Girl Detective

“The idea is that you don’t have only one destiny. Younger and younger, kids are pressed to decide what they want to do with their lives, as if everything hinges on one decision. But whichever direction you go, there are going to be upsides and downsides. You’re dealing with a set of trade-offs, and not one perfect course in comparison to which all the others are crap. The idea is to take the pressure off….There are varying advantages to each competing future. But I didn’t want to have one bad future and one good. In both, everything is all right, really. Everything is all right.”

I place far too much weight on decisions. I can agonize over such trivial things as whether to go to the grocery or to yoga. I used to consult my Magic 8 ball with far too little skepticism. This passage sums up the guiding theme of The Post-Birthday World. It’s a refreshing and freeing one for me.

I rarely comment on a book until I’ve finished it; I’m still a little bitter about the ending of Smilla’s Sense of Snow. But I’m very much enjoying Lionel Shriver’s Post-Birthday World. Irina faces down a momentous decision on a friend’s birthday: to begin an affair, or go back to her long-time partner. After that scene, the book is told in alternating “what if” chapters.

One of those many interstitial sequences that didn’t tell well: Lawrence left for work in a jacket that wasn’t waterproof, and I ran after him in the rain with his overcoat and lunch. Little wonder that Irina began dinner with friends like Betsy at a loss for stories. But these moments were the stuff of life and they were the stuff of a good life.

I smiled at the above passage when I read it, because it’s something that the author at Mental Multivitamin often reminds readers: life isn’t the exclamation points, it’s the stuff in between. So cherish it.

I also had a wry smile for this passage, since it encapsulates the defensive-mommy zeigeist:

Tatyana had embraced domesticity with the same extremity as she had ballet. She was eternally quilting, canning, baking, upholstering, and knitting sweaters nobody needed. Her officious conduct of motherhood gave off that whiff of defensive self-righteousness characteristic of contemporary stay-at-home moms. She was stifling, fussy and overprotective, for if children were to redeem her existence, they would redeem it with a vengeance.

What I’m most enjoying about the book is Shriver’s uncanny ability to delve into the muck of secret thoughts and emotions. It feels rather as if she rummaged around in the dark corners of my mind. The alternating chapters could come across as precious, but I don’t find them so. Instead, they display (thus far; I’m about 3/5 the way through) an admirable complexity, with intriguing comparisons and contrasts. When I’m away from the book I am eager to get back to it. I wonder about the characters, and what they’re doing between the covers of my book. In addition to mesmerizing me, the book has also made me very eager to finally read Anna Karenina.

From “Wasps,” a short story by A.L. Kennedy in the New Yorker.

Let’s have a good morning. Before your mother starts to scream and
doesn’t stop and has to be taken away to the hospital for screaming
people. Who would make your breakfasts then?

Her sons showed no sign of having heard her, and she wondered again
which of her threats they would remember, which would be useful and
which would scar. It never was easy to tell, she supposed, if your
parenting was mostly beneficial or bound to harm.

I really enjoyed her novel, Paradise. I was surprised to learn she now does stand-up comedy. The humor in her writing is quite dark, even bleak.

#1

You don’t have to read a book to have an opinion….I don’t read novels. I prefer good literary criticism. That way you get both the novelists’ ideas as well as the critics’ thinking. With fiction I can never forget that none of it really happened, that it’s all just made up by the author.

–Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) in Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan (1990)

#2

according to Bayard, it is perfectly possible to have a fruitful discussion about a book one hasn’t read, even with someone who hasn’t read it either. (link from Arts & Letters Daily)

#3

[Cowen] lists eight strategies for taking control of one’s reading, which include ruthless skipping around, following one character while ignoring others, and even going directly to the last chapter. Your eighth-grade English teacher would faint. But the principle here is valuing the scarcity of your own time, which people often fail to do. (link from Arts & Letters Daily)

I’m a reader. I believe in the power of stories and the magic of books. This does not mean I finish every book I start. I give books 50 pages; by then if I’m annoyed or disengaged, I stop. There are too many other books I WANT to read for me to waste time on books I don’t care for. Like Cowen, I value my time, which is all the more scarce after having two children.

