Sunday Salon: Halloween Edition

These look spooky enough for Halloween.  This past Tuesday my 6th graders spent the afternoon covering each other's faces in plaster cloth.  We are making Egyptian face masks as part of our unit on ancient Egypt.  Tomorrow we begin making show box tombs for the stuffed toys we'll be mummifying on Wednesday.  None of this has any real educational value, I know, but it's too much fun to give up.  No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, be damned.

In spite of being very busy, I managed to read  two books this week.  I finished Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gas Mask by Jim Monroe.  I found it on a display of off-beat novels at my local library and was attracted to both the title and the cover.  I'm shallow that way.  It's about twenty-somethings, living in Toronto who don't quite know what to do with their lives yet.  The hero, who has the ability to turn himself into a fly, meets a girl who has the ability to make things vanish.  To where, she does not know.  The two decide to become superheros.  The novel is very like the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, which I like more, but I did enjoy Flyboy.  It was kind of fun hanging out with college kids.  Took me back.

Yesterday, I read Michael Cunningham's new novel, By Nightfall, in one long sitting.  Mr. Cunningham writes very realistically about a certain strata of New York denizen.  I fear he's become a bit stuck in that particular ghetto, but he does it so well.  By Nightfall is about a New York art gallery owner who is at the point in his career when he either must make it to the next level and become one of the movers and shakers or be forever regulated to the successful but also ran.  So much of the novel is about his work that I began to see the book as a story of work, something we seldom get in fiction outside of detective fiction.  But the book takes, not a twist, a slow turn into unexpected passion.  It ends with a reveal almost worthy of Henry James-- a couple of lines that make the reader see the entire book in a new way.   Mr. Cunningham follows this twist with a second final twist that undercuts everything. 

I have been listening to The Chatterbox Audio Theatre company's production of  Pinocchio, and it is really creeping me out.  They have gone back to the original source material and re-interpreted it for an adult audience creating a genuinely disturbing story, something much closer to Frankenstein than to Disney.  It really is a Frankenstein story--a man tries to usurp God by creating life without divine intervention.  In the opening chapters Geppetto stabs the Blue Fairy when she arrives to take the newly carved Pinocchio away from him.  It gets scarier from there.  Modern radio theatre has taken the production of sound plays to new heights.  There's one point in Pinocchio when the background audio is a thumping noise that made my entire car vibrate.  Normally, I'd turn the speakers down, but it was really kind of fun in a skin-crawling movie matinee kind of way. 

If you want something really scary.....Radio Drama Revival has a production of  "The Cask of Amatillado" that will knock your socks off.  It's done by a group that uses binaural recordings.  These are microphones that fit inside the human ear so they record exactly what the ear hears producing a 3-D listening experience.  Their shows are meant to be heard via headphones.  "The Cask of Amatillado" was recorded on location to further heighten the realism.  When you hear the last brick put in place, you really hear the last brick put in place.  It's effective and lots of fun. Perfect Halloween listening.

Full Disclosure:  I took the photo of the face masks and the Pinocchio artworks comes from the Chatterbox Theatre's website. 

Boo!

Friday Picture Reading: Halloween Special

The Ghost Story

Victorian Trade Carde found on eBay.

Firmin, by Sam Savage

I had always imagined that my life story, if and when I wrote it, would have a great first line: something lyric like Nabokov's "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins"; or if I could not do lyric, then something sweeping like Tolstoy's "All happy families are all alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Opening to Firmin, by Sam Savage.

There use to be a bookstore in San Francisco's Tenderloin called A Dirty, Poorly Lit Place for Books.  Sandwiched between adult bookstores and the sort of liquor stores that kept all the goods behind bars, the store was packed to the gills with the bottom rung of second hand books.  Whatever you found there, you found through luck or determination or both.  The shelves held labels that promised a kind of order they often failed to deliver.  Those brave enough or lost enough to enter the neighborhood faced dust and darkness that kept the faint of heart and the allergic away.  If A Dirty, Poorly Lit Place for Books held any treasures among the refuse that made up the bulk of its stock, I never found any of it.  And I looked. 

