Author Archives: Rebecca

The Darkest Part of the Forest

by Rebecca

darkest partThe Darkest Part of the Forest
By Holly Black
2015

Since I really enjoyed The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, I started paying more attention to Holly Black. This book didn’t hit me quite the same way, but it is still a fun read. There’s something really pleasing about her heroines in both books: they know what they want and they go after it. Even when they flounder about a bit, there’s a certainty to them that I like.

Hazel, the main character here, occasionally (okay, more than occasionally) makes idiotic decisions, but she does so with a purpose. It’s always understandable and I’m often left wondering if maybe she’s right. And when she’s wrong, she acknowledges it, which is another rare and attractive quality. I didn’t feel much of a connection with Hazel (it’s possible I’m aging out of YA, at least a little bit), but I liked her.

The book also provides an interesting look at how easily some pretty horrific things can be normalized such that both the characters in the book and the reader reading the book don’t think too much about it… until someone points out that, wait, no, what you had been accepting for so long is actually not acceptable.

Only the most obvious example of this is how cruel, tricky and magical the fae are, but also how accepted they are in the town of Fairfold. They’re a dangerous and disturbing part of life in this town. People just carry on… until they can’t anymore.

The Bible: Kings 1

by Rebecca

This book is literally a listing of the various Kings of Israel. This is clearly a summary of events and many of the chapters end with a citation: For more information about King [whatever king this chapter discussed] see The Annals of the Kings of Judah, or The Annals of the Kings of Israel. These are apparently both lost books, with no known copies still in existence.

Anyway, at the start of this book, King David is old enough that it is time (again) for his sons to fight over the succession.

King David’s son Adonijah apparently decided that it was better to ask forgiveness than permission and went ahead and arranged his own coronation. (With Joab’s support, too!) With some prompting from his wife, Bath-sheba, King David immediately arranges for the officially recognized coronation of their son Solomon.

King David dies but not before reminding Solomon of all the betrayals he (David) suffered and all the people he (David) promised not to kill, but reminded Solomon that those promises would not bind him (Solomon). Thus there’s no surprise that Solomon starts off his reign with ordering a variety of deaths (chapter 2). After that, Solomon prays for the wisdom necessary to rule the land, which God grants (chapter 3).*

After some talk about how wise King Solomon now was, there’s a lot of description of the temple he has built to hold the Ark of the Covenant. It was built with much cedar wood (as a gift from King Hiram of Tyre) and gold and brass in a very specific design (chapters 5 thru 7) and then consecrated with much worship and sacrifice** (chapters 8 and 9).

Chapter 10 is about Solomon’s wealth and Chapter 11 is about his virility with his 700 wives and 300 concubines. However, it also talks about how he let some of those wives worship gods who were not the one God and thus he sinned started a pattern of sinful behavior in the line of kings. God decides that in punishment, Solomon’s son would only rule over only one of the tribes of Israel and be king in Jerusalem, while a man named Jeroboam would rule over the remaining ten tribes as king over Israel.

The next eleven chapters (chapters 12 thru 22) list the various kings who ruled and the ways in which they variously offended God and tried to kill one another.

Kings of all Israel:

  • King David
  • (King Adonijah, son of King David – had himself anointed king without his father’s blessings)
  • King Solomon (son of King David) (sinful)
  • King Rehoboam (son of King Solomon)*** remained king of the tribe of Judah

Kings of Judah:

  • King Rehoboam (sinful)
  • King Abijim (son of King Rehoboam) (sinful)
  • King Asa (son of King Abijim) (faithful)
  • King Jehoshaphat (son of King Asa) (faithful?)
  • King Jehoram (son of King Jehoshaphat) (unstated)

Kings of Israel (minus Judah):

  • King Jeroboam (sinful)****
  • King Nadab (son of King Jeroboam) (sinful)
  • King Baasha (having assassinated King Nadab) (sinful)
  • King Elah (son of King Baasha) (unstated)
  • King Zimri (having assassinated King Elah) (sinful)
  • King Omri (having defeated General Tibni the other claimant after King Zimri’s suicide) (even more sinful than Jeroboam!)
  • King Ahab (son of King Omri) (even more sinful than King Omri!)*****
  • King Ahaziah (son of King Ahab) (sinful)

While there’s all sorts of civil unrest within each of Judah and Israel as well as between them, there’s also all sorts of conflict and temporary alliances with the various kings of Syria.

