Tuesdays on the Margins: The Library at Mount Char (for real this time)

Okay, to revisit the post where I talked about this and then went off on several tangents and didn't actually get around to this actual book - a bunch of books on my ereader that sounded cool and different and exciting, wasn't sure how it would actually turn out, would they realize their promise of transportation and transcendence or would all be mushy mediocrity, blah blah blah.....

HOLY SHIT THIS BOOK BLEW MY MIND.

I hate saying that, because I'm fresh off a couple of books that were EXCEEDINGLY mediocre and the Goodreads reviews were ravingly positive (remember how I resolved to only read good books for a while? Turns out it's hard to tell a good book from an indifferent book sometimes, and when they're on your Kindle already... well, let's not talk about it, it's still a little painful). But you know me - you know I don't say this kind of thing about a book lightly, right?

Goodreads synopsis: Neil Gaiman meets Joe Hill in this astonishingly original, terrifying, and darkly funny contemporary fantasy. 
Carolyn's not so different from the other human beings around her. She's sure of it. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. She even remembers what clothes are for. 
After all, she was a normal American herself, once. 
That was a long time ago, of course—before the time she calls “adoption day,” when she and a dozen other children found themselves being raised by a man they learned to call Father.
Father could do strange things. He could call light from darkness. Sometimes he raised the dead. And when he was disobeyed, the consequences were terrible. 
In the years since Father took her in, Carolyn hasn't gotten out much. Instead, she and her adopted siblings have been raised according to Father's ancient Pelapi customs. They've studied the books in his library and learned some of the secrets behind his equally ancient power. 
Sometimes, they've wondered if their cruel tutor might secretly be God. 
Now, Father is missing. And if God truly is dead, the only thing that matters is who will inherit his library—and with it, power over all of creation. 
As Carolyn gathers the tools she needs for the battle to come, fierce competitors for this prize align against her. 
But Carolyn can win. She's sure of it. What she doesn't realize is that her victory may come at an unacceptable price—because in becoming a God, she's forgotten a great deal about being human.

Normally the "whoever meets whoever" thing isn't borne out by the reading at all, but in this case Neil Gaiman meets Joe Hill is pretty dead on. I would throw in shadings of Terry Pratchett also. "Original, terrifying and darkly funny" isn't wrong either, although the terrifying is dialed way, way up, with accompanying accents of horrifying, soul-rending and nightmare-inducing, and the darkly funny is more like salt in soup - the soup would be unbearable without it, but it's not obvious. This book is most certainly not for the faint of heart, or the delicate of sensibilities, is what I'm saying. It should maybe come with a warning label. But to borrow from good old Aristotle, if you're looking for a heaping helping of cathartic pity and fear, look no further.

For the first little bit, you have no freaking clue what's going on, which is sort of appropriate, really. There are some strange characters, and then there are a couple of really sympathetic characters, and when you realize that the sympathetic characters are getting wound up in the bizarre machinations of the strange characters you're all hand-wringy and tenterhooky. Then things start to become clearer and you're all JESUS CHRIST these are the abhorrent, repugnant fabrications of a diseased imagination. And then you kind of settle into it and you're all, well, did you really think the universe could be made and reality controlled without breaking a few eggs, and yeah, I could see how OH DEAR GOD, TOO MUCH, TOO MUCH. 

And in the midst of all of it there are moments of flat-out hilarity, the kind you don't get unless you're already keyed to the screaming point. And the children discussing Father's friends: "'Some of the others we don't see much. Like Q-33 North.' 'Is he the one with tentacles?' "No, that's Barry O'Shea. Q-33 is the sort of iceberg with legs, remember? Up in Norway.' 'Oh, right.'" And some really cool stuff about lions. And a chapter called "About Half a Fuckton of Lying-Ass Lies". And Carolyn telling Steve about the library like this: “’But…’ he looked up at the cloud of lights overhead. ‘I mean…the universe is, like, big? Right?’ ‘Yes and no. Size is notional. It has to do with the structure of space. The door we came through was a gateway, but it’s also sort of a transition function. You wouldn’t be wrong to say that going through the transition makes you bigger.’ ‘I feel the same size.’ ‘Well… you wouldn’t really be right to say it either. It’s sort of mathy.’”

There are also genuine moments of pathos and empathy. It's a wild jumble of stuff that in the beginning seems incomprehensible, and then the author draws together all the frayed ends into something brilliant and strange. This is something I admire. But, like my friend said after watching Shaun of the Dead, "Really liked it. Not sure who I would recommend it to."

The Giving of the Thanks

It's hard not to be thankful when your sister (who poses for pictures so much more gracefully than her daughter)

Turns her kick-ass attic into a Hogwarts dormitory

for this motley crew;

and a visit to the shoe outlet results in this kind of entertainment; 

I mean, seriously?

