The Truth about Princesses, plus: a Public Opinion Poll

In spite of my total lack of self-control, I managed to check out one fewer book that I returned yesterday, bringing my total count of books out of the BPL system down to 11. This is really intimidating, but I'm doing the best I can with it. The YA summer reading shelf was calling to me.

I grabbed something there called Just Ella, by Margaret Peterson Haddix, and on page 2 I'm already a little disappointed. I love a good fairy tale retelling, and I liked this one--Cinderella is carried off to the palace by the prince and given lots of boring sewing and etiquette lessons, and realizes that the prince may be charming but he's not all that bright. Sounds great, right? Sadly, within the first five pages you can see that the story is going to depend heavily on nobility being snobbish.

Now, I am college educated and read a lot of fantasy, so I have a lot of ideas about being a princess. Before I had a son, I had long since decided that if I ever have a daughter, she's going to understand what it means to be a princess. It means sitting very still for long periods of time and being perfectly polite to everyone. It means not talking back or running around or doing anything fun or interesting most of the time. It means thinking of others--the whole kingdom, in fact--before you think of yourself. My daughter will only want to be a princess if she has an overdeveloped desire to serve her nation/family.

But that doesn't mean that nobles are snobs. The fact is, at the time when there were princesses and peasants, that was not only luxury you were born into, it was responsibility. You were in charge, and running a fiefdom is not going to be easier than running a business. You don't get rich running a lousy kingdom--a good king/queen/noble is going to be thoughtful, problem solving, hard working. Maybe they'll be a jerk, and likely they'll know their place, but in the real world of nobility and servants, there's no need to be a snob. Everyone's working together in the system, and it's no more snobbish to be a noble than it is to be the principal of a school. Do you think the principal turns up his nose if the cafeteria lady needs to talk to him? No, he converses with her, even though they both know that he's in charge.

So when, on page three, the etiquette instructor tells her that when she screams for a doctor to save the life of Lord Reston, she should scream, "His Excellencey Lord Reston is dying!" I was immediately turned off. I think I'll keep trying, because it looks like it could be fun. But I'm sick of the raw deal nobles get in fantasy. Of course, I'm equally sick of the idea that a nice or goodhearted noble doesn't want to be noble, and asks everyone to call them by their first name and doesn't stand on formality. The Queen can't act as a person, she has to act as a head of state, and so it is important that people be reminded that she's queen. Including her.

Wow. Who knew I had a rant in me on that subject? Okay, let's be quick on the public opinion poll: is it okay to go back and change a review? Not in the blog--I can do a new post if I want to change my opinion. But I was cruising through Goodreads recently and realized I only gave three stars to a book that, in retrospect, was better than that. At the time I read it, I didn't understand what the author was doing, but now that I've read more of her books, I get it and appreciate it. I wouldn't change my written review, except to include an addendum, but can I change my star rating after the fact? Discuss.

Edge of My Seat

I literally jumped out of my chair at the high point of The Queen of Attolia. The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner, is a really good book and worth reading, but most especially so you can get to the sequel. I'm going to run right out for the last one, The King of Attolia. Circles within circles...

I'm determinedly whittling away at the library pile. I need to run to Malden tomorrow to return some things--why do I always pick Thursday for Malden, and then always pick 2:00 exactly somehow, which is when their weekly staff meeting closes the library? Duh. If I concentrate really hard, I can avoid that this time by planning ahead.

I've been adding a bunch of books I read a few years ago to my Goodreads account. I realized I only had about 175 books that I'd read in there, and when your to-read list is 150, that seems kind of pathetic. Fortunately, I've been keeping a reading journal for a while, and I did some backfilling. It's very satisfying, but it starting to feel a little indulgent. I did take the precaution of turning off notifications, so none of my Goodreads friends will get an email stating that I added 75 books and what they are.

Okay, I should have entitled this post "Miscellanea." Bedtime.

Sunny Happy Sunshine

I really love Mercedes Lackey and I don't understand how anyone else could possible. The writing is straightforward and serviceable. She makes every point explicitly and laboriously, enhanced not just by italics, but by emphatic italics. She writes dialect in the most atrocious way I've ever seen; my understanding is that good dialect is communicated 90% through word choice and only 10% through phonetic spelling. She uses phonetic spelling even on words where it does not make any difference. Every to is a t'.

But I think I mentioned recently, the main thing about her books is that everything is so neat. There's actually a passage in this one, Foundation (no relation to Asmiov's), that spells this out. Our main character, Mags, is trying to figure out why the Heralds go around being awesome heroes all the time, and his mentor (I'm not going to get into explaining Companions here; it's way too My Little Pony) says "We try to make things fair."

Mags protests that life isn't fair, and Dallen replies, "'Life isn't fair' is nothing but an excuse people make to justify bad things they do. But why shouldn't life be fair? What's keeping it from being fair? Those same cruel, mean, and evil people." This is said in all seriousness, and I think it's a main theme in her work: things are fair until someone makes them unfair, and it's up to the good guys to bring the fairness back. Nature's fairness.

This is so far off of the way the real world works that I hope nobody needs me to spell it out with words like "cancer" and "tornado." But almost all of her books believe this--that hard work always pays off. That the good guys always win. That plans come to fruition.

And not only fair, things are tidy. She's big on the details that make great worldbuilding, but her worlds actually run way better than the real world. I remember a behind the scenes feature about Star Trek that I saw once, where they showed that the futuristic stool the guy was sitting on was an apple crate with a futuristic cushion. That's what the real world is like, but her world is set with the fantasy world equivalent of futuristic stools made of as-yet-undiscovered alloys.

This sounds like hate, but it's really love. There's a beautiful, satisfying simplicity to her stories--the morality there is the morality of the world we all wished we lived in. And that's why I still read them.

That and the inside references for those of us who have read the rest of her books. I'm a sucker.

I will say, one of my favorite books of hers was The Black Swan, and one of the reasons, I realized today, is that it has the most complicated character--someone who falls in between good and evil, and discovers this. The path to redemption there is far more littered with obstacles--the bad guy is more formidable--than in any of her other books. But the palace kitchen is still run like clockwork.

No Spoilers, No Spoilers, No Spoilers....

I finished The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman, recently, and I loved it and think everyone should read it. But I have an issue with the very last chapter, the ending, that I can't discuss because I will spoil it for everyone. So I'm going to sit here silently on the subject and, in fact, tease you all with this little post.

I also just finished Deep and Dark and Dangerous, by Mary Downing Hahn, who wrote one of my fifth-grade-self's favorite books, Wait Till Helen Comes. Deep and Dark is pretty much the exact same book in many ways, though there are interesting lessons in the behavior of the adults in the book. They pretty much do not have their crap together, any of them. I guess this is often the way in a YA book--otherwise how would the kids be dealing with problems that are way beyond them? but the flawed adults in this book added a really nice layer of depth to what was otherwise an almost painfully predictable ghost story. I mean, really--if I was 13 I would totally have figured out the identity of the irritating neighbor who keeps showing up when there are no grown ups around.

I'd also like to point out that any member of the Babysitters' Club would have handled that situation so much better than the main character. Ali kept yelling at the annoying kid, buying into the dynamic she set up, instead of taking charge like a good babysitter does. Kristy Thomas would have wiped up the floor with that brat, make no mistake.

I'm reading The Queen of Attolia now, which is the sequel to The Thief, by Megan Whalen Turner. I've only read about 40 pages, so I can't really spoil it, can I? I mean, is it spoiling to tell something that happens in the first 40 pages? Because I really want to tell. I mean, it's Eugenides vs. the evil Queen, and something shocking happens, and....okay. I'm restraining. I don't even want to ruin the first sequence for you, the first five pages, which is a wicked chase scene and you should really read it, really.

Bragging

I hit my theoretical average of 8 books already this month. Then I went a little nutty and started 5 new books today. I was trying to decide which to read next, and apparently the answer is all of them.

More later.

Oh, but the Koontz book was a huge disappointment. Just bleck.

More Dean Koontz!

I'm cruising through this book, and while I won't call it astronomically bad, I'm finding it kind of a fascinating ride, in a car wreck kind of way.

First, I am being forced to recall Koontz's fascination with architecture. Most of his books take place in southern California, and he's always talking about Spanish styles, Tudors, neoclassical architecture, with everything surrounded by bougainvillea. I don't quite know what bougainvillea is, but I'm surprised it's possible to see the state of California under the blankets of it that populate Koontz books.

He is also definitely very excited about the research he does. When the guy has blood drawn, the author uses the technical name for the little tube that they take the sample in, as well as for the part of the syringe that it attaches to. I was able to glean what he was talking about pretty easily, but it's such a cute affectation, like an eighth grader using a fifty cent word that he just looked up. At another point, the guy has a little twitch in his eyelid (the girl thinks he's winking at her, which results in a meet-cute), and he uses the technical name for that, too. This one, though, he had to explain, resulting in the sentence, "...on the afternoon that she had met him, thirteen months previously, he had been afflicted with a stubborn case of myokymia, uncontrollable twitching of the eyelid." Learning the word myokymia, I'm sorry to say has not improved my life at all so far.

