Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 152

Public service message: some trees do not go well with spaniels

Okay, so, every year I suffer through LEAVES and RELATED VEGETATION falling from trees to the ground, then being gathered up and transported inside by the boxcar load by the spaniels. If I can prevent EVEN ONE person from having to endure the same fate, then this blog post will be worth it, right?

This is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel in full coat. Note the long hair, especially on the ears, chest, belly, legs, and tail. This longer part of the coat is referred to as the dog’s “furnishings.” This coat is soft, not coarse like the coat of a terrier.

This is Conner. Isn’t he handsome? He is also MUCH SHORTER than, say, an English Setter. My guess is that a Setter would also pick up a lot of trash in his coat, but probably not as much because his belly would be farther from the ground.

Conner’s coat picks up EVERYTHING. Most particularly burrs. Even after I walk through the yard and other areas where the dogs run, destroying every burr plant I can find, a dog occasionally comes in COVERED with burrs. Naming no names, but Conner’s sister Kimmie is by far the worst offender.

That’s the best picture I’ve ever taken, maybe, and you wouldn’t think it to look at her, but WOW does this dog have prey drive! She dives through underbrush without even noticing, particularly if she thinks there might be BIRDS, but also if she has suspicions about bunnies. She is a genius at finding burr plants no matter how carefully I search for and destroy them.

But anyone could guess that burrs wouldn’t be a happy companion plant for spaniels. Let me show you the WORST TREE.

This is a bald cypress, courtesy of Seth Betterly on Unsplash because I do not want to take the time to go through my phone and find a good picture of my own trees.

The bald cypress is one of my very favorite trees. It is one of the few needled deciduous trees. A bald cypress is beautiful as a sapling, beautiful as a youngster, beautiful as a mature tree, and beautiful in old age. The delicate green of the spring foliage is nice, the fall color is this handsome toasty color, and I love the shape of the trunk, so I like them even in winter. They are one of the rare specimen trees that looks great with branches all the way to the ground but also great if you limb them up, however high you choose to do that.

But see those frond-like leaves that have turned color? Those fall off the tree. They are about a fingerlength long with little spiky bits off the sides. They might as well be coated in GLUE. Every single time I forget and take the dogs under my bald cypresses, I have a ton of work to do with an extremely sturdy wide-toothed comb. The only good part is that these trees — I have three — are not actually in the yard. But they do overhang the driveway and the road, so avoiding them is difficult.

We’re a long way from spring, but while we’re on the subject, oaks, almost every one of the 500 or so species, are almost as bad as bald cypress. Not only do the dogs bring in leaves in the fall — not so much trouble, as oaks have big nonsticky leaves — but sometimes they try to eat acorns. Acorns are moderately toxic to dogs, so this is not ideal. But worst of all, in the spring, oaks flower abundantly, like this:

Image from Pixibay. Someone with a better camera than mine took this highly detailed picture. These are strands of male flowers. They will fall off the tree in massive quantities. I was exaggerating when I said bald cypress leaflets are coated in glue. THESE flowers actually sort of are. They produce pollen. Pollen is sticky. They are TERRIBLE for spaniels. I’m not actually tempted to cut down the fifty-year-old oaks in my yard, but … okay, maybe I am tempted.

Anybody with a spaniel should look UP at the TREES before buying a house. If planting trees, if you have a fluffy dog, do not plant these trees no matter how much you love them! Plant something else!

You know what the best trees are for coexistence with fluffy dogs?

This is my magnolia “Ann,” which blooms sporadically all summer. This is one of the late blooms, which is why the little tree is leafed out while flowering. Way more flowers in early spring, but this is nice all summer.

Here’s another:

This is my big Yulan magnolia.

My point is: the leaves of all magnolias are big and heavy. The dogs never pick up those leaves. The flowers are big, with big petals. The dogs never pick up those petals. Magnolias produce zero detritus that makes its way into the house. If you have a spaniel? Or any coated dog with abundant furnishings? THIS is the right genus of tree for you.

Also, magnolias are beautiful.

Detail of a Yulan flower.

Magnolias are my favorite trees. I do wonder, when combing infinite numbers of bald cypress leaflets out of Conner’s furnishings, if perhaps their cleanliness might be why. It certainly doesn’t hurt.

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Recent Reading: The Wizard’s Butler by Nathan Lowell

Okay, this was just about the perfect book to read, especially right before bedtime. Calm, very slice-of-life, nothing bad happening to anyone. Everyone is nice to everyone else, except the niece, but honestly nothing much bad happens to her either except losing a court case she should never have brought against her uncle.

