lycomayflower's 2009 75 Challenge

Seventy-five may actually be a challenge, as I tend to come in between sixty and seventy in a year and often fall off in October and November. But I've been trying to spend less downtime being aimlessly aimless (repeatedly refreshing Behind the Sofa when I know there won't be anything new there) and more being purposefully and memorably aimless (reading some of the literally hundreds of books that make up my TBR pile), so perhaps a slight challenge will provide the appropriate kick in the pants.

My at-a-glance 2009 list (click titles to go to individual post within my thread):

Thread Two for 2009

50. Spock's World
49. The Tale of Despereaux
48. Slant
47. Star Trek: Academy: Collision Course
46. Giovanni's Room
45. Something to Tell You: The Road Families Travel When a Child Is Gay
44. The Mysterious Benedict Society
43. Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders
42. Star Trek: Crucible: McCoy: Provenance of Shadows
41. Epistemology of the Closet
40. Short Bits Read for My Dissertation
39. The Time Traveler's Wife
38. To Sail Beyond the Sunset
37. Star Trek
36. Kate's Klassics
35. The Jane Austen Book Club
34. The Witches
33. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
32. A Solitary Blue
31. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
30. Jackaroo
29. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
28. Copenhagen
27. My Ishmael
26. Here, There Be Dragons
25. Surprised by Joy
24. Broken Hallelujahs
23. The Following Story
22. House of Fallen Leaves
21. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
20. Day by Day:The Notre Dame Prayerbook for Students
19. Breaking Dawn
18. Eclipse
17. New Moon
16. The Invention of Hugo Cabret
15. The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia
14. The Code of the Woosters: Jeeves to the Rescue
13. Death at La Fenice
12. I Was Told There'd Be Cake
11. Pomosexuals: Challenging Assumptions about Gender and Sexuality
* The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction
* Unbecoming Women: British Women Writers and The Novel of Development
10. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers
9. Taft
8. A Room of One's Own
7. The Catcher in the Rye
6. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
5. Twilight
4. Semaphore
3. The Arrival
2. Short Stories read with my creative writing students Spring 09
* Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding
1. The Tales of Beedle the Bard

Link to my 2008 50 Book Thread

Explanation of what I include in my challenge list.

Personally, I'm looking forward to reading what you and your mom have to say on different books--if nothing else, I'm certain it will be vastly entertaining, based on past experience! :-)

Me too, Joyce. I enjoyed the 2008 thread for that reason and have starred this one! Let the banter begin.

Can't you just see it, Laura? I do wonder what lycomayflower is going to threaten to beat her mother with this coming year--she's very creative in her choice of weapons, don't you think? Giving me great ideas for Fred.

1.) The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling ****

An interesting magical spin on some traditional fairy tale tropes. The best part about the book is the commentary by Albus Dumbledore on each of the tales--best both because I'm always fascinated by fiction which makes claims about its authorship (i.e. Dumbledore, a fictional character, writing commentary on fictional fairy tales from a fictional world--all of it, of course, created by one author standing behind the whole thing) and because the commentary offers more insight into the fairy tale genre, the gestalt of the Harry Potter world, and the character of Dumbledore.

Looks as if your reading year is off to a good start!

I have The Tales of Beedle the Bard on my shelf, waiting, until `i can finish off some other books and just sit back and enjoy this one!

Like your review!

Tales of Beedle the Bard was one of my last reads of 2008. I loved it and agree completely with your "review." That's exactly how I felt.

Echoing the above, I loved The Tales of Beedle the Bard as well--all the footnotes and commentary were especially fun.

Well I hadn't been going to read it, lyco, but I think that now I shall, on the basis of your comments. Thanks!

Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding, Jerome Hamilton Buckley ***

I appreciate the work Buckley has done in outlining what can be considered the tradition of the English Bildungsroman and arguing the case for including certain texts under that label, but I simply didn't find many of the later chapters all that engaging. He seemed to be making the same point over and over with successive texts. I'll note that I only read about half of the book (I read only those chapters which seemed on-point for my third (and final) comprehensive exam), and it's entirely possible that seeing the arc of the argument in its entirety would help. (You may also note that I have not numbered this book--I won't consider it toward my total since I didn't read the whole thing--though I did want to get my impressions down here.)

Ah yes, the English Bildungsroman. *Charlie scratches noggin, decides to go to bed*

@12: It's not nearly as impressive as it may sound. Simply put, the Bildungsroman is a novel following a character's growth from childhood through maturity. It was initially a German type (as the name probably suggests to you), and Buckley identifies characteristics and examples of that type in English literature (Great Expectations would be a prime example).

#12: You are not the only one who wondered what it meant, CharlieBrain. I have wondered for years - glad someone finally explained it to me. Thank you very much, lycomay!

2.) My "second book" of the year will be a running list of the short stories I'm reading with the creative writing class I'm teaching this semester. Taken as a whole, the stories will constitute something "book-length," and, as with Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding, I'd like to keep track of my reactions to these stories here. I'll be updating this post over the course of the next three months.

*Solid Geometry, Ian McEwan
--This story knocked me out the first time I read it. On subsequent readings, not quite so much, but I'm still impressed by McEwan's slow, controlled revelation of character and plot, which is why I had my students read it.

*Christine, A.L. Kennedy
--It's the combination of a neat concept (I won't reveal what, as it would go a long way toward spoiling the story), brilliantly indirect execution of that concept, and masterful tweaking of language that make me return to this story and want to share it.

*A&P, John Updike
--I'm not generally a big fan of Updike, but the first three pages of "A&P" make up some of the most spot-on description I've read.

*Bread, Frederick Busch
--Quiet, almost subconscious symbolism.

*Why I Live at the P.O., Eudora Welty
--Brilliant rendering of dialect without resorting to awkward spellings or punctuation use. And funny while still portraying people I recognize.

*Hills Like White Elephants, Ernest Hemingway
--I really find Hemingway quite tiresome, but "Hills" demonstrates such admirable control of dialogue.

*Barn Burning, William Faulkner
--Sort of the anti-Hemingway. And all the better for it.

*Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx
--I love this story, and yet something always feels slightly off with it. After multiple readings, I still can't put my finger on what.

*The Dead, James Joyce
--Most beautiful last paragraph of a short story ever.

*Something under the Porch, G.W. Hawkes
--Muted symbolism. Nice.

*A Temporary Matter, Jhumpa Lahiri
--I just never tire of Lahiri's prose. Her ability to depict simple activity (like making dinner) in a way that is utterly enthralling repeatedly amazes me.

*Falling in Love, Andre Dubus
--This isn't really one of my favorites of Dubus's, but it is a good illustration of his mastery of controlled revelation of character.

*A Child's Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas
--Happy Christmas memories without sentimentality. Beautiful language. Should be read aloud.

*Bouyancy, Richard Russo
--Can't quite decide about this one yet. It may be that Russo works too hard to make nature comment on his characters here.

*The Beginnings of Grief, Adam Haslett
--This story hurts, but without ever feeling like the writer is being manipulative. He's right there with you through the whole thing.

Interesting short stories. *bump*

3.) The Arrival, Shaun Tan ****

This gorgeous book was a birthday gift from LW3. A graphic novel with no words, The Arrival contains stunning, imaginative artwork telling the story of a man migrating to a new land, finding his bearings, and sending for his young family to join him. The world Tan depicts is uncanny in just the ways a new land may seem to a newly arrived immigrant--at times just shy of familiar and at others downright strange. Reading this book was a joy not just because of the amazing artwork but because of the way it gently challenges, through a lengthy narrative told without words, what it means to "read."

Query: When you receive your doctorate will I be required to call you Dr. Laura?

I don't quite understand your last sentence. Are you saying that, because there are no words, you are "reading" meaning into the pictures? A "lengthy narrative told without words" sounds strange indeed.

Perhaps I'm an old fuddy-duddy (strike perhaps), but I'm not crazy about graphic novels. The popularity of Neil Gaiman and the Japanese worry me: since remedial reading is required in many undergrad programs, are we headed away from traditional books? Or do you see GNs as an adjunct reading experience for the literate?

#18: I'll weigh in here on the GN discussion--I refuse to read them or in any way patronize them. I can't find evidence to the contrary, but think that Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana was the first--if not the first, then among the first--of the graphic novels as opposed to straight out comic books. I thought it was well done, but not everyone has Eco's talent.

I think there is a place for comic books. My younger soon, when about 10 years old, really didn't like to read. My ex-husband, who was an expert in the education field, suggested that I encourage comic books; he said studies showed that reading ANYTHING was better than nothing. Rich really took to comic books, and then graduated to regular books within a very short period of time.

BUT--he was 10 years old.

No one has to worry about people who love books--they'll read cereal box tops if deprived of anything else. Being in such a situation when I was forced to read a church bulletin board was a precursor to a 10 year several months per year) odyssey in Brasil. My worry and objection is for those people who think that reading a comic book--an that'd how I see them--of, say, Oliver Twist is the same thing as reading the novel. Sorry--I don't agree.

As a former college instructor, I can tell you that even 20 years ago, the difficulty that US students had with reading comprehension was a major problem. Time and again,when I would probe as to why students weren't doing well, it was due to the fact that they couldn't understand the text. along with fifth grade arithmetic--I had to teach fractions before I was able to start teaching basic chemistry.

I tend to be a real hard-liner in this area, because my understanding is that things have not gotten better as far as reading skills are concerned--only worse.

Joyce, you have this annoying tendency to beat around the bush.

@18

Answer: Not only will you not be required, but you should so really, really not.

Re: that last sentence: I mean that I feel that I have read The Arrival in just the same ways I would say that I have read Great Expectations or Rebecca. The pictures succeed at narrative just was well (or in the case of this story, better) than words would.

I see graphic novels as related to the conventional novel, just as the conventional novel is related to the romance. Graphic novels have much to offer that conventional novels do not, but if graphic novels were to replace conventional novels, literature would suffer a great loss. They both have value, and to say that the one could not replace the other is not to say that one is more or less valuable than the other.

As for your worry, I see the problem as a failure to cultivate and promote reading books that one finds interesting. We put too much emphasis in school on reading certain books without equal emphasis on reading that which makes us go, "Ooo, neat. I wanna read that." If children, young adults, or teenagers read manga because they spark their interest and no one bothers to point out conventional novels that might also interest them, I don't think we can be surprised at any moves away from the conventional. Not that I'm terribly worried about that. Reading habits and rates have always waxed and waned--and I read an article suggesting that we are seeing the beginning of an upturn, so it's all good.

Well, Charlie, what can I say--a lifetime of submission to male authority, creeping around, you know, always worrying about what the neighbors will think--it does dull the spirit. :-)

#21: One of the most hopeful signs I ever saw was the Harry Potter books and how they really "took". They're good books--hey, I have the Beadle the Bard book, which I'm saving for a rainy day(s)--and they certainly helped give a spike to reading rates among children and teenagers. But what I'm talking about is comprehension, not reading rates.

And I'll also take some exception to pandering to their tastes. If given a choice, most kids would not attend school. If given a choice, most kids would not learn math. If given a choice.....

Reminds me of an argument that my older son lost with me. he had decided not to sign up for algebra in his freshman year in high school. I called the school, and he was signed up. We got into a rip-roaring argument about how all he wanted to be was a comic book artist (and by the way, he was very good at it) and if he then decided to be a beach bum what good was algebra going to do him? I announced--there was no discussion--hat then he was going to be the best educated beach bum in the state of Washington.

He wound up getting his B.A. in Fine Arts and is a very fine painter--who does know his algebra.

I think there are some things that constitute a civilized human being in the Western tradition that can't have substitutes. Now--timing--sure. Don't alienate a 12 year old (or, I should say, most 12 year olds) with Shakespeare, although I know many pre-teens who loved it in the theater. But even then there are no hard and fast rules, as far as I'm concerned.

One thing that infuriated me about the late, unlamented Democratic primary was the elevation and exaltation of semi-literacy--the "real Americans"--as opposed to those who read. That attitude is too widespread, frankly. I do think that the dominancy of TV has slanted tastes towards the quick and easy.

I'm not arguing that the GNs or comic books or whatever they are should be abolished. I do agree that they can e complementary. And who knows, maybe in some they might lead to greater curiosity about the originals. But given the general actual educational level of most of the people in the US, not the nominal level, I really think that they do a lot of damage as well.

Since at heart I'm an anarchist and really do believe in the First Amendment, I'm NOT in favor of abolishing such books, but refuse to support them myself.

