So ’s daughter was reading Howl’s Moving Castle when I saw her last. After she finished it and I’d finished my book, I picked it up. I was decidedly put out when she took it back with her, and even more so when I found that my library’s only copy was checked out. As a consolation, I took this other book, not new but previously unread by me.
Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones Fantasy plays different roles even in fantasy books set in our world. In this one, the real world predominates, the magical elements slipping in so subtly that they are easy to miss until the very end. Polly, now about 19, is visiting her Granny and looking at a picture on her wall. It brings back memories of the man she met when she was there nine years before, when she accidentally gate-crashed a will reading at the big house up the hill. She realizes that she has two complete sets of memories. In one of them, she and Mr. Lynn had an ongoing correspondence and occasional visits. In the other, he never existed. Now, even the other people in her life who met him can’t remember him. The book is largely made up of her newly-found memories of him, and the stories they made up together about Mr. Lynn being a hero named Tan Coul and Polly his apprentice, Hero. But the stories had a strange way of coming true, not quite the way they told them and usually in a way that put them in more danger than the original. Only near the end does Polly realize Thomas Lynn in danger and needs her help.
And here is where my difficulty began. The characters – Polly, her crazed mother and forceful Granny, the friends she made over the years, were compelling,. Each chapter began with bits from the ballads of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin, so that someone familiar with these, as I am, could probably figure out where the story was going. But it never quite made sense to me. I never understood why the bad guy was opposed to them, and even after Polly solved the puzzle, I didn’t get the solution. I’ve been thinking about it for days now, and I still don’t. Is this just me or the book? If anyone has read this and could help me out, I’d be much obliged.
Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore Love, friendship and the mob mix in surprising and fascinating ways in this classic graphic novel. Katchoo and Francine are roommates. Francine is broken-hearted when her boyfriend leaves her after she refuses to sleep with him. Katchoo exacts a fearsome revenge on him, but refuses to tell Francine she’s in love with her. Meanwhile, Katchoo meets a persistent young man, David, at an art gallery. Even though she refuses the romantic relationship he wants, they develop a strong friendship. One might even go so far as to call it a love triangle. And then it turns out that Katchoo has old connections with the mob, and the mob is no longer willing to let them stay in the past. (I have to give a shout-out to my old library school friend Erica of 
Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall by Bill Willingham. Illustrated by Charles Vess et al This is the just-published prequel to the long-standing Fables series. In the Fables world, the Adversary has been taking over all the fantasy worlds one by one. The characters have been fleeing to our New York City, where they have established an underground community led by Snow White and King Cole. In this book, Snow White is visiting the as-yet-unconquered Arabian Fables world, trying to convince the sultan – yes, that sultan – that he should ally himself with the New York Fables community. Naturally, he refuses to meet formally with an unattended woman, so she is sent to him as a concubine. Instead of sleeping with him, she entertains him with tales of escaping Fables to win him over. Each tale is beautifully illustrated by a different comic book artist, with the incomparable Charles Vess providing the illustrations for the frame story. These are most definitely fairy tales for adults, with familiar fairy tale characters in often horrific situations. But the stories are compelling and the illustrations lush, making this a beautiful introduction to the world of Fables while standing firmly on – or between – its own covers.
Everything Nice by Ellen Shanman Prickly Mike loses her job, too, when her lecherous boss Brian is fired from a prestigious ad agency. Suddenly she discovers that everyone wants team players with people skills and already knows she has neither. Soon she’s in a downward spiral, drinking too much, sneaking in to her ex’s comedy club performances to hear him rail against her, and pushing away Gunther, her only friend. Just when she’s being evicted, her father, widowed when Mike was four, announces that he’s engaged and his fiancée is moving in. The fiancée suggests that Mike ask about a job at her former place of employment, an all-girls charter school. Now she’s stuck teaching Life Skills to a terrifying group of giggling and whispering thirteen-year-olds. Mike as a character was hard to like at first, but things turned around so nicely that I couldn’t be offended at the unsurprising redemptive ending. Because sometimes a little redemption is a beautiful thing.
