I Spy Books with Spies

So you've watched Casino Royale three hundred times and can recite whole portions of The Bourne Identity from memory (that's, like, your superpower). You even sat through all five hours of Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy. Okay, that was more for the man candy, and you might have spent most of it tweeting, but anyway. The point is, you can't get enough of sophisticated spies, but you're so desperate for something new you're considering watching Knight and Day; and yeah, you could read (or reread) the actual James Bond novels, but you're hoping for something slightly less misogynistic. Fortunately for you: sexy spies with a love story thrown in? We got that.

Note that this list isn't of spy novels as per literary fiction--if you love John Le Carré, more power to you, but I prefer my spy stories to be as divorced from reality as possible. The way God, or at least Ian Fleming, intended.

Black Ice by Anne Stuart--Chloe is scraping by as a translator in Paris (shades of Charade!) when she's offered a job in the French countryside. Only the job turns out to be for a group of arms dealers. Fortunately for Chloe, there's a spy among them--Bastien Toussaint, who's not sure what Chloe's game is, but is willing to protect her from the baddies until he finds out. This book is the first in a series about an organization of spies who travel the world. All of the novels are unputdownable with just the right mix of thriller and romance. NO ONE writes bad boy heroes like Anne Stuart.



Crazy Hot by Tara Janzen--Quinn used to be the black sheep of his small town, until he left to join the military. Now he's part of a special ops team that operates under the cover of a specialty car shop, and his first mission involves working with Regan, the poor little rich girl who broke his heart. Fast cars, kick ass men, and wrong-side-of-the-tracks romance? TOTALLY THERE. I also love this book because it takes place in my home state (Colorado); Regan is super-smart and doesn't take any crap from anyone; and it really is a hot book. Also: first in a series, again. All of the installments with high entertainment value.



The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers--Okay, so the guys are more hugable than hot in this one, and the romance is kind of incidental, but I do recommend Riddle of the Sands for anyone who loves spy stories. Curruthers is a suit at the Foreign Office who is desperate for a vacation, so he accepts an invitation from a random acquaintance, Davies, to go sailing on his yacht. In the Baltic Sea. In September. When he arrives, it's to find out that Davies only invited him because he thinks a German spy tried to kill him, and now he needs help figuring out what the spy was trying to hide. This is a great book. I absolutely love Carruthers, who is sarcastic and hilarious, and the story is surprisingly tense and 100% believable. Childers really knew what of he wrote. Winston Churchill even used Riddle of the Sands as a blueprint for British operations in the Baltic during WWII.



My Bother Michael by Mary Stewart--Camilla is sitting in a cafe in Athens, bemoaning how boring her life is and how nothing ever happens, when something happens! (Note I have attempted this tactic myself on several occasions and it NEVER WORKS.) A stranger presses a key into her hand and begs her to take a car to a man named Simon in Delphi. It's a matter of life and death! Well, what's a girl to do? Camilla hops in the car and drives that sucker down to Delphi, where she gets involved with the mysterious Simon and all the non-boring car chases, shoot-outs, and cloak-and-dagger craziness that is his life.


What are some of your favorite spy novels?


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The Phantom Versus Erik

Nymeth had a post a few weeks ago asking if there were any books you love that make you feel like you were part of a secret club with other people who love that book. At the time I drew a bland, but later I realized I kind of feel that way about The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux.

For one thing, only people who've read the book know who Erik is. For another, I believe that Erik is one of the best characters in literature, but the qualities that make him fascinating never translate to the musical or film adaptations.

The first difference between Erik and "the Phantom" can be seen in their names. Erik is a specific person, a genius who invented ventriloquism, designed a sultan's palace, and entertained a sadistic princess. The Phantom is an idea, a terror that shadows the Opera's rafters and subterranean labyrinths.

The Phantom is clever, mischievous, and threatening. Erik is a psychopathic and terrifying.

Erik also inspires ALL THE FEELS. Pity and admiration, love, fascination, disgust, and horror. The Phantom, while fascinating, doesn't engender the same reaction. I mean, I feel sorry for the poor guy, but it's kind of his own fault.

When it comes to the Phantom and Christine... it's sad, but was she really going to live beneath the Paris Opera with him? No. With Erik, it's more complex. Yeah, he's kind of a psycho and unattractive; but he also clearly loves Christine, putting her happiness above his own. In the end, Erik is a hero while the Phantom is a figure of tragedy.

Do you know Erik?


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Review: CHOPSTICKS by Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral

Glory, a piano prodigy, has a nervous breakdown and obsessively plays Chopsticks over and over. Then one day she simply vanishes from the "rest facility" she's staying in. What happened to Glory? Why did she go crazy and where did she disappear to?


An example page from Chopsticks, via the novel's Tumblr.

