Girl Detective

Both my boys are slow to lose baby teeth which is fine by me. Let them keep building their brushing skills on the baby teeth to give their grown-up teeth a better chance at fewer cavities.

6yo Guppy’s tooth had been loose for a while. Earlier in the week, he said he pushed it forward with his tongue in his school picture, so it will be immortalized.

Yesterday at the bus stop, I’m chatting with the other parents (we have 11 kids at our bus stop from 7 families) when I heard the cry go up from the kids:

“Guppy lost a tooth!”

Guppy appeared in front of me, lip quivering.

“Because Drake punched me in the face.”

I hugged him close (perhaps not only in sympathy, if you know what I mean), then checked for blood, which was minimal. I was relieved, since I didn’t have tissues and the bus was pulling up.

Alas, the tooth was missing, and the sidewalk was effective camouflage. I didn’t find the tooth, but another dad did, so I ran on the bus before it pulled away to assure Guppy that we’d found it.

9yo Drake maintains he didn’t PUNCH Guppy in the face, but merely scraped his hand down the front of it which ended up popping the already loose tooth out.

This morning, Guppy found $2 under his pillow. (We’re long past the Tooth Fairy here.)

“I guess you get an extra dollar when your tooth is punched out of you,” I told him.

“I didn’t punch him!” yelled Drake.

I don’t think he recognizes that describing it the other way tells the story more effectively, if not more precisely.

This is not the story that the title makes it sound like it’s going to be, so don’t dismiss it if you think this is going to be an inspirational story about losing weight.

My insurance company discounts rates for things like not smoking, having good cholesterol levels and low blood pressure, getting health screenings, etc. One of the boxes to check is a BMI in the not-overweight range.

Last week at the doctor, I took off my shoes and weighed in. When the nurse plugged the number into the calculator, I came in at 25.1% BMI, when 24.9 is the top limit of what they term “normal.”

“Can I take off my clothes and try again?” I asked the nurse.

“Sure,” she said, then advised me not only to take off my jeans but also my watch, bracelet and eyeglasses. Down to my underwear, we got a new number, plugged it in, and the new BMI was 24.7%. Success! We both cheered and laughed and clapped. The doctor also found it pretty funny when she came in.

Alas, I thought getting the target BMI would get me out of blood tests for cholesterol and glucose. Turns out I have to do those anyway. I’m not a fan of the blood draw; I’ve had some horrific experiences over the years. Also, I’m pretty sure there’s no way to jigger those tests to hit the target retroactively.

Because fall television has begun, and I no longer can be so carefree with my screen time. Here we go:

The Bourne Legacy (2012) with Jeremy Renner. Good, but not as good as the previous films.

Hanna (2011) About a girl programmed to be an assassin. I didn’t like it as much as my husband did. But did appreciate a very creepy turn from Tom Hollander, who played Mr. Collins in the Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice. Wondering: was Cate Blanchett’s X-Files Scully-look deliberate?

The 39 Steps (1935), Criterion Collection. The movie is great, as are the extras, and the booklet/essay that comes with the DVD. I think my favorite part is where the guy takes a woman home, and then offers her haddock, and cooks it for her.

The Wire, Season 5. Such a good show. So sad to be done. Fingers crossed for some of those characters, but by the end, I did not give a sh1t about McNulty. He got off too easy. Oh, Bunk, Bunny, Carver, Dukie, Omar, and so many, many characters. I loved spending time with you.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Trifling, but probably worth it to see the original song by Monroe, since I grew up with Madonna’s “Material Girl” homage, and liked Nicole Kidman’s in Moulin Rouge.

Back to the Future (1985). The kids loved this, and I love watching my kids love a movie. The film holds up, though the Huey Lewis soundtrack doesn’t.

Fish Tank (2009). Michael Fassbender. Woo. Great indie, and loved the lead actress.

Being Elmo: a Puppeteer’s Journey (2011). Could it be MORE different than the previous DVD? Interesting and charming docu about the man behind the puppet, but I wanted more about his experience as a black man in a white man’s milieu, and felt it glossed over how he was loving to millions of kids as Elmo, but not so much to his one actual kid. (Reminded me of Miyazaki)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the 1979 miniseries with Alec Guinness. So classy, so good. Better than the recent film, and appropriately lacking the film’s unnecessary violence. Like the film, I had to let go of trying to follow the plot and characters and by the end they were all sorted. My husband about had a geekjoy apoplexy when he recognized the actor playing Karla.

