Girl Detective

The Ulysses group readalong is happening! Read and tweet from February to Bloomsday (June 16) 2015, and I’ll blog about it here. We’ll tweet with the hashtag #TCUlysses

Twin Cities readers can celebrate when we’re done with a meetup at Anchor Fish and Chips. (I wouldn’t be opposed to weekly meetings there, either, though my cholesterol might.)

2/9/15 Start Ulysses which has 18 parts of various lengths

2/16/15 discuss and tweet sections 1, 2= 32 pp
2/23/15 discuss and tweet sections 3, 4=29 pp
3/2/15 discuss and tweet sections 5, 6=40 pp
3/9/15 discuss and tweet section 7=29pp
3/16/15 discuss and tweet section 8=28pp
3/23/15 discuss and tweet section 9=30pp
3/30/15 section 10=31 pp
4/6/15 section 11=31pp
4/13/15 section 12=45pp
4/20/15 section 13=31pp
4/27/15 section 14=37pp

5/4-5/18/15 read, then discuss and tweet section 15 (150 pages in my ed.)

5/25/15 discuss and tweet section 16=44pp

6/1-6/8/15 read then discuss and tweet section 17 (65 pp in my edition)

6/15/15 discuss and tweet section 18=37pp

6/16/15 Bloomsday!

Group meetup and celebration to follow at the Anchor Fish & Chips in NE Minneapolis.

I’ve never even attempted this behemoth—too intimidating. But I’m ready to give it a go, and looking forward to the support of a group while reading. Let me know if you have questions. I hope you’ll join us.

Welcome back to the Odyssey Readalong. Hey, for those of you who aren’t joining us, there is an audio version of it read by, wait for it…Ian McKellen! If you are more likely to listen than to read, then you might want to check it out.

Things have really picked up this week now that Odysseus and Telemachus are back in Ithaca, and everyone isn’t just sitting around talking. I assume the reason for the steady insertion of recaps is that this oral history wasn’t told aloud in one fell swoop, so this is the ancient version of “Last Time in the Odyssey…”

Book 16: Father and Son

Telemachus arrives at the swineherd’s hut, and is greeted warmly. He is super nice to Odysseus even though the latter is disguised as an old, smelly beggar. Telemachus sends the swineherd to Penelope to tell her he’s back secretly, but says not to tell Laertes yet, but rather the nurse. After he leaves, Odysseus goes outside for a chat with Athena, who “stroked him with her golden wand” to reveal him in all his heroic glory, and when he appears before Telemachus, T says, whoa, you must be a god. And then O: Nope, just your dad. They they cry a lot, and loudly, then plot revenge against those suitors, then finish thusly:

When they’d put aside desire for food and drink
they remembered bed and took the gift of sleep. (532-533)

Book 17: Stranger at the Gates

After a goatherd talks some smack to him, Odysseus enters his own house still disguised as a feeble beggar. The suitors give him a hard time, he starts to beg from them, and Antinous continues to distinguish himself as the biggest jerk of them all by throwing a footstool at the poor old man. Even all the jerky other suitors note that this is too harsh. Penelope says she wants to see the beggar in case he has news of her husband, but he responds via messenger that he’ll see her later when it’s safer (and presumably darker.)

Book 18: The Beggar King of Ithaca

Another beggar comes round and yells at Odysseus to step off. One of the suitors thinks it would be good fun to see the beggars go a few rounds, so calls them out. When Odysseus peels off his rags to reveal strapping muscles, the other guy, Irus, becomes sore afraid. Odysseus wonders whether to kill him or just give him a glancing blow, and decides on the latter, yet then punches him so hard it breaks his jaw and causes blood to spurt everywhere. Odysseus’ version of pulling a punch is pretty harsh. Then he goes inside, and the suitors are nice to him again, he tells Penelope’s maids he’ll take care of the lights, one of them talks smack to him (she’s the one sleeping with that dog Antinous) at which point Ulysses says, “You wait, you bitch” and no, that’s not dialog from The Wire, but from the Fagles translation.

Eurymachus, the secondary jerk, gets mad at the beggar and throws a stool, then Amphimous and Telemachus calm them down and

they drank the heady wine to their hearts’ content
and went their ways to bed, each suitor to his house (482-483)

This week’s reading really flew for me, and I enjoyed it on its own. What did everyone else think?

Previous Posts:

Odyssey readalong schedule link

Week one books 1-3: link

Week two books 4-6: link

Week three books 7-9: link

Week four books 10-12: link

Week five books 13-15: link

Welcome to the last Sandman readalong post, for volume 10, The Wake! 76 issues, whew!

At the end of the issue #72 script, Gaiman noted:

Last page of The Wake. Which is, more or less, the last page of the story that began in the first issue of Sandman. The last three issues are small codas. Scary. I never thought I’d make it this far.

For those finishing the series, did you ever think you’d make it this far? Had you tried the series before and given up, or not started feeling that 75 issues was too much of a commitment?

In a perfect world, I think a Sandman readalong would do about 5 issues a week, so take about four months. We crammed ours into 2 months.

Remember, join in the conversation by adding comments to this post, or by posting on Twitter with the hashtag #SandMN.

The 10th and final collection of the series, The Wake is six issues, but really only three of them are The Wake. The final issues of the series, 73, 74, and 75, are codas. 73 is a coda to The Wake, and 74 and 75 to the series. In these last six issues we meet again with SO MANY of the myriad characters we’ve encountered over the previous collections.

First off, a giant kick in the ass to whomever the designer of volume 10’s introduction was. What size is that font? Negative 2? Also, the 9’s look like 0’s. Bad font, unreadable size, but it’s a good intro, though I think Gilmore’s hyper-bitter dislike of one female character was perhaps influenced by personal baggage.

