Return of the Book Blogger (aka OK So Now It's April)

Annnnnnnd... once again I have let months pass without writing a blog post or even managing to get one of my volunteer guest bloggers going.

Yeah, I've been busy.  Working and with kids and family and friends... but also because we moved to a new house and that was a giant engineering project from Hell.  But now I am in an awesome new house and I have fabulous new places to read!  Many of our books are still in storage, along with many of our book shelves... but still.  This is good.  I love the house and we have much more space to store our giant book collection, which it appears I may be physically incapable of culling.

Despite my lack of recent blog posts and my busy schedule, I have been reading for an hour every day... mostly.  If I don't manage an hour in a particular day, I catch up the next day (or the next...).  As long as it works out to at least one hour per day of book reading, I'm happy.  (No, I'm not counting listening to audio books in the car.  So that means on days that I commute I am getting extra "reading" in.  I LOVE THIS.)

So... where am I now in meeting my goal to read 52 books this year?  Well, happily I have already finished 24.  I am well on my way, and I imagine I am going to exceed the goal.  This is good!

The most recent book I finished was written by my friend Emily Rapp, The Still Point of the Turning World.  Emily's son, Ronan, was diagnosed at 9 months of age with Tay Sachs disease, a genetic illness that is invariably fatal.  Ronan died this year on February 15, about a month short of his third birthday.  Emily writes movingly of how difficult - really how impossible - her job as a parent became.  There are a few wrenching chapters (because I knew Emily personally and maybe because I am a nurse I had a hard time with the beginning, where she describes hearing the diagnosis for the first time.  The scene played out all too vividly in my mind).  Mostly, though, there is a lot of intellectual content about literature and art and parenting and how we deal with (or mostly how we deny) the reality that every single one of us is going to die someday.  This isn't a light read, but I am so glad that I read it and I'm always thankful that I knew Emily.  I just wish that I had been able to meet Ronan.

Before I got into reading that, I had been having some stellar luck with literary fiction selections.  One book that I listened to in my car, The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirezzvani was so amazing that I bought a copy and sent it to my sister-in-law.  Historical fiction set in Iran (then Persia) in the 1600s, illuminating the plight of women in that society AND ready by a very talented actress?  If only every audio book I read was that amazing.

In print books, I read several really interesting works in a row, all of which featured twins (I did not plan it that way at all).  First, I read Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry.  I loved The Time Traveler's Wife and had heard not-so-great things about this newer book, but I suspect that people who didn't like it as well wanted it to be The Time Traveler's Wife again.  It's not, but it is a compelling story that includes two strange sets of twins, a ghost, and a character with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  I enjoyed it.

Next, I read through Abraham Verghese's novel Cutting for Stone.  Twin boys are born to a nun in Ethiopia, setting off a chain of events that affects many.  This one is over 600 pages long and my sister complained that she didn't like it because it "didn't go anywhere."  It does meander some, but the point, I think, is the complex relationships between the characters.  I was never bored reading this and would recommend it.

Finally, I read The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards.  I started it with no idea what it might be about, and soon found myself pulled into a story about twins, one born with Down's Syndrome, and their parallel lives.  The circumstances of the twins' birth it unusual and the father, a physician, tells the mother that the second twin has died rather than confront the reality of living with a child with Down's.  The father instructs his nurse to take this child to an institution; not an uncommon plan for the era (the early 1960s).  Instead, the nurse leaves town and raises the child as her own. 

Those are the highlights from the past few months, although, as I said, I am cruising through a lot of reading material. 

Next up: maybe I will get that guest blogger going.  IT COULD HAPPEN, PEOPLE. 

Hello 2013, Hello Book-Related Resolutions

I read 41 books in 2012, which isn’t bad, but this year I want to do better.  One book a week seems reasonable (especially considering that I count the audio books that I listen to during my commute), so 52 books is my goal for the year.  And hopefully some of them will be books that I can read and donate or give away.  Most of our books are currently in storage as we attempt to sell our house, which adds an extra element of challenge to reading what I own, so if you are reading this, please cross your fingers that we sell our house soon and are able to move!

My secondary goal is to spend at least an hour a day reading.  This is trickiest on days when I work evening shifts in Rochester, as I wind up starting at 2 in the morning, but so far, so good.  And sitting and reading for an hour straight truly is a pleasure, and one I had nearly forgotten.

So far I’m on pace, having finished Michael Connelly’s The Black Echo and Stephen King’s fifth Dark Tower novel, Wolves of the Calla. 

I liked The Black Echo, but I’m not totally sure why so many people love Connelly’s Harry Bosch series so much.  I’ll read another one sometime soon and maybe I’ll see what I’m missing.  I mean… I liked it, but it wasn’t so compelling that I felt I had to go read the next ten immediately.

The Black Echo is also the first book that I read on my new Kindle (my husband owned it previous to me and gave it to me when he upgraded).  This means that it doesn’t add to or subract from the number of physical books in my house, and it was kind of an interesting experience.  I’m not totally sold on reading in this format.  It certainly is convenient, though, and it doesn’t take up very much space.

Wolves of the Calla is a book I’d been putting off reading for years.  The fourth Dark Tower book, Wizard and Glass, had been my favorite in the series so far, and I was hesitant to go on, especially since I’d heard vague complains about the final three books from other King readers.  For the most part, though, I found this volume compelling, and I’m curious to see where it goes in the final two books.   

I do like the way King refers to others of his works, sort of tying them all together into one world.  I didn’t expect to meet up with Father Callahan from ‘Salem’s Lot again, ever… but there he was.  One aspect of the end of Wolves did make me question what King is planning to do… but I’ll reserve judgment on that until I see where he takes it next.  The sixth volume, Song of Susannah, is currently on my Shelf of Ten, although there are a few other books I want to get through first.

Wolves of the Calla will, like all Stephen King books (even the ones I don’t particularly like), stay in my collection. 

And… back to reading.  For now.

Best and Worst Books (of the Ones I Read in 2012)

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It is the end of 2012 and I have finished reading 41 books this year.  It would have been more if I had not gotten so bogged down in both orientation for my job and in reading Red Mars (seriously, it took me two months to get through that book), but that leaves me an easy goal for 2013: finish more than 41 books.

Without any further ado, here are the five worst and the five best books I read in 2012.

The Bad Ones

5. Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson.  I complained extensively about this book both online and to anyone who would listen to me kvetch in person.  The concept is great, but unfortunately, the characters are not interesting and the execution of the story is boring.  How you can make a story like this dull, I’m not sure, but Robinson managed admirably.  Months later all I remember is a few interesting moments and being baffled over why anyone would be remotely attracted to any of the three main characters in the central love triangle of the book.

4. The Other Side of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon.  I first read this terrifically trashy book when I was in high school.  I’ll be honest: I liked it a lot better then than I did this time around.  The plot was interesting and twisty in the way that a poorly written soap opera is interesting and twisty, and it does have some mildly interesting sex scenes.  Mostly, though, it’s nonsense.

3. Brother Odd by Dean Koontz.  I liked the first Odd Thomas book pretty well and the second wasn’t bad, but this was padded and poor.  Dean Koontz is such an on and off writer that I was entirely unsurprised.

