vox verbminxiae

20th Century Ghosts, Salon Fantastique, and Clubbing

nobody@vox.com(verbminx) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 00:41:51 -0500

I haven't written about books in a while, because ha ha who has time to write about books? Who has time to read books? Mostly I just read and write for work these days: it's starting to make me feel stupid, so I've been running around the house trying to find any relatively highbrow literature that I own and haven't read yet. Need brain stretch!

Here are three things I've read recently. I didn't finish any of them.

20th Century Ghosts

Joe Hill

20th Century Ghosts, by Joe Hill.

OK, everyone knows by now that Joe Hill is one of Stephen King's kids, and everyone knows that he has oodles of genuine talent of his own.

I don't really read horror much anymore, though I was really into horror in the late 1990s. I started to find it tiresome. The thing with genre is: it's not true that it's automatically worse than mainstream realistic literature. But much of it is not necessarily better, either, so the "really great writers" in the horror genre (and in most others) are not writing great literature, they're writing very good commercial fiction. And there is nothing wrong with that, but it's not always what I'm in the mood for.

When I looked at the most recent Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, it seemed like the majority of stories chosen by Ellen Datlow (the horror side of the volume) were stories about being stuck in the hinterlands with something scary, bad backwoods-America dialect included. Add to that "so-and-so has been kidnapped by a serial killer," and you have something like 60% of all short horror fiction. It gets boring after a while, particularly when the writers are good-not-spectacular. (For me, I don't like reading a writer and knowing that I am as good as them or better; I like reading a writer from whom I can learn something, or who challenges me intellectually. For example, among the new stars of fantasy, I'm so impressed with Scott Lynch's amazing "ear" for dialogue. The rhythm is fantastic.)

So, what I'm getting at: Joe Hill is a wonderful writer, who occasionally writes things I don't like, but this collection is uneven. Christopher Golden did the intro, and has written a lot of vampire fiction, and liked the story "Abraham's Boys," which recasts Van Helsing as a fanatical, vampire-fearing sadist with two sons who hate his guts. I did not particularly like this story; there's a whole list of reasons why I didn't like it. (It's not really based on the characters, except in name only and with Dracula as a framing device. It's darker than anything I want to read right now in a way that I don't enjoy, which is nothing against the story itself; I'm just not into horror. I thought the characterization was heavy-handed.) There are several stories of the "escape from a serial killer" variety.

However, three I liked a lot:

The title story is about the ghost of a young woman who died suddenly in a movie theater during the first showing of The Wizard of Oz, and who manifests in that theater. All the people she manifests to are deeply affected by it, and somehow wind up with careers closely connected to the cinema, not least the boy she appeared to in the mid-1940s who wound up owning the theater for the rest of his life. This story, which I think is mostly about longing, has a peculiar beauty in spite of its "horrifying" moments.

There's a story a bit later which isn't a horror story at all (Hill has written in and out of genre); it lives more in the land of magical realism, and no, I don't mean "Mexico or Colombia." A kid's best friend is an inflatable boy. There's never any explanation of why the kid is inflatable: they live in a world where being born as a blow-up doll is an infrequent birth defect, and that's just how it is. He works around the logic of exactly what it would mean to be an inflatable person: mean kids would try to prick you, you'd have to avoid dog bites and excessive heat, the scars of your childhood would be covered by rubber patches. This one is quirky and elegaic.

The last of the stories I enjoyed a lot... you know, I can't remember right now. If I do remember it, I'll come back and add it. It might have been the one about the guy you think will be a serial killer all the way through the story, but he turns out to be a hero.

Salon Fantastique: Fifteen Original Tales of Fantasy

Salon Fantastique: Fifteen Original Tales of Fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

This anthology didn't really have a theme, other than "Hey, you're awesome, write us a story." I have heard a lot of praise for it, but I thought it was middling... definitely better than all those Sword and Sorceress anthologies that have given many, many young writers of heroic fantasy their start, but, you know, not Borges. And again, it's not that any of the stories I didn't like were bad... it's that they reminded me of 10 other fantasies I've read. (For example, I like Catherynne Valente, but her story here essentially reminded me of The Tower at Stony Wood by Patricia McKillip and the Ceres: Celestial Legend manga. There's really only so much you can do with a selkie. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't a standout.)

