Girl Detective

I’ve been thinking on Kurt Andersen’s Vanity Fair article “You Say You Want a Devolution? From Fashion to Housewares, Are We in a Decades-Long Design Rut?” for a few days now, and the ideas in it linger:

Since 1992, as the technological miracles and wonders have propagated and the political economy has transformed, the world has become radically and profoundly new. (And then there’s the miraculous drop in violent crime in the United States, by half.) Here is what’s odd: during these same 20 years, the appearance of the world (computers, TVs, telephones, and music players aside) has changed hardly at all, less than it did during any 20-year period for at least a century. The past is a foreign country, but the recent past–the 00s, the 90s, even a lot of the 80s–looks almost identical to the present.

Additionally, this cartoon from XKCD on traditional Christmas music is along the same lines–we’ve been playing the same stuff for decades.

And Dan Kois’ New York Times essay “Eating Your Cultural Vegetables” on art that’s good but boring makes sense in this conversation too.

I don’t have any conclusions, but these continue to lurk and make me think.

A few weeks ago, I had three daunting books to finish for three different book groups: The Master and Margarita, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, and Freedom. I read them more quickly than I’d anticipated, so December’s ended up kind of a free month for me to read whatever I want. All this choice is a little daunting (one of the themes from Freedom, in fact) and I’m trying to strike a balance between edifying books like Master and Margarita, and flat-out enjoyable books like Jhereg by Steven Brust. So far, December has been a very good reading month.

Though a short book by itself, Jhereg is the first of many Vlad Taltos novels by Brust, and was one of the first books my now-husband lent to me when we started dating. Vlad is an assassin with a dragon-y familiar in a complicated world called Dragaera.

There is a similarity, if I may be permitted an excursion into tenuous metaphor, between the feel of a chilly breeze and the feel of a knife’s blade, as either is laid across the back of the neck. I can call up memories of booth, if I work at it. The chilly breeze is invariably going to be the more pleasant memory.

In this first novel, he’s hired to kill someone but keeps uncovering reasons why he can’t, or shouldn’t. The world, and the comprehensive cast of characters in it, feel fully formed, and like the author has much more control over the bazillion narrative balls he’s juggling than he has any right to. Reading this was like hanging out with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while, one who I’d forgotten was so entertaining and funny. My hope is that I can re-read the Vlad novels in between longer ones and maybe even catch up, since several have come out since I last visited Dragaera. Jhereg and the two novels that follow it are collected in the omnibus The Book of Jhereg, but since I’m reading them piecemeal, I’ll post about them one by one.

It’s NOT ABOUT VAMPIRES! If that’s what you were looking for, well, move along. If that’s what you feared, then bide a while, and see how The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson sounds to you. It was recommended to me at a Biblioracle session at The Morning News.

Parents Caleb and Camille Fang, along with their children Annie and Buster (aka Child A and Child B), aren’t quite normal:

Mr. and Mrs. Fang called it art. Their children called it mischief. “You make a mess and then you walk away from it,” their daughter, Annie told them. “It’s a lot more complicated than that, honey,” Mrs. Fang said as she handed detailed breakdowns of the event to each member of the family.

You see, they’re performance artists. Tales of their performances alternate with tales of Annie and Buster as adults, struggling to find their own way as individuals and as artists. They flail in the long shadow of their parents’ art and their own history with it.

More than one review has likened this book to a Wes Anderson film, and it has that weird, kooky-cool vibe to it as well as the ability to veer between hilarity and the truly bizarre. Reading the history of the Fang’s performances was like watching a series of car crashes; I was never able to turn away. Instead, I just kept reading into the next chapter, having sworn I’d stop when I got to the end of the previous one. It’s weird, sweet, a little creepy, and I enjoyed it a lot.

After reading Franzen’s Freedom, I wanted something lighter, funnier, and shorter. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me by Mindy Kaling, writer and actor for NBC’s The Office, fit the bill perfectly. It has that ideal balance of smart and self-deprecating that good memoir-y books have. Kaling is honest and resigned about being a pudgy child on through to her struggles and eventual success in Hollywood. This made me laugh, a lot, so be careful if you’re reading it in public, during nap time or when your spouse has already fallen asleep. And if I ever get the chance to have a coffee with Kaling, I’m totally taking it. She’s the funny, smart, honest kind of girl friend we all could use one more of.

