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Way back in April, during Knit and Crochet Blog Week, I wrote about the challenge my friend Alice had issued: to make her very own Avatars of They, "they" being They Might Be Giants and "avatars" being, well, The Avatars.

So, one fine Saturday in late May, Alice and I went yarn shopping. We put the top down on the convertible, plugged Imagine Dragons into the CD player, and set the GPS to take us to Lovin'Knit Yarn Studio in Marietta.

So, here we are, starting from Clarkston on the east side of Atlanta. Where we need to go is on the northwest side. Sprint GPS sends us south (?) on I-285 and then west on I-20. Okay, not necessarily out of the ordinary, because I know some major construction is happening on the 285 loop north of Atlanta, and I have the GPS set to avoid traffic. I figure we'll catch I-75 in the downtown area and... wait, there goes the exit for 75. Hmm. Okay, traffic's often backed up on 75 as well. Maybe we're catching 285 north on the other side of the metro area... wait, there goes the exit for 285! Where on earth is GPS taking us? But, you know, it's a beautiful day, it's barely 10 AM and we've got nothing but time, so what the heck, right? Let's allow the adventure to continue. Never know what we might find!

I stopped and filled the car with gasoline because I was under a quarter tank, bought a bottle of water, and got back on the interstate. Alice tweets, "This is turning into an epic road trip!" And then we're past Douglasville -- which means Marietta and any way I know to get to Marietta is way to the northeast behind us -- and we're taking an exit out in the middle of the country somewhere and GPS wants us to keep going west? No, no, no. There's no way this can be right. This is not where we are supposed to be. So I pull over and look at the phone.

Somehow Sprint GPS thought Lovin'Knit in Marietta (which, I swear on my mother's life, is what I typed) was actually some other store (the name of which I don't recall right now) in Villa Rica.

Oy.

Classic example of the GIGO concept. As sophisticated as they may be in and of themselves, electronics are truly only as smart as their operators.

Aaaaand, let's leave it on that note, 'mmm kay?

Reset GPS, get back on I-20 going east this time, and look! GPS tells us to take 285 north. We take 285 north and follow the rest of the directions right to the front door of our preferred yarn store.

( The rest of the story, with more pics )

(Originally posted on my Wordpress blog, which is mostly where I hang out these days...)

And I wrote about it here, if anyone cares to take a gander.

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Okay, book first: Well written and readable. Although initially I enjoyed the 19th century storyline, I got bored with Ann Eliza's story about 2/3rds of the way through. She struck me as whiny, strident, and self-serving, which is only to be expected in an autobiography detailing her struggles as a plural wife and attacking one of the (then) fundamental doctrines of the Latter Day Saints. As the book wore on, I became more interested in Jordan's contemporary fight to save his mother from a murder charge than in Ann's 19th century fight against "celestial" marriage and the Mormon church.

And now, a brief meditation on the fundamental issue of this novel, plural marriage.

As an advocate of personal liberty, I don't think plural marriage is necessarily evil in and of itself. However, as it was practiced by the Mormon Church in the 19th Century (and is practiced still by its bastard offshoots today), in which the man has multiple wives and holds all the power, it is blatantly discriminatory, demeaning, and harmful. That's not marriage, that's concubinage. That's slavery.

To me, plural marriage must mean all parties involved have multiple spouses.

In other words, a husband doesn't just marry another woman, or man, for that matter. His current partner must marry her or him also. And conversely, if a wife wants to marry another man (or woman), her current partner must also marry him or her. All parties involved are married to each other. Any children that result from the marriage are the children of all. In theory, such a family structure makes a certain amount of sense. Several working adults contributing monetarily to the household while one or two nurturing types stay home and care for the children and the house? Sounds prosperous, comfortable, almost idyllic. In Caprica, a television series hardly anyone saw, just such a marriage was depicted. And, other than one of the spouses being a spy and another one a murderer, it seemed to work just fine.

Look, if multiple consenting adults want to marry each other and raise a family, I see no reason why they shouldn't. Human nature being what it is, though, I don't hold out much hope for such an arrangement actually working in the long run. Jealousies and rivalries will develop, factions will evolve, power struggles will ensue....sheesh, it's hard enough being married to one person. I can't imagine dealing with multiple spouses. (Go ahead, watch Caprica and see what happens in the above-mentioned plural marriage.) And when such a marital arrangement falls apart? I can't even begin to imagine the unraveling of that legal tangle in a divorce court.

On a personal note, if my husband ever came to me with the notion that he wanted to add another wife to our household, he'd find himself out the door in a hurry. I just asked him what his response would be in the opposite scenario. His response can't be printed.

