Yeah, yeah. I bought a copy of Twilight last night. I'm only a couple of chapters in so far so I haven't gotten to any really painful parts yet, but a note or two to begin with:

1) I am fine with the fact that the main character is attractive to the vampires. There has to be a reason for a particular character to be the lead in a particular story, so within story constraints it does make sense for her to be the Vampire Whisperer. However, it's just stupid to make such a thing about how she's never had any friends, ever, and then make her the centre of a social whirl the second she gets to the new school. I can only assume the writer wanted to avoid having to worry about too many ties to her old home--realistic human relationships are such a pain--but in that case the character should have been a bit of an outcast at the new school, too.

Or, you know, put a little effort into making friends.

2) The author note thanked her editor for helping make the book better than it was before. However, nobody seemed all that interested in narrative consistency, both for the reason given above and the business of Bella fainting in biology class when they did the blood draw. I notice she was fighting fit in the emergency room when Tyler was swathed in gory bandages after the van incident.

Okay, Ihave been skimming ahead.

3) The bit about how Edward can't read Bella's thoughts because "you don't think like everyone else" was a stroke of genius. Bella is the absolute dead norm of every dull little self-obsessed teenage girl you have ever met or been. So readers, who almost certainly think just like Bella get to feel SPESHUL, too!

4) The thing about how the vampires hunt animals. They prefer to go to places "where there is an overpopulation of predators." Um, exactly how do they figure that out in the three days before the predators disperse in search of new food? Do they hang around new housing developments encroaching on predator territory and wait for some desperate animal to come out of the woods?

An extra special stake through the heart for grizzyl killing Emmett, too.

So. Twilight.

Half the people I know on the Internets are reading this series, and I think I have to get in on the fun. The copy at my public library is checked out and I am like eightieth on the holds list, and I have technical issues with the ebook...

So it looks like I might actually purchase this sucker. Dang.

I can tell myself it is an exercise in learning how not to write a spine-chillingly creepy relationship between two young characters. This is useful because Jordy, the main character in the Kowalski story, is not supposed to be creepy about his girlfriend Vanessa. It's not a big problem in this story because she's at home and he's in Texas, so she participates mostly via telephone calls. And Jordy is too worried about, you know, people getting killed all around him to have much time for creepy thoughts.

The thing is, I'm pretty sure I can avoid creepiness without such research. Jordy is not by nature inclined to try to control Vanessa's behaviour, and she is not by nature inclined to put up with that shit.

But hell. Even the excerpts people are posting all over the Internet makes this look like a creepy, creepy book. The author has said the no-sex-no-drugs story is an attempt to represent "the good kids who play by the rules." Based on the excerpts I really wonder whether her definition of "good kids" means ill-humoured and self-centred ones like her female lead, or controlling stalkers like her male lead.

I should add here that I have never really gotten the bad-boy thing. No, really. Heathcliff gives me hives and Wuthering Heights is not romantic in that way. Yes, I know--I am all about the dirty rock stars. Thing is, my initial interest in dirty rock stars began when I fell for Bruce Springsteen, who had the dual benefits of being attractively scruffy but also, inarguably, a fundamentally decent person.

[Oh, okay. I had the misfortune of seeing the movie Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band when I was eleven or so. And yeah, the villain band (revealed at the end of the movie) were represented as Aerosmith playing "Come Together" at the height of their filthy, drugged-out period. And I immediately sat up straighter and thought, "Wait, what's this?" and promptly rooted for the Future Villain Band, who were so much cooler than the good guys. But that was an abberation. And also, you know, Aerosmith. I don't agree that the devil has all the best music--hello, U2 and the aforementioned Bruce Springsteen!--but he certainly has a lot of it!]

So my thing is, I have nothing against "good kids who play by the rules," but the the kid in the excerpts I am reading doesn't strike me as a particularly shining example of being a "good kid." (We'll let the vampire off the "good kid" hook because--vampire!) She's uncharitable, unkind, and mentally inert.

I suppose the question is, whose "rules" do the kid characters play by? By my standards a sexually active dope-smoker who is actively kind to other people is a better example of a good kid than someone who stays within all the lines prescribed by adults but resents the hell out of everyone around her. (Yeah, I know--a lot of adolescents do go through a period of generalized angst... but this kid doesn't seem to care about or be interested in anything. Almost diagnostic for pain-in-the-arse kid rather than good kid, at least in my book!)

