Girl Detective

I finished The Confusion, volume two of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, so I’m on track to complete my summer reading project of all three behemoths! Volume 1, Quicksilver, was divided into 3 books, one each for Daniel Waterhouse the natural philosopher, Jack Shaftoe the vagabond, and Eliza the former Turkish concubine. The Confusion alternates between book 4, Bonanza, which is Jack’s story, and book 5, Juncto, which is Eliza’s. As in Quicksilver, and Cryptonomicon before it, I found the Shaftoe parts more enjoyable; they’re frequently humorous tales of adventure, in the spirit of the picaroon novels Stephenson mentions in the stories.

Eliza is embroiled in intrigue and finance, plus has a vendetta against one man (or is it several?) who done her wrong. Her story was more frequently affecting, and much more complex and challenging.

These books are challenging and great fun. I’m learning about history, though it’s a fictionalized version. And I’m enjoying myself with a vast cast of characters I like spending time with. Which is good, because these books are so long. Overlong? Perhaps. But it’s hard to resist Stephenson’s zeal for the historical subjects and his characters.

I’ll have a little incidental reading in between, but then I’ll be off into volume three, The System of the World.

Every day at 4pm, Mary Lucia of the Current plays a “No Apologies” track. One day, it was Meatloaf’s “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” which I sang to my bewildered kids at the top of my lungs. I hadn’t even known I knew all the lyrics.

I was reminded of this idea of no apologies when I read a piece on failure by Elizabeth (Eat Pray Love) Gilbert in the 10th anniversary edition of O magazine, which I borrowed from the library. Yes, I sometimes read O. Turns out I’m their demographic. Guess what? Not gonna apologize for it.

Anyway, the piece isn’t groundbreaking or revelatory.

Can we lighten up a little?

As we head into this next decade, can we draft a joint resolution to drop the crazy-making expectation that we must all be perfect[?]

But I liked what I was left with when I finished, which was the sense that not only should be expect to fail and forgive ourselves for it, but we should laugh at our ridiculous expectations of universal success, and maybe even actively embrace failure. In that spirit, then here is a short list of things I’m currently failing at:

1. cutting back on caffeine and sugar
2. keeping my house minimally clean (e.g., ungross bathrooms)
3. blogging regularly
4. managing money
5. weeding the yard (not only did our thistles spread, then flower, but they went to SEED)
6. being even tempered with my kids and not calling them idiots on occasion (deserving occasions, IMO, but still)
7. keeping up with my online feed reading
8. managing my inbox (1300 in my home box, dunno how many in the blog box)

I’m sure there’s more. I’m far from perfect. I don’t get it all done, or done well. And I’m not going to apologize. So there.

Me, instructing 4yo Guppy and his nearly 4yo friend Bitsy on the basics of Quiet Time so that I could get a little lie down:

1. Be safe.
2. Be kind.
3. BE QUIET.

Guppy turned to Bitsy and said, “My mom loves quiet time. Because she gets PEACE and QUIET!”

The more detailed instructions on quiet time, which both my boys can tell you if you ask:

1. No going outside
2. No talking to strangers
3. No answering the phone or door.
4. BE QUIET

Things you can get Mom for:

1. Someone we know is at the door.
2. Blood
3. Burglar

A farming friend once shared a theory with me that humans get busy and perhaps a bit anxious at the height of summer, as we’re in tune with the earth, which is telling us to tend, weed and harvest our gardens while the sun shines.

I like that idea, and certainly find summer to be full rather than lazy. My gardens are metaphorical (except for the ones of bellflower and thistles in my back yard, but I don’t think weeds count) but there’s still a lot of tending, wedding and harvesting to be done even though not literal.

