My Mom's Bumper Sticker

"Support your local farmer, or watch the houses grow."

Barbara Kingsolver, not unsurprisingly, is an Earth Mother. And Animal Vegetable Miracle is a great read. While I am almost entirely as far as you can get from being a gardener without actually being forced by a bizarre illness to live in an antiseptic bubble, I love stories about the satisfaction of living with the land and nature--my inability to deal with dirt makes me the odd one out by miles in my family.

There's a thread of end-of-the-world anxiety in a book like this; America's relationship with food is so dysfunctional, and it's hard to imagine all the needed anti-corporate, structural changes to the nature of eating even having a small chance of happening. So I start to feel that shrill sense of despair when I really think about what I'm learning in this book, what I eat every day.

There's also an issue of absolutism here; the experiment in the book is of a family eating ONLY local food for a full year. They actually raise a lot of their own food, shop only at farmer's markets and from local farmers. They bake all their own bread, make almost everything from scratch. I'm pretty sure their only exception to the rule is olive oil.

To her credit, there is no level on which she expects you to grow your own food. She's pushing farmer's markets, seasonal eating of local foods, less or no processed foods. I don't think she is claiming her lifestyle is sustainable for just anyone. But there is a level on which she believes that this is not only her own ideal life, but everyone's. Even if, in a practical sense, you can't grown your own asparagus, you should long to.

As I was reading along, though, my big concern was the elitism involve in the amount of work this lifestyle entails. Her point that fresh local veggies are not actually (usually) prohibitively expensive is mostly true; farmer's market veggies are not more expensive than what you'd buy at the grocery store. It's true that the middle class can probably afford it, and that if the argument is between takeout and eating fresh, there's no cost contest.

But the time differential seems to be a big issue to me. Baking your own bread takes a lot of time. Most farmer's markets are only open during work hours. Cooking from serious scratch involves turning food into other kinds of food, and then using them to make meals. You bake bread, and then you grill vegetables, and then you press them into a sandwich. You make pasta from scratch, then cook it, and do the same with your sauce. If you want meatballs, you have to put a steak in the meat-grinder. Clearly there are plenty of frittatas and roasted chickens on the menu, but a lot of things that are simple for a lot of us are not simple anymore.

But the no time argument holds no water for her. "It's easy for any of us to claim no time for cooking; harder to look at what we're doing instead, and why every bit of it is presumed more worthy." And, "Some people really do work double shifts with overtime and pursue no recreational activities, ever....But most of us are lucky enough to do some things for fun, or for self-improvement or family entertainment." And there's an implication that spending hours every day cooking really should take the place of whatever those pastimes are.

I'm not going to defend my TV-watching. Instead, I'm going to end this with an example of why this book is so damned charming. When the baby turkeys arrived, "I filled a shallow water container and showed them how to drink, which they aren't born knowing how to do. They are born, in fact, knowing a good deal of the nothing a turkey brain will ever really grasp, but at this stage their witlessness is lovable....It's a good thing they don't stay this lovable forever."

Baby turkeys are apparently the cutest thing ever. I would never have known this without this book. It's pretty fabulous, and, more than a lot of books about what's wrong with the world, my panic is mostly overwhelmed by charm and beauty and hope.

Writing Out Loud

Last night, before coming home and discovering the travesty that is the BPL list save functionality (which they call your Book Bag, but only when they're telling you you've filled it up and can't fit any more books in it; are they trying to cheer me up with imagery? Anyway, I digress), Mike and I went to see Sarah Vowell and David Rackoff reading at the Sanders Theater in Harvard Square.

We went for the love of Sarah Vowell--you may have read some of rhapsodic descriptions of her historical essays, and how I love people who wade through all the dry parts of a field to deliver unto me the fun bits. She talked about that a little, during the Q&A (oh, the Q&A. More on that in a minute), about how she started writing history because so much history is written in a stilted, unnatural voice, and there's no reason for it to be. There's no reason these stories can't be told well, conversationally, normally.

And that's what she did--she read excerpts, whether from other things she's done or articles or her new book, I'm not sure, but she described the brash, bold explorer who led the expedition to map the Oregon Trail, and the gifted, bookish cartographer who went with him and mostly, in his journal, complained about the bugs, and the food, and the cold. It was interesting and hilarious and kind of touching, really. I love the way she thinks about these historical figures as people, and really imagines or even believes them back into existence.

David Rackoff is someone I'm less familiar with, but I've heard his pieces on This American Life, a couple of which I've really loved and a couple of which I found to be somewhat...umm, indulgent? precious? Anyway, he was, for me, not the reason to show up, but he really surprised me by being great. He reads very well, with a lot of inflection and humor--the man is very funny. While it's really past time, in my opinion, to be done with jokes about how George W. Bush really lost the election of '04 (you should either be agitating about this or letting it go; as humor, it's passé), it's long past time that someone pointed out that Rent is, maybe, not the greatest, truest depiction of vibrant youth and creativity that ever graced the stage. And did I mention, he was damned funny?

After two short readings from each of them, we were told that there would be a 15-minute question and answer period. Ah, the Q&A. This was, I believe, the single worst Q&A I've ever experienced; possibly the most uncomfortable I've been in a theater--and I've had front row seats for a nude scene in a space that seated 45 people. There was no structure; people were shouting out questions. But most of them weren't actually questions, they were invitations to joke around with the person shouting. I think, because you hear these people on the radio and you read their books and they're both so casual and conversational, you think that you can make them laugh and then you'll be friends. The woman in front of us just kept shouting "witty" comments (apropos of nothing she called Rackoff "pork chop," after the affectionate nickname for the Oregon Trail cartographer in Vowell's story). One guy shouted, "Grover Cleveland: compare and contrast," and I don't think he was kidding. The first question perhaps sums it all up: the woman began with a long explanation about how the two big white marble statues that stand on either side of the stage had been distracting her all night, and then asked the writers, "If you could choose any two people to have big white statues of flanking your stage, who would it be?"

Sarah Vowell answered, "Don Rickles and the Marquis de Lafayette," David Rackoff added, "I can't improve on that," and a wonderful evening came to a close for me. We'll pretend the last ten minutes never happened.

Late Night CRISIS

Oh god, oh god, I was getting all excited because me library list was about to crack 100 (excited and depressed but whatever), but the library system tells me it WON'T STORE MORE THAN 100 TITLES FOR ME. I have to remove items from the list before I can add more.

Hot freakin DAMN! I guess I have to commit all my list compilation to Goodreads. Because lord knows the list doesn't shrink.

Hearing Voices

I was on several stalled trains today. I was also in several libraries that denied me my copies of Austenland. I feel that fate has determined what was going to happen to me today--the voice of the gods was speaking, and I sat on the green line, and then on the orange line, obedient to their whims.

I did, almost accidentally, check out a few library books today. I got A Post-Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver (who is, for the record, a woman). She wrote We Need to Talk About Kevin, which was an amazing, disturbing, perfectly constructed novel, one of the most thoughtful and enjoyable books I've ever read that had almost zero truly sympathetic or likable characters, including the narrator. This new one, Post-Birthday has, I believe, a sort of Sliding Doors thing going on, with a pivotal moment and then two different possible futures stemming from that.

The other book I picked up was The Last Witchfinder, which appears to be an historical novel about a woman whose father executes women as witches in England in the 1600s, and who is determined to stop him. The only problem here is that I have it on a strict 14-day loan, no renewals, and, though it appears from the outside to be a normal size and shape, it weighs nine thousand pounds and is over 500 pages long. This is officially something I have "gotten myself into." It's my first check out from my new College Library, though, so I'm now officially engaging in the community.

Anyway, at the rate I'm going, I'll be reading almost nothing but The Evaluation and Measurement of Library Services for at least three days. I don't know how some of these people are doing this with a full time job on the side. Power to them, and luck.

On Deck

I stayed up way too late last night to finish The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale. Good stuff. Can't wait for more!

Today, sadly, I'm going to be reading chapters 1, 4, and 11 of Reference and Information Services: An Introduction, Third Edition, by Bopp and Smith. So far, it does not succeed in evoking the image of a dewy young woman in a '50s style business suit in her pearls and chignon, clutching her clipboard and smiling her Marlo Thomas-That Girl smile up at her first library the way Evaluation does. Also, though the type isn't small, the density is intimidating. Still, I'm sure it'll be fine; it's only 60 pages or so.

