Black Trillium

1990, 1991 Bantam edition
Marion Zimmer Bradley, Julian May & Andre Norton
Black Trillium
Bought new for $5.99
Very worn paperback
B

Satisfying fantasy novel, in fact I think it holds up better than Bradley's Mists of Avalon and Firebrand.  Each author wrote the thread of the story for one of the triplet princesses, with Bradley (no surprise) taking scholarly Haramis.  I'm guessing that her name is inspired by Aramis of the Three Musketeers, while sweet blonde Anigel is just "angel" with an extra letter.  (No idea where Kadiya comes from.)  Yes, you can argue that the story is both implausible and formulaic, with the triplets having completely different hair and eye colors, not to mention heights, and of course totally different personalities.  They have their individual quests but must unite to save their land.  You could also quibble that Haramis being melted with one flaming kiss from the evil sorcerer is too bodice-rippery, especially since she's supposed to be the sensible one.

No matter.  The book held my interest throughout, and I especially liked the setting of a swampy kingdom, so different from other fantasy and sci-fi that I've read.  (There's a handy map, as well as an inset with portraits of the princesses.)  I went on to read May's Saga of Pliocene Exile series, which started out well and then got deeply annoying by the third book, so I gave up on it.  I did like the one Andre Norton book I got from the library.  (Both May and Norton are/were female, despite the first names.  Norton died in '05, May is now 81.)  I also read one of the four sequels that the co-authors wrote as individuals later in the '90s, probably May's Blood Trillium (1992), but found it disappointing.  Perhaps, as with the triplets, the writers are stronger together than apart.

Fudge-a-Mania

1990, 1991 Yearling edition
Judy Blume
Fudge-a-Mania
Possibly bought newish for $3.50
Worn paperback
C+

Well, clearly I found this at least as forgettable as Just as Long as We're Together, since I didn't even remember that I owned any of the "Fudge" books.  It's fourth in the series if you count Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, which you probably should, since Sheila's family and Fudge's are sharing a house in Maine one summer.  A summer whose year Blume coyly omits, but August 28th is a Saturday, so it's possibly 1982, although considering that Fudge's older brother Peter was "a fourth-grade nothing" in 1972 and is now 11 or 12, time obviously moves much more slowly for the Hatcher family.  The two families become related when one grandmother marries a grandfather, a romance that seems rushed to me as well as to their children.  Meanwhile, Peter has a crush on a girl of about 17.  And Fudge wants to marry Sheila.  Various misadventures ensue.  A decent time-killer.

I do not own the next (and still last) book, 2002's Double Fudge.

First Hubby

1990, first edition, from Villard Books
Roy Blount, Jr.
First Hubby
Original price $18.95, purchase price $3.39
OK condition hardcover
B-

The bio paragraph says Blount "is a novelist.  Now."  Yes, but the book often feels like a collection of Blount's essays loosely strung to a loose plot.  First-person narrator (in the form of a diary) Guy Fox (the book has lots of wordplay) is a humorist, so this isn't much of a stretch, but Blount did have to imagine what it would be like to be the "first male First Lady."  The book is set the summer of 1993, shortly after his wife Clementine has risen from V.P., the previous President having been killed by a random falling fish.  And, yes, in the real 1993 (and ever after) the actual First Spouse was accused of controlling the President.  Guy doesn't even want to be Second Hubby.  He just wants to go home.  But his wife likes running the country, and he's always tried to be supportive, except the time he ran out on her and regretted it.

The book isn't as funny or as insightful as Blount hopes, although of course I always find myself rooting for him.  That the novel works at all probably has more to do with that everyone in it-- even Qadhafi!-- comes across as likable.  I also like the way Blount portrays a long-term marriage, where the couple still don't quite communicate but they try, and they still love each other, especially in bed.  This is also the second novel in a row where the issue of an unplanned pregnancy comes up, and Blount deals with it with more complexity than Binchy does.  It's implied that Clementine (who's 43 and obviously has a lot to cope with) will go through with it, after initially planning an abortion, but either way, she and Guy will talk that, and everything else, out.

Circle of Friends

1990, 1991 Dell edition
Maeve Binchy
Circle of Friends
Original price $6.50, purchase price $3.25
Very worn paperback with split spine
B-

I really enjoyed the 1995 film version (Minnie Driver's debut), but I haven't seen it since, so I don't know if it would bother me as much as this book now does.  My dislike ranges from an anachronism worse than the 1957 Twist in Echoes to the central romance.  The former is a 1957 letter that says in part, "She has read aloud to me your letters about being groovy and inviting me to where the action is.  She has begun to ask me what 'turning someone on' is about, and why do people say 'It's been real.'"  (What happened to Binchy in 1957?  Some time-travel mishap?) 

As for the romance, Benny (short for Bernadette) is very insecure and can't believe that someone as handsome, charming, and popular as Jack would want her for his girlfriend.  The tag on this edition says, "For everyone who ever thought the person they loved was out of their reach."  Translation, "You folks are damn lucky if it's true, because that unattainable guy would try to pressure you into sex and then cheat on you with one of your friends, who's secretly pregnant by another guy, who won't marry her.  But it could be worse, since your best friend would threaten her with a knife and cause her to have a miscarriage, so your ex won't marry her and will then want you back, but you'd have moved on by then."  Not to mention that Jack offers Benny almost zero support when her father dies and she suspects (correctly) that the family store's "loyal" employee is embezzling.  All Jack does is whinge about how she doesn't spend more time in town.  (They're students in Dublin, and she commutes almost daily to and from the small town of Knockglen.)

