And the Answer is, Clearly, Fairy Tales

So I've noticed lately that a lot of popular YA lit these days is purely dystopic in nature, and I've speculated about it.  But something had been nagging at me, and that something was this: what is popular--is there anything popular--that's at all anti-dystopic?  What, I thought, is the opposite of all this dystopia?  (Linguistically speaking, I know the answer is utopia...but for a little while I was stumped about how one would generically answer this question.)

And then it hit me as I watched the season 2 premiere of Once Upon a Time: duh, the answer is fairy tales.

They never fully go out of style; they get adapted and re-adapted; they almost always follow the same general plans.  They're stark: black and white, good and evil.  Hey look, this is the evil queen.  She's bad.  Hey look, this is Snow White.  She's good.  

No in between, only temporary unhappiness, and lots of happy ever after.  Most of the time.

And I guess I just had to write this up to reassure myself that not all of the popular books of the moment are about the world going to hell in a handbasket (or worse).

In Which I Tell You Why I Will Never Finish The Casual Vacancy

Life is too short, people.  It's too short to read books that you don't enjoy reading all the way through.

Which I suppose could be considered an odd perspective coming from someone who recently decided to re-read books that she read in school and positively and fearsomely hated, but I feel that's a different story.  Some of those books just weren't given a fair shake back then for whatever reason.

But here's the thing about J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy, or at least the first one hundred pages or so of it: I just kept waiting for something to happen.  And nothing did.  (There's a joke in an episode of Gilmore Girls where the characters are making fun of The Donna Reed Show: remember that episode where the dad came home from work and was upset because dinner wasn't ready and nothing happened?  Remember when Donna tried to bake a cake and nothing happened?  That's what the first bit of this book felt like.)

Well, strictly speaking, that's not fair.  One major event happened, really the event that sparks the novel's title: someone dies.  So in all fairness I would describe the first bit of the book thus: someone dies, and then nothing happens, except that everyone somehow mostly internally reacts to the death and then there's some blahblahblah about local politics.

You might be thinking that I was unwilling to give this book a fair shake because it's not Harry Potter, but that's not even a little bit the case.  I don't like this book because it's dull.  Nothing that's going on in this first bit makes me want to keep reading.  As of where I stopped, there's only a whisper of a plot and I don't have any faith at all that it will ever reach normal speaking volume.

I could possibly, potentially, maybe get behind some of these characters--well, at least one that I can see--but nothing has given me reason to.  And I have no reason to carry on reading this book when I could be reading something else I'll enjoy more.

So that's my two cents, in the event you were debating whether to pick up this book.

(I didn't post this on the book blog as it seemed decidedly unfair to review a book without reading it all the way through.  And I didn't want to read the book all the way through to post an opinion.)

I somewhat recently read an interview where Rowling stated she's sure she'll find her way back into children's books.  I have great faith in what she might add to that particular genre, mostly because you don't find a lot of children's books where nothing much happens.

Thoughts about Dystopia

Is it just me, or does the popular young adult literature of the moment all seem a little...less than idealistic?  Of course it's not just me.  Haven't you noticed?  Dystopia has been all the rage of late.  I'll readily grant that each individual novel I've read (the first few that pop into mind are The Hunger Games, Veronica Roth's Divergent, Ally Condie's Matched, and Caragh O'Brien's not-yet-fully-comple Birthmarked trilogy) has been differently dystopic.  But they're all dystopic nonetheless. 

And I find myself wondering: why dystopia?  Why now?  Why so many?  And again, more emphatically: why dystopia?

I often find myself wondering if this may be a way we content ourselves with the current state of the world: yes, we say to ourselves, it's bad.  But it's not this bad.  A reassurance, if you will, that things could always be worse.  Perhaps reassurance is the wrong word; this would seem an instance where there's a world of difference between saying we see a bright side and saying that we see a less dark side.

It's also easy to look at these as morbid thought-experiments.  If society started restricted this, if we no longer could think of that, if somehow we managed to restructure everything completely...this fascinates me, because I feel as though utopias of any kind are also thought-experiments.  Cause and effect: if we caused this, what effects would it have?  Except that right now doesn't seem to be the time for speculating what would happen if we found a way to feed everyone or if a fountain of youth existed or any...happy...thought experiment.  Instead the thought experiment generally seems to be what if somehow the world ended, the apocalypse came, etc.

