Ghostroots: Stories, ‘Pemi Aguda

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4 stars

First Sentence: This is the first pimple of your life.

Thoughts: This is a collection of interesting short stories set in Nigeria that connect traditional ways with modern life. A lot of them venture into the seriously creepy category. I know they say don’t judge a book by its cover, but the illustration above is a hint about where these stories go.

The stories I liked were:

“Manifest:” The narrator, after a lifetime of perfect skin, starts getting pimples as an adult. Every time she breaks out, her personality changes. She starts becoming unnecessarily cruel to everyone, from not waking her roommate when it’s time to go to work to straight up killing a puppy. Turns out she’s being possessed by the spirit of her grandmother, a vicious woman everyone thought was safely dead.

“Things Boys Do:” Three men become fathers to sons all named some version of John. Each new father finds his child isn’t what he expected and his life starts falling apart. Then they connect on a message board and discover the reason why their sons are ruining them.

“The Hollow:” A house that wouldn’t be out of place in a T. Kingfisher novel has a mind of its own.

“Masquerade Season:” Three masked figures start following a boy around. His mother starts making requests of the figures until the boy realizes what she’s really doing to them. I liked this but I feel like I should know more about the traditions around the masks to really understand what was going on.

“The Dusk Market:” This is the most fairy-tale like story. A woman is barely making a living as a small merchant on the streets of Lagos. She remembers when she was young and first came to the city thinking she’d make her fortune and despairs. Then she hears about a market that only appears at twilight and decides that’s where she’ll find her dreams.

Brigands and Breadknives, Travis Baldree

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5 stars

First Sentence: “Fuck!” cried Fern, ducking back inside the carriage a whisker before a clawed and scaled hand sailed past.

Thoughts: Baldree swerves onto the exit from the highway in his third book. Instead of another story about finding oneself through building a small business in a fantasy kingdom, he tells a story about finding oneself through leaving the small business and exploring the fantasy countryside.

Fern moves to Thule to open a new bookstore next to Viv’s coffeeshop. She’s tired of her life in her hometown and thinks a change of scenery will help. After a happy reunion with Viv and her wife Tandri, Fern opens up the new Thistleburr Books and settles in. But she’s still not happy. She’s forty-eight years old, is selling books all there is?

Time for a midlife crisis! After an evening spent drinking in the alley with the gnome handyman, Fern climbs into a wagon parked on the street and goes to sleep. She wakes up the next morning miles from Thule. When she wakes up more, she finds herself in the company of the legendary elven swordswoman Astryx One-Ear. Fern doesn’t have the money to buy passage back home, so she joins Astryx on her current quest: delivering a goblin named Zyll to the authorities in Amberlin (all the way across the country from Thule) to collect a bounty.

Fern meets the other companions on the journey: Bucket the horse; Nigel, Astryx’s talking sword; and a bread knife Zyll had in one of her many coat pockets. The bread knife was once a sword named Bradlys forged by the same legendary blacksmith as Nigel, but he and the blacksmith got into a fight and Bradlys was reforged into a knife named Bradlee. Once Zyll gets hold of him, his name changes to Breadlee. Since Fern doesn’t have a weapon and the countryside is dangerous, Zyll gives him to Fern.

The countryside is extremely dangerous and part of that is due to Zyll. Not only does she incite chaos wherever she goes, the bounty on her has attracted some other mercenaries. Specifically a very angry orc who claims Zyll ruined her life. She doesn’t want to collect the bounty, though. She wants to kill Zyll dead. Fern & Co. try to stay one step ahead of the orc until a crisis leaves them stranded at a bizarre rattikin monastery in the mountains.

I like this turn off the fantasy small business highway. We get a chance to see more of the world than just the small towns and their environs and find out how the country folk live. The monastery section also gives us an insight into how religion works in this world (not the way you’d expect in a good way). It also gives Fern a chance to find out what she wants to do with her life and a cute rattikin to spend it with.

What? I like rats. I used to have pet rats and I would again if I didn’t live in a house with three sharp-clawed murderers.

