The Fallback Plan

Gack.  So, I've been reading a lot more books on my iPad Kindle app, and mostly I like it, but what really drives me balls is the notes and comments issue.  And also, formatting.  (And also, random text that seems to pop up.  And font irregularities. And, some other stuff too.)  I borrowed The Fallback Plan, by Leigh Stein, from the library, which is a major pain in the ass.  I understand all the weird issues that libraries are trying to iron out with publishers and whatnot, but each time I've borrowed an ebook from the library it's been such a massive P.i.t.A. that it's almost not worth it.  Firstly, for no obvious reason, you inevitably have to wait 2 months for the book to be "available".   I apply quotations merely to illustrate the obvious point that the normal library policies are nothing more than constructs when applied to ebooks, as everyone knows - whatever, I'll play that little game, but I'll also think it's stupid while I'm playing it.  Secondly, none of your notes are saved.  Why? Those are MY notes.  I received an annoying note that if I BUY the book, my notes will be returned?  BUY IT?  After I went to all the damn trouble in the first place of BORROWING it?  No.

Anyway, I highlighted a bunch of stuff and put in some notes, but now that my loan period is over the book has disappeared off my reader and all my notes are gone.  I didn't quite realize that would happen, or else I would have kept my notes elsewhere.  *frowny face*  I'm just annoyed because I don't have my NOTES!  Point of this long story: I'm not done with real books yet.

The Fallback Plan reminded me a lot of Treasure Island!!!, a hilarious book by Sara Levine about a young, well-educated, mostly unemployed woman.  Esther is a directionless recent Northwestern graduate, which was quite amusing to me for various reasons.  It's funny like this:

   "Dad, can I borrow the car tonight?"   "If you put on some pants," he said.   I looked at my legs. I was only wearing the t-shirt I had worn to be the night before. On the front, it had a picture of a gray wolf, standing on a cliff, howling at a full moon. The moon was surrounded by silvery clouds coming out of a ghostlike woman's mouth. This was my so-ugly-it's-awesome shift, but my parents didn't appreciate that, even after I explained it to them.

Eventually Esther gets a baby-sitting gig for a little girl who's parents are experiencing some emotional trauma and it continues to be pretty amusing despite the fact that written dialogue of children is the Most Boring Thing In The World. Ever.  And, eventually, the book becomes slightly more than just about an aimless midwestern college graduate navigating a horrible economy, however... does this all remind you of anything?  It's a lot like Lorrie Moore's absolutely brilliant 2009 A Gate At the Stairs, which is also partly about a directionless recent college grad who's babysitting for an emotionally traumatized family. Where Moore greatly exceeds Levine is in how her story explodes into this meta-narrative about family, race, midwestern-ism and eventually nothing less than Time & Space.  God help me if I'm not a sucker for stories that don't examine our very existence.  

Which is not to say that Stein's book isn't worth your time - I think it is - it's so rare to find a book that actually makes you laugh out loud; I did, several times.  Also, she's only frigging 27 years old, so it's not really fair to compare her to the highly accomplished Lorrie Moore (but, seriously, if you haven't read A Gate at the Stairs, do.)

This Will Be Difficult to Explain

My review of This Will Be Difficult to Explain on Newcity Lit.  Short stories by Johanna Skibsrud.

I hate that cover - reminds me too much of this...

HHHH

My review of HHHH on Newcity Lit - incredible book!  I really recommend it!

We Only Know So Much

I read We Only Know So Much for Newcity magazine and interviewed the author, Elizabeth Crane.  Wow, interviewing her was the first time I've ever really enjoyed interviewing anyone - she was very easy-going and had great answers to my questions.

I thought the book was really fantastic - it's about a multi-generation family living in one house - Two parents, their children, and a grandparent and a great-grandparent.  That's so unusual in a contemporary household, and I really loved that aspect of the book - these very different characters bound by familial bonds  - people that wouldn't love or care for each other aside from the fact that they do - because they're family.

Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me

Here's my review of Harvey Pekar's Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me on Newcity Lit!  Fantastic graphic novel that's both informative and personal.

Broken Harbor

Here's my review of Broken Harbor on Newcity Lit - It's a great book, I really recommend it for mystery fans.

Valley of the Dolls

Valley of the Dolls was a recent book club selection for us.

It was published in 1966 by Jacqueline Susann and revolves around three women characters, starting in 1945.  At first I really liked it because it had this real Mad Men quality, but it's a really bizarre, kind of anti-feminist book that's rather disconcerting.  For example, Anne, who I see as the main character, at the beginning has just left Lawrenceville, Massachusetts, where she foreswears the dreary Lawrenceville fate that awaits her - Marriage and a life of old-fashioned New England Unhappiness.  So, she moves to New York city where she wants nothing more than to live in Manhattan, and, oddly, get married and do nothing but fulfill the dreams of the man she loves.  Her friend Neely is a really talented singer and actress, who also would love nothing more than to land a (rich) husband and quit working.  Worse, perhaps, is Jennifer, a beautiful woman and successful actress, who nevertheless openly admits to what she perceives as her own extreme lack of talent, and desires nothing more than to (... you guessed it) before the rest of the world realizes how extremely untalented she really is.

Another rather awful thing about reading Valley of the Dolls is that it's really homophobic, and there are frequent references to "fags" and "faggots" and how gay men are "not really men at all".  It's a pretty sad reminder of how it was more socially acceptable to straight up hate on gays - but the weirdest thing of all is that apparently Susann herself was bisexual.  Self-hatred makes me so sad.  

Apparently (at least according to a rather eye-opening Wikipedia entry on the book, it's also a roman à clef, which means that the characters are based on actual people.  So, Neely is Judy Garland, Jennifer is Carole Landis (which whom Suzann reportedly had a relationship) and this other awful woman, Helen Lawson, is Ethel Merman.  I'm not sure who the enabling doormat Anne is...

Oh! And the pills! The pills!  "Dolls" it turns out, is slang for barbiturates.  I'm not sure if that was common slang or Suzann just made it up for this book.  So, (tiny spoiler) all the women end up addicted to various "dolls" - mostly Seconal (for which there is a fascinating wikipedia page).

