Bloody Bloodiness!

I was cruising through my stores of Drafted posts that have never borne Bloggy Fruits when I realized that I haven't written anything on the Bloody Jack books yet.

*Hits self on forehead*

The Bloody Jack series, by L. A. Meyer, is a trillion kinds of awesome. Seriously.
The first book is called Bloody Jack (no surprises there), and it is about a scrawny little girl named Mary who lives in London in the 1800s-ish. When she becomes an orphan, she joins a gang of kids running around London stealing drunk peoples' clothing and fighting other gangs. THEN, her buddy is killed by Muck, a creep who sells bodies to doctors, and Mary decides to leave the gang by dressing up as a boy, joining the Navy ship The Dolphin, and renaming herself Jacky. While in the Navy, she goes through puberty (she thinks she's dying at first), falls in love, and kills pirates and child molesters.

The second book is The Curse of the Blue Tattoo, and it's actually the first one in the series that I read. You KNOW a series is good when you can read the second one, and still follow the plot and like the characters. Jacky is punted off The Dolphin and sent to the Lawson Peabody School for Girls.
That's right, this gun-toting, shiv-wielding, spitting, swearing, skinny little pirate-killer is gonna become a bleedin' lady of manners and wot-not.

I am not going to get into the other seven or so books, but suffice to say, they are also really neat reads.
My Uncle R, who is pretty into 19th century sailing and ships and boats and stuff, also says the books are both really good and fairly accurate. I just find it neat that we can both read the same book and enjoy it equally.

I am just going to say this: I have read a LOT of books with kick-ass female protagonists, and if I were going to need backup or assistance or a friend from one of those books, I would pick Jacky Faber. (Or Hermione Granger. But that comparison's really not fair, because Hermione's magic....)
Jacky is a scrawny, smart, funny, brave-but-also-cowardly, snarky, sneaky, unforgettable little con-artist of a character. She's loyal, a bit of a hell-raiser, and tries to get along with everybody, except if they are evil/mean/cruel, in which case she concocts diabolical ways to get revenge on them.

The writing in the first half of the first book is a little funky because there are a hell of a lot of run on sentences much like this one, but they actually flow really well. I don't usually enjoy Streams of Consciousness, but I enjoy Jacky's. About midway through the first book, though, she starts to talk normally (as normal as 19th century pirate killer talk on Navy ships gets) because she starts to get some schoolin' in.

The thing that really gets me about this series is that even though it reads like a teenage girl telling you what's going on in her life, the series is actually written by L. A. Meyer, a fifty-year-old-ish guy in Maine. His website (linky goodness here) actually leads to either his art gallery's page or Jacky's page. Continue to Jacky's page! He sells autographed books for $24 (US, I think) and t-shirts (he actually makes them, and they are actually cool) for $24 (US again, I think).

Also, luckily for us all, there is a new book (9th in the series, I think) coming out in September. 

Have at 'em, mates!
Captain Radical

Bite Me, Timekeepers

*This is a post I started back when Daylights Savings Time had just started again and was screwing me up. This should alert you all to the time it takes between Blog Post Idea and Actual Legitimate Blog Post. I am like a snail. Persistent, slow... I think this analogy should end here.*

I am not afraid to say that Daylight Savings Time sucks.
While I am not totally opposed to the general idea or even the implementation, the actual doing of it irritates me. The idea that Time can change, that we affect how the already almost impossible to measure substance running our lives is counted kind of bamboozles my brain.

Another thing running around my brain is revolution. I've been reading books on the French Revolution lately, and it is... disorientating, to say the least, to be able to draw comparisons to present day events in the East, specifically Egypt and Libya.
The only book to come to mind concerning issues of time and political rebellion was Revolution, by Jennifer Donnelly.

Andi, a high school senior, is a pill-popping, emotionally traumatized musical prodigy supporting her mother through a mental breakdown after the death of her younger brother Truman. When her estranged father enters the scene, he swiftly makes a series of decisions that will change Andi's life forever. Putting her mother in a mental hospital to help her recover, he takes Andi to Paris with him for Christmas break, so he can supervise her senior project, and help identify a young boy's heart in a glass jar, rumoured to be that of the last Dauphin - possibly King - of France, Louis-Charles, or Louis XVI, the son of Marie Antoinette.

When Andi stumbles upon a diary from the years of the French Revolution, she is intrigued and captured by Alex, a young aspiring actor who takes a position as companion and joker for Louis-Charles, and later lights fireworks for him when he is imprisoned at the age of ten by the corrupt regime of Robespierre.

