My Feminist Hackles

I've never thought of myself as someone who has feminist hackles, but lately I've been all bristly at things that I would normally have brushed off with a, "Yeah it's sexist, but is that such a big deal?"

I started this post intending to talk about the influx of Mormon women on the scene of YA fantasy--from the horrifying (Stephanie Meyer) to the fabulous (Shannon Hale)--but I don't know that I have anything interesting to say on the subject that hasn't already been said.  There's been an influx of YA fantasy by Mormon women in the past few years.  This is partly because they hit just the right note of wholesome and romantic.

For the most part, you wouldn't know their religion to read their books, which I respect from an author of any faith.  I love Shannon Hale, especially Princess Academy.  I don't remember realizing that she was a Mormon.

But the book I recently read, Entwined, by Heather Dixon, sent me flipping forward to About the Author with a niggling suspicion.  And while the brief bio doesn't say she's a Latter Day Saint, it does say that she lives in Salt Lake City, where she grew up one of eleven brothers and sisters.  I'm making an assumption.  Look out, because there are further generalizations ahead.

The story was a lovely retelling of a fairy tale I loved--twelve sisters, locked up and forbidden to dance by their controlling father, find a secret passageway and sneak out to a magic garden where they dance each night away.  Their tattered dancing slippers give them away, and their father, determined to figure out how they're sneaking out, offers any man who can solve the mystery the daughter of his choice in marriage.

The retelling keeps just the right amount of fairy tale while adding just the right amount of depth.  The father is not cruel, but overcome by the loss of his wife and unable to communicate with or understand his many (many, many) daughters.  The gentlemen are not offered random hands in marriage, but a chance to meet and woo, should they and the young ladies be agreeable.  The magic is embroidered into the fabric of the world, the danger that the girls are trifling with sneaks up on them, and (always very important to me) their reasons for not seeking help when they're in over their heads are mostly believable.

I say mostly--let's work our way backward with my observations.  (What lies ahead are spoilerish, but not entirely spoilers.  No details, and most of the generalizations are eminently guessable.) 

Our heroine, Azalea, the eldest sister and the one most conscious of the danger they're in, is pretty much rescued by--well, all the men.  Her beau, her dad, her sisters' crushes.  The girls are all helpless--though
kicking up a fuss like the spitfires they are. Still, it's not until the fellas come to their rescue is the day saved.

Which is not to say they're fainting lilies.  There's some tomboyishness, some defiance, some stubbornness.  But the only grown woman to appear in the entire book is the sickly mother who dies in the first chapter, and a woman's virtues are her good character and her love for her family.

Family is a big part of this book, and in a nice way.  It's about being close to people who can't always show their feelings, and who you don't always agree with or understand.  It's about loving fiercely and belonging to each other, which is all lovely.  But it's also about the fact that a girl's job is to hold her family together, because her widowed father isn't capable.  Somehow, this incapacity is more than just a character trait of this one man; it's because he's a man.  I wish I could explain it better.

There are pettier things, too, which I bridled at while I was reading but can't really remember now.  I'll quote you my favorite one, though.  It's Clover's birthday, so she's wearing a corset for the first time.

"Do you like the corset?" [asked Azalea.]

Clover tried to keep from smiling, but her face glowed. 

"I...can feel my heartbeat in my stomach!"

"Aye, that's what it feels like to be a lady!" said Bramble, among the general riffraff and clattering of seat taking and plate getting.  "It's corking.  I love it."

I'm not 100% sure what to make of this.  But I'll tell you, it had part of me scratching my head.

I apologize if I'm generalizing about Mormons and strict gender roles.  I do know something about the LDS church, and I don't think I'm being outrageous, but I also know that everyone, everywhere is different, and that what a group professes is not what any individual adherent believes. 

Am I saying Mormons are sexist?  I might be assuming that.  But I'm definitely saying that this book sees "feisty" as the height of female vigor, and something you'll probably grow out of at that.  It's not like me to notice things like this; I wonder what other people thought.

Rave Review

Was there ever a more Australian name than Garth Nix?  Can you say it out loud without an Aussie accent?  I can't.