Like Bayard, it’s not just possible, but common, for me have an opinion on a book I haven’t read. I qualify my opinion by admitting that, though. I’m allowed to think that The DaVinci Code is poorly written and that its story is intriguing. But I haven’t read it; I’ve only synthesized what I’ve heard and read ABOUT it. My opinion is theoretical, because it’s based on the testimony of others, not experience of my own.

Yet I’m still bothered by the cavalier attitude of Cowen and Bayard. Most good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. If Cowen and Bayard practice–even celebrate–this literary dilettantism, they may have opinions (to which they are entitled, as are we all), but they are partial, and thus limited. And if Cowen and Bayard don’t disclose their partial knowledge, then they’re being less than honest.

In the end, I think it’s like what Robin Williams’s character said about smoking in Dead Again:

Someone is either a [reader] or a non[reader]. There’s no in-between. The trick is to find out which one you are, and be that. If you’re a non[read]er, you’ll know.

I’m a reader. I suspect you are, too. Don’t read what you don’t want to. But stories in their entirety are most often greater than the sum of their parts. Don’t listen to the dilettantes. To paraphrase another movie:

Read… or read not. There is no try.

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.

This article from The Edge (link via Arts and Letters Daily) elucidates how and why many adults choose speculative beliefs over scientific findings:

…resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and will be especially strong if there is a non-scientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are taken as reliable and trustworthy.

A member of my writing group arrived last night saying she’d suffered a week of serious doubt: was her manuscript ever going to be finished, would it amount to anything?, would it be published, what was the point of it all?

The rest of us laughed sympathetically; we’d been in that writing slump before, and we will be again.

Later, as we were chatting about the books we were reading (because reading is an integral part of writing; it’s the yin to the yang), the doubting writer noted that she’d recently finished two books by Margaret Atwood, who she’d not read before. After a long period of avoiding Oryx and Crake for her book group, because she didn’t like futuristic fantasy, she finally began it, and was swept away and won over. She followed that by picking up Atwood’s Blind Assassin.

Aha, I said, seeing the connection. “Did you have your writing crisis after reading Atwood?”

“Well, yes, I guess I did,” she said.

“I did the exact same thing after I finished Alias Grace,” I told her.

Atwood is like a goddess of writing. We mere mortals pale in comparison. We should instead admire and learn.

While I haven’t read either of the titles that my friend did, I highly recommend The Handmaid’s Tale, The Robber Bride, and especially Alias Grace. Cat’s Eye is an embarrassingly longtime denizen of my to-read shelf. To read excerpts of several Atwood books, visit The Daily Book Excerpt at The Sheila Variations.

I woke Friday morning with a severe spike in my already considerable irritability. It was not long before I was angry and cursing aloud in front of the kids, which I’ve learned is a sign of rising anxiety for me. I sent off a quick email to a retreat center to see if they had any space. We have a babysitter helping us with childcare for now, so I left soon after she arrived, and went first to a yoga class, then to my regularly scheduled therapy appointment. I returned home better, though not feeling calm, and had almost forgotten about my inquiry to the retreat center. When I checked email at home, they’d replied and had a last minute cancellation at the hermitage, their private cabin for a solitary retreat. Figuring that the universe seemed to be answering my request, I said yes, then sent off a few emails and made some calls to alert friends that G. Grod would be on his own for the next 36 hours and could use some help with the boys.

My friend Becca recommended the ARC retreat center to me, and I will thank her forever for it. I’ve now gone twice, and it is a haven. The hermitage cabin has just what it needs and no more. Since I tend to anxious overdoing, I took way too much with me, but sorted things out when I got there.

Once I could think clearly, I realized what I did and didn’t need.

Did need: book, journal, fiction notebook.

Didn’t need: laptop, City Pages, two Entertainment Weekly’s, five books to review for the blog.

I also probably didn’t need any toiletries other than sunscreen, toothpaste and toothbrush. (And I would’ve liked to have fluoride-free toothpaste, since the cabin doesn’t have running water.)

