The Killer Crabs of Clipperton Atoll (An Unintentionally Creepy Bedtime Story)

Find on Amazon: The Pocket Atlas of
Remote Islands

A while back, a good friend (i.e., Nik) regifted to me a small book about islands to pass along to my oldest son (a child who starts nearly every sentence with “Hey Mom, did you know….,” and then proceeds to share whatever random fact he’s just discovered…). It’s a great little book – The Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands  by Judith Schlansky – with short tales and interesting facts about, well, remote islands (the subtitle of the book is Fifty islands I have not visited and never will). 

Because there was no reason to read the book from start to finish, we  (i.e., me) thought it would be fun to jab a finger at a random page and read the resulting selection as a bedtime story.

Well….(cue creepy music)…that was the night we discovered the (almost) unspeakable horrors of Clipperton Atoll.

You see Clipperton, a small coral island tucked away in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Pacific Ocean (about 1000 km off the coast of Mexico), is inhabited by man-eating orange land crabs. Lots and lots of them. So many that their shells crunch underfoot as one walks across the island (until, of course, one’s feet are devoured by said crabs).

Clipperton Crab: Sure, it looks all cute and innocent...

According to Schlansky, a small Mexican garrison stationed at Clipperton was all but forgotten for more pressing issues during the Mexican Revolution. Supply ships stopped arriving as the war heightened, and the 26 residents – 14 men, 6 women, and 6 children – were left with no food save the crabs (nothing grew on the coral). Scurvy broke out, many died, and the governor went mad. The survivors, mad themselves by then, killed each other off (with help from the crabs, I presume) until only a handful remained to outrun the crabs to a long-awaited rescue ship. From the safety of the deck they could see the orange ring of crabs around the atoll, claws snapping in the sun as the ship sailed off….  (book closes).

(Silence)

“Mom? Are there crabs in Ohio?”

 “Just little ones, honey. Like at the pet store. And they only eat bugs.”

“Okay. Night, Mom.”

 “Night, honey.” 

(Light off)

“crruunnnnchhhh”

 “Mom! Not funny!”

TMI, Mr. Fforde. TMI.

As I type this, I'm about two hours into a 13 hour plane ride. I've achieved the rank of Peggle Master in my latest app obsession, and am working my way through my second tiny bottle of a surprisingly good Pinot Grigio.

Buy from Amazon: First Among Sequels

I'm also working my way through Jasper Fforde's fifth book in his Thursday Next series, "Thursday Next, First Among Sequels". And I'm not particularly happy.

Oh I'm happy about the trip, despite the fact that I'll likely miss my connection flight. And I'm happy that I have a row to myself, nice wine, and the rumble of jet engines to lull me to sleep.

But I'm not happy about the book. I adore Ffforde's writing, I really do. And his stories are amazingly creative, and whimsical, and funny. But having read the first 14 chapters of First Among Sequels, I'm terribly disappointed. It's just one long back story so far, 124 pages whose sole purpose seems to be to catch up the story for new readers.

To make matters worse, the plot devices for revealing said backstory are weak and shallow. In one case, Thursday, a Jurisfiction agent in BookWorld, drones on and on to her cadet trainee: explaining how BookWorld works, taking tours, going on ad nauseum about stuff that was delightfully woven seamlessly into books 1-4. In another case, Thursday takes her son to a ChronoGuard recruiting seminar, where, similarly, a recruiting officer drones on and on about time topics also covered in depth in the earlier books. The only light spot is when her son, Friday, asks, "Is this going to take long?" My thoughts exactly!

Now as an author whose first novel is still very much a work in progress, this has me thinking (or maybe it's the wine): When writing a sequel (or two or three or four), how do you catch up your new readers without boring your loyal followers to death? You can't just pick things up without some sort of transition (or can you?)? But holding the reader captive while lecturing the finer points of earlier novels doesn't work either.