In The Wake, as he has done more and more throughout the series, Gaiman plays with multiple meanings. Those echoes and layers are what makes reading this series again so satisfying for me.

In the first issue of The Wake #70, wake means the aftermath, in the wake of previous events. I’m assuming Delirium got a crow as her winged messenger, since she’s butchering the counting-crows rhyme when she and Barnabas appear.

Delirium, as always, has some of the best lines:

Delirium: I want to name him! Plippy ploppy cheese nose?
Death: Mm. NO. Try again.
Delirium: Eblis O’Shaughnessy?
Death: Okay.

Then again, Gilbert’s scene is pretty amazing, too. I love Gilbert. Such a class act.

#71 means the wake after a funeral. Everyone starts to arrive. Rose’s brother Jed looks like Shaggy from Scooby Doo!

Often in these collections/storylines, Gaiman gives us the essence of it in the middle. Here, perhaps, is as good a summary of the series as any other:

Lucien: Sometimes, perhaps, one must change or die. And in the end, there were perhaps, limits to how much he could let himself change.

Next we get Thessaly’s side of the story, and while Dream’s version made him sound like a victim, this version makes it more like they just weren’t right together, and both were hurt.

This sadness is followed by a HILARIOUS PANEL with Clark Kent, Batman, and Martian Manhunter discussing whether they dream of being on TV, followed by a funny panel of the trio in trench coats for the DC nerds in the audience:

Another funny panel is when Matthew arrives and tries to figure out who’s who, using the D motif:

Matthew: Hello. let’s see: You two I know. Delirium…Death… let’s see: Desire, Despair. Destiny. And uhm…Dog?

In #72, there is no body, but the cerement has a shape under it, hinting perhaps that Dream was an idea made into a shape, but not a physicality in the conventional sense.

Another good nugget in the interchange between Jed and Rose:

Jed: Families rock.
Rose: Aren’t you the one that told me “families suck.”?
Jed: They do both. They rock AND they suck.

Destruction shows up to give advice to Daniel. He already said goodbye to Morpheus. Eulogies are said, even by bears. The reincarnated Nada as a Chinese boy throws flowers on the river, and in the end, Daniel pardons Lyta and releases her from the punishment for killing his predecessor and other Morpheus victims: Burgess, Nuala, Madoc, Lyta, all wake, restored. Then in the last panel, Daniel meets the family, and there is very distinct body language for each of them.

#73, in which Hob goes to a Ren Fair, is like an epilogue to The Wake. We see how Hob goes (and chooses to keep going) on. His young lovely African-American girlfriend is a sign to us that the horror that Morpheus inflicted on Nada, then Ruby, then Carla, is ended.

#74 is lovely, but serves more as a conceit in which it’s one issue that both the old and new Dream appear.

And #75, The Tempest, is a piece of work, is it not? I love the issue, but most of all, I love how it ends the series, and the echoes among how Shakespeare, Prospero, Dream, and Neil Gaiman have all chosen their ends, though they could not have foreseen the details of getting what they wanted.

Todd Klein’s lettering for Shakespeare is such a small detail that adds so much.

This is also a great example of how this series enriched and even changed my life. I had no idea Shakespeare had worked on the Psalms, this taught me the Guy Fawkes rhyme, and this made me seek out The Tempest, which has become my favorite play of Shakespeare’s. This series also probably was what ignited my initial interest in Shakespeare, which has gone on to become a love.

For those who’ve been reading along, I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride, and I hope the posts have been helpful as post-reading recaps and guides.

If you’re left wanting more Sandman or Gaiman, choose your follow up s with care. There’s a lot of middling stuff out there. Both of the Death miniseries are good (not great, though, IMO). Sandman Dream Hunters is in the spirit of #74, if you liked that fable-y type story. I also recommend Gaiman’s Books of Magic and Stardust for things in a similar vein. Currently, the Fables series and Unwritten are similar in subject and spirit to Sandman, but for me they don’t have its heft and resonance. You can email or comment, and I’ll give customized comic recommendations.

So, what did everyone else think?

Previous posts:

Sandman Readalong week 6 v. 9 The Kindly Ones: link

Sandman Readlong week five v. 7 Brief Lives and v. 8 Worlds’ End: link

Sandman Readalong week four, v. 5 A Game of You and v. 6 Fables and Reflections: link

Sandman Readalong week three v 3 Dream Country and v 4 Season of Mists: link

Sandman Readalong week two v 2 A Doll’s House: link

Sandman Readalong week one v 1 Preludes and Nocturnes: link

Sandman Readalong schedule: link

Welcome back, those of you who are reading Homer’s Odyssey!

And, for those of you who chose to sit this one out (perhaps wisely, grumble), you’re welcome for the recaps, especially if you’ll be joining us next month when we start the Ulysses readalong.

(Because I seem to be constitutionally incapable of saying no to book discussions. Because the only thing better than reading a book is reading a book then talking about it with someone/s smart and funny!)

VT asked if I was “glad” to be doing the simultaneous reads of Sandman and The Odyssey. Not really. I wish Sandman could have been some other time, and spread over a longer period. One week for each graphic novel would have been ideal. But, this was the best time for others to read Sandman, and this timing for Odyssey fit nicely with reading Ulysses next year prior to Bloomsday, so, as the kids say these days, it is what it is.

Well, let’s get to it, then. There were a few weird and hilarious moments for me this week.

Book 15: Ithaca at Last

I am not a fan of gifs and such, but I really felt the call for an exclamation point with this chapter title, and that reminded me of Elaine from Seinfeld

So: Ithaca at Last!

At the end of 12, Odysseus finished his tale. Alcinous agrees that it’s time for him to go, and asks, nay, demands that his guests pony up even more swag for Odysseus than they did before.

Then recover our costs with levies on the people:
it’s hard to afford such bounty man by man.” (Book 13 l.15-16)

So, in other words, cough up a tripod or cauldron, then tax your people to pay for it. Glad I’m not one of his subjects.

