Girl Detective

I’m back after a trip to my hometown for my 20th high school reunion. I flew out with both Guppy (4+ months) and Drake (nearly 3 years) by myself, then my husband G. Grod flew in for the weekend, and we four flew back together. Ironically, the flight out was tough, and the return was a breeze.

Outbound, we got permission for G. Grod to accompany us to the gate; we arrived just in time to board early. I asked the high-school-aged girl sitting behind me to hold Guppy while I installed Drake’s car seat, then I strapped Drake in and put Guppy in the Maya Wrap sling, where he proceeded to scream for quite some time, perhaps because we sat for 45 sweaty minutes past takeoff time without air. Everyone around me was carefully looking everywhere but at us. The man on the other side of me asked if the girl behind me was my daughter (OK, while she technically COULD be my daughter, and some of my classmates have kids her age, I still did not appreciate the confirmation that I look my age.), perhaps looking to switch out of our row. I said she was a stranger who helped me. He expressed surprise, and I wondered to myself what kind of person would NOT volunteer to help a mom traveling with 2 kids and needing an extra hand? Drake was mostly good, but kept insisting that he wanted another lollipop, which I had trouble extracting from my bag while also trying to juggle Guppy, whose screams were not only disturbing in general, but also because they were so uncharacteristic. He is normally a placid little buddha.

My stash of Dum-Dum lollipops, a new Matchbox toy, the Consumer Reports annual auto issue, and several paperback books ensured that Drake continued to be mostly good for the 2-hour flight. The monkey backpack/leash worked great once we got off the plane. As usual, we received lots of admiring looks and comments on the wheels for Drake’s car seat.

Drake missed his nap, then had a nuclear meltdown at bedtime, which I thought was due to the nap, but had to reasses when he woke an hour later, having spiked a high fever. Boy, did I feel competent for having bought and packed children’s Tylenol. Drake’s fever rose as high as 104 over the next few days, then passed. Guppy continued to fuss and sleep badly throughout our trip, though he did also occasionally show his cute, smiley side in public and at my reunion events. And if compliments are to be believed, then I don’t look as if I haven’t slept well since I got pregnant with Guppy, so I suppose that’s something.

Once home, I diagnosed Guppy with reflux from trying to lengthen the intervals between feedings, since every 2 hours during the day is exhausting to me, and both my pediatrician and my pediatric-trained dad told me I was feeding him more often than necessary. Now I’m back to feeding him more frequently, and hope that brings back a long interval at night, once the irritation dies down. Last night, though, I was up at 11, 2, 4, and 6. Guess he showed them. And me.

#35 in my book challenge for the year, and #11 in my summer reading challenge was The Finishing School by Muriel Spark. Disappointing, and overlong even at just 180 some pages. I much preferred the other Spark books I’ve read. The Finishing School wasn’t quite funny or dark enough to be compelling. Instead, I found it boring.

#34 in my book challenge for the year, and #10 in my summer reading challenge was I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier. One of the classics of the YA genre, this novel reminded me that really good YA should be a good read at any age. This was a great mystery novel, skillfully written. It had three main narrative threads: a story told in first person, present tense; transcripts of interviews from an unspecified time; and interspersed narratives to flesh out the interviews, told in third person past tense. These three weave together until they finally meet up (or do they?) at the end. The ending gives credit to the reader by leaving the interpretation open. My sister Sydney told me that when she read the book for a class in grade school, she’d called the phone number that’s listed toward the end of the book; it was Cormier’s own. She got to discuss the book and its ending with the author himself.

#33 in my book challenge for the year, and #9 in my summer book challenge, was The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, currently being discussed by the Slaves of Golconda at Metaxucafe. Like the other Spark novels I’ve read, The Driver’s Seat and The Abbess of Crewe, the story begins toward the end, loops back, then moves forward and back, until myriad facts accumulate that illuminate the entire story. It’s an impressive way to tell a story, and Spark once again does so flawlessly. The tale of a charismatic teacher and her select students, the novel is at times dark, funny, and poignant. Brodie is one of the more complex characters I’ve read.

