Obscurorant 2.0 » Reading Response Journal

Out of Nowheresville

The Silver Fox — Sat, 05 May 2012 01:37:11 +0000

Walton, Jo (2011). Among Others. NY: Tor Books. 304 pages.

Among Others is the tale, in the form of a diary, of young woman by the name Mori (short for Morwenna) Phelps. As the book opens Mori has run away from her mother following the death of her twin sister, and gone to live with her long-estranged father and his cold and distant family, who promptly pack her off to boarding school. Also she can do magic and talk to fairies.

Now that description may sound like the set up for your standard kind of YA fantasy novel, with a Chosen One who discovers hidden powers and an inevitable destiny to confront the Dark Lord and save the world, but you would be wrong. None of the above happens – in fact there is very little at all happening in Among Others. Mori navigates the strange currents of boarding school, and reads a lot of science fiction. A lot. Among Others is not about quests or confrontations or battles, it’s about what happens after those things happen. Mori herself notes:

“Tolkien understood about the things that happen after the end. Because this is after the end, this is all the Scouring of the Shire, this is figuring out how to live in the time that wasn’t supposed to happen after the glorious last stand. I saved the world, or I think I did, and look, the world is still here, with sunsets and interlibrary loans. And it doesn’t care about me any more than the Shire cared about Frodo.”

Please don’t get the idea that the lack of Big! Plot! Points! in Among Others makes for a dull or uninteresting read. Mori is an engaging diarist, whip smart and perceptive, but still a somewhat awkward teenage girl, trying to find her place in and come to terms with this strange world of adulthood. Also very interesting – at least for me – was the strong pull of the past generated by Walton’s Wayback Machine: the late 70s/early 80s setting of Among Others. Mori moves through a time I remember well, a time before the internet mainstreamed geek culture, a time when comic books and superheroes were decidedly not cool, let alone the subject of blockbuster films. Her perpetual hunt for new books to consume reminded me of my own. There was no Amazon (obviously), no huge bookstores like Barnes & Noble or Borders with shelf after shelf to browse, just your local, independent bookstore which if you were lucky had a decent selection of science fiction and fantasy*, and of course the library. And you learned about worthwhile books and authors by and large through word-of-mouth or your own experience.

Anyhoo, I highly recommend Among Others, and not just for the nostalgia.

*I was lucky. My local back on those days, the Voyager book store, had plenty of science fiction and fantasy available, as well as a fully stocked gaming section, which in those days meant loads and loads of Dungeons & Dragons (and lesser known role playing games) books and supplements, in addition to Avalon Hill wargames.

Walking In Different Circles

The Silver Fox — Fri, 20 May 2011 02:17:18 +0000

Fermor, Patrick Leigh (1977). A Time of Gifts. NY: The New York Review of Books. 316 pages.

The Library of Congress cataloging data just inside the cover of A Time of Gifts lists the subject headings of ‘Europe-Description and travel’ and ‘Europe, Central-Description and travel’ but one could just as easily describe it as part memoir and part adventure novel. Travel writing is not generally my reading material of choice, nor do I take easily to memoir, so I’ve been trying to determine the appeal of A Time of Gifts. Oddly enough, I decided it was the similarity to The Lord of the Rings that drew me in, and has led me to the sequel, Between the Woods and the Water. In a letter dated 20 September 1963 Tolkien noted that

“Part of the attraction of the L.R. is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist.”*

A Time of Gifts possesses some of that same attraction. In 1933 Fermor is walking across a Europe the reader knows is a few short years from being swept away. The medieval architecture that inspires him to ecstasies in prose will be bombed to the ground along with the rest of Germany, and many of those who shelter him along the way will be end up trapped behind the Iron Curtain. But through his journey Fermor affords us a view of an even older Europe, one that largely vanished in the wake of what was then called the Great War. In Austria Fermor is given food and shelter in the schloss of an elderly Count, whose visiting card inspires the following passage:

“After his name was printed: K.u.K. Kammerer u. Rittmeister i.R. ‘Imperial and Royal Chamberlain,’ that is, ‘and retired Captain of Horse.’ All through Central Europe the initials ‘K.u.K.’ – Kaiserlich und Koniglich – were the alliterative epitome of the old Dual Monarchy. Only candidates with sixteen of thirty-two quarterings, I learnt later, were eligible for the symbolic gold key that court chamberlains wore on the back of their full-dress uniforms. But now the Empire and the Kingdom had been dismembered and their thrones were empty; no doors opened to the gold keys, the heralds were dispersed, the regiments disbanded and the horses dead long ago. The engraved words croaked loud of spent glories.”

