Lilith Saintcrow

It’s chicken-with-head-cut-off time. There’s the trip next week and wordcount and ARGH. So, three things today.

* First off, more on the Google Books Settlement. Richard Curtis asks where all the “concerned” people were before all the work was done. More links, of course, as I find them. Feel free to post links in the comments, but keep the shouting/arguing to a minimum, ‘kay? Thanks.

* Just finished The Storm of War, which for a one-book history of WWII was magisterial and pretty good. Some of the author’s assertions I don’t agree with, but I can see how he got there. Moved from that to digesting Disease, Desire, And The Body… in little pieces, and was thrilled to find an intersection with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s thought in the Introduction. (Homosocial bonds, etc.) I’m also blazing through The Vagabond. I’d forgotten how much I love Colette.

I’m trying to figure out which books to take with me on the trip. I’ll have a lot of time while on the plane and train to read. I’m thinking some JR Ward and This Republic of Suffering, with Epistemology of the Closet for when I feel ambitious.

Yes, I am obsessing over what books to take. It’s better than my usual angst over flying. You don’t even know.

* From Digby:

Seriously, if they can’t support those reforms, which are even supported by the insurance companies themselves, then regulation will never be enough to keep the system honest. A public plan will be impossible to dismantle once it’s in place and will not discriminate against sick people. If they keep premiums low enough to attract some healthy people as well, it will provide enough competition to keep these insurance company greedheads and psycho Republicans from doing their worst. It’s a necessity.

I love how it’s the reformers who everyone believes are trying to kill people when it’s these defenders of the status quo who actually are. (Digby)

It’s funny, but the conservative side of the healthcare debate, with its lunatic fringe yelling about Nazism and death panels, is a huge exercise in projection. They’re trying to pin on everyone else the things–i.e., killing people who don’t agree with them–they actually ascribe to, the things their poster boys do. Words can’t express my disgust at this point. Though Barney Frank does a good job. And so does the Rude Pundit, who is not for the faint-of-heart and NSFW either. (You’ve been warned.)

Glenn Greenwald, in his typically logical and nonemotional way, details what’s actually driving the healthcare reform process and debate.

I just feel like, come on people. We could put a man on the moon, fer Chrissake. We can figure out how to get healthcare for everyone, the way other developed countries do. Quit being idiots. And at the same time, I feel weary contempt for the lies and fear-and-hatemongering going around, but I don’t know why I’m surprised. This is business as usual from the jerkwads who brought us Fox News. Yawn. Let’s do something productive instead, mmmkay?

I’m almost glad I’m going to be taking an enforced break from blogging next week while traveling. I’m worn out.

And that, as they say, is that.

The Selkie sent me a link to Eugie Foster‘s story Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast, in Apex Magazine, this morning. I read it before coffee–it reminded me quite a bit of Tanith Lee‘s Four-BEE series, the one starting with Don’t Bite The Sun. I’m a huge Lee fan–she’s my favorite author–so I was disposed to like the Foster story. Barring a few jarring word choices (fabulists who throw in modern jargon take that risk) it was awesome. The fact that it kept me away from my coffee and the other half of my breakfast speaks for itself. I literally could not walk away from the story, which is one of the hallmarks of a good one. Go, read if you have time. I recommend it.

I’ve got tons to do today–two guest blog thingies and feeding the snake, dinner and housecleaning and wordcount–so this is necessarily brief. I know I’ve promised to post a couple recipes and I will get on that as soon as I find a way to do it–I might just put ‘em in PDF and stick them up or something. But that’s far down on the list. And…well, there’s struggle. Things are a bit hectic here.

Anyway. I finished rereading The Unicorn’s Secret (I have the 1986 edition, I think, that dates to before Einhorn was extradited from France.) That’s something not a lot of people know about me: I read a fair amount of true crime.

I know, you’re not surprised.

I also started on The Storm of War, which I read a good review on in The Economist. (Like I need a reason to read another WWII book, especially those that focus on the Eastern Front.) I’m still motoring through Epistemology of the Closet and recently got my greedy hands on a copy of Disease, Desire, and the Body in Victorian Women’s Popular Novels Academic writing is slow for me to plod through but I enjoy it.

And that is all the news that’s fit to print out here. I have my Friday post well in mind too. No wonder I feel scattered.

Over and out.

