And I'm back, with books I received for Christmas, a book review, and feeling better

Well, I'm sorry I missed wishing you all a Merry Christmas last week.  I was very sick with a bad cold for most of it.  It was all I could do to get the Christmas dinner cooked and not just give up and go to bed!  It was very quiet, as we all had variations of this cold.  I was the last one sick with it, and the longest  - not boasting, this is what having a chronic illness does to me.

At long last, yesterday I began to feel better, and today I was able to go outside without that special wheeze I get when I'm sick.  I'm well enough to blog again, which is also a relief after making a valiant attempt to blog every day for the Christmas month.  I enjoyed it, so I'm planning on continuing to blog every day if I can. 

I don't have any lists done yet for this past year.  However I do have two happy things for you: 
1) my pile of book goodness (presents) from this past week.  Included are books from my box of books to myself:
   Still Writing - Dani Shapiro
   The Explorer - James Smythe
   The Echo - James Smythe
    All Mortal Flesh - Julia Spencer-Fleming
    I Shall Not Want  -  "         "           "
    Through the Evil Days - "   "        "
    City of Dragons - Robin Hobb
    Blackout - Mira Grant
    The Heist - Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg
     The Year of Reading Dangerously - Andy Miller
     The Dark Lord of Derkholm - Diana Wynne Jones
     Reflections on the Art of Writing - "    "        "
     Young Woman in a Garden - Delia Sherman
      Highfell Grimoires - Langley Hyde
      Autumn, All the Cats Return - Philippe Georget
      Ghost Girl - Lesley Thomson

A very lucky book reader, I think.  Very grateful to be reading a little more now, as time goes and I begin to heal. 

2) I READ A BOOK THIS PAST WEEK!!!!!!!!!!  Yes, a heavenly chorus is singing hallelujah.....and no pun, the book was Miracle and Other Christmas Stories by Connie Willis.
                                     

A quick review:  8 stories are included in this collection. They all feature Christmas, whether the season, or in the case of Inn and Epiphany, taking elements of the religious story of Christmas and retelling it with a modern twist.  Both are among my favourites in this collection.  Now, you may be wondering how I as a pagan can read Christian fiction and like it.  It's simple. I was raised a Catholic, and no matter how far in the spiritual world I go, those stories I first heard are part of me.  So when the story of Mary and Joseph is retold so poignantly (and brilliantly) in Inn, with some kind of time hole opening so that Mary and Joseph are there at the church in modern day USA, in the middle of winter, dressed for the desert, it takes kindness and charity for someone to take them in and find them back on their path.  The ending made me cry.  This is the spirit of the this time of year. 

In Epiphany, Mel is already on the road.  He is a pastor, who upped and left his church when in the middle of a sermon about not knowing when Christ will come again, he has the strongest feeling that Jesus has already arrived, is here, and waiting for people to find Him.  Even though he is Presbysterian and so not supposed to have epiphanies or visions, he cannot shake the intense feeling that he must go, right then, and head west.  Even though he does not know what he is looking for, or whom, or what signs, he starts driving.  Along the way he keeps seeing fair rides on the backs of trucks.  And he stops to help one of them who has run by accident off the road, because it is just after Christmas and everything in Iowa is icy with snow and storms and fog.  Then he meets a woman who keeps turning up wherever he is, who is driving west, and then another person....to say any more would be to ruin the sweet nature of this gentle story.  It is another modern version of part of the holy story of the birth of Jesus/Christmas, and so well done that I didn't catch on until near the end.  He does have a bout of doubt, and I found that I did not want him to quit his quest to keep looking for the coming of Jesus (or arrival).  There is something about faith that I want to see rewarded, and this story is about that. 

Miracle is about the film 'Miracle on 34th St' versus 'It's a Wonderful Life'.  Everyone in the story but two people love 'It's A Wonderful Life', the other two people loving 'Miracle on 34th St'. Of course, the girl who loves 'Miracle on 34th St' doesn't love the guy who also loves it, she wants someone else who loves 'It's a Wonderful Life'.  It takes the special humour and tricks from her guardian angel to show her her true love.  With lots of the little scenes and dialogues that make Connie Willis's writing so delightful for me.