@19

I agree that reading a graphic novel version of a book that was originally text-based is not the same as reading the original. And I have little patience for that sort of graphic novel--mostly because I rarely see one that offers anything worthwhile that the original does not. But I've been really impressed and intrigued by some original graphic novels (like Maus and Blankets). I also think comic books have their place--just as I think Ok Go and Bach both have their place. I would never choose one over the other forever, but one day I might want "Here It Goes Again" and another day I might want "The Goldberg Variations."

As a college English instructor, I do have concerns about the reading ability some of my students come to me with, but I don't think graphic novels are really much of the problem (I might change my mind if I worked with younger students or had children myself, I suppose).

I see the value of reading as threefold: 1) it develops and sustains certain kinds of brain function, 2) it develops compassion and empathy in the reader, 2a) which in turn helps make for a better citizenship, and 3) it's enjoyable. If we could find better ways to develop number three, I think we'd be happier with the demonstration of one and two. I think graphic novels probably develop other kinds of brain function than text-reading does, so doing one but not the other probably isn't too swift, but I suspect that good graphic novels are just as capable of developing compassion and empathy in the reader as text novels. Enjoyment can be achieved by both.

#23: I have to agree with Maus. But that's the exception rather than the rule, in my (strictly text) book.

Oh heavens, I don't mean to imply that graphic novels are the cause of reading problems! 20 years ago, they weren't in existence! I think that the origins are in part cultural and in part due to TV and who knows what else.

If all we want is propaganda to promote better citizenship, I suppose. But I simply don't see that GNs help develop discernment. That takes subtlety, which is not the forté of GNs.

I also don't see how GNs really help the average reader to be able to understand a piece of legislation, or to understand a chemistry text book or to understand a huge amount of information on the Internet, being able to digest meaning from complicated arguments (or detect specious ones). Tell me how it improves vocabulary. Decades later, I'm finally back to using words of more than 1 syllable in talking with USers; I realized very early on in my classes that if I didn't cu back on my vocabulary, I was going to lose people. Ditto in talking at school board meetings. Again, GNs are NOT the origin but they do not help solve the problem.

@22

I think to some extent we are talking at cross purposes because we're not seeing the latest addition to the discussion before adding to it.

I'd never suggest not instituting curriculum that requires that certain books be read (to short-circuit a possible tendency for kidlets to prefer and read mostly rubbish), but I would suggest a greater effort to find them books that will interest them as well.

And reading graphic novel adaptations instead of the original is just not on.

#25: In any event, true daughter of your mother, I have to concede the field because I'm about to love my computer access! But wait--wait!--in about a week Freddie the iMac takes up residence here and THEN watch out! :-)

Actually, I thought it was a great discussion, myself! :-)

@24

"I also don't see how GNs really help the average reader to be able to understand a piece of legislation, or to understand a chemistry text book or to understand a huge amount of information on the Internet, being able to digest meaning from complicated arguments (or detect specious ones). Tell me how it improves vocabulary."

They don't. Which is why no one should read nothing but graphic novels, just as no one should eat nothing but squash, not matter how good for you squash might be. If you want to develop skills with words, you've got to practice by dealing with words. But in the development of understanding, compassion, empathy, I see no reason why (good) graphic novels shouldn't be just as successful as good text novels, paintings, music, et cetera. And understanding why the piece of legislation is necessary (or dangerous) is just as important as being able to comprehend what the piece of legislation says. I'm thinking here of a passage in Martha Nussbaum's Cultivating Humanity:

"Narrative art has the power to make us see the lives of the different with more than a casual tourist's interest--with involvement and sympathetic understanding, with anger at our society's refusals of visibility. We come to see how circumstances shape the lives of those who share with us some general goals and projects; and we see that circumstances shape not only people's possibilities for action, but also their aspirations and desires, hopes and fears. All of this seems highly pertinent to decisions we must make as citizens. Understanding, for example, how a history of racial stereotyping can affect self-esteem, achievement, and love enables us to make more informed judgments on issues relating to affirmative action and eduction" (88).

Reading The Arrival certainly aided my understanding of the fears, apprehensions, and discoveries that accompany emigrating. I might, having read that graphic novel, think differently as a citizen (not just as a reader) about issues of immigration.

I, too, enjoyed our discussion, Joycepa!

What a fantastic discussion---and I missed the heat of it by attending a Pampered Chef party! (Well, that was fun, too...) Joyce, I'm almost as eager as you are for your new computer to arrive. I wish I could do something to put the spurs to it!

Using graphics to convey a message has been around since prehistoric days when someone painted on the cave walls at Altamira and Lascaux, or drew in pyramids to tell a story. My childhood Rupert books were a form of graphic novel. In 1842 in the US, The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck was put out in serial form by Rodolph Toffler. Richard Outcault put out The Yellow Kid in the late 1800s. Comics evolved out of this kind of publication, as well as out of cartoons of political satire. The graphic novels of artists like Raymond Briggs were out in the 60s and 70s with his wonderful Fungus the Bogeyman, Father Christmas, When the the Wind Blows etc. Shaun Tan is simply the continuation of a long line of this ilk. I think he's brilliant. But then, I thought comics were brilliant too, as a kid.

Being an afficionado of this kind of "book", which I always just took as an alternative form of expression, didn't preclude loving the written word. All of these creations are part of the human quest to express all that comprises humanity and I embrace them as such.

Personally, I worry far more about the effect of IPods, FaceBook, cell phones and text messaging on the forming brains of the young than I do about the effect of the graphic novel. U no wht i mn? LOL - gack.

Sorry to hijack your thread, Lyco!

Edited to fix a touchstone

Well, it's the next day, and I'm back for a little while, anyway, and reading the threads;

#27: Outstanding quote!

#30: I had quite forgotten the text messaging "language", which utterly horrifies me. Occasionally, both during the primary and the campaign, I would make the mistake of reading some comments to political articles. NY Times ones were usually ok. Then I'd go to the WA Post and wonder if all the semi-literates had moved to the DC area or simply posted on The Fix. What really bothers me is the destruction of spelling. Of course, I'm one to talk anymore since notice that my English spelling has been going south since I moved here. STILL.

Comparative languages fascinate me, and I tend to read a fair amount in that area. One thing that has always intrigued me is the insistence of experts about the flexibility of the English language--how it's constantly evolving. And that which (ye gods, Spanish has taken over) worries us--the text message language--may be part of that evolution. Which frightens the heck out of me, because if so, in another few years, I'm going to need a full-time translator!

#29: Pampered chef indeed! See what you missed!

I can't even imagine life without discussions like these.

Referring to language: one of the big problems that I have with swearing is that it seems to be - "Well, I cannot think of anything else to say, so a few profanities would be good here", particularly in movies, because evidently the majority of screenwriters are illiterate. I think we could cut 2 hour movies down by 30 minutes or so if we removed all the swear words, lol.

Joyce, if you are interested in comparative languages, one of the books I am currently reading may interest you - Spoken Here by Mark Abley.

#32: Ever since my two boys were teen agers, I have felt that, particularly with that age group, swear words are used because of a lack of vocabulary.

I was home once when a group of my younger son's friends was there with Rich, no one realizing that I was working at home that day. After about a half hour of being forced to hear f__k every third word, I strolled out and told them that they would have to cut that word out and find some other way to express their primitive sentiments (there was one kid in particular whom I thought could definitely have been replaced by a human being). Whole lot of silence afterward. They finally got up and left. To give him credit, Rich actually thought it was funny!

Thanks for the tip, Stasia--i'll definitely look it up.

Joycepa, my mother (now 89) always said that swearing was the sign of a deceased imagination. Obviously, she would say to any offender, yours is stone dead.

#34: That's good, that's very good, your mother's comment! How true.

@ 31-33

Awww, dissent!

Cuss words can be meaningless oral crutches or indications of sloppy thought. But used with care, they can be powerful, funny, or clever. And their consistent use across all parts of speech demonstrates some interesting points about language acquisition. One example: with striking consistency, all speakers of a language will insert a cuss word into the same points in other words--abso-****ing-lutely but never ab-****ing-solutely. It holds true even with words most speakers won't have heard in that construction before. I think Steven Pinker discusses this phenomenon in The Language Instinct.

@ 30 and 31

As for the shorthand used in texting, I see it as a symptom of a larger problem: underdevelopment of code-shifting. We all use language differently in different situations. We need to put more emphasis on learning to distinguish between those situations, identifying which kind of language is appropriate, and being able to use the appropriate language correctly in each situation. I have friends to whom I can say "Aw, mate. Failboat. But the iconage is win" and be perfectly confident that they will know precisely what I mean. And friends who I know won't. I don't speak to my dissertation director the way I speak to my father. I don't write about books on LT with the language I would employ in a seminar paper. And texting shorthand isn't "standard" usage. If we were to acknowledge the validity of texting shorthand in its appropriate setting and teach the skills needed to shift from it to other codes, we'd be better off I think than just decrying the use of it.

BLIMEY! Clearly YOUR imagination isn't deceased. "underdevelopment of code-shifting" indeed. Show-off.

>36 lycomayflower:: That discussion of code–shifting is quite interesting. I had never given the subject much thought beyond a bit of censure when one of my children sends me an email with "how r u?" in it. Yet, in an online game the same child could send "afk 4 bio" and I wouldn't even blink.

Do you think this is a particularly recent phenomenon, or has the diversity between purpose-specific slang and "ordinary" speech—and the inability to distinguish when to use which—always existed in our culture?

@ 38

I suspect it's more of a problem now because (and this is just conjecture) we have more situations whose codes we have to identify, acquire, and use. Code-shifting has surely always been some part of civilized life--switching between languages (English and French), employing different levels of formality (speaking to your child versus speaking to your priest), using different vocabulary (writing a love letter versus writing a legal contract). But now we have all of those previous situations as well as texting, blogging, myspace, twitter and so on.

We tend to be trained in the appropriate codes for traditional situations. Your parents teach you how to behave in public and how to interact with strangers (wait-staff, cashiers, policemen). Your boss trains you in the appropriate ways to speak to customers. Instructors teach you a foreign language. You take an M.A. in business and learn how to write grants. But when the codes are new (like texting) and people pick them up communally, there's no training and thus no division between how you use language here, in this space, as opposed to there, in that space. And if the new code is most popular among the younger generations, the people who are likely best equipped to demonstrate how to use the old codes, may not be fluent in the new ones. That's probably always been true to some extent as well (the young using slang their parents don't completely understand), but it may be compounded by the prevalence of new code (like texting shorthand) that is primarily written (because it bleeds into other, formal written documents), the speed with which the new code can be transmitted (instantaneously, essentially), and resultant speed at which the code will morph.

Conjecture, all. I'm just thinking out loud.

If we were to acknowledge the validity of texting shorthand in its appropriate setting and teach the skills needed to shift from it to other codes, we'd be better off I think than just decrying the use of it

I agree completely. It seems to me that a kind of texting shorthand is increasingly transferring to speech: "So I was, like, you know, and she was, like, so whatever, and that made me so like mad and so like I ....". It reminds me faintly of American Sign Language, where much is inferred from facial expression and body stance, which supplements the information being delivered. What I do worry about is that this ability isn't being taught young enough - or even being acknowledged as a necessary skill set by educators.

If the skills aren't being taught to shift to other codes (and I despair that they aren't), text speak and tics can become insidious. I ran a mini experiment in our office at the University where I worked, asking the students who worked there not to use "like" in their speech while they were working in the office. Some were able to do it, reverting to what they had been raised with in their families. But several others simply could not speak without it, as they had no background training otherwise. "Like", wailed one young 'un, "I can't like talk now!" Her code shifting was obviously in dire need of development! What was particularly terrifying was that she was planning to be a teacher.

I guess there's no hope for me: I understood the failboat sentence. hehe

#39: I like how you think.

ETA: just had this wonderful image of someone putting ROFLMAO in a thesis.

*Mom busts her buttons*

But Linda, don't you sometimes get the feeling that your daughter is speaking in tongues? :-)

*picks up your buttons and hands them to you* You might want them later. Flick them under the boss's door at seven-minute intervals. Bosses, like cats, need periodic confusing.

#43 Yeah, half the time I've NO idea what she's on about.

#44 YOU are meant to be leaving the computer alone.

Bosses, like cats, need periodic confusing. Not mine. He confuses himself.

#45: Well, in terms of your boos confusing himself, Linda, you ought to be grateful--saves you the effort, right? :-)

Except that he also confuses ME a good bit of the time.

