This is the second book in the Rhapsody trilogy, and has the
strengths and weaknesses of its predecessor. Which is to say, I liked
it; but I think it could be trimmed quite a bit.

I found this book in a bookstore in the Kingston neighborhood of
Canberra. I plucked it off of the shelf because of its title, and
submitted it to the Page 100 test, a trick I learned from one of
Donald Knuth’s books. Having read the cover blurb and
perhaps the table of contents, open the book to page 100, and
read that page. This is far more effective than reading the first few
pages; the author expected you to look at those pages first thing, and
probably spent lots of time polishing them. But there’s nothing to
distinguish page 100 of the book from any other in the author’s
mind–indeed, when he submits his manuscript, he probably doesn’t even
know what’s going to end up on that page–so it’s a more representative
sample of the quality of the book as a whole.

Now, The Overloaded Ark is a memoir of an animal collecting
trip to the Cameroons (as they were called in the 1950’s) by the owner of
an English zoo. It’s intended to be light and funny, though factual, and
for the most part it succeeds. Page 100, for example, concerns the
author’s attempts to teach the village boys that he won’t buy animals from them
unless they are in good condition. He finally shames them into it by
publically rewarding a little girl who brings him a bird she’s handled
gently and well, and then questioning their manhood. After that, he
says, he has no more difficulty.

And that sample is indeed representative, but not in the way the author
would have expected. Because what’s most interesting in this book isn’t
the depiction of African flora and fauna (though these are presented by a
loving and witty hand), or even the travails of collecting the animals
and keeping them alive for the return trip to England. Rather, it’s the
relationship between the author and the natives. They are dark-skinned;
he is the great white sahib. He calls them by name; they call him Masa.
They have villages dances; sometimes he deigns to adorn their dances with
his presence. He is erudite; they are ignorant, frequently knowing less
about certain animals than he does. He is masterful; they are
subservient.

And yet, he genuinely cares for his native employees, and takes care of
them in many ways; and they, for their part, seem genuinely honored by
his attention.

Quite frankly, it’s a PC person’s nightmare. And though I don’t try to
be politically correct, it nevertheless gave me much food for thought.

So it was an interesting book to read, as well as being a useful source
book should I ever wish to write anything about collecting animals. On
the other hand, it wasn’t quite the laugh riot I’d been hoping for.

This is the latest of King’s Mary Russell Holmes mysteries, just out in
paperback; I bought it a couple of weeks before leaving for Australia,
intending to read it on the plane, and would that I had. I’d have gotten
more enjoyment out of it in that context than I would have out of either
of the books I actually did read on the flight over. But I enjoyed it once
I got to Australia anyway.

For those who aren’t aware of this series, it postulates that there was a
real Sherlock Holmes, similar to but rather younger than the familiar
character. In the first book, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice,
he meets a young woman, Mary Russell, and takes her on as his apprentice.
Later they marry, despite the age difference between them. (Yes, there’s
a bit of an Amelia Peabody feel to the whole thing, but only a bit.)

In an earlier book, O, Jerusalem, they become acquainted with
two British intelligence officers in the Middle East. In the current
book, one of them is in serious trouble and calls on the pair to help
out. The action largely takes place at a stately country home called
Justice Hall, the seat of the Dukes of Beaufort.

I try not to say too much about the plot of mystery novels; after all,
plot is everything in a mystery, and I don’t want to give it away. But I
will say that the book involves (in part) a young soldier summarily
executed at the front lines during World War I–and that
Reginald Hill did a better job at it in The Wood Beyond.
Also, I disliked the ending; although it tied up
all of the loose ends satisfactorily, it wasn’t very satisfying. It
seemed rushed; and while the actual events were OK, I think they could
have been motivated better.

But I’m being picky. Justice Hall is a worthy addition to the
series, and a good read besides.

This is the first book by Rendell I have read. I’ve seen her name on
author’s lists, usually coupled with P.D. James as
great-British-women-detective-novel-writers. When you see a list of
adjectives that long, certain, often unmet, expectations are created. And
then, this is a novel right smack dab in the middle of a series, which
isn’t the best place to start if the series is a continuing one and
knowledge of the previous installments are necessary for the
understanding those following.