But then, and I suppose this might be the optimist in me peeking out, I wonder if these books aren't so popular because of the type of conflict that it allows a hero/heroine to rise above.  Could it be possible these concepts are idealism in cynicism's clothing, teaching us that any of us might rise to our potential in even the worst of times?

I find that I can't decide, and so I take the only rational approach I can think of: upon exiting dystopia, I choose a happier environment to lose myself in for a while.  I read a happier book.

Wandering Down Book-Memory Lane

I have a default present-buying setting that automatically directs my inner compass to one specific place: the bookstore. This default setting becomes even more validated when my sister tells me that my nephew loves books that have textures in them. (In all fairness, she also told me he needs pajamas. But that is neither here nor there.)

Anyway, as I perused the children's book section today, I came across a book that has long remained in my memory and may possibly still be on my parents' bookshelf: Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel.

And for a brief couple of minutes, I felt just like a little kid all over again.

Don't you love that? Books are wonderful, wonderful things.

I Judge You by the Company You Keep

And when I say that, I'm clearly not talking about people. I find that I tend to make snap judgments about people I don't know not really by who they surround themselves with. Rather, I find that I make snap judgments when I can see their reading material.

I'm not a flirt. And I rarely talk to men I don't know.

But. Sometimes I'm tempted to start talking to men when I see them reading.

I never do, because I've never quite figured out how to have that conversation: "Hi! Clearly, you read. And clearly, you have marvelous taste in books. I, too, read. And I also have wonderful taste in books." I mean where else can you take that sentence, except to: "So would you happen to have any good reading recommendations?"

The temptation arises any time I see a decent-looking guy holding an actual book. Sometimes the temptation falls away quickly. You're reading Clive Cussler? No, thank you. (Random confession: on my last--blind--date, when my date admitted to what he read, he listed a litany of nonfictional genres. Which was fine. But then I asked if he read fiction, and he said: "I enjoy Clive Cussler." At which point it's about 145% likely that I said something such as: "Well, I wasn't judging you based on your reading habits before. But I am now.")

But sometimes. Sometimes I see someone sitting at lunch in the Gateway, eating a sandwich and reading a book called The Art of Racing in the Rain. And I don't start talking because of that whole awkward-book-conversation thing, but also because I don't know the book. What if I make the wrong judgment?! (Incidentally, I looked the book up and it sounds pretty darned interesting. I guess that guy gave me a book recommendation without even knowing it.)

And other times. Other times, I see an attractive man a few Trax stops past mine getting on while reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and I want to do all of the following, in this order:

1. Tell him he's reading one of the best things I recently read.
2. Acknowledge this means he's got really great taste in books.
3. Let him know that he won't be sorry.
4. Ask him to marry me.

What I really do is try to bestow a look of gleaming approval--you know, the sort that might come from a cute and beatific librarianlike type of person? It's highly ineffective. But safe. And my books like that look just fine.

Please, Don't Make My Books Go Digital

My dad keeps "trying" to convince me to purchase some type of e-reader--a Nook, a Kindle. I use scare quotes because the man knows me. He provided half of my DNA. And he knows that the apocalypse will come before I choose to read my books electronically. In this day and age of already plenty-enough staring at computer screens (after all, I get all my news online), I relish the physical interaction of reading a book. I like turning pages. I like New Book Smell, and Old Book Smell, and I even like You Found Me In A Used Bookstore and You Can't Place My Smell Smell. I like taking notes in my books when the whim hits me. Sometimes I dog ear pages. (But not often. It ruins books' aesthetics.) I recently read someone--and no, I don't remember who-- who wrote about the experiences we have that are associated with particular books. And she (yes, I remember it was a she! Hm, maybe it was from The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, now that I think about it) talked about how we are tied to particular actual material books--our copies. It makes perfect sense to me: it's why I resent that I had to replace the first copy of Ella Enchanted I owned--the one I begged my mother to let me read to her (and she complied, at least for a few pages)--with a lesser, less hammered version. It's why I'm always a little bit sad every time I pick up a new edition of Corduroy in the bookstore---the one I originally fell in love with as a young, young child had practically fallen apart. I have difficulty imagining waves and waves of nostalgia and untold reminiscences triggered by my touching an e-reader. And while I can "note" an electronic copy, it's just not the same as rereading 1984 and coming across my own handwriting with some note that 17-year-old me thought was such a revelation while 27-year-old me marvels at how obvious that revelation seems now. Not a revelation at all, anymore, except that it still seems that way when I see it in my own juvenile handwriting. Of course, to be fair to my dad: he knows I'll never go digital when it comes to my books. He just wants to keep from moving any more of mine than he has to the next time I change location. But books are supposed to be heavy: heavy with importance. And memories. And more stories than the words on the page readily show.

