Reading Wednesday

What did you just finish?
Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes by Shoba Narayan. A fairly unmemorable memoir in which Narayan lives a pretty normal middle-class life in Madras/Chennai, goes to college in New England, and then heads back to India to get married. The writing is neither wonderful or terrible, and she doesn't have any new insights into life, culture, food, art, or any other topic. That said, it's also not a book anyone could really hate, and the recipes do look really good and useful, though I haven't actually tried any of them myself yet. I could quibble with some of the choices – does anyone really need a whole recipe devoted to making ghee? – but overall it's a perfectly pleasant, easily forgettable book.

Unveiled by Courtney Milan. This is the first book in Milan's Turner series, which came out before her Brothers Sinister books. In 1830s England, Margaret is the daughter of a Duke. However, her place in society is lost when a distant cousin, Ash Turner, proves she and her brothers are illegitimate, making Ash himself the Duke's heir. Margaret and her brothers are still trying to press their suit forward in court, so when Ash arrives at the Duke's home, Margaret stays on, disguised as a servant, to spy on him. SURPRISE THEY FALL IN LOVE.
In some ways, you can really see that this is an earlier book; some of the things that Milan will do much better later are here, but only in half-formed ways. Ash is a better Duke than Margaret's brothers (in the sense of trying to be responsible to the people under him), but that point isn't developed much, and the class system is still a bit the 'Wheee Dukes!' of most historical romances. Ash himself is a bit more stereotypical Alpha Male than Milan's later heroes (though he does prove to be soft-hearted by the end). I did ultimately really love the climax where Margaret, not her brothers and not Ash, wins the lawsuit. I wanted more of that!

Unlocked by Courtney Milan. A short novella in the Turner series. As a young man, Evan had a crush on Elaine, both of them newly introduced to Society (in the capital-S sense) and attending the same parties. He dealt with his crush like many teenage boys: by constantly making fun of Elaine and giving her cruel nicknames. Years later, he's come to regret his behavior, but Elaine is still unmarried, due in large part to Evan's treatment of her, and she doesn't trust his overtures of friendship. And then she ties him up with mountain-climbing rope. I really liked this one! I would have read a whole novel about them, honestly; their problems were very realistic, I loved the solution, and the long-standing tension between them really worked for me.

Unclaimed by Courtney Milan. And yet more of the Turner series. Mark is Ash's younger brother, a celebrity – even having been knighted by Queen Victoria – for having written a book about male chastity. Jessica is a courtesan (which feels like the wrong terminology for 1840s England, but whatever) hired to seduce Mark and prove that he's not really as upright as his reputation; she wants to quit the courtesan life, but desperately needs the money from this last job to do so.
I really liked the premise of this book, but feel like it didn't quite carry through. If you're going to have a virgin for your hero and have the heroine be an experienced, worldly woman, why make him so confident and dominating? Why have her always so nervous and in need of help? Also, given the character dynamics, I really feel like the sex scenes – or at least the first one, come on – should not read like every other romance novel sex scene ever.
There were a lot of things I liked about the book other than the central romance. Mark's reporter/stalker, who constantly follows him around in order to sell more newspapers, was hilarious, as was the Male Chasity Brigade of his followers. The climatic scene in which Jessica fights a duel with the bad guy, was almost the iddy awesomeness I wanted it to be, but it was taken just a little too seriously for me to really appreciate the 'heroine fights a duel!' element. Duels are only fun when they're not taken seriously at all; if they are, it becomes weirdly ritualized violence that is never actually effective at addressing the problem. There was a lot of that in this book actually, since there's also a scene where Mark beats up the Bad Guy and for some reason we're supposed to be cheering instead of thinking, 'Great, we've achieved the same level of problem-solving as ten-year-olds". But man, the premise is so great! I really wish the book could be rewritten without some of the Standard Romance trappings.

Talk Sweetly to Me by Courtney Milan. The newest Milan book, a short novella connected to her Brothers Sinister series. I WAS SO EXCITED FOR THIS, YOU GUYS. SO EXCITED. It's about a black, glasses-wearing mathematician named Rose and her Irish, promiscuous, feminist boyfriend. I WAS REALLY READY TO READ MY OWN ENJOYMENT INTO IT. But alas, it just didn't quite work for me. There's nothing really wrong with the book – the biggest complaint I have is that the characters have supposedly just met and don't know each other well, but they relate as though they've been acquaintances (at least) for ages. At some points, it's almost unclear how they know each other, or why they want to. Mostly though, I guess the best way to put it is that it lacked a spark. Though it's also possible that my expectations were too high.

Graveyard Dust by Barbara Hambly. I actually read this last week, but finally have my thoughts typed up. (Anonymous)
This book is one of my favorites in the series, I love it so much.

