Girl Detective

For a recent trip, 3yo Drake’s loveys got lost in the shuffle of packing and were left behind. I worried that he would have trouble falling asleep away from home and without his bedtime friends, so I asked my husband G. Grod to send them. He went to the Fed Ex office. Overnighting the duck and the lamb would be $33. He paused. $33 was well beyond the “might as well send them” realm, and into “must be done” territory.

I know if I send them, he’ll be fine without them, he mused. But…

The woman behind the counter looked at him sympathetically and shook her head. “You gotta send them.”

G. Grod nodded. And paid $33.

I gave Drake a teddy bear at Grammy’s house, and he slept fine. His friends arrived the next day in their $33 box. I can only hope that his good night’s sleep was due to his certainty that the friends were on their way. I’m sure he knew his dad would not let him down.

I watched 58 movies in 2006, averaging nearly 5 a month. Apologies for no italics or links, but all are linked in the 2006 Movie Challenge category on the right. I saw only ten in theaters, but I enjoyed all of them. I was more selective this year about what films I saw in theaters, and this made them worth the effort and cost of childcare, movie snacks, and non-matinee prices:

Brokeback Mountain
Capote
Cars
Casino Royale
Good Night, and Good Luck
Lawrence of Arabia
New World, The
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
Thank You for Smoking
Walk the Line

Eighteen were from our home library, either on DVD or Tivo. I often skip over what we have unwatched at home in favor of something new from the library. As with books, I’m going to try and improve on the ratio, because there were fewer disappointments (Alfie, The Quiet Man, Sense & Sensibility) than delights (Happy Accidents, The Palm Beach Story, Triplets of Belleville, Wuthering Heights):

Alfie (1966)
Happy Accidents
Lady Eve, The
Nausicaa
Palm Beach Story, The
Pride & Prejudice (1940)
Producers, The (1968)
Quiet Man, The
Ref, The
Sense & Sensibility
Silverado
Spellbound (2002)
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Triplets of Belleville
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
What’s Cooking
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Wuthering Heights (1939)

I borrowed thirty-two from the library, but only finished thirty of them, since I couldn’t stay awake for either Ong-Bak or Hero. There were a lot of disappointments here (13 Conversations About One Thing, The Family Stone, Junebug, Made, Nicholas Nickleby, Rumor Has It, Sky High, and The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill), especially compared to the few I thought were really good (The Constant Gardener and Inside Man). It’s further reason to be more selective about reserving items from the library. Just because they’re free doesn’t mean they’re worth my time.

13 Conversations about One Thing
40 Year-Old Virgin, The
Anchorman
Broken Flowers
Bruce Almighty
Constant Gardener, The
Crash
Family Stone, The
Fever Pitch (2005)
Graduate, The
Grizzly Man
Hustle & Flow
In Her Shoes
Inside Man
Junebug
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Last Holiday
Lord of War
Made
Matador, The
Millions
Mysterious Skin
Nicholas Nickleby
Proof
Rumor Has It
Sky High
Syriana
Upside of Anger, The
Wedding Crashers
Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

A few days ago, I heard Drake pass gas loudly. My husband heard it too, and he and I looked up together. Drake gazed calmly back at us, and asked, “Who’s at the door?”

I take two things from this event. Lying about farting is innate behavior, not learned. It’s also probably a developmental milestone the childhood books neglect to mention.

I read 69 books in 2006, an average of 5.75 a month. Many were young-adult titles and graphic novels, both of which tend to be fast reads. While I trounced my fifty-book goal, I slowed down considerably at the end of the year, reading less than just after Guppy was born. Making books a priority is a continuous process, not an event. When I have less time for myself, I need to put reading somewhere after sleep and food, and before just about everything else. I liked most of the books I read, so it’s time well spent. I’ve starred the dozen titles that I most enjoyed. I apologize for the lack of italics and links, but all reviews are listed in the 2006 Book Challenge category on the right.

I was disappointed by several sequels: Bangkok Tattoo, Batman Dark Victory, Catwoman: When in Rome, Magic Lessons, Tears of the Giraffe, Scott Pilgrim #3, and Second Helpings. The third book in Alexander McCall Smith’s Precious Ramotswe series was better than #2, though, so perhaps there’s hope for some of those other less-than-stellar sequels.

