Why We Love Haruki

"Is it possible to become friends with a butterfly?"


"It is if you first become a part of nature.  You suppress your presence as a human being, stay very still, and convince yourself that you are a tree or grass or a flower. It takes time, but once the butterfly lets its guard down, you an become friends quite naturally."


"Do you give them names?" Aomame asked, curious.  "Like dogs or cats?"


The dowager gave her head a little shake.  "No, I don't give them names, but I can tell one from another by their shapes and patterns.  And besides, there wouldn't be much point in giving them names: they die so quickly.  These people are your nameless friends for just a little while. I come here every day, say hello to the butterflies, and talk about things with them.  When the time comes, though, they just quietly go off and disappear.  I'm sure it means they've died, but I can never find their bodies.  They don't leave any trace behind.  It's as if they've been absorbed by the air.  They're dainty little creatures that hardly exist at all: they come out of nowhere, search quietly for a few, limited things, and disappear into nothingness again, perhaps to some other world."


The hothouse air was warm and humid and thick with the smelll of plants.  Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginnigng or end.  Whenever she came in here, Aomama felt as if she had lost all sense of time.

From 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.  

Sunday Salon: Do you ever review books on this blog?

IQ84 Status Update: Note Bookmark

It's been a long time between book reviews.  Life happens as they say.

I like to  keep a two week  gap between writing a review and publishing it here at Ready When You Are, C.B.  I like to have some time to see if I really agree with my first draft.  And it's good  to have some time between drafts to let the errors rise to the surface where I can spot them.

Usually, this lets me put up two or three reviews a week, which is a pretty good clip overall.

Then I got this second job......

I'm teaching a cram course for teachers preparing to take the CSET exam in history/social science which is the test one has to pass in order to get a teaching credential in California,  if you want to teach anything that falls under social sciences.  The course covers all possible subjects, world history from prehistoric times to the closing days of the cold war, all of American history including the pre-Columbian era, California history up to 20th century immigration patterns, civics and basic economics.

I've been teaching world history for decades so I was fine with all of that material, but I had to learn much of the rest first myself.

So, I've been busy.

I taught my first class last weekend; two full days each eight hours long.  The class was small, and the first day was a bit rough, but I had things well under control by the start of the second day.  I hope everyone passes the test.

I don't have another class until mid-December so I'll be able to do some reading in the meantime.  Of course since I'm reading Haruki Murakami's new book IQ84 which is almost 1000 pages long,  it may be a while before reviews get back to twice a week here at Ready When You Are, C.B.  I will have one up later this week, maybe two.  I'm limiting myself to four chapters of IQ84 a night.  It's an expensive book, I don't want to rush it.  So in between chapters I'm doing a bit of low brow reading.

You'll see.

Friday Picture Reading - The Library, Bangkok

Statue at The Library, a book themed hotel in  Thailand

Starbucks near Bookshop Benecia 4:15 P.M.

Tuesdays with Dorothy

"I don't care what is written about me, as long as it isn't true."

Dorothy Parker

Sunday Salon: Two Days Until IQ84

I got to hold my book this week.  After nine months of waiting.

Wednesday, I had to get a haircut which meant I would be passing by Bookshop Benecia, so I decided to pop in and see if my copy of Haruki Murakami's new novel IQ84 had arrived.  Maybe I could get them to sell it to me a few days early, I hoped.

I didn't get to buy it; it doesn't go on sale until Tuesday, but the clerk let me hold it for a while.  She knows who I am by sight now because I've been in about IQ84 several times this year.  I tired to convince the store's owner to have a midnight release part for IQ84. I even offered to come dressed as a cat.  She laughed and said maybe someone else would come as Mr. Peanut.  I'm still convinced there are enough Murakami fans in the Bay Area to pull off a party.  Maybe in Berkeley or Japan Town in San Francisco.  We just need 30 or forty people.

I thought IQ84 was going to be heavier.  It was much smaller than I expected, too.  I thumbed through the first few pages, just to see.   I thought about reading the first sentence--decided to wait.  What if it was really good--I hope it is--and I just had to read more?