2. Redwall by Brian Jacques.  Predictable, sexist, and sanctimonious, this is the first book that has actively made me want to stomp on mice or any other kind of animal.  The fact that the head bad guy’s name in this tome is “Cluny” is so stupid that it doesn’t bear repeating unless you are being warned against read this book.  Which you are.

1.  Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James.  A lot of people love this book, especially women, and… I don’t get it.  It is poorly written to the point of being comical and the sex scenes – purported to be super hot and interesting because of the BDSM content – are pretty generic.  And every damn character is so dull and uninteresting that you barely care about their alleged relationships.  There’s a lot better smut available for free on the internet, people.  And in print.  And probably on the backs of bathroom stall doors.  If you’re looking for erotica, I would look further.  It shouldn’t be hard to find something much better.

The Good Ones

5. Bossypants by Tina Fey.  Tina Fey is very funny, and so is her memoir.  I listened to this on compact discs while working in my kitchen.  Fey herself reads it, which is an added pleasure.  My son watched me doubled over, laughing, while listening to this at one point.  Really, really enjoyable.

4. Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine’s Greatest Lifesaver by Arthur Allen.  I have long been interesting in the debates surrounding vaccinations, and Allen offers a thorough and fascinating study of the subject, focusing primarily on vaccination and its history in the United States.  From the first vaccine for smallpox to modern vaccines for rotavirus, Allen takes the reader through American history and shows how public health and the government interact with the American people – both individuals and in populations.

3.  11/22/63 by Stephen King.  I became one of Stephen King’s Constant Readers when I was fourteen.  I’m forty now, and have read almost all of his novels – the great (The Shining, Salem’s Lot, The Stand, etc.) and the terrible (Insomnia, Gerald’s Game).  11/22/63 is long.  And well-researched historical fiction.  And it has an emotional love story in the second half that broke my heart a bit.  I was surprised at this late date to be able to add a new Stephen King book to my “top five King reads,” but there it is.  Don’t miss this one. 

2. Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado. This one wins for best non-fiction book I read this year, hands down, no question about it. Parrado’s first person account of his experience in the 1972 plane crash into the uninhabitable mountains of the Andes is gripping, harrowing, and occasionally nauseating. I have mentioned this book to numerous people as a “must read,” and it is.

1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. I was dimly aware of this novel before a fellow nurse handed me the audio book and suggested I listen to it on my commute. It is excellent, one of the best books I have read EVER. I literally was sitting in my car many times once I’d gotten home, wanting to sit in the garage and just keep listening. The movie is good, yes, but the book is better by far.



And that’s it for 2012!

Next year: more about books… and some guest bloggers!

 

Packing Up, Trying to Finish Books, and My Renewed Obsession with the Public Library

First of all, the major book thing I’ve been doing lately is packing them.  All of them.  Into boxes.  Many, many boxes.  And then carting them to a storage area so that somehow someone will buy our house and then we can move into a beautiful, bigger house that we are trying to buy (which is only about four blocks from where we live now).

I thought this would be more traumatic than it has been, to be honest.  But packing books is easy.  Yes, they are heavy, but they also fit nicely into boxes.  This is why most of the books that live in my house are now living in a cold storage area for a while.  I do have plenty of books still here, at least three or four bookshelves worth, so really, it almost doesn’t matter how long selling this house takes in this regard.  I will not run out of reading material.  It’s possible I will go mad and set the house on fire out of frustration with all the painting, re-carpeting, and cleaning we are doing, but at least I still have the solace of some books.

It is finally December and I’ve decided that I need to stop starting new books and start finishing off the ones I’ve been slogging along with this year.  Thus, the only new books I’m going to allow myself to begin before January 1, 2013 will be audiobooks from the library and maybe one or two from my shelf of ten (but only if I finish the previous Shelf of Ten book).

Yes, if it wasn’t clear to the two people who ever read this blog before, I do read multiple books at a time.  Usually the number is around five.  I’ll sometimes try to commit to reading just one at a time but it never works out somehow.  Currently I’m reading four… and it was five until I stayed up until two a.m. on Friday night finishing reading a library book; The M.D.: A Horror Story by Thomas M. Disch.

That title brings me to something I need to comment on: my obsessive love for our public library, which has recently been renewed. 

I love libraries.  My first job (other than retail work for my father) was in a public library.  I even went to library school for a while.  My most vivid memory of junior high is standing in the science fiction section of our local public library and looking for new Ray Bradbury titles I hadn’t yet devoured. 

Because of my attempt to read the books I already own – and try to get rid of some of them – I hadn’t been visiting the public library as much as I used to.  But now I’m obsessed again… because of the audiobook selection.  I’ve finished listening to eleven audio books in the last four months or so and I’m currently listening to two more.  I have a plan to go to the library today to pick up another one because I’m afraid I will run out of discs this weekend; I’m working four days in a row at Mayo but not planning to stay over in Rochester.  That is about eight hours of driving time that requires audiobook entertainment.

The only downside that I have run into using the library for this purpose is the occasional scratched disc.  I confess: that is super annoying to me.  But nothing is perfect.

Big Exciting Plan for my next blog post: Best and Worst Books I Read in 2012.  Probably.

Awesome Books That I Have Recently Read

Yes, it’s true: I do actually read books that I like as well as Books That I Hate Enough To Bitch About Them On The Internet (BTIHETBATOTI).  In this post I will regale you with information about the three that have been the highlight of my last summer/early fall reading.

First, Tina Fey’s Bossypants.  I spotted the unabridged audio version at our public library and it was read by Tina Fey herself, so how was I supposed to resist that?  I brought it home and listened to it in my kitchen and it was very funny.  So much so that at one point my 14 year old son watched in amazement as I doubled over from laughing while doing the dishes and listening.  Great fun if you like Fey’s sense of humor and this is one of those books that I actually think benefit from being read out loud.  The only downside was that some of Fey’s asides are difficult to hear… and I always wanted to hear every word, so I did have to backtrack sometimes.

There is a .pdf file of entertaining photos from Fey’s life on the fifth and final compact disc, as well as a video of Fey portraying Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live.  I enjoyed these items but had to ask my computer-guy husband to help me access them.  I am just clueless about that kind of thing,  I guess.

Rules of Prey by John Sanford has been on my mental To Read list for a long time.  Years.  Like since 1997 or so.  I finally got to it, starting the Prey series about which I have heard many good things from reading friends I trust.  And… it is great stuff, fast-paced, violent (but not too graphic, at least in this first book in the series).  It’s well written and I really enjoyed it.

Sidenote: I lent Rules of Prey to a co-worker who was stuck in an Individual Patient Assignment (IPA) with a patient who was sleeping or otherwise out of it.  My co-worker was under the misapprehension that this book was nonfiction, perhaps because it is set in the Twin Cities area and it depicts Minnesota so clearly and realistically.  But no, it isn’t non-fiction; it’s made up. 

Thankfully.

And now we come to Judy Blume’s classic, Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret.  I read this book waaaaay back when I was in grade school and vaguely remembered enjoying it.  Julia, my 10 year old, is so interested in Growing Up and All Things Puberty that I ordered a copy for her for her birthday.  She read it in short order and it was sitting there… so I picked it up again.

