35 (NTY) The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan 5/13
Pick:
I loaned this out to a friend, Tonya Arnold, who was both inspired and appalled by it, just like Toni was; I think both of them had to stop partway through the book and read something else, just to keep from having to give up food forever from the sheer horror and despondency. Once Tonya gave it back, it went on the short list until I got to it.
Story:
My response to this was what it usually is when I read about how the corporate-industrial complex has ruined our world: rage. This led to a really nice blog about how much I now hate corn, where most of my reviewing was already done.
Other than make me want to go through the offices of Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland dealing out solar plexus jabs, the first part of this book made me want to be a farmer. I shrugged it off and decided to write, instead, which was the right choice -- but honestly? I may want to be a farmer someday. I loved reading about Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia (Which is also prominently featured in the movie "Food, Inc.," though the book, of course, gives more information.), and his system of intensive management of livestock. The problem for me would still be in the slaughtering -- and the knowledge base, I suppose, since Salatin is a third-generation farmer, and I'm third-generation bourgeois -- but I still love the idea. I love the idea of making real food, of understanding where food should come from and what it should do for you, and fighting against the ravages of the agribusiness corporations. I would love to do that, if I could. And I, unlike those organic bastards, wouldn't sell out when General Mills came knocking. As hard as Pollan worked to make that Cascadian Farms guy seem like a logical man doing the logical thing, he still strikes me as a money-grubbing sell out. Sure, go be that if you want -- but recognize that you're betraying the values you ostensibly started with.
I loved reading the final chapters in this, about hunting and gathering; I didn't know any of what Pollan said about mushrooming, and even though I'm not terribly fond of mushrooms, he made me want to go hunt for them and eat them. Sort of. I am at least fond of the idea. More interestingly, Michael Pollan is the first and only person who has ever made hunting make sense to me. That actually might be the most interesting thing I take away from this book: while I will still and always criticize sport hunting and trophy hunting, hunting for food actually seems like a reasonable thing to do, now. I get it. It just took someone who could honestly describe the entire experience better than my students can, and Pollan did that. It was interesting.
Great book. Everyone should read. Oh, and read about how much I hate corn, too.
36. (Re-read) Small Favor by Jim Butcher 5/15
Pick:
I can't go on without reading Harry Dresden! I can't! Must . . . finish . . . series!
Story:
In the two years since I last read this book, I managed to forget all but the smallest details, so this was nice -- it was an almost-fresh reading. As always, I love the Denarians; the two big showdowns in this book are incredible, especially given that Harry is genuinely outclassed in them -- and in essence, loses one of them. I like the tension between Harry and his friends, who are forced to doubt Harry at more than one point; I like the way we see Mab's manipulation working throughout, from the shadows and barely visible (and not always done in a way that makes any sense to any sane person, which I also liked), and I absolutely loved the Gruffs. Especially the last one, and the way Harry resolves it.
Great book.
37. (12) Turn Coat by Jim Butcher 5/18
Pick:
I loved reading Dresden so much, I went straight into the next one -- which was new, at least for me! Woohoo! I CAUGHT UP!
Story:
To be honest, I didn't like this one quite as much. I didn't like the premise; not because it was poorly thought out or didn't work or anything, but because it put Morgan into Harry's world. Since Jim Butcher is the kind of writer he is, he couldn't let himself write Morgan as anything other than a cantankerous, prejudiced, hard-boiled leather-assed bastard, and it was very annoying to keep reading that in the middle of my happy Harry time. I mean, when Harry goes home to his apartment, I want to read about Mister and Mouse, and get ready to laugh at Bob's cracks. Instead, every time Harry comes home I got -- Morgan. Being Morgan. Though the repeated almost-fights broken up by Mouse were pretty damn funny.
I did like the Council intrigues (I knew who the villain was! Go me!) and I absolutely loved Demonreach and how Harry deals with that. I also really liked Binder, since it gave us a good view of how much damage a minor talent could do if he was also a hard-ass mercenary. Which gave me a push toward one of my ideas for a character in the upcoming Dresden Files RPG (Which will be a librarian, with a specialty in fae lore, who has one magical trick -- I haven't decided what yet. Knowledge will be my power.). The ending of this book, though, was just sad. The good guys win, yet still everything in Harry's life pretty much goes bad. I'm hoping the next book can redeem some of this. I really hope that. I'll be reading it soon.