Yep, seriously. (My sister is tall. My niece has really good balance).

AND it's warm enough for Eve to handily beat Angus at 21 (several times) in short sleeves;

and there's a schoolyard next door where she can practice being a badass (a touch more practice might be in order);

and when I say 'oh wait, we need a turkey-carving picture', my ever-gracious brother-in-law gives me this:

and, well, in the spirit of full disclosure....

and, of course,

So full. On so many levels. 

Mondays on the Margins: The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

The other day I visited the Ottawa Public Library's website, as I do every few days, to see what I needed to renew and return. I had to look at my list a couple of times to confirm that, for the first time ever, I only had ebooks out. Nothing to return. Just a bunch of stuff that would go *poof* when its due date arrived and vanish into the ether.

I've had a succession of books come available that I'd been waiting for eagerly. Well, sort of eagerly. They were all books that sounded really cool and different and exciting when I read about them. As we all know, there are two ways this can go (that's total bullshit, there are a veritable multitude of ways this can go, but I'm bad at math and my husband is in Korea and there aren't enough iterations of me to effectively drive everywhere and cook everything and walk everything that needs to be driven and cooked and walked right now so I'm choosing to call it two, DO YOU WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING OF IT???); either the book lives up to its hype and you are transported and transformed for a few days and it stands in beautiful book memory as a memorable period, or it doesn't and you feel deceived, betrayed, cruelly mocked and desperate to throat-punch, nipple-twist and hair-pull the reviewer who set you off on this fool's errand. Or maybe that's just me.

One of the books that came up in this queue was The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber: "It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter’s teachings—his Bible is their “book of strange new things.” But Peter is rattled when Bea’s letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea’s faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter." 

Aliens! Galaxies! An enigmatic corporation (those almost always turn out to be evil). Dangerous illness! Typhoons, earthquakes, crumbling governments! Sounds earth-moving, does it not?

And... it's not that it was bad. It wasn't bad. It just was very.... earth-standing-still. What I said in my review was that it was very realistic, and some people like that. I'm forever coming out of movie theatres and hearing people complain that what we just saw "wasn't believable". Believability isn't really a relevant criterion in my book - it's fine if that's your thing, but if it's original and imaginative and funny or frightening or so sad you want to sit down and weep until you lose consciousness, put it up there, I WILL BELIEVE IT. This was almost too believable. It read like a documentary of these events if they'd actually taken place, which would be all I could reasonably expect if they HAD actually taken place, but since this was fiction, I would have appreciated more of a creative spark. What I got was this happened, and this happened, and this happened, and the aliens are weird and inscrutable, which is not that surprising really, being as they're aliens, and more stuff happened, much of it depressing and unpleasant, the end. 

Then there was Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill, not to be confused with The Book of Speculation which was in the list at the same time and has just come available, and I have no idea what THAT's about, but THIS was about a marriage, an affair, a woman who reminded me uncomfortably of myself ("Was she a good wife?" "Well, no.") a child, and a lot of ordinary stuff involved in all of those - "common catastrophes", "the consuming, capacious experience of maternal love", etc. It's written in a listy, aphorismy, stripped-of-all-extraneous material kind of style, and while reading I wondered if it was maybe easier to write a book this way, just concentrating on the pithy, sharp points of dialogue and exposition without the tedious connecting bits like describing what people look like or getting them from the kitchen to the living room. I don't know if it is easier, but in this case it worked brilliantly for me - I had to restrain myself from highlighting the entire thing. It was like she was admitting that things can get absolutely horribly bad in a marriage and a life, but if you keep your mind open to the strangeness and comedy and humanity of it all, it's - well, it's still horribly bad but you get a great book out of it. 

Which brings me to The Library at Mount Char. But now it's Tuesday, and I still can't find my keys, and my husband is still in Korea, and I haven't blogged for two weeks, and I almost got into the wrong car in a parking lot earlier, and I have to go cook something or order something or something. So hey, look, another book post where I don't actually review the book. That makes me charmingly quirky, right? I'll do it tomorrow. I promise. ("Was she a reliable blogger?" "Well, no.") 

Mondays on the Margins: Reading: It's Possible I've Been Doing it Wrong

Not for my whole life, of course. I learned how to make the letters form words, make the words form sentences, and I was off to the races. I read everything I could get my hands on, which wasn't a great big amount back then, but most of it was fucking magical and blew the doors of my mind wide open. The Faraway Tree. Narnia. The Cricket in Times Square. I would go to the library alone and the librarian would make me call my father to come and get me and approve my book choices (because I had blown through the kids' section and was on to adult reading). If I couldn't get it at the library, I would beg my parents to buy it for me.