For all my punctuation-geek friends, (of which I know there are many) “Colonoscopy: It’s Time to Check Your Colons” from the Millions (linked from The Morning News):

The jumper colon is a paragraphical Red Bull, a rocket-launch of a punctuator, the Usain Bolt of literature. It’s punchy as hell. To believers of short first sentences—Hemingway?—it couldn’t get any better. To believers of long-winded sentences that leave you gasping and slightly confused—Faulkner?—it also couldn’t get any better. By itself this colon is neither a period nor a non-period… or rather it is a period and it is also a non-period. You choose.

Yes, yes, I know I’m supposed to be reading The Confusion, volume 2 of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle. But finishing Volume 1, not to mention schlepping it everywhere for a month, made me want to take a wee break, which I did over the long weekend with Tom Rachman’s The Imperfectionists.

I read about this book first at Entertainment Weekly, then again online somewhere. It lodged on my radar, then was recommended to me by the Biblioracle at The Morning News (Great fun for book geeks like me.) So when I found it on the shelf at Half Price Books, well, who was I to pass it by when the universe was so obviously putting it in my path? (Moi, good at rationalization?)

Rachman’s first novel is about a struggling international newspaper and the people involved with it.

The paper is hardly at the cutting edge of technology–it doesn’t even have a website. And circulation isn’t increasing. The balance sheet is a catastrophe, losses mount annually, the readership is aging and dying off.

There are eleven chapters, each focusing on one character, which are also linked short stories. Most are employees of the paper, but a few are peripheral: a reader, an applicant, and a girlfriend. In between are brief pieces of the paper’s history. Over the book, all of these overlap and interweave.

This book tells a lot with very little; Rachman’s background in journalism shows itself in his eye for detail and in the sharp jabs of humor. But it’s the characters that drew me in and held me. I kept hoping for them to be happy, and ached for them when tragedy occurred. And occurred, it did. This book has moments of terrible, terrible sadness, if only because I cared so deeply for the characters who experienced them. Near the end of the book, I was exulting as one character’s chapter seemed to be ending without tragedy. Then in a very few lines, the knife twist occurs. I read the end of that chapter several times, marveling at the swiftness of its punch, even as I continued to wish it had gone differently.

In its workplace dynamics and relationships, the small joys and the big tragedies, this book often reminded me of Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came to the End. Those who have worked at a newspaper or in a copy department will likely recognize many of the characters. This was a short, intense read, far more sad than I’d expected because I cared so much about the paper and its people.

I was on the fence about seeing the Swedish adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s book, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But I’m glad I did. In short, it replicates some of the big problems with the book, such as dwelling far too much on particulars of crimes against women. There MUST be better ways to shed light on and criticize something without potentially fetishizing it, right? I wonder what a woman director might make of this.

But it also was a mostly faithful adaptation of the book parts of the book, such as Lisbeth. The character looks and feels true to the book, and it’s much of why I enjoyed these books in spite of their problems, and thus enjoyed the adaptation, too. I was surprised and pleased at the casting of the actor who played Blomkvist–not only is he not conventionally good looking, but he’s often kind of funny looking, and it’s a pleasant contrast to what will be done in Hollywood, I’m sure. But it helped with one of the film’s other departures from the book–Blomkvist doesn’t have women falling into bed with him as much, though it is, unfortunately, still there. I see the point Larsson was probably trying to make: Blomkvist loves women in all their shapes, sizes, abilities, etc. and is in contrast to the many men in this book/film who pathologically hate women. Yet he’s still such a Mary Sue character that his bedroom escapades feel ridiculous. And why is it that only the deviant sex is described/shown, not the healthy stuff?

In any case, as with the book, a qualified recommendation. Not for the squeamish, but definitely for those who love Lisbeth.

Remember when I reviewed Dragonflight a little while back, and we had a great discussion in the comments about better books for tween and teen girls where the main character has a relationship with another girl and is not defined by the boys around her? Foiled, a graphic novel by the prolific writer Jane Yolen, is one of those better books.

