YA Lit: The Mysterious Benedict Society

If you look at my bookshelves, you will quickly realize I enjoy a range of literature--and I really like good "young adult" literature. I have everything from Anne of Green Gables to the series to Harry Potter. I frequently reread books from my childhood, The Secret Garden being a perennial favorite.

When I was last in Barnes and Noble, I wandered through the children's section to see what I could possibly pick up for my nieces. One book caught my eye because of its cover art: The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart*. I picked it up and read the first two chapters, and was instantly hooked--A is begging to borrow it because she did the same thing the other night at my apartment.

Without going into too much detail on the plot (A, after all, reads this blog), the story is compelling and empowering for young adult readers. Adults can also take delight in a story well told, as well as identify with the characters, who could contain shadows of our younger selves.

The Mysterious Benedict Society (the first in a series) has all the elements of a good narrative: compelling characters, a villain, mystery, secret agents, and a satisfying conclusion. I even teared up a couple of times. I definitely recommend it for adult readers who enjoy a good story and for older kids who want an adventure read.

*Who, incidentally, lives in Little Rock.

Hamlet--But With Dogs

As soon as I concluded my thesis writing and defense, I snatched up the nearest book I could find. That book was The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, one I had purchased with Christmas money based on Donna's recommendation*.

I had heard the book was a sort of modern Hamlet. The book certainly contains similar elements to Shakespeare's play, but it also extends those themes into the relationships between humans and their dogs. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle tells of the boy Edgar, who was born without a voice and whose parents breed and train dogs. These dogs are special, special because of the vision that Edgar's grandfather had to breed a dog who is a true companion, not merely a useful work animal.

The book plays on themes of love, of soul-mates, and of revenge. The novel too focuses on language: since Edgar cannot speak out loud, he must communicate via different avenues, including his beloved dog, Almondine. Yet he is obsessed with words and language, and he is given the responsibility of naming all the pups in the Sawtelle kennel. His relationship with language is entirely physical, enacted through written and signed forms, embodied by his well-worn dictionary. His inability to communicate verbally underscores the ways other characters in the novel are unable to speak, even though they have the power of speech.

I don't really want to give too much away of the plot, but Wroblewski was able to get me to really care about the characters in deep and complex ways. I wasn't completely repulsed by the story's villian because Wroblewski didn't completely villainize him, writing a complex character that a reader could be drawn to in spite of herself. The writing was vivid and well-paced; though long, the novel read quickly and concluded well.

I'm glad I read this book, and I look forward to loaning it out. My next book is The Mysterious Benedict Society, which I picked up this weekend on a lark because I liked the cover art** and thoroughly enjoyed the first two chapters. I do enjoy being able to read for pleasure again!

*I like knowing that I have people who can really recommend good books and movies to me. I've liked nearly everything that Donna has recommended. Thanks to her, I purchased Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
**The book was illustrated by Carson Ellis, who is also the artist responsible for The Decemberists' albums and is married to Colin Meloy, their lead singer.

Milton, In Translation

Just in case you didn't know, Milton's Paradise Lost is a masterpiece of the English language. It's also really difficult to slog through, which is why it is infrequently taught outside of an college English classroom. What if there was a way to translate the epic from English...well, from hard English to easier English? Would that betray the project of the poem, or make the work more accessible to the everyday, non-English major reader?

Stanley Fish wrote today in the NY Times about a new "translation" of Milton: a prose interpretation alongside the original work. It makes a great work of English literature accessible to those who want it.

My initial impulse is to dislike it (why don't we just get students to use ClifNotes?), but after a bit of thought, I realized something like this could be a great teaching tool for high school teachers, or in an introductory English course in college. Milton's epic is worth experiencing, even if you need a bit of help translating/interpreting.

I think I'm going to order it and check it out. Maybe I'll even try to read the whole work--I've read parts of it, but that epic is long!--to experiment with how it will read for a student. For me, works like this have to strike a balance between getting folks to read Great Books and simplifying it for readers. I think Danielson's translation doesn't reduce it down (like ClifNotes might), but instead illuminates it. And that is a worthy project.

An Awful Book I Can't Shut

This summer, I thought I was going to take a seminar in literacy. Part of that class involved reading YA fiction, which excited me. Some of those books are award-winning Good Books. Some were merely popular to teens and fit the purpose of the unit. Thus, I picked up Twilight with the intention of seeing what all the fuss was about.

