Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog by Kitty Burns Florey

Diagramming sentences is one of those lost skills, like darning socks or playing the sackbut, that no one seems to miss.

Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences, by Kitty Burns Florey is an entertaining memoir of sentence diagramming rather than a comlete history of it. Ms. Florey speaks for generations of students who learned to diagram increasingly complex sentences in private and public schools up until the 1960's when sentence diagramming began to fall out of favor.  Did these complicated illustrations of how sentences are constructed actually help them become better writers?  Ms. Florey does not provide a definitive answer, but she does present a series of amusing examples and anecdotes along with many entertaining illustrations of diagrammed sentences.

Sentence diagramming began in the 1877y with the publication of Higher Lessons in English by Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellog.  It's popularity with elementary school teachers grew and endured through the century that followed.  Ms. Florey learned how to diagram from her sixth grade teacher, Sister Bernadette.  Supporters of sentence diagramming included Gertrude Stein  who famously said "A rose is a rose is a rose."  Which, it turns out, is fairly easy to diagram.

Ms. Florey presents the basic rules for diagramming sentences and gives many useful and fanciful examples.  When she is focused on sentence diagramming her Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog is at its strongest.  When she moves on to her personal grammatical bugaboos, the use of 'ain't' for example, the book  becomes weaker.  Too often she interjects her own political agenda in ways that do not add to the discussion of sentence diagramming.  In the end one can see why students like Ms. Florey found sentence diagramming  so much fun to do, but I cannot see that it had much real value.  There must be a thorough study out there somewhere proving or disproving the effectiveness of sentence diagramming.  I can't believe no one ever did a doctoral dissertation on this topic.  But if there is, Ms. Florey has not included it in her book.  This is what makes Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog an amusing memoir rather than a more complete history of sentence diagramming.

This book meets two challenges.  It's my first one for the Non-Fiction Challenge which starts today and it's also my 400's book for the Dewey Decimal Challenge.  

 

BTT: Which is Worse?

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

Which is worse?
Finding a book you love and then hating everything else you try by that author, or
Reading a completely disappointing book by an author that you love?

This question is about exceptions--sometimes a good author writes a bad book and sometimes a bad author writes a good book. Which is worse? I'd have to pick finding a book you love and then hating everything else you try by that author. Fortunately, for many author's, the good books cast very large shadows. Fans are a very forgiving bunch.

I have read books I loved, only to find the rest of the author's work lacking. Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice comes to mind. I read it when it was fairly new in paperback and loved it. The idea of it was original, the writing kept me glued to the page, and I her other books and followed the vampire sequels for years only to be disappointed again and again. Ron Hansen wrote a marvelous book called Mariette in Ecstasy that is one of my all time favorites, but I've never been able to make it through any of his other work.

Many author's I love have written disappointing books: Charles Dickens has his Martin Chuzzlewit, Jane Austen has her Mansfield Park and Charlotte Bronte her Villette. Margaret Atwood has written some of my favorite books, but she also wrote Orynx and Crake which you'd have to be a die hard fan to praise. I love Midnight's Children by Salmon Rushdie as well as The Moor's Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet but could not find my way into The Satanic Verses at all and I really did try.

But in the end, I'd count every author I've mentioned here as a terrific writer whether they wrote one really good book or twenty. And you can rest assured that when I see their newest book on the shelf I will pick it up and at least read over the blurbs on the cover. I make no promises after that though.

Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch

Young R.M., my Mormon guard, has brought me a supply of paper at last. It is three months to the day since I first asked him for some. Inexplicable, this change of heart.

Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch makes for two dystopian science fiction novels in a row. I seem to be reading quite a bit of this stuff lately. I'm not really writing a review of this one--I didn't really like it and I only review books I like. So please don't consider what follows a review.

Written in 1968, Camp Concentration is full of Big Brother type anti-government paranoia. The narrator/hero is serving a five year prison sentence as a conscientious objector for refusing to join the U.S. army. The U.S. is fighting a war against an unnamed opponent but that's just a narrative device to get the narrator in prison--this book is not about the war. Shortly into his sentence, the narrator is taken to a secret laboratory where he is forced to participate in a government experiment to develop a drug that will make people smarter. The drug works but at a price--while those who take it become geniuses, they also slowly die from the side effects. This may sound very familiar to fans of Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Alegernon which was a much better in my view. I've not read it since high school, but all of my friends were very moved by it. In Flowers for Algernon an uneducated, mentally disabled janitor is given a drug that over time makes him a genius. It's written as a first person narrative so the writing itself mirrors this process. The effects of the drug eventually begin to wear off, which we can see in the writing as the narrator returns to his natural state. All of the cool kids at Foothill High School, class of 1982, loved it.

Camp Concentration is an entertaining read, for the most part. It becomes a bit bogged down towards the end when the narrator starts debating politics with the other characters. (I found myself mercilessly skimming--another reason why this is not a review.) Dystopian science fiction is supposed to reveal truths about contemporary society, but it's not supposed to preach it. Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, which I reviewed yesterday, got a little preachy towards the end too, but the overall novel was a much better read that Camp Concentration. If you happen to be looking for this sort of novel, I'd go with Mr. Harrison's book or with Mr. Keyes's.

Dakota, however, found the book delicious, so I won't be listing my copy on Paperbackswap.com.

Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison

The August sun struck in through the open window and burned on Andrew Rcsch's bare legs until discomfort dragged him awake from the depths of heavy sleep.

Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison was made into the classic, some would say camp classic, 1973 Charlton Heston movie Soylent Green. In those days, before the advent of widespread, cheap special effects, science fiction movies were about ideas instead of spaceships and strange looking creatures. The movie is much better than its reputation--I rewatched it this year and found it holds up fairly well. The book, which is widely different from the movie, holds up fairly well, too. Both have components that have become dated, but the overall message, a plea to act soon to avoid environmental catastrophe, is still a pertinent one.

Make Room! Make Room! is a classic police procedural set in a dystopian future. Detective Andy Rusch is called on to investigate the murder of a very wealthy man, apparently the victim of an attempted robbery that went very wrong. The victim, lived with his beautiful "girlfriend" in one of the few functioning high rise apartments left in New York City. Det. Rusch lives on one of the upper floors in a broken down tenement building without water and power that function only rarely. He shares his apartment with Sol, an older man who lives as much in his memories as he does in the present. Det. Rusch's building is overwhelmed nightly by squatters who camp out on the stairways, the only space in the city they can find for shelter.

