Girl Detective

Subtitled “The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef,” Gabrielle Hamilton’s memoir Blood Bones and Butter was one I wanted to love. Then, as I read it, I wanted to like it in a sustained manner. By the end, though, I was finishing it just to finish it.

It has some wonderful stuff in it, particularly about the value of hard work, the echoes of childhood trauma, and kitchen culture. But for me, Hamilton’s book lacks a key element to a good memoir: a sense of humor, about oneself particularly. The book’s subject matter is not light stuff: childhood neglect, early drug abuse and an unpleasant marriage. But these felt all the heavier to read because of skipping around in time, and describing things in detail, multiple times, like her relationship with her sister:

“She’s the only one in my family who’s held on tight to me, and I will never let go of her.” (153)

“I fully and completely and 100 percent understand and comprehend what she is saying–to its fullest meaning–within hte first fifteen seconds. And unfailingly by the end of the third sentence. I’m not saying I’m that smart. I’m saying I get her that well. We Two Are One.” (154)

“I understand every single word of it, every stop for gas, every detour. I think exactly what she thinks.” (154)

“she’s the only member of my family that I still know the entire, detailed landscape of.” (156)

A few times she would announce an event as if the reader should know it, then go on to describe it. Why not just lead up to it? Further, she includes the insight of an older person who’s gone through therapy when writing events and relationships, rather than showing us those things through herself at that stage.

This book made my fingers itch to edit it: arrange events in chronological order, cut excessive description, remove the hindsight, and gently emphasize points of tenderness and humor. Despite some good parts, I can’t recommend it. It’s reviews are positive, though, so I’m in the minority on this one. YMMV.

My friend of New Century Reading recommended The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine by Alina Bronsky. She mentioned it was an interesting contrast to Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, I found this novel had the same kind of staggering, head-tilting, WTF-ness as that Russian classic. It’s a funny, bizarre and tragic story (sometimes all at once) of three generations of Russian women with a Tartar background told by the fearsome and boggling grandmother, Rosalinda who was hateful, but not necessarily without charm, or at least wit, however lacerating:

Sulfia wasn’t very gifted. In fact, to be honest, I’d say she was rather stupid. And yet somehow she was my daughter–worse still, my only daughter…

But I also felt sorry for her…This daughter I did have was deformed and bore no resemblance to her mother. She was short–she only came up to my shoulders. She had no figure whatsoever. She had small eyes, and a crooked mouth. And, as I said, she was stupid. She was already seventeen years old, too, so there was little chance she would get any smarter.

But as the book goes on, we learn that perhaps Sulfia isn’t as stupid as Rosa thinks, and perhaps Rosa is not the most reliable narrator. Bizarre, but entertaining.

Christmas season, and time to break out the Christmas books and DVDs. Our collection and things we borrow from the library gets a little longer each year. Like the “5 Gifts” post, I will try to post this earlier, say after Thanksgiving, next year.

Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas. A Muppet production based on a favorite book from my childhood by Russell and Lillian Hoban, who also wrote the Frances the badger books. The video adheres closely to the story and the Muppets are a perfect fit. 8yo Drake and I enjoyed this. 5yo Guppy said he hated it, and my husband G. Grod slept through much of it, as he does every year.

Bridget Jones’ Diary. Not for the kids, and not exactly a Christmas movie, but it starts and ends at the holidays, and I love it. I love the casting (Hugh Grant and Colin Firth), the soundtrack and timing, the humor. I feel like I might be a bad feminist for loving it so, what with Bridget only redeeming herself in the end by getting the guy, having humiliated herself yet again, by racing around town in her tiger-striped undies. Don’t care. Love.

A Charlie Brown Christmas. Guppy got to pick this one. He and Drake both loved it, though I’m not sure they’re reliable critics, as they also loved the lame ass sequel on the DVD.

The Shop Around the Corner. Not with the kids. Perhaps my favorite Christmas film, and one I love much better than that other Jimmy Stewart classic. Remade as In the Good Old Summertime and You’ve Got Mail.

A Christmas Story. No one in our family had ever seen this, which some friends considered travesty, one we corrected this year. Enjoyable, funny, but I think it’s classic would grow with repeat viewings, which we haven’t had yet. Drake liked it; Guppy didn’t.

