What I'm Reading: 1st Day of Kindergarten Edition

Today is the day -- the day I've waited five and a half years for: KINDERGARTEN!  Yes, folks, we made it.  And I am totally rocking staying awake and staying in my chair working.  (Mostly, anyway.)  But enough about school; I'll write more on that once we've made it through an entire day.  Instead, let's talk about BOOKS!

I've been reading so many good books lately.  And really much of this is due to some really amazing suggestions from one of my favorite podcasts, All the Books, a Book Riot podcast.  They cover everything from literary fiction to YA to memoir to romance, so regardless of your reading habits, they've got you covered.  Here are some of my favorite recent reads:

Saint Maize, by Jami Attenberg

I am so in love with this book.  It's difficult to put my finger on why I loved it so much, but I just didn't want the story to end.  Great female protagonist who is beautifully flawed, set in one of my favorite time periods/places to read about, and the story is revealed though various "historical documents" (such as diaries, news clippings, interviews), which is a conceit that I love.  Can't say enough good things about this one.

The Fishermen, by Chigozie Obioma

This one has made the Man Booker long list, and it's obvious why.  Though it is set in modern Nigeria, something about this story feels almost fable-like, and I loved the voice of the narrator.  While this is a tragic story of family love and loss, I never felt depressed or manipulated.  Just a really beautiful story.

Music for Wartime, by Rebecca Makkai

This is probably the best short story collection I've read in a year or two.  Could not put this down.  Never have I read such an eclectic group of stories that maintain such unity of theme. These were beautiful (and sometimes heartbreaking) stories with just the right amount of whimsy thrown in (mini-Bach crawling out of a piano, anyone?) for the perfect balance.  Read this even if you don't usually like short stories.  Actually, read this especially if you don't like short stories.  It just may change how you feel about short fiction.

In the Country, by Mia Alvar

This is what I'm reading right now, and so far I'm loving it.  I've read some comparisons of this to Jhumpa Lahiri's short fiction, and while I hesitate to label her book as the Filipina version of Lahiri, I will admit to parallels in theme and style.  This is a collection about being in the margins, an outsider, sometimes even in the main character's own country.  The settings are modern and recognizable and the characters are real and surprising.  Can't wait to finish this one.

So, that's all I've got for today.  Of course, I've been reading lots of other stuff, but these are the current standouts.  Now back to lesson plans and reveling in the perfect silence of my house.

Margot the Magnificent!

I can't believe it's been seven months since we lost our sweet Abby Tabby.  I can't believe I went so long without a cat in the house.  It was unnatural.  I may not have grown up with cats (Mom and I were both terribly allergic.  I grew out of it; she didn't.), but I have had at least one (and up to 3 -- insanity) feline(s) in my home since 1997.  First there was Sophie (or more appropriately, Satan).  Then there was Murray (my love), then Abby, then precious Hobson (or Hobbes depending on who you ask).  When Abby died, I was torn between grieving a pet of sixteen years and longing to fill that empty cat-shaped spot in the house.  We attempted to remedy the catless situation back in February when we adopted Oscar.  Sadly, poor Oscar was too troubled (and vicious) for a home with a small child.  It was a heartbreaking decision, but Oscar had to go.

But enough with all the sad stuff.  Because we have a new family member, and this little stinker is here to stay.  Meet Margot!

This little ball of fluff and teeth and purrs is around nine weeks old and was approximately six weeks when we brought her home.  I had been reconsidering my ban on adopting a kitten (usually preferring to rescue an adult cat) because of the size of our beast/dog, Sam.  My hope was that if the kitten grew up with a giant dog, she wouldn't know any different and they could be friends, but more on that in a minute.  A friend had recently rescued a tiny 4 to 5 week old kitten abandoned in a parking lot and had put the call out on Facebook.  The pictures were too cute/pitiful to ignore, and I decided to meet the little orphan.  She was tinier than I expected and had more fleas than any living creature should have to endure, but I was hooked.

