rsadelle

I owe a debt of gratitude to anitabuchan for reviewing Justina Chin Headley's Girl Overboard on 50books_poc because I would never have picked it up otherwise. I have, in fact, read the inside flap of another of Justina Chin Headley's books in the library and decided not to read it. Considering how great this book was and how much the back of the book doesn't match the contents, I'll definitely be reading more of her work.

Girl Overboard centers around Syrah Cheng. Her dad is billionaire and business book author Ethan Cheng, and her mother is his socialite second wife. When the story opens, Syrah is recovering from a knee injury that's keeping her from her one true love: snowboarding.

Over the course of the book, Syrah works her way through her friendship with the best friend she used to snowboard with, her injury, making a new friend, her relationship to food and her family, and learning to use her rich girl resources (including the Cheng drive to succeed along with the Cheng money) to help others.

I just loved this book. I read it in two short sittings and didn't want it to end.

My biggest quibble with the back of the book is that it says, "...her own so-called boyfriend is only after her for her father's name." ( Spoilers )

Don't bother with the back of the book blurb and skip straight to the book itself.

If you're interested, I have a copy I'm giving away. Just let me know and you can have it! If it's not claimed by next Monday, it's going back up on PaperBackSwap.

I don't know how interesting other people's writing processes actually are if you're not them, so this might be one of those entries that's less for you to read and more for me to write. This does contain lots of spoilers for "Fighting For," so if you have any interest in the story, you should go read it before you read this. If you're not interested in the story, but are interested in the intersection of sci fi and feminist thought, you might still find the section on gender politics interesting.

( Writing Without a Plot: Origins and Story Arc )

( Sex Scenes That Don't Obey )

( Gender Politics )

( Credit Where Credit Is Due: Influences )

( Things I Did That You Might Not Have Noticed )

Things I Did That I Might Not Have Noticed

One of the things I love about having other people read something I wrote is when they notice things I didn't even know I was doing. If you read "Fighting For," I'd love to know what you noticed in it that I didn't know I was doing.

I don't have a lot to say about Climbing the Stairs. I did start reading it with the intention of reading for twenty minutes before bed and had to finally force myself to put it down and go to sleep an hour after my bedtime, so it was a pretty compelling read. Um. That's pretty much all I have to say about it.

I was a little iffy about reading this book because I thought Tantalize was a little weak, and ended just as I was really getting into it. I thought Rain Is Not My Indian Name is actually much better written. It's a fairly standard YA novel where the girl's mother died years ago and her best friend recently, she's withdrawn into herself, and then the connections she has with other people draw her back into the world, and I found it totally emotionally satisfying. It even made me cry at the end, which is what that kind of book should do.

I not only liked Rain, I also liked the way all of the other characters are also real people with their own lives that we catch glimpses of. My favorite is probably Grampa, who spends the majority of the novel on vacation in Vegas and sends notes and emails back.

The reason I picked up this book even though I thought Tantalize had problems is that one of the reviews I read mentioned that Rain is a fangirl, and that's not something you see in very many books. For anyone else to whom this might be an enticement: it's not a major plot point, and, in fact, only gets two mentions. It's not quite a throw-away, only because she talks about fandom being something Fynn (her brother) introduced her to. The second mention kind of bothered me: "Me? I'd cleaned the house, read sci-fi fan fiction, and eavesdropped in Internet chat rooms." On the one hand, I know firsthand how easy it is to avoid real life by cleaning and hiding in fandom. On the other, I'm bothered by the reinforcing of the stereotype that fangirls don't have lives.

Even though I just read it this week, The Arrival is my PoC author book for June. (I had another one, but I didn't start it until almost the end of the month and then discovered I hated it and couldn't finish it.)

I have to admit that I chose this because I figured it would be a fast read, which is true. I'm not much of a visual art person, so the fact that The Arrival is all picture and no words means it's not quite my kind of book, but there were things I really liked. First of all, I loved all the little creatures. They're totally awesome. Secondly, I like the way that every time he meets someone, it takes us into their stories. It was a neat bit of interweaving of stories. Thirdly, there's a panel I absolutely love, where he opens his suitcase and his family is sitting at a table inside it.

I have to stop reading books without knowing anything about them ahead of time. I knew that a lot of people liked Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, but I didn't know it was going to break my heart pretty much from the first page.