People do eat Soylent products in Make Room! Make Room! but they are all made out of beans in the novel. Instead of talking the reader down that rabbit hole, Make Room! Make Room! follows a more ordinary plot line-- the detective works to solve a hopeless case, he becomes involved with the victim's girl, the case opens up windows on the corruption of society as a whole and on certain parts of the government in particular, then it all kind of fizzles out. It's much more like The Long Goodbye or Chinatown than it is like Soylent Green.

Books like Make Room! Make Room! are often much more a reflection on the societal worries of their time than they are on a potential future. Once society has moved on to other problems, interest in books of this genre tends to fade away. I have been reading many of them lately and finding that I quite like them. They do provide entertaining reading and they provide an interesting glimpse into history; it's fun to see what people in the past thought our lives today would be like. Well, sometimes it's fun.

If you've never seen Soylent Green here's the trailer for it. See if you can guess the secret of Soylent Green.

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindquist

Blackeberg.

It makes you think of coconut-frosted cookies, maybe drugs. "A respectable life." You think subway station, suburb. Probably nothing else comes to mind. People must live there, just like they do in other places. That was why it was built, after all, so that people would have a place to live.

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist and translated by Ebba Segerberg is for people who like their vampires monstrous. There are no cuddly creatures here, no misunderstood, sexy, brooding handsome young men, no one one who really has a soul, no one fighting an urge or repressing it with non-human blood substitutes. The vampire in Let the Right One In is an evil monster that survives on human flesh and blood. It's also a 12-year-old girl.

In classic horror fiction the reader has to wait for the monster to arrive. Instead of starting off with a jolt, the way many contemporary thrillers do, things are basically normal for quite a while. Think of The Exorcist, the 1970's movie about a girl possessed by demons. 40 minutes into the film things are bad but not so bad you'd have to believe the devil made her do it. Let the Right One In begins like a classic horror tale, with a troubling but ordinary situation. 12-year-old Oskar lives with his single mother in a modern flat in a modern subdivision. Small and shy, he has become the target of the school bullies, so much so that he dreads going to school and has lost all of his friends. He spends each day trying to avoid the bullies and then trying to keep his mother in the dark about them afterwards.

There is a murder in Oskar's neighborhood which he becomes obsessed with. He follows every piece of news about it that he can get with an avid interest, even keeps a scrapbook about it. At the same time a man and his young daughter move into the building next door. Their curtains are always closed. Very few people ever see either of them enter or

 leave. Though the reader knows immediately where this is going, the book becomes harder and harder to put down.

I'm not going to say any more. Spoiling any of the plot would spoil the fun of reading it. While Let the Right On In is probably not great art, it is great entertainment, the kind of book that keeps you up a night and then keeps you up at night.

Book Giveaway

I'm giving away my copy of Let the Right One In at the end of the week. If you're interested, leave a comment below. To be entered twice leave the name of your favorite vampire story in your comment. Link to this giveaway and be entered five times. Dakota will be selecting the winner Saturday morning as usual. That is, if she doesn't sink her teeth into the book first.

Short Story Sunday: "Ciccone Youths 1990"

When real life becomes impossible to bare, create a world of your own.

In Bruce Morrow's short story "Ciccone Youths 1990" the narrator is in the last days of his illness. Once an in-demand New York City hairdresser, well known drag queen, lover of many, he has ended up alone, rejected by his family and cut off from those of his friends who are left. Madonna's album "Vogue" has just come out and drag queens are suddenly everywhere. The narrator imagines a group of four drag queens, friends who share a devotion to Madonna and a plan to get the stars attention by performing a dance routine in front of her apartment building.

The narrator tells us the story of his own life, how he came to New York and how he ended up alone. He interrupts it now and then to continue the story of the four drag queen friends. Soon the reader begins to suspect that maybe this story is actually his own as well. Just how much of this 'memoir' is fiction is left for the reader to decide.

You can find "Ciccone Youths 1990" in Men and Men 2000 edited by David Bergman and Karl Woelz.

Please join me for Short Story Sunday by adding a link to your short story review below. These are the stories reviewed for April. I'll start up a new list next week.

Dakota Picks a Winner

Dakota picks the winner for the current book giveaway.



I only used the forbidden word once this time. This time the winner is Molly. I'll try to get in touch with you later today. If you don't hear from me, please leave your contact information below. Thanks to everyone who participated.

Among the Cannibals by Paul Raffaele

For almost three hours the Indonesian jet has been crossing the Banda Sea high above the clouds.

Among the Cannibals: Adventures on the Trail of Man's Darkest Ritual by Paul Raffaele casts doubt on itself in the very beginning. Cannibalism is controversial in more ways than one. One controversy is over whether or not it exists at all. To Mr. Raffaele's credit he acknowledges this controversy in the opening chapters of Among the Cannibals with a review of William Arens' book, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy which makes the case that anthropologists have largely misdiagnosed cannibalism throughout history by relying on the unverified testimony of one group of people with an ax to grind against another. To Mr. Raffaele's detriment, this had the effect of making me even more suspicious of his own claims that cannibalism was widely practiced until recently. I am not an authority on the subject by any means, so I'll leave this question here. I will say that I am now very interested in reading Mr. Arens' book.

Among the Cannibals is a highly readable account of Mr. Raffaele's travels to five locales throughout the world where cannibalism was recently or is still practiced. The story can't help but be a bit grisly; however, with one exception, it's surprisingly easy to take overall. Mr. Raffaele presents a frank account that reads, at times, like a boy's adventure book, but he's not nearly as gross as some readers might expect with such a subject.

He starts with what is probably one of the last, hopefully one of the last, cannibal tribes in New Guinea, the Korowai. His account of their culture and how it has faced contact with the modern world is fascinating reading. According to Mr. Raffaele, the Korowai have a long tradition of cannibalism connected to their belief that evil spirits that inhabit humans are the cause of other humans deaths. Before one person dies from illness he points out who has become possessed by an evil spirit. That person is then captured, ritually executed and eaten. The Korowai are one of the last remaining stone age tribes on earth and have much to offer besides cannibalism, their tree house dwellings are something to see, and Mr. Raffaele does take the time to paint a fairly full picture of their culture. It's likely that this culture, for better or worse, will not survive into the next generation, it may already have basically vanished by now, because the temptations of modern living are very difficult for anyone, let alone the young, to resist.

