Girl Detective

I am very, very sorry. How is it, why is it, I’ve never written here about Carla Speed McNeil’s comic-book series Finder? There is no other series I’ve been reading as long as I’ve been reading Finder, which is since the beginning, about 15 years. But I’ve never yet written about it, probably because up until “Voice” I’ve purchased single issues and not read them in graphic-novel collections. But now they’re being collected by Dark Horse Press, and they’re in pretty shiny packages with tons of explanatory notes at the end. So I picked up Voice and am writing about Finder for the first time. And for that, I apologize. Because if you like comics, and you like speculative fiction, then perhaps you, like me, will LOVE Finder, which the author described as “aboriginal science fiction.”

Finder refers to Jaeger, a mystery man, who is introduced at the beginning of the series in the storyline “Sin Eater.” He’s living with Emma Grosvesnor and her three daughters. Subsequent stories follow Jaeger, the Grosvenors, or other characters in this rich, fantastic world. In “Voice,” we follow the eldest Grosvenor daughter, Rachel, as she goes through the “conformation competition” for her clan. This is a coming of age novel as we follow a character who starts off light and shallow. When she is mugged and a necessary heirloom is stolen, she had to delve deep, into her world, looking for Jaeger, and into herself, to figure out what to do next.

McNeil has distinct, accessible, manga-influenced art, and her characters are engaging. Rachel’s internal and external journeys had me enthralled. I devoured this book in fewer than 24 hours. Additionally, I plan to buy the stories in their new collected forms and re-read from the beginning. This fills me with a great deal of geek joy.

From “Get Over ‘Ferris Bueller,’ Everyone” at The Atlantic:

I grew up in a place not unlike Ferris’s tony North Shore suburb. Naturally, I dreamed about cutting class and zipping around Chicago in a 1961 Ferrari 250GT California. I’m just not sure every kid shared, or even had the means to share, my fantasy. This is the myth of Ferris Bueller. It’s portrayed as a universal story, when it’s really not.

I’m a fan of the late John Hughes, but Alan Siegel makes some strong points about why this movie should be more troubling than revered.

Via The Morning News

I requested Marilynne Robinson’s Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of Self months ago from the public library and my turn in rotation finally came up. It’s a short, small book containing essays based on a series of lectures she gave at Yale University. In them, she covers some of the same ground as she did in her previous collection of essays The Death of Adam, such as the faulty facts deployed by those who denounce religion in the face of what she calls “parascience.” I savored and was challenged by The Death of Adam, but did not have a similar experience with the four essays in Absence of Mind.

“On Human Nature” argues that “the mind as felt experience had been excluded from important fields of modern thought.” In “The Strange History of Altruism,” she questions the recent spate of articles supporting social Darwinism that humans are selfish creatures, altruistic only to those who do (or might) share genes. “The Freudian Self” details some of the reductive understanding by and about Freud of the relation between people and sexuality. And “Thinking Again” notes that those who argue against religion in the name of science talk about research as if it’s complete, finished, and finite. (See, for example the title alone of Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith.)

While her points are well taken, I enjoyed them more in The Death of Adam. Here, they were weighed down with what I think of as ivory-tower jargon, including one of my least favorite terms (I find it needlessly esoteric, and thus alienating), hermeneutics, i.e., the study of texts.

If there is an agenda behind the implicit and explicit polemic against religion, which is now treated as brave and new, now justified by Wahhabism and occasional eruptions of creationist zeal, but is fully present in the rationalism of the eighteenth century, it may well be that it creates rhetorical occasions for asserting an anthrolopology of modern humanity, a hermenuteutics of condescension.

The essays didn’t feel accessible or engaging to me, though this could certainly be due to faults in my own understanding or attention. My dislike of this book disappoints me, as I’ve appreciated and enjoyed Robinson’s novels as well as The Death of Adam. While I appreciate her arguments against facile proofs and reductive science, they are couched in such difficult, dry prose I struggled to wade through this slim volume.

