During my last knitting group get together, we were chatting about
books. It’s a common topic since most knitters I know are also
readers. Mysteries seem to be the most popular genre with Miss
Marple, Brother Cadfael and the Judge Dee books the most popular. Why
this is so, I have no clue, though we have had chats about the precise
techniques for knitting while reading. Perhaps it’s some primal need
to multitask that I never inherited. I do know I have never gotten the
hang of it, the book keeps flopping closed or I drop a stitch or I
forget to knit and just read or whatever. So I must divide my time.

Anyway, Byatt as an author came up and I mentioned that I had tried 3
times to read Possession without success and had given it up as too
obtuse or modern for my sensibilities. Another member of the group
suggested I give it another go, staying with it for the 1st hundred
pages or so before tossing it into the trade in box for the used
bookstore. And of course, she was right. The story kicked in somewhere
around page 70 or so and I was hooked for a week.

I mean, really hooked. I read it at work on breaks, while cooking,
before bed, waiting for my dinosaur computer to boot, etc., etc. I even
delayed knitting on a sweater I’ve been dying to work on to finish
it. I got a little anxious when I realized that I only had about 20
more pages and the book would be over. Sort of anticipatory separation
anxiety. This happens rarely.

The plot is more complex than this but essentially it’s a mystery. A
young, unemployed researcher of an obscure British poet runs across a
draft of a letter by the poet to a woman. There is no known
documentation that the two had ever met except for a brief reference
to the woman at a dinner party he attended. She, however, had written
an epic romance that the feminist camp had rediscovered recently so he
takes himself over to the leading scholar of the woman’s work to see
what he can find out. She, of course, is brainy, beautiful and
interested…in the relationship between the two poets. From there, it
is the bit by bit unraveling of the poets’ story thru letters,
journals and literary detective work and the building of the
relationship between the two modern researchers. It was
entrancing. Byatt writes with a command of the language that is
breathtaking. Some of her descriptions I read two and three times just
to enjoy them again. Her use of color was so interesting I was noting
them on post it notes to see if I could find the pattern. There is
one, but I will leave it up to you to discover. A rare, fine
read. And she has other books she’s written to be discovered and read.

Welcome to the new home of “A View from the Foothills”. I’ve decided to stop rolling my own blog, and go with a package called Movable Type. There are some advantages and disadvantages to the change–for one thing, this blog will no longer be quite as easily integrated with the rest of my site. On the plus side, though, you folks can now leave comments if you like.

Over the next few days I intend to migrate all of the old weblog archives over to Movable Type’s database; they will also stay where they are, so that the old perma-links will remain valid.

And then will begin the tweaking, to make the weblog look the way I want it to.

Funny, now that I’ve changed the style sheet it looks really bad. Is that an error in the style sheet, or is it just that I’ve not added more entries?

Just a test post, to make sure everything is working OK

The May
Issue of Ex Libris Reviews is now available for your reading
pleasure.

A Disclaimer up front: This review is NOT going to include any kind of
plot description. The book is in hardback and I have 3 co-workers who
will hurt me if I give away the plot before they get the book.

This is the next installment of the Amelia Peabody series. It’s great. If
you have the cash and can’t get it due to waiting lists in the library, go
and get it. Otherwise, I guess you’ll have to wait for paper.

This is the most recent Amelia Peabody mystery but one, just fresh out in
paperback. Deb English gets them from the library in hardcover, so she
reviewed this one quite some time ago, and I’m afraid I’m too lazy to
look up what she said.

But anyway, I liked it. Parts of it were purely absurd (if very much in
keeping with the traditions of the series), and over all I think it’s the
best of the most recent few episodes. All the familiar players are
there, and there’s considerable obfuscation, and the bad guys get what’s
coming to them, and so forth.

If you’re not familiar with Amelia Peabody, this is not the book to start
with; go to our Elizabeth
Peters page and find out more.

“OH, THE HUMANITY!” Take Two: As everyone knows but me (where
“everyone” means the two people who wrote me), the phrase “Oh, the
humanity!” dates back to at least 1937. Iam Hamet of
Banana Oil put it this way:

The earliest instance of it I ever encountered was the radio broadcast from the
Hindenberg disaster when the commentator, at a loss for words and with genuine
anguish cried out this
very phrase.
His reflexive usage makes me think it was a common phrase at the time.