So what then? In the types of writing I do daily – scholarly scientific articles, test plans, project proposals, and the like – there's always a backstory. In some cases, depending on the topic, the foundational work goes back decades, or even centuries. Now most articles in technical journals are dry and dull enough without years upon years of backstory, so deciding which elements to include and how to include them is a sort of art form. Is it necessary to mention the Wright Brothers when developing a new test procedure for jet engines? Probably not. But if adding a new term to an existing equation, discussing the original work is a good idea.

Many authors approach the issue of previous work by just stuffing a few paragraphs into the intro. Something along the lines of: Guy1 did this stuff [see reference 1], guy2 did this other stuff [see reference 2], guy3 did some more stuff [see reference 3], blah, blah, blah until it's practically unreadable.

The better authors, in my opinion, not only weave the past work into appropriate sections of the paper rather than blast the reader with a tally sheet of backstory, but they also include a discussion of how the earlier findings contribute to the current work. 

This approach isn't unique to technical writing. Look at some of the hugely successful sequels, such as the Harry Potter books or the Series of Unfortunate Events or any number of multi-book stories. The best sequels don't bore the reader with in-your-face, not-letting-you-go-until-I've-had-my-say backstory. Rather, they introduce relevant points through the actions of their characters, or the setting, or natural dialogue. Could Fforde have describe BookWorld without the tedious tour scene? You betcha! Tuesday could've whisked her cadet away on their first assignment (after a behind-the-scenes tour and in-processing, presumably) and the important details of DiscWorld would've been revealed more naturally. Ditto for the ChonoGuards and time travel – introduce the concepts when they impact the current storyline, not before.

Okay, I've had my say and I'm ready for another tiny bottle of wine. Feel free to direct me back to this post if at some point in the future my (wildly successful) sequels have you bored silly.

Turning a Blind Eye

Available from Amazon
The Great Gamble: Nelson at Copenhagen

I'm very partial to a good history book, and I've just come to the end of one of the best that I've read. It has the three criteria that I think make for a good history book: it's meticulously researched; it paints a picture of the broad context of the period, without which any history book can descend to being a list of facts; and it's well-written (sadly, there's a lot of turgid prose out there on the History shelves).

The book is "The Great Gamble: Nelson at Copenhagen" by Dudley Pope. Hard to get hold of these days, and you might think an odd subject for a post here, but as the battle of Copenhagen led to the phrase "turning a blind eye", there is some broader relevance. At the height of the battle, the commanding Admiral (Sir Hyde Parker, who was four miles away, and because of the conditions, coming up very slowly) ordered the attacking fleet to disengage. Nelson ignored this, at one point putting the telescope to his blind eye and saying "I really do not see the signal". Hyde Parker was a cautious commander, judged by Pope to be the wrong man for the job: Pope has a lovely analogy that Parker crossed the North Sea at the start of the mission at the same pace as a child dawdling to school, because of his nervousness over losing ships onto the coast. 

The signal to cease the attack occupies a large chunk of the book plus an Appendix, to debunk a subsequent tale told in Hyde Parker's defence, that the signal was to be obeyed at Nelson's discretion. Pope destroys this with a mix of eye-witness accounts and sound reasoning (the signal was made to the whole fleet, not to Nelson alone, and some ships obeyed it). 

Pope's account of the careers and personal lives of Nelson and Parker, and the background diplomatic failures that led to the battle, are absolutely superb. The battle itself does degenerate into a list of facts as to which ship attacked which, but that's almost unavoidable. 

So I very much enjoyed this.  It won't appeal to all readers, but it certainly has a place on my shelves. 

Bone Dancing, Blood Dancing

Last year we ran a series of posts on Jonathan Gash's Bonn/Burtonall series, but neglected to post the reviews of the final two books. Today, we correct that oversight. To catch you up, here's where we left off:

Book 1: Different Women Dancing

Nik's Review: Different Women Dancing

Jay's Review:  Different Women, Different Reader, Different Review

Book 2: Prey Dancing

Nik's Review: Prey Dancing

Jay's Review: Book Musing: When Characters Seem Too Old

Book 3: Die Dancing

Nik's Review: Outta My Head

Now on to the final two!

