To Some Blind People, Kindle 3 Is Sour Grapes

A Rant

For some time now I have defended the Kindle 2 as a tool for accessible reading for people who are print impaired.    The fact that I am severely visually impaired and yet was able to use my Kindle readily without audio on the navigation made the clamor from groups like the national Federation of Blind e more annoying to me.  When they were able to get universities to stop assigning Kindles until they were 100% accessible made me wonder what two stodgy immovable institutions, academia and the blind accessibility community would finally make a breakthrough.

Of course, the answer is neither.  The advocates will take credit for it, but it is Amazon, the Kindle's maker, that came through in the end.  At least one representative of a blind organization expressed to me his lack of faith in Amazon, so I had the pleasure today of saying, "I told you so!"  In fact, Amazon's Kindle 3 has fully accessible navigation. 

Knowing the radical advocates as I do, I knew there would be a "yeah but.."  It only took a little more than an hour to get it.  The spokesperson for one organization pointed out that while indeed the Kindle 3 has accessible navigation, the new experimental web browser on it is not blessed with text to speech.  Oh and the fact that the newest Kindle is less expensive than the Kindle 2 means, at least in the mind of this person, they were overcharging for the old ones.  This person's commentary resulted in one fellow on a blind discussion group to conclude that if the Kindle 3 is not fully accessible, then it's of no use to him.

Frankly, I don't care about this web browser... I wish Amazon did not have to come up with it to compete with Apple's iPad.  As a person with a visual disability, I am happy to confine my browsing to my home computer with its ridiculously expensive adaptive software.  I want the Kindle for reading and portability.

It's not a popular opinion but I think that groups like the NFB will always find something wanting in any effort that, by the way, competes with their own overpriced tool.   Their motivation for crying "Sour grapes!" seems suspect to me.

I run a historical fiction online chat.  If the rest of the print impaired people on it would give it up and just embrace the Kindle 3 our choice of nooks to discuss would increase exponentially.  Just now all we can read are the National Library Service books or, with much grumbling, BookShare.org.  The latter depends on volunteers scanning books they want to read so that they are accessible to people via text and text readers.  The former takes a good long time to get any book into their library no less in a format that does not break halfway through much of the time.  I wish I could simply choose books that anyone with a Kindle 3 could read.  It would be nice to feel like a grownup once in a while instead of a tantrum-throwing kid.

Nan Hawthorne

Sharpe's Honor, by Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe's Honor

Bernard Cornwell

I t astounds me how in spite of the Sharpe books being essentially the same plot that Bernard Cornwell manages to make each one seem quite distinct.  Sharpe dies in this episode, though of course he doesn't really and you know it if you are a fan, but it makes for a plot twist that certainly keeps one's interest.

In Sharpe's Honor Our Hero is hanged for murdering La Marquesas's husband.  You see, it's like this.  Sharpe is full of angst and self disgust.  He's a major now, but he's unhappy because he feels guilty about Teresa's death and having dallied with La Marquesa and just 'cquse that's what Sharpe does, so when he is called out for a duel with the marquis he accepts.  It seems that the Spanish Inquisition (yeah, I know... you didn't expect that...) and Pierre Ducos are plotting to make a treaty between Spain and France and get the British kicked out of Spain.  So they have tLa Marquesa accuse Sharpe of taking indecent liberties.  That of course offends the marquis's honor and besmirches Sharpe's.  Colonel Leroy (yee haw!) pulls Sharpe's charming posterior out of the fire, but when the marquis is found murdered in his bed, Sharpe is arrested, accused and hanged.  Of course, someone else is hanged in his place and only Wellington and Hogan know this.  (I couldn't find fault with the substute hanged man plot since I use it myself in An Involuntary King: A Tale of Anglo Saxon England ...)

Of course what is really happening is that Wellington and Hogan have sent Sharpe to find out what the big mystery is, why he was targeted.  It is to sow distrust and discord between the British and the Spanish.  Sharpe himself is more focused on finding La Maquesa so he can ask her why she wrote such vicious lies about him.  He finds her confined in a convent where she has been sent so the Church can have all her wealth.  In looking for her he also meets the Spanish Inquisitor's charming brother, El Matarife, a hairy fellow who likes to make you hold the other end of a chain and fight him with a dagger.  Sharpe finds his lady friend and beds her a couple times, all the while knowing she will sell him out in a heartbeat.  he is believed dead a second time when the fort where he was held is blown up.  But you can't keep Our Hero down, it seems, and of course he saves the day.

