RAview: Laura Lippman's Every Secret Thing

Laura Lippman's Every Secret Thing is psychological suspense--I think it would qualify as my first thriller! I was anticipating something a bit more suspenseful, but I was intrigued by questionable characters and slowly revealed details from multiple perspectives.

I feel like I'm looking at this book as representative of all thrillers and I was looking for differences in this book and the mysteries I read. I think that's a flawed approach, though, so I'll try here to consider strictly the appeal of this book alone, not as a genre.

The pacing feels moderately fast, especially as vignettes of crimes (kidnappings) are occasionally rattled off. The characters were either not too complex or very mysterious--those working the case and the victims were fairly straightforward, and the suspects were obviously very confusing. I think I would call this a character-centered novel, though I did find myself eager to find out what would happen next.

Story line themes include child criminals, kidnapping, parental guilt, paranoia, one's story and perspective versus another's, preteen girl friendship, race. The narrative is told chronologically but from various characters' perspectives. However, we don't get everything from everyone--and the suspects' sections are short and their perspectives seemingly unremarkable.

Details help characterize the mother of one of the suspects as well as the psyches of the police detective and the suspect's lawyer. There are also details of working as a journalist and police as well as of what it's like to be poor or black in Baltimore and a young girl with a past that won't go away. The tone is eery, sad, absorbing, fearful, speculative.

At the end of the Thriller & Suspense Reading Challenge, I hope to have a better understanding of characteristics of the genre as well as an ability to do readalikes. For now, I'm glad I'm not too scared of thrillers so far, and what interests me about Law & Order was definitely satisfied with this book.

Knitted aubergine

The first of three veggies I'm knitting for a foodie friend. Wish I could get them done in time for Valentine's Day, but, although small, they require a lot of attention to make and are harder to do while doing other things.

When I started knitting the purple body onto the leaves and stem, my outside was in and my inside was out. However, I just started purling in the round, instead of knitting as the instructions advised. I was worried the make-one increases would look weird but I followed directions for those exactly, and I guess the wrong side looks nearly as good as the right side! This was also my first experience with picking up stitches, but it wasn't too bad at all. Pattern is from Amigurami Knits, a fun book!

RAview: This Is Where I Leave You

Jonathan Tropper's This Is Where I Leave You is a character-centered novel that packs an emotional punch. The tone is humorous and profoundly sad at the same time. The narrator's voice (a thirtysomething man who recently caught his wife cheating on him and is back at his parents' old home to sit shiva for his recently deceased father) is so authentic, this reads almost like a memoir, save the occasional too-well-timed-to-be-real irony.

Story line: I would classify this as the male equivalent of chick lit, if such a pigeonholed classification existed. Themes include family, sex, loss, nostalgia, becoming an adult, parenthood, adultery, love. The book is organized chronologically, following the seven days the four adult siblings and mother are sitting shiva. In addition to the present storyline, Judd, the narrator, has dreams and recalls childhood events and times before his marriage fell apart. The pacing is leisurely, mirroring the time the family is meant to be reflecting on the dead but sometimes feel trapped together and forced to face serious drama.

Details primarily help promote characterization--from Judd's mother's too-short skirts to his younger brother's somewhat pathetic habit of quoting pop cultural references at inappropriate times. Language isn't hugely important, but Tropper uses similes--e.g., "the girls are vacant and beautiful and wield their budding sexuality with a certain lack of control, like a toddler with a power tool" and "But this being late August, we get our fair share of men in shorts, showing off pale, hairless legs with withered calves and thick, raised veins like earthworms trapped beneath their flesh who died burrowing their way out"--to help establish characterization. Setting doesn't largely contribute to the appeal of this book, which readers will seek out for its realism, tone, and characterization.

Knitting: eyelet hat

I recently made this eyelet hat from the "Beach Beanies" pattern in Hats: A Knitter's Dozen. Much in this book, published in 2005, feels out of style, but this pattern appealed to the 90s girl in me. I used leftover cotton yarn that I bought for a stripe on a baby hat, so it was essentially free to make. I adjusted the number of stitches because I was using larger needles and heavier weight yarn--unfortunately, it turned out a bit too small for my head (circumference is good, but it's not quite long enough).