Vacationland: True Stories from Painful Beaches, John Hodgman

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1 star

First Sentence: I apologize for my beard.

State: Maine
Have I Been There: No
Do I Want to Go There: Sure, I’ve never been on a stony beach.

I don’t get self-depreciating comedy. Take Annie Hall as an example. It’s been hailed as a comedic masterpiece, but I laughed exactly twice when I watched it: once when they were chasing the lobsters around the kitchen and again when Woody Allen sneezed in the cocaine. That’s one more time than I laughed while I was reading Vacationland.*

This is the memoir of an overprivileged white guy and his three vacation houses, one in Massachusetts and two in Maine. Relatable! The first house, the one in Massachusetts, he inherited from his father along with a weird complex about the local dump. The first chapter in the book is about the complex, which he uses as an excuse for why he’d rather leave bags of garbage rotting in his garage than take them to the landfill. I’m sure his neighbors there just love him.

After he got married, the Hodgmans started going to Maine for their vacations. Not because the other house stank to high heaven, but because Mrs. Hodgman had gone to Maine as a child with her family. And also because the Massachusetts house stank to high heaven. After his sophomoric** thoughts on fudge, he embarks on a slightly interesting discussion about the kitschy comedy albums found in all Maine tourist shops. They’re mostly about two lobster fisherman and the bits consist mostly of boat engine noise. Kind of like the Sven and Ole+ stories from Minnesota without the charm.

The third vacation house is in the same town that a famous reclusive writer once called home. Hodgman wastes way too much time in not referring to the author by name and even more time drawing attention to that fact. It is easy to discover if you look up the quote he mentions at the beginning of this section and I’ll save you the trouble: it’s E.B. White. A famous boat builder also lived in that town that he does mention by name because he and his wife accidentally bought a peapod boat the man built at an auction. Like you do.

In conclusion, there’s a very good reason why Hodgman was one of my least favorite correspondents on The Daily Show. Honestly, his best role was as the PC in the old Mac ads from 20 years ago.

*It was at the part where Hodgman said that the ocean in Maine is made of hate and wants to kill you.

**Sophomoric might be too mature. “Fudge looks like poop, hur hur hur” is more along the eight-year-old level.

+Please enjoy the video in the link. It contains actual comedy, unlike this book.

A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett

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5 stars

First Sentence: Before there was memory, before there was history, there were the leviathans: the colossal monstrous creatures that lumbered ashore each wet season and went wandering the plains, bringing death and panic with them.

Thoughts: Ana and Din’s latest mystery sends them to the outermost edge of the empire. Yarrowdale has been an independent kingdom but the empire has been trying to incorporate it for almost a century. Why? Because of the ocean currents, it’s the best place to haul dead leviathan carcasses to process into the various enhancements and such that the people of the empire depend on. Specifically an island off the coast known as The Shroud where the processing plants churn out all kinds of magic without disastrous consequences for the people on the mainland.

Mineti Sujedo, a banker, came to Yarrowdale to negotiate the various and sundry financial matters that must be dealt with when absorbing a new kingdom into the larger imperial machine. He went to the bank, checked on a safety deposit box, went to his room in the main city on top of a tower, and vanished. Weeks later his ravaged corpse was pulled out of the swamp.

Ah, a locked-room mystery. Ana can solve this easily, and she does. Sujedo was never in the room. He was dead before he got to the bank. New mystery: he could only have gotten past bank security and accessed the deposit box with keys that were encoded to his blood. Living blood, the kind that’s still circulating in your veins. How could the fake Sujedo use his blood without an impossible complete blood transplant?

The weirdness continues when they open the box Fake Sujedo came to open. Nothing was taken, nothing was added. Let’s check the other boxes! One of the Apoth’s boxes had been robbed, but it had only held vials containing leviathan-derived treatments for various respiratory illnesses. But there was a note! A note that makes no sense, all it says is something about “those who drink the marrow.”

