Kristi's

Pattern in Crochet Uncut

2009-03-03T06:06:00.000-08:00

I have a pattern, a sleeveless shell called Over the Top, in the spring issue of the online crochet 'zine Crochet Uncut.

Some beaded necklaces

2009-02-20T19:46:00.000-08:00

This first image is a cellini spiral that was comissioned by a co--worker who liked the one I made previously. It's done in different sizes of crystaline ab beads, with a single thread of purple for contrast. The colours don't show up very well, unfortunately. She's asked me to make a pair of earrings to match, but I've been a little short on beading inspiration...

These next two were christmas gifts. The silver necklace is a basic chevron chain in silver size 15 seed beads, with grey freshwater pearl dangles. The bronze with flowers is a design I found online on a french site; the design name was "collier cascade" but I seem to have lost the link. If I find it again I'll add it.

Striking Doily Beret

2008-09-27T18:44:00.000-07:00

Being on strike, I've had more time than usual to crochet lately. I decided to make myself a light, lacy hat to wear on the picket line - something I could pull over my ears to keep them warm but that wouldn't overheat my head. I started going through beret patterns on Ravelry, but couldn't find anything that seemed quite right. At some point the following thoughts went through my head: "beret circular... lacy doilies circular... use doily pattern to make lacy beret?"

Striking Doily Beret Pattern

I used Bernat Satin Sport yarn and a H / 5mm hook. Any soft sport or (probably) dk yarn should work.

This starts with rounds 1 - 5 of the Pineapple Round Doily pattern formerly at Celt's Vintage Crochet. This has disappeared from the Internet so I've copied them here.

Chain (ch) 4, double crochet (dc) in 1st stitch (st) of ch, * ch 3, 2 dc in same space, repeat from * 6 times, ch 3, join in 4th st of ch.

Round 2: Slip stitch (sl st) to next loop, ch 3, 1 dc, ch 3, 2 dc in same space, * 2 dc, ch 3, 2 dc in next loop, repeat from * 6 times, join.

Round 3:: Sl st to center st of next loop, ch 7, cluster over next 4 dc (cluster: keeping last loop of each st on hook work I dc in each st, thread over and work off all loops at one time), * ch 4, dc in next loop, ch 4, cluster over next 4 dc, repeat from * all around, ch 4, join in 3rd st of ch.

Round 4: Ch 1, 1 sc, ch 3, 1 sc in same space, * ch 4, dc in next cluster, ch 4, 1 sc, ch 3, 1 sc in next dc, repeat from * all around ending to correspond, join in 1st sc.

Round 5: Sl st into loop, ch 4, treble crochet (trc) in same space, ch 3, 2 trc, ch 3, 2 trc in same space, * ch 1, sc in next dc, ch 1, skip next loop, 2 trc, ch 3, 2 trc, ch 3, 2 trc in next loop, repeat from * all around ending to correspond, join.

Round 6: sl. st. to between the middle two treble crochet of the current group of three pairs of trc. ch 1, sc in same space, * ch 6, trc in next sc, ch 6, sc between middle two trc in next group of three pairs * repeat from * to * around, join in top of first sc.

Round 7: ch3, 5 dc in ch6 loop, *dc in next trc, 6 dc in next ch6 loop, dc in next sc, 6 dc in next ch6 loop,repear from * to * around, join.

Round 8: ch3, sk first dc, dc in next 5 dc, 2 dc in next dc, *dc in next 6 dc, 2 dc in next dc*, repeat from * to * around, join.

** for a larger slouchier beret work another increase row here (increase after 6 dc)

Round 9 - 11: ch3, sk first dc, dc in each dc around, join.

Round 12: ch3, sk first dc,dc in next 4 dc, dc 2 tog, *dc in next 5 dc, dc2tog*, repeat from * to * around, join.

Round 13: ch3, sk first dc,dc in next 3 dc, dc 2 tog, *dc in next 4 dc, dc2tog*, repeat from * to * around, join.

Round 14: repeat round 13

Beret should now fit head snugly but not tightly. If not work another decrease row (decrease after 4 dc) or rip out the last decrease row, whichever seems appropriate.

Round 15: Ch3, sk first dc, *fpdc (front post dc) around next dc, dc in next dc*, repeat from * to * around, join.

Round 16: Ch3, sk first dc, *fpdc around next fpdc, dc in next dc*, repeat from * to * around, join, fasten off and weave in ends.

Cropped jacket

2008-08-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

Here's a little cardigan I've made myself, using the same technique as Melanie's shrug. I picked up some alpaca-blend yarn on clearance, and I'm always needing something to keep my shoulders warm here in this icebox where I work.

I love how such a simple design (top-down, try on as you go raglan) can produce quite different garments when done in different yarns. The only change to the design was lengthening the sleeves and body.

Sorry about the way the pictures have me in them, looking like an overly lit stunned rabbit. I need a model.

The Icelandic Turtleneck

2008-06-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

Here's a crochet project I've been working on for months (four months, to be exact): the Icelandic Turtleneck from the book Crochet Me: Designs to Fuel the Crochet Revolution, which is so far my favourite crochet pattern book ever.

This was my first attempt at making a large project using fine yarn, in this case Patons' Lacette, which is a fingering-weight mohair blend. I'm very pleased with how it came out, although the yarn is a bit itchy to wear. But after all the effort I put into it I'm going to wear it itch or no itch! With a cami under it it isn't bad.

Brown Sugar Shrug

2008-06-18T13:04:00.000-07:00

So the resident teenager asked me to make her a shrug to go with her new skirt. I was happy to, of course - I can't resist being asked to make someone something.

This wasn't exactly an exercise in creativity, however. She picked out the yarn and colour (Sugar 'n cream, brown), approved the stitch pattern (plain dc), and the ornamentation (none). I wanted to add a bit of decorative edging, but that was vetoed, so I contented myself with sc’ing all around to finish it off neatly. Still, I have to admit it looks cute on.

Rough Pattern / Tutorial

This started as the Crochet Anthropologie-Inspired Capelet, but I made a few modifications (apart from changing the yarn) and the construction ended up being different enough that I thought the pattern might be worth recording. This was much easier to do than it is to explain, though. Please leave a comment if there is anything that I need to clarify, as I have a feeling that I may have overexplained the simple to the point where it becomes complicated.

For this I used Lily's Sugar and Cream cotton yarn in Caramel (from the confectionery colours line) and a K hook. The confectionery colours come in huge balls, and I used rather less than half. The directions should work equally well for any yarn/hook combination.

To start, you need three measurements. You can take these directly from the person who will be wearing the shrug, or from a decent-fitting jacket or top.

Neckline. Not the actual neck but the shrug neckline, the length around where the person wants the shrug to sit.
Shoulder. Length from the neckline to the end of the shoulder/start of the sleeve.
Arm circumference. You want this at the point with the largest circumference, and make sure to include some ease so this can be worn over clothing.

A note on gauge and swatching: in a "pattern" (term used very loosely) like this traditional gauge is pretty irrelevant, but it is still a good idea to make a gauge swatch using your selected yarn and hook. Measure your swatch, wash and block it, let it dry, then measure again. Use the percentage increase (if any) to adjust the measurements you took above.

So, if you made a swatch 20cm by 20cm...

If your swatch grew from 20cm wide to 22 cm wide (the width is measured along the rows) or by 10%, after blocking, and your original neckline measurement was 40cm, your new neckline measurement would be 40 cm divided by 1.1 = about 36.5 cm. (Note: these numbers are completely made up and don't match any actual neck or swatch that I know of.) Adjust the arm circumference by the same percentage.

If your swatch grew from 20 cm to 21 cm in hight (height is measured across the rows) then you need to adjust the shoulder measure by 5%, or by dividing by 1.05.

Ok. Got that? Using your new adjusted measurements, make a chain the length of the neckline. The chain should be a multiple of 6 stitches + 4. You can fudge this a little if needed.

The body is divided into 5 parts: left front, left sleeve, back, right sleeve, right front, with one extra stitch between each two parts. To figure out where your increases go, subtract 4 from the number of stitches in your starting ch and divide this number by 6. The resulting number is your Shrug Unit. If you had 70 stitches in the starting chain, (70 - 4)/6 = 11. The fronts and sleeves are each one Shrug Unit. This would make 11 stitches in each front and sleeve. The back is two Shrug Units wide, and would have 22 stitches.

Put a marker in the extra stitch between each section. (Or you can just count.)

Time to start crocheting into the chain. Ch 3 (counts as first dc) dc into the fifth chain from the hook, dc into each ch until you reach the first marker. In the marked stitch do an increase of 1 dc, ch 2, 1 dc. Continue to dc between markers and increase at each marked stitch until you get to the end (4 increases). Turn.

For each subsequent row, just dc into each stitch until you get to the increase from the previous row. Make sure you dc into the dc's that make up the sides of the increase (this makes your increase for the new row), and 1 dc, ch 2, 1 dc into the ch 2 space.

Measure the height (across the rows) after each row. When the height equals the shoulder measurement you took way back, it's time to make the sleeves. Measure the current width of the sleeve section. Compare this number to the arm circumference measurement. If the sleeve width is smaller than the arm circumference, record the difference. Start the next row and dc until you get to the first increase, and make a chain that is equal to the difference measurement you just took. Join the end of the chain at the second increase, and continue on. Repeat to join the third and fourth increases. You now have two sleeves.

Continue to dc on the body part, including into the chains you made, without increases until the shrug reaches your desired length. Fasten off, rejoin at a sleeve, dc around until it is long enough for you, repeat on the other sleeve.

For a tidy finish, sc around the body, or add any edging you like. Wash, block and you're done!

Recent reading

2008-06-18T06:35:00.001-07:00

I've finished Sharon Shinn's Twelve Houses series - ended with Reader and Raelynx. Left me wanting to go back and read the first one again. Such nice, friendly, romance-fantasy-friendship comfort reads. The second - The Thirteenth House -was the best, I think- there was a little more tension, and she wasn't quite so kind to her main character.

Elizabeth Bear's duology - Blood and Iron and Whiskey and Water - was something quite different. At least, I thought it was a duology - looks like there's another? This is not an author that could be accused of being too kind to her characters! A very harsh, elemental version of Faerie. I then picked up her earlier book Hammered, but so far haven't really gotten into it.