Of what I read here (not all of the stories), I was floored by Jedediah Berry's contribution. It's about a few people living in a cabin in the 1890s, running out of food for the winter, constantly negotiating with spirits who live on the perimeter of their now-spent farmland. The wife is narcoleptic and sleeps more and more; the husband has one leg and is constantly enticed by the spirits with visions of their son, a childhood suicide. A mysterious young woman, who may need to forget that she was once a Queen of either the spirits, the natives, or both, has moved in with them and does the cooking, and they've co-opted a visiting surveyor. It could be chilling, but for some reason, it's just dreamy and heartbreaking. (And I don't remember the title because I've already returned the book to the library.)

I also liked Gregory Maguire's story, which isn't really a fantasy: it's about what a gay-or-bisexual young soldier, shot in WW1, sees as he's dying, and as his lover tries to save him. Historically, I can't get into Maguire's stuff (I have most of his novels and have yet to finish even one of them), so I was pleased to like this one.

I read other stories in this anthology, but either couldn't get into them or didn't find them that interesting when I finished. Again, it's the issue of, yes, these are good writers, but ultimately I can't get into the stories they're telling.

Clubbing (Minx)

Andi Watson

Clubbing by Andi Watson & Josh Howard

No, no no, no no no.

I normally like Andi Watson's stuff; it's a bit fluffy, but sweet. This one is from DC's Minx line, which has made a lot of noise lately with books like The PLAIN Janes (which I thought was just OK, though illustrated by a friend of my fiance's -- the art is the best I've seen in a Minx book so far, which I'll get to in a minute) and Re-Gifters (which is my favorite of the Minx books I've read so far, about a teen Korean-American girl who has a mad crush on one of her classmates as they both attempt to compete in a martial-arts championship).

I can't really fault Minx books for being what they are: designed for girls in their early teens. From that POV, there's nothing much wrong with Clubbing, though it would probably still count as a bit shallow. The premise has promise: average teen goth girl (fashion obsessed, prone to sneaking out to clubs and lying about her age or to make herself seem more cool, etc) gets caught lying about her age to sneak into a club, then shipped off to visit her grandparents in the country. Her name is Charlotte.

The grandparents own a small golf resort in the Lake District; the grandmother is appropriately grandmotherly, while the grandfather is an old military man who seems like every "Old Colonel" cliche in every British book, film, or radio or television show ever. Oh, the amusement as ultra-urban ubergoth Charlotte tries to fit in with the yokels! Then a woman from her grandparents' circle makes a few mysterious remarks to Charlotte and ends up dead on the golf course -- clubbed to death, IIRC. (The title is a threefold pun.) It's a silly mystery and the solution is as far-fetched as you can imagine, but if I say that the premise of the whole thing is very similar to the movie Hot Fuzz, you might get the idea.

Hot Fuzz (3-Disc Collector's Edition)

Disaffected junior punk/goth/emo girls in their early teens might like Clubbing, but I thought it was feather-weight and paper-thin and not even worth finishing. And Hot Fuzz is much more entertaining... so skip Clubbing and watch that instead.

The art is charming enough, but beware: a lot of artists whose work is put out at this size work much larger (12x15 is, I think, what my fiance does, maybe 14x17). It allows them to send in resized image files that makes their art look crazy detailed, because they shrink it down. (This is how my fiance works, and he's very open about it. He did a book for Oni, and Minx has mined a lot of Oni's talent, though not him yet. I think he would love having the work itself, but would not enjoy the following stricture:)

Minx requires its artists to draw the art at around the same size as it will be when published, so as a result, the art in their books is not very detailed. They also require a certain degree of speed, which doesn't help the look of the eventual art.

Someone I know (not my fiance) who was approached -- and eventually rejected -- to write a book for them explained some stuff about what one of the editors is looking for; the criteria ("put in something weird!") is such that you can expect to see more ridiculous plots like the one in Clubbing. Seriously, Andi Watson seems like a really cool guy with whom I'd totally like to be friends, but shelve this one with his lesser works. Mostly, it's about Charlotte's succession of really cute outfits, with a very light emphasis on her relationships with her grandparents.