When my friend Melissa moved away a few years ago, she was cleaning out her bookshelves and brought a big pile of books in to work.  "Here," she said, shoving them at me.  "These are wonderful.  You'll love them."

It seemed pretty obvious to me that she was just trying to cut down on the packing she had to do, so I thanked her and put them on a shelf.  I didn't even open one for years (how long ago?  Well, I haven't had that job in three years, and she moved well before I left, so let's say five).  Then, maybe a year ago, I leafed through the first one.

And, lordamercy, the first chapter of Sabriel takes place at a boarding school.  I fell right into it.  Nix tells a story that is tightly focused on the characters, to the point where the fact that it's truly High Fantasy just sneaks up on you.

I plunged right into Lirael when I had finished.  Classic second book problem: while the storytelling, writing, and plot were all excellent, I missed the characters from the first one.  I wanted to know what was Big Things were happening, but instead, I was focused tightly on these characters I barely knew (and, let's face it, who start out kind of whiny).  I meandered through it--until the last third.  Then, oh, then, dear reader, the action picks up and you're swept back into the epic battle of Life and Death.  And (another classic second book problem), it ends on a major cliffhanger.  Almost literally--there are definitely cliffs involved.  Or at least nearby.

But somehow, I managed to wait a while before I picked up Abhorsen.  I think it was because I knew the series would end, and I didn't want it to.  (Never mind that I have Across the Wall, Nix's collection of short stories in the same world.)  But finally, last week, I started it.

It takes a special book to haul me back from the library to my own bookshelves, and I'm happy to say that I started my Personal Library Renaissance in the right place.  I could read another dozen of these.  I have a deep-seated belief that nothing I own is as good as what I don't, but this was epic, thrilling, and satisfying on a deep level.

The really special part of this book is in the details.  A lot of books, especially fantasy, treat "power" like some abstract, meaningless concept.  It's like watching action heroes fight in the movies--they keep slugging each other, but neither one seems to feel the blows.  Any normal person would be unconscious--physiologically, these people should be unconscious--but that doesn't mean anything, so the fight doesn't mean anything.  Magic battles can be the same, authorial protestations of protagonists' exhaustion aside.  The enemy usually feels invulnerable until he is destroyed.  In this book, though, the bad guy is powerful, but so are the good guys.  However ragtag, they are the ones who hold the power, and there is a real sense that it's a battle of equals, and that it's anybody's game.

Also, I love that a lot of things go wrong.  Generally, your ragtag band of misfit heroes will get lucky a few times in order to win the day.  These folks just seem to hit snag after snag.  They get lost on the way to the rendezvous, slip up and say the wrong thing, take the advice of the wise old ancient, who is totally wrong.  I hope I'm being vague enough not to call these spoilers, but I love the fact that our heroes screw up--a lot.

Because God knows if the fate of the world was in my hands--well, we'd all be toast.

So thank you, Melissa Montgomery, wherever you are.

Too Much Of A Good Thing

My personal library renaissance is going swimmingly, thanks for asking.  I finished Garth Nix's Abhorsen today, and I'll do a review ASAP, because it was just ripping good. 

But right now I wanted to pose a question to anyone who might be out there.  I have noticed (it's hard to miss) that I read mostly young adult and fantasy novels.  Really, if you count the overlap, almost exclusively.  I don't mind that, but I would like to think that I'm getting a slightly broader scope.  So: what plain old books--no category--should I read next?  I don't have a lot on my immediate list.  I've got a few things tucked away--Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson, The River King, by Alice Hoffman, The Bomber, by someone Swedish.  Does Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake count as science fiction?  It's always hard to tell when a mainstream author writes something with a genre-type plot.

So, candidates?  What historical fiction, literary fiction, women's fiction, fiction-fiction have I been missing?

Those Sweetest Words

I'm not even really that excited to read Maria V. Snyder's Outside In, but I have been waiting on hold for almost two months.  The one copy in the system was listed as "in processing" that entire time.  Finally, out of sheer curiosity, I wrote to the library that was processing it, a tentative little email saying, "I totally understand that processing takes a long time, but I just wanted to see, you know, if you're really still processing, or if there's some sort of problem?"