Of course I was going to read Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. So much praise! So much backlash(!) including the amusing (if linguistically dodgy) “franzenfreude” which Jennifer Weiner coined and defined as “taking pain in the multiple and copious reviews being showered on Jonathan Franzen.”

Now that it’s been out over a year, the dust has settled in the various Franzen feuds. Interestingly, it has won no major awards. It was famously snubbed for the National Book Award and wasn’t a finalist for the Pulitzer, which went to Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, which beat out Freedom for the major award it was a finalist for, the National Book Critics Circle Award. Goon Squad also bested it, barely, in The Morning News Tournament of Books. While one scene came in second at the Salon Good Sex awards, it got much more press when it was a finalist for the Literary Reviews Bad Sex Award. So perhaps Franzenfreude can now refer to the joy Jennifer Weiner probably takes in how Freedom’s critical reception over time didn’t live up to its initial hype.

Freedom centers on the marriage of Patty and Walter Berglund, and includes chapters from their points of view as well as their children and Walter’s best friend Richard, to whom Patty had long been attracted. Patty and Walter and painstakingly drawn complex characters. Along with the others, they’re sympathetic but also easy to despise at times. I found the Berglunds and Richard to be good company, and I was interested in what happened, even as it often was emotionally twisting, especially as the book went on and the characters grew on me.

I did feel its sex scenes were decidedly on the bad, squirm-inducing TMI side. I found it fascinating that one plot of the book was very much like one in Egan’s Goon Squad, and these felt timely in their zeitgeist-y critique of modern media consumption. In the end, I thought it was very good, liked it and read it quickly. These characters will stick with me for some time.

John Warner is a writer for The Morning News and one of the color commentators of its literary twist on March Madness, the Tournament of Books. In that role he started one of my favorite internet events, the Biblioracle (most recent session here), where you send in the last 5 books you read and enjoyed and he’ll recommend the next one. I’ve really enjoyed the recommendations I’ve gotten thus far: The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, What Was She Thinking? by Zoe Heller, and The Thousand by Kevin Guilfoile. I’m currently reading his most recent recommendation for me, The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson.

In the most recent round of the Biblioracle, he politely requested that those who appreciated the event buy a book from an indie bookstore, then pass it on to someone who wasn’t an indie bookstore shopper. I bought his first novel, The Funny Man at Magers and Quinn, and did just that.

It’s a dark satire of celebrity culture told in alternating chapters with The Funny Man of the title rising to fame in the past while on trial for murder in the present. The second half of the book details his fall from grace and the ostensible recovering of his faculties at a covert rehab called the White Hot Center. It’s a challenging structure to have attempted, yet it works, and ends provocatively. I was thoroughly engaged throughout, and had a complicated mix of feelings for The Funny Man of sympathy and outraged disgust. As dark and satiric as it is, it’s not for everyone, but if you’re up for an enjoyable challenge that makes you think, laugh and cringe, I do recommend it.

First, my mom sent me this article from The Columbus Dispatch on a new YA fantasy book author who’d bucked some of the usual conventions of the genre. Then a friend said it was one of the best YA novels she’d read in recent memory. So I sought out Rae Carson’s The Girl of Fire and Thorns.

It’s about a girl chosen by God, which is signified by a jewel in her belly button, who is pursued by many who think they know what God’s will is. Elisa is a sympathetic character–she’s fat, she’s insecure, she pees herself at one point. And it’s not a romance. Romance-y things happen, but so do many bad things. It reminded me strongly of Hunger Games, but was more realistic about sexuality to balance its violence. I raced through this, and look forward to the sequel.

I was, though, disappointed that the “God” parts were so conventional. Why was God unquestionably a single entity, and “he”? Even though it’s fantasy, it’s so conventionally Christian it could read as religious fiction. I would have liked to see a more complex, provocative take on religion since it plays such a central part in the story.

Get in If You Want to Live by John Jodzio is a series of 19 short shorts illustrated by 19 different artists, the first book published by Paper Darts, a Twin Cities literary magazine. It’s consistently raunchy, sometimes shocking and often laugh-out-loud funny. The book itself, as an object, is a lovely little thing, with its odd size, utilitarian-looking brown cover, and collection of striking typefaces and artists. Did I mention already that it’s raunchy, with drugs, hookers, sex and creepy though usually amusing narrators? Not for everyone, but if you like weird stories, short shorts, or zine-y books, definitely check this out.

