Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 37

Life Update

Pro: I can pick up my new laptop today!

Con: That is, I can if my car is out of the shop by then. lol sob

Crash injury update: I have such spectacular bruises on my inner thigh where I got caught by the harness strap that I am tempted to go full TMI and post pics under a cut once I have a laptop. Both kneecaps also black and blue. Next time I'm wearing kneepads though maybe next time I won't crash.

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Now with landing!

Click to enlarge.

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That's Beena, Dan's dog. Isn't she adorable? She's very frisky, and rides on the folded glider atop the cart like she's surfing.

I didn't get as much practice on the second lesson as I did on the first as winds eventually got unsafe for a beginner to fly in. But before that, there was much more wind, sometimes enough to lift the glider straight off the ground, and it was way easier to launch.

Zero totally failed launches (ie, none where I never got off the ground or immediately crashed)!

Several flights where I sort of managed a controlled landing! One in which I would have landed fine except I failed to get my feet quite under me and dropped to my knees!

Only one actual hard crash!

No injuries!

I didn't ever manage to correctly steer it but I did get closer. It's really hard when you only have a couple seconds in the air and you're trying to keep track of what feels like really a lot of things, though in fact it's a small number of things but all of them are critical and also YOU'RE FLYING!

But I did manage to acquire some noticeable improvement from the first lesson, so that feels pretty good.

ETA: Spoke too soon on no injuries. I scraped a knee and a shin, and bashed the hell out of my elbow. Icing it now.

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Where is Mary Bostwisk? by Rae Foley

What was he going to say to the department store Santa Claus about the emissary whom he had sent to Gramercy Park and who was now residing in the deep freeze?

I picked up a bunch of old pulp mysteries and thrillers at Bouchercon, and this was one of them. It was not good, but it was extremely diverting by way of being completely nuts - something I did not expect from the title, cover, or blurb, which made it seem much more normal.

Here is the blurb: When lovely, wealthy young Jennifer Clay flew from California to New York, she plunged into a world of danger she had never dreamed existed. Her former college roommate, Mary Bostwick, had mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind a multi-million dollar legacy. Jennifer vowed to find her friend. At Jennifer's side was a handsome lawyer she could not bring herself to trust. Blocking her path was a web of sinister deception. And shadowing her every step, moving ever closer, was a murderer who had killed twice and was poised to strike again...

This blurb is correct but misleading. Most of the book is from the POV of Foley's series detective, Mr. Potter, a wealthy young man with a big house and a live-in housekeeper.

He comes home from a vacation and finds that an unknown person is living on the top floor of his house but keeps not getting around to investigating this. He eventually asks his housekeeper, who says it's her sick mother. He almost immediately begins to doubt this, as the unknown hider in the house is also stealing his Scotch and cigarettes, but doesn't do anything about it.

Mr. Potter is hired to find a missing heiress, Mary Bostwick. If she's not found within three days, the entire fortune goes to a different set of heirs. Jennifer shows up about a third of the way in.

Mr. Potter finds an unknown corpse in his living room. Since he's in a hurry to find Mary Bostwick and thinks being investigated will delay him, he sticks the corpse in the freezer. A clue leads to a department store Santa, and thus to the immortal line, "I have to see Santa Claus about a dead man."

Santa is missing Mary's uncle, Bostwick, who sent the dead guy to Mr. Potter with a message. Mr. Potter immediately shows Bostwick the freezer corpse:

Mr. Potter explained why he had hidden the body and Bostwick accepted his explanation without question.

I would have questions.

Mr. Potter FINALLY goes to check out the hider in his house and finds him (an unknown bearded dude) sleeping. He goes downstairs to demand an explanation from his housekeeper but was sidetracked by the ringing of the phone. He then has a conversation in which he's about to ask, then gets distracted by a thought and wanders off.

Meanwhile, we learn that a male ballet dancer deliberately dropped his ballerina partner and broke her neck because she was getting more attention than him so he "got rid of his rival."

...that's not how that works.

For literally no reason whatsoever, Jennifer decides that a missing college student is probably a prisoner behind the Iron Curtain and maybe his girlfriend, the also-missing heiress Mary Bostwick, was kidnapped by Communists.

This is UTTERLY out of the blue.

