Since my boss went dark on all things interwebs, I've read a bunch of stuff.
Except that I didn't take notes and now I'm trying to catch up.
Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal: Great! I really liked the mixture of regency and magic. And the true-to-form combination of wit and brooding. Downside: the diary. Upside: glamours. Definitely enhanced by having known Mary and what a mixture of whimsy and propriety she is. Her book so beautifully reflects her.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: GAH! I was so addicted to these. So believable and dark and addictive. I know I was the last person in the world to read these, and I'm very glad I did. Wish I could start all over again.
The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen: Oh, I like her. They've gone from whimsical to a tiny bit guilty pleasure, but I like her voice nevertheless. This one was a bit fluffy, but I did like how the man in this one was non-butch. Not many mainstream writers extol the appeal of androgynous men.
Somewhere in there I re-read Jane Eyre. Reinforcing (again) how I would never ever have married in that era based upon her portrayal of male behavior. I've loved this book since I first learned to read, but DANG, Rochester gets worse upon every read. And St. John? Mother of all things manipulative. Ugh!
What else...? I've stayed up late a handful of times finishing books. I'll have to think harder about what those were...
Monday, June 6, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
The state of the blog
...I haven't posted forever. I blame my employer's block of the internet. Sad sad sad.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Diana Wynne Jones - A sad day for readers everywhere
Diana Wynne Jones died Saturday, March 26, 2011. Something I learned from reading Neil Gaiman's online journal entry today.
DWJ is so far and away my favorite author that there isn't really a 2nd-favorite, and even though I'm just one of millions of fans, I feel devastated, as if she was a favorite relative or someone else I knew well.
Really, though, I merely knew a small piece of her world, through which she created a small piece of mine.
DWJ is so far and away my favorite author that there isn't really a 2nd-favorite, and even though I'm just one of millions of fans, I feel devastated, as if she was a favorite relative or someone else I knew well.
Really, though, I merely knew a small piece of her world, through which she created a small piece of mine.
Monday, March 21, 2011
March Birthday = NEW BOOKS!!
Hooray!
In honor of turning the magical number forty-one, my mother-in-law gifted me a generous Powell's card, with which I purchased:
AND! I won one of the Locus Challenge giveaway books:
Sadly, the book, had I but paid attention, is #3 in a series, prompting me to spend my own money on books 1 and 2. Despite bleeding my own money: WHEEEEEE!
Again, March proves why it's my favorite month of the year: Many delicious books to read!! Stay tuned...
In honor of turning the magical number forty-one, my mother-in-law gifted me a generous Powell's card, with which I purchased:
- Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal
- Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
- The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (I may be the only person who has not yet read these)
- The Maltese Manuscript, by Joanne Dobson (literary mysteries at their best)
AND! I won one of the Locus Challenge giveaway books:
Sadly, the book, had I but paid attention, is #3 in a series, prompting me to spend my own money on books 1 and 2. Despite bleeding my own money: WHEEEEEE!
Again, March proves why it's my favorite month of the year: Many delicious books to read!! Stay tuned...
Thursday, March 17, 2011
12 books, 12 months #6: Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, by Alison Arngrim
This is part 6 of my portion of a book review series brought to you by The Latter Day Bohemian via Middle-Aged Woman.
Holy fun. Clearly I've been blocking a key part of my childhood - the one where I watched 3000 hours of Little House on the Prairie, obsessively read the books, wore prairie skirts, and played out endless Little-Housian stories with my staff of dolls and toys.
Last night it all came roaring back as I read Alison Arngrim's snappy autobiography about growing up playing Nellie Oleson in the wildly successful prairie TV (melo)drama. This is a fun, quick read, and Arngrim definitely keeps everything fresh - light-handed with the serious stuff and laughing companionably (and often) at the histrionics of actors everywhere.
There's not a lot to pick apart. Her narrative is quick-paced and sweet. Arngrim had eccentric, fairly bohemian parents who were bent on their own and their children's success. Money was iffy and her family's coping mechanisms - which could easily sound bleak and sad in other hands - come across as upbeat and quirky.
Even the heaviest piece of her childhood - long-term sexual abuse at the hands of her also-famous brother - is dealt with matter-of-factly. Not dismissively, but not overly sentimental. I had to admire her ability to say "I will share this with you, stranger, and give you the summary. But keep your pity out of my way." It's certainly good for the sake of her mostly comic memoir, and keeps her overall persona glib, humorous, and slightly detached.
Arngrim clearly could write another story about her life, interpreting her odd parents, her brother, some post-Little House life experiences in a much more untangling, wallowing way. But she chooses at every point to make the glossier, humorous punchline. And it works. It IS a memoir and she IS an actor, but for all the layers of narcissism inherent in those two things, it's a good, candid, non-precious read.
Arngrim knows she's writing a book that will primarily be read by fans of Little House, and uses that as her motif, despite the many non-actor things she's done since Nellie (most notably AIDS activism and campaigning for the rights of incest survivors). And she isn't all sunshine and lollipops: she's candid about a few people, including the (scandalous!) rudeness of Melissa Sue Anderson (Mary) and Katherine MacGregor (Mrs. Oleson)'s infuriating habit of directing other actors. But (aside from Anderson, who sounds difficult to know), Arngrim's voice is generally fair and loving, even when she describes some of the most difficult situations in her life.
Given that, it's tough to call her to task for her glib, defensive humor. Lots of people use humor as a wall, and Arngrim at least acknowledges that her humorous shield has saved her. She calls it bitchiness, born from playing a well-known girl-you-love-to-hate. But, you know, not so much. I'd call her direct and humorous and admirable - not much of a bitch at all.
Holy fun. Clearly I've been blocking a key part of my childhood - the one where I watched 3000 hours of Little House on the Prairie, obsessively read the books, wore prairie skirts, and played out endless Little-Housian stories with my staff of dolls and toys.
Last night it all came roaring back as I read Alison Arngrim's snappy autobiography about growing up playing Nellie Oleson in the wildly successful prairie TV (melo)drama. This is a fun, quick read, and Arngrim definitely keeps everything fresh - light-handed with the serious stuff and laughing companionably (and often) at the histrionics of actors everywhere.
There's not a lot to pick apart. Her narrative is quick-paced and sweet. Arngrim had eccentric, fairly bohemian parents who were bent on their own and their children's success. Money was iffy and her family's coping mechanisms - which could easily sound bleak and sad in other hands - come across as upbeat and quirky.
Even the heaviest piece of her childhood - long-term sexual abuse at the hands of her also-famous brother - is dealt with matter-of-factly. Not dismissively, but not overly sentimental. I had to admire her ability to say "I will share this with you, stranger, and give you the summary. But keep your pity out of my way." It's certainly good for the sake of her mostly comic memoir, and keeps her overall persona glib, humorous, and slightly detached.
Arngrim clearly could write another story about her life, interpreting her odd parents, her brother, some post-Little House life experiences in a much more untangling, wallowing way. But she chooses at every point to make the glossier, humorous punchline. And it works. It IS a memoir and she IS an actor, but for all the layers of narcissism inherent in those two things, it's a good, candid, non-precious read.
Arngrim knows she's writing a book that will primarily be read by fans of Little House, and uses that as her motif, despite the many non-actor things she's done since Nellie (most notably AIDS activism and campaigning for the rights of incest survivors). And she isn't all sunshine and lollipops: she's candid about a few people, including the (scandalous!) rudeness of Melissa Sue Anderson (Mary) and Katherine MacGregor (Mrs. Oleson)'s infuriating habit of directing other actors. But (aside from Anderson, who sounds difficult to know), Arngrim's voice is generally fair and loving, even when she describes some of the most difficult situations in her life.
Given that, it's tough to call her to task for her glib, defensive humor. Lots of people use humor as a wall, and Arngrim at least acknowledges that her humorous shield has saved her. She calls it bitchiness, born from playing a well-known girl-you-love-to-hate. But, you know, not so much. I'd call her direct and humorous and admirable - not much of a bitch at all.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
More challenge!
I'm attempting another book challenge through Locus Magazine. The list of possibles is LONG and DELICIOUS! I've been wanting to read Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal (squee! I know her!) and the new Jasper Fforde... wish me luck!
Sunday, February 27, 2011
The Book of Johns: 12 books, 12 months #5: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
This is part 5 of my portion of a book review series brought to you by The Latter Day Bohemian via Middle-Aged Woman.
I can't do it. Much as I believe the payoff would be pleasurable, this book is the most difficult to enjoy audio-book I've yet tried.