Odysseus and the Phaacians sail off with the swag. O relaxes and falls asleep, so when the ship hits shore (hard) they drag him off and leave him sleeping amid his treasure in order to book it back home. Alas, Poseidon is still pissed about O killing his son and gripes to Zeus that O is returning with more treasure than if he hadn’t been screwed (literally and figuratively) and shipwrecked multiple times after the war.

Zeus says, bro, what is your problem? You’re a powerful god. Do what you want, man.

Poseidon says, well, I know that messing with Odysseus yet again might piss you off, so how about I mess with those Phaeacian mother cussers. I TOLD them not to offer hospitality to strangers. I’ll crush their ship and put a mountain around the port!

Zeus says, “Wait, dear brother,” and what I expected him to say was something like “way harsh, dude” but instead he says, wouldn’t it be great if you could turn the ship to stone just as it was getting there! THEN put up a mountain. BAM!

Thus, just as the ship gets into harbor and the sailors are glad to be home and the city excited to see them back, poof, the ship and crew are turned to stone.

Alcinous suddenly recalls that prophecy back in Book 8.

D’oh.

Quick, he says, sacrifice a dozen bulls to Poseidon and maybe he won’t put up the mountain, too! And then…

Odysseus wakes up, doesn’t recognize Ithaca, bitches about the poor, stoned Phaecians who got him there so fast and didn’t take one jot or tittle of his treasure.

Athena appears, in disguise as per her usual. Odysseus invents some tremendous lies and then she mocks him and reveals herself and says to stash the booty. Then she disguises him as a smelly beggar and tells him to go see…

Book 14: The Loyal Swineherd

The swineherd recaps the sitch in Ithaca, if you’d forgotten. Which you totally haven’t.

And then, something really weird happens in the storytelling. It’s as if Odysseus is later telling this back to the swineherd (whaaat?)

And you repled, Eumaieus, loyal swineherd,
“It’s wrong, my friend, to send any stranger packing…” (Bk 14, l. 63-64)

Then Odysseus tells a bunch more tremendous lies, then passive aggressively tells a story about a time when it was cold and he forgot his cloak in the war. And the swineherd is really nice about it and doesn’t roll his eyes, just goes and gets his best cloak of goat skin and Odysseus snuggles up in it next to the fire and falls asleep again.

Over and over, the swineherd says, when Telemachus gets back, we’ll get you a proper cloak and shirt.

Book 15: The Prince Sets Sail for Home

After leaving Odysseus last book, Athena flies off to see Telemachus, who is sleeping with Nestor’s son, Pisistratus. Go home, she says. So he prepares a ship, laden with gifts. An eagle appears with a dead goose. Helen says, the eagle is Odysseus and the goose is those silly suitors, whom he will kill. Yay, says everybody.

Just as they’re about to leave, some guy, a prophet named Theoclymenus, shows up, is the subject of lengthy story that does not have obvious relevance to the story, and asks to bum a ride. No prob, says Telemachus.

Meanwhile, back at the swine shack, the nice swineherd tells his lengthy backstory, and then they go to sleep again.

At this point Telemachos sneaks into Ithaca (because a bunch of the suitors are waiting to ambush and kill him) and tells Theoclymenus that things are a little dicey on the homefront. Then a hawk flies by with a dove in its mouth and Theo says Telemachus’ line will reign forever in Ithaca. T then foists Theo off on a spearsmen, and heads to the swine shack, because as we know from Book 14’s title, he is a Loyal Swineherd.

So, that’s it for this week! Moving right along, as the Muppets sang. What did everyone else think? Did you find the sudden POV switch with Odysseus and Eumaeus as weird as I did? The backstories of Theo and the swineherd as boring as I did? Do you think Poseidon put up the mountain or was appeased by 12 bulls?

Discuss it in the comments, or on Twitter with the hashtag #TCOdyssey.

Previous Posts:

Odyssey readalong schedule link

Week one books 1-3: link

Week two books 4-6: link

Week three books 7-9: link

Week four books 10-12: link

I know what I’ll do this morning, I told myself. I’ll catch up on my book blogging. I’ve been all about the Sandman and the Odyssey, but I’m reading other things too. I’ll do a few book reviews.

HOLY CATS. I haven’t blogged about other books since December. Waitaminute… Nope. November. CRAP. Well, don’t I have a lot of catching up to do? In order, then, what I’ve finished since November:

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Re-read, for Gods & Monsters book group. Great, dark, weird, and tight as a drum. My husband G calls it a super villain origin story. I love how difficult it is to categorize, and discuss. What is Bronte criticizing, what is she valorizing? Can a novel be great when we hate most of the characters in it, and those characters were clearly written as unlikeable?

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. For Books and Bars. Tore through it, and it changed how I think about humans as animals, and made me really uncomfortable watching Speed Racer and the chimpanzee.

Relish by Lucy Knisley. For Beer + Comics book group. Loved this comic-book memoir about food and growing up.

The Bronte Myth by Lucasta Miller. Re-read, this year with the focus on Emily. Fascinating deconstruction of how the poor little sick sisters have been mythologized while too often downplaying that they were righteous geniuses.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson. Beautiful. Like a poem, or a prayer.

Violent Cases and Black Orchid by Nail Gaiman and Dave McKean. Related reading for the #SandMN readalong.

Saga of the Swamp Thing and Swamp Thing: Love and Death by Alan Moore. Related reading for #SandMN. Also, amazing.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. I borrowed this from the library after a friend made fun of it, then I read it and ran out and bought my own copy plus two others as gifts. Bizarre, and while sometimes I would laugh at it, I think reading this book has actually changed my life. Or, at least my sock drawer.

Not My Father’s Son by Alan Cumming. Fascinating, heartbreaking story about Cumming’s tormented relationship with his father.

