Vellichor Afternoons

This isn't as good as Templesmith's other work, story-wise--but it is still absolutely wonderful. His artwork is so fantastic, all obfuscation is forgiven.

Cute story, and funny, but weirdly transitiony and doesn't spend enough time setting up the world. Entertaining nonetheless.

Short, but adorable.

I love his cookbooks.
Don't judge me.
And yes, I know it's ridiculous to buy an "American" cookbook by a visting Brit.
Whatever.
The Dan dan noodles and Candied Bacon Salad alone are worth your derision.

I'm sort of conflicted about this one. Ambivalent, you might say.

On one hand, I really enjoyed it. I loved the art style, the personal journal aspect, and the idea of someone living in Paris for six weeks is lovely.

However, on the other hand, I couldn't help feeling that she--Lucy, I suppose, as it was her personal story--was sort of an ungrateful brat. She was given the chance to live in Paris for six weeks and she complained a great deal about all sorts of things--she had trouble sleeping, the service in cafes was bad, she was homesick, the art didn't meet her exacting specifications, she's horny, oh god her life is staring at her, she's "old" (she turns 22), she gets her period and wants to die.

I mean, I kind of understand her complaints as a very human sort of nattering, but still, she comes off as spoiled and entitled and entirely too blase about the whole experience.

And yet, I enjoyed the book nonetheless.

Maybe I'm a brat, too?

Ben Templesmith is an American Treasure (even though he isn't American, he's Australian, but he lives in the US, which I choose to consider as counting because he is so damn good).

In short: the story is amusing (a continuation from the second volume, so pick it up first), and as always, the art is gobsmacking. I mean, it's disgusting and grotesque, too, but Templesmith makes even the grotesque gorgeous and beautiful.

Also, a story about a worm that animates the corpses of the dead and wears them like a suit and builds robot companions and hangs out with immortal strippers who have tattoos that come to life and fight? What's not to like?

I loved--LOVED--this novel.

Furthermore, it's one that Zeb saw in a bookstore, picked up and brought over to me, saying, "This looks like something you would enjoy." And that is a wonderful feeling, that idea that somebody knows you well enough to know what books you would like, that somebody gets you that way. That somebody is paying attention.

All that aside, however, Zeb was totally right.

I read all the Sherlock Holmes stories when I was a youngster, and loved them, and then reread them as a teenager, and loved them again, and then reread them as an adult, and--you guessed it--still loved them. And I enjoy general Sherlockania, and even the films from Basil Rathbone to Jeremy Brett and even Robert Downey Jr, which I forgive its liberties because of the sheer rollicking good fun. Also, the Steven Moffat Sherlock on the BBC is one of my favorite things EVER. It's a modern adaptation for people who love the original.

But, I digress. The point is, I love Sherlock Holmes, and have for years.

That is possibly a setup for hating a book such as this (people hate when their passions are mucked about with), which is not about Holmes, exactly, but rather about people who love him--the titular Sherlockians, whose devotion to Holmes varies from excited fandom to manic devotion. When one of them--who claimed to have located the lost diary of Conan Doyle, the one from the time period in which he killed Holmes off in the Reichenbach Falls--turns up dead, strangled with his shoelace, then Harold, an intrepid Sherlockian and newly-inducted Baker Street Irregular, decides to solve the mystery, employing Holmes's methods to try to locate both the murderer and the diary.

But the book is also about Arthur Conan Doyle, who did seem to hate his own creation, and his frustrated yet inescapable tie to Holmes. Doyle gets wrapped up in a mystery and drafts his friend Bram (Stoker, which also delighted me to no end) to serve as his Watson to investigate the arrival of a letter bomb and the related murder of three young women. And it's marvelous to be alongside him as he tries to put all his fictional theories into practice.

This IS a work of historical fiction, but it's based in reality, which makes it even more exciting in a way. And it's a marvelous mystery--two of them, really, as we watch both Harold and Doyle try to find the solution and then, once they do, wonder what now?

And the final chapter, a mostly-aside about the completion of replacing London's gas lamps with electric light, and they way it drives back the fog... it's beautiful, and melancholy, and so vividly encapsulates the passing of one era into another.

I highly recommend this novel, and can't wait for Moore to write another.