Sadly there is far too little Patrick Harper in this one, and the other Chosen Men are not even mentioned.  As far as I was concerned, there was more than enough of El Matarife, a thoroughly unpleasant fellow.  Sharpe's awareness that he will never be a serious part of La Marquesa's life and that she will do him dirt but till he travels across Spain and risks his life over and over for her is an interesting bit of psychology for our complicated friend.  You do want to throttle him on more than one occasion for being such a dork, but whatta ya gonna do?  Harper marries Isabella in this novel, by the way, and we lose another regular character.. not gonna say who, just that Jim and I were sorry.  Yee haw!  Oh, and Sharpe gets a waycool knew spyglass.

I think we only have three or four Sharpe's left.  We keep a diary so we know when we started and finished each book.  After the next one, Sharpe's Regiment, it will be time to read the second draft of my novel-in-progress, giving us a bit of a Sharpe break.  My husband Jim read this novel to me.

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NEWS!  I have just been accepted as a reviewer for the Historical Novel Society 's onlline newsletter.  I look forward to reading even more and cvarious novels and sharing my reaction and analysis with you there.  I am very honored to have been accepted on that talented team.

Bigamy, Incest, Prostitution, Abotion, Illegal Adoption, Child Abandonment, Highway Robbery, All In One Novel

Moll Flanders

Daniel Defoe

I will never again allow anyone to tell me that people were more  well-behaved and concerned with their immortal souls in the past. When Moll Flanders is not committing bigamy she is pondering murdering a child to cover the crime of stealing the kid's gold bead necklace.  Not once does this woman think about God.. that is, not until maybe the last half dozen pages in the book.  And this novel was written in 1683.  I mean, c'mon, the Stuarts were still on the throne of England!

A quick recap of Moll's story, which she regularly reminds the reader is her chief concern.  She was born in Newgate Gaol of a woman, a thief, who is transported to America for her crime.  Nevertheless, little someday to call herself Moll does not seem to do her all that much harm.  A kind woman raises her and gives her an education.  She is taken in by a family where she beds one brother and marries the other.  Believing herself ever on the verge of abject poverty, which she never really seems to be, she marries again, that husband runs away, then marries another nice man who takes her to Virginia where she learns he is her half brother.  Heading back to England she becomes the mistress of a man who has a crazy wife.  When this guy gets a case of penitence,  one overlooks both marriages, gets hitched to a fellow named James, and when he vamooses, marries a nice solid banker who then dies.  It is then that she leaves off tricking men into marrying her for her money of which she has little and not mentioning she is married already, and settles down to a nice life of just plain crime.  This goes on for years until she is finally caught and is back where she began.. literally.  Who should should up in the same death row but James, who appears to have been a gentleman highwayman, and they fall into each other's arms and live more or less happily ever after... with a few adventures along the way.

Ostensibly this is the story of a woman who was wicked but saw the error of her ways and reformed.  Yeah, right.   She lies through her teeth almost to the bitter end and does not seem to be much troubled.  Of course the fact that this is one of the very first novels ever is more than impressive.  And that it has such a strong central female character made my feminist heart glad.  But any leeway I was willing to give Moll vanished when her lover with the crazy wife is ill unto death and all Moll thinks about is "Whatever will I do? I cannot allow myself to be poor!"  Only her second or third serious bit of robbery she, who has just been lamenting over the cruelty of putting unwanted children t for adoption, drags the little girl with the beads into a dark alley and thinks maybe she should kill her.  Speaking of children...Moll has several and ultimately leaves them all.  She expresses only passing regret.  It seems more than she deserves that she is so happily reunited with one near the end.

OK, OK, I know.  This is the point.  What genius Defoe's therefore, with so little novelizing extant to learn from.  One of the best observations Moll makes, when tempted to describe the sincere reformation of her husband James is that she is aware readers will find this part boring and wish for more scandalous stories.  Ikept my husband informed as I read this book.  One time when he called and I told him Moll was finally in prison, he came back with a succinct "Good."

