Made to be Broken

I wrote about the second of Kelley Armstrong’s Nadia Stafford series at Curled Up With a Good Book. Check it out here.

The Help

When I don’t really care for a book, I generally just don’t write about it here. I have written some reviews of books I dislike, if I have specific reasons. If it was simply “this book didn’t grab me” then I just don’t write about it. I read so many books that there just isn’t time to write thoughtfully about everything.

I read The Help by Kathryn Stockett a bit more than a week ago. It’s taken me a while to decide how I feel about it and what to say.

On one hand, I liked it. The story was interesting and I wanted to see how things turned out for the women.

On the other hand, something about it bothered me and I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly it was. I got online and read some reviews of it, which didn’t seem to help because the reviews all think Stockett is the next Harper Lee. I didn’t see that at all.
I realize that To Kill a Mockingbird also dealt with racial prejudice in the south and was also written by a white woman. That about ends the comparison. Stockett’s characters didn’t have the depth of Lee’s, for one thing.

For those of you who haven’t read it yet, the premise is this: Skeeter, a 23-year-old white woman in Jackson, MS begins to notice the racism that surrounds her. She is an aspiring journalist and decides to do something about it in the only way she knows how – with her writing. With the help of two black maids, she gathers other maids to tell the stories of their relationships with the white families they serve.

Stockett is a white woman who was raised in Jackson, MS. At the end of the book, she includes a section she calls Too Little, Too Late and in it she talks about her trepidation at writing in the voice of a black woman. She talks about her own family’s maid and doesn’t seem to realize how much of what she says is quite like the families in her books.

I can’t exactly put my finger on it, but the maids didn’t feel right. I think the attempt at writing dialect didn’t work well, for one thing.

The white characters, other than Skeeter, were all pretty much universally bad. I live in the north, but my entire family is southern, quite a number of them fairly vocally racist. I won’t condone their behavior, but I will tell you this: even the most racist among them has some redeeming qualities. My dad, for example, is vocally opposed to interracial marriage, but treats no one with anything less than respect. Among some of my cousins, “the n word” flies freely but they also are ashamed of our family’s history with the KKK. I think I mystify them, and I certainly challenge them, with the fact that so many people of color are in my life and that I am biracial myself. (Though for the purpose of clarity, given my topic, I am half Native American, not half black.)

Skeeter herself doesn’t realize that she is also exploiting the maids. She begins by getting a job writing a column for the local newspaper. The column she writes is one she does not have the knowledge to write – it’s a household tips column – so she enlists the help of Aibilene to write it. Then she uses the maids for the stories for her book. Granted, she ends up giving the money to the maids and she also doesn’t get a byline, but it didn’t start out that way. This is the one part of the book that felt real to me: Skeeter began to see the maids as real people, with real lives and real problems. Different from her own, to be sure, but she starts to see them as real. In my experience, people who are racist have a harder time holding on to that when they begin to see other people as real and fully-developed individuals rather than as skin color.

The plotlines didn’t work well, in some cases, or were simply extraneous. For example, there were two “mysteries” that Stockett alluded to throughout the book: What happened to Skeeter’s family maid and what did Minny do to Hilly that caused Hilly to be so angry? Constantine, Skeeter’s family’s maid, had a story that seemed all too plausible yet not really so scandalous as to require such secrecy. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t live in that time or place, but it would seem that *someone* would have told Skeeter about it without such carryings on. And if Hilly couldn’t tell that she ate not one but two pieces of pie made from feces, then she is a moron who deserves what she gets. She also probably would have gotten fairly sick from e coli, which it doesn’t appear that she did.

From what I know of the south in the early 1960s, it’s highly possible that a number of women were as resigned to their lot in life as some of these maids were. Given that the Civil Rights movement was gaining national attention and that Jackson, MS was in the center of it, it would seem that Stockett could have made more of an effort to have the maids be their own savior, rather than the white lady rushing in to do it for them. At the same time, I wonder: could the maids have gotten the book published, given the time and their own educations and experience, if not for the help of Skeeter? I don’t know the answer to that question, actually. I know black authors did get published, some fairly radical. They were not southern domestics, though.

The ending didn’t ring true to me, either. Skeeter raises a lot of ruckus with this book, though it is published anonymously. It’s clear to most of the city, though, that the book was written by someone in Jackson. Some of the white women fire their maids and do other things to cause them trouble, such as accusing one of stealing silver.

Amid all of this, Skeeter gets a job offer in New York City and she decides to take it. Skeeter is only 23 and a recent college graduate, so that isn’t that unusual. However, none of the maids seemed too upset that she stirred things up in their world and then left them to deal with the consequences. Skeeter wouldn’t have to deal with the fallout, they would. I am sure that the maids thought that Skeeter probably wouldn’t have to deal with it anyway, so it wouldn’t make any difference if she left.

