Gaffney, Patricia - Sweet Everlasting

I have done nothing this weekend except lounge around in bed and read. A brief break was taken to lounge on the couch to watch The Jane Austen Book Club (verdict: Grigg is very cute. The movie is very fuzzy. I do not remember the book at all, but I suspect that contributed to my enjoyment of the movie.). Another brief break was taken to lounge in the bathtub and read with the rats.

I should probably feel lazy, but instead I feel very happy and relaxed.

Anyway, Dr. Tyler Wilkes has accepted a post in the backwoods of Pennsylvania after recovering from a bout of yellow fever during his time in Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Carrie Wiggins is a shy mute girl who loves animals, and Tyler soon finds himself intrigued by her.

Gaffney tends to write romances that focus on the romance, not on plot or sex; I like her focus on characterization and two people getting to know each other. Unfortunately, the general lack of plot usually leads to some contrivances near the end, when she tries to come up with something to keep the lovers apart. There was a little of that in this book, though not as much.

I'm fond of this book just for the setting: turn-of-the-century America doesn't get many romances written in it, which is a shame. I love the details of Tyler's medical practice and his interest in epidemiology, the information about Carrie's love of wildlife and plants. I also like the fact that the book doesn't handwave Tyler and Carrie's class differences, and Tyler's decisions in particular make sense, though they're boneheaded from a romance point of view.

What threw me out was Carrie's complete unselfishness and sweetness -- through the entire book, she expects nothing from Tyler and gives everything away. And of course, though she's the town outcast, her amazing sweetness always shines through and wins people over. I appreciate that the conflict was driven by internal conflict (Carrie doesn't want to chain Tyler down), but in the end, Carrie was too self-sacrificing for me. I don't think she gets angry at anyone in the entire book, and there are definitely parts in which I would have whapped people over the head.

So... I liked the break from the increasing trend toward gutsy heroines and alpha males (I have no problem with gutsy heroines, but they almost always seem to be accompanied by alpha males, whom I am throughly sick of), and I very much liked the focus on the romance, not on two people in lust. But in the end, it wasn't convincing enough to win me over.

ETA: Oh, I forgot, I had the standard romance class issues with this book, as it comes complete with the brutish lower-class suitor.

Singh, Nalini - Visions of Heat

Faith NightStar (this is a PsyClan name, not a pretendian one, I think) is one of the world's top F-Psy; she forecasts business trends with unerring accuracy and can even be prompted by triggers, further upping her value. But lately, she's been getting visions of horrible violence, disturbing because the Silence has supposedly wiped emotion from all of the Psy. She ends up getting help from a leopard Changeling clan, though she's instantly attracted to a jaguar Changeling, Vaughn.

Wow, that was a lot of information.

I picked this up in a used bookstore after reading magicnoire's rec of Singh's first book. I couldn't tell if the heroine of this one is multiracial or not (ditto with the hero), but in general, the book has a lot of side characters who just happen to be Asian or Caribbean or etc., which is promising.

This had pretty much everything I am sick of in romances -- the clear signs of a series, including way too much information about the couple from the previous book and a bazillion alpha males, each more alpha than the last; Very Special eyes -- all cardinal Psys have eyes like the night sky, completely black with spots of white and occasional lightning depending on mood; instant lust; extreme and literal alpha maleness complete with almost biologically ordained protectiveness; and psychic mating.

On the other hand, what made me keep reading was how it differed from paranormals I've read in the past. First, the psychic mating is an optional life-long bond, unlike most forced soulmate bonds. And even though the heroine from the first book was an empath, Faith is icy cold. Her breaking away from emotionless Silence went a little too fast for me to entirely believe it, but I like that she still retains her brain for logic and strategy. I rolled my eyes at the hero's Angsty Past and his jaguar-ness and growling, but it was a pleasant surprise to discover that the bulk of the book was about Faith -- I think we get one or two mentions of the hero's Angsty Past, and the rest is all about Faith breaking away from the only society she's known and avenging herself on her sister's killer. I approve!

