Book Blog Hop IV

Once again it's time for the weekly Blog Hop hosted by Crazy for Books.  So this week's question is who is your favorite new-to-you author of the year?

I wish I had an answer that didn't involve an author I feel like I'm constantly talking about here but it does.  I don't know how I missed him before but Christopher Moore is my newest favorite author.  A friend hounded me for the longest time to read Lamb and once I finally go around to it I understood why.  Since that point earlier in the year I've read 5 more of his books.  I've only gotten around to posting about one of the books, Coyote Blue, but more are certain to follow.  I'm trying to take a break from Moore for awhile but I'm sure I'll be drawn back soon.

Edit: I didn't notice until Bookangel pointed it out but I didn't describe Moore's work at all.  His books can be categorized as satirical, absurdest, humor and literary.  Lamb's full title is Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal.  He has another work, Fool, which is King Lear told from the Fool's point of view. 

Big Wide World of Vice: You knew you shouldn't...but...you loved it. And now...you feel terrible

In order to give you a break from reading my posts about Strange & Norrell and to give my shoulder a break from carrying it around, I picked up a funny and quick re-read from my shelf.  I also finally got my copy of What's My Name, Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the United States for my book club so I will most likely read that book as well before I finish up with S&N.  I like being able to break up S&N, both reading and writing about it.

The title quote is the basic working definition Sagal uses to determine vice in The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them).  Now this isn't actually a how-to book of vice.  I'm pretty sure I found it on one of the humor tables at the bookstore.  The title caught my eye and the fact that it is written by Peter Sagal of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me* made me pick it up.  It's what you expect from the host of WWDTM: ridiculous and fairly pretentious.  I mean this as the highest compliment because pretentious comments lose their power when used to describe things like penis pumps.  Here are the opening lines to the chapter "Swinging or Dinner Parties Gone Horribly Wrong":

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a couple at a swingers club announce that they are there merely to observe, and not actually to swing, everybody loses interest in that couple pretty quickly. (19)

I was trying to come up with a good way to describe this book but I've been having trouble coming up with a good way to really get the story and humor to come through.  So I figure I'll just wriggle out of doing any work myself and give you a quote from each of the chapters.  I'd say I'm sneaky like that but I obviously just told you of my plans. Watch me do the quote thing anyway.

"Eating or Sodom's Restaurant":

Many restaurants offer information on where the various ingredients are raised or farmed, so we can be certain, as we dig into our pork tenderloin with the demi-apricot glace, that the meat comes from an animal whose throat was cut by someone it knew and trusted.  There are those who say the ironic betrayal adds piquancy to the flesh. (51-52)

"Strip Clubs or Sure, They Like You, Really":

The professors have tremendous respect for the dancers, who, they told me, were doing their best to maximize their economic status and take control over their financial/sociocultural destinies. "McDonald's, now that's a degrading job". (84)

 "Lying or This Chapter Will Change Your Life and Make You Millions!":

I began researching the play [Denial] primarily because I was interested in exploring why Holocaust deniers are so effective in achieving their goal -- which is annoying Jews. (114)

"Gambling or Dice, Cards, Wheels, and Other Lethal Weapons":

[Las Vegas] seemed like the veritable neon level of hell, Virgil's City of Dis with better lighting.(133)

"Consumption or How To Keep Up With the Joneses When the Joneses Are Insane":

...Commodore Green also owned what may have been the world's only diamond-encrusted chamber pot, which, in re his innate attitude toward the nature and source of his wealth, would send any Freudian into fits of ecstasy. (161)

 "Pornography or You Can Look, But You Can't Admit It":

But it's the early stuff, the chiaroscuro photos of hard-core sex from the 1910s and earlier, that really arrest attention.  They look so old that you surmise the models were held still by iron apparatuses holding their heads, like Abraham Lincoln being rotogravured by Mathew Brady. (In this context, even "rotogravured" sounds dirty.) (192-193)

Now to actually give my two cents on the book: you won't actually learn much from it but it is funny and you can feel slightly pretentious while reading it.  And if you read it in public you get lots of interesting looks, a few nods of approval and some stifled giggles. 

*See the article at Stuff White People Like: Public Radio

Title quote from page 15

Sagal, Peter.  The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them).  HarperCollins, New York.  2007.

"I am sure you are a very different sort of magician from Mr Norrell," [Stephen] said. "I hope I am," said Mr Segundus, seriously.

