Brushing up

I've been brushing up an old skill lately--namely contorting my body into the physical position that allows me to knit and read at the same time. The first few times I tried recently to revive this skill my right hand fell asleep. Then I encountered a new challenge as the 55 lb dog climbed in my lap (she's a heat seeking missile) and complicated things. I had to try and prop the book on her head and not poke her with a needle. But I finally got the hang of it and so was able to finish a sweater and read a really good YA novel. And the dog got a lot of loving.

You'd think that my knitting would have picked up because of the lovely new yarn shop that opened in town (and where I occasionally work). Spun has beautiful yarns and is an inspiring place to spend some time and satisfy the fiber cravings. But Fiona requested that I knit her this sweater in mid-November and Spun didn't open until December 1st.

Owls by Kate Davies knit in Lion Brand Chunky Wool-Ease in Silver Gray. 

And look--the pre-teen is smiling! That's pretty notable these days...

The significance of her asking me to knit for her cannot be understated since she has pretty much refused my offers of knitwear for the past few years (though she will occasionally still wear the fish hats that I made.) I didn't want her to change her mind so I rushed out and bought yarn at the big box craft store and cranked this baby out in washable acrylic/wool mix. (If I'd been a bit more patient and waited for Spun to open, I probably would have still bought an acrylic mix--like the affordable and soft Berroco Comfort Chunky that Spun carries--because my kids are crap at taking care of their clothes and I fully expect to find this sweater crushed in a corner under Fiona's bed...no premium fibers for them until they learn that a sweater is not a dust rag.) The pattern was easy and speedy and fun to knit. There are only two tiny seams to sew up at the end, but there are 36 (damn) buttons to sew on for the owl's eyes.

And the book I read while knitting the end of the sweater is this one:

I loved Patrick Ness's previous books, particularly The Knife of Never Letting Go, and loved this one, too. The Rest of Us Just Live Here has a clever concept that, with a different author, could have been irritating. The beginning of each chapter has a brief summary of a parallel tale--one that will be familiar to YA readers (particular fun is poked at Twilight with numerous references to vampires, but the same could be said for Harry Potter.) Pretty much any novel that has a "chosen one" aspect and some form of paranormal activity is referenced in these brief bursts. Then the rest of the chapter shifts to four (mostly) normal kids and what it is like to witness weird stuff happening but be more focused on real world problems like family dynamics, crushes, what comes after high school and particular mental challenges. The main character, Mikey, suffers from OCD and his struggles with it make for some really poignant writing which Ness manages to make more interesting that the weird blue light and enchanted deer that keep appearing in the background and that are the problems of the chosen ones (not our main characters.) The satire never dominates but is gentle and appreciative and eventually does end up intertwining with the paths of the four main characters. It was a really lovely read and one which I couldn't predict what would happen which was a welcome change from a lot of the recent YA fiction I've read.

And now I need to go do some yoga stretches to straighten out my posture before contorting again for the next yarn/book project!

Getting weepy on the stairmaster

I was at the gym the other night stomping away on the stairmaster when all of a sudden everything got sort of blurry. No, I wasn't going so fast that the machine was smoking (ha!), nor was my vision deteriorating more than its already crappy state; I was reading the final chapters of the wonderful book Plain Kate by Erin Bow and my eyes were responding appropriately.

This is a wonderful book. The story is about a young girl and is set in a vaguely Russian-ish land with prominent characters who are members of a traveling Roma family. The story has elements of magic and mystery, but primarily it is about loneliness and belonging.

None of the characters are simple--almost all of them have been deeply hurt by the world--and none of their feelings are simple. The best example is the villain of the piece, who I absolutely hated for preying on Kate at times, and for whom I felt a deep sympathy for his suffering at others. Kate is also unsure what to feel or think about him: fear? pity? friend? enemy?  There's no simple way to render a character who steals from Kate but also saves her, and I loved this complexity.

You'd think that with such layered characters the book would be long and it would take a lot of text to convey such complicated feelings and characters. But there is a remarkable economy to the language--it is lyrical, yet spare. It didn't feel like there were any extraneous words in the book. By comparison, most other books (many of which I also enjoy) seem downright sloppy.