From the beginning, these books have bothered me. Meyer's style hearkens back to romance novels, punishing kisses and all, and her descriptions are heavy-handed and dull. The style is such that it calls attention (for me at least) to the language, something that it shouldn't do. The narrative should be the focus of the reader's attention, not the language; I had a hard time concentrating on the story at first because Meyer's style got in the way.

But I can't seem to NOT finish the series. Part of it is my obsession with knowing the end of stories, no matter how horrible. Part of it is the stories are strangely compelling, even with all their narrative and character flaws. Now I'm embarking on the final book in the series, knowing how it's likely to end, but I have this need to finish it, even if the end will annoy me.

The Twilight series has captured the imaginations and hearts of thousands of readers. It's hailed as the "next Harry Potter" due to its popularity. However, they can't touch that series because they lack the depth and complexity of Rowling's work. Rowling carefully spins tales with complex characters and mythological allusions. Part of reading Harry Potter is playing "spot the myth". Meyer's books lack that depth and richness.

I purchased the first two books out of curiosity, and checked the other two out from the library because they were only available in hardback, and my desire to know the end of the saga wasn't enough to justify paying for two books that will end up on Paperback Swap or Bookmooch. I'm into the last book, and I just want it to be done so I know how it ends, and then I can go on with life.

I read these books with nose wrinkled slightly with disgust, but obviously Meyer creates something that's compelling enough to overcome my distaste for her writing style. How can an awful book still be good enough to keep me turning the pages, eliciting anxiety and hope? I always feel the need to justify why I'm reading these books, yet the reason is simple: I've been sucked into a story against my will and better judgment.

I can see the appeal for teenage girls who can't imagine a world beyond high school and age 18: Bella Swan aspires to halt her life right as its beginning. She can't imagine passion and love greater than what she's found at 17, while those of us who are a bit older know that she's a teenage idiot. She wants to give up humanity because she doesn't understand what being human and having a beating heart means--her "soulmate" is more important, and what teenage girl doesn't want to believe they can't find their soulmate at 17? It's silly and awful. Still, I can't look away, and I can't shut the book.

Goodbye, Bananas

Yesterday, I finished up Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. The book chronicles her family's journey to eat local produce and meat for one year, growing it themselves or buying it from her community. It includes small essays written by her husband, Steven L. Hopp, as well as essays and recipes by her eldest daughter, Camille Kingsolver.

Kingsolver wrote the book not as a lecture about the dangers of industrial eating, but rather as a celebration of good, locally-grown food. It's about having a relationship with what we eat, about having the chance to see it as emerging from vibrant earth or from a living creature, instead of carefully packaged and tidy products to be purchased whenever and where ever. It flips the idea of convenience and availability (the "I want it now!" mentality) on its head as she joyfully moves through the season and the fruits of that particular time and place. Strawberries and asparagus are all the sweeter because they emerge for a short period; tomatoes full of flavor are those that are not shipped from California, but picked from the garden, still warm from the sun that draws out their juicy sweetness. Food that's not eaten in its proper time and close to its source just isn't as good.

I love that this book shuns the impulse to become a bitter tirade against the industrial agricultural system; instead, Kingsolver weaves her family's story in with the story of small farmers that she meets and with facts about the current state of food in the US. She visits Quebec, Italy, and seeks out the local in those places and finds it delicious. The work takes a didactic turn every so often, but inevitably she returns to her goal in writing Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: to show that eating locally is beneficial, fun, and not that difficult. It's not for an elite few, but it can be for everyone if we'll stop allowing our government to support big agriculture at the cost of small, productive farms.

The illustration above is a "vegetannual," which envisions a return to the relationships between vegetables and fruits and their season. We've lost a fundamental connection between seasonality and locality in selecting what we eat. Hence, I'm saying goodbye to bananas. Bananas are not grown in the U.S., and where they are grown, banana companies were (are) responsible for the exploitation of South American peoples and governments*.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an inspiring work. I felt compelled (and hungry) while reading it to grow a garden, support local farmers (which I do already! yay Farmers' Market!), can and preserve my own produce, and shun processed foods and unseasonable fruits and vegetables. It was a fantastic read and ultimately hopeful that we can return to a simpler (and healthier for body and land) way of eating.

*For more interesting stuff on bananas, their origins as the possible fruit of Eden, and how the mass production and transit of them shaped South American politics, check out Dan Koeppel's book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. A hint: we might not even have bananas in a few decades.