The staff at ARC is wonderfully supportive, and the food they make is vegetarian, hearty, sustaining AND delicious. There was fresh bread at almost every meal, some wonderful gingered beets from a recipe in Sundays at Moosewood. I had a restorative 36 hours. During that time, I tried and succeeded at doing only one thing at a time; I didn’t multitask. I didn’t read while I ate (or in the outhouse). I also tried, and mostly succeeded, at not making a to-do list. I did one thing at a time, and allowed myself just one, “and then”. This worked surprisingly well, probably because I was in a tiny cabin in the woods by myself and chose to limit my options to: eating, sleeping, reading, journalling, novelling, and walking.

I have a huge crush on the book I took with me, that I finished this morning in between my first breakfast (yogurt with strawberry rhubarb sauce and granola, bread and butter, coffee with almond biscotti) and second breakfast (egg scramble with cheddar cheese and hummos). It’s Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

READ THIS BOOK. It’s funny, sad, honest and intelligent and it’s got some GREAT stuff on religion and spirituality. Gilbert is instantly accessible and empathetic. My only quibble (oh, I always have one, don’t I?) is Gilbert’s overuse of male pronouns for God. A little equal opportunity time for goddesses would have been lovely.

I came back this morning rested and with some little reserve that helped me to handle the boys screaming and poking and crying that has sporadically filled the day. I really needed to get away, and I’m so thankful and fortunate that I could do so. Thanks, G. Grod. Thanks, friends who helped G. Grod. Thanks again, Becca. Thanks, ARC staff. Thanks, whoever cancelled your hermitage reservation. Thanks, Liz Gilbert for writing an awesome spiritual memoir. Everybody rocks.

Three more things, which I feel are distinct enough to merit their own postscript, rather than me cramming them retroactively into yesterday’s post on Stephen King and Fieldwork.

One: M., who blogs at Mental Multivitamin, is also a fan of Entertainment Weekly. She is erudite, but not elitist. She, too, liked the essay by King.

Two: I forgot one of the reasons I was so attracted to Gilead when I first saw it in hardcover. Not only was it physically beautiful to look at, but it also felt good in the hand. It was a good size and weight; its slight heft bespoke substance, not the overwhelming weight of pretension. And the cover was textured, so the weathered pastels felt as good as they looked.

Three: one more thing urged me to buy and read Gilead, but I felt it was too long to add to yesterday’s already long post. My writing instructor told this story, which I hope is true, of an editor at Farrar, Straus, Giroux who appeared at the door of another editor, holding an unremarkable box in his hand.

“Guess what I’m holding?” editor #1 asked, holding the box aloft.

He paused dramatically; he knew editor #2 had no idea.

He continued, his voice reverent and excited. “The manuscript for Marilynne Robinson’s second novel.”

How could I not want to read the book that inspired such a reaction?

I am an unapologetic reader of Entertainment Weekly. For all the swearing off of magazines I’ve done, there are a few that rise above the crowd to earn my attention. EW is one of those. I find it smart, funny, and a good, quick review of many things important to me: books, movies, tv and music. Sneer if you must, but in this case I’m no snob. I like EW because it embraces popular culture, though whether it’s high, medium or low is anyone’s call.

Stephen King is a columnist for EW. I haven’t read a King novel in many years, but I enjoy his “The Pop of King” and his sense of humor. In April 6, 2007’s “How to Bury a Book,” he accuses publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux of dropping the ball with its treatment of the new novel Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski. King takes issue with the cover and the title. He feels they tell nothing about, and therefore don’t sell, the book. King picked Fieldwork up on impulse, in spite of the cover and title, and was pleasantly surprised. He says that FSG has burdened the book with a smeary image and vague title because they’re afraid to market a literary novel overtly:

Hey, guys, why not put the heroine on the jacket….why not actually sell this baby a little?