And I challenge anyone to read this book and not be thoroughly in love with character of Taggle the cat. Bow has captured the most perfect "cat-ness" of Taggle:

Taggle was absorbed in the meat pie. "It's covered in bread," he huffed. "What fool has covered meat with bread?" He batted at the crust, then sprang back as it broke, and began licking gravy off his paw. "Ooooo," he purred. "Ooooo, good."
"Taggle," gulped Kate, again.
The cat looked up from his licking. "Oh. Well. I could share." He arched his whiskers forward and, like a lord, demonstrated his beneficence by giving away what he didn't want. "There is bread you might like."

The only other fictional animal I can think of that is this perfect, that absolutely captures the appeal of the particular species, is Manchee the dog in Patrick Ness' The Knife of Never Letting Go (which I mentioned here) whose love for the boy Todd made me cry.

For the writers out there, it was really nice for the author to include the information in the acknowledgments* that it took her six years to write this book. That seems like a perfectly reasonable amount of time in which to create something so perfect and precise. I checked out the author's web site and it looks like her next book will be out in 2012 so (yeah!) we don't have to wait another six years to read it.

And now a word about the cover art: Very pretty but it just doesn't fit. Take a look at the picture at the start of this post. It looks like the girl on the cover is having a lovely time, balancing on the ridgepole of a roof, looking out over a magical town, a gentle breeze making her hair and scarf float out behind her and her cat is prancing in front of her! This lighthearted depiction is the absolute opposite of the one incident in the book when the main character (and the cat) are on a roof. They are in a city that is about to be destroyed and the inhabitants of the city are known to pick scapegoats (like Kate), accuse them of witchcraft and burn them at the stake (so not a friendly, happy place). And by this point in the story Kate has had her hair cut off and been badly burned. She is hunched and tense and clinging to the slates. For example: "The downpour slowed to a cold soaking rain. The steep roofs were slippery, but they didn't dare go into the streets. Men in the dark garb of the city watch roamed in packs and harried the refugees from doorways and alleys. So Drina and Kate stuck to the roofs, inching, sliding, scraping, keeping out of sight. It was slow and exhausting." This cover just doesn't fit this wonderful book.

*Thank you, editor, for putting the acknowledgments at the end! One of my big pet peeves is when they are at the beginning.

Shaun Tan

The NY Times has their special Children's Books section in the book review today! And one of the books they review is a book I love: Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan. I just searched my blog and realized that I never mentioned it when I read it (a serious memory lapse on my part). Personally, I wouldn't classify it as a children's book, though my girl critter did like it a lot (her favorite story was "Eric" about a wee creature who comes to a family as their foreign exchange student--it is full of whimsy and light).

My favorite story in Tales is called "Grandpa's Story." I'd love to get it in stand-alone booklet form to give to people on their wedding day or anniversary: in it a pair of newlyweds embark on a surreal journey that best exemplifies the potential challenges and joys of the marriage endeavor. It is sweet and sad and hopeful and beautiful all at once.

I think of Tales as illustrated stories for everyone. Tan's previous book, The Arrival was a wordless moving meditation on immigration and cultural adaptation. Sure, kids who can't read could understand it, but that doesn't mean that it was intended for the pre-literate. In Tan's work images are just as communicative as words, and carry a poignancy and impress the mind in a distinct and powerful way. (I have always been biased towards words; my sister is very visually inclined). I find Tales particularly lovely because it contains both!

The day my character came alive

A strange thing happened today.

The main character in my work-in-progress novel just came alive. And it turns out that she is 15, not 12 and she has straight dark brown hair, not light brown frizzy hair, and she's short, not tall.

I have to say, this is a little weird.

I have written almost 60,000 words and while many things have been falling in place, there was something that was holding me back. I was getting the plot points, seeing where the story was going, developing conflicts, figuring out resolutions. But all the while my main character felt a little off: stiff, not quite real to me.