The other thing he's doing is going HEAVY with the Poe references. We've got a guy with a heart condition who's been hearing a weird tapping noise and having paranoid moments. It's finally come to the point where Koontz writes that he suspects someone of following him around "for the purpose of tormenting him with the rapping, the soft rapping, the soft rap-rap-rapping, only this and nothing more." Followed by a paragraph describing the lub-dub of his unhealthy heart in telltale detail.

Oh, oh, and also! All the trappings of wealth I was talking about earlier? It's one thing to have a private plane and call a limo service all the time. But every time the car service comes to take him to or from the airport, it sends a superstretch limousine. I mean, why? It's one guy, driving to the airport. He spends all the time staring out the window--it's not like he's into the champagne or taking a nap on the huge seats. I really don't think I'm supposed to find this showy wealth as creepy as I do.

On the plus side--the whole thing where I thought he was being paranoid? He was being paranoid. So maybe, at the end, the character will realize he's also throwing his money around conspicuously and having Edgar Allen Poe channeling moments. Maybe this is an intricately crafted, mind blowing roller coaster ride of a novel. Hehe. I'm pretty sure not, though.

The Grown-Up Books of My Childhood

You cannot tell me this is not the worst cover ever. Well, maybe not the worst EVER (I'm accepting additional nominees--with links--in the comments section), but really, just awful.

I read a lot of Dean Koontz when I was young. I remember in seventh grade, he was THE author to be reading--grown up books, novels, come on. Everyone had a copy of Whispers or Watchers or one of his other one-word sometimes-supernatural thrillers on top of their social studies book and notebook. Him and V.C. Andrews, baby; we were not YA readers.

I read almost everything he'd written on through high school, and then a couple of his newer ones in college. And somehow, I've moved on, and he keeps cranking these books out.

I think they're getting worse. It's always tough to go back to something you've read in childhood, but it's even harder to move on with it. Mercedes Lackey and I, for example, have grown apart. I loved her first books when I was a teenager; when I go back and read them now, I still love them, but partly in a nostalgic way. I'm a more critical reader, and they're simple books--satisfying in many ways, childish in many others. Her current books are much more complex and very different, and I have to admit I don't like them as much. She's retained her fondness for a firm grounding in fairness--seriously, her world is so fair that if you get rained on, you're likely to find a quarter in a puddle. I can't count her uses of "she would pay for that later," because anyone could do any physical feat--it's just really tiring. In her older books, this sense of fairness was simple and charming. In her newer ones, the world has to twist itself around to make things work out, and it's just weird.

But I'm talking about Dean Koontz. I just reread a few pages of Watchers, the one about the superintelligent dog. It's definitely still good. Maybe a little overly fond of lavishing you with the details that his research has uncovered on things like how to get a fake ID or how a vet's office works, but overall good and well-paced and charming.

But oh, Your Heart Belongs to Me. It's hard to explain--it's not as charming a story, but a puppy who can spell things with Scrabble tiles is hard to beat. No, it's more that the details, the characterizations, are supposed to be appealing to me, and are failing. He gives you these details about his super-rich main character--his elaborate garage, his swim trunk collection--that I think are supposed to endear me--doesn't he have good taste? Isn't he down to earth?--that actually do the exact opposite. A 12-car garage is not endearing, even if it's charmingly outfitted. Anyone who describes his swim trunks as having "a palm tree motif" is irritating. That's not how I'm supposed to feel.

I'm not yet sure if I'm supposed to think the main character's motivation is nonsensical. I mean, he says himself that he's being irrational, but in the way you apologize to a store clerk for bothering them when you're really requesting that they do their job, thankyouverymuch. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to follow him down this irrational path, or keep thinking that maybe he's going crazy. I hope the latter, because that's what I do think.

Also, almost no paragraph is more than two sentences long. There were four pages of two-sentence-and-under paragraphs in a row just a minute ago. No dialogue. Urgh.

We all remember the good old days, though, right? Lightning, that was great. Dark Rivers of the Heart. Twilight Eyes. Man, those were the days.

Chuck Palnichuck

I have never quite been able to keep Chuck Palahniuk's name quite straight, so I always think of him as Chuck Palnichuck. It's a little embarrassing, but there it is. It reminds me of my friend Becky, who used to make up normal names for all the characters when reading a Russian novel. This makes total sense to me--even in your head, don't you call them "R-somebody" and "the B guy" when you can't pronounce their names?

This is neither here nor there. I'm listening to Survivor as an audiobook, and I was really liking it till it got all Palnichuck on me. The only other book I've read of his was Fight Club, and I liked it. This book seemed somewhat different at first--not a lot, but enough. The story was interesting, and the weird, disaffected main character hadn't totally alienated me yet.

But now we've hit the point where he's reciting long, long lists of factoids that somehow relate to the particular nature of his disaffectation, and it's reminding me very much of the little indignities Tyler Durden inflicted on the world. And of all the violent chemical knowledge he had, and all of the gritty details that he likes to give to make a clear impression of the world. This staccato recitation of how to clean up the remnants of violence with common household substances is...well, it's tedious. It's so stylized, so self-aware. And it's so much more about the author than the narrator.

I guess that's what it comes down to. How much of a book should be about a book, and how much should it be about the author? Not that an author has to do something different every time. But if what I'm watching is the author create something, instead of a story unfold, I have to love the author. And I just don't love Palnichuck. Sorry.

Some Further Points on Food

I'm glad to hear that I don't sound like a reactionary crackpot when I talk about food politics, because I have a little more to say now that I've finished the book. I think I've figured out in a little more detail what's missing from the advice I'm reading, what the hurdle is.

Pollan and Kingsolver both have lots of great advice about what a healthy food culture looks like and how it works. What they have no suggestions for are the steps from here to there. They talk about our broken diet, culture, relationship with food, and I'm all with them, yes, yes. But it is MY culture, the one I've grown up in, and it's no easier to let go of a crappy culture than a healthy one. So yes, I should eat more whole foods and cook more myself. And Kingsolver even offers recipes and menus, which are incredibly useful even if I never use them, because they make the theory concrete. I've eaten out of the grocery store all my life--and I grew up on a vegetable farm--so I can barely picture the day to day of this diet they're espousing. But Animal, Vegetable, Miracle gives you enough examples that you can maybe grasp the concept.

Gardening is a great example. You should plant a garden. According to Pollan, with just a couple of hours a week of work you'll get in touch with your food supply, have access to great food, and have all the fun of gardening which is so much fun! I'm sorry, but did I mention that I grew up on a farm? If I was going to love gardening, believe me, I'd be there by now. My aunt Charli is always trying to convince me, not just that I could learn to love it, but that I DO love it and just don't know it yet. Because it's so innately fun and fulfilling. No, it's dirty and boring. And a couple of hours a week does not take into account the extra showers and laundry because of all the dirt. And the talk of fun does not take into account the work that needs doing even if it's going to rain all week, or be over 90 degrees every day, or if you're just insanely busy.

So yes, I know I should plant a garden. But the hurdles to me planting a garden are more than just 1) space, 2) seeds, 3) go for it! They're about how I live my life and how I want to live my life. The same is true for cooking. I wish I was someone who loved preparing elaborate meals made of fresh, delicious veggies. I wish that was how I longed to spend my free time. It isn't. So is this advice that I should do it anyway, spend my time doing something I don't love because it's good for me? Or is it that I should just love it? I hope it's the latter, but if it is, I need advice on how. And if I could just start enjoying things that are good for me, well, a whole lot of other hurdles would be removed.

Okay, I do sound a bit like a crackpot in this post. I think that the gardening thing got my dander up, because my life has been full of people who love to garden and cannot comprehend that someone might find it tedious. But I think my point is valid: we don't just have bad habits. It's been generations now--we have bad folkways. And they're a lot harder to change. Maybe the best I can do is raise my son differently. I'm just going to let all those gardeners in my life loose on him and see how he turns out. If he eats like my grandmother, he'll smell funny and live to be 95.

(With apologies to Charli and Grammy, who really, really love(d) their plants.)
Edited to clarify earlier that I do not espouse gardening to nongardeners. I am not that cruel.

I Choose To Miss the Point

So I'm reading In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollen, and it's very good. It gets at a lot of the same things that Animal, Vegetable, Miracle did, only through more of a journalist's lens--analysis of the history and science of the thing, rather than personal experience and memoir. I am familiar with the argument, but I do really like his writing style, and he makes some specific points that are interesting.

The idea, for example, that food is a complex system, and by trying to thing of it only biochemically, we're missing a lot of the point. Besides all the cultural and sensual things going on with eating, there is the simple fact that food is not a pile of nutrients, but a complex system. We don't have the capacity to fully understand it, so the rules we've created around it never seem to work.

In spite of all this interesting things I'm reading and learning about, I'm going to address this subject from a different point of view, one he hasn't yet looked at. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle had this problem, and until I get to the end and read his advice on how to eat, I won't know if he does, but I'm curious. This is the lack of direct, practical advice.

