American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Interesting. Not a page to page absolute delight like Good Omens, but still an interesting premise with a quirky execution.

It seems that all the immigrant peoples to come to America (clear back to the folks who arrived via the Bering land bridge) brought their gods with them. As time passed, these became less and less the focus of their people's worship as social groups homogenized and new gods arose to supplant them. These new gods are representative of the ills and icons of American society. We enter the scene as the old gods are preparing for war with the new gods.

Shadow, the central character, has been released from prison a day ahead of schedule because of the death of his wife in an automobile accident. An unusual old man with a glass eye, who is called Wednesday, accosts him and offers him a job as his general dogsbody - and since he has nothing else to do. Shadow eventually accepts.

My friend and my daughter agree that Shadow is too passive. I see their point, but I think there is more to it. He just floats along and does as he is told for most of the story, but something like this requires an observer, and Shadow is a perfect observer. He is placed to see everything, intelligent enough to understand much of what he sees, and passes the rest on to the reader.

And I love the part about having Thoth, Anubis, and Bast run a mortuary and funeral parlor.

Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection by John E. Sarno, MD

A friend recommended this to me many years ago. Somewhere in this house there is an actual paper copy. Suddenly about a week ago it occurred to me that the choir concert is coming up in just a couple of weeks - and I can't stand for much as five minutes without that deep pain in my back on the right side just below my waist. Sunday mornings with the doxology followed by a hymn followed by the choir special were a case in point. I can't afford a chiropractor, and one worth the money wouldn't guarantee to "fix" me in two weeks. Sufficient pain-killers to do the job would leave me in a stupor. So I decided to read the book - EC told me that she had not had back trouble since reading it.

The premise is that back pain is generally caused by repressed motion, particularly anger and can be cured by recognizing that.

Dr. Sarno is very gentle with his colleagues. He discusses institutionalized blindness, and a long history of traditional medicine. He even alludes to the risks incumbent upon challenging conventional wisdom.

He does not point out that palliative care is forever. If an individual is cured of a long-standing complaint, he goes away - and takes his money with him. He does hint that pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in extended drug treatments, but never suggests that members of the medical profession could share that view of treatment.

He also forbears to point out that many patients are unwilling to take any responsibility for their treatment beyond taking a pill. There is a
pervasive believe in the "magic bullet" - the drug that will fix everything. There is also the Munchausen contingent of the population which craves ever more expensive and exotic treatments for the sympathy which is lavished upon them. These patients do not want a simple, inexpensive, total cure.

As for me, I wish I had read it when she told me about it. Maybe I could have spent the last ten or fifteen years without the pain. I made a joke of it to Anne and told her that I was going to fix my back by the "think system" as in Music Man. It does sound like it. But it has been said, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." And the truth is that there is nothing really wrong with my back - if there were, I would have had worse problems years ago. Early episodes of back pain many years ago can all be associated with visits from my husband's parents. It doesn't take a lot of insight to realize that I have been repressing a lot of anger for the last ten years at least. The beauty of this is that you don't have to "cure" the anger - you just have to recognize the fact that it exists and that your brain has hidden it by giving you some pain to worry about. I don't know that I can think myself well by the concert - but I really do think it can be done. Last Thursday, I wandered all over campus without any problems at all, until I headed over to the police station to get a parking sticker, knowing all the while that my driver's license is expired - has been for two years. I hobbled in and they gave me a parking sticker without even asking to see my license. -- And I walked back to my office without a twinge in my back.

Theirs Not to Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty by Jean Johnson

Honest, stand-up space opera. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It would be a standard Marines in space number except for the fact that the heroine is a precog - this only one of a number of special talents. She uses her varied gifts to get herself and her unit through all sorts of extremely awkward situations.

In the course of book one of the series, we see her through basic training after her enlistment on her eighteenth birthday to a field commission and awards for valor granted by the hand of the (nearest analog) vice-president of the government of earth (picture the final scene of the original Star Wars film). She is probably about twenty at that point.

In her spare time, she writes letters to people to make sure that they are in the right place at the right time to protect the future of the entire galaxy. Oh yes, and it seems that she may not be entirely human, sort of.

Apparently, the next book is not yet out, although there is a long excerpt at the end of book one - is a book really out if it is not yet available at Amazon? If a tree falls ...