After this, though, I need to decide what I'm going to read next for my own self. I appear to be on an unavoidable Young Adult Fantasy kick. So I'm choosing between more YA fantasy (The Rebel Angels, by Libba Bray (not to be confused with the Robertson Davies book of the same title, about Canadian academics studying Rabelais, which was also a very good book)), which I'm very excited to read; the YA non-fantasy Long May She Reign, by Ellen Emerson White, which I'm interested in theoretically but not really drawn to; and The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, which I'm really only even trying to read because I'm feeling guilty that I've only ever read Huck Finn--and even that guilt is just because Lynne's systematically devouring Twain's biography and biographical information.

Oh, but I've already started Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, which is really good. I'm not usually a huge fan of modern-day back-to-the-earth experiments--they seem snooty to me. And it's true that Kingsolver doesn't deal very thoroughly (yet) with people who don't have the land or time to do what she does with food (I won't say money; it's not as much about money). But she's a compelling writer and she really lives these things--the life came before the theory, if that makes sense, which I think I respect a lot more. I'll probably be devoting more time to this book when I've read a bit more.

Oh, and I went to storytime at the local library yesterday. The librarian is just finishing up the program I'm in and invited me to observe. It was crazy and chaotic and fun, and I have to say, I think it's the first time since I came anywhere near library school that I had a moment where I felt perfectly clear. Evaluation class is another universe from where I want to be, but storytime really made me think: this is what I want, and this is where I want to be. I want to do this, exactly this, all the time. It was really refreshing, and made a lot of this feel worth it.

But good grief, now I need a job!

All Hail

That post title is maybe the worst pun I've ever been guilty of, because this is a post about how awesome Shannon Hale is. Y'all are just lucky I didn't call it "All Hail Shannon Hale." You may already know this, but I disapprove of puns on a very deep level.

I've written about Shannon Hale before. I started with Princess Academy, which caught my eye while I was adding it to the catalog at the middle school library. As it happens, this was a Newbury Honor book, though it didn't win the medal. What caught my eye on the first page was the authentic texture of the story. The mountain girl in this story sleeps on a dirt floor with her sister and her goats, and her only regret is that she's not allowed to work in the quarry with the rest of her family. I can't explain how she did it--if I could, I like to think I'd be a famous writer--but she made this life seem both gritty and beautiful. The story went on to be full of layers, of people with different motivations, of people who are human instead of good or evil. And if the ending was a little happy, you will never hear me complain.

So I looked at what else she'd written, and decided I most wanted to read Book of a Thousand Days. It was her only other young adult fantasy that wasn't tied together as part of a group. And oh, it was just what I wanted it to be; I think I just went on about this one the other day, so I won't bore you. But it was sweet and thrilling. She does getting to know someone and falling in love with them in the simplest and most charming way--she relates those little, meaningless conversations that make your heart flitter with perfect accuracy.

And now I'm reading Goose Girl. After this, there is a book called Enna Burning and another called River Secrets; both are based in the same world, with characters common to all, though I don't think you'd call them sequels. Goose Girl was a big slow on the getting into, partly because the beginning is a bit dreamy, and partly because the main character, Ani, begins the story as (forgive me for the pejorative language) a bit of a milksop.

But now I'm right there with her again. Again what Hale is doing is the small patterns of day-to-day life, the small conversations where acquaintances become friends and humor becomes affection. The authors I look for are the ones who can do exactly what she does, and she does it so well. I'm thrilled that there's more left for me to read.

Then there's Austenland. I haven't read that one yet; instead of YA fantasy, it's chick lit--a modern British woman's experience at Jane Austen fantasy camp. I can't imagine that I won't enjoy it, and I've heard quite a few positive reviews. I'm excited to read it, though I have to admit, I can't believe it'll live up to what I've found in her other books. It's so exciting to me that these fabulous authors are still out there for me to discover. I so want to grow up to be Shannon Hale.

And You Thought It Would Be Boring

I really expected school reading to cramp my blogging momentum--look at last week's pathetic post count. I've spent most of my reading hours today (in between napping and playing Wii target practice) on a book called Evalution, Second Edition, by Carol H. Weiss.

Have I hooked you yet? Let me tell you about the class--it's called Evaluation of Information Services, and it's about undertaking assessments of library and reference services to determine process outcomes and successful fulfillment of user needs. This is a core course of the library and information science curriculum.

Really, it's somewhat more useful than it sounds. It's about using scientific method and standard research methodology to figure out how well you're doing as a library. This seems like a useful thing to think about, since, unlike a business, you don't have profits or sales to use as a shorthand for whether you're doing your job well in a library. While I'm not sure that a course that emphasizes meticulously designed long term studies is the best way to get me thinking about how to tell if I'm a good librarian, I appreciate the intention.

But anyway, I don't suppose all this has endeared you to a review of this book I'm reading, has it? And to tell you the truth, it's mostly a dry-as-dust academic manual on, as the title indicates, evaluation. Meaning how to design and run an evaluation of a program, mostly government or charitable organizations like homeless shelters and Head Start. The book is full of material like: "Another factor that influences the nature of the evaluation performed and the uses to which it can be put is the location of evaluation within the organizational structure."

But I have to say, I'm really feeling like I'm getting to know Carol H. Weiss, through little snippets of language. The book was first written in 1972, and the current edition is a 1998 revision, so the book wasn't born yesterday. This shows up in a footnote where she explains that, for the sake of continuity and simplicity in the text, she's going to refer to all evaluators as "she" and everyone else--the program management, personnel, government oversight, etc.--as "he." She explains that another researcher does something similar with the opposite gender choices, but "I like it better this way."

And here's the line I just read, the line that makes me think that Carol H. Weiss, despite being a professional evaluator, whatever that is, might be someone I'd like to know: "A worst case scenario would be the program whose negative side effects are so serious that they overwhelm the good it does. An evaluation that failed to take note of them would be a creature from cloud-cuckoo-land."

I'm going to try to find a way to raise my hand and ask a question about cloud cuckoo land in class tomorrow. Let's see if my instructor did the reading.

Maisie, Maisie, Give Me Your Answer Do

I almost blogged about Maisie Dobbs last night, and went to bed feeling guilty over my lousy blogging schedule. But I'm so glad I didn't; last night, I was a little down on it, because the middle section--a flashback to the main character's early life and how she ended up being a 30-ish female detecting in 1929--kind of dragged. I needed some of the information, but as storytelling, it wasn't worth a third of the book.

But now I'm back in the "present day," and the plot is plummeting along, and I've leaped up from the couch at least twice shouting a warning to the characters. Mike thinks I'm nuts, but you can't argue that it's a good sign in a detective novel.

There are a couple of problems with the middle part, but it's mostly that you don't get much new information at all. The beginning of the book lets you know that Maisie was a war nurse, that she is the protege of a lady of means and an older gentleman detective, that she loved someone who met his end in the war. You could say these things are teased, but I really think they are indicated--you don't need much more. Then you get to the flashback, and you meet Maisie's father (which is pretty important), and learn how she started as the daughter of a barrowman, entered service (got a job as a maid, for those non Anglophiles out there), was discovered by the progressive lady of the house to be brilliant, and sent to college. Then she meets her gentleman, goes to be a nurse, etc. None of this, except her relationship with her father, adds much to what we learned earlier, and any of it could have been included in the first part of the book.

I also find it interesting, as a modern American, to read books about England of the past, because the class system is so important and so different from anything we could experience. Think about it: as an American, is there anything surprising about a smart serving girl earning her way to college? Would it even surprise you in 1920? Not really--there's a deep understanding here that starting out as a servant has less bearing on where you end up in life than how hard you work or what skills you have or what you want to do. But in England, in 1920, that was only just becoming the case.

I'm reminded of reading Emma with my book group, and talking about snobbery in Jane Austen, and how Austen indicates that Emma's friendship with her silly friend whose name I can't remember is inappropriate, or how in P&P Darcy needs to choose a wife of his breeding. The thing that's so hard to remember is that different classes really led totally different lives in those days--Darcy was not just looking for a life partner, but a business partner who would run the estate in such a way that it (and all the many people who depend on it for a living) would prosper. And to choose a woman who had no experience or not enough good sense to do that would be truly irresponsible.

God I loved English class.

Anyway, I'm seriously digressing. I'm totally loving Maisie Dobbs, and I'm excited to read the next in the series as well. In fact, I hope that, without the flashback, it's a cover-to-cover ripping good yarn.

Back to Books

I have a bushel of books, but I had a run of finishes this week, which is making me feel better about January. Jenny McCarthy's autism memoir was a quick read, and not bad (though not spectacular). Then there was Shannon Hale's Book of a Thousand Days, and I think she's officially one of my new favorite authors. It was a young adult book, on the younger teen end of the range, in that it not only has a fairy tale plot, but a fairy tale structure. But I just loved it--I loved Dashti's experience working in the kitchen and fighting off rats and her cat, and just everything. The best stories are the one that make mundanities seem fascinating.