So what did I like?  I liked the friendship between Benny and Eve (the knife-wielder).  I liked Eve's story much more than Benny's, including her prickly relationship with her late mother's family.  As always, I liked Binchy's view of small-town life.  (Dublin is just sketched in, and I didn't really get a sense of student life, beyond scarves and fly-cemeteries [a type of pastry].)  There were things here and there I liked.  And I have to admit that I like that Binchy resisted the temptation that the film-makers gave into, of giving Jack and Benny a "happy" ending.  (And, no, nobody makes a Jack Benny joke, which would at least be more timely than a teddy-boy writing letters like a hippie.)

Next up on the Binchy list, 1992's The Copper Beech....

New, Improved! Dykes to Watch Out For

1990, possible first edition, although bought "new" almost a decade later, published by Firebrand Books
Alison Bechdel
New, Improved! Dykes to Watch Out For
Original price unknown, purchase price $4.00
Slightly worn paperback
B

At least as good as the previous collection, this one introduces Lois's roommates black college professor Ginger and Asian therapy addict Sparrow.  (Or did Ginger appear briefly before?)  Clarice has a one-night stand with Ginger, which puts a strain on her relationship with Toni, although they go to couples counseling and eventually talk marriage.  Meanwhile, Mo is still with Harriet, although it takes her a year to be able to say "I love you."  Lois, who usually has flings, becomes a recently divorced older woman's "secondary."  Sparrow doesn't seem to have a love life yet.  No major job changes.  And since this covers '88 to '90, there's the shift from Reagan to Bush I, with Mo going through a bout of political indifference.

As before, I wanted to keep reading.  (Next up will be 1992's Dykes to Watch Out For: The Sequel.)  One thing I felt was done better than before was the interaction of the characters, both in a soap-opera sense of "Oh no!  Do you think I should tell ______ what they did?", and in the sense of characters arguing and kidding around.  Bechdel now has her basic cast and it's a good blend of personalities.

Unlike the last book, and many of the later ones, this doesn't conclude with an extended story.  (Last time was Mo and Harriet's first night together.)  This one just asks a bunch of soap-operatic questions, concluding, "Don't touch that remote control!"  I wish I didn't have to.

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle

1990, 1992 Avon Flare edition
Avi
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
Possibly bought new for $4.50
Worn paperback
B-

This book won several awards, in both teen and child categories, and it's easy to see why.  It's got adventure, historical/nautical details, and a heroine who transforms from docile but snobbish pre-Victorian doll to open-minded swashbuckler.  (A transformation not unlike that of Tandy in Captain Salt in Oz.)  What I found most interesting this time was the question of whom and what to trust.  Thirteen-year-old Charlotte initially sides with the captain because he reminds her of her father.  By the end, after seeing what a tyrant the captain is, she's prepared to realize that Papa isn't the wonderful man she remembers.  In contrast, she initially distrusts Zachariah because he's an old (well, fiftyish) black sailor, but he becomes her best friend.  Charlotte also questions the rules she's been raised with, and during her "trial" she emphasizes that "unusual" does not mean "unnatural." 

There's a transgender aspect to the book in that she dresses as a boy and cuts her hair, in order to work on the ship, although there's not a conscious sexual aspect to this.  The crew agree to treat her as a "brother," and there's never the sexual threat/promise of the later Jacky Faber series, where the main character does pass as a boy for months at a time.  (I've read several of the books but don't own any.)  That, along with the violence being not very explicit, makes me put this in the children's rather than YA category.  (Even the swearing is discreet.)

If I can't rate the book higher, it's that it doesn't draw me in as much as, say, Island of the Blue Dolphins.  It's a pleasant read, with some interesting undercurrents, but no more than that.

Shelley II: The Middle of My Century

1989, 1990 Pocket Books edition
Shelley Winters
Shelley II: The Middle of My Century
Possibly bought newish for $5.95
Very worn paperback
B-

I didn't find this as funny or overall good as the previous book, although things pick up once she divorces Tony Franciosa.  The anecdote about how Richard Nixon became her housesitter, for instance, was good.  She covers from her divorce from Vittorio Gassman to JFK's assassination, with some glimpses of her life in the '70s and '80s.  As I noted with Shelley I, she hoped to write a third autobiography but never got around to it.  As before, she juggles the order on some things, including her age.  (She's 32 a few pages after she's 33, and then she's 30 sometime after that.)

She writes here that she'd done only one sitcom, but a couple years after this she started appearing as the beloved grandmother of the title character on Roseanne.  She was a bit young, in her 70s, for the role (and only seven years older than "daughter" Estelle Parsons), but she did look and act uncannily like Roseanne.  Winters didn't make it to a century, dying at 85 in 2006.  She swears here she had no intention of getting married again, but she did marry on her deathbed.

This is not only the third book in a row with the word "my" in the title, but it marks the end of the 1980s.  With 175 posts, this is a new record, although I suspect that the 1990s will eventually pass it.