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert O’Brien. Read aloud to the boys. This book would never be published today–it’s all backstory!

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. Smart, funny, heartbreaking essays by Gay, who writes in a way that makes her fun and interesting to hang out with. I’m glad I read this before her novel, An Untamed State, it gave me good context for that one.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. Read aloud to the kids. Interesting to read it as an adult, when making fun of poor kids whose parents run off doesn’t seem so funny. Still, some lovely and some hilarious parts.

A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. One of my favorite holidays re-alouds. The words are delicious in my mouth, and I just love Hyman’s illustrations.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. For The Morning News Tournament of Books. I tore through it, and was reminded of both Steven King’s The Stand and James Kunstler’s World Made by Hand series. Felt it spend far too much time on the male characters, and on female characters with the male ones. Would have preferred more of the women.

An Untamed State by Roxane Gay. A book full of violence with unlikeable main characters is not an easy one to recommend. But this is full of hard truths, and a moving trauma and recovery tale. Mind opening.

Ms. Marvel volume 1. A Muslim teen girl becomes a superhero. Smart, funny, engaging, and passes the Bechdel test. Can’t wait for more!

So, friends, what have you all been reading? What have you loved, loathed, or put down out of indifference?

Welcome to week 6, the penultimate week of the Sandman readalong. You can comment on this blog or tweet with the hashtag #SandMN.

The Kindly Ones is the penultimate storyline of the series, and contains its climax, the death of Dream.

I was going to do a whole spoiler spacing thing, but c’mon, these issues came out 20 years ago. The spoiler period is OVER.

Originally planned as 6 issues, this story more than doubled that, and also if I remember correctly, started coming out less and less monthly as it went. I remember many, many people complaining at the time that they hated the art and didn’t like the storyline.

What I noticed on this re-read is that this is a storyline full of assholes, and in which lots of beloved characters die. (But do they die fer real? We’ll have to see next week, with The Wake.) It is mostly illustrated by Marc Hempel, whose iconic, seemingly simplistic art wasn’t a fan favorite. I liked it then, I like it more now, and think it does a great job moving us through this long, echoing story to the climax of the series. Dream is drawn about as reductively as he has been throughout the series, and he still is by far the saddest, worried-est looking he’s ever been until the very end, when he looks, to me, at peace.

The opening story, The Castle, was part of a Vertigo promo piece, and does a good job of re-situating us in the series and reminding us of a lot of the minor players.

Each issue opens with an image of a thread, and comments that can relate to Dream, to knitting, as well as to the process of creating the Sandman itself.

Is it ready yet? Are you done?

Nearly.

1. Lucifer and Mazikeen! Daniel kidnapped.

2. Lyta meets the three-in-one, Cluracan strays from the path and is an ass, Nuala is wimpy Dream is an ass,

3. Loki and Puck. Hob, Destiny, Delirium, “And she went off to look for [Barnabas], trailing occasional fish.” Lyta goes nuts, flashback to Doll’s House and other issues.

4. Remiel is (still) an ass. Lyta bops between fantasy and “reality” but both are real enough, in this series. Rose Walker! Catches a peeping Abel, and oh, SHE was the sleepy sitter. Hey, who are these two sisters that look like Chantal and Zelda? So many echoes! Note: grey background is dream-y, white is realer. Corinthian 2.0!

5. “Can I have more water please? My hair drank most of it.” Rose passes Lyta, and visits Zelda, dying of AIDS, who now speaks because Chantal is dead. Rose is sent back to England, Corinthian 2.0 and Matthew are sent to find Daniel. Poor dead Carla. I feel like we’ve got a whole list of dead nice people that litter the path of this comic.

6: No strings, and we’re echoing Doll’s House again, and the first time Rose flew to England. I love Glyn Dillon’s version of Rose. Cute solicitor, 3 old ladies (the one who says she killed someone after destroying his life is Lyta’s birth mother, the first Fury), a creepy old-school fairy tale, and we find Paul and Alex from the beginning of the series. Alex has Ethel’s picture on the nightstand, and has the original Piglet with him (did he nick it from Christopher Robin Milne?)

7. Love the snake cover. It’s Dave McKean’s favorite. Hey, we know this woman, but not by “Larissa.” And what does she wnat with Lyta? Thessaly kills a little lamb (she really is a humorless bitch through this) and Lyta finally finds her way in the dreamscape to the Furies, I mean, The Kindly Ones, and while they can’t avenge Daniel, they can go after Dream who killed Orpheus in Brief Lives.

8. A day in the life of Dream. Delirium tries to recruit Dream to find Barnabas but he’s not going. Rose gets some action, the Corinthian eats eyeballs to find Carla’s killer, and the poor dead Gryphon. “Larissa” eats lamb stew (stone cold, that one) Nuala pines, Rose gets dissed: “Very perceptive”.

9. “Almost time. Nearly. Very nearly.”

Rose meets her grandfather on a grey-backed page, and her heart is returned, just as it’s learning to break. (Readers of Wicked + Divine, were you reminded strongly of Luci with this scene?) Corinthian battles Loki. Oh, poor dead Gilbert. I loved him so, even if he was a place, not a person. And we finally learn who the woman is who broke Dream’s heart, or vice versa, and their talk does not go well, as was previously prophesied (by Destiny?)

10. “There.” Puck, Loki trying to get Thor to kill him, why does that poor skinny woman stay with Loki? (what is it with women in servant roles?) Poor dead Abel, boring Faerie, badass Merv Pumpkinhead goes out like Rambo alongside his bats with bowler hats. Nuala meets Delirium, Rose flies back and gets chatty with Ethel Cripps’ niece (I was very fond of Judith Krantz books when I was young, and don’t recall having to look up words. I preferred Mistral’s daughter to Princess Daisy, though. Less rape-y.) Shirley Jackson We Have Always Lived in the Castle reference, and now I get it, woo hoo! “I am here, Nuala.”