Aliera attends the smallest high school in New York City. She fences, hence the pun of the title. She doesn’t always get along with her parents, but she has a good relationship with her cousin. They play a D & D like game every weekend and talk about what’s going on with Aliera, like fencing tournaments and cute boys at school. Not much goes on with the cousin, as she’s confined to a wheelchair with rheumatoid arthritis.

When Aliera gets asked out on a date by the ridiculously named cute boy Avery Castle, things begin to get weird in that “hey, magic is real!” way. And they do not unfold in a predictable or saccharine manner. Aliera is funny, charming, and easy to relate to. Her fencing skills are cool. The art, by Mike Cavallaro, is manga influenced, and easy to read and engage with. This book sets the stage for further books, so it’s a beginning rather than a complete story. I will definitely read the next book in this series, and would recommend this one unreservedly for tween and young teen girls who like fantasy.

The blurb on the front said Batman R.I.P. is “as good as superhero comics get” and it was from IGN, a pretty trusted source for geekiana. I’ve been reading Morrison’s reboot of Batman and Robin, and like it a lot. This was the story that led up to it. So I took the bait, bought the book, read the book, and the same thing happened as almost always happens when I read a Grant Morrison book; I thought, “Huh? What? I don’t get it…”

Here’s what I think it’s about: A villain group called The Black Glove has sworn to destroy Batman, in a way that put me in mind of a book I liked much better, Daredevil: Born Again. They involve the Joker, who they refer to as The Master. They do, in fact, manage to make some Very Bad Things happen to Batman–poison, madness, drugs, kidnapped girlfriend, etc. And in the end a helicopter goes down, with one of the bad guys and with Batman. Do you think he’s dead? For real? This time?

Grant Morrison said in an interview that the villain’s reveal would be one of the most shocking things in Batman’s history. After reading the book, this confused me. First, because I found at least three main villains (possibly a fourth), and a whole lot of secondary ones. Second, because when I finally figured out which one I thought he was talking about (I’m still not completely certain) it wasn’t shocking.

In the wake of my confusion, I looked up reviews, most of which are excellent. But the excellent reviews came from comic-book critics and fans who had been reading the various Batman titles all along. That isn’t me.

I have geek cred. I’ve read comics for over twenty years, and even worked in comic shops. I’ve read a lot of Batman. But what I’ve read were often stand-alone graphic novels, like The Dark Night Returns, The Long Halloween, The Killing Joke, Mad Love, etc. I don’t read every issue of every Bat title. I have a general sense of what’s going on in the major universes. I know the main characters and history. And that wasn’t enough to appreciate this book. There’s lots of good stuff in it; Grant Morrison is a good writer and a very clever guy. But I think this collection is better suited for medium-high to high Bat fans who follow the ongoing books. It couldn’t quite stand alone, I thought.

I did it! I finished Quicksilver, volume 1 of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle trilogy as part of my summer reading project. Was it worth a month of my time? You betcha, as we Minnesotans sometimes say. I know a few of you gave it a try; anyone still reading besides me and G. Grod?

The big book is divided into three smaller ones. Book 1 is Quicksilver, and uses character Daniel Waterhouse to introduce us to historical figures like Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke. Waterhouse is the son of a Puritan, but is not so fervent as his father was, which got that man blown up by Charles II. Book 1 focuses on alchemy and the rise of “science” which was at that time referred to as Natural Philosophy. It also does a good job of portraying the blurry line between science and religion/philosophy, and the frequent connection between math genius and madness.

Book 2, King of the Vagabonds, introduces Jack Shaftoe, a mercenary, and Eliza, a harem girl Jack rescues from beneath Vienna during a military siege. They proceed across Europe trying to make their fortune, meeting historical figures like Leibniz and William of Orange, and generally getting into a lot of trouble while doing so.

Book 3, Odalisque (which means Turkish harem slave, which Eliza was), brings Daniel and Eliza together, and introduces Bob, Jack’s more respectable brother. Natural philosophy, politics and finance collide as they usher in huge changes.

