Ten Favourite Reads

I was just nominated by a friend (who just happened to be the supervising prof for my Master's thesis) to take part in the "Ten Favourite Reads" challenge. So I rose to it (the challenge, I mean). I had to resist the urge to primarily list serious works of literature in order to make myself look good to the academics via whose postings I received the challenge, and stop myself from feeling self-conscious about including Georgette Heyer and Rosamunde Pilcher in that list. Well, actually, Pilcher didn't make the Top-10 list, sad to say - but more on that in a minute. So here it is, the honest list of ten favourite books. In fact, I couldn't pick just ten favourite books - more than half the list would have been taken up with Austen, she did write six novels. So I just picked my favourites of the favourites: ten favourite authors, and then the one story I might, by a slim margin, like better than their other works. Here goes, in no particular order:

Jane Austen: Sense & Sensibility
Georgette Heyer: Venetia
J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
C. S. Lewis: The Horse and His Boy
Terry Pratchett: Wyrd Sisters
Dorothy L. Sayers: Gaudy Night
Agatha Christie: Murder on the Links
Ellis Peters: A Morbid Taste for Bones
L. M. Montgomery: The Blue Castle
Brothers Grimm: "Snow White and Rose Red"

I'm sure you're shocked and amazed at the list; you had no idea I like Austen and Heyer and the Brothers Grimm. Yeah, well.

But then, I ran into a problem: there were others (and some of them, yes, serious classic literature) that I also like - they're sort of my almost-favourites. So I ended up with a second list of ten, the runners-up:

Wilhelm Hauff: "Zwerg Nase"
M. M. Kaye: The Ordinary Princess
Rosamunde Pilcher: The End of Summer
Patricia C. Wrede: Dealing With Dragons
Diana Wynne Jones: The Nine Lives of Christopher Chant
Jean Little: From Anna
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Die Leiden des jungen Werther
George Elliot: Middlemarch
Edith Nesbit: Harding's Luck
Carola Dunn: Smuggler's Summer

And I'm sure if I kept going, I could end up with a third and fourth and fifth list, ad infinitum. Or, if I actually spelled out all of my favourite books by all these favourite authors, there'd be over a hundred on the first list alone. But there's limits. Really, you have to quit somewhere. So that's where.

Life, the Universe, and Favourite Reads. What's yours?

Stacks of Stickies

I just mailed off my final grad school paper. That paper, that's why I've been AWOL from the blogging front in the last few months; I've been up to my eyebrows in fairy tales (meaning I've been writing about them, not that what I'm telling you is one). But now it's done, one big treatise on "Cinderella", "Sleeping Beauty", "Beauty and the Beast", and "The Frog Prince". I'll be anxiously awaiting my mark, and then editing the thing for submission to my uni's thesis collection.

So the paper is sent in, and I feel slightly stunned that I'm actually done. Two-and-a-half years of study finished with one click of a button. It can't really be true, can it? But then, there's always one more thing to do after that button has been clicked: I have to de-sticky my research materials. Yes, you know, de-sticky? Take the sticky tags out of the books, of course. I might have mentioned once or thrice, marking books is evil and will get you smote by the library gods. But a grad school student (or indeed any other student) has to keep track of interesting points in books somehow, so, enter the sticky note. I go through pad after pad of those things in the course of my research, plastering them all over the margins of the books, sometimes adorning them with expressive arrows  (← !!!) or erudite comments such as "Does NOT!!" or "pfffffft!", or even, I hesitate to admit, the occasional "IDIOT!" (it's true. I found one like that this time. What can I say - I was justly incensed at a scholar's assessment of my favourite movie.).

So then, by the time I'm finished my writing, I don't need all those place markers any more, and the university library, slack though they may be about the state of their books (I once had one out that sported the dusty print of a running shoe sole across its front page spread), would probably not appreciate all those pink and orange and green bits of paper sticking out of the book. So I pull 'em all out again and pile them on my desk. One stack of stickies indicating just how educated I have become. Or how muddled, either way. It's the sure sign that I really am done with whatever piece of research I've been doing.

And then I dump the stickies into the garbage, take the library books back to the library and put my own books on my book shelf (or pile them on the floor, because there is absolutely no book shelf space to be had any more), and then - then I go and find myself a book to read or a movie to watch that has absolutely nothing to do with whatever I just finished studying. Fairy tales? Hmm, I think I'll read a Regency romance now, thank you. But don't worry, I'll be back to fairy tales soon enough. Even studying them as intensely as this hasn't soured me on the topic, and that, my friends, means that it really is my thing.

Life, the Universe, and Stacks of Stickies. The sign of the end of grad school studies.

Precision Scribblings

I just got a second-hand copy of one of my textbooks, Max Lüthi's Es war einmal: Vom Wesen des Volksmärchen (Once Upon a Time: On the Nature of Fairy Tales). I bought it via AbeBooks, and it was mailed out from Germany (gotta love AbeBooks). Unfortunately, when you're buying a second-hand book online, you're buying a pig in a poke; there's no telling in advance what kind of shape it's in. The vendor's comment of "Condition: good" might mean almost anything. More than once I've been disappointed at all the scribblings and underlinings and highlightings in the book, and this one is no exception.

However, you've got to say this for Germans: they're tidy scribblers. This book is marked all over, but all the underlining has been done with a ruler. So at least, we've got precision scribblings here. It amuses me.

Incidentally, don't ever let me catch you scribbling in library books. The university library books I've got out right now are, in a lot of cases, a right mess. What is it with uni students? I don't care if you do it with a ruler or while holding the pen between your toes, marking up a library book is vandalism.