Old Advice, Mostly Useful

Recently, I've been bombarded with information about how wasteful, indebted, and damaging our culture is. On the flip side, I've also seen a lot on people who are trying to do their part to change that, to help Americans see that they can live frugally and happily without buying into consumer culture. Are people waking up and realizing that buying tons of stuff isn't so good?

This weekend, Lance's mom brought out an old book (possibly from 1889 or 1892, but certainly from before 1908) called The Every-Day Cook-Book by Miss E. Neill. It's a neat volume, with interesting recipes and home health remedies, as well as sound advice. Take this passage, for example, listed under "ITEMS WORTH REMEMBERING":

Pictures are both for use and ornament. They serve to recall pleasant memories and scenes; they harmonize with the furnishing of the rooms. If they serve neither of these purposes they are worse than useless; they only help fill space which would look better empty, or gather dust and make work to keep them clean.

A room filled with quantities of trifling ornaments has the look of a bazar [sic] and displays neither good taste nor good sense. Artistic excellence aims to have all the furnishings of a high order of workmanship combined with simplicity, while good sense understands the folly of dusting a lot of rubbish.

A poor book had best be burned to give place to a better, or even to an empty shelf, for fire destroys its poison, and puts it out of the way of doing harm.

Better economize in purchasing of furniture or carpets than scrimp in buying good books or papers.

Our sitting-rooms need never be empty of guests or our libraries of society if the company of good books is admitted to them.

I love the last bit about books. But the part that caught my eye was the emphasis on not having things if they serve no purpose. And not cluttering up the home with "trifling ornaments". I've been on a quest for some time to shed some of my more useless belongings, so Neill's words resonate across a century. Good sense is good sense, no matter the time I suppose.

I'll talk about The Every-Day Cook-Book more because it contains some gems of good sense, and some passages that are mildly amusing as relics from a time gone by. It's also a book repair project for me, since the volume I have is falling apart. I have plans to read it all, though, and maybe find someway to make an academic paper out of it...and try a few of the recipes.

What's for Dinner?

I'm a huge fan of Michael Pollan's new book In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. I finished it up at the beginning of the summer, and recently Lance had a chance to read it too. He thought it'd be good if we had a list of Pollan's "guidelines" for eating.

Basically, Pollan argues that Americans have lost their "culture" of food. We have no culture-governed rules, as do the French (for one). He explores the implications of that loss and continues the journey he started in The Omnivore's Dilemma (another great read). I thought it'd be nice to post the guidelines that I typed up, but I warn you--they are good advice, but the book offers great reasoning and details under each guideline, so I encourage you to go buy this book. Seriously. If you're interested in healthy eating.

EAT FOOD

· Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.

· Avoid food products containing ingredients that are a.) unfamiliar, b.) unpronounceable, c.) more than five in number, or that include d.) high-fructose corn syrup

· Avoid food products that make health claims

· Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle

· Get out of the supermarket whenever possible

MOSTLY PLANTS

· Eat mostly plants, especially leaves

· You are what you eat eats too

· If you have the space, buy a freezer

· Eat well-grown food from healthy soils

· Eat wild foods when you can

· Be the kind of person who takes supplements (health-conscious!)

· Eat more like the French. Or the Italians. Or the Japanese. Or the Indians. Or the Greeks.

· Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism

· Don’t look for the magic bullet in the traditional diet

· Have a glass of wine for dinner

NOT TOO MUCH

· Pay more, eat less

· Eat meals

· Do all your eating at a table

· Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does

· Try not to eat alone

· Consult your gut

· Eat slowly

o Eating with the fullest pleasure—pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance—is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend. (Wendell Berry)

· Cook and, if you can, plant a garden

If you can't buy this book, at very least check it out from the public library. Personally, it's a book that I plan on loaning out, rereading, and otherwise getting more than one use out of, so I consider it a good investment. If you're extremely interested, pick up The Omnivore's Dilemma first--In Defense of Food is a continuation of much of the research and ideas he explores in that one.

Rain Rambling

Caveat: this post contains a major amount of rambling and slightly jumbled thoughts.

So remember my last post where I talked about getting some kind of weird virus? Well, I passed it to Lance last week. And then we were both healthy again, and I managed to develop a sore throat that I'm increasingly suspecting is the result of the weird weather and vigorous Arkansas vegetation growth. Thus, I've been taking it easy yesterday and today, sipping on Masala Chai* and reading.

