Currently Reading: Ella Enchanted

“I know all about you,” Char announced after we’d taken a few more steps.

“You do? How could you?”

“Your cook and our cook meet at the market. She talks about you.” He looked sideways at me. “Do you know much about me?”

“No.” Mandy had never said anything. “What do you know?”

“I know you can imitate people just as Lady Eleanor could. Once you imitated your manservant to his face, and he wasn’t sure whether he was the servant or you were. You make up your own fairy tales and you drop things and trip over things. I know you once broke a whole set of dishes.”

“I slipped on ice!”

“Ice chips you spilled before you slipped on them.” He laughed. It wasn’t a ridiculing laugh; it was a happy laugh at a good joke.

Author: Gail Carson Levine

Synopsis: Ella of Frell was given a fairy gift at birth, which turned out to be a curse: she will always obey any command given her. Unfortunately for Ella, this means that if her stepsister Hattie tells her to give up a friend, she has to do it. If an ogre tells her to hop into a pot and cook herself, she must obey. Since Hattie is inclined to make Ella’s life miserable, and ogres are inclined to eat humans, Ella lives always at the edge of great danger—especially when Hattie discovers the nature of the curse.

Meanwhile, good-hearted Prince Charmont finds playful Ella more than appealing. As Ella learns to love him, she must face the biggest danger her curse has brought her yet: the possibility of being exploited to destroy both prince and kingdom.

Notes: For those who—like me—saw the movie before reading the book (yeah, I know), be prepared to find an astonishingly different story. Like most adaptations, however, the movie lacks the depth and interest of the book, though I enjoyed both.

Quirky, lovable worldbuilding sets the stage. In the kingdom of Kyrria, ogres and giants and gnomes and centaurs are commonplace, and they speak in hilarious gibberish likely to baffle elementary school teachers who attempt to read the book aloud. The fun of the world, along with Ella’s and Char’s senses of humor, prevents the book from becoming too heavy. Ella’s predicament rivals the justice of Delores Umbridge for the award of Most Frustrating Fictional Situation, so the laughs are much needed.

Levine follows the popular modern Cinderella story in some ways and changes it entirely in others, but the important characters are all there: silly and grasping stepmother Olga, vicious stepsister Hattie and stupid stepsister Olive, two bossy fairies sharing the role generally played by the godmother, and of course cinder girl and prince.

The primary twist—the obedience curse—makes the cinder-girl’s story a tale of growing into individual freedom and sacrificial strength. Ella has the pluck to accept her plight as something she must live with for the time, while always searching for her escape. Her playful spirit and her knack for the goofy linguistics carry the story, making her positively irresistible as a heroine. It’s not at all hard to understand why Char is so taken with her.

And while Ella is the star of the show, Char isn’t just a stock romantic hero, to be desired merely because he’s royalty. Despite his awkward name, Char proves himself more than a little lovable. Ella must work against a curse to do the right thing; Char works to do the right thing out of the desperation of his own nature. Ella falls into romance; Char falls over himself to romance his girl. He comes alive in the pure-hearted, self-deprecating playfulness he shares with Ella, and there were moments when the pair of them reminded me pleasantly of Elizabeth Bennet bantering with Mr. Darcy. Now, is there a higher compliment for middle-reader fiction? I ask you.

The concept of the magic book that aids the protagonist by spying shamelessly on her friends is an intriguing one, and probably an entire series could be written with that as the central plot point. In this book, it simply serves as a way of conveying information to the reader. Shameless as the spying was, of course, I can’t say I’m entirely sorry for having had a look into Char’s and Areida’s journals.

The ending contains one sentence—six words, really—that stung a little. It suggested, at least to this sometimes-cynical reader, that the author felt it necessary to force her Cinderella story(!) into the narrative that it’s a Very Bad Thing for little girls to want to be princesses. I could think of no other reason for the inclusion of those six words. While I understand not overindulging certain tendencies, there's also such a thing as overreaction. They'll take princess dreams away from our daughters when they stop our sons from making guns with their fingers.

Otherwise, the ending makes sense within the story and is quite thoroughly delightful. It even suggests that a re-read might be nice, and that owning one's own copy might be ideal.

Recommendation: Read it for some good laughs and a happy Cinderella story.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That were Totally Deceiving

This is a great topic. Every reader has had the experience of coming to a book with certain expectations and finding something very different indeed.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! Do come join the fun...

Culprits for raising unhelpful expectations may include misleading covers, back-jacket summaries that were clearly written by marketers who hadn't read the books, reviews or recommendations by people with tastes unlike your own, and popular misunderstanding. Among other things.

I'm not sure I can make ten off the top of my head, but here's a try.

1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling.
What I expected: Heavy influence from various forms of modern paganism.
What I found: Jesus. And a whole new set of insights into literature and symbolism.

2. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.
What I expected: Romance so smarmy that even I, with my high tolerance for cheesiness, could only laugh.
What I found: One of the more compelling images to come out of YA fiction, ever, with a lot to say about conscience and faith.