These are my three favourites from the 8 stories, followed by Newsletter which is hilarious as a young woman finds something strange is happening to people when they suddenly begin wearing hats in the weeks before Christmas. Are they being taken over by aliens?  I had read this story in another collection before, and it is just as good in the reread.  Willis has an ear for dialogue, comical scenes, and wry comments that make me burst out laughing time and again.  It was so good to laugh this Christmas, and I have a feeling I have a Christmas collection to reread for every holiday season now. 
 5/5 Perfect for Christmas 
  Relief that  I read a book for Christmas: priceless

Dr Who Christmas Special
Oh, and I have to say:  Wasn't that Doctor Who Christmas Special wonderful?  I loved it. Dark, scary, funny, brilliant.  One of the best Christmas specials ever for Dr Who. A dream within a dream within a.....featuring Santa, Rudolph, and scary dream creatures.  LOVED it.  How do you wake yourself up from a dream?

                                         
So, may I wish you a belated Merry Christmas, and be the first to wish you happy preparations for the new year.  It's almost 2015! 

Book Christmas Advent Calendar Day 16: Connie Willis short story e-treat

A special treat for science fiction and Christmas readers:  Connie Willis' new e-book All Seated on the Ground is available through Subterranean Press (link here) at a low price (really low!) for the next few days.  This is a new story by her featuring her trademark humour and romance.  As the site says, ...."she's also a huge fan of the holidays and their accompanying frivolity and nonsense, and has written a marvelous array of Christmas stories, including Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, “Just Like the Ones We Used to Know” (made into the CBS movie Snow Wonder), “deck.halls@boughs/holly”, and now the hilarious “All Seated on the Ground.”  
                                                          
Sadly this book is not available in e-book in Canada!  *sob*   Nook book (Barnes and Noble), Amazon in the US, and Kobo in the US only. So, if you are in the mood for some humour and a good Christmas story, and you live in the US, this is your e-book advent calendar treat for the day.  It sure is would have been mine.  Happiness is a new Christmas story from Connie Willis!  Extra happiness would be if it was available to users everywhere. I hope the publishers are taking note......At least I just received a copy of her book Miracle and Other Christmas Stories for my X-mas box.  I can console myself with at last being able to read these through the holidays. My advent calendar treat for the day!

                                                

Sci Fi Experience 2015

It's here.  The 2015 Sci-Fi Experience, hosted by the warm and kind Carl Anderson over at Stainless Steel Droppings.   This challenge runs from Dec 1 2014 to Jan 31, 2015.
                                                

                     
Yes, I'm going to sign up.  I will read at least one science fiction novel between now and the end of January!  Yes, I am only committing to one, because of my dismal finishing of books since Oct 22 (still at 2 books read since then).  I have a whole stack of SF books, and if it weren't so late, I'd take a photo, so maybe tomorrow or the next day for an Advent Calendar treat. 

I have three  SF novels I really want to buy for Christmas: 
Points of Hope, A Novel of Astrieant by Melissa Scott -  just reviewed by Cath over at Read-Warbler, a lovely review. 
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane, one of Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2014
ok, four
A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias, another of Publisher's Weekly Best Books of 2014

Carl has also just reviewed DA by Connie Willis,which I happen to own and can't remember the ending too, so maybe I can read 2 books for the sci-fi challenge!  DA is a novella, too, so well within my reach (for these days). 

This is a sad state I am in, isn't it?  I hope my mind starts to settle soon.  I miss reading for long stretches of time.  I can do it occasionally, once a week or so now. 

I do really enjoy this challenge. I have read some wonderful books for it in past years.  Here's hoping it can help me slip back into more reading. Thanks for hosting it again, Carl! 

Fire Watch - Connie Willis

"Fire Watch" by Connie Willis is her short story that features her time-travelling continuum that Willis uses in-depth in Doomsday Book , To Say Nothing of the Dog, Blackout and All Clear. I've linked you to my two reviews.  I haven't read All Clear yet, that's on my immediate TBR pile.

"Fire Watch" is the story of Bartholomew, who is supposed to travel with St Paul, but because of a spelling error, is shipped instead to St Paul's - in the Blitz, in London, 1940.  Bartholomew doesn't have time to switch his history learning from the time of St Paul to the Blitz, and he only knows he is sent there to prevent St Paul's from burning down.  He joins the Fire Watch brigade at St Paul's for three months, which is the length of his time travel visit there.  And the story is him trying to do just that, save St Paul's at night when the incendiaries and bombs fall,  while he learns about the Blitz, while he tries to recall through memory aids what he needs to know about that time.  The memory aids  were implanted the fast way and so don't work until the moment he needs them.  So he bumbles about, learning everything as it happens, and then understanding what happens, almost instantaneously as the memory aids kick in. History happens and he is supposed to observe, as a historian, but like all the characters in Willis's time-travelling books, they end up doing, participating in history, and being changed by it.  There is no such thing as observing history, and part of the thrill and charm of this story and all her time-travelling stories, is that we get to experience that moment of history along with the characters.  By the way, I love the cover of the edition above - I don't own it, though I am going to try a copy now.  It's lovely, isn't it?