I did not expect to like this book as much as I did. I got it as a gift, and my first reaction was basically I liked the author (her earlier YA novel, A Northern Light? SO MANY KINDS OF AWESOMENESS), but the premise (time travel+teen angst) didn't seem particularly appealing.
SO WRONG. (Ah, how I love the taste of literary crow in the mornings..............)

Revolution was crazy good, not only because I love historical fiction (especially the French Revolution, for some reason) but because Andi is a really, really incredible character. She's tortured and moody, but it doesn't feel as tired and boring as the patented "Teenagers + Angst = Guilt + Depression" as a plot device usually is.

An interesting undercurrent and side-plot is Andi's music. She's a talented musician, focused mainly on guitar, and the music the author chooses to mention in the book (from Led Zeppelin to Debussy) never feel like it's just being thrown in to hook People Who Like Music; it just feels like an actual facet of Andi's character.

If you're interested in reading more about Jennifer Donnelly and Revolution, she has written some really interesting things about it on her website.


Enjoying the "End of Blog Post Means I Have Accomplished Something Today" high,
RR

Beer and Genetics

So, egotistical maniac I am, I've been reading up on this blogging blog's stats.
Disturbingly, the Google searches that have led hapless readers to my clutches are people wondering or trying to find the following:

1. Books where the main character goes on a road trip

2. How to have good looking children

3. I am the messenger sequel

4. Is there always one good looking sibling?
5. Le messenger beer

6. lemessenger beer

For starters, I am sorry to have misled so many beer aficionados. 

I'm pretty sure there isn't a sequel to I am the Messenger, but here's the link to the author's website if you want to explore that a bit further.

To have good looking children, marry someone good looking. (I could do a bit of a rant about loving your children for who they are, but it's been a long morning, so I'll leave you to your imagination on that one.)

I think good looks are fairly objective, but if you want to physically compare yourself to your sibling your entire life, I suggest you start saving for therapy now. 

On that cheerful fiscal note, I leave you. 

 RR

Review: Water for Elephants

Every once in a while, I read a really lovely book about a time gone by - not so far gone by, but a time almost forgotten. It is one so foreign from our present that it meshes wonderfully with the fiction the author has created.
Water for Elephants, by Sara Gruen, is an excellent example of this. A beautiful novel built around a traveling circus train, it follows the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth circus during the Great Depression.

Jacob Jankowski, the main character, is a "ninety or ninety-three year-old" rotting away in a nursing home in the present. One of his five children or many grandchildren visit regularly, and he lives a tolerable life, if not an interesting one. Bored by his dull present, he recounts his past with the circus.

At twenty-three, he is about to take his final exams to become a veterinarian at Cornell, when he is told his parents have died in an accident. Unfortunately, he also loses his home and everything in it, as his parents mortgaged the house to pay for Cornell, and his father had been working for food. Desolate and broken, Jacob jumps a train that turns out to be the traveling circus of the Benzini Brothers. (The Benzini Brothers do not actually exist as characters in the book, but their circus was bought by a central character.)

He is hired by the manipulative Uncle Al, head of the circus, as a veterinarian, and becomes friends with August, the unpredictable and frightening head animal trainer, who is married to the mesmerizing and beautiful Marlena. Also featured is Rosie, an elephant spontaneously purchased by Uncle Al. At first, Rosie is badly beaten  by August for not obeying commands - until Jacob discovers that Rosie speaks Polish, and will respond to a myriad of commands as long as they are in Polish.

This is not a ground-breaking book. It doesn't unravel any mysteries untouched by man, it doesn't make any sweepingly epic declarations on the state of being human. But it is a beautiful, readable book about a young man, the world of the circus, and his love for a woman and, improbably, an elephant.

Well worth a read if you are into subcultures, animals, true love, and/or historical fiction.
Yours truly,
RR

Planet of the Literary Guilt Monkey Part II

Today I caved to the hype, and checked out a Stieg Larsson - my first, actually. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Multiple friends, family, acquaintances, libraries, and publications have told me that TGWtDT is a book worth reading, but I have just not been able to muster up the urge to WANT to read it. Why? Why, you ask?
(Why yes, I AM blatantly setting this up for a list! How DID you guess???)

WHY I CAN'T SEEM TO READ TGWTDT:
1) It's enormous,
2) the actual main character is a middle-aged man, not someone I easily identify with,
3) the way people say it treats women (not so good), and finally,
 4) it's been publicly lauded as fantastic and multiple people have recommended it to me.