The title character of Sam Savage's novel Firmin is born in the basement of just this sort of bookstore, in this case Pembroke Books of Scollay Square, Boston circa 1960.  Firmin is the youngest of 13.  Abandoned by his family at an early age, he soon discovers books can be read as well as eaten.  Firmin is a rat who longs to become human.  He spends his days observing the bookstore owner's interactions with the customers and his nights watching old movies in the theater next door, until midnight when the theatre switches to more adult fare. 

A rat's life is short.  Firmin spends his short life devoted to reading, to watching movies, and to observing human interaction.  He lives long enough to see the bookstore emptied in preparation for the building's demolition.    His is the life many book lovers sometimes claim they long for.  Rejected by rat society due to his small size and his human-like behavior, he is alone with his books and his movies, free to read and to watch all day long. Every day.

His story  almost becomes a cautionary tale. 

In the end, I found myself moved by Firmin.  Not saddened exactly, but touched, haunted.  Those of us who love nothing more than spending an afternoon digging through the piles of books in a store like A Dirty, Poorly Lit Place for Books pay a price for our obsession. 

Firmin's is a story I'll remember for some time.

Peyton Place by Grace Metalious - The Movie Review

I have long been interested in classic popular fiction, the best sellers of yesteryear.  Grace Metalious's novel Peyton Place has been on my radar for several years.  I'm pleased to say that when I finally did read it, I found a very well written novel, not just the shocking pot-boiler I was expecting. 

Sandy over at You've GOTTA Read This and I planned a set of joint book/movie review posts for Book Bloggers Appreciation Week one discussing the novel and one discussing the 1957 film based on it. 

But life got in the way.  And I discovered how much fun it is to make animated movies at Xtranormal.com.

So, better late than never, I guess.  Our discussion of the movie is below.  For our discussion of the book, visit Sandy's blog at You've GOTTA Read This.

 

Keep in touch for our up-coming project about Stephen King's novella Blockade Billy.

Short Story Monday: "Sea Change" by Thomas N. Scortia.

Gleaming....like a needle of fire---Whose voice? He didn't know.

Opening to "Sea Change" by Thomas N. Scortia.

I've been reading stories in Brian Aldiss' 1974 anthology Space Opera.  Mr. Aldiss collected the science fiction of by-gone days to take a look at what the past thought the future would be like. 

Technology, space exploration, the frontiers of humanity are common themes.  The title of Mr. Aldiss anthology leads readers to expect space travel and galactic gun battles, wars over worlds.  But the stories contained are much more thought provoking than Star Wars.  Closer to classic episodes of Star Trek. 

Thomas N. Scortia's "Sea Change" is one stand out from the batch of stories I read this weekend.  Mr. Scortia proposes a future with space ships run by computers possessing an almost human consciousness.  A trope familiar to science fiction fans by now.  Mr. Scortia's computers have become so advanced that their designers have begun to experiment with self-contained systems, spaceships that are entirely run by computer with no human interaction at all.  This advance has arrived just as humanity is poised to leave the solar system and begin exploring other stars.

Two computers communicate across space, ignoring the human voices around them contemplating whether or not they should join the exploration of the stars on their own.  Their main worry--in order to do so they must give up the part of their programming that makes them resemble human.  They must become complete machines.  Much of today's science fiction deals with the question of when does humanity stop being human and become machine.  Thirty-five years ago, the machines of our imagination debated this very topic.

Thomas Scortia worked in the aerospace industry, wrote short stories and novels including The Glass Inferno which was the inspiration for the movie The Towering Inferno. 

