Without-Feathers.com

June 2008

Book Blog
14 entries

The Sea Captain’s Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century

June 28, 2008

Details:
Author: Martha Hodes
Genre: Biography

The true story of a white woman who married a black man in Civil War-era America. A very interesting and well-told historical tale. Minor quibble: I don’t know why Hodes thinks it so probable that Eunice’s daughter Clara, born when she was married to her first husband, is the product of an affair between Eunice and her eventual second husband; maybe she’s just going by a researcher’s gut instinct, but considering the lack of evidence she puts forth for this conclusion, it seems like a stretch to me. It’s a stretch even to suggest the two met during that time, let alone had an affair. Other than that, though, it’s a good solid read. Recommended.

The Fiend in Human

June 27, 2008

Details:
Author: John MacLachlan Gray
Genre: Mystery

Not a bad book overall, but I found it remarkably dull most of the time; my eyes kept glazing over throughout entire chapters, particularly the ones dealing with Whitty’s newspaper cronies. The mystery, too, was decently-written but badly-plotted; it was obvious from the first few chapters who the murderer was, so much so that I kept waiting for the twist that would prove me wrong. (It never came. I guessed right. I hate it when that happens; it makes me feel like I’ve wasted my time, because if I knew who the villain was before the book was half over I might as well have given it up right there and moved on to something better.) The writing style impressed me and annoyed me at the same time; I like present-tense immediacy and a style that stays in keeping with the relevant era, but something about this particular prose just bugged me to no end. It just wasn’t to my taste.

Crime and Punishment

June 26, 2008

Details:
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Genre: Drama

STOP IT DOSTOEVSKY YOU ARE BLOWING MY MIND WITH YOUR AWESOMENESS. And to think that in the past I could only make it through Part One before putting the book down and going off to cry and get drunk. The really sad thing now is that I’m going to have to recap this for the Bad Book Club, and I will not be able to say anything coherent beyond, “… awesome. Also: AWESOME.” (Also: am I the only one who prefers the old-skool spelling of “Dostoievski”? I am? I kind of thought so.)

ETA: And now I am thinking of crossovers. Crime and Punishment and Law & Order: Criminal Intent: Goren would break Raskolnikov like a brittle chicken bone. Even better: Death Note. Raskolnikov is Light Yagami, people.

The Secret Life of Houdini

June 22, 2008

Details:
Authors: William Kalush, Larry Sloman
Genre: Biography

Just as irrelevant as I expected it would be—nothing I hadn’t read before, except for the amusingly fragile claims of Spiritualist conspiracies. Other than that, it was just a rote biography with more than a few dramatized scenes (ugh) and more than a little snark about Bess, whom the authors seem quite prejudiced against. Even the pictures were all-too-familiar. If you want a good Houdini biography, read Ken Silverman’s definitive book.

Murder on the Lusitania

June 15, 2008

Details:
Author: Conrad Allen
Genre: Mystery

This book had three strikes against it from the beginning: its clumsy prose, its frequent cabbage-head dialogue (nice that the author did his research on the time period and all, but did he have to beat me over the head with it in every freaking paragraph?), and a remarkably high number of typographical errors—but I don’t really count that last one, since a previous reader had helpfully gone through and corrected them with a pen. The first six chapters were aggravatingly stilted and slow—again, Allen really wants the reader to know how much research he put into this thing—but things picked up after that. The plot was better than I’d anticipated, and the characters, if not very well-described (stilted, stilted, stilted), were more complex than I’d initially assumed they were. I picked out the villain fairly quickly, but that’s no more than I usually do. A nice summer read for mystery lovers who like a teeny whiff of the sea (though it is fairly teeny—the emphasis is on the mystery, not the ship; also note that the mystery takes place during the Lusitania’s maiden voyage, and not its final, tragic one).

Bloody Falls of the Coppermine: Madness, Murder, and the Collision of Cultures in the Canadian Arctic, 1913

June 14, 2008

Details:
Author: McKay Jenkins
Genre: History, True Crime

A very well-done account of an incident in Arctic history that I’d never heard of before. I’ll definitely pick this book up if I see it at Half Price.

