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 Advent Calendar day 22: I am sick

My cold has worsened.  I had to step out for last-minute things ** even with my cold because we have a storm coming in over night.  Freezing rain, snow, rain.  Who knows?  So I dashed out, and now I know I probably shouldn't have.  I'm shivering and huddled under blankets, about to have ginger and honey tea, watching the Dr Who Marathon that is running on our Space channel all week until Christmas night, when the new special airs.  My husband is also sick with this cold, while our children are recovering now.  Let's hope it's done with by the 25th.  *achoo* No reading, my head is all stuffed.  The Dr Who marathon was showing Season 4 with Donna today.  We have had fun picking out references in the early episodes that happened later on in the season or even later on in the show with other doctors.  Such a well-written show!  And perfect when I need to be entertained and cuddle with my kids at the same time.

** I confess:  I had no cranberries, no sausages, no bread, and no birthday cake for my daughter's birthday on Wednesday.  So I had to go out.  What's turkey without stuffing???? or cranberries??? lol  And the birthday cake!!!  We had put it off all weekend by staying in, hoping this would help our colds disappear faster.  My husband ended staying home from work today. We both were worse this morning. He's improving, or seems to be.  Fingers crossed for me.....

Timescape by Gregory Benford - book review

                       
   Timescape by Gregory Benford is a nebula-award-winning science fiction novel, written in 1979.  When it is set is important, because the novel is split between two different time periods:  1998, when the world environment is in near-collapse after the oceans start dying, and 1963.  1963 is when a message sent by the scientific team in 1998, a team of nuclear physicists, work with tachyons to send back a message in time.  They pick 1963 because scientists then are just beginning to work in the field around tachyons, without knowing they exist. The first experiments with working with nuclear resonance equipment, which allows the messages from the tachyon beams to go back to 1963 to be received - is why 1963 is picked.  Timescape is about the world as Benford foresaw in 1998, and looked back on in 1963, from his position in 1979, when he was writing it.  We, as the reader, now look back on all of it as all in the past, and so this novel should feel dated, but it doesn't.  Even though 1998 is 15 years ago now, I read it from the perspective of Benford, from 1980, and so looking ahead to one possible future of earth in 1998, and back on the past that was in 1963.

This sounds all complicated, like listening to the Doctor try to explain time business in Dr Who -
'Timeywimey"  is a word I like now and hope to see in the dictionary one day.  "A big bowl of wibbly wobbley timey wimey stuff," is  how he describes it to Sally Sparrow in the first weeping angel episode. Of course, she's writing it from the future back to him in the past in an event that hasn't happened yet either, or is happening now and that she has to send back to make sure it happens in that way so they survive.  In Timescape, the 1998 team are trying to get a message back to 1963 earth to not create - or use - a certain type of chemical that when it gets into the food chain, the molecule works as a virus and mutates within the food organisms so they become inedible. 

All this in itself is cool.  It's fascinating to watch the one team sending the message back in time, running the program, beaming it when they know the earth is in that position in the sky in 1963.  Seeing how physics, astronomy, and chemistry are all needed to solve this riddle in 1963, where Gordon Bernstein is running the nuclear resonance experiment, and picking up the coded message that sounds like intereference in his experiment.  He ends up going to chemists for the molecular code sent back, to astronomers for the latitude and longtitude delineations that he realizes gives a star in space - and a time period when the earth is there. The lives of all the scientists are explored, which gives a  human grounding to the messiness that is time travel story.  This also lets us see the inner lives of the scientists, especially Gordon, and John Renfrew from the 1998 team, who has to keep the message going back and wonders how they will know it is received, when the 1963 team can't send any message to the future. He wonders, if the world - the future - is changed by the 1963 team acting on the message received, how will they know in 1998?  How do you experience the world changing?  Will they be able to stop the diodom bloom in the oceans?  Save the environment? 

I won't give all the answers here, as how this is resolved is done in a very interesting manner.  It involves an event everyone knows, so that the reader - you and I - are involved in imagining what if this happened?  it's part of our history too.  Very interesting, and very well done. And, the future is involved too, in a very cool way.

I really liked this book. I loved seeing how the scientists work out their problems - and they really are 'head in their clouds', distant, constantly trying to work it through while going through their daily lives.  Like artists, creators,writers, they are involved in their minds working through data, especially when working through new experiments.  How does a scientist win a prize?  what does it take to be a scientist?  what's it like to run with ideas while in the midst of doing something else?  This is probably the best book on the inner workings of a scientific mind.  It's highly readable.  Trust me.  I am not a scientist, and Benford wrote the physics in such a way that I don't feel like an idiot because I don't understand, but made me feel smart because I could understand the theories behind tachyons, planets in space and time, and how a message might be sent back in time.  Brillliant, clever writing that makes the reader feel smart. 

And it might just be possible to send a message back in time.....though it is still kind of timey-wimey at it's heart, too.  Time travel is that.

Read for Carl's Sci-fi Experience, it is a really well-written, and one of the best books on how at least a message through time could  be done.  

