Hilary's book blog experiment

End of 2006

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 03:25:00 +0000

I used to joke that if I had a blog, each post would start or end with "this might be my last post ever." I think I'd better start doing that!

Balliett, Blue
Chasing Vermeer - 2004. Very good although not as brilliantly wonderful as I'd anticipated. It made me feel old not to have the energy to try solving all the puzzles and ciphers myself. That's what Wikipedia is for... A

Blyton, Enid
Island of Adventure - 1944. I still have a tiny bit of sentimental attachment to some Blyton (particularly the Famous Five, because one of them is a real dog; also the Noddy illustrations, especially his cute little car), but boy is she lousy. Interesting to notice how repetitive and heavy-handed the description is; I guess that's one of the things that makes it easy to read before one is particularly quick to pick up cues. She must have liked animals, because Kiki the cockatoo is the most memorable character ("Wipe your feet! Shut the door"), followed by Dinah with the ungovernable temper and Lucy-Ann the timid goody two-shoes. OK, for cardboard characters they sometimes are refreshingly realistic. Blyton also shows some inner-life-of-adults that explains why they get sick of the rambunctious kids. But wait... I think of Kiki as a cockatoo because she has a crest and that's how she's illustrated, but the text calls her a scarlet and grey parrot. Is there such a parrot, with a crest that it can "work up and down"? I haven't been able to confirm that. C+

Cabot, Meg
All-American Girl - 2002. Recommended by my "little" sister (who's now 15!) Very funny and very absorbing, and even the stereotypical characters (like Sam's sister Lucy) turn out to have hidden depths. A

Christopher, John
The White Mountains - 1967; The City of Gold and Lead - 1967; The Pool of Fire - 1968. A classic trilogy whose images have stayed with me since I first read them, despite being mostly lifted from War of the Worlds crossed with Brave New World. A-

Collins, Wilkie
The Moonstone - 1868. Ground-breaking mystery and very amusing and enthralling, but I'd forgotten how weak the solution is. Believability was never Collins's strength. A-

Daisey, Mike
21 Dog Years: Doing Time @ Amazon.com - 2002. Daisey was experiencing all the worst aspects of Amazon when people still bought that they were Different and a Noble Place to Work. He wittily deconstructs the simple capitalistic greed that led smart people to work crazy hours fulfilling warehouse orders. Very well-written to boot. A

Dickens, Charles
A Christmas Carol: In Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas - 1843. I re-read this frequently anyway, but most recently after finally catching the Cider Mill's version with Bill Gorman and Claus Evans. A+

Francis, Dick
I've been on a Francis kick in the course of which I'm finally giving up on some titles (I used to be a completist but have outgrown him to a certain extent).
Banker - 1982. A leisurely pace for a change. B
Flying Finish - 1966. Better/more plot than some, and one of the few really interesting lead characters, aristocrat-with-a-blue-collar-job Henry Grey. B+

Fredericks, Mariah
Crunch Time - 2006. Good YA about SAT prep; very Breakfast Club but also well-written. B+

Hoban, Russell
The Mouse and His Child - 1967. One of my very favorite books ever. It impressed me strongly as a kid and I still re-read it at least once a year, finding more each time. A perfect novel in so many, many ways. I am lucky to have an original, signed copy given to me by a FOF of Hoban's; the inscription reads "FOR SHIRLEY AND ALFRED./WITH/BEST WISHES/FOR GOOD LUCK/ALL THE WAY/FROM HERE/TO/THE LAST VISIBLE DOG/FROM/Russ & Lil." Am I a lucky duck or what? I think they gave it to me because I was a child and they thought it was a kid's book. But it is so very much more. A+++

Jenkins, Emily
Toys Go Out: Being the Adventures of a Knowledgeable Stingray, A Toughy Little Buffalo, and Someone Called Plastic - 2006. Very cute talking-toy story with more-than-usually-distinctive characters. A-

LeGuin, Ursula
The Dispossessed - 1974. Brilliant, thought-provoking, touching, but now that I'm older Anarres seems excessively rough on families in a way I didn't notice before. A+

Shute, Nevil
Beyond the Black Stump - 1966. Fascinating and devastating view of American society through the eyes of a young Australian girl. B+
The Breaking Wave - 1955. One of the saddest of his novels, though I had forgotten that it still has a hopeful ending. B+
The Chequer Board - 1947. Very advanced in anti-racism for its time; it's depressing that moving to Australia seems to have set Shute back so far. A-
The Far Country - 1952. Shut doesn't normally do very well with characters outside his stolid Anglo-Australian types, but the exiled doctor Carl Zlinter is an exception. Shute's rhapsodies about how healthy it is to eat pounds of meat and dozens of eggs (comparing the Australian diet to England's rationing) are unintentionally amusing, especially because there is quite a bit of medical setting. He also manages to make himself look foolish by taking a swipe at modern art:

The artist had modeled his style upon that of a short-sighted and eccentric old gentleman called Cézanne, who had been able to draw once but had got tired of it; this smoothed the path of his disciples a good deal.

