Author Archives: Anna

The Ocean at The End of the Lane

by Anna

By Neil Gaiman

Book Cover: Ocean at the End of the LaneI have a bit of a love–hate relationship with Neil Gaiman. I loved the Sandman series, of course, and American Gods, and I hated his short story collection Smoke and Mirrors. All of his other stuff sort of falls between those two extremes, and The Ocean at The End of the Lane is pretty smack dab in the middle.

It is quite short, less than 200 pages; really more of a novella, despite “A Novel” being printed on the cover right under the title. And to go off on a side rant: I hate novellas! Somehow they are always both too long and too short. Like, authors write short stories to be compact and novels to be all-encompassing, but novellas pretty much always fail at both, and seem like initial outlines for a full novel. I almost always end up feeling like I’m reading an incomplete work and it has been a waste of my time. I then get sulky about the author being lazy, and bitter about the state of publishing, and it all cycles down from there, so novellas are not my thing.

So, I wasn’t too enthusiastic about this one, but I follow Neil Gaiman on twitter, and lots of people were raving about it. When I ran across it in the library, I figured I’d give it a shot, since I really did like American Gods and this seemed all fantastical, too.

It was okay. It starts off pretty slow, with the narrator reflecting back on the summer when he was seven, when a boarder in his house dies, kicking off a string of supernatural events. He meets his mysterious neighbors, a family of three-generational women including a girl just a few years older than him, and helps them try to contain the odd happenings. It all takes some time to get rolling, but by the middle, the story is quite engaging, though at times I felt it followed a very standard “yellow brick road” narrating style, as the two children walk a path into another reality, and must deal with one strange thing after another.

Gaiman does introduce some quite intriguing characters and imagery that simply don’t have the space to really grow to their full potential in such a short book. It ends up feeling a bit like Chis Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, in which the readers must flesh out the story on their own, and it makes me bitter, having to put all this unexpected work into a story. I just told Tom that this review was circling the drain, and he commented that while I often talk about how much I like Gaiman, I don’t really like the majority of his work, so I guess maybe I’m not really a fan at all. Oh, well.

—Anna

Julian Kestrel Mystery Series

by Anna

By Kate Ross

Book Cover: Cut to the QuickSo, I’ve been having a bit of a rough time over the last couple of weeks with some family medical issues, and as usual, I’ve turned to my main comfort, rereading old favorites. There is nothing quite so comforting as reading a book where you already know everything that happens, so you can give it as much or as little attention as you have to spare at any given time (highly recommended for waiting room waits). You already know the outcome, so there is no anxiety (you probably have enough of that in your actual life already).

All of this to say that I’ve just reread Cut to the Quick and A Broken Vessel, the first two in Kate Ross’ Julian Kestrel mystery series, and they were exactly right for my current mood. The protagonist, Julian Kestrel, is the epitome of a dandy in Regency-era London, focused entirely on his appearance and amusements until he is framed for the murder of a strange woman who appears at the country house in which he is attending the engagement party of a slight acquaintance. In order to clear himself and his valet, an extremely endearing former pickpocket named Dipper, he must uncover the true murderer among his host’s upper-crust family. The plot and characters of Cut to the Quick aren’t anything new in the extremely well-covered genre of Regency-era mysteries, but they are all just so well written that the book and the series really stands out.

Book Cover: A Broken VesselNow, A Broken Vessel is another matter entirely, introducing Dipper’s sister Sally, who shares narration of the book with Julian. Sally is clever, courageous, and a completely unrepentant prostitute, who has stolen a letter pleading for help from one of three men. Sally is wonderful, the mystery is even more intriguing than in Cut to the Quick, but the most interesting thing for me in A Broken Vessel is how it describes the various levels of society in Regency London, with the aristocracy at top, to their servants, to the shop and pub keepers, and finally to the dregs of the crime world, and how people either fall down those layers or claw their way up.

The series contains two additional books, which I read years ago, and haven’t reread yet, though I remember them both as being quite good as well. Our mother first introduced Rebecca and me to the series, and she had a theory on where Ross was taking Kestrel’s character, and we were eagerly awaiting to see if this proved true when unfortunately Ross died, and so no more books in the series will be forthcoming. This shouldn’t dissuade anyone from reading these, though: each book stands alone, plot-wise, though they occasionally refer back to previously introduced characters, and no book ends on a cliff-hanger. You’ll just be sad that there aren’t additional books to enjoy, but you can always just reread these four in times of need.