And thus we are through Kings 1 and thus on to Kings 2.

Summary: There have been a lot of kings of Israel and Judah and most of them have been sinful. Most of the sins, however, have had to do with allowing the worship of idols rather than regarding their tendencies towards killing one another.

Moral: There’s a lot of sinning going on here, but punishments for those sins is largely hit or miss.

* Chapter 3 contains the famous story of Solomon’s wisdom in which two mothers are claiming an infant child is theirs. King Solomon orders the baby to be cut in half so that they can each have half. The woman who protests that decision is identified as the actual mother. Given Solomon’s recent history, it’s no surprise that the two women involved absolutely believed that King Solomon would be more than willing to cut a baby in half.

** 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep and goats were sacrificed at the temple over the course of 14 days. This comes to a bit more than 7 animals killed every minute for 14 days. Oof.

*** The people of Israel asked King Rehoboam to be a kinder taskmaster than his father, to which he responded along the lines of: you only thought you had it bad under Solomon. I’ll work you to the bone and whip you till you bleed. They decided not to accept him as their king after all.

**** King Jeroboam didn’t want his people going to Jerusalem to worship since King Rehoboam remained king of Jerusalem even after Jeroboam took over the remaining ten tribes. Thus, Jeroboam made a bunch of local temples with local priests for his people to worship at and thus horribly offended God. For a while, Jeroboam is the benchmark for the sinfulness of all other kings.

***** King Ahab was so wicked that he gets chapters 17 thru 22 to recount some of his evil deeds which include marrying Jezebel and worshiping Baal. The prophet Elijah comes in here to, first, announce the coming of a drought and, second, to demonstrate the non-existence of Baal. He also arranges the slaughter all 450 of the prophets of Baal, who had been under Jezebel’s protection. Eventually, Ahab was so terrified of a prophesy Elijah made that he rent his clothing, fasted, and wore sackcloth, such that God decided to punish Ahab’s children instead of him.

Next up: Kings 2

The Bible: Samuel 2

by Rebecca

It’s been a while since my last Bible post, but I am determined to get through the whole thing, even if there is no way I’ll manage my original finish-it-in-a-year goal. (It seemed so easy at the time!) Anyway:

Apparently the reason why there are two-part books in the bible sometimes (Samuel 1, Samuel 2; with Kings 1, Kings 2 and Chronicles 1, Chronicles 2 to come) is because these books were too long to be written on individual scrolls as they originally were. These books are literally scroll 1 of the text and scroll 2 of the text, separated into two parts for practical convenience rather than from narrative intent. This explanation helps a lot with understanding the naming conventions because by the time we get to Samuel 2, the character Samuel is dead some chapters back.

In Samuel 1, we are introduced to David as the plucky rebel who is gets quite the reputation for defeating enemies and surviving assassination attempts by King Saul, and being generally much beloved by the populace.

In Samuel 2, David is now king and it’s maybe a lesson that plucky rebel types do not necessarily make the best kings. In particular, the king in these circumstances (intermittent civil war and periodic invasions) needs to be fairly ruthless (according to his advisers.) If he’s not willing to kill potentially traitorous friends and family, then his advisers are more than willing to do so in his stead and against his wishes.

At this point we’ve got an emotional king who will dance lasciviously in the streets when he’s happy (chapter 6), rend his clothes and refuse to eat when sad (chapter 12), and willing to send a soldier on a suicide mission so as to marry the widow (chapter 11). He’s supported by Joab, a politically practical and ruthless adviser more than willing to kill people with whom the king has already promised peace. The neighboring kingdoms are understandably wary.

Also, King David’s son Absalom tries to take over, and part of this is sleeping with all of his father’s wives. Urg. There is much conspiring by various individuals on both sides. King David, however, manages to send out his army to fight Absalom’s army while also instructing his army to be gentle with his son.