One of my friends said something that was in my mind as I read this book. We were out to dinner with a southern white guy who was essentially raised by his nanny, a black woman. He said “We loved her and she was part of our family.” After we left dinner, my friend, also a black woman, said to me, “He was her job.” My friend’s grandmother was a domestic and she heard stories such as Aibilene’s and Minny’s firsthand. That’s what was going through my mind, “They were her job.” Sure, they probably felt affection for some of the children of the families they worked for, but they were her job.

In Too Little, Too Late, Stockett quotes Howell Raines’ article, “Grady’s Gift.” Raines wrote:
There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.

She then goes on to say,
I am afraid that I have told too little. Not just that life was so much worse for many black women working in the homes of Mississippi, but also that there was so much more love between white families and black domestics than I had the ink or the time to portray.

What I am sure about is this: I don’t presume to think that I know what it really felt like to be a black woman in Mississippi, especially in the 1960s. I don’t think it is something that any white woman on the other end of a black woman’s paycheck could ever truly understand. But trying to understand is vital to our humanity.”

Stockett says she wrote this book because she didn’t think to ask her own family’s maid, Demetrie, what it was like for her. Demetrie died when Stockett was 16. Stockett has spent years imagining the answer to that question, she says, and that is why she wrote this book.

I believe that it is vital for us all to try to understand one another and I believe that Stockett had the best of intentions when she wrote this book. Somehow, it still feels disrespectful to me. I’ve written more than 1500 words here and none of it answers the question of why it feels disrespectful. That’s because I can’t put my finger on it.

Cleopatra’s Daughter

I wrote about Cleopatra’s Daughter for Bookbrowse.com.

Go check out my review – and other people’s review – of Cleopatra’s Daughter.

While you’re there, consider getting a membership. I find out about great books well before they show up on bookshelves and sometimes I get Advance Reading Copies to review. It’s pretty great and not that expensive. For the year, it’s $29.95 and totally worth it!

The Mark of the Demon

I can’t believe I got suckered into yet another series but I did.

Mark of the Demon is the very first book by Diana Rowland, so obviously the very first book of this series.

Kara Gillian is a Louisiana detective. She’s only been a detective for three years and she’s been assigned her first homicide case. It’s a big one, too. The Symbol Man killed 13 people before he just stopped. Now, it appears that he’s killing again.

Kara was a new to the police force when his last victim was found and she saw something at the crime scene that took her by surprise. She saw what she called “arcane resonance.” The thing is, Kara isn’t just a detective. She’s also a demon summoner and what she saw led her to believe that the Symbol Man was at least involved with the arcane. There are a few twists and turns, some surprises and a fairly big surprise before it’s all said and done.

This was an interesting take on urban fantasy. There were none of the usual supernatural characters like weres, witches or vampires–only the demon summoner and various forms of demons. It was really more of a detective novel, what is often called a police procedural with an element of the supernatural thrown in. Well, I shouldn’t say “thrown in.” It was integral to the plot at the same time being nearly secondary. It’s hard to explain.

I have to say … in her acknowledgements, Diana Rowland thanked her copy editor. Well, the copy editor missed a lot of things. Hyphens that didn’t belong, for example. Quotation marks that didn’t belong. Things like that. I want to email her and say “Can I *please* be your copy editor? Or at the very least, the 2nd round copy editor?” The other grammar/language thing (and then I will stop already) is that Rowland used the word “shit” enough times as to make it noticeable to me. For one thing, I’m not a fan of that word but also it was just excessive. That has nothing to do with the copy editor, though.

There is a second book due out in the spring and I’m looking forward to it.

Destined for an Early Grave

This  is the fourth book of the series and it just keeps getting better.

Cat Crawfield is half-vampire and half-human.  Until six years ago, she was a vampire killer.  Then she met Bones.  She’s since learned that not all vampires are evil but that a good many of them aren’t all they appear to be.

She has dreams about a vampire she doesn’t know who is trying to take her from Bones.  She has to unravel the mystery of who he is – and who he is to her. In the meantime, she learns some things about herself, about Bones and about a few other people around her.

Cat’s relationship with Bones is tested and nearly doesn’t meet the test.  Things change for Cat in a number of areas, some she is more ready to deal with than others.

You’re gonna love this one!

Got Books?

Apparently, I’ve been on a Book Frenzy.

Last night, I went to Bunns & Noodles and bought:

Mark of the Demon – Diana Rowland (a new series for me)

Greywalker – Kat Richardson (another new series, thanks to Renee

Coraline – Neil Gaiman (My 12-year-old nephew says he loves it, so I had to buy it)

Vampire Academy – Richelle Mead (another Renee-inspired read)

Early this afternoon, I got 3 packages from Quality Paperback Book Club. In those packages were:

A Mercy – Toni Morrison (I actually got two of these, for some reason)

The Help – Kathryn Stockett (which I’ve been eyeing for a while now)

The Witch of Portobello – Paul Coehlo

The Sword of Shannara Trilogy – Terry Brooks

The New Annotated Bram Stoker’s Dracula – Bram Stoker (duh)

As if *that* weren’t enough, just a few minutes ago, a knock from UPS brought me another box with:

Magic Bites – Ilona Andrews (a new series that I’ve been interested in for a while now)

Cry Wolf – Patricia Briggs (the first of a new series by the author of the Mercy Thompson series)

Destined for an Early Grave – Jeaniene Frost (the latest in a series that I love!)