Life, the Universe, and Scribblings in Books. Enough with the rant, and on to reading Lüthi.

Social Realism

Steve got a book! Well, okay, I got a book. A friend found it for me at a second-hand store, and at first I wondered why - I mean, I love kids' books, but why this particular one? Then I cracked open the cover, and all became clear: it's not for me, it's for Steve. Obviously.

It's called Teddy Edward in the Country, by Patrick and Mollie Matthews (published by Golden Pleasure Books in London in 1962), and it's the story of a stuffed bear, Teddy Edward, on a visit to the country with his human, Sarah (they normally live in London), as chronicled by lots of interesting photos. You don't see much of Sarah in the pictures, but lots of cows, swans, rabbits, and even some hedgehogs. And Teddy Edward, of course.

Steve considers it the best thing in Social Realism he's read in a long time; it's very true to life, he says. At least to life in England in the early 1960s.

It kind of threw him for a loop when I told him that the Sarah-girl in the picture is well over fifty now and probably has grandchildren; a bear's lifespan is very different from a human's - some only make it a few years before their plush is loved off, others last decades. For all we know, Teddy Edward is still alive and kicking somewhere in the home counties, and conversing with calves and kittens every summer. Maybe we should try to look him up if we ever make it to England.


Life, the Universe, and Social Realism for Bears. It's all in how you look at it.

Understood by a Book

Love in Paris, on Amazon

Today I felt understood by a book. That's right - understood by a book, not "I understood a book" (although that, too, I hope). I got the email from the library yesterday that the ebook copy of Lunch in Paris I had put a hold on was available, so I downloaded it and started reading. I'd already read the first couple of chapters, which were available as a sample - whet-your-appetite-while-you-wait, that sort of thing - and really enjoyed it.

But the further I got into the book, the more I realised that it's not what I thought it was from those first few chapters. The full title is Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes, and that's exactly what the beginning of the book reads like. Romance, and food. It's the story of how the author, Elizabeth Bard, a New Yorker, goes to Europe, falls in love with a Frenchman, moves to Paris, learns to shop at the market and cook French food, and lives happily ever after (well, for a given value of "happily ever after"). I was expecting a regular romance story - I've read enough of those to know how they're supposed to go: Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl overcome obstacles to their being together, boy marries girl. The end.

As I said, the first few chapters start up quite promising in that regard - Elizabeth meets the tall-dark-and-handsome Frenchman Gwendal (yes, that's a guy's name; Breton, apparently); he takes her home from the café where they've eaten amazing food and then, after an amorous interlude, feeds her more amazing food (recipes included in the chapter); she goes back to London, where she is working, comes back to Paris every weekend for more amorous interludes (not described in detail; this is a G-rated book) and more amazing food; and you expect the rest of the book to be about how they eat and love their way to a proposal and a wedding with lots more deliciousness of the amorous and culinary kind.

But actually, there's a lot more to this book than that. Oh, the loving and eating (including recipes) is all there. But the wedding takes place just half-way through the book. The romantic happily-ever-after is not the denouement, it is, in a sense, only the beginning. What this book is really about is an American girl finding a new home in France, with a Frenchman. And quite apart from the language barrier - at the beginning of the story, Elizabeth barely speaks French; Gwendal's parents don't know any English - this is about making a cross-cultural marriage work. About being transplanted into a culture different from your own, and learning to live and function in it. And boy, do I know what she is talking about.

"I had one foot on either side of the ocean," she says, "and my knees were beginning to wobble" (chapter 18). Yes. That's exactly how it is. And with that foot on either side of the ocean comes an awareness which, I believe, you can only get from this in-between position, this neither-fish-nor-fowl existence that is entailed in being a cross-cultural transplant. You see both cultures, your original and your adopted home, through a different lens.

The interesting thing is that even though my situation is, in a sense, the exact reverse from Elizabeth Bard's - I'm German, living in Canada, married to a Canadian, she is American, living in France, married to a Frenchman - the issues are the same. Some of the cultural difference she points out are precisely the ones I've struggled with - still struggle with, in fact, after twenty-five years in this country.

Take the issue of "making friends". Americans (i.e. North Americans - Canadians are included in this) can meet someone, find them sympathetic, invite them over for coffee, and bingo, friendship is established. Europeans, Bard explains, don't do that. "I found that, for whatever reason, people in Europe don't need more friends," she says. "They have their families, the people they grew up with, the people they went to university with, colleagues to talk to on a cigarette break. Their social world is made up of tiny circles, closed but overlapping like those Chinese ring toys you can never untangle from one another. […] An English acquaintance was once drunk enough to explain it to me. We would have to meet at at least three events, he said, before I could even consider suggesting that we see each other outside a group context" (chapter 16). Yes! That's exactly how it is. I need to meet you repeatedly in a group setting before I can be friends with you. I'm still profoundly uncomfortable "going for coffee" with someone I don't already know really well, or "inviting them for coffee", for that matter. And it's very difficult getting out of your cultural skin.

But also, if you've chosen to live somewhere other than your culture of origin, you find yourself in a position of having to translate for those "back home". And believe me, it can get tedious. Bard talks about her mother bringing out the phrase "Why can't you just…" - do the things you would do "back home", the things that are "normal" (chapter 15). Because they're not normal here, that's why. There is an implied criticism in that "Why can't you just…" - a criticism of your home of choice, of the culture you are now a part of, to the tune of "Why do you choose to live in a place where people do these weird things?" And then you find yourself defending your new culture, even if perhaps you don't like whatever it is they're criticising, either.