This is what appeals about Megan McCafferty's books, and Fourth Comings, while more serious and somewhat grimmer than the others, is just as satisfying. Her fast-talking, painfully young teen angst is exactly right, and so satisfying in a deeply horrible way.

The schoolwork will start rolling in this weekend and my real reading time will be harshly cut into. But for now, I'm going to blow through what I can in time. I'm on my way out the door, with Goose Girl by Shannon Hale in my bag and Maisie Dobbs waiting for the finish on my bedside table. Life, for this moment, is pretty sweet.

And Me Without My Lunch Box

So school started today. Perhaps not many of you know (though I'm sure all of you can imagine) how poorly I handle new situations. I think Linden might be the only one our there reading this who understands just how much I cried during my first week at college. And any number of people will remember my ongoing delusion for my first two years at the office that every staff meeting that was called was expressly for the purpose of firing me publicly. I do understand that I overreact to these things. For the past few weeks, any hint that school was coming has caused me to come very close to wetting myself. There was much gnashing of teeth (which I have documented from my dentist--she made me buy a mouthguard, but I haven't worn it yet), and a good deal of weeping and wailing.

And then today I had class. And it was, unsurprisingly, fine. Everyone's been telling me it would be fine. And I mean, I've been to school, and I did fine, and I'm a relatively intelligent person, and seriously, how unfine can it be? Answer; not at all unfine. Inasmuch as it was fine. The material is not at all over my head; it's actually about designing empirical studies to assess how well library services are doing what they're trying to do. It makes sense; a library doesn't have sales figures to figure out whether they're successful.

So this is a good first step. The other class, meeting Thursday, will be a lot more work, but whatever happens...well, I'm in it for real now. We'll have to see what happens.

More on books tomorrow; I read a ton this weekend.

She Wrote the Doorbell

It's been a quiet week around here, partially because I was working on the same little pile of books all week and embarrassed to keep talking about them, partially because I was having the nervous fits before, during, and after grad school orientation on Wednesday, and partially because I am a lazy schlub.

I finished 1 Dead in Attic and Charmed Thirds, both of which were excellent in very different ways. And today I went to the library and picked up (deep breath) FIVE new books. I'm proud, though, because I had at least three more pulled off the shelf, but returned them because that would be excessive.

Among my new acquisitions is Louder than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism. I enjoy autism memoirs, partially because they bring me back to my experiences working with those kids, partially because it's reassuring to see these writers finding the strength to do something that I don't know if I would have the strength for. Having an autistic kid is one of my biggest fears, because it's such an ill-defined disease with such a cobbled-together, only-partly-proven course of treatment.

This is mostly beside the point, because while this is an interesting account of autism (so few of them begin with a hospital trip or medical crisis), the really engrossing part is that the author is Jenny McCarthy. You remember Jenny, I'm sure, because who didn't waste at least one high school afternoon watching Singled Out on MTV? She was the belching, bodacious bleached-blonde babe who waggled her tongue at the camera in the dirty Vanna White role on the show. Yes, that Jenny McCarthy. And honey, I'll tell you, this book ain't ghost written.

She's written two others, Belly Laughs, a memoir of pregnancy, and Baby Laughs, about caring for her infant son. Those are humor books, and while this one isn't without laughs, it's a more serious story she's telling. Let me tell you, this woman writes like she talks, and she talks like a crazy person. She uses a lot of exclamation points, and talks to God, prays, and follows her immediate gut instincts all over the place (Jenny McCarthy is VERY religious, raised Catholic but now just good pals with God. Go figure.). She asks me to "guess what?" several times in the course of ten pages near the beginning.

But my favorite part is when she calls the Morman Tabernacle in Salt Lake City and asks them to send someone to do a healing prayer over her son. The anecdote is pretty funny, including a joke about the word balls that I'm sure went over GREAT with the two 19-year-old missionaries the church sent her, but the best part is the beginning, when the two young men arrive at her door. "DING DONG." Yes, like a good old fashioned episode of Batman, the sound effects are written into the text.

I tease, but that's not fair. The truth is, it reads very much like an excellent raconteur (raconteuse?) telling an interesting story, and the only reason that doesn't work perfectly is because when you actually transcribe the way most people talk, it sounds, well, somewhat off. I have to say, though, that even when she's not finding out that her son has a devastating diagnosis, she sounds like someone who's so full of energy that she'd be tiring to be around. And her husband's a dink.

That's all the news from here. I might update later this weekend with more info about Wednesday's info session at school, but I'm still digesting it and trying to pretend that classes don't start soon (Monday! I have a class on Monday! I'm DYING!), so I need to process things before I can really dig in. Suffice it to say, I'm not too intimidated by the classes, but I'm a little beaten down by the amount of career planning they expect from you before day 1.

Happy weekend, one and all.

Jazztown

I've never been to New Orleans, nor ever wanted to go--I'm not into music or seafood (I'm pretty sure you couldn't pay me to eat a crawfish), I don't like partying or crowds, and I hate hot weather. So The Big Easy was never someplace I dreamed of going, though I guess I always imagined that I might end up there for some reason, someday.

I'm about halfway through 1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose. It's sweet and sad and poignant, and while a lot of the "spirit of the city" stories are really about human resilience, with a New Orleans flavor, there is a great deal of the idea of New Orleans here, a lot about what makes it a special, strange, glamorous, wild place. Aside from the loss of life and property, it's clear that Rose is really traumatized by the loss of place, by the fact that something that existed as such a solid and real thing--the very world--can cease to exist as we know it, can become something entirely different, less hospitable, unreal. It reminds me forcibly how much of human history is a string of events like this, and how insulated from the reality of nature we generally are. I believe that my house will be standing tomorrow, but in so many ways, anything can happen.

No matter how grim the material, though, for the first third of the book, the predominant tone is one of bewilderment, confusion, and pleading. The last few essays, though, have taken on a stronger tone of anger and impotent rage, with an overtone of growing hysteria. It's getting strange, more disconcerting, and more difficult to read. Which is funny because, as a commenter noted the other day, the columns are not in chronological order. I think I'm doing all right with that, though, because, although they don't tell a direct narrative, they do have a steadily developing tone.

Unfortunately, it's developing in an emotionally tricky direction. If I could renew the book, I'd probably put it on the back burner for a few days, because I have a hard time keeping the desperate emotions in the books I'm reading from taking me over. But the library waitlist is going to keep me going, and I think, while it'll be hard, it'll be closer to the emotional experience that something like this ought to be--immersive, hard, but true.

Wading Around

This is going to be one of those months when I go weeks without finishing a book and then finish five of them in three days. I'm dancing back and forth between Charmed Thirds and Maisie Dobbs, and I'm enjoying both so much I can barely decide which one to read from minute to minute. I have this feeling that someday I'm going to come down to the point where both books are open in front of me and I'm switching off page by page. It speaks well of what I'm reading, but I don't think that would be healthy.

I'm worried that I won't have as much time to read when school starts. It seems obvious that I won't be able to keep up the pace I've been keeping--though is it? I read the same number of books while working a full time job. I know school is a big commitment, but we're talking about 6 hours per week of classes. Could that really be much more than 35 hours a week of work?

You may have noticed me worrying about school.

I was reading a conversation online this morning about gender identity and books for kids. It was a bunch of parents discussing good books about or containing gay or bisexual characters. People were posting lists of books introducing the idea of straight, gay, and bisexual to toddlers and little kids, and dealing with those issues more thoroughly for older kids and teens. One thing they were lamenting, though, is the lack of books for little kids that have these ideas in the background, without being all about them. So you can buy a book to introduce the idea of having two mommies to a little kid, but you can't find a book that's about something else in which the character just happens to have two mommies. This is also true of other nontraditional family constructions, like families with different racial makeups, adoptions, or multiple parent constructs; it's possible to find a book to help you teach kids about these ideas, but not a book about, say a little girl having a fight with her friend (or a lost baby polar bear, or whatever) in which the nontraditional family is just there and taken as a matter of course.

This is a shame. My someday-kids are going to be raised to a white mom and dad, and I hate the idea that, while I can explain all I want that not everyone is like that, the fact of white hetero families will be the default of the world they live in, both in real life and in the media.