Kindling - 1938. For some reason I remember this as a James Hilton novel; I think there's one with a similar plot. I wouldn't have known how autobiographical this was had I not finally read Slide Rule; it's an interesting defense of overstating a company's financial prospects to shareholders, for the sake of the employees' livelihoods. B+
Landfall - 1940. B+
Lonely Road - 1932. B-
Most Secret - 1945. Very grim. B
No Highway - 1948. The closest to Shute's real life, it seems like. A
Pastoral - 1944. B
Pied Piper - 1942. B
The Rainbow and the Rose - 1958. B
Round the Bend - 1951. A+
Slide Rule - 1954. Gets off to an incredibly dull start--Shute seems just as boring as his characters, with the added disadvantage of not being involved in a plot--but picks up in the fascinating story of the rival dirigibles commissioned by the English government, one with the private sector (Shute's company) and one with the public sector. That story is not primarily about Shute, simply told by him, and that's why it's interesting. B
So Disdained - 1928. B-
A Town Like Alice - 1950. A
What Happened to the Corbetts - 1939. Minor. B-

Niven, Larry, and Jerry Pournelle
The Mote in God's Eye - 1974. Niven and Pournelle excelled at combining a huge disaster-movie style cast of stereotypes with intriguing SF, and this is one of their best. A-

Uttley, Alison
The Sam Pig Storybook - 1965/1971. Are these stories so perfect partly because they are colored by familiarity and memory? I feel like I grew up along with the four little pigs, nurtured by Brock the badger. A+
A Traveler in Time - 1939. Psychologically-realistic time travel/historical fiction. A

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling, 2006

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 03:17:00 +0000

This is what I wrote just after finishing HP6:

I love the excitement and anticipation of a new Harry Potter book; I've gone to Barnes & Noble just for the midnight thrill (even though I buy my book through the library) for the last 3 volumes. Cracking a new one is like seeing old friends again. I sank into this one with pleasurable anticipation, which was mostly rewarded...but not entirely. As I've already seen some reviewers saying, Book 6 is so busy setting up for the finale that it's weak on its own. One of Rowling's strengths is normally the richness of the tapestry's details; the minor characters, the specifics of spells the students are studying, the new creatures and methods...

That's all I wrote back then, but I was basically going to say I found #6 too busy with narrative and not as enjoyable as the previous 5. Well, I've re-read it twice since it came out, and I think I was projecting my own headlong rush to gobble it down; it really holds up very well. I don't think I wrote any notes on Deathly Hallows, but I loved it. What a satisfying end to the series. I'll re-read them all in a year or two (unless I get sick enough to stay home for more than a day; the last time that happened, years ago, the pleasurable part was doing nothing but read Harry Potter for an extended period.)

A Treasure's Trove: A Fairy Tale About Real Treasure for Parents and Children of All Ages - Michael Stadther, 2004

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:50:00 +0000

Low expectations can be good because it's easy to exceed them. This book had so many strikes against it (self-published; gimmicky in the extreme; unclear on audience; badly drawn; full of grammatical mistakes) that I was surprised to find anything redeeming in it, but I did love the character Pook. He's a doth (dog/moth), essentially the author's cute white bulldog (visible in a photo) with blue and orange wings added. I think that's why, although the other characters are wooden, Pook feels alive--Stadther is writing what he knows.

The most famous precursor to A Treasure's Trove is Kit Williams' Masquerade, which wasn't a very good story either but at least had truly impressive illustrations. I like puzzles but this one felt very contrived, like it wasn't following the classic rules. I used to fantasize about finding the Canadian Club whiskey cases that were hidden as part of a marketing campaign in the 70s--I was much too young to drink, but the search fascinated me (especially after seeing one that was hidden in Manhattan--more accessible than volcanoes and glaciers!) That yen for finding the hidden is still alive (hence the popularity of geocaching), but it's got to feel possible. I've just been listening to the audio of Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw, and his use of the distinction between puzzles and mysteries (originally by Gregory Treverton) comes to mind. Canadian Club was a puzzle; Treasure's Trove was a mystery. Nonetheless all the gimcrack-looking jewels were found.

Running With Scissors: A Memoir - Augusten Burroughs, 2002

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:46:00 +0000

I loved Dry--I leafed through it at a bookstore and then couldn't put it down--so my hopes were high for this earlier slice of autobiography. Good but not great. Burrough's adolescence was unbelievably bizarre (although a few people involved have disputed his account) but he survived and found humor in it. The main moral I absorbed is that people can adapt to anything.

Understanding the Borderline Mother: Helping her Children Transcend the Intense, Unpredictable, and Volatile Relationship

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 01:43:00 +0000

The title is so long that the author didn't fit: it's Christine Ann Lawson, 2000.

I read this book to better understand a situation in my own life, and although it was somewhat interesting, I didn't find it particularly helpful. Perhaps the most useful bit was an explanation of why the women described can seem like normal parents to the vast majority of observers:

Emotional intensity, impulsivity, unpredictability, and fear of abandonment are symptoms observable primarily by those who have an intimate relationship with the borderline. Casual acquaintances, co-workers, or neighbors are less likely to witness the borderline's sudden shifts in mood, self-destructive behavior, paranoid distortions, and obsessive ruminations.

Lawson categorizes women with borderline personality disorder into four categories: helpless waifs, frightened hermits, bossy queens, and vindictive witches. There's a lot of
heavy-handed parallelism with Alice in Wonderland, and a mix between case histories and biographies (Charlotte Du Pont, Sylvia Plath, Mary Todd Lincoln).

That's the extend of my notes (read in 2004, writing now in 2010)--but now there is a second situation where having more insight would be helpful, so I might try to borrow it again.

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman - Jon Krakauer, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 02:49:00 +0000

I love Krakauer and I'll read anything he puts out; if this book hadn't been by him I probably would have leafed through it, but not read every word. Although I preferred his other books as great narrative non-fiction, because Where Men Win Glory was easier to put down, I think it will linger longer in my mind (Under the Banner of Heaven does too, but for different reasons).