I picked up The Queen in Winter, a collection of four romance/fantasy novellas. Enjoyable, but not as much so as the earlier To Weave a Web of Magic, which had an utter gem of a story by Patricia McKillip. The Sarah Monette disappointed me the most, mostly because my expectations were high. I think romance isn't really her natural milieu.

Anything else? A romance or two from the library on the plane to a conference, but I can't remember the titles, so they were probably neither great nor terrible.

Chains of Folly by Roberta Gellis

2008-03-04T13:39:00.002-08:00

I find romance tends not to mix well with series mystery. Or series anything, really. A romance story usually really is a sort of one-shot deal: while one imagines that the relationship will continue to develop after the book ends and the characters have gotten together, further exploration of it falls more into the realm of mainstream fiction than romance. Norah Roberts/J.D. Robb's Eve Dallas mysteries have that issue - the couple keeps getting caught up in similar issues, only to resolve them by book's end to provide the necessary romance happy ending. (There's the kerfuffle before she agrees to move in with him, the kerfuffle before she agrees to marry him, the one before she agrees to let him make dinner...)

That said, I'm still enjoying this medieval series, which features a romance between a medieval prostitute and a knight. Partly I'm a sucker for any genre fiction set in the period that portrays it in a reasonably authentic, non-sanitized manner - setting most of the book in a whorehouse, though admittedly an unusually pleasant one, helps with that. And the developing relationship between Bellamy and Magdalene is subject to all sorts of pressures from their relative stations in life. The mysteries themselves aren't as memorable, though.

The Ghost with Trembling Wings by Scott Weidensaul

2008-03-04T12:11:00.001-08:00

Well-written, enjoyable but ultimately rather depressing. Lost species... there's just so many of them, and even the ones that reappear are so fragile, clinging to existence on the fringes.

The Sonnet Lover by Carol Goodman

2008-02-27T10:37:00.001-08:00

Mmm. Ok, I guess.

Really, this rather disappointed me. I like Goodman's literary mysteries, very much. And the literary side didn't - the story of the female Italian Renaissance sonnet writer that slowly emerged through scraps and clues. But the accompanying modern mystery was obvious and dull, and as for the romantic plot... the romantic interest never made his presence felt - he barely registered even as a part of the scenery.

The Folk Keeper by Franny Billingsley

2008-02-26T06:55:00.001-08:00

A YA I picked up because I liked the premise, and it didn't disappoint. That premise is a world based on certain elements of European folk tales: selkies, goblin-like Folk who kill chickens and spoil milk. These Folk are seriously nasty, too.

The world reminded me of the one in Cecilia Dart-Thornton's Bitterbynde Trilogy, which I found an intensely frustrating read. The writing style was odd and rather stilted, and the plot and characters went haywire in the last book. But the worldbuilding I thought was fantastic.

Benighted by Kit Whitfield

2008-02-13T13:10:00.001-08:00

A very good and surprising werewolf novel, though I may find it surprising mostly because I don't generally read werewolf novels. I've tended to dismiss them as erotica for people with odd fantasy lives since glancing over some by Laurell K. Hamilton and the like.

This was more an extended meditation on prejudice, on how it warps. The main character was a normal non-lycanthropic human, a tiny, despised minority in her world. By the end, I think I identified more with the lycanthropes.

Shreik, an Afterword by Jeff Vandermeer

2008-01-10T03:29:00.001-08:00

This is one of those odd, modern fantasies - fantasy without genre conventions, I guess you could call it. No wizards, dragons or wer-beasts, nothing from recognizable mythology or folklore, just settings that aren't at all familiar, with inhabitants and laws and conventions all their own. This has fungal technology and grey-capped fungal people, the Festival of Freshwater Squid, publishing companies entering all-out war, underground civilizations.

A problem I sometimes have with books of this type is that the writers put so much time crafting their setting, they seem to forget to tell a story - the characters recede somewhat. China Mieville's sometimes like that for me. But this wasn't at all like that. It's mainly a sort of memoir, a sister musing about her life and her brother, and their world is - how to put this - it's natural to them, it's where they live.

The Sons of Heaven by Kage Baker

2008-01-08T13:42:00.001-08:00

Conclusion to the Company series, finally. And rather better than I expected - perhaps as good as it could have been, given all the disparate disjointed threads that needed wrapping up.

I still think the series could have well done without the subplot involving the strange subhuman race.

The ending was as happy as it could have been, for everyone who deserved a happy ending, except Victor. Or really, maybe for Victor too.

I have difficulty discussing this as a book. It's the end of a series, a wrapping up and farewell to this world, these characters. I don't think it stood alone as a book - it was an ending, not a story.

Anthropologie-inspired capelet

2007-11-25T09:43:00.000-08:00

Anthropologie has to be my favourite I-can't-afford-it-but-aren't-they-pretty window shopping store. (Well, browser-window shopping mostly, since I moved back to Canada). So when I came across the pattern for a crochet Anthropologie-inspired capelet on Craftster, I had to make it.

Unlike the poncho, this is something I will definitely wear, can't wait to wear in fact. It's not too bulky to fit under a winter jacket, and cute enough to keep on inside. I've got a dress it will go nicely over, and it's just warm enough to keep my shoulders snug without stifling me.

Round the capelet

2007-11-22T09:42:00.000-08:00

I made this following Teva Durham's free pattern for a vintage style capelet (though I'd call it a poncho). Big hook, thick plush yarn, very quick to make up.

I haven't decided yet if this is something I'll actually wear out where people can see me. It's too open to provide much protection on a cool day, too thick to look other than peculiar on a warmer one or indoors.

Earrings in beads and wire

2007-11-22T09:38:00.000-08:00

In between working on crochet projects, I've found time to make myself a pair of earrings:

I made them by stringing size 15 silver seed beads and crystals on wire, then twisting it into shape - I was trying for an abstract floral shape. They've quickly become my favourite earrings, delicate but noticeable.

This next is a slightly more gaudy pair I made a few months ago:

They're just traditional granny squares, crocheted in silver-coloured wire, gauge 30. I'm fond of them, even if they did inspire a coworker to ask if I could make him something similar for Christmas tree ornaments.

The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories by Susanna Clarke

2007-11-20T10:34:00.001-08:00

A collection of stories by the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell,, which I have sitting on a shelf somewhere but haven't read much of. These stories are set (more or less) in the same world (an alternate England, with magic) in various time periods mostly preceding that book.

I think I liked the fictional "introduction", a scholarly note describing the volume as a sourcebook for the academic study of magic, more than any of the actual stories.

Vintage Crochet

2007-11-17T09:43:00.000-08:00

Since making my Asphyxiation, I've become hooked on vintage crochet. On looking at it, at least... such beautiful lacy thready things, so much patience required to make!

Crochet at about.com
Quite a bit of vintage material including a number of filet charts. I like the Roaring 20's patterns, especially the bird and rose filet sweaters, as well as the rose tam. I'm planning to make the tam and at least one of the sweaters. This site is especially helpful because the patterns have been rewritten to use modern terms, unlike those on many of the others.

Antique Pattern Library
A site devoted to scans of out-of-copyright pattern books, knitting and various kinds of lace as well as crochet, mostly from before 1922. Especially good for filet patterns and edgings. Too much to stuff to pick out only a few, but I particularly like the Corticelli series of books.

Celt's Vintage Crochet
Patterns mainly dating from the 1920s to the 1960s. Good collection of doilies, pineapple squares, filet and edgings as well as some wearables.

Vintage Stitch-O-Rama (where old patterns go to die a slow, painful death)
Knitting and crochet stockings, camisole yokes, undies etc., along with oddities like the Chicken Bone Necklace

Free Vintage Crochet
A couple of cute bulky sweaters, along with a number of hat and bag patterns, doll clothes etc. New patterns added often.

A Good Yarn
Has some vintage patterns including Fleisher's Knitting and Crocheting Manual from 1922. I particularly like the Delmar Sweater.

The Information on Making the Irish Crocheted Lace
Poor English, useful diagrams for various Irish crochet motifs.

Knitting-and.com
A few cushions etc, and a scan of the Nufashond Rick Rack Book from 1916.

Yarn Lover's Room
Assorted patterns of uncertain date and source, mostly for babies and home. Nice: ballet slippers, shawls.

Crotique
A few odds and ends under Free Patterns, including two lacy tank tops.

Soft Memories
A commercial vintage pattern site with a few free patterns, including this lovely Draped Bed Jacket.

Asphyxiating

2007-11-14T09:37:00.000-08:00

This is Severina's Asphyxiation Choker, made of venetian crochet motifs in black thread. I made it to wear to work on Hallowe'en, and did - with a black dress.

I'm planning on using the same pattern to make a hairband, in off-white thread.

Tweedy cloche, or the quest for flapperdom - with pattern

2007-11-12T09:36:00.000-08:00

The Roaring 20's are one of my favourite fashion eras - I wear my own hair in a classic bob cut, and I like the insouciant smirk that often shows up in flapper-girl pictures.

So I wanted my own 20's style flapper hat, but most of the crochet flapper hat patterns I could find online didn't have the distinctive bell shape of the classic cloche. So I improvised my own pattern, and I am really happy with the result. (Well, with version three and somewhat with two. Version one I'm not posting about.)

This one is my favourite. I made it with two strands of yarn held together, one of Lion Brand wool in grey and one of Paton's Decor in pale aubergine. I really like the vintage, pink-grey heathered effect these yarns gave me. The ribbon's off an old top or something - the colour just happened to match.

This next is an earlier version, in Paton's Decor Aubergine and Red Heart black.

I've written out the basic pattern - it's pretty simple. If anyone makes this and has any problems, please let me know.

Use two strands of worsted weight yarn held together and a 6.0mm (J) hook.
Gauge: first two rounds in dc creates a circle about 2.5" (6 cm) in diameter. I crochet fairly tightly, so some people might go down a hook size to get this.

For the first six rows, I followed Yarncat's Basic Crown instructions.

For the grey hat, I did row 7 as dc each stitch around, as I have a rather small head. The other one I made a little larger: dc in 5 stitches, 2 dc in next stitch, repeat around.

Unless your head is small and your hair flat, I suggest the latter.

Row 8 - 11: dc in each stitch around.

Row 12: dc in 9 stitches, 2 dc in next stitch, repeat around

Row 13: dc in each stitch around

Row 14: dc in next 3 stitches, 2 dc in next stitch, repeat around

Row 15: sc around. (I did this with two strands of one colour to give a nice edge.)

