Relish: My Life in the Kitchen, by Lucy Knisley

Relish

by Lucy Knisley

“Lucy Knisley loves food. The daughter of a chef and a gourmet, this talented young cartoonist comes by her obsession honestly. In her forthright, thoughtful, and funny memoir, Lucy traces key episodes in her life thus far, framed by what she was eating at the time and lessons learned about food, cooking, and life. Each chapter is bookended with an illustrated recipe—many of them treasured family dishes, and a few of them Lucy’s original inventions. A welcome read for anyone who ever felt more passion for a sandwich than is strictly speaking proper, Relish is a book for our time: it invites the reader to celebrate food as a connection to our bodies and a connection to the earth, rather than an enemy, a compulsion, or a consumer product.”(via Goodreads)

Is it possible for me to review Relish without mentioning my own food-related memories? I have good ones (helping Mom make paella in her Spanish paella pan that’s older than I am) and bad ones (my brother sneaking such a liberal helping of wasabi onto my salmon-and-bagel sandwich as a kid that I still can’t stand the taste of it with sushi). Really, though, I just have a ton of food memories in general, because I think about food A Lot. Okay, basically all the time. It’s one of my great joys in life besides reading and sleeping, and if I could somehow tuck Relish under my pillow and absorb Lucy’s charming food-related memories through magical sleep osmosis, it would be my Bible.

Relish is episodic in nature, illustrating vignettes from the author’s life–her family’s Easter gatherings, her time working in a cheese shop, a trip to France and the croissants scarfed there–and some readers may find the fare a little light, but I found it perfectly tasty. (Ugh, okay. I’ll stop. I promise.) I feel like her illustration game is only getting better with time; the faces are simple but expressive, the colors are gorgeous. My food-loving roots aren’t as illustrious as hers (no professional chefs in my family, just a great cook of a mother who came from a family where they carved up the Thanksgiving turkey with a cadaver knife), but this is a case of the specific becoming universal. Anybody who’s fond of cooking and/or eating–and if you’re not, why did you pick this up?–will connect with the familiarity of the warm feelings that come off the page.

Well, that’s not wholly true. The book might alienate, say, folks who are against foie gras and the process of its creation, something I’m not personally comfortable with myself. It’s not the kind of book that really looks critically at eating habits and the impact that they have, globally or environmentally, and the author owns her love of goose liver. I don’t believe it’s particularly harmful in that way either, though, so that’s not the hill I’m gonna die on. That’s just not the book it is.

Overall, Relish is sweet and funny and pretty, and includes some recipes if you’re willing to give butterflied leg of lamb a go. I’ve only read the galley version of it, so I’m looking forward to having a bright, shiny copy of the real thing in my hands soon enough. You can read the first chapter here, and Relish will be out on April 2–a week and a half is plenty of time to go preorder it or look at her tour schedule, don’t you think? (I’m serious about that last one. Guys, she got special clothes made to match her book cover for the tour. Are you kidding me? I have to see that dress in person. Or the tunic, I’m not picky. GET IT? PICKY? I’ll go now.)

Medicus, by Ruth Downie

Medicus

by Ruth Downie

“Divorced and down on his luck, Gaius Petreius Ruso has made the rash decision to seek his fortune in an inclement outpost of the Roman Empire, namely Britannia. In a moment of weakness, after a straight thirty six-hour shift at the army hospital, he succumbs to compassion and rescues an injured slave girl, Tilla, from the hands of her abusive owner. Now he has a new problem: a slave who won’t talk and can’t cook, and drags trouble in her wake. Before he knows it, Ruso is caught in the middle of an investigation into the deaths of prostitutes working out of the local bar. Now Ruso must summon all his forensic knowledge to find a killer who may be after him next. With a gift for comic timing and historical detail, Ruth Downie has conjured an ancient world as raucous and real as our own.” (via Amazon)

Good Things: I picked up Medicus for Kindle because the price was right–it’s still $1.99, actually–and because the premise was pretty interesting. I’m starting to get more into mysteries these days, and an unusual setting can spice up what might otherwise be a predictable story, so why not a murder mystery set during the Roman Empire?

