Hilary's Book Blog

Attempting to read Wicked got me off on an Oz spree (one of my favorite things in life, following my ‘satiable curiosity—to borrow from Kipling—wherever it leads):

• The Wizard of Oz: The Official 50th Anniversary Pictorial History – John Fricke, Jay Scarfone and William Stillman, 1989
• The Wizard of Oz – L. Frank Baum, 1900
• The Land of Oz – L. Frank Baum, 1904
• Ozma of Oz – L. Frank Baum, 1907

I knew that the movie differed from the book, but I didn’t remember the specifics. (I was one of those who only saw TWOO on a black-and-white TV when growing up, so I missed the transition to color once Dorothy gets to Oz. Watching the movie now, I enjoyed the effect of the B&W to color transition, but thanks to the fertile imagination of childhood, I don’t think I missed out on anything back then—my mind supplied plenty of color! As kids my brother and I got to go to the short-lived Oz amusement park in the North Carolina mountains, which was pretty cool (you entered the house, then it actually spun around in the “tornado” and you exited onto the Yellow Brick Road).)

When you think about how the movie terrified so many children, it’s ironic to find out that Baum specifically wanted to get away from fairy-tale scariness (“It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out”). The book is indeed lower-key than the movie and the witch is nowhere near as prominent. On the other hand, Oz specifically instructs Dorothy to go and kill the witch. And the Tin Woodman sees a wildcat chasing a field mouse: “…although he had no heart he knew it was wrong for the wildcat to try to kill such a pretty, harmless creature.” So of course, he chops the wildcat’s head off without a second’s hesitation!

I had thought I’d probably get rid of my Oz books after this re-read—and I didn’t get past these four–but I do enjoy Baum’s limitless inventiveness so for now I’m keeping them. Favorites: the Gump (a creature assembled from two sofas and a stuffed quasi-elk head, brought to life with magic powder); the Princess Langwidere, who keeps dozens of heads to wear and therefore doesn’t need to vary her outfits; and the Hungry Tiger, who craves fat babies but whose conscience won’t let him eat any (he doesn’t deny how yummy they would be, so as a vegetarian who still craves meat I very much identify with him!).

I loved loved loved this tale of a silly quest—to build a navigable craft entirely out of wine corks—that became a seriously-interesting adventure. Pollack completely succeeds in showing the reader why this ridiculous-seeming goal was in fact a creative and worthwhile challenge, and explaining how he got so many people to help. His enthusiasm is contagious and helps to put all of our arbitrary human pursuits in perspective. When he gives us the context, Pollack’s choice to step off the White House speechwriter hamster wheel to fulfill a lifetime dream (with its own crazy stress and impossible deadlines) makes perfect sense. The technical and personal obstacles are brought to life so vividly that when Cork Boat triumphantly floated in the Potomac, and then sailed the Douro River in Portugal (the home of cork), I got choked up. Pollack writes beautifully and sincerely, without understating any of the difficulties. The closing lines:

But Garth says that, for our next project, we ought to build a rocket ship out of bottle caps. I’ve always wanted to go to the moon.

I love T.H. White, especially The Once and Future King, one of my all-time favorite novels, and Mistress Masham’s Repose, one of my favorite children’s books, with passages that always make me laugh. So when we were weeding the basement collection at work, of course I was going to check this out before sending it to the book sale. It’s got some good bits and lot of tiresome bits. At times, White exhibits a mixture of pomposity and denseness/insensitivity that’s almost touching in its innocence but is also annoying (I’ve known people like that). He loves Jefferson for all the reasons I did when I was younger, and has Tocquevillian insights into the US, as non-natives often do.

I forsee a time when the President of the United States will be as powerful and vicious as Caligula. We are in Republican Rome at present, the Emperors of America have yet to sieze power.

Yet there is something wrong with Disney … Why those awful mermaids encountered on the submarine trip? Why were they so saccharine, insipid, dishonest, unworthy, coy? Why was the sea serpent a babyhood dream, not grand or terrible or beautiful or even reptilian? Why was everything just wrong, the galleon unsailable, the whale provided with toy teeth? Why was everything a toy, in fact? Why was everything a pet? It seems that to Disney women, animals, children, knights, dragons and elephants are all pets.

Hatching Magic – Ann Downer, 2003

Quite good fantasy set in modern-day Cambridge, MA (where we lived for many years). There are lots of references to familiar landmarks (the NECCO factory, Rosie’s, Harvard Square) which made it extra-enjoyable for me, and the depiction of the struggling academic lifestyle is accurate. The wyverns are believably animal-like as well as magical and seem like great pets!

The Supernaturalist – Eoin Colfer, 2004

I’ve yet to read any of the Artemis Fowl books, so I was glad to try something by Colfer. I didn’t like it much. It’s got the choppiness/terseness I hate in much contemporary YA fiction, combined with a kind of macho action-overkill/emotional flatness; beyond-bogus “science” (viruses that reproduce in millions instantly, for example); and a future world so dystopian that I couldn’t understand how the protagonists could even survive. Lots of the plot didn’t make much sense. Some good satirical bits though–for example, in this future world lawyers are like a private police force and paralegals are the muscle.