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

2007-10-21T19:03:00.001-07:00

Collection of short stories, mostly some variant of our-world fantasy (or slightly skewed our-world), very avant-guard. I wanted to like it, I really did, I liked many of the concepts. But the stories themselves didn't work for me, quite. They were more ideas, sketches... the characters weren't people.

The two that worked the best were the ones about the boy whose father was a minotaur, and the title story. They had people.

Spirits that Walk in Shadow by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

2007-10-12T18:18:00.001-07:00

Eh. Pretty good read, but didn't quite grab me, don't know why. Well. I liked Kim (one of the two narrators) better than Jamie. I like the world (basically the same as in her other urban fantasies), the concepts of magic, the way power plays itself out among families.

The ending didn't quite work for me.

The Mirador by Sarah Monette

2007-10-01T17:10:00.001-07:00

The third in the planned four-book sequence that started with Melusine. (My spell-checker just suggested "Limousine" as a possible correction for that.)

I've delayed posting about this because I'm not sure what to say. I very much love this series - it's dark with a deliciously decadent setting, the characters are warped and human, tormenting themselves and others, and the relationships are central and painfully well-drawn. The world has geography and history, complex politics, architecture and aesthetics, a sense that the world goes on and on beyond the fragments we're shown. Like the others, this was compulsively readable, and pushed just about all of my "most desired in a fantasy novel" buttons. And yet...

Mildmay, for one. At the beginning of the book other characters are greatly concerned about him, by how much he's changed since the incidents in the last book. But they never mention how changed, exactly, or give examples, and the inside of his head, in his POV sections, looks much the same as ever.

And Mehitabel, the new, female narrator. Early in the book, she seemed to be setting up for the same sorts of internal and external conflicts and complexities that make Felix and Mildmay so compelling. But that faded - she guarded her secrets intensely one minute, then gave them up the next. I had the feeling she was being phased out, as unnecessary for the next novel.

It's occurred to me that I have very little idea what magic is actually used for, in the Mirador. Most of the spells we see are for clearing up the effects of other spells, except for the apparently minor witchlights. And spells are cast on people, to harm or control, but those are forbidden by the branch of magic most of the characters subscribe to. So what do they do? Felix and the others read books on magic, talk about magic, attend meetings on magic and teach magic, but there doesn't seem to be any real point to it.

The Tomb of the Golden Bird by Elizabeth Peters

2007-08-26T08:07:00.001-07:00

Latest installment in the Amelia Peabody Egyptian Archeology mystery series. This one centered around the discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb, with the Peabody-Emersons taking part as bit players and observers.

Fortunately I still enjoy simply spending time with Peters' characters, because the biggest mystery in this book was "where's the plot?" A holy man might have been murdered (though nobody seemed to care very much) and an encrypted message sat around for a while. But the main characters weren't really involved in any of it.

Magic Study by Maria Snyder

2007-08-21T09:41:00.001-07:00

Good book, fairly quick read. Yelena was kidnapped as a child from her home in Sitia and grew up in Ixia. (Note: I wish the author had given the countries names less easy to confuse.) In Snyder's previous book Poison Study, Yelena escaped death to become a poison taster and find a place for herself in Ixia. Here, she returns to Sitia to gain control of her newly discovered magical powers, under sentence of death if she doesn't succeed. (Certainly one way of getting her to focus on her studies.)

One of the things I liked about Poison Study was the political system - the semi-benevolent, if rather twisted, military dictatorship was an interesting change from the conventional fantasy monarchy or vague ruling by some sort of council arrangement. Sitia falls under the "vague council" governing category.

The main story arc involved catching a serial killer, and the main theme was Yelena coming to terms with her roots in Sitia. She spent remarkably little time on magic study, especially given the threat of death, which seemed to have been forgotten about by book's end.

Overall, an engrossing read, but a bit too much plot. I didn't get that feeling from the previous, although it was also action-filled.

I'd have liked to spend more time with Yelena's brother.

Saffron and Brimstone by Elizabeth Hand

2007-08-20T05:54:00.001-07:00

Short stories. Elizabeth Hand is one of those authors that I think I should like - reviews and comments on the group rec.arts.sf.written put her in that branch of literary speculative fiction I like - but despite several tries, I've never made it further than a few pages into any of her novels. So I thought I'd give this collection a try.

I had no difficulty reading it, and it did indeed fall into that area of literary SF that I particuarly like. I suppose I shall try a novel again...

The stories varied considerably. I didn't like the final quartet as much; it's a slipstream set of meditations on friendship, leaping about through time, space and nominal genre, but in at least three of them I never had enough of a sense of the people to care much about their friendship.

Of the rest... two stick in my mind. The first, Cleopatra Brimstone, is an odd, indecipherable tale of geeky but attractive Jane, a budding lepidopterist. The plot is fairly straightforward - studies entomology, is raped, becomes a predator, turns into a moth - but Jane herself is opaque. I could say it's depersonalization made literal, but really I don't know quite what to make of it. It sticks, though.

The other is The Least Trumps. The main character is an agoraphobic tatoo artist, and the world changes. The ending is lovely - it's a delicate story, I don't want to disturb it by saying more.

The Sharing Knife - Legacy by Lois McMaster Bujold

2007-08-16T11:52:00.001-07:00

Another sequel, another car-trip book. This was readable, but... hmm. Too much in-law unpleasantness, and nothing getting resolved.

I feel like I should have liked it more than I did. I often like ambiguity, and stories where the world doesn't get saved, and in-law conflict, even. But I can't remember the names of any of the characters.

I was expecting the "sharing knife" of the series title (the particular one that featured in Beguilement) to be a more important element in this one.

Kushiel's Justice by Jacqueline Carey

2007-08-13T09:20:00.001-07:00

Middle book in Carey's follow-up trilogy following Imriel, the foster-son on the hero and heroine of her first series. At least, I assume it's a trilogy, at first I thought it might be a duology. (Checks author's web site.) Yep, it's a trilogy.

Suffers from middle-book-of-trilogy-itis. Imriel spends a lot of time going places and doing things. I liked the first half of the book, the story of Imriel's doomed marriage. After that, though... well, he sets out on a quest, and various stuff happens to hinder him. At one point, when Imriel is interrupted yet again, this time by a shipwreck, I could almost hear the author muttering "ok, now shipwreck him, that'll fill up a few more pages..." Not that I have anything against a picaresque adventure where the hero overcomes a series of obstacles, but this just didn't work. It was dull.

Looking at that "didn't work" comment reminds me of a blog post by Sarah Monette, a fantasy writer I like quite a bit as a novelist and also as a blogger. Her fifth reason why a scene might suck is the bit I'm thinking of.

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

2007-07-27T09:25:00.001-07:00

Short stories, fantasy. How to describe? A mix of good and very good, with a few poems thrown in. I prefer Gaiman's stories to his novels.

Mythic, pastiche, ghosts and fables. The introduction includes a story about mapmaking, which comments that the best description of a story is the story, itself.

I always have trouble summing up books, their plots and characters. If I say this, I think, I should say that as well, it's equally important.. and how about this other? This character is this, but not really: she's also this and this and this... and how much harder with a collection of widely varying stories.

I think they're worth reading. If you like that sort of thing, of course. Whatever that sort of thing is.

City of Bone by Martha Wells

2007-07-13T09:47:00.002-07:00

Nice fantasy with a somewhat science-fictional feel - it's set in a post-apocalyptic world, where the apocalypse was brought about by an unfortunate combination of magic and hubris. A blurb described the setting as "Arabian Nights" style, but I didn't get that at all, apart from the desert setting. Most of the world's water was destroyed in the magical disaster, and the paired struggles for water and for knowledge of the Ancients drive the society and the plot.

Heloise and Abelard: a new biography by James Burge

2007-07-05T10:38:00.001-07:00

Heloise and Abelard, the prototypical star-crossed lovers...

At one point, Burge sums up Abelard's autobiography roughly as follows: promising career ruined by the jealousy of his colleagues, a disastrous love affair that led to his castration, followed by exile to a land of homicidal monks. Very hard not to feel sorry for the fellow.

I'm still startled that they named their son Astralabe. I thought baby names like Apple or Telescope were modern innovations.

Winter Moon by Mercedes Lackey, Tanith Lee, C.E. Murphy

2007-07-05T10:23:00.001-07:00

Picked this up at the library mostly for the Tanith Lee story - I haven't read anything new by her since the Venus series. But I found that actually the least appealing - stylistically it reminded me of her earlier writings, like The Birthgrave, which I didn't like as much. The Lackey had sympathetic characters, engaging writing, minimal plot and vaguely drawn setting, which is par for most of her writing. But the third, by C. E. Murphy, whom I haven't read before, was good - urban, slightly off-kilter setting, gritty supernatural stuff, strong characters.

Looking Tanith Lee up on Amazon, I see that someone's bringing out a two-volume compilation of selected stories. Must look for.

Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik

2007-06-29T19:03:00.001-07:00

More of the Napoleonic War With Dragons saga. Except that this didn't involve much war...

Let's see. Temeraire belongs to an insanely rare and valuable, not to mention sacred, breed, and the Chinese who bred him want him back. So Temeraire, Laurence and crew take a very slow boat to China, where they are subjected to culture shock, formal dinners and diplomacy, not to mention intrigue.

Middle books in fantasy trilogies usually involve a lot of landscape and traveling from place to place, and this is no exception. (Actually, I've since realized that this isn't a trilogy. Oh well.)

The difference in status of dragons between China and Europe (and apparently most other places) is a major theme.

Dark Water by Linda Hall

2007-06-08T08:22:00.001-07:00

A mystery, sort of... perhaps more of a literary-ish suspense novel. Took the basic plot convention of the abused woman being stalked and played around with it a little.

I was annoyed by the side tale of the philandering, adultering deacon who was seen as a pillar of his church community - it seemed too blatant.

The ending was remarkably unsatisfying. The second half of the book was much like watching a train wreck, or a spider spinning a web for a hapless fly. I'm used to mysteries with more satisfying closure.

Not a bad book, but not really my thing.

A Scholar of Magics by Caroline Stevermer

2007-06-05T08:20:00.001-07:00

Great fun. Not as memorable as College of Magics -- this was very much a comedy of manners in a fantasy guise, and had less poignancy. But the characters were just human enough to keep the story real.

His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

2007-06-01T19:03:00.001-07:00

The Napoleonic Wars, with dragons. Almost an alternate history, except that given the great difference this level of aerial transport and combat would have made to the course of history, everything was far too recognizable.