Bone Dancing

Available on Amazon: Bone Dancing

So here's a thing. I was quite happily working my way through Bone Dancing, the fourth book in Jonathan Gash's Clare Burtonall series (though I still maintain that it's misnamed, as she is more bystander than protagonist), when I suddenly had a bit of a shock. 

You see, there's one particular sequence I remember from the books (they are indeed unusually memorable). Rack, the main fixer of the seedy world of crime, is refused protection money by the new manager of a car showroom, so he has the entire stock stolen. It's almost peripheral to the story, just a lovely vignette of life in the shadows. 

So, there I am, lapping up the book, when I suddenly realize that I'm virtually at the end and it hasn't happened yet. After a bout of confusion and concerns of incipient senility, I come to a joyful conclusion. 

I'd misremembered. There aren't four books in the series, there are five.

Yes! A whole other book to enjoy! So I suppose that this post should have a subtitle:

Blood Dancing

Available from Amazon: Blood Dancing

The final book (so far, I live in hope) is a real cracker. Not only does it have that sequence that has stuck with me, but Clare Burtonall finally seems more integrated than she has since the first novel, even though the previous book appeared to leave her cast out by her underworld associates. The plot centres around a vigilante wreaking lethal justice on paedophiles. And why not. Well, the why not and its resolution is the core of the story, and it's great. I expect the book is now hard to come by, but it is well, well worth the effort. 

I still have a minor grumble over continuity. There's a definite disconnect between the end of Bone Dancing and the start of Blood Dancing. At the end of Bone Dancing Clare has been cut-off from the underworld syndicate, and given the track record of everyone else who's suffered that fate over the course of books, she's lucky to do so alive. But there's the suggestion that Bonn, her hired lover, will take her as his live-in woman. 

By the start of Blood Dancing, though, there's almost been a reset back to business as usual. Maybe Gash found that the change was too restrictive on the storytelling, I don't know. It certainly didn't lessen my enjoyment of the book, but it's a small niggle nonetheless. 

This is one of my all-time favourite series of books. Please, please, Mr Gash, write another one?

Orphan Stories

When I was a kid, my dad often sent me and my sisters off to sleep with tales of The Meanest Man in the World. Although I can't recall the exact words, it always started something like this:

"There once was a man," he'd begin. "Was he a green man?"

"NO!" we'd shriek.

"Was he a lean man?"

"NO!"

"Was he a keen man, a bean man, a metal machine man?"

"NO!"

"No," he'd continue, his voice so quietly sinister I used to get goosebumps. "No. He was a mean man, The Meanest Man in the World."

Then the night's story would start. Oh, he was mean alright (the Man, not my dad!), with a particular penchant for torturing orphans. Not Hannibal-Lecter-style torturing, but psychological mind games. 

Like the time he delivered a beautifully-wrapped package to the orphanage, bedazzled with ribbons and bows and sparkle and glitter. It was the first present the orphan had ever received, and was so incredibly stunning that the orphan just stared wide-eyed for hours. When he finally set about to unwrapping, he painstakingly removed the trimmings one-by-one, each more glorious than the next, and put them aside carefully (no doubt to relive this wondrous event over and over). 

As he peeled back the layers he wondered with anticipation, what riches lay inside? A toy, perhaps? He'd never had a toy. Or maybe sweets? He'd heard of something called chocolate, where a single bite could fill one with joy. Or maybe a small puppy to love and to hold and to be his friend forever? He'd never had a friend. He almost dared not think it. 

The last layer was off and all that stood between him and his heart's desire was the cardboard lid. His heart was pounding and he could scarcely breathe. He closed his eyes and slowly lifted the lid. Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes and looked inside.

Any guesses on what he saw?

