Reading Wednesday

[dhampyresa]

What did you finish reading

The three Benjamin January short stories (all by Barbara Hambly):
Libre: I liked it! It's got an early series feel to it (no mention of Rose, iirc, for exemple) and Dominique was great. Plus the resolution was way cool.
There Shall Your Heart Be Also: I think Ben puts it best when he says "Kentucky Williams owns a Bible?" but I enjoyed this a lot. Also set early series, it's got Ben and Hannibal palling around and Kentucky Williams. I like Kentucky Williams, even if she has like twenty lines in the whole series. I love the shenanigans with the Bible and the resolution.
A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven: THIS IS MY FAVOURITE OMG IT'S A DETECTIVE TEAM-UP BETWEEN ROSE AND DOMINIQUE! It starts with

Rose Janvier was the first neighbor across Rue Esplanade that morning at the sound of
Agathe Truande’s screams: this turned out to be an extremely unfortunate circumstance for a
number of the people concerned.

and it only gets better from there and oh, Rose. (Strange that there was no Shaw, though.)


What are you reading now

New Orleans Noir, anthology edited by Julie Smith: I thought I might as well read the whole book where There Shall Your Heart Be Also is collected, but I made it two stories in before I had to take a break. The introduction is very interesting and I wasn't a fan of What's the Score? because I wasn't sure what was going on. Two-story Brick Houses, on the other hand... It packs quite a punch. I could tell when I started to read it that it was ended nowhere good, but I didn't expect it to go so bad or hit so many of my DNW buttons. In retrospect, most of the DNW were obvious and I should have dropped the story, but I kept thinking, "how bad can it get?" even as it got worse and well. I won't spoil the ending, but ouch. I don't think I can be objective about this story. It's got good SPaG?

Dying Bites, by DD Barant: I needed a break after Two-story Brick Houses, something light-hearted and fun, so I picked up this book for a re-read. It's about Jace Valchek, FBI profiler, who finds herself thrown into a world where there are less than a million human beings left, with everyone else being either a vampire, a werewolf or a golem. Also, no guns. At all. (The worldbuilding for this is quite interesting.) Mostly, I remembered the main relationship being the friendship between Jace and Charlie Aleph, her new partner. He's a golem who wears pinstripped suits and IS POWERED BY A T-REX YESSSSSSSS

Hannibal's Odyssey, by William Mahaney: I read a chapter and had to renew it at the library again.


What are you reading next

Probably the other two BloodHound Files novels I've already got and likely the next ones as well (T-REX POWERED GOLEM). After that, who knows?

Comments

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

A Time to Every Purpose Under Heaven is my favorite short story too! I wish we had more of Rose's POV. I love how she keeps thinking in terms of graphs or melting points. I also love when she punches one lady in the face. (Shaw is in Oregon with Ben and Hannibal!) I do quite enjoy Ben's vindictive streak in There Shall Your Heart Be Also, though.

I haven't read anything else in New Orleans Noir. Perhaps I'll get around to it someday.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I want an entire book from Rose's PoV or, failing that, more short stories. I loved that! I just love how completely into science Rose is. I loved that as well and how she takes care to mention she's punching and not slapping (idk, it struck me as super relevant at the time). (Because this takes place during The Shirt on His Back, because Rose is pregnant. How did I miss that?)Oh! By the way, Rose is 28 in this short story:

She was, Rose guessed, her own age - twenty-eight

Ben's vindictive streak is a thing of beauty, as is this exchange:

Hannibal paused, his hand on the rungs of the ladder. "For such a thoroughly nice man, Ben, you can be a complete son of a bitch."
"Thank you," January said. "I have my moments."

Before I forget to ask again: in Good Man Friday, when Ben first finds the corpsedigger's "office" he says "Familiar with the ooze of fluids from the bodies of the dead, January understood what had been cut away." and I have no idea what he's talking about. Do you?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I totally want more short stories. Especially if Hambly goes back and fills in some of the gaps between books. There's so much space there!

(Of course, if Ben, Hannibal, and Shaw were in town, there would have been a lot of angry people immediately rescuing Rose from jail, and she wouldn't have had time to solve the murder.)

