Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 9

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I Survied Pompeii/The Black Death/The American Revolution/The Japanese Tsunami by Lauren Tarshis

This is not one book about a particularly unlucky immortal, but four books in a series of short, easy-read middle-grade novels about kids surviving disasters. I bought them because I needed to fill a particular ecological niche in my children's books, which was easy-read middle grade novels which 1) would appeal to boys as well as girls, 2) are not fantasy, 3) are not Hatchet or Wimpy Kid.

I read one to see what they were like and was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was. I ended up reading three more for sheer enjoyment and will no doubt work my way through the entire series. I'm not saying they're great literature, but they are A+ at leaning into their premises - they promise a kid surviving a disaster, and they give you a kid surviving a disaster - and they are much better than they need to be.

I particularly like how each one features both a disaster and some personal problem, and how the personal problem ties into the disaster but in a non-obvious way. My favorite in this line is that the hero flees Pompeii with his father not because of Vesuvius, but because they're runaway slaves - and then goes back to try to warn the city because his dad's former (now deceased) owner was basically an early scientist and so his dad recognized the signs of an impending eruption. But I also enjoyed the Japanese-American boy using his recently-dead father's stories from the Air Force to help hum survive the tsunami, the American Revolution kid worrying about the young woman slave and her toddler that he left behind, and the medieval peasant girl trying to retrieve her church's stolen chalice from a corrupt sheriff.

The historical details are pretty good, the action is exciting, and while the kids and the people they love the most all survive and get reasonably happy endings and there's nothing too graphic, Tarshis doesn't pull many punches within those constraints. The tsunami aftermath is pretty brutal, and she's very clear that the American Revolution meant freedom for only a very limited subset of Americans. There's an afterword to the plague book which says she got a lot of requests for it, and she thinks it's because of covid. She suggest that kids who lived though covid write about it for posterity.









I regret that the heroine is not running away from the bubonic plague while looking over her shoulder to see if it's chasing her.

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I opened a bookshop!

On Saturday, Nov 16, I had the grand opening of my independent bookshop, Paper & Clay, in Crestline, CA!

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You... sorry, WHAT? How did this happen?

Crestline had a shop that sold herbs, crystals, and gifts (Botanical Enchantress) sharing space with a small bookshop (Palace of Salt and Bone). It was a very cool, welcoming, beautiful space, and was a community hangout. But the woman who owned the bookshop moved out of state, and the woman who owned the herbs decided to move her business to a home office. I was so sad at the thought of Crestline losing that community space and its only bookshop that I began to fantasize about taking it over...

...and I decided to go for it!

However, I was due to travel abroad on September 20. I couldn't even speak to the landlord before the current owner gave notice, which she wasn't going to do till September 30. I was also going to leave my cats at home for the neighbors to take care of. But the day before I was supposed to leave, a huge fire blew up and the town next to me, Running Springs, was evacuated. I crammed my cats and valuables into my car, drove down to LA, dumped them all on my friend Halle with two hour's notice, and flew out of the country the next morning.

Once I could speak to the landlord, I had to then do all this negotiating from Bulgaria, culminating in us meeting in person on October 15, the morning after I flew back (after a customs official confiscated my passport at LAX but that's another story, never mind). And then I didn't officially get the lease until November 1, so I had exactly two weeks to get everything and move it in and set it all up.

Since Crestline is very small, I wanted to make it the kind of extremely cool, destination bookshop that anyone who comes anywhere near Crestline will eventually automatically stop by: "On our way to Big Bear, we have to stop at Crestline to check out that amazing bookshop."

Like The Last Bookshop in LA, I made it into a kind of art installation with Instagrammable book sculptures, book-related ceramics, my book nooks showing scenes from books, upside-down book shelves, hidden wonders, and so forth.

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That is a sculpture made of books abandoned by the previous owner. It took the entire two weeks to construct. It's held together with wood glue. None of the books are rare or valuable.

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That is why I was asking earlier about topsy-turvy titled books. Surface Tension was a serendipitous find from the abandoned books. The upside down books are glued to Surface Tension, which is placed on a floating bookshelf. The books on top are just stacked on top of it, and will be periodically swapped out for other relevant titles. (I could never glue Growing up Weightless.)