11. Which McKean illustrated with a fish on a string and a music stand even before Gaiman wrote 12 which had both those things. Weird. No more string as it was cut last issue. “Who’s there?” Hamlet reference! In case you hadn’t guessed, this is a tragedy. Goldie! Oh, Nuala. Barnabas! Lyta realizes she’s made a terrible, terrible mistake.

12. Penultimate issue of penultimate story line. Dream prepares for battle (again.) Delirium meets Satan! “Down the road I go, following my fishie.” Matthew takes a stand, and we see Hempel’s version of Death which I really like, and Dream sheds all his stuff (but keeps his pants on, and finally doesn’t look scared.

13. Unlucky 13. “What are you doing? “Waiting for you.” Indeed.

Hal is less of an ass. Rose is knocked up. (Again, echoes of Unity).

The nurse is reading a paper with the headline “Local Solicitor Kills Himself when Gay Lover Walks Out.” Could this be Rose’s Jack?

Alex wakes finally so perhaps there is hope for sinners after all. Daniel grows up fast, and the Kind Ladies have tea.

“There. For good or bad. it’s done.”

The Kindly Ones. I laughed. I cried. It was better than Cats, because as Lucifer said about the song ‘Memories,’ “the melody is trite, while the awkward paraphrases of lesser Eliot poems in the lyrics are grating in the extreme.”

What did everyone else think? I found it immensely satisfying as a whole story, though I am left with a nagging feel that the women characters in this: Larissa/Thessaly, Nuala, Lyta, the Kindly Ones, are more dastardly than they need to be.

Previous posts:

Sandman Readlong week five: link

Sandman Readalong week four: link

Sandman Readalong week three: link

Sandman Readalong week two: link

Sandman Readalong week one: link

Sandman Readalong schedule: link

Welcome back to week 4 of readalong for The Odyssey. Finishing book 12, we are now halfway through! Woo hoo! But, that’s not counting introductions and back matter. D’oh. Go to the end of the post for links to the schedule and previous posts. You can also tweet with the hashtag #TCOdyssey.

Without further ado, let’s get to this week, which ends at a new beginning.

When last we left Odysseus, he was in the castle of princess Nausicaa’s mom and dad after a sporting event. He revealed who he was, and told the story of how he’d killed Polyphemus and thus incurred the wrath of Poseidon, which brings us to

Book 10: The Bewitching Queen of Aeaea., who is Circe, yet she is referred to as having shining braids just like Calypso. Confusing!

The book starts not on Aeaea, but on the Aeolian island, where Aeolus gives good host, then sends Odysseus and his men on their way with a sack of wind. Tee hee. Fart joke. They get really good wind mileage, but the men begin to grumble (take note: most of the bad things that happen are portrayed by Odysseus as because his men did them. And the men are all dead and gone by this point, so who’s to contradict him?) and think he’s got a sack of treasure, so they open it, the wind escapes, the ship stops moving, and they have to row all the way back to Aeolus’ house, where he refuses more help, saying anyone dumb enough to lose the advantage he gave them before is obviously screwed by the gods.

O and crew row off, dejected, find a new island, that of the Laestrygonians. They seek hospitality, but the Laestrygonians are both giants and cannibals. Run! Run away! Some of the men die.

The row off to a new island, the one of Circe, who invites the crew to her house. Only two men stay behind, Odysseus and Eurylochus, smart enough to set a trap. Circe turns the men into pigs. Literally. O meets Hermes, who is just chillin’ on the island, who gives him some tips about how to avoid getting turned into a pig, plus rescue his men. He has to eat a weird plant called “Moly” (Attention, those of you also reading Sandman–the same plant used to capture Calliope by that nasty old author!) then not turn into a pig and before he has sex with Circe, make her promise not to hurt him or the men again. He does not seem to have a problem with this exchange of services, and not only restores the men but seems really nice and they stay for A YEAR till she insists that their next trip be to hell. Literally.

The men have almost no time to be happy they’re no longer pigs, before they’re crying about having to go to hell. Circe dumps a couple sacrificial animals off and disappears, her way of saying Buh-bye!

Book 11: The Kingdom of the Dead. In which Odysseus chats with ghosts. His most recently dead soldier who fell off a roof probably because he was still drunk asks Odysseus if he’ll give him an honorable burial. Roger that. Then the blind Tiresias, the one Circe said Odysseus had to go talk to, comes, drinks blood and tells Odysseus something we’ve heard before: don’t touch Helios’ sun cattle! Odysseus’ mom comes and tells him a bunch of stuff that makes him feel super guilty: Telemachos is powerless, Penelope is besieged, the kingdom is being plundered, and oh, yeah, the mom died of a broken heart because Odysseus was gone so long. Nice guilt trip. There are lots of other dead people, including Ajax who holds a grudge, Achilles who says being dead sucks, and Tantalus (tempted by water/food), and Sisyphus (pushing rock up hill that always falls down) and Heracles. I’m a little unclear on how Heracles can be both in the underworld and on Olympus, but that’s what it sounds like it says. Finally, O is overwhelmed by the dead, and he and his crew get the hell out of hell.

Chapter 12: The Cattle of the Sun. I could go into detail, but all that matters here is that according to Odysseus, they manage to get past the sirens by stopping their ears and keeping O lashed to the mast, ahem, erect, and then they pass the monster Scylla only losing six more men, avoid the whirlpool Charybdis (the proverbial rock and a hard place, plus referenced by Sting) and he wants to row, row, row their boat past the island of Helios, but they’re becalmed, and the men go ashore and he makes them swear not to eat the cattle. But they do. And it’s not Odysseus’ fault, because he was asleep. Plus, he made them swear. They try to leave, and as predicted, they lose the ship, all the men, and Odysseus has to go by Scylla and Charybdis in reverse and ends up at Calypso’s island of Ogygia where she kept him a sex slave till Hermes showed up, back in book 5.

