This book took a while to grow on me.  The first story was “okay”, I didn’t really like the second until I got to the second half, number three was, again, “okay”, but I loved the last two:  “Luxurious Hearses” and “My Parent’s Bedroom”.

“Luxurious Hearses” is a wonderfully complex story about religious conflict.  Not just the conflict between religions, but the ones within them.  Islam versus Christianity, yes, but also Catholic versus Protestant, moderate Islam versus fundamentalism, and more traditional faiths versus both of them and themselves.  All of this told through the eyes of a sixteen-year-old Muslim boy who was baptised as an infant as he flees the religious violence of conservative zealots in his home village in the north.  He is on a bus, trying to flee to his father’s Christian people in the south.  The poor boy is so torn by what he was raised to believe and by what the people on the bus tell him to believe.  About religion and about the government.  The conflict between the largely Muslim, desert north and the mostly Christian, oil-rich south.  Also, the merits of democracy from the southern Christians and the authoritarian police state from a traditional chief over the Sharia law he had respected and promoted throughout his short life.  Akpan tells this story beautifully. 

“My Parent’s Bedroom” shows us the beginnings of the abominable genocides of Rwanda through the eyes of a half-Hutu-half-Tutsi seven-year-old girl who watches her father as he is forced to do the unthinkable by his own family.  Akpan shows the terrified confusion of her child’s mind as she tries to comprehend what is going on.  How does one explain such a thing to such a small child?  I was in tears, reaching for a tissue.

I don’t know why I didn’t like the other stories more.  I just couldn’t get into them for some reason.  However, those last two stories made it worth it.

If this book only contained those first three stories, I would give it a 3 (average), but other the two deserve at least a 4, so I’ll compromise with:

Rating:  3.75 out of 5 stars

I’ve had some excellent experiences, and a few exhilarating adventures, within the pages this year.  A few disappointments, true, but that only makes me appreciate the true gems even more.

Best

Serena by Ron Rash - A wonderful, slightly creepy, read set in the mountains of North Carolina.  Serena, herself, is a complete sociopath, excellently written, so that you find yourself fascinated by her cold manipulation of her husband and the superstitious loggers they employ.  Serena instantly catapulted Ron Rash, who I had never even heard of before I read this book, into must read status.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez - Oprah’s seal of approval almost put me off this book, but the dearth of books in my local library finally forced me to read it.  I’m glad I did.  It took me on a glorious vacation to the hot, verdant jungles of Colombia where I spent hours in Macondo.  Another reason I’m surprised I loved this book so much is Señor Márquez’s writing style.   He reminds me of Hemingway.  I loathe Hemingway, and I wasn’t too fond of the other books I’ve read by Márquez, but I loved this one.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides – A strange book, to say the least, with a giant ICK! factor for the incest, but it is a compelling read that looks at the differences between us and at the complications of assimilation.

One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash – I loved this book.  Ron Rash writes in such gorgeous prose that it completely sweeps you up into the story.  The general feel and voice of the novel made you read the words with a rich Southern drawl.  On the morbid side, I was thrilled and entertained by what Billy did with the body!

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson - Oh, the smoothness of the language Davidson uses to talk about the desperation of the mentally unstable and the unawareness of another’s emotional awakening!  Two people on opposite sides of the emotional intensity spectrum find an odd kind of love, and peace, in each other.  It’s wonderfully tragic and amusing at the same time, with lots of wit to make you smile even while you are sad or horrified by the story.

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel - A fascinating story about the odd ways the mind copes with tragedy and the horrifying things one must sometimes do in order to survive.  Rationalizing the unthinkable through a vivid imagination and division of personality traits into different characters.  The beginning is, admittedly, a bit boring, and the whole meerkat thing was too wierd and stretched my credulity beyond its limits, but I still enjoyed this book.

Saints at the River by Ron Rash - Excellent story about the pull between human emotional needs and the needs of the environment, and about how we cope with tragedy in different ways.  Sometimes good ways, sometimes bad, and sometimes for the wrong or right reasons. Saints at the River is as beautifully written as you’d expect from Ron Rash.

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber - A fascinating, though long, character study of Victorian culture and behavior among the lower to middle classes.  My favorite character was Caroline, but Sugar and others were just as fascinating.  Though, I will admit, a few of their actions completely baffled me for that time period.  The characters are what drives this book.  Also, I’m one of the minority of people who actually liked the narrator. 

Plainsong and Eventide by Kent Haruf - Loved these characters and can’t help but wish for another sequel.  I just got so engaged in the lives of these ordinary people.  I still want to know what happened with the lawsuit.

The World Made Straight by Ron Rash - The past is a tangible thing here in the South and Mr. Rash demonstrates that beautifully in this book.

Worst

These first three lend even more weight to the theory that certain scientists and scholars should really collaborate with a real author.  A professional.  In other words someone who can actually write.  These scholars are, no doubt, masters of composing thought provoking and insightful scientific papers for various journals, but that doesn’t help them write actual books that would prove interesting, not to mention readable, to the general public. 

