Next late walk, I'll take the camera

Great walk tonight--doggies saw a raccoon and an armadillo!  I didn't know armadillos could run that fast.




Next up is book number 75

Fifteen by Beverly Cleary

In order to honestly review this book I need to time travel into 1973, when I was fifteen myself.  Turning to the wayback machine...

brrr...beep beep...nonny nonny boo....

Nope.  Still don't like it.

There were two good parts.  A passage near the end when she decided to quit trying to be someone she wasn't and just be herself.  Myself, me, Jane, is who I want to be!  I had to applaud.  I'd never seen that theme so well captured and followed through to a satisfying conclusion.

The second part wasn't exactly in the book, rather, it was in me.  The girl in the book reminded me of someone I once used to be.  I used to be the sort of girl who would rescue flies that a bratty little kid had trapped in snapdragons.  I haven't been that little girl in a long, long time...but once upon a time, I was.

My bad attitude is showing

Happy Endings Are All Alike (by Sandra Scoppettone) has got to be the worst written book I've ever read.  It had so much potential, too!  It's full of interesting people--the lesbian lovers, Jaret and Peggy.  The jealous, bitter older sister who wants to learn psychology as a weapon.  The mother who is a little more intelligent than her husband and so treats hims like a son.  The younger brother, trying to struggle out of adolescence without much in the way of a role model.  The good friend Bianca, unfailingly honest as she struggles to understand. 

Despite all that, here are the comments I made while I was reading it:

- I'm on page 37 and I've already been in five peoples' heads.
- Please, please please never let me accidentally pick up this writing style.  She writes a paragraph of omniscient backstory for every two lines of dialog.
- And keeps making really obvious editorial comments.  Is this story being told by God?

Worst of all, she tried to make it into a psychological thriller by adding stream-of-consciousness style passages from inside the head of an angry adolescent stalker, whose identity is kept anonymous until the bloody crisis.  It reminds me of Silence of the Lambs except (a) this book way predates Silence of the Lambs and (b) that book was actually good.

I see that the author has written many other books and most seem to be crime novels or thrillers.  Maybe they're good--I hope so--I'll never read them.  She has talent.  (Shudder)

Working late...meetings...blah!

My poor puppies got barely a walk today, in the dark.  But they did get the meat out of the leftover Chinese food from last weekend.  It beat throwing away half of a $10 Chinese takeout dinner.

                       The only reading time I got was to finish up
                                  Fables Volume 3 - Storybook Love.

I liked it better than the first two.  I don't know why--it just seemed better plotted and some of the drawings were awesomer than usual.  I guess I'll go on to Volume 4.

Sorry to write it--it's truth to me--

After waiting nearly forever--a year that I'm sure of--I finally got to read Dog Tags Yapping: The World War II Letters of a Combat GI, by M. D. Elevitch.

It was exactly what it purported to be--and I was so disappointed.

Somehow I'd gotten it into my head that this was letters to and from more than one soldier.  The "dog tags" plural misled me.  But it's not--it's only one guy writing to the folks back home.  And it got very boring at times.

Best were the "We learned to kill" letter and the letters describing his actual combat experiences.  Those alone were almost worth the book.  But near the end, as he recovered from a lung injury and then waited to be shipped home, the letters got really shallow and repetitive.  I skimmed freely.

So I kind of liked parts of it but I can't really recommend it to a general audience.  If this is your cup-of-tea, you'll like it.

Cover art not to be missed

Joyland by Stephen King



What fun!  Only a little spooky and not gross at all.  Just like in the last Stephen King book I read--11/22/63--the plot was only a vehicle to move the people from one place to the next, but the people, they were what made the story worth reading.  If I interviewed the author, I'd never be so stupid as to repeat the inane refrain, "Where do you get your ideas?" But I might ask "Where do you get your characters?"

No matter.  I meet them every day.

Forever by Judy Blume

I find it interesting that this book is shelved in the adult fiction section but New Moon (of the Twilight series) is in young adult.  It may be simply historical, since Forever was first published in 1975.  Was there even a young adult section back then?  I don't remember one.

Another thing I find interesting is that when I scanned though the Goodreads comments, several of the reviewers positively slammed the  boy.  He was a "pushy sex-obsessed hormonal teenage boy".  I don't get where this is coming from.  Aren't all teenage boys sex-obsessed and hormonal?  And this one wasn't the least bit pushy--I would call him sweet, patient, and understanding.  A "nice" boy.