This isn't something I lament every day, because I have the luxury of not having to think about it. But right now I have a real itch to go out and write a kids book about an adopted black kid with two white moms and a biodad. Or something. I don't know enough to address this intelligently, but it's out there, in my head, floating around. I'll have to think more about this somewhere up the line, I suppose, when someday-kids appear on the horizon.

Throw Open the Windows

It's not like I finished any books or anything, but I started a few new ones last night, and it was pretty exciting. I am so easily pleased by new things--shiny! covered with glitter!--that it's a little embarrassing how bad I am at finishing the old ones. Around my house it's common knowledge that I'm great at the first 90% of a task, and really, really, REALLY awful at the last 10%.

So here I am, poking around in Maisie Dobbs by, I believe, Jacqueline Winspear (Mike wasn't sure that was the author's name since it's much less believable as a person's name than Maisie Dobbs. This is a 1920s lady detective story, and the five pages I've read are awesome. Thanks to Becky for that recommendation.

1 Dead in Attic is a collection of essays written by New Orleans journalist Chris Rose after Hurricane Katrina. I'm guessing he was a columnist, because he seems to have written the essays weekly. I read about the book online somewhere, but I probably wouldn't have picked it up if it wasn't for Dooce linking to his column describing the depression he suffered in the aftermath of all the suffering he witnessed. I was really impressed by the article--he does an excellent job of writing about depression from both sides, both as someone who has and is suffering from it, but also as someone who never really understood it until it happened to him. Even the most sensitive of us can have trouble understanding a mood disorder until we've experienced it--and sometimes not even then. (Like Laurie in my college psych class who raised her hand to contribute, "I don't understand why depressed people don't just decide to get happy." Sadly, she was a psych major.)

So far, I've only read about three of the columns, but they're really beautiful, full of pain and guilt (his house was barely damaged) and bewilderment. My only wish is that there was a map in the book; I don't know enough about New Orleans to have a clear picture of all the geographical background he gives, and I think a little help might be useful.

I haven't finished anything, though, so I need to get back on task for that last 10% (though it's really more than half of the two books I'm in the middle of that need to be finished. And I really want to read Caddie Woodlawn soon. So much to do! Burdensome!)

Not About Books

My classes could start at absolutely any minute; I haven't been paying much attention. I'm pretty sure I have another week or so, though. I'm freaking out.

I'm going to be studying library science starting in two weeks. I'm not convinced this is a good idea; I have historically been fairly good at going to school, but I have a high baseline level of anxiety, and the rolling nature of schoolwork (that is, the fact that the obligation to do work does not end at 5pm or on Friday afternoon) has never been good for my brain.

So you'll have to forgive me if I'm finding this distracting. I'm not going very far or very fast in anything that I'm reading, and I have a tendency to flinch at random moments during the day when I think about the fact that I have to start going to school soon. I will, however, keep the world posted as I learn library-y things--it'll be like a free education!

Like a Thrifty Man's Butter

Which is to say, spread a little thin. I don't have much to report from the wide world of literature and libraries, because when you're reading four books, you're barely reading at all. I'm almost done with Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear (which everyone should read, by the way, because it's an excellent guide to how to think about personal safety by a very smart guy who does this for a living). It's a reread, and a fast book anyway, so that'll be done tonight, I'm sure.

I've started Promise Not to Tell by Jennifer McMahon, which is not horrible, but not great. I've already cleared the 20% mark, so I'll probably finish it (it'll probably take another three hours, so it's not that much of an investment). It's promising me a murder mystery, but so far it's mostly about an outsider of a little girl observing another child's hardscrabble life with horrified fascination, which I'm feeling, too. Then there are the modern-day bits, in which the grown-up girl is dealing with her mother's growing dementia. Really, what I've read so far sounds like a bit of an Oprah book (which would be fine; I like a lot of Oprah books), but it's kind of dry, and I think someone's going to get murdered.

Oh, also the main character's name is Kate Cypher. I certainly hope they explain that in a way that makes it okay that her name is so on the nose.

Charmed Thirds, Megan McCafferty. Not quite as densely smart and angsty as and Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings (why is high school angst so much less annoying than college angst?), but still smart and angsty, and I'm loving it. (Aside: why does blogger say I'm spelling "angsty" wrong two of these times, but not the first one? Is it accusing me of overusing a word that quite possibly doesn't legitimately exist? Guilty as charged.)

To Say Nothing of the Dog. I'm really enjoying this, but I have to force myself not to rush it, because it's not that kind of book.

Library school starts in just a couple of weeks, and I've managed to convince myself that I'm not going to be scared out of my mind until the week after next. Really I'm scared out of my mind right now, but I'm letting all those feelings float away....like a leaf in a stream....a very, very anxious leaf....

Becky, I'm So Sorry

...but I just can't read Exodus. I've tried, I really have, but I just can't get drawn in--jumping from story to story, the writing style is so matter-of-fact, and the details are so familiar, I just can't get my head in it. I'm so sorry; I don't think it's a bad book, I'm just not in a place to read it.

I'm almost 100 pages in--with another book, I'd stick it out another 200 pages or so to the end, but knowing that the end is over 500 pages away from me....I just can't do it.

You get to slap me good next time you see me, okay?

My light reading this week is The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker. It's light because I've read it before--I'm skimming it in a reread, because it's such an interesting book. I love nonfiction with a lot of concrete facts in it. Have I mentioned that lately?

I'm probably going to be reading To Say Nothing of the Dog for a very long time--it's not really a "plow through" kind of book. (Aside: is plough a British spelling? Because blogger doesn't recognize it.) Mike and I are also reading A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Miserable Mill. It's a nice book for reading out loud to each other, in the car or while one of us is doing something like cooking dinner or drawing.

I also have a total of about 14 other library books out. Something really needs to be done about that; possibly I need to start reading The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, but more likely I should pick up Charmed Thirds, which will be both quick and trashy. Delish.

That Jim Carrey Book

I had read the first three books in the Series of Unfortunate Events series. They're clever and charmingly written, but they are, in many respects, all alike, and there is a frustrating and recurring theme of nobody listening to the kids. So I basically decided to stop reading them. And then, of course, I got access to the books of the middle school library, and suddenly I'm carrying around The Miserable Mill. It's good, like they're all good, but this is book 4 of 11, and I think after this I'm going to skip to the end. Unless this one has something very different going on, which I doubt.

We watched the movie this weekend, though. All three children were marvelous, and I loved how they subtitled Sunny's coos. But...ah, Jim Carrey. There were long moments in the movie where it's clear that they just let him riff, told the kids to look stiff and incredulous, and then looped the background music to cover the right amount of time. Not, not good. Long riffs, repetitive, hammy...everything you expect from Jim Carrey. I think I only ever liked him in two movies: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and, believe it or not, Liar Liar. This is not a movie blog, so I don't feel the need to explain myself there.

Next up, To Say Nothing of the Dog, which is a preposterous title, but the subtitle, How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump At Last, is even worse. The book, though, is by Connie Willis, and is very good, even on page 20 or so. I think it helps to have read her Doomsday Book, because it has the same setting, but I don't think it's necessary.

Final note: they made a movie of Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. It's animated in her comic style and in French. But the movie is black and white (not grayscale) and the English subtitles are, inexplicably, all in white. Good luck to you there.

More on God

Read that title out loud. No heresy intended. I promise this will be the last religious book entry for a while--I'll head straight into thrillers and chick lit, possibly some sci fi.

I just read Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren F. Winner. This is the woman who wrote Girl Meets God, which I read a while back, and really didn't like. And yet somehow, I keep reading all her books. I actively seek them out, and I actually enjoyed this one, and I'm struggling with that, but I think I've figured out why.

First, Girl Meets God was a personal story of being Jewish, converting to Orthodox, and then converting to Christianity. That's a convoluted journey to take, and, in my opinion, requires some justification, which the author does not give. Not only does she fail to seem at all sheepish for having such a tangled path, but she narrates the book with such conviction and authority, as though it was silly how much confusion she went through to arrive at such an obvious spiritual place. But she's writing only a couple of years after her conversion. She acts like someone with perspective and some secret knowledge, without earning either of those things.

So why do I keep coming back to her? I think this is quite simple, and it's the same reason I love Sarah Vowell--I love it when someone takes a complicated and esoteric subject and does all the research for me, so I can just show up and be showered with the interesting tidbits. (It's a cheap way of being intellectual, but it's better than nothing.) And when she's not talking about herself, Winner is excellent. She's at her best when she's synthesizing the work of academics and priests and rabbis and the Bible and the Talmud, and telling me what obscure mystic writers say about some of the things that she's discussing, and then telling me about how her friend Molly put this theory into practice.

