Olympics, new Rebus, and In the Garden with Jane Austen - book review

The Olympics are taking up much of my attention this past week.  I'm getting a little reading done, though only because we had a long weekend so I was able to read in the evening the past few days and finish a book. Darkfire by CJ Sansom, to be reviewed shortly..  I love the Olympics, I enjoy how the athletes try their best.  It's exciting and thrilling and sometimes heartbreaking to watch. 

At the same time, I had to share with you my excitement when I found on Amazon today that a NEW REBUS mystery is coming out!    
 

Yes indeed, John Rebus is back!  He is teaming up with Malcolm Fox, or rather, he and Malcolm cross paths.....all the old favourites are there, Siobhan Clarke, Big Ger Rafferty, and most of all, Rebus.  Still retired, and still pushing buttons and going where no one else wants to go.  Standing In Another Man's Grave isn't released here yet, there is no date out, and I'm still ecstatic.  NEW REBUS MYSTERY!!!! 

I thought for a change of pace that I would actually review a book today.   Some of the high heat and humidity  we have been suffering under have died away today, so that I feel energized and can think straight.  I'm posting while I can.....

In the Garden With Jane Austen by Kim Wilson

This was such a beautiful book.  Gardening and Jane Austen, what could be better? Well, this book takes bits and pieces of letters Jane, her mother, and her sister Casexened to the gardens in her various homes after her death.  It even shows some of the stunning gardens and settings she would have seen in her travels around south England, and wrote about, either to her family, or used as a basis in her books.        
                                           
I learned two big things reading this book:
1) Jane loved to garden and discussed flowers, fruits and vegetables and took an interest in raising the animals that were being raised for food by her family  She learned to raise animals and grow vegetables and fruit while growing up at the parsonage in Steventon, where her father was the rector. She and Cassandra looked after the animals, the chickens and the bees, and they often had what the house gardens and land offered as their main source of food.

2) that walking paths, garden paths, were used extensively in 18th century England.  Ladies didn't run, they didn't work out!  So to keep healthy, walking paths were built into gardens - thus, the ladies could go for several miles of walking if they walked around the gardens several times, depending on where they were living and the kinds of gardens around.  It makes me feel much better about my walking and less guilty that I hate working out (so I don't). Walking is good exercise,! 

I did not know that her brother Francis was wealthy enough to manage a country estate, which they did at Goodnestone Park.  This was the same brother who she visited for a short time in London, and who supported her and her mother after their father died. Goodnestone Park has several gardens,  and Jane visited her brother and sister-in-law frequently there.

There is alist at the back of the book, of the flowers grown in Jane's time. Unfortunately the original gardens at many of the places she lived are long gone now, however the head gardener at Chawton Cottage now (which is a trust historical estate) provided a list of the flowers grown now at the Cottage, with almost all the varieties used being available during the years Jane was alive.
-Hollyhock
-lady's mantle
star of Persia (allium)
basket of gold/gold alyssum
masterwort
sweet William
 dianthus superbe
bleeding heart
geranium Buxton Blue
dogtooth daisy
Little Maid daylily
Madonna lily
winter honeysuckle, Hall's Honeysuckle
moonwort/money plant
maltese cross
yellow daylily
evening primrose
Jacob's ladder
garden phlox
Rosa Alba Belle Amour
Rosa centifolia Shailerss White Moss
black-eyed Susan
satin flower
columbine

I was delighted to see that I have some already in my garden, sweet william, daylilies, phlox, of course roses, money plant, maltese cross (though I can't grow these, they keep dying), Jacob's ladder, black-eyed Susan, alysum, and I dearly want to try growing some Hollyhock next year.

There are many pictures in this book, of the gardens and great houses that Jane would have visited, and pictures of the gardens at Chawton Cottage, old sketches if the gardens or houses don't exist any more, and delightful descriptions from Jane's letters, as well as excerpts from her novels. There are excerpts from gardeners of the time, thoughts on gardens, how to design them, what a successful 19th century garden should contain, the various uses of the garden. 

I found this book to be a delight for the soul.  It is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon, with a cup of tea,  reading about gardens and life in Jane Austen's time.  It gives a rare glimpse of how Jane used the landscape around her in her novels, and when I reread them, I know I will have a better understanding of how she used the garden settings in her books. I love that she loved her gardens and was happiest when she could have one to tend, a cottage with a garden.  She was a woman after my own heart, and since I already love her novels, this is such a deep pleasure to discover about her.