Speaking of rain, I ran a race in the rain on Saturday, while I was still well. It was an interesting experience, since usually the rain deters any exercise attempts or causes me to head to the HPER instead. I actually found the experience fun, although the stream of water into my right eye was a little annoying. I see why runners often wear hats.

The rain also brings me to a link I'd like to share with you: Robin McKinley's blog**. I love Robin McKinley; she's a fabulous writer and is responsible for several of my favorite books. Her blog is entertaining and quirky, and I'm enjoying reading about the personal life of a favorite author. Of course, now I remember that I wrote about this last time. Duh. Oh well, I'll just leave it.***

So now on to my reading. I've finished three, no, four books in rapid succession (man, I love the start of the summer, when I can gulp down novels that have been tempting me all semester). I started off by reading The Jane Austen Book Club, followed by The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which led me to polish off In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. I then moved on to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is a YA book, so it read REALLY fast. Yum. I promise to talk about each of these books individually for the rest of the week.

Well, I'm off to do some more reading. A trip to the library brought me Lady of the Snakes, Lost and Found, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Bee Season. And yes, I do realize I need to do thesis reading. Soon, I tell myself.

*Thanks to this guy. It's almost all gone, so I'm trying to savor the last few cups.
**She's been complaining about the rain. She's also the reason I'm using lots of footnotes lately.
***See caveat.

Maybe E-Books Aren't So Bad...

I'm suspicious of E-Books. Why would I take a beautiful thing like a book and transfer it to an electronic medium? I love books--especially when they smell a certain way or have a particular heft. There's something comforting about the physicality of an object that is also full of non-physical entities, such as characters and ideas that only come to life when I, as the Reader, participate. Transferring reading to a activity mediated through technology robs the Book of some of its magic and charm.

Perhaps, however, electronic books can still be useful. I've heard nothing but rave reviews of this one, the one that I now want. The Kindle looks amazing. And there are sites like ManyBooks.net that let you download free classics. Classics that I want to read.

It also appeals to my environmental side. Even if I got a free book download, I'd still want to print it out, using lots of paper. The Kindle is created to dodge the tricky issue of using a computer for reading--and it allows you to take notes on what you're looking at. It's also searchable ("What's that book with the thing about green spaces? Oh, let me search my Kindle...there it is!"). I can suddenly see the possibilities for research and travel--if I need to read some books for a project, but I also have to fly somewhere? No problem--I can carry all I need in one tiny device!

One drawback is that it doesn't seem to easily accept PDF files--something that would make it perfect as a research tool. I get a lot of ILL articles and book chapters in PDF format, and to upload them to a Kindle instead of printing them off would be better than anything I could imagine. It seems that they are working on this--and reading the reviews, there are certainly ways to get the PDF file on the Kindle by connecting it to a computer. Sweet!

Needless to say, I'm going to be saving up for this little device. If you'd like to contribute to the Jenn's Kindle Fund, please do! It'll be infinitely useful for my personal enjoyment and my academic career.

All Alone, But King

I've never read Robinson Crusoe, but I had vague ideas about what the book entailed: shipwrecked on an island, hangs out with some dude named Friday, eventually escapes. Defoe's story is well-known enough to be immediately recognizable when someone asks what I'm reading*. I wasn't quite prepared for my reaction to the work as I started reading it for my 18th-Century Literature class.

Robinson Crusoe was written in the early 18th century, when British colonization was in full swing (the American colonies had yet to rebel). Consequently, the book is full of what Lance calls "the Taker mentality". Crusoe kills animals without needing to, just because they are big and there. My modern conscience was appalled at such a unfeeling approach to other creatures, and especially toward other people, namely non-Europeans.

At the beginning of the book, he sells his companion Xury to a Portuguese captain who rescues him, even though he was "very loath to sell the poor boy's liberty, who had assisted me so faithfully in procuring my own" (29). As through the whole book, however, Crusoe finds it easy to smooth over any pangs of conscience and justify his actions.

The book alternates between Crusoe bemoaning his dejected state and telling us how he lived on his island, and after his religious conversion, his bemoaning shifts to reflections on God. He realizes that he could be in a worse state, but it takes him half the book to figure that out. His life, although he is without human contact, is actually quite comfortable: he is able to retrieve food, clothes, tools, and weapons from his ship before it sinks, and with those supplies build himself a "castle" as he terms it.