Now, it's all about advice. "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Good stuff. Even better: shop at the farmer's markets. Cook whole foods, not processed. These are useful tips. What they won't help me figure out, however, is how to do this without it taking over your entire life. When Barbara Kingsolver did it, it DID take over her life--they spend a lot of time canning, freezing, baking, farming. She's a bestselling author; I'm sure she has the time. Most of us don't.

The whole foods movement is, on some level, a feminist issue. In a lot of the families I know, the men do their share of the cooking, but let's be honest. In most of the households in the US, it's going to be the woman who adds baking bread, freezing vegetables, or any other food work to her list of things to do. And whole food is more work; making chicken stock vs. buying a box of broth? Rolling out any kind of dough, from pie to pasta? Even driving out of your way to pick up your food at the farm or the market, rather than the grocery store (where you still have to get shampoo and light bulbs)? All these things are going to add a lot of time to my already crowded week.

I would really like someone to sell me a more wholesome food lifestyle that leaves some room for the rest of my existing lifestyle. I'd even take an acknowledging nod in the direction of the things I do manage--getting my veggies from the farm, doing more of my shopping "around the edges" of the grocery store, eating out less.

What it comes down to is that the food culture in America needs to change, and that's going to have to be part of a bigger change, a reprioritization. And all I can offer right now, in my life, are baby steps. So--I made quiche tonight. Good for me!

Motherhood Is Kicking My Ass

When you're up at 3am because the baby is crying and you're trying to teach him to calm himself down, so you are only going in every five-ish minutes, so you don't want to go to sleep because getting up every five minutes for two hours is too brutal, so you're reading in bed at 3am--at those moments, you can be somewhat critical of a parenting memoir. That's why last night (technically this morning), I put down It Sucked and Then I Cried, by Heather Armstrong, and finished up Under the Jolly Roger, by L.A. Meyer. That was an awesome book about pirating, which you should read after you've finished the first two in the series, starting with Bloody Jack.

When I came back to It Sucked and Then I Cried this morning, after a short sleep and a shorter nap, I was not quite as ready to sell my beloved son for a pudding pop and a bottle of NyQuil. I read dooce.com, and I love Heather's writing (I feel that I can call her Heather, since I read her blog and that's what she calls herself). And I didn't mind at all that most of the content was from the blog--in fact, I appreciate the amount of work she put into making it come together in chapters instead of keeping it short, distinct essays.

She's hilarious, and a great storyteller/anecdotist. (My spellchecker is accepting that word, so I don't think I made it up.) I'm a little disappointed by the book, though, for a couple of reasons that I think are tied into the Rampaging Wakefulness I went through last night. Mostly, it comes down to this: I wish the book had plumbed a little deeper than the blog posts.

I think I wrote this summer about how I see blogging as a very specific style of writing. Hers are funny--even when she's talking about things that are important and difficult, there's a thread of funny that I don't know if she could lose if she tried, and I think that's great. But I found that the laughs that worked so well online kind of kept the book from coming together. The truth--emotional and factual--of a lot of the stories are hard to get at past the hyperbolic humor and caricatures.

That might be okay in another book. I didn't see the movie Life is Beautiful, but I suspect it's a similar thing--tragedy told through humor. The difference, though, is that we all know the tragedy there--nobody hasn't seen a dozen holocaust movies, nobody doesn't know the horror story. This is why the warmth and humor can be transcendant--it does something different with something familiar.

Her story, the "motherhood, especially early motherhood, can be painful and soul-wrenching" story, hasn't been told enough. I wanted to read that story, I wanted to hear the voice of this person saying, yes, it's that hard. And she says it, but then she giggles because she just said the word "hard," and I feel a little let down.

I think it came together for me in the chapter in which she enters the hospital, near the end of the book. I realized that each of the anecdotes, while told in a sequential and narrative way, is emotionally separate from the others. She says that she cried, threw things, felt a mess. But then she tells other anecdotes that don't have any real emotional weight either way, and you're not sure how this relates to either the glory or the horror that she's going through. When she goes to the hospital, it's almost a surprise, because you didn't feel the escalation coming throughout the story. She talks about her suffering, but the sense of it doesn't permeate it.

Maybe I just had very specific expectations, because I'm a new mom and I've been struggling. I don't have the illnesses that she has always struggled with, but this job is not easy, and sometimes the intensity of my feelings, the question of where my life went, the agony and the ecstasy--never forget the ecstasy, even when someone's peeing on you--is overwhelming. Heather's a great writer, and I was really hoping to read something here where someone wrapped her arms around these feelings without sentiment or dry academic language, but with humor and sympathy.

But she went a different way--this is a humorist's book about a serious topic. And it does that job well. It's just not the job I was expecting.

Verdict

If you lurve Marcus Flutie with the all-consuming lurve that most people devote to their handsome, charming, slightly nerdy dentists, then you should read Perfect Fifths. I've never been his #1FANgrrl, so whatever. There was way too much poetry in this book.

But, if you can read it in three hours, you can mostly skip the poetry (at least skim it). In that case, it might be worth it just to complete the series. I mean, it was only occasionally painful.

I guess what it comes down to is that I was never in this series for the love story, but for the coming of age story. There's pretty much none of that here, just the Great Romance. I am rarely driven by Great Romance.

And thus ends this adventure.

Still at Newark

I can't believe I only just realized that Megan McCafferty must have had an elite liberal arts education. It's the only place where you can come by what I have also just identified as this much postmodern use of language.

The shellfishness of selfishness. Intimidating intimations. Frankenskank. Interwenchions. This dissective use of language--let's not even get into how she constructs sentences, which I can't even pick out to quote--is why the word pomo freaks me out.

And yet, you'll notice I'm still reading. Hard.

Further Dispatches

Ugh, worse again. I don't think I could like anyone over 23 who gets that invested in haiku. Besides the fact that haiku full of clever wordplay is almost an oxymoron--it's supposed to be an image poem, just because you match their rhythm scheme doesn't make it a haiku.

Okay, I'm not actually pretentious enough to believe that. 5-7-5 for fun is fine. But please, Megan McCafferty. Stop. Being. So. Precious.

Sigh. JMLC, if anyone needs me to spoil it for them, I will. Also, I'll admit I'm finding it a fast read--you could skim it. I think the exposition was really irritating because they worked it in as though she was thinking about everything we might want to know about her life in the stretch of time we're following her.

It's a hell of a rollercoaster ride.

Dispatch from the Newark Airport

Okay, I still won't recommend Perfect Fifths yet, but it's slightly less painful another 50 pages in. Slightly. To be fair.

(For those of you who don't know or care about the book but do know and care about me: the characters are at the Newark Airport, not me. I'm at the dining room table.)

It Hurts My Soul

Sloppy Firsts was some good stuff. Megan McCafferty did something amazing and impressive with Jessica Darling, and she sustained it through four books. Not, alas, through five.

I'm trying really hard to read Perfect Fifths, the final Jessica Darling installment, and it's just not happening for me. In fact, it's dragging me down. The interesting thing is that it's told in the third person instead of the first, but uses the exact same voice as the first four books, all of which were in journal form.

This was a major mistake on her part. I understand that she wanted to include the Marcus parts, and doing those in third person would have been fine. But the thing about Jessica is that she's a hyper, emotional, hyperemotional drama queen. Reading things from her point of view is part sympathy, part watching-NASCAR-for-the-accidents fascination. We love her through and because of her weird super-intellectual pop-culture melancoly verbosity. But when it's a third person narrator--presumably the author--talking like that, WE HATE HER.

Hate hate hate. Jessica's having a really bad day in this book, fine. It's kind of her own fault (just get up in time to catch your freaking plane, how hard is it?), but if I was inside her head, I'd be watching her self-flagellate and could forgive her. From outside her head (and yeah, I get a peek at her thoughts, but it's not the same), I have to take up the whip, because man, someone has to talk some sense into this girl.

As for Marcus, he's never quite made sense, but in that way that the male love interest never quite makes sense in stories like this. Because he's so infuriating but so perfect, sigh. He's all Zen and stuff. I actually liked his character (not as a person but as a literary accomplishment) most in Fourth Comings, when we finally see some of his flaws--his drifting through life is not about really being above it all and grounded but unable to find true meaning. It's about thinking you're all that. Anyone that Zen at 24 is an ass.

I read a very interesting story once. It was an English translation of a Czech (if I recall correctly) horror/fantasy story, which basically follows the story of Cinderella, if Cinderella was a dim and unknowing mortal whose stepfamily was older and more powerful than she could possibly imagine. The stepsister, who is the heroine of this story, is virtually immortal, and is often accused by Cinderella of being vain and shallow. The stepsister observes that she spent centuries seeking truth in philosophy and natural science, trying to understand the meaning of things through study and deep thought. And now, millenia later, the only things that bring her pleasure, that get her through the day, are the small vanities: grooming herself. Eating fine foods. Small sensualities that, in the end, mean more than all the meaning mortals search for.

