4 posts tagged “fiction”

I shouldn't write about this until I finish it, but it's just occupying so much of my mindspace, I have to purge. I heard about this book on Forum's annual book roundup, which is quite a mishmash ... and then but a few days later it showed up in my Book of the Day page-a-day calendar, so I thought -- Kismet!

First, it has the best title ever:

and second, it's very cleverly done. The story is told completely through interview transcripts and does a great job of switching between voices (like one military grunt that keeps referring to the legions of the Living Dead as "Zack", as in "we kept firing but Zack just kept coming" -- ha ha!). And, well, it's giving me a lot to think about, aside from zombies. For instance (although I've been thinking about this before this book) -- how utterly USELESS is every last whit of my education, come the revolution (or the undead invasion)? I can't sew, can't cook, am not handy, am not really a social organizer or Leader Of People ... I am so destined to get eaten when Zack gets here. Again, in the book, there's a very telling scene in a refugee camp, where everyone is listing their previous occupation as "analyst," "executive", "consultant", "artistic director"  and all they want to find is some carpenters and masons. Everyone winds up working for their old cleaning ladies.

Although I haven't yet finished the book, I am happy to know that ultimately humanity does win World War Z. Somehow the customer service reps manage to triumph.  

When I was young, I always wished I had a cave nearby, a la Tom Sawyer and others. I would retreat to this cave in order to be alone and to do Serious Solitude Thinking. Having no local caverns, I was forced to revert to burying a pen and a notebook in a plastic bag in the woods behind our house, which could be dug up in Solitude Moments should profound thoughts need to be jotted down. But the trees were rather sparse, and you could totally see the Braico's backyard from my fortress, and it just generally sucked way more than a cave would have.

Now, had some of these recent jolly underground books been around, I might not have been so keen on a cave (although you'd think Tom Sawyer would have been a bit cautionary, too).

Leepike Ridge has a fast-moving river that acts all innocuous as it flows past your house and then SPEEDS UP and HEADS UNDERGROUND for a long time before bottoming out in a dank underground pond, complete with bodies from previous spelunkers and treasure-hunters. Naturally, the grouchy son of a possibly-remarrying mom would hop on to a piece of refrigerator foam and accidentally end up there, with no apparent way of ever getting out. Scary, suspenseful and fun, with a great archaeological-mystery, avenge-my-dead-dad subplot. But what a stupid cover, and not the world's greatest title either.

My other recent underground read is the fourth book in the City of Ember series. Right now I'd like to give a shout-out to my stand-up buddy Paul, who actually schlepped all the way to San Jose and then came with me to see the tepidly-reviewed, PG Kid Thriller Flick "City of Ember", based on the first book. The author, Jeanne DuPrau, is local and came to our school last year and made me a Totally Awesome Librarian Hero with the 4th-6th grader set for hooking that up.

The basic premise of the series is that some unspecified apocalypse has forced the remains of humanity underground,

where huge generators and acres of stored canned goods provide the electricty and sustenance for the city. But, after two hundred years, the generators are beginning to fail and no one knows what lies beyond Ember or how to get out. By the fourth book, the Diamond of Darkhold, our cute cute teen heroes Lina and Doon have made it out of Ember, found survivors on the surface, tamped down rebellion, and started to think about the supplies that were left behind when the people fled the City. Lots of adventure for two little kids.

I actually thoroughly enjoyed the movie, although I think it was enhanced for me by the backstory that any movie has to eliminate for time purposes. Maybe because the story was less meaty to begin with, it translated to the screen with greater ease than, say, Harry Potter. Usually I'm afraid to see the movie of books I've loved, because I don't want my mind's view of them tainted, but since this wasn't exactly a life-changer, I was happy with how it turned out.

(But I'm going to continue to keep away from The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and another book-turned-movie I won't be seeing is Blindness. Just in case.)

I think it's safe to say that many women have a love-hate relationship with their feet. We spend a lot primping them at spas and salons but also deprecating them -- they're not exactly the most glamorous parts of our bodies. They get blisters, corns, calluses ... they get stinky and dirty and sweaty ... Even nicely-painted-toe feet are pretty gross sometimes. Not my favorite appendage by a long shot.