Meanwhile, I'll be on the lookout for a book that engages me enough that I can finish it. Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar stories might be just the ticket. Sopa de Pena! I'm also going to hit Middlemarch or The Diamond Age soon: supposedly awesome books I own but have never read.

And Spamalot tickets for the family, because apparently they all want to go.

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Vox Hunt: This One's For The Kids

nobody@vox.com(verbminx) — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 02:05:23 -0400

Books: Show us a great children's book.

Flora Segunda: Being the Magickal Mishaps of a Girl of Spirit, Her Glass-Gazing Sidekick, Two Ominou

Ysabeau S. Wilce

Well, really more for teens than children, per se - the heroine is turning 14. But would be fine for adventurous readers around sixth grade age. I read this a few months ago, when I was 30, and loved it a lot... it's very near to Diana Wynne Jones's work. (Which I've also been reading a lot of lately, and meaning to post about.)

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QotD: The Never-Ending Boat Ride

nobody@vox.com(verbminx) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 02:55:08 -0400

What's the longest boat ride you've ever been on?

Breaching Humpback Whale

I went on a whale watch off the coast of Plymouth, MA, on a day when I was 11. A smallish, ferry-type ship took a group of passengers (30? 50?) out into international waters to look at humpback whales. We were out on the watch all day, from early in the morning (6 or 7) to late afternoon (4 or 5). I have a small phobia about deep open water, so it's amazing that I was able to handle the whole thing. I read a book and drew pictures of Snoopy during the trip.

It took hours to get to the location where the whales hang out, and we waited for a long time without seeing any, but eventually we did see a few. They even told us some stuff about the whales we saw and their histories, since the whales are generally recognizable from their tail flukes. The whales seemed pretty friendly, breached a lot, checked us out, and were huge.

Later that year, we had moved to Florida, and I brought in some swag from the whale watch (floating, plastic-coated foam keychain shaped like a whale, whale-shaped patch, adopt-a-whale information, pictures of whales that I'd taken) for show-and-tell. My classmates were distinctly disinterested, and I was disillusioned into thinking that what had been an interesting experience at the time was totally lame.

But now, I think it was cool and I'm glad I went. How many people really get to see humpback whales up close?

Now I just think show-and-tell usually sucks.

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FIRMIN by Sam Savage

nobody@vox.com(verbminx) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 06:26:14 -0400

Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife

Sam Savage

Have you ever been at a bar or a party, stuck talking to some dude who's clearly a depressed wreck, visibly down on his luck, but who wants to tell you his life story anyway? You know how it's going to end... he keeps referring to things like, "But that was before I lost my job and the house." He's drunk and his breath doesn't smell so good and he's somewhat interesting and you feel bad for him, but ultimately you'd rather be talking to your buddy Jane about her work for Doctors Without Borders, or your cousin Ed about the novel he just sold.

I almost didn't finish Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife, and you may be able to discern why: for me, the experience of reading it was very much like being buttonholed by that poor schmo who just needs someone, anyone, to listen to him for a few hours. This is something that maybe you'd do when the schmo is a person in need, but when the schmo is a rat narrating a short novel, you may find yourself wanting to back... away... slowly.

But it's only 150pp, and I found myself continually just curious enough to keep on reading. Is a rat's life destined to be anything more than a sad-sack story?

Firmin is born in the basement of a bookstore in Boston's Scollay Square in the late 1950s or early 1960s. He's the runt of a large litter, and only survives by filling his half-empty stomach with paper from the books around him. Somehow, he develops the ability to read, and soon reads his way through the store. Scollay Square is a seedy flop-house area full of peep shows and other adult entertainment, Firmin's source of food and non-literary entertainment. Eventually, it's slated for demolition. Before everything he knows changes, Firmin will leave the bookstore to live elsewhere in the building with an alcoholic bohemian science fiction writer who becomes the only true friend he ever has. Even so, as Firmin repeatedly warns the reader, the story doesn't have a happy ending. Lowlife is the watchword.

