Book review: Mr. Kiss and Tell by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham

The eighth book I read in 2015 is the second Veronica Mars novel, Mr. Kiss and Tell by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham.  I was a big fan of the TV series back in the day and went to opening weekend of the Kickstarted Veronica Mars movie.  This is the second book released since then, both of which pick up with the movie continuity and move forward from there.

Rob Thomas is the creator of the show so, unlike some novelizations, all the dialogue is utterly true to the characters; you can just hear the actors from the series delivering the lines.  I think it's utterly ridiculous, however, for the authors to expect the reader to believe that Veronica Mars can visit the parent of a former classmate using a false name and not be recognized.  Frankly, by this time, anyone in Neptune ought to recognize the daughter of their former sheriff considering all the times she ought to have been featured in local newscasts and newspapers for her crime-solving and involvement in various scandals.

More unfortunately, this book revisits one of the most egregious of the TV series's missteps in the Manning family, which is simultaneously wealthy and powerful and fundamentalist Christian in a beach town in southern California.  They're prominent in their church ... which no one else in town attends ... and they're part of the Quiverfull movement ... despite having only three children.  Nothing about them makes the slightest bit of sense, but you can feel the self-righteous vindictiveness flow out of Thomas' and Graham's pens.  Biker gangs? Mostly nice guys who are misunderstood, and their petty crimes are small potatoes compared to the systemic violence and corruption of society.  Prostitutes?  Brave and kind women who have taken control of their own bodies to achieve their dreams and deserve respect for their choices.  Evangelical Christians?  100% evil, beyond the pale, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

The Mannings' religious leanings aren't even relevant to the plot; it's just an excuse to bash Christians.  Ironically, one of the main political points raised by the story is the victimization of prostitutes, who are often assaulted or otherwise abused but are afraid to go to the police lest they be arrested because of their jobs.  You know who have been main players in efforts to stop sex trafficking and to prosecute pimps and johns instead of prostitutes?  Christian ministries.

After the Veronica Mars movie, only two novels were announced.  I don't know if there will be any further books in the series (although this book certainly sets up some intriguing changes in Neptune that I'd like to hear more about), but I'll certainly buy a third if it's published.

Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!

If this isn't this year's best Super Bowl ad, the advertisers are really upping their game....

Book review: Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith

Back to the actual Mma Ramotswe, with all her flawed humanity a more endearing protagonist than the cold fish Sidney Chambers could ever aspire to be.  The seventh book I read in 2015 is also the seventh in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.

It is in the nature of the series that Blue Shoes and Happiness doesn't introduce any new and revolutionary twists into the formula.  No new characters are introduced, although the latest addition to the combination garage/detective agency at the heart of the story, Mr. Polopetsi, makes a sad mistake as he tries to contribute to the latter side of the business.  Charlie, the older apprentice, might actually be getting serious about a girl ... but if he does, it's not confirmed in this installment.  The younger and less troublesome apprentice still hasn't been given the dignity of a name.  On the continuity front, Grace Makutsi is still making two kinds of tea, which is good, although we are suddenly confronted with the never-before-hinted-at assertion that she was widowed at some point in her backstory, which is bad.

The blue shoes of the title are Mma Makutsi's.  (The shoes pictured on the cover are most emphatically not her shoes, which explicitly have a red lining in the story.)  Mma Makutsi continues her evolution as a terrific character, with the hilarious and charming trait of imagining her shoes berating her for her missteps as she looks at the ground in anxiety or consternation: "You've done it, Boss, said the shoes.  Don't expect us to carry you all around town looking for another man.  You had one and now you don't.  Bad luck, Boss.  Bad luck."

As for Mma Ramotswe, she has a characteristically conservative outlook on societal change and the younger generation: "Take one country, with all that the country means, with its kind people, and their smiles, and their habit of helping one another; ignore all this; shake about; add modern ideas; bake until ruined."

Book review: Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie

Unbeknownst to me, Masterpiece Mystery began showing a series based on this interlinked collection of short stories in January.  Having received the book as a Christmas gift, I jumped a bit ahead on my reading shelf to finish at least the first story before the show premiered, in case I wanted to watch it without being spoiled.

As it turns out, I chose not to watch the series at this time.  I read a review of the first episode that made it appear the romance angle was really played up for TV, a romance that only makes a tentative and half-hearted appearance halfway through the book.  I can't stand sexed-up adaptations, and frankly the book itself, with its back-cover blurb about Sidney having "eyes the color of hazelnuts" already makes me think of Rose from "Keeping Up Appearances" cooing over the "dishy vicar."