My sister Elisabeth had recommended this, and then it made it to the list of the teen Summer Reading group (“Joust Read”) which I participate in to help out the Children’s Librarian. Great book, a truly original fantasy. (The language is a little choppy for my taste, but less so than much YA fiction nowadays). Re-interpretation of fairy tales (this is “Cinderella”) are a dime a dozen, but this one is so original that the characters come alive in a remarkable way. Ella’s predicament–she is cursed with obedience and must obey any direct order given her–feels genuinely alarming, and her skill in languages (and the importance of language to the ogres especially) is a great touch. My favorite little bit was the giant’s wedding ceremony:

The giants pantomimed their lives together. They framed and built a house and brought a series of older and older children from the audience into the imaginary home, and then more babies for grandchildren. It ended when they lay down in the grass to signify their deaths together.

We also watched the movie, which is nice enough but a totally different animal from the book. It’s all played for laughs and jollied up with silly anachronisms and impossiblities–a farce instead of an emotionally-realistic fantasy. Slannen the elf and the magic book are travesties who bear no resemblance to the characters in the story. And there’s nothing special about Ella (no gift for languages, for one thing)–she’s much more of a traditional fairy-tale princess with a good heart. Nonetheless, I liked the way the movie resolves Ella’s overcoming her curse much better; it doesn’t feel symbolically convincing enough in the book.

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West – Gregory Maguire, 1995. I couldn’t finish this, though I tried. I found it draggy and unfocused (hard to put my finger on; it’s not poorly written), and the political and social travails of Oz, though theoretically interesting, were in fact not. But it did get me onto a Wizard of Oz kick.

The Rule of Four – Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason, 2004. Read in large print on the elliptical trainer, and it really did motivate me to keep coming back. Very similar to The DaVinci Code but quite a bit better.

Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief: The Astonishing True Story of a High-Society Cat Burglar – Bill Mason with Lee Gruenfeld, 2003. I thoroughly enjoyed this although it’s a little long and self-congratulatory. Interesting: how easy it was for Mason to get by “unbeatable security systems” by simply thinking outside the rules (buildings with incredible arrays of alarms and locks on the front door, but the door to the roof isn’t even locked) and how baffled the owners and police were (akin to “Aliens must have helped them!” reactions to ancient technologies sophisticated in ways we no longer use). Thought-provoking: the way his first wife chooses not to know what’s going on until he’s arrested (and even after). Mason makes a big deal of how scary it was for her for the police to show up when she had no idea he wasn’t on the up and up. Yet it was clearly unmistakable he was doing something illegal (lots of money, lots of free time, lots of shady friends, “c’mon we have to leave right now,” etc. etc.) Reminds me of complicit Mafia wives and especially the Catherine Zeta-Jones character in Traffic.

Little Things Long Remembered: Making Your Children Feel Special Every Day – Susan Newman, 1993. A small book of good-to-great ideas for family rituals which cement connection. Example: taking a picture of your child’s room periodically (doesn’t have to be clean!) so they’ll be able to remember what it was like at various ages. Wish I had that! Some are a little generic or platitudinous, but they are all concise so you can quickly move on to the next.

Sigh… been in another writing slump. Too bad, because there have been thoughts I wanted to write about as I read many of these books, but the backlog is hanging over me so I’m going to catch up with batches of brief listings. I keep telling myself that just a list of what I’ve read is more than I ever did before I started this blog. And who’s reading it, aside from people who think I’m Hilary Duff? I am going to try putting at least a brief comment on each title; 2x better than nothing!

Watership Down – Richard Adams, 1972. Still holds up; a true epic. Notes I made: “his face…was a mask of blood, foam, vomit, and earth…” No no no! Rabbits are physically incapable of vomiting, which is why hairballs are a problem for them. Adams relied on R.M. Lockley’s The Private Life of the Rabbit for his research (which I read many years ago), and it must not have mentioned that. I marked another page, but I don’t remember why. The climactic moment when Bigwig tells General Woundwort that his Chief Rabbit has told him to defend the run still gives me the thrill it did when I was eleven.

The Look of Architecture – Witold Rybczynski, 2001. I like Rybczynski as a writer, but parts of this book reflect what I think is wrong with modern architecture. He seems blind to the truths Christopher Alexander recognizes and shares.

Gifts – Ursula K. Le Guin, 2004. Brilliant. I want to re-read this anyway & will write about it then, I hope.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke, 2004. As others have said, slow going to get into, then grabs you. A wonderful book. Captures the eerie, scary, not-at-all-cute true meaning of “fairy” like nothing else I’ve read. Beautiful and haunting; scenes I will never forget, like the stone statues in York Cathedral talking, and the ships made of rain.

