edward's blog

LBD

The Little Black Dress
Is best served with red wine
To accompany the red soles
Of the pumps below it
As she moves through the bistro.

The Little Black Dress
Rarely does not flatter the wearer
Giving its all
To show off the legs
Encased in black tights in the cold
Or bare in the thick humidity
Of the summer.

The Little Black Dress
Can be served
As part of a healthy breakfast
Or as lunch, but especially as dinner

But if served as dessert,
Champagne must accompany
The Little Black Dress
Glasses clinking
As it hits the floor.

Be careful how far you lean in, lest the flame jump out and burn you...

to paraphrase Jacqueline Carey, the candles always burn brighter by the time one switches to the house wine. :-)

(shot at Italic, a neat restaurant in Vienna.)

Well, you know I can't just go into a bookstore like Maple Street and not buy stuff. From left to right:

New Orleans City Park by Catherine Campanella - Cathy's third book for Arcadia. I was always more a "city park kid" than an "audubon park kid," having gone to school in Gentilly.

Render Unto Rome by Jason Berry - Berry was one of the best writers covering the clergy sex abuse scandals that rocked the Catholic church. His latest details some of the financial scandals plaguing Rome.

The Complaints by Ian Rankin. @beathhigh's lastest novel. It's a cop story, but not an "Inspector Rebus" tale. In Lothian and Borders police, "The Complaints" are the Internal Affairs cops. I was going to buy this one for the Nook. I downloaded the sample there, but when I saw it on the shelf last night, I couldn't resist. As much as I enjoy reading on my tablet, there are those times on planes when they tell you to turn off the electronics, or when the batteries go kaput on long flights.

Come up to Maple Street Book Shop TONIGHT at 6pm, and we'll talk about Maison Blanche, Mr. Bingle, and all sorts of New Orleans stuff!

Maple Street Book Shop

I'm currently reading Kushiel's Chosen (Kushiel's Legacy, #2), by Jacqueline Carey. It's the second book in "Phèdre's Trilogy," named for the main character, Phèdre, a courtesan in the main city of Tere d'Ange, a country more-or-less where France is located in reality. If you're not familiar with Carey's work, check out my review of the first book, Kushiel's Dart.

When I posted an update to Twitter/Facebook via Goodreads, a friend remarked that she'd never known a guy to read Carey's books. This started me thinking about the line between what I call "chick lit," such as romance novels, and other genres.

Carey's work caught my eye because it's good medieval fantasy, set in an alternate Europe that is well thought-out. She also put a lot of thought into the religion of her world, with lots of real-world similarities woven together with interesting angelic twists. I think what surprised my friend is that the series focuses on a courtesan, so much of the action deals with her profession and personal feelings.

Still, I see the books as more medieval fantasy than romance. Like Laura Resnick's "Esther Diamond" novels, Carey's Phedre is a fantasy heroine first.

If you've read Carey, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

(x-posted to NOLA Linux)

A page from the illuminated manuscript "Coronation Order of Charles V"

via a tweet from @2NerdyHistGirls, I discovered this fantastic app from the British Library:

Illuminated manuscripts from between 800 and 1500 are available to peruse, admire and zoom in on thanks to a new App launched by the British Library.

The app has been created to coincide with an exhibition at the library called Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, which will open on 11 November.

There are iPad and Android versions of the app, which is not free (Android=£2.49, iPad=£3.99).

I hope I can get back to London to see the exhibition in person, but in the meantime, what a great resource!

From the website:

Olivier Charles creates his vision
of the Stockholm Public Library,
a virtual world of Architecture and CG Art.
The result is an EXPOSÉ 7
Master Award winning image
for Interior Architecture.

The article itself is pretty geeky, discussing the techniques to build this computer model, but the result! All those books! *sigh*

Laura Resnick is a friend of a friend. Specifically, my friend is the wife of a fraternity brother of mine, so we go back a long way. When you see friends of friends commenting on stuff on Facebook, naturally you get curious about that person. I asked my friend Cindy if the thought Laura would mind me "friending" her on Facebook. She said no, so I did. When Laura announced the release of her latest novel, I learned it was the fourth of her "Esther Diammond" books. Not wanting to jump into characters developed over three previous novels, I decided to follow the canon.

Unfortunately, Laura's first novel, Disappearing Nightly, is out of print, so I picked up the second, Doppelgangster, for my Nook. Laura said she put a lot of backstory from the first novel into the second to catch everyone up. She was right, I got what was going on pretty quickly.

