck a zombie!”

This is the book where Pam becomes my favourite vampire (though Bill is still in the running). I love the deadpan lines that Harris writes for this cold blonde.

As in this conversation between Sookie and Pam:

Pam: “How is Eric?'

Sookie: 'Very tightly wound. Plus, a lot of stuff happened that he'll tell you about.'
Pam: 'Thanks for the warning. I'll go to the house now. You're my favorite breather.'
Sookie: 'Oh. Well ... great.'
She hung up.”

Dead and Gone / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

The vamps have been out for years, and now the weres and shifters have decided to follow the lead of the undead and reveal their existence to the ordinary world. Sookie Stackhouse already knows about them, of course - her brother turns into a panther at the full moon, she's friend to the local were pack, and Sam, her boss at Merlotte's bar, is a shapeshifter.

The great revelation goes well at first - then the horribly mutilated body of a were-panther is found in the parking lot of Merlotte's, and Sookie agrees to use her telepathic talent to track down the murderer. But there is a far greater danger than this killer threatening Bon Temps: a race of unhuman beings, older, more powerful, and far more secretive than the vampires or the werewolves, is preparing for war. And Sookie is an all-too-human pawn in their ages-old battle...

2019 Re-Read

“I added to my mental list of the odd things I'd done that day. I'd entertained the police, sunbathed, visited at a mall with some fairies, weeded, and killed someone. Now it was powdered-corpse removal time. And the day wasn't over yet.”

I’m enjoying the inherent humour in this series. Harris knows that she’s writing soap opera story lines and she’s enjoying it. Especially when Sookie arms herself to deal with malevolent fairies—with a garden trowel and a squirt gun of lemon juice! And Sookie saying to herself, “What had set the fae world off? I’d never seen one. Now you couldn’t throw a trowel without hitting a fairy.”

And once again, I’m carrying a torch for Bill:

“As I watched Bill, waiting with apparent calm for death to come to him, I had a flash of him as I'd known him: the first vampire I'd ever met, the first man I'd ever gone to bed with, the first suitor I'd ever loved. Everything that followed had tainted those memories, but for one moment I saw him clearly, and I loved him again.”

From Dead to Worse / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

After the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the manmade explosion at the vampire summit, everyone human and otherwise is stressed, including Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who is trying to cope with the fact that her boyfriend Quinn has gone missing.

It's clear that things are changing whether the weres and vamps of her corner of Louisiana like it or not. And Sookie, Friend to the Pack and blood-bonded to Eric Northman, leader of the local vampire community is caught up in the changes.

In the ensuing battles, Sookie faces danger, death, and once more, betrayal by someone she loves. And when the fur has finished flying and the cold blood finished flowing, her world will be forever altered.

2019 Re-Read

”The security light made me feel safe, though I knew that was an illusion. If there's light, you can just see what's coming for you a little more clearly.”

How true! We all try to arrange our lives to keep ourselves safe and sound, but in reality we have little control over those matters. But as John Lennon wrote, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Ms. Stackhouse could write a dissertation on this subject.

This is the volume where I fell in love with Bill Compton. Yes, he’s a vampire, so inherently untrustworthy, but I just love that fact that he stays in Sookie’s life and just keeps on quietly being her friend and admirer. I adore his loyalty.

All Together Dead / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse has her hands full dealing with every sort of undead and paranormal creature imaginable. And after being betrayed by her longtime vampire love, Sookie must not only deal with a new man in her life—the shapeshifter Quinn—but also contend with the long-planned vampire summit.

The summit is a tense situation. The vampire queen of Louisiana is in a precarious position, her power base weakened by hurricane damage to New Orleans. And there are some vamps who would like to finish what nature started. Soon, Sookie must decide what side she'll stand with. And her choice may mean the difference between survival and all-out catastrophe.

2019 Re-Read

Another evening, another Sookie Stackhouse book. At least I managed to cook some dinner last night, although my kitchen is still a mess. I have to find a way out of this groove I have found myself in—there are other things I need to be reading and other tasks that need my attention. But I may only find the way out by finishing up this series as a re-read.