4.) Semaphore, G.W. Hawkes ****

My favorite of Hawkes's novels. Tender and effortlessly spot-on, it's a lovely exploration of its concept. Joseph, the point-of-view character, is mute--for reasons medical science is unable to explain--and can not only see the future, but experiences it. The novel is about how Joseph comes to understand his ability and how he learns to live despite his knowledge of what is to come. Hawkes wastes no time trying to explain how Joseph got to be the way he is, but we buy the set-up because of his deft characterization. This is my second or third reread and I'm always impressed by the seeming ease with which Hawkes puts Joseph on the page. Recommended.

To quote the mighty one himself, "I'm delighted you like this one best. So do I."

I was thinking of that as I typed that up, in actual fact!

#48: Semaphore sounds like a wonderful book. I will look for it. Thanks for the glowing recommendation!

Hawkes is worth discovering, Stasia. His short story collections are marvelous --Playing Out of the Deep Woods and Spies in the Blue Smoke.

I liked the sound of Semaphore so much that since my local libraries did not have it, I went ahead and ordered a copy for myself. If I like it as much as I anticipate, I will certainly look for the short stories as well. Thanks for mentioning them, lw3.

Hawkes is one of those under-the-radar authors I push whenever I can, Stasia. He taught and advised my daughter as an undergrad. The LT photo of him was taken at her graduation---I cropped her out!

Cool beans!

>39 lycomayflower:: wow, this will teach me to restrict myself to reading everything only once a week. Absolutely fascinating discussion. Did you read David Crystal's book on txt-speak? (writes a crusty who took at least 18 months to write "text me" in her SMS messages as opposed to laboriously thumbing out "send me a text message" with some misplaced belief that this made her a Better Person. or something)

(and hello, by the way!)

I read The Arrival based on your suggestion and loved it. Thanks! (And for all of those who won't read graphic novels, you should try this one. It's much like watching a silent film.)

Wow. Interesting discussions like above are the reason I am (extremely slowly) working my way through the challenge threads.

5.) Twilight, Stephenie Meyer ***

Reasonably diverting, but with all the flaws I expect from genre fiction. Far too much reliance on adjectives (especially in the dialogue tags) to convey feelings rather than providing the kinds of concrete details that create character and show the reader those feelings rather than telling her what they are. I also found the climax to be a bit of a letdown after the dramatic and intriguing set-up we get for it. The action of the climax happens off-stage, as it were, because the point-of-view character loses consciousness--that loss of consciousness is perhaps consistent with the internal laws of Meyer's world, but losing details of that scene because of it makes the story arc feel off-balance.

I'm also a bit put off by Edward's power over Bella--she's mesmerized by his eyes, her heart beats wildly when he kisses her, she's helpless to resist his requests. It's all stock teenage first-love stuff, and it's made slightly more tolerable because it's all literal--these are effects of Edward's vampire nature. But it could have been so much more interesting with some sense of irony--or even a better attempt to particularize this experience rather than relying on the traditional indicators of love. This may be an unfair judgment of the book, as its primary audience is teenagers, though I dare say many teenagers would welcome a stronger evocation of what it feels like to be in love for the first time rather than a reiteration of what we have all heard it feels like.

I am a bit bothered by the message the book may send to young women about relationships. Bella is not a particularly submissive person--in fact she's quite stubborn and she balks fairly strongly when Edward tries to keep information from her "for her own good." She wants to be his equal--not his pet (my word). These are all good things. However, boiled down to its basic parts, this is the story of a misfit girl (albeit strong-willed and reasonably confident) who meets a gorgeous young man who adores her, is willing to make painful sacrifices for her, and can offer her super-human protection. They fall deeply in love and the young woman is willing to sacrifice everything (her family, her life) to be with him. This is fantasy, but of the type some impressionable teens might not detect. I'm concerned about girls developing impossible expectations for gorgeous, sweet, protective, powerful, and talented teenaged boys. While Bella does stand up for herself, Edward is portrayed as generally having superior judgment, power, strength, and charm--all results of his being a vampire and over one hundred years old. Again, fantasy, but I'm trying to picture being the mother or aunt of a fourteen year-old who fantasizes that she's going to find a boy who completes her and then submit to his superior judgment, power, strength, and charms. It makes me a little twitchy because I'm afraid the book pleasantly and powerfully reinforces some not-so-great hooey already rampant in our culture.

All that being said, Twilight fairly well met my expectations for sentence-level writing--it's rubbish but readable; however, the story exceeded my expectations--both the world Meyer has created (the way the vampires "work") and the incidents told were more interesting than I anticipated they would be. I was also pleasantly surprised by how invested I was in the characters--primarily Edward and his family, but Bella as well--despite what I consider to be sub par characterization. Meyer has told a quite good story, even if the telling of it is only passable. I will be carrying on with the series--I much prefer my novels to be good stories told well, but the truth is that I want to know what happens next.

I liked Twilight... I thought the characters were compelling in the sense that I wanted to know more, and like you said, the world was well developed and Meyer kept things moving so that I wanted more, more, more! Sorry to say though, that's where the thrill ended for me. I really, really wanted to like the 3 books that followed... but a lack of decent editing (and writing, in many cases) and what felt like a need to 'fill page space' made me dislike the last 3... the middle two more than the final book, but there you have it. I could talk about the problems (and redeeming qualities, I suppose) of these books for days, LOL. I'll be interested in hearing what you think!

>59 lycomayflower: Congratulations on the "Hot Review"!

I absolutely agree with your review about Twilight. Completely sums up how I felt about it as well!!

#59. Far too much reliance on adjectives (especially in the dialogue tags) to convey feelings rather than providing the kinds of concrete details that create character and show the reader those feelings rather than telling her what they are.

You've hit the nail on the head regarding the genre of "romance." I once read ¾ of a novel by Nora Roberts and there wasn't an adjective or adverb she didn't like. The only feelings she conveyed to me was (1) embarrassment for her fictional characters and (2) nausea.

Lest I be accused of sexism, Andrew Greeley is even worse.

I am a bit bothered by the message the book may send to young women about relationships. . . . This is fantasy, but of the type some impressionable teens might not detect.

This, I believe, has been the major criticism of Meyer's series: are the majority of young teens able to discern that this is all make-believe?

giggling madly about the Andrew Greeley comment. Tried reading him once and found my gag reflex going into overdrive.

Excellent review of Twilight, Lyco. I haven't read it but I think I get it, courtesy of your review.

Oh, come now, Charlie--Greeley is worth the read if only for the absolutely lovely way he slices up the cardinal archbishop of Chicago! At least in the ones I have been fortunate enough to read--talk about giggles!

6.) Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Anne Fadiman ****

A delightful collection of essays about books and reading. From the observations about the "odd shelf" to the musings about the use of "Ms." to the memories of childhood reading, I saw myself throughout the book--and that can be one of the best things about reading.

I read Ex Libris last month and really liked it. It seems to be a popular read in this group.

#66-67: I love that book! Hands down, one of my all time favorites. Glad there is another fan among us.

Ex Libris is one of my regular "rereads"--I think it resonates with many passionate readers. It's fun to see others drawn into its "circle!"

>63 BrainFlakes:-65 I used to really enjoy Father Greeley's novels. Didn't care for the Ireland Irish ones, but loved the Chicago set. I wonder which one choked you, Tiffin? I haven't read him in years, but I don't remember thinking his prose was off-putting.

Re Greeley: Never going to make it to great literature, but very often entertaining if nothing else. I used to buy his books with the certain knowledge that his royalties kept him independent of the archdiocese of Chicago--the cardinal really couldn't shut him up because he had no leverage over Greeley! I just thought that was ducky, so I would buy his books and even enjoyed them, probably because I felt I was striking a blow on Greeley's side.
It probably isn't all that well known, but Greeley was one of the first to call attention to the pedophilia problem in the US Catholic Church (I should now probably point out that I am at least nominally Catholic), especially as it was developing in Chicago. In fact, one of his books, written either in the late 80s or early 90s, was very blunt in pointing that out.

I also had the pleasure of hearing Fr. Greeley at some seminar or another in Seattle--for the life of me, I can't remember why. Normally, I'd say it was some peace forum or another, but perhaps it was connected with the Church and I went as part of our parish team. In any event, I had already known that he was a sociologist, but was quite pleasantly surprised at the paper he gave there on the topic--forget what it was about--too many years ago. He also participated in some sort of panel discussion, and was extremely witty.

#70: it was a series about someone who had emigrated from Ireland and married into a Boston (?) family. There was lots of red hair, freckles and Bushmills. It was a little too Begosh and Begorrah for my taste, as I recall. His attempts to write the sensual bits were very much what I'd expect from a priest: and sure, do you have a blindin' clue what you're talking about there, Father? hehe

As for the man as a political entity, well, no clue, so no opinion.

7.) The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger ***

I feel sort of fantastically "eh" about The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger demonstrates great skill in creating Holden's character and his voice, but I feel very little sympathy for him. I had to force myself to keep reading because by about a fourth of the way through the novel, I was tired of Holden's cynicism, his attitude, even his speech patterns. It was important, I suspect, to give voice to Holden, but I would have enjoyed the book more if I'd felt more sympathetic toward him. The bits with Phoebe do a lot to redeem Holden for me, but they come too late in the book to do much to change my impression of the novel.

I agree! I know so many people who think The Catcher in the Rye is the greatest book ever, but I just didn't care for it. I found Holden to be extremely annoying, and I just do not understand the connection people feel with him. To each her own, I guess!

Well, let me chime in with the same opinion. I read it many, many years ago, and was completely puzzled as to the high opinion everyone had of its literary ranking. I found Holden boring, he was so predictable.

I always have thought that Salinger was targeting the young adult audience with The Catcher in the Rye. I have not read it yet, but it will be interesting to see what Catey, who is 18, thinks of it. She has it home from the library to read.

I think I read it when I was about 17---I didn't "get" it. Having been raised much the way I raised the owner of this thread, I just thought Holden needed a good swift kick in the seat of the britches.

as a Salinger fan I must say that while I enjoy everything he writes because I like his style, Catcher is by no means up there with his other books like Nine Stories or Franny and Zooey. However, I do not think he was aiming the book at young adults, for the simple reason that Holden does not think like a young adult. Maybe this article would help you understand more what I mean?

From the article:
"Reading Holden’s story is supposed to be the literary equivalent of looking in a mirror for the first time. This seems to underestimate the originality of the book. Fourteen-year-olds, even sensitive, intelligent, middle-class fourteen-year-olds, generally do not think that success is a sham, and if they sometimes feel unhappy, or angry, or out of it, it’s not because they think most other people are phonies. The whole emotional burden of adolescence is that you don’t know why you feel unhappy, or angry, or out of it. The appeal of “The Catcher in the Rye,” what makes it addictive, is that it provides you with a reason. It gives a content to chemistry.

Holden talks like a teen-ager, and this makes it natural to assume that he thinks like a teen-ager as well. But like all the wise boys and girls in Salinger’s fiction—like Esmé and Teddy and the many brilliant Glasses—Holden thinks like an adult. No teen-ager (and very few grownups, for that matter) sees through other human beings as quickly, as clearly, or as unforgivingly as he does. Holden is a demon of verbal incision. He sums people up like a novelist. (...) The secret to Holden’s authority as a narrator is that he never lets anything stand by itself. He always tells you what to think. He has everyone pegged. That’s why he’s so funny. But The New Yorker’s editors were right: Holden isn’t an ordinary teen-ager—he’s a prodigy. He seems (and this is why his character can be so addictive) to have something that few people ever consistently attain: an attitude toward life."

>73 lycomayflower: Bingo! Even though it's been 25+ years since I've read it, your comments perfectly match my memory of my reactions to this book.

8.) A Room of Own's Own, Virginia Woolf ****

I enjoy Virginia Woolf more and more as I get older (and as I have the opportunity to read her books for a second and sometimes third time). I read A Room of One's Own in a masters class on the essay and I suspect I read it once before that in undergrad as well. This time it's for my last doctoral comp. I love her style here, which is discursive but eminently followable. Her insights into the difficulties of being an artist and a woman seem, in some cases, just as relevant today as they were in 1928 (the conflicts involved in the decision to both work and bear children) and in some cases not (the revelation that a woman should be free from financial dependence on a man) and in some cases to apply to both men and women equally today (the notion that a writer should have her own room into which she can retire and be free from interruptions). Altogether, a satisfying and enjoyable read--and one I look forward to reading some day entirely for its own sake rather than for some stated purpose dictated by my studies.

