38. 
Title: Broadmoor Revealed
Author: Mark Stevens
Pages: 107 pages
Genre: Nonfiction
Medium: Kindle
Acquisition: Free Amazon Download
Date Completed: May 3, 2012
Rating: ***

As one could deduce from the page count, Mark Stevens' Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum is only a brief glimpse into one of England's Victorian-era asylums.  Idyllic in setting and home to as many sane criminals as deranged artists, Broadmoor is an interesting subject for study, but by no means unique.  Although a number of crimes are discussed in relation to the patients, what I found most interesting were the details of the escapes attempts, and how the Board responded - or failed to, as was frequently the case.  Although I would have preferred greater depth, Broadmoor Revealed is a nice snack for those interested in Victorian crime or mental institutions. 

39. 
Title: Death Comes to Pemberley
Author: P. D. James
Pages: 220 pages
Genre: Mystery
Medium: Kindle
Acquisition: Library Ebook
Date Completed: May 4, 2012
Rating: *

Death Comes to Pemberley is trite and wooden.  The plot itself is lost in the pedantic text, which lectures as opposed to narrates. James uses dialog to introduce every detail, which leads to cumbersome and often ridiculous conversations, in which Character A reminds Character B that they met the good Doctor five years ago at that dinner party, and that the Doctor now suffers from gout and enjoys a comfortable estate, but went on that dreadful trip last year and is now nursing a sore hip and oh yes is not married and has no intention of seeking matrimony; he'll be here within the hour.  Oh yes, and candlelight merely enhances the darkness and gloom, and Darcy wonders, generally speaking.

Anyone with any knowledge - even passing - of Austen and/or the long nineteenth century will be better off avoid this cumbersome narrative. 

36. 
Title: Waiting for Godot
Author: Samuel Beckett
Pages: 100 pages
Genre: Drama
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: Work Text
Date Completed: April 26, 2012
Rating:

37. 
Title: Simon Said
Author: Sarah R. Shaber
Pages: 220 pages
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Medium: Kindle
Acquisition: Borrowed from Amazon Prime
Date Completed: April 27, 2012
Rating: ***

Simon Shaw is the perfect protagonist for a cozy mystery; unlike other cozies, which dump corpses behind bakeries or in bookstores, Shaber deposits a 70-year-old corpse in the middle of an archeological dig at a college, where a depressed and socially awkward professor of history is happy to take up the research to put a name to the skull, and a name to the bullet inside of that skull.  As an amateur detective, Shaw utilizes his skill set as an academic and researcher, and pieces together the mystery in a way that is purposeful and conceivable.  While one of the two mysteries of the text isn't quite so meticulous, Shaw's own efforts are strong.

So why just three stars?  Shaw himself is repugnant, albeit far less so than some of his colleagues.  Emotionally crippled by the departure of his wife, Shaw is initially presented as a wounded animal, and lacks sympathy (when Shaw himself analyzes his failed marriage he can understand how his actions and decisions lead to the separation, and so can I).  However, such emotional frailty could be overlooked if Shaw himself wasn't such blatant a sexist.  Although a colleague in the history department is labeled a sexist, it is Shaw himself who proves far more demeaning and critical: the colleague dismisses women as a waste of time, while Shaw criticizes the "love interest's" choice of clothing, eating habits, and choice of beverages in a way that exerts his superiority over an independent and successful woman.  To Shaw, she lacks autonomy and instead functions as an inevitable addition to his life - after all, once she works through her far-more-complicated emotions he will be there to indulge in the relationship of his choosing. 

As much as I enjoy Shaw as an amateur  detective, his personal life is enough to keep me from pursuing the series.

35. 
Title: At Home
Author: Bill Bryson
Pages: 592 pages
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Medium: Ebook
Acquisition: Library book
Date Completed: April 21, 2012
Rating: ***

At Home is not the book I had hoped it would be; focused primarily on the home developed by the Victorians, the book is a brief history of inventions and biographies loosely related to the domestic life we now enjoy.  While I had hoped for more of an evolution of homemaking, what Bryson has produced is very much so in line with A Brief History of Nearly Everything - and as such much more focused on who invented the television and first thought to drill for oil than how people made their beds in the fourteenth century.  Bryson's style is easy to comprehend and his tone gives his books a wonderful personality. 