Once he leaves New Guinea, Mr. Raffaele heads to the city of Benares along the Ganges River in India where he finds an unusual cult of Hindu's, Aghoris, who believe that the eating of human flesh, among other unpleasant actions, actually makes them more holy and brings them closer to achieving moksha, or release from the cycle of reincarnation. Mr. Raffaele interviews several Aghori practitioners who are an interesting group, but not one I would invite over to dinner.

After a visit to Tonga in the South Pacific Mr. Raffaele heads to Uganda where he talks with several former child soldiers who were forced to practice cannibalism by the rebel group known as the Lord's Resistance Army. I was a bit bothered by the inclusion of this section in the book. I can see the argument in favor of including it--cannibalism was widely used by the Lord's Resistance Army as a means to subjugate and terrorize their enemies much like it was once done by the Tongans, the Aztecs, who end the book, and by other groups through history. But the overall tone of Among the Cannibals is that of an armchair adventure which is uncomfortable alongside a truly tragic story like that of the child soldiers of Africa. Should this story follow several chapters about Tonga with its bad hotels and enormous banquets? With the other sections one could argue that cannibalism was a part of the culture at one time, something that need not be regarded as monstrous in that context. I'm not saying you could make a successful argument, but you could try. The leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army act outside of their culture; they are criminals who should not be considered as anything more than the psychopathic murderers Mr. Raffaele otherwise avoids in Among the Cannibals.

Among the Cannibals was my second 300's book for the Dewey Decimal Challenge--did I mention that there's a lot of interesting stuff in the 300's? I've one more that I may read this weekend about the movie business in the United States. We'll see if there's any cannibalism there.

BTT: In Preparation for the Final

This week from Booking Through Thursday a tough one:

My husband is not an avid reader, and he used to get very frustrated in college when teachers would insist discussing symbolism in a literary work when there didn’t seem to him to be any. He felt that writers often just wrote the story for the story’s sake and other people read symbolism into it.

It does seem like modern fiction just “tells the story” without much symbolism. Is symbolism an older literary device, like excessive description, that is not used much any more? Do you think there was as much symbolism as English teachers seemed to think? What are some examples of symbolism from your reading?

I had an interesting exchange with author Patrick Ryan that fits this question.  I asked him about thematic parallels in his two novels.  I had found all sorts of things, I read each one twice to prepare questions for the interview, so many that it really seemed to me that he was working through the same issues and ideas in both books, trying out slightly different answers to the same questions.  He  said that he had not done any of this intentionally.  

... this sort of thing is fascinating to me. You’re talking about themes, and I’ve always felt that theme, in a work of fiction, is something the reader should bring to the author, and not the other way around. As in, I once had a reader friend say to me, “You’re always writing about people suffering mild financial hardship; there’s a recurring theme of economic struggle?” And I responded, “I had no idea I did that. Maybe its because I’ve never had much money?” 

The themes (In my books) regarding parenting, coming out, abandonment and the like happen organically. I think a writer tends to gravitate toward subject matter they've always found important on a deeply personal level.

I think symbols often work this way as well. They can be something that the reader brings to a work or they can be something the author has put there deliberately.  I think "not avid" readers can become frustrated with this when they have to take English classes and read literature they would otherwise ignore.  Many, probably most, books are written for the sake of the story, by which the author means the sake of the sale.  Nothing wrong with that, but that's not something one needs a class to read.  A good English class should take the students to the next level in their reading.  That can mean looking at symbols in a book and how they work.  Whether or not the author put them there on purpose, there they are.  They have an effect on the novel, which may or may not be what the author intended.

While still in high school I took a class at the local community college focused on fantasy and science fiction novels.  The professor began by giving the class an overview of Carl Jung and his ideas around archetypes: the hero, the dragon, the earth mother, etc.  We read eight or so novels over the semester and analyzed every one of them in terms of these Jungian archetypes along with Joseph Campbell's work on the Hero's Journey.  I remember everyone loving this, even when we'd read a book we didn't like that much.  Jung believed these archetypes were a part of human psychology and

 that they manifested themselves in the stories we tell.  I think it took books like The Hobbit up to another level, looking at it in terms of The Hero's Journey and Jungian archetypes.  We all felt good to discover that the books we loved could be considered literature after all.  It was nice to discover that there was more going on that a bunch a dwarves trying to fight off a series of giant spider attacks.

I suspect there probably is as much symbolism these days as there ever was, which is not all that much.   I think you can find lots of it in books with overtly religious or spiritual themes.  The wheel of life is always a popular one.  People in literal or metaphorical prisons continue to see birds flying overhead and hear trains go by.  I suspect that most of the 

novels written in the past were written for the sake of the story, again by this the authors mean the sake of the sale.  Trashy bestsellers are nothing new.  But even they contain symbols.

For example, this year 17% of all books sold in the United States contained a symbol within their title.  Twilight.  The time between day and night, neither fully light nor fully dark.  Is that not the perfect symbol for that series?  And look at the cover photo I've included here.  Two bare arms, hands cupped, holding an apple.  Tell me that's not symbolic.

See My Art at Sometimes Books in Pt. Reyes Station and a Bonus Giveaway

I've only posted about my art a few times here , but since I have four pieces in a gallery show through June I thought I'd put in a plug for them and for the gallery.

You can see three of the four pieces on the white table in these two photographs. The current show features accordion books, so I sent in several of mine. They are all mixed media and all use some level of collage. The tall piece is made from a small screen I found and from paste papers I made and cut up for another book. If you could see it up close, you'd see that it's actually a map, in this case a map of the air. I've been making books around the theme of impossible maps. You can see a video of my map of the sun here.

The long blue piece is meant to be viewed like a book or hung on the wall. It's called The Book of Blue Leaves and features my experiments with leaf prints, all in blue. The last one pictured is my paper interpretation of the landscape around Northern California, devoid of all human activity, of course. Yellow hills with dark, green tress peaking through and a solid, cloudless, blue sky. That basically sums up the landscape of the Bay Area where I live. It's made from my paste papers as well. You can display it standing up as you see in the photo or view it like a book. When viewed like a book the hills and trees pop-up as you turn each page. You can kind of see that in the photo here.