Miss Moll Unbelievable Good Luck Flanders falls on her feet every time.  If the moral of the story is that crime doesn't pay, then the author missed the mark by a mile.  But I suspect Defoe knew better than that.

Ti downloaded this novel from the National Library Services BARD catalogue.

I just joined LibraryThing.com and will endeavr to post reviews there.y username there is nan_hawthorne.

Time and Chance, by Sharon Kay Penman

Time and Chance

Sharon Kay Penman

This is actually the second time I have read this magnificent novel.  As a result it will claim the honor of being symbolized in two of my famous book yarn paintings.  In the first, I did Henry II's shield, and in the second I will honor the Welsh with a bow and arrows.  I read the book again this soon because the Let's Read Historical Novels group will be discussing it on 3 August.  It is an online voice chat, so please consider yourself invited!

Time and Chance follows Penman's When Christ and His Saints Slept: A Novelwhich covered the years of civil war when Stephen of Blois and Empress Maud duked it out for the crown of England.  Both novels have as a central character a fictitious illegitimate brother of Maud and uncle of Henry II, Ranulf Fitzroy.  The plots are concurrent, the historical events brought to life through masterful storytelling while the entirely fictional events in Ranulf's life enrich him and places him credibly in the accurate context.  Penman is known for her exhaustive research and fixation on the facts which makes her ability to take historical record and turn it into a dang good story that much the more impressive.

In Time and Chance, we take up the story with Henry II and his glamorous and redoubtable Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, early in their marriage, when it was all still good.  Several things come into their lives that make the marriage doomed, perhaps the most damaging Henry's slighting of Eleanor as a smart lady and a politcian in her own right.  This rankles terribly with her, one of the most influential women in history, and simply lays the ground for her further resentment when Henry turns to a younger, more biddable paramour, the Fair Rosamund.  Meanwhile Henry's close friendship with Thomas Becket goes awry when the former makes the latter Archbishop ad the new archbishop begins to oppose the king's every move.  Ad to this that Henry seems constantly at war with France, Brittany, and Wales.  It is this last circumstance that throws Ranulf Fitzroy into the mix in the greatest challenge of his life.  He is now thoroughly  married to Wales, both literally and poetically.  A time comes when he can no longer straddle the fence of his conflicting loyalties.  Reading this book is like watching a dam crack.  You know everything is going to fall apart and it's going to ruin everything for everybody.

I love Ranulf.  I love his friends and family.  I especially like his wife Rhiannon, a rationally depicted blind woman, and Price Hywel -- I hope I am spelling that correctly - the son of Owine Gwyneth and a stalwart friend and gifted port.  In many ways these three are the golden thread throughout the rich weave of this novel.  I found something of a kindred soul in Henry, mainly because he was so restless, always had to keep moving.  People ask how I do it all... ask Harry Plantagenet.  Neither of us really have a choice.  It's in our programming.  I came to detest Becket, learning through this novel just how far off the movie, Becket, with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole is from the reality, much worse even than Braveheart. in terms of rewriting already fascinating and dramatic history for the author's own preference.  Embroidering is one thing, but don't rip out the seams and completely remake the garment putting the sleeves where the pants legs should go.

One thing this novel attempts to do is explain why Becket turned coat so thoroughly and abruptly.  i mean, no one wanted Becket to challenge the King to the extent he did, other than a few other bishops with either fondness for Becket or their own agendas.  The Pop wanted Thomas to make nice, the other bishops mostly wanted him to make nice.  He even alienated King Louis of France with his dogged opposition to Henry.  I will leave to you to find out what Penman concludes about His Grace Archbbishop Schizo.  I think she came up with as plausible, if not conclusivee, explanation as possible.

One thing writing your own novels makes you do is pay attention to how another author takes an event and dramatizes it.  I pay close attention to this in Penman's novels, because she is just so flippin' good at it.  Listen to how she conveys story line with dialogue.  You can have Henry, Eleanor, Ranulf and three or four other people in a room and you get background, characterization, story advancement, foreshadowing, and more just b lidtening in on their conversation. 

