Geraldine Brooks

So I finished The People of the Book the other day. I was excited when I heard it was out, which is sort of surprising given how I felt about her previous two novels.

I read The Year of Wonders a few years ago, and I really loved the first 90% of it. Then the end went all Big Tuna on me (for those of you who haven't seen Wild at Heart, that is to say "freaky all out of proportion to even what you have been led to expect). You're reading this tragedy where you think you know all the characters, and then there's this U-turn and you're all, "okay, this is surprising and I'm not sure how it changes the theme or meaning of the novel, but it's an interesting surprise and I'm impressed." And then there's another, far more troubling U-turn, and you're all, "What? What point could you possibly be making by sneaking this in at the end? This completely changes the theme of the book!" The book was, at the last minute, rendered a setup for the tragic punchline at the end.

I read March when it came out, too. This was more of a mixed bag--I think that, if it hadn't been playing off of the beloved Little Women and changed the tone of the characters whose purity I have long admired, I might have liked the book. It's emotionally and morally complicated, and a lot of it is about misunderstanding and how people sometimes aren't communicating and don't even know it. There's a lot of painful violence, and a serious loss of moral innocence in a grown man. Like I said, if it hadn't been Jo and Beth and Meg and Amy's father--Marmee's husband, for crying out loud!--I think I would have found it a good book, if harrowing. But as it is, it left a slightly bad taste in my mouth.

So why was I excited about The People of the Book? I know Geraldine Brooks is a great writer, and I can't say enough how I loved The Nine Parts of Desire, her nonfiction book describing her experiences as a reporter in the Middle East. The book was written in the late 90s, so it lacks the context of the past 10 years of change, but she creates an amazing picture of what it's like to be a woman in an Arab country. The best part, I think, is that she traveled to many different countries, and met a wide variety of people, and she really takes the time to differentiate among them. There's a big difference between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and she tells about all of them. I think this is what makes the book still useful, I think--even though the details have changed in most countries, it's so easy to ignore the differences and call them all "the Middle East," and this book helps to illustrate the range of differences between how Islam is practiced and women are treated in all these places.

So--The People of the Book. I'm not a huge fan of short stories, but this book does something amazing with what are essentially a series of short stories, cinched tightly together by the narrative of the woman who's investigating the history of an amazing, unlikely volume--a centuries-old Jewish book illuminated in the Christian style. We follow Hanna on her detailed investigation--analyzing an insect wing tucked in the pages, a wine stain, a stray hair. We meet her cold, disapproving mother, her mentor, her lover. She's not perfect, but she's smart and competent and sympathetic.

And then, as she learns the scraps that science can tell her about each clue, we get the full story of where each clue comes from. And this is a remarkably well-balanced saga of the history of Jews in Europe. We meet a girl in the '40s who flees from Sarajevo at the beginning of the Holocaust; a Jewish doctor who treats the Christians who hate him in the 1890s, a rabbi in Venice as the Inquisition approaches, and a number of characters in the painful position that is Spain.

Because the modern part of the story is told in Sarajevo, and because more than one story takes place in Spain, the religious theme of the uneasy interaction between faiths in Europe is actually a three-way balance, and the Muslim, Catholic, and Jewish balance is really at the heart of this book. It's so exciting when I learn something (about history, about conservation of old texts), AND am stimulated to think about deeper themes, AND find myself anxiously following the fates of irresistible characters. You should read this book.

Not as YA-y as I Seem

I wonder if I grew up while I wasn't looking. I don't have any huge problem with You Know Where to Find Me, by Rachel Cohn. I don't have any problem with it at all, really. It's just kind of bleak, which makes it not so much my book. It's definitely not a reluctant reader book, in that it is not at all action-packed, and is in fact very moody. It actually strikes me as pretty "literary," which of course is not a term I often use in a flattering sense.

I think it's just not my type of book. The main character is depressed and angry at the world, and as we all know (probably YA writers best of all), writing about someone who's suffering from chronic boredom, ennui, or aimlessness is very hard to do well. I don't think she does the job poorly, I just think that the protagonist, Miles, is too grouchy for me. She wants to do nothing, to shut the world off, and while I understand the impulse, I just want to shake her. Her existence seems so pointless--I suppose that would appeal to teens who feel that way, but it doesn't really appeal to me.

I feel like such a crank, complaining about all these books. I'm supposed to love this stuff, right? Of course, none of these are things I wouldn't stock in a library--this person exists and needs books about herself. It's interesting, I guess there are two ways for books to use the Developmental Assets--one is to demonstrate them in use, through the plot, and the other is to have a plot about them coming into a person's life. Miles is lonely, adrift, with no purpose, self-esteem, close ties to others, supportive environment, or anything really. I assume that by the time I finish this book, things will have changed. We'll see; an upbeat ending cures many ills, for me.

In other news, I want to GUSH about The People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks, but I'll save it for another, non-class post. Suffice to say, though, that this was a wonderful, engaging, thrilling, heartbreaking book. I think the structure of the story really allowed her to do some of the surprising things she does in her other novels without my feeling that my involvement in the story has been upset the way I felt with her other novels. Really excellent.

Talking to Teens, Supplemental

I realized that I forgot to include a list of the books that I had used when I talked to the teens. The list can be found on my school webspace. I used this list to show the books to the folks whom I interviewed via email.

I also wanted to add a comment about how all the kids indicated that they absolutely hate reading "classics." Some of them referred to this as "any reading for school," while others seemed to like some school stuff, but really don't like "classics." This makes sense--I've always been an avid reader, but absolutely hated anything by Charles Dickens, and The Scarlet Letter caused me an almost physical suffering. Which is funny, because in retrospect, it's a very good story. Anyway, the first book I loved for school was Jane Eyre, which was summer reading my senior year. I started it two weeks before school started, and ended up staying up all night and reading almost in one long sitting. But that was after 11 years of faking it--reading 2/3 of the book and writing a paper about a character who dies early, or the author's use of language.

Sorry, Mrs. Meyers.

But this element, which seemed perfectly natural and not really worth mentioning when I was talking to the teens, took on a new level of significance when I read Connecting with Reluctant Teen Readers the other day. It made an excellent point that a lot of teenagers who might be avid readers of things they enjoy are turned off because everything they "know" about reading comes from school, from an English teacher. Most of their reading has been "classics."

This brings me to the question of WHY the books we teach in school are these choices. I mean, I can understand why we're not giving pop quizzes on Gossip Girl, and even why Boy Toy might be too much for the classroom, but what are we hoping high schoolers will get out of The Grapes of Wrath? There's a good answer to this question: cultural literacy. These books are modern history, it's English as Art class.

But that doesn't seem like enough of an answer. Is the point of English class to expose teenagers to the content of high culture, or is it to teach them the tools of reading, analyzing what they read, finding themes and morals and discussing the use of language to affect the reader? Because those are far more universal, practical skills, and those can be done with books that might have a much broader appeal. Moby Dick can be saved for, say, your senior year of high school, or maybe even college.

More later today on my newer reads!

Talking to Teens, or Can This Possibly Count as a Paper?

When you interview the teenagers who just happen to be hanging out reading in the Young Adult room at the library, you’re probably going to get some kids on the high end of the reading-for-fun spectrum. It’s a fun way to meet people! (Especially when the librarian does the tapping people on the shoulder asking them to take a survey part of the job for you.)

First let me say that Molly Collins, the Young Adult librarian at Malden Public Library, is exceedingly awesome. She’s fairly new in town, but not to YA librarianship, and she knows her stuff and her group. I can’t thank her enough for her cheerful help, her time, and her encouragement.

The Malden Public Library is located right across the street from the high school, so during the school year, the after-school crowd floods in for the afternoon. But even during the summer, they have their regulars, and a thriving summer reading program—the end of June is a hugely busy time in this library.

What are kids reading? MANGA is the number one answer—unsurprisingly. She says that circulation has gone up about 50% since the manga collection really took off. Other things? Urban fiction, vampires, and fantasy. Stephanie Meyer (author of the infamous Twilight), the Bluford High series, Gossip Girl, Kimani Tru, Clique. Series books are kept in a separate section, because they don’t always have the same author, but people like to go straight to them. Most of these are books for girls—guys, she says, lean more toward manga and fantasy. Post Secret is also very popular, and almost never in the library.

What she says pretty much reflects what I hear from the three teens I talk to in the reading room. The two girls I talk to are both African American, and both are interested in urban fiction. V (17) tells me about Street Pharm, one of her favorite books, about a drug dealer who meets a girl who helps him get his life back together. She says she’s very interested in African American books, although she gets a lot of her reading material from the adult section of the library. In my stack of offerings, she said she had planned to read Homeboyz and Grace After Midnight anyway. Her attention is also caught by Another Fine Prom Mess and Last Days. As a library page, I get the feeling V, like me, can’t resist the books she sees as she’s shelving them over and over.