In addition to the lame sequels, I didn’t care for The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which I found precious and affected. I didn’t find Allende’s Zorro emotionally compelling, though I thought the history was interesting.

I liked four books enough to purchase after I had borrowed them from the library: King Dork, Reading Like a Writer, Black Swan Green and The Thirteenth Tale.

From the home shelves, I finally got around to Middlesex and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I enjoyed them both a great deal, and will try to go “shopping” on my own shelves more often this year.

I re-read 18 books last year, several in preparation for the sequels. Bangkok 8 and Magic or Madness were fun to read again. And I appreciate Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights more with each reading.

The Thirteenth Tale was an homage to the Brontes, as well as a fun read. Pete Hautman’s The Prop had good characters and a tight plot; I raced through it.

Intuition got a lot of good reviews last year, but I was more impressed by Sigrid Nunez’s The Last of Her Kind. Both were good stories well told, but I felt Nunez did a better job with POV.

Finally, Kathryn Davis’s Thin Place was probably the best modern book I read this year. Davis took some wild leaps in POV, and pulled them together into a lingering, unsettling whole.

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens
Baby by Patricia MacLachlan
Bangkok 8 by John Burdett
Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett
Batman Dark Victory by Loeb/Sale
Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
*Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
Bungalow Kitchens by Jane Powell
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Catwoman: When in Rome by Loeb/Sale
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
Goodnight, Nobody by Jennifer Weiner
Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks
Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard
*How to Read Like a Writer by Francine Prose
Hypnobirthing by Marie Mongan
I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Intuition by Allegra Goodman
*Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
*Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke
*King Dork by Frank Portman
Magic Lessons by Justine Larbalestier
Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier
*Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Monkey Island by Paula Fox
Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith
My Sister’s Continent by Gina Frangello
Persuasion by Jane Austen
*Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Salvation Run by Mary Gardner
Satellite Down Rob Thomas
Scott Pilgrim v. 1 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim v. 2 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim v. 3 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith
The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark
The Accidental by Ali Smith
The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
The Explosive Child by Ross Greene
The Film Snob’s Dictionary by Kamp/Levi
The Finishing School by Muriel Spark
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
*The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez
The Memory Artists by Jeffrey Moore
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanka
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
*The Prop by Pete Hautman
The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
*The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis
*The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Truth and Consequences by Alison Lurie
V for Vendetta by Moore/Lloyd
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
*Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Zorro by Isabel Allende

‘Tis the season for end-of-year reading lists. They’re fun for comparison and contrast. But this was the only books-not-read list I saw (via Pages Turned), and I found it so funny I am compelled to follow suit. I could come up with any number of unread books. Instead, I’ll just note the obvious ones.

1. Ines of My Soul by Isabel Allende. Bought (breaking my new I’m-only-buying-books-that-I’ve read-and-loved vow) on sale at Target after a friend invited me to see Allende speak. I read the first 50 pages, then stopped because I found out my friend was reading Zorro. I started Zorro (from library), took forever to finish it because I didn’t love it, then returned Ines.

2. Charmed Thirds by Megan McCafferty. I re-read the first two books in her trilogy, and didn’t like them as well as I remembered. I had to finish Middlesex for my book group, so I returned this to the library unread, since I couldn’t muster any excitment to read it.

3. Rash by Pete Hautman. I like Hautman’s books a lot. The Prop was one of my favorite books of last year. But Rash came in at the library in the midst of my summer reading challenge, and I could either read it, or the books on my shelf that I’d set as my goal, so I returned it unread.

4. One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson and 5. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marish Pessl. I was still slogging through Zorro when these came into the library at the same time. I knew I’d never have time to re-read Case Histories before OGT was due, and I had no idea that STiCP was so long. I returned them promptly to the library so someone else could get them quickly.

6. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert; 7. Not Buying It by Judith Levine; and 8. The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susannah Clarke. I put these in my library queue before I made my young-adult-centered reading list for the summer. I knew I could either read them, or the books I’d set for myself. I gritted my teeth, and deleted them from my queue. I still want to read the first two, but my enthusiasm for the Clarke book has dimmed in the meantime.

9. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys and 10. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. I wanted to read these in the aftermath of my re-reading of Jane Eyre. Again, I knew if I did, I wouldn’t complete my summer reading list. I put them off for later, and never got to them.

And finally, because every list of 10 should have an 11. The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. Because anytime I say to my husband that I don’t know what to read next, he says, “You know, there’s this great book…” Both he and I know that I’ll probably never read it. I’d have to go back and start the trilogy again from the beginning. I think I came to these books too late in life to love them.

Books recommended by my husband that I don’t read, though, and vice versa, is another topic, for another day.

Mom: Hi, how are you?

Me: OK, but busy. Drake and Guppy are pretty demanding lately.

Mom: (starts to talk)

THUNK (Guppy’s large head hitting wood floor, after Drake has shoved him)

Guppy: WAAAAAH! (wail of outrage)

Me, dropping phone: DRAKE!

Pitter, patter (Drake running away)

Me, gritted teeth: Sorry Mom, gotta go. (Hang up)

The past several years I’ve skipped New Year’s Resolutions. Instead, I’ve jotted down a few wishes for change in my journal, then forget about them. Lo and behold, when I check back at the end of the year, they’re usually under way.

Goal setting was a big part of my last job. I learned that vague goals are almost certain to fail, and that whenever possible it helps to have a quantifiable or concrete goal.

This year, though, I feel the urge to steel my resolve. What’s more, I intend to do it vaguely. In short, this is the year I want to get organized and clear out the junk.

I still have boxes of paper from each of the last three moves. I have two more piles, one for each child. I have magazines that are years old. Over the years, I’ve done a decent job at cleaning out wardrobe, books, comics and CDs. The paper, though, continues to accumulate.

I have some specific strategies to accomplish the great paper purge. I’ve called to cancel one catalog. Each time I receive one, I’ll call to cancel. I will re-register my name on the junk-mail removal list. I’ll try to let magazine subscriptions lapse. I won’t sign up for more. I will only buy magazines when I travel, or on special occasions. I will not borrow them from doctors’ offices anymore. I’m going to try to get all recurring bills and statements sent electronically.

I’m still going to have book, movie and writing goals. Those are important to me, and setting goals reminds me to prioritize them. But this year I’m setting an extra one of reducing the garbage in, after increasing the garbage out. It’s like a paper diet. I just hope this isn’t hubris.

Our little family continues to be laid low by viruses. My husband and I were supposed to go out with friends on Saturday. Guppy had vomited, but then went to sleep peacefully, so we thought the babysitter would be OK. (Or maybe we weren’t sure, but it had been so long since we’d had grown-up company that we were willing to believe it might be.) But when the babysitter called to say that Drake had also vomited, we turned the car around. Clearly, we were not meant to have a night out.

I’m doing all the right things for us: periodic fresh air and sun, vitamins, rest, fluids, healthful and sustaining foods, staying in. Yet the sniffling, barfing, coughing, and excessive pooping continues into its FOURTH MONTH.

Please forgive the lack of posts. And think healthful thoughts in our direction. I’m convinced it’s because we haven’t had a proper freeze, and the weather keeps bouncing up into unseasonably warm. I don’t want warm. I live in MN. Bring on the cold, already.

#58 in my movie challenge, Spellbound, the documentary not the Hitchcock film, was my last movie of the year. I finished watching just after midnight. It focuses on the kids, and doesn’t take cheap shots at them or their parents. It shows them all as complex people and does a fair job at showing why spelling is important to each of the kids. While the variance in economic background of those who made it to the finals was wide, it narrowed significantly as the spellers moved to the finals.

I went to the state spelling bee in 7th grade. I can’t remember if I got beyond the first round, but I will always remember the word I missed: jacamar. It’s a type of bird.

#57 in my movie challenge for the year was Wrath of Khan. My husband has joked that he married me even though I’d never seen this. Having befriended and dated geeks, though, I knew all the basic points. I was surprised to find Kirk’s “Khan!” not nearly as drawn out as it is in parody. Bad hair, bad wigs, bad costumes. Weirdly smooth pecs on Ricardo Montalban. Like many things geeks hold dear, its impact is not as strong for those of us who come to it later in life.