Sam Savage is in his mid-60s, but this is his first published novel. The relatively unique subject matter and the finesse with which Savage writes got this book a lot of attention on last year's lists. But it seems like everyone talking about the book overplays the titular rat's literary nature... he makes a handful of literary references, it's true, but is just as likely to imagine himself into one of the several dozen movies he's seen. It's well-written, but the much-vaunted wittiness never goes past "mordant" or "wistful." I can't say it's bad at all - it's one of those books that might wind up being assigned to high school and college students when they're studying voice and character, in a novel. But I can say that I didn't really "enjoy" reading it... it's neither light nor intellectually challenging. It's a novel that's "serious" by virtue of the utter lack of triumphs in the lives of its characters. And Firmin is only a likable character in spite of the hard work he does to make himself sound unlikable... readers will like him, if they like him, not because he's a philosophically-inclined literary rat, but because he is, ironically enough, infused with humanity.

My favorite passage, from p57, discusses the specifics of the projected destruction of Scollay Square:

Destroying that much of the city was going to be a big job. The buildings were old and had deep roots and did not want to go. So the mayor and the city council went looking for the right man, someone who understood the difficulties of applying heavy machinery to very old buildings and narrow streets, and they found Edward Logue. He was nicknamed the Bombardier, because that was what he had been during World War II. In a B-24. So he had had firsthand experience with the largest urban renewal project in human history. He sent the mayor and city council pictures of Stuttgart and Dresden and told them, "I can make Scollay Square look like that."

He got the job.

See? Mordant wit.

I disliked Michael Mikolowski's pen-and-ink-wash illustrations, which seem influenced by Gahan Wilson. They are sometimes difficult to make out at the size at which they're printed, and to me, do not seem to jibe exactly with the mood of the story. (If a major point of the story is that Firmin is a real rat with an extensive interior life, not one that is cartoon-cute or cartoon-repulsive, why accompany it with exaggeratedly grotesque illustrations that seem like they could be Fritz the Cat outtakes? They make Firmin seem like a drunken lecher, when in reality he's bookish and his carnal appetites are dreamy and idealized, almost sublimated.)

So I have to throw my hands up in the air and say that this is the sort of thing that you will like if you like this sort of thing. It's too much of a downer for me, and while I think the character of Jerry Magoon, the writer, is well and affectionately drawn, I found Firmin otherwise pretty monotonous. The writing is, on a textual level, certainly better than 99% of first novels. Thus, if you don't mind depressing books, and anything I've said about this one appeals to you, you may enjoy it. I think I would have appreciated it more when I was in my "sad books are more truthful about the human condition!" phase, but at this point, I think I need a viewing of Flushed Away to cleanse my palate. ;)

Flushed Away (Widescreen Edition)

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FIRMIN by Sam Savage

nobody@vox.com(verbminx) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 06:24:03 -0400

Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife

Sam Savage

But it's only 150pp, and I found myself continually just curious enough to keep on reading. Is a rat's life destined to be anything more than a sad-sack story?

My favorite passage, from p57, discusses the specifics of the projected destruction of Scollay Square:

Destroying that much of the city was going to be a big job. The buildings were old and had deep roots and did not want to go. So the mayor and the city council went looking for the right man, someone who understood the difficulties of applying heavy machinery to very old buildings and narrow streets, and they found Edward Logue. He was nicknamed the Bombardier, because that was what he had been during World War II. In a B-24. So he had had firsthand experience with the largest urban renewal project in human history. He sent the mayor and city council pictures of Stuttgart and Dresden and told them, "I can make Scollay Square look like that."

He got the job.

See? Mordant wit.

Flushed Away (Widescreen Edition)

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Vox Hunt: Here Is Floof

nobody@vox.com(verbminx) — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 04:23:10 -0400

Show us something fluffy.

This is only, like, the canine love of my life! :D My dog Arwen. She's a Shetland Sheepdog. This picture was taken when she was about a year old; now she's 5. She basically still looks like this, with more fluff around her ears and a slightly darker "mask" around her eyes. Arwen is extremely intelligent - it takes getting a trick right once for her to learn it - and a great watchdog. She has warm little brown eyes and a sweet expression. But she's shy, and doesn't like to have her picture taken, so this will have to do.

arwen - 7march03

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AFTER DARK by Haruki Murakami - and others.

nobody@vox.com(verbminx) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 01:20:13 -0400

After Dark

Haruki Murakami

I always tell people that Murakami is one of my favorite authors, but to be honest, I find his work hit-and-miss. The thing is, when it hits, it hits hard.