Oh, but then I went on a little Lisa See binge and now I just want to thank my feet for being whole and useful.

Raise your hand if you thought, as I did, that the ancient Chinese custom of footbinding was a way of stunting the growth of a young girl's feet to keep them small, not unlike a bonsai tree. Not the case, friends. Bones are broken. Toes are FOLDED UNDER THE FOOT. The whole thing is so incredibly deforming it's hard to fathom how widespread it was.There are some delightful photos here and also here. (Not perhaps if you've just eaten.)

In both Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (about which I know I'm late to the game) and Peony in Love, footbinding plays a prominent role, as does the general worthlessness of girls and women, and the relationships between women who truly believe that they and their sisters/daughters/friends have no value beyond giving birth to sons. The most chilling phrases, repeated in both, is "Show her your mother love, " said to weak moms who recoil from binding their daughters' feet. Mother love is inflicting pain and teaching sorrow. DAMN. My mother love is NOT like that.

Feet aside, Peony in Love is one of those strange books that get better, not worse, upon reflection. It's a rather fanciful and highly strung story about a girl who  becomes obsessed with an opera, falls desperately in love with a poet and dies rather than marry her arranged spouse (who, WHOOPS, is actually the guy she fell in love with -- shoulda looked when they were pointing him out). Here it gets a little Lovely Bones-y, as she becomes a hungry ghost and wafts about trying to do good things for her still-living man, including Plucking a Young Girl from Poverty by arranging to have her feet bound (!!) so she can't labor any more and matchmaking the two of them (poet and former peasant). There is also much about a commentary on the opera that she had written as she was dying, which interested me very little until I finished the book and learned that much of it was true! There was such an opera, that inspired many "lovesick maidens" to essentially starve themselves, and even the commentary exists. (Presumably the hungry ghost part was

fictional.) With that framework, all of a sudden the book seemed a lot better to me. The more I think about it, the more I like it.

SFATSF is much more straightforward; I can see why it was everyone's book club pick last year. However, both of these together have made me revise my nightly Blessings Review. Now I also need to thank God that:

1. I was born a women in the 20th century in America and All Things Are Open To Me.
2. My mother's Mother Love did not deform me either figuratively or literally.
3. My feet are intact and could help me flee marauders if necessary.

Women, we are LUCKY LUCKY LUCKY that strong women went before us. And Go Hillary! How about that Democratic Convention, people?? Let us devoutly hope that the tide has turned and that change is coming.

Well, well. Can anyone tell when school started for me? Oh, yeah, about a month ago. Note date of last posting.

Whatever.

I've been busy reading lots of dragon books (they just keep churning these out!), reading some Best Sellers (including On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan, because we are all supposed to, didn't you know, and The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud, because the cover reminded me of The Keep) and ROCKING my 8th grade tech class. Perhaps "rocking" is a bit enthusiastic, but I do have them begrudgingly contributing to a class blog on technology (and their comments are so great, these kids are so sophisticated and clever and well-meaning and young) and it's actually much less awful than it could have been. So that's a plus. I should be planning lessons right now. Of course I am completely NOT.

Ian McEwan, though completely brilliant, leaves me cold. The first thing I ever read by him was The Cement Garden, which damn if that wasn't the feel-sick novel of the year, and it was at a Vulnerable Time in my life, and you know, I just am a bit cagey around him. I loved the way their lives unfolded at the very end of the book, so quick and so distant.

The Emperor's Children was more plot-y and dishy and fun, but I couldn't get over how these uppity New Yorkers just kept running into each other in completely random places ... like so for instance <SPOILER> Woman 1 and Man 2 meet in Sydney, where he lives and she is scouting for a documentary location, and then she goes back to New York and he moves there to start a Literary Magazine to Foment Revolution, and hey, they meet at the cafe in the Met his first day there! Because I am so sure he would go directly from Qantas to the museum, right? Or, hey, here we are in Miami, and isn't that that guy who used to live with us, who we all thought died on 9/11 but apparently just took that opportunity to vanish? </SPOILER> It got to be a bit much.

There's a punch line in there, right?