Writing Warm-Up or Four Things Meme

Melanie of Indextrious Reader tagged me for this one. Trying to get the writing juices flowing this morning so we'll see if this works for me:

Four Jobs I've Held

Switchboard Operator - Thirty years ago, in between regular jobs, I was a switchboard operator for three days at an old institution of some sort in Washington DC. I'm talking about cords and plugs and flipping switches in order to transfer calls. It was pretty bad, even as temp jobs go.

Camp Counselor - During college, I was a camp counselor during the summers. That wasn't bad; it worked off all the weight I would gain during the academic year.

Secretary - Another job that we should be glad technology has made largely redundant. Executives should be required to type their own letters; it will keep them from surfing porn in the office.

Writer, Corporate Communications - All thinly veiled marketing. Press releases are the spawn of Satan.

Four Places I've Visited

Thailand (We lived there for two years when I was just 8 or 9. My brother was born there.)

The Netherlands (A very nice country; cab drivers would help you into the car and calmly ask "And where does Madam wish to go?" Suffice it to say that it was quite a change from the cabbies at New York's JFK.)

England (not long enough of a visit; if that company would hire me back today, I'd go on the sole condition that I be permitted annually to be in London for a week at a time. They had me doing crappy little one and two day jaunts.)

Germany (don't remember it; I was under five at the time)

Four Places I'd Rather Be

--Eaglesmere, PA (Lovely hideaway place, where Offspring #2 is currently working at the ETC School. Great opportunity for starstruck kids. I am absolutely serious when I say that they will get so much out of it.)

--London, England (see above; I desperately want the leisure to visit Persephone Books and the British Library and the Tate Museum)

--Chicago, Illinois (I'm reading Karen Abbott's social history, Sin in the Second City, which centers around a high-class brothel in Chicago at the turn of the century. Besides there's great shopping and great food in Chicago. I miss working the library meetings there.)

--Riding Amtrak (I like trains much more than planes.)

Four Foods I Like

--Chocolate
--Pasta
--Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
--Vanilla Milk Shakes (along side the grilled cheese sandwich. Great taste sensation)

Those of you lazing about this August weekend may consider yourself tagged.

Innocence by David Hosp [Review]

Title: Innocence

Author: David Hosp (official author web site)

Copyright: 2007; Published by Warner Books, New York, ISBN 0-446-58014-7. (Review copy supplied by Hatchette Book Group USA)

Length: 416 pages

Genre: Legal suspense/thriller

Summary: Scott Finn is drawn into a case involving illegal immigrants against his better judgement. His is a one-man practice and he hasn't time or resources to devote to getting Vincente Salazar out of jail. Salazar was convicted of shooting a female police officer in the line of duty; attempts to clear his name and free him from jail will be received poorly by many, including some upon whom Finn depends in his professional life. By accepting the case, Finn, his private investigator friend, Tom Kozlowski, and Finn's law intern, Lissa, are caught up in a series of events ranging from spoken threats in an elevator to bloody, barbaric murder. Why is it so critical that an apparently innocent man remain in jail? Or was Salazar convicted appropriately with Finn about to engineer the release of a guilty man?

In Raymond Chandler's essay, The Simple Art of Murder, he commended Dashiell Hammett for writing "at first (and almost to the end) for people with a sharp, aggressive attitude to life. They were not afraid of the seamy side of things; they lived there. Violence did not dismay them; it was right down their street." David Hosp is doing his best to write in that tradition. His plots require violent action as much as they require honesty about the flaws in our law enforcement and legal systems. The pace of the action is rapid; the reader is swept along. Characterization might not be handled with the depth found in reading P.D. James but, while on stage, these characters, first introduced in Hosp's Dark Harbor, have enough energy to maintain the reader's interest.

Extract: Available here. I will warn readers that I found the prologue (which actually precedes the extract in the book itself) to be fairly violent. Naturally, it presents the crime in context but some readers may find such an opening off-putting.