None of that seems to matter, though. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Inspector Wexford has had some sort of bleeding in his eye leading his
doctor to prescribe rest, healthy food and no work as a cure. I gather he
prefers to work hard, drink a bit and eat badly. The novel opens with him
and his wife in London staying with his nephew, a detective for Scotland
Yard. He is being coddled, pampered and generally bored out of his wits
by his wife and niece while his nephew, lucky man, gets to go off to work
everyday. On one of his prescribed and hated daily walks, he passes a
cemetery where a murder investigation is taking place, decides to just
pop in for a quick look and stumbles on his nephew heading up the
investigation. His aid is enlisted, surreptitiously lest the women find
out, and he begins to nose around. A very young woman has been strangled
and left in a crypt. Investigators find her identity but have no luck
tracing the girl using the name she is known by and no one steps forward
to claim her as missing or lost. And sometime in the last year she has
had a full term pregnancy. Hmmmmm….

As a detective novel, it was pretty good. I had the wrong person pegged
as the killer most of the way thru the book. Actually there were about 4
candidates I came up with in the course of reading the book, none of
which actually were the killer. And while Rendell deliberately was
messing around with my mind and setting up false trails, she was also
equally giving the same sort of clues for the correct candidate.
Interesting. I want to hunt up more of her work to see if she does the
same thing in other novels. I would also like to see Inspector Wexford in
his home setting in rural England, working too hard, drinking a bit and
eating badly.

I love it when I find a new author to follow. It’s been lonely without
Peter Diamond books.

Pratchett generally writes two sorts of books: Discworld novels and young
adult novels. The Discworld novels are always written to be accessible
to Americans; the young adult novels are intended for young adults in the
UK, and make much or use of UK slang and terminology. They generally
aren’t as satirical, either, and they generally aren’t available in the
United States.

This present novel is an exception to the rule–it’s both a Discworld
novel (though it’s not marketed as one) and a young adult novel. I
nabbed it joyfully at a bookstore in Australia, and read it with glee.

The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is a sterling
example of the Small Story. It takes place on the Discworld, but doesn’t
depend on any prior knowledge of the Disc; in fact, the only standard
Discworld character to make an appearance is Death (no surprises there).

Maurice is an intelligent talking cat; his Educated Rodents are
intelligent talking rats. Apparently the animals ate something that agreed
with them from the trash heap of Unseen University, the Disc’s premier
college of wizardry. Once blessed with intelligence, Maurice found a
stupid-looking kid playing the pennywhistle, and then enlisted the rats
into a continuing Pied Piper scam–the kid, the cat, and the rats move
into a town, the rats raise a ruckus, and (for a sizeable fee) the kid
pipes them out of town.

The rats are starting to grumble that maybe this is unethical (being
intelligent is giving them ideas) when the troupe arrives in the
Uberwald village of Bad Blintz–a village on the verge of starvation due
to a plague of rats, except that Maurice and his Educated Rodents can’t
find any rats there but themselves. What goes on?

This is a small book, shorter than the usual Discworld novel, but it was
a lot of fun.

My brother recommended this book to me, along with its two sequels, just
before I left for Australia; he said that he and my sister-in-law had
rather enjoyed it. I was out buying a new suitcase, and on a whim
stopped at a bookstore to see if they were available. They were, and I
bought them. I packed the second and third books
(Prophecy and Destiny) in my checked luggage, and
brought this first book along to read on the plane.

As with Everything’s Eventual, this was a mistake. Not
because it’s a bad book–it isn’t. It’s the story of a young woman who
calls herself Rhapsody. She’s a Singer, on the verge of becoming a
Namer; which is to say that she’s a bard, in a world in which bardic
songs have real power. She’s brave, brash, and clever; she’s also good
looking, and is much sought after by a admirer, a military commander who
call himself Michael the Wind of Death. Michael is a confirmed sadist,
and Rhapsody sees no reason to have anything to do with him. And then
Michael sends his troops after her, and she’s forced to flee.

As it happens (this is an epic fantasy, after all), she runs into the
arms of the only people who can help her–a mismatched pair of killers on
the run from their demon master. The three of them flee from Michael’s
forces (leaving quite a few of them dead) in search of a secret and
magical passage to the other side of the world.

And therein lies the problem. After a number of scenes to get the ball
rolling, the first part of the book consists primarily of a long,
torturous slog through the center of the earth. A lot of character
development occurs, along with a few pertinent adventures, but most of
that part is simply a painful endless ordeal of trudging, trudging,
trudging through cramped, confined tunnels while fighting off nasty
vermin. And whenever I looked up from the book during this phase, I found
myself in my seat at the back of the plane–a plane in which the shades
were drawn, the main lights were off, and most of the reading lights were
off as well. I was cramped and confined, and while I was sitting instead
of trudging the flight still seemed endless. And the cabin of a dark
plane does look rather like a tunnel

Needless to say, this did not help my mood, which was not good to begin
with.