So King David’s army manages to defeat Absalom’s army and find Absalom* but then sort of wander around wondering what to do about the guy who just lead an unsuccessful rebellion but who their king wants treated gentle. Joab pulls out his daggers and kills Absalom where he hangs (chapter 18). Then Joab rides back to Jerusalem, where King David is in deep mourning for his son Absalom. Joab tells him that David is going to stop that mourning, get up and start celebrating with the returning troops or Joab is going to be leading the next rebellion. King David hops to it (chapter 19).

Anyway, civil unrest and external warfare continues, and King David sings a song of praise for the lord that is particularly questionable given the juxtaposition with actual events.

Plus, in chapter 24, David decides to hold a census, Joab argues that counting the population is an insult to God, and God is so incensed by David’s decision to go ahead that he sends a plague to kill 70, 000 men over the course of three days. David builds a special alter to the Lord and the plague finally stops.

Summary: David makes for a wishy-washy king and there is a bunch of civil unrest.

Moral: I don’t even know.

* Absalom managed to ride his mule under a tree, get his neck caught on a branch, and have his mule wander off without him. He’s just sort of swinging there trying to get down while his father’s army wonders what to do about him. Hahahaha!

Next up: Kings 1

Mortal Heart

by Rebecca

MortalHeartMortal Heart
by Robin LaFevers
2014

I started reading the His Fair Assassin trilogy after Kinsey reviewed the first book, and since Anna reviewed the second book, it seems fitting that I review the third book.

This is a fun series and I enjoyed all the books, each of which focuses on a different main character. However, of the three main characters, Annith, the focus of Mortal Heart is the one I find the most annoying. For all her capabilities, she’s really extremely naïve, especially given her history. I continually reminded myself that she was just 17 and a lot of people are gullible at that age. As the book progresses and there are plots and reveals, I would routinely see the issue significantly before the main character even though we’re seeing the same evidence. I also felt a bit of a letdown at the end because I saw a potential way for one of the plot arcs to be resolved in a really fabulous way and instead it was sort of semi-resolved in an okay way.

One thing I really enjoyed about this book was the look it gave into what the other eight gods of the old religion have been up to and how their chosen people are marked and what they do with them.

While the grand political conflict seems to have mostly worked itself out over the course of the three books, what happens next regarding the actual convent of assassin nuns is left so very open-ended that it makes me wonder if there might be a fourth book in the planning stages. I haven’t been able to find any mention of one though.

It was an okay book, but I did like the previous ones in the series a lot more. If there is a fourth book, though, I’ll definitely read it to see what happens.

Thug Notes

by Rebecca

Like Anna, I’m a bit embarrassed to make this next recommendation during Black History Month because while this is awesome and by black creators and celebrating black culture, it shouldn’t be restricted to just the one month. This isn’t just awesome within the context of black culture, it’s just plain awesome.

Thug Notes is a YouTube series of videos and it is AWESOME! And I really wish it had been available when I was in high school. These videos take classic books and, in about 5 minutes each, summarizes the plot and talks about the main literary analysis.

  • Great Expectations, which I slogged through in high school and just got entirely bogged down in the details, laid out nice and neat in 5 minutes.
  • Lord of the Flies, which I never managed to get past the first page of, broken down for me and presented.
  • Pride & Prejudice, which I have read way too many times and absolutely love, getting shown in a new light that I hadn’t noticed before.

What makes them particularly funny is that they’re all narrated by Sparky Sweets, PhD, coming at you from the Houston Rap subculture and he is keeping it real about what these homeboys of literature are up to, from a set straight out of Master Piece theater with all of its proper British overtones.

The implied culture clash is hilarious mostly because no clash is ever actually realized. As Jared Bauer, one of the creators, says:

“The idea behind Thug Notes was always that ‘the joke is that there is no joke…’ because the analysis is just so accurate and so smart.”

There are 64 of them (so far) and they are just brilliant. Go check them out!

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories

by Rebecca

poisoneatersThe Poison Eaters and Other Stories
by Holly Black
2010

I checked this book out of the library less because I actually wanted to read it and more because I was testing out the ability to check out kindle books. (It works! I love it! I can get books when the library is closed, when it is snowing out, and without getting dressed for the day.)