Given that most of the United States can't even bring itself to allow consenting adults of the same sex to marry, I don't see much chance of plural marriage as described above becoming permissible at any point in the future, so speculation on its nature and effect on family and society is simply that: speculation. We can only go by history, and thus far history shows us only one form of plural marriage. As portrayed in The 19th Wife, it's not a pretty picture.



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Interesting things happen when you click a link, and it leads to another link, which leads to another....

I ran across a website devoted to Rory Gilmore of The Gilmore Girls, a TV show I've never watched and know nothing about. It seems Miss Rory was a reader of renown, and this website had listed all the reading material she had mentioned or read during the course of the series.

And so, in the best interest of all readers everywhere, I copied the list, alphabetized it, eliminated the duplicates, corrected spellings and authors as necessary, and lastly deleted the travel guides and dictionaries. I hereby present to you:

The Rory Gilmore Reading Meme!

Bold those you have read, italicize those on Mt. TBR, strike through those attempted but never finished.

And please let me know if you see any duplicates, misspellings, or misattributions that I missed.

( Cut because the list has 239 books )

Whew! That's a lot of books to be mentioned in one TV series.

Heart of Gold: A Novel by Sharon Shinn

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I read Sharon Shinn's Samaria series many years ago (when it was still a trilogy), and thought it simply wonderful. Heart of Gold, while good, doesn't measure up. And that's disappointing, because there's a lot of potential in its premise.

On an unnamed continent of an unnamed planet, three diverse races live in a state of unarmed truce. The Indigos, a blue-skinned matriarchal society, are the de facto rulers of the continent by virtue of their numbers and control of arable land. The Guldens, a gold-skinned patriarchal society, are more technologically innovative, but stifled by restricted access to land, wealth, and power. The third race, the Albinos, exist in meek servitude, primarily to the Indigos.

Nolan Adelpho, the scion of one of the High Hundred families, the Indigo elite, is a scientist in Biolab in the Central City. His family is waiting for him to get this notion of working for a living out of system and marry according to family arrangement. He is quietly rebelling: although he loves Leesa, his fiancee, he is resisting the pressure being put on him to come home, where all he will then be required to do is raise the children and take care of the house. He enjoys his work and has made several satisfactory discoveries in his field: antivirals and antibiotics.

Kitrini Candachi is the somewhat disreputable member of another High Hundred family: disreputable by virtue of her father's youthful rebellion in leaving home and raising her among the Guldens. Much to her indomitable grandmother's dismay, she does her reputation no good by being the mistress of Jex Zanlan, the son of the Gulden chief Chay Zanlan.

The Indigo and the Gulden have viewed each other with suspicion for generations. Long ago, the Indigo bullied the Gulden out of their native lands and pushed them toward the rocky coast. Non-aggression treaties were eventually signed, but lately the Indigo have been pushing into Gulden territory again. Terrorist attacks have taken place in retaliation, attacks laid at the feet of Jex Zanlan, now under arrest and awaiting trial in the Central City.

Shinn spends nearly half of the book introducing us to the various aspects and conflicts of Indigo and Gulden society, and then plunges us into the midst of a terrorist attack, a frantic escape from Central City, and a clandestine journey to Gulden territory in an effort to thwart a malicious plot. The slow build-up is necessary, especially due to the severe role reversal of Indigo society, where women have all the power, land, money, and prestige, and men are the virginal chattel bargained away in marriage. Even the action-packed second half progresses at a leisurely pace. For all its leisure, though, this is a fast read, easily consumed in a day or two.

All that being said, this book's premise is one that could have easily been expanded to twice its length. Too much was left unexplored. What was the origin of the different skin tones? Did the Indigo come from some other planet or some other continent and take over the Gulden lands? If not, how did two such radically different societal structures evolve on the same continent? Was there some geologic feature which separated them that the Indigo eventually surmounted? Why did Shinn even include the Albino race since they played virtually no part in the story? What about the Guldens' trading partners on other continents, mentioned only in passing? Were they Gulden as well? Albino? Or something else? So many questions, so little information. I guess that's what comes from having a mind attuned to anthropology....

So. Bottom line. Enjoyable light SF/fantasy with a romantic bent, not too taxing on the brain. Could have been better, but not too shabby a way to spend a Sunday afternoon.



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Sacrilege by S.J. Parris

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Some historical novels read like lighting; others trip lightly down their historical paths; still others plod, heavy and weighted with their historical sense and period sensibilities. Sacrilege by S.J. Parris is a plodder.