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The HORROR and One Ring signs are ceramics I made. The haunted carnival is made from a ferris wheel and 3D printed people I painted. The VHS tape magnets and earrings, and the book earrings are from artists on Etsy.

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My shop is half of a single building. There are boarded-up doors in between my shop and the shop next door. The previous owners couldn't remove the doorknob on their side, so they smashed the back of the bookcase into it, punching a hole in the bookcase, and hid it with a potted plant. I painted the doorknob, molded clay imprints off it, sculpted monster claws, and glued them to the back of the bookcase.

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Those are my ceramics.

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This is the children's room. The hobbit hole mural is from an artist in Ukraine.

That's nowhere near all of it, but you get the general idea.

Paper & Clay on Yelp


Paper & Clay on Instagram

FAQ:

- The majority of the books are new. I ordered them from Ingram or direct from publishers. Some are books in excellent condition I got from library book sales or thrift shops.

- The shop was already painted like that. The black bookcases were already there. Everything else, I did.

- I do not yet have a Bookshop account but it's in the works. I get 10% if you buy through that.

- You can order books direct from me by emailing me your address and any book you want, so long as it's in print. I get about 40% that way. I'm currently limiting this to the US only to save my sanity (I once ended up lugging a gift TO BULGARIA IN PERSON because mailing it was so complicated) but I might relent on that eventually.

- I will also mail pottery and other items I carry, also currently only to the US, but I don't yet have a website with everything listed.

- I do not and will not have a cafe. There is no room for it, I don't have employees, and I don't want to deal with health permits. Instead, I serve free coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and hot cider. I can do this without a permit because there is no charge, and all I do is provide hot water and sealed commercially made packets.

So how did it go?

People LOVED the shop. All the work I put into making it beautiful and cozy and inviting was totally worthwhile. They remarked that it smelled good (thanks [personal profile] landingtree for suggesting scent diffusers - I used cinnamon apple.)

I LOVE having the shop. It's so fun and rewarding. I love talking to people about books. I love reccing books. I love arranging stuff in the shop. I love buying books. I love selling books. I love how happy everyone is when they're there. I love that when no one's there, I can sit in a lovely space and read or write or craft. It's the greatest job ever.

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Happy birthday to me, please help some cats

It's my birthday! I intend to spend it doing pottery, reading, and working on a very special secret project which I will announce shortly.

If you would like to make my birthday extra happy, please chip in to support the cats of 10th Life. This is a cat rescue and trap/neuter/release operation in Bulgaria. They will send cats anywhere in Europe, and can probably send them outside Europe as well. I have visited it multiple times, and can personally vouch for it.

I was there earlier this month, and got to pet lots of rescue cats, many of them disabled or otherwise special needs, and even got to live with a rescue kitten for a while!

Meet Ezra, the very bitey pointy-tailed kitten. He was rescued from attacking dogs, and was too young to go into the general shelter.

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If you donate to 10th Life, please comment or email. I will update this post with an adorable cat photo for every comment and email I receive, so keep watching this space.

10th Life particularly needs recurring monthly donations. A small monthly donation would be better than a large one-time one, as then they know how much money is coming in and can plan. They are really in need of money now, as they spent a lot on a massive trap/neuter/release operation which was followed by a cat who needed extremely expensive emergency surgery. (He made it!)

If you have already given to 10th Life and have some left over and really want to send something personal, which I may or may not review in a timely fashion or ever, here's my Amazon wish list.

And, of course, birthday art, fic, and general wishes always happily accepted.

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Come Closer, by Sara Gran

A short, quick-read, first-person novel narrated by a woman who gets possessed, with elements of satire and lots of relentless encroaching doom. A lot of people found it absolutely terrifying. I did not. For me, it had exactly one scary moment, when the footsteps of some unseen being approach the heroine and then stop right in front of her. But soon after we actually meet the demon, and though she increases in power from then on, she also became less scary to me.

You can read this as a straightforward story of possession, or as an unreliable narrator's account of losing her mind IF you can explain away the moment when a child also sees the demon. It's very predictable in a way that can work in horror ("No! Don't do it! Noooo!") but for me, just felt predictable. I was not that impressed, but I picked it up because so many people on social media loved it so you may too.