I own 2 hard copies, so I WILL try again with the bound copies, so I can make mental notes as to the page upon which someone named John appears. That way, when the eleventy-seventh John says something dry and witty, I can remember which effing John it is - or at least page back to figure it out.
8 hours into an approximately 32 hour audio-book, I throw up my hands.
The good: It's a fun capture of regency-era stiffness and linguistic quirks in a parallel universe where magic lurks in the shadows. The bad: the cast of thousands, the interchangeable stuffiness of address, and the footnotes, OH, the footnotes...AAAAAHHH! I can't do it. I drift off into a deaf mental fugue whenever I try to sit and listen. Or jog and listen. Or anything and listen. A few paragraphs into the narration and I'm completely bored AND have to cull my brain to remember if this is the John who wrote the treatise on Magic in Britain, or the John who is the selectman, or the John who is going to marry the fussy Miss R, apprenticed to the fussy magician Mr. Norrell. Or possibly it's the one married to the brought-back-to-life Miss C? And by the time I've figured it out, I've once again lost what may be critical information to the book's plot.
I really like Clarke's voice. But this is a book to be careful over, and my life, full as it is of job, family, and etc. is not allowing the careful, note-taking reading required.
My vote: A- for Clarke (I don't care for the narrator choice, and think his dry voice contributes to my dilemma) and an F- for me for the realization that my life needs books with more spoon-feeding.
I can't do it. Much as I believe the payoff would be pleasurable, this book is the most difficult to enjoy audio-book I've yet tried.
I own 2 hard copies, so I WILL try again with the bound copies, so I can make mental notes as to the page upon which someone named John appears. That way, when the eleventy-seventh John says something dry and witty, I can remember which effing John it is - or at least page back to figure it out.
8 hours into an approximately 32 hour audio-book, I throw up my hands.
The good: It's a fun capture of regency-era stiffness and linguistic quirks in a parallel universe where magic lurks in the shadows. The bad: the cast of thousands, the interchangeable stuffiness of address, and the footnotes, OH, the footnotes...AAAAAHHH! I can't do it. I drift off into a deaf mental fugue whenever I try to sit and listen. Or jog and listen. Or anything and listen. A few paragraphs into the narration and I'm completely bored AND have to cull my brain to remember if this is the John who wrote the treatise on Magic in Britain, or the John who is the selectman, or the John who is going to marry the fussy Miss R, apprenticed to the fussy magician Mr. Norrell. Or possibly it's the one married to the brought-back-to-life Miss C? And by the time I've figured it out, I've once again lost what may be critical information to the book's plot.
I really like Clarke's voice. But this is a book to be careful over, and my life, full as it is of job, family, and etc. is not allowing the careful, note-taking reading required.
My vote: A- for Clarke (I don't care for the narrator choice, and think his dry voice contributes to my dilemma) and an F- for me for the realization that my life needs books with more spoon-feeding.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Grammar slammer: in/out or on/off
This past Saturday I had a chat with a Jordanian barista with AMAZING English. He said he'd been in the US for 6 months and had studied the language conversationally in Jordan with other English-speakers for only a few months prior to that. I'm always amazed by people who are adaptive linguists. I am not. Like many things in my life, I can be clunkily adept at something only after a lot of repetition and even then am best when I can do one thing over and over again until it comes "naturally".
Aaaaanyway, my new barista friend was joking about all the painful English idioms he'd encountered that make no sense nor do they follow language rules that are uniformly enforced. Having (briefly) studied his native Arabic, I can see his point.
My favorite of his idiomatic head slappers: We get in and out of a car, but on and off of a bus, train, or airplane. Why?
I have it on good authority that Brits say things like "on" line instead of "in" line for a queue. (Also, they use the word queue.)
I know there are English idiom books and studies out there that would, at length, answer any query I encounter, but it's more fun (for me) to ask you what you think?
Aaaaanyway, my new barista friend was joking about all the painful English idioms he'd encountered that make no sense nor do they follow language rules that are uniformly enforced. Having (briefly) studied his native Arabic, I can see his point.
My favorite of his idiomatic head slappers: We get in and out of a car, but on and off of a bus, train, or airplane. Why?
I have it on good authority that Brits say things like "on" line instead of "in" line for a queue. (Also, they use the word queue.)
I know there are English idiom books and studies out there that would, at length, answer any query I encounter, but it's more fun (for me) to ask you what you think?
Monday, January 10, 2011
12 Months, 12 Books: #4 - The Alchemist by Paul Coelho
This is part 4 of my portion of a book review series brought to you by The Latter Day Bohemian via Middle-Aged Woman.
Sometimes you think you want something, and then - shaZAM! - you find it right there in front of you – at home! And sometimes that thing is a big treasure chest full of gold!! And you can find it using Ruby Slippers! Or maybe if a bell rings on a Christmas tree… Whichever, be assured that it is your DESTINY to find the treasure, and the UNIVERSE will help you find it!...sigh...
A few months ago, my niece wrote a review of The Alchemist, a book I was, until then, sure I’d read (I hadn’t). I wanted to read it until I did; I now I wish I hadn't.
The story follows a poor shepherd named Santiago who has a specific dream about a treasure. Lots of mysterious strangers help him follow this dream. Many years, adventures, and magical powers later, he finds the treasure back at home where he started. The end.
The Alchemist is set vaguely back in time far enough to strip away all modern contrivances like ease of transportation or communication – or literacy. Throughout the book, speech and exposition walk a thin line of fake-o ethnicity, sort-of Tonto-meets-Swami-meets-Yoda: "in heart one will find truth!". This is maybe one of the drawbacks of anachronistic writing, and not universally true of the novel, but true often enough to grate on me.
Clearly - CLEARLY - I’m disinclined and sarcastic when it comes to modern books of spiritual allegory, which generally have the appeal of Christian tracts. When I was in college, or maybe even in High School, somebody recommended to me Illusions by Richard Bach; at the time, I thought Bach’s desire to allegorize his anti-materialist world-view very interesting and enlightening. That was probably the last time an allegory made me feel more enriched than condescended to. As with my feelings about self-help books, allegorical novels have to be especially terrific in both premise and form to not make me roll my eyes. And I don't think The Alchemist has either going for it.
Coelho is not a bad writer. In fact, one of my favorite reads in 2009 was The Witch of Portobello, a sort-of mystery novel about politics, gypsies, adoption, parenting, death, and love. And I really savored that book and Coelho’s writing. And although I set myself up to not enjoy The Alchemist once I realized the overall conceit, I must acknowledge that it’s also written in a sparse, pleasing way, despite the occasional dips into caricaturizing:
Sometimes you think you want something, and then - shaZAM! - you find it right there in front of you – at home! And sometimes that thing is a big treasure chest full of gold!! And you can find it using Ruby Slippers! Or maybe if a bell rings on a Christmas tree… Whichever, be assured that it is your DESTINY to find the treasure, and the UNIVERSE will help you find it!...sigh...
A few months ago, my niece wrote a review of The Alchemist, a book I was, until then, sure I’d read (I hadn’t). I wanted to read it until I did; I now I wish I hadn't.
The story follows a poor shepherd named Santiago who has a specific dream about a treasure. Lots of mysterious strangers help him follow this dream. Many years, adventures, and magical powers later, he finds the treasure back at home where he started. The end.
The Alchemist is set vaguely back in time far enough to strip away all modern contrivances like ease of transportation or communication – or literacy. Throughout the book, speech and exposition walk a thin line of fake-o ethnicity, sort-of Tonto-meets-Swami-meets-Yoda: "in heart one will find truth!". This is maybe one of the drawbacks of anachronistic writing, and not universally true of the novel, but true often enough to grate on me.
Clearly - CLEARLY - I’m disinclined and sarcastic when it comes to modern books of spiritual allegory, which generally have the appeal of Christian tracts. When I was in college, or maybe even in High School, somebody recommended to me Illusions by Richard Bach; at the time, I thought Bach’s desire to allegorize his anti-materialist world-view very interesting and enlightening. That was probably the last time an allegory made me feel more enriched than condescended to. As with my feelings about self-help books, allegorical novels have to be especially terrific in both premise and form to not make me roll my eyes. And I don't think The Alchemist has either going for it.
