Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

read by Dan Bittner

Sort of a cross between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood, set in Mexico City, with mismatched teen protagonists (one mortal and one vampire) thrown together in an improbable buddy story where the buddies’ lives are in constant peril, this book should have been tremendous fun. And it really was pretty good… but that was it.

I think the main problem was that I listened to the audiobook instead of reading the print version. Dan Bittner has a fine reading voice and all that, but he doesn’t know how to pronounce Spanish. Which, since the characters are all meant to be Spanish-speakers living in a Spanish-speaking country, is very distracting. There is no need for the narrator to fall into the trope of speaking English with a Spanish accent as a way of letting the listener know that the characters are actually meant to be speaking Spanish, but he ought to at least be able to pronounce proper nouns properly.

Aside from that… the protagonist is clearly meant to be sympathetic, and he is, more or less. But he’s a callow youth, scrappy and perfectly gallant, but not very interesting. The fledgling vampire he’s thrown together with is a much more interesting character, but we don’t get much time with her point of view. Oh, and there’s a lady cop who is stuck doing shady stuff because she’s a single mom and needs the money. A stock character and definitely uninteresting.

What’s interesting about this book is the world it’s set in. There are numerous species of vampire, which all have different appearances, abilities, and vulnerabilities—which explains why, although vampire legends exist throughout the world, they vary tremendously in their details. Each government has responded differently to the existence of these beings, which makes sense too. This is, potentially, a very rich setting for further stories, as this writer’s skill develops.

I’m treating this as the book version of the first X-Men movie—not that great on its own, but setting the stage for future good stuff. And who knows, maybe someone will take this raw material and make a great TV series or movie based on it.

A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle

read by Jennifer Ehle

Here’s another book review that has to start with a confession: I was never especially fond of A Wrinkle In Time. It was a good book, in my opinion, just scary enough and with some interesting science-fictiony concepts and scenes in it. I get why people love it so much. But it never really did it for me. I only ever read it once, until I had a kid of my own and read it to them. And I only read it even that one time, as a kid, because it was by the same author as A Wind in the Door.

I *loved* A Wind in the Door. I lived it, over and over and over again. I absorbed it. It became part of me in a way that books just don’t do anymore once you’re past your formative years. Reading it again, now, for the first time in decades, I was struck by how certain scenes and even certain phrases, though I didn’t consciously remember them, struck such a chord of familiarity and happiness that it was almost like reuniting with a long-lost and much beloved grandparent. The characters felt like long-lost family. Rereading this book was an intensely emotional experience—surprisingly so.

Meg Murry is our protagonist; she’s a bright, argumentative, and complaint-prone high-schooler who lacks confidence in her looks and is intensely loyal to friends and family (though she constantly questions everything they say). She’s the oldest Murry child; the middle kids are a pair of socially well-adapted twins, Sandy and Dennys, who play fairly minor roles in this book, and her baby brother, Charles Wallace, around whom the plot revolves.

Charles Wallace is a genius, the brightest of a very bright family. At age 6, he has a better vocabulary than most adults. He gets beaten up regularly at school because he’s so different—and it turns out he’s also seriously ill, with a disease that, coincidentally, his microbiologist mother happens to be studying.

Proginoskes is a singular cherubim, a creature not of this plane who materializes, when he does, as a great ball of hundreds of wings with winking eyes set amongst them, emitting the occasional spurt of flame or puff of smoke. He's haughty and pedantic—but so would you be, probably, if it were  your job to know the name of every star in the universe. His unbelievable appearance on the Murry property (they seem to live on a tremendous plot of rural land, though in other parts of the country their acreage is probably pretty standard) is what sets events in motion.

Meg, Charles Wallace, Proginoskes, and Meg’s personable and protective friend, Calvin O’Keefe, are soon united as students of a Teacher, an enormous and all-knowing humanoid being named Blajeny. For me, the biggest surprise of this reading was that I’d completely forgotten about Blajeny, as he directs the kids and sets them their tests and basically moves them all like somewhat-willful chess pieces. He’s hugely important to the plot—and yet he’d gone completely out of my mind.

