Discriminating Reader

Books That Make Me Turn Back and Re-Read

2010-09-06T15:36:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, when I finish a book, I know I am not finished with the book. Sometimes I will finish a novel right before I go to sleep, and in the morning, I feel compelled to re-read the ending, to be sure what I think happened really happened. I did it with Ann Patchett's Bel Canto and with Charles Frasier's Cold Mountain. Sometimes the ending makes me turn back and read the beginning. At the end of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, I suddenly remembered the beginning, set in a different place and time and realized just why it was there. I did the same with one of the most intriguing YA novels, Robert Cormier's I Am the Cheese, a book that blew me away with its ending, forcing me to go back to find the clues, the foreshadowing I had missed.

I finished Adam Ross's novel Mr. Peanut this week, and after letting the story percolate in my brain awhile, I know I have to go back and read the last few chapters. The main thread of the story, the death of David Pepin's wife Alice, from what seems an allergic reaction to a peanut, is interwoven with the family stories of the two detectives investigating him--Hastrol, whose wife Hannah has taken to her bed and refuses to leave it, and Sam Shepard (yes, that Sam Shepard), working for the police department after being released from prison on charges of killing his wife.

Ross moves from the main story--the Pepins--to Hastrol and Shepard--in ways that make a reader forget the other stories exist--until he throws in a small detail that echoes what's happening in the other two story lines. To reinforce the circular nature of the story, he adds an antagonist who goes only my the name of Mr. Mobius, and he has the Pepins meeting in a college elective that studies Hitchcock films and marriage. The professor's explanation of the MacGuffin seems to be more than a minor detail, but perhaps a clue to the way his narrative plays out.

The added detail that Pepin is writing a novel (whose main characters are David Pepin and his wife Laura) add to the web that will probably require a second reading just to discover the undergirding of the story that was there all along as I moved through the plot.

Ross has pulled off quite a feat in his structure of the novel, pulling the reader into whichever story he tells at the time, shifting perspectives within the stories, then leaving the reader wondering what just happened. Wondering enough to want to go back and find out--and that is just what I intend to do.

Autumn Potluck

2010-08-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

My reading habits are as arbitrary as anything else in my life. I make a "to read" list, but then I hear a title mentioned on the radio or someone sends a "you've got to read this" email, and I'm off. in addition, my audio book fare depends entirely on supply, and I'm fast working my way through all my first choices at the public library and having to find other sources. I tried to download from audible.com (hearing their TV offer--two free books) but although the website promised I could burn them to CDs, I've ruined enough blank disks to buy at least one audiobook at retail. I find that when I listen, there are big blank spaces in the narrative when I move from one disk to the next. So far I have listened to a large percentages of Sherman Alexie's War Dances and part of Joshilyn Jackon's Backseat Saints. I just gave up until I can find the actual book.

I did listen to Amy Bloom's Where the God of Love Hangs Out, a short story collection, and then I found that one of her stories from that collection was included in the new edition of our literature anthology. I also somehow picked up Falling Apart in One Piece by Redbook editor Stacy Morrison, an account of the end of her marriage when her son was just a few months old. It wasn't the kind of book I intended to read, but I did glean a couple of good phrases from the book. She said at one point ,"I like to live life out loud." I understood that impulse completely. My favorite quote, though, was this: "Life is hard. Life is good. These two truths are in no way related."

Meanwhile, after reading high praise of author Charles Portis in Oxford American magazine, I rounded up a copy of True Grit. Since a remake is in the works (with Rooster Cogburn played by Jeff Bridges, I hear), I thought it was high time I read the real thing--told from Mattie's point of view.

I was also tickled to hear that Ron Koertge had written a follow-up novel-in-verse to Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, this one called Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs. This one follows Kevin Boland, a middle school boy who loves baseball but also keeps a secret poetry journal, which he finally begins to share a little. In the first book, Kevin is home sick with mono right after his mother's death from cancer. Now in this second book, his father has begun to date, something Kevin is not quite ready to accept. He also finds himself torn between his girlfriend Mia and Amy, a kindred spirit he meets at a poetry reading with his dad. I love the way he uses his journal to experiment with poetry forms as he writes about his day-to-day life. I first fell in love with Koertge's adult poetry, and then I heard him present at an English conference and discovered his YA lit as well.

Now I'm trying to keep up with school reading, while also balancing Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, an unlikely book club pick, and Adam Ross's Mr. Peanut, a recent Lemuria First Edition Club choice. I'll report back soon.

Required Reading: The Instructor's Perspective

2010-08-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

I'm survived a first week of classes and while I know this is the honeymoon period of the semester, I still feel optimistic and almost excited about classes. For the first time since I moved from high school to community college, I am teaching a British Lit class, so I am back with some of my old friends (Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Alfred the Great). All those boxes I had stored for so long in my garage as useful as I knew they would be as I pull out the materials I've horded over the years (Ah! Here's my King Lear file!)

I've also been skimming and scanning my bookshelves, trying not to overlook great resources. For example, at the English convention last fall, I bought a copy of Gareth Hinds Beowulf. It's an abridged account with exquisite artwork, something like a graphic novel--maybe just more graphic. I'm also locating John Gardner's Grendel and Seamus Heaney's lovely translation, which features the original Old English text on the left and his line-by-line translation on the right.

In my freshman lit class (Literature-Based Research), I am searching through the newest edition of our anthology, Michael Meyer's Introduction to Literature (Bedford), to see what fresh material I might select this time. The textbook is huge, and I realize that in a Tuesday/Thursday class with only an hour and fifteen minutes each time we meet, I can't begin to have them read all I wish I could. I have tried to take to heart, though, a common last year: "Mrs.Posey, are we ever going to read any happy stories." I am looking at the selections that have been added, the ones I have overlooked before, even the chapters that focus on humor, incorporating those into my syllabus. Why not? I know that I love humor in my own reading selections.

With that same idea, I am searching for writing models for my Expository Writing class, also looking for some with a humorous angle. Some of the most memorable pieces I've read will fit perfectly. I've found "The One-Eared Intellectual" in Bailey White's collection Mama Makes up Her Mind, and I have my eye out for a Woody Allen piece I remember from an old Literary Cavalcade magazine called "If the Impressionists Had Been Dentists."