B is 15, and her response to my stack of books is similar—Homeboyz (she was so jealous I had a copy; the reserve list at the library is long, since it’s a summer reading book in Malden), Grace After Midnight, Last Days. She also expresses interest in Hitler Youth and Re-Gifters—she’s interested in history and likes comics—though she prefers the Japanese kind that you read back-to-front. But what she really loves is romance—she’ll read anything fun that has romance in it, or is scary. The book she’s reading, I notice from the cover, is an African American love story. What does she hate? “Lollipop books,” the kind with bright, spare candy colored covers, about being in high school. “I’d never read Gingerbread or anything like that.”

H is 17, an Asian guy into fantasy, adventure, and history. My stack of books doesn’t appeal to him much at all—the only one he’d find interesting is Hitler Youth—an oversized, photo-heavy nonfiction book. He’s dying to get at the third Eragon book. He’s also the first one I’ve talked to who says he spends a LOT of time online (an observation backed up by the librarian; he’s a regular).

This is Malden—a diverse community with a gorgeous, busy library. I’m glad I got a chance to meet some of the kids who use my favorite library.

I also talked to a brother and sister from rural Maine. Their taste was somewhat different from my local acquaintances—both were big fantasy/science fiction fans, and fairly heavy readers. L, the boy, is 15, and observed that he’s interested almost exclusively in the action of a story, and it has to move fast. He says girls are more interested in issues and themes in the books they read. (This doesn’t explain why he’s currently reading St. Matthew, the New Testament (apparently with the intent of arguing theology with his classmates), alongside the Han Solo Trilogy. This guy impresses me.) This is born out by his sister, M, who is 17 and says she’s interested in books she can relate to somehow, either through character, plot, or some other element. Although she lists a bunch of fantasy titles as her favorite and recent reads, she says she’ll read anything—fiction, nonfiction, whatever catches her eye.

I think it’s interesting to see the similarities and differences between these groups. As a big fantasy fan, I’m pleased to see its universal appeal reflected in the people I talked to. And I guess it’s not too surprising that the white teens from rural Maine were not as interested in Homeboyz as the African American girls living near the city. I think I see here that readers are looking for something that touches their lives, whether that’s a character who’s like themselves (or an idealized version of themselves), an adventure they’d like to be on, or a problem they can see themselves facing. It doesn’t surprise me to find that guys are interested in plot, while girls can be drawn by romance or personal drama, in addition to plot.

I'd also like to point out that Molly knows her customers.

Parenthood

One thing that I've found myself noticing about all these books as we read them is the presence or absence of parents in these kids' lives. Gossip Girl is a good example; only one of the 4 characters I've met so far has parents who are not explicitly absent, as in off touring the world and not in any way about to show up. The parents in Boy Toy and Nineteen Minutes were present, but seemed to be entirely missing the point of their kids' lives. Snoop had foster parents who loved her, but who weren't aware of what she was doing, or even what the fabric of her life looked like.

I find this interesting in a couple of ways. First, I don't think all of these books are making a point about parents. It seems more like parents are in general a fairly minor part of the lives that teenagers lead--family life is a known quantity, while the rest of life is what needs to be navigated and explored and figured out. Books for teenagers are about defining yourself apart from family, and so family takes a back seat, or maybe is missing altogether. They also want to be about empowerment--parents are, by their nature, either somewhat controlling or somewhat neglectful. To explore a teenager's power, the story needs to keep the parents in the background or make them agent against which the protagonist is acting.

(Aside: why am I talking like this? I keep lapsing into academic-speak. Not sure why; apologies.)

Also, the nature of a good story usually indicates that a person have a certain level of being on their own, in the same way that most Disney protagonists are either orphans or, at least, missing a mom. Concerned, involved parents make life a little easier in some ways, and relieve the solitude that seems to be such a theme in the lives of the characters in all these books.

I just think it's interesting that this theme comes out in all these books--and so many others. There are different developmental assets at work in all these books, but the presence or absence of parents could be seen as related to all these things.

Huh. Just a thought.

Mea Culpa

Well, after reading Linda's comment, I feel bad saying this, but my judgment based on page 1 of Gossip Girl has changed after reading pages 3-24. The first two pages are a blog entry by the mysterious Gossip Girl herself, which is funny and smart and coy and which I loved. The actual text of the book, though, is so far not so much those things. My main complaint is that all of the adjectives used to describe the characters are long, hyphenated phrases: Dan is described as "stained-brown-corduroys-wearing" and Serena's feet are "Urban Decay Piggy Bank Pink-toenailed." The branding is troubling, too, though I understand that the point of this is to impress upon me deeply the true level of wealth and materialism at work here among the youngsters.

I'm not saying it's awful, but it's not going to bring me running back for more. But again, we'll see. Page 24 is not yet at the point of my 10% rule. I'm not putting the book down either way, but I don't get to lay claim to full judgment till I've passed page 40.

I finished Grace After Midnight this morning--it was compelling and quick, and I think it would be an excellent choice for reluctant readers. It reads like speech, and it keeps you guessing. I think it's interesting that Snoop has moved fully away from her dangerous and illegal life after many false starts, but she seems to have few regrets about her whole journey. I find that interesting--she makes statements about feeling bad about people whose lives she's messed with and being sorry about things she did wrong, but they're fairly bald, and she doesn't dwell on those feelings. Her whole story, even the saddest parts, seem to be about looking forward toward the next thing, accepting everything about yourself, and trying to be better without beating yourself up for NOT being better yet. I feel like I should feel a little differently--like she should have more regrets--but as it is, I really like the message, that having regrettable things in your past doesn't mean you have to be full of regret.

I'm also reading The People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. It's very good so far, but I've just reached a point where the Holocaust is encroaching on the life of the main character in the section I'm reading, and I need to gather up my emotional wherewithal before I dive into that bit too far. I'm really hoping that the segmented nature of this story makes it a little easier to follow to the end--her other novels, March and The Year of Wonders both had me going until the end went all Big Tuna (slang from my college days for absolutely wacko insane). I will, however, always recommend her nonfiction book, The Nine Parts of Desire, about her time in the Middle East as a news correspondent, and everything she learned about the different countries, about Islam, and about the lives of women there.

So, I'm keeping busy. Happy Independence Day Weekend!

Deep Fears

I've just started Gossip Girl--actually, It Had to Be You: A Gossip Girl Prequel. I'm only one page in and already I have a terrible fear that I'm going to enjoy it a lot and not be able to stop reading the whole series. This just seems like a terrible fate--I mean, do I need more trashy stuff on my list? Forgive my use of the pejorative, but come on. Uber-high-society teenagers, already jaded about sex and partying and consumption, turn to intrigue to fill their empty lives. This is not where I want my reading life to go, but I can see it shooting off in that direction, because so far, the book is just juicy. Sigh.

I've also started Grace After Midnight, by Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, which is interesting. The actress/memoirist has a coauthor/ghostwriter, and the book does a great job of capturing her voice--it's very street, with short sentences using the grammar of speech ("I still got my braids." "Those jams were poppin' everywhere I went.") My initial reaction to this was complicated--I really like it as a style, especially since it's clearly the voice of the person writing the story. This is not a woman who came from the streets and is now teaching at Harvard; she's an actress now, but the characters she plays are based on the life she's led. And, although it takes time to get used to the rhythm, once you are into it, it's musical and communicates a lot.

But I had a much more prim reaction, too, which is that young, reluctant readers shouldn't be reading this and learning this terrible grammar! Luckily, that part of me shut up in about three seconds, because reading to better your grammar is not, I'm happy to say, a major swaying factor for most people. My role is not to push people toward complex sentences that use pronouns and adverbs properly. These aren't typos--it's the language of speech, and if I love it, then it's for sharing.

Anyway, so far so good. In other reading news, Maria V. Snyder has joined Shannon Hale on my list of writers I'm dying to read more of and kind of want to be when I grow up. Her style is not as polished as Hale's, but she makes up for it with note-perfect plots that are well-paced and full of absolutely enthralling characters. Poison Study and Magic Study are great, and now I'm itching to get at Fire Study. I'm trying to ignore the fact that they're published by the fantasy division at Harlequin--it's not a romance, and you can sort of tell that the romantic part of the plot (while integral) has been beefed up a bit in lavishness to fulfill the publisher's needs, maybe. Still, absolutely fabulous fantasy.

And I finished The Dead and the Gone in two days. It was everything I hoped--quite different in many ways from Life as We Knew It, with characters coming from very different places in life, a whole different set of troubles, and a much more raw, gritty grimness. But there's also more of a sense of hope, I think--community means more, and faith is much more of an issue. I think if I had to pick I'd choose Life as We Knew It for my favorite, but I still really hope she produces one more about this before she finishes.

So it's been a busy week. I'll have more to say about these two that I've just started, before too long. Till then!

Death Note

This is a popular little bit of manga, and I can see why, now that I'm reading it. I like the way it keeps throwing up practical and ethical dilemmas for our protagonist (I won't say "hero") to sort out (though I won't say he does a lot of ethical "sorting"). I like the way it's carried by story--one thing happens after another, promptly--but character and suspense are built within the action.

