Lurlene's Birthright

So today, in addition to the staggering accomplishment of finally finishing The Name of the Rose after 3 months of reading it (I think this book disproved the existence of God, like as an aside at the last minute), I read A Summer to Die, by Lois Lowry. This was a classic of my youth--I remember reading it a few times, and how much I loved it. When I thought of it the other day, I had to look up the author, and I was surprised to find that it was Lois Lowry, who wrote a lot of respected books--The Giver, Number the Stars--and that this was her first book.

So it wasn't the teen tragedy melo-queen, Lurlene McDaniels (Too Young To Die, I Don't Want To Die, Too Young To Want To Die, How Old Is Old Enough To Die?). It's really a much better book than any of hers, because it's not about the acute experience of illness, but rather a more slice-of-life story, in which death is just a part of the changing that goes on in general. It's really kind of a mood-setting story. And it's still very good.

Another interesting thing is that it was written in the late 70s. The sister's illness, which isn't named specifically till the end of the book, is leukemia, and there's a real sense that the reader is expected never to have heard of it. It talks throughout the book about her hair falling out, her face getting rounder, etc., and it's clear that she's undergoing chemotherapy, but that word is never used, either, and the symptoms are presented as though they would be unfamiliar to you, instead of being a recognizable vocabulary of illness. Because of course, chemo was brand new in the 70s, and leukemia had just barely entered the realm of curable.

Another thing this book made me think of is something I've always found interesting to look at--the qualities that make a good protagonist and a good narrator. Meg, the healthy sister, is both in this book. I've always thought that a good narrator should be someone slightly outside the norm, and maybe even outside the action--we should be watching things through the eyes of someone who is not necessarily the center of things. I don't know if that's always true, or even mostly, but I feel like you get a broader picture from such a character. Or maybe it's just that someone who fits that description is likely to start out ignorant, which makes them a good vehicle for the reader, who also begins that way.

The protagonist is also usually someone special--that just makes sense, if only because someone's bothering to tell a story about this person. So even if the person isn't innately great, or interesting, or evil, something different or special is likely to happen to them. Or maybe it's just that we're living with the person, and inside our heads, each of us is special, different, interesting.

There's also the interesting category where you get both--you get the narrator (say, Nick Carraway) who is slightly outside the action, and the protagonist (oh, let's say, Gatsby), who's something different and special and worth watching. A Summer to Die isn't really one of those books, but it feels like one, because, although the whole point is to follow Meg's transformation, that takes place through the act of watching her sister, observing her, comparing herself to her. I haven't fully thought out how this is different, or how it affects her as a narrator, but I think it's interesting in terms of these categories I set up or imagined a long time ago.

Philosophical Randomness...

So I was thinking today about an argument I've been reading about in The Name of the Rose, about the nature of laughter. There is a character who believes that laughter is the tool of the devil, because humor is dismissive of the beauty of God's world, and because mocking the devil trivializes him, which gives him power.

At some point today, I was associating this very, very important, almost life-or-death argument with something I heard on NPR. I wish I could remember what it was exactly. But I was thinking about the vital-seeming nature of the question, and the ambiguity of the arguments within the context of the times. Meaning how real these problems seemed then, and how frightening the implications, given the way spirituality worked at the time. The possibility of pleasing or angering God through laughter mattered.

The NPR piece was, I think, about environmentalism. Specifically, I think, it was about whether higher gas prices would actually be BAD for the environment, because it would encourage the use of even-worse-for-the-environment alternative fuels. (Ever heard of liquid coal? Doesn't sound good for Mother Earth, does it?)

Not really related at all, right? But what I was feeling, very strongly, was that this is a truly important question to which it's almost impossible to find an answer right now. But in the future, someday, (a thousand years from now, if we're still around), every schoolchild will know the answer to this question; no one will have arguments about it. No one will even ask themselves this question anymore.

This made a lot more sense this afternoon. My hands are cold, and I'm kind of tired and distracted.

Overdue

I barely even feel like dealing with my books right now. It's kind of depressing--November's almost half over and I've only finished three books this month. That is most of the way to the pathetic end of the scale for me--I think my average is about 7 books per month, though when I go through YA-heavy periods, it runs more toward 9 or 10. I don't know why Angels and Demons was such a monkey on my back--it was long, but good god it was fast paced! And not, not, not deep at all, no no no.

But I'm so very close to the end of The Name of the Rose that I think that will be accomplished very soon--which will be so exciting! I've been reading that book for, at the very least, 2 months. I'm pretty sure it's more like 3. I've just renewed my second copy of the translation book that goes with it--I ran out of renewals on the first one. And that was after I ran out of renewals on the copy of the actual book that I checked out at first. Props to Lynne for the long-term loan of her copy, which is trade-sized and dignified and good for reading.

I am going to have to check out one more book when I go to the library tomorrow to return books that will be one day overdue when I get them back (and the head librarian will probably give me dirty looks the whole time I'm there. Medford now leaves a sour taste in my mouth). I was asked yesterday to think of books about mourning for young adults. My first thought, instantaneously, was Judy Blume's Tiger Eyes, which is sweet and sad and perfect. But I followed that up with a vague memory of two sisters, quarreling over having to share a room when their family moves to the country, then dealing with the older sister's cancer diagnosis. It was so good--what was it? I found it pretty quickly, though only through luck--A Summer to Die, by Lois Lowry. Her first novel, can you believe it? One of the most respected YA authors of the generation, and her first book is the one I carry with me in the back of my head. Good for her.

Can't get warm--guess I'd better cuddle up and read.

The Sweet Smell of Fresh Air

Good God, at least that's over. I will point out that I predicted exactly who the bad guy was (didn't give away that as a spoiler), and I also flagged at least two peripheral details that wound up being vitally important.

One thing I'll grant him was an effective and economical use of characters. It was not one of those books in which the character list contains exactly as many people as are necessary, where you can tell who the bad guy is by the clear process of elimination. Nor did it have hundreds of extraneous characters I had to keep track of or jump back and forth between. It had just the right number of distractor chracters--though it did kill a relatively large number of them off.

Anyway, I can now move on to some of the many, many other books I have out of the library, in a desperate attempt to read them all before returning them. It's a little unrealistic as goals go--it's a busy month, Medford has unforgiving renewal policies, and I've been feeling vaguely unwell lately--stiff and sore and way too sleepy.

But I will prevail! It is my mission. Now I've turned my attention to The Position, by Meg Wolitzer (you should definitely read The Wife. Definitely.) and back to The Name of the Rose. Plus I need to work on Joan and Leave Me Alone I'm Reading. If I can finish all those by Thanksgiving-ish...well, all my goals are lacking in consequences, but they are mind and I cherish them. C'est la vie.

It Just Goes On and On (Warning: Spoilers of Awfulness Within)

Okay, if they're going to recall Angels and Demons, I decided to just plough right through it, damn the torpedoes. And I have, kicking and screaming every page, because it's so unremittingly, delightfully, shrilly badly written.

I can't, for the most part, argue with the plot--it's fast, there are twists and turns and action and murder and intrigue and suspense. There is romance, too, though that is the one part of the plot that is very poorly handled, very clunky and insincere-seeming; I understand it's been an intense five hours, and she's totally hott, but that doesn't spell a soulmate.

Aside: it's weird to read a 500+ page book that takes place all within a few hours. Usually a book this long would take days, at the very least, and I have these weird instinctive moments of thinking it's been a while, then being jerked back to "reality" by a comment about the time that's passed.

But the badness here is just so relentless that I've documented a little of it for you. Some of it might not come across as clearly as I'd like when I explain it, but I hope that at least you'll get a glimpse of the density of literary missteps here. Mind you, these are only the ones that a) bothered me enough to pick up the pen to write them down and b) could be pinpointed to a single line or a few words, as opposed to something vague or pervasive.

p. 367 "What he saw was so unexpected, so bizarre, that Langdon had to close his eyes and reopen them before his mind could take it all in." This is not the best example, but this construction (Langdon sees something so crazy he can't quite believe/process it) is used a heaping helping of times in this book. In this instance, what he sees is a building that is on fire. There is also a dead body hanging from the ceiling, which admittedly is weird. But in one of the previous instances of this construction, what startles him is a chapel with particularly elaborate carvings. Mind you, the man is an art historian (renowned symbologist, actually, but attached to the art history department).

p. 379 This is a speech by a priest we're supposed to like and trust. The book sets up what I believe is a melodramatization of what, even in the real world, is a false dichotomy of science and faith. I really, really don't get how God and science are mutually exclusive (AT ALL), and I could go on about that, but let me give you a few highlights of nonsense from this "moving and stunning speech."

• "Our sunsets have been reduced to wavelengths and frequencies." As though someone who understands the idea of wavelengths of light can't see that a sunset is beautiful.
• "Does science hold anything sacred?" Well, no, no it doesn't. Oh, except ideas like the scientific method and faith in reproducible experiments. And, from another angle, things like the fact that matter is composed of atoms, the Earth revolves around the sun, things like that.
  