I’ve always felt that this is the book where Sookie proves that she has good judgment—she seems to understand the plots and conspiracies of the vamp world better than they do, perhaps because she’s an outsider to that world and able to observe it dispassionately. This talent of hers, which Eric calls “thinking outside the box,” attracts unwanted attention from the Queen and her sidekick, Andre. Staying unbound to them is proving difficult. Instead, she ends up bound to Eric the Uncertain.

Eric runs hot and cold towards Sookie, unwilling to admit that he’s unusually attracted to a human woman. It seems kind of like the men who’d like to sleep with a woman but don’t want to be seen with her in public. Good for Sookie, standing up for herself and her right to be acknowledged.

I think just about everyone has been unappreciated at a job at some point in their life. Sookie gets her moment of this as she holds a bomb that she’s scared to set down, waiting for the bomb squad to show up, talking to a bystander about her status in the vamp scene:

”Ha,” I said. “Oh, ha-ha. Yeah, ‘cause they love me. You see how many vampires are up here? Zero, right?”
“One,” said Eric, stepping out of the stairwell.

Lots of foreshadowing for upcoming installments. On to book 8, From Dead to Worse this evening.

Definitely Dead / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

Since Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse has so few living relatives, she hates to lose one - even her cousin Hadley, undead consort of the vampire Queen of Louisiana. Hadley's left everything she has to Sookie, but claiming that inheritance has a high risk factor. Some people don't want her looking too deeply into Hadley's past, or Hadley's possessions. And they're prepared to do anything in their power to stop her. Whoever it is, they're definitely dangerous - and Sookie's life is definitely on the line...

2019 Re-Read

You know, I have library books that I can’t renew and that I should be reading. My kitchen is in chaos and I had cornflakes for supper last night. My to-do list is as long as my arm. And yet, I’m re-reading this series instead of doing any of that. Je ne regrette rien.

This is the heart-break volume, when Sookie finds out that she’s based a lot of ideas about her life on shifting sands—and doesn’t know what is exactly true any more.

“I’d been blindsided with the most painful knowledge: the first man to ever say he loved me had never loved me at all. His passion had been artificial. His pursuit of me had been choreographed.”

To add insult to injury, she is informed by an ancient vampire that she has fairy heritage and that is her big attraction for vampires, who are to fairies what cats are to catnip. He doesn’t even realize that he’s kicking her when she’s down. Quinn has entered stage right at exactly the right to time sooth Sookie’s wounded pride.

Despite the emotional turmoil and unending vampiric politics, Sookie has to deal with her doubly-deceased cousin’s belongings. During the clean-up of Hadley’s apartment, she discovers yet another body-in-a-closet.

“Was this the second body I'd found in the closet, or the third? I wondered why I even opened closet doors any more.”

At least she comes out of these events with a female friend, Amelia, plus some credit with the Queen of Louisiana. She’s going to need both.

Dead as a Doornail / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

Small-town cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse has had more than her share of experience with the supernatural—but now it’s really hitting close to home. When Sookie sees her brother Jason’s eyes start to change, she knows he’s about to turn into a were-panther for the first time—a transformation he embraces more readily than most shapeshifters she knows. But her concern becomes cold fear when a sniper sets his deadly sights on the local changeling population, and Jason’s new panther brethren suspect he may be the shooter. Now, Sookie has until the next full moon to find out who’s behind the attacks—unless the killer decides to find her first…

2019 Re-Read

Just as telepath Sookie enjoys resting her mind around Vampire Bill, whose thoughts she can’t hear, I enjoy resting myself in this series that I’ve read and enjoyed before.

I’ve been consuming this series at a furious rate, seeing details that I just didn’t see on my first pass through. I believe that this is the volume where the private investigators show up to question Sookie, and we get an intersection between this series and Harris’ Lily Bard series. When I first read this book, I hadn’t been introduced to Lily yet, so this was a fun little detail. [It may have been the previous volume—I’m sucking back 2 books per evening right now and they are getting a bit blended in my memory].