The Eagle Catcher by Margaret Coel

Ok, not great - however, it is the first in the series and one can hope that she improves with practice.

It is an unusual detective team - an Irish Catholic Priest and a "Janet Peet" character, an Arapaho woman who has been away, become a lawyer, and returned to the tribe. It is clear that the priest "admires" the woman a bit more than is strictly appropriate given his chosen profession.

The basic story is pretty solid, although the title seems to be only minimally related - something which I always find annoying. Another problem is that several times she leaves glaring pointers which she then drops. I found myself continually irritated by a couple of verbal mannerisms - maybe I should call them bad habits. The story is set on the Arapaho reservation in Wyoming. For the most part, life on the rez sounds a lot like life on the rez in a Hillerman novel. We all know how people dress out here. So why, for crying out loud, does she never simply refer to someone's hat as a hat - it is always his "cowboy hat." I don't know of anyone who calls a cowboy's hat a cowboy hat except possibly six-year-olds in the Northeast. But it is always a "cowboy hat": "He pushed his cowboy hat back on his forehead." "He grabbed his cowboy hat as he ran from the house." Sounds silly. Slightly more subtle perhaps - she never simply refers to a character (even one we have met fifty times) by name, it is always "the Arapaho man or women or boy or whatever".

One can hope that these flaws will be overcome in further works - after all there are ten or twelve of these now. I will read another - because a friend recommended them, not for their compelling narrative and insight into a modern Native American society.

Princeps' Fury by Jim Butcher

This is a good, solid series and I'm still enjoying it - but I am finding that now toward the end of it, I need something else in between. There is just so much fighting. It makes me tired. I still like the characters and they have held true to character which is a big bonus. I hope that in Book 6 they get their well deserved rewards.

The overall plot of the series has been no secret for several volumes now - actually, that is good, too. It shows that this is a mmvfs not an indefinite series with the same characters. This is the first one that left a clear cliff-hanger, though. Maybe it isn't exactly a cliff-hanger - maybe it is more like a preview of coming attractions in case you were so tired of fighting the Vord that you were considering quitting. Gaius Sextus is dead and Aquaintaine has seized control, but we have been clearly informed that Tavi is the chosen one. So we know that whatever else happens, Tavi will be the First Lord - which, I suppose, means that his and Kitai's first-born will be named Nonus or some such. And, mind you, I never make predictions, but I think it would be fitting if Aquaitaine's Borgified, excuse me, I mean Vordified wife Invidia makes a final showing to do him in herself.

The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

I hope I don't run into another book like this too soon. There are things I need to get done - and since I started this book I have done very little besides read it. I liked The Historian, but this one kept me reading long past when I should have been grading papers or some such thing. Maybe it is the romance, maybe it is the mystery, maybe it was the immersion in the minds and work of painters.

Maybe it was the possibility of some sort of time/space thing. Given my lifetime of reading science fiction and fantasy, I kept expecting something like that. I had figured out the basics of the plot long before the end, but I kept looking for a Jack Finney conclusion. Kostova brings it to a totally satisfying and rational conclusion. In spite of my expectations I enjoyed it completely.

The two time tracks are beautifully woven together. The switches between the two are clean and logical. Discovery in each track leads to the events in the other.

Kostova uses a couple of devices here that are not my favorites but she does it very effectively. I'm not a big fan of the new narrator for every chapter thing. All that voicing is difficult to do effectively, and I think it disrupts the narrative line unnecessarily. Here, Kostova allows us to hear each of the women in Robert Oliver's life in her own voice: the wife, the mistress, and the obsession. And one of those is only accessible through a packet of letters - the epistolary form which also is not my favorite. She makes it work.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Now that was fun - a parody of the apocalypse. It seems that the demons charged with delivering the antichrist to the family which was to raise him mislaid the infant. A perfectly ordinary child goes to that family and the antichrist goes to a perfectly ordinary family - and it is recommended that we refrain from wondering what happened to the extra baby.

I believe it includes every required element of the end times - including the four horsemen (mounted on motorcycles) and the antichrist's personal hellhound (morphed into a nondescript mongrel called "Dog") and a book of prophecy and all the rest.

The story in the endnotes about the writing of the book is almost as much fun as the story itself. I do intend to read the work of Gaiman himself; Coraline was just a teaser.