Birthday Books

      It was my birthday on Sunday.  My family surprised me by taking me out to the mall, and saying my birthday present was a new cell phone, of my choice!!!!  The biggest surprise ever, as I have never owned one before, though I have been looking at them for a while.  I am now living just after the Iron Age according to my 23 year old son,as between the new laptop and a cellphone, I have leapt light-years ahead from being in the Stone Age before.  Now if I can just figure out how to get music on my phone, and how to text, I'll be the hippest just turned 49-year-old ever. (Sadly, I know that last phrase 'hippest' dates me, and I've lost many cool points with that.  Sigh)

At the end of the day, I realized that I was the lucky recipient of the new cell phone, Cranford on dvd (I'd already seen it this winter from the library and really enjoyed it, so am thrilled to have my very own copy of this very sweet BBC comedy-drama of village life by Elizabeth Gaskell). And two wonderful book tokens for Amazon so I can do some book shopping shortly.  Then, this morning, I remembered - I had been making a box of books for my birthday!  So my ex-partner brought down the books, and here are  
Susan's Books to celebrate my birthday:

-The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin (Malcolm Fox #2......first book was very good, so I was so happy to see this in paperback so soon)
- Novel Destinations - Shannon McKenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon (subtitles "Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West",  who could resist this?)
- The Bibliophile's Devotional - Hallie Ephron (subtitled, "365 days of Literary Classics".  This is to remind me of how many great books are out there that I still have not read!)
- Why I Wake Early - Mary Oliver (my favourite poet, I am collecting all her books now.  I love this title poem also.  She is my heroine and guide when it come to writing as clearly as possible, to say exactly what I mean and not waste language if it's not needed)
- District and Circle - Seamus Heaney (another poetry book, how could I resist one that features a subway line that I've ridden on? His use of language and words is rich and fills my mouth - alliteration abounds (I know! bad me!), and the poems  delve into the meaning of things - I could write this in all literary terms, but really, these poems have depth and they are about every day life in England, and they teach me about using language.  Remarkable)
- The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni - this has been on my wishlist for almost a decade.  I love her speech patterns, her poems are like she is talking directly to us, and she is wry and funny and moving and bitter and wistful and even loving in them.
 - A Train in Winter - Caroline Moorehead (another subtitled book: "An extraordinary Story of Women, Friendship and Survival in World War 2.  I had to get this as soon as I saw this. It's about a group of women who were resistance fighters in WW2, who were rounded up in the detention camps and sent to Auschwitz - and how they tried to support one another and keep each other alive during the trip and in the camps. Only one train during one trip, took the 230 women to the death camps during the 4 year war, hence the title.  It was the only time women of the Resistance from France were sent.  The book explores why they joined the Resistance, and how they helped one another. A must-read, for me)

Now, to be honest, my birthday list I gave to my family did have many books listed on it, so I was careful not to pick any up for the box.  Dervish House by Ian MacDonald is top of the list, as is Tim Power's new book, Hide Me Among The Graves,  the sequel to The Stress of Her Regard,which I am rereading now to refresh my memory as I read it many years ago.  I'm also waiting for Artur Erlandur's Outrage to come out in softcover.  I don't think I will have any difficulty using my book tokens, do you?

Sunday Salon: Where around the world do you read?

So Memory over at Stella Matutina has a post today about books she's read by authors from different countries. That got me thinking.  How widely do I read?  Is as widely as I hoped?  What do I want to read, and from where?  So today I'd like to take a little trip around my bookshelves and the world, to talk about:

THE WORLD OF BOOKS


You and I know, Gentle Reader, that there is a whole wide wonderful world of books out there.  Published in almost every language (because some are only spoken languages, they can't be written in words and therefore no books exist in that language), books come from every corner of the lovely planet.  They cover every genre, every possible idea that has flitted across man's mind.  What I'm interested in talking about is fiction, and because I'm me, particularly mystery, and fantasy/science fiction, my two main interests in fiction.


Last year this is where I read from:
Canada (my home country and nationality):  14
USA:  26
Britain: 24
Scandinavia (including Iceland): 7
Russia: 2
New Zealand: 2
Ireland: 2


Well, not nearly as world covering as I would like!  I am thrilled that I have read so many from Canada, which is one of my personal challenges every year any way.  I am delighted that I am expanding my reading to Ireland, to New Zealand, to Russia.  There are so many other countries to try.  I usually have Fred Vargas for France, but I haven't seen her new book yet.  One country in particular I do want to read more from is Australia, which hasn't made it on my list yet for several years now. 