The main character of Doppelgangster is Esther Diamond, an aspiring actress living in New York who waits tables more than she acts. Esther got mixed up in some heavy-duty occult goings-on in the first novel, and naturally they continue to follow her around Manhattan. She's in between acting gigs, working at an Italian restaurant that is, well, to not sugar-coat it, mobbed-up. While working one night, she encounters a Doppelgänger, or perfect double, of a mobster who is a regular at the restaurant. The mobsters believe that, if one sees his perfect double, death is imminent, and this guy ends up dying while Esther's serving him.

Esther immediately picks up a tabloid characterisation of a mobbed-up "chorus girl," who witnesses what may be the beginning of a war between two crime families. Enlisting the help of Dr. Max Zodak, a mage/wizard of the "Magnum Collegium" (an organisation whose charter is fighting Evil with a capital "E"), she investigates the doppelgänger sighting. Naturally, since this involves a Mafia family, one of the older hitmen who knows Esther joins in. He doesn't get "doppelgängers" calling them "doppelgangsters." A few more deaths, a few more doppelgängers, and some solid plot work, and the case is solved.

When I started reading Doppelgangster, my first thought was, this is like Misty Lackey's Diana Tregarde novels, and I forgot how much fun a series like that is. Esther's not a paladin-level heroine; she's trying to make ends meet while getting an acting career off the ground. High-level paladins don't often sit around in sweats, consuming pints of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, but Esther does that when she's depressed. She's managed to get caught up into some weird stuff that complicates a love life, and Resnick's descriptions of a worked-up, horny Esther are at once exciting and humorous. Throw in social/business interactions with mobsters, and Esther Diamond's world just gets more interesting.

Doppelgangster is a fun read. Resnick does her homework on the occult/esoteric side of things, so it's easy to slip into the world in which Esther and Max are fighting Evil. You look at some elements, such as Max Zodak's bookstore and see connections used by countless other authors (think Ray's Occult Bookstore from "Ghostbusters" for this particular location), but you don't care. It's like role-playing game material that often starts in the common room of a local tavern. Yeah, it's a standard setting, but who cares, the story's good!

My instincts were solid here, and I've moved on to the next Esther Diamond story, Unsympathetic Magic.

Warning: links go to Wikipedia entries, which contain serious spoilers.

I'm not sure what attracted me to this book, but there was an exotic aspect to the back-cover teaser that got my attention. Kushiel's Dart is medieval fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, but the "sorcery" is sexual rather than magickal. 

Phedre is a "whore's get"--and in medieval terms, that's pretty low on the totem pole. In Jacqueline Carey's universe, Phedre's nominally in a kingdom corresponding to Gaul/France. 'Yeshua ben Yosef' is acknowledged, as is "Tiberium," but Christianity doesn't dominate Western Europe as in the real world. This gives Carey a great deal of latitude regarding sexual mores. Written in the first person, Phedre tells the story of how she was given over by her mother to a "house" of the "Night Court." The men and women of the Night Court see their role as offerings to a god, so sex-for-money is acceptable. Phedre's contract/indenture is purchased by a player, a poet and adventurer who educates her, training her to become his spy amongst the nobles of the land.

I'll leave the plot exposition at that.  What impresses me about this book are several things.  First, the Carey's universe turns medieval Christian mores on their head. There's not much Phedre does that didn't happen anyway, but the hypocrisy of the Church is missing. One might argue this is a cop-out on part of many fantasy authors who aren't very well-educated on the Church, but clearly Carey knows what she's about, and has done a great job of creating an "alternate theology" that works.

Second, the "good story" here involves the sex. Phedre likes it rough, as it were, but it's the way she's wired. She's an anguisette, someone who truly gets off on the pain. Her patron and mentor recognizes this and allows her to make her way in the world, using her talents to make him money and to gather intelligence about the doings of the nobility. The author weaves a wonderful tale of intrigue, scheming on both a personal and a grand scale. Epic battles on land and sea, with trials and tribulations for the main characters that are both exciting and bittersweet.

Kushiel's Dart is an interesting cross between a fantasy and a romance novel. Ms. Carey did well with her universe, throwing in more than just bodice-ripping. The concept of the "adepts" of the Night Court is developed well. Sex scenes in the book aren't bodice-rippers, but are of a level you don't see in most "vanilla" fantasy novels.

Kushiel's Dart is exactly what the jaded fantasy reader needs, a sexual boost. Even if you don't continue with Phedre's exploits in subsequent titles, this is an enjoyable read.