My theory is that this is because he isn’t really a character—he’s more of a god-like force. He doesn’t seem to have much personality, other than an idealized-but-dim fatherliness. He matters tremendously, but he doesn't really feel real.

In any case, our intrepid protagonists discover the nature of Charles Wallace’s illness, and that it threatens not only him but, somehow, the entire universe. So of course they set out to save the world. Hijinks ensue.

I’ll stop here so as not to spoil the plot for you. I will say that this is metaphysical fiction on par, for its intended audience of tweens, with the Narnia books and with Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. The nature of free will, the meaning and importance of love, the unimportance of time and distance—all that is discussed, at length, in terms any 5th-grader could understand. There’s a lot more religious content here than I realized when I was the target audience, but it’s thoughtful and life-affirming.

If you’ve never read this book, you should. Either to your kids, if you have them, or to yourself. It’s definitely aimed at a young audience, but it’s magical and scientific and universe-spanning enough to enchant almost anyone. 

Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon

read by the author

I am not a fan of Sonic Youth. Yes, I admit it: I was in my 20s during the 1990s and yet, although I understand their appeal and I quite like a few of their songs, for the most part I have no particular liking for them. Dissonance has it place, but doesn’t generally do anything for me. On top of that, I’m easily startled by sudden loud or jangly noises. So you can see why they’re not my favorite performers. I do like Kim’s spooky, haunting moan of a voice—what’s not to like?—and those songs of theirs that highlight it and are more melodic. But yeah, I know, faint praise.

My main memory of having gone to see them in concert (I think it was at the Masonic?) sometime around 1992 or ‘93 was of not recognizing any of their songs and being bored. Oh, and their “opening band” was Ciccone Youth, which was an experimental band composed of… the members of Sonic Youth. The friends I attended with thought this was clever and witty of them. I’ll take their word for it.

Fast forward to 2018. Kim Gordon has published her memoir (in 2015), which I’ve bought for my partner; he has read it and enjoyed it very much. But then, he’s a fan of the band; I had no desire to read it myself. Then in early 2018 I learned that Kim Gordon and Chris Kraus (the author of I Love Dick, the book upon which the sadly short-lived TV series was based) were going to be interviewed together at City Arts and Lectures. This was obviously a perfect birthday present for my partner, so I bought the tickets and we went.

And I learned that Kim Gordon is affectless and somewhat inarticulate, especially as compared to Chris Kraus. She also came across as somewhat self-absorbed and self-important. So, okay. Not impressed.

Why did I finally decide to read the book? I think it came down to having attempted and failed to read three fiction books in a row—I didn’t even get through the first chapter of two of them. Having failed to get through a vampire novel and two different sorts of speculative fiction, I decided I needed something based in the real world. Not even realistic fiction, but nonfiction. And I came across Girl in a Band on my Libby app and basically thought, well, what have I got to lose? So I started it.

Right away I was struck, as I had been during the interview, by her affectless, flat voice. But as she talked about her childhood in Southern California and her relationship with her more-than-difficult brother, I began to understand why she talked that way. I won’t spoil it, but there’s a reason for it. She opens up in this book  as she takes you on a journey through her life, and although I still find her self-important, I also see her as strong-willed, creative, independent, and admirable. The kind of self-important she is is the kind she needs to be, as a person and as an artist, and I’m no longer put off by it.

I do wish she had gone into more detail about the earlier, better days of her relationship with Thurston Moore, but I can see why that would have been painful for her. And the audiobook version really missed an opportunity—there’s a long section where Gordon talks about a number of different songs and her memories relating to them, and it would have been great, especially for someone like me who isn’t especially familiar with the band’s oeuvre, to have heard the song in conjunction with the narration.

But overall, the book is well-written in a quirky, somewhat choppy way, and I’m glad I got to know her just a bit. Verdict: if you like memoirs or are a fan of the band, read it. You'll discover a person worth knowing about.