Of the many interesting people Krakauer has profiled, Pat Tillman is the first real hero. I didn't know much about him before reading this book, and had made some fallacious assumptions based on the thumbnail description I'd read: NFL pro enlists after 9/11, is killed in Afghanistan, and the reason for his death is covered up. Krakauer promises that "the real Pat Tillman was much more remarkable, and considerably more complicated, than the fiction sold to the public," and he delivers on that promise. Tillman was not flawless, but he was both admirable and grounded, traits Krakauer's previous subjects haven't had in combination.

Most people are content to "believe in" values or ideas without examining too closely whether they ought to take actions to live out those values or ideas. That wasn't good enough for Tillman. I disagree with his conclusion that war can be necessary, and that Afghanistan after 9/11 was a place where it needed to be fought, but I respect his decision to act on what he believed--especially because he consistently challenged his own beliefs and those of others. I felt a kinship for Tillman growing as the book progressed; I would have loved to pick apart premises and implications with him, despite the macho side of his personality (his belief in honor reminded me of the Southern culture described in Gladwell's Outliers). A friend of his (who later got him in touch with Noam Chomsky--they never got a chance to meet, alas) reports talking with him when he was deciding to join the army:

"Are you sure about this? Are you ready to serve under a president you don't really support?" But he thought he owed it to the country to really do something after 9/11. I think he felt he could stay above the politics, somehow, and just do his duty as a patriot... With Pat, if his conscience told him he should do something, he did it, no excuses. He just made it happen as well as he possibly could.

Once enlisted, Tillman had serious doubts about the methods and goals of the military, but he felt committed to his decision. For the same reasons he'd abandoned a lucrative NFL contract and a comfortable life, he refused to participate in the propaganda machine. He knew his story would be catnip to the conservative movement, but he was not a part of it and did not want to give them fodder.

Krakauer goes into excruciating (to me, excessive) detail about the events leading to Tillman's tragic death by friendly fire. There doesn't appear to be anything nefarious about his demise--just a classic FUBAR situation of crossed signals, hasty decisions, pressure from supervisors to meet artificial benchmarks, and sheer bad luck. But the original cover-up was motivated by propaganda at the highest level, and as each investigation results in another cover-up, it becomes unbearably disgusting. If it were not for the dogged persistence of Pat's mother, and the light his celebrity could bring to bear, the truth would never have come out.

On the form where soldiers discuss their funeral preferences before deploying, Tillman specifically said "I do not want the military to have any direct involvement with my funeral." Despite the detailed picture Krakauer draws of his personality over hundreds of pages, it was a pleasant shock to discover near the end of the book that Tillman was a nonbeliever:

During his time on earth, he wrote in his journal while serving in Iraq, he wanted to "do good, influence lives, show truth and right." He believed it was important to "have faith in oneself" and to aspire to "a general goodness free of religious pretensions...I think I understand that religious faith with makes the holy brave and strong; my strength is just somewhere else--it's in myself...I do not fear what awaits me, though I'm equally confident that nothing awaits."

Disbelief in an afterlife is so rare in the US that before Krakauer specifically discussed it, it wouldn't have occured to me that Tillman and I shared that as well; an officer charged with one of the investigations, Lt. Colonel Kauzlarich, had the gall to say that the Tillmans would "never be satisfied" with the outcome because they were not Christians. Frequently I feel regret that someone can't see how much people love them as demonstrated after they die (Alex Chilton most recently). But I'm glad Tillman cannot know the tragic way his life ended, and worse, be tormented by the way his convictions and motivations were betrayed by the unworthy institution for which he sacrificed himself. Rest in peace, Pat.

Food Rules: An Eater's Manual - Michael Pollan, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 01:16:00 +0000

I normally frown on short essays published as overpriced books, and $11 is a little steep for what could easily have been a complete New York Times Magazine story (instead of the extract they ran). But the format might really make more people take these rules seriously--and that could improve, even save, countless lives. The 64 rules are mostly common sense, expressed in a sticky way (#19: "If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don't.") I didn't learn anything new, but I enjoyed it, and felt motivated to continue on the path I've been trying to walk for a few years (for example, avoiding anything with HFCs). As with self-help books, reading something I know again, especially if it's expressed in a pithy or novel way, can be tremendously helpful. I especially liked #39, "Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself," which is an idea I'd sort of stumbled on. The book is a nice size, attractively designed, and not at all intimidating; may it be a huge success!

Grumbles from the Grave - Robert Heinlein (ed. by Virginia Heinlein), 1989.

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 23:43:00 +0000

Heinlein is one of my perennial re-reads, in the "I know some of his writing has huge flaws but I still love his books" category--along with Dornford Yates and Frances Hodgson Burnett. I have everything he wrote and recently went on a Heinlein juvenile kick, but after reading this collection of letters and miscellanea for only the second time, I'm going to get rid of it. There are a few interesting insights, but mostly his letters are dull and Ginny's additions are not well-written (the grammar is fine, but there's no felicity to the sentences, and the sequence and emphasis seem strange). Most revelatory to me was that Heinlein's method of work was to write until he could hear the characters talking, and then he would just let them unfold the tale. This partially explains to me why his later books are so terrible: the characters tend to all sound the same, exactly like him, so of course they have no new places to take him. That's not entirely true--Job: A Comedy of Justice was something of a departure--but it does explain The Number of the Beast, in which what is really a good story is bogged down by the pill-ish, wooden quartet of Bob/Ginny clones, of whose company one quickly becomes heartily sick.

Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life, Neil Steinberg - 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 23:27:00 +0000

I picked this up, based the title, from new books coming through processing at the library. I was shocked to see Steinberg's name on the cover. I know him as the author of my favorite humorous essay book of all time, Complete and Utter Failure, and of others I enjoyed: If At All Possible, Involve a Cow and Don't Give Up the Ship. In my inner world, he's a friend and a peer, and discovering his alcoholism gave me a pang. I was misled by one of the blurbs on the back, which says "'Hysterically funny.' - New York Post" (adjectives in the other blurbs include wistful, clear-eyed, and elegant)--that must have been a description of Steinberg's writing as a whole, not this book. It's not funny at all, even though it ends well. Steinberg has recovered, and not only does his marriage to Edie survive, but his struggle with the concept of a higher power in AA resolves when he realizes that she, Edie, is his Higher Power. But the compelling way in which Steinberg shares his compulsion with the reader is deeply sad.

Why am I, like many others, so drawn to memoirs of addiction? Partly because we can tell ourselves "I may feel bad about things I do or leave undone, but it could be much much worse." Partly because it's inspiring to see human beings survive and resurrect themselves from such dark abysses. Partly because the struggles depicted are the common lot of humanity, writ larger. When I surf the web instead of writing, I wonder why I make that choice; does Steinberg's inability to stop drinking once he'd started come from the same source? I think perhaps it does.

When facing the prospect of stopping, Steinberg worried that drinking was part of his smart-alecky, cynical observer personality, and that he'd become less funny and interesting. That personality, which came through strongly in his earlier books, is certainly compatible with drinking, but it's not a causal relationship. Steinberg also built his identity as a hard-drinking writer (led on by his role models at the Chicago Tribune), but believing that fallacy doesn't feel congruent with the ironic distance of his writing persona. In today's world, when I hear about writers who think drinking is an important part of creativity, I'm astonished that they swallowed that particular idea (I feel the same way about intelligent young people who smoke). How could Steinberg mock the received wisdom of his middle-class upbringing, and simultaneously rush to adopt the received wisdom of the Fitzgerald/Hemingway school?

I love the final paragraph:

In the final analysis, I don't drink because I don't want to be compelled to think about drinking all the time. That's no way to live. I persuaded myself that I was tired of it, that it was boring, and the world too varied and rich to remain obsessed with as narrow a thing as alcohol. You can't imagine the delight of having the urge fade--the absence itself is a powerful motivation not to drink. To not have the obsession hit you in the face each morning when you open your eyes. To have other things occupy your mind. A joy. What madman would wake the beast by pouring booze on it again? No me. Not today.

Good for you, Neil, and thanks for the thought-provoking book.

French Spirits: A House, a Village, and a Love Affair in Burgundy - Jeffrey Greene, 2002.

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 01:38:00 +0000

I'm trying to catch up on posts I left in draft. This is pretty pathetic because I started this one in September 2004 and it is now March 2010. Needless to say, I remember almost nothing about the book, but I made a number of notes and copied some quotations. My stubborn nature won't let me abandon it. OK: Greene rehabs a presbytery into a house in rural France. Not the South--although one might have thought at some point that every single publisher needed to release a book about expats in Provence--in Rogny, a town in the Puisaye region of Burgundy. I do not need to read the book again to know that it costs more and takes longer than he thought. During the course of the rehab/book, he marries Mary, devoting an excessive 3 chapters to the wedding. They do get the best wedding present ever: a meteorite. We have the requisite colorful neighbors--Madame Savin, Coco, Pere Jo--and at least one pointed observation: "Nothing brightens French spirits more than explaining the right way to do something."

A few jarring details: some of the French is translated, but some is not; we get a bit of sex with enough specifics to feel out of kilter with the rest of the book ("Mary had her bare bottom against the cold, dusty plastic); when Greene's mother comes to visit, we get strong foreshadowing of her death, which luckily doesn't occur; we hear the details of furniture buying, which isn't particularly interesting.

Finally, I copied off this quote:

...they went about their hard-core and undoubtedly hard-earned vacationing, setting lines and tossing balls of meal into the opaque water to attract carp, a Hungarian favorite in soup, with paprika.

I don't remember who "they" are, but I do love the way that sentence falls into a heap at the end--especially the paprika.

Juliet, Naked - Nick Hornby, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:13:00 +0000

Hornby is always thoroughly enjoyable, and a great premise makes his latest even more savory. Annie's wasted 15 years with Duncan, a socially clueless middle-aged nerd who's obsessed with reclusive American musician Tucker Crowe. Annie does love Tucker's classic album, Juliet, and when the original demos are released as Juliet, Naked, she writes a counter-essay to Duncan's rhapsodizing about this one new addition to the Crowe canon. Crowe emails Annie in appreciation, and the cascade of encounters begins. The showing-up of Duncan's fanboy snobbishness is delicious, but Hornby never goes too far--all his characters remain human and sympathetic. He's kind to them, which is one of the reasons I'm so fond of him; he's also not-put-down-able, but without leaving the junk food aftertaste that some compelling novels do. Juliet, Naked doesn't quite have the substance of About a Boy, but it made me very happy. Thank you, Mr. Hornby, and please keep writing!

The Blessing - Nancy Mitford, 1951

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 01:48:00 +0000

This has been one of my favorite novels since picking it up as a kid--I saw my parents laughing over it, and was drawn in by the child protagonist, raised alternately in Britain and France (just as my brother and I were raised in the US and France, with a British father and an Anglophilic mother). I happily re-read it every few years.

Normally I read too quickly, but this time I was tempted to create a guide for all the references, challenging myself to look up the ones I don't know. For example, the treatment that keeps wealthy people young is presumably a reference to Victor Bogomoletz, who wrote The Secret of Keeping Young and prescribed Sérum de Bogomoletz. A character says of it: "The wonders it has done for me! Why my hair, which was quite red, has positively begun to go black at the roots."