Chronicle (2012) A surprisingly solid indie about kids who develop superpowers.

Woot! Caught up!

Currently enmeshed in season 1 of Veronica Mars (watching w/husband) and Friday Night Lights (sans husband.)

I first read Toni Morrison’s Beloved in 1996. I was in my second year of graduate school, and in a woman’s book group. I was new to the wish to become a better reader of better books. As part of claiming my books, I wrote in them. Alas, in Beloved, I wrote in red pen. While it’s interesting to see what moved me and felt important on my first read, it’s not what I want on my second read, sixteen years later. I am still mulling over getting a new copy. But for an upcoming discussion, because I couldn’t find an unmarked used copy (apparently, unsurprisingly, Beloved is the kind of book that gets marked up), I read my old copy.

I am certain that sixteen years, which included grad school in religion and umpteen books, helped make this a less bewildering read than it must have been back then. Also, knowing two key things about the book, since they will never be forgotten, made it “easier” to read than before. I put easier in quotes, because this is anything but an easy read. The blurbs are full of apt adjectives, like harrowing, stunning, dazzling, glorious, brilliant, shocking, brutal, magical, shattering. Both the history the novel relates–of the Middle Passage crossing and US slavery–as well as the emotions the richly drawn characters evoke, drew me in and forced me to read, think on, and feel things I’d really probably rather not. And yet, the reading of the book also makes it clear why it’s so important to know about these things, to not ignore them. The book bears witness to pain and ugliness, but also to beauty, strength, and hope.

Morrison’s writing is spare at the start, gets mystical in the middle with Faulknerian stream-of-consciousness chapters, and then more elaborate at the end.

124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims.

Here’s what we know at the beginning. The house is haunted. Sethe is a former slave who lived with her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, until the old woman died. One day a man named Paul D finds her. They once were slaves on a Kentucky plantation ironically named Sweet Home. Things proceed, moving back and forth, from there.

What struck me on this reading was that Beloved, with its ghost and grisly past, has all the hallmarks of a gothic horror story, which are blended with historical facts of the slave trade. I think it’s a toss up whether the gothic treatment highlights the horror inherent, or manages to make it able to be read, giving the reader just that small space of breathing room that fiction’s make believe can provide.

I re-read Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure prior to seeing a performance by Ten Thousand Things. Revisiting this play reminded me just how strange it is. I’d remembered it as a romance, but it’s classified as a comedy, though also a “Problem Play” because of its dark, weird mood.

In it, a duke dresses as a friar, gives all his power to a trusted friend Angelo, who then enforces a long-dormant law and sentences poor, nice Claudio to death because he got his girlfriend pregnant without marrying her legally and completely. Claudio’s sister Isabel, a soon-to-be nun, pleads for his case, Angelo falls in lust with her, the duke/friar runs around meddling, and wacky hijinx ensure.

The play ends with two, or is it three?, marriages. The two that are certain are punishments, and the men in them would prefer death. The third, uncertain marriage, can only be answered by the production. The one we attended last night skirted the possibility of the third marriage altogether.

It’s an unsettling text, and an unsettling play, though it does put forth provocative questions of power, equality, and judgment. I wonder if it might have been a satire in its time, whose sting has been lost with the context. I’m glad to have seen it performed.

Some of my favorite lines:

Mistress Overdone: But what’s his offence?
Pompey: Groping for trouts, in a peculiar river. (I, ii, 82-3)

Lucio: Our doubts are traitors,
And makes us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt. (I, iv, 77-9)

Duke: Her madness hath the oddest frame of sense. (V, i, 64)

which reminds me of

Polonius: Though this be madness, yet there is method in ‘t” (Hamlet II.ii.205-206).

When I did a good long think about the young-adult novel I am attempting to write, I realized something strange. It’s a romance. Which is not what I set out to write. But when I read Fifteen by Beverly Cleary this summer, I realized THAT was the kind of book I was trying to write: a coming-of-age romance with not too much conflict. Who knows if I’ll even finish mine. I’ve been working on it so long because, basically, I wasn’t a good enough writer to tell the story the way I wanted to. I’ve kept writing, and in the hope that someday I’ll be able to pull it off.