—Anna

Nonfiction Graphic Novels

by Anna

I previously read Pyongyang and Shenzhen by Guy Delisle, and really enjoyed them, and when I saw that he also had books on Jerusalem and Burma, I was very interested in reading those, as well. I was living in Boulder at the time, though, and the local library didn’t have copies, so I backburnered it and of course forgot about it until a couple of weeks ago, when I thought to try my new library system, which happily had both! Jerusalem was available first, and when I went to go pick it up, I browsed the other offerings in the adult travel graphic novel section (a small section, certainly). I picked up Joe Sacco’s Palestine and Waltz with Bashir: A Lebanon War Story as well.

Being your typical clueless American, I hadn’t quite put together that all three books were pretty much talking about the exact same region. I had just figured that I am generally sort of confused over issues in the Middle East, and perhaps a graphic novel or three would be able to break some of the issues down in a way that I could understand. If libraries weren’t stringently against keeping rental records (for exactly this reason), I’m sure I’d be on some list somewhere.

Jerusalem

By Guy Delisle

Book cover: JerusalemJerusalem is about twice as long as Delisle’s previous books, which is explained toward the beginning when he describes how he and his family are moving to Jerusalem for an entire year for his wife’s work for Doctors Without Borders. By this point, he has made enough of a name for himself as an author that he is spending the year solely working on this graphic novel, while also taking care of the children and doing the occasional lecture.

Delisle’s style is quiet and nonjudgmental. His strength as an author and illustrator comes from showing the reader these foreign cultures through his eyes as a traveling Westerner (he’s French Canadian), so it feels very personal. Several times, I laughed out loud, which is somewhat unusual in a visual media such as graphic novels, and two specific pages related to the other two authors of this blog: 1) Kinsey, apparently you are not alone in playing the game “Hipster or Priest”, and 2) Rebecca, I believe you, too, own some of the Helsing manga?

Like his previous books, this one focuses primarily on his own small, daily experiences trying to navigate a new culture, only referring to more global politics when it touches on him directly. For instance, a recurring theme throughout the book is him attempting and failing to get permission to travel into Gaza to lecture at a university there. In fact, after his fourth and final failure, he wonders if perhaps he is being mistaken for Joe Sacco, a reference that pleased me since I was reading his book next.

Palestine

By Joe Sacco

Book Cover: PalestineI have to admit that after Guy Delisle, Joe Sacco came as a bit of a shock and I was initially quite turned off. Like Delisle, Palestine is an autobiographic account of Sacco’s experience in Palestine, but where Delisle is quiet and personable, Sacco is loud, crude, and in-your-face. He is very clearly influenced by the R. Crumb school, which is not my favorite either, and I found his bold lines and clustered text boxes aggressive and claustrophobic. Sacco portrays himself as a bit of an asshole, self-centered and cowardly, and I initially took his word for it, but slowly began to think it is defense mechanism on his part, protecting himself emotionally from so many needy people that he is not in a position to help.

What finally sold me on the book is the sheer amount of information he has managed to pack into it. While I enjoyed Jerusalem more, Palestine gave me a much better understanding of the current situation, and the history that brought about it. As the title might reveal, the book is very much in support of an internationally recognized Palestine, which is not a perspective we hear much here in the United States, and it seems to me that it is an important perspective to hear.

Once I got over my initial bias, too, I started to notice that Sacco is a beautiful illustrator when he wants to be, drawing very detailed and delicately inked vistas depicting the scope of the conditions in the settlements.

Waltz with Bashir: A Lebanon War Story

By Ari Folman

Book Cover: Waltz with BashirI had initially picked this one up because the illustrations are beautiful, like little paintings in each panel. I was not real clear on where Lebanon is (I may or may not have thought it was in South America, the Texas public school system at work.) I had certainly never heard of Bashir before.

It turns out Waltz with Bashir was actually an animated film first (you can see the trailer here) and the graphic novel is made up of frames from the film. It also turns out that Lebanon is just above Israel, and Waltz with Bashir centers around the Israel Defence Force’s invasion of Lebanon. I figured that after the previous two pro-Palestine books, this would be my Israeli perspective.

