The Sunday Philosophy Club : An Isabel Dalhousie Mystery
By: Alexander McCall Smith

Finished this one a few days ago. I had really loved the “Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency” novels by the same author, and I hope to encounter a new favorite series with this one. That wasn’t the case, but I did enjoy meeting Isabel Dalhousie and seeing a bit of her world. She’s a very deep person who spends a lot of time thinking about things philosophical, romantic, and mysterious. Ultimately it’s an unsatisfactory read, because philosophy gets in the way of logic. In the real world, a bizarre “accidental” death like the one in the opening chapter would be investigated, and there would be some resolution. In Dalhousie’s world, after a perfunctory mention of the police and the “procurator fiscal” (the Scottish official responsible for investigating deaths), there’s no mention of any official notice taken. So when Dalhousie discovers the truth, she decides for herself that the authorities need not be advised of it. She justifies it to herself, but a typical hard-headed Scottish detective inspector would n’t have let his or her own feelings in the matter color their report; they would have handed the case on to be dealt with and for justice to be handed down.

Still, it was an enjoyable read. I’ll read the next one when I see it.

Little People
By: Tom Holt

This turned out to be a disappointment. It started out to be a bit flaky and different and amusing, and then it continued on being flaky and different and amusing in a much too self-aware way for far too long. The premise was funny and interesting: a young boy sees a tiny little elf in his back garden, and has a couple more encounters in his life while he’s working out that his stepfather’s shoemaking factory isn’t run according to conventional modern labor practices. Then things go seriously awry.

There are some missed opportunities; there’s a conversation the main character has with an escaped “elf” that begged a followup nearer the end of the book. And some of the plot points that Holt makes a “given” in the world he’s created come and go at his whim – when it’s no longer convenient, things no longer happen in the way they did earlier in the book.

Finally, the tone goes on being a little too wryly arch long after the story has become pretty much a hopeless downer. If I wanted to read a pastiche of Douglas Adams-like snickering asides during a narration, I’d go and dig my copy of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe” out of whichever box it’s in. Adams was much better at it, and he used a narrative voice, where Holt uses first-person narration. Somehow, having your long-suffering main character bothering to add all the witty asides and snarky commentary while also getting on with telling his story just isn’t that funny after a while.

I’ve started another new book in the meantime. More on that later.

Chicago Tribune | Were treasured maps looted?

Check out this guy’s name: E. Forbes Smiley III. He’s a well-known dealer in rare maps – with a name like that, what else could he be? He lives in Martha’s Vineyard (of course). He was wearing a blazer when arrested (no doubt with a monogram or family crest embroidered just over the breast pocket). In another pocket of that blazer was a rare map that he had evidently just cut out of an old atlas at a Yale University library – a sharp-eyed librarian noticed an X-Acto knife blade on the floor near him and alerted security.
The Newberry is checking their collection now. So are other libraries that Forbes has visited in the last couple of years.

Every now and then, there’s a big case where old maps or illustrations or engravings are cut out of antique or rare books and end up on the rare documents market. This one probably made it “above the fold” media-radarwise because of Smiley’s status in his rarefied world.

Makes you wonder when you enter a shop of beautiful old documents and illustrations just how many of them came from the X-Acto colletion.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6)

What page are you on? David and I have been asking each other this question for a couple of days now. We picked up a copy of “Half Blood Prince” on a trip to Costco the other day, and have trading back and forth reading at leisure since then. Unfortunately, we’ve been losing each others’ places in the book.

I was about halfway through it by yesterday, and when TiVo locked up on the latest TAR1 rerun (arrrrgh!) I gave up on televised fantasy and re-entered the familiar world of Hogwarts instead. I just thought I’d read a few chapters and go to bed.

Right.

The previous book had a lot of scary action, but it was depressing and dragged quite a bit in the first half. It took much longer than usual to read – yes, it was a longer book too, but it was a slog that I waded through dutifully. Unusually for me (also for David) that’s the one book in the series we haven’t reread multiple times. The loss of Harry’s beloved Sirius at the end of that one was almost too much to bear.

However, all that is in the past. The Half-Blood Prince delivers action, adventure, humor, romance, terror, regret, grief and even a sense of gritty resolve. It’s almost a return to the “normal” school life of previous books, but the shadow of war and terror hangs over everyone.

I read each chapter with a sense of urgency. As each one ended, I wondered “What happens next? I need to know.” Well, I kept right on through to the end.

I was completely bamboozled by some of the red herrings (for example, the identity of the Half-Blood Prince) and some of the plot turns took me by surprise. It turns out that seven is a mystically powerful number, and we’ve always known that there would be seven books and probably lots of other things that come in sevens. I was shocked, mystified, and enlightened by turns.

So I read right through until the very last page, until I was reading once again that the book is set in Garamond type and other trivia of interest to bibliophiles. I kept losing David’s place – he’s just a few chapters into it – and I won’t be able to discuss it with him until he finishes it.

