96, NG19, F49, E95, NA3 / WG77, M47, MF0, B9, D1, Frz0, B7, C1

Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan, Mad Honey

Jodi Picoults Bücher, obwohl echte Süchtigmacher, wirken auf mich so intensiv, dass ich sie lieber etwas vorsichtig dosiere, auch wenn ich sie vorbestelle ohne groß in die Synopsis zu sehen. Hier reichte schon der Titel, weil ich die Story von dem Mad Honey schon einige Male anders verarbeitet gelesen habe und völlig faszinierend finde. Wie immer lernt man auch bei diesem Buch unendlich viel dazu, nicht nur über Bienen und Transmenschen, und wie immer wurde die Liste der zitierenswerten Stellen viel zu lang. Das Buch wird auf jeden Fall noch etwas nachwirken bei mir, und ich denke von der Co-Autorin Boylan sollte ich auch mal etwas probieren.
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I don't think it's an invisible chromosome, or the inability to get pregnant, or anything else, that makes people so cruel to transgender folks. I think what they hate is that the world is complicated in ways they can't understand.
People want the world to be simple.
But gender isn't simple, much as some might want it to be. The fact that it's complicated - that there's a whole spectrum of ways of being in the world - is what makes it a blessing. Surely nature - or god, or the universe - is full of miracles and wild invention and things way beyond our understanding, no matter how hard we try. We aren't here on earth in order to bend over backward to resemble everybody else. We're here to be ourselves, in all our gnarly brilliance.
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For me, being trans was always more about the heart than any other organ. If I were, like, some disembodied spirit, a ghost that blew around on the wind, I would still be female. If I were a head in a jar, I would still be female. If I were just a piece of forgotten music played at night on a viola da gamba, I would still be female. All along, the only thing I ever wanted was for the thing I felt in my heart to find its home in the body in which it ought to have been nestled from the beginning.
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And even though I am proud of who I am, proud of having fought against all these odds to become the person I always dreamed of being - it means everyone would know I'm trans.
When all I really want to be - all I've ever been - is a girl.
Is it so wrong to want to fit in, and to be left alone? Do I really have to spend the rest of my life as the emblematic trans girl?
But again: that's the question. Is being trans the truth of who I am? Or is it just the truth of who I was? Am I even still trans, at this point, after everything I've been through? What is it that makes me so different from other girls my age? Is everything that happened to me before the age of seventeen really going to be the most important thing about me for the next seventy?
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I do not recall much of the book, except for Eowyn, the warrior facing the King of the Ringwraiths, who said no living man oculd kill him. But no living man am I, she said, pulling off her helmet so her hair cascaded to her waist.
Then she hacked him down.
I remember missing much of what Braden read after that, imagining what it would take to see being a woman as a strength, not a weakness.
.
This has always been my favorite fact about bees: in their world, destiny is fluid.
You might start life as a worker, and end up a queen.
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(Jodi Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan, Mad Honey)
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93, WG76, M45, E92, / NG17, F48, MF0, B9, D1, Frz0, B7, NA2, C1

Stephen King, Doctor Sleep

Eigentlich hatte ich mir "Under the Dome" schon heruntergeladen, aber dann hatte ich doch mehr Lust auf die weiteren Abenteuer von Danny, dem Jungen mit dem Shining. Und wurde einmal mehr gepackt von dem Buch, das soviel mehr als eine der Art Fortsetzungen ist, die immer von dem Original überschattet werden. Das Buch könnte sogar für sich allein stehen und auch so gelesen werden.
Ganz nebenbei fiel mir auf, dass der Name Frederica Bimmel (aus 'Silence of the Lambs') auch hier erwähnt wird. Vielleicht ist es doch eine Art Insiderjoke?

It was all he could do, and he wasn't sure it would be enough until, slowly, her eyes opened. They were vacant at first, but they gained perception. Dan had seen this before. The miracle of returning consciousness. Not for the first time he wondered where it came from, and where it went when it departed. Death was no less a miracle than birth.
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(Stephen King, Doctor Sleep, 2012)

92, WG75, M44, E91, / NG17, F48, MF0, B9, D1, Frz0, B7, NA2, C1

Stephen King, Billy Summers

Auch beim wiederlesen erwies sich das Buch als ungeheuer fesselnd, ich denke, das wird nicht das letzte Wiederlesen gewesen sein. Vor allem die vielen Ebenen in der Erzählweise - der fiktive Protagonist, der sein Leben als Fiktion aufschreibt und damit selbst zur fiktiven Person wird, mit fiktivem Schluß - da musste ich mich erst wieder reindenken. Auch wenn ich diesmal den Übergang bemerkte, tat das dem Genuß keinen Abbruch.
Sehr schön auch die Verweise auf andere Werke, wie 'The Stand' und ganz besonders 'The Shining' - das machte mir glatt wieder Lust auf 'Doctor Sleep'. Wie schön, dass sich der schon auf dem Paperwhite befindet.
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Alice walks up to where the path ends at the knife-cut valley and looks across to the flat ground where the old hotel used to stand - the reputedly haunted hotel, according to Bucky. Once she thought she actually saw it, no doubt a hallucination caused by being unused to the thin air up here. Today she sees nothing.
Buch I could make it be there, she thinks. I could make it be there just as I was able to make the Bide-A-Wee be there, complete with all the details I didn't put it, like the bagged glass in the bathroom or the stain, sort of like the shape of Texas, on the rug. I could make it be there. I could even fill it with ghosts, if I wanted to.
She stands looking across the gulf of cold air between this side and that, hands in her pockets, thinking she could create worlds. Billy gave her that chance. She is here. She is found.
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(Stephen King, Billy Summers, 2021)