For some reason, while I enjoy recommending books, I rarely enjoy books recommended to me. Especially books like TGWtDT, what with it being pasted all over Time, Newsweek, Macleans, Entertainment Weekly, bookstores, libraries, etc. for the last couple of years.
In short, overexposed.

When a book has been as talked about and praised and recommended as TGWtDT, I just find that it never really lives up to my expectations - much like The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. While I acknowledge that both books are good, incredibly good, even, I can't seem appreciate them as much as a book I find on my own. This may tap into my block with Jane Austen books, and is definitely something I would like to one day vanquish as Buffy did so many of the undead.

But New Years is a long time away, so I suppose I will just have to tuck my LitGuilt 2.0 away until December - when I can obsess over it with PURPOSE.

Sincerely,
RR

Planet of the Women

Hi all,
Today is (according to Facebook) International Womens' Day!
So in honour of IWD, I have decided to do a post on, surprise surprise, WOMEN.
Below, a list of my favourite female characters:

RR'S FAVOURITE FEMALE CHARACTERS:
1. Mary "Bloody Jack" Faber
She's a pirate/musician/entrepreneur whose adventures start when she is about ten as an orphan on the streets of 19th century London. Reckless, scheming, smart, and funny, all good things.

2. Hermione Jean Granger
Smart, quick on her feet, and a great witch. Also, clearly has social conscience, as evidenced by S. P. E. W.

3. Magdalena "Maggie" Lorraine Quinn
A normal... slightly psychic.... girl just trying to vanquish evil, graduate university, and find a good pair of jeans.

4. Imogene Yeck
She sees fairies, has an imaginary friend who's not so imaginary, dresses thrift store chic, and can pull off being entirely BLUE. Also, knows how to make a few extra bucks here and there, and can defend herself pretty handily in event of a fight.

5. Jane Eyre
Hard core awesome. Doesn't care about husband's blindness and whatnot, but sticks to her morals when offered position as would-be husband's mistress when his secret in the attic is uncovered.

6. Elizabeth Bennet
Ms. Bennet, though possessing faults, is both quick with a comeback and loyal to her family, both traits I admire. Also, she manages to have her own opinions and act upon said opinions in a time when parents basically owned their daughters. Kudos given for not marrying cousin, even under maternal pressure. (I don't care how distantly they were related! IT'S STILL GROSS!)

On a more serious note, I direct your attention to the International Women's Day website. It's been one hundred years since they started, and I think it's amazing how far we've come - but how far we still have to go. Please take a look, it's a great site, and a great cause.
Yours Sincerely,
RR

A Quest for Nerds

You know, everyone has a particular quest. A burden. Something they must struggle through one day.
I have SO MANY OF THESE.
Actually, quite seriously, I have a couple of books I always vow to finish at some point or another.
They tend to be older books, "Classics" that I feel like I have to read in order to be a "real" reader. 

BOOKS I CANNOT SEEM TO READ

1. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien
3. The Once and Future King, by T. H. White
4. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

I have checked all of these books out of libraries multiple times. I have read up to a third of some. I OWN some of them. About once a year, I ACTIVELY SEEK each of them, and attempt to read them.
And then I get stuck. So, so, so stuck. And I start reading something else. And then... the due date comes up, and I return it, and forget about it.
Currently, I am attempting to read J. R. R. Tolkien's The Two Towers, or books III and IV.
I am.... halfwayish.... into Book III.
See, the thing that really gets me is that I HAVE A PATTERN, and I KNOW I have a pattern, but I still can't frigging seem to finish any of the books on that list.
Although to be fair, The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) is pretty much an enormous series. But whatever.
The pattern I wind myself into (every. time.) goes something like this:

Innocent/Naive Self (INS): "Oh, it is *summervacation/springbreak/Christmasbreak/longweekend*. You know what I will do? I will check out *book 1, 2, 3, or 4; see above*. And I will finish it during *summervacation/springbreak/Christmasbreak/longweekend*. And then I can check off a Literary Achievement!"

(I am joking about the Literary Achievement bit. Kind of.)

And the thing is, despite all odds, this happens pretty much every break. I seem to regain my sense of innocence and naivete.

Actually, this Spring Break I'm reading Book III of LOTR.
Or maybe The Once and Future King.
Or Pride and Prejudice.
*Innocent/Naive Self: "OR ALL OF THEM! WE CAN TOTES DO IT!"*

Yargh.
The worst part is the impending sense of Doooom when the end of *summervacation/springbreak/Christmasbreak/longweekend* comes around.
Dooooom................
Doooom................
Dooom.............
Doom...........

And with that cheerful thought, I leave you.
Because I have a lot of reading to do.

RR