Unlike all the fans, I'm not someone who deals well with continually ongoing stories, that roll out forever with no hope of resolution in sight. I think I'd love to follow the same characters, but knowing that they're going to be wrestling with the same dilemma for the rest of the foreseeable future is annoying. This is true especially because it rather stunts characters' ability to change; the whole idea of storytelling is that your protagonist changes or grows or learns something over the course of his/her adventures--and I'm not talking about a new rule about their Notebook of Doom. I suspect that Light's never going to realize, over the course of this series, where his morality is off, because that would be the end of the story. So this is a mark against this kind of book for me.

Interestingly, though, I'm told it's not a mark against it for teenagers. Rather, the consistency, the ability to rely on the story to keep on coming, is a part of the draw. I can see that--first, the insatiable appetite, and second, the reassurance that this thing you love will be there for you tomorrow--these are heady things. I've read my share of series of books. Now, though, I'm more of a fan of excellent writers who write different books. Maybe I'm just afraid of commitment.

But the moral struggle of Death Note is really the most interesting part. This week's topic is boundaries and positive values, and the story couldn't be more on point. I'm curious if a teenager is going to react the same way I am--to see Light quickly turning from misguided hero (kill all bad guys!) to uh-oh antihero (kill all cops who try to stop me!), and to hope that he gets stopped somehow. I'm hoping it'll be a blow-out, and that something more impressive happens than the police catching him, but I don't want him to win, because he's wrong. I wonder if a teenager would come to that conclusion as quickly as I did.

Cheating on My Homework

That subject line is a tease--I'm not copying from anyone's paper, I'm committing infidelity to the syllabus reading list. I couldn't help it; a couple of very thrilling reserves came in and I just couldn't resist. I just can't be trusted--I'm promiscuous when it comes to books.

I finally read Rebel Angels, by Libba Bray. It's the third time I've checked it out of the library, but I could never see squeezing in the 550 pages, and never got off the ground. It doesn't help that I can't really remember much of what happened in the first book (A Great and Terrible Beauty), though I remember liking it a lot. This one was very good, too--I'm a sucker for a British girls' boarding school book, and when you add the fantasy part, well, I'm in. It's one of those books that's about the sort of meandering journey that you're on--there are a lot of dead ends and switchbacks, but the end was very satisfying. I'm not going to run out and get the next one, but I'm definitely going to read it.

Poison Study, by Maria Snyder, is the other one I'm cheating with. As soon as I heard of this book--and I don't even remember where--I really wanted to read it, and I wasn't wrong. It's fantasy, as well, and much plottier than Rebel Angels. Everything moves along quickly, and there's a lot of fun worldbuilding--though the political situation is a little heavy-handed. It's almost amusing how clear the parallels are to, say, the communist bureaucracy that took over after the abusive indulgence of a corrupt monarchy. For example. But the character is cool, and I can't quite figure out who she should trust, which is fun--it's nice to be reading a YA fantasy novel and not to be even one step ahead of the main character.

And finally, finally, I'm waiting eagerly for the Minuteman system to bring me The Dead and the Gone, by Susan Beth Pfeffer, sequel to Life as We Knew It. The latter was a truly excellent YA end of the world book, and I'm really excited that the sequel came out--early! before its anticipated pub date! kudos to the editorial and production staff over there!--and that it's winging its way to me!

I'll have things to say about Homeboyz (bleck) and Death Note (thumbs up), but for now, I'm taking a mini-vacation into sweet summer reading indulgence.

Worst. Parenting. Ever.

I'd rather be reading Nineteen Minutes right now, but I had to come post here before I got any further and my having figured out the ending became less impressive. I won't spoil it by telling you my guess, but rest assured, I have a strong suspicion of what the big Jodi Picoult twist at the end will be.

One of the "always the same" things about her books that drives me insane is the fact that one of the main characters is always keeping a secret, for no discernible reason. Often it's someone who's on trial, and not only do they choose not to explain that they're not guilty or had a good reason for doing things, no one ever even asks them. I'll spoil Vanishing Acts (only a tiny little bit) by saying that the father who ran off with his young daughter was in jail for WEEKS before he mentioned to anyone that the mother he took her from was dangerously drunk a lot of the time. No one asked him, "why'd you do that," even the people who are sitting down, talking to him, wondering that. He doesn't tell his lawyer, in spite of the fact that he's sitting in jail and on trial. It's infuriating to me.

But when I think about this book in the context of teenage readers, it makes a certain amount of sense. It's part of the barrier that Peter has put up, part of his isolation--which is total. He's been so thoroughly unsuccessful at connecting with anyone in his life, it's not nearly as surprising that he's stopped trying, even though it could make all the difference in his life. The idea of being alone and different in this book is carried through perfectly, to a painful degree. It hurt me to read this. Every incident from Peter's life just made my heart sink into my stomach. His brother calling him nasty names behind his back. His mom embarrassing him in front of the soccer team without even realizing it. It's such a perfectly realized portrait of what it's like to be that kid, whom nobody likes--my tastes of it in life have been small, but they were there, and it's hard to read.

Then there's Josie's solitude. She's got the popular crowd of friends, but she doesn't really connect with anyone, including her mom. She has almost no tools for dealing with what she's really thinking, because all her efforts have gone into making sure things don't look bad from the outside--welcome to the life of a judge, of a popular girl. Her loneliness and confusion are also perfectly captured (though I'm pretty sure she's also keeping The Secret That I Suspect But Won't Spoil).

But the most painful part of this book, in my opinion, is the parenting. I can't claim to be an awesome parent (or any kind of parent yet), or that I wouldn't make mistakes, but when Lacy tells her son near the beginning that if he lets the other kids tease him again, she won't let him play with his only friend, this seems to be, well, HORRIBLE to me. There is a difference between helping your kid be strong and making him responsible for his being weak. When she shows up on the soccer field and admonishes the coach in front of the other kids--come on! My mom went in to complain to my math teacher that she wasn't challenging me, but she did it after school, and I wasn't embarrassed in front of my peers. And I don't care how important it is to be a judge, it amazes me that Alex never once figured out that you can't just ask a teenager if they want more of your attention, or time--you just have to give it to them--maybe even force them to take it.

And the hardest part about the parenting is that they're all trying. They all love their children and are trying hard. They just don't seem to see what their kids need, either as teenagers, or just as people who are different than they are. While it's heartbreaking, there's also something deeply true about it, and something that I think a lot of teenagers, feeling like their parents don't understand them, would recognize.

This book blows right through all of the developmental assets. We've got all kinds of support missing from Peter's life--family, school, neighborhood. Safety is missing, too. Boundaries and expectations are messed up--none of the adults at school, at home, or in the world sets boundaries on any of the teens--Josie's mom giving her and Matt run of the house, teachers ignoring the abuse Peter takes. Alex models almost no positive values for Josie, except responsibility. And let's not discuss Peter's identity and lack of social competencies. The novel is like a manual on what can happen to someone who doesn't get the emotional nourishment they need in life. It's hard to read, but I can't deny that it's compelling, and emotional, and that I'm really enjoying it.

On Manga

Dramacon is by no means my first outing into comics, but I think I can officially call it my first successful outing into manga. It's a great book, about learning to stand up for yourself, and finding out that you are strong and talented, even if you didn't know it before. I love the fact that the main character is a high school girl who produces her own mildly successful comics. The focus, sense of purpose and identity that displays is exciting, and the confidence she finds in that over the course of the book is pretty rewarding.

It is (relatively) widely known that I kind of despise manga. I hate that all the characters look alike. I dislike the weird combination of realistic/idealized images with cartoonish pictures. I am turned off by those giant, shiny eyes. But honestly, what's really stopped me near the beginning of so many promising comics is that everyone is so shouty. Everyone's always sweating or screaming or crying or just OVERACTING. Even the serious drama (Eagle) and very American stuff (At Death's Door) just has so much shouting in it, it's emotionally reminiscent of watching the Three Stooges, something else I don't do voluntarily.

So I'm grateful for two things right now: the necessity of picking up and finishing Dramacon, which I now have to read the sequel to because he gets a girlfriend? But they're supposed to be together! And the necessity of picking up Manga and Anime, by Robin E. Brenner, which does a certain amount to demystify manga. At the very least, she's acknowledging my observations (criticisms!) and even explaining some of them.

The fact, for example, that manga writer/artists turn out at least 30 pages a week, instead of a team turning out 32 pages-minus-ads per month, allows me to forgive them a little bit for the characters that look the same. The fact that they're serialized in magazines that are considered somewhat disposable, more like the funnies in the newspaper than a novel, lets me cut some slack for shorthanding a lot of action through silly, simple conventions. That the Japanese consider themselves a "wet" or emotional people, as distinct from us dry, unemotional Westerners will never cause me to ignore the shouting, but at least it explains it.

Because of this long-standing hatred, I've thought a lot about why on earth people like this stuff. I love comics, but I'm pretty picky about the art. But of course I've noticed that a huge percentage of what's out there falls into the superhero category, which is not at all a broad range of appeal. Of course, the fantasy of being strong and competent, able to save the world and worthy to stand against all foes is a pleasing one, and escapist, and, I know, often dealt with in complex ways, but if you're not going to read a superhero comic, you're just not. And sure, there are other kinds of graphic novels (from Fables to Fun Home to Blankets to Persepolis), but not nearly enough.