And then there is the amazingly insightful passage about the flip side of the American dream. "Implicit in the American dream is the idea of self-determination. The result of our just-do-it attitude is that anything you don't do is your fault. This ethic of personal responsibility informs American attitudes on everything from obesity to college admissions to welfare reform" (chapter 19). And with it, Bard says, comes a fear of failure - because the American attitude is "You can do anything you want to do!", if you fail to do it, if you're not a successful person, it's your own fault. The can-do attitude that is so pervasive, and so refreshing, in American culture has its backlash.

My prime personal example of that is homeschooling: what is illegal, or at least uncommon, in Europe, namely educating your kids yourself, is perfectly possible here, which is wonderful. But if your kids are less-than-perfect in their academic performance and social development, guess whose fault that is? Oh yes. Self-determination has massive guilt trips built right into its system. I love the sense of personal freedom inherent in American culture, but I have also absorbed the guilt that comes with not making perfect use of that freedom to become a highly successful person on all fronts. One foot on either side of the ocean, and my knees are wobbling.

I knew most of those things Elizabeth Bard says - knew them in the back of my mind, but to have them articulated in this way struck such a chord. I found myself in her book - I was understood.

However, Lunch in Paris is still first and foremost a love story, with recipes. One novel-length tale of people and good food. And unlike some other books I've read, it is not a homily on the superiority of French eating habits over everyone else's (American ones in particular), but simply a celebration of the pleasure of French food. And of love, of course. I've come away from reading this inspired in so many ways.

And you know, I think I'll have to get me a hardcopy of this book for keeps, even just for the recipes. The local bookstore has a copy in stock, and what do you know, I still haven't spent the gift card I got from my friend for my birthday. I was saving it for something special, and this will fit the bill admirably.

Life, the Universe, and a Book that Understands Me. Love and good food are part of the deal.

Jane and Valancy

image from wikipedia.org

I'm re-reading L. M. Montgomery's Jane of Lantern Hill. Yes, I do that - read fiction for fun, I mean, even though I already spend all day sitting on my rear end and reading for school. Bedtime reading is something I have to do; I can't go to sleep without engaging with a good story for a while first. It's a form of putting on mental pyjamas. So it's got to be something soothing - something that holds my interest, but not too exciting, else I'll not be able to put it down and/or will be tossing and turning all night because my adrenalin is pumping too hard. Just a good story that allows me to leave behind my everyday reality, and live someone else's life for a while - and I want to know that it's going to be a good life, not something terribly painful and upsetting. You don't put on your pyjamas if you think there might be burrs in them, do you? Neither do I.

So a nice re-read of a favourite book is a good choice for a bedtime story. And Jane of Lantern Hill is my most favourite of L. M. Montgomery's - well, Jane, and The Blue Castle. Oh, I love Anne of Green Gables, of course - who doesn't? - and Emily of New Moon is great, and so is The Story Girl and Kilmeny of the Orchard and so on and so forth. Montgomery was just good, that's all there's to it. But Jane and Blue Castle top them all, for me.

And it occurred to me this morning that that might just be because, underneath it all, they're really the same story. Even though Jane is eleven, and Valancy twenty-nine, they're very much alike - particularly in their situation at the beginning of the book. Both of them are capable people who are utterly unappreciated by their bullying families (particularly the mother in Valancy's case, the grandmother in Jane's). Through a circumstance they are snapped out of their downtrodden existence, they leave their repressive home and find a new family where they are appreciated, and a man to love. And that's the thing that struck me so forcibly today: those men, they're just the same person, and they're the reason I love these stories so much. I'm talking about Jane's dad, Andrew Stuart, and Valancy's husband, Barney Snaith. Both are successful writers, both are slightly (or, in Barney's case, very) bohemian, and both have just the same way of talking, the same sense of humour.

My guess is that Montgomery wrote herself a dream man - kind, witty, sensitive, handsome, a good provider, in need of a loving capable woman to mend his socks and make him shave every morning - wrote him twice, in fact, and Jane and Valancy, who are so very easy to identify with, get to be that woman who loves him and cares for him and is loved and cared for in return. Of course, in Jane's case it's her dearly beloved mother who is dad's wife, but it's Jane who is the caretaker of the family. She is the one who rescues her childlike mummy from grandmother's clutches, and she gives her prince (aka dad) back his most precious treasure (his wife); at the end of the story Jane is left with the bliss of taking care of both her parents at once. Jane takes the decisions in her own hands, makes things happen for the people she loves. And so does Valancy. Also, the pattern of their relationships is similar: both of them love their man from afar while they're still in captivity - Valancy harbours a secret crush on Barney just from having seen him drive through town, and Jane cuts out dad's picture from his byline in the paper, not knowing he's her father, because she finds the face so attractive - and once they're sprung free, they let their love have full reign.

image from wikipedia.org

Jane and Valancy are both about agency, women's agency. It's easy to dismiss Montgomery's stories as Edwardian fluff, demonstrations of women stuck in a patriarchal society who unfortunately find all their fulfilment in housewifely activities, serving a man. But if you look closer and take off  your twenty-first-century blinkers, you'll see that the books are deeply feminist. The downtrodden, disenfranchised girl, once she is forced out of the rut of powerlessness in which she is stuck (Valancy through her diagnosis, Jane through being sent to PEI), takes action, makes choices, and brings about a happily ever after for herself and her loved ones. Valancy and Jane are empowered to be who they want to be, and in reading their stories, the reader is too. That's feminism. And that's why I love those stories - Jane and Valancy, triumphant; the princess, through her own agency, gets her prince (Hero's Journey, anyone?). And he's a prince worth having. Happily ever after, the end. Aaaah.