I found it interesting that King also took issue with the cover and title of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, also from FSG, because I clearly remember the first time I saw that book in a store. I had to sternly restrain myself from buying Gilead in hardcover. Oh, how I wanted that book. The cover was a lovely wash of bleached-out color. It looked like the door of an old church. That plus the title told me it would be a book about religion and spirituality. I didn’t buy the book, because I managed to adhere to whatever “if I’m not about to read it next I can’t buy it, and I certainly can’t buy it in hardcover because by the time I read it, not only will it be out in paperback, it will probably have gone through a trade paperback printing into a mass market printing and I’ll have spent $25+ on a book that’s harder to read because of its lack of portability, and I’ll long for the lighter weight, and smaller pocketbook dent, of a paperback” vow I had taken at the time. I continued to visit that hardcover on subsequent bookstore trips, even after I borrowed Gilead from the library. I bought it as soon as it came out in trade paperback.

I went to amazon.com to check out Fieldwork after I read King’s column. Based on the description of the book, the cover and King’s endorsement, I would get this book, in spite of the mixed editorial reviews at amazon. (I don’t take the editorial reviews as gospel, and I pretty much ignore the personal reviews–too little signal to noise. But the ed. reviews usually point me in the right direction: check it out/meh/avoid.) I might not buy Fieldwork in hardcover (see para. above). But I would certainly reserve it from the library, which notifies them that the book is in demand, and encourages them to purchase more copies. The smudgey cover and title, along with the book description, point to a messy tale about anthropologists. The image and title both appeal to me, and make sense.

I find King’s complaints interesting. He may have a point that publishers are afraid to market literary fiction. Yet his argument sounds to me like he’s taking his opinion–that the cover and title should be more obvious in order to better sell the book–and universalizing it. Given that King is mostly a writer in the horror genre, and genre books tend to have more representative and less impressionistic covers and titles, I think he has a bias for what he likes that may not be as true for “ordinary readers,” as he believes.

Let me be clear. He is Stephen Freakin’ King, the bestselling author, many of whose books I’ve read and bought over the years. I am merely the author of this little weblog, and mostly unpublished. His opinion counts for more than mine. But since I consider myself one of the “ordinary readers” whom he validates, I wanted to voice my difference of opinion.

In the end, it feels unfair to quibble with King. He’s using the considerable power of his good opinion to support Fieldwork. In fact, his closing words are so good they should be repeated:

Under the drab title and drab cover, there’s a story that cooks like a mother. It’s called Fieldwork.

Because I haven’t been able to get it, this week. Or if I have, then it was quickly undone the next day: eeny, meeny, miny, moe, bad day, good day, bad day, whoa.

Mrs. Large took a tray from the cupboard. She set it with a teapot, a milk jug, her favorite cup and saucer, a plate of marmalade toast and a leftover cake from yesterday. She stuffed the morning paper into her pocket and sneaked off toward the door.

“Where are you going with that tray, Mom?” asked Laura.

“To the bathroom,” said Mrs. Large.

“Why?” asked the other two children.

“Because I want five minutes’ peace from all of you,” said Mrs. Large. “That’s why.”

This morning I had Drake set the kitchen timer for five minutes. Twice. Neither time did we make it to zero without the boys both screaming. Drake and I both love this book because it is funny and true about the push/pull between kids and moms. Consider this as a Mother’s Day gift for the tired moms you know.

I got this book at Barnes and Noble in the paperback section. I originally saw it recommended at a book blog, though I can’t find the link. (Book Moot, was it you?) I love the paperback children’s book section. I can splurge and not feel guilty for spending $15+ on a book that Drake is just as likely to throw as he is to “read”.

This week’s episode with the boneless woman was more cringe-inducing than usual, and there was no Stephen Fry, so I was a little disappointed overall. Sully said goodbye, but is that the last we’ve seen of him? My husband G. Grod thinks he’ll either be dead or evil by the end of the season. I think evil; perhaps he’s the suffocating serial killer who nearly got Bones earlier in the season? Poor Bones; she does not have a good track record, as Booth so unkindly pointed out to her.

For a funnier use of the term boneless, check out Mo Willems’s Knuffle Bunny. The “K” is pronounced in Knuffle (as it would be in German). And the term for one of Trixie’s tantrum contortions is “going boneless,” which Willems attributes to his wife.

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.

A fun find from our library, Looking for a Moose by Phyllis Root is one of our new favorite picture books. The text is repetitive and almost rhyming, similar to We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, so it’s fun to read aloud. It’s different from Bear Hunt because it’s a one way journey, and because it has a happier ending that teaches the plural of moose. Cecil’s oil paintings are clear and engaging, and several pages have hidden moose.