Coelho is not a bad writer. In fact, one of my favorite reads in 2009 was The Witch of Portobello, a sort-of mystery novel about politics, gypsies, adoption, parenting, death, and love. And I really savored that book and Coelho’s writing. And although I set myself up to not enjoy The Alchemist once I realized the overall conceit, I must acknowledge that it’s also written in a sparse, pleasing way, despite the occasional dips into caricaturizing:
"Hmm…" said the old man, looking at all sides of the book, as if it were some strange object. "This is an important book, but it's really irritating."The Alchemist had a lot of my own anti-authority, anti-dogma issues to overcome, at which (naturally, perhaps) it failed. It might be a pleasurable book – it certainly has been very well received both critically and in overall sales – but I found myself frustrated with the moralizing intent. Like Richard Bach or O. Henry, I was unwilling to open myself to the homily-laden language to find the path to the obvious Higher Power (Love, God, Faith, or, in this novel, the Universe within). Overall, I found it simple and elegant in its way, but more irritating than compelling.
The boy was shocked. The old man knew how to read, and had already read the book. And if the book was irritating, as the old man had said, the boy still had time to change it for another.
"It's a book that says the same thing almost all the other books in the world say," continued the old man. "It describes people's inability to choose their own destinies. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world's greatest lie."
"What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked, completely surprised.
"It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie."
Thursday, December 30, 2010
12 books, 12 months: Room, by Emma Donoghue
This is part 3 of my portion of a book review series brought to you by The Latter Day Bohemian via Middle-Aged Woman. I originally posted this on my personal blog, and then moved it.
Pssst: This post contains book spoilers. It's not that I don't get why reviews don't contain spoilers, but...you know, half of this book takes place after a major event, and not ONE of the reviews I have read reviewed the entire book because of that thing. And that isn't journalistic integrity, exactly, it feels like journalistic truncation. Or something. So, as an amateur, armchair reviewer, I'm too interested in the whole book to give you half of a review. But if you haven't read the book already, I speak to a few major plot points - be warned, 3 readers!
Anyway. This book is tough. It takes on a lot of hurdles, some sensational, some psychological, and some imaginative. It's a book that could so easily falter that I kept expecting something bad (literarily speaking) to happen.
Among a series of other, generally tight conceits, Room is built on the premise that a 5-year-old boy, Jack, is the narrator. As the parent of 2 kids, ages 7 and 3, I was pretty skeptical that Donoghue could really get into the weird phrasing and idiosyncratic voice of a 5-year-old narrator. But...she did. Very very well, I think. FAR better than any other adult book I've read where a child narrates in the first person (Carson McCullers, if you aren't dead - probably you are - take note! Charles Dickens - definitely dead - would be shamed).
Not once did I want to rip my headphones out and yell "ARGH!!!" (and YES, I "read" this as an audio book - again - which may have contributed to the overall believability of Jack's voice, as I had an actor reading me lines that may have been more awkward on paper).
There are multitudes of small points where Jack is spot-on. His interchanging verb tenses, his attempt to ferret (flawed) logic from a situation he half understands. It's an amazing portrayal and worth every second of this book for that achievement alone.
So...straight from the worst, most sensationalized news, Room (as you, 3 readers probably have already heard) is about a mother and son who live in a tiny, fortressed, 1-room garden shed, held captive by a man, "Old Nick" who kidnapped the mother when she was 19 and put her in the room he had already created for that purpose. Jack is their son.
Many other reviews have spent a lot of time talking about the weirdness/cleverness of Jack's world scope (they don't sleep on a bed, but on Bed; other inanimate characters include Duvet, Wardrobe, Plant, and so forth...). And more time also (elsewhere) has been devoted to the sense of "real" or "not real" that Jack has, growing up in a world where the only "real" people he has ever seen is himself and Ma.
While I like the attention paid to those details by Donoghue, I was most impressed by her portrayal of characters. Like Jack, Ma (she is not given a real name) has an intent, unique personality that scrabbles off the page. This story survives on Ma's ingenuity and strength, and also on her crushing depression and stress. When Ma is not on the page, the narration limps along a bit lifelessly.
In the first half of the book, while they are in captivity (this is the big spoiler - they escape!), Donoghue establishes a well crafted, subtle relationship between the two. Once their situation becomes more apparent, there are hundreds of little touches that both reveal and give shape to the two characters. Donoghue invests Ma with a wealth of creativity inside a world of deprivation, and the two characters re-write their situational poverty through a series of daily, innovative rituals.
In my favorite of these, they set up the room to have an obstacle path, and then they "hike" around and around their tiny room, talking about the things they would see on a hike: "a tree", "a bear"...While Donoghue, through Jack, is never explicitly complimentary or descriptive about Ma, the effort Ma puts into parenting Jack well and carefully in that impossible situation is repeatedly breathtaking.
I've been a volunteer with trauma-survivor service agencies for almost 20 years, mostly as a peer-to-peer support person. Subsequently, many of the ways in which Ma is some days strong, some days catatonic, some days angry really resounded for me. I don't know what kind of research Donghue did with trauma victims, but I do know she created someone who could believably have been one of my clients. And her moods, linked so tightly to Jack as she is, were best reflected in the tragedy of a child who couldn't understand, but had learned to cope on days when Ma was "gone", wrapped in a catatonic state of blankness.
I think the strangest reaction I had to this book was my inability to finish it immediately. I was gripped by the story, and felt tremendous (reader) anxiety about how they could escape. Donoghue set up the tension and the exposition of how Ma had tried to escape over the years in a greatly paced way, so that as I pieced together Ma's history and helplessness (such as her discovery that Old Nick had reinforced the foundation of the shed with chain-link fencing), I was caught - brainstorming more ways in my head as I read.
And then...about 2/3 of the way through the book, after they've escaped and are living in a psych hospital for evaluation and "re-integration", Ma attempts suicide. And I was devastated. It was one of the most clinically believable, tragic moments I've hit in a book in a long time, and I had to stop. It took me almost 2 months to come back and see what happened. It ended tightly, but I was still raw from thinking about what led Ma to that place. And so even though I didn't want to finish it, I think even that speaks to Donoghue's unerring skill.
Overall, Room is one of the best researched contemporary novels I've read. While there were stumbles, they were quite possibly stumbles of my own understanding, such as my disappointment in Ma's parents' response to her return to them after 7 years in captivity. I think Donoghue wants to show that Ma was disconnected from her parents before she was kidnapped, or maybe more that Jack, narrating that reunion, didn't understand the experience. Whichever, I was left feeling empty about something that had so much potential for resonance. And the grandparent/family characters felt weakly drawn and not-quite-real. Which perhaps circles back to that point of, maybe they just weren't quite real to Jack.
Pssst: This post contains book spoilers. It's not that I don't get why reviews don't contain spoilers, but...you know, half of this book takes place after a major event, and not ONE of the reviews I have read reviewed the entire book because of that thing. And that isn't journalistic integrity, exactly, it feels like journalistic truncation. Or something. So, as an amateur, armchair reviewer, I'm too interested in the whole book to give you half of a review. But if you haven't read the book already, I speak to a few major plot points - be warned, 3 readers!
Anyway. This book is tough. It takes on a lot of hurdles, some sensational, some psychological, and some imaginative. It's a book that could so easily falter that I kept expecting something bad (literarily speaking) to happen.
Among a series of other, generally tight conceits, Room is built on the premise that a 5-year-old boy, Jack, is the narrator. As the parent of 2 kids, ages 7 and 3, I was pretty skeptical that Donoghue could really get into the weird phrasing and idiosyncratic voice of a 5-year-old narrator. But...she did. Very very well, I think. FAR better than any other adult book I've read where a child narrates in the first person (Carson McCullers, if you aren't dead - probably you are - take note! Charles Dickens - definitely dead - would be shamed).
Not once did I want to rip my headphones out and yell "ARGH!!!" (and YES, I "read" this as an audio book - again - which may have contributed to the overall believability of Jack's voice, as I had an actor reading me lines that may have been more awkward on paper).
There are multitudes of small points where Jack is spot-on. His interchanging verb tenses, his attempt to ferret (flawed) logic from a situation he half understands. It's an amazing portrayal and worth every second of this book for that achievement alone.
So...straight from the worst, most sensationalized news, Room (as you, 3 readers probably have already heard) is about a mother and son who live in a tiny, fortressed, 1-room garden shed, held captive by a man, "Old Nick" who kidnapped the mother when she was 19 and put her in the room he had already created for that purpose. Jack is their son.
Many other reviews have spent a lot of time talking about the weirdness/cleverness of Jack's world scope (they don't sleep on a bed, but on Bed; other inanimate characters include Duvet, Wardrobe, Plant, and so forth...). And more time also (elsewhere) has been devoted to the sense of "real" or "not real" that Jack has, growing up in a world where the only "real" people he has ever seen is himself and Ma.