The movie is BEYOND stupid, and, by some accounts, one of the worst movies ever made.  We were all sort of amazed by how much they cut out.  I can't imagine that if you watched the movie without reading the book that you would have ANY idea what was going on.  At least in the book you understand why these women are friends.  Also, it ends on a slightly up-beat note, where the book does not.   But, we watched the movie in my backyard, projected on a screen while we swigged sparkling wine and chucked handfuls of Hot Tamales into our mouths whilst howling with laughter, so it really couldn't have been more fun.

Fledgling

When we were in Seattle last year, I kept seeing Octavia Bulter books everywhere - I'd never heard of her before but it was pretty clear she was the patron saint writer in Seattle.  I asked for a recommendation and a bookseller told me: Fledgling.  My To-Read pile is pretty big so I only got around to reading it a year later - well worth the wait! I definitely intend to read more by this great Seattle writer.

I don't like reading back covers of novels, so I didn't quite realize what this was about.  One time I recommended to my book club that we read Fledgling and my friend said, "Isn't that about a vampire?" with more than a little distain.  I said, "Oh, no, I don't think so..." but walked over to my book shelf and briefly peeked at the back cover, enough to see "...Shori is a fifty-three-year-old vampire with a ravenous hunger for blood..." Whaaaaaaaa?

Anyway, it is indeed about this young woman, Shori, who, it turns out, is a vampire.  At the beginning of the book, she has amnesia and doesn't realize what she is - she has to teach herself or try to learn from others her unique culture.  Shori quickly starts a relationship with this handsome guy, Wright, whose blood she also drinks.  She has very dark skin and comes from a line of scientific vampires.

Some of us have tried for centuries to find ways to be less vulnerable during the day. Shori is our latest and most successful effort in that direction. She's also, through genetic engineering, part human. We were experimenting with genetic engineering well before humanity learned to d o it - before they even learned that it was possible.

What's pretty weird is that this book has actually quite a lot in common with Twilight.  Both were published in 2005, and both have super-smart, attractive vampires that live for a long time and have irresistible, insatiable relationships with plain-old humans. Most of the vampires a "good" - they don't kill their blood sources but rather have a symbiotic relationship. Both take place in the Pacific Northwest, and, get this... both have a lot of SITTING ON LAPS!  Is that a thing?

However, where Meyer's Twilight is insipid (if not deliciously addictive) nonsense, Fledgling is a vehicle for larger themes surrounding race and femininity, sexuality and Feminism.  For example, Shori (unlike Bella) is immensely powerful - she's brilliant, she's strong, and she's sexually assertive.  Because the vampires need a lot of blood, they need multiple human partners, usually both men and women.  All the vampires have to maintain the peace in their families.  Navigating the inevitable jealousies of a poly-amorous household is seen as an admirable feat of sensitivity and intellect, one at which Shori excels.  Her black skin, small size, relative youth and gender put her at a disadvantage to the other vampires, who fear and criticize almost all those attributes - it's up to her to convince the community to help protect her and her human consorts, as well as to reteach her the things she needs to know to survive.

The Colony

I read about The Colony on a blog I read - The Rejectionist.  Actually, I didn't so much read about it as merely see that The Rejectionist had read it, so that was good enough for me.  I enjoy reading a book that I know basically nothing about.  I think my sister and I might be the only people in the entire universe who would rather die than read the back cover of a book.

Anyway (if you don't mind finding out a little bit about this book), The Colony, by Jillian Weise, takes place in the not-so-distant future (specifically 2015), and the main character, Anne Hatley, along with some other folks, have just moved to The Colony, a science campus where it seems like they'll probably be experimented on.  Anne has a "rare genetic mutation" and other new arrivals talk about how they have a "fat gene" or a "suicide gene".  One guy's bipolar.  Another has Alzheimer's.  Eventually (I'm not ruining it) and wonderfully slowly, it's revealed that the scientists are out to use these people's genes to cure them and others that have similar genetic afflictions.

But, what's really great about this book is Anne really challenges the idea that she needs "curing" or that she even has an "affliction."  (One of her legs never fully developed - she has a computerized leg and walks with that.) She is, after all, a perfectly capable person that's well educated, has a decent job, is attractive and relatively satisfied with her life (at least, as much as your average 25 year old).  She only begins to entertain the concept of allowing the scientists to fiddle with her genes when she fully realizes how narrowly other people view some disabilities with disgust and even hatred.

It wasn't true that love conquers all. Love doesn't. In the morning, one person has a condition and the other doesn't. No one should feel like a condition, as if their entire life, how people see them, revolves around a microscopic chromosome. It's not air. And don't give me the bullshit about finding someone who looks beyond that. What am I supposed to do? Be so happy, so appreciative when I find someone who looks beyond me? I don't want anyone to have to look beyond me. Where would they be looking?

A few years ago Weise wrote an article about getting her first "cyborg" leg.  Before I read this book and that article, I think it was less easy for me to understand why a person wouldn't want to have the more "normal" body.  So, I couldn't recommend this book more - not only is it beautifully written, but it's gotten a really interesting story and it made me challenge my own preconceptions and helped me change them.

By the way, there's an amazing Notes section at the end of the book that lists references for some of the scientific background and influences that is really eye-opening.  Oh, Weise is a poet, too.  Here's one of her pieces.

Year of the Gadfly

I reviewed this book for Newcity: The Year of the Gadfly, by Jennifer Miller. Here's my review. I also painted a scene from it!  Here's the inspiration text:
  Hazel opened the door wearing a long brown sweater, a thick green scarf, and at least a dozen jangling bracelets. She ushered them into to a large room with three tapestry-covered couches and skylights filtering snowy light. The room contained many large paintings, most displaying women in various states of undress. The canvas of the fireplace shoed a woman who resembled Hazel, minus the freckles. Her hair curled like vines across her naked breasts.

I thought I had completely ruined this one several times.  My darling husband, M, kept saying in a soothing voice, "There are no mistakes..." channelling Bob Ross. And later, Walter: "Nothing is fucked, Dude."  Hair, man.  It turns out hair is really hard.  I'm going to try to avoid it in the future.  There were a few "happy accidents" though.  In the end, I kind of like how her hair came out, although I had many small temper tantrums along the way.  I'm pretty happy with the neck, nose, and eyebrows, too.  The background is not great, obs.  