Anyway, decades later, I'm still drawn to orphan stories. Thanks to a recent discovery by Nik (I Judged a Book by Its Cover) I've had the pleasure of reading two absolutely fantastic orphan-themed books by Baltimore author Laura Amy Schlitz.

The first is Splendors and Glooms (titled Fire Spell in the UK). My local library had it filed away in juvenile fiction, but it definitely transcends this age group. The other, released a few years prior, is A Drowned Maiden's Hair (filed under Young Adult, presumably for content as the writing style is less complex than Splendors.) Both feature orphans pressed into service by not-particularly-nice adults. And both feature the deliciously creepy specter of long dead children who shape and influence events.

A Drowned Maiden's Hair tells the story of Maud Flynn, orphan and troublemaker, who's adopted solely to help her benefactors, the sisters Hawthorne, conduct fake seances for grieving parents. At first just happy to be out of the orphanage, Maud soon is torn between her desire for affection from her adopters, and her growing uncomfortableness with the deceit. 

There's a great supernatural element that I love, woven in with very real human emotions, both good and bad. I enjoyed Splendors just a tiny bit more, but both are excellent choices for a shivery read.

To Serve Man

My oldest son was almost eight and we were at the small, local airport to see my mom off for her trip back to New York. The queue at the security line was long, way longer than usual, but people were laughing and smiling and didn’t seem at all grumpy.* My well-traveled child studied the situation for awhile, experienced enough to know that happy, waiting passengers were something of an oxymoron, then (never one to hold back), turned to me as he pointed to them and shouted (way too loudly for an airport), “Mom! Mom! It’s a …COOKBOOK!!”

Funny kid.

Great book at a great price! Less than $20 on Amazon. Buy here!

The same line went through my mind when I received my latest Amazon purchase in the mail this week. If ever there were a time to yell, “It’s a cookbook!” this would be it. Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything is a massive tome:  over 2 inches thick, 1000+ pages, and nearly 5 pounds.  I’d been stalking the price for some time and when it dropped a few bucks I decided to spring.

But does it truly tell one how to cook everything? My oldest, now almost 11, put it to the test:

“Chicken pot pie?” Check. 

“Hazelnut brownies?” Check.

“Crème brulee?” Check. 

“Hmmm, I guess it really does have everything. Good job, Mom.”

I’m only a couple of chapters in so far – Kitchen Basics  & Sauces – but what I’m really loving about Bittman’s approach is that it’s more of a cooking tutorial than simply a collection of recipes. He includes of course the basic ingredients and preparation instructions, but also explains, where relevant, how to choose ingredients, why they work together, and how to create almost endless numbers of variations.

He also includes recipes I would’ve never thought of making from scratch – like ketchup and coconut milk.

Each chapter starts with instructions for what he terms Essential Recipes: basic recipes that every home cook should know. For example, in the section on grains, the essential recipes cover simple cooked grains, basic pilafs, fried rice, and couscous – the types of cooking that, with a little practice, won’t require a recipe at all.

There are tons of tables in the book, too – lexicons with descriptions and uses for basic ingredients and also mix-and-match charts for recipe variations. The idea is that once one’s mastered the basic recipes, a few simple guidelines can help to create a huge variety of dishes.

I’m looking forward to donning an apron and delving in this summer. My sons and I put in a small vegetable garden in the back yard, and have allied with our neighbors to form a barter-based co-operative (basically a table where we can all trade our excess veggies).  Bittman’s section on vegetables is mouth-watering: layered tortes and Asian stirfrys; outdoor grilling and curried everything. So many options it’s almost overwhelming, but I’ll start from the basics and go from there. Wish me luck!

* The date was 02 May 2011. News had just been released that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan. 

Spoiler Alert! To Serve Man is a 1962 Twilight Zone episode in which suspiciously nice aliens – the Kanamits – come to Earth to assist mankind. Aided by their trusty book, “To Serve Man,” they do all sorts of nice things to make us safer, happier, and healthier….and tastier…

Why One Should Never Teach a Child to Read….

Kindle edition only $1.99!