In the meantime, I'll keep reading for pure pleasure, dropping little hints to my students. "Let me tell you about this book I'm listening to on the way to school. . . ." Who knows? They might be interested too.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet

2010-08-13T06:48:00.000-07:00

With school starting back Monday, I know that much of my autumn reading will consist of textbooks (At least I teach literature. Calculus books would be unbearable for me.) and student papers. Of course, anyone who knows me knows that while my school responsibilities may slow my pleasure reading, they never stop it altogether. What a hypocrite I would be to teach people the purpose and pleasure of reading and writing if I didn't do them myself.

One of my last books I read this summer was also one of the best. David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet came highly recommended by a reading friend who was only a hundred pages in and "already hooked." Mitchell's story is set on an Dutch-settled island separated from Nagasaki by a bridge at the turn of the nineteenth century. Jacob De Zoet has signed on for a five-year stint with the Dutch Indies company, hoping to make his fortune and to return to marry his beloved Anna.

Politics--not only between the Japanese and the Dutch but among the Dutch colleagues as well--continually frustrate his hopes and opportunities. He develops relationships with an aging doctor who teaches medicine and with an interpreter, and he becomes fascinated with a young Japanese woman, a doctor's daughter with a burn scar over half her face, ruining her chances for a good marriage.

From the beginning, DeZoet feels protected by the lucky family Psalter, a bullet still firmly wedged into its cover, that has passed to him from his uncle, a minister. Since any material of a Christian nature is strictly forbidden, he must keep it hidden. He finds protection from one or two people who choose to look the other way, particularly since he has in his possession other books of genuine interest, especially to his friend the interpreter.

Mitchell's book is set on the brink of change in the world. Japan is still clinging to isolation and tradition. The Dutch have passed their peak, much to the surprise of those who are stranded by the edge of Nagasaki, and the British and Americans are gaining power in the world.

This is no casual beach read or page-turner thriller (although I'll admit I read it on the beach.) At first, I found it difficult to distinguish the characters. This is the point where I would tell my students to make a list with notes. The attention required, however, is worth the mental effort. I loved the book, and I loved its protagonist, its hero, Jacob DeZoet.

Dropping the Y

2010-08-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

No, I am not weighing in on the controversial decision of the YMCA to drop their other letters in their ads and signage. I'll let the Village People handle that. I have just been thinking about the arbitrary division between Adult Fiction and Young Adult Fiction.

As much trouble as I have organizing my own book shelves, creating something that borrows from but does not emulate either the Library of Congress method or the Dewey Decimal System, I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for publishers to decide how to market books and for book store owners to decide how to shelve them. In the "Young Adult Fiction" category, tracing back to S. E. Hinton's The Outsiders, some books seem to fit neatly....My Darling, My Hamburger, for example. At other times, though, books seem to be slotted there at the risk of being missed by a large portion of the reading population.

When I was a young adult myself, I fear I might have snubbed anything categorized thus. Back them, I wanted books with heft and substance. What I recognize now is that many YA books have just that.

One of my favorite "YA" books The Book Thief had so much to appeal to mature readers. In fact, its sheer length might be a turn off to YA's, whose selection criteria often begins with "How long is it?" The seriousness of its subject matter, the unique point of view (Death as narrator) all touched my peers who read it. As far as I can tell, it was slotted as YA lit because (1. the protagonist was young and (2. the book had nothing vulgar or sexually explicit. (Why, after all, do we describe profanity as "adult language"?)

Last week, I got around to listening to a young adult novel recommended by lots of high school students I've taught, Edward Bloor's Tangerine. I recognized it at the library, where I am always scouting for a good audio book I haven't check out yet, and gave it a try.

Nothing about the book, on the surface, seems to indicate it as a choice for me: the protagonist is a seventh grade boy. The novel, though, was compelling enough that I found myself listening in the garage or in parking lots, long after it was time to get out of the car. The novel dealt with family secrets and favoritism, sibling rivalry, visual handicaps, soccer, football, class conflicts, and loyalty. Paul Fisher, the main character, was endearing but flawed. The parents were flawed but human. At the center of the story, Paul has lived in the shadow of "the Eric Fisher football dream," since his older brother has the potential for athletic greatness as a kicker, but absolutely no moral character.

When a sinkhole damages the excessive number of portable classrooms at his middle school, Paul opts to transfer to the more ethnically representative Tangerine Middle School, instead of going to the late shift at his own upper class school during construction. Here he earns the friendship and even respect of the coed soccer team on which many of the players' families are citrus growers. They face precarious weather and prejudice, but they accept Paul, grudgingly at first, and play a huge role in his maturity.

This weekend, I was talking to a group of high school students preparing to return to school this month. That preparation for most of them involves summer reading assignments. I recognized all of the titles and had read most--Of Mice and Men, The Count of Monte Cristo, Cyrano de Bergerac, In the Time of Butterflies, and more. The English teacher in me wanted to say, "Come on! Get excited! These are great books!" Instead, I just asked, "Have any of you read Tangerine?" And they were off!

Slow Read/Fast Read

2010-07-30T04:46:00.000-07:00

Not often do I read a book in parts, while interrupting to read something different altogether, but early in the summer, I started reading Edward Dolnick's book The Forger Spell on my eBook. I kept it handy when I did my time on the exercise bike (one of the best ways, I am convinced, to use e-Readers), but the nature of the book--highly researched and factual--didn't keep me reading just to see what happened next.

The book is the story of Van Meergen, a Dutch forgerwho successful fooled many buyers, art critics, and museums during WWII with his forgeries of works of DeHooch and especially Jan Vermeer. Among his victims was the Nazi Herman Goering. Failing to receive acclaim in his own rights, Van Meergen discovered a number of clever tricks to produce paintings that not only passed for the work of better known painters, but even found ways to simulate aging of the canvas and paints.

Heavily researched, the author took readers in a number of directions, but for me the best part came in the last section in which he described the hunt for art and artifacts after the war and the trial of Van Meergen after his discovery. Interestingly, the forger actually confessed to forgery to avoid a far worse crime at the time, collaboration with the Nazis. Many of those he duped were unwilling or at least reluctant to believe his confession, so his trial became something of a media circus.

The book has so much material of interest in the fields of art, history, and psychology. It just didn't have the page-turning quality that I seek in fiction--and that was fine. I've long been a fan of Vermeer (trendy now, I suppose, because of the fairly recent novels, The Girl in the Pearl Earring and The Girl in Hyacinth Blue), so I can imagine how the art world would have swooned over the possibility of adding to his small body of works.