I want to explain here that I do sometimes base my reading on where books come from.  I have a finite amount of time, so I do look for books from other countries, authors who write mysteries that sound interesting.  I like to read good books. I guess I'd say that I don't care where a book comes from, so long as it is good, but that makes it sound like I'm in search of the book, without the flavour that a different perspective and setting gives.  I am interested in the differences in viewpoints, in how we see the world, and what living somewhere else means when we tell stories.  I want to read more fiction set (or from) Central and South America, as well as Africa.  I do have on my to-read shelves books by Deon Meyer (South Africa), Andrea Camilleri (Italy), Alexander McCall Smith (Zimbabwe), Karen Healey (New Zealand), Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany; the last two are library books), Tolstoy (Russia), Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Argentina)......As our world grows closer in ability to communicate, I'd like to know what mysteries, what poetry and literature is like in other countries.  I think how we tell stories is one of the best ways into a different culture.  It's like where we stand in the world does affect how we perceive the world, our relationship to it.  So a writer in Canada has a different perspective than a writer from The Netherlands, or China, or New Zealand.  I like that. There is always room to read more from other places, so my question to you is:

Do you,  my Gentle Readers,  read around the world?  Do you have any favourite authors that are from another country?  Who are they?  What do you look for?  Tell me who you recommend - from your country, or who you love from another one. 

Here is my list - because fair is fair, and these are writers that I've come to love and seek out, whose books are imprinted on me and inform me about the world and the times they were written in - it is only a partial list, representative only for the UK and the US, where I read most widely from:

Artur Indridason - Iceland
Fred Vargas - France
Isaac Babel - Russia
Henryk Sienkiewicz - Poland
Henning Mankell - Sweden
Jo Nesbo - Norway
Peter Hoeg - Smilla's Sense of Snow - Denmark
Kerry Greenwood - New Zealand
Ian Rankin - Scotland
Phil Rickman - England
Jane Austen -   "
Charles de Lint - Canada
Robin Hobb - USA
Giles Blunt - Canada


Poets
Mary Oliver - US
Nikki Giovanni - "
Evgeny Yevtuschenko - Russia
Wendy Cope - England
Carol Ann Duffy - "


Books I have to take with me wherever I go

I also asked Memory if she had taken any particular books with her when she moved to New Zealand - books that she had to have with her, that she had to know were safe, and were with her to read, while she waits for the rest of her books to arrive.  I asked her because when I moved to England 10 years ago, I sent most of the books I couldn't replace ahead of me by boat (after dispersing much of the rest of  my library), and I kept a few special books with me to bring in my luggage on the airplane.  At that time, they were:
 The 2000 move -  Books I Brought in my Luggage
*If  You Want to Write - Brenda Euland
In the Garden of Iden - Kage Baker
*Bellwether - Connie Willis
*Black and Blue - Ian Rankin
Immortal Poems - Oscar Williams
Writing Down the Bones - Natalie Goldberg
*The Encyclopedia of Dreams - Rosemary Ellen Guiley
Animal Dreams - Barbara Kingsolver
*Smilla's Sense of  Snow - Peter Hoeg
*Persuasion  - Jane Austen
*Pride and Prejudice - "
*Dreams Underfoot - Charles De Lint
Tea With The Black Dragon - R.A. MacAvoy
*The Language of the Night - Ursula K. LeGuin
*The 20th Century North American Ephemeris
Secrets from a Star-Gazer's Notebook - Debbi Kempton Smith
The Assassin's Apprentice - Robin Hobb

I know, that was a lot to pack into two suitcases!  In 2000, of course, pre Sept 11, we could have two heavy suitcases.

Now though, I look at that list, and I wonder, would I take the same books with me if  I had to move to another country?  Some I would, and some I wouldn't.  I marked the ones I think I would take with me still, on the plane, with at asterisk *.  The rest on the list would be shipped instead!  I still love them all......The astericks ones are mostly because I know it would be cheaper to bring them with me than to replace them, and these are ones I would replace, absolutely.  This post is so long now that I will save the other books I would bring with me now, for another post. Because of course in the interim, I have new books and authors that I've discovered and love (Jo Nesbo, Phil Rickman, Gile Blunt, Louise Penny, Mary Oliver....the list goes on!) that I would have to take my favourites with me on the plane, to keep them safe with me.