9.) Taft, Ann Patchett ***1/2

The story of John, a black ex-drummer who runs a bar in Memphis and finds himself increasingly drawn into the lives of his white, seventeen year-old waitress and her brother. The waitress, Fay, confesses herself to be in love with John, and John is certainly intrigued sexually and emotionally by her. Patchett subtly explores John's unease with Fay's youth and race, and for the first half of the book I was intrigued and enthralled with John as a character. But by the halfway point, it seemed as if the story wasn't really getting anywhere and I found it a struggle to finish. The second half deals a bit more with Carl, Fay's brother, and the trouble he finds himself in, and while that story was potentially just as interesting as Fay's, the connection between the two halves seemed not quite well-enough fleshed out. The Taft of the title is Fay and Carl's father, who died a few months before the opening of the novel. We get scenes from Taft's point-of-view from the months prior to his death, but they are imagined by John. That these third-person point-of-view scenes spring from John's imagination and are not actually told from a narrator outside the action of the story is clear in the beginning, but Patchett stops reminding us that that is what's going on eventually, and the result is a bit disjointed. A neat experiment in showing the reader how much Fay and Carl have entered John's consciousness, but somehow it just doesn't sit right in the end. Good writing and compelling to a point, but ultimately somewhat unsatisfying.

#80/81 - I love A Room of One's Own. Glad to see that you enjoyed it.

I have not read Taft yet by Patchett, whose book Bel Canto I really enjoyed. From your review however, it does not look like a book I would like, so I think I will give it a pass, at least for a while. There are just too many other worthwhile books out there.

@82--I enjoyed it very much. I've gone back and added comments now, too.

#80: Lyco, I agree that Woolf gets better - or speaks to us differently - as we get older. "A Room of One's Own" is on my reread list for this year as I read it as a callow undergrad and suspect that much of what she was saying in it went right past my ears.

I just ordered A Room of One's Own yesterday. I normally only buy books that are "keepers," ones I want in my permanent collection. I've not read this yet, but it's on tap for March and I'm really looking forward to it!

lindsad

I hope you enjoy it. It is a great book. Although aimed specifically at women who are writers I think it speaks to all women who have the need to develop their intellectual lives. IMO

10.) The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, John Gardner *****

I no longer have a clear sense of how many times I've read this book. I read it this time through with a roll of Scotch tape at my elbow for impromptu repairs. It was our text for creative writing courses at my undergrad. We only had one fiction creative writing professor, and he ascribed whole-heartedly to Gardner's philosophy on the art of writing fiction, which suited me fine as reading The Art of Fiction was an affirmation and clarification of what I already believed. I think it was assigned for every workshop I took for four years and, along with other Gardner texts (On Moral Fiction and On Becoming a Novelist), was the backbone of the capstone Form and Theory class for the major (we read a wealth of other texts on craft as well, including Aristotle's Poetics, Calvino's The Uses of Literature, Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and Annie Dillard's The Writing Life). I'm now using it in the introduction to fiction writing class I'm teaching. My students are divided in their reactions to his philosophy (e.g. fiction is best when it is a process of discovery, art should affirm life, the governing technical concern of fiction is creating and maintaining a "vivid and continuous dream") and many of them resist Gardner's high standards and insistence on perfection. I accept any well-reasoned objections to the philosophy but resist their resistance on the other points.

Has he written one for old writers? Or would this work for the other end of the spectrum just as well?

Tui...if you haven't read his On Moral Fiction, check it out. (Pssst...Gardner is God to that woman in #87, just so you know. As you feel about Frye...)

#88. Has he written one for old writers?

LOL! Are you referring to the dust-and-cobweb school of writers?

No, myself, Brain.
Well, on second thought, that WOULD be me.....

#89, thanks Linda, I will. And if that woman in #87 thinks he's Big Stuff, I'd bet the house that he really is.

Unbecoming Women: British Women Writers and The Novel of Development, Susan Fraiman

Another book for my upcoming comp exam that, like Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding, I have not read completely so am not "counting." I don't have much to say about Unbecoming Women except that it is an interesting read next to Season of Youth. It's a bit dry, and I would have appreciated a clearer outline of criteria (as Buckley provides), though it does much to illustrate the limitations of applying the concepts of the Bildungsroman to books whose central character is female.

(Psst again...she's edited No. 10 in message 87 above to actually talk about Gardner a little.)

You poor creature. It's a bit dry is probably an understatement.

The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction, Wayne Booth ****

Another text for comps that I didn't read in its entirety. Fascinating discussion of the ways that fiction matters and the effects (for good and bad) fiction has on its readers.

>95 lycomayflower:: now THAT sounds like a book my husband might like... he's one of those people who tends to hiss and spit when anyone repeats that phrase of Oscar Wilde's about there being only "good and bad books". intriguing.

11.) Pomosexuals: Challenging Assumptions about Gender and Sexuality, Carol Queen and Lawrence Schimel ****

Could just as easily have been subtitled "In your societies disrupting your binaries." This is a fascinating collection of essays interrogating and exploring the experience of being queer in the late 20th century and the way language and political attitudes have created divides (and insiders and outsiders) in the LGBT&F community(ies). Written by a variety of writers falling all along the sexuality and gender continuums and coming at the topic from multiple angles, the book's unifying theme is a reaction against assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality. Recommended.

#97. Congrats, Laura, for making the hot reviews list!

Hey, you two are on the list together! woo hooO!

Congratulations to lycomayflower and Brainlakes for hot reviews! and another 75er--girlunderglass also has a hot review today! This group rocks!

Whazzup...I can't see Lyco or Brain's reviews, just GunderG's.

congratulations re. the hot reviews!

>101 tiffin: They must have been bumped off the list by others already. It's a review-eat-review world out there!

#103. All 3 of us are still there. You have to set hot reviews to "10" so you can see all 10 hot reviews. *Charlie is confused and goes back to bed*

Thanks, Charlie...only one ever shows up at a time, so I'll go see if I can do that.

ETA: aha! Read them both and way to go, Hot Reviewers!

>104 BrainFlakes: Huh. I didn't know that. I usually see 3 or 4 at a time.

12.) I Was Told There'd Be Cake, Sloane Crosley ***1/2

A collection of personal essays by a member of my generation (Crosley is about three years older than I am). Entertaining and with several observations that make me nod and smile in recognition. Great voice and evident mastery of the form.

Chuckle! I've gotta read it for the title alone!

I checked this book out of the library, but alas had to return it before I read it. Bonniebooks, when reading your comments I thought of the librarian who read the title and laughed out loud and said "Man, that should be ONE good book!"

13.) Death at La Fenice, Donna Leon ****

If you had asked me recently, I'd have said that I generally didn't care for mysteries, or detective stories, or police procedurals. But I suppose that's not actually true. I went on a fairly lengthy kick in high school where I would read Robert B. Parker's Spenser books back-to-back-to-back, and I enjoy Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe books. I've always liked television cop/detective/lawyer shows like Law and Order and Magnum P.I., and I find myself greatly looking forward to each new installment of ABC's new police/mystery writer show Castle. But the fact remains that I haven't ever thought of myself of a fan of the genre. That being said, I very much enjoyed Death at La Fenice. I felt very much like I was uncovering the crime with Guido Brunetti and never felt as if he had a brain wave I was not privvy to and ran off to solve the thing without me (that's my biggest turn off with mystery stories). By the end, I had the crime somewhat sorted--just enough that I felt clever, but not so much so that I had lost interest in the story. The setting and details of Venice were fascinating, and the characters interesting and well-drawn. I see myself carrying on with this series.

I thoroughly enjoy the Donna Leon books, there are a lot of them, some better than others but all good, relaxing reads.

#110. There is a Joyce-from-Panama-Donna Leon fever going around and it appears quite contagious. Tiffin (Tui) also reviewed it yesterday, there is a "Hot Review" of it, and I will finish the book today.

I like the fact that Guido doesn't have 10,000 personal problems so the story stays focused on investigating the crime.

And aren't you a bit young for Magnum?

In this family, Tom Selleck is all things to all women. Don't try to cure us.

Yes'm.

I finished Death in La Fenice the other day, too. Joyce has infected us all!

I don't think we can blame Tom Selleck on her though.

Lol, if I'd known you were all that easy to infect, I'd have tried it!!

My infection itches.

Oh. Wait a minute. I'm sitting on the cat.

Forget I said anything.

@112

In those blessed summers after the Ents decided I would probably not burn the house down if I was left home alone but before I had summer jobs, I lounged about the house watching television and devouring books (and, one memorable summer, following the World Cup like a footie-following thing) for three months. This was back when the cable stations showed reruns of old sitcoms and dramas rather than mind-numbingly dull and disturbing "reality" tv during the day. Consequently, I was a huge fan of both Magnum P.I. and Three's Company a decade after they stopped airing new episodes.

14.) The Code of the Woosters: Jeeves to the Rescue, P.G. Wodehouse ****

I've never before considered whether I should include audiobooks in my challenge threads--for the simple fact that I very rarely listen to them. I much prefer the act of reading a story to listening to it, so my audiobook listening has pretty much been limited to those books I wouldn't mind missing out the experience of reading myself. A friend loaned my this unabridged version of a Jeeves and Wooster (Jooster? Weeves?) novel, and I listened to it in the car, mostly during my drive to and back from Roanoke over Spring Break last week. I love Wodehouse--he's one of the only writers who has ever made me laugh out loud repeatedly--but I think I prefer my Jooster (definitely--Weeves rings a bit willowy) shenanigans in the short format. The short stories provide just enough silliness that I'm still happy with Wodehouse, the characters, and myself in the end. I find the novels go on a bit, and while this one is immaculately plotted (a farce would almost have to be, I think), and the humor is spot on, I find myself growing a bit weary of it by the end. This audiobook was seven discs long, and as I was switching disc 5 out for disc 6, this thought crossed the old brain pan: "How can this go on for another two discs?" (The answer, as is so often the case with Joosters, is to nip a policeman's helmet.) Still, worthy of four stars for that immaculate plot, the laugh-loud-outs, the delightful performance by Jonathan Cecil, and the opportunity to romp through the hilarity of the British a.

>120 lycomayflower: Right ho, then.

>107 lycomayflower:: I just got I Was Told There'd Be Cake from BookMooch and ended up starting it instead of any of the other 5 I was theoretically picking my next read from (oh, the irresistible siren call of the new book..). Only read two so far but the pony essay at the start was completely priceless.

15.) The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia, Laura Miller ****

I've never been a big fan of C.S. Lewis. I first read some of The Chronicles of Narnia when I was perhaps too old to really enjoy them (and years after I'd already become a die hard Tolkien fan). So I'm not entirely sure why I thought I should read this book--unless because I've always found it somewhat peculiar that given my general appreciation for fantasy I don't like the Narnia books. Mostly I enjoyed The Magician's Book very much, and found it both a lovely exploration of The Chronicles from someone who does love them and a quite interesting analysis of the series. I did find myself growing a little tired of the last section of the book, probably because it was concerned less with the texts and more with Lewis himself. I also found Miller's treatment of Tolkien a little harsh. I learned to accept long ago that not everyone loves Tolkien the way I do (or even half as much as I do), so I certainly don't mind that Miller prefers Lewis's work to Tolkien's. But there was a snippiness to some of her comments about JRRT that struck me as odd coming from someone who has been mystified herself by others' lack of regard for her own childhood literary love (The Chronicles).

#123 I read The Magician's Book a couple of months ago and I agree with your assessment. I also think that I would find The Chronicles of Narnia much more charming if I'd read it as a young person. The "magic" just wasn't there for me like it was for LOTR which I did read when I was young (and several time since then!).

16.) The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Brian Selznick, ****1/2

A simply gorgeous book using illustrations and text to tell the story. Unlike a traditional illustrated story in which the illustrations picture what has already been said in the text or a graphic novel where the pictures and text work together simultaneously to tell the story, The Invention of Hugo Cabret sometimes tells the story through words and sometimes through pictures. Selznick's black and white illustrations are breathtaking and his imagined history for an early 20th-century fillmmaker is captivating. The design of the book is lovely as well--I'm especially delighted (I'm not sure why, exactly) by the black paper the book is printed on.

#125: I agree with you - it is a gorgeous book!

I love and regularly reread both the Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings trilogy + The Hobbit. Lewis and Tolkien enjoyed each other's company and I don't think they saw any competition.

