Why reading junk is okay

I'm about half-way through my re-read of Angela Thirkell's 35 novels. A book or two ago (I'm currently reading Marling Hall, first published in 1942) I stopped by the public library to borrow some books on CD for our drive to Cincinnati last weekend. As I wandered the shelves, I found myself staring at The Book of the Dead, Patricia Cornwell's latest Kay Scarpetta book. Now, it really wasn't my fault; the book happened to be shelved right at eye level, so I couldn't help seeing it there -- also, Predator [A] (which means it's an adult book if you're following along in the category columns on the right), the book before The Book of the Dead [also A], has a neon-green dust jacket, which tends to catch the eye even if you don't find it staring at you, six inches in front of your nose.

I should explain. I'm a teensy bit of a true-crime fan. It's not necessarily a good thing, but given the number of Law & Order shows out there and the length of the original show's run, I'm not the only individual with this problem. (For the record I was watching when Mike Logan was on his first partner and Michael Moriarty was Ben Stone, the original D.A. who liked to confront every defendant with "Siiiiiir!" I'm very unclear about why I feel proud of this. I also liked Chicago Hope, but that's another blog entirely, I think.) At any rate, before my kids were born, I was a huge fan of Patricia Cornwell's work. I was also reading a great deal of Anne Perry at that point -- another [A] author -- and since I was usually reading their books concurrently, my husband and I enjoyed debating which plotline would end with a more fantastically improbable twist. Until Cornwell's Point of Origin, which we listened to in the car on the way to Cape Hatteras just before our daughter was born and found incredibly silly, Perry usually won. Point of Origin was significant on a number of levels, though, because once I had my daughter in my arms, I realized that I was far less interested in reading about crime. So Perry and Cornwell stayed at the library for the next few years.

It may be significant to note, here, that I have never actually purchased a crime novel. I don't need to own them. I don't want to be in that world full-time. I just like to visit and go home to my Trollopes and Thirkells and Pratchetts and Cynthia Voigts.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Sometimes, not always certainly, but sometimes, it can be very palate-cleansing to read some junk. Don't get me wrong, clearly some junk reading is better than others. I have, for example, never been able to get all the way through a Harlequin romance. I'm fond of romance. I like a good love story as much as the next person, but it does need to be a good love story. Same thing with a mystery or a crime novel -- make it reasonably good and I'll gobble it right up, but please don't ask me to read absolute trash.

So last weekend, heady with WWII English manners, I took a detour and read The Book of the Dead, which was confusing, so I had to go back and read Predator. I think I've gotten it out of my system now, but Patricia Cornwell still owes me an apology for Black Notice. That loup garou nonsense was just silly. Stephenie Meyer, that goes for you too! Stop with the werewolves already!!!

And the rest of you, if you are a 7th or 8th grader, let me know and I'll find you some fun reading that doesn't involve true crime. Don't worry about waiting a while, like their Law & Order TV counterparts, Patricia Cornwell and Anne Perry aren't going to disappear anytime soon.

Kate - the Hepburn biography

I finally finished reading Kate.

Here's the scoop (problematically placed spoiler alert!!!): everyone in Katharine Hepburn's life was gay. Really. Everyone. Except John Wayne. Which is the one part I think William J. Mann may have gotten dead wrong.

Wasn't that nice of me to save you 656 pages. It really is a very big book. If you are fascinated by Katharine Hepburn (like me) you probably have to read it just to say you have. Otherwise, whew, that's a big chunk of pages. It's just so heavy... to hold up I mean... my arms got tired...

Also continuing to read Thirkell. I'm up to Before Lunch (1939) at this point. I think The Brandons is next, but I'll have to check before I start reading.

I know that's not much reading, but there was the premiere of The Dark Knight to see and this silly hooded sweater to finish...

Procrastination is the thief of time (well duh!)