I got no response.  But today, this turns up in my Minuteman account:

Those two sweet words: In Transit.  So thank you, whoever checks the generic email address at Dover Public Library.  Thank you very much.

More and Better

I owe you guys--I've been gone too long!  Also, I'm reading like a fiend--you really need to keep up.

Note that this is a link to the audiobook.  (I get my audiobooks from Audible, but they don't give me a handy little linkmaker widget like Amazon does.)  I would have read the book in print, but I would have enjoyed it less.  Because I love Tina Fey, but comedy books by comedians tend to be missing something. Bossypants, on paper, would have been no exception--witty, amusing, whatever.  But Fey brings it all into this performance with her urgent perkiness, self-deprication, and mumbled asides.  I would have smiled at the book, but I laughed out loud when she read it to me.

I love the fact, too, that she has a lot to say.  She talks about Sarah Palin, politics and SNL in general, being a working mom, her relationship with her father, women in comedy (and boy, did I learn something about women in comedy.  Makes me want to smack Christopher Hitchens one more time).  She talks about these subjects with the kind of polite candor you expect from a celebrity--well, except for women in comedy; she can really rip into that one.  But I admire the job she does here, because she can be funny but not insulting, perfectly polite but you can tell what she thinks.  She doesn't say anything brutally honest that you wouldn't expect a celebrity to say, but she gives you enough to chew on that you feel like she's really discussed her topics.

Blah blah blah.  Writing about funny is like....I don't know, smelling something pink?  I'm not really a writer, and I'm not feeling articulate.  This audiobook was awesome and made me laugh like an idiot.  Listen to it.  Now!

A Whole New Lineup

Please excuse the overlong silence: Blogger was uncooperative, and I'm not one of those ambitious people who can eschew the ease of a do-it-yourself blog publisher and build my own Web Presence.  Though, with the help of my brilliant web programmer husband, I have learned to do this:

Look at that! Exciting, isn't it?  Anyway, I finished Passage the other day, and it was a relief. It's kind of sad to say that, because I did enjoy it, and I think of myself as a huge Connie Willis fan, so I just want to gush about this book.  But the fact is, it's too long by almost a third.

You get a good, solid start with 100 pages or so of setup--meeting our characters (Doctors Joanna Lander and Richard Wright), learning about their motivations and lives (researchers trying to establish the scientific basis of near death experiences, and whether they serve a biological function; lots of running around the hospital, answering phone messages, and scheduling conflicts), and get an idea of the main driving story of the book (Mandrake, the spiritualist whose research discredits their own, and Joanna's feeling that she's close to the truth about near death experiences).

Then, we have the middle part, which should be much, much....well, I want to say shorter, but the problem isn't that it's too long, it's that it loops around itself.  Willis does an amazing job of creating the tension of the everyday busy person--too many voicemails, pages that you don't have time to answer right now, people rescheduling on you when you really need to get this done by Tuesday.  This does a good job of ratcheting up the tension, but I think that was the problem: the level of tension was hit early in the book and didn't climb gradually, but stayed frenetic for too long.

The story was so good, though, that I can't un-recommend the book.  It's a book that's about the ride, and you need to be willing to climb on and watch the scenery go by, get to know the people who work at the hospital, fish around in the imagery that Joanna is trying to parse (and I won't spoil anything by giving away the details here).  I loved Maisie and Kit and Guadalupe, and I was annoyed by Tish and Mr. Sage.  I really wanted to know when the cafeteria would be open, and I want the recipe for the ham dip.

I can't say I didn't enjoy the book.  I just would have enjoyed less of it more.

Scandal!

I love a good book scandal.  There's the chick who plagiarized big chunks of her book from Megan McCafferty, the cover whitewashing scandals, Harlequin's self-publishing division/scam.  I don't know why, but I love the lowest common denominator.

So  let me tell you a little about the current one.  Bitch magazine put out a list of 100 YA books for the feminist reader.  It's a good list, with a bunch of good books.  Shortly thereafter, a kerfuffle arose in the comments thread, and thereafter three books were removed: one for using rape as revenge ("uncritically"), one for victim-blaming, and one for being potentially triggering.  (Warning: lots of those links have spoilers.)

