Hump of the Week

Day 191...and my mom is immersed in the newest issue of Glimmer Train (all stories, all the time) and various issues of the Christian Science Monitor, because she is actually paying for a year's subscription after being hooked by a 6-month "come on."

"We're reading things here we don't read anywhere else," she says, an excellent point. She means, in print periodicals, acknowledging that this information may be quite accessible on the web, but she's not looking for it there.

I finished Dreamers of the Day, by Mary Doria Russell, and liked it just fine, though wasn't as wowed as I was by The Sparrow, where the cultural anthropology and the departure into the fantastic were perfectly entwined and justified by the science fiction aspect. I don't mind anyone's genre twisting, but I am pulled more by realistic fiction, which engages me in the same complexities and conflicts I see in my own life. Amazingly, this happened in The Sparrow, too, though it was mostly set on another planet, entirely imagined. Thread of Grace had its realistic World War II context, and I was happy to re-learn that history that particular way. Dreamers of the Day was delightful...enlightening...and is done. With me admiring the delivery system more than the place I was delivered to.

Meanwhile, I am immersed in The Cookbook Collector, by Allegra Goodman, and we are deep into computer technology, and IPOs, and rather far from the cookbook collector at the moment, on p. 161. I can say that I really, really liked her book Intuition, and its close look at contemporary science and how it's done, specifically the male/female dilemmas still inherent in it, and that I really, really appreciate this book's elegance as it reveals the technology issues. This is in high contrast to the Stieg Larsson books, which I liked for different reasons, and the way he brandished brand names and made the technology "insider" knowledge separate from me. Goodman makes it intimate instead. More to come on this.

Today's Diane Lockward "chocolate" (poem of the day from What Feeds Us) is a tomato. No, a peach. No a tomato. It's the poem "The Tomato Envies the Peach," and they are both luscious, as, surely, is she.

Not Expecting an Answer

Day 180, and I am reading Dreamers of the Day, by Mary Doria Russell, a book that is pulling me in with its story and history. It starts in the same territory I left with Houdini Pie, by Paul Michel, as there are bootleggers and trouble with war and influenza, but now we have gone to Egypt with Lawrence of Arabia!

Agnes, the narrator, tells us we don't realize the terrible effects of the flu, and how soldiers spread it on the trains, and how more people died of the flu than in battle in World War I. That is indeed sobering. But I got the devastation from William Maxwell's work before this, in They Came Like Swallows. That was sad and poignant all the way through. Dreamers is lively and fun and, as with Russell's other novels, I am learning so much about the people, the cultural and political conflicts of the time, and the inner life.

I am also still reading In the Next Galaxy, by Ruth Stone, poems. They are marvelous, simple, and rich. I can turn anywhere in the book and find something odd and wonderful, edgy or disturbing: "Corn is universal, / so like a Roman senator." Or: "The play yard with its automobile tire / hanging from the one tree, like a lynching."

Or, from the poem titled "Not Expecting an Answer":

This tedious letter to you...

what is one life to another?

We walk around inside our bags,

sucking it in, spewing it out.

My sister, who had a lovely time in Michigan at the shore and here with family, has to go home to troubles in her house. She can sigh at the above, and I can sigh for her. I am not expecting an answer.

Undersea, Earthsea, Cute Boys

Day 108 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project. Laura has just finished reading Dark Life, a young adult science fiction "western" by Kat Falls, and is moving on to some Ursula Leguin Earthsea sequels, because science fiction rocks! (I think that's why. Laura, you can tell us more about why.) Is that a jellyfish, or are you just happy to see me?

Young adulthood is when I fell in love with science fiction, and I haven't read very much since, though Leguin has been recommended to me frequently. But I did read and love The Sparrow and Children of God, by Maria Doria Russell, after frequent recommendations, and those recommenders were definitely right. The Russell novels are a wonderful combination of science fiction, cultural anthropology, and comparative religion. I learned a heck of a lot about Earth before we went off it.

I loved talking to Curt (of a past entry), who had read a lot of classic science fiction with his mother growing up, because she was in a science fiction book club. I could talk to Curt about Zenna Henderson and The People books! I have Henderson paperbacks on a bookshelf upstairs and may bring them to the beach this summer to entice the kids. (Me, I'm bringing Barbara Pym. And Three Men in a Boat.)

Laura is also reading The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, which is marketed as young adult fiction in the U.S. but was written as general adult fiction in Australia. I think an Australian first told me about it. Narrated by Death, it takes place during World War II and has a child heroine. Dark as that sounds, it looks to be a charming, moving, and even uplifting book, maybe the way The Diary of Anne Frank is uplifting and heartbreaking at once.

Or, since Death is called wry and sardonic by readers and reviewers of The Book Thief, maybe it is more like Dead Like Me, a television series my son found on Hulu, with the amazing Mandy Patinkin in it. Markus Zusak is pretty darn cute, too.

The English Major

Day 28 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project.

Dick (yes, really, Dick), who is one of the SOBs, reports that he took The English Major to bed last night. It's possible, from the descriptions/reviews I read at Amazon, that Jim Harrison writes "dick lit," but I'm hoping we'll drop that line of conversation pretty soon! Just couldn't resist it here.

Nor can I resist another mention of Philip K. Dick, thanks to Douglas Robillard's most recent comment (to previous blog entry) about the new Library of America editions of his work, and the fact that he wrote the book on which the movie Bladerunner was based. "Ohhhhh!" I said to myself, "that's right! I'd heard that."

In fact, one of our recent customers who was buying some Dick, in paperback, was telling me that most of the films based on his work have not been nearly as good as the books themselves. So I will get around to reading him someday.

And yes, Doug, I join your wife in recommending that you read the Sparrow and then its sequel, Children of God, by Mary Doria Russell. Powerful stuff that puts human history in context by looking at misunderstandings with devastating consequences on another planet! Our twin cities also read her book Thread of Grace, historical fiction, for our Tale for Two Cities program a couple years ago.

So...The English Major seems to be a middle-aged On the Road sort of thing, or exiting middle age, as the main character is 60. And a former English major.

Susan and aka Simone have pursued intended audience (and less incendiary labels, like "women's fiction" and "men's fiction" to help identify book by its intended audience, although the other categories also remain, primarily as marketing tools, as Julie notes) as a guide to reading experience, and The English Major may be intended for a male readership, and an exiting-middle-age male readership at that.

But I find I am willing to read just about anything to find out more about the various ways of being human. As my reading impulse is mostly that--not to be entertained, but to learn about being human, and how to handle it--I do find that I learn stuff from just about anything I read.

Of course, I have set books aside.... In some cases, I come back to them, as it was just not the right time to read that book. In some cases, I never come back to them.