Meanwhile, Mr. Potter again chats with his increasingly weirdly behaving housekeeper without mentioning the hider in the house who is definitely not anyone's mom.

Jennifer gets kidnapped and rescued, one of the rival heir's maids is murdered, and Mr. Potter randomly causes a riot in a department store by spanking a stranger's misbehaving kid.

SPOILERS include the immortal line "What makes you think you have leprosy?"

( Read more... )

I can't say I didn't get my money's worth but, similarly to the magnet murder book, it's a wildly coincidental and overly convoluted plot that only works because characters don't behave like actual humans. And also, make correct deductions with literally no basis.

Oh and it's not leprosy. It's an allergy to his new shaving cream.

Here is the author's Wikipedia biography; like the book, it takes a sudden turn: Elinore Denniston was an American writer of more than 40 mystery novels under the pseudonym Rae Foley. She wrote other mysteries as Helen K. Maxwell and Dennis Allan. Elinore Denniston was born on September 20, 1900, in North Dakota. She worked as an assistant to the playwright Theresa Helburn. She also worked as an assistant to Eleanor Roosevelt.

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Biggles Flies West, by W. E. Johns

The others joined in the famous refrain, roaring it at the top of their voices.

'Drink and the devil had done for the rest,
Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum.'

Algy, looking through the loophole, saw the astonished faces of the soldiers peering out of the jungle. "They think we've gone crazy," he declared.

Biggles nodded. "They're not far wrong, either," he murmured drily. Then his eyes glinted. "Avast there, pipe down," he cried. "Here comes the boat."

The one where Biggles and crew play pirates! Literally. They not only get involved in a pirate adventure, but they dress up as pirate, fly the Jolly Roger, and take on pirate names from Treasure Island I swear to God. Biggles is Captain Smollett. It's hilarious.

It begins with a historical prologue about pirates and a cursed doubloon which is the most piratical thing I have ever read. It's absolutely delightful. In another universe, Johns wrote historical adventures and they were great.

The main story begins with a teenage boy named Dick living mostly on his own. He gets the tragic news that his father, a sailor, has died, but managed to send him 1) a letter describing how he found a cache of pirate treasure on an uninhabited island and how his shipmate tried to kill him for it and now he's dying, 2) a rather vague map to the treasure, 3) one gold doubloon.

No sooner has Dick received this than the shipmate bursts in and tries to kill him and steal the doubloon, letter, and map. (The shipmate knows about the island and treasure, but not the exact location of the treasure itself.) He flees and runs straight into Biggles and friends! After some adventures, Biggles agrees to fly Dick out to the island so they can all go treasure hunting.

Unfortunately, they are burdened with the doubloon, which the readers knows from the prologue is cursed. Literally everything goes wrong, starting with their attempt to take a taxi to a restaurant!

Once on the island, the pirate adventures truly begin. It's absolutely hilariously and amazingly piratical. It has EVERY pirate trope except a parrot (but it does have an albatross). Biggles is totally aware of how ridiculous it all is and throws himself into it with boyish enthusiasm, even giving everyone nicknames from Treasure Island.

It's completely delightful and an excellent example of writing different genres within the same series, and I would enthusiastically recommend it...

...but it does have a caveat, and it's a pretty big one. I'm sure by now you can guess what it is. The overall racism content is mostly in the mild-moderate range, and it's intermittent rather than pervasive, BUT it also includes several casual uses of the n-word. If I was reissuing this book I would remove them, and I wish someone had. I don't think even Johns would object, as judging by later books he appears to have met some actual Black people in the interim.

ETA: Apparently some editions DID remove it thank God. I am going to exchange my super-racist copy forthwith.

Re: the cover: Yes. I know.

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Biggles Bingo: Stood up in front of a firing squad; Daring rescue

I have filled in two squares of my Biggles Bingo card.

From Ashes. 1914 words.

Erich von Stalhein is put before a firing squad.

Prompts: Stood up in front of a firing squad; Daring rescue. (Also a bonus prompt not on my card, a curative nip of brandy.)

Also, here's another which I didn't write for Biggles Bingo as I wrote it before we thought of that, so I'm not counting it for the card, but it does contain a hilarious number of the prompts on my card.

Human Touch. 14,000 words.