A Calculated Risk – Katherine Neville, 1992. Not-very-good thriller with lots of unbelievable stuff about “teckies” (one of the reasons I read it), although the author supposedly was a systems consultant for IBM, Honeywell, etc. The heroine goes from a “computer ignoramus” to a “full-blown technocrat” in one weekend. If only!

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference – Malcolm Gladwell, 2000. Believe the hype–this is a fascinating book. I can’t wait to read Blink. My favorite kind of book, full of amazing tidbits to talk about. I need to read it again!

French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure – Mireille Guiliano, 2005. Basically the same message as The Fat Fallacy, more fun to read, but not as explicit as the typical American probably needs on the COOK FROM SCRATCH, DON’T EAT PROCESSED JUNK message. (She does say that; but IMO lots of people believe a frozen entree which claims to be “natural” and “heathy” really is, and don’t fully realize how different it is from the same dish cooked at home). The recipes look good, though I didn’t try any. My favorite thing about the book is how distinctive and French her voice is; it made me nostalgic for my years there.

This “brief comments” format seems like a decent compromise… I’m starting with the library books (except Watership Down) so I can return them!

The subtitle is so long I couldn’t fit it in the post title: “Why Your Papers, Books, Clothes, and Other Possessions Keep Overwhelming You–and What To Do About It.” As a slowly-recovering slob and clutter hound, who also has a soft spot (in my head!) for self-help, I’m a sucker for books like this. Making Peace ranks somewhere in the top third of organizing books I’ve read; it’s good, it’s useful, it actually has a new and different take on things (or Things as Glovinsky calls them), but it didn’t motivate me quite as much as I hoped it would. Some of that may be resistance; Glovinsky is really good at analyzing “Thing Addiction” and unpacking the many excuses, escapes, and evasions that people like me are prone to. She makes the excellent point that before diving in to declutter and containerize, the most important step is to change our habits of piling up new Things. I should re-read this book in a few months and maybe I’ll absorb more of it. The analysis of the types of problems people can have dealing with Things, which she describes as Trouble Tuning into Things, Trouble Seeing Things, Trouble Thinking about Things, and Trouble Moving Things, are especially useful.

A great companion to Fast Food Nation, not quite as entertaining a read but just as informative and scary. Critser traces the intersection of factors, operating from the 1970s on, which have resulted in a US environment that promotes obesity: the Secretary of Agriculture whose policies to deal with inflation, as well as corn and soybean surpluses, resulted in lots of cheap calories; the food manufacturers who turned to high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oil to raise their profit margins; the dysfunctional government health agencies which kept weakening requirements for exercise and diet; the school budget cuts which led administrators to eagerly seek “pouring contracts” with soda companies and to put fast food on lunchroom menus. Ignoring socio-economic differences, Critser says, exacerbates the situation. Public health messages don’t address poor people’s lack of access to the support systems that rich people have (high-quality, varied food; fees and transporation to excercise facilities; safe places to walk and play outside). Yet concerns over anorexia (a relatively rare disease if you’re not white and middle-class, he argues) lead to softening of counter-obesity messages. I don’t buy everything he says, especially when he claims that Krispy Kreme targets Latinos and supports his claim by idiotic quoting of their Spanish-language menu:

Everywhere the Latin flavor was pushed: “Chocolate iced custard filled” became “Rellena de crema pastelera y cubierta con chocolate.” “Cinnamon apple filled” became “Rellena de manzana y canela.”

Those sneaky Krispy Kreme executives, using translation to suck in customers!

Some of the most thought-provoking bits are the studies showing that when more food is available, people eat more, and that only the very youngest children can be relied on to choose just what they need. Anything that provides a boundary seems to help people eat less, whether it’s parental supervision, small portions, tight clothes, inflexible armchairs, or even a rope around the waist. Fast food merchandisers found that “price and value–not taste and presentation–were the key” to selling more. Gulp–that’s a personal weakness; I used to choose books to buy by how many pages I could get for my money, which is fine, but I do that with treats too, and that’s not so fine. (At least I’ve succeeded in resisting the temptation to buy the incredibly cheap 36-count boxes of candy bars at warehouse stores, though it’s been a struggle.) Fat Land is a fascinating book, and it’s also very well researched and documented.

I’m a dabbler who wants to know “something about everything,” so I love books like this. The one hundred things are all over the map but are each given just a few pages, which results in lots of detail for some (“wash your hands”) and ridiculous oversimplification for others (“eat right,” “get organized”). The gimmick is that an expert of some kind writes each section, so Grete Waitz talks about jogging, Dean Ornish about relaxing, etc. The only chapter I learned something new from was “wash your hair” (Frederic Fekkai), which says to apply conditioner only from the ears down, and that to have really glossy hair, you should rinse in cold water. That explains why washing my hair in the sink, which I don’t like but had to do when we lived in France, felt like it was good for my hair.