The Orange Fish

Here's another watercolor from my not-quite-famous-yet (for some reason?) series based on things I'm reading.  This one's from a book of short stories by Carol Shields called The Orange Fish. The title is from the name of the first story, which is about a couple whose lives have gotten kind of stale, so they decide to buy some art work.  They buy a print of a goldfish in a bowl, and... well, their lives start to change.  It's a pretty incredible story.  I don't think my painting will ruin anything for you.

Here's the accompanying text:  Lois-Ann and I took in the flare of dyed hair, curiously angled and distinctively punk in style.  You can imagine our surprise: here of all places to find a spiked bracelet, black nails, cheeks outlined in blue paint, and a forehead tattooed with the world's most familiar expletive. 

I'm sort of proud of this painting, I mean, yes, overall it has some problems but some parts did what I wanted them to do.  I have another painting for you later in the week!

A Nobel Radiance

A chatty bookseller in Seattle talked me (easily) into buying A Nobel Radiance by Donna Leon.  I love a good mystery.  I guess this one is from a series about Guido Brunetti.  He's a "commissario" in Venice.  In A Nobel Radiance, Brunetti is trying to solve the mystery of a kidnapping that occurred a few years ago, after a body is found.  Brunetti is married to a woman who comes from an old, wealthy Venetian family - Leon has a nice balance between her main character's professional and personal life.

I must say, the ending kind of took me by surprise - I did not see it coming (always kind of a fun experience).  The only odd thing about the book was it really could have taken place anywhere. Venice was not really featured at all, which I thought was strange.  Why set a novel in an amazing city like Venice and then not play it up?  Leon seems like a very understated writer, though.  I think she might like putting her action in the wings.  Most of the action is extremely even tempered.

One thing I did love was how much Italian she slid in, without translations, but easily understood.  Except for this sentence: "Qualche garbuglio si troverà." Ah, turns out it's from Figaro... "I'll find some way to mess it up." It was also written in 1998, with a healthy dose of internet/computer skepticism. "Before Signorina Elettra, newly appalled at his ignorance, could begin to explain to him just what a modem was and how it worked, Brunetti turned and left her office. Neither viewed his precipitate departure as a lost opportunity for the advancement of human understanding."

I'd be interested in reading more of her work - if anyone is familiar with her books, please let me know.

The Weird Sisters

I read about half of The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown.  I really love the concept - three literary sisters (named Rosalind, Bianca and Cordelia) whose parents were Shakespearean scholars.  The three sisters return to the little college town where their parents (or maybe just their dad? I can't remember) live, slipping back into their roles.  What really drove me nuts about the book, and why I ultimately didn't finish it, was that it felt SO PREDICTABLE.  It was a great idea, and I think Brown's a good writer - I loved the historical and literate references, but the inevitable slog toward the sisters bonding together to help each other overcome some conflict, pairing off with the various handsome, rugged men and their pick up trucks in town was too boring.

The book has a lot to do with birth order, which I suspect my sister would like.  She told me this is one of her friends fave books of the year, so, you know.  One person's trash.

Rose is the only one who can get us out the door on time when we have theater tickets or are trying to get to church services.  When our mother left pans of carrots boiling away to charred messes on the stove, Rose made us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, cutting them neatly in sailboats for Cordy. When she got her driver's license, she drove Bean to the nearest mall (which isn't really near at all) almost every weekend night, and didn't even tell on her the time she met those boys with the Trans Am and came home with vodka on her breathe and vomit down the front of her blouse.... as much as she hates us for taking away her throne, she has never ever pushed us off of it.  And she would be none of those things if she weren't the firstborn.

If I'm wrong about the end, by all means, correct me!  For some reason, I find it quite difficult to "cheat" and skip to the end to see what actually happened.

Notice:  I have a new painting for my series!  I'll post soon.

2nd in a series

I continue my (extremely slow) series of drawings created from books I'm reading.  Here's the first one I did, from Super Sad True Love Story.   This one I started a long time ago - inspired by Crossed, by Ally Condie.  The first watercolor was so bad, I wanted to redo it.  Here's the first one:

Terrible, right?

and here's the second one.   It still didn't come out exactly like I wanted, but I kind of like it.  

 Since I have like, absolutely no idea what I'm doing, I consider this all "win."  I don't think it would ruin the book to view this image, but, if you've read it, maybe you'll remember this part?

What was that book?

Found a great website where people post about books whose titles they've forgotten and other people chime in with the answers: What was that book?  Of course, I immediately posted the description of a book of short stories I've been searching for for YEARS.  I hope someone knows what it is called!

On 50 Shades of Gray and Fan Fiction

I've been quite amused by the popularity of 50 Shades of Gray and the conversations around it recently.   Erotic fiction is certainly not new, but the level of discourse around it has changed recently, in that people are so willing to admit they're reading British author EL James Fifty Shades trilogy.  Not surprisingly, it's a top-selling ebook, for those who don't like to bare their book covers.

I haven't actually read the book, except for some excerpts I read online - but, I never let a little thing like actual experience get in the way of sharing my thoughts.  What's surprising is how few people seem to know that Fifty Shades is fanfiction of the Twilight series, and, not only that, but I've discovered quite a few friends don't know what fanfic is, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to explain.  Fanfic is a type of story written in the style or with a continuation of characters or stories from a piece of literature.  It varies wildly in quality - some is quite excellent, like Wide Sargasso Sea or March, and some is really awful, like 90% of the stuff you'll find on fanfiction.net.  Harry Potter and Twilight are the most popular kinds of fan fiction; it's not all erotic, there are many represented genres.  (BTW, if you're just reading about this for the first time, and you're anything like me, you'll spend the next straight 24 hours mindlessly reading one story after another until you never want to ready anything ever again.)