The Washington Ballet's "Alice (in Wonderland)"

Now that I have your attention.


This Sunday I took First Born to see the Washington Ballet's production of "Alice (In Wonderland)." Given the above promotions for the event, it promised to be a spectacle and a wonder, and we were very enthusiastic about attending the show. I am, admittedly, more familiar with the Disney film than I am the original novel, so from an audience perspective I had few expectations in terms of storyline, and was open to interpretation.

While the costumes are just as glamorous and breathtaking as the advertisements suggest, the wonder of the performance stops there.


Initially, the staging seemed magical, but when Alice falls down the rabbit hole the ballet quickly falls into gimmick. It seems that Septime Weber really wanted to get his money's worth out of the aerial harness, and awkwardly foists Alice (and other dancers) into the air a number of times. The aerial display (while not spectacular) is not itself the problem, but rather the rather awkward amount of time it takes to get each dancer harnessed - on staged - and then unhooked once the piece is over. There is an attempt to mask this by using chorus members in identical costumes to do the actual rigging, but the whole thing came off as rather trite.

In light of the unprofessional effects (and really, dance is magical enough without this, I say), the rest of the ballet took on a likewise unprofessional feel. Many of the dances seemed under-rehersed, and often "forced" as they tried to replicate the sense of wonder a child would experience when seeing the film for the first time. There was little fluidity to many of the dances (specifically those with Alice herself, who was not played by the actress pictured below for my showing), and the whole production felt more like a modern art experiment than a captivating ballet.

I was absolutely gobsmacked by the production of [The Great Gatsby], so I'm holding out hope that this fall's production of [Dracula] will hold some of the same magic of the Fitzgerald piece, and none of the gimmicks of "Alice."

34.
Title: Hexed
Author: Ilona Andrews and others
Pages: 336 pages
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Medium: Ebook
Acquisition: Library book
Date Completed: April 5, 2012
Rating: ***

I borrowed Hexed from the library as an introduction to authors I had been intending to try - Ilona Andrews and Yasmine Galenorn specifically. Like many collections of this sort, it seems that fans of these individual series will enjoy the stories more than those going in cold, like myself. The writing styles and worlds vary fairly widely, and there is something that will likely appeal to an equally wide range of fantasy readers. However, most of the content fell a bit flat for me, largely because I had no previous attachment to the protagonists to fall back on. I am not sure I will seek out any of these authors in the future.

33.
Title: Dirty Little Secrets
Author: C.J. Omololu
Pages: 224 pages
Genre: Fiction
Medium: Ebook
Acquisition: Recommended by Faith
Date Completed: April 5, 2012
Rating: ****

Compulsive hoarding is a disease I both understand and fear; while I have no desire to keep all of our garbage, for example, I can sympathize with the panic and anxiety that inspires one to keep "x" because it might be needed one day, or the similar fear of forgetting that leads people to collect things like receipts. Thankfully, my own compulsive disorder drives me to streamline and organize as much as possible (I guess you could say I hoard electronically, since I scan all paperwork/children artwork/photos/etc instead of keeping it in hardcopy), but in the absence of that kind of drive people with similar anxieties just tend to ... keep. Unfortunately, it seems in many cases that one's hoarding doesn't just impact the hoarder's life, but it has a detrimental effect on those around them - most tragically their children.

I picked up Dirty Little Secrets because of my own interest in the show "Hoarders," which attempts to help hoarders recognize their anxieties and problems. Omolou's book focuses on the real victim of this kind of household - the child of a hoarder. The protagonist has fought with her mother's hoard for her entire life, and suffers great emotional and psychological problems because of it. I found the narrative to be both compelling and realistic (from my own perspective, mind), and I could feel my own anxiety and OCD rising just reading about her living conditions. And I have to admit - I found the conclusion to be a relief.

31.
Title: Return of the Rose
Author: Theresa Ragan
Pages: 310 pages
Genre: Fiction
Medium: Ebook
Acquisition: Free Download, recommended by RichardDerus
Date Completed: March 31, 2012
Rating: ****

Ragan had me at "kirtle."

