Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 100

Dead and Buried (Ben January # 9), by Barbara Hambly

This starts with a bang, when a drunken pallbearer trips and spills a corpse out of a coffin, revealing that 1) it’s the wrong corpse, 2) it’s someone Hannibal knows from his very mysterious past.

The story then slows down considerably for much of its length. Aggravatingly, I kept thinking it would be a Hannibal-centric book, and while plot-wise it is, he’s not on page as much as I expected and the revelations about him were less surprising/interesting than I’d hoped. It has some good moments but a disappointingly low batshit quotient, and a lot of it is Ben doing stuff apart from the rest of the cast, when what I really love is the interaction and relationships between them. Considered on its own, it was a very good novel with a lot of well-done thematic stuff, but I didn’t love it as much as the last couple books that had more hurt-comfort and punching alligators in hurricanes.

I also found one plot element extremely frustrating.

( Read more... )

Dead and Buried (A Benjamin January Mystery Book 9)[image error]

[image error] [image error]

comments

Desert Dog, by Jim Kjelgaard

Tawny, a promising racing greyhound, is left with his future in question when his owner drops dead of a heart attack. Two of his owner’s friends take him for a walk in the desert near where his owner dies, and he bolts off into the desert at top speed, leaving them far behind.

Most of the book consists of Tawny’s adventures surviving in the desert, learning to hunt and find water, fighting a pack of feral dogs, and mentoring a young abandoned collie, who looks up to him and adores him. The survival is good but the dog-dog hero worship is one of the most adorable things I’ve ever read, and it really made the book for me. The dog characterization is excellent - they don't speak, they're not more intelligent than a normal dog, but Kjelgaard gives them vivid personalities (Tawny is introverted and aloof, for instance) and uses omniscient narration to explain what the dogs don't know.

Some dogs die and it discusses the short lives of abandoned strays and racing greyhounds, but the two main dogs survive and are headed for a happily ever after at the end.

This is probably not Kjelgaard’s best book and I suspect that it’s uncharacteristic in the lack of time spent on the relationship between human and dog, but I enjoyed it and it made me want to read more. I have Big Red and Outlaw Red at home.

Desert Dog on Project Gutenberg

[image error] [image error]

comments

Book Poll!

I am on a solo writing retreat/Thanksgiving in the cabin on my parents' property in Mariposa, with my cats. The forecast promises snow (oh please please please let there be snow) so today I drove down to the library bookstore to check out what people have donated, and got an absolutely wonderful haul.





A few snippets from the back covers:

No Clock in the Forest by Paul J. Willis. For William, a cynical and aimless 'serious' climber abandoned in a breathtaking alpine wilderness, the strange old man's gift if a key to a magical realm--where marmots speak and terrible beasts dwell.

Me: ...MARMOTS?

Driver's Ed: The only life and death course in school.

Fatality: Everyone has a secret...

Flight # 116 Is Down: Plane Crash!

Twins: Two girls... one life.

I enjoy reading trashy, vintage, and weird books, I guess as you can see. I have not read any of these, though in some cases I have read others by the same author. Please tell me about them and suggest which I should read and review for your pleasure while I'm snowed in and being stepped on by cats.

View Poll: #22975

comments

My Femslash Ex stories

Papaver somniferum - Annihilation (movie). Josie/Anya. Tags: weird biology, alien flora & fauna.

There was nothing left but the smallest, simplest, quietest, purest essence of things. An indrawn breath. A glitter of steel. A stab of pain. A drop of blood.

Like Thieves in the Night - X-Men comics. Storm/Yukio. Tags: Tokyo, cat burglars, makeover.

Girls just want to have fun.

comments

The Doll in the Garden, by Mary Downing Hahn

After her father’s death, almost-eleven Ashley and her mother move to get away from the constant reminders of their grief. They end up in a house which was divided into halves, one half for Miss Cooper, the angry, bitter owner of the house, and one half for them. Miss Cooper, who hates kids, orders Ashley to stay away from the wild part of the garden. But Ashley follows a white cat into it, and there discovers a mysterious buried doll…

Ghost stories are the perfect vehicle for stories about grief. This short novel deals movingly with grief and friendship and healing, the impossibility of changing the past and the possibility of changing the present. It’s only a little bit spooky, but is very touching and exactly the right length.

The Doll in the Garden: A Ghost Story[image error]

[image error] [image error]

comments

Do-it-yourself Magic, by Ruth Chew

Brother and sister Scott and Ruth buy a “build anything” kit, and quickly discover that the semi-invisible hammer marked “sizer” can change the size of objects… and people. Next thing they know, they’re driving around in matchbox cars, capturing a burglar in a toothbrush glass, and exploring a medieval world inside a castle they built themselves.

This isn’t one of my very favorites of Chew’s books, as I like her magic in the real world best and a lot of this one takes place in the past, but it’s sweet and charming and the whole matchbox car sequence is hilarious.

Do It Yourself Magic[image error]

It's included in this ebook omnibus:

[image error] [image error]

comments

Femslash Ex Recs

The Femslash Ex Collection is open, with tons of excellent stories. If you ever wanted to read Jane Eyre/Mrs. Rochester or original fiction about Cryptozoologist who keeps finding injured animals/Female vet she brings them to, this is your chance.