Then today while polishing off my second cup of black coffee and eating my new favorite not-so-healthy breakfast (garlic naan with cream cheese, Turkish aleppo pepper and cherry tomatoes) how she should be was so apparent that my hands started to quiver with anticipation of typing it all down. I don't know where she has been hiding, but now that she's here it feels like any of my residual reservations have fallen away.

This is going to necessitate some changes to the rest of the book--now I think it is pretty clear that this will be YA, not middle grade so the voice will have to be tweaked and some of the relationships rewritten. But this doesn't sound overwhelming--with her here beside me, it sounds like fun.

The YA flood continues

The good YA reads just keep coming and coming! In the past few weeks I have been lucky to read two new YA books, both of which focus on distopian futures. Each has a strong main character who is shown struggling to conform to oppressive regimes and ultimately resisting them. If you like happy versions of the future, these might not be for you. But if you get inspired by the resilience of people who are faced with way worse situations than you have ever found yourself in, then you might want to pick up these two.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness grabbed me at the first page and didn't let go. Actually, it grabbed me at the first sentence: "The first thing you find out when your dog learns to talk is that dogs don't got nothing much to say." Of course, if you don't like excitable talking dogs, perhaps you won't be charmed as quickly as I was.

I don't want to summarize the book, because the world is revealed as the main character, Todd, learns what is real and what is propaganda and much of the narrative momentum comes through his perceptions with all of the limitations. His voice is distinct and grouchy and confused and beautiful. And then there is Noise. I don't want to wreck it for you, but I have to say that the author's rendering of Noise was fantastic.

This is a "chase" book and the pace is appropriately breathless. So it combines distopia/thriller with a poignant story about a boy coming of age. In plenty of hands this combo would be a royal mess, but Ness pulls it off.

The only negative comment I have is something that wasn't exactly unexpected. The subtitle of the book is "Chaos Walking: Book One" so from the get go I knew that the story wouldn't end at the end of the book. But did it have to be quite so cliff-hanger-y? I promise, I wanted to read book two even without the anxiety producing ending.


I wasn't the biggest fan of Allegra Goodman's most recent grown-up novel, Intuition, but I did really like two of her other novels: The Family Markowitz and Kaaterskill Falls. The Other Side of the Island is her first YA novel and it imagines the world after global warming has raised the sea level to such an extent that the only habitable land consists of former mountain tops, now islands. A repressive regime controls most of the islands and sees anyone who does not subscribe to their goals to enclose the islands under domes and submit to an extreme regulation of life as a threat. The main character's parents are non-conformists and one of the more compelling strands of the novel involves her conflicting feelings towards them and her understandable desire for the easy answer to be the right answer (which, of course, it rarely is).

It's a good read, not a book with the depth and intensity of Knife, but I enjoyed it and think that it would make a pre-teen/teen think a whole lot about conformity, the price that is paid for fitting in, and the meanings that lie under patriotic slogans.

Everyday is Smekday!

I finished reading The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex yesterday, a wonderfully inventive novel of alien invasion.

The main character is a smart, sassy 11 year old girl named Gratuity (nick name "Tip"). She is resourceful at the start of the book and becomes even more so as the book progresses. The novel moves from invasion plot, to a road trip plot, to a save the world plot with Gratuity joined by a confused but very handy alien who calls himself J.Lo. He has mistakenly alerted another hostile alien species to the presence of Earth (aka Smekland) and thus is on the run from his own species (the Boov) and isn't welcomed by humans either. Gratuity is trying to find her mom and survive, and together with a pet cat named Pig, they save the world not only from the Boov, but also from the much more fearsome Gorg.

Rex is an illustrator and throughout the book there are wonderful little black and white sketches that made me smile every time I came upon one--I defy anyone to see a drawing of J.Lo's goofy smile and not adore the little alien.

Rex also has a great ear for ESL and J.Lo's speech is fun to read with all its malaprops and confused verb conjugations. There is a wonderful scene that hinges on J.Lo's use of the word "explore" for "explode" (I never noticed how close those two words were before this). I particularly loved exchanges like this:

"I am thinking we are alls in the same car now," said J.Lo. "We should to have no more secretions."
"Secrets."
"Secrets. Yes."