Thanks also to Lynn Sislo, who’s 99% sure the reporter was Edward R. Murrow.
She’s got a blog called
Reflections in d
minor which
I’ll be taking a look at.

Update: Alas, the 1% case came up. According to Stasia, the
reporter’s name is Herbert Morrison; she cites
this site.

This book, being “The Second Epic Novel” about Captain Underpants,
arrived in my home, along with four or five others, whilst I was in
Australia. I want this to be perfectly clear–my sister is responsible,
not me. Jane read “The First Epic Novel”,
The Adventures of Captain Underpants, to David while I was
gone; I got to read him the concluding chapters of the second volume on
my return.

The series is really about two boys who can’t sit still in class–the
kind who are clever, easily bored, and always able to make their own fun.
In the first book, so I gather, they write a comic book about a character
named Captain Underpants–the first superhero to wear jockey shorts
instead of longjohns. He has “wedgie power”. Along the way, they
hypnotize the school principle, Mr. Krupp, into thinking that he’s
Captain Underpants. When anyone snaps their fingers, Mr. Krupp will
divest himself of his outer clothes and his hair piece, and rush off to
fight evil wearing only his underpants and a cape.

In this volume, our heroes use an old copier revamped as a Science Fair
exhibit to try to make copies of their latest comic book. To their
dismay, the evil beings therein (the Talking Toilets) come to life and
ravage the school, eating all of the students and faculty (including the
delightfully named Miss Anthrope, Ms. Ribble, and Mr. Meaner). They save
the day by feeding the toilets the food from the school cafeteria.

The book is clear aimed at the beginning reader. Above all, it’s short.
The book is short, the chapters are short, and the pages are short.
The writing is breezy and fast-paced, and Dav Pilkey undeniably has a
lock on what small boys find amusing, and he manages to (mildly)
entertain the adult reader as well.

Which is just as well, as I’ve got several more of these in my
future–both David and James were in stitches.

I am selective about the sci-fi I read. It’s not a genre I know my way
around in and I’ve read some that struck me as, well, just silly. But lo,
my son has now grown to the age where he is reading adult fiction and
spends most of his free time with his nose stuck in sci-fi novels.
Robert A. Heinlein is his current passion. Plus, summer is
coming and he’s too young to drive which means he’ll be spending long
hours out here at the farm. I need to have some authors lined up to throw
his way when he gets bored and we’re browsing the library shelves.

And then Will talks about how good Cherryh is. I usually concur with
Will. Not always; it’s highly unlikely that I will ever make it thru the
entire Patrick O’Brian “Jack Aubrey” series though I did give
the first one a go. But usually Will is spot on. So when I saw
Cyteen on
the shelf at the local Large Chain Bookstore, it was a sale, right then
and there.

If you want a good plot summary, go to our C.J. Cherryh page
and read Will’s. He nails it well. I read it in a weekend and wanted more
so I stopped and picked up a few more at the used bookstore on the way
home. 40,000 in Gehenna was there and I opened it thinking it
would be more of the same. Wrong. Nothing like it. Initially, I was
disappointed but as the book progressed, it grew on me.

Gehenna is the name of the planet where 40,000 born-men and clones are
left in an experiment in sociogenesis. The clones are programmed to
reproduce and farm; the born-men are there to administer the society and
fulfill the upper-level functions required. And it goes wrong when
sentient life is discovered in the form of huge lizard-like critters that
build mounds and tunnels in swirl patterns. The book is about the
evolution of the society from one that is structured by off-world
standards to one that has adapted to the environment and has become
viable in its own right. And then the off-planet men come back to check
up on how things are going. And things start going wrong. It’s a theme
that’s been done before. What fascinated me were the lizards, called
calibans. They create the patterns in the dirt and change the
way people communicate. They provide the forms that shape the society.
They create the power structure in the society. I wish she had made the
novel longer and fleshed it out more. Cyteen
detailed everything but we
only get a taste in 40,000 in Gehenna. And that taste left me
wanting more.