The last of his books that I finished was Sputnik Sweetheart, and I thought it was one of his worst, nearly incomprehensible. (I own Kafka on the Shore, but haven't read it yet; it seems decent. Everything else in the interim has been short stories, I think.) Sputnik Sweetheart is pertinent to After Dark because they deal with similar themes, and because After Dark may help illuminate what's actually going on in its predecessor.

After Dark takes place over the course of a single night in Tokyo. The book centers on two sisters: nineteen-year-old Mari Asai, a student, and her beautiful older sister Eri, a model/actress. A young man, Takahashi, sees Mari in a Denny's, late at night, and decides to talk to her based on the fact that they'd gone on a double date several years earlier. When his friend Kaoru, who runs a love hotel, needs the assistance of someone who speaks Chinese, Takahashi points her in Mari's direction. One of the love hotel's customers has brutally beaten a Chinese prostitute, and Mari's help is needed to converse with the girl and get her back on her feet.

The rest of the evening - the rest of the book - mostly centers on Mari and Takahashi making a connection, which gives her someone to talk to, for the first time, about her feelings towards her sister. Meanwhile, something mysterious is happening to Eri, the meaning of which becomes clear to anyone who pays attention to the conversations that Mari has with the people she meets. Finally, we get a glimpse into the life of the guy who beat up the prostitute, and an idea of why he might have done such a thing.

At its core, I think After Dark is about people who feel isolated and how isolation affects them. One seems to both seek and resent isolation, reaching out for connection in inappropriate and ineffective ways, while rejecting connections that are more healthy. Another is isolated by their position in life and by a variety of health problems. A third is isolated, maybe, by issues of personality and self-esteem. For some of the characters, isolation is not just a feeling, but also a place*... a world that exists on the other side of mirrors, or inside a television, or in a dark office.

I liked this and would recommend it.

* The relatively straightforward explanation of what's probably happening to Eri is what I think has the most relation to the mysteries of Sputnik Sweetheart. It's been about four years since I read that one, though, so I'd have to read it again to be sure.

Other stuff:

Trial of Flowers

Trial of Flowers by Jay Lake - Lake is supposedly making a name for himself in the fantasy/horror field (this book is a little of each).

I read the first few chapters of this and skimmed the rest. I am not qualified to review a book I didn't read. I can say that in the first few chapters, there was way too much telling and not enough showing; I'm not impressed with Lake as a writer, but I've seen plenty who are worse. On top of that, none of the protagonists is particularly engaging... everything here is grotesque. One protagonist is a politician's aide and a sexual sadist; another is the dwarf who raised him; a third is an unreliable loser from a dishonored family who scrabbles to recover some position.

In the City Imperishable (motto: The City Is), dwarfs are made much more commonly than born - remember the Bonsai Kitten joke from a few years ago? The Sewn faction of the City's dwarfs (Lake's preferred plural) is a group of highly educated (captive audience) people whose growth was intentionally stunted by raising them in boxes. The sides of their mouths were sewn shut, leaving a small opening and tiny pursed lips. There is a revolutionary rival faction of dwarfs, the Slashed, whose mouths are not sewn shut.

Lots of politics, plus plenty of bodily fluids, eventually including sand. This will appeal to some, but I am not personally interested in this sort of thing right now... it's a shame Lake didn't write it ten years ago. There's nothing wrong with his imagination, but I prefer my fantasy novels with less torture and degradation, thanks. Contrast this book to something that I liked, like Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora, and you may understand why I didn't go on with it.

Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out for

Alison Bechdel

I've been hearing about Alison Bechdel for years, because I read what used to be called alternative comics, but I never read anything of hers until Fun Home came out last year. It was almost certainly the best graphic novel of 2006, so I wanted to read more of her work.

This involves admitting something embarrassing about myself, something that a lot of straight people do until they call themselves on it: a tendency to shy away from queer-identified material, particularly reading material, both because we think that it's primarily aimed at queer people (and thus not "for" us) and because we don't want people who see us toting it around to think that we're queer. (And not just because of physical safety issues - fear of being gay-bashed - either.) How can I say that I don't think there is any shame in being gay when I was acting ashamed that someone might think I was gay? When I realized that I really don't care if someone, particularly some random person in the library, thinks I might be a lesbian, that opened my reading up a lot.