It also wound up being an interesting book of short stories. This is clearly the author experimenting with different characters and plot points. Some of them work better than others, but they’re all quite interesting. It makes me think that I need to read more of her Black’s books, because I really do think these stories were testing grounds for her books, and I want to see what she made of the more successful stories.

I thought it was pretty funny that one short story, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, is set in the same universe as the author’s book, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, but has an entirely different set of characters and plot arc. There’s a single throw-away line in the book that references the events of the short story. I really liked both the book and the short story, but I am left wondering: who does the author think is the coldest girl in Coldtown?

I’m virtually sure that The Land of Heart’s Desire is set in the same universe as Black’s Modern Faerie Tales series, using characters that I would recognize if I had read those books. And it probably would have made more sense if I had recognized them and thus knew their various backstories. I might need to go ahead and read at least one of those books to see.

I liked the short stories, The Night Market and The Coat of Stars, both of which are complete in and of themselves in a way that most of the other stories in this compilation are not. The rest tend to be character studies (Going Ironside) or plot summaries (The Dog King and The Poison Eaters) or single interludes from larger universes (Virgin). So while they’re interesting, they don’t really stand on their own. I enjoyed them, but I don’t necessarily recommend them.

Not Actually Fanfiction

by Rebecca

As should be obvious, I really enjoy fanfiction. They are (often) fun stories by (presumably) amateur authors who can sometimes do amazing things unconstrained by thoughts of salability. They write because they have ideas they want to get out. And sometimes, it’s not actually fanfiction. Sometimes an amateur author, in the same spirit of fanfiction, will write an original story and post it online for anyone and everyone to enjoy.

There are even a few archives specifically for these types of short stories, presented like fanfiction except for being entirely original. The parallel for Fanfiction.net is FictonPress.com. ArchiveOfOurOwn simply added a category for Original Fiction.

Here are a few recommendations for original short stories presented online:

Suite for the Living and Dead
By Inland Territory
Summary: When he was twenty three years old, Mike Lafayette took it on himself to write an oratorio for a people without a god.
Why I like it: This is just beautiful. A beautiful concept and beautifully written, but also speaks directly of the particular pain of seeing a deadly and important conflict happening in front of you and, for one reason or another, not joining the fight.
Extra comment: This feels a bit like a fanfiction story in that it references a much more epic story with main characters who are minor characters here. It makes me wonder if there is a book out there this is connected to but I haven’t been able to find. My current assumption is that it is that the author of this short story has an idea for a book and maybe she’s even half-written it, but it’s not available anywhere.

Toad Words
By Ursula Vernon
Summary: Terri Windling posted recently about the old fairy tale of frogs falling from a girl’s lips, and I started thinking about what I’d do if that happened to me, and…well…
Why I like it: One of the problems with traditional fairytales that I (and many other women) are increasingly aware of is how they often reward young girls for being quiet, polite, beautiful, and awaiting rescue, while punishing young girls for being outspoken, ugly, and actively attempting their own rescue. This takes one such fairytale and shows the repercussions, and how a curse can ultimately be made a reward and a blessing can ultimately be a punishment.

Never the Same
By Polenth Blake
Genre: science fiction
No summary, but the first paragraph: Everyone thinks my brother is nice. He set up a rescue centre for birds, after the terraforming accident poisoned the lake. That’s always the image of him, holding a bird covered in sludge. The birds are never the same after they’re cleaned, but the gossips never talk about that.
Why I like it: This is a lovely little mystery, with a main character with mental health issues. With a somewhat unreliable narrator investigating a situation in a highly biased community, the story looks into the difference between right and wrong actions and right and wrong motivations.

The Emperor’s Last Concubine
By Yamanashi Moe
Warning: this has explicit sex in it
No summary, but I bookmarked it as: a story of love and politics
Why I like it: This story has the standard Cinderella structure but focuses on what happens after the handsome prince whisks his beloved away and the difficulties faced by both prince and beloved as they both become aware of the golden cage the palace makes.

Maya Angelou

by Rebecca

I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing in high school after my particularly awesome English teacher won her stare-down with the school board. Unfortunately, I don’t actually remember it all that well and didn’t remember much about the author either, for all her name recognition. Clearly that needed to change.