I’m so glad I did!  I had forgotten almost everything about this book. Mostly I remembered that it was a book about puberty and a girl named Margaret.  I had entirely forgotten the huge struggle that the main character, Margaret, is going through, trying to choose which religion she might be… Catholic or Jewish?

This is a very fast read and so well done, brilliantly capturing the desire of young people to just be “normal” as they enter puberty - and trying to figure out what that might even mean.  Julia loved it and I highly recommend it for preteen and tween girls and for those of us who might want to remember how scary, exciting, and confusing this age was for us, too.

So… these three books aren’t adding to or subtracting from my personal library.  Bossypants needs to go back to the public library and the other two I’m keeping. 

And I’m buried in trying to move right now (!), so who knows when next I will blog about books.  But I will do it.  You will see.

Brian Jacques, You Are Dead to Me. Dean Koontz… You Might Be Next

Oh Lord, now how long has it been since I posted? 

That long, huh.

Well… sorry.  I keep going off to my job to “work” and “be a nurse.”  It’s fun sometimes and it’s really tough at other times, but I do love my patients and I rarely leave without learning a lot of new stuff.  Plus I have taken to listening to audiobooks on my commute, so even if I work on a particular day I can get in almost two hours of reading time.  It’s like magic! 

I read a bunch of books over the summer, of course, but one stands out as the most irritating book: Redwall by Brian Jacques.  I purchased this book long ago (possibly as far back as the late 1990s, when I used to work at a Barnes and Noble store).  It came highly recommended as young adult fantasy.

And… I hated it.  Pretty much the entire thing.  I thought the narrative was entirely predictable, the characters were cliché (and when they weren’t cliché, they were obnoxious), and the main character – the hero of the book, Mattias the mouse - was a sanctimonious twit.  The leader of the antagonists in the story, “Cluny the Scourge,” was equally annoying.  It is never a good sign when, as a reader, I am laughing at the stupidity of the bad guys and I want to stomp on the heads of the good guys.  On top of all of that, the sexist treatment of Cornflower, Mattias’ love interest, was just… ugh. 

Admittedly, I am not a huge fan of fantasy writing.  A few years ago I read a book that was about fairies that nearly put me into a coma.  I struggled to get through Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books (although I love the movies and the story). 

But it is also very unusual for me to not like something about a book.  In this case, all I can say in its defense is that, despite being written for children, the author does not shy away from interesting vocabulary choices.  Otherwise… I hated it.  And I will never read any of the ten zillion sequels.

So.  Onward to the Dean Koontz book that I read earlier this year, Brother Odd.  I really enjoyed the first book in this series, Odd Thomas, and I liked the second book, Forever Odd well enough to not be horribly annoyed by it.  Brother Odd, though… meh.

Dean Koontz has always been a wildly uneven writer.  I remember the first book I read of his, Strangers.  It was great for the first half – what a build-up! – but then the second half, with the explanation for what was going on, was total crap.  Later I read Watchers and loved it.  Intensity was pretty good, as long as you can suspend your disbelief long enough to believe that the smart main character would do something profoundly stupid in the middle of the book instead of doing the sane, sensible thing to save herself and others.  (SO annoying!)

Like I said, I liked the first two books in the Odd Thomas series, at least enough to keep reading.  The concept is solid; a man who sees the dead and sometimes works to avenge their deaths, and who also sees other supernatural creatures that portend terrible violence.  Odd is charming and quirky and has interesting friends, and he is truly heroic in Odd Thomas, the first book in the series.

But… Brother Odd is just kind of meh.  The writing in the narrative veers from quirky and fun to overwrought and dramatic and back, which is jarring.  But worse… not much happens in the first hundred pages or so.  The book is over four hundred pages long, but with proper editing it could have been much shorter.  (Not to mention better written.)

I will no doubt read Koontz again, because sometimes his books really are written well and they can even be scary.  I just can’t recommend Brother Odd.  And, like Redwall, it is going on the donation pile and leaving my house for good.

Thankfully I have been reading some fantastic stuff lately, and I hope to blog about it soon.  Not kidding.

Promise.

The Inevitable _Fifty Shades of Grey_ Blog Post

Okay work has been busy and life has been busy, but really... how it it July already?  In 2012, I mean. 

For the two people that ever look at this blog, apologies for once again going weeks without writing... life gets in the way of our best intentions, doesn't it. 

I have finished reading Blockade Billy by Stephen King and Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah, as well as two more volumes of the Walking Dead graphic novel series that Robert Kirkman writes.  All were interesting and had some good moments.  The Stephen King book is staying, Kristin Hannah goes to whomever wants it (takers?), and the graphic novels are going on loan to another nurse on my unit at the hospital.

Really, it's just way more fun to write about books that I don't like.

Which brings me to Fifty Shades of Grey, the uber-popular first book in the Fifty Shades trilogy, penned by E.L. James.  E.L. James began this series as Twilight fan fiction of a (far) more adult nature, and then it got really popular online, so she edited it and published it and it got to be a huge hit.  (At least that's what I understand.)

Now, I haven't read any of the Twilight novels.  I don't even want to, even a little bit, especially after reading Fifty Shades of Grey.  The only thing I think Fifty Shades has going for it is some decently written sex scenes (by no means all of the sex scenes even qualify as "decently written," though).  Everything else about it is uber-annoying, in particular the main characters, Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. 

Christian: he's a super rich, super damaged person (apparently), who is very into being a Dominant in the sense of consensual sado-masochistic sex.  He's not interested in any other kind of relationship with a woman.  And he won't let Ana touch his upper body for some reason.  But at least he's up front about what he requires in a relationship.  He's also annoyingly controlling, especially about Ana and what she eats (what woman can resist being repeatedly told to eat all their food?), and about... well, kind of about everything. 

Ana: Oh lord, where to even start with this woman.  She's 22, graduating from college, and she's not only a virgin who has never even been curious enough to masturbate, but she's never been attracted to any man before she met Christian.

Now... I know very well that there are 7 billion people on the planet and we are all different, but really... that just seems crazy to me.  But okay.

I would have less of a quarrel with the story if it wasn't badly written, poorly edited, and sometimes inadvertently hilarious.  There's a sex scene in which Christian takes off his watch and his jacket (I'm with you so far, Ms. James), but then the text specifies that he takes off his socks "individually."  First of all, this is a sex scene and there is just nothing sexy about men's socks.  I'm sorry, I don't want to hear about them in this context.  I've been around the socks that men have been wearing all day.  Please don't write about them in a sex scene.

Secondly... how else would one take off their socks?  Go put some socks on.  Now try to remove them "individually..." that is how you always do it, right?  Put them back on.  Try removing them simultaneously.  It's not even sexy in a funny way... you just look like an idiot.  Now put your socks in the laundry and forget you ever tried this experiment.

There's a series of hot sex scenes toward the middle of the book that take place over the course of two or three days... which would work better if in the text, Christian hadn't just had Ana examined by a gynecologist right before all the sexual activity starts.  I know there are a lot of different people on this planet, and I'm not shocked or whatever by the S&M content in this book, but I do not even want to understand a woman who feels like having a lot of sex right after a pelvic exam. 