Which is not to say that the mystery in Medicus is predictable–at least, not to me it wasn’t, although I’m still a mystery newb at this point. The solution to the murders is both more and less complex than I expected, and while the answers that come out left me a little with a feeling of really? that’s what was going on?, it felt like a rather realistic, muted end to things, especially in comparison to some of the weirdness that the story goes through as it races to the denouement. I enjoyed the setting, although I couldn’t speak to the historical accuracy, which may end up being a sticking point for those more versed in Roman history than I. (As an aside, how much does historical accuracy matter to you in a historically-based novel? I’m still working through my feelings on authenticity and how much I care about it.)

There are moments of casual misogyny that don’t feel out of place for such a patriarchially-oriented society, and most of the moments that would have become really uncomfortable–oh great, Ruso thinks, my slave has misbehaved and now I must beat her–are thankfully averted in a way that doesn’t feel too contrived. I feel complicatedly about historical novels that impress current morals and culture on a historical setting, especially with all the preternaturally modern-sounding Bluestockings that end up running around; I don’t want to read super-misogynistic things that make me feel terrible, of course, but ignoring the reality of times and places that weren’t so hot for women (and POC, of course) and pretending everything was hunky-dorey doesn’t seem like the way to go either? To that end, I appreciated the way that Ruso slowly comes to an understanding of how shitty life is for a large number of women in his time and place, but doesn’t end up acting on that realization in a way that seems unrealistic. Plus, you know, many of the supporting characters in the story work as prostitutes and they are (for the most part) not slut-shamed by the main character or the internal narration! Yay!

Bad Things: Although I generally felt comfortable with the line between historical accuracy and blatant misogyny that the book walks, I wasn’t comfortable with the moments when Ruso reminisces about his ex-wife Claudia. These memories don’t seem to serve any purpose other than to remind us oh yeah, what a shallow bitch she obviously was and give us a reason that Ruso doesn’t want to get involved with another woman, which–what’s the point? Now, this is the first book in a series, and this may be setting the stage for something that happens later down the line, but I didn’t feel great about the inclusion. There were also a couple moments of fat-shaming and other things that made me unhappy, and which didn’t really build towards my seeing Ruso as a sympathetic main character. Actually, he’s kind of a curmudgeon, and while he’s got that soft spot that keeps him doing good things–doctoring, helping the helpless, financially supporting his brother’s family–his grouchy view of the rest of the world as taking advantage of his good nature got a little tiresome. I also didn’t feel super-strongly about Tilla one way or another, which isn’t great since she’s supposed to be the (eventual) love interest. On the other hand, some of the other female characters were pretty rad (holla, Chloe!), so that made up for it a little bit.

Overall: I’ll probably pick up the second book at the library since I bought the third one as a Kindle Daily Deal a while back. (Those Daily Deals, they get me sometimes!) Pretty interesting, although it didn’t leave a strong lasting impression–for historical murder mystery, I’d be more inclined to recommend The Unquiet Bones, by Mel Starr.

First Draft of the Revolution

Word-based stories are what we deal in here at NBP. While those are usually in the form of books, other types exist and today I want to share an interactive story with ya’ll. It’s First Draft of the Revolution by Emily Short, who is rather famous in IF, interactive fiction, circles for good reason. First Draft is particularly exciting to me because it is an interactive epistolary story. Instead of entering commands like in traditional IF, you “help” the various characters write letters to each other. The particular brilliance of First Draft is that you get a lot of story and character while editing, many things that don’t end up in the final versions you send. It is excellent and honestly made my day. Go play it! It won’t take long!

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler (A More Diverse Universe)

Like a couple of others, I decided to (re)read Wild Seed for Aarti & Co’s More Diverse Universe Blog Tour. Any regular reader of NBP knows that diverse reading is important to me, so signing up for the tour was a no-brainer. The real question was what to read. I have several SF&F books written by POC that have been on my TBR for a while (A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, Who Fears Death, etc), but I’ve been meaning to reread Wild Seed for years so that I could continue on with the rest of the Patternmaster series which I haven’t read. Since it’s been on my TBR list for the longest, Wild Seed won.

Anyway, tl;dr for why I chose Wild Seed. Onto the book itself!

From Amazon (that link is to just Wild Seed, but I would recommend, if you are interested, in instead getting Seed to Harvest, the compilation of the four Patternmaster books): “Doro is an entity who changes bodies like clothes, killing his hosts by reflex — or design. He fears no one — until he meets Anyanwu. Anyanwu is a shapeshifter who can absorb bullets and heal with a kiss…and savage anyone who threatens those she loves. She fears no one — until she meets Doro. From African jungles to the colonies of America, Doro and Anyanwu weave together a pattern of destiny that not even immortals can imagine.”