AND since Odysseus’ tale has now looped back so we know it all he refuses to say more to the court of Alcinous. And the next chapter is titled “Ithaca at Last”, and I think we can all agree, that, yes, it’s about time Odysseus got back already.

So, we’re halfway through. Interesting how most of the heroics that live on in popular memory are crammed into book 12, not spread out over the entire book.

What did everyone else think?

Previous Posts:

Odyssey readalong schedule link

Week one link

Week two link

Week three link

Welcome back to the Sandman Readalong. We’re in week five, reading volume 7: Brief Lives and volume 8: Worlds’ End. Note the placement of the possessive apostrophe in the last volume, that’s the end of Worlds, plural.

Again, we’re on a rigorous reading schedule. The nice thing about Sandman is that it is possible to jump in anytime. There’s enough backstory given, or enough info out in the world (or you could just ask this particular blogger) to give you what you need to dive in anytime. And you really should, because this comic book series, Sandman by Neil Gaiman, is a wondrous thing. Not flawless, mind you, not from the pen of a god, though many fans pedestal-ize him. But still, tremendous and awesome, in the full meanings of those words.

Brief Lives is a road trip story, primarily focused on Delirium’s quest to find her brother Destruction, who abandoned his realm 300 years ago, on the verge of Newton’s science and question “are not light and gross bodies intraconvertible?”

The art is by Jill Thompson, who draws herself in the character Etain of the Second Look. (What does that MEAN, of the second look?) We first saw her work in the story “Parliament of Rooks” from Fables and Reflections. Thompson’s Delirium is younger and more childlike than the version we saw at the start of Season of Mists.

The first time I read the series, when it came out in the 90’s, I was fixated on the backstory of how Delight become Delirium. It was one of the questions I asked Gaiman when I went to my first signing (which I chronicled in My Neil Gaiman story), and one he brushed off. “Oh, someone else is going to write that sometime.”

But in the notes he gives in Season of Mists, which I read either in Hy Bender’s excellent Sandman Companion, or the, to me, less useful Annotated Sandman, Gaiman notes that Delirium is a pre-adolescent urchin, the kind who experiments with sexuality, clubs, and drugs before she’s whatever ready might mean. Once I read that description, I no longer wondered. Of course, I thought. Delirium is what happens to any delightful girl who gets shown too much too fast.

In Thompson’s hands and in Gaiman’s version for this story, she’s cuter and funnier. In fact, she gets most of the best lines. It’s hard to choose just one to quote. When the receptionist asks for a name, and she responds in surprise that the receptionist doesn’t have a name, that she wouldn’t want hers (Delirium’s, that is), and this is just before she starts summoning colored frogs, one of my favorite moments of the series. Then when she asks if Dream ever spends time thinking of ice cream flavors like telephone or green-mouse flavors. Later, when she says she’s going to grow up to be a kangaroo. But if I have to pick one, I’ll go with the one that illustrates the center of this story and maybe the series:

Delirium: Um. Whats the name of the word for things not being the same always. You know, I’m sure there is one. Isn’t there? There must be a word for it…the thing that let’s you know TIME is happening. Is there a word?

Dream: Change.

Poor Ruby. Poor Bernie Capax. Poor confused Danny Capax, eh? So much death throughout, but then again, as the lady says, we get what everyone gets, right? A lifetime. And no matter how much it is, they all feel brief and precious.

The character who has the healthiest view of life, probably is Andros, who always notices it’s a beautiful day. He’s the caretaker of Orpheus, who longs, like Rainie Blackwell, for death.

In the end, Dream makes a momentous decision, one that will have repercussions we see in the next volume and beyond.

Gaiman sneaks in yet another reference to the wizard of Oz (among a ZILLION other references, which are like delightful treats throughout that enhance the reading experience, but aren’t necessary to it), when Destruction asks whether they wants a heart, a brain, or a balloon ride. He gets the balloon ride into the sky by himself, while Delirium gets a brain in Barnabas and Dream gets a heart, one that he has not shown too often. (Though his apology to Delirium earlier in this story, and when he admits he went with her at first so he could do an earthly drive by of the lover who left and made him so delightfully Morrissey-ish at the beginning, what with the rain on the balcony are both lovely moments.)

OK, on, on, on to the next one, as the Foo Fighters sing.

Volume 8, World’s End. This is a great example of why I’m baffled when people say of the Sandman series, “I don’t like the art.” WTF? There are like twenty different artists in this one short volume! You can’t dislike ALL of them!

So here’s a question for you, kind readers. Who’s your favorite inker in this volume?

I can’t decide. I love Allred’s iconic Prez story, plus Zulli’s spread of the sea monster, plus the 14-15, and 16-17 spreads of the last issue #56, (note how there are an unprecedented THREE full spreads in this collection.) and am at my satellite office and didn’t bring the Bender book, so I don’t have the artist for those pages.

Gaiman is doing an homage to Chaucer (who appeared earlier in “Men of Good Fortune”) with travelers telling tales. Somewhere else in the past I read that it was also an homage to Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, which I subsequently read and didn’t love and can’t recall if I found a connection. Here, let me go check… AHA. From 2008, my comments on If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller.

There are stories within stories within stories, but perhaps my favorite is the one that is ostensibly NOT a story, Charlene’s after she notes this about the previous stories:

Charlene: There aren’t any WOMEN in these stories. Did anyone else notice that?

“Jim“: But, well, what about me, missie? There’s ME. There was MY story. That was a woman’s story.