I had read "Fire Watch: before, several years ago.  So when I came across it in The Winds of Marble Arch, her massive collection of short stories (and still sadly no paperback editions have ever been issued, despite what Subterranean Press says, or if they did, they were so few that there weren't enough for the stores to carry), which I am currently reading from the library (because Subterranean Press refuses to publish any more in hardcover, which I would run out and buy RIGHT. NOW. if they did), I reread it again.  Since the time I read it the first time, I have been to St Paul's - if you look on my sidebar, you will see a picture I took when we were in London last in 2009, that we also have framed in our house.  I love that picture, it seems to capture the past rising up in the present, that everywhere you go in London, in England (and Europe), history is everywhere.  This sense of history is much harder to find in North America. We don't hang on to our history very well here, except in museums and in the US, the Civil War is remembered in many locations. I love that going about your every day life in London, you can see this beautiful awe-inspiring majestic church, that Christopher Wren rebuilt when it was destroyed in the 1666 Fire of London.  So much was lost in London during the Blitz, too, and this sense of loss, of history being lost, and trying to not forget it, infuses all of Willis' time travel books.  Why else do we study history, but to experience it and learn from it?

"Fire Watch" is stunningly moving. I forgot how good it is.  Here it is, online. I'm so glad it's available.   I cried as much at the ending as I did the first time I read it so many years ago.  There is something about Willis's writing that moves me, and this is why - along with her wonderful fun, zany, humorous, gentle, witty, smart writing, that I love so much. She never forgets that it's people that count.  No matter how prepared I am for her work to touch me, even in reading her short stories, I find she has the ability to pierce through to the important place where truth is kept.

Bonus review! another short story by Connie Willis:

"Letter from the Clearys" seems like such a quiet story (again, from The Winds of Marble Arch), and yet it lingers, this image of the world after it has exploded and left the survivors grimly hanging on.  It makes me realize how much in the 1980s we had to live through the threat of nuclear war - remember that Doomsday Clock, forever pointing at 1 or 2 minutes to midnight and death?  It is the story of a young girl, who goes to the corner store to fetch supplies - mostly seeds - and looks among the mail. She is looking for a letter from their summertime neighbors, who didn't come as usual the summer before last, when the end of the world started.  She is trying to hang on, and unwittingly reopens all the scars her family carries about the time - the day - the world changed. The Letter from the Clearys is also about us, as a human race, about how nuclear war might start with a bomb, and it is the small things that drive home the loss, the details, the way people don't always talk about what needs to be talked about, because it hurts too much.  The heroine, Lynn, aged 14,  reminds me of me as a child.  I was bumbling and awkward and forever saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  I still don't have the greatest sense of timing.  Lynn wants to share the letter from the Clearys, because it's from before the bomb, and she doesn't realize the pain it will cause everyone to remember the way things were before. This is exactly what it would feel like to live in America after the bomb fell.  And you still have to live with people, and try to stay alive.  It's scary, and it's bittersweet, and it's supposed to be.  Brilliant, really. 

One thing Willis's writing is reminding me of, that I am discovering as I read science fiction this year, is how much science fiction is trying to find a way through the certainty of some global disaster or nuclear war or ending of the world - trying to find some way through the future, so that we have a future ahead of us. How do we survive?  what's the best way?  Do we have to leave the planet, is that our only hope?  It would be depressing fiction, if it weren't for this sense of hope infusing it, that we can find a way.  Science fiction is one way of pointing us to possible futures and outcomes. Connie Willis' writing (the time travelling series anyway) comes from a future where we do still exist,but things have changed, and they are trying to come back to see what they can save, or to see what happened.  It's beautiful and I love her writing, and this story, "Fire Watch", for showing that in the midst of war (the Blitz), there is time to care.

 "Fire Watch" won the Hugo and Nebula award for best novelette in 1983.
"Letter from the Clearys" won the Nebula Award for best short story in 1983.

Sunday musings

I have come across two challenges today, that are mini-challenges specifically for March:


March Mystery Madness, hosted by Christina at  Reading Thru the Night, is about reading mysteries and posting a link to her blog.  That's all.  I neglected my mystery reading badly in February and have a huge pile to get to.  I like the idea of March Mystery Madness, too!  I'm mad for mysteries.....

