Girl Detective

#53 in my 2007 book challenge was Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. This was a long,uncomfortable read for me. It reminded me of my experience reading Confederacy of Dunces. I didn’t like it. I knew it was supposed to be funny but I didn’t find it so. Yet I also could see why it was important, well done, and in the case of IM, a classic.

An unnamed black everyman careers through a series of circumstances that are often excruciating. Slowly, he learns about society, race, and the pressures of history. It’s frustrating to read because of the main character’s naivete and frequent inaction. Also unpleasant are the many injustices done unto him. But his journey to the end and his transformation make this a kind of bildungsroman. Interestingly, my use of a German term isn’t as incongruous as it might be. Ellison was clearly influenced by the philosophy of Hegel, as well as many other dead, white, males. He took a great deal of criticism for this in the wake of the book’s publication and subsequent success–it won the National Book Award, among other plaudits. He notes in the 1981 introduction, though, that he was trying to have an intellectual black main character, something he found lacking in most other literature.

I noticed several writing themes throughout the book. Ellison used terms for light and black deliberately and with positive and negative connotations, respectively. He rarely, if ever, identified characters by their race, and left it to the reader to piece together whether they were white or black through other details. And his prose was influenced by the musical style of the blues. It often had a dreaming, wandering quality that nevertheless carried the narrative through with strength.

I did not enjoy reading this book, but race is always an uncomfortable subject. As an example, I’ve used “black” in this review rather than the more modern and PC “African American”. This book is well worth reading, and I’m glad I did.

Knuffle Bunny Too is a worthy sequel to Mo Willems’s Knuffle Bunny, and a welcome addition to his impressive oeuvre. While I don’t consistently love all his books (such as Leonardo and Edwina) my kids, 4yo Drake and 21mo Guppy, are gaga over Pigeon, Knuffle Bunny, Elephant, and Piggie.

As in its predecessor, KB2 meshes photos with Willems’s illustrations to great effect. Trixie is back, and she’s gone on to great conversational lengths (if not heights) from the conclusion of KB1. She is disturbed to learn that her beloved Knuffle Bunny (pronounced Kuh-nuffle, as it is in German) is not unique. Rivalry and hijinks ensue. Dad gets bossed about; happiness is restored in the end.

Careful observers can detect the slight differences in the bunnies, as well as three appearances of Pigeon. Like Hitchcock, the Pigeon appears somewhere in all of Willems’s books.

Looking for toys that will bring joy? Both The Pigeon and Knuffle Bunny now are in plush form!

#52 in my 2007 book challenge was 1001 Nights of Snowfall, written by Bill Willingham and illustrated by many. It’s a graphic novel original collection of linked short stories, set in Willingham’s mythical Fables world. Fables, for the uninitiated, is a monthly comic from the Vertigo line of DC Comics, very much in the tradition of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. It takes mythic elements–here, characters from fairy tales–and transforms with new, and very modern, twists on the ancient tales. In the series, a group of fables, e.g. Snow White, escaped a rampaging other-worldly Adversary and established a “safe” community within New York City.

1001 Nights of Snowfall has been sitting on my metaphorical shelf for some time. It is a series of short stories set within a larger frame. Snow White, as ambassador for Fabletown, visits a sultan in the East. He says he is going to marry her, then kill her. Instead, she beguiles him with stories, all of which provide details into the past of many of the Fables characters. As in all good fiction, the stories answer many questions, but beget even more.

As in the Sandman series, there are different artists for different stories. The amazing Charles Vess illustrates the framing story. The other stories are done by some of the brightest talents in the arts and comics world, all of whose work is beautifully suited to the fantastic world of the Fables.

My one concern, and it’s a big one, is Willingham’s disturbing sexism, which I’ve noticed occasionally in Fables, but was more prevalent in his previous fantasy works. He’s done a decent job of overcoming, or perhaps hiding, this in the ongoing series by making both male and female characters by turns nasty, loving, loyal, and depraved. In 1001 Nights, though, there is a troubling rape scene in the Frog Prince short story, which is unnecessarily depicted in the art. The story would have been more powerful, IMO, if the story and the illustration showed this in a more sophisticated, allusive and less graphic manner, as was done in the first Snow White short story in the book. As written and illustrated, it places itself squarely in the realm of the torture porn so prevalent in recent movies like Saw and Hostel. It’s a short part (two or three panels) within a longer, very moving story. But for me, it marred the entire work.