I admit, I discovered Narnia when I was young so there may be a point to the timing.

17.) New Moon, Stephenie Meyer ***

I was interested in Twilight from the beginning of the book and then found the end sort of disappointing. The opposite was true of New Moon. It took forever to get going (I wasn't really interested until about halfway, and I'm not sure why I kept on with it) and then it just took off. I found the last ~260 pages gripping. Part of the problem was that Edward (who is so much more interesting than Bella, really) was absent for the first half of the book, and the other part of the problem is that it takes Bella way too long to figure stuff out. (You know in the Back to the Future movies how the Biff analogues are always rapping the McFly analogues on the head and going "Hello? McFly?" I feel like rapping Bella on the head and going "Hello? Bella?" about eight times a chapter.) She mopes about for the first half of the book, feeling sorry for herself and refusing to be made to feel better--and, frankly, that's fairly dull. How much more interesting would it have been if, *SPOILERS* after Edward left her, she had moped about for a few days (rather than SEVEN MONTHS) and then got up and said either 1) Screw him. He's no good for me or 2) That little such and such, thinks he can leave me behind, does he? I'll show him. I'll track him down. Victim stories are seldom interesting, and it's not till Bella does get up off her kiester and does something that this one gets worthwhile.

The writing is still rubbish.

Every time I think of the title, I hear the little mice from Babe singing "Blue Moon."

*sigh* If you start asking "When is Midnight Sun coming out?" I will have to disown you.

@129. Hmph. It wasn't exactly a positive review. (Why do you even know about Midnight Sun? O_O)

you two make me chortle

>130 lycomayflower: Just drop into the "Books and Authors" section of Yahoo Answers for two minutes. You'll see. And you'll run screaming for a copy of The Vampire Lestat or Nosferatu to cleanse your mind. I'm off to read about Carmilla myself.

@132

No no, you're reading the Twilight series under a blanket with a flashlight in the bathroom at 3 a.m. Admit it. You have stepheniemeyer.com on your bookmarks toolbar, doncha? It's okay. You don't have to hide the truth any more.

May I recommend the LLBean LED headlamp which fastens on your head so your hands are free? Bright as all get out too.

#133

Why is she reading under a blanket in the bathroom? Wouldn't you normally read under a blanket in bed? Isn't that where blankets are?

*ponders the idea of sleeping in the bathroom....or keeping blankets there*

Then again, my cat sleeps in our bathroom sink so obviously the bathroom is an appropriate place to sleep.

Well, something is screwing with my head....because I read post 133 and saw "You have stepmother.com" on your bookmarks toolbar". Actually, I DO have Stephenie Meyer's website bookmarked, so I can instantly plug it in to the "Answer" box on YA, in my capacity as Top Contributor, when the 4 millionth little blood-brain squeals "Does anybody know when she's going to finish Midnight Sun? OMG I can't wait to read it!!!!!"

136

#128. The writing is still rubbish. Thank you for mentioning that little detail. How do you read rubbish without twitching and breaking out in a rash?

#133. ... you're reading the Twilight series under a blanket with a flashlight in the bathroom at 3 a.m.

Great idea numba 1.

#134. May I recommend the LLBean LED headlamp which fastens on your head so your hands are free?

Greater idea numba 2, Tui.

Another thank you, Laura, for keeping your Mom occupied; when you don't come out to play, your Mom picks on me.

#137 I made it up on the spot. I meant it to refer to those obsessed with the Bella/Edward/Jacob saga. Blood on the brain, as it were.
#139 I never did.

@139

Well, I do sometimes yell at the book. There's fist-shaking on occasion too.

It's that list thing. Not sure where the list comes from. I've Xed the ones I've read (and some have explanations).

X 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
X 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
X 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
X 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
X 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
X 6 The Bible (bits)
X 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
X 8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
X 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (just the first one)
X 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
X 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
X 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
X 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (well, not the complete works, actually, but a lot of them)
X 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
X 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
X 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
X 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
X 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
X 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
X 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
X 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (again, not all, but several)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
X 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
X 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (why is this effectively on here twice?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
X 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
X 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
X 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
X 48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
X 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
X 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
X 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
X 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
X 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
X 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
X 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
X 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
X 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
X 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
X 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
X 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
X 75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
X 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
X 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
X 87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
X 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
X 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
X 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

The Twilight thing is interesting... at present, I'm still clinging to my original intention not to read them (mainly because every single review by someone whose opinion I trust has used the words "rubbish", "writing" and "is" in close proximity to one another and not necessarily in that order), but both the Atlantic and the LRB have had pieces about the books in the last couple of months, so it is clearly a Cultural Phenomenon.

#125
I recently finished The Doll People by Ann M. Martin which was wonderfully illustrated by Brian Selznick I was able to obtain a copy of The Invention of Hugo Cabret from my library and will read it in the next few weeks. Thanks for your comments.

>143 FlossieT: I think you should read (or try to) one of them so that you have an opinion of your own. And so that you can attack/defend/discuss the books, which is always fun, no matter what side of the argument you're on :)

>143 FlossieT:: "...Cultural Phenomenon...

That is always the conflict: so many "hot" books turn out to be disappointing but, as girlunderglass says, it's fun to be able "attack/defend/discuss" them. I find I have a natural aversion to any book that gets hyped too much, yet I occasionally force myself to read one or two to understand what's going on.

I enjoyed Harry Potter, but then that was something I could share with my son. I just haven't read anything about the Twilight books that makes me think I would actually enjoy the experience, and reading time feels too precious right now to spend it on something I don't like. I do take your point, Eliza, about having one's own opinion, but I think for now I'm quite happy just listening in if it comes up as a topic of debate.

I do my best to avoid the 'hyped' books unless someone whose voice I respect has said I should try it. However, I did get sucked in by Twilight cos my friend bought it for me for christmas.

However, if I felt my reading time was very limited I wouldn't have read them.

18.) Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer ***

I don't have much to say here except that this is more of the same and I continue to enjoy the series. It's diverting and fun--sort of like bubblegum (hence my tag of that name for this, and several other books, in my catalogue). I have some problems with the series's (lack of attention to) vampiric metaphor (which LW3 has patiently listened to me chunter on about on at least two occasions) that I might write up after I finish book four.

Patience is my middle name.

@ 150

I though Prudence was your middle name.

#151. Are you sure you're not a giggleheaded fourteen-year-old posing as a grown-up person?

@152

Funny, when I WAS fourteen, I was always accused of being weirdly mature. I must be Merlining.

what a good verb: to Merlin

Picked this up on Facebook and thought it might be fun here:

Copy the questions into your own post and answer the questions.

1) What author do you own the most books by?
J.R.R. Tolkien

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
The Lord of the Rings

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Not really.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
I have to pick just one? Can't. Fitzwilliam Darcy. Heathcliff. Boromir. Richard Sharpe. I'll own it: Edward Cullen.

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?
I'm going to exclude The Lord of the Rings here on the grounds that that answer (though true) will surprise no one and actually falls into the category of "books read (repeatedly) to me when I was a child." And in that case, I think it's a three-way tie between Pride and Prejudice (which I love), The Death of Ivan Ilyich (which I find terribly depressing), and Heart of Darkness (which I hate).

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway makes me want to put my finger in my eye.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
At Swim, Two Boys

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
Semaphore, G.W. Hawkes. It's a travesty this man's work is not more well known, and Semaphore is his best.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
Pshaw. I don't know.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
If they did it right, I think Death at La Fenice could be really enjoyable as a film.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
At Swim, Two Boys. I think the inevitable loss of some of the brilliance of the language would just make me sad, regardless of how good the movie was otherwise.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
Uh. I think the only dreams I've had about writers were not dreams about those people BECAUSE they were writers. Like, it was a dream about a writer I know or a dream about a writer who's also an actor. So, yeah. Nope. Characters? Only if they've also been incarnated on screen. Yeah. Nope.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
I guess I have to answer the Twilight Series, though, left on my own, I wouldn't describe that as "low brow." I'm not making claims of great literature, I just don't think those are the words I'd use.

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
That depends on how you define "difficult." Ulysses, I suppose, but there are "easier" books that I would be less happy about having to read again and would therefore likely have more DIFFICULTY getting through.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you've seen?
Love's Labor's Lost

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
I'm not a big fan of either, but I'd prefer the Russians to the French if I HAD to choose.

18) Roth or Updike?
Again, if I HAVE to chose, Roth. But I have little use for either of them.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Haven't read either.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Billy Shakeshaft all the way.

21) Austen or Eliot?
Austen!

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
British lit before the end of the 18th century. American lit after the end of the 18th century.

23) What is your favorite novel?
This changes weekly at least. Pride and Prejudice is probably the novel I am mostly likely to pick up at random to read in snippets or its entirety (again, excluding LotR, which, really, I don't think is a novel).

24) Play?
The History Boys

25) Poem?
Uh. I don't really do poetry (maybe THAT is actually my most embarrassing gap). I do have a general affinity for Robert Frost. Maybe "Dust of Snow."

26) Essay?
I'm fond of Perec's Species of Spaces. For a single essay, maybe Calvino's "Whom Do We Write For? or The Hypothetical Bookshelf." Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories" is also fairly brilliant.

27) Short story?
"A Child's Christmas in Wales"

28) Work of nonfiction?
Soccer in Sun and Shadow

29) Who is your favorite writer?
I can't answer this in any way other than to list a string of them. You probably get the gist from my above answers anyway.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
I really hate to be this way, because I really am enjoying the series, but I'm going to have to say Stephenie Meyer. I'm getting really tired of hearing my (creative writing, yet) students saying that Twilight is the best book they've ever read. It's fun. It's a LOT of fun. I'm glad they're reading. I'm REALLY glad they are so caught up in a story. But COME ON.

31) What is your desert island book?
If I get stranded on a desert island, I will get stranded with a trunk full of my favorites. I declare it to be so. (This is just another example of me refusing to choose.)

32) And... what are you reading right now?
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Bone People, Breaking Dawn

Fun! I am stealing this to add to my thread - thanks!

I stole it, too. Thanks! It was fun to fill out.

I'm not seeing this on a lot of the major news outlets yet, so I thought I should share: Amazon has stripped some books labeled "adult" of their sales ranking, thus effectively rendering their search function useless.

It's showing on Yahoo. Actually, from what it's saying, the latest round of this appears to be targeted at gay/lesbian books.

>158 lycomayflower: Crusader Rabbit, the Next Generation! Thumbs up.

If Amazon wants to play censor that's fine. I can shop and buy elsewhere, like B&N. I'm tired of Amazon's Kindle advertising anyway.

19.) Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer ****

A genuinely satisfying read, a great end to the series, and the best book of the four. The rest of my comments are spoiler-rich for the whole series, so stop reading now if you don't want to know What Happens.

Breaking Dawn is the best book of the Twilight series because it deals with all of the weaknesses of the first three (except for the general quality of the writing, which still leaves something to be desired--though I will tentatively allow that Meyer got better at that as she went on). The weaknesses of the series up to this point were Bella's own weakness, lulls in the action, the tiresomeness of the virginity issue between Bella and Edward, and the lack of attention to vampiric metaphor (these last two are intertwined).

Throughout the first three books, I found Bella far too timid to be fulling satisfying as a protagonist (I said in my review of New Moon that I thought Edward was far more interesting than Bella--it's because Bella lets things happen to her rather than making things happen). Despite being a character who thinks for herself and who does not allow herself to be swayed from her own ways of thinking, she doesn't do much in the beginning. In Twilight, Bella, who is not only the protagonist but the point-of-view character and the narrator, passes out at the climax. It makes sense within the framework of the story but is not terribly satisfying for a reader. Bella spends much of New Moon moping about and that book only picks up when she finally gets up and does something. She's a bit better in Eclipse, but in Breaking Dawn, Bella shows up in a way she doesn't in the other three. She takes on the protection of her husband, child, and extended family in a way that is fierce and interesting and that we just haven't seen from her before. Bella sort of is the climax of Breaking Dawn and that made for a satisfying read.

