Dakota Picks the Winner of Away by Amy Bloom

Dakota is very old hat about choosing the winners now. Today she picked the winner of Amy Bloom's novel Away. You can read my interview with Amy Bloom here.



Darn, I said "anyway" twice!! You can find my review of Away is here.

Stop by on Monday for a new book giveaway.

Plague Ship by Andre Norton

Dane Thorson, Cargo-master-apprentice of the Solar Queen, Galactic Free Trader spacer, Terra registry, stood in the middle of the ship's cramped bather while Rip Shannon, assistant Astrogator and his senior in the Service of Trade by some four years, applied gobs of highly scented paste to the skin between Dane's rather prominent shoulder blades.

Plague Ship by Andre Norton (Alice Mary Norton) is one of the 130 novels the author wrote, so we may be able to excuse an opening sentence as dreadful as the one above. Maybe she was having an off day. Plague Ship is pulp, as one can tell from the cover, and probably not very good pulp at that. It's a rather mundane story, frankly. A ship full of traders travel to a newly discovered planet, exchange goods with the cat-like natives who live there, and head home only to discover they have picked up a strange virus which makes them officially a plague ship, unable to land on earth (Terra) or any other planet inhabited by humans.

But it's in the book's mundane aspects that one can find something fairly interesting. Take away the rockets and the aliens and Plague Ship becomes a novel about business, about work. Not a glamorous, soap opera kind of story full of beautiful, backstabbing women, but a story about how business deals are actually transacted; the negotiations, the problems with delivery, the interpersonal struggles to please all of the parties involved, the squabbles with the competition. Real everyday life buried inside a piece of interplanetary pulp fiction.

Book critic Maureen Corrigan has written about the overall disappearance of work in modern fiction. There was a time when books about work were commonplace. Horatio Alger stories come immediately to mind, but descriptions of people trying to be successful in the workplace, trying to do their jobs well, used to be a regular feature in all sorts of fiction. Even a novel about psychological breakdown like Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963) has long sections about how to become successful at work, in Ms. Plath's case as a magazine writer. Ms. Corrigan believes that the last bastion of work in modern fiction is the detective story. Detective novels are about work above all. They may feature exciting scenes and exotic characters, but the main focus of the novel is how the detective does the job. It surprised me to discover that this is basically what science fiction, especially 1950's pulp science fiction is about. How will business men go about their business in the future, when we can travel to and trade with distant planets? Plague Ship provides one possible answer.

Is it an undiscovered gem? Not in my view. But it does provide a window on the past which may be strange for a novel about the future. By projecting the concerns and interests of her contemporary readers on the question of what their futures may be like, Ms. Norton gives us a glimpse into the psyche of her own time.

BTT: Collections

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

Hardcover? Or paperback?
Illustrations? Or just text?
First editions? Or you don’t care?
Signed by the author? Or not?

While I don't have any collections large enough to comfortably call myself a book collector, I do have several small collections of books.  In general, a book goes into one of my collections because of its content not because it's a first edition or because it's signed by the author.  Nor am I concerned enough with hardcover vs. paperback to reject something just because it's one or the other.

In my large collection of Victorian fiction I have a small collection of late nineteenth century first editions.  Don't be too impressed with the fact that they are first editions because most of them never had a second printing.  I do have one copy of The Yellow Book in the collection.  This was a quarterly publication that featured some of the more scandalous authors and illustrators of the 1890's like Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley.  It became such a sensation that for a while "Yellow Book" could be used as a term to disparage all sorts of authors and publications.  It seems very tame by today's standards.

I have a small collection of young adult fiction that deals with LGBT issues.  The oldest book in the collection is I'll Get There.  It Better Be Worth the Trip from back in the days when it was very trendy to have a very long title.  I expect to soon be adding a signed first edition of In Mike We Trust which author P.E. Ryan is sending me.    

For years C.J. and I have been fans of silent movies.  Because of that we discovered photoplay editions which were special editions of books that featured photographs from the movie as illustrations.  This went on well into the 1930's but I only collect photoplay editions with pictures from silent movies.  This is the one collection that I am picky with--I only buy books with original dust jackets.  

You know, those might make a fun Wednesday Wonder feature.  Hmmm.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

When I was quite small I would sometimes dream of a city -- which was strange because it began before I even knew what a city was.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham takes the reader to what once was the future and finds there a message all too relevant for today.

Written in 1955, The Chrysalids is the third post apocalyptic book by John Wyndham author of Day of the Triffids. While Triffids tells us how the world might end, at the hands of a biological menace probably unleashed accidentally by the Soviets, The Chrysalids takes place long after the fall of civilization, this time caused by nuclear war. Most of the world is left devastated by the war, uninhabitable except by mutated plants and animals, most of them just able to eek out a living along the fringes of the barren lands.

Except for several small communities on the island of Labrador where a new form of religious fundamentalism has taken hold, one based on the Bible and on the belief that if man is created in God's image then "accursed is the mutant in the sight of God and man." Newborn children, animals and crops are examined for any physical deviation from the accepted norm and condemned if any are found. No one is allowed to stray from the path without severe consequences, namely forced sterilization and life in the fringes.

The story's narrator, David is the son of the local religious patriarch, an unyielding believer in the new Christianity. When David's aunt arrives with a baby that has not passed inspection hoping to hide it with her sister, his father physically casts her out of his home and turns her in to the authorities who take the child away from its mother. David's aunt dies soon after, a probable suicide. So what can David expect when he befriends a young girl who has six toes on each foot? Or when he discovers that he can communicate with seven other children in their village through the use of mental images instead of spoken language? Are all mutations bad? Are they all bad enough to warrant sterilization and life on the fringes?

Even if you are not a fan of science fiction there is much to enjoy in The Chrysalids. John Wyndham tells an excellent story. He gradually introduces the more fanciful science fiction elements as he goes, leading us on with the father/son conflict and the story of a societal outcast trying to survive before asking us to believe in telepathy. The book has many memorable characters and raises more than a few issues that are still relevant some 60 years after its initial publication. How many modern readers can identify with a boy who has a secret he cannot tell his family know for fear they will reject him? One way to read The Chrysalids is as a classic narrative of life in the closet and coming out. Another way to read it is as a critique of religious extremism. David's family and his society have made Christianity so narrow minded that many humans are rejected as inhuman. (The Chrysalids could almost be a commentary on contemporary religious fundamentalism.) There is also the issue of just what makes an acceptable child. Today we can test in utero for many conditions that used to remain undetected until after a child was born, sometimes years after. Modern parents are faced with decisions their own parents and grandparents never had to consider at all. In The Chrysalids a mother cannot decide if her child is normal enough to keep-- the decision is made for her by religious authorities--but the question is pertinent to today's society. Remember how controversial it was for Sarah Palin to keep her Down's Syndrome child?

