PACKING FOR MARS by Mary Roach

In an increasingly secular world populated by increasingly cynical adults (like me), holidays have lost some of their inherent shininess. Really, when was the last time you got excited about Easter?  I propose that, in order to replace those holidays that have lost their shine, every adult should have the right to declare a certain number of days a year as “personal holidays.”

If that proposal came to fruition, every time Mary Roach published a new book, I would declare a personal holiday.  

There are few writers who are so consistently good.  And there are fewer who are so good when writing about about such diverse material.**  Roach’s previous three books have been on subjects that are already interesting in their own right: death, the afterlife, and sex.  Roach’s fourth book, PACKING FOR MARS, is about a subject that is, at its core, relatively interesting. But while I would-- and have-- read a book on death, the afterlife, or sex, of my own volition, I’ve never before been compelled to pick up a book about the space travel program.  

Roach could write about anything at this point, and I will pre-order her book from Amazon as soon as its announced.

PACKING FOR MARS explores the complications of space travel from a very Roach-ian prospective.  Sure, she’s a science writer, but she’s not interested in aero-space engineering and the math involved.  She’s interested in the many dozens of ways that NASA and other countries’ space agencies have tried to deal with the problem of disposing of feces in space.  She’s not interested in how we’re going to get people BACK from Mars if we ever send them there (and scarily enough, she’s discovered that some plans to send American astronauts to Mars do NOT include return plans).  She’s interested in how people have sex in zero gravity and whether or not sperm need gravity to swim.  

Whether she’s suppressing the urge to vomit on a parabolic flight or genially swigging reclaimed urine (apparently, it’s refreshing and surprisingly sweet), Roach is as compelling a character as the many astronauts she interviews for the book.  Maybe my favorite thing about Roach is that she’s a humorist who doesn’t knee-jerk rely on our generation’s crutch of snark.  Her shit is just plain funny.  “Compressed food not only took up less stowage-- which is how children and aircraft designers say ‘storage’-- space, it was less likely to crumble,” writes Roach in a typical aside. 

Unless you’re a space junkie, STIFF-- Roach’s debut book-- is a better introduction to her writing.  But PACKING FOR MARS is a book more than worthy of her.

**  The only non-fiction author that rivals Roach in the ability to make anything interesting is Jon Mooallem, who has yet to write a book.  Mooallem has, for the New York Times Magazine, written articles about pigeon control and the complications of creating bagged apple slices that are drool-inducingly mesmerizing.  Mooallem, where the heck is your book?

BARELY BEWITCHED by Kimberly Frost

BARELY BEWITCHED is the second in Frost's "Southern Witch Novel" series.  I reviewed WOULD-BE WITCH in 2009, and for more background on the series, it's best to start there.

As with my previous review of Frost's book, I offer this declaimer: This is a minor friend full-disclosure.  While I don't know Kimberly that well, we do travel in the same circles and have a lot of friends in common.  


And with this review, that disclaimer is kind of important.

When you're talking about books written by people that you know, or even sort of know, things get a little tricky.  Especially when you know them, as I do Frost, precisely because they're uber-talented.  When you have a talented writer acquaintance who has finally made the big leagues of publishing, there's sometimes a disparity between what they've actually published and what you wish they had published.  You probably sensed that a little from my review of WOULD-BE WITCH.  And it remains true for BARELY BEWITCHED.

In both books, Frost's writing sings.  Our narrator is funny and sarcastic and smart, and the descriptions and setting feel real and paint authentic Texas in your mind's eye.  But the narrator's obvious smarts are undermined by the relationships that she has.  Her ex-husband is controlling and piggish-- but somehow still attractive to her?  The budding love interest, Bryn, demeans her on one hand and lusts for her on the other.  Why would an obviously spunky, bright woman like Tammy Jo forge these kinds of relationships?

The good news is that by the end of BARELY BEWITCHED, Tammy Jo Trask seems to be headed in the right direction as a character and with her relationships. A direction that is much more worthy of her and her author.

In BARELY BEWITCHED, our hapless amateur witch has snagged the attention of the greater witching community.  It's clear now that her powers are significant, if untamed, and the World Association of Magic has sent two sketchy characters to come and train her for a test so she can join the community or... well, fail and die.  But when Tammy Jo fails an initial challenge, she's punished with a curse that unwittingly causes her to unleash pixie dust upon poor Duval, Texas, sending the entire town into an orgiastic, destructive fit of bacchanalia.  Like WBW with the invasion of werewolves, BB puts the entire town on the line.  If Tammy Jo and her cohorts can't figure their way out of this, the whole town (more?) is a ticking time bomb.

BB picks up right after WBW ends, so the entire cast of characters from Frost's debut novel are poised to help-- and poised to be the same jerks they were in WBW.  Kyle, Tammy's ex husband, is still there at the beginning of the book, so vile with doubt and machismo that he's talking about having Tammy committed for all of her chitchat about ghosts and witches and whatnot-- despite the fact that he spent the end of WBW fighting off werewolves (Yeah, he doesn't think they were real).  But by the end of BB, Kyle grows and becomes far more sympathetic, and now I'm actually intrigued to find out how his relationship with Tammy Jo will develop in Book 3.  The increasingly appealing Bryn Lyons begins BB as the savior for Tammy's damsel in distress, but as the book progresses, the two become much more evenly matched and start to take turns saving each other's hides.  By the end, we're actually not sure who's saving whom.