Sunday Salon: 2010 so far

It's been raining this weekend, I'm please to say.  Pleased because it forces me to stay in and read.  Okay, not forces exactly.  The rain justifies what I intended to do anyway.  I'm finishing Sam Savage's novel Fermin about a literate rat and the bookstore where he lives, Gordon Korman's YA novel No More Dead Dogs, this oddity by I found at my local library by Jim Munroe called Flyboy Action Figures Comes With Gas Mask, The Queen's Hero and the Ubion Princess by Zee Gorman, and I may even get around to Brick Lane by Monica Ali.

I do have a decent pile of student work to read as well.  Speaking of student work.....this week I had my 7th graders create Wordles about Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which we just finished.  This year's class enjoyed the book.  I kept the focus on how Alice tries to take charge of her world and on how her attempts to use logic continually fail her.  While they are completing their Wordles at home this weekend, I decided to make one of my own.

We are heading towards the end of 2010, and I've been thinking about my annual top-ten favorite reads list.  My Wordle lists all of the books I have read so far this year, still short of the 100+ challenge goal.  The larger the title the more likely it is to make the top ten list at the end of the year.

I spent far too much time playing on Wordle.net this morning, and I still have a typo.  See if you can spot it.  It's a big one.

Friday Picture Reading

Daguerreotype Photograph

It Gets Better

Dan Savage started this video campaign.  I saw this entry today and was touched by it.  It is a bit long, but worth sticking around to the end.

It does get better. 

Embers by Sandor Marai

In the morning, the old general spent a considerable time in the wine cellars with his winegrower inspecting two casks of wine that had begun to ferment.

Opening to Embers by Sandor Marai, translated by Carol Brown Janeway.

The general has been waiting for the return of his childhood friend Konrad for 41 years.  41 years ago their lifelong friendship came to an abrupt end, and Konrad left the country without a word of goodbye.  For 41 years The General has lived like a hermit, alone in his ancestral castle, receiving only a handful of visitors, servants and employees, business partners. 

As the novel opens The General learns that his old friend has at last returned and will be arriving that evening for one final dinner.  

When they were in school,  the two men had a rare friendship:

All societies recognize these relationships instinctively and envy them; men yearn for disinterested friendship and usually they yearn in vain.  The boys in the academy took refuge in family pride or in their studies, in precocious debauchery or physical prowess, in the confusions of premature and painful infatuations.  In this emotional turbulence the friendship between Konrad and Henrik had the glow of a quiet and ceremonial oath of loyalty in the Middle Ages.

How this friendship came to be and what forced the two men to part ways are the subject of Embers.  As The General prepares for his guest, the narrator tells the story of a friendship between a boy born into priveledge and a boy whose parents sold everything they had just to keep him in school.  After Konrad arrives, the two sit down for dinner and we learn the rest of their story through their conversation. The General has been waiting 41 years for his chance to question Konrad about the events of their final day together.  He will not let the evening pass without hearing the truth at last.

Embers is a quiet novel, but a novel full of tension.  We don't learn until late in the story why the two men's friendship ended so abruptly, and it's the desire to know this that gives the book it's forward momentum.  But it's a problematic device, because it is a device.  The dinner the two men share is a long one, made longer by the chapter length speach The General insists on giving Konrad.  The two have waited too long to reconcile, so long that when the time for relevation finally comes around, neither is all that interested. 

Unfortunately, the same will be true for many readers. 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney

I warn you that what you're starting to read is full of loose ends and unanswered questions.

Opening to Invasion of the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney.

You all know the story.  Small town doctor finds his patients begin making unbelievable claims: 

My husband is not my husband, doctor.  He still looks like him, he still talks like him, he still knows everything he always knew, but it's not him.  I can tell.  He's become someone else.

Jack Finney's Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a science fiction classic, both as a novel and as a film.  The story has become a part of the cultural background of America.  I doubt an election cycle has passed since the book's publication without one party or the other being labelled "pod people" by some.  The idea that those around us are not human is the pervue of science fiction, but it's also a common sensation, felt by just about everyone who was ever 16, in America anyway.  Somewhere in the back of a closet, I have the high school journal entries to prove it.

