Girl Detective

The long-running comic-book series Fables is one of the more consistently entertaining ones, and I liked the first storyline of Fairest, so thought I’d give the second one, Fairest: The Hidden Kingdom, a try. The theme of Fairest is to focus on backstory of the “pretty princesses.” And interesting backstory it is, with much darker, more kick-butt background than is imagined by little girls playing Disney dress up.

The image above is from the last issue in the storyline. I use it instead of the front or back cover images, which I found more, oh, what word am I looking for here: trashy, salacious, slutty… Just, not for me. One of Rapunzel’s past lovers was a woman, and this story revolves around that relationship. Sometimes I wonder if the creators of Fables are doing equal-opportunity love, or to pander to those who’d snicker and drool behind their hands. I choose to hope for the former.

Rapunzel gets a message via a fleet of killer origami cranes, the first of many visual nods to Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazoaki. After she escaped from the prison tower of her youth from her adoptive mother (Frau Totenkinder in one of her many guises), Rapunzel spent a lot of time in Japan. I read a brief interview with the author, who said that Japanese ghost stories obsessed with hair seemed a natural fit for Rapunzel. She goes in search of one part of her past, but of course things turn out sideways, and she doesn’t get the happy ending she’d imagined. Along the way, we’re given more tantalizing hints about Totenkinder, my favorite character from the Fables-verse.

Like volume 1 about Cinderella, good, and worthwhile but not required reading, and better in pieces than as a whole. Better to start at the beginning of the Fables graphic novels then to jump in here.

1986. I’m in a class called “The Problem of God” at a Jesuit university taught by an atheist who’d been raised Catholic. One of the required books is Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse, and the paper we were required to write on it was in response to the question: “Is it possible to be in the world and not of it?”

I am abashed, because it’s a cliche, to say that this book and some of the others like it jolted me out of the mostly complacent beliefs I’d been raised with in the Episcopal church. I didn’t run out and say I was a Buddhist or get a bumper sticker, but I started saying that I was raised Christian rather than that I was a Christian. Interestingly (or not) nearly 3 decades later, I’m not much more defined in my beliefs. I still wander and wonder, unsettled.

Siddhartha is a fairy tale, based on the life of Gotama Buddha, written by Hesse, a German Protestant. Most Buddhists agree this isn’t a good book about Buddha or Buddhism, but interesting perhaps as a German Protestant’s understanding of Buddhism. Like Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet, it’s become a beloved book that perhaps belongs better in pop culture or self help than in religious studies.

Siddhartha and his friend Govinda go out from his wealthy home and become ascetics, then part ways when Govinda decides to follow Gotama Buddha and Siddhartha says he much go his own way, a response in harmony with the Buddha’s teaching that there is no one truth, no one teacher and each person’s answers lie within. Siddhartha wanders, then becomes enmeshed in life when he takes up with a courtesan (an interesting woman, yet the book is obsessed with her lips that look like a ripe fig, and isn’t she really just a variation on the Hooker with a Heart of Gold? and on the sexy older woman who teaches the young man The Ways of Love.) Siddhartha becomes nauseated and suicidal, but listens to the river and reaches a form of enlightenment not unlike the Buddha’s.

This is a lovely little story, stereotypes of women aside. It’s accessible. But I think too often it’s taken as Buddhism, rather than a little sliver of a story about Buddhism written by a white man who wasn’t a Buddhist. And the inaction that is ultimately validated seems antithetic to a world of increased justice and peace.

Some other reviews I found interesting included Keely’s on Goodreads, and one at The Open Critic.

I have a confession to make. Buddha was the first book by Karen Armstrong I’ve read. I minored in religion as an undergrad, and went on to get an MA in religious studies. People have been telling me to read Karen Armstrong ever since A History of God came out. Armstrong is a former Catholic nun, a self-described “freelance monotheist” and well-known as an author of books of world religions. And now, I’m feeling kind of vindicated and no longer that guilty about not reading her books. Because I was not that impressed by her Buddha. It was, to me, “unskilled” in many ways, to use a phrase she deploys in the book.

At the beginning, she sets out the challenge of how to do a biography of a person for whom there is so little historical record. The idea of taking the myths and stories and trying to tease out the commonalities into something approaching fact is an interesting one. Alas, the book was more focused on historical details of The Axial Age on one hand, and some oddly specific psychologizing of its subject, such as what he felt and why he left his wife and child. And Armstrong’s no-comment, no-sympathy treatment of the abandoned wife and child curiously dispassionate to me.

Armstrong started to lose me about page 50, though, when she referred to “yoga” in a way that didn’t make it clear that it is a complex system, not the series of exercise poses that many people know it as. She then goes on at page 56, to describe the “yoga” of the Buddha using negative, restrictive terms such as: “force, bludgeon, denial, cut, refusal, exclude, radical denial, invulnerable, control, impervious, suppress” to decribe “yoga”. Additionally, she uses only the male pronoun, unqualified, to describe any practitioner of yoga. Her source, in the notes, is simply Yoga by Eliade, and all her quotes are from the same source. This is in the paperback edition, so I can fairly criticize BOTH author and editors for such a slack-ass citation. The full citation should have included the full title:
Yoga: Immortality and Freedom by Mircea Eliade and have indicated that it was first published in 1936. Why does Armstrong use a scores-old source written by a white man when she might have used modern critical scholarship by practitioners? Yes, Eliade is one of the most famous figures in religious study. He’s best known for his writing on the sacred/profane, and origin myths. But along with Joseph Campbell, who Armstrong also references in her notes, I think of him as the type of superficial, outsider scholar that is included in most first-year college religion overviews, or on PBS specials, or in pop-culture. I wanted a better source, and to know whose translations of the ancient texts she was using, and why.

