The Sweet Potato Queens’ First Big-Ass Novel

Posted on June 26, 2007 by Katy K.

book coverThe Sweet Potato Queens’ First Big-Ass Novel by Jill Connor Browne with Karin Gillespie. Read by the author. I’ve been a fan of the Sweet Potato Queens for several years now, and heard really good things about the audio novel from a colleague. Well, I think it’s a good first novel, and funny as novels go. It’s just that novels are inherently less funny than a book of straight comedy. I remember my grandfather complaining about the Cosby Show for the same reason. The novel is a change from the books, aside from being fictional, in that the queens have different names instead of all being called Tammy. In the fictional world, Jill and friends Mary Bennet, Patsy, Gerald and Tammy form the Sweet Potato Queens in high school, to help Tammy get over being rejected by the Key Club. They have a highly successful debut in the homecoming parade, outshining the elected homecoming queen and president of the Key Club. The book proceeds to follow the Queens from high school in the 60’s through to the 90’s, with romances, career changes, and some painful misunderstandings between friends. It’s all very southern, very soap-opera like, crude-mouthed and sparkly, like the Queens themselves, and very much for women.

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Grace (Eventually)

Posted on June 25, 2007 by Katy K.

<book coverGrace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott I really like Anne Lamott. She talks, as usual, about the messiness of life and the difficulty of acting the way you want to. About how when she’s in the depths of despair she wants God to fix it right now, with big gestures and miracles. And instead the grace comes slowly, through friends and her own hard work, but is there nonetheless. Her stories are about teaching Sunday School, walking the dog, death, raising a teenager. Somehow, she manages to tell stories of herself at her worst and make herself sympathetic and so funny I could hardly keep myself from reading the whole thing alound to whomever happened to be around.

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Protected: Tuesday Dinner

Posted on June 24, 2007 by Katy K.

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The Scarecrow and His Servant

Posted on June 24, 2007 by Katy K.

book coverThe Scarecrow and His Servant by Phillip Pullman. Read by Graeme Malcolm Phillip Pullman (The Golden Compass) turns to lighter fare in this quirky adventure story. A scarecrow is struck by lightening and comes to life, where he is found by a young homeless boy. The scarecrow turns out to have a wonderful personality, honorable, trusting, and entirely impractical, so that the more worldly-wise servant boy is left to manage the practical side of things. Lord Scarecrow’s quest is to win a fortune and go back to claim his ancestral home of Spring Valley. He also believes himself and all humans to be at war with the Kingdom of the Birds. On their way to fame and fortune, Lord Scarecrow and his servant deal with brigands, actors and fortune-tellers. Unbeknownst to them, they are being pursued by a lawyer representing the powerful Buffaloni family, which wants to build poison factories in Spring Valley. The ending is gratifying and a little surprising, if not kind to lawyers or big businesses. Still, this is a delightful adventure story. The narrator was most excellent, doing voices for all the characters and especially the rich, sonorous voice of the scarecrow.

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Magyk and Flyte

Posted on June 22, 2007 by Katy K.

Magyk

Septimus Heap: Magyk by Angie Sage. Narrated by Allan Corduner.
Septimus Heap: Flyte by Angie Sage

This children’s fantasy series got starred reviews when it came out a couple of years ago, and I just got around to it, listening to the first book in the series and reading the second. The story is set in and around the Castle, a walled city surrounded by wild woods and marshes, with what seems to be an advanced pre-industrial tech level but very well-organized society. As the first book opens, Silas Heap, a not-to-skilled Ordinary Wizard, is wandering through the woods looking for something to help his ailing newborn seventh son, when he comes across an abandoned newborn baby girl. He scoops her up and takes her to his wife, just as the midwife runs out carrying his own baby and yelling that he is dead. It’s pretty obvious that little Septimus isn’t really dead, what with the whole series being named after him and all, but never mind. Fast forward ten years to young Jenna’s tenth birthday. We learn that she is the Princess, her mother the Queen having been assasinated at her birth. Jenna was rescued by the ExtraOrdinary Wizard and left for Silas and Sarah Heap to find, in the hopes that she would blend in with such a large family. Alas, she has been discovered. The ExtraOrdinary Wizard finds out only just in time. The rest of book is spend first running away from the usurpers and the evil wizard DomDaniel, and then trying to find a way to reclaim the Castle. On the way, they rescue a small Young Army Expendable, Boy 412. And of course, by the end of the book everyone knows who Septimus Heap is. The plot is a wee bit predictable, but we expect this of children’s books. The writing is more modern in tone that I generally expect in a classic fantasy, but it works out well. The characters and the suspense keep the story entertaining. There are sailing ships large and small, dragons, and secret passages.

flyte
In the second book, Septimus Heap is now apprentice to the ExtraOrdinary Wizard, Marcia Overstrand. (As the seventh son of a seventh son, he has impressive magical abilities.) Jenna is openly recognized as the Princess and is living in the Castle with the rest of the Heap family. The only flies in the ointment are the disappearance of the oldest Heap boy, Simon, and the Shadow following Marcia. When Simon suddenly reappears in a black cape on a black horse and kidnaps Jenna, Septimus is the only one who believes that Jenna needs rescuing. Could the evil DomDaniel somehow have survived being eaten by the Marsh Brownies? A second solidly entertaining entry in the series. My only beef with the book version is that in the middle of otherwise contemporary-sounding text, magical terms are spelled archaically and bolded, as if they were vocabulary terms to be studied. Otherwise, the typeface is cute, the layout and illustrations attractive. I’ll probably still read the third one once I get through the rest of my pile.