The book (and film) is an autobiographical account of Folman attempting to recreate memories of his experience as a young soldier in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1982 Lebanon War, when Israel invaded Lebanon in order to install a pro-Israeli Christian government headed by the titular Bashir Gemayel. Folman knew that he had been stationed near the horrific Safra and Shatila Massacre (Christian soldiers under Israeli protection slaughtered between 762 and 3,500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians), but had no memories at all of that time or place.

A friend of Folman’s, also stationed nearby, began having nightmares 20 years later, which inspires Folman to begin to dig into his own past. Clearly, it is not a happy book, and it, too, is quite critical of the Israeli military, so I am three-for-three on the pro-Palestine front. (If anyone wants to recommend a solid pro-Israel book on the subject, I’d be happy to check it out, though I’d prefer a graphic novel, clearly.)

Which brings me to my conclusion: while nonfiction graphic novels seem a little odd at first, they are palatable media for communicating very complex and charged information. There is no way that I would read a multi-hundred-page book, or even a dozen-page article, on the Israel/Palestine issue, but I happily and quickly ran through several hundred pages of these three comic books combined. They only made me marginally more informed, but they made me a lot less ignorant, if that makes sense. I don’t think that I could instruct someone else on the nuances of the various issues, but I know enough now not make pat judgments, either.

Burma Chronicles

By Guy Delisle

Book Cover: Burma ChroniclesDelisle’s Burma Chronicles came as a welcome relief after the building heaviness of the Israel/Palestine books above, though it is also Delisle’s most political book. He still writes very much in his first-person perspective, but Burma (or Myanmar, depending on your politics) has such a restrictive government that it interfered quite a bit in his daily life. Burma Chronicles takes place after Pyongyang and Shenzhen, but before Jerusalem; Delisle, his wife, and their infant son travel to Burma for his wife’s work in Doctors Without Borders. For the nine months that they are there, Doctors Without Borders attempts to reach outlying minority groups, with the government blocking their efforts until they eventually pull out altogether. This book highlights Delisle’s main charm for me: at the same time as he lightly touches on global politics, he shows us individuals in a very real light, so it becomes easy to look past the cultural differences and see the basic humanity underneath it all.

—Anna

Sin City Series

by Anna

By Frank Miller

So, after reading Frank Miller’s A Dame To Kill For, I rewatched the movie “Sin City” and then decided to read ALL the Frank Miller Sin City graphic novels. I went on a wild reserving spree at the library; the library rental system just sort of lists “Sin City Frank Miller” for each of the volumes, so I had to do scattershot holds on all the books. I ended up reserving multiple copies of some volumes and no copies of the first volume until about a month after all the rest. So, I’ve been reading them as they come, completely out of order, but I’m going to quickly review them all in order here.

Quick caveat upfront: Frank Miller is not to everyone’s taste, so while I love the comics, I can’t indiscriminately recommend them to everyone. If you don’t like broad noir stereotypes and ultra violence, it doesn’t matter how well it is done, this is not going to be for you. For the rest of us, here’s my rundown, with semi-spoilers (revealing a character is in volume 5 sort of spoils that he doesn’t die in volume 4, I guess? Although, actually, only sort of. I was reading them out of their published order, but the volumes weren’t written in strictly chronological order, either):

Volume 1: The Hard Goodbye

The first panel of the book and the series:

First Panel: Sin City

It doesn’t get more classically noir than that. Most noir mysteries are sweltering hot; sometimes they are bitter cold, but mostly roasting. Reading this issue last, I can tell that it was Frank Miller’s first (he is still finding his style for this series) and I can understand why it made such a splash in the comic book world. Everything is just so in-your-face: the violence, the machismo, the sex – I think it was probably unlike anything else people were reading at the time.

Book Cover: Sin City Volume 1

The Hard Goodbye is Marv’s (Mickey Rourke) story from the “Sin City” movie, the plot line with the most action but the least explanation, so I was happy to get more of the backstory this time around. With a couple of well-placed lines, The Hard Goodbye also gives a very quick overview of the origins of Sin City itself, which was most welcome after reading the other six volumes. At the end of this volume, too, I realized that The Hard Goodbye bookends at least several other volumes, with several of the subsequent volumes occurring to other characters within the span of time of this volume.