What I'm getting at is that the meditating 25 year old in your sophomore class might be less typical than you are, but it doesn't make him more profound. I'm not Marcus's biggest fan.

Trust

Trust is an weirdly important part of my relationship with a book. On an inanely literal level, that seems ironic when you're talking about fiction--I mean, they're lying to you, kid, that's what they do. But one of the problems with bad writing is that, once you realize that the author isn't going to be filling in all those inconvenient holes (inconsistencies, confusing bits, knowledge gaps), you start seeing every little problem coming from a mile away. When you trust an author to make it all work out, you often don't even notice these problems.

Real life is like that. When something unlikely happens, you don't assume that reality is coming apart. If you found a fish lying in the middle of your driveway, you would not assume that the end of the world was upon us, or that reality had ceased to make sense (I guess you might, but I wouldn't). You would assume that your neighbor's dog stole someone's dinner off the table and dropped it in your yard for some reason. Or that a teenager was vandalizing the neighborhood by throwing fish out of his car window. Maybe you couldn't even come up with an explanation, but you wouldn't doubt the fabric of reality based on this one misplaced fish.

If you trust an author, you can have that same experience--you believe there's an explanation, even if you don't know it yet. In a bad book, though, the possibility exists that no one's going to explain that fish very well. If a bad author needs a fish in your driveway, he'll put one there and not bother to give you an explanation. Or he'll give you one that you can't swallow (teenagers throwing fish out of their car windows is far more believable in real life than in fiction).

I'm reading a book right now, The Compass of the Soul, which is a sequel to something I read a few weeks ago, Beneath the Vaulted Hills. They really should not have been split into two books; because the first one did such a poor job standing on its own, I had come to completely distrust the author. Just this morning, though, one of the characters pointed out what I had considered to be a big hole--why on Earth is this other character following us on these life-threatening adventures? That whole "curiosity" thing is wearing pretty thin.

Seriously, this has changed my whole outlook on this book. Because there was no hint of skepticism about his motivations in the first book, I had assumed that I was supposed to buy the whole thing hook line and sinker. Now that someone's asked the question, a) I have a bunch of theories that I can't wait to develop (Brenda: I suspect RC is in league with the deacon!), and b) I now have a feeling that certain other things that seemed to be leading somewhere might actually be leading somewhere. And now I'm excited to find out.

So let this be a lesson: sequels are not the same as volumes of the same book. If I'm going to have to read the whole thing, I need to know that from the beginning!

How To Be Well

I can't be the only one who is skeptical whenever I read, hear, or see something about what's good or bad for me to eat. Chocolate is really good for you? Honey Nut Cheerios is good for your cholesterol. Something about walnuts. Am I supposed to eat no carbs at all, or some carbs as long as it's been at least an hour since I've had protein, or am I supposed to avoid meats and fats instead of carbs? I honestly don't know what to eat anymore. And has anyone else noticed how often they make a scientific advance that has to do with toothpaste? I mean, where are these guys who can crank out three discoveries a year and why aren't they curing disease and solving the oil crisis?

The Healthy Skeptic is a book by a science writer who is sick of all the junk science that is passed off on the public. I'd say "these days," but you have no idea the kind of bunk that Messrs Kellogg and Graham (of the crackers) believed in. The point of this book is that pretty much anything about your health that you see on TV--commercials, the news, anything--or read in a magazine is biased and oversimplified, biased, and inadequately supported by the research.

It was a really great book for the first half. He talked a lot about how "independent" research groups are funded, and how news shows often use video press releases from interested parties like drug companies without editing or even investigating them. He gave some examples of respected news organizations like 60 Minutes buying into the hype and tearing companies apart over "problems" that sound scary but don't mean anything. He made some great poionts about paranoia, and how, with health, it's possible for too much information to be a bad thing; demanding screenings for ailments you have low risk for results not only in wasted time and money, but sometimes in greater risks associated with screening and preventative treatment than with the ailment itself. (If you're 80 and your cholesterol is high, there's almost no chance that's going to cause heart disease or kill you. You don't need low cholesterol--or meds for it--if you're 80.)

But he lost me at sunscreen. I can't argue with his science--sunscreen protects against common, highly treatable forms of skin cancer, but not against the somewhat more rare and much more dangerous melanoma. And I can't argue with his assertions that the universal "wear sunscreen" message has been introduced into public consciousness by nonprofit organizations that are funded by sunscreen manufacturers. But I have to balk at his assertion that wearing sunscreen is pretty stupid--we should just none of us ever go outdoors. Seriously, that's pretty much his arguments--long sleeves, stay inside. Not that I'm lying on the beach with a reflector under my chin, but isn't he the one railing against oversimplification?

Speaking of which, I think the point where I really started to disagree with him is the point where he derided even impartial groups for oversimplifying public health messages. On the one hand, I know that's true and that it can result in wasted time, money, and worry. On the other hand, I'm sorry, but you DO need to dumb these things down for us. I'm not going to research, care about, or remember every piece of advice that I get. If I should be wearing sunscreen, you're going to need to drill it into my head. You need to make it something that I know deep down--meaning it has to be simple. And repeated. And then I won't remember why I know it, I'll just know it.

In the end, his suggestions for how to approach health information are pretty useless. Whenever someone says something is good for you, find out who's behind the message and what research their claim is based on. So, when I see a commercial about how Cheerios are good for my cholesterol, I know who's telling me that, but I should go look up the study they're citing that proves it and read it myself to decide. And if it's based on ten studies, I should read the literature. If the news tells me that I might be at risk for getting cooties because I live next door to a cat owner, I should figure out who gave that info to the news and what they based the assertion on.

Seriously? Never gonna happen. Eat right, get exercise, don't smoke. And apparently stay out of the sun. I don't even really do these things. You want me to add to my health regimen, I'm sorry but you're going to have to provide me with a catchy slogan. Maybe rhyming. A cute mascot would be nice. Then we'll talk.

Someone Else's Meme

Can you name a book you've read beginning with each letter of the alphabet? Rules: 1) A, an, and the don't count, 2) a title that begins with a number is alphabetized as though the number were spelled out, and 3) for X, you only need a book that has X somewhere in the title, not at the beginning. Though Mike and I had both read a book beginning with X, so bonus points if you can do it.

I won't bore you with my list--it's a fun exercise to go through, though.

Next time: why The Healthy Skeptic had me in the palm of his hand for a while, but now just sounds like a bitter old crank.

Towards a Philosophy of the Undead

I think I may have recovered from the loss. And there's a lot of ground to cover here, so let's get started.

I think I may have mentioned before that I prefer my vampires to be more like monsters than sex machines. I have no interest in the love lives of the undead, or really in any story that hinges so strongly on convincing me of the IRRESISTIBILITY of someone. I think this is a place (one of so many) where Twilight falls apart for me.

There are a lot of stories that depend on the weight of their love story to work. That is, depend on my believing that the lovers really need to end up together--emotionally, practically, whatever--and that whatever crazy stuff that either impedes them or results from their fighting for their love makes sense. In some stories, it works--Romeo and Juliet is a great, iconic example--and in some it doesn't--see Star Wars Episode III: Vader is a Dink. Twilight wants to be a book where this works, wants me to believe that these two people have a mystic connection. It takes a good writer to prove that--someone who can use words other than "attractive" to describe the main character's voice, and whose idea of soul-baring conversation does not involve questions about favorite colors and flowers.

I can believe in the lust--she throws that at me enough. But I can't see it as a bond, something that holds them together in the face of, you know, his undeadness and society's disapproval and whatever else they're going to run into before the book blessedly ends. I won't bother you with all the ways in which he's emotionally abusive and kind of creepy, either. But she just hasn't sold me on why being with a vampire is so yummy.

Interestingly, the author claims she didn't read many (or maybe it was any) other vampire books before she wrote hers. (This explains why they can go out during the day,though not why they bother attending high school.) But she seems pretty well plugged into the idea that Vampires Are Sexy. Which brings me back to: why?

Vampire people are different than zombie people. After death, vampires become more, stronger, faster, sexier. Maybe even smarter and richer and more talented. Zombies become less--slower, dumber, a void where people used to be. Vampires are better than people, except for the morality bit--zombies are less than people in every way. To put it Freudianly, vampires are about sex, zombies are about death. Vampires are about something better, zombies are about something worse.

The vampire model doesn't make sense to me. You're dead. In most of these stories, the absence of morality (and the ability to eat garlic) are really almost no loss at all--vampires just live the sweet (if dark) life. I can't buy into that, somehow, and I'm not even sure why it's fun to read about.

Zombies, on the other hand, are SCARY AS HELL. They are death incarnate, and they're coming for you. With the added bonus of wearing the faces and dessicated bodies of people you maybe used to know. And they're trying to eat you. Not just drink your blood like some sort of froufrou aperatif. Chomp chomp like a turkey leg at the fair. They're messy, and scary, and, as such, represent more of what there is to be afraid of in the world. I'm not afraid of sexy. And it's hardly worth it to be afraid of inhumanly fast and strong. Death by vampire would be pleasant--either swift, or sexy, or becoming one of them (well, I'd argue that as pleasant, but still). There is nothing less than awful about being eaten by a zombie.