I enjoy Fables the series, and I thought this book was quite good. But my reservations about some of the depictions of women in both the series and 1001 Nights result in a qualified recommendation of both.

#51 in my 2007 book challenge was Marrit Ingman’s Inconsolable: How I Threw my Mental Health out with the Diapers.

To borrow her phrase, reading this book made me wonder if Marrit Ingman had been reading my mail.

A good friend, and post-partum depression survivor, lent it to me in the wake of my own struggle with PPD after the birth of Guppy, now 21 months old. Ingman is smart, funny, and often brutally honest about the often ugly underbelly of new motherhood. From a birth that deviated from plan to a rash-y, colic-y infant, Ingman’s experience was so physically and emotionally exhausting that I can’t imagine anyone going through it and NOT becoming depressed. Shifting hormones, sleep deprivation, and the bewilderment of breastfeeding are just a few of the circumstances that make new motherhood less than idyllic.

Ingman details the exhaustion, the ambivalence, the recurring regrets, the suicidal thoughts, and the waves of anger that were all part of her experience. I empathized, I laughed, and I cringed at various points. The book sometimes felt a little disjointed; it’s more a collection of essays than a linear memoir. But the insights into the struggle, and the importance of surviving, are present throughout.

It is taboo for mothers to confess their anger, their confusion, their frustration, their resentment…Looking back now from a place of relative sanity, I see maternal anger everywhere, bubbling through the veneer of politesse, reaching out from inside the platitudinous language we turn to when we are confounded: “I thought I was going to lose my mind.”

I kept taking the Paxil. I started writing and here I am. I woke up to a rash and a screaming kid this morning at 3:30. It’s more manageable most days. You could say it’s better.

I’d discovered from my own experience socializing with other mothers that we could talk about just about anything other than mental illness. We could eat braised puppy and defecate on each other before the topic of PPD would come up.

You have become the person you sneered at when you were young and single and knew everything. You are That Mother.

“You’re very judgmental, you know,” The Good Therapist had pointed out one time. “Do you realize how critical you are of others? You think you’re smarter than everyone else.”

In the end, she reminds us of something I’ve written about many times. Mothers don’t need judgment, especially from other mothers; we need help. When you feel that snarky comment coming on, ask if there’s anything you can do, instead.

Mothers of the world, we’ve got to have each other’s backs. Without working together, we literally cannot survive. Because we are divided–into “working” and “stay-at-home” parents, into “natural” or “attachment” parents and “mainstream” parents–we remain marginalized as a group. We just haven’t noticed because we’re too busy shooting each other down, trying to glean little nuggets of self-satisfaction from an enterprise that is still considered less significant than paid work

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is one of my favorite books I read this year. I recorded her appearance on Oprah. It was mostly Oprah gushing about the book, and an appearance by Richard from Texas, whoEat, Pray, Love was almost completely ignored. I was feeling especially bad about having wasted an hour (and tricked 4yo Drake into watching it with me) when O asked EG for ideas. Gilbert offered these three pieces of advice, not from the book:

1. Begin the morning by asking yourself (and possibly writing in your journal), “What do I really, really, really want?” She was firm about the need for three “really”s.

2. End the day by writing down a short description of the happiest moment of the day.

3. Change your mantra to something positive.

I know it sounds cheesy, but I’ve found that #3 is a big deal. When I was floudering in my post-partum depression I had a discouragingly wide repertoire of bad messages for myself, which included, but are not confined to: I suck at this; I can’t stand this!; I could kill myself; Oh, shoot me now; I hate my life; I’m a moron…

Lather, rinse, repeat.

In April, I attended an outpatient program for my depression, and my mantras have improved dramatically since then. Negative ones still creep in, but I notice them now. Instead, the one getting the most play in my head lately is the chorus from the Disney Cinderella: You can do it. Fortunately it’s not in the squeaky mouse voices.