So for my Christmas road trip, I picked up (thank you public libraries!) three of Maya Angelou’s audio books, each of which she read herself. I like audio books that have been read by their authors. All readers add their own nuances to texts and when the authors read them you know it’s the intended nuance. Maya Angelou has the added benefit of actually being a professional performer and reciter.

Curiously, her speech pattern reminded me of William Shatner’s, and I wonder if he modeled his after hers. Very well enunciated, and with frequent, intentional pauses. She carries the style off better, though.

 

asongflunguptoheavenA Song Flung Up To Heaven
2002

Maya Angelou had a pretty amazing life with many ups and downs. Where before my impression of her was as this iconic individual almost out of sight on a pedestal, this autobiography shows her as fully human with all the attending strengths and weaknesses. One of her many strength is surely her willingness to show the world her weaknesses.

Rather than a single long book, this felt like a themed collection of short stories. Rather than telling the story of her life, she’s telling stories from her life, giving the reader a look at different times and events. Each chapter could potentially stand alone and be well worth reading.

 

momandmeandmom2Mom & Me & Mom
2013

Wow. Maya Angelou’s mother, Vivian Baxter, sounds like a truly amazing woman who lived her life to the fullest. As tumultuous as Maya Angelou’s life has been, her mother’s seems to have been that much more so. This book focuses on Maya’s relationship with her mother, which was excellent, but I also wish there was a full biography of Vivian Baxter, because just the glimpses we see into her life as it intersected with her daughter are pretty amazing. She was strong and determined and opinionated and just an amazing woman but she was not necessarily a comfortable woman to be around. She seems to have been utterly and completely herself and lived out loud.

 

lettertomydaughterLetter To My Daughter
2009

This struck me as pretty much a perfect graduation gift (highschool? college? some other major life transition where you’re not sure what you’re going to be doing next?). Many of the chapters are slightly edited versions of chapters from her other books, but they’re collected here for a reason. The overall message of this book is that life is going to throw a lot of different things your way, some wonderful opportunities and some awful experiences, so stay strong and try your best to take advantage of the first and get through the second.

 

I recommend all of these.

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much

by Rebecca

The-Man-Who-Loved-Books-Too-Much-937489The Man Who Loved Books Too Much
By Allison Hoover Bartlett
2010
Read by Judith Brackley

This was an interesting look into the both the rare book collecting community and the criminal mentality as a journalist recounts her research into an unrepentant book thief and the book seller who tracked him down to bring to justice.

It reminded me of a combination of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, with its quirky book lovers, and The Art of the Steal, with its discussions of how con jobs and thefts are both implemented and guarded against. With a side of Marching Powder, with it’s unpleasant main character who just gets less sympathetic the more he tries to explain his perspective.

And actually, regarding that last bit, Gilkey’s (the thief) attempts at gaining sympathy and explaining his rational is so crazy that even the Bartlett (the journalist) is completely taken aback by it. But she’s still more accepting of it than I am, to the extent that her writing almost reads like an unreliable narrator as she first recounts a conversation verbatim and then describes how he still seems like such a nice, polite guy… and I’m going: nope!

But it’s still quite fascinating and does make me want to visit a rare book convention and see the stalls where different book sellers set up with their books with prices that range from less than a $100 to more than $100K.

Bible: illustrations

by Rebecca

So it’s probably pretty obvious that I’m falling behind in my year schedule for reading the Bible. I will excuse it because a) this has proven to be a remarkably difficult year, and b) the Bible is really amazingly dense.

However, I just ran across some pretty awesome biblical artwork that I want to share:

Photographer James C. Lewis noticed that while the bible is set in the Middle East and Africa, most of the illustrations of the people involved look really northern European. So he decided to fix that:

What Would Characters From The Bible Really Look Like? Here’s One Photographer’s Idea (The Huffington Post article shows 10 of the photographs)

An antidote to lily-white Bible characters (The Church Times article shows 14 of the photographs)

A Tumblr post (shows 51 of the photographs)

I’ll also take this opportunity (despite not having gotten anywhere near the New Testament yet) to reflect back on a really gorgeous painting by Janet McKenzie, “Jesus of the People”, which won the 1999 National Catholic Reporter’s competition for a new image of Jesus, judged Sister Wendy Beckett.