Choosing

I've been thinking a lot about choices recently, probably because I just finished Matched, a novel that seems in some ways to be the child of 1984 and The Hunger Games. (Or rather, that's how I perceive its literary lineage. After finishing, I thought it had similarly dystopic elements to THG and 1984's insistence on the importance of controlling language--albeit more subtlely than 1984.)

Complete book review, by the way, will be forthcoming on the book blog. Tomorrow or the day after.

Anyway, one of the takeaway messages from the novel (unsurprisingly) revolved around the idea of making choices, i.e. there was an implication that we are defined by the sum of the choices we make.

One of the difficulties I have with books such as these is that if there are a limited range of choices a character can make, can that character only have a limited range? And what about choices that are neither good nor bad? Not all choices have a lasting moral impact.

Having grown up in an environment where I've been told that we are to respect and love people even if we don't expect and love their choices, I struggle with this conflation between character and choice. It's too easy. Too tidy. And ironically enough, entirely too complicated when put into practice.

I suppose that's an innate difficulty of assuming that any one element of a life affects character: we are all a conglomeration of choices, habits, and personality traits that we were just born with. Our interactions with others help define us in small way. There's no such things as a real-life, simply motivated human.

There can't be.

Charlie St. Cloud

It's been several months since I read the wonderful novel The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, and as I mentioned in the review: they made a movie out of it.

Let me say this, right here and right now: Hollywood doesn't get it right often. I mean, sure, they're smart enough to know a moneymaking plot when they see one. But that doesn't mean they'll do a good job of converting a masterful novel into an equally masterful movie. In rare instances, it happens. And I applaud them. But more often than not, the film misses exactly the mark the book hits.

And yet any time a book I've loved is made into a movie, I have to see it. I'm inevitably drawn toward the theater (or, you know, Netflix) and I find myself watching a visual adaptation of that work I so dearly loved when it was only printed word and all of the visuals existed in my imagination.

I found the film version of this book lacking. And this is why: it didn't allow for the idea that Sam, too, moves on in the end. One of the loveliest things about the novel's ending is that Charlie gets to see Sam one last time--actually see Sam--but it isn't the younger-brother-as-he-was. Charlie gets to see that when he moves on, Sam moves on. In the end, he sees a young adult version of Sam--someone that Sam simultaneously could have been but still gets to be, after a fashion. They both get to move forward. In their own ways, they both get to have futures.

And while yes, that makes the book ending more than a little sentimental and while yes, some people don't believe in anything after death and that makes the whole premise...difficult...I appreciate the impression Ben Sherwood left behind in the novel, which is that Sam does have somewhere to move forward and onward. He doesn't just simply stop existing. Charlie, after all, still lives. But it's difficult to think of Sam being a nebulous child-like entity, even if he's in heaven.

But those are just my thoughts. And maybe I just need to avoid filmic adaptations of my favorite works. They never turn out as well as they could.

Sharing, Etc: Some Thoughts about Books and/or Reading

In the room I shared with my sisters, a little framed cross-stitch project hung on our wall. It depicted two girls standing under an umbrella and said something like "Caring and sharing is what sisters are for." And that, people, is what I am--the sharing sister. Not that I resent it. I'm coming to realize that I quite enjoying sharing (provided that, at some point, what I share gets returned.)

When we all drift toward my parents' house for holidays or for family gatherings, I find myself hauling books and sometimes movies right along with me. And this is why: I believe in trying my darnedest to give people an opportunity to love the same things I love. To laugh at the same things I've laughed at. To cry when I have cried. And to enjoy an experience I've enjoyed.

While I grant that no two people ever have exactly the same experience with any book, I think two people can come to better understand each other by delving into each other's reading. Forget the whole you-are-what-you-eat idea, because I've always been far more convinced of the you-are-what-you-read idea.

Further, I like to share a variety of genres and styles and emotions of books, because I like to have various reading experiences. (Although I can definitively say that I really just don't enjoy reading things that gross me out. I mean, sometimes it's good for books to cause a visceral reactions, but I tend to stray away from anything that creates a reaction that visceral, you know?)

And herein, I would also like to posit something: a person who reads cannot be boring. At least, not totally. Everyone has their moments, after all. Not everyone can be a tap dancing monkey all the time. (Doesn't stop some people from trying, though.)

