Girl Detective

I’ve told you before: you should be reading the comic book series Sweet Tooth. I just tore through volume 4, Sweet Tooth: Endangered Species. It’s about a boy named Gus. He’s a human/animal hybrid in a world that was largely wiped out by a plague, after which all children were born as hybrids. Where did the plague come from? Does it matter? In this fourth collection of the series, there’s a lot of questioning and blurriness about who is good and who isn’t. Another devourable installment in this ripping, post-apocalyptic yarn with an utterly endearing narrator. Reminds me of Y the Last Man and Riddley Walker.

I’m leading a book discussion soon on Flannery O’Connor’s first novel Wise Blood, which I found both fascinating and confounding. To research it, I thought I’d glance at Brad Gooch’s recent Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, but instead I read the whole thing, even though the beginning is slow and dull. (Do we really need so many quotes from schoolmates and teachers in grade school?) But once O’Connor begins to write and pursue being a writer, things get interesting. I appreciated the context the biography provides for her novels and stories, though it did spoil a few endings of some of her stories I hadn’t yet read. If I could have finished The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor before the biography, that would have been a better order of operations.

I wrote already here on how I enjoyed reading Lonesome Dove. It’s book that’s sat on my shelves the longest unread since the mid-90’s. Yet I never stopped hoping I would read it, and this month I finally did.

Post Civil War, two former Texas rangers lead a cattle train north, and cross paths with many and various people. It’s easy for me to see why so many people love this book, as several people, some strangers, shared they did when they saw me reading it. It’s huge, with a giant cast of characters who are complex and engaging, which makes it all the more upsetting when bad things happen to them, as was wont to happen back then in the West. Yet for all the tears I cried over these characters, I wouldn’t take back one.

I loved the experience of reading this book and resented when life interfered with that. I remember feeling similarly when I read A Suitable Boy years ago, another book a friend had recommended highly. Lonesome Dove has that same epic, sprawling, populous, blanket-i-ness that I just want to wrap myself up in, and not crawl out of when I’m done.

This was a great book to take on a trip and not worry I’d finish it while I was gone. I look forward to renting the mini series.

Edited to add: What got me thinking about the book was Rosecrans Baldwin’s piece on it at The Millions:

The novel is excellent, sustained with constant style, and its dramatic excellence increases, withholding and rewarding, as the cowboys move their cattle north. Even the ending fits together. It’s not incredibly deep. But it’s deep enough. And I couldn’t remember the last time I was similarly floored by a long, dramatic, entertaining literary novel.

Bossypants made me laugh. Out loud. A lot. From Fey’s larger-than-life father through her ugly duckling years (and years) to Sarah Palin and beyond, we get a front row seat to Fey’s hectic life, and she makes it entertaining. Like Mindy Kaling did in her book, Fey gushes about Amy Poehler. Who I hope will be writing her own book soon, though Pawnee is a good bathroom book in the meantime.

Bossypants is like spending time with a friend who’s great at telling stories. Fey has made an art out of self-deprecation, and it really works for her.

Ostensibly, I bought Sarah Varon’s graphic novel Bake Sale for my kids, who enjoyed her Robot Dreams and Chicken and Cat books. Really, though, it was at least as much for me. Sarah Varon art and story with recipes? I’m in.

Cupcake runs a bakery, is in a band, but dreams of going abroad and meeting his culinary heroine, Turkish Delight. In his quest to meet his idol, his priorities get a bit mixed up (no pun intended, sorry) but his friend Eggplant helps set things straight. Like all of Varon’s work, it’s charming without being twee and emphasizes friendship and loyalty in ways that speak to this adult as well as my kids.

(I’m beginning to suspect the English are going to try and take the US back. Spell check insists on English spellings lately, not American ones. It wanted me to correct to “emphasises” in the above paragraph. What’s next? Aluminium instead of aluminum? GUESS WHICH ONE WAS UNDERLINED? You heard it here, first. The British are coming…)

I’d heard great things about Patti Smith’s memoir Just Kids even before it won the National Book Award. Having finally gotten around to reading it, I kind of fell in love with it.

It was the summer Coltrane died. The summer of “Crystal Ship.” Flower children raised their empty arms and China exploded the H-bomb. Jimi Hendrix set his guitar in flame in Monterey. AM radio played “Ode to Billie Joe.” There were riots in Newark, Milwaukee, and Detroit. It was the summer of Elvira Madigan, the summer of love. And in this shifting, inhospitable atmosphere, a chance encounter changed the course of my life.

It was the summer I met Robert Mapplethorpe.

