Books

I've been reading Osip Senkovsky's "The fantastic journeys of Baron Brambeus" all month (see here and here), and I have to admit that since that last enthusiastic report it's been something of a slog. The problem is that in the second section he goes to Siberia, joins a scientific expedition to the mouth of the Lena, and winds up exploring the nearby Медвежий остров [Medvezhii ostrov], 'Bear Island,' which is presumably invented—it certainly has nothing to do with the Norwegian Bear Island, and probably nothing to do with the Medvezhyi Islands, which are much further east. There he and his companion find a cave with what appears to be a long hieroglyphic inscription covering all four walls; fired with enthusiasm, they spend a week laboriously translating it using the "Champollion method": "every hieroglyph is either a letter, or a metaphorical figure, or neither a letter nor a figure but a simple flourish of the handwriting" [всякий иероглиф есть или буква, или метафорическая фигура, или ни фигура, ни буква, а простое украшение почерка]. So far, so funny, but the problem is that Senkovsky then provides the complete "translation," a very long novella about the last days before the meteor strike that caused the Flood and ended the antediluvian civilization from which hieroglyphics were passed down to the Egyptians, featuring a tiresome account of a jealous husband and his flirtatious, society-loving wife whose arguments and reconciliations are occasionally interrupted by catastrophic events and the comic relief of the astronomer Shimshik, who keeps running in to bore everyone with disquisitions on how this comet proves that he is right and his archrival is wrong. (The account is purportedly written by the husband with his last energy as he starves to death after eating his wife; the line Я съел кокетку! "I ate the coquette!" didn't redeem the story, but it did make me laugh.) But now that section is over, the baron has gone to Sicily to view Etna, and the book is back on track, a souffl? again rather than a fruitcake, and I'd like to share a passage in which the baron is trying to convince the lovely Giulietta, whose current boyfriend is a Swede from Finland, that she shouldn't be so impressed with him (Russian below the cut):"But surely at least you'll agree," she went on, "that the Swedish language is very nice and pleasant to listen to?" "And do you, signora, believe," I answered heatedly, "that there is such a thing as the Swedish language? The Swedes are exceedingly proud, and they're afraid that Europeans will call them Finns, so they employ every means to convince other peoples that they are of a completely different origin and even have their own special language. But I, having lived a long time in Petersburg, have satisfied myself that the so-called Swedish language is nothing but a hoax. When foreigners are around, Swedes deliberately pronounce random sounds in a sing-song fashion, accompanying them with gestures, to make people think that they are conversing among themselves in their native tongue, and that their language is sweet and melodious; but after babbling a while in that way, they are forced to leave you, go over by the window, and explain in Finnish whatever they wanted to tell each other.Giulietta is convin

Title: Renfred's Masquerade Author: Hayden Thorne Publisher: Queerteen Press (imprint of JMS Books) Series: None Other Reviews for This Author: A crap ton, and rightly so! Hayden Thorne is a dear friend and will therefore not be getting officially "rated" in this review. That's partially because I love all of her books to bits, and partially because my reviews have bias, especially now that I've gone long past casual acquaintanceship stage with her. That being said: read this damn book. Seriously. You shouldn't even bother reading this review - just go out and buy or borrow the book, because it's wonderful and one of the best examples of an amazing writer of LGBTQ genre fiction that should be getting a bigger marketing push at a big publisher somewhere. Renfred's Masquerade is part fable, part fantasy, and part history. It's Thorne's most personal book to-date and has a sense of timeless storytelling about it that will make it perfect for readers across a broad range of genres and ages. Renfred's Masquerade is a fairy tale. Nicola Gregori's father is a craftsman, a maker of clocks that astound and amaze with their gothic brilliance. They are works of art as much as they are functioning timepieces. Nicola has always wanted to follow in his father's footsteps in making such brilliant things. Nicola's father has other desires for his son. He sends Nicola off to a boarding school to learn about things that are non-magical and non-creative; the hope that practicality will prevent Nicola from attempting to live the life of a starving artist. Going away to school doesn't help Nicola. His love of his father's artistry doesn't diminish. Home feels a million miles away, a paradise, as Nicola gets teased for his right leg. It was deformed due to infantile paralysis, a constant reminder that Nicola is different from the privileged boys around him at school. To go back to Papa and the clocks - that is what Nicola desires, just as he desires the ability to craft them. Tragedy doesn't take this childish longing into account, though, as Nicola eventually loses his father and finds himself alone in the world. A friend of Nicola's father takes him on and boats him away to an islet of deserted mansions and nightly masquerade balls filled with noise and light, a place of ghosts that cannot be shaken. Gustav Renfred, the family friend, lives on the island with his twin, the lady Costanza. The Renfred twins find Nicola a welcome addition to their spectral island, even as he begins to explore the nightly masquerades, uncovering a boy that attends the balls and has connections to the Renfred's. Nicola befriends this boy, Davide, and slowly becomes aware of the reasons behind Davide's presence at the masquerades - and why Davide can never leave them. A fairytale that blends the light and the dark with an Italian twist, Renfred's Masquerade is a tender story about love and recovery that goes far beyond a simple boy to boy romance. I loved everything about this book - Hayden Thorne has outdone herself with Renfred's Masquerade. Her books show a consistent growth in authorial voice and writing ability, and this piece is probably struck the strongest in terms of emotional connectivity with me as a reader and as a writer. Thorne's writing has always taken great inspiration from fairy tales, whether they are the ones of a dark, sadistic medieval Europe or the comic book stories that have grown popular in the past century. Each of her books has had a level of timelessness to it - even the contemporary stories have that feeling, which is something very special - and that timelessness also seems to effect how well I respond to the book. While I've loved all of her books, Renfred's Masquerade just has this particularly astounding tone to it that feels like it could work for any age of reader. There's a lightness to the story that prevents it from being bogged down with angst or extraneous characters, bu

