The Life of a Dishcloth

I feel wrung out.


I've been part of a large update of systems at work and it has been several months of pressure. Normally I work really well under pressure, but this time there was so much and for such a long time, that more than once I wasn't sure if I was going to make it to the end.


I've always looked at the end of projects as a time when I can feel positive and invigorated and ready for the next one. This time I'm feeling like I want to crawl onto a warm rock somewhere and have someone bring me cold fruity drinks for a few weeks. Preferably alcoholic drinks. Very alcoholic.


But regardless of how I feel, the project is done. And that's a good thing.

The Return of Trash Tuesday: The Trash-ening

I said I would review Between on the blog in February. Thanks only to the fact that 2012 is a leap year, I'm going to manage it.


It's been awhile since I did a review, so refresh your concept of BROWNIAN MOTION, my patented* rating system. 


I'm making a change this time: instead of a day by day aftermath rating I'm going to to let you know how I felt while I was actually reading the book because my opinion has not changed since I finished it.


Ready? O-K.

Between, Jessica Warman

I picked Between up because I was looking for something without angels, vampires, werewolves, love triangles, magic (or Magick), faeries, aliens, creatures from another dimension or dystopian government oppression. I wanted the 'real world'.


The back of Between sounded promising:


Elizabeth Vachar is young. beautiful and popular. Everything is right in her expensive, glossy life...until the night of her eighteenth birthday party, on her parent's yacht. A persistent thumping noise from outside the boat wakes her. What Liz finds changes everything she thought she knew about her life, her friends, and what lies in between.


I'm not giving anything away when I say that the body is Liz and that the book is narrated by her ghost. I grew up reading Christopher Pike and by page six was already comparing it to Remember Me. Not favourably either. Only a few pages in I was ready to put the book on the bottom of the TBR pile for the next printed-word drought. Except that there was no TBR pile anymore and it was this or nothing. 


Boy am I glad I kept reading.


Liz is dead at the end of Chapter 1 and everyone accepts that it was a tragic accident before we hit page sixty. There is no drama about the situation for the living, beyond her death and funeral for most of the book. Liz mostly watches her friends and family cope with her absence and try to move on. But what they do, or don't do, reveals a lot - both about Liz and about how she died.



There are definite echoes of Remember Me in Between. It's narrated by a ghost, exactly how she died is a mystery, and there are lots and lots of family secrets, but the similarities are mostly surface detail and I think I'd have found them in almost any book with a ghost as the major character. The most impressive things about this book were the subtle changes that Warman made to Liz after each visit to her past. The only way I can think of to accurately describe the transformation is that I got to watch a character grow up, and do so pretty believably, in only 430 pages. 

The mystery is written well. I kept revising my opinion of The Truth because Warman kept feeding me crumbs which, together, seemed to make a cake. Every time I thought I had it worked out, another bit would come out and I would have to revise my opinion. The actual Cake-of-Truth at the end was made of most of the crumbs and it wasn't a surprise, but I like it when authors make you second-guess yourself, even if it's just a little bit.

The book may have paranormal DNA, and I may be So. Over.That.  but Warman's writing is engaging and the visits to the past are written in such a way that you forget the fact that the narrator is already dead. By the end, I wanted Liz to somehow make it. To be able to go back to her body and take the things she had learned with her. Mostly I just wanted to hug her. And I hated her in the first few chapters. Hated. 

Between is about death and learning about yourself. but it isn't preachy. The author doesn't bash you over the head with life lessons, make the book into some kind of Very Special Episode or have everyone hug at the end and promise to be nicer to the school outcast. Not everyone is able to move on.


Since there are two mysteries in the book, telling you much more would be spoiling. Suffice it to say that I really enjoyed it, despite an initial wobble and that I'll be adding it to my 'Read Again' pile.