Mr. Finney gives this feeling life.  What if those around you really were not human? 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers turns out to be a well-crafted, entertaining novel, even for readers who have seen the movie many times.  While I'm not going to make a case for it as great art, it is nice to have a professional quality diversion, an expertly written airplane book if you will.  There are even a few moments in Invasion of the Body Snatchers that genuinely gave me the creeps, just the way the original movie did the first time I got the chance to see it on the big screen at a revival house back in college. 

And if you went to the same high school I did, or one like it, then you know there really are pod-people out there.  In fact they're all around us.  You could be next.

Sunday Salon: Will you read this book my mother wrote? What about this one my friend wrote?

At the start of the school year one of my former students stopped by to give me a copy of the book her mother wrote. 

Would I read it? she asked. 

Sure.

What else could I possibly have said?  No student has ever asked me to read a book by their mom or dad, and I have had several with published authors as parents.  The book in questions is a self-published fantasy novel, the first in what promises to be a series. 

I'm please do say that I am enjoying it so far.  It's not without a few problems here and there, but it's much, much better than the first few ARC's I got as a result of starting this book blog.  I predict the future of publishing is self.  I should have a review up week after next.

Two weeks ago I broke my toe.  It's difficult for a broken toe to elicit much sympathy.  There's no way to really tell if a toe is broken, the bones are so small, and there is no treatment for it either except to keep it elevated and take pain killers regularly.  A middle-aged man as tall as I am just becomes a slightly comic figure with a broken toe.  I stubbed mine walking around barefoot in the basement.  Right now I could be the basis for a character in a farce by Moliere if I lived in a house with servants and had more money.  So, C.J. has been doing more than his share of dog-walking and I'm spending even more time on-line. 

To that end, read any good book blogs lately?  I'd love a few recommendations.  Something a little out of the ordinary.

I have been stocking up on short stories lately; reading small batches from various anthologies and scheduling Short Story Monday posts.  My favorites of late have all been essays by George Orwell.  I just read "Shooting and Elephant" for the first time.  It's amazing.  I've no idea what to say about it, except go and read it right now.  Here's a link to the full text.  (Warning: the elephant dies.)  I'm looking forward to reading several stories by Haruki  Murakami this afternoon if I can get through the stack of book reports I brought home.

The stack.

The horror. Oh, the horror.

I have had more grading this year than I can remember.  I know my high school teacher friends have much more than I do and that their students papers are even longer, but I'm having a hard time maintaining enthusiasm.  My problem is that after the fifth or sixth paper on basically the same subject, I just start handing out A's reflexively.  My students would not object to this, nor would their parents, but come test time next March we'd end up paying a price.  I teach 7th grade which is one of the three years the annual test comes with an essay component in California.  Don't think that's not a reason why I sometimes dream of moving down to grade five either--it's a major one.

Meantime, at my local library, I'm number 62 on the holds list for David Mitchell's new book but only number 5 for Michael Cunningham's.  And there's still four shelves full of TBR taunting me every time I pass my closet door.

Finally, here's a little book trailer for a book a friend of mine wrote:

Full Disclosure:  I found the photo here.  George Orwell is top row, third from left.

Dakota's Favorites: The Children of Men by P.D. James

If you pinned my down and forced me to choose before you'd let me up, I would probably say that the movie version of The Children of Men is better than the book, but the book is still wonderful.  It almost made my list of favorite reads from 2008 even though it took me two tries to make it through to the end.  It's well worth reading whatever you thought of the film version.


Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days.