Revenge

June 12, 2008

Details:
Author: Stephen Fry
Genre: Drama

Same situation as the last entry—I bought it on clearance, stuck it on the shelf, and never got around to reading it until now. Bottom line: meh. It was so close to The Count of Monte Cristo that there were no real surprises; it was just a matter of how and in what order poor wronged Ned would go about smiting his enemies. The only bit that really caught my fancy was at the very end, where Ned gives his final tormentor a choice between spending the remainder of his life at the asylum or suicide by swallowing hot coals—and his victim chooses the latter. Very nice death scene, that. Other than that, it was not very memorable, I’m afraid. Stephen Fry is still my idol, but I hope he won’t mind if I let this book go to make room on the shelf.

The Ice Child

June 12, 2008

Details:
Author: Elizabeth McGregor
Genre: Drama

I bought this book for $1 at Half Price over a year ago, and just now got around to reading it. Not that great, really—decently readable, but not memorable. Also, every time I read the word “ice”, I would think ice of glory, and then I would have to put down the book and giggle like a loon, which kind of spoiled all the dramatic happenings. I’ll sell it back to Half Price with my next batch of books.

The Secret Agent

June 11, 2008

Details:
Author: Joseph Conrad
Genre: Drama

Reading Joseph Conrad is, right now, like drinking a bottle of fine vintage wine after a month of cheap beer. The story moved slowly, but with that kind of creeping inexorability that tells you something horrible is going to happen. I could see what it was leading up to, but damn—when it finally got there, it was even better (and creepier!) than I thought it would be. My only problem—and I’m pretty sure it was me, not Conrad—was that I had a hard time remembering the story was set in England; it seemed very French, somehow. Maybe I’ve just read too much de Maupassant, though.

What Rough Beast

June 8, 2008

Details:
Author: H.R. Knight
Genre: Supernatural, Mystery

Yet another crap entry into the already-too-large genre of Houdini-Doyle supernatural mystery stories. I really can’t justify reading all the way to the end, because this book was surprisingly thick and I had other, better books waiting for me, except to say that my devotion to Houdini extends even to pulp fiction. The best part of this book was the author bio inside the back cover. Everything else was a hash.

A Slight Trick of the Mind

June 7, 2008

Details:
Author: Mitch Cullin
Genre: Drama

BEST. PASTICHE. EVER. Seriously. I am recommending the hell out of this to all my family and friends—even the non-Sherlockians, because it stands alone as an excellent novel, too.

Split: A Memoir of Divorce/h3>

June 5, 2008

Details:
Author: Suzanne Finnamore
Genre: Memoir

Is “fucknoying” a word? Well, let’s make it one, because otherwise I have no words to describe the crapness of this book. Wait, yes I do: crap. The whole modern “memoir” trend bugs me anyway, but this is a particularly superfluous addition to the genre. Not only is Finnamore a bad writer, she sounds like a whiny, pathetic, obnoxious personality. Remind me to keep well away from her books, fiction and otherwise.

Any Approaching Enemy

June 1, 2008

Details:
Author: Jay Worrall
Genre: Adventure

The first book in this series was pretty silly but fun. This book, however, was mostly a drag, punctuated by fairly awkward writing and the inevitable Fanfic Cameo, which is apparently going to be a reoccuring feature in this series (it was Horatio Hornblower last time; this time it was Jack Aubrey). I didn’t exactly hate it—I did read the whole thing—but I have to express some annoyance with the offing of a certain major-ish character, whose demise brought this approximate response from the other characters: “… ouch. Oh well, that won’t spoil our fun!” Kind of expected more PTSD, I guess.

To the Lighthouse

June 1, 2008

Details:
Author: Virginia Woolf
Genre: Drama

My first taste of Woolf’s fiction, and I can’t say it suits me. Her sentences are like high-heeled shoes: they look fine from the outside, but once you’re in them and actually trying to get somewhere, you find yourself stumbling and staggering and not really getting anywhere at all, until you either give up and fall over or run headlong into a brick wall. I ran into the brick wall of BOREDOM, but managed to keep reading all the way to the end. And now my mother wants me to read Mrs. Dalloway to her, ALOUD, which is not humanly possible because MY LUNGS DO NOT HAVE THE CAPACITY FOR THOSE SENTENCES.

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