The other novel I finished recently, Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil, was more disconcerting. I am a huge fan of his novel The Life of Pi. In fact, it was one of the optional books I assigned a few years ago with a group of AP students eager to read more. This latest book, though, is dark and baffling. It is about the Holocaust and it is not. He actually builds a story-within-a-story when the protagonist, with one successful and one failed novel, is contacted by a taxidermist--and an odd one at that--who is writing a play about a howler monkey and a donkey, Virgil and Beatrice. Something about that part of the story reminds me of Waiting for Godot. The book, I feel sure, is intended to be unsettling. I'm not sure how to recommend the book. It's certainly not a feel-good beach book. The underlying theme seems to deal with how to be able to find words to talk about something as horrific as the Holocaust.

Most haunting are a series of questions posed at the end of the novel, in the guise of a game. I look forward to finding someone else who has read Martel's latest book because I certainly need to talk it through.

Nonfiction Update

2010-07-23T06:47:00.000-07:00

I finished listening to Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and I'm not quite sure how to describe it. Is it a book about how to live or how to write--or both? His framework centers on his working with two other filmmakers to turn his memoir into a movie, as he learns more about what comprises a good story.

He points out that if we saw a movie about a guy who really wanted a Volvo and at the end of the movie, he gets a Volvo, no one would leave the theater wiping away tears. That is not a good story. He repeatedly points out that just as one selects details to write a story--whether fictional or not--that people also have some choice in writing our own stories.

Along the way, while describing how to live a life would living--and sharing--he has a lot to say about story. The author reads his own book, which works most of the time, but someone needs to help him pronounce Proust. Publisher Thomas Nelson also needs someone to edit out the pronoun case errors. Me and I are used interchangeably only in country songs to achieve rhyme. Even then, the error makes my ears bleed.

The second book I mentioned earlier is Carr's The Shallows: This Is Your Brain Online. I am reading it during a week when I have consciously committed to turning off Facebook. He gives an explanation of the way our brain works that ordinary laymen can understand. The history of technology and how it has changed our lives starts far before computers. I had never thought of the impact of the map or the clock, although I certainly am aware of the impact of the printing press and the book on lives other than my own.

The chapter on Google--a big force in our community now--is especially enlightening and, in a way, disturbing. He doesn't reveal anything sinister so much as he sheds light on wha one of his sources called Google's belief in "its own goodness."

I am encouraged by what he reveals about the "plasticity" of the adult brain. I am relieved to know that you perhaps can teach an old dog new tricks--or new ways to do old ones. I certainly won't turn Luddite and abandon my laptop, my eBook, my Facebook friends, but I will try harder to be contemplative, to avoid the pressure to think of multi-tasking as a virtue rather than a hindrance.

I will also feel less guilty when I get lost in a good book. I am just nourishing those synapses in my plastic brain.

The Sound of Summer Running

2010-07-20T11:54:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite instrumental recordings, the first track of an Allison Brown CD, is called, "The Sound of Summer Running," a title taken from or at least shared by a Ray Bradbury short story. What struck me when I heard it first was how that melody sounded just like what the title implied.

As a teacher working on a nine-month contrast, I enjoy the luxury afforded few other professions, the chance to live my life on a permanent schoolchild's schedule, a year that begins not in January but in August. I know better than to take those three months for granted either. Although I may not be teaching during that time, I am renewing, refreshing, and preparing for the classes that will greet me each fall when I return. Fortunately for me, as an English teacher much of that preparation includes reading, one of the things I like to do best. By mid-July then I begin to hear what the poet called "time's winged chariot" right over my shoulder--or at least the sound of summer running.

I easily read twice as many books in the summer months as I read in the other months of the year, but I don't begin to check off all the ones I intended. I start with my "to read" list, but I encounter other readers or reviews and the list changes. Or I finish one book and the one I intended to read next doesn't feel right. I am a tedious list maker, though, so I record each book I finish on my wall calendar in the laundry room, transferring the list to a book in January.

Over the last week, I've realized that my reading list doesn't necessarily look like what I expected. I did finish the audiobook The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black (read by Timothy Dalton, with whom I fell in love in the ninth grade when he played Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights). The second in my swan reading phase (see previous post), this one was an interesting tale set in Ireland, something of a murder mystery.

Meanwhile, though, I've also read a book passed along by my youngest sister and recommended by her daughter, a rising sixth grader, Irene Latham's Leaving Gee's Bend, a story set in Alabama of a young sharecropper's daughter who takes risk to try to bring a doctor to help her mother. The girl loves quilting, and the story was inspired by the Gee's Bend quilts that hand in the Whitney Museum. Although I'm not sure when or where, I believe I have seen some of the quilts. I started reading the book about 2 a.m. this past week, during a phase of sleeplessness, and I read it straight through.

I've also picked up Nicholas Carr's book The Shallows: This Is Your Brain Online. Carr's article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" appeared no long ago in the Atlantic Monthly, and this book follows the brain study he began there. This was another recommendation by NCTE president Carol Jago, and it motivated me to take a week off from Facebook. Carr shows that internet has not just changed what we know, but how we know it--and indeed how we think and act.

I have long realized that my tendency to multitask may be as much a vice as a virtue. Carr is reinforcing the idea and explaining how and why. I'm actually pleased that I am as engrossed in the book as I am, not usually a big reader of nonfiction, but I find that especially with the computer turned off and in a different room from the television, I want to keep reading. One most interesting part for me has been his discussion of how print text had such a tremendous impact on human beings. This is a book I want to pass along, but perhaps to a different set from those to whom I sometimes recommend titles.

I'm also listening to Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. I have another of his books, Blue Like Jazz, which I haven't actually read, though it was highly recommended by one reader I trust--my daughter. This book, nonfiction, his usual genre, looks at his life--everyone's life--as a story being written. The book has implications for how to live or how to write. The book would be shelved in the Christian reading section, but it's subtle with no attempt to proselytize.

The other nonfiction book I've finished this month, which I mentioned earlier, was Mary McDonagh Murphy's Scout, Atticus, and Boo, her reflection on To Kill a Mockingbird as it reaches its fiftieth anniversary, along with those of many different people she interviewed--Mary Badley, who played Scout in the movie, Anna Quindlen, Tom Brokaw, James McBride, Rosanne Cash, Wally Lamb, Rick Bragg, and many others.

To say I have a minor obsession with the book is hardly an overstatement. I am ready to read it again, this time as a "family book club." I've been reading Scout, Atticus and Boo by Mary McDonagh Murphy. She not only writes about her own response to the book but also interviews a variety of people--authors Wally Lamb and Anna Quindlen, singer Rosanne Cash, journalist Tom Brokaw, and even Mary Baddley, who played Scout in the film. She said she wondered whether the many different people she interviewed would have something new to say. They did. Most discuss why Nelle Harper Lee never wrote another boo and mention with which character they most identify. The issue of racism in the book is also almost always discussed. Other than that, everyone has a different take, a different memory of reading the book, a different attachment to the novel.