You can sort stories on fanfiction.net by type of story, "rating", language, number of words, characters, complete or in-progress and inspiration via movie or book.  So, a short, finished, mature, sexy story about Bella and Esme would have a search the one below...

and three results would appear, one with this description: "Bella, still a virgin at 20 & perpetually horny and snarky, has a heart too big to worry about herself. Turns out being forced to work on Valentine's Day because she's single may not be such a bad thing. Especially when her client is Esme Platt."  


A few years ago, a similar search for Bella and Edward resulted in a series called "Master of the Universe" by SnowQueen IceDragon, which is now Fifty Shades of Grey.  They've since removed "Master" from fanfiction.net, but I did find an excerpt.  EL James's publishers claim that "Master" and Fifty Shades are separate works of fiction, but some enterprising sleuths discovered the books are 89% identical.  So, apparently the guy character, based on Edward, is rich and possessive and secretive (although not a vampire), and the girl is a horny clumsy virgin (sound familiar?).  I hear there's also a Jacob character, and possibly an Alice?  Anywho, as far as I know, Stephanie Meyer hasn't made any accusations of infringement, and even if she did, who knows what would happen?    I'm no copyright expert, but I wonder what the legal implications are or will be, assuming more and more publishers go trolling the fanfic databases for the next best-seller.  By the way, it's not unusual to see authors write "I do not own these characters" at the beginning of their stories, as if absolving themselves of any dubious copyright infraction they may have committed.  


The copyright thing is strange ... what if I just wrote an erotic novel about a daring orphaned boy and his brave red-headed girlfriend, who happened to be the sister of his best friend?  (Wait, what IF I DID???)  I mean, can we just do that?  

Check these out:
3 Grannies critique
Gilbert Gorrfreid reads
50 Shades of Grey Pinterest board
Increase in rope sales?
Ellen reads

Great House

I finally finished Great House by Nicole Krauss - I had started it some time ago and then got distracted by other things on my nightstand.  It's a lovely book, and Krauss writes beautifully - her History of Love is so poetic and beautiful... but... I have to say I found some parts of Great House really boring, and, I must admit I flipped past a few pages.  She'll go on for whole paragraphs about someone raising a glass of tea to their lips, not drinking, and putting the cup down again.

The book tracks, non-linearly, a desk and it's various owners.  The first character is a writer who talks about how she came to own the desk.  I like the way she tells this story because, as a reader, you kind of get ost int he story but every once in a while she slips in that "Your Honor" and reminds you that there's a bit of a mystery about to whom and why she might be talking.  Another story is told from the perspective of a hate-fueled old man whose wife has died and he has a really rotten relationship with one of his sons.  My favorite story is told by a young woman who is dating a guy - she loves him and his sister, but they have this weird, mysterious relationship with their father, who searches out furniture for Jewish families.  He searches for these tangible articles that were stolen by the Nazis.  "Unlike people, he used to say, the inanimate doesn't simply disappear."

The Gestapo confiscated the most valuable items in the apartment, which were many, since Weisz's family on this mother's side had been wealthy. These were loaded - along with mountains of jewelry, diamonds, money, watches, paintings, rugs, silverware, china, furniture, linens, porcelains, and even cameras and stamp collections - onto the forty-two car "Gold Train" the SS used to evacuate Jewish possessions as the Soviet troops  advanced toward Hungary.  In the years after the War, when Weisz returned to Budapest, the first thing he did was knock on these neighbors' doors and, as the color washed out of the faces, entered their apartments with a small gang of hired thugs who seized the stolen furniture, carrying it out on their backs.

So, ultimately, while I don't think it was nearly as captivating as History of Love, it was certainly well-written, and I curiously await Krauss's next work.

My Darling, My Hamburger

I can't remember where I read about My Darling, My Hamburger, but it was inspiring enough to add it to my Amazon Wishlist.  Apparently a lot of people my age read it when they were kids and it made quite an impression on them. It was originally published in 1969 by Paul Zindel.   Eventually got around to reading it myself, but, I have to say, I wasn't that impressed.

It's a pretty dated attempt at describing teenage relationships - it carries a kind of after-school-special morality tale about the dangers of sex.  It's about these two couples, one is dorky and awkward and the other is cool and popular.  The popular guy is pressuring the popular girl to have sex and she doesn't want to.  "Is it that you think I won't respect you?" Sean asked quietly. "I'll still respect you. We love each other. I need you, Liz."  Poor Liz gets preggo and ends up having a back-alley abortion (remember this is three years before Roe v Wade). The dorky friends goes for help when she starts bleeding profusely afterward and they aren't friends anymore.  Liz is bitter and angry and the dorky girl goes on with her life.

The title comes from the beginning when a student asks a teacher what to do if a boy wants to "go all the way" - the teacher says the girl should suggest going out for a hamburger.  Whaa whaaaaa! Get it?!? Teenagers don't have the resources to handle the complexities of sexual relationships.

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone besides, like, historians or YA Historians.  It's too outdated.  It's hard to imagine why so many people found this book so influential (just check out the reviews on Amazon), I guess back in the 70s it might have felt "real" and "gritty", but now it reads as a mostly sad reflection on the lack of resources available to women.

Insurgent

Insurgent, the follow-up to Divergent, is finally (ok, it's been less than a year) out, and I picked up a copy at the airport to read on my long-weekend trip to LA.  The cashier says to me, "Sooooooo gooooood." and I'm like, "Did you know the author lives in Chicago?" She goes, "Yeah, she wrote the first book when she was in college.  I was just writing papers when I was in college."  And I say, "Yeah." and then we make faces at each other and laugh.  YA love in the airport! Squee!

The downside to this whole thing is while I remembered the broad strokes of Divergent (this girl, Tris, is in a faction in futuristic Chicago called Dauntless, which is characterized by bravery and strength, and she's "divergent" and there's some inequality in the factions...) I didn't remember the details very well.  I suppose I should have re-read it before I started this one. If you're like me, you may want to read these reminder/spoilers about Divergent, written by Veronica Roth herself.  BTW, her blog is pretty cool, I especially liked this post about sexual assault and how she wishes she had written a scene differently.