Giordano Bruno, former monk and current secret agent on behalf of Queen Elizabeth in the London establishment of the French Embassy, is surprised by the reappearance of his former love Sophia. Dressed in rags and disguised as a boy, she is on the run and accused of murdering her husband. She begs Giordano for his assistance: please go to Canterbury, discover who really killed Edward Kingsley, and clear her name. Giordano, still half in love and feeling some guilt over their past, obliges. He sets off for Canterbury, but not without a secondary purpose as assigned by the Queen's spymaster Francis Walsingham: while there, he should look into rumors of a Catholic plot to unseat the Queen.

Once in Canterbury, and under an assumed identity with the aid of his court connections, Giordano begins his investigation. However, Canterbury harbors more secrets than a possible assassination plot and the identity of Kingsley's murderer -- missing and murdered children, a cultish devotion to the murdered St. Thomas Becket -- and and such a questioning presence unsettles someone powerful behind the scenes. When he finds himself arrested and accused of murder himself, Giordano finds he must prove his own innocence as well as Sophia's.

Parris tells a good story, rich with historic fact and period detail. The pace is steady and the language straightforward. This novel is third in a series, however. It's a personal quibble, I suppose: this story stood well enough on its own, but given that Sophia's and Giordano's relationship had been previously established and explored, I felt I would have been better served and enjoyed the story more had I read the previous novels.



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Losing Clementine: A Novel by Ashley Ream

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Clementine Pritchard, in a fit of determination, has fired her shrink, fired her assistant, and flushed her meds down the toilet. After decades of suffering with bipolar disorder, she's through. She's given herself 30 days to wrap up her affairs and then she's taking her own life. Neatly. Cleanly. No fuss, no muss. And definitely not like her mother, who murdered Clementine's sister and then herself with a powerful shotgun blast one black day when Clementine was a girl.

Throughout the next 30 days, one chapter per day, we follow Clementine -- a denizen and bright light of the L.A. art world and beyond -- as she sets things in motion and begins distancing herself from her life: she buys a cemetery plot, makes a suicide plan, writes her notes, makes arrangements for the adoption of her cat. She even manages to finish a new painting or two to leave behind as a legacy. She's very focused, and so incredibly sad. The sadness seeps through every word, every deed, every action Clementine takes. She's good at masking it, maybe even from herself at times, but the black permeates her very soul, colors her every thought, informs every piece of art she's ever made. It sits on her shoulder and whispers in her ear, insidious, lethal, and inescapable.

The more Clementine tries to disentangle herself from the people in her world, though, the more they refuse to be disentangled. We -- and Clementine -- come right down to the last few days, unsure if everything is completely set...

Ashley Ream has done a splendid job depicting the thought processes of someone with a serious mental illness. Clementine is by turns funny, outrageous, bitchy, sweet, and angry. She drinks too much and has a history of other forms of self medication. She hurts, oh how she hurts, and I hurt with her. She's beautifully written, beautifully created, and utterly real.

Lovely work, Ms. Ream. I look forward to your next novel.



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The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


In the 14th Century CE, the Black Death wiped out roughly 1/3 of the world population -- and up to 60% of all people in Western Europe -- and changed world history. But what might have happened to the world had the Plague been more severe? In The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson posits a world in which some 90% or more of the population is dead, Europe is utterly depopulated, and the survivors are concentrated in Eastern Asia.

It's an ingenious and startling premise. Seriously, think about it. Christianity and Judaism, gone as practiced religions, and scarcely even mentioned except as footnotes in a history book. No Shakespeare, no Queen Elizabeth, no daVinci, no Van Gogh, no Mozart, Columbus, Magellan, Rembrandt, Dumas, Jefferson, Franklin, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler.... the list of never-to-exist Eurocentric artists, authors, explorers, and other world shapers is virtually endless.

Instead, Robinson introduces us to a world gradually explored and settled by Asian peoples. In keeping with a common theme of Eastern religions, he uses the plot device of reincarnation to tell his story. From a primitive village on the steppes of Mongolia to a 100-story highrise in Burma, centuries later, each character returns in the next cycle, to learn more, to grow more, to be reunited with each other time and again, and to gradually learn to recognize each other, at least a little.

It's a fabulous premise. I wish I had liked its execution more.

Robinson's style is bone-dry and stultifying. Even his romance and battle scenes are presented at an objective distance, lacking all blood and passion. I plodded through this book, one sere paragraph after another, and only finished it out of sheer stubbornness, as in: "By God, I've spent three weeks reading this thing, I'll be damned if I give up on it now.") In the end, what kept me going was drawing parallels between the book's characters and our world's key historical figures. ("Okay, this woman would be Marie Curie in our world," and so forth.)