Edited to add: I also wondered at Armstrong’s uncritical take on the caste system, presented simply as “this is what it was” rather than as the colonially constructed system posited by Nicholas Dirks in his Castes of Mind.

Finally, I found Armstrong’s book dull and slow, surprising for such a short book about such a fascinating person with such a vast store of myths and legends. Frustrated and disappointed, I pulled out my freshman college copy of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha to compare and contrast, which I’ll write about in another post.

For a more compassionate take on the book that still raises concerns, see this review at Tricycle.

Dirt Music by Tim Winton was a selection for one of my book groups, chosen by an Aussie ex-pat. I’d never heard of Winton, or his books, so this was one of those good choices that I might never have come across otherwise.

Dirt Music is set in Western Australia. It is told in alternating chapters and sections between Georgie Jutland, the dissatisfied girlfriend of the most powerful man in a small fishing town, and Luther Fox, the last remaining member of a family plagued by infamous bad luck. Georgie and Luther come together and apart, and fight against their families, the past and their conceptions of luck and fate. The writing is evocative, and includes lots of Aussie and fishing jargon that I liked to puzzle out in context. Georgie felt more like a man’s ideal of a woman than an actual woman to me but I enjoyed that she was complicated, frequently unlike-able, and didn’t follow a predictable path of redemption. The ending, though, was far too themes-hammered-home and ’splodey for my taste.

Welcome back to the summer readalong of The Brothers Karamazov. During Book VIII (the longest book thus far), we move past the halfway mark, plus the event that’s been foreshadowed for four hundred pages finally happens! Well, kinda sorta.

Ch 1: Kuzma Samsonov: We’re back with Dmitri again after so many pages of Alexei wondering on and off where his brother was. He was off having bad ideas, such as that he must pay back the 3000 he owed to Katerina Ivanovna in order to clear his slate to run off with Grushenka, and goes to Samsonov, Grushennka’s patron, to ask for the money. Samsonov tells him to so see a guy, Lyagavy, but he’s setting up Dmitri, who wonders if he’s being set up, then thinks, Nah. Alas for Dmitri…

Ch 2: Lyagavy. D spends a lot of time and money to track down Lyagavy, who is drunk and passed out. Everyone almost dies of poisonous fumes, D falls asleep while Lyagavy wakes and gets drunk again, and when HE wakes, D finally twigs that he’s been duped by Samsonov.

Ch 3: Gold Mines. Plan B. He goes to Mme. Khokhlakov’s and asks her for money. She says she’ll make him rich, which is what he wants to hear but then as she goes on (and on) we learn that she’s only going to get him a job as a miner. D (rather understandably, to my mind) storms out, then accosts Grushenka’s maid for her mistress’ whereabouts though she claims ignorance, and he takes a perfectly harmless gold pestle with him as he heads out the door.

Ch 4: In the Dark. Here’s where stuff finally happens, except what exactly happens is, shall we say, in the dark. Dmitri goes to his father’s, worried that Grushenka might be there. She’s not, he calls his father to the window and…

the narrative breaks. Grigori wakes from his drugged sleep, his back still hurting, and goes after the intruder (Dmitri) who tries to flee. Grigori grabs D’s foot before D jumps the wall, D hits Grigori in the head with the pestle, blood everywhere (because we all know from watching TV that head wounds bleed a lot) and D throws down the pestle, goes back to Grushenka’s, and they finally ‘fess up that she’s gone to be with her officer.

Ch 5: A Sudden Decision. Dmitri goes to his friend Perkhotin’s house. He pawned his pistols there earlier. Perkhotin is suspicious but does nothing when he notices that Dmitri is a. covered in blood b. waving around wads of cash and c. acting manic. Dmitri orders a bunch of stuff to be sent ahead to Mokroye, where Grushenka is, then spends more money on a coach to follow. Perkhotin goes to Grushenka’s house and knocks a lot.

Ch 6: Here I Come! Dmitri contemplates shooting himself with the pistol he took back from Perkhotin, is welcomed by the inn merchant at Mokroye who remembers his last drunken spending spree, and sees Grushenka with Kalganov and Maximov from earlier chapters, plus two men, one tall and mysterious, the other short, round and smoking a pipe. Grushenka is surprised to see him.

Ch 7: The Former and Indisputable One. Things get awkward. Grushenka is angry with the Poles because they’re talking to her possessivly in Polish, they’re angry at Dmitri, who proposes a toast to Russia, he’s angry with them because Grushenka’s with them and they’re winning at cards, Dmitri offers them the 3000 (which he no longer has in full) for Grushenka, they get angry with him, the innkeeper reveals they’ve been cheating at cards, they storm off in a huff.

Ch 8: Delirium. The peasants get the party started with all of Dmitri’s supplies. Dmitri and Grushenka declare their love, imagine running off together when suddenly the police show up! accusing him of murdering his father! Dmitri is confused!

But he didn’t murder his father, did he, fellow readers? He only konked Grigori on the head, right?

Waitaminnit. But then, where did all that blood and money come from, the reader wonders?

Hmm. Something finally happened. Fyodor Petrovich seems to be dead. The police think Dmitri killed him.

What do YOU think?

After a less-than-stellar review in Entertainment Weekly, I was going to skip Neil Gaiman’s latest, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. But Amy at New Century Reading said it was good, and my friend had it for sale in the comic shop, so I bought and read it.

The book is short and disturbing, like much of Gaiman’s work. Young boy meets interesting people, adventures and bad things happen, adults are thoughtless and cruel, boy grown into man struggles to remember the sacrifice made by a young woman on his behalf.

Oh, did that sound like Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending? Because the two books felt awfully alike to me, though Gaiman’s is narrated from the point of view of a seven-year old, and Barnes’ by a man who is emotionally about seven.