But YA romance, by and large, isn’t something I’ve read much of, so I did some spelunking at amazon.com and at sites like Forever Young Adult. I revisited this YA-fiction flow chart, and it was clear I needed to check out something by Sarah Dessen. Thus, Keeping the Moon.

My name is Nicole Sparks. Welcome to the first day of the worst summer of my life.

Nicole, nicknamed Colie, is shunted by her famous mother to live with her eccentric aunt in a tiny vacation town for the summer. Colie has dyed black hair, a lip ring, and an event in her past that’s made her angry and isolated. Over the summer, she gets a job as a waitress, makes some friends, tries to figure out her aunt, meets cute boys, and, guess what? She does not, in fact, have the worst summer of her life.

This, along with some other plot points, were not surprising. But Colie and the friends, even Colie’s relationship with her mother, all had some nice touches that felt real and true. I enjoyed it, and will seek out some of Dessen’s other books to see how they compare.

Or: Nerdishly Obsessing over Bicycling Backpacks

My husband and I both love bags. We have scads of them. The thing about bags, as with bikes and so many other things, is that you don’t know what works and what doesn’t till you’ve been living with something for a while.

For some time now, I’ve been muddling along with my husband’s old broke-ass gigantic backpack. It was too big, missing a lining, black on the inside, and with a rolltop that I nearly always have to undo and redo because I’ve forgotten to put in or take out something. In other words, completely unacceptable.

Now that fall is here, I’m making longer jaunts on my bike as the boys are back in school. I felt a growing resolve for a new bag. And so my quest began, which ended with my purchase of a Banjo Brothers Metro Bag. Here’s how I came to that decision.

I wanted a flap closure, not a rolltop. The latter is better for absolute water proofing, which isn’t such an issue for me, since I’m mostly a fair-weather biker. Since I often forget to put things in and take things out of my bag, easy access is more important to me. Rolltops also tend to ride higher above the shoulders, so they can lessen visibility. Choosing flap rather than rolltop ruled out Trash bags, most Beard bags, Seal Lines, and the handsome Chrome Orlov.

I knew from the black pack I’d been using that a dark interior doesn’t work for me. I needed a light-colored interior to better see what’s inside. Bags with dark interiors I ruled out were Bailey Works (such great color choices!) and Mission Workshop.

I also needed two side pockets. I like to carry my U-lock in my bag, for less rattly bang when I’m riding, and I don’t have a water bottle holder on my bike, so I like a 2nd pocket for the bottle and to stash my keys in. This ruled out the Beard Loiterer, as well as Chrome and Mission Workshop bags. The Timbuk2 Swig had only one pocket.

I also need a bunch of interior pockets for littler stuff like pens, wallet, book, etc:

I’d tried using conventional backpacks without a chest strap, but they made my shoulders ache. The Banjo Brothers Metro has both a chest strap and one at the bottom for even more support.

At the end of my search, I found one bag that had everything I wanted, and then some. The Banjo Brothers Metro in White had a light interior, double side pockets (though I wish they were a bit more deep), and a flap top. It was neither too big nor too small. The phone carrier on the strap, where I like it to be, is included, not an extra purchase. The interior has good organizational pockets. Bonuses: Banjo Brothers is a Twin Cities company, so local to me, and the bag was $74.99, significantly less than many of the other bags I looked at.

I’ll have to live with it for a while to see how it works out. Already I’ve noticed it rides higher on my shoulders than I’d like even though it’s not a rolltop. But everything else so far is good. I’m glad I waited a while to see what I wanted in a bag, rather than rushing into a relationship before I was ready.

A pick for one of my book groups, Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street was mostly unknown to me, perhaps because I grew up elsewhere than in Minnesota, the setting for the novel and the origin point for Lewis himself. But now that I do live in Minnesota (and plan to stay) this felt like an enjoyable piece of required reading, one that would probably have been mostly lost on me if I’d read it when younger.