38. (Got it from school. Seriously.) Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell 5/21
Pick:
Well, I've been reading so many good books, that I felt it was time for a bad one. Actually, one of my Honors students did his book presentation project on this thing last semester, and hearing about the climactic fight made me burst out laughing; it was one of the nicest moments of hilarity I've had at school all year. After he finished his presentation, he sat down and then held the book up and said, "Does anybody want this? Seriously. I'm done with it." So I took it, and told him I'd read it. It has sat on my shelf at school for the last five months; finally that same kid asked me if I'd read it yet, and I had to say no. But when he asked, I was almost finished with Dresden . . .
Story:
Somebody's been reading Bukowski.
To be honest, I haven't read very much of that master barfly's work, but I think I've read enough to describe his hero: a physically imposing, yet almost completely aloof, giant who makes a hobby of being surly. He comes, of course, from a thoroughly soul-destroying background, yet he has known enough kindness, enough love, to retain some small inner core of real compassion. While he is a dispassionately violent brute, who is constantly and intensely intoxicated, he is also a genius; this serves to add contempt for his fellow men to his already anti-social personality. He is profane and visceral, and he is surrounded by scum and filth: everybody he knows is a liar and a fool, and they are all out to manipulate and use and hurt others, including our hero -- who is generally too cynical and intelligent and savage to let them, but that inner core of goodness gives him a vulnerable spot which gets struck again and again.
If this doesn't sound familiar, you haven't read Bukowski (And I would recommend doing what I did: read one of his novels. He was a brilliant writer. But follow it up with the happiest book you can find, because good grief, is that world ever depressing.). Nor, apparently, have you read Josh Bazell's Beat the Reaper, because Pietro Brnwa is exactly what I described. Down to being Polish, just like Henry Chinaski, the main character in Charles Bukowski's books. Except Josh Bazell isn't anywhere near the writer that Bukowski was. This means that Pietro's savagery, while it makes sense, isn't sympathetic like Chinaski's; his profanity and obscenity are just off-putting, and the world of lowlifes that surround him doesn't seem realistic and therefore both eye-opening and depressing -- it just seems ridiculous.
Beat the Reaper is about an orphan who is taken in by a mafia family, and he becomes a hired gun for his surrogate father. Until, as they say, the poop hits the propellor and he leaves the mafia behind, entering the witness protection program (I'm really not spoiling much -- this is all revealed within the first few chapters; then the entire story is told in a series of flashbacks.) and becoming -- wait for it -- a doctor. That's right, a brutal and heartless killer, who manages to slaughter four gun-toting gangsters while he is tied to a chair, becomes the only doctor who isn't entirely corrupt, incompetent and self-involved in the New York hospital where he does his residency. Until someone shows up who remembers him (Maybe he shouldn't have stayed in New York after entering witness protection?), and then he has to make a decision: run or fight?
It's a silly premise, made worse by a thoroughly ridiculous character, and almost entirely killed by the fact that the inevitable betrayal -- because in Bukowski's/Bazell's world, trust always leads to betrayal -- is absurd. It makes no sense. The proposed explanation doesn't work, and isn't really given the weight to make it acceptable with some suspension of disbelief. It's just silly.
However: I did read the entire book. I did this partly because I had been told about the last fight scene (Based on what is, without a doubt, the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard of -- and I read Chuck Norris jokes) and I wanted to read it for myself, but also because Bazell, who is actually a doctor, has a ton of interesting tidbits to say about hospitals and doctors and medicine. He puts them into footnotes throughout the book, which is annoying (Because Bazell also isn't David Foster Wallace), and I refuse to believe some of them (though maybe I'm naive), but they did help enormously in making the book readable. The medical trivia, and the absurdity, were the best parts of this.
My best advice to the curious is this: read the book's first line. If you are interested in a book that starts with that, go for it; if you roll your eyes, put this down and go get Ham on Rye.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Angels, Demons, Aliens, Zombies -- and America.
30. (10) The Lost Continent by Bill Bryson 4/21
Pick:
I think this one was an LBS book (Library Book Sale) that just looked interesting. "An unsparing and hilarious account of one man's rediscovery of America and his search for the perfect small town." Funny, biting non-fiction? I'm in.
Thoughts:
I did like it quite a lot; it wasn't often laugh-out-loud funny (What the kids these days call "lol"), but Bryson has a great eye and a truly scathing wit. If I had any trouble with it, it was that it was a bit out of date for me; the America that Bryson is looking to recapture was not one that I ever knew, either chronologically or geographically. I was an East Coaster growing up in the 70's and 80's; he was a Midwesterner growing up in the 50's and 60's. But I like the way he sees America: as a wonderful place that has basically been horribly fucked up by the people, who are generally ignorant, shallow, short-sighted goobers. On the other hand: some of those idiots are incredibly nice people, and there are people who aren't idiots, who care about their country and their town and their community, and who do a wonderful job, as long as they can survive the slow encroachment of the idiots.