So I really enjoyed Mudhouse Sabbath, which was about some of the things that Christianity (with its focus on faith at the path to salvation) could learn from Judaism (with its focus on the practice of worship). I love learning about esoteric Jewish traditions, and I love how she claims to have tried a lot of them, in the charming, random way young people wander into trying things.

I wonder if it seems silly to people, how much I like nun books and C.S. Lewis and Lauren Winner, when I'm not even remotely a Christian, not even at all.

Preached At

Anyone reading this is probably tired of hearing about Till We Have Faces, but I like it and am annoyed by it and am thinking about it, so that's what I'm writing about.

The ending of this book is really irritating to me, in the same way that a lot of proselytizing is irritating to people who aren't already sold. He sets up this great story of a woman who is angry at the gods, and telling her life story as an indictment of them. The big issue it comes down to is that, as she (Oruel) puts it, she was faced with a riddle and made the best answer she could with the information she had, and, when she was proven wrong, she and her sister Psyche were punished for it. What happens, in essence, is that she is told that something exists that she cannot see or perceive in any way. She believes that her sister is wrong--mad or deceived--and acts on this, attempting to bring her sister home and save her.

Based on this, her claim seems like a pretty fair indictment to me. The book supports it all the way through, until the last part. At the end, it is revealed to Oruel and to us, that her real motivation was not compassion for her sister but jealousy of her sister's love. And that all her urge to save her sister before, all her standing by the evidence of her senses, was just stubborn denial of what she must have known in her heart to be true.

I hate this. It's like that old, irritating psychoanalytical issue, where if you deny that you have had a trauma, you're repressing it, or resisting the therapeutic process or something. No, honey, sometimes not being traumatized is just based on bad things not having happened to you.

So the whole book just dismisses the fact that, given the information she had, Orual was right to try to save her sister--that she had no earthly reason to believe that Psyche wasn't living on an exposed mountainside in the winter--in favor of the idea that if you don't grasp what the gods want, then it's because YOU are wrong and stubborn and have not yet overcome what is bad in your heart. Good people believe, it's as simple as that, I guess.

Various and Sundry Miscellanea

For the record, I read over my list from 2007, and I read a total of 122 books last year. These are the books I logged in my journal; not all of them made it up here--I don't blog everything I read, it would get draggy. That number does include audiobooks that I listened to. And for the record, one of those was an abridged version--I know, I know, I hated to do it. But in the end I'm glad I did, because five more minutes of that book would have been a hard thing to deal with. But now that I know there are authors out there who have internet access, for crying out loud, I'm feeling cautious. Oh, hell, it was Darwin's Radio, by Greg Bear. Which was intriguing in concept, and good as far as it went, as sciencey political dramas go, but which reminded me of Michael Crichton in how it dealt with a lot of minutia and then danced away from the interesting reveal at the end that is the whole point of the book.

Anyway, there's that. Also, I went to the library today. Jenny McCarthy--yes, the hot chick in the baby tee from Singled Out who got famous for belching--has written a memoir about raising a son with autism, and I can't even wait to read it. Based on a limited amount of information about her (see previous sentence), there are a lot of places where I wouldn't feel comfortable following Jenny McCarthy. But there are so many moments to laugh at in autism, even while you're crying--I'm really curious to see where she goes with this, and what kind of a writer she is, and what kind of observer and humorist.

I got a big book of Mark Twain essays, for which I can blame no one but Lynne (I will draw the line, though, at reading about Irish dance halls). I liked Huck Finn in high school, but lately have found myself unable to get into his novels for various reasons. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is so offhand as to be boring, and so clever as to cease being clever. The Prince and the Pauper just couldn't hold me. And I've seen a copy of Life on the Mississippi from a distance, and that's plenty for me, thank you. I hope the essays will be more consumable.

I got a bunch of other stuff that I'm excited about, too, but I'm also exhausted and going to bed soon. But I will close with this: Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. I've gotten past the preachy part and am loving it again. But I'm coming into the home stretch and I have a strong feeling he's going to start preaching again. I hope he can hold it together anyway.

So we plunge into 2008 with a fresh round of stuff to read. I need to get a lot done in January, because I get much, much busier at the end of the month, and my reading time will be sadly shortened!

Why Is There Always a Sequel?

Ellen Emerson White wrote The President's Daughter, which was a classic sixth grade read, about a teenager whose mother is elected as the first female president. Sort of a classic that mostly flies under the radar.

Life Without Friends is not something I'd heard of till recently, but I've been hearing some buzz; apparently, this is one of those books that is a huge favorite of anyone who has actually read it. So I read it today.

What was really exciting about this book is how it took a standard "teenager in over head" type plot that could have been a thriller or a deep drama and set that up as the backstory, proceeding to tell a more overlooked story. In the first chapter we learn how the main character fell in with a dangerous crowd after her mother died and she came to Boston to live with her father and his new wife. Her new boyfriend becomes a drug dealer, beats her up, and eventually kills some people. The story starts after his hearing, and it's not about any of those things. It's about someone who's messed everything up and been through the wringer, and now has to show up at school every day, where every single person despises her. It's about having no friends, not knowing your family, and kind of hating yourself. It's a story about healing, and there are no easy outs here.

I really enjoyed this book. I thought it did something difficult--gave you a surly, angry, messed-up character, and made you like her, sympathize with her, and root for her.

So now I'm eying Friends for Life, which appears to be a sequel to this book. I'm torn about sequels--well, mostly I love them. When I find a book I like, I'm excited to hear there are more out there by the same author with some of the same elements. The only problem is that they sometimes become a burden (because they make my damned list longer!).

Looking more carefully at Friends for Life, though, I think it's more of a companion book--it's the story of the boyfriend-murderer and the girl who was looking too closely at his drug habits, and basically how everything went down that eventually led to Beverly's experiences in the book I just finished. And I think, if this is going to be some sort of murder-thriller, that I don't really need to put it on my list.

So this is part of what I hope will be a good New Year's process for me; allowing myself to lay things aside, relax, set aside anxiety at a lack of completion. We'll see how long this lasts.

C.S. Lewis and Christian Parables: Who Knew?

Till We Have Faces. I'm only about halfway through it, and it's quite lovely--a leisurely written story of the princess of a mediocre country whose beloved younger sister is given in sacrifice to their God, and who tries to rescue her. The first third or so of the book was an interesting story, and very much a character study. But then the plot really got underway, and the two sisters are having a long conversation about gods that is such a Christian parable that it almost ceases to function as fiction.

Actually, I'm not sure if that's true. I think it feels heavy handed, but I also thing Lewis is quite an expert at exploring the issues surrounding religious faith in a way that is generous to the agnostic. He's not antagonistic, as I find so many other apologists to be. But you can tell that's because he really feels like he's going to win you over. The girl in the story (I can't remember her name, because it's strange and she's a first person narrator; the sacrificed sister is Psyche) clearly doesn't want to believe, and even as she's making very reasonable arguments (I think my sister is crazy because she says we're sitting inside when we're clearly outdoors getting rained on), it's clear that I'm supposed to find her suspect because of her lack of faith (in her sister's claim that no, really, we're indoors and dry as a bone). And then her arguments that really, if the gods want us to believe things, they should make them less contradictory with the evidence of our senses--insert C.S. Lewis eye roll. But, I'm sorry, that makes total sense to me as an argument. You can't dismiss the evidence of my senses as a spurious argument.

I don't want to argue religion with anyone--I am without any sort of conviction. And I really enjoy reading more explicit religious discussion, because I want to home in on the place where I part company from believers, because I really can't find it for myself; I only know we're on different paths. But I do hope that the book becomes less of a parable and goes back to being more of a story.

I also want to put in a plug here for the YA novel Princess Academy, by Shannon Hale. Hale has apparently written Goose Girl, which a bunch of people I know have raved about, as well as a bunch of other things. I just found her, and I can say that I enjoyed Princess Academy a lot. I thought it dealt very well with the main character being strongly of two minds, and really not knowing which way to go.

Okay, I'm off to ring in the new year. Happy 2008, everyone!

Wait, Are You Telling Me The Internet Is Interactive?

So. Well. Huh.

Apparently my recent post about Ha'penny, by Jo Walton, was read by the author herself. And then blogged. I noticed because of an insane bump in my blog stats on December 26. You don't go from the loyal 5-8 readers I have (hi, Linden! hi, Lynne!) to the 102 who came to visit me without wondering how exactly THAT happens.

