Ariana Franklin, Mistress of the Art of Death series

Mistress of the Art of Death
The Serpent's Tale
Grave Goods


Have just read the three books in Ariana Franklin's "Mistress of the Art of Death" series; they are a lot of fun. The series takes place in the early 1100s in England. The main character, Adelia Aguilar, is a medical examiner of sorts--she went to school to learn to do autopsies and to be a medical doctor in Salerno, Italy, where women were seen as the intellectual equals of men. At the behest of Henry Plantagenet (King Henry II), Adelia is sent to England to help solve a murder, and as the series progresses, she ends up working on several cases. She has a companion, an Arab named Mansour, who is a eunuch. She becomes romantically involved with someone else in the course of the series, but I don't want to tell too much here so I won't mention who it is.

What I love about these books:
1. They feature a strong, well-rounded female character with both strengths and flaws. Adelia is passionate, smart, and bad-tempered; she tends to yell a lot and is frequently incensed by the backward habits of the English.
2. Henry II is a very interesting character; the author spends lots of time discussing how various reforms he introduced in England made things better for the common people.
3. The crimes are pretty horrifying and very interesting.
4. The books are feminist in nature--they point out (the many, many, oh god) instances of gender inequity both in the Catholic church and in English society in general in the 1100s. They also portray working class people as human and smart. The specific issues facing women of all classes are highlighted.


Downsides?
1. Henry II is lionized. I get that he was great, but this sometimes verges on hagiography.
2. Social issues arise with a vengeance in the pages of this series and perhaps sometimes feel anachronistic. Tally thus far includes: homophobia, racism, classism, rape.

But the downsides don't bother me a bit, to be honest. I am loving this series. I actually listened to the audiobooks: the first is done by Roslyn Landor; two and three are by Kate Reading. Both women are excellent readers, and the books were a lot of fun to listen to.

In conclusion, congrats to Roger Federer for his win at Roland Garros!

2008 Independent Publisher of the Year: University of Nebraska Press

From the Independent Publisher of the Year 2008 Awards speech by Victoria Sutherland, Publisher, ForeWord Magazine:

. . . And that’s the reason why we’re here, isn’t it. Because editors and publishers know how to make choices. Of course different editors will make different choices, but there still remains that responsibility for the acquisition, subjective as it may be, and the care of the manuscript. There is monitoring for quality. And ultimately, there is the accumulation of a house’s taste—call it cultural heritage—through backlist.

This is where independent publishers can and do differ from the conglomerates. When an independent chooses to publish an author, it’s because they truly believe that the author’s work contributes to the press’s “cultural heritage.” Independents don’t have the luxury of throwing authors up against walls to see what will stick.

Luxury is probably—is definitely—the wrong word. It isn’t luxury to publish thousands of titles a year, It’s glut. It’s flood. It’s content chaos. It’s what editors and publishers are supposed to prevent.

So, we’d like to honor today a publisher that excelled in its role of keeper of the cultural heritage. A university publisher that has deliberately made a place for itself in the world of trade as the curator of consistently wonderful books in several special markets. This university press not only publishes scholarly work, fine translation, classic reprints, and regional fiction and poetry, but it has made a name for itself in the categories of memoir, combined with history and travel, and in sports.

This publisher fulfills its roles of editor and curator in a way that makes them indispensable in libraries and bookstores. Whomever or whatever they choose to look at, to listen to, to get to the bottom of, is important or beautiful or entertaining, and always, always enduring. At ForeWord, we are always excited to receive a new catalog from them because we’ve discovered over the years that if they’ve chosen to publish a book, then it is surely a contribution to the world library, not just another wet noodle.

Please join us in recognizing the University of Nebraska Press as the 2008 ForeWord Magazine Independent Publisher of the Year.

In addition, The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie, edited by Annick Smith and Susan O'Connor, won the Gold Award in the anthology category; and Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village, by Mimi Schwartz, won the Bronze Award in the autobiography and memoir category.

Here's a link to a little local coverage of the award.

Three cheers for UNP!

Catching Up: Three Books I Finished Recently

Three quick reads, all enjoyable. Especially the one by Elinor Lipman, who is new to me (via Laura Lippman).

Picture Perfect by Jodi Picoult
ebook 1-4295-3335-8
iPod Touch, eReader Pro
copyright 1995

As Picture Perfect begins, it is daybreak in downtown L.A. A woman suffering from amnesia is taken in by an officer new to the L.A. police force, after he finds her wandering aimlessly near a graveyard. Days later, when her husband comes to claim her at the police station, no one is more stunned than Cassie Barrett to learn that not only is she a renowned anthropologist, but she is married to Hollywood's leading man, Alex Rivers.