Now Ana has something to work with! She sends Din into the swamps with the local Apoths to hunt for clues. They find a smugglers’ camp that’s been horrifyingly transformed by leviathan blood gone rogue. This narrows down the identity of the criminal:

[Spoiler deleted out of respect for those who would like to be surprised.]

What’s really going on behind the Veil that covers The Shroud? How will this affect the imperial negotiations up at the palace?

Ana finds the answers to all these questions while Din solves a mystery of his own: why Ana is the way she is. It’s another delightfully weird fantasy mystery. Don’t think too much about the scene at the smugglers’ camp, though. It’ll give you nightmares.

How to Judge Authorities

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Today’s Saturday Short is “How to Judge Authorities.” It’s how the hideous moose sweater from Good Table Manners makes you a judgmental person.

Meet Bob. Bob just read The Professional Careers by L.D. Penner. He liked the book, but it complicated his problem. What is his problem? Deciding if he wants to be a lawyer when he grows up. Mr. Hunter, the school counselor, wants to know what Bob thinks about that.

Bob has interviewed Mr. Morley, a successful lawyer who heads the local bar association. Mr. Morley enjoys being a lawyer. After the interview Bob could picture himself prosecuting trials in the void. But then he read that book. Penner didn’t think much of the legal profession. He used phrases like “years of heartbreaking study, years of drudgery,” and “so many unhappy, unsuccessful lawyers.” So who’s right? The author or the lawyer?

Mr. Hunter wants to know if Bob’s considered Penner and Morley as authorities. Didn’t his civics class go over methods of judging authorities? Why yes they did! Then why not use those methods to judge these opinions and come back when you’ve finished.

While Bob considers his dilemma, Mr. Hunter pulls out a pamphlet on The Pros and Cons of World Federation. The narrator steps in to explain the proper way to judge authorities.

Conflicts of authority surround us all the time. In casual conversations, on the radio, in lectures and speeches, library books, newspapers, magazines, there is always someone to be judged. Consider this ad for O’Toasty Breakfast Food featuring pro football star “Bronco” Lewis. How would you rate him as an authority on breakfast? (Medium) How would you rate his ability to reach out of the ad and grab your soul from your body? (Extremely high)

How about these headlines? The 5¢ Courier says NEW CITY BUDGET PROVIDES FOR NEEDED IMPROVEMENTS. The Post-Times, on the other hand, claims NEW BUDGET LEVIES HIGHEST TAXES YET. These are different points of view. Which one is closer to the truth? The answer is both of them.

How often do books disagree? How can you judge the authors? Let’s go back to Mr. Hunter’s office and go over the method to judge others correctly. It begins with making a chart because of course it does. Bill will use his chart to judge Morley and Penner on three counts: internal evidence, author’s experience, and Bill’s own experience.

Internal Evidence: Mr. Penner has clear and convincing arguments. His publisher is reputable and his copyright recent. There are footnotes and a bibliography to make the book extra scholarly. The author has consulted people who know what they’re doing. He looks reliable. Mr. Morley is an actual lawyer who talks actual law. He wears an authoritative dark suit. He loves his job. He is also clear and convincing. Will his professional satisfaction reflect Bill’s own? Nope! Point goes to Penner.

Author’s Experience: What qualifies a person to speak on a topic? Bill looks up Penner in Who’s Who. Turns out he’s a Ph.D. in psychology and works for the Vocational Guidance Institute. He’s an authority on vocations, but not on the legal vocation in particular. Mr. Morley, on the other hand, is a real lawyer and speaks from his own professional experience. He’s a successful lawyer as well. Point goes to Morley.

Bill’s Experience: Which authority seems more valid to him? Does Bill have Morley’s enthusiasm or is he cautious and analytical like Penner? We’ll never know because the narrator refuses to tell us. You must judge for yourself.