And, in an outburst of common sense rarely seen on the Internet, the major gripe people seem to have about this book is the way it makes it okay for the girl to be controlled by the boy. A whole lot of people have addressed this much better than I can (and cleolinda's is really damned funny) but I also appreciated the Amazon citizen reviewer who remarked that she has no fear of her daughter getting mixed up with a vampire, but she doesn't want her getting into a relationship with one of the zillions of selfish controlling abusive bastards that populate the world. When you think about the messages books send to "good kids"--well, that's a real fucking doozy.

To get back to my initial point, I could say I'm reading this for the how-not-to points. That's a lie. I want to read it for the snark.

But I have a feeling some of the things I'll get out of it won't be strictly amusing...

Over the weekend I spent far too much money at the book store. I got two Miss Silver mysteries, one of the Blackbird Sisters mysteries by Nancy Martin (Nancy is a member of DorothyL, the mystery discussion list I am on, and her books are at the top of my "buy now" list partly because I enjoy them, especially the character arc, and partly because Nancy herself has gone out of her way to be friendly and encouraging to the wannabe. I should probably write something about her series one of these days.)

However, the book I was really looking for was Diana Killian's new one, Corpse Pose.

Full disclosure: Diana Killian is D.L. Browne, list owner and head moderator of the Yahoo mystery writers' group Wicked Company, of which I am also a member and junior co-moderator. I am violently prejudiced in her favour... which in terms of reviews means that if I had bought this book and hated it, I would never have breathed a word about it. Ever.

Fortunately, I loved it. And if you're a fan of amateur sleuth mysteries, especially one with a specific hobby or professional setting, I recommend this one.

Our heroine is AJ Alexander, freelance marketing consultant and bona-fide Big City Girl. Think Cosmopolitan. Think Sex and the City. Think...

...of something else entirely, because AJ has never felt less like a Fun Fearless Female in her entire life. Her ten-year marriage to her university sweetheart has just collapsed--Andy has just left her for another man, which has left AJ understandably shaken up--if she could be so fundamentally mistaken about the most important relationship in her life, and know so little about the most important person in it, what else is she clueless about?

A complicating factor is, AJ is not what you would call an untroubled person in the first place: raised by a narcissistic alcoholic actress mother and what seems like an emotionally absent (now deceased) dad, AJ loves her mother best from a distance and considers her earth-mother aunt Diantha to be her rock.

So when she gets the phone call telling her of Diantha's murder, she is understandably devastated.

Especially when it becomes clear that, as heir, AJ is a prime suspect.

And then her mother arrives to deflect the attention of the police by declaring herself a prime suspect. Mother, thinks AJ, is a drama queen even by the standards of a retired actress.

If this was all there was to the story it would be fun but forgettable. What I really liked about Corpse Pose was the dawning realization that AJ's interactions with these other characters were not going to follow the rules of sitcoms. Andy the ex did not automatically become the Gay Best Friend--AJ was really hurt and angry, and Andy was hurt and felt guilty, and the two of them need to decide whether there is going to be an ongoing relationship and what form it will take. Likewise, AJ and her mother start out sniping at each other like a comedy duo, but it doesn't take long for the reader to recognize this as protective, and eventually the fact they are forced to spend time together makes AJ realize her mother wants, in a disorganized way, to make amends. And maybe AJ wants to let her.

The victim, Diantha, was the owner of a yoga empire (well, sort of) and was the sort of person who stood on principles. Actually, according to Andy, she was the sort of person who would "burn you at the stake for your own good." AJ loved her, but not everyone else did, although even some of the people who disliked her admired her.

And maybe one or more of the people who loved her also feared or even hated her.

I concentrated on the characters in this entry because they are interesting enough to support a series, which this is going to be. The mystery part, including the investigating officer who likes AJ just fine but has no sympathy for "Snoop Sisters," works well. The reader will probably get the solution half a step before AJ, which adds to the tension. AJ does not pull and Too Stupid To Live moments and her mother turns out to be better in a crisis than I--or AJ--would have expected.

