Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery. This was always my favourite, apart from Anne of Green Gables, and the only one I’ve reread as an adult, though it was some time ago. Rilla is Anne’s youngest child, and the book starts when she is fifteen, just before WWI starts. What I find interesting is that Rilla isn’t an exceptional girl, like her mother, and countless other heroines. She’s a very normal teenager, a bit spoiled, not interested in intellectual pursuits, rather vain and mainly concerned with her looks and having fun. She’s a nice person, but also quite ordinary. And this is what makes the book so interesting. Because at the eve of her first ball the war breaks out, and her whole world is turned upside down. The book spans four years, and we follow Rilla as she grows up; she starts to take responsibility for her life. She takes care of a war orphan, organize, skillfully, a youth Red Cross society, as well as a number of tasks she had never imagined. And though she still has no intellectual interests at the end, unlike the rest of her family, she has still evolved into a intelligent and capable woman.

I also very much enjoy Rilla’s relationship with her favourite brother Walter. She worships him, but at the start of the book she feels he only sees her as a baby sister, not as someone he can truly talk to. My sister is six years younger than me, and I remember how great it was when she grow older and we became friends, not just sisters. Of course, the book also makes me cry several times over. Especially when it comes to Dog Monday. I didn’t cared much for the token love story. Even if Ken Ford is someone Rilla has known all her life, we, the readers, haven’t, and to me the love story feel rushed and underdeveloped. In their two scenes together before Ken goes to war, Rilla is shy and tongue-tied, and though we see her through Ken’s eyes, he is only thinking over how beautiful she is, not how she is as a person. I guess they get to know each others in the letters they exchange, but basically the whole thing feels like something that is there because there “has” to be a love story. It has nothing to do with Rilla’s process of becoming an adult.

I’ve continued with my L. M. Montgomery re-read.


Further Chronicles of Avonlea This book was published against Montgomery’s wishes, and it’s not a very good one. None of the short stories are memorable, and the last one “Tannis of the Flats” is pretty much unreadable with an overabundance of racials stereotypes and slurs. Don’t read it.

Anne of Ingleside. I never read this book as a child as it wasn’t translated until I was all grown-up. I did read it once then, but I had forgotten pretty much everything. It isn’t very memorable. It’s a sweet book about Anne’s happy domestic life. Even the terror of fatal illness can’t take that away, but the result isn’t very interesting. We follow Anne and her children through five years, alternating POVs between all of them, which makes it a bit jumpy. It’s also a terribly gossipy book. Whole chapters are about people gossiping about character’s we only ever hear about in a few paragraphs, and never in person, which makes it feel rather pointless.

Considering how unhappy Montgomery's own life was- and this book was written just a few years before her death, it’s easy to imagine this book was Montgomery's life of dreams. Anne is happy and at 35, after six pregnancies, she is still slim and beautiful. Her marriage is perfect, her children are lively and loving, and everything is alright by the end of every chapter. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I read it as a child, but I don’t think it would ever have been my favourite.

After all this perkiness I felt the need for a change; The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers. I’ve read it once before, but it was a couple of years ago, so the details were a bit hazy. It’s the early 19th century and a doctor; Michael Crawford, is about to get married. At the stag party he slips his fiance's wedding ring on the finger of a statue, but when he tries to retrieve it, the stone hand has closed. The day after the wedding Crawford wakes up to find his bride brutally murdered, and the suspicion falls, quite naturally at him. He flies England pursued by his dead wife’s sister, slowly realising he has unwittingly picked up another spouse when he put the ring on the stature.

This is part an historical novel. Crawford’s life gets mixed up with those of Keats, Byron and Shelley, as well as several other historical characters. Powers has taken great care to get the facts right, so you learn quite a bit about the Romantic poets by reading this book. But it’s also a vampire story. Here the vampires are sentient beings made of stone who needs blood to be able to transform themselves into human form. They latch on to a human, something they see as marriage, and that human will live a long life and be unusually creatively blessed. Yes, this is a book where the Romantic poets are displayed prominently. In return they want blood, but they are also extremely jealous and will slowly but surely kill off everyone their spouse loves. As classic vampires they are sensitive to sunlight, garlic and silver, but once married you are not getting rid of them easily. The books is long and covers several years, so the plot isn’t exactly easy to line out. I like it a lot. I like vampires, but not the romantic hero-type which has been popular in the last decade, or so. Powers’ vampires are very “other”, completely inhuman and with no real understanding of humans needs. And I like slow-moving books, and I love historical novels where the facts are right. A book right up my alley, in other words.

I don’t usually plan what I’m going to read next, but probably something by LeGuin now. I haven’t re-read her in years, but I read everything I could get my hand on by her all through my pre-teens, and teens.

I haven’t read much lately, mostly because the cold gave me a very bad headache.

A Grave Talent by Laurie R. King. I’ve read this book several times, not for the murder mystery, but for the characters. I enjoy reading about the characters at Tyler’s Road, I love the description of artistry, and Vaun herself, and I love the growing friendship between detectives Kate Martinelli and Al Hawkins. And the murder mystery is good too; several little girls are found murdered, eerily mimicking an old murder, and the convicted murderess is living nearby...