Tonight I'll meet with my book club to discuss Anna Quindlen's Every Last One, a book that affected me so that I can't wait to talk about it but which I am reluctant to discuss in depth here because I don't want to be a spoiler. As always, we'll decide what to read together next. Almost always, we come away deciding to read something I hadn't anticipated. That's what happens to my summer reading list too. Meanwhile, over my shoulder I hear it--the sound of summer running.

A Lamentation of Swans

2010-07-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it's a strange coincidence that I ended up reading two books at once with swans in the title--The Silver Swan and The Swan Thieves. In an act of diversion, I looked up the official name for a group of swans and found no consensus. They are called a "wedge" when flying in formation (but I've never seen such), but on ground or in water, I see the options as "gaggle," "bevy," or--my favorite--a "lamentation" of swans.

My favorite swan story was passed along in a folklore class taught by Dr. Bill Foster at the University of North Alabama years ago. Around the time some of us were driving to Montgomery to attend a performance of one of the comedies at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival at the gorgeous theater complex financed by Winton Blount. Not only is the theater itself quite beautiful, but the grounds are ideal. There are bronze statues of children running and--if I recall correctly--of Puck playing a pipe. Sheep graze in grassy fields. When planning the site, someone decided they needed to order two pair of swans, one black and one white, from Stratford-upon-Avon. What could be more authentic? After flying the swans almost halfway around the world, though, they learned that the Stratford folks ordered their swans from a little farm about thirty miles from Montgomery, Alabama.

Now, I am not about to check with Snopes for the authenticity of the story. It's just too good. It has absolutely nothing, though, to do with either of the books under discussion.

This past weekend, I finished reading The Swan Thieves, a second novel by Elizabeth Kostova, whose first novel The Historian--a tale involving Vlad the Impaler--garnered lots of acclaim even before vampires were so cool. The premise of this latest novel appealed to me. It opens with an artist being arrested and eventually institutionalized for treatment after he was caught trying to attack a painting of Leda and the Swan in the National Gallery in D.C. The doctor who treats him is also an amateur painter (or frustrated artist); he provides art supplies for his patient, but while he endlessly paints (the same dark, curly-haired woman), he refuses to talk.

Since I tend to love novels with an art angle, I expected to love this book. It did have an engaging story, but while I am usually the more agreeable participant in the "willing suspension of disbelief," I couldn't go all the way with this book. For example, the patient speaks the first day, long enough to give his doctor permission to "talk to anyone--even Mary" then goes silent. Convenient, eh? But he also turns over a packet of letters in French written in the late nineteenth century, which the doctor sends to a friend for translation. The letters (and little narratives about the people between whom the letters are written) are interspersed throughout the novel, but Marlow, the protagonist never responds to them, until they conveniently tie everything together in the end.

The haste to resolution and denouement in the end were also a little too tidy for me, and when I went back to re- read the prologue, I also felt the author had depended far too much on coincidence.

Am I glad I read the book? Sure, but I don't know how readily I'll recommend it to anyone who asks for the titles of the best books I've read lately. Meanwhile, as I'm listening to The Silver Swan on audio, I'll hope it will be less disappointing, so I won't suffer a true "lamentation of swans."

Happy Anniversary to Atticus and the Kids!

2010-07-06T06:40:00.000-07:00

This week is traditionally vacation week around this part of North Carolina. Lots of plants close for the week of the Fourth of July, so everyone seems to head to the beach. This year, though, my grandchildren are here for a few days and then we are heading to Alabama for reunions with several generations of both sides of the family and with friends from the late sixties and early seventies.

If I didn't have a week planned out for me, I would have wanted to head to Monroeville, Alabama, for the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of what I (and many others) consider one of the best books ever written, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. From what I know of her reputation, Lee (Nelle, not Harper, to those who really know her) would prefer to let the date pass without hoopla, but I've been pleased to read articles in Smithsonian magazine, Garden and Gun, Southern Living and more acknowledging the importance of the novel on this anniversary.

For those of us who can't get enough, Mary McDonagh Murphy has published Scout, Atticus & Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird, including material from interviews with other authors and public figures about the impact of the novel on their lives. While most of us would love to be able to lay claim to discovering just such a masterpiece, to be the first in our circle to have read it, there is a much stronger urge to share the experience.

In a book I'm reading now, Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves, one of the narrators mentions loving the work of Monet, even when it has become so commonplace, the images on wall calendars and thank you notes. Maybe visual masterpieces run that risk, but great literature never does, in my opinion. Atticus's advice about walking in someone else's shoes is timelessly true. Scout and Jem and even Boo and Dill will always remain real to me, even when I know the rest of the reading world feels much the same.

I'd love to go to Monroeville. It would be a pilgrimage for me. Several years ago, I struck up a friendship through correspondence with a local teacher there who shared images from the 1930s of the town that became the model for Maycomb. Honestly, though, the town is planted in my consciousness as firmly as Andy Griffith's Mayberry. I've been there many times, and I always love to make that journey back.

This Shakespeare Guy--and YA Lit

2010-06-28T08:18:00.000-07:00

I bought the book The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt more than a year ago, after it showed up on my list of recommendations I accumulated during the NCTE conference. If I remember correctly, I heard about the book from another teacher I met early one morning in the hotel lobby. Both of us has been unable to sleep late and had slipped downstairs to read until our roommates woke up and the conference opened. She was almost at the end of a book and crying. so I had to know--when it was appropriate to break in and ask--about the book's title.

I jotted down her name and email, and we talked about books we had recently encountered. All I had in my notes besides the title The Wednesday Wars were the words "Vietnam" and "Shakespeare." Incongruous? Maybe. Maybe not. The book had since been sitting on my shelf waiting its turn when I discovered the audiobook at the local library when I went looking for my next read for the road.

I will confess than I am a great fan of the best of young adult literature, perhaps because I am a fan of young adult readers. I may not be a seventh grade boy, but I can remember being that age. Holling Hoodhood, the narrator, was convincing and complex. His English teacher, who appeared at first to be the antagonist (Mrs. Baker hates my guts, Holling complained routinely in the beginning) turned out to be a great mentor and catalyst for her student's growth.