I did find one discordant note in the novel this time.  Perhaps Penman had her reasons, but she tells the story at least three time of William Marshall's father refusing to care if he is hanged because he tells King Stephen "I have the hammer and anvil to make more sons".  Once it was someone recounting the story to Ranulf, but the other two times repeated the story in the narrative.  Perhaps in such a tome it is easy to forget you already told that tale, or maybe Penman's judgment was that readers would forget.  Whichever it is, it's a great story.

I am anxiously awaiting her next in this series, Devil's Brood, which although it has been out some time is not available with text-to-speech enabled on the Kindle, is not out on audio book and is not yet available from the Library for the Blind.  I am looking forward to more of Ranulf, but more than that, I look forward to what Penman learned and can tell me, along with other readers, about just how Henry's and Eleanor's boys turned out as they did, how Rosamund dies, and what Eleanor's imprisonment was like and what it did to her.  I feel for Henry, a man who trusted few and was betrayed by all.

I read the novel downloaded from the National Library Services' BARD catalog.

Ten Dragons: A Chapbook, by Barbara Weitbrecht

Ten Dragons: A Chapbook

Barbara Weitbrecht

Despite its tiny price -- less than a dollar for the download for Kindle or Kindle for PC - this equally tiny book is one of those you will come to feel you were privileged to read.  For lack of a better way to express it, it is a Zen experience, using familiar images from myths and fairy tales to convey profound concepts like courage, endurance, acceptance and will.

Ten Dragons is a series of ten short stories, a few originally written for the Internet Writing Workshop.  In fact, the production of the "chapbook" was a demonstration of independent publishing on Kindle for a class the author conducted.  In spite of its rather pragmatic origins, the stories are quite fanciful, with most being tales for adults about dragons and dragon slayers.

The first, for example, "Hoard", shows an old man protecting his village through his deceit of a dragon slaying knight.  In "Fire" the character of William is introduced.  He meets Sir Lawrence, an affable dragon slayer who invites him to be his assistant.  William worries that the old squire is gone, until he learns that said squire just up and left and was not consumed by a dragon.  From here on, William is the dragon slayer in many of the stories.  He travels as far as the Middle East to find work.  In one story, "Sacrifice", twenty virgins not rescued from a dragon, themselves become dragons.  The stories turn even more mysterious with "Water" where a servant girl sees such a creature in transformation, knowing her master is questing for a dragon seen in the area.  Finally in the last two stories one finds oneself in the world of now, where dragons exist but adult minds cannot believe, until, facing cancer, one woman and her niece recall the dragons that were childhood companions.

These are such simple little tales that it may not hit you at first, or at least not until the few last stories, that subtler things were happening all along.  Like real fairy tales from bygone days there are layers of meaning with dark undercurrents, undercurrents of fear, abandonment, and death.  Ultimately for me the continuum was a path from an awareness of meaning lacking in one's world that evolves into the importance of finding one's own meaning in the face of universal disbelief.

Ten Dragons: A Chapbook is only available for Kindle at this time, but is enabled for text-to-speech and can be read on Kindle for PC.  I purchased my copy.

Counterpoint: Dylan's Story, by Ruth Sims

Counterpoint: Dylan's Story

Ruth Sims

I think I fell in love with Dylan on page one of this historical romance by Ruth Sims. We meet him as he pours out his passion in music, then watch as Sims skillfully and lovingly guides him through his coming of age in the two distinct worlds of late 19th century England and France. As with her earlier novel, The Phoenix, Sims gives us a look at the arts world of an era on the brink of liberation though still hostile to "the love that dare not speak its name". You will rage and sorrow with Dylan, Laurence and Geoffrey, but you will also glow with triumph as they make their way to love in an unfriendly world that the author paints with such authenticity.