This is where manga comes in. For sheer volume of stories, it can hardly be beat. And, unlike American comics, it's not nearly so weighted to the science fiction/action-adventure genres. There are comics marketed toward girls, tons of straight-out romance stories, personal drama, queer characters--just sheer breadth. There's something for everyone, and I think that the fast-paced, pop-culture appeal of comics draws in a lot of reluctant readers who are looking for a romance or a high school drama or any of the many characters and stories to see themselves in. You can find plenty of novels in any genre, but when it comes to comics, manga is where the variety is.

The very simplification of characters--good guys vs. bad guys vs. villains, loyalties and betrayals, characters who are mostly exactly who they appear to be--is probably very appealing for teenagers, hoping to fit everything they're seeing around them into familiar shapes and categories. If you can tell by the size of a character's eyes whether you're dealing with an ingenue, a rogue, or a villain, you can find the shape of the story, the lessons and patterns and familiarity, much faster.

----Amusing aside, from Manga and Anime, page 41

Apparently blood type is considered an indication of character in Japan, rather like astrological sign might be here. If your blood type is A, you're probably "a team player, industrious, trustworthy, needs leadership, can be inflexible." B is "independent, creative, honest, emotional, can be irresponsible." O is "ambitious, a planner, romantic, focused on status, can be superficial," and AB is "diplomatic, organized, sensible, moral, can be unforgiving." This I find to be kind of crazy-awesome, and I wanted to share. Thanks to Robin E. Brenner for the quotes.

Can't Trust That Guy

I've recently come to the conclusion that I have a very shaky relationship with unreliable narrators. Seems perfectly natural, I suppose; that's what they're all about. But it seems funny to me that someone who reads as much as I do has so much trouble shifting gears to mistrusting the narrator. I guess it has to do with the fact that I read for entertainment, escape, fantasy, as opposed to the appreciation of literary style.

An excess of cleverness is one of my least favorite literary qualities. But I can't point at that problem as the issue with the unreliable narrator. I'm not sure which of these two problems turned me off of The Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England; maybe it was just my dislike for the narrator. But I was talking with someone the other day about Kazuo Ishiguro, and this got me thinking. I read When We Were Orphans a few years ago, and I really loved it until the end. As the book progressed, though, I found myself getting mad at the author for these ridiculous assumptions that everyone in the book seemed to be making. He's going to find his missing mother after 20 years, when the authorities couldn't? And the people who moved into his house 20 years ago are going to happily vacate for him, now that he's back? What kind of fool's paradise is this? I asked myself.

Someone pointed out to me, last week (which is to say, about two years after I read the novel), that the narrator is completely unreliable, and all these things are probably not happening the way he recounts them exactly. And you know, while I realized he was unreliable during the scene near the end where everything gets all trippy, I have to say it never occurred to me that he's really very unreliable all the way through the book, and that you really can't assume any of those things happened the way he related them.

I don't think I'm giving much of anything away here--any reasonably bright person would have seen that. I, apparently, don't fit that description. I think this fits in with Ishiguro's (aside: how great is his name? I love saying it.) other books, at least the ones I've read: The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. But in those, it was the emotional judgment of the narrator that you couldn't trust, not his/her recounting of the facts. Somehow this is very different to me. I understand that he has other books more like Orphans in their use of the narrator, but I haven't read them.

And this is not just an Ishiguro thing. I guess what it comes down to is that I throw myself into books in a way that makes it hard for me to judge their narrators objectively. I can do it if I'm given guidance from the author (Lolita, say), if I'm given space to step out with the author and observe the narrator. But if the author flies under the radar and leaves me in the room with a raving lunatic telling me his story, I will be nodding vigorously and scanning the skies nervously for the flying saucers full of little green men. I'm not proud of it, but there it is.

Barry Lyga, Wow.

Boy Toy, by Barry Lyga, is not a book for everyone. This is the story of a high school boy who's still recovering from the aftermath of a sexual relationship that he had with his teacher when he was 12. It's harrowing, in a lot of ways--her manipulation is so well-chronicled--and though I wouldn't call it explicit, it's pretty frank about the sexual acts that are taking place.

What I find most impressive about the book, though, is the impressive voice of the viewpoint character. Most of the story takes place when he's 17, in high school, and starting to deal directly with some of the long-term effects of what happened. He's not happy, exactly, but he's got kind of an equilibrium that he's sustained, which has been thrown off completely. The author captures beautifully the balance between this really smart kid's understanding of the fact that it's not his fault, and the deep, unshakable feeling that he's messed up and will never be normal again. He's not an unreliable narrator; rather, the irrational but inevitable feelings he's struggling with are made unavoidable and real.

But there are also chunks of the book told in flashback, where he recounts the relationship and its aftermath. In these parts, he's 12, but he's also sort of 17 telling the story of when he's 12. And the author does a brilliant job with this, of conveying exactly how all of these events came across to him, his guilt, his compulsion. It was amazing, to watch this teacher seduce a child, and to be able to see the boy's anxiety and desire and confusion and his sense that this is really happening, this is how it is with adults, and at the exact same moment, to watch a predator moving in on her prey, and to see and feel how repulsive it is, even as he's feeling drawn in. It's such a balance, and you don't even really feel the author doing it till, say, you sit down to blog about it, and realize that it sort of bowled you over.

The thing that strikes me here, though, and really makes me think about how a teenager would see this book, is the almost perfect absence of adults who treat him like a person. Not even like an adult, but like any kind of person at all. His doctor. The female police officer. That's it. His parents go back and forth between seeing him as an object that has been damaged and a stupid, disobedient kid who maybe should have known better, or at least could have spared them all this trouble--besides being caught up in their disintegrating marriage. His teachers are either absent, condescending, or outright hostile. His best friend's parents are so awful as to not be worth discussing.

And yet, you don't feel like he expects anything else. He doesn't seem to feel alienated, or even really lonely, not the way depressed teens are so often portrayed. It's more like he sees solitude as natural, and his separation from so many people in his life as the natural running of the world. This sense of his strength in isolation is such a source of power to him, I feel like this is the part of the book teens would touch on. This kid is working his way through his stuff, not entirely alone (he has Zik, Rachel, Dr. Kennedy), but through his own power. Adults, other kids, it's all really just background to what's going on inside him, his struggle with himself, to figure out who he is and what he is capable of. And from the very beginning, even before he starts solving these problems, you can tell that this is a guy who is going to hold his act together, this is a guy who, even in the middle of a panic attack, has nothing to fear outside of himself. He finds his own support system, he creates it, he struggles with himself. He's not completely deprived of family support, his school has not written him off, he has a very few, very good friends. But this is a kid with strength in himself, and the sense of empowerment that spending time with Josh Mendel can give a reader is really pretty impressive.

So, after much rambling: hats off to Barry Lyga. Unlike a lot of brilliant authorship, you can't see him pulling the strings. You just get to the end and realize that every word of this amazing book came out of this guy. I'm impressed.

Dear Readers

To my four loyal readers, and those other two kids who wander past sometimes, I feel the need to warn you: I have been called upon to blog for class. This should not be onerous, as I don't see how I'm going to have time to read anything non-class-related for the next few weeks--not even most of the 11 non-class library books I have out now. But we're talking about three novels per week, and a girl's got to do what a girl's got to do.

Anyway, the reason I give you, my audience, this heads-up, is that I will be talking a lot about developmental assets, which are "positive experiences and personal qualities that young people need to grow up healthy, caring, and responsible," according to the Search Institute. They're like a blueprint to a well-adjusted teenager. I didn't want anyone to think that I'd joined some sort of cult when my blog suddenly got a lot more focused--just a YA lit class.

I should also warn you that I'll be reading a Jodi Picoult book next week; we all know where that's going to end up.

Before I start this seven week journey, though, I want to add my thoughts on Remember Me 2: The Return. UGH. Christopher Pike started out as a writer of good thrillers. He has since then discovered transcendental meditation. I liked Sati, though I found its spirituality too simplistic. But he's managed to dumb his philosophy down even from that, AND his dialog at the same time. It's mushy (Earth is just one part of our mystical journey, and we're all part of the great Oversoul that is God), and contradictory (you can advance through evil instead of good, but everything is good because it's all part of the Oversoul that is God), and just plain derivative (Nirvana is a big beautiful field). Also, you get to come back to Earth as a Wanderer, if you want, by taking over another person's life.

Oh, and one of his main characters is supposed to be this great writer, and she's kind of a lousy writer. It's like--OMIGOD--like Christopher Pike has been taken over by an anti-Wanderer, and lost his writing skills!

I'm a terrible, terrible person. But I really loved Remember Me. As far as I am concerned, it has no sequel.

My Limits

I've always kind of had a problem with stories in which the plot is dependent on people acting in ways that don't seem reasonable to me. It's not about rational or irrational--making stupid decisions out of fear or desire or thoughtlessness is very natural and normal and doesn't turn me off. But the syndrome that turns me off is the one you see in thrillers, where the main characters don't go to the police for stupid reasons like "there's no time" or I don't even know what other dumb reasons. Or when the lovers don't admit they love each other (when it's so OBVIOUS that they both do) for--well, whatever reason. The whole point is that the choices are unreasonable. Or, at the very least, far from anything I would do, or could imagine doing.