The book is about Junior and what happens the year he decides to leave the reservation school and go to Reardan, a small-town white high school twenty-two miles away. Junior is a cartoonist, and the book also includes his cartoons, from artist Ellen Forney. In a lot of ways, the book is ultimately hopeful. Junior navigates his way into life at Reardan, makes friends there, and reconciles with his best friend on the reservation. But it's not an easy road. Probably the most heartbreaking part was this:

Jeez, I've been to so many funerals in my short life.

I'm fourteen years old and I've been to forty-two funerals.

That's really the biggest difference between Indians and white people.

A few of my white classmates have been to a grandparent's funeral. And a few have lost an uncle or aunt. And one guy's brother died of leukemia when he was in third grade.

But there's nobody who has been to more than five funerals.

All my white friends can count their deaths on one hand.

I can count my fingers, toes, arms, legs, eyes, ears, nose, penis, butt cheeks, and nipples, and still not get close to my deaths.

I kept being reminded of a video (I think) I've never seen but have read descriptions of. The video is of black men and white men talking about racism, and one of the white men doesn't believe the PoC experience, and they keep pushing, and eventually he says something like he can't believe it because he can't live with the idea that our world can be like that. I felt like that guy reading this book. The first couple of times Junior talks about what it means to be Indian and poor, I felt myself resisting it. I don't want to believe that our world can be like that. Once I noticed myself resisting, though, I was able to let go of it and listen to Junior tell me his story.

I listened to Empires' "Spit the Dark" (acoustic version at their MySpace or download Howl with the album version I was listening to from their website) on repeat the whole time I was reading the book. (Yes, I'm the kind of person who will listen to one song on repeat for hours and hours and hours.) The lyrics that catch my ear are "I will guide you in the night" and "will you join me?" I also read the vision statement of To Write Love On Her Arms yesterday. Both of those things were in my head, and by the time I got to the end of the book, I felt opened up and full of love. It reminded me that one of happiness commandments is Love.

On a more intellectual note, part of why I wanted to read this is that one of the characters in my paranormal mystery novel is Native American and grew up on a reservation, and one of the things I'd like to do someday is write a prequel novel that tells her story. This book certainly gave me a lot to think about.

My instinctive white privilege/child of a social worker response to the issues of alcoholism and poverty was to think, "How could this be fixed?" And then my anti-racism resources reading/family support/strengthening side kicked in and said, "This is not your place to come up with a solution." I'm still left curious about what the perspectives of Native Americans are. The conclusion the book comes to is that what Junior has to do to break the cycle is to leave the reservation. If everyone leaves, what happens to the culture? Do other people have other solutions or is this the accepted solution? I don't expect anyone reading this to answer my questions, but they're certainly something I'll be thinking about to direct more of my reading.

In a different intellectual direction, the book design is awesome. If you're at all interested in books, I suggest taking a look at this for the design alone, even if you don't ultimately read it.

I have one more book and part of a second book to rec for you today.

First up is Bound By Deception by Ava March. Honestly, I have no memory of buying this book, so I think it must have been something someone else sent me a copy of. Anyway, Oliver is in love with his friend Lord Vincent Prescot and contrives to take the place of Vincent's usual prostitute on his monthly outing to a brothel. This takes place in London in 1822, so you can imagine the circumstances. The important part for this post is that the sex they have is nicely kinky, and there's a hot masturbation with a dildo scene later.

My other rec for this post is only a rec for part of a book. The book is Love Bites, an anthology of threesome short stories with bites or hickeys, edited by S.A. Clements. Like any anthology, the quality is variable. Some of the stories are hot, others not so much. There were a couple of other stories I liked, but my favorite was "CatsEye" by C.C. Bridges. First of all, it's m/m/f threesome kink. But more importantly, the person who brought it to my attention did so because of who the threesome is: we're pretty sure it started life as a Jared/Jensen/Sandy AU, and all she did was change the names to Cooper, Jason, and Lexi. The plot is that Cooper's in love with Jason who invites him out to a club. He gets there to find out that Cooper is Lexi's puppy, and then he becomes their kitten. Trust me when I tell you it's hot. There are apparently a couple of other Jason/Cooper/Lexi stories in other anthologies, but I have yet to read them.