Biggles and von Stalhein are trapped together in an evil laboratory.

Prompts: Searching for lost friend(s), Daring rescue, Gunshot wound, A mysterious poison, Nerves, Dinner invitations.

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"Hark!" Biggles ejaculated

Will you all please look at this cover and tell me what you think they're doing.

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The Devil's Alphabet, by Daryl Gregory

A mysterious plague hits the little town of Switchcreek, Tennessee. Many residents die, and most of the survivors are transformed into one of three new types of people: argos, who are immensely tall and grey-white; betas, who are bald and red; and charlies, who are extremely fat. There's a lot more to all three types, but it's gradually revealed throughout the book so I won't spoil it.

Pax is the preacher's teenage son when all this goes down. His best friends, Deke and Jo, turn respectively into an argo and a beta, and his father into a charlie. Pax leaves town and doesn't return until ten years later, for Jo's funeral, which is when the novel begins.

Most of the book is Pax bumbling around town, seeing how the community works, and learning its secrets. Supposedly Jo killed herself, leaving behind twin beta girls, but Pax begins to suspect that she might have been murdered. The other thing Pax finds out almost immediately is that old male charlies get blisters filled with a fluid that makes you high. Pax, who has a history of addiction, accidentally touches it and gets hooked. This plotline is exactly as gross as it sounds, and it really doesn't help with one of the big problems in the novel, which is that Pax is the least interesting person in it. (This isn't as bad as it normally is, as he's not the sole POV character. Unfortunately, the most interesting characters are Deke and Jo, and Jo is dead when the book begins.)

The fluid (called the vintage, which somehow makes it even grosser) is somewhat like ecstasy in that it specifically makes people feel bonded to and empathic with other people. Pax, who is very lonely and feels isolated and is sort of in the closet (he's bisexual and somewhat asexual, with occasional exceptions), gets as hooked on feeling close to others as he does on the high itself.

The mystery of the disease, where it came from, what the argos/betas/charlies are, and how each individual group functions are really fascinating. This is one of the rare cases where the answers are at least as interesting and satisfying as the mysteries, and the best part of the book is just learning more about what the argos and betas and charlies are like. Unfortunately, a lot of the mysteries are never solved, and that includes some very specific mysteries that I thought would be, like why all the argos seem to be infertile or why Pax is so much more susceptible to the vintage than other regular humans.

The book overall felt like it needed another draft and another hundred pages. There were some very moving aspects, the story and concept were interesting, and I did like the ending. But it didn't quite gel for me.

Isn't the cover off-putting? I hate it. It's completely unrepresentative of the tone and content of the book, too.

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Good news and update on Ukrainian friend-of-a-friend

From my friend:

"as promised, an update: Z is firmly awake, compos mentis, and getting transferred to a nephrology hospital for further treatment from ICU. there's still a huge problem with her kidneys and a brain injury, and there's a long, long and fraught rehabilitation ahead, but - considering how she was - there's now a lot of hope. her mom is there, and will be looking after her. her new baby was released from the hospital too, he's totally healthy and he's a super cute newborn.

the family sends you all an indescribable amount of love and gratitude. you're, seriously, the absolute best. it's still unsafe in Dnipro - the horrible bombing there happened near Z's house - as it is anywhere, but there's now hope for the family, and a decent financial buffer for medical expenses, and most importantly, they really felt this support, and. well. here's for hope."

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Was it worth it?

I described my salon experience in the post below; was it worth the cancer, dementia, and Parkinson's?


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Here's the rest of the images, including the restorative nip of brandy - I could only get one of them to load correctly here.

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Who is Frances Rain? by Margaret Buffie; Prairie Fires; The Long Earth

Sometimes one reads a book in circumstances which make the book forever inextricable in one's mind with a specific place or mood. Whenever I think of Le Guin's Tehanu or Toni Morrison's Beloved, I remember afternoon sunlight on carpet and a view of a very blue swimming pool through a sliding glass door; I read A Dance with Dragons on the overnight leg of a very long plane ride with all lights but mine turned off because I was too uncomfortable to sleep, becoming more and more annoyed with both the book and the situation as I plowed through the thing.

Who is Frances Rain? is a semi-classic Canadian children's book from 1987, and while based solely on the book itself I would not normally have found it all that memorable, the reading experience sure was.