This isn't to say it's badly written. It isn't. It's beautifully written; it had to be to make me stick with it for nearly 700 pages. Deserts are beautiful, too. I'm still awfully glad when I leave the desert and am free to travel somewhere else.



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Pity the Billionaire: The Unexpected Resurgence of the American Right by Thomas Frank

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


When I read What's the Matter With Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America several years ago, I finished the book determined to conduct any future political discussions with a focus on how economic/social justice issues are inseparable from personal morality: that is, if one claims to be a "Christian", one cannot ignore one's responsibility to care for the needy and the oppressed, and said responsibility includes approving and encouraging government assistance such as food stamps, disaster relief, and jobs programs.

It's been a very frustrating several years.

Thomas Frank's new book helps explain WHY it's been so frustrating. In this new America, The Free Market is God, and any attempt to regulate and control The Free Market is seen as socialism, communism, fascism, choose-your-ism, both by people who ought to know better AND by people who don't know better because they've never bothered to educate themselves in matters of economic policy as it has played out in US history.

As Frank points out, however, it has been ever thus. In one of the few passages that actually made me laugh, Frank briefly discusses how labor unions were seen as a threat to capitalism in the 1840s, and "...sure enough, the form of capitalism they had in those days died, to be replaced by 'capitalism modified by the right of collective bargaining.'" A few decades later, regulation of railroads signaled the End Times and "...the end of the world came to pass. Capitalism died, to be replaced this time by 'capitalism modified by the right of collective bargaining and Federal regulation.'"

The main thrust of Frank's thesis here, though, is the surprising "Hard Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right", to quote his subtitle. Based on previous economic history as it played out in the 1930s, the Right's new fascination with Ayn Rand's doctrine of Objectivism and the anti-government, anti-regulation rhetoric should never have taken hold in the general population. Conventional wisdom dictated the rank and file "common man" should have been screaming in the streets for Washington to come down hard on the bankers, investors, and corporate entities who created the crisis. Instead, the Tea Party was screaming in the streets for government to take its dirty little fingers out of the pockets of the "job creators", to cut back on current and proposed regulations that "crippled the economy", and decrying any government attempt to alleviate social ills as treacherous steps on the road to the evils of a socialist society.

How the Right managed this shift in public perception makes for fascinating reading. Unfortunately, said reading had the side effect of leaving me feeling (a) helpless and demoralized in the face of so much misinformation, misunderstanding, and sheer right-wing obstinacy, and (b) supremely angry at liberal leaders and politicians who cowered in the face of such obstinacy, who did not articulate their positions in language that would be understood by the rank and file Right, who essentially shrugged their shoulders and abdicated their responsibility. (Yes, you, President Obama, I'm looking at you.)

I'll get over the demoralization in a few days, and re-enter the fray with renewed vigor and determination. I hope our elected liberal officials -- who are few and far between these days -- find their courage and their voice and join me.



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Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


After their stunning Hunger Games double victory, Katniss and Peeta return home to District 12 and try to get back to their old lives. Being the victors, however, means their lives will never be their own again. As they are being prepared for the Victory Tour of all districts, Katniss is stunned to realize she must continue the pretense that she and Peeta are in love. But is it entirely pretense any longer? Katniss isn't certain.

Rumors of rebellion, spurred by Katniss' dramatic public defiance of the Capitol's authority during the Games, leak out. Perhaps by coincidence, perhaps by design, the Capitol announces the names of this year's Hunger Games tributes will be drawn from each District's surviving victors. As the only female victor from District 12, Katniss knows she's going back to the Arena. The only question is, will Haymitch or Peeta be accompanying her? And which one of them will she need to kill to survive?

The followup to The Hunger Games covers much of the same territory as its predecessor, but provides a somewhat deeper background for the world Katniss and her fellows inhabit. As Katniss and her victory entourage travel the Districts, I got a better sense of Panem's history: still no real details, but I could see some of the blank spaces starting to fill in. I was much more satisfied with this section of the book than when Katniss and her partner re-enter the arena. Really, one visit to the kill zone of the first book was plenty. And, although this arena had an entirely different -- and more intriguing -- setup, there's only so much slaughter this reader can take. Even if it is mostly "offscreen". And the novel's final twist felt contrived and arbitrary.

While it's worth reading on the whole, I think Catching Fire suffers from Middle Novel Syndrome, a failing shared by the second novel of most trilogies -- the story contains information necessary to set up the final novel, but the reader knows that final novel is where all the good stuff will finally happen. This is the chief reason why I haven't re-read The Lord of the Rings in many years. I love The Fellowship of the Ring but I just can't bear to slog my way through The Two Towers again to get to The Return of the King. It's a personal failing, that.



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