Reading questions

from Readers Guide by way of BeanPhoto:

Most memorable experience reading a book? When I was in graduate school, I lived in an apartment that had a pool. One hot summer day when I was reading books on the list for my comprehensive exam, I decided to take my copy of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse out to the pool, since I hadn’t been able to get interested in reading it any of the other times I’d tried. For some reason, that did the trick. I was transfixed, and ripped through the entire book at one sitting.

Most unusual place for reading a book? At sporting events. I go to my son’s soccer games and sometimes one of the other parents has a book because we’re reading during the half hour warm-up before the game starts. But when I bring a book to a professional sporting event to read before it starts--because I’m the designated parent--I don’t see other folks in the stands who are reading.

Most dangerous place I’ve ever read a book? I think we won’t count the fiction I read behind my textbooks during most of third grade. (That got me banned from using the school library.) So I’ll say reading on the metro trains in Washington D.C. The danger was always that I’d miss my stop, plus when I read I’m pretty unaware of what’s going on around me.

Most luxurious experience reading a book? The final Harry Potter book came out when I was on vacation with my whole family in Hawaii—my husband and kids, my brother and sister-in-law and my nieces, and my parents. The kids read some of it on rented beach chairs under a rented umbrella on Waikiki Beach. I read almost all of it on the airplane from Kona to Phoenix. We all felt lapped in luxury because we were in Hawaii on our long-planned dream vacation, plus we were rich enough in time and money to buy the book and read it right away.

Funniest experience reading a book? Well, the book was so funny it made the whole experience funny—I was waiting with my daughter in the parent waiting room for my son to finish a swimming lesson, and I was reading “Six to Eight Black Men” by David Sedaris. When I got the part about what the Dutch parents get to say to their children on Christmas Eve, I couldn’t stop laughing. I have a very big laugh, and I had been trying to hold it in, but when I got to that part it just came out in big booms punctuated by gasps for air. My daughter was embarrassed, so I kept trying to control myself, and then I’d just break out again. I waved the book and said “there’s a funny part” and then kind of backed down the hall, collected my kid, and managed to drive home wiping the tears of laughter from my face.

Like to answer these questions? You’re tagged. I'd especially like to hear from Kristen at Booknaround, Care at Care's Book Club, and Florinda at The Three Rs

Crystal Healer

I had the book Crystal Healer with me while waiting for some kid event, and my daughter looked over at it and said "what on earth are you reading?" thinking it was some kind of new age book, from the title. In fact, though, it's science fiction and the healer does not use crystals to heal--she tries to heal the ailing crystals. Yeah. This is the tenth book in the "Stardoc" series by S.L. Viehl, and if you haven't read the previous ones, you're not ready for this one. There's quite a build-up.
(Previous Stardoc novels: Stardoc, Beyond Varallan, Endurance, Shockball, Eternity Row, Blade Dancer, Rebel Ice, Plague of Memory, Omega Games.)

If you have read the previous ones, though, this one has a tremendous payoff in terms of what happens to the main characters. The Stardoc, now calling herself Jarn, travels to a planet on which the natives live in primitive rural societies by choice, having disdained the technology of their forebears. One of her colleagues cautions the group of "healers" from the spaceship, telling them "The oKiaf have been exposed to advanced technology, so it is unlikely their healers have remained dependent on native treatments and religious rituals. Yet these will still be important to the people, and may be incorporated with what technology they continue to use."

Jarn and her husband Duncan have become functionally immortal without their consent, and their interest in understanding what the crystals are, how dangerous they can be, and how they work is tied up with their deliberations about their mortal daughter and beings on other worlds they feel some responsibility towards, one the larval form of a creature so fearsome that if anyone else knew it existed, it would be summarily destroyed--or at least an attempt would be made to destroy it. As they learn more about the dangers of the crystal, they discover that one world's translation of the word for it is "eternity" or the "afterlife."

There's an exciting space battle towards the end, complete with shape-shifters called Odnallak who assume the form of whatever you're most afraid of (like boggarts in the Harry Potter series). Part of the fun is seeing how the Odnallak appear to characters from various worlds--to Jarn, one appears as "six-legged death cat." To another character, it appears to be a blind, venom-spitting creature that can feel movements in the air. To another, it's a tusked animal. To Duncan, it's a fearsome warrior lizard from a race that once held him as a slave.

At the very end, some of the mysterious appearances in previous books are put into a new and fascinating context when the crystal appears to speak to Jarn. Finally this character, who I habitually react to as damaged from her years on a misogynist ice planet, fulfills her destiny. I could probably stop reading these books now, because this one provides an ending. But if Viehl comes out with any more, you know I'm going to be pouncing on them like, well, a six-legged death cat.

I'm afraid I'm like Ron Weasley about the form my boggart would take. I've always thought that what would wait for me in Room 101 (from 1984) wouldn't be rats in a cage they'd put on my face, but spiders in a cage they'd put on my feet. How about you--what form would your worst fear take?