Today's bonus book rec, in honor of being at WisCon, is the PsyCop series by Jordan Castillo Price. You may remember that I first heard about the series two years ago at WisCon and decided to try it out last year when I found out that Jordan is a woman. The books are really better for the plot than the sex, but the sex is mildly kinky and thus appropriate for this rec series. Vic very much likes it when Jacob takes charge, and Jacob totally gets off on Vic talking about psychic stuff, even when it's kind of creepy psychic stuff.

Today's bonus book rec is J.L. Langley's My Fair Captain. This is a Regency novel in space, complete with stifling social rules, intrigue, and, of course, true love. It's awesome. Nate and Aiden's relationship also has a tinge of kink to it. Nate is very much always in control, and there's a very hot spanking scene.

Saturday's bonus recs will be books. Yes, this means you'll have to go buy/borrow/otherwise acquire them to read them, but I promise they're worth it.

Let's start with an obvious set: the Deviations series by Chris Owen and Jodi Payne. There are four books (so far?). In order: Deviations: Submission, Deviations: Domination, Deviations: Discipline, and Deviations: Bondage. Our main characters are Noah and Tobias, who meet one night when Tobias heads to the club for his birthday and his good friend/club owner Bradford suggests he might like to play with Noah. As in all such stories, they start playing regularly, write up a contract, fall in love, write a new contract ( spoilers. ) Also as in all such stories, you'll have to suspend a bit of disbelief, but if you ever read BDSM club AUs, you'll have no problem with it.

Highlights for me include use of a Saint Andrew's Cross, the previously mentioned scene where Tobias talks Noah down into subspace, Tobias staging an outdoors scene with an audience, a fair amount of other roleplaying, and ( spoilers for the last book. )

Chris Owen is a slasher, and her fan fic is on the same domain as her pro site. I'd read some of it before I read her books, but none of it stands out for me. I'd love to know if Jodi Payne is a slasher, and if so who, because I'd love to check out her fic too.

I keep meaning to make a kink recs exchange post, but I've been meaning to do that for six months, so the chances it'll happen anytime soon are iffy.

Enabling friends have recently gotten me into bandslash, which mostly makes me laugh about how I'm always a couple of years behind the rest of fandom. Anyway, I read a couple of stories with BDSMy elements without being explicitly BDSM (part of what prompted my previous question about BDSM and BDSMy fic), which made me want to read more of that kind of thing.

The Recs Request

BDSMy fic. I don't want something like a BDSM club/whips and chains thing, something less formalized. I read something where someone (Frank or Gerard, I think) found himself really liking having his hair tugged a little while giving head and something else Panic pre-gsf where Ryan had a thing about his wrists. So what I really want is something like that - where someone just likes being held down, but where the story is more about the relationship/schmoopy than just the hot sex.

Anyone have any recs for fic along those lines? I'm not picky about the fandom - as we've seen, I'm perfectly happy to read things where I know nothing about the fandom.

The Rec

I wasn't sure if my request made a lot of sense, and then I stumbled upon a story on my own that was exactly the kind of thing I wanted, so you can consider this both a rec and an example of what my recs request is about, even if the story in question is somewhat more formal than I was thinking of.

The story is "Tell me to stop" by airgiodslv. It's Brendon/Spencer, with Brendon both subbing for Spencer and teaching him the mechanics of being a dom. The mood is what I wanted. I also really liked the level of negotiation. ( There's no real reason for this cut. I just feel like there should be one here. )

As you probably know, I like sci fi. Octavia Butler is pretty much the classic PoC sci fi author. Aside from this, all I knew about her was that she writes vampire books and she wrote Kindred. I did not read anything about Kindred before I requested it from the library. I kept waiting for the vampires to show up, and only realized 35 pages in that it was not, in fact, a vampire book. D'oh!

Kindred is instead the story of Dana, a black woman married to a white man in 1976, who keeps traveling back to the nineteenth century at moments that allow her to save the life of her white, slave-owning ancestor Rufus.

I read the first thirty-some pages on Monday, another forty-some pages on Tuesday, and the rest of the book in one sitting yesterday, a sitting where I kept thinking, "At the next section break, I'll get up and do my weight lifting," but didn't. That's a pretty good sign that it's an engrossing, compelling story.

