The Cruelest Month (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #3) by Louise Penny

“But Three Pines itself was a village forgotten. Time eddied and swirled and sometimes bumped into it, but never stayed long and never left much of an impression. For hundreds of years the village had nestled in the palm of the rugged Canadian mountains, protected and hidden and rarely found except by accident.” pg 10, ebook

Readers are back with Chief Inspector Armand Gamache for another unlikely murder in the village of Three Pines. This time, it appears as if someone was scared literally to death.

Photo by Eternal Happiness on Pexels.com

“Eight of them had gathered in the cozy back room of the bistro to raise the dead this Good Friday, and the only question seemed to be, who would do it.” pg 17, ebook.

Why is it that such a lovely place continues to experience such horrors?

“Was it possible the old Hadley house was full of their anger and sorrow? Was that why it attracted murderers? And ghosts?” pg 26, ebook.

Meanwhile, Gamache is haunted by a ghost from his past, the Arnot case. Claire continues to work on her painting while Peter tries not to be jealous of her talent. And for fans of the irascible poet, Ruth has a special role in this story.

I think what sets Louise Penny apart from other mystery authors is that she has created an entire community full of humorous and welcoming characters that I find myself wanting to return to. That’s not as simple as she makes it seem.

“One by one they entered the old Hadley house. It was colder inside than out and smell of mold. The electricity had long since been turned off and now the circles of torchlight played on the peeling floral wallpaper, stained with damp which they all hoped was water.” pg 35, ebook

My only criticism is that I didn’t enjoy the mystery in this book as much as the previous ones. There was a lot of side drama that did a lot to build the characters but not to advance the plot. Otherwise, highly recommended for readers who enjoy cozy mysteries.

Thanks for reading!

The Night Witches by Garth Ennis

Though the main characters in The Night Witches are a work of fiction, Garth Ennis based them on real-life women, the female-Russian aviators who flew for their country during WWII. Their older airplane engines were too loud and alerted the Germans before their aerial night attacks, so the aviators developed a technique of cutting the engines and gliding over their targets before dropping their bombs.

“You know what it’s like when a P.O.-2 comes along, if you’re on the ground you can hear it for miles, that pop-pop-popping the engine makes… Two more missions like that and we’ll all be done with, unless we can magically stop them from hearing us coming.”

Their method of attack was unique and terrifyingly effective at robbing the invading troops of sleep and peace of mind. The Germans called these pilots, because they were women and attacked at night, “Nacht Hexen” or the “Night Witches”.

This graphic novel is filled with violent warfare, rape, loss, heartache and other dangers the women faced during their service, including male counterparts who didn’t want their help. But Russians were so hard-pressed in their fight against the Nazis, that they had no choice.

“I think the notion of women aircrew is a joke; I think women combat fliers are a worse joke; I think women assigned to this base alongside my fighter squadron are the worst joke of all.”

It is a sad but true chapter of history. The Russians lost more troops than any other country in the conflict, a staggering twenty seven million dead.

They didn’t have time to properly train or equip the people they were throwing at the Germans. It was a bloodbath. But the women flew and fought all the same. They were the most decorated female combat unit of WWII and their service is worth being remembered.

Recommended for adult readers who enjoy military history and aviation.

Thank you to the publisher for a free copy of this book for review purposes.

If you’re interested in more non-fiction information about the Night Witches, check out The History Guy’s video “The Night Witches and World War II”:

The History Guy remembers the service and courage of the Night Witches.

And thanks for reading!

How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman

When two young men go to a party, the young women there are so much more than what they expected.

This short story by Neil Gaiman, adopted in a graphic novel format, perfectly captures (in a science fiction-tinged bubble) the bewilderment that goes along with communication and young adulthood.

Sometimes, when you’re trying to chat up members of the opposite sex, it’s as if you’re talking to someone alien from yourself or even just the idea of a person. Gaiman takes this concept and, in typical Gaiman-fashion, runs with it.

He is even able to touch upon the darker side of young, romantic flings. The popular young man in the story gets all the female attention he could want, but at what cost to both him and the young women he leaves behind?

The other young man, referenced in the title because he is hesitant to “talk to girls at parties”, is the one who the narrative follows. His adventure into the worlds of the mind is certainly as wild as his friend’s experience.

This is a quick read, only 10 or 15 minutes, but I found it stuck with me. I was wondering at the layers of meaning in it.

The artwork is beautiful but strange. The women’s eyes are drawn slightly too large for normalcy. It set me on edge and made most of the story unsettling, which I suppose is also the point of the thing.

The story made me think about how much of our relationships take place because we’re brave enough to face that unsettling feeling. And by experiencing “the other”, we come back home a new person than who we were when we left. Maybe not a better person, but different.