But here's something that I've realized recently: almost every genre has something to offer. And it's not always nice--or right--to snub a genre just because it has what I once considered an iffy past and it doesn't as directly trace its literary heritage to what have been dubbed "classics." (Side note: the whole idea of a "modern classic" cracks me up, as "classics" are supposedly time-proven works that still appeal to a mass audience after years and years and years...I think labeling a book a "modern classic" right when it comes out has to be one of the most simultaneously nervy and dumb things that marketers do.)

Comic books have quite a lot to offer, and so do graphic novels. And yes, I've grown nerdy enough that I'd sometimes--not always, but sometimes--draw a distinction between the two. Not all mass market fiction is utter drivel. (Jim Butcher, I'll admit that you and Harry Dresden drew me right in.) Memoirs are not all cheap tell-alls or embarrassing amounts of over-revelation scribbled out to manipulate a reader's heartstrings. Not all economics books are filled with unsubstantiated B.S. You catch my drift.

The older I get, I find myself accepting more types of books than I used to. Someone once told me that tastes narrow with age, but I find I'm experiencing the decided opposite... but that can't possibly be a bad thing, can it?

Reading for Pleasure

I'm not sure how it happened, but somewhere in the last two years of studying and research and analysis, I forgot how it felt to read for pleasure. And I do mean pleasure. I don't mean fun. I did a perfectly adequate job of reading for fun during my summer and between-semester breaks.

Reading for pleasure, at least my reading for pleasure, often includes a greater degree of absorption than reading for fun. When I read for fun, I want to whoosh my way through a plot line that I find entertaining. I want to like the characters, or I want to like to like the characters (all of the best characters--literary and otherwise--are, after all, works in progress). And I want to read quickly. Reading for fun can be done in a day. The analytical side of my brain doesn't tend to get terribly involved when I read for fun.

But oh! when I read for pleasure, I invest my faculties into the book. (And at this stage, I can't turn off my analytical mind. But I find my mind is always satisfied when it has some interesting topics to think through and I don't have to think them through on a timetable.) I like to take my time, to taste the language, to meander through the words. I like to pause and ponder, stop and wonder.

I like to read for pleasure in the same way I travel: I like to go where my whims take me, wander at will, and move forward at my own pace. It's soothing. It's calming. It's wonderful.

Art and Narcissism

A couple of months ago, I read The Picture of Dorian Gray for one of my classes. It wasn't the first time I had read the novel, and I'm sure that it probably will not be the last. But anyway, I found myself thinking about the book in a very different way than I had previously. When I read it as an undergraduate student, it had seemed an entirely moralistic tale: if you invest yourself too much in bad things, you'll become corrupt and eventually die. But this time around, I found it more difficult to read it as quite that moralistic.

That particular professor enjoyed summing up books in a sentence or so--a sentence that could essentially act as a thesis for an argument paper, if necessary. Her sentence was "Art: it's not about you." That sentence alone provoked an interesting discussion, because a fellow student stated it reminded her of a pop culture conference she had attended with her mother. According to the fellow student, she had been appalled at the sheer number of panel discussions centering around the topic: "What is the Twilight series doing to teenage girls?" She highly disliked that so much of the conference seemed not to be exploring anything interesting . . . or even aesthetic. (Incidentally, my answer to the question would be this: the series itself may be planting ideas, but the books are not actually doing anything to those girls. Reading the books does not automatically turn any given girl into an agency-less, susceptible fembot.)

Don't get me wrong. I think it's entirely possible for art to create an effect in its viewers. My enjoyment of reading does not come from the repetitive actions of page turning and eye scanning involved. And art, in some sense, is entirely reliant on its viewers. (It seems to me that with most art, it's sort of necessary for someone outside the artist to declare it art. Just like it's necessary for someone that's not myself or one of my parents to verify I've written something good.)

But I don't think that art can make its viewers do anything. In that sense, I felt my professor's blanket statement to be correct. But at the same time, there's a paradox at work for the reason I briefly mentioned above: whether or not art has an individual impact is entirely based on you. Your tastes. Your reactions. Your assessments. These are not necessary for definition, i.e. for the art to be called art, but they are wholly necessary for the art to be anything except words on paper or paint on canvas or a chemical process applied to paper to show an image.

In short, I personally think the sentence should be modified to: "Art: it's not entirely about you." Because enjoying art--feeling art--is an inherently narcissistic enterprise. Simply seeing it? Well, that's a different story.