Each of the first three books (and mostly especially New Moon) contained long sections that just didn't hold my interest. Twilight dragged in the end (at exactly the point where the book should have been the most interesting), New Moon dragged in the middle (when Bella's anguish over Edward's absence is particularly trying--there's a reason the depressing middle bits of Romeo and Juliet only ask of the audience less than an hour of their time), and Eclipse suffers from "wrap-up syndrome"--the plot primarily cleans up what didn't get sorted in book two, and while I grew more and more interested in the workings of the supernatural world Meyer has created in Eclipse, I can hardly remember now, a mere two weeks after finishing it, what that one was about. But Breaking Dawn leaps right in at a resolution we've been waiting on for three books (the marriage and sexual consummation of Bella and Edward's relationship), and doesn't let up for nearly 800 pages. I was fully invested for the entire book (even through the lengthy section told from Jacob's point-of-view, which Meyer pulls off with more skill than I expected from her). The honeymoon, the pregnancy, the rift between Bella and the Cullens over that pregnancy, the conflict (and its resolution) between the wolves and the vampires, Bella's transformation into a vampire, the development of Renesmee and her influence over her family, and the conflict with the Volturi were all completely gripping. The last one hundred pages of the book were brilliantly, deliciously tense and contained, I think, the best example of Tolkien's concept of a eucatastrophe I have seen anywhere outside of his own work. Utterly satisfying all around.

One of the ongoing tensions throughout the first three books of the series was Bella's desire for Edward and Edward's desire to keep her at bay, at first because he's afraid he won't be able to be intimate with her without killing her, then because he wants to wait until they're married (why? He's not religious. She's not religious. He believes vampires have no souls, and he's committed to turning Bella into a vampire before he comes up with this marriage condition--I think the answer has to do with Meyer, not her characters, and it's one of the few times she does not successfully couch her own views logically within her framework, and it's annoying), and then because he's afraid of hurting Bella because of his superior vampire strength. This issue of abstinence could have been fantastically compelling if handled with a little more finesse or sophistication. Vampires, as they sit in our 21st century western imagination, are about desire, specifically repressed sexual desire and submission to that desire in the face of the death (real or metaphorical) inherent in that submission. The Twilight series pulls the metaphor apart at the seams and gives us a vampire who controls not only his metaphory vampire desire (bloodlust) but his declared sexual desire as well. It's the human who is seducer, who wants to act on her desires (again both the real (sex) and the more metaphory (desire to be a vampire, or desire for death)). Meyer sort of turned the emotion behind vampire mythology on its head, but then she didn't do anything with it. And furthermore, the constant angst about the physical aspect of the relationship grew a little tiresome after some 1500+ pages (though I suppose it might be more interesting to a teen, especially one considering becoming sexually active), and I was relieved when they finally consummated the relationship (albeit in a fade-to-black that might as well have been a literally blank page in the book--I certainly wasn't expecting anything graphic, but good grief. Hays would be proud) and it wasn't an issue anymore. So Breaking Dawn was better than the other three for me because I no longer had to roll my eyes at the sexual angst (because it was resolved) or calm myself down when I got all twitchy about the vampire stuff (because if everyone's a vampire, the metaphor kind of goes pfffft anyway).

I still have some lingering concerns about the portrayal of women (mostly Bella) in the series. I love that Bella comes into her own in the last book. But I am suspicious of the fact that she cannot do so until she has married and had a child. Bella becomes a vampire (and thus strong and immortal) at the moment she gives birth. This is another moment that makes perfect sense within the framework of the book, but which bothers me in the same way that Bella's obsession with Edward-as-perfect-and-superior boyfriend bothered me in Twilight. Is it possible for a woman to feel stronger, to feel reborn, to feel as if she is more herself as a woman after giving birth? I'm sure it is. Is it necessary to give birth in order to become a strong woman who has goals that are not always perfectly in-line with her husband's or her family's (or whoever's)? No. Does the book send the message that motherhood is the path to some sort of better womanhood? I think it does. And as much as I loved this specific story about this woman and her child, I don't like that message at all.

Excellent review of Breaking Dawn, lycomayflower! I love that you enjoyed the book, but were still able to see it's flaws. It seems like most readers either worship this series and think it is perfect, or they think it is the biggest piece of crap they have ever read. I totally agree with your concerns with Bella and motherhood - Meyer is definitely pushing her own beliefs here. Despite that, I think that it is the best book in the series too.

20.) Day by Day: The Notre Dame Prayerbook for Students ***

I saw this for fifty cents at our local used book store and thought it was kind of sad to leave it there. So I bought it. And then I read it. Not sure why exactly, as I'm not a religious person. I do like the the peacefulness and introspection of some of the prayers here, though the language of others that I've heard repeatedly throughout my childhood and college years (like the Doxology) annoyed me because it's been "modernized."

21.) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis ***

After reading The Magician's Book, I was curious to read some of the Chronicles of Narnia again, so the other week when I wanted something light and pleasant at bedtime, I picked up The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I find that I enjoyed this in small doses (say, a chapter at a time), but that anything beyond that just didn't hold my interest, especially as, unlike the first two books in the series, this one doesn't have much of a unifying plot.

>164 lycomayflower:: Hmmm ... modernizing prayers is always a controversial topic. Several years ago I was active in a Presbyterian church where the pastors made great strides toward more inclusive language in the liturgy. I quite liked a modernization of the Doxology that changed, "Praise Him..." to "Praise God ..." and "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" to "Creator, Christ, and Holy Ghost".

*wince* You can't change the words!!! Modern prayers and new songs---OK. Modernizing OLD prayers and songs---NOT OK. *says AMEN, and sits down*

#167: I am with you, Linda! You cannot change the words. It reminds me of 84 Charing Cross Road where Helene gets all mad about changing the words from the KJV of the Bible and says "They'll burn for it." Some things you just do not mess with!

>167 laytonwoman3rd:, 168: Well I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree !

#169: I guess so :)

>167 laytonwoman3rd: & >168 alcottacre: definitely with you kicking it old skool... there is something truly magnificent about the KJV. Modernising the words of some of the great hymns out of the New English Hymnal is the one that always gets me: the scansion is often completely out of whack. Butchering a finely-formed creature in the interests of accessibility just doesn't feel right to me.

22.) House of Fallen Leaves, Holly Wendt *****

This here be the unpublished manuscript of a brilliant book by a writer I know--and someday you will too. Tells the story of Wiglaf after the end of Beowulf. Some seriously brilliant use of language and characterization here, as well as compelling and intricate descriptions of simple actions. Someday this will be published, and I highly recommend reading it when it is. (You ought also read LW3's review of the manuscript, where she gives a summary that I would basically just be repeating if I gave my own.)

*waving Canadian dollars in the air*
Sign me up for a copy when it comes out!
And where did I put my "Poor Old Grendel" teeshirt?

#172: I cannot wait! Be sure and let me know when it comes out!

23.) The Following Story, Cees Nooteboom ***1/2

I read this novella over the course of the past week or so, and somewhere along the way I lost the thrust of the narrative. Which is a shame, I think, because there are passages here both beautiful and compelling. I may return to this one someday and try to read it in an afternoon--as I think it probably ought be read.

24.) Broken Hallelujahs, Sean Thomas Dougherty ****

Brilliant collection of poetry full of images that stick with you. Dougherty has a way of turning a phrase that is at times gleeful (as in "Dear Pistaschio," which may just be my new favorite poem ever) and at times simply astonishing (as in "Somewhere on Planet Earth"). Recommended.

#175. ... somewhere along the way I lost the thrust of the narrative.

That happened to me with The Boys in the Trees. I left it for a couple days, and when I came back to it and a new chapter I was completely lost. I was 75 pages in, but I started over and realized I'd missed a very important sentence.

I hate when that happens, and it makes me wonder how many important things I've missed in other books.

Congratulations on your "hot" review status, found on today's home page for your comments re. Breaking Dawn. Kudos to you!

@178

Thanks! (And thanks for mentioning it as I may well have missed it without the heads up.)

25.) Surprised by Joy, C. S. Lewis ***1/2

I enjoyed the bits of this that were "like a general autobiography" more than the metaphysical discussions of Joy and Lewis's experience of conversion. I suspect this is a book that needs to be returned to to be understood fully, and someday I'll do that. For now, I can say that it was an enjoyable read and not least for the better sense of Lewis as a person I gained from reading it.

You might want to add Shadowlands to your Netflix queue...Sir Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger did a pretty good job being Jack and Joy.

26.) Here, There Be Dragons, James A. Owen ****

After watching a few episodes of I, Claudius yesterday, I decided that all of the books I was currently reading were too heavy to dispel the foreboding that miniseries inspires. While searching my bookshelves for something quick and light, I came across Here, There Be Dragons. I don't think I can talk about this one without spoiling it, so stop now if you ever intend to read this one and don't want ruined the delight of sorting what's going on here for yourself.

On the night in 1917 when an Oxford professor is mysteriously murdered, three young men who are strangers to one another meet up at the professor's study through a series of coincidences. Shortly they are met by a strange man carrying an important book which he explains is the Imaginarium Geographica, an atlas of all the imaginary lands. He claims that the professor was training John, one of the young men, to be the Caretaker of the Imaginarium Geographica and that the Archipelago of Dreams is now under threat from the Winter King. The strange man, Bert, takes the three young men (the other two are named Jack and Charles--anyone have it sorted yet?) to his ship, which, by virtue of its living dragon-head mast, can navigate the barrier between the "real" world and the world mapped in the Imaginarium Geographica. Adventures ensue.

Anyone familiar with any works that might be deemed "fantasy" will find the characters, settings, and situations of the adventures in the Archipelago highly derivative--and that is precisely the point. Or rather, the implication is that those fantasy stories arise when Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica return to the "real" world from the Archipelago and share their wonderful adventures there in the only way they believe they can without being made a laughing stock--by turning their adventures into tales. Past Caretakers include Cervantes, Shakespeare, Poe, and Jules Verne, among others. Our three strangers are Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, though the book does not reveal this until the last page. (I was pretty sure before the one-third mark.)

The very delight of Here, There Be Dragons is in recognizing the characters and settings from various myths, legends, and tales and celebrating, along with the narrative, the importance to the "real" world of all that is encompassed in the Archipelago of Dreams. I think the revelation of who the three main characters are must be held until the end in order to achieve the desired effect of an ah-ha moment which confirms and underscores that importance of fantasy. But I wonder if suspicion of their real identity is not necessary as well, for that suspicion, once confirmed, creates a delicious sense of having been "in on it" and of having access to something quite wonderful that not just everybody could understand. People, like Eustace in Lewis's Voyage of the Dawn Treader, for instance, who haven't read "the right sort of books," here being marvelous tales involving the imagination rather than dull, practical books, might have difficulties.

This is intertextuality at its delightful, gleeful best and anyone who loves imaginative, fantastic stories will love Here, There Be Dragons for its own adventure, yes, but most for the joy it takes in the adventures that have gone before it.

Thanks for thr review of Here There Be Dragons. It sounds pretty good.I'm adding it to my book list.

#182: Great review! Sounds like a very good book and one I look forward to reading. Thanks for the recommendation.

oh boy oh boy oh boy...this sounds right up the old alley. Thanks, lyco!

Add me to the list. I just put it on reserve at the library!

27.) My Ishmael, Daniel Quinn ****

A follow-up of sorts to Ishmael (which I read yonks ago and don't remember much about except that I found it compelling) which follows the same format: telepathic gorilla seeks student with whom to engage in a Socratic dialogue about how to "save the world." The student this time is a twelve-year-old girl and while that set-up allows for discussion of some topics an adult wouldn't see in the same way (such as western schooling systems), it also makes the whole thing a bit hard to swallow. I believe Julie's compassion, her disillusionment, and her brightness; I do not believe that this twelve-year-old girl has any thing like the kind of knowledge of the world and history and economics that she demonstrates throughout her conversations with Ishmael. This flaw is certainly a by-product of novels of ideas told in this way, which I have to admit I find somewhat tedious wherever I encounter them. Ishmael does engage Julie and have her suss out answers herself, but she still spends far too much time saying only variations on "Yes, I see that" or "I still don't get it." As for the ideas themselves (1. our society (people who lock up the food and force everyone to work to get any of it) have developed a system of living which does not work for people; as evolutionarily things that do not work do not survive, our system cannot survive and 2. the way to "fix" the system is to show people the flaws in the system so that they stop wanting this system and let a new system that does work slowly evolve*), I find them interesting but wish that Quinn, instead of using Julie almost entirely as a device for getting the argument on the page, had used her more as a devil's advocate to indicate the opposition to these positions so that the book could present a more fully rounded picture of the conversation about these ideas.

*Over-simplified, of course, and leaving out much of the definitional work that is part of the foundation of the argument, but that's the gist.