Charlene: Oh, PLEASE. Look, girl, the whole POINT of your story is that there WASN’T a WOMAN in it. Just a ship full of sailors and a giant dick thrusting out of the ocean…I mean, there aren’t any real women in any of the stories I’VE heard tonight. We’re just pretty figures in the background to be loved or avoided or obeyed or…whatever.

Charlene goes on to tell a heartbreaking and utterly plausible story of her mundane life. In the end, she chooses to stay. I gotta say, Charlene is right about the Boys-Own nature of the tales, and having her stay to be a domestic sticks in my craw. Just because Gaiman acknowledges there are no women in the stories, doesn’t absolve him of the lack, and making her a domestic? Works my nerves, it does.

So, that’s more than enough from me. Join us next Monday for the longest arc of the series, volume 9 The Kindly Ones. (And speaking of art that people hate, whooee. I don’t, but MANY did.)

You can comment here, or tweet with the hashtag #SandMN.

What did everyone else think?

Previous posts:

Sandman Readalong week four: link

Sandman Readalong week three: link

Sandman Readalong week two: link

Sandman Readalong week one: link

Sandman Readalong schedule: link

I just scared my writer tablemates by taking a picture of my chestular region; the photo booth did a really loud countdown that sounded like my machine was going to blow up. I’m wearing my Delirium T-shirt, given to me in the 90’s when my now-husband was courting me.

Slightly disappointed that there are no colorful frogs, as in the Farrell travel office, but the Jill Thompson images are still charmingly bat$hit.

Welcome back to those reading along with us through Homer’s Odyssey. I think there are four of us total, including me and my husband G., but hey, I committed to this, and I’m going to do it. So if anyone else out there is lurking and reading, give a shout in the comments.

Prior to Christmas, the story finally shifted from Telemachos to Odysseus himself.

Book 7: Phaecia’s Halls and Gardens. Athena in disguise as a small girl guides Odysseus to the castle and gives him useful info, and then disguises him. He follows directions, goes in and hugs the queens knees and begs for hospitality, which they give him. This encourages him, so he goes further and asks for a ship before the queen notices O is wearing her daughter’s clothes. Another awkward Odyssey moment. He spills the beans on his trip from Calypso to Nausicaa, and everyone is very impressed, then they go to sleep. Honk shoo.

Book 8: A Day for Songs and Contests. Things get set up for a party. A blind singer tells a story of Odysseus and Achilles. O cries, but only the king notices (similar to what happened with Telemachus a few books ago). He switches things up and calls for the feats of strength to commence. Those who win are named to spread their fame. Odysseus is first invited, then taunted, and he gets up and hurls a discus farther than anyone else, and tells them to bring it on. Again, awkward! King brings back the singer, asks outright who he is, then settles back to hear about the ten years O has been missing. (Finally!)

[Aside: did you know I lettered in track in high school, and when I ask people to guess what my event was they never can. It was discus.]

Book 9: In the One-Eyed Giant’s Cave. O and his men left Troy, raped and pillaged a town, landed on an island of Lotus Eaters, who got so high they didn’t even remember home, then went to an island of Cyclopes. O insisted they try for hospitality. Instead, they got imprisoned and the Cyclops ate a bunch of the men. They sharpened a stick, got him drunk and poked him in the eye. A bunch of his Cyclops buddies came to see what the ruckus was about, but O had given him a fake name: Nobody. They left after the cyclops, whose name is revealed as Polyphemus, keeps shouting that Nobody tricked him.

[Aside: when we read an excerpt of this in 9th grade English, our teacher, Mr. S the hog farmer, told us about the girl the year before who'd had to read the Cyclops passage and had accidentally pronounced his name Polypenis. Tee hee.]

The men sneak out under the bellies of sheep, get to their ship, but then Odysseus starts taunting Polyphemus and boasts his real name. Couldn’t just sail away, but had to incur the penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct, which was Polyphemus complaining to his dad Poseidon that Odysseus was a jerk (to be fair, he was still angry about all those men Polyphemus ate), and that’s why Poseidon has been so angry at O till now. O tries to set things right with Zeus, who won’t accept his sacrifice, and that’s why Athena had to intercede on his behalf. So, just a little over a third of the way through, we’re finally getting some answers.

That’s it for this week. Join us next Wednesday 1/14 to discuss books 10, 11 and 12. What did you think?

Previous Posts:

Odyssey readalong schedule link

Week one link

Week two link

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Oh, except for dairy month. And the MN State Fair. And Christmas… Well, let’s just say it’s in the top ten, shall we?

THE MORNING NEWS TOURNAMENT OF BOOKS SHORT LIST HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED!

Last year I ill-advisedly put together reading schedules for the Odyssey, Sandman, and Ulysses. On the one hand, WTF was I thinking, on the other, I know damn well what I was thinking: ALL THE BOOKS! I WANT TO READ ALL THE BOOKS! But I told myself, and I’m sure other people, oh, I’ll give a miss to the ToB this year.

NO. I will do no such thing. I’ve just finished Station Eleven (which I correctly guessed would be on the short list) and I’ve got Untamed State and Brief History of Seven Killings on deck. Who am I kidding, I am totally going to buy the David Mitchell book. And the rest I’ve now requested from the library, having had to jigger my request list so it didn’t exceed 50. (That’s not OCD, no, no it’s not.)

So, despite the fact that I’m in the middle of FOUR books already, little things like Homer’s Odyssey, Absolute Sandman v. III, The Sandman Companion, and Sandman Dustcovers, I’m going to blaze ahead, full speed. Woo hoo!