Neil Gaiman story for RIP VI

All my plans for a lovely long post about all the books I bought on Friday (including 4  for RIP!) have been put aside until tomorrow.  My youngest son and I played Uno instead today, followed by bowling on Wii (until my injured knee started clicking, a bad sign) and then archery (no bending of said knee required).  Tomorrow is the first day back to school, and he is nervous - he and his sister are going to a new school this year.  Our daughter is currently in England attending a family funeral with her father, otherwise it would have been a family Uno game and Wii events.

Instead of books to drool over, I found something even better:  at Neil Gaiman's blog, back in July, he posted here about a collection of new short stories he and Al Sarrantino had coming out, entitled Stories (they are both editors of it).  His story in this collection, he says in this post, was also nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award at Readercon.  He won.  He invites everyone to go read it online, for free, here, at 52 Stories.  As we are now in RIP, this is like getting free candy for us horror fans:  a free dark short story (and not outright horror, no gore, so safe to read for the shy of heart), by the one and only Neil Gaiman, AND the story won the Shirley Jackson Award for best novelette.  So we get an award-winning dark  short story to read for RIP!  Let me know what you think, my Gentle Reader.

I've just finished reading it - entitled "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains", and it is good.  Much better, and much more moving, and much more thoughtful than I would have expected.  Actually, I didn't know what to expect, which is good, because I have read Fragile Things, and Smoke and Mirrors, and I am happy to find I am still, always, surprised by his short stories.

While I'm on the topic of Mr Gaiman, I have to add that I have not commented on his Dr Who episode, "The Doctor's Wife", that aired earlier this spring here.  That wasn't because I didn't love it, on the contrary - it is an episode that the more it sits in my brain and heart, the better it gets, like there is old Dr Who and time travelling wisdom in this story that takes time to sink in.  The Tardis as a woman, ever so briefly, and the Doctor's true love.  An amazing episode, by an gifted writer, who can go from dark to funny to bizarre without really blinking at all. The episode is unlike almost any Dr Who episode ever, yet it is perfect for the Dr Who mythology.  In one fell swoop, we learn how the Doctor and the Tardis chose each other to run away with. It is romantic and beautiful and ethereal, like the most romantic part of the Doctor's soul has been revealed, the reason why we all love him so, because he is mad, and he does care, so very much.  

Enough of the fan-girl stuff, I have to go off to bed so I can be ready for the morning angst about starting a new school.  Fall is definitely in the air, it's school time again, and I have now read a short story and a book for RIP!!!!  Review of book to come.

Happy Labour day everyone! 

some favourite Dr Who episodes at our house

After writing my post last night, I thought, what a plethora of sad news I've been writing about since Christmas.
So I thought I'd share with you something fun that has happened at our house:  The Doctor has taken over.  With the exception of my husband, who falls asleep during most tv shows, we all have favourite Dr Who episodes. 
This came about because our daughter, Holly-Anne, who you will remember from this post a few years ago, has developed a serious crush on Matt Smith as the current incarnation of Dr Who. 

This week, we have watched/listened to " The Pandorica Opens" and "The Big Bang" many, many times.  "I have to watch this every day!" she says, when asked why we are watching it for the 12th time in a weekend.  It's Spring Break for us, so this has meant that last weekend, "The Pandorica Opens" and " The Big Bang" played over and over for a whole day.  We finally,  after many hours of listening to these same two episodes, insisted she watch something else.  So she put on the episode before it, "The Lodger".  Now, "The Lodger" happens to contain a soccer game.  Graham is a tiny ball of soccer fever, at age 6.  We are even playing Monopoly because my in-laws sent us a version of Monopoly from England that featured the current English Premier League teams (in 2002) as the properties we could buy.  So for the past two days when it hasn't been"The Pandorica Opens" and " The Big Bang", it has been  "The Lodger".  (This just finished playing recently this evening.)  We turned on the tv to find Space Channel playing the very first Dr Who episode of the recent series, the one featuring Rose and The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston).  This one, "Rose", with the mannequins, is my youngest's oldest favourite, that we also have had to watch over and over, through the past year.  He also made us watch
"The Empty Child" and  "The Doctor Dances" , and  "Midnight"
over and over.  There is something about Dr Who episodes that makes them stand up very well under repeat viewings.

Along the way of watching Dr Who in this household, we have had to discuss so many things the show brings up:  time travel, history, how the doctor comes back, where Rose currently is (in a different dimension sealed off from ours), why the doctor never dies, extraterrestrial life, who Van Gogh was, how important memory is (Amy recreates the world because she has such a powerful memory, stronger than even the Doctor guesses). We've met Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, the Titanic, Romans in early Britain, how dangerous angel statues really are (I like to scare the children too), and all through the 5 glorious years of Dr Who so far, seen so many examples of love, and faith, triumph.    We've seen Rose try to save her father from his early death, and how it nearly wipes the world out.  Loss, and grief, are part of Dr Who too.  He can't save his family, or his world that was destroyed in the Time Wars, even though he is a time lord.  We've met his mother, and we've met another Time Lord who went mad - the Master.  Dangerous, these time lords are.  It might be only science fiction, but I think it's the best kind of science fiction.