I'm still not a fan of the band, though.

Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite

read by Chris Patton

I so wanted to get into this book. This was my second time through it, my first having been in the early-to-mid Aughts after a friend who is a horror fan (and now a horror writer—hi, Ben!) loaned it to me. Actually, he first loaned me another book of hers, Drawing Blood, and although I’m not generally a tremendous horror fan myself, I loved it. I remember not loving this one quite as much, but still, I got into it. It was a vampire book from, in part, the point of view of the vampires, after all; and it took place, in part, in New Orleans. I’m a complete sucker for all of that.

Not so much this time, though. Drawing Blood stands the test of time by being charmingly time-capsule-like. Lost Souls, though, fails the same test by charmlessly and blatantly pandering to the sensibilities of the horror-goth kids of the 90s, mindlessly repeating Anne Rice-esque tropes while splattering gratuitous gore everywhere. Sad to say, I didn’t even make it all the way through this time around.

It starts sometime in the late 70s or very early 80s. A very old vampire named Christian runs a bar in the French Quarter of New Orleans and notices a young girl spending a lot of time there. She believes there are vampires and is hoping to meet some there, in hopes of becoming one herself—though why she should believe this and why she should suspect they hang out at this bar is never explained. She’s more right than she knows, but our barkeep never reveals himself to her. And she’s wrong about one critical thing: in this reality, vampires are born, not made. So even if she does find the beings she seeks, it won’t do her any good.

In fact she does end up meeting some, and it does her much worse than “not any good.” Three old vampire friends of Christian’s roll into town for a visit and end up partying with the girl and impregnating her before taking off for the next chapter of their monotonously rollicking life on the road. After that Christian takes her in, giving her work at the bar and letting her live with him--but never bothering to explain that all vampire pregnancies end in the death of the mother, as the infant invariably eats its way out.

This takes place, and Christian disposes of the body very dispassionately and then drives up north and leaves the infant on a random doorstep with a note pinned to it. In the note he says that the baby’s name is Nothing and that he’ll bring luck to those who raise him.

So that’s all setup. Nothing grows up to be a teenaged psychopath—actually all the vampires pretty much act like teenaged psychopaths, aside from Christian, who acts like a tired old psychopath—and runs away from home and toward an inevitable encounter with his vampire dad and cohort, and also with the two main human characters.

These are Ghost and Steve. They are two young men from a small rural town called Missing Mile, North Carolina, which is also where much of Drawing Blood takes place. Ghost is a spooky kid who has visions. His best friend, roommate, and bandmate is Steve, a self-absorbed rapist. Both are bisexual—seemingly everyone in this book is bisexual—but they don’t appear to be lovers, just very close friends.  Their band, Lost Souls, gives the book its name and provides the plot device that brings the two of them and all the vampires and Steve’s ex-girlfriend and rape victim, Ann, onto a collision course.

Nothing and his father, Zillah, become lovers and then discover their relationship—which delights them both and cements their union, with Zillah becoming fixatedly possessive and Nothing becoming fixatedly dependent. Zillah impregnates Ann and takes off for New Orleans. Ann becomes fixated on Zillah and decides to follow him there, and Ghost decides to follow her and try to save her. This was the point at which I stopped caring about what happened to any of these crazy and painfully improbably people and stopped reading.

If this is the sort of book you like, you’ll really like this book. A lot of people do.

How to Be Famous by Caitlin Moran

read by Louise Brealey

Such a good book. I couldn’t get over how good this book was the whole time I was reading it—and that was after thoroughly enjoying How to Build a Girl. I laughed out loud so many times, I had to think twice about reading it in public. There was one, comparing a man’s parts to a turnstile, that was so good that I had to call my partner and repeat it to him and laugh all over again.

First off: no, you don’t have to have read How to Build a Girl to enjoy this book… but it would probably help. If you haven’t already, I recommend it. It’s a terrific book in itself and I’ve already reviewed it on this blog.