Bill Bryson grew up in Iowa, the son of a sportswriter who took his family on annual driving tours of the country every summer. Bryson grew up and followed his father into journalism, though not into life in the American Midwest: Bryson lived for almost twenty years. And then he decided to come back and see if he could rediscover the country his father had shown him in his childhood, by taking the family car -- a Chevette, god help him -- and touring around the US. He is looking, he says, for the perfect small town, the one that politicians and local-color writers like Garrison Keillor are always going on about. Bryson calls his Amalgam, as he expects that he will only be able to find a piece of it here, a piece of it there.
He tours through 38 of the 50 states, over the course of two months in 1989. He stops at battlefields, at national monuments and state parks, at small museums and shopping malls. He gets lost in the Ozarks, looking for the Melungeon people. He is horrified inside a K-Mart (Only because Wal-Mart had not yet metastasized across the country) by the people there, while he is simultaneously tempted by the bargains -- this guy, by the way, is more than a little cheap. He sneaks into Colonial Williamsburg and sees a once-in-a-lifetime geyser erupt in Yellowstone. And finally, he comes on home to Iowa -- though it's interesting to note that one of his best experiences, in terms of nice people and beautiful, unspoiled countryside, is in New Hampshire -- which is where the author settled with his family after this book's publication. He never finds his Amalgam, but he finds a lot of nice things, mixed in with all the horror.
It's a smarmy book, it is at time a supercilious book, it is a slightly sappy nostalgic book. But it's a very good book.
31. (Vine) Can't Teach an Old Demon New Tricks by Cara Lockwood 4/27
Pick:
A woman has a half-demon child because she didn't know her husband was possessed? Angels and demons are now hunting down her recently-vanished demonic husband? Sounds good to me.
Thoughts:
I thought this was a very fun book. I probably missed some of the enjoyment because I hadn't read the first one; it seems, from comments made about several of the characters, that the first book deals with a similar theme, and the main players in it reappear in this, but are no longer the protagonists -- there are several characters who know about the existence of angels and demons, and their presence on Earth and how humans must deal with them, but the main character, Rachel Farnsworth, is a total innocent when the story begins.
There's a decent romance, though it is a little hard to swallow; the male lead is Sam, a fallen Wrath angel turned demonic bounty hunter. His character's main concept is a loner, an independent who refuses to knuckle under to anyone else's attempts to tell him what to do; he is cold and distant and hard-boiled because of it. And of course, that kind of man always ends up falling in love with the woman with a heart of gold and a tongue of razor-sharp steel, who can break through his tough exterior and make his gooey insides melt, in books like this, and Sam is no exception -- but I didn't feel like enough of the story dealt with making that happen. It just sort of -- happened. There are reasons given, but it didn't feel like enough, to me.
I loved the parts dealing with the fallen angels and demons; I liked the two watcher angels and the ancient Babylonian goddess, and the half-demon toddler was great. I was a little annoyed by the bad guys, but I did like the big surprise concerning the identities of a few of them, and their unexpected intentions. The ending was excellent, both for the adventure story and the romance. Overall a nice book.
32. (New This Year) Flirt by Laurell K. Hamilton 4/29
Pick:
I have so many new books to read, so much on the shelf; I just wanted something from my top picks group (the ones I prefer reading, rather than the ones I'm merely interested in) that would be a quick read. So that was Flirt. (By the way: we had this one because Toni and I are both enormous fans of the series, so this was Toni's birthday present. One of them. Or maybe it was the Bookiversary present -- I forget. )
Thoughts:
It wasn't bad, though I thought it focused on the wrong thing. It would have been okay for the story to really hone in on the concept that inspired Hamilton to write it, which was the flirting scene in the restaurant; it would have been better for her to focus on the stuff she actually does well, which would be the zombie parts. I loved the idea of the two clients who demanded Anita's services, why they wanted their loved ones raised and why she wouldn't do it; I liked the end result of that fairly well.
But since the book went from the zombie story, to the flirting scene, back to the zombie story, the flirting scene felt added in, a complete distraction, and it took some of the focus off of where it should have been. And then Hamilton's author's note, when she told the same goddamned flirting story two more times, in almost identical language -- first narrating what actually happened, and then including the webcomics her friend drew based on the story (Which recapitulated the story for the third time for me, again without changing hardly a word), not only made the zombie stuff seem like the part that was off-topic, but it made the original concept story boring. A flustered waiter and a hot friend are just not that riveting, Ms. Hamilton. Sorry.