I have this idea in my head that Octavia Butler is a Serious Writer who deals with Serious Issues, which she does. The book clearly tackles both the issue of white slave owners fathering children with their black slaves via rape and the issue of how easily people adapt to their circumstances, even if those circumstances mean they become slaves. The Serious Issue that seemed hinted at but not directly addressed is how their time in the past changes Dana and Kevin's relationship in the present of 1976.

Some of the dialogue is a little stilted, and not the nineteenth-century dialogue, either, but the 1976 dialogue. I suspect most of that is simply the formula of writing in the 70s (I can't remember the last time I read a non-children's book written before 1990, so I don't really have anything to compare it to), but there's at least one spot where the message is showing a little too clearly.

In terms of broadening my experience of the world, I have to admit that I had a hard time really accepting how easily Dana adapted to being a slave. I'm not sure how much of this is the writing not pulling me far enough into her head and how much of it is my white privilege that means I've never had to think about what it would be like to be a slave, which is clearly something Dana lives with even before her time travel experiences. I was skimming Racialicious earlier today (is anyone talking about last night's ep of Better Off Ted?), and in recounting a discussion about BDSM race play, Andrea Plaid says, "Personally, I think of race play and, yeah, I feel the body memories of slavery, too," which makes me more convinced it's my white privilege showing.

As I mentioned, I've been reading a lot about race, racism, and anti-racism, and one of the communities I came across was 50books_poc. Reading some books by people of color seems like a good idea, but 50 in a year seems like setting myself up to fail. To get a good sense of what would be a reasonable challenge, I decided to look at both the books I own and the books I've read so far this year to see how many of them are written by PoC or feature PoC protagonists. Since I always say I don't really read books by or about men, I also thought it would be interesting to look at female authors and protagonists. A note about counting: books with multiple authors/protagonists got counted if one of the authors/protagonists was PoC/female. Anthologies did not get counted in the protagonist category and only got counted in the author category if it was an anthology of stories by one author. (I thought about trying to fraction it out, but that would be too much work for what is meant to be a general overview and doesn't quite need that level of precision.)

Books I Own

I own 29 books of fiction. This includes picture books, excludes ebooks (because my standards for keeping them are pretty low since they don't take up shelf space), includes collections of Grimm and Andersen fairy tales and Connie Willis' Impossible Dreams but excludes multiple-author anthologies (because thinking about how to count them made my head hurt), and counts all volumes of From Eroica With Love as one book (because to do otherwise seems like cheating in my favor). If you're interested in what those books are, you can check out my LibraryThing. I've excluded nonfiction because the nonfiction I own is more in the reference category (a cookbook, three prayer books) than the sort of thing you would sit down and read.

Of the 29 books I own, 2 books are by PoC authors. (Note: I think. I had it in my head that Vera B. Williams is Hispanic, and my mother thinks so too, but a quick google didn't give me anything. If she is, it's 3, not 2.) Interestingly, both of them are graphic novels by Japanese authors (one in translation, one originally in English) featuring white characters: Yasuko Aoike's From Eroica With Love (I have volumes 1-13 in official translations and a bunch of fan translations, which is why it would feel like cheating to include each volume separately) and Kazu Kibuishi's Daisy Kutter: The Last Train.

Of the 26 books for which I counted protagonists, 3 books have PoC protagonists. Interestingly, two of the three are picture books (Vera B. Williams' A Chair for My Mother and Robert D. San Souci's The Enchanted Tapestry) and two of them have Chinese protagonists (Robert D. San Souci's The Enchanted Tapestry and Maureen F. McHugh's China Mountain Zhang).

Of those 29 books I own, 25 books are by female authors. Of the four that are by men, one's a picture book, one's a graphic novel, and the other two are the Grimm and Andersen fairy tale collections.

Of the 26 books for which I counted protagonists, 18 books have female protagonists, which is much lower than I would have guessed before I counted. Of the books with male protagonists, only one is by a male author.

Books I've Read This Year (So Far)

I've read 23 books so far this year. This includes fiction, nonfiction, ebooks, and anthologies.

I was able to identify if the author was a PoC or not for 16 of those books. (Note: the single anthology was left out of this count.) Of those 16, only 1 book was written by a PoC author (Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi). Trying to figure out if the author was a PoC or not was an interesting exercise. There was one particular author who I expected from her writing to be the whitest white girl who ever lived. I found pictures of her, and, well, I've seen white women who look like that and I've seen PoC women who look like that, and she does not self-identify a race on her MySpace page. It was one of those things that make you think about how odd it is to try to determine these kinds of things from the outside.