Chopsticks is a book told almost entirely in pictures. Not so much like a graphic novel, more like a scrapbook. I've been wanting to read it for a long time, ever since I read Vasilly's review of it at 1330v. I have to say, I'm very torn about this book--on the one hand, I love the concept and definitely think creative ways of storytelling like this should be encouraged. But on the other hand, the execution left a lot to be desired.

The photographs and visuals in Chopsticks are gorgeous, certainly, but not consistent with the time period the novel is set in. It starts in the early '90s, but everything in the photographs--from the type of film used to the clothes and hairstyles of the subjects--look like they're circa 1970s. There are also visual themes in the book that are never explained and seem really random. If any of you follow me on Pinterest, you know I love octopi (they're my favorite animal), but why all the octopi in Chopsticks? Glory's obsession with Jo Ann Castle was also really weird and anachronistic. At first I thought it was a metaphor for Glory's life, seeing as how Castle seems like a performing monkey; but by the end I realized this isn't the type of book that trades in metaphors and no, Glory actually just liked Jo Ann Castle and watching The Lawrence Welk Show. You know, like a normal teenager! The Malbec wine theme also seemed really random and weird. I don't know a lot of teenagers who are that into wine, and these teenagers even say they're not! Yet Glory's boyfriend's parents give him wine for a birthday present? MAKES NO SENSE. Who does that?


An example page from Chopsticks, via the novel's Tumblr.

As for the story, I found it really shallow and obvious. The characters had no depth. Glory's dad was over-the-top controlling, the school administrators were cartoonishly bureaucratic, and Glory and her boyfriend only had two speeds: histrionic whinging and total freak out. I'm not saying I didn't understand their frustration, but that's ALL we ever got of their personalities. It needed to be balanced out with some cognitive reasoning (not lovey-dovey make-out sessions) in order to be believable. Or bearable. I knew exactly where the book was going by the end of the second chapter and was disappointed that there were absolutely no surprises or twists in the story. The conclusion to Glory's serious psychiatric problem was laughably simplistic, not to mention kind of unrealistic.

So while I liked the concept of Chopsticks and would definitely encourage Jessica Anthony and Rodrigo Corral to continue experimenting with telling stories in this format, I don't think this particular book was successful. A better option if you're looking for a story told in pictures might be Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.




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Review: PAINTED FACES by LH Cosway

Freda is a young Dubliner who likes to be called Fred. One day she introduces herself to her new neighbor, who tells her he'd like to be called Vivienne. It's only after Nicholas invites her to one of his shows that she realizes he's actually a professional drag queen, not just a guy with a weird sense of humor. Nicholas asks Freda to be his costume assistant, but it's clear he wants more than just a professional relationship or friendship. Will Freda be able to put up with his moody bullshit long enough for these two crazy kids to get together?

I picked up Painted Faces because romances with a heterosexual drag queen as a hero are pretty unusual. You know I'm a sucker for books that are unconventional like that. I'm really glad I took a chance on it, because it was totally fun and entertaining.

What made Painted Faces for me was the heroine and narrator, Freda. She is awesome and hilarious! First of all, she makes cupcakes for a living. How can you NOT love someone who makes cupcakes?? She also has an attraction for anything odd and is always ready with the clever quips. Some of the dialog exchanges in Painted Faces are pretty sharp. She has great friends, drinks too much, visits her parents nearly every weekend, and loves music. She's a character that I felt like I knew and would want to be friends with in real life.

As for Nicholas, he reminded me of something from an animé. As in, cartoonish. You know those beautiful guys in animé shows that are surprisingly kick-ass, yet super-moody and occasionally go into shame spirals because of their DARK PAST? Yeah, he was kind of like that. And sometimes he got slightly rapey, or at the very least sexually harassing. At first it was just awkward and funny (there are so many funny/awkward--fukward?--situations in this book), but as Nicholas and Freda began to know one another more, he only got pushier. I started to get really impatient and annoyed with him about halfway through the book, and equally annoyed with Freda for putting up with his crap. I get that she like-likes him, but no means fuck off, buddy. Once we got to the DARK PAST reveal I really didn't care anymore, and it didn't seem much of a dark past secret anyway. So while I totally get why he would fall in love with Freda, I didn't find Freda's attraction to him that convincing.

There are also a bunch of secondary characters in Painted Faces who are fun and show how much thought LH Cosway put into the two main characters--not just their personality, but their hobbies and what types of people they hang out with. I also LOVED the setting; I seriously need to read more books set in Dublin.

Even though I think Painted Faces is too long and I was a little disgusted with with romance in the third quarter of the book, I still like it for Freda and what a fun and entertaining read it was. The ending was also really sweet and kind of redeemed the whole book for me. I am definitely going to check out more work from this author.