His view of the world is in-line with the colonists' perspective. This island becomes "his" domain. The creatures that he tames are "his" subjects and servants. And when Friday appears on the scene, he has no thought to make him his equal--he isn't a European after all!--but he becomes his loyal servant to do Crusoe's bidding. Crusoe is king of his little world, and he persists in viewing it this way throughout the book. When other men come to the island, they too end up his subjects, his army, his men to command.

I found the book interesting and engaging (I was never bored in my reading of it); however, the ideas the book represented were ones that were alien to my way of thinking. Robinson Crusoe was a book born of the ideas in its time, and no Englishman reading it would have thought anything the matter with Crusoe's approach to the world. After all, who wouldn't want to be king of an island?

*Usually it's "Ah..." *Looks bored as I try to explain the book*.

Bookshelf, Where Art Thou?

I go through the same trauma every time I look for a new bookshelf. For one thing, I want one that actually will last longer than one move and will hold lots of books with out listing to one side. Another, I want one that looks good. Because it's made with real wood, and not particle board crap. And each time, it's an arduous process.

Thus, I set out to buy a smallish bookshelf to hold specifically my semester's texts and library books. But the awesome one I found once at Lowe's was no longer there. Drat--and it was so cool! My favorite! I should have bought four!

I went to Target to find the one they had on sale this week. While it was affordable, it was also crappy. And they didn't have the color I wanted.

I found one at a thrift store that should have been $5, but it was $15, which was the price of a brand new one at Target. Apparently they smelled my desperation.

I'm trying to decide if I should keep searching, go to miscellaneous big-box retailer and buy the crappy small one, or shanghai Lance into building me one to my exacting specifications. Don't the bookshelf barons realize that people like me are willing to pay a little more for a cool bookshelf that won't fall apart if you as much as think about putting too many books on it?

So for now, all the books that are destined for the bookshelf are lying around in dejected piles.

That Thing...

Library Thing: most of you probably remember me talking about it, and many of you have embraced it as a way to catalog your library. I signed up, then didn't really have time to add many of my books.

118 books later, I've discovered why I put off doing it. I recently moved, and I'm looking for a way to sort all of my books. Then I decided I really wanted to put them online. This is going to be an on-going project, I have a feeling...

It's a neat program, though, and a neat tool to organize one's library. Lance declares I will be frightened by the number of books I own, and I'd admit that I've only entered in a small fraction of my total collection. I'm sure it won't stop me from buying anything else, though. I'm a book addict and an English grad student, for God's sake.

Bookish Things

My daily web browsing and Google Reader offerings have brought several different websites to my attention, so I thought I'd share them with you all.

First is a used book site, Alibris. Like Amazon's used books, Alibris coordinates independent sellers who might have what you're looking for. I've noticed that often their prices are cheaper than Amazon's (and the shipping is also standardized). And right now they are offering $2 off any order. I ordered a book from them, and I was pleased with the speed of shipping, which is sometimes lacking in Amazon's sellers. (Though I'm guessing it might vary). Basically, it offers an alternative place to look for used books should Amazon let you down or not have what you desire.

Now, have you ever desired to make your own paper? Recycle the paper that accumulates around you? This tutorial looks interesting, and I'm longing to try my hand at homemade paper for my bookbinding purposes...I guess I just gotta get someone handy to build me the frames for it!

If you're environmentally minded, recycling paper is great, but what about the paper that goes into all those books I purchase? All the textbooks that I need to buy? Eco-Libris offers a way to make up for the environmental impact of new books. For $1 each, you can buy a tree and balance out your paper consumption! I thought this was a pretty neat organization, so I wanted to pass it along.

And finally, do you want to read new books, but don't want to spend all that money for a book you'll maybe read once? The BookMooch is a program that allows you to trade books with other Book Mooches, creating a reading community and cutting down on consumption. It's a way to share good books, de-clutter your bookshelf, and get books you want to read with minimal cost. Woo! (Donna, aren't you using BookMooch or something similar?)

Anyway, that's some nice fruits from my web-browsing. Time to go home and make some books!

Holding a Slice of History

My final project for Intro to Graduate Studies is based around a text that resides in our university Special Collections office. Mine is Letters from an American Farmer by Hector St. John de Crevecoeur in 1782. I went to go look at it yesterday.