The next step was to de-flea the poor baby, and my friend and I rallied for the seven hour ordeal.  (Incidentally, excellent friend-bonding time, elbow deep in flea-filled water, holding a struggling kitten together.  Seriously, it was like months of actual friend time compressed into a day!)  I'll save you the gory details of picking off hundreds of fleas and instead give you this:

And this:

Sweet little Margot (named after a character, Margot Tenenbaum, from my all-time favorite movie, The Royal Tenenbaums) was a real trooper through all the de-fleaing torture, and a few days later she came home to a very excited five year old and an extremely sniffy dog.  She has since adjusted quite nicely to this slightly askew family, and has morphed into a hilarious, fluffy little dictator/clown who runs the house between cuddles.  The dog does little more than annoy her, except for when she's stalking/attacking his cords, which she loves, and her favorite pastime is listening to Kiddo read.  There is no in-between for Margot Kitten, and she is either the Queen of Cuddles, purring and stretching and squeezing her eyes shut tight, or she is Kitten Murderface, wielder of razor claws and microscopically pointy teeth that she clamps down with abandon.  There is much running and hiding and stalking and booty shaking and attacking and flipping and chasing and back arching and purring and head butting and nibbling and swatting and hissing and sniffing and every other kitten good thing there is.

And through it all, Sam remains impassive:

Just a slight size disparity.  Nothing insurmountable. 

Mommy Doesn't Feel Like Crying

So many things to write about, so little time.  What an excellent problem to have!  It's been a crazy few weeks, and a few even crazier ones are ahead, but I'm feeling positive.  Why this sudden burst of rose-tinted perspective, you ask?  Because of two things on the near horizon: #1 Classes will be starting back in less that two weeks for me, which means lots of teaching and writing.  I can hardly wait.  #2 KINDERGARTEN BEGINS IN LESS THAN A WEEK!  (I'm sorry.  Was I shouting?)  Seriously folks, I'm going to sucker punch the next well-meaning head tilter who speaks to me in the third person: "How is Mommy handling kindergarten coming up?  I bet she wants to cry."  Just stop.  The only crying I feel coming on is for joy at all the extra time that is opening up for writing and work.  Also, my sweet little, high-energy, chatterbox will have a new outlet for all her high-energy chattering.  Hallelujah for silence.  Quiet, how I have missed you.  Think I'm terrible yet?  Too bad.  This mama is ready for kindergarten (both literally and figuratively) and proud of it.

In upcoming blogs? (If I can ever get these freaking lesson plans done.)  Our new family member, Margot.  (A kitten.  NOT a baby.)  My annual pilgrimage to Frederick (and of course, Wonder Book.  Can't wait to tell you about one of my super-cool finds.)  My current favorite reads (there have been some doozies, let me tell you.)  And an update on how the first days of school (Kiddo's and mine) turned out.  In the meantime, talk amongst yourselves....I'll give you a topic: Parliamentary Procedure -- Aye? or Nay?

Random pic of me attempting to work with help from the Big Dog.

Go Set a Watchman - My Thoughts

Oh the media feeding frenzy that has been the release of Harper Lee's "new" book.  So many articles and podcasts and social media debates, and yet I still looked forward to the book's arrival on my doorstep, July 14th.  Multiple friends have asked me for my thoughts/opinions on the book.  I finished reading it last week, but I've been trying to let it all settle in my mind, make sure that my thoughts are actually mine and not the opinions of some well-read journalist, academic, or blogger.  There has been so much controversy over the backstory/origins of this book and its murky "discovery" by Lee's lawyer, a lack of clarity that hasn't been improved by the publisher, Harper Collins, that I think people were caught off guard when the book was at least as controversial as the release itself.  I will not be attempting to untangle the moral ambiguities of Go Set a Watchman's publication.  I was ambivalent about the book's history before it's release, and reading it did little to settle my stomach.  What I can do is tell you my thoughts after reading the book all the way through, but I must warn you that there will be spoilers.  (The book isn't super-plot driven, so spoilers may be a bit of an overstatement.)

First let me me say that I really love To Kill a Mockingbird, though after reading a lot of articles and rants about the new book, I realize that I must not be as in love with it as a lot of readers are.  There is so much anger out there about Lee's portrayal of some beloved characters, but for some reason, I just never felt like the characters in question were infallible.  I heard a podcaster yesterday say that To Kill a Mockingbird was a book about how white people think about racism and civil rights, and I think that's accurate.  Though I haven't heard or read much of anything from black readers on either book, I'm guessing that their feelings toward Atticus Finch (in the original book) are far more complicated than those of the average white reader.  Yes, Atticus works tirelessly to defend a black man on rape charges in pre-civil rights Alabama.  But throughout TKAM runs this idea of a helpless black community.  Atticus is their white savior.  Without him, they are defenseless, and it is clear that gratitude and devotion are required in return.  While Atticus does nothing wrong, per se, in TKAM, the tone of the book infantilizes the black characters, indeed the entire black population of Maycomb.   The reader is left less with a sense of Atticus' defense of equal rights for all than with a portrait of a man helping the helpless.  