Of the 18 books for which I counted protagonists, only 1 book featured a PoC protagonist (Bone Crossed by Patricia Briggs).

Of those 23 books, excluding the one anthology, 17 books were written by female authors. This was another one of those that was lower than I would have expected before counting. Of the six books written by men, three of them were children's/YA, one was nonfiction (one of the books counted as written by female authors was also co-authored by a man), and one was m/m erotica (and if I'd known that Sean Michael was actually a man and not some female slasher's male pseudonym, I never would have bought Bent; it does go a long way to explaining at least two of the three major problems I had with the book). This division isn't quite as surprising to me: when I say I don't read books by men, I usually say that the exceptions are nonfiction and the occasional YA novel.

Of the 18 books for which I counted protagonists, 12 books featured a female protagonist. Of the books featuring a male protagonist, two were YA, three were m/m erotica, and one was a fantasy novel with gay protagonists by a female author, which, again, fits pretty well with how I would classify books I do read with male protagonists.

What Seems Reasonable to Me

I think I could actually do more, but I think I'll baby step my way into this and start with a commitment to reading one book by a PoC author per month. So this is where I'm asking for recs. Keep in mind that I basically read YA; fluffy sci fi/fantasy (by which I mean no hard sci fi, nothing with too intensely belabored a message, nothing with eighty bajillion pages of boring description), preferably with a romance as part of the plot; nonfiction in limited quantities; and m/m erotica.

norwich36 was kind enough to loan me Patricia Briggs' Bone Crossed, so I didn't have to wait for it to come out in paperback to read it. ( Thoughts/Spoilers )

After I finished Bone Crossed, I decided to continue on with werewolf books and read Carrie Vaughn's Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand. You may remember that I've talked about this series before (spoilers for earlier books at both those links). ( Thoughts/Spoilers )

Then, completely unrelated to either of the two previous books, I read Perry Moore's Hero. Maybe someday I'll manage to get my thoughts together about how knowing about a book/TV show/movie changes what I expect out of it, but for now let me boil it down to: I think Hero is overrated. (Which I say without having read any particular reviews, just the impression I've gotten that a lot of people liked it.) ( Thoughts/Spoilers )

I'm not sure what I want to say about this, or, rather, I didn't write it down when I did know what I wanted to say and no longer remember what it was. So instead, let me start with a question: for those of you who read two or more of them, did you find "Chris in Recovery," "Britney Escapes," "Love and Marriage," and "Full Hearts" to be the same story? To me, they're all the same story, and it's the same story I've been telling for years, with only a slight shift in plot details.

You may remember that I was a little shaken up when I figured out what I was writing about, partly because it was my own story: I write about people going away from the people who've known them as children to become their own people as adults and make their own choices, which is what I did with my life. The small shift I noticed as I looked back over the things I've been writing recently is that now sometimes people become who they are in place instead of having to leave to do it. I've been thinking about this again because I brought up this idea that we tell the same story over and over again with my writing group and caused some consternation. (This is like my causing trouble in fandom in the old days - I just say things and they turn out to cause uproar or upheaval.)

I don't want to tell the same story over and over again. First of all, it's boring and/or annoying for readers. Years ago I read one of Elizabeth Moon's sci fi books. I was enjoying the dynamic of the woman with leadership skills who was reluctant to be a leader, and I kept thinking it reminded me of another book. I lost a lot of respect for Elizabeth Moon when I realized that the book it reminded me of was her own Deed of Paksenarrion. Secondly, I think telling the same story over and over again shows a lack of imagination. I don't want to be that kind of writer. I want to be the kind of writer who has an imagination and can tell different stories.

As I was thinking about this and talking to the member of my writing group who was particularly thrown by our discussion, I realized that another aspect of the story I tell is that it always has a happy and/or hopeful ending. It was my wish to do something different that had me trying to write an unhappy story with "No Happily Ever Afters" and "Brokenhearted". I'm not sure I was successful, and I had to work very hard to take plot bunnies I'd intended to be happy and/or hopeful and make them unhappy.

When the stories in my head follow the same well-worn paths, how do I learn to tell a different story?

1

It is a Tuesday in February. This is the start of my second year of helping my mother clean out and organize her house. In practice, this means that I go over to her house every second or third Tuesday and stand or sit with her and ask the occasional question while she does most of the work and all of the hard work - the decision making.