With Rose Red, I’m on the fifteenth volume of Fables? I don’t know that I’ve ever read a comic series as long as I’ve been reading and enjoying this one. The comic book series posits a world in which storybook characters, like Snow White and Rose Red, are real and live secretly among us “mundies.” In this volume, the Fables continue to be pursued by the scary Dark Man as the witch Frau Totenkinder prepares to battle him. Additionally, Rose Red FINALLY gets over her depression about the departure of Little Boy Blue, and gets her butt out of bed to take back control of the Farm, where the non-human Fables, like Reynard the Fox and the Three Little Pigs, live. We get history of Rose Red and her sister Snow White, as well as a new mystery or two. There’s lots of extra material collected from the 100th issue. For fans of the series, this is another strong entry. For those who haven’t tried it, go to the library or comic shop and check out volume 1. There’s a lot here to like.

For others who have read this, though, I have a question: did we ever find out Totenkinder’s secret?

The third graphic-novel collection of DC’s Vertigo series Unwritten v. 3: Dead Man’s Knock by written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Peter Gross, continues the adventures of Tom Taylor, whose father’s books about a Harry Potter-ish boy named “Tommy Taylor” have brought him more trouble than he’d imagined possible. Accused of murder, believed dead, and on the run from a mysterious, story-obsessed cabal, Tom is accompanied by a reporter and a woman named Lizzie Hexam. In this volume we learn more about the cabal, and Tom’s father and mother. One chapter was a (too?) self-consciously clever choose-your-own-adventure tale about Lizzie’s past. This is heady stuff on the magic of stories and their influence. If you’re a fan of stories about stories, like the comic-book series Fables and Sandman, or Jasper Fforde’s novels, I think you’ll like this series. My only complaint is that I have to wait another six months or so for the next collection. I’m hoping all this mystery will eventually pay off, but for now, I’m hooked.

Louise Erdrich’s Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse centers on Father Damien Modeste, a Catholic priest to an Ojibwe territory, and Sister Leopolda, a nun who may have been a saint. These two characters anchor a story with dozens of supporting characters. I was thankful for the family tree at the beginning of the book, and referred to it many times.

His hand, long and crooked, beautifully worn and supple, oval nails of opaque tortoise, surprised him on the stem of the glass. For a long time he had been old, then he was past old. A living mummy. Of all people to have become so ancient! Himself! He put his hand to his hair, just wisps of thin and brittle stuff parted by the white scrawl of the scar that unwrote so many of his early memories. And the heart in his chest, so touchy, so tremulous. Easy things had become difficult. For instance, children. He had always loved to be around them, but now their exuberance was rattling. Their voices and quick movements dizzied him. He had to sit, allow his heart to settle, and restore his strength. And his hearing had become quite tricky–sometimes he heard everything, the undertones in Chopin’s preludes, which he still played, though with a fumbling energy, the rustle of his own bedsheets, and at other times all sounds were cloaked by the roar of an unseen ocean. (4, 5)

Erdrich starts near the end of Damien’s life, then takes the reader back to his complicated beginnings. Damien’s history is interwoven with letters he has written to the Pope(s) over the decades. When a representative from the Vatican finally arrives, it is to investigate miracles supposedly performed by the late Sister Leopolda, who holds a prominant place in Father Damien’s memory and history.

The interplays between things are what made the book both dizzying and dazzling for me: Damien and Leopolda, good and evil, Ojibwe and Catholic, male and female, real and mythic. The panoply of supporting characters, in contrast to Damien and Leopolda, appeared and disappeared in ways that felt strangely brief to me, given the rich characterizations of the central figures. In looking over descriptions of the prolific Erdrich’s other works, though, LRotMaLNH is situated in the same fictional territory and peopled with many of the same characters as several of her other books. Erdrich has lovely, evocative prose, and thoughtful, provocative characters. I’ve read a few of her books, but feel I might want to go back to the beginning now and read them all.