Second: if swearing, casual drug use, excessive drinking, and frank discussions of sex that don’t mince words aren’t your bag, this is not the book for you.

Now that’s out of the way, let me tell you a bit more about this fabulous book. It’s about Johanna Morrigan (AKA Dolly Wilde) again, but now it’s 1994. She’s 19, living in London, and a successful writer. She’s still desperately in love with John Kite, and he still doesn’t return her affections, but never mind: she has a plan. She’s going to write him into being in love with her.

Along the way, she’ll have to somehow get her marijuana-addled dad to move out of her flat, teach John to value his teen girl fans, and—and this is the whopper—decide what to do about being very publicly slut-shamed by the entire London music scene after a disastrous encounter with a Famous.

This is How to Build a Girl for the #metoo era. Tremendous fun. Read it!

World Without End by Ken Follett

read by John Lee

It’s two centuries after the building of Kingsbridge Cathedral, and while many things have stayed the same—for example, the balance of power between the hidebound clergy and the rapacious nobility is constantly being pushed at by both sides, pretty much always to the detriment of everyone else—change is on the way. The Hundred Years’ War has begun, and the Black Death is on the horizon. This won’t just mean the death of 60% of the population, but also the beginning of the end of the feudal system. New ideas about medicine and architecture are beginning to develop, among other things, and they’ll change the world, too.

In World Without End we see all of this through the eyes of four main characters: Caris, the daughter of a wool merchant; Merthin and Ralph, two very different sons of an impoverished knight; and Gwenda, the daughter of a ne’er-do-well landless laborer. As the book begins, they’re all children. Gwenda is being made to steal a nobleman’s purse at a crowded church service—which immediately leads to a plot twist I don’t want to spoil. In fact the entire book is essentially a big ball of easily-spoiled twisty-turny plotty-wotty stuff. In fact the plot thickens at such a pace that it’s as dense as a neutron star long before you get to the middle of the book's thousand or so pages (a.k.a. 45+  hours of audiobook).

Don’t let the size of the thing put you off, though. I’m long past the age when I was a size queen about books (ah, to be young and have time for a book-a-day habit—during the summer, at least), but I was engaged all the way through. Yes, Follett is putting characters with relatively modern mind-sets into a historical setting—but only relatively modern, and there’s a reason for it. He’s writing about a time when the world was changing pretty rapidly, after all. And he also includes plenty of characters with thoroughly contemporary points of view, including two of the four POV characters, only one of whom is a villain.

By having his main characters start off as children who don’t understand everything, Follett eases the reader into a world that isn’t fully understood. And throughout the book he explains all sorts of things we may not be familiar with, without ever making the reader feel talked down to; it just seems very natural that a given character wouldn’t understand a given situation or a technology fully, and you learn about it along with them. There are several times when some characters seem painfully and even unrealistically naive, but that's my only quibble with a really grand work of historical fiction.

For fans of the first book in this trilogy, Pillars of the Earth, this is a must-read. But you needn't have read the first book to enjoy this one thoroughly; it's written to stand alone. Strongly recommend.

Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley

narrated by Charlotte Parry

Ah yes, Beauty and the Beast: the classic fairy tale about Stockholm Syndrome. I have to admit that I am enough of a fan of this story (and of modern retellings of fairy tales generally) to have sought out the live action version last year. And to have thoroughly enjoyed it—because, duh, Emma Watson, but also, Josh Gad as LeFou: what a performance! Totally stole the show.

But also, like any right-thinking person, I’m always a bit queasy about the premise, no matter how good the execution is. Basically this is the story of a young woman trapped in an enchanted castle by a man who has literally become a monster due to a (well-deserved) curse, and whose only hope of becoming human again is to have someone agree, of their own free will, to marry him.

But apparently in this universe the idea of “free will” isn’t negated by coercing someone to live with him by threatening grave harm to said person’s father, who innocently stumbled across an enchanted castle and plucked a single rose to bring her as a souvenir—so that’s exactly what the Beast does. It’s not technically kidnapping, but morally speaking, it might as well be.