And, we've met the Angels.  The stone angels, the lonely assassins.  Those are my favourite episodes:  Season 3/ 10, "Blink", and  Season 5: "The Time of the Angels" and "Flesh and Stone", a two-part series.  Here is a link to a page about the Weeping Angels on the BBC Dr Who site.
  I love "Blink" because it is about so much.  There are the names - Sally Sparrow, Kathy and Larry Nightingale.  There are the angels who steal your life energy, but at the same time send you backwards, where love is still found - Kathy marries the first man she happens to meet in Wales, and Billy marries her daughter, if I'm not mistaken (one thing with the Doctor is you have to be on your toes and listen to every piece of dialogue - it all matters.  Another reason I love this show.  No wasted space or energy.)  There is the old creepy house, and the statues that you can't look away from, or they move.
Now tell me, haven't you had the feeling sometimes that things were moving at the corner of your eyes?  That things were happening just there, where you couldn't see, and if you turned your head fast enough, you could see it?  I have, though thankfully not often!  There's also movies, and seeing her friend's brother accidentally naked, and a grown over garden, and statues that move.
I love this episode because the ordinary is taken, and turned inside out.   Sally and Larry fall in love because when the angels threaten them, at the very last moment Larry throws himself over Sally to protect her.  It's romantic.  At it's heart, Dr Who is a romantic show, in the old fashioned sense that gallantry and rescue in the face of danger and braving terror for knowledge and adventure are romantic.  All the companions are allowed to be heroines, to have strengths and sensitivity and make errors and cry, and be open.  How could I not let my children watch this show?  They've seen me cry over and over during "The Parting of the Ways", when Rose looks into the heart of the Tardis,

and we see the power of time, space and knowledge pour through her as she is momentarily like a Goddess, like a Time Lord, looking into all of time and space simultaneously.  I love the powerful imagination let loose in this series, and the story telling  is glorious adventures in time and space.

Here is another link to the "10 Scariest Moments in Dr Who".  Do you agree?  Do you have a favourite Dr Who episode that you return to again and again? 

Mysteries! Science Fiction! and The Cipher Garden arrives.....

So, you're wondering where I've been. So am I. Imagine my surprise when I was entering a book read - The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt - in my book journal, and I looked at the date and realized it took me a month to read it. A month!!! A MONTH!!! Work hours have changed and now my morning commute is usually spent standing, I have a friend I write about Fringe with over lunch, and at home I've been so involved with Fringe that I didn't realize my reading had fallen off so drastically. I'm not mad at myself, I have loved and continue to love all moments with this show! I am puzzled that I haven't made reading time elsewhere, somehow. Last night I stayed up late to read Nemesis, and it was the first time in a long time that I stayed up late to read this year, I think. It was rather nice to be reading again. I have to somehow work these two loves into my life now!

What I really think though, is that I've been waiting for Martin Edward's book The Cipher Garden to come in the mail. It threw me off when I lost it on the bus, just as I was beginning to read it. I felt like I was in a holding place, that the universe wouldn't be righted until I had it again. All right, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but I really felt like something was off, that would only be put right when I had the book again. It arrived two weeks ago, and ever since I have felt better. It's funny what books mean to me, even unread ones that I am only anticipating reading. And no, I haven't read it yet - I was finishing The Court of the Air, and then I realized I had a date with Harry Hole in Nemesis, which I started reading for my birthday treat (it was my birthday last week). I finished it early this morning. I picked up The Cipher Garden - was it time for Hannah and Daniel - and I realized that Nemesis had been so good that I didn't want to read another mystery right after, I needed something different. Miss Pettigrew Lives for A Day fell into my hands, and I am laughing and delighted already - and then it will be time for Hannah and Daniel. I have the next three books in the series now. Daniel and Hannah and I have a date in a couple of days!

I don't really have a reading plan any more this year. I do want to finish quite a few mystery series - get caught up in them, and this is why I expected to read close to 100 books this year. However this last month of not reading much has derailed that plan, and I don't know what my expectations are any more. I think I am going to read as much as I can, and if I get to 75 books that will be quite an achievement now for me.

Science Fiction thoughts:

Why are the best shows on tv so often science fiction? Is it because they examine the unusual, the 'out there' stories that end up reflecting the human condition in all its various shapes and colours and emotions? Is it because science fiction lets us see ourselves as others would really see us, as a human race? Is it because we all secretly wish we could escape from the boring mundaneness that is every day, and experience the joy of discovery again? is it because if we can love the other, the alien, the different, if we can find a way to accept it, then we can find a way to accept our differences here? I think so. I think science fiction holds up hope to us. There will be a tomorrow, and it will be different from today. If our brains need puzzles (and books!) to stay alive, then as a human race I think we need to have a horizon to aim for, to keep our focus on striving to be better. Science fiction is our hope that tomorrow exists. I know that I want to believe we can overcome our differences as a human race and look outwards and upwards to exploring the stars. First, though, we have to conquor the alien that is within each of us, the fear of being different and outcast, before we can hope to take our place in the stars. For exploring all the ways we have of being human, and of encountering what might lie out there, science fiction is our gateway within to get out there.