3. A Creed for the Third Millenium by Colleen McCullough.
What I expected: Tell me this is not a light romance novel cover. (With a sci-fi title, admittedly.)

What I found: A bizarre, futuristic and tragic replay of the Gospel narrative.

4. Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy.
What I expected: Gloom, despair, and agony on me. Deep dark depression, excessive misery.*
What I found: Lewis' Mere Christianity in novel form.

5. Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo.
What I expected: A cheesy story about a kid with a dog named after a supermarket.
What I found: An intensely beautiful and empathetic portrayal of friendship in deep Southern poverty.

6. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather.
What I expected: A tale about approaching death.
What I found: Scenes from the life of an archbishop. (Good, though.)

7. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin.
What I expected: Harry Potter, but underwater and with more mermaids. (I have no idea how I got this.)
What I found: How Harry Potter might have read if it had been imagined and written by an Old Testament scribe with Taoist leanings.

What about you? What books have proven, on the inside, to be unlike what you expected?

* Yes, I'm quoting Hee Haw. My Southern mama used to sing those two lines whenever my sisters and I started complaining too much.

Nor I Beheld Aught: The Artist and Suffering... and Joy

Source.

"Fear not suffering - the sadness
Give it back to the weight of the Earth
the mountains are heavy, heavy the oceans.
Ah, but the breezes, ah, but the spaces - "
~Rainer Maria Rilke

I would like to explore the necessity of suffering to the artist. Some suffering is inescapable in life, but what do you say - is it on equal footing with joy, or does it create better and richer than the happy times? Are the romantics right to write in despair?
~Masha

The romantics shall do as they choose, but I've never been particularly drawn to the brooding-artist image above any other. In my favorite idea of myself—and I'm narcissist enough to have many—I'm actually a little happy-go-lucky; humming and talking to myself, laughing randomly at things that pop into my mind, head often tilted back toward the sky, hands always ready to reach out to the nearest flowers.

I won't bore you by listing the ranges of angst that keep me from being entirely the charmed soul I'd like to be. Suffice it to say that the brooding side of me exists, and affects every day of my life—but I fight it with everything I have, including this usually-cheery blog.

My experiences aside, suffering is a common theme among artists. Probably because the stronger forms of suffering, like those of beauty, are felt too deeply for words and must be expressed through transcendental powers like art, literature, and music. Masha expresses this well when she says:

...I do think that there is a tendency for the artist to feel deeply, and feeling deeply, to suffer in and for the world. That suffering, mingled with the joys of life, with the daily things, is boiled down in the soul of the artists until all his works well forth from these rich, fully infused memories, what Rilke described as "blood remembering".

Or, as Chaim Potok put it:

"For all the pain you suffered, my mama. For all the torment of your past and future years, my mama. For all the anguish this picture of pain will cause you. For the unspeakable mystery that brings good fathers and sons into the world and lets a mother watch them tear at each other’s throats. For the Master of the Universe, whose suffering world I do not comprehend. For dreams of horror, for nights of waiting, for memories of death, for the love I have for you, for all the things I remember, and for all the things I should remember but have forgotten, for all these I created this painting—an observant Jew working on a crucifixion because there was no aesthetic mold in his own religious tradition into which he could pour a painting of ultimate anguish and torment."—from My Name is Asher Lev*

(Mr. Pond, if you're wondering, did not post Friday, perhaps due to Easter-related busyness.)

Masha's question for the week intrigues me. Does the artist create better out of suffering, or are joy and sorrow equals in their benefit to the artist?

I would claim that the best joys, like the stronger forms of suffering and beauty, can often not be described without art. Depression has been good for my writing, but so has getting married. So has becoming Catholic, an experience in which sorrow and love have mingled beyond my ability to talk about. Anything that requires transcendental expression is material for the artist; not just the pain, but the haunting delights and yearnings of living. Tolkien has put it better than I could:

The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, [is] the sudden joyous “turn” (for there is no true end to any fairy tale). . . In its fairy-tale—or otherworldly—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.—from On Fairy Stories**

Or, from Frederick Buechner:

"...yet the tears that come to our eyes at the joy of the fairy tale are nevertheless essentially joyous tears because what we have caught a glimpse of, however fleeting, is joy itself, the triumph, if not of goodness, at least of hope. And I do not think it is entirely fanciful to say that it is not only in fairy tales that we have glimpsed it." from Telling the Truth***

It's Holy Saturday as I write. Lou has Bach's St. Matthew Passion playing, and tonight is the Easter Vigil in which there are joys I can most definitely not explain in bare words. But tied up in these Holy Week celebrations is the hope of paradise, of the "sudden joyous turn", and perhaps that is why I choose to write fairy tales—because while suffering has had its effect on my artistry, so have the glimpses of joy. I won't promise a happy ending to every story I tell, but I do write toward the hope of paradise.

* Quoted from Goodreads, as I don't have a copy of Asher Lev handy. The wording is at least close to the original.

** Quoted from Eucatastrophe: Hope Beyond the Walls of the World on Pages Unbound

*** Quoted from my friend Jana. Three cheers for the Internet!

These Three Days and other stories

It's my most favoritest time of the year.