The Dragon Tamers

We all had a good time at the Harry Potter Exhibition (in Chicago until Sept. 27, 2009, and then going to Boston) this weekend. My favorite thing was walking through the enormous carved doors into the great hall of Hogwarts and seeing lit candles floating overhead. Sitting in Hagrid's chair was my second favorite thing (when you're six feet tall, a chair that doesn't let your feet touch the floor is a novelty). Walker's favorite was throwing quaffles at Quidditch hoops. Eleanor liked seeing all the costumes (which a guide told us are occasionally changed out as they're needed for the last movie). We all marvelled at how small the actors and actresses are; my almost-nine-year-old niece looked at the Bellatrix costume and another for Cho Chang and observed that they're about her size. We were also surprised at how small the Ford Anglia is--it was parked in front of the ticket counters of the museum.

As you can see, I did get some souvenir magnets--a few with potions recipes (which I thought would be oddly appropriate for my refrigerator) and one with the Hogwarts crest and motto: Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus ("never tickle a sleeping dragon").

The motto has always made me think of the story The Dragon Tamers, by E. Nesbit, in which a connection between dragons and cats is gradually revealed, one that will strike every cat-owner as absolutely right and true (read The Dragon Tamers on gutenberg.net--if you've never read it before, you should read it right now because it is one of my favorite stories in all the world).

City of Glass

Cassandra Clare's City of Glass came out last week, and everyone in my household was pleased to hear that it's a wonderful ending to a great YA trilogy. We bought it at a bookstore in the train station in Chicago, and Eleanor read it all the way back to my brother's house in the suburbs, and then every moment she could snatch the next day. There were parts that made her exclaim out loud, and when she handed it to me, she said I should hurry up because she wanted to talk about it with someone. Well, I've been doing my best to hurry up with it all week, because Eleanor left for a band trip in the wee hours of this morning, giving me a deadline in the busiest part of the week, before I could have any free time to read. But City of Glass is a novel you make time to read.

Eleanor and I laughed and I cried out loud while reading this book. At one point I even got angry. I slapped the book shut (with my finger marking my place) and said to her "if I find out Sebastian is Clary's brother, I'm going to be so mad! I mean, listen to this: 'she went numb with an icy shock of wrongness. Something was terribly wrong...' I just can't stand it when somehow a character 'just knows' that it's WRONG to kiss her brother." Eleanor assured me that the feeling of wrongness was not merely about family ties. Eventually, I settled in and learned to trust the storyteller. In the end, I found that the trilogy is about more than just "the importance of being nephilim." In fact, the treatment of the "Downworlders" reminds me of the treatment of house elves, goblins, and other non-wizarding magical creatures in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. I wouldn't say that Clare's fiction is derivative, but rather that her magical world intersects with other fictional magical worlds (most notably Holly Black's, whose characters watch Clare's characters go by, at one point). I especially like the way the Seelie Queen is left flat-footed at the end of this novel; it's immensely satisfying to see someone finally stand up to her. As Captain Jack Sparrow would say, it's all about leverage.

City of Glass brings most of the things I enjoyed in the first two books to satisfying conclusions: the humor, the characterizations of evil, and the love story. In addition, (to Eleanor's quite vocal delight on first reading) it provides a nice little reply to fans of Stephanie Meyers' forever-seventeen vampire Edward in the musings of Clare's vampire Simon:
"Young forever, Simon thought. It sounded good, but did anyone really want to be sixteen forever? It would have been one thing to be frozen forever at twenty-five, but sixteen? To always be this gangly, to never really grow into himself, his face or his body? Not to mention that, looking like this, he'd never be able to go into a bar and order a drink. Ever. For eternity."

There's less humor in this final book, but Magnus Bane still gets a few good lines, including another one about how old he is:
"'I'm seven hundred years old, Alexander. I know when something isn't going to work. You won't even admit I exist to your parents.'
Alec stared at him. 'You're seven hundred years old?'
'Well,' Magnus amended, 'eight hundred. But I don't look it.'"
And even though Magnus promises to play a crucial role in the events of this novel, we're still no more sure we can trust him than Clary is--"she wondered why she'd ever thought trusting someone who wore that much eyeliner was a good idea."
Simon also gets some of the humorous lines in this final novel. Our favorite is:
"Has there ever been an Inquisitor who didn't die a horrible death?" he wondered aloud. "It's like being the drummer in Spinal Tap."

The issues involved in how to fight for good and against evil are nicely nuanced, even in the title City of Glass. The vampire looks "faintly green" at the idea of drinking blood from a cat, because he has a pet cat at home. Clary finally gets to tell her mother that it's not a mother's right to protect her child from who and what she is. And, more importantly, Clary comes up with a clever way to use her magical talents and help her friends, and she succeeds in convincing the entire community of adults that they need her to do it. Valentine meets the end he richly deserves, but not as an entirely black and unlamented villain.