I was reluctant to read this at first, partly because of the Napoleonic war angle (I'm not fond of too much military detail in my historical reading) and partly because of the dragons (I'm not especially fond of traditional fantasy trappings, unless they're unusually well done, or used mythopoeically). That said, I very much enjoyed this; the dragons were neither mythic nor traditional, but fully fleshed out, as were the humans. They did resemble Anne McCaffery's dragons in some ways, but the pseudoscience behind them was better thought out. And the military details of how dragons might be used in combat were also carefully thought out and integral to the plot.

Claiming the Courtesan by Anna Campbell

2007-05-26T05:49:00.001-07:00

Romances I like tend to fall in two categories: the gentle, healing, life-affirming sort that Mary-Jo Putney usually writes, and a rather darker and more twisted type exemplified by Anne Stuart's Black Ice. This was definitely the latter, and a good one.

Justin, the Duke of Something-or-other (why are so many romance figures Dukes?) has been left by his mistress Soraya. Soraya vanished because she's earned enough money as a courtesan to support herself and her family, and now wants to retire and live out her life as respectable Verity. Justin isn't very happy about this, and expresses his displeasure by tracking Soraya/Verity down, abducting her, and treating her abominably.

I have some difficulty explaining why I like

Lady Silence by Blair Bancroft

2007-05-22T04:56:00.001-07:00

This was a traditional Regency romance, a vaguely Jane Austen-influenced subgenre I've not read much in. I found it readable, but forgettable.

The Regency is a comedy of manners, but the plot of this book really felt like it wanted to be much more melodramatic- a mysterious child who didn't speak for years, a traumatized military officer readjusting to civilian life. But the tone was kept light, and it all felt wrong, awkward.

Angelica by Sharon Shinn

2007-05-20T20:18:00.001-07:00

Another very readable Sharon Shinn- I think she's among the best writers of romantic sf that manages to scratch the itches of both genres. Only- this one felt a bit like a rerun, enjoyable but familiar. She's done the "archangel gets saddled with reluctant and unexpected angelica" before, and it was more interesting the first time around. I preferred Angel-Seeker; one woman found she preferred a human after all, and the culture clash in the other main plot played out very believably and painfully. Also - she has a way of typecasting members of her varying races that makes me uncomfortable - all Edori are feckless and pleasant, all Jansaii rather slimy, Mandavii money-grubbing. Angel-Seeker went a bit deeper into the whats and whys of culture, and showed some variation within members of the groups.

The Machine's Child by Kage Baker

2007-05-17T10:43:00.001-07:00

Well.....

Good: back to the main plot, with Mendoza, Alec/Edward/Nicholas, Joseph and Buda.

Bad (semi-spoiler): well, not much of Mendoza, mentally or (at first) physically. Not much bite left to her.

Ugly: Alec/Edward/Nicholas. All at once. Sharing one body and quarreling continually. (This isn't a spoiler, it happened a book or two ago.)

At least the little weird people didn't put in an appearance. I'm really wondering how she's going to pull all this together at the end.

I'd like to spend more time with Suleyman and Latif.

What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman

2007-05-17T10:41:00.001-07:00

A psychological mystery, and also a story about how a family falls apart.

Two sisters disappear, and, decades later, a woman shows up claiming to be one of them. The story of the disappearance, some of the family's life before, and how the parents endured, and didn't, after, is told in flashbacks.

I guessed the identity early (though not why), and so didn't care much about the maneuverings of the police officers. But the family tragedy was gripping.

Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey

2007-05-17T10:26:00.001-07:00

A follow-up to her Kushiel's (blank) series featuring Phedre. This focuses on Phedre's foster son Imriel.

I didn't like Imriel's voice as much as Phedre's (both first person), and the book felt jerky to me. The plot didn't seem to have any shape to it. It's essentially Imriel's coming of age story, but too many of the events didn't mean enough, if that makes sense. The author nearly lost me when he moved to Rome-analog. Still, some very good passages... I'll see if the sequal redeems it.

The Veil of Night

2007-05-12T04:51:00.001-07:00

Historical romance. A decent read, but not as good as Music of the Night. I'd have liked to have met the main female character earlier and gotten to know her a little before she made her big choice - accepting the male character's scandalous bargain - so I could have seen that it was as out of character for her as the author said it was.

Plump-bottomed bag

2007-04-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

Not much beading, lately - my creativity's been taken up with home renovation and crochet.
This purse is a variant on the "fat-bottomed bag" pattern in the Stitch-n-Bitch Happy Hooker book.

Any crocheters who have the pattern and are interested: I varied the pattern by stopping after the second gathering row, then added a flap to close it with, button and a shoulder strap. (The original is a handbag - I can't or won't carry a purse that doesn't hang from my shoulder.) The yarn is lion brand suede.

Here's a shot of the lining, which used to be part of a bedsheet. I followed Kel's tutorial for doing the lining:

And finally, a closeup of the on-topic button. It's circular peyote, increasing on one side and decreasing on the other (though I ran into trouble with the decreases), using size 8 seed beads.

A Place Called Here by Cecelia Ahern

2007-03-18T11:32:00.001-07:00

I liked this, though I had trouble getting into it at first. Actually, I'd put it aside, then loaned it to Melanie, a young friend (my ex's daughter) who was visiting that week. She devoured it in an afternoon, then told me she was going to recommend that her high school's library purchase it. So I picked it up again... if it wasn't too opaque for her, I wasn't going to let it be too opaque for me.

I had a dream once where I was wandering around a house and somehow came across a room which contained all the umbrellas I've ever lost. This book has a place like that, and I was enchanted by the idea. I liked the main character too, prickly and obsessed as she was.

Melusine and The Virtu by Sarah Monette

2007-03-10T07:39:00.002-08:00

At first I didn't realize Melusine was the first in a series, but I should have. So I was very frustrated when I came to the end and it just stopped. I did get The Virtu a day or two later... if it hadn't been out yet I'd have been pissed.

The plots of the two books were basically fantasy quest variants (get to someplace, fix the whatsit), but hardly mattered to my reading of the book. What the books were about was the relationship between the two main characters, half brothers who meet for the first time part way through the first volume. The story's told in first person, with viewpoint switching back and forth between the two brothers, who have have very distinct voices. They're both emotionally screwed up to the point that it's something of a surprise that either is capable of walking around upright, and one of them spends most of the first volume being insane. I have to admit, I love that sort of thing when it's done well, and it was here.

There are two more coming out in the series, but Melusine and The Virtu make a solid duology - the story doesn't need any more.

The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman

2007-03-02T06:05:00.001-08:00

Odd book.

A woman of ice meets a man of fire. The ice is metaphorical -

Night Fall by Anne Stuart

2007-03-01T11:49:00.001-08:00

I read and loved Anne Stuart's earlier Black Ice and a review on All About Romance made this seem like a similar type of book, and also gave it a grade of A. So I requested it from the library.

I was disappointed. Um... ok, major spoilers here. The supposed hero needs to find someone to look after his children. The best plan he can come up with is: pick a woman whose picture he likes and treat her nastily to manipulate her into falling in lust with him. This apparently will induce in her a level of devotion sufficient to cause her to move to a different country and spend the next X years in hiding looking after aforementioned youngsters alone. He occasionally tests her fitness for the task, not by observing her with actual children or attempting to get her sympathy for his children by telling her their pitiful story, but by treating her ever more cruelly and noting with satisfaction her failure to sensibly flee. Were I the parent, I would not want a potential role model for my daughter to behave like that.

Black Ice had some similarity: a hero who behaved unheroically, even nastily. But once you accepted the basics of the plot (he was infiltrating a multinational arms cartel) his actions made sense; he behaved ruthlessly, but not psychotically. And when he started to care for the heroine, it changed him. It didn't make him into a nice person, but it had an impact, and watching that impact happen was the most fascinating aspect of the book.

The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque by Jeffrey Ford

2007-02-25T23:19:00.001-08:00

Odd. Nowhere near as odd as his earlier fantasy The Physiognomy and sequels, but odd nonetheless.

I was expecting another fantasy, but this turned out to be a fairly straight historical fiction. The closest thing to a sfnal element in the setting was the unusual (and gruesome) disease/parasite.

Let's see, plot... a portraitist named Piambo recieves an unusual commission: to paint the portrait of a woman, Mrs. Charbuque (or Luciere), who will not allow him to either see her or question her on her appearance. He may question her on any other topic, and if he succeeds in portraying her accurately, his already substantial commission will be doubled. Piambo is becoming tired of society portraits and accepts the commission, hoping to earn enough to retire from portraiture for a time and devote himself to his art.

What ensues is a battle of wills between and psychological study of Piambo and Luciere. Meanwhile, women in the city start bleeding to death through their eyeballs.

I might have enjoyed this book more if I hadn't read the author's previous work. His earlier Cley and Bellow were most remarkably unpleasant characters, and I spent some time suspiciously watching Piambo, waiting for him to reveal himself to be equally unsympathetic. I ended up rather liking him, though.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

2007-02-13T08:32:00.002-08:00

Before I write any more, let me confess: I fell in love with this book. It's a book for booklovers, too: everything from a girl who grew up in a bookstore to a moral dilemma that weighs literature against life.

The framing story is this: a dying author, Vida Winter, who has always hidden her past with outrageous lies, decides to tell the story of her childhood to Margaret Lea, who is an amateur biographer and has written an insightful study of a pair of twins. And it's quite a tale she has, too: a gothic with dark nights, bizarre deaths, madness and perversity, feral twins, old family servants and a governess. Incredible and un-realistic-fiction-like enough that at first I wondered if Vida would turn out to be spinning another tale - but if she was, she never confessed.

But surely some of it must have been invented, extrapolated, filled in: the picnic before her birth, for example - no possible informant I can see for that. Conversations recounted verbatim, that even the most detail-oriented family cook could not have retained or listening child recalled. Memory's a slipperier thing, a plague of biographers and framing-device novelists alike. At first my suspension of disbelief was jarred.

I couldn't quite discern what time either portion of the story was set in - Vida's story, or Margaret's, some 60-70 years later. Even the more modern frame seemed to belong to an era that did not know cell phones or computers. I think that was deliberate - it's a book meant to sit with the Brontes', or Du Maurier. Email wouldn't have gone well.