The other challenge is for next week: The Irish Short Story Week Year Two, and is for the one week:  Mel at The Reading Life is hosting this one. It is on from March 12-22.  I can read a short story or three!  I mean, ghost stories from Sheridan LeFanu count, as well as convincing myself I can read Ulysses by reading one of James Joyce's short stories, counts. As I am part Irish, we always celebrate St Patrick's Day in my house, so this fits right in with the Irish Stew and the cabbage and the tea we have :-)  plus the wearing of the green.  You only have to read one story for the week, though Mel has drawn up a list of reading he wants to do every day.  Anyone in the mood for some Oscar Wilde?  Anne Enright? I wish poetry counted too - I will read some Yeats anyway, just because he is Irish, and in general to celebrate Irishness next week. Maybe I can find a short mystery story by an Irish writer and do both challenges at once!

Currently reading

I am currently reading Fables: Witches, and loving it.  I think it might be the darkness - I mean, they box up Death in the beginning, and he reminds me of the creepy Gentlemen from the Buffy episode I watched a few months ago (season 4). The nightmare creatures were captured, but there was an unbinding spell performed (in the book before, I believe, since Witches is dealing with the aftereffects) and now all the nightmares are released again - due to Death, of course.

 Baba Yaga is in the section I am reading now, and she has horrible spiders around her, as well as her chicken legs house.....I love this series.  Fairy tales twisted.  I know I should wait for Once Upon a Time in a few weeks, but I have these out from the library (I have Rose Red out also), and I don't know if I can renew them (since they are so wildly popular), so I'm reading them while I have them.  I think I might break down and by this one, it's so good.  I'll review more when I finish it.  ***It turns out I never reviewed Hush, as it was at the time that my husband and I were separating.  I did watch "Hush", and it is still as terrifying as ever.  The whole episode is magical and frightening.  Losing your voice, everyone losing their voices, and those gentlemen moving soundlessly, floating just above the ground. 

I've also begun the short stories of Connie Willis, in The Winds of Marble Arch.  I read the titular story last night. It almost made me cry at the ending. It's the story of a married couple who return to England for a visit, and of how the main character experiences a cold wind that smells of death, while in the London Underground.  He spends the next few days exploring where he feels them (even as they are awful and hair-raising, he wants to know more), and in the end, it becomes a musing on the arch we all go through.  It ends unexpectedly beautifully, and that's what made me want to cry.  I find this often in Willis's short stories, that what the story is about ends up - even if it's science fiction based - to do with emotions, and being a person.  Subterranean Press insists they put out a trade softcover version, though if they did they sold out so quickly that I never saw it.  This book is now on my most-wanted list.

So what are you reading on this Sunday in early March?  Do you have any plans for this month?  And yes, I've noticed none of these are mysteries!

Moving Mars - Greg Bear - Final thoughts

I loved Moving Mars.  It's a gripping science fiction novel, about the settlers on Mars, and how they grow up and break away from Earth.  It's much more than that, though. I posted earlier about my first thoughts while reading it, and I've had over a week to let it settle in my mind.  Moving Mars is about the people who settle there, and how Mars changes them. It's much like how settlers here in North America or Australia must have felt - and their descendants.  Because the settlement on Mars is 70 years old, when they face the stuggle they have with examining if they should stay with earth, and what right they have to be a world in their own right, it's like remembering our history - how the US colonists fought to not pay extra tax to England, about 150 years after the first settlers arrived.  When does a colony become a self-sufficient country or world?  In Moving Mars, we get to experience first hand the changes that Mars goes through, through the eyes of Casseia Majumdar, and through all the characters around her, especially Charles Franklin, who makes the scientific breakthrough in thinking and physics, that leads Earth to struggle with Mars for control of that power.  It was unputdownable. 

I loved how Casseia travels back to Earth early on, so we get to see how Earth has changed.  I was fascinated by the way Bear shows that economics and the hidden few that control the economic system, eventually paved the way for the different continents to come together in a power base, so there were several groupings that decided how the world would function as a unit as man moved into space - first the moon, and then Mars, were colonized.  People are the same, though how they connect has been changed by social networking - there is a very cool party scene that Casseia experiences while on Earth, that I could see the new generation coming up, wanting to create between their social plug-ins and desire to connect with as many people as possible, in many different ways.  It was fascinating.