Also Relevant: Hosp makes a point about our legal system, articulating the points of friction that will inevitably exist in life, due to the limits of forensic science, the demands of society, and the emotional tensions experienced by victim, criminal and enforcer. Is Finn a modern Philip Marlowe, neither tarnished nor afraid? To return again to Raymond Chandler, he is intended to be "... a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."

The testosterone runs fairly high in this one; with some exceptions, the action is largely through the eyes of the male characters (good and bad). Female characters are tough and mouthy because the males are largely tough and silent.

Given that my personal taste runs to poison in a teacup or injury inflicted by a heavy pewter candlestick, I don't think that I'm quite the intended audience for Innocence. That said, I think there is an audience out there for Innocence who are likely to find it a satisfying read.

Miss Marple on Mystery!

A week ago, I watched Mystery! on PBS. They were showing a new Miss Marple episode, starring Geraldine McEwan, entitled Nemesis. For the official write-up of that episode, go here. While you're over there, you might also read the interview with McEwan for her ideas about Miss Marple.

Now I had read the book some years back so I had a vague recollection of how it went but as I watched the episode, I puzzled more and more over the presence of the two Benedictine nuns in the story [see link above]. I was fairly sure that Agatha Christie never had nuns as characters in any of the stories featuring Miss Marple. So falling asleep before the episode was over, I made a note to myself to revisit the mystery, Nemesis, and check whether I was right. Turned out that I was! There were "sisters" in the story, but in the sense of blood relations rather than members of a religious order. It seemed a rather odd change; surely more modern viewers can identify immediately with the concept of a blood relation than with professed religious. I wasn't alone in the question. There were a number of viewers over at the PBS Mystery! forums wondering at the departure of the current set of episodes from the actual Christie plots. The response from the production company is captured here.

On the one hand, I suspect that Christie's expressed sense of morality is fairly foreign to modern sensibilities. Viewers, had the script adhered to the text more closely, might have wondered what the fuss was all about; so a young girl falls in love and secretly plans to marry a bad young man. As justification for murder, it seems a bit thin. However, if you recast the young woman as a novice in a religious order, then it's seems more intelligible that another member of that order might be moved to murder on the grounds that Verity (the novice) has violated her promise as a Bride of Christ. We believe that religious fundamentalism can cause murder. Overly controlling relatives just seem anti-climactic.

On the other hand, I don't care for the practice of "updating" a text in order to present it to new audiences. It is another instance of copyright holders and literary executors working to preserve the brand of an author name (for financial reasons) without much regard for the integrity of the work itself.

Personally, I'd come back to haunt any literary executor who did that to my work...

By the way....

Did anybody else post a link to this entry over at Library Thing (LT) this past week? It's entitled "Harry Potter and the Period of Quiet". Tim Spalding's flight to New York this past Tuesday was "like Harry Potter Study Hall". LibraryThing is giving prizes to people who post the best reviews of Volume 7 (as voted by members of LT) on the site by August 6th.

Jo Walton's Farthing [Review]

Title: Farthing

Author: Jo Walton (her official web site)

Copyright: 2006, published by Tor Books, New York, ISBN 0-763-31421-5

Length: 319 pages

Genre: Speculative fiction/mystery

Summary: Lucy Rowena Kahn, nee Easterling, has come down to her parent's estate with her husband, David Kahn for a weekend party. It's an uncomfortable setting for the young couple; Lucy's mother had steadfast objections to Lucy marrying someone of the Jewish faith to the point of threatening to attend her daughter's wedding ceremony dressed in mourning clothes. During the course of the weekend, the other guests display a range of prejudices against David which is awkward enough but following the murder of Lord James Thirkie, the police decide that David is the prime suspect in the case. Of course, he didn't do it , but how does one protect oneself against the accusations of prejudice in the midst of an uneasy peace? Farthing is set in an alternate universe where the Nazis control Europe almost entirely and England, suffering from the economic and political constraints this signifies, is vulnerable. (Walton wrote the book in 17 days in a fit of white-hot fury over politics. Don't let that dissuade you. She makes her point with skill and calculation rather than with any blunt objects. )

This would appear to be, in the early chapters, a pedestrian English country house murder mystery. As it progresses, the reader discovers that the lens of a murder mystery and the lens of an alternative timeline are actually used by author Jo Walton to present very interesting perpectives on issues of class, prejudice and hate.