Before you, dear reader, begin your adamant defense of the original Atticus Finch, please hold on.  Yes, legally speaking, African American's were mostly helpless in the face of a corrupt system at the time and place of the story.  Frequently, the only way a black person could be saved from an unfair trial or lynching was if a white person spoke up.  I am merely suggesting that being willing to do the right thing in defending a man unjustly accused of rape is simply that, the right thing to do.  It doesn't make you an activist, and certainly doesn't preclude you from being a racist.  So, I guess what I'm saying is that the revelation about Atticus Finch in GSAW (SPOILERS) didn't wreck me the way it seemed to so many people.  Maybe Atticus Finch really was originally a racist.  Maybe not.  What I do know is that the more complicated, deeply flawed Atticus seems far more believable for that time and place than the paragon-man-ahead-of-his-time Atticus that we read about TKAM.  

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on to another big picture question about GSAW, which is: How should I read it?  This book is supposed to be Lee's earlier incarnation (a first draft as it were) of TKAM.  Her editor supposedly read it and told her close but not cigar.  She followed the advice to move the story back twenty years and try again.  The result is the story we read in TKAM.  So do I read GSAW as a first draft?  Is this just an interesting look at the stages of writing?  That alone would be enough to make me read it -- getting a chance to see Lee's process, the evolution of a book.

Another option is to read GSAW as if it were published back when it was written in the sixties.  Certainly, many of the ideas put forward in this book would have been controversial, even revolutionary, back then.  The idea of a young, white woman championing the rights of black people in the deep South would have been surprising to say the least.  From this more distant perspective, the book becomes more of a study of racism in America, or at least, a study of white people confronting racism.  And it is chilling how so many of the arguments used by Atticus and his other essentially white supremacist colleagues can still be heard today (Confederate flag debate, anyone?).  There is no way you can read GSAW and not find yourself re-examing the status quo and your own prejudices.

What you can't do with this book is read it as a straight up "sequel" to TKAM.  This is in no way a sequel.  Without the input of Harper Lee herself (which we're unlikely to get), we'll never know if she decided to change Atticus' personality when she did the re-write or whether she really saw the TKAM Atticus as becoming this pompous bigot.  Without the added clarification of Harper Lee interviews, we cannot make any assumptions of sequel-hood.

I know this post is spiraling out of control lengthwise, but I have two more things to talk about with regards to GSAW.  The first is the racist content.  There's just way to get around the final message of the book, which seems to be that racists are people too.  This is a very dangerous message, and I find it far more disturbing that a woman who has been lauded for decades for her racially progressive novel wrote these thoughts down and tried to get them published fifty years ago than I do that fictional character, Atticus Finch, was once in the KKK.  Throughout the book, black people are infantilized to an absurd degree, even by the supposedly liberal protagonist.  While in a way this all makes the book more believable for its time period, the final thought the reader is left with is that Scout was somehow at fault for being angry with her bigoted loved ones, the suggestion that open-mindedness means giving equal-time in your head to racist drivel.  This is really troubling stuff to read, and I was left far more unsettled by the conclusion than any other part of the novel (even the brief domestic violence that is also portrayed as an okay thing to do to calm an hysterical woman.)

Paragraph after paragraph and I still haven't "reviewed" the book.  I did attempt the read the book for its own merits and tried not to place it side-by-side with Lee's classic original.  This was extremely difficult, but here's what I found.  Not much happens in GSAW.  This is not a book with much of a plot.  There are pages and pages and pages of arguments, ping-pong dialogue, with the venom flying back and forth sometimes at breakneck pace.  If only the book were paced a bit more quickly.  While some of the dialogue and Scout's personal asides were funny/entertaining mostly this is just Scout getting angry and nostalgic in turn for a couple hundred pages.  And that's about as compelling as it sounds.  Maycomb is still its own character in the novel, and I love that.  Scout is still irrepressible and smart.  Also great.  Everyone else seems inconsistently and a little vaguely drawn.  Of course, all of this would be about right for a first draft.  

Overall, I would have to say, I think Go Set a Watchman is important, and I'm glad I read it.  Do I like the way Harper Collins portrayed it as some long-lost sequel?  No.  Do I think it should have been published while she was still living? No.  Have I already loaned out my copy?  Yes.  Am I loving all the debate and discussion online about A BOOK?  Absolutely.  Go check it out for yourself.

