Girl Detective

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I liked it. If you’d like to discuss, email me at

girl detective (all one word)

at

girl detective dot net

I am stopped on page 520 of 606 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and I can’t bring myself to resume the book. I have been trying to read it as quickly as possible. I was chagrined not to finish it before I left for the writing retreat I’m on this weekend. I’ve taken it out at every opportunity. I sit in the corner of the cafeteria with my book propped in front of me at meals, in case anyone thinks I want to be social. I’ve completed writing exercises quickly in order to take out my book and read on.

I don’t feel so bad about this. While we write, our instructor, Faith Sullivan, the author of The Cape Ann, Gardenias, and other novels, opens the book she’s reading, which is Heat Wave by Penelope Lively. Bookish behavior made me an outcast in grade school, but is something I celebrate today.

Given all this, then, I am surprised at my sudden aversion to finishing the novel. I want to find out what happens!

And yet, and yet…

When it’s over, it will be over. All seven books done that I’ve been reading for nearly ten years. The characters–Ron, Hermione, Harry. The locations–Hogwarts, Diagon Alley. The details–pumpkin juice, spells, jinxes and charms. Yeah, Rowling’s writing isn’t flawless, and her characters haven’t changed that much over the seven years of the books. But I LIKE the books. Rowling has the storytelling knack that makes a reader desperately want to find out what happens next. I’ve enjoyed the Harry Potter books. I’ve found pleasure in reading them. And like Steven King, I’m going to be sad when the series is done, no matter who lives or dies.

Yesterday morning, I was impatient to know when my UK edition of the new Harry Potter would arrive. I checked my email confirmation and was displeased with the news. It was shipped by mail, so I couldn’t track it, and estimated delivery was between 7/27/07 and 7/31/07. I tried steeling myself for the wait, and reminding myself that it would be possible to avoid spoilers, but I couldn’t help looking at the mail slot every chance I got. I told myself this would make it arrive even later.

Imagine my joy, then, when the mail was delivered, and I saw my amazon.co.uk package. I’ve made just the bare beginning (30 pages) but hope to devote more time to it soon.

One of my best book shopping moments ever was when I worked at a used book store. I’d just read an article about how HP1 was so wildly successful in the UK but had not yet taken off in the US. #2 was already published in the UK, but not yet released stateside. I was unpacking a remainder/seconds box when I found a UK trade paperback of HP1 and a hardcover of HP2! And because I worked there, I got them for 50% off the marked down price! Since then, I’ve gotten them from the UK so I have a matching set, and so I get the English vocabulary, titles, and punctuation.

I’m a fan, but no fanatic. I like the Potter books. They’re fun. The release of a new one is an event. I want to know what happens. They’re not great literature, but so what? Not everything has to be, and they have a fair share of redeeming qualities.

From Laura Barton’s “Girl Wonders” in The Guardian:

If there is a single thread that links these fictional girl heroes, it is surely that they were all people who knew, very clearly, their own state of mind, who were brave and strong and articulate

The article leads off with images of two of my favorite titian-haired heroines, Anne (with an ‘e’) and Nancy. As a girl, I aspired to be a tomboy, like George in Edid Blyton’s Five mysteries, but I knew I didn’t have it in me–I didn’t like bugs, dirt or mess. My favorite was Trixie Belden. She had unruly hair and said dumb things, but still solved the mystery. Nancy Drew was great, but always very tidy. Trixie walked a middle ground between George and Nancy that I could relate to.

Thanks, SFP! (at Pages Turned)

Here are a few female friends who I think rock

Becca

Rock Hack rocks both literally and figuratively

Sars at Tomato Nation

Lisa at The Rage Diaries

Dawn at Avenging Sybil

Camille at Book Moot

Having the time to check Arts & Letters Daily, click through to the stories that interest me, read them from beginning to end, then quote the parts I like here.

Having the time, or taking the time, to read and think is something I value, and try to cultivate. Parenthood is not an excuse to give up learning. Instead, it can be a reminder to keep trying.

My friend Becca and I went to see #35 in my 2007 movie challenge, Knocked Up, in the theater, without kids (though apparently some parents were OK with bringing small children into this R-rated film), and with buttered popcorn and candy.

I loved this movie. It is an ever-so-rare comedy of substance. It’s funny, it’s sad, and in the end it’s sweet. I left this movie feeling happy, as did NYT film critic A.O. Scott.

If you were a fan of director Judd Apatow’s critically acclaimed but criminally canceled television shows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, you will probably appreciate this movie and its strange blend of hope, and acknowledgement of the suckiness of much of everyday life.

I know many people who didn’t like the similar weird mix in Apatow’s last film, The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I hope the packed theater at Knocked Up means that more people are open to Apatow’s geeky, complex, and ultimately life-affirming, sense of humor.