Extract: The first two chapters of Farthing can be found here. We watch the drama unfold through two sets of eyes, the eyes of Lucy and those of Inspector Carmichael of Scotland yard. I will note that Lucy is not an amateur sleuth in this; any actual solving of the crime is left entirely up to the Inspector. Lucy is simply a witness (of sorts).

Also Relevant: I read and loved Jo Walton's Tooth and Claw which won the World Fantasy Award in 2004. That one has dragons wearing hats, and offers a parody of Anthony Trollope's novels. What's not to love? Farthing was marketed as an alternative WWII murder mystery, not a particularly exciting premise to me. Generally speaking, I am not keen on alternate history stories. I always wonder if perhaps the author wanted to write a real historical novel but discovered the difficulty of research and sees alternate history as an easy way out. That's certainly not the case with Farthing.

Unlike Tooth and Claw, this work is not amusing or light-hearted. It may seem so through the first half-dozen chapters, but the mood darkens and you can tell that the ending will not be a particularly uplifting one. In reading it, I was quite frankly reminded of the 1943 movie, Watch on the Rhine, which starred Bette Davis and had been based on a Lillian Hellman play. At other times, I was reminded a bit of Love in a Cold Climate and Gosford Park. At one point, I slammed the covers of this book shut because I thought I knew where it was headed and I dreaded that conclusion.

I fully intend to urge this on the book group at Didi's to see what they think of it. I urge it on you as well. It is due to be released in August in paperback form because Walton has a follow-up novel that features Inspector Carmichael called Ha'Penny due out in the early weeks of October. A fast read, but more powerful than one might expect.

Typepad Is Down

...which is why you can't get to some of your favorite book bloggers at this hour. According to an email in my box this afternoon, the cause is "power issues at our co-location facility." The system went down just before 5 pm (Eastern DST) and the email says they're working to rectify the situation. Just thought I'd share info, given that so many of our book-blog-buddies are on that particular platform.

Yellow-Journalism-Style Update: There are apparently several different albeit interesting accounts circulating, as to the actual source of the difficulty. Other affected services appear to include Technorati, Craig's List, Live Journal and other high-profile services. Disclaimer: I have no idea how reliable the sources referenced might be.

Much More Reliable Update: The really good book-bloggers all appear to be up again.

Final and Very Funny Update: Provided by Sylvia of Classical Bookworm.

Information Request

I have been asked to liveblog a conference within my industry in September, but the organizers are anxious to use a (free) bloghosting service that provides solid statistics on the blog's visibility in terms of hits, etc. Blogger really doesn't do that; to the best of my knowledge, one can get third-party counters that sit on the page, but nothing that yields more complex information. I use MyBlogLog which provides some statistics about visitors to this blog, but again, it's not a source for anything very sophisticated.

I'm seeking information from those of you that might be more knowledgeable than myself. Any feedback from those of you using Typepad? Does typepad give you a good set of statistics? Any other service you'd recommend? Recommendations on how I might get/extract better stats from Blogger?

I'm just putting this out there to see who might know. I have only blogged using this host so have no frame of reference.

Brief Update/Further Clarification: It would appear that google-analytics is also an option for use with Blogger/blogspot. I have added that code to this blog for a test period just to see what I learn. If you have feedback on google analytics, that would also be welcome.

In response to Dorothy W. : I'm not sure what they're looking for, actually; hits is the word used in the email which is, admittedly, rather vague. But I told my colleagues that I'd post the query to a number of social networks and see what came back.

My Cousin, Rachel [Review]

Title: My Cousin, Rachel

Author: Daphne du Maurier (official du Maurier web site)

Copyright: 1951; I read a recent reprint edition, ISBN 1579125697, from Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers. (Curiously, there is no city provided on the title page in connection with this publisher. It was no great difficulty to find out that they are part of Workman Press which is headquartered in New York, but I did find it rather odd that they'd skipped a standard part of the title page publishing protocols.)