While I like the attention paid to those details by Donoghue, I was most impressed by her portrayal of characters. Like Jack, Ma (she is not given a real name) has an intent, unique personality that scrabbles off the page. This story survives on Ma's ingenuity and strength, and also on her crushing depression and stress. When Ma is not on the page, the narration limps along a bit lifelessly.
In the first half of the book, while they are in captivity (this is the big spoiler - they escape!), Donoghue establishes a well crafted, subtle relationship between the two. Once their situation becomes more apparent, there are hundreds of little touches that both reveal and give shape to the two characters. Donoghue invests Ma with a wealth of creativity inside a world of deprivation, and the two characters re-write their situational poverty through a series of daily, innovative rituals.
In my favorite of these, they set up the room to have an obstacle path, and then they "hike" around and around their tiny room, talking about the things they would see on a hike: "a tree", "a bear"...While Donoghue, through Jack, is never explicitly complimentary or descriptive about Ma, the effort Ma puts into parenting Jack well and carefully in that impossible situation is repeatedly breathtaking.
I've been a volunteer with trauma-survivor service agencies for almost 20 years, mostly as a peer-to-peer support person. Subsequently, many of the ways in which Ma is some days strong, some days catatonic, some days angry really resounded for me. I don't know what kind of research Donghue did with trauma victims, but I do know she created someone who could believably have been one of my clients. And her moods, linked so tightly to Jack as she is, were best reflected in the tragedy of a child who couldn't understand, but had learned to cope on days when Ma was "gone", wrapped in a catatonic state of blankness.
I think the strangest reaction I had to this book was my inability to finish it immediately. I was gripped by the story, and felt tremendous (reader) anxiety about how they could escape. Donoghue set up the tension and the exposition of how Ma had tried to escape over the years in a greatly paced way, so that as I pieced together Ma's history and helplessness (such as her discovery that Old Nick had reinforced the foundation of the shed with chain-link fencing), I was caught - brainstorming more ways in my head as I read.
And then...about 2/3 of the way through the book, after they've escaped and are living in a psych hospital for evaluation and "re-integration", Ma attempts suicide. And I was devastated. It was one of the most clinically believable, tragic moments I've hit in a book in a long time, and I had to stop. It took me almost 2 months to come back and see what happened. It ended tightly, but I was still raw from thinking about what led Ma to that place. And so even though I didn't want to finish it, I think even that speaks to Donoghue's unerring skill.
Overall, Room is one of the best researched contemporary novels I've read. While there were stumbles, they were quite possibly stumbles of my own understanding, such as my disappointment in Ma's parents' response to her return to them after 7 years in captivity. I think Donoghue wants to show that Ma was disconnected from her parents before she was kidnapped, or maybe more that Jack, narrating that reunion, didn't understand the experience. Whichever, I was left feeling empty about something that had so much potential for resonance. And the grandparent/family characters felt weakly drawn and not-quite-real. Which perhaps circles back to that point of, maybe they just weren't quite real to Jack.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
12 months/12 books: Post #2 "The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance" by Elna Baker
This is part 2 of my portion of a book review series brought to you by The Latter Day Bohemian via Middle-Aged Woman. **This is re-posted from my personal blog - not sure why it took me until now to figure that out **
I realized when I picked up this book and paid FULL PRICE for it that I would probably choose to review it. And that I wasn't sure how much I would be able to simply review this book as much as review my own take on Mormonism, "single"-ness, and faith.
That proved pretty true while I was reading it as well: it was tough to hear Elna Baker's voice without filtering her through my own experiences in nearly identical circumstances. She caught me when describing the crepe-paper festooned Mormon gymnasium and nut cups, and I can attest that she is deft at portraying many typical Mormon experiences with a great eye for their intrinsic and myriad loopiness. Unfortunately, the editor in me begged to push her (over and over again) for more personal authenticity than glibness.
Elna Baker is a professional comedienne who fits in with the current oeuvre of memoirists who (as it seems to me) are like your funny friend with a lot of ability to build up to a good punchline in a life-of-the-party sort of way, and who then find themselves writing a book piecing together all their funny punchlines. For Baker, sometimes that works, and sometimes it's a mess. However, it's not a terrible thing to say that this book is funny and messy, but unfortunately, it's also occasionally teen-journal-angst-ridden (the format is part journal as well, including a map of whom she's kissed, and where), excessively narcissistic, and generally pretty glossy when it comes to self-examination.
She's no David Sedaris, but she's definitely interesting, even if her best selling point is that she is someone funny from the Mormon world, navigating a life where she doesn't drink, smoke, do drugs, engage in premarital sex, swear, or drink caffeinated beverages. Almost all of her punchlines are related to being Mormon. And that's okay. A little one-trick, but (to me, at least) unique by virtue of being genuinely Mormon in a world FULL of "my weird childhood/life/religion/sexuality/money-making-scheme" memoirs.
Generally, I find that Baker's humor is sharp in the well-edited passages, and a bit of a toss-off in many other sections. Here's one example:
One of the most intriguing things Baker admits in this book is how she complicatedly mixes her suppressed sexuality with spirituality. At one point, she meets a man to whom she is very connected and attracted but who is also an atheist. She likes him, and wants to be with him, but can't reconcile their clashing worldviews. Soon thereafter, she gets mostly naked with him (Major Mormon Taboo), then whispers in his ear "I really want you to pray about whether or not you believe in God".
Ha! So...the build-up to that is great. Awful. Embarrassing and deeply crazy. But the aftermath to that scene isn't "what is UP with me that I am trying to turn this guy on and then get him to pray?" Or even laughably clueless "I wonder why he ran out of here?" It's just...hum. Sort of "That was weird of me, wasn't it? Oooh, toast!" It's probably a situation not many authors could handle deftly, so maybe I could cut her some slack. However, Baker flubs the aftermath of many situations by not giving them the chance to reverberate fully. Like your friend at the party, she's already on to the next funny story, leaving the last story falling apart in her wake.
What I like most about the book is that Baker is generally very good at laughing at herself - something I think most Mormons lack, like a genetic defect caused by all that inter-breeding of Scandinavian zealots. (NB: Not all Mormons are Scandinavian descent, clearly, but look at any Ward phonebook and count how long the J section is "Jensen, Jergensen, Johansen, Jorgensen"...).
At any rate, I think the thing I wanted most from this book is something I may never get from any Mormon memoirist: a thoughtful, intelligent understanding of how their faith functions and how they reconcile the myriad requirements and inconsistencies of that faith with the rest of the world. Baker does an okay job, albeit superficially, of talking about how faith for her is more the feeling of peace with belonging to a group she understands and to which she belongs from birth. And I get that, even if she can't plumb much deeper into her own understanding.
As I stated before, some passages are clearly better edited than others, and it ends in the fraught-with-messiness setting I associate with a contemporary memoir. She chases atheist ex-boyfriend to (seriously) Africa, learning that being connected with someone doesn't erase the months of craziness you've put them through. It's got a bit of an Eat, Pray, Love end-vibe (minus the Love), but again, it ends up being a funny, if overall minor work.
I realized when I picked up this book and paid FULL PRICE for it that I would probably choose to review it. And that I wasn't sure how much I would be able to simply review this book as much as review my own take on Mormonism, "single"-ness, and faith.
That proved pretty true while I was reading it as well: it was tough to hear Elna Baker's voice without filtering her through my own experiences in nearly identical circumstances. She caught me when describing the crepe-paper festooned Mormon gymnasium and nut cups, and I can attest that she is deft at portraying many typical Mormon experiences with a great eye for their intrinsic and myriad loopiness. Unfortunately, the editor in me begged to push her (over and over again) for more personal authenticity than glibness.
Elna Baker is a professional comedienne who fits in with the current oeuvre of memoirists who (as it seems to me) are like your funny friend with a lot of ability to build up to a good punchline in a life-of-the-party sort of way, and who then find themselves writing a book piecing together all their funny punchlines. For Baker, sometimes that works, and sometimes it's a mess. However, it's not a terrible thing to say that this book is funny and messy, but unfortunately, it's also occasionally teen-journal-angst-ridden (the format is part journal as well, including a map of whom she's kissed, and where), excessively narcissistic, and generally pretty glossy when it comes to self-examination.