The main character is Carol, a young college graduate who works in Saint Paul, Minnesota before marrying a country doctor and moving to Gopher Prairie, modelled after Sauk Centre, Lewis’ birthplace. Idealistic Carol struggles against the staid pace and less than lovely facade of her new town, but her attempts to modernize thought and behavior mostly fall flat. The novel revolves around Carol’s struggle to accept small-town, middle-American life, while it wonders whether she should.

On a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky. She saw no Indians now; she saw flour-mills and the blinking windows of skyscrapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

In addition to Carol, though, it’s also the story of her husband, Will Kennicott, and their marriage. While the book is mostly viewed as a satire of small-town America, I found it also had some affection for what it mocked, and I appreciated the complicated portrait of marriage that it detailed through Carol and Will over the years.

What struck me again and again, too, was how modern the novel felt. The political and social issues, even the names and details of the Twin Cities, all felt like they were still echoing down the years. I would never have picked this up on my own, and it’s now earned a spot in the permanent library. Not a swift read, but a rewarding one.

Continuing to catch up on the DVD goodness we availed ourselves of this summer. Unlike the rest of the world, we do not have Netflix streaming. We get most of our DVDs from the library. Long wait, but FREE!

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001) with the kids after we listened to it on CD during our road trip. Those kids look so impossibly young! The quidditch brought to life is a delight, and our boys really enjoyed this.

Batman Begins (2005) rewatched the first movie in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. While the Evil Plan doesn’t actually make sense, it’s a very good action flick, and superbly cast and acted. (Even Katie Holmes, IMO.)

Batman: The Dark Knight (2008) Poor dead Heath Ledger. One of the (the?) best superhero movies ever.

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises (2012) Good, but not as good as its predecessor. Joseph Gordon Levitt is one of the best young actors, and utterly engaging. Also, covering up Tom Hardy’s face with a mask the whole time? Ill advised.

Crazy Stupid Love (2011) Steve Carell and Julianne Moore are divorcing, and sad sack Steve gets adopted by Ryan Gosling, playing to type times infinity. Emma Stone is flailing in her own bad relationship, and somehow all these characters and more cross over. I didn’t care for some aspects, but overall, this was very entertaining. If Joseph Gordon Levitt and Emma Stone did a film together, would the world implode with charming cuteness?

Turns out I basically took the summer off from writing about movies. Unintentional, probably because I was huffing and puffing to keep up with the Shelf Discovery readalong. I have also acknowledged to myself that it is unlikely that I will be able to catch up in one fell swoop of a post. Probably not desirable, either, for me or you, dear reader, eh? Thus, without further ado:

Stepbrothers (2008) Recommended by a friend, and as with many Will Ferrell movies, I wanted it to be funnier than it was. And yet, thinking about “Boats and Hoes” and the “Catalina Wine Mixer” both make me laugh in memory.

Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries Season one. I re-watched these with my boys, who are the ages my sisters and I were when we watched it. It’s terrible. But we all enjoyed it anyway. My husband G. Grod, though? Not so much.

Cowboy Bebop the Movie (2001) Not as fun as watching the series was.

I have a gigantic blemish on my face. I’m not paranoid; it’s obvious. It started out as one of those deep, cystic ones. It throbbed so badly I thought it was going to spout a face and start talking to me. In the end, it was the same thing: a huge, unsightly whitehead.

Back in the day, I used to have persistent cystic acne that seemed irritated by hormonal shifts. I went to an old-school dermatologist named Myron, who would give me shots of cortisone in each cyst, and prescribe a lotion and cream that never worked well enough that I could stop going in and getting those painful shots, though they did shrink the cussers.

Eventually another dermatologist convinced me to try Accutane, which was a tough drug while I was on it, but did dramatically improve my skin. Now, though, as I approach menopause and the hormones get uppity, I’ve got cysts rearing their ugly (white)heads again. Sigh.

It seems unjust that I’m 44, and facing the same acne issues as at 14. I know not to pop it, and that covering it makes it worse AND highlights it. There’s little to do but abide and wait for it to subside. I have a cold compress on it now (the Mr. Happy cold pack that is supposedly for the kids.) Small problem, I know. But still, pretty gross.

In my defense…oh, I’ll just shut up now. I do not have time to read these books, I cannot afford them, and I don’t have shelf space for them. Yet, I bought them anyway. Another possible epitaph for me.