More inspiration to seek out a copy of Roth’s Radetzky March.

*The full text of this letter can be found in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Cold Gin

The Silver Fox — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:42:51 +0000

One thing about convalescing, you can get a lot of reading done. And so, here’s a brief review.

DeVoto, Bernard (1948). The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto. NY: TinHouse Books. 127 pages.

When he wasn’t winning Pulitzers or National Book Awards, Bernard DeVoto penned this brief ode to the joys of the cocktail. Long out of print, it has been re-issued with an introduction by Daniel Handler of Lemony Snicket and 69 Love Songs fame, and makes for a pleasant afternoon’s or evening’s reading. But reader be warned. DeVoto provides not only an ode, but an orthodoxy. To wit:

“Remember always that the three abominations are: (1) rum (2) any other sweet drink, and (3) any mixed drink except one made of gin and dry vermouth in the ratio I have given.”

DeVoto recognizes only two cocktails, the gin martini and “a slug of whiskey,” a rigid code that I, with my fondness for the French 75 (and its cousin the French 77 ) and Sidecars, freely admit to violating, though I hew to DeVoto’s line on what a proper martini contains, as well as enjoying slugs of whiskey.

Goodbye Girl

The Silver Fox — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:59:44 +0000

And here we are at the end of the series. Fifteenth in a series of fifteen.

Spinelli, Jerry (2000). Stargirl. NY: Random House. 186 pages.

Evaluation and summary: Leo Borlock is an unremarkable guy at an unremarkable high school. In fact, pretty much everyone at Micah High School is unremarkable, and they like it that way. No one really gets excited about sports or any other extracurricular activities, and most importantly, no one is different enough to stand out – until Stargirl arrives. She is very different, from her unusual garb, to her penchant for singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to anyone and everyone (while playing the ukelele), to her habit of attending the funerals of complete strangers. Leo falls head over heals for Stargirl, but will their relationship survive their classmates’ shunning of Stargirl?

When choosing the titles for this series, I tried to mix up the types of books I selected, varying the genres and picking some books that weren’t to my personal taste in reading material. Based on a classmate’s book talk I chose Stargirl, along with Heavy Metal and You, as books about romance and relationships, as opposed to my usual fare of ray guns, sword points or flintlocks. And maybe it’s because the book is not my usual fare, but I didn’t much care for Stargirl, despite the pile of awards it won.

My cool reaction to Stargirl is due to the characters. Stargirl herself is entirely too good to be true, saint like in her regard for others. Just as David Levithan created an ideal world (or at least an ideal town) to make a point, Spinelli created an ideal character to make a different point. Leo, while a little more believable as a real person than Stargirl, is a lot less likable. The only character I found appealing never spoke a word: Dori, Stargirl’s friend who remains loyal throughout all the events of the book.

Booktalk hook: I can see the appeal but I personally wouldn’t try to convince anyone to read Stargirl. The book did won loads of awards, so this may be just a matter of taste.

Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams

The Silver Fox — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:08:09 +0000

We’re almost through – fourteenth in a series of fifteen.

Gaiman, Neil (2007). M is for Magic. NY: HarperCollins. 260 pages.

Evaluation and summary: On the face of it, a book of short stories for young adults seems like a fine idea. The notion certainly has a distinguished pedigree, going back to (at least) Mr. Kipling and Ms. Potter. The format is ideal for those who want to sample a genre or an author without committing to a whole book, and the short time needed to finish a story must have an appeal to reluctant readers. Granted, short stories seem to have largely vanished from popular culture along with the pulps and slicks they once populated, but the idea still seems workable.

Neil Gaiman agrees with me, noting in his introduction to M is for Magic that his enjoyment of short stories as a young sprout inspired this collection. The Gaiman has a knack for self-promotion* and inspires near cult-like devotion in some of his fans; I’ve enjoyed much of his work but regret to say I found this collection little lacking. No doubt part of my disappointment is due to having previously read some of the selections (“Sunbird,” “How To Talk To Girls At Parties,” and “October in the Chair,” all of which are in Fragile Things), selections which were among the strongest stories in the collection. Some of the other stories left me cold. “Don’t Ask Jack” seemed like a synopsis of a story to be fleshed out later, while both “How To Sell the Ponti Bridge” and “The Price” ended rather abruptly for stories with such a lengthy buildup.