The Easter Triduum—Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil—is a bit exhausting (especially for anyone involved in the liturgies) and entails three very long church services three nights running. And it is so stunningly, beautifully worth it.

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Lou has today off work, so this post will be short. But it's sunny, there's lettuce coming up in the garden, I've got my rewrite of the first three chapters of my novel drafted and out to a few trusty readers who will tell me if it's dreadful, and despite my having been a little under the weather, it's been a good week.

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Writers' link of the week: Over at The Big Thrill, Lee Child and "The Long Game": Lessons on Success From One of America's Favorite Authors. Good stuff.

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Music of the week: From Holy Thursday, the Pange Lingua. This is one of my favorite chant pieces.



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Random amusement of the week: Mr. Pond sent this link recently, and I have no idea what (theoretically) English subtitles are doing on The Lord of the Rings films, but they are pretty dang hilarious. Advisory: some language (no one knows what language, but some of the bad words are in English).

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Have a blessed Good Friday, a happy Easter, and a great weekend!

Currently Reading: Echoes

“I do worry a bit, I don’t want to be abnormal.” Clare was solemn.

“Well, I hope you’re not big-headed enough to think that you’re something special. That would be a sin of Pride you know.”

“I suppose so.”

“You can know it, not suppose it. It’s there in black and white in the catechism. The two great sins against Hope are Pride and Despair. You mustn’t get drawn towards either of them.”

“Were you ever tempted a bit to either of them?” Clare was an odd mixture. She could be quite familiar and probing sometimes as if she were the equal of the teacher sitting opposite her, yet she could also be totally respectful, and up at the convent she never gave a glimmer of the intimacy they shared in the O’Hara cottage.

“If I was, I suppose it was a bit more towards Despair,” Angela said. “Sometimes I used to think I’d never make it and what was it all for anyway. But I did and here I am, and I’m teaching the second great genius to come out of Castlebay, so will you open your books and not have us here all night talking about sins against Hope and friendships long gone.”

Author: Maeve Binchy

Synopsis: In the seaside resort town of Castlebay, two very different children grew up to love each other: David Power, privileged only son of the town’s only doctor, and Clare O’Brien, brilliant but poor younger daughter of the town’s huckster. Both of them want out of the quiet little place where both of them feel stifled, and it is in Dublin where they begin to fall in love. But passion and city freedom lead them to choices that endanger Clare’s only shot at education and set them at odds with both families.

When fate takes them back to Castlebay, destructive forces begin to work against them, and it is Clare—left defenseless—who has too much to lose.

Notes: For the first three-quarters of this story, I loved it. For most of the last quarter, I had my arm drawn back, ready to send the book flying against the far wall. Binchy held off anything resembling resolution for the main characters to the last two or three pages, and all I can say about that without spoiling it entirely is that though it was nowhere near a rainbows and unicorns ending, I didn’t throw the book across the room after all.

Binchy, despite her stylistic licentiousness regarding commas and her tendency to pose questions without using a question mark (one of my pet peeves), is a fantastic storyteller. Her people live and think and feel with the beautiful and awful, hilarious and poignant inconsistencies of reality. The situations she describes are relatively everyday—at least, the everyday of small-town Irish Catholic life circa 1960—but they hold the reader’s attention nonetheless.

The history, odd as it feels to use that term for something as recent as the Fifties and Sixties, was interesting. Set in the last years before Vatican II unleashed its mixed bag of major changes upon the Catholic Church, Echoes snaps a picture of the time within the place: firm country traditionalism, unexamined and unfair as it often is, and yet both beautiful and correct in its way; young people caught up in education and city anonymity, trying their strength against the boundaries of morality and stigma and scandal.

The one fault I found with this book was that in a couple of respects, it was Circle of Friends, second verse. In both novels, the boys did what they did for the same halfwitted reasons and justified themselves with the same witless excuses. I'd have appreciated it if one of them had at least pretended to understand that he was in the wrong. But in this case, it was worse; it seemed an unnecessary, even irresponsible inclusion—a method not of developing the primary characters, but of bringing the Gerry Doyle plot thread to its climax. It's not unimaginable that I've missed the point, however.

All that aside, I had little trouble understanding and loving most of the characters. Angela O’Hara might have been my favorite; brilliant and beautiful and single, desperate to do the right thing while avoiding scandal. She was absolutely sympathetic. Clare suffered so much that I could not do less than love her, though at one point—maybe two or three—she could have used a stiff talking-to, not that it would have worked. Mary Catherine and Valerie and Josie are humanly lovable friends with very believable weaknesses and strengths.

There were a handful of characters who were unsympathetic or difficult at some level, and in every case the author controlled this fabulously. Molly Power and Gerry Doyle and Sean O’Hara are too ordinary to seem like villains, but they come off all the more villainous because of their ordinariness. Shuya makes herself both problem and solution. Chrissie is a mess and a mystery.