#50 in my 2007 book challenge was Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. My goal for the year was fifty, and I’m happy I’m going to exceed it. See, it IS possible for parents of small children to read, and to read books of substance!

This is labeled memoir/graphic narrative, since it can hardly be called a graphic novel. This is one of the best books I’ve read this year. I’ve not read her comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, but friends have and recommend it. Bechdel’s art perfectly reflects her memoir–gentle, sad, measured, careful, and caring. It is both expressive and engaging. Interestingly, it called to my mind the style of Carla Speed McNeil, who writes/illustrated in the very different genre of fantasy.

The fun home of the title is how the family jokingly refers to the family business inherited by her father, a funeral home. Bechdel deftly balances myriad elements–her own memories, childhood journal excerpts (that amazingly manage not to be dull or irritating, but rather deserving of empathy or pity), literary interpretation, humor, and sadness–to tell the story about her family and specifically her father, a complex and intriguing person. It would be easy to read him as a villain if Bechdel didn’t so meticulously make him human and complicated. Further impressing me was that the story jumped back and forth in time, yet was easy to follow. This book is lovely to read both literally and pictorially. It’s a beautiful example of the power of graphic narratives.

#49 in my 2007 book challenge was Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma.

The blessing of the omnivore is that she can eat a great many things in nature. The curse of the omnivore is that when it comes to figuring out which of these things are safe to eat, she’s pretty much on her own.

Pollan’s thoughtful, thorough, and provoking book is one of the best I’ve read all year. In fluid prose that is neither needlessly academically esoteric, or dumbed down for the masses, Pollan examines four food systems, the meals they produce, and their hidden costs and suffering. The four are agricultural industrial, organic industrial, organic sustainable, and hunted/gathered. In the end, it’s not hard to determine where Pollan’s bias lies after all his research and experience. What makes this book so compelling, though, is that he takes effort and time to explore and explain all the alternative views. The cruelty and problems of industrial farming are clearly delineated, but Pollan’s book situates them in time and place to make them understandable, though nonetheless disturbing.

I was surprised and concerned to learn how prevalent corn byproducts are in the North American diet. Another point I especially liked was that eaters must either be ignorant of where their food comes from and how it’s processed, or choose from smaller, more challenging method of eating, like vegetarianism, or a focus on locally farmed and sourced organic food.

To visit a modern Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) is to enter a world that for all its technological sophistication is still designed on seventeenth-century Cartesian principles: Animals are treated as machines–”production units”–incapable of feeling pain. Since no thinking person can possibly believe this anymore, industrial animal agriculture depends on a suspension of disbelief on the part of the people who operate it and a willingness to avert one’s eyes on the part of everyone else. Egg operations are the worst,

Pollan quotes Levi-Strauss about the ideal that food should be both good to think and good to eat. According to Pollan, this means that the eater knows how and where her food is produced, and feels good about. There’s another interpretation of the Levi-Strauss, phrase, though, that lends itself less well to Pollan’s text. As Pollan does, though, I find it a useful phrase that will help to guide my food choices. I’m no longer willfully ignorant of the provenance of much of my food. Already I do most of my family’s shopping at our local grocery cooperative. But after the book, I’ve resolved to seek out even more local, organic food, eschew products with high-fructose corn syrup, and cut back on the non-local, non-seasonal organic items that have hidden costs (e.g., petroleum used in transportation) in addition to their high prices.

This book has changed the way I think about food, and will change the way I shop and eat.

Greg Mortenson is fighting a personal war on terror that has an impact on all of us, and his weapon is not guns or bombs, but schools. What could be a better story than that?

–Parade editor-in-chief Lee Kravitz

#48 in my 2007 book challenge was Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. I was not excited when a friend picked this for one of my book groups. It sounded dull and a bit sappy. Once I started to read, though, my grinch-y heart melted, and the book completely won me over. Mortenson’s story is extraordinary, and it shines through all of Relin’s overwritten prose and Penguin’s sloppy spelling and typography mistakes.