When he, the lone Presbyterian in his seventh grade class, is left alone in her class room when the other students are either in synagogue school or catechism class on Wednesday afternoons, she tries first to send him back to remediate sixth grade math, and when that fails, she takes it upon herself to have him clear every chalk eraser in the junior high. Eventually, though, she settles on a better plan and begins assigning him readings of Shakespearean plays, beginning with The Tempest. What he believes is a plan to torture him fails because he discovers the plays aren't so bad.

The story is set in 1968, when his high school sister's desire to be a flower child and oppose the war flies in the face of the principles of his father, an ambition architect and the town's 1967 Man of the Year. When Mrs. Baker's husband (Tybalt) is reported missing in action in Vietnam, the war becomes all the more real to Holling and his friends.

The supporting cast of characters--the friends, the teachers, coaches and adminstrators, the intimidating eight graders, and their families--is strong and appealing. As Schmidt leads Holling and Mrs. Baker through the other plays--Macbeth, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, he weaves in Hollings' emerging awareness of the universal truths, the lessons of Shakespeare Mrs. Baker intends.

As if Shakespeare and Vietnam were not enough, Schmidt manages to infuse the book with New York Yankees baseball as well. I kept thinking as I read that this would be a perfect companion to another favorite YA book, Ron Koertge's novel-in-verse Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, the story of a high school baseball player stuck at home with his writer father as he recovers from mononucleosis and the recent death of his mother.

A firm believer myself that the bard writes for everybody and all times, I am glad to have worked my way through a few more of my favorites with Gary Schmidt, Holling Hoodhood, and Mrs. Baker.

It Can't All Be Serious.

2010-06-24T09:51:00.000-07:00

Today on the Today Show, authors of different literary genres--chick lit, mystery, detective novels--were sharing their summer reading suggestions, and I'll be honest, I didn't find many to add to my list. I'm a reading snob, but only in the most inconsistent way. I loved Harry Potter, but I just can't get into the Twilight series beyond book one (probably because the two are in no way literarily comparable.) There are some authors I ignore on general principle, although I try to be tactful when others gush about their books.

But I love Celia Rivenbark. Her books could be shelved under humor or under Southern--and honestly, doesn't Southern humor merit its own section in the bookstore? I had read Bless Your Heart, Tramp and We're Just Like You, Only Prettier before she appeared at Hickory's library for a "girls' night out" reading. She was equally entertaining in person. I love to have the real voice for my own internal soundtrack, especially when the author's writing has strong literary voice.

Since then, I buy her new books while they're still in hardback. (Then I give them as gifts to just the right people when they come out in paperback.) I mean no disrespect to Ms. Rivenbark when I say that her books provide the perfect bathroom reading. They sit right there on the back of the tank with the Reader's Digest. I just finished her latest, You Can't Drink All Day If You Don't Start in the Morning," the title coming, if I recall correctly, from a cousin's tee shirt. Since some of my friends are about to start out on their second annual RV trip back and forth across America. (Last year's was called "The Big Heads and More" as they headed toward Mt. Rushmore. This year's goal is the Big Ditch--the Grand Canyon.) Rivenbark's observations on camping should make for perfect road reading.

In a week or two, I am attending an engagement party for the daughter of a friend, and the fiance's parents will be in town from Scotland. I don't know what I'll get the happy couple, but I think his mother is going to need a couple of books like these to help her understand the Southern future in-laws and wedding protocol.

Real People, True Stories

2010-06-22T05:07:00.000-07:00

The next in my inadvertent detour through nonfiction this summer is William Kamkwamba's memoir The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. This is the simply-told story of a boy from Malawi, the son of a maize farmer whose ambitions for attending secondary school were dashed when drought and famine first nearly destroyed the area, with many literally starving to death, then devastated the family's financial situation. Forced to drop out of school when his family couldn't come up with the requisite fees, William's curiosity led him to the small community library, where he read voraciously, occasionally asking the teacher who worked there for definitions of words he didn't know. He was particularly interested in science and began, with the help of his two best friends Gilbert and Geoffrey, to build a windmill from materials he found at the local garbage dump or scavenged.

The project first provided light to his own home, changing the family's life in much the way Edison's light bulb must have changed those in his world--extending reasonable waking hours past sunset. He learned too that he could charge cell phones for neighbors, and eventually set his eyes on powering a well that would allow his family to grow a second crop each year.

Although the project was first observed warily by his neighbors--some fearing he might be invoking witchcraft--it finally gained him international attention and an opportunity to travel and eventually to get what he had wanted most all along--an excellent education.

Someone who heard Kamkwamba speak after his book's success said the young man had one poignant question: Where was this Google when I was building my windmill?

Nonfiction for a Change

2010-06-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

I'm usually engrossed in a novel or two a week during the summer, since fiction is my favorite, but this summer I've veered toward some other options. I had downloaded a copy of Francine Prose's book Anne Frank back in November after attending the NCTE convention in Philly, but I just got around to reading it on my flight home from Turkey when I just couldn't hang in there with Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I had read one of Prose's books on writing, lent to me by a student in my creative writing class a few years ago. This book takes a fresh look at Anne Frank's famous diary from a literary perspective.

In this book, Prose first disabuses readers of the idea of this book as a one-draft stroke of young prodigy. Evidence of revision, among other things, proves that Anne had intended her writing to have a broader audience that "Dear Kitty." The resulting book by Prose offers something for a wide audience as well. She looks at the book, the play, and the movie that resulted, as well as much of the controversy involved in each. For writers, the book reemphasizes the value of revision and of a sense of one's readers. The last part of the book deals with ways for teachers to use the book--at all education levels. This was for me one of the most valuable sections of Prose's work, but I needed to read the preceding chapters to make this last most useful.

I was reminded of a work of fiction I had encountered a few years ago, The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank, a work of fiction based on the flawed assumption that Peter might have survived and come to American, choosing to pass as a Gentile--even to his own wife--until the diary's publication strikes him mute. I had also read a most clever essay by David Sedaris first in the New Yorker then in one of his books in which he describes the dilemma of looking for a new apartment and deciding that Anne Frank's house was the perfect place for him to live. He manages to balance his pointed humor with very poignant response to the truth of her story.

The Diary of a Young Girl (which, by the way, was not her chosen title) is one of those classic works that not only stands up to rereading after one's school years, but absolutely demands it. (I put The Good Earth, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Once and Future King in that same category.) The book doesn't change over time, but as a reader matures and experiences life, the book takes on a richer, fuller meaning. Prose has certainly enriched that experience for her readers.