I think the reviewers must have had a personal axe to grind.  Maybe they have a teenage girl they're trying to protect--a physical one, like a daughter or student or favorite niece, or a mental one.  A secret, hidden one, hurting somewhere in a dark corner of memory.

(I have to apologize to the reviewer who wrote the pithy description I quoted above.  She admits he reminded her of her own first boyfriend.  But what about the others?)

Other reviewers, and Ms. Blume too, I suppose, think the book is a good object lesson about the impermenancy of Forever. Sorry, folks--kids may nod their heads and pretend to agree with you, but they're not really listening.  After all, the Twilight saga sold 116 million copies.

A highly biased book review

                                              
                                        The Jane Austen Book Club
                                             by Karen Joy Fowler



It's like she took all of the things I hate about a Jane Austen book, recreated them in a modern setting, and buried them in boring backstory.  Nothing much happens in this book.  A couple of people break up; a couple of people hook up; but mostly they just sit around and talk about inconsequential things.  It was hard to like anyone but equally hard to hate anyone--I just didn't care.

Is it just me?  There's a certain missing depth factor in Austen, at least when I read it, and it's missing here, too.  Let me compare this book to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.  Both books have a small circle of friends who meet periodically.  In both books the friends support each other in times of need.  Both sets of friends travel the circumference of a sphere, starting at one point, spreading out into separate, curving lines, then ending up back together, at the opposite pole from where they started.  They end at a different point but it's still a point on the same surface.   Same world; same friends; same reality.

The difference is that in SOTTP the people live real lives in a real world and I, the reader, am right there with them.  I have to know how it ends.  I'm in there, sharing the pain, the joy, the worry and the quiet pride.

In this book, I was just a casual bystander.  Watching a made-for-TV movie. "Yeah, that was interesting.  I guess."

People Of The Book, at last!

Not for the squeamish, nor for those with overactive imaginations on the subject of a certain era of medieval history....
         I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.
         Dum, te-dum, te-dum, te-dum, te-dum.
         No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

But for an average Joe Reader like me, this was probably the best book published in 2008. I don't think it contained any literary devices, allegories or symbolism; if it did, they went right over my head and didn't distract me from the story. It's a rare, good story, too--the history of a book. A certain priceless book of illuminated Jewish prayers that lived beyond the lifespan of many human owners. Its many owners, like the bearers of the One Ring, were bewitched, betrayed, or redeemed by the book...yet the book lived on.

All of which you could get by reading the cover. But here's what it meant to me--it was a new acquaintance who turned out to be a lifelong friend.  It was uncomfortable at times--a movie I wanted to fast-forward--but a friend I would want to call up for a frequent lunch date. To visit just to say "Hi," have a conversation.  About art, maybe, or mortality.

But above all, it was a reminder that humanity can progress; has progressed.  There are times when you think it hasn't--children still die of malnutrition; power still breeds corruption; slaves are still bought and sold; people still kill in the name of God.

But now more than ever, a single human voice, raised in protest, can be heard. Across the world, we will all hear them saying

    This isn't the way it's supposed to be.

And all of humanity, I think, will finally agree.

A YA feast

The Land of the Silver Apples is a sequel to Sea Of Trolls, and in some ways, better. 

I especially liked the  new "people" it introduced -- ugly little Pega who looked more like a frog than a human; the Bugaboo and his Nemesis; Brutus the cowardly slave; and the half-elf, ???? (not telling!)

It was good to see Jack grow up a little--learn to trust his own judgement; stand up for what is right.  To deal with envy and come out (somewhat) the better for it.  To grow a little character.

Most amusing of all, the author had a chance to teach a little moral lesson...and totally skipped it!  The "obvious" answer was not the explanation, at all.  I loved it!

She's branched out into all sorts of mythology here.  It feels well-researched but never heavy.  Lovely, light reading.

Why do I bother looking at the weather forecast?

 

(in case you can't read this, I'll interpret--Monday, 95; Tuesday, 95; Wednesday, 95; Thursday, 95...)

According to the calorie counter app, I lost 1/10 of a pound this week!  I'm going to go look in the mirror!

Whatever I lost in poundage, I gained in book weight.  Callie and I went on another HPB run yesterday; taking advantage of my 15% off coupon.  Here's my take, minus Callie's three books.

It's dangerous to leave her alone in a bookstore too long.  Not that I don't like to see her reading (books that aren't manga), but oh, the things she chooses!  Guide To Mythical Beasts.  Witch Eyes.  Dragons.

At least it's something to do that's sort of outside. 

So now, I'm up to...