It was a fun, easy project that is nice a change from the typical starter hat and scarf.

RAview: Laura Joh Rowland's The Cloud Pavilion

I'm going to count this as my first review of 12 for the Thriller and Suspense challenge, per the rules, although I do intend to focus more on thrillers, and Laura Joh Rowland's The Cloud Pavilion is a mystery. I'm not sure I entirely know the difference between thrillers and mysteries, but I think it has a lot to do with tone. In the Cloud Pavilion, readers aren't sitting on the edge of their seats in suspense. It's more of a slow reveal as we follow detective Sano Ichiro investigate kidnappings and rapes happening in his 1701 Japan.

Story line: This is the 14th in a series, but it works very well on its own, as the mystery is self-contained and characters recall events from previous books to establish context. This is a historical mystery, and the setting and details are important. Food, markets, clothing, and legal, class-related, and cultural aspects of the 18th-century Japan setting are described in rich detail. There is also a focus on samurai extrasensory capabilities, which lends an air of mysticism to the book. Although there are descriptions of violence, this is not a grisly book. There are domestic scenes among Sano and his family as well as political posturing and Sano's experiences working for the shogun.

I listened to this on audio, so pacing is more difficult for me to identify, but I would say the 10 discs felts like they were flying by. There is a sense of anticipation regarding the case, although there's not much nail-biting suspense as the characters are generally not in immediate danger through most of the story. Characters are well-established and Sano's familial and political relationships drive the plot. Despite the realities of the historical time and place (e.g., rape was not actually illegal), Sano's wife, Reiko, is pretty tough.

Knitting

I've decided to post the occasional photo of things I knitted here, too, as I don't think Twitter (follow me @bananakatt) is an adequate record-keeping device. I hope this doesn't anger the blog gods too greatly. I figure it's easy enough not to read a post. Also, when the pattern comes from a knitting book, I'll mention that, too.

This is a scarf I finished about two weeks ago (no pattern used) to match a crazy looking hat my cousin has. She loves it and says it matches well, but I haven't seen the two together, and I picked the colors from memory. It's double-stranded, and I left the tails dangling to save time and because she obviously wanted something crazy looking (believe me, that hat is even more nuts than this).

RAview: Cherie Priest's Boneshaker

First of all, long time no post, I know. Happy New Year! I have this crazy notion that once I get a Sony reader (next week!), I will magically be able to read faster, so I should be less neglectful of my little blog.

I'm also about halfway through Laura Joh Rowland's The Cloud Pavilion on audio, so there is more fun coming soon!

For now, I just finished my first steampunk novel, Cherie Priest's Boneshaker. It was a lot more accessible than I thought it would be, if only because I prejudged it based on the sf subgenre's intimidating name. For the uninitiated, here's a Tor.com Steampunk 101 article that helped me a lot.

The details of Boneshaker are primarily related to gadgetry/inventions/mechanics, which seems like a standard of the genre. What makes it more generally appealing, I'd say, is the characters. A mother and her son, both plagued by their family's past, end up inside Seattle's walls, where the Blight, a gas leaking from the ground, turns anyone who breaths it into a zombie--Going into this book, I didn't know there were zombies involved, and I'm a little sick of them having just read World War Z; however, they're not the main point or even the main conflict of the book, so it didn't bother me too much.

The narrative alternates between the two main characters' points of view, and they both have distinctive, stubborn, kick-ass personalities. The boy, Zeke, has the attitude and perspective of a the young teen he is. In their separate adventures, both meet sundry people in rag-tag clans who've, against all logic, made a life inside the abandoned, poisonous city. The pace is quick, as the reader knows if the two separated characters are close to each other and don't even know it or are trusting the wrong people, and the alternating chapters make for suspense as you naggingly wonder what's going on with the other character who we last left in peril.

The tone is suspenseful but somewhat uplifting, as the mom and son have left a dull life and are on a [dangerous] journey of discovery. The technology is intriguing and exciting. Transporting.

Story line: motherhood, romp, steampunk, Seattle, Victorian technology, alternating narrators, family pasts, local/underdog heroes, the drug world, zombies, airships, determination, character judgments and misconceptions.