Dylan has two strikes against him with his own middle class family.  The first is that he wants to be a composer, something his father utterly rejects, and second when it becomes clear to the old man that his son is a homosexual.  His one champion is Laurence, one of his masters at school, for whom Dylan forms an infatuation.  When Laurence escapes to Paris to avoid the bigotry of England, Dylan finds him and they become lovers.  In Paris the young man comes to the attention of virtuoso Adler Schonberg  who encourages his passion for composition.  It is there that Dylan meets the master's protege, Geoffrrey Dohnáanyi, a Romany violin virtuoso who will find significance in his life in the future.  When Laurence dies suddenly in a street accident Dylan returns to London.

There he re-encounters the master and Geoffrey.  The attraction between the two younger men is undeniable.  However, when Adler Schonberg dies, his family accuses the Romany lad of theft and hints at murder, so Geoffrey is tried, convicted and sent to prison.  The story from here is about Dylan's efforts to clear his lover's name and get him released from prison, to help him heal from the bitter experience, and for Dylan to gain acceptance and support for his musical compositions.

There is so much to like about this novel I hardly know where to start.  All three of the main characters are brilliant drawn and compelling.  The world they live in is cruel and judgmental.  Geoffrey is rejected for his ethnicity and class as well as his "unnatural" affections.  He is a complex character living with bitter memories of how his family was victimized as they traveled in their brightly colored wagons throughout England.  he has to struggle with the conflict between seeking a place in the oppressive society and yet remain true to himself and his heritage.  Dylan, utterly estranged from his family, is stronger and more able to break through the prejudices but is balked for being an innovator among the stodgy musicians of his time. 

The eroticism in this novel is so subtle you almost don't realize what you just read.  Sims can do more with the "what's going on behind closed doors"  than many more frank writers can.  Someone pointed out to me that scenes where Geoffrey plays his violin clad as a "Gypsy Prince" are as erotic by themselves as any sex scene.  Coupled with Sims' sensitive but at the same time honest portrayal of how two people can find each other  and let themselves fall in love when that very love is condemned, you wind up with as lovely and compelling a love story as any written.

Sims clearly knows music and the music world well enough to evoke it understandable for those of us less familiar.  In addition she paints the times, Victorian England and Paris, with a paintbrush that is both accurate and expressive.  The paternalistic and dangerous world of the Victorian penal system and its impact on both the free-spirited Geoffrey and the idealistic Dylan grabs your heart and squeezes it, setting you up for the tenderness with which the latter helps the former to heal.  Sims is a storyteller par excellence, her instincts for timing and detail beyond compare.  One critic referred to this novel as a work of art.  That is without doubt.

The author provided me with a text copy of this novel so that I could read and review it.  It is available on Amazon, from Dreamspinner, and at AllRomance EBooks.  For the sake of full disclosure, I will share that Ruth Sims is a member of a mutual critiquing group I am in.

The Reavers, by George MacDonald Fraser

The Reavers

George MacDonald Fraser

This novel is cute... I guess.  I read fraser's similar novel The Pyrates many years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it.   Maybe two novels of this ilk is too much of a good thing, I don't know.

Both books take quintessentially romantic historical themes and throw in lots of humorous anachronistic references and funny plays on words.    With The Pyrates it was the swashbuckling and romanticized period of the Captain Jack Sparrow types, based around one actual pirate named Calico Jack Rackham.  The Reavers takes place in about 1599 in the border country between England and Scotland not too long before James VI of Scotland became James I of England when Elizabeth I died childless.  In fact James and his accession to the English throne figures centrally in the novel to hilarious results.

Basically what you have here is the story of Archie Noble, a double-nought spy for the Tudor era version of MI-5.  "Bonny" Gilderoy is his counterpart in Scotland and his deadly rival.  They both fall in love with Lady Godiva.. no, not that one.. an entirley fictional Tudor era heiress whose father became rich thanks to exclusive rights to the monosodium glutamate trade by Henry VII.  (I think you are probably getting the picture now.)  Noble accidentally uncovers a plot by Spanish operatives to substitute James VI with an imposter who would then ascend to the English throne and allow Spain to move in and get revenge for the Armada.  The bad guys in this are a wizard, a Spanish don named Collapso, a Scottish drunk called the Earl of Anguish, a fanatical inquisator named Fra Bentos, and most colorful of all, a monstrously beautiful and deadly female spuy named La Infamosa.  When Archie is not fretting over his humble bith, Godiva is not fussing at her companion, Kiley, for stealilng her clothes, Gilderoy is not kissing some woman stuporous, La Infamosa is not contemplating the most diabolical death for our heroes, and James VI is not screaming at people for smoking, then.... wel, actually, that's pretty much it.

