Collected Miscellany

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Jane Austen and Steve Hockensmith

From the Publisher

With more than one million copies in print, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was the surprise publishing phenomenon of 2009. A best seller on three continents, PPZ has been translated into 21 languages and optioned to become a major motion picture.

In this terrifying and hilarious prequel, we witness the genesis of the zombie plague in early-nineteenth-century England. We watch Elizabeth Bennet evolve from a naïve young teenager into a savage slayer of the undead. We laugh as she begins her first clumsy training with nunchucks and katana swords and cry when her first blush with romance goes tragically awry. Written by acclaimed novelist (and Edgar Award nominee) Steve Hockensmith, Dawn of the Dreadfuls invites Austen fans to step back into Regency England, Land of the Undead!

A week or so ago I promised as a service to my readers to referee the dueling New York Times reviews of  Angelology by Danielle Trussoni. Put aside the fact that one was technically in the New York Times Review of Books and the other in the paper – or the fact that they were not really side by side reviews – and focus instead on the very different reaction the book produced.

But first, let’s allow the publisher to introduce the book:

Sister Evangeline was just a girl when her father entrusted her to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in upstate New York. Now, at twenty-three, her discovery of a 1943 letter from the famous philanthropist Abigail Rockefeller to the late mother superior of Saint Rose Convent plunges Evangeline into a secret history that stretches back a thousand years: an ancient conflict between the Society of Angelologists and the monstrously beautiful descendants of angels and humans, the Nephilim.

For the secrets these letters guard are desperately coveted by the once-powerful Nephilim, who aim to perpetuate war, subvert the good in humanity, and dominate mankind. Generations of angelologists have devoted their lives to stopping them, and their shared mission, which Evangeline has long been destined to join, reaches from her bucolic abbey on the Hudson to the apex of insular wealth in New York, to the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris and the mountains of Bulgaria.

This was in fact the blurb that intrigued me enough to read the book (generously provided by the publisher in this case). But the same book produced two very different reactions.

Janet Maslin calls it “a class-obsessed, scholarship-spouting, minutiae-strewn thrill ride that follows the ‘Da Vinci Code’ model as loftily as it can.”

In contrast, Susan Cokal: “Sensual and intellectual, “Angelology” is a terrifically clever thriller — more Eco than Brown, without the cloudy sentimentalism of New Age encomiums or Catholic treatises.”

So if I had to choose side in this debate who would I declare the winner? I would have to side with Cokal but I can understand where Maslin is coming from to a degree.

More below.

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Frame Up by John F. Dobbyn

Description

I have seriously mixed feelings about The Power of Half: One Family’s Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back. On the one hand I firmly agree with the idea behind the book: that we focus too much on collecting “stuff” and not enough time on giving of ourselves and this impacts the character of our children. On the other hand, the tone and style of the book just doesn’t quite work.

Allow me to kick things off by lazily stealing using PW’s review:

In this well-meaning but self-congratulatory memoir, the Salwen family decides to sell their gorgeous Atlanta mansion, move to a home half the size, and commit half the proceeds to the needy. Putting their plan into action, a raft of family decisions and meetings are led by mom Joan, a former corporate consulting executive and teacher, with the help of an actual whiteboard. Entrepreneur and activist Kevin, a former Wall Street Journal editor, writes with daughter Hannah, who, as instigator of the family project, provides commentary and practical suggestions. The chronicle is intriguing and the cohesiveness of the four family members is remarkable: “Friends and others… always focused on… the big house, the big donation, or the trip to Africa” with their eventual partner, The Hunger Project, rather than “the transformational energy” of “a family eager to stand for something collectively.” The authors tend to gush over their efforts while discounting the privileged position that allows them to make them (“we think everyone can give one of the three T’s: time, talent or treasure”); their unflagging optimism, buttressed by clear self-regard, can also be tiring.

The hook (selling their house and giving half the proceeds to charity) is intriguing and following the story on how that process plays out is interesting in many ways.

But the drawbacks of style and tone noted by PW really drag the story down.

More below.

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The Devil’s Star Jo Nesbo

Publishers Weekly

A serial killer taunts Harry Hole in Nesbø’s searing third crime novel to feature the Oslo police detective to be made available in the U.S. (after Nemesis). Still suffering from alcohol-fueled demons and obsessed with hunting for evidence against a clearly dirty cop, Hole grudgingly agrees to help look into the murder of a woman whose finger has been amputated and a red diamond stuck under her eyelid. More bodies follow, with the murderer leaving identical five-pointed diamonds (the titular devil’s star) at each crime scene. At first the killings appear to be random, but Hole soon discovers an ominous pattern. Nesbø brilliantly incorporates threads from earlier novels, including Hole’s often tumultuous relationship with his lover, Rakel, without ever losing the current story’s rhythm. Even with—or perhaps because of—his flaws, Hole is arguably one of today’s most fascinating fictional detectives.

Despite the fact that he lives and preaches in my home town (well, town I was born in anyways) of Grand Rapids, Michigan – and I have always heard good things about him – I was never a big Rob Bell fan. There was something about him that put me off a bit – a little too hip, the religious left type language and attitude, a post-modern sensibility, I am not sure.

But I read Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile for our church’s summer book series and found myself enjoying it (more about that later).

So when the publisher offered Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith for free on Kindle I scooped it up (free is free after all) and started reading it on a recent trip (my Kindle is a lifesaver when I travel). And maybe Bell is winning me over because I really enjoyed this book too.

Here is the Bell’s blurb for his own book from the publisher:

We have to test everything.
I thank God for anybody anywhere who is pointing people to the mysteries of God.
But those people would all tell you to think long and hard about what they are saying and doing and creating.
Test it. Probe it.
Do that to this book.
Don’t swallow it uncritically. Think about it. Wrestle with it.
Just because I’m a Christian and I’m trying to articulate a Christian worldview doesn’t mean I’ve got it nailed. I’m contributing to the discussion.
God has spoken, and the rest is commentary, right?

My take below.

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The Spellmans Strike Again Lisa Lutz

Publishers Weekly

In Edgar-finalist Lutz’s entertaining fourth and final novel about the eccentric Spellman PI clan (after Revenge of the Spellmans), Isabel “Izzy” Spellman juggles the usual family drama—her mother tries to sabotage Izzy’s relationship with her Irish bartender boyfriend and younger sister Rae throws herself into freeing a wrongly convicted man—while helping to drum up business in a dreary economy. While Rae works on her “Free Schmidt” campaign, Izzy investigates the whereabouts of a missing valet with a checkered past and sifts through garbage for a screenwriter client. Older brother David, the only Spellman not involved in the family business, grows closer to his defense attorney girlfriend. On the sly, Izzy is also tailing Rick Harkey, a rival San Francisco PI, and discovers that Harkey left behind a trail of suspicious arrests and conveniently misplaced evidence in his career as a cop. Narrator Izzy’s biting wit—mixed with a refreshing dose of humility and sadness—easily carries the story.