Child of a Rainless Year by Jane Lindskold

2007-02-09T13:43:00.001-08:00

Oh, lovely. A very pretty, elegantly written, colourful book - the kind that makes real life seem just a little drab, on finishing. My life will never contain magic found surprisingly between things, just as my home will never demand to be painted in the blinding "midway fairground" style of Phineas House - though come to think of it, I don't regret the latter.

Urban fantasy, shading towards magic realism - the Spanish-tinged New Mexico setting rather reinforced this, I think. (Gene Wolfe's definition of magic realism: "Magical Realism is Fantasy written in Spanish.") And so another of Jane Lindskold's subgenre hops.

I liked the late middle-aged heroine.

Point of Honor and Petty Treason by Madeleine Robins

2007-02-07T11:29:00.001-08:00

How can one not love a book that begins with the line "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Fallen Woman of good family must, soon or late, descend to whoredom."

Sarah Tolerance is the heroine of these two books, and determined to defy the above statement. (Her aunt, who runs a whorehouse, didn't.) So she becomes an "Agent of Inquiry", which seems rather implausible, if entertaining. (And less implausible than the means by which other authors contrive to have their heroines entangled in murder after murder.)

Written with a very light, dry touch. It occurred to me that the ending to the first book, if written by another hand, could have been quite utterly devestating.

I didn't realize that this was a slightly alternate regency that was being written about, and so was rather historically disoriented for a while.

More ladies

2007-01-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

I created some more ladylike peyote tube earrings for Christmas. These little blue girls were a gift for my cousin's daughter, who requested them several months ago. I made them using size 15 seeds.

And these were my christmas earrings. I added wings to the basic tube pattern to create little angels. (Ok, I know they're cheesy, but sometimes I like that sort of thing.) Like the blue ones, these are 12 around even count peyote. The skirt is two rows of 3 bead netting followed by two rows of 5 bead netting.

Lady Sophia's Lover by Lisa Kleypas

2007-01-22T21:02:00.001-08:00

Ok, I suppose the lover was a fine enough fellow, if rather uninteresting and occasionally unperceptive. But as far as the focus of the plot and centre of interest for Lady Sophia herself went, the book would have been more aptly titled Lady Sophia's Brother.

The Buried Pyamid by Jane Lindskold

2007-01-18T09:39:00.001-08:00

Odd but enjoyable.

I like Jane Lindskold's books. Ok, I lost interest in the Firekeeper saga a couple of books in, but I like her stand-alones. I especially like the way she bounces around between subgenres - she's done sword-and-sorcery (When the Gods are Silent), near-future cyberpunk (Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls) and an off-planet SF espionage (Smoke and Mirrors), among others. This one was particularly odd: a Victorian-era novel of an Egyptian archaeological expedition, not unlike Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody mysteries and complete with mysterious murderous thugs, which abruptly turns into a journey through an egyptiam mythological landscape accompanied by a sun god. Left me with a bit of whiplash...

Novels and stories from Kage Baker's Company series

2007-01-18T07:19:00.001-08:00

The Graveyard Game, Life of the World to Come, The Children of the Company, Black Projects, White Knights. I read these fairly in one steady Company binge.

I'm not going to review these - it's been done better. All I can say is I like the Company... but. The Children of the Company drove me nearly insane! Life of the World to Come ended on practically a cliffhanger for Alex, and Graveyard for Joseph. I picked up Children desperately needing to find out What Happens Next to the characters I care about - and instead got what I later realised was a fix-up of short stories. If I'd been expecting short stories about random company-related things, that would have been one thing (as with Black Projects, White Knights), but I thought I'd picked up a novel.

Not that some of them weren't excellent short stories. But the main plot, such as it was, seemed to involve a rivalry between the unpleasant Labienus and one Aegeus, who is probably equally unpleasant, but stays offstage. Fight between Unpleasant and Unknown. Don't Care.

I was piqued enough that I haven't gotten the next book in the series, even though it apparently does carry on the plot from Life. I'm trying to hold out until it shows up in paperback, at least.

An absence of posts

2007-01-03T13:27:00.001-08:00

It seems that keeping up with the very simple premise of this blog - post a few words about each book I read, as I finish reading it - isn't as simple to accomplish as I thought it would be. I'm not sure why this is.

Partly, I think, my perfectionist tendancies combined with the fact that this is a public forum. I find myself wanting to post something close to a full review of each book, which requires that I set some time aside and think deeply and carefully, rather than simply writing an unvarnished reaction. And to also write serious reactions, thoughtfull meditations on this or that inspired by my reading - after I get the full review out of the way, of course. Which all becomes something like homework.

And really, much of what I read doesn't inspire such serious reactions. I read a grab bag that includes quite a bit of genre fiction - romances, murder mysteries, meant to be pure pleasant escapism. Maybe I don't want my less intellectual preferences showing.

Well, here's a list of unposted boks from the last little while. I'll write about some of them in more detail later, if the mood strikes.

Books and short stories from Kage Baker's Company series:

Mendoza in Hollywood
The Graveyard Game
The Life of the World to Come
The Children of the Company
Black Projects, White Knights (short story collection)

Mysteries and romances by Nora Roberts:

Going Home compilation, containing the books ”Mind Over Matter”, “Unfinished Business”, & “Island of Flowers”
Cordina's Royal Familiy series: Affaire Royale, Command Performance, Cordina's Crown Jewel
Mysteries written as J. D. Robb: Naked in Death, Ceremony in Death, Witness in Death

Other:

The Runaway Princess, Christina Dodd
Hidden Honor, Anne Stuart
Windflower, Nick Bantock
Forcing Amyrillis, Louise Ure
A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray
Beguilement, Lois McMaster Bujold
The Buried Pyramid, Jane Lindskold
The Silver Bough, Lisa Tuttle

Black and bronze spiral

2006-12-23T09:30:00.000-08:00

No posts for a while, but I have been beading, a little. This is a gift I've been working on off and on for months (mostly off, it wasn't that much beading); I gave it to the recipient on Thursday, so I'm free to post it now.

It's what I've seen called a Cellini Spiral. The version in the link is even count peyote, with a step up, but mine is odd count. Each round is one size 11 bronze seed bead, two size 15 matte bronze, one 11 bronze again, and one black size 8.

Unstolen by Wendy Jean

2006-12-07T18:35:00.002-08:00

The story of a girl whose brother was kidnapped when she was an infant and never found. A very well-written book, I think, and hard to read, mostly because (should get this out up front) I hated the mother.

Not that I didn't sympathize with her - to lose a child, the uncertainty, the unfairness. Or I could have sympathized, perhaps was meant to. But I identified too strongly with the daughter, who did sympathize, too much I thought. I wanted her to stand up and demand that her mother look away from the stolen son, and see her, or to do that on her behalf, or something.

Monstrous characters are interesting. The mother was warped, understandably so. Had survived, was doing her best. It was perhaps her inability to stop hoping - to give up on her son - that made her most unendurable, in the end. A good trait... until it isn't. Until it becomes a rigid refusal to live. Buying new shoes for the absent son, that she couldn't afford for her daughter...

Whatever warped her, whatever made her, she was, to me, an unsympathetic character, a monster.

Sky Coyote by Kage Baker

2006-11-19T21:28:00.001-08:00

Another Company book - sequel to Garden of Iden, and I've already picked up the third in the series, Mendoza in Hollywood.

Plot: Facilitator Joseph has been assigned to talk the Chumash, a southwest Native American tribe, into allowing themselves to be preserved, or perhaps collected, for some future purchaser. (I'm still not entirely certain why this involved obtaining all the individual Chumash, since apparently what was really required was a record of their culture and DNA. Maybe the purchaser was benevolent.) Anyways, Joseph does this by assuming the persona of a deity of theirs, Sky Coyote.

I like Joseph. Moderately liked the Chumash, and so enjoyed the book, overall. But none of the individual Chumash stood out as, well, individuals, so I find I'm thinking of them as a sort of group character, "The Chumash".

Bits of interaction with company representatives from the future - they seem to be annoying twits. Hard to believe they basically run everything... but that's the hook to read the rest...

Ladylike earrings

2006-10-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

Ok, they're more little girl earrings, but I wear them. On days when I look at my outfit and realize that I'm overdoing the "prim academic librarian" thing, they provide a sort of comfort - make me feel that I haven't completely given in.

I'm also working on a pair in blue - my cousin's 10 year old daughter requested a pair. Cobalt blue, to be specific, and brown hair. I need to find a better shade to use for the face and hands - the ivory I've used in these is too pallid and the pink I tried just looks odd.

The Wandering Unicorn by Manuel Mujica Láinez

2006-10-19T11:31:00.001-07:00

Not about a unicorn - it's historical fantasy set during the crusades, narrated by the fairy Melusine. The unicorn of the title is Aiol, Melusine's descendant, who carries a unicorn lance. The fantasy elements seem almost beside the point, though I enjoyed Melusine's reminiscences on her life as an enchantress and patroness of architects, and her comments on esoteric subjects such as the relationship between fairies and angels.

But really it's a novel of medieval life, of Aoil (who Melusine falls hopelessly in love with), his father and sister, and the fall of Christian Jerusalem. The characters feel medieval - as they rarely do in fantasy - and the language, in my translation at least, has an archaic feel. All of which made it a slow, not easily digestible read.

Rose amulet

2006-10-19T09:13:00.000-07:00

And finally, I've made an amulet just to please myself. The ones I've created before were for friends, which I've enjoyed. But it's fun to just sit down and make something pretty out of your favourite beads and colours:

Tubular peyote in seed beads. The lighter pink is a metallic called Platinum Rose and the green is a dark metallic matte olive, both from Mill Hill; the darker pink is a gold lustered raspberry shade, but I can't remember where I got it. I think the bronze beads may be czech.

This is another pattern I designed myself. If I made it again I think I'd add another column of bronze beads to each side to make it a little wider. I was a bit disappointed when I discovered that it was a couple of milimetres too narrow to fit a toonie in.

The Garden of Iden by Kage Baker

2006-10-13T08:46:00.001-07:00

Gripping SF.

It's set in a world where a company called Dr. Zeus has mastered time travel (backwards only, but you can return to your own time) and immortality (but only if you start with young children and replace most of their parts with machinery). They rescue from imminent death, recruit, immortalize and train young children from various eras to work as agents, rescuing lucrative bits of the past and storing them safely for the company to recover far in the future. Mendoza's one of the agents, a spanish child rescued from the Inquisition to become a botanist. Not surprisingly given the situation she was rescued from, she dislikes and fears mortals.