Also, the blog is showing these pics in a fun-house format, and I have no idea how to fix it. I hope the books aren’t self-conscious because they look fatter than they are in real life.

The titles, and becauses:

Weight by Jeannette Winterson. A candidate for the book group I moderate. And: $2! Part of the Canongate Myth series, along with Buddha and A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong.
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson. Because Stevenson was mentioned in Peace Like a River, and that’s all the excuse I need.
Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler. A candidate for the book group. (I’m auditioning them, doncha know? Also known as: nerdishly obsessing and compulsively buying.)
Oliver Twist by Dickens. The Penguin cloth-bound cover!
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Who was also mentioned in Peace Like a River, but this title wasn’t.) The Ruben Toledo Cover!

G. Grod to me: You aren’t actually going to read that again, are you?
Me: …
Him: You bought it for the cover, didn’t you?
Me: …

But oh, can you blame me for buying these books (at half price plus 20% off) for THESE covers?

20% off at Half Price books over the long Labor Day weekend, and I had a very satisfying time combing through their Highland Park store in St. Paul:

The goods, and the becauses:

Semisonic Pleasure and All About Chemistry: we just saw Semisonic at the MN state fair, and decided to address these gaps in our local music collection
Buddha by Karen Armstrong. Because some members of the book group I moderate want us to read this. And I’d passed it up twice.
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. A candidate for the same book group.
True Grit by Charles Portis. $2!
Main Street. Oh, what, you remember me getting this already, recently. Alas, the print in the MMPB was too small. I chose to get this Modern Library edition for my aging eyes.
The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. A candidate for the above book group.
Not pictured: The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies. For my husband, because The Biblioracle recommended it. Also, $2!

Really, dear readers, I’m not sure why you put up with me. When I went to check how many photos I haven’t posted and DVDs I haven’t talked about, I was abashed. And what about all those clever vignettes and stories I meant to write about regularly? Yeah, not so much. Sigh.

On an upside, I’ve been on some nice bike rides lately, with and without the boys. In my recent post on milestones, I forgot to mention my bike milestones.

In June, I celebrated five years as a bicyclist! I got my first bicycle as an adult when my younger son was about one year old, and have been gradually riding more ever since.

In April, I’d been riding my current bike, Pepper, for a year. I traded in my adorable but unwieldy cruiser for a sleeker, simpler single speed, which I have now pimped out to my satisfaction (this photo isn’t even current; I got a tan saddle to match the handlebar tape). I feel like it was after I got Pepper, once Guppy started full-day kindergarten, that I got serious as a cyclist, and worked up from five miles each way to round trips in the 20- and 30-mile range. Also, this past winter was so mild that whenever G. Grod put the bikes away in the basement, I found myself hauling Pepper back upstairs, in January, February, and March.

For upcoming posts, I’ve got a few more book stacks (went a little nuts over the holiday weekend at Half Price Books 20% off sales), and a slew of DVDs to catch up on. Good thing I’ve been reading a long book, Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, so at least I’m not behind in book reviews. My goodness, there were a lot of those this summer.

Now that both boys are back in school, Guppy in 1st, Drake in 3rd, I have all sorts of grand ideas about what I’ll do with all my time: write more, bike more, volunteer, get a part-time job, etc. I’ll wait to see what the gap between idealism and reality looks like this year.

Welcome to the first week of September, which is my kids’ second week of school, and I am now back in the (writing) saddle, and almost weeping with joy at the long stretches of peace and quiet.

I am frequently asked how my summer was. My response: hot and busy, but not in the naughty way. Shuttling children to and fro, mediating fights, doling out consequences. Thus, I didn’t write a lot. I did _read_ a lot, with the Summer of Shelf Discovery and for my book groups.

But it occurred to me sometime recently that some milestones flew by and I forgot to mark them. So

May was my yoga-versary. I’ve been doing yoga for 12 years, and it’s the only exercise I’ve ever been able to keep up with year ’round.

June was my blog-iversary. Yes, Girl Detective turned ten. 10! I always fancied myself a writer, but it wasn’t till I started my blog that I got a regular writing habit.

In August Drake turned 9, and August also marked the 22nd anniversary of my last cigarette.