After a failed attempt to climb K2, Mortenson got lost in Pakistan, and wound up in the village of Korphe. When he learned that the children were schooling themselves outdoors in the harsh climate, he promised he’d build them a school. Not only did he keep his promise, but he discovered a calling that led him to build schools throughout Pakistan, and into war-torn Afghanistan. By educating children, particularly girls, he continues to build a legacy of peace and understanding that defies the roots of terrorism. The details of Mortenson’s adventures are astonishing, and his story provides interesting insight into America’s conflict in the east, and with the Taliban and Al-Quaeda.

Read this book. Buy it, or request it at your library. Choose it for your book group. It’s a rich, provocative narrative; the effects linger after the last page.

If you buy the book at their site, 7% goes to girls’ scholarship in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

#47 in my 2007 book challenge was Elizabeth Swados’s My Depression: A Picture Book. With simple black line drawings and minimal texts, Swados sketches out her history of depression and anxiety, as well as her “little cloud” that grew into a “black hole”. She bravely admits how badly she behaves when she’s depressed, both towards herself and others. She also has amusing lists, such as things people have told her to try to get out of the depression on her own. In the end, though, a combination of medicine and therapy are what worked for her, and her story is of hope and self-acceptance. Her illustrations, reminiscent of Shel Silverstein’s, are deliberately messy, conveying the frazzled ugliness of depression, as well as the silly joy in well-being. I recommend this book for those who have gone through a depression, who are in a depression, or who have known someone who’s been depressed. That should pretty much cover us all, I think.

#46 in my 2007 book challenge was The Amber Spyglass, the final book of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. The third book felt a bit bloated compared to the first two, and the action slowed in places. But Pullman’s skill at multiple-world building continued as a strength, and the details, of the land of the dead, especially, were very satisfying. The polar bears are back, as are the fascinating daemons, but they’re both given short shrift compared to angels and heaven. The adults switch allegiances so often I lost track–who’s good and who’s bad, now?

Pullman’s narrative became much more anti-religion, as he expounded on in an interview with Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair when TAS was published. Interestingly, though, the absence of religion created voids that Pullman filled in the narrative with very similar things. Religion was a giant mistake, and there was no creator. But Dust was sentient, and had “gifted” humanity with consciousness, so it was a common, creative, animating spirit. The character of Will symbolizes free will, yet so much of the story is driven by fate, related to Lyra by the alethiometer, the witches from prophecies, and Mary Malone by the I Ching. I think Pullman worked hard to have an atheistic fantasy, but the end result was an agnostic one, which is a much richer, more complex result, I thought.

I liked the series a lot; I didn’t love it. Lyra never felt fully realized to me, though Will did. Some aspects of Dust were overexplained, while others were given less time. For example, why did the Dust stop rushing out of the world only because of humans–why hadn’t it done that before with the mulefa? But I was engaged with it from beginning to end, I cared about the characters, though some of them didn’t ring completely true with me, and the plot drew me through. It was fun, it was mostly well-written, and it had some big ideas that are interesting to discuss. It was well worth my time, even if I didn’t connect so completely as to love it.

Oh, I do rather miss the childish phrase, “No, duh!” I read a few things recently that brought it to mind.

1. Children need sleep.
2. Boy children shorten their mothers lives. (What? Only 34 weeks? I swear it feels like more than that already.) (Links from Arts and Letters Daily)

And, finally, one not-so-obvious thing that wasn’t at all surprising. I felt chagrined that I hadn’t intuited it between the lines:

3. Dumbledore was gay.

I am enchanted at how J.K. Rowling has the entire complicated backstory of her universe rattling around in her head. She could probably just do Q & A events for the rest of her life.

#45 in my 2007 book challenge was The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman, the sequel to The Golden Compass. It is a characteristic second book in a trilogy. The beloved and hated characters are back, the plot speeds along, but the end is more cliffhanging than that of the first book. I am glad to be reading this trilogy when I can immediately pick up book 3, since there was a long time between the publishing of the last two books.

TSK shares many strengths with TGC: nefarious villains, engaging child protagonists, religion, adventure, and the utterly engaging daemons, familiars who take animal form and accompany their human partners in the world of heroine Lyra. But it also shares the shortcomings. The adults are either entirely good, or entirely evil. Religion is completely messed up. And all parents are, in some way, bad parents; the only good adults are non parents. The children are wise and well spoken beyond their years. As the book progressed, I became increasingly irritated by the construct of the alethiometer, the device the first book was named after. Since it’s all knowing and Lyra can magically read it exactly and perfectly, then there is little that’s left to chance for the children. They know far too much about what’s happening and what’s going to happen for there to be a believable and constant tension. Finally, I thought there were far too few armored polar bears in this book compared to its predecessor.