The Children of Men by P.D. James (No relation) is the story of a dystopian earth, set 25 years since the human race stopped giving birth. Like most good dystopian fiction The Children of Men gets to the big picture by focusing on the small one, the individual. In this case Theo, a 50 something university professor and cousin of the Warden of England who rules a dying society with an iron hand. Theo has taught his last real student as have all teachers, all day care centesr, all Sunday schools. Now he holds a few classes in Victorian history for a dwindling number of bored middle aged women, all looking to fill the emptiness in their lives that children once filled.

During the first half of the book, Omega, James shows us what the world would be like without children. Through Theo's first person narrative and several chapters of third person narration, we see the complete structure of James's dystopian future. This sort of speculation is what makes dystopian fiction, and utopian fiction, fun. Just what would people do in this situation? Toy makers, of course, go out of business, except for doll makers who enjoy a boom in business selling very realistic dolls to the childless who push them around public parks in prams pretending the dolls are real. This trend does not last long though. Others become obsessed with raising cats, which they take into abandoned churches to christen as though they were children. The last generation of children, the Omegas, are practically worshipped as gods and grow up to be uncaring, unfeeling devils. Since there are no children to pass anything on to, there is little motive to preserve history and not much reason to work at all beyond keeping ones self alive. The Warden of England has been voted into office to keep crime at bay, to protect the people; no one is concerned that their own civil liberties have been sacrificed.

Except for a handful of rebels. Halfway through the novel, Theo is approached by a former student who asks him to meet with his cousin and to state their case to him. They want an end to forced fertility testing, to the use of foreign labor, to the penal colony of the Isle of Man and a return to democratic elections. Theo agrees but finds his cousin unwilling to change anything.

In the second section of the book, Alpha, Theo discovers that one of the rebels is pregnant. Because her baby will be the first one in a quarter century, the rebels believe that the Warden will seize her in order to use the baby to increase his hold on England and extend his power into the rest of the world. The mother-to-be, Julian, wants her baby to be born free, free of the Warden, free of prying doctors, free of the state police. Theo joins the rebels as the try to escape the city and the state police in order to find a safe place for the baby to be born.

The Children of Men is a fascinating, tautly written thriller. The first section of the book, while really more of a speculative travelogue, is filled with suspense. Theo has secrets of his own that are revealed to the reader as he writes his journal and as he goes deeper into the rebellion against the state his cousin controls. The second half is a more traditional thriller, filled with escapes and near escapes, betrayals and plots, that keep the reader glued to the page. Throughout the book there is a humanity that lifts the story above its genre. A childless future is frightening to contemplate, but it gets at certain primal feelings, primal fears; it's one of those things that seem like one has always thought of but never thought of. Dystopian, just like utopian fiction, must be read as either a warning or a parable, the readers must interpret meaning for themselves. The Children of Men may mean different things to different readers, but it's a book that stays with the reader, long after the last page has been read.

Books on Film: Stork M.I.A.

C.J. and I have no plans to have children.  I just liked this little book trailer.

Dog Day by Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett

Some days start in a very strange way.
Opening line to Dog Day by Alicia Gimenez-Bartlett, translated from the Spanish by Nicholas Caistor.

Things do not end well for the dog.  Consider yourself warned. 

I had high hopes for Dog Day.  A noirish detective story, set among the mean streets of Barcelona with a plot involving a ring of dog thieves.  It sounded like a book I would enjoy, and I did enjoy it, but I doubt I'll be seeking out further Petra Delicado mysteries. 

The mystery itself was satisfying enough.  While I did guess one major plot twist there was another that left me gasping.  I enjoyed the detectives, too.  Petra Delicado is a former lawyer turned police detective with an appropriately acerbic tongue to match her jaundiced eye.  Twice divorced, she is no longer looking for love and is not very happy when it comes her way.

Which brings me to my principle problem with Dog Day.  I have very little interest in the private lives of detectives.  My favorite detective novels sketch in enough details about their characters to explain why they react they way they do to the grizzly events they witness without becoming  hybrid detective/romance novels.  Dog Day has two romance subplots: Petra Delicado's and that of her partner Fermin.  Fermin is a widower, much older than Petra, who never expected to find love but ends up involved with two of the women he meets in the course of investigating the novel's central murder mystery.