I found my way to these threads from a post at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and I have been following avidly ever since.  The outrage on both sides, the defense of free speech, denouncing of censorship, holding up of Best Of lists as inviolate, trivializing them as irrelevant, questioning of feminist credentials--it's as painful and twisted as any comments thread.

I know which way I come down, though mostly it's just on the side of really, really wanting to read Tender Morsels now.  Anyone else have an opinion?

Roaming the Blogosphere

I have been promoted to the exalted position of Guest Blogger at Brenda's blog, Pragmatic Environmentalism.  It's an excellent blog that does a great job of looking at the practical things you might do to live a greener life, and balancing them with reality.  Half the time I'm learning something fascinating, and the other half I'm being reminded of something I knew.

What on earth could I have to say on the subject, you ask?  If, like me, you need large quantities of books to keep from going nuts, then I'm your guy.  I provide suggestions for the impatient non-library-user to get the most out of their local resources without wasting money or paper.  I'm going to pretend I'm not part of the downfall of the publishing industry.

Or we can instigate my brilliant new economic plan for publishing, which is where a payment is automatically made from my bank account directly to the author of any book that gets 3 or more stars from me on Goodreads.  We can prorate the amount of the check for the quality of the review.  Anyone with  me?

Someone Else's Contest

Sometimes I feel like this blog is more a personal journey through an obsession than it is about, you know, books.

But here, I'm participating in the blogosphere!  Don't you want to win a copy of Gennifer Choldenko's Al Capone Does My Shirts? Well, if you want to win, you should check out Between These Pages and leave a comment there to enter the giveaway! This is a great blog in general if you are responsible for or even acquainted with any young readers.  She gives a clear picture of which books are stand-outs, which deal best with interesting or popular subject, and which might have iffy content (depending on your idea of iffy--is your kid easily scared?  Squicked out?  Confused?  Don't worry--it's all spelled out).  Honestly, I get a lot of good recommendations for middle grade books that I want to read for my own purposes, as well as the best picture books and gifts for older kids.

I've always meant to read this book, and that was before I found out that it's a story about a family dealing with autism in the '30s, before there was such a diagnosis.  Some folks know I've worked in early childhood autism education, so it's a subject that really interests me, and I've read a million memoirs about parenting an autistic child.  I thought I'd give you a quick guide to my favorites, in honor of National Autism Awareness Month.

The Siege, by Clara Claiborne Park.  My favorite, by a million miles.  I read this book in college, before I ever met an autistic child, and I thought it was beautifully written, honest, and incredibly touching.  Then, after I had spent a few years teaching autistic kids, I read it again, and I was blown away by how note perfect the account is.  Every layer--every behavior, every interpretation of the behavior, and then every re-evaluation of those interpretations--captures the experience of watching these children and trying to imagine their inner worlds.  Even if you have  no interest in autism whatsoever, I truly recommend this book; I consider it to be beautiful.

Let Me Hear Your Voice, by Catherine Maurice.  This book gets some justified flak for its perfect-world happy ending.  With an autistic child, even the best outcome is almost never a complete disappearance of all autistic symptoms, as this mother describes.  The strength of this story, though, is that it's a specific and detailed account of an intervention using Applied Behavioral Analysis, which is the style of therapy I practiced, and one with the best documented outcomes.  There are a lot of stories about "rescuing" children from autism, and quite a few of them are sketchy, to say the least.  This one seems somewhat exaggerated to me, but it's not sketchy; I've seen this in action.

Exiting Nirvana, by Clara Claiborne Park.  This is actually a follow-up to The Siege, from the perspective of the parent of an adult child with fairly severe autism.  It's interesting to see that the further Jessy comes, the further she has to go--the more independence she's able to have and the more she's able to figure out the "normal" world, the more complicated situations and expectations she encounters.  A "real" job requires dealing with customers; traveling independently means dealing with the unexpected.  I wish Clara Park had written more books, because she's such a gifted writer.

