Horseradish

Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid by Lemony Snicket

I like Lemony Snicket and his dark sense of humor (even though I will freely admit that I've only read the Series of Unfortunate Events through book four). I have to admit, however, that I was disappointed with Horseradish.

Some of the aphorisms are dead on

"Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like." (137)

and perfect articulations of things we tend not to give much thought to

"One of the world's tiresome questions is what object one would bring to a desert island, because people always answer 'a deck of cards' or 'Anna Karenina' when the obvious answer is 'a well-equipped boat and a crew to sail me off the island and back home where I can play all the card games and read all the Russian novels I want.'" (67)

Others are just kind of strange

"Having an aura of menace is like having a pet weasel, because you rarely meet someone who has one, and when you do it makes you want to hide under the coffee table." (123)

but that's to be expected of Snicket. Most, though, are forgettable, easy to just flip past, making Horseradish a very quick read.

more recent reading

Witch Child by Celia Rees
The year is 1659, a time of fear and lies. For Mary Newbury, it is a time of desperation. While she watches, unable to intervene, her wise and beloved grandmother is falsely condemned, tortured, and hanged as a witch. Soon the relentless crowd may turn upon Mary.
When a mysterious stranger offers her a way out--safe passage to America--she knows she must go. But she doesn't know that the turbulent voyage will bring her to yet another society where differences are feared and defiance is deadly. To survive, Mary pretends to be a pious Puritan girl. But when witch frenzy begins to tear apart the community, Mary must finally choose between the precarious safety of her disguise and her own true nature.

The time period and subject matter are both of great interest to me and I thought this book was very well done. I particularly liked the archival aspect of it - the fact that the bulk of the book was Mary's diary that she hid in a quilt and was only discovered 400+ years later.

I found Mary's character quite sympathetic and ended the book hoping that she'd met up with Jaybird and lived happily-ever-after with his tribe. Now that I know there is a sequel (Sorceress), I've put in on my wishlist.

The Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld series by Alexander McCall Smith
Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances (all published in 2003).

I feel the end to harken back to something I wrote about The Sunday Philosophy Club, the first book in another AMS series:

One thing that occurred to me as I was listening to the book is how different Isabel is from Precious Rambotswe (star of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency books). Not that I expected them to be similar, but I found it interesting that while McCall Smith's core audience probably has the least in common with Precious, she may very well be his most sympathetic protagonist (I don't know anything about the 44 Scotland Street series, though, so I could be completely off base).

Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld is if anything less sympathetic than Isabel Dalhousie. He's a quirky, clueless, self-important academic who manages to get himself into very Bridget Jones-y situations. I did, however, like the books (though the over-the-top situation in At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances may have put me off reading more books in the series if there were any). They are very tongue-in-cheek and because I know more about German culture than the average American (and more than I probably care to know about academe), I was able to appreciate a lot of what AMS was going with the books.

The highlight of the series, however, has to be the case of mistaken identity in The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs. I was so amused (though, again, AMS carried it a bit too far later in the novel).

some recent reading

In addition to the books for which I need to write reviews (I have three reviews in progress and am still reading another book I need to review), I have managed to squeeze in some lighter reading.


Kafka's Soup by Mark Crick
Subtitled "a complete history of world literature in 14 recipes," Kafka's Soup is a light, amusing read. I was intrigued when I first saw the book on the shelf at the book store and was ecstatic when one of my BookCrossing friends had a copy to share (my first instinct about the book--that it would be a fun read, but not worth the cover price--turned out to be quite correct).

In Kafka's Soup, Crick creates recipes in the style of different authors (from Homer to Graham Greene). I particularly enjoyed Tarragon Eggs à la Jane Austen and Coq au Vin à la Gabriel García Márquez--possibly because in those recipes Crick was mimicking two of my favorite authors. I also enjoyed Clafoutis Grandmère à la Virginia Woolf partially because a recipe for that dish appeared in the most recent Williams-Sonoma catalog giving me a wonderful sense of connection. The Marquis de Sade's poussin recipe was amusing, but seemed to drag and left me skimming after the first few pages.

My issue with the book is really with the word "complete" in its subtitle. I just fail to see how fourteen authors (all Western it seems) can illustrate the complete history of world literature.


You Slay Me, Fire Me Up, and Light My Fire, the first three books in the Aisling Grey, Guardian series by Katie MacAlister.
These books are very similar to MaryJanice Davidson's Undead and... books (see my comments on those books). In the Aisling Grey, Guardian series, the protagonist is a guardian (soon to be responsible for her own portal into Hell) and a wyvern's mate (destined to be the partner of a dragon clan head). If you liked the Undead and... books, you'll probably enjoy Aisling Grey and her adventures. I, for one, had a very similar reaction to the books: I had a hard time relating to Aisling (a reaction that did diminish in the later books) and found that the secondary characters (particularly Jim) really made the books.

My biggest complaint about these books is that MacAlister seems to have written them without a plan for how the series was going to progress. There are things that happen in books 2 and 3 that have no grounding in the earlier books. They necessitate huge leaps which really can't be explained away by Aisling just not being in the know (some of them can, but others really can't). Book 3, Light My Fire, is really the first book where MacAlister seems to be laying the groundwork for the rest of the series.