Breaking out the vintage Evanovich

So do you ever do this? You sort of save a book that you know you will completely love for a just-right time?

I was saving Janet Evanovich's FOUR TO SCORE like that. I've been reading this series a bit out of order, but I've heard FOUR is one of the best ones, and also, it's the one where Morelli and Stephanie finally get together.

Anyway, it's hot as hell here in Minnesota, I'm a bit more busy than I like to be, and crabby coughpmscough. And so I broke out this book. OMG. This is such a lighthearted, even silly series in a way, but I was blown away all over again by what a true master of fiction Evanovich is.

I was marveling at her descriptions last night:

If people were cars, Lula would be a big, black '53 Packard with a high-gloss chrome grille, oversized headlights, and a growl like a junkyard dog. Lots of muscle. Never fit in a compact space.

Like, the car thing? It's so smart and perfect! Her straightforward descriptions, too:

She'd been a fat kid with a terrible overbite. The overbite had been minimalized by braces, and by the time Joyce was fifteen she'd trimmed down to look like Barbie on steroids. She had chemically enhanced red hair done up in big teased curls. Her nails were long and painted, her lips were high gloss, her eyes were rimmed in navy liquid liner, her lashes gunked up with blue-black mascara. She was an inch shorter than me, five pounds heavier and had me beat by two cup sizes. She had three ex-husbands and no children. It was rumored she had sex with dogs.

Or this bit:

...he was slender and totally hairless, like a bald Chihuahua, with soft brown eyes hidden behind thick glasses...

I also happen to own Evanovich's Writing book, entitled HOW I WRITE. I was reading it over before this post, thinking I'd be like a real journalist and pull in a quote of hers on this issue of description, but then I just started reading it again and remembering why I loved it. It's got lots of super basic stuff, but also some brilliant nerdy tricks she uses, like how to get your place and weather descriptions not to boringly stick out by shoving them into the experience of the character.

Oh, Janet, you rock!

Other News:
Rebecca over at Dirty Sexy Books, a fun and hugely action-packed blog lately, featured yours truly in A Few of my Favorite Blogs post. Thanks!!

Also, she has a big monthly drawing that ends tomorrow (and as she notes in her very entertaining fine print: "If you think your odds of winning are bad, think again. My list of subscribers is minuscule, so your odds of winning something are stellar, and furthermore, I’ve guaranteed it so that everyone will win a book before prior winners have another shot. Also, you only need to enter once, and I’ll keep your name for each month’s drawing going forward."

What's more, on MONDAY the 17th, she starts a group chat/book club about Wicked Game by Jeri Smith Ready, a book I greatly enjoyed (my ramblings about it here).

Identifying with heroines

Well, I must say that Three to Get Deadly, the third Stephanie Plum novel by Janet Evanovich, is really doing the trick for an escapist comfort read. I am just a sucker for that world. Mom has been making pot roast. Faithful Rex the hamster is always running in his little wheel. Last night Joe Morelli even brought over a pizza from Pino’s. He was there when I ordered it, and decided to surprise me.

Don’t worry, I know that I’m not Stephanie, but I have to say that my experience of identification with Stephanie is scarily complete when I’m reading one of these books, and I’ve been thinking, what’s that all about? A lot of it is obviously about her vulnerability - she's not that great a bounty hunter, and she's even scared a lot, and checks her closets when she gets home.

Of course I’ve read heroines who are so vulnerable and needy that I want to slap them. You have to have something on the plus side, too. For Stephanie’s it’s her resourcefulness, and the fact that she never gives up. Plus, she has this intense desire to be a good bounty hunter.

I don’t have to identify with a hero or heroine to love them or love a book, but when I want a comfort read, I do. So what the hell, I have decided to make a list.