#32 in my book challenge for the year, and #8 in my summer challenge, was The Prop by Pete Hautman. This is a rock solid mystery novel about poker. The plot, the characters, the setting, and the mystery all unfolded seamlessly. I attended a reading at which Hautman said he wrote the book to see if he could write from the point of view of a middle-aged woman. I found Peeky Kane not only believable, but utterly likeable. I stayed up way too late to finish it, and sleep is so precious of late that this is a high compliment.

#38 in my movie challenge for the year was last year’s The Family Stone. Poorly written and directed, it was saved by the performance of Craig T. Nelson, in perhaps the film’s only likable role. The story and the characters were wildly uneven. At times it seemed to want to be a old-fashioned romantic comedy, but then it whipped into a scene invested with ham-handed attempts at drama. I didn’t hate this movie, but I came awfully close. It should have been a drama with gentle humor, or a comedy without maudlin attempts at realism. I found the mix of extremes often painful to watch.

#31 in my book challenge for the year, and #7 in my summer reading challenge was The Abbess of Crewe, a satire of Watergate. There will be an online discussion of Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and other works at the end of the month, at Metaxucafe.

Abbess is dated, both by its subject and the electronic equipment it references. Spark nevertheless makes her story timeless by setting the power struggle in the removed culture of an Abbey. It has snarky one liners, and a deluded Abbess who is so funny that she is hard to dislike, even as she runs roughshod over the rights of the rest of those poor nuns.

Such a scandal could never arise in the United States of America. They have a sense of proportion and they understand Human Nature over there; it’s the secret of their success. A realistic race, even if they do eat asparagus the wrong way.

A friend asked me recently why I chose to write a young adult novel. I responded that I’d always been a fan of the genre, and that my story centered on a high school girl, so that usually made for a YA book. When I gave it more thought, though, I realized that my answer wasn’t entirely accurate. In my very first draft of the novel, the main character was a woman in her twenties. I wrote the backstory of a relationship she’d had in high school. The backstory got very long. As I kept writing, I found I didn’t want to return to the original story. The backstory turned into the main story, and because it was set in high school, the novel became for young adults. Realization one was that my novel had NOT always been YA, rather that’s what it turned into during the writing of it.

Once I realized my faulty memory about that, I also recalled I had not “always” been a fan of the genre. I read some YA when I was a young adult, and some YA much later, like Francesca Lia Block’s books. I liked children’s literature long beyond when I was technically a child, and I oversaw the children’s section for the year I worked in a used bookstore. But “always” was an overstatement that brought me to realization two: I became a fan and reader of YA because I was working on a YA manuscript, which has only been since November of 2002. I’m not obsessive or completist about it. I occasionally visit the Young Adult Library Services Association home page; it has good book lists. I also read Avenging Sybil, a weblog about young adult novels, and more specifically about portrayals of female sexuality in YA.

It was interesting that my brain had created this revisionist history. Perhaps it is my age, coupled with the fatigue of caring for an infant. Or perhaps, like so many things in my life now, my manuscript and my affection for YA novels have become so important to me that I have a hard time remembering life before them.

#37 in my movie challenge for the year was Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility. I was hoping that the condensing of Austen’s overlong narrative would be a good thing, but the movie disappointed me, as had the book. Perhaps the film hasn’t aged well, or perhaps I’m a curmudgeon, since I am at odds with ALL the critics. I didn’t think it as good as either the A & E or the more recent movie of Pride and Prejudice. The characters aren’t as likeable, and the production values aren’t as good. There was a shot in this movie where I became aware of the camera, and Marianne’s tearful repeated calls of Willoughby from the hill in the rain had me rolling my eyes. Hugh Grant could have chewed up the screen as Willoughby, but instead was a mumbling, shrinking presence as Edward. Rickman talked as if he had a mouthful of marbles. Hugh Laurie’s few lines had me wishing for so much more from his minor character. I know the male leads aren’t supposed to be dashing manly men, but both in the book and in the movie they are hardly compelling. It was a long 136 minutes.