I enjoyed the advances in science and technology that Bear explains made moving into space possible, and how life was possible on Mars - the physical contraints, and why they tunneled into Mars to live, rather than just living on the surface.  Most of all though, I enjoyed the idea of the thinkers, the super computers that eventually evolve to having a personality made when a person joins with them - goes into them, in a sense. The blending of human creativity with all that is known to exist, makes for an interesting way to see one possible future for the computers and internet and the vast possible ways we could interface together.  What do we do with knowledge?  Where can we go with it?  In Moving Mars, it eventually becomes possible to break down the smallest particle, to its essence, with thought - the space in the center of the smallest photon, is empty, surrounded by the energy charge that makes it positive or negative.  Out of this, the photon moves towards or from the photons surrounding it, and so we have the physical structure of life.  Once Charles is able to think his way to that structure, and with the help of a Thinker, join his mind to moving the photon, then moving in space becomes possible. I won't say any more, because I don't want to give away what he does, and why, though I will say that it was powerful to read, and very thought-provoking.  I also have to apologize if I got any of the science wrong, I'm sure I got a term in there wrong somewhere!

I read this for Carl's Sci Fi Experience, and also as part of my personal challenge to read more Hugo and Nebula winning science fiction. Moving Mars won the Nebula Award, and deservedly so.

We have 3 days left, and I have two more books to review for Carl's Sci Fi challenge.  If I'm lucky, I will have another one to add in time.  However, I am going to be continuing my science fiction reading this year.  I am participating in the Grandmaster Challenge at World's End blog, and I am having a ball finding new books and authors to read. 

I also am finding I am piling up other books to read very soon - The Morville Hours, and finish reading some books I started before Christmas, like The Most Beautiful Villages in England, and The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction.  And, of course, Carl's Once Upon a Time Challenge will be starting very soon (I hope!), and I have several books out from the library already that fall into this fantasy/dark fantasy area. 

Finally, for a brief time:
Plus, I finally broke down and requested a book from our library, that it not currently being published and no copies are floating around:  The Winds of Marble Arch, the collected short stories of Connie Willis.  It finally came into my house yesterday.  I have it for a maximum of three renewals, and then I have to let this dear book (I already love it) out of my hands again.  I won't read it all in time for Carl's challenge, but it will fit into the Grandmaster reading challenge.  I love it because I have read a few short stories by Connie, and I know fabulous ideas await me.  Of course the very best news would be that Subterranean Press finally announces they are publishing the announced but never seen soft cover edition of Winds of Marble Arch.  Not yet. Sometimes, despite all our advances, other things get in the way of getting a book published.

I hope you have a week filled with good reading ahead also!

Blackout by Connie Willis

What a wonderful book. I read it in one day, which is lucky for me, because this book is written at such a breathless pace that it's a very difficult book to put down. Blackout is a return to Willis' time-travelling world set in 2150, which we saw previously in Dooms Day and Say Nothing of the Dog, featuring Mr Dunworthy as the head of the time travelling history department. In these books, Willis has created a science fiction world of time travel done by historians who go back in time to learn what history was really like. In this book, some of the time travellers - focusing on three specific time travellers, Merope, Polly and Michael - go back to England during WW2. They go to Dunkirk, the evacuation of the children from London to the countryside, and the beginnings of the Blitz - London in 1940. And from the opening lines as Colin searches for Polly to give her a message, to the last line when a mysterious 5th time traveller comes to London just as the bombs are about to fall, this book is enchanting. There is a fourth time traveller who we get part of the story for, but nothing in depth as the first three. That will come later, I expect.

I felt like I was really there during the Blitz, hearing the bombs fall, the airplanes as they droned over the city, the air raid sirens, the explosions. We see London through the eyes of Polly, who is undercover as a shopgirl, we see the evacuated children in the countryside through the eyes of Merope, who is working as a maid in the country house, and we see Dunkirk through Michael's eyes. The switch from character to character works very well here, and Willis is an expert at leaving the chapter just as things get interesting. I really could not put this book down. My only warning is that this is part one of two, as the publisher broke the book into two parts, and All Clear will be published in October of this year - thankfully, I do not have too long to wait!

This book is a great beach read. By this I mean, you could read it in one day, laugh out loud and cry, and come away completely satisfied. It is enjoyable, well-researched, filled with interesting characters and even has some funny moments, as well as some of the best secondary characters in all of fiction. Every character is memorable, and I really feel as if I had just taken a trip back to London my self.