How Doctors Think by Jerome GroopmanDoctors think fast. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they are scarily wrong. And the methods that doctors who make correct diagnoses even in tricky cases are not the methods that medical students are taught to use. Groopman writes as both doctor and patient, pulling apart cases of the best and worst medical thinking both to help doctors improve their own thinking and to help patients give better information to their doctors and know when to ask for something else. The examples were fascinating, and fortunately nearly all with happy endings. My biggest quibble was that I wanted it to do a better job of pulling out specific steps and questions for both doctors and patients. The chapters were organized around medical specialties rather than specific errors or strengths in thinking, leaving the pulling together for the individual reader. Still, it was useful and interesting for anyone who deals with doctors, and those interested in puzzling medical cases for their own sake will find this fascinating.
The Flirt by Kathleen Tessaro Imagine yourself finding that the spark has gone out of your marriage. You’d like to get things going again, but since part of the problem is that you’re not feeling amorous, either, you’re not sure where to start. If you are a man in London, enter the hired flirt, a “professional massager of the female ego”, who will conduct a chaste yet thrilling flirtation with your wife. She’ll start being excited about herself, and you’ll start being excited about her. On the other hand, if you are a woman in a similar position, you could visit Bordello, and have the proprietress make seductive yet subtle custom lingerie, such that you won’t look like you’re trying at all, but your husband will nevertheless find you irresistible. 
Gorgeously Green by Sophie Uliano Going green is increasingly fashionable, with books aimed at every possible demographic. This book is aimed at the shopping fashionista who isn’t sure that regular products are really all that bad and certainly isn’t going to risk looking dowdy to benefit the earth. I myself am pretty fashion challenged, passionate about being environmental, and have neither the money or the patience for a lot of shopping. But hey, the cover was cute, so I thought I’d give it a try. Uliano, a yoga instructor, is really trying to make being green easier, spiritual, and more fun. The tone is chatty, talking about her own successes and shortcomings, and the book includes frequent references to fun quizzes and prizes available on the associated website. Her advice includes thoughts on the usual yucky chemicals and processes, along with which warrant throwing away the product and which are safe enough to finish before being replaced; chatty product advice; some easy yoga and meditations, as well as recipes for beauty products and fast but tasty food. Each chapter focuses on a different area of life, and concludes with a menu of five action steps, from which you are supposed to choose one. I am getting sick of people saying that G Diapers, where you dump the gel in the toilet, stir with considerable force and several flushes, and wash the cloth cover, are so much easier than cloth diapers that modern cloth diaper options don’t even need to be mentioned. Everyone I’ve talked to that’s tried both says that cloth is a lot easier, yet every book I read on the subject lately assumes without trying that the opposite is true. Anyway, mini-rant aside, this is a fine book for those just getting started being green, especially those to whom the term “Gorgeously Green Girl” sounds appealing.
The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs Georgia Walker was young, single and pregnant when an older lady suggested that she use her knitting to make a living for herself. Now, her daughter Dakota is 12 and Georgia is the proprietress of a thriving New York City knitting store, Walker and Daughter, which is also staffed by the elderly and widowed Anita. As our story opens, a group of women wanting companionship and help with their knitting coalesces into the Friday Night Knitting Club. Our cast includes Georgia’s old friend from publishing, K.C., who is always starting but never finishing big projects; Lucie, a single and out of work television producer; Georgia’s daughter Dakota, who provides baked goodies; and Darwin, a women’s studies grad student bent on proving that knitters are submitting themselves to the patriarchy. The plot thickens further for Georgia as Dakota’s father James, missing since the pregnancy was discovered, turns up. Her old best friend from high school, now a rich society lady, also comes in to commission a hand-knit ball gown. The story switches between all of the major characters, as they all work through their own struggles and learn to rely on each other. It’s classic strong female friendship stuff, with some Wisdom from the Grandmothers (and a random priest) thrown in. It’s all about the characters and the relationships, and is already being promoted for book clubs. Did I mention that I read during rare knitting opportunities?