Her first assignment is to collect specimens from Walter Iden's garden of exotic plants. She travels there with Joseph, the agent who rescued her and is now posing as her father, and another agent. And falls in love, unfortunatley for both her and the object of her affections, a mortal Englishman with heretical but devout religious beliefs.

There's a whole series set in this world. I'd like to read more about the company - who runs it? How do they control their immortal, highly enhanced agents?

The scene at the end with monkeys throwing fruit at each other, was unneccessary - the point (people keep having the same pointless conflicts) was clear. Bludgeoning it in with rotton fruit was excessive.

Walking the Labyrinth by Lisa Goldstein

2006-10-04T18:32:00.001-07:00

Eh. I was lukewarm on this one. Which is a pity, because Lisa Goldstein at her best is outstanding - Tourists is my favourite of hers, but I also enjoyed The Red Magician, The Dream Years, and many of her short stories. Her fantasy is often tinged with surrealism and is quite unlike most of the other material in the genre. But Dark Cities Underground was a letdown - I never managed to care much about the main characters, and the title left me hoping for dark city scenery that never materialised.

Molly Travers was raised by her great aunt, and believes she has no other family. Which is a pity, because she's actually related to a troupe of performing magicians. After a private investigator contacts her, she starts researching her peculiar family history. A few evil murdering types with connections to some of her ancestors try to interfere, but oddly don't manage to provide much suspense.

I liked Molly, and her private investigator sidekick John Stow. ("Liked" may be overstating how I felt about John, but he was interesting to read about.) But I'd have prefered to spend a little more time getting to know them - large parts of the book were told through old diaries and letters. Emily's story could have made a book of its own, I think, but instead was just long enough to distract me from the main plot. It all might have worked better if the plot hadn't been so busy; too much happening in not enough space.

hamsa earrings

2006-09-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

My love affair with tiny metallic seed beads continues. Here's another pair of earrings made with size 15 silver and hematite coloured beads:

The design is a Hamsa, also called Hand of Fatima or Hand of Miriam, an ancient Middle Eastern symbol used by both Jews and Muslims. The hand with three fingers upraised is intended to avert the evil eye.

I've seen a number of variations on this design in various media, but none in beadwork, so I decided to design a beadwork pattern. And share it:

The cat ate my beadwork

2006-09-23T09:09:00.000-07:00

Well, chewed my beadwork, anyways. This was a pair of russian leaf earrings I created for fall, using size 15 silver beads. Unfortunately, I left them on the bedside table, and the cat knocked one down and started playing with it. The picture shows what he left.

I'll make another one up sometime soon. I'm also thinking I'd like a pair in bronze 15 seeds - a better colour for autumn.

Maria's Russian Leaf instructions. (Often her site is down, but it's also available from the Internet Archive)

The Other Eden by Sarah Bryant

2006-09-05T18:08:00.001-07:00

What a beautiful little book, was my first thought on finishing this. But on second thought not so little; over 450 pages, but I read it in a couple of sittings and didn't notice time passing.

A cliche, but it's easier to criticize than praise, and I sometimes have trouble writing about the books I enjoy most. Especially ones like this, that I just absorb in a kind of uncomplicated gulp of reading pleasure.

It's a sort of literary gothic, full of family secrets. Most of the book is set early last century. with a prologue 20 years earlier, and a coda much later. Eleanor is a gifted young pianist, raised by her grandfather. On his death she moves to an abandoned family estate in the south with her companion Mary (rather uninteresting, as companions named Mary often are). The estate, the Eden of the title, is lushly beautiful in decay, tangled and haunted, perhaps poisoned.

Strange how I find myself thinking of the book with an almost southern gothic vocabulary. It's the language more than the plot I loved, I think, much as I do love these past-delving novels. Eleanor's mother and her mother's twin sister traded places so one of them could marry the man she loved - this is revealed in the prologue. Eleanor knows nothing of this, doesn't even know who her father is, or that her mother had a twin. In eden she learns, slowly, and with the help and hindrance of two mysterious men who are somehow tied to those events from before her birth. And even Mary plays a sinister role.

The Algebraist by Iain M. Banks

2006-09-03T06:39:00.001-07:00

This is one of the books I read during my two-week holiday/belated honeymoon in Prague and Budapest, mostly while in transit. (I'm a compulsive reader, but even I found more interesting things than reading to do in Europe.) I'll be catching up on my blog posting over the next few days. (A few days later: or weeks...)

This is also, incidentally, the book I was reading in Prague airport which I was forced to surrender to my checked luggage due to the terrorist threats that week.

I've read all of Iain M. Banks' Culture space operas, as well as some of his non-M. literary works. I think I would have appreciated this book more if someone else had written it; it was well-written, fun, and for Iain M., fairly average. Which is still very good...

I nearly didn't read it at all. Mr. Banks has a skill for writing vivid, memorable, utterly repellant scenes - the live-human-eating cult in Consider Phlebas comes to mind - and this book included one right at the beginning. I have what is sometimes an unfortunately visceral imagination, and the fate of the bodiless head that was being used for a punching bag was a bit much for me. Fortunately, the rest of the book was relatively light on such things.

As a side note, the Archimandrate Luseferous, the leader of the invading force who punched the disembodied head, broke so many of the rules on the Evil Overlord List that I was forced to wonder if Banks used the list while designing his character. (For example, see rules #17, #24, #49, and also the bits about properly securing ones' noxious pets.)

I missed the Culture. I like the odd interplay of moral shallowness and depths that their hedonistic, AI-supported society lends itself to... but back to the book in hand.

Dwellers are members of an ancient, galaxy-spanning civilization of gas-giant inhabitants who live for millions or, if lucky, billions of years. (Despite or because of this, to the casual human observer they often appear to have the approximate maturity level and attention span of a typical pre-teen, or possibly a celebutante.) Fassin Taak is a human scholar in Dweller Studies, one of the few non-Dwellers who actually gets to talk to Dwellers face to face and has some measure of understanding of them. To do this in the gas-giant atmosphere he employs a small, carefully-crafted ship. For various war and plot-related reasons, Fassin is sent on a mission to try and find an important Dweller document.

For me the Dwellers were the best part of the book. At first they seem to have been thrown in for comic relief, frivolous and bumbling, but there's more to them, and I think it's actually a fairly subtle portrayal. What would a society of beings that live, grow and learn for millions of years look like?

These look rather like the Culture, in a way. Both are civilizations whose inhabitants lack some of the basic motivators we take for granted. No economic motivators; technology's advanced and pervasive enough to do anything that needs to be done, produce anything that needs to be produced, on request. With universal lack of economic want goes most urges towards social change, philanthropy and activism, other important motivators in this reality. Science and engineering are a set of solved problems, and the main remaining field of inquiry is history. So, most of the concerns we consider serious and adult simply aren't there to be concerned about. Not surprising the beings in question might seem frivolous and hedonistic, even juvenile. They've not much to worry about except how to kill time.

Some do more than that, though. And gradually, we get to see some of what they've been up to.

One of the things I like most about Banks' Culture books is the way that background lets him isolate the biggest questions. They've delt with everything that can be solved with money and technology and medicine. The Dweller parts of this book didn't explore those themes, and the Dwellers themselves were more alien than anything biology-based in the Culture universe. But perhaps not alien enough, given the huge amount of time and life and biology that separated them from the quite comprehensible humans? I'm not sure. The book seemed to have more possibility than it used, in the end.

Thud by Terry Pratchett

2006-08-30T11:01:00.001-07:00

What's to say? It's a Terry Pratchett book, and I've loved pretty much all of his books.

Almost metalwork

2006-07-29T09:07:00.000-07:00

More twisted herringbone. These hoops are made out of 15° silver-coloured seed beads.

Pink and silver herringbone

2006-07-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

My current favourite colour is probably the soft dusty pink of these seed beads.

I made the earrings a few weeks ago, but it took me until now to come up with a necklace I liked using the same colours. I started and ripped out several, including peyote and russian spiral ropes, and a more elaborate twisted herringbone pattern from one of Carol Wilcox Wells' books. Eventually I settled on this simpler herringbone rope. I worked out how to get this twist using a single size of seed bead by trial and error. Then perhaps a day later someone posted a link to instructions on the about.com beadwork forum.

The earrings are made using Felinda's fern stitc h.

Here's a close-up of the earrings:

A net of crystal

2006-07-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

A netted necklace with gold beads, pink crystals and pearls. The picture doesn't do it justice, it sparkles gorgeously in real life.

I created this as a wedding / graduation gift for a favourite student.

Based on Theresa's russian net pattern.

Labyrinths by Jorges Luis Borges

2006-07-18T10:31:00.001-07:00

Missed this when I was entering my old posts. Well, there are no rules. No way to back-date, either.

Thunder and Roses by Mary Jo Putney, with digressions on the Romance genre

2006-07-18T10:29:00.001-07:00

What's to say? She's my favourite romance writer. This book didn't stand out much among her others, but it was perfectly likeable.

The author was quoted on the back saying that "for pure romance, you can't beat Thunder and Roses." I actually found the romance a bit tepid. The heroine muses after realizing she's in love with (and having sex with) the hero "She would miss him when their odd relationship was over..."

I've had stronger reactions to impending separations from my cat.

Still, things to like. One thing I appreciated was that the heroine was the daughter of "respectable yeoman stock." Most of Putney's characters range from mid to high-level nobility - even the actress in One Perfect Rose turned out to be a mislaid heiress of some sort. I also enjoyed the Gypsy scenes - the hero was half Romany.

Mary Jo Putney was the author that showed me that I could actually like romance novels. I'd read them before I discovered her, of course, but mostly just because they were, well, there. I've always been something of a compulsive reader - if I'm not doing something else, and something written is available, I'll probably start reading it. (That doesn't mean I'll keep reading it, mind; I'm not that compulsive.) And my mother had a collection of romance paperbacks.

It would have been back in the early 90s that I came across these, and most of them were at least a few years old. So they would have been from the heyday of the bodice ripper, the days when "heroes raping heroines was part of the courting process," as a reviewer at All About Romance Novels put it.