I'm waiting on the actual novel.
33. (Vine) Boom! by Mark Haddon 5/1
Pick:
I loved A Curious Incident . . . and this was a children's book by the same guy. About the teacher's lounge and alien languages and mischievous kids. I'm in.
Story:
When you were a kid, did you ever wonder what really goes on in the teacher's lounge? I did. So I became a teacher, and I found out: nothing.
Nothing that you need to know about, that is. Nothing that I can tell you and still allow you to roam around free, with both your memory and your tongue.
But I've said too much.
Mark Haddon's novel "Boom!" covers this same vital question, and unfortunately for Mr. Haddon -- an excellent author with a fantastic imagination, the kind of person who can dream up things that are so close to real life that they seem most genuine, yet are different enough to open our eyes and minds and show us the wonder that hides behind our perceptions and assumptions (witness his most famous and brilliant novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) -- he knows what he's talking about. His two heroes, the schoolboys Jim and Charlie, decide to plant a hidden microphone in their teachers' lounge, in order to find out whether the rumor of Jim's impending expulsion is true or not. They hear more than they ever bargained for. They hear what we teachers really say when there is nobody else around.
The results are terrifying, fascinating, and of course, utterly hilarious. The characters are picture perfect, three-dimensional and real without being overly complex. The story tells not only of a thrilling and intergalactic adventure, but also of a family that comes close to falling apart but manages to hold on and rediscover what is truly important. It makes the book not only fun to read, but good to read. Anyone who wants to read this book will be able to follow it, and anyone who reads this book will enjoy it.
And then you had better forget all about it, if you know what's good for you.
Gridzbi Spudvetch!
34. (11) Curse of the Blue Tattoo by L.A. Meyer 5/4
Pick:
I wanted something rollicking and fun, and I wanted to see if this second book held up with the first.
Thoughts:
Hell, it was even better! As much as I enjoyed the story of Mary "Bloody Jack" Faber finding her way from the rough streets of London at the turn of the 19th Century to life in His Majesty's Royal Navy, I liked this story even better. In this one, Jacky, having been discovered masquerading as a boy and thus removed from the HMS Dolphin, has been enrolled (largely against her will) in the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls in Boston. She quickly finds that while life as a proper young lady in Boston is much less physically strenuous than life in an orphan gang or life on a ship of the line, it is no less dangerous. She is still surrounded by enemies -- though she finds friends, as well, just as close as those she had on ship -- and she must still maintain a masquerade. This one gives her much more trouble, however. On board the Dolphin, she simply had to pretend to be a boy; here she must pretend to have an entirely different personality and upbringing, and priorities and morals that run completely counter to those she actually has. This is a life that her previous lives have most definitely not prepared her for.
Fortunately for Jacky, and for those of us who love her and wish her only the best, her talent and intelligence, her kindness and sense of justice and fairplay, and her intelligence and toughness and love of adventure carry her through most of her trials -- and into several of the worst ones. She goes from proper young student -- and almost universally disdained and treated cruelly by the meanest set of snippety little bitches I personally have ever read about -- to jailed strumpet in danger of a flogging, to chambermaid to the very girls who treated her so poorly before. Then she becomes a singing sensation, once again a proper young lady, for a few brief spans she is again a boy -- and she ends up both saving the day and coming within inches of death. It was amazing how many adventures she had, and also how well written they all were.
That was the coolest part of the book for me. As much as I loved reading about Jacky -- and I did, all the way up to the ending, which is quite sad (though it set up the next book and got me all excited about reading that one, too) -- the best part of this was how well the author managed to recapture so many disparate elements of early American life. I mean, Jacky goes everywhere and does everything in these books; this one is absolutely the story of a young girl who doesn't fit in to an upperclass environment, but who also makes her mark on high society; whereas the last one was a nautical yarn about life on a ship, with a secret. Totally different, yet both equally good. Very impressive -- and these are highly recommended.
Pick:
I think this one was an LBS book (Library Book Sale) that just looked interesting. "An unsparing and hilarious account of one man's rediscovery of America and his search for the perfect small town." Funny, biting non-fiction? I'm in.
