Rampant Bicycle

Ok, that's three of my five down.

I finished The Thirteenth Tale yesterday, squeezing the last few words out of its pages while I waited for Jonathan to be finished at work. And the thing that I really feel I must first say is that this is a book for people who love books.

If you haven't really loved books...really loved them; if you haven't smiled a little secret smile of anticipation as you step into a library or bookstore and inhale that slightly musty, papery scent of hoarded knowledge; if you haven't held one reverently, feeling the balance of its weight in your hand, treasuring that moment before you open it and slip inside, out, and away...then you might not get as much out of this one. Might you still enjoy it? Oh, yes, certainly. But there's an extra layer of goodness waiting for you, if you really love books.

Vida Winter is a great author. But nobody knows what her story is. Time and again reporters and would be biographers and seekers have come to ask her to tell them the truth, and she smiles amiably and tells them a different tale every time. But now she is old, and now she is ill, and now she has sent a letter to a young woman - an inexperienced amateur biographer - and promised to tell her the real story.

But will she? And why THIS young woman?

The Thirteenth Tale has been described to me as a ghost story and in a sense it is, though to my mind it is more a story of absence, of abandonment, of loss and longing. Nearly every character Setterfield puts before you is, one way or another, longing. Lonely. Bereaved. The story itself is a teasing, slow tale of a curious family and their curious habits, and of the mysterious state of being - or having once been - a twin. This would normally be the part where I tell you about it in more detail, but...somehow I don't feel like doing that. If you aren't curious to read this book, it would do nothing for you for me to relate it here, and if you ARE, then I would do you a great disservice in telling you anything more.

I will add one more thing. The Thirteenth Tale is not a perfect book. It's a first novel, and you can sort of sense that first - novel flavor...that fresh, inexperienced crunchiness in the prose...but, you know, taking that into consideration, I think this is awfully nicely done for a first go. I'll keep an eye out for future books by Ms. Setterfield (what a marvelous name that is! Just right for an author. Ah, but I wonder, is it real? )

I Saw This:

at Fark.com:

• Dear Australia: Someone please tell me how this is a good idea. Sure, "guns don't kill people, people kill people," but the guns help.
• Finally!
• Hmm. Some folk have interesting ways of expressing their dislike for politicians.
• Ridiculously expensive toys for the children of the ridiculously rich.

at BoingBoing.net:

• I like this interpretation of the airline safety routine as a sort of maiko dance. (Nice manga - style art too!)
• Shop for the gadget lovers in your life.
• Yet another reason I am so glad I am not a woman in the 50s or 60s. Interesting though, in a sort of sad way.

On Other Linklogs and Personal Blogs:

• Oh, Eunny. I want them! Look at them! So pretty with the little pattern, and reversible, and everything!
• Torontoist's etiquette citations are pretty cool, actually.
• Did you know they have a bread manga in Japan?  Slashfood does.

Kate asked in the comments yesterday what happened with Snow Crash. (What rot, Jonathan! The only time I have ever really begun to feel that the trouble with a book was an excess of testosterone was Stephen King's The Gunslinger. Of COURSE that wasn't the problem with Snow Crash.)

No, the problem with Snow Crash was that through most of the book, I had this feeling. A feeling that Neal himself was leaning over my shoulder as I read, occasionally tapping me on the shoulder, pointing at a spot on the page, and murmuring in a growly voice "Wasn't that cool?"

It got annoying! Sufficiently so that I began wanting to turn round and chide the invisible author: "Shut up, can't you? I'm trying to READ!"

So it wasn't that the book was bad. Far from it; it's a fine piece of sci - fi, and if the word "cyberpunk" has any appeal for you whatever you should probably read it. It was just...well, like the equivalent of using a black background for a web page, or giving yourself the middle initial X (anyone read Terry Pratchett's Maskerade? Then you know what X stands for. )

So it's been almost a whole week of stinky office now. I have taken to just flinging the front door wide in spite of the cold (and today the damp) in an effort to gain some relief, as otherwise it would be positively nausea - inducing. Please, oh please, someone come and fix this?

Last night the Boy got his hair cut. This always puts him in a bad mood. Counterintuitive, no? But I suppose it might put me in a bad mood too if it usually took three hours to cut MY hair. I was fine; I went home and founded a piñata research garden, feeding things to various creatures to change their color and discovering a new species or two. Somewhere in all that, I put a lasagna in the oven. By the time the Boy got back it was made and well on its way to cold, and he sat staring off into the distance and being surly for some time. He thought about changing his hairstyle. "Don't you think this is a silly affectation for a 30 - year - old man?" he asked me.