I did enjoy the last story in M is for Magic. “The Witch’s Headstone” features Nobody Owens, ‘Bod’ for short, an orphan who lives in a graveyard and is raised by an assortment of ghosts. The story went on to be included in The Graveyard Book, which I’ll get around to reading eventually.

Booktalk hook: I would booktalk M is for Magic by recommending The Sandman or Fragile Things.

*This is not intended as a slam at Gaiman. If you’ve ever heard one of his readings it’s obvious he put quite a bit of time and effort into his public speaking (reading?) skills.

You Got Another Thing Coming

The Silver Fox — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 20:59:40 +0000

Lucky thirteen brings us back to New York. Thirteenth in a series of fifteen.

Krovatin, Christopher (2005). Heavy Metal And You. NY: Scholastic. 186 pages.

Evaluation and summary: Sammy Markus is a high school student who really likes two things: heavy metal music, and getting fall-down drunk with his friends. All is well in his world, until he encounters something, or rather some one, else that he wants – Melissa. Pretty soon Sammy’s life is filled with conflict. He spends most of his time with Melissa, who convinces him to quit drinking and smoking. She doesn’t much care for his friends. Sammy’s friends in turn don’t much like Melissa; they she’s not only stolen their friend away, but turned him into some one he’s not in the process.

I grabbed this one from the shelf because of the title and it made me feel old. I was a teenage metalhead, so I figured I’d get the musical references. Not so much. For one thing, I was a teenage metalhead over twenty years ago, and was never really much into thrash, unlike Sammy. The only band we shared fondness for is Judas Priest. I also noticed Sammy’s tendency to cry, something I don’t recall the male protagonists doing in the YA books I read when I was actually a YA. Maybe things have changed and young men in YA literature are more sensitive? Or perhaps the crying was just a result of this author’s vision for the character? Either way, it pointed out the fact that I come from a generation with different social mores when it comes to male displays of emotion.

Booktalk hook: I didn’t dislike this book, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend it.

Listen, The Snow Is Falling

The Silver Fox — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 04:09:14 +0000

We return to present day England for the next title. Twelfth in a series of fifteen.

McCaughrean, Geraldine (2005). The White Darkness. NY: Harper Teen, 369 pages.

Evaluation and summary: What can I say about The White Darkness without giving away too much away? My professor has obviously read the book – she assigned it to the class. But the rest of you haven’t, as far as I know, and I don’t want to ruin it for you. Because I really like The White Darkness and highly recommend you read it yourself. Really, it was excellent – neck and neck with Montmorency in the race for my favorite read of the semester.

So I will say this concerning The White Darkness. The main character is Sym Wates, a fourteen year-old girl who is clumsy, shy and obsessed with Antarctic exploration, especially Captain Lawrence ‘Titus’ Oates. Captain Oates, it should be said, is Sym’s imaginary friend and they converse frequently. Anyway, Sym sets off on a trip to Paris, courtesy of her Uncle Victor, and I don’t have to tell you that things quickly get out of hand from that point. Go read and it and find out what exactly happens.

I don’t think it gives too much away to discuss here my extreme dislike of Uncle Victor. Actually, scratch out extreme dislike and insert intense hatred: Uncle Victor got on my nerves quickly and remained there for the entire book. It was his many eccentricities that did it to me. Everybody has their own little quirks. Me, I like to sleep on the cold side of the pillow, and I’m sure you have your own peccadilloes. Uncle Victor on the other hand – what with his special diet, sleeping upright in a special chair, sleeping upright in a special chair facing a certain direction to align his brain neurons and thus gain IQ points – is a crashing bore. And like Dr. Franklin, Uncle Victor too has his real-life compatriots, a whole host of people who are unable to deal with reality and so take refuge in conspiracy theories and other idiotic notions. You know them: the people who think there was a plot to steal the election for Bush; the people who think there was a plot to steal the election for Obama; the Birthers; the Truthers; and so on and so on. I’m sure much of my visceral reaction to Uncle Victor is due to the fact I since avoid folks like him in real life, encountering his ilk in fiction is all the more aggravating.

