I'm not hot shit in a wineglass, more curried goat in a paper cup

47) "The Tin Woodman of Oz" - Baum

This is the one in which we hear of the gruesome fate of the Tin Woodman's original body, Nick Chopper, and meet his 'brother' the Tin Soldier. I remembered this book particularly fondly from when I was a kid, and it was about as good as I recalled.

A wandering boy happens to ask The Tin Woodman whatever happened to his Munchkin girlfriend, Nimee Amee, and the Tin Woodman realizes that she had slipped his mind because he had been given a kind heart but not a loving heart. And then he realizes that he has a duty to marry the poor girl, he had promised, and it would be unkind not to follow through, so he goes to find her. During the process of which the boy, Woot The Wanderer, gets turned into a green monkey and ends up running around in a lacy apron during a good chunk of the book. That was the image that stuck with me as a kid. (In fact, quite literally image - I'm often reading along and see one of the pictures and large chunks of the story come back to my mind. I absolutely adored the artwork in these books, and still do, although now I realize it often doesn't really reflect the words of the story that well.)

Dorothy and Ozma do interfere with their magic picture and such, but only to get things back on track after a diversion. Jinjur gets an appearance, and she seems to have gotten rid of her troublesome husband who she previously had to hit because he milked the wrong cow. (I wish I had mentioned that in my review of whichever book that was in, because I can't recall, now.) In this book she has gone from being a perpetrator of domestic violence to being such a good painter that the Scarecrow claims she painted him a pile of straw and he was able to stuff himself with it, and she's given up her cows for orchards. In the past few books we've been finding out that basically anything Ozites want grows on trees, so she grows caramels and such. They do seem to live quite a bit on candy. Makes me wonder if 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain' song was because of Oz, or vice-versa.

Oh, and the Tin Soldier 'later' went off to the Gillikin wildernesses to patrol. Think of the stories that could be told about him.

45) "Rinkitink in Oz" - L. Frank Baum

The main character is the young Prince Inga, who goes through a series of adventures in the process of saving his parents and people from slavery. There's a strong intimation that he'll eventually marry the daughter of a woodcutter. (And the woodcutter's daughter for a time gets super powers, and is ridiculously strong and impervious to harm, which was kind of fun, even if only temporary.)

Again, this seems like he titled it with an intention to confuse, because the characters only ever get to Oz because Baum decided not to finish this story, just have Dorothy come swooping in and fix everything at the end. (Well, Dorothy and may or may not have been some random good luck off screen.*) Oh, and again the character whose name appears in the title really gets very little to do in the story. Rinkitink is a side character that seems to have been pulled from another book, and performs as the sidekick and comic relief to Prince Inga.

I think he would have been better off to have placed it at a different point in time, not tried to integrate it with his ongoing Ozian timeline, because he had to completely change the character of Kaliko, the new King of the Nomes, and that seemed too bad. He'd been a decent sort in "Tik Tok of Oz."

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* ( Cut for spoilers about what may or may not have been random good luck off screen. )

42) "Tom O'Bedlam" by Robert Silverberg

It escaped my notice, when I said in my last post that there was a very 70s feel to this book, that in fact it came out in the mid 80s. I don't know if he did the 70s feel on purpose or if he was just old enough that it came out that way. Probably the latter, because there seemed to be a certain... cultural / racial insensitivity? I think it won't be too spoilery to say that a lot of people die, but that it felt to me as though most of them were not considered important because they're non-white people. The main female character does hook up with a light-skinned black guy near the end of the book, and there were a few very specifically ethnic background characters, but this felt like a clunky effort. "Here, let me go out of my way to give you some non-whites." And the 'saintly' guy mentions having lived in an area with a lot of 'immigrants' and having moved on because he didn't like their company. It felt so... non-saintly, to my sensibilities.

And I can't get started on the whole business of 'bitch' being equated with 'slut'. For one thing because it just gets too long and complicated and I have to tell half the story to make it make sense. The story would have been better off without that character.

. . .

This whole writing thing is really not working, today. Every time I've tried to write I've gotten so sleepy it's ridic. I should really get to bed, I want to be up fairly early to go help with the Historical Society Pie Bake tomorrow. (It's the yearly fund raiser.)

41) "Tik Tok of Oz" - Baum

It seems that he's just reaching for a title, here, as Tik Tok doesn't actually get that huge a role. This is really about Betsy Bobbin, but she can't be "of Oz" because Oz has officially been closed off to allowing any more people from the outside world in. I strongly suspect Betsy Bobbin of being a crossover character from another book which didn't do well.

The Shaggy Man gets a big role in this book, too, as he's out wandering around yet again, and has left Oz to look for his brother. Shaggy (as he is called throughout this book - I don't think we've seen that before) gets to be noble at the end, as he adopts Betsy, accepting exile from Oz as the result of doing so.

His love magnet is working differently, now, as he has to actually show it to people, but when he does they're literally falling-at-his-feet in adoration - one young woman even rushes to him and hugs him, which makes him a little uncomfortable. I almost for a minute thought he was going to have a Romantic Interest. There ARE romantic interests in this book, the first time I've seen that in an Oz book, though discreetly brushed off into the corners. The Rose Princess, Ozga, and a young man named Jo Files are always off by themselves, talking.