This kind of dialog had me snorting with laughter as I read along. But the novel isn't all jokes and silliness--there are some excellent points made about how people treat each other, group mentality vs individual responsibility, and friendship. The novel also includes moments of insight such as this exchange between Gratuity and J.Lo:

"This is incredible!" I shouted. "You guys can teleport! You can clone things! You could, like, teleport to France and leave a clone of yourself behind to do your homework!"
The Boov frowned. "Everybodies always is wanting to make a clone for to doing their work. If you are not wanting to do your work, why would a clone of you want to do your work?"

There were a couple of weak spots in the book. One conveniently borrowed idea--the Boov discovered the existence of our planet and learned our languages through TV broadcasts--is exactly the scenario in the fun Star Trek parody film Galaxy Quest. And Gratuity's mom is such a space cadet in the beginning that it is hard to see how she has become much more capable when she is finally tracked down in Arizona. But these are really minor quibbles with a book that takes on so many cultural icons (Roswell, New Mexico; Disney World; Indian Reservations) and folds them into a rambunctious plot with grace and humor.

I can't wait to read this one with Ian if only for the great fun that reading J.Lo's part aloud will bring.

Brazil, but for kids

I recently finished reading a YA novel that is like the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil, but for kids. The Wall and the Wing is set in an alternate reality New York City where most people can fly, where toy monkeys can keep your secrets (and wipe your memory clean) and where cats are rare creatures who pick their owners.

In this surreal landscape are two orphans, Gurl and Bug, and they search for their identities and for a life a little less miserable than the one they inhabit at the orphanage, the wonderfully named Hope House for the Homeless and Helpless. The matron of the orphanage is Mrs. Terwiliger who reminds me of the Katherine Helmond character in Brazil--too much plastic surgery and warped ideas of what is important in life. Of course the plot isn't about a bureaucracy gone mad but about two lost children, one of whom discovers that she can turn invisible and the other who can fly really high, but only when holding onto a cat called Noodle. There are other wonderful characters in the book--a professor with grass growing out of his head who has a seemly endless supply of kittens in the pockets of his house dress, a man who can unzip his face, and a gangster who was a diaper model when he was a baby. Possibly my favorite creatures in the novel are the giant sewer rat men with filed pointy teeth who love kitties. They are creepy as hell but, like Gurl, they just want to cuddle a cat and feel it purr.

The plot moves along at a fast clip and after a whirlwind of experiences and adventures, the two orphans are no longer lost and are adjusting to their new identities. I was willing to say goodbye to them for now because this wonderfully imagined world and the eccentric characters in it will get more page-time--there is a sequel titled The Chaos King to look forward to.

The best gift

Today was the first day I got to enjoy the best gift in the world--writing time. Yes, my mother-in-law stepped up to the plate and is taking the little girl off of my hands each and every Friday. After dropping her at her morning preschool at 9:30 I have about 5 hours of time in which to write before I have to go get my bigger boy from his school at 2:45.

Guess what I had forgotten?
Fiction writing is fun!

Guess what else I discovered?
I am very rusty. It has been a long time since I let my imagination be free. My brain is so used to multitasking with the small people and trying to keep five thoughts active at the same time that sitting down and focusing on one thing, one story, with no other demands felt really weird. But weird in a good way. Hopefully this regular Friday time will make me more able to turn on the writing mind when I have less time during the week.

So today I started working what I've laid out as my goal: by year's end, I'd like to have written a fairly complete draft of a YA (or children's) novel.

I'm proud of myself in that I didn't let myself get distracted by my surroundings--the house is still a sty, there isn't anything in the house for dinner tonight, my legs have not received the exercise that they really want (and they are getting a little twitchy now), and I haven't been reading all the wonderful blogs I follow.

What I did do was have a grand time naming characters, describing locations, outlining the movement of the plot and planning significant scenes, and doing some character studies.