The recent death of Sidney Sheldon coincided with an online column and lengthy comment section at Entertainment Weekly on surreptitious reading–what books did people read as teenagers and hide from their parents, because the books were about sex, profanity, rebellion, violence, etc?

I was a precocious reader. My parents didn’t forbid me from reading anything, but I tried to hide some of the racier ones. (Interestingly, they forbade my sisters and me from watching Three’s Company, Charlie’s Angels, Love Boat, and Fantasy Island, so TV was censored more than books. Yet I remember watching all those shows many times, and I couldn’t have spent THAT many nights at friends’ houses.)

A list of forbidden books is the antithesis of the more usually found top ten lists, like those recently compiled in The Top Ten by J. Peder Zanes. Forbidden books were usually selected more for their racy content than for their literary merit; very few of the forbidden books I read as a teenager have survived in my library.

Here, in all their embarrassing glory, are some of the books and authors I read when I was a teenager. I couldn’t contain myself to ten, even when I collapsed a few authors and categories.

1. Flowers in the Attic, V.C. Andrews’s cult classic. I don’t even want to know how far I got in that series.

2. Judy Blume: The progression for me was Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, Then Again Maybe I Won’t, Forever, and Wifey.

3. Horror Books: The Amityville Horror (couldn’t sleep for weeks), The Omen, anything by Stephen King. These books often had sex AND scary stuff, so there was plenty of stuff that parents would disapprove of.

4. The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills by Mary Stewart. Merlin! Magic! Naughty bits! But, oh, the later books were pretty bad.

5. Restoree, Dragonflight (and far too many of its sequels), Get off the Unicorn, by Anne McCaffrey, who had some non-explicit racy bits mixed into her fantasy stories and novels.

6. Chances and Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins

7. Rage of Angels, Bloodline, If Tomorrow Comes, and Master of the Game by Sidney Sheldon

8. The Promise by Danielle Steele, strangely, a novelization of someone else’s screenplay. I remember a stirring love story, yet when I re-read it as an adult I was horrified by how badly written it was.

9. Bodice rippers: Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught, A Rose in Winter by Kathleen Woodiwiss, and the Steve and Ginny books by Rosemary Rogers.

Years later, my younger sister pointed out that most of McNaught’s books have a rape scene; I hadn’t noticed or been bothered by them when I was younger–yikes.

I loved most of the books by Woodiwiss, but this Beauty and the Beast homage was one I read again and again.

Even when I was reading them, I found the Steve and Ginny books by Rogers to be kind of disturbing. Steve cheated on her all the time, yet she only cheated on him when she had amnesia or was being tortured, then he’d be horrible to her after she got rescued. And I don’t recall what he went through, but she was a captive army prostitute, a harem girl, an opium addict, so I definitely think she got the worst of it. A most embarrassing moment: I was reading one of the Rogers books while waiting to go on a school trip. The teacher commented, “Oh, you have such a look of intensity on your face while you read!” Given the racy cover of the book, and the very racy scene I’d just read, I was mortified.

I always wondered–why was the man always 33, and the woman always 18? That was a hard age difference for me to buy when I was young, yet I suppose it was mostly that a man would have to be significantly older to have achieved the kind of financial success necessary for a romance hero.

10. It looked like a bodice ripper, but it had more substance to it: Amanda/Miranda by Richard Peck. I had to tear off the cover, because I got tired of being teased about it. It was a romance, a mystery, and about the Titanic! It was a girly dream come true.

11. Lace by Shirley Conran, The Debutantes by June Flaum Singer (these were pretty much the same book) Lace had a very naughty part involving a goldfish.

12. Scruples, Princess Daisy, and probably my favorite of them all, Mistral’s Daughter by Judith Krantz

The planet Mercury has turned retrograde. According to astrologers, this is not a good time to start new projects or books. If you’re found new books slow going, give old favorites a try until March 8, when Mercury turns direct again.