Anyway, at the end of Divergent, this crazy thing has happened, which you may or may not remember very well, and Tris and her bf, Tobias/Four, are trying to regroup.  Imma try not to be too spoiler-y for anyone who intends to read the book.  What's nifty is she ends up living for a while in each faction's building/living space and sort of experiencing what it's like in each place.  She and Tobias have a lot of secrets they're keeping from each other for various reasons and they go through a few spats, with Tobias being largely wise and sensitive and Tris being mostly impulsive and insecure.  Whatevs, she's 16.

I really enjoyed reading more about what it's like to live in each faction and how the groups communicate and function.  A couple of mysteries emerge and Tris tries to solve them.  For various reasons that were not entirely clear to me, Tris finds it necessary to hide things from Tobias.  One thing that I admire about Roth's books is that they're very grown-up YA, like Rowling and Suzanne Collins, she isn't afraid to include some big themes, violence, and death of beloved characters.  I also really like the main character.  She's flawed, she's smart, she's really brave, and she's a kick-ass inspiring girl.

Swamplandia!

I finally got around to reading Swamplandia!* by Karen Russell. It. Was. Amazing.  I really loved it.  Why did I wait so long to read it????

What's really amazing about this book is that the whole story is really Gothic and strange, but what could have been a gimmicky story  is instead imaginative and exciting - it feels modern and beautiful.  I wanted to take a few days off work so I could just stay home and read it from front to back in one sitting (alas...)

The plot sounds bizarre: It's about this family who lives in a swamp in Florida and they have an alligator amusement park.  The father has created this entire mythos for the family - they call him the Chief and their family history is part of the lore of their "tribe" - the Bigtrees - a faux-native american history of warriors and alligator wrestlers.  Ava is the youngest, the heroine, she's an utterly charming pre-teen that fully believes her family's mythology - trained as an alligator wrestler herself, she's cunning, thoughtful and brave.  Following the death of the mother, the powerful matriarch whose show-stopping act in the Bigtree carnival is to jump into a pit of alligators and outswim them (that's not how she dies, by the way), the family comes unhinged.  Ava's older sister, Osceola, starts doing seances and becoming possessed by ghosts?  And her brother, Kiwi, in an effort to save their land, departs to the mainland where he starts working for a huge, conglomerate amusement park called The World of Darkness, which people enter through a giant Leviathan and travel (merrily?) through the various levels of hell (sound familiar?). 

This is not forever, Kiwi would think as he held his breath and plunged one of the World of Darkness latrines with the clown-nose suction cup. You are still a genius. You are just a temporary worker. That was the rank that Kiwi had been hired at - full-time staffers all had their high school diplomas. The HR lady had flicked her dry eyeballs over Kiwi's body and shouted (Why so loud, madam?), "Women's size medium!" into an intercom.  "And get me a temporary ID badge."

When Osceola leaves Swamplandia to travel to the land of the dead, Ava sets out to find her with the help of the "Bird Man" - a bizarre local character who wears a long coat covered in feathers who talks to birds and influences their migratory patterns.  Here the book turns into kind of a mystery - whether there really is a Land of the Dead and what expertise or motivations the Bird Man might have leaves the reader constantly wondering whether the story is honestly a gothic fairy tale or whether some reality lays below the surface of these fantastical events. 

Each house had a shadow beneath it, a sort of liquid basement. Small waves rose midway up the platform supports and collapsed into a thin foam. The temperature dropped tens of degrees whenever we poled beneath a house. Above us, the rotten planks and greenish white crossboards looked like they'd been nailed shut by some lunatic carpenter - I saw the glint of what seemed at a distance to be hundreds and hundreds of nailheads. Barnacles. Not nails but shells, dark red horns spiraling out of every surface.

Like any good Florida novelist, Russell's book includes more than a little information about Florida's amazing ecosystem and the detrimental influences that have effected it over the years.  The Ten Thousand Islands area, in the Everglades, sounds like America's last nearly-untouched territory - a wild place, history fraught with unthinkable events and characters (especially to a relative northerner like myself). 

Russell's writing is fresh and often hilarious, underlaid with a consistent, sophisticated prose by turns hyperbolic and gorgeously metaphorical without ever venturing into the domain of overworked language (how she does it I wish I knew!)

*PS, this is the second book I've read this year with an exclamation point in the title.

YA books

Ooo - Goodreads has posted a list of supposedly all the YA books of 2011, which you can organize by average ratings.  Hey, how come I haven't heard of so many of those top 10?   (Except, notably, Divergent, of which I have been a big fan since its publication.)

via

Cover Girl

Kate Hart has an interesting blog where she posts her infographics of YA books - she studies the covers, amongst other things, and makes these amazing graphs with her findings.  Here's an example:

Ah, the ol' "no head" technique - classic technique (literally!) in the history of representing women.  

via

How fast do you read?

Here's a little app that tells you how fast you read, along with a few basic questions about comprehension.  I got the following results:

I do read kind of slow, but I'm not uptight about it.  I sort of enjoy reading slowly.  Also, frankly, who gives an ef how fast anyone reads?   Although, at the same time, I have a feeling I will spend the rest of the day taking this test compulsively.

Reading about the Hunger Games

There's a great article in Salon, The making of a blockbuster (March 2012) by Laura Miller and another in
the NYT, Fresh Hell: What’s behind the boom in dystopian fiction for young readers? (June 2010) .  The  Salon article is really interesting because she gives a lot of behind-the-scenes/insider info about publishing houses, and how they begin the marketing process and push books out into the world.  The older NYT article is more of an examination of the popularity of dystopian YA novels in general.  One of her claims is that dystopian fiction is so appealing to teenagers is because high school is a dystopia:

Adults dump teen-agers into the viper pit of high school, spouting a lot of sentimental drivel about what a wonderful stage of life it’s supposed to be. The rules are arbitrary, unfathomable, and subject to sudden change. A brutal social hierarchy prevails, with the rich, the good-looking, and the athletic lording their advantages over everyone else. To survive you have to be totally fake. Adults don’t seem to understand how high the stakes are; your whole life could be over, and they act like it’s just some “phase”! 