She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders – Jennifer Finney Boylan (research for a book I’m writing with Joelle Circe)

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity – Julia Serano (also research for the book.)

I am officially out of control! Where am I going to put all of these???

Over My Dead Body: 43 Old Cemetary Road Book 2 – Kate Klise & M. Sarah Klise

Somehow, I wound up on the Amazon Vine list. This is the first of the books I’ve reviewed as an Official Vine Reviewer but I have two more books waiting for me to review and I think another one the way.

You can read the review here.

Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton

In Anita Blake’s St. Louis, vampires and werewolves aren’t figments of our imagination or the stuff of fiction. They are real and walking the streets, they own businesses and have jobs and lives, the vampires even have their own church.

Anita’s primary job is as an animator. She raises the dead – temporarily- for various reasons. Sometimes to settle a will dispute, sometimes other things, mostly mundane. Mundane in the “boring” sense, not mundane in the “nonmagical” sense. Aside from that, Anita is The Executioner, a vampire slayer, with 14 legally sanctioned vampire kills as the book begins.

It’s odd, then, that the vampires have come to Anita to ask her to investigate the vampire murders that have been taking place across St. Louis. The police think there have been four murders – there have really been ten. The vampires don’t trust the human police to properly investigate, so they ask Anita. Anita refuses until the vampires threaten something that she doesn’t want to risk.

If this is your first Laurell K. Hamilton book, please read more of them.

I read Guilty Pleasures because my friend M’s husband said that the third book in the series, Circus of the Damned, was one of his favorite books. I decided to read it and when I found out it was the third, of course I began at the beginning. If I hadn’t had to get to Circus of the Damned, I may not have gotten past this book.

These days when you read reader reviews of new Anita Blake books on, say, amazon.com, there are a number of them who don’t like the newer books. They say the series has gotten to be so much sex and really poor writing. I wonder if any of them have read the early books recently? Because this book is clearly a first novel. It’s a good story but not good enough that I would have normally read the rest of the series. Especially given some annoying grammatical and typographical errors. For example: “Just blundering around trying to track down a killer that has taken out two master vampires.” That sentence should have read: “… a killer who has taken…” That sort of thing drives me nuts. Doesn’t the editor have copyeditors or proofreaders? Anyway.

However, another really good reason to read the early books again is to set the stage for all that happens in the newer ones. It reminds the reader that some things are difficult for Anita and that she has come to accept them only after much kicking and screaming. If you only read the new ones as they come out, you may forget why Anita doesn’t do casual sex and so, as much sex as there might be, none of it is casual. That is only one example.

Guilty Pleasures provides nuances of things to come: Anita’s relationship with Jean-Claude, that she is special and not simply a human or an animator. We meet characters who will be seen in several of the future stories and some who will be referred to frequently.

While it’s not the best of the Anita Blake books, Guilty Pleasures is one you should read, if for no other reason than to set the stage for you to read some of the later books which are excellent.

The Series in Order Category

I don’t know about you, but I like to read a book series in order from first to last. It’s annoying when I’m in a bookstore and can’t figure out which book came first. I suppose I could pull each book out and line them up in order of publication date, but that’s not always reliable either. Never mind that it’s time consuming.

The stupid list of books in the front of each book don’t always help either because some publishers put them in reverse order and some idiotic ones leave the book you’re holding out of the list so you have no idea which is first and which is last. I’ve even seen some recently that the order changes depending on what book you’re looking at!

If you’re more organized than I am and you think about what you’d like before you go to the store, check in here. I’ll be adding lists of books of whatever series I’m reading or have read in the handy dandy category called “Order of the Books” over in “Let’s Talk About Books”.

Happy Reading!

Some Thoughts on This Blog

I originally started writing this blog just to keep track of some of the more complicated book series I read. However, I haven’t done that. It was tedious, writing all those notes, so I didn’t.

I’ve read a lot over the last month or so but I haven’t written anything about any of it because I basically was writing the same thing over and over. I will probably not write about every single book I read. I’ll probably choose a focus on which type of book I want to write about or perhaps it will be just random.

One thing I want to do,though, is re-read some of the series I love and make Character Reference Pages. For example, I love Laurell K. Hamilton but lots of times the characters reference someone from a previous book – and I can’t remember who they are or why they were significant. This could take some time, since I have so many books that are new that I want to read, but I’ll do them as I can.

Renee, at Renee’s Book Addiction, does lists – such as Top 5 Audiobooks – and I’ll perhaps do some of those, too. I don’t know anything other than chances are great that things will change as I change my mind. Which I’m prone to do! I’m definitely going to change the categories somewhat and who knows what else?

Do you have any thoughts? What are things you like about the book blogs you read? What brings you back? I’ve recently cut my list of book blogs down to only a few – readers who like similar books and who write interesting things. Perhaps that’s my answer.