Escaping North Korea

Before I read Escaping North Korea (Mike Kim, 2008), I never could've imagined seeing contemporary China as a place of freedom and refuge. But to refugees from North Korea, it's exactly that--a place of comparative political and religious freedom, and, oh, plentiful food.

Kim, a Korean-American Christian, spent four years in China near the North Korean border, helping a network of house churches that protect North Korean refugees. His book is a straightforward account of what he saw and heard from escapees. It's not artfully written or filled with sophisticated political analysis, but there's a certain power in the straightforward simplicity of the accounting of horrors. It's mindboggling, really, to think of a country as thoroughly broken as North Korea, and sobering to speculate on how much it would take to rehabilitate it if Kim Jong-Il's regime collapsed tomorrow.

But, as you'd expect in this kind of book, there's hope, too. If you can read the "Freedom on the Fourth" chapter without tearing up, you're made of sterner stuff than I am.

The Fiery Cross

There's no pleasure quite like that of getting lost in a good book, particularly a good long book, and for the past few days I've been doing my best to escape into the North Carolina backcountry, 1770-72. That's the setting of The Fiery Cross (2001), fifth installment in Diana Gabaldon's series about a 20th-century English nurse who stumbles through a stone circle and finds herself in 18th century Scotland. (And, eventually, North Carolina, though I don't want to spoil the plot by giving the whys and hows. Go read the books, starting with Outlander. They're top-quality intelligent escapism.)

There's not a lot of plot to The Fiery Cross, but that didn't bother me. (Except in one spot, very near the end, about which I'll only say that Brianna clearly needs to study the Evil Overlord List.) It's mostly a chance to visit a three-dimensional world and richly developed characters. And that's what I love most as a reader. Plot is window-dressing. I enjoyed this book so much that I'd like to pick up A Breath of Snow and Ashes immediately to find out what happens next. But I won't. I have library books that must be read before they're due back.

The Ramshackle Suitor

Whenever I'm in a used bookstore, thrift store, or library book sale, I look for traditional Regency romances. Major print publishers abandoned them a few years ago, since their sales went into a decline as longer, sexier Regency-set historicals came to dominate the market. I was sad to see them go--at their best they have a wit and a historical realism that's harder to find in newer romances.

The Ramshackle Suitor (Nancy Butler, 2000) isn't the kind of book that will stay with you forever, but it's a pleasant read with an unusual setting (Isle of Man) and central couple (heroine is five years older and in many ways better educated than the hero).

Inspiration and Incarnation

Inspiration and Incarnation (Peter Enns, 2005) attempts, I think successfully, to balance the traditional Christian view of scripture as inspired by God while looking honestly at internal contradictions, parallels with other ancient literature, and the way New Testament writers cite the Old Testament (by modern standards, wildly out of context at times). Enns takes an incarnational approach, treating the Bible as a way God comes among people, meeting them where they are--which means it's unfair and inappropriate to evaluate its approach to history by modern standards of science and historicity. He also views the contradictions and complexities of scripture as a feature, not a bug--life is complex and contradictory, so why should God's message to humanity be any different?

I wish I'd had a book like this when I was first wrestling with serious doubts 10-15 years ago. I think it would've spared me a lot of angst.

The annual Powell's haul

Roughly once a year I make it down to Portland, and I can't come here without visiting Powell's--an amazing, ginormous bookstore with both used and new stock. It's one of my favorite places in the whole world. I could easily lose myself in there for days.

Today I ended up with $56 in store credit from the used books I'd brought down to trade in, so I kinda went wild (spending way more than $56, but I only get there once a year). Here's the list. It's almost all nonfiction, because I headed up to the history department first and easily could've spent my entire budget and then some just on the Britain and Ireland shelves.

THE WORLD OF DANIEL O'CONNELL, by Donal McCartney - eventually my WIP world will include Ireland, so I'm starting to stock up on sources on Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries.

THE ART OF WAR, Antoine Henri Jomini - if I'm going to invent Napoleonic-era battles for my alternative history, I might as well study the actual theory of the era.

WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT OF THE NAPOLEONIC WARS, Philip Haythornthwaite - I'm always seeking books to help me with the everyday details of my characters' lives.