28.) Copenhagen, Michael Frayn *****

A play about Werner Heisenberg's 1941 visit to Niels Bohr in occupied Denmark and what they discussed then. Frayn uses the relevant physics about uncertainty, complementarity, and fission as conceits in the play to remarkable effect. Ultimately not really about the development of atomic weapons at all but about friendship, memory, and personal paradox. Frayn's postscript about the history and science he used in the play is a lovely overview of the subject as well. Recommended.

#188: Sounds like a good one. I will look for it. Thanks for the recommendation!

29.) King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Benedict Flynn ****

Another audiobook--this one kept me occupied during the second half of the drive back from a visit to a friend in Georgia. The appeal here is almost entirely the narration by Sean Bean (to whom I could listen read his grocery list). He does an excellent job making the story exciting and magical (where it is otherwise only a competent telling of Arthurian legend) and of giving each of the characters his or her own voice.

#190: My local library has that one, narrated by Sean Bean, so I will have to give it a go.

30.) Jackaroo, Cynthia Voigt ****

This was a recommendation and a loan from a friend (and I actually finished it days ago, but I haven't gotten around to getting it on the internet yet). Jackaroo is classified as young adult, but I think it should be enjoyable for anyone interested in the premise. The story follows Gwen, a girl of about sixteen living with her family at the inn her father runs near a village in a nameless European-esque country in something like medieval times. Local stories tell of a lord who rides in the name of justice and who calls himself Jackaroo. When Gwen finds a Jackaroo costume hidden in a cabin owned by her father, she takes on the persona. The novel is best when it is describing Gwen's day-to-day activities and chores. She's a strong-headed heroine who bucks against the expectations laid upon her because of her time and her gender but who manages to be happy despite that resistance.

#192: My daughter Catey is a big fan of Voigt's, but I have never read any of her books. I will give Jackaroo a try.

I noted that it is the first book in a series. Are you going to read the others?

Jackaroo sounds really good. I'd recommend Homecoming because it had a huge impact on me when I read it as a teenager. I would imagine it would do the same now.

Edited to add: Just mooched Jackaroo from Australia so hopefully will get round to it at some point!

?194 luna, someone else told me to read Homecoming recently... Voigt seems to have completely passed me by somehow, even though when I look at the list, I've heard the names of lots of her titles before.

31.) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling ****

A re-read in preparation for the release of movie six this summer. Goblet of Fire and this one rival each other for my favorite of the HP books--Half-Blood Prince has just the right combination of fun Hogwarts-antics, revelation of backstory, and action. I'm also a big fan of the way Rowling starts this one, with two "prologue-y" chapters before we get to Harry. The first, about the "other minister," I think is pretty genius. I also like the way Rowling shows us that the characters are growing up (she does a much better job here than in Order of the Phoenix of depicting teenager-ness) and (and I know many people would disagree with me on this point), I find the developing romances between Ron and Hermione and (especially) between Harry and Ginny to be quite touching.

32.) A Solitary Blue, Cynthia Voigt ****

I wasn't a huge fan of Cynthia Voigt growing up (some of my friends were, but I don't think I heard about her early enough to really be caught up in all of her stuff, but this book was one of my favorites in my early teens. After reading Jackaroo at the suggestion of a friend a few weeks ago, I was itching to reread A Solitary Blue. It's just as good as I remember, and, as with Jackaroo, one of the strengths here is Voigt's ability to detail simple action in ways that are compelling and gripping. Reading this book as a teenager was one of the first times I understood that boys are real people and not just a category of mysterious creatures to find threatening and mesmerizing in turns.

I have heard good things about Voigt's books (I already put Jackaroo on my TBR list after your review earlier), but I am obviously going to need to read more than just that one.

33.) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling ****

Second reread for me for HP7. I have a terrible time remembering all the ins and outs of how this one comes together when I'm not reading it, but I enjoy it immensely while I am reading it. Chapter Thirty-Six makes me cry, and (again, standing against what I gather is popular opinion), I love the Epilogue. It doesn't quite get that last star from me simply because it fails (though I don't think it's even trying--nor do I really think it ought to) at the delight the other HPs imbue. I don't really see that as a flaw, especially as I think Rowling does an excellent job of pulling her mythos together here, but the unrelenting, nightmare-making darkness detracts just a bit from the book's enjoyability for me.

34.) The Witches, Roald Dahl ***

One of my old books I found in an recent root-round in the Ents' attic. Only okay as a reread in my late twenties, though the illustrations are great fun. When I do my fantasy class, we tend to end up reading a lot of children's lit, and I always ask them to think about what aspects of a book (beyond reading level) make a book for children. We get onto subjects about themes in children's lit, and one that always comes up is mistreatment of children (a staple of fairy tales as well as modern children's lit). My students are generally able to come up with some ideas about why children are mistreated in particular stories (for instance, a popular theory is that Harry Potter, in order to be an appealing and convincing hero, must come from humble beginnings), but none of my classes has ever come up with a good theory as to why this is a theme of children's literature as a whole. It's fascinating to me that so many stories designed for older children (say, sevenish and up) and young adults feature children who are either orphaned or mistreated (or both). It must, I suppose, tap into some fear or desire (or both) that children enjoy seeing explored in fiction. Anyway, all that to say that The Witches would fit very well into that conversation as the story is about beings whose primary goal is to rid the world of children--and who walk around disguised as the people young children are taught are the safest to approach: nice-looking ladies.

Your class sounds very interesting!

35.) The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler ***1/2

I remember reading somewhere that one reviewer found Fowler too clever. I think I agree. Generally, I enjoyed this and found some of Fowler's observations more insightful than I had expected them to be, but overall I wish she had done a little more characterizing for its own sake and a little less paralleling Austen (dare I say, for its own sake). Still, enjoyable, and trips right along. A suitable summer read.

#200: Quite apart from the use of fairy tales to frighten children into good behaviour (e.g.,the Black Peter stories), I always thought it was because having adults around complicated things. Children with no encumbrances (i.e., adult guiding voices saying "don't take candy from that witch, she's bad news!") can be allowed to actually have experiences which no adult would permit. "Let me get this straight: you think your father and I are going to allow you to fly into an alternative universe on the back of a dragon to save the world? I don't THINK so, young lady!" They can experience the passage of innocence to experience without adult interference.

Trash-talking about Special Topics over on Stasia's thread. Get on over there and sort them out, so I know why I'm supposed to read it.

36.) Kate's Klassics, Kate Camp ****

A collection of ten essays, each about a different classic. A fun read, and one which celebrates the classics as books we read because they are enjoyable, not (only) because they are classics. It was a joy to catch a glimpse of another reader's honest reactions to books I've read too, and I find that Camp's essays rouse a desire in me to reread some of the books she addresses (Moby Dick and Wuthering Heights), encourage me to read ones I've never touched (Middlemarch and The Odyssey), and, in one case, affirm my decision to quit a book after the first fourth or so (Crime and Punishment). Recommended.

37.) Star Trek Movie Tie-In, Alan Dean Foster ***

Generally I have no time for novelizations of movies, but I do enjoy seeing what kind of information ends up in a novelization that ultimately doesn't make it into the final movie (because of editing or a final script rewrite or what-have-you). And, well, STAR TREK. There's some interesting "extra" bits at the beginning of this one (some about Spock's youth, some about Kirk's), but beyond that, this is pretty much the movie. And not all that well done. The editor should be fired (there's numerous huge continuity problems here that are not in the film) and I remember Foster being a better writer than this. The point-of-view is weirdly distant (particularly for Star Trek, part of whose charm has always been its familiarity) and the text fails utterly at capturing the glee of the film. I'm not exactly disappointed that I bought and read this, though when I think that for the purchase price I could have gone to see the movie again--twice--I'm a little distraught.

This is your editor speaking. "there are numerous examples of huge continuity problems..."

Resisting temptation simply to say, "Correct as set, dammit."

Begrudgingly accept "examples" is wordy and unnecessary here. Insist "huge continuity problems" not the same as "continuity problems," as latter might well include tiny ones. Retaining grammatical error for flavor.

I would love to have you for a teacher, Laura. Every time you red-penciled me for a grammatical error I would reply, "Flavor."

Sarah Palin must be LOADED with flavor

38.) To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert Heinlein ****

I went on a Heinlein kick in high school where I read a good number of his books back to back. I've only read a smattering since then and it's largely because he has a one-note style which can be very annoying if one isn't in the mood for it. This past week, I was in the mood for it. This is the last in the Lazarus Long cycle of books, and it is told as a memoir by Lazarus's mother, Maureen. It's full of what you'd expect from Heinlein--sex, time travel, alternate histories, sassy ladies, strong gentlemen, and strong opinions. A cracking good read, and one which may make you rethink some morality codes which otherwise seem fairly universal and correct.

#211: I do not think I have ever read that one by Heinlein. Thanks for the recommendation - I will see if I can find a copy of it.

>211 lycomayflower:: I always used to wonder how his wife, Ginny, felt through those later books as he wrote glowingly over and over about sleeping with a clone of yourself, sleeping with your mother, sleeping with your siblings, sleeping with anyone who came along. ;-D

>213 TadAD:: Ooh, ick!

Yeah - I was on a Heinlein kick right around college, but I got mired in his older books and had to stop. I think it was the one where the hero met his mother that finally was too much for me.
I have some of his juvenile works now and I look forward to reading them.

39.) The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger ****

I rate books based on how much I enjoy them; lots of stars means lots of enjoyment. And while I suppose it's unlikely that I would enjoy very much a book that was very badly written, my rating system really has little to do with my assessment (either as a reader or a scholar) of the quality or value or importance of a book. That being said, I find that books I give four stars generally fall into two categories: 1) those that, if pressed, I probably would say are important or valuable or of high quality beyond my mere enjoyment of them and 2) cracking good reads. The Time Traveler's Wife is the second kind. I was wrapped up in the story and the characters and had a hard time putting the book down (I read it within 48 hours--for a 500+ pager, for me, that's really fast). I do have some problems with the story (the biggest being that I think the point of the thing could be more focused--I was left with a bit of a sense of "so what?" in the end, though mostly I enjoyed it enough that I don't care), but on the whole I'm pleased that I read it.

I agree, The Time Traveler's Wife is a cracking good read, although probably not "important." I'm skeptical of the upcoming film though ... the trailers look too chick-flicky for me.

40.) Much like I did earlier in the year with short stories I read with my creative writing class, I'm going to keep a running list of short pieces I'm reading in conjunction with my dissertation here at slot 40. These entries will mostly be snippets of queer theory with some essays and the odd short story thrown in.

* "On the Difficulty of Confiding, with Complete Love and Trust, in Some Heterosexual 'Friends,'" Thomas Glave
--Glave is always a delight to read. His prose is gorgeous and the care he takes with it is evident. I take the point of this essay and find the conclusion inspiring, though I do find the indictment of heterosexual people a touch too far-reaching.

* "Talking to Straight People," Dorothy Allison
--Most interesting for its insight into the performativity involved in speaking professionally about sexuality.

*"Regarding a Black Male Monica Lewinsky, Anal Penetration, and Bill Clinton's Sacred White Anus," Thomas Glave
--A contemplation of sexuality, race, and power, particularly as understood through the American perception of the body of the president as a representation of the nation. A fascinating essay in its own right, made more so by the fact of Barack Obama's presidency.

*"How I Become a Queer Heterosexual," Clyde Smith
--Sort of walks the line between an academic discussion of "queer" as a continuing disruption of gender and sexuality binaries and a personal essay about discovering those disruptions. I think it would be better if it were one or t'other.

*"Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality," Calvin Thomas
--Does what it says on the tin.

*"S/M: Some Questions and a Few Answers," Carol Truscott
--Discusses what S/M is with particular emphasis on S/M practices as a site of transparent negotiation of power exchange and dispelling the misconception that S/M is synonymous with violence. Also does some work to reject the disruption of binaries (not using this language) in favor of embracing both factors in a pair of opposites.

*"A Second Coming Out," Guy Baldwin
--Equates coming out as gay or lesbian with being open about kinkiness. Calls for an end to secrecy and closeting.

*"A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: Notes on the Materialization of Sexual Fantasy," Michael Bronski
--Explores the ways in which gay men living in post-Stonewall America can give themselves permission to express and become the sexual fantasies they've had all along.

*"Public Silence, Private Terror," Dorothy Allison
--Interesting to read next to Bronski, as one of Allison's points here is that women still live in fear of expressing their real sexual selves and desires. Both pieces were written around the same time (mid-to-late eighties).