It begins with an arresting prologue by the first-person narrator, teenage Lizzie, saying that it's a ghost story. For once the prologue probably was necessary, because the ghost doesn't turn up until halfway through the book. The first half is a realistic problem novel about blended families and parent-child problems.

Lizzie's father walked out on the family about a year ago, and the three kids haven't heard from him since. Lizzie's mother married a man who clearly is extremely nice and trying very hard, but Lizzie and her brother hate him because he's not their father. (Her little sister adores him, though.) All of them, stepdad included, are on a trip to visit Grandma who lives near a tiny island. Halfway through the book, Lizzie finds a pair of glasses on the island which enable her to see scenes from the life of Frances Rain, who used to live there.

The climax/ending of the book, which ties together the ghost story and the family story, is quite well-done. But for my taste, there was too much family and not enough ghost.

I read this book (after starting and abandoning several others) while getting my hair done at a local salon which I was trying for the first time. I did a full rainbow, so I was there for quite a long time while other clients came and got their hair done and were replaced by new clients.

I started out reading Prairie Fires, nonfiction about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her historical context, but abandoned it (for later, not forever) in when I realized that it had already covered a lot of historical context in quite dense detail and I was only 10% in. It was too hard to follow given the salon conversations I was trying to ignore.

Then I tried reading The Long Earth by Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett, about parallel worlds and SUPPOSEDLY a WWI soldier who falls into one. He appears in a prologue, then vanishes for the next 25% of the book which was as far as I got. If I had to guess how Baxter and Pratchett collaborated based solely on the reading experience, I'd say that Pratchett provided two zany ideas and then Baxter did everything else.

A design for parallel world exploration, powered by a potato (I'm guessing this was Pratchett's first idea) appears online and children across the world build it. They go to a parallel Earth, throw up, and freak out. Only one kid does not throw up, and is also the only one who figures out that you can turn the dial the other way to go back. He grows up to be a very very special person, the only one on Earth who can go to parallel worlds without getting briefly nauseated and also the only person who doesn't freak out when alone on a world. He teams up with a soda machine that's legally recognized as the reincarnation of a Tibetan bicycle repairman (I'm guessing this was Pratchett's second idea) to investigate something. Meanwhile, the effects of easy travel to empty parallel worlds are explored.

This doesn't sound boring but it was incredibly boring. Permanent DNF.

I then started Who is Frances Rain?

While I was going from book to book in an effort to not listen to the client/hairdresser conversations, I began live-blogging the experience:

11:46 AM: They have been talking about cancer for TWO HOURS. Client's father has cancer, prompting reminisces of everyone's relatives with cancer.

12:16 PM: The salon is now discussing orthopedic injuries.

12:17 PM: Someone with Parkinson's fell off a roof.

12:18 PM: Getting a blow by blow account of surgery and recovery.

1:02 PM: We're now back to chemo.

1:18 PM: Dementia.

1:22 PM: There were brief breaks discussing other stuff, plus some blessedly silent stretches. But I now know exactly what a Whipple Procedure is and now I have a new phobia.

1:35 PM: Paris Hilton was a student at the hairdressing school my hairdresser went to.

Amazingly, she didn't die.

[By now I'm reading Who is Frances Rain? in the hope that it will be an entertaining ghost story. So far, no ghosts. But...]

1:43 PM: In the book I've been attempting to read while all this is going on, the characters have spent multiple chapters failing to notice that Grandma is clearly having a heart attack. She keeps rubbing her left arm.

Maybe she needs a Whipple Procedure.

1:44 PM: "Are you okay, Gran?" Her skin had a dusky grayness behind it.

"I'm fine. Just winded."

1:59 PM: Gran looked pretty wiped out by the time the dishes were done.

2:03 PM: "But remember," said Doc, shaking her finger all round. "There can be no stress in her life right now."

2:33 PM: Breaking news from the salon: a sinkhole has opened. Somewhere.

2:51 PM: A client blamed immigrants for the drought.

I now have a dilemma re: should I ever go back because my hair is AMAZING.

3:03 PM: I'm home! I am now going to light a fire and have a restorative nip of brandy in front of it.

PS. Grandma lived! Shocker.

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