Bujold’s latest book, Paladin of Souls, is a sequel to
The Curse of Chalion which I read and reviewed
almost exactly two years
ago. As I hadn’t reread it since, and as I like to have the story
fresh in my mind, and because almost any excuse is sufficient to reread a
Bujold book, I picked it up and devoured it for the second time.

In our library, Bujold stands alone as the only author whose new books I
always read aloud to Jane. I’ll sometimes read
P.G. Wodehouse to her (not that he’s really writing anything
new), and I’ll almost always read new Terry Pratchett and
Steven Brust books to her–but not invariably. She likes
Pratchett, she likes Brust, she likes Wodehouse, but (with three kids in
the house) only Bujold will cause her to drop everything for a week until
we’ve finished.

Anyway, I liked the book just as much this time as I did the first time.
You can go read my earlier review to get a feel for what it’s about; I
rather doubt I can improve on it without giving away too much.

The Regulators, by Stephen King

When King is good, he’s very good. This, on the other hand, is just 500
pages of blood, gore, violence, and rude words. I’m still not exactly
sure what his good books add to that mix, but there must be something.

This is the companion to King’s novel Desperation, which I
read and reviewed some while back. I liked Desperation. It
had blood, gore, violence, and rude words too, but it was good. It took
place over a few hours in a small town in Nevada. This one takes place
over a few hours in a small neighborhood in the Mid-West. Some of the
same people are involved, sort of. It’s got some interesting bits in it.
But unlike Desperation, it failed to hold my attention.

I dunno. I guess you win some, you lose some.

(On the other hand, it’s not Pet Sematary, either. So I
suppose it isn’t truly dire.)

Jane found this, and passed it along to me. I think it’s worth your time.

This book is such a treat. I read it the first time 4 or 5 years ago when
they first republished it after recognizing the author’s name as the author
of the original novel “101 Dalmatians.” And then hearing that it is being
made into a movie, I pulled it back off the shelf to see if it was as much
fun as I remembered.

It’s the story of the Mortmain family as told by the youngest daughter in
her diary. The father had years before written a breakthrough book that
afforded them the luxury of taking up residence in an old castle somewhere
in rural England. In the years since, the mother has died and been replaced
by a stepmother, Topaz, who is not at all evil although a bit eccentric and
embarrassing. Father has quit writing completely and spends his days reading
detective novels and doing crosswords. The family has taken in the orphaned
son, Stephen, of their deceased housekeeper. And the two daughters have
grown from children to young women with all the angst adolescents go thru.
They are struggling along admirably with their poverty when the owner of the
castle dies and leaves it to his two American raised sons. And of course,
young men in the neighborhood send the two girls into a romantic tizzy.

There is another book about young women looking for husbands that starts “It
is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a
fortune must be in want of a wife.” Smith keep making references to Jane
Austen throughout the book and after the first couple I started paying
attention to them. And there are a lot of them. She takes elements of many
of Austen’s characters and recreates them in the modern world with modern
circumstances.

There’s the father who shuts himself up in the study. There is a Vicar and a
village spinster who are important parts of the story. There are the two
young men, one of whom is destined for one sister and the other who may or
may not be destined for the other. There are the two sisters, one who is
flighty and emotional and the other who is rational and dependable. It’s not
a perfect synthesis and she certainly doesn’t have the skill with words and
humor that Austen has, but it makes for a very entertaining read.

Sueños y Encuentros is a new exhibit that’s just opened at the Long Beach Museum of Art; it’s a celebration of 20th-century Latin American artists. I’m no expert in Latin American art; I was there because Mexican art is an interest of my father’s. It was not a big exhibit–it’s not a big museum–but they had some interesting stuff, including a sketch by Orozco, a rather cartoonish watercolor of a Mexican peasant by Diego Rivera, several Tamayos, only of which I liked much, a Cuevas I thought was interesting, and a Wilfredo Lam I’d gladly take home. There were also quite a few ceramics, which uniformly left me cold. I dunno; I can appreciate the amount of work that went into them, but they don’t grab me at all.

The exhibit was paired with two others, one of Staffordshire pottery figures (no, I didn’t go for them, either–too cutesy) and one of turned wood and wood sculptures that had some dynamite pieces.

I took the video camera, and if I have a few minutes later on I’ll capture some stills and add them to this post.

Update: Here’s the Wilfredo Lam I spoke of. I apologize for the quality of the image; it doesn’t do the picture justice.

And here’s a Rufino Tamayo (that’s my dad’s hand, pointing at it). Once you’ve seen a Tamayo, his style is unmistakeable.

Finally, here’s a piece from an unrelated exhibit that I rather like. The frog is made of poppy-seed bread, specially baked; and it has a ceramic bake sale on its back.

It’s when afternoon naps start sounding like a good idea.