Turns out, I’ve been a non-smoker, yogi, writer and mom for a long time now. And no, it’s doesn’t feel like it’s gone by fast. It’s been a day at a time that I’ve accrued these newer and different aspects of myself.

A while-ago suggestion for me from The Biblioracle, I finally got around to I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman. I first read Lippman as part of The Morning News Tournament of books, and really enjoyed her What the Dead Know. She has a long-standing series, but these are both standalone books, and ones that stand out, as well. It’s strongly plotted, solidly written, fast paced, well characterized, and a thumping good read.

Eliza Bennet is living a good life with a husband and two kids in suburban Maryland when she gets a letter from a man she used to know. The twists? Walter is a killer on death row. He kidnapped her when she was fifteen. Unlike the other two girls he’s known to have killed, he left her alive.

It’s told in back and forth focus on Eliza and Walter, with a few other characters thrown in. As the date approached for Walter’s execution, Eliza struggles with remembering the past as well as dealing with mundane things like her teen daughter’s rebellion and her younger son’s nightmares. Lippman ratchets the tension and throws in enough believable detail that I was kept guessing till the end, which was a very satisfying one, I thought.

My pile of graphic novels got higher over the past months as I did the Summer of Shelf Discovery Readalong and kept up with my book groups. I’ve finally been able to catch up, and it’s been a good batch of varied stuff.

Cinderella: Fables are Forever by Chris Roberson ill. by Shawn McManus. The second miniseries devoted to Cinderella (I enjoyed the first, From Fabletown with Love), set in the Fables comic-series universe, this is a standalone miniseries that yet fits into the bigger mythology. I was a little disappointed when I finished it, but it’s grown on me since. What I didn’t like were the many flashbacks, and I sometimes was disoriented in time. What worked was introducing a nemesis for Cinderella, an interesting one, and seeing their interactions past and present. There was one twist at the end involving identity that I didn’t quite buy. The book introduced another world and minor characters that also play roles in the larger Fables series, so this is one that works on its own and enhances the larger works. There are also tantalizing hints about Frau Totenkinder, who has always been one of my favorite characters.

Caveats: the Cinderella stories are riffs on James Bond, so they have sex and violence. On the surface Cindy is a strong, liberated woman exercising choice and power. But this is a story by men, and to me the sexism comes through louder than the strong-female aspect.

Fables v. 17 Inherit the Wind. Wahoo! A return to the series strong points, its main characters and the overarching stories. Finally we are back to the aftermath of the fables’ war with Mr. Dark and the rebuilding that happens both by the heroes and villains. I loved the main story about which of Snow White and Bigby Wolf’s cubs/kids would be the heir to the North Wind. I was very disappointed in the last Fables collection, Super Team, which felt thin and not as funny as it was trying to be. This collection was a great example of the things I love about the series, though Snow White as whiny mother is a drag; she was way more kick-ass at the beginning of the series.

Richard Stark’s Parker: The Score by Darwyn Cooke. I have no idea why I like noir, with its sexist tropes and poisonous portrayals of women, though I do think sometimes misANTHROPY is mistaken for misogyny. But for all its troublesome aspects, I like the genre when it’s done well in book, film and comics, and I think Cooke’s new Parker graphic novel is excellent. Parker is the career criminal who’s getting a gang together for a sure-thing heist. He smells a rat but can’t suss it out till everything is well under way. This is a complicated story with ten men involved in the heist, yet Cook does a great job of telling the story visually and keeping to the terse, minimalist style of the source material. There were several pages and spreads that I lingered over, appreciating how they did what they did. In addition to being a great story, this is a lovely book. Heavy covers, quality pages and nicely retro end pages. Highly recommended if you can stomach noir.

The Underwater Welder by Jeff Lemire, the author/illustrator of another of my favorite ongoing comic series, Sweet Tooth. Here, Lemire is telling a story set in present reality. Jack is a young husband and about to be father. He works as a welder for a nearby oil rig off the shore of a tiny town in Nova Scotia. When he dives, he has visions. Are they his imagination, or something more mystic than that, and what are they trying to tell him. A good mystery, sympathetic characters, and nicely told in wash-y black and white.