Brownian Rating:


Bookstore reaction: Awesome. YA crime. That thumping noise outside has got to be a body and Liz is going to turn Nancy Drew. I love Nancy Drew! 9/10


Chapter 1: Aw CRAP. This is going to be a rehash of Christopher Pike's Remember Me isn't it? Those are some pretty big shoes to fill Warman. I'm not sure you're going to live up to my memory of that book** 4/10


Chapter 2: Aaaaaaaand we've got the dead classmate guide going on. He was hit by a car a year ago. Yeah. This is totally Remember Me, except Liz is kind of a shallow bitch and I think I hate her. 2/10


Chapter  6: Okay. Maybe it's not a total rip-off. Liz is messed up. Is that pity, or do I need another cookie? 3/10


Chapter 12: Seriously messed up! Man. That feeling was pity. I actually feel sorry for you Liz. Sorry for calling you a shallow bitch. 6/10


Chapter 21: Oh god. You poor screwed up girl. I saw it coming, but I didn't see THAT coming. Wow. Okay. Not Remember Me. I hope when I die that this does not happen to me and I solemnly swear to be nicer to people so viewing the past isn't so horrible if it does. 8/10


Finish: I think I might have actually cried a bit. 8/10


For a book that started out high and which would have been abandoned before Chapter 2 if I'd had anything else to read, Between ended on a high note. I think it is one of the better YA books I've read this year and I'll keep an eye out for  more of Warman's work.


If you do pick it up and start to draw comparisons with Christopher Pike, favourable or not, don't give into the temptation to lump them together. Like Liz Vachar, there is definitely more going on under the surface here and it is worth finding out.


*Patent pending


** Unrepentant C.Pike FIEND here. Remember Me is third on my list of favourites after Sati and Witch. The sequels didn't happen. La la la. I can't hear you.

Meg Murray Kicks Ass

Over at Tor.com they have an awesome one page explanation of A Wrinkle in Time. This is possibly my new favourite image:

Meg , my hero indeed.

Go check it out in all its awesomeness.

http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/02/exactly-what-happened-in-a-wrinkle-in-time

Sigh

The problem with getting a burst of creative inspiration is that suddenly EVERYTHING seems like the next great project.


So here I sit spending hours on t'interweb, doing nothing constructive, frozen with indecision.

Link

I really enjoyed this:

http://www.rachellegardner.com/2012/01/its-a-book/

Update - A New Page

I have not updated in awhile and that is because I have been reading.
I know that this is shocking news and not like me at all.
In my defense, I can only say that I had an 11 book Christmas this year (beating last year's 7 book record) and I went on a bit of a spree at Waterstones when I got back to the UK on the 5th. So I've had much to occupy me in the past few weeks.

So in an effort to keep track of my reading I've created a new Page. The link to it is on the right hand side under the Twitter feed. I will be listing the title and author of every book I read this year, along with a few of my thoughts about them. If you would like a quick book recommendation, that's the best place to go. At the moment it is a bit YA heavy, but I've got a stack of mysteries and Sci-Fi next to the bed to get through in February. Until then, go out, get yourself copies of Rivers of London and Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch. You can thank me later.

And yes, I really have read ALL of those books since January 1st. I spend 4 hours on a bus every day. What else am I going to do?

Overheard...

Waiting at the bus stop. Two girls.

1ST GIRL: I only see him, like for two hours a day.

2ND GIRL: That's rough.

1ST GIRL: I know, but he says it's really difficult to find free time.

2ND GIRL: Hmm.....

1ST GIRL: It's not like we're having an affair. We just have sex. I mean yeah, his wife doesn't know but I don't know what's hard about finding time.

Overheard...

Small BOY shopping with his MOTHER. Aged around 4. Both are watching the animatronic Christmas display in the local shopping centre. The MOTHER looks bored and tired. The BOY is enjoying the show like no one has ever enjoyed anything in the history of the world ever.

Frenzy of jumping, whooping, attempts at dancing and singing along. Cries of 'Watch me Mum, watch me!' more dancing, more jumping, more singing. BOY tried to make MOTHER dance, fails. Dances more on his own. This continues for the entire 15 minute show.