Life, the Universe, Jane and Valancy. Always worth re-reading.

Book Walls

My computer is currently walled in by books. Lots and lots of books - fifty or so of them. And the desk is shored up by another dozen or more on the floor beside it. That's life in the grad school lane.

They're not all mine - some are (an ever-increasing proportion, I have to admit), but most of them are library books. I'm lucky enough that even though I live in a semi-rural area, I have access to the library of one of the biggest universities in Canada, which just happens to have a campus in town here. With the library card from my distance ed uni, the locals let me take out anything I like, and even send me books from the big city campus if I ask. And I ask - you better believe it. And then there's the public library, which netted me some couple dozen books for my research this time. It'll be heavy lugging taking all that stuff back when the time comes.

You know, I like real books. I enjoy reading ebooks on my ebook reader, when it's novels or short stories (like fairy tales!) which I'm reading for amusement. But for research, for non-fiction, give me a real book. For keeps, give me a real book. For looking up information, give me a real book. For knowing that I have the book in my collection - you know, when I run across that obscure reference to Andrew Lang, and I can say "Hey, I've got that on my shelf downstairs!" - give me a real book.

Real books are not dependent on electricity; if the power goes out, I can still read by candlelight. Real books don't suffer from file corruption or obsolescence - I got my copy of the Brothers Grimm in 1987, and it's still perfectly good, barring a bit of yellowing of the pages. On real books, I can stick sticky notes all over the margins, so I can find the quotes again which struck me while I was reading them.

And of course, real books make great walls around your computer. If I wasn't sitting in my office (aka bedroom) by myself anyway, I still wouldn't need a cubicle for privacy - I have book stacks to do the job.

Life, the Universe, and Grad School Book Walls. Better get back to studying.

Movies from Books

I've come to a conclusion about watching movies, especially fantasy stories: if you really want to enjoy the movie, don't read the book first. We just saw Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters last week, and it was quite a fun movie to watch. Then I read the book yesterday, and boy oh boy, is it ever different! Well, as usual, the book is better - but because I hadn't read it, I wasn't spending the two hours in the movie theatre groaning about how they messed up the story; I was able to enjoy both film and print.

True, there were a few groan-worthy spots - like the point where some characters are having an emotional reunion-hug scene, monologuing about how much they appreciate each other, while the bad guy does bad-guy things right behind their back that they very much need to interfere with. But they don't, being all emotional and huggy, so bad guy nearly gets his bad-guy way. (Spoiler: he doesn't, in the end. I'm sure that really surprises you, that in a hero movie the heroes win. Yup.) Oh, and another thing that threw me for a minor loop was that they replaced the actor for one of the main characters: Chiron isn't played by Pierce Brosnan, but by Anthony Head. So, no, Camp Half-Blood didn't get another centaur teacher as I first thought, he's just shape-shifted a bit. And actually, Anthony Head fits the character in the book better than Pierce Brosnan; he looks older and more teacherly-mature, which is what Chiron is supposed to be.

"Supposed to be". That "fidelity question" in film adaptations is something I've been thinking about ever since last semester's term paper on Jane Austen movies. I used to be very demanding of "fidelity" in movie adaptations, i.e. "how faithful is the movie to the book?" I still am, to a point, especially when it comes to my favourites such as Austen. But I've rethought a lot of my attitude in that regard. Because, you see, the fact is that movies are not books. Film and print are apples and oranges. Yes, I like my apples to have a certain taste and texture, and my oranges as well. But if oranges were green & yellow with red stripes and a crunchy texture, I'd be a little perturbed. Well, no, a lot perturbed. And a squashy orange-coloured apple with a dimpled skin really wouldn't be cool, either. So a movie which tries to tell the story in just the same way as the book - well, it often just doesn't work. At worst you end up with really boring voice-over narration of the text in the book, or just, well, really boring. Or cheesy.

Because in a book, you can just tell the reader what you want them to "see". You can say "She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen," and each reader imagines for themselves what exactly that means. On a film, you have to show that - and when it comes to such things as "most beautiful" or "most horrible", those experiences are quite subjective. That's where Peter Jackson struck out with his Lord of the Rings elf women - he succeeded in making them sugary, with all that pink backlighting and the soft-focus shots, rather than ethereal and stunningly beautiful. At least that's my opinion. Yes, yes, of course the actresses are very beautiful women - but they're women, that's the problem, not elves. In fantasy films that's a big issue - you're trying to show something supernatural by natural means. That's why the book usually is better, because you can convey so much more in words than in mere image.

But then, sometimes, it's the words that start to stumble. Take The Lord of the Rings again: if one wanted to re-tell the movie in words, to convey the majesty of the New Zealand landscape in which the film was shot, words just would not be enough. That's where the film excels in something the book hasn't got. The movie tells a story in pictures, and sometimes, if not almost all the time, that story is different from the one that is told in words. Different, not worse, not inferior. Well, maybe sometimes inferior, and then, sometimes, superior. But most of the time, just different. I think there are some stories that are best told in words, and some best in images. And maybe - maybe we won't know which fits best until we've tried them both.

Life, the Universe, and Movies from Books. Don't read the book first, you'll like the movie better for it.

Book Fixes

I pulled out my copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for my next course. Well, one of my copies. This particular one is part of a boxed set that my man gave me many years ago, I think it might have been for our first Christmas after we were married. And then, also many years ago (but not quite as many), one of the kids was practising her scissors skills on the cover. (In her defense it must be said she was quite small. And she never did it again, at least not on book covers - the cat's fur and her own bangs were a different matter. I'm not sure which came first, the hair cut or the book trimming. But in either case, even though I don't remember my reaction exactly, I'm sure it was sufficient to put a healthy respect for the sanctity of the printed page into her. It doesn't seem to have scarred her for life, fortunately.)