The Ride Together, by Paul and Judy Karasik.  This is an interesting story told in both essays and comics.  What I think was most interesting was the perspective; the brother and sister of an autistic man relate both what it was like to grow up with him, and what it is like now, in middle age, to be his sibling, to worry about him and love him.  It's a perspective that I enjoyed very much.

George and Sam, by Charlotte Moore.  As the parent of one child, I think about how hard it would be to parent two, or to parent an autistic child.  I'm in awe of Charlotte Moore, who brings such a clear head and a keen eye to the seemingly insurmountable job of parenting multiple autistic kids.  It's actually quite common to have multiple siblings with autism; I believe that the chances of having a second autistic child are something like ten times greater than the first.  What I loved about this book was the pure mundanity, and how much it was about parenting.

Those are my stand-outs.  Whether you find the subject interesting or not, I highly recommend that you read The Siege, really.  Clara Park passed away recently, and I can't tell you how sorry I was to hear that.  I had the privilege to meet her when I was in college, and I know she is greatly missed.

Suffering for Art

I wish I had more to say, but I am STILL suffering through The Land of Painted Caves.  It just goes on and on.  I can't say nothing is happening anymore (at page 568), but it's not much.  And honestly, when someone mentions Wymez, Ayla should not say, "You mean the flint-knapper Jondalar so admires?"  He was almost her father-in-law!  There's no, "wait, which Wymez was that?"  Not even a little.  Grr.

But I'm also reading Hush, by Eishes Chayil.  It's a really fascinating combination between an inside look at the life of Chassidic Jews in New York and more general "that can't happen in our community" story of secrets and their fallout.  The first half of the book is an elegant and tense combination of the two.  The last part is a bit less compelling, since it's shifted from a growing up and coming of age story to something both more painful and awkward; the point where innocence begins to look like ignorance.

This isn't usually something that impresses me, but the author of this book, Eishes Chayil, has really impressed me.  The name is a pesudonym, meaning "Woman of Valor."  She wrote the book in her twenties, and though I can't tell from the afterword, I think it's possible that she's still living in her community.  Whether she is or not, the challenge of learning to believe something that you have been taught not to believe in every way for your whole life--without even the standard American acclimation to provide a counter-view (can you imagine living in New York City and never having heard of Oprah?--takes a presence of mind and strength of character that I can hardly imagine.  In many ways, it's a fascinating book.

The Envelope, Please...

And in the category of Worst Book Ever, the winner is....

It is entirely possible that The Land of Painted Caves is the worst book I've ever read.  I'm trying to think of a worse one and I can't.  I went through all the books I've ever read in Goodreads--nothing worse.  Even the ones I didn't finish--nope.

Nothing happens in this book.  People go on long trips to look at painted caves.  Let's look at some passages that illustrate my points.

1) The descriptions.

They reached the lower end of the second loop [of the river], then followed the river only until it headed north again. The forking paths at the bottom of this loop, one toward the east and the other heading north, were more equally worn; it was the north end of the second loop that was opposite the mouth of The River, the place where it flowed into Big River, and that northern path was used as often as the other. Going east across the land, they reached the river again, then followed the trail beside it in a southeast direction.  The volume of water in Big River was considerably less before the place where the water of The River entered the larger stream.  It was there that they decided to camp for the night."

Now, I suppose it's not inherently awful.  There's a lot of description that I can't quite picture--which way the river loops and where the heck they're walking.  But the thing to remember is that this is one paragraph in a two page description of this walk.

2) The repetition.

Levela walked up to Ayla and Wolf. "I think they are getting ready to tell the next story," she said. "Are you staying to hear it?"

"I don't think so," Ayla said. "Jondalar may want to stay. I'll ask him, but I think I'll come back another time to listen to stories. Are you staying?"

"I thought I might see if there is anything good left ot eat. I'm getting a little hungry, but I'm tired, too. I may go back to our camp soon," Levela said.

"I'll go with you to get something to eat. Then I have to pick up Jonayla from your sister." Ayla took a few steps to where Jondalar and the others were talking, and waited until there was a break in the conversation. [nb. She didn't rudely interrupt. Thanks for pointing that out, Jean!] "Are you going to stay to hear the next story?" she asked.

