Girl Detective

I was in my sons’ room, looking for a missing book. Here’s what I saw, “hidden” under 9yo Drake’s pillow:

Ransom and Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan, two scary books I loved as a kid.

Yep.

I’m not quite sure how I got here, but first, my friend Amy at New Century Reading said she was doing a Bleak House readalong, with each serial segment a week, just about 40 pages. Easy, I said, and was glad to pick it up again after I tried and failed at an earlier readalong this year.

Then, my husband says he wants to see Les Miserables on Christmas Day. I’ve never read it, I said. (except for an excerpt in high school French called Les Chandeliers de L’Evecque.) Why don’t we read it together? So we nerdishly compared translations and decided to go with the unabridged Fahnestock/Macafee in the mass market paperback.

The small type, the several typos, and the general sludginess of the prose all brought me down. I’ve switched to a much prettier edition translated by Denny, and we’ll see how it goes from here.

Also, somewhere in there, I decided to pick up volume 2 of Carla Speed McNeil’s excellent Finder Library, perhaps when I was waiting for the MMPB of Les Mis to arrive and after I’d read my weekly allotment of Bleak House.

Thus, in the middle of December, and holiday frenzy, I find myself in the middle of 2700+ pages. What was I thinking?

For one of my book groups, Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante wasn’t at all what I was expecting. When I heard it was a book about a woman with dementia, I imagined a Lifetime movie. Instead, it’s something else entirely. The main character, Jennifer White, is a retired hand surgeon whose dementia is getting worse. Her best friend was recently murdered, and she’s the prime suspect. Unfortunately, she’s not a reliable narrator, and this book plays skillfully with that, telling us parts of her past and present as she goes, filling in the big picture a little at a time. I was very worried that the end wouldn’t pan out. This is the kind of thriller that depends very much on the strength of its Ta Da moment at the end. I think the author mostly pulled it off. There were some implausibilities that nagged, but it was largely satisfying. It engaged me from beginning to end, and I found the main character fascinating.

I started Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed, before I read Strayed’s more famous Wild. It’s a collection of the previously anonymously penned advice column at literary site The Rumpus. It is a very different book, but with many similarities and connections. As in Wild, Strayed puts a lot of herself and her troubled past on the page. But she doesn’t tell the exact same stories, in the same ways. Here, she uses them in service of telling people who ask her for help what she thinks. This is not a story, with a beginning middle and end. It worked well for me as a pick it up then put it down book, read in bits in between other things. It might make an excellent book for the bathroom, which seems a weird descriptor, yet an apt one, I bet for those who know what I mean.

I really enjoyed reading the columns, and reading Strayed’s responses. A few weeks ago, I read Savage Love, and didn’t like a response that Dan Savage gave a reader. “Sugar would never have told her to do that!” I thought, outraged. Throughout, Sugar is like someone who listens well, really tries to understand what’s being said (and as often, what’s not) and who exhorts the writers, and all the readers, too, to work to reach their highest, best selves, with acknowledgement of how hard that really is.

One of my favorite passages was about writing:

Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don’t know what it is yet. (351)

I got to see Strayed in person recently, where she also offered her writing advice like this: “Write like a mother [cuss]er.” Which is funny, but it’s also true. That’s sorta how I felt about the book. It’s a good companion to Wild if you liked that, but probably not if you didn’t.

Raina Telgemeier’s Drama is a graphic novel about Callie, a middle-school theater geek. She has a crush on one boy, while another one likes her, and makes friends with some others as they prepare for the school play. There’s kissing, but not much more, so the story feels sweet and young. It has an openness about gay teens that reminded me of the wishful fantasy of Boy Meets Boy. The art is charming, Callie is engaging if sometimes annoying. It’s a likeable book that I found myself wishing I liked more. I just didn’t connect–maybe because I was not a drama person?

Overwhelmption: noun. The state of being overwhelmed, inundated or otherwise paralyzed by a situation (e.g. approaching holidays) or mess that’s “so big. And so deep and so tall, we cannot pick it up. There is no way at all!” (The Cat in the Hat)

See also: Tharn:

Describes the act of a person or animal being frozen in terror, e.g. a deer caught in the headlights.

Perhaps originally found in Richard Adams’s novel ‘Watership Down,’ the term was also adopted by Stephen King for use in his novel ‘The Stand.’
Michael stood tharn while the grizzly bear bore down on him.

I was eagerly looking forward to The Devil in Silver, the follow up (not sequel, as I’d assumed it would be) to Big Machine, which I discovered during the 2010 Morning News Tournament of Books, and really enjoyed.