For this reason, I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to read An Arsonist's Gudie to Writers' Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke. I picked it up randomly, and started it, and it's funny and strange and interesting. The premise (as far in as I got) is that this guy, as a teenager, accidentally burned down Emily Dickinson's house, and two people died. He served ten years in prison, got out, and is starting a new life--going to college, getting married. The writer is witty, the book is interesting, and there's a good amount of mystery to what's going on.

The problem is that the main character is not just an unreliable narrator; he's a compulsive liar. And when he lies to his wife, letting his wife believe that he's having an affair so he doesn't have to tell her what he did; when he tries to buy the goodwill of the guy whose parents died in the fire with a root beer; really, when he does or thinks or says anything, I just want to smack him. I don't want to follow his hilarious adventures anymore. I don't want to watch him grow as a person. I want to club him over the head and get him out of everyone's life so he won't bother them anymore.

Somehow, I didn't have this problem with Story of a Girl, by Sara Zarr. Thinking about this book is really what made me realize the difference between "unreasonable" and "irrational" in my constellation of annoyances. Because a lot of the stuff that happens in this book would normally irritate the heck out of me--people who are hurt but don't talk openly to each other, a girl whose life has been broken by a jerk but who is still hanging out with him anyway. Irrational ways of being. But somehow, I believed every minute; the emotional repression of the family in this book is painful, but not in an awful way. It made me cry, but I absolutely loved it.

It just goes to show again that it's all about the author. And I think it backs a personal corollary of mine, which is that an excess of cleverness is almost always a bad thing, but a nice, modest dose of sincerity will do a lot for the world.

Of course, I already mentioned Seventeenth Summer, which proves that sincerity is not a panacea, and can be dangerous in large doses.

A Certain Kind of Girl

Of late I've been reading a book for school, called Seventeenth Summer, by Maureen Daly. It was written in 1942, and is the pre-class reading--what would be "summer reading," if it wasn't a summer class, in which, I suppose, all reading is technically summer reading. Given the nature of the rest of the syllabus, which is very recent in publication date and modern in style, I have to assume this book is just for contrast.

Rarely have I found a book this hard to read. Honestly, I would have put it down if it wasn't for a grade, and I would have skimmed it if I wasn't awful at skimming. As it is, I dodged through many a long paragraph about how her garden is coming up or what the wind of the lake is doing to the grass and tree branches. If it had chapter breaks, it might have been more skimmable, but it doesn't. It's just three long months of the main character, Angie, falling in love during the summer after high school and before college.

I was walking up the street yesterday and I passed a rose bush, with huge yellow roses just at the end of themselves--wide open to the point of drooping, where the petals begin to part from each other and no longer quite form a coherent blossom. The smell was rich and lush, and what I thought when I saw them is that Angie is the kind of girl who would find full-blown roses uncomfortably sexual. She wouldn't be able to define it that way, but she'd sense that something wanton and sensual was going on and probably blush and avert her eyes, for fear of spoiling her innocence. This is not a person you would ever meet today.

I'm also listening to Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier, which is long overdue, I have to say. The main character of that book is also this type of person--I think, in fact, that she actually, literally turns her eyes away from full-blown roses at some point in the book specifically because they're so embarrassing. It's hard to remember--English gardens take up so much of the text, it's hard to remember exactly which flowers have been gawked at already.

I've seen the movie of Rebecca, with Joan Fontaine and Lawrence Olivier, so I know the outline of the story. And I've had the differences between the book and the movie explained to me, so I have a clear idea of where we're going with this book. It's interesting, because it's clearly a story that is all about innocence vs. --what? Experience? Guilt? Ennui? All of those things. It's about being 19, and how you don't really know what's going on at all in the world then. Which is not how the world today seems to think--that the wisdom of 19 isn't worth anything, and that you're not really a person with your wits about you till you're 36.

Seventeenth Summer also thinks this. Angie is 17, has graduated from high school, and is not allowed to go steady. Her parents don't approve of how much time she spends with Jack, and even she doesn't believe she can really feel this way, because she's so young. Have you, in your life today, ever encountered someone who didn't believe that a person of 17 could feel passionately in love with someone? It's the most terrifying time for that sort of feeling--it's all that those kids are going through, all the time.

Between these two books, I'm being subsumed into a world of naivete, sweet romance, and confusion about the world. I know that Rebecca will put an end to my stay at this saccharine hotel very soon, but I think I'm going to have to read something base and violent very soon, just to get a hold of myself. The new James Bond book, maybe, or something I picked up at the library called The Arsonist's Guide to Literary Homes of New England. How can you go wrong with a title like that?

Where Does the Time Go?

Seriously, I thought I'd be posting all the time now that I have free time. But you know, my reading life has been seriously pathetic lately, and not only am I a little ashamed of it, it also leaves me with sadly little fodder for blogging.

So I'm still reading The Queen's Fool, by Philippa Gregory, but because I don't ride the train much, it doesn't make it out of my bag very often. In the waiting room at the optometrist (which sounds way more like "optimist" than my eyesight warrants) I'll probably get through another chunk, and now that I have lawn chairs, I'm hoping to read outside a bit this week. I need to get over my feeling that sitting outside in the shade doesn't count as enjoying the lovely outdoor weather--I just recognized this prejudice in myself, and I blame it on my family history of toiling in the fields all day. Sitting under a shade tree on the lawn just doesn't cut it.

Wow, two digressions in one short paragraph. Anyway, I'm puttering between three or four slow-moving books upstairs. It's quite possible that I'll be reading Star-Spangled Manners for the next couple of years, which is probably how it should be read, so I have no regrets there, except it's messing with my quotas. Children of God, which is the sequel to The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell, is not bad, but it's rich, and I think I jumped the gun when I started it. Also, it messes a little with the ending from the previous book, which makes me a little mistrustful.

I'm also reading Fisherman on the Inland Sea, which is a book of short stories by Ursula LeGuin, who I'm pretty fond of, actually. Her books are hit or miss for me, but when they hit I love them, because they do an excellent job of being very well-thought-out science fiction that is still very human-centered. I didn't love Wizard of Earthsea, though I liked it, but I did love The Tombs of Atuan, which I found haunting, partly because it seemed more "feminine." Anyway, this book of stories begins with a great essay about non-sci-fi readers, and what makes sci fi feel inaccessible to people, sometimes justifiably so. This is something I think about a good deal, and there are a few good essays about it out there, and the preface to this book is one of them. Most of the stories are very good, whether light or deeper, but the last few are getting too philosophical and tech-heavy for my full enjoyment.

So that's it. I've finished THREE books this month. Isn't that sad? We're more than halfway through, and I'm not near the end of anything. And that includes the audiobook I listened to! (Oh, I'm also listening to Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier, and who do the unabridged versions of audiobooks always have the worst readers and the hyper-abridged versions the best? Mike claims it's because good readers are expensive. Someone should hire me; I'm pretty good, if I do say so myself.)

I'm not even going to count the digressions herein contained. We'll call this a five book month and strive to make it so.

Running Behind

No more school, no more books, no more teachers, dirty looks!

Well, way more books, actually, because now that I've turned in my evaluation books and even my reference book for a whopping $31 (less than 1/3 of what I paid for them, and I shake my fist menacingly at my former coworkers in the textbook industry. Though to be honest, they really needed to produce a new edition of that reference book--the technology in 2001 is now obsolete, and the book is full of remarks that read like "this whole internet thing is really starting to look like it might take off," including a conviction that video chat would be the online communication wave of the future for things like electronic reference services. Which, I have to say, is wrong, as evinced by David Foster Wallace's not-so-distant future in Infinite Jest, where everybody gets a video phone before realizing that most people multitask on the phone, and no one really wants to stare at you while you plan what time you're going to meet for coffee, so everyone gets a picture of themselves and hangs it in front of the videophone camera, and it becomes more like a phone conversation with an avatar. I think DFW was right about videophone, even if the book was incredibly long and impossible to read in parts. But I think I might have digressed.)

So now that I'm rid of my textbooks, I can--nay, must--turn my attention to the more pleasing literary world. I have a month off before my summer class starts, and when it does, it's a young adult literature class, so that should be fun. The pre-class homework consists of reading two books--one from the 40s, when they didn't even have YA books, and one that's very modern and About Sex. I also have to watch Juno and Superbad. Can you already tell what an onerous class this will be? (And they'll make me read manga. I can't stand manga! Everyone's always shouting at everyone else! Shout shout shout! With big squeezed shut eyes!)

So in addition to my pre-reading, I have a bunch of stuff to get through before class starts and I can't read anything but assignments. I checked out a Jodi Picoult book, Keeping Faith, but now I'll have to return it unread, because if I read two Jodi Picoult books within two months of each other, my brain will explode. This is what happened when I read Plain Truth and The Pact in quick succession--I realized how similar they were and my brain exploded. Not pretty.