#s 28, 29, and 30 in my book challenge for the year, and 4, 5, and 6 of my summer reading challenges were the three Scott Pilgrim volumes. I read and reviewed #s 1 and 2 last year, and re-read them before #3 because I couldn’t remember who was who. The Scott Pilgrim stories are young adult graphic novels that reference music, magic, and video games. While manga is the obvious influence, I was more than once strongly reminded of Trudeau’s Doonesbury.

Scott is an amiable goofball who has a way with the ladies. He is still traumatized by his breakup with Envy Adams, he did a bad job of breaking up with his high school girlfriend Knives Chau, and he is trying to date the mysterious Ramona Flowers, but he must first defeat the league of her seven evil ex-boyfriends. The graphic novels are all fast reads, and I still highly recommend 1 and 2. I laughed out loud during both several times, and read bits aloud to my husband.

From Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life (Vol. 1)

“It’s…It’s her shoes. She was wearing these shoes. These HAUNTING SHOES.”

“What’d they look like?”

“They looked…really…uncomfortable.”

From Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (Vol. 2)

“What kind of idiot would knowingly date a girl named Knives?”

From Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness (Vol. 3)

“N…No way! Bionic arm?! Knives…!Oh my God, Knives! Your hair! She punched the highlights out of your hair!”

#3 tells the backstory of Scott’s ex, Envy Adams. I didn’t think it was as great as 1 and 2. The back and forth between present and past was jarring. Envy wasn’t at all likeable, as is Knives Chau–seventeen years old–Scott’s more recent ex. It is funny, especially some bits about Envy’s boyfriend (and Ramona’s evil ex #3) Todd’s veganism. I found it more sad than funny, though. Perhaps I should have expected that, given the subtitle.

While I was less enamored of #3, I still like the books and these characters, and I want to know what happens. What is in Ramona’s past? Who is Gideon? What’s going to happen with that guy who kidnapped Kim when she and Scott were in high school, and who shows up at the end of #3? What’s the deal with Kim–will this cool drummer chick be more than just an ex of Scott’s?

If Scott has to defeat one evil ex-boyfriend in each volume, and if each volume comes out once a year, there’s four more years till the end of the story. Perhaps author Bryan Lee O’Malley can put two boyfriends in each of the next two volumes, because four years is too long to wait.

#27 in my book challenge for the year, and #3 in my summer reading challenge, I feel abashed that I couldn’t finish Catcher in the Rye over the weekend for a 48 hour reading challenge, but I did finish it Monday. I wanted to read it prior to reading King Dork, but the library due date for KD made that inadvisable. I definitely recommend reading both, with Catcher first.

First, I am not a member of the Catcher cult, as it’s called in KD. I wasn’t forced to read Catcher in high school. Whether this says something good or bad about my high school English education is debateable, but I think it was bad. Over four years, the required reading list was short–probably what I’d go through in a month or two nowadays. Instead of entire novels, I remember reading a lot of excerpts from big hardback textbooks with shiny pages. I read Catcher on my own at some point as part of my self-education (or autodidacticism, as it’s called at Mental Multivitamin) to compensate for deficiencies in my schooling.

Catcher, like KD, does a good job portraying what a social horror high school is, and how difficult it is to survive. Catcher is also historically important, not just as a good novel, but because it helped to establish the Young Adult novel paradigm–it gave a distinct voice to a teenaged character who told the story in first person, and sometimes in present tense. It also proved to publishers that teenagers were legitimate members of a critical reading audience.

Because I have affection for the YA niche, I thought I would love Catcher. Perhaps I was negatively influenced by the de-pedestalizing of Catcher in KD, but I finished Catcher feeling profoundly ambivalent. I started the book annoyed at Holden and his affected voice. I then realized it was bluster, not unlike Gatsby’s, and that it hid a character who seemed to have a good head and a good heart. As the story wore on, though, I began to sense the presence of the writer showing off by creating a singular character, and having him repeat, ad nauseum, some suspiciously Salinger-esque negative opinions of phony people, Hollywood, and society in general. What bothered me most, though, was Holden’s repeated idealization of childhood. This novel is supposed to be about the difficult transition from childhood to adulthood, but I found Holden’s view of childhood at least obsessive, if not fetishistic.