A Book Review, and a Goal

I just finished reading The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance a few days ago, and I greatly enjoyed it. In reading feedback from others, I've found this memoir seems to be of the love it or hate it variety. Nobody who feels a need to discuss this book seems to be shrugging their shoulders and saying, "Meh. Didn't really care."

I laughed; I cringed; I groaned; I empathized.

Most of the camp who have hated the novel seem to hate Elna's portrayal of herself as Mormon, but as a Mormon who does not behave in the strictest sense of the stereotyped definition of our faith. (I honestly knew I would love the book when she dedicates the book, minus the swear words and a couple of racy scenes, to her parents.) She swears; she struggles with physical boundaries; she doesn't exclusively date men from her faith. More importantly, she questions: she's not always sure about how she fits into her faith and she's not always sure how to explain what she believes. Hell, she's not always sure what she does believe. That doesn't make her unfaithful; in his November CES fireside talk, President Uchtdorf defined LDS church members as a "question-asking people" because "inquiry leads to truth."

I enjoyed the book because it felt so utterly honest and it rang true to my experiences. (And mind you, I have yet to move outside Utah! But Salt Lake City has a liberal scene all its own; and as a graduate student in a liberal arts program, I often find myself purposefully avoiding most church settings except my Sunday meetings, because I believe the doctrines--but I don't think that the culture is true. In fact, the culture can be exceedingly difficult to swallow sometimes.)

That said, if swearing offends you (and it would offend you even more coming from a Mormon mouth) or if you can't handle a candid discussion of sexual boundaries (including a couple of racy scenes--that, to be honest, I didn't find terribly scandalous...but I'm an English graduate student, and after several years of studying literature, I probably have a more broad definition of "racy" than most), this book isn't for you.

Now, onto the goal part: after reading the book, I admire something she addresses in the book: an ability to say "yes" to many, many things. As she notes, there's a power to saying yes: you never know where--or what--it will get you. And I've decided that's my new goal--to say "yes" to more of the opportunities I'm presented. To stop rationalizing away opportunities. To live a little. (Or who knows? Maybe a lot.)

The Book I've Most Recently Read

You may remember that earlier this year, I blamed Schmetterling for making me read a funny book. A funny, funny book. Since it was hilarious, really, I'm not sure "blame" is the correct word. But really, I can't use too nice a verb: Schmet would become insufferable.

Anyway, said funny book has a sequel I recently read. Even funnier than the first. So if you haven't read Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, do me a favor and read it first before you read its sequel, Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones--because, as you'll learn in the sequel (after you've read things in a proper order, of coourse), one of the worst crimes a reader can commit is reading a series out of order.

Well, one of my co-workers at my new job (not quite so new now, as I've been there five weeks or so) asked me what I read when I job shadowed him. And he asked if I'd ever heard of Brandon Sanderson. Which started a quite animated discussion about our attachment to Alcatraz Smedry, my mention that I owned Elantris but had not yet read it... and the next thing I knew, I'd started reading it.

Elantris was slow, but I'd also promised to read Mistborn.

And let me tell you something: I read. I read quite a lot. And generally speaking, I greatly enjoy what I read. But I haven't gotten this immersed in a book since...well...probably Harry Potter. You must understand: I read my guts out during the semester, and I usually find my assigned readings interesting, but I never find myself so immersed in those books that I resent returning to reality.

Pulling myself out of Mistborn and back into reality inevitably made me mad. I hated going to work. I hated doing housework. I hated watching TV. In short, anything that drew me away from reading Mistborn seriously made me angry. I wanted to go back to Luthadel. Back to Vin, Kelsier, Dockson, Sazed, and Elend. Back to an insanely funny band of thieves who voluntarily admit they're crazy. A band of thieves who doesn't like to admit that they are, in fact, a band of revolutionaries who want to drastically change the government.

With both plot and humor in spades--not to mention a few twists I hadn't fully expected (Kelsier, the leader of the band of thieves/revolutionaries, is fond of saying that there's always another secret)--this book kept me riveted. I was almost sorry to end it. But it has two sequels, and the second is currently next to my bed, just begging me to open it.

I think I'll oblige.

Yet Another Reason I Read

I have an incurable case of wanderlust. Even though, generally speaking, I love my life...I usually want to be somewhere else. If you've ever heard the music from Cats, I'm like Rum Tum Tugger: I'm "always on the wrong side of every door / And as soon as I'm home, then I'd like to get about."

Unfortunately, I'm also poor. I don't have the funds to even attempt a beginning at curing my wanderlust by actually going somewhere. At least, I can't sate my wanderlust by physical travels.

