Circe by Madeline Miller

3.5 Stars

A different point of view.

This rendition of Circe, daughter of Helios, witch, and Titan is told from her perspective. A reckoning and analysis of the hows and whys of what has been told before might have come to pass. This isn't redemption per se, but rather a retelling with less demonization. I like Greek mythology a lot, and I liked this, too.

Rebellion is for prosperous islands, or else those so ground down they have no other choice.

Circe is an easy target for vilification: plain, insolent, lack of groveling, and power. This version is more complex, but it also rubbed me almost the wrong way by the end. Circe comes across as wise and compassionate to the point of being taken advantage of, and she knows it. She accepts it willing. The reasoning Miller makes is a fine one, but I don't like it. But hey, it's her life I don't have to like what Circe chooses for herself, but it made me wish for more.

Frankly, I understood her father's logic much more.

"Tell me," he said, "who give better offerings, a happy man or a miserable one?"
"A happy one, or course."
"Wrong," he said. "A happy man is too occupied with his life. He thinks he is beholden to no one. But make him shiver, kill his wife, cripple his child, then you will hear from him. He will starve his family for a month to buy you a pure-white yearling. If he can afford, he will buy you a hundred."

Whelp. That explains politics, doesn't it. 

And to be honest, my estimation of where this story was going went downhill fast with Miller's inevitable introduction of Odysseus, the liar and thief, whom Circe seemed more than amused by. I get it, she's bored and isolated, but he was the worst sort. Additionally, Ajax's character summary I vigorously deny. Dull-brained and lacking a silver tongue are not the same thing.

Prior to that, I loved the glimpse of Prometheus. Daedalus and the Minotaur were wonderful. After Odysseus, there's Telegonus and Telemachus and Penelope. I suppose these were fine, but I drifted down to the end. So this ends up ranking under four stars, but certainly not three--I'd go with three and half.

What We Do Is Secret by Thorn Kief Hillsberry

4 Stars

Finding a place.

The one thing in all LA, I love the purple sky at night.

All the zeitgeist of the early eighties in Los Angeles and the changing punk scene, and while there's a definite warning bell of the skinhead coup, it's not the primary focus. I went in expecting crazy stories--I got them, but there's this real deceptive undertow of emotion that builds and builds around Rockets, a young teenage boy living on the streets of LA and trying to figure out his place and what to do, and I got pulled under. By the end, I just felt...heartsore.

"Why was it hard to watch me?" I ask. "you never said."
He thinks about it all the way down to the sidewalk.
"Because it felt like someone should be stopping you," he says finally, "and nobody was."

The story is told from Rockets' viewpoint and you get this front and center seat to street life and what the characters wanted, what they were willing to sacrifice to have it, but there's the growing question in Rockets' mind about why. It shows issues of race, sexual orientation, and policing and not in heavy-handed ways, but as a part of the daily fracas of Rockets' life.

"But it's so blatant," Tim says. "The police don't notice?"
"What they really notice is a black dude north of the Santa Monica Freeway, period," Blitzer says. "A lot more than a white daddy, comma, looking for a pink boy."
"Pink?" David says.
Time echoes it, and there's that fuckin silence again, like after "How old," it's stale as hail on the Yukon trail.
"Fuck all of you! I've got pubic hair! Here! Look!"

Rockets is a young, gay male trying to navigate life with no resources aside from general group goodwill. A group that revolved around the punk scene, how they looked out for each other and did the best they could with what little they had. Not going to give more backstory because reading the unveiling is a big part of the punch in this one.

Waiting's basically wanting, there's only one letter difference, you can't be waiting without wanting the wait to be over. So when you're waiting you're controlled by wanting, and wanting's what controls everything.

Punk. The primal scream I can relate to, but there is so much beyond rage that never fit for me. I don't have that destructive force in me, the hermit dissociated always appealed more. So much of life was a train I didn't want to get on; I never believed in Willoughby, a dream stop. Nonexistent. Even so, the references and the language are compelling. There's a cadence to the storytelling and it gets stronger at times, just pulling you along.

I love this story like I love LA: All the fun parts, the wild parts, the broken parts.