Thoughts:
I did like it quite a lot; it wasn't often laugh-out-loud funny (What the kids these days call "lol"), but Bryson has a great eye and a truly scathing wit. If I had any trouble with it, it was that it was a bit out of date for me; the America that Bryson is looking to recapture was not one that I ever knew, either chronologically or geographically. I was an East Coaster growing up in the 70's and 80's; he was a Midwesterner growing up in the 50's and 60's. But I like the way he sees America: as a wonderful place that has basically been horribly fucked up by the people, who are generally ignorant, shallow, short-sighted goobers. On the other hand: some of those idiots are incredibly nice people, and there are people who aren't idiots, who care about their country and their town and their community, and who do a wonderful job, as long as they can survive the slow encroachment of the idiots.
Bill Bryson grew up in Iowa, the son of a sportswriter who took his family on annual driving tours of the country every summer. Bryson grew up and followed his father into journalism, though not into life in the American Midwest: Bryson lived for almost twenty years. And then he decided to come back and see if he could rediscover the country his father had shown him in his childhood, by taking the family car -- a Chevette, god help him -- and touring around the US. He is looking, he says, for the perfect small town, the one that politicians and local-color writers like Garrison Keillor are always going on about. Bryson calls his Amalgam, as he expects that he will only be able to find a piece of it here, a piece of it there.
He tours through 38 of the 50 states, over the course of two months in 1989. He stops at battlefields, at national monuments and state parks, at small museums and shopping malls. He gets lost in the Ozarks, looking for the Melungeon people. He is horrified inside a K-Mart (Only because Wal-Mart had not yet metastasized across the country) by the people there, while he is simultaneously tempted by the bargains -- this guy, by the way, is more than a little cheap. He sneaks into Colonial Williamsburg and sees a once-in-a-lifetime geyser erupt in Yellowstone. And finally, he comes on home to Iowa -- though it's interesting to note that one of his best experiences, in terms of nice people and beautiful, unspoiled countryside, is in New Hampshire -- which is where the author settled with his family after this book's publication. He never finds his Amalgam, but he finds a lot of nice things, mixed in with all the horror.
It's a smarmy book, it is at time a supercilious book, it is a slightly sappy nostalgic book. But it's a very good book.
31. (Vine) Can't Teach an Old Demon New Tricks by Cara Lockwood 4/27
Pick:
A woman has a half-demon child because she didn't know her husband was possessed? Angels and demons are now hunting down her recently-vanished demonic husband? Sounds good to me.
Thoughts:
I thought this was a very fun book. I probably missed some of the enjoyment because I hadn't read the first one; it seems, from comments made about several of the characters, that the first book deals with a similar theme, and the main players in it reappear in this, but are no longer the protagonists -- there are several characters who know about the existence of angels and demons, and their presence on Earth and how humans must deal with them, but the main character, Rachel Farnsworth, is a total innocent when the story begins.
There's a decent romance, though it is a little hard to swallow; the male lead is Sam, a fallen Wrath angel turned demonic bounty hunter. His character's main concept is a loner, an independent who refuses to knuckle under to anyone else's attempts to tell him what to do; he is cold and distant and hard-boiled because of it. And of course, that kind of man always ends up falling in love with the woman with a heart of gold and a tongue of razor-sharp steel, who can break through his tough exterior and make his gooey insides melt, in books like this, and Sam is no exception -- but I didn't feel like enough of the story dealt with making that happen. It just sort of -- happened. There are reasons given, but it didn't feel like enough, to me.
I loved the parts dealing with the fallen angels and demons; I liked the two watcher angels and the ancient Babylonian goddess, and the half-demon toddler was great. I was a little annoyed by the bad guys, but I did like the big surprise concerning the identities of a few of them, and their unexpected intentions. The ending was excellent, both for the adventure story and the romance. Overall a nice book.
32. (New This Year) Flirt by Laurell K. Hamilton 4/29
Pick:
I have so many new books to read, so much on the shelf; I just wanted something from my top picks group (the ones I prefer reading, rather than the ones I'm merely interested in) that would be a quick read. So that was Flirt. (By the way: we had this one because Toni and I are both enormous fans of the series, so this was Toni's birthday present. One of them. Or maybe it was the Bookiversary present -- I forget. )
Thoughts:
It wasn't bad, though I thought it focused on the wrong thing. It would have been okay for the story to really hone in on the concept that inspired Hamilton to write it, which was the flirting scene in the restaurant; it would have been better for her to focus on the stuff she actually does well, which would be the zombie parts. I loved the idea of the two clients who demanded Anita's services, why they wanted their loved ones raised and why she wouldn't do it; I liked the end result of that fairly well.