I feel bad criticizing this book; I know so many friends who love the series, and they are friends whose taste I admire and respect. I raced through the book, and enjoyed it. But I was also nagged by little things as I sped along that left me feeling unsatisfied by the end.

#44 in my 2007 book challenge was Confessions of a Blabbermouth from the DC Minx line of graphic novels. It’s written by Mike Carey and his 15yo daughter Louise, and illustrated by Aaron Alexovich.

Tasha Flanagan is a mildly rebellious teen blogger. Her mother starts to date a guy Tasha doesn’t like, and he has a daughter that she both likes and hates. Things get tense on a group vacation. Though dark things are hinted at, the reality is much more palatable. Tasha is funny and likeable. The art is manga-influenced, and suits the frenetic pace and mood of the book. Overall, though, this reads more like a book for pre-teens than a book for older teens and adults. It’s enjoyable and clever, but there’s not much depth.

#43 in my 2007 book challenge was Re-Gifters from the DC Minx line of graphic novels. Of the ones I’ve read thus far, this is far and away my favorite. Dixie is a Korean-American in LA, who juggles a crush on a fellow Hapkido classmate with school, home, and neighborhood troubles. There’s some good stuff in here about race and socio-economics, and some complex characters. The art is both distinctive and accessible. The book eschews Formula A of YA, which is that the cute popular guy finally comes to recognize the wonder that is the main character. (See Cinderella, Pride and Prejudice, Sixteen Candles, etc.) Instead it goes with Formula B, which is when the heroine realizes that the cute guy is not worthy of her affections, and instead transfers them to the geekier/badder boy who has been inexplicably nice to her. (See Emma, Clueless, Revenge of the Nerds, etc.)

While it is formula, the details are good enough for me to recommend this. I find the Minx line a bit curious, though. I think it’s intended for teens, yet the stories read really “young” to me, more like middle-grade books, especially in their near-total avoidance of sexuality. I did find it interesting that the bad boy in this book was nicknamed “Dillinger” for an unspecified reason, though.

Emily Hill writes such a compelling essay on Patrick Hamilton that I think I’m bound to read his work and become one of the readers she identifies at the beginning:

the skimmer, the trash whore, the short-attention giggle-seeker, the populist, the escapist, the wistful romanticist, the book group conversationalist, the academic, the self-improver, the factual addict, the fetishist, the literary stalker.

I’ve been many (but not all) of these over the course of my reading life; they’re not mutually exclusive. Generally, I’m an escapist. Hamilton’s stories sound as if they’d be _outstanding_ in that capacity. (Thanks to Mental Multivitamin for the link)

From Persephone Books:

To celebrate The Fortnight in September, the extraordinary novel by RC Sherriff (extraordinary because it is not really ‘about’ anything except a family on holiday in Bognor Regis, and yet it is impossible to put down - or forget) we thought we would tempt you with a special September offer.

If, before Monday morning, you order two books on the website, and one includes The Fortnight in September, we will send you a third book free of charge: just pay the normal amount for two books and write in the Additional Information box which book you would like free. (This offer also applies in Europe and America; although the third book will be sent surface mail and may take longer to arrive.)

Persephone resurrects out of print books by or about women’s lives and reprints them in lovely softcover editions. If you’ve thought about ordering before but didn’t know where in their impressive catalog to start, I recommend Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, a sassy tale of mistaken identity reminiscent of a 30’s era Hollywood romantic comedy, something that would have starred Clark Gable or Cary Grant. I also loved The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, about a family forced by circumstance to take on non-traditional roles. It helped me make the decision to resign my job after I had Drake, and four years later the memory of it is urging me to move back in the direction of paid, professional work.

But if you’re still not sure, give them a call (minding the time difference in London). The women of Persephone would be happy to help you find something suitable.