It's a very promising start to a new mystery series and I recommend it. Actually, because of my prior relationship with the author I recommend that you buy it new. But I'm sure it would be okay if you bought your copy new and then encouraged everyone you know to read it.

And I must say, if a person is going to be in a mystery-writing discussion group, it's nice to know it's run by someone whose writing I admire.

Sometimes I gloat about my new acquisition: How Can I Keep From Singing? The Ballad of Pete Seeger. It's a biography of... Pete Seeger.

I hope it's good, because if it is I can get a copy for my sister, for her birthday. If the lady at the bookstore doesn't snatch up the last copy for her dad.

Nobody could feel stabby while reading about Pete Seeger.

( Or listening to him: )

I'm reading the Anne Boleyn book and have one about Katherine of Aragon on my to-be-read pile. But I just went and requested two books about Henry V from the public library.

I blame the guy with the insults.

The Shakespearean Insulter has been around for some time, in one form or another, but it just never gets old.

Mind you, I grew up in a household where if my dad wanted us to go away and leave him alone he would tell us to avaunt and quit his sight, so maybe I'm just sentimental.

This is one of my favourites, just because Dad liked it: "Go, prick thy face, and over-red thy fear, thou lily-liver'd boy."

Apparently nobody ever told him that it's bad luck to quote Macbeth.

I also like "The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon! Where got'st thou that goose look?" I hope I'm remembering that one correctly. You'd think it would be hard to forget.

Go ahead, try it! Post your favourite insult!

On Saturday night I read a mystery called Cries and Whiskers by Clea Simon. It's the third in a series about Theda Krakow, a freelance journalist who covers the club scene in Boston, and her cat Musetta. (Musetta does not sleuth. So far, though, the two stories I've read from the series have involved cat rescues and music.)

The characters are likable, the cat is realistic, and although they are technically termed "cozy," there's nothing cutesy about them. I'd recommend them to fans of amateur sleuth mysteries who also like to feel like they're meeting interesting new people.

Sometimes readers read for idiosyncratic, stupid reasons.

I just checked my email and found a post from a mystery-related mailing list. In it the author extolled her latest book, warned us that it is super-cozy (we are in the midst of the semi-annual round of cozy-versus-hardboiled, in which the hardboiled people sneer at the cozies and I lose my temper--AMAZING AS THAT MAY SOUND TO YOU ALL!!) and suggested we check out her Web site. While there, she also suggested we check out her astonishingly beauteous great-grandchildren.

So I did.

And the great-grandchildren are, in fact, so astonishingly beauteous that I went directly to the public library site and found a book by her, which I placed on hold.

Yes, I will actually read a book by an author just because her great-grandchildren are astonishingly beauteous.

Observe for yourself!

And besides, now I know she is a truthful lady, so if she tells me the book is good I have reason to believe her...

In addition to the Anne Boleyn book I have not started yet, I got one about Catherine of Aragon out of the public library over the weekend. It was published in 1967 and is firmly in Catherine's camp, so I don't expect much sympathy for Anne. However, Catherine is an interesting character herself.

Over the weekend I watched Henry IV Part I--well done, I thought. Only I kept looking at the actor who played Thomas Percy and thinking, Damn I should know who that guy is!

And then it hit me: Richard Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances. I don't think I've ever heard him utter a complete line of dialogue before, since Hyacinth kept interrupting him. It was funny and weird to see him as a military leader!

I know I said I was all through with the Tudors, but as my last post makes clear, I seem to have lied. I'll finish The Sunne In Splendour and then it's ho for the Ives book on Anne Boleyn, which appears to be the biography of Henry VIII's second queen.

Over the weekend, however, I had two vampire novels by Barbara Hambly out of the public library. Over the past few weeks I have done considerable giggling and a little ranting about this one inept vampire novel, and in passing I commented that I really don't do vampires in the first place. Hambly's books, especially Those Who Hunt the Night (classed as young adult in my public library) were recommended to me as excellent examples of the genre. Subgenre. Whatever. I also signed out Traveling With the Dead (containing absolutely no references to Jerry Garcia) which is about the same characters (James Asher, Oxford don and former spy, his intellectual wife Lydia, and Don Simon Ysidro, 350-year-old vampire who "danced with both of Henry VIII's remarkable daughters"--a nice turn of phrase for sure.) The books take place in 1907-08.