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Movie Review: ANNA KARENINA

Originally released: 2012
Starring: Keira Knightly, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson
Directed by: Joe Wright
Based on: the book of the same name by Leo Tolstoy

Anna is married to this guy named Aleksei, who is honestly kind of a prick. When she goes to Moscow to visit her brother, she runs into dashing cavalry officer, Count Vronsky. It's love at first sight! But Anna's a married woman and tells Vronsky to leave her alone. Instead, he stalks her for the next hour, and then Anna's hubby is all, "You're behaving improperly BLAH BLAH BLAH." So Anna figures if people are just assuming she's sleeping with Vronsky, she might as well sleep with him! And Vronsky bangs the brains right out of her head.

This version of Anna Karenina takes place almost entirely in a theater and is extremely stylized. It's a little strange at first; during the opening scene I was like, "What is this and why am I watching it?" But then I was totally sucked in and the theater setting seemed to work naturally with the themes of the story. I felt that by making the staging obvious, the story was allowed to dominate and I didn't have to sit through the typical explanations of what's going on that would have slowed the pace of the movie. Plus, IT'S A METAPHOR DUDE. A beautiful Russian metaphor.



In addition to the gorgeous sets, you've got beautiful costume design (I found it really interesting that Anna wore black when she was "innocent" and white after she was a notorious adulterous--I thought that was a great way to demonstrate how appearances and reality never mesh with her) and perfect casting. I loved Matthew Macfadyen most especially, who plays Anna's brother, Oblonsky. He was hilarious! He was like Gaston's crazy uncle in Gigi, only Russian and married. It was great to see Macfadyen in a role where he wasn't being dour. I also loved Ruth Wilson as Princess Betsy. That is an awesome character!

As for Anna, I have SO MANY FEELS. For one, I LOVE her. I've seen other people call her selfish--and she is, especially at the end of the movie--but I also really admired her and thought that for most of the movie she was trying to make the best of a soul-sucking situation where she was miserable. But then on the other hand, I was also like, "Girrrrrrl, what were you thinking." I was totally with Anna up until right after she gave birth to her daughter. To me, this was the turning point in the movie, particularly when Aleksei asks her, "What do you want?" This is an honest question and deserves deep consideration, but I wasn't sure Anna knew what she wanted when she answered. She said she wanted Vronsky, but maybe she just wanted passion in her life. Of course, Aleksei's never going to give that to her; but on a practical level her decision to leave with Vronsky really made no sense. She loses everything for herself AND her child, and all she gains in return is him. Why would she choose Vronsky? And then the whole thing with them returning to Moscow and her INSISTING on trying to be accepted in society and going into a panic spiral when she's not... WHAT? Don't tell me you didn't see that coming, Anna. You had the guts to tell society to go fuck itself and I respected you for that; now have the balls to deal with the consequences. Basically I think Tolstoy fell in love with Anna as he was writing the book; but then he remembered he was trying to be moralizing, so he forced her to act in a way that made no sense in order to teach Team Vagina that if we cheat on our husbands, WE WILL DIE. PS, if you know of a 19th-century novel where the adulteress main character doesn't die, please let me know.


You know you want to lick that moustache.

Still, the central question of Anna Karenina seems to be, did Anna really love Vronsky? Not because if she did love Vronsky it would excuse her behavior, but because the message of the story is different depending on how you answer that question (I know we were spoon-fed a message about lust and all that, but I decided to ignore it). And honestly, I don't think it's a question that has a definitive answer. Personally, though, I believe Anna did love Vronsky, because unless he had some magical penis or something, I don't think Anna would give up her son just because she found a guy sexually attractive. Maybe her spiral into jealous crazy town was simply a result of her love not being shored up by faith and hope.

Anyway, even though I had some issues with the story itself, I thought Anna Karenina was a really, really good movie. I loved how stylized it was, while still being very emotional and focusing on the characters of the story. I haven't read the book, but I think this might be one of the best book-to-movie adaptations I've ever seen. I can't wait to watch it again.




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Bloggiesta Finish Line

Yet another Bloggiesta is over. This weekend I didn't get as much done as I'd planned. You know how sometimes it feels like the universe has some nefarious plot to keep you from getting anything done? That was pretty much my weekend. BUT. I did complete my first goal, catching up on my posts for the Liquid Persuasion blog. I wrote over 30 posts! It took foreverrrrrrr. I'm exhausted. But I'm glad I did it because it needed to be done.

I'm really glad there are events like Bloggiesta to give me a kick in the pants to get these housekeeping tasks done! How was your weekend?



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Bloggiesta Starting Line

Hello, everyone! It's that time again, when I devote more time than usual to fixing up things on la blahg for Bloggiesta, the blogging fiesta!

Here is my to-do list:

• I really need to catch up on posts for Liquid Persuasion. I don't know why I get so far behind on that blog.
• Update links on my resume.
• I'm starting a new blog with Becca from Lost in Books and Tif from Tif Talks Books called Book Bloggers International, which has a planned launch date of April, so I'm going to do some stuff with that. Schedule posts, etc.
• Maybe I'll write a few posts while I'm at it.

Anyway, those are my weekend plans! Plus working. What will you guys be up to?

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