But perhaps the biggest thing I did today was I gave myself permission to fuck up and make a royal mess of it. There is nothing more stifling than overvaluing your own labor. God knows that I'm not a perfectionist in other areas of my life, but perhaps because I read so much and am so used to cohesive, finished stories, it has been difficult for me to picture a novel as starting out messily. As soon as I told myself that what I write down can be flawed because it is a draft and there will be plenty of time for changes later, the words, ideas, and images started to flow. For all I know, next week I'll think up an even better idea for a novel and I'll chuck everything I wrote today. And that'll be ok because I've decided I am going to enjoy the process, and value all of it, not just the parts that end up in the final product.

Funky town

Sometimes, for no good reason, a headache will just take me down to funky town. My funky town looks like this: I can't stand odors, can't take light, don't like food, and worst of all, can't read without it hurting. The strange thing about this headache was that it wasn't triggered by anything--no stress from yelling at kids, no excess of alcohol, no insomnia to blame, just a wicked headache that resisted 1. ibuprofen 2. caffeine 3. Tylenol 4. a blissfully quiet house with kids over Granny's 5. fresh air obtained via hour long walk.

Finally I just had to lie down and give in to the damn thing. And after about two hours of that (go ahead and hate me for having the opportunity to lie down for two solid hours) headache receded enough to let me read. I have to say, the worst thing about these headaches is how damn boring they are so once I could read again, I felt a little more normal (though food and noise still don't seem like a good idea).

The hardest thing about this trip to funky town was I was in the middle of a really good book, so the borning-ness of lying there for two hours was intensified.
But once tracking words across the page didn't make me feel like a firecracker was going off behind my eyes, I was able to finish the book, An Abundance of Katherines. This is a charming YA novel with really terrific dialog between the two main characters, Colin, a former child prodigy, and his best (only) friend, Hassan. At times their banter reminded me of the scenes in the movie Knocked Up which so perfectly captured the grossness and affection of immature males--lots of references to their balls, weird nick names (including one of my favorites--sitzpinkler--a German insult for a man who sits to pee), but underneath it all, genuine caring and friendship.

I was amused by Colin's obsession with creating a mathematical formula to describe all of his past (and, he thinks, future) romantic fiascoes. And I like a good road-trip buddy story. But what really got me was the way Colin and Hassan's friendship was expressed and how they blunder around in the undefined post high school period trying to figure out who they are and what they should, could and would do with their lives. There's a little bit of preachyness at the end of the book about personal responsibility and taking care of your fellow man, but when I consider the intended audience (i.e. not me) I think it is a mighty fine idea to plant in the heads of young readers.

Obsessor's gift guide

Ok it is December, I am no longer in denial about the speed with which major holidays are approaching. For those of you in search of a gift for an obsessor in your life, or putting together your wish list to noodge those giving you gifts in the right direction, here are some ideas. This is stuff I'd like to receive if I didn't already have it--I don't think there is anything here over $20 and many are appropriately sized for stocking stuffing:

Kitchen:

• Good tongs--I can't tell you how many times I've been at the house of a good cook and found that they somehow survive without a pair of tongs.
• Roasted walnut oil (or hazelnut oil if you have a hazelnut freak on your hands. Me, I'm a walnut girl.) Makes the best vinaigrette dressing ever. I like the stuff from La Tourangelle and recently saw some of it hiding on a shelf at TJ Maxx of all places.
  
• Pastry cloth and rolling pin cover--for making pie crust. I love this thing. Cook's Illustrated recently disparaged it--they prefer parchment paper--but with a thorough flouring of the cloth and cover, I have never had pastry stick to it. Of course Cook's Illustrated also mentioned that they wash the covers every time they use them to which I say--Ha! You don't have to worry about rancid bits of pie dough festering away on the thing between uses if you flour it thoroughly enough that the dough never gets a chance to stick. I sometimes do give mine a shake out the back door to get rid of excess flour before I fold it back up and store it in its ziplock baggie. But wash it? Too OCD for me.
  
• Microplane zester--I've been contemplating getting a second one since I use my current one so much and sometimes have to wash it three times in an evening when lemon zest, Parmesan, and nutmeg all need to be produced. And for God's sake, get the one with the handle so your favorite cook doesn't grate off their palm.
  