38) "The Emerald City of Oz" - Baum

This really hung together much better as a story than "Ozma of-" and "Dorothy and the Wizard in-", and didn't degenerate into fifteen days of feasting and merrymaking described in loving detail like "The Road to-". Feels like Baum was hitting his stride, here. Which makes if all the more poignent to me at the end of it where the last page says he's gotten a letter from Dorothy saying he won't be hearing from her anymore because Oz has been permanently cut off from the rest of the world.

This book has a proper Quest of Three, although it's the evil guy who completes it (General Guff the Nome collects three allies to the Nomes, each more evil than the last), interspersed with the random meetings with odd people which Baum likes so much. And he included some fun, if heavy-handed, social satire with the "Defensive Settlements" of Oz, where they send the Rigamaroles and the Flutterbudgets. Also, Dorothy gets to act in her best capacity as someone who can let people know when they're actually well off.

( To discuss the one place where I think his plotting falls down requires a huge spoiler for the end of the book. )

His continuity errors (because I must bring this up) -

Apparently along with there being no horses in Oz (which we learned in "Dorothy and the Wizard in-") there were never any dogs before Toto nor chickens before Billina. Yet as you recall they had a word for "horse" and the concept - I mean, you have to in order to call something a Sawhorse. Similarly, the rabbits know that they don't like dogs, even though Toto is supposedly the first one they've ever seen. They won't even let him into their town. Something about him screams "I like to chase rabbits"? I don't know.

And, Glinda has apparently house-swapped with the Good Witch of the North and suddenly SHE is the Good Witch of the North. Whatever happened to that sweet little old woman in white who gave Dorothy the shining kiss on the forehead which protected her in the first book? She just disappeared, never heard from again, never even given a name.

34) "Now That You Mention It" - Kristan Higgins

This is a from nowhere surprise favorite. I happened to pick it up while I was waiting for some people at one of our satellite offices to finish a test, started reading and didn't want to put it down. It's a chic book, not my usual thing, but it kept me involved and going forward from start to finish. The theme was returning home to a small town after a variety of hard knocks in life and finding that you can fit back in to a place you never thought you fit, before. She managed to do racial and sexual orientation, body type, disability and age inclusivity, and yes it is somewhat glaringly obvious at a point about halfway through the book, but the reasons why the main character has these friends makes sense. She was an outcast because of her weight in high school and it's modern day, she's well educated and has spent a great deal of time in Boston.

I was also most impressed with how well she nailed a lot of Maine mannerisms as well as dialect. Most often forgotten is the inverted nod - kind of a chin-jerk of acknowledgment, "I see you" - which stands in place of a wave or actually saying hello. She didn't mention that it's often done with the mouth opening, kind of like a fish grabbing a fly. I wasn't sure it made perfect sense on a small island so close to both Boston and Portland, but fiction gets some passes. :) She undoubtedly reads a lot of Stephen King, and I don't, so that's probably mentioned by him.

There was some horrific traumatic stuff in her past which I wasn't sure was necessary, but it drives some of the plot.

Gotta run, getting Matt's car inspected today. Which makes three days not quite in a row I'm sitting in the Fiat dealership in Portland - I almost feel like I live there.

ETA: Car inspected, but had to have new shock bushings and have been told it will need another appointment soon for a variety of 'scheduled maintenance' and an oil change. Can I get a cot there? I get a lot of reading done, though.

It occurred to me I should get one of my friends (ElvenGirl) who reads a lot of Stephen King to let me know if this Connecticut author, Higgins, got all her Mainerisms from his books.

32) "The Land of Oz" - Baum

In which we learn that the self-described "good" man, the Wizard, who forced a child to kill someone in the first book, also 'stole' the throne of Oz and had the child who should inherit, Ozma, hidden by a witch. And yet he'll come back in later books and still be called 'good'.

( some other quite random thoughts below )

29) "The Bonesetter's Daughter" - Amy Tan

Personally hard for me to read, with the high rate of Alzheimer's in my family. I may add to this at some point when it's not ridiculously early in the morning.

26) Sharing Knife, Volume Four: Horizon - Bujold, yet again.

I liked how this series ended up. Some growing up for youngsters. Different races learning respect for each other after generations of poor interactions. Our Plucky Heroine helping defeat the Big Bad Boss (no, there's no particular ongoing Evil One in this series, but it's like playing Diablo where you meet different levels of monsters... er. yeah.)

Yeah, I don't really ask much more out of a book than that it have some decent female characters, a few things to say about societies and human interactions, and be fun. ( some potential slightly spoilery stuff be here )

25) "Sharing Knife, Volume Three: Passage" - Lois McMaster Bujold

Hey, shut up, I like books where people get a little angsty about moral decisions and get talked out of angst by ridiculously level-headed friends/parents/sweethearts, okay? Yeah, it's a re-read, and you know what? I enjoyed it just as much the second time. Probably because I have the memory of a tse-tse fly, but whatever.