So, anyway, this poor book has lived with half a jagged-edged cover for the last however-many years (title: The The Witch A The Wardrob). I even bought another boxed set of the Narnia novels from Scholastic to replace this one, but I could never really warm to that version with its movie-tie-in covers. It seems cheap, somehow. Well, it was cheap - it's Scholastic, after all (I love Scholastic; but quality of physical properties of books is not one of their strong points).

So I pulled out this book from between The Magician's Nephew and Prince Caspian to do preliminary work for my course. It really was pathetic, that half cover. Fortunately, the actual text escaped the ravages of toddler scissors unscathed; only the front matter got hit. The copyright page looks pretty sad, and there's a couple of snips on the edge of the page which has Lewis' dedication letter to his goddaughter Lucy on it, but from the table of contents onwards the paper is intact. But it really didn't feel nice, handling that jagged-edged cover. So I thinks to myself: why not fix this? Can't make it worse, can I?

Now, I love books. Not just reading them, but handling them. I could probably be quite content in a job in the library's processing department, where they stick the Dewey Decimal stickers on the spine and put nice clear covers around the books to keep them looking pristine. Perhaps in another life I was a bookbinder? Anyway, fixing a poor, mutilated book is something that's quite a pleasing endeavor.

I started with a piece of plain white card stock, trimmed it to size, then glue-sticked it to the inside of the cover. So now instead of a half cover with a jagged edge I had a half-coloured cover with a jagged-edged section of white staring at me. Much better on the tactile end, but still not so glorious visually. Along comes the offspring (she of the scissors skills) and says "You should find that cover online, print it out and glue it on!" Brilliant, eh? And that's just what I did - well, the finding and glueing; she actually did the printing (it had to be sized just right to fit, and she's good with stuff like that; besides, she sits next to the printer. And she's just one of those obliging kinds of people).

So now I've got a nice, complete image on the cover of The LION, The Witch AND The WardrobE again. It's a little paler on one side, and the fit isn't 100% exact (due to the cropping of the online image). But that's just one of those pleasing signs of age, sort of like the wrinkles at the corners of my eyes (Velveteen Rabbit, with the plush loved off, that sort of thing). Just a sign that this book has been well-used (not just ill-used). I'm happy.

Life, the Universe, and the Fixing of Books. Now I can have my book fixes again.

Self-Explanatory

Steve modelling my current predicament

Fabulatherapy

A couple of days ago, one of my friends posted this link on Facebook: "You don't need pills for depression - you need books, says British agency". To save you the hassle of reading the article, it says - well, it says just what's in the title. Apparently this organization in the UK called "The Reading Agency" is working on getting books prescribed to patients with depression; and what's really cool about it is that they have the backing of the Department of Health and a few other high-up official bodies with clout. They've compiled a list of "mood-boosting" books, and it will be made into a pamphlet and handed out by doctors to their depressed patients. Whoot! I wish I lived in the UK - bibliotherapy, that's my kind of antidepressant prescription.

Now, of course, I've been self-medicating with bibliotherapy all my life. Okay, all my life since I was six and first picked up Der kleine Lord (aka Little Lord Fauntleroy), and puzzled out the first line, "Cedric himself knew nothing whatever about it". I haven't looked back since. But, really, even before that epic moment, I lived in stories. Stories that were read to me, stories that were told to me. (None that I watched, at that point, because we didn't have a TV, let alone go to the movies - we were kind of old-fashioned that way.) In fact, quite likely the reason I picked up Little Lord Fauntleroy and taught myself to read was that there were never enough people around who were willing to read to me, so I had to become self-sufficient (on the same principle, I got my driver's license as soon as I possibly could, because I was tired of being dependent on other people to drive me around).

In case you missed my point, I love books. I adore books. I - well, no, I wouldn't go so far as to say I worship books. One does not worship the air one breathes, or the food one lives on. Truly, I don't think I could live without books. Then again - it's not actually the books I love. Yes, I do love the physical objects, too - I enjoy handling them, fixing them, sorting them, looking at them nicely arranged on the shelves; I could be quite happy working in a book bindery or the processing department of a library (where they put the call number stickers on the spine, and the clear sticky foil around the dust covers). But what I really love is what's in books. I love Story; I live in Story.

And Story comes in many forms. Books are just one of them. See, I'm fully aware that book nerds like myself aren't actually terribly common. Oh, there's plenty of us, alright - you should see the crowds I have to elbow my way through to get to the book tables at the annual library discard sale. But compared to the crowds at, say, a ballgame, or the opening of the latest blockbuster movie, well...

But that's just it: the latest blockbuster movie. Movies are Story. TV shows are Story. Most computer games are Story. Even ballgames, or the Olympics, are Story - "...and Schlipfengrimmler passed the ball to Schustermeier, and he hit the most amazing strike of his career, and - GOOOAAAL!!" It gets told, and re-told, over and over. Blockbuster movies are blockbusters because so many people love them. In fact, I don't know anyone, not one single person, who does not like Story in one form or another.

Now, much as I love and thoroughly, wholeheartedly, approve of the bibliotherapy the Brits are prescribing to their depressed patients, I would love even more to see that idea expanded. Not everyone loves reading, and (though this might sound sacrilegious to my fellow book nerds, librarians and literacy teachers) I don't think everyone needs to, either. But I think much, much more could be done with Story. Everyone needs Story. I believe everyone enjoys Story, so everyone could benefit from Story.