If you happen to make it to Point Reyes Station in Marin County California, just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, on a Saturday or a Sunday between noon and four, please stop by Sometimes Books. It's just around the corner from Gallery Route One which is on the corner. The town is only three blocks long. You can't miss it. Mary, who runs the gallery, is very friendly and is always happy to talk about the art on display. The gallery doubles as her studio and her work is terrific. She also has six or seven blank books that I made in three sizes, if you're looking for a journal or a sketchbook. All very reasonably priced.

In fact, I think I'll give one away here. This little journal measures just under 2 x 3 inches, has over 80 pages and features a hand sewn spine. It's perfect for whatever. If you'd like to have it, just leave a comment below or become a follower of this blog and I'll enter your name in a drawing to be held this Saturday, April 25. Dakota will pick the winner at random first thing in the morning.

The Commitment by Dan Savage

I can't shake the feeling that I've lived this moment before.

The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage and My Family by Dan Savage is not a book I thought I would like. It's hard to say exactly why I picked it up in the first place, except that I was in the 300's section of the library as part of the Dewey Decimal Challenge and I already had an armful of books when I saw it on the shelf. Why not check it out too--it's free? I used to be an occasional reader of Mr. Savage's advice column, I've more-or-less enjoyed his contributions to NPR's This American Life and I do read The Slog, where he blogs regularly. Just after the passing of California's Proposition 8 he emerged as a spokesman for same-sex marriage and held his own very nicely against the usual anti-gay people in several television spots I saw. So, I gave his book about his own marriage, The Commitment, a try.

And I enjoyed it very much.

The memoir takes place during 2004, when George Bush was running for re-election and the forces in Mr. Savage's life aligned themselves in such a way as to force him and his partner, Terry, to consider marriage much more seriously than they ever had before. They had been together for almost a decade, bought a home, raised a son who was six at the time, weren't getting any younger and, most importantly, Mr. Savage's mother was fighting a battle against an illness that she was sure to eventually lose. So there was some family pressure, which was a bit unusual since Mr. Savage's family is Irish Catholic, though his mother and one sibling are divorced. Dan and Terry's son, on the other hand, was forcefully opposed to the idea. Boys do not marry boys, he said. If you get married I won't go.

The road to marriage is a rocky one as most anyone who has ever been married can probably tell you. C.J. and I had a very simple ceremony with just 80 or so guests and a low key reception afterwards with just salads and sandwich platters that we made ourselves. It was very nice but the whole thing ended up costing several thousand dollars more than we planned and what we had to endure the day before and the morning of nearly brought about one nervous breakdown. It was totally worth it, by the way. I bet that's what always happens. It's basically what happens to Mr. Savage in The Commitment.

Mr. Savage's account of the back and forth debate whether or not to get married between himself, his mother, his partner and his son, and how they eventually planned the wedding and what happened there make for entertaining and often touching reading. I expected he would provide a few laughs along the way, and he did, but I did not expect he would bring a few tears as well. Maybe I should just publicly admit that I always cry at weddings, even if I'm just reading about them. Maybe I should also admit that the next time I see one of Mr. Savage's books on the library shelf, or his latest in the bookstore, it will probably be coming home with me.

This book counts as my selection for the 300's in the Dewey Decimal Challenge. I'm probably going to end up with three books in the 300 section. Turns out it is a very interesting century.

And The Zombie Chicken Awards Go To.....

Trish over at Trish's Reading Nook gave me this very cool award a short while ago. Receipients of the Zombie Chicken Award must demonstrate their belief “in the Tao of the zombie chicken - excellence, grace and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of zombie chickens just to be able to read their inspiring words. As a recipient of this world-renowned award, you now have the task of passing it on to at least 5 other worthy bloggers. Do not risk the wrath of the zombie chickens by choosing unwisely or not choosing at all…”

The Zombie Apocaplypse has not arrive yet, thank goodness, but Dewey's 24-Hour Read-a-Thon has come and gone and yet again I managed to miss out on it. Every time I truly intend to join in as a reader or a full flegdged cheerleader or run a mini-challenge and every time I somehow mess it up.

So I decided I'd give the Zombie Chicken award to five Read-a-thon participants as a kind of extra, time-delayed prize. Maybe next time I'll finally get it together, but until then here are five very worthy blogs and bloggers who spent 24 hours reading this past weekend, which means they just may have the stamina required to survive the Zombie Chicken Apocalypse.

• Carl over at Stainless Steel Droppings has a very interesting blog, somewhat devoted to science fiction but not limited to it. He's keeping a running list of the short stories he has read this year, too.
• Bart at Bart's Bookshelf has just started posting Vlogs. His reading also trends a bit science fiction/fantasy which may be why I haven't made his bad bloggers list, but the bad bloggers list is something you should check out.
• Myza at Books and So Many More Books is an eclectic reader after my own heart. One trip to her site and I've added The Soccer Wars, Salmon Fishing in Yeman, and The City of Djinns to my TBR pile. If I were Bart, Myza would have three bad blogger points.
• Book PSmith is spending a year more-or-less devoted to reading P.G. Wodehouse which is such a cool idea it deserves and award. If you visit you'll find that there is more to Wodehouse than Bertie and Jeeves.
• Lastly, to everyone else who participated and made it to hour 24. You all deserve an award so the Zombie Chicken is yours.

As for me, maybe I'll get my act together for the next read-a-thon in October.

Short Story Sunday: "Are You The Favorite Person of Anybody?"

I've been working my way through Miranda July's anthology of short stories No On Belongs Here More Than You for over a year now. (I don't like reading a full volume of short stories at once so I read one or two about every six to eight weeks.) I think I've hit a bit of a slump. Yesterday I read three: "I Kiss a Door," "The Boy from Lam Kien," and "Making Love in 2003," and I came away liking only one of them. Somehow, the magic was gone.

I've loved almost all of the ones I read before yesterday, my favorites: "The Swim Team," "Majesty," "This Person," and "It Was Romance." But yesterday, I came away liking only "Making Love in 2003."