So when I read Mary Jo Putney's Silk and Secrets, it was a revelation. I wrote this in my book log:

"I think what makes this book likeable while so many romances I've skimmed through seem fairly unpleasant is the fact that the hero was a genuinely nice guy. He was handsome and rich and brave and all that, of course, like most romance heros, but he wasn't overly "commanding", didn't bully his wife into doing what he wanted, never considered raping anyone, and while plausibly non-celibate, he wasn't famed thoughout the land for his sexual prowness or the number of marriages he'd broken up. He was just nice. I liked him."

More casualties of the car fire

2006-07-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

The car fire I mentioned in an earlier post destroyed quite a few other things: my wedding dress and gifts, family photo albums, and more relevantly my supply of beads and several pieces of beadwork. (We were combining a trip to visit my relatives for Thanksgiving with a trip to collect some of the stuff we'd been storing at my father's place.) Not to mention the car... No people or animals were hurt, which is the important thing.

The Briana necklace was made following instructions in Cheryl Assemi's Beaded Elegance. The flowers were less red than they look in the picture, more of a cranberry.

This is Eagle Spirit's Victorian Lace pattern, done in transparent navy and bronze czech seed beads.

The Ghost Orchid by Carol Goodman

2006-07-16T18:48:00.001-07:00

Another of Carol Goodman's literary mysteries, a review I found calls it, but this wasn't really a mystery at all, even though it contained questions that slowly were answered. More a novel of the supernatural, almost a more erudite version of one of Marion Zimmer Bradley's parapsychologicals.

Writers and artists are invited to Bosco, a retreat where they can create undisturbed all day. Ellis is writing a novel about a sequence of events involving a medium that took place at Bosco over a century before. And strange things happen...

The story of modern Bosco is interleaved with the story from the past, and I wasn't quite sure if what I was reading was Ellis's novel or the events she based it on. No matter, or perhaps, no difference.

Goodman's books are plagued by coincidence. The odd hidden relationships of the characters, the mediums' tools left under the bench for a century for Ellis's mother to find... it didn't bother me so much in this one, given the supernatural hand in things, but the spirits still needed help from a good dose of unlikely happenstance.

But the unlikely happenings all fit together and grew into something genuinely touching, and subtly creepy. And there's this line near the end:

"This disconcerts me more than the broken teacups and disembodied voices and Diana speaking in tongues--that Zalman's beautifully ordered poems have gotten scrambled together..."

All her earlier books have water in the title: Lake, Water, Drowning. This didn't, but the fountains of Bosco ran through it, and the book might almost have been called Muse of Water along with the biography of Bosco's founder one of the secondary characters was writing. But perhaps the bog orchid was wet enough.

And it fit very well with her earlier books, even if they are more like traditional mysteries. They're all also of another subtype I really enjoy even if I have trouble defining it. I'm not sure what else fits the mould. A. S. Byatt's Possession, yes, though not her others. Some of Robertson Davies, perhaps; Rebel Angels or maybe Lyre of Orpheus. Amanda Craig's In a Dark Wood, which is like Goodman's earlier Seduction of Water, but also another thing entirely. Maybe Fiona Mountain's Pale as the Dead - that's genre mystery, but I think it's good in non-genre ways too. These are books with a sense of place and time, a delving into some real or imagined past, a centrality of arts or literature - not just "literary mystery" as in mystery well-written, but a mystery of literature. Well-written is good too. If any reader knows what I'm trying to get at, I'd appreciate suggestions for other books in the same vein.

Amulet Purses

2006-07-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

I'm mostly not a fan of amulet purses - I want a purse I can actually carry something in - but I've made a couple to give as gifts.

I created this for my friend Margaret, who has two cats. The orange one is a female named Willow, and the grey is a male called Trogdore. I used czech seed beads, and I like the crafty, folk art look that the beads' slight irregularity gave the design.

It's my own design, based on Emily Hackbeth's cat earrings. Here's the pattern:

The strap is a basic daisy chain.

My only other amulet purse so far is this tiny sheep, created, naturally enough, for my former co-worker Sue who keeps sheep. The pattern is a slightly modified version of Aunt Molly's sheep. This one uses japanese seed beads, which are more regular than the czech ones.

I still want to make a purse I can carry things in. Entirely out of beadweaving, mind; not cheating by adding some beads to a cloth or leather purse. One of these days when I'm feeling ambitious, I guess.

Memorial for a Russian Leaf set

2006-07-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

This Russian Leaf set was the first large project I attempted and the first that I designed myself, and I was very fond of it. Unfortunately, it was destroyed in a car fire.

The rope is tubular peyote, and I made the leaves using Maria's instructions. (Often her site is down, but it's also available from the Internet Archive)

Key of Light, Knowledge, Valor by Norah Roberts

2006-07-09T21:22:00.001-07:00

Three for one!

I really enjoyed this series. Great light reading airplane-type books, and I did even read one on an airplane.

Combined romance with a nicely done fantasy quest. But mainly I really liked the portrayal of the friendship between the three women. As wish-fullfillment goes, the friendship was more satisfying than the romance. I'm not sure if that says more about me, or about the portrayals of the male characters. But then, romance is rather easier to find. Hapily-ever-after books about friendship I think are rarer.

Key of Valor, the last in the trilogy, didn't work for me as a romance at all. The only thing I can remember about the hero is that he was rich.

The Battle of Evernight by Cecelia Dart-Thornton

2006-07-09T21:20:00.001-07:00

Third and last in a series; if you care about spoilers, please don't read further.

Hard to get through. I don't know why; the prose was rather impenetrable, but no more so than in her earlier two, which I found oddly readable despite that. The plot, partly - it wandered, but then the earlier two did as well. Characters? Fewer interesting secondary characers in a less interesting setting, or maybe I'd just lost patience with them somehow.

A pity, because I did enjoy the earlier two, and also because she did come up with good answers for some of the things I disliked in the earlier books - Thorn was inhumanly attractive and capable because he was, in fact, inhuman, for one.

I choose to believe the second option at the ending - that she was spirited away by her unworldly lover to beyond the gate. The other was too pointless and stupid a tragic ending, and unworthy of both the prince and his supposedly befuddled bride.

Unless by Carol Shields

2006-07-09T02:22:00.001-07:00

A very deeply felt feminist book, in a way I haven't encountered lately. Not harsh, or angry; a sort of soft muted almost passive protest, yet one that came through very clearly, most of all in those unsent letters Reta wrote. All those passive abstract words, adverbs and prepositions: goodness, unless, thereof, despite... "whatever" didn't quite stike the right note, though.

The book kept me a little too distanced from Norah, who I instinctively wanted to be the center of it. But really it was about Reta, and I can accept that, her trauma of disconnect from her daughter.

Red Heart of Memories by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

2006-07-09T02:20:00.001-07:00

A book I've been looking for so long it almost had to be a dissappointment. Except it wasn't; much better than the incoherent sequel.

Trauma and recovery, of course, and magic. Talking things. Only the trauma was a little shallow, the recovery too easy, Susan's father too symathetic at the end. Oh, but the landscaping was lovely, the house, the chittering airplane tickets.

But not the people.

No, that's not quite true. I found myself picking it up and starting over, and I'd forgotten how riviting I found the relationship between Matt and Edmund at the beginning. It was very real. But somehow it lost focus somewhere half way through.

Life Studies by Robert Lowell

2006-07-09T02:13:00.001-07:00

Poetry collection. I was plugging at this off and on over a few weeks, reading it on coffee breaks at Starbucks, lunch hour in the cafeteria, buses. Not with my comfort reading at home in the bath. Finally finished it while waiting for a bus at the mall.

Interesting. Bits of masculine emotion and childhood I had difficulty relating to, bits of history I liked, faintly religious musings I was fascinated by, and at the very end some moments from a breakdown, and after, that helped me understand why Alvarez considered it such an important book.

The style... I'll have to read it again just to absorb the nuances... rhymes so subtle I missed them on first reading, rhythm faint, never jarring.

But much of it didn't grip me, quite.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

2006-07-09T02:11:00.001-07:00

Odd book. I tried to read it several times because the themes I was told were in it appealed to me, but kept getting bogged down near the beginning. I finally managed to get into it by skimming ahead to just past the point where I had difficulty, and read the rest compulsively.

I've never read a book with such a collection of completely self-absorbed, amoral characters. Charles reactioning to the first murder: "It wasn't like it was Voltaire we killed, but still, I feel bad." Henry, trying to push the blame on Coke, or Richard, or anyone, really. Bunny, the only one disturbed by the first murder, but casually stealing food, defacing books, his skill for finding others' weak points and pressing them - and his entire family so concerned with their image. The entire student body, even, with their affectation of grief.

The structure of the book seemed off. I expected the Dionysian murder to come at the climax. Instead it took place unnoticed by Richard near the beginning, followed by the casual killing of Bunny. And then the breakdown - I think it was the questioning by the police, and the apparent betrayals by Henry, that precipitated them. The breaking of the group, not remorse...

Sin by Josephine Hart

2006-07-09T02:09:00.001-07:00

Intense, rather perverse book, with an intense and very perverse heroine. (Heroine? Villain?)

About a woman, Ruth, whose life, whose entire being is built around her hatred for her adopted sister, her cousin. She thinks of little else, cares for nothing else (except her son), chooses her lovers and husband as parts of schemes to hurt her sister. Finally manages to sleep with her sister's husband, and destroys all their lives. Well, that and the accidental death of her son, and her sister's...

Perhaps too intense a focus on the hatred? Nothing else to Ruth at all, to the other characters... hard to read, hard to believe.

Her husband - now that was a relationship I did believe. His adoration, her indifference, eventual giving in because it was convenient. Twisted.

Through Wolf's Eyes by Jane Lindskold

2006-07-09T02:07:00.001-07:00

Not what I thought it was. I was expecting another of Jane's Athanor novels, or something similar. Instead, something more like Pat Murphy's Wild Angel - a feral child book, although in a fantasy setting.

Why so many feral wolf women books, I wonder? I seem to have read quite a few lately. Continued aftereffects of pop psychology like _Women who run with the Wolves_? Seems a healthy subgenre, but it's not exactly producing blockbusters.

The ending was not very good. Bad Ending! Bad! No cookie!

I was expecting the story to end, even though I'd realised there might be a sequel. Instead, it just seemed to stop. The main problem had been resolved, but in a sort of by the way manner. And then I turned the next page and there wasn't any more story on it.