I don’t know how I feel about David. I may never decide that. I don’t see him as loathsome as, say, Kristin Lavransdatter’s Erlend, but he’s not Taylor Caldwell’s Luke either.

Dick Dillon, however—there’s a man and a hero for you. Father Flynn, likewise.

Perhaps I should say one more thing about the ending. As noted before, it’s not rainbows and unicorns. It’s not entirely satisfactory, and everybody doesn’t get their perfect understanding of just how bad they were and how they ought to go on. It is, however, a step toward redemption. And I appreciated that.

Recommendation: Read it for small-town sensibilities, for history and humanity. For the quiet battle of fallible, resilent courage and faith against terrible sin and suffering.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books to Read in a Day

This topic could go a lot of different ways. Daisy over at The Broke and the Bookish interpreted it to mean books that demanded finishing the same day they were begun. Others have listed books they themselves read in a single day. I'm going to be different.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! Do come join the fun...

You have a single day to lay in the hammock and read. All you want is something that'll take you from page one through happy ending by sunset. Not something so long that if you take your time and enjoy it, you risk not finishing, but something relaxing and pleasant and dependable. Here are a variety of suggestions:

1) Any of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. They're short enough that you might manage a couple of them, actually. If it were my hammock and my sunny day, I'd probably pick The Horse and His Boy.

2) Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. Lay back and laugh.

3) Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It's surprisingly short, so don't hurry through the humor—take time to pay attention to the many hilarious weirdnesses. You'll sympathize with the dolphins.

4) Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. Most of Austen's works are fairly long and not meant to be read in a single sitting; this one is a quick read, though, light and spoofy and sweet.

5) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Especially likely to be powerful if your hammock is near some good flower-beds.

6) A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle—or, if you’ve read that, A Wind in the Door or A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Actually, I'd expect most of L'Engle's novels to be good single-day relaxing reads, though they're not all as reliably simple and cheerful as her famous Time books.

7) If You Love Me by Patricia St. John (also published as Nothing Else Matters, but I like the title my edition uses). This one is a bit rougher than most of the other stories on this list, but it's a short, powerful tale of love and forgiveness amid war, and it has a beautiful ending.

8) The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho. Mystical and quiet and lovely, this is a great read for a single day.

9) A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks. Not that Sparks books are happy-endingish, mind. But if you like your endings cry-worthy in a good way, this is the summer-day read for you.

10) The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. A little longer than some of the others but still possible to finish easily, it's an adventurous and (in the old sense) romantic delight of a book.

What books would you choose to read in a single day?

Sweep Mud in the Street: The Artist and His Un-Artistic Life

Source.

"Go to your cell, and your cell will teach you everything."
~Desert Fathers

"I would like to probe a bit into the act of writing as it relates to daily life.  Is there a value in mundane life for the work of the artist? How can the writer in the romantic ideal combine the demands of daily life: family, bills, housework, and physical labor with the dramatic aloneness of the writing life?"
~Masha

"He whispered something to the clockwork bird, words that coursed through his blood as he spoke, that throbbed on his breath like fire."
~Mr. Pond

If any of you know of an artist who manages to escape the mundane life and everyday labor entirely, let me know. I figure I lose myself in the romantic ideal of creative work as often as anyone, yet I am responsible to a husband and house and garden and church and family—all of which require me to get my head out of the clouds now and again.

Masha claims that regular non-writing work is important to the writer:

I am very much convinced that daily chores are a grounding, inspiring, and essential aspect of my own creative process.... Ora et Labora, the blessings of balance. It is what the Romantics lack, balance, aching muscles, roots, and the soothing resistance of bread dough. Not everyone is suited to physical labor, but the presence of mundane tasks is an essential to creative wholeness.

Or, one might say, as in Ecclesiastes: "Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh." (ESV)

Mr. Pond decided he'd said all he could say about artistic solitude and community and all that what-not in a story called Ragabone, which I highly encourage everyone to read. It's a beautiful tale, and speaks greatly to the idea of the isolated artist living his true calling surrounded by community.

Every artist must work out the balance between his creative work and the rest of his life. Very few of us earn our bread and housekeeping by art alone, so the tension is constant. Art expands to fill all available space, my artist mother often says. That's true mentally as well as physically, so art, in its attempt to claim the artist's time and energy, battles day job and family and social demands and hunting for food and managing the mess of living.

Perhaps no two artists handle it the same way. Masha says that her "best writing came during a time I spent working long hours at a dairy farm" with long hours of physical work. Contra that, my own outdoorsy years were those in which I wrote less than at any other time in my life; these past three years have been my most productive as a writer, and I've barely moved off the couch and out from under the laptop. Not that that's healthy, mind. But it's hard to convince myself to move about when the words are coming.

That said, a regular dose of manual labor is good for the writer. I am grateful for my garden, which gives my mind and eyes a break and the rest of my body some honest-to-goodness work. Devotion helps, too. It nearly always requires me to fight the flow of artistic thought in order to concentrate on reverence, but it offers both discipline and inspiration. Likewise, family and friends keep the artist—this one, at least—human and grounded.