Two tv shows in particular that seem to me the best for showing us all that is human happen to be science fiction:

Dr Who: We are enjoying the new series very much, the children especially. I wasn't sure how I could adapt to a Dr after David Tennant's marvellous heart-breaking and edgy performance, but I like Matt Smith as the younger Doctor. Just one thing, he's a mean to Amy Pond, his new pretty assistant. He is forever telling her to be quiet, to shut it, and I don't know if its' because he is young and so brash and less aware of other people's feelings, or if he genuinely thinks he's smarter and so he has the right to tell her to shush, but I find it rude. Especially as Amy has already saved him and the universe. I think the clue is that he picked up on the theme of pain, which is something the doctor seems to be struggling with in the last few seasons also with Tennant, whereas Amy picked love. Despite this flaw, when they came up with the idea of the star whale, I fell in love all over again. That, and 7 year old Amy, waiting with her suitcase for the doctor to come back, because she believed in him. that's the power of science fiction, to imagine and reveal our hearts in that imagining.

Fringe: the two-part season finale was fabulous. I keep rewatching it. It is so satisfying, and ends on such a cliff-hanger. This has been the first week without a new episode, and I have been feeling lost with no new episodes to look forward to until September. I find this show much more satisfying than Lost, for although I enjoyed Lost, it never filled up my thoughts the way Fringe does. I find myself wondering about different elements of Fringe - story, plot, characters, questions and answers - but mostly, I love it. My favourite line from this second season: There are as many cells in each of our bodies as there are stars in the sky. (Walter, and William Bell, both say this in the two-parter). There's magic and beauty in that sentence that just sings to me.

Mysteries - who do I love?

Harry Hole: I still love you. How do I know this? When you went to have dinner with your old flame in Nemesis, I was so anxious I didn't think about Fringe at all, and felt this knot of anxiety and dread. Oh Harry, that was silly. And when you thought the person you were working with was going to be shot and you fell to your knees calling out Ellen's name, I loved you all over again. You really won't let go, you won't give up until you find out what happened. You are willing to make a deal with the scariest of criminals to get the information you need, and somehow it all works out in the end. Please don't wreck things with Rakel. I don't think Oleg or I could get over it. You're a quiet, persistent, cynical investigator, and I'll follow you anywhere that you take me.

Some fast mystery book reviews so it looks like I read something this year:

All of these books are at least a 9/10. They are all highly recommended, and I'm not sure how I can have just 10 top mysteries for this year, since most of these are on this list right now, and it's not quite June.

Nemesis - Jo Nesbo - 2nd book published in the Harry Hole series. We pick up two years after The Redbreast. Rakel and Oleg are still in Harry's life, and he has quit drinking. The murder of his colleague is still unsolved. Of course, we the reader know from The Redbreast who the killer is. But Harry doesn't. The killer makes a reappearance again also. We see the net being drawn just a little tighter, though the breakthrough eludes Harry in this book. The main mystery, a bank robbery that ends in a killing, take Harry from Oslo to Brazil and back, and into his own past as he tries to solve the death of his old flame, for which he has been potentially framed as the last one to see her alive. This is a complex book on love and revenge, well-written and densely layered, so the themes reappear over and over until it becomes a philosophical musing on how love and revenge so often go hand in hand. Nemesis is a perfect title and perfectly worked into the plot. This is a must-read. 9.5/10

The only reason why I'm not reading book three is because I discovered it is not The Devil's Star, which I do have, but The Redeemer, which I don't yet. I will be buying it very shortly, because I have to know how Harry solves the death of his colleague. He will, I know he will. And because, see above, who do I love?

Dead Famous - Carol O'Connell - the 7th book in the Kathleen Mallory series. I haven't written much about Mallory here as I'd read all the other books before I began my blog. This is one of my favourite mystery series. Kathleen Mallory is a detective like no other you will encounter. She is a psychopath, but on the side (barely) of the law, luckily for the police. Her victims are usually those she is pursuing in an investigation, which she frequently breaks the law in her pursuit of. She is coldly beautiful and frighteningly intelligent, so bright that she is breathtaking in how she foils the plans of those criminals who are as equally intelligent and convinced they are going to get away with it. Dead Famous features such a brilliant mind, but to say more would be to give away who the killer is and why. Suffice it to say this is a clever mystery, and just when I think Mallory is too cold, one of the few friends she does have, discovers that she has outsmarted him in convincing him to coming back into the force, because she doesn't like change, either. Heartbreaking. She can't say she loves you, but she will do anything, anything, for those she does love. A heroine unlike any other, and if you haven't read her, then begin with Mallory's Oracle, and meet what should be touted as one of the best detective creations in literature. 9.5/10

Fearless Fourteen - Janet Evanovich. Number 14 in the Stephanie Plum mysteries, this is as funny as ever. I love Stephanie. If I were a bounty hunter, I would be as clumsy, unlucky, and ineffective as Stephanie is at being one. I could only hope for a guy like Morelli though. This one features various losers hanging out at the Morelli residence as they try to track some missing family members of the Morelli clan. Bodies keep turning up and disappearing, Lula is engaged to The Tank, an employee of the hunky and fascinating Carlos the security expert (very hunky), and there is a bomb, which frequently explodes around Stephanie in most of her books. She's like that, attracts trouble and love, and this is the funniest series in mysteries going. I read these when I need to laugh, and this one was very good. 9/10