 The upside of this book is that some friends and I have had some great laughs while looking through it.  It's also a fast read.  I actually have a short list of friends who want to borrow it now that I'm finished with it, so I don't have to feel like it's going to stay in my house forever, taking up space.  AND, if I want extra lolz, there is a blogger called Jennifer Armintrout who has read through the entire series (I think) and hilariously complained about each chapter:

http://jenniferarmintrout.blogspot.com/p/jen-reads-50-shades-of-grey.html?zx=bf3a8545c6541106

And... that is it.  Fifty Shades isn't good, but it is kind of in the So Bad It's Good category, at least if you are paging through it with hilarious people.  

It's not going to stay in my permanent collection, but I'm not sorry I read it.  I am somewhat disturbed by the occasional Facebook posts from my friends, wishing they would find their own Christian Grey.  But hey, maybe we just have really different tastes in men.

The next book I'll be finishing is Dean Koontz's Brother Odd.  I have a feeling I will be blogging about it in the near future.

Red Mars, You Kind of Suck

Is it May again already?  No one has called an RRT* on this blog? It's still breathing... barely.  I'll try to get it stable again here, I don't want to have to move it to the Intensive Care Unit for blogs (wherever that might be), or - God forbid - have a funeral for it.

I guess I should start by making my excuses.  I've been training at a new job that is in a city an hour away from the one I live in.  I'm tired a lot and busy a lot and I haven't been reading a lot.  And the book I have been reading, Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, left a lot to be desired.  It took me two months to get through it.

I've been wanting to read Red Mars for many years.  It won a Nebula Award for best novel in the early 1990s and the concept is compelling: this is a story about how Mars is colonized and the different personalities who envision different fates for the planet.  Robinson does a great job of imagining what the science and politics might look like in that eventuality and he creates a lot of conflict.  So you might think this five hundred-plus page book would be a page turner.

It is not.

The major problem I had reading through this book is that, despite a huge cast of characters, I felt indifferent toward all of them.  Much more time is spent on what the characters are doing with their work than anything else.  It's hard to feel anything for anyone when all you know about them is that they are brilliantly intelligent and hard-working. 

The book does try to hook you in with a love triangle between three of the protagonists, Frank, John, and Maya.  Within the first thirty pages or so you know that Frank is angry about something, enough so that he kills John.  This frames the book and we are taken back to the beginning of the colonization, but it's never clear why Frank committed murder (was passion or jealously over Maya?  professional envy?  politics?  who knows!).  Neither is it clear to the reader why any of these three characters would be attracted to the others.  The descriptions of sex on the flight to Mars or on Mars read to me like really boring robots engaging in sex.  No offense to robots but that is just not hot.  Or interesting. 

Other characters in the book have strong points of view; Ann believes Mars should be left alone entirely and merely studied, while Phyllis, a business-minded Christian, pushes for it to be utilized as a new resource for the overflowing population of Earth.  There is a woman named Hiroko who creates a secret, hidden colony on Mars. 

Part of the problem is that there are so many characters that you get to know very little about any of them, and part of it is that so much is written about what they do that the reader never understands why they feel how they do. 

There are two further novels in Robinson's Mars trilogy, Green Mars and Blue Mars.  I'm curious to see if they are better than I thought Red Mars was, but that assessment is going to have to wait.  I have a lot of other stuff right now on my Shelf of Ten, and a lot of it looks a lot better than reading more of Robinson's vision.

The next book on my Shelf is Stephen King's Blockade Billy.  It should be a much faster read.


*Sorry, I really can't give up the health care metaphors at this point, apologies to anyone reading this blog, most of whom probably have no idea what I'm on about.

The Other Side of Nonsense

When last I blogged, I was responding to Julia's "eight books by March 14" challenge. Austin has, of course, already read well past eight, and is being appropriately gloaty. Julia has read five. I'm... slower, but my books are longer (really) and I have this whole "new job as a nurse in a town an hour away" thing going on. So every day is an adventure, but I try to get a little reading done anyway.

I finished Stephen King's 11/22/63 weeks ago, and damn... this one is a good one. I feel in love with Stephen King's work when I was fourteen and I have never given up on him (no, not even after Gerald's Game). 11/22/63 is probably his best work in years, and I say that as someone who really enjoyed both Duma Key and Full Dark, No Stars. Did I have some quarrels with the new novel? Yes. The basic concept is a time travel book - the protagonist goes back in time to try to save JFK from being assassinated. Most of the story is set in the past, and most of it rocks along compellingly. It drags a bit at times when King offers too much detail about Lee Harvey Oswald's politics and associations, and I have a quarrel with the heavy-handedness of aspects of the end of the story, but overall this one deserves an A. Note to those of sentimental disposition: having several tissues handy for the last few pages is helpful. This book will have a permanent spot on the bookshelves at my house. Not surprisingly.

I moved from the sublime to the ridiculous next, picking up The Other Side of Midnight by Sidney Sheldon. I remembered enjoying it when I was in high school... and it is compulsively readable, but for all the wrong reasons. It's entertaining but stupid, and I spent most of the book wondering just who the protagonist was even supposed to be.

There's nothing particularly believable in this (or any book by Sidney Sheldon, as I recall); it's full of rich, beautiful, wildly talented people, all of whom are having an unrealistic amount of badly described sex. The main character, Noelle, becomes rich and famous with almost no effort, and of course she's luminously beautiful, a fantastic cook, and no man she's ever been with can forget her. Her only motivation in life, though, is to get revenge on Larry, the first man she ever loved, a cocky playboy womanizer pilot. This book is set mid-twentieth century, and much of it is set against the backdrop of World War II. There's one minor character that can be described as a hero (a doctor who fights against the Nazis), but everyone else is consistently out for themselves. This flaw might make the characters likable if they had any other flaws... they just seem like paper dolls.

Curiosity compelled me to finish, and it is amusing, but this book is going in the donation pile. A better title for it would have been The Other Side of Nonsense.

I'm currently reading two more books; Diana Gabaldon's The Scottish Prisoner and Max Brooks' World War Z. I'm still hoping to get those eight books read by March 14... three down, five to finish.

The Bad Mother's Handbook and Julia Challenges Me

So I finished reading The Bad Mother's Handbook by Kate Long; cute and has some great moments. Not as hilarious as the title's premise might suggest, but still... three generations of women in one house, all of them sort of trying to figure out their lives... not bad. The worse thing about it is that each of the women acts as narrator at times and that means that figuring out who is "speaking" can be a challenge. I find that distracting. It's also by a British author and the characters are Brits, so that's also a bit of a challenge sometimes if you, like me, are unfamiliar with Britisher slang.

This book isn't going to have a permanent home with me; either it will be donated to the big Northfield used book sale that we have here every April (which benefits the local hospital) or I will pawn it off on a friend.

But anyway. Finished a book, moved another book onto the Shelf of Ten and on we go.

Julia, my energetic 9 year old, has been pining to go to our public library lately, and I'm planning to take her tonight. She is required to read books off of a Maud Hart Lovelace list that her teacher gave her - and J's goal is to read 8 of these books by March 14. We'd better get to the library, stat....