*"Inside/Out," Diana Fuss

*"Believing in Fairies: The Author and The Homosexual," Richard Dyer

*"Rock Hudson's Body," Richard Meyer

*"School's Out," Simon Watney

*"Imitation and Gender Insubordination," Judith Butler

That bit about the Allison piece....in English, please?

@219

Uhmmm. Allison was talking about a time when she and a small group of women were invited to talk to a friend's class about being lesbians. The essay focuses (in part) on the roles these women created for themselves in order to negotiate that potentially awkward space. So, if we can posit a "real" Dorothy Allison (who she is when she's at home, if you will), that "real" Dorothy Allison takes on the role of another Dorothy Allison for the talk, say Dorothy-Allison-the-politically-active- lesbian. So, she's performing a role. Which we all do, in all different ways in all kinds of different times/spaces, but the essay is about how being looked at as a representative of a particular kind of sexuality encourages or requires that performance. See?

Right, then. That's a lot to ask of a single word that isn't in ANY of my dictionaries, though.

Well. It is a bit field-specific, I suppose. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performativity

That's a good word! I'd never heard of it either, but it makes total sense given your examples. I agree we all do this--both as "actors" and "audience"-- but definitely some groups face that more than others.

That's your mother, right? Asking you to "speaka da English?"

P.S. I went to go read the Wikipedia article. So good! I agree that so much of what identifies us as male or female is learned and socialized into us. I was just talking about one example of this with someone else today--for example, how boys artificially lower their voice during puberty which creates more difference between girls and boys than can be explained by biological changes.

Oh, lord. EVERYBODY is on to us, sprout.

RE: Yesterday's edit to #218 *twitch* And your grandmother wonders why she can't read what you're writing...

Stop twitching. It's a really good essay--you should read it. I could lend you it.

yes, please.

41.) Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick ****

I had a really hard time getting through this, and, contrary to my usual reactions to lit crit, I found the pure theory chapters the most useful and easy to read and the critical readings of texts through the lens of that theory interminable. This is important work and I'm reasonably glad I pushed through the whole thing, but my primary reaction is to wonder why so much academic work has to be so bleeding difficult to parse. I'm not talking about sophistication of ideas here; I'm talking sentence structure. I'll concede a certain correlation between sophistication of ideas and complexity of sentence structure, but it should still read clean. This so often doesn't.

#228: I know a book is not for me if I cannot understand the title!

42.) Star Trek: Crucible: McCoy: Provenance of Shadows, David R. George III ****

*drums fingers on desk* I've mixed feelings about this book. I enjoyed reading it very much (and even though I joked that at 624 pages it wins the Interminable Star Trek Book award, I'm sorry to leave George's interpretation of these characters), but I spent the first 550 pages trying to figure out What Was Going On only to realize that the book was doing what it said on the tin all along. Ruminate whilst I illuminate. (Spoilers ahead.)

The Crucible series contains three books, each one dealing with one member of the triumvirate of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy and all hinging on that most fateful of TOS episodes "The City on the Edge of Forever." "City" strands McCoy in Earth's past, where he does something to change the course of history, thus also stranding fellow crew members Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, and some redshirts on the Guardian planet because the altered history means the Enterprise is no longer orbiting that world (and probably doesn't exist at all). Kirk and Spock follow him back in time to figure out what he did and stop it, thus restoring the time line. They are successful. Provenance of Shadows follows two story lines--one begins with the successful conclusion of Kirk and Spock's mission to restore the time line and continues from there through the next one hundred or so years, focusing primarily on McCoy. The other follows McCoy in the past, where, unlike in the events of "City," he remains stranded in 1930s New York. This story line continues to follow McCoy in the past for about twenty-five years.

Now, seeing this set-up, I'm thinking, "Okay, what weird time-travel shenanigans has altered the time line again, preventing Kirk and Spock from going back and getting McCoy, and how is it going to get sorted?" I persist with this thinking nearly to the end of the book, where it is revealed that the time line in the past really happened, as did the restored time line. Thus: If Kirk and the landing party could experience, even briefly, the altered time line resulting from McCoy's trip to the past (i.e. the Enterprise doesn't exist), that means that McCoy lived out a life in the past. In fact, the whole 330 years between 1930 and the present of the episode played out. Then Kirk and Spock went back in time to stop those events (which had already happened in the future in their past) from happening. McCoy, who comes back with them once the time line is restored, distantly remembers those events and relives them through nightmares.

The point of all of this double time line wickety-wonk is to provide us with a sort of biography-like exploration of McCoy and his pervasive loneliness. This the book does very well. George does a great job illustrating how McCoy put together a new life in Earth's past (and the unfolding alternate time line, which (of course) involves Germany winning World War II, is appropriately chilling) and an admirable job weaving together the threads of McCoy's life in the restored time line using events established by Star Trek canon (though I will say that at times the restored time line story line felt a bit like Guess Which Episode I'm Cleverly Summarizing for My Own Purposes Now). Eventually, the two story lines work together to provide a portrait of McCoy's life and character. Which, in retrospect, is exactly what the book seems to have intended to do. Short of putting a sticker on the front what says "No really! No big sci-fi devilry waiting in the wings!" I don't know how the book could have indicated that this was the case, but I think I would have been happier with it if I had not been expecting the Science-y Revelation that Makes It All Clear for so long. (M'Benga Numbers? Hellooo, MacGuffin.) Not getting that revelation felt a bit like an anti-climax, but that's probably because I picked up a box of Shredded Wheat and expected to find Lucky Charms inside. Can't blame the Shredded Wheat for that.

"time line wickety-wonk" indeed. And you want I should watch The Time Traveler's Wife.

43.) Star Trek: The Vulcan Academy Murders, Jean Lorrah ****

Mum recently sent me a box of some of my favorite Star Trek books from my yout (there may have been brat-tastic nagging on my end to secure said sending of said box), and this was one of the books I most anticipated rereading. I'm sure I read this one more than once as an adolescent sprout (my prime ST fandom years were about eleven to sixteen, at which point Star Wars ate my brain replaced it for awhile) but it has to have been something like twelve or fourteen years since I'd read it; I can't believe how well I remembered little details and small events from the storyline. There are (many) better-plotted Star Trek books out there, but this one is just such fun. The tag line on the cover exclaims, "Captain Kirk becomes an interplanetary homicide detective!" and that pretty much sums it up. Looking back on it now, I probably liked this book so much because it was light on battles and heavy on character interaction, with a nice dollop of Vulcan culture thrown in for flavor. I absolutely delighted in the Kirk-Spock-and-Bones banter as a kid (I still do), and The Vulcan Academy Murders captures the feel behind that dynamic very well. There's better sci-fi, there's better Star Trek, and there's better murder mysteries, but for a nostalgic Star Trek romp, this one is aces.

There's better grammar....
(But for 5 star brat-tastic offspring, this one is aces.)

Wouldja stop picking on my colloquial use of "there's" as a stand in for "there are"? Prescriptivist.

You can't call me that.

I DID though. Nyah.

Wait, I know...you HAD to use "is" because you were out of "are's", right? *mutters "Stand-in --- I'll retire to bedlam"*

Actually, it was more an issue of parallelism.

Aren't you supposed to be working?

#232: My local library has that one and I definitely need to read it! Thanks for the recommendation, Laura.

>233 laytonwoman3rd:-238 that was delightful-a five star giggle

We've been practicing for years.

Like the Laurel and Hardy of verb tense routines. Whose's on second, I dunno's on third.
Are's...hehehe

44.) The Mysterious Benedict Society, Trenton Lee Stewart ****

Fun, children's/young adult book. Lots of adventure, clues, and codes. Emphasizes the importance of believing in yourself and the power of friendship. Did not grab me in the way that, say, Harry Potter did (I enjoyed this and may well read the next in the series, but I can't quite imagine reading this one again, whereas I've reread all of the HP books repeatedly), but worthwhile. And I'd certainly recommend it to ten and eleven year-olds (if I knew any).

#243: Agree with that review precisely. I would also read the sequels, but cannot see re-reading any of them repeatedly. Of course, I am not 10-11 either!

45.) Something to Tell You: The Road Families Travel When a Child Is Gay, Gilbert Herdt and Bruce Koff ****

A sociological study of the ways families react when a son or daughter reveals that he or she is gay. Many of the families studied here who reacted negatively to their child coming out seemed to view homosexuality as a dark unknown to be feared (among other things). I would be fascinated to see a reprisal of this study in thirty or fifty years as I find it hard to imagine that such a reaction will be possible among parents who grew up with Queer as Folk, Ellen, Will and Grace, The L Word and so on. (Here's hoping, anyway.)

One would hope, but then there are still all those people who don't watch those shows and think quoting the bible--or whatever God they believe in--is a good enough reason to discriminate and hate. Still, I can see the changes in people like my mother who's 89, so gotta believe that change is happening for the better.

#246: Bonnie, as someone who believes in the Bible, I hope attitudes change as well. My God is a God of love and those who use His name to hate are not practicing what they so often preach.

Bonnie, my mom is 89 too and has always been incredibly accepting of what she calls "alternative lifestyles". But she has a touch of Mrs. Malaprop about her. She told me not long ago that she loves the kind of humour gay men have, "their cottage humour". Do you mean "camp", Mom? Oh probably, said herself.

Ha! Ha! tiffin, that's so funny! Yes, alcottacre, exactly right. You got what I meant. People are/should be responsible for what they say and do.

>247 alcottacre:: well said.
>248 tiffin:: LOL!

>247 alcottacre:: Amen to that :)

46.) Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin ****1/2

So beautiful, yet so very, very hard to read. I may say more when it settles a bit. Recommended.

I love Giovanni's Room. Did you mean it was hard to read because of the heavy emotional...stuff, or because the language was twisty?

@ 253

Because of the heavy emotional stuff. It made my chest all twisty. I thought the language was quite beautiful.

>254 lycomayflower:: I know what you mean. It's a good thing the book is so short; 300+ pages of that would be impossible to handle.

47.) Star Trek: Academy: Collision Course, William Shatner, with Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens ****

This is the a story of teen-aged Jimmy Kirk and how he ended up on the path to becoming Starfleet captain and legend James Tiberius Kirk. There's at least one other Star Trek novel which follows this same premise, though that story is very different. Yet, however many permutations of young!Kirk we get (I know of three: this novel, Diane Carey's Best Destiny, and Star Trek XI), there's one constant: Kirk is always portrayed as a troubled, rebellious, smart kid who only ends up on his way to greatness because an honest, weather-worn Good Man (TM) takes an interest him. I'm okay with that as a cultural myth for everyone's favorite captain of the Enterprise, but I wonder where it comes from, as it seems to be in direct conflict with canon (Kirk tells Bones, in the episode "Shore Leave," that he was studious and "positively grim" as a first-year cadet--hardly the image of a just reined-in trouble-maker). Anyroad, point being that this is a fun vision of Kirk as a teenager. There's a plot, and it holds together alright, but the point of it (and the book) is to let Jimmy Kirk run around being troubled and smart and charming. This it does well. All kinds of points, too, for Kirk's interactions with a young Spock; for the appearances of Sam and George Kirk, and Finnegan and Mallory; and especially for the exploration of what happened to a fourteen-year-old Kirk on Tarsus IV and how those events shaped him afterward.

I am borrowing your suggestions for Star Trek books, so keep suggesting away!

48.) Slant, Greg Bear ***1/2

I really liked this sci-fi novel at first, but at about the halfway point it started to drag for me. Some interesting concepts here, and while on the whole I enjoyed it more than not, I'm left feeling a bit like it didn't all quite come together.

49.) The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo ****

Charming children/young adults story about a mouse who must brave the dark and the dungeon to save the princess he loves. Though pitched at a younger audience than His Dark Materials and the Harry Potter series, like those books, this one deals with dark themes, and while it has a pleasant ending, it doesn't all work out perfect and rosy with some storybook swoop of "happily ever after." Recommended.

50.) Spock's World, Diane Duane ****

Star Trek book which moves back and forth between a storyline following debates on Vulcan in the 23rd century regarding whether they should secede from the Federation (the triumvirate are involved, natch) and a storyline which traces the history of Vulcan. May not sound terribly gripping, but Duane pulls it off by including a lot of humor and lightness in the debates storyline and solid characterization in the history bits. The resolution of the debates storyline is a tad anti-climactic, but as the point of the thing is the history of the Vulcan people, it's a forgivable flaw.

I'm starting a "Part Two" thread for 2009. Here.