The July issue of Ex Libris Reviews is now on-line for your reading pleasure. Of course, if you’ve been reading this weblog all month you’ve probably seen most of the reviews…but, as always, you’ll miss Craig Clarke’s reviews if you don’t go take a look.

Here’s an interesting post that contrasts the books bought by folks from the Bible Belt with those bought by folks outside the Bible Belt. Take a look; you might be surprised.

Of course, it would be interesting to know the relative size of each “purchase circle” as a percentage of the population in each region….

Here is simply an outstanding essay on fantasy fiction and why it’s been so popular since the sixties and seventies. I won’t spoil the punchline; but if fantasy interests you, you should give it a read. (Via Mark Shea.)

This is one of Tremayne’s Sister Fidelma mysteries; he also
writes about the history of the Celts under the name of Peter Berresford
Ellis.

Fidelma of Cashel is the sister of the King of Cashel and a highly educated
advocate of the Brehon laws in Ireland in the 7th century AD. She speaks three
or four languages, can read and write and has studied law for eight years in
a bardic school in Tara, the central kingdom of Ireland and domain of the High
King. She also is a member of the religious community of the St. Brigid of
Kildare. The community that she belongs to is very different from the
monasticism that later developed in Europe with celibacy and cloistering as
basic tenets. The Irish church had developed separately from Rome during the
early part of the millennium and had adapted to the cultural values of the
Irish Celtic society. Tremayne, by the way, includes an excellent
introduction giving some of the background of tensions between Irish
Catholicism and Roman Catholicism that creates a lot of the tension in the
book. Fidelma has not taken vows of celibacy, nor has she entered a
cloistered community so she is available to lend her assistance as an
Advocate of the Courts when a legal issue, such as murder, comes up.

In this book, set in 666 AD, she is called to an Abbey on the far west coast
of Ireland to investigate the murder of a young woman. She has been found
hung from the well rope in the Abbey’s well, naked and beheaded. No one
claims to be able to identify the body without the head and no one has
reported a woman missing in the near vicinity. Fidelma is called in to
investigate and try to figure out who the girl is and who killed and left
her in such a ghastly way.

That’s the main plot. The subplot involves Brother Eadulf, a Saxon monk who
adheres to the Roman Catholic tradition and usually acts as Fidelma’s
sidekick in her investigations, providing a counterpoint to her theological
beliefs and the slightest hint of love interest. On the sea voyage to the
Abbey, the ship she is on discovers a Gaulish ship floating abandoned at
sea, with a missal Fidelma has given to Eadulf in one of the cabins. She had
left him in Rome and is beside herself with worry, especially after finding
blood on the deck of the ship.

The Sister Fidelma series is generally pretty good. The early ones are a
little spotty in the strength of the plot lines and Tremayne has an
irritating tendency to explain Fidelma’s credentials more than is needed,
but essentially they read well and are interesting. The historical detail is
fascinating without intruding too much on the action. I’m looking forward to
finding a few more of these.

There are some folks who write clean and crisp prose with a snap to it like
sheets fresh from the sunshine. And there are some who write melodies that
flow from the page into the mind, dancing rhyme and rhythm into a story that
lasts and lasts. But the really good writers can do both. Ivan Doig is one
of those.

Dancing at the Rascal Fair is the story of two friends, Rob Barclay and
Angus McCaskill, who emigrate from Scotland in 1889 to become sheep ranchers
in the high country of Montana. They are young bucks in a new land believing
that a canny mind and hard work will make them successful. They have left
behind the poverty and harshness of life in Scotland for the promise and
harshness of life homesteading. And in it they find joy. But it takes a
hardpan spirit to survive undamaged the brutality of the winters near the
mountains and the hard life of a sheep rancher and Angus McCaskill is of
softer soil than that. A rift develops between the two friends, widened by
Angus’ love of a woman he can’t have and Rob’s inability to accept that his
friend is not able to bounce with the same gusto he does. The story of the
rift between these two friends who are closer than brothers is what forms the
core of the book. The story of Montana and the forests and mountains in the
west is the background that it is played against.