I’ve had good luck on the book front recently:

* The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery. Oh. My God. I LOVED this book. It was beautifully written, wonderfully constructed, lovingly translated, and Barbery did not punk out on the ending. The concierge Madame Michel looks like any other 54-year-old concierge in an upper-class Paris apartment building. This is camouflage. She is in reality an autodidact, a connoisseur of art, literature, classical music, and film. The privileged, hyperintelligent girl Paloma plans to kill herself on her next birthday because adult life is a sham. Both of them are doomed to loneliness and self-destruction…but then a new tenant moves in, and an odd sort of salvation between dissimilar creatures takes place.

I won’t lie. The book made me cry, especially the part about the camellias. And I expected Barbery to go for the Hallmark ending and ruin a great book, and she didn’t. My faith in humanity is officially restored.

* Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri. I blame Bam for this. She was reading Lahiri the other day and tweeted that Interpreter of Maladies got a Pulitzer–a collection of short stories, getting a Pulitzer. I had to read it. I flat-out loved every story. I am still thinking about Mrs. Sen, though I suspect my favorite story is a toss-up between Sexy and A Real Durwan. The only wrong note was The Third And Final Continent, mostly because the exposition at the end seemed like a case where the writer got tired and took the easy way.

I find Lahiri very Ibsen-like. There is not a great deal of motion on the surface; it is mostly interior action. This is difficult to pull off without getting boring, but Lahiri does it brilliantly.

* Her Majesty’s Spymaster, Stephen Budiansky. This is history the way it’s meant to be told. Action-packed, deftly explained, and occasionally hysterically funny in a dry academic way, this slim biography of Walsingham–the man who, more than anyone other than Cecil, kept Queen Elizabeth I on the throne–just knocked it out of the park for me. It starts with a gripping description of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and managed to make me finally understand what the hell was going on with Mary Queen of Scots and why she and Elizabeth acted the way they did. I’ve read other books that haven’t given me half as much insight into Elizabethan society and political maneuvering.

* Along For The Ride, Sarah Dessen. I’m a big, big Dessen fan. I bought this in hardcover because I couldn’t wait. (Dessen’s Dreamland is one of the best YA books I’ve ever read, hands-down.) The protagonist, Auden, is an insomniac overachiever, dealing with her parents’ divorce. In trademark Dessen style, with lyricism and deft characterization, Auden finds solace in nighttime rambles with another insomniac, a boy haunted by a deadly accident. However, it’s in Auden’s relationship with her stepmother and her halting, painful relationship with her demanding mother, that Dessen’s craft really shines. A very solid, very beautiful YA book.

If I ever meet Sarah Dessen in person my brain is going to melt from the sheer fangirl squee. Nuff said.

So, it’s been a good run for me lately. I’m still working very slowly on other books, ones I either have to savor or slow down and really untangle each word of. Obfuscation is considered a sign of academic and literary athleticism, but it’s hell to work through even when one loves the material.

Poor, poor me. Yeah, I’m just unlucky all over, ain’t I.

Over and out.

Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear is a forehead-slapper of a book. By this I mean that what he says is so simple and practical, not to mention useful and logical once you think about it, that you will slap your forehead repeatedly and say, “DUH I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT!” De Becker manages to share a whole lot of this sort of stuff without making the reader feel stupid, which is an achievement in and of itself.

I’ll be honest: this book is largely for women. From the back of the book:

A date won’t take “no” for an answer. The new nanny gives a mother an uneasy feeling. A stranger in a deserted parking lot offers unsolicited help. The threat of violence surrounds us every day. But we can protect ourselves, by learning to trust–and act on–our gut instincts.

These are female problems. As de Becker himself points out, there’s a basic rift in our society: at bottom men are afraid women will laugh at them, women are afraid men will kill them. Women are also socialized to make us good victims, another thing de Becker deconstructs. We’re taught to play nice, get along, make someone feel better, let someone down easy. Even if we do feel uneasy, or if our intuition tells us something is off, we’ll play along just to be nice.

And a lot of times, these nice cooperative things are used so someone can get inside our homes or our lives to hurt us. We are capable of predicting the behavior of our fellow beings–we do so every day we drive, stand in a line, talk on the phone with a friend, get on an airplane, or do any number of everyday things. We are experts when it comes to other human beings, and we often get into trouble when we don’t trust what our expertise tells us.