In conclusion, JUDGE EVERYONE. Judge judge judgy judge judge

Along the Shore, L.M. Montgomery

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4.5 stars

First Sentence: When L.M. Montgomery married the Reverend Ewan Macdonald in 1911 and went to Ontario from Prince Edward Island, she left the place that furnished the background for her immense body of work, nearly all of which is set in the Maritimes, and most of it in P.E.I.

Thoughts: The stories in this collection are all set along the coast of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, Montgomery’s favorite place on Earth. She loved the Atlantic coast and it shows in every one of these tales.

One of the stories, “The Life-Book of Uncle Jesse,” is famous because Montgomery rewrote it later and put it in her novel Anne’s House of Dreams as the subplot with Captain Jim, the lighthouse keeper. Jesse (and Jim) were old sailors who had been around the world several times and filled their homes with shells and souvenirs of their travels. He wrote down all of his adventures in his “life-book” which caught the attention of a young writer who was summering on the coast. The writer asked Jesse for permission to make the life-book into a proper novel, tied the voyages together with the tragedy of “Lost Margaret,” Jesse’s sweetheart who disappeared when her dory floated out to sea one afternoon, and next thing they knew they had the next bestseller.

One of my favorite stories is “Fair Exchange and No Robbery.” Katherine goes out of town to visit her aunt at Harbor Hill just when her fiance Ned is coming to town. She asks her roommate Edith to keep him company with predictable results. But it’s okay because while Katherine is at the shore she meets Edith’s fiance Sid and falls for him.

“An Adventure on Island Rock” and “How Don Was Saved” are both stories about a Very Good Dog who swam out with a rope to rescue someone caught in a bad spot as the tide was coming in. Throwing the rope out for the dog to fetch worked because both dogs were Newfoundlands, a breed known for loving water.

One of Montgomery’s standard plots is the parson who falls for the wrong girl. This time it’s in the form of “Four Winds” where the Rev. Alan Douglas meets Lynde Oliver while out on a walk one day. Lynde is the daughter of the town atheist, but Mr. Oliver likes Rev. Douglas as long as they don’t talk about religion. Alan of course falls in love with Lynde and she with him, making them the scandal of the town. Then the crisis happens and they all live happily ever after as we all hoped.

A couple of the stories weren’t so hot, though. “A Strayed Allegiance” is one of Montgomery’s earliest short stories and it shows. It wants to be gothic in the worst way but the subject matter doesn’t match the style. “A House Divided Against Itself” is a funny story about two sailors who get into a fight about a statue, but the 1920s racism ruins what could have been one of the best tales in the book.

The Sagas of Ragnar Lodbrok, Ben Waggoner tr.

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5 stars

First Sentence: In 1758, Thomas Percy published Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, his translation of selected Old Norse Poems.

Thoughts: Ragnar Lodbrok may or may not have been a real person, he may have been several people, but he was definitely a legend. People have told his story from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century: it was the foundation for the TV show Vikings, which was surprisingly close to the original legend. At least up until Ragnar’s death, because that’s when I stopped watching. I will not burden you with the four thousand reasons why I hated Ivar on that show that made me turn it off for good. You’re welcome.

The first part is “The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok and His Sons.” It begins with neither Ragnar nor his sons, but his wife Aslaug. After her parents, Sigurd and Brynhild, died she was hidden away in a harp by her foster-father Heimir. They traveled around Norway for a while until they ended up at a small farm. The farmwife, Grima, saw a fancy sleeve hanging out of the harp and convinced her husband Aki that he should kill Heimir. That done, they broke open the harp and Aslaug fell out. They adopted her as their own, making her ugly so no one would ask questions, and renaming her Kraka.

Years later Ragnar and his men landed their ship near the farm and met Kraka. They realized she was more than she seemed and invited her to come away with them. She agreed, married Ragnar, and gave birth to their first child Ivar the Boneless. After the King of Sweden tried to get Ragnar to put away his peasant wife and marry a princess, she revealed herself as Aslaug Sigurd’s daughter, more royal than you can handle. The king of Sweden was not best pleased, starting a war that killed Ragnar’s sons from his first wife, and inspiring Aslaug to change her name again to Ranalin and join Ivar’s force to teach the Swedes some manners.