So instead of writing a review of a story I wasn't crazy about, I'm posting a short video written by Ms. July that I am crazy about. In "Are You The Favorite Person of Anybody?" a man takes a survey on a quiet street corner. He has two questions: Are you the favorite person of anybody and how sure of this are you? This is what I like best about Ms. July's work. She takes such a simple idea and works it, just enough to make a point, maybe just enough to appear to make a point, yet the idea hits remarkably close to the bone. She makes us face things we wouldn't otherwise ever consider. Are you the favorite person of anybody?




If you'd like to participate in Short Story Sunday by reading a short story and writing a short review please feel free to use Mr. Linky below.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods. For instance, there is a brownstone in the East Seventies where, during the early years of the war, I had my first New York apartment.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote shares a deep bond with Christopher Isherwood's short story "Sally Bowles" which became the movie Cabaret. In each a young writer travels to a big city, gets an apartment in a building full of unusual people and meets a wonderful train wreck of a woman who wants to be a star but does not have the talent to pull it off and ends up going through a series of men until she more or less disappears from the narrator's life for good. Both movie adaptations "suffer" from the same fate, having an actress who is much too good portray the lead role. Mr. Isherwood said that Liza Minnelli was wrong for the part of Sally Bowles in Cabaret because she was too good a singer; no one could seriously believe she was a failed actress just getting by in a small nightclub. I think the same is true for Audrey Hepburn. Holly Golightly, the main character is supposed to be a failed actress/model who's looking for a rich man to marry. Can anyone seriously believe Audrey Hepburn can't make it in New York as a model or find a rich man who will marry her. Audrey Hepburn?

The narrator in Breakfast at Tiffany's is really beside the point, just as he is in "Sally Bowles." He's probably gay, which is why he can become Holly's close friend, which brings up another interesting point. Again in both stories there is a gay narrator attached to a tragically glamorous young woman. There is no plagiarism going on here, but I suspect Mr. Capote, who published his novella in 1958, had probably read Mr. Isherwood's story which was first published in 1939. In fact, they may both owe a debt of gratitude to Henry James whose novel Daisy Miller bears a striking resemblance to their work.

Breakfast at Tiffany's has long been one of my favorite movies. (What can I say; I am a gay man who once wanted to be a writer, moved to a big city and had a close friendship with a tragically glamorous young woman.) The novella does have something to offer fans of the movie as well as general readers. Though the story was cleaned up, or rather straightened up, for the movie, there are things in the book, even at only 86 pages, that add to our understanding of Holly Golightly. The book gives fans of the film another take on the character, one that is not as romantic as the one in the film, but one that is easier to believe in. It's like having two witnesses discuss the same person and the same events. Mr. Capote's Holly is much more flawed that Ms. Hepburn's is, but you probably already guessed that.

Here is the trailer for the Audrey Hepburn film. Watch it and I think you'll see what I mean about Audrey Hepbrun being too good to really be Holly Golightly.



But then, who would want to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's without Audrey Hepburn or Cabaret without Liza Minnelli?

The Alphabet by James Earl Jones

I saw this on Andrew Sullivan's blog the other day. They say a truly great actor can make the phone book sound good. How about the alphabet?



So my question is why it is called a double 'u' when it is clearly a double 'v'?

BTT: Books and Taxes

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

Yesterday, April 15th, was Tax Day here in the U.S., which means lots of lucky people will get refunds of over-paid taxes.

Whether you’re one of them or not, what would you spend an unexpected windfall on? Say … $50? How about $500?

(And, this is a reading meme, so by rights the answer should be book-related, but hey, feel free to go wild and splurge on anything you like.)

Ever since C.J. and I bought a house we've done very well in the tax refund department. (Long live the home mortgage interest deduction!) Most of our refund goes to pay for repairs and improvements in our house. This year we'll be replacing the fixtures in the upstairs bathroom, buying a new dishwasher and fixing the sprinkler system. We bought an older house. What can I say--we really like the neighborhood.

I do splurge a little bit each year. This year I'm going to take a summer class at the San Francisco Center for the Book, probably bookbinding I, maybe even II as well. I've heard many good things about the center and their courses but have yet to visit it or take a class there. I've been making books for several years, completely self-taught using various how-to books, and I'm at a point where a real art class with a real teacher would be a big help. And I think it would be fun to do.

I should be able to swing it along with most of the home repairs.

Gone to Tahoe

I've been posting by remote delay this week since C.J. and I are vacationing at Lake Tahoe for a few days. It's spring break and we both thought it would be good to get away from everything for a while and since my brother who lives in Sarajevo has a condo there.....

I tried to to get enough books and stories read to avoid a post like this, but it just didn't happen in time. We did take all of the library loot with us. That's basically our plan, lie around the condo reading books for a couple of days. We'll probably visit Reno this time up, maybe Virginia City.

So.....Closed for Vacation....Until tomorrow.

Dakota's Library Loot

I've reached the 300's in the Dewey Decimal Challenge and it's like finding a beautiful pool of water after a long drought. I've enjoyed the challenge so far, but the 0's, the 100's and the 200's were not exactly chock-a-block full of wonderful books to choose from. I did find several that I enjoyed, two of them very much. (Please see here, here, and here.) But the four I read were the only ones I found.

The 300's are another story altogether. There are two entire rows of books at my library featuring a wide range of interesting topics and titles to choose from. I ended up walking out with seven books--all that I could carry and more than I'll be able to read. Here they are: Two books about food. Among the Cannibals by Paul Raffaele is about one man's search to find the last remaining cannibal tribes in the world. Fatland by Greg Critser promises to document how Americans became the fattest people in the world.

Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich is a history of collective joy. She's the author of Nickel and Dimed which my book club read several years ago and enjoyed.

Down and Dirty Pictures by Peter Biskind. This one tells the story of the rise of independent film with a focus on Miramax pictures and the Sundance Film Festival.

The Commitment by Dan Savage is an account of the author's struggle to marry his long term partner. I don't actually like Dan Savage, though for some reason I keep reading his blog, and this book looked good. I don't know what that's all about. There were lots of books by Ann Coulter on the shelves, but I didn't pick any of those even though I really really don't like her.