It was really neat: I got to hold an over 200-year old book in my hands. It was small (about 6 3/4 inches by 4), bound in sturdy leather (probably a while after it was printed on March 4th 1793). My bookbinding interests got me to look at how it was bound, and I was able to spot the heavy bookbinding thread that bound the book together. It smelled like an old book.

I started imagining reading this when it was first printed. The paper was heavy (probably cotton rag paper), yellowed with age. I could feel the roughness from where the printed letters pushed through to the other side of the paper. It had obviously been taken care of for the past 200 years because it was in amazingly good condition.

I wondered about the book's owner (before it was donated/purchased for Special Collections). Were they a scholar? A gift to a traveler on his way to Arkansas? How did this particular book get to where it is today? It's all pretty interesting, really.

Mostly, though, I was just happy to be holding an old book and thinking about how neat it was to hold an object that has been around almost as long as the United States has been a country.

Me? Blog Daily for a Month?

That's right, folks. In an attempt to aspire to more conscientious posters, I am participating in NaBlogPoMo. Blog each day in November. Can I do it?

I've discovered a blog that makes fun of misused quotation marks. I also hate that...

It's Stephen Crane's birthday, by the way. If you don't know who he is, that's okay. (He wrote The Red Badge of Courage). John Keats, however, is inexcusable.

I was invited by my Grad Studies professor to take her Advanced Romantic Poetry class. My heart yearned to do so...but, alas, I have to take another class, and my job only permits me to take one during the day. She's a great teacher, and I'd love to learn more about the Romantics from her. I think they really are my favorite period, if I had to choose. Occasionally, when I falter with my Rhetoric Composition plans, I think fondly of doing something with the British Romantics.

I've been enjoying the "Books" podcast from NPR. It puts the different segments involving new books together into one weekly podcast. NPR has become a tool for me to keep up with new literature that I might otherwise read much, much later.

The trees are starting to take on their autumn blushes. I love fall colors, the weather, the sweaters I get to wear--it really is my favorite season.

Excuse the rambles. My brain is all over the place today...

September 11th in Literature

I have some conflicted feelings about September 11th. While I believe that it was a sad event and that the people who died should be remembered, I also hate how it is used as a sign of patriotism, and a reminder of how we should all be afraid.

We should not be afraid. We should look forward with courage, and try to seek peace instead of retribution and more fear. But enough politicizing.

Recently, I've been thinking about how the events of September 11, 2001 have crept into our cultural conscious. In other words, how it is being represented in art, namely literature. More specifically, two books I've read in the past month both have representations (albeit small) of the events of September 11th from two different perspectives.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini describes the events from the perspectives of an Afghani refugee family. I found this one interesting because it was from a perspective of the people whose country was then affected by the ensuing retaliation against the Taliban. Their reactions--and the author's call for readers to remember Afghanistan--marked a contrast with the American reaction. Sometimes, we forget that there are other victims of world events besides our own citizens and our own soldiers.

The second book, The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger*, tells the event from an American perspective. In a brilliant artistic move, Niffenegger simply shows Clare and Henry looking at the television, watching the planes crash into the towers. She leaves it to her reader's imagination to place their own reactions to the events into the story, a cleverly engaging device. It brings a stark element of the real world into this already wonderful book.

I'm interesting in observing how those events will continue to creep into art and effect the public imagination. How do audiences who could name specifically where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news react to such representations? I know that in both of those sections in both novels, I felt strangely connected, as though I had a shared experience with the characters, whose lives were otherwise different from my own.


*In an intriguing aside, Niffenger is a book artist, who teaches in Chicago. How cool is that?

Books, books (and the World's Worst Poet)

It's that time of year again--the one where I get to buy my school books. Here was the semester's list:

• The Confidence Man (Herman Melville)
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (H.S. Thompson)
• Angels (Denis Johnson)
• Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson)
• Fool's Progress (Edward Abbey)
• Vineland (Thomas Pynchon)
• La Perdida (Jessica Abel)
• Flaming Iguanas (Erika Lopez)
• Elements of Style (Strunk and White)
• Literary Research Guide (Ed. Harner)
• MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (Ed. Joseph Gibaldi)
  
• Glossary of Literary Terms (Ed. M.H. Abrams)
• Chicago Manual of Style
• Chicago Guide To Your Academic Career
• Poetic Designs (Adams)

Sounds like I have an exciting semester ahead of me, no? I already had two of these books, but the rest totaled about as much as my tuition--though, I do have a tuition discount and all.