Carl's Sci-Fi Experience

In one of those amazing coincidences that fill our lives, I just finished re-reading In the Garden of Iden by Kadge Baker, this morning.  I read it for Carl's Sci-Fi Challenge, and now realize it also falls in the Historical Challenge since most of it is set in 16th Century England, in 1555 as Mary takes to the throne. I read this also  to honor Kadge, who passed away last year.  She is one of my favourite female SF writers, and I wanted to see if I loved her first book as much as when I first read it.  Well, while I was upstairs looking at my books to see what I had brought with me 10 years ago, I came across some old journals that held, of all things, lists of books I'd read, going back to 1993!! So that's where they are! I said to myself, and then started flipping through, to see if any titles jumped out at me for what I'd bring over.  I found that it in 1998 I read In the Garden of Iden for the very first time, and this is what I wrote:
  "1st novel, very good! Wonderful SF, interesting characters, great history.  Solidly good!"
So I'm going to let that be my review today, because the book is just as good today for me as it was then.  Highly recommended.

The Year of the Ian Rankin re-read
So, this is by no means an exhaustive or even complete list of books that I love from around the world.  I keep wanting to put Alexander Pushkin on, but I haven't read him in years.  This just reminds me that the more I read, the more I find to love, but also that there are old favourites wanting to be reread, and I have decided that this will be the year I revisit my favourite Scottish writer, Ian Rankin, and his detective John Rebus.  I miss reading new Rebus!  I know he's retired (and personally I am glad Rankin left him alive), but I had years and years of reading him, and I miss him under my tree.  There is only one John Rebus, and so this year I am rereading him in order.  I have no set date for starting, and it's very loose - no schedule.  I'm not sure if I will get done reading the 16 books in the series, this year.  If you are interested, drop me a line or let me know in the comments, and we can read the books together and talk about them here whenever we are ready. 
** I have just discovered I am missing the first 4 books in the series, so I have to go buy them and then I can start.

Happy reading wherever you are in the world, Gentle Reader!

I Dare You - and the Advent Calendar Tour 2010

So by now you all know about my weakness for book lists, and books of the year reviews.  How my TBR mountain grows because of books you love, dear Gentle Readers, as well as the recommendations from Locus, Book Awards, The Guardian, and a whole host of other book information places.  Well, today,  I went to the Guardian to see what was new on the book site, and they have put up a list of books chosen as 'book of the year' by a selection of writers.  *big sigh*  I've added 11 books to my TBR pile.  I should say I sigh happily, but still.....no matter how many books I read, there are so many more to be read out there.  We are spoiled in this age, by having far more books being published than we can ever hope to read.  So I dare you, dare you, Gentle Reader, to go the Books of Year article here and read through it all, and not find at least one book that you would like to read.  Go ahead.  And then if you like, come back here and let me know if you were seduced - and by what, of course.

 Now because you are like me and love book lists, and from my previous posts we ALL want to know what other people are reading/want to read/have read/long to get,  you all are wondering what titles I found, that I picked out as ones I'd love to get my hands on. In the spirit of "if you missed it the first time, maybe you'll find it interesting this time" and "if we are going to be poor because we spend too much money on books, let's be poor together and have a wealth of wonder instead", here is my list:

It's only a small list of books:
-Ghost Light, Joseph O'Connor.  This looked interesting enough that I added it to to my Amazon wish list as well as the book of 'books to get' (yes, it's an actual book!) I carry around with me.  Going to Amazon let me see his other books, to which I then added: 