And while the power dynamic is still a little too imbalanced for me to like, particularly the focus on male physical strength and sexuality, I was happily surprised when the very alpha Vaughn actually lets Faith go off on her own and explicitly says he trusts her strength enough to just watch her back for her instead of jumping in himself. And! Giant bonus points for finally tying the guy up during sex, even though he's still too commanding for it to be totally trope-breaking.

I also wish there were less about jaguar-ness and cat-ness and other such animalistic descriptions, though at least they're literal. Also also, I wanted more female Changelings and more male Psys, as the story structure and social set up of the Psys basically calls for alpha Changelings and Psys learning to get in touch with their feelings. Still, I'm glad that there's a divorce between physical strength/sexual charisma and emotional vulnerability in that the men seem to be much more primed to fall in love than the women.

I've also grown very interested in the world; it's much deeper and richer than past paranormals I've read, and it has psychics running corporations and forming psychic webs! Much of my dislike of the male-Changeling/female-Psy pairings and potential essentialism is also diffused by getting a broader look at Psy society, though Changeling society still feels largely male.

Plus, the next book has psychically wounded female wolf Changeling who reacts to psychic damage by getting more violent + ex-assassin Psy guy, and it is now on hold at the library.

Verdict so far: not completely a fan yet, but Singh's doing enough interesting and different things for me to overlook the tropes I dislike.

ETA: OMG! I totally didn't comment on this at first because I didn't realize. But, people, the couple from the first book? The woman is not pregnant! There are no adorable children running around at their feet! This book does not end with Faith pregnant!

Manning, Frankie, with Cynthia Millman - Frankie Manning: Ambassador of Lindy Hop

Frankie Manning's one of the giant names in lindy hop -- he invented the first aerial (the throws you usually see in movies) and choreographed the first ensemble lindy routine, he was a key choreographer and dancer in the very influential Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, he started dancing less upright and more angled to the ground (now a tell-tale feature of lindy), and he's been one of the key resources in the late lindy revival, along with Norma Miller.

And for what he didn't do himself, he was there to witness -- the formation of Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, George "Shorty" Snowden coining the name "lindy hop" after Lindbergh's hop across the Atlantic, the birth of lindy as a dance separate from the Charleston and collegiate shag, and the growth of the Savoy Ballroom as one of the centers of lindy.

His biography is fun to read as well; Millman preserves Manning's casual voice and his love of pranks and his modesty shines through. It's a little hard to see how influential Manning is just from his biography, as he has a tendency to downplay his role in things.

My favorite parts were the ones about the birth of lindy, from Manning dancing at the Renaissance Ballroom and later "graduating" to the Savoy, the development of swing-outs and breakaways, watching all the dancers playing with Charleston and incorporating steps and improvising, all the things that I love about lindy today. Unfortunately, that's just one part of the book. Most of the rest of it is on Manning's career as a professional dancer and choreographer in Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, a loose group that eventually branched out to many dancers and groups, all under the management of Herbert "Whitey" White (named so after the white stripe in his hair, not because he was white).

I'm not particularly interested in the backstage of show business, and usually when I am, it's on a more sociological and less personal level. I got the feeling that Manning didn't particularly like blaming anyone or anything; his comments about racism and sexism are fairly minor and usually confined to the most egregious examples, or examples that turned out in his favor. I don't blame him for this, and I was mostly able to fill in the blanks from what I got out of Dixon Gottschild's Waltzing in the Dark, a sociological critique of race politics in the swing era dance industry.

I would have also liked more pictures and video footage to go along with Manning's explanations and am sad that we have no film records of normal social dancing at the Savoy (most swing era lindy hop we see is from two films, both of which Manning was involved in, and it's much more showy and exhibition-focused than social lindy). I would have also liked more of Manning's thoughts on the swing revival starting around the 1980s, particularly on how style has changed and the race differences, but most of that chapter just focused on how happy he was to be dancing again (which is awesome!).

So, for those interested in lindy hop history, the second and last sections were the most interesting for me. There's not much sociological analysis, but as a first-hand narrative, we probably aren't going to get anything better, given that Shorty Snowden and Whitey White passed away a while ago (Norma Miller! Write a biography?). For those interested in show business, I suspect the other sections will be much more interesting. In conclusion: a very necessary read for lindy history, even though I got bored at times.