M, who blogs at Mental Multivitamin, has a wonderful, thought-provoking entry about choosing a positive focus. She avoids the usual saccharine sentiments. Her entry brought Denis Leary’s pithy quote to mind: “Life sucks. Get a helmet.” I was all the more impressed when I read his wife’s book, and learned he wrote that after the extremely premature birth of his first son. Life is hard; the key is not to get mired in ruts, and most certainly not to decorate them.

Thanks, M., for the always helpful reminder that perception is a variable thing. In honor of that, I wanted to say a quick thanks for a handful of things that make the rough stuff more surmountable. In no particular order, a list of 10 (that goes to 11):

1. My husband, who makes me a kick-ass cappuccino almost every morning, and who empties the dishwasher before I get up, so I don’t have to.

2. My friends, new and old, virtual and non-, who are supportive and generous.

3. My family, who I appreciate more, and more of whom I appreciate, as I grow older.

4. Olay Regenerist products.

5. Maybelline’s Define a Lash mascara. The pretty green tube houses a great, everyday product.

6. Sonia Kashuk eyeliners and lipstick. Good quality and colors, cheap!

7. The Loft Literary Center. I wouldn’t be a writer without it.

8. My sons. By turns maddening and inspiring. Oh, how they make me learn. I’m glad for that, even though sometimes growth=pain.

9. Good books, television and movies.

10. My public library.

11. My grocery cooperative.

Some things demand an exclamation point. This day is one.

[Caution: if you're here looking for an intellectual entry, this isn't it. This is the purview of mommy blogs. But I must celebrate; I hope you can share my joy.]

As Drake walked out the door of preschool, he said, “I have to go potty.”

My eyes widened in surprise. Drake was wearing a pull-up diaper. He had never before said that phrase while wearing a pull-up diaper.

“Sure, honey!” I replied, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice. I’ve been disappointed so many times before.

We went back into the building. He went into the girls bathroom. I didn’t re-direct him. I asked if he wanted help.

“No, Mom, I need some privacy,” he said, having learned that phrase from a toilet-using friend.

I peered anxiously under the stall door as he pulled down his shorts, then his diaper, and sat on the regular-size toilet. I heard the sound of pee. (I also heard the sound of 15M Guppy screaming right behind me. He was immune to the significance of what was transpiring.)

“He’s never said that before,” said his preschool teacher, standing behind me. “Not in all the months he’s been here, not in all the times that the other kids have gone. Never.” Her voice echoed the awe I was feeling.

Once home, Drake did a repeat performance, unprompted.

During his quiet time, I began to compose this entry. Then he began banging on his door, his unsubtle sign that he wishes quiet time to be over. We went downstairs together. I asked if he would like underwear or a pull up.

“I would like some air time, Mom.”

We weren’t seated for many minutes in the basement before he announced that he needed to pee.

“You know where the bathroom is,” I said. “Let me know if you need help.”

He disappeared down the hallway. A few moments later he called out.

“I peed, Mom! And I pooped!”

I leapt off the couch, but again tried to diminish expectations. I’d had my hopes dashed so many times before. But my fears were unfounded; my hopes were realized. Drake had gone to the bathroom by himself. I reminded him to flush and wash his hands. I asked if he remembered what I said would happen if he went by himself. He paused, and a big grin came over his face.

“Mack!”

I went to my secret-squirrel hiding place, and brought back Mack. We called Drake’s dad to share the good news. And Drake is now happily playing with Mack as I write and edit this entry.

It may be some time before either event happens again. Drake still refuses to put on either a pull on or underwear; he’s going to have to cover up eventually. There will also be accidents and regressions. But no one can take today away from me.

Oddly enough, I had a related dream last night. I rarely recall dreams in the morning, and have never had a prophetic one. But in last night’s dream, I was complaining to a friend about Drake’s refusal to use the toilet.

“I understood when he was two that he might need more time than other kids. But I hardly expected him to be NEARLY FOUR and still in diapers. Everyone says he won’t start kindergarten in diapers. But I’ve seen nothing to give me hope,” wailed my dream self.

Oh, me of little faith. Way to go, Drake. Thank you for showing me, yet again, that you are on your own, unique time line. If I can remember and respect that, instead of fighting it, we’ll both be a lot happier.

During the hospital program I attended for post-partum depression and anxiety, we had two classes on relaxation with guided imagery. On my last day of the program we listened to a soothing CD whose narrator took us through the stages of relaxation. Toward the end, the narrator instructed us to imagine a beautiful gold box was sitting next to us, tied with a luxurious silk ribbon.

Wow, I thought, that reminds me a lot of the turning point in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. My mind started wandering in that direction; I drew it back to the sound of the narrator’s voice.

“Now imagine that you’re opening the box,” she said. “And what’s inside the box is whatever it is that you really, really want and need right now.”