I've got a jumble of other stuff lined up--some shots in the dark from the library, including some Ursula LeGuin short stories, Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier (which I've still never read!) and my first Patricia McKillip book, Alphabet of Thorn. Plus I'm still reading Star Spangled Manners, which will take a while, and Children of God, which is the sequel to The Sparrow.

It's sad that I can't bring this level of ambition to any other aspect of my life. If only reading paid better than $15 per book at the agency. Ah, well, for God and country, onward!

Shame

You know, I suppose it's really appropriately blogger-like to write a lot of entries about things I'm embarrassed about, but when I think about the number of posts that start with an admission or confession, I still blush. Still, these are not my true sources of shame, so here I go again, trumpeting my ignominy to the anonymous cyberworld.

Ready? Here we go: I'm really enjoying The Queen's Fool.

Yes, that's right. Philippa Gregory, whose last book made me laugh out loud (not the author's intent, I assure you), feel sorry for my fellow book club member who selected it, and want those hours of my life back, whose work I certainly would never have thought I ought to invest in again...she who wrote the phrase "the chase of sex that ends in bed," (TQF, p. 1), yes, SHE has drawn me into her damnable web by writing a book about the intriguing subject of Jews trying to escape the Inquisition and, well, persecution in general in the 1500s (a sadly losing proposition), as well as by creating a character with something some backbone (unlike OtherGirl Boleyn, whose name I don't even remember).

Whew! So much for a run-on sentence. I'm not that far into the book, but, in spite of that awful prologue, this story appears to have at least a twinge more subtlety than the brick-through-the-front-window that was The Other Boleyn Girl. I can't say I'll be running out to grab her newest gem, but I'm not disappointed to be reading this. I'll probably pick up something a bit meatier when classes are over in a week, and I have nothing to worry about but reading (and insurance, and a new roof for the garage, but you know. That kind of nothing.)

Need to Share

I may have already mentioned this here somewhere, because it could easily be why I gave up on the book my first time around. But it's just too delightfully trashy not to offer up to the public.

(Warning: the following quote gets a little saucy, so send the kids out of the room!)

On page 1 of Philippa Gregory's The Queen's Fool, a nobleman is chasing his teenage stepdaughter around the garden while his wife looks on, valiantly ignoring the flirtatious subtext. She says something like, "Can't catch me!" and...

"'I can catch you any time I want to,' he said, thinking of the chase of sex that ends in bed."

Wow. Just wow. Did you see the episode of The Simpsons where Marge writes a romance novel, and it's just awful? It cannot be awfuller than that line. We should all be Philippa Gregory.

P.S. My spellchecker acknowledges the existence of the word awfuller. What is the world coming to?

Precipice

So I finished Pardonable Lies last night. I'm relieved that Maisie seems to really like her boyfriend, and appears to have smiled spontaneously (rather than in an effort to express pleasantness to another person) at the end of this last book. She still seems like a bit of a cold fish, though. I might read the next one, in hopes that she warms up.

And I'm almost to the end of Then We Came to the End. I like the book, and I think I get what he's doing. I'm curious about how the "payoff" I've heard about at the end works. I have to say that figuring out whether they'll come up with good ad campaigns is probably getting me more mileage than it as an idea is entitled to.

But now I'm at an impasse--what to read next? I'm not quite out of library books, but Anarchy and Old Dogs is another mystery, and I'm just not enough of a mystery person to be confident in that. I'll try it, but one book, dear people, is not going to tide me over.

I guess that technically I'm still in the middle of Star Spangled Manners, the extended Miss Manners essay on how American etiquette came to be what it is, and why it's so awesome (in a nutshell: egalitarianism). It's a good book, but being long and essaylike, better for dipping into than bolting down.

I'm supposed to go to the library with Sheila next week, which will open up a whole new world of possibilities. I'm thinking I might wait till then. But that means dipping again into the Shelves to pick the next big thing. Which way to go? The Pillars of the Earth looks good, but I'm pretty sure I shouldn't start anything that significant till classes end in two weeks. The Queen's Fool looks dumb, but Lord, The Other Boleyn Girl was so bad I laughed through most of it. Still, I bought the darned book. Maybe that's the way to go.

Not like I don't have enough borrowed books on my shelf, but I'm not hauling Brenda's gorgeous Richard Yates compendium on the train with me.

Oh, I can't forget to mention Escape, the crazy fringe Mormon cult plural marriage runaway story. I love fringe religion memoirs, both noble (nun biographies) and scandalous (cult escapees), so this is just what I'm looking for in an audiobook. Thumbs up.

In we dive. See you after finals on Thursday!

Then We Came to...Well, Here.

It's interesting, I'm in the middle of Then We Came to the End, and the lack of plot hasn't bothered me (or rather, the smallness of the plot--I think I figured out which of the little threads of anecdote were supposed to drive the story). But when Mike asked, "What's going on your book?" about 100 pages in, I had to think for about 10 seconds and say, "Nothing."

But what has sort of gotten to me is the idea of looking at people in an office environment as drones who THINK they're interesting and unique people. I guess there's this corporate stereotype that everyone is a faceless drone. But then when you're in the trenches, you see past the stereotype to the fact that each of you is a real person with a full life, a special and unique snowflake. But then by stepping back another step and seeing each of those separate lives as meaningless and swallowed up by the droning corporate world, without much of an internal life and with NO non-pathetic internal life, it just feels like it's unnecessarily reducing people. It's a book about quiet desperation that you don't even know is desperate. It's a friendly condescension, someone who's clearly looking at his own life that way, but since this guy wrote a book and presumably doesn't work in a cube farm anymore, or has proven himself to be non-pathetically extracurricular, well, he's exempt.

And the thing about it is, we look at people who work other jobs, now or historically, and there isn't this sense of drone-ness, of condescension, as though they'd given up basic humanity and weren't they foolish for it? You don't look at industrial workers who work a machine in a factory all day and turn up your nose at their lack of an internal life. You don't look at a farmer on his tractor getting heatstroke and skin cancer in the sun all day, pulling muscles and putting his back out without medical insurance and smile sadly at how hard he has to labor for so little payback (though, as an aside, I can say firmly that a farmer on his tractor has a rich, fertile internal life). Is it because they're less than us white-collars, and couldn't be expected to understand our wasted talent? Is it because of the inherent dignity of working with your hands? Is it because they are presumed to have only that job standing between them and starvation, while we, the white-collars, would have that factory job (or, more likely, a gig as a barista at Starbucks, or that book we always meant to write) to fall back on?

Oh, who knows? I'm overreacting, thinking not only about this book, but about articles I've read and just a vibe I perceive in the world. Think about The Office, and Jim's slow transformation into Michael Scott. Think about all the times you've wanted to give it all up to weave baskets to sell at Renaissance Faires, or to write music reviews for the Phoenix in your garret.

And I don't mean this as a condemnation, because the book is quite good. It captures the balance between work and interaction, the weird intimacy and yet anonymity of an office life, the boss you all respect and love and fear (hairy eyeball, anyone?), the scramble to look busy and the intense draw of gossip and distraction and cleverness. Their office has more outrageous characters than mine ever did, and more frantic energy, but it's also a dot com office, which accounts for a lot of the difference--I remember, even in my stable, never-at-risk job, the sense of more-more-more coming to a complete end, and the bewildered, lost feeling that goes along with it.

I'm no longer in the office, and before too long, I'll be joining the service sector. But I'll still have coworkers, and I'll still spend a lot of time fretting about budgets and doing what someone else tells me, and cleaning up crap (God, I hope just figuratively). I don't think any of us are going somewhere where our lives won't have those factors in them, except those special few novelists among us. I wish them good luck, but I hope they don't forget us white collars on their climb to the top.

Maisie Dobbs: Robot Detective

So this--Pardonable Lies--is the third Maisie Dobbs novel, and the third that I've read. I felt the first one dragged a bit, and that the second one was a lot better. They are meandering stories, full of character studies and lessons about trusting your instincts and meditating; I find that, with detective novels, especially, you have to get used to whatever your author is doing with the pacing before you can really dig in. Is it character-driven, and more about the detective than the case? Is it action packed, unrelenting adventure? Or maybe it's more about the mystery itself and the characters involved, with the detective just your reliable anchor of a narrator guiding you through the labyrinth of diabolical doings?

Maisie is the former--these books are about her detecting style, and the atmosphere of post-WWI London. I'm not against this; in fact, I'm really enjoying the setting, and how, ten years after the war, everyone's life is still touched by it, everyone's story is deeply affected by where they were, what they did, who they lost. This aspect is really poignant, well-researched, and lovely.

But Maisie herself needs to climb off her high horse. Seriously, the girl is an ice queen. On one hand, it does follow from her life--she was a parlormaid who, through brains and sponsorship, became a "psychologist and detective;" she was a war nurse who lost her love, she was a scholarship student at a women's college before 1920. These are things that are not easy to do, and that will cast a spirit of iron. But she is as cold a fish as ever I've seen. She has a beau, and she likes him a lot (as do I), but she is always thinking about her work when they're together and hopes like heck that he won't propose. Why? I'm not sure. Because she's so busy being a detective. Which is great, but if she's supposed to be such a student of they human psyche, shouldn't she learn a lesson about actually relaxing when you're away for the weekend? Balance?