The good: I love this book. It explores many of the same themes of other Butler novels: race, gender, sex, power. Butler also explores what it means to be truly immortal, in Doro’s case, or effectively immortal, in Anyanwu’s case. She explores the loneliness that each experience and their differing ways of dealing with it. She explores the relationship between morality and mortality. Wild Seed is about the relationship between Doro and Anyanwu, and is really a prequel to the rest of the series, so there isn’t an arcing plot. I’m fine with that, enjoy it even, but beware if you’re the type of reader who wants a big bad to fight or whatever. I should perhaps mention here that the next section will have spoilers, but given the not-so-plotful nature of the book, I don’t think it will ruin your experience. Still, don’t read the next section if you hate spoilers!

The rough: Many (most? all?) of Butler’s novels have an at least partially uncomfortable sexual and/or romantic relationship and this is no exception. Anyanwu and Doro are very different people and, truthfully, the one thing that keeps them together is that they are the only two immortal people they know of in the world. Doro’s lack of empathy, his obsession with his breeding program, and his ultimate power mean that he uses people, including Anyanwu, in very gross ways. I don’t blame Anyanwu for growing to hate him, and I don’t judge her for growing close to him again, in the end. If I was immortal in a world where almost everybody and everything is mortal, I don’t know that I could forever stay away from another immortal person. Anyanwu realizes this for herself and realizes that her only real choice is to either let herself die (which she can do, and which Doro cannot) or live with him. She chooses the latter and I refuse to belittle her choice. And I strongly disagree with Fangs for the Fantasy that that choice makes Anyanwu a long-suffering mammy. (I also disagree that Anyanwu and Doro’s ability to change sex, whilst still retaining their gender, and having relationships with women and men respectively is in any way excluding LGBT experiences and, in fact, is inclusive of trans* experiences. I do think Fangs for the Fantasy makes an important point about Anyanwu’s healing and what the books says about disability and the problems therein, but I do not think there is as much erasure/negativity as they are saying. I will have to think more on it. Anyway, head on over and see what they had to say!)

The bad/overall: For me, there is nothing, really, to say here. If you like book plots to have a distinct arc, you may have trouble. If you are sensitive to or triggered by race/gender/sex issues, I would recommend it only with extreme caution. Otherwise, I highly recommend it to everyone. If you haven’t read any Butler at all, you are seriously missing out! Get thee to the library/bookstore!

The Einstein Intersection, by Samuel R. Delany (A More Diverse Universe)

The Einstein Intersection

by Samuel R. Delany

“The Einstein Intersection won the Nebula Award for best science fiction novel of 1967. The surface story tells of the problems a member of an alien race, Lo Lobey, has assimilating the mythology of earth, where his kind have settled among the leftover artifacts of humanity. The deeper tale concerns, however, the way those who are “different” must deal with the dominant cultural ideology. The tale follows Lobey’s mythic quest for his lost love, Friza. In luminous and hallucinated language, it explores what new myths might emerge from the detritus of the human world as those who are “different” try to seize history and the day.” (via Amazon)

Good Things: As I’m sure other reviewers of this book have said before me, The Einstein Intersection (or, if you want to call it by its intended title, A Fabulous, Formless Darkness) is a tough book to talk about. It’s short, clocking in at around 150 pages, but it’s not a breezy read. Samuel Delany wrote it in his early twenties, and the book’s sections of narrative are interspersed with short journal entries that Delany jotted down while writing the book during a trip around Greece. That’s not a surprise, because The Einstein Intersection is dense with mythological references to the Minotaur, to Orpheus, to Phaedra, and many more besides that I’m sure went over my head. The main characters are all aliens who have come to Earth and inhabited the planet long after humanity has ceased to exist, and have taken human form for reasons never fully explicated. The main character, Lobey, describes himself as an oddly-shaped 23-year-old brown person with a bottom half larger than his top half, with hand-like feet and a great love of music. In this world, many people are born deformed, terminally disabled, or otherwise “different,” and Lobey begins to learn that he himself is “different” in a way that could endanger his life. When the also-”different” girl he loves, Friza, is killed, he sets out to find her killer and deal with him himself.