Volume 2: A Dame to Kill For

Previously read and reviewed here, inspiring this extended post.

Volume 3: The Big Fat Kill

Book Cover: Sin City Volume 3

The Big Fat Kill is Dwight’s (Clive Owen) story, starting with him in Shelly’s (Brittany Murphy) apartment while she argues with her ex-boyfriend (Benicio Del Toro). I kept thinking that I had already read this one, but then realized that it is literally the same as the movie, frame by frame, line by line. It’s really quite impressive.

It also made me appreciate the movie even more. By entwining volumes 1, 3 and 4, they made for a diverse group of characters and quick pace that the original comics seem to lack a bit in comparison.

Volume 4: That Yellow Bastard

Book Cover: Sin City Volume 4

That Yellow Bastard is the Bruce Willis/Jennifer Alba story line from the movie. This is probably the most…problematic of the Frank Miller stories (and that is saying something). Spoilers for both the book and the movie, of course:

Continue reading →

I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales from a Happy Life Without Kids

by Anna

By Jen Kirkman

Book Cover: I Can Barely Take Care of MyselfSo, I struggled a bit writing this review because this is a book-reviewing blog, not an autobiographical blog. But, clearly, I didn’t just pick up this book out of the blue, thinking, boy, I’d like to read more about comedian Jen Kirkman’s personal views on pregnancy and childhood.

Much like Kirkman, I have never felt a strong desire for children or even envisioned children in my future. Also like her, I have been told by people older than me, in very decisive tones, that I will change my mind when I get to be that age, and I guess I sort of believed them. I knew that I didn’t want children at the time, but accepted that I could change my mind (I’m a big fan of spinach now, and I wouldn’t have anticipated that when I was a kid, so, sure, tastes change) and that would be fine.

However, if I may put this delicately, I’ve come to the age, where perhaps sooner rather than later is a good time to plan for children, and I have experienced no change in my feelings. This really does seem to be a somewhat shocking aberration in our current society, and I thought it would be comforting to read someone else’s struggles with the same outlook.

So, I approached this book wanting a philosophical discussion on what it means to be a woman in our society who simply chooses not to have children. I was slightly disappointed right off the bat because it was no different than many other comedic memoires I’ve read, an overview of her childhood and young adulthood and what drew her to comedy; she’s funny and an engaging author, but it wasn’t what I was looking for in this particular book. About halfway through, though, she really delves into the subject of not wanting kids and her immediate surrounding’s reactions to that, and it was exactly what I wanted. I even understood that she had to set the stage before: that she was a normal kid, from a loving, intact family, with siblings who have happily chosen to have kids. There is no childhood trauma to be used as an excuse, and her lifestyle choice cannot be called a symptom of anything.

The most important thing that came out of the book for me is that she doesn’t ever explain exactly why she doesn’t want children, and I believe the truth is that she can’t. I certainly couldn’t, either. Can parents truly describe why they wanted children? I get that there are concrete reasons; I have concrete reasons, too, for not wanted children, but they aren’t really the whole story, or even most of it, are they? It is simply something deep down inside you that desires something, or does not. I have a million reasons why I don’t want kids, but reading this book helped me come to the understanding that they are all just extraneous excuses and it all boils down to the very basic truth that I simply don’t want them.

I have had various conversations about it with family, friends, and acquaintances, and found them all to be much more accepting than the conversations that Kirkman relates. Towards the end of the book, she goes on a bit of a screed about parents wanting to push everyone else to be parents, too. For me, though, reading this book made me more comfortable with my choice, but also more comfortable with people who chose to have children, as well. If my choice to not have children is deeply embedded in who I am (and it is), then their choice to have children is, too, and that is certainly something to respect and admire.

—Anna

P.S. – Jen Kirkman wrote a short column for Time Magazine, giving a brief overview of her book here.

P.S.2 – Jen Kirkman was also featured in the Boston episode of Drunk History, which I just love and you should definitely watch (but not at work)!

P.S.3 – A few days after reading this, I had a super realistic dream that I was pregnant and it was awful. Even in the dream, I thought “how ironic that after coming to a comfortable acceptance of not wanting children, now I will have one for the rest of my life.”