The singing robots finish and MOTHER sits the boy on a bench to put his coat back on so they can go outside.

BOY: Wow. that was good Mum. I liked it.

MOTHER: I saw. You did some nice dancing.

BOY: Yeah. I was excited.

MOTHER struggles with the coat. The BOY gets quieter and quieter.

BOY: Mum. I think I was too excited.

BOY yawns and falls asleep. MOTHER picks him up and straps him into his stroller. They leave.

Overheard...

Standing in line at the Japanese take-away:

Woman 1: I'll have the teriyaki salmon, with noodles. Oooh - can  I have a bit of the chicken katsu curry too? With just a bit of extra curry sauce on the side.

(The Waitress puts this in a container for her. There is a lengthly discussion about the exact amount of extra curry sauce needed. It turns out to be the size of a pea.)

Woman 2: I'll have the exact same as her, but can I have the teriyaki chicken with rice instead? And I don't want the chicken curry.

The Waitress: So......the same but different?

Woman 2: Yeah.

Eleven Memories: Eleven

Because he was a driver, Papa spent a lot of time waiting around on bases. Early on, he was based in England.


None of the troops were allowed off the base without a signed pass. They certainly weren't allowed off just for fun and you can utterly forget about going down to London at any time of day signed pass or not.


So of course, that's what Papa and a friend decided they would do.


They were headed to Leicester Square. Maybe some dinner, maybe dancing, maybe a movie - Gone With the Wind had been playing for over a year, and everyone was always saying Papa looked like Clarke Gable. Somehow, they'd managed to convince their commander to sign a pass, but they still had to sneak out of the barracks in their hobnailed boots.


Papa would always pause the story here to make as much racket as possible drumming his fingernails against the table.


'And that was just standing still.'


(As a child I wondered why they couldn't simply remove the boots, but having some vague idea that hobnailed boots were nailed to your feet, I didn't ask. )


The two Canadians snuck out the front gate of the base and walked down the road to the train station. 


'But you can't just walk in those boots. There's no give. You gotta march. So we marched all the way to the station. It was a very small parade,' he'd say with a smile.


Servicemen weren't supposed to be on the trains any more than they were supposed to be off the base - so every time one of them saw a ticket inspector they had to move to the next car along. Luckily the train was busy and it took the inspector a long time to get from one car to the next. (These days I think he probably saw them, but as long as they stayed out of his way he didn't have to 'officially' notice them or kick them off the train).


They made it to London and got on the Underground to take them to Leicester Square. Arriving at their destination, they picked their way through the people filling the platforms, past dozens of Londoners ready to withstand another night of bombing, and headed up to street level.


'Those boots on the tiles! It was quite the racket,' again he would hammer his nails against the table top. Then the staccato beat would be cut off and he would look at us seriously. 


'We got to the top of the stairs and you know what? The warden standing outside said ; Sorry boys. Air Raid. You'll have to go back down.'


They'd scammed their way off the base, suck past the dorm guard in their noisy boots, marched all the way to the station, and evaded notice on the train into London, only to be beaten at the final hurdle. But only an idiot would ignore an Air Raid in those days. So they turned around, started back down the stairs.


'We got the the bottom and the bomb hit. I don't know what happened to the guy at the top of the stairs.'

_______________________________________________

My grandfather lived through the war unscathed. He came back to his family, which over the next 70 years grew to include another son (my father), five granddaughters and three great-grandchildren. 


While the past eleven days have been purposely scheduled to coincide with Armistice Day, this isn't the only time of year that I think about Papa and the things he did for me. I'm not talking about the war. I mean all the little stories and lies that are now a part of me and always will be. 


I'm so lucky to have had him.

http://www.poppy.org.uk/

http://www.poppyscotland.org.uk/index.php/homepage/show/home/poppyscotland

** if anyone has a link to Canadian or American Poppy appeal sites, please let me know. I can't find one that makes it easy to donate.