What came to my mind at that instance? World peace? Personal peace? Patience? Health? Happiness?

No. I opened my imaginary box and found a John Hughes DVD box set. I burst out laughing, which I’m sure disturbed some of my more relaxed and meditative compatriots.

So, there we have it, folks. When given the choice of anything in the world, my relaxed meditative self said she wanted to watch 80’s teen dramedies. I’m not sure if this is humorous, pathetic, or both.

There are two(!) John Hughes DVD sets: Too Cool for School, which includes Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Some Kind of Wonderful, and Pretty in Pink; and The Brat Pack, with The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, and Sixteen Candles.

The first Saturday in May is Free Comic Book Day. Visit your local comic store to pick up a free comic book. Many have been created just for the day, so they’re not just 25 cent-ers. I plan on picking up Comics Festival! 2007, Whiteout, Nexus, and Owly. I highly recommend Whiteout and Nexus.

Find your local comic shop by visiting the Comic Shop Locator. Do not be afraid. The Simpsons guy is an exaggeration. Free Comic Book Day was created for comic book geeks (like me) and neophytes as well.

If you’re in the Twin Cities, visit the best comic shop, Big Brain Comics, on Washington Avenue by The Loft and Grumpy’s.

Reading, Discussion, & Book Signing with John Scalzi, who writes The Whatever and is a SF author on the rise*

Saturday, May 5, 2007
1:00pm

Uncle Hugo’s
2864 Chicago Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
(612) 824-6347

*Event in conjunction with author Tate Hallaway

#25 in my 2007 movie challenge was Superman Returns, a good movie for geeks. The reviews when it came out were mixed, plus it clocked in at two and a half hours, so I skipped in in the theater. I’m very glad I watched it, though. Singer pulled off a very tricky thing. He made Superman Returns both an homage to, as well as a continuation of, Richard Donner’s Superman, The Movie. Brandon Routh does a credible job as Superman, and evokes Christopher Reeve so strongly that it was almost eerie. His fake blue contacts over his brown eyes (a look I find distracting) bothered me throughout the movie. Kate Bosworth did a decent job as Lois Lane, and was certainly attractive, but she has become a character for our time, trying to juggle motherhood and a high-powered career. It’s a striking difference from Margot Kidder’s ERA-era feminist Lois Lane.

I normally avoid internet quizzes, but I found this one, What American Accent Do You Have? intriguing in a Sherlock Holmes-y way. My results? Spot on:

What American accent do you have?
Created by Xavier on Memegen.net

Midland. The Midland (please don’t confuse with "Midwest") itself is the neutral zone between the North and South. But just because you have a Midland accent doesn’t mean you’re from there. Since it is considered a neutral, default, "non-regional" accent you could easily be from someplace without its own accent, like Florida, or a big city in the South like Dallas, Houston, or Atlanta.

Take this quiz now - it’s easy!

We’re going to start with "cot" and "caught." When you say those words do they sound the same or different?

Different Same Same, no wait I mean different, maybe, a little bit different…

Isn’t that a fab title? Too long, but funny enough to deserve its length. #12 in my 2007 book challenge was You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop: Scalzi on Writing by John Scalzi.

My husband G. Grod started reading Scalzi’s blog, The Whatever, a while back, and frequently shares entries with me. Scalzi is funny (Chapter 4: Science Fiction, or, Don’t Skip This Chapter, You Damned Writing Snobs), smart, and not shy about sharing how he manages to make a decent living as a writer. (Hint: it’s not book tours and Oprah, though he is coming to a city near you very soon to promote his new novel, The Last Colony.) Scalzi is a pragmatist, not a romantic. He writes for hire, and for fun. He picked the topic of his novel, Old Man’s War, by going to the bookstore and studying which sci-fi books sold well. He lives in what I grew up calling BFE Ohio, where the cost of living is low, the politics swing right, and culture isn’t entirely absent, though I would argue that fine dining pretty much is. (Scalzi also claims that central-ish Ohio is a great place to raise a kid. He’s entitled to that opinion. I was a kid raised in Ohio. I left at 19 with a drinking problem and a decided lack of worldliness. Both of those got better once I was out of Ohio.)

YNFA is a collection of his blog entries. Check out the archives at The Whatever. If you like what you read, you’ll like YNFA. Why buy it if the individual entries are available for free? One, you’ll contribute to the decent living that one writer makes. If you’re a writer aspiring to make money and be published, that’s gotta help to slough some karma. Two, the edition, by Subterranean Press, is very nice. It’s cloth bound with good typefaces. My quibbles? Page 271 has a typeface goof, and there are a sprinkling of errors throughout the text that a more careful editing should have caught.

Heartening, humbling, and fun to read.