Things That Are Making Me Happy

In lieu of another rant on what's making me grumpy today (and there's plenty), here are some of the things that are making me happy (in between the grumpiness):

My little workspace

Yes, that's my dog.  Yes, he looks like a rug.  Ha, ha.  Never heard that before.

While I do sometimes pine for my bigger desk upstairs (if you could see my other desk, you'd get that pun), I am so grateful for my sweet, little workspace that's been squeezed into the guest room.  I can be near Kiddo while still being tucked away.  And that makes me happy.

Weird Stories

This book opens with a story about a woman who dresses us as Bigfoot so people can "hunt" her.  And that kind of weirdness makes me happy.  Also, I met Ms. van den Berg when she came to Converse a few years ago (okay, more than a few years ago), and she was talented and gracious. Somehow this book sat on my shelf, untouched until now.  (Blame grad school.)  Anyway, I read her latest, Find Me, earlier this year and COULD NOT put it down.  Really enjoying her short stories as well.

Perler Beads

Kiddo has discovered the magic of placing tiny little beads on a tiny little pegboard and then melting them to smithereens with an iron (I do that part, obvs.)  While all those itty-bitty holes do make my scalp crawl just a bit (that's a thing, actually, called trypophobia.  Don't Google it.  The images are terrifying), I'm loving the free work time I get while she carefully makes two-dimensional cats and turtles.  

Book Riot Podcasts and YouTube Videos

Okay, I'm pretty sure I mentioned this in an earlier post, but I am just so obsessed with my new bookish "friends."  I've also found at least one other bookish YouTuber that I'm enjoying called, "climbthestacks."  Check them all out!

Gluten-Free Truffles

L to R: Lemon Heaven, Triple Mocha, Hazelnut Gianduia, and Chai Something-I-Can't-Remember

The days of Godiva boxes for Valentine's Day may have ended with my Celiac diagnosis, but the chocolate goodness is back (and actually MUCH better) at The Chocolate Fetish in downtown Asheville.  Such a beautiful shop, with helpful staff, and a really lovely selection of GF truffles!  Yum!

And last, but not LEAST...

My Tiny Empty Picture Frame

No, I haven't lost my mind.  Well, maybe I have, but this isn't evidence of it.

I believe I mentioned in a previous post that I am reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.  If you've read this amazing book on the writing craft, you'll know why I now have an itty-bitty picture frame on my desk.  If not, drop everything and go read it.  I'm not doing the work for you!

The Tease, or Tarantino Writes a Novel

Like many readers, I enjoy suspense.  More than anything, I want to be so wrapped up in a story that I neglect household chores and family members.  Page numbers should be a shocking revelation (as in "I can't believe I just read 100 pages.  I wonder if dinner is now cooked to cinders?" NOT "Just 80 more pages to the end.  I can do this.")  The conflict in question doesn't have to be big, just compelling.  There doesn't need to be a hipster glasses-wearing zombie lurking outside your favorite dive bar hoping to get his last sip of IPA from you...the hard way.  (Though somebody please write that.)  But I do have to wonder what is going to happen next and give some cares about how this affects the characters in the story.  (Turns out the zombie was actually hopped up on caffeine from his previous victim, an espresso drinker, and gets impatient, moving on to a vintage clothing store where he manages to find the perfect ironic plaid western shirt for his next Zombies Anonymous meeting.  "People are friends, not food.")

But seriously, I'm all about some surprising but inevitable endings, and I can hang with perspective shifts with the best of them, but here's the thing:  I (and I imagine most readers) have a limit.  Remember that terrible show, Lost?  I didn't watch it.  Well, that's not entirely true.  My husband insisted that I was missing out, and so I relented and watched the last season and half.  (I'll never get those hours back, unfortunately.)  One of the most irritating parts of the show (and that's really saying something) was that on the rare occasion that something mildly interesting was happening on screen, the writers would laugh maniacally (in my head, anyway) and switch to some scene with two lovestruck people staring into each other's eyes, while looking inexplicably well-groomed (except for the three grains of sand stuck to their prominent cheekbones because, you know, realism.)  It wasn't so much about building suspense as it was just pissing me off.  Here's what you could be watching....PSYCH, just kidding.  Back to Love in the Time of Smoke Monsters.  So, why, with such a fine example of poor pacing and annoying cliffhanger music (Psycho meets Jaws meets the Law & Order musical gavel bang) readily available on streaming would you write a book that utilizes these same devices?