Let you see, what you wouldn't, the woman's face first seeing me, soft warm breath, sudden in-drawn deep, "How old are you, boy, how could, who would, who did this to you, tell me."
"I did."

More beloved quotes that didn't make the cut above:

"But I don't trip on it too hard now, how the Go-Gos are number one from sea to slimy sea when Darby said they've got no lyrics, they've got nothing, they're going nowhere, how it's maybe morning in America to Reagan, but midnight in Hollywood to me, and I can't get there from here."

"Somehow the freeway part is what makes it feel possible, make's it real, that unbroken pavement so no map's necessary, unwinding like a licorice whip to I-want-Candyland, pine trees, rivers, grizzlies, a thousand fuckin miles, my country tis of fuckin thee, and the you-are-here is just a bus ride away."

Darby said.
You know what's fun? You take like ten hits of acid, drink a six-pack of beer, and you go to the Santa Monica pier, there's a bridge there that goes nowhere, 'cause their suppose to lower it for boats, and you can go out on the end and jump off, right? And you can swim, and it's so great 'cause it's dark, you know, and you can just swim and it doesn't matter if you live or die or anything, just swim and swim, and you feel the fish nibbling at your feet." 

"It's football jock who last year saw us on the street and yelled and spit, and now they've got their number-one crops and their motor boots and their bandanas, and they're punk rockers, a different breed of mommy's little monster though, with mommies to go back to, mommies and Mustangs and anarchy posters over their soft beds."

And trends are for terminal morons, I don't follow them at all, like for example last year's top-drawer trend, the one before ska was being bisexual. Which on-fire fags like Tony the Hustler were down for completely, because they were first ready, able, and more than willing dudes who came to mind to all these clueless vals and surf boys who wanted in on the latest. Though what I heard from those in the two-way know was double your pleasure in theory, double your trouble in practice.

"Shhhh!" Tim says. "We don't want to wake them."
"Why not? It's your fuckin room. And anyways what the--"
"It's not our room," David says. "The phone in our room's avocado. This one's harvest."

If this didn't take you back...

Dexter is Delicious by Jeff Lindsay

2 Stars

You'd think with cannibalism it would have been more exciting.

Sure it had the fun slice and dice of knife play, but frankly it was less artistic and lacking in the panache that Dexter has perfected. More like getting a dish called "rustic" when all it really means is that the sous chef has the prep skills of a blind monkey, not a beautifully prepared plate. It lacked the cleverness that I expect from Dexter, there's a few zingers, but in general there's a high degree of stupidity in this episode from all the characters. All. Multiple whacks of the stupid stick and Dex, Deb, Chutsky, Deb's partner are all piñatas.

Except Brian. Hello, long lost family member who's existence really does highlight the shared hobbies in the ever-increasing domesticity of Dexter Morgan's life.

I think my disappointment is echoed here:

My Dark Passenger fought back, of course, and my rational mind sang harmony. Seriously, Dexter, it crooned with oh-so-sweet reason. Could we really let all this predatory frolicking go unchallenged?

Our Native Bees by Paige Embry

3.5 Stars

Life is pollination, Love the Pollinators!

So, another local fauna book. This one is to assist in determining my planting plan.

After years of drought in California, I decided to reevaluate my open space, tiny as it is, and optimize for responsible resource use. That means planting things that don't require regular watering. I toughened up some of my plants and let the others die. Bye, roses. Good job, camellias.  I do make small concessions to my fruit bearing citrus trees, but even they manage on limited water.

I have several hummingbirds who avail themselves of the fountain in my garden and fight over it. One made a nest in the pine tree right over it, and I hope there isn't a repeat of baby bird that I have to guard from the evil marauding neighbor's cat that roams until it hops up my orange tree to safety. Couldn't fly, but managed to flutter up a branch, rest for five to ten minutes and then do another. Meanwhile, I'm watching desperately wishing I could just stick it in the tree, but knowing better than to get involved especially since one of the parents was still cheerleading the little sucker.

