In My Mailbox (37) and weekend update

This meme is hosted by The Story Siren.

Spring has FINALLY sprung! It's T-shirt weather, there's some vitamin D circulating through my body and I bought a pair of new sunglasses. Actually I went a bit nuts on the shopping yesterday. Two new outfits and a bra set from Pleasure State, who make some of the prettiest lingerie around. I am in saving-for-OS mode, but when I went to cancel my mobile phone carrier so I could switch to another they offered me a crazy huge discount to stay. So I did. Which means I had several hundred dollars worth of FREE MONEY to play with and what do you do with free money? YOU GO SHOPPING.

I have been finishing up book two in my series, which is oddly PANIC INDUCING. I have set myself a deadline: October 5. Which is in TWO DAYS. It doesn't have to be perfect then but it needs to be done. There's only about 1500 words left to write and I'm probably going to bawl all the way through them.

There's a video on YouTube that's a friend sent to me this morning and I am dying to post it here, but it's not very PG-13. Actually, not at ALL. It's an homage to Ray Bradbury and it is the funniest thing I have seen all year. Girl after my own heart! If you've seen it you'll know what I mean. Even funnier than the one that came out of Alabama a few months back. ("Run and tell THAT, homeboy!") There are some very funny and talented songwriters out there.

For review:

Embrace, Jessica Shirvington
(Hachette Australia, October 14)

Violet Eden is dreading her seventeenth birthday dinner. After all, it’s hard to get too excited about the day that marks the anniversary of your mother’s death. The one bright spot is that Lincoln will be there. Sexy, mature and aloof, he is Violet’s idea of perfection. But why does he seem so reluctant to be anything more than a friend?

After he gives her the world’s most incredible kiss – and then abandons her on her front doorstep – Violet is determined to get some answers. But nothing could have prepared her for Lincoln’s explanation: he is Grigori – part angel and part human – and Violet is his eternal partner.

Without warning, Violet’s world is turned upside down. She never believed in God, let alone angels. But there’s no denying the strange changes in her body ... and her feelings for Lincoln. Suddenly, she can’t stand to be around him. Luckily, Phoenix, an exiled angel, has come into her life. He’s intense and enigmatic, but at least he never lied to her.

As Violet gets caught up in an ancient battle between dark and light, she must choose her path. The wrong choice could cost not only her life, but her eternity...

Jessica Shirvington is Australian and married to Matt Shirvington, the Olympian athlete and FOXTEL presenter.

Woo! Aussie books rule! Happy weekend all.

Review: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Ah, classic dystopian fiction! Cold War-era dystopian fiction, no less. Published in 1953, Bradbury's short novel tells of a society in which firemen start fires instead of putting them out. The object of incineration is books, the houses in which they abide and, sometimes, even the occupants.

Guy Montag is one such fireman. He lives for the pleasure of burning until he meets a girl who makes him question the purpose of his occupation. Did firemen always start fires, or did they once put them out? Like in Nineteen Eighty-Four, state-sanctioned censorship and the rewriting of history is rife.

Fahrenheit 451 is set against the backdrop of impending nuclear war, but I suspected while reading this novel that it was either a fictional war or a perpetual state of strife that the government encouraged in order to instill fear and obedience into its citizens. A world without writing is a world in which the government can easily dupe it citizens, after all, as there are few ways that dissenters can communicate their doubts and opinions. But rather than a treatise on the sinister uses of censorship by the government, Bradbury is making a statement about that opiate of the masses, television. Human feeling and relationships have given way to parlors lined with massive interactive television screens. Characters on lively and banal shows have replaced family. The Bible, now banned, has been replaced by a televised Jesus who peddles brands alongside his sermons.

Guy Montag, the protagonist, in discussion with Faber, a man who has dared to hold onto his books (p. 82):

"Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me. I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read."

Faber examined Montag's thin, blue-jowled face. "How did you get shaken up? What knocked the torch out of your hands?"

"I don't know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought the books might help."

It's tempting to believe that books are intrinsically noble and forthright creatures. That they improve minds by their mere existence. But Faber replies, "It's not the books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books."

When I read that I got that delightful yes! feeling that comes from reading something that's so spot on. I've always felt that the people and situations contained in books are much more real than representations of reality that are portrayed through film and song. And fiction aside, how could masterpieces like On the Origin of Species be communicated if not through prose?

Fahrenheit 451 is a character-driven novel, which is unusual for dystopian fiction. Often its events that force the main character into action, but in this case it's the people that Montag interacts with. There's something of the Gary Stu/Mary Sue about him, but that's easily forgivable as the rest of the novel is so exceptional. The writing itself is vibrant, almost melodramatic, in places. I enjoy a dialogue-heavy book, and Bradbury's novel has plenty of banter and just enough description. And the climax is just excellent.