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cyphomandraI would comment about the aftershocks settling down, but every time I do so to anyone outside the area we have another bad patch. Last night there were three in quick succession - the strongest was only 4.1, but they were all shallow and close, with one of them about 8km below my house. Anyway. I've reshelved half my books (avoiding the upper shelves), filed my claim with the EQC (minor - hopefully - cracks in the house, and the pavement/tiles around it sinking by 5cm) and am reluctantly getting used to the loss of various local shops and buildings.
And finishing the occasional book. All animals, this batch.
Beswitched, Kate Saunders. Mildly spoilt and overly entitled Flora Fox is en route to a boarding school (parents have to look after grandmother in Italy post-hip fracture) in the present day, when she is suddenly swaps places with a boarding school girl in 1935, jolly hockey sticks and all. I liked this a lot - it's fun, it's fast, and apart from the fox motif, which is never entirely explained, there is an actual explanation for the swap and a deeply amusing precedent. Flora's memory is conveniently blurred/merged with the girl she swaps with, so WWII is there more in the reader's mind than in the characters, but what there is works well. And the boarding school story has all the suitably traditional trappings, illnesses (pre-vaccination), accidents, misunderstandings and dramatic rescues.
The vet's family, Martha Robinson. 11 year old American twins (Linda and Jane) get sent over to their uncle in the UK, while their widowed mother recovers from surgery. Uncle John is a vet, his wife a doctor, and they have an older moody teenager (Tom) who no longer wants to help out, and a younger enthusiastic but clumsy boy (George). The twins sort out Tom and save/retrain a savage German Shepherd during their stay, as well as provide occasional trans-Atlantic confusion and amusement (mainly a rather laboured joke about frosting/icing a cake, but some more subtle confusions).
There’s a running theme here about mothers working – one of the reasons Tom has absented himself from the family is his belief that his mother should stop her paid employment, so that his father is less stressed, and one of the arguments put to him by Jane is the fact that he (Tom) could help out at home instead, which is work Tom hasn’t seen as something he should/could do. The twins’ mother works, but the twins are of the belief that men in America routinely help out with household chores (although what they fail to mention to Tom is Martha, their “coloured maid”, who helps out on weekdays) and go someway towards convincing Tom of this. But Aunt Sarah’s job does seemed sidelined – Tom and George are called “the veterinary children”, because apparently their father’s work is “much valued by the country community”, and the book is, obviously, about the vet rather than the doctor. Still. It’s published in 1963, after all, and there’s also an interesting point about Tom and George feeling more alone because their parents are around (both work from rooms at home) but without giving them attention, as opposed to the twins’ mother, who is more definitely there or not. And at the end Tom gets given a collection of Walt Whitman poetry to brood over, which again in 1963 was probably not intended to be a coded reference to homosexuality.
Nobody's Horse, Jane Smiley. I’ve enjoyed Smiley’s novels without being wild about them – well written, yes, but I don’t remember all that much about them afterwards. My inner horse aficionado liked Horse Heaven, tho’, and so I picked up this, which is a children’s horse book. It’s perfectly competently done – girl who rides horses to train them for sale for her father deals with a difficult horse, conflict at school, and parents who don’t exactly fit it – but it’s so low-key that it’s hard to get excited about anything, and more problematic is the fact that it’s historical – U.S., 1960s, I think, given the music references are to the Beatles and the television is Mr Ed and My Mother the Car. I don’t have a problem with historical novels, but I’m not sure why this is one – it’s not all that clearly signalled (nothing on the flap copy, and I only got it from the pop culture references a fair chunk into the story) and then once I worked out it was I was distracted by wondering exactly when it was, and if the disaffected elder brother was about to run headlong into the Vietnam War. I like my children's/YA horse books to have just a touch more emotional connection, tho' - my favourite is probably Lucy Rees' Horse of Air, which is gritty and exciting and overwhelming, in just the right ways.
To Ride Pegasus, Anne McCaffrey. Psychic talents fighting to be accepted by society - there are three short stories buried in here, not necessarily all that well, but McCaffrey is, at her best, great at establishing worlds and ideas, and a fluent writer who keeps things moving. I'm less convinced by her people, and particularly her ideas of male-female relationships (and, this time through, slightly baffled by the Pan-Ethnic conflict that appears to involve Czechs protesting against all the quasi-Celts she puts in). I think that, like Pern (although not as extreme) a lot of the appeal of this is in its potential, rather than its follow-through; certainly I never got into the lengthy sequels.