• "[Science] shatters God's world into smaller and smaller pieces in quest of meaning...and all it finds are more questions." Wow, God's world is pretty fragile, huh? If it can be shattered by wondering and noticing things that are taking place in it.
• (moving on a couple of pages in the same speech) "Since the days of Galileo, the church has tried to slow the relentless march of science...always with benevolent intention." Because we would all be so much better off if we didn't know the FACT that the Earth revolves around the sun. (And let's make this clear, God set it up that way. It's just we were better off not knowing that, you see.)
• "...in your quest for smaller chips and larger profits." Wait, wait, what does science have to do with capitalism? If your argument is that capitalism is hurting more people than it's helping, we can have a conversation. But a lot of history's science was done by amateurs doing it for the love of thinking, of using the reason God gave them to observe closely the world that God put them in. You're diluting your message there, boss.

p. 390. We've moved on from the speech, and now we're with the assassin in his secret lair, which is also the ancient meeting place of the Illuminati. And as he enters this lair, where he's been living and plotting and coming and going from for some days now, he thinks, "The church of the Illuminati. The ancient Illuminati meeting room. Who would have thought it to be here?" Anyone remember the line from The Simpsons where Lisa's summing up how they wound up in the car on their way to wherever, and Homer asks her, "What are you, the narrator?"

p. 429 Our hero finds the fortress in which is concealed the assassin's lair. The assassin handily dispatched our hero a few minutes earlier, in spite of Langdon having the element of surprise and a gun. Langdon is now unarmed and alone, but he finds a network news broadcast van nearby. He offers the driver the story of his life to let him climb on the van get over the wall into the building. And what story does he give him? Does he tell him that the assassin that everyone's looking for is inside, and ask him to send backup? No--he tells him where he just came from, where the tumult is downtown, and then proceeds to storm the castle alone. Unarmed.

p. 435 "Langdon was still in a state of shock over the location of the lair." You'd think that after four hours of trekking around Rome and finding out that the Church's golden boy artist was their secret logo-creator, that secret symbols are in all their churches, that the Illuminati exist, for crying out loud, you would not go into a "state of shock" (trembling? low basal body temperature? That's a very clinical term you're using there, Mr. Brown. Or is it a <gasp!> cliche?) over the unlikely building.

p. 436 Okay, last time you met the unarmed assassin, you pointed your gun at him and shouted, in essence, "Freeze!" At which point, he disarmed you with minimal effort, finished killing his victim, and very, very nearly killed you, leaving you for dead (nice dodge, Langdon--this failure to kill you was, I'll grant you, cleverness on your part and no fault of his). So now when you approach him with no gun, only a steel pipe, but from behind and with the element of surprise, do you challenge him to a duel, or do you hit him unceremoniously over the head with your pipe? Apparently, the answer is you shout, "Get away from her!"

p. 442 "'But no one could possibly get into Vatican City right now!'

The assassin looked smug. 'Not unless he had an appointment.'

Langdon was confused. The only person expected at the Vatican right now was the person the press was calling the Eleventh Hour Samaritan--the [anonymous] person Rocher said had information that could save--"

But, I'm confused? Who could possibly be the person with an appointment who is the head terrorist? Certainly not the anonymous informant who offered valuable information to the investigation if he would only be allowed deep inside the threatened Vatican! The idea is preposterous!

I could go on. This is about 3/4 of my notes from that stretch of almost 100 pages. But I think you're getting the picture.

I want to apologize to anyone who loves this book. Like I said, the plot is keeping me right there with it. It's like reading a movie. It's got action/adventure, daring near-misses, and sweeping intrigue. It's only, you know, the writing that's a problem.

And even that is almost tipping over into being so bad it's good. My shouts of rage are starting to border on satisfaction, or even delight. It's like, have you ever seen the Nicholas Cage vampire movie? It's like that--just so awful that you can't resist.

Another Day, Nothing to Say

I'm not proud here, folks. I meant to do more reading this month, but the days go by. Tomorrow, I'm drilling firmly toward the end of Angels and Demons, because I have to get it back to the library. I'll be finishing The Name of the Rose soon. But this does not call itself interesting.

Emily and I were just having a conversation, though, about Jodi Picoult. She read My Sister's Keeper, arguably her best book, and hated it very deeply. I think this is interesting because I can't really argue with any of her observations--lots of the characters' behaviors are very unrealistic, and the topic is dealt with in some really irritating ways. The former observation, in my opinion, is a pervasive fault of Jodi Picoult, which is that characters withhold information very unnaturally in order to keep the plot of the book rollling. The latter is more up in the air, but I personally think the only offensive part of the book is the ending, which is a complete cop-out. If you're going to take such a sensitive issue and try to see it from both sides, wrestle it down, you can't let God stop the debate--you owe it to these characters to do something about it.

I'd also add that the romance between the lawyers is unnecessary and unimpressive, and that the mother's near-hysteria is ludicrous.

That said, though, I didn't think of the flaws in the book till Em pointed them out. It's funny, I thought of that as a book I liked (except for the ending). I still do, I guess, even though I can't disagree with her. I really think there's something less offensive about flaws that feel like they are coming from the overly-invasive hand of the author, rather than ones that feel woven into the fabric of the book. But isn't anything woven into the fabric of the book the hand of the author?

I'm having some trouble parsing this. For which I'm grateful, because I have something to write about. For the record, I read about three Picoult books and couldn't read anymore, because they're too much of the same thing in a row--the flaws start to glare. I recognized this a while ago. And I think I might elevate Plain Truth to my favorite of her books.

Meffuh

The Medford Public Library is not on my list of favorites right now. They want Angels and Demons back, won't let me renew it, because someone has it on reserve. There were at least 15 copies on the display I took it from, but it's not for me. I think it was actually a reserve table for the local high school, but this does not decrease my indignation, nor my conviction that being within walking distance does not bring this library up to my standards. They won't let me renew more than once, even if no one has it on reserve. And don't get me started on the crap I took for showing up one day late--two hours into the day after the due date--to pick up my reserve book.

It's all Malden now on. BPL is so much better.

It's so late, so late, so late. Technically you could say I missed blogging yesterday, but I have a strict policy that it's not tomorrow till after I've gone to bed and gotten up again, or until I give up on the chance to go to bed at all. So, this being my blog, this counts for Friday.

Out.

Catching Up With Me

Lord, blogging every day is hard! Especially when I spent my free time today curled up on the couch with my head under a blanket, trying to keep warm while I half napped, half listened to Law & Order.

But I have to say, this library volunteer thing is going to be awesome. They have boxes and boxes of books that they haven't had time to enter into the system. So I'm going to help them out with that, which makes them grateful. But I have to learn the system, and the logging will take time. In the meantime, I'm welcome to bring any of these (often brand-new YA fantasy) novels home to read. So exciting!

How long have I been reading The Name of the Rose? A long time. I'm down to the last 100 pages. It's clearly winding down! I'm quite proud.

That's my update today. Maybe I'll have more to say tomorrow. I hope!

My Motto

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading, by Maureen Corrigan, appears to be a memoir through books--an explication by the book reviewer for NPR's Fresh Air of how the books she's read have affected her, how she views her life through them. It sounds like a wonderful idea, but it came to me as less of a recommendation than a curiosity--Kris sounds like she's not sure what she thinks.

I'm pretty much on the same page, which is funny because I'm not even into the numbered pages yet. I'm on xxv of the (rather long) preface. And I'm already kind of torn. On one hand, she's promising me that she finds so-called "genre" fiction to be more affecting than "Great Books," which I appreciate. On the other hand, she talks about teaching college classes and makes herself sound like a pompous academic blowhard.

I hope I fall in love with this book. It's possible. I have an innate suspicion regarding Fresh Air, too--I've never listened enough to have much opinion, but I get the impression that it might be a little, well, trite.

I have a T ride coming up in a few--that'll get a few more pages down.

Oh, and I've been taking notes on Joan of Arc. More on her soon!

Adaptation

They're making an all CGI version of Beowulf. I have a strong suspicion that they're going to totally miss the point of the story. I can already tell, in fact, given the fact that Angelina Jolie is playing...well, anyone really. The only woman I remember in that story is Grendel's mother, and I'm pretty sure she's a monster. Also, movie adaptations of that story tend to assume that when Beowulf dives into a lake to kill her and then fights her for hours down there, that there's a cave or something. I prefer the vagueness of knowing that he's underwater for all that time, holding his manly, manly breath.

My sister wants to get my brother a copy of the book, in Old English. I had to explain to her that German looks more like modern English than Old English does. Actually, I'm pretty sure it has its own alphabet, so I think Greek might be a better analogy than German. Seriously, my brother does not want to go there, I promise you.

If I have to vote for a Beowulf adaptation, I like Eaters of the Dead by Michael Creighton. I even liked (sort of)The Thirteenth Warrior.

Another movie that just came out is Martian Child. You may remember that I read that book a ways back. It was godawful. I'm absolutely sure that the movie is, too, because I strongly suspect that they're going to leave out one of the interesting parts, which is that the single dad, played by the always (well, usually) winning John Cusack, is gay. Actually, the book was so awful, nothing could have made it a good movie. Sorry to spoil it for everyone.