One thing: I am DONE with descriptions of something as the best episode of the Twilight Zone you’ve never seen. It’s cheap shorthand for a blurbist or introduction author (here, Damon Lindelof, the Lost guy). The Underwater Welder was far more nuanced in story and execution than such a comparison implies.

Tinkers by Paul Harding was a selection for one of my book groups. I read it alongside Vestments by John Reimringer and Peace Like a River by Leif Enger to compare and contrast the three novels. There were a lot of similarities, as well as differences, and each had things to well reward the reader.

Tinkers announces its ending at the beginning:

George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died.

Over the eight days of George’s dying, he moves beyond his own consciousness and remembers events from his own life, but also his father Howard’s, and his unnamed grandfather’s. George was a teacher when he was young, and later an antique clock repair person, tinkering with their inner works. Eight days is the time a wound clock will take to run down. Howard was a tinker in that he owned a cart and sold things and did odd jobs around the countryside. His father was a preacher, in awe of nature, and attempting to make connections between nature and God even while his own connections were failing him as he succumbed to dementia.

This is a surprisingly dense book for one so short. The sentences can be mesmerizing, but sometimes I found them too much, and had to drag my attention back to the page. This is not a fast-moving, plot-driven tale. It reminded me more than a little of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, unsurprising as Harding was a student of Robinson’s. Like that book, it’s about fathers and sons, and how we engage with the world and our families. If you liked that book, you’re likely to appreciate this one.

(Note how artfully I included the receipt.)

Thought 1: This is actually restraint for me. There are at least 3 books I put back on the shelf and didn’t get today.

Thought 2: I am turning into my mother, buying books on religion and stacking them all over the house and not reading them.

Here’s why I got these particular lovelies today:

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis: candidate for my group that reads books on myth and religion. Recommended by author Marlon James.

The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Candidates for the book group, and ones I used to own and couldn’t find when I went to look for recently. A scene in Peace Like a River reminded me of The Great Divorce, and I wanted to re-read it.

A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong. Also for the book group. Passed over Armstrong’s Buddha for this, though one member has been lobbying hard for the latter. Think we’ll read this alongside Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt.

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. Also for the book group. (I’ve been nerdishly obsessing over what next year’s books are going to be. Alas, most were ones I didn’t already own.)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. On clearance for $2! Also, went to look for this after Stevenson’s books were mentioned in Peace Like a River, and found I didn’t own it.

I moderate a group that reads books on spirituality and myth, and Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River has been on the to-read list from the beginning, as it’s by a Minnesota author and parts of it are set in northern Minnesota.

It’s narrated by Reuben, in an adult voice telling the story from the perspective of himself as a child. This can be a tough point of view to pull off. I thought it worked most of the time, but there were a few times early on when I got bounced out of the story. Interestingly, it wasn’t the age of the voice felt wrong, but that Reuben kept making Foreboding Prounouncements, when I would have much preferred to just get on with the story.

what [Dad] said to Swede and me on the worst night of all our lives:

We and the world, my children will always be at war.
Retreat is impossible.
Arm yourselves. (4)

And

I felt straight off that a piece of our lives had changed, as certainly as our cheerful green door had gone to black (21)

And

I wonder yet what might’ve happened had Dad and I stayed home that night or had Davy and Swede gone with us to church. Wars escalate in mysterious ways, unforeseen by good men and prophets…

So thoughtlessly we sling on our destinies. (28)

When the FPs tapered off I did get on with the story, and it pulled me through to the end.

At the beginning of the story, Reuben’s brother Davy does something that the law doesn’t agree with. Davy runs away, and soon asthmatic Reuben, his miraculous dad, and his Western-writing younger sister Swede head west after him. Intertwining with their trip is a “putrid fed,” Andreeson, who says it’s his job to find Davy. Everything intersects in the Badlands of North Dakota, where what transpires reflects the singularity of the landscape.

This is a novel that has a lot of sweetness, that at times overbalances its complex bitter parts, which I thought were well done. But it has some gorgeous writing, a ripping plot, great settings, and some thought-provoking questions on whether miracles exist and what they are.

The book wears it’s ties to the Western genre clearly. But the family’s road trip, and Davy’s outlaw status reminded me strongly of The Grapes of Wrath, while a scene near the end reminded me of C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. I found these an interesting mix of influences.