The Last Detective - Peter Lovesey. Kerrie over at Myststeries in Paradise brought this series to my attention. The latest book in the series, Skeleton Hill, made the top 10 of her mysteries for 2009. I decided to begin at the beginning, with The Last Detective, which won the 1992 Anthony Boucher Award for Best Mystery Novel. I'm so glad I did. I like Peter Diamond. He is the last of a dying breed, relying on his investigative and interview techniques to nail his suspects over the new 'computers' that in 1991 still have the orange writing on the black screen. He is fat and out of shape and proud of it. It is told from the point of view of Diamond, and the two main suspects. I found the first suspect, Gregory Jackman, annoying as anything, though I did appreciate what Lovesey was doing - we are getting into the mind of this self-obsessed horrible shallow professor, who it turns out does have feelings after all. I really enjoyed the writing and the mystery, and the ending is sad. This is a mystery that shows how love can lead people to horrible acts. I'm going to continue with this series as soon as I can. 9.5/10

The Coffin Trail - Martin Edwards. At last, the mystery novel you've been hearing about for a little while now, the first in the series of which the infamous The Cipher Garden belongs to, which was left on a bus. DCI Hannah Black is asked to head a Cold Case task force in the Lake District as a way of showing people that the police are taking the unsolved cases seriously. Daniel Kind is a tv-famous historian, whose father was a police detective who lives in the last place - the Lake District - where Daniel has happy family memories. The last ones, as his father left his family for another woman. His father did work with Hannah, and they were quite close, but he has recently died, leaving Daniel with the sense that he wants to reassess his life and comes to find out what he can of his father. One thing leads to another and Daniel buys a property in the Lake District. He sets out to discover what really happened during that same childhood summer long ago because he has never believed that Barrie, his summertime friend from that childhood visit, was guilty of the ghastly murder of a woman on an altar stone . A tip is received when the cold case is the same one reopened by Hannah, and Daniel and Hannah eventually meet up. They do not work together in this book, but they have the potential to have a unique pairing given their respective trades. I enjoyed this book very much. There is some sorrow, as evinced by the title, the Coffin Trail, which is the trail the coffin bearers took from to get to the nearest church, in centuries past. I like the beauty of the Lake District in this book - I really need to go visit it now! - and the melancholy as Daniel tries to recovers some good memories of the man his father was, as well as clear the memories of his friend. This is a good mystery, with many possible guilty parties, and still the killer when unmasked is unexpected. I like DCI Hannah Scarlett, and I like Daniel Kind. Very solid mystery. 9/10

The Serpent's Tale and Grave Goods - Ariana Franklin. Books 2 and 3 in the A Mistress of the Art of Death series. I really love this series. Something about how Ariana writes Henry II makes him vivid and come alive for me. The historical accuracy is amazing. Above all, is Adelia Aguilar, a Mistress of the Art of Death, an early version of a forensic investigator. She has been trained in Sicily where women have much more freedom than they do in England, where she is forced to hide what she is behind her friend and servant Mansur, an Arabic eunuch, who plays the role of investigator while Adelia translates for him. How she investigates murder in 11th century England is fascinating. In The Serpent's Tale she is investigating who killed the mistress of King Henry II. I love how real these books make this time period. In The Serpent's Tale, I am trapped with them in the abbey as the winter settles in and covers them with impenetrable snow. In Grave Goods, I enjoyed the visit to Glastonbury Abbey near Wales, and how even then the legend of King Arthur was used by the locals and by the King. Adelia has to prove or disprove if some bones found hidden in a grave, revealed by an earthquake, are indeed the bones of Arthur and Guinevere. All of the characters are well drawn, and it really seems as if history has leapt of the page and we are there, with Adelia and her group. I really like Adelia, she is a courageous and honest woman, far ahead of her time, who must wrestle with her conscience over what she sees around her, as well as learning what it means to love her newborn daughter who is her illegitimate child of her liasion with the Bishop of St Albans, Rowley Picot. Their love is hilarious and heartbreaking. These are intelligent people who live in the early-developing English society, and I enjoy seeing these characters questions their loyalties, and loves, and themselves, even as they pursue justice at the request of the king. They are each 10/10.

This Night's Foul Work - Fred Vargas. The latest in the Commissaire Adamsberg mystery series from France. I really enjoyed this mystery. It is set in Normandy and in Paris, in the past and the present, and Adamsberg must unravel how the various incidents between two men killed in Paris, two stags killed and hearts cut out in Normandy, and an escaped murderer is linked. He has to discover who is betraying him within his division and why, even as he tries to solve the cases, and discovers how long revenge can simmer in the heart of someone he once offended. Again love and hatred are shown as linked, easily flipping from one side to another depending on the heart involved. The lengths one will go to achieve a sense of retribution seems to be a common theme in the mysteries I have ben reading this year. It's very interesting to see how often crime has at its roots, some form of passion or thwarted emotion. Adamsberg discovers who is loyal to him, and how easily he can be hurt. I think this is one of the best of the Adamsberg mysteries so far. 9/10.

Full Dark House - Christopher Fowler. The first book in the May and Bryant mystery series, this features May and Bryant retired from the force. An explosion at the old station kills Bryant, forcing May to remember their early days when they met during the Second World War, and how the Peculiar Crimes Division was set up then. They are an odd couple detective, Bryant the brilliant, eccentric detective, May logical and reasonable and as Bryant almost instantly recognizes, what he has needed to make the Peculiar Crimes Division work. Their first case is a killer who is stalking a risque production of Orpheus in Hell, killing several of the cast members in grisly deaths. The case is unsolved, the crimes stopping suddenly, until the bombing in the present day reveals that Bryant had discovered something and had been quietly investigating the old crime again.