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Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom

Posted on June 18, 2007 by Katy K.

Suddenly, I’m way behind, both in reading and in writing reviews. I often request new books, either before we get them or adding myself to a list of other fans. Last week, six books came in. That means two books a week to have them all back in on time. Several of them want to be read by both adults in the household. Wish us luck!

Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom
Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom by Christine Northrup Dr. Northrup, an OB/GYN, illuminates the tricky connection between mind and body in this superb book on women’s health. She opens in a rather new-agey way which nonetheless struck close to home, as she talked about chakras and the diseases connected with them. For example, being required to fit into an extremely masculine environment is a second chakra issue which can cause uterus and cycle problems. Chakras are pretty new to me, but her descriptions closely fit my experiences. As a Western medicinal background, she advocates combining emotional therapies with traditional medicine, never saying, “Just get over yourself and the problem with go away.”

The next section covers specific areas of women’s health – cycle problems, childbirth, menopause, to name just a few. Each section includes potential problems and cures ranging from least to most invasive, nutritional therapy through surgery. Also included are the specific energy issues from the first section. All of them include both personal stories and research from studies, both of which I find very helpful.

After the health problems, she turns to how to create “vibrant health”, including diet, sex and exercise. Her diet recommendations were somewhat confusing to me, but included a lot on the dangers of carbohydrate addiction, and on the need to get calcium from more varied sources than just dairy. Mindfulness is key. I found her coverage of exercise particularly nice, since she acknowledged that she herself did not exercise when her children were small, and discussed how she made time for it and got her children to accept her exercising. I am now recommending this book to every woman I know, especially to those suffering from health problems that are difficult to identify or cure. It’s a tome, but you can easily skim the introduction and then flip to your specific problem. Unless you get sucked into it, as I did.

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Protected: Peepman

Posted on June 8, 2007 by Katy K.

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Library Politics

Posted on June 6, 2007 by Katy K.

I don’t often get on a librarian soap-box, but here are a couple of nice links I found today:

Not About the Buildings is a grassroots campaign to save the branches of the Providence Public Library. You can support them by downloading songs from the Library Album, including “The Missing Arm of Viktor Krum” by Harry and the Potters.

See no evil? is an editorial in the Guardian about the dangers of internet filtering.

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Castle Waiting

Posted on June 4, 2007 by Katy K.

Did I mention that I like fairy tales? Particularly feminist fairy tales?

Castle WaitingCastle Waiting by Linda Medley This graphic novel (recently available in a one-volume hardcover) starts by retelling the story of Sleeping Beauty. The young princess veers from the classic story, though, by leaving the castle with her prince as soon as she wakes up. The castle, with all its staff, is left without a ruler, waiting for her promised return. Over time, it becomes a refuge for those cast out from the rest of society, if they believe the legends and can find it. One such is a Lady Jain, pregnant and alone, who comes to Castle Waiting to bear her child. The castle is populated by a variety of interesting characters, including three now ancient ladies-in-waiting, a crane named Rackham, John Henry, and a horse-headed man called Sir Chess. The rambling story shifts its focus in the second half from Jain to a Solicitine nun, who shares her story and the history of her most unusual order. It’s funny and serious at the same time, and full of sly references to the characters of folk and fairy tales. The introduction by author Jane Yolen, hinting at the difference between truth and Truth, was a delightful addition.

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The Yarn Girls’ Guide to Beyond the Basics

Posted on June 4, 2007 by Katy K.

Yes, I am a little obsessed with knitting. No, I haven’t made a sweater yet myself. Not even a little one for Mr. FP.

Yarn Girls

The Yarn Girls’ Guide to Beyond the Basics by Julie Carles and Jordana Jacobs If you’re a knitter wanting to branch out a little from basic rectangles, but still wanting to keep things fairly simple, this is a good place to start. Well, depending one how much you’ve done, you might want to start with the first one, which has slightly simpler patterns. Both focus on basic sweaters knit in fairly large gauge, though there are a few hats, scarves and blankets as well. In this book, they include stripes, simple intarsia, cables and other stitch patterns, where in the first book, they are a bit simpler. They are mostly nice-looking patterns, ranging from the simple and basic to more modern in style. I say mostly, because while I liked many of them (and am really thinking about knitting the cabled “not your standard-issue sweatshirt, take two”), I personally would not want to wear a pea green sweater with an orange stripe up the middle. The Yarn Girls run New York City’s Yarn Company, and design patterns for a more fashion-conscious population. Anyway, the book is fun and the patterns nice enough to tempt a scarf knitter into the broader world of sweater knitting.

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