Recommended for teens or adults who enjoy science fiction. I think anybody who has faced down their own fears to talk to someone they find enchanting will find something to ponder in this graphic novel.

Thanks for reading!

Animosity, Vol. 3: The Swarm by Marguerite Bennett

In the world of Animosity, the animals became sentient one day. In some areas of the world, this transition occurred more smoothly than others. Strangely, all of the bees disappeared.

This issue sheds some light on where they went.

As this series continues to get darker, I can’t help but be reminded of The Walking Dead, Book One. (Especially with the rumors of a “walled city” in this issue.)

You have a world, much like our own, but with unexpected dangers and predators around every corner. Some have adopted in strange ways to survive, sometimes at the great expense of others. Cultures have entirely changed or adopted to embrace different manners of communication and family.

The strong are thriving, but so are the smart. What matters most are your relationships and how you interact with others.

My one criticism of this series is how dark it seems to be turning. If animals became like people, wouldn’t they get some of our most positive characteristics too, instead of mainly or entirely the negative?

It’s still a fascinating premise in that the carnivores still need to eat meat even though they now have the cognitive abilities of a human. There’s a few panels in this issue showing krill having a conversation about the dangers of trying to communicate with the deep ocean creatures shortly before being swallowed by a whale.

How small does the sentience go? To one-celled organisms? We don’t know yet. But it is a mystery the series is working on solving.

Recommended for adult or older teen readers because of some violence, not too graphic, and stressful situations. This issue ends on a cliffhanger so if you can’t handle the uncertainty, you may want to wait to read these until the series is complete.

Thanks for reading!

Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World by Elizabeth Morrison

Books of Beasts is a scholarly examination of medieval texts called “bestiaries”. These curious works consisted of lists of animals with accompanying pictures and traditional stories. Sometimes they were printed alongside other works, like the Bible, sometimes not.

Elizabeth Morrison and twenty six other medieval scholars assert that these were the second most popular texts in the medieval world. They weren’t concerned with accuracy or science, part of the purpose of the books were to use creation as a window to contemplate the mysteries of God.

This particular book, Books of Beasts, was made to accompany a ground-breaking exhibition at The J. Paul Getty Museum. You can learn more about the exhibition here: http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/…

I also used the information in this book to write a script for The History Guy YouTube Channel.

“Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World” presents the largest number of medieval bestiaries ever gathered together, representing one third of the known surviving illuminated bestiaries, including some that have never before left their countries of origin.”

The stunning portion of this book are the bestiaries themselves. The colors and the animals in their various tableau are simply beautiful. When you consider how old the artwork is, it’s staggering that something that fragile has survived so long.

“Animals both real and fantastic parade by the dozens, and sometimes hundreds, across the pages of these remarkable works. Their stories were among the most familiar and beloved of the time, and many survive today, though their origins in medieval and earlier times have, sadly, been largely forgotten.”

My favorite part of this book were the stories attached to the animals. Everyone in the medieval world knew them and so, when that animal appeared somewhere else say, for example, on a tapestry or dish, it was a hidden code of sorts, imparting meaning that the modern reader has never learned.

Consider the lion: “The natural philosophers say that the lion has three principal natures. His first nature is that he likes to walk on the mountain heights. And if it should happen that he is sought by hunters, the odor of the hunters reaches to him and with his tail he covers the trail of foot prints he left behind…. And thus our Savior… covered over the foot prints of his love in Heaven, until sent by the Father, he might descend into the womb of the Virgin Mary, and save the human race that was lost.”

The lion was always presented first in the bestiaries and was given the name “the King of Beasts” not only for its position on the food chain but also for its association with Jesus Christ. These associations have bled over to today, and I had no idea that’s where they came from.

Fascinating, isn’t it?

But as interesting as the stories and images were, this book suffers from some serious academia-itis. The various scholars, the only experts on the topic in the world I’m sure, have different writing styles and some are far more palatable than others.

By the time I got to my fifth or sixth explanation why this text was related to that text and may or may not have come first, my brain was glazing over a little bit. Other sections read more like dissertations than material that someone would pick up for fun.

That criticism aside, the topic itself is absolutely worthy of investigation, if for nothing else than these stories that were, as one of the authors said, as popular as a “viral meme” that some of their meanings are still in use today. Isn’t it cool how history haunts us in ways that we may be unaware of?

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free digital advance reader copy of this book. The projected publication date is in June 2019. The short quotations I cited in my review may change in the final version.

Thanks for reading! #BookOfBeasts #NetGalley

The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better by Seth Godin

The premise of Seth Godin’s non-fiction book about how to improve business websites is this: imagine consumers as a monkey in a big red fez looking for a banana, i.e., whatever it is you’re selling or promoting. You want whatever the “banana” is to be as big and bright as possible because if the consumer can’t find it, like right now, they’re going to go somewhere else.