There's also Louisa May Alcott's point that we're better off sweeping mud in the street than wasting time creating poor or damaging art. I'm not speaking of the failures that are naturally part of practice and work, nor of the simple mistake, but of dishonest art: art that by intention is morally or technically sloppy. A moral agenda may be a bad thing for art, but so is an attempt to excite humanity's weakness for mere gratification in defiance of conscience. Alcott's Professor Bhaer is right overall (regardless of whether he's correct about whisky or sensation stories): there is a demand for many things which are unwholesome, and the temptation to supply such things is always present. By common wisdom, honest, mundane ora et labora are the natural antidotes to that disease.

I believe Masha and Mr. Pond are both more right than may appear. The artist must have time alone, time devoted solely to art; yet he must spend some time involved in reality and among others, where hard work strengthens the body and clears the mind, and common sense and principle return in the presence of common conversation and everyday human need.

The stabilizing powers are not mundanity's only gift to the artist, however. Whatever his life beyond art happens to be—the people he knows and loves and struggles with, the daily labors in which he partakes, his beliefs and rituals, his everyday and earth-shattering moments—that life gives him the content for his work. Not necessarily subject matter, but experience, the experience that is necessary for the creation of good art.

Missing the Hunger and other stories

I haven't seen The Hunger Games.

Oh, I read the books, and found them flawed but compelling. I watched the trailer several times; it gave me chills. I wondered whether Jennifer Lawrence would make a believable Katniss and how Lenny Kravitz would do as the gentle Cinna. And as people all over the blogosphere and Facebook have cheered or ranted or both this week, part of me has felt out of it, that I'm missing something.

Usually, I tell people I don't want the nightmares. So far, so true. But it's more than that, and it's hard to explain. The books were compelling, but they were also unbearable. For me, even the first. I don't want to sit through that as translated to screen. Also, I resent the marketing buzz's attempt to cast me as a citizen of the Capitol; Hollywood knows nothing about how I live my life. Much as I loved Peeta—partly because I hurt for him so badly—I don't want his name stamped on my underwear. Nor will I be buying nail polish named for the tributes, or whatever else they're selling. This is one phenomenon that I understand (believe me, I am sorely tempted at every turn in a Harry Potter shop) and yet I sincerely don't at the same time.

In case it needs to be said, I'm not judging a single person who walked into the theater, not even if they wore a pink Effie Trinket wig and gold spots on their face. People are drawn to a work of fiction for thousands of possible reasons, and there are good reasons to be drawn to The Hunger Games. I get it.

And yet I don't. I really don't. And I don't know why. All I know is that I can hardly think of that story without feeling like crying. Tears are not something I go to the theater for.

But here are three thoughtful articles by people who saw the movie, people whose responses I respected: Maggie Stiefvater fangirls the film but is floored by the irony, Danielle Tumminio asks "What if we didn't watch?" (I'm good at not watching, but not necessarily so good at taking the action she calls for; believe me, I found this piece convicting, though I think protesting is the weakest of the actions available to us), and Amy Simpson looks for the Bread of Life in the story (thanks for the link, Arabella.)

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Fans of The Hunger Games may be interested to know that I followed Katniss all around the grocery [incongruity!] this week. Not Jennifer Lawrence—just a wiry young woman with a narrow, sorrowful face and long dark brown hair braided slightly off to the side. It was her, I say.

Later, I went home and braided my own hair slightly off to the side.

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My seedlings are coming up!

Basil! See those little guys peering over the edge of the pot?

Chives! I love the way they poke up, all doubled over.

Other happy gardening thoughts:

Blooming peace lily! Even though Maia broke off three of the leaves last night.

Blueberry bushes in the brand-new raised bed...

Peonies and grape hyacinths...

Lou actually found rhubarb and a peony plant in the lawn. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of those before it started pouring rain again.

Flowering quince! Actually, it's technically the neighbors', but
it's partly growing into our yard.

Currant bushes!

Helping things grow: one of the best feelings in the world.

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Writers' link of the week: Michael Wallace's How to Eat an Elephant, which is perhaps the most practical post on how to finish a novel that I've ever read. Two of my three current novels have reached completion on that basic principle, and the third follows closely. I might go look up that Freedom program, too...

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Music of the week: Maurice Duruflé's arrangement of the Ubi Caritas—some good Holy Week music, there. Lou and I have sung this in choir.



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Random amusement of the week: What's your architectural style? (I like my bungalow.)

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All right, I think this post is long enough. Happy weekend!

Currently Reading: The Outlaws of Sherwood

“One of the things you insist on leaving out of your calculations is that our absurd and uncomfortable life under Sherwood’s wide branches suits some of us,” said Will. “Say, Little John, if someone gave you a herd of cattle, would you go back to farming?”

“No,” said Little John immediately. “They’d get the pox, and I’d not have rent on quarter day, and soon I’d be an outlaw.”