Her books are an ongoing project. She won't or can't get rid of very many of them. On this Tuesday, she's sorting and rearranging the stacks of unread books that create uneven towers in the corner of her living room. At the bottom of one stack is the copy of Zadie Smith's White Teeth she had me pick up for her on a trip to Barnes & Noble when I still lived with my parents. I haven't lived there for five and a half years.

Halfway through sorting, as she flips a book open to a random page to see what it is and if she wants to keep it, she rejects it based on the size of the print. She looks at the stack of books she's already rearranged, sighs, I should really check all of them for print size. She doesn't.

Somewhere in the stack is Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. I want to read that, I say. She hands it to me. You have to give it back. I'd been hoping I could read it, pass it on, make it one more book out of the stack.

2

In February, I read a book that I had hoped would be more about elephants when it turned out to be more about people. I had hoped Reading Lolita In Tehran would be more about people, especially once I got into the first section, but it's more about literature, and more about the crushing sense of life in a totalitarian regime, and life in a totalitarian regime at war.

3

Early in the book, on page 50, Nafisi recounts one of her students' thoughts: "It's strange, but some critics seem to treat the text the same way Humbert treats Lolita: they only see themselves and what they want to see." When I read it, it seemed like Nafisi wanted it to be a startling revelation. Perhaps, if there were more set up for this to be surprising to her girls. To me, though, it's obvious. It's Anais Nin's "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

4

I was startled by how strong a reaction I had to Lolita without ever having read it. My instinctive response was revulsion at what Humbert does to an innocent girl, to such a point that I had a hard time reading Nafisi's plot summary of the book.

5

This book belongs as the centerpiece of a class on Western literature and Iranian history. It's divided into four sections: "Lolita," "Gatsby," "James," and "Austen." Austen is the only one I've read. My knowledge of Iranian history is superficial at best. I wonder how the book would be different if I'd read the things she references, or knew the historical facts behind her emotional memories of the Revolution and the bombings of Tehran.

6

The back of the book led me to believe the book would be about Nafisi's experiences with the private literature class she convened in her living room. The first and fourth sections of the book are about that, but the second and third are not.

7

The first section of the book - "Lolita" - reminded me of the feeling I always have about Resonant's "Transfigurations": I always expect tragedy. "Transfigurations" is not without its deaths, but it ultimately ends happily. In the Epilogue, Nafisi tells us of her students now. They are all still alive. Several of them have left Iran. Those who haven't continue to read literature.

8

I'm always struck by startling statements uncommented on. In this:

I joined the Iranian student movement reluctantly. My father's imprisonment and my family's vague nationalist sympathies had sensitized me towards politics, but I was more of a rebel than a political activist - though in those days there was not much difference between them. One attraction was the fact that the men in the movement didn't try to assault or seduce me. Instead, they held study groups in which we read and discussed Engels's Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State and Marx's The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

Which reminded me of this, from brown_betty's "The Underwire Job":

It came out sharper than he meant it, but she didn't look insulted, only puzzled. "Feelings are hard," she said finally. "But he's a good kisser. And he stopped when we had to stop."

There was something really dark and nasty behind that sentence, and Eliot did not want to go anywhere near it, other than taking a mental note to hurt some son of a bitch if it turned out that was required.

9

I'm hungry, but it's time to do yoga. It's time to do yoga, but I'm so close to the end of the book. I'll finish the book, I tell myself, and then do yoga.

I get to the end of the Epilogue and cry. I put the book down in my lap, take off my glasses, wipe my eyes with the palms of my hands. Why am I crying? I ask myself. The people we've come to know live. They keep reading.

I dry my eyes, put my glasses back on. It's time to do yoga.

But I know how to structure my entry about this book. I sit down and write half of this. I stop and do my yoga. Is my heart more open? Is my mind clearer?

10

"He continues almost breathlessly, with a sort of venom that is uncalled-for in relation to a work of fiction."

I was bothered by this. If she wants her students to be passionate about literature, to love it, to see in it a different world, can't venom be a part of that?

11

Every time I came to a section 11, I thought, "But surely I'm farther along than part 2." The typeface, Bembo, according to the note in the back of the book, makes 11 look like the Roman numeral II.

12

The last section of the book is "Austen," which is the only one where I'd actually read any of the referenced literature.