The hugeness of the book, in both size and subject, strangely makes me want to be pithy in describing it. It’s speculative historical fiction, much like Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, the research for which spawned the idea for this series. If you like Stephenson’s work, like Snow Crash and Diamond Age, this will be in your wheelhouse. I found it a fun AND educational, if wrist-straining, summer read.

I’m going to take a little break, then move on to Volume 2, The Confusion, which I hope isn’t truth in advertising.

TV critic Alan Sepinwall, who blogs at Hitfix now, revisits TV shows on DVD during the summer. This years he’s doing Joss Whedon’s Firefly and The Wire Season 3. My husband and I were fans of Firefly during its short-lived time on the air, and thought it would be fun to watch it again in one swell foop and read Sepinwall’s recaps. And it was, indeed, mostly swell.

The series, which ran for only 14 episodes, was a space opera western. Mal Reynolds was a rebel war veteran who used his spaceship to run dodgy business throughout the galaxy. He has a crew of four: his right-hand woman, Zoe; her husband, the pilot Wash; mechanic Kaylee; and hired muscle Jayne. There are also a few passengers: Inara, a Companion (i.e. space prostitute); Shepherd Book, a preacher with a murky past; and another couple of guys.

I’ll get my big problems out of the way first. One, this is another example of how supposed feminist Joss Whedon maybe isn’t such a paragon. Space prostitute? Really? It might have worked if he’d followed up on what’s stated in the show–Companions are celebrated and revered, almost worshipped. Instead, they go for cheap shots from both Mal and customers about hookers, which make it more akin to 50’s westerns than millenial sci-fi. Further, the series and movie fails the Bechdel test–none of the women characters ever talk together about anything other than men.

Second, it was recently brought to my attention that while Whedon posited a future cultural mishmash of US and Chinese cultures, the series and the movie have almost no Chinese or even Asian characters, EVEN AS EXTRAS.

And yet, I still found this a darn entertaining show. Nathan Fillion is charming as Mal, a knight in sour armor. Zoe and Kaylee are smart and strong female characters, even if they could have been developed more as individuals than in relation to the men. The mystery is involving. My favorite element, though, was Adam Baldwin (now on Chuck) as Jayne Cobb. He is hilarious and steals many of his scenes.

In perhaps the oddest turn of events, Firefly, though canceled by Fox, had such a strong and dedicated fan following that Whedon was able to find a producer who liked the series and was willing to gamble on a feature film. Whedon’s challenge, then, was to make a film that would appeal to both fans of the series and newcomers and further, answer a bunch of the questions left open when the series ended. Seeing Serenity again confirmed and enhanced my opinion from when I saw it in theater: mission accomplished, Joss and crew. Well done.

Serenity is fast-paced entertainment, with impressive effects given its small budget, and a remarkably tight plot given the many things it had to accomplish. Also, probably not coincidentally, there’s hardly anything about Inara as a space prostitute. What it does best, though, is highlight one of the strengths of the series: its diverse, engaging and charming cast.

I recommend both the series and the movie, as well as the recaps Sepinwall is doing this summer. After Whedon’s most recent series, the to-me disappointing Dollhouse, rewatching this made me wish he could get another series that might last. It’s been a long time since Buffy.

As part of the same Spielberg series in which I saw Jaws, I finally also saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Unike Jaws, it prefigures a lot of the touchy-feely stuff that Spielberg did later, most notably E.T. (of which I’m not a fan.)

Richard Dreyfuss is one of many civilians who see a UFO one night. They’re brought together by the govenment, and questioned, but mostly dismissed and ridiculed. Teri Garr is Dreyfuss’ wife, and when he begins to behave strangely (painting and sculpting things over and over based on images in his mind) she grabs the kids and leaves. He befriends the mother of the little boy from the ads, who has disappeared after a subsequent UFO sighting. The government begins tracking down leads, as does a French scientist played by Francois Truffaut, who should not have quit his day job as a director for acting. Dreyfuss and the mother try to figure out what’s going on, and eventually stumble into the finale.