You know how frustrating it is when you finish a book and it's late at night so nobody is awake to talk to about it? That's what a book blog is for, right? But when it's that late it just feels like so much trouble to fire up the laptop and talk to the blog. If, instead, a person decided to just blog in the morning, can you see how it would be that much more frustrating to wake up and realize that all of the brilliant ideas and insights of the night before are gone? That's essentially what happened to me last Saturday night. I finished Meg Rosoff's What I Was (YA/MYA?) and I'd practically written the entire blog entry about it in my head but I was too tired to actually get the stupid thing on electronic paper. Trying to reconstruct those thoughts now is immensely frustrating and just points to the fact that I (and maybe you too) need to write when the muse arrives to bring brilliance with a thump on the head, not later.

Meg Rosoff writes strangely compelling (or possibly just strange) books. Her 2004 novel How I Live Now (MYA) was a book I considered for the seventh grade dystopia list last year but discarded, reluctantly, because it was a little graphic on a number of levels. I wandered across What I Was (MYA?/YA) a couple of weeks ago in the public library and checked it out just to see if Rosoff followed the same pattern. This book, published in 2008 by Viking Adult press, does offer a similarly weird and otherworldly flavor, but the writing style and plot progression are both dramatically different.

The main character, whose name we don't learn until the end of the book, is a young man on the brink of, well, even he's not sure about that. As the book opens, our seventeen year old protagonist is beginning what should be his final academic year at St. Oswald's School. St. Oswald's is his last-chance for graduation, following expulsions from three schools in as many years. And, while our hero's parents expect their son to follow a typical, if mundane, upper-middle class British career path but he is, at best, ambivalent about his future plans. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth about this lack of ambition, though it is a lifeless sort of wailing (Rosoff's strange style comes through particularly in the colorless fog that is the future for her main character). The action begins, perhaps predictably, as the main character meets his destiny while trying to escape from P.E. class. Here's our hero pondering that moment as an old man: "We know now that time leaps and skids and suddenly stops short, as it will soon for me, as it did once on a day in the middle of the twentieth century when I met the person I wanted to be and asked him for a drink of water." (p. 204) Read it and let me know what you think. Post a late night comment if you finish reading and nobody else is awake...


What I'm reading right now: At the moment I am cruising back through, in chronological order, Angela Thirkell. A friend lent me Wild Strawberries which I had never read (thanks KWK!) and I've been diving back in to Thirkell with enormous delight (as usual). I'm also trying to finish William J. Mann's biography of Katharine Hepburn, Kate, which I borrowed from a colleague about a year ago. I need to finish that one before school starts, because it's 656 pages long and I'm only on about page 200 or so. I think I'll go see what progress I can make.

What I've finished lately - with few comments

Ravens-Gate - Anthony Horowitz
What I Was - Meg Rosoff
Daniel the Half Human and the Good Nazi - David Chotjewitz
The Wave - Todd Strasser

More on these later. What are YOU reading?

Genius zzzzzzzzzz - huh? What?

I finally finished Genius Squad this morning. Will it surprise you when I reveal that there is a sequel to this sequel? Cadel's story is like the song that would not end, and Genius Wars is the next in the set. I hesitate to say "trilogy," because I'm frankly concerned that Catherine Jinks believes herself to be the next J.K. Rowling. If you're reading this Cath, I'd like to say with all positive, and loving intentions, don't give up your day job. And don't call Vera Wang about the gown you're planning to wear to the movie premier either! While I feel quite certain that the books will be made into films (isn't that the reason to write books anymore?) I have my doubts about whether the films will keep me from falling asleep, unlike their literary predecessors.

I read Evil Genius because someone I respect had recommended it. I still respect him, and I still want to know what he's reading so I can read those books too, but I also want to confess that when I said I liked Evil Genius earlier this year, I wasn't telling the entire truth. I liked that such a cool person had loaned me his copy of the book, but I had to work to get that sucker read, and, frankly, Genius Squad was even worse. I found myself sighing over the same old problems. Awkward syntax (as though the books had been translated into English by someone who hadn't been reading or speaking it that long -- it was the "all your base are belong to us" phenomenon on a more subtle level), and ridiculous character names (Saul is the most reasonable first name in the whole set of books so far, but he gets the last name "Greeniaus" tacked on for good measure) caused serious irritation for me with both books.