I noticed over the last year that the date for Devil in Silver’s release was pushed back at least once. LaValle reveals why in his author’s note at the end–his wife gave birth to a son in May 2011 and that resulted in some changes to his writing routine that put it past deadline, but also gave him experiences that he incorporated into this wild novel.

Most of the book is told through the view of Pepper, a big white guy who gets put in a mental institution for a 72 hour observation after tussling with some cops, but ends up staying a little bit longer. He struggles (literally) to get out, but they drag him (literally and figuratively) back in. From the start, he’s aware of something beastly, weird and scary in the psych ward of New Hyde Hospital in New York City.

The snort came for a third time. It was even closer now. Immediately to his right. As if the animal had crept right up to his ear. Even worse, there was a smell. Musky and warm, like old blood. It made his throat close, and he wanted to wretch [sic]. The hospital’s staff members sat around the converence table taking notes, or watching him. Not one of them seemed to notice anything. How could they not smell that stink? (14)

Pepper grudgingly begins to accept his situation, and interact with the staff and patients around him. As in Big Machine, the administration may or may not be evil, and what looks like a monster may not be. A ragtag group of misfits stumbles toward some kind of truth, fragmenting along the way. In addition to Pepper’s point of view, we get many others, including a very strange one toward the end that I won’t spoil but that I enjoyed a lot.

There’s a lot going on in this crazy quilt of a novel: literary horror, social commentary on the treatment of the mentally ill, character sketches from different walks of life, and a character toward the end that I suspect is LaValle’s Gary Stu (a male Mary Sue):

A big man. Not tall but wide. The polite term is heavyset. (The clinical term is hyperobese.) A black guy…Late twenties or early thirties, his hair was kind of a wild puff and his head was down. …interested in his own toes. He had his arms crossed. (402)

The book was scary, but had some laugh-out-loud moments, and some downright sweet ones, along with some terribly sad ones. It engaged me, made me loath to put it down, and pulled me through from start to finish. It’s possible that it’s kind of a mess, and has uneven stuff in it, but if so, I didn’t even notice.

In an interesting bit of synchronicity, I recently read The Silver Linings Playbook, whose main character also spent time in a mental ward, also lost large chunks of time there, also had violent tendencies, and in one scene, shared a tiny box of cereal across the table from another female character. It was a strange mirroring, probably coincidence, but fascinating.

I recall exchanging emails with LaValle after he did an author Skype chat with one of my book groups, Books and Bars, but I can’t find any record of it. (Did I imagine it?) In it, I tried politely to express my worry that he’d pull a Matrix, and follow up a promising first work with a crappy second one. In my opinion, he didn’t. I was sad not to meet up with the two main characters from Big Machine, but glad to meet these new ones, and interested to see what the next book might hold. Well played, Mr. LaValle, well played.

Fairest is the newest spin off from the popular comic-book series Fables, and Wide Awake collects the first seven issues. It tells backstories of some of the female characters, in this case Sleeping Beauty. (Not to be confused with Beauty of Beauty and the Beast–different character in this world. Unlike Prince Charming, who was actually the same guy to all the ladies–Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Cinderella. He got around, that one.)

This story picks up in series continuity just after the Fables defeated the armies of the Emperor. We’ve got Ali Baba, a bottle imp (not a djinn, sorry!), the Snow Queen and Sleeping Beauty. There are fights, there’s romance and things don’t quite have a fairy-tale ending, which I appreciated. In addition, Fairest: Wide Awake is capped by a one-shot story about Beauty and the Beast, with a surprising reveal about their history.

As with the best of the Fables series, Fairest is a fun, fast read, that plays around with storytelling and mythologies in interesting ways.

In November of 2010, I tried a DIY spa treatment at home. I made a brown sugar/heavy cream scrub for my scalp, which exfoliated and moisturized well, but smelled terrible. I wrote:

This should put me off any more home spa attempts for a while. Until I forget, and then I’ll be all, “I don’t know if this is a good idea, but I’m going to do it anyway.” Story of my life, I swear.

Two years and 17 days, people, is how long it took me to forget. Yesterday I consulted Curly Girl for a natural, shampoo-free solution for itchy scalp. I’d tried the brown sugar and conditioner before, and it worked OK. The newer edition of the book recommended quinoa plus conditioner. Directions: 1 tablespoon raw quinoa in 3 tablespoons conditioner. Scrub scalp and rinse. Hey, I thought, if I use it in my hair then we don’t have to eat it! (Not a fan of quinoa, or of how much 9yo Drake bitches and moans when we make it.) Plus it’s bigger, so it should scrub better than brown sugar.