-Star of The Sea, his earlier prize-winning novel about the 1847 potato famine and the journey in a ship from Ireland to North America that winter.  Since some of my family fled Ireland that same year, arriving here in Canada, I really want to read this novel.  It's out of print now.  So on my growing "books to look for in second-hand bookstores", I've added this title. 
-Heartstone - CJ Sansom.  I have the first two books to read still in this series, but this came with such a high review that I had to add it.  Dissolution is on my immediate to be read pile.  I'm warring between it and Raven Black by Ann Cleeves, which my friend Lee in Texas is waiting impatiently for me to read so we can talk about it.  She really liked Raven Black.  I told her about Martin Edwards and now she's read and enjoyed the first one, The Coffin Trail. I then sent her Louise Penny's Still Life for her birthday.  She has since sent me Janet Neel's Death's Bright Angel because it's set in York and I wanted to find more books set there.  So I told her about this series (by CJ Sansom) and Susanna Gregory's Thomas Chaloner series, plus Ariana Franklin's series which she hadn't heard about.  We're not competitive at all on how many series we can recommend that we like, are we?  
- Freedom - Jonathan Frazen.  I'm of two minds about this book, since I tend to find books everyone likes, usually not as good as I'd like.  I'm not sure if I'm so afraid of being disappointed because of the hype that I'm avoiding it, or afraid that once again my dislike of 'literary' novels is getting the better of me here.  Maybe in the new year.....
-Ghosts of Belfast/alt title The Twelve - Stuart Neville.  Since discovering that some of my ancestors are from Ireland, I've begun seeking out books on Ireland.  This led me to Declan Hughes' wonderful The Wrong Kind of Blood noir mystery earlier this year (which I still have to review), and now I add this book to my growing books about Ireland I want to read.  It's a thriller, and I'm hoping I can find it here.
- Whoops!  Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay - John Lanchester.
- Enough is Enough - Fintan O'Toole
thoughts on both books: I am amazed at how countries that were seemingly doing very well suddenly are facing bankruptcy. I'm even more amazed that the lessons about inflated mortgage schemes and property investments that caused such disasters in the 1980's, and 1990's, are recurring again.  Did no one pay attention to any of the lessons from before?  Apparently not.  I am puzzled and saddened also, and deeply worried, for the people affected - Greece, Spain, England, USA, and now Ireland - where did all the money go?  And why?  I don't like thinking that we aren't secure, and yet, earlier this week, the public service union I belong to held a vote on whether to accept the government's offer for our contract.  On the table?  This, for the largest public union of workers in Canada?  Our severance pay.  Since when does the government decide that paying out the measley severance pay to clerks if they leave service, is responsible for the sudden 'biggest debt carried by the Canadian government ever " - 1 billion dollars?  Something isn't right, something doesn't smell right, and I want to try to understand why, when the world has so much, there doesn't seem to be enough to go around at all now. 
- Human Chain - Seamus Heaney.  Poems about loss, death, which becomes a meditation on life - irresistible, especially as I go through my second year of being diabetic and glimpsing, as my kidneys started to fail this summer, that the second half of my life isn't going to be the way the first half was.
- And The Land Stay Still - James Roberston.  If you can resist what Ian Rankin says about this book, good for you.  Any time my favourite mystery writer says a book shouldn't be ignored and it's about Scotland (where some more of my ancestors are from) and a novel, I'm right there.  I miss my yearly new Rebus - it's really hitting home this year that there will be no more of him - and while I know I have The Complaints in my Christmas box (isn't it surprising how buying books for myself for Christmas is one of my true delights?), and am truly looking forward to reading about Malcolm Fox - I miss Rebus and Siobhan and gritty Scottish noir.  I'm thinking of rereading the entire series next year. In the meantime, a novel about Scotland sounds like it might just do to tide me over.  Oh dear.  I just went to look to see if it's over here in Canada.  It's not.  He does have an earlier book which looks just as interesting: 
- The Testament of Gideon Mack. It's available here. A Scottish Minister who confronts the Devil. This one was nominated for The Booker. His first book is also available,  
- The Fanatic.  Look, it's about witches and witchhunts, ghosts and ghost tours, and historical Scotland, set in Edinburgh. Oh dear dear.  Somehow they just slipped onto my wishlist.  Don't they sound like they'd make excellent Christmas reading?  And I can catch up on this interesting Scottish author while I wait for And The Land Lies Still to make its way across the ocean.
- poetry by Jackie Kay.  Poems that make you laugh and weep?  I'm so there!  
- Of Mutability - Jo Shapcott.  Poems about transformation, and mutability?  I think I am moving into reading more poetry as a way to capture the intensity of my moments and minutes, because somehow time is going by faster without my being aware of it slipping by.  I don't feel old, or  even middle-aged yet, though I am aware that being present in my life is a choice I am conscious I have to make as an adult, when as a child it simply is that way. 