Time travel is one literary device which I have always disliked; no matter the amount of research that an author may dedicate to the composition of such a novel, the characters created are nearly always so grossly ignorant that their bumbling ways prove to be a greater frustration than source of entertainment. Return of the Rose, a story that relies on the idea of traveling through time (albeit through magic as opposed to pseudo-science) is not perfect, and does indeed dip into the ludicrous at particular moments (bikinis?!).

Despite her introduction of far-too-liberal fourteenth-century characters, Ragan's own research does come through; as opposed to limiting herself to such vague and useless descriptions as "old fashioned," she does in fact make an attempt to reconstruct a fourteenth-century environment, and her "bumbling" protagonist does make attempts to adapt, even if some of her actions seem careless.

The odds were stacked against this book, and still I found it to be very good fun. And if I, one who does not seek out the genre, enjoyed this book, then I am sure others will love it.


32.
Title: Othello
Author: Shakespeare
Pages: 100 pages
Genre: Drama
Medium: Anthology - Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, & Writing
Acquisition: Work Text
Date Completed: March 31, 2012
Rating:

A film review

I went to see "The Hunger Games" tonight, and I thought it very well done. Like most books made into movies it certainly wasn't perfect; to do so just isn't possible, because there is always more story and development in a 300-page novel than there is in a 2.5 hour movie. I was particularly taken with Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss; her portrayal is consistent with my own reading of the novel, and her performance is excellent. The one casting choice I do question is Josh Hutcherson, who is not quite the heartthrob-type I had pictured for his character, but his portrayal is loyal and I can appreciate the sense of realism he brings to the character. Though I did miss some development and found myself questioning (as usual) if the unread viewer would see the same story that I do, I found that I appreciated the choices made by the director. A movie is a different beast than a novel, and I try to treat it as such; although I have seen the film just once I feel comfortable calling it a success.

30.
Title: The Night Circus
Author: Erin Morgenstern
Pages: 400 pages
Genre: Fiction
Medium: Kindle
Acquisition: Library Book
Date Completed: March 24, 2012
Rating: ***



More than a book about a circus, Morgenstern's The Night Circus is a narrative about questions, knowledge of self, and the role of external factors - including, for example, entertainment - in the shaping of the self. Character growth is what is most appealing about this story.

But book hype is a fickle beast, and can do just as much damage to a readership as it can propel an author towards stardom. The Night Circus is one of these books that, for my own reading, was not helped by the raving reviews I have been hearing from trusted reader friends, and I can't help but wonder if I would have rated the book higher had I not heard such illustrious praise for the book before reading it myself.

I, for one, did not find the first part of the story compelling, and was not captivated by the tale until 22% (thanks, Kindle) of the way into the text. At that point I was indeed hooked, and was fairly greedy in my reading. While I continued to loathe the occasional shifts to second-person narration (what seemed to me to be a cheap authorial trick rather than a successful narrative device), I was able to quickly gloss over such meaningless moments to get back to the true meat of the story. However, like the beginning, I found that the conclusion of the novel was dull and unnecessary, and could easily identify the point at which the novel could have concluded more successfully. I found the end to be too traditional for what is supposed to be such an nontraditional space, and was rather disappointed.

While I enjoyed the book much more than I initially thought, I am equally glad that I was able to borrow the novel from the library.

29.
Title: Habibi
Author: Craig Thompson
Pages: 672 pages
Genre: Graphic Novel
Medium: Hardback
Acquisition: Rec'd at Contentious Issues conference
Date Completed: March 15, 2012
Rating: *****

Habibi is both the Arabic word for "my beloved" and a masterful work of art by Craig Thompson. The graphic novel is a lush, brutal, and unconditional love story about two slaves in the middle East. The protagonists of Thompson's tale are as intricate as the script with which he illustrates his pages, as full of flaws and humanity as they are full of love and dedication to one another. Their beginning is a seemingly unusual one, and their relationship grows and shifts as the two struggle through tribulations and abuse.

Habibi is not for those easily disturbed by graphic material; as one can imagine, the lives of two slaves in the Middle East are not marked by kindness and luxury, but a very harsh - and often graphic - reality. Still, there is much beauty to be found both in the story being told, and in the stories they tell. I found the text to be mesmerizing, and found myself lost in the story and the images used to relate it.

Highly recommended.