So after I stopped screaming and crawled out from under the kitchen table, I started to think about what was in the post and pray that, even if I disappointed Ms. Walton, that at least I hadn't embarrassed myself. I mean, on the off chance that Stephen King finds his way here someday, I stand by my declaration that he needs a more aggressive editor. But I have been known to say things that are rather less thoughtful and more impassioned than is truly necessary.

I'm not going to backpedal, because I said what I think about the book. The ending depressed me--I was invested in the conspiracy, and who wouldn't be invested in killing Hitler? The ending depressed me so much, I woke up the next morning and felt depressed when I thought of the book again. I even felt extra-depressed when reading Exodus later, because I kept forgetting that we won World War II. But I don't think I can claim that writing a depressing book is a failure, even if I am a five-year-old child when it comes to happy endings.

I'd like to reiterate how much I adored Farthing. You should really read it, and I'm not saying this because Jo Walton knows my URL. Tooth and Claw was fabulous, too--a spot-on perfect, excellent, marvelous novel--practically Jane Austen with dragons. And, even more, I am indescribably excited to learn that there is going to be a third book in the Small Change series (her name for it, also called Still Life with Fascists), in which I absolutely insist that Carmichael be redeemed. It is possible that, after reading the third book, I'll be okay with Ha'penny as a second act.

I hope it doesn't sound wishy-washy coming back to this. I throw this blog out into the void (Hi, Kris! Hi, Becky!), and I feel like this situation calls for more precision. And for a big shout-out to Jo Walton, who's going to be the Guest of Honor at the 2009 annual meeting of the New England Science Fiction Association here in Boston. Maybe I'll show up to shake her hand--if she'll have me.

The Brick Wall of My Bougeois Taste

As in, once again I've run up against the brick wall of the fact that there's a quality of good "literary" fiction that I just can't take.

So I'm not going to be reading Giraffe. I'm quitting after the requisite 10%, plus a few more pages, and I would normally not be bothered by finding out, this early in the process, that a particular book is not my cup o' tea. But I had been SO excited about this book. Also, I have to say, I'm still really curious about the plot. What did happen to the giraffes? Why were they shot? But I think that finding out how it ends is a good enough reason to plow through, say, the last quarter of a book, not getting into the first 50 pages.

So what don't I like about it? Well, so far, it's the atmospheric nature of the book. So far the only things that have actually happened were 1) giraffes are caught and sorted, and 2) guy who studies giraffe circulatory systems is called to the government office, told he'd be fetching the giraffes from the ship and brining them to the zoo, and then goes home. We also have elaborate descriptions of the office he sits in, his route home, and his house. This is something like 40 pages in. Literally, nothing else happens. There are a lot of poetic moments--vignettes of things like him walking along the river and imagining an elderly couple watching him from the window of their apartment, and a flashback to how his architect mother designed the high dive of an important municipal pool and how the family went annually to view said pool and high dive.

Also, there's the pervasive misery of every book that takes place in a communist country, as though (and I think I've said this before) the sun never shone in Czechoslovakia.

So I am done. Stick a fork in me. Kris, next time we have lunch you will tell me how the book ends, and I will be done. I'm sorry; I feel like a bit of a failure, but it's over between me and this book. I'm reading Princess Academy, a young adult book by Shannon Hale, and Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, as well as Exodus. Speaking of Till We Have Faces and Exodus in the same sentence, Becky, if you're out there, you should read The Penelopiad, by Margaret Atwood. It's a strange little slip of a book, but I think you'd really like it.

Next time: goodreads.com, library arrivals, and a meditation on whether it's really completely respectable to read this much YA.

Major Letdown Season

This is not a holiday-themed post. Christmas so far is not at all let-downy. I was disappointed in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, but that's neither Christmas nor literature, so we're not going to talk about that.

But Ha'penny. Jo Walton. Sequel to Farthing. Sigh.

So I loved Farthing. You can't pretend that the ending was a happy one--the book is, from start to finish, about fascism winning the race--it's a world in which Lindburgh defeated Roosevelt and America is mired in Depression and isolationism, and in which Churchill was ousted early on in favor of a treaty with the Nazis. This is the world the book takes place in, and there is only the slightest hint that there is hope for anything or anyone.

The sequel, Ha'penny, has all these issues, but without the even tiny sense of uplift that you get at the end of Farthing. I'm almost sorry she wrote it. There were a few bits that didn't fly as well throughout--the main character's sex/love relationship and how it influences her actions, for example--but her voice and the police procedural guided me painlessly through those parts. Ah, but the end...I won't spoil it, except to say that the only sliver of hopeful sentiment it leaves you is pale and false. There is no hope here, only Zool.

And as for Pirates of the Caribbean, if there's another sequel, I'll forgive it, but if this is the end of the series, I'm taking my business elsewhere. Also, I hate movies where everything is monochromatic. Different scenes had their own color, but each one was just the one color. Blech.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Starting a Meme

I don't know if it's a meme until someone else picks it up, but here's a list of all the Newbery Award winners so far. Bold are the ones I've read; red are the ones I'm pretty sure I want to read. Not that I won't read others; there are a lot I don't know anything about. But this is a list of my intentions.

Now that I look at it, I've read a lot more than I'm planning to read. And to be honest, I've only selected the ones to read that look like I might really enjoy them--there's no duty-reading on this list. I have enough of that in my life. I'm going to have to think about this a little more, process it and think about the procedure.

There are in reverse order by year--the last one on the list is from 1922.

:The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, illus. by Matt Phelan
:Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins
:Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata
:The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread by Kate DiCamillo
:Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi
:A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park
:A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
:Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
:Holes by Louis Sachar
:Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse
:The View from Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg
:The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman
:Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
:The Giver by Lois Lowry
:Missing May by Cynthia Rylant
:Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
:Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
:Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
:Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman
:Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman
:The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman
:Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
:The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley
:Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary
:Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voigt
:A Visit to William Blake's Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers by Nancy Willard
:Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson
:A Gathering of Days: A New England Girl's Journal, 1830-1832 by Joan W. Blos
:The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
:Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
:Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
:The Grey King by Susan Cooper
:M. C. Higgins, the Great by Virginia Hamilton
:The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox
:Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
:Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O'Brien
:Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars
:Sounder by William H. Armstrong
:The High King by Lloyd Alexander
:From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
:Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt
:I, Juan de Pareja by Elizabeth Borton de Trevino
:Shadow of a Bull by Maia Wojciechowska
:It's Like This, Cat by Emily Neville
:A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
:The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare
: Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
: Onion John by Joseph Krumgold
: The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
: Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith
: Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen
: Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham
: The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong
: ...And Now Miguel by Joseph Krumgold
: Secret of the Andes by Ann Nolan Clark
: Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes
: Amos Fortune, Free Man by Elizabeth Yates
: The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli
: King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry
: The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pène du Bois
: Miss Hickory by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
: Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski
: Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson
: Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes
: Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray
: The Matchlock Gun by Walter Edmonds
: Call It Courage by Armstrong Sperry
: Daniel Boone by James Daugherty
: Thimble Summer by Elizabeth Enright
: The White Stag by Kate Seredy
: Roller Skates by Ruth Sawyer
: Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
: Dobry by Monica Shannon
: Invincible Louisa: The Story of the Author of Little Women by Cornelia Meigs
: Young Fu of the Upper Yangtze by Elizabeth Lewis
: Waterless Mountain by Laura Adams Armer
: The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth
: Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field
: The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly
: Gay Neck, the Story of a Pigeon by Dhan Gopal Mukerji
: Smoky, the Cowhorse by Will James
: Shen of the Sea by Arthur Bowie Chrisman
: Tales from Silver Lands by Charles Finger
: The Dark Frigate by Charles Hawes
: The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
: The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon

Czechoslovakia and My Quest

Well, I just got back from an evening in the Balkans at Revels, which was fabulous. Who knew that Bulgarian music would sound so Eastern in flavor--almost Southeast Asian, with Indian-like twang. And looking at the program with all those words that contain letter combinations like "jro" and "dse" reminds me yet again how much trouble I have reading books about places that I can't even try to begin to fathom how to pronounce.

I know the author of Giraffe is trying to create a clear image of the country in my mind, but when the narrator talks about riding his bike down Jroklavske Street, through the roundabout and up Skvlinsiljrka Hill, I am not being made to feel like I know this place. I am being made to feel like I'm visiting the natives of Jupiter, and perhaps the sky here is maroon--I have no way of knowing.

It's such a petty complaint; I feel shame. Here's a more profound one--stories set in Communist countries are depressing. Especially the Eastern European ones (Colin Cotterill's Laotian mysteries are rather upbeat; but then, communism is young in The Coroner's Lunch). This isn't petty, just trite--why are the Reds always such a downer? It's like the sun never shone in Eastern Europe, when I'm sure there was, at some point between 1950 and 1990, a clear day.