Most readers know that recommending books is a dicey business, made more fraught when one lends or gives a book. Because the recommender, especially if she is also a loaner or a giver, hopes (not unreasonably) to share the book she’s enjoyed, and wants to hear, preferably sooner than later, that you enjoyed the book as well. There are a few potential problems.

For those of us (I think there are at least a few of you who can relate) who make reading lists, and commit to certain books for certain discussions, and are enthusiastic patrons of the public library and frequent ab/users of its reserve system, a book loaned or given throws a wrench in our carefully (some might say obsessively) laid plans. It is good manners to return the favor of a recommendation/loan/gift by reading the book soon. All those other books that we’ve bought over the past however many years, the ones we swore we’d read soon, get bumped again. The reading list gets crammed, and we need to whiz through books we’d rather savor, put aside books already begun, or return books unread to the library that have been in our queue for months.

All these, though, are fairly trifling in comparison to the good will of a R/L/G. I feel petty and small as I write this, as it implies I begrudge the R/L/G. Some of my best book friends have been R/L/Gs!

And yet. And yet.

Is there any book scenario more perilous than when one dislikes the R/L/G? An analogy: several years ago, when my husband and I were still courting, he bought tickets to a ballet production of Carmina Burana, a musical work he liked. Wow, I thought, how romantic! The ballet!

After the show was a different story. I wasn’t feeling well that night, and had a hard time sitting still. When G. Grod asked me what I thought, I was less than gracious. I was, unfortunately, honest. “It was long. My bum hurts from the uncomfortable seats. And why did that music sound like the anti-christ was going to come swooping in at any moment?”

Poor young G. Grod. He’d taken the time and expense to surprise me with ballet tickets, and that was my response. Ten years later, this still comes up occasionally. I’m still sorry. But I still think of Damian any time I hear CB.

A similar situation happened with my sister Sydney, who sent me a copy of Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose. I loathed the book, so much that I was moved to write an article detailing why. It was hardly the response my sister had hoped for.

Even though G. Grod and I have years of experience of why R/L/Gs are bad, we still do it. How can we not? We love books, and want to share the love. We each have several books we think the other should read, and both of us have put those books off for some time. Perhaps that’s one of the benefits of being married lo these several years; we can take both the delay in reading and the potential eventual dislike of each other’s R/L/Gs with equanimity.

Books G. Grod thinks I would like/should read

Dune by Frank Herbert
Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike
A Fire on the Deep by Vernor Vinge
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh

Books I’ve bought because I liked them, and I want G. Grod to read them

King Dork by Frank Portman
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

Book I bought before I made my most recent book vow, that I want to read, and think G. Grod will like too

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

“It is the greatest absurdity–Actually snowing at this moment!–The folly of not allowing people to be comfortable at home–and the folly of people’s not staying comfortably at home when they can! If we were obliged to go out such an evening as this, by any call of duty or business, what a hardship we should deem it;–and here are we, probably with rather thinner clothing than usual, setting forward voluntarily, without excuse, in defiance of the voice of nature, which tells man, in every thing given to his view or his feelings, to stay at home himself, and keep all under shelter that he can;– here are we setting forward to spend five dull hours in another man’s house, with nothing to say or to hear that was not said and heard yesterday, and may not be said and heard again to-morrow. Going in dismal weather, to return probably in worse;–four horses and four servants taken out for nothing but to convey five idle, shivering creatures into colder rooms and worse company than they might have had at home.”

Mister John Knightley, a voice of reason, in Austen’s Emma. I am intrigued by his argument that we should attend to nature’s suggestion, and stay home when it is cold. On one hand, we Minnesotans would be housebound a lot. On the other, getting myself and the kids bundled up and out the door and into a vehicle is considerable work. It makes me long to curl up on the couch with books. And what if we went to bed earlier, and got up later during winter? Modern life doesn’t encourage this kind of adjustment to our environment. But what if it did?

“What’s this book called, Mommy?” said Drake, holding up a book at Grammy’s house.

“Mimi’s Toes,” I replied, trying to keep the disdain out of my voice. I think the book’s rhyme scheme is forced, which makes it unpleasant to read. I’m also not a devotee of the Baby Einstein line in general.