Meanwhile Ragnar set off to raid England. While he was there he was captured by King Aelle who tossed him in a snake pit. The story of his death came to Norway where his sons heard it. They hopped on their own ships and taught King Aella what a blood eagle was.

The second part, “Sogubrot,” is about Ragnar’s father, Ivar Wide-Grasp, who conquered Denmark and fought in one of the most famous and most mysterious medieval battles. This is, sadly, only a fragment of the full tale which did not survive the ravages of time.

“The List of Swedish Kings” is exactly that: a chronicle of Ragnar’s genealogy. This was a particular interest of the medieval Norse which I can’t complain too much about. It’s a good way to prevent inbreeding. *coughHapsburgscough*

In “The Tale of Ragnar’s Sons” we revisit the battle of Sweden with some more poetry. The final section, “Krákumál” is the poem spoken by Ragnar in the snake pit. It’s a recitation of his greatest battles, ending with proper scorn for the thought his death would be a punishment:

I desire my death now.
The disir call me home,
whom Herjan hastens onward
from his hall, to take me.
On the high bench, boldly,
beer I’ll drink with the Gods;
hope of life is lost now—
laughing shall I die!

That’s what counted as a good death with the Norse.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Becky Chambers

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5 stars

First Sentence: As she woke up in the pod, she remembered three things.

Thoughts: Rosemary Harper is on the run from her past. She signs up as what is essentially a secretarial position on the wormhole tunneler Wayfarer. It isn’t a new ship, but it’s a sturdy-little patched-together workhorse that gets the job done. It was able to do the big tunneling jobs, but it never got any because Captain Ashby’s paperwork wasn’t always submitted on time or completely. That’s what Rosemary’s there to do.

She finds herself part of a crew that’s the textbook definition of “motley.” There’s Lovelace, aka Lovey, the ship’s AI who makes everyone at home. Lovey is in a relationship with Jenks, one of the engineers. Jenks was born in a back-to-the-land cult on Earth, but when the cultists wanted to kill him at birth for being “inferior” (short), his mother brought him up to the spacefarers where he would be allowed to grow up. The other engineer is Kizzy, a hurricane in human form. She is all over the place all the time (including my nerves) but she’s a brilliant engineer. Corbin, the algaeist (the ship runs on algae), is an antisocial autistic man who’s more comfortable with the algae vats than other people. The pilot is Sissix, an Aandrisk. The Aandrisks are a reptilian race that is very touchy-feely. Dr. Chef is exactly what his name says, the ship’s doctor and chef, and one of the last members of a dying species. The navigator is Ohan, a Sianat Pair. The Sianats willingly get infected with a virus that will kill them young, but gives them the ability to do space-folding math in their heads. The virus is almost sentient, hence why the infected are called Pairs.

The captain of this hot mess is Ashby, an Exodan human. The Exodans left Earth before it collapsed completely and lived in generation ships in space. He’s normal except his girlfriend is an Aeluon, a species that communicates via color-changing cheek patches. This is weird because Aeluons are very against interspecies relationships so they have to keep their relationship secret.

Once Rosemary joins the crew, they get a fantastic assignment: a mission to create a wormhole to a new species that just joined the Galactic Commonwealth. The new members are a warlike species that’s in the middle of a bitter civil war, but they’re close to the center of the galaxy where a rare fuel can be easily mined. The journey will take one standard (year), which gives each character time to have a chapter dedicated to them that explains what they’re about and gives the reader sympathy towards them. Yes, even Corbin.

This is a fun science fiction novel full of adventure and building relationships. It’s like a wacky Star Trek set in a different universe. That’s high praise coming from me.

The Duke of Caladan, Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson

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4 stars

First Sentence: He was far from home and did not want to be here, but when the Padishah Emperor invited all members of the Landsraad, Leto Atreides had to attend.