This sixth book I read in 2015 is the first of a planned six volumes of The Grantchester Mysteries.  Without huge reserves of enthusiasm, I'll probably sign on for the complete trip.  Sidney Chambers is the vicar of Grantchester in Cambridge in the early 1950s: 1953-54, in fact, in this volume, which gives precise dates and provides the newspaper headlines and wireless stories that would have been current at the time.  A veteran soldier from the recently-ended World War II and jazz aficionado, Sidney makes for a curiously bloodless protagonist.  Historical accuracy substitutes for depth of character, in the hero as well as the supporting cast.  I find it hard to get too excited about any of the characters.  The reader seems expected to root for the aforementioned romance, despite the fact that neither Sidney nor the lady can gin up any real enthusiasm for each other.  I can't help but feel that they'd be a terrible match if they ever bestirred themselves to action, at any rate.

Speaking of awkward publicity text, one of the blurbers compares Sidney inexplicably to Mma Ramotswe.  Because they're both mystery series, I suppose?  The two have very little in common beyond their genre.  The more natural comparison would be to G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown, although perhaps that's not current enough to sell books.  They are, after all, both Anglican priests who solve crimes on the side.  Sidney, however, suffers from the comparison, as there seems to be as little thought put into his theology as there is into his romantic life.  He repeatedly complains that his hobby of solving crimes conflicts with his vocation, as being a priest demands that he think the best of everyone; Father Brown, on the other hand, with a more orthodox understanding of original sin, held that his vocation made him the perfect investigator, having heard confession, witnessed repentance, and plumbed the depths of human depravity.  His less idealistic view of human nature, ironically, makes him a warmer and more forgiving character and less of a disapproving scold than Sidney manages to be.

(As a side note, the capitalization of 'The' in the middle of the title -- Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death -- is really annoying from a grammatical point of view.  I suppose the 'Sidney Chambers and' is appended to the title of each of the books for branding, as if the 'The Grantchester Mysteries' heading wasn't enough.  Might as well stick a hashtag on it.  #StrunkandWhite.)

Book review: The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth

The fifth book I read in 2015 is The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase by Mark Forsyth.  A linguaphile's text, it explains various terms of classical rhetoric and provides examples of their usage in English literature and pop culture.  The author has a friendly and casual style which must serve him well in his etymological blog. (And ... followed.)

Forsyth moves from alliteration (pointing out that if you say "Full fathom five thy father lies," you're a great poet whereas if you say "Your father's corpse is 9.144 metres below sea level," you're just a coast guard with bad news) to polyptoton (repeating the same word as a different part of speech or in a different form, as in the Beatles' "Please Please Me") to antithesis ("It was the best of times, it was the worst of times....") and on through thirty-six more rhetorical formulae, some of which I remembered touching on in English class but many of which I didn't.

Unlike with short stories, I had no issue breezing through from one set of definitions and examples to the next, which probably says something about me; I can certainly imagine other readers enjoying this book more by dipping in a chapter or two at a time and some for whom the whole project would be an exercise in tedium.  Not I, however.

Book review: In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith

The fourth book I read in 2015 is In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, the sixth book in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith.  Amusingly enough, considering my review of the previous book, Smith almost immediately deals with the bush tea issue, albeit only by forcing Grace Makutsi to have the same awkward conversation with her employer that she's already had; Mma Ramotswe even explicitly remembers Mma Makutsi making both kinds of tea and then reverting to drinking bush tea with no explanation why.  I stand by my opinion that the author simply forgot and was reminded by readers and posts on the internet.  Mma Makutsi's teapot does play a part in the larger plot of the book, but it could still have been used if she had been drinking her preferred kind of tea all this time.

Apart from that side issue, I really enjoyed this book.  Mma Ramotswe gets an It's a Wonderful Life moment in which the people to whom she has showed kindness and generosity vow to help her in what appears to be her own hour of need, and both Mma Makutsi and a newly-introduced character whom one swiftly grows to like and respect are rewarded in a manner they richly deserve.  A villain is rather two-dimensional, doing all but twirling his moustache as he cackles evilly, and a few plot threads appear to be dropped in wrap-up; but I'm willing to overlook more than that in exchange for the most Mitford-esque installment in the series thus far.

Book review: Dancing with Mr. Darcy

The third book I read in 2015 is Dancing with Mr. Darcy, a collection of short stories entered in a Jane Austen short story competition, introduced by Sarah Waters.  I might have enjoyed the stories more if I'd spaced them out with other reading material in between rather than pushing straight through from the first page to the last.  My tolerance for short stories is low in the best of circumstances; the passing glimpses of characters one gets in the abbreviated art form is like watching train cars pass by: both interminable and ephemeral.