Number 70 on my 100 books, which sounds about right.  It's
                                                                    Down a Dark Hall
                                                                      by Lois Duncan

Creepy. Chilly. Cool!

I vote this book for "Most Likely To Spawn An Ongoing Story"...in the darkness of your pre-teen's bedroom, as she lies awake fighting off sleep, making up stories, spirits, and sequences to fill a fantasy world's dreams.

The pretext thrilled me (can't tell it for fear of spoilers.)  The execution annoyed me just a little--I think it should have been more personal in the characterizations.  I mean, like, the unbearably cute guy is just there, you know?   She says how cute he is and she says how she wants him to notice her, but you don't feel it.  Come on, I've been a teenager!  Nine-tenths of her waking hours would have been spent agonizing over him and plotting to get him alone.

All of the people are a little flat. If I'd read it as a teen, I'd have fixed that problem right away!  (in my mind!)

Recommended for under 15's especially. Not enough sex and violence for the older set, although they can always add it in their sequels.

On smallish dogs and Small Wonder

The cracks in the ground are so wide and deep that Zack stepped in one and fell down.  (I laughed).
And I read,

                                                                                  Kingsolver's Small Wonder


It's an odd coincidence that I'm reading these essays on the twelfth anniversary of the 911 attacks and she began writing them immediately after the attacks.  They are still as urgent now as they were then--maybe more so. And it is still as true as ever that the people who ought to be reading this book, aren't.

She has so many ways to make the point--
     The biggest weapons we'll ever build cannot ever really make us safe.

Or, more to the point--
     As our war drives a population into refugee status, immense waves of  new recruits are entering schools in Pakistan ... to train to a lifelong vow of vengeance against America.  One, somewhere, is just a boy, the age of my younger child.  Today that child and mine enter new lifetimes as hater and hated, and the door locks behind us all.

I hope I'm not quoting a passage that the author believes to be one of the weaker ones of the book--I don't think there were any weak passages.  And I hope I'm not misleading any potential readers that the book is a dry diatribe against war.  Far from it! It's about life, love, motherhood, pain, growing up...it's an eternal reminder that life is precious, all of it--why should we waste the world we have been given?  Cherish it.

My words are what's weak.  All I should be saying is that I especially loved the essays "Letter to a Daughter at Thirteen" and "Letter To My Mother". My daughter and I are like her and her mother in heart-rending ways--I was the shy introvert with an crippling fear of failure, yet somehow my daughter turned out brave, confident, and gregarious.  And I can't take the credit for it.

"Letter To My Mother" is one I wished I had written.  The events in this story are true.  Names have been changed to protect the innocent. So true for me and my mother, in vastly different times and places, that we did eventually come to understanding and deep forgiveness.  We all hate our mothers, for a while, but some of us are lucky enough to get over it.

One odd thing, Barbara Kingsolver is only three years older than me, but in the ways she describes her coming of age against a "woman's place in the world", she seems to have grown up in a different generation.  It's as though she was a woman of the sixties, but me, of the eighties.

If you're a woman our age,pick up the book and read those two essays and see if you agree.  I'd be curious to know.   Even if you choose to read nothing else.
(You won't!)

Hats off to

  The Sea Of Trolls by Nancy Farmer.

 It's a kid/young adult book, but even as an old crone I give it 4-1/2 stars.  I'm rounding down for Goodreads, but at a younger age I would have definitely rounded up.

It's the best piece of fictionalized history I've read since The Gods Must Be Crazy or Drums Across the Mowhawk (whichever came last.)   The author did her research well but didn't let it interfere with telling a whopping good adventure story.  In the time and place of the legends of the Norsemen, she created an unlikely hero that you have to like--in spite of him having an intact nuclear family.  Mother, father, and a bratty little sister.  Is that even possible in YA fantasy?

Her world is beautiful, fanciful, fearful, sordidly grim and sometimes very funny.  And I only have one quibble with her fictional reality--
Is it true you can't housebreak a crow?

Almost good enough to recommend--

Okay, I admit to liking it.  It's way goofy and even kind of funny.

In other hot news items (no, this isn't about Miley Cyrus naked on a wrecking ball), I attempted some weeknight cooking.  Chicken teriyaki--good, but halfway through when I poured off the cooking juice and added the sauce, I added the sauce cold.  Refrigerator cold. 

What was I thinking?

So I've made it to an age...