However, on my first reading I certainly did see the assumptions of the men in Sookie’s life—they assume that she’s going to be open & interested in them, that they can easily manipulate her, and that when they speak she has to listen. And, as women, when we resist these assumptions, we are labelled as bitches. (Now I’m going to recommend a non-fiction book to you, The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence—I think every woman should read it and every man who has a woman in his life who he cares about should too just to know what it’s like to be female in our world.)

They say when one door shuts, another one opens. But they haven’t been living at my house. Most of the doors I open seem to have something scary crouched behind them, anyway.

Dead to the World / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

When cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse sees a naked man on the side of the road, she doesn't just drive on by. Turns out the poor thing hasn't a clue who he is, but Sookie does. It's Eric the vampire—but now he's a kinder, gentler Eric. And a scared Eric, because whoever took his memory now wants his life.

2019 Re-Read

Just as telepath Sookie enjoys resting her mind around Vampire Bill, whose thoughts she can’t hear, I enjoy resting myself in this series that I’ve read and enjoyed before.

"It's probably a bad indicator of your lifestyle when you miss your ex-boyfriend because he's absolutely lethal."

Wherein we learn that Sookie can certainly handle a shotgun or a baseball bat should the need arise. But she still wishes for a bit more back-up. Despite her misgivings, she proves repeatedly that she’s in many ways more street-smart and a better tactician than most of the supernatural beings that she hangs around with. Probably as a result of being a single woman, responsible for her own safety—an escape plan is a necessary fashion accessory.

Everyone keeps judging Sookie, thinking that she’s blonde & stupid, but she proves them misguided. She may not have the best taste in men (she tends toward the controlling, violent sort), but she’s an excellent practical psychologist (figuring out how people will act & why). Being a telepath has given her some insights that the rest of us could certainly use. Her general lack of experience in romantic relationships shows, but she’s learning gradually that she doesn’t need to put up with poor treatment. Amnesiac Eric shows her a bit of what a good relationship could be like—but I think Sookie is right, that it feels fake, knowing how proud the Viking vampire is when he’s himself.

As a friend of mine often says, “You get what you put up with.”

Living Dead in Dallas / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

Cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse is having a streak of bad luck. First her co-worker is killed, and no one seems to care. Then she comes face-to-face with a beastly creature which gives her a painful and poisonous lashing. Enter the vampires, who graciously suck the poison from her veins (like they didn't enjoy it).
The point is: they saved her life. So when one of the bloodsuckers asks for a favour, she obliges - and soon Sookie's in Dallas, using her telepathic skills to search for a missing vampire. She's supposed to interview certain humans involved, but she makes one condition: the vampires must promise to behave, and let the humans go unharmed.
But that's easier said than done, and all it takes is one delicious blonde and one small mistake for things to turn deadly...

2019 Re-Read

Just as telepath Sookie enjoys resting her mind around Vampire Bill, whose thoughts she can’t hear, I enjoy resting myself in this series that I’ve read and enjoyed before.

I find myself really curious about Charlaine Harris’ writing practices—did she have this series planned out well in advance or did she just sit down at her desk each day to see where the characters took her? Maybe a hybrid somewhere in between? I feel like the general arc of the story must have been laid out in advance, but then some characters (the maenad, for example) just seem to appear without warning or explanation.

But Harris delivers some on-the-nose commentary about American society, despite the supernatural elements. Take for example the lawyer Hugo that Sookie is teamed-up with to investigate the Fellowship of the Sun:

I could tell Hugo was convinced that he would get to walk back up these stairs: after all, he was a civilized person. These were all civilized people.

Hugo really couldn't imagine that anything irreparable could happen to him, because he was a middle-class white American with a college education, as were all the people on the stairs with us.

I had no such conviction. I was not a wholly civilized person.

I’ve made assumptions like this—that life is safe and that bad things won’t happen. It’s these little observations that make this series more than just fluff. Just as Agatha Christie’s Jane Marple could gauge people from her village experience, Sookie has good psychological experience from being a woman, a telepath, and a bar maid in a small town. It’s true what they say, that everybody knows your business in a small town and this gives anyone who is paying attention a chance to educate themselves in the field of human behaviour!

Dead Until Dark / Charlaine Harris

4 out of 5 stars

Sookie Stackhouse is just a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. Until the vampire of her dreams walks into her life-and one of her coworkers checks out....

Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea.

2019 Re-Read

I don’t know how other people handle stress, but my favourite diversion is to re-read books that I know that I will enjoy. When my life is uncertain, I love the certainty of an entertaining book. So, as I prepare for major life changes, I picked up Dead Until Dark a few nights ago and found myself completely immersed in the life of Sookie Stackhouse in Bon Temps, Louisiana. How can you not have a good time in a town called Good Times? It’s silly, soap-opera type fun.

Since Sookie knows a thing or two about life changes, I started to wonder if that wasn’t why I had zeroed in on this particular series. In this very first book, we meet her when she is still an ordinary person. Or at least as ordinary as a telepathic bar maid in a small town can be. This is the first installment of the changes that open up her life, giving her access to a whole new world that she hadn’t previously been aware of.

I love the very first sentence: I’d been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked into the bar. Well, I’ve been waiting for years for retirement and I will achieve it shortly. As I watch Sookie change and adapt as her world opens up, I feel like I can change and adapt too, and adjust to this new reality.

Coriolanus / William Shakespeare

4 out of 5 stars

Not my first time seeing Coriolanus performed, but the performance that I have most enjoyed.  This was the Stratford (Ont.) version from 2018. Since I’ll be participating in two elections this year, first provincial, then federal, the nature of leadership and democracy are top of mind right now.  The friend who accompanied me to this screening also commented on the timeliness of the theme.

I must say that Lucy Peacock, playing Coriolanus’ mother, was amazing!  Who knew that Coriolanus had a Tiger Mother? She played her part in a way that made me laugh as she steered her son exactly where she wanted him to go.  Ms. Peacock stole every scene that she was in.

The play had a modern setting, something that I don’t always appreciate in Shakespearean drama, but with this play it worked.  A feature that my friend and I both particularly appreciated was a portion of the dialog which was done via text message. It received snickers from our theatre audience and was completely appropriate in its context.  While remaining true to the play’s dialog, it was a nifty updating.

If only we could send all of our politicians to see Coriolanus and hope that they would understand how contempt for the electorate does in a great military man!

The Fires of Heaven / Robert Jordan

4 out of 5 stars

In this sequel to the phenomenal New York Times bestseller The Shadow Rising, Robert Jordan again plunges us into his extraordinarily rich, totally unforgettable world: . ... Into the forbidden city of Rhuidean, where Rand al'Thor, now the Dragon Reborn, must conceal his present endeavor from all about him, even Egwene and Moiraine. ... Into the Amyrlin's study in the White Tower, where the Amyrlin, Flaida do Avriny a'Roihan, is weaving new plans. ... Into Andor, where Siuan Sanche and her companions, including the false Dragon Logain, have been arrested for barn-burning. ... Into the luxurious hidden chamber where the Forsaken Rahvin is meeting with three of his fellows to ensure their ultimate victory over the Dragon. ... Into the Queen's court in Caemlyn, where Morgase is curiously in thrall to the handsome Lord Gaebril. For once the Dragon walks the land, the fires of heaven fall where they will, until all men's lives are ablaze. And in Shayol Ghul, the Dark One stirs....

I would certainly have to say that I find this series addicting. Once I begin one of these mammoth tomes, I feel the need to keep reading until the end. Despite the reservations that I may have about the characterization of both men and women. Because everyone in this series seems to be as stubborn as mules and to have nasty tempers. Part of me really wants to know what Mr. Jordan was like--tempermental and hard-headed perhaps? Pure speculation on my part, but what else am I to think?

Only five volumes in, and I’ve already read thousands of pages, still with 10 volumes in my future. It’s good that I’m engaged in the story despite everyone’s general grumpiness. It continues to amaze me that this much detail can be kept interesting for the reader. Most series are wrapped up in 5 volumes, but this one is just gaining steam.