Roger Mulligan takes the niece’s job to look after her aged uncle and keep him alive for a year and look after the house in a small way; eg, be a butler and also the full staff of the house.

Roger, an ex-army medic and ex-EMT, finds being a butler a soothing change of pace and is luckily not all that thrown when he finds out that old Mr. Shackleford is a wizard. Everything works out for everyone, the end.

I mean, there’s a cursed artifact, and I suppose it was POSSIBLE something (else) would go wrong at the court hearing, but really, I’m not sure I’ve ever read a lower-stress story.

Also! I would say that Nathan Lowell’s improved markedly as a writer since Quarter Share. I liked the Ismael Wang series quite a bit, but various quirks of the writing did irritate me. That wasn’t the case here.

Definitely recommended for anyone who would like to read a calm story about a guy discovering he likes being a butler, with nice people getting their lives in order plus rather easily thwarting a minor bad guy.

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Best animal photos of 2019

Thought you might like this: National Geographic’s best animal photos from 2019.

It’s hard to beat the tigers. But that orphaned giraffe with its keeper probably manages.

I will add that most of these pictures are fine, but one is not fine. If someone is going to include a miserable or tortured animal in a photo lineup of great animal pictures, I would appreciate a warning. If you click through, that one is picture #24 out of #28.

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New cover: NIKOLES

Just thought you might like to see this. I haven’t got the paperback version just yet. The new ebook cover won’t be live till later today or perhaps tomorrow, but here it is:

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Female detectives in books and movies

So, looks like The Passive Guy is on a roll. Recent posts:

Women and Crime Writing: We’ve Always Been Detectives

Why do we enjoy reading about female detectives?

No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency

Jane Tennison

20 Greatest Fictional Female Detectives and Sleuths

So, okay, that’s a theme.

I liked No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency quite a bit, but had no idea the series was up to 21 books. Wow. I only read the first one. In fact, I think that was the only one at the time I read it. More recently, I liked the Tannie Maria series a lot. The books in the latter series include an emphasis on cooking, almost guaranteed to appeal to me.

I haven’t clicked through to read the post about Why We Enjoy Reading About Female Detectives, but one reason some readers probably do is that cozy mysteries are essentially a subgenre of romance as well as a subgenre of mysteries. That might not be relevant to the linked post, because in cozies, the female detective is an amateur sleuth, not a professional detective. Nevertheless, if someone (a) likes mysteries, and (b) wants something low-stress to read, then cozy mysteries that follow romance tropes and are guaranteed to have a happily-ever-after or a happily-for-now ending are going to appeal to that person.

I’m currently reading, and enjoying very much, Nathan Lowell’s The Wizard’s Butler. But for the rest of the year, and probably some time to come, I expect cozy mysteries and romances and so on are going to be filtering up to the top of my TBR pile.

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Stand and Deliver, by Andre Norton

Here’s a topical post by Judith Tarr at tor.com: Delivering the Goods in Andre Norton’s Stand and Deliver

Here is the promising beginning of the post:

This is the best thing I could have read during one of the most fraught weeks in quite a few people’s lifetimes. It’s deft, it’s fast-paced, it’s unabashedly escapist. Above all, it’s fun. I stayed up unconscionably late reading it, and I regret nothing.

So you see: topical. for those of us who would prefer Stories In Which Nothing Terrible Happens just now, this is probably another one like that. I’ve never read it — I’ve never read any historical by Andre Norton. I didn’t know she’d ever written anything but science fiction and fantasy.

It’s got everything. Highwaymen. Smugglers on the coast. Bow Street Runners and undercover agents. A wonderfully Baskervillian hound named Satan and his dastardly master. Traveling circuses—plural—including a rousing battle between two rival circuses …

There’s even an echo of the alien race in my favorite of all the Free Trader novels, Moon of Three Rings, in the traveling diorama with its unworldly artist father and his rigorously unemotional daughter. Their dark caravan with its weirdly mismatched pair of animals and its enormous and censorious black cat is like a Regency version of the Thassa of Yiktor. I kept wondering if someone would let slip a bit of actual moon magic, but Norton restrained herself in that respect.

Sounds like fun! Here’s a link to Stand and Deliver. It’s the sequel to another story called Yankee Privateer.

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Book recommendations for when you can’t even

Okay! I started Records of a Spaceborn Few and boom!, first thing that happens is a terrible, terrible accident that kills 46,000 people.

You know what I am not in the mood for right now? That.

In case some, most, or possibly even all of you feel the same way, let’s take a look at some Books Where Terrible Things Do Not Happen.

I will also point out this post by Jo Walton at tor.com: Books in Which No Bad Things Happen

That’s what I’m talking about! Thanks, Jo!