The Book Report:

2010-06-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

I spent more time at the airport than I really intended on my way to Istanbul this month. Missing about five connecting flights, including three different international flights, I had lots of time for reading. I had intended to report on my reading during my travels, but our hotel (the Lady Diana in Sultanahmet) had three computers, all of which were different and I had the most challenging time finding my punctuation marks. I eventually found most. In fact, my closing my eyes and using my tenth grade touch typing skills (Thank you, Mrs. Aldridge!) I found the comma and period right where they belonged, hidden under symbols I didn't normally use. I eventually had to use cut and paste for the @ symbol--just to check my email--and I never found the apostrophe. I actually considered typing without it and using a little note in the header, but my English teacher in me just couldn't do it. I have a hard enough time typing titles on Facebook without italics. Now without further ado (oh, maybe just a little), here is the first installation in my travel reading report.

On the way to the airport, I finished listening to my current audio book (due back at the library before I return), Anita Shreve's new novel A Change in Altitude. I had read a couple of her novels before and found that what keeps me reading is not her characters but the research. I had read her book A Wedding in December, her attempt at a Big Chill experience, set not at a funeral but at a wedding, and I kept reading for the back story, a historical account of a ship explosion in Halifax, that had me googling for more details. This book had whiny, inconsistent main characters centered around two attempts to climb Mt. Kenya.

On the flight I began reading Anna Quindlen's latest novel, Every Last One, my current book club choice. I have always enjoyed Quindlen's writing, both fiction and nonfiction. I was immediately drawn to the protagonist, a mother just a little younger than me, with children almost ready to leave the nest. The first half was a gentle, engaging story line, but without giving a spoiler, I will say that midway through the book, Quindlen threw a major curve and I couldn't stop reading. Now I am so eager for our book club meeting because I have a genuine need to talk about this book.

My next book on the trip was Joanne Proulx's Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet, a book with an "I couldn't put it down recommendation from one of the younger members of my book club. As the novel opens, the protagonist is in the basement of his best friend's house with several of his stoner buddies when--out of the blue--he predicts, quite accurately, the accidental death the next day of one of the boys in the room. While it might be more natural for me to identify with Quindlen's middle-aged wife and mother, this kid had me. As he deals with his bizarre unwanted gift, he also must wrestle with feelings for his dead friend's charming girlfriend. This is an eerier, less humorous I Love You, Beth Cooper novel. The same actor could play either leading part--an awkward, out-of-the-mainstream teenage boy. Sara was right: I couldn't put it down.

I'll pick up next with more of my wide variety of reading experiences on the road and in the air. Stay tuned.

Lacuna The Carolina Connection

2010-06-01T03:07:00.000-07:00

It's happened again--I'm reading along, traveling vicariously to another part of the world, then zing! I'm back home faster than Dorothy clicking her slippered heels. It happened a few years ago when I read Steve Berry's The Romanov Prophecy (beware of spoiler!) when the title character moved from the former Soviet Union to San Francisco then Richmond then Boone, NC.

Now I've just finished Barbara Kingsolver's latest novel Lacuna, and after spending half the book in Mexico City with Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Lev Trotsky, the protagonist Harrison Shepherd ends up, of all places, in Asheville, NC, living on Montford Ave. I forget who said it--I think Richard Peck, the YA novelist, that we all read fiction for a sense of recogniton. I know I do.

Lacuna was a bit of a slow start for me. Anyone who reads Kingsolver's novels--and I've read them all--knows she gives lots of detail--places, colors, plants, food. It all fits in the end, but you have to read through it. This book is told through journals, letters, clippings from the newspaper, and it is, in the end, a satisfying tale.

The protagonist is a young man, a writer, who keeps himself out of the spotlight in his own stories. As a result, I found his secretary Violet Brown the most engaging character of the novel. She is a no-nonsense woman, widowed young, empathetic and wise. She's the one I missed most at the end. I will try to catch a glimpse of her or the home she inherited from Shepherd the next time I visit Asheville.

Reading on the Fly

2010-05-24T05:48:00.000-07:00

As I get ready to travel to Istanbul with my best friend Debbie and her two daughters, I am loading up my eBook. From my summer list, I've added Pamuk's My Name Is Red, Gaiman's American Gods, Anna Quindlen's One Last Thing, Francine Prose's Anne Frank, and Joanne Proulx's Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet.

My only concern is maintaining the reader's charge for ten days. Other than that,a I am thrilled by the idea of traveling with one slim volume instead of a sack full of books (especially in light of the airlines' money-grubbing move to charge for luggage). Thirteen years ago, I went with Debbie's family to China and brought at least eight books along for the trip. My inner clock was so upset by being on the exact opposite side of the world that I often work at one in the morning certain that it must be morning. I read.

Since I love to read about a place I visit, I am especially eager for other titles besides those by Pamuk that are set in and around Turkey. The area is so rich with history and culture, I could probably read a shelf full of books and just scratch the surface.

In anticipation of a visit to Ephesus while we are there, I am already re-reading Paul's letter to the Ephesians. I'd love other recommendations. While I'm away, I'll try to report back.

Let the Great World Spin

2010-05-18T05:12:00.000-07:00

Just in time for my book club meeting (tonight) I finished Colum McCann's novel Let the Great World Spin. We are always either too indecisive or too eager to read ever to settle on one book. This book is paired with Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. While two could not be any more different in tone or mood, I realize that both involve characters who area able to develop close, dear friendships across cultural barriers.

The central event of McCann's novel is the famous tightrope walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center by Phillipe Petit in August of 1974. The author has taken some liberties creating Petit's back story, but all the other characters--the main characters, actually, intersect in unusual ways around those days in New York City. He brings together two Irish brothers--one who has taken religious vows then fallen in love, a mother and daughter who are prostitutes, a couple living a 1920s reenactment until involved in a hit-and-run, and five mothers who have lost children in the Vietnam war, coming together to share their grief and to keep their sons alive through memory.

Because the story moves back and forth between the characters, sometimes told in first person, sometimes in third, and also back and forth in time, the reader has the experience of surprise and discovery as the pieces fit together. The story, though, never feels disjointed or intentionally confusing.

I had read somewhere that this book had been described as a 9/11 novel, so the only real surprise was that it wasn't--at least not directly. With the towers so central, New York so firmly set as the setting, the future of those towers loomed powerfully. McCann presents so many different eyewitness perspectives to the tightrope walk that I was reminded of all those other witnesses 26 years later, those who would always mark where they were when.

While Major Pettigrew wrapped up all the tidy ends, Let the Great World Spin did just the opposite: the author reminds us that is exactly what the world will do.