During one of my regular weekly exchange of emails with my daughter’s
special ed teacher, she asked me to recommend books for boys who are
reluctant readers. Specifically, one she could read aloud to them that was
part of a series. She was thinking of Lemony Snickett and after gacking all
over my keyboard–don’t these teachers actually read kids books?– I
suggested this one as one that might interest boys who like video games or
who feel different because of the way their brain works. I just read it on
the strong recommendation of my son who, though he has never been reluctant
to read anything, fits all the other criteria.

Essentially, the plot revolves around a 6 year old boy and intellectual
prodigy named Andrew Wiggin, nicknamed Ender, who is taken from his parents
and family and put into a military training academy in space for future
commanders of warships. Earth had been invaded a generation ago by aliens
resembling wasps or bees, nicknamed Buggers, and a global effort is on to
find the best military minds early and train them from childhood to defend
the planet from the expected upcoming invasion. The school curricula is
completely dedicated to train them as military strategists and training in
command is supplied by team sports in The Battle Room. Those who fail are
sent back to Earth in disgrace; those who succeed are promoted up the
militaristic school hierarchy. Ender is a perfect candidate because he
displays both a ruthless determination to survive when confronted by danger
and a real sense of empathy for those around him, enabling him to predict
how others will think and act.

For the most part, I enjoyed the book. The writing is good and the character
of Ender is well drawn and complete. The plot moves along fast enough that I
had a hard time putting it down at times. There is plenty of cool techie
stuff and world building going on to keep me interested. And The Battle Room
and the games the kids play in it are fascinating, often the best part of
the whole story. That could have been a book all by itself.

However, some things did bother me. One is that Ender is a 6 year old. He
doesn’t act or talk or think like any 6 year old I know. He’s too
emotionally mature even for a kid with a huge intellect. He is making
decisions based on adult reasoning and experience which, as a 6 year old, he
is too young to have.

And then the whole thing about using children in this way bugged me. I
couldn’t leave behind my own principles on how children should be treated
while reading. I didn’t like what they were doing to Ender and the rest of
the kids at the school.

I didn’t like how it ended either. I think Scott Card wimped out. It should
have followed the harshness of the rest of the book and ended just as
brutally. However, he is writing for young adults and children. I told my
son that and he totally disagreed with me on that point. We actually had
quite a good discussion about the book and why certain things happen as they
do. As a device to get kids reading and actually thinking about what they
are reading, I can see this book as an effective tool, especially if read
aloud and talked about as you go. What I saw as problems with the book would
make great topics to chat about with a young reader.

This is the book that turned Deb English back on to
Ngaio Marsh after reading one or two that she didn’t much
care for. Unlike her previous two books it’s set in London, but like
them she spends a great deal of time developing the characters before
the murder occurs. Usually she adopts a relatively omniscient point of
view when she does this, but in this case she gives us a delightful
viewpoint character, a young woman named Roberta Grey.

Roberta is a native of New Zealand. Her parents die, and as she’s not
quite old enough to live on her own she comes to England to live with a
maiden aunt. First on the agenda, though, when she arrives is a blissful
month with old friends, the Lampreys. The Lampreys are an amazing crowd
of popinjays who bought a farm in New Zealand on a whim; Roberta became
acquainted with them through Frid Lamprey with whom she was in school, and
soon became close friends with the entire family. The Lampreys are
eternally having money trouble–it flows through their fingers like sand–
and yet are equally unable to give up their ritzy life-style. Something
always happens, and they are saved for another day.

I didn’t warm up to the Lampreys quite as much as Debbie did–this is
far from my favorite Marsh–but it’s a good ‘un none the less.

Like Overture to Death, this murder mystery is set in a small
village–in this case, a seaside village in Devon. And also like
Overture to Death, it has a very long lead-in before the
murder is even committed. But instead of being about the tensions that
naturally arise in a small village, it’s about the tension between the
locals and visitors: in this case, three friends–a barrister, an actor,
and a painter–who have come to stay at the local inn for a few weeks for
the second year in a row.

One of them is killed in the inn’s common room, and Alleyn (helped, most
unusually, solely by the stalwart Inspector Fox) must determine not only
who killed him, but also how. It’s rather like a locked-room mystery–we
know he was poisoned, but except for the evidence of poison in his blood,
it seems impossible that he could have been.

I didn’t like this one much when I first read it–other than Alleyn and
Fox I found few of the characters to be particularly sympathetic–but it
began to grow on me this time.

Posting might be light over the next few days; Lois McMaster Bujold’s latest book, Paladin of Souls, has just come out, which means I’ll be spending my free time reading to Jane.

Paladin of Souls is a sequel to The Curse of Chalion, and so far (we read two chapters last night) we’re enjoying it immensely.

(Many thanks to Dave Jaffe for letting me know that the book was available; I went out almost immediately and snagged a copy.)