So I take mental travels instead. By reading, I allow my mind to take me to other places: sometimes to existing worlds, sometimes to worlds that only exist--ultimately--in my imagination. (In mine, you see, because even though the author's imagination created it, I'm the one who visualizes it...And I doubt I visualize anything exactly as the authors I read did.)

Reading allows me to forget, for a while, where I'm at. What I'm doing with my life. And allows me to wend my way through a different plot line, a more interesting time. I suppose this is why I find fiction indispensable. Fiction creates an infinite number of places for my mind to go when it wants to be anywhere but here.

In Re: Alcatraz (Not the Prison, the Person)

Schmetterling made me do it.

Okay, so strictly speaking, that statement may not be entirely true. (And though I've not yet posted the rest of my year's resolutions, one of them certainly is not going to be in any way related to embellishing for dramatic effect. Unless, that is, I decide to resolve to embellish for dramatic effect as often as humanly possible.)

But I had never heard of Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians before Schmet wrote that blog review (and I still take a marginal amount of credit, by the way, for him reading something fictional . . . even if he purposefully chose to read something fictional I hadn't recommended). And once I'd heard of the novel, I had a burning desire to read it.

Burning desires, unless they are desires to write epic papers and research my guts out, are very rarely fulfilled while I'm in the midst of the most harrowing semester of my young life. You think I'm exaggerating about how my semester was. News flash: I'm not.

Anyhow, one Christmas tradition has held true for many years now: my well-off aunts send gift cards (generous gift cards) for each of their nieces and nephews to the type of store they know we love most. My little sister's was for Kohl's. Mine, of course, was for a bookstore.

Don't act surprised. It's not like you didn't see that coming.

And so, the day after Christmas, I suffered a particularly hard-to-swallow Scrabble defeat at the merciless hands of my mother. As seemed only natural, I relieved my wounded soul by spending the entirety of the gift card online . . . and the first book I bought was Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians.

It came yesterday. I started reading it this morning. I finished it this afternoon. And I laughed. Quite a lot. Look to Schmet's review for some choice excerpts (although there are choicer still, and I'm tickled pink that I'm pretty sure I caught more references than he did . . . but that is neither here nor there).

As much as it pains me to say it, I agree with his assessment of the voice wholeheartedly. I don't know that I found all of the characters unbelievable or unlovable. And I quite like the idea of having a Talent for klutziness. (Which, of course, has no direct correlation with my propensity for running into walls, chairs, the edges of doors, and the like.)

But seriously: it's a quick read. And most importantly, it's funny. Chortle-and-have-people-on-the-bus-with-you-looking-at-you-like-you're-strange funny. Not that I have any experience or anything . . .

Most importantly, I (more or less) agree with Schmetterling about it. If that sort of consensus doesn't convince you, I don't know what will.

The Lover of Books . . .

. . . will now proceed to tear one to shreds. Because really: what's the fun of reading if you can't periodically and systematically dissect the flaws of books you didn't enjoy reading as much as you hoped you would?

The book today, ladies and gents: Breaking Dawn. If you haven't read it yet and you'll hate me forever for revealing key plot points, stop reading now--because here be spoilers. And not even the this-particular-part-of-the-book-made-me-tingle! spoilers. Nope. These would be spoilers of the I-think-I-may-have-just-thrown-up-a-little-in-my-mouth variety.

A list of highly lame things I didn't like about Breaking Dawn.