More significantly, the author just didn't make me care. The hijinks and demonstrations of genius are well-imagined, but without a character-driven background, all the drama starts to feel pointless. The title character, Cadel (he has so many possible last names that it's not worth listing them all here) is mildly interesting, but his emotional conflict always feels surface-level to me, as though Jinks fears we couldn't embrace a truly evil genius. So Cadel isn't bad to the bone, he's only done evil things because he didn't understand they were wrong...and how boring is that? If you're gonna call your book Evil Genius, for heaven's sake, embrace it. Run with it. Wallow in it like Patricia Highsmith does with Thomas Ripley and make him really, deliciously amoral. Otherwise you need to call the book something like Morally-Conflicted-Due-to-His- Questionable-Upbringing Genius so we know what we're in for. Jinks is so unwilling to confront the true nature of evil (or so timid about whether her readers can handle it) that even the central villains, Prosper English and Phineas Darkkon (see what I'm talking about?), don't accomplish anything that's really merits the title. Anyone that was truly evil would have shot Cadel in the head at the end of book one and I would be done with this ridiculous series once and for all. Wait, maybe they are evil because they let him live in order to continue torturing me?

Will I read Genius Wars? Of course I will, in just the same way I'll end up slogging through Breaking Dawn in a month or so. While I think there's probably some medication available to help me resolve this problem, at present I can't NOT read the rest of the books in a series, even if I find them all terrible. (For the record, I didn't hate the Twilight series, I've just read better romantic fiction and better vampire fiction and I did resent being sucked into a trilogy that was 1792 pages long right smack in the middle of the school year. I'm also 39 and I've been married for almost 16 years, which changes your viewpoint on finding the partner of your dreams and choosing the course of your entire life when you're 17. I'll admit that I was also a bit put-out when I realized what the deal was going to be with Jacob. That was just one notch too far over the top for me -- if you've read it, you know what I'm talking about there, if you haven't it would be a total spoiler to tell you more. Why I can suspend disbelief long enough to get into the vampire thing, but not take it to the next level I cannot explain, but there it is. But, whatever conflicts I may have with Stephenie Meyer's work, she sure can write a page-turner, and I admire her enormously for that.)

Hey, while I'm on the subject, which of you is going to lend me your copy of The Host? I've only got thirty or so books lying around here waiting for me to read them, after all...

Recent Reading 1

Since school ended for the 2007-08 year I've been busy unpacking left-over boxes and reorganizing the things we managed to unpack before school started last August. That hasn't left much time for reading (or guitar or knitting or any of the other things that feel essential in my life). But here's what I've finished since around June 1st:

Reaper Man and Mort, (both A/YA) and both by Terry Pratchett. I am constantly re-reading Pratchett's Discworld novels and trying to figure out a way to use one or more of them in class with the seventh graders. For the moment I am striving to be content with having two (The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky) on the summer reading list. Both of these are books about Death, one of my favorite Discworld characters. Death always speaks in capital letters and his granddaughter, Susan Sto Helit is another of my favorites. You can find her in Soul Music and Hogfather, as well as Thief of Time.

World War Z, by Max Brooks (MYA) is an oral history of the zombie plague that nearly wiped out humanity. It's written in the style of The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston (a true and fairly gruesome story of the Ebola virus that I loved, but would recommend for more mature readers only because it does get pretty graphic and did I mention gruesome?). World War Z is a little less graphic, but still fascinating.

Taken, by Edward Bloor (YA) is a book I'm thinking about putting on the dystopia list for the fall, so I won't say much more about it here, except to comment that it is pretty typical Bloor (who also wrote Tangerine). In other words, expect a twist at the end...