I did grow quite fond of Captain Oates, who made for a much more interesting imaginary friend than did Tony Hawks in Slam, perhaps because Captain Oates, to my way of thinking, had a much more interesting life. Serving in Ireland, Egypt and India, he was the kind of adventurous and insanely brave young man that formed the backbone of the British Empire, nearly winning the Victoria Cross with the Inniskilling Dragoons prior to his gallant but futile self-sacrifice on the Scott Expedition. In short, Oates is almost a picture perfect version of the stiff-upper-lip-play-up-play-the-game British gentleman. The imaginary Oates who spends so much time with Sym, is aware that by dying in 1912, to such great acclaim, he avoided the anonymity that waited for him in the muck of Flanders:

“I told you before : I’m the luckiest of men! Think! Two years more and it could all have been ours: the Great War! Lice and rats. Drowning in mud. Shrapnel wounds. Mustard gas. One among millions known only unto God. Would that have been somehow preferable?

Too true, too true, although there can be little doubt that Oates would have been one of those mad bastards who went over the top kicking a football. (He also gives another reason he feels fortunate to have died in Antarctica, but I’ll let you discover it for yourself, as it’s part of The White Darkness’s grim charm).

Booktalk hook: Reading aloud the scene with the ponies and the killer whales would be a pretty effective attention grabber.

Trip Through Your Wires

The Silver Fox — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:07:58 +0000

Next stop – the Republic of Vietnam, 1967. Eleven in a series of fifteen.

Myers, Walter Dean (1988). Fallen Angels. NY: Scholastic. 309 pages.

Evaluation and summary: Seventeen year old Richie Perry can’t afford to go to college, so he takes another way out of Harlem: he joins the army. The army promptly sends him to Vietnam where, despite a medical profile for bad knees, Perry is assigned to a combat infantry unit. There are rumors of an upcoming truce for Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, but Perry and the other members of his squad are seeing more and more combat…

Maybe it’s because I was a teenager in the ‘80s, when movies about the Vietnam war – Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Casualties of War, Hamburger Hill and Born on the Fourth of July to name a few – seemed to crowd the cinema, but the plot of Fallen Angels seemed very familiar . Raw recruit becomes a blooded veteran while witnessing the horrors of combat, experiences both brotherhood and racism in the ranks, and realizes the futility of the war. This is not a criticism of the author but an observation of how thoroughly I absorbed the tropes of the ‘Vietnam story’ without realizing it. I certainly enjoyed Fallen Angels, especially the character of Peewee Gates:

“You guys think we’re going to have a race problem over here?” Lobel asked.
“Not as long as everybody over here got them a gun,” Peewee said.
Lobel stood up. “Well, just in case we do,” he said. “I want you to know you got the Jew on your side.”
“Who’s the Jew?” Peewee asked.
“Me, I’m a Jew.”
“You ain’t no Jew,” Peewee said. “You too tall.”
“Fuck you, Peewee.”
“There you go with them promises again,” Peewee said.

It’s not hard to see how this book could be challenged due to profane language. Granted, I think banning or burning books is horrid, but why someone would want to ban a book because it contains the word fuck, while overlooking the scenes of graphic brutality (like children being machine-gunned along with their mother) is beyond me. Oddly enough, Fallen Angels is mentioned by one of the characters in Tomorrow, When the War Began, as an example of how ugly a guerilla conflict can become, and indeed the violence in Fallen Angels is an order of magnitude far worse.

Booktalk hook: The scene in which Perry and Peewee are cut off from their unit, crouched in a spider hole, on the verge of being discovered by ‘the Cong’ would be a great one to read aloud.

Land Down Under

The Silver Fox — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:09:08 +0000

Book ten brings us to Australia and the first reading response journal entry to reference the movie Red Dawn. Tenth in a series of fifteen.

Marsden, John (1993). Tomorrow, When The War Began. NY: Houghton Mifflin Company. 286 pages.

Evaluation and summary: Ellie and her best friend Corrie plan a camping trip into the wilds of rural Australia, and invite along five more of their friends. They pack up the Land Rover and drive it into ‘the bush’ and then hike deep into a remote valley in the mountains known as ‘Hell’ by the locals. After a week of camping, Ellie and company pack up and return to their homes in the small town of Wirrawee, – but something has happened during their absence, something awful. Ellie arrives home to find the dogs are dead, the power and phones out, and her parents missing. Things are no different at her friends’ homes. Soon they learn that the seemingly impossible has happened: Wirrawee has become the staging ground for an invasion of Australia. Ellie, Corrie and company take to the hills – and soon they turn to resisting the invaders.