Not bad, but hardly epic.

#56 in my movie challenge for the year was Happy Accidents, a weird indie mystery/romance from 2000. Marisa Tomei (who with red hair bears a startling resemblance to one of my friends from college) starts dating Vincent D’onofrio, who may or may not be from the future.

Funny, kooky and sweet.

#55 in my movie challenge for the year was Spike Lee’s Inside Man. A solid thriller with a great cast, I found it oddly charming.

#54 in my movie challenge was Anchorman. Will Ferrell is funny, but it is (again) Steve Carell who makes this movie worthwhile. The humor was of the bizarre, often painful kind, but there was enough wacky charm to make me like the movie, in spite of its excesses.

#53 in my movie challenge was Bruce Almighty. Borrowed from the library when I read that a sequel, Evan Almighty, will star Steve Carell, the only reason to watch this fairly awful movie.

#52 in my movie challenge for the year was The Ref. My husband G. Grod chose this Chrismas flick instead of a feel-good holiday classic like It’s a Wonderful Life or The Shop Around the Corner. A thief (Denis Leary) takes a bickering couple hostage on Christmas Eve. Life lessons are learned. Leary is funny, though a bit too nobly wise. I suspect he was trying to emulate Bogart in To Have and Have Not, as a good guy with flexible ethics and a drunk partner.

Funny enough.

(Weird fact about me: I’ve never seen It’s a Wonderful Life. As a child, I watched the Marlo Thomas remake, with Trapper John as her husband. Years later, when a friend described It’s a Wonderful Life, I realized I’d been watching a remake, then never got around to seeing the original.)

#68 in my reading challenge was Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. I don’t know how long this slender volume has been sitting on my shelf. A while, I suspect, since it is a third edition, published in 1979. (A fourth edition was published in 1999, and an illustrated edition in 2005.) More than once, a writing instructor has said it’s worth reading, not only as reference, but also cover to cover. I found it by turns perceptive, funny, and irritating. An example of the latter:

The use of he as pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the beginning of the English language. He has lost all suggestion of maleness in these circumstances. The word was unquestionably biased to begin with (the dominant male), but after hundreds of years it has become seemingly indispensable. It has no pejorative connotation; it is never incorrect.

I disagree, for reasons detailed in the usage note on he from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition:

Traditionally the pronouns he, him, and his have been used as generic or gender-neutral singular pronouns, as in A novelist should write about what he knows best and No one seems to take any pride in his work anymore. Since the early 20th century, however, this usage has come under increasing criticism for reflecting and perpetuating gender stereotyping. · Defenders of the traditional usage have argued that the masculine pronouns he, his, and him can be used generically to refer to men and women. This analysis of the generic use of he is linguistically doubtful. If he were truly a gender-neutral form, we would expect that it could be used to refer to the members of any group containing both men and women. But in fact the English masculine form is an odd choice when it refers to a female member of such a group. There is something plainly disconcerting about sentences such as Each of the stars of As Good As It Gets [i.e., Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt] won an Academy Award for his performance. In this case, the use of his forces the reader to envision a single male who stands as the representative member of the group, a picture that is at odds with the image that comes to mind when we picture the stars of As Good As It Gets. Thus he is not really a gender-neutral pronoun; rather, it refers to a male who is to be taken as the representative member of the group referred to by its antecedent. The traditional usage, then, is not simply a grammatical convention; it also suggests a particular pattern of thought. · It is clear that many people now routinely construct their remarks to avoid generic he, usually using one of two strategies: changing to the plural, so they is used (which is often the easiest solution) or using compound and coordinate forms such as he/she or he or she (which can be cumbersome in sustained use). In some cases, the generic pronoun can simply be dropped or changed to an article with no change in meaning. The sentence A writer who draws on personal experience for material should not be surprised if reviewers seize on that fact is complete as it stands and requires no pronoun before the word material. The sentence Every student handed in his assignment is just as clear when written Every student handed in the assignment. · Not surprisingly, the opinion of the Usage Panel in such matters is mixed. While 37 percent actually prefer the generic his in the sentence A taxpayer who fails to disclose the source of ______ income can be prosecuted under the new law, 46 percent prefer a coordinate form like his or her; 7 percent felt that no pronoun was needed in the sentence; 2 percent preferred an article, usually the; and another 2 percent overturned tradition by advocating the use of generic her, a strategy that brings the politics of language to the reader’s notice. Thus a clear majority of the Panel prefers something other than his. The writer who chooses to use generic he and its inflected forms in the face of the strong trend away from that usage may be viewed as deliberately calling attention to traditional gender roles or may simply appear to be insensitive.