Although, I really think Miller's inquiry into why teenagers like the book is extraneous.  Teenagers, if you ask me, are not necessarily critical readers, full of thoughtful introspection (at least I wasn't).  If a book is ostensibly written and marketed for young adult readers, it's not out of the question that young adult readers will enjoy them.    The question is why adults like them so much.  For one thing, some people think it's embarrassing to read a book that's written for teenagers.  *I* don't feel that way, but I do get a fair amount of raised eyebrows for my reading choices.  Personally, I don't give two fucks about what other people think about what I'm reading.  My attitude is, "I'm reading a BOOK - my mind is an explosion of language and thought - what are you doing? Being judgmental?"  But, I do know that a lot of people suffer from the embarrassment of book covers in public spaces.  So, first of all, you have to find a person brave enough to defy public scrutiny, or else a book that is socially acceptable for adults to read (ie Harry Potter was, Twilight really wasn't.)

What I find most appealing about teenage heroines is the escapist idea that they, despite apparently lack of opportunity, strength, means or support, nevertheless upset social or policial hierarchy.  Characters like Katniss or Cassie in the Matched Trilogy or whatshername in Divergent (I assume, the 2nd and 3rd books are forthcoming).  These young characters generally have little to lose, and encountering their parents' inability to change their situation, it's left to them to challenge the norms.  Older readers, like myself, are in reality more like the parents of these characters - they have a lot to lose.  They have children, careers, homes, and partners that would be in jeopardy if they rocked the boat.  Identifying with the teenage characters gives the adult the opportunity to imagine what it would be like to effect massive change without sacrificing any of the relationships or possessions they've gained.  Without judgement, the adult reader of the YA dystopian novel can embrace the actions of the heroine, not only because it's easy to support her, but she would like to image that she would do the same thing.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was our book club selection for this month - it was also, coincidentally, the book selection of the year at the college where I work.  So there have been a lot of lectures and whatnot about the book in town recently (not that I like, went to any of them...)  I'd heard all this stuff about the book like how remarkable it is and so on, but I was quite disappointed.  The story of Henrietta Lacks eternally dividing cells and the impact they've had on scientific research is pretty remarkable, but the story that Rebecca Skloot has told is problematic, to say the least.

Henrietta Lacks was a woman who had cervical cancer and died in 1951.  Her cells, it was discovered, are "immortal" - they reproduce easily and have been widely utilized in scientific experiments around the world (they're called HeLa cells).  Lacks or her family was never notified that her cells were being used in this way.  She was an impoverished, uneducated, southern African-American woman and her family, even today, continues to suffer in poverty, ill-health and under-education today.  (As a side-note, it was interesting to read this book in conjunction with the national conversation about wealth and bootstraps - the Lacks family is a perfect example of how the poor stay poor.)

Skloot is very much a part of her own narrative - the journey to learning more about the life involved trying to talk to her family.  Henrietta's family, by 1999, had been burned many times by reporters and members of the medical community - Henrietta's surviving children and husband were never informed about their mother's place in scientific importance, and, being very poorly educated, they did not seem to understand exactly what had happened to her, before or after her death.  Skloot describes the process of talking with the family, particularly Henrietta's daughter, Deborah, an erratic women that vacillated between eagerness to talk about her mother and learn more, and sudden skittishness and privacy about her family matters.

What really comes across in this book is the extreme irony that the family of this woman who made such an important contribution (without her knowledge) toward medical science continues to live in poverty and, for example, has no health insurance.

"Hopkins say they gave them cells away," Lawrence yelled, "but they made millions!  It's not fiar! She's the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty. If our mother so important to science, why can't we get health insurance?"

However, what bothered me more and more was how this book was less about Henrietta's history and cells, and more about what a completely ignorant and superstitious family she had.  While so much of the book was devoted to how Henrietta, as a poor, black woman was considered fair game for medical experimentation without her knowledge or consent, I found it rather alarming how much of the family's bizarre, idiotic statements were included in what felt like the further advantage-taking of this family for someone else's gain.

"Daddy," Lawrence yelled, "did you know mam's cells gonna make Stevie Wonder see?" [...] Then there was a thump on the ceiling and the rustling of someone walking around, and Lawrence jumped from the table and ran into the kitchen. "My wife is a fire dragon without morning coffee," He said. "I better make some." It was two in the afternoon.

Skloot also describes the surviving family members' appearances, skin tone and texture with obsessive detail:

Deborah was a substantial woman - about five feet tall and two hundred pounds. her tight curls were less than an inch long and jet black, except for a thing streak of natural gray framing her face like a headband. She was fifty, but seemed both a decade older and younger at the same time. Her smooth light brown skin was dotted with big freckles and dimples, her eyes light and mischievous.  She wore capri pants and Keds sneakers and moved slowly, leaning most of her weight on an aluminum cane. 

Historically, the assumed character for white writers are white, while any non-white characters are the "other" and "require" description.  This started to drive me nuts after a while in this book because the players were either medical professionals or Lack's family.  The Lacks' skin tone, eye-brightness, and obesity was almost always immediately and indulgently described while those characteristics were not mentioned for the scientists unless they were not white.

I don't think that's uncommon, but just illustrates how unconsciously white writers (and readers) carry their own (even unknown or unrecognized) prejudices.  However deeply problematic I found The Immortal Life, it seems to have sparked a conversation for an ethical and legal issue that will most likely become more and more prevalent to our society.

Little Brother

I encourage everyone to read this great YA book by Cory Doctorow called Little Brother.  It's a about this kid (16 or 17) in San Francisco in the not-so-distant-future.  Marcus's world has a bit more surveillance than our world - in school, all students are issued computers that track their keystrokes and look for specified keywords.  The walls are lined with "gait recognition" cameras that try to match up gaits to people and track movement.  Everyone is tracked by arphids too.  Marcus is a hacker, and knows his civil rights really well too - when the principal calls him into his office to grill him about a recent campus hack, he plays it cool, asks the principal if he has an evidence and encourages him to call the police and his parents.

When Marcus and his friends are running around town playing a game, there is a terrorist attack on San Francisco and they are gathered up as suspicious characters.  (I'm not telling you anything that's not on the back of the book).  Marcus's cool responses don't work with the Department of Homeland Security - using post-9/11 legislation, they don't have to follow the same procedures as the principal.  Marcus is tortured, certainly never gets a call to his lawyer, or is ever charged with anything.  When he finally is released, he decides he'll do what he can to take the DHS down himself.