This was actually my third time thru the book. I bought it soon after it
came out in 1987 on a whim in the bookstore and read it thru once. A few
years back I picked it off the bookshelf to see if it was as excellent as I
remembered and it was. And lately NPR has featured it on “Chapter a Day”
which brought back to me the musical quality of the language that Doig uses
to tell his story. It reads aloud incredibly well. At first I thought it was
the phrasing that he uses that was so wonderful, almost like a Scots burr
rolling off the r’s and broadening the vowels with snippets of Bobbie Burns
woven in to pick out the colors. But this time thru what I really noticed is
that the story plays out almost as if there is a fiddle playing highland
music in the background, faintly picking up tempo or going down to the deep
notes as the story unfolds. I have rarely read a writer with Doig’s facile
touch with language. It was a true pleasure.

Since April, 2003, I’ve been slowly working my way through
Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn mysteries in chronological
order. The last one I read and reviewed, A Wreathe for Rivera,
was an accident; somehow I accidentally skipped over the present novel.
I go into this only because Final Curtain occupies a key place
in the sequence–Roderick Alleyn spends the years of World War II doing
anti-espionage work in New Zealand, and is parted from his wife, the
artist Agatha Troy, for the duration. This is the book in
which he returns from New Zealand, is reunited with Troy (as he calls
her), and takes up his police duties once again.

Consequently, the book is fraught with tension. Alleyn and Troy hadn’t
been married long when the war broke out, and haven’t seen each other in
over four years; both are concerned that whatever magic they had for each
other has evaporated. And no sooner is Alleyn home than he ends up
investigating a murder to which his wife is a prime witness; this is difficult for
him, as he first got to know her during an unpleasant murder investigation
(in Artists in Crime, and it caused such trouble between them
that since then he’s been trying to keep his home and work lives
compartmentalized. And now all of those mental barriers are necessarily
falling.

The quintessence of the English murder mystery is the country house
mystery, which, as Marsh seems to delight in avoiding cliche, is probably
why this is only her third novel in that sub-genre. And, typically, it’s
not just a country house mystery; Marsh brings in her beloved
theater by making it a country house mystery about actors.

Sir Henry Ancred is a famous Shakespearian actor, now nearing the end of
a long and productive and highly emotional life. He’s the patriarch of a
large dramatic family; not all are actually on the stage, but the only
one of his descendants who isn’t giving to making scenes and
over-dramatizing every little thing is in fact a theater producer. He
browbeats Troy, who is eagerly awaiting her husband’s return and not much
interested in working, into coming to his stately home, Ancreton, and
painting his portrait. Thus, Troy becomes our viewpoint character for the
first half of the book. While there she meets his unspeakable family and
the young starlet they fear he will marry, and
when he dies in bed after an overly rich dinner and a fit of rage she has a
niggling feeling that perhaps his death wasn’t entirely natural.

She and Alleyn discuss it, and are the verge of forgetting the whole
thing when the CID receives an anonymous letter claiming that Sir Henry’s
death was murder. Alleyn must find out whether it was murder, and
whodunnit, and reconcile his job with his married state.

All in all, not a bad outing.

This is too funny. And if you browse a bit, you can also see scenes from the Hamster Opera (I like Brunhilde, and also Falstaff), and from the Hamster Ballet.

“Strange women lying in ponds is no basis for a system of government!”

When did you last play a game of Checkers? I remember playing it a number of times with my older sister when I was small, but I don’t believe I ever made a regular thing of it. Some time in elementary school I moved on to Chess, and when I found I hadn’t the patience for it I discovered games like Backgammon and Othello. Somehow I never got back to Checkers.

But a couple of years ago, we were given a nice hardwood family game set. The lid has a Checker/Chess board on one side and a Backgammon board on the other, and the box contains all the pieces you need for Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, Dominoes, or various card games. My boys have been fascinated with it since we got it, and recently I’ve been playing Checkers with them.