The language of The Einstein Intersection is often beautiful and fits the dreamlike structure of the story. I felt the atmosphere quite vividly the whole time I was reading, and there are certain scenes that will probably occupy my brain for quite a while. There are also moments of surprising humor that make me smile and which help define Lobey’s character and the world around him:

I began to learn what I was doing when about twenty dragons got stuck in a mintbog (a slushy quicksand bog covered with huge bushes of windy mint, right? Mintbog). (p. 68-69)

There are interesting explorations of gender and able-bodied-ness and able-minded-ness that are often ignored in science-fiction; it’s a very thoughtful, cerebral book that wanders through mythology, genetics, history, music, and death, touching on all and asking questions that it doesn’t necessarily answer.

Bad Things: All that meandering, that dreamscape quality, that obliqueness of the text? Is probably frustrating for some readers. It’s not a book that makes itself easily accessible to a lot of people. Do you know how it is when you get the feeling that the book you’re reading is probably smarter than you are? That’s sort of what reading The Einstein Intersection feels like. I felt a little lost at times when I didn’t get the mythological references or the talk about parthenogenesis and haploids, and I think some readers might end up feeling left out and quit reading partway through. I don’t believe it’s something Delany does on purpose; he was and is a brilliant man, and his books definitely go through cycles of being more or less accessible to a wide audience. The Einstein Intersection in and of itself feels less like a straightforward novel and more like an exploration of the themes mentioned earlier, hung on a fictional frame. The ideas explored don’t always come to a satisfactory conclusion–for me, particularly the parts regarding ableism and gender could have been taken farther and to more interesting places (why do the androgynes make Lobey so uncomfortable? difference and the true meaning of “functional” are discussed, but why is it okay to stick the severely non-functional disabled in “kages” and treat them as not-people?) .

I also felt a little sad that, of the few female (and neither-male-nor-female) characters in the story, none of them had much in the way of agency; La Dire exists to give Lobey direction and set him on his journey, Friza and Dorik die early on, and Dove is used by–who?–at Branning-at-sea to keep genetic lines from becoming too inbred.

Overall: Not easy reading, and may turn some readers off with its oblique references and shaky plot. Interesting and thoughtful, though, and a clear beginning of some of the ideas that Delany explores more thoroughly in later books. For more casual readers looking for more developed ideas and a stronger plot in POC-centered science-fiction, I’d suggest Nova, Babel-17 (reviewed at chasing bawa and to-be-reviewed at Necromancy Never Pays on Thursday), or Trouble on Triton over The Einstein Intersection, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at. Plus, the current edition available at Amazon has a foreword by Neil Gaiman! And who doesn’t like Gaiman, huh? (Don’t answer that.)

Thirsty, by M. T. Anderson

Thirsty

by M. T. Anderson

“All Chris really wants is to be a normal kid, to hang out with his friends, avoid his parents, and get a date with Rebecca Schwartz. Unfortunately, Chris appears to be turning into a vampire. So while his hometown performs an ancient ritual that keeps Tch’muchgar, the Vampire Lord, locked in another world, Chris desperately tries to save himself from his own vampiric fate. He needs help, but whom can he trust? A savagely funny tale of terror, teen angst, suspense, and satire from National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson.” (via Amazon)

[REVIEW CONTAINS VAGUE, NONSPECIFIC SPOILERS FOR THIS BOOK]

Good Things: I’ll cut to the chase, guys: Thirsty is a pretty bleak book. Chris, a high-school freshman living in Massachusetts, lives in a world where vampires, changelings, and other nonhuman beings are real. They are hunted down and killed by humans, who fear for their own survival among the inhuman. One day, Chris is approached by a being who says he is with the Forces of Light, who needs Chris to help save the world before the annual Sad Festival of Vampires happens, and at the same time, Chris realizes he is becoming a vampire–the whole book is about his struggle to do the right thing and to resist his thirst for blood, to stay human. Ultimately, though, it’s something of a tragedy; the ending is somewhat ambiguous, but it sure ain’t happy. I don’t think I’m really spoiling anything by saying that, although I went into the book with absolutely no knowledge of the contents other than 1) that it was by an author I already like and 2) it was a vampire novel. So I don’t know if knowing that it’s a bleak book will affect your reading experience–well, scratch that, it probably will. I guess what I mean is that I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. I had pretty complex feelings immediately post-read, and I couldn’t have told you if I even liked the book or not, but now, a couple of days later, it feels weirdly satisfying, like putting your tongue where a tooth used to be and feeling the sore rawness of the space.