Unlike Jaws, this is more interesting as a relic of film history and pop culture than as an enduring film, I think. It’s well made, the music is good (the film was edited to go with the music, not the reverse, as is usual), and it’s engaging. I can see the large shadow it cast both in alien and government conspiracy tales, like the X-Files. In the end, I found Dreyfuss a little forced in his kookiness, and the ending made my teeth ache a little, even if it avoided the gag-inducing treacle of E.T.

I did finish Book 2 of Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver a few days ago, and then plunged ahead to book 3, which I’m frantically trying to finish by tomorrow, thus the lack of blog postage lately. And so, this’ll be quick.

Book 2 finds us in the company of Jack Shaftoe, a London urchin who, along with his brother Bob, hangs on the legs of hanged men to help them die more swiftly. They had procured payment previously, of course. Bob grows up to be a military man; Jack becomes the vagabond of the title. During a mercenary stint taking Vienna from the Turks, Jack manages to rescue a pretty harem girl and a good horse. Eliza is the girl, and she was sold into slavery after being kidnapped with her mother from the shores of Qwghlm (familiar to those who’ve read Cryptonomicon) by a Bad Man who dines on rotten fish. Eliza has sworn revenge on him, and vows to end all slavery.

Jack and Eliza make a good team. He teaches her about thieving, and she teaches him about subtle trickery. She becomes expert at financial markets, and they travel to Amsterdam and Paris, encountering Natural Philosophers like Leibniz along the way. But as Eliza becomes more savvy by the day, Jack slowly goes mad from syphilis. They meet up in Amsterdam, only to part acrimoniously, and then befall two different and very bad fates.

Jack and Eliza’s story is much more of a romp than was Daniel Waterhouse’s in Book 1. This is swashbuckling adventure, with some science, finance, and math thrown in for good measure. Heady stuff, indeed.

Things I looked up:

Huguenot is pronounced in French: [yɡno]; in English: /ˈhjuːɡənɒt/, or /huːɡəˈnoʊ/.

One of Jack’s nicknames, L’Emmerdeur, is vulgur slang for “pain in the ass.” Or arse, since he’s English.

Thus far, I’m very much enjoying my summer reading choice, even if it does make my purse quite heavy to tote around.

My newest piece at Simple, Good and Tasty is part of a bi-weekly series on using up my CSA box.

I said I was going to finish book 2 of Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver by today. Didn’t happen. I’m on page 403, with Jack Shaftoe and Eliza making their way through the European countryside. They make for good company. I’m still aiming to finish by the end of the month, and have no other books I need to read in the meantime. I’ll update again when I finish Book 2.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman is the July selection for the Twin Cities’ Books and Bars group. I’d read only good reviews of it, but after I mentioned I was reading it, some of my literary pen pals–Tulip, Amy and Steph–said they weren’t fans, and were interested to see what I thought of the book. That made me hyper-aware as I finished the book. Would I like it?

In spite of peer pressure, I did, but I can guess why others haven’t.

Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed.

They picked their way along the cold, uneven sidewalk together: James, Julia, and Quentin. James and Julia held hands. That’s how things were now. The sidewalk wasn’t quite wide enough, so Quentin trailed after them, like a sulky child. He would rather have been alone with Julia, or just alone period, but you couldn’t have everything. Or at least the available evidence pointed overwhelmingly to that conclusion.

Quentin is a prestidigitator and high school senior in NYC, and is part of the hyper-competitive race to get into a top university. When his Princeton interview doesn’t go as planned, he ends up sitting for an entrance exam to Brakebills, a private university for magic. Quentin has been obsessed with a Narnia-like fantasy series set in a land called Fillory since he was young, and is thrilled to discover magic is real and that he has an aptitude for it.