Heroines I have the highest and most gratifying identification experience with during reading:

1. Stephanie Plum.
2. Harper from the Grave Surprise series. Sorry, I have a kitty on my lap, so I won't be getting up to see what the official name of the series is, but it's the other one by Charlaine Harris. I sure love this heroine. Every town she goes to, everybody thinks she’s a freak because they’re sort of scared of her, and because she makes them uncomfortable. Then she ends up helping them, because she believes in what she’s doing. And the assholes end up feeling or at least looking like real assholes. It’s an unusually satisfying series in this way. She is so easy to identify with, though.
3. Georgina from Succubus Blues. I haven’t read the new one, so maybe she gets downgraded or upgraded in relate-ability, but she has a tragic vulnerability in the first book in that she will destroy any man she loves, but she wants to love! Her wanting something badly and never getting it, and the internal struggle of that somehow makes her really easy to identify with.
4. No, this isn't a book, but how could I not put Buffy on this list?

Tomorrow: Heroines who I admire and/or am of in awe or fascinated by, but don’t fully identify with.

The pleasures of cozy

It was only this year that I learned what exactly a cozy mystery is. I sort of find the term odd. I guess I’ve read a few, particularly if you count Dorothy Sayers. And this year I have started the Stephanie Plum series of cozy mysteries, which I love. I first read #2, and later #1, which was so excellent—wow, could I ever feel the first book energy in it.

Anyway, the central drama these days in my life is our beloved cat, Petunia, being sick with cancer. She has been for months, but she has continued being her kitty self, so it was okay for the most part. But now she seems to be getting worse, and she’s become less often her kitty self. I can’t tell you how much we love this cat! Anyway, after a very sad day today of agonizing over what to do when, some books arrived in the mail from Amazon. I am such an addict of ordering books. And in spite of an outstanding roster of books I am currently reading: Demon Moon, My Fair Captain, and Karma Girl, there was the third Stephanie Plum mystery in that box, and it’s like the only thing I can think of reading.

I want Stephanie’s mom to make roast and exhort me to sit at the table and ask about my day, and do I want dessert? And what about that nice nephew of somebody? And for Grandma Mazur to appear wearing something outrageous, and for the father to be grumbling from behind the newspaper. And I want Morelli to be just this dependable guy, attracted, interested, but nothing dramatic. And Ranger always willing to show up. Cozy mystery seemed such an odd term, but now it doesn’t seem odd or wrong at all. There is something so wonderfully cozy about that world. It’s all about that world. Cozy and familiar. Always waiting for you.

Please, people, welcome me to the 90’s

I picked up Janet Evanovich’s “Two for the Dough” at Steeple People, this used store in my neighborhood that’s practically like a garage sale. It was 50 cents, and I thought, now I can see what fuss is about and if I hate it, who cares?

Wow, that was two quarters very well spent, and Ms. Stephanie Plum has been upgraded to the status of series to follow, even books to buy at a bookstore, or to get in an exciting box from Amazon.

First of all, I totally expected the whole big hair Joisey girl shtick to be overdone, but it wasn’t. It was wonderfully subtle, charming. The dialogue felt authentic.

At one point the mother says:

“You should get a real job. Something steady with normal hours. Your cousin Marjorie got a nice secretarial job with J and J. I hear she makes big money.”

This dialogue is so simple, but when I read it, I hear an accent. Maybe it’s the clipped sentences. It’s as if the rhythm of the speech, the music itself, creates the accent, so Evanovich doesn’t rely on phonetic spelling. Like I did with Joisey. Or this:

“Kenny Mancuso is a bum,” my mother said. “All those Morelli and Mancuso men are trash. You can’t trust a one of them.”

Lisa Dale over at Book Anatomy 101 makes an interesting comment on an older post about Evanovich’s Trenton setting being “branded” and I really thought that was smart. A brand is something familiar and friendly you feel good about. That's how I feel about this setting. I feel like that about the Sookie Stackhouse world, too. (Actually, on that post, Dale has a whole interesting analysis of what makes the Plum series such a success.)

The hero, Morelli, hit just the right, very subtle note with me, too. A decent and witty guy with, from what I can tell in #2, a roguish past, but deserves another chance. Is he in all the Plum books? I understand we’re up to thirteen. Should I read these in order? Should I go back to #1?

I love when I find a new author and series, a whole mess of books arrayed before me, hours of fun.