In other news, I have begun my quest into the Newbury books. I will probably post the list here sometime, along with what I plan to do with it. Stay tuned!

...And Legend Is a Dirty Old Man

Upon deciding recently that I'm too delicate a flower to watch the movie I Am Legend, I decided to read the book. Since it's very old, and a novella, and also currently a big movie release, the library system did not have a lot of help to offer me. So I ran over to Audible--and the whole thing is only 5 1/2 hours long, and well read.

So I've spent today listening to this misogynistic, sexually repressed and weird 1950s story. It's almost mind-blowing how this book dates itself by its ideas of sex and women--and this in a story that's basically a one man show. How much page-time do women get, you ask?

Well, I don't want to spoil anything, but enough. First of all, within the first ten minutes of audio, I commented to Mike that this man's life would be much happier if he'd consider touching himself as an option. Of course, that's just the book dating itself--a Man does not do that, or at least doesn't admit to it, even in fiction. But the vampire-women try to draw him out of his house by "striking lewd poses." His memories of his wife are not too bad, but he makes other comments, about how a normal man could never live a life of celibacy without completely turning off his sex drive and psychologically neutering himself.

Spoiler time, though I'm pretty sure I'm just spoiling the book, not the movie.

There is also a female character, who is not particularly strong--a decent number of hysterics, collapsing into tears, requiring slapping to calm her down. My favorite line, though, is when Robert Neville is still doubtful about her, and feels like he's being manipulated. Then he dismisses the thought, because she's "just a woman." I don't even know what this means. I mean, if you're going to be that demeaning toward women, don't you probably think that they're innately manipulative? I'm getting my prejudices confused.

End spoilers.

But I'm sorry that I had to begin with all that incredibly striking sex stuff, because around that, the story is actually pretty good. It's very psychological, and contains a lot of thought about the main character trying to keep sane, and sort of not doing a great job, and doubting that he's going to be able to keep going, and then somehow managing it. It moves in cycles, too--he doesn't just get better and better or worse and worse. The effects of time of his emotional state are pretty complicated, which is nice.

I'm enjoying the story. It has a kind of stark, simple style that seems very 1950s sci-fi, at least to my untrained literary judgment. And it's short, and I think the reader is adding a lot (though his women's voices don't help with the sexism thing, being breathy and limp). Still, I'm glad to be reading it.

Will I see the movie? It's hard, because I really want to, and I've heard that a large part of it, at least the first half, is quite good. But I think we've discussed here before my complex and delicate relationship with end-of-the-world stories. And I think that will always mean that I have to at least wait and watch them on video, so I can turn them off in the middle if I need to. Because I love Will Smith, and I can only watch so much of his suffering.

Impassioned

I think I scared Tracy this weekend. It's not much of a party if half the people don't exchange books to borrow and read. But I don't fully understand people who only read one book at a time, and finish the one they're reading before even thinking about what to read next. So I lent her The Subtle Knife, since she just finished The Golden Compass and was hungry for more. And Katie took The Amber Spyglass. And I returned her copy of Rebecca, which I hadn't read yet but will never get to, who are we kidding? Plus Brenda took a couple of Sword and Sorceress volumes.

So I've got momentum, and I start shoving things in Tracy's hands. Don't you want to read Sandman, Leaving the Saints, Return to Avalon? Can't I fill you up with all my favorite books, everything I've read for the last few years, don't you want to read it too? Join me, join me in my quest! Come with me to the dark side! A-hahahahahah!

Ah. She was very graceful, and walked out with just the one book she wanted, bless her heart. We forgive her for not following me to Crazytown.

God's Aesthetic

You know, when you think about a giraffe and what it looks like, it's really a weird beast. It's like the large land equivalent of those strange, glowing, barely-real-looking creatures that live in the unreal places at the bottom of the ocean. The physics involved in a giraffe living on Earth--it's just remarkable.

Before I actually went after this book, Giraffe, I should have read the back. I might have found it interesting that two separate blurbs compare the work to a combination of Sebald and Kundera. Now, I don't even know who Sebald is. Kundera wrote a book I've never been able to read--not yet, anyway--The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Noah and I tried to watch the movie once in college. The fire alarm went off, though, and we both took the opportunity to creep away and not reunite to finish the movie. Since then, we've both called it The Unbearable Lightness of Boring. I try not to hold that experience against the book, though.

All this to say, this blurb makes me wary regarding this book.

I started out wary with Ha'penny. I loved Farthing, but I was worried because the somber, gloomy outlook that you're likely to get in an alternate history in which Hitler basically won was most projected in the plotline about the police officer, and that was the one that was going to continue in this book. I was worried that the lightheartedness of the girl's story would be sorely missed.

I underestimated Jo Walton. I might even eventually have to read her King Arthur fiction. Ha'penny is already clever, I already love the new main character, and I'm dying to know how Hitler turned out. The author clearly understands that Carmichael is a gloomy guy, and no one can handle a whole book about him. Go Jo!

I'm off the wagon, back at the library, and I absolutely love it.

My About-Faces

Today appears to have been a day for coming around. (Aside: you'd think I never did anything but read. I won't claim I get a lot done, but I really only read about 10 pages total of anything today.)

I'm really enjoying Small Gods. I still don't think it's as funny as I'm supposed to think Terry Pratchett is, but it doesn't need to be funny because it's, well, good. There are a lot of cute British little puns (a foreign country named Djelibaybi, for example), which are not actually offensive, but are somewhat distracting from what is an interesting story about a slow person from an oppressive religious regime seeing a little more of the world and beginning to wonder. This is amusingly set off by his god, in the form of a talking tortoise whom only the main character can hear, barking sardonic commentary and impatient orders at him. In sum, I like this book a lot.

And Exodus is coming along, as well. I think I'm going to have to pick a day and just read on into it for a few hours to really get into it, but I can see the raw materials there. There are quite a few characters to follow--even just in the part I'm on; I understand it will flash back in time after a while--and until you start to get to know them, this is always distracting. Plus, I have to say that I'm not getting a great picture of what Cyprus looks like, so the place names that seem so important as they're driving from one town past a small city and to a mountain really mean absolutely nothing to me. I can barely even picture it, and any picture I have is based on what Greece looks like. That's a fair guess for Cyprus, I guess, but I have to keep reminding myself that I really should be picturing, say the less populated parts of Mykonos, rather than Santorini (most photographed volcanic island in the world, not typical even of rocky Mediterranean islands).

So, things are coming along. This will not be a high volume month, but if I manage to read all 550 pages of Exodus, plus a couple of these kids' books and Small Gods, I'll be doing my part.

Oh, and all those library books! Those too! God that's satisfying.

The Only Plummet I'll Take

Wow, when I break the seal, it's broken. At the middle school library today, I checked out four books (which is two more than I'm technically allowed to, but they're going on winter break soon, and nobody will be reading them! Also, they have three copies of at least one of them! I'm not stealing from children, really I'm not!). I also borrowed three books from the pile in the back room of unregistered books that aren't in the system.

Two are Babysitter's Club books, which almost don't count. One was the fourth Lemony Snicket book, which I'm not sure if I have the mental fortitude to read, but by Jove I'll try. The rest, though, are part of a new, informal project I'm embarking on; I'd like to read most of the Newbery Medal winners.

Mike and I were perusing a list of them the other day and I realized that, of the 80 or so that have one, I've read about 16. Which is great. (I won't embarrass Mike by revealing how few he had read, but let me put it this way: you can count them on one thumb.) But so many of them are some of the greatest YA books ever: A Wrinkle in Time, The Westing Game, Holes, The Hero and the Crown. So I think it might be worth it to read more of them. I don't want to read them all--once a year since 1922 is a lot of books, and I have no desire to drag myself through a bunch of YA that I'm not going to enjoy as an adult. But I picked up The Slave-Dancer, Caddie Woodlawn, and The Door in the Wall, all of which had appealed to me independently. So I'll probably shoot for reading about half of them--at least all that appeal to me.

So I plunge into this plan, and roll around in the 9 official check-outs and 6 or so unofficial library-owned books that I have right now, and I'm like a pig in poo. It's glorious. I really get a high off it.

Oh, and you should read The Golden Compass. I will not spoil the movie for you.

Oooooooooooooh yeah.

I went to the library today, to pick up my reserve book, Ha'penny, and to check out a better copy of Exodus, and I totally fell off the wagon. I got To Say Nothing of the Dog, about which I know next to nothing, but which I'd like to read. Also, Kris is reading it, so I thought we could read along together.