This post is going off the rails a bit; I'm sorry y'all missed the one that Blogger ate, because it was much more coherent. We'll wrap it up with a few quick observations.

1) Twilight is mediocre at best.
2) The Forest of Hands and Teeth was a good, if flawed, story, that did the zombie thing REALLY well.
3) I like my vampires more like zombies.
4) Looking forward to 99 Coffins, the sequel to 13 Bullets, by David Wellington. Now those are vampires.

Philosophy of the Undead

I wrote a whole long great post about the difference between zombie people and vampire people and Blogger ate it. I can't even tell you how angry I am.

So I'm sorry that I don't have anything to say about this subject. Maybe tomorrow.

Phenomenomenomenon

Okay, so let's talk about this Twilight thing.

First, I'm listening to the audiobook. It had become clear to me that the writing was going to be so bad (I'm sorry, fans, I really am) that I would just be irritated to be reading it. On the minus side, I probably would have finished reading the book by now, while I'm only on chapter 3 of the audiobook. On the plus side, Adam is little enough that he doesn't know when the audiobook playing in the background while he's eating is trashy.

Secondly, Stephanie Meyers is a faithful Mormon. This is not a criticism, but a point about the whole sexy vampire thing. If getting bitten is sex, a devout Mormon is going to have a complicated relationship with that. Really, a true Mormon is going to have a take on gender issues and relationships that I'm not 100% about.

Next, let's address the sexy vampire thing. Sexy vampires out in daylight. Who, presumably, eat garlic bread, or at least hang out at the local pizza joint with those who do. I am not into sexy vampires, but if you're going to go that way, you at least have to obey the rules of vampirism. If they're not afraid of daylight, what on earth makes them vampires instead of some kind of intensive carnivores on a liquid diet?

Fourth, Edward's voice is described as "attractive." This is NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION about a voice. Call a guy attractive and being vague isn't so bad--I can build my dream guy. But what the hell is an attractive voice?

Fifth, why does Bella so hate the fact that the cute, popular, friendly kids all like her. She seems overwhelmingly annoyed at the three guys who like her, at least one of whom has really nothing against him. Also, why exactly did they all fall for her instantly, when no one in Phoenix appears to have cared much about her one way or another? What is up with this girl?

I think it would be awesome if it turned out that she was an unreliable narrator and she was some kind of freaky outcast or reverse vampire or something, but I know it's not going to be that interesting.

Sigh. I'm sorry to be so critical lately. I'll read something great soon, I swear. I've got a zombie book and a Bloody Jack book on deck--it can't be all bad.

Feels Mean to Say It

So I'm finally getting into the meat of Beneath the Vaulted Hills, and the story is getting really good. But my GOD is it slow reading! It's not hard, but the font is weird and the sentences are strangely hypnotic, so it becomes hard to jump ahead. Honestly, the action is pretty good, so I kind of wish it was in a more streamlined book.

The book began about six times. Each of the first six chapters felt like the first chapter of a book, introduced a new character (in medias res, of course), and ended on a tense note. I was 50 pages in and had barely begun.

And there are so many characters. Starting from a random point in the plot: Bryce is a mysterious figure who provides information to Sir John, allowing him to foster an antagonism between Moncrief (and his ally the Sea Lord) and Lord Skye, who employs two young men in a research capacity, Hayes and Kehler. (Deep breath, and--) Hayes is in trouble, and is being aided by his friend Erasmus, who is being dogged by Deacon Rose (who's looking for Kehler), aided by Randall, and wooed by the Countess of Chilton, who was hung up on Lord Skye and is advised by her friend Marianne and pursued by an artist named Kent. All these are only the living characters, and only some of them. Let's not talk about the priest Baumgere, the mysterious Teller, the child Percy, the painter Pelier. Let's not talk about the mage who is the focus of the book.

And that's the thing--the conflict they're all tangled up in (which isn't really a MacGuffin, but isn't really coming together) doesn't quite make sense to me. So the mages want to get rid of all magical knowledge, but there are folks who don't want them to be able to, and the church which has some unclear third position on the subject. Also there are people who can do magic but aren't mages. So what is a mage? It's all a little fuzzy.

But mostly it's a spelunking novel. And if you ever saw the movie The Descent, and thought it was much scarier before the creepy cave people appeared, then you'll see what I'm liking about this book.

Brenda, I really want your opinion, when I'm done.

Plan of Action

Okay, a person has to map these things out. I find myself scribbling these things in random moments, which means I need to get it documented to get them settled in my mind. So:

Currently reading:
The Wisdom of Whores, by Elizabeth Pisani.
The Healthy Skeptic, by Robert Davis.
Beneath the Vaulted Hills, by Sean Russell.
The Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett.

On deck (i.e. Out of the library):
The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie.
Under the Jolly Roger, L.A. Meyer.
In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan.

On reserve:
It Sucked and Then I Cried, by Heather Armstrong.
Perfect Fifths, by Megan McCafferty.
The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Carrie Ryan.

Audiobooks in my near future:
Survivor, by Chuck Paluchuk.
Twilight, Stephanie Meyer.

And finally, Books I Own That Will Be Read Soon, Honest:
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman.
The Children of God, by Mary Doria Russell.

Whew. That's a lot. I'm glad I have it on record. Sorry if it's boring for everyone else, but I feel satisfied. I think I'll go take a nap.

And Now For the Thrilling Conclusion of: In Which I Make a Meme

Now remember, these are not necessarily my all-time favorite books, but rather the best representatives of the best books on my shelves.

6. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell. Here we represent literary fiction. I read Cloud Atlas for book club a few years ago; I was mad when they picked it, because the back cover uses the word “postmodern” to describe it, and that word makes my brain melt. And then I started the book, and found the first chapter, written in the style of a diary of an 1800s ocean journey, hard to read. And I really didn’t trust the author to pull of the overly clever structure he was using. But I fell in love with the simplicity behind the complicated structure, with the connections between different styles of storytelling, with the mainstreaming of science fiction, with the incredibly different ways of addressing the same themes.

I have a fairly low tolerance for standard “literary fiction,” which too often loses track of its story in the face of its ideas. But when an author does it right, it can be amazing. Mary Doria Russell does something like this with The Sparrow, Marilynn Robinson in Housekeeping. The People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks, is another novel that uses beautiful prose and historical research to tell a series of stories that are really one story, about tolerance and faith and history.

I choose Cloud Atlas here both because it’s one of my favorites, and because it brings in another element that I find fascinating—mainstream fiction that bridges the gap with science fiction. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is another of my favorite example of this—a story that people who “don’t read science fiction” would pick up and enjoy, but that is science fiction both thematically and in plot.

7. Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey. This is mostly a nostalgia choice, but it also represents something important. First, there needs to be a decent amount of fantasy on this list, because that’s what it takes to reflect what I read. But this was the first fantasy novel that I ever read. For my twelfth birthday, my aunt sent me three novels. One was Trespasses, a solid World War II family saga; one was People of the Wolf, which I think she picked because I liked Clan of the Cave Bear, and one was Arrows of the Queen. I could not for the life of me figure out why she picked these books—with the exception of People of the Wolf, they were like nothing I’d ever read. Somehow, I never ended up reading People of the Wolf, but read Trespasses several times (though I haven’t thought of it in years). And Mercedes Lackey became one of my favorite authors. I gobbled up the rest of her work ,waited for the new ones to come out, searched for anthologies where her stories had been published.

Sad to say, I’ve grown out of her a bit lately, but I think it’s more a matter of us growing apart—as her books go along, they get more complex and, I think, more flawed. But her early, simple work I can still go back to with the fresh eyes of someone who can be amazed at the person who came up with a world where everyone has a psychic connection to a sentient horse. And dammit, I still love her for it.

8. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett. Because good funny is hard to find, but vitally necessary in life.

9. The Nine Parts of Desire, by Geraldine Brooks. And here we come to nonfiction. Since I would say that at least 90% of what I read is fiction, I only get to put one of these on the list, but there’s a broad range in here. I choose this one because I learned so much from it that I carry with me today—though it was written more than 15 years ago, it’s an excellent guide to the Middle East, if you’re willing to exclude any current events and just look at history. This is where I learned about the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and about what is said in the Koran vs. what is practiced by tribal cultures that have adopted Islam over the centuries.

My nonfiction reading is kind of all over the map, though. I like pop psychology books and memoirs (An Unquiet Mind, by Kay Redfield Jameson), books about how medicine works (Better, by Atul Gawande), autism memoirs (The Seige, by Clara Claiborne Park—I used to work in autism, and Clara Park was my advisor in college), and explorations of any subject that are either fun (Stiff, by Mary Roach) or titillating (Leaving the Saints, by Martha Beck). I’m a bit of a sucker, actually, for titillating when it comes to nonfiction.