When I picked up John Wyndham's book The Chrysalids, I expected to find an entertaining story, but I found much more than a good read. The Chrysalids is a novel that will stay with me for some time. I'd rank it with the best of Octavia Butler's science fiction which uses a futuristic setting to show us what our present is like and to explore what it means to be human.

Homecoming by Bernhard Schlink

When I was young, I spent the summer holidays with my grandparents in Switzerland.

Homecoming by Bernhard Schlink, translated from the German by Michael Henry Heim, is about one man's attempt to connect with his past. Because the narrator is German as is the author, it is tempting to look at the novel in larger terms, to make it the story of a people trying to connect with their shared history. It might be possible to make a good case for this position. The narrator, Peter Debeauer is raised by a single mother. He believes his father died in World War II. He is allowed to spend summers with his father's parents, Germans living in Switzerland, where he feels more at home, more a part of a family. His grandparents publish a series of books in German called "Novels for Your Reading Pleasure and Entertainment." After his grandparents die he begins reading them and finds a fragment of one unpublished novel particularly interesting. He becomes obsessed with it, researches its history, tries to find its author, to discover that the missing author is probably his own father. Few people he meets will tell him all he wants to know about his father. Even his mother is evasive when questioned. His father was a dedicated believer in National Socialism, a supporter of Nazism up until the end. What writings the narrator can find from this period are all justifications of Nazism and attempts to reinvigorate the spirit of ordinary Germans, who were already losing the war.

Are these parallels meant to stand for Germany itself and for the attempts of each successive generation of Germans to come to grips with what happened under Nazism and later under socialism in East Germany? It seems possible to me, but a more knowledgeable critic will have to provide a more conclusive answer.

The book is called Homecoming and this theme permeates each level of the novel. Peter, who is without a home, spends much of his time thinking about homecomings--the novel fragment his father wrote is about a man who escapes a Russian prisoner of war camp to return home and find his wife and child living with another man. Homer's Odyssey plays an important role in the story with its famous homecoming scene, the slaughter of Penelope's suitors. The reunification of Germany takes place during the course of the novel, perhaps one of the greatest homecomings in history. Towards the end of the book, when Peter leaves his wife and travels to America, he hopes she will wait for him like Penelope did, but he also fears he'll return to find her with someone else like the hero of his father's novel did.

Homecoming is a book with a lot of meat on its bones. If your book club is looking for something that will spark discussion, this is an excellent choice, as good as Mr. Schlink's novel The Reader. Peter's investigation into the unpublished novel makes Homecoming enough of a detective story to keep the pages turning and the panoramic view of recent European history the author presents provides a fascinating education for readers. There are many parts of Europe's history during the second world war that have still not seen the light of day. Homecoming presents several of them.

However.

I am not the first person to have a problem with the novel's ending. I won't describe exactly what happens here but I will say that I had a very difficult time buying it. In the end Mr. Schlink seems to want us to understand that we are all capable of evil, but the lengths he goes to to prove this point undermine his position. I suspect it is true that at a certain point, under certain conditions, people will probably do whatever they have to to stay alive. George Orwell demonstrates this in his novel 1984. While it may be true that a large majority of people who lived through the second world war, especially those on the ground where it was fought, committed acts they would normally have considered evil, it didn't start out that way. People began committing evil acts long before they had to in order to survive. The narrator's father is one of those people. He began advocating for National Socialism early on, a fact that the narrator never confronts and one that is only rarely confronted in fiction.

Interview with Amy Bloom author of Away -- And a Book Giveaway

Late last year I decided to start asking authors I like if they'd agree to an interview. I figured what's the worst that could happen? They may say no if I ask, but they may say yes. You always fail at the things you don't try, right. So I wrote to Amy Bloom, the author of one of my favorite reads of 2008 and was very excited when she said yes. Here's the interview.

Away was my first exposure to your work, but I know you've been a published author for some time. How has the success of Away affected your life and work? Have you been forced to make any changes in your daily routine because of it?

The only difference that Away has made in my writing life is that when I am in a large group of people now, instead of people saying to me Judy Blume "Are You There God It's Me Margaret?", they now sometimes say "Oh yeah, I read Away, I liked it".

You've said that Away came to be after an all night brainstorming session that produced a 40 page outline for the novel which you used as a basis for research. Do you typically outline or brainstorm before you begin writing? How close to the first outline is the final product?

For a novel, I do usually do quite a bit of outlining and brainstorming. The first 2/3 of the novel often conforms to the outline, the last 1/3 often does not.

Away covers an impressive amount of ground, literally going around the world. The amount of research that went into it must have been staggering. Was there anything that you wanted to include in Away that you had to drop because the historical record just didn't support it? Did you find anything during your research that you just had to include even though you hadn't planned on it?

I'm pretty committed to not sticking in fascinating historical details unless they advance the plot and illuminate the character. However, I had planned a two week and arduous train journey from New York to Seattle for Lillian, only to discover it would take about five days with only one change in Chicago.

As a Yale professor, I imagine you have access to historical documents that the general public would find it difficult to get a hold of, but did you come across anything in your research for Away that you can recommend to more general readers? Any history books out there we should read? (I ask this, in part, as a fan of historical non-fiction.)

I didn't read a lot of history books. I read mostly primary sources, maps, first person accounts by trappers, businessmen, merchants, and newspaper reporting.

I was struck by the father/son relationship between Reuben and Meyer Burstein in Away. There is a scene early in the novel where Reuben takes his son out on a tour of New York City and points out all of the places men can go to meet other men. He doesn't make a big deal out of it, but it's clear that Reuben knows his son is gay and that it makes little difference to him. (Reuben, of course, would not have used the word gay to describe his son in 1924.) The two reminded me of some of the families you discuss in your book Normal who are very accepting of their transgendered daughters, and of the families in your short story "A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You." How did your work on Normal influence the characters Away and in your short stories?

I think it is not so much that my research with Normal led to more open minded parents appearing as characters in my fiction, but that I have found that by and large good hearted people who actually love their children rather than the idea of children or the public image of family are invariably more tolerant than one might guess.