I showed J my Shelf of Ten, and she and I cooked up a plan for me to also read 8 of the books by March 14. I'm in, but did I mention that a lot of these books are really, really long? I'm currently into Stephen King's new book, 11/22/63, which is over 800 pages long. I have Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars on my Shelf right now... that one must have 500 pages. And the new Diana Gabaldon, The Scottish Prisoner, which will likely have great moments (swoon-worthy Jamie is in it, not just interesting-but-gay-so-somehow-less-interesting-in-a-romance-series Lord John), but sometimes her focus on historical detail takes time to absorb. Added to all this is the fact that I actually start a new job on Feb. 15, in a different city, and orientation will be full time.

But... I agreed to the challenge and I'm weirdly excited about it. Julia wants Austin to participate, too, and he seemed willing (it's a little difficult to know just what he is reading, since half the time he's using a Kindle at this point, but whatever). Julia did not want to invite Alex, which is just silly brother-sister stuff I'm sure, but it's not like Alex needs the motivation anyway. Alex is more interested in reading than in eating. (Alex is more interested in almost everything than in eating, but nevermind.)

So. The gauntlet has been thrown down... and I'm in. We'll see how far this takes me.

Oh Hello, Blog. You're Not Dead Yet? a.k.a. Shelf of Ten

No, my blog isn't dead. I've just been super busy with my Real Life for the past few months - giving vaccinations and trying to not starve to death or let my family starve to death and executing the necessary holidays that everyone expects (because we all know that the world will end if I don't send the right number of Christmas cards or whatever). So my writing time has been limited and I haven't been reading nearly as much as I should. My most utilized recreational activity has actually been working New York Times crossword puzzles (another obsession) lately.

But here I am, back at this blog, administering Blog-CPR and doses of epinephrine and atropine and whatever else I'm supposed to remember from that ACLS class I took last May.

So. Where am I? Well... I actually acquired four or five books for myself (yes, I said I wouldn't, but hey at least some of them were gifts!), so I'm probably not moving in the right direction in that regard. AND the last book I read was actually a re-read (the fourth in Stephen King's Dark Tower series; Wizard and Glass... which wasn't as astonishingly awesome as I remember it being, but it's still my favorite in that series up to that point). So no progress on that front, either.

But new hope has arrived somehow, as it always does, and I have a new scheme to get reading the giant stash of books in my home (and get rid of many along the way). I was reading my Twitter feed (yes, I know, shut up) and one of the many people I follow is Joe Hill. Hill is an entertaining writer (check out his Locke and Key graphic novels, stat) and he is also quite funny, so his Twitter feed is often full of good thoughts and ideas. And the Shelf of Ten is an idea I stole from him.

What is the Shelf of Ten? Essentially it is a shelf you can create in your home that contains only the next ten books you plan to read. The idea is to read them in the order you choose, but not to deviate from reading them. I take that to mean I can still read other books simultaneously (as if anyone could stop me anyway), but I'm willing to commit to reading these ten books, in order. And it's weirdly fun to choose them and make a little shelf, and I have to say that I get enthusiastic all over again every time I see my "shelf" (really a section of the floor next to a bookshelf in my bedroom, but nevermind).

So this is my current plan and I'll see where it takes me. The first book I'm tearing through is a weird one, The Bad Mother's Handbook by Kate Long. It was one the free book exchange shelf at the clinic I'd been working at and I couldn't resist that title. It's not what I expected it to be (sadly, it turns out that it is a work of fiction), but it's not bad. Happily, it's also not good enough that I'm going to feel the need to keep it on my bookshelf forever, either.

Okay, that's the update. Hopefully that's enough chest compressions and epi for this blog to last a few weeks.

Terrible Books That Need to Go... But Where?

Somehow it has gotten to be September already, and so obviously it's time for another blog entry. It took me forever to finish reading Catherine Coulter's masterpiece of idiocy, The Hellion Bride, but I finally have done so. This is the kind of book that I need to get out of my house, but where to go with it is a bit of a mystery. Yes, it really is that bad.

The first half of the book is bad, but the negative aspects of it are often humorous. The romantic hero, Ryder Sherbrooke (no, I'm not making that name up), is sort of fun, and determined to figure out what is going on with romantic heroine Sophia Stanton-Grenville. The year is 1803, it is a very hot summer, and Sophia is known as the whore of Jamaica, because she is alleged to have three lovers and everyone on the island knows it.

Sophia is actually a 19 year old virgin, being oppressed and beaten by her malicious uncle, who has ruined her reputation as well for his own nefarious purposes. Ryder is predictably intrigued when he meets Sophia.

Actually, that's not a bad start to a story, and parts of it might have worked if Coulter's writing wasn't so hilariously dumb sometimes. Perhaps my favorite passage (and when I write "favorite," I mean "the one that made me laugh the hardest") is as follows:

Ryder hated to brood. He'd done very little of it in his life for the very simple reason that he'd never felt the need to take himself apart from his fellow man and commit himself to brooding. It had always seemed to him to be a singularly boring way to pass the time. But now he felt the need and it was sharp and deep inside him. It was also unexpected and unwelcome and made him uncomfortable; nor did he particularly know how to do it properly. (p. 169)

I'm not even sure where to start with how absurd that passage is - it's both badly written and ridiculous in every way. It did make me chuckle, though, and it made me think - hey, maybe someone, somewhere should be offering classes in how to brood properly. Maybe there is money to be made here!

If this book had just stayed hilariously stupid, I would just donate it to next year's used book sale and not think much about it. But unfortunately the second half of the book evolves into being offensively stupid and it ceases being funny. Ryder somehow finds himself obligated to marry Sophia, which isn't a terrible romance set-up (it worked very well for Jamie and Claire in Outlander), but Coulter writes the absolute worst story for these characters that I can think of short of making them both into some kind of sociopathic killers.

First of all, Ryder leads Sophia to believe that he has taken her virginity while she was under the influence of a drug and he does not communicate with her that this is not the case. So already this is problematic. Worse, in the context of the story Sophia is terrified of sex, and Ryder's solution to this is basically to force himself on her every night until she likes it. Yes, this is a book that tries to make marital rape sexy.

Not only that, but (and maybe this is trivial), Ryder does something to Sophia that made me shriek "okay, so that's going to be an instant yeast infection!" to myself. And in 1803 I don't know what one would have done about that. But it freaked me out.

This is a romance novel, so of course everything eventually works out for Ryder and Sophia, but not before a lot of scenes that either made me angry or made my eyes roll out of exasperation.

I'm not a person who approves of censorship in any way, but this isn't the kind of book that I would want passed on to, well... anyone. It's just that terrible and offensive. And I would hate to think that young romance readers would get the idea that Ryder's tactics with Sophia would work.

So... do I toss it in the recycling bin or what? I'm still not sure. But I want to get it out of my house soon, because it is very possibly the most magically stupid book that I've ever read.

August 2011, Progress (Or Lack Thereof)

How did it get to be August already? This summer has simultaneously flown and crawled by; while I can't believe it's actually August, every day does have a dragging quality to it. This is typical for me for summer these days.

As a child, I loved summer. I could read whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and when that wasn't going on I had the television and the Country Club swimming pool (complete with a somewhat creepy salamander population, but it was what it was). I was a self-entertaining child. I could make a project out of anything, and I still have notebooks full of recipes I copied by hand or cut out of my mother's Good Housekeeping magazines. Those magazines kept me fairly entertained with their weird stories, too, especially the medical ones. I remember reading one that was titled something like, "My Body Was Rusting!" I mean, who could resist that?