The Uninvited Guests

by Anna

By Sadie Jones

Book Cover: The Uninvited GuestsThis is just the strangest little book! Kinsey recommended it last year as a good spooky story for Halloween reading, and I’ve only now gotten around to reading it. I’m not even sure quite what to think. Oh, I liked it a lot, but was never quite sure where I was standing with it, either.

It started as one of those impoverished English gentry books (you know, where the insular family starts to decay along with their surroundings?); it reminded me a bit of Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle. Then things took a turn for the worse and it was a bit of an adult Lord of the Flies, which was actually pretty horrifying, though still in a disconcertingly genteel way. As the various mysteries were revealed, though, I realized exactly what this book is: it is a written Edward Gorey illustration.

In fact, it is so much Edward Gorey that when I searched to find a representative illustration, I found the following eight that are literally characters or scenes from the book. I’m putting them after the cut, not because they are spoilers, really, but so I don’t fill up the entire home page with lots and lots of Gorey illustrations. Continue reading →

In The Woods

by Anna

By Tana French

Book cover: In The WoodsI really liked this book: it has a plot that I couldn’t anticipate and building suspense that I couldn’t put down, and the characters are where it really shines. The narrating detective’s female partner, especially, is tough, smart, and likable, and that’s a lot less common than it should be. My favorite passages of the book just follow the various officers working through the minutiae of the investigation. However, there were a couple of issues that kept me from loving it:

First, a pet peeve: I just hate foreshadowing. I know that is an important writing device for building suspense, but I hate it when the narrator says stuff like, “if only I knew then where this would all lead” or “at the time I was so sure I was right.” I just hate it, and this book was chock full of it. I will say that French put it to better service in this novel than I’ve seen in used before, but it still didn’t make me like it. I prefer to advance through the story at the same time as the narrator, and see missteps retroactively as well.

Second, from the very beginning, even on the back cover blurb (so this isn’t a spoiler; the full plot spoiler follows below the cut), it is known that the narrating detective’s past is related to this new crime. Though the book primarily focuses on the present-day murder, the cold case, with the same setting and similar victims, runs as a parallel undercurrent. Our narrator knows he shouldn’t be working this case, but he is obsessed and becomes increasingly unbalanced throughout the book. French does a very good job of subtly depicting his unraveling mentality, and I gradually began losing patience with his growing belligerence and incompetence and all-encompassing self-involvement.

So, I found the actual reading of the book a bit more a chore than I like in my for-fun books, but the twist ending (which I couldn’t even guess at) made it all worth-while, and I want to bring it up because I want to gasp over it with other readers, specifically Kinsey, who recommended it to me and mentions the second and fourth in the series here.

WARNING: I’m seriously spoiling the entire mystery in the following paragraph. Pet peeves aside, I really do recommend this book if you like the grittier-type murder mysteries and suspense, and if you haven’t already read it, you should check it out without my spoiler. Continue reading →

Femme Fatales: Femme and A Dame To Kill For

by Anna

Femme

By Bill Pronzini

Book Cover: FemmeAh, Bill Pronzini. You were one of my early introductions to pulp mysteries, and I have a lot of left-over affection for you, but I’m afraid I may have outgrown your nameless detective.

I hadn’t read a Bill Pronzini novel in at least 15 years, but I ran across this very short novella in the new releases shelf at the library and picked it up, as I do love a femme fatale! I also had very fond memories of Pronzini’s nameless detective series from high school; they are somewhat run-of-the-mill novels, but are told in first person by a detective who is never named (I was also at the time watching Clint Eastwood’s “The Man with No Name” series, so it was a bit of a theme).

I read Femme in the space of one delayed flight, so probably over 3 hours total, and it was the fluffiest of fluff. I have a bit of a problem with novellas, actually. Whereas authors seem to put extra effort into short stories to be concise and compact as independent entities, novellas have a tendency to just come off as reading like general outlines for a future novel, and this one was no exception.

The plot, characters, and setting were quite generic, which is especially problematic when it comes to a femme fatale. A woman who uses her very femininity to lure men to death and destruction really needs to stand out. This particular femme seemed no different than the average murderess on any given Law & Order episode. I get that it is more difficult to make violence stand out in this modern age, but that’s what makes writing a femme fatale such a challenge.