Once again this is very well written, with a lively group of characters in the theatre, as well as May and Bryant, who leap off the page. I enjoyed both the current investigation as well as the story of how they met and the initial murder investigation. The Blitz is also recreated vividly. Unusual and a lot of fun to read. 9.5/10. I will be reading more as soon as I can get them.

The Christmas Rush and Dr Who is on in 10 minutes!!!

Well, I didn't expect it, to get so caught up in getting ready for Christmas that I haven't been on here in over a week! I feel so terrible, I have the advent tour to go catch up on. And, in 25 minutes, the premiere of Dr Who The Waters of Mars - which looks seriously scary and creepy and we are all so excited in the house that the kids are asking every few minutes how much longer to go.........

I have very good news to report from the doctor, the health scare I had has turned out to be just that. I think I am still exhaling from this very long period of tests and wondering what lay next. I am so relieved, of course, and I also have begun to do some thinking about what I do in my life, and what I would like to be doing. My life is close to what I've always wanted, except that I have little time for writing, and I haven't seen the way to where I can fit it in. I just know I have to! I thank all of you who have been thinking of me and hoping all would turn out all right, because your support did, and does, mean a lot. This may be cyberspace, but each of us writing is real, and you have all touched me with your concern and love. Thank you!!

We have been busy doing Christmas things, and so, in lieu of words, here is how we spent last Sunday: Dr Who is on! So no commentary, just enjoy the pictures, and hope you are celebrating Christmas preparations too.

Torchwood and Sylvia and Ted

The new 5 part series of Torchwood, "Children of the Earth", is currently playing for the first time on Canadian TV on our Space channel. Every night at 10 pm my brain is seared. So I'm watching most excellent science fiction on tv. It is so good, so dramatic, so dark, that I can't fall asleep right after! After this, to be rounded out by the new (for us anyway) Dr Who: the first of the last 4 episodes David Tennant will star in, the episode with the bus (can't remember the name of it) is on Saturday night. I have a date with the Doctor that night!!

I just found this most amazing reading of Ted Hughes' letter to Sylvia Plath's mother after Sylvia's death, courtesy of a link provided by Jane at Reading, WRiting, Working, PLaying, found at Fly High ( a new to me blog site), here.



I know, I know. Richard again! Honestly, this is just coincidence! But I promise, this will leave you with shivers, or if you're like me, tears, at the end. 4 minutes of one of the most honest letters ever written, involving two of the 20th century's greatest poets, read with great skill by Richard Armitage.

I don't mean to be quiet here. I keep falling asleep after dinner, which is one of the signs of diabetes. And I'm still trying to get to 56 books read by July 31! so I'll be on target for 100 this year....I'm not even at 50 yet, so I'm plowing through what I can (and still taking time to enjoy it).

Dr Who and my daughter

I have friends who are amazed and horrified that I let my 6 year old watch the new Dr Who. She's been watching with me since the show began, 3 years ago (we had to wait for it to premier over here). It began as a treat for her, she'd stay to listen to the theme music, then she'd stay for 15 minutes and fall asleep curled against me in a cuddle, then she'd slowly fight to stay awake for the whole hour. The next day she'd ask to see it again, when she was awake. And very quickly, she fell in love with Rose, and the Doctor, and the whole idea of travelling in the blue box all over the galaxy, helping fix whatever needed fixing in every world they came to.



So why, I am asked, do I let my daughter watch it? The themes are adult, even if some of the creatures are in that cute gizmo way, and the science talk is sometimes goobledy-gook, and the inside of the Tardis is fantastic beyond anything dreamed of! and I'm still not sure how it's the time machine, just that it is - it doesn't matter. What matters is the truth the show tries to convey, the heart of the story every week, which is almost always about love. There is death, and sadness, and partings - Holly-Anne still isn't over Rose going, and then all this past season got so excited over Rose coming back,until the ending, when she cried (I cried too) over Donna and Rose and the Dr. Because in a funny way, the writers and creators of Dr Who are updating this old science fiction idea for the 21st century. Yes, we can travel in time, and to different worlds - and wherever we go, we face ourselves, in whatever disguises we come in. How do we love what is alien in ourselves, if we can't embrace the stranger across from us? How do we learn to say hello in a different language? How do we gaze upon the stars and not wonder 'what's up there?' If we can save a life, do we? Yes, because we can.



My daughter is learning about what it is to be human, by exploring the universe. And I love the fact that as she grows older, she will find more in the stories and dialogue than she can currently understand. She loves the Dr, and Rose, and finally came to like Donna by the end of this year, only to lose Donna at the end. She's gone through the doctor change once - and she cried and cried when the Doctor changed from Christopher Eccleston to David Tennant, and then within a year became devoted to David Tennant too! She has already said that if the Dr came by with his blue box, she would gladly fly with him through the universe.

So would I.

I bring this up today, not just because it's still Carl's on-going Sci Fi Experience, but because I wanted to share what Holly-Anne chose to take to school today for Canada's Literacy Day. The children were encouraged to dress in pyjamas, and bring a book and toy from home. Out of all the books for her and her brother that we have (hmm, 100? 200 is closer....)she went right to the bookshelf last night and picked out the 2009 Official Dr Who Annual.