Even before she had a business, when she was in love with Simon during the war, she didn't want to accept his proposal, because she "knew" something awful would happen. This is a good point--she was afraid to lose him to the war--but you don't feel her love, just her hesitation. Also, she doesn't do humor. She smiles and is pleasant, but she's never laughed that I can recall, or bantered, or even enjoyed someone's bantering without bringing them swiftly back around to the topic at hand.

I'd blame it on the author, but other characters are warm and affectionate. I'd say it was a plot point, but it's been three books now, and it's not really getting much better. I think it might be an examination of the ultimate reserved woman. And I suppose it's doing that very well. But I'm starting to side with Dr. Dene (her gentleman friend)--I feel the rejection on his behalf. And I'm half hoping he'll find a lovely, bright young thing to settle down with.

Prove me wrong, Maisie! Prove me wrong.

Confession is Good for the Soul

1) I am a terrible, terrible, evil person. I did not feed the cat. I couldn't sleep Sunday night. Brenda, Jason, Jasmine, I'm so sorry.

2) How does anyone get through school? How on earth did I do this as an undergraduate? With four classes, and papers and--man, I had FOUR concurrent jobs in college--I opened the day care center, managed the AV office, worked as a research assistant, and had a regular babysitting gig. Plus all the frigging homework. Jesus, there must be something wrong with me. Confession: dude, I have been skipping the assigned readings. Sigh.

3) The Sparrow was a fabulous book. It's a wonderful first contact story about making contact with an alien race, but it's also about the limitations of faith, and trying to comprehend life. Mary Doria Russell has written a sequel too. I can't wait to read it.

More soon; I'm so behind!

Glutty

Well, never let it be said that I finished a book or three before starting another three.

Specials, by Scott Westerfield, is the third book in the Uglies series, and I had it out of the library for about 15 minutes before I started it. Those books always take a while to get into, because they use a lot of strange slang. The great part is that it feels very natural when you get into it, and isn't that hard to follow, but it's a zone you need to be in, if you know what I mean.

Something called Brit-Think, Ameri-Think, which is an entirely too precious title for a short, cute little treatise on the cultural differences between America and England (key difference: Americans think death might just be optional, and if you work hard enough you can beat it. Brits think everything is inevitable, and there's no point in trying too hard, because it all ends up the same in the end). I was practically reading this one at the stoplights on the ride home. Another layer to that book is that it was written in 1987, so a lot of the American aesthetics are based around shag carpeting and Dallas.

I'm still reading The Sparrow, which is beautiful and harrowing. I'm finding the middle a little weak, because the nature of the flashback structure means that I know how the story ends (no big giveaway: everyone but Sandoz dies), so the parts are not driving directly toward this end or its fallout are starting to make me impatient. But in a kind of a scared way--I know it's all going to go horribly wrong, but I have no idea where it's going to come from, and it's a little like a quiet moment in a funhouse--you know they're going to jump out at you.

There's more--oh, God, there's more--but I have no time now. Let's not even talk about the articles on articles on articles for school....

Mixed Messages

I'm very proud of myself, and also not. On the plus side: I'm reading two books that I own! Hooray! On the minus side, I'm waiting for 4 BPL deliveries, and checked 3 out of the Arlington library yesterday, because I was there and had ten minutes to spare and so of course couldn't NOT find a bunch of stuff to read.

The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell, is so far just as good as I had hoped, which is wonderful. It was one of those ones where I SO wanted it to be great that I was afraid to read it in case it wasn't. But it is. There's a central mystery--it's told mostly in flashback--around the only survivor of man's first contact with an alien race. But there's so much information about what happened, that you rally just want the story. It's laced with sadness, but not depressing, which is hard to do.

Star Spangled Manners by Judith Martin. Miss Manners on American etiquette, which is dense (because her essays are always dense when they're not tempered by the question-and-answer format of her column) but interesting. I'm looking forward to a lot of info on where manners come from--the American fork-in-right, knife-in-left, then-reverse-to-take-a-bite is actually an older system than the British fork-left-knife-right-period system. This is because we adopted the fork more gradually, so most people ate primarily with a knife, then put the knife down to use the fork. Or something like that; anyway it's interesting.

I'd list all my library books, but I have to get to class. Another Maisie Dobbs, something by Georgette Hayer (who's supposed to sound like Jane Austen, and appears to), and some other stuff. More when I pick them up!

Trippy

Enna Burning...well, it had an excellent core, an excellent story. But sometimes, when a fantasy novel starts talking about what magic is like as an internal experience, it can start to sound like a crazy drug trip. And this book was about magic that makes you addicted, that hurts when it's taken away, that takes over and becomes your only motivation. To paraphrase that prince of all wisdom, Homer Simpson, fire magic is both the cause of and solution to all of Enna's problems.

So there are long passages about what it feels like to be burning up and obsessed and want and hate the wanting and then give in and say you'll never do it again, and feel it build again...etc. That said, the ending is kind of sweetly awesome.

This marks very nearly almost the last thing I have out from the library right now. I really don't want to count Stacey vs. the BSC, in which the title character gets a boyfriend and alienates the rest of the Babysitter's Club. I understand she ends up on probation at the end of the book. Thrilling.

So what's up next? Nothing's really appealing to me lately, for some reason. Out of sheer disinterest, I might come back to reading some of the books that I own. I'm not going to get my hopes up, but if that happens, I'll be so proud. I'll be back here ranting about it, I'm sure.

Like Being 15 Again

You wonder where I've been? Nowhere. I feel like saying "school suxx!" like I'm a high school sophomore again (though I was never that sophomore; I disapprove of such spelling, I hated exclamation points at that time in my life, and since it was pre-internet, capitalization and misspelling were not yet considered a language of their own). But I don't think school really sucks, so much as the novelty is wearing off. After all, I never claimed to want to go to school. And while I'm pretty psyched about my YA Lit class this summer, Reference is a TON of work--interesting work, but SO much--and I'm having trouble keeping up. And you know how the more you slip behind, the harder it is to keep from slipping more? Yeah, story of my life.

I've also been feeling under the weather, schlumpy and tired for a while. That's not really better. One thing I can say about school, though, is that once I've dragged my butt an hour across town to get here, I end up focused on something, whether it's work or blogging or whatever. It's easier to take on a task than it is at home. This is a lesson to me to spend more time here next week.

To keep up appearances, let me update you on what I've been reading lately. You know, for the record. I finished Birds of a Feather, the second Maisie Dobbs mystery, this morning. It was charming, and I liked it even better than the first one. It did hold back a lot of information (including a mysterious clue that our detective finds but keeps wrapped in a hankie without revealing it to us for about 1/4 of the book), so I'm not sure how that works as a "standard" detective novel, but I like Maisie. She's brusque and impersonal sometimes, but she's so tightly controlled. I wonder if there will be an opening of her character over the series. I also find the details of the WWI aftermath to be really compelling. It takes place 10 years after the war, but it's very much about how the lives of everyone were shaped by the experience. England is a small country, after all.

Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Todd Gilbert, was something I expected to be a self-help book, but was really mass-market psychology. (I won't call it "pop psychology" because I think there are demeaning connotations there, but really it's psychology intended for a popular readership, so there you have it.) Anyway, it's about how we spend our whole lives deciding what we think will make us happy and working toward it, and we're usually wrong, not equipped to make the decision anyway, and it doesn't matter because where we end up is often what we make of it. If nothing else, it'll make you feel somewhat better about not knowing what you're doing with your life.

Ellen Emerson White, author of the ever-popular President's Daughter series and one of my favorites, Life Without Friends, preceded the latter book with her first novel, Friends for Life. It's the backstory to LWF, though I now realize that it was written first. It's okay--it definitely suffers from the "thin excuse not to go to the police" problem that a lot of simple thrillers fall into, but for a first novel written by a college senior, I am nothing but envious. Her voice was definitely there, and a lot of the things she explores in her characters--inability to ask for what you need, lonliness held in check by pride--but she improved greatly over time.

Now I'm reading Enna Burning, by Shannon Hale. I just started in on the train, so I have nothing to report, except that, as I've said, I like Shannon Hale's books.

Class will begin soon, so I'm on my merry way. I forgot to bring an apple for my snack, but I think I have some CheezIts. Wish me luck.

In Between Time

Sigh. I hate being in between books. I finished Austenland, which was fun but slight, and checked out a few new library books, but I'm not into anything, and I'm not really getting into what I try.

I grabbed Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear, the next Maisie Dobbs book, which I'm pretty excited about. I read somewhere that it goes a little more into Maisie's solitude, which sounds like an important part of her life that was really only brought into focus at the end of the first book. I also grabbed Enna Burning, because Shannon Hale is my imaginary best friend. She lives in Utah, you know. I wonder if she's a Mormon. I could probably look that up somewhere.