What I knew about Smith was that she was the godmother of punk, and the iconic photo of her from the cover of her album Horses. What I knew of Robert Mapplethorpe was censorship scandal over S & M photography, and he died from AIDS-related illness.

What I didn’t know filled a book. I was surprised and interested to learn that she started her artist’s life in poetry, and he his in painting, sculpture and other medium. She didn’t become a musician and he didn’t become a photographer for quite some time. And that time, their youth and their young love affair as they grew into the artists they’d become, is the subject of Smith’s book. She paints gruesome pictures with beautiful words of the early years–rough jobs, no jobs, starving and scrounging for food and art supplies. But she also details their many years in the art culture of the 70’s in NYC and specifically in the Chelsea Hotel. These parts of the narrative were like reading a history of a time I knew little about and was fascinated to learn. Directly after finishing, I did some further research online and plan to explore more of her music and his photography. Perhaps not the latter when the kids are around, though. Like Wise Blood, this book involved me and provoked me to find out more.

A word of warning about e-books. I read this on my nook. My edition had a lot of pictures, but not nearly as many as did the paperback edition. Do not read this electronically. Get the paperback edition of Just Kids. A book about a photographer should contain the maximum number of photos possible, not be limited because of ridiculous permission battles.

We got a nook color because it was well reviewed, we thought it was time to check out an e-reader, and because we could get Angry Birds to distract our boys in restaurants. On the Angry Birds front: big win. But as a reader, while I do like the ability to adjust the text size, I don’t like it as I do a physical book. I’m travelling this weekend and mulled whether to take the nook or a book. Downside to nook: have to take charger and the nook color only has about 8 hours of battery, which is about the length of my trip. Also, it can’t be used during takeoff, and landing. Thus, it’s staying at home, and I’m taking a real book, the oldest shelf sitter I have, one I’m unlikely to finish it in a weekend. I’ll have to see how I do with the tiny text, though. I’ll take my magnifying glasses, as the bifocals I just ordered won’t be in till next week. Happy reading, folks, in whatever format suits you!

I’d never read Flannery O’Connor before, which felt like a huge omission as I fancy myself a writer. So when I started a book group last year, her names was one of the first to go on my TBR list, and we’re starting off the year by reading her first novel, Wise Blood, in January.

That morning Enoch Emery knew when he woke up that today the person he could show it to was going to come. He knew by his blood. He had wise blood like his daddy.

Wise Blood is a short book, just over 200 pages with wide margins. But it’s an uneasy read, and a provoking one. A young man named Hazel Motes takes the train to a bigger city than the tiny place he grew up, and meets an array of strange and amazing folks. He brazenly proclaims a heresy, saying he’s founding The Church of Christ Without Christ, and yet he continues to seek the company and blessing of a blind preacher, all the while pursued by another unusual fellow named Enoch. This is a powerful book, one that immediately provoked me to seek more about its author. I now have her biography by Brad Gooch, and have begun reading the Complete Collected Stories, which contain four of the chapters of Wise Blood. It is a rare book that sort of pushes me out of the reading experience with a hunger for more information, and this book is one of them. I look forward to gleaning more as I continue to ruminate on it.

I was a fan of Jennifer Reese’s when she was books editor at Entertainment Weekly. When they downsized books, though, they let her go. I did some searching, and was happy to find her blogging online at Tipsy Baker. She’s recently taken many of her home-economics-gone-mad escapades and written them up, along with recipes, in Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, which I reviewed earlier this week at Simple Good and Tasty, one of the other sites I write for.

For each food, Reese advises whether to make it or buy it. Granola? Make. Grape nuts? Buy. Hot dog buns? Make. Hamburger buns? Buy. Mayonnaise? Both. Like most modern food lovers, Reese values seasonal, local, sustainably produced foods. But she’s not a harsh ideologue. She acknowledges that sometimes you’re up for making things from scratch and sometimes you’re not.

It’s a cookbook as well as a charming food memoir. Highly recommended.

When I watched the dvd of Bridget Jones’ Diary as part of our holiday movie fest, I realized I could no longer remember what the similarities and differences to the book were. So re-reading Bridget at the first of the year was a joy. Many of the things in the movie, the best things, are lifted straight out from the book, weird stuff in the book is elided or changed. Overall, the movie is a faithful adaptation, retaining the spirit if not all of the details. The book made me laugh, and was a cheering way to start the year.

Teckla is the third novel in the sword and sorcery Vlad Taltos series, and it was something of a slog for me, especially when compared to its predecessors Jhereg and Yendi. Revolution of peasants and a failing relationship do not make for a fun read. Read the series, but don’t start with this one.