I've run into a string of these books lately.  Two, in particular spring to mind, and interestingly they're both dystopian/speculative fiction.  J, by Howard Jacobson, follows several characters through their sad and narrow lives in a mysteriously altered England (I think?).  I was really excited about this one.  The description was just bizarre enough (a guy who always held two fingers over his mouth when saying a word with the letter "J" in it, a post-event world--not necessarily an apocalypse--in trouble, characters with murky pasts) to lure me in, but the execution of Jacobson's concept (SPOILER ALERT) of living in the aftermath of a second Jewish holocaust was oblique at best and completely mostly opaque.

Here's the thing: if you do decide to use a shifting perspective, to dole out information like you're rationing food for wartime, you'd better have one hell of a revelation at the end.  Like a Luke, I am your father, he's been dead the whole time, Keyser Soze kind of revelation.  You can't leave your reader in total murkiness once you've built up that much suspense.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm fine with ambiguous endings.  What I'm not fine with is making it clear that the narrator has the answers, had some sort of revelation, but instead hands you a your-simple-little-reader mind-couldn't-handle-it kind of vagueness.

Which leads me to Area X, (Jeff Vandermeer) a mysterious place, a mysterious trilogy.  There was so much bizarre creepiness, delightfully icky and disturbing detail.  It was a book about unraveling the mystery of Area X.  It's a sprawling narrative with lots of characters, lots of time covered, and a whole lot of different perspectives.  It's dystopian, speculative, sci-fi with literary fiction level writing.  So why did I have to drag myself through the last 150 pages?  Because the explanation (at least as much as ever gets resolved in the book anyway) is strung out between so many different journal entries, interior monologues, and angry dialogues that stop and start the action too many times to count.  Yes, dear writer, we get it: You know the answers.  We don't.  But you don't need to keep slapping us in the head with this fact.

All this complaining and now I have to admit that this sort of dividing up the narrative to increase the suspense thing can actually work.  Enter All the Light We Cannot See, the latest Pulitzer winner for fiction.  (Anthony Doerr)  This guy does the shortest, quickest little chapter/perspective shifts I've just about ever seen.  So why does it work?

For one, he limits the number of people he follows.  While there are a few forays into the minds of some less central characters, Doerr focuses the majority of his chapters on the two main characters, flipping back and forth between their lives sometimes after only the briefest of snapshots.  But you don't have so many of those moments where you're suddenly taken completely out of the story to follow a seemingly unrelated character.

Another thing that makes his book work is narrative structure.  Within his date-stamped sections, he follows along fairly chronologically, so that each little tidbit furthers the action and the plot.  The reader may be shifting perspectives, but ultimately it reads more like a shift in camera angles than a fade to a different scene, especially as the conflict escalates.  Though admittedly, the quick back-and-forth of his structure took a few chapters to relax into the rhythm, ultimately the braiding of perspective felt organic, as we learned how these two characters' lives came to intersect so briefly.

Which leads me to my last point.  There needs to be a reason for doling out information in such a piece-by-piece way.  Doerr needed to show his characters in a parallel fashion so that the moment when they all converge makes sense and is powerful.  While with Jacobson and Vandermeer, it just felt like they were either figuring it out as they went along, making up backstory as needed, or just enjoyed teasing the reader with tidbits of useful (or not) information.

So, the moral of the story? I hated Lost.  Like really hated it.  Like can't understand why everyone is so freaking in love with JJ Abrams kind of hated it.  Also, don't watch Lost.

Promises, promises.

Needing All the Stuff, or Hurry Up Birthday

I'm working from Barnes & Noble today while Kiddo bounces her little heart out at summer day camp.  When I dropped her off this morning, there was nary a backward glance after she spotted the bouncy castle and inflatable bouncy slide.  There will be one dirty, sweaty little girl in my backseat come one o'clock.

I've set up camp in the BN cafe, but I'm managing to do everything but the work that I actually need to do.  So much procrastination.  But it's not my fault.  It's difficult to concentrate when you want all the things.

Especially the Wonder Woman mug.  I NEED the Wonder Woman mug.

Also in my current Must Have Now list are:

Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood

Saint Maize, Jami Attenberg

In the Country, Mia Alvar

Summerlong, Dean Bakopoulos

Born with Teeth, Kate Mulgrew

Too bad that I'm all out of gift receiving opportunities until October.  Anyone for a second Mother's Day?