Continuing with the onslaught of movies from the library.

The Secret in their Eyes (2009) A Spanish-language film that won the Oscar for best foreign film. I liked it; my husband G. Grod loved it. A retired legal guy is writing a novel based on a case from early in his career. The story is told back and forth in the past and present, but is still clear in the tales it tells. Warning, this movie starts off with images of sexual violence and the plot moves around that, so if that’s not your thing, avoid this. But it has good performances and a compelling plot, as well as an amazingly suspenseful elevator ride scene. Very good.

500 Days of Summer (2010) The relationship of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, the Summer of the title, is tracked over 500 days, going back and forth, sometimes overlapping. Rather than funny and clever, I found it cloying and unsurprising. I like both the leads, but the flat characters killed any charm the gimmick of back and forth in time might have brought me. A few funny bits, but overall, eminently skippable.

The Town (2010) Directed by and starring Ben Affleck, this Boston heist movie is solid. It’s anchored by good performances from Affleck, Jeremy Renner and Jon Hamm, the plot is fine, and though it covers ground many have been over before (one last heist, the good guy trying to get out while his sidekick gets more embroiled, the guy falling in love with the only witness, etc.) it does so in a way that was enjoyable, even if not surprising. Definitely worth renting.

Added later: My husband G. noted that The Town is essentially the same story as Good Will Hunting: smart local struggles to get out of stifling situation, meets higher class girl, feels dragged down by old local friends.

A friend of my husband, G. Grod, is moving soon. He offered his collection of vintage Star Wars toys to our boys, 5yo Guppy and 7yo Drake. (And 39yo G.) We, of course, accepted this stunningly generous offer with alacrity. The boys have been playing with them for the last few weeks in great delight.

A few weeks ago, in the shadow of some writing deadline, I yelled at the rambunctious boys to go play outside.

“Sure,” responded Drake, instead of his usual begging for television. “We’ll take the Star Wars toys outside.”

No alarm bells went off in my head; I was awash in relief. The boys went to the back steps. I left them playing happily there until it came time to leave for Guppy’s tumbling class. Drake was especially excited to go, as I was going to let him play with the gameboy.

I went out the back door and found the boys in the back yard, not on the back steps.

“Time to go!” I said.

“We lost the toys,” they said.

I looked around our backyard, covered with high grass and higher weeds. I stifled the urge to scream.

“Get down from there and start looking.” I said. “We’re not going to tumbling unless you find them.”

We found eight with relative ease. Walking slowly we (and by this, I mean mostly me) found four more. Only two remained at large, a snow trooper and Yoda.

The time for tumbling class had come and gone. Guppy took it in stride. His older brother, deprived of a planned-for video session, had a meltdown, which I ignored. My husband arrived home from work. I put him in charge of the search party and left for a movie. When I returned home, G said they’d found the snow trooper in the rhubarb. I had figured the snow trooper was going to be easier to spot than Master Yoda, who is green, dressed in brown, and small.

Sure enough, Yoda eluded our efforts to find him. The next day we looked, and I said a prayer to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things. Do you know it? It goes like this:

Tony, Tony, look around
Yoda’s lost and must be found.
Please help us find Yoda.

(Insert lost item instead of Yoda; you get the idea.) But we did not find Yoda. I looked. The kids looked. G looked. Days passed.

Then came a very windy day. The latch on our back storm door was broken, so the wind kept blowing it open and slamming it shut. I heard glass break, looked out our back door, but didn’t see anything broken. I thought the storm door panels were made of plexiglass. But one had been glass, as I found out when G. next used the back door and found the glass on our back steps and in the nearby flower bed.

When I went out the next day to pick up the glass, I cherished a small hope of finding Yoda. I’d be working in the area Guppy said he’d last been seen. I looked from above; no Yoda. I bent at the waist; no Yoda. Only when I crouched down, picking up the smallest pieces, did I finally see him. Master Yoda, lying face up, patiently waiting to be found.