Here are some of my favorite stories I've read so far:

Annihilation - movie.

Garden of Unearthly Fruit. Eerie, unsettling, weirdly moving post-movie Lena/Ventress.

Bound - 1996 Wachowski Sisters. A pair of sizzling hot, beautifully written, perfectly characterized stories of Corky and Violet after the movie.

Devil Never Saw the Likes of Us. Corky and Violet didn't go looking for more trouble, but they're not exactly going to turn it down.

Good at Something. Corky and Violet and a brand new truck.

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte.

spreading wide my narrow hands. Reader, I buried him.

Absolutely stunning Gothic Jane Eyre/Bertha Mason in a pitch-perfect style.

Original Fiction I have barely started reading in this category, but Femslash Ex is reliably excellent for it.

Flourishing, and How It Is Done. Hard-bitten Post-apocalyptic Wanderer/Lost Dimensional Traveler from a Better Timeline. My wonderful gift story, with evocative worldbuilding of two very different worlds in this tale of two women who find and lose and find each other again.

Formal Beauty. Art Thief/Woman in a Painting. Gorgeously written and eerie.

I wrote two stories in the collection. Can you find them?

comments

My Wish List, and More Miniatures

I am justifying my ridiculous time-wasting in creating this by sharing it with you! Should anyone wish to get me something off this list, purely out of the kindness of your heart or the hope that it will appear in this blog and amuse you later, have at it.

There's a bunch of books on there. If you happen to have any that you don't want to keep, I'd be delighted with your beat-up used copy. No need to purchase anything from Amazon, that's just for convenience of list-making. Email me for my address if you don't have it.

https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/dl/invite/3dTh0dr?ref_=wl_share

A brief explanation of the figurines, not that they really require an explanation:

I've semi-recently gotten back into modeling with clay, displaying/playing with figurines, and creating little dioramas for my own amusement. I'd like to create some based on favorite fandoms, and also on some of my own books.

My skills at animals and organic/simple objects are about a million times better than my skills at people and mechanical objects. So I want to combine purchased figurines at 6" scale with things I made to create little dioramas and photograph them to create stories - comic books for people who can't draw, basically. Since my own books don't have figurines and most of the fandoms I'm interested don't either, I will be substituting.

For instance, I'm thinking of doing some Dark Tower scenes, using Carl from Walking Dead as Jake Chambers.

[image error] [image error]

I made a lobstrosity (shown with a demon pig-seal, I mean Church from Pet Sematary):









Trinity eating some gunslinger burritos:



Cut for a bunch more images: ( Read more... )

comments

Witch in the House, by Ruth Chew

If you were a kid in the 70s or early 80s, you may remember Ruth Chew. She wrote a bunch of easy-reading chapter books which are what we would now call urban fantasy, about ordinary kids in the city having magical adventures. (She was particularly fond of witches.)

They don’t have deep characterization or beautiful prose, but they are very good at their own niche, which is small scale, satisfying magic that involves ordinary places, objects, or animals imbued with magic. Chew is incredibly good at bringing to life the imagination of certain types of kids (like me) who liked to imagine being so tiny that you could eat dinner off a bottlecap plate, living on the ceiling of your own home, or having a conversation with your cat.

The down-to-earth elements make them feel like they could happen to you, the way the magic works is often surprising and clever, and they can be quite funny. They have charming illustrations by the author, who invariably draws the exact scenes that you really want to see. (I appreciate this because so often that’s not how it goes.)

In Witch in the House, Laura rescues an absent-minded witch named Sally who has reversed gravity on herself and can’t figure out how to undo it. Sally moves into the ceiling of Laura’s bedroom, where she sleeps on the ceiling of her closet, takes upside-down showers, and accidentally enchants a bathmat into a semi-sentient flying carpet. It’s all utterly delightful, and if it wasn’t what inspired my childhood thing for lying down and imagining myself walking on the ceiling, it certainly encouraged it.

If you never encountered these or would like to revisit them, a handful of them (including this one) have recently been reprinted, both in paper and ebook form, and the original paperbacks are cheap and easy to find used.

I linked the reprint version below. The cover illustration is new (but 100% in the spirit of the original - check out her upside-down witch's hat dragging across the surface of the pond!), but the interior illustrations are the originals.

A Matter-of-Fact Magic Book: Witch in the House[image error]

[image error] [image error]

Here's the original cover:

[image error] [image error]

comments

Amazing Investigative Journalism on John M. Ford

Who says investigative journalism is dead?

A Slate journalist got curious about why John M. Ford's books were all out of print. The science fiction community said it was because his family held the copyright and had deliberately buried them. The journalist got in touch with the family, and in doing so, not only helped arrange for the books to get back in print, but also located another person who had apparently dropped off the face of the Earth and was, at least by some, presumed dead.

The Disappearance of John M. Ford

Against Entropy

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days—
Perhaps you will not miss them. That’s the joke.
The universe winds down. That’s how it’s made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you’ll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

—John M. Ford

comments