Even though the moral of the book is that Grace's happiness comes from ignoring her husband's infidelities, and Sigsimond is a little monster, it's more light-hearted than some of Mitford's books. There are so many wonderfully satirical characters: the odious Hector Dexter, whose speech captures something genuinely 50s American:

I am very very happy to be able to tell you, Madame Innouïs, that the young American male is brimming over with strong and lustful, but clean desire. He is not worn out, old, and complicated before his time, no ma'am, he does not need any education sentimentarl, it all comes to him naturally, as it ought to come, like some great force of nature.

And there are striking insights, like the comparison of idle people playing bridge to workers in a factory: "You sat by electric light at the same table hour after hour, going through the same motions, with music while you work thump thump thumping in the background, life passed by, the things of the mind neglected, the beautiful weather out of doors unfelt, unseen."

This is a retrieved draft of an earlier post, so there was more I wanted to say that's been lost. But I'll be reading it again soon and presumably it will come back--and I can flesh out other references. I love the way the Internet's expansion makes more of the past accessible even as it recedes further in time. When I first read The Blessing, I could have spoken to people who remembered Boglometz, if only I could have found them. Now they're doubtless all dead, but I can discover more about it than ever.

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:37:00 +0000

Although I love a lot of fantasy, there's much of it I don't care for, and I'm one of those who never got into Gaiman. One comic book a year more than sates my appetite, so I didn't read The Sandman; one chapter of American Gods was plenty; and I missed Stardust. But I saw Coraline and loved it. Then librarians everywhere raved about The Graveyard Book; it won the Newbery (an award that really means something, even though it can lead to as much head-scratching as the Oscars); and most of all Gaiman gave either a great Newbery acceptance speech or a great interview (or both) in The Horn Book, my favorite literature magazine. No head-scratching here--it's a great book, a lot like Eva Ibbotsen book, but with more thought and heart.

Bod (short for Nobody) grows up in a graveyard, where the ghosts and other inhabitants shelter him from "the man Jack," who killed his family when he was a baby. The ghosts speak and think in the ways that were natural to them when they were alive, so the different time periods give texture to the dialogue. They're delightful, but the emotional center is the mysterious Silas, neither dead nor alive. He fetches Bod's food, brings in the werewolf Miss Lupescu to teach him, and eventually lets the growing Bod go to an actual human school. Bod and his supernatural family deal with the tension between safety and growth, past and future, ordinary and remarkable, with lots of plot and twists along the way. I love books like this that work on multiple levels.

My only criticism is that the illustrations are truly ugly. David McKean is a comic book artist (among many other things), which fits with Gaiman's background, but personally I don't think the distorted, black-and-gray, bleeding-off-the-page look works at all with a novel.

Big Tree - Mary & Conrad Buff, 1946

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:19:00 +0000

I've managed to track down most of the children's books I loved but for which I didn't have author/title information, many with the help of the wonderful Loganberry Books' Stump the Bookseller. But there is one I still can't find. From the description, Big Tree seemed like a good match, but unless I conflated several books, this isn't it. The big tree of the title is a giant sequoia named Wawona. He sprouts 2,500 years before the present time and we see him grow, observe the animals and birds around him, survive fire and lightning, and eventually survive even man, as a national park is made around him just in time. Unfortunately the style hasn't aged well at all. The chipmunks are busy, the rabbits are timid, the eagles are cruel; everything has an adjective and no cliche is spared. The tree's personality isn't well-defined and there are some strange contradictions ("It seemed to Wanona that summer had not really come unless the two golden eagles perched in his crest... In many ways he preferred that the eagles did not nest in the old eyrie..." [two consecutive sentences])

Maybe I read this as a child, but I'm not sure. I think I would have remembered the name Wawona and the black and white illustrations. My favorite bit in this book is the trade rat who takes a prospector's glasses and leaves him a dirty stick--that also would have stuck in my head, and I wouldn't have been so surprised and delighted to discover trade/pack rats and their role in archeology when we lived in Tucson.

I also recently checked out The Tree in the Trail by Holling Clancy Holling (better known for Paddle-to-the-Sea) because I remember the tree being in the middle of a road. That was a much more colorful and entertaining book than Big Tree, and the illustrations are in color, but the tree is a cottonwood and it's definitely not "the" book. Could I have read the two and mixed them up in my memory? Initially I thought so, but a few more details have crystallized. I'm quite sure the book I remember featured a "drive-through tree," and interestingly enough the most famous of them was--Wawona! So maybe there was a book subsequent to Big Tree that also narrated Wawona's life, didn't use that name, and had color illustrations. Or maybe I mixed up three books! It niggles at me, and I'll keep searching. As the online universe gets bigger, the chances of success get greater if there really is a book out there. My recollection of The Little House in the Fairy Wood was spot-on, so I'm betting on little Hilary's memory.

The Inn at Lake Devine - Elinor Lipman, 1998

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:09:00 +0000

My mother sat next to Lipman at a conference and told me about her. Lipman recommended this novel as the one my mother would like best. So I read it "for her" in a way. I don't know that Mummy would care for it much, but I loved it. When she's twelve, Natalie and her family are told they can't stay at the titular vacation resort because they're Jewish. Natalie pursues the issue through her teenage years and ends up not only staying at the Inn, but becoming part of the family through a series of accidents and romantic entanglements. In both the Marx and Fife families, the generations and the sexes struggle to understand and tolerate each other. Each person is believable, and even Mrs. Fife's anti-semitism is that of a real human being, not a cardboard monster. Plus it's funny and touching, and it features mushroom hunting!