“Nothing would drive me back to my father’s hall,” said Will; “not even a full pardon. Indeed, particularly not a full pardon, because then I’d be treated as the lord’s son again, and if you knew how boring it is, dressing up in frills and a clean shirt every day and praying that a guest will arrive some time soon with a few new jokes... You can even get bored with hunting and hawking occasionally, without the savour of need. I know why the Lionheart went off to Palestine; he couldn’t stand it either. All those state dinners. I’d have followed him if I hadn’t heard about Sherwood. I wanted to stay in England.”

Author: Robin McKinley

Synopsis: After a misfired arrow makes him an outlaw, Robin flees deep into Sherwood, which he knows well from having worked as one of the king’s foresters. He expects to be sought by the corrupt sheriff of Nottingham, but two of his friends find him first: Much and Marian, the former of whom has ideas for making him a Saxon rebel-hero against the domineering Normans, and the latter of whom he loves. Though Robin wants nothing to do with leadership, he soon finds himself responsible for a band of renegades in the forest—hiding them, teaching them how to hunt and survive, and superintending their work against the sheriff and all Norman cruelty.

Notes: In a brief note in the back, McKinley speaks straightforwardly about her interpretation of the Robin Hood legend, including the difficulties of drawing from widely varying versions and the incompatibility of the modern image with historical likelihood. I wish I’d read her note before the book, rather than after. But the few hey-wait-I-don’t-remember-thats hardly detracted from the pleasure of the tale.

McKinley’s note is important, however, because she reimagines a named time and place. The language and humorous banter—Much always made me laugh—are in the voice and tradition of fairy tales, not of plain history; also, the author overrides conventional portrayals to offer her female characters a stronger role.

The matter of outlaw femininity forms its own subplot to the tale. Marian, for instance, proves the true sharpshooter, and she and several other women struggle to be taken seriously by their male companions. McKinley develops this beautifully, although I might make the slight complaint that as marriage by nature is ordered toward the creation of children, it’s hard to imagine what all those girls and their respective lovers plan to do in their future situation. Slight complaints aside, the romances are enjoyable, and readers will delight alongside the young women as the latter hunt, shoot, learn woodscraft, join in the practices of Sherwood outlawry, and escape being sold into marriage for political advantage.

Robin—but here the reviewer struggles with the fact that author and protagonist carry the same first name. Robin Hood, in this incarnation, is strong and wood-wise but not quite legendary in his own right. His marksmanship is average, clearly inferior to Marian’s. Difficulties have left him silent and resentful. But like many others who have leadership thrust upon them by quick-thinking friends, rather than demanding the mantle for themselves, he proves more than capable.

My own acquaintance with the Sherwood hero comes mostly through Sir Walter Scott and Disney (though I’ve seen both Prince of Thieves and Men in Tights... maybe the less said about that, the better), and McKinley’s version proved thoroughly likable in its own right as a more careful and intimate development of the characters. In fact, the book’s main weakness—and it would have been admittedly difficult to fix—was that after the first chapter, it spent a little too long adding new characters without much progression of plot otherwise. It got far more interesting after Friar Tuck, one of the last of the main additions, entered the story, after which I had not a fault to find with the playing out of the tale.

At the end the book focuses on friendship, the power of camaraderie, and does so with a lot of beauty. For myself, I was sorry to see it come to a close; Sherwood Forest and the outlaws’ affection and woodscraft captured something exquisite from my childhood fantasies, and I would have been glad to remain there.

Recommendation: Read it for woodsy adventures, for humor and wonder and the strength of a band of true friends.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I'd Play Hooky With

This is one of those lists that could change from day to day, let alone week to week. So, if I could drop everything today...

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! Do come join the fun...

If it didn't matter That Much if the laundry didn't get done, if I could blow off pre-Easter choir practices, if I could just skip a day of house and writing work and disappear with a few books, here are the first ten that might jump off the shelves.

First, I need some Jane Austen, and at the moment I think I'd pick 1) Emma, which I haven't read in a long time.

It's also been a while since I've read 2) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and I want to go through it so I can re-re-re-read 3) Order of the Phoenix and 4) Half-Blood Prince and 5) Deathly Hallows. Yes, I know that listing them individually is kind of cheating and I'm already well beyond the possibility of what can be read in a single day. We're dreaming here. Dreaming of playing hooky for a week. Which sounds like a good idea, actually. How did March get so busy?

Also, I'd take 6) Tuesdays at the Castle, which I'm halfway through. Must know what happens before anything else!

Most of my take-alongs would be re-reads, because I don't do enough of that nowadays, but my friend Jana just loaned me a copy of 7) Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes, which has gorgeous art in it and looks like a lovely middle-grade story.

Middle grade stories make me think of Percy Jackson, which series I'd like to re-read eventually. I'll put The Lightning Thief at number 8), but of course I want to go through them all.

My sister borrowed and adored and has just returned my copy of 9) Beauty, so I should read that again.

If I'm out getting Percy Jackson for the hooky trip, I might as well hunt down the next Bean book as well. I believe it's 10) Shadow Puppets.

That ought to get me through a good week of hooky. Maybe two....

What books would you take?