Normal, your non-fiction book on transsexuals, crossdressers and hermaphrodites, was published in 2002. Since then the British actor/comedian Eddie Izzard has gained some fame for his comedy routines, which he performs in women's clothes and make-up, and for his cable show The Riches which includes the character Sam, the youngest son who is transgendered, though we don't exactly know if he is transsexual or a crossdresser by the end of season one, which is the only season I've seen to date. So, I was wondering if you've seen Eddie Izzard's stand-up routines or The Riches and what you think of them?

I've never seen The Riches. I like Eddie Izzard very much. Especially his earlier pre-America routines.

Because I regularly feature reviews of short stories on Ready When You Are, C.B., I'd like to ask a few questions about yours. I enjoyed your anthology A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You--my favorite was "Rowing to Eden." When you think of an idea for a piece, be it plot or character, when do you know whether it will be a short story or a novel? Other than length, what is the difference between the two when it comes to writing them? Do they each have different goals or a different purpose? I find that the best short stories lead towards an epiphany of some sort that I don't find in most novels. Do you plan to continue writing short stories?

I hope I'll be writing short stories for the rest of my career. I have new collection coming out in the Fall/Winter 2009 published by Random House called "I love to see you coming, I hate to see you go". When I am writing fiction, everything is a short story unless it has so much plot it has to be a novel.

In Away, Lillian travels across the United States to the far reaches of Alaska in an attempt to take a boat across the water to Russia. She doesn't know that this crossing is almost impossible to make in the 1920's, but her friend Yaakov is convinced it can be done because the distance on the map is so short. I couldn't help but think of this during the Presidential election when Gov. Palin spoke about being able to see Russia from parts of Alaska. I kept thinking, she's surely never read Away. Did this strike you as well? Did any of your friends or colleagues mention it to you during the election?

There are plenty of Sarah Palin remarks in Q/A after my readings in October. I, too, think it's unlikely that she read Away.

I entered college as a creative writing major and left it, with no regrets, as a middle school English teacher. As a creative writing teacher, is there a specialty you focus on in your classes? If I had to pin you down to two or three things, what do you want your students to go away with when they've completed your course.

I want to go them away having read John Gardener's The Art of Fiction, and knowing the difference between a good sentence and a bad sentence.

I often write about my dog, a Basset hound named Dakota, who has eaten many of my books, so I like to end each interview by asking if you have any pets and if they have ever gone after your books?

We had a cat named Max who can to an unfortunate end and we haven't replaced him.

I'd like to thank Amy Bloom for taking the time to participate in this interview. I look forward to her next book.

Win a copy of Away by Amy Bloom.

If you'd like to win a copy of Away by Amy Bloom let me know in a comment below. Dakota will be selecting the winner Saturday morning, so enter soon. This giveaway is open to anywhere in the world, as long as the postage is not too dear.

Short Story Sunday: "Kitty Blue" by James Purdy

I suspect that James Purdy was having a David Sedaris moment when he wrote "Kitty Blue." The story is just the sort of slightly out there almost fairy tale Mr. Sedaris likes to make up. It features a Crown Prince, an international Opera star name Madame Lenore and a talking cat called Kitty Blue.

When the Crown Prince learns that Madame Lenore's favorite cat has died, he cannot stand the thought of his favorite singer suffering loneliness so he goes to look for a new kitten to give to her. He must have a special cat for Madame Lenore is a special woman. He finds a gorgeous kitten so intelligent it can actually speak human languages. The seller tells him he must never let the kitten, Kitty Blue, near ordinary cats, because he is surely a higher being trapped in the body of a cat.

Madame Lenore and Kitty Blue become inseparable until the opera singer is asked to perform for the Sultan of Turkey who will not allow cats in the palace. She refuses to go, but Kittly Blue will not stand in the way of her career. Once in Turkey, Madame Lenore is so popular that she is forced to extend her stay, and eventually Kittly Blue falls into bad company, bad cats who convince him to go out into the garden where he is captured and sold to a vaudeville theater owner who forces him to perform on the stage.

But there is a happy ending.

James Purdy's advice to young writer's is to "banish shame." "Kitty Blue" is atypical of Purdy's work which often walked the line of what was publishable. Edward Albee, who can be counted as one of his fans, once said the Purdy is rediscovered like clockwork every ten years. Maybe he's due for another round of popularity in 2009.

If you'd like to join in on Short Story Sunday please feel free to leave a link below.

Dakota Eats Neil Gaimon

I recently reviewed Neil Gaimon's Newberry Award winning young adult novel, but I didn't tell you everything that there was to tell.

Resolution Redux

This year I made five New Year's Resolutions.

1. Only use credit cards for purchases over 200 dollars, like car repairs and veterinarian bills.
2. Spend no more than two and one half hours on-line per day, not counting time on-line required by work.
3. Read both Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne and Les Miserables by Victor Hugo by the end of the year.
4. Find at least 10 new book blogs and add them to my blog roll.
5. Have a small dinner party once a month.

The thing about resolutions is that if you don't keep checking in on them you won't keep them. So I thought I'd review them, now that we're over six weeks into the new year. Turns out, I'd completely forgotten several of them.

1. I almost made it. I gave in an had a pizza delivered one night when C.J. had a meeting to go to. C.J. hates pizza so I only get to have it when he's not home for dinner. Other than that....

2. I was doing okay until a week or so ago. But, I can restart this one as of today, if I can just find the clock/timer I had put by the computer.

3. I'm keeping this one. I've read the first two parts of Les Miserables. One part a month and then I'm on to Tristram Shandy. I like having a big fat book on the table. It's nice to really sink yourself into a story.

4. Completed.

5. We were just under the wire in January. We had two couples from school over for dinner on Jan. 30 and then we all went to the Vallejo Symphony. Yes, little Vallejo, CA has a professional symphony and it's quite good, too. We're having some people over tonight.

So that makes me three for five as far as resolutions go. But I can restart the two I failed to keep as of today. I'll check back in when there's another lull in my reading.

BTT: How To Store Your Books

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

How do you arrange your books on your shelves? Is it by author, by genre, or you just put it where it falls on?

Why don't I just show you:

Starting in the basement. This is the shelf where I keep my art books, tucked in behind the copier and a drawer full of art supplies. I make book arts. The books on the shelves are all how-to books mixed in with books and magazines showing other peoples' work. The towering pile of books on the right side of the little book case that spills over on top of it is a stack of old American Heritage books that a librarian friend of mine gave to me. I use them as raw materials for collage projects.

I keep my cookbooks in the kitchen. I don't have very many because I try to cook most of the recipes in one before I buy another. The book on the top is one that I made to keep recipes from magazines in .