I got Till We Have Faces, which struck me on a whim once while I was roaming the shelves, and which Becky extols. I got Giraffe, which I've been interested in since, again, Kris read it. That's about it, but they're all long hardcovers, so that's like 30 pounds of books. And now that I've broken the seal, I think I'm going to get some kids' books at the school library tomorrow. I'm thinking maybe Caddie Woodlawn, which won the Newbery Award in the '60s, and then maybe Princess Academy, which I'd never heard of but shelved the other day.

I'm not ready for any more A Series of Unfortunate Events books right now; they're not as depressing as they sound, but they're not exactly upbeat, either. And it frustrates me how nobody ever listens to the kids complain that Count Olaf really is after them. But it still reassures me that the school library has them all--easy access.

But oh, it felt so good to stride purposefully through the library and snag things off the shelves. It was so satisfying. I imagine this is what skiing is like for people who, you know, ski. The wind in your face, gravity pulling you, the thrill of being acted on by forces greater than you. Swish!

Lull

This PLR thing isn't working as well as I'd wish. Harry Potter was great and all, but Exodus has not sucked me in, I'm sorry to say. And I'm also reading Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett, which I think I might not quite get.

Terry Pratchett is hilarious, right? I'm afraid I'm not really seeing it. There seems to be the core of a pretty good story there, with a certain amount of wit--the simple but honest novice who's been approached by his god in the form of a talking turtle whom no one else can hear; the inquisitor (exquisitor, in this topsy turvy world) who is terrifying but whose henchmen might be working against him. Great. Does it sound funny? Not particularly...I guess, there's something innately funny about a turtle? All the place names are funny, but a map of England is equally silly. And the dry bluntness that is characteristic of Britishness is charming, of course. But I can't say I'm laughing out loud.

The best line I've read so far, which had an actual laugh in it, as well as some nice meat on its bones: "Fear is strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground."

I think I'm going to have to grant T.P. that "the potatoes of defiance" is a great item, and I will read the rest of the book for that.

But Ha'penny is waiting for me at the library, and I'm not at all convinced that I won't be checking out four or five other books along with it when I go.

HARRY POTTER

So, five months after my special Saturday delivery of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in its special branded box by a mailman with a smile that implied that he had spent the whole morning delivering a truckful of Harry Potters to gleefully trilling people like myself, I finally picked it up to read it, day before yesterday.

I have done almost nothing but read it since then. Don't tell Ruth, but I barely checked my email. I read all 758 pages in a bit of a marathon--about 16 hours over the course of three days--two, really, because I started it just before bed on Tuesday night.

OMG it was so fabulous. It was satisfying and scary and thrilling and I was one step ahead of it but then wham it was one step ahead of me, and Harry was a tortured soul and then a despairing adolescent, and then a hero, of course, a hero!

I have to say, though, the epilogue was extraneous and unnecessary.

So that was a thrill ride that I won't reveal too much of, and that's one of the three books in my PLR down. Exodus is in my bag and will be my other big thing; I need to figure out what book 3 will be.

Oh Harry! I swoon!

Queen of the Trash

If you've been reading along, you might be wondering why I read so many awful books. Or maybe, if you're not a snob, you just wonder why I read so many books "of questionable literary merit," or maybe just "poorly written mass market thrillers." I can't blame you for wondering this, because I've been pondering that very question today.

What brings me to this pass, you ask? What makes me ask this question that even that paragon of awfulness, Angels and Demons, did not bring to mind? The answer can be given in two little words: Darwin's Radio. Greg Bear is the author, apparently a well-respected scifi guy.

Let me give you two little tastes. First, the main character (Mitch) is an anthropologist who is on the outs in his field because he stole some remains. The local Native Americans wanted to rebury them, but he shouted, Indiana Jones-like, "It belongs in a museum," and swiped it. This is all backstory, but the interesting thing is that his anecdote is supposed to paint him as a rogue hero, someone who's going to flout the rules to get the job done. I'm supposed to find him to be "my kind of man," when in fact I find it offensive that he would steal human remains like they were potsherds. (That's right, "sherds." That's what the archaeologists call them.)

Taste two: What's going on in this book is that most of the pregnant women are having weird pregnancies that aren't coming to term--when eventually they do start coming to term, the babies are the next stage in human evolution. Anyway, the scientist who discovered this mess is a woman who falls in love with the abovementioned Mitch after meeting his unemployed, YMCA-living self. Since the government is determined to get rid of these new mutant fetuses, she decides to get herself pregnant, and tries to seduce her boyfriend of three days without a condom. He refuses. "Why not?" "You're fertile." "How can you tell?" "I can smell it."

You can? Those home ovulation kit salesmen have a hell of a racket going on if you can smell her ovulating. Seriously, tell me more about this smell. Also, I'm pretty sure that you should never tell your girlfriend you can smell anything about her, unless it's about her new bath soap.

Just a tip.


who is morally questionable, and who (second) can smell his girlfriend's ovulation, apparently.

One of My Many Personality Disorders

You wouldn't know, to look at my slacker, procrastinating, half-assed self, but I think I have a perfectionism problem. One way I control myself is to break things down into tiny tiny baby steps. Another way is to make explicit rules for myself, or to give myself firm permission for things that go against my unfortunate all-or-nothing tendencies. This is the source of the Personal Library Renaissance.

I think I have to enter a period of explicit permission to give up on lousy books. It usually takes something pretty awful for me to give up on a book. When I really can't get into something in the first 10% of the book, I can usually give it up without too much of a fuss. But, though the Ten Percent Rule is the one on the books, I rarely put it into practice. And after ten percent, the book has to be pretty lousy, really almost offensive (aesthetically, if not morally) to quit.

But right now, I'm feeling overwhelmed by to-reads, and I'm really not enjoying all of them. And I can't really figure out why I'm reading some of these books--or why I'm continuing to read them. I need to stop thinking of this as my job, and start looking at it as a pleasure again.

So, Kris, I'm sorry to say that I'm giving up on Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading. It reads too much like a really, really long entry on this blog--and I can't say for sure that I'd find this blog interesting if I wasn't writing it myself.

I'm also giving up on Mary, Bloody Mary, which is a YA novelization of the life of guess which British monarch? I blame the writing style for everything that's wrong with this book; it's told in first person, but it reads like a very distant, almost journalistic account of someone else's life.

Example: "Scarcely two days had passed when I began to complain of a pain in my head. This was nothing unusual, for I frequently suffered from headaches. But the pain worsened and I developed a fever and a squeezing in my chest. Within hours I tossed in my bed, clutching my head and moaning with pain. Perspiration poured from my armpits and groin, and my hair, soaked with the poisonous sweat, lay matted on my pillow."

Does this sound like someone's experience? There are a lot of physical details, but not ONE of them describes the actual experience. In fact, if this was told in the third person, from the point of view of a maidservant standing in the corner, it could be just fine, but if you were describing writhing in pain in your bed, would you explain how you began to complain about pain, or would you describe the pain? Would you explain how your hair lay matted on the pillow, or how it felt, clinging damply to your forehead?

You see my problem?

So I'm going to give up on this book, and forgive myself. And what that means is that I will have ZERO library books checked out. I wonder how long that will last.

Ugh. It feels slightly wrong. Let's see how that goes.

Visualbooks

You know, like audiobooks, only you read them with your eyes instead of your ears. It's a pretty neat idea, actually.

You've all heard my rant about how the reader really makes or breaks the audiobook. Well, I have a comparable one now; my enjoyment of a physical book can really be colored by its form and quality. I'm reading Exodus, but my copy is very old, paperback, falling apart with yellow pages and too small type. There's something so dated, so out of date, about how the physical book feels, that I fear I'm going to be biased against the story because of that.

So I think I might break PLR to check out a better copy of this book. I don't think it's breaking the rules, because it certainly isn't breaking the spirit of the thing, which is to read books I own. And I would finally keep that ten-year-old promise to Becky--hi Becky!

This prejudice of mine is also the reason ebook readers don't excite me. I'm a snob for the physical product; I make paper bag book covers for my trade paperbacks, I take the slipcovers off my hardcovers to protect them (weren't slipcovers invented to protect the actual hard cover?), and there was even a time in my life (that my sister remembers and rubs in my face) when I read my favorite books carefully so as not to crease the spines. I prefer hardbacks to paperbacks, even though they're heavy and a pain to carry around.

I judge them by their covers. And I'm not nearly as ashamed as I should be.