Shaun the Sheep: We Wish Ewe a Merry Christmas (with Seasons Bleatings!) Guppy picked this, since he hated the last one. Both boys were delighted and cackled gleefully and often, as they always do with the Shaun DVDs. If you’re a Wallace and Gromit fan and haven’t checked them out, do.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas. When Guppy was younger–two or three years ago?–we watched this and he hid his eyes and said he didn’t like the green guy. He’s acquired the taste though, and loved it this year.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Before watching, Guppy said he didn’t like it. After, he’d changed his mind. Both boys were confused by the shunning of Rudolph. I’m convinced that Hermie’s (why does it sometimes sound like Herbie?) dentistry is a deliberate metaphor for something else. And the defanging of the Bumble seems more cruel every year.

The Lemon Drop Kid. Recommended by Connie Willis in her MIracle and Other Christmas Stories. Bob Hope as a con artist who owes a gangster money by Christmas. Good, not great, but has him singing Silver Bells with his co-star. Worth it, if not must-watch for every year.

More to come…

My husband’s a fan of Willis’ books, but I’d not yet read them, so figured her Christmas book Miracle and Other Christmas Stories was as good as any to start with. In it, she has several short stories, all about weird aspects of Christmas, like what if a spirit turned up in your house, or if Mary and Joseph showed up at a church on Christmas Eve? The stories are good, but even better is her introduction and her end notes, in which she details her love of the holidays (e.g., Miracle on 34th Street), her dislike of certain aspects (the universal adulation of It’s a Wonderful Life) and includes lists of recommended reading and movies, several of which I hadn’t even heard of that are now on my list. (The Lemon Drop Kid? The Three Godfathers?) And I’ll certainly be seeking out more Willis books in the new year.

I dove into Steven Brust’s second Vlad Taltos novel, Yendi, and finished the next day, kind of bummed I had other reading to do before tearing into the third book. These are wildly entertaining sword-and-sorcery tales, and Brust can plot like a mothereffer. The world of the books is fascinating and complex. These books hold up marvelously these 20 years later, even if they do conform to a lot of the fantasy tropes that Diana Wynne Jones tweaked in her clever The Tough Guide to Fantasyland.

My only gripe is that there are brothels and the league of witches is called The Bitch Patrol. If we can create a fantasy world, can’t we imagine a world without prostitution, of where sex workers are honored, not exploited? Joss Whedon tried and failed epically to do the latter in Firefly, though Carla Speed McNeil does an interesting take on it in her series Finder.

Sigh. Three days later than last year.

From the archives, on gift giving for kids:
Star Tribune 12/24/89 - Pat Gardner “Tender Years”

The weeks of hectic preparation are coming to a close. Within days, the magic will begin to unfold for our children and, vicariously through them, for us. Just as we remember those wonderful Christmas Eves and mornings long ago, our children will one day look back on these days. How will they remember them? What are you giving your children this year?

I know one family of modest means that makes a great effort to celebrate Christmas in the best way possible. Their children always find five gifts under the tree. And more than that, the gifts are always accompanied by a parent. Here’s how they do it.

The children always receive a gift to hug and love. Sometimes it’s a doll or maybe a stuffed animal. Every Christmas each child has something to care for, to carry along and finally at night to share a bed, secrets and dreams.

The wise parents know that the children will themselves learn to care for others by practicing on dolls and stuffed animals. Mom and Dad demonstrate rocking the stuffed bear and wiping the doll’s face. They talk about being gentle and giving care.

More important, they treat their children tenderly. They make a special effort at this busy time of year for a little more lap time, more frequent hugs and all the physical care and attention their young children need.

The children in this family always receive something to read. The parents know that to give them books is to give them wings. The little ones get books, and the big ones get books. Books aren’t foreign to any member of this family. Books are treasures. And more than that, they become a daily connection between parent and child.

The wise parents know that the best way to raise a reader is to read to a child….They share curiosity. They take the time to listen patiently to their beginning reader. They share discoveries. Through books, these parents explore worlds within their home and beyond their front door with all of their children.

The children receive toys and games. These parents are concerned about each child’s skills and find fun ways to enhance their present capabilities and encourage further development. For a grasping baby, a crib gym; for a beginning walker, a push toy; for a pre-schooler, a shape and color sorter; for a beginning reader, a game of sequence and strategy.