Catcher in the Rye deserves to be a classic. It’s well written and historically important. It does not deserve to be uncritically lauded as an every-person’s book, though. There is some creepy, disturbing stuff in there, and I don’t think all of it was intentional.

Here’s another piece on the British study that asked men what their watershed novels were. The researchers found that many men (surprise!) didn’t read novels. It’s a follow up to a study last year of what women’s favorite novels were.

I found a few things interesting. One, they seemed to conflate watershed and favorite, which, as I’ve mentioned before, can be two different things. There are books I’ve read that helped me make life decisions, and while they’re among my favorites, they might not be the one(s) I name when asked for a favorite. Two, this article notes that while men don’t read novels, they still are in control of most of the novel-producing and -awarding machinery out there.

This article discusses the study as well, but it gets interesting more than halfway down when it talks about why we read. Some literary critics have gotten together with scientists, and they’ve found proof (and use abstruse lit-crit jargon to talk about it) that we read novels in order to try to know our minds, and the minds of others.

There are lots of reasons to read, of course, but the one they name is probably my primary one. Temporary escape of reality is ranking rather high for me, lately, especially on days when both boys cry at once. The screaming toddler plus the wailing baby is so loud, and so awful, that it’s almost, but not quite, funny. It makes me long for a book during naptime.

I was so pleased that I’d gotten into a writing groove on my current novel and was racking up the page count by two a day. But my writing group met Monday, and agreed that I’m still not on the right track after three starts. The bad news is that I don’t have either a frame or a story arc that work, so I can write 2 pages a day till the cows come home, and just be spinning my wheels. The good news is that I trust my writing group enough not to get defensive and second guess it. I agree that the new novel isn’t working, and am going to take some time off from it. Perhaps if I read and write other things, my subconscious will work things out.

Yesterday I packed both boys into the car and took Drake to get a haircut. Then we drove to the mall so I could buy a sun hat for Guppy. Then we drove to the adjacent Super Target to do our household shopping. Then we went home for lunch and naps.

I think there are two morals to the story. One, if the planets are in alignment and the kids are being good, a morning of errands isn’t impossible, or even unpleasant. They key is noticing when they are (or more importantly aren’t) up for certain things. Also, making errands like this an occasional event enables them to be an adventure, and less of a chore.

Two, going to a different Target because it was “Super” did not benefit me. The selection wasn’t much better than at our neighborhood one, and it took longer to navigate because it was bigger and I didn’t know where everything was.

The time came (and really went) to harvest my third backyard rhubarb plant. With the first, I made Rhubarb Tarte Tatin from Nigella Lawson. It was OK. With the second, I made a Rhubarb Crisp from some online recipe. This was barely OK because it wasn’t at all crisp on top–the juices of the baking rhubarb completely overwhelmed any possibility of a browned topping. For the last plant, then, I turned to Cook’s Illustrated. They only have 2 rhubarb recipes in over ten years of magazines, but the success rate of their recipes promised more success. The one I wanted to try was the Rhubarb Fool, which is cooked rhubarb layered with sweetened whipped cream in parfait glasses. I couldn’t give up the idea of a pastry, though, so I combined the recipe with the Cornmeal Shortcakes (one of the easy recipes) from Sunday Suppers at Lucques. The resulting Rhubarb Shortcakes were lovely and delicious. I mix the shortcakes by hand, rather than in a food processor. It’s messier, but simpler.

Cornmeal Shortcakes from Sunday Suppers at Lucques

1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. stone-ground cornmeal
1 Tbl. plus 1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 c. granulated sugar
4 Tbl. cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1 c. plus 1 Tbl. heavy cream

Preheat over to 425. Whisk first five dry ingredients together in medium/large bowl. Add butter, then with hands or a pastry blender, cut into dry ingredients until there is no lump larger than a pea. Make a well in the middle, add 1 c. cream and fold quickly with rubber spatula just until dough comes together. Knead in bowl a very few times to get dough in ball, then transfer to cutting surface, pat into inch-thick disk, and make four cuts to form eight wedges. Brush tops with remaining cream, sprinkle with sugar and bake about 15 minutes until light golden brown.