I have to confess that I don't understand the love of Mr. Darcy. Even Nafisi's students love him. Am I missing the appeal because I'm not straight or because he's more appealing in the book, which I only read once, twelve years ago?

I keep thinking of the cynical note, possibly from dialogue in Miss Austen Regrets, that Elizabeth only realizes she loves Darcy when she sees how large his house is.

13

Perhaps I shouldn't have taken a break. I've lost the sense of what else I meant to write about.

14

Nafisi has an interesting literary premise: "This, I believe, is how the villain in modern fiction is born: a creature without compassion, without empathy."

My instinctive skeptic wants to question it. I'll have to pay attention and see if I find that true in the things I read.

15

I thought about writing this entry as I read. I've read that if you're thinking about what you're going to say in response, you're not really listening. Was I not really listening by thinking about how I was going to talk about it? Or does the fact that the book is, at least in part, about talking about literature, mean that I was engaging with it the way I was meant to?

So way back in December, when Sarah Connor Chronicles went on hiatus for two months, I decided I needed some projects to get me through the time without it. I actually completed those projects quite a while ago, but keep forgetting to post about them. Since the show starts up again tonight, I figured I should write about them today. (Although if I'd done it earlier, I would have more to say in more detail. Consider this more in the way of a long overview.)

Project 1: The Wizard of Oz

I'd never read L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz before, although, of course, I've seen the Judy Garland movie version. Sarah Connor Chronicles references it fairly often, so I thought I would read it. I ended up getting The Annotated Wizard of Oz (1973 edition) with introduction, notes, and bibliography by Michael Patrick Hearn from the library. The annotations were actually fairly interesting and often amusing (he spends a surprisingly large amount of time seriously considering the location of Oz), but I think I probably should have read the book without them first so I could really concentrate on the story. I think I remember more about the eighty-page introduction and the annotations than about the story itself. Amongst other things, the introduction includes a fascinating look at Baum's involvement in the early days of motion pictures that's certainly worth reading. It's also fascinating to note how much legwork Hearn had to have put into it that would be so much easier now with the internet.

The book holds up really well as a children's story, especially when you compare it to the story from the same era in the Denslow Appendix. (W. W. Denslow did the original illustrations for the book. Apparently there was later strife between him and Baum, and at various points, some of Denslow's Oz character illustrations were published with other stories written to go with them.) There's almost nothing that's confusing to modern ears, probably because most of the story takes place in the magical world of Oz.

I was also trying to make the analogy to the show, and it works in an interesting way. You would think John should be Dorothy, but he's not. In terms of experiences, Derek's Dorothy: he's the one who travels to a different world, and if you think of Jesse (or even Kyle) as his home, he does want to go home. Cameron's obviously the Tin Man: she's built without a heart, but she does learn to care and think of others (sort of, at least). Sarah's the Cowardly Lion: she started out not knowing what she's doing and she's scared to death, but she keeps going anyway. And John's the Scarecrow: he doesn't know anything/enough, and yet he's the leader and he's making choices and choosing strategies.

Project 2: Terminator Movies

It had been so long since I last saw the Terminator movies that I was having trouble tracking any conversation about Sarah Connor Chronicles that referenced the movies. The answer to this was obviously to watch the movies again. (I also wanted to rewatch them all before Terminator Salvation comes out in May.)

The Terminator had me laughing in the first few minutes because pretty much the first thing you see that's not just a place is the governor's naked ass. (Remember, I live in California.) Given my penchant for reading/surfing the internet while watching things, I actually found it hard to watch this movie because it's so dependent on visual imagery.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the one that relates most to Sarah Connor Chronicles - the show takes place after it, and I believe the powers that be have said it's supposed to follow from T2. I was amazed, watching it, at how well Lena Headey is playing Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor. Between the first two movies, Sarah toughens up a hell of a lot, and I could see the roots for Lena's Sarah in Linda's. I could also completely see Thomas Dekker's John in Edward Furlong's. (Aside the first: his voice keeps breaking, which is at once both kind of distracting and probably part of the point - he's a human being with all that comes along with that. Aside the second: I think of "douchebag" as a relatively recent insult, but John uses it in this, which is from 1991.)