Let me see what Jo Walton suggests … Ah! Cotillion by Georgette Heyer. Excellent choice. A few others, and then she finishes the post this way:

And now, my one actual real solid in-genre example of a book where nothing bad happens!

Phyllis Ann Karr’s At Amberleaf Fair is about a far future where people have evolved to be nicer, and there’s a fair, and a woodcarver who can make toys come to life, and there is sex and love and nothing bad happens and everything is all right. It’s gentle and delightful and I genuinely really like this odd sweet little book, and unless I’m forgetting something I don’t think anything bad happens at all.

Yes, thank you, that sounds perfect.

A commenter at that post recommends the one that probably leaps to mind for many of us here: MCA Hogarth’s Dreamhealer’s series. This is obviously a great choice, but since I just read it a few months ago, well, now what?

We have all shared “comfort reads” here from time to time, such as this post or this one or this one here or this one.

Whole genres do exist where problems are minimal and happy endings assured, particularly romances (obviously), but also cozy mysteries, which as I have argued elsewhere are fundamentally mysteries that are also romances. We have also seen posts here about cozy SF, a category which some of you helped flesh out.

For me, stories that fall into this category AND are new to me this year:

MCA Hogarth’s Dreamhealers seriesFrom All False Doctrine by Alice DeganElizabeth Peters’ mysteriesWhat else?

If you have read a nice, calm novel this year, one in which nothing particularly bad happens, with low stakes and minimal tension, by all means drop it in the comments!

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The vicissitudes of time

At Crime Reads: HOW TO GRACEFULLY SUBJECT YOUR DETECTIVES TO THE VICISSITUDES OF TIME

Someone recently pointed out to me a moment in a Nero Wolfe novel where Nero and Archie are solving a mystery for the now-adult son of one of their former clients. Here’s the son, all grown up, while Nero and Archie haven’t aged a bit. Funny! And perfectly appropriate, for that type of detective novel. But that’s why this post caught my eye. Indeed, the post begins with a mention of detective series where the characters remain untouched by time, including Nero Wolfe:

Much the same happened with Nero Wolfe, who irrefutably established the benefits of overconsumption and complete physical inactivity by remaining in the pink of health for fifty years while refusing to stir from his brownstone on West 35th. Rex Stout knew what Christie knew: readers want constancy in a series.

You’ve all read some of the Nero Wolfe novels, yes? Because anyone who enjoys the English language used with style, plus clever detective stories, ought to try this series. Sherlock Holmes never appealed to me, for some reason, but this series did and I’ve read most of the books several times. They’re quick and fun and light and easy to enjoy, and now and then there’s a really memorable sentence. I have always remembered something Nero once said to Archie … let me see …

“Archie.” He was gruff. “No man can hold himself accountable for the results of his psychological defects, especially those he shares with all his fellow men, such as lack of omniscience. It is a vulgar fallacy that what you don’t know can’t hurt you; but it is true that what you don’t know can’t convict you.”
― Rex Stout, Prisoner’s Base

So convenient that other people have gone to the trouble to create lists of memorable quotes from Nero Wolfe mysteries, so that I could easily find the exact quote I wanted.

However, the author of this post is discussing something else: a series where he wrote several books, time passed, and he then picked up the series and brought the protagonist forward in time and into the present day.

The background of the series was the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, with the old terror gangs mutating into organized crime groups in the chaotic new geopolitical landscape. The third book came out just before 9/11, a watershed event that marked the end of an era. In an important sense, Pascual’s world ended on 9/11. …

Adam [Adam Dunn, a publisher] stressed that he was interested in Pascual twenty years on, personally as well as in the context of his environment. What had he been doing for twenty years and how would he, middle aged now and long out of the game, cope with this brave new world?

Interesting challenge. The author, Dominic Martell, describes other detective series where the protagonist does age and change and move through time. Lots of examples. Martell eventually handled it this way:

I had Pascual retire to the Catalan hinterland and raise a son with the woman he winds up with at the end of the third book. And I traced out the connections and circumstances that would make him, twenty years on, a valuable property for an agency intent on skulduggery and requiring a front man of unstable identity who can’t refuse the offer he is made.

That’s a nice couple of decades to give his protagonist. Glad it wasn’t too grim. I imagine that whatever challenges Pascual faces in the newest book, he’ll probably surmount them. Oh, I notice that the new book, KILL CHAIN, is on sale for $1.99 on Amazon at the moment. Well, that’s tempting. I sometimes like a political thriller. I’m not in the mood for one right this minute, but no doubt eventually.