• Wesley the Owl by Stacey O’Brien
• The Mountains of Saint Francis by Walter Alvarez
• The Hittites by O. R. Gurney

Sarum by Edward Rutherford - A testament to the merits of editors who actually do their homework and correct minor historical errors, and people who can actually look at a map and figure out that the ancient land of Sumer is in Iraq NOT Iran.  Someone smarter than a fifth grader, maybe?

The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet by Colleen McCollough - A truly awful, disappointing read.  I love Colleen McCollough, but she should have avoided this story like the plague, as should the reader.  The utter and complete stupidity of Mary Bennet, despite of the fact that she is supposed to be, at least marginally, intelligent, was ridiculous.  I’ll admit that the plot between Elizabeth and Darcy could have been interesting if it had been better written.

Heartbreaker by Diana Palmer – I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason I read all of her books is for the same reason a lot of people drive slowly passed accidents:  morbid curiosity.  How much worse can they get?  Can this heroine be more of a whiny doormat than the last?  How much higher can her next hero go on the Neanderthal scale?  I just have to know!

A somewhat average reading month, in both quantity and quality.  The Gargoyle was the best by far, and I loved Sacred Hearts.  O. R. Gurney should really collaborate with a real author who can actually write.  His The Hittites was dry and boring.  This demonstrates, I think, why The Kingdom of the Hittites by Trevor Bryce, who mentions Gurney in his notes, is more popular.  Bryce is, quite simply, a better writer.

• The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson – 5
• Kindred in Death by J. D. Robb – 3.75
• Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahriar Mandanipour – 4
• Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant – 4.5
• Into the Dark by Cindy Gerard – 3
• To the Edge by Cindy Gerard – 3
• A World Lit Only By Fire:  The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance:  Portrait of an Age by William Manchester – 3
• The Hittites by O. R. Gurney - 2.25 
• The Black Dagger Brotherhood Insider’s Guide by J. R. Ward – 3.25
• In the Empire of Genghis Khan:  A Journey Among Nomads by Stanley Stewart – 3.5

I really enjoyed Stewart’s writing style.  It was conversational without being chatty.  Almost as if you were sitting in a pub with a Guinness or a whiskey listening to his tales of far off places with the sound of pipes or a fiddle in the background.

However, I did have a couple of problems with his story:

First, am I supposed to believe that, having been on a horse only once in his life, he rode across the steppes all day that first day without some serious pain?  Even an extremely fit person would ache after an entire day in the saddle in those circumstances.  At the end of the day they would long for a hot bath and a vat of Bengay. 

Second, he completely overlooks the fact that Mongke Khan and his brothers, including Kublai, were Nestorian Christians.  In fact, all of Genghis Khan’s sons married at least one Christian woman, so most, if not all, of his grandchildren were Nestorians.  Genghis himself was a shamanist, but he was a great believer and promoter of religious freedom in his vast dominions.  Later on, several of them converted to Islam or Buddhism, or whatever else furthered their political advantage, but, in the beginning, they were Nestorian Christians.  It is my understanding that the Mongols saw Jesus as an extremely powerful shaman, the only one to actually defeat death.

For an excellent account of the life of Genghis Khan and his empire, you must read Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford.  I’m really looking forward to his new book, The Secret History of the Mongol Queens:  How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire, which comes out in February.

In the Empire of Genghis Khan was definitely an interesting read with a wonderful storytelling feel.

Rating:  3.5 out of 5 stars

It’s Christmas Eve, the day of baking and cooking.  We have Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve.  Tomorrow will be self-serve.  Just fix your own plate when you’re hungry, and pop it in the microwave.

I’ve made a few more things for my Merrily kit.

• 2 papers
• 2 frames
• 8 buttons
• 2 stockings
• 2 santa hats
• 1 snowman
• 1 snowball
• 1 fallen snow
• 2 ornaments
• 3 glitter filled stars

Also, I’m told that some of the glitter elements weren’t in the first download for some people, so I’ve included them in this one:

• 20 glitter snowflakes
• 7 glitter stars
• 5 glitter circles

Download:  4shared and mediafire

Enjoy!

Hi, y’all.

We missed out on the big snow (   ), and the weather geeks are calling for thunderstorms on Christmas Day, which totally sucks all around.

It’s been a while since I’ve done any real creating, but, with my holiday spirit came my creative one.  I decided to use non-traditional colors, shades of blue and ginger, so it has a more wintry feel.  Perfect not only for Christmas or Yule, but for those pictures of the kids building snowpeople and having snow wars.

Just so there is no confusion, Merrily is an 800 pixel by 800 pixel kit.  This means it is tagger size.  A standard size scrap kit in 3600 x 3600 pixels.  I cannot make things that big because my computer is a relic of the Stone Age and freezes when I try.

Merrily contains:

• 18 papers
• 18 ornaments
• 20 glitter snowflakes
• 8 presents
• 7 glitter stars
• 6 frames
• 5 Christmas trees
• 5 glitter circles
• 4 bows
• 4 curled ribbons
• 4 tags
• 2 sets multi-tags
• 2 tinsel ropes
• 2 fallen snow (like on the ground)
• 1 snow (like it’s falling)
• 1 round snowflake photo border
• 1 square snowflake photo border
• 2 alphas (lowercase only)

The fonts used in making this kit are:  Christmas and Organica from Kingthings, Christmas Mouse by Steve Ferrera, lpsnowflake by ShadowyMist, Snowflake Letters by Darrian, and Flakey by Gabrielle Gaither.  I got all except the last from dafont.com.  Flakey came in a tutorial at Jumbo-PSP. 