This book case is in the upstairs hall. You may notice that it is kept behind bars to keep Dakota out of it. This one is full of nonfiction. Most of my books are fiction.

This bookcase is in the spare bedroom where we keep the computer. Most of it is full of modern fiction. About once a year I alphabetize it by author's last name. I keep my small collection of short story anthologies on the top. The first shelf is a collection of photo-play editions. These are all novelizations of silent movies with pictures from the films used as illustrations. The bottom shelf is where Dakota gets most of her books. She is not allowed in the spare room, but you know how that sort of thing goes.

This is the main bookcase in the spare room. It used to be just for 19th century novels. I did my master's thesis in 19th century English novels so I have quite a few of them. Because I ran out of shelf space last year I've had to double up the shelves. The top two shelves are my TBR shelves. They are booth two books deep and very full. The next shelf is all 19th century fiction. The fourth shelf is where I keep all the books I've posted at paperbackswap.com. The bottom shelf has photography books and my small print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Truth is I could use another bookcase, but I don't really have room for one in my house. So, just about once a year I go through all the books, reorganize them, and set aside a pile to trade or give away. A book that I'm probably not ever going to read again does no one any good if it just sits on my shelves.

Wednesday Wonder: Miniature Book Club

I am hereby banning the word "anyway" from this blog.

Les Miserables Part 2: Cosette by Victor Hugo

On a fine May morning last year (that is to say, in the year 1861) a traveller, the author of this tale, walked from Nivelles in the direction of La Hulpe.

So begins part two of Victor Hugo's classic Les Miserables. The author then goes on for some 40 plus pages in a detailed examination of the final days of Napolean's defeat at Waterloo. There is a connection with the plot eventually, but it really didn't require forty pages of history to get to it. Clearly, Les Miserables occupies a unique position in literature; Victor Hugo is allowed to get away with things few other authors would be. Later in part two there is a long history of the convent of Petit Picpus in Paris-- this time a made up history that lasts a mere 25 pages. Very few authors would ever attempt so much back-story.

The remaining 150 pages of part two are about the plot, but even here Victor Hugo gets away with murder. This part of the story concerns Jean Valjean's escape from a prison ship, his attempt to free eight-year-old Cosette from the evil inn-keepers the Threnardiers and to avoid being captured by inspector Javert. One should be embarrased to have written this. Cosette is described as so pathetically helpless she ought to be laughable. When Jean Valjean finds her at work in the Threnardier's tavern she is dressed in rags and barefoot though it is winter. She is forced to fetch water in the dead of night using a pail that is too big for her to reasonable carry. She hides underneath a table and plays with an old lead sword, dressing it up in scraps of cloth, pretending it's a doll. This is simply worse than anything I've ever read, more sentimental than Dickens at his most trite moment.

What can I say...I was moved...I almost cried...I couldn't put it down.

I once read David Copperfield to C.J. while we were driving to Santa Barbara where he had to attend a conference. When we got to the part where David's first wife dies and he goes down stairs only to find that her beloved lap dog has also died we had to pull over and recover ourselves. Fortunately, I was at home while reading Cosette. Every piece of Les Miserables part two is an embarrassement. It's overly sentimental, the chase scene are full of ludicrous twists and turns that have forced me to re-think my criticism of Child 44, the historical sections go on far too long, but the sum is much greater than its parts. It's, frankly a wonderful read. Victor Hugo, like Charles Dickens, can get away with murder.

If you've been intimidated by the size of Les Miserables, and who could blame you at over 1200 pages, consider reading it in montly installments like I am. I'm two parts into it and I can't wait for March to roll around so I can begin part three.

Aliens Among Us by Ruth Montgomery

This is a book about extraterrestrials; who they are, where they come from, how they arrive, and why they are here.

Aliens Among Us by Ruth Montgomery is actually a sequel to Strangers Among Us which described how alien beings are able to visit the earth as"walk-ins" who temporarily take over the bodies of humans by exchanging souls with them. The human soul then visits the alien's planet, some other planet or the alien's spacecraft while the alien can observe and interact with humanity. Aliens Among Us is a collection of first hand accounts by people who experienced becoming a "walk-in" and commentary from Ms. Montgomery's spirit guides whom she channels through a process known as automatic writing. Ms. Montgomery's "space friends," as she calls them, are here to help us get through the upcoming shift in the axis of the earth which is what destroyed the ancient kingdoms of Mu and Atlantis.

It's difficult to figure out how to critique a book like this. While it would be fairly easy to take snarky pot-shots at it, and that could easily produce more than a few laughs, readers who take works like Aliens Among Us seriously would remain unmoved and skeptics, like myself, would soon become bored. I'm not out to make fun of anyone here. If I produce laughter, I didn't mean it.

If you can believe an account of alien encounters based solely on the words of an eye-witness then Aliens Among Us may be of use to you. Myself, I need footnotes before I can take any work of non-fiction seriously; I want a full accounting of all sources. Ms. Montgomery provides neither footnotes nor bibliography, nor does she include reproductions of the paintings and photographs she refers to as evidence. She asks her spirit guides if something is true and their confirmation is good enough for her. You either believe she is as good as her word as are her spirit guides or you don't. She does provide a list of addresses, so if you want to you can contact the witnesses in Aliens Among Us directly, I suppose, assuming they are still alive. Ms. Montgomery died in 2001.

So why bother reading the book at all? I signed up for the Dewey Decimal Challenge and needed something in the 00's for one and I've been curious about this genre for some time. A search for "alien encounters" at Amazon.com produced over 3,400 titles; I'd say that qualifies as a genre. Searching for Ruth Montgomery listed over 800 books including one that she's written from beyond the grave, I assume through someone else's automatic writing. Other than satisfying my own curiosity, I can't think of another reason for a skeptic to read Aliens Among Us. I suspect, even believers would be better off reading the first book, Strangers Among Us based solely on the general belief that the first book is usually the best one.

What I do find interesting is how a group of people, working together some of the time and on their own some of the time, can collectively come up with such a complicated mythos. Ms. Montgomery's spirit guides and the "walk-ins" others experience are all playing by basically the same rule book. Together they create a fantasy world as fully imagined as any you'll find in the fantasy genre. You may be thinking to yourself, that's how religions get started isn't it. You may be right.