If this sounds familiar, it’s meant to. The Magicians is not coy about the debt it owes to C.S. Lewis’ Narnia and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Unlike those, however, it’s not sweet, romantic, or centered on Christianity (Lewis) or love (Harry Potter). When Quentin finds out magic is real, the result is like Harry Potter filtered through Bret Easton Ellis. There’s drinking, drugs, sex, raging immaturity and bitterness. Grossman speculates on how magic might impact real, spoiled teens. Brakebills is less like a university than a vocational school with no career waiting at the end. The result isn’t pretty.

Along with the discomfort of reading about a debauched magic population, there’s Quentin, who is hardly a sympathetic main character. He’s a shallow, competitive guy who’s always grasping to be the best, whining about unhappiness, and pining for some life-changing circumstance that will bring him finally to the bliss he feels he deserves. He casts away old circumstances with hardly a thought, including friends and parents. This leads, unsurprisingly, to disastrous results.

For me, though, the disastrous results were of a piece with the whole book. The groundwork was laid carefully throughout, and things progressed to what I felt were fitting ends. Is Quentin reformed and nice by the end? No way. But is he wiser, less credible and (possibly) less selfish? I think so. I did find a self-awareness at the end that wasn’t there previously.

I had the opportunity to see Lev Grossman read earlier this week, and asked him about some of his influences. I had guessed, correctly, that Donna Tartt’s The Secret History was one of them. So rather than describing it as “Harry Potter for adults,” I might say “The Secret History, with magic.”

This is a frequently dark, bitter book with scenes of profound ugliness. Yet I liked how it made me re-examine my own feelings about reading Narnia, Harry Potter, and others. Prior to reading this book, I re-read a fantasy favorite of mine when I was a teen, Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey. I found it a less pleasant read than I remembered, and I think that’s exactly the thing Grossman was going for: how magic would affect real teens if there were no kindly advisor figure like Dumbledore, and no obvious “big bad” like Sauron. This book contains deep ambivalence about how cool magic would be if it were real, and examines why longing for a fantasy world is not endearing, but a significant a character flaw.

As part of Take-Up Productions‘ Spielberg series at the Trylon Microcinema, I got to see Jaws for the first time in a theater. It’s one of those weird gaps in my movie-watching history, but I feel very luck to have been able to see it on a big(ger) screen. I found it truly scary, and had I seen it as a child I would have had nightmares. At one scene, the entire audience gasped and jumped. Best of all, though, was how scary it was with implied action and with the momentum from John Williams’ famous music. This wasn’t a sappy movie that pandered to an all-ages audience–this felt very much like a horror movie for grown-ups. Dreyfuss and Scheider are a good buddy team, and Quint’s speech about the USS Indianapolis was mesmerizing.

Yes, I just re-read Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey, one of my favorite books from girlhood. But I had a good reason. Really.

Books and Bars is reading Lev Grossman’s The Magicians for July. (And he’s reading at Barnes & Noble Har Mar tomorrow night.) It’s about a guy who still re-reads and loves a Narnia-like fantasy series from his childhood, so a woman who’d read it already suggested going back to a book we’d loved and wished were real when we were young. I chose Dragonflight, because it was the one I wished most fervently was real, and the one whose heroine I envied.

I used to own most of the Pern books, but have gotten rid of all but this one, since the last time I re-read them was probably in my early 20’s, or two decades ago. I was worried about revisiting a book I had such a strong affection for, and that made such a huge impression on me at the time (pun not intended)–it was a gateway book into sci-fi and fantasy for me. When I started reading, my affection was right where I’d left it. For better or worse, though, I could not silence my consciousness, far more critical and discerning that that of my younger self.