Short and strange, it felt like both and neither a book for adults and children, though except for one sex scene and some gruesome threats, I’d say it skews more toward children. There were many elements that recalled Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time to me.

I hate advance reader copies. They’re ugly, full of typos, and whenever I’ve gotten one in the past, I’ve ended up reading it after the book came out in its proper form. Often, after it came out in hardcover and even paperback. So, I tend to avoid ARCs. Except when a friend says, “would you like an ARC of the new Margaret Atwood?” And then I’m all in.

Maddaaddam is the third book in Margaret Atwood’s Maddaddam trilogy, which began with Oryx and Crake, which I initially disliked, a great deal. It was followed by The Year of the Flood, which I loved, and which cast all events in Oryx and Crake in such a different context probably because it was narrated by two smart, interesting women, as opposed to the emotionally stunted, wilfully obtuse Jimmy, who narrated the first book. I loved Year of the Flood so much I re-read Oryx and Crake, which made much more sense to me with more of hte puzzle shown.

Maddaddam doesn’t even pretend to be a standalone novel. There is a 4-page recap at the beginning of the ARC that summarizes what happened in the previous two books, and from there the reader is plopped right down again this futuristic, mangled Earth and the cast of characters from the past, which expands further in this book. It’s told mostly from Toby, one of the narrators of YotF, and who is now one of my favorite fictional characters, ever. Sometimes it’s in third person, about Toby. Sometimes it’s in first person, being narrated by Toby, and sometimes she’s telling the history of Zeb and finding out how all of his puzzle pieces fit into what went before.

I tore through the books 400 pages in two days. I took unwilling breaks to take care of myself and my family. I stayed up late to finish it, and had tears leaking down my face. This book is full of memorable characters, an epic battle, unlikely allies (which I was sad were given away on the back cover, so if you want to read this, I recommend just plunging in), love, loss, survival tips, and a makes me continue to think long and hard on what the differences are between utopia and dystopia, and the type of potential futures shown by different authors, and how differently male and female authors have handled similar ideas.

After I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy, I wondered why so much of dystopic literature, and really, so much of literature generally, was about the father/son relation. I have a masters degree in religion, so there is the obvious answer that it’s a reflection, inborn or learned?, about the human struggle to understand the Father/Son relation. Where is the mother/daughter relation, I wondered after reading Gilead and The Road. Whither is the female, I wondered after A Canticle for Leibowitz and Oryx and Crake.

They are right here, in the three books of the Maddaddam trilogy. I flat-out, full-on loved this book, this universe, and these characters. And I about exploded with geek joy when I found out Atwood is coming to the Twin Cities for a reading series this fall.

A Matter of Life is part of the growing comic-book memoir genre–think Persepolis, Fun Home, and Blankets. I was going to pass this one by when the comic shop guy personally recommended it. Every so often I wonder if he even reads comics any more. But he’d read this and liked it, so I got it.

You may recognize Brown’s art from the wildly popular Darth Vader and Son, which my own sons love, and we’ve shared with many others as gifts. It has a sweet sensibility that combines the love and frustration of parenting with the imagined interactions of Darth Vader and a little Luke Skywalker. There’s now a sequel, Vader’s Little Princess.

But prior to these hits, Brown was known as a comic-book memoirist, and A Matter of Life is in that vein. In short visual stories, we see shots of life, past and present, with Brown’s father and then his son, and all three of them together. As the son of a minister, he declared himself an atheist in his teens and made everyone uncomfortable. Then, when he becomes a father, how does he explain the universe to his son Oscar, without lying, but also without disrespecting the people he loves?

It’s a deceptive book–short, easy to read, often sweet and funny, but with topics as weighted and fraught with mystery and history as the dinosaur skeletons on the cover. The hardcover edition is pleasingly sized with quality paper, typical of publisher Top Shelf’s fare. Being a child, being a parent, struggling to articulate what he believes–Brown’s struggles resonated with me a great deal.

See also: “Exploring a Crisis of Faith with Confessional Comics” at NPR.

Welcome back to the summer readalong of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. This week we read the pleasantly short Book VII, about our hero Alyosha.

Ch 1: The odor of corruption. Alas, Zosimas sh1t smells like anyone else’s when it leaves his body after death. Many are saddened that his body did not decay in a miracle manner. But many are gleeful, schadenfreud-ishly exulting in his crude humanity. This includes the Obdorsk monk and the crazy Father Ferapont.

One of those modern glimmers that spooks me a little: a monk confessed once to Zosima that he was seeing unclean spirits. Z advised prayer and fasting but when that did not help, he advised “a certain medicine.” (335) which sounds awfully modern to me.

Alyosha leaves the monsastery.

Ch 2: An Opportune Moment. The narrator goes on about Alyosha and how he is troubled, but has not lost faith. The intrusion of the narrator is interesting, and bears further reflection for me. Rakitin finds A face down on the ground, tempts him with a sausage (”sausage”? coded language?) then takes him to Grushenka’s.

Ch3: An Onion. Alas, for an editor, here! Is Grushenka’s benefactor/savior/old man alive or dead? Hard to tell from this chapter. A few footnotes would’ve helped, or a more clear translation, or something, because his name is revealed as Samsonov on 343, then on 344 he’s called a great businessman (now long deceased). P 345 talks about his wwill, and when he had one foot in the grave and was amused by FP’s infatuation with her, but then not so amused by Dmitri’s, and advised her to avoid the latter and string along the former and get in HIS will, and then Samsonov died five months after giving this advice.