I'm not sure what to call it - Storyotherapy? Narratotherapy? Oh, I know - the Latin word for story is fabula. Fabulatherapy. Fabulous!

Now wouldn't it be great if, next time you go to the doctor because you're feeling lousy, the doc would pull out his prescription pad, and started asking: "Now, what's your favourite form of stories? You like movies? Hmm, let's see, where is my list of the most uplifting, serotonin-boosting films of all times? Ah, here we are. Take two, and call me in the morning!" I'm sure that studies would prove that there are zero side effects, and that Fabulatherapy is the most cost-effective and best-tolerated treatment they could prescribe.

But until that happy day arrives, we can always continue to self-medicate. Story is all around - pick your favourite kind, and get lost in another world. It works.

Life, the Universe, and Fabulatherapy. Fabulous, isn't it?

It's a Mystery

I really like mystery novels. It's a little odd, that, as I loathe and abhor violence, and you pretty much can't get any more violent that murder. But for some reason, reading about cranky old rich men being offed for their money doesn't disturb me, probably because it's not a fate that's likely to ever befall me - I'm not a man, will (alas) probably never be rich, and as for being cranky and old, I'm hoping to stave those off for a while yet.

Actually, there is a weird sense of safety in reading murder mysteries - the kind I like, anyway, which are the English cozies, preferably the genuine "Golden Age" article à la Agatha Christie & Co. They're set in a proscribed circle of people, in a time and place far removed from my own reality, and the sleuth always finds out whodunnit, so justice is served and peace restored. And if the story includes a charming romance between a pretty young girl and a handsome young man (amateur detective, part of "the Force", or simply mysterious stranger, I'm not picky on that), then my satisfaction is complete. Ah, escapism.

However, there's one thing that strikes me as being a genuine mystery, in reading mysteries. It concerns those aforementioned charmingly beautiful young girls. In addition to being charming and beautiful, they are usually also quite intelligent - it's part of what makes them so well suited for being a focal point of the story. They see the clues, they sense that something is wrong, they shiver in the cold draft emanating from the sinisterly-left-open window and jump when the soft-footed tabby cat silently brushes by them in the darkened room where they sit, thinking about the handsome young man who is so disturbing to their tender feelings but might still be the murderer. They even almost solve the mystery, usually. However, they seem to be afflicted by a peculiar disability.

See, it's like this: whenever one such girl is told, usually by said handsome young man of chiselled brow and masterful demeanor, that she should not, under any circumstances, tell anyone of her suspicions (which she has just voiced to him in the darkness of the night, leaning on the balcony railing overlooking the rose garden) - or, alternatively, that she should not, whatever else she may do, leave the house without informing him of it (this is usually accompanied by a look of more than usual seriousness from the grey/brown/deep-blue eyes of said handsome gent) - somehow or other it seems to cause the girl's brains to trickle out of her pink and shell-like ears. Or something like it.

Because as soon as a directive of this kind is issued, the girl is guaranteed to do the very thing she was told not to do. She hears the command, fully agrees to it, but somehow always figures that it must not apply to Mrs White (who is, after all, only the cook), or Colonel Mustard (who is surely too pukka sahib to have done anything so sordid as commit the murder), with the inevitable result that she spills the beans to and/or leaves the house in the company of the murderer him- or herself. Of course, as anybody could tell her, it directly leads to her undergoing several pages' worth of hair-raising suspense, being menaced by said murderer in the kitchen/conservatory/ball room with the revolver/rope/lead pipe while he or she monologues about his or her reasons for committing the murder and gleefully prophecies that no one will ever find the girl's body, foolish thing. All of which she could have avoided if she had only paid attention to what she was told.

So what do you think - auditory processing disorder? Something that affects only one very small part of what she's hearing? Because it can't be stupidity; the whole rest of the book establishes very clearly that the girl in question is not stupid.

Ah well. It doesn't really matter all that much, because, fortunately, in the nick of time, just as the murderer is about to pull the trigger/tighten the rope/swing the lead pipe, he of the chiselled features comes bursting (or, alternatively, stealthily creeping) through the french doors, incapacitates the villain (having taken careful note of the monologued confession which clears up the remaining questions about the murderer's guilt), then roughly pulls the girl into his arms while angrily exclaiming "Don't ever do this again, darling!" and presses a hard kiss on her trembling lips, thereby removing the last vestiges of doubts that the girl had about her feelings for him, and/or making her realize for the first time why she always went weak at the knees whenever he glared at her (which she had previously taken for a sign of dislike). D'oh. The End.

Life, the Universe, and Mysteries. It's a mystery, what?

Eclectic Tastes

I just read one of those books I picked up at the book sale, the pink one on the top of the stack in the picture. It's called "The Frog Princess", by E. D. Baker, and turns out to have been the inspiration behind Disney's "Princess and the Frog" movie. Inspiration only - there's not a whole lot of resemblance between the two stories, apart from the basic idea of a girl kissing a froggified prince and turning into a frog herself, and then having to find a way to un-froggify herself and the prince. In fact, they're both really nice stories based on that idea, each enjoyable in their own way. (Oh, cute: I didn't realize that it was Oprah Winfrey who did the voice for the princess' mother in the movie! The things you can find out online...)