I only got a couple good guffaws out of this novel.  One was when ble tells a villain, "You feeling lucky, punk?  Go ahead, make my sennight."  An awful lot of the jokes refer to modern British poppular culture about which this Yank was clueless.  The few jokes of that ilk that referred to medieval and Renaissance culture I got, like the fact one Scottish laird has "Percy-skin curtains".  OUr heroes and villains alike find themselves in nightclubs and James Bond villain like lairs, which I am sorry to say just got laid on a little too thick for me.  I do have to admit Walsingham struggling with spy dispatches and wishing he had a computer was kinda funny.  A sign of the times, I found the constant use of the perjorative "dago"rather off-putting since the novel doesn't try not to be as contemporary to its readers as it is to Gloriana.  The ending is adorable.

I downloaded this novel from the National Library Servicves BARD catalog.  The narrator was one I know from Morgan llywelyn novels and was excellent with all the accents, though she was so good with some of the Scots that I couldn't understand a word they sid.

But Gilderpy is indeed appealing... as they say, va-va-va-voom.

Gallows Thief, by Bernard Cornwell

Gallows Thief

Bernard Cornwell

If you think you are getting away from Sharpe with this novel, and frankly I have no idea why you would want to, forget it.  The nero, Sandman, is what Sharpe would have been if he had been born not a pauper.  And Our Hero, Sharpe, shows up incognito in one of Sandman's memories of crossing the Pyrenees during the Peninsular Wars.  i will have to watch for Sandman when we read one of the nexct Sharpe novels.  needless to say, running into him in this novel tickled my husband and me rifleman green.

So back to this book.  If Cornwell meant it to be the first in a series, and the setup of Sandman and Berrigan as a team seems to suggest that, I hope he pursues that plan.  Unlike most of his period fiction, this novel is a m urder mystery and investigation.  Sandman is called out of unemployment by the Home Secretary to re-investigate a murder that has already been adjudicated, and the convicted man, a gay painter,  is days away from hanging.  It is the period after Waterloo when the economy is in the toilet and riots and crime are way up, giving the grim but factual Jemmy Boddington, the hangman of Newgate Gaol, lots of work.  Sandman proves to be an apt investigator and is quickly convinced that the painter is not guilty.  Through his dashes about the country lanes and infiltration into a scandalous men's private club he finds out enough to at least get the poor man reprieved and perhaps even to get the real killer caught, tried, and hanged.  meanwhile he is fretting over the fact that his fiancee dumped him when he lost all his money thanks to his scoundrel late father's debts.  He thought Eleanor loved him.  Didn't she?

The story is fairly standard murder investigation Regency-style.  I have to boast that I was pretty sure of the identity of the killer reasonably early.  (I was right.)  Cornwell is a terrific storyteller, and as usual his characters are a joy, both bad guys and good guys.  Sandman is a hardened veteran officer who while striving for honor and dignity is not averse to losing his temper when sufficiently provoked and testing the other guy's steel, litrally.  He seems to relate to the world in terms of who was in what regiment and where.  Sgt. Berrigan starts out as the main muscle for the effete Seraphim Club but early on allies with Sandman, and is a satisfying coarse, pragmatic man.  Sally Hood, Sandman's neighbor, is delightfully spunky and worldly.  Her brother, the highwayman, behs for a book of his own. Sandman's best friend, Lord Alexander, is cricket-cracy but also wise, progressive, and at long last, a decently positive disabled character. Between Sally and Sandman's Eleanor, Cornwell has improved his average on strong heroies.

The novel is as much about the cruelty of hanging as anything.  Cornwell learned all he could of the repulsive practice, which flourished during this period in England.  It is also about the corruption and class oppression of the court system.  Not only is the act of hanging horrendous, the authorities' confidence that all who were hanged were fairly tried and found guilty is a major villain in this piece.

My husband Jim read this novel to me aloud as a change from our succession of Sharpe novels.  Now back to them!