CORRECTION: In a previous post I wrote the Ms. Montgomery predicted the axis of the earth will shift around 2012 and that all of North America, except Florida and the coast of California would be lost. This is not so. That's actually the punchline to a favorite joke of mine, but Ms. Montgomery predicted that most of North America would be fine after the shift in the earth's axis except for coastal California and Florida. Either way, the decline in my property value will no longer be much of an issue.

Short Story Sunday: "Pages from Cold Point" by Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles is one of those authors I've known about for a long time but never read. Best known for his novel The Sheltering Sky which became a minor cult film in the 1980's, Bowles lived the life of an American in exile--Paris, Morocco, Sri Lanka. Friends with Gertrude Stein, Aaron Copeland, Steven Spender, he travelled among the ex-pats, living the high life one could afford in third world locales. You can get a good sense of what this life must have been like from his short story "Pages from Cold Point."

"Pages from Cold Point" is about a father and son and couldn't help but make me think of Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams who was a friend of Bowles. The father narrates the story of how the two settle into life on a tropical island after his wife's death. Unfortunately, they are not able to get a house near the town where the other English boys live, so Rackey, the narrator's 16-year-old son has only the local youths for company. As the story opens, Rackey stays close to his father's side. The two ride bikes over the island, exploring the area around their new home, more like good friends than father and son. As Rackey grows accustomed to the island, he stops riding with his father, goes off on his own sometimes not coming home until the next day. Stil, the narrator dotes on his son, admires everything about him, and is blind to the boy's one, very serious fault.

There is much to enjoy in "Pages from Cold Point." There is a richness of character that can be lacking in more modern short stories. The writing is never dull, but it takes its time, lingering on a scenic description, or on one particular thought or another. The narrator has retired and he is no rush to tell his tale. Overall, reading this sample has piqued my interest in Paul Bowles and put his novel into my TBR pile.

If you've read a good story lately and would like to post a link to it here, please do. Mr. Linky is below.

Happy Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day from the good folks at the Courage Campaign and from Ready When You Are, C.B.


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

The Possibility of Fireflies by Dominique Paul

I am sitting on my front stoop.

The Possibility of Fireflies by Dominique Paul has much in common with Paul Zindel's play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. Both feature two sisters who are being raised by a mother who is not really up to the job. The older sister in each is a troubled figure, clearly a character who will not do well in life. The younger sister, in contrast, is a bright, inquisitive, thoughtful girl who stands a fairly good chance of doing well in spite of her difficult family life.

But times have certainly changed since Mr. Zindel wrote Gamma Rays which was a fairly hard hitting story for its day. The girls in The Possibility of Fireflies face life with one of the worst mothers I've ever encountered in fiction. While the mother Gamma Rays cannot adequately provide for the financial and emotional needs of either her disabled older daughter or her gifted younger one, she does love them both. If you remember the play you're probably thinking about what happens to the rabbit right now and asking how could I say that she loves her girls after that scene. I offer how hard she works to get by as evidence of her love. She works multiple jobs, takes in elderly borders, does all she can to scrounge up enough money to get by. And, in the end, she stays with her elder daughter and cares for her knowing full well that the girl will never be able to do so for herself.

The mother in The Possibility of Fireflies may have a redeeming feature somewhere but I couldn't find it. She leaves the girls alone while she goes out to bars all night long and then gets physically violent with them if they come home late. She won't give them a key to their own house which leaves them locked out in the cold night waiting for a chance to sneak in when she returns. She is emotionally and verbally abusive towards them. The girls are left to face the world without any help or guidance. The older one ends up in trouble with the law while the younger ends up desperately lonely. The only decent thing she does is actually a questionable act; she provides an alibi for her older daughter who has been accused of setting fire to the barn where local teenagers hang out to smoke and do various drugs. She then uses this alibi to blackmail her elder daughter into doing her favors.

At the end of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds the younger daughter reads from her science fair presentation. She talks about how some of the marigold seeds she planted were able to survive exposure to radiation and grow into flowers, while others, ones that faced too much radiation, withered and died or did not sprout at all. In the almost 40 years since Gamma Rays was first published, maybe things have gotten a lot worse, or maybe Young Adult literature has come to the point where bad situations can be portrayed as truly terrible as they really are. There is a ray of hope at the end of The Possibility of Fireflies, but I wasn't quite able to buy it. I have had students, girls, whose mother's stayed out in bars until very late at night. There is not much hope there.

The Possibility of Fireflies was the most recent choice of one of the book clubs in my 7th grade class. A group of five girls picked it; I told them they could read it if they could all get a copy since it's not one I have a class set of. Luckily, none of their parents read it, or didn't object to it if they did. It's too racy for a class book in the 7th grade which I now know. Of the five, four liked it enough to want to see the movie when it comes out. They are convinced that there really are people like the mother out there in the world and that the issues the girls face are very real. They also buy the ending and the hope it offers, which I was glad to hear.

BTT: Author Blogs

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

Do you read any author’s blogs? If so, are you looking for information on their next project? On the author personally? Something else?

As far as blogs go, I guess I'm more interested in reading than in writing, so I read very few author blogs, none regularly. There was one that I used to read all the time. I've no idea how I found it, but it was interesting, kind of gossipy, lots of fun features, and it made we want to read her books even though I'd never heard of her before. She's clearly a very nice person and someone I'd probably get along with very well at a party or if we ended up on the same committee for some reason. So I read one read one of her books but I didn't like it. In fact, I didn't finish it. I don't read her blog all that much anymore.

The only other times I've searched out an author's blog have been to prepare for interviews with them. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Half of a Yellow Sun has a wonderful website, well worth checking out though, technically, it's not a blog. Sorry to say, I have not been able to get an interview with her. If you know her, please put in a good word for me. I'm a big fan.

Dewey Decimal Challenge and Library Loot

I did several challenges last year, well, I signed up for several and completed half of them. While I enjoyed doing them I was not planning on doing any this year so I'd be completely free to read whatever comes along and strikes my fancy. Until I found the 2009 Dewey Decimal Challenge. The idea is to read one book from each of the centuries in the Dewey Decimal system. How fun does that sound, I thought. I like to read widely, all sorts of stuff, and I like to browse around in my local library, so I signed up.

Sunday afternoon, after my book club met (They all loved Half of a Yellow Sun, by the way.) I headed for the library and to the 00's. Funny thing about the 00's, they're almost all books about how to use various kinds of software. I did find two interesting shelves though, one with books about books and one with books about aliens.