And the love story. It's a good one. Clary won't give in to her own urge to love Jace, early on, because she thinks, as she says to him, he only wants "something else you can hate yourself for." Jace finally tells her "I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there's a life after that, I'll love you then." And Clary is finally able to say yes to Jace, a sort of Molly Bloom eternal yes that goes a long way towards reconciling me to the angel ex machina way Clary and Jace reach their happy ending.

Once Walker has gotten a turn to read this book, I'm pretty sure Eleanor and I will be rereading it. Because now that our anxiety over what happens is assuaged, we'll want to sit back and enjoy these characters some more.

Movies out of season

Eleanor got a bit of facebook "flair" on Friday that said
"July 9? Why not just cancel Christmas?"

I was glad to know that there are other people out there who had been looking forward to seeing the new Harry Potter movie at Thanksgiving. But now the release date has been moved to July. Who wants to see Harry Potter in July? The atmosphere of the book (this one is the Half-Blood Prince) is just right for late November, not for a bright, American summer.

I also liked the way the flair was worded, because I'm pretty sure it's a conscious echo of the actor who plays Snape (Alan Rickman) at his villainous worst as the Sheriff of Nottingham, snapping "and cancel Christmas" as he stomps out of the room. Yes, it was in that Robin Hood version with Kevin Costner. What do I care if Kevin didn't do an English accent? Go pick on the studio that did the story with animals.

Or better yet, send your letters of outrage to the Harry Potter studio, Warner Brothers.

New Pleasures

Last month we took off over the weekend of the kids' spring break and had a fancy dinner and stayed in a hotel. Walker wanted oysters. Ron had to point out the steamed shellfish on the menu and we all had to agree to share the raw oysters as an appetizer before he could be dissuaded from ordering raw oysters as his dinner. A good thing, as it turned out. Although he said he liked the flavor of the one raw oyster he put in his mouth, Walker didn't swallow it. (He did eat all the steamed shellfish happily, as usual.) Ron and Eleanor each tried a raw oyster. Ron ate several. I thought I could just sit there and not be noticed, but it was decided that I needed to try a raw oyster. I sat there thinking of the poem by Roy Blount, Jr.:

I like to eat an uncooked oyster.
Nothing's slicker, nothing's moister.
Nothing's easier on your gorge
Or, when the time comes, to disgorge.
But not to let it too long rest
Within your mouth is always best.
For if your mind dwells on an oyster...
Nothing's slicker, nothing's moister.
I prefer my oyster fried.
Then I'm sure my oyster's died.

Anyway, I put the thing in my mouth and swallowed it. It wasn't too bad. And I'd tried something new.

Just as potent as the pleasure of traveling to a new place and trying a new food is the pleasure of an entirely new book by an author you already like, especially when the author is also fond of the same kind of books you are. With her first book, The Penderwicks, Jeanne Birdsall set out consciously to imitate the pleasures of books by E. Nesbit and Edward Eager. In her new book, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, she also mentions Eva Ibbotson, Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series (a BIG favorite at our house*), and a character from Narnia. In addition, she has one of those odd pleasures in store for parents--the pleasure of hearing the words of a story you've read to your child a hundred million times...I couldn't believe how readily the "Scuppers the Sailor Dog" song came back to me when I heard Mr. Penderwick read it to Batty.

Mr. Penderwick's Latin phrases will not be a mystery to any child who's read the Harry Potter series (we have a new game with books--try reversing initial letters to see if you can make words and phrases that make sense, like A Wrinkle in Time becomes A Tinkle in Wrime, Where the Wild Things Are becomes Where the Tiled Wings Are, and any Harry Potter book becomes Perry Hotter and the...). Mr. Penderwick's date with Marianne Dashwood probably will be a mystery for most child readers, at least until the mystery is revealed towards the end of the book. Just a little Toy Story-like pleasure for older readers.

One of my favorite parts of The Penderwicks on Gardam Street is how you can tell that a particular woman would be a bad match for Mr. Penderwick--she not only wears a rabbit coat, but she also has "rabbit fur around the tops of her boots." Shades of Cruella DeVille!

Another favorite part for me is when you see the kitchen of the woman who turn out to be a good match for Mr. Penderwick:

Jane entertained herself by looking around the kitchen. It was nothing like the kitchen at home. It was warm and cozy like home, true, but it was also messy--delightfully so, thought Jane--and it didn't look as though lots of cooking went on there. There was a laptop computer on the counter with duck stickers on it, the spice cabinet was full of Ben's toy trucks, and Jane couldn't spot a cookbook anywhere. This is the kitchen of a Thinker, she decided, and promised herself that she'd never bother with cooking, either.

I have several quite intellectual friends who are good cooks and who enjoy cooking, but I'm not one of them. From now on, I'm going to think of my kitchen as "the kitchen of a Thinker." I can make some good tea sandwiches, and I have a caviar dish with room for ice, so probably I can use it to serve up oysters raw and properly chilled.

*If you want to read the Swallows and Amazons books in order, check out this link:
http://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Ransomes-Swallows-Amazons-order