Thoughts: Duke Leto, along with the rest of the Landsraad, was invited to the planet Otorio. Emperor Shaddam had just appropriated the planet to build a lavish and self-aggrandizing Museum of the Empire. While he’s strolling around the grounds, Leto notices a man acting suspiciously. Shortly after, he saves the Emperor and his cadre when the museum blows up. Seems like someone wasn’t too happy about the planetary theft.

The person who masterminded the explosion was Jaxson Aru, son of the Ur-Director of CHOAM. Otorio belonged to his family before the Emperor swiped it, and he wasn’t happy about seeing his childhood home bulldozed and rebuilt into something tacky. He claimed responsibility for the attack in the name of the Noble Commonwealth, an underground group planning to overthrow the Emperor and establish a republic in his place.

After all the chaos, Leto goes back to Caladan to relax. Except he can’t because someone is exporting barra ferns, which only grow on Caladan, as ailar, the new fashionable drug. The punji rice farmers had been using barra ferns for millennia in their religious rituals, but the new strain is much stronger and has a nasty way of killing people because whoever’s modifying the plant doesn’t know what they’re doing. Leto declares war on the drug smugglers with mixed results.

Speaking of drugs, in order to pay for the destruction of his museum, Emperor Shaddam has imposed a new surtax on the spice melange. Baron Harkonnen, among others, is not happy about this, but as the current ruler of Arrakis, he can do something. Specifically striking a deal with the Ur-Director of CHOAM for some unlicensed smuggling for their mutual financial benefit. Count Fenring, the Imperial Observer, is in charge of the licensed smugglers and the fact that he can’t figure out where the extra spice is going is driving him batty..er than he already was. Someone must die for this, even if they aren’t the one responsible.

Just another day in the murky world of Imperial politics.

Abigail Adams: A Life, Woody Holton

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5 stars

First Sentence: On an unusually warm morning in the middle of January 1816, seventy-one-year-old Abigail Adams, wracked with pain and convinced she was dying, sat down to write her will.

Thoughts: Thanks to her thousands of letters, we know more about Abigail Adams than most women of her time. We don’t have much about her daily life because, to her, that was not worth writing about, but we do have her thoughts and ideas about her world. That’s how we know she was a feisty lady.

She was also quite independent for her time. Her biggest gripe was her lack of formal education. In the mid-eighteenth century girls were taught how to read, write, some basic math, and that was it. They had to rely on themselves and their friends for anything else. Abigail and her friends used their letters to each other to further their menial education. She taught herself French as a girl and finance as an adult.

Her financial savvy was Abigail’s major strike for her own independence. Back then any money a woman had belonged to her husband. John, though, was more interested in the Revolution than money, so Abigail had to keep the family afloat, especially when the congresses would only pay John a pittance for all his diplomatic work. She bought stocks and bonds, ran her own business during the Revolutionary War, and was an equal partner with her husband when determining what they should invest in. She kept her own money and wrote her own will dividing it among her children and grandchildren. John had to sign off on it to make it legal and official, but after so many years together there wasn’t really any question that he wouldn’t.

Her most famous letter was the one she wrote to John when the Declaration of Independence was being drafted asking him to “remember the ladies.” She wasn’t actually asking for equal rights for all women, just married ones. She really, really hated the fact that married women didn’t have a legal identity outside of their husbands, and she wanted more education available to girls. As to slavery, she was against it but she still thought that white people were superior. She had decided opinions about European culture, the way rival politicians treated her husband, and how her grandchildren should be raised. She was the matriarch of the extended Adams family and wasn’t afraid to wield her power.

And speaking of family, I mentioned this briefly with John Adams, but I really feel for their oldest daughter Nabby. She died of breast cancer in 1812 and her treatment was one step removed from torture. I am extremely grateful that, if I had to have cancer which I apparently had to, I had it in the 2020s when we had more reliable and safe treatments. My surgeons didn’t rely on alcohol to knock me out during my lumpectomy; they used anesthesia which did a more thorough job of putting me under and the pain meds for after were better. I felt nothing, which is more than poor Nabby was granted.