NAPOLEON, Paul Johnson - a brief biography, and I'm hoping a balanced one. Napoleon tends to be portrayed as either the greatest man EVER or as lacking any redeeming qualities whatsoever. The former makes me roll my Anglocentric Wellington-fangirl eyes forever, while the latter...I'm sorry, you just can't compare Napoleon to Hitler. Not even the same league. Really. Which would you rather live in, Napoleonic France or Nazi Germany?

THREE NAPOLEONIC BATTLES, Harold T. Parker - analyzes the battles of Friedland, Aspern-Essling, and Waterloo.

ORGANIZING FROM THE INSIDE OUT, Julie Morgenstern - a resource for my ongoing struggle to organize my stuff and my life.

THE COMPLETE WRITER'S GUIDE TO HEROES & HEROINES, Tami D. Cowden, Caro LaFever, Sue Viders - a book on archetypes. I was at a presentation based on this book and found it intriguing.

PASSION & PRINCIPLE: THE LOVES AND LIVES OF REGENCY WOMEN, Jane Aiken Hodge - because I'm not only interested in war.

THE YEAR OF LIBERTY: THE HISTORY OF THE GREAT IRISH REBELLION OF 1798, Thomas Pakenham - more Irish history.

FOOD MATTERS, Mark Bittman - decided I needed my own copy.

NAPOLEON AND HIS COLLABORATORS, Isser Woloch - how Napoleon became First Consul and then Emperor, and who supported him along the way

THE BOOKSELLER'S DAUGHTER, Pam Rosenthal - my one fiction purchase, a historical romance set in France just before the Revolution.

HOW TO GROW A NOVEL, Sol Stein - looked like it might have good advice for my style of writing.

ACCESS 2003 BIBLE, Cary N. Prague, Michael R. Irwin, Jennifer Reardon - hopefully contains the solutions to a pesky database problem or two at work.

Oh, and I got my daughter all the Martha Speaks books that she doesn't yet have.

Saxons, Vikings, and Celts

In Saxons, Vikings, and Celts (2006), Bryan Sykes traces the genetic origins of Britain and Ireland through analysis of mitochondrial DNA (direct maternal lineage) and Y-chromosomes (direct paternal lineage). It's fascinating stuff if, like me, you geek out over the intersection between science and history. Sykes looks at what history and legend claim for British ancestry, then compares it with what the DNA tells us.

Basically, the British Isles are persistently Celtic. (Though Celtic doesn't necessarily mean what you think it does--think Celtic speakers who'd been in Britain since Mesolithic times or came by sea from Iberia rather than descendants of an invasion by the Celts of Central Europe.) Even in areas heavily settled by Saxons and Vikings, over half the mDNA and Y lineages are Celtic. And the maternal and paternal lines don't necessarily match, showing that invaders often fathered children with local women rather than bringing wives from their own people, and in some cases a "Genghis Khan effect," wherein one man or a closely related group of men is disproportionately represented in the gene pool.

Naamah's Kiss

With Naamah's Kiss (2009), Jacqueline Carey opens a new series set in the same alternative Earth of the Kushiel series. A hundred years and change have passed, so Phedre, Joscelin, Imriel, Sidonie, and the rest are all part of history and legend. The new heroine is Moirin, half D'Angeline (French) and half Alban (British), and raised as a hermit even though she's kin to the royal houses of both kingdoms. She goes on a quest to find her gods-decreed destiny and her unknown D'Angeline father and gets involved in courtly intrigue, a love triangle, and dangerous magic, before ultimately going on a journey halfway around the world to rescue an imperial princess of Ch'in.

In other words, it's a great big sexy epic adventure, and if you enjoyed the Kushiel books, you'll like this one, too. I wasn't as immediately enthralled as I was my first time reading Kushiel's Dart. Moirin is in some ways a milder presence than Phedre, and I spent most of the second quarter or so of the book wanting to shake her and insist that she grow a backbone. But then she did, and by the time she left for Ch'in, I was well and truly hooked.

I'm looking forward to the rest of Moirin's story, but I'll miss some of the characters I know are one-offs. And I'm wondering just how far Carey intends to take her loose parallels with our world. It's probably a few generations into the future, but a D'Angeline Revolution has the potential to be interesting, IMO.

Usual caveats for this universe apply: these have far more sex than most epic fantasy, and while they don't bother me in this regard, some Christians might be uncomfortable with her treatment of God, Jesus, angels, etc. I read it as an alternate world rather than an attack on my world and beliefs, but your comfort zone may vary.