But then he’s alive and perhaps well on 344 (gah!) because Grushenka has lied to Dmitri that she’s spending the night doing business (”business”?) with Kuzma Kuzmich, who is Samsonov. WHAT? The author/translators could have made it more clear that, in what I think I grasp, that K Samsonov is alive when Alyosha goes to see her, but will not be for long, and will be long deceased by the time the narrator is telling the story. Poorly done, author/translstors/editor, poorly done.

At Grushenka’s, it comes out that G begged R to bring A many times before, as they both, for different reason, want G to seduce him. (So Rakitin’s a pimp. But a monk. Not a good guy.) A is not aroused when G sits on his lap, and she jumps off when she learns his elder is dead and he’s grieving. He sees this as an act of kindness from her, like the giving of an onion in a fable. She is leaving to be with the soldier who disgraced her years ago, and tells A to pass on to Dmitri that she loved him for an hour, and to never forget her. A real prize, no?

He returns to the monastery and the place with Zosima’s corpse and has a dream/vision that merges Zosima talking to him with the tale of Jesus’ first miracle, the turning of water to wine at the wedding of Cana. (Note that this first miracle was an occasion of joy, a wedding, not one of sorrow, like curing or revivifying someone.) He falls to the ground outside in rapture, in contrast to when Rakitin found him in Chapter 1 of this Book, and three days later leaves the monastery.

Once again, the narrator has teased but withheld the terrible event. We’re nearly halfway through the book. Maybe in Book 8, next week?

[Book 8, annoyingly, begins prior to the events of Book 7, and has to do with Grushenka and her old man Kuzma Samsonov, who is not yet dead. I was annoyed by the confusion of the order of events. This is a very muddled middle, IMO.]

What did everyone else think? Were you as annoyed as I was by the dead/not dead and out of sequence transitions between 7 and the next book, 8?

See, sometimes I surprise you, right? Have I ever included a decorating book before? I don’t think I have. And if you saw my house, you’d know why: because decorating is not a priority. It’s more like an expensive foreign country I dream of going to someday, if I can ever get the laundry done, my articles written, and my book groups prepped for. Oh, and if I could afford it.

Over a decade ago, when I worked for a department store, I tried to learn about furniture. One of the few things that took was that I liked the style of designer Barbary Barry, both in furniture and china. A helpful furniture salesman told me that Barry’s style was highly influenced by Eileen Gray. At the time I think I imagined reading up on these women, spelunking in furniture and antique stores, and somehow living in a grownup’s house. Instead, we had a kid, I resigned that job to stay home with him, then we had his brother. And now my sofabed upholstery is hemmed with masking tape. (Hey, at least it’s hemmed, right?) My swivel chairs jingle tantalizingly when they’re shifted. (What’s inside there? Legos? Quarters? The earring I lost three years ago?) But still, a girl can dream. And so, I borrowed Around Beauty by Barbara Barry from the library.

And a lovely book it is. Heavy, with rich photographs on thick paper. With nice, large, accessible text that I didn’t expect to read, but somehow found myself halfway through the book without even noticing, though appreciating and continuing on. Barry shares anecdotes and photos from particular clients, her life, and her own home. She writes about her creative process, and the things that inspire her. I wished for a few more photos of interiors and fewer (hey, just realized as I was typing that that “a few less of” isn’t grammatically correct!) of California flora. I wished for perhaps more solid detail on her life. For example, when she writes that she knew someone in a past life, she’s using metaphor, right? But this is a lovely, diverting book, the kind that is pretty inside and out. A perfect coffee table book. For those of you who have a coffee table, and would buy a book to put on it.

Me, I’m taking this back to the library tomorrow.

I’m trying to balance my Brothers Karamazov summer read with shorter, funner books. During my Shelf Discovery reading project last year, I never got back to Louise Fitzhugh’s classic Harriet the Spy, but she’s waited patiently, so I recently pulled her off the shelf.

It was a joy to meet up with Harriet again, she of the notebook, spy clothes of jeans and sweatshirt, and capital letter observations, many of which are hilarious, but many of which also are thoughtless and cruel, and these two things aren’t exclusive.

THIS IS INCREDIBLE. COULD OLE GOLLY HAVE A FAMILY? i NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT. HOW COULD OLE GOLLY HAVE A MOTHER AND FATHER? SHE’S TOO OLD FOR ONE THING AND SHE’S NEVER SAID ONE WORD ABOUT THEM AND I’VE KNOWN HER SINCE I WAS BORN. ALSO SHE DOESN’T GET ANY LETTERS. THINK ABOUT THIS. THIS MIGHT BE IMPORTANT. (13)

Other than Harriet, my other favorite character was her nurse/caretaker Ole Golly. Interestingly (spookily?) Ole Golly quotes from Dostoievsky on page 22:

Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.

Which is from section (g) in Book VI, Chapter 3 “From Talks and Homilies of the Elder Zosima” of Brothers Karamazov. WHICH I JUST HAPPENED TO BE READING AT THE SAME TIME. Odds on that, please?

Alas, Ole Golly and Harriet part ways, and without her guidance, Harriet gets into trouble when her school friends discover what she’s been writing. They ostracize her, in a section of the book that was painfully easy for me to remember/empathize with. Gah. Middle school. It’s one of the reasons I chose a K-8 school for my boys.

The book is odd, in that it doesn’t follow a clear crisis/realization/redemption outline. By the end of the book, it wasn’t clear to me that Harriet was much the wiser about WHY everyone had been so hurt by what she’d written. But she also refused to conform, and did not become domesticated, which is a far more important conclusion to me. A little self insight is better than none, even if she was still perhaps too callous by the end, especially of her treatment of the family cook, and those of different socio-economic class around her. Then again, she’s 11. The upshot for me: still overly dense/cruel (Asperger-y, unempathetic?) by the end, but improved, and without caving in and becoming something not herself. Odd, funny, sad, and good, it’s also an intriguing look at the upper class of NYC in the 50’s/60’s.