#42 in my 2007 book challenge was Nicholas Kulish’s Last One In, a satire of the war in Iraq. It’s a fish-out-of-water premise when gossip columnist Jimmy Stephens screws up and gets himself sent to cover the imminent US invasion of Iraq. Jimmy is a good everyman character–a little bit sleazy, a lot self-involved, but with an essential goodness that outs in the end. It’s easy to relate to his shock at the conditions and his confusion about so many aspects of his new circumstances. Last One In is dark, funny, and sad. It doesn’t descend to cruelty. It’s a thought-provoking ground-level view of the grueling mundanity of military action as well as the reasons people go, and the reasons people stay or leave.

#41 in my 2007 book challenge was Karen Joy Fowler’s Jane Austen Book Club, a movie of which is coming soon to a theater near you.

When she spoke at The Twin Cities’ Book Fest a few years ago, she said she was at a bookstore reading for another author, and saw a sign for “The Jane Austen Book Club.”

She thought it was a great title, and decided to buy the book and was speculating on what the plot would be when she realized that the flyer was for a book group, not a book about a book group. Then she realized she wanted to write that book, or perhaps that she had to.

I know I’m not the only one who’s glad she did. I read this book in 2004. At the time, I’d read Pride and Prejudice once, and seen the A & E miniseries, as well as the films Mansfield Park and Clueless, which is based on Austen’s Emma. Fowler’s novel revolves through six characters, each of whom host a discussion of one of Austen’s six completed novels. Cleverly, there is also an email interlude that pays homage to Austen’s unfinished work. (Sanditon or Lady Susan, I think.)

I liked Fowler’s characters, and their development over the book. I also liked their discussion of Austen’s novels and the various interpretations. This made me want to read all six novels, which I now have done: Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion. I wondered how these readings would affect my experience of TJABC.

At first, I experienced literary vertigo and whiplash. There were now so many layers to Fowler’s writing and characters. Like Austen, she has a biting wit, and her book was full of sentences begging to be underlined and read aloud. Characters brought to mind one Austen character, then later another. The plots paralleled Austen, diverged, then came together again.

The first time I read TJABC, I liked it, and it inspired me to read six novels that I at least admired, and often enjoyed. This time, it impressed me greatly. Fowler not only wrote a book that stands on its own, but she simultaneously made it an homage to Austen’s writing, stories and characters. This re-reading of Fowler’s book makes me want to re-read Austen’s books. Fowler has created a lovely book that can keep on giving, both to current and future admirers of Jane.

In the book one character and her husband are fans of the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the movie, the husband is played by Marc Blucas, who played Buffy’s boyfriend Riley on the show.

#40 in my 2007 book challenge was A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, credited to the late Michael Dorris. It was written at a time when he and then-wife Louise Erdrich were collaborating on everything they each wrote, and it has many of Erdrich’s hallmarks: Native American female characters; difficult and disappointing parental figures; interwoven, overlapping narratives; and family secrets. The only Erdrich-ian characteristic I didn’t see was dreamy, magical realism.

The book is divided into three sections, each narrated by a different character: Rayona, Christine (Ray’s mother), and Ida, (Christine’s mother). These three strong characters are what elevate this novel. They are complex and flawed, yet still easy to like, even though some of their choices are hard to understand, especially as they relate to family secrets and emotions.

If you like Erdrich’s work and have never read this, it’s an interesting addition to her oeuvre, whatever role she played. While Dorris may have done bad things, and he came to a tragic end, this book is about the redemptive power of family and love.

If you haven’t read Erdrich, I recommend her Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birth Year, and The Antelope Wife.

Outer Life did a typically thoughtful and funny entry on book binging, and book purging. He notes that genre books are an easy target.

As a practicing purger, I recognized the value of the genre tactic a while ago. Like OL, I got rid of all my McDonald Fletch books, even though the first and second were really good. I got rid of my Anne McCaffrey dragon books that were so compelling when I was a teen. Ditto with a bunch of bodice rippers.

I’ve done a pretty good job of borrowing books from the library rather than buying them; this has significantly reduced my book expenditures.

I wonder if book binging coincide with general upswings in the retail market, and hopeful feelings of consumers for the economy? Or, more interesting, could it have an inverse relationship?