She's no David Sedaris, but she's definitely interesting, even if her best selling point is that she is someone funny from the Mormon world, navigating a life where she doesn't drink, smoke, do drugs, engage in premarital sex, swear, or drink caffeinated beverages. Almost all of her punchlines are related to being Mormon. And that's okay. A little one-trick, but (to me, at least) unique by virtue of being genuinely Mormon in a world FULL of "my weird childhood/life/religion/sexuality/money-making-scheme" memoirs.
Generally, I find that Baker's humor is sharp in the well-edited passages, and a bit of a toss-off in many other sections. Here's one example:
"“Do you guys know what cereal killers are?” he asked.It's a funny little story, but it lays there, sort-of lodged in as a substitute for more information about how her family dynamic works. It needs a framework that just isn't there to strengthen her voice, and the overall effect is that she's weak at painting other people into her single-spotlit world.
We shook our heads no.
“You guys are the cereal killers!” he said emphatically.
He piled us into the van and drove us to Fred Meyer. While he bought us masks, gloves, and squirt guns, we each got to pick out any cereal that we wanted.
From there we headed to several of his friends’ houses, assembling in a clump on their doorsteps while Tina, my oldest sister, rang the bell.
As the door opened we cocked our squirt guns with one hand, and held up our cereal boxes with the other: “Hands up,” we yelled. “We’re the cereal killers!” Then, at my father’s instruction, we went into his friends’ houses and forced them to eat cereal."
One of the most intriguing things Baker admits in this book is how she complicatedly mixes her suppressed sexuality with spirituality. At one point, she meets a man to whom she is very connected and attracted but who is also an atheist. She likes him, and wants to be with him, but can't reconcile their clashing worldviews. Soon thereafter, she gets mostly naked with him (Major Mormon Taboo), then whispers in his ear "I really want you to pray about whether or not you believe in God".
Ha! So...the build-up to that is great. Awful. Embarrassing and deeply crazy. But the aftermath to that scene isn't "what is UP with me that I am trying to turn this guy on and then get him to pray?" Or even laughably clueless "I wonder why he ran out of here?" It's just...hum. Sort of "That was weird of me, wasn't it? Oooh, toast!" It's probably a situation not many authors could handle deftly, so maybe I could cut her some slack. However, Baker flubs the aftermath of many situations by not giving them the chance to reverberate fully. Like your friend at the party, she's already on to the next funny story, leaving the last story falling apart in her wake.
What I like most about the book is that Baker is generally very good at laughing at herself - something I think most Mormons lack, like a genetic defect caused by all that inter-breeding of Scandinavian zealots. (NB: Not all Mormons are Scandinavian descent, clearly, but look at any Ward phonebook and count how long the J section is "Jensen, Jergensen, Johansen, Jorgensen"...).
At any rate, I think the thing I wanted most from this book is something I may never get from any Mormon memoirist: a thoughtful, intelligent understanding of how their faith functions and how they reconcile the myriad requirements and inconsistencies of that faith with the rest of the world. Baker does an okay job, albeit superficially, of talking about how faith for her is more the feeling of peace with belonging to a group she understands and to which she belongs from birth. And I get that, even if she can't plumb much deeper into her own understanding.
As I stated before, some passages are clearly better edited than others, and it ends in the fraught-with-messiness setting I associate with a contemporary memoir. She chases atheist ex-boyfriend to (seriously) Africa, learning that being connected with someone doesn't erase the months of craziness you've put them through. It's got a bit of an Eat, Pray, Love end-vibe (minus the Love), but again, it ends up being a funny, if overall minor work.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
12 books/12 months: Under the Dome, by Stephen King
This is part 1 of my portion of a book review series brought to you by The Latter Day Bohemian via Middle-Aged Woman. ** This is a re-post from my personal blog - not sure why it didn't occur to me to put it on the word blog until now **
Note: I listened to the audiobook version of this novel over the course of a couple of weeks, during my commute and while jogging. I may mess up the spelling of a character's name or location because I never saw the printed spelling.
Stephen King novels seem to loosely be structured around the same general premise: trap a person or group of people, either figuratively by circumstance, isolation, desire, or something a bit more obscure like a secret, or literally by placing them in captivity or incarceration, and then follow the arc of what each character or personality does in the parameters of that trap.
In novels of his that I particularly enjoy, like The Stand or It, the depth or integrity of each character seems to hinge on minutiae: a selfish character may find their own inner mettle when trapped, and another may find their inner depravity. And the nuances that lead each to disparate action is - to me - King's greatest gift.
His novels always seem impeccable in their detailed scrutiny of human character and the ways in which people think, feel, and act. In that, I compare his writing with the best of others of his generation: John Irving, Margaret Atwood, John Updike. I am not much of a horror or suspense reader, but to me King's novels walk that line between pure horror and better literature because of his great gift in creating believable, breathing characters.
Then, of course, there is the supernatural element of his books, which forever ties his work into that genre. Sometimes his supernatural premise is insidious: a niggling fantasy you had one dark night made horribly real and brought out, wriggling, under the light. In the case of Under the Dome, however, what fails - and fails badly - is this supernatural element (the logistics and the laughable source of the dome of the title barely deserve mention, other than as unworthy of the rest of the novel) and - even more importantly in this case - the supernatural element that wasn't.
In his novels where evil is perpetuated by a supernatural force, like Randall Flagg in The Stand or IT in It or the possessed dog, possessed zombie baby or possessed car, characters who respond to that unassailable evil with their own dark natures seem to be making choices that are, on some level, outside their own control, or at least are seduced by something that may puppeteer or commandeer their actions. The presence of iconic evil, in other words, makes the mundane horror and darkness of human characters more sympathetic.
In Under the Dome, the Dome itself is a bit of a red herring when compared to the actual decay of the town Chester's Mill (the town trapped by the dome). While the dome makes a complex situation explosive, I think King wants to make the point all the dome did was ignite fuses that were already laid.
For Chester's Mill, all of that decay can be traced back to the character of "Big" Jim Rennie. Big Jim is a town selectman, a used car dealer, a drug kingpin, and a born-again Christian. And evil. There is not one human or empathetic vision of Big Jim in this novel: before the dome came down, he was already a murderer, a thief, a drug lord, and an abuser of power and people. Subsequently, Big Jim's actions once the dome comes down are an escalation of what is clearly one-dimensional narcissism and his constant maneuvering to protect himself and maintain a position of local power. The meltdown of Chester's Mill hinges almost entirely on the results of Big Jim's negative actions, his power-plays and his relentless dark core. While you believe that he is, for whatever reason, evil, those machinations are, from the outset to the end, one-dimensional and flat - primarily unbelievable - and the novel breaks down over this point.
For example, one of the logical effects of the dome (or capsule) enclosing the town is that the power and water lines are severed. People with generators have power; those without generators do not. People with wells have water; those without do not. As the dome shuts out weather fluctuations, this is somewhat neutral as far as heating or cooling systems - initially, but impacts the storage and cooking of food, running water, and other power and water-based resources. Big Jim's drug manufacturing has slowly been siphoning all of the town's reserve propane, so only a few people actually end up with access to the propane needed to run their generators longer-term. Why is Big Jim a drug dealer? Why not: he's evil. Why did he take the propane? Because he can. Why does he cover up this fact? To keep power and hide his drug organization. Why do all the people who NEED that propane and know that Big Jim has taken it do NOTHING to get it back? Because...that's what they do. They do nothing until the logical results of Big Jim's machinations have already become inevitable.
Maybe I don't think this novel is successful because there are too many sheep-characters and too few heroes.
Maybe King sees this novel as an allegory for Nazi Germany, and in creating a purely evil human character and the groups of people who follow that character without scrutiny or a personal ethical core, he is quite possibly making a statement about current politics and/or religion in the US. And this is not a terrible point, but if that is his aim, I think he fails to ever find the access-point that makes the reader both identify with the followers of evil and recognize the horror of that choice.
This is a bit of a grander overview of the book's effect. I liked it well enough, but I don't like novels where fragile characters like children, dogs, and drug-addicts are dangled over the metaphorical flaming pit to make you squirm. Plenty of the more fragile characters in this novel (and, in fact, ALL of the "bad guy" characters) die. It's a bit of an apocalypse at the end. The main heroic arc is fine, if sort-of uninspiring, and I may always think a little differently about how precious clean air is after the end of this novel.
It's no The Stand, and I wish it had been a hell of a lot shorter for the pleasure I took in it in the end, but I am glad I read it. It's B- King, but even B- King is better than the A+ of most lesser skilled novelists.
Note: I listened to the audiobook version of this novel over the course of a couple of weeks, during my commute and while jogging. I may mess up the spelling of a character's name or location because I never saw the printed spelling.