It actually felt very nice and scrubbly, but as with past home-spa disasters, things started well but ended badly. Quinoa, unlike brown sugar, does not dissolve in water. And it’s a fast cooking grain. So by the time I finished scrubbing, rinsing, conditioning and showering, the walls, floor, shower curtain and my feet were covered with partially cooked grain. How had 1 Tablespoon produced so much? The hair trap was full, the water was backing up. The grains were no longer hard, but soft and more difficult to clean up.

So, here I was again, cleaning up another home spa mess. On the bright side, the scrub worked great and my scalp is in great shape.

Prompted by my friend at Mental Multivitamin, I am always happy to obsess nerdishly over books. I’ll try to keep this short.

1. What book (a classic?) do you hate?

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. Though it does remind me to be a better, less selfish person.

2. To what extent do you judge people by what they read?

I shouldn’t but I do. But when I see someone reading a book I’ve consciously decided not to pick up, or that I’ve tried to read and disliked, it’s hard to feel a kinship.

3. What television series would you recommend as the literariest?

The A & E Pride and Prejudice miniseries.

4. Describe your ideal home library.

Shelves enough for all. Nothing stacked on its side.

5. Books or sex?

Both (but probably in that order, to be honest)

6. How do you decide what to read next?

It’s a balancing act. I’m in 3 book groups, and I have many bookish friends (including my husband) with whom I share recommendations. It’s definitely a holistic process, taking into account calendar, whether a movie’s coming out, whether it might be spoiled, what others are reading, if I feel guilty about having bought it, length…

7. How much do you talk about books in real life (outside of the blogging community)?

ALL THE TIME! Which is still never enough. I’m in 3 book groups, 2 of which meet monthly, and the other ever 6 weeks. One of them I started and moderate myself. I talk about books whenever I can, and if I’m at a loss with a person in conversation, I ask what they’re reading.

Bookish, blogging friends, how about you?

My Ideal Bookshelf (?)

There’s a new book out called My Ideal Bookshelf, which I read about at Mental Multivitamin, then promptly put on my amazon wish list. She posted her Ideal Shelf, here is a stab at mine–hey, it goes to 11!

Possession by A.S. Byatt
Life with Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
Middlemarch by George Eliot
The Illustrated Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, ill. Dame Darcy
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
Hamlet, The Tempest and Twelfth Night by Shakespeare
The Holy Bible NRSV

Also, please note, I picked particular Shakespeare plays rather than a collection. More challenging, no?

Wuthering Heights and A Wrinkle in Time almost made the cut. I think I’m missing a good, cathartic weepie. Probably should have put Anne of Green Gables on there, in lieu of Witch of Blackbird Pond.

What does your shelf look like/contain? You can print out an illustration at the Ideal Bookshelf site, too.

As I’ve gotten older and free time has gotten scarcer, I don’t obsess about new and returning fall television as I once did. That said, I still watch plenty of TV, and we haven’t talked TV in a while. Here’s what’s on the rotation currently, and why:

The Mindy Show: not hilarious, but charming and funny enough to keep going with
Happy Endings: bizarre and often hilarious
Arrow: comic-book geek guilty pleasure, heavier on the guilt
Nashville: soapy, woman-centered guilty pleasure, heavier on the pleasure
Modern Family: for now. Feeling very been-there, done-that.
Parks and Rec: Love this funny, sweet show. From season 3 on, this has been a consistent entertainment.
30 Rock: last season, and they’re pushing some interesting boundaries.

We tried Elementary (another woman-violent procedural), Last Resort (didn’t see the hype) and Ben and Kate (almost cute enough but not quite.), all just once.

Currently watching past seasons of Downton Abbey, Homeland, Friday Night Lights.

Looking forward to return of Breaking Bad and Mad Men.

I read all of Alan Sepinwalls reviews of my shows at Hitfix. He’s got a smart, informed commenting base, unlike Entertainment Weekly’s, which is regularly horrible and hateful.

What are you watching that’s worthwhile?

Long weekend plus stitches in my leg from having a non-melanoma but atypical mole removed meant permission to sit on my a$$ the long Thanksgiving weekend. Woo hoo! Here’s what we watched.

Friday Night Lights Season 2. I’m glad people warned me that this season is silly and to persevere. Otherwise, I wouldn’t, because it’s as if the writers threw ever cliche at the screen they could think of: murder! drug dealers! love triangle! Also, they ended season 2 with a surprise pregnancy, as they did season 1. Keeping the faith that Seasons 3 to 5 are as good as people say.