But since the book went from the zombie story, to the flirting scene, back to the zombie story, the flirting scene felt added in, a complete distraction, and it took some of the focus off of where it should have been. And then Hamilton's author's note, when she told the same goddamned flirting story two more times, in almost identical language -- first narrating what actually happened, and then including the webcomics her friend drew based on the story (Which recapitulated the story for the third time for me, again without changing hardly a word), not only made the zombie stuff seem like the part that was off-topic, but it made the original concept story boring. A flustered waiter and a hot friend are just not that riveting, Ms. Hamilton. Sorry.
I'm waiting on the actual novel.
33. (Vine) Boom! by Mark Haddon 5/1
Pick:
I loved A Curious Incident . . . and this was a children's book by the same guy. About the teacher's lounge and alien languages and mischievous kids. I'm in.
Story:
When you were a kid, did you ever wonder what really goes on in the teacher's lounge? I did. So I became a teacher, and I found out: nothing.
Nothing that you need to know about, that is. Nothing that I can tell you and still allow you to roam around free, with both your memory and your tongue.
But I've said too much.
Mark Haddon's novel "Boom!" covers this same vital question, and unfortunately for Mr. Haddon -- an excellent author with a fantastic imagination, the kind of person who can dream up things that are so close to real life that they seem most genuine, yet are different enough to open our eyes and minds and show us the wonder that hides behind our perceptions and assumptions (witness his most famous and brilliant novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) -- he knows what he's talking about. His two heroes, the schoolboys Jim and Charlie, decide to plant a hidden microphone in their teachers' lounge, in order to find out whether the rumor of Jim's impending expulsion is true or not. They hear more than they ever bargained for. They hear what we teachers really say when there is nobody else around.
The results are terrifying, fascinating, and of course, utterly hilarious. The characters are picture perfect, three-dimensional and real without being overly complex. The story tells not only of a thrilling and intergalactic adventure, but also of a family that comes close to falling apart but manages to hold on and rediscover what is truly important. It makes the book not only fun to read, but good to read. Anyone who wants to read this book will be able to follow it, and anyone who reads this book will enjoy it.
And then you had better forget all about it, if you know what's good for you.
Gridzbi Spudvetch!
34. (11) Curse of the Blue Tattoo by L.A. Meyer 5/4
Pick:
I wanted something rollicking and fun, and I wanted to see if this second book held up with the first.
Thoughts:
Hell, it was even better! As much as I enjoyed the story of Mary "Bloody Jack" Faber finding her way from the rough streets of London at the turn of the 19th Century to life in His Majesty's Royal Navy, I liked this story even better. In this one, Jacky, having been discovered masquerading as a boy and thus removed from the HMS Dolphin, has been enrolled (largely against her will) in the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls in Boston. She quickly finds that while life as a proper young lady in Boston is much less physically strenuous than life in an orphan gang or life on a ship of the line, it is no less dangerous. She is still surrounded by enemies -- though she finds friends, as well, just as close as those she had on ship -- and she must still maintain a masquerade. This one gives her much more trouble, however. On board the Dolphin, she simply had to pretend to be a boy; here she must pretend to have an entirely different personality and upbringing, and priorities and morals that run completely counter to those she actually has. This is a life that her previous lives have most definitely not prepared her for.
Fortunately for Jacky, and for those of us who love her and wish her only the best, her talent and intelligence, her kindness and sense of justice and fairplay, and her intelligence and toughness and love of adventure carry her through most of her trials -- and into several of the worst ones. She goes from proper young student -- and almost universally disdained and treated cruelly by the meanest set of snippety little bitches I personally have ever read about -- to jailed strumpet in danger of a flogging, to chambermaid to the very girls who treated her so poorly before. Then she becomes a singing sensation, once again a proper young lady, for a few brief spans she is again a boy -- and she ends up both saving the day and coming within inches of death. It was amazing how many adventures she had, and also how well written they all were.
That was the coolest part of the book for me. As much as I loved reading about Jacky -- and I did, all the way up to the ending, which is quite sad (though it set up the next book and got me all excited about reading that one, too) -- the best part of this was how well the author managed to recapture so many disparate elements of early American life. I mean, Jacky goes everywhere and does everything in these books; this one is absolutely the story of a young girl who doesn't fit in to an upperclass environment, but who also makes her mark on high society; whereas the last one was a nautical yarn about life on a ship, with a secret. Totally different, yet both equally good. Very impressive -- and these are highly recommended.
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