10. Farthing, by Jo Walton. I think this is a good book to sum it all up, because it covers so much ground. It’s plain old good fiction. It’s thought-provoking, with an alternate-reality twist. It’s a mystery—I don’t read a lot of mysteries, but I’m loyal to a few: Colin Cotterill’s Dr. Siri stories, and the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books. It’s speculative fiction, which I would say is not anything as flat-out fantastical as science fiction or fantasy, but it comes back to bridging those gaps between genre and mainstream, like Never Let Me Go. The book is about a murder mystery set in an alternate 1940s England, where Hitler rules continental Europe, and England and the U.S. remain out of the war. Ideas about right and wrong, loyalty, fear, and bigotry are examined in great detail by a flighty socialite of a narrator. It’s a wonderful book, and represents so much of what I’m hungry for when I read. You should really check it out.

So I wonder if this covers everything. You'll notice that I snuck a bunch more titles onto the list through the backdoor, but even there, I had to trim--Adventures in the Screen Trade, by William Goldman--humor, or nonfiction? A Gift Upon the Shore, by M.K. Wren--how do I work it into the text of #10? Sadly, I don't; there's too much great stuff out there. But here's a glimpse, and, for anyone who thinks they might like what I like, a little reading list. So, enjoy.

In Which I Make a Meme, Part the First

Inspired by a "15 Albums" meme that Mike did on Facebook, I've decided to start one of my own: 10 books. The idea is to create a 15 book reading list that will encapsulate and summarize my taste. A lot of them are my favorites, but not all the choices are my "desert island" favorites; I went for a representative corps, rather than the outliers. But the idea is that if you read this list, you should be able to go out and make an intelligent decision if you decided to, say, buy me a gift. (Which would be very nice of you. Thanks for even thinking of it!)

You'll notice that I sneak in a lot of other titles from the pool of work that each item represents. I'm cheap; sue me. Also, the post was really long, so this is the first half. More to come.

Okay, here we go!

1. In This House of Brede, by Rumer Godden. This book is representative of a few overlapping categories: nun books and detail books. In sci-fi and fantasy, there's an element of storytelling called worldbuilding, in which the author gives you the details you need to understand the world in which the story takes place. The details of day-to-day life in this nun book are exquisitely well-drawn, and a world as foreign as any imaginary one just springs to life. Most nun books (I'm not sure if this is a category acknowledged anywhere else in the world, except privately among readers of nun books) have as part of their appeal the sweet simplicity of a life outside of the world, and also the rigorous inner journey of someone who has chosen something difficult and meaningful to devote themselves to. (As the Mother General says in The Nun's Story, by Kathryn Hulme, my first and most cherished nun book, "In many ways it is a life against nature.")

Audrey Hepburn brought me to the movie The Nun's Story, which brought me to the book, which brought me to this book. Some of them are memoirs, some novels. And I'm not interested in racy exposés; though I don't demand all roses and sweet smiles, I'm in the nun books for the focus of these lives, and that's what I love to read about. I love to read about a life that is hard and worth it; as John Adams said (or something like it), there are only two kinds of people worth anything--those with a commitment, and those that require the commitment of others.

2. Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, by Judith Martin. I am an advice junkie. Part of it is a creepy kind of voyeurism--other people's problems are titillating--of which I'm not proud. Part of it is the bald fact that great writing is great writing, and Judith Martin has a simple grandeur and vicious dignity that is pretty thrilling. And part of it is just the catharsis of being told exactly how one might go about living the perfect life, even if that is totally unattainable. Also, the question-and-answer format is very digestible. Fun fun fun.

3. Shining Through, by Susan Isaacs. Chick lit: I'm a female, and my taste in literature can in no way be defined as highfalutin', so there will be some chick lit. But I'm seriously picky about chick lit, since I secretly kind of hate anyone I see wearing sharp-pointy-toed shoes, even people I like. Which means I kind of hate a lot of people in chick lit books. But there are some books that make the cut--Megan McCafferty, some Elinor Lipman, the Bridget Jones books. Susan Isaacs takes the cake, though, and Shining Through is the best of the bunch. The life and loves of a sassy World War II secretary-turned-spy. Can't get better.

4. Preludes and Nocturnes, by Neil Gaiman. It’s so pedestrian of me to pick Sandman to represent comics in this lineup, but it’s incredibly famous and popular and classic for a reason. Besides graphic novels, this is also great fantasy, and an excellent example of a plot-driven story that is still full of and very much about important ideas--duty, honor, history, storytelling. It is so intensely up my alley (and, I guess, everyone else’s) that I can’t even articulate it, except maybe to say that this is one of those works that not only wish I could have written but feel lives in my brain as though it was there before I read it. You know what I mean? I love Hellboy, Castle Waiting, and a lot of great one-offs (The Last of the Independents, by Matt Fraction--anyone?), but The Complete Sandman would definitely be at the top of my desert island list, so I think it has to make this one.

5. Ghosts I Have Been, by Richard Peck. If there is a compendium of all Peck’s Blossom Culp books out there, I’d pick that, but if I had to pick one, you have to go with the original. I twiddled with this part of the list a bit—I wanted to include some quality YA fantasy (Princess Academy, by Shannon Hale), and some indulgent Pez-type stuff (I actually wrote an explanation of why Goodbye, Stacey, Goodbye is my favorite Babysitter’s Club book), and I recently fell in love with something else again (Bloody Jack, by L.A. Meyer), but if I want to boil it down, I think my desert island choice in this category would be Blossom Culp.

I’d like to say I keep up on the kids’ stuff because of my hoped-for youth librarian-future, but the truth is, it’s the other way around. Librarianship looked like a good place to go, since I was already reading this stuff. I think fantasy writers and YA writers are doing some of the purest storytelling out ther; they can’t afford to lose the story--the characters, the plot, the events—to their ideas and themes and statements about life, but they have to include those elements. I think it makes for disciplined work, and I think that’s why so much YA material appeals to me. I’m a little surprised, actually, that it only got one spot on the list, but here you have it.

Okay, this is more than enough for now. Six through ten, coming at you soon. Stay tuned!

Up And Coming

I'm working on a big post with kind of a cool meme in it, but it's taking some time and energy, so I wanted to drop in and discuss my current reading list. But first, I want to point out the awesome-cool Goodreads widget that updates the images of the books I'm reading, with links directly to my Amazon Associates account. So feel free to click through those, if you'd like, or just admire the ever-changing list of books I'm reading, whether I actively blog them or not.

So, right now, I'm finally getting around to some Nero Wolfe, as recommended by my good friend Kris, whose taste is as eclectic as one might wish. It's got that fast-paced, workman-style mystery that you get in a noir tale, and I'm really loving it. I mean, it took me about two hours to read the first half, so it's not deeply profound or anything, but I have no idea what's going to happen, and I'm excited to find out. Nero Wolfe himself is kind of irritating, though. And has Orson Welles ever played him, 'cause he totally should have. It's called The Golden Spiders, by Rex Stout. (Pen name? I wonder.)

Because this is due soon, I put aside (at great emotional discomfort) the second Bloody Jack book, which I had made good progress on: The Curse of the Blue Tattoo. The reason this hurts so much is because I have FINALLY found the motherlode--a pirate book that is also about a girls' boarding school. I am absolutely swooning! And this reminds me of my fondness for boarding school books, and makes me ask: recommendations, please! Books, especially YA, that take place at boarding schools, especially of the past. Besides Charlotte Sometimes (more of a kid's book than YA) and the Great and Terrible Beauty Series (very satisfying), I'm practically stumped. Suggestions!

That's it for now. Look out for a more in-depth post in the next few days. No, really!

Ah, Young Love

Do you remember Sunfire Romances? Those historical young girls with a gleam in their eye and two chaste boys chasing them? My favorite was Cassie, a white girl raised by the Mohawk* tribe, in love with a trapper, pursued by a blacksmith, trying to be part of both worlds. It turns out that the author, Vivian Schurfranz, wrote another one, Josie, which is actually quite hard to get your hands on.

Hard, that is, unless your local library buys ten books a year, and the majority of their YA holdings were published before I was a young adult. There she was, just staring up at me from the paperback rack. So I brought her home.

And now I'm afraid to reread Cassie, because if Josie is any indication, these babies don't hold up too well. I remember Cassie as compelling, but Josie is somewhat disjointed. On many levels there's nothing more wrong with it than with any book written 20 years ago for 13-year-olds, but that is not to say that I need to want to read them.

Except, of course, the Babysitter's Club.

So I dipped my toe in that nostalgic pool, and came out...well, wet. But it's okay. I'm wrapping up Fieldwork, which has inexplicably taken me a long time to read, and about which I will have more to say as I finish. Until then, dear reader, read on!

*Correction: it was the Iroquois tribe, and I apologize to Cassie, Vivian Schurfranz, and Native Americans everywhere for not paying more attention.

