Bless Your Heart, Tramp and Other Southern Endearments

 

By Celia Rivenbark

A collection of Rivenbark's humor columns from the from about the 1990s. Mainly centered on how Southerners live and talk. It has three sections, At Home; The South; And Everywhere Else. 

A new Barbie movie came out this summer 2023 and this collection has her essay about Barbie turning forty in 1999. Here is a short selection from that column:

'And at forty, why couldn't Mattel make Barbie suddenly start shrieking phrases in public place like "WHERE'S MY PURSE?" only to find it on her lap. Right alongside her ta-ta's.

To her credit, Barbie has been one heck of a role model for womankind. She's been a doctor, skydiver, race car driver, mother of triplets, professional lambada dancer, Twirling Ballerina, everything but a double-naught spy.

The problem is she's done it all with what the experts have deduced through mathematical calculations would be a physique measuring six feet tall and weighing 110 pounds. Y'all put your hands together and show some love for Bulimic Barbie.

Of course she's just a doll and such measurements are part of the fantasy. Remember, with dolls, all things are possible. Including having triplets with Ken.'

Which is a pretty good sample of the author's brand of humor. Pretty funny most of the time and at worst, mildly amusing. 

Texts From Jane Eyre

 

By Mallory Ortberg

What if characters from stories and mythology could text? Author Mallory Ortberg imagines what characters from literary works such as King Lear, Oliver Twist, Daisy Miller, and even more modern works like Sweet Valley High and Atlas Shrugged would text about. 

Here is a sample of the sort texts you will find in the book, this one featuring Jane Eyre (J) and Edward Rochester (E).

E: So you're really not coming then

J: I'm really not

E: I would be an amazing husband you know that?

J: I know

E: I taught you Hindi and everything That's basically the same as getting engaged for missionaries

J: And I really appreciate that It will be terribly useful in my career as an English governess

E: See? That There. that is exactly the kind of tone I mean One round of cholera in the tropics would sear that sarcasm right out of you

J: guess I really missed out

E: Guess so

 

This was an okay read. But it would have been a lot more enjoyable if I knew more about the characters and the literary works. It's been decades since I was in school and I don't remember much about most of those stories and plays, etc. And a lot of them I have never read, such as Les Misérables, The Sun Also Rises, Great Expectations, and Atlas Shrugged, to name just a few. And those I have read, like King Lear or Moby-Dick, were so long ago, I have mostly forgotten all but the very basic facts about them. I was the wrong audience for this book. 

The Blessing Way

 

By Tony Hillerman

The first novel in the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee detective series, published in 1970. 

A young Navajo man, Luis Horseman, has wounded a man in a knife fight and has fled to the wilderness, fearing he has killed the man. 

Navajo policeman Joe Leaphorn is out looking for the fugitive, checking with the Horseman's friends and family to see if any of them have been in contact with him, pointing out it would be better for Horseman to turn himself in. And that Horseman's victim is in the hospital and expected to make a full recovery.  

But soon Horseman is found dead and an autopsy reveals that he was smothered to dead with sand. Leaphorn is concerned that his inquiries may have inadvertently lead to Horseman's death.

Talk has been going around in the Navajo community that a witch has been plaguing some of the locals. A college professor, Bergen McKee, has been conducting research into Navajo witchcraft beliefs and he decides to head into the back country to look into this talk of a witch. Together with a colleague, the two men set up camp in the same area where Horseman had been hiding out. 

The local Navajos hold a meet to do an Enemy Way ceremony to stop the witch, a sort of magic spell that will kill the witch within a year. Leaphorn, now investigating Horseman's death, attends the meet as part of his investigation. At one point, he realizes that he has seen the man the witnesses describe as the witch. The witch is a Navajo, but he is a stranger to the area.

McKee, who was interviewing locals about witchcraft, returns to the camp to find a note from his colleague. But the note is signed John, whereas his friend's name is Jeremy. McKee starts to feel uneasy and wakes up in the night feeling something is wrong. He sees a man lurking outside and McKee slips away unseen by the man.  Heading back to the camp in the morning when the coast seems clear, McKee finds that his truck has been sabotaged. Hiking out, he comes across a young woman who is headed towards the danger zone and McKee is fearful for her safety. As he tries to lead her out of the area, they are confronted by the witch-man and he takes them captive.