My son, Alex, is like me in this regard; he will sit and read all day, or play video games, or watch television, and if I take him to the pool or for a bike ride, he's pleased, too. My daughter, Julia, though, is another story. She's a hyper extrovert and she has enough energy for ten children. Actually, I suspect she might have enough energy to light up the entire Eastern seaboard, but I haven't figured out how to make that happen. No matter what we do, it's never enough, and she's just exhausting to be with constantly. I love her so much, but there's no way can I keep up with her. Our personalities clash somewhat, and she just overwhelms me. So having her constantly in my care is part of why I haven't gotten a ton of reading or blog writing about books done lately.

But I have done a bit of reading, my project isn't totally dead. Maybe it's on life support, but I have hopes of a complete recovery.

Here's what I've managed this summer:

1. I re-read the first Hunger Games book by Suzanne Collins in early June. So, so great.

2. Finished Julia Gillian (and the Quest for Joy). Good.

3. Finished reading Stephen Clarke's A Year in the Merde. This was a library book that I requested after a friend suggested that it might be a fun read. It was, but I didn't totally love it. And it didn't help with my Read These Books In My House project. Fie!

4. Finally, read the second volume in Joe Hill's Locke and Key graphic novel series, Head Games. This series is so fantastic and creepy, and the concept is just brilliant. The artwork is great. I can't wait to read the third volume, but I have to wait because Austin owns these books, they were gifts from me, and he's sort of pacing out his reading of them. (*taps foot impatiently in direction of husband*). In some ways, this book shouldn't count for my "read 100 books here before I buy myself another one" project, because I did buy this one for Austin for some holiday - maybe Christmas. But... I'm counting it.

Now I'm on to really starting Hellion Bride by Catherine Coulter, definitely a title that will be read and disposed of, I suspect. I'm only a few pages into it, and so far it's nothing like what I expected. It's a period romance set in the West Indies, and the language is more complicated than the title would suggest it would be. I'm curious to see where it's leading anyway.

And that's it for now. More reading, more blogging to come.

I Share A Poem

Not everyone knows that I am a writer of poems, usually of the terrible variety. In late high school and much of college, I wrote many. This was an ongoing effort to express emotions (often a combination of hurt and absolute rage), so what appears on those pages is not something I share. Much of it is not only bad, it's frightening. A few are better than others, but still not something I'm apt to let most people read unless they are very much in my inner circle.

During my final semester of college I had finished my biology major and was close to wrapping up my women's studies major. I had time and inclination in my schedule to not only spend many hours in the dance studio (I often wished that I could have majored in dance), but also to take a creative writing class. Jim Heynen, a phenomenon writing instructor, would sometimes give us cues in class for ideas for poems. The following poem (one of the few that I am actually willing to share publicly) came out of that.


My Mother's Voice

Cats carry disease. If you get one I
won't come visit you. They're sneaky.
When you have children you should stay home with them -
at least until they're old enough to go to school.
You seem thin - are you sure you're well?
It's that goofy diet of yours. Are you sure you're getting enough iron?
You could stand to lose
five pounds.
You should have your children early
and then
have your ovaries removed.
No man would want to marry
someone who acts like you.
Drive carefully.
Of course you can both stay in the house while we're gone.
Just make sure you sleep in separate rooms.
Your uncle's very sick, but I don't think you're supposed to know.
Do lesbians have periods?
My family never talked about cancer, even when my mother was sick.
No one talked about sex. I found out from
my little sister.
Those clothes aren't very feminine.
Madonna is a bad influence
on the young people of America.
Don't you want to look nice?
I wish you were back with those nice girls at St. Mary's.
Women are less stable than men because women have periods.
Why don't you get your hair cut?
You're good for our family - if you weren't here
we'd never think
about these things.
You write mean things about me in your journal,
don't you?
When I'm dead, you'll regret it!

MishMash Plus Gone With the Wind

Reading (or not reading?) continues apace at my house. I finally finished a juvenile lit. book today called Julia Gillian (and the Quest for Joy) by Alison McGhee. This is the second book in the Julia Gillian series, and it's cute, with a good message... but not particularly compelling. My daughter Julia enjoyed hearing it read aloud (by Austin) more than I enjoyed reading it to myself, I suspect. I do enjoy the fact that the setting is Minneapolis and that the grade school kids in the book go to "Lake Harriet Elementary" (is there such a school? I have no idea!).

Possibly the most compelling part of the story is the odd names that Julia Gillian's grade school compatriots have. Are there a lot of kids named Bonwit, Lathrop and Cerise running around in Minneapolis? I'm not judging here; it just seems awfully unlikely.

So there's another book down on the way to one hundred; then I can buy another book. I've knocked out all of fourteen so far. Sigh.

The next book on my read it pile is titled (wait for it) Hellion Bride. It's a romance novel by Catherine Coulter that I believe I picked up for free. Of course I can't just let it go and get rid of it; it must be read first! Even if the title is completely absurd. (And really, even Hellion Bride can't compete with the bodice ripper title I recently spotted at the public library; The Earl Claims his Wife. And yes, I restrained myself and at least didn't bring that one home...)

The other book news I have is that I'm slowly reading The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting out loud to Julia. It's fairly absurd, but she seems to be enjoying it. My personal favorite part has been hearing about Dr. Doolittle's efforts to learn to speak to clams.

In the world of books, this last week was the 75th anniversary of the publication of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. I have really mixed feelings about the novel; it's hard not to be swept up in the Rhett/Scarlett romance (or the fact that Scarlett is so stubborn and clueless about just what her feelings are for pretty much the entire story)... while at the same time, the content of the book moves between mildly and blatantly racist. I've read through it twice, the second time a few years ago. I found myself totally pulled into the scene where Rhett proposes to Scarlett... and then horrified just seconds later by the use of the "n" word along with content that I've deliberately forgotten.

The novel and the movie are an oddity, I think. I have equal measures of love and hate for the story; how can such beautifully drawn characters - characters that I actually do love - be so awful? Yes, it was written a long time ago and in a place (the South) that sentimentalizes aspects of the Civil War. But it's still hard for me to reconcile the story I love with the fact that so many of the characters I love think it's just fine to own a person.

I own a copy of the film and I do watch it occasionally. Austin declines; he famously watched it with me once and somehow didn't realize it wasn't going to "end right." (Yes, I married a man who majored in English who didn't know what the end of Gone with the Wind was before we watched it together.) For myself, I love the costuming, acting, scenery... and many of the scenes. Yes, I feel uncomfortable with the scene where Rhett sweeps Scarlett off to the bedroom... but I prefer the implication that she's being swept off to the bedroom willingly to the notion that it's a marital rape happening off camera.

Any scene where Rhett is enjoying Scarlett's spirit and encouraging her to act in a way that will not be viewed as proper is fantastic. In particular I love how he gets his way and is able to dance with her despite her recent widowhood. I like it when he tells her that she needs kissing, and badly, and by someone who know how (swoon!). But my favorite is, of course, when he leaves her to finally become a soldier, despite knowing the South's cause is lost... but not before declaring that he loves Scarlett and swoops her into an embrace.