Starring Sally J. Friedman as Herself

So the narrator of this novel I'm reading, Fieldwork, by Mischa Berlinski, is a character named Mischa Berlinksi. Mike's reaction to this information was, "So he read Everything is Illuminated." I feel for the guy, since he was probably working on this book five years ago when Everything came out, and he's going to be looked at as a Johnny-Come-Lately to the self-named narrator bandwagon, but I have to say his use of this is irritating me way less than Jonathan Safran Foer's did.

JSF was my least favorite part of that book. It seemed at once self-indulgent and as though he was laughing at himself in order to laugh at the reader, somehow. Is this character you, or isn't he? This isn't an experience you had. Is it that you were imagining yourself in that experience? Is this really how you see yourself? But that's so sad; this was no Mary Sue situation. If it was a fictional character, why give him your name?

Berlinski is doing something different. I'm not 100% sure why he's using his own name, but it helps that I like the character, and that it is a believable rendition of someone writing about himself. He's not much of a character, either--one thing I love about this book is that it is, in large part, a reporting procedural. He heard about this interesting story and tracked it down, and the shape he is using to tell the story is the shape of his investigation into it. "He" being Berlinski the character, who is a writer and, so far, not much else.

Basically, I feel like, in Fieldwork, this gimmick is adding a layer of veracity, and I really am wondering how much of the time the author spent in Thailand is reflected here, how many missionaries and anthropologists and international teachers and hill tribesmen he met before deciding to write a novel around them. In Everything Is Illuminated, the trick was used to put distance between you and the author; it turned his third person narrator into someone unreliable, who either didn't really like himself or was lying outright about who he (thought he) was.

To be fair, though, Fieldwork uses way too many italics, which pitfall Everything managed to avoid. Credit where credit is due.

Whoops

I was really just returning things. Really. I had 21 books out; I was returning 4. But I ran into My Favorite Librarian, and we chatted, and I strolled into new nonfiction, which is a small section, not too tempting, right? And there's this book called The Wisdom of Whores. What's this? A sociological study of sex education in the red light districts of Eastern Asia? Well...it's not really something I....the author is cited as having a biting wit. And look at this first page--she's got an engaging style, all right. Well, I don't have to read it, I'll just check it out.

And, on display, Salman Rushdie's new book, for which I'd seen an interesting blurb somewhere. I've never read one of his books before. Ah, what the heck?

So...I now have 19 books checked out. Sigh. In my defense, two are for Mike, one for Marsha, and six are picture books for Adam, and one I've finished. That brings me down to 9 that I intend to read. Oh, oh, and one is a Sunfire Romance! It was on a rack in Medford. Josie, by the author of my favorite Sunfire, Cassie. It's all just so exciting!

Right now I'm reading Fieldwork, by Mischa Berlinski. So far, really surprisingly good--a reporting procedural Thailand mystery thing. Really engaging!

The Mystery Mystery

I don't read a lot of mysteries. I used to listen to audiobooks of the Kinsey Milhone alphabet series--A is for Alibi, C is for Corpse, etc. I like Sherlock Holmes. But at the library, there are only two reasons I'll go into the mystery section: Mma Ramotswe and Dr. Siri Paiboun.

What they have in common, besides the obvious quality of both taking place in other countries, is a sense of the lighthearted, and (not incidentally) of the actual mysteries being almost subplots. I couldn't even tell you what anyone is trying to solve in any of these books; the point is the characters, the cleverness, and the ambiance.

The two series are very different, though, and I was just thinking about those differences today. In the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books, the country of Botswana is practically a character. The beauty of the land, the patient, the values and methodical mindset of most of the characters, and the dialogue are all intended to be distinctly Botswanan. I say "intended," because I have no context for saying whether it's accurate.

But simplicity is the main descriptor I would use for them. People say a lot of sentences like, "It is very bad when your car breaks down." Things are "bad" and "good." Simple observations are made, and a lot of conversation consists of agreeing with each other. I'm not sure if the simplicity is a little condescending, in presenting everyone as uncomplicated, maybe primative? I don't want to think so, and it's terribly charming, but sometimes I wonder.

Dr. Siri's communist Laos is very different. Of course, a communist nation in the '70s is inherently different from a modern African country, but there's more to it than that. Things are messier in Laos, and less pleasant, but the language is the big difference. Cotterill's characters use a lot of sarcasm, wit, cynicism, and complexity. There are still a lot of traditional cultural values represented--respect for elders, family taking care of each other by sending their money home, national pride. But the individual characters in the book come across as more complicated. I can't decide if my assessment that this is a good thing, that it's probably an accurate reflection of the internal life of people everywhere, that it's less condescending, is in itself a somewhat condescending Eurocentric way of looking at things.

So now I don't see anything for it but to learn Setswana and go to Africa to figure the whole thing out.

The Kicker

I finished The Buffalo Soldier, by Chris Bohjalian, today. In the last 100 pages, you can feel everything building to a climax--there's a storm like the one that killed the girls at the beginning of the book, and everyone's trying to drive home and really nervous about it, and we jump back and forth among our main characters very quickly. So you know something big is coming.

And for a minute, I got myself all turned around and thought I was reading a Jodi Picoult book, and I expected HER kind of twist ending--instead of the characters having to resolve their difficult quandaries, someone pivotal would die suddenly and no one would have to decide anything. I was totally expecting it--trying to figure out whose death would solve the most emotional and logistical problems within the story.

And then I realized that it wasn't her, and the story had a much more reasonable (if slightly convenient) ending. I actually feel very, very slightly let down, though, because I feel like he set up a very complicated moral conundrum and then resolved it by just sort of ignoring part of it. At least Picoult brings in a deus ex machina to tidy up the loose ends, instead of just pretending that they aren't there.

I hate to be so vague, but it was really such a good book that I don't want to give anything away about the ending! So, go read it and we'll talk more.

As an aside: it's interesting that authors who have very geographically centered novels often have one place that is their "away," where people go to start life over or escape or dream of. For Pat Conroy, it's Italy. For Chris Bohjalian, it's the American southwest.

Passing the Bux

I was a little worried that my huge volume of books in my physical queue (i.e. books that I already have checked out of the library) was maybe the reason I've passed on two books I had planned to read and picked up this week. But I don't think so, I think both were wise and liberating choices.

Adam's Navel sounded like an interesting bit of pop nonfiction--a "physical and cultural anthropology of the human body." I was a little intimidated by the density of the type and the thinness of the pages--god I'm shallow--but when I started reading I realized that yes, the density of this book is a problem. It's basically a brainstormed soliloquy on the human body. Every literary quote and scientific factoid about various body parts creeps into this story. It didn't really impress me, and did I mention the density? A pass.

Born on a Blue Day was quite the opposite. Daniel Tammet's autobiography/memoir about growing up with Asperger's Syndrome and synesthesia. I really wanted it to be interesting--who doesn't want to know more about what it's like to smell numbers? And the idea of peeking inside Asperger's Syndrome, which makes people hard to be around, is very tempting. Sadly, the author writes like someone who has Asperger's Syndrome. The language and style are there, but there is very little feeling--his memoir is a litany of facts about his childhood (as far as I got; I assume it proceeds into facts about his adolesence and adulthood). And there is no feel for synesthesia--I can sympathize with this; how can you describe sight to the blind? That must be what it's like for him to try to describe this to us. But I felt a lack of empathy in his telling that made it hard to read on.

So, no regrets. And yeah, I suppose part of that feeling of liberation relates to the fact that I have more than a dozen library books out. What of it?

This Is What We Mean When We Say You're Too Clever For Your Own Good

Lemony Snicket.

Specifically, The Unauthorized Autobiography of Lemony Snicket. It's really a series of stylish funny lines (not really jokes), cryptically captioned photos that someone picked up in the archives of an historical society, and elaboration on the mysteries within the Series of Unfortunate Events. I've only read the first three books in the series, so I'm really curious, now, whether a lot of the mysteries in those three books are resolved later in the series--that is, if this autobiography is elaborating on questions that are answered, or merely raised, in the series of books. I might have to ask Wikipedia, to spare me reading all 13 books.

Next up: Born on a Blue Day, the memoir of an autistic savant; or maybe Bloody Jack, a swashbuckling tale of an orphaned girl gone into piracy. I don't know that I can read The Buffalo Soldier right now--Bohjalian is always so...I won't say maudlin, but not for someone who's in a mopey mood.

I'm reading toward my due dates, at this point. I have several books due in a week or so--Adam's Navel, which is about body parts (nonfiction, thank heaven), something by Patricia McKillip...oh, it just goes on and on. I'm going to bed.

Local Branches

Local library branches are a challenge for me. I have two books on my "Check This Out Soon" list, and the only place to get both of them is at the main branch of the BPL. Before Baby, that would have made them easy to get, but getting downtown is a bigger deal now than it used to be, so I'm trying to decide whether I should order them for delivery to my local branch.

These are the things that prey on me.