One of the things I really appreciate about the first two movies are the special effects. I find myself annoyed with movies where the special effects are the point. In both of the first two Terminator movies, the special effects are secondary to the story, and they're kind of cheesy to modern eyes. I like the cheesiness. They're not afraid to make a movie that's a movie with some shooting lights added in to give you the sense of what the terminators are like.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines has kind of a bad rap, but I liked it when it came out, and I liked it again this time around. It doesn't really connect to Sarah Connor Chronicles - Cameron jumping them years ahead completely changes the timeline - but that doesn't mean it's not worth watching. The most relevant thing about T3 is that Arnie's Terminator says, "You only postponed it. Judgment Day is inevitable." This is what I've been saying all season, and where I hope the writers are really going with Sarah Connor Chronicles. I want them to take a middle path: Cameron is teaching John that robots can be allies, and Ellison and others are teaching Weaver and John Henry what it means to be human. It doesn't have to be robots vs. humans; metal and skin can work together to make a future they can all live in.

Remember when I said I was getting worried about running out of time before running out of music? Well, this week I'm worried about running out of interest. To keep me going, I'm pulling things off of my things to post list, and I do already know what I'm going to post for days 16 and 17 and which artists to choose from for days 20 and 21. (I thought I knew what I was going to use for day 22, but I may have changed my mind since then.)

Anyway, today's song is from the Once On This Island soundtrack. Once On This Island is one of my favorite musicals. I'm sure I've heard it described as a variation on "The Little Mermaid," but it's not really. It has some similar elements, but it's also set in the midst the effects of colonialism and doesn't shy away from it: "But Armand took his pleasure / With the women who served him / Black peasant girls from / The village beyond." "And the loveliest one / Bore the Frenchman a son / Such a fine peasant son." "And Armand sailed for France / By the seat of his pants / Driven out by his beautiful son!" The musical is based on a book, My Love, My Love or The Peasant Girl by Rosa Guy, which I remember being much darker than the musical. (I could be wrong about this; I was relatively young when I read it.)

"Why We Tell The Story" is actually the last song in the musical. It's hopeful for the future, and the little girl to whom the story is being told in the main narrative frame begins to retell the story herself.


Why We Tell The Story - Once on this Island

(Oh, imeem. You continue to annoy me. Click on the link to the song to hear the whole thing.)

I've put up my list of books I read in 2008. Every year, I think I should start doing this list on the computer so I don't have to then spend time typing it up at the end of the year, but there's something so satisfying about writing each book down in my notebook. I did at least type it up into Excel this year so I could just mail merge into the html code.

I had a really hard time narrowing down the best books of the year. Instead of a top five in alphabetical order by author, this year, I have one that was the absolute best book of the year and the six other best books I read in alphabetical order by author.

The Best Book
The best book I read all year, as I've already mentioned was My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins & Fenway Park by Steve Kluger.

The Other Best Books of 2008

• Audrey, Wait! by Robin Benway.

  The day I broke up with my boyfriend Evan was the day he wrote the song.

• Belong to Me by Marisa De Los Santos.

  My fall from suburban grace, or, more accurately, my failure to achieve the merest molehill of suburban grace from which to fall, began with a dinner party and a perfectly innocent, modestly clever, and only faintly quirky remark about Armand Assante.

• Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer.

  Almost everyone in Utah County has heard of the Lafferty boys.

• My Fair Captain by J.L. Langley.

  A dried, crumpled leaf blew across the toe of his shiny black boot as he lifted his right foot.

• Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr.

  "Four-ball, side pocket."

• Impossible by Nancy Werlin.

  On the evening of Lucy Scarborough's seventh birthday, after the biggest party the neighborhood had seen since, well, Lucy's sixth birthday, Lucy got one last unexpected gift.

A couple of years ago, I decided that I would keep a list of all the books I read. It would be, I thought, interesting to see how much, and what, I actually read. So when I read a book, I wrote it down in my writing binder. I liked the whole project so much that I've been doing it again each year.

What's here:

• Books I read in 2008.


• Authors of the books.


• Dates I read the books.


• Short notes about each book.


• Approximately how many times I've read the book.

What's not here:

• Magazine and newspaper articles I read, either for work or for fun.


• Web-published fiction I read.


• Short stories and individual chapters I read to remind myself of what the book was about.

This year, I read 93 books. For those of you playing along at home, that's 8 more than last year. 85 of those, or 91%, are books I read for the first time.


( List )