A Date You Can't Refuse by Harley Jane Kozak
ebook 978-0-307-58871-5
iPod Touch, eReader Pro
copyright 2009

Wollie Shelley isn't happy about taking the job as a "social coach" at MediaRex, but the FBI makes her an offer she can't refuse. If she agrees to infiltrate the company, they'll guarantee that her schizophrenic brother will have a home at the federally subsidized halfway house he's come to love.

So Wollie launches into teaching three foreign celebrities how to cope with the customs of Beverly Hills, improve their English, and become Oprah-ready. And when a coyote-chewed corpse appears in the MediaRex compound, Wollie realizes that her colleagues are concealing some serious secrets of their own.

The Dearly Departed by Elinor Lipman
ebook 1-58836-013-x
iPod Touch, eReader Pro
copyright 2001

With her latest work, Elinor Lipman expertly serves up her usual delicious dish of entertainment. When the story opens, the not-so-sunny Sunny Batten has just received news that causes her to be even more morose than usual: her mother, Margaret Batten, has died in a freak accident with Margaret’s alleged fiancé, Miles Finn. Thus Sunny returns to the small New Hampshire town of King George and to the charity bungalow on the edge of the country club’s golf course where Margaret raised Sunny by herself. While at the funeral, Sunny catches her first glimpse of the brash Fletcher Finn, Miles Finn’s son and self-described possessor of “a heart of plutonium.” And who can’t help but notice, as they sit together at the graveside, the resemblance between Sunny and Fletcher, “the flagrant display, wherever one looked, of Miles Finn’s genes” [p. 79]?

David Sedaris Update 3

This just in:

Bestselling author David Sedaris will read from his latest book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, at 7 p.m. June 20 at the University Bookstore. He will sign copies of all his titles after the reading. Come early to get a good seat, and enjoy the stand-up comedy of Scott Muilenburg, Cody Hustak, Ryan Cownie, Joe Choi and Christian Stokes. Comedy begins at 2:30 p.m. For more information contact the store at 472-7300.

Link to NYTimes review of When You Are Engulfed in Flames

tennis

As I watch Jo-Wilfried Tsonga try to beat Juan Monaco at Roland Garros (go Jo-W!!!), I will also talk about the book I just skimmed--OMG BREAK BACK TSONGA AND HE HAS A MATCH POINT. Ahem. So the book I want to mention is Strokes of Genius, by L. Jon Wertheim.

Match point 2! Okay, wow. Seriously good effort from Monaco--but it is not his day! Jo Wilfried Tsonga def. Juan Monaco! Very lovely. Tsonga is so adorable at home in France.

Okay. Wow. The review. First let me just admit that I am a huge fan of Federer. It would not be inaccurate to say I am crazy for him; I love his technique, his precision, the beauty and elegance of his game. I also really love Nadal, but I desperately wanted Federer to win the Wimbledon final last year. Which he did not.

Strokes of Genius discusses that match, now known as (and indicated in the subtitle as) "the "greatest match ever played." In the text, Wertheim combines minute disucssions of the match itself with biographical information about the players, analyses of their games and strengths/weaknesses, and musings about tennis in general. He is a lively writer and the book moves along well.

Okay, I should admit I have to skim the parts that discuss the match. Those are too painful for me still. However, the rest of the work gives great information, and if you are not devastated when Federer loses at a Grand Slam, you will enjoy this book in its entirety. Wertheim had more access to Nadal than Federer; he seems to have had lots of discussions with Nadal's coach, Toni Nadal (his uncle), whereas much of the Fed info and quotes are from already existing pressers and interviews. That said, I do believe he did talk with Federer directly and he seems to have had discussions with his parents and some people who have worked with him. I learned things I did not know about Federer, which is saying something. The Nadal half of the book is more revelatory, however, in my opinion, partic. bec. Nadal has been so close-mouthed about his--well, about everything. Sometimes, Wertheim gets crass (the use of "ass," "zit," and other slang was jarring in tennis writing), but he is very knowledgeable and insightful, and I like his prose. In the end, the book has to kind of be Nadal's as he was the victor of the match, and that's fine. Federer/Nadal is a great rivalry, and Wertheim does a great job of discussing this in detail and making it richer and more resonant.

Anyway, god, I hope Federer does well at Wimbledon even in this (difficult) year for him.

In conclusion, there is only one thing left to say. GO CAVS. DO NOT QUIT.