There’s a lot of good, dark, dry, almost-not-there humor that I’ve appreciated in Anderson’s books in the past. The dialogue is interesting; it’s stilted, due in part to the characters’ non-use of contractions, but the boys still call each other “buttplug” and “peckerhead,” etc. etc., so I’m inclined to call it a stylistic choice rather than any lack of knowledge about those damn teenagers and how they talk these days. I guffawed aloud at Lolli’s multicolored note to Christopher (C-R-E-M-A-T-E-D :( ), among other scenes. Thinking about it, the book reminds me of Etgar Keret’s novella “Kneller’s Happy Campers,” or Junji Ito’s series Gyo or Uzumaki (although, unlike the latter two, I would read Thirsty and “Kneller’s Happy Campers” again).

Bad Things: I don’t know if I can properly enumerate things that I found bad about the story, but I can talk about why other people might not like it, and why I understand the contentiousness of such a book. I’ve been thinking about this since I read the book two days ago, and I keep coming back to one of Joey Comeau’s posts about his own book, Bible Camp Bloodbath. If you haven’t read it, it’s a semi-comic horror story where there the murderer wins, there are no survivors, and the story ends on a pretty tragic note; in the later post, Comeau talks about how he stayed true to his original vision of a horror story where the murderer “just runs out of people to kill,” but ultimately regretted the resultant hopelessness of the story, and has plans to rewrite and republish it.

Thirsty is one of those books where readers are going to have to weigh its purity of vision versus its hopelessness for their own preferences, and I’m sure a lot of readers may find it coming up too hopeless. It’s a pretty gutsy thing, to write a whole book that ultimately resolves in ambiguous hopelessness; you see writers take that risk more often with short stories, because the readers don’t have as much invested in a twenty-page story versus a three-hundred-page novel, and for a lot of people, a truly hopeless ending to a novel can feel like a betrayal by the author. But here, I think, it fits. Anderson creates this world–this cold, grimy, tinny world that’s hardly worth saving in the end, and the hopelessness feels…right. There was no other way it could have happened.

In the author’s notes, Anderson is quoted as saying, “I grew up in a suburb very much like Chris’s. It seemed to me that there were always a lot of kids struggling with the isolation of wanting to do the right thing when there was no right thing to do.” I don’t think anybody can articulate it better than that.

Overall: A complex, bleak book; not for everybody, although I thought it worked well, with a terrible, funny sadness. Probably good for fans of Etgar Keret, Junji Ito, and M. T. Anderson’s other works. For maximum impact, read in conjunction with a novel that is of the vampires-are-glamorous-and-sexy school.

The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008

The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008

edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant

“As in every year since 1988, the editors tirelessly scoured story collections, magazines, and anthologies worldwide to compile a delightful, diverse feast of tales and poems. On this anniversary, the editors have increased the size of  the collection to 300,000 words of fiction and poetry, including works by Billy Collins, Ted Chiang, Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Hand, Glen Hirshberg, Joyce Carol Oates, and new World Fantasy Award winner M. Rickert. With impeccably researched summations of the field by the editors, Honorable Mentions, and articles by Edward Bryant, Charles de Lint and Jeff VanderMeer on media, music and graphic novels, this is a heady brew topped off by an unparalleled list of sources of fabulous works both light and dark.” (via Amazon)

Good Things: Hey, look, it’s an anthology! I grabbed this one pretty randomly off the shelf at the library. I’ve been meaning to read more short stories, and “the year’s best XYZ” seems like a pretty reliable endorsement, no? Flipping through it, I landed on a poem by Catherynne M. Valente, “The Seven Devils of Central California,” and that’s when I knew the book was coming home with me–Central California doesn’t get featured a whole lot in fiction, especially not the San Joaquin Valley, where I’ve lived for 20 of the last 24 years of my life. Unfortunately, that particular poem ended up being a bit too obtuse to end up on my favorites list, but there are a number of stories that really impressed me, listed here in the order they appear in the book:

1) The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics, by Daniel Abraham. The title sums it up pretty well: a money-changer encounters a dangerous, powerful man, and is forced to outwit him in three puzzles regarding money, exchange, and value in order to escape with his job and his life.