The parents know that play is the work of childhood. They understand that to meet a child at her level of accomplishment is to encourage success in play. Success stimulates motivation and interest in a challenge. So the parents judge their toy and game choices carefully. Not too easy, but not too hard.

They they do the most important thing. They play with their children. The children see that learning is a toy, that it’s fun to challenge oneself, that play can be a very social activity, that it’s OK to win and also to lose and that Mom and Dad wholeheartedly approve of play.

The children in this family always receive a gift of activity. From a simple ball or jump rope to a basketball hoop or a pair of ice skates, they always have one gift that encourages action.

The parents know that those children who, by nature, are very active may need to be channeled into acceptable and appropriate activities. And they know that those children who, by nature, are very passive may need to be encouraged to move with purpose. But their message to their children is that physical activity is important and good.

These parents make their message clear by joining their children in physical play. They skate and play catch. They’re on the floor with their crawlers and walk hand in hand with their toddlers. They get bumped and bruised and laugh and shout. They sled and they bowl. And many times in the next few weeks when resting on the couch sounds much more inviting, these parents will give their kids one more gift. They’ll get up and play with them.

The children always receive a gift of artistic expression. They might find crayons, paints or markers in their stockings. It might be a gift of clay this year or rubber stamps or scissors and glue. The materials change, but the object remains the same: create with joy.

These wise parents aren’t terribly concerned about the mess of finger paints. They’re more concerned about the exposure to unique sensations. They want their children to use their imaginations. They want their children to approach life in a hands-on fashion. And they want them to express themselves through their artistic activities in ways that exceed their vocabularies.

After taking more than a year off after Season 3 of The Wire, my husband and I watched Season 4 in a blaze. This is the one about the kids, the schools and the mayoral race, and I flat-out loved it. This is my favorite of the seasons thus far, and I think it was because of the kids. Like always, the series breaks my heart then builds it back up. It gives and it takes away. Phenomenal storytelling and characterizations. If you haven’t watched, you should. And winter re-run season is a great time. Go spend some time in Baltimore.

HOLY CATS, PEOPLE! The complete series is at amazon right now for $82. What are you waiting for?

The sixteenth graphic novel in the Fables series, Fables: Super Team didn’t move me much. While it was a more light-hearted counter to the last, very dark, book (to which it was a coda), it still felt…thin. Rather like they hadn’t been able to contain the story in the last collection, it spilled over a little, then they stretched it to its own collection. Not a good one to start with. Go back to the first graphic novel for that.

Also, a plug to visit your local comic store, which you can find at the Comic Shop Locator, where it was available a week before it is at bookshops and amazon.

I was spurred to re-read (original post here) Jeffrey Moore’s The Memory Artists when I resumed work on my endless novel-in-progress.*

One of the main characters (there are several), Noel Burun, has a combination of synesthesia (he sees letters and sounds in color) which is linked to hypermnesia, an overly elaborate memory system (similar ot photographic, or eidetic, memory). The different way his brain works makes it hard for him to function in society, so he mostly spends time in a psychology lab doing tests with his mentor, Emile Vorta, the fictional editor of the book, adding sometimes illuminating, sometimes hilarious, and always suspect end notes. He lives in a crumbling mansion with his mother, whose memory is deteriorating rapidly as a result of Alzheimer’s disease and is fast becoming exhausted of money and physical resources in caring for her.

Orbiting Noel are a sarcastic friend from the lab, a woman with a singular hole in her memory, and a genial doofus-savant. Chapters switch from third person, focusing on one of two of these at time, or individual journals, the mother’s being particularly heartbreaking. All these combine for a complex portrait of friendship, a few mysteries, and an interesting consideration of opposites and extremes. While it had a bit too much wrapping up in just a few pages at the end, the entire book, its characters, and its neurological topics were all utterly engaging to me. A lovely book, with lots of great visuals, that’s worth tracking down, since it seems to be out of print in the US.

* When Guppy started kindergarten this fall, I rejoined my writing group and decided I wanted to have another go at a novel where the main character has synesthesia (a cross wiring of the senses). I’ve been working on it for years (9 as of November; sigh) yet the break I took from when Guppy was 1.5 to starting school at 5.5 felt like a productive one, generating a few plot ideas to make the novel more complex, timely, and (I hope) interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was wrong.

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

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

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