“Some people might object to the characterization of web surfers as monkeys. After all, they say, we’re smarter than that. No, actually, we’re not. We’re not smart because we’re busy, or we’re distracted, or we’ve never been to a particular site before and and we’re not mind readers.” pg 8

Yes, the specific information about how to lay out your website is outdated. (The examples he uses for newsletters are too.) But, if you take his general business advice and apply it in broad strokes to your blog or social media accounts, it is still incredibly useful.

For example, I don’t answer all of the messages my business account receives on its Facebook page because we get too many. I had a generic robot response set up that said something like “thank you for your interest, we can’t get back to you right now”. Godin pointed out that most websites lose an opportunity to further connect with the consumer by not utilizing the “thank you” portion of the interaction. The consumer has already reached out to you through a sale, or in this case, a message. Why not direct them back to other items or services your business sells when replying?

As I said, he was applying this idea to the sales portion of a website, but I started thinking about other potential applications and realized that I was missing a golden opportunity to share further information about our business.

I now use the automated message response to thank the person for contacting us AND providing the links to our YouTube page and Patreon account. I may have never come to the realization — that the person reaching out to the business wants more than just a thank you note — if Godin hadn’t pointed it out. Thanks Seth!

He also had some interesting ideas about what kinds of things to post on your website/social media accounts. Sometimes, he asserts, you just need to strike up a conversation.

“The biggest win you can create when you interact with a customer is actually not closing a sale. The biggest win is getting someone to tell ten friends, who then come do business with you.” pg 75

Good business is about how valued you make the consumers feel. Make the interactions about them and their needs.

Don’t read this book if you’re actually interested in website design. I’m afraid you’ll be sorely disappointed.

Do read this book if you’re interested in general business principles that you can apply to your digital interactions. I’ve generated a half dozen different ideas on how to improve my online business presence, all thanks to The Big Red Fez.

Thanks for reading!

The Blue Salt Road by Joanne M. Harris

The Blue Salt Road is where the selkies dwell as kings and queens of the deep. When a young woman named Flora needs to find a husband, she despairs of choosing any of the men on the small island where she lives. They’re hardened by work on the whaling ships and unrefined.

But when Flora’s grandmother teaches her a secret about mysterious beings called the selkies, she knows her search will soon be over.

“In tears he was summoned, salt as the sea,
In silver was his binding. In blood and betrayal, his calling he found.
In cedar, his salvation.” pg 87

Unlike other selkie stories I’ve read, like Sealskin, the person summoned from the waves is male, not female. I’m sure the fairytale has been told both ways, but it’s a nice change from other versions.

Joanne Harris writes interesting and nuanced fantasy in which she takes a look at older stories and puts her own spin on them. If you haven’t had a chance, you may want to read her duology about the Norse god, Loki. (The Gospel of Loki and The Testament of Loki)

“This is my story. The story of the land-folk and the seal-folk, and of treachery, and of the call of the ocean.” pgs 4-5

There’s quite a lot to unpack in the symbols of The Blue Salt Road and the selkie myth. (Warning, spoilers ahead for those unfamiliar with the selkie myth.) In Jungian psychology and dream interpretation, water is a common symbol for the subconscious mind. What floats or comes to the surface is what you’re aware of. Swimming about in the depths of the ocean, are the feelings or situations you’re perhaps unwilling to confront.

In the sad fairytale of the selkie, the fairytale creature emerges from the ocean as a free being, but then is prevented from returning to the depths where it belongs. He or she forced to live a life on land unless she can find the magical item, her sealskin, that allows her to return to the waves.

The added twist to the tale, sometimes, is the selkie has a child that either gets abandoned when he eventually returns to his home or he takes the child with him and the land-bound parent never gets to see the child again.

So, we have a fairytale examining the complex relationship between men, women, and how people handle having a child together. In addition, it looks at the loss of freedom some experience when a single person adopts a life with a family and how some people can’t deal with it.

It also speaks to the individual ways that people deal with growing up and choosing a trade or growing old and growing apart from the people and things they used to cherish.

In Joanne Harris’ version, there’s a family component with the secret passed between mothers and daughters, grandmothers and grandchildren.

“I told you that within the year I should catch myself a prince, and bear him a pretty princeling,” she said. “Now I shall be the envy of all the maids on the island, and all the young men who missed their chance will curse their evil fortune.” pg 44

These secrets that we carry are unique as well and help create cultures among family groups. Sometimes, the spouses we choose to add to the mix don’t adapt well to these cultures and eventually leave, not because there’s a loss of love, but because they are never truly accepted into the family group.