• The monster spawn. And even worse, Jacob imprinting on the monster spawn. And okay, okay. I know Edward is a good vampire and Bella was human while she carried Renesmee, so it's probably not fair to call her monster spawn. But she struck me as a rather lame contrivance to be able to carry on a story line if Stephenie Meyer should so choose. Also, her name is stupid.
• Question: if all bodily functions disappear when Bella becomes a vampire (yes, Bella becomes a vampire--but honestly, it's not like you weren't expecting that), why is it that she manages to retain control when she realizes the Jacob situation until she discovers that Jacob's nicknamed her daughter Nessie? Because, um, wouldn't PMS have disappeared when she became a vampire?
• In a completely non-plot-related note: Little, Brown isn't exactly a small publishing company. But whoever proofreads these books should be fired. Twilight was an engaging enough story to me that I could let all of the typos and errors go. New Moon and Eclipse didn't have that going for them. And Breaking Dawn was just as bad. I'm half-tempted to take a red pen to these books and send them back to the publisher with a note: why can't anyone on your staff seem to do this properly?
• On a related non-plot-related note: The word is dependent, people. Not dependant. I recognize that our friend the dictionary says it can go either way. But seriously--who spells it with an a? (Schmet, you can say you spell it with an a, but I just won't believe you)
• Meyer needs a new conflict-resolution model. Also a new plot model. She's the queen of the anti-climax. Of course, it didn't help that the major conflict didn't happen until more than halfway through this book. All of the vampires were gathering against the Volturi to witness that Nessie wasn't dangerous and she wasn't immortal and they were all geared up for a fight. And then . . . ta da! Diplomatic resolution. Possibly because one of the extraneous vampires willed it. Phooey. And seriously, could we just skip the la-la-la, ooey gooey Bella-and-Edward are in love and like to make out parts of it? Do they serve a purpose? Aside from the aforementioned throwing up a little in the mouth?
• Also, let's see how many times Edward and Bella can have (implied) sex! That should be exciting! And then it should be really funny when Emmett starts throwing around innuendos. Because then Bella can arm wrestle him and kick a rock to pieces just because she can.
• And it's official: she made enough comparisons to Greek gods that I wondered why there's nothing and nobody else she can compare these vampires to.
• Those Romanian vampires? They sort of reminded me of those Muppet critics. (You know, the ones whose names I can't think of right now.)
• Wow! Bella has a power to block people! Except wait . . . she could already do that as a non-vampire.
• But also! She has such self-control as a newborn vampire that she doesn't need to worry about seeing her dad. How wonderful for her that she's such an anomaly. And now Charlies knows. Ish.
• And Jacob comes to live in peaceful habitation with the vampires, purely because he imprinted on Nessie. One of the most gag-worthy lines in the book: "We always knew I was attached to part of you, Bella. Now we know what part." Or something to that effect.
• Aw, Edward and Bella are going to live happily ever after. Forever and ever.
• And in one last non-plot-related point, the publishers will be (conveniently) releasing an official guide to the Twilight world at the same time the movie is released. Coincidence? I think not. And I think it's kind of a lame idea, because it's not like there are a lot of intricacies to the world of Twilight. I can understand the concept of Harry Potter companions because--come now!--Rowling created a whole new world. Meyer used an existing one and stuck vampires in it.

If you loved it dearly and want to temporarily disown me as a friend, I'm cool with that. Because it's now official: if I want to escape to a fantasy world, I'll be visiting Hogwarts. Or the Discworld.

So Many Books

Every time I move, I try to get rid of things. Moving is a chance to clear out the clutter. Not only does it make me feel better, but it means fewer things I have to pack. Practicality. Especially since I have a tendency to acquire clothes I don't wear. Some things looks much less cute after two weeks. Perhaps I have apparel ADD, but since it only happens with certain clothing items . . .

Anyway, I've been good. This time around, I have been merciless in sending clothes to DI. If I hadn't worn it in a month or more, it got tossed into the big donation bag. I've been clearing out extraneous papers. You know, like the copies of checks I wrote in 2002? Those got taken to my parents' house to be shredded.

But I've discovered something: I am far more prone to acquiring things I won't get rid of. Things like DVDs and books. My shelves runneth o'er. And that's no exaggeration. I now officially have more books than I have shelf space. (Of course, I know the solution: more shelves!)

This makes the most intensive packing--by far--the packing of the books. The DVDs took ten minutes or so, but the books are taking significantly longer. And I can't get rid of any of them. I love them all. I wouldn't own them if I didn't have particular attachments. Throwing them away would be a crime. Practically unmentionable. Book blasphemy.

Which is why this afternoon has been exhausting. And I'm not done yet. But I'm providing myself incentives. I just got the second season of Psych on DVD, and I told myself the number of boxes of books I pack is the number of episodes I'll allow myself to watch tonight . . .

Fun with Books

Th. told me to, so here goes.

I intended to do this while at work, but realized none of the HR books lurking around my office are more than 120 pages long.  (Which is probably a good thing, or I'd spend all of my time at work reading, maintaining that it was "research" and I was improving my value to the company.)

Anyway, the nearest book turned out be Jasper Fforde's Something Rotten, and the magic sentence is:

"Can't wait.  Hubba-hubba!  Who's the moppet in the tight blouse?"

All right, so that's three.  But they're all short and on the same line.

And all of a sudden, this book seems a lot more risque than it actually is . . .

A Post for Petra; or, Hey! I Finally Read Cryptonomicon!!