Who’s still with me? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

(That joke will never not be funny to me.)

I had so much trouble making it through Book V that after I finished I plowed right on through the shorter Book VI so I wouldn’t get behind. I still haven’t fallen in love with reading this, so I think it’s better for me to read it at the start of the week then at the end of it.

Wondering: Is the Grand Inquisitor chapter like The Council of Elrond? My husband said he got stuck on that chapter in LoTR the first couple times he read it, but then came to appreciate it later. That is, until Hugo Weaving was cast as Elrond, and about that, he is still bitter. (It came up when we re-watched Captain America last week.) Does Grand Inquisitor get better on better acquaintance? I thought I might try to re-read it, but have not yet worked up the gumption to do so.

Book V ended with Fyodor Pavlovich convinced that Grushenka was coming to visit him, though discerning minds suspect something entirely different is coming. Alas, whatever it is, we will have to wait AGAIN for it, because we’re back with the elder monk Zosima.

Ch 1 The Elder Zosima and His Visitors. Listeners gather at his deathbed. I particularly liked the description of this man:

quiet and taciturn, rarely speaking to anyone, the humblest of the humble, who had the look of a man who has been permanently frightened by something great and awesome that was more than his mind could sustain. (283)

Zosima says to Alyosha that he was worried about Dmitri, and that A reminds him of his own brother. Narrator interjects to say the upcoming pages are from Alexei.

Ch 2 Biographical Information of Zosima. a. He had an older brother who became holy and died. b. Zosima went into the military. c. Zosima became worldly, loved a girl but was rejected, challenged his rival to a duel, then didn’t shoot, to the consternation of many. Perhaps the time of the Decembrist uprising, so there’s your soundtrack for this part of the novel. d. Z was visited by a man who he urged to tell the truth about a dark past.

Ch 3 Talks and Homilies.Was anyone else spooked by this in e.?

the world is becoming more and more united, is being formed into brotherly communion, by the shortening of distances, by the transmitting of thoughts through the air. (313)

He then goes on to say the unity is an illusion, and that “they live only for mutual envy, for pleasure-seeking and self-display.” That science makes people worldly and that monks aren’t disconnected, but rather MORE connected.

f. A Dickensian tirade against abuse of children, especially in factories. Servants and masters are equal.

g. Prayer is good. Then, Dostoevysky finishes this segment with what sounds a lot like a personal statement of philosophy/theology:

Much on earth is concealed from us, but in place of it we have been granted a secret, mysterious sense of our living bond with the other world, with the higher heavenly world, and the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds. That is why philosophers say it is impossible on earth to conceive the essence of things. God took seeds from other worlds and sowed them on this earth, and raised up his garden; and everything that could sprout sprouted, but it lives and grows only through its sense of being in touch with other mysterious worlds; if this sense is weakened or destroyed in you, that which has grown up in your dies. Then you become indifferent to life, and even come to hate it. So I think. (320).

On retyping this, I am strongly reminded of Battlestar Galactica. I am also reminded of the final chapter of The Screwtape Letters (as I was by Ivan’s confession in Chapter 4 Rebellion from Book V last week.):

when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realised what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not ‘Who ARE you?” but “So it was YOU all the time.” All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained, that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at least recovered.

h. again, everyone is equal. all are guilty (except children.)

i. Z speaks of heaven and hell, says to pity suicides though the church forbids it, then narrator jumps back in to say that the listeners were then shocked when Z suddenly died. Also, something is coming in the next book that is “unexpected…strange, disturbing, and bewildering”

Will we FINALLY get to what’s been foreshadowed for so long? Join me here next week. Same bat time, same bat channel…

Boy howdy, have I gotten behind on blogging. I blame summer vacation and round-the-clock kid caring. Or, if I’m honest, I blame myself. Either way, I’m rather slower on the writing than I’d like.

Hey, lookie, I made a strawberry rhubarb pie yesterday, and it didn’t suck. So, that was one of the things I was doing when I wasn’t writing. I might need to practice my pie crust, cause it didn’t come out as well as I would have liked. You know, I’ll practice pie crust in all my free time.

Anyhoo, in reading related news, here’s what happened:

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. For one of my book groups. Thought this was would be a fun fast read. Not fun, not fast. Made me furrow my brow, think, and after I was done, re-read it and take notes and think some more. I read this in my 20’s and found it fast and fun. Is this what growing older does–makes me see how serious and complicated this slim book (and this short life) really is?

One of the many things that stuck out was a new denizen of Hell declaring: I spent most of my life doing neither what I ought nor what I liked. (Ch XXII). And then it goes one to describe pretty exactly what it feels like to while away time on Facebook. Very aware of trying to do either what I ought or what I like, not Nothing with a capital N. And try to strike a balance between those. That’s all. Nothing big, really.

I did find it very funny when Screwtape got so angry he changed into a centipede.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. Oh, so THIS is what I was missing when I didn’t like Oryx and Crake. HERE are the fully realized female characters, who have Bechdel-test passing conversations. Like a puzzle piece that expands on Oryx and Crake, which I felt compelled to re-read immediately.

Oryx and Crake was so much better after having read Year of the Flood. Plus, I noticed this time that Jimmy/Snowman, a marketing and word guy, was put in charge of the care and schooling of a bunch of new creatures, which illustrates one of my personal theories, which is that marketing and religion are bound up in one another. They’re both about fear of death, but one is more about distraction, the other (depending on which flavor) about struggling to understand it. (Have I mentioned before that my undergrad degree was in marketing, and my grad degree in religion?)

Sweet Tooth v 6: Wild Game. A satisfying end to an engaging comic-book series. A good story, well illustrated and well ended, which goes a long way to mitigating my disappointment in the end of the ongoing series.