I also used a few of the ornament tutorials at Jumbo-PSP.  For glitter, I used a few of Melissa’s glitter tiles from Sentimental Style.  The multi-tags were made using a Photoshop tutorial which I modified as best I could in Paint Shop Pro.  This is the tutorial:  Simplistic Multi-Tags Icon.

Download:  4shared and mediafire

I hope everyone has a happy holiday, whichever one they celebrate.

Enjoy!

Sacred Hearts is definitely the best of Dunant’s Renaissance novels.  I was totally absorbed in life behind the walls of Santa Caterina.  Although, I find it difficult to believe that Serafina managed to fool so many.  I mean, when a rebellious sixteen-year-old girl suddenly becomes sweet and complacent it means she’s up to something.  Everyone knows that, or so I thought.  Especially women who used to be sixteen-year-old girls themselves.  I know that being sixteen then meant different things than being sixteen, in maturity and responsibility, but come on!

The contrast between the austere piety of Umiliana and the more worldly shrewdness of Chiara was especially well done.  There was little freedom for women in those times and I found it fascinating that many found more of it within the convent walls than in the outside world.  The fight for those freedoms in the face of the reforms of the Counter-Reformation was very compelling.

This is an excellent, absorbing read, though I must say that the way Serafina’s fate was achieved was almost too cliché.

Rating:  4.5 out of 5 stars

Aren’t they cute?  Though Kaylee doesn’t look all that happy, does she?  Like maybe she needs a nap, or just woke up from one. 

The layout is based on Lindsey Jane’s Template 97.  I also used her Mini Tinsel Frames.  The other elements and papers are from the Starving Artist Holiday Blog Train.  Specifically from Black Cherry Scraps and QueenBrat Designs.  The fonts are “a bug’s life debugged”, which you can get at dafont.com, and “pea katie” from Kevin and Amanda.

I don’t really know what I think of this book. 

On the one hand, I found Mandanipour’s description of the agonies of being a censored writer fascinating.  An American writer can simply sit before their computers and let the words flow, but an Iranian writer must constantly think about whether or not a sentence or word may be seen as provocative or corrupting in the eyes of the Islamic Republic.  I kept getting this mental picture of a small writer perched on one shoulder and Mr. Petrovich perched on the other, like the devil and angel in cartoons.

And isn’t it interesting that use technologies purchased from the hated West in order to monitor and purify their literature?  Talk about hypocrisy.

However . . .

On the other hand, the love story was quite dull, not to mention ridiculous.  Dara was an insane stalker, in my opinion.  Rather like an Iranian Florentino Ariza (from Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera).  My impression of Sara is that she’s a spoiled child.  She liked male attention in a society where it was banned.  Liked watching their jealousies and the rivalries for her love.  First Sinbad and Dara, then Dara and Farhad.  She kept insisting that Dara prove his love for her in idiotic and childish ways, as if she actually wanted him to get arrested.  Until, that is, it happens.  But does she learn her lesson?  No.  She just has to flirt with the good doctor.  See?  Ridiculous! 

There is one good thing about the love story:  I also kind of liked the idea of a Hashashin in modern-day Tehran.  It was an interesting twist to the story.  I was also amused by the references to other novels an stories integrated into the text.

Censoring an Iranian Love Story is certainly an enlightening read, but not very entertaining.

Rating:  4 out of 5 stars

The Gargoyle is an amazing read.  I was hooked from page one.  The entire book is wonderfully, beautifully written, the descriptions lovely, even when what is being described is not.  Like “unholy yoga” on page 3 to describe the spinnings and bendings of a car as it tumbles down a cliff.  You can’t help but appreciate Davidson’s word choices.  He makes you laugh and he makes you cry.  Sigurðr’s death had me in tears, but I had a little chuckle here, despite the horror of  what was happening:

“Once you’ve spun that steering wheel around and found it doesn’t make any difference, you have this one clear, pure thought:  Oh, shit.  For a glorious moment, you achieve the empty bliss that Eastern philosophers spend their lives pursuing.  But following this transcendence, your mind becomes a supercomputer capable of calculating the gyrations of your car, multiplying that by the speed of the fall over the angle of descent, factoring in Newton’s laws of motion and, in a split second, coming to the panicked conclusion that this is gonna hurt like hell“  (2-3).

All of the characters are so vivid, especially Marianne.  Her fervent, zealous love and desperation just leap off the page.  I will admit that I found the constant use of Marianne’s last name to be slightly annoying after a while.  The other characters were simply Nan, Gregor, or Sayuri, for example, but she is always Marianne Engel.

Andrew Davidson is a true wordsmith, a master of his craft and I eagerly await his next effort.  This is his first novel, if you can believe it.

Rating:  5 out of 5 stars