Here’s the close up of where he was. Looks obvious, right?

But what about medium distance? Is he still easy to find?

And now, what about from regular height? Can you find him now? (Hint, he’s a little right of center.)

We rinsed him off and returned him to his carrying case. Then I said thank you to St. Anthony, though I thought breaking our storm window was a little extreme, and decreed that from that day forth, the Star Wars toys were INDOOR toys.

A few times, I’ve picked a longer, less-illustrated book to read to 5yo Guppy and 7yo Drake at bedtime. Last year, I found a new copy of The Mouse and His Child written by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Caldecott artist David Small in a re-issued edition. I remembered reading it as a girl, and that I liked it, but nothing beyond that.

A wind-up mouse and child are displayed in a toy store at Christmastime.

As the tramp watched, the saleslady opened a box and took out two toy mice, a large one and a small one, who stood upright with outstretched arms and joined hands. They wore blue velveteen trousers and patent leather shoes, and they had glass-bead eyes, white thread whiskers, and black rubber tails. When the saleslady wound the key in the mouse father’s back he danced in a circle, swinging his little son up off the counter and down again while the children laughed and reached out to touch them. Around and around they danced gravely, and more and more slowly as the spring unwound, until the mouse father came to a stop holding the child high in his upraised arms. (2, 3)

They are purchased and taken out into the world, where many strange, wondrous, sad and happy things befall them. This is an often dark book that wanders sometimes in parts that weren’t of interested to me or the boys; visits with a muskrat and a snapping turtle went on too long for us. Yet the story moves along as the two windups are pursued by the villain Manny Rat. Often when I’d stop reading, 5yo Guppy would be able to say what had happened, or what he thought was going to happen. I figured if he was keeping up, I’d keep going. Both he and Drake said they wanted to hear the story, and in spite of its darkness and sad parts, both boys always said they wanted me to continue reading. They were much more engaged on pages with the lovely black and white illustrations.

I was reminded very much of Kate DiCamillo’s The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. Those who find that book too dark and scary, either for themselves or children, would likely not enjoy this book. Conversely, if you liked the complex, mythical tale of Edward, then I think you’ll appreciate this. This is an especially good tale of a devoted father and created families.

From “Food Crazy” by Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl at Experience Life:

when Ancel Keys analyzed his study subjects, he concluded that these effects were simply that of human physiology: If you feed someone 1,500 calories a day, his mental health will be jeopardized; he’ll exhibit strange, obsessive behaviors; and he’ll end up fatter than he was before he started. It’s just science.

We all know the right things to do: make better food choices (eat more whole, unprocessed foods), exercise more and sit less. Simple, but NOT easy for this coffee/carb/writer gal.

The American was my husband G. Grod’s pick and he enjoyed it more than I did. George Clooney is an assassin hiding out, doing ONE LAST JOB BEFORE HE GETS OUT, providing a custom made gun to a FEMME FATALE. Even after his last “friend” died violently (at his hand!) he begins to FALL IN LOVE WITH A BEAUTIFUL HOOKER WITH A HEART OF GOLD. This bag of cliches weighed on me.

The film is beautifully shot in Italy, and Clooney gives a good performance as a quiet, terse, tired killer plagued by rightful paranoia. But the plot is thin, and full of holes: he ditches a cell phone so he can’t be traced, but keeps the car he was given. One of the people out to kill him has ample opportunity a few times, which makes the ending less tense. A person who’s supposed to be ambiguous wasn’t, really, to me. I was really bothered by the plot with the prostitute. Not without merit, but I wish I’d done something else with my hour and forty-five minutes.

Reviews from: A.O. Scott, Ebert, Michael Phillips, Rotten Tomatoes.

Waiting on the Catbus

Day: made

Via

We’re in the middle of a movie bender because of the long Memorial Day weekend and a clump of requests that came in to the library from my reserve queue. I’m struggling to keep up with life basics (must remember: a shower is not a privilege, it is a SOCIAL CONTRACT*) so don’t have time to review each one individually. So.