( And my verdict is... )

So. Apparently I'm not into vampires, and apparently I know why.

Good. Now I don't have any scruples about dropping the subject and moving on to other things that interest me more. Whew!

We spoke of Tudor history last week and carmine_rose pointed out a biography that looked interesting. I got hold of it through document delivery this week, and here is a nice meaty review. Sounds like, if you're interested in Anne, this is one you have to read.

Done!

I just dropped off my last book about the Tudors. For the next little while I will stick to my own story, as well as wholesome fictional vampires. (At least until the book on Anne Boleyn arrives on interlibrary loan...) We'll see what I think of 'em.

It is damned cold out! I like having four seasons, but the thing about having seasons is, by the time one is ready to end you are eager to move on to the next one. Spring will be very welcome!

And I'm over the cold, so I'm going to get some writing done tonight. (I'm working on the assumption that the SMU thing is for SMU folks, which is usually safe.) So let's see if I can get my characters to confront one more suspect, and if I really get moving I may even get my protagonist shot tonight.

(But I know he'll be fine, so that won't keep me up tonight...)

Courtesy of arcaedia:

MatchIt for Pratchett, a fundraiser for Alzheimer's research in honour of Terry Pratchett, who was diagnosed with the disease late last year.

A worthy cause, for sure.

And one of the ways to help is to buy one of these t-shirts. Which, you know, you might need anyway.

...I have only just now figured out there may be a connection between my recent reading material and the fact that when I wake up at night lately I feel a little freaked out and have some trouble getting back to sleep. I know I'm waking up partly because of the cold (which is pretty much gone now, thanks) and partly because of Bojo waking up and wandering around, but I definitely have this problem with anxious "monkey thoughts" about the conference.

Well, it occurred to me yesterday afternoon that it's also possible that all the Wives-of-Henry-VIII stuff, what with the beheading and the disembowelling and all that kind of good stuff, is not the most restful material to read of an evening.

So I think I'll stick to nice fictitious murder mysteries, and possibly try out those Barbara Hambly vampire stories as well.

( But, since it's broad daylight now, about those Tudors... )

Again, I feel sorry for Catherine, and certainly for Dereham who received the full sentence for treason. Culpepper? Eh. And Lady Rochfort? Again--WTF? I mean, really.

As for Jean Plaidy, whose novels started this entry, I might check out a few more of her books. Because if nothing else, she could certainly create an atmosphere of dread.

And here I am back at the library, returning three of the holds I picked up yesterday. Coach Girl's party was postponed due to the weather, but today is just beautiful. Snowy, but lovely.

I actually read the three books I just returned--one was large print and a very cursory fictionalized overview of the life of Catherine Howard. One was a highly sentimenal but still pretty gripping fictionlization of the lives of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard--too much to stuff into one book, really, except that in many ways the main character was Henry, who begins the book as a monster and gets progressively more monstrous as the story goes on. (Murder Most Royal, by Jean Plaidy. 1949, I think.)

The last was a biography of Catherine H, published in 1961. They say no man is a hero to his valet. Well, the poor queen was certainly no heroine to her biographer, whose kindest term for her seems to be "imbecile." Okay, she was by no means wise, but on consideration I object to the biographer's scornful comment that, unlike Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, nobody spoke up for Catherine, which tells us something about her qualities. There must have been a reason she inspired no loyalty.

Because naturally the fact that, after Katherine and Anne, everybody realized exactly what Henry was capable of, could not have been a factor in courtiers' efforts to distance themselves from the disgraced Queen. No, no, it must have been her fault nobody rushed to stick their heads into the same noose.

From a 21st century perspective it was amazing to me that the great families remained eager to throw their daughters to the monarch, but it does appear that after Catherine Howard's fall, when Henry made it a crime to present the king with a less-than-maidenly bride, the families were a bit less eager. I guess it's one thing for your daughter to get her head lopped off, but quite another to suffer the same fate yourself. It was indeed likely then to die in a fall while social climbing.

Next time I read online discussions of how dissolute society is now...

Right. On to the barn...