Today is another day of the Indie/New Adult feature where I provide you with mini-reviews from the many (mostly New Adult) books I've read lately. I had a ton of books get a 4 star rating from me and this is the 3rd day I'm featuring those. Check my previous posts for the other 4 star books and my 5 star favorites that posted on Monday. Waiting for You by Shey Stahl Add to Goodreads This book started out for me as a raving, sparkling 5 stars. I absolutely loved Bailey and the fact that she wanted to escape her "perfect" life. She chooses to do this by jumping in the car with Dylan, the local bad boy, and heading off to who-knows-where. I am a sucker for road trip books and this one had so many amazing parts. Dylan started out as the perfect bad-boy character and I actually liked Bailey a lot because she showed how independent and rule-breaking she could be. Then, about 2/3rds through the book it took some strange turns. I won't say what happened but I will say that Dylan did something to Bailey that raised some reg flags for me. I couldn't brush off that uneasy feeling and the book never quiet grabbed me again after that. Either way, this may not be an issue many people find in this story. Maybe it just hit a sore spot for me, but I'd still recommend people give this one a try. The Future of Our Past by Kahlen Aymes Add to Goodreads I'm a sucker for books that involve teenagers who have been friends forever and question their relationship. I think many girls want to have that male best friend that we adore, and then we find out that maybe that's who we are meant to be with. In this book, Julia and Ryan are at that moment and neither know what to do. Once together, they deal with typical relationship issues, like distance, and it was good to see how they worked through those problems. By the end, the drama was a bit more boring and I hated that it ended on a huge cliffhanger. I still plan to read the next book in the series soon to see what happens. Falling Into You by Jasinda Wilder Add to Goodreads I know so many people who just looooved this book. I enjoyed it a lot but it didn't blow me away like I expected. I will say though, the first part of this story had me in tears. It was the saddest thing ever! As with many titles I've read, the beginning was fabulous. I got the emotional connection with the characters after the accident and Nell and Colton were believable and obviously had a lot of chemistry. Towards the end I just wasn't into the story as much. I started skipping a few parts and didn't get the drama going on. But again, that beginning was insanely good and I do plan to read more from this author. Fire Always Burns by Krista Lakes Add to Goodreads This is a book you may not have heard of before but it's definitely worth the read. In this story we meet Holly, a young girl who lost her scholarship after too many late nights. This is something we rarely see in NA books (a person who fails at college and ends up back home in their small town), but it happens every day! She has best friends still in the town and one of them is Luke, a guy who is dealing with his parent's divorce and his little brother having to move. Then we have Andrew, a guy forced to take care of his mother after his father passed away. They all felt so stuck. I totally got these situations. They were similar scenarios but so relateable. Some parts I didn't fully understand (like how Andrew's mother was a nurse, but she was bats*it crazy sometimes), but I still enjoyed the overall story in this book. Take This Regret by A.L. Jackson Add to Goodreads I adored this story. Christian abandons his girlfriend, Elizabeth, after finding out she's pregnant. Now he tries to come back and connect with her and his child. I was frustrated at Christian at times because he let his families control go so far, but I felt that once he came back he really did want to try to m