But, I have multiple renewals sitting on the shelf, and I need to read some of these books in the next five days or so. Example: Post-Birthday World, by Lionel Shriver (a woman! named Lionel! I can't get over that, like I'm seven and never heard of such a thing), author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, a fascinating and disturbing book that I highly recommend. In the latter, the somewhat unappealing characters were made up for by the fascinating story. In Post-Birthday, though, I'm just having trouble getting into what seems like a slight story. I know it's going to get gimmicky, and possibly interesting, when the plotlines split to follow two possible outcomes of the scene I'm about to read, but I can't even make it that far. And I'm upset because I think it might be worth it.

Then there's The Rebel Angels by Libba Bray, not to be confused with the book of the same title by Robertson Davies, which I read and which I remember as being really interesting, if somewhat illustrative of old men's fantasies of brilliant women whipping off their academic robes to reveal their sexiness. Wait, what was I talking about? Oh, yes, Libba Bray. I only liked A Great and Terrible Beauty, the first in her series of fantasy novels, but I've had a hankering for a British girls' boarding school story, and here one appeared for me. But somehow I've renewed twice without reading. So the time has come to put up or shut up, and we'll see what comes of that.

I also have a stack of my own books that I want to read. But I'm really chipping away a the library books--I checked out two, but I have three waiting to be returned, which will leave me with a total of five checked out (not counting audiobooks, because they do not take reading time--they have their own category. I Am America: And So Can You! for the record). This is an improvement over the eight at last count. I really think I'm getting better....

Mr. Darcy, Where Is Thy Sting?

If you regularly watch this space, you may be aware of my new and passionate fondness for the work of Shannon Hale. Alas, Austenland is not tickling me the way her young adult books do.

The premise is reasonable to start with: a woman in her thirties, examining the reasons she has foundered in love, realizes it's because she has, for some reason, pinned all her romantic hopes on the unattainable Mr. Darcy. She feels shame at this and decides to swear off men and renounce her Darcy worship, but just around that time, a keen-witted elderly relative dies and leaves her an all-expenses-paid vacation at Jane Austen Fantasy Camp, where you dress up and act out life in an English manor house. Our heroine decides to call this her last hurrah.

So far, this sounds fabulous to me; the vacation itself sounds wonderful, as does the book--sassy American transplanted not just in staid, uptight England, but staid, uptight England almost three hundred years ago. Girl finds love exactly where she always hoped and doubted she would. C'mon, it's only 200 pages long.

The flaw in the book is that Jane is inexplicably ashamed of her love for Pride and Prejudice. And not for the sensible reason that, however hott Darcy's aloof indifference makes him, it means he might not be a great husband. No, it's because it seems "silly" and "romantic." Not in a hard-headed businesswoman kind of way, but in your standard girly chick-lit character trying to act like maybe she thinks a hard-headed businesswoman would act. I know very few college educated women--girly romantics or hard-headed businesswomen--who are not swoony over Mr Darcy, whether they actually want to marry him or not. I really can't understand how anyone would be embarrassed about that.

Which makes this book a bit like the thriller where your main characters can't just go to the police for some stupid, unclear, not-really-valid reason, and all the subsequent action revolves around them trying to do something the police would have done in five seconds if they had just called them, which there was never a good reason not to do.

I'm still going to read it though. And dream about my vacation in an English manor house.

Me at Three

Last week I was at a family funeral, and I saw Auntie Effie for the first time since I was very, very young. (Aside: being from New England, it's not pronounce anty--it's onty. But with an open throat--Aaaaahnty Effie. I just thought you should know that.)

She told me a story: I was 2 or 3 years old, sitting in her lap reading a book. Auntie Effie said to me, "Can you read that, sweetie?" and I replied, "Quiet, Auntie, you're disturbing me!"

I don't remember this, but it's such a perfect, wonderful story. And from someone who hasn't seen me in 15 or 20 years, and doesn't necessarily know how I turned out. I think it's kind of perfect.

Long Live the Ghosties

I really have no reason to read an actual debunking book, and no desire to read a book about the afterlife by anyone who's not looking at it skeptically. So of course, this is the book for me. Brief, funny, flippant, Mary Roach's Spook is about the search for life after death, or the immortal soul. She comes at it as a skeptic, but as a skeptic who'd kind of like to be convinced--her goal is not to debunk, but to figure out what someone reasonable and rational will find in the field.

What I love is that she really picks out the fun bits--not just of her subject, but of anything even tangentially interesting. And I mean tangential--when mentioning the hymn included on a recording of spirits singing through mediums, she refers to "'There's a Land,' a anthem made famous by renowned English contralto Madame Clara Butt." But this is too charming to pass up, so she follows it up with a footnote that begins, "Oh, for the days when a nation's highest-paid recording star could be a beefy six-foot-two oysterman's daughter named Clara Butt."

But mostly, she's simultaneously amused and respectful, eager and dubious. It's a light book, not in-depth, but she clearly did her research, and the topics she covers--the spiritualist craze of the late 19th century, various attempts to weigh and measure the soul, out-of-body experiments--are thorough enough that I feel like I understand how hopeful, eager people are convinced while the rest of us remain doubtful.

I've heard good things about Stiff, her other book, about all the various and sundry things that might happen to dead bodies in America. I don't think I've really got the constitution for that today. But if she can find humor there, I'm going to start steeling my stomach now.

My Sad Addiction

Hi, my name is Sharon and I read Babysitter's Club books. I, in fact, order them form Interlibrary Loan so I can understand how Abby was introduced to the series, or what happened when Stacey snubs the BSC in favor of her boyfriend. What I'm saying is I follow them. And, while I'm so desperately sorry, in a way I'm not sorry at all. I only wasted an hour of my life on Kristy and the Dirty Diapers (in which her softball team, the Krushers, gets sponsorship but has to wear a diaper company logo during the games--alternative title: Kristy Sells Out), and I'm only planning to spend another hour on Welcome to the BSC, Abby, the unoriginal title of which says it all.

Incidentally, Ann M. Martin appears to have gotten a new ghostwriter around book 85, and I'd like to know how one signs up for THAT gig.

Anyway, I just needed to confess that, because I just spent 20 minutes in various library catalogs and book sites trying to figure out in which volume Stacey undertakes the aforementioned snubbing. I will be checking that out soon. PS I also buy them when they're 50 cents or less at book sales.

I'm also breezing through the Ellen Emerson White oeuvre, and I'll be taking up Long Live the Queen later today. In looking for it, I ran across Friends for Life, the prequel to Life Without Friends, which was so good. I had thought it was an afterthought, but apparently this book was written first. So this will be taking up at least a little of my Spring Break reading time.

I'm finishing up Spook, by Mary Roach, which is good enough to deserve its own entry, and starting in on Austenland, which I hope pays off better than Brenda indicates it might.

I'm also about to go eat a breadless sandwich for lunch, since I forgot to buy any bread. Wish me luck, people; I think it's pretty clear I'm someone who needs it.

Recovery

It's been a rocky week around here. A lot of the reasons are not necessarily appropriate for this venue--work woes, family sorrows, scheduling miscalculations. But there are a few relevant tales to tell my reading public, including the fact that I have barely risen from the couch all weekend due to being unbearably sick, and the fact that I spent about six hours in the library at school this week doing my reference homework, and it's really just so interesting.

The sickness anecdote is mostly an apology because I meant to blog sooner. It seems like the more I plan what I want to write about, the less likely I am to sit down and write it. Unlike certain other blogging friends of mine, a plan of action for a well-constructed essay and a deadline for posting it brings out the WORST in me.

But we had our first big homework assignment in Reference class this week. It was incredibly time consuming--we had about thirty dictionaries and encyclopedias to look through for terms and answers. It was all about practicing how to look things up--where do you look for the meaning of the phrase "a Roland for an Oliver?" (Answer: Bartlett's famous quotations; it means equally matched and originates with Charlemagne's paladins.) What's the best way to use the Encyclopaedia Brittanica? (Answer: start with the index. There are Micro and Macro volumes, and facts are often embedded in longer articles. Don't waste your time, just go straight for the index.) Why would you ever use the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary if you have a full OED on hand (or online)? (Answer: OED is very British in orientation--it does not cover American usage and etymology as thoroughly as British.)

A lot of people hate Reference. The fact that I kind of love it is, in my mind, another indication that I'd rather work in a public library than a school library. But now is not the time to bring you this internal debate.

Other news relevant to the blog: I finally finished To Say Nothing of the Dog, or How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last, by Connie Willis. It was about the journey, not the destination, as so many other books are. It took me almost three months to read it; I kept getting distracted. But it was so much fun, by the time I finished it--you don't often get a Victorian farce and a time travel mystery in the same book. So excellent--Linden, you might enjoy this one, too. Not to overload you with recommendations, because I know I'm prone to.

And now, I'm reading Mary Roach's Spook. She's funny, and she's on my list of people who research things and then tell me all the fun stuff, thus saving me from going in-depth into a subject I'm only somewhat interested in. Oh, and again I'm finding confluence--spiritualism is a major theme and the Enigma machine is mentioned in both Spook and To Say Nothing of the Dog. I feel liek the whole world is finally falling into place.