The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery. The only Montgomery books translated to Swedish was the one’s about Anne and Emily, so I’ve never read anything else. This one seemed geared to an older audience, and I wish I had read it in my teens- i would have loved it wildly then. But I liked it now too. Plot-wise it was easy to predict what would happen, but I liked Valancy, and I very much enjoyed her transformation from bullied old maid to radiantly happy. If you haven’t read it, it’s about a young woman who is terribly bullied and down-trodden by her pretty awful family. But when she learns she has only a year left to live, she stops feeling afraid and decides to actually live the time she has left. Very enjoyable read with shades of Jane Eyre and Persuasion. Also,, even if Barney Snaith is idealised, he is much more of a real person than ever Teddy Kent and Gilbert Blythe.

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery. While reading The Blue Castle it struck me i haven’t re-read the Anne-books since my teens, and only in the Swedish translation. I was always much more an Emily-girl, and those books I re-read regularly. It was fun to read Anne of Green Gables again, but it was even clearer to me now why I always preferred Emily. Anne’s mood swings and endless chatter doesn’t really grip me, and Diana is a much more bland best friend than Ilse Burnley, and I have never liked Gilbert Blythe. (Sorry). But even so, I enjoyed reading it again, and I think I’m going to re-read the whole series.

Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions by Joyce & River Higginbotham, which I will talk about elsewhere.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. I love Lovecraft’s mythology, but the racism and misogyny are hard to take.But then there are some brilliant authors who take the mythology and make it soar, like the Swedish author Anders Fager, who mixes it with Swedish mythology and a (mostly), contemporary setting. Lovecraft Countrytakes the racism, gives it a good shake, and gives it center stage. Oh, it’s full of Lovecraftian horror themes, as well as some borrowed elsewhere, but that’s not the truly frightening stuff. The really scary bits in this book is the daily life of the protagonist, a family of African Americans in USA in the 1950’s, not monsters from beyond. I liked this book a lot, after I got used to it’s format. Each chapter is a self-contained novella, each featuring a different main protagonist, from a set of characters who also play parts in the other novellas. And there is also a underlying narrative which reach it's conclusion in the last chapter, so it is a coherent novel as well. For example, the first story is about a young man, Atticus, who go looking for his father in a small and isolated town, in the company of his uncle, and friend Letitia. The next one features Letitia as she purchases a house which turns out to be haunted. The novellas are a bit uneven in quality, but overall I found the book very good, and it was a joy to read. It has a proper ending, but also an opening for a sequel, which I wouldn’t mind. Apparently it is going to become a TV series, which I think could work very well.

Bryony and Roses by T. Kingfisher. You may have noticed by now I like fairy tale retellings. This one if a version of The Beauty and the Beast which was always one of my favorites (long before the movie, which didn’t come until I was an adult). In this novel beauty is called Bryony, and it’s she who gets trapped by the Beast and not her father. I really enjoyed this re-telling. Both Bryony and the Beast have distinct personalities and also hobbies, which I loved! And the tale was changed enough to make the narrative fresh and interesting.

Lord Peter Views the Body by Dorothy L. Sayers. This is the first collection of Sayers short stories, and it’s pretty uneven. A couple of macabre ones, like the one about an artist who makes some very curious pieces of art, or the man who inherits his uncle’s stomach. A couple of more straightforward murder mysteries, a couple of plain mysteries, and the absurd finale; “The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba” where Lord Peter “dies” to go undercover for several years. My personal favourites are “"The Fascinating Problem of Uncle Meleager's Will" where Lord Peter and Lady Mary helps solving the clues to the whereabout of a testament by being frivolous, and "The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head" where we get to meet lord Saint-George for the first time.

A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge. The previous books I’ve read by Hardinge has been pure fantasy, this one is set before and under the Civil War in England. Makepeace’s grow up with her unmarried mother, who refuses to speak of her father. Makepeace also see ghosts. When she, eventually, learns about her father, she realises this is something she has inherited from him and his family. It’s a bit hard to say more without spoiling the book, but it’s well worth reading! It has a similar plot point with some of Bujold’s work, so I successfully guessed the big secret pretty much at once, but I enjoyed my read nevertheless.

I haven’t done a reading post in months and months, So instead of doing one huge post, I’ll break it down.

Which Witch by Eva Ibbotson. This has always been my favourite Ibbotson. The dark wizard arriman the Awful decides to get married. Not because he particularly wants to, but because it has been foretold his heir will be an even greater wizard than he. And to choose a wife he arranges a competition among the witches from his hometown. Belladonna, the youngest witch falls hopelessly in love with him, but she is a white witch, and no matter what she does, her magic remains white. But then he meets a work called Rover and his owner, an orphan called Terence, and suddenly her magic goes black. Perhaps she will be able to win the competition, after all, if there wasn’t a new witch in town, whose magic isn’t only black; it’s evil.. It’s a funny book, but with its serious moments- especially Terence story is heartbreaking.

Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers. I started re-reading Sayers last year, and then got distracted, but I think I will continue now. I’ve always found her three first Lord Peter books the weakest ones, and Unnatural death is the one I re-read the least, apart from Five Red Herrings. The murder mystery is quite good; an old lady, dying in cancer, dies, all her money going to her great-niece who, by all accounts was devoted to her. The doctor attending the case is convinced something is amiss, but it all seems like a natural death. Enter Lord Peter, suddenly a lot more people are killed, and, of course, it was murder all along.

There are some glorious moments, the best the introduction of Mis Climpson, but what drags this book down is some rather unpleasant digs at lesbians, and several characters says nasty things about people of colour. I know it reflects views of the late 1920’s,, and at when it comes to the Reverend Hallelujah it is clear that the persons coming with derogatory remarks are narrow-minded bigots- he is actually a very pleasant person. But it still makes it a bit of an uncomfortable read.

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley. I read The Watchmaker at Filigree Street earlier this year and loved it, so I was delighted when I learned Pulley was publishing another book. This one takes place in the same universe, but some 30 years before the events of the previous books, in 1859. They share a character, so it could be considered a prequel, but both books stands on their own legs. Here the hero, Merrick, is a young man who, due to damaging his legs, has resigned to live with his brother, whom he doesn’t get along with. They upper-class, but poor, the manor house they live in basically falling apart around them. There is also the fear of inherited insanity, something getting very acute for Merrick when a statue starts to move around, but it is only he who sees it. But then he is asked to travel to Peru to try to fetch trees to get quinine from, and to fetch it from the very place both Merrick's grandfather and father spend a lot of time.

I think this book was better than the first one; though there were a few minor things in the first part which never got fully followed up. Pulley has a trick in writing supernatural things in a way which makes them feels perfectly natural- like trees which may burst into flame at the smallest provocation. And in a way this is a book about two friendships; one this is falling apart, and one that tentatively starts, and then blossoms, both described vividly and interestingly. I look forward to see what Pulley will write next!

Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth. I read Forsyth’s The Wild Girl, about the wife of one of the Grimm brothers, interwoven with the fairy tale Deerskin. Bitter Greens have a similar set-up. Charlotte-Rose de la Force was a real person, an author and noblewoman at Louis XVI’s court. She was banished to a convent in the 1690’s, and the novel begins with her arriving at the convent. The story then split between her past, her life at the convent, and eventually a story an old nun tells her; the story of Rapunzel. Here it takes place in Venice in the late 16th century, told from Rapunzel’s point of view. Eventually we also get the sorceress’ story too, starting in the late 15th century.

Despite several timelines and POV’’s it was not difficult to tell them apart. Forsyth has a lovely language, and is very easy to read. She has also done extensive research which I love! You really do get a proper biography over Charlotte-Rose de la Force, authentic details about the clothes, as well as the proper history. I especially like that even if there is real magic in this story, it is still magic which very much rely suggestion, and real magic lore. The plot twist in the end wasn’t difficult to guess, but it didn’t matter- I enjoyed this book from beginning to end.

The Drowning Game by LS Hawker. Interesting start about a young woman who has been raised by a survivalist father, basically locked in and with no contact with other people.. When the father dies events unfold which makes her flee her hometown, trying to find out what happened to her mother. But all in all everything hinges on far too many unrealistic and fantastical events

As lways spoilers under the cuts.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley. I really liked this book, set in Victorian London, but with a couple of strong fantasy and steampunk elements. It started out with a telegraphist receiving a mysterious watch as an anonymous gift, and a bomb threat, and I thought it would be a bit of a thriller, but it isn’t, really. But it’s a bit hard to describe what happens without spoilers. I can say it’s about a man who see the colours of sounds, and a woman who want to see the ether. And about a man who remembers his future and forgets his past. And two love stories. And a clockwork octopus. And I enjoyed every page of it. This is Pulley’s debit novel and it makes me really excited to see what she writes next.

( Grimm )

( OUAT )

And Versailles will start airing in Sweden on April 13. Wohoo! I only hope it won’t be any hassle, as it’s on a streaming channel we don’t have. It ought not to be a problem, but I’m always sceptical to those things until they do work. I really, really want to watch the new season. If worst come to worst the French DVD will be released by the end of April (with both the English and the French-dubbed version). But I think that if you are in USA you’ll need a DVD player which can play European DVDs.

I’m a bit fascinated that I hadn’t finished a book last week. Taking the bud instead of the train really impacts my reading! Of course, I still read several books at once, so one of these Wednesday I have probably finished more than one book again.

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison. Sometimes you read a book and you get so involved in the story you don’t notice the screaming discrepancy until you are finished. This book was like that.

( Read more... )

My reading time is severely inconvenienced right now. Normally it takes me half an hour with train to get to my workplace, and I usually read during that time. But now my train-line is shut down until August for extensive repairs, which means I have to take the bus. Not only does it take longer time, but I also can’t read on buses. Most annoying.

The Oracle Glass by Judith Merkle Riley. ( Read more... )

So, back to this. I have missed it. This last week I have read:

( The Serpent Garden )

( The Harvest of Scorn )

( The Miniaturist )

( Death Notes )

( An Absence of Light )