Author credits:
1) Jane Austen
2-5) J.K. Rowling
6) Jessica Day George
7) Jonathan Auxier
8) Rick Riordan
9) Robin McKinley
10) Orson Scott Card

I Know You Of Old: The Artist and the Community

“Artists discover as children that they have inappropriate responses to events around them, they also find...that these oddities are what constitute their value to others.” 
~Kathleen Norris

Source.

“I’d like to try continuing to connect the writer to his audience...writing well takes a good deal of dedication, almost as much as it takes talent; it also takes a particular calling - a vocation to ‘otherness’, to take up the voice of the community...”
~Masha

I have a list, buried deep in Google Docs, of several terms I do not care for, and community is one of them. It's a sterile word, vague and unimaginative, something used by politicians and sociologists when they want to sound compassionate. Now, Masha isn't to be blamed in the least for matters of my distaste. But I'm going to call the word into question here for its lack of specificity nonetheless.

The problem is that the artist deals with more than one community. There are the people he lives with every day; then there are the communities of artists and critics and critique partners; then there's his audience. In all likelihood, these are different sets of people, with widely varying levels of artistic expertise, not to mention differing thought patterns and ideas of what should result from art. Whose voice is the artist responsible to take up?

It is true, as Masha points out, that any of these groups is liable to treat the artist in a variety of inappropriate ways. They may idealize him as a prophet at some moments and demand from him the vacuous entertainment of a freak show at others. The artist has no control over this sort of thing unless he portrays himself as such, and he probably ought not concern himself with it.

It is also often true, though not always, that the artist is a loner, an outsider—someone who can spend hours, days, weeks on end with people who exist only on paper, but who may turn into an inept and anti-social bore when confronted with flesh and blood humanity. Mr. Pond defends this freedom:

At best [active community membership] teaches [the poet] compassion, which he can hack up into fuel for poetry. At worst it takes him away from his writing, devouring his time, crowding his mind with other things than the play of vision and colour and words, the light and texture of sound; it lets him flatter himself he is doing well when he has forsaken his true calling.

Which is hyperbolic, of course, but certainly to the point. Better yet, though, Mr. Pond explains:

His community is his tradition, the company of writers and poets who have followed this path before; the supple words of court poets from centuries ago speak to him with more power and immediacy than the pundits and activists on his neighborhood block.

The isolation of the poet, as put forward by Mr. Pond, brings me back to the part of Masha's post that especially intrigued me:

...writing well takes... a particular calling - a vocation to ‘otherness’

This connects strongly with Norris' claim that "Artists discover as children that they have inappropriate responses to events around them", yet "these oddities are what constitute their value to others." It also connects strongly with my own experience as a writer. Without getting into too much self-psychoanalysis, things like slow, repetitive mental process and sometimes-hypersensitivity and even depression help make me the writer I am. For instance, I am distressingly unobservant, thanks to the tendency to focus so hard that... well,  I have a lot of conversations like this:

Friend: "What is that awful noise?"

Me: "What noise?... Oh. I don't know, but it's loud, isn't it?"

That focus comes in handy, though, when I'm trying to hold an entire story in my head. And it's just one example among many of ways that human and social weaknesses may become artistic strengths. I'm not making excuses for artists making jerks of themselves; no amount of genius gives anyone the right to that. I only claim that Norris is correct about oddities constituting the artist's value to others.

As for taking up the voice of the community, that is something that may be best done unconsciously. I suspect that authors who try outright to speak for a particular group of people wind up coming across as if they have an agenda, which question this blogalectic has already covered.

If the writer takes up his own voice as he works, though—if he has any compassion, any empathy, any truth in him, he'll find that he's spoken for others as well as for himself.

Highlighted Miscellany and other stories

Not to start off with politics, but if all has gone well, as you read this, I'm down in Seattle protesting—very quietly and peaceably, but protesting nonetheless—against the HHS mandate. Even though I detest protesting. And that's all I have to say about that.

* * *

Owing to my trip south, this will be a fairly abbreviated post. Hence, a few highlights from this week:

1. Daffodils!

2. In first-three-chapters revision, surpassing the original 11,059 words with 11,598 and counting.

3. Raised bed garden in the making!
4. The superb husband who is building it.
5. The likewise-superb in-laws who have contributed transportation
for long pieces of wood, plus tools and labor.

6. This chipotle recipe. I will use it again, oh yes.

7. Healthy baby cherry tree! Even if I can only take a blurry picture.

8. Discovering on Tuesday that I was still capable of waking up all the way. This, after spending Monday flat on the couch, sleeping or else reading with eyes half open and mind half aware. It's been a busy couple of weeks.

9. Pansies! And basil and chive starts. I hope they grow.

* * *

Readers' and writers' link of the week: Nathan Bransford suggests we Beware of Stories. There are numerous possible essays to be written in response to this, but I'm ending an extraordinarily busy week and have no time. Feel free to write or imagine your own.

* * *

Music of the week: There's just not enough Faure in the world.



* * *

Random amusement of the week: Despite the fact that I think there ought to be less hate mail in the world, not more, this is funny.

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Happy weekend!