In a lot of YA books parents are removed as protagonists through some contrivance or plot twist. In Dr. Franklin’s Island Semi, Miranda are on a trip abroad when their plane goes down; in Peeps Cal Thompson is in New York ostensibly to attend college; and in Boy Meets Boy and Weetzie Bat the parents remain agreeably off-stage for the most part, much like Ms. Othmar in Peanuts (except for Weetzie Bat’s dad, who conveniently removes himself from the storyline). Seen in that light, having your main character’s parents interned by invading soldiers is an effective way of removing them from the action while setting up the story to come.* John Milius thought so too, as anyone who has seen Red Dawn can attest, and as I read the book I couldn’t help compare it to the movie.** Tomorrow, When The War Began is not nearly as ‘gung ho’ as Red Dawn, although there is certainly plenty of action. What the book lacks is any sort of political subtext. The invading country is never identified and there are no clues to its identity presented in the story; we are only told that the enemy envied Australia’s wealth and prosperity. Nor does Marsden use the book to promote any sort of personal political ideology. He focuses on the character’s efforts to survive, as well as their efforts to cope with the after-effects of they violence they witness and are a part of.

On a side note I should mention that this title (or at least my wife’s copy) is an ‘import’ and as such is full of Australian slang. The slang terms are easily understood in context and add to the overall flavor of the story. I have no idea if there is a bowdlerized American edition but I hope not. I don’t have any use for such ‘Sorcerer’s Stone’ nonsense.

Booktalk hook: I would think this story would kind of sell itself – I might read one of the more exciting passages out loud to drum up interest.

*I’m trying to think of other YA books in the ‘resisting invasion’ genre and can only come up with two other series – Lloyd Alexander’s Kestrel books (which also deals explicitly with the effect of violence and combat on soldiers) and John Christopher’s Tripod series.
**Tomorrow, When The War Began is being made into movie, scheduled for release in 2010. I think you could combine it with Red Dawn for interesting double-bill.

Monsters And Angels

The Silver Fox — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:42:26 +0000

For the next book, we’re leaving the past behind and voyaging to a mysterious island in the present. Ninth in a series of fifteen.

Halam, Ann (2002). Dr. Franklin’s Island. NY: Dell Laurel-Leaf. 246 pages.

Summary and evaluation: Semirah Garson is shy and not at all good with people. So she is somewhat surprised find herself on an expedition to Ecuador with fifty other British Young Conservationists. Even if she has a tough time, Semirah, who goes by ‘Semi,’ is determined to enjoy trip. Very soon she realizes making friends will be the least of her problems; the plane carrying the expedition crashes and Semi, along with Arnie and Miranda, is cast ashore on an island, an island belonging to the Dr. Franklin of the title. And the good doctor is in need of subjects- human subjects – to take part in his latest experiment.

If Dr. Franklin’s Island was assigned to us as a science fiction read, and Peeps as horror, why did I find the former much more creepy? I’m going to say it’s because Peeps is about vampires, which don’t exist, while Dr. Franklin’s Island is about a man so consumed by his cause, conveniently justified by the great notion of ‘progress’, that he is able to treat other people as less than human, as objects. And the world is full of people like that. Dr. Franklin sees nothing wrong with the horrific things he does to his prisoners; indeed he is happy to chat with Semi and Miranda and tell them in great detail what he has in store for them. He has no shame, and so it easy to imagine Dr. Franklin not just as a ‘mad’ scientist but as an SS officer executing civilian hostages, or as a Wall Street executive cashing out his bonus while his employees’ pension fund goes up in smoke. As I said, the world is full of people like Dr. Franklin.

In a brief ‘about-the-author’ style note at the end of the book, Halam mentions that Dr. Franklin’s Island was inspired by The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H.G. Wells. I haven’t read Wells’ book (though I have seen the awesomely bad movie based on the boo – you know, the one with Val Kilmer and Marlon Brando). Based on what I know about the earlier title, Halam has inverted the mad scientists’ work: Dr. Franklin seeks to change people into animals, while Dr. Moreau wanted to change animals into humans. In Well’s book the transformation is presented as a very bad thing, but in Halam’s novel the change is presented differently. The process is horrible and scary (and creepy to read about) but the result is, well, enjoyable for the test subjects. Being a person changed into a fish or a bird is not bad in-and-of-itself; it’s the captivity and lack of control that pain Semi, Miranda and Arnie.

Booktalk hook: It would hard – really hard – to beat the blurb on the back of the book i.e ‘what would it be like to watch your friend change into a bird, knowing you’re next?’ I would play on that statement and read aloud the particularly horrifying passage where Miranda really starts to change.