Kung Fu Panda (2008). With the kids on DVD. They loved it. So did my husband and I. “There is no charge for awesomeness.”

Jane Eyre (2011). Moms’ night out. Loved how literally dark it was, and how strong and sassy Jane was. They did not use the famous line, “Reader, I married him.” Because it wouldn’t have made sense. Judi Dench as Mrs. Fairfax brought a minor character her due.

Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011). With the kids in a theater with extraordinarily expensive popcorn and pop. Total for one adult and 2 child tickets, 2 kid combos, a Fresca (mmm, ester of wood rosin) and a small popcorn: $37.50. Again, very entertaining. “I’m gonna need a hat.”

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010) with my husband on DVD, part of a clump that came into the library from my request list. Weird. Fascinating. Fun to watch. More than a little head-tilting, though. Huh? What?

More to come. I’m not sure my movie/book balance is going to hold for long.

*Hat tip, LA for this phrase.

I read Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford for one of my book groups. One of the members voiced annoyance after we read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. She’d wanted us to read non-fiction for a long time, but didn’t love the Lacks book, which had jumped the queue ahead of some of her suggestions. So she got the next pick, and chose Genghis Khan over other biographies of Marco Polo, Magellan and Einstein.

For me this is a great book group book. It’s not one I ever would have picked, it’s by a local author (he’s a professor at Macalester College), and it’s world history, which I am sadly deficient in. It was interesting and accessibly written, though not a quick read. It’s based on the translation of a Chinese document detailing the secret history of Genghis Khan, then follows his descendants and their influence over the centuries. Genghis (a title, not a name) was a warrior intent on gathering all tribes together under the “Banner of the Great Blue Sky,” his animistic faith. Interestingly, religious and cultural freedom, like retaining language and customs, were not only allowed, but encouraged as long as the group submitted to Genghis Khan’s rule and contributed goods to the growing empire.

Genghis Khan’s ability to manipulate people and technology represented the experienced knowledge of more than four decades of nearly constant warfare. At no single, crucial moment in his life did he suddenly acquire his genius at warfare, his ability to inspire the loyalty of his followers, or his unprecedented skill for organizing on a global scale. These derived not from epiphanic enlightenment or formal schooling but from a persistent cycle of pragmatic learning, experimental adaptation, and constant revision driven by his uniquely disciplined mind and focused will. (9)

Weatherford’s main point is well documented and taken–that Genghis Khan was not the monster history has portrayed. But reviews, from National Review and H-Net point out some historical inaccuracies and misreadings in the text. But as an incitement to read more history, or learn more about Genghis Khan, this book is an excellent place to begin.

My husband sent me a link, which he saw at Boing Boing that they got from Making Light to Sustainable Cities on “The Real Reason Why Bicycles are the Key to Better Cities“:

image from Boing Boing

The bicycle doesn’t need to be sold. It’s economical, it’s fun, it’s sexy, and just about everyone already has one hiding somewhere in their garage.

Invite a motorist for a bike ride through your city and you’ll be cycling with an urbanist by the end of the day. Even the most eloquent of lectures about livable cities and sustainable design can’t compete with the experience from atop a bicycle saddle.

“These cars are going way too fast,” they may mutter beneath their breath.

“How are we supposed to get across the highway?”

“Wow, look at that cathedral! I didn’t know that was there.”

“I didn’t realize there were so many vacant lots in this part of town.”

“Hey, let’s stop at this cafe for a drink.”

Suddenly livability isn’t an abstract concept, it’s an experience.

I tried to convince 5yo Guppy and 7yo Drake to go on a bike ride last night. They wanted to watch Phineas and Ferb, so I took my bike out on my own, and went 9.9 miles, if Google is to be believed.