--Spoiler warning!  This post is going to be full of lots of details of the book, up to the point I've read anyway.  So if you haven't read the book yet and/or don't want to read any spoilers, you may as well skip this post and go do something else with yourself for awhile.  I'll catch you next post. --

Do you ever find yourself surprised by how much you like a character?  You're reading along and you see a character appear time and time again.  They aren't the main character but they are a major supporting character.  You don't really think too much of them though.  You like them well enough but you don't really think about them and the BAM the story takes a turn and that character is gone.  All of a sudden you realize how upset you are that the character is gone and much you looked forward to them showing up in a scene, adding their two cents.  Not only are you caught off guard by their disappearance but you suddenly realize how much you hate the character that caused your secret-favorite character to go away.

Apparently my favorite character has been Arabella Strange.  She snuck up on me.  We are first introduced to her through Jonathan Strange's description, though his initial description proves to be false rather quickly.  He thinks "sometimes it seemed as if she had fallen in love with him for the sole purpose of quarreling with him" (244) and then he lists all of the things he anticipates she will argue about.  He even imagines entire arguments she's going to draw him into.  This gives an impression that she's a nag but even in his arguments a very loving nag.  But still, a nag.  Luckily the narrator jumps in and explains that his love for Arabella has "produced a most inexact portrait of her," (254) and when she does appear on the scene she is actually wonderful.  She's kind and she genuinely loves Strange, which in and of itself is a nice thing to see for characters in this time.

I liked all the scenes with Arabella but I guess I never really thought about her too much.  But then she was taken away by the jerk-face (I become a 4 year old when upset) with the thistle-down hair to be another toy in his Lost-Hope balls.  But unlike Lady Pole and Stephen, who gets to leave Faerie land every day, Arabella "dies" in the human world and is a permanently a prisoner.  So at first I was just mad at the this thistle-down hair man because obviously he is the one who actually took Arabella. But getting mad at him for acting selfishly is silly.  I may as well get mad at a zombie for eating brains; it's just in it's nature and it's your fault if you get in the way.  So who is culpable?  Who's fault is it?  Then Lady Pole came through and shed the light when she tried to shoot Norrell.

Up until this point I liked Norrell.  Not in a seems-like-a-fun-guy-we-should-hang-out kind of way, but in the fact that he's an interesting character while boring and annoying the other characters is pretty great.  But he brought the thistle-down hair man to their world to wreak havoc and when he heard that Lady Pole was driven mad by Arabella's "death" he knows what's actually happened but he doesn't come forward.  He's a coward.  I'm fine with annoying, overly-cautious, boring characters but this guy is the worst kind of coward and I want him taken down. 

Strange & Norrell is only getting more interesting and now I can't wait to see what happens next.  I hope it involves having Arabelle and Norrell changing places or at least just bring Arabella back. 

Title quote from pages 667-668

Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, London. 2004.

Fellow Book Bloggers

As many of you may know, I take part in the weekly blog hop hosted by Crazy for Books.  It's a great way to find other book bloggers and introduce my blog to a wider audience.  Joanne over at Booklover Book Review takes the hop an extra step and includes links to some new blogs that caught her eye.  I think this is a great idea, and not just because she mentioned by blog (although it certainly helped. Thanks for the shout out!).  So here are a couple of the blogs I enjoy and you should check out

What You Read - This was one of the first book blogs I started reading when I began blogging not so long ago. I not only enjoy his posts about specific books but he also has a lot of entertaining book related posts, such as all of the random barking dogs that show up in literature or his book buying obsession.  Check out To Watch or Not To Watch: A Reader's Dilemma

Dead White Guys: An Irreverent Guide to Classical Literature - Initially it was the name and the promise that this blog was not going to be filled with chick lit and YA stories that seemingly make up the majority of book blogs.  Her tone and humor are what keep me coming back to her blog; it's never pretentious and it's usually sarcastic.  Plus her rating system is is # stars out of your mom.  What's not to love there?  Check out her post What is a Classic? which gives you a good taste of the blog's content and tone and includes an Eddie Izzard clip.  Double win

The Raven Paradox - The internet loves lists.  Check out the top stories on Digg and you'll see lots of countdowns.  I also love lists and this blog provides.  The last countdown was was top 10 twentieth century novels and he's currently has a new list of the top 10 twentieth century non-fiction books.  Classic works and some new finds.  Check out his post on Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels. 

And one non-book blog Hyperbole and A Half.  I found this blog a couple months ago and read all 2 years of posts back in about a month.  There are a lot of posts about the author's childhood, which is far more interesting than anything my childhood included.  It's hard to say what the blog is about overall since it doesn't really have a theme.  It's just Allie Brosh's thoughts, drawings, whathave you.  I find myself laughing out loud (literally, not in the lol internet way) while reading her stuff.  If she ever writes a book I'll definitely post about it on my blog.  Sneaky Hate Spiral is one of my favorite posts, even if I end up with La Bamba stuck in my head after reading it.