The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi is an account of the author's attempt to solve a murder committed in the house next door to the one he buys in Florence, Italy. Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore is a memoir focused on the author's relationship with his brother Gary Gilmore who became the first man executed in the United States for several decades opening the gates for the many more executions that have followed.

It's hard to say which one Dakota is most interested, and, yes, photographing the books with her is certainly tempting fate. She may look interested in The Commitment, but it's really the noise outside the window that got her attention. I've since put all of the books on a very high shelf, out of her reach. They all look good to me, and I expect to read several of them before the due date arrives.

What do you think? Where should I start?

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

All true histories contain instructions; though, in some, the treasure may be hard to find, and when found, so trivial in quantity that the dry, shrivelled kernel scarcely compensates for the trouble of cracking the nut.

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte never stood a chance. First published in tandem with Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, several months after Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre had become a sensation, Anne Bronte's novel was easily dismissed as second rate. and that judgement seems to have stuck for the most part. Anne's second novel, a far superior one in my view, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was so scandalous that Charlotte did not reprint it during her lifetime in order to protect her sister's reputation. She even published an apology for it in her biographical introduction to the later editions of Anne and Emily's work.

The choice of subject was an entire mistake. Nothing less congruous with the writer's nature could be conceived. The motives which dictated this choice were pure, but, I think, slightly morbid. She had, in the course of her life, been called on to contemplate, near at hand and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents misused and faculties abused; hers was naturally a sensitive, reserved, and dejected nature; what she saw sank very deeply into her mind; it did her harm. She brooded over it till she believed it to be a duty to reproduce every detail (of course with fictitious characters, incidents, and situations) as a warning to others. She hated her work, but would pursue it.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall deals with a woman, trapped in a bad marriage to a violent alcoholic, who runs away with her young son in tow. She then meets a good man, whom she falls in love with but cannot marry because she is legally bound to do whatever her husband insists. I think it's a terrific novel that can easily hold stand up to comparison with just about everything from the 19th century. It is Anne Bronte's great misfortune that she is the sister of not one, but two of the greatest English novelists. Almost no one can hold a candle to either Charlotte or Emily Bronte.

Agnes Grey is the story of a governess. Anne Bronte, like her sister Charlotte, had first hand experience as a governess--it was one of the only job options available to an educated 19th century woman of her class. Clearly, she wanted to expose the conditions governesses faced and the circumstances that forced women to accept them. She does a fine job of this in Agnes Grey.

Agnes must leave a happy, albeit somewhat poor, home to become the governess for a succession of families because her own family cannot afford to find a suitable husband for her. Agnes does not last long at her first position, with two very small, very spoiled children whose every whim she must obey. (One begins to wonder how the English aristocracy ever learned to read at all when the children are allowed to dictate when their lessons will take place, how long they will last, and just what they will cover.) Agnes' second position is with two older girls, pre-teens or tweens in today's parlance. She fares somewhat better here, but again the parents allow the children to do whatever they want and then blame Agnes for their shortcomings. Through it all, Agnes tries to remain true to her ideals, those she learned from her own mother who gave up a substantial position to marry the man she loved, though he was only a very poor clergyman.

Many people enjoy historical fiction, as do I. But it should be noted that if you want to find out what things were like in a particular time and place, you can go often go directly to the source. Anne Bronte has painted a full picture of a governess's life, the isolation, the daily grind of the work, the demands of the employers and the children, and the small solace found when one child recognizes the hard work the governess has done. Agnes Grey may not be considered great art the way Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are, but it does provide a window into the private lives of an often misunderstood and neglected group of women.

This is my first book for the classics challenge. Five more to go.

Short Story Sunday: "A Real Doll" by A.M. Homes

I'm dating Barbie. Three afternoons a week, while my sister is at dance class. I take Barbie away from Ken. I'm practicing for the future.

There are probably many, many men out there who can identify with the main character in A.M. Homes' short story "A Real Doll," though I doubt many will admit it. Did your sister have a Barbie? Maybe your best friend's sister? Did you ever engage in what many would call unhealthy fantasy play with said Barbie?

I had two brothers, so no Barbies in our household, though I will confess I did want one. We did have G.I. Joe's and an action figure called "Big Jim" who drove a customized van, had very outdoorsy friends, and a button in his back that would make his arm give a karate chop. He came with bricks and boards that he could chop in two. We had the van, the helicopter, and the river raft, but no fantasy play that would raise any eyebrows. Not like what goes on in "A Real Doll."

From the story:

I sat on the edge of my sister's bed, my head in my hands. My sister was biting Barbie's feet off, and Barbie didn't seem to care. She didn't hold it against her, and in a way I liked her for that. I liked the fact she understood how we all have little secret habits that seem normal enough to us but which we know better than to mention out loud. I started imagining things I might be able to get away with.

If you have fond memories of your own Barbie and don't want to know what your brother may have been doing with her when you were at dance class, stay away, far away from "A Real Doll."

The story is a lot of fun, very funny in places, and it does have a point to make about how boy's learn to relate to women. I think. Barbie is a real character in the story. Though she remains an inatimate, plastic figure, she has feelings and speaks her mind, at least to the story's narrator. Their relationship begins fairly innocently and is cute and funny, perfect for NPR's This American Life. But as the two become more intimate the story leaves National Public Radio behind and things get very kinky, very NC17. Not at all for children.

I found "A Real Doll" in The Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories edited by David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell. I highly recommend it. I liked it a lot.

If you'd like to participate in Short Story Sunday please feel free to leave a link below. I'll carry this link through the month of April and then start up a new one.

Cluny: In Search of God's Lost Empire by Edwin Mullins

For five hundred years the abbey church of Cluny was the largest house of God in Christendom, demoted to second place only when St. Peter's in Rome was rebuilt in the sixteenth century, and made--deliberately--just a few feet longer.


Cluny: In Search of God's Lost Empire by Edwin Mullins is the fourth book I've read for the Dewey Decimal Challenge though I'm still in the 200's. The 200's are all about religion with a tight focus on actual religious texts, so it was a little hard for me to find something this time around. Cluny: in Search of God's Lost Empire promised to tell the story of one of the largest empires in Medieval Europe, now largely forgotten. Sounded interesting to me.