The Magicians - Lev Grossman, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:40:00 +0000

People I admire and respect loved this adult fantasy. Me, not so much, though I wanted to. It sounded right up my alley: a cross between a sorcerer school story and realistic fiction. We meet Quentin Coldwater as a brainy seventeen-year-old Brooklynite. Led into a community garden which gets bigger as he walks through it, he finds himself in the grounds of Brakebill College for Magical Pedagogy somewhere up the Hudson. In this world magic takes talent but most of all ferocity at studying long hours and memorizing arcane scholarship--it's kind of like law school. Quentin's spent oodles of time practicing sleight-of-hand, which has prepared him well. That's a brilliant touch--great magicians in real life are the ones who've put in crazy time practicing, so it fits. The professors and the other students are well-drawn and believable modern people. I liked the idea of the Disciplines (herbalism, physical magic, etc.) grouping the students into little clubs, and that the initiation rite is for the "sorted" students to figure their way into the clubhouse.

So the book has redeeming qualities--many, in fact. I can see why others have liked it. But I have two major problems with it, which in combination ruined the experience for me.

1. Ultimately what makes the novel realistic/modern/"psychologically piercing" as the jacket says--it goes on "...in which good and evil aren't black and white, love and sex aren't simple and innocent, and power comes at a terrible price"--is almost entirely that the characters are miserable, drink a lot, swear, and treat each other badly. Quentin in particular is one of those people who mopes around, always expecting that the next goal (getting into Brakebills, having a girlfriend, entering Fillory (the world from their children's fantasy books which turns out to really exists)) will make him happy, and always bitterly disappointed that it doesn't. A major character, Eliot, is described as an alcoholic, but Quentin commits a terrible betrayal while drunk and doesn't acknowledge that as a problem. Plus this existential malaise they all share is far more told than shown. I was heartily sick of the lot of them halfway through.

2. Quoting the jacket flap again: "Grossman pays homage to the fantasy novels of C.S. Lewis, T.H. White, and J.K. Rowling while creating an utterly original realm..." If only it were so.

2a. OK, he's pretty open about the Rowling references--the characters frequently refer to Harry Potter, and given the contemporary setting we start in, it all makes sense. But does Brakebills have to be quite so slavishly Anglophilic, especially in upstate NY? Do we have to have a magic game (not Quidditch, but indebted to wizard chess) with an international tournament between magic schools? And for goodness' sake, the inconsistent number of students at Hogwarts has always been a problem in Rowling, but at least she can't be pinned down. Grossman specifically states the size of the maximum student body (100) and then, like Rowling, has many scenes and situations that just don't work if there are that few of them. Ultimately it feels a little lazy to model the Harry Potter world so closely.

2b. The major T.H. White reference I noticed is a doozy: as part of their education, the students live as animals, specifically geese. Merlin has the Wart inhabit many animal societies, and one of them is geese, including migration and courtship. Couldn't Grossman have picked something of his own? Again, lazy--very lazy. (Plus where they end up is basically the Isolate Tower from LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea.)

2c. But the Narnia rip-off is totally brazen. In the book, everyone has read these Fillory and Further books by Chistopher Plover, about the five Chatwin children who enter the magical land of Fillory, the first time through the cabinet of a grandfather clock. The older children can't return in the later books, etc. etc. It's Narnia with just a few details changed. The final straw for me was when the characters enter Fillory themselves and recapitulate The Magician's Nephew. They hold buttons, rise through a fountain, and find themselves in one of countless squares, each fountain the gateway to a different world. To me, stealing the concept of the Wood Between the Worlds is inexcusable--and that's just the worst of many, many direct lifts from Lewis. Once in Fillory, our mopey crew travel to an underground tomb (aka Aslan's How) where the god of that world, a giant golden ram (!) waits to crown two kings and two queens, yada yada.

There's a decent twist at the end where the Big Bad turns out to be somebody rather unexpected, but I no longer cared about any of it. I felt like Grossman had plagiarized C.S. Lewis only to sully good fantasy with exchanges like this one:

"What the fuck, man! Didn't you plan for this?"
"This is the plan, Earth child," Dint snarled back. "You don't like it, go home. We need kings and queens in Fillory. Is that not a thing worth dying for?"
Not really, Quentin thought. Asshole. That slutty nymph was right.

I immediately went back to read the Narnia books again and get the taste of this out of my mind. All seven put together are about half the word count of The Magicians and at least an order of magnitude better, IMO.

U is for Undertow - Sue Grafton, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 03:28:00 +0000

Does Grafton have a contractual obligation to turn in a certain number of pages? This is a really good 250 pager bloated to 403, and all the extraneous stuff is front-loaded. I was on the verge of bailing early on, and almost the only thing that kept me going was the entertainment value of the excessive, prosaic details. I started reading passages aloud to Jonathan, like this series from one trivial backstory scene (all on pages 60 & 61):

Annabelle shrugged and chose a roll from the basket. She pulled off one segment and buttered it. She took a bite and tucked the nugget of bread into one side of her cheek, a move that slightly muffled her speech.
...
There was a pause while they studied their menus and decided what to have. Salads, rare New York strips, and baked potatoes with sour cream, green onion, and grated cheese.
...
He paused, looking up, as the waitress arrived at the table with the wine. She turned the bottle so Kip could read the label, and once he approved, she proceeded to open it. Kip sampled it, nodded, and said, "Very nice."

A little later Kinsey goes to interview someone who lives in a small town.

I retrieved my Mustang, gassed up at the entrance to the 101, and headed down the coast to Peephole (population 400). The area, like so much of California, was part of a Spanish land grant, deeded to Amador Santiago Delgado in 1831. His mother was distantly related to Maria Christina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, the fourth wife of King Ferdinand VII...