I also appreciate that although this is a quest tale, Jordan has written something original--The Wheel of Time is so distinct from LOTR. Tolkien’s work may be the roots of this genre, but Jordan proves that he has made it his own. And he has taken Frank Herbert’s concept of the Bene Gesserit and made the Aes Sedai into a force to be reckoned with while still making them humanly attainable. I love the different colour groups with their associated behaviours and their bonds with their Warders. I do tire, however, of his constant struggle for control between men and women. Why can’t they acknowledge their mutual interdependence? It seems like the Aes Sedai and their Warders are the only mixed-gender teams that are working well together.

Nevertheless, I hope to read at least one more volume of WoT before this year is finished!

Book 313 in my Science Fiction & Fantasy Reading Project.

The Five Red Herrings / Dorothy L. Sayers

3.5 out of 5 stars

The body was on the pointed rocks alongside the stream. The artist might have fallen from the cliff where he was painting, but there are too many suspicious elements - particularly the medical evidence that proves he'd been dead nearly half a day, though eyewitnesses had seen him alive a scant hour earlier. And then there are the six prime suspects - all of them artists, all of whom wished him dead. Five are red herrings, but one has created a masterpiece of murder that baffles everyone, including Lord Peter Wimsey.

Give this volume about 3.5 stars, I think. For me, it has been the least enjoyable installment of Lord Peter Wimsey. And still, it had its great moments. Dorothy Sayers is the only author that I have read who had produced Scots dialog on the page that hasn’t annoyed me to death! I found it was effective and even a bit humorous from time to time.

Where this book fell down for me was the intricacy of the clues. I know that Sayers prided herself on not “cheating,” giving the reader all the clues that they needed to solve the mystery right along with Wimsey (see Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul by Barbara Reynolds). However, I would have needed to make myself a detailed flow chart if I was going to solve this mystery! So I just drifted with the flow of her writing and enjoyed other details along the way.

The last few pages, including the re-enactment of the crime, were absolutely the best part of the book. I don’t usually laugh out loud when I’m reading, but I know for a fact that I produced several outbursts as I enjoyed this production! Well worth enduring all the train time tables!

Remarkable Creatures / Tracy Chevalier

4 out of 5 stars

From the moment she's struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is different. Though poor and uneducated, she learns on the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast that she has a unique gift: "the eye" to spot fossils no one else can see. When she uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious community on edge, the townspeople to gossip - and the scientific world alight with both admiration and controversy. Prickly Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class spinster and also a fossil hunter, becomes Mary Anning's unlikely champion and friend, and together they forge a path to some of the most important discoveries of the 19th century.

I’ve just recently read a non-fiction book about Mary Anning (The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World by Shelley Emling) and I was anxious to read this fictional account of Anning’s life before the details had faded too much in my mind. Chevalier sticks to the big, important details, but takes the liberty that those who write fiction often do, to write in drama and make a better story.

It’s always a tricky business, writing fiction about real historical figures. I appreciated Chevalier’s depiction of the friendship between impoverished, working class Mary Anning and genteel spinster Elizabeth Philpot. It was a real friendship, made across class boundaries and well documented in the written records of the time. What either woman was actually like personally is an unknown quantity (to me at least), but well filled in by Chevalier.

The official record doesn’t offer much drama beyond Mary and her family being on the edge of going to the poor-house most given days. Very suspenseful if you are experiencing it, but not the most riveting plot for the reader. So I completely understand why Chevalier creates the rivalry between the two women for the attention of one un-noteworthy man. Still, it disappoints me. One the main ribbons running through this book is the changing role of women during this time period—getting recognition for their minds, not just their appearances, and loosening some of the conventions that bound them to child-rearing and household roles. Both of the main characters and all of the marine reptiles are indeed remarkable creatures.

Some details are extremely fictional—there’s no indication that Mary’s mother, Molly, ever set foot on the beach or ever searched for a fossil. She was only reluctantly won over to fossil selling as a way of earning cold, hard cash. I know Mary’s dog, Tray, was killed in a landslide, but I don’t think that Mary herself was caught in it (although it made good, dramatic sense in this version). I also wish that Chevalier had captured more clearly the intellectual achievements of Mary and the expertise that she drew on to educate many of the fossil-hunting men who came to her for assistance. There was definitely an auction by Lieutenant-Colonel Birch to fund the Anning family, but no indications that it was Elizabeth who shamed him into it or that he was romantically involved with either woman.