We picked it up while in England because it hasn't been available here. Off she went to school, and she showed her friends and her teacher. I did ask her if anyone else knew about Dr Who, and she said no.

This quote from Ursula K Le Guin's essay 'Why Americans Are Afraid of Dragons', is the real reason why I let her watch Dr Who with me - always at her insistence, so it's become our tv show now, hers and mine;
And finally, I believe that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties [of a human being] is the power of imagination: so that it is our pleasant duty, as librarians, or teachers, or parents, or writers, or simply as grownups, to encourage that faculty of imagination in our children, to encourage it to grow freely, to flourish like the green bay tree, by giving it the best, absolutely the best and the purest, nourishment that it can absorb. And never, under any circumstances, to squelch it, or sneer at it, or imply that it is childish, or unmanly, or untrue.
For fantasy is true, of course. It isn't factual, but it is true. Children know that. Adults know it too, and that is precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life that they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons, because they are afraid of freedom.
So I believe that we should trust our children. Normal children do not confuse reality and fantasy.....Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren't real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books." p 44

The unicorn comment made me think about something that happened this autumn with her. We came across a copy of The Last Unicorn, the animated video that came out in the - 1970's? that we were able to rent from our local video store. It was the animated film of Peter Beagle's book, which I read long ago and have carried a copy with me ever since. She watched it once, and then cried when it had to go back. (We haven't been able to get it out since.) I realized then, and often since then, watching her watch Dr Who, that there is a power in fantasy and science fiction - whether in Dr Who or Disney - that she responds to, and I am delighted to see this love of 'what if' rising up in her.

Oh, and she also loves Indiana Jones, especially the first movie. And Scooby Doo, and her doll Rose (named after you know who), and Strawberry Shortcake and Littlest Pet Shop. So she's not being completely taken over by Dr Who and science fiction! Though I have endless questions to answer about Dr Who, especially this season's ender, which she is still working out.

That's why I let her watch Dr Who. It is in the end, made for children, so any blood or gore is minimal - almost always off-screen. The very best of Dr Who contains what is in the very best of all science fiction and fantasy: it shows what it is to be human, and it shows what is true.

Doctor Who is back!!!

*sigh*

He's back. Season 4. Dr Who. It started off slowly, and then built to yet another satisfying conclusion - and only 1 person died in this episode! the cutest little blobs of fat from people too. If only they did look that cute! I want the diet pill - without the final effect, of course! but that's another story.... By the end of this episode, my daughter cried because she has to wait a week until the next one, and I was smiling because the Dr is back, and I think I might like this new companion Donna, despite all my reservations.

*sigh*

On a book note, Holly-Anne asked if she could learn to read soon. I promised her I would sit with her tomorrow and help her copy out a sentence from the Strawberry Shortcake treasury that we have read several times to her now. she knows the alphabet, but can't recognize more than letters yet. It's fascinating to watch her in the process of learning about words, and I can hardly wait until she does see her first word!

I am in the mood for a ghost story, and The Harrowing is next up. I love this RIP3 challenge! all the ghost and horror stories I want for another 5 weeks!!

I hope you, Gentle Reader, are enjoying your cooler autumn nights, curled up with a good book, if not a good ghost story. And failing that, as several readers commented to my post yesterday, curled up watching good television (whatever we consider that to be) is a close second.

Dr Who is back!

television

So, I got sucked into watching the television for the last week. Lost and Battlestar Galactica began playing every night, on Space channel, from the very beginning of the first season, so I made the mistake of watching one, and then the other. For a whole week, I read nothing. Then, I realized what I was doing, and have made myself not watch these shows - I don't need to see either series quite yet again, I've seen them already - and watch only what I'm really interested in. It's so easy to get involved in watching tv. It requires nothing but attention, just sitting there and getting fed by it. I finally wanted to read again, and finished The Terror tonight, a few minutes ago. I will review it tomorrow - it's fantastic, by the way! - but for now, the battle between watching tv and reading continues......

I'm also working my way through Everything's Eventual, and I am having a very disconcerting feeling with each story that I have read it before. I don't remember reading this book! But when I start each story, I suddenly know what it's about, in a vague way. I am enjoying it - The Terror is too big to carry on the bus, so I read Everything's Eventual to and from work and over lunch. Have you had this experience before, opening a book that you think you have never read, and suddenly realizing you have? I just wish I could remember where and when I read it.

I don't hate tv. I have said this often here, that my goal is to watch less of it, and to read more. This being said, I love good tv - what is to me good tv anyway. And tomorrow night is the new Dr Who Season 4. Finally!!! The first episode...we are all counting down in my family, even the youngest children (who get to stay up for it, but fall asleep long before it's finished).