Stephen King novels seem to loosely be structured around the same general premise: trap a person or group of people, either figuratively by circumstance, isolation, desire, or something a bit more obscure like a secret, or literally by placing them in captivity or incarceration, and then follow the arc of what each character or personality does in the parameters of that trap.
In novels of his that I particularly enjoy, like The Stand or It, the depth or integrity of each character seems to hinge on minutiae: a selfish character may find their own inner mettle when trapped, and another may find their inner depravity. And the nuances that lead each to disparate action is - to me - King's greatest gift.
His novels always seem impeccable in their detailed scrutiny of human character and the ways in which people think, feel, and act. In that, I compare his writing with the best of others of his generation: John Irving, Margaret Atwood, John Updike. I am not much of a horror or suspense reader, but to me King's novels walk that line between pure horror and better literature because of his great gift in creating believable, breathing characters.
Then, of course, there is the supernatural element of his books, which forever ties his work into that genre. Sometimes his supernatural premise is insidious: a niggling fantasy you had one dark night made horribly real and brought out, wriggling, under the light. In the case of Under the Dome, however, what fails - and fails badly - is this supernatural element (the logistics and the laughable source of the dome of the title barely deserve mention, other than as unworthy of the rest of the novel) and - even more importantly in this case - the supernatural element that wasn't.
In his novels where evil is perpetuated by a supernatural force, like Randall Flagg in The Stand or IT in It or the possessed dog, possessed zombie baby or possessed car, characters who respond to that unassailable evil with their own dark natures seem to be making choices that are, on some level, outside their own control, or at least are seduced by something that may puppeteer or commandeer their actions. The presence of iconic evil, in other words, makes the mundane horror and darkness of human characters more sympathetic.
In Under the Dome, the Dome itself is a bit of a red herring when compared to the actual decay of the town Chester's Mill (the town trapped by the dome). While the dome makes a complex situation explosive, I think King wants to make the point all the dome did was ignite fuses that were already laid.
For Chester's Mill, all of that decay can be traced back to the character of "Big" Jim Rennie. Big Jim is a town selectman, a used car dealer, a drug kingpin, and a born-again Christian. And evil. There is not one human or empathetic vision of Big Jim in this novel: before the dome came down, he was already a murderer, a thief, a drug lord, and an abuser of power and people. Subsequently, Big Jim's actions once the dome comes down are an escalation of what is clearly one-dimensional narcissism and his constant maneuvering to protect himself and maintain a position of local power. The meltdown of Chester's Mill hinges almost entirely on the results of Big Jim's negative actions, his power-plays and his relentless dark core. While you believe that he is, for whatever reason, evil, those machinations are, from the outset to the end, one-dimensional and flat - primarily unbelievable - and the novel breaks down over this point.
For example, one of the logical effects of the dome (or capsule) enclosing the town is that the power and water lines are severed. People with generators have power; those without generators do not. People with wells have water; those without do not. As the dome shuts out weather fluctuations, this is somewhat neutral as far as heating or cooling systems - initially, but impacts the storage and cooking of food, running water, and other power and water-based resources. Big Jim's drug manufacturing has slowly been siphoning all of the town's reserve propane, so only a few people actually end up with access to the propane needed to run their generators longer-term. Why is Big Jim a drug dealer? Why not: he's evil. Why did he take the propane? Because he can. Why does he cover up this fact? To keep power and hide his drug organization. Why do all the people who NEED that propane and know that Big Jim has taken it do NOTHING to get it back? Because...that's what they do. They do nothing until the logical results of Big Jim's machinations have already become inevitable.
Maybe I don't think this novel is successful because there are too many sheep-characters and too few heroes.
Maybe King sees this novel as an allegory for Nazi Germany, and in creating a purely evil human character and the groups of people who follow that character without scrutiny or a personal ethical core, he is quite possibly making a statement about current politics and/or religion in the US. And this is not a terrible point, but if that is his aim, I think he fails to ever find the access-point that makes the reader both identify with the followers of evil and recognize the horror of that choice.
This is a bit of a grander overview of the book's effect. I liked it well enough, but I don't like novels where fragile characters like children, dogs, and drug-addicts are dangled over the metaphorical flaming pit to make you squirm. Plenty of the more fragile characters in this novel (and, in fact, ALL of the "bad guy" characters) die. It's a bit of an apocalypse at the end. The main heroic arc is fine, if sort-of uninspiring, and I may always think a little differently about how precious clean air is after the end of this novel.
It's no The Stand, and I wish it had been a hell of a lot shorter for the pleasure I took in it in the end, but I am glad I read it. It's B- King, but even B- King is better than the A+ of most lesser skilled novelists.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
A Book Challenge!
Pick 12 titles from your To Read Pile. These should be titles you currently own have wanted to read for a while, but to which you haven't gotten around.
Post your list in your public space of choice by September 1, 2010 whenever. If you prefer not to post, you can just leave a comment with your list.
Read all 12 titles between now and September 5, 2011 (or, you know, whenever).
When you finish a title on your list, post about it in your public space of choice. If you prefer not to post, you can just leave a comment with your thoughts.
Once a month, I’ll try to post a round-up of the reviews/thoughts posted from that month so that we all know what everyone else has read.
My list (in no particular order):
- The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, by Natalie Angiers. Why haven't I read this yet? It's been in my "To Read" pile for at least 2 years. And I'm still totally excited about it, but every time I start a new book, this one isn't it.
- I'm Down: A Memoir by Mishna Wolff: A memoir about growing up in a white family that identified most with their black neighbors, this caught my eye when it first came out and I finally bought it (on sale - thanks, Powell's Books!) Now to get it off the bedside table, where it could otherwise languish...
- Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl by Susan Campbell. Well, duh. This one practically lept into my arms and said "Your Life! Here! Buy me!".
- Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship by Gail Caldwell. I bought this because it's supposed to be a "great novel about coping with grief"...but then I started reading it and realized that it's about 2 women who bonded over dog raising and AA. Both of which are...yeah. And then one died and the other one wrote a book about it. Hopefully the grief-coping part will grab me, because I've been languishing on page 100-something for a while now.
- Under the Dome by Stephen King. I've heard this compared to the best of Stephen King's work (The Stand, It) enough to know I want to try it. This one is a bit of a crapshoot, but I am hoping to LURV it.
- A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. See #1. Same. Exact. Problem.
- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. I think I've tried this exact same thing before. Everybody loves this novel, and I love the ~theory~ of this novel, but couldn't make it past the first chapter the last 2 times I tried to read it.
- The Alchemist by Paul Coelho. I thought I had already read this until my niece blogged about it and then it didn't sound familiar at ALL and I wasn't sure I ~had~. So maybe this will be a quick recognition...
- My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover If Not Being a Dumb Ass Is the New Black or a Culture-up Manifesto by Jen Lancaster. I have a lot of guilt around liking uptight, right-wing Jen Lancaster. But...she's funny and sharp and - when she doesn't talk about politics - I like her. I haven't been able to wince my way through her latest book yet, but...maybe this is my motivation.
Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin. I love UKLeG's writing, but this one has been on the bedside table for a while now...here's my chance to reinvigorate my interest in this book. Supplanted by Room, by Emma Donoghue.- Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I'm not sure if I'm kidding about this one. It's sat on my shelves for 100 years because the first chapter is about war and then...I never got to Chapter 2. Maybe this year...
- Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Jamie loved it. I loved the first 80 or so pages, and then I put it down and then...I don't know what happened.
Monday, December 7, 2009
My language - your language
I'm in the early stages of a CRAZILY-deadlined project overseeing and administering the translation of 200+ pages (60 individual documents) into 16 languages, which I will then collate into one document per language. By January 4th.
I've received 1 document so far in each language. For the math challenged (like me with my handy behind-the-scenes calculator), this is 3200 pages. (Plus 200 more in English). Which I will gather, validate, collate, index, hyperlink, and distribute. In 27 days. 8 of which are weekend days and 4 of which are American holidays.
Anybody who has worked this kind of project can perhaps appreciate the level of insanity this is inspiring in me. And the way in which I'm kissing spending any quality holiday time with my family goodbye.
However, since this is a technical writing blog, I'll suppress my inner horrors and ask just the wordnerd question:
When working with English-to-XXX languages (European, African, Asian, SE Asian, and so forth), what sources have you/do you look to for advice in order to create the most impactful, culturally appropriate (in format) technical work?