[Yes, yes, I know it's wildly popular, and to each her own, etc. But I can't help suspecting that Baby Einstein's success is based on a canny brand name. Would the products sell so well if the brand was Virtual Babysitter, or Wishful Parent?]

“It’s not That Stupid Monkey Book?” he said, wide eyed and innocent.

I sighed, feeling guilty for having been overheard. “No, that was something mean I said. It’s called Mimi’s Toes. Would you like to read it during your bath?” I offered.

“Yeah!” he exclaimed, grinning, then clutched it and ran out of the room. I suppose I should be glad he’s developed his own likes and dislikes, rather than simply internalizing my prejudices.

I read 69 books in 2006, an average of 5.75 a month. Many were young-adult titles and graphic novels, both of which tend to be fast reads. While I trounced my fifty-book goal, I slowed down considerably at the end of the year, reading less than just after Guppy was born. Making books a priority is a continuous process, not an event. When I have less time for myself, I need to put reading somewhere after sleep and food, and before just about everything else. I liked most of the books I read, so it’s time well spent. I’ve starred the dozen titles that I most enjoyed. I apologize for the lack of italics and links, but all reviews are listed in the 2006 Book Challenge category on the right.

I was disappointed by several sequels: Bangkok Tattoo, Batman Dark Victory, Catwoman: When in Rome, Magic Lessons, Tears of the Giraffe, Scott Pilgrim #3, and Second Helpings. The third book in Alexander McCall Smith’s Precious Ramotswe series was better than #2, though, so perhaps there’s hope for some of those other less-than-stellar sequels.

In addition to the lame sequels, I didn’t care for The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which I found precious and affected. I didn’t find Allende’s Zorro emotionally compelling, though I thought the history was interesting.

I liked four books enough to purchase after I had borrowed them from the library: King Dork, Reading Like a Writer, Black Swan Green and The Thirteenth Tale.

From the home shelves, I finally got around to Middlesex and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I enjoyed them both a great deal, and will try to go “shopping” on my own shelves more often this year.

I re-read 18 books last year, several in preparation for the sequels. Bangkok 8 and Magic or Madness were fun to read again. And I appreciate Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights more with each reading.

The Thirteenth Tale was an homage to the Brontes, as well as a fun read. Pete Hautman’s The Prop had good characters and a tight plot; I raced through it.

Intuition got a lot of good reviews last year, but I was more impressed by Sigrid Nunez’s The Last of Her Kind. Both were good stories well told, but I felt Nunez did a better job with POV.

Finally, Kathryn Davis’s Thin Place was probably the best modern book I read this year. Davis took some wild leaps in POV, and pulled them together into a lingering, unsettling whole.

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens
Baby by Patricia MacLachlan
Bangkok 8 by John Burdett
Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett
Batman Dark Victory by Loeb/Sale
Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
*Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
Bungalow Kitchens by Jane Powell
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Catwoman: When in Rome by Loeb/Sale
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
Goodnight, Nobody by Jennifer Weiner
Hicksville by Dylan Horrocks
Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard
*How to Read Like a Writer by Francine Prose
Hypnobirthing by Marie Mongan
I am the Cheese by Robert Cormier
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Intuition by Allegra Goodman
*Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
*Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke
*King Dork by Frank Portman
Magic Lessons by Justine Larbalestier
Magic or Madness by Justine Larbalestier
*Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Monkey Island by Paula Fox
Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith
My Sister’s Continent by Gina Frangello
Persuasion by Jane Austen
*Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Salvation Run by Mary Gardner
Satellite Down Rob Thomas
Scott Pilgrim v. 1 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim v. 2 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim v. 3 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Sloppy Firsts by Megan McCafferty
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith
The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark
The Accidental by Ali Smith
The Elements of Style by Strunk & White
The Explosive Child by Ross Greene
The Film Snob’s Dictionary by Kamp/Levi
The Finishing School by Muriel Spark
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
*The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez
The Memory Artists by Jeffrey Moore
The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanka
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
*The Prop by Pete Hautman
The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
*The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis
*The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Truth and Consequences by Alison Lurie
V for Vendetta by Moore/Lloyd
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
*Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Zorro by Isabel Allende