"What do you want to do?"

"I'm getting tired and so is Levela. We thought we'd go and see if there is anything good left to eat," Ayla said.

"That sounds fine to me. We can come back another time and listen to more stories. [In case you were worried they wouldn't hear more stories!] Is Jondecam coming? [Let's go run this full decision past someone else!]" Jondalar said. [nb. he said, she said, Ayla said, Jondalar said. Invariably.]

"Yes, I am." They heard his voice coming toward them. "Wherever you are going." [Thank you, Jondecam, for not making them explain this again.]

The four of them left the storytellers' camp and headed for the area where the food had been gathered together. [In case you weren't following their plans.]

Okay, here's my version of the passage. "Feeling somewhat tired, the women decided to see if there was any good food left, then wander back to camp. Jondalar and Jondecam decided to come along, and the four left the storytellers' camp, promising to return later in the Meeting to hear more stories." Not poetry, but God help us, it's SHORT and CONTAINS ALL THE SAME INFORMATION.

And all the caves in the Land of Painted Caves are the same.

3) The lack of occurrence.  I don't have a quote for this, because you can't quote things that don't happen.  But things keep almost happening, reminding me of what it's like when things really do happen in a story.  There are a few injuries--none of which are to anyone we care about, and none of which any of our famed healers can do anything about.  Of course, there were a lot of fatal injuries in prehistory.  But having a character who's a doctor is not that interesting unless they can actually occasionally do something. 

Because of all the travel, we don't really get to know anyone, so even when something does happen, it's to someone you just met, who you'll leave behind in a few (dozen) pages.  When someone tries to hunt their horses, they don't have to convince them that they're not from the spirit world; they just have to say, hey, don't hunt our horses.  Oh, sorry!  Everything's cool again.  It's the same bag of tricks, but when you're not meeting anyone new or coming up with any new ideas, there's just nothing to show me.

Even the cave paintings, which are mysterious to us, aren't viewed with any imagination.  Every time they see them, someone asks, "Why did they paint this like that?" and the answer is, "Nobody knows.  They were painted by the Ancients."  Cop out!  What's the point of writing about cave people and cave paintings if the cave people don't paint--or even understand--the cave paintings?

You know, I thought I was going to write a well-organized post about my problems here, but really I'm just ranting.  So here's the rant: I really believe this is the worst book I can remember reading, ever.

I'm so, so sorry.

Manageable

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I have just done something that's going to be good for me psychologically, I think.  I've tried other methods of doing this before and never had any luck, but today I found the trick.  I knocked 100 books off my to-read list.

And seriously, folks, I'm not even halfway there.  I've got from 700 to 600 in the past hour, and I think I can bring this down below 500 easily.  I can't tell you how good this is for me, psychologically.  My "read" list is longer than my "to read" again.  It's like I can breathe again.

The trick, it turns out, was to create a separate category called "B-list," into which I shunted any book from to-read that I couldn't remember what it was about, where I heard of it, or what possessed me to put it on the list.  Some people might delete these, but I can't do that--at some point it seemed worth reading, and I have to trust that instinct.  At the very least, I don't want to forget that the book exists. 

Also on B-list, we have books that I like to think I'll read, but that I don't harbor a lot of illusions about.  This includes a lot of quality literature (The Book of Night Women, The Shadow of the Wind), classics (Vanity Fair), nonfiction (Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul, The Wishing Year), and mysteries (The Analyst, Medicus).  These are all categories that I read, but not very often.  This is a list that I can go through and say, "Oh, yeah, I wanted to read that."  But the gift is, it leaves my actual to-read list as full of that makes me say, "Oh, yeah, I can't WAIT to read that!"

There is also a sub-category called "Like To Think I Will Read," which really means, "Don't want to read, but feel like I ought to."  That is almost all ponderous, well-reviewed books on subjects that interest me.  Let's not bother going there.

I feel light and free and happy.  I'm going to go metaphorically throw some more books out.  Hooray!