Once school started, I read for marks and for pleasure. In high school, I was reading a science fiction anthology in homeroom and a girl asked me which class I was reading it for. Her expression when I said I wasn't reading it for a class was uncomprehending.

I did a B.A. and and M.A. in Comparative Literature. I had to read some fiction that I wouldn't have read otherwise. Some of it I thought was great, and with some of it it seemed like the entire Western world agreed that it was great except for me. I had to read a lot of critical theory, some of which was intriguing and fun and some of which was dry and pedantic and entirely too impressed with itself. And then I would read something fun - once I stayed up all night reading The Animal Hour by Andrew Klavan even though my parents were coming to visit the next day, early. I regretted nothing.

Then I got a job in audio publishing. Then I worked in a bookstore. There were always things I 'should' be reading, and things I wanted to be reading, with a good amount of overlap between the two.

Then I had kids and stopped working at a formal, official, 'job'-type thing. Other than some usually pretty light course reading, I am now the captain of my own reading destiny.

I have recently come to realize that I am kind of a shitty captain and that it's possible I should be keel-hauled, or mutinied, or some other negative ship-related term.

Generally I try strike a good balance between reading for pure pleasure and reading for education. The books I love, the books I anticipate, the books I pounce on like a deranged slinky,  tend to be mysteries and science fiction and fantasy and horror, and I do think that the best of the books in these genres are valuable as more than escapism - they have things to say about being in the world, about longing for things and searching for things and loving people and loss, and empathy and hope and redemption – more than enough to qualify as “the axe for the frozen sea within us” that Franz Kafka says literature must be. But I also try to read non-fiction and literary fiction, stuff that sometimes takes a little more work, and even if it takes me a while I almost always find it rewarding. I think of these books as my broccoli books. There’s nothing wrong with broccoli. It’s green and crunchy and chock-full of fibre and anti-oxidants. It really rounds out a meal, although you don’t necessarily want to curl up on the couch with a carton of it after a bad break-up. I like broccoli. I like asparagus. I even like Brussels sprouts.

You know what I hate, though? Green beans. To each his own and everything, but I don’t get green beans. The texture seems like a cross between fishing line and shoe leather. The taste is incredibly dull while still being disagreeable. I was always exceedingly bitter as a child when on fish night my fish-hating sister got chicken, but on green bean night I always had to eat a few. I decided quite a few years ago that I’m an adult now and, barring extreme circumstances, green beans will not pass these lips again.

So I have this thing I do with books that I'm almost sure I will love - because I know and love the author, because it's the next in a series, because I've read them before and I'm due to reread. I stockpile them. I build them into walls and towers around my room, and I defer them endlessly. Sometimes I buy a book in hardcover because I really, really want to read it, and by the time I actually let myself it's already out in paperback. And in the meantime, I read not just broccoli books, but books that I realize at some point don’t have any redeeming qualities at all – green bean books, if you will.

It would be one thing if there was a really good reason for this. If there were things I needed to read first, for some reason, or I just got busy. But I've suddenly realized that that's not really it. Partly it's that I feel the need to keep Really Great Books in reserve for some theoretical day when I might really need one. This is stupid. There is no possible way I can keep up with and surpass the literary output of all the really great present and future writers that make my reading brain sing. When the zombie apocalypse comes, a wall of unread Fred Vargas and Susan Palwick will not stop them. There is absolutely no need for me to browse the library ebooks and fill up my ipad with them and finish even the really bad ones against some day when I might run out of things to read.

The other part? The Super-Dumbass-with-Extra-Stupid part? I think I'm not letting myself read all the Really Great Books right away because I don't feel like I deserve to. And this is not because they’re empty calories, but because they are sweet, and rich, and nourishing on a whole other level. For this reason, I feel like I can't let myself read one until after I've done something really difficult or unpleasant. Which would be fine if I was reasonable about it – sure, rake up some leaves, or shovel some snow, or clean out a closet, and then settle in with a good book. Except I do that thing and it’s never enough. I still don’t deserve the – let’s call it the doughnut book. Because I don't have a job that I hate that takes up all my time. Because I haven't published anything. Because I have trouble getting up early. Because I feed my kids kraft dinner and hot dogs some days. Because I shot the Archduke Ferdinand and started World War One that time (yep – depression lies, and, in my case, also has delusions of grandeur.) What I’m trying to say, before I torture this poor beleaguered metaphor any further, is that sometimes when you live in Depressionland, it feels like there’s no possible way to choke down enough green beans to earn your doughnut.

I've decided this is bullshit. Life is too short to read bad books on purpose, and I've punished myself for just being who I am enough for several lifetimes. I've spent the last couple of weeks rereading the first two books in the Magicians Trilogy by Lev Grossman, and it's been delicious. After that I'm going to read the second book in the Colours of Madeleine series by Jaclyn Moriarty, and then something else by Christopher Moore. I might stick a broccoli book in there, but I will NOT stuff myself with green bean books anymore.