I asked the clerk if I could  sit behind the counter and read it.  She was open to the idea, but I think she thought I was just kidding.  I was at least 40% serious.  If I wasn't starting a second job this weekend, I would have spent yesterday morning behind the counter with my book and a cup of coffee or two.  I think people should drink coffee while they read Haruki Murakami novels.  If they're listening to them on tape, they should jog.

The book's design is very cool, several introductory pages with IQ84 in big letters, section titles, fun stuff.  I was so tempted to read just a little bit.  Maybe a random page or two, just a paragraph from somewhere in the middle.  It couldn't possibly give that much a way--just a paragraph.  But what if there's a giant talking frog? or a mysterious appearance by an another advertising icon?  I didn't want to risk spoiling any of the fun.

I asked the clerk what time the store opens on Tuesday-- 10:00 A.M.  I'll be at work finishing up second period.  We'll be discussing the life of Muhammad.  His story does feature a dream about a winged horse, but it won't be the same.  Maybe I can take the day off, stay home from school reading.  I have 178 sick days banked, so I can afford it.

I forced myself to give my book back to the clerk.  She found the whole situation delightful.

Maybe if I show up at closing time tomorrow night and offer to pay cash with exact change, maybe a slight 'tip' for the clerk,  I could bring her a tin of homemade biscotti, she can sell me the book under the table if I pay cash and not record the sale until Tuesday morning.

No one need ever know.

Dakota's Favorites: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

It was a dark and storm night.


A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle was one of my favorite books of all time, back when I was 13. It was one of those books that opened up a new world of reading for me. I read all of the sequels that existed, at the time just two, and everything I could find by Ms. L'Engle at my local and school library. Everything. To this day I recall the chapter about the man with red eyes just about every time I enter a new suburban subdivision with its rows of nearly identical houses. I expect every front door to open and one boy and one girl to simultaneously come out of each with a ball and a jump rope and for them all to begin jumping and bouncing in perfect unison, just like they did in A Wrinkle in Time.


For several years I've had a set of five copies in my classroom, an option for my students' book clubs. This month, at long last, one group finally chose it, so I decided to re-read it along with them. Recently, Sam over at Book Chase wondered if he should re-read a book he loved back in college. Turns out he is right to hesitate before going back to revisit a book he loved 20 plus years ago. This is not to say that A Wrinkle in Time is a bad book, not by any means, it's just not what I remembered.

The story concerns three children, Meg, Charles and Calvin. Meg Wallace,the central character in the book, is the daughter of genius parents. Her father is a renowned government scientist who has been missing for several years. The government will not tell the Wallace family everything, but they do know that he was lost while working on tesseract, a method of bending three dimensional space around a fourth dimension in order to travel extremely long distances between planets. Charles is Meg's youngest brother, also a genius and Calvin is the new boy next door, too smart to fit in with his large family of very normal siblings. Meg wishes she could fit in, be closer to normal like her twin brothers who show no sign of possessing extraordinary ability or powers the way Charles does.

Enter the three witches: Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Which and Mrs. Who. These three elderly ladies have moved into a run down house long believed to be haunted. Charles befriends and introduces them to Meg and Calvin. They help the children begin a journey to rescue the lost Mr. Wallace by teaching them how to tesseract. Eventually they learn the true identity of the three witches and Meg learns a lesson about the power of love and that what she saw as her own faults are really her strengths.

But for me, A Wrinkle in Time has always been about the man with red eyes. His planet is a perfect looking American suburb, where all of the children look and act the same, to the point that when every little girl jumps rope, every rope hits the ground at the same time. Any child who deviates from this norm is subjected to retraining that lasts until that child is broken and remolded into one who will cooperate and get along with everyone else by being like everyone else. It has been suggested that Ms. L'Engle was critiquing Soviet style communism here, but it seemed like suburban California to me when I was 13 and lived in an all white town where every fourth house had the same floor plan, and still felt that way when I re-read the book this week. Meg, who sees herself as someone who cannot get along with the culture on her own world, is horrified by what she sees on his planet and by what happens to the one boy who does not fit in with the others.