But none of that is really the fault of the book or its author. It’s a
competently written epic fantasy, and considered dispassionately I
enjoyed it. Especially the parts I read after I got off the plane.
I’m looking forward to the subsequent volumes.

However, I do have a few complaints. First, this is a Big Story with a
vengeance–the fate of the world depends on Rhapsody and her two friends.
Second, the story depends greatly on
ancient history, and on creatures and people who have survived from
ancient times. J.R.R. Tolkien managed to pull that off, but
he spent years on the historical background, purely for his own
enjoyment, before he wrote the books that made his reputation. In the
hands of other authors the result usually seems rather comic book.

But mainly, the book is too darned long. I’d estimate that the book
could be trimmed quite a bit without affecting the plot or the character
development in the slightest.

It’s hard to know what to say about this book. It’s not perfect; parts
of it are too long, for one
thing. A little more editing could have taken care of that. And it’s a
bit comic book, too; like so many fantasy writers these days, she’s
forgotten that in fantasy some things must remain mysterious and
evocative. She’s a systematizer, and it shows, and that’s not entirely a
good thing.

But anyway. It’s a competently written epic fantasy, and is certainly
worthy of your time if you like that sort of thing. I’m looking forward
to the later books.

Reading this book was a mistake.

You almost certainly misunderstood that last statement.

I like Stephen King. He’s a darn good story teller, and he’s
darn good at evoking just the response he wants (which, it seems to me,
isn’t quite the same thing). I use to buy all of his books as they came
out, until I got to Insomnia, which was frankly a waste of
time. He told the story well, but the story itself was too silly for
words. After that I more or less stopped buying him, and even got rid of
all but my favorite books by him.

I kept all of his short story collections. He’s a darn good story
teller. So when I saw Everything’s Eventual at the bookstore
and realized it was a new collection, I almost bought it. Almost, but
not quite. I wasn’t in a buying mood, and I wasn’t in a
Stephen King mood.

Well, then came the day when I was to leave for Australia. I didn’t much
want to go, so I was in a foul mood. And then I came across this book
again, at the airport, and thought it would distract me a bit, and so I
bought it and started reading it in lieu of the book I’d brought for the
trip.

That was the mistake.

See, when you write a horror novel you can make it as scary and awful as
you like, and still provide a bit of a happy ending after all of that
catharsis. When you write a short story in the same genre, you mostly
can’t–there’s not time or space. Reading a short horror story is
something like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer, because it
feels so good when you stop. The horrible thing happened to someone
else, someone you don’t know, someone who isn’t even real.

If you read a horror anthology straight through in one sitting, it
doesn’t stop. You just keep getting hit with that hammer through story
after story. It’s enough to make a guy feel really lousy, and indeed
that’s usually the effect a Stephen King collection has on me
if I’m stupid enough (after all this time) to read it that way.

I started reading Everything’s Eventually in the terminal. I
continued reading it on the plane. And when I finished a story, I was
still on the plane, with many hours to go (it was a
fourteen-and-a-half-hour flight) before I got to Australia, feeling
cramped, confined, and really out-of-sorts about leaving my family.

I guess you could say that the book fit my mood…but on the whole I’d
have been better off with something cheerful. At the very least, I didn’t
do the stories justice, reading them that way.

Which is a pity, because it’s really a rather good book, if you like that
sort of thing.

At the same time I started my
Ngaio
Marsh re-reading plan,
I thought I’d do the same with Josephine Tey, another author
whose work I’ve not re-read since I first discovered it. And again, it
seemed worthwhile to read her books in order of publication, just to see
how her writing develops.

I had a similar experience as I had with Marsh–part way through this
book, I was asking myself just what it had been that pleased me so much
about Tey’s writing. And then, suddenly, Inspector Grant follows his
quarry to Scotland and the book takes wing and turns out to be much more
enjoyable than I’d feared.

This book also has a bearing on my post about imagination: Grant is known
for his intuitive “flair”, which his boss (the intelligent but methodical
Superintendant Barker) recognizes but mistrusts. And sure enough, toward
the end of the book when Grant is agonizing because he’s might have
arrested an innocent man, he tells himself that Barker has no more
imagination than a paving stone.