De Becker also speaks directly about the techniques someone will use to get within range before they perpetrate violence on you, techniques like “typecasting”, “loan sharking”, and “too many details”. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen these techniques used, and having something to call them helps immensely. Not only does it give these techniques, but it also gives women permission and strategies for shorting them out. This can help in all sorts of situations, not just the ones we’re afraid might erupt into violence. And it was immensely helpful and

I found this book immensely, intensely valuable. I’m going to be buying copies to give to my sisters and my female friends, as well as recommending it at the bookstore. It’s taken me thirty years and several bad encounters before I’m comfortable saying “no” or enforcing my personal boundaries. If I’d read this book sooner I could probably have saved myself a lot of grief.

There are flaws with this book. Chief among them is de Becker not talking about one of the bigger reasons women stay in abusive relationships–because the first thing an abuser tries to do is get control of the financial situation, and women (especially women with children) often cannot afford to leave without starving on the streets. He also glosses over the shell-shock and several other important issues when it comes to battering and domestic violence. I can see that it’s outside the purview of what he set out to write, and all in all the book is so goddamn valuable this is a tiny little quibble.

De Becker also talks about separating anxiety, uneasiness, or other feelings from fear. Fear is a survival mechanism, and it’s serious business. Jacking yourself up to feel fear when you don’t need to–a trick lots of people do with the help of the evening news–is counterproductive, because it drowns out all those little things your intuition is taking note of to help keep you safe.

The book is a quick read, and I’ve marked several passages for rereading. Going through and reading a self-help book won’t actually change anything, I know–but reading a self-help book, paying attention, and working hard on the issues you find will help.

Case in point? About halfway through this book I had an Encounter.

It was after dark, and the kids and I were at Safeway picking up some groceries at the end of a long day. The UnSullen One stopped with the kids at the quarter machines–he saves his quarters from change and gives them to the kids to get stickers, gumballs, or little figurines at the bank of machines at the grocery store. I carried four bags and two gallons of milk out to the car, he would bring the kids when they were done.

I scanned the parking lot. There were a couple people on foot talking to someone in a parked car, and they made me slightly uneasy. I am a tempting target–female, weighed down with groceries, alone. I kept an eye on them while I walked to my car, got everything in the trunk, and since I had them in my peripheral vision I was prepared when they approached. A man and a woman, both obviously homeless.

“Excuse me,” the man says, politely enough. I slammed my trunk and turned on my heel. “Can I ask you a favor?”

No you can’t, I think, but I draw myself up and make eye contact. “You can ask.”

“Do you happen to have a spare $2.50 for the bus?” He’s sizing me up. I can feel it, and the woman is looking at the ground.

“The bus?” I raise an eyebrow.

The kids are coming, each of them holding an UnSullen One’s hand. I make a series of lightning-fast calculations. Since I’ve been reading this particular book, I am not frightened. I am a little uneasy, but for good valid reasons. I don’t need to be afraid at this particular point.

I have my wallet and my car keys in my hand. The man steps forward, and something in the set of his shoulders warns me.

I say, “That’s close enough.” In my Mommy Voice–the one that stops people in their tracks, even adults at the mall. I don’t think he would have committed any violence had I not said that. But I do think he and his partner would have gotten aggressive when it came to begging for cash.

He stopped dead, the kids got closer, and he and his partner wandered away. It might not have been dangerous, but it could have been unpleasant, and adding my kids to the mix changed what I was willing to do in the situation.

That’s just a small story and a small incident, true. But it was amazing how I suddenly saw from another point of view while in the incident. The book had immediately proven practical and helped me save myself some unpleasantness. Granted I was slightly annoyed and anxious, but I wasn’t crippled by fear because I had faith in my predictive ability in the situation.[1]

This is why I recommend this book, and why I’m going to be buying copies for people I know. I could go on and on about the useful things in The Gift of Fear, but that would make this review almost a book in itself. So, be safe out there. And do yourself a favor: read this book.

Who knows? It could save you annoyance, or it could save your life. I call that a good bargain for a trade paperback.

[1] Of course, I also had faith in my ability to kick some ass if the guy got snitty with me or frightened my kids. But that’s an entirely different set of mama-bear reflexes.

First of all, a couple messages: Thanks to Tami H. for the virtual chocolate–it made my day. And AJ: your WordPress.com username is totally separate from the username on your own hosted WP blog. Just go sign up for that (as Kerry notes, you don’t have to use the blog at all, I use mine as a placeholder, though I should probably find some way to mirror it…is there a plugin to crosspost to a WP-hosted blog?) ANYWAY, that will give you an API key you can use for Akismet and will make all sorts of stuff totally easier.