Blog Hop III

I was away last weekend and couldn't partake in the previous blog hop, so I'm happy to get a chance this week.

This week's Blog Hop question, as determined by Crazy-For-Books.com is "Tell us about the book you're currently reading"

For those of you that follow me, or else just glanced at my recent posts, you can see I'm primarily reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.  I'd seen the book in book stores and on my friends' shelves for awhile, but I didn't actually know much about it when I picked it up from the bookstore.  Really the only thing I knew was the cover looked familiar and it was on the bargain table, my favorite table at any bookstore.  I'm about half way through it and loving it!

Because Strange & Norrell is long and heavy, I've so far taken one break and re-read the play The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged) by the Reduced Shakespeare Company which I can't recommend highly enough.  I'm on my second copy after losing my first one during one of my many moves.  I decided I couldn't go much longer without reading it again so I bought a new copy as soon as I found it. 

I'm going to be taking a second break from Strange & Norrell so I can pick up the book I'm supposed to be reading for my book club What's My Name, Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the United States by Dave Zirin.  I haven't found it in any bookstores yet but I'll be ordering a copy soon.

I believe Mr Strange will do very well in the war, sir. He has already out-manoeuvred you.

After a brief detour into the world of Shakespeare on speed, I'm back to the magical history of Strange and Norrell.  I spent last weekend at the shore and perhaps Strange & Norrell isn't the typical beach read, but as I literally read it on a beach, it's getting thrown in that category.  Besides my beach trips mostly consist of practically bathing in 70+SPF sunscreen and hiding in any bit of shade I can find, so it almost makes sense to read about an English setting instead of some light read where people frolic merrily in the sun. (Do books like that exist?  I'm sure they do but now that I've typed it I can't actually think of any.  Ah well.) 

Anyway, I'm more than half way through Volume II (page 497) in which we are (finally) introduced to Jonathan Strange.  This isn't a criticism of the pacing of the book; there is a lot of book to get through.  But before this new volume we spent a long time with Norrell with no reprieve.  Strange is a breath of fresh air.  As the book cover describes "Young, handsome and daring, Strange is the very antithesis of Norrell," but it's not the fact that he is bizarro Norrell that makes him so interesting.  It's the fact that, as a fellow magician, he doesn't defer and give in to Norrell about everything.  The title quote in particular is from a scene that displays Strange's abilities to, as Lascelles says, out-maneuver Norrell.  Norrell has been hiding books from Strange from the moment they met and Norrell only agrees to convince Strange to help aid the war effort in Portugal because it means Strange won't be around to bid on a rare book collection that will recently become available.  So before Strange leaves he asks Norrell if he can borrow a number of books and, as dictated by etiquette, Norrell is forced to comply even though it means his books will be subject to all sorts of perils such as torn pages and damaged covers.  There is a part of me that understands Norrell's fear of damaged books but on the other hand, shut up Norrell. 

As I mentioned, Strange goes to Portugal to help with the English cause in the war against the French.  Look at that, some action!  And a magician that does magic.  He really is bizarro Norrell.  To be honest, I did enjoy watching Norrell make excuses and disappoint people when he would never perform magic and be a general bore.  He may be a sourpuss but he doesn't give into the wills of other people, much to Drawlight and Lascelles chagrin.  But it is nice to see a character who is likable and helps to move the plot along.  After some initial distrust from Wellington, Strange becomes an essential part of the war effort with his magic.

I especially like the tone the novel takes when discussing magic.  As the book is an alternate history and takes place in a world where magic is a large part of history and take seriously, magic is treated in an almost down-to-earth fashion.  When Strange first manages to prove his worth to Wellington, he suggests magically creating a road for the armies to use.  It would have been easy enough to have that been the end of it: Strange suggests magically creating a road, Wellington agrees, everyone in awe of magic.  Instead there are the details to consider: what should the road be made of, what happens if the French find the road and can make use of it, etc.  It isn't a matter that Clarke overwhelming the book with small details, but the fact that, if magic were real and being used this way, these all sounds like valid points that would be brought up.  And because they make good points about trying to use this magical road in the real world it makes the world more believable. 
I'm excited to continue the book and see what else happens to Strange, Norrell and of course the man with the thistle-down hair.  Perhaps my next entry will concern him, unless something else happens during my reading to distract me. 

Title quote page 367

Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, London. 2004.