Reading Fiction Because of the Author

When I pick up a new book it's often because I've enjoyed books by that author before. I've been having a grouchy spell with my reading--nothing I was reading struck me as much good--so I picked up some recent books by three different authors I've enjoyed in the past.

The first one was Megan Whalen Turner. I loved The Thief, The Queen of Attolia and The King of Attolia, so when other book bloggers (like Stella Matutina) told me that she had a new one in that series out, A Conspiracy of Kings, I found it and read it immediately. It was as much fun as the second and third ones. If you like adventure stories and you haven't read these, go find them.

The second author was Susan Beth Pfeffer. My daughter and I both loved Life As We Knew It, as much as you can love any post-apocalyptic novel. Then I read The Dead and the Gone and told her not to bother, that I didn't like it much. After I read the third one, This World We Live In, I went out and bought the middle one for her so she could read it purely for the sake of enjoying the third one fully. She's the same age as the heroine of the first and third novels, 16-year-old Miranda, and that probably adds to my interest in this YA series.

The third author was Umberto Eco. My husband has read many of his books, so I've read a few of his essays here and there, but I hadn't read any of his fiction since The Name of the Rose, a thoroughly wonderful tale (and a best-seller when it came out). I came across The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana in the audiobooks section of the library, translated by Geoffrey Brock and read by George Guidall, and listened to it during my commute. I didn't realize what an unlikely audiobook it is until I took down our copy from the built-in bookshelves (the ones you can see at Scene of the Blog) and flipped through it to see all the comic book illustrations. And the irony, of course, is that I'd never have read it if I'd seen those, because I don't care for books that depend too heavily on anything other than text.

The first half of the novel is mildly interesting, all about memory and how a man who has read avidly all his life, Yambo, is affected by a stroke so that he remembers only what he's read, and none of the details of his personal life. The title comes from a comic he discovers to have been "the most insipid tale ever conceived by the human brain," but one that had built up in his mind until it became a symbol for memory and immortality, the "mysterious flame" of recognition when he doesn't remember what is being recognized, but feels the emotion of it.

The second half, although finally revealing what the "fog" he has been unable to penetrate previously is hiding, ultimately peters out. Yambo remembers the events that shaped him as a boy, and then apparently has another stroke, blends memory with all that he's read and then re-discovered through rereading, and dies. It's not a success as fiction; it reads as thinly veiled autobiography, and the ideas might have been better explored in his essays.

So in two out of three cases, picking books by an author I'd previously enjoyed meant that I enjoyed the new one at least as much. How well does it work for you to pick books by a tried-and-true author when you want a particular level of satisfaction from your reading?

Firebirds

Once when I was in high school, a group of guys who had been talking about cars for a while turned to me and politely attempted to include me in the conversation. "What kind of car would you get, Jeanne?" they asked. "A Firebird," I replied, with little hesitation. There was a stir in the group, surprise that I had a ready answer, and such a good one. A little later, they found out that I knew of a symphony called the Firebird and liked the image (this was well before Fawkes popularized his species). But I will always treasure my memory of the momentary admiration in their eyes.

A few years ago, my daughter brought home a collection of Fantasy and Science Fiction stories in a collection entitled Firebirds. I was predisposed to like it, of course, but it's a truly wonderful collection, especially for the novice reader. It's heavy on Fantasy and very light on Science Fiction. There are a couple of fairy stories, Cotillion and Byndley. There's a very unusual story entitled Mariposa, by Nancy Springer. We like Beauty by Sherwood Smith, Hope Chest by Garth Nix, Little Dot by Diana Wynne Jones, Remember Me by Nancy Farmer, and Flotsam by Nina Kiriki Hoffman.

The standout story, however is by Megan Whalen Turner and entitled The Baby in the Night Deposit Box. In it, a small town bank that had just put up a billboard advertising "your treasure will be safe with us" gets a baby in their night deposit box with a rattle, a teething ring, and a note that says "Our treasure, please keep her safe." They take care of the baby, who turns out to be a girl, and keep her safe from the world outside the bank, including a woman from Child Protective Services who keeps attempting to take her away. At one of her court hearings, the girl (now called Penny, short for Precious Treasure) tells the Judge that the night watchman's wife helps her when she feels afraid of shadows in the night:

"She said they were just shadows and that shadows all by themselves couldn't hurt anyone. I didn't have to be afraid. I just had to pretend that they were the shadows of bunnies. That any shadow, if you look at it right, could be the shadow of a bunny. She said I should take my rattle, because I always have my rattle with me, and my ring." She held up her arm to show the teething ring that now sat like a bracelet around her wrist. "She said I should point my rattle at the shadows and say 'You're a bunny,' and then I won't be afraid anymore."

When Penny is eighteen, she leaves the bank to rescue her royal (of course) parents from a wicked usurper with lots of minions that cast scary shadows. Naturally, she does what she has been taught:

"No--" shrieked the enchantress. "No--"
"You," Penny said firmly, "are a bunny."

Like my answer to the car question, the ending of the story is not what the reader might have expected.