I am excited, though, about The Mist, which is based on a Stephen King story, or so I'm told. I've never read the story, and I can't decide if I should before seeing the movie. Brenda says it's one of his best. But it looks like a really good horror movie, and I can't wait to go see it. Maybe even in the theater. Brenda, I'm looking in your direction!

(This is all to distract you all from the fact that I've barely read anything in days. A limited topic blog is a tricky one to update every day!)

A Whole New World

So I didn't get much reading done today, but I've begun a new library-centric relationship. Today was my second day volunteering at the one of the local elementary/middle school library. In January, I'll be going to grad school for library sciences, possible in a specifically school-librarian program. I wanted to kick around at a school library for a while, to figure out what it's like and if it's where I want to end up.

Most of what I've done for the past couple of sessions was just shelving and getting familiar with the library. I'll probably do some cataloging, as well. I hope that I'll be able to help with the computers, observe some of the research lessons/classes that the librarian has for the kids, etc.

I don't want to be too detailed about any of this here--unlike what I'm reading, this involves real people and my opinions of them. Also, more vitally, the dish they provided me with, and a little bit of trash talk we did about certain other people. And since I've only known this woman for a total of five hours, the fact that I was able to squeak in some trash talk should speak volumes regarding my mad gossip skills. Those of you who know me will not find this surprising.

I'll stop there and keep you guessing. This is a big juncture for me, though; a whole new phase in my relationship with libraries. I have crossed the desk.

What a Differenece a Day Makes

So last night, I was debating about whether to write up my list of books, or to write about the book that I spent most of yesterday reading, The Game, by Laurie King. I went with the list, because I really wanted to get it in near the beginning of the month, to compare my goals to my accomplishments later one. So I put off writing about The Game and how godawful boring it was until today.

And then, late last night, just before bed, it got interesting. So my plan to ramble on and on about how nothing was happening, and why on earth would you write a spy novel with so many digressions, and not just digressions, but boring digressions, was all shot to hell. I still can't recommend the book--I mean, I was pretty miserable up until page 250 or so--but I can't whine too much about it, either. The last 100 pages were just what they needed to be for the novel I had wanted to read. I don't know quite why the first 250 pages were 100 pages too long, and all of that filled with laborious detail about the paintings in every room she entered, and the countryside of every single town the damned train passed through. I do understand that India in 1923 is lovely and exotic and deserves lavish description. But once, maybe five times. Not every single page.

It's funny, the character, Mary Russell (the young, clever wife taken late in life my Mr. Sherlock Holmes), is British, but the author is American. The pacing of the book, though, has a flavo(u)r that reminds me of England, in its long descriptions of travel and the minutiae of getting from one place to another, whether or not those details are interesting in and of themselves or relevant to anything that happens later. In this book, for example, which is supposed to be something between a mystery and a spy novel, the couple disguise themselves as itinerant Indian magicians and travel around India to pick up gossip about the location of a missing spy. They spend nearly 100 pages doing this. They ask a lot of questions, see a lot of scenery, give a lot of magic shows. They don't find out anything. There are no details that I can call to mind from that stretch that become relevant later in the book. It's just there for its own purposes--because traveling around India disguised as an itinerant magician is interesting. Well, maybe, but not in a spy novel. Which this had already been set up to be. If you see my point.

So it's done, anyway. Why did I keep reading it yesterday, if I wasn't enjoying it, you ask? Well, first of all, once I've invested myself in half a book, it seems a waste not to make it to the end--I have to really hate it for that. But also, I have to admit, the other book I kept trying to pick up was Angels and Demons, and that book was just so awful that I kept having to put it down again.

And why will I keep reading that, if it's so awful? Well, that's easy. At least in that book, I can say quite clearly that I want to find out what happens next. Because say what you will about Dan Brown, something is always happening next.

Does this in Caesar seem ambitious?

It seems only appropriate that, if I'm trying to do a month of daily entries, I should also be doing a month of aggressive reading. Let me just list off the stack of library books to give you a taste. Sitting across from me on the table we have:

The Position, by Meg Worlizer
The Full Cupboard of Life, by Alexander McCall Smith
A Gift Upon the Shore, by M.K. Wren
Ladies of Grace Adieu, by Suzannah Clarke
Disco for the Departed, by Colin Cotterill

Then on the coffee table we have:
On The Wealth of Nations, by P.J. O'Rourke
Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading, by the book reviewer on NPR's Fresh Air, whose name I can't read from here or call to mind right now.
The Game, by Laurie R. King
Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown (To be perfectly frank, this is the only one on the coffee table. The others are under the coffee table. But let's not quibble.)

In my purse is the biography of Joan of Arc, and upstairs we have, finally, The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco. That is not actually a library book, it's a loaner from Lynne, but I did check out The Key to the Name of the Rose, which basically explains all the historical references and translates all the Latin (there is a LOT of Latin), so I'm counting it.

The list above does not include the small but key stack of books I own and really really want to read soon, which I'd like to count, since we're being ambitious here. They are:

Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper
The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell
Star-Spangled Manners, by Judith Martin
The Queen's Fool, by Philippa Gregory
New Mercies, by Sandra Dallas
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (no, I haven't read it yet, leave me alone already!), by J.K. Rowling.

And I will briefly mention here the fact that, having seen Elizabeth: The Golden Age last night and been bitterly disappointed by it, I'm really anxious to read Alison Weir's biography of Elizabeth I. Kris has told me that Alison Weir is THE go-to for a layman on the subject of British Royalty from approximately York to Tudor, and I take Kris's word on these things.

To be honest, a few of these are going to fall by the wayside. The P.J. O'Rourke was a whim, and while I don't usually have too much of a problem with Libertarians in theory, I do have a problem when someone with such an impractical political philosophy starts dissing hard on my liberal homeboys, if you see my point. And I'm considering getting the audio book for the Susannah Clarke--I never did read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, (for which I don't think anyone can blame me, as it was an infinite number of pages long), but the reader for Ladies of Grace Adieu sounds quite good in the sample. So not all of these are really on my list of hard and fast goals for the month.

Still, now you know what I'm getting into. Today I spent mostly on Laurie King's The Game, about which more later. But don't you ever tell me there aren't any more good books out there, or this list will start to look insurmountable.

Onward to Victory!

The Wisdom of Stephen Fry

I read The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown for book club a billion years ago. Boy was that a lousy book club; we met in the conference room at work, over lunch, and it just didn't work. The problem was, it was a bunch of English majors--the point of book club was to talk about writing, really, about literature. But if you read The DaVinci Code, there is no literature to discuss. The book has all the literary merit of The Yellow Pages. By Nynex.

Stephen Fry said it best somewhere buried in his blog (which I haven't read; seriously, have you seen how long those entries are?) when he said that he dismissed the book entirely after reading the first word. He goes into why--it's very interesting--if you can find it on his page, let me know.

So why on Earth, you ask, did I pick up Angles and Demons, which is the first adventure of the "renowned" (that's the aforementioned first word, by the way) symbologist (my spellechecker doesn't even recognize that word) whatshisname (my husband, who has never read either book but to whom I've been complaining endlessly, tells me his name is Robert Langdon)? Well, until I saw the movie, my entire reading experience of the first book was the reaction that it would make a great movie. The plot was fast and furious, great locations, mysteries unlocked by academic knowledge and sheer cleverness. It was fun, if nothing else.

I think Angels and Demons might be worse. I picked it up because I heard it was better, but either my palette has become more refined, or this book sucks, as my sister would say, dookie (I apologize if that is crude; I really don't know what it means). It's choppy. It consists of sentences that read like this. Exactly like this. I do particularly love the sentence fragments that add an adverb to a phrase that was used in the preceding sentence, as I just demonstrated. Also, I love how Langdon, knowing he's sitting on a ticking time bomb (literally a time bomb, though it's digital, so no ticking), keeps thinking about his friend and detective-partner's hot bod. And also how he's so shocked that people have heard of obscure historical figures like, say, Galileo, or organizations like the Illuminati (I didn't know anything about the Illuminati, but I had heard the name). Or how shocked he was that a word could be rendered, through fancy fonting, into a logo with horizontal symmetry. My college CompSci professor could write his name so it looked the same right side up and upside down. This is not rocket science.

This completely discounts the suspensions of disbelief that I'm allowing him. I'm granting him that historians have heard rumors of all kinds of symbols, codes, and logos that they've never actually seen. I'll grant him that the first thing the head of a Swedish think tank does when one of his scientists is brutally murdered is look up the fax number for a good symbologist. I'm even granting you the idea that there are still people alive today who are MAD AS HELL about how Galileo was treated, and decided that, now that the power and influence of the Catholic Church has begun to wane, now science needs defending against those nasty cardinals, with lethal force. Also that the BBC would send a guy they just hired from The Tattler on New Pope Duty at the Vatican because it's the crap job nobody wanted. These are the things I'm not complaining about, mind you, the things I'm taking in stride.

Because I'm that big-hearted.

Feel the love.

Yesterday's Post

I understand there's something going on in the blog world about posting every day this month. And since, in all other endeavors that I've been endeavoring to labor at, I've been such a slacker, I'm going to shoot the moon and give this a try.