Even though I qualify it as a beach read or excellent book to read in the heat (which means you can't do anything except read anyway, hurray for summer!), it does have some interesting ideas about history and time travel. If time travel existed, how do we know if our actions will affect history or not? Are we allowed to do anything, and if we do, what happens? does it matter if we get involved in locals' lives? In Willis' theory of time travel, the net - the transportation site to and from historical locations - won't let you in if you arrive at a crucial point in history because the danger of affecting it is too great. But Polly, Michael and Merope end up trapped in the Blitz, when their pick-up times pass and their nets won't open. If the science theory that observation changes the outcome of the experiment is applied to time travel, has Mr Dunworthy discovered too late that sending people back in time is more dangerous than anyone realized? That history has indeed been changed already? Even though time travel doesn't exist yet, these are questions I find myself asking while reading this book, which is a sign that even though I haven't been aware of it, Willis has been asking them all along. What does it mean to time travel? Is it safe? What happens when the way back home is temporarily closed? Are there any moments in time that it is safe to become part of, if you weren't there the first time around? Very interesting questions, I think. I'm really looking forward to Part Two in October.

10/10

Some birthday books and how to get your footie man to read

My birthday was a month ago, but for various reasons, I haven't been able to post about the books I received. The first book I received on my birthday, from my wonderful husband who is also the lucky recipient of my recipes so he likes picking out what he is going to be eating for the next few years.

Nigel Slater is one of my favourite cooks. He was the one who taught me how to roast a chicken perfectly every time, how to make bangers and mash the way the English like them, and who gave a recipe for lentil soup that is a winter mainstay in our household now. He is an English cook, so I am not able to see his tv shows, though I do copy out his Observers Food Monthly columns often. I didn't know before discovering him that that there were cooks that could speak to us, whose recipes made sense and who I would feel comfortable spending time in the kitchen with, until I met Nigel in Appetite while I lived in England in 1999-2000.

Appetite is his award-winning cookbook, and had just come out that winter. Giving me The Kitchen Diaries, the latest from this wonderful cook, was a real delight for me. In this cookbook, Nigel takes us through the year of a cook and his garden and the vegetable market. He decided to cook with what ever foods he could find at the market that day, and whatever his garden was producing at that time. Seasonal eating, which seems trendy now, although if you buy food at the fresh market stalls, as we are lucky enough to have here in Ottawa, then eating seasonally is possible 5 months of the year. I have done this for several years now, from May until Oct when the last of the harvest is gone. So I am thrilled to have a book by Nigel on how to use the bumper foods as they come into season, how to live rhythmically with the seasons.

I have only dipped into this cookbook so far, and already I've seen several recipes I want to try. Grilled zucchini with basil and lemon, cannelini beans with coppa, spinach and mustard (the picture of this dish always makes me hungry when I look at it!), lamb chops with oregano and tsatziki, Nigel's delightful trifle (alcohol-free!), Chicken stew and mash (for winter days)........mmmmmm, it must be lunch time soon. I will be reading this cookbook throughout the year, so I can try out Nigel's recipes as the food becomes available here too, so I can experiment further with eating seasonally. I'll let you know how it goes.

My other presents didn't arrive from Amazon.ca until this past Friday, thanks to a gift certificate from my mother:


Yes, I treated myself to a hardcover! Connie Willis's Blackout, which I had been intending to wait until it came out in softcover so I could carry it, has had so many good reviews that I can't wait. A very rare treat, and I've already read the first chapter while finishing up reading books for the other book challenges about to wind up. I bought for my birthday:
Blackout - Connie Willis
Diamond Solitaire - Peter Lovesey - 2nd book in the Peter Diamond series
Dido Live - dvd of Dido's live performance in 2004 in England
Lone Star - dvd, John Sayle's dark mystery, which I absolutely love and haven't seen in ages.

By the way, Blackout is book one of two books. It was so huge the publisher broke the novel into two parts, and the second book, All Clear, is due out in October. That's not so long to wait! Connie is one of my favourite authors, and this book is a return to Mr Dunworthy and his time-travelling historians. This time they are going back to World War 2. Here is a review that does not give anything away, at Locus Magazine online.

**I'll be posting on Carl's challenge tonight, after I finish reading A Midsummer's Night's Dream this afternoon. Lovely, lovely midsummer's eve! And Shakespeare.

Happy Fathers' Day and how to bring more books into the house:
It's Father's Day here in Canada, as it is in many places in the world. To my readers who are also fathers, Happy Father's Day. I hope you get some quiet time to read (most likely tonight after those who have made you fathers go to bed). My spouse, who is parked in front of the tv for World Cup football (aka soccer over here in North America) for this month, received two books from me - many of you know he is long-suffering because I buy more books than he has seen in his life. Slowly but surely I have been building a large library of English football books for my love. Today was no exception: he received the England pre-match warm-up kit to wear, as a proud England supporter, and two books:

Soccernomics, by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski
The Story of the World Cup by Brian Glanville

Since England, and now Italy, are on the bubble - they must win their next game or go home early from the tournament - Soccernomics, which I bought some time ago, seems timely with its subtitle: Why England Loses, Why Germany and Brazil Win, And Why the US, Japan, Australia, Turkey - And Even Iraq - Are Destined to Become the Kings of the World's Most Popular Sport.