Rhubarb topping, from Rhubarb Fool, Cook’s Illustrated 5/2001

2 1/4 pounds fresh rhubarb , trimmed of ends and cut into 6-inch lengths
1/3 cup orange juice
1 cup granulated sugar plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
pinch table salt
2 cups heavy cream (cold)

1. Soak rhubarb in 1 gallon cold water for 20 minutes. Drain, pat dry with paper towels, and cut rhubarb crosswise into slices 1/2-inch thick.

2. Bring orange juice, 3/4 cup sugar, and salt to boil in medium nonreactive saucepan over medium-high heat. Add rhubarb and return to boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring only 2 or 3 times (frequent stirring causes rhubarb to become mushy), until rhubarb begins to break down and is tender, 7 to 10 minutes. Transfer rhubarb to nonreactive bowl, cool to room temperature, then cover with plastic and refrigerate until cold, at least 1 hour or up to 24.

3. Beat cream and remaining sugar in bowl of standing mixer on low speed until small bubbles form, about 45 seconds. Increase speed to medium; continue beating until beaters leave a trail, about 45 seconds longer. Increase speed to high; continue beating until cream is smooth, thick, and nearly doubled in volume and forms soft peaks, about 30 seconds.

To assemble shortcakes, split each shortcake in half horizontally, spoon about 1/4 cup rhubarb over the bottom, then spoon about 1/4 cup whipped cream. Top with other shortcake half. Serves 8.

I once had a friend from NYC who loved A Prairie Home Companion. I gave a listen, and was bored by its content and physically repulsed by Keillor’s voice. I talked with other friends about it, and formed my first theory, which is that non-Midwesterners like APHC, but people who actually grew up in the midwest (or close to it, as I did in central Ohio) are immune to its purported charm.

Then I moved to Minnesota, and found that plenty of people who live here (and who aren’t transplants, like me) like Keillor and his radio show. So that theory went bust.

I also found that living in Minnesota made it much more dangerous for me to listen to the radio. If I scanned channels, I might come across APHC. “Bad man! Bad man!” I would holler, not unlike a toddler, as I lunged for the button to make GK’s distinctive, smarmy baritone go away.

Then a friend of mine got a job working on APHC. I would occasionally listen because my friend, a nice person and very funny guy, was writing some of the jokes. But they were still told in that same creepy voice, so in spite of my best efforts, I could never listen for long. Eventually my friend and the show parted ways, so I no longer had any reason to hide how much I disliked it.

The reviews of the new film APHC have been mixed, but not in the middle. They tend to be polarized. Critics who like the radio show like the film, and vice versa. Ebert and Roeper did a polar split in their reviews. Since I’m not a GK and APHC fan, I’m not going to see the film even though Altman is one of my favorite directors.

From this, I have conceived a new theory on GK and APHC. It’s love or hate, perhaps because of some genetic, physical predisposition, like this. Some people love it. But many, many people don’t. There’s no middle ground.

My results on the 48 hour book challenge were disappointing, but not surprising. Our family had a lot of things to do this weekend, it was Father’s Day, plus there have been the usual shenanigans with 2 small kids, and there was not nearly so much reading as I would have liked. There was, however, still reading. I was heartened that, even with everything else going on, I kept trying. Here’s when and what I read from Friday morning to Sunday morning:

Friday

8:42 to 8:46 a.m. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, while nursing Guppy, who seems to be protesting the “read while nursing” thing by popping on and off randomly and in general becoming a far less enthusiastic and conscientious nurser. He’s just four months old, though, and this is consistent with development, as they suddenly become much more aware and distracted by what’s going on around them. It does interfere with reading, though. My 2yo Drake was having some out-of-diaper time, and chose this time to pee on the floor. He did get a towel and wipe it up after I asked him to, though. Total pages read: 3. Very annoyed by Holden’s voice, and aware that if it were written today, all the “goddamn”s would be “fucking”s.