I know there is a whole book out there about Rhett called Rhett Butler's People. I am sure that, at some point, I will read it, if only to see if it offers any insight on one of my burning questions (namely is Belle Watling in love with Rhett, and is the child that she refers to having his child). But I hesitate a bit, because, even though I have mixed emotions about Gone with the Wind, it's a story that I grew up with and it does have so much in it that I love. Somehow it seems wrong to try to add to that.

A Few Favorite Books EVAH (a.k.a. Books I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time)

Spring fever has hit my kids hard and it's gotten me, too. While I can normally read almost anything, no matter how painfully it is written (yes, Austin, I'm aware that there is a major exception here, you can just be quiet about that), lately it's like whatever I try to read, the words just slide away. I've been suffering a bit of a writing block as well - reviews, poems and the terrible romance novel I sometimes pick away at... it doesn't matter what it is, it's just not progressing well. Or, in some cases, at all.

Reading and writing have always been my safe place to go to no matter what the world throws at me. It's frustrating when it feels like it just isn't working. Thankfully there are a few books that I can always turn to.

My all-time favorite is Stephen King's The Stand. I fell in love with the original published version when I was in high school, and I was beyond thrilled when King released an unabridged version during the spring of my senior year. I got some fabulous graduation gifts; the unabridged version of my favorite book was one of them. I bought the book with my own money, but it was a gift just the same.

The book features a tremendous cast of characters, some romantic entanglements, and - my favorite thing - an apocalyptic theme. When I'm feeling sick or just blue, there's something oddly comforting about reading a book in which more than 99 percent of the world's population dies horribly of the flu. I love the book's overall themes, and I love the characters. I'm always happy to go back for a visit with Frannie Goldsmith and Stu Redman, Mother Abigail and the Walking Dude, Harold and Nick and Glenn.

More recently, I have been loving Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy. It's been years since I've fallen so completely into a book that I totally forgot the world existed, but it happened the first time I read this series. This is critical for me; at least for a few books worth of time, I felt like I had found the door to Narnia again.

The Hunger Games features a futuristic dystopia in which North America has become a country called Panem. Panem is made up of twelve districts and the Capitol; the districts lost a destructive war and now the tyrannical government forces each district to sacrifice two children a year in remembrance. It's not as simple as just putting the children to death, though. Instead the twenty-four competitors face off in an elaborate arena. They must kill or be killed; only one may win and live.

Collins does a nice job with her other books (The Underland Chronicles - young adult/fantasy), but The Hunger Games far outshines her other series. All three books in the trilogy are compelling, but the first book is the best; I found it nearly impossible to put down the first time through. I'm moving through it a bit more slowing the second time around, savoring the interaction between heroine Katniss Everdeen and the boy from her district - and competitor in the arena, Peeta Mellark. The minor characters are also excellent. Now that casting for the film version is underway, I'm even more excited to see Haymitch and Effie Trinket come to life on the big screen. I would be surprised if it matches my expectations, but I do expect to at least enjoy it.

A final book for today's list is Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. It is true that, while I sometimes attempt to write romance stories, I'm not a huge fan of the genre. A lot of romance is beyond trite, and it's often humorless and stupid to boot. Not so with Gabaldon's brilliant series. Outlander (and it's many sequels) combines romance with time travel and history. It doesn't hurt that one of the main characters, Claire, is a nurse. Or at least she is in the first book... certainly Claire evolves a lot during the course of the books.

Gabaldon is not a typical romance writer; the woman has a Ph.D in some scientific discipline (I can never remember if it's marine biology or ecology or what), and she uses her research skills to create a story that is as historically accurate as possible. At times this is problematic. Certainly women were property of men in Scotland in the 1750s, and sometimes (probably often) they were legally beaten by their husbands. Later in the series slavery in America becomes an issue that Claire must contend with. Gabaldon is skillful with these issues, but I confess that - at least with the beating scene - I felt a bit uncomfortable.

The center of the series is the relationship between Claire Beachamp and Jamie Fraser, and it's very difficult to not fall in love with both of them and their story. They don't fall in love in a typical way, but it happens, although Claire also must contend with the ghost of her husband, Frank, who she can no longer reach. It's all rather brilliantly done, and (forgive me for being crass, dear readers) that includes the sex scenes. There's also humor, atmosphere, adventure and history. I've never recommended this book to anyone without having them come back and tell me how much they love it. Ever. I'm grateful that Gabaldon has continued this story for many more (very long) books, and that there is yet more to come.

And... that's it for now. A few books I dearly, dearly love. Check 'em out if you haven't already.

The Month That Would NOT Slow Down

I haven't been reading much this month. I hate - hate! - to make that confession, but it is what it is. People, friends who are pretty much family, events, classes... many things have taken me away from my routine life of reading, cross-stitching, doing laundry, and feeling a bit on the low side. Doubtless this is a good thing; I needed to remember that there are things that I enjoy and people that I love outside side of Austin, the kids, and the few friends I see frequently (Corinna, Andrew, Marnie... love you all!).

A few of the events have included a friend graduating from medical school (yay) and preparing to move away for his residency (boo), another friend getting married (yay) and bringing other old friends back to Minnesota (yay) for a hugely emotional, fantastic wedding. From there I went headfirst into taking a class in and getting certified in Advanced Cardiac Life Support (yay - but nerve-wracking). There is still more to come in this epic May of 2011; an anniversary party, a play to attend... and I'm skipping over some of the emotional content of the month (like Alex's choir concert... so much else) because I am getting overwhelmed just thinking about all of it.

So this has left me little to blog about in terms of books. I finished reading InterWorld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves (good stuff), but I haven't even managed to finish writing my Epinions review of it. I enjoyed it, but it's one of those books that are going to stay in the house that I somehow don't have much to say about here.

There are two topics I've been wanting to cover here that maybe don't fit perfectly (but who cares, this is my blog and if I want to I can write about worms or warts or whatever I want, right?). One is Books That I Wish I Could Read Again for the First Time and one is Favorite Poems. Both topics might... let's be brutally honest here, they will take up multiple posts. Because I blog so infrequently, this could take years. I'm actually fine with that, though.

So. Here's a poem that I adore and never get tired of, that I think everyone should know.

i carry your heart with me
by e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud)
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)


***************************************

After reading that, I dare you to tell me that you don't like poetry.

More of my favorites to come in the nebulous future...

Out of the House, Old Books!

I'm not making huge progress on reading this week, and the slowdown may continue for a bit, as I have a few weeks of major projects going on. This includes hopefully getting certified in Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS), which will require some study time.

Adding to my Too Many Books burden, we attended the 50th annual used book sale that benefits the Northfield Hospital Auxiliary. My husband limited himself to four or five purchases, but the kids each brought home a bunch of books. I stuck to my virtuous promise to buy no books until I have read 100 in the house, although I was tempted by a few.

A few books have left the house in the form of donations to the book exchange at my son's middle school. He donates books and receives coupons that he can use to "buy" other books. I can only hope that somehow fewer books are coming in than going out, but he is at least enjoying it.