Ha, Rose is always 28. Totally a vampire!

I love that exchange between them.

Bodies tend to decompose from the inside out, because skin is designed to be tough and protect you from bacteria/bugs/etc, whereas internal organs are soft and vulnerable. Also, there's a lot of bacteria already in the digestive system, and immediately after death they change from digesting food to eating their now immune-system-free surroundings. So as the body's insides turn to fluids, they leak out of the pre-existing holes in the skin, and end up on whatever cloth is underneath the genitals. They could also leak out of the mouth/nose/etc, but corpses are often positioned in such a way as to elevate the head, and of course liquids flow downwards. Sorry if that was gross!

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Especially after Days of the Dead, I want to read about hannibal convalescing in the January's house.

(Fair enough! Although we never do get Rose and Shaw interacting, which is a shame.)

It takes a lot more than that to gross me out. I did do 18 months in medschool, after all (long story). I know about the decomposition process too, but Ben's use of "cut away" makes me think there's more to it than that? If it were present day, I'd think they'd been organ stealing. Idk.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yessss! And after 'Dead and Buried'.

That would be great! I'd also like to see Shaw and Hannibal interacting on their own.

Oh, I thought "cut away" referred to the petticoats, not the bodies– that is, they cut off the stained back of the petticoats but kept the top part where the cloth wasn't ruined.

And you went to med school? That's very cool!

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I want to see Rose and Minou react to it. Does it change Livia's opinion of Hannibal at all?

I suppose that makes sense.

I suspect this is significantly less cool than you think it is. The way medschool works in France is completely different to how (I undertand it to) work in the US.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, do you think Minou and Livia even know? Livia in particular I think Hannibal would not want to tell, but she has such in-depth sources of gossip that she might be able to put it together on her own.

Ha, well, I basically know nothing about med school here in the US or elsewhere, so I will remain impressed.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine Livia not knowing. No one told her and she never gets confirmation, but she does put it together. "Honestly, Ben, I'm surprised you couldn't tell. You spend enough looking at that useless fiddler of yours. They have the same hands."

Actually, medschool in French consists of showing up for a fist year you can take twice and hope to get into second year. That's the big problem: there's the numerus clausus, which sets the number of people admitted into second year. In my medschool, it was roughly 300 out of 3000 people. I did not place, obviously, but I did come quite close (<10 people) in pharma. I'd rather you be impressed by that, if you insist on being impressed. I'd rather not talk about it more, as it still hurts.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes, that is perfect. I don't know if she would save the information in order to drop it casually at the most devastating moment, or if it would endear Hannibal to her (if just because she might be able to make use of him someday).

I think Shaw must figure it out, too, because he has pretty much all the same information as Ben, even if he's not as close to Hannibal. He seems to keep very quiet about his realization, though.

Ah, yeah. That sounds hard and painful.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

What about both? She secretly thinks better of Hannibal and maybe doesn't treat him quite as bad, but she keeps the bombshell for when she really needs it.

Of course, Shaw knows. That is his job and his case to investigate. Shaw probably has enough affection for Hannibal that he'll keep his secrets as long as he's not breaking the law.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Poor Hannibal. He was so determined to keep the secret, and now pretty much everyone knows.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Oh no :( I never thought of it that way. Poor Hannibal indeed.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I think the reason he never tells Ben and/or Rose isn't because he doesn't trust them to keep it a secret, or that he's worried about people from his past finding him, but because he's violently ashamed. He's probably afraid they won't like him anymore, if they find out.

On the other hand, I think his managing to go sober is directly related to how he was sort of forced out of his denial/repression about his past; I think he's trying really really hard to be a more responsible person and not make the same mistakes.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I think he thinks he did the right thing but that he is ashamed of been in a situation where that was the right thing. (Knowing Hannibal, he probably is.)

He tries so hard. I'm with Ben though, I fear for his life and sobriety should his TB kick up again. I don't want Hannibal to die :(

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, God, yes. I'm completely in denial about it. Ben's going to invent antibiotics; I don't want to think about anything else.