Last Days of Summer

It's the middle of August here in the Pacific Northwest, the East side of Puget Sound, to be exact. This afternoon around 5:30 I stepped outside to give the chickens some scraps, and instead of a blast of heat at the end of a blindingly sunny Summer day, I was met with a soft, barely cool breeze. What a difference from the years I spent in Northern California, where I pretty much just hid for six months of the year until the heat wave passed. Right now in Stockton and L.A. and Sacramento people are cranking their air conditioners day and night, while up here we manage to keep things under control with an "open windows at night, closed and shuttered during the day" policy. Usually this means just closing up whichever side of the house is in sun at the moment, and leaving the other sides open to the breeze, unless it gets over 80 F at which point I batten the hatches and turn on a couple of ceiling fans.

As a native-born Washingtonian, this is a time of year I loathed in California. After months of unbearable heat which never seemed to abate, I was ready to jump in front of a bus by August, knowing that the worst was far from over and probably wouldn't be until darned near Halloween. As a little kid growing up near Seattle, my memories of Halloween involved much whining about having to wear a coat over my costume to go trick-or-treating. Now I'm just grateful that I'm back where Autumn actually means "cooler weather", and "back to school" clothes involved new sweaters, wool skirts, courderoy pants, and a new coat of some kind. Ordering socks and sweaters from the Sears catalog was an end-of-Summer ritual that heralded both the advents of the school and Holiday seasons, as well as in our household both my and my sister's October birthdays.

The landscape, especially this year with the crazy dry weather, is scorched and brown, but the daytime high temperatures are manageable for even this heat weenie. The breeze even at midday is refreshing. The sun is setting at a more reasonable hour. The leaves on the maple trees are browning early because of our unseasonably hot and dry Summer, which adds to a feeling that Fall is just around the corner. The apple tree is full, and it's just about time to get picking before the crows get into their annual "take just one big bite out of each apple" routine. Time to fill the kitchen with the smell of apples and cinnamon. Extra perk of not being a little kid anymore: I don't have to wear a coat over my Halloween costume if I don't want to.

The Cross

 

It's (non-Orthodox) Easter this Sunday, and Ravi Zacharias' short essay on the cross and what it represents is worth a few minutes of your time.

There is...(a)...word we often hear when we are in the throes of indescribable pain, the word, “excruciating.” That, too, derives from the Latin and means “out of the cross.” Across time and human experience, the historical event of the Cross intersects time and space and speaks to the deepest hurts of the human heart.

But we live with more than pain and suffering. We also live with deep hungers within the human heart, such as the hunger for truth, for justice, forgiveness, and peace. As I see it, there is only one place in the world where these hungers converge: it is in the Cross of Christ, where perfect peace and perfect justice became united in one death on a Friday afternoon.

"The Spook Lights Affair: Carpenter & Quincannon #2", by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini

The Spook Lights Affair by Marcia Muller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It takes a solid grasp of a historical setting to impress me, and these authors do exactly that and more. Add to that a perplexing suicide/murder/or?, a hunt for missing Wells Fargo money, and assorted other mysteries that may or may not be related, and you have an interesting tour of 1895 San Francisco and environs. This is so nicely put-together that I wasn't even aware that I was reading the second in a series until I checked the cover/title about a third of the way in. The authors weave in 19th century idiom and conversational style without it seeming forced or flowery, the principal characters are believable and engaging, and the conclusion satisfying without being melodramatic. Good solid mystery writing in the vein of Conan Doyle meets Dorothy Sayers.

View all my reviews

"Rogue's Honor", by Brenda Hiatt

Rogue's Honor by Brenda Hiatt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this charming, and occasionally steamy, Regency romance as I'm a very tough audience when it comes to the romance genre and historicals in general. Nicely realized setting, interesting arcs for the characters, plenty of bumps in the road to happiness without being overly frustrating, and a satisfying set of conclusions that don't come off as contrived. I love a strong heroine and Pearl is stalwart without coming across as bitchy, in fact I would love to have had a girlfriend like her in my early twenties. Very minor "technical" issues with how horsemanship is presented; nothing egregious, just the same old misconceptions about use of reins and legs, and for all I know this was common equitation in the early 19th century. Again: very minor.

Don't let the "Dread Pirate Roberts" cover put you off. Looking forward to reading more by this author.

View all my reviews

"The Banishment", by M.C. Beaton

The Banishment by Marion Chesney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hunting around for an audio book on my library's web site, I stumbled upon this little gem. A big fan of Beaton's Hamish MacBeth series, I thought I'd give it a go. What a treasure! Beaton may have out-Regency'd Georgette Heyer. I would like to have been a bit more deeply "inside the head" of any of the POV characters, but this is a minor complaint. This would make a charming feature film to rival anything made from Austen's work in the last few decades. Thank goodness Beaton cranked out piles of historical romances before she made it big with MacBeth. I'm looking forward to exploring them all.

View all my reviews

"A Heartless Design": why is this not alt-history?

A Heartless Design by Elizabeth Cole


This may be a good story. I don't know, because I didn't make it past the first few pages. The cover is pretty and vaguely Regency despite the bad/21st century hair on the model (not the author's fault), so I was guessing this was a historical romance. After a few paragraphs I was confused and thought maybe this was supposed to be alt history or Steampunk, and since I was reading an e-version had to look up the blurb online. Nope. It's listed as a "Regency romance". What with there being a steel (sic) ship with a mechanical drive system powering a screw, and all of it designed by a woman in the first decade of the 19th century, I would not consider it historical. Iron (not steel) cladding wasn't used for another fifty years, not to mention steam propulsion. Hopefully Cole makes a big deal of the designer being female, because that would have been huge back then, too. I'm not saying there weren't women designing things in the early 19th century (Ada Lovelace!), but it was not commonplace and they would have had huge social and commercial obstacles to surmount. Anyway, I couldn't continue with that much askew right out of the gate.

I can't give it a serious rating of any kind since I didn't read it.

View all my reviews