So. I currently have two library books checked out: Those Who Hunt the Night and Traveling With the Dead by Barbara Hambly (and no, that second one has nothing to do with San Francisco rock bands!) If I find myself unmoved by either of them we can conclude for sure that vampires are Not My Thing.

I also have four items in on hold, three about Catherine Howard, the other one of Henry VIII's wives he had beheaded. And one that's been described as sort of Real Person Fanfic about Richard III and the author's idea of who the mother of his illegitimate children was. I wasn't going to check that one out because after my experience with The Other Boleyn Girl (and Mary actually existed!) I figured my patience for medieval Mary Sues might be wearing thin. But hell. If I can't be bitchy on cold meds, when can I be bitchy?

When I feel like myself again I'll get back to writing about present-day non-vampires, but it's anybody's guess what influences will reach out from this stuff to my own...

Well, one thing.

With the fire of a thousand very tiny suns.

But I do sort of hate when I'm checking the CD included with a book I've added to the allied health collection, and the CD envelope includes documentation that has to be read before you break the seal of the envelope, on pain of not being able to return the book and CD.

And the documentation is sealed up behind the CD so you can't see it until you break the seal and remove the CD!

Not that I'd be returning the book anyway (we don't always add the CDs to the collection but that's a separate issue.) But. It's kind of a stupid way to package them.

After I left the barn yesterday I stopped at Chapters (big box bookstore) to see if they had Horse & Rider UK. They did, there is a jumping lesson article featuring a piebald cob named Moo who could not look more like my mental image of the horse in National Velvet if he tried, and in the help! letters there is a page-long reply to someone whose mare keeps running over her when she's being led. I am considering photocopying it and tacking it to the black mare's stall door. Signed, of course--if I do anything I'm not going to be sneaky about it.

And then I went over to look at fiction.

And found a trade paperback copy of The Sunne In Splendour.

And. Um. I bought it. Because I already know I don't want to give the library copy back, and I do this Richard III thing every couple of years regularly.

I know. * sigh *

I picked this up yesterday and started reading it last night. I've got to stop myself from skipping around in it to find the fictional take on incidents that interested me from history and just read it through, but so far it's quite absorbing.

The title, incidentally, refers to Edward IV, the "Sun of York," which is interesting in a novel about the life of Richard. But it makes sense, given that as far as I can tell the author is arguing that Richard was a good man but not a great one. For that value of "great" that might be painful and even dangerous to try to live with. Her portrait of Richard is of a man pretty much created by God or nature to be someone's utterly reliable strong right hand, and when he's let down by or otherwise loses his leader, he's not as able to cope. I'm putting this badly--he's an able general, for instance, but even in the early parts I'm reading now he's not at all suited to be a king, and he seems to know it.

As my brother remarked of Gimme Shelter, this shit is not going to end well. And there's the bad thing about reading historical fiction based on real people. No matter how well-prepared you are for betrayal and death and stuff, it's still hard to read about.

I've also been reading my history of the wives of Henry VIII today, by Antonia Fraser. Incidentally, when Henry was at his most deeply paranoid, he executed George's of Clarence's nearly-seventy-year-old daughter, among other women, not to mention children. I can only assume this activity is not considered as shocking as the deaths of "the little princes" because we already consider Henry a monster.

Fraser refers to Margaret as the daughter of "the murdered Duke of Clarence." Yes, poor innocent George, whose only fault was rising in armed insurrection against his brother the King. Twice.

Imagine how the Tudors would have dealt with the like of that.

And on that note, I'm out of time...

I just renewed Richard III for another week and am wrestling with myself over whether I should order the whole Henry VI cycle from this series. Reviews I've dug up have generally indicated that this version of Richard III is actually the weak link in the Jane Howell-directed War of the Roses cycle, which makes me gape in wonder at the idea of how great the Henry plays must be. I mean!

Also, I put The Sunne In Splendour on hold at the public library and it's in, so I'll pick that up tonight or tomorrow. Reviews I've read indicate that it treats Richard as a good but flawed man, which should make him eminently readable. I mean, I'm sympathetic and everything, but I draw the line at perfect heroes. I mean, it occurred to me this morning that Johnny Cash (a good man who tried hard to be a good man) was enormously flawed himself. And if Johnny can be a flawed hero...

I may have more to say on this front with reference to inept vampire fiction, but that's enough for now.