Dykes to Watch Out For is sort of a queer-identified, politically liberal-to-radical take on For Better or For Worse or something similar. The characters age, date, break up, have children, and so on. Some of the characters live in a communal house; at this point in the story, which has been running for around 20 years, there are male characters, straight characters, bi characters, a young transgendered girl, and a young conservative Evangelical Christian lesbian trying to come to terms with how her sexuality impacts her position in her own community.

This book is fairly recent, with comics from 2003 to early 2005. There are a number of earlier books in the series. It's my first, but it won't be my last. Anything that you like about any ongoing comic about the lives of a small group of friends and family is probably true of this one, and it's definitely worth a look if that kind of story appeals to you. So as far as who it's "for," I would say, "Anyone looking for a good slice-of-life comic." (If, on the other hand, lesbian sex offends you, or you're really conservative yourself, you probably won't like this. But if you really are that conservative, I don't know why you're reading my blog, unless we're related.)

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QotD: An Embarrassing Hobby

nobody@vox.com(verbminx) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:01:12 -0400

What was the most embarrassing hobby you've ever had?

In the seventh grade, not only was I the president of the school Stamp Club, I was also a member.

I still have a banker's box full of stamp-collecting goodies somewhere around these parts.

And for years, my mom subscribed me to the U.S. First Day Cover Society... that may not be the exact name, but it's a stamp-collecting subscription service. Whenever the U.S. releases a new stamp, that stamp is sent to you on a special envelope featuring coordinating engraved art. The postmark will be the day of the stamp's release. I had a screw-post display album for these and everything. IIRC, they sent display pages for each stamp in advance of its release, so you would put the pages in your album, then wait for the actual First-Day Cover to arrive, when you would slot it into the display page.

This is all ironic in that I've never really been "into" collecting stamps in more than a desultory manner. I liked the pictures on them, but I never took very good care of them, or had nice albums or anything, with the exception of the First-Day Cover album. For me, collecting stamps is a lot like collecting stickers. I haven't done any stamp collecting in the last 15 years, but I'm loath to part with the little collection that I have.

I was also a Girl Scout for a year or two longer than was fashionable in my circle.

I don't know... I just don't think any of my hobbies, past or present, are that embarrassing. I have some geeky topics of interest, like Latin language, Roman history, 17th century England, but that's something different. Those are mostly just lonely rooms... never anyone in them to have a discussion with.

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DEAR CATASTROPHE WAITRESS by Brendan Halpin

nobody@vox.com(verbminx) — Thu, 31 May 2007 06:09:59 -0400

Dear Catastrophe Waitress: A Novel

Brendan Halpin

It has recently occurred to me that I haven't posted here about anything I've been reading in a while. Time to remedy that.

This was a spur-of-the-moment library selection, and a fast, relatively compelling read: one night, for me. It's about two people, Mark and Philippa, who have each been the topic of a breakup song. Philippa's song was the single hit of a London punk band in 1983, "Philippa Cheats." She'd met the band's singer when she went to stay with her father in London after her Cincinnati high school graduation. The song eventually caused her to flee from London and into a series of bad relationships back in Ohio, until something else caused her to change her life for good.

Mark's song was written by Raquel, his college girlfriend, who left him when she moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles to pursue a music career in the early 1990s; Halpin leads the clued-in reader to think that ROCK-L is a little bit Alanis Morrissette, a little bit early Liz Phair, a little bit Ani DiFranco, and she dumped Mark for her older producer soon after her arrival in LA. But there was never any major trouble in their relationship, so Mark was stymied and humiliated when Raquel released her first single: "Two Minute Man." It begins with the lyrics Mark! My word, he's a two-minute man, lyrics which are both unkind and untrue.

Mark is a nice guy, who has been a bit fragile since his beloved kid sister Janet was killed in an unspecified accident soon after he left home for college, and his parents' marriage dissolved almost immediately thereafter. After college, and the end of his relationship with Raquel, her song dogs him through his subsequent life. He moves to Boston for grad school where, thinking of Janet and of his success as a camp counselor, he becomes a second-grade teacher, but not before ruining his dating prospects with all the women in his teaching program by going off on a rant about the general meanness of "Two Minute Man." Nostalgia causes him to attempt to reunite with his former camp crush, which has eventual disastrous results and leads him to a period of furious misanthropy.