I knew of the Cluny only as the location of a wonderful collection of Medieval art in Paris. (If you ever get a chance to visit, you really should.) The Paris Cluny was built very late in the story. The Cluny Abbey lies farther south and was once the largest church in the world as well as the seat of the most powerful abbot in Europe, some would argue he was more powerful than the Pope.


The Cluny monastery began as part of a reform movement within the church during the 10th century. Their order had the very good fortune to receive a grant of land that specifically placed them outside the existing feudal system. Their order would owe fealty to no lord but God. They received similar status from the Vatican, so they were free to grow their order without interference from anyone. This was not easy to do at first, since the existing Bishops were very jealous of the Cluny's special status and worked openly against them. But the monks of the Cluny were true to their faith and true to the monastic ideals set down by Saint Benedict which inspired many lords to grant them land and to support them through donations. The lords themselves often ended their lives by joining the Cluny as monks.


During the 11th century the Cluny was led by only two abbots who remained in power for over 50 years each. One of these was Hugh who became a major power broker in the struggle between the church and the kings of Europe over the question of lay investiture. Unless you have been a seventh grade student in California during the last ten years, you may not know about this struggle. (Even if you were, you've probably forgotten all about it.) But the question of who would appoint bishops was the major controversy in the struggle over who would rule Medieval Europe, the church or the state. The debate led to the excommunication of the Holy Roman Emperor, to the forced removal of the Pope, the sacking of Rome, and to a schism within the church that left Europe with two rival Popes, one in Italy and one in France. Because the Cluny was seen as free of corruption, as true to its religious calling, Abbot Hugh was able to negotiate a truce between the Pope and the renegade Emperor, which eventually gave the church the sole ability to appoint bishops and led to the separation of church and state. It also led many more people to give the Cluny land and other forms of support which made the Cluny the largest land holder in Europe.


But things change. The Franciscan orders, which promoted the idea that monks should be engaged with the world through charitable works instead of living cloistered lives, came along and reduced the popularity and influence of the Cluny. The order eventually became known not for its religious faith but for the lavish lifestyles of its members. It was during this period that the structures in Paris were built as home for the abbot who soon moved there permanently. Eventually the French revolution came along, disbanded the order completely, and used the great abbey church as a stone quarry for new construction. Only a small portion of it, seen in the photograph pictured here, remains.


Cluny: In Search of God's Lost Empire provides a good overview of the Cluny's history. As a general survey of history, it's a good book. However, it does not go into great depth like many other histories I've read. We get to know the major players, like Abbot Hugh, but there is a dearth of minor ones, the smaller roles that can help bring a history to life. I was expecting more information than I got. This, of course, may be the result of what has been lost over time or any number of things beyond the author's control, but at just over 200 pages one feels that there must be more to say.

Non-Fiction Five: A New Challenge

Trish is hosting the Non-Fiction Five Challenge this year. That makes three challenges I've signed up for in 2009 even though I promised not to sign up for any. The challenge is to read five non-fiction books between May and September of this year. You also have to read at least one that is outside of your usual pattern of non-fiction reading.

I've no idea what I'll read yet, but I guess I'll have to stray away from history for at least one choice. I'm pretty sure I can double count these books with the Dewey Decimal Challenge books.

Any suggestions?

BTT: How Many Books?

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

Some people read one book at a time. Some people have a number of them on the go at any given time, perhaps a reading in bed book, a breakfast table book, a bathroom book, and so on, which leads me to…

Are you currently reading more than one book?
If so, how many books are you currently reading?
Is this normal for you?
Where do you keep your current reads?

Sometimes I read one book at a time, sometimes I read several at a time, often as many as five or six. I regularly take a break from whatever book I'm reading to read a short story or two for Short Story Sunday. I don't read entire volumes of short stories at a time. I have a collection of 17 story anthologies, and read a story from one, then move on to the next.

At the moment I am only reading book, Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte. This is normal for me, but so is reading many books at once. I think I may start multiple books after this because I have a large pile of non-fiction I just checked out from the library.

I do try to keep my books on a table or shelf that Dakota, my dog, cannot reach, but, as regular readers of this blog know, I don't always succeed. I should probably say, I don't always remember. I have no special place where I keep my current reads. I'll set them down anywhere, and I often end up looking for them.

I should be more organized.

The Pop-up Book of Nightmares - A Wednesday Wonder

Mary has three times as many apples as Susan, who is on a train traveling from New York to Los Angeles at an average speed of 80 mph. Using the formula below, prove that morality can exist is a Godless universe. Show all work.

The Pop-up Book of Nightmares by Gary Greenberg, Balvis Rubess and Matthew Reinhard is not really a pop-up book for kids, maybe for precocious middle schoolers, but not for little kids. Sandy at You've Gotta Read This mentioned her family's love of pop-up books in a comment last week, and that got me thinking about them and one of my favorites, The Pop-up Book of Nightmares.

All of the standard nightmares are here, all cleverly and creepily illustrated: taking a test, public speaking, falling, spooky bedrooms, child-birth, appearing naked in public. The illustrations are clever and the mechanical design of the pop-ups add to the fun. The doll below has eyes that move back and forth as you open and close the book, for example.

Pop-Ups have come a long way since I read them as a child. The advent of computer design tools has made very complex pop-ups possible, many of them far more complicated than The Pop-Up Book of Nightmares. But the illustrations here are still quite good, even eight years after publication. In one, the falling nightmare is illustrated by a pop-up spiral staircase featuring three floors of stairway that the reader ends up staring into for a startling illustration of falling.  In another, the fear of appearing in public naked, the a baseball player and an umpire pull back the shower curtains to reveal that the reader is in the middle of a baseball game with thousands of spectators.  That's as racy, and probably as scary, as the book gets, probably safe for most 6th graders  and up.

So this week's Wednesday Wonder is The Pop-Up Book of Nightmares.  

Sleep tight.

In Mike We Trust by P.E. Ryan

They were just finishing dinner when they heard a screech of tires, followed by several taps of a car horn.

In Mike We Trust by P.E. Ryan is the author's second young adult novel. (For an interview with the author see here.) Mr. Ryan wrote two of my favorite reads from 2008, The Saints of Augustine and Send Me, so you should consider me something of a fan. I'm pleased to say that Mr. Ryan's second YA novel does not disappoint.