...the number of which I typically round up to sixty rather than round down to fifty.  I guess I'm lucky to still be alive.
Doesn't feel like it.  Except for this--

Dancing At the Edge of the World             Essays by Ursula K. LeGuin

Worth the price of the book for the Bryn Mawr Commencement Address alone.  She makes us stop and think about the three languages we learn--the Father Tongue, the Mother Tongue, and (if we're lucky), the Native Tongue.   The graduating students whom she addresses have heard the Mother Tongue from their earliest days.  They were once fluent in it, yet it is in danger of vanishing from their hearts as they pursue the future--success in a man's world.  The university education will teach them to speak the Father Tongue and thus parrot the whole set of values that go along with it--distancing of self from object; the importance of primacy, rule by might and the assumption of right.

But the Native Tongue is one they must learn on their own-the language of life that can only be felt and heard and smelled and sung.  It cannot be described--to me it is "the singing voice" but to you it may be something so different, it's best not to name it.

The rest of the book is lively with essays, writings, travel logs and book reviews.  You can pick and choose as your fancy flies.  I loved the flow-of-consciousness-style description of her journey across America.  It reminded me so well of the places I'd seen.  And the trip through a section of England made me remember of why my life list must include a trip there, just to amble through the country lanes and stir up the dusty footsteps of my cultural ancestors.

 I was shaken out of sorts by the feminism--no--call it womanism--of The Left-Handed Commencement Address.  The theme of this address might be to "be at home on the night side--the side of life that is the opposite of success, domination, power."  The night side, the dark heart of the forest, the origin of humanity.

 I'd not have missed these essays for any number of calendar years.

Finished

Wild: From Lost To Found On The Pacific Crest Trail

by Cheryl Strayed




Un-be-liev-able.  It was hard not to rush and skim through a book so gripping as this.  But as I wrote that comment, I realized something--that is the reason it'll get four stars on Goodreads instead of five.  It's a delightful combination of movement, retrospection, and introspection, and I highly recommend it to anyone.  But it lacked the sense of place I want to experience when I'm reading someone else's travels.  The looking out at the world around you and experiencing the jaw-dropping wonders of the natural world.  I never wanted to go back and read a passage twice.  She could have written this book on any trail, anywhere.

This she explains, and apologizes for.  Most of the time she was staring at the trail in front of her and concentrating on putting one foot in the front of the other.  In place of the "sense of place" I wanted to feel, this book substituted human encounters--people.  The people of her life, past and present, and the myriad interconnections that make a human being.

And that's a lot to get out of a travel book.

Rhapsody to a long weekend

Saturday was a me day, and while I didn't have quite as much fun as I'd expected to, I had a little.  I made a major HPB run and only spent $70 because of the 20% off special.  I found several books on my list but then lost the list.  I seem to be always losing scraps of paper these days.
But here's my stash.

I don't write about the garden anymore because there is no garden.  It's transformed to weeds and potential.  When (if) the weather cools down I'll get back out there with gloves, lawnmower and tiller; turn it back into gray dirt with weed seeds and grass roots buried beneath the pocked surface.  But until then I try not to think about it.

Since it hasn't rained in six weeks and the temperature is regularly hitting 103, the ground is cracking open in agony.  As a kid I thought cracks were mysterious and longed to be small enough to explore into them.  But now, they just seem a sign of unhappy earth.


 

Today (Monday) is going to be a catch-up day, because yesterday was a movie day!  Sad to say, those are my best days nowadays.

 

Fun.  Charming, one might say.  I suspect they were quoting from a book at times, but I couldn't be sure.

I need to be careful what I put on my list

The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox

Let me first explain that I had no business reading this book.  If was a kids' book, strictly.  I picked it up when I was reading a librarians' blog and she seemed to think it was worth recommending.  To kids.

I beg to differ.  I wouldn't recommend this to any kid I know, and in fact, I'd be quick to un-recommend it.  It's one of those books that's trying so hard to be "Newberry Medal" politically correct that it distorts history.  Jessie is growing up in New Orleans near the end of the pre-emancipation period.  He's poor and uneducated...yet--oddly--drawn to and disturbed by the atrocities of slavery all around him.  When he's picked up and put to work on a slaving ship, he reacts strongly to the abuse of his fellow human beings.  He reacts like a 20th century kid would.  Isn't that convenient?

Once you swallow that bushel-sized basket of coal, the story becomes believable.  He's just a kid, after all, and pretty powerless to change things.  Toward the end it gets pretty good.

But, oh! How it hurts!  Given the time, place, and characters, why couldn't she have written a story of how a normal (clueless!) kid comes to understand the true atrocities of slavery?