The quality of the stories meanders the gamut (really, it's a bunch of introspective female characters examining their lives; there's not enough action for them to "run") from high-school-literary-magazine to Austen-sequel-doomed-to-end-its-days-remaindered (Elinor Dashwood Ferrars opening her own private detective agency à la Precious Ramotswe, really?).  My favorites are "Eight Years Later" by Elaine Grotefield, which is daring enough to have a male protagonist, and "One Character In Search of Her Love Story Role" by Felicity Cowie, although I'm a bit dubious of the author for not acknowledging the debt she owes to Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series.  (Barely possible she's never heard of it and just invented the same conceit, but it would be an absolutely astonishing case of parallel development.)

{Fun Fact to Know and Tell: I went to dictionary.com to copy paste the correctly accented a in "à la"  rather than having to find it in the character map and discovered that, according to the Online Etymological Dictionary, the phrase's first published use with an English rather than a French word as the object was in Jane Austen!}

Book review: Enough by Kate Conner

Saturday I finished reading my second book of 2015, Enough: 10 Things We Should Be Telling Teenage Girls by Kate Conner.  Based on a blog post by a youth worker that went viral, it aims to help teens avoid mistakes that will at best waste their time and energy and at worst negatively affect their lives for years to come.

One of the things is that smoking is not cool, and it frankly boggles my mind that is even an open question in this day and age.  I didn't even know anyone who smoked when I was a teenager, lo these many moons ago, and I'm stunned every time I see young people huddled at the back doors of their jobs, smoking on break.  Conner is writing from the old South, however, North Carolina, in particular, and cigarettes are much more a part of the culture there.  I well remember mornings when the wind was just right and you could smell the tobacco from the R.J. Reynolds plant all over campus.  (It actually smells great before you set it on fire!)

Yes, I will mark off for spelling.

We drove past a small office building the other day that had a large, colorful, professionally-printed banner out front advertising that it had space for lease.  Along with the phone number, etc, was the advisement that it was a "multi-tennet building."

I've seen 'tenet' in place of 'tenant' many times, but at least that's a real (if incorrectly-used) word which passes the spellcheck test.  It boggles the mind that at no point in the process of ordering and printing and paying for this sign did anyone bother to make sure they knew how to spell the word they obviously thought they knew how to spell.

Maybe at some point they'd spelled 'tenant' 'tenet' and someone told them, "No, it has two Ns?"

Book review: The Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith

The first book I finished reading in 2015 is The Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith. The fifth installment in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, it continues the story of Precious Ramotswe, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and Mma Makutsi in Botswana.  Much like in Jan Karon's Mitford books, there is very little action in the Mma Ramotswe series; you don't read for events and excitement but out of enjoyment of the characters.

I have a few quibbles with the series.  One is Smith's cavalier attitude toward continuity.  In an earlier book in the series, Mma Makutsi finally works up the nerve to tell her employer that she prefers regular tea to the bush tea she brews for Mma Ramotswe and from then on she makes both kinds of tea so they can drink tea together, each enjoying her favored beverage.  In the books since then, however, Mma Makutsi always and explicitly drinks bush tea.  It's as if, having given Mma Makutsi differing tastes, Smith decided that it's just too much trouble to keep track of.

Another issue is his penchant for inserting the Social Issue of the Week into the story, whether it fits or not.  In this book, it's anti-immigration sentiment he wants to denounce so he puts a random musing into the mind of Mma Ramotswe about how Botswana ought to welcome immigrants from less fortunate countries because all people are brothers and sisters, this despite her repeated worries about how Botswana is losing touch with its traditions and explicit blanket judgments about Zulus and other African peoples in the rest of the series.  He wants Mma Ramotswe both to be endearingly and engagingly provincial and to espouse the politically-correct opinions of western Europe.

My final concern is one that bothered me when reading The Help, as well.  Precious Ramotswe is an entirely African character, and the greatest draw of the series is immersing oneself in her worldview and seeing the world through the eyes of someone with a life and outlook very different than American life.  And yet, what the reader is really imbibing is not a thirty-something traditionally-built Motswana woman's perspective, but what a fifty-something white Scottish man thinks an African woman's perspective is (or should be).  Yes, he grew up in Rhodesia and spent four years teaching in Botswana, but just as with The Help, I'm uncomfortable on some level with a privileged and well-educated white writer presuming to speak on behalf of a less-privileged group.  The gender gap in the case of Smith only exacerbates that feeling.