Death Comes to Pemberley. Because I was intrigued that Jenna Louise Coleman of Dr. Who was cast as Lydia, and Matthew Rhys of The Americans was cast as Mr. Darcy, which was much better news to me than the bizarre news that Vincent Kartheiser (aka Pete Campbell) is Darcy in the Guthrie Theater’s Pride and Prejudice stage adaptation. That is just wrong.

So, Death Comes to Pemberley. Austen fan fiction, which is a no-no in my book, but by P.D. James, a hugely respected English mystery author. I thought that sounded promising, even though many people I trusted were lukewarm on the book. I read along at a thumping pace and was having a grand time till I got to within spitting distance of the end, and WHAM. Everything that had been working–clever treatment of old characters, introduction of new ones, clues dropped for mystery–hit a wall. Hugely overcomplicated explanation of the mystery that went on so long that I ceased caring, then capped by a long convo between Mr. and Mrs. Darcy that had all been included in ways before, and might be theoretically significant but, woo, was it dull. So, I agree with everyone who said “it was only OK” except that it was more like “it was great till it wasn’t, then it really kind of sucked at the end, which made me question the investment I’d made in the whole book.” Can’t recommend.

But my disappointment in that was helped by reading two smashing good graphic novels in a row.

Heck by Zander Cannon is about a former high school hero who discovers a gateway to hell in his basement, then starts a business to convene with dead loved ones. There’s a tiny mummy sidekick named Elliott and a nice girl (or is she?) named Amy. Cannon’s Dante-an envisioning of Hell is an entertaining landscape, and Heck (short for Hector) is a good, noir-y hero. It’s available online at Double Barrel, but this hardcover edition by Top Shelf is really sweet.

Next was Crater XV by Kevin Cannon, who is the studiomate of the aforementioned Zander, but unrelated. It’s a sequel to Far Arden, which I liked, but this one I just loved. Army Shanks, a retired sea man from the Canadian Arctic, is back, here trying to help a young girl get to space. This story is woven with several others involving space travel, orphans, mistaken identity, evil plans, femme fatales, fake science missions, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some stuff. A fun read, often funny, sometimes sad, but at least not tragically so, like the end of Far Arden was.

I know both Kevin and Zander, and they’re good guys, so I’d probably recommend the books even if they were only OK. But they’re REALLY good. And the Top Shelf HCs are really sweet. So you should buy them, ‘k?

This week’s section, Book 5 of The Brothers Karamazov, was a hard read for me. I was slow to pick up the book, then felt slow as I was reading it. I had particular trouble with Chapter 5: The Grand Inquisitor. I can’t imagine I’m alone in that.

Ch 1: A Betrothal. Alexei goes to the Khokhlakov house. Mrs. K is tending to Katerina Ivanovna, who has fallen ill after Ivan’s departure. Lise and Alexei talk. She is doing wild swings between laughing and being serious, but admits her letter telling him of her love was not a joke. He knows. Mrs. K overhears this, is upset, but Alexei, continuing calm in the crazy-town-banana-pants world around him, just goes on his way to look for Dmitri, who he’s worried about.

Consider, what contempt can there be if we ourselves are just the same as he is, if everyone is just the same as he is? (217)

Ch 2: Smerdyakov with a Guitar. Alyosha looks for Dmitri, finds Smerdyakov, who says Ivan was going to meet Dmitri in a tavern. Ivan insists that Alexei dine with him.

Ch 3: The Brothers Get Acquainted. Ivan shares his belief that he accepts God, but not God’s world. But

With one reservation: I have a childlike conviction that the sufferings will be healed and smoothed over, that the whole offensive comedy of human contradictions will disappear like a pitiful mirage, a vile concoction of man’s Euclidean mind, feeble and puny as an atom, and that ultimately, at the world’s finale, in the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and be revealed something so precious that it will suffice for all hearts, to ally all indignation, to redeem all human villainy, all bloodshed, it will suffice not only to make forgiveness possible, but also to justify everything that has happened with men–let this, let all of it come true and be revealed, but I do not accept it and do not want to accept it! (235-6)

Ch 4: Rebellion. Ivan says, which made me laugh:

I must make an admission…I never could understand how it’s possible to love one’s neighbors. In my opinion, it is precisely one’s neighbors that one cannot possibly love. Perhaps if they weren’t so nigh…

Ivan goes on to specify that the reason he can’t accept God’s world is suffering, and particularly the suffering of small children. This is Ivan’s own attempt at Theodicy.

Ch 5: The Grand Inquisitor. Ivan narrates and explicates a poem he’s memorized from the 16th century about an Inquisitor who has killed heretics, meets Jesus (who’s visiting, rather like Henry V the night before the Battle of Agincourt), who’s performing miracles, and berates Jesus for not accepting the three temptations (winning over, dazzling by miracles, and overpowering). The inquisitor insists that people do not want to be free. Jesus kisses the inquisitor, who sets him free.

How about that 8+ page “paragraph”? Oh, for a little textual differentiation.

Alexei asks Ivan how he can accept something so depressing, then he kisses Ivan, who is pleased. (As Lise was in Ch 1 when Alexei kissed her; he’s the kissing bandit in this book.) He leaves initially to look for Dmitri, but gets distracted and heads back to the monastery.

Ch 6: A Rather Obscure One for the Moment. And once again, we are led down a side path, and I wonder WHEN WHEN WHEN will we ever meet up with Dmitri again, and be told what all this foreboding is about, though we probably know since we were told WAY BACK ON THE FIRST PAGE OF THE NOVEL that Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov (the father) dies a “dark and tragic death.” 265 pages in, and apparently it’s STILL not the “proper place.”

But anyhoo, Ch 6: Ivan has violent mood swings over the creepily behaving and passive aggressive Smerdyakov.