I hope wherever you are, you are enjoying a book and some footie on this Sunday.

PS May I add my congratulations to my readers from New Zealand? We were cheering for you today, and it was a thrilling point you won today against the Azzuri.
PPS To my Italian readers, I'm sorry, I really am. As someone who cheers for England, you can take comfort that you played better than we did in our last match.

Bellwether by Connie Willis or, the book that is most like me

Bellwether by Connie Willis is a book I first discovered 12 years ago. The first time I read it, I gave it to everyone for Christmas that year. I have reread at least once since, and a few weeks ago I picked the book up again. As always, I wondered: would I still love this book? Was it still funny?

Yes.

Yes!

I laughed out loud! I cried, wiping tears away surreptitiously at work and on the bus. I devoured this book. Most of all, I remembered why I love it so much. The heroine, Sandra Foster, is me. Not me, literally. But how she thinks, the things she does and gets caught up in, she is me. Synchronicity. Chaos resolving into a higher state of stability. Humour. Books feature in this story in a big way. So do administrative clerks and a management team who keep inventing new acronyms for the team. I don't know about you, but even in my workplace we've managed to go through three acronyms since I began there 9 years ago. Three! Since this is my first foray into business/government vs retail work, I found reading Bellwether this time even funnier. I can relate to a management team whose new iniative spells out "GRIM: Guided Resource Initiative Management". It makes as much sense as any real life acronyms!! I wish I dared suggest it in our suggestion box at work......

This science fiction novel is about the chaos that results at a science firm when an administrative assistant named Flip misdelivers a box to the wrong section. Sandra is researching what caused the bob in the 1920's - the short cut of hair that millions of women suddenly adopted, without one apparent reason for them all to do it. Sandra is a statistician, and has a theory about how trends get started. Flip's misdelivery of the box leads her to meet Bennett, who defies all popularity/trendsetting fads, including wearing coke-bottle lens glasses, and researches chaos theory. 'Bellwether' is also about sheep, but you'll have to read the book to find out more, since otherwise it might give too much of the plot away!

It is a delightful, wonderful, witty poke at modern fads and trends and the buzz words we use, all in the context of understanding why people behave the way they do. Thrown into the mix is the desire of the company to win the Neibnitz Grant, a prize of one million dollars, awarded every so often to a scientist.

Did I mention library books? Library books figure prominently, as does Barbie, fads in angels and fairies, restaurants that change names weekly, and management sensitivity exercises.

There is so much to love in the book. I was as happy and satisfied at the ending as ever, and I finished it thinking, "If anyone ever wanted to get to know how my brain works, this is a good book to start with." This is one of those books that truly delights me. It is good, it is moving, and it is funny. It really is one of my favourite books of all time.

Here is a link to a Connie Willis site and her books. I see by this that her new book, Black-Out, was released last week! I'm rushing to my bookstore on Tuesday to see if it's there!

Here is Jo Walton's review of Bellwether, written last year. I'd suggest to read this one only if you've read Bellwether already, since it does give more plot away. I also disagree with Jo when she calls it fluff; I prefer one of the commentators on the post who suggest that Bellwether unifies chaos events - I like that! there has to be some kind of new equilibrium reached, even if it's only temporary, or only chaos results, forever. And life just isn't like that. Life does have moments of equilibrium.

As science fiction goes, this is not heavy on science at all. Science plays a major role, but so does love and friendship and a Robert Browning poem. It's a book for anyone who's afraid to try science fiction, for anyone who hates winter and longs for spring (this will at least make your spirits happy for a few days), for anyone who likes a wry look at how people come to do things - anything. This is a very good novel that happens to be science fiction. So I really have given it to people who've never read this genre, as well as to life-long readers of it. Mostly, it's funny. It also gives a handy 5-answer guide for what to put down for your list at your next management strategy (new acronym time!) meeting that we all have to suffer under :

1.Optimize potential. 2.Facilitate empowerment 3. Implement visioning 4.Strategize priorities 5. Augment core structures.

Uh oh, writing that list down makes me realize I've heard all this in real life! I wonder if any of my management team have read this book? So I like Bennett's response to the list:
What is that?" Bennett said, looking at the list. "Those make no sense."