The Golden One by Elizabeth Peters

2006-07-09T02:05:00.001-07:00

A while ago, I realised that I read this series, and most mystery serieses these days, as novels of setting and character, not as puzzles. Which was good, because this book was wonderful as a chance to spend more time with Amelia Peabody, family and friends. But as mystery, it left something to be desired. A few extremely incompetant and not at all mysterious tomb robbers, a couple of murders at the beginning that were immediately explained and that no-one really cared about anyways, and a completely unrelated spying diversion, also quite lacking in mystery. And the tomb-robber plot and the spy plot didn't really fit well together. I had the feeling that they were originally intended to be two books, and she awkwardly glued them together after realising neither could support a book on its own. Really, rather carelessly done.

Moon-Flash by Patricia A. McKillip

2006-07-09T02:01:00.001-07:00

I thought Fool's Run was McKillip's only science fiction, but apparently not. I also thought I'd read this at some point when I was younger, but if I did, I have no memory of it at all, not the slightest sense of deja-vu.

Not nearly as obscure and allusive as her later fantasies. I really enjoyed it, so perhaps I haven't really lost my ear for McKillip. Perhaps this was simpler because it was a Young Adult, but mostly I think her stylistic characteristics were not at that time exaggerated.

One thing that struck me - the "primitive" peoples, the cultures on the plain and by the river, worshiping the space-ship so carefully sent out for them, the Moon-Flash - they were like animals in a wildlife preserve. Kept, to study and watch. Kept ignorant. Out of love, she said? The girl, her mother and the boy did grow, I think, leaving their place, they changed and learned. And no-one questioned whether it was reasonable to keep that from the others. Odd.

Ombria in Shadow by Patricia A. McKillip

2006-07-09T01:38:00.001-07:00

I used to really really like Patricia McKillip's books. Not all of them, but I adored Fool's Run, Sorceress and Cygnet, Winter Rose, the Riddlemaster books, even Atrix Wolf. And Stepping Out from the Shadows was incredible. But the last three or four have left me quite utterly cold.

Including, alas, this one. Perhaps I'll reread, though I feel no great desire to; I reread Basilisk, the first of her books to disappoint, and found it actually rather charming, if not as good as I'd hoped.

I don't know if I've changed, or if the books have. They don't seem to have enough substance to them, and all the twists and character types are vaguely familiar from other books. I think the substance in her books has always been mostly in what she doesn't say, what is alluded to and implied. And I'm not picking up on that any more.

The King Hearafter by Dorothy Dunnett

2006-07-09T01:37:00.001-07:00

A very odd book. I was enjoying it very much at the beginning, and quite liked Thorfinn, barbaric but clever pagan viking that he was, when suddenly he turned into Francis Crawford of Lymond. Oh well.

I wonder, is Dunnett only capable of writing that sort of hypercompetant, ultra-energetic Great Man character, or is it only that she thinks that is the only type of character worth writing about? They make me tired, and I never quite believe in them.

But Thorfinn wasn't quite Crawford, for which I was grateful. First, he was wrong occasionally. Several times, in the end, when everything started to go bad. (Maybe Francis screws up later in the series?) And I liked his stubborn paganness, while at the same time slightly despising his political using of christianity.

And Groa. Why on earth, if he loved her, did he neglect, avoid, and insult her for five years running? I must be missing something.

I liked Thorkel. In some ways he was more heroic than Thorfinn, more to my liking. Although a little too devoted, like . . . A kickable dog.

Were death rates really so high, amongst early-medieval royalty? A wonder anyone wanted to become king, if it meant lisence for all other claimants to burn your house around you, marry your wife on your deathbed and slaughter your family as potential rivals who would do the same in their turn.

Three Kids and a Cowboy by Natalie Patrick

2006-07-09T01:32:00.001-07:00

Picked this up at an acquaintance's house. First Harlequin I'd read in a while.

Harlequin-style romance is a pretty limiting form. But still, it is possible to write a good one within the form, and even possible to stretch the form and do something interesting with it. I haven't read that many, but still, some are pleasant enough,and a couple I've read have been more than that. There was one I remember featuring a woman author, and the man who'd fallen in love with her through her novels. The flashbacks telling the story she'd recorded in her novel seemed to be doing something nice, and interesting. And I could actually like that hero. (Anyone have a clue what book this is?)

But in this one, I found myself hoping that the heroine would dump the hero - just give up, get away and be glad to have a bad situation over with. He just didn't seem to be worth the effort. Manipulative, controlling - I guess in formulaic romance terms he was "masterful," or something.

It irritates me that these sorts of romances are still being written - the ones with manipulative, control freak, misogynist heros, and the women who for some reason idolize these very traits. But someone must like them.

Obviously this book was written for people different from me.

The Wolf of Winter by Paula Volsky

2006-07-09T01:29:00.001-07:00

Um. Fantasy Russia, with necromancy.

I had trouble sympathizing with the main character for being imprisoned in a library. I mean, I'd like to live there. Regular meals, routine, infinite quantities of books, tutors to help you study anything and everything, impassioned debates about footnoting. . . and benign necromancy in the cellar. Paradise! So it was hard to sympathise with Sharri's dislike.

Did the practice of necromancy invariably destroy a person's moral sense? Volsky didn't seem to have made up her mind. Villan Varis had the excuse of an unfortunate background, that Sharri thought had ruined him. . . But Sharri did not, and she felt the lure of necromancy, and tortured a spirit without caring. And even Varis thought that he would once have felt conscience-stricken by what he did, suggesting that the necromancy, or the drugs, had changed him. Yet the Librarian conclave didn't seem to have any such problem.

Oh well.

The Phisiognomy by Jeffrey Ford

2006-07-09T01:28:00.001-07:00

Very, very weird. I disliked Cley so much it was hard to believe in his redemption, but he was interesting to read about, sort of like the pleasure one might take in seeing a bug disected.

Odd how ideas keep cropping up, once you've noticed them. The memory building, for example. I came across the idea first in Wolfe's Soldier books; it was a greek temple of memory then, very appropriate. Then the memory house in Little, Big, and then here an entire memory city made flesh. I'd like to construct my own memory building. What would it be? Memory cottage? Appartment or condo? An entire memory library?

Queen's Play by Dorothy Dunnett

2006-07-09T01:25:00.001-07:00

Sequel to Game of Kings, and I haven't read the other 3.

Lymond, Lymond, Francis Crawford of Lymond... Eh.

Compelling read for the political machinations, even if I don't quite believe in the protagonist. It's the superhero aspect I can't identify with. Brilliant fencer, wrestler, best musician ever heard, linguist, lover, leader, strategist, charismatic, gorgeous... It's all a bit much, understand? In the first novel there was enough of a temper of error and self-doubt, and his best-at-everythingness wasn't quite so much on stage.

And yet I suppose there were such people. The proverbial renaissance man: Da Vinci, Francis Bacon, and Henry VIII was a musician and athlete, before he went to fat, it's said (or flattered), and there were others... I suppose someone has to be the best, though usually it isn't the same person being the best at everything.

I have the same problem with the Miles Vorkosigan books. He's a bit much. I think it's the charisma again. I suppose that sort of overwhelming personal magnetism doesn't penetrate the book-brain barrier for me very well.

Maybe it's inadequacy: I'm not charismatic, brilliant, or good at most things, so reading about someone who is makes me feel deficient. I can't relate.

The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett

2006-07-09T01:23:00.001-07:00

What a hard read, until I got used to it. Very difficult on the sentence and paragraph level to figure out what was going on. Not just her prose, though that was convoluted enough, or the way her characters talked in poetry and allusions I was mostly unfamiliar with. But she showed everything, didn't tell, just gave their words and looks and none of the thought behind it. And they all spoke in abreviated form, allusions and hints and never half saying what they meant (except, perhaps, Will Scott). It's a wonder any in the story understood the conversations they found themselves taking part in; in real life they'd have been more bewildered than I, without lesiure and pages to refer back to. A very mind-consuming read.

I know I started this before, didn't think I'd gotten very far. Now I'm not sure. I kept being teased by hints of familiarity, as if I'd read it all before, but then I never knew what was coming.

Should I read the others in the series? I've no great desire to do so, somehow. Lymond tortured, outlawed, ambiguous and unpredictable, hiding from unknown crimes or errors: that was interesting, worth disentangling to find out about. Lymond reputation restored, clearly on the angel's side, in good with his family - in short, not tormented - might be less worth chasing through Dunnett''s entangled prose. But I may have a look anyhow.

Scholars and Soldiers by Mary Gentle

2006-07-09T01:22:00.001-07:00

Odd collection. Several of the stories had hidden fangs... They seemed like ordinary tales with classic life-affirming type plots, the sort of thing you might find in say MZB's Sword and Sorceress anthologies, especialy with all the strong-woman heroine types and egalitarian or matriarchal societies. But then at the end they'd turn on you, turn into something different and much nastier. The one with the woman warrior who turned on her masters to rescue the prisoners she felt sorry for, and fled with them... And then turned again, and killed the man she'd rescued. Several of them had endings like that.. Perfectly conventional stories, if only they'd stopped a little sooner...

Only problem was, after the first couple I started to expect that, which lessened the impact.

Past the Size of Dreaming, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

2006-07-09T01:21:00.001-07:00

I first read this, and wrote about it, sometime in late 2001.

This book is an urban fantasy, I guess, though mostly rural. The magic systems were rather incoherent: demons, talking sidewalks, spirit guides, elemental magic, witches and old-fashioned cookbook magic. Oh, and the gold bands that were never really explained or served much purpose. The characters were well enough done, I guess, but I seemed to be missing context. Perhaps they appeared in Red Heart of Memories?

It was the magic that bothered me, though. Anything could happen: at any point a character could pull out a new spell or ability, turn a house into a person or a dog, change sexes, fly, whatever the plot required. As a result none of it came to matter very much, there wasn't any wonder, any sense that the magic meant anything.

I've seen the charge leveled against fantasy, that where anything can happen nothing matters (some science fiction writer, I guess?), but this was the first time I've seen it played out. I think it's more an effect of incoherency than fantasy. I mean, in a mystery the author could reveal the conspirators at any time, or cripple them, or not leave any clues, have the killer be someone she never introduced at all; anything can happen that is within the scope of the book. It matters because the writer arranges things so it seems to matter, so things flow from who the characters are rather than how the author manipulates their circumstances, so if something unusual happens, it's significant and surprising, not just 'oh. The author described something unusual.'

Fantasy works the same way, it's just that the scope of the book is different. And this one was never clearly defined; no way to know what was within the scope of the book.

I did keep reading, though. I liked the characters, especially Matt.