Friday Music - deeply absorbing old favourites

I can't tell you how much, how deeply I love this.

Cat Stevens as he was, Yusuf Islam as he is now. I love everything about this song: the melody, the words, the arrangement, his voice, the emotion he sings with. *Clasps hands earnestly*

Brief booky ruminations

It's been hectically busy at work. But the beat goes on, reading-wise. In no particular order:

1. Jill Sorenson sent me Sea Lord by Virginia Kantra, a selkie shapeshifting book. It was actually ok, but I struggled a little with the whole... turning into a seal thing. Seals aren't quite as, well, sexy as wolves:

Her limbs shortened and fused. Her body thickened. Panic closed her throat. She couldn't.... She must. She struggled forward, wallowing in the surf, ungainly and powerful.

The corn maiden was good though, and sent me to my bookshelf to read Feathertop by Nathaniel Hawthorne again.

2. Following on from my last post, my first Anne Stuart book arrived, a Regency: The Devil's Waltz. It was a very enjoyable B, and has left me keen to read more Stuart. The most notable thing was the hero's cheerful amorality, in fact, downright immorality. He's really quite a bad 'un yet somehow appealing. My one gripe? The heroine confesses her love for the hero in a rather lowering manner and then the hero doesn't really 'make that good' by the end. Funnily enough though, I find as I get older that I am less concerned by these sorts of 'gaps' (perhaps I read more into the text? Perhaps I just see things less in a tit-for-tat way now). This merits a longer post of its own and maybe I'll write it when I have more time.

3. I'm currently reading Penniless and Purchased by Julia James, an author who is like crack for me. It's .... really quite extraordinary. I am going resist the temptation to review it.

4. I've got a whole pile of books I've read first chapters on and got no further. I need to go back to these books. They are not DNFs. For the most part I've enjoyed the first chapters but just felt like reading something else at the time.

5. Janet Webb sent me Something About You by Julie James. Having said on someone's blog (Promantica I think) I had no desire to read it, I'm forced to eat my words. I enjoyed it. It was a good solid read and the misunderstanding between the H/H was rational and believable.

6. Janet also sent me Goddess of the Hunt by Tessa Dare. I've been enjoying it so far, despite finding the heroine a bit irritating (headstrong, heedless, gets into trouble regularly - not my type really). I've put it aside till I'm finished with the roller coaster ride that is Penniless and Purchased.

I hope your reading adventures are going well.

Anthologies, trade descriptions and inconsistency

I've been very real-work-busy this week. Working every evening at home till late (remote access is a terrible thing) including the weekend. I'm now winding down. Writing a blog post helps get my mind off law - law in my head is not conducive to sleep. Romantic novels are more so.

In light of the work pressures, I've been reading an anthology this week. Each of the four novellas is just a hundred pages or so and all light reads. It's a Mills & Boon/ Harlequin anthology called Snowbound Together featuring stories by Lindsay McKenna, Cara Summers, Laura Marie Altom and Anne Stuart, all (yes, all) new-to-me authors. I'd heard of Anne Stuart of course, and she was the reason I bought the book, which was fifty pence in the Cancer Research charity shop. Bargain.

I've read three of the four so far. I started with Anne Stuart because I fancied trying her out. Her story was Star Light, Star Bright, the story of Angela and Brody. They had always carried secret torches for one another but hadn't seen one another for a decade and in the meantime had married other people, in the heroine's case, her childhood sweetheart (who had stood between them in the past). Both were now divorced - and in Brody's case, financially ruined - and back home to lick their wounds.

I really liked the story in a very uncomplicated way. It was just good. I liked the H/H and the set up and it all just worked. I sort of felt.... safe or comfortable or something in Stuart's hands. It was by no means a perfect story but I just came away from it feeling pleased. So now I've ordered a few of her old categories from Amazon, just to try them out.