Shift by Jennifer Bradbury (YA) is a new book, published in 2008. Chris and his best friend Win decide to cycle cross-country from West Virginia to Seattle. Only Chris comes home, and Win's overbearing and controlling father suspects that Chris knows more than he's telling. This one was extremely hard to put down, but we're trying to hold our kids to no books at the dinner table (we all get to read at lunch during the summer, but not at dinner), so I had to read it in two big gulps rather than just one.

I'm currently about halfway through Genius Squad, by Catherine Jinks. It's a sequel to Evil Genius, which I didn't like quite as much as I had expected it to do. When it comes to writing brilliant, but not always ethical genius teenager, I think both Eoin Colfer and Anthony Horowitz did it better with Artemis Fowl and Alex Rider.

Cereal Box Authors 1: Madeleine L'Engle

Didja ever find an author whose work you enjoyed so much that you started an all-out quest to find everything that author had ever written? And then when you finished the last book, you realized that you'd read cereal boxes if that was the only way to get more work by your author? It happens to me all the time and rather than try to summarize each book by the authors I love, it seems to make more sense to tell you about my cereal box authors and you can go find them for yourself.

Madeleine L'Engle (pronounced lingle) was my second cereal box author (the first was Laura Ingalls Wilder, but that's another post) and my all-time favorite author through adolescence and into early adulthood. She is probably most famous for A Wrinkle in Time, which I read when I was in fourth grade. It made more sense when I was in fifth or sixth grade, but I was already hooked by then. If you've only read the Wrinkle in Time trilogy (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door and A Swiftly Tilting Planet), you only know about a quarter of the story.

The Arm of the Starfish indirectly continues the Wrinkle series with less fantasy and more dramatic, spy-novel style. The main character, Adam Eddington, has been offered a summer position as an intern to famous biological researcher Calvin O'Keefe. On his way to the island where O'Keefe lives and works, Adam meets Kali, an incredibly beautiful and seductive young woman who throws herself, literally, into Adam's arms. But Kali may not be exactly what she seems in a book that's all about difficult choices in the face of deception. Ultimately Adam will have to choose between the scientist he respects and beautiful girl who seems to offer him fascinating possibilities. Not every book I enjoyed as an adolescent has held up to re-reading as an adult, but The Arm of the Starfish is still fantastic (and now on my summer reading list). A number of characters from this book will resurface in other L'Engle books, which is one of my favorite things about her work.

The Austin series begins with Meet the Austins, and includes The Young Unicorns and A Ring of Endless Light. Those focus on Vicky Austin and her family and can get a little bit preachy about choosing between good versus evil and light versus dark, but I read them over and over from middle school through college. Vicky reassuringly reminded me of myself: awkward, a little plain, not very confident and hyper-aware of all her own flaws. She does, however, manage to find courage and faith in herself when she needs it most (that was the reassuring part). Like most of L'Engle's work there is always drama and struggle and hard choices with just enough romance thrown in to keep things interesting without making you want to vomit.

Then there are the odd novels that don't seem to connect (but really do if you read everything), like The Small Rain, A Severed Wasp, And Both Were Young, and Dragons in the Waters. Several of L'Engle's adult books -- Certain Women, A Live Coal in the Sea and Ilsa also refer obliquely to characters that have appeared in her young adult work. In addition to fiction, L'Engle wrote several memoirs and volumes of poetry. Much of L'Engle's later work, prose and poetry, focused on Christianity, including, occasionally, her struggles with faith in the face of trial.

I met Madeleine L'Engle at King College in 1986 (I was a junior in high school). [If I can find the picture I have of the two of us together I'll post it.] My favorite part of her work, aside from recognizing myself in it, has always been the recurring characters and different relationships they form from book to book. During the question and answer session after her lecture I found myself pleading for Adam Eddington and Vicky Austin to wind up together in the end. L'Engle smiled and told me that she wasn't really in control of what her characters did; they seemed to choose that for themselves. Madeleine L'Engle died in October of 2007, but somewhere, I have faith that Adam and Vicky are alive and well, enjoying their lives together.