The other thing I keep forgetting to mention is that I'm now posting on dreamwidth ascyphomandra, and cross-posting to livejournal. I will eventually get round to providing a footer on entries saying this and making it a bit more formal - I've been cross-posting for a while, but recent events on lj have made me less keen on supporting it. If anyone wants a dreamwidth code, let me know; I also have an AO3 code for any interested parties.
And finishing the occasional book. All animals, this batch.
Beswitched, Kate Saunders. Mildly spoilt and overly entitled Flora Fox is en route to a boarding school (parents have to look after grandmother in Italy post-hip fracture) in the present day, when she is suddenly swaps places with a boarding school girl in 1935, jolly hockey sticks and all. I liked this a lot - it's fun, it's fast, and apart from the fox motif, which is never entirely explained, there is an actual explanation for the swap and a deeply amusing precedent. Flora's memory is conveniently blurred/merged with the girl she swaps with, so WWII is there more in the reader's mind than in the characters, but what there is works well. And the boarding school story has all the suitably traditional trappings, illnesses (pre-vaccination), accidents, misunderstandings and dramatic rescues.
The vet's family, Martha Robinson. 11 year old American twins (Linda and Jane) get sent over to their uncle in the UK, while their widowed mother recovers from surgery. Uncle John is a vet, his wife a doctor, and they have an older moody teenager (Tom) who no longer wants to help out, and a younger enthusiastic but clumsy boy (George). The twins sort out Tom and save/retrain a savage German Shepherd during their stay, as well as provide occasional trans-Atlantic confusion and amusement (mainly a rather laboured joke about frosting/icing a cake, but some more subtle confusions).
There’s a running theme here about mothers working – one of the reasons Tom has absented himself from the family is his belief that his mother should stop her paid employment, so that his father is less stressed, and one of the arguments put to him by Jane is the fact that he (Tom) could help out at home instead, which is work Tom hasn’t seen as something he should/could do. The twins’ mother works, but the twins are of the belief that men in America routinely help out with household chores (although what they fail to mention to Tom is Martha, their “coloured maid”, who helps out on weekdays) and go someway towards convincing Tom of this. But Aunt Sarah’s job does seemed sidelined – Tom and George are called “the veterinary children”, because apparently their father’s work is “much valued by the country community”, and the book is, obviously, about the vet rather than the doctor. Still. It’s published in 1963, after all, and there’s also an interesting point about Tom and George feeling more alone because their parents are around (both work from rooms at home) but without giving them attention, as opposed to the twins’ mother, who is more definitely there or not. And at the end Tom gets given a collection of Walt Whitman poetry to brood over, which again in 1963 was probably not intended to be a coded reference to homosexuality.
Nobody's Horse, Jane Smiley. I’ve enjoyed Smiley’s novels without being wild about them – well written, yes, but I don’t remember all that much about them afterwards. My inner horse aficionado liked Horse Heaven, tho’, and so I picked up this, which is a children’s horse book. It’s perfectly competently done – girl who rides horses to train them for sale for her father deals with a difficult horse, conflict at school, and parents who don’t exactly fit it – but it’s so low-key that it’s hard to get excited about anything, and more problematic is the fact that it’s historical – U.S., 1960s, I think, given the music references are to the Beatles and the television is Mr Ed and My Mother the Car. I don’t have a problem with historical novels, but I’m not sure why this is one – it’s not all that clearly signalled (nothing on the flap copy, and I only got it from the pop culture references a fair chunk into the story) and then once I worked out it was I was distracted by wondering exactly when it was, and if the disaffected elder brother was about to run headlong into the Vietnam War. I like my children's/YA horse books to have just a touch more emotional connection, tho' - my favourite is probably Lucy Rees' Horse of Air, which is gritty and exciting and overwhelming, in just the right ways.
To Ride Pegasus, Anne McCaffrey. Psychic talents fighting to be accepted by society - there are three short stories buried in here, not necessarily all that well, but McCaffrey is, at her best, great at establishing worlds and ideas, and a fluent writer who keeps things moving. I'm less convinced by her people, and particularly her ideas of male-female relationships (and, this time through, slightly baffled by the Pan-Ethnic conflict that appears to involve Czechs protesting against all the quasi-Celts she puts in). I think that, like Pern (although not as extreme) a lot of the appeal of this is in its potential, rather than its follow-through; certainly I never got into the lengthy sequels.
The other thing I keep forgetting to mention is that I'm now posting on dreamwidth as
cyphomandra, and cross-posting to livejournal. I will eventually get round to providing a footer on entries saying this and making it a bit more formal - I've been cross-posting for a while, but recent events on lj have made me less keen on supporting it. If anyone wants a dreamwidth code, let me know; I also have an AO3 code for any interested parties.