Audiobooks from Libravox

I have recently been downloading and listening to audiobooks from Librivox, which is a site that contains audiofiles for works in the public domain that are available for the public (for free) to download and listen to. From what I can tell, you can either download the entire work (if it is complete) in a zip file or receive it in serial form. (For a Victorian novel, this would be ideal, and would perhaps mimic how original readers received the work.) Some of the works at Librivox are already completed; some are ongoing; you can search for only completed works if you prefer. There is a way to access the files through iTunes in case you want to put them on an iPod. That's a huge advantage over my own public library's downloadable audiobook system; the files there cannot be listened to on an iPod.

The wonderful thing about Librivox is the selection: there are many not-so-well-known works, and also some of the most famous. There's also poetry, which is quite nice, and nonfiction as well as fiction. The diversity of the selection is incredible. Again, since these are works in the public domain, they are pre-1923, but since eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels happen to be some of my favorites, I am fine with this. There are works in German and French (and probably other languages) as well as English. The selection is, as I've said, eclectic. Anyone can volunteer to read!

That last fact also leads to, perhaps, the worst thing about Librivox--anyone can read these books. Sometimes, an individual reader will do an entire work; sometimes, you get a group. I've listened to two works thus far--Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers, and The Sign of the Four, by Arthur Conan Doyle. Barchester Towers featured many readers. The words "Proudie," "St. Ewolds," and other proper names in the book were pronounced in different ways by different readers. The readers were not all native speakers of English--this is not a problem for me, as I like accents, but it can lead to some interesting mispronunciations (the word "ascertain" was pronounced consistently as "as certain"), and also, because different languages have different rules of intonation and emphasis, sometimes the emotional resonance of the work seems slightly different. This discordance can, paradoxically, lead to a new or better understanding of the work (because you're hearing the words in a way you didn't expect to), and I grew to like all of the readers for BT. There were some truly excellent readers in the bunch, and many okay ones: only one horrible one, though, and she did only one chapter. All in all, I enjoyed the motley crew.

The Sign of the Four was read by a single reader, a Canadian, so I enjoyed her vowels in "about" and suchlike. I did not enjoy her mispronunciation of the name Goethe--she said it so it rhymed with "both", and that set me on edge in the very worst of ways. Still, I listened to the entire book, and she did a mostly fine job with it.

So anyway, I recommend Librivox.org to those of you who enjoy audiobooks, who enjoy things in the public domain, and who are tolerant of readerly eccentricity.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

I am incredibly pleased to post this review from one of my real-life and long-time BFFs, Tammy. Especially since I've been so bad at posting lately. I'm also excited to see this review because I have a copy of it waiting for me at the bookstore (I think) along with It Sucked and Then I Cried by Heather Armstrong. Enough about me, though. On to the zombies!

Seth Grahame-Smith’s mash-up novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a lot like finding chocolate in your peanut butter. Never could two more esteemed genres find companionship. The story is, of course, still Jane Austen’s—often verbatim—but with the much appreciated addition of zombies.

In P&P&Z, the sisters Bennet have all been trained in the deadly arts. They spend their days hunting unmentionables and husbands, Bingley is still dreamy and Mr. Darcy intolerable. The parody of manners and civility remain, enhanced with the burden of proper conduct during battle with either zombies or ninjas. Before roundhouse kicks, one must consider modesty. During their visit to Rosings, Elizabeth suffers Mr. Darcy and the unfortunate transition of her dear friend Charlotte:

What remained of Charlotte would liked to have believed this change the effect of love, and the object of that love her friend Eliza. She watched him whenever they were at Rosings, and whenever he came to Hunsford; but without much success, for her thoughts often wandered to other subjects, such as the warm succulent sensation of biting into a fresh brain. Mr. Darcy certainly looked at her friend a great deal, but the expression of that look was disputable. It was an earnest, steadfast gaze, but she often doubted whether there were much admiration in it, and sometimes it seemed nothing but absence of mind. And upon imaging Mr. Darcy’s mind, her thoughts would again turn to the subject of chewing on his salty, cauliflower-like brain.

Who, truly, has not, on occasion, desired a little blood and gore while reading of repression and propriety? Haven’t we all shared Elizabeth’s feelings toward a suitor at one time or another when she “resolved to hold Darcy’s heart, still beating, in her hand…?” Wouldn’t Wharton’s The Age of Innocence be more satisfying if Countess Olenska became a blood sucking vamp, rather than expiring pathetically of tuberculosis?

Grahame-Smith is also a screenwriter, so a movie version cannot be far behind. Spare us Keira Knightly or Gwyneth Paltrow. Give us the girl who always plays the outsider, a Kat Dennings or Eva Amurri. And LET HER KICK ASS!