It goes on like that for two entire pages. Is this tourist brochure in any way relevant to the plot? No! It's as though the protagonists took down the gun on the wall in the first act, examined it, discussed the model, its provenance, and how to fire it, and then we never saw it again.

As I mentioned while discussing R is for Ricochet (I read S and T but didn't blog them & barely remember them), Grafton's alphabet mysteries are gradually turning into historicals. One could argue that she's dwelling on the details to document the 80s, or to show off her research (a common historical fiction failing)...or for the benefit of people from another culture? Jonathan wondered whether she'd hired someone to pad out the beginning of this book to meet the hypothesized page quota, but it reads exactly like Grafton's distinctive voice, taken to an extreme or parodied. She's always excelled at the immersive first-person experience, so that we know far more about Kinsey's daily life than about most other mystery protagonists.

But Grafton here crosses the line between documenting every detail in an interesting way--like Nicholson Baker in The Mezzanine--and walking the soporific reader through every minute of every day, diluting the telling moments with tedium.

Then on page 123 Walker McNally, one of the many people we've met so far, wakes up in a hospital with no memory of his drunken weekend and is told he killed a girl with his car. Like a python emerging from a swamp, the compelling, plot-weaving Grafton lifted me right out of the slog of the first quarter of the book, wrapped me in her coils and didn't let go again until the very satisfactory ending.

In other words, hang in there or skim until you get to the good stuff. Where are the editors of yore? Couldn't someone have carved away the flab and helped this become the taut little joyride it ought to be?

Claimed - Francis Stevens, 1920

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 03:14:00 +0000

I just stumbled across Stevens a few weeks ago while reading up on A. Merritt, one of my favorite pulp writers (years ago I purchased the rare Seven Steps to Satan for a Norwegian friend, read it before sending to him, and had to get my own copy). Merritt is said to have been influenced by both Lovecraft (I like, but a little goes a long way) and this Stevens, who as it turns out was Gertrude Barrows Bennett, US fantasy pioneer who essentially created "dark fantasy." This is one of her most well-known works, and after reading this I'll look out for more. A mysterious blue-green box, inscribed with characters in an unknown tongue which always flow back to the bottom no matter which way the box is turned, passes from hand to hand and brings a curse with it. J. J. Robinson, tenacious man of business (Uncle Jesse to the inevitable love interest, Leilah), won't give up the box, though the sea itself comes to claim it. Dr. John Vanaman is the protagonist who traces the box's origins and protects Leilah and Uncle Jesse to the best of his ability. The pace and tension pick up when they leave land. The Nagaina, a stout sea-going vessel, chases the spectral Red Dolphin across the ocean to a lost blood-red city... It's great classic pulp, very atmospheric and eerie even when it doesn't entirely make sense.

In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim - Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1899

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:50:00 +0000

I'd seen this referenced on many FHB title pages (in the "author of" list), but knew nothing about it--I would have guessed it was one of her few European historicals like A Lady of Quality, and would have been wrong. It's actually set in the U.S., and the title refers to a claim for damages from the Civil War. The protagonists have to move from North Carolina to D.C. for almost a year to pursue the claim with the government, and the depiction of the city back then is fascinating--Dupont Circle is referred to as a residential backwater--but that's not the core of the book. It's primarily about lazy, carefree Big Tom, postmaster and general store keeper in a tiny town, and the changes he undergoes after adopting an orphaned infant girl. Her mysterious origins are eventually revealed along with Tom's, and everything resolves very satisfactorily. It's one of Burnett's sprawling, ambitious works, bringing together many plot threads and third-person perspectives, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The subplot about two out-of-wedlock pregnancies isn't at all psychologically believable, but Burnett's liberal-for-her-times views are interesting.

Vagabondia - Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1884

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 19:52:00 +0000

Plowing through new-to-me FHB paid off with this book, which I stayed up late reading, crying through the last few chapters. Why was this a successful tear-jerker when the other heroines dying for love left me cold? Because Dolly and Grif, the star-crossed lovers, are so believably specific, people with strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. The misunderstandings that separate them are neither ridiculously trivial nor engineered by a villain. None of the other characters--the foolish sister, the rich suitor, snooty Lady Augusta--are cardboard. The cultural camps of Philistines and Bohemians are distinct but neither all-good nor all-bad. A new favorite.

Frances Hodgson Burnett kick - minor works

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:37:00 +0000

Now that Project Gutenberg offers epub format, and the Sony Reader is switching over to it, I'm downloading stuff like crazy. One click from Google Books, too! I have both a PRS-505 (thanks, Boyce!), which I'm using now, and a PRS-500, which is off at the Sony factory being updated to use epub (500 owners, don't miss your chance!).

My first catch-up has been Frances Hodgson Burnett, one of my favorite authors. I picked up everything in PG and Google Books, finding some stories, novels, and novellas I've never read. Here are some not-very-good ones:

The White People - 1920. Burnett did write some great stuff late in life (Robin, one of my favorites, is 1922), but this is almost dreck. A little girl sees ghosts but doesn't know that's what they are until she grows up. Burnett's indulging her woo-woo leanings but not providing any compensating character development. I can read T. Tembarom every year but I'd never pick this up again.

Theo: A Sprightly Love Story - 1877. Not close to dreck but not good either, from the other end of her career (yet I loved 1873's Vagabondia, which I'll cover in a separate post). A poor girl is brought to London by a wealthy aunt, falls in love with a man who's engaged to be married, pines away until everyone is noble & self-sacrificing. Burnett sure knows how to work the cliched situations, but at least these characters have a little more dimension.