I thought: No, I think you're just cranky because it takes a long time to do and you hate having to sit there while they do it. And I wondered: what, all of a sudden you feel the need to part it down the middle or something because that is more adult? Besides, you're 30, not 60! What next, sweater vests? Ties? Loafers? I do not understand this obsession you have, dearest, with being an adult, as though there were some definite series of criteria and behaviors to which all adults must adhere. As though adults were an identifiable, more or less identical species of thing that you could spot like a birdwatcher. Isn't the reason kids are in such a hurry to grow up because you can do as you please? Isn't it also true that, finance permitting, you CAN do as you please? So if you like your hair a certain way, then...why not?

But all I said out loud was: "No, of course not. I think it looks good on you."

Then he ate his dinner and watched me experiment with piñatas, and I think he was feeling better by the time we went to bed.

Bleh. The smell in here is really making me feel sick. I think I need to go outdoors for a few moments...

I Saw This:

at Fark.com:

• Well, it had to happen, right? Now people can cover their online tracks.

at BoingBoing.net:

• Really love Counter - strike? Try these.
• Brilliant and very funny photoset of interplay between souvenirs and the monuments that inspire them.

On Other Linklogs and Personal Blogs:

• Rachel sent me this cute penguin. In shoes!
• Neil Gaiman finds a video of the Helsinki Complaints Choir in his email.  We should all have a choir like that.

And I am addicted to Viva Piñata. It's sitting there in the tray in the 360 at home. Waiting. I would rather be playing it now than sitting in my office smelling...whatever it is that is causing the stench in the office today. (Something dead? Backed up sewage? I don't know.)

There is some shame in this. I mean, after all, it's Microsoft's blatant attempt to reinvent Pokemon. There will be toys. I understand an animated series already exists. But...

But it's surprisingly fun to spend an evening landscaping a brightly colored virtual garden and planting it with goodies to lure in cute, paper - covered piñata creatures. Where it becomes addictive is in the husbandry. The weird Mendelian experiments you can run: what happens if I feed a bluebell seed to this duck thing? How can I tame this naughty little bat that keeps creeping in at night and feeding on my other piñatas? (Answer: you hire a crazy guy to tinker with a pumpkin and turn it into a jack - o - lantern, on which the bat will then feed. Then it will love you, and hang around the garden being cute and blue.)

Actually everything is cute. The game was initially described to me as "chocolate covered crack with MSG sprinkles" and that is what it is. A powerful hit of cute that leaves you wanting more. And you get curious: what will happen if I keep giving this beggar guy money? (Answer: something nifty. But I won't say what.)

Anyway. I won't get started talking to you guys about piñatas or we'll be here all day. Instead I will talk about Valiant, which I said I would do yesterday (sorry about that.)

Valiant wins points for a real shocker near the beginning. It would be bad form to spoil it, so I won't, but I was quite startled to see such a thing. YA fiction is getting edgier all the time. As a result of said shocking thing, the heroine (Val) leaves home and takes up with a small group of other teens living in an abandoned subway station. So far, it could be just about any teen runaway story; but here is where the interesting bit happens.

You see, the kids in the subway station act as couriers. Every so often they bring mysterious brown bottles of...something...to abandoned houses and to parks and to all manner of curious places, where equally mysterious and magical folk receive them. They're faeries, honest to goodness faeries, and in the bottles is a compound that helps protect them from the ravages of the iron and steel of which our world is increasingly made.

That's what it does for faeries...but as the kids have discovered, if a human takes any, it gives them a magical, dangerous high. And to further complicate matters, some of the faeries receiving their deliveries are dying. Poisoned. Could the troll who gives them their packages and instructions be behind it?

What follows is part mystery, part coming of age tale, and part meditation on the dangers of drug use, and it's fairly crunchy - good. Holly Black has quite a solid idea of how dangerous it is to deal with faeries - no tiny Tinkerbells here - and it's always satisfying to pick up a book that has a good strong grounding in the real lore, which this one does. The book seems to me a little self-consciously edgy, which bothers me a bit (ask me some time about my experience with Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash), though if that's the sort of fault I'm picking out... Whatever your feelings on self - conscious "edge", it's a quick read, and anyone in need of a bit of brain candy could certainly do worse.

I Saw This:

at Fark.com:

• What are superheroes thankful for?
• Ok.  Ok.  I understand, it's nice to have lots of kids, and all (provided you like them), and if you feel that birth control is wrong, I guess that's up to you.  But, um.  The number of children you have is not a gauge of holiness.  There's probably more to being holy than that.

at BoingBoing.net:

• Sleep in a toon room.