Currently Reading: The Curse of Chalion

He made his voice stern, for emphasis. “Dondo dy Jironal is a power you dare not treat with anything but strictest courtesy.”

Iselle swirled round, and stared intently at him. “No matter how corrupt that power is?”

“The more corrupt, the less safe.”

Iselle raised her chin. “So, Castillar, tell me—how safe, in your judgment, is Dondo dy Jironal?”

He was caught out, his mouth at half-cock. So say it—Dondo dy Jironal is the second-most-dangerous man in Chalion, after his brother. Instead, he picked up a new quill from the clay jar and began shaping its tip with the penknife. After a moment or two he got out, “I do not like his sweaty hands either.”

Author: Lois McMaster Bujold

Synopsis: After a stint of slavery and torture in enemy galleys, Castillar dy Cazaril returns to Chalion and seeks work in a ruling household he once served. Remembered by the family, Cazaril becomes secretary-tutor to young Royesse Iselle and her companion Lady Betriz—only to be sent with them to Chalion’s high court, where his own worst enemies hold a great deal of power and put all three of them in danger.

When those enemies move against the royesse, Cazaril must risk both body and soul to protect his charges and the whole generous but cursed royal family.

Notes: In modern fantasy, the common trope is to put an inexperienced young character into the cycle of hero’s journey, at some point giving him or her an archetypal Wise Old Mentor for instruction and aid. This book, however, gives its protagonist both age—thirty-five, with some gray hairs—and the wisdom of immense experience, as well as a mentor role. And throws him into the monomyth nonetheless.

I liked this. Cazaril proved both interesting and sympathetic, a good man who becomes a great one not so much by growing from naivete to wisdom (though there is some of that, particularly as regards his relationship to the gods) as by continual willingness to obey the demands of rightness despite his feelings. Though his ideas and decisions fit with his setting and culture and not always with twenty-first century Western sensibilities, he remains likable.

The setting, culture and gods are quite well-developed, especially the first and the last. I appreciate a good setting with lots of visuals, and apparently, so does McMaster Bujold. The culture had strong hints of old Spain, which helped unify the images; of course, it also made me want to read the names in a mostly Castilian way, which turned out to be mostly wrong. The world and worldbuilding felt real, though, believable, and no part of it was more interesting than the gods.

I happen to very much like a good portrayal of religion in fiction, and a richly-imagined fantasy faith can be especially enjoyable. What McMaster Bujold actually believes, and where she drew her ideas from, I could not entirely discern. But the fivefold family of gods—Father, Mother, Son, Daughter (all corresponding to the seasons), and Bastard (the god of odds and ends)—was fascinating to no end. Problematic morally at times, from a variety of different angles, but intriguing nonetheless. It was portrayed with common miracles and therefore a general certainty, but never failed to be comprehensible within its world.

It is in the area of faith that Cazaril most lacks understanding, and his character growth is largely spiritual. That trajectory thoughtfully develops the concept of a single human becoming a conduit for the gods’ work, within, of course, the context of Chalion’s religion.

Cazaril’s task forces him to choose between serious moral transgression and allowing the royesse, who is entirely under his care, to be seriously transgressed upon. It also involves him in a great deal of the grotesque—and on that note, I should add that this is an adult book. Blessedly free from the curse of the gratuitous sex scene, but straightforward in depiction of the story’s lecherous villain and other vulgarities. There’s also some violence, both magical and ordinary; for high fantasy, however, the tale is relatively short on gore.

Despite the presence of real tragedy, the book works toward joy and healing. It does so beautifully. If anything, it resolves a little too neatly, but you’ll not hear this reviewer complaining about that.

Recommendation: Read for its intelligent hero and his intriguing, beautifully-developed fantasy world.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Spring To-Read List

This week's topic gives me an excellent excuse to start organizing my to-read list again. Honestly, I'm only now catching up on books from Christmas.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! Do come join the fun...

What do I want to read? Far, far more than I'm actually likely to get through this spring. Especially now that the garden wants fixing up and the weather sometimes fails to excuse me from outdoor duties. But here are some of the top tales I hope to get to soon.

1. The Giver by Lois Lowry. Honestly, I'm afraid of it a little. People make fearsome comments about the nature of the ending, and after pushing myself most of the way through The Silmarillion, I'm not in the mood for anything less than shameless paradise. But I mean to read this anyway.

2. The Righteous by Michael Wallace. Read the first few pages and am now officially hooked, which is unfortunate because I'm also hooked on and halfway through a Maeve Binchy novel. I'll have to wait a couple of days.

3. Finding Angel by Kat Heckenbach. I read the first chapter of this, which is available online, and very much want to go forward.

4. The Midnight Dancers by Regina Doman. A retelling, I believe, of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, which—as per a review I read on a smart and helpful little review blog—sounds fantastic.

5. Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George. I've meant to read something of hers for a long time, and hurried that up this week by putting this one on hold at the library.

6. The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery. Several of you have mentioned this one, and I'm anxious to read it.

7. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. The title is so beautiful that I couldn't resist looking into it, and it sounds like