Harry Potter 3: Prisoner of Azkaban. With the kids for family movie night. The day after, my husband G. Grod and I were in the kitchen discussing whether we should buy the whole series of movies, or just borrow from the library. I said I didn’t care for them that much and was leaning to the latter when 9yo Drake said, “Hello? I’m standing right here! I LIKE them.” And we now have the entire set on Blu ray. I do like film 3 better than the previous 2, it’s darker and the kids are growing up.

Planes Trains and Automobiles. John Hughes’ first movie for grownups. Thought we might watch it with the kids, but was glad we didn’t, give the eff-ing scene in the middle. But a good one for Thanksgiving.

Our Idiot Brother. Carolyn said she liked it, and she was right. This was dumb but entertaining and sweet like its main character.

The Amazing Spider Man. Again, with the kids. I just love Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker, and Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy.

Skyfall. G. Grod and I saw Goldeneye on our second date, in 1995. We’ve been going to see Bond movies for 17 years. This was entertaining, though overlong and doesn’t at all hold up under even light consideration.

And, to finish out the weekend, we watched the pilot of Homeland, since everyone gushes about it. I was immediately sucked in. Can’t wait to tear through it.

Remember the advice we got growing up on how to take care of cuts–. dab some antibiotic ointment on it, bandage loosely, then leave it open to the air and let it alone to form a scab? Nope. This actually increases scarring.

For big cuts, like the set of stitches I got last week when I had a non-melanoma mole removed, here’s the modern protocol to heal faster and prevent scarring, which was news to me:

1. Keep the wound covered with a bandage until it heals. Change the bandage daily. You can let water or soapy water run over it, but don’t aggressively clean it.
2. When replacing the bandage, do cover the wound with a thin film of something like Aquaphor or Vaseline, to keep in moisture. Don’t use antibiotic ointments like Bacitracin and Neosporin. These can cause rashes and reactions. Avoid Target-brand bandages–they all contain antibiotic ointment.
3. Get the least adhesive bandage that will cover the wound and stay in place for a day. Tough and waterproof strips will irritate surrounding skin quickly. Paper tape to hold gauze in place sticks less well, but is far less irritating.
4. Avoid fish oil supplements. They’ve been shown to slow down healing.

And, for the record, this is a reminder that tanning beds, which I used often when I was young, are bad for you. Stop pretending they’re not. Real sun, in moderation and with sunscreen, if at all. The end.

The Silver Lining Playbook by Matthew Quick has been on my shelf for years, a gift from my Eagles-fanatic stepfather-in-law to my Eagles-fanatic husband when it was released, and pulled off the shelf by me because it’s currently playing on the big screen.

Quick’s novel is eminently readable, an entry in the emotionally-stunted-young-man-stumbles-toward-some-kind-of-understanding genre. In this it strongly reminded me of Jonathan Tropper’s This is Where I Leave You.

Pat is a guy in his 30’s, just released from a mental institution, and he’s pining for his wife Nikki, that everyone else, including the reader knows, is his ex-wife. He’s got an emotionally stunted dad whose moods are dependent on whether the Eagles win or lose. (I’m married to an Eagles fan, so I really appreciated the ethnography of this particular subculture as I recognized many aspects.) Pat thinks life plays out like a movie, where every bad thing always has a silver lining, so much of the book reads like the film it’s been “adapted” into, rife with coincidence, but still has some surprises. Alas, one of the reveals near the end about Tiffany, the emotionally damaged woman Pat has befriends, continues to nag at me. Two aspects of it read like really creepy male-fantasy masquerading as characterization, and this left it ending on a sour note for me.

August Moon by Diana Thung is a children’s graphic novel heavily influenced by Hayao Miyazaki’s films in general and My Neighbor Totoro in particular, though it’s rather like Princess Mononoke crossed with the latter, as there are bad guys with guns. There’s also a little bit of Seuss’ The Lorax.

It’s cute and sweet and has likeable child protagonists in Jaden and Fi, but I found it hard to read visually at times. For example, there would be multiple panels of a character facing different directions when they were only supposed to be moving in one direction–this was disorienting. My difficulty could also be a factor of many small panels per page. My 9yo son Drake read this and really enjoyed it. He has much sharper eyes than I do.

Just so we’re clear, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s book 36 Arguments for the Existence of God is a work of fiction. And yet, it’s kinda not. As they say, it’s complicated. Or, as my professor of Judaism in grad school used to say in the type of grad-school lingo often parodied it Goldstein’s book, “it’s not UNcomplicated.” Thus, whether you like it or not (and my book group found it pretty divisive), you probably won’t find it UNinteresting.