I don't find possession inherently scary, probably because I disbelieve in it on a much deeper level than I disbelieve in, say, werewolves. There's Jewish possession legends - the dybbuk - but this, like most modern possession narratives, comes from a very Christian perspective. There's some Christian mythology that does scare me (Hell), but in general, it's a big lift. Possession stories have to be good at the level of The Exorcist TV series to scare me. Come Closer probably works better if you do find possession inherently scary the way I find ghosts inherently scary. It's not coincidental that the one scare that worked for me was more ghost imagery than demon imagery.

Come Closer is traditionally published, but the Kindle edition has an annoying number of typos.



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Topsy-Turvy Titles

I have a slightly unusual request. I will explain the reason for it in a couple days.

I need books whose TITLES suggest a topsy-turviness. So far, I have When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger, Be Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpas on K-2's Deadliest Day, and The Inverted World by Christopher Priest. As you can see, the actual content/genre is irrelevant. The titles are what's important.

I do NOT need titles including the phrase "upside down," like Upside-Down Magic, as I can search for those by myself - I'm looking for less obvious ones that I might miss.

Feel free to share this.

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The Mysterious Mr. Quin, by Agatha Christie

A collection of short stories about Mr. Satterthwaite, an elderly bachelor who observes life rather than participating in it, and Mr. Quin, a younger man who appears mysteriously to catalyze a crucial change or realization in the lives of others - often though not always lovers - and disappears just as mysteriously. Shadows and reflections make Mr. Harley Quin appear to be masked and dressed in rainbow motley. He's obviously an avatar of Harlequin from the English Harlequinade, which was based on the Italian commedia dell'arte, where he's an acrobatic, romantic trickster figure with magical powers.

Mr. Sattherthwaite is very clearly coded as gay. (With Christie that sort of thing is deliberate, she absolutely knew about gay people and they're no more or less likely to be sympathetic than her straight characters.) He's a lifelong bachelor whose only romantic relationship with a woman was due to social expectations and apparently never went beyond hand-holding, if that. He's explicitly described as feminine.

The stories are all standalones in which either Mr. Satterthwaite solves a mystery, often after the fact, with Mr. Quin's help, or in which they help characters with some romantic problem. The mysteries themselves are mundane, but Mr. Quin is increasingly unambiguously magical, and Mr. Satterthwaite is increasingly unambiguously enthralled by him. Mr. Satterthwaite goes from feeling that he's a dried-up old man destined to be a bystander to taking on active roles in investigations, and seeing that his actions matter. Mr. Quin goes from a strange and distant figure to also taking on an active role in human life, and clearly develops a deep fondness for and connection to Mr. Satterthwaite. There's no real conclusion to their personal story, but there is a definite evolution.

I'd read some of these stories before, but this was my first time reading the entire volume in order. The mysteries are on the implausible/melodramatic side, but Christie conjures up a vivid atmosphere of romantic longing and subtle magic. They're basically fairytales, sometimes sweet, sometimes tragic, in the form of mysteries and wrapped around a barely-coded love story between a lonely old man and a magical being drawn to lovers.

Unsurprisingly, there is which removes the coding veneer.

Christie scale: MILD levels of ethnic stereotyping. In-character class snobbery.

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House of Hollow, by Krystal Sutherland

A lush, decadent YA dark fantasy about three sisters who vanished mysteriously and returned amnesiac and strangely changed.

In the four years since she’d left home, my eldest sister had grown into a gossamer slip of a woman with hair like spun sugar and a face out of Greek mythology. Even in still pictures there was something vaporous and hyaline about her, like she might ascend into the ether at any moment. It was perhaps why journalists were forever describing her as ethereal, though I’d always thought of Grey as more earthy. No articles ever mentioned that she felt most at home in the woods, or how good she was at making things grow. Plants loved her. The wisteria outside her childhood bedroom had often snaked in through the open window and coiled around her fingers in the night.