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Recent Reading: Witch by Barbara Michaels (Elizabeth Peters)

I didn’t realize that the author was actually Peters until I opened the book and there that was. Not that this was a problem, I just hadn’t realized it. I then thought, kinda a nice touch, selecting a different last name that is also a plural male first name. A clever little clue for her readers, if anyone suspected Michaels was Peters but didn’t know for sure. Actually, turns out this author’s real name was Barbara Louise Mertz.

Anyway, I read this book because, all else being equal, I sort of like a light horror or dark fantasy novel around Halloween, just as I am somewhat inclined to read something Christmas-themed in late December. Then a couple of you recommended WITCH, so I thought there you go, good choice.

I liked this book fine, but almost at once I suspected it had been written a good long time ago. Yep. Copyright is 1973. This comes through rather clearly, just as the reader can tell many of Mary Stewart’s Gothic romances were written an earlier age. Mertz/Peters/Michaels started writing in the sixties. The story in WITCH is just structured in a way that would be highly unusual for any story, including Gothic romance, today. Specifically, in a pinch, the female protagonist needs the help of a brave male love interest to get her out of her predicament, even though this requires her to be stupid at key moments so that the guy can take over.

So, things to know about this novel: 

1. The structure of the story is indeed kinda dated. That didn’t bother me. I am perfectly capable of adjusting my expectations for story structure according to the basic time period in which it was written.

2. It’s low stress, for a light horror novel in the Gothic tradition. Not for a second did I worry about the ending. The style of the story made it crystal clear that the author was following romance tropes, including the happily-ever-after, not horror tropes where anything might happen. So, for example, take the protagonist’s teenage daughter. In horror, who knows what would have happened to her. But in this case, not a problem. I could enjoy the atmosphere and the writing without any concern for the daughter’s eventual fate. That is much more what I prefer.

3. The quality of the writing is excellent. Here’s the beginning:

According to the directions Ellen had received from the real estate agent, the house was in a clearing in the woods. Gently perspiring in the hot office, Ellen had thought wistfully of cool forest glades. April in Virginia is unpredictable; this particular day might have been borrowed form July, and the small-town office was not air-conditioned.

An hour later, after bumping down rutted lanes so narrow that tree branches pushed in through the car windows, Ellen was inclined to consider “clearing” a wild exaggeration. She started perspiring again as soon as she turned off the highway. No breeze could penetrate the tangled growth of these untamed forests; moisture weighted the air.

At any rate, this must be the house, though it more resembled a pile of worn logs overgrown by honeysuckle and other vines. There was a window, shining with an unexpected suggestion of cleanliness; presumably there was also a door somewhere under the tangle of rambler roses in front.

Very nice. This is a good example of using the opening paragraphs to establish setting and tone. Not much going on yet with the protagonist. I tend to like plenty of setting in the opening paragraphs, and I found this an inviting introduction to the story.

4. Ellen herself is a perfectly decent protagonist. Most of the other characters are simple – in fact, Ellen is in some ways drawn in simple, broad strokes as well. She’s kind and perhaps a touch interfering. She has a temper and a sometimes unfortunate sense of humor. I liked her, even though she is also somewhat dense at times. However, the man who sells Ellen the house is my favorite character by a lot and I wish we’d seen far (far) more of him. He actually came across as more interesting than any other character in the entire book, including Ellen.

I quite liked the cat, Ishtar. I was not so keen on the two Dobermans, which were firmly cast in the Devil Dog mode – which is true to the time period, as in the seventies, Dobermans were one of the breeds suffering a fad hatred. Fortunately, the society-wide suspicion and hatred of Dobermans has long since faded away – I say fortunately because this is one of my very favorite breeds and I therefore don’t much like seeing them used as this kind of Magically Obedient Evil Dog plot device. Ishtar was way more like a real cat than the dogs were like real dogs.

5) Lord above, woman, how could it not have been obvious who the real villain was?

This is perhaps not quite fair. Unlike me, Ellen did not know she was in a Gothic horror-romance sort of story and therefore perhaps did not have an advantage in picking out the obvious bad guy.

On the other hand, there were lots of clues.

Who would like this book?

If you’re a Mary Stewart fan, by all means give this one a try. While I wouldn’t put this one on the same level as Nine Coaches Waiting, it’s definitely in the same tradition and shares many of the same pluses and minuses as Stewart’s book’s.

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Sale!

Amazon quite conveniently sent me a notice about a sale for a book in which I must have shown interest — perhaps I got a sample or something —

I know some of you have read this and recommend it, but I had not quite got around to picking up a copy. It’s $1.99 today as a Kindle ebook, so if you, like me, hadn’t picked it up previously, now would be a good time.

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