The Shortlist for The Morning News 2015 Tournament of Books

Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball
A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall by Will Chancellor
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
Wittgenstein Jr by Lars Iyer
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
Redeployment by Phil Klay
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Adam by Ariel Schrag
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

Welcome to the fourth installment of the Sandman winter readalong! This week we’ll be talking about both A Game of You v5 #32-37 and Fables and Reflections v6 #29-31, 38-40, 50 and Special #1. At 14 issues this is our biggest chunk so far. If you’re reading in the graphic novel collections, then this was a pretty straightforward jump from volume 5 to 6. But if you, like me, are reading the issues in order in the Absolute Editions, this week required some jumping around. A$$loads of SPOILERS AHEAD.

By all accounts, A Game of You was one of the least popular Sandman storylines. People didn’t like the art, or the story. Retailers didn’t like the covers, since A Game of You was writ large, and Sandman small. Also, many readers were troubled, including the GN collections introduction writer Samuel R. Delany, by the deaths of two characters at the end of the story, Wanda the transexual, and Maisie Dobbs, the homeless “I don’t like dogs” woman. Delany (spot on, IMO) calls out Gaiman for killing off the two outsider characters. He concludes, though, that if you read the story, carefully, in the details, that what’s being put forth isn’t easily reducible.

I’ve read this story many times. Every time it makes me cry. I absolutely love the detail of the cute frog mug. So many, many lovely characters die in it, but none of them are white and hetero-normative. (Or human, for that matter.)

I’ve come to terms with all the deaths but one. Wanda, based on the set up of the story, had to die. Alas, she had to die in order for Barbie to learn, and this is not just an unfortunate trope, it’s a terrible one. But in terms of the story, in which the moon won’t allow Wanda to travel because she has a Y chromosome, and she is left behind in the brownstone in a hurricane, it makes sense that she dies, and her funeral and Barbie’s memoriams to her (including her dream) give Wanda a lovely rich, well-deserved goodbye.

Here are the things that make me not pissed (though always sad) about Wanda’s death: Barbie’s scribbling Wanda’s name on her grave with pink (which echoes her heaving of the pink Porpentine at the grey stone Hierogram in the skerry), and Wanda’s appearance in the dream, which in the context of this story, in which all the dreams are real, and all that’s real is artificial and constructed and shifting, is her true self, as Death encounters her, as a lovely person and woman. I do not see her as conflicted in her identity, which Delany scolds Gaiman about, nor do I see that the moon’s opinion about Y chromosomes is the author’s. Wanda is simply afraid of surgery; she KNOWS her identity and claimed it by leaving Kansas and becoming a New Yorker named Wanda who spouts Yiddish.

Gaiman says his aim in the story was to show that all of us, no matter how boring and bland on the outside, contains worlds of wonder within. Mission: accomplished.

The death I cannot and won’t forgive is that of Maisie Dobbs. Wanda’s character is deepened when she goes to help Maisie, and Wanda dying is part of Barbie’s character, but Maisie’s is not necessary, and killing a black homeless character for slight story reasons (unlike Wanda’s which I read as major) to protect a pretty white cisgendered girl is an cruel, thoughtless cliche. Shame on you, Neil Gaiman, and I hope you now regret that story choice.

Now, to see if I can sum up (ha!) Fables and Reflections. Courtesy of Wikipedia:

Fables and Reflections collecting The Sandman #29—31, 38—40, 50; Sandman Special #1; and Vertigo Preview #1: A collection of short stories set throughout Morpheus’ history, most of them originally published directly before or directly after the “Game of You” story arc. Four issues, dealing with kings and rulers, were originally published under the label “Distant Mirrors,” while three others, detailing the meetings of various characters, were published as the “Convergences” arc. Fables and Reflections includes the Sandman Special, originally published as a stand-alone issue, which assimilates the myth of Orpheus into the Sandman mythos, as well as a very short Sandman story from the Vertigo Preview promotional comic.

I’ll write a little about each.

“Fear of Falling” Gaiman says this refers to a dream he had as a child.

“Thermidor” Lady Johanna Constantine, who we first met in “Men of Good Fortune” and Orpheus on whom more later.

“August” The story itself is OK, but Talbot’s art is the thing for me, with its changing shadows and accumulations of garbage as the day progresses.

“Three Septembers and a January” Never knew about this guy. Lovely story.

“The Hunt” Another one of those seems like a “real” myth but Gaiman made it up.

“Soft Places” More history, with Marco Polo. Best line: I remember when I was just a vicinity. Hints of things to come: who’s hanging out, cooing in him?

“The Song of Orpheus” Gaiman says readers on book tours weren’t familiar enough with the story of Orpheus, which is why he did more of a straight telling of the myth than a series of riffing short stories. Hey, it’s the missing sibling!

Back in the pre-internet days, I nerded out by calling the Classics department at a local university to ask him what Olethros meant after the issue came out to confirm it meant Destruction.

Note: the other Endless never call her “Death,” just our sibling, perhaps a reference to the birth visit Olethros refers to. Also, probably not a good idea to set out on a path that Destruction sets, eh? And, Calliope’s comment about Dream not changing, and maybe even not being able to change, and finally, the ending, which shows again: old-school Dream is a jerk.

“The Parliament of Rooks” Another appearance of Goldie, yay! Also, the first appearance of the Lil Endless. Death laughing at Dream tripping on his cape is hilarious.

“Ramadan” So, so pretty, the art, the colors, the letters. Russell illustrated this from a prose story Gaiman wrote rather than a traditional script. We saw the city in the bottle when Dream put Azazel away in the Season of Mists storyline.

I’m reading the Absolute Edition, which includes a short story about a satyr, beautifully painted by John Bolton and featuring Desire in a non-jerky aspect.

Whew! I think that’s it for this week. Join us on Twitter with the hashtag #SandMN or in the comments. I’ll be here next week to talk about Sandman: Brief Lives v7 #41-49 and Sandman: World’s End v8 #51-56 (15 issues).

What did everyone else think?

Previous posts:

Sandman Readalong week three: link

Sandman Readalong week two: link

Sandman Readalong week one: link

Sandman Readalong schedule: link