On Other Linklogs and Personal Blogs:

• Slashfood says: someone at Starbucks must have wanted to see what would happen if they crossbred Pay it Forward and www.wheresgeorge.com.
• I found it on Digg. It might make you cry. But it's cute. And sad.
• BibliOdyssey maps the brain.

Well, I have finished Wings to the Kingdom. Last week actually. And I finished Valiant over the weekend.

That "these books will last us till January!" thing isn't looking so good.

Anyway. Me finishing things usually means it's time for a postmortem, so here one is. Wings to the Kingdom is a less complicated story than Cherie Priest's first novel (Four and Twenty Blackbirds), but overall I think I ended up enjoying it more. In unwilling medium Eden Moore's second outing, she gets to skip the family intrigues and sink her teeth into a classic mix of the ghost stories and urban legends surrounding the Civil War battlefield of Chickamauga. The Confederate dead are back, and desperate to communicate. It all has something to do with a local urban legend of the "Lover's Lane monster" type...or perhaps something more like a bridge troll...called Old Green Eyes. (The author's note suggests that Old Green Eyes may be a genuine artifact of that region's lore...can anyone seeing this confirm?)

And, you know, I didn't think I would like the combo of spooky, ethereal ghosts and extremely corporeal it - jumps - out - at - you - from - the - woods! beastie, but surprisingly, it works. The monster has reasons for its behavior / existence that most urban legends don't, and I won't spoil them for you, but I found it quite satisfying. It's more resolution than most of us ever get with our little local mysteries.

Like its predecessor, Wings to the Kingdom is filled with little bites of Southern flavor...there is a kind of languid expressiveness in Eden's narration and in the conversations we see her having with others. I like this as a stylistic choice, though perhaps other people might find it annoying. Oh, yes, and one other thing: Eden is, I think, a teen, but it is surprisingly difficult to get a solid handle on her age just from reading the book. I'd forgotten she was so young in Four and Twenty Blackbirds, and had her pegged at about 25 at the beginning of Wings, only realizing later when she was hanging out with other teenagers that I'd remembered it wrong. (Oops.)

I'm out of practice writing reviews, but I'll keep trying. Valiant tomorrow.

Other things of note from this weekend: I made cheese biscuits from that biscuit cookbook I got. They were delicious. I would not have thought under ordinary circumstances to use cayenne, even though I put it in cheese SAUCE all the time. I thought I had put in too much, but as it was you could only taste it a little. Perhaps next time I'll use even more - I think these biscuits will be coming out again.

I also have finally started a knitting project that seems to be working out. I've settled into a nice groove and it's ticking along well. Naturally it is none of the things that I SHOULD be making about now... I'm using some cashmere a lovely friend gave me last year as a Christmas present, and the tilting blocks pattern they used for the Midwest Moonlight scarf in Scarf Style. With any luck the end result will be a pretty, soft fall / spring scarf I can fasten with a pin. (Just in time for winter. I need to work on this whole knitting for the seasons we're actually HAVING thing.) Now, if only I have enough yarn!

Currently playing on our game consoles and Really Big TV: Gears of War. Which is the umpty - millionth game about space marines that I have seen. I am so over space marines. Also, I look forward to the day when the people making games for the Xbox 360 get over their need to display the console's graphical prowess by making it render things that look...well, shitty. I have seen enough battle - scarred wastelands and muddy hellish locales for a while. How's about we turn that pixel - pushing might to something actually pretty for a change, instead of pretty - but - in - a - horrible - sort - of - way?

I Saw This:

at Fark.com:

• I don't know, I think it's kind of cool. There's no law that says you can't use tv-land science to teach real science.
• In the same vein: 40 things that only happen in the movies.
• Why we should all be glad that proverbs aren't literal.
• Pretty! Also, pretty #2!

at BoingBoing.net:

• Someone's been doing research into women and guns, and they've gathered some visual treats for us. Intriguing.
• I'm glad someone besides me knows what the problem is with Lost.
• Be advised: a burrito is not a sandwich. It's the law!
• Hey, Jen - in - England: I know you've been having some troubles with your doctor lately. At least you don't go to this one, though. right?
• Things not to do in various places.

On Other Linklogs and Personal Blogs:

• Neil Gaiman says Alan Moore is going to be on The Simpsons. Well, I'm curious.
• I hear you, Franklin.  (Spiffy idea for a post.  I may steal it some day. )

Still tinkering with the blogroll, but a quick addendum:

While roaming the street after lunch today, I saw an ad that read:


It was that last bit that really set us off, speculating.  What could be IN there?  Some of our ideas:

• Ninja gear
• 8,000 photographs of Sean Connery
• Shoelaces
• Ghost hunting equipment
• Illegal substances
• A severed head (classic!)

What do you think, readers?  What was in the mysterious lost bag?