Ch 7: “It’s Always Interesting to Talk with an Intelligent Man” Ivan wavers on going to Chermashnya, as FP wants him to do, and urges him to do business with a man with a beard very much like the man Dmitri abused in Book 4. Smerdyakov says the cryptic words of the title to Ivan, then Ivan doesn’t go anyway. FP is convinced that Grushenka is FINALLY going to come to him for money, and the servants are drugged and unconscious, so are we FINALLY going to get his tragic death?

Alas, Book VI is about Zosima, so again, Dostoevsky gives us the Heisman, and we are DENIED.

Lots of theology, rather less of the insane people behaving insanely.

What did everyone else think?

Sorry, but I haven’t quite been able to get up to speed on Brothers karamazov and the post. Coming today (I hope.) Wow, Chapter 5 of Book 5, The Grand Inquisitor. Woooo. Feeling a little dizzy after that one.

Welcome back to our section-a-week reading of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. We just finished week 4, book 4, which puts us about a quarter of the way through the book. Woo hoo! Apologies for the lateness of this post. This is my super busy week of the summer, with 3 kid activities a day. If I make it through this week, I think I’ll be OK.

Disclaimer: I am reading BK for the first time, and this is not (as you’ll soon see) a rigorously academic discussion of it.

In the “From the Author” section that opens the book, Dostoevsky asks himself what’s so notable about Alexei to make him the hero of the book. The answer is pretty clear to me by book four. Alexei is the only sane character in the book. He might also be the only one who doesn’t shout all the time, requiring multiple exclamation points. All the other characters are loud, and shout-y, and act capriciously, with mood swings that have to be read to be believed. But not Alexei. He just wanders among them, sometimes confused, always tolerant. He’s a good listener and well liked. Doestoevsky’s right in that these don’t seem exemplary. UNTIL HE’S SHOWN IN THE MIDST OF A BUNCH OF BAT$H1T CRAZY PEOPLE.

So in this week’s Book IV: Strains, the adventures of Alexei are as follows:

Ch 1 Father Ferapont (who then is not even discussed till the end of his chapter.) Zosima wakes and preaches ramblingly to Alyosha and others. I had trouble with this phrase: “his voice, though weak, was still quite firm.” Weak and firm are opposites. Quiet and firm would have worked better for me. Mostly Z says to love one another. Shocking. The monks are awaiting a miracle. Then we shift to Father Ferapont, who fasts, says little, is grumpy and either very holy or very crazy. or perhaps ingesting too many forest mushrooms. This made me laugh:

today he announced that a fool would visit me and ask improper questions.

In Chapter 2 Alexei goes to his father’s, discusses the love entanglements that go far beyond a triangle, because we have both Katerina and Grushenka and two of the three legit Karamazov brothers plus their father. Love pentagon? I may need to try and map this, perhaps with a ven diagram. Alyosha kisses him goodbye, which seems to startle Fyodor.

In Chapter 3 he comes across some schoolboys who are tormenting a sickly kid. A tries to intervene, and for his trouble the sickly kid throws a rock at him and bites his finger to the bone. Most people would be annoyed, but Alexei is merely confused.

Chapter 4, At the Khokhlakov’s (having just re-watched Arrested Development, this name always makes me think of the family’s chicken dances. Hmm. Bluths and Karamazovs. Maybe not so different. Anyhoo.)

Lise acts strangely to Alexei, though perhaps not if we remember she’s an adolescent who seems embarrassed by her mom. They worry about his injured finger.

In Chapter 5, he visits with KI and Ivan in the drawing room, and finally is so exasperated by their duplicity that he calls them out and everyone gets very huffy. KI asks him to give some cash to a man who Dmitri had offended.

In Chapter 6 and 7, we learn the man is the father of the boy who attacked Alexei earlier. Dmitri humiliated him publicly. His wife is ill, as is one of his daughters, the son is now ill, and he refuses the money out of pride.

I’m finding the book enjoyable enough to read, but I think I’m still getting my sea legs with its Russian-ness. I’m not yet having fun with it, and I sense that potential here. Perhaps just wishful thinking? Then again, I’m really having fun with these recaps, so I think I’m on my way.

What did everyone else think?

Here’s how I’m reading the book. I read another book Monday through Friday, set aside the weekend for Brothers K, then after I’m finished with the book, check in with the summary at Schoop.com to make sure I got the broad strokes. My fave note this week was from Book 3 Chapter 5 Confession. ‘Heels Up”:

Complicated much?

Book 3, at 71 pages, is our longest so far, and it was a doozy. I was struck by how so much of the book is drunk men shouting at one another. These Russians are certainly not buttoned down and quiet and Victorian like the characters of Dickens and Austen. Dostoevsky is certainly succeeding in his goal of having a characteristically Russian book (though whether it’s a “true” portrait we can’t know.)

Ready for a whirlwind summary?

Book III The Sensualists

chapter 1: In the Servant’s Quarters

Grigory and Marfa have a happy marriage. They had a child with 6 fingers who died. The night of the burial, they heard cries, and found a girl and newborn in their bathhouse.

Chapter 2: Stinking Lizaveta (which this band took the name of)

The birth mother is called Stinking Lizaveta, a beloved town oddity, holy fool, ascetic and mute. When she becomes pregnant, the father is rumored to be Fyodor Pavlovich, and he doesn’t disavow the rumors (though neither does he explicitly confirm them, though we wouldn’t believe him if he did as he’s such a liar). Grigori, the all-father to FP’s sons (or supposed ones) brings him up, calls him Smerdyakov (son of stinking one)

Chapter 3 4 and 5. Alyosha goes to visit Katerina Ivanovna, encounters Dmitri hiding out waiting to ambush Grushenka, and a very long confession by Dmitri begins. KI’s father got into financial trouble, D said he’d bail him out if KI “came to him” She did, he didn’t actually abuse her, but she was shamed by the memory. He did bail them out, the father died. Then D got entangled with Grushenka and spent 3000 roubles that KI had entrusted to him.