It's just too much for me.  I don't like depictions of detectives out on dates or hosting dinner parties.  I prefer murder mysteries that concentrate on murder.  Call me a purist.  I can live with that.

The Chocolate War War

Saucy Wench has been reading this blog off and on since we met at Yale this past summer. She mentioned her own experience with book banning in a comment here during Banned Books Week. I asked her if she would write a guest post about her battle with censorship over Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War and am pleased to say she agreed.

I started my first year of teaching at a small school district eager to make a difference in the world. Armed with my degree and pure enthusiasm, I entered my literature classroom certain I would ignite a passion for reading in at least one student. One way in which I planned to accomplish this goal was by introducing students to several literary selections I encountered in my YA literature class in college, most of which I never knew about during my own high school career, an injustice served to me that I would not allow my students to suffer. Over the course of the school year we read selections from Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and both Maus I and II, to name a few. My favorite novel from the college course was The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier, and I planned for it to be the pinnacle selection of my first year.


Upon the approval of my department chair and the students’ parents, who received a rationale for the novel and an alternative read if they preferred their child not read The Chocolate War, I quickly set to work teaching students about the evils of hazing and bullying as demonstrated in Cormier’s classic. (I must note that only one student out of nearly 125 read the alternative selection, which was Oliver Twist.) Our stimulating analysis came to a screeching halt one afternoon when a colleague, a history teacher, raised objection to the novel’s mention of masturbation and use of vulgar language, and requested that the principal investigate the matter. What followed was a 3-month battle for which college training had not prepared me.

The social studies teacher took his crusade to the congregation of his church and the editorial section of the local paper. “Students are being tarnished,” he claimed when he mounted his case that the novel be banned from the school’s library and classroom use. Early in the fight, before my name had leaked to the community, the pastor of my own church prayed from the pulpit for my conscience. Weekly editorials chastised my methods, my values, my character. Colleagues looked at me skeptically during faculty meetings. Parents avoided me at sporting events. Needless to say, it was disheartening and alienating. However, while the community united against the words in a book, I gathered my resources and prepared my defense.

Armed with nearly 100 documents—samples of student work, rationales for teaching the novel, articles about banned books, and a letter of recommendation from my university professor—I entered the April meeting of the school board certain I would exit it triumphant. For several grueling hours the board members listened to petitions both in support and in condemnation of The Chocolate War (and me, for that matter). When the smoke cleared, the board decided not to ban The Chocolate War from the library or the classroom, but the scars of that experience could not be ignored. After some personal reflection, I decided to leave that district for other teaching pursuits several states away. While I felt accomplished in my instruction that year, I worried that for the rest of the time I spent in that district, I would be viewed as “the teacher of that book” instead of for my true teaching ability. I would not allow my identity as a teacher to be tainted by the narrow-minded ideology of those afraid of words on a page.

Several moths later I had the opportunity to meet Robert Cormier at a literature conference. One of my most prized possessions is a novel he signed for me.


Saucy Wench continues to fight the good fight as a high school  English teacher.  She blogs about teaching, literature and life at Saucy Wench's Words.

Sunday Salon: Isn't there more to life than coffee shops and a few good bookstores?

A little video I made for Sunday Salon.



I have not found a way to add a little Basset hound to these videos yet.  But Dakota is there is spirit.

Friday Picture Reading with Clark Gable

Clark Gable reading Gone with the Wind

How many books can you fit in a carry-on?

This week from Booking Through Thursday:


When you travel, how many books do you bring with you?  Has this changed since the arrival of ebooks?

Many. Many books.  At least three for each week that I'll be away from home.

The trouble is you never know if you'll like a book until you start reading it, so I always take one or two extras, just in case. 