*********
How would you like the title of the World's Worst Poet? One William McGonagall (yes, he shares the name of a Hogwarts Professor) has been granted this honor. The Scottish are known to take their poetry seriously. After all, they produced the likes of Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott, and the Scottish are a little touchy about appearing inept to the rest of the world. They had the English telling them for years that they were nothing but barbarians who didn't know how to open a book.

But seriously--a poet who had to take an umbrella with him to shield himself from rotten vegetables? He must have upset some readers. Also, I'm sure thinking that he was second to Shakespeare in genius didn't help. I mean, really. Even if you're good, you don't go around claiming that you're in Shakespeare's league. And judging from the samples of poetry, he really is a pretty poor poet.

War, Oppression, and Friendship: Hosseini's A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS

One eye on my soup, the other on the pages of Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, I managed to finish this excellent novel just a short time ago. And so I decided to tell you all about it.

Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, brings the world of Afghanistan to life for his American audience, enchanting us with his descriptions of its beauty and richness, and wrenching our hearts as we watch it slowly destroyed through thirty years of conflict. In many ways it is a book to make us not forget about Afghanistan, a fear voiced by a character at the close of the novel, keep in our minds the effects of war and cultural strife that tore Afghanistan apart.

But it also a compelling narrative about two women, Mariam and Laila who are caught in the aftermath of war and violence, victims of the power shift from the Soviets to the Mujahideen, who then fell into civil unrest and sectarian violence, followed by the rise of the Taliban and the restrictions they enforced. Mariam is married off at fifteen to Rasheed, a violent, ill-tempered man who forces Mariam to dress in burka and punishes her because she cannot carry a child to term. Her silent, long-suffering character is juxtaposed with Laila, the young, beautiful girl who is love with Tariq, her childhood friend who lost a leg to a land mine.

Mariam is reclusive and shy, while Laila is able to go to school and have a public life. But it all changes the day that her parents are killed when a rocket blows up their house; fourteen year old Laila survives and is nursed back to health by Mariam and Rasheed. Rasheed decides that Laila either needs to marry him or leave; he refuses to pay for her upkeep any longer. Laila agrees--but only because she discovers she is pregnant with Tariq's child, who she has been told is dead, and cannot make it to the Pakistan border.

As the narrative continues, Mariam move from enemies to friends who both suffer at the hands of their violent husband who insults, beats, and abuses both women. It is their friendship that sustains them both, giving love and purpose to Mariam's life and offering Laila love and support in turn.

The novel is not without its faults, but I found it compelling and captivating. It was hard to put down, and I feel offered a window into life in Afghanistan in the turbulent years leading up to 9/11 and the events following. It's a great read, and I recommend it if you need something good to fill up your summer evenings.

Currently Reading

• I'm currently re-reading the entire Harry Potter series. I just finished up The Goblet of Fire, and am about to jump into The Order of the Phoenix. I'm constantly amazed at Rowling's skill at writing and her ability to compose a compelling story. I love that she plants little clues to things that become important later in the narrative (either within the same book, or in a later one). And I'm really looking forward to learning what is between Snape and Dumbledore in about two weeks.
• I'm also currently reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. It's his second novel, following the hit The Kite Runner (which I've also enjoyed). Thus far it's pretty interesting, and I've certainly been reading it quickly. (It's my "work" book, so I don't have to lug Harry Potter around. Those later books are heavy).
• I'm enrolled in a genre theory independent readings course, and we're reading something called The Rhetoric and Ideology of Genre. I'm supposed to find ways to apply it to my thesis--which won't be hard, considering I'm dealing with basically transitioning between genres, and I want to use an informed concept of genre to formulate the class.
• I've also picked up several knitting books from the library, trying to devise ways to use up my stash of mediocre yarn so I can buy pretty, nice yarn. Mmm, knitting.

Anyone else got lots on the summer reading list? Tell, tell!

The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass, an amazing book by Philip Pullman, is being made into a movie. The site looked pretty neat, so I went and played for a while and created a daemon, which in the novel is the manifest part of your soul as a creature. The site lets you take a personality quiz, and then assigns you a daemon. Mine is a tiger--but it might be wrong. So in my sidebar, you can click and take a quiz to see if I'm right!

Edit: apparently the sidebar quiz is a little funky, so here's a direct link to take it...