The Elements of Style is a classic, and deservedly so. Much of it details the kind of common sense that is easily forgotten or confused. It is limited, though, both in scope and adaptability. I recommend The Chicago Manual of Style for the former, and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language for the latter.

#67 in my book challenge for the year was Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking. She chronicles the mysterious illness of her daughter and the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. It’s beautifully written, and Didion uses repetition masterfully to illustrate the waves of grief. In the end, though, I felt her skill at writing blurred the emotional impact she was purporting to reveal. A hospital worker called her “a pretty cool customer”, and that coolness permeates the book. Her daughter’s serious illness was included primarily as it related to the husband’s death. I was left with many questions about the daughter, though. I kept returning to the image on the dust jacket, in which Didion stands alone, looking sidewise at her husband and daughter. Her narrative echoed the observing isolation of the photo.

#66 in my reading challenge for the year, Diane Setterfield’s Thirteenth Tale rescued me from my reading slump. A friend called it something like a ripping-good read, and I agree. It’s full of juicy passages ripe for quoting about the love of reading and stories. This is a literary mystery that proudly displays its gothic roots. Setterfield isn’t coy about the books to which she’s paying tribute; she mentions Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, and Wilkie Collins’s Woman in White several times. The book is rendered timeless by the sparing use of modern detail, and the complete lack of brand display that many authors use as a shorthand for characterization. I was loath to put it down, and kept telling my husband “I MUST finish my book.” I don’t believe it is in the same class as its forebears, but it is an engaging and compelling book that earned one of my top compliments: I bought it for our home library after returning the library’s copy.

As the surface of our large non-stick surface eroded, my husband G. Grod and I began to use our cast-iron skillet more. Family legend says this skillet belonged to my great grandmother. I’m not sure this is true, though, as one of my sisters has a skillet with the same story. Plus my grandmother is a garage-sale maven, so one or both skillets may have been purchased over the decades. When I first acquired the skillet, I made the classic, wince-inducing mistake of scrubbing off its patina. Since then, we have worked hard to get it back, and it now has a pretty much nonstick surface.

It resides permanently on our stovetop. We use it for eggs, grilled-cheese sandwiches, corn bread, and any recipe that calls for a large skillet. My husband takes care of it properly, by scrubbing it with salt, never using soap, and seasoning it after every use. And it has rewarded us by becoming the most used item in the kitchen.

And it’s done pithily, even. I’m enjoying the mid-season break of the TV shows I watch. Former favorites Veronica Mars and Battlestar Galactica have disappointed. I tried one ep of Friday Night Lights on a friend’s recommendation, but was annoyed. My Name is Earl and House have been pretty good, but the only show I actively miss is The Office. I hadn’t questioned my ennui much until my husband sent me this link from Warren Ellis’ blog. Normally, Warren’s enfant-terrible-morphed-into-grumpy-old-man rants bug me, but this time I think he’s hit it, though his target of Sci Fi TV was too narrow. It’s a much bigger problem that pervades too many shows.

There’s too much fucking crying. Veronica is crying to Logan that he let a house burn down. Logan is crying to Veronica that she wants him to change. Baltar and Caprica cry to torpid piano music. People are crying on Heroes because the waitress died. The cheerleader has tears in her eyes constantly. And the time I watched Friday Night Lights at least FOUR characters cried.

[And yes, for you nitpickers, there has been a smattering of crying on the shows I claim to like. Cuddy cried on House, but only after he was super mean to her. And Michael cries on The Office. But that's funny.]

I’m with Warren on this one. Stop fucking crying.

OK, OK, Athena is allowed to cry when she gets her baby back from the Cylons. But that’s it. I mean it.