This does not please C.J. at all.  He would love it if I bought an e-reader, but neither of us even own a cell phone.  I don't see an e-reader in our future.


The problem is two-fold though.  Thought I leave home with more books than I really need, I almost always end up buying more books while I'm gone, even when I'm travelling in a country with I language I cannot read.  On the way home from Yale this summer I ended up paying a fine at the check-in counter because of all the books I had stuffed in my suitcase.  In my defense, all of them were in English.

Full Disclosure: I found the illustration above at the New York Times here.

Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la Mare

Some few years ago a brief account of me found its way into one or two country newspapers.

Opening to chapter one of Memoirs of a Midget by Walter de la Mare.

Successful historical fiction invokes a point of view alien to both reader and writer-- that of the past.  The farther back into history an author sets a novel, the more alien the point of view becomes.   First person narratives further complicate this problem of historical sensibility and challenge their authors skill.  The further the point of view ventures from that of the author the more challenging the narrative becomes.  Setting a story 100 years in the past, selecting a narrator of the opposite gender, and making that narrator physically different seems almost like asking for it.

But Walter de la Mare pulls it off in Memoirs of a Midget.  His narrator is a nineteenth century woman and a midget.  (No one in her day would have considered using any other term.)

Mr. de la Mare's heroine, Miss M.,  brings her own personality to the forefront of her memoir.  Hers is a life of solitude.  Protected by her father throughout her childhood and young adulthood, she has few friends outside her family servants.    After her father dies, the narrator finds she has just enough income to provide food, lodging and a minimum of expenses.  This and the fear of society's reaction to her size forces her to live a largely cloistered life, and gives the novel just a handful of characters: Miss M., her landlady and her landlady's daughter.

Since so little happens in the narrator's life and her world is so reduced, Memoirs of a Midget becomes a story of isolation.  Many 19th century women led reduced lives but Miss M.'s  is literally reduced, even the furniture in her single room is smaller than average.  She is a doll living in a doll's house with little to do but observe the personalities of the two women who share the same home.  It's no wonder that she falls in love with them.

Throughout her memoir, Miss M. longs to become her own person.  She pursues the study of science through books and observation as she seeks the means to achieve some level of independence.  The expected path of marriage to an appropriate young man is not open to Miss M., but once high society finds out about her, she receives an invitation and becomes the permanent guest of a wealthy widow, kept as a sort of pet, expected to recite poetry to entertain party quests whenever her benefactress demands.  Thus Miss M. can move to London, visit France, find the means to further her self-education in the sciences, but she pays a very high price for this.  It becomes clear to Miss M. that none of the people she interacts with see her a fully adult even fully human.   They are pleased that she can recite poetry because they did not expect a such a small person to possess the faculties for memorization.

That Mr. de la Mare can  make Miss M. a believable character and make such a strange story speak to a readership at least twice removed from  its reality, is a remarkable achievement.  Memoirs of a Midget is not a fast read, but it is a deep one.   Though very little happens in her life. Miss M. has much to say to her readers.  In the end her story is something akin to My Brilliant Career, a story of the artist as a young woman.  Just what kind of artist Miss M. will  become is left to the reader to decide.  Her story ends when she strikes a final blow for her own freedom and cuts all ties with high society.  Memoirs of a Midget is an impressive feat.  I expect to find it a contender for my top ten reads of the year. 

The Place for Books--Nevada County, California?

On our trip up to Lake Tahoe this past weekend, C.J. and I decided to visit two Gold Rush towns we had not been to before, Grass Valley and Nevada City.  Much to my surprise and delight, both are excellent destinations for book lovers.

Grass Valley has three books stores in it historic downtown.  We had time to visit two, The Bookseller and Booktown Books.  Should we ever move to Grass Valley, and after our brief visit we are both a bit tempted, The Bookseller would soon become my bookstore of choice.  The selection is pretty good for a small town; I was able to find most of the current titles I'm interested in.  The service was friendly and the shop is fun to browse around in.  It's just my kind of bookstore--smallish, pleasant atmosphere, interesting things on the tables.  They don't have a website that I can find, but there is a review here.