I've already read most of the better books about books, but I decided I should take one or else people will think I'm some sort of alien abduction fanatic. Why We Read What We Read by Lisa Adams and John Heath looked like fun. It's a tour of nearly 200 bestselling books so it probably won't be anything high-brow and should be a fairly quick read. I think it will turn out the be the kind of book that makes it possible for you to talk knowledgeably about lots of books you haven't really read, which can be very useful.

My second choice is such a guilty pleasure I'm almost ashamed to admit it. Last year C.J. and I watched a Penn and Teller program about alien abduction. They were debunking it, of course, but the alien abduction convention looked like so much fun I decided to get some of the books they mentioned. They've been on my wish list at Paperbackswap.com for over a year with no luck. Apparently, the people who read books about alien abduction like to hang on to them. But, in the 00's at the library, I found Aliens Among Us by Ruth Montgomery. I'm already having fun reading it. Apparently, aliens are able to travel to earth and then temporarily switch bodies with humans so they can perform harmless experiments. They are concerned that we will not be ready for the impending shift in the earth's axis and they want to help us prepare for this disaster and to prevent us from further harming the planet through nuclear war. (The book was written in 1985, before global warming replaced nuclear war as the most likely way we'll destroy the planet. I do not know if the aliens have shifted the focus of their experiments at this time.) Before her death, Ms. Montgomery predicted that the earth's axis would shift in 2012 and that all of North American would become submerged except for Florida and the coast of California. As someone who lives on the coast of California I can rest easily. My property value is likely to recover afterwards.

Anyway, maybe you can see why I wanted to avoid challenges.

The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople by Jonathan Phillips

In April 1204 the armies of the Fourth Crusade conquered and sacked Constantinople. An eye-witness wrote of the crusaders' lack of humanity, of 'madmen raging against the sacred', of murderous men who refused to 'spare pious maidens' and of 'these forerunners of Antichrist, chief agents of his anticipated ungodly deeds' who smashed altars and plundered precious objects.
Almost 800 years later, in the summer of 2001, Pope John Paul II issued an extraordinary statement - an apology to the Greek Orthodox Church for the terrible slaughter perpetrated by the warriors of the Fourth Crusade.

The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople by Jonathan Phillips tells the story of what went wrong. The crusade began as an attempt to send large numbers of reinforcements to the crusader kingdoms in Palestine to try and recapture Jerusalem and ended up invading several Christian kingdoms culminating in the destruction of Constantinople, the most splendid city in the Christian world of its day. It takes many mistakes and many people for something to go so disastrously wrong, and it is to Mr. Phillips credit that he does such a good job explaining how the Fourth Crusade came about and then came to such a bad end.

The crusade started with an overreaching promise to send 30,000 men to defend the crusader kingdoms and a contract with Venice to build enough ships to carry them. Because England did not participate in this crusade and because several other groups decided to bypass the planned gathering in Venice and go straight to Palestine not enough forces gathered to cover the contracted cost of building the ships. To pay off the dept, the crusaders agreed to take the coastal city of Zara, which the doge of Venice had long wanted to control. Still not enough money was available to pay the debt for the ships, so the crusaders joined forces with Alexus IV, son of the deposed emperor of Byzantium in an attempt to dethrone Alexus III and take Constantinople. Afterwards, Alexus IV was not able raise enough taxes to pay his debt to the crusaders and was dethroned by his own people. In the end, because the political situation in Constantinople was so chaotic the Greeks were not able to adequately defend their city and it fell to the crusaders.

In the end, the venom intended for the Muslim population of the holy land was unleashed on the Christians of Constantinople. Churches and monasteries were raided. Relics were looted. Money and valuable objects were stolen. The silver leaf that decorated the Hagia Sophia was pealed away, chiseled off and melted down. Not even nuns in their convents were safe.

The crusaders then established a kingdom in Constantinople and tried to bring the rest of Byzantium under their control. They never made it to the holy land in the end, nor did their kingdom last very long. Within a century, the Greeks were back in control of Byzantium and Constantinople, though even they fell shortly afterwards to the Turks.

Mr. Phillips explains all of these events using eyewitness accounts from both sides of the story. He gives the reader the details needed to illuminate the events and to understand the motivations of the people involved. It's hard to find any heroes in the Fourth Crusade, everyone's motives are so compromised either at the start of the crusade or by its end. That the crusades targeted both Muslim and Jewish populations, most people know. The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople is a useful book because it details the extent to which the crusades targeted Christians and did so in the name of God. In the final analysis, there is not much to admire in the notion of a crusade, and we should be on our guard whenever we hear someone call for one. Fail to learn lessons of history at your own risk.

Shakespeare Wrote for Money by Nick Hornby

It's been an unsettling couple of months.

Shakespeare Wrote for Money is the third collection of the columns Mr. Hornby wrote for Believer magazine about the books he read each month. This is the column that almost got me to subscribe to Believer; a popular author with eclectic reading tastes, writing about the books he's reading every month--sounds like the perfect thing for every incurable biblioholic to me.

Shakespeare Wrote for Money, the final collection, covers Mr. Hornby's reading from August 2006 to September 2008 and includes September 2006 when Mr. Hornby read not a single book, due to his obsession with watching the World Cup. It's nice to know that even a devoted reader takes a month off now and then.

Each entry begins with a list of the books Mr. Hornby read that month along side a list of the books he bought. The lists never match. Book bloggers tend to love lists of books and I freely admit that these added greatly to my own enjoyment of Shakespeare Wrote for Money. (What is it about list of books that we all like so much? Are we really closeted librarians?) The articles/chapters are breezily written and tend to wonder off on whatever tangents Mr. Hornby's reading suggest, though never in an uninteresting way. One month he reads several books about East Germany's police force the Stasi and a couple on mental illness, while in another he discovers the world of Young Adult fiction. He claims that his editors, whom he calls the Polyphonic Spree, won't allow him to write bad reviews so he ends up recommending almost everything he reads. (This does have the side effect of adding titles to ones TBR list. Consider yourself warned.)

Though not as eclectic as I am, since he freely admits his complete lack of interest in fantasy and science fiction, Mr. Hornby reads a wide range of material. His reviews cover non-fiction, some popular, some more serious, and fiction ranging from literature in translation, to graphic novels, to classics, to Young Adult fiction, to best sellers. There is something for almost everyone in Shakespeare Wrote for Money. (Except, of course, people who read only fantasy and science fiction.)

While Mr. Hornby is a successful author, he reads more like an everyman. You won't find an esoteric critique of literature in these columns, but you will find an honest and open reflection on what one man's reading experience was like. When something moves him in an embarrassing way, he admits it. When something begins to bore him, he admits that as well. At least, as much as his editors who do not like negative reviews will allow. He does not recommend books that are good for you or that should be read, but books that he enjoyed reading. A useful distinction that makes Shakespeare Wrote for Money a useful and entertaining read.