In short, this was an enjoyable, dramatic telling of a famous woman’s life, but don’t take every detail as gospel. As they say of movies, “Based on a true story.”

Dead Over Heels / Charlaine Harris

3 out of 5 stars

What's the world coming to - when you can't relax with an ice-cold beverage in your own backyard without a body falling from the sky and landing in your garden? Part-time librarian and frequent amateur investigator Roe Teagarden has good reason to ask herself this question when the remains of one of the Lawrenceton, Georgia police department's finest catapults into her flower bed one beautiful sunny morning. Roe's friend and bodyguard, the long-legged, bikini-clad Angel Youngblood, is mowing the grass and Roe is reclining on a lounger when a small red-and-white plane flies low overhead and drops its unlikely debris more or less at Roe's feet. Roe's husband of two years, wealthy businessman Martin Bartell, immediately wonders if the killer chose his dumping place to send some kind of message to Roe. And the mystery deepens when two federal agents arrive in town to investigate the murder. It's only when Madeleine the cat provides a clue that Roe and Martin realize Roe herself may be in danger and that using Roe's yard as a temporary landfill for dead bodies was no accident.

What do you do when you’re suffering from a severe case of insomnia? If you’re me, you wander to your bookcase and say to yourself, “Which of these books is interesting, but I’ll be willing to set it down when sleep finally feels possible?” I gave up at about 2 a.m. on Saturday morning and started to read--finally, at 4 a.m. I managed to set down the book and sleep for a while.

I’d have to call this both a cozy mystery and a Southern mystery. Charlaine Harris includes so many of the details of Southern life--the churches that people attend, the community conflicts, the everyday lifestyles of her characters. Some readers obviously love these details--I must confess that they are why I chose it as a “sleeping pill.”

Despite that, Aurora is a character that drew me in and made me care what happens to her. This is the fifth book in the series after all, I’m still reading them, and I have no doubts at all that I’ll continue on with her adventures when I have another sleepless night.

Random Family / Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

2.5 stars out of 5

In her extraordinary bestseller, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc immerses readers in the intricacies of the ghetto, revealing the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour, gold-drenched drug dealers, and street-corner society. Focusing on two romances - Jessica's dizzying infatuation with a hugely successful young heroin dealer, Boy George, and Coco's first love with Jessica's little brother, Cesar - Random Family is the story of young people trying to outrun their destinies. Jessica and Boy George ride the wild adventure between riches and ruin, while Coco and Cesar stick closer to the street, all four caught in a precarious dance between survival and death. Friends get murdered; the DEA and FBI investigate Boy George; Cesar becomes a fugitive; Jessica and Coco endure homelessness, betrayal, the heartbreaking separation of prison, and, throughout it all, the insidious damage of poverty.

Charting the tumultuous cycle of the generations - as girls become mothers, boys become criminals, and hope struggles against deprivation - LeBlanc slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism and comes back with a riveting, haunting, and true story.

I guess that I’m not entirely sure what the author was trying to achieve with this book. There’s no introduction, there’s no conclusion--I don’t enough about her to know her motivations. To be charitable, it would seem that she is trying to show, through the lives of three main people, the ties that bind people into poverty, drugs, and crime.

I have no doubts about how difficult it is to escape poverty. When your parents are uneducated, violent, and poor, who can you look to for an example of how to get out of that situation? During this time, in this place, boys were fathers in their teens, dropped out of school, and could only earn money through drugs and other criminality. Girls are pregnant in their teens, dropped out of school, and can’t provide for themselves and their children on minimum wage jobs. Sexual abuse is common because children get left with people that can’t be trusted. Girls skip from one man to the next because they’ve watched their mothers do the same thing. No one has enough education to properly fill out government forms to obtain benefits or to budget what little money they have. Boys take advantage of their male status to have sex with as many girls as they can talk into it. Girls can’t afford birth control and view having children as a way to bind boys to them.

Add to these problems that being a generous, good person can work against you. How many times did these women feed people who were only “random family”? Someone connected to someone who was part of the family? When girls have children by 2 or 3 different men, all of their relatives somehow become part of the web of family and women like Coco feel badly about denying them food and/or housing. Yet she knows that it’s bad for her own children in the long run.