All of this is symbolic goodness is packed into a story that is appropriate for young adults to read. There is nothing overly graphic in here, just layers of complexity that a tween might not be able to grasp.

Highly recommended for young adult and adult readers of fantasy fiction and mythology.

Thanks for reading!

The Alchemist’s Kitchen: Extraordinary Potions & Curious Notions by Guy Ogilvy

The Alchemist’s Kitchen is an examination of alchemy — what it is, what symbols it uses and includes a cookbook of various recipes to use and practice the art on your own.

For as confusing a topic as alchemy is for me, Guy Ogilvy has put together the most succinct explanation of it I have ever read. I still don’t completely get it, but for the first time I was able to follow the general idea of it from beginning to end rather becoming completely lost and giving up in the middle.

“The story of alchemy, at least in the West, is, in a nutshell, the story of gold and our relationship with it.” pg 2

Let’s not forget spiritual gold. The search for the Philosopher’s Stone seems to entail something of both the physical and the mystical, a curious mixture of both.

Ogilvy uses each section, which consists of one page, to completely explain a concept and then, on the opposite page, provides alchemical artwork to illustrate the concept. It is clear, concise, and it makes me crazy that I still don’t get most of it.

The most fascinating part to me was the author’s description of colors, planetary correspondences, and their purposeful arrangement in famous works of art like Raphael’s “The Crucifixion”. You can see it here:
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/raphael-the-mond-crucifixion

Who knew Raphael was an alchemist? I didn’t.

“There is a way of manipulating matter and energy so as to create what modern science calls a force-field. This force-field acts upon the observer and puts him in a privileged position in relation to the universe. From this privileged position, he has access to realities which are normally concealed from us by time and space, matter and energy. This is what we call the Great Work.” pg 38

Some of this book sounds like nonsense. But then I wonder why so many people have been obsessed with these practices for so long if there’s nothing to them? Oh right, probably because of the creating gold from dross part of it.

I’m still not one hundred percent convinced that alchemy isn’t anything other than a misunderstood metaphor for purely spiritual practices. But I’m still willing to dream and explore and entertain the idea that the magical might be concretely possible.

Recommended for readers who are dreamers, like me.

Thanks for reading!

Animosity, Vol. 2: The Dragon by Marguerite Bennett

The plot thickens for Sandor, the hound dog, and his human, Jesse, as they attempt to make their way across the country to reunite Jesse with her half-brother.

“Jesse is growing up, and signs of it frighten Sandor more than they even frighten her. Sandor fears, so much, that he will be unable to protect Jesse from all pain, all terror, aware that he will not be there for her adulthood.”

Photo by cheptu00e9 cormani on Pexels.com

Now that all of the animals are sentient, the lines between human and animal, predator and prey have blurred. Certain species are starving to death. Other species are being farmed for their meat. It’s a dark story, but still fascinating in the way it flips reality on its head.

“The honeybees have retreated to some secret place, and the ants threaten blistering violence for the paw that reads the wrong mound, yet each seem unusual in their clannishness to their own kind.”

Along with their new sentience, some of the animals are considering the state of their souls… do they have one, and where do they go when they die? Others are banding together to fight against the humans or each other. And still others are protecting the only person or thing they care about, like Sandor.

My favorite part of this issue was the series recap at the end where the author, Marguerite Bennett, gives a brief glimpse into what’s going on in every state and country since the animals “woke”. Highlights include my home state of Illinois trying to figure out how to regulate the new reality (you know they would) and her description of the new Mongolia: “Little has changed.”

Honestly, this book is worth reading if only for that section. I can’t help but be impressed by the imagination it took to combine the cultures, unique creatures and people of each corner of the world and provide its own mini-story.

The artwork, as you can tell from the cover, is haunting in places. You see animals wielding human weapons and wearing clothing. But it’s not cute, the overall effect is very disturbing. I won’t soon forget a deer lobbing a hand grenade into a group of shadowy figures in the forest and I think that’s probably the point.

Recommended for fans of dark science fiction graphic novels. Thanks for reading!

To read more of my reviews of graphic novels, go to
https://thehelpdeskbookblog.wordpress.com/category/comic-or-graphic-novel/page/1/

The Help Desk Book Blog

Sharing reviews and deep thoughts about life.

Tag: book blog

The Cruelest Month (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #3) by Louise Penny

The Night Witches by Garth Ennis

How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman

Animosity, Vol. 3: The Swarm by Marguerite Bennett

Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World by Elizabeth Morrison

The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better by Seth Godin

The Blue Salt Road by Joanne M. Harris

The Alchemist’s Kitchen: Extraordinary Potions & Curious Notions by Guy Ogilvy

Animosity, Vol. 2: The Dragon by Marguerite Bennett

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