2) “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche,” by Delia Sherman. A beautiful trickster tale set in Louisiana, where a young albino girl named Cadence makes a deal with a devil. Probably my favorite of the collection.

3) “Winter’s Wife,” by Elizabeth Hand. Teenage American Justin’s neighbor, Mr. Winter, marries a strange woman from Iceland who is more than she seems.

4) “The Gray Boy’s Work,” by M. T. Anderson. This is one of the few more obscure, opaque works in the collection that left me interested instead of annoyed. A sort of spooky American fairy tale; a boy’s father returns from war, and embodied concepts like Despair and Victory haunt their house.

5) “The Hill,” by Tanith Lee. A historical mystery, where an English spinster librarian is hired to sort the library of a near-empty mansion with an expansive menagerie, and the animals begin to act very strangely. (Miss Constable had a strong, practical narrative voice that I liked quite a bit; the drawback for me was the exoticization of non-English countries that, while appropriate for the story’s time period, still bugged me.)

6) “Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz Go to War Again,” by Garth Nix. A surprisingly sad fantasy by the author of one of my favorite fantasy series; a knight and an animated puppet travel from town to town, righting a very particular kind of wrong. I’ve read some of Nix’s books and short stories aside from the Old Kingdom series and generally found them disappointing in a good-but-not-as-good sort of way, so it was great to finally read a story that engaged me as fully as Lirael, Sabriel, and Abhorsen did.

7) “The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change,” by Kij Johnson. Dogs have gained the ability to speak, and many have subsequently been abandoned by their masters, who have become uncomfortable with the way the master-pet relationship has changed and is continuing to change. A young woman, Linna, visits abandoned dogs at a park to record their fables about One Dog, and to try to help them.

Bad Things: My main complaint with this volume is that, for something titled “the year’s best XYZ,”there were a lot of stories that left me unimpressed. I’ll admit that I skipped over a fair number of them, especially when I started noticing a pattern where many of the stories a) were narrated first-person by b) a young-to-middle-aged white guy who c) acts as a thoughtful observer to certain mystical or horrific events that teach him an important lesson about his young-to-middle-aged white guy life. Do you know what I mean? There was such a narrow scope, and it started getting really repetitive. I really would have liked to see the inclusion of more POC, and stories from more countries and with a greater variety of circumstances. It’s supposed to be the year’s best, for pete’s sake! The ones that really tended to grab me (as you can see above) varied from the pattern or stood out in some way.

Overall: A somewhat uneven collection of stories with some incredible standouts and some forgettable works. Includes a long series of introductions listing the best fantasy and horror novels, media, comics, and music of 2007, if that sort of thing floats your boat. It’s unfortunate that 2008 was the last year of the anthology, because while I suspect that I would continue to skip a portion of stories for more recent years, there would be a few really knockout pieces that would, like this one, make the whole thing worth it.

So you want to get into… Bollywood movies

First, an apology: This is not going to be about books or even the written word. I hope that is occasionally forgivable for a book blog.

Second, a little information: America had, for a long time, the biggest film industry in the world, but times change. India now ranks #1 in the world for total film output, with America and China taking the #2 and #3 spot, respectively. Bollywood is the largest industry within India, referring to Hindi-language films produced in Mumbai (formerly Bombay, hence the B in Bollywood), but it is far from the only one and I have tried to reflect some of that diversity in my list. Lastly, the Indian diaspora is huge and hungry for these films, so they are available everywhere, including (sometimes) new releases at movie theaters.

Disclosure: I am a white girl who has never lived in or been to India, but almost all of these movies come from a class I took on Indian film that had an Indian teacher. I’m going to recommend one to start, and then split the other eight into musicals and non-musicals, for you to more easily navigate with your tastes.

Without further ado, here are the nine movies that I would recommend for people wanting to get into Indian film:

Start off with 1. Monsoon Wedding, which is about, you can probably guess, a family preparing for a wedding during the monsoon season. It’s less conservative than Bollywood and was made for both Indian and Western audiences, which is why I recommend it for people unfamiliar with Indian film or culture. Plus it’s a great movie! (This was, in fact, the first film we watched in the aforementioned class.)