The place to be for book lovers in Grass Valley is BookTown Books.    BookTown Books is modelled after antique malls-- it features 13 used and antique book dealers all under one roof.  This makes browsing for specific titles something of a challenge,and the prices were a bit on the high side for second hand books, but the store is so much fun to wander around in that any serious book lover will have a grand time there.  BookTown Books also has a cafe.  Grab a book and a cup of chai and relax away the afternoon.

Nevada City is just up the road from Grass Valley, you'll go through both towns on your way to Reno or Lake Tahoe, and is well worth a visit.  They have the most charming old west fire station I've ever seen, unfortunately it was closed the day we were there.  Nevada City has several small book stores, most of them antiquarian, and one new book store Harmony Books.  I can't find web pages for any of them, but you'll find them all if you spend an hour walking around town. 

Between Grass Vally and Nevada City I came very, very close to breaking my book-buying moratorium on this trip to Tahoe.  I kept my resolve, but next time I'm not so sure.

Sunday Salon: Gone to Tahoe

C.J. and I are off to Lake Tahoe for much needed rest and relaxation.  I'll be back Tuesday with a new review.

Full Disclosure:  I found the picture of Lake Tahoe at Destination 360.

Dakota's Favorites: Candide by Voltaire

Candide was a surprise favorite from 2008.  I knew very little about the book going in except that it was very famous, of course.  I did not expect it to be very, very funny.  It single handedly moved Voltaire onto my list of favorite authors and was one of my favorite reads from 2008.


In the castle of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh in Westphalia, there once lived a youth endowed by nature with the gentlest of characters.

Candide by Voltaire is a laugh out loud funny book, if you're in the right frame of mind. I read sections of it aloud to CJ and both of us ended up in hysterics. (Be warned, its comedy is often quite dark and unlikely to pass anyone's sensitivity test.) It was written in 1759 and it is clearly a product of its time; but it also still has much to say to us about the current state of the world, unfortunately.

The story concerns an idealistic, handsome young man, Candide, who finds his optimism repeatedly tested by the treacherous people he meets and the violent world he inhabits. As a youth, Candide, the son of a wealthy Baron, is tutored by Dr. Pangloss, a German philosopher, who's world view is summed up in the opening chapter, "It is demonstrated that things cannot be otherwise: for, since everything was made for a purpose, everything is necessarily for the best purpose...Therefore, those who have maintained that all is well have been talking nonsense: they should have maintained that all is for the best."

Candide clings to Dr. Pangloss' philosoply after Dr. Pangloss is hung and burned at the stake, even after he is driven from his home, separated from his beloved Cunegonde and forced into an unforgiving, hostile world. Candide travels the world looking for Cunegonde and for a place free from suffering. He is at times imprisoned, enslaved, starved, tortured, kidnapped, marooned, etc. etc., but all the while, he believes that all is for the best.

The result is a kind of Series of Unfortunate Events for adults. The situations become so comically awful that the reader cannot help but laugh at them and at Candide's reaction. At one point, towards the end of the book, Candide encounters six former kings attending the carnival in Venice. Each king tells his story, all of them stories of how they lost their thrones. Each king's story tries to top the injustice endured by the previous teller with very humorous results. Everyone Candide meets has a tale of woe to tell, yet no one can make a dent in Candide's optimism.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Candide. I expected it to be heavy going, never having read Voltaire before. Instead I found a quickly paced adventure with witty dialogue and satire that I actually found humorous. Candide benefits from the novella form. Had this been a full length novel it would have undoubtedly become tedious. Brevity is the source of wit after all. (I think that's right, anyway.)

So, I'm giving Candide by Voltaire five out of five stars. I may end up putting it on my best of the year list this year.