It turns out that I had forgotten everything that happened after the man with the red eyes. That was the end of the book as far as I was concerned, but it actually goes on for several more chapters. Chapters that I did not like this time around, unfortunately. The actual ending struck me as so simplistic that it was very hard to believe, and it turned out to be kind of preachy. But, I suspect, in spite of this, that the next time I find myself in a new subdivision, I'll still have a moment when I wait for all of the doors to open at once and for identical children to come out of each house and begin their play, in unison like they all did 30 years ago when I first read A Wrinkle in Time.




Dakota's Favorites are reviews from the archive here at Ready When You Are, C.B.  

Tuesdays with Dorothy

"There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words."


Interview, Paris Review (Summer 1956)

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Mr Jones, of the Manor Farm,

had  locked the hen-houses for 
the  night, but was too drunk 
to  remember to shut the popholes.

Opening to Animal Farm

by George Orwell

I'm going to assume you have read this book.

Probably in high school.

Even if your English teacher was not the best teacher you ever had, you probably got most of what there is to get in Animal Farm.  It's a straightforward book;  Mr. Orwell makes sure that everyone understands  his point.  While the communist revolution may have started well, may have even brought peace, prosperity and equality for a while, Stalin soon seized power and destroyed all that was good about it.

I'm a firm believer that Mr. Orwell's best work can be found in his non-fiction; there's nothing in Animal Farm to compare with Homage to Catalonia or essays like "Shooting an Elephant", but the story is still a good one, the critique of Stalinism is still a damning indictment and, unfortunately, Animal Farm still has a message relevant to our time. Even for those of us who never lived under Stalin.

Consider three examples:

1.  In Animal Farm there is a pig named Squealer who has, as his sole function, the job of convincing all the other animals that what their leader, Napoleon, the evil pig who represents Stalin, is doing is the right thing to do.  Squealer must face the animals and lie to them, cajole them, convince them that what they saw with their own eyes or lived through themselves, is not what really happened.  Squealer is Napoleon's spin-meister, the media pig who corrects the story and tells everyone what "really" is true.  This keeps the animals from questioning their society, keeps them working from day to day without raising objection to how they are treated by those above them.  Squealer is the agent who convinces everyone not to question the status quo.  He must make everyone believe that the pigs should eat better food and while working much less than they do.

2.  The dedicated, devoted worker Boxer, a draft horse, gives his all for the cause.  Whenever anything goes wrong, Boxer takes it upon himself to work harder, to get up earlier than before, work later, do more than his fare share, all he is capable of doing, to make sure that the job gets done and done as well as it can be.  Boxer never complains about the effort he puts into his work, never holds anyone else's lack of effort against them, never questions those in charge.  He has faith that his work will be rewarded one day with retirement to the pasture set aside for him and for others where he can peacefully live out his old age.   Instead, when he has worked himself so hard he can no longer do much of anything, he finds the retirement pasture  has been given over to growing wheat for the production of beer drunk only by the pigs in charge and he is sold to a glue factory.

3.  By the novel's end a few pigs are  living the high life while the rest of the animals gain nothing from their labor.  They are told that they are better off than they were before under the oppressive farmer, and many of them still believe it, but the readers know this is not so.  The pigs are better off, surely, but the rest of the animals suffer to make this possible.

Sound familiar?

Darn that George Orwell.

Friday Picture Reading - Gumby

Gumby, from Glam Book Shots

BTT: Sequel Anyone?

Today from Booking Through Thursday:

If you could read the sequel to any book, what would it be?

There are not many I would want to read.  Most of the time, when a book is finished, it's finished.  The exceptions to this rule--mystery and fantasy series generally--have lots of 'sequels' already so they don't qualify here.

I would like to have the rest of Nicolai Gogol's unfinished novel Dead Souls.  It's still a wonderful book, even in it's incomplete state, but I'd love to know where the rest of it would have gone.  But that's not a sequel.

I think because I am a fan of the open ending, I don't really ever want a sequel.  I prefer not have certain things set down on paper one way or another.  That way whatever I think happened afterwards, did.  As far as I'm concerned anyway.

Tuesdays with Dorothy

Comment

"Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,

A medley of extemporanea,

And love is a thing that can never go wrong,

And I am Marie of Roumania."

First printed in New York World, (16 August 1925)

"The Mermaid's Tea Party" and "Five Ways Jane Austen Never Died" by Samantha Henderson

Do not sail your ship into mermaid infested waters.  Not in a Samantha Henderson story.  Ms. Henderson re-imagines the classic Victorian heroine in her short stories and comes up with tales that are as affecting as they are scary.  Perfect reading or perfect listening for an October evening.