These people are in a virtually inescapable situation. Their only pleasures are food and sex and they indulge when they get a chance--who wouldn’t? But when all the food is gone and there are more babies on the way, once again their lives worsen.

It was depressing reading because I know that the same things are probably happening to the children and grandchildren of Jessica, George, and Coco. Reading this made me realize how incredibly fortunate I am to have been born into the family that I’m part of, into the communities that I’m part of, and to be a citizen of my country. The fact that the adults around me didn’t lecture me about how to live, they just lived it and let me watch & learn. I learned to work, to live within my means, to value education, to regulate my emotions, all those skills that are necessary to living well.

I’d like to think the author meant this book as more than just downward social comparison, but I wish that she had addressed her purpose directly. What would have made things better? Are there programs that could actually assist people in these life circumstances? Ultimately, without this kind of analysis, I wonder why she wrote it?

Quartet in Autumn / Barbara Pym

4 out of 5 stars

This is Pym's poignant story of four elderly single people who work in the same office. Their work is their chief point of contact with each other and with the outside world. When the two women retire, the equilibrium of the quartet is upset. Quartet in Autumn is a gently compelling story of human dignity in the midst of hopelessness.

This little novel probably appealed to me so strongly because these four people are in the zone that I currently inhabit—they are reaching retirement age and wondering if they are ready for this next phase of life.

I’m currently flailing around, trying to determine if I have the financial resources necessary to pull the plug, because like Letty and Marcia, I never married and I’m now responsible for my own future. But how times have changed—I’m no longer at the mercy of the government pension to determine how my future unfolds, and I’ve been able to plan better things for myself.

Still, I understand the uncertainties of retirement. How will my days be structured? What activities will fill my time? Will I still be able to afford many of the activities that I currently enjoy? Poverty in old age is a perennial worry, something that has soaked into my bones. I think single women of my vintage have a horror of becoming bag ladies and having to eat cat food. Financial advisors rarely understand this worry—they don’t live on the same financial edge that many older single women do.

I remember when one of my friends was looking for housing for her elderly mother in the U.K. She told me she looked at too many places where “You wouldn’t want to leave your coat, let along your mother.” I think we’ve all heard horror stories of homes for the elderly where they are abused and/or neglected. The problem of where to live is the big one. Does one stay at home and go odd, like Marcia? Or take small steps towards taking control, like Letty?

I’m hoping to be in the Letty camp—once I’m retired, I hope to start looking around for the next living situation and plan out the next number of years. I think most of us still feel younger than we are in our own heads—referring to myself as elderly seems ridiculous to me, but I’m sure I seem that way to the younger people in my life. Still, I need to get planning adventures for the post-work phase of life and this book has been both a comfort and an inspiration for that.

Snow Crash / Neal Stephenson

3 out of 5 stars

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous… you'll recognize it immediately.

I guess the cyberpunk part of the science fiction world is just never going to be my favourite thing. As far as the cyberpunk novels that I have read (not many), this is so far my favourite.

I’m not into computer programming or virtual reality and I really don’t idolize hackers or their culture, so I am not the target audience for this sub-genre. However, there were a lot of clever details in it, like the name of the main character, Hiro Protagonist—no mistaking who is the star in this one. Stephenson did what so many good writers do—he took contemporary trends and played them out to extreme lengths, reminding me a bit of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. He also wove in quite a lot of esoteric scholarship, namely Sumerian history and linguistics, ancient Semitic religion, and brain physiology, which he expertly entwines with computer programming. This use of ancient & modern details in such a complex way reminded me strongly of Tim Powers’ Last Call.

If you are a fan of the cyberpunk genre, I would encourage you to pick up this book. Stephenson is an excellent writer and the story is both amusing and entertaining (although I did feel like the ending just kind of petered out instead of really resolving anything). If you enjoy the fiction of Tim Powers or William Gibson (Neuromancer or The Difference Engine), I think there is a strong chance that you will appreciate Snow Crash too.

Book number 312 in my Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Project.