At this point, I'm relying on my experience performing this same task for Western European language translations, and I'm trying to self-educate on how to make these documents most useful for Asian, Cyrillic and Central European readers as well. Times 17.
I've received 1 document so far in each language. For the math challenged (like me with my handy behind-the-scenes calculator), this is 3200 pages. (Plus 200 more in English). Which I will gather, validate, collate, index, hyperlink, and distribute. In 27 days. 8 of which are weekend days and 4 of which are American holidays.
Anybody who has worked this kind of project can perhaps appreciate the level of insanity this is inspiring in me. And the way in which I'm kissing spending any quality holiday time with my family goodbye.
However, since this is a technical writing blog, I'll suppress my inner horrors and ask just the wordnerd question:
When working with English-to-XXX languages (European, African, Asian, SE Asian, and so forth), what sources have you/do you look to for advice in order to create the most impactful, culturally appropriate (in format) technical work?
At this point, I'm relying on my experience performing this same task for Western European language translations, and I'm trying to self-educate on how to make these documents most useful for Asian, Cyrillic and Central European readers as well. Times 17.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
He Read/She Read Review of The PowWow Highway
I originally wrote this review for the (now defunct?) He Read/She Read series by Jim Styro. Full review and site here - and I recommend Jim's review, which is far more throughtful than mine for this very good novel.
(Disclaimer: Fortunately for me, Jim Styro is not my boss. Because he would fire me. Unfortunately for Jim Styro, re-reading a book I read in college apparently triggered some of my latent deadline avoidance. Jim, I owe you beer and/or many other beverages. And this apologetic, very much not-on-time review.)
Powwow Highway is a book I loved in college. LOVED. And re-reading it, I think my LOVE has maybe turned to ~love~. BUT it's still a very worth-it novel set in a realistic, if difficult, world on the borders of my own.
Superficially, Powwow Highway is a familiar caper/road-to-redemption/endearing-cons-triumph-over-the-man story. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...If Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid were two somewhat life-battered American Indians on a road trip to rescue a drug-dealing damsel in distress - and her kids - in a burnt-out car full of beer, porn, and marijuana. And if they spent their road trip getting high and drunk, committing larceny, pissing off some white people, and taking a number of detours - both literal and metaphysical - on the road to heroism.
The main characters are reservation Cheyennes in the 1970's, and their experiences of poverty, tragedy, history, mysticism, casual sense of oppression (and anger at same) are core to the story, but difficult for me, a middle-class, middle-aged white woman, to observe without occasional, subjective little fusspot asides, like: a) bad personal accounting! and b) random-ass-kicking! and c) drug use! while driving!! and d) child neglect!!! But it also appeals to my rebel level. And my spiritual quest level. And even my romantic level. (I'm like an onion that way...)
The book centers around Philbert, the sweet heart (and, I guess, eventually the "sweetheart") of the novel. Philbert is an overweight, methodical, traditional young Cheyenne. A little drunk. A little gullible. And Buddy, an intense, well-educated, passionate, angry Vietnam vet who is the golden boy of their tribe. Together, Philbert and Buddy take off with some "borrowed" tribal council money in Philbert's battle-scarred Buick to bail Buddy's sister Bonnie from jail and rescue her kids, Sky and Jane. (And then get themselves back to Indian land when things go, as they will in this kind of tale, crazily, chaotically awry).
Most of the book takes place on the roads which loosely, meanderingly connect Lame Deer, Montana to Santa Fe, NM. Or, at least, in the effort of transition from one place to another. As a former road-tripper, I found myself captivated by Seals' demonstration of how a destination is only one of the places a journey may take you, even as I recognize the overuse of that metaphor. But, as with powerful folklore, sometimes a strong metaphor is part of the pleasure and familiarity of the story. And stylistically the book is laid out as a series of folklore vignettes: (The Origin of the Pony, The Warriors find the Princess).
There's a moment in the book which is simultaneously gorgeous, passionate, completely spiritual, and totally vulgar: On the way to New Mexico, Philbert ends up detouring into South Dakota to a mountain which holds special religious significance to the Cheyenne. Philbert climbs the butte, gasping and marvelling at the world and struggling his way to an epiphany, and then masturbates into the dirt in a sort-of blissed-out spiritual consummation with the earth. It's a great scene, and is the site of Philbert's rebirth as a stronger, more self-confident man. (But also, you know...sperm!) But I love it for the way in which it marries the crass and physical with the sublime and esoteric, and that, more than any other scene, has stayed with me over the years. Plus Philbert is just an endearing bear of a character.
All the players find haven at the end of the trip (and occasionally along the way). And resolution, at least of a kind. It's worth the time. And although there are other, slightly more mainstream and equally brilliant Native American authors (tip hat to my secret boyfriend, Sherman Alexie), I think David Seals is a master and have always been very sad that he only has the two books (this and a semi-sequel called "Sweet Medicine") which can be easily purchased. (Wikipedia lists a few more, but I can't find them for sale anywhere).
I guess this is as good a place as any to note that this is a PROFANE book. I'd forgotten just how much. Sweet, and surprisingly touching, but maybe not meant to read aloud to your grandmother (or, since I don't know your grandmother - not to mine).
(Disclaimer: Fortunately for me, Jim Styro is not my boss. Because he would fire me. Unfortunately for Jim Styro, re-reading a book I read in college apparently triggered some of my latent deadline avoidance. Jim, I owe you beer and/or many other beverages. And this apologetic, very much not-on-time review.)
Powwow Highway is a book I loved in college. LOVED. And re-reading it, I think my LOVE has maybe turned to ~love~. BUT it's still a very worth-it novel set in a realistic, if difficult, world on the borders of my own.
Superficially, Powwow Highway is a familiar caper/road-to-redemption/endearing-cons-triumph-over-the-man story. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...If Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid were two somewhat life-battered American Indians on a road trip to rescue a drug-dealing damsel in distress - and her kids - in a burnt-out car full of beer, porn, and marijuana. And if they spent their road trip getting high and drunk, committing larceny, pissing off some white people, and taking a number of detours - both literal and metaphysical - on the road to heroism.
The main characters are reservation Cheyennes in the 1970's, and their experiences of poverty, tragedy, history, mysticism, casual sense of oppression (and anger at same) are core to the story, but difficult for me, a middle-class, middle-aged white woman, to observe without occasional, subjective little fusspot asides, like: a) bad personal accounting! and b) random-ass-kicking! and c) drug use! while driving!! and d) child neglect!!! But it also appeals to my rebel level. And my spiritual quest level. And even my romantic level. (I'm like an onion that way...)
The book centers around Philbert, the sweet heart (and, I guess, eventually the "sweetheart") of the novel. Philbert is an overweight, methodical, traditional young Cheyenne. A little drunk. A little gullible. And Buddy, an intense, well-educated, passionate, angry Vietnam vet who is the golden boy of their tribe. Together, Philbert and Buddy take off with some "borrowed" tribal council money in Philbert's battle-scarred Buick to bail Buddy's sister Bonnie from jail and rescue her kids, Sky and Jane. (And then get themselves back to Indian land when things go, as they will in this kind of tale, crazily, chaotically awry).
Most of the book takes place on the roads which loosely, meanderingly connect Lame Deer, Montana to Santa Fe, NM. Or, at least, in the effort of transition from one place to another. As a former road-tripper, I found myself captivated by Seals' demonstration of how a destination is only one of the places a journey may take you, even as I recognize the overuse of that metaphor. But, as with powerful folklore, sometimes a strong metaphor is part of the pleasure and familiarity of the story. And stylistically the book is laid out as a series of folklore vignettes: (The Origin of the Pony, The Warriors find the Princess).
There's a moment in the book which is simultaneously gorgeous, passionate, completely spiritual, and totally vulgar: On the way to New Mexico, Philbert ends up detouring into South Dakota to a mountain which holds special religious significance to the Cheyenne. Philbert climbs the butte, gasping and marvelling at the world and struggling his way to an epiphany, and then masturbates into the dirt in a sort-of blissed-out spiritual consummation with the earth. It's a great scene, and is the site of Philbert's rebirth as a stronger, more self-confident man. (But also, you know...sperm!) But I love it for the way in which it marries the crass and physical with the sublime and esoteric, and that, more than any other scene, has stayed with me over the years. Plus Philbert is just an endearing bear of a character.
All the players find haven at the end of the trip (and occasionally along the way). And resolution, at least of a kind. It's worth the time. And although there are other, slightly more mainstream and equally brilliant Native American authors (tip hat to my secret boyfriend, Sherman Alexie), I think David Seals is a master and have always been very sad that he only has the two books (this and a semi-sequel called "Sweet Medicine") which can be easily purchased. (Wikipedia lists a few more, but I can't find them for sale anywhere).