Musicals:

2. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai – If that admittedly small picture doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will. This is my favorite Bollywood musical, about friendship and love and loss. It’s a love story that takes years to tell, which I like, and that doesn’t pretend that you can only ever love once or best, which I fucking adore more than I can even express. Plus there is a wonderfully cheesy 90s-esque dance scene.
3. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge – This movie, which came out in 1995 did for Bollywood what The Little Mermaid did for animation. That is, it completely changed the game. It features the first time Shahrukh Khan and Kajol, the same couple from Kuch Kuch, graced the screen together. It’s about a young man and woman who fall in love on a European tour.
4. Swades – Also stars SRK (Shahrukh). What can I say? He is my favorite Bollywood actor. I like this one because it is a typical Bollywood musical but also has a little more politics than the ones above. Swades means homeland in Hindi and the main character is a NRI – Non-Resident Indian, aka a member of the Indian diaspora, who goes back to India for reasons I won’t go into here. But! Will he find a reason to stay?

Non-Musicals:

5. Parzania – This may be harder to find, but it is a must-see for the mob scene in the beginning. Here is a little reading (two Wikipedia pages shouldn’t be too much) that will help with the background. The film is about one family that was affected by the Hindu/Muslim rioting (srsly go read those links). I really cannot stress how much I want more people to see this film. (Okay, I just realized you should also know a little about Parsis, the bigger group of Zoroastrians in Indian. The key thing, really, is that they are not Hindu or Muslim.)
6. Rang de Basanti is a very political and modern film, and as such a necessity. It’s about, to boil it down, Indian nationalism. If you do watch this, or have seen it, I’d love to talk to you about it. I have mixed feelings that I want to work through. :P

7, 8, 9. Any/all of Deepa Mehta’s trilogy: Fire, Earth, Water – These are more political, too, to the point of causing controversy in South Asia. Fire is about two women who fall in love with each other in, if I recall correctly, contemporary India. Earth is set in 1947 about Hindus/Muslims and the separation of India into India and Pakistan (this, like Parzania, involves a Parsi family*). And lastly, Water is set in 1938 about a child widow.

So there you go! Nine movies. That’s totally doable, so get started!

There are so many great Indian films and this is a really small selection, designed to get you going in Indian film without overwhelming you. Here is a more extensive (but still curated) list of Bollywood films to look at once you’re ready to take the next step!

A note to end: A crap ton of Indian films are on Netflix as of right now. Rang de Basanti, Dilwale dulhania le jayenge, Swades for my list and My Name is Khan, Jodhaa Akbar, Hum Tum, Chak de India, Dhobi Ghat, Udaan, No One Killed Jessica for the other list. I’m sure I’m missing some great movies that I haven’t seen, but you get the picture! I know a lot of people don’t have Netflix, but if you do, there is no excuse! Go watch some of these. That’s an order.

*Did you notice that the two films about Hindu and Muslim conflict feature Parsi families as protagonists? Interesting, no?

My Miss Marple Readthrough Begins!

I was inspired by the amazing Sarah Rees Brennan’s post on Miss Marple to read through all of her books (Miss Marple’s, that is). My mom is a huge mystery reader and has a LOT of Agatha Christies, so I set out to gather all of the Marples I could find. I don’t know if she has all of them, but I’m sure I can supplement with the library if anything is missing.

Side note before we begin: I tried to find the correct covers (aka the ones I have) for these, but every Christie has been republished to the moon and back and I was only able to find the right one for the third book and I am too lazy to do the scans myself. OH WELL just consider this a purposeful medley.

OKAY first up are The Tuesday Club Murders, a collection of short stories in which Christie introduced Miss Marple. Every week, Miss Marple, her nephew and his girlfriend, and a few other people get together and tell stories of “some mystery of which they have personal knowledge, and to which, of course, they know the answer.” Everybody else is to guess the answer and then the storyteller of the week reveals the truth. Miss Marple, who everybody underestimates and indeed they assume she won’t even want to play, solves every single one through her intimate knowledge of human behavior. She makes parallels from village life in St Mary Mead and, most importantly, never assumes people are good. Or evil.

There’s not a whole lot to say about the stories. Murder mysteries short stories are hard to pull off and, while Christie does a good job of setting up little mysteries, fails pretty well at making you care about anybody. Part of the problem is that murder mysteries of the era were already emotionally detached and having less time with the characters doesn’t help matters.

Still, these are fun and short (derp derp I am so smart) and introduce some important characters in the later books. Jane Marple, of course, but also her nephew Raymond West (a novelist) and Sir Henry Clithering, an ex-Commissioner of Scotland Yard who becomes a great fan of Jane’s.