Of course if we take all of this stuff literally, and not as a metaphor for bad things that happen in real life, we can decide to just focus, as this retelling does, on Beauty’s specific experience, her bravery and loyalty and ability to see the good in just about any person or situation. And on the magic and the tragedy of the castle and its various inhabitants.

If your only experience of this tale is the two Disney adaptations, you’ll notice some changes in this version. For one thing, “Beauty” is just a nickname—one that its bearer has come to dislike, over the years, even more than she originally disliked her given name, Honor. That’s because she’s not as beautiful as her two sisters.

The book spends quite a bit of time telling the story of the three sisters and their father and their various suitors, and how they became impoverished, and how they settled in their new life. A lot of time. About two-thirds of the book. Fortunately for Beauty, there is no Gaston in this retelling (which, alas, means no LeFou). Her troubles are a quieter sort—until her father falls afoul of the Beast, who threatens to kill him for taking one of his many flowers as a gift for Beauty. But Beauty offers herself in her father’s place, and somehow convinces her father to accept this, under a lot of protest.

At the enchanted castle at last, Beauty encounters the invisible servants of the original tale (not the talking animated objects of the Disney versions) and sets about making the best of her new circumstances. The best part is, of course, the library—this Beauty being just as bookish as Disney’s Belle—but I won’t spoil it for you, there being few enough surprises in this version. The rest of the story goes on more or less as one would expect, if somewhat condensed.

The end of the tale is extremely condensed—that, apparently, not being the part McKinley was most interested in. That was a bit disappointing. But overall, this is beautifully written, and, in spite of a certain vagueness about when it’s supposed to have taken place, it does a lovely job of bringing these characters and this story to life. Recommended for adult and teen fans of the genre or of fantasy in general.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

Narrated by Lloyd James

Oh boy. This was my first re-read of this book in at least a couple of decades. And—spoiler alert!—it is flawed.

I should start by saying a bit about my history with Heinlein. My first Heinlein book was Friday; I read that when I was about 15 or so, and I was instantly hooked. The plot grabbed me by the collar and roared along like a freight train, and I loved every moment of it. I also loved the self-assured competence of the plucky-yet-vulnerable protagonist, and I was super intrigued with the future and with the alternative relationship models the author presented.

So I began reading every Heinlein book I could get my hands on. When I began to have a hard time finding new ones, I re-read the old ones. (To this day, there are a handful of his “juveniles” that I’ve never gotten my mitts on.) A few—Friday, The Number of the Beast, The Door into Summer, I Will Fear No Evil, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, To Sail Beyond the Sunset—I read over and over and over again. They were deeply satisfying worlds to crawl into; they were my happy place.

Much as I loved these stories and uncritical as I was at that age, even then I knew they weren’t perfect. I got that his ideas about gun-toting and personal liberty—I didn’t know the word “libertarian” yet—worked out so well in his universe only because he was in charge of everything in it, and could conveniently ignore all the real-world reasons why we don’t actually want that kind of society. And his ideas about sex—some were great, even enlightened, but many were clearly misguided and a few were flat-out harmful if taken as advice for how to conduct one’s life.

And o lord did that man love a soap box. Politics, economics, gender roles—if he had an opinion on a subject (and o lord did he have a lot of opinions), he didn’t hesitate to climb up and hold forth, at great length. Don’t even get me started about his long lessons on engineering and ballistics.

Still. When you’re reading an otherwise excellent book, by an author for whom you have great affection, it’s easy to quickly scan through the boring or squicky bits and get back to the good stuff. And there’s so much good stuff there. The “dean of science fiction writers,” as he was often called, could write a ripping yarn like nobody else. He was spilling over with story ideas—a universe full of them—multiple universes, actually—and he knew a thing or two about how to make them compelling.

Fast forward to 2018. I was nosing through the science fiction audiobooks on Hoopla, trying to decide what to read next, when The Moon is a Harsh Mistress popped up.