But I digress, I'm presently in native pollinator spoiling/wooing mode. I've been optimizing for my hummers and trying to lure butterflies when it occurred to me that some bees would be a wise choice, so I picked this book to come up to speed with the basics and it was good. Generally insightful overview of the both the situation with native bees and European honeybees since they've been the default workers on farms. California produces >40% of the fruits and vegetables eaten in the U.S.; that's a lot of pollenating. Good discussions on habitat and the issues with various pesticides, which is more complicated than you might suspect.

Some absolutely gorgeous pictures of the bees:

And useful information like most native bees Don't Sting. Males can't and unless attacked, i.e. stepped on then females don't either. In fact, there's a whole species called the Tickle Bee that doesn't at all!

Btw. I'll be taking part in the Great Sunflower Project and the Pollinator Friendly Plants Program where I'll sit outside with coffee or wine depending on the time of day and count visitors!

I think the book did a good job for the average person to understand the importance of bees, the environment, and insects in general. What I really appreciate in an ebook and this one did it, clickable references--CLICKABLE! Takes you right to the paper. So disappointing when a medium doesn't utilize its advantages.

The Return of the Sea Otter by Todd McLeish

3 Stars

'd always dreamed of being an otter in my next life. Good news, still a good plan. Bad news, not as easy as I thought.

First, great white sharks have to be stupid. Pretty sure thinking about what they're going to bite is not high on their list of things to do. Just like people, sea otters are given one taste and spit out by great whites. Not yummy seal. Which means that if I wanted to be a California sea otter that I'd have a 30% chance of death by great white chomp. *sigh* Might explain the weird dreams I have.

But choosing to be further north along the coast in Washington, British Columbia, Alaska through the Aleutian Islands is fraught with different perils. Everything from killer whales, to getting shot by irate people, to disease from various chemicals in runoff, and species' jumping infections makes the chomp-chomp, death by great white seem not great, but could be worse. Plus the idea of being a kelp forest guardian sounds pretty awesome.

McLeish covers the whole Pacific range. The near extinction and recovery in different regions. The stress between humans and animals, the interaction between plants and animals in the food web and the otter's place as apex predator and how it's near eradication due to the fur trade affected ecosystems. Solid information that's provided in an accessible manner with enough data to give laypeople an understanding without swimming in numbers.

Why I want to be a sea otter:

As we looked down into the glassy water, it appeared as if we were peering down from the canopy of a liquid forest, which we sort of were. Great egrets and double-crested cormorants perched warily on some of the studier branches, while sea lions and seals surfaced repeatedly in all directions. Almost everywhere we turned, we saw long chains of sales--tiny jellyfish-like creatures that look somewhat like clear caterpillars were visible an arm's reach below the surface. Occasionally we saw a school of herring or small salmon darting by, and solitary kelp rockfish could often be seen pausing motionless for long moments at a time, as if they thought they were well camouflaged.

AND all the seafood!

The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer

3 Stars

Amusing story of succession.

This is really not a romance, but more of a family dynamics' vehicle. You have the unforeknown, dark horse relative of mixed origins hailing from the northern hinterlands plopped into the decaying Sussex/Kent gentry of the Darracotts. The "new", not really new, but new to all but Lord Darracott coming to meet the family after the heir apparent's unexpected demise, Hugo wastes no time in playing the idiot to meet his family's expectations.

Done for more amusement than spite, nonetheless, you see who figures out that the country bumpkin oaf isn't as slow-witted as they thought, and that the title of major was not given lightly. It was earned. You have a range of male relations from the overbearing to the dandy explored, and slowly, as this story does take its time unwinding. But by the end, Hugo has won over the esteem of his relatives and with practically no interaction the hand of his cousin, Anthea.

"What a delightful thing it is to know that if I am such a wet-goose as to marry you I shall be able to depend on having a husband who won't hesitate to the take the wind out of my eye every time I try to get a point the better of him!"

There were more quips by other characters regarding their relationship then expounded on by Hugo and Anthea together. If you enjoy the charm of county seat Regency stories then this is entertaining.

"You can't go about smelling of April and May, the pair of you, and then expect to gull people into thinking you don't mean to get riveted!"

The language was more colloquial than I'm used to with the Heyer novels I've read. Luckily, I have some practical experience and the contextual clues were quite good so the reader really wasn't left to wander wondering what terms meant.