Caught By Surprise by Laura Marie Altom was next. Another Brodie this time, albeit with an -ie. The heroine was Tabby. Again, the H/H had a past - teenage sweethearts until Tabby callously dumped Brodie leaving him to pin a "Success is the Best Revenge" poster on his wall and devote his life to his .....rural GP pratice? Tabby meanwhile had had a career in 'advertising', married a cardiologist and failed to find fulfilment in her six-bedroomed house and voluntary work.

I disliked this story. The characters were shallow and poorly drawn and in parts it was truly risible, like when totally unqualified Tabby acts as Brodie's nurse for an afternoon? Or attends a birth with him to hold the mother-to-be's hand and urge her to push?

"I can't!" [Kelly] cried, thrashing her head.

"Sure you can," Tabby crooned, holding Kelly's hand. "Just think how awsome it's going to be when you finally hold your baby in your arms."

If I was Kelly, I think I'd have said something rather blue in response to this strange unqualified woman in my house telling me in my moment of agony that of course I can push some more. But Kelly is evidently milder-mannered than me. Her response?

"O-okay. I- I think I can."

The ending made me roll my eyes.

I've not read the Cara Summers story yet and before I talk about A Healing Spirit by Lindsay McKenna, I'll pause here to say I'm disgruntled by the title of this anthology: Snowbound Together. What do you assume from such a title?

I'm thinking something like this. With the H/H inside.

Like in Simply Unforgettable by Mary Balogh for instance. Or that nice Sandra Marton category I once read where the H/H - an estranged couple - go up to their cabin for xmas, each believing the other won't be there. Or the fabulous Duel of Desire by Charlotte Lamb which has the H/H not being snowed-in, but being trapped in a house in France by a flood and having to live upstairs for a few days eating out of tins.

Well, maybe Ms Summers will come through for me, but so far, there have been NO SNOW-INS in this anthology. Not a one. Admittedly, in the Anne Stuart, Angela walks through a snowstorm to get to Brody but no actual being trapped together.

So, that was a disappointment.

But onto the Lindsay McKenna story, which was really the reason I'm writing this post.

I googled Ms McKenna just before I started this post and discovered she has published many books - I hadn't heard her name before but then she seems to write a lot of military romances which are very much not my thing, so that probably explains it. This story started with a description of an incident featuring the heroine in Afghanistan (she is a pilot involved in a crash in which all her comrades die) but all the rest of the story takes place on a native American reservation.

Tahcha has gone home to recover from her mental wounds. Her childhood sweetheart (yes, again!) is now a medicine man on the reservation, Storm Black Horse. Her grandmother sends her to Storm to be healed and the two rediscover their long-ago love. My experience of reading this story was strange.

I was attracted to a number of things about the story. I liked the fact that it was set on a reservation and that it depicted a culture that I'm not familiar with that is very unlike anything I've read before in a category. In particular, the lack of materialism was very notable. The hero isn't depicted as particularly financially successful and no attention at all is paid to material things. This almost made me notice by omission how prevalent these things are in other categories I've read.

SPOILER AHEAD. The hero turns out (though any detail is skated over) to have been in an abusive marriage where he has been the victim. We don't learn whether the abuse was emotional or physical or even really how it has affected him, but it was sufficiently surprising to get my attention.

Whilst the hero is large and handsome and physically imposing, his strongest appeal for the heroine seems to be his kindness and emotional strength (although, being picky, how she saw him and how I saw him didn't really match up).

There is a very strong emphasis on native American culture and religion in the story. Storm is a medicine man and his powers are depicted as both genuine and successful. The story of Tahcha's healing at Storm's hands is presented as something that happens in fact and there are numerous didactory passages extolling the rightness of their beliefs:

"I still don't feel right, Storm. There's so much energy moving around inside me. It's hard to explain." She cocked her head and studied him. "Is this normal?"

"Yes, it is."

"I'm glad. I didn't know a person could lose part of their spirit."

"When shocking events occur, it happens. The worse the shock, the more you lose."...