Chapter 6: Detour to Smerdyakov, beloved by FP, sullen and mean, and now an epileptic chef.

Chapter 7: Disputation: Argument about denouncing God. Smerkyakov is provocative.

Ch. 8: Over the Cognac: Much drunken shouting. Alyosha begins to have a shrieking fit (still not certain how this is different from epileptic one?) FP says it’s like his mother. Ivan says, she was my mother too. Has FP just forgotten?

Ch 9: The Sensualists. Dmitri beats up FP and exhorts Alyosha (yet again) to go to KI.

Ch 10: The Two Together. Meaning KI and Grushenka. Creepy with intimations of girl-on-girl actions. KI enthuses about how lovely Grushenka is, then G shows herself as the liar/provocateur she is. KI cries, Alyosha leaves, and she gives him an envelope.

Ch 11: One More Ruined Reputation. Dmitri pretends to threaten Alyosha, then runs off saying foreboding words. At the monastery, Alyosha prays humbly, then reads the letter, in which Lise declares her love for him, which she says ruins her reputation, but he seems happy with, not troubled by.

Whew! Book 4 for next week is shorter, at 50 pages. Are we on the verge of FP’s death, foretold on page 1?

What did everyone else think?

I bought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies right when it came out, then it sat on my shelf for years. The idea was amusing, but the slew of horror/classic mashups that followed made me less inclined to begin even the first one. Seeking a light read in between books of The Brothers Karamazov, I picked it up and enjoyed it.

Much of the prose is Austen’s own, which I thought would make for a fast read, given my familiarity with the text. For whatever reason, though, I did not fly through this. I was charmed and amused by the zombie twists that were woven into the text. I especially liked this book’s take on Elizabeth and Darcy’s meeting at the parsonage, and the reason Darcy gave for separating Bingley from Jane.

I was less enchanted with the overt sexual innuendos. It also departed from Austen’s text by doing a lot of ’splaining. What Austen leaves for the reader to infer, Grahame-Smith sometimes spells out. I think he also included some elements from the 1995 P & P miniseries that weren’t Austen’s own. These all made for a slower, less enjoyable romp than it might have been. Still, diverting and entertaining enough.

Book 2 of The Brothers Karamazov is “An Inappropriate Gathering” but would perhaps be better called a deeply uncomfortable one.

A quick summary of the chapters, which have a profusion (overabundance, perhaps?) of characters:

1: “They Arrive at the Monastery.” They are Fyodor Pavlovich (the father), Ivan (2nd of BKs), Pyotr Alexandrovitch (cousin of FPs 1st wife and helped care for all 3 BKs after their mothers’ deaths), and a relative of his, Kalganov. Not Dmitri. They are met by a landowner, Maximov, then invited to dinner.

2. “The Old Buffoon” They are joined by 2 other monks, 2 Fathers (Paissy and the librarian), a seminarian, Alyosha, and Zosima. FP talks and talks, Zosima is very kind to him, tells him to stop lying and better things will follow.

3. “Women of Faith” Zosima blesses women waiting for him, some of whom have traveled far.

4. “A Lady of Little Faith” A lady landholder has also come to thank Zosima for curing her lame daughter, Lise. Lise mocks Alyosha, says she has a message from Katerina Ivanovna to give him for Dmitri, and Zosima tells them that Alyosha will visit them.

5. “So Be It! So Be It!” A long, involved discussion of church, state, Ivan’s article and various arguments. Dmitri arrives.

6. “Why is Such a Man Alive?” Lots of bad behavior, though Dmitri is the first to be respectful to Zosima, who ends up bowing to him and touching his head to the floor, which alarms Dmitri and others.

7. “A Seminarist-Careerist” Zosima tells Alyosha he’ll have to leave the monastery. Alyosha meets Rakitin, another novice. Rakitin has much gossip: Dmitri is engaged to the respectable Katerina Ivanovna, but sleeping with Grushenka. Ivan is interested in KI now that Dmitri is wandering. And FP also likes Grushenka. Rakitin thinks Zosima’s bow to Dmitri presaged a crime.

8. “Scandal” The dinner with the father superior goes badly. FP said he wouldn’t come, he shows up, angers Miusov again and insults the monastery. All leave,with Maximov trying to go with FP and Ivan. Ivan becomes cold to FP.

I found Zosima to be most engaging, and FP most disturbing, as I’m sure the author intended. The talks on ecclesiastical courts, while probably politically timely when published, went on and on. Lots of women introduced, and it’s obviously the groundwork for what will unfold.

What did everyone else think?

My husband recommended Precinct 13 by Tate Halloway to me. He’s friends with the author and liked the book. I was skeptical. The cover features a pretty woman in leather, and it’s billed as a paranormal romance. Then again, these aren’t things my husband usually reads either, so I gave them both the benefit of the doubt. After a slow start, I was completely drawn in to this tale of a young woman coroner in Pierre, South Dakota.

Aside. Did you know that it’s pronounced PEER, not Pee AIR?

Anyhoo. the heroine, Alex, has run away from a bad boyfriend and a bad situation, but seems to have landed right smack in a doozy of a new one. Her new job has some strange aspects, and she can’t quite let go of the old boyfriend, no matter what she promised to a phalanx of shrinks. Magic, dragons, fairies, trolls, and lots more. This was a fast, fun, funny romp of a read. It was meant to be the first in a series which, alas, didn’t get picked up, but on its own its still well worth it.