Weekly Geeks 5 - Second Favourite Form of Storytelling

So I'm a little slow. I actually wrote a whole post on this topic, and then didn't post it because i didn't like what I wrote. This was last Wednesday or so. Since then I've been giving it alot of thought. Do I write about all my tv shows? Movies? Favourites? How do I go about showing why this is my second favourite form of storytelling? And, as usual I am too late to make Dewey's wrap-up post...but who cares! I finally know what I want to say:

This past week's Weekly Geek was to post about our second form of favourite form of story-telling. Mine is tv shows. I kept trying to make it movies, because I do enjoy them, but the ones I get caught up in, and argue and discuss about, are tv shows, for the most part. By the way, I have to give a big thanks to Bride of the Book God, because she wrote about tv shows as her 2nd favourite form, and some of what she says crystallized what I had been trying to say last Wednesday in the unposted post. So thank, Bride! And you can go here to check out her post. TV are one of the things my family and I sit down to together to do. Over the years, my eldest son and I have watched Babylon 5, the old Star Trek (he still thinks it's cool that I can name the episode within seconds of the opening scene/music!), Lost, and Heroes: he, my daughter and I watch Smallville, the new Battlestar Galactica, my husband and I watch House (our tv show!), Life on Mars, Vicar of Dibley and host of shows from England (mostly on DVD now) and our whole family watches the new Dr Who from Britain. So, after watching the final episodes of Season One of Dr Who this weekend at my daughter's request, I realized that I want to talk about this episode as it encapsulates everything good about tv and visual storytelling.

"The Parting of the Ways" is an episode that even after viewing at least 4 times, still makes me cry. In fact, there were very few episodes that I didn't find myself moved by, because the new Dr Who is exploring who we are by going into the past - both Earth past and other worlds - and the future, again sometimes ours, sometimes ahead in the universe somewhere. The best of the episodes involve something personal, and Parting of the Ways is as personal as it gets: the Doctor sends Rose back to Earth to save her, and he and Captain Jack face annihilation, as well as the entire Earth, from the Dr's old foes the Daleks, and she does the unthinkable to save him and Jack. The power of this episode, and in this series as whole, is in its exploration of love. The Doctor, we learn in this episode, when faced with the dilemma of being a coward or a killer, chooses coward. He can't - he won't - kill to wipe out the Daleks, even though he is dooming the human race to painful extermination. He can't because at the bottom of his being is the hope that some way out can be found. The will to live, to survive, even when all hope is lost - that is the Doctor's secret. And in this episode, for the first time, we see what the Tardis is really formed of, for Rose, the Doctor's companion, looks into it, in order to save her Doctor from that annihilation at the Daleks. The picture as she emerges from the Tardis with the light pouring from her eyes and face, the light that is Wisdom incarnate, what the Goddess Sophia (who is Wisdom in Christian mythology) would look like if She walked the Earth - and what Rose says about time, is haunting and beautiful. She is beautiful, and how she destroys the Daleks and restores Jack, before the Doctor stops her, is magnificent. That is a perfect scene that understands the power of Spirit made bodily, and it is so beautiful that I am moved to tears - because Spirit - nor all of time, can't be contained in our bodies. We simply can't hold all that much power, and the Doctor tells her that; even he can't hold it. He can only touch it as a Time Lord, and because it powers his ship. It destroys his current body, and we all meet the new Doctor at the very end. Rose has no memory of what she has done, which is also fitting, because if she remembered, everything else that happened in her life would not mean anything in comparison to that moment she was All and saw all Time.
This episode is about saving the ones you love, if you can, and also about letting them go. When the Doctor sends her back to earth the first time, he tells her, "Have a good life. Have a fantastic life." So I started thinking about what is a good life? Do I live a good life? And Rose says to her mother (who doesn't understand Rose's need to try to get back and save the Doctor), "The Doctor showed me a better way of living my life. You don't give up, you don't stand around, you do something about it." And I thought, that's the recipe for a good life, both in tv land and in the real world. And that's part of why I love Dr Who so much - he goes into time that needs fixing or correcting, he acts. He can't stop time, he can't restore dead people - see the episode when Rose goes back to see her Dad, and what happens! Which Rose refers to in this episode, and how Jackie (her mother) reacts when she finds out - this show is all about love and the things we do for the ones we love, and how the impossible becomes possible if you do something about it. For a main theme of a tv show, that's not too bad! This episode contains all of the season's themes within it. Science fiction is a vehicle for showing us to our selves. What would we be like through other's eyes? What is the best of us? The worst of us? Dr Who shows us all this, with great storytelling and superb acting. I especially love long-arcing storylines, and most of my favourite tv shows (with a few exceptions) have had this as part of the writing. I love to see how one story impacts later on, how one character's actions come into play later. Because that is how our life works, even though we don't always slow down enough to see it. Stories, written and visual, allow us to see that causal effect.
This particular episode also featured the words "Bad Wolf", which were encountered in earlier episodes as well. We finally get an answer to what those words mean, and I thought about it later and I am intrigued by how two little words could catch our attention. And like almost nothing else - except other fairy tale words - do. "Bad Wolf", no matter what context we see it in, immediately grabs our attention because it recalls the fairy tales with the big bad wolf. We know these words mean something. And even as they are a signpost for us to pay attention, so do the Doctor and Rose pay attention, and follow them to the source. So once again I find fairy tales turning up at the most unexpected, least likeliest places!!
And it's one more reason for me to love Dr. Who and this episode!
And, by the way, my daughter has said that if the doctor came by in his blue phone box, she would hop in and travel around the universe with him. She's 5. That Doctor, he appeals to females of all ages!!!!