In "The Mermaid's Tea Party" 12-year-old Cassandra is the lone survivor of a shipwreck, both her mother and her governess drown in the wreckage.  Cassandra finds herself alone on an island surrounded by mermaids.   Not mermaids like Ariel, mermaids who tear ships to pieces and then consume those inside.  

When the story opens, Cassandra is on the beach with the mermaids who have become bored toying with  her and are threatening to leave her to die in favor of a school of tasty herring.  Cassandra convinces them to bring her food with the promise of a tea party.  The mermaids have found a tea set in the wreckage and are intrigued with the idea of drinking real tea at a real tea party.

They take her to a larger island where a pirate, marooned in an earlier wreck has managed to survive.  The two form an alliance against the mermaids who imprison them, who wrecked their ships in the first place.  As long as Cassandra can entertain them with the promise of additional more complicated tea parties, the pirate can complete the repairs on the boat he hopes will take them to safety, if they can escape what he calls the "fishy bitches."

In "Five Ways Jane Austen Never Died" Ms. Henderson creates five vignettes that run from kick-ass to tragic as she re-creates Jane Austen's final days in ways that entertain and move the reader/listener.  Oddly, each one seems at least a little plausible, even the one with vampires and the one with time travel.  I was ready to hate this story, but ended up touched by it.

What made Ms. Henderson's stories fun for me was the way she took stereotypical characters, the little Victorian girl, Jane Austen, the pirate, and put them through their paces, through a series of events that forced them to become people they never thought they could be.  Sometimes tougher and more willing to become violent, sometimes gentler and willing to sacrifice for others.  

And did I mention that Ms. Henderson's stories are lots of fun.  

I listened to both of these on my favorite podcast, Podcastle.  Podcastle is running spookier stories this month, in honor of Halloween.  If your taste in scary stories runs to the more traditional, they have just posted a very good recording of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher."   If you're a fan of audio books, a fan of short stories, or a fan of good old creepy tales, you really should check out Podcastle.  It's all free, too. 

To listen to "The Mermaid's Tea Party" go here.

To listen to "Five Ways Jane Austen Never Died" go here.

Sunday Salon: Sleep Reading

If you've had the same morning commute for a decent amount of time, especially if it's early enough to take place before sunrise like mine is, then there's a good chance you've experienced the phenomenon of sleep driving--you arrive at your destination with the sudden realization that you have no memory what-so-ever of the drive there, as though you are awakening from sleep.

This week, I had the same experience while reading a book.  I was enjoying the three alternating narratives of Michael Ondaatje's novel Divisadero, enough to keep reading it at least.  It's a B+ book at best; even his fans will have to admit.  The book follows three "siblings" who are raised by their widowed father in northern California.  I will confess that I bought the book in the first place because I thought it took place on Divisadero Street, a San Francisco neighborhood I once called home.  This is not the case.  After the father violently beats the adopted son whom he finds in bed with his daughter, the lives of the three main characters take them far from each other, and the novel divides into three narratives.  I found all three compelling and wanted to know how things would turn out.  Would they reunite with their "father," I wondered.

The last thing I remember is a chapter about the biological daughter finding the adopted son who had become a professional card shark in the Lake Tahoe  area.  She hoped to bring him back to see her now dying father when I must have drifted off.   When  I came to, some 20 pages later, I found myself in the middle of the French countryside where an elderly man was in love with a gypsy girl.  Where did these people come from?  What's going on?  Where did the other three characters, the ones I cared about, go?

I had fallen victim to sleep reading. 20 pages of it.

I kept reading for a few chapters, but the story never did get back to the three "siblings," and the new plot failed to hold my interest, so I gave up.

Dakota's Favorites: The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

When I was quite small 

I would sometimes dream of 

a city -- which was strange 

because it began before I 

even knew what a city was.

Opening to

by John Wyndham

The Chrysalids

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter

Three Indians were standing out in 

front of the post office that hot summer 

morning when the motorcycle blazed 

down Walnut Street and caused Mel 

Weatherwax to back his pickup truck 

over the cowboy who was loading 

sacks of lime.