The back-of-book description is utter rubbish, so I’ll do a broad-strokes summary, though I imagine more than one of you is geeky enough to have read the Pern books, too. Pern is a colonized but abandoned world, with a largely medieval/agrarian culture. Lessa is a former noble who went into hiding as a girl when her family was slaughtered by an invader. She bides her time waiting for revenge and to claim her birthright, and thinks the time has come when a group of dragonmen come on “Search.” The old queen dragon has laid a golden, queen egg, and the men, led by bronze rider F’lar, are looking for intelligent, powerful women candidates to “impress” the new queen. Impression is a psychic link made between person and dragon at the time of hatching that lasts till one of them dies. Lessa, rather than regaining her birthright, goes back with the dragonfolk and *gasp* impresses the new queen, who is the great hope of the dragonriders to revitalize the dragons, who protect the planet from a rain of deadly spores (”threads”) that takes place every two hundred years or so. Few believe the threads are real. F’lar and Lessa do, though. Will the threads reappear? Will Lessa and F’lar triumph over them?

This was heady stuff for me as a teen. Lessa had telepathic powers, plus a psychic dragon. She also got handsome F’lar. The book was sort of the next progression from horse books for me (dragons being just bigger, psychic creatures than horses), plus with “romance” (not really that romantic, as I discovered this time around) and sex. (When the dragons go into heat, so do their humans.) I very much wanted to be Lessa, with psychic powers, a dragon and a tall, dark, handsome man.

With all due respect for its age (same as mine–1968),there was a lot of disturbing, disappointing stuff in there. Lessa is supposed to be a strong female heroine, yet she is both a virgin and unknowing when her dragon goes into heat, and she ends up having sex for the first time with a dragonrider. Further, that dragonrider was having sex with others, won’t share his affection for her, only his frustration, often shakes her physically, and notes that without the dragons involved, their sharing a bed “might as well be rape.” Well, if the shoe fits, and all, then maybe it is.

During the book, Lessa has only one conversation with another woman (unless you count her dragon, and I don’t), and it’s about home economics, so hardly forward-thinking stuff. Women play a subordinate, domestic role in society, and the men are portrayed as polygamous. And while Lessa and F’lar are perhaps almost three dimensional, none of the other characters are. The women are either matrons or sluts, and the men are either loyal or stupid.

Re-reading this book was a curious mix of old joy and current discomfort. I loved this book when I was a geeky, hormonal teen, but find it problematic today. I probably would not recommend it to anyone, much less a young girl, who deserves a book with a strong female character who is friends with other strong female characters, and not subject to the physical and psychological manipulation of men.

I’m having a hard time thinking of a YA or YA fantasy book that has this, though. Even ones that are better about the psycho-sexual relations between the sexes (or within one) usually have the young girl as a loner, and not friends with anyone with whom she talks about things other than boys. What books am I forgetting here, readers?

Inspired by reading friends at In Our Study, I recently read Francine Prose’s Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife. I thought it was a fascinating, compelling close reading of Anne Frank’s life and her diary, which in turn made me excited to read/re-read The Diary of a Young Girl.

I remember reading it at age 10, in grade 5, for a book report about a famous person*. I think I’d read it before that, at least once. I loved Anne’s diary. I related to her, and it helped me learn more about the Holocaust and WWII**. Her beginning resonated then and now:

June 12, 1942: I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support…

June 14, 1942: I’ll begin from the moment I got you, the moment I saw you lying on the table among my other birthday presents.

What I read then was not the same book I just read, though. Anne did keep a diary, in fact many volumes of them, now referred to as the “a” diary. Near the end of their time in the secret annex, a politician on the radio encouraged those in hiding to document their experiences. Anne went back to the beginning of her diary and began an edited version, now known as the “b” diary. After the war, her father Otto Frank took both documents (which had, against all odds, survived) and combined them into what’s called the “c” version. This is what I read as a girl, and the version most people know. The Definitive Edition is more recent, and restores many deleted passages from the a diary, especially ones dealing with sexuality and Anne’s difficult relationship with her mother.