After one of my comic book guys recommend the series Sweet Tooth to me, I read and enjoyed volume one. It was hard for me to put down volume 2 In Captivity in the middle, then wait to buy volume 3 Animal Armies, and again begrudge anything that took me away from tearing through volume 3 to find out what happened to young Gus, a deer-antlered little boy in a post-apocalyptic world where all the children are now human/animal hybrids. It shares some themes with Y the Last Man, but the art is more distinctive and evocative, and I find Gus a much more charming main character. I’m eager for volume 4 to be collected.

I’ve been riding my bicycle a lot more this year, well into this year’s glorious fall. After one long ride, I had very cold ears and hands. I wondered if it was time to suck it up and buy some cycling gloves. Then I put on a pair of fleece ones, and they worked fine. Purchase avoided.

But my ears were still cold. My husband, who bike commutes in cold weather, wears this stretchy black hood under his helmet during the winter. While it’s practical, it’s just not cute. In pursuit of cute, I took one of my scarves, put it over the head and ears and around the neck. It fit nicely under my helmet, I held it closed with a vintage sparkly pin and then did my cold-weather ride. And returned home with warm ears. Not sure this’ll work when it gets below 20F, but another bike gear purchase avoided utilizing existing resources. Woo!

Special Topics in Calamity Physics was one of the “it” books of 2006, with lots of media attention paid to the young, attractive author and her 500+ page mystery.

Blue Van Meer is a preternaturally precocious high schooler who rarely stays in the same school for several months, much less an entire year at a time. Her father is a much-in-demand adjunct professor in world history and political science, so they crisscross the country as he teaches at this and that small-town school. For her senior year, he says he wants to give her some stability and they go to a small North Carolina town, home of a prestigious private school where Blue can put the finishing touches on her application to Harvard. She is soon singled out by the charismatic Hannah, a film teacher at the school, who introduces her to the Blue Bloods, a coterie of privileged yet messed up kids who reluctantly take Blue into their midst. It starts in the future, where we know a key point right away:

Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it….

It began with simple sleeplessness. It had been almost a year since I’d found Hannah dead, and I thought I’d managed to erase all traces of that night within myself, much in the way Henry Higgins with his relentless elocution exercises had scrubbed away Eliza’s Cockney accent.

I was wrong.

Death, mystery, and deception abound. This kept me reading till the end to find out exactly how all the pieces fit together. It was a fun read, reminding me a lot of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. As literary fiction, though, I found it had aspirations to grandeur it didn’t quite reach. The chapters had titles of famous works, yet the events in them rarely had more than a surface connection to the book of the title. The Woman in White was about a mysterious woman, not even in white, with no allusions to any of the many other distinct aspects of the Wilkie Collins mystery.

Blue’s habit of citing articles and books in reference to her own comments wore on me as the book went on. I got that Blue and her father were intelligent and intellectual; the parenthetical device wasn’t necessary. Another thing that nagged was the time period of the book. Ostensibly set in the 00’s, none of the characters had cell phones or communicated by email. The reverse anachronism made it often hard to suspend disbelief. It also made me read to the very end to find out what happened; I’d say 80 to 90% of the details happened in the last 10% of the book; it felt very end heavy and author ex machina.

In spite of my concerns, though, I still enjoyed it and read it quickly despite its 500+ pages. It was smart, often funny, and engaging. I recommend it with reservations, but nonetheless do recommend it.

The Master and Margarita was recommended to me long ago by my friend Trash, who is married to M. Giant who blogs at Velcrometer. Christopher Moore mentioned the Pontius Pilate chapters as an influence in interviews about his book Lamb, a fictional account of the early life of Jesus, which one of my book groups read earlier this year. When I offered it as an option for our group to read, several people clamored for it. (In the manner of book groups, most of those did not attend the discussion. Hmmph.)

After reading this article and its links, I chose the Burgin/O’Connor translation because it was a more complete text than some earlier editions, which were censored versions. The most recent translation by Pevear/Volkhonsky had some detractors online, though seemed fine when I compared first paragraphs in a bookstore. (I tried to do that on my nook, but found one of the nook’s shortcomings is the inability to pick a particular edition of a particular classic. The Kindle has the Penguin version but the nook had no translation at all. Again, hmmph.)