What's interesting is that, in a manner of speaking, Marcus becomes a terrorist after being released from the DHS, even though what he's doing is ostensibly for the good.  What I found endlessly fascinating is that (almost?) all the technology Doctorow mentions in the book is either existing today or not a far stretch.  I frequently found myself asking my guy, "Is TOR a real thing?"  It is.  "You ever heard of Thomas Bayes?" Yep.  "How does DNS work?" It's complicated.

Little Brother has a great story, but the didactic side is what I loved.  This book challenges the reader to consider how they feel about privacy and how far they would be willing to go to protect it.  It encourages readers to become more savvy - and it's really empowering:

If you've never programmed a computer, you should.  There's nothing like it in the whole world.  When you program a computer, it does exactly what you tell it to do. It's like designing a  machine - any machine, like a car, like a faucet, like a gas hinge for a door - using math and instructions. It's awesome in the truest sense: it can fill you with awe.

It's so fun to read a book about a city you know well - I used to live in SF, and a lot of the action takes place in my old neighborhood (affectionately known as the Tender-knob).  Marcus is a cool kid - he's a nerd, but this accessible book would appeal to both nerds and non-nerds (that term is also affectionate, by the way) - I would think this book would really inspire young people to start some interesting web searches - it definitely did for me!

Doctorow is a real revolutionary and an anti-DRM, liberal copywrite activist.  His wikipedia entry is a great place to learn more about him.  As a proponent of Creative Commons, Little Brother is available as a free download here.  Wow!  Why does he provide his books for free?  Read this.

The No Asshole Rule

The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't is a book based on author Robert Sutton's article in the Harvard Business Review - one of the anual "Breakthrough Ideas" of 2003 (the book was published in 2007).  


Sutton spends a lot of time setting up the premise - there are a lot of assholes out there, and they make workplaces miserable - from decreased moral, high use of sick time, decreased productivity to mental collapse.  It's bad.  Why're are there so many assholes?  I don't know.  His premise is simple: try not to hire assholes.  


His use of the word "asshole" is partly strategic, part cop-out.  He uses the term humorously, and, it IS fairly amusing to the see this mostly harmless curse word in every other sentence.  An asshole, by Sutton's definition, is someone who consistently acts like a jerk, "who belittles and demeans others in the workplace independently of gender, race or religious beliefs."  That's important - treating someone differently based on gender, race or religious beliefs (as well as sexual orientation) is illegal.  Being as asshole isn't.  So, when Sutton talks about managers removing "assholes" (by his definition), it's not entirely clear what he means.  As far as I know, you can't fire someone for being a jerk.  


As a hiring manager myself, I think I do a good job of finding people I want to work with (ie, NOT assholes), but, I must admit, I was more interested in this part of the title: Surviving One That Isn't.  I wasn't at all surprised to see that Sutton works in academia (also where I am).  I think most people would agree there are a disproportionate number of unpleasant folks in academia.  Just about daily I think about this old adage - Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.  Sutton returns again and again to the "simple" solution if you're in an office populated by a-holes: just leave.  Well, sure, easy for him to say - but, that's pretty terrible advice in a bad economy (and not so great in a good one.)  His more "practical" advice is not much more helpful: Lower your expectations, "learn to feel and practice indifference and emotional detachment", "look for small wins" and "limit your exposure."  I frankly, do not want to to treat my work with indifference and emotional detachment - it's a part of my life - half of my waking day.  There's gotta be another answer, but it isn't in this book.*


I wouldn't really recommend this book to anyone, unless you enjoy reading shocking statistics and horrifying stories that may or may not be worse than your own.  He calls out a lot of people by name - some are well known, like Bobby Knight, other's less well - but I think all a matter of public record.  I'm thinking about passive-aggressively leaving the book laying around on my desk at work, but, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that Clueless People Are Clueless (it's true, there's a study and everything.)  One time at work this brochure went to everyone in the office that said to be aware if your behavior caused other people to, for example, back away, or avoid eye contact, or to cross their arms, etc, and I had a laugh with a friend about how many people it defined to a T, and then we got really sad because we realized it would take nothing less than a lightening bolt from the sky for someone to read that paper and say, "My God!  This is ME!  I need to change my evil ways immediately!"  




*Actually, there was one small bit of advice that I did like.  Sutton quotes a woman who uses advice from a white-water rafting instructor - if you fall out the boat, rely on your life vest - lay back with your feet in front of you and use your legs to bounce off the rocks.  In nasty meetings, the woman would literally stick her feet out under the table and imagine she was gently pushing off the offensive actions around the table. That's a nice visual I can work with!  

Why old books smell

I should have known - Chemistry!


via by way of Flavorwire

No fiction winner for Pulitzer this year!

Wow, the Pulitzer prizes were announced today and there was no fiction award!  Shocking, huh?  Swamplandia, by Karen Russell (I've really got to read that soon!), something I've never heard of called Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, and The Pale King (by Foster Wallace, which I have no intention of reading)  were short-listed.  I wonder what gives?  Apparently this hasn't happened since nineteen-seventy-something.

Cringe-worthy

There's a great article in the Awl that interviews a bunch of folks in the book-industry: 
What Books Make You Cringe To Remember?  As you might expect, there's a lot of Ayn Rand on the list.  I have to say, that's what I would put on my list too - I LOVED The Fountainhead when I was a teenager.  I might also put Flowers in the Attic on the list...  

Quite a few people mentioned On the Road by Kerouac - that was a bit surprising to me.  However ridiculous and misogynist the Beats might have been, they exemplify this pretty interesting part of American history.   Someone mentioned Sweet Valley High!  Now, how could you regret Jessica and Elizabeth?
 
But, even though they make me cringe a little, I don't regret reading them.  I think the books we read help us become who we are.  