Now, if you want someone who is up to that challenge:

A Dame To Kill For

By Frank Miller

Book Cover: A Dame to Kill ForFrank Miller’s A Dame To Kill For is the basis for the new Sin City movie coming out next year, and coincidentally the only Frank Miller graphic novel that Rebecca owns. I really enjoyed the first Sin City movie and was torn over whether to read the graphic novel for the second one, and thereby “spoil” it for myself, but finally decided that part of the fun of the movie is seeing what a brilliant job it does of bringing to life each individual illustrated panel. (I saw in a “making of Sin City” that they actually used the graphic novel as the original story boards for the movie, which makes a lot of sense, given Frank Miller’s very cinematic style.)

While it is no spoiler that Frank Miller loves a femme fatale (or ten), I’m going to go ahead and spoil this particular book (and upcoming movie), so proceed with caution. Continue reading →

Rest In Peace, Elmore Leonard

by Anna

Elmore LeonardMan, 2013 has not been a good year for authors! Today, Elmore Leonard passed away, and even if you don’t think you are familiar with him, you are sure to be familiar with some of the movies and television shows he wrote or inspired: Out of Sight, Get Shorty, 3:10 to Yuma, and Justified, to name just a few. I was first introduced to Leonard through the very short-lived tv show Maximum Bob which ran for just seven hysterical episodes in 1998, but inspired me to read the novel with the same name and become a lifelong fan of the author.

I consider him one of the founding fathers of the craziness-in-Florida niche genre continued by Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen, and if you haven’t read any of his work, you should definitely check it out if you want to laugh at some head-shaking craziness that doesn’t seem that farfetched anymore. Honestly, with Florida, you laugh so you don’t cry, and Leonard is very good at making the reader laugh. In eulogy, Vulture posted Leonard’s Ten Rules of Good Writing, and it is easy to see why I am such a fan.

—Anna

Magic Rises

by Anna

By Ilona Andrews

Book Cover: Magic RisesThis is the sixth book in Ilona Andrew’s Kate Daniels series, and Rebecca has previously introduced the series here.* It is my favorite in the over-abundance of series about spunky women in a werewolf- and vampire-populated world, but to my mind the series peaked at book 3 and went downhill from there. (As an aside, Rebecca and I had a lengthy discussion about whether this is a common phenomena; are trilogies so standard because authors tend to lose steam after the third book? There are a lot of series that support that thesis, and only a few that belie it.)

Maggie Q as Nikita

As an aside on first impressions, when I first got the book, I was somewhat taken aback by the cover. The featured woman looks somewhat different than previous illustrations of Kate Daniels, which is fine, artists change visions, etc., etc. But, doesn’t she look strikingly similar to someone else instead? I feel like, as an artist, you should take your inspiration from wherever you like, but maybe don’t make it so blatant.

A very mild spoiler for the series: book 3 settled a romantic tension that had run through all three initial books, and all the subsequent books have had relationship drama that I don’t care for, and increased violence, possibly to counter-balance the relationship drama, now that I think about it. A lot of the violence, too, was starting to be directed toward various magical (and deadly) creatures that populate the world, and I have a big problem with violence against animals, even fictional ones. A true hypocrite, I don’t have nearly the same problem with violence against people, which is why I was fine with the earlier books. I was still committed to the series, but was not anticipating this book with the eagerness I had earlier in the series.

In fact, this book way exceeded my expectations, and I believe rejuvenated the series a bit in a very clever way. Andrews changes the setting from Atlanta, Georgia, where all previous books are set, all the way to Europe, so there is a freshness just in the change of scene. With the new setting, she also constrains the number of characters, which had been expanding exponentially with each book, until the action started to get muddled with so many players. Magic Rises is pared down to just a cleanly written and plotted, extraordinarily fun supernatural adventure, and I am just so, so happy to have my favorite fluff series back.

One caveat to all of my praises: I went back to the earlier books to double-check a minor character’s name, and it reminded me of the casual humor and one-liners that made the early books such a pleasure. As the books have ratcheted up the drama and tension, that humor has mostly disappeared and I miss it. I almost feel like that as the authors have become more accomplished, they perhaps have edited out those parts as being less polished, and that makes me sad.

* There has been some update in information from this original review. The series has been expanded to ten books instead of the previously planned seven, when the authors realized that they would not be able to wrap it up conclusively in just two more books.