But I just found out about this, so I'm already a day behind. So here you have my declaration of intent, and this is yesterday's blog post. Today's will follow. Luckily, I've overshot on books, too, so I have plenty to talk about.

Correction and Retraction

This teaches me to post after reading only about ten pages of a book. Let me just straighten this out.

Joan of Arc did NOT keep her voices a secret from all but two people. She told everyone that God had sent her by speaking to her--that's a big part of why they followed her. It's interesting, everyone was skeptical but receptive, the way you would be today if someone showed up in your town sent by the President. It was understood that God COULD send people, but that not everyone who showed up saying God sent them was telling the truth.

What she kept private was the true nature of her visions, voices, and experiences. She didn't explain the bright light she saw, or who was speaking to her (Saints Michael and Catherine, mostly), or how it felt or what was said. Only that God had sent her, and spoke to her.

Still she was practical, and smart. And it's a good book, if you'd like to read it.

I have about 15 library books out now. And it gives me such satisfaction, I can't explain it. It's like having three hundred dollars in your pocket. Maybe even four hundred.

Joan update

Joan of Arc tidbit: she never told people about the voices she heard (with the exception of two confidants), until her trial. She led the armies without telling them about the voice of God. Also, she's the only person who was ever named a heretic by the church and then later canonized.

Unrelated: you should totally read Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty. Great teenage stuff, so satisfying, funny and sharp.

Just a Reminder

When I have something I need to remember, it's a constant source of low-grade anxiety till I write it down. This is why I have so many to-do lists laying around ignored--once I write it down, I don't have to worry about it, and the list falls by the wayside.

But there are a number of books that have come to my attention, but that aren't being published until next year, and I don't want to forget them. So, the list of Things To Remember To Look Up Next Year When They Come Out. It's short but vital.

The Dead and the Gone, by Susan Beth Pfeffer. This is a companion book to Life As We Knew It, the wonderful YA post-apocalyptic novel that I read earlier this year. It's about the same climate-changing, world-ending phenomenon, but it's another person's experience of it; instead of a girl in suburban/rural Pennsylvania, it's about a boy in NYC. Which, according to the first book, was quite troubled by floods during the events related. Chilling.

The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell. Pilgrims! Sarah Vowell! What could be better? I wish there were more people who would write nonfiction like this. I don't quite know how to explain what I like about Sarah Vowell; anyone who thinks they can explain why I like Sarah Vowell is welcome to try. Obviously she's funny, and I like history but only the interesting parts, and the interesting parts are not the big highlights but the more human stuff, but not ALL the human stuff, like an in depth biography. But still.

The other book I want to keep track of is whatever comes next in the Clan of the Cave Bear series, by Jean Auel. Actually, I guess it's the Earth's Children series. I have to say, this series has evolved into a guilty pleasure. I may know more about herbal medicine during the last ice age than you do, but that's just thanks to the first book. By the fourth one, it alternates between boring, cheap thrills, and sex. Yet I read on. I even wait, eight, ten years at a stretch, for the next one. Jeez Louise, somebody knock some sense into me.

If there's another book I'm waiting for, I can't remember it. So remind me when these books come out, okay?

Joan Romee, nee d'Arc

So I'm reading Joan: The Mysterious Life of the Heretic Who Became a Saint, by Donald Spoto. I promised Lynne I'd blog it, because she's been curious about Joan but doesn't have time to read a bio, because she already has a biography project of her own. So, for vicarious information on Joan of Arc, I'm your new source. I'm only 15 pages in, so all I know is that D'Arc is a strange nominative, since neither she nor her parents were from anyplace that would have given them a last name like D'Arc. If she had been named after her mother, as was traditional at the time, she would have been named Joan Romee, because her mother had made a pilgrimage to Rome. I love this kind of book because of info like this.

The other fun thing I learned in the first 15 pages of the book (if you count frontmatter) is the list of books this author has written. All biographies, twenty-one of them. A partial list includes Audrey Hepburn, Princess Diana, Elizabeth Taylor, Ingrid Bergman, James Dean, Marlene Dietrich (two books about her), Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, and Jesus. Yes, that's right, two books about Marlene Dietrich, and a book called The Hidden Jesus: A New Life.

I find this man fascinating. More to come.

Practically Perfect

I wanted to write about one of the books I read on vacation, because it was good but flawed. That's a blunt beginning, but I have all these thoughts percolating, and I just want to talk about it.

The book is called Practically Perfect in Every Way: My misadventures through the world of self-help--and back, by Jennifer Niesslein. The title has a hint of this whole thing--"misadventures," "and back" (or rather "--and back"--I am a fan of the em-dash, and I do not dismiss the significance of this punctuation). Now, nonfiction is often too-long of title, so I hold this against no one. I think it's interesting, though, that this book may have turned out differently than she first envisioned it.

I liked the book a lot because it was well written, and because the author seemed very much like--well, not me, really, but someone I might hang around with. She was hip but settled down, smart, shares my politics and maybe my priorities, better-off than I am, but also more driven (though I don't know that there's any causality there; she's driven in that she runs a magazine, but the money is not necessarily pouring in from that). I also think self-help is fascinating, and I occasionally read the more titillating self-help books for sheer personal enjoyment.

So where's the flaw? Well, the idea of the book is that she's not perfectly happy, so she decides to try to improve her life by following the advice of a bunch of popular self-help programs (pretty much one at a time--the woman isn't insane). Whatever thin story she came up with for having the idea of wanting to do this, I'm sure it was an idea of something to write a book about. And again, I'm glad she did--I enjoyed reading her book. But the problem she has is that she doesn't really have any problems.

Now, I'm not being dismissive--I understand that a lot of people in happy marriages to wonderful people, with successful jobs, smart children whom they love, and big houses are depressed, unhappy, unfulfilled, aimless, miserable. This woman is not one of them. She and her husband are close, happy teammates. There's nothing wrong with her marriage. So when she sits down with Dr. Phil's book about how to improve your marriage, she's missing the whole point. This book, I can tell just through the parts she shares with me, is not about strengthening a secure bond--it's about fixing something that's broken. If there's a nail sticking out of your dining room table, by all means take a hammer to it. But if there's no nail sticking out, you're probably going to damage your table, if you see what I mean.

It's the same all the way through. At the beginning of the "body" section, she specifically says that, though she knows she's not in amazing shape, she loves her body and thinks it's sexy. WHY, then, are you turning to these books that are speaking to you as though you know there's something wrong with you? A lot of people feel that way, and need help not to, but of COURSE there's nothing there for you.

And this plays out in how some of the advice works. Her discussion of becoming a better social person--where she teaches herself how to win friends and influence people--is interesting, because she successfully follows it, but doesn't like it. She doesn't WANT to win friends and influence people--after becoming a good listener, etc. etc., and finding that it really does make social interactions easier and better, she decides she doesn't really want that, it's too much work, she likes being suspicious. Okay, great, that's you. But doesn't self-help start with wanting to change?

I think the strongest sections are the first two--housekeeping and money--and the section on a book called Authentic Happiness. I like the latter because I feel like I got some good advice just out of her summary of the book. And it's the only place where she really does seem to feel a little moved by what she's doing, rather than harangued. The former two are the only two where she's not really trying to change herself so much as gain some practical skills, and she does so, before realizing that doing everything is not necessarily a great investment of her time.

So I liked this book. I'd love to read more of her writing, and to spend more time in her life. I'm sorry that there was what I felt to be a tough problem at the root of this book. But I really wish I could run up to her and say, "You love yourself, please don't try to change!" Because I loved her, too, till self help pointed out, to me and to her, everything that was wrong with her life.

My Autumn Vacation: The Rundown

Let's see, so where did we end up?

Well, William Goldman thinks the 90s were the worst movie decade ever, and came very close to saying that the Oscars were pointless because all the movies sucked. And cranky as he is, I love it, because he's a great writer, and very smart about whatever he discusses--film, theater, Miss America pageants, what-have-you. He learns it and thinks about it and understands it, and then can explain it to you coherently. He's both intelligent and passionate and he writes good dialog, even when he's not writing dialog, if you see what I mean.

The one problem I had with that book, and it was a doozie, was a major, major quibble with everyone at his publisher. First of all, someone made a choice, presumably to get the page count they wanted, to double space between paragraphs, Internet-style. That's fine, I actually kind of prefer it for longer essays, when the paragraphs are dense. But then, they did something I just cannot get on board with--they indented as well. At that point, I was no longer a fan of whoever these editors were.

Also, the book is riddled with typos, but really, that's carelessness. It's not a lousy, lousy decision, like the paragraphing thing was. Ugh.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. I've always had an issue with Oliver Sachs, because I've always felt that he seemed to be rubbing his hands with gluttonous, childish glee over the debilitating neurological disorders he writes about. While I wouldn't say I deeply enjoyed The Man Who Mistook, I can say that it changed my view of Oliver Sachs. First, I had always assumed he was a journalist first, and never fully realized that he was a practicing neurologist for many years before becoming a writer. That changes my opinion, somehow, because, while both could be approaching these people as case studies and subjects, a doctor has a responsibility to fix something, while a journalist is just there to glom onto the tragedy. I give the doctor far more credit.