I just finished Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, which was not quite as good as Graceling, but another big YA winner. In the distant future, people in the Capitol live lives of wealth, supported by the labor of the poor, hungry folk in the outlying Districts. And once a year, two young people are selected randomly from each district to participate in the Hunger Games, a fight to the death with only one winner. Overall, the book was quite compelling--even the premise seems less of an obvious setup the way it's explained--and my only complaint is that it ends with the words "End of Book I." The story is well wrapped up, but the personal relationships are not, and there's plenty of political turmoil to make another book, but I'm undecided as to whether or not I want to commit to this.

Now I'm reading an older post-apocalyptic distant future story, called The Chrysalids. I'm enjoying it so far, but I don't know what the driving force of the story will be yet, so I don't have a firm opinion.

I'm excited about this spring, though--Dooce's Heather Armstrong is coming out with It Sucked and I Cried, the story of her troubles with postpartum depression, which I'm very excited to read. She's an hilarious and sensitive writer, and I'm really interested in the topic. And Megan McCafferty is coming out with Perfect Fifths, the topper for her Sloppy Firsts series. I'm full of anticipation--I might even have to buy some of these!

Admitting Comeuppance

I was going to blog the other day about a book I had just started that was promising to be pretty mediocre. I wasn't going to specify the book, because 1) I now fear the self-googling of authors, and 2) though I don't know her, I went to school with the author, making it even more desirable that I not be found out.

The first four chapters were, in my opinion, pretty mediocre. The story begins in medias res, as is only proper--the main character and some of her friends are rescuing someone from the dungeon of a king. There are a lot of names introduced (the friends who are with her, the friends who are waiting elsewhere, the various royalty involved), which is a muddle, but one trusts the author to sort out a muddle of introductions in the first chapter, so fine.

This is followed by three or four chapters of "backstory." This was painful--it reminded me of that chapter at the beginning of all the Babysitters Club books where we learn that Stacey has diabetes and dresses really cool and Dawn is from California and an individual and Kristy's new stepfather is a millionaire. Ex Po Si Shun. Some potentially really good storytelling, actually--I suspect that the book was much longer and she was forced to boil all that down and tell-not-show the background. Oh, this girl has been a thug and then started a secret organization for righting cosmic wrongs. Check--now back to our story.

So I wasn't very hopeful. By the end of the book, though, I couldn't put it down (thank God the baby's been napping well), except when something so nerve-wracking was happening that I couldn't bear to watch. The characterizations that started out so heavy-handed ended up with some really nice character development. A number of fantasy cliches were avoided (some weren't, but if you read fantasy you really can't mind a few cliches). I really liked this book.

Graceling is the title. Thumbs up.

Drive-by

City of Thieves is by the author of 25th Hour which was an excellent movie with Ed Norton. Can't remember the author right now, but I'm enjoying the book very much. I belong to a message board with an online book club and this is the February book. I miss my book club--kind of. I don't miss reading all those books that I was only minorly interested in, especially now that so much of my reading time is stolen.

Also making my way through the short stories about English history, which is a good way to get the background without getting too bogged down, which is something I often find in historical nonfiction.

I'm terribly afraid that tomorrow I'm going to be checking out the latest Dr. Siri Paiboun mystery by Colin Cotterill. Also, possibly, the book Home by Marilyn Robinson, who wrote Gilead and Housekeeping, which are both very good.

Still on deck from the library: The Buffalo Soldier, Bloody Jack, Graceling, The Chrysalids, Adam's Navel, and The Tower in Stony Wood. The Hunger Games is in transit. There are two books called Bedside Manners about doctor-patient relations--I don't remember which one I wanted to read, and so I might have to read both.

Argh!

Addict

Oh, God. Just because I was having lunch with Jo didn't mean I needed to go to the library across the street from her office. It certainly didn't mean I needed to get two more books than I had half-planned, including one I've never even heard of. Never mind the fact that I have nine books out already, about three local (owned or borrowed) books that I'm very eager to read, and precious little time to meet these personal demands.

I can't stop, though. I drive by a library and I have to go in. Adam has been to three separate libraries in the past two weeks. (He sleeps like a champ in the Baby Bjorn.)

And on this note, I'd like to shout out to Molly Collins, a truly awesome YA librarian whose job is in jeopardy due to budget cuts at a local library. She runs a really wonderful YA room (it's always packed with kids), and it would suck for her AND for the town if she got laid off. Good luck, Molly!

How Long Has It Been?

Jeez, have I really not posted in 10 days? It's true what they say about kids making time fly.

Anyway, you can tell I'm obsessive because I'm upset that I've only read four books so far this month. I'm now reading a really interesting nonfiction book called The Forger's Spell, which is about an art forger who created a bunch of fake Vermeers and pulled a fast one on the Nazis. It's really interesting--the things I'm learning about Holland, Nazis, forgery, and the art world in general are just amazing, and the book is a lot of fun to read. And there was a cameo by none other than Leo Baekland! (Inventor of Bakelite, the plastic that changed the world.)

I also finished David Rakoff's Don't Get Too Comfortable, which was a book of very amusing essays, made even better by his incredibly dry, delicate reading. I highly recommend the audiobook. It was abridged and (did I mention my obsession with my statistics?) so I had to check out the book itself from the library to read the four essays that were omitted. I really am a nut, huh?

I also just got a book from the library, Graceling, which sounded interesting and has been on my list for a while. Come to find out it was written by someone I went to college with, Krisitin Cashore. No one I knew, but now I'm feeling pretty unaccomplished.

Deep sigh. This blog reveals my innate weirdness. Ah, well, what can you do?

Starting Again

Plain Secrets, the Amish book, was very good. It was an excellent use of a personal account to tell a broader story about a society. It's a little strange that he opens with a preface about how everyone who talks about the Amish gets it wrong and has their own agenda--either about oppressive religious societies or about the wholesome goodness of leaving behind our consumer culture. But I have to say, his story isn't that different. He sees the good points and the bad points, and you could say that his occasional waxing philosophical about being in touch with the earth is not so much idealizing as...well, I can't think of a better term. He does acknowledge the restriction of Amish life, but not in any kind of real critique.

I also finished Ever, another by Gail Carson Levine. It's a pretty good YA book, and I enjoyed it very much--a sweet romance about two young people who need to find themselves. But the most interesting part, I thought, was a really interesting angle on religious critique that it takes. It's a story told from two points of view; one is that of a girl who lives in a monotheistic culture, who's been promised as a sacrifice to their somewhat overbearing God who is everywhere and nowhere. The other protagonist is actually a god from another country, where the gods are more of the Greek and Roman variety--they have powers, but limited (he can see and hear from far off, and as god of the winds has control of them and can fly. That's about it.) They go among their worshipers occasionally, and are much more humanistic.

He's pretty sure her God doesn't exist, and, being in love with her from afar, is angry that she's going to be sacrificed and wants to do something about it. But he can't be absolutely sure that her invisible God doesn't exist, so his options for action are limited. The agnosticism of a god is a whole new take on theological debate; it was interesting.

And now I'm not in the middle of anything. I've just started a religious memoir and the English history book I have, but neither of them seems quite light enough to match my current attention span. I have Hogfather, but I can't plow through Terry Pratchett--it's like being caught in a funhouse. I have The Buffalo Soldier, by Chris Bohjalian, but that's going to be very sad and solemn.

So maybe I'll have to dive into my Personal Library Renaissance now. I have American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, and World Without End, which Brenda recommends (and lent me, and I still have), and Children of God by Mary Doria Russell. So many things to choose from, but any involves beginnings. I'm not great at beginnings.

You Were Wondering, I'm Sure

So I returned The Explosionist. It just kept getting to be more and more about ghosts and less about alternate history, bombs, or girls' boarding schools. And while I'm not opposed to ghost stories, I don't like them enough to be pleased when they're the end product of a bait and switch game.

But I have to say I'm feeling gleeful, because I'm reading THREE interesting books right now, and they balance each other very well. I'm still working on Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, and that's nothing but fun. It can also be taken in small bites, because the plot tends to be so convoluted that you can easily follow the big points and really can't follow the small ones no matter what. It's all about the funny, anyway.

Then I'm reading Ever, which is another by Gail Carson Levine, whose Fairest I enjoyed recently. This one does not appear to be a retelling of any story I know (though it could be--Lord knows I didn't see it coming in her other books). This is pretty straight fantasy, YA and romance. It's sweet and fast and nice.

And finally, I just started Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish, by Joe Mackall. This is a nonfiction account of the author's friendship with an Amish family in his neighborhood (in rural Ohio, needless to say). They belong to a particularly insular order of the Amish, and he describes their lives very well. It's much more about the story of one family, rather than trying to make them "typically" Amish. It reminds me of the parts in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, where Barbara Kingsolver describes a family of farmers with whom her own family is close, only explaining near the end that they are Amish.

After these, I have a true story of someone who forged a bunch of Vermeers and almost got away with it, a memoir by an Episocopalian minister who leaves her post but not the church, a Chris Bohjalian that I still haven't read and am excited about, and a book that appears, at first glance, to tell short, engaging stories about great events in English history. You hear that, Kris? I'm going to know one Henry from another soon!