It feels simultaneously like a momentous decision and an effortless no-brainer.

These are strange, exhilarating times.

The Sky is So Very Blue

Just before Labour Day Week-end, I started on a nice little hyper-manic upward slope. Even if I didn't HAVE to be early, I popped out of bed first thing in the morning with no brain fog, I got some organizing done that I've been putting off for months, I walked the dog four times a day and never felt too tired to do one more thing in the day if it occurred to me. 

Along with this, as usual, came some less awesome stuff: a sort of hardened mental glaze over my mind, obsessive thoughts that wouldn't clear for more than a few seconds at a time, and that uncomfortable sense that the air around me is crowded with screaming or crying. 

Honestly, it's not the worst trade-off in the world. Going to bed every night knowing that the morning is going to be either a battle-slog out of a pit of quicksand or another dismal failure is really demoralizing. A bit of mental glitchiness isn't too high a price to pay for some time above water. 

Yesterday, I suddenly felt a strange puncturing and it was like a balloon inside my head had popped. Obsessive thoughts - gone. Vague feeling of doom - gone. It was sort of like my mind had been slightly short-winded, and suddenly it could take a deep, lovely breath.

Okay, I thought. It was nice (ish) while it lasted. I fully expected to be back to business as usual today - stabbing the snooze button and dreaming about getting up five times before actually managing it.

Woke up fine, early, no brain fog. Had dinner for a friend in the crock pot by nine. Coursework, gardening, dog walked by eleven. I had lunch at regular lunch time. I'm going to have to go clean out a closet or something because the kids aren't home yet and suddenly there's more DAY in my day. I went outside and sat in the swinging chair in my weedy back yard and looked up at the sky and laughed because, holy shit, this might be one day's grace, and it might not last, but for the moment I'm so purely grateful I could weep. 

Newbery Medal Series: Holes by Louis Sachar

Synopsis from Goodreads: Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnatses. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys’ detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending all day, every day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. But there are an awful lot of holes.

It doesn’t take long for Stanley to realize there’s more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. But what could be buried under a dried-up lake? Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment—and redemption.

This book has been on my radar for quite a while, both because I have the impression that I like Louis Sachar as an author without actually being able to name any Louis Sachar books that I have read, and because I had the vague impression that the Dulé Hill, who I adore, was in the movie, which I've never seen. 

Clear enough?

So I had to take my mother to the hospital for an eye test last week and I grabbed this for the waiting room. It's one of those books that I really wish I had read as a child, because reading it as an adult trying to imagine it from the perspective of a child is disorienting. It's quite harsh, but then so was Annie, and 101 Dalmatians was terrifying, and  The Rescuers - poor Penny being lowered down the well to search for the diamond... hey waitaminnit, Holes totally rips off The Rescuers! 

So, yes. It was harsh. The camp environment made my stomach hurt. The injustice and cruelty were so upsetting, and then the descriptions of the past in Latvia where the threads of destiny begin to weave this story are sort of charming, and then the story of Kate Barlow and Sam the Onion Man is so wonderful but so desperately sad, and then wham it all comes together at the end and overall I liked it, but I had a slight impression that some of the parts didn't quite match the others in tone. 

What do we think about stories where young people are powerless in the grip of self-interested adults without conscience? Is it cathartic for them (since usually the children triumph, through a mixture of ingenuity, pluck and some kind of intangible force for good in the universe, over the bad guys?) or does it just heighten their feelings of powerlessness? It always fills me with a kind of impotent rage, knowing that as cartoonish as a lot of the situations are, there are real-life situations that are dishearteningly similar. But I do enjoy the redemption.

And speaking of impotent rage, remind me to tell you about being stuck in a tiny traffic jam with my mother, who was convinced we were going to be late for her appointment even though we'd left an hour earlier than necessary and were already halfway there. The world does not understand my pain. 

Well here we are

I'm restless. The kids are back in school. Eve has calmed down, although her stories of her homeroom group wandering the halls looking for their next class, complicated by incorrect timetables and sections that are closed for construction are quite entertaining. Angus has somehow ended up as the only grade ten student in an eleventh-grade fitness class - no one is quite sure how this happened.

I don't know quite what to do with myself. I don't feel like working on my course. I don't feel like writing. I barely feel like reading. So right now I'm just walking. I get the kids to school, and I get Lucy leashed up, and I wander all over Barrhaven. Sometimes I stop in somewhere. Sometimes I don't. My feet hurt. My hips hurt. My back hurts. But my dog is really happy.

I guess for now I'll just keep walking until I get somewhere.