Books in August

Most of August was spent finishing off the John Carter of Mars books. Namely Thuvia, Maid of Mars, The Chessmen of Mars, The Master Mind of Mars, A Fighting Man of Mars, Swords of Mars, Synthetic Men of Mars, Llana of Gathol and John Carter of Mars. Phew! Pulp fiction makes perfect treadmill reading, though. These are fun books, and I'm very intrigued to see what Pixar is going to do in bringing these stories to film (I hope they do them all). Burroughs wrote the first book in 1917 and the last in 1964 and I did get a sense of how the world around him was changing as he wrote. I mean, Dejah Thoris may be Incomparable in terms of beauty, but she's a huge liability in a fight. She's constantly getting kidnapped, nearly killed in airship crashes, used as leverage to make John Carter do things... She always struggles against her captors, of course, but completely uselessly. But as the books progress we are introduced to other female characters who can fight. It's nice that John Carter saw the value in teaching his daughter and granddaughter how to defend themselves. And I particularly liked The Swords of Mars, where the fighter thinks he's in love with the beauty but slowly realizes he's actually in love with the girl he thought was a boy a first, the one he can talk to and who has his back in a fight. But The Chessmen of Mars is my favorite, because the Kaldanes are so cool. (Did I mention I'm hoping Pixar makes movies out of all of these?)

After reading all eleven of those books, though, I was in deep need of a little Opposite of That. I was just browsing my shelves before hopping on the treadmill when I saw Learning to Play Gin by Ally Carter, the sequel to Cheating at Solitaire. I bought this the week it came out but somewhere along the line it got shelved instead of staying in the To Be Read stack on my end table where it belonged. Which is just as well, a book about smart, emotionally complex women was just what I needed. I like Ally, she has wit and is often laugh-out-loud funny. I particularly identified with the pants-shopping scene: "I have a waist! And hips! And my waist is smaller than my hips!" I don't know why fashion designers assume that because size zeros tend to be built like boys that all of us are, we're just proportionately bigger. If I find pants that fit my hips I end up with way too much hanging around my waist. Not a good look. Thank the gods for Lands End custom-made jeans.

The last book was Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens. Aidan is reading an abridged version for history, so I finally plunged into the unabridged version I've had hanging around here forever. Not particularly good treadmill reading, I'll tell you. More cuddle up with a cat and an afghan reading, although what with the heat wave that wouldn't have been pleasant either. It's hard to knock a classic, but I will say this isn't as good as his later stuff. I'm guessing Dickens was a pantser, as this story started out doing one thing and then went all over the place. Still, I like his dry humor and observation of character. I just liked it better in, say, Great Expectations.

On the writing front, I did nothing all week. Seriously. We had painters working on our house, which involved lots of guys working around all my windows all day long. I felt like I was an exhibit at the Museum of Natural History: Life of a Homeschooler or something. They were completely professional, of course, they weren't actually looking in the windows, but still. I'm a recluse; it was traumatic for me.

So that leaves me with half a novel to write in a week. Which I'm going to try to do. Because I'm nuts. Well, wish me luck!