P.S. YNFA sold out of its initial print run! If you’re interested, feedback to Subterranean Press might encourage a second printing.

#11 in my 2007 book challenge was Breaking Up, a graphic novel written Aimee Friedman with art by Christine Norrie. I’ve admired Norrie’s work on the Hopeless Savages series, as well as her previous book Cheat. I’d not read Friedman before. This is the story of four friends at an arts high school nicknamed “Fashion High”. The friends bicker over boys, then “break up” and get back together. The narrator, Chloe, is a painter. She falls for a geek boy; her friends don’t approve. In the end, everyone is wiser and more tolerant, and Chloe and the (very cutely drawn) geek boy are together. This felt a little like a mishmash of 90210 episodes. And while that inspires affection in me, it also disappoints, because there was little that was new here. The dilemmas the girls faced felt real–desire for popularity, overly strict parents, pressuring boyfriend, inappropriate crush–but more young teen than young adult. I did very much like the sneaky, specific, and cruel revenge exacted on the pretty blond by the popularity queen, whose boyfriend the blond was trying to steal.

I suspect that Friedman’s lack of experience writing for the comics format is what made the prose feel a bit stiff to me. But what made this book stand out was Norrie’s art, and her interpretation of the fairly straightforward teen story. Her art gave the characters depth, made them sympathetic, and added both humor and pathos to Friedman’s story. Norrie did a very good job showing what Friedman was telling. The art infuses the story with a sweetness and empathy for its confused teen protagonists that ultimately elevates this above standard YA fare.

OMG! I just finished reading issue #5 of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s comic Criminal. Please pardon my slippage into jejune exclamation, but I can’t contain myself; it was that good. Wow.

Issue five is the conclusion of storyline “Coward,” about a thief named Leo. Leo’s never been caught before, but his latest heist might prove the exception to his many rules. There’s a good cast of characters, though many of them don’t survive the storyline. Brubaker has created a good canvas to work from. This is dark and violent; it owes a lot to noir. Its violence isn’t gratuitous, though. Each incidence serves the story.

My husband G. Grod highly recommends Brubaker and Phillips’s other collaboration, Sleeper, and I may not put off reading it.

At the end of Criminal #5, Brubaker asked a bunch of friends and comic-book creatives to share their favorite noir movies. Some I’d seen, some not. The ones I own, I’m going to re-watch. The ones I don’t, I’m going to seek out. And I’m not going to list them; go to your local comic shop and buy all five issues of Criminal for yourself. What? Your shop doesn’t have them all? Well, give my two favorite shops a try: Big Brain Comics in Minneapolis MN and Showcase Comics in Bryn Mawr PA. The trade paperback is due next month.

For a while, I felt bored with comics, and didn’t like anything I read. I think I see the light at the end of the ennui tunnel.

#9 in my 2007 movie challenge was Repo Man, which my husband borrowed from the library after finding this list of fifteen essential geek movies. I had seen 11 out of the 15, 8 of them with my husband. Repo Man is extremely weird, more so than other movies of its time that I did see, like Valley Girl, Better Off Dead, and the John Hughes canon. Emilio Estevez is a skinny young punk drafted into service as a repo man by Harry Dean Stanton. They inhabit a dark corner of the 1980s with generic everything, where there’s a ready supply of items to be reclaimed by people whose reach extended their grasp. The plot centers on a mysterious car that inspires warring factions, and there’s a truly bizarre ending.

The long, dry TV season is over, and the shows are returning in force. Like the mid-season ender, the latest Battlestar episode was strong, and put some of my previous concerns at ease. While the ep sometimes lagged especially around the will he/won’t he drop the bomb (sheesh, of course he won’t), there was some good character development. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Baltar is looking more like Jesus (or Judas?) with every episode.

The big question is, who did D’Anna see in the temple that she said “I’m sorry” to? I think Adama is too obvious. I think it’s Starbuck, but I’m terrible at guessing these things. I read that one of the dead characters might come back as a Cylon. I’m hoping for poor dead Billy. I was glad to see the end of Kat and Ellen.

Veronica Mars returned this week. I am one among many fans who have lamented that season three is nowhere near as great as season one was. But since season one was one of the best things on TV, ever, maybe I’m expecting too much. Veronica is still sassy, and the supporting cast is strong. I was sad to see Ed Begley Jr.’s character die at the end of the mid-season episode. He brought a lot of much-needed quirky humor to the dark storyline. At the end of this week’s ep, I was thrilled to see Veronica show up at Logan’s door, even though I don’t love the lovesick Logan. It sounds like he’s swallowing every other word. I don’t mind Piz, but Piz and Veronica? No way. He’s not got nearly enough dark side. Riley on Buffy had more than he does, and look how well THAT ended.

For the rest of the season, then, I’m going to try to be less tough on Veronica. We girl detectives have to stick together.