This is the first one that really emphasizes the sort of… fantastic quality of the series. It's not quite a fantasy, because there's always also a rational explanation for the things that happen, and it's not really magic realism, because it's not so much about the symbolism, but there's just this sort of undercurrent of 'maybe voodoo spells really do work, maybe ghosts really can accuse their murderers, maybe the Virgin Mary really will show up in your dreams and give you an answer". Or maybe not – maybe it's all a coincidence or a lucky guess or lies. But I love that the possibility is there. Everything from Isaak not really being dead to Colonel Pritchard's death – which is great, I love how his funeral at the end ties back to the opening scene, and god, he's such a dick – to the figure on the bridge at the climatic scene. None of HAS to be because voodoo is real - but it could be!

And with a flirt and a leap, the music sprang forward, like a team of bright-hooved horses, swirling the drums’ dark beat away. Walls of shining gold, protecting within them the still center that the world’s caprices could not touch. I love Ben's relationship with music. There's a lot of particularly beautiful passages about it in this book.

Ben's still recovering from the climatic parts of Fever Season which has left him unable to fight or do much of anything physically. It's an interesting contrast to rest of the series, since he's normally so strong. Also, God, Hannibal is so sick in this book. Which is... less of a contrast, but it's much more dramatic here than it usually is. I am continually in denial about Hannibal's TB and just want Ben to invent antibiotics, despite it being a century early.

“Any imbecile can tell you the currency must be made stable, but why this imbecile Jackson believes he can do so by handing the country’s money to a parcel of criminals.” Man, there's some foreshadowing that's not going to pay for books to come. I suppose that's easier to do when you're writing about historical events, though.

It took me a ridiculous amount of time to figure out why Ben signs his letters "fmc", considering that it's the title of the first book. But I googled it while I was puzzling over it, and it turns up all sorts of historical documents - it seems to have indeed been a really common abbreviation in letters and wills and such. Along with "fwc", for women.

Jumon hesitated, trying to pick his words with care. “Now, Antoine was always … always a very fanciful little boy. Not always truthful, I’m afraid, and inclined to exaggerate when he thought he could win either admiration or sympathy, especially sympathy." With the knowledge of what's revealed at the end of the book, I wonder why Jumon says this here. Is he afraid Antoine has accused him to Ben? Is it just what he's used to always saying, any time Antoine is mentioned? Has he actually convinced himself that it's true? It's a really revealing statement.

Oh god I love Livia so much. I love her gossip, I love her refusing to admit to realities that she doesn't want to, I even love how much of a total asshole she is.

I'd forgotten Granville was an important character in this plot too! Man, he is just involved in everything that goes wrong in New Orleans. It's good to see the Mayerlings again too, and how happy they are, even if there isn't anything new really we learn about them.

I love the scene with Ben, Rose and Hannibal cooking jamabalya together. I don't even have anything to say about it, it's just so cute.

Ben's getting good at disguises and such by this book. I particularly like the scene where he passes himself off as a German Baron's servant, especially January had been a musician in Paris for ten years. Every tale and anecdote and bit of gossip he’d ever heard there—not to mention substantial blocks of Stendhal and Balzac—flowed easily to his tongue. Hee. I like that mix of his resources - calling on both his sort of high-class literature knowledge as well as his own experience of how to behave like a servant.

Ah, the poisoning scene is so great. I was saying to someone that this series is amazingly iddy for being a serious examination of historical racism, and dramatic H/C poisoning scenes are definitely an example of why.

I love Gabriel, especially his participation in his own rescue - it would be easy to have written him in that scene just as a victim, a damsel to be saved, but instead he's clever and quick and working on saving himself.

Here are just a bunch of my favorite scenes or quotes, because this book has so many bits that I love:

Relief unspeakable.
I’ll be safe now.
No more nightmares about his mother going away, as others on the plantation had gone so abruptly away. No more fear that someone would one day say to him, You are going to go live someplace else now—someplace where he knew no one.
All his life, it seemed to him, he had wanted a home, wanted a place where he knew he was safe. Awwwww, Ben. I love how central home and family is to him; it makes perfect sense, given his life, but he's kinda a woobie about it, and it's completely adorable. Ben needs all the fluffy fanfiction written about him.

If asked, Benjamin January would have denied all and any belief in magic. To his childhood catechism had been added the writings of Pascal, Newton, Leibniz, and Descartes, and the severed foot of a chicken was to his rational mind nothing more than so much leathery skin and bone.
He slept in the storeroom over the kitchen that night, and told himself this was because he did not want to disturb any sign in the room that, by daylight, might have told him who had entered to lay the fix. He did not, however, sleep particularly well.
Haaaaaaaa, oh, Ben. You are so cute.