90, WG74, F48, E89, / NG16, M42, MF0, B9, D1, Frz0, B7, NA2, C1

Tanya Huff, The Long Hot Summoning, The Keeper Chronicles, Book 3

Auch dieser Band las sich besser als ich ihn in Erinnerung hatte, vielleicht weil ich den Teil mit Dean und Austins Kampf gegen die Mumie beinahe komplett vergessen hatte. Da waren immer noch Längen, aber irgendwie störten sie mich nicht mehr so wie früher.
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"I guess it's stopped arguing," Diana muttered as they begun running faster.
"You mean they've stopped arguing."
"No. The guy from the throne room is a Shadowlord, as much a shadow of Hell as the assassin; just a bit more formed, is all."
"Hell was arguing with itself?"
"It's a thing it does. It doesn't get out much."
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(Tanya Huff, The Long Hot Summoning, 2003)

88, WG72, F46, E87, / NG16, M42, MF0, B9, D1, Frz0, B7, NA2, C1

Tanya Huff, Summon the Keeper, The Keeper Chronicles, Book 1

Nach 'Into the Broken Lands' wollte ich noch mehr von Huff lesen und weil es schon wieder vier Jahre her ist, seit ich den ersten Keeper-Band las, musste das Buch - wenn nicht Lieblingsbuch so doch definitiv unter den Top 5 ihrer Werke bei mir - zum xten Mal nochmal ran. Nach vier Jahren machte der Eröffnungsband mit dem seltsamen Gästehaus mit dem Geist im Speicher, dem Fahrstuhl in andere Dimensionen und dem Zugang zur Hölle im Heizungskeller auch wieder großen Spaß, vor allem Hells ständige Kommentare und Diskussionen mit sich selbst.
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"This morning, my reflection offered me eternal youth and beauty."
Martha sighed and shrugged out of her jacket. "I've said it before and I'll say it again, evil has no imagination. Probably why so much of it ends up in municipal politics."
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If the flames reflected on the copper hood were sullen before, they were downright sulky now.
IT ISN'T FAIR.
WHAT ISN'T?
THAT THE KEEPER SHOULD ALWAYS WIN. IF WE HAD ONLY PULLED HARDER. WE WERE SO CLOSE.
CLOSE! The repetition resounded in the heated air like a small explosion. CLOSE ONLY COUNTS IN HORSESHOES AND HAND GRENADES.
AND DANCING.
WHAT?
CLOSE DANCING.
SHUT UP.
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PATIENCE.
PATIENCE...The word sounded as though it had been ground out through shards of broken glass...IS A VIRTUE!
The ruddy light reflected in the copper hood grew brighter, as though Hell itself blushed. SORRY.
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THAT BOY IS SO NICE HE'S NAUSEATING. THERE MUST BE SOMETHING WE CAN TEMPT HIM WITH.
WE'VE TRIED. HE DOESN'T LISTEN.
ISN'T THAT JUST LIKE A MAN.
NOT WHERE WE'RE CONCERNED, Hell told itself tartly.
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(Tanya Huff, Summon the Keeper, 1998)

83, NG15, F41, E82 / WG68, M42, MF0, D1, Frz0, B7, NA2, C1

Agatha Christie, Taken at the Flood

Dieser Poirotband war insofern eine Überraschung, weil ich feststellen mußte, dass ich ihn nicht als Taschenbuch in meinem Regal stehen hatte und mich auch an garnichts aus dem Inhalt erinnern konnte. Die Handlung an sich war nicht so überraschend, wieder viele wiederverwertete Plotelemente nach bewährtem Schema, bis auf die Auflösung am Schluß, dass einer der Morde sich als Unfall herausstellt, der als 'Mord' getarnt wurde. Nur das Ende mit Rowley und Lynn störte mich - und da bin ich wahrscheinlich nicht allein.
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'Central Africa. The home of voodoo, of the zombie-'
'The zombie is in the West Indies.'
Mrs Cloade swept on:
'-of black magic - of strange and secret practices - a country where a man could disappear and never be heard of again.'
'Possibly, possibly,' said Poirot. 'But the same is true of PIccadilly Circus.'
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(Agatha Christie, Taken at the Flood, 1948)

82, WG68, F40, E81 / NG14, M42, MF0, D1, Frz0, B7, NA2, C1

Agatha Christie, Mrs McGinty's dead

Das Buch war eine wahre Wohltat nach Murder on the Links. Anfangs konnte ich mich garnicht an die Handlung erinnern, aber beim Lesen kam vieles wieder, auch die Identität des Mörders, was aber dem Vergnügen keinen Abbruch tat. Besonders Poirots qualvoller Aufenthalt im chaotischen Haushalt der Familie Summerhayes und Ariadne Olivers Problem mit der Adaption ihrer Detektivromane waren richtig schön zu lesen.
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'The Cat it was who died' - that's where I made a blowpipe a foot long and it's really six feet. Ridiculous that a blowpipe should be that size, but someone wrote from a museum to tell me so. Sometimes I think there are people who only read books in the hope of finding mistakes in them.
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Hercule Poirot had heard many people say much the same thing. It was one of the most convenient assumptions, this knowledge of what the dead would wish. The bereaved had never any doubt about their dear ones' wishes and those wishes usually squared with their own inclinations.
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(Agatha Christie, Mrs McGinty's Dead, 1952)