Opening to

Hard Rain Falling

by Don Carpenter

The main character, Jack Leavitt, deserves no sympathy.  True, he was born into a terrible situation, orphaned by his mother who abandoned him to the state in secret just to keep his father from ever finding him.  He grows up under very bad circumstances; faces young adulthood without anyone to help him steer a path through the mean streets of Portland and Seattle where the early sections of the novel take place.  That he ends up in prison, even in a high security prison like San Quentin, is not a surprise.  He never had a chance.

But he still deserves no sympathy.  Racist, sexist, able to take the bad hand life has dealt him and turn it into something much worse again and again knowing full well that the choices he makes the wrong ones, Jack is unlikely to be the sort of character many readers willingly identify with.

Yet, his story moved me.  Jack's failed attempts at redemption and  his final acknowledgement of his own failings in life, and in love, didn't bring tears to my eyes, but they've left a strong impression all the same.  I wish Jack could have come to a better end, even as I understand exactly why this was never possible.

Don Carpenter paints a picture of the American under-class that we ought to see more often.  At present, close to 2% of Americans are either in prison, on parole or on probation, yet we rarely see them as characters in serious fiction.  Crime fiction, yes, but not in literature.  Except in the case of cross-over works like Hard Rain Falling, a mix of crime and literary fiction, Great Expectations if Magwitch had stolen Pip away  and raised him himself.  That Hard Rain Falling was published in 1966 puts it squarely in the Ken Kesey school of literature, social outcasts trying to make their way in the word.  The world of Hard Rain Falling is one of pool halls, wild parties, reform school and prison.  But even in this hard edged world, Mr. Carpenter's hero manages to find love, though he cannot call it by its name until far too late.

But he never really does find redemption.  The closest he comes is a sort of acceptance, a willingness to face his life on its terms.  That this small bit of cold comfort in his hard-scrabble life make Jack Leavitt's story a moving one is a testament to Mr. Carpenter's skill as a novelist.  I never heard of him before NYRB Books sent Hard Rain Falling my way, but I'll be on the look out for more.  

Tuesdays with Dorothy

"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks."


Quoted in The Algonquin Wits (1968) edited by Robert E. Drennan

Sunday Salon: Is this a crime fiction blog?

I've been reading a lot of crime fiction lately.  I'm not doing it on purpose.  But this past summer, and even since school started, when I reached for something on my TBR shelf it tended to be crime fiction.  I started reading Michael Ondaatje Divisadero this week only to find the opening dominated by crime.  So far it feels like a second cousin to Don Carpenter's Hard Rain Falling.  I'll have a review of that one up this week.

I realized this might soon be a crime fiction blog when I got an email from author Michael  Alenyikov who wrote Ivan and Mischa which I recently reviewed. Mr. Alenyikov thanked me for the review and then went on for a couple of paragraphs about mystery/thrillers that have been reviewed here lately and those that are his favorites.  (He currently likes  Henning Menkell whom I've not read yet.)  


This got me thinking about why becoming strictly a crime fiction blog might be a good move.  It's niche blogs that really become influencial.  I mean, eclectic.  What's that?  There is no way I'm ever going to win the BBAW award for best eclectic blog.  Everyone thinks they're eclectic.  There's too much competition.  But if I focused on the genre a little more, maybe I could get the award for best mystery blog.  It could happen.  Or maybe they'll set up an award for best blog with a pet featured in the banner.  I would surely get a nomination, just look how cute Dakota is.  We'd make the long list at least, but we'd probably lose the award to Sandy Nawrot's cat in the end.  


In other news, we are in October, heading towards that special time of the year when people start announcing next year's reading challenges.  I deleted all challenges from my sidebar last month.  I managed to complete all of one, to do part of another and to totally forget about the others, so I thought deleting them all was the best option.  I suspect the whole reading challenge thing may be coming to an end, but I've already had one email asking if I'm going to repeat the TBR Dare in 2012.  The answer is no.  In 2012 I plan on running the TBR Double Dare!  Basically the same thing as last year, just with a slightly cuter name.  Read only books on your TBR shelf from Jan. 1 to April 1 in 2012.  Look for more details to be announced here in late November.