Books I sent out the door for this exchange include Couplehood by Paul Reiser, The Deep End of the Ocean by Jaquelyn Mitchard (I hope I spelled that name right because I'm not going to look it up), Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean (a promotional copy from my Barnes and Noble days, read but in great shape), and some outdated books about politics. Two of the political ones were books panning George W. Bush (ugh, I was never going to re-read those, living through those eight years was enough for me) and one called Nine and Counting, about the nine women in the U.S. Senate. (There are now seventeen women in the U.S. Senate, so I got rid of that one on the basis of being hopelessly outdated.)

There are, I'm sure, plenty more books that I can get rid of without re-reading them; it's a matter of finding time to weed them out.

I'm still reading InterWorld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves, which is pretty good stuff for what I would classify as a juvenile (a bit too "young" to be called "young adult") sci fi book. It's fast reading; I'm just slow lately.

Crichton Versus Crichton

It's been over a month since I managed to write on this blog... you'd think I was a super-busy person! Well, I am, to an extent, but a lot of it is manufactured stuff that I require myself to do... working out five times a week, for example. It's good that I do that, but no one is actually making me do it other than myself.

Okay, so now that we know my excuse for not blogging is that I'm Getting Fit, where am I with my reading-the-books-in-my-house project? Well, it's going pretty well! I finished that ridiculous Alchemy and Academe book and recycled it, finished reading Joe Hill's Locke and Key: Welcome to Lovecraft (so great!), and finished reading my son's collection of Underland Chronicles books by Suzanne Collins (fun).

My most recent conquest has been yet another stripped book from my bookstore days, The Lost World by Michael Crichton. I finished it yesterday - the same day I decided to watch the famous "Love's Labor Lost" episode from the first season of ER, the now-defunct but still great television show... a show that was created by none other than Michael Crichton.

Crichton's fiction is always interesting to me, in that it's fun to read and fast-paced, but I always feel like I'm getting the same message: Beware Technology - It Could Destroy Us All! When I read Prey several years ago, I realized it was pretty much just Jurassic Park with nanotechnology instead of dinosaurs. The Lost World is pretty much just Jurassic Park with a few different characters. And I'm okay with that - because it was fun, fast-paced reading - but the underlying technophobia strikes me as a little much.

Consider this passage, where Ian Malcolm, chaos mathematician and survivor from the first book, opines about why he thinks "cyberspace means the end of our species."


"Because it means the end of innovation," Malcolm said. "This whole idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That's the effect of mass media - it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok of Tokyo or London there's a McDonald's on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there's less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity - our most necessary resource? That's disappearing faster than trees. But we haven't figured that out, so now we're planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it'll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity."

While I actually (and weirdly) agree with some of that - it is annoying to imagine the Gap and Starbucks and McDonald's sitting in Tokyo and Moscow - and I also think it's really difficult to make millions of people change anything at all (see American politics in general), I think it's completely off the mark in a lot of ways. Put five billion people in cyberspace and it turns out that a lot of them will just continue to argue that their way is the right way forever and ever amen. This is true to the extent that there are entire news sources that deliberately slant their news one way or another. Even people who generally agree with each other that, say, that liberal viewpoints are "correct" will argue ad infinitum (see any ILX Politics thread at ilxor.com for further information, or if you feel like knocking your own head against a wall for a while).

The weird thing about all this is that, on the television series ER, medical technology was used constantly not as a threat but as a way to save lives. "Love's Labor Lost" shows heroic doctors spending a night trying to save a woman and her baby (admittedly this particular case showcased an extremely unlikely series of events and unfortunately scared a lot of pregnant women in early 1995 - but my point still stands). For a woman with pre-eclampsia or eclampsia (the first threatening diagnosis the character receives), it's critical to have access to intravenous medications and good fetal monitoring.

And yes, I realize Michael Crichton merely "created" ER, he didn't write it, and I acknowledge that there is a huge difference between a novel and a long-running television series. I just think it's odd to have the creator of both these worlds be so at odds with himself in his messages about technology.

Now I'm off to recycle The Lost World and leave it behind me, going on to another book from my shelves. I admit that I still like to read the paper ones and have them with me, but I don't think the new reading technologies (i.e. e-books, Kindles, iPads, etc.) are bad or destined to cause humanity to stop evolving and eventually die out. I think we have created a lot of problems that we need to solve, but I don't think cyberspace is one of them.

The Solace of Zombies

As much as I didn't care for 30 Days of Night, I absolutely loved the first two Walking Dead graphic novels (Days Gone By and Miles Behind Us - author is Robert Kirkman). This isn't too surprising, I suppose; even though the very concept of zombies terrifies me, there's something brilliantly fun about end of the world narratives and the stories of survivors. Since I took my solemn vow to not buy any more books until I read 100 of the ones I already had (and don't think I'm not keeping careful track), I'm waiting with baited breath to see if my beloved husband will get me one or two (or fifty) more of these graphic novels for Mother's Day. Yes, Mother's Day is the next plausible gift-giving occasion in our house, and I am asking for zombie stories.

And now I am really, really jonesing for the stories because I feel like I need the distraction of reading something, well... intensely distracting. Lately it feels like the whole world is falling apart. The earthquakes and tsunamis and everything else in Japan was depressing, but felt far away. Then yesterday I was browsing my Facebook friends' status updates and saw that a friend from college, Emily Rapp, had written a blog post. And I looked at it and found that her baby - her sweet, adorable, smiley (at least in photos!) baby named Ronan - has Tay Sachs disease. Which, for those not in the know, is genetic, progressive, incurable and fatal.

I have to step back a moment here and explain that Emily is one of those people who I have always admired for her brilliance and envied for her fantastic good looks. She's an amazing writer (her memoir, Poster Child, about growing up with a prosthetic leg is just great), too. We have never been close friends, but she was a reader at my wedding and she stayed with us a few years ago while she was on book tour. Mostly we went to the same college and participated in similar political activities (Feminists For Change, supporting the organization for gay students on campus, probably some other things but at this late date, who remembers?).

Basically, Ronan's fate doesn't have much to do with me. I will likely never meet him, although I can follow his blog and admire his Facebook photos. Emily lives on the other side of the country, so I'm no use to her, although I would love to be. But I'm still upset by this news, so much that my usual activities (obsessing about politics - I am so behind on the Libya situation at this point...) seem trivial. In fact, everything does.

I was reminded last night, a few hours after I discovered this horrifying news, that music can be a huge solace. I had to drive to a neighboring town to take my son's friend home, so I got to listen to the whole second act of the music from Rent. Say what you will about that show, hearing Without You seemed so perfect (even though I had forgotten that song entirely; mostly I just needed to hear a musical that I didn't think would make me sob, like Les Miserables always does). And I felt a little better after I got home.

Literature - even the type that is "only" zombie stories (yes, I know they're not Tolstoy or anything) - is also a source of solace for me. I love stories about surviving the end of the world anyway (my go-to novel when I'm sick is Stephen King's The Stand), and when it seems like everything that is happening on the planet is so dark, sometimes I guess it's good to see that, hey, things could be worse. I think there's some quote somewhere about how looking out into the dark from the dark, you can see a lot further... and maybe that's it, too.

Whatever, I hope I get to check out those zombie stories soon. Meanwhile, I'm working on the last book of Suzanne Collins' Underland Chronicles, Gregor and the Code of Claw. It's fine, but it's not really the distraction or the solace I'm currently seeking. On the upside, it will be one more book down on my quest to read books that are in my house.