I devoured BARELY BEWITCHED because Frost's writing is just so darned good.  And I'm so happy to say that my sense is that this book is the stepping stone to more Southern Witch Books starring the very appealing Tammy Jo who is now really starting to be a heroine in her own right.

I happen to know that Kimberly Frost is just about as kick-ass, liberated, smart a chick as you can imagine.  And that definitely clouds my reviews of her book.  I want a Tammy Jo who's more like Kimberly.  And I think now, we're starting to get one.

WHERE, WHERE THE HELL IS LOU? (Reading Elizabeth George)

For a while I had a pretty good thing going here.  And then around a year and a half ago, I just crapped out.  I didn't crap out with my blogging-- I've been pretty regular about posting on Loueyville-- I just couldn't get back on track with my reading.

As many of you loyal readers-- if you still exist-- know, I was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2008.  Between the stress of the very "idea" of cancer and the subsequent chemo treatments, my mind became... a little fried.  Turns out "Chemo Brain" is a very real thing.  And some studies say it can last as long as five years.  Chemo brain gnaws at your short term memory, makes you forgetful, and disrupts your ability to concentrate.  My Mama has been calling me "the absent minded professor" since I was a wee lass; dump a steaming load of chemo brain on an already scattered soul... and it's kind of a whole mess of "what was I saying? Hey look at that pretty flower!"

Reading takes stamina.  It takes focus.  And if your short-term memory is shot, it's pretty hard to keep a story in your head once you put the book down.  

After a while of trial and failure, I got tired of be frustrated all of the time, of having to go back ten or twenty pages every time I picked up a book.  So for a long time, I just didn't read anything longer than a light short story. 

But sometimes, after you've failed at something over and over, you have this glimmer of success.  And whatever it was that gave you that feeling of succeeding?... Well, you tend to get kind of attached to that thing.  If it made you feel good once, maybe it will make you feel good again...

... gosh, I sound like I'm talking about addiction.  And maybe I sort of am.  

That thing that made me feel like a successful reader again?  Well, that thing was Elizabeth George.

After years of listening to Big Mama wax lovingly about George's characters, I decided to pick up her 1988 debut novel A GREAT DELIVERANCE.  And something about those characters just clicked with me.  And so I tried again with PAYMENT IN BLOOD.  And I became hooked.

Last week, I turned the final page of George's August 2010 release THIS BODY OF DEATH.  And that means I have read all eighteen books of George's Inspector Lyndley series... in a row... with almost nothing in between.

If that simple fact is not an endorsement of George's writing, I don't know what else to tell you.

Of course I do....

The first thing that everyone notes about Elizabeth George is that she's a woman from San Francisco who writes convincingly about a whole cast of characters, from various walks of life, who work in and around New Scotland Yard.  "Convincingly" doesn't do George justice.  Her grasp of all things British is extraordinary. Not only does she write "convincingly" about New Scotland Yard and middle and upper class Brits, she wrote an entire novel, WHAT CAME BEFORE HE SHOT HER, from the perspective of and, largely in the dialect of, an inner-city, mixed-race ten year old.  

But more extraordinary still, to me at least, is George's daring. (Mild spoiler alert... if you're familiar at all with this series, you've heard this before)  A great number of books into the series, George dared to kill off one of the most beloved regular characters, in a numbingly tragic sort of way (I thought I was prepared for it... I could not have been prepared for it).  And then she had the unmitigated gall to follow that book with a book that entirely abandoned the regular cast of characters to rewrite the murder of the beloved character from his/her killer's perspective!  AND she made that killer not only sympathetic, but desperately tragic... perhaps even as tragic as the death that he/she had caused.

And finally... most extraordinary is the fact that this most recent book, THIS BODY OF DEATH, ranks among my favorites.  Eighteen books into the series, and George is still hitting them out of the park.  After you've read seventeen of George's books, you come to trust her unconditionally.  Sure, for the first 500 pages or so, you have no idea why she seems to be recounting two separate and disconnected stories of graphic, horrible murders.  But you know, you just know, that it's going to somehow gel before the end.  

I hope George has eighteen more books in her.  Certainly her characters' personal lives have nowhere near completed whatever journeys they seem to be on.  And every new book-- there was one clunker in the bunch, but I forget which one it was, and I'm loathe to stigmatize any book in particular-- presents new, interesting crimes and new, interesting challenges for her cast of many.  Yes, these are Lyndley novels-- or so they are called-- but I figure most female readers, at least, are as invested, if not more invested, in his train-wreck of a female partner, Barbara Havers.  That being said, I'd be crushed if the series ended without solid resolution for at least five or six of the minor cast.  

I've tried watching the PBS (BBC) series, but two hours doesn't do these books justice.  Many viewers complain that the actor who plays Lyndley isn't handsome enough (uh, yeah he is) or that Havers is too pretty (yes, she is, but what a lame complaint).  But for me, it's about the fact that George's novels average around 700 pages in paperback; that means I've spent upwards of 12,000 pages of my reading life with Elizabeth George's characters.  Try replicating that on film.  

So, that's where I've been, kids.  I hope I am back.  Here's to me finding my next Elizabeth George!