It feel particularly silly, really, to give a plot summary/blurb for Christie novels. You know exactly what is going to be inside: witty, rich, white people, one of whom will die and one of whom will kill and one of whom will solve.

The Murder at the Vicarage is from the point of view of the vicar, Clement. He and his new young wife, Griselda, were two of my favorite characters in the book. I suppose this isn’t a surprise to anybody, but I love reading about relationships, especially healthy and supportive ones. Clement and Griselda have their issues, but their relationship throughout the book is pretty consistently strong even through the trying situation of having a murder occur in their house and both being under suspicious of the murder.

Anyway, I liked this one a lot! Best out of the three. Seriously I don’t have anything intelligent to say, just go back to the Sarah Rees Brennan link and read what she has to say!

And lastly we have The Body in the Library. It’s a third shorter than MatV, which at least partially accounts for me liking it a lot less. Plus this one is third person omniscient, so we’re even further away from the emotional life of the characters.

I also just kind of wasn’t enthralled by the pacing of the plot. We start off with a body, claro, but it takes quite a while to get to the primary setting and even longer to get any useful clues/knowledge. It felt like it took 2/3rds of the book to introduce all of the relevant characters, which means that there was little time to properly get to know them and develop theories and do the things you do when you read a murder mystery.

OTOH, it’s a Christie. And Miss Marple is always full of awesome. I have no doubt I’ll enjoy many of the rest of the books! The Moving Finger is up next, but I’m taking a short break to read other things.

Lastly, I’m 100% with Sarah when she says that Joan Hickson is the only Miss Marple. Dare to suggest otherwise and, uh, I’ll do something bad to you.

Or maybe I’ll get the ghost of Joan Hickson to haunt you!

Now My For Reals Short Reviews (Or Not)

You will find enclosed: Three short reviews for Taylor’s Tempation (a Romance novel) and the first two Miss Marple books*.

From Amazon: “Bobby Taylor is a Navy SEAL, and his best friend is his swim buddy, Wes Skelly. As Wes ships out on an assignment, he asks Bobby to go to Boston to look out for his younger sister, Colleen, who is doing stuff that has big brother in overprotective mode. Bobby goes, but is full of reservations because his feelings for Colleen Skelly are far from brotherly.”

First off, the whole reason I read this book is cause the heroine is big & tall, and as a 5’10″ tall woman, I was feeling a little desperate for representation. But this cover? Makes her look 5’5″. Makes ME grouchy.

Books about Navy SEALs are popular. So much so, that I wouldn’t be surprised if there were way more fictional SEALs that real ones. I don’t really get it, but then, I don’t enjoy romantic suspense much and these SEAL books are all romantic suspense. (I could have sworn I had written about why I don’t like romantic suspense, but I can’t find it! Anybody else want to take a look? If not, I’ll have to write about it soon. I have Opinions, ya’ll.) This book gets a pass on my normal worries (that romance built in times of intensity is at least partially based on those intense times and I need EXTRA proof that what the characters are building is going to last. And no, a happy epilogue is not proof.) because the hero and heroine have known each other for years.

Also, if I remember correctly, the hero is Native, so that’s cool. Unfortunately, any coolness of having a MOC as the hero is pretty well negated by the suspense part of the plot, which involves them going to a dangerous developing country to do Good and there were Poor Brown Children and shit. Guys, I am white. I am interested in making the world a better place for all. But my whiteness doesn’t make me some magical being that can go to a third-world country (which is a problematic term to begin with) and have flowers bloom at my feet and heal people just by touching them. My whiteness isn’t a virtue when it comes to helping people and it certainly doesn’t replace actual education and talking to, you know, the people that I want to help. And it doesn’t make me a saint if I did any of the above. Colleen is not a saint for helping the poor brown children, no matter what this book says.

The suspense part of the book, which I am lambasting for the above reasons, was a disaster, but it is thankfully a small part of the book, at least for the genre. My other main complaint is that Colleen is that type of woman who disregards her own personal safety in an irritatingly flippant way. But seriously, overall, I thought it was a pretty alright book. Especially if you like romantic suspense and/or want to read a romance with a “stacked,” tall heroine.

*Man, this turned out fairly long too. I guess Miss Marple will have to wait for tomorrow!