..."I can't imagine how people go around trying to survive after something like that.... How do they do without a medicine person like yourself helping them reclaim that lost part of themselves?".....

..... "They don't. Their lives are shortened because they are not whole....."

There's quite a lot of this sort of thing in a short novella of only 100 pages. As I was reading this, I wasn't massively troubled by it, although it did begin to grate more the nearer I got to the end. Even so, it was only once I'd finished the story that I reflected that if passages like the one above had been about Christian faith-healing, I'd have strongly objected to them.

Inconsistency? Or a different standard for a religion that is not so organised/ evangelical?

At a more general level, this story didn't really work for me for two reasons: there was a distinct lack of conflict and the author's style - at least in this story - tended towards the info-dump. For example, in an exhange between the heroine and her grandmother near the start of the story:

"What's [the medicine man's] name?"

.... "Keehonsheca."

Shock bolted through Tahcha and she reared back. "What?"

"You heard me. Keehonsheca. Storm Black Horse. He's no stranger to you. As young children you were playmates. And when you reached your teens you fell in love - remember? He left the reservation, too, but came home a few years ago after serving in the military. Home to study the ways of healing medicine, because he's descended from a line of well-respected medicine men and women...."

All of which information, Tahcha can be presumed to have already, I'd have thought.

And yet, despite all these gripes, I was compelled to finish this story - and quickly - and I was really drawn by the depiction of a culture that the characters hold as their dominant culture -and that is so different from what I normally read about. And I did like the kind, slightly reserved hero. Those aspects of the story felt different and refreshing. And made me long for more.

More and better.

Late Friday music: Villagers

I wasn't going to post Friday music this week then I heard this on Later... - the live version was even better. I love his voice and the hyrics are amazing.

Reader visualisation

When you read a book, how much detail do you 'see' the characters in? Does it vary depending on the writer? The setting? Your level of engagement with the text?

Even the idea of 'seeing' characters is an odd one. Books are not a visual medium in the sense of seeing things with the eye. Of course, we don't just see with our eyes - our eyes are merely the conduit for the information that our brains interpret and 'see'. But with a book, we don't get any information through the eyes (except the often confusing images on the cover). So the way we see characters is more complex and indirect. The author uses words to provoke pre-existing knowledge. It's an incredibly inefficient way to make someone see a picture. But that's part of the satisfaction.

One of my pet hates is when an author describes a character in an efficient but lazy manner e.g. she looked like a blonde Angelina Jolie. That gives me a strong image of the character but it does absolutely nothing to feed my reader desires. And it leaves me no room whatsoever to use my reader imagination. What if I don't find the image of a blonde Angelina Jolie appealing? I can't get rid of it now thanks to the author. Better - I think - to have a looser, more impressionistic sketch of the character that gives the reader some leeway.

Of course the difficulty is that human beings have more in common than we don't: a head, two eyes, a mouth, two arms, two legs etc. How to create a visual of a character that is anything more than the barest of silhoettes? Many authors don't bother, from what I can see. I get tall heroes with black hair and blue eyes and handsome faces. And really, nothing more. Others go into great detail about the precise shape of noses and jaws and so on and still this doesn't really do any more than sharpen the outline.

When I'm in the midst of reading, sometimes I see the action in my mind a little like the way I dream. It's not cinematic at all. It's often from an odd perspective, or so close to the action as to be myopic; it's usually a little blurry with stand-out pockets of detail that I fixate upon.

When I think of the character visuals that have really stayed with me, I immediately think of Judith Ivory who gives her characters strong individual details that stay with you. In Black Silk, for example, Graham Wessit has 'extravagant dimples' and Submit has a light golden fuzz on her skin that Ivory likens to fleece. These are just details, but they are memorable details and they prompt my reader-imagination to do more. Graham's dimples - and other details Ivory gives - sketch a picture of old-Hollywood glamour for me, an old-fashioned handsomeness cut with debonair grace. And that fleeciness of Submit's paints her hair for me to a very precise shade of blonde and a very precise skin tone that I know well.