Short Story Sunday: "The Birds of Illinois" by Susan Woodring

I've been savoring the stories in Susan Woodring's collection Springtime on Mars for just about a year. (I've been reading one of them just about every 6 to weeks.) So it's no surprise, I suppose, that I began to wonder just what Mars looks like during the spring. Turns out it looks like the picture to the left. Not very exciting, really.

"The Birds of Illinois" takes place in an ordinary American town, small enough to still have a supermarket with a butcher who knows the names of all his customers. Maud and her husband Donald have recently reached retirement. Donald has taken to it in stride, devoting his hours to various projects around the house, greeting the news that another of his children has decided to move out with a casual aplomb, a sense that this is what's supposed to happen and there is no need to get worked up about it. Things have not been so easy for Maud. She is not able to find something fulfilling to do with her life now that the children are gone. She takes classes here and there, but when her daughter calls to tell her she's coming home early with her boyfriend and with big news, Maud is much more anxious than happy. To top it all off, Maud has begun to have dreams about the bag boy at the local market, sensual dreams that border on erotic.

In Ms. Woodring's other stories the characters reach a moment when something wonderful happens, wonderful in its more literal sense. But while in "The Birds of Illinois" a moment of crises is reached, Maud has the emotional breakdown she seems headed for, there is no moment of wonder. I felt that Ms. Woodring over-reached this time around. Somehow the character of Maud is not quite within her grasp. I've loved the previous stories in Springtime on Mars so far, but this time I just liked it.

If you've read a short story recently and would like to participate in Short Story Sunday, please use Mr. Linky to post a link to your post.

Dakota Picks a Winner: Notes on Democracy by H.L. Mencken

This time Dakota cooperated.



Last time she didn't cooperate. You can see it here.

Thanks to everyone who follows this blog, you're all entered every time, and thanks to everyone who left a comment. I'm planning on another give away at the end of the month to coincide with my interview with Amy Bloom, author of Away. And I hope to have a new Young Adult fantasy up for grabs in a week or so. One of my students is currently reading it. Stay tuned.

Terminated

We got word at school yesterday that our district will be facing at least 3.5 million dollars in cuts next year and could face as much as 5.5 million.  I teach in a fairly small district so this is a drastic situation.

Things are tough all over these days, I know, but the situation is made worse here in California because the state legislature and our governor (pictured left) cannot agree on a budget.  We know we'll have to face cuts, but no one knows what they'll be until the state budget is passed and it looks like that won't be any time soon.

But, the word on the street is that the middle school I teach at will be closed; the students divided between the other two middle schools in my district.  That's likely to be a two year long process, so I'll probably still be here next year, just with no sixth grade students.  They will be phased out of my school and into the other two, I guess.  Then, the year after next, I'll be moved to another school along with everyone else who is left.  This all assumes that I have enough seniority at this point not to be fired, which I think I do.  I'll find out early next month.

So, I'm not writing a book review for today.  I'm in a kind of funk.

BTT: "I don't like you, anymore."

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

Have you ever been put off an author’s books after reading a biography of them? Or the reverse - a biography has made you love an author more?

My answer is yes to both, but not very often.

I read a lot of books by people who are long dead. With them it doesn't seem to matter much what kind of person they were. Anthony Trollope wrote an autobiography in which he described his writing process in detail. His own description made him sound like a complete hack, following a formula without any creativity or artistry involved. He forever ruined his own reputation in the minds of serious readers, placing himself on the second tier of the literary cannon. But I still really like his books.

Contemporary authors are a different matter. There's something about knowing the money I spend on their book with actually go to them, that makes their biography a little more important. One author, who wrote a few books I enjoyed, recently published several very prejudiced articles against gays, the kind of thing people wrote about Jews in the 1930's. I can't imagine reading his work will ever bring me the same pleasure it once did. Why would I give him any of my money? On occasion I hear an author interviewed on the radio or read an interview in print who comes off sounding a little dim. It's hard for me to take his work seriously after that.

On the other hand, a good interview or an interesting biography can make me more inclined to buy their book. Authors are people after all. Reading their books is, in my mind, a direct communication with them, a very intimate one at that. When I read a book, I am listening to one person talk to me for several hours. Why would anyone listen to someone they don't like, or whose opinions they don't respect even if they disagree, for hours on end?

Prince Henry's Complete Atlas of the Sun

For this week's Wednesday Wonder I decided to feature one of the books I made. I posted a picture of this one a while ago and had some very nice comments so I thought it would be fun to show some more of it.



Did you see Dakota's very quick cameo? You can see much of her, but she was there underfoot, take after take.

Notes on Democracy by H.L. Mencken

Democracy came to the Western World to the tune of sweet, soft music.

Notes on Democracy by H.L. Mencken published in 1926 must be something of a hard sell these days. The inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States seems to stand as a shining example of how well democracy works. A system that can produce a leader of such stature must have something going for it. Mencken would probably beg to differ. And it may do us good to keep in mind democracy's failings even during such a hopeful time. After all, the same system that elected Barack Obama also passed Proposition 8.

Notes on Democracy provides a clear-headed, skeptical view of American politics and the democratic system. Menken begins with this premise: "The average man doesn't want to be free. He simply wants to be safe." Mencken would not be at all surprised to hear the use of torture justified as necessary to keep ourselves safe from terrorists. He would expect us to willingly surrender our freedom rather than face even the slightest sense of danger. Would you allow government agents to randomly search people on the street who are neither charged with a crime nor suspected of committing a crime? Would you allow these random searches to include strip searches? What if the government told you these searches were necessary to insure safe air-travel?

Mencken believes that the main motivating factor in democracy is fear. He believes that fear has been used since the founding of America to motivate the mass of voters, whom he calls the mob. Leaders have always and will always use fear to convince the mob to trade away its rights and to support causes that will harm it in the end and to enter wars it could have avoided. He is worth quoting at length about this:

Fear remains the chiefest of them. The demagogues, i.e., the professors of mob psychology, who flourish in democratic states are well aware of the fact, and make it the corner-stone of their exact and puissant science. Politics under democracy consists almost wholly of the discovery, chase and scotching of bugaboos. The statesman becomes, in the last analysis, a mere witch-hunter, a glorified smeller and snooper, eternally chanting "Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum!" It has been so in the United States since the earliest days. The whole history of the country has been a history of melodramatic pursuits of horrendous monsters, most of them imaginary: the red-coats, the Hessians, the monocrats, again the red-coats, the Banks, the Catholics, Simon Legree, the Slave Power, Jeff Davis, Mormonism, Wall Street, the rum demon, John Bull, the hell hounds of plutocracy, the trusts, General Weyler, Pancho Villa, German spies, hyphenates, the Kaiser, Bolshevism. The list might be lengthened indefinitely; a complete chronicle of the Republic could be written in terms of it, and without omitting a single important episode. It was long ago observed that the plain people, under democracy, never vote for anything, but always against something.