I go to 19th century literature when I want to escape. I have been
spending far too much time lately thinking intensely about education, the
act of reading, what makes good writing and whether the role of public
education is to fulfill the expectations of the parents or to fulfill
some larger social purpose such as creating a literate public. And what
is a “literate public” anyway? Or, and even scarier, do kids go to
school to be socialized and exactly what does that mean? From what I can
tell, manners are not part of the equation. Wearing the correct clothes
and using the approved language is. Heavy stuff after a long day at work
analyzing data about child care and what the projected state level budget
cuts will do to the availability of quality care for parents. Not to
mention my job, which may disappear pretty soon.

Anyway, I picked up The Woman in White. I’ve never read any of Wilkie
Collins’ work though I have read about it in the context of Dickens and
the publishing world of Victorian London. Somehow I got the impression he
wrote lurid, sensational novels that were hugely popular but of inferior
quality. But this book, unlike most of what was published then, has been
continuously in print since it was first published in 1860. Something has
to be going on here.

What I found were amazingly well drawn characters.

The plot itself is fairly straightforward. Walter Hartwright, a young
drawing teacher, has been offered the financially lucrative opportunity
to go to the house of a Mr. Fairlie to teach his young wards drawing.
Late at night, on the way back from a farewell visit to his mother’s
house just outside London, he encounters a ghostly woman dressed
completely in white asking his aid in getting to London. She is
mysterious, nervous and attractive. After walking with her the rest of
the way and finding her a cab, he overhears the conversation of men
looking for her. She has escaped from an insane asylum. And, later, after
arriving at the house he is to teach in, his new student is the spitting
image of her. That is just the opening. The story is told by various
narrators telling their version of events from Walter’s meeting with the
mysterious woman to the marriage of Laura Fairlie and the final escape
made from it and the revelation of Sir Percival Glyde’s “Secret”.
There are some melodramatic moments though by current standards they
wouldn’t frighten a five year old. And the sexual innuendos are so tame
by comparison I had to consciously think back to the times the book was
written in to appreciate them.

But the characters are wonderful. Count Fosco is so hypnotically evil he
sends shivers up your spine. And the interesting part is that his
nastiness is so under the surface, so seemingly congenial that you just
want to believe he’s a good guy. Yet something about him is off. The
other bad guy, Sir Percival Glyde is the foil that sets him off. He’s
manipulative and cunning but can’t keep the ruse up in the face of
frustration. His true self shows through and you hate him. But he gets it
good in the end.

The good characters are just as much fun. Walter Hartwright’s initial
description of Marian Halcombe, the principal female narrator, is
perfect. He lovingly describes her goddess-like figure from bottom to
gloriously described bust and hair only to come to her face, which is,
deep intake of breath here, UGLY. Ugly beyond belief. Gargoyle ugly.
Butt ugly. She has hair on her upper lip. Fortunately for Marian, she
has a fine mind and a perfect temperament. Laura Fairlie doesn’t quite
fair so well. She is perfect in a more conventional sense–frail, blonde
and unassumingly compliant. I just wanted to take her by her lovely locks
and shake her up a little. But had she had more backbone, the plot of the
book would have been disrupted.

There are also several humorous grace notes. Mrs. Vesey, the companion of
Laura and Marian, is a woman who sits. That’s her role and she fulfills it
splendidly. And the Italian friend of Walter, Pesca, chitters away in
broken English in a perfect rendition of a Victorian writer’s attempt at
displaying a foreigner.

It’s a good book. Read it slowly and enjoy.

As I noted a couple of days ago, I’m starting to re-read all of
Ngaio Marsh’s work in order of publication. And I was
shocked, once I cracked this one open and remembered which one it was, to
find out that it was only her second published work. It’s far and away
better than A Many Lay Dead.

Gone is the country house, gone is the absurd Russian Secret Society;
instead, this is the first of a number of her books that take place at
the Unicorn Theater in London. Nigel Bathgate’s sweetheart being
unavailable, he asks his new friend Inspector Alleyn to join him at the
theater. The play is a tale of crime and betrayal, and ends with a
shooting, only on this occasion the shooting is real–and it was the
victim himself who was responsible for loading the gun with dummy
bullets. Suicide? Or was he pushed?

Some books just become dated; others age gracefully into period pieces,
and this is definitely one of the latter.