As I was engrossed in all the fantastic detail of a world I that I wish actually existed alongside ours, I was struck by the contrast between the “real” world and its problems – war, terror, poverty, famine and the “fantasy” world. And I was also struck by the similarities. As a commentary on modern life, the Harry Potter books make it possible to talk about frightening subjects like fear, loss, death, war, and tyranny with children, and for children to discuss them amongst themselves. Then of course, the opening often has people traveling from King’s Cross station, which will forever be linked with the London bombings in addition to being the place where tourists try to find Platform 9 3/4. And in this book, it starts at No. 10, Downing Street, with the PM reading a memo. How odd was that in light of recent news? Just a coincidence, but a weird one.

I kept shaking my head and saying “naww, it’s a kid’s fantasy. It’s not about dealing with your fears in the real world, and coping with loss.” But now I’m not so sure.

This morning when I woke up, it was from a typical post-Potter dream -the books have a way of insinuating themselves into your dream life very easily, especially after the first reading of a new one. In the dream, it seemed to be someone reading from the Daily Prophet newspaper about the battles that have been taking place throughout the latest book, with mentions of casualties and so on. Then as I awakened, it was to the latest news from Iraq on NPR, along with the carnage of yesterday’s car bombs there, followed by the radio obituary of yet another fine young military man killed in that increasingly senseless war. And it seemed to me that the fantasy war and the real wars (the one on terror, and the one that’s supposed to be on terror but is really about oil) weren’t all that different.

For example, Harry’s asked by the Ministry of Magic to show his public support for the Ministry’s handling of the war with Voldemort and the Death-Eaters, (terrorists who use magic instead of backpack bombs and IEDs). Meanwhile, it seems that the best weapons against terror are courage and resolve (not to mention instant communication).

The Ministry arrests people for the wrong reasons and holds them indefinitely, so that the wizarding community will be reassured that at least they’re doing something. Meanwhile, the Ministry wastes time, lives, and resources while dithering about what to do. They make the real governments of the world look really good by comparison (with the exception of Ron Weasley’s dad and a few others in the lower ranks – all the higher ups lack leadership skills).

Yes, at the end of the book there is a death, as has been widely reported. But as sad and troubling as it will be for anyone not yet at the last page, it serves a purpose, and it puts the seemingly senseless death of Sirius Black at the end of the previous book in a new light. There are reasons for everything in these books, as avid readers already know.

And the people who out of misguided faith will never crack them open at Page 1 will never understand just how moral and uplifting these “fantasy” books can be. Allegory is always so difficult for literalists; they insist on taking it literally.

It’s a shame that we’ll never all be on the same page.

Stole this idea from the Observer Blog, because I got it wrong. The book I was thinking of starts out “Space is big. Really big.” This is one of the other ones. Which one?

The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This had made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

I read via ***Dave a review of the new “h2g2” movie that… makes it sound like it just might suck, and that all the good jokes and lines are gone. If so, I think I’m going to be feeling very depressed. The list of things not in the movie is why.

Damn, I hate being disappointed when a favorite book is made into a movie. I might just have to re-read all the books again, or dig out my original BBC Radiophonic cassette tapes of the original radio series and take several long baths, in succession, until I feel better.

And congratulations also to Susanna Clarke, whose excellent book on English practical magic has won the American Booksellers Association Book Sense award.

Via Sci Fi Wire — The News Service of the Sci Fi Channel

Hacking Movable Type (ExtremeTech), by Jay Allen

Yeah, I might have to invest in this book, too. I think I may be entering an exalted stage where all the cool crap comes out and a more minimalist aesthetic comes in. Or something.

Well Blow Me Down:
A Guys Guide to Talking Like a Pirate,
by John Baur, Mark Summers

Another book for the pirate-obsessed: Well Blow Me Down: A Guy’s Guide To Talking Like A Pirate. I can’t add this to my bookqueue yet (error: something about the ISBN number makes the baby Jesus cry) and I’m happy to say that Erik Benson is gradually bringing Allconsuming.net back from the dead, so I’ll stash it there. I use both Bookqueue and Allconsuming.net because sometimes one works when the other doesn’t. Also, I just like the way Allconsuming encourages happy bloggy goodness between bookloving bloggers.

ETA: Added to Bookqueue. Weird. Now if only I could get into my Allconsuming.net account – but Erik’s probably a little busy.

Very soon now, I’ll upgrade to MT3.whatever, and then I’ll be able to install BookqueueToo. When I do, I’ll be upgrading my Bookqueue page and adding one for the Holy Moly blog. Currently it’s basically a static page with each division of books (reading, read, to be read) in a standard blog entry div, with a right-aligned sidebar. And all the books are in one long vertically aligned list. I’d rather go with a block of images from left to right for the next iteration, rather like at kwc blog: Reading List, but with a short amount of text associated with each book cover (title, author name).

All the books have Amazon tags, and any sales via the links or the search boxes benefit Holy Moly, which is in rather… dire financial straits at the moment. It seems the village has enacted some sort of plumbing code, and we have to come up with about a thousand bucks to get special cutoff water valve doohickies installed. Meh. So I’ll be adding a lot more Amazon-linked books to both blogs, because every little bit helps.