I’d known the book was about the devil, so I’d always assumed he was the Master of the title, while Margarita was the black cat on the cover. Completely wrong. But not a bad guess in a book where the devil appears on page 5, yet the Master doesn’t appear until a third of the way through, and Margarita not till the halfway point! This is a good example of why I found the book confounding, yet engaging. I could not predict what was going to happen. And when things did happen, it wasn’t like, oh, yes, that makes sense. It was a constant series of jaw-dropping, What-The? moments. Chapter 12’s theater show, and Chapter 20’s significant transformation were particularly mind boggling to me.

The chapters in which the devil and his crew appear and make mischief in Moscow drip with magic, some of it nicely presaging Harry Potter, Twilight, et al. These alternate with chapters from a book within a book, a straightforward, utterly non-mystical telling of the encounter between Pilate and Jesus, named here as Yeshua Ha-Notsri.

This was hard to get into, and a few of my friends who tried to gave up, based on the Nancy Pearl 50-page rule. Those who persevered, though, said they were glad they did, even if it won few fans as fervent as those who’d urged the picking of it.

I’m very glad to have finally read it. I appreciated its themes of repression, fear and bravery. The bizarre narratives swayed me, as did the background of the book, written by a dying man who knew it would not be published in his lifetime, or perhaps ever.

If you do want to give it a go, I strongly recommend reviewing the Faustian legend beforehand, and following up with this site, which has links out the wazoo, helps to explain its continued popularity in Russia, and includes video from various television and movie adaptations.

Have you read it? Are you a disciple, a liker, or a hater?

two pennies

Last week, I made quesadillas for supper. As I was washing dishes, 8yo Drake came in and held out two pennies. I thought he’d found them, and told him to put them with the rest of his savings.

He held them out again. “No,” he said, “they’re for you.”

I took them. “What for?”

“A tip. For the quesadillas.” He smiled. “Bet you don’t get that very much.”

I laughed. “No, I don’t.” I gave him a hug.

I do make very good quesadillas.

(Posted originally on Facebook, but again here for those who choose to abstain.)

I need to leave for a meeting directly, and am frustrated with myself for yet another morning of not writing. (Please do not point out that I am actually writing. Writing anything of consequence is what counts, here.) My blogging habit is off, and I fritter my mornings away on Facebook, email, this, that and the other, then it’s lunch, nap, and time to get the boys from the bus. Poof. The time I thought was so free and open is gone.

I have been doing other writing, though, so I’m not an utter deadbeat. I also rejoined my writing group once 5yo Guppy started kindergarten, and am having another go at a novel. The fiction writing moves like atrophied muscles, or old, unused gears. But there is movement.

Here is some of the other writing I’ve done elsewhere, until I get back on the blogging horse/wagon/what have you:

Easiest Pumpkin Pie

Easy Turkey Pot Pie

This is a reprint from the “spring” but became relevant again this week.

Preparing to Go Outside: The Order of Operations

First, determine the outside temperature. This system of layering will be too warm for above 20F, but below that should stand you in good stead.

Next, remember what your mother said: use the toilet.

If you wear eyeglasses, consider contacts, as they don’t steam up. I’m heading steadily into bifocal territory, though, so I rarely wear my contacts anymore. Steamed lenses are better than loss of close vision.

Apply moisturizer to face, neck and lips. Heck, everywhere. During the winter, I forego sunscreen to maximize what little vitamin D I can get from the sun.

In order, don:

1. Underwear (underpants, and bra if you wear one)
2. Undershirt (thermal or silk, longer length is best)
3. Long johns (thermal or silk). Pull waistband over bottom of undershirt. This will keep your lower back (or overbutt, as my 7yo calls it) from unwanted exposure.
4. Socks, long and thick. Pull tops over bottoms of long johns.
5. Shirt(s)
6. Pants, over bottom of shirt. Do NOT tuck overshirt into long johns.
7. Sweater
8. Snowpants
9. Boots, hat and scarf
10. Gloves/mittens. Gloves inside mittens is the warmest, but diminishes dexterity.
11. Coat. The lower the temp, the puffier and longer it should be, covering at least your butt and the top of your thighs.