I’m 26-years-old, not even close to old enough to remember Richard Nixon’s presidency and the Watergate scandal. But ever since I knew I wanted to be a journalist, I’ve meant to read All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein: In the most devastating political detective story of the century, two Washington Post reporters, whose brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation smashed the Watergate scandal wide open, tell the behind-the-scenes drama the way it really happened. Beginning with the story of a simple burglary at Democratic headquarters and then continuing with headline after headline, Bernstein and Woodward kept the tale of conspiracy and the trail of dirty tricks coming — delivering the stunning revelations and pieces in the Watergate puzzle that brought about Nixon’s scandalous downfall. Their explosive reports won a Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post and toppled the President. This is the book that changed America. I have a serious weakness for books about the history of journalism or books that show how the process of journalism works. Watergate is one of those huge moments in the history of my profession, a time when the full power and importance of the press was made totally obvious. If it weren’t for the work of Woodward, Bernstein, and other journalists at major newspapers and magazines around the country, Nixon and his closest aides would have gotten away with a massive political conspiracy. It’s awesome they were caught! By reporters! As you probably can’t tell, this isn’t a proper review because I couldn’t honestly tell readers at large (or even a reader individually) whether or not I think this would be a good book for them to read. It’s just so very particular and so tied into my interests as a journalist and a political junkie that I can’t really think about it as “literature” in the same way I can about other works of nonfiction that I’ve read. Part of what I loved about this book was how “inside baseball” the whole thing was about the process of journalism. Every chapter details how Woodward and Bernstein went about gathering information or putting together key puzzle pieces in the process of uncovering the Watergate scandal. Given that the book was originally written in 1974, almost before the full extent of Watergate was revealed, there are a lot of vague sources and veiled references to who each of the journalist talked with to confirm key details. That was  fascinating to me because showed how committed both Woodward and Bernstein were to protecting their sources (an important value for a journalist). It was also cool to really see how the process of old-school reporting works. Today we rely so heavily on the Internet for information, it’s easy to be lazy about looking up things as basic as a phone number, address or job title. But when the Washington Post reporters were trying to track down a lead, they often had nothing but the phone book and a long afternoon to try and get what they needed. I admired Woodward and Bernstein’s tenacity and willingness to just put in the amount of time it takes to do a big story like this, particularly the time it takes to let a story develop and see how the pieces will fit together. I think it’s easy to get down on journalism today, especially if you just look at what is happening online or on cable news (which… don’t even get me started). If All the President’s Men did one thing for me, it was remind me how much the big picture, investigative, combative but factual type of reporting matters. I love my job as a community journalist, and I know for a fact that I don’t have the personality to be the next Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein. But someone has to do good journalism like this ethically and effectively to keep people in power honest. When the good stuff happens, it matters. And now I’l

Although it might not feel like it, spring is here. One of my favorite springtime stories to share is Fran’s Flower. In this story, a little girl finds a plant and decides she wants to make it grow. Unfortunately, she decides it needs food and feeds it a piece of cheeseburger, some spaghetti, ice cream and even a chocolate chip cookie. Of course, this doesn’t help the plant grow and fed up with the flower she throws it out the door. Once outside, the flower gets all the things it needs, and it grows! The colorful illustrations add to the fun. Before you start planting, share this one along with The Carrot Seed by Krauss. Posted by: Liz

… Another plagiarism scandal hits poetry community | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

… Talking to editors about the "Vigilante Copy Editor" | MobyLives. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

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Hisham Matar’s second novel (following his much-lauded, substantially-awarded debut, In the Country of Men) reads like a fast-moving dream, events jarringly, jaggedly forced together, and yet somehow managing to maintain a clear, thoughtful narrative. Narrator Steve West’s methodically-paced, calmly-controlled voice imbues Matar’s haunting story with dignity and gravitas. Disappearance, absence, displacement loom large throughout Nuri’s life. Even as a young boy, what Nuri knows of his Cairo home is already a compromised existence-in-exile as a result of his father’s political past. When his mother dies, his father remarries a vibrant young woman named Mona whom the 12-year-old Nuri claims as his own upon first sight. Sent away to an exclusive English boarding school, Nuri is separated from all that is familiar, including the devoted servant girl who helped raise him. And then his father disappears, in 1972 when Nuri is just 14. That loss becomes the single defining event of Nuri’s life; in the desperate, unending search to discover what happened, both Nuri and Mona learn as many truths about themselves, and each other, as about the distant, enigmatic man who once held them tenuously together. The missing parent looms large in both of Matar’s titles, telling proof that he writes what he knows: Matar lost his own father, a Libyan dissident, to a politically motivated kidnapping in 1990; decades later, the elder Matar remains missing. In a January 2010 article for the UK’s Guardian, Matar wrote about learning that his father was seen “‘[f]rail, but well’” in 2002 in a secret prison, although the news took eight years to reach the surviving family: ” … weeks from finishing that novel [Anatomy], I learn that my father, who disappeared 20 years ago, might be alive … Uncanny how reality presses against that precious quiet place of dreaming. As if life is jealous of fiction.” Fictional as Anatomy claims to be, echoing his literary stand-in Nuri, Matar holds on to his father’s coat waiting for his someday-return. “Maybe it still fits him,” he muses. Readers: Adult Published: 2011 Filed under: ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, Arab, British, Egyptian, European, Middle Eastern Tagged: Anatomy of a Disappearance, BookDragon, Coming-of-age, Death, Family, Father/son relationship, Hisham Matar, Kidnapping, Parent/child relationship, Politics, Steve West

One of the qualities of liberty is that, as long as it is being striven after, it goes on expanding. Therefore, the man who stands in the midst of the struggle and says, 'I have it,' merely shows by doing so that he has just lost it. — Henrik Ibsen, who died on this date in 1906