*cracks knuckles* We got your tech support right here, babe.

SO. Evil Ways is the second Chastain & Morris investigation, written by Justin Gustainis. Justin approached me for a quote for Black Magic Woman, the first Quincey Morris book, and I loved it. (I have also grown to adore Justin, but that’s beside the point.) I also loved Evil Ways. So, on to the review!

Evil Ways opens in Iraq, during the looting of a museum in Baghdad. A book is stolen, and right away the reader begins to suspect something is Very Very Wrong. The book contains a ritual, and a mad millionaire wants to use it to grant himself near-immortality and a cure to whatever Bad Disease he has. (My vote is cancer, but it’s not explicitly stated. Doesn’t matter, either.) The Mad Millionaire, Walter Grobius, has hired a sorcerer to help him–and the sorcerer knows his stuff.

Enter our good guys, Quincey Morris (yes, a descendant of one of Dracula’s hunters) and his pal Libby Chastain, a “white” witch.

This is one of the things I love about Justin’s work. The magic has rules, and Justin has done his research. He peppers the work with occult in-jokes–but never so many as to detract from the story. And I can tell he’s boned up (pardon the term) on Western occult theories and techniques. Not only that, but he’s thought long and hard about why the magic works the way it does in his world, and he sticks to it. I’ve read enough fantasy and urban fantasy by now to appreciate an author whose magical rules don’t change to service the plot.

There’s plenty more to appreciate about this book. For one thing, the heroes don’t know who they’re fighting for most of the book, and each group of heroes (Quincey and Libby, and Fenton and O’Connell the FBI agents, then Hannah Widmark, and the Sisterhood of white witches) has their own motivations as well as their own pieces of the puzzle. The interlocking pieces of the plot all come together in a cinematic showdown during a black-magic sabbat that was alternately hilarious and horrifying for all the right reasons. Plus, the villains have believable motivations as well–Pardee the sorcerer and Grobius the millionaire are perfectly prepared to do away with each other if and when they can, and both want this ritual done for different reasons. The villains aren’t cardboard, and I like that.

Gustainis is still a “young” writer, and there are some flaws in the book. One is a little too much exposition “tell” instead of characterization “show” at some points; especially when the academic tone rubs through. Don’t get me wrong–the academic tone works wonders when he’s starting out a chapter to set a scene. But when it comes to (in particular) Libby Chastain saying something prim instead of cursing and Quincey noticing it and realizing they’re in deep shit, the academic tone is a distraction. This is something practice and growth will solve, and Gustainis’s craft has noticeably improved between the first and second Morris & Chastain books. (He was no slouch to begin with, either.)

The ending also felt a bit abrupt, but that could have been because I was enjoying the book so much and didn’t want it to be over. There’s also a little bit of over-the-top when it comes to the bad guys–I mean, Pardee kills kittens, for Chrissake–but it works because that’s the way the world set up and it’s internally consistent, something many books that feature magic just aren’t. (Can you tell that’s a pet peeve over here at Casa Saintcrow?)

These are tiny little quibbles when compared to deft pacing, overall solid characterization (my favorite was Hannah Widmark[1], who as a secondary character stole the show and came close to taking over the whole damn book) and a number of fun pop-culture references and nods. I think I already mentioned Harry Dresden’s favorite bar and bartender showing up in this book, as well as references to a certain reporter and an awesome cameo by a guy named Frank.

These references may end up dating the book–for example, if you don’t have Netflix or don’t remember the original series, Frank is not going to be any big deal to you. HOWEVER (and this is a big however) these cameos are very adroitly handled and stand up as tertiary characterizations on their own merit, adding breadth and depth to the world Gustainis has created.

I really can’t wait for the next book in this series, and I enjoyed this one very much. Like I’ve said before, there are very few books that I am pulled into and stop “looking under the hood” of anymore, and I can rely on Justin to give me a rollicking good time without jolting me out of the story with bad craft. All in all, a thumb’s-up read, and I recommend Evil Ways for anyone who likes their occult fiction and urban fantasy smart, fun, fast, and occasionally brutal.

[1] And Hannah is so totally hot. She’s a girl after my own heart, especially her introductory scene, where she does a Lady Vengeance ALL OVER a nasty vampire. Here’s hoping Justin will give Hannah her own series…hint, hint…