Yes, I feel like I'm having a conversation with the characters! If for nothing else, you have to read this book for Flip, who is like the worst assistant out there......

So tell me, Gentle Reader, have you come across a book that seems to reflect you on the page? Is it one of your favourite books?

This was read for part of Carl's Sci-Fi Challenge, as well as Becky's 42 Science Fiction Things challenge.

Doomsday Book - Connie Willis

The current cover and edition, the one I just bought two weeks ago.






Doomsday Book by Connie Willis.


Every once in a while you come across the perfect book. The one that takes your breath away, where every word is perfectly placed, where the story comes alive for you, and there is nothing else in your world as you read. Doomsday Book has been that book for me for well over 15 years. I have to admit to some trepidation when I bought a replacement copy two weeks ago (I lent it to someone and it's never come back), and decided it was time to revisit it. Would it hold up? Would I still love it? I think I was almost holding my breath when I opened it last weekend. And then I was swept away, and when I resurfaced late Monday afternoon (I was home sick but well enough to read!), when I put the book down, my eyes were red and puffy from crying and it was still a perfect book.

So what makes it so good? you ask. How can a time travel book back to the Middle Ages, from 2050 AD Oxford, be thrilling, moving, gut-wrenching, and sometimes funny reading? When you have strong characters who seem like they stepped out of life onto the page, when you have a story that is filled with love, and curiosity, and human errors, and determination, all that's best about people, and the very interesting idea of time travel and how it could work - in the hands of one of the US's best science fiction writers, it becomes a luminous novel.

What? you ask. A science fiction novel that's luminous? How can that be? Doomsday Book concentrates on people first, how they relate to one another, their relationships, and then how their actions affect others. The science is there, an integral part of the plot, but isn't the reason the book exists. The book exists because of Kivrin and Mr Dunworthy and what happened when Kirvrin travelled back in time to 14th century England. And this part is very well thought out; how could someone go back in time and not upset the time they landed in? How could a person be prepared for this kind of travel? How do you cope when you land there? Doomsday Book answers all these.

Most of all, 14th century England comes alive, specifically life in a tiny village. The first time I read this book, I had only a hazy idea about life in the Middle Ages and how people lived then. Since reading this book I have lived in England, and I have seen first-hand surviving 14th century houses and streets, so I have a much better sense of what life was like back then. Once again, Doomsday Book surprised me with its recreation of the Middle Ages in the characters, the locale, everything is thought out and planned and covered for.

The book takes place in 14th century England - to say any more would be to give a way a key plot point, so I won't! and 2050 Oxford. I certainly wish that half of what Willis envisioned, especially the phones that are actually video screens, would come true! All of the characters are wonderful, people that talk to each other, and are funny, or proud, or determined.

Here are a few of my favourite passages:
'She had been wrong about not recognizing anything - she knew these woods after all. It was the forest Snow White had got lost in, and Hansel and Gretel, and all those princes. There were wolves in it, and bears, and perhap's even witch's cottages, and that was where all those stories had come from, wasn't it, the Middle Ages? And no wonder. Anyone could get lost in here.'

"None go to Bath," the boy said. "All who can, flee it."

She put the lists at the bottom of her sheaf of papers and began passing the top sheets, which were a virulent pink, around to everyone. they appeared to be a release form of some sort, absolving the Infirmary of any and all responsibility.....
She handed Dunworthy a blue sheet which absolved the NHS of any and all responsibility and confirmed willingness to pay any and all charges not covered by the NHS in full and within thirty days.....
The sheet was distributing now ws green and headed "Instructions for Primary Contacts." Number one was, "Avoid contact with others."
"Record your temp at half-hour intervals," she said, handing round a yellow form. ...
She handed Dunworthy another pink sheet. She was running out of colors. This one was a log, headed "Contacts," and under it, "Name, Address, Type of Contact, Time."
It was unfortunate that Badri's virus had not had time to deal with the CDC, the NHS, and theWIC. It would never have got in the door.

Did I mention the lovely sense of humour like in the above passage, and for example, the head of the department who has gone away for the holidays, and can't be found? Most of Willis's books have this wry laughter along with a sense of sorrow. For me, this is some of what makes her books accessible to everyone. You don't have to understand any math or science to know how time travel works in her worlds!


Cover, 1st edition, hardcover. I used to have a copy of this version also, and it was lent out and got damaged. I love this book so much that I want everyone to read it! However, I've decided that from now on, I will just buy a copy when I want someone to read it!

This book is such a satisfying read that I haven't really been able to pick another one up yet. I can't recommend this highly enough. It's still, one of my favourite books.