Length: 325 pages

Genre: Suspense; female gothic

Summary: Twenty-four year-old-Philip Ashley is alone. The much beloved cousin who raised him from infancy, Ambrose, has gone to Italy to relieve the pain of his rheumatism. After three years of journeying back and forth, there is a year when Ambrose writes that he has decided to stay in Florence. He has met a young widow, distantly related, to whom he refers as "My cousin, Rachel". Within three months they are married. Subsequently, Philip receives odd letters from Ambrose that seem to indicate his health is failing and that Ambrose fears for his life, perhaps due to poison at the hands of his young wife. Philip travels to Florence, only to learn upon his arrival that Ambrose is dead and that the widow has disappeared with all of Ambrose's personal belongings. Philip, grief-stricken and blaming this stranger, Rachel, returns to Cornwall to take his place as Ambrose's heir. He is young and uncertain, but seems to rise to the challenge.

What then happens when Mrs. Ambrose Ashley (Rachel) arrives in Cornwall not long after Philip's return? Can Philip see the real woman in the midst of his grief? Is Rachel a scheming female or merely independent? Did she poison Ambrose or did Ambrose die a madman from other causes? Does Philip wrong Rachel by his suspicion? Told entirely from the viewpoint of Philip, this novel leaves many questions open for the reader to ponder.

The writing is masterful, the narrative compelling, and the characters fully fleshed out. The reader has plenty of material to analyze for the purposes of coming to a conclusion. Did Rachel kill Ambrose in the hopes of gaining his fortune? Did she manipulate Philip? Or did Philip, inexperienced and impetuous, drive an innocent Rachel to a grim and unforgiving end? I imagine that there are women out there who have not yet read this tale, but if you've missed it, you will want to rectify that omission. It's a gripping read.

Also relevant: The first time one reads My Cousin, Rachel, the reader is so fixated on the determination of guilt with regard to Rachel, there is scant attention paid to the character of Philip. The second time one reads My Cousin, Rachel, there is more opportunity to consider duMaurier's position on Philip's general youth and inexperience with relationships, the gender gap inherent to the culture in 19th century Cornwall, and the craft with which duMaurier creates a mood of ambiguity while bringing her tale to a satisfactory close. I read somewhere that duMaurier herself never reached a conclusion as to Rachel's guilt, but now cannot locate the reference.

It is too easy to categorize duMaurier's novels as "female gothic" or "historical romances". Her main strength as an author is the creation of characters who are so engaging that one neglects to question their reliability as a narrator (as in My Cousin, Rachel) or note that you never hear their Christian name (as in Rebecca). I never once doubted the voice of Philip Ashley; he and his reactions to events seemed as realistic and as likely as those of my own son, seated on the couch with his laptop.

The movie version of this novel (1952, Twentieth-Century Fox) starred Richard Burton and Olivia de Haviland. I found de Haviland's rendition of Rachel to be entirely in keeping with the character of the novel while Burton as Philip chewed the scenery left and right. Still it was what prompted me to first buy and read this novel last summer, and subsequently select it for this month's book talk with the township library group. They were most enthusiastic about this title as a discussion, so I look forward to hearing their opinions and theories later in the week.

Update: Corrected copyright date to 1951 and corrected actress' name to deHaviland from Hussey as originally written.

** Potential Spoiler**Stop Now**Potential Spoiler**Stop Now

For what it is worth as a final conclusion, I don't think she murdered him, but I do think he murdered her. There! All clear now?

Safely In The Reader's Hands

In the interest of reporting on the situation honestly, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is here and I'm no longer worried about the offspring's future happiness. Of course, the postman also delivered very ordinary, muggle-like mortgage and utility bills along with the magic. Sigh, I couldn't have afforded to go out and buy a second copy.

Now should I open the package for him? Or would that be a smothering-monster-mom thing to do? Technically, the package is addressed to me...

Blithering idiot

As of 12:24pm today, I have sunk to a new low. I have just eaten Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream and had the temerity to call it my lunch. Agitation should not drive one to this.

On the other hand, Making Light has a wonderfully funny post/thread on Flamer Bingo!