Summer Reading: Making My Own List

2010-05-15T07:52:00.000-07:00

My friends who teach year 'round get tired of my rubbing it in--three months off to refresh and renew. With a bookstore gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket, I shopped around the local Barnes and Noble this week, taking time to peruse the table of school summer reading assignments. As usual, it's an eclectic mix of new books and classics. I remained baffled by parents who object to summer reading requirements, considering them an encroachment on personal family time. As I recall, reading was one of the best parts of time together. I would probably still welcome a list. As I've probably mentioned before, the summer before my first full-time teaching job, I was given a list of the books my students would be reading. They actually had choices--and I was teaching three grade levels--so I had about fifteen books to read just to be ready for the school year. With few exceptions, they were wonderful.

Now, though, I make my own list, changing it as I go along, at suggestions that crop up from other book-loving friends I encounter. This summer, I want to put together a list for myself and then in early August to weigh it against the list I actually complete.

Already this year (this week) I have finished Helen Simonson's first novel Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, a charming book set in England that deals with late-in-life love, class and generational struggles, just about everything. It's a perfect summer read--some serious issues but not wrapped in cryptic language--and some genuinely engaging characters.

I am midway through Colum McCann's novel Let the Great World Spin, a darker, more serious story pulling the threads of several lives together, centered around the day the man walked a tight rope between the two towers of the World Trade Center.

Other books I plan to read include these:
Neil Gaiman's American Gods--I was so taken by The Graveyard Book and Anansi Boys that I
wanted to try another.
Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red--because I plan to travel to Istanbul for ten days this summer,
and I always want to read something set in the area where I travel.
Barbara Kingsolver, Lacuna--So far, everyone who's read this one says it's a good read.
Fatemeh Keshavarz, Jasmine and Stars: Reading More than Lolita in Tehran
Elizabeth Kosova, Swan Thieves--I always love some kind of art connection in my books
Francine Prose, Anne Frank
Julia Alvarez, In the Time of Butterflies
Ruth Reichl, Tender at the Bone
Perry Deane Young ,Two of the Missing (about Sean Flynn and his colleague's disappearance
in Vietnam

I'll be honest, just sitting here, looking at the shelves is enough to make me weep that summer is only three months, as time keeps ticking away.

I'd love to hear other recommendations for books absolutely not to be missed. I'll report as I go, and I'll tally my summer reading at the end. For me, this will be the only test.

Let Summer Begin--Bring on the Books

2010-05-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

If I have seemed mysteriously absent here for a couple of weeks, I have a logical explanation: end of semester essay grading. I admit that going into the teaching profession--especially teaching English--I should have known to expect this challenge, but the quantities has certainly increased. Now, though, I have papers graded, and I'm close enough to completing all the little details of red tape that I feel like beginning my true summer reading regimen.

I've had to depend on audio books for the last couple of weeks, and I'll admit that I got through four discs of Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood and had to give it up. I appreciate her versatility in writing the lyrics and score for the songs that accompany the text, but I won't be downloading on the iPod! I can take grim, and I can take weird, but this novel--at least for me right now--was too much of both.

Fortunately, I have plenty of options lined up for reading. I have two selections for my May book club, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (which so far is delightful) and Let the Great World Spin, which I started reading last night when I was caught without Major Pettigrew. I look forward to starting in front of my bookshelves and prioritizing. Summer reading is such a pleasure that I cannot imagine why parents and students bristle at their assignments. Meanwhile, I look forward to hearing from all my reading friends to learn what great choices are in their summer stacks.

In Praise of Subtlety

2010-04-22T05:36:00.000-07:00

While I will admit that I am sometimes a book snob, I also realize that our purposes for reading vary as much as our tastes. I'll turn my nose up at some authors (those, for example, who study what makes women cry when they read and then write just that), but I also indulge myself in works that other readers just as picky would deem unworthy.

As I was reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I felt a connection with the concierge Renee, a secret intellectual and autodact, who could cringe at a misplaced comma or a "bring" used in place of "take," but who also enjoyed cultural entertainment of a more pedestrian taste. Her favorite movie, for example, was The Hunt for Red October, more for sentimental reasons that cinematography or script. She also confessed a penchant for reading Michael Connelly, even though he certainly shares little with Tolstoy, another favorite.

I took the suggestion and chose a Connelly audiobook The Scarecrow for my daily commute, and I don't feel ashamed for not listening to War and Peace or Anna Karenina instead. I will admit, though, that the experience was a little like Chinese food. It served its purpose but probably won't fill me for long. I could probably analyze the differences ad nauseum, but the main distinction, I believe, is the subtlety--or the lack thereof. I know that dramatic irony is the draw of crime thrillers. I'm no FBI agent or L.A. Times reporter, but I still caught myself shouting at the protagonist and his love interest: Don't do that! Pay attention, you morons! How amazing that someone so skilled at profiling can be sitting right new to a perverted computer genius serial killer and not pick up a clue--not even LOOK for a clue.

No, I much prefer the tiny details--the errant comma that makes me wince just a nanosecond before I realize that the protagonist winced too. I recall another favorite book, also quite understated, The Remains of the Day. In fact, I was pleased, almost shockingly so, when the movie managed to convey the tiniest, most subtle details. In the book, the protagonist travels to the home of the woman he has cared for, ready to declare his love, only to discover she has married. He reveals (and I paraphrase, not having the text at my fingertips): At that moment I knew my heart was breaking. When the movie was released, I wondered how that mere thought could be conveyed, and it was, wordlessly. In a play, there might even have been an aside or soliloquy, but moment was captured--perfectly. No one had to scream at the movie screen.

Friends and Family

2010-04-17T16:43:00.000-07:00

My youngest sister and her family are visiting from Alabama this week. Although they've had to fend for themselves while I was working, we've enjoyed lots of time talking. Last night, I read her youngest daughter to sleep--the book of poems and song lyrics that Julie Andrews and her daughter published and promoted at last November's NCTE conference. I was eager to have a little one as audience, but I was wary too. I read a few of the poems, then I said, "I have other books too if you'd rather have stories than poems." She assured me that she liked the poems.

Since there's a thirteen-year gap between the my sister Emily and me (and three sisters in between as well), we didn't spend a lot of time growing up in the same house. In fact, this weekend we've talked about that old saying that no two children are raised by the same family. We may be proof of nature over nurture then, since we find so many similarities in our quirks, our likes and dislikes.