Once upon a time, I attended BYU. (Or, in the language of the city where I now live, "that school down south." When you live a mere four blocks or so from the main campus of the U of U, BYU's name actually becomes an epithet.) For a year, anyway. Then I washed out, which you can surmise if you troll back through the archives of my blog. Or you already know that particular trivia if you know me personally.

Anyhow, I met this great girl there--we shall call her Petra, because that's who she is. (See her link? If not, that's just sad. I can see it, and I'm half-blind--so you should be able to see her link.) Together, we schemed to take over the world. Played Speed Scrabble. And wrote a crazy letter to Del Rey publishers, requesting the reunion scene from The Princess Bride. (Okay, so all of that isn't true. We never schemed to take over the world. But if we ever did, I'm thinking we'd be super-cool dictators. Although she'd probably completely oust me eventually and rule on her own, since she's just that much smarter than I am.)

Both of us are big readers. I mean, we read lots. And lots and lots. She reads faster, but the point still stands--we both read voraciously. Anyway, she incessantly mentioned this Neal Stephenson novel called Cryptonomicon. It's one of her favorites. She'd read it forty-billion times by then (okay, maybe three), and recommended it to me almost any time the word "book" cropped up in our conversations. As you can imagine, this title stuck in my brain.

For five years. That's how long it took me to get around to reading Cryptonomicon. (In my defense, the sucker's 900 pages long! And for someone with a not-very-math-oriented brain, it's not the quickest read!!) I had to wait until a phase of life when I had spare time on my hands. (Spare time: "surreptitious reading of snatches while at work, in addition to normal reading time")

So, ahem. Petra, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that it took this long. I'm sorry that it took me until page 300 to get truly interested in it. I'm sorry I didn't read it sooner, so I could have actually discussed it with you in person--for your sake and mine, because I have a feeling I would like this book sooooo much better if I could just talk to you about it. For a while. Long enough, anyway, for you to clarify the math stuff.

A question to any and all who have read this novel: did I black out somewhere? Do we as readers ever get clued in about the entire Enoch Root situation? (I mean, Bobby Shaftoe sees him dead on a table, but then he's in jail with Randy? How does that work??)

P.S. Also, I'm sorry, Salt Lake City Public Library. My timing was bad. Lucky for you, I'm the type of girl who pays her overdue fines.

The Dangers of Having the NY Times Book Reviews Delivered Straight to Your E-mail

I'm a nerd. I admit it, I've always known it, and I've learned to cater to those tendencies that make me happy. And if those tendencies involve spending whole Saturdays at the Salt Lake City Public library--writing poetry, reading, and occasionally opening books just to smell them--then so be it. I'm a book geek and I'll gladly admit it.

A friend once complained of what she called her movie quandary: with as many movies there were in the world and as many movies there were continually coming out, she didn't see how she could possibly see all of the movies she wanted to see in the span of her lifetime. To be quite honest, I didn't understand the particulars of the movie-ness of her quandary, but I began to understand the quandary itself when I began to think of books.

I have the same quandary myself, you see, only my quandary is with books. In my defense, I really do think it's quite impossible for me to read all of the books I want to read before I die for a couple of reasons. Reason 1: The publishing of books has gone on for far longer than the making of movies. I mean, if she's talking motion pictures with sound, she is only dealing with less than a century's worth of reel.

On the other hand, when did Gutenberg invent the printing press? Ah yes, I believe it was in the fifteenth century. And what century are we in now? Ah yes, the twenty-first. I have six centuries filled with literature. And more books are coming out all of the time. Reason 2: My reading sparks new reading interests--exponentially. It works something like this: I read one book that leads me to think about three different things: sometimes historical events, sometimes people, sometimes genres. And I have to explore each of those three things, which lead me to nine more things (and really, let's be honest--three is a low number when it comes to connections for me).

This exponential issue alone is a difficult problem. But it isn't the one controllable source of my ever-growing book list. No, indeed, that problem would be that I get the New York Times book reviews delivered straight to my inbox. It's a handy little feature for those nerds who, like me, are registered for the online version of the Times. All you have to do is provide your e-mail address and presto! weekly e-mails arrive in your inbox. And you find yourself scanning the book reviews for interesting titles. And finding many. And then seeing links in those reviews to similar books. And then following those links. And then before you know it, you're spending all of your free computer time online in various local library catalogs, desperately seeking those books that you just have to read!!!!

I was born a book lover . . . but this is how book junkies are made.