A few weeks ago I traded in my big unwieldy though cute cruiser for a zippier rebuilt Schwinn single speed. It was a lovely early evening, sunny and not too cool. I saw a heart-shaped puddle on the trail:

I’d never listen to a music player while biking, because I wouldn’t feel safe. But my mental playlist popped up Perfect Day by Iggy Pop, Just a Ride by Jem, and Ramblin Man by the Allman Brothers. I have a funny subconscious.

My standard apology for a lapse in blogging. I’ve had a bunch of articles due that I took way too long to write, and life seems to be crashing around me in waves, which are tremendous fun if I’m a little ahead of them, but instead I keep getting sand in my suit and swallowing the ocean.

My husband and I deemed Kenneth Branagh’s new Thor date-worthy, after it got some good reviews out of the gate. And I enjoyed it a great deal, but at least some of that may be due to how ridiculously handsome I found the guy who plays Thor, and I’m normally more drawn to Mediterranean looking guys, not Nordic ones. Some of this, too, has to be due to director Kenneth Branagh, who knows from directing himself as a young king in Henry V, how to made a young blond guy look good, as well as tell a compelling story about how he has to fight for his place on the throne, overcome the rashness of youth, and court an awkward, brunette foreign beauty. But it was the “villain,” the jealous sibling and trickster Loki, played by Tom Hiddleston who really made the film, I thought.

This is not A-list comic-based fare, like Spider Man 2 or The Dark Knight, but it’s up there with Iron Man as a solid, well-done, interestingly cast, entertaining flick.

Who said “he who is not with me is against me”?

a. Jesus
b. Hamlet
c. King Arthur in Excalibur
d. Hillary Clinton
e. Patrick Swayze in Road House

I re-read Dream Country, collection of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series along with Glen and Linda at NPR’s Monkey See blog. I’d never thought that this volume, the series’ third, would be a good entry into Sandman for newbies, but many commenters say it is. And after this most recent re-reading, I can see why. This book contains four short stories: Calliope, A Dream of a Thousand Cats, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Facade, illustrated by three different artists. Each brings his/her different look to the quite different stories, which include an artist’s relationship to his muse, a cat seeking justice, a surreal pastiche of fiction and reality around a play performance, and an obscure character exhumed from DC Comics’ archives who briefly gets her own spotlight.

If you haven’t read Sandman, check out Glen’s primer, and try this volume out. This is especially true if you tried volume 1, Preludes and Nocturnes, and gave up. Gaiman and his crew readily admit the series got off to a wobbly start, and they didn’t find their stride till several issues in. Jumping in on Dream Country gives a good idea of the mix of literature, myth and horror that Gaiman and the artists brewed up. It’s heady stuff, and this is a good way to see if it might be for you.

I’ve been reading a lot of post-apocalyptic and dystopian stuff lately, and decided I wanted something cheerier, so I selected Christopher Moore’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal for one of my book groups. I read and enjoyed it before (holy cats, that was over five years ago, before Guppy was born!), but think I’ve grown to love it this time. At first, it seems like a silly romp–a fictional account of the lost years of Jesus told by his buddy. But a second reading reinforced not only a sweetness to the story, but an underlying provocativeness that makes me want to go to the gospels to remind myself of what’s “true” and what’s “fiction.” Moore triesto be obnoxious, and probably succeeds, to many people. But I don’t buy it. There’s an underlying earnestness in Biff, and thus in the book, that makes this more than a Bible-based confection.

I wrote in 2005: “This is a fun, funny, clever book. I didn’t find it life-changing, or overly thought-provoking, though.”

I don’t think that was true. I’m pretty sure it was after reading Lamb and the passage in which Joshua and Biff stay with Gaspar in a Chinese monastery that I became conscious of the pervading multi-tasking that I did, and tried to do one thing at a time.

Right before I had a second child. Nice timing. Didn’t work.

But I _am_ aware of it, still, and think of it nearly every morning, when I have to remind myself not to read, but simply enjoy my cappuccino and cherry-pomegranate toaster pastry. So, this book is not only funny, but it might change your life. How’s that for a recommendation?