Plus, reading this longer piece, I realized that his prose is really kind of dense with philosophical musings about the nature of "being" and humanity and the soul. So I think I was confusing actual erudition with pretension. Not that there's nothing pretentious about writing a book about whether your brain-damaged acquaintance has a soul, but still, he's really thinking here, not just writing like he's thinking.

One Good Knight by Mercedes Lackey fails mostly as a book, but very seriously as a romance novel (part of Harlequin's new Luna imprint, for fantasy romance). As a book: I knew exactly what was going to happen pages/days ahead of the characters at every turn. As a romance novel: there are NO MEN until more than 3/4 of the way through. WRONG!

I have a lot more to say about the one other book I read, Practially Perfect in Every Way, but it'll have to wait, because I want to think it over and get into it. I enjoyed it, though, and she's a good writer. I might, someday, read her magazine.

Welcome back from vacation!

How I Spent My October Vacation

Preliminary Edition.

Tallgrass, by Sandra Dallas. I don't love her books, but I used to read them to my grandmother, so I try to keep up as new ones come out. But she's prolific, so it ain't easy!

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by Oliver Sachs. Bone dry, but I'm 3/4 of the way through it. Hopefully I can pound it out on the plane.

Who Killed Hollywood? and Other Essays, William Goldman. He's dishy, though this isn't his best. I love his two screenwriting books, and some of his novels.

The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster. Never read it, though I loved the movie. Sometimes these things jump off the shelf and into my hands. Like for example...

To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. She wrote The Doomsday Book, so I thought I'd give it a try. The title is apparently a play on a stereotypically Victorian piece of literature, which is perhaps a little erudite for what she's doing, but perhaps only just erudite enough.

One Good Knight, by Mercedes Lackey. See how honest I am with you? This is the inaugural book of a new Fantasy Romance line from Harlequin. 'Nuff said.

Don't miss me too much!

Volunteerism

So I sent a letter offering to volunteer at my local school library. I want to get my hand in. No response yet; I'm going to have to follow up next week. I should have followed up already, but I'm swamped. I'm excited, but also kind of sad and anxious that I haven't heard back yet. It's like a whole new life is waiting for me.

Books are like crack. I have two on reserve, waiting--one in the BPL system and another in Minuteman. I have a total of 21 books checked out right now (7 are ready to return, one is, as previously discussed, ahem, misplaced). I'm stressed and busy and fried and cranky, but at least I'm reading four books at once. That counts for something.

Like crack.

That Guy: I Am Him

Okay, so this is a serious problem and source of shame for me. After all the crap I've given Brenda, after all the ragging on Lynne, after coming up for a plan for a uniformed library enforcement squad, it comes to this. They say confession is good for the soul; let it be true, because it doesn't feel like that right now.

I....lost a library book.

Shhh! Don't tell the BPL--I haven't told them yet. It's not due till the end of next week. But it's gone, just plain gone. I had it on a Friday, in a doctor's waiting room, and I noticed the next morning that it wasn't in my purse. I can't find it in my house. The doctor's office doesn't have it (confirmed by phone and in person). Nor does the restaurant I ate at after the doctor's appointment, nor the library (a Minuteman library, not BPL) where I browsed after lunch. I've been praying that someone would find it and turn it in, and that it will show up in my account as returned, but not yet.

And the worst part is, it's a book that the library is understocked on. I mean, Megan McCafferty is one of the most popular YA writers right now--this book has three bestselling sequels. Yet the BPL system, in all its branches, has only four copies. Of which I lost one. I think the worst part of this whole thing is how judgmental I am of some faceless stranger when I see the "Item Lost" designation in the system. And now, lo, I am he. It doesn't feel good.

And the coup de grace, the insult added to the injury, is that, calling the restaurant, the doctor's office, the other library, I had to ask each of them on the phone if they could find the book I was reading. "What's it called?" asks the middle-aged Russian waitress at the diner. And I have to answer, "Sloppy Firsts."

Somebody wake me up.

Linden, This One's for You

I can't figure out where I get off going MIA for so long. Seriously kids, all I do is sit around all day and eat Breyer's ice cream Poppers (the modern housewife's answer to bonbons) and watch Law & Order reruns (original, none of those spinoffs for me). Yeah, I occasionally sit at my computer for a couple of hours and produce some work for my boss, but seriously, that's a very small dent in the acres of free time that is my day. So how am I not blogging more?

(This is my life in theory. In actuality it's a bit more complex.) But what I'm trying to say is I'm sorry. I'll remain sorry till I post more often.

But for Linden, what I have is new recommendation in the sidebar. Linden and I used to talk about how nice it would be to read a good book in which nothing awful happens to all these main characters you like. In fiction, you meet these people, and (if it's good) you get to know them and like them, and then you proceed to follow them through trouble and heartache and misery that, if they happened in real life, would be redefining, earth-shattering, unbearable. And if things ever do get straightened out, it's at the last minute, and then, as soon as your new book-friends are happy, the book ends and you're left to just imagine their pleasure.

But here's the other problem: I read a book once in which nothing bad happened. It was called Three Wishes, by, I think Barbara Delinsky (I don't even care enough to look it up). Some bad stuff happened at the end, but it was all very Meaningful and clearly for a Higher Purpose so that was okay. But for most of the book, mild and pleasant things happened to these people. And it was kind of awful. Not just boring, but bad. So I took back my wish.

But now...Linden, you should read The Coroner's Lunch. It's a mystery, and short, and light and you'll finish it in a couple of hours. And I guess I'm giving things away when I tell you that nothing bad happens, but that's not even entirely true. I mean, Siri has some pretty exciting, dangerous, and even harrowing adventures. And he lives in Communist Laos in 1976, so life ain't all peaches and roses. But he's old, and smart, and honest, and he's not afraid, for the most part, of the bad things that could happen. He can handle himself, and so the whole book is just a jolly time spent with these delightful folks who you can't help but fall in love with. Seriously. Seriously!

So you should totally read this. Linden, et al.

Buddhism, Plain and Simple

Plain and Simple? Anything but. I really don't understand what I'm supposed to see, or the nature of the types of reality I might realize. Also, he claims that if I pay attention to my feelings, my feelings will become less "urgent" (but not less "vivid"), and that then my feelings won't influence my emotions so much.

Also, all those thoughts you've been having? You know, your whole life? Well, there's your problem right there.

I think my point is, if this is what life is like in the buddha dharma, I don't quite understand why a person would choose that. No pain or discomfort, because you've realized that everything there is is irrelevant. Might as well just give up the ghost.

I've been looking at Eastern philosophies lately, a bit. I read the Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tsu, which I didn't get either. The Art of War was much more interesting and straightforward--even when it was being dreamy and philosophical, you could tell it had a solid grounding in psychology and observation of reality (as distinct from Reality, which this Steve Hagen guy keeps telling me I should be able to see as Truth).

Anyway, I think a practitioner would tell me that dabbling is not the way to approach these philosophies; ironically, it seems to me that they're oddly like Western religion in that it doesn't really work without you've got the faith.

Sad State of Affairs

Don't you think I'd have more free time, to read and to blog? Not so much. Unemployment is eerily time-consuming.

Anyway, July was the Month of the Young Adult Book. I read about 5 regular books and at least 7 YA novels. They varied a lot. The Babysitter's Club is consistent, the same way those little cheese-and-crackers packets, the ones that come with a little red paddle for applying your cheese whiz to your butter cracker, are consistent. Yum. Julie of the Wolves was not bad, but seemed kind of obscure and distant. The sequel, the crappily-titled Julie, was much better, I thought, and much more full of character development. The end was weird and I didn't get it, but other than that, it was great. Fever, 1793 was pretty good, in a solid, historical fiction, YA way. Nothing to write home about.

Knowledge of Angels, by the way, which I was raving about before? Just lovely. Kick in the gut there at the end, but just a gorgeous book.

Now I've hit one of those lulls where I started a bunch of books at the same time, so I haven't finished one in ages. I'm reading The Spiral Staircase, by Karen Armstrong. It's a sequel to her memoir about her seven years as a nun, about trying to make her way in the world (as the nuns call everything outside the cloister). I'm also reading My Latest Grievance, by Eleanor Lipman, which, while still dealing with her theme of how annoying people sometimes improve our lives, is kind of more fun than a lot of them, mostly because, so far, the main character is keeping one step ahead of the annoying person. And I couldn't help it--in spite of the 5 books I borrowed (it's getting on toward stole) from Brenda and the 5 other library books I have out (including The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco, which is a tome), I've started re-reading (RE! As though I didn't own a dozen books of my own that I haven't read yet) The Seige by Clara Claiborne Park. This is a fabulous book about raising an autistic daughter who was born about three years before the word "autism" existed, and back when it was commonly called "refrigerator mother syndrome." It's not a miserable book; it's a beautiful, hopeful, honest book.

I'm thinking of quitting the whole unemployment thing to read full time.