11:10 a.m. to 1:10 p.m. had a friend and her 2yo over so she and I could discuss Sense and Sensibility. No reading done, but definite book talk, in between toddler discipline sessions for jumping on furniture, screaming indoors, throwing toys, not sharing, etc.

1:35 to 1:50 p.m. Read books to Drake before his nap. He chooses from our current selections from the library as well as from his own library.

Sheep in Wolves Clothing by Satoshi Kitamura. I love Kitamura’s art, and this is a fun, clever book with wool-thieving wolves who knit and listen to jazz. It’s a long-time favorite of Drake’s.

Two Old Potatoes and Me by John Coy. Coy is a Minnesotan author, and Drake has asked to hear this library book over and over. The story, about a dad and daughter who try to grow new potatoes from old ones, is told in simple prose with striking graphics; many of the words are incorporated into the pictures. There’s a short interlude that reveals the girl is visiting her dad and usually lives with her mom. It could easily have seemed thrown in, but both the art and sensitive dialogue from the father to the daughter help this spread mesh with the book, and deepen the reader’s appreciation for the characters.

Farmer Duck by Martin Waddell, ill. by Helen Oxenbury. I saw this at Book Moot alongside the Oxenbury-illustrated We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, which was another recent library favorite of Drake’s. Farmer Duck works the farm because the farmer is too lazy. Drake has listened to Farmer Duck so many times in the few weeks we’ve had it in the house that he’s memorized several pages of Waddell’s inviting, poetic prose. I enjoy the cadence of the words as I read aloud, and Oxenbury’s textured watercolor illustrations are charming without being at all cutesy.

1:55 to 2:00 p.m. Read books to Guppy before his nap.

Moo, Baa, La, La, La by Sandra Boynton One of our first board books from when Drake was a baby, with Boynton’s usual cute animals and sense of humor.
See the Rabbit and Baby Sleeps, by Janet and Allen Ahlberg. Simple phrases and illustrations of babies doing all the baby-ish things.

4:34 to 4:40 p.m. Nursed Guppy, read another three pages of Catcher.

5:05 to 5:10 Snuck in another two pages of Catcher while the boys were happy and occupied.

5:30 to 5:50 Read board books to Guppy while he had tummy time:

The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss Seuss’s rhymes, while different in board book form, are still some of the best.
1, 2, 3 by Tana Hoban Great photo illustrations
Go, Dog, Go by P. D. Eastman. Completely different in board book form, but still fun, though the final rhyme is forced.
Hey, Wake Up by Sandra Boynton When Drake was younger, he would laugh and laugh at the “broccoli stew” line. Though he eventually stopped, I will always love this book for that.
Mighty Movers: Diggers and Dumpers One of Drake’s favorites. Hardly an intellectual challenge.
The Snowy Day Beautiful prose and lovely illustrations.
A to Z by Sandra Boynton has some charming combinations: Frogs Frowning and Hippos Hiding are two favorites.

7:55 to 8:00 p.m. Read board books to Guppy for bed, while my husband read to Drake.

Pajama Time by Boynton is a decent bedtime book, but writing it up here makes me realize it’s only OK, and probably doesn’t deserve a permanent spot in the rotation.
The Going to Bed Book by Boynton, though, has both fun illustrations and a good rhyming cadence, with an amusing interlude. This was Drake’s final book before bed for a long, long time.
Goodnight, Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. I love reading aloud Brown’s rhymes, which are never forced. I find the illustration OK, but it’s the words that make me love this book.

8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Various grown-up stuff that I can’t get to while the kids are awake, like showering and watching a TV show.

11:00 p.m. Read eight pages of Catcher to get to the end of a chapter, but was too tired to read more. Depressed to have only made it to page 16 by the end of the day.

Saturday

I didn’t write down the times I read, but I had several errands to run, so there was much less reading in general. I read a few pages of Catcher each time I nursed Guppy, and Drake asked me to read him the graphic novel Scott Pilgrim #3, so I did a few pages while expressing milk. I had to euphemize some of the language, and I read just enough to realize I’m going to need to re-read #s 1 and 2 before tackling 3.