Maureen Corrigan from NPR says it well:

I've been wracking my brain, but honestly it's hard to suggest any without feeling disloyal. In fact, at the risk of sounding sentimental—oh, what the hell, I'll be sentimental—to dis those embarrassing young adult faves now feels like snickering at the friends I had in high school and college whom I've "outgrown." I loved them and needed them at the time and, for that, I'll always be grateful to them.

Anybody have some cringe-worthy books they'd like to share?  

Nightwoods

I hadn't planned to read Charles Frazier's Nightwoods (2011), but it called my name as I was browsing the "New Books" alcove at the library where I work.  I'd read his Cold Mountain many years ago and wondered how things had progressed for him.  I thought Cold Mountain was beautiful but dull. 


Nightwoods was absolutely captivating.  I could literally barely put it down - I like to read at bedtime and I would try to read well after I should have gone to sleep, trying to keep my drooping eyes open. 

His prose is so beautiful.  I had just read this novel with kind of forced, over-the-top prose (The Book of Madness and Cures) and reading Frazier's effortless, lovely language kind of washed that previous book out of my brain.  I wish I could examine the structure and tell you how he did it, but, to my great shame, I've never taken so much as one literature class, so, I have no idea.  It's magical.  Like Marilynne Robinson only more plot-driven (thank God!)  

Done carefully and with luck, maybe a flame no bigger than the tip of a finger lives for a few seconds.  Then, when the tinder begins to catch, an old man with his long hair on fire, crumple a few more whole leaves and place twigs above the flame. Nervous as pick-up sticks in reverse. Judge wrong, the sticks collapse and snuff the flame. Do it right, and the flame grows, but still fragile. More twigs and then small broken branches. And when that layer starts to catch, that's when you purse and blow. Do it on and on until, when you look up to the sky, everything is dark and grainy as soot with little silver sparkles dancing in your vision. For there, it's easy. nothing but the architecture of broken wood. 

A woman, Luce, lives alone as a caretaker for an old, closed, resort lodge.  She makes little money and supports herself with a garden and listens to the radio.  She likes being alone.  But, her sister is killed by her husband and her sister's children are sent to her.  The children have been damaged by what they saw and what was done to them, they are like skittish animals, which Luce carefully tries to coax back into the world.  They don't even speak.  The story is alternately told from the perspective of the murderous husband, who is trying to find the children.  His pathology and justifications are really chilling.  He lives with violence, but is a charming schemer.  

You might be able to think of half-a-dozen Lifetime movies that have that same plot, and, as I was reading, something in the back of mind kept telling me how annoying  it would be if it wrapped up the way those movies end - surprise, unknown strength, unexpected gratitude, mute children suddenly talking, what a relief, etc.  Thankfully, he's a much more skilled writer than the folks who are throwing those movies together!  

Here's one of those stupid book trailers, slightly more stupid that usual.  I include it only because I think they're bizarre and publishers still seem to be working out the kinks. Also this one in particular  kind of sets it up like a Lifetime special, with an odd focus on FIRE! (the children, like most kids, like catching things on fire.)  

The Book of Madness and Cures

My snarky review of The Book of Madness and Cures by Regina O’Melveny in Newcity.  It's got nice cover art, though.

Wyrd Sisters

A friend of mine recommended Terry Pratchett to me - I've never read his books, but I'd recently seen Hogfather with a certain husband. The movie was half-really-good and half-really-terrible, made slightly more interesting because Lady Mary from Downton Abbey played the granddaughter of Death.  Anyway, Pratchett wrote the novel (or novels? I'm not sure) upon which it is based.


Wyrd Sisters (1988) takes place in Discworld, the universe Pratchett has created.  Discworld is like Earth with a sharp tilt - magic and sorcery and fairy tales are part of the reality.  It's sort of like a grown up Harry Potter (I suppose Discworld fans would want my head for that because it looks like he's been writing this series since the early 1980s...)  The best part about the book is that it takes it's cues from MacBeth - it's about a king who is killed by a Duke (a strategic move masterminded by his power-hungry wife), and nearby, three witches become involved in the political strategies in order to help protect the village and the local environment.  It also involves a little Hamlet as well, but that's more subtle.  It was all very amusing for a former Shakespeare scholar like me.  Why, I, myself (have I ever mentioned?) played one of the three witches in college in my Shakespearean drama course, part of my, career-wise, completely useless undergraduate degree in Theatre, but, I think, quite useful for like, life in general.  

All that sounds mildly stodgy and boring, but, let me assure you, it's very, very funny.  I think it's so hard to write truly humorous literature, but, I have to hand it to this guy, he's laugh-out-loud funny.  Incredible wit, and at the same time, a smart critique of story-telling and history.  Guided by his Fool, who is actually something of a genius, the Duke decides to literally re-write history by having a play written about what happened to the previous king.  Enter a band of actors (who are also building a theatre called The Dysc:  "It's got to be a name that means everything," he said. "Because there's everything inside it.  The whole world on the stage, don't you see?"*

I have to admit, some parts I did find slightly annoying - there were a few characters I didn't like, so I found myself skipping pages occasionally, but I absolutely loved the Shakespearian comparisons.  A running theme, for example, is that the Duke/King is forever trying to clean his hands of the blood from the murder.   "He'd scrubbed and scrubbed, but it seemed to have no effect. Eventually he'd gone down to the dungeons and borrowed one of the torturer's wire brushes, and scrubbed and scrubbed with that, too. That had no effect, either. It made it worse. The harder he scrubbed, the more blood there was. He was afraid he might go mad..."  Remember Lady MacBeth's famous "Out, damned spot!" scene?

If I had discovered this series when I was 15 or 16, I probably would have gone completely bananas.

All the Disc is but an Theater, he wrote, Ane alle men and wymmen are but Players.  He made the mistake of pausing, and another inspiration sleeted down, sending his train of thought off along an entirely new track.
   He looked at what he had written and added: Except Those who selle popcorn.
   After a While he crossed this out, and tried: Like unto thee Staje of a Theater ys this World, whereon alle Persons strut as Players.  This seemed a bit better.
  He thought for a bit, and continued conscientiously: Sometimes they walke on. Sometimes they walke off.  

* If you're not a theatre nerd, this is a delightful reference to The Globe theatre.