Lodusky - 1877. Burnett's narrative bag o' tricks includes having two protagonists, an unreflective "uncouth" character (rural or blue collar/spontaneous and natural) and a sophisticated observer (citified and cultured/buttoned up and inhibited). Here there are three: the title character, a backwoods siren; a middle-aged female writer; and the writer's love interest, an artist who's fatally fascinated by the beautiful-but-evil temptress. Crossing class lines never works out in FHB stories. Lots of bad southern dialect, although not as incomprehensible as some 19th-century attempts can be.

In the Closed Room - 1904. Another mystical the-afterlife-is-wonderful story with a live child playing with a ghost child, but more fleshed out than The White People. Like that one, it's full of italics (late Burnett lurvs italics) which the early PG texts unfortunately rendered in CAPS, which leaves a very WEIRD impression.

Esmeralda - 1877. This time it's a sophisticated couple (French, teacher and artist) who are observers of an uncouth American couple: "Esmeraldy" and Wash, North Carolinians separated by E's social climbing nouveau-riche mother. Mother has her heart set on a "Markis" for her daughter. Double pining--Wash follows the family to Paris and almost dies of starvation before the French couple operate the mechane.

"Le Monsieur de la Petite Dame" - 1877. A noble husband tries to sacrifice himself for his young American wife, pining for another. Set in Pari, sprinkled with "Pouf!" and "Mon Dieu!" in lieu of dialect.

The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment - A.J. Jacobs, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:56:00 +0000

Jacobs' books are catnip for me, and Guinea Pig Diaries is the funniest yet - a cross between Malcolm Gladwell and Dave Barry. Instead of focusing on a year-long project, as The Know-it-All and The Year of Living Biblically did, this one collects nine shorter stunts. Some (outsourcing all his activities) are inherently more promising than others (posing for a nude photo), but AJ milks them all for maximum laughs, interspersed with personal insights. But what completely blew my mind was discovering that his outsourcing experience, which first appeared as an article in Esquire (9/05), is what inspired legendary asshole Tim Ferris to write The 4-Hour Workweek, whose siren song (not unlike Amway) drew millions of gullible buyers. (It's "been sold into 35 languages!") You can't blame Jacobs, whose humane and fundamentally sensible outlook underpins everything he writes. Don't miss the priceless book trailer.

Heart-Shaped Box - Joe Hill, 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:48:00 +0000

Gushing reviews led me to order this for the library, and I finally got around to reading it. Joe Hill is Stephen King's son, and the buzz was that he'd matched his dad's horror ability in a totally different voice. True, and it's a satisfactory novel, though not one I'd re-read. The premise--a rock star who collects the macabre buys a haunted suit on the Internet and can't get rid of the ghost--is good, the characters believable, and the plot ties up nicely. Hill writes well and doesn't display any of King's faults, but he lacks a little bit of King's compelling narrative drive.

I'd completely forgotten the title is drawn from a Nirvana song--it's a very evocative phrase on its own.

Jackaroo - Cynthia Voigt, 1985

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:59:00 +0000

On a particularly stressful day I found a list of young adult fantasy which included a number of titles I wasn't familiar with. This is one of the few from the library's collection that I read after scanning the first few pages. The idea of a Robin-Hood-like disguise hidden away intrigued me, and the vivid realism kept me reading through the long initial sections before the Jackaroo cloak, sword, and mask showed up. Like Ursula LeGuin, Voigt shows a strong female protagonist dealing with a sexist society, but even more dominant is the class struggle. Innkeeper's daughter Gwyn and Lord's son Gaderian very slowly develop a genuine relationship after being stranded in a tiny cottage together for weeks, but the obstacles aren't waved away. The world of the Kingdom, which Voigt returned to in three other books, is darker than any of LeGuin's setttings; the attitude toward human nature reminded me of "Souls" by Joanna Russ. This actually wasn't fantasy at all, which disappointed me a little in the middle, but the deeply satisfactory ending made me glad I stuck with it. It sounds like the sequels can be read independently, so at some point I'll read #3 (The Wings of the Falcon) which is also in the library collection.

Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories - 1983

noreply@blogger.com (Hilary) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 02:11:00 +0000

Though I do enjoy the occasional ghost story, an entire collection--even of the best ever--was a little much, and I'm happy to list this on Paperback Swap where 3 members are wishing for it. Perhaps they work better when you're not alerted to the genre. When you know it's a ghost story, right off the bat the mysterious child/dog/crone/policeman isn't so mysterious--only the details remain to be determined. The only image which stuck in my mind was the "white fat hand" in Sheridan Le Fanu's "The Ghost of a Hand." The story itself is more imagistic than plot-driven. I did especially enjoy my dear E.F. Benson's "In the Tube," more light-hearted than the rest and with an optimistic ending (as in The Sixth Sense, the ghosts want the help of the living to communicate with their loved ones). That's the key--I like fantasy and not pure horror because the latter is so often purposeless. Why the haunting? No reason is given in classic horror--the scary stuff just is, and the story dwells on the protagonists' reactions. My impression is that seeing the motivations and mechanisms of the Big Bad steers closer to fantasy.

In the introduction, Dahl claims that women are/were (this was the early 80s) disproportionately represented in the writing of great ghost stories, as they are/were in great children's books. After talking about how rare and difficult it is to write a truly classic children's book, he veers off into an anecdote about the publisher Crowell Collier inviting "all the most celebrated writers in the English speaking world to write a children's story."

...[A]ll the writers accepted. These were big names, mind you, famous novelists, so-called giants of the literary world. I won't mention who they were but you would know them all.
The stories came in. I saw each one of them. Only one writer, Robert Graves, had any conception of how to write for children. The rest of the stories were guaranteed to anaesthetize in two minutes flat any unfortunate child who got hold of them. They were unpublishable.