The setting for In Mike We Trust is Richmond, Virginia where 15-year-old Garth lives with his widowed mother. Garth is a good kid, small for his age; he works three shifts a week at a local grocery, a job he hates, to help his mom make ends meet and to put away some money for college. His best friend and confidant is wanna-be photographer Lisa. Lisa has no problem with the fact that Garth is gay, neither does Garth, but his mother has asked him to put the issue on the back-burner, not to discuss it, and not to tell anyone who isn't family about it. At least for now. Garth is more concerned about helping his mother who is still dealing with the sudden, accidental death of his father than he is about being out, so he agrees to go along. At least for now.

Enter Uncle Mike, Garth's father's identical twin brother. Mike has not been a fixture in the family for some time--he did not get along with his brother well--but he is in town for a few weeks and wants to reconnect. While Garth's mother is at work, Mike and Garth set out on a series of "fundraisers" which Garth soon realizes are nothing but scams to con people out of their money. The two of them set up a table in front of a store in a nearby town and hand out phony pamplets about a phony disease, give out Tootsie-pops to the kids and collect donations from the parents. Mike's scams become more elaborate as the books goes on and Garth becomes more and more uncomfortable with them, with his uncle and with his mother's insistence that he remain in the closet.

One reason Garth is so willing to go along with Mike's plans is that he is completely comfortable with him being gay, and he begins to push Garth out of the closet, something Garth resists but clearly also likes. Mike takes him to the local gay bookstore, buys him appropriate books and a DVD of Beautiful Thing. (A terrific movie, by the way.) Mike even encourages him to go out with Adam, a friend of Lisa's whom they meet in the bookstore.

In Mike We Trust does deal with serious issues, though not as serious as the ones in The Saints of Augustine, but there are plenty of laughs along the way and the overall tone of the novel is much more comic than Saints was. I suspect, in the end, that most of Mr. Ryan's younger readers are probably really reading for the romance, and the romance certainly satisfies. Once again Mr. Ryan does an excellent job of capturing the wonderful awkwardness of the first date. One thing I like most about In Mike We Trust is that the fact that Garth is gay approaches incidental. He does have a conflict about this with his mother, but the book is really about his relationships with Mike, Lisa and Adam. Garth, himself has no problem with being gay at all. 30 years ago, when I was 15 and secretly reading books like this one, Lisa would have been the main character of the book and either Garth or Adam would have died in a car crash. It's nice to see that everyone can find happiness, now.

P.E. Ryan writes novels for adults under the name Patrick Ryan. He is currently working on his second adult novel. I'm looking forward to it.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: Part III - Marius

"Paris has her especial child and the woods have their especial bird. The bird is the sparrow, and the child is the street-urchin."

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: Part III Marius is the weakest part of the novel so far. In fact, if you're intimidated by the length of the novel, I think you could skip this section altogether.

Almost 500 pages into the novel's 1200, Mr. Hugo is still introducing characters, still setting up the plot. Unfortunately, Marius, the main character of Part III, is a complete bore; I began to lose patience with him very soon. The son of a decorated and then forgotten veteran of Napoleon's army, Marius is raised by his wealthy, aristocratic maternal grandfather who refuses to allow any mention of his son-in-law in his house. Marius grows up believing his father, who is still alive, is a scoundrel and that those who fought alongside Napoleon were traitors to the king. After his father dies, Marius learns the truth, that he was a hero and that he gave Marius up so he could benefit from his grandfather's money and position. Of course, Marius denounces his grandfather and begins to live the life of a poor student and then a poor clerk.

Marius' circle of friends, classmates largely, are much more political than the circle of college students in Part One of the novel. They spend each evening discussing the politics of the day and what should be done to restore the revolutionary ideals of France. Marius gradually drifts away from this group as he becomes obsessed with a beautiful girl he sees on daily walks in the Luxembourg Gardens with her elderly father. He does not speak to her in Part III, though he follows her for over 100 pages, but the two eventually begin to exchange glances, which the father notices. I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but you can probably guess who the "father and daughter" are already.

There is a plot twist involving Threnadier, the unpleasant innkeeper from Parts I and II, and eventually Inspector Javert reappears, but while these sort of twists were entertaining reading in the first two parts, in Part III they are expected, almost telegraphed long before they arrive. I really just wanted to get on with the story. I know the street battle section and the chase through the Paris sewers lie in wait in parts IV and V and this did not make reading Part III any easier.

So, I know this is considered sacrilege among some, but you may want to consider just skipping over Part III altogether. You won't be missing much.

While looking for pictures to post with this entry I found several examples of Victor Hugo's artwork. Eugene Delecroix, the painter and one of Mr. Hugo's contemporaries, had high praise for Mr. Hugo's artwork. Delecroix regretted that Hugo never spent time developing this talent. I've included two of his pen and ink pieces here for your consideration. I think they are a bit surreal, myself, but I like them.

Short Story Sunday: "A Woman, Young and Old" by Grace Paley

It turns out Grace Paley's stories are about sex. At least the three I've read so far are. To be honest, I'm a little shocked by this. I've long heard her praised as one of the best short story writers out there, but never read her until recently. I don't know quite what I was expecting, but it wasn't what I found in her short story "A Woman, Young and Old."

Josephine, the fourteen-year-old narrator, lives with her older sister Lizzy, her mother and her grandmother. The sons of the family have all left home. "Sons are like that, first grouchy, then gone," as Josephine's grandmother says.

One night Lizzy brings home a good looking corporal who quickly becomes the center of everyone's attention, especially young Josephine's. She decides that she is in love with Browny, as he's called, and that the two of them should be married. After a long evening, Browny ends up staying the night which gives Josephine the opportunity to sneak into bed with him and convince him that they should get married. The next morning, she announces this to her family. Lizzy is not all that concerned since he was just a date, grandmother is shocked to hear this from a young girl, but mother goes out that same day and comes home with a Lieutenant.

"A Woman, Young and Old" is a comic story in the same sense the Eudora Welty's stories are comic. There are plenty of laughs along the way, but the whole thing tends to make the reader a little uncomfortable, too. Paley looks like she is having fun here, maybe having her way with the reader, but she's definitely up to something. I'm hooked. Expect to see more of her stories reviewed here.

If you'd like to participate in Short Story Sunday this month, please feel free to leave a link or a comment below.