Reading Prose’s book, and then reading Anne’s diary as an adult, gave me a vaster appreciation of the diary as a book. Anne wanted to be a journalist and to publish her writing. At the ages of 13 to 15, when she was writing the diary, she already showed immense facility with storytelling, characterization, humor and emotion. The diary is the work of a skilled, maturing writer. If you haven’t read Anne’s diary, or haven’t read it in years, I highly recommend The Definitive Edition.

*For the book report, we had to dress as our character. I remember I picked out a plaid skirt and tried to style my hair like Anne’s on the cover of the book. Another student in my class, named Peter and on whom I had a crush (as Anne did on two boys named Peter in her diary) also presented that day. His subject, whom he dressed as? Hitler.

**I learned about the Holocaust and WWII when I was about 7 years old from, of all things, a comic book from a Christian bookstore. It was an adaptation of Corey Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place, and I found it while my mother was shopping for other things. She bought it for me and I read it to tatters.

I’m off and running with my summer reading project, Baroque Summer, during which I hope to finish all three of Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle volumes, Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World.

Quicksilver is conveniently split into three books, so I’ll read and recap them one at a time. Book One is, confusingly or conveniently, “Quicksilver.”

We open on mysterious stranger Enoch Root in 1713 Massachusetts, who seeks out Daniel Waterhouse, a ridiculed figure he finds at the Massachusetts Bay Colony Institute of Technology, situated between Charlestown and Newtowne. Initial chapters alternate been Root meeting with Daniel and Root’s past, in which he met a young Isaac Newton. When Root gives Waterhouse a royal summons, though, Waterhouse is persuaded to return to England, and boards the Minerva, whose captain is named van Hoek.

From thence, chapters alternate between the Minerva and Daniel’s past in mid to late 1600’s England. This includes the plague, further religious strife, and burgeoning scientific investigation by those why styled themselves alchemists, and those, like Daniel, who call themselves Natural Philosophers. Daniel was the son of a vocal dissident Puritan. Many around him assume, incorrectly, that he espouses his father’s belief in predestination. From his youth, Daniel encounters many famous historical figures, such as Newton, Leibniz, and Hooke. With them, he participates in numerous experiments. He also struggles to figure out the tangled web of politics and their relation to religion. When his father figure and mentor, Wilkins, dies, Daniel is adrift and worried. He’s not much helped when his former schoolmate Roger Comstock (of the “Golden Comstocks”) offers himself as a patron. As “Quicksilver” comes to a close, Daniel realizes his path will not be simple:

His role, as he could see plainly enough, was to be a leading Dissident who also happened to be a noted savant, a Fellow of the Royal Society. Until lately he would not have thought this a difficult role to play, since it was so close to the truth. But whatever illusions Daniel might once have harbored about being a man of God had died with [his father], and been cremated by [his mistress]. He very much phant’sied being a Natural Philosopher, but that simply was not going to work if had to compete against Isaac, Leibniz, and Hooke. And so the role that Roger Comstock had written for him was beginning to appear very challenging indeed. (330-1)

As you can see, Stephenson employs the archaic “phant-sy” a contraction of phantasy, just as “fancy” is contracted from “fantasy”. The “ph” spelling emphasizes the connection to the Phanatiques, another term for religious dissidents such as the Puritans and the Barkers.

At another point, Daniel comes across a hairpin in the shape of a caduceus, the symbol of the Roman god Mercury, which is also another name for Quicksilver. The caduceus, a rod with two snakes, has been misappropriated by the US medical establishment and correctly should be a rod with one snake, or a Rod of Asclepius, who was a healer.

If this kind of obsessive nerdishness is appealing to you, then you’ll likely enjoy Stephenson’s speculative take on the 17th century.

Is anyone reading along with me? If not, I’m going to take these books in chunks at my own pace. Next up: Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey, a blast from my past followed by Lev Grossman’s The Magicians for July’s meeting of Books and Bars. Then I’ll be back for book 2 of Quicksilver, “King of the Vagabonds”.