Either you like this sort of thing or you don't, and even if you do, it's easy to tip from lush to purple. For me, this REALLY worked - I loved it like I loved Dhonielle Clayton's The Belles, another book about too-close sisters possessed of a terrible, toxic beauty. House of Hollow is set in modern London but has a similar deliciously dark, decadent feel, with lots of descriptions of beautiful and creepy clothing, people, and places. I ate it up.

When Iris Hollow was seven, she and her older sisters Vivi (nine) and Grey (eleven) vanished without a trace when her parents glanced away for a moment. They returned a month later, naked and amnesiac, with healing wounds on their throats and no memory of what happened. There were no signs of sexual assault or other abuse. But after that, their blue eyes turned black, their hair went white, and they grew up strange, uncannily beautiful, able to control others, and prone to attracting unwanted attention and stalkers.

The book opens ten years later. Grey (straight) is estranged from their mother (their father is now dead) and has become a supermodel and designer of gorgeous and spooky bespoke clothing. Vivi (lesbian) is a rock singer. Iris (bi) is a student, hoping to avoid the excesses and public gaze of her sisters, unhealthily enmeshed with both her mother and her sisters. Especially Grey. When they were children and Grey accidentally broke her pinky, Iris smashed her own with a hammer.

Then a strange figure, a skull-headed Minotaur, begins to stalk Iris. And Grey disappears...

This dark fairytale hits many of my favorite things: the three sisters, each with their own fascinating attributes, a central mystery WHICH IS SOLVED SATISFYINGLY FOR ONCE, beautiful/horrifying descriptions (corpse flowers play a large role), liminal places and otherworlds, folkore, and even a road trip. It has a reasonable ending but also kind of begs for a sequel, which hopefully will show up at some point.

Content notes: Body horror. Sexualized mind control, both deliberate and accidental, and sexual attacks caused by the latter.

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Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you for writing for me! If you have any questions, please check with the mods. I am a very easy recipient and will be delighted with whatever you write for me. I have no special requirements beyond what's specifically stated in my DNWs. I'm fine with all POVs (i.e., first, second, third), tenses, ratings, story lengths, unusual formats, etc.

My AO3 name is Edonohana. I am open to treats. Very open. I love them.

I like hurt-comfort, action/adventure, horror, domestic life, worldbuilding, evocative descriptions, camaraderie, loyalty, trauma recovery, difficult choices, survival situations, mysterious places and weird alien technology, food, plants, animals, landscape, X-Men type powers, learning to love again or trust again or enjoy life again, miniature things or beings, magic, strange rituals, unknowable things, epistolary fiction/found footage/art described in fiction. And many other things, too, of course! That list is just in case something sparks an idea.

(  General DNWs  )

(  Chronicles of Prydain - Lloyd Alexander  )

(  Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin  )

(  The Iron Dragon's Daughter - Michael Swanwick  )

(  Piranesi - Susanna Clarke  )

(  The Stand - Stephen King  )

(  Watership Down - Richard Adams  )

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Traitor, the final book of the Change series, is OUT!

Traitor, the final book of The Change, is out now! FINALLY. You can buy an ebook or a lovely print version. It has maps and a cast of characters. The earlier books also have updated editions with maps and casts of characters. It's available everywhere books are sold.

This has been such a long, strange journey, from an agent refusing to represent the book unless we made a gay character straight to us launching Yes Gay YA in response, to my health problems and Sherwood's health problems delaying the fourth book, to us getting 2/3rds through it two weeks before a global pandemic put it on hold again, to the entire landscape of YA changing so queer characters are not an anomaly anymore, to a huge push to ban books and outlaw even mentioning the existence of of queer people in schools.

We originally wrote the book so teenagers who never see themselves represented in fun adventure fiction would get to do so. The books not existing isn't quite as much of a problem anymore - now the problem is more being able to access the books that do exist. But I hope that teenagers (and younger kids, and adults) will still see themselves, or just enjoy the read. And for everyone who's been waiting to see if Felicité will ever [spoiler], this is for you.

If you read it, please review it and/or the other books in the series wherever you review books. It's been such a long time that the whole series has dropped out of sight, and I'd like people to find out that the last book is finally available.



The series on Amazon.

Traitor on Book View Cafe.

The series on Goodreads.

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