Some time later, he meets Stacey, the single mother of one of his favorite students. It's possible that they could have a future together, enabling him to put the curse of feeling like both "that guy that song is about" and "that guy who women always leave" behind him. But Stacey has a secret that could threaten their happiness... as well as a seven-year-old daughter who is humiliated that her mother may be dating her teacher.

While I was reading this book, I didn't feel that the female characters were necessarily delineated that well... I knew what they looked like, and what they were doing, but they didn't spring to life the same way that Mark did. I feel like I was told more about Philippa than I was shown, possibly because so much of her story is a lengthy summary. The point of it is to get to the moment where she becomes Stacey, so that her story with her daughter and eventually with Mark can begin. Mark's two previous big loves, Raquel and Becky, are mostly offstage; the periods of Mark's happiness are not really germane to the story. I'm not blown away by the writing - it's what I would describe as achievable, as in, "I am not awed by the perfection of your prose, but I don't have any complaints about it." There's a sex scene near the end, and I can't decide if it's hot, goofy, or both. (It's the hottest one I've read in at least a year or two, but most of the books I read just don't have them!)

Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit, and Devotion

One thing that illuminated the novel a lot for me was reading, coincidentally, Halpin's essay in Modern Love, which I picked up at the library in the same spontaneous manner the day I returned Dear Catastrophe Waitress. I read it last night. It is succinct, beautiful, and very sad. Halpin married his college sweetheart; she died of cancer about a decade later, leaving him with their seven-year-old daughter. When he started dating again, the woman who caught his eye was his daughter's teacher. They eventually married, and Halpin summarizes the situation by declaring his love for his current wife, but admitting that he'll always love his late wife, too. Because I've read both the novel and the essay within a week or so of each other, it's very apparent that many of the details of Mark and Stacey's courtship are taken from real life: the single parent meeting the teacher when the teacher walks the kids out to the bus, the bonding over rock music (in the book, the characters bond over Stacey's ROCK-L t-shirt, which borrows a classic Kathleen Hanna line; in real life, they bonded over Suzanne's trip to lady rocker camp), the worries that the parent of a young child has when dating becomes an issue.

I don't know if I would recommend this novel to everyone... it's a relatively light novel in intellectual terms, although its themes are serious enough. The writing is good, though like I said, a lot of Philippa's story feels like summary to me. I liked Douglas Coupland's first few novels a lot, and I haven't cared for much that he's written since Girlfriend in a Coma (which was, itself, kind of borderline for me). There are a few writers that I think are writing similar stuff these days, and who I'd rather read than read what Coupland is doing now. Adam Davies is one, and now Brendan Halpin is another... so if you loved Generation X or Microserfs, or even some of his newer books like Miss Wyoming*, I'd probably recommend this one to you too.

However, I totally recommend Modern Love. Its essays run the gamut of moods and topics. Some writers talk about their romantic relationships, others about the relationships in their parents' lives, or their relationships with their children. Some are about good relationships and others are about relationships that never get off the ground. What the essays have in common is that they were all good enough to make it into the New York Times; many of them are by writers you've probably heard of, if you read enough anthologies and midlist literary novels, but most of them are interesting.

* Dear Catastrophe Waitress is, at least, way way way deeper than Miss Wyoming.

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Book Meme

nobody@vox.com(verbminx) — Sun, 13 May 2007 06:22:50 -0400

Rachel posted this a while ago, and I was kind of amused by my results, so I thought I'd post it. I'm not sure whether or not this is the one where you're meant to add a book of your own at the end, but some of the books on this list are so abysmal - Mitch Albom, for pete's sake? - that I thought it would really be a good idea. You will find that I tend to not like trendy commercial fiction or books about hardscrabble living.

*Look at the list of books below.
*Bold the ones you’ve read.
*Italicize the ones you want to read.
*Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) - I read a bit and thought it was AWFUL.
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) - I don't endorse this, but I've read it.
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller).
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce) - I've read SOME of it and I MEAN to finish it. ;)
101. Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton)
102. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (Haruki Murakami)

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