First, though possibly not foremost, how can you not love an author named Pelham Grenville? In a world of Tonys and Chrises and Ryans, you have to admit that a name such as that inspires a certain confidence in one's authorial voice.

Otherwise, it's a typically wonderful Wodehouse novel, with Bertram Wooster mucking about in the affairs of his friend Gussie (and attending the party of a friend named Pongo, GOOD LORD THE NAMES DO ME IN), and of course has to rely on the inimitable Jeeves to sort it all out for him. But it's never the plot that these novels are remarked for--it's the sheer joy and playfulness with which Wodehouse uses the English language, and as always it is delightful to behold.

My theory is that if you would hand Wodehouse novels out in high schools instead of, say, Cold Sassy Tree, which I was forced to read (though, honestly I never did, out of pure stubbornness) then I think the enthusiastic taking up of reading wouldn't be so farfetched.

Also, I should really track down the TV series that starred a young Hugh Laurie and Stephen Frye, but even with those two I doubt it could be as delightful as the books.

I love Millay, so very much, and I pick this book up again every couple of years. Her sonnets are incredible--she has such an amazing sense of musicality, and she conveys beautiful melancholy so well that I feel less alone in the world for it.

My very favorite sonnet of hers is XLIII:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

This book totally sunk my emotional battleship, and I mean that in the very best way possible.

Because this book gets it, gets what it is we are all striving for--not love, not exactly, though yes, love too--but appreciation. That we all want to be seen, understood, that we want to be acknowledged for who we are. And we want to feel like someone else appreciates that.

Didn't really expect to be crying over my orange juice this morning, but I was, and I was so happy for it.

I read all those clumsy sentences, sat through all those obvious red herrings, and had to plow past all those verb tense errors for THAT ending?

Gah.

I like the puzzle parts. But you need a little more than that for a story. Also, an actual ending would help. A lot.

Oh, Amy Haskel.

I bought it last night after I got off work, and I basically devoured this in 24 hours, helped along by the fact that I got up at 4:30am today to take my roommate to the airport and couldn't go back to sleep.

You know... I love these damn books. I really do. Considering my weakness for a) series, b) things set in ivy league or private schools, and c) intertextual references, well, it's right up my alley.

And this, the conclusion... well, it satisfied. Things for Amy never do go smoothly, and this is certainly no exception as she tries to navigate the end of her undergrad career and the tap process while entangled in the kind of feisty romance that exactly fits her.

A perfect summer novel. And one I bet money I reread before summer is over and I head back to the drudgery of obscure 16th century texts.

A re-read, because I wanted to entangle my brain with something purely enjoyable and not think about my Hemingway and Faulkner exam coming up. A mental palate cleanser, if you will.

My favorite thing about Sarah Addison Allen's books? The way food is a character in its own right, that it is a motivator, an expression of emotion, more than just sustenance.

It's no coincidence that I want to eat her books.

A strong theological bent, but nice original insights rather than parroting of the history of theories of the grotesque.

It's not that I am a prude, but dear god, could we get a little less ZOMG MAD KINKY SEX and a little bit more PLOT?
Seriously.

It starts with some police work, which is refreshing. Then some more. Looking up! Then Anita goes home and bonks her honeys. That's cool.

Then we go off on a 200 page section of fucking, until at some point she finally realizes, oh, right, well, I sort of began this plot, why don't we wrap all that up in about 40 pages, and even for LKH, it's an abrupt fucking ending.

I recently reread Blue Moon, and I had forgotten how much I used to like these books. They were never great literature, but they were enjoyable reads. And back in the day, there was still the mad hot sex, but it was in service to the plot rather than just gratuitous scenes of fucking to no end.

Each book now seems like a bad fanfic version of the first 8 or so of the series. I do appreciate that Anita has grown and gotten less stubborn and more aware of her own bullshit. And it's nice to see her relax and be happy. But that's a short story, not a 400 page novel of filler. (When even the sex is repetitive--like it's totally cribbed from the previous book, but INSERT NEW LOCATION HERE--it's hit a point of diminishing returns. LKH is plagiarizing herself.)

Also? If Anita is going to spend the whole book talking about how happy her core group of studly preternatural muffins makes her, perhaps they should appear (hello, Richard? Jason?) rather than her new stable of dudes (and dudette?).

Not sure how many more of these I have in me before I give up and quit reading these. I'm close.