A former work colleague of mine once said that there was nothing more terrible and terrifying than that moment in life when one’s child has become a proficient driver and one is relegated to the passenger seat. I think that there is something on a par: and that’s when one’s children begin to recommend books…

“Have you read this, Daddy?”

 “Well, yes, but not since I was three”.

“Why don’t you read it now?”

“Well, I have other things to read now”.

“Did you like it when you were three?” 

“Well, yes I think I did”.

“Why don’t you read it now if you liked it?” 

etc etc

Now that my children are a bit older, it’s becoming harder to completely dismiss their recommendations, particularly as I spend so much time recommending things for them to read, and in some instances we’re now reading the same books (Artemis Fowl, Harry Potter, The Hunger Games…). 

I grew up reading Doctor Who books from the original TV series. Loved them at the time, they were a staple of my childhood. When the series stopped the books kept going, and became geared towards an older readership as the readers themselves grew up. Now the TV series is back, the books are again for a younger age group, and they’re a bit simplistic for me these days. However, they have started publishing the occasional book by fairly prominent sci-fi authors that are a bit more demanding and challenging. So when my elder daughter recommended The Silent Stars Go By, by Dan Abnett, I thought it was worth a go.

Turns out she was right! I went through this book in a couple of days, and really enjoyed it. OK, it’s a fairly straightforward tale, but it’s well written and certainly not dumbed down. One notable thing is that Abnett absolutely nails the style of the dialogue from the TV series, to an extent that one wonders if this were in fact a near-miss script. It’s also a neat touch that the Chapter titles are lines from Christmas carols.

So, one for your kids, and maybe for you too on a cold night.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Download Chapters 1-3 FREE
from Amazon!

I have always adored the work of Ray Bradbury. I first came across him through the TV version of The Martian Chronicles, something completely different in terms of TV sci-fi.  The book was even better, and from that I moved on to his other novels and short stories. Bradbury was so prolific that even now and I can into a bookshop and stumble across something of his that I'd never read before. 

Ray Bradbury is no longer with us, and is a real loss to literature. This week, though, I came across the closest thing to a successor. 

I've also enjoyed the work of Neil Gaiman. My first encounter was his collaboration with Terry Pratchett in Good Omens, the wonderful spoof on The Omen where the Antichrist gets accidentally swapped for another baby in the maternity ward. Tee hee. I particularly like Stardust, and the film is great, too. 

But this time I'd just worked through the Christmas pile (yes, I know, but it was a big pile this year) to The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Starting it was like reading Bradbury all over again. A fantasy novel that could almost be true, with things we don't understand living just a few doors away. 

Gaiman can cut deeper with his prose than Bradbury did, and can make the reader uncomfortable in a way that's not my favourite feeling. But on the whole he restrains that here, and the result is a lovely, rich and rewarding read. 

Don't wait for next Christmas to get hold of a copy. 

Download Chapters 1-3 FREE from Amazon!

Island of the Sequined Love Nun

Buy here from Amazon

How does Christopher Moore do it, do you think? Does he get blind drunk on industrial chemicals, chew dictionaries, spit out the words and see how they've landed the next morning? Does he have a madcap Nutty Book Title Generator app for his iPhone? Which came first, the book title or the plot?!

Having loved a couple of the Christopher Moore books earlier this year, this one came to me via Jay, who'd had a bad reaction to one of his vampire novels and was feeling disillusioned. I packed it in my case for a recent trip, and once I'd started reading I was completely hooked: to the extent of ploughing through it whilst I really should have been sleeping off the jet lag.

Without giving away the whole plot, the book revolves around a failed pilot who gets an apparent dream job flying a top-of-the-range Learjet on hops to Japan for a mysterious couple on a Polynesian island, complete with armed guards, a minefield, state-of-the-art medical facilities and a resident cannibal. Go on, work out the plot from that lot, I dare you.

I raved about it to Jay, and I think I may have converted her.

Try it yourself, too.

Start at the beginning. Or maybe the middle is better. But not the end.