James, my going-on-five-year-old, enjoys it most. He gets caught up in the moves he wants to make, and forgets to check whether my last move did anything nasty, but he’s got a pretty good grasp of the rules. I have to be careful and not win too often, or he gets discouraged.

It’s a surprisingly interesting game. One of the rules, which I had completely forgotten until we got back into it, is that if you are in a position to capture one of your opponent’s pieces, you have to capture it. You’ve got no choice. And that makes the game quite a bit richer than I’d realized when I was a boy–you can force your opponent to make moves he doesn’t want to make. It’s sneaky.

If you’re interested, you can find the rules here.

I’ve no books in my Ready to Review pile at the moment, and (after yesterday) no particular deep thoughts to share, and in fact it’s been quite a busy day. So instead of wasting your time, I’m going to settle down with some tunes and a nice Ngaio Marsh mystery. See you tomorrow!

Kevin at Collected Miscellany is asking, “What Kind of Book Person Are You?”

1) What is your favorite type of bookstore?
A. A large chain that is well lit, stuffed full of books, and has a café.
B. A dark, rather dusty, used bookstore full of mysterious and vaguely organized books.
C. A local independent bookstore that has books by local authors and coffee.

A. Although, frankly, I don’t care much about the café. And I don’t much care whether it’s a chain. Mostly it needs to be large, well lit, and stuffed full of books.

2) What would excite you more?
A. A brand new book by your favorite author.
B. Finding a classic you’ve been wanting to read.
C. Receiving a free book from a friend in the mail.

A, definitely.

3) What’s your favorite format?
A. Novel
B. Short story
C. Poetry

A, which should come as no surprise to long-time readers of this blog. I’d like to appreciate poetry, but except for light verse I seem to lack the gene.

4) Favorite format, part II.
A. Contemporary fiction.
B. Classic novels.
C. Genre (mystery, espionage, etc.)

C. Need you ask?

5) Favorite format, part III (none of the above) Fiction or non?
A. Almost entirely fiction.
B. Almost entirely non-fiction.
C. A mix of both.

C, though heavier on the fiction.

6) Does the design and condition of the book matter?
A. Yes, I love a well designed book and keep mine in mint condition.
B. No, the words are what matter.
C. Yes and no, I appreciate good design and treat my books with respect but I am not obsessive about it.

Somewhere between A and C. Which is to say that I am obsessive about it. Condition is more important than design, though; the point is that I want to be able to re-read it as many times as I like.

(Note from Jane: in our first years of marriage, while I was learning to put the toilet seat down, she was learning never, ever to crease the spine of a paperback book.)

7) On average how many books do you read a month?
A. I am lucky to read one.
B. I am dedicated. I read 4 or 5.
C. I am a fiend. I read 10 or more!

C, though I don’t feel especially fiendish. It was eleven last month,for what it’s worth. Not counting The Cat in the Hat and such like books read to the kids at bedtime; I’d be into the seventies if I included those.

8) Do you prefer to own or borrow?
A. There is a particular joy in owning a book. I have a large library.
B. Why spend money when you can read it for free? I use the public library.
C. Different tools for different job. I do both.

A. As I said above, I want to be able to re-read a book as many times as I like. That means that I need to be able to find it again, reliably. And that means, well….

9) Where do you get (the majority) your book news?
A. Newspapers.
B. Magazines.
C. TV
D. Blogs.

Hmmph. I don’t get book news, I am book news.

But seriously, I don’t get book news from any of these sources. I just go to the book store and look to see what’s new. Occasionally I’ll hit a favorite author’s website.

10) Are books a professional obsession?
A. Yes, I work in the field (writer, reviewer, publisher, teacher, etc.).
B. No, I do it for fun.
C. Kinda, I write the occasional review but have a regular job outside of books.

B. You mean they pay people to do this?