Reading:

• The Hummingbird's Daughter (in paperback!)--I raved about this book here.
• The Welsh Girl--I raved about this book here.
• The Goose Girl--And this one I think I forgot to rave about, but it is for those of you who are nurturing a young reading freak. I've always liked retellings of the classics and this one takes a Grimm tale and turns it into a compelling story about a young woman who learns to define who she is, rather than let others define her.
• If your recipient can handle potentially tragic/depressing, yet really beautiful, literature as a holiday gift--some people are not so grateful to get a book that will make them cry--there is Half of a Yellow Sun and Flight.
  

Knitting/Crafting:

• A skein of Crack-silk haze is a luxury that can be used in many ways. There are 33 colors and enough yardage in one skein to make a wispy scarf, or use it to make an ethereal trim on a chunkier sweater.
  
• A subscription to Craft magazine or Interweave Knits--if you have a crafter who isn't addicted to the web then these paper magazines are pretty great. Not really so necessary for we blog addicted types...
  
• Bias tape maker--this little thingy is fun! You cut strips of fabric on the bias and feed it through this gadget and it comes out ready to iron into perfect bias tape. Now I'm trying to think of what exactly I plan to do with 10 yards of bias tape....

Writing:
For chrissake just give any writer in your life a little time. That's the only gift that I'm asking for from my Mother in Law. She has been kid-tending while I take my Friday pastry class this autumn; as I'm not taking any cooking classes next semester, I'm hoping she'll keep kid-tending while I use my Friday to write. God knows, other than this blog, this year has not been a productive one on the writing front for me.

Countdown

OK all, you have 224 days to read Philip Goldman's The Golden Compass trilogy before the movie opens (on December 7). The series is another of those marketed-as-YA-though-only-because-the-main-character-is-a-young-girl books. Because, you know, all the ten-year-olds I know are busy meditating on the nature of good and evil and the mutability of the soul and whether Milton's poetics in Paradise Lost is representative of our world....yea right.... I'm not sure if the marketing in England was as youth directed or whether my Aunt is just super cool, because she sent me a copy of The Golden Compass in 1995 when it was just published in England under the alternative title Northern Lights (I do prefer The Golden Compass as a title). Since then, I've re-read the trilogy twice and I'll probably read it again in the next 224 days.

Once you've started the first book, you'll start thinking about what form your Daemon (an animal manifestation of your soul) takes--shrew? eagle? snake?

The folks who made the movie website are smart enough to realize that readers everywhere start thinking about their own Daemons pretty much as soon as they figure out what Daemons are. So they installed a nifty 20 question quiz that supposedly takes your personality traits and assigns them to an animal. (Go to the section on Daemons, then click on the Meet Your Daemon link to get to the quiz). My Daemon is named Adan (at least I think that fancy script says Adan, not Adon. I like the arty-ness of the script but find it damn hard to read).



I took the quiz twice, once answering honestly, and once answering as though someone as unlike me as possible were taking the quiz--I picture this person as an optimistic extrovert, about as unlike me as you can get. "Opposite-Kate" got a terrier as her Daemon. I'll stick with my lion Daemon--since I am kind of suspicious of people when I first meet them, I like the idea of having a big old lion there to back me up.

Defining an audience

I'm starting to feel a little strange about the books that I'm loving of late. I just finished this book:

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party

and it marks the third book in the space of a year that I think is absolutely fantastic and which is classified as Young Adult fiction. This book and the other two, The Book Thief and Fly by Night, are three of the most intelligent, risky, poignant and beautiful books I've read and I can't understand why they aren't considered "adult" literature. If the only reason is that the hero or heroine of each book has not reached the age of majority, well, that's a pretty pathetic reason. And if this is the case, I don't see why Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close would be an "adult" book since the main character of his novel is a 12 year old named Oscar; yet the New York Times Book review graced him with a review (and not in the segregated children's books issue). All three of these "Young Adult" books attack such huge and, dare I say, adult issues with such subtlety and complexity that it leaves me breathless.