“You’ll be all right,” said January finally, and Hannibal turned, drug-bright eyes glittering.
“It’s kind of you to lie to me,” he said, “but in point of fact I am not going to be all right. I am going to die. If not of this bout, of the next, or the next. That’s why I left Dublin, and that’s why I came here. I’ll try not to be a burden to you but I undoubtedly will be; you could more profitably purchase a watchdog for fifty cents.” He was trembling, his face ghost-white, like a skull in the dark straggling frame of his hair, and there was anger and a savage contempt in every tone and word. He must have heard it, for he looked away, biting his lip. January saw the cuffs of his sleeve were spattered with blood.
“I know I could.” He walked over and laid a hand on the fiddler’s shoulder. “But at the moment I don’t have fifty cents.” And he felt the stabbing bones under the patched linen shake suddenly with a breath of wry laughter.
Ah, I really like this scene. Hannibal so rarely says anything about his past, or anything at all that has real emotion, that it's nice to occasionally see glimpses of it (even if it's, like Ben says, because he's incredibly high). It's also interesting because Hannibal is almost never described as angry, even in circumstances that would really warrant it; the few times that he is, like here, it's usually at himself instead of someone else. And also I just love Ben and Hannibal's relationship, and could read a hundred scenes of them being sad and then comforting each other.

“And did you find the teacup Mathurin Jumon served Isaak the arsenic in?”
“I found a teacup with arsenic stains in it,” replied January gravely, his eyes moving ceaselessly up and down the dark streets. “I didn’t attach much importance to it because the teacup was Sèvres pâte dur instead of Palissy ware. Oh, and there was a copy of Laurence Jumon’s will impaled on the tree trunk with an Arabian dagger, and one of Isaak’s visiting cards. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. And up she comes.” He pushed the wrought-iron gate inward a little, then closed it behind them, pulling out the black ribbon that tied his hair to bind the gate loosely shut again. “Was the visiting card also impaled on the tree trunk with a dagger?”
“On the other side of the tree,” extemporized January, scratching a lucifer and shielding the candle he took from his bag. “Separate dagger.”
“Also Arabian?”
“Venetian.” Their whispers echoed in the arch of the flagged carriageway. “Quattrocento. Cellini, I think.”
“Cellini made good daggers.” Hannibal nodded wisely. “An excellent choice. Tasteful.”
“Which would argue that it had to have been Mathurin. I mean, I can’t see Hubert Granville having the refinement to buy a Cellini dagger.” They emerged into the dark courtyard, the closed and shuttered bulk of the slave quarters looming before them against the sooty sky. The fountain muttered softly; the candlelight showed up a cat’s eyes, hunting frogs among the banana plants.
“A point, my friend. A most distinct point.”
“All daggers”, said January, in a tone of deep solemnity, “have a point,” and Hannibal went into a fit of coughing from trying to stifle a laugh.
OMG SUCH DORKS I LOVE IT. Scenes of them being silly are also great.

In the end they got Gabriel to do it, balanced perilously on a borrowed pair of pattens that added three inches to his height and wearing a dark-blue tignon stuffed and padded out to bring the top of his silhouette up another four. “Oh, M’sieu,” he squeaked, holding out his arm to his uncle for balance as he minced around his mother’s parlor in one of her borrowed dresses, “please lend me your arm! I feel faint!” And amid gales of laughter from his siblings he brought the back of his hand to his forehead in imitation of the frailer Creole belles. “Can’t I wear at least a little rouge, Papa? I can’t be a real belle without rouge.”
Oh my god I love Gabriel. I really want a whole Gabriel-focused book.

But all the way through the streets to the Cabildo he remembered Ayasha, lying dead in their rooms on the Rue de l’Aube. Remembered the smell of the sickness as he climbed the stair. Remembered opening the door and seeing her.
Some part of him, he thought, would never recover from that. Some part of him would always be trapped in that moment, like a ghost returning to repeat endlessly one single action in the same corner of the same house forever: opening the door and finding her. Opening the door and finding her.
I just love this line; the feeling described is so vivid and evocative. And I love that it's Ben who's symbolized as the ghost, rather than Ayasha.
(And here's the link to the FFA discussion, wich actually - for once! – is still going on.)


What are you currently reading?
The Magistrates of Hell by Barbara Hambly. This time, James and Lydia (and vampire third Ysidro, I suppose, though he's actually not part of their group at the point I've read to yet) go to China!

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri. I actually didn't like the previous Lahiri books I've read, but this one seems not to be a thinly-disguised autobiography, so I'm more interested in it.