I guess this is as good a place as any to note that this is a PROFANE book. I'd forgotten just how much. Sweet, and surprisingly touching, but maybe not meant to read aloud to your grandmother (or, since I don't know your grandmother - not to mine).
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Mice, lice, rice, blouses, houses, spouses, ice
Why is this?
Some grammar rules are easy to explain to my 5-year-old.
Some are not.
This one is not:
Mouse x 2 = mice
Louse x 2 = lice
Blouse x 2 = blouses
House x 2 = houses
Spouse x 2 = spouses
ice/ice = ice
rice/rice = rice
Why? Is it because typically there is never a single ice/ouse?
Or that most commonly people aren't afflicted with a multitude of hice or spice, but have just one?
Is the "ice" plural used only for the animate? Because my spouse = totally animate.
If you double-douse someone, you usually haven't diced them. At least not simultaneously.
Humph!
Monday, September 28, 2009
Intent and Tone
Right now, I'm a Policy and Procedure writer.
Usually my work is more focused on training in some capacity, but I'm enjoying the pace shift.
Writing for this particular large, sports-industry corporation, I'm in a unique position, in that my work affects a lot of employees globally.
As I sit in meetings every day, I'm faced with a perpetual, interesting-possibly-only-to-me dilemma: what is the corporate INTENT when writing Human Resources Policies? And how do I use the right tone to reflect that intent?
Are Policy & Procedures meant to be PUNITIVE ("Do XXX, or face these consequences")?
Or RESPECT-BUILDING ("We expect XXX in order to uphold corporate integrity. Failure to comply may affect business and will result in consequences to employees.")?
Generally, I'd say that my job is for a company whose corporate lifestyle is so clearly NOT punitive. For example, my spacious cubicle is built from bamboo and rice paper, the campus is surrounded by acres of woodlands, and my (company lunchroom) meals are fresh and organic.
And also generally, I'd say I'm more of the Respect-Building school, and - as an employee - appreciate the softened, conspire-for-success tone.
But no matter what the corporate lifestyle is, do people, generally (aka you, 4 readers), want policies which are plain:
(Policy/Punitive response to failure)
OR softened:
(Policy phrased respectfully/Reasons for policy/Consequences of failure)?
Which is really a rabbit hole of political correctness (or touchy-feeliness) vs. old-school transparency (and bluntness).
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Data
Today in Time, I read an article using the phrase "the data are inconclusive".
Which sounds incorrect to my ear. Even though I know it is technically and theoretically correct, I think this is a case where colloquial usage (singular) has superseded traditional grammar rules (plural).
Were I writing this phrase, I would always say "the data is inconclusive".
In the stricter echelons of grammarians, this is a particularly nasty piece of heresy. Grammar anarchy! Rrawr!
Which brings up another question:
"Day-tuh"? or "Dah-tuh"?
I find that I've adapted to the more common day-tuh over time, particularly as I spend so much of my time working with software engineers who, most often, say day-tuh.
Which brings up another question:
"Day-tuh"? or "Dah-tuh"?
I find that I've adapted to the more common day-tuh over time, particularly as I spend so much of my time working with software engineers who, most often, say day-tuh.
My inclination, however, is that dah-tuh is more correct.
And singular.
And singular.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Compact
When a parking spot is labeled "COMPACT", is it Informative ("I am a small parking space"), or Instructive ("This parking spot is meant for small cars")?
I have an opinion, but am actually unclear as to public intent.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Vampires, parts 2-infinity...
So...I tried, not all that valiantly, to get through the other 3 Twilight books.
I mean, you know, I read a LOT, so it shouldn't have been that hard. But it was, and it took me over a month of eye-rolling to finally do it.
So, when we left off, klutzy teen girl had moved somewhere cold, wet and rainy for reasons not very well explained. And she hates the rain and can't seem to stop talking about that. Or falling down. Then she meets a mysterious, smouldering boy and for three hundred+ pages, she wonders why he's so hostile and keeps disappearing and scowling and then maybe she thinks he likes her and does he? and what's his deal anyway? and wait, is there something weird about him? and, omg! he's a vampire! A smouldery sparkly vampire! Dang, does he like her enough? Some? Does he hate her? What's up? Does he love her? Does his family hate her? Finally, for about 5 pages, a plot happens. And then they go to prom. The end.
Book 2: Depressed. Edward left. Bella is very very depressed. So depressed. Depressed. Very. unhappy. Jacob is a werewolf? Whatever. Still depressed. Bella gets a MOTORCYCLE! Probably she'll have an accident and die (she doesn't). She jumps off a cliff, maybe she'll die! (she doesn't). More. Depressed. And then, for like 30 pages, after 500+ pages of, you know, depressed, Edward-thinks-bella-is-dead-and-tries-to-kill-himself-in-italy-can-bella-and-alice-get-there-in-time-to-save-him? Yes they can. Tourists die. Whatever. Edward loves her. The end.
Book 3, which I just read, I can't even remember. Mysterious murders offscreen. Jacob and a lot of his tribe are werewolves. He loves wannabe vampire girl. She doesn't love him. Yes she does. No she doesn't. Yes. No. Yes, but not enough. But MAINLY, vampire boy and wannabe-vampire-girl argue about: I want to be a vampire! (no) should we have sex? (no) Where should we go to college? Are you sure you love me? Sure? For realsies sure? Should we get married? And wheeeeennnnnn will you turn the wannabe into a vampire? Please please please? (no). Then the murderers offscreen turn out to be vampires. 20 pages of vampire-and-werewolf-on-vampire fighting. Good guys win! The end. Dang.
Book 4: so...my confession is that I can't make it all the way through book 4. But I got a good ways in. Enough to say that, well, mutant, hybrid, ultra-strong, rapid-gro babies (with teeth!) born at something like...20 days gestation to a mom who gets pregnant after the first time she has sex with her big old emo vampire husband...pretty much that took me as far as I could get in that series. That and they name the baby something I just can't not mock.
I mean, you know, I read a LOT, so it shouldn't have been that hard. But it was, and it took me over a month of eye-rolling to finally do it.
So, when we left off, klutzy teen girl had moved somewhere cold, wet and rainy for reasons not very well explained. And she hates the rain and can't seem to stop talking about that. Or falling down. Then she meets a mysterious, smouldering boy and for three hundred+ pages, she wonders why he's so hostile and keeps disappearing and scowling and then maybe she thinks he likes her and does he? and what's his deal anyway? and wait, is there something weird about him? and, omg! he's a vampire! A smouldery sparkly vampire! Dang, does he like her enough? Some? Does he hate her? What's up? Does he love her? Does his family hate her? Finally, for about 5 pages, a plot happens. And then they go to prom. The end.
Book 2: Depressed. Edward left. Bella is very very depressed. So depressed. Depressed. Very. unhappy. Jacob is a werewolf? Whatever. Still depressed. Bella gets a MOTORCYCLE! Probably she'll have an accident and die (she doesn't). She jumps off a cliff, maybe she'll die! (she doesn't). More. Depressed. And then, for like 30 pages, after 500+ pages of, you know, depressed, Edward-thinks-bella-is-dead-and-tries-to-kill-himself-in-italy-can-bella-and-alice-get-there-in-time-to-save-him? Yes they can. Tourists die. Whatever. Edward loves her. The end.
Book 3, which I just read, I can't even remember. Mysterious murders offscreen. Jacob and a lot of his tribe are werewolves. He loves wannabe vampire girl. She doesn't love him. Yes she does. No she doesn't. Yes. No. Yes, but not enough. But MAINLY, vampire boy and wannabe-vampire-girl argue about: I want to be a vampire! (no) should we have sex? (no) Where should we go to college? Are you sure you love me? Sure? For realsies sure? Should we get married? And wheeeeennnnnn will you turn the wannabe into a vampire? Please please please? (no). Then the murderers offscreen turn out to be vampires. 20 pages of vampire-and-werewolf-on-vampire fighting. Good guys win! The end. Dang.
Book 4: so...my confession is that I can't make it all the way through book 4. But I got a good ways in. Enough to say that, well, mutant, hybrid, ultra-strong, rapid-gro babies (with teeth!) born at something like...20 days gestation to a mom who gets pregnant after the first time she has sex with her big old emo vampire husband...pretty much that took me as far as I could get in that series. That and they name the baby something I just can't not mock.
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