We certainly share our love of books. We've spent a lot of time in front of my bookshelves, heads turned sideways, reading the titles. Today as we rode together to High Point to visit the furniture market, her children had their noses buried in books.

My trip to market always gives me the chance to talk to the reps from across the country and the temporary receptionist I only see twice a year. We all get out our notebooks or blackberries and compare reading lists.

Today we also visited another friend's company showroom. I knew from an earlier market visit it had the head of a deer that talked mounted in one of the room settings. Using a remote microphone, one of the employees was able to talk, and the deer--named Buck--moved his mouth, nodded his head, and wiggled his ears. He knew my nephew and nieces' names. He sang "Sweet Home Alabama."

After we left, Lynnsey Beth, the six-year-old, said. That was my favorite things so far. Second was Nancy reading to me last night." I feel anything but sad to come in second to a talking deer. I'm just happy to know that Rodgers and Hammerstein, Joyce Kilmer, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Langston Hughes can hold their own with any generation.

Julia Alvarez at Hickory's Big Read

2010-04-16T19:22:00.000-07:00

Speaking at Lenoir Rhyne University's Monroe Auditorium, Julia Alvarez demonstrated the power of repetition as she shared her own story, that of an American writer with roots in the Dominican Republic. More than once, she reminded her audience of the pivotal events in her life that led her to this place in her career: 1960--New York City--a sixth grade teacher--a librarian. Born in the United States, Alvarez spent her first ten years in her family's home in the Dominican Republic before fleeing the Trujilla dictatorship. When she was taunted by her classmates, "Why don't you go back where you came from?" she wanted to say, "We can't go back." She compared her situation to the cartoon characters who find them selves running off a cliff, realizing, "Yikes!" there is no ground below their feet and no way to turn back.

Alvarez's first novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents was chosen for this year's Hickory Big Read, and she has been in Hickory since Wednesday, signing books at the library, speaking to 2500 fourth graders on Thursday, and speaking again to students on Saturday. Not living in Vermont, Alvarez described her own time in Fayetteville, North Carolina in the late 70s, teaching poetry to the elderly. (She learned later that some had come to the class thinking she was teaching them about poultry.)

In a carefully prepared but conversationally delivered presentation, Alvarez came across as generous and self-effacing. Before her introduction the audience was told she would speak 20-30 minutes, followed by a period of questions and answers. Although the time flew by, she seemed in no hurry to end her speaking engagement or to cut off any questions that remained.

Ms.Alvarez considers herself an American writer. In response to one audience question, she admitted that she came to literature through North American writers, canonical writers. In fact, she pointed out her wonderment that she now finds herself located on library shelves right next to Louisa Mae Alcott, near Emily Dickinson, on the opposite end of the alphabet from Walt Whitman.

In the literature class I teach this semester, I assigned a chapter in our text devoted to Julia Alvarez's poetry. Even before I heard her speak, I was struck by her easy allusions to Frost, to William Carlos Williams, to a host of canonical writers. Although she didn't come into literature through Latino/Latina writers, she does attribute the influence of the storytelling tradition to those roots.

She quoted former slave Terence, who said, "I am a human being. Nothing human is alien to me." Indeed, the thrust of her presentation focused on the power of storytelling. In fact, when she mentioned some of her favorites from literature, she alluded to Nancy Drew, but specifically mentioned Scheherazade, the hero of the Thousand and One Arabian Nights. She reminded us that stories are all around us and that, she said, is how we learn to be human.

I know all too well how unpredictable author readings can be. Some seem to have an inner clock ticking; some seem to wish they had stayed home. Julia Alvarez seemed genuinely pleased to be right where she was--in a room full of readers, an audience that chose to be there with her on a beautiful Friday night in Spring.

It's a Wrap

2010-04-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

As I keep several books going at once these days, sometimes they all wrap up about the same time. This week has been exceptional. Listening to Norman Mailer's Castle in the Forest, a 15-CD audio book, I found the going tough sometimes. The book is a story of Hitler's childhood and his parents' lives, and the narrator is the devil responsible for looking after young Adolph (Addie), so I had a hard time finding a sympathetic character. Mailer had done extensive research to put together this background tale of one of history's most infamous characters--a real monster. As I neared the end, though, I discovered that CD #15 was missing. I turned my car upside down, looking everywhere I could imagine, then realized that I had a book on my shelves, so I finished the old fashioned way.

At the same time, I've been re-reading Serena on the same reading schedule I've assigned to my students in preparation for Ron Rash's appearance at our Writers Symposium on April 23-24. I finished it within twenty-four hours of finishing Castle in the Forest.

Then before bedtime last night, I happened to pick up Stitches, the graphic novel/memoir by David Small. Until now, the only graphic novel I've read is Maus. This story came through recommendations at the November NCTE convention (where I get so many of my good titles). The story is dark--Small's dysfunctional family let him go through surgery as a preteen without ever telling him he had cancer. Even the book cover reflects the dark nature of the book, a picture of Small's parents and grandparents. A close look shows that around the author's name is a dialogue balloon in which his (insane) grandmother says "...by my durn grandson David Small Durnit !!" Not exactly ideal bedtime reading, but original and thought-provoking enough that I may have to look for Persepolis, the graphic novel I hope to read next.

Fiddling with Form

2010-04-09T09:48:00.001-07:00

As I'm reading the poetry collections in my own library this month, the ones acquired in the last year especially, I am also teaching poetry in my Literature-Based Research class. Today as we discussed fixed form in contrast to free verse, I talked about the challenge not only of using the framework established by a fixed form such as a sonnet or sestina, but of creating something clever, original, or even beautiful in the process. After all, isn't that what drew Renaissance poets to the sonnet?

Two poets have achieved just such a feat with quite original constraints in the past year. First, Fred Chappel succeeded in his book Shadow Box to create a poem within each poem. At readings, his wife sometimes reads the inner poem as he reads the outer lines, reminding me of the power of poetry out loud.

In a quite different turn, Mike Smith's book Multiverse uses anagram in a most original way. The first section, entitled "A Bestiary," uses the same exact letters--no more, no fewer--to create each poem. His titles range from "Ape" to "Zebra" and all in between. The section section "Anagram of America" rearranges the letters of poems by famous poets to create something new, often in response to the original. He creates anagrams of Auden's "The Unknown Citizen," Bishop's "Filling Station," and Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain."

I cannot comprehend the tediousness of Smith's accomplishment, but I can certainly admire it--and I can enjoy the results, since he has succeeded in creating something new, endowed with meaning and message. He and Chappel make villanelles and sestinas look like a piece of cake.