Many Thanks to That Girl on the T

So I'm reading a book that is really amazing and that I really love. It's been on my list for a while, and I wasn't sure how heavy it was going to be. I was inspired to read it because, on the T one day about two years ago, a girl sitting next to me was reading a book in which two priests were having a serious conversation. I read about two sentences, and I thought I should maybe read it. Mostly because they were priests (or monks, it was unclear; now I know that one was a cardinal and one a monk), and priests, though not quite nuns, still make really good novels in my opinion.

So I caught a glance at the spine and went home to put the book on my list. And I never got around to reading it, because it's not like it came with high recommendations or anything. What would bump it to the top? I mean, the list is like 85 books long now.

But the author's name starts with W, and a couple of weeks ago, I was too lazy to run to another part of the library. So I went looking for it--Knowledge of Angels, by Jill Paton Walsh. It turns out it was in the P section, but by the time I realized that, I was on a mission, and I went and found it. And now I'm reading it.

And oh, thank you, thank you, random girl on the T. This book is basically a long, plotty exploration about the existence of God. Does that sound boring? It's not, not at all. On a small island whose prince is also a cardinal, the cardinal is forced to think for the first time about the reality and inevitability of his beliefs. An atheist, a girl raised by wolves, a brilliant monk, and a convent far from the world. This is a book full of good people trying to find truth and do right by man and God, while trying to figure out just what man and God need. This is (so far; I'm about 1/3 of the way through) a brilliant, beautifully written book. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, presumably in 1994 when it was published. You absolutely should read it.

I also want to put in a little plug for Castle Waiting, a sweet little comic by Linda Medley. It's a big fat book, fairy-tale in nature, that's sort of an assortment of "how I ended up here" stories about a motley crew of characters who live cheerfully in an abandoned castle. It doesn't have much of a plot, but it's just so happy and sweet.

I'm all sunshine and rainbows today. The truth is, I've always thought that books about good people doing the right thing, with nothing majorly bad happening to them, were inevitably boring. But I've had a good week of those, which puts me in a fabulous mood. So pick one of these books--seriously, worth it.

Charles Dickens: Enigma

Actually, the post title is shamelessly and unnecessarily sensational. I don't know much about Charles Dickens, but my understanding is that this is due only to my own willed ignorance, and not because history lacks information, if I were only to seek it out. I do know, for example, that he was sadly poor until he inherited some money that an unlikely distant relative had left him. Someone told me that, anyway.

But in school--twice--I was exposed to Great Expectations, and I have to say, I really didn't like it at all. Which is kind of funny, because I remember it as having a reasonably interesting plot and well-crafted characters. I think that part of the problem is that I didn't like anyone in the book--except perhaps for his elderly friend at work, the one who lived with his Aged Parent--what was his name? Anyway, everyone from Pip and Estella, through his initially upstanding roommate who becomes an indebted fool because of Pip, right down through the convict and of course Miss Whatsername in the wedding dress is, in one way or another, a bit of a creep. Oh, not Joe or their maid who (spoiler) Joe ends up marrying--Bessie, was it?--they're good folk and stay that way, which is nice. But my perception of them can't help but be tainted by Pip's disdain throughout most of the book, and I can't love them, by the end, as much as I did at the beginning, though I recognize that they haven't done anything to deserve that assessment.

All this to say that, until now, the above and The Christmas Carol were the only Dickens that I had read. And I'm not fond of him, though, as I said, he does tell a story, and his characters are well-wrought. Why? Well, they tell you he wrote by the word, and I do believe you can hear that in the slow and roundabout way in which every scene unfolds. I feel sometimes like you can see him squeezing extra words in for the money. Does the Establishment agree with me? My only evidence either way is the fact that every teacher who mentioned Dickens to me also mentioned that he was paid by the word--as though they knew that he had something to answer for, and that was the answer they were giving on his behalf.

And now (to the point), I'm listening to an excellent reading of A Tale of Two Cities. And from the beginning, I enjoyed it immensely. I'm still enjoying it, though I'm less certain of where it's going, since we seem to have taken a rather long digression into the affairs of the heart (which I have to say, I've never read convincingly in Dickens--I mean, who could love Estella?). So we have all these characters, and we've learned something about their history, and they're all in love with Miss Manette (audiobook; I don't know how to spell any of the names). But I'm less than halfway done, and I have no idea what's going to happen next. Oh, except the French Revolution. That's been pretty well telegraphed, albeit with historical accuracy. Seriously, how did the aristocracy not see that coming?

But here's my real question; the question that I came here to ask. Sydney Carton, the look-alike lawyer who's a dissolute alcoholic. What did he ever do wrong? He's kind of mopey and insolent, and, as I mentioned, a raging alcoholic. But in the scene I just heard, he proposed to Miss Manette, with no hope in his heart because he's not worthy of her. Now, all suitors in books like this proclaim themselves unworthy of their lady-loves. But both he and she really seem to believe it here. What I want to know is, what did he ever do? He clearly has a bit of a bad-boy attitude--is that enough to rule him out in that day and age? Or is there some hint of a dark secret in his past that I'm not seeing? Or is it a strength of character thing--his slacker mopeyness is enough to rule him out of the marriage pool entirely?

I guess they just had higher standards, but if there IS something he did wrong, and I'm missing it, somebody please let me know.

Seriously, though? This is the most fun I've ever had with Dickens. The reader is great, and, with audiobooks, you sort of half-ignore the slow parts. I'm really excited to be kicking it, Dickens-style, as the young folk say.

Too Much of Nothing

I was supposed to meet Lynne at the library at 5:30. I got there at 4:30. This is a recipe for disaster, and now I have 18 books to read. And it's not 20 only because I exercised a great deal of self-restraint.

Sigh.

It's All Art

In college, when postmodern was such a revelation and performance art entered our vocabularies, we used to look at the pizza boxes stacked in the branches of a tree or the postcards someone would write his dreams on and mail to random people from the phone book and say, philosophically, "It's all art."

I've been reading Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott, and I think the point she's trying to make with this book is, "It's all God."

Now, when you read a book with a subtitle like Thoughts on Faith, you expect that message, and I'm not at all bothered by the message. It's really one of the reasons I loved Traveling Mercies and Plan B so much; because she was talking about faith as something that gets you through the day.

But this book just doesn't live up to that. She's come to the point of being one of the reasons I'm skeptical of memoirs--they're too often just anecdotes about lives of people whose lives are really only marginally more interesting than mine, and really, mostly just grimmer. Her first two books painted her as a marginally neurotic recovering alcoholic who was working hard on herself and learning life lessons as she went. This book, though almost identical in structure and nature, takes that description and eliminates the word "marginally," her work doesn't seem to be getting anywhere (short temper, complete inability to handle minor setbacks), and her slice of life anecdotes are actually quite hard to find lessons in.

I got through it because it was a fast read. But I can't recommend it, I'm sorry. Though I have to say, I'm still looking forward to reading Operating Instructions, the memoir of her completely unprepared first year as a single parent.

Where Have I Been?

She cracks her knuckles and gets down to it: where have I been, dear reader? Well, some life changes have been going on in the old Hungry Homestead, as well as some vacationing and some packing, but I missed you. I'm also ashamed to admit that I've barely read 5 books this month--and that's if I don't even bother to count the Babysitter's Club books, which, well, I normally do. They only take an hour, but each one is such a perfect little miniature world that I can't wait to find out if Jessi wins the gold medal at the Stoneybrook Athletic Festival, or if Dawn has the courage to be friends with the girl with Down's Syndrome. (The answer to both questions, for the curious, is yes.)

But I'm really here today to talk about a book I'm not quite finished with: Intuition, by Allegra Goodman. I've been speedreading it this weekend (which is not to say skimming; rather, ignoring other important tasks in favor of reading this book), because I let it languish till it was due, and can't renew it because it's so popular. It's one of those hot young "now" books that's been reviewed six ways from Sunday, and is very popular. I have to say that I actually had more doubts than anticipation because of that.

No doubts necessary, the book is good. It's a very close-up look inside the politics of a research laboratory that's having some unprecedented success. The plot of the book get quite interesting--a search for truth, perhaps a fight against injustice, or perhaps selfishness driving people to do things they might not otherwise--but it really is intended as a character study.

It's interesting; working in any office, you know at least a little about politics, about working with tricky personalities, about charm and bitterness. There's a lot here that most people can relate to. But you're also definitely learning about a lab, where funding is tight, where the goal is glory, where people with expensive educations earn almost no money because they're trying to make it in their field, and the competition is fierce, but the group is family. This is most definitely their world. I recognize some emotions, some personalities, bits and pieces; it feels real. But I bet some researcher out there is reading this book and laughing in nervous recognition.

I could be wrong, of course; what do I know about research science and its politics and personalities. In fact, some of the characters seem so very....well, intense, maybe?....that they felt rather caricature-ish to me at first. But as the book goes on and things develop, I began to see them as those people who do seem caricature-ish when you meet them in real life. But I have to say, even if research science doesn't look anything like this, she totally convinced me. And really, isn't that the point?

Edited to Add: Please don't misjudge the book based on the cover in the sidebar link. It looks like chick-lit, but it's really, really not. The cover of my copy doesn't look like that. I don't know why they would use that cover; I'm going to write an irate letter or something.

