How I Spent My October Vacation

Preliminary Edition.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't miss me too much!

Volunteerism

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

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

Like crack.

That Guy: I Am Him

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

I....lost a library book.

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

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

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

Somebody wake me up.

Linden, This One's for You

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buddhism, Plain and Simple

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

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

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

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

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

Sad State of Affairs

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

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

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

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

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

Many Thanks to That Girl on the T

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charles Dickens: Enigma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Too Much of Nothing

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

Sigh.

It's All Art

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

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

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

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

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

Where Have I Been?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earth Kids Are Easy

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

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

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

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

And I Feel Fine

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

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

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

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

Punctuation Quiz!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Hike in the Mountains

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Never Read Angela's Ashes

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

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

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

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

Those Wacky Tudors

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

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

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

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

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

Why am I reading this?

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

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

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

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

Sex and Lies

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

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

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

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

Near-Trauma Experience

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

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

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

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

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