By the time the boys were in bed, I’d read enough of Catcher to come to appreciate Holden, and to see through the annoying bluster of his language. He’s a decent guy, I thought, more empathetic than most. Not a jerk, though certainly capable of aggravating. When I continued to read, another throught crept in, which was an awareness of the writer behind the scenes, creating this character who is vulnerable and kind to women. I began to suspect Salinger of the same thing that is one of Holden’s many pet peeves:

If you do something too good, then after a while, if you don’t watch it, you start showing off. And then you’re not as good anymore.

I finished the night at only page 76, a little more than a third of the way through my mmpb edition, but too tired to read more.

Sunday morning

Guppy woke to nurse around 6, then went back to sleep. I grabbed Catcher and went downstairs and got in another thirty pages or so by the time he and Drake got up, which put me at about half way through. Began to wonder if it was Salinger who hated social artifice and the movies, and if he ventriloquised through Holden.

So for the 48 hour challenge between 8:42 a.m. on Friday and 8:42 a.m. on Sunday, I read 3 picture books, 13 board books, about 20 pages of Scott Pilgrim #3, and 106 pages of Catcher in the Rye. I don’t have either a complete page count or an exact time count, though I think it added up to about 4 hours. I’d hoped to do more reading for myself, but I did persevere in spite of myriad errands, tasks, and interruptions.

Added later: I know mine wasn’t exactly congruent with the book challenge–committing time to check out the unread YA books in one’s life. But since that’s part of my overall summer challenge, and since getting through a busy weekend and re-reading Catcher and reading to the boys is what I have to do to clear the way to the unread YA books, I think I still fell within the spirit of the challenge.

June 16 was the four year anniversary of Girl Detective. I’d hoped to have an updated version of WordPress, new description, new links, the works. As you can see, things look the same. I’ve never been great at deadlines, but I do hope to get to some of these soon. In the meantime, you can check out the previous anniversary-time posts. Starting a weblog has been one of the most significant things I have done for myself as a writer. I have a regular writing practice now, which I never did before. I have one novel sent out, and am working on another. I don’t think those would have happened if I didn’t hack things out here on a regular basis. Thanks for reading, and welcome to year five.

June 16, 2005
June 13, 2004
June 16, 2003
The First Post

A few things have slowed down my comic reading: the birth of Guppy, several deadline-driven books to read, and a slowly growing sense of comics ennui. Lately I’m reading comics out of habit, not for fun. Several of the titles I’ve enjoyed in the past just don’t excite me: 100 Bullets, Ex Machina, Fables, Queen and Country, Y the Last Man. Are they in a rut, or am I? Most comic-book people I know have experienced the ennui, as I have before, and I know that it usually passes.

It could be me. I took the time to read one of the best reviewed comics of the year, Ganges, and I was not blown away. It was good. It was thoughtful. It has very good art and a beautiful presentation. But, truthfully, I was kinda bored by it. It reminded me of James Kochalka’s work. It’s less crazy, and more polished, but also less wackily charming.

But then I read the four issue series Batman 100 by Paul Pope. Pope’s distinctive art infuses a frenetic energy into his dark, future Batman story. The four issues are satisfyingly long, with a lot of text intos and outros. The whole story is great. I can’t say it’s dispelled my comics ennui, but it has reminded me why I love the medium, as did recent issues of Daredevil, and Fell, the latter by my husband G. Grod’s favorite comics author Warren Ellis.

I’ve been checking out a few new book and reading blogs lately. Today at Book Moot I found a link to MotherReader’s 48-hour reading challenge. Since the challenge arose from her reading backlog of literature for older kids/teens, and since I have several of that kind of book already on my summer reading challenge list, I think I’ll give it a shot. I’m also interested in showing when and how I read, because I hear other moms say they don’t have time to read. I’ve got a four-month old and a 2 year old, and I make time to read for myself, in addition to the reading I do to them. Other things go undone, but reading ranks right up there with eating, sleeping, childcare and writing. Most everything else is negotiable.