Anyway, I picked up that book at the sale because it looked like it might be a fun read. And it was, too, so much so that I've now got the next two books in the series on hold at the library. They have something to do with breaking the curse on the princess' aunt's long-lost boyfriend, who, at the end of the first story, is left as a turquoise-coloured otter (yup - the book's called "Dragon's Breath"), and with breaking the curse on the princess' family's women, who are doomed to turn into hideous hags if sometime after their sixteenth birthday they touch any flower at all ("Once Upon a Curse"). I always like it when I find a good new series to read; this one is promising. Reminds me of the time when we found Patricia Wrede's "Dealing with Dragons" and its sequels, about a princess who doesn't want to learn such princessy skills as how to faint or how to be rescued, and runs away to become a dragon's housekeeper instead. I highly recommend it to strong-minded girls of any age, or ones who could use being a little more strong-minded, or any girl or boy who just likes a good story with dragons and knights and princesses and cooking and such-like.

Speaking of strong-minded, my other read today (other than "Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life"), was "The Renaissance Soul" by Margaret Lobenstine. In case you're wondering, Renaissance Souls are people who have so many interests, they have a hard time choosing between them. They go to library book sales and pick up cookbooks, fantasy novels, gardening books, art books, travel guides, literature classics, and Snoopy books, with reckless abandon. (Stop snickering, people, I wasn't referring to myself. At all. Nope.) That's also known as having Eclectic Tastes, which is a handy thing to have, because it assures you never run out of things to do. It can also be a bit inconvenient, because it assures you never run out of things to do. Or read, for that matter. So much to read, so little lifetime!

Incidentally, Steve likes that "Frog Princess" book, too. Here is Benjamin reading it to him and Yorick. (Steve can read, of course, but it's a bit hard for him; I think he might be dyslexic.)

Life, the Universe, and Eclectic Tastes. What does your stuffed bear like to read?

Book Sale

I just got back from the annual library book sale. Spent $39 (which is not too bad) on: Julia Child's cookbook and autobiography, a Snoopy book, "Eat, Pray, Love", xeriscape gardening, Cezanne, an illustrated biography of the Brontës, Diana Wynne Jones, Pratchett, Brian Jacques, some classics, Sister Wendy's "Nativity", "The Happiness Project", "Twinkie, Deconstructed", a book on British food, one on Kokoschka, and a couple of YA fantasies. Eclectic tastes - who, me? Naaah...

I spent a couple of bucks on a great big cookbook, a four-pounder, on wine and food: "A Matter of Taste" by Lucy Waverman and James Chatto. I've had this very same copy checked out of the library when I was still working there; the flyleaf has our local branch code and "Jan. '10" scribbled on it in my handwriting (no, I wasn't vandalising it; it was part of my job to mark when the book came into the branch). I remember shelving it, more than once, and putting it out on display so that others would take it out, too. And eventually I must have sent it back to Headquarters for reallocating to another branch, or even for weeding out of the system. And then it ended up in the book sale for the likes of me to take home for good. It's the kind of book that would easily cost $50 new. Library discard sales are the bargain of the year.

Of course now you're wondering if I'm actually going to read all those books I bought. And the simple answer is: you-gotta-be-kidding! Well, the novels, I bought them because either I've read them and liked them and want them for my collection (e.g. "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents", a vintage-Pratchett spoof on the Pied Piper of Hamelin), or because they looked like they might be amusing. So those, yes, I'll read. Probably. Eventually. But the non-fiction, like the gardening or art books, I never read those. What I do with them is I look at the pictures ("[For] what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversation?").

Even the cookbooks, I rarely actually cook out of them. I just use them for inspiration. I look at the luscious photo of Red-cooked Chicken in Mandarin Pancakes, drool over the idea of Aragula and Gorgonzola Spread (what is Aragula, anyway? Is it any relation of Aragog, Hagrid's giant arachnid pet?), sigh at the thought of Chocolate Passion with Mango Lime Sauce - and then go and serve up yesterday's leftovers (albeit with the gleam of inspiration in my eye). I really don't need to cook my way through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and then write a blog about it; Julie Powell did an excellent job of that already.

Now, the real difficulty still lies ahead: where am I going to put my new acquisitions? I must build me bigger bookshelves... Library book sales are dangerous.

Life, the Universe, and library book sales. Live dangerously today.

Diana Wynne Jones

So when I wrote that last blog entry, about my book stacks, I found out that Diana Wynne Jones is, alas, no longer with us. She passed away in March of this year at the age of 76, of lung cancer. Sad. Sad to think there won't be any more stories coming from that so-very-gifted pen of hers.

I first read one of her books in the early 80's, when it was still quite new. The German title was "Wir sind aufs Hexen ganz versessen"; it's a translation of "Charmed Life", the first book she wrote in the "Chrestomanci" series. Some fifteen years later I picked up a book called "The Lives of Christopher Chant" from a Canadian library, and in reading it kept having flashbacks to this other book I'd read as a young teen - there are nine worlds, all parallel to each other; one of them is ours, the others just like it except a bit different (one, or maybe several of them, use magic to manage their daily affairs). And I thought how interesting it was that two authors had come up with the same idea of these parallel worlds. D'uh... "Charmed Life" came out in 1977, "Christopher Chant" in '88; the last of the six Chrestomanci books, "The Pinhoe Egg", was published in 2006. I devoured them all as I could lay hands on them.

When I first read the Harry Potter books, which I picked up sometime between the publication of "The Prisoner of Azkaban" and "The Goblet of Fire" purely to find out what all the fuss was about, I was actually rather unimpressed - oh, I liked them alright, but my main thought was "What's the big deal? These are just like Diana Wynne Jones' stuff!" And I still stand by that opinion, although I've now pretty much become a die-hard fan of Rowling's world and her young wizards. Diana Wynne Jones is every bit as good as Rowling, and I'm fairly certain Harry Potter's creator would agree with me (not being of the conceited sort, from what I can tell). Jones' work is much more varied than Rowling's, and there is considerably more of it - not surprising, as Diana Wynne Jones was some thirty years older than J. K. Rowling and had that much more time to produce good fiction (I'm sure in thirty years' time we'll have lots from Rowling, too).