Earth Kids Are Easy

So they got John Cusack, that underdog heartthrob, to play the dad in the movie adaptation of The Martian Child, by David Gerrold. I'm currently listening to the audiobook, and I'm actively restraining myself from going into a rant about terrible audiobook readers and how they ruin what should be a good experience. Okay, I'll grant myself a tiny, short little rant: you don't need to pause for two seconds after every single sentence! And not every single word is so incredibly important that it needs to be carefully emphasized. Okay, seriously, rant over.

But only to make room for a new rant: a book about adopting a kid with severe behavior issues is a) very surprising and b) possibly kind of irresponsible if it implies, as this one seems to, that true and deep love is all it takes to reach the little tykes and turn their lives around. First, it's disrespectful to all the other people who spent hours of months of their lives with him before this guy came along.

Second, it's irresponsible to all the other potential adopters out there. Seriously, it's NOT easy to take care of these kids. The closest he comes to acknowledging that the kid has problems so far is one sentence saying, in effect, "Sure it wasn't all a bed of roses--he lied and stole money from me and kept a knife in his room and got in fights with other kids. Still, we were blissfully happy and it was an unadulterated dream." If you didn't know how disruptive a behavior disordered kid can be, you could easily believe, from this account, that the instant you bring him home and give him his own room, he's going to be just dandy and fun to hang with.

So yeah, I'm having trouble picking apart the things I don't like about the narrator and the things I don't like about the reader and the things I don't like about the author. Look at that sentence; it's hard to even describe who all these people conspiring to trouble me are. I guess it's not awful; I'll finish it. But I have to admit, I'm not getting much out of it. Luckily, I'm reading two other books. I'm still getting my fix.

And I Feel Fine

I have a thing about end of the world books. I have a thing about the end of the world in general, actually, particularly when it comes about via environment-altering events (nuclear war, for example) that make even the basics of survival virtually impossible to manage, never mind surviving the collapse of civilization. Or zombies. Zombies I think are a close second in fear to environmental disasters, and they only really make it into second because I'm pretty sure they're fictional. I think zombies are scarier, but they're less likely than, say, nuclear war, or global warming, or the moon being knocked out of its orbit.

Speaking of which, I just finished an excellent book called Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. It's YA, and not nearly as depressing as it could have been. William Goldman once said in one of his screenwriting books that audiences love a good how-to, and I find that's definitely true. Really well-written stories about the mundane details of something like this are just wonderfully engaging. It's about storing food and running out of it, chopping firewood, boarding up windows, swimming, running water, Christmas presents, snow, distant volcanoes, etc.

Really, I think the book's main flaw was what also made it tolerable--it was upbeat. Well, not downbeat, anyway. It's not the heartwarming family togetherness that bothered me--that actually made it quite palatable. It's the lack of violence or human danger. It's not about society collapsing so much as disappearing, as though the system that keeps our world running the way it does--which is really so artificial and tenuous--didn't just collapse into a shambles, but slowed down a great deal, almost to a stop. Civilization was still there, it was just operating at a very low efficiency level.

This isn't much of a review; I'm just processing this and thinking out loud. It stuck with me, though, and I really enjoyed this book. I just checked out another one, an end-of-the-world book called Z for Zachariah, I can't remember the author's name. I don't think this one will go over as well for me. It seems darker, just based on the blurb. Although I will say, as long as the environment is intact enough that, say, food will grow, I'm willing to fight off the zombie hoards from inside my walled fortress. That's just the kind of girl I am.

Punctuation Quiz!

Okay, it's you and W. Somerset Maugham in a head-to-head punctuation extravaganza! Let's see how you do!

What's missing from or wrong with each of the following sentences?

1) She admired the way in which amid the banter which was the staple of their conversation he insinuated every now and then a pretty, flattering speech.

2) She put away her fears, but for an instant unreasonably she regretted that her plans for the future were shattered.

3) Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind.

Bonus points if your answer to #3 is anything more than, "huh?"

I know it's unfair to give a quiz when each item is worth 33.3 points, but the problem is that I'm enjoying the book too much to keep stopping to mark the many, many pages on which I wish he'd added more commas. I mean, there are commas, but there are a lot of mid-sentence clauses that don't have them that end up bewildering me for a minute.

But the book is so enjoyable, so quickly paced and the characters so flawed but interesting, that I can't pause in the reading long enough to register complaints. Sorry folks! Excellent book.

A Hike in the Mountains

Bill Bryson is an interesting guy. I think I went on in a blissful and rhapsodic way about his A Short History of Nearly Everything, which I loved dearly. And now I'm listening to A Walk in the Woods, read by the author. It's abridged, and I don't know how much (not too much, I think, based on the length of the audiobook and the length of the print book). It's a fun, interesting read, full of historical facts and funny observations. I'm not a hiker, and he confirms that I never will be, but I'm glad to have this vicarious experience.

But when he starts in on his discussions of the National Park Service or the American attitude toward the wilderness, I'm bemused. Right now, for example, he's discussing how he doesn't understand why Americans are so interested in keeping wilderness wild, and how he'd much rather that there were some farms or hamlets along the trail. He's poo-pooing (if I may use the term) the much vaunted "protected corridor" through which a certain part of the trail runs, and comparing it to hiking in Luxembourg, where you pass through hamlets and past farms.

It seems so British to me. It reminds me of the scene in Arcadia by Tom Stoppard, in which one of the characters is talking about the landscaping on a big English estate and how they tore up the pastures to create a faux wilderness, but how the pastures were artificial, too, because that was just another generation of landscape architects trying to recreate the Italian countryside of the classic authors.

What kind of hamlet is he talking about? Every town he's walked through he's described as ugly, boring, nondescript. He wants cute, scenic little places, but authentic! Untouched by the modern era! And they shouldn't get any bigger, that would ruin the beauty of nature. No, we want charming signs of civilization of juuuuust the right size.

It also reminds me of my father's customers, who want him to stay the quaint, authentic, crusty figure that he is, in spite of the fact that this involves him never making any more money.

I don't mean to whine. I'm really enjoying it. But he's kind of demanding--I'd think of it as "full of dreams," except he's kind of insistent, even when he's not being very practical.

I Never Read Angela's Ashes

I have a suspicion that Frank McCourt has been selling his blurbs. I could be wrong--it could be that he and I just have similar taste in nonfiction. I wouldn't have suspected that, since I couldn't get past page 10 of Angela's Ashes, but then, I have noticed the fact that I often share a taste in literature with authors whose work I don't necessarily care for. So it's not impossible that he just likes these two rather obscure books that I plucked off the internet and checked out of the library.

One of these books is not even available through the BPL system--I had to go to Minuteman. (Minuteman officially has way more books, probably by virtue of having a lot of member libraries, each one building an independent collection. Unfortunately, their online catalog is very, very clunky.) One book I heard about on a This American Life story from about three years ago that I was listening recently. It's a memoir called The Man Who Outgrew his Prison Cell, by Joe Loya, a former bank robber who has, apparently, gone straight. Frank McCourt ("Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Angela's Ashes") believes I will "be taken with the energy and urgency of Loya's writing," among other things.

Frank McCourt also expresses his gratitude for the existence of Susan Jane Gilman, author of Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress. "Thank you, O Lord," he prays, "for sending us Susan Gilman's tales." He feels pretty passionate about this, clearly. I'd never heard of the book till someone on the internets pointed me at it. They read a lot of good books out there in cyberspace. Anyway, I don't know pretty much anything about this book at this point, except that Frank McCourt just loved it.

I'd say I should re-try Angela's Ashes, and I suspect that a large number of folks in the world would agree with that idea. But, I have to say, I don't suspect I will. Sorry.

Those Wacky Tudors

When I was in high school, I watched the movie Lady Jane, starring a very young Helena Bonham Carter and an equally young Carey Elwes (plus a bonus part for Patrick Stewart, before I knew who he was). Later, when Lady Jane Grey herself came up in my history class, I almost convulsively said out loud, "I saw that movie!" To which my teacher responded immediately, "Really? Because, that movie was just sex sex sex!" To which I wish I had responded, "How did you know?" which comeback is less sassy now that I think about it than it seemed when I thought of it five minutes after blushing and not responding to her well-meant teasing, or the class giggling at me.

You know how sometimes you come across something unusual, or maybe a word you've never heard before, and then all of a sudden it's everywhere? Well, apparently Alison Weir has written some five million books about British history, all very readable nonfiction, and I've only just come across her. I'm reading Innocent Traitor, which is about Jane Grey, who holds a special place in my heart because of the aforementioned anecdote (and the movie that spawned it--it really was all about sex, and I was 15). It's an enjoyable book, and well-written in its way. It doesn't have a lot of the qualities of a really literary novel, though the writing is very enjoyable and well-crafted. It's really a book by a non-fiction writer who's giving herself permission to create scenes. I really was giving her credit for doing something clever by using cliched phrases in a historical novel to give it a flavor of the past tied to the present, but when a newly married woman explained that she "had never felt such bliss," I realized she was just trying too hard.