Joe Leaphorn had a lead that he thinks will take him straight to the Navajo witch who Leaphorn is certain killed Horseman. He doesn't know about Jeremy or that McKee and the woman are in mortal danger. He also has not figured out the why of all of it. But he will. 

I enjoyed this story quite a lot. It was very exciting. I have read other Joe Leaphorn stories, but not this one. It was a bit confusing that Leaphorn was not the main character of the story, McKee was as all the action centered on McKee. McKee gets hunted, injured, captured, escapes, saves the woman and confronts the killer. Leaphorn's roll is mostly just that of investigator. But it was still a good story even if Leaphorn is secondary in the story to McKee.

Wikipedia has an article about The Blessing Way with a good summary of the story.

The Dispossessed

 

By Ursula K. Le Guin

Anarres is the moon to the world of Urras. It is being colonized by rebels from Urras even though it is an awful place whose only recommendations are a breathable atmosphere and some ores that are valuable to the people of Urras. Other than the trade in ores, Urras pretty much leaves the rebels on Anarres alone.

The government of Urras varies, with the usual capitalistic style to dictatorships to communist. Anarres, however, was founded by the devotees of the philosophy of Odo, who taught a kind of decentralized communism. (I can't explain what it is supposed to be, I pretty much skipped those parts of the story.) So life on Anarres is hard because of its harsh environment while life on Urras could be bountiful but the wealth is hogged by the upper classes, so the lower classes are suffering. 

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, grows up on Anarres and lives his life according to what is expected of a citizen of Anarres. But Anarres is succumbing to bureaucracy and Shevek's work is being stifled by his envious superiors. So he travels to Urras which turns out to be a mistake. Because the rulers recognize the value of Shevek's work and they want to use it to make themselves all powerful. When Shevek realizes what they are after, he flees to the Terran embassy, asking them for help returning to Anarres. 

This book was so boring. Apparently it won loads of prizes, but I found it dull. Too much of it is concerned with contrasting forms of government or lack thereof. Not much really happens for most of it except for Anarres' non-government getting in the way of Shevek's ambition. The only real action occurs on Urras when Shevek escapes from his captors to find his way back to Anarres. Halfway through, I seriously was considering just giving up. I was only able to finish by skipping the boring stuff. 

Wikipedia has an article about the book.

The Reluctant Widow

 

By Georgette Heyer

A Regency Mystery

Wellborn Elinor Rochdale had her life turned upside down when her father lost his fortune through gambling and then killed himself. Left on her own, she works as a governess in order to survive. Starting a new job, she has been instructed that a carriage will be waiting for her at the inn in the village of Billingshurst. So when she alights from the London stage and a man from a coach asks her if she is the young lady who has come from London in answer to the advertisement, she assumes he is there for her and she gladly climbs into the very nice coach. But she has climbed into the wrong coach and the people at the destination wanted someone for a very different position than governess to small children. What they wanted was a wife.

Naturally, Elinor's first impulse is to request to be taken back to the village. But then the man who is the proposed groom meets with a fatal injury and is expected to die within a few hours. And Elinor allows herself to be persuaded into an impromptu marriage and is now a widow and the sole owner of everything her dead husband possessed, including a run-down mansion.

It doesn't take long for Elinor to realize that something odd is going on with the house as she surprises a strange man who walks in as if he owns the place. And there is the intruder who shoots and wounds a guest of Elinor's when the guest surprises him in the night. Plus it all might be connected to the war between Britain and France. 

 

I first read this book decades ago. And I have read it several times over in the years since. I always liked the book and I enjoy rereading it every time. This story is kind of between a Georgette Heyer romance and a Georgette Heyer mystery. It's not really a murder mystery because the only one who dies is the groom and his death is not a mystery. But the mystery is what the groom was up to before he died and if he was a traitor. 

The romance story is not romantic. It's really a very minor subplot, with the mystery being the main plot. There is virtually no love-making beyond the hero binding a bandage around Elinor's head when she get bashed by an unknown person. But I have never minded that the romance is mostly missing. It really is a fun and light read, despite the gloomy mansion, the midnight intruders and people getting shot and bashed in the head.

Here is a review by Jane Greensmith on Austenprose.