This order of operations has you always pulling something over a previous layer, rather than tucking in a subsequent layer, which makes for a smoother line and means you don’t have to double back, for example if you accidentally put boots on before snow pants. Also check out Sal’s post at Already Pretty on Layering Without Lumps.

Stay warm. And remember, it’s only six months till spring.

I found out about Murder My Sweet a while back in this article at Tor on Chandler adaptations. Since The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye (which gets wrongly dissed in the article) are two of my favorite films, I wanted to check out this, since Chandler claimed Powell was his favorite actor to portray Marlowe.

Marlowe is hired by a thug just out of jail to find his ex-girlfriend. He’s also asked to accompany a guy who is afraid he’s walking into an ambush. Surprise! He was. The guy is dead, the police suspect Marlowe, and all of a sudden there’s a vampy blonde and an earnest brunette, and things get complicated and shoot-y. Good stuff.

I recently read Voice, the latest collection of Carla Speed McNeil’s long-running comic book series Finder. It reminded me how I loved the series. Even though I own all the single issues cected in it, I picked up the recently published Finder Library volume 1, put out by Dark Horse, a comic book publisher known for respecting artists’ rights. The first four story lines, all 22 issues, are included in this volume, as well as covers of individual issues and previous collections, plus pages and pages of notes. Kudos to Dark Horse for recognizing a quality series, and for packaging it in a smart, attractive edition.

At $24.99, this is a bargain for what it includes (coming out to slightly more than $1 per issue) yet a steep ticket to entry to those who don’t know the series. Here’s what I recommend. Check out McNeil’s website, on which she has art samples and a webcomic of the ongoing series. Or buy or borrow the Talisman graphic novel. It’s a great example of the kind of art, humor, complex fantasy world, and characters that populate Finder. I’m trying to think of something to compare it to, as in “if you like x, you’ll like this” but I’m drawing a blank. I can’t even come up with “it’s x crossed with y.” McNeil calls it aboriginal science fiction. I call it a solidly plotted, well-drawn fantasy comic book series with characters I love.

Good thing my mom and step-dad-in-law notified us the blog was messed up. The rest of you are slacking!

Just kidding.

Anyway, I think the coffee chick with pink plaid and yellow roses may be beyond repair, so I’ll work with tech support (ahem, my husband) to come up with a new look. And maybe update the stuff on the side, which is at least a year old. Sigh.

In the meantime, enjoy this super-clean theme, and please let me know if you have any other blog-related snafus.

(The end of October marked 16 years from when I met the man who is my husband, G. We join the story, already in progress.)

So, there we were, G and me, picking out songs on the jukebox and hitting it off. We talked with my friend A, who’d encouraged me to introduce myself to G. Another friend of mine, C, joined the conversation for a bit*, then moved on. I found out G was: 23, living with his parents, had recently given up on grad school, was selling insurance for a company with a cult-ish sounding name. He found out I: recently started grad school, was 27, was leaving in the morning to visit my sister who lived in Nashville, had a tough week of papers coming up in school. The night wore on and he had a 45 minute drive ahead of him. He asked for my phone number; I gave it to him. He tried to say his goodbyes, but my friend A, fearing he’d leave without being suitably impressed by me, offered to buy him a beer. We reassured her he’d gotten my number, so she allowed him to leave. I returned to my apartment that night and stayed up for another hour emailing my sister about the cute guy I’d met that night even though I’d be seeing her in mere hours, and thus arrived in Nashville a few hours later, cross-eyed from lack of sleep.

*G told me later he’d been flirting with C and me. What I knew at the time that he didn’t was that C preferred tall African-American women. He had no chance with her, so it was good he thought I was cute, too.

When I first got Let the Right One In (the Swedish original, not the American remake) dvd from the library, my husband G Grod pointed out an article that said it was flawed. Instead of the evocative translation from the theaters, where the film had been a surprise hit, the DVD used a looser, sloppier set of subtitles that fans said didn’t do the film justice. The studio said it would release a version that also had the theatrical subtitles. And it did, though this clarification isn’t on the package, but only on the menu. I can’t speak to the comparison of subtitles, but found this Swedish vampire film about a friendship between children spooky, not too gory, and even touching.