Goldstein has a background in philosophy and mathematics, and was raised as an Orthodox Jew. All these aspects and more are woven through the novel. She has written both fiction and non-fiction, and her philosophy colleagues tend to view her fiction forays with suspicion, as she notes in this weird book trailer where her husband, the cognitive psychologist Steve Pinker, talks with her about it, yet never identifies her as his spouse. It also features a lot of stilted shots of Goldstein on a ladder in their impressive library. As I said, weird.

It’s a 400+ page novel with a 60-page appendix that contains the 36 arguments of the title. I found the appendix and the parts of the book that were very philosophically argumentative less interesting, and the morality tale of the characters involving and fascinating.

Some readers in my book group reacted negatively to the esoteric verbiage of the overtly philosophical sections. As one noted jokingly, it made her feel “stoopid.” Others reacted to how lengthy these sections were, and noted they tended to drag, especially as compared to the novel, featuring a religion professor named Cass Seltzer.

In that weird book trailer, Goldstein coyly claims that it’s a misconception that characters are based in reality. And yet, there are a lot of ringers in her books generally. Compare this photo of the author’s ex-husband, mathematician Sheldon (”Shelly”) Goldstein:

and this description:

handsome, but not in a way to make the squeamish consider indeterminate sexual orientention, Cass has a fundamental niceness written all over him. He’s got a strong jaw, a high ovoid forehead from this his floppy auburn hair is only just slightly receding, and the sweetest more earnest smile this side of Oral Roberts University. (11)

Some reviews have noted likenesses between characters and real people, most especially Jonas Elijah Klapper as Harold Bloom, but there’s also likeness between Sy Auerbach and literary agent John Brockman, and another minor character interested in immortality (can’t remember the link.)

There’s also more than a passing resemblance between Goldstein herself and Cass’ girlfriend, Lucinda Mandelbaum, the “goddess of game theory”: who is described as grey-eyed, beautiful, graceful and more throughout. One of the many things I found interesting in this was that if Goldstein is going to write herself into the novel, why do it as an unlikeable Mary Sue? (I wondered, could this book be like an apology to her first husband, a la Hemingway’s Moveable Feast, where Lucinda is young and mean to the sensitive guy?)

I’ve gone on here, and haven’t even gotten to main parts of the story and other characters. It’s an interesting satire of academia, and of new atheists. It fictionally presents the question whether there’s any point in trying to prove the existence of God.

My advice on reading, if you think this sounds interesting: read the novel, then the appendix, and skim the parts that you find slow, since the narrative wanders and does not have consistent momentum. And yet, I do recommend it. It made me think, and still has me thinking.

I have had a crazy-town banana-pants week, with all three book groups meeting and four articles to turn in. Thus, no posts last week. I am emerging from under my rock, though.

One of the articles is up at Simple Good and Tasty, on L.C. Finn’s flavor extracts, which I used to make Pumpkin Spice Muffins and Anise Biscotti.

I will use this excuse to repost the easiest Pumpkin Pie recipe which I will be making tomorrow:

Impossible Pumpkin Pie–no crust needed!

1 15-oz. can pumpkin
1 1/2 c. milk, or 1 13-oz. can evaporated milk
1/2 c. biscuit/pancake mix or 1/2 c. flour plus 3/4 tsp. baking powder
1 c. sugar
2 Tbl. butter, melted then cooled
2 large eggs, beaten
1 tsp. cinnamon or 1/2 tsp. cinnamon extract
1 tsp. ground ginger or 1/2 tsp. ginger extract
1/4 tsp. ground cardamom, or 1/8 tsp. cardamom extract
1/2 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9-inch glass or Pyrex pie plate.

Place all ingredients in blender; blend for 2 minutes. Pour mixture into pie plate and bake for about an hour, or till center is set and tester comes out clean. Cool. Serve with vanilla or ginger or cinnamon or cardamom or maple whipped cream.

I may have to stop listening to Entertainment Weekly reviews; they gave Wanderlust an A-, and I thought it was reaching for a B-. I thought this would be a short, funny diversion. While I did laugh at some parts, I’m having trouble remembering what they were the morning after. (Unlike 21 Jump Street, where I saw a gas tanker yesterday and my husband and I started laughing over a joke from that movie.) What sticks instead are the excruciating overdone dick-centric, homophobic scenes with Ken Marino, and the awful Paul Rudd in a mirror scene followed by the insult-to-injury Paul Rudd with Malin Ackerman scene.

I found 21 Jump Street (also IMO overpraised at EW) and Wanderlust uneven, but where 21JS had boring and silly bits, Wanderlust had actively unfunny/offensive bits that largely obscured the funny parts for me.

Also, I have now had it with penis humor. Grow up already.