What about you? What are you likes and dislikes in character description?

Friday music: the golden thread

I love Joanna Newsom. She's like - I keep thinking - a troubador. She's a bewitching mix of the traditional, the borrowed, the original, and the eccentric. And there's something curiously American about her lyrics. In a Nathaniel-Hawthorne-sort-of-a-way that I'm finding difficult to explain.

Beyond that, her lyrics are very beautiful. Poetry. Like these incredible lines from Emily where the narrator is talking about Emily telling him/her about the stars:

That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee

Just the way these lines are delivered is sheer artistry. But if you want to listen to that 12 minute epic song, I suggest you head over to You Tube, or better still, buy the album, Ys.

For Mothers' Day, which in the UK is celebrated in March, my boys got me her latest album, Have One On Me, a 3-disc box set. Much goodies therein. This is the first track from my current favourite of the three, disc 2, On A Good Day and a lovely little bit of a tune as well as being less than 2 minutes long.

Topsy-turvily triumphant

I have to start this post by disclosing that Carolyn Crane and I are crit partners. From which you might fairly conclude that this post is not going to be an objective review of Mind Games.

If that is your assumption, you are quite correct. But then, you're never going to get an objective review out of me (whatever that is).

At the risk of boring you all to tears with this much-repeated assertion: I don't even see myself as writing reviews. I just blog about my reading experiences. And so in that sense, this blog post about Mind Games is just like any other post I've done about a book I've read, albeit with one interesting little twist that is absolutely and inextricably linked to the fact disclosed above.

The twist is this: Carolyn and I became CPs after she'd finished Mind Games. She was just starting on book 2 in the series so that was the book that I started CP-ing. Early on, we discussed whether I should read the first book so as to understand the world of book 2 but since Carolyn wanted book 2 to work for a reader who hadn't read book 1, we decided against it.

So, although I've read drafts of the yet-to-be-released book 2, I only read Mind Games for this first time last week.

Of course, I knew the plot and the characters. I knew the set up and the world Carolyn had built. I was already engaged, and indeed in love.

But it was still a relief to read it and discover it was so very very good.

The heroine is Justine, a severe hypochondriac. When she confronts a man she knows to be a con-artist in a restaurant, she brings herself to the attention of Packard, a 'highcap' with the ability to read people's psychology. Packard recruits Justine to his squad of 'disillusionists' and teaches her to weaponize her fear. Suddenly, Justine is a crime-fighter, 'zinging' her fear into a series of lethal targets. As Justine gets to know her fellow disillusionists - and Packard - better she begins to discover secrets... about Packard, his invisible prison and his arch-enemy.

On one level, this is an incredibly entertaining story with a quirky comic-booky feel. But it's so much more than that too. Carolyn raises interesting philosophical questions about crime, punishment, reform, choice, free will, justice. She deals with these difficult ideas with a wonderfully light touch which means the reader is free to give as much or as little attention as they wish to that deeper side of the book.

I'm realising, as I type this, that I wouldn't feel right talking about all the many many things that I loved about the individual characters, the romance story, or the actual writing because that is the stuff of our CP exchanges. So let me talk instead about the experience if reading this as a CP.

It was lovely for me to learn more about these characters, with whom I'd already spent so much time. Book 1 told me little things about them that I didn't know before. It was like when you visit your new boyfriend's family for the first time and his mother gets out old family albums.

It was lovely too to read Carolyn's work in a real physical book. Words have a subtly different quality when they're not on screen in a Word document, but on a page, typeset, numbered and bound; given a physical reality that does not change. So I read Mind Games in a different way. This was not a draft, with every word up for grabs but an immutable story; settled into its final form. I relaxed, put my watchfulness in my pocket and allowed myself to be fully drawn in.

And it was glorious. Topsy-turvy and pleasing and entertaining and funny and sad and -

- and I was swept away. I believed.

And that, in a nutshell, was my experience of reading this book. I recommend it to you.