This was never one of my favorites. I had found the narrator’s pseudo-Russian patois a little annoying, as well as his pretense of having no political opinions. On the other hand, the book covers an interesting period in Luna’s history (in that particular timeline). As such, it gives important background for some of my favorite plot lines in other books. (Cameo by a very young Hazel Stone, anyone?) Also, I’ve always loved his stories featuring artificial intelligences.

So I decided to go ahead and download it. I listened to the first chapter or so on my own, and found the accent of the narrator even more annoying when read out loud than when printed on the page. It wasn’t so annoying that I couldn’t fall under the spell of the story, though. The next day I had a long car ride with my 14-year-old, and I asked if they would mind if we listened. They did not mind.

Almost immediately I had to stop the story to explain stuff to my kid. First, of course, was the basic setup—where the story takes place, and at what point in its history, and who Mike was (Mycroft Holmes, the first self-aware computer and the centralized administrator of way too many civic functions). Then mention was made of the main character’s line marriage, which my kid wondered about, so I paused the story to briefly explain the various sorts of marriage described in the book.

Then came a heaping pile of condescension toward Wyoming Knott, a female character who was putatively admirable, and I had to stop again.

Women’s place in Heinlein’s Luna… ugh, what a can of worms. I think he means to be generous and respectful toward women, in his way. But...

So, basically, Luna is a penal colony (much like Australia back in the day), and the male-to-female ratio is heavily skewed in favor of males. And there are no laws, as such; only the Authority’s rules. The way this plays out is that women’s sexual agency is considered sacred, and all decisions about marriage and divorce are theirs to make. Men universally band together to defend women's right to make these decisions, though it's so ingrained in the culture that it only needs to be defended against outsiders and "new chums."

Good as far as it goes (though why they should have to be underrepresented in the population in order for this to be the case is a fair question). However, the way men show “respect” to women is to howl, snap, and wolf whistle instead of, say, shaking hands. Whether this “respect” is paid to women past a certain age, or who present as butch, or are otherwise sexually unappealing or unavailable to a given man, isn’t mentioned—but it seems clear from context that women’s status is firmly based on their sexual availability and desirability in a situation of scarcity. And it’s unambiguously clear that women who choose to sell their sexual favors are considered to have the right to do so—but are also looked down upon as flighty, at best.

Wyoming Knott—Wyoh—is presented as intelligent, a beauty, and a political leader. She is simultaneously presented as a charming little fluff-head whose misapprehensions about politics are to be gently but firmly corrected. Oh, and whenever she does anything unusually admirable, she’s praised for being almost like a man. It’s not just that she’s imperfect; it’s that her imperfections are cute little specifically-female qualities that add up to there being no need to take her seriously. (That Mannie and the Prof take her as seriously as they do is clearly meant to be taken as admirable gallantry on their part.) Women are supposedly treated extra well in Luna because they are scarce—but they are treated like a scarce commodity, not fully human.

So I told my kid, awkwardly, that Heinlein had a lot of strange ideas about women, and that he was, in lots of ways, ahead of his time, but in other ways he was very much a man of his time. And, my kid being 14 years old, I left it at that. They are, after all, able to ask their own questions if they have any. We listened. We didn't get as far as any of his numerous instances of casual racism thinly disguised as admiration, so we didn't have to have that conversation. Not that that isn't a good and important conversation to have with your kids, and not that I haven't had it before and won't have it again—but just then I wanted to hear a story, not give a series of lessons.

And it’s an engaging story. It is. It's about a lonely computer, a revolution, and an engineer pulled into it for friendship’s sake. One character, Professor Bernardo de la Paz, is clearly a stand-in for the author, and he’s a charming old coot in his way. This book is definitely worthwhile—it won a Hugo award in its day—though I probably wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to Heinlein.

Verdict: read it, but with a very large grain of salt.

Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free by Wednesday Martin

Read by the author

I’ll state right at the outset that this book is not for everyone. If you’re not interested in frank, open, sex-positive discussions of female sexuality—or if you’re so triggered by the thought of women who cheat on their partners that reading an account of them that doesn’t condemn them will make you fly into a rage—or if you aren’t interested in the distinction between consensual and non-consensual nonmonogamy, you probably shouldn’t read this book.

Or maybe you should.

Wednesday Martin is standing on the shoulders of the authors of Sex at Dawn, What Do Women Want?, and What Love Is and What It Could Be. From that vantage point, she can see quite a lot that our society and past sex researchers (almost exclusively male) not only couldn’t see, but actively pooh-poohed. Because she doesn’t assume, as they did, that women are more naturally monogamous than men, but is open to other possibilities, she’s able to look at existing research without discounting evidence that doesn’t fit into that box.

And what does she see? That taken as a whole, women, not men, are the ones who have a harder time maintaining monogamy. That it’s at least just as natural for women as for men to cheat on their spouses or have multiple sexual partners. That it was the rise of agrarian societies, not biology, that put a premium on controlling women’s sexuality. That in societies where women are free to have more than one sexual partner at a time without social sanction, they often do.

These ideas aren’t entirely new, of course. What Ms. Martin brings to them is the backing of scientific research. She then goes on to conduct interviews and research of her own, all of which are fascinating. She talks to women in long-term monogamous relationships, women who have cheated on their spouses, and women who practice consensual nonmonogamy. She visits a women-only sex club aimed at women who identify as basically straight, to see what women’s sexuality might be like absent the male gaze. And she draws some interesting conclusions.

This is a very wide-ranging book; topics include social anthropology/ethnography (of both familiar and less-familiar cultures, past and present), primatology, and evolutionary psychology. The numerous interviews she conducts put a human face on the scientific studies she cites. The book does occasionally seem to wander a bit aimlessly, but never for long; another fault in her writing is the focus on female vs. male as if they were immutable categories. However, overall it's a well-researched and informative book, written in a conversational tone that keeps it highly readable. Strongly recommended for anybody who is interested in female sexuality.

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

I have a confession to make: I did not love Norse mythology growing up. In fact I was only dimly aware of its existence. 

I loved Greek mythology, which I read in turn to my kid. And I picked up various fictional-world mythologies via osmosis, by reading things like the Lord of the Rings trilogy and playing role-playing games, like RuneQuest, that were set in richly-detailed worlds. (Thank you, Greg Stafford, and may you rest in peace.) But for whatever reason, Norse mythology never really did much for me.

This was true even after reading American Gods, my second-least-favorite Neil Gaiman book (though I’m enjoying the hell out of the TV series), even though I pretty much love everything he writes. It was true even after watching some of the Marvel movies that include Thor and Loki because, well, of course those characters are only loosely based on their mythological prototypes. I wasn’t even inspired to learn much about it when I learned that the days of our week are named after Norse deities, or after getting a crow tattooed on my left shoulder--that was a crow, not a raven, and especially not Hugin or Munin.

But I do love most of Neil Gaiman’s work. Particularly when he goes off in a new direction--which he does often. (Though what you can really call a “new direction” for a writer who is a genre unto himself could be an interesting discussion.) Rewriting the Norse myths, bringing them alive for the modern age, struck me as the perfect job for a man of his background and peculiar talents. And I was right.

Gaiman’s gods have voices of their own. Voices, and faces, and gestures, and tastes in food and in women (and in some cases, in men and even in stallions), and, so help me, after reading this version of the Norse myths I feel like I could tell them apart by their body odor. These are manly myths about manly gods--Gaiman wasn’t making any effort to modernize these stories. The gods misbehave in all the expected ways: they drink too much, covet each other’s property too much, become violently peevish when things don’t go their way or they’re just bored. They aren’t role models.

What they are is vividly real, in this retelling, outsized technicolor warts and all. I don’t approve of them, and nor am I meant to. They’re gods, after all, and beyond a mere mortal’s approval or disapproval. They’re also fascinating to read about. Highly recommend.