Add to this list civil rights activists, feminists, drugs, terrorists and gay marriage and you bring Mencken's thesis up to the present. Mencken wrote Notes on Democracy after seeing how the mob of voters could be manipulated into passing Prohibition, surely the single most hypocritical piece of legislation in the country's history. Anti-saloon leagues played upon the fears of the mob; religious leaders used their pulpits the pressure state legislatures into passing a law that took away property rights, closed businesses, and turned a majority of Americans into criminals. Mencken also covered the famous Scopes trial in Tennessee which charged a man with the crime of teaching evolution. (It would do us all well to remember that was a crime with a prison sentence as punishment less than 100 years ago.) These two events as well as his years as a Baltimore reporter provide the foundation for the views he expresses in Notes on Democracy. But his sense of humor and his way with words make the book a pleasureable read. He is like an acidy Mark Twain. Humorous, but as forgiving.

Mencken would probably look around today, and find that not much has changed. Personally, I'm not sure I would agree, but reading Notes on Democracy forces one to take a hard look at the system, to see that what we hold as dear may not be as good as we want it to be. It's probably like going to a parent conference and finding out that your favorite child is really not all that nice to the other kids on the playground. How you react to the news will determine what kind of adult that child grows up to be. Disregard that sort of bad news at your peril. President Obama said in his inaugural address that America is a young country but that it is now time to put away childish things. Perhaps we can prove Mencken wrong and move beyond our fears towards our better natures. Surely, the time has come.

If you're at all interested in reading Notes on Democracy, which I highly recommend, please let me know in the comments section below. I have one ARC copy that I'd like to give away. Dakota will be choosing the winner Saturday morning.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman is the winner of this year's Newbery Medal. I've already read several sites praising this choice as a popular one, a book kids will enjoy. The last few winners have not sold very well afterwards which has been taken as a sign that kids did not like them and therefore they should not have been the winners. I do agree that one sign of excellence in children's and young adult literature is that children and young adults like it in large numbers, but that should not be the sole criteria nor the over-riding one. Popularity should not determine excellence. Otherwise the Newbery Medal will become about as valuable as a Grammy.

Is The Graveyard Book worthy of The Newbery Medal? I have not been following current YA books closely enough lately to say it was the best one in 2008. I have not read any of the Honor books, the runners up, either this time around. I have read almost all of the past winners though and many of the past honor books over the years which gives me some basis for an opinion. Of the seven previous winners in this century so far I'd say The Graveyard Book is better than three of them, about as good as one of them and not as good as three of them. Mr. Gaiman is a very popular author, so The Graveyard Book will probably do very well as far as sales are concerned. This will certainly make some people very happy.

The Graveyard Book is the story of Nobody Owens who is raised from toddlerhood by the dead and undead inhabitants of an old graveyard. Nobody's family is murdered in the opening scenes of the book by a mysterious man called Jack. Bod, as Nobody is called, wanders innocent and unaware away from the scene, down the road and into the graveyard which Jack cannot enter. The ghosts in the graveyard and their guardian, a strange man called Silas who is neither fully dead nor fully alive, agree that they should protect the toddler, keep him in the graveyard where he'll be safe from Jack who still wants to kill him and raise him as their own.

The rest of the book is the story of how Bod grows up raised by ghosts. There are many amusing and suspenseful scenes in the book. Because he is initially taught history by people who actually lived it, he runs in to some trouble once he begins going to the local school and starts to correct his history teacher's version of the past. He meets a live girl and together they explore an ancient pre-Roman tomb guarded by Sleers who've lain in wait over two thousand years for the return of their master. Outside of the graveyard lurks the menacing Jack, still trying to complete his murderous task, still trying to get into the graveyard and kill Bod.

I found reading The Graveyard Book to be an uneven experience. I was enthralled at times as one should be in a good children's book, but I also found myself waiting for him to get on with it too. (I have found this to be the case with the other Neil Gaiman books I've read, so it could just be me.) The best children's books, like many of the best adult books, leave the reader in a temporary state of wonder, a satisfied maybe blissful state that can last a few seconds or a few minutes sometimes an afternoon. Recent Newbery Winners like Holes; Bud, Not Buddy; Walk Two Moons; and The Giver all left me in this state. The Graveyard Book did not. I suspect it will satisfy Mr. Gaiman's fans who are almost legion, and it may very well sell lots of copies, but I'm still waiting for a Newbery winner to be excited about.

Short Story Sunday: Wish Fulfillment - 52 Stories

While reading through my blogroll today I found out from RobAroundBooks that Harper Perennial is putting up a new short story on their website every week this year. You can find them here. There are four stories already up including this weeks Short Story Sunday, "Wish Fulfillment" by Mary Gaitskill.

I had to read the opening of "Wish Fulfillment" twice. I was confused. I believe that confusion is a part of reading, so it's okay that I was confused. The story opens with a girl, Mary, exploring a world of her own imagining. In her imagined world the back yard of her house is a forest. It has a trap door that leads to a long staircase going down all the way to where the devil lives. But you can get off at a landing and see the earth instead, which is what Mary does.

As she goes down the stairs, Mary becomes the narrator of the story, but the narrator is a middle aged woman. The woman is imagining herself to be Mary who is imagining herself to be the woman. A child pretends to be the grown up; the grown up remembers what it was like to be the child. They each want to be beautiful, to be happy, to have love, to have a family. They share the same wish. That's what life has been like for the woman. For a while she lived with her love, Karen. The two wished for love, and for a while their wish was shared.

I've not told you the end of the story. There is more. There is an ending that some might see as a cheat and others as a ray of hope. But I like this idea of linking our lives with people who share the same wish, whatever that wish may be.

More stories to come at 52 Stories and here at Short Story Sunday. If you'd like to participate by writing a review of a short story or a short story anthology, or if you've already got a review somewhere on your own blog, please feel free to leave a link below.