The sudden existence of Alison Weir and all her knowledge of Tudor and Stuart England (as Miss Lavoie's class was called) reminds me of Philippa Gregory, and I'm again asking myself if I should try to read something else by her. I really kind of hated The Other Boleyn Girl, mostly because real history contained some rather un-novel-like facts--such as the fact that randy King Henry VIII was kept twitching on the end of a string for NINE YEARS. It's hard to drag out a novel of cat-and-mouse romance for nine years. You end up writing things like a one page chapter entitled "Spring, 1527," "Summer, 1527," and "Fall and Winter, 1527." It gets, in a word, boring.

But maybe I should read The Queen's Fool. It's about Elizabeth, who I find to be more interesting than most of the rest of them. I don't know why I'd give the woman another chance, but I want to. Part of me wants to. Mostly because I love pre-digested history--I love the stories with the boring or dragging parts taken out. I love the characters when they're revealed to me, instead of being told up front what their personalities are, the way actual books of history seem to. I love it when the craft of storytelling, as used in fiction, is brought to history. I love Sarah Vowell, who by the way is working on a new book about the Pilgrims and I'm so excited. She should write faster, in my opinion.

In sum: Alison Weir, good. Philippa Gregory, bad, but for some reason getting a second chance. Sarah Vowell, awesome.

Why am I reading this?

Really, if I can't answer that question, you could call it the biggest insult to a book, or the saddest state of things. But it's the hardest thing to read, I think.

Have you ever heard of Charlotte Sometimes? The answer could easily be no. Kids' book. It's so depressing, though, because it's such a good idea that's so poorly executed. I really don't know what Charlotte learned from her adventures in a body-switching, time-traveling situation. You don't know her at all before she wakes up in the wrong time, and she really never does anything or has any thoughts besides wanting to go home.

The book might be about identity--what, besides how you look, makes you recognizably you? But it never really answers these questions. And I think that, if I can't even figure out for sure what questions you're asking, or even trying to answer, then you've failed in a sad way. It wasn't even entertaining! I'll accept that as a reason to tell a story--it's a romp!

But no. You've got nothing for me. Sorry state of affairs.

Sex and Lies

Man, I'm some sort of glutton for punishment. I hated Girl Meets God so much that I ran out and got Lauren Winner's other book. Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity. Now I know a lot about how a good Christian practices chastity (as distinguished from celibacy). It was a different, less offensive kind of frustration from the last book, though. She's still kind of obnoxious in the way she "admits" her own flaws in the most self-righteous way I've ever heard. But the really bizarre thing is how many things I agree with her on. I agree that sex is important and shapes who we are as people, and therefore it's important to have an ethical code around our sexual behavior. Then she starts talking about St. Paul, and she loses me. I'm pretty sure Paul kind of hated women and resented our existence. I don't want to take my sexual ethics from him, thanks.

What else have we? The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood. Short and kind of easy to read, but a wry retelling of the story of Odysseus from the point of view of the waiting Penelope, and a chorus of her handmaidens, who were killed by Odysseus when he returned to Ithaca.

And I'm finally reading The Time Traveller's Wife. I'm really enjoying it; one of the main themes is about finding joy in the happy moments of a difficult life, which is something I struggle with myself. It's an intense book, about someone who lives an intense life, but is trying not to. I was turned off for a long time by an anecdote someone told me about a certain sex scene, but it was not really as troubling as I was expecting. I was slowed down again, though, when I tried it on audiobook first. One of the first scenes in the book is a sex scene, not particularly graphic, but somewhat intimate. Those are tricky on audiobook, and when the scene is at the beginning of the story, before you really know the characters, it feels awfully voyeuristic.

This time, though, I got past it, and it got all thrilling and tough and awesome. I'd say you should go read it, but I'm pretty sure at this point I'm the last person (woman, anyway) in the United States who hasn't read it yet. So you probably already have.

Near-Trauma Experience

It's hard to post about this, even a week later, because I'm going to sound like I'm joking or exaggerating my emotion, when I'm not. Or rather, I'm going to start to joke and use hyperbole when I don't mean to, because it's the easiest way to protect myself from how really close to home this hit. But I'm going to tell you the story.

Last week, (Tuesday morning, I think) the BPL website went down for about half an hour. This is not the end of the world. When it came back up, my list was gone. This was, to a certain extent, the end of the world for me.

At the time, the list was 62 books long. It's a list of the books I either intend to read or am interested enough in that I don't want to forget that they exist. I've been compiling this list for years--once I've read the book and it's been logged, either here or in my journal, I delete it from the list. Each individual book is not nearly as important to me as the list as a whole--it's almost like a record of my thought processes, and also a predictor of my future thought processes. There are young adult novels about post-apocalyptic survival (Z for Zachariah), nonfiction books about the religious right (Don't Think of an Elephant), all kinds of novels (The Historian, The Uses of Enchantment, The Time Traveller's Wife), history, politics, environmentalism--all kinds of things that I've thought about or planned to think about. It was like losing a diary, and it was really harsh.

That night (after checking for the 40th time in 12 hours, emailing and phoning the library, and being told there was no hope), I started recreating the list. I managed to pull almost 2/3 of it out of my brain. It still hurt, but I really felt a sense of relief that it was all in there. Sometimes I feel like things aren't real until I write them down, or tell someone--until they're recorded. I find it weirdly reassuring to find out that my brain can, indeed, retail information, much in the way it's designed to.

In the morning, like magic, the list reappeared. I issued Mike the huge apology and thank you that he was owed (I was not good company that evening), printed the list immediately, and went about my business. I have to say, I feel like I've discovered something about myself. I'm just not 100% sure if I discovered a new stability, or a new instability.

I have not been here lately

I'm back on the upswing, though, and there's more to come. There's been a lot going on in my life, and no one has seen much of me in months.

But before my next update about my VERY TRAUMATIC Tuesday, bookwise, let me post this for the indignation of my fellow readers:

George W. Bush claims he read 60 books between January and August of 2006.

Now, I'd love to have a conversation about this with him. I can't tell you off the top of my head how many books I read during that time, but I can tell you that, since it was 7 months, the number is probably about 50. I have a log, though, so I can go home and figure it out and get back to you.

You know me--or most of you do. I lead a quiet life, and reading is my main hobby. Not that I think the president is some sort of dynamo who never lays around doing nothing, but where did he find the time? I mean, he's in meetings all day! He doesn't even have a commute!

This is so outrageous I can't even deride it vigorously enough for my own satisfaction. Please join me in a silent moment of indignation.

New Direction

I have a lot going on these days, bookwise, though I'm in one of those zones where I'm in the middle of too many books to finish any. But I'm trying to phase over into reading some novels; lately I've been reading a lot of nonfiction, which is great, but not quite as relaxing as the novels.

I have The Double Bind, the new Chris Bohjalian from the library. I like a lot of his books, but some better than others, so I'm really curious about where this will come out. I've been meaning to read The Time Traveler's Wife, and I own it, so that's on the list. I just finished The Wife by Meg Worlizer. That book was really great, you should read it. It's a really fabulous, funny, poignant story, and that rare gem: a literary novel about a crumbling marriage that is well written, humorous, and totally engaging.

I checked out Howard's End, and I'm looking forward to rereading that. I remember enjoying it when I read it in college, but what you like in a school book is not always reliable to come back to later, so we'll see how that goes. I got a recommendation for Jasper Fforde, so I'll pick up one of those soon. Oh, and I'm back in the thick of my Jeeves and Wooster audiobook. I don't even remember which one it is--they're almost all the same--but it's still a great ride.

I took this class: Intro to the Novel, English 2o4. Great class. Here we go again.

Shame

I've been meaning to undergo a Personal Library Renaissance. I was going to come here and write about it. I got a bunch of great books for Christmas, and there's a list of books that Mike brought into this marriage that I'd like to read. There's plenty there, and a lot of it that I'm really excited about.

But here's the thing: I've been under a lot of stress at work. Like, the kind of stress that leaves me emotionally vulnerable. And when I'm at my desk, at my computer, and anxious, what brings me a momentary surge of happiness and temporary relief? What soothes me the way a cigarette soothes my sister? A hit of the BPL website. At http://catalog.mbln.org, I can log in and see what I have on reserve. And if there's nothing, if I'm not waiting for a book to arrive (on reserve! in transit!), there's nothing there for me.

So I've been ordering books and reading them as fast as I can. It's kept me going. The Wife, by Meg Wolitzer (such a great book; I'm just kind of let down by the last ten pages); The Double Bind, by Chris Bohjalian (love that guy; hope this one's as good); Through the Children's Gate by Adam Gopnick (I cannot tell you how guilty I feel that I really, really didn't like Lynne's favorite writer, but I just can't get behind a book that's all about how great and special New York is); Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (really interesting; I'm amazed at how much nonfiction about the Middle East I can read).

So there's been no renaissance. I have been reading some borrowed books, though--from friends I mean. I will give you only one tiny taste, and let you judge for yourself: "The psychologist probably scratched his head."

Did he really? You be the judge.

I won't apologize. I hope, though, that soon I'll be emotionally strong enough to read some books I own, rather than be so dependent on the BPL. I'm hooked, and I won't apologize. I've always been up front about it: I'm a cheap date.