More books, again

Thanks to the blizzard, I've had a chance to catch up on my reading. When I'm not seething with rage, of course. (Just kidding, really. No, REALLY.)

Here are the latest books I've finished:

6. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. I love books that take a story we think we know by heart and look at it from another perspective. So I thought I'd really like Wicked. But the first time I tried to read it, soon after it came out and long before the musical had ever come to Broadway, I couldn't get through the first chapter. Something kept turning me off, and I eventually returned the book to the library and got on with my life. But now the musical has been a huge success, and I heard a song from the soundtrack one day ("Defying Gravity"), and I thought, well why the heck not? This time I was determined to hold on until I got to the Elphaba / Galinda part (which as I understand it, makes up the bulk of the show, which I will admit right now I've never actually seen). There is a lot going on in the beginning of the book, and though it opens with a scene featuring the Witch and Dorothy, it then goes back in time and things get confusing and weird. The Oz in this book is darker and far more disturbing than the MGM movie version. But given that L. Frank Baum included lots of symbolism about the gold standard and other events central to life in late nineteenth-century America in his book, it is perhaps not surprising that this version is packed full of conflicts that don't seem to alien to a twentyfirst-century viewpoint. Racism, religious conflict, and imperialism all rear there heads, and what seems to be the central question of the book -- what is evil and what makes people become that way -- seems very timely. This time I liked it. It was fun to see Oz through another set of eyes, and to try and pick out elements that would play a part in Baum's book. Elphaba is a difficult character. I didn't quite like her, or pity her, and there were times when I couldn't even really understand her, or her actions. Maybe that's why she felt real, though.

7. Cut to the Quick by Kate Ross. I have the feeling I've read a Julian Kestrel novel before, but none of the plot synopses looked quite familiar in the bookstore. Still, a Regency gentleman detective seemed fun, so I picked up this one, the first in a series of four. While visiting in the country, Julian Kestrel finds a dead woman in his bed. Who is she? And who put her there? As soon as the murder occurred, I started piecing together theories. There were plenty of candidates for murderer and motive. While I was close, I wasn't quite right. I really enjoyed the characters and plot, which took many of the elements of the Regency romances I adored as a preteen and combined them with the English Country House Murder, one of my favorite mystery sub-genres. Kestrel was very engaging. Like other detectives in the British Mystery arena (Peter Wimsey, Albert Campion), he masks his considerable intellect behind the facade of a society dandy. It was also fun to see how the mystery got solved without even the basics of forensic science, which plays such a (necessary) part in many modern mysteries. Fun all around.