My favourites of Diana Wynne Jones' stories are the "Chrestomanci" and the "Castle" series - the latter known to anime fans through Miyazaki's version of "Howl's Moving Castle" - and the set "Deep Secret" and "The Merlin Conspiracy". Some of Jones' books are pretty much written for adults ("Deep Secret" is one of them; "Fire and Hemlock" another); others are classified as "easy readers" or "chapter books" by the library (for example "Wild Robert"; it's one book I didn't like, as the story feels unfinished to me). I have yet to read "Enchanted Glass" - it's left in my bedside stack of mean-to-read's - as well as the Derkholm Series and "The Tough Guide to Fantasy Land", which form a set. Her last book, "Earwig and the Witch", only just came out in July; my library hasn't even got it yet (but they will soon; I suggested it for purchase).

So I still have a few Diana Wynne Jones' left to read, and when I'm done those, I can probably start over again on the older ones. It's been a long time since I read most of them; I can enjoy them all over. And I will - they're that good.

It's sad when a good author leaves us readers, and we can no longer look forward to more gripping tales from their pen. But then, there are new writers, fresh voices, for us to discover. I'm sure that somewhere in the Mythosphere (that's the Land of Story, as you'll find out when you read "The Game") the Chrestomanci is shaking the hand of a young wizard with a lightening-shaped scar on his forehead, and, I believe, is getting ready to pass him the baton.

Quick Trick Book Stacks

I realized this morning it was time to clean up the book stacks again. They keep growing beside my bed. Three current library books, two of them on cooking and French diets (ah, deliciousness!). One note book. Two classics, several Pilcher, Heyer, and Diana Wynne Jones. Most of them sort of migrated there, from the basement shelves, or the book case on the other side of the bedroom. When the stack gets so high that it reaches the top of my (admittedly low) mattress, and interferes with making the bed, it's time to have the books re-migrate back to their proper locations.

So, one pile over to the book case. But, unfortunately, there's no room there either. The Heyers in the second shelf from the bottom have become obscured behind sideways-stacked books I've been meaning to read; most of them I picked up at last year's library book sale. (Oh dear, it's almost book sale time again! Where am I going to put the new ones?) Ah, but there are also quite a number of books there that I'm done reading! They can go back to their homes on the basement shelves. One paperback set of "Lord of the Rings". Several small German novellas about Lorenzo de' Medici. A Maeve Binchy. An assortment of mystery novels, and a copy each of "Emma" and "Pride and Prejudice" (I got nicer copies that match the rest of the gilt-edged set, so these ones can go downstairs for now). Okay, pile those up. Add the ones from beside the bed that are destined for the basement. Pick up the stack, carefully pinching down on the top book with my chin. (The worst is when you pinch too hard, and the books from the middle of the stack pop out- clatter bang ka-bumble! The whole stack goes. Do not try this at home, people, you have to be a trained librarian to treat books that badly.) Now, two flights of stairs down to the basement. I hope nobody's left anything sitting on the stairs for me to trip on, I can barely see where I'm going. Down in the rec room, I don't feel like sorting the books into their proper places, so I'm going to just leave them on the cabinet for now. Who knows, one of the kids might like to pick up one of those books to read, and they wouldn't notice it if it was neatly filed on the shelf, would they?

Back up the two sets of stairs (who says book worms don't get any exercise?). Okay, so now there's space in front of the Heyer books where I can pile a couple more of the books that have sat beside my bed in the mean-to-read pile. A mean-to-read shelf, it's somehow much tidier that a loose stack beside the bed, don't you think? Steve thinks so; probably partly because the books aren't as likely to fall on him from the shelves as from the book stacks (splat, flat teddy).

Quick trick book stacks. Somehow they just grow around here. Incidentally, that phrase is a corruption of Fox-in-Sock's "quick trick brick stacks". If you have young children in your life, and you haven't read them Dr. Seuss' "Fox in Socks", you absolutely must do so. Forget the Cat in the Hat (he's annoying and inconsiderate anyway), go with Fox in Socks. I dare you to read that book through in one go without tripping over your tongue at least once on the way.

Life, the universe and quick trick book stacks. What's on your mean-to-read pile?

Here we are

I took a blogging course yesterday. Yes, a course, in a classroom, with a teacher. Well, excuuuse me- some of us prefer learning from real people to just getting information from a book, or worse yet, a website. And a good course it was, too. I learned lots of interesting stuff. For example: never publish a post without a picture. So here goes:
That's Steve. He's better-looking than me, not to mention more photogenic, so he gets to have his picture in the blog first.

Did I mention I learned lots of useful stuff in the course? Yes. One of them was that a blog is supposed to have a focus, you know, be about something. Well, this one isn't. Or doesn't. Whichever. It's also not going to have any favicons on it, you know, those little annoying pop-up buttons that allow you to tell all your friends on Facebook how fabulous my blog is, and how it's the latest thing in useless information (sorry).

Speaking of which, there's a great book out there: "The Ultimate Book of Useless Information". It imparts to you such earth-shatteringly important bits of knowledge as the fact that it's illegal in Alaska to intoxicate a moose. Oh good, I'm so glad I know that. My holiday plans included going to Alaska and getting the first moose I meet snockered. Seeing as that would be the first moose I'd have met in my life, period, it really would be a shame to get fined for it, too.

So there you have it: life, the universe, Steve, and a snockered moose.
Do not look for any updates too terribly soon, you might get very thirsty in the meantime.

Cheerio! amo