I'm trying not to be cynical and put it all down to marketing. For all I know, it is smart to market a book as a YA work--maybe there is more of a market for good YA fiction than adult and the authors are raking it in rather than pinching their pennies. But if I wasn't a regular blog reader of such kid-lit blogs such as Bookshelves of Doom, A Fuse #8 Production and Big A, Little a, I probably would have missed these titles and that just makes me mad. Maybe these books are YA because their authors have written for a YA label in the past. But I still don't get it. I gave The Book Thief to my mother for Christmas (yeah, I know, nothing like a good fire bombing and tale of WWII miseries to cheer someone up at Christmas time...but I still think it is an exquisite and hopeful book despite the grimness of its subject.)

My latest read is set in the American Colonies shortly before the revolution. As a former 18th C lit geek (i.e. my first MA degree), the representation of the period, with its fondness for experimentation, political treatises and formal language was beautifully executed. But the story of a slave boy who is raised as an experiment in classical education and the abilities of Africans, told from (mostly) the boy's perspective, became much more than an exercise in 18th C arcana; it is a meditation on freedom, affection, liberty, and science, and how all of these "principles" are manipulated by society for personal and political gain. Really complex deep stuff that makes me want to pull out my Hume and Godwin and Wollstonecraft and re-read them--I can't say that another novel has had that effect on me in a looooong time.

My happiest revelation came at the end of the novel when two significant words of the title sank in: "Volume 1". I can't think of happier words for a besotted reader. Now I'll be anxiously watching for Volume 2.

"so ugly and so glorious..."

I tried not to feel glad that my kid came down with strep throat yesterday, but since she did and since she slept a lot of the day, I was able to finish The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. So I'm offsetting the downer guilt for being a crummy mom with the invigorating oomph that a really fine book produces. This is a difficult book to write about--a phrase like "The power of the human spirit" sounds incredibly trite, but frankly, I can't think of a better way to express the mash of feelings that this wonderful, quirky, intense, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic book inspired in me.

I think the best I can do is quote a line that captures the essence of the story:
"I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant."

I read the last 100 pages with tears streaming down my face, but despite the fact that the narrator is Death and the subject matter is the Holocaust, the book is incredibly life affirming. It reminds me of one of my other favorite books, Everything is Illuminated (which also devotes a significant amount of its plot to the Holocaust) and The Book Thief is going to join the company of Everything is Illuminated by bumping Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott off of my Top 10 list (which is still a mighty fine read, mind you, but now that both of my kids are potty trained, the daily relevance of the "shit storms" that Lamott writes about has decreased).

If you are on my regular list of gift-book recipients, please be advised that you will most likely, be receiving a copy of this book from me when the appropriate celebratory occasion comes around. I gotta tell you, it is great to know what you'll be giving everyone for Christmas on July 22nd!

My new hero

I have a new author hero: Frances Hardinge. Her first novel, Fly by Night is so fantastic I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around all the facets of wonderfulness (when I get blown away by someone else's writing, my own writing deteriorates to utter blather. And don't even ask me to talk about the admiration I feel: I once inflicted Ron Hansen, who wrote the excellent novel Mariette in Ecstasy, with my idiotic enthusiasm after he gave a reading and after politely signing my book, the man backed away in fear of the manic reader in front of him.)

I discovered this book through A Fuse #8 Production's review and her designation of this title as her favorite book of the year. It is categorized as both youth fiction and fantasy by my library, but it rises above any attempts at categorization. Yes, there is a young heroine central character and yes, it takes place in an alternate world that resembles 18th C England. But there is so much subtle word play and intelligent discussion of politics, power and religion, that the book appeals to readers of all ages--sort of like the way kids and parents can watch The Simpsons together and laugh at things for different reasons.

Fly by Night also is a wonderful affirmation for anyone who actively hungers for words--I get really squirrelly and restless when I don't have a good book to read. Brian sometimes comes home and finds me pacing the house waiting to dump the kids on him so I can head to the library or bookshop to get some relief! Well, the main character feels the same way. When contemplating her own life and future she decides "I don't want a happy ending, I want more story" which is a sentiment that I have felt at the end of many books. The last page of this book has a simply beautiful description of the seduction of a good story.

I really don't think I can control my blather at this point so I heartily suggest that you head over and read her much more coherent review. And after that you should go buy the book.