For years and years and years now, one of the things that most defines Christmas for me is receiving the latest Terry Pratchett book as a present. At some point over the holiday, I would find a comfy spot and, with consumption of copious quantities of tea, chocolate, and cake, I would read the book from cover to cover.

Yep, I love his books: but I have a problem. I want to recommend them to Jay, but don't know where to tell her to start.

For those not in the know, Pratchett sets his books on the Discworld: literally a disc, carried through the heavens on four elephants standing on the back of a turtle. One can literally fall off the edge of the world. Magic is real (though wizards are pretty incompetent) and Death pops up as a recurring character WHO TALKS LIKE THIS.

These aren't just frothy fantasy, though; well, perhaps some of the early ones are. They are very, very, very funny. Pratchett uses the books to make all sorts of social commentary far better than most "serious" writers. The Discworld changes and evolves.

Buy Raising Steam on Amazon

My favourite books are some of the ones from about the tenth book in the series or so (there are now 40). Pratchett had found his stride and had risen above frothy fantasy. He has a range of recurring characters, from Rincewind the cowardly wizard (accompanied by the Luggage, a trunk on legs containing, depending on its mood, anything from folded laundry to violent death) to Commander Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork city watch.

So where to start Jay off? The latest book, Raising Steam, isn't where to start. It's a fun homage to steam trains and the railway boom of the 1800s. It has more recurring characters than one can shake a stick at. To a newbie, it would be utterly bemusing. It failed to grab even me to the extent of his earlier books. That's not to say that he's losing his touch: book 38 is stunning!

Buy The Colour of Magic on Amazon

Do I take a similar risk by setting off Jay on book 10 or 20? The problem was solved for me by a lady in a second-hand bookshop eavesdropping as I agonised over what to do. She said that Jay should start at the beginning.

So, Jay: The Colour of Magic. Off you go.









Captain's Log: Supplemental. Having finished this post I stumbled across this on the net. Look! Multiple start points! I'm still sending Jay back to the start, though.

I Judged a Book by its Cover

My local library has a little display section where the staff select a range of books that changes week by week. I suppose I should ask them what the criteria are. I generally have a flick through to see if there's anything interesting. Usually there isn't: fantasy, crime, romance, chick-lit, and so on. My technique is to browse by cover, title, read the blurb if it looks promising, then flick open and check the prose. Few make it through this rigorous process of selection and grading.

Buy Fire Spell on Amazon

One that did is "Fire Spell" by Laura Amy Schlitz. Lovely cover, of a marionette silhouetted against the London skyline. The prose definitely passed muster. So I borrowed it.

(In the US the book is published as "Splendors and Glooms", a decidedly odd title that seems to have nothing to do with the story at all!)

I really enjoyed this book. It's a fantasy novel, I suppose, though categorising it like that doesn't really do it justice. The core of the tale is an ageing witch trying to rid herself of the fire stone, the source of her power that both sustains and torments her. The main characters, though, are London orphans-cum-urchins, who work for an itinerant showman who makes his money, such as it is, from his marionette show, his fantocini. He's also an aspiring magician and former flame of the witch. There's also a young girl, Clara, daughter to a doctor and his wife who lost their other children to cholera and who live in a permanent display of mourning and grief.

Mix all this together and what comes out is a rich tale that brilliantly evokes late-19th-century London, the hopelessness of the orphans, and the tragedy of Clara, without being saccharine or maudlin or straying into the silliness that often accompanies any novel with a fantasy tag. The story starts with the showman being invited to perform for Clara's birthday, upon which he kidnaps her to ransom, using the opportunity to try out some nasty magic on her at the same time. The witch throws a spanner in his plans, summoning him to find a way of the fire stone being stolen from her, the only way she can be free of it.

I won't go on, as you need to discover the rest for yourself.  It's also a good book for advancing readers: my ten-year-old picked it up, browsed it, stole it, and I ended up with an overdue fine from the library as a result.