Is it Christmas so soon?
Speaking about time, how is that we are now less than a month away from Christmas?   Reading over my books read for this year, I realize I still have to read over 10 mysteries to make my 50 mysteries read I promised myself this year.  So that's quite a challenge for the upcoming month!  I won't be doing my best books read this year until the end of the year, since I have so many good ones just in the 10 I am waiting to read.  It's kind of fun, really, to know I must spend the next month reading in order to make one of my goals.  The 100 books a year I have sadly laid to rest, but not for long.  Starting Jan 1, I will be back at this personal challenge again!  I do plan on catching up on my book reviews for this year, over the next month, since there are so many good books I read that I haven't let you know how I felt about, this year.  And I do want to tell you about Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (I have a Charles Dickens post planned), and The Good Fairies of New York, plus the afore-mentioned The Wrong Kind of Blood, and so many others.  It has been a wonderful year for finding good books to read.  How about you?

I am joining the Advent Calendar tour again.  I am very excited, and have a couple of ideas already.  I am looking forward to seeing what all you, dear Readers, are doing and celebrating this upcoming holiday season, as we go around the world via our book blogs.  I will be doing my entry on December 24, the last day of the tour.  This starts in three days!  Get ready! 

In my corner of the world we have been getting snow flurries in between some sun.  We have snow on the ground, finally.  It feels like winter. Now to do the impossible:  read 12 mystery books between now and Dec 31.  Hmm, sounds like the Twelve Days of Christmas, doesn't it?  "On the first day of Christmas, I let myself read:  Raven Black, by Ann Cleeves.  On the second day of Christmas, I open up: Dissolution, by CJ Ransom.  On the third day of Christmas......" Only in the life of a book fanatic!!  What are you reading over the holidays? Before?  Do you even try to read during the month of December? 

Happy reading, everyone!

A New Ian Rankin mystery!

I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm so excited: Ian Rankin has a new book coming out next month! Guardian preview here, "Rankin Reveals Details of New Detective", and it's a new detective since John Rebus is now retired (sob). His name is Malcolm Fox, and I can hardly wait!!!. Joy!!!

Also from The Guardian, here is a list from Marjorie Blackman of 10 of the best graphic novels. For anyone looking for some of the best graphic novels - the classics in the genre - this might be a place to begin. Which would mean myself, also, since I'm so new at reading the genre!

And here, because the Guardian seems to have some good sections for this Saturday, is a review of the very first Patricia McKillip book, the one the won the very first World Fantasy Award: The Forgotten Beasts of Eld. I read this book over 20 years ago and gave it to the only person I knew then who read fantasy, I loved it so much! It's one that's due for a reread soon, too. This is a fabulous review of a fantasy classic that I think everyone should read.

And, one of my favourite Canadian fantasy writers, Guy Gavriel Kay, has a wonderful piece on what using real-life figures in fiction might actually mean, and how fantasy is better at imagining the truth of another's life, in "Are Novelists Entitled to use Real-Life Characters?" That's the question I've been thinking over lately, wondering why I'm not drawn to the same mystery series that Bride at Bride of the Book God has been reading, Nicola Upson's new series starring Josephine Tey using her real name, Elizabeth Mackintosh. Her post is here. Kay asks, what right do we have to put words and thoughts in real-life figures' mouths and minds, when we don't know what they were thinking or feeling? I wonder, why use someone who was once alive, who doesn't really have anything to do with the story? It seems to me a failure of imagination, of cheating - it's one thing to write a biography, and make educated guesses, based on events in the person's life, their own words and possible letters etc. It is quite another to take a real person, and make them into fiction, without using them to create a new figure, which is what fiction is about. Writers take bits and pieces of the people they meet, the phrases they use, mannerisms, and put the bits together to make a new whole. To take a real person, and give them fictional thoughts and dreams - I find that disturbing. Yes, I agree with what Kay says in his article!

What about you, dear reader? Are you drawn to books that feature real people in fictional settings? Do you think this is an honest way to tell a story? And yes, that means I am criticizing Joyce Carol Oates' book Blonde, without ever having read it. And it does bother me that I am even forced to make this kind of choice in my reading.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy biographies and history! I think I am concerned about the invasion of the person. Unless a writer specifically aims his arrow at a person by making them into a badly-disguised character, which we all know has happened! - I think that people are entitled to their privacy. I really enjoyed Josephine Tey's most famous work, The Daughter of Time, but I'm not sure I like her as the star of a mystery series she isn't writing herself. It's the continued line of blurring of reality that James Frey laid wide open with his biography that turned out to be a little bit untrue. Somehow, Kay says, we are left with almost no privacy at all. I would add, we don't know what is true any more, not really, not if we are putting words and ideas in people who were alive once, ideas they never would have had. And to be honest, this is the reason why I haven't picked up Laurie King's reworking of Sherlock Holmes with Mary Russell. I read most of Sherlock Holmes while a teenager, and I must have imbibed a sense that Sherlock Holmes was wary around women, and didn't think of them as equals. I have tried to imagine Sherlock Holmes sparring with a woman, and while I can see the appeal - he is so darned intelligent, and wouldn't we love to be the woman who is intelligent enough for him? - I don't see him as ever in domestic bliss. I can't read the Mary Russell series (even though I really like anything else Laurie King has written!) because she has changed a literary figure into something he's not. She may have made it better, but that wasn't how Doyle originally wrote him, and so he had something different in mind. I can't help asking, why didn't Ms King make a character similar to Sherlock, invent a male character that was better than Sherlock?

So what right do writers have to change other works, and what right do they have to use real people in fictionalize works where their words and actions are not real?

Let me know if you have any thoughts, or if you care - I'm curious, and very interested to see if I am the only one (well, other than Mr Kay!) who does think it's important. (Sorry here to Bride, who really likes what Upson has done to the real-life people Josephine Tey and her friend Archie Penrose in the series!!!) See? It's not an easy topic, and no one will agree completely, but I'd really like to know if it's important to you or not, dear Gentle Reader.

I hope you have a happy Friday with a good book!

updates and shout outs

I am so excited for Carl who got a wonderful shout out at Endicott Studios on their April 29 entry.....'My hat is off to the Stainless Steel Droppings blog, which just keeps getting better and better." Wow. Posted by Terri Windling herself. Congratulations, Carl, and well-deserved. He has had an amazing book week, and incredible posts, and is generally as enthusiastic and encouraging towards and about reading and books as you could ever hope to meet. He does so much to let the rest of us find the incredible fantasy art being done, as well hosting the Once Upon a Time and RIP challenges.

Also, in Ian Rankin's Exit Music (to be reviewed shortly), Ottawa was mentioned! Yes, my home city, was in an Ian Rankin novel! One of my favourite mystery writers! It has to do with a Russian poet, so my guess is we got a mention because we have an amazing Writer's Festival held here yearly now, and Mr Rankin came in 2004. I was supposed to go hear him read, with a friend, but she backed out, and as I was very very pregnant at the time, I didn't want to go out at night by myself, so I ended up missing him. To which I really regret, and vow next time he comes, I will be there! I did get to hear Kathy Reichs read from one of her mysteries the previous year, which was very enjoyable. So, Ottawa makes it on the literary map....

Finally, two updates: the new toilets have arrived. They are parked in each bathroom. We are now trying to book a plumber. One would think this would be easier, but it's not,and it's turning into an epic journey. One I would rather not experience! Next week sometime, maybe, they will actually be installed and working.....
And at work, we had our special team-meeting yesterday morning. We all have to work a 9-5 shift for three weeks during the summer. This is the shift I normally work, but can't because of Toby's new job. While everyone was very polite in the meeting, they were rather stunned. Everyone else works 7-3 or 7:30-3:30, so this is a radical change, and previously we could work the hours we wanted. However, we are Operations (code for providing a service to the public) so we have to have staff on during normal work hours. Anyway, two of them did complain, the third who wants to be supervisor next didn't say anything but has avoided me ever since, and the last one made a comment about making sure work (meaning my work, since the work I do has the information needed for the weekends) "should be done as much as possible before 3 pm", to which I'm still furious and am glad he is trying for a job in another department. Just another day at the office!!! But, I will say, my boss and assistant manager went out of their way to point out any new staff have to work the later hours too, that this is required by the department now (ie the directors have said so). They have done their best to accommodate me, and I can't ask for any more. Now I have to hope the buses co-operate and I get to both daycares in time each night!!! The Nanny Diaries didn't cover this aspect of child-rearing, then again, I don't have a nanny!

Happy reading! Hope you have a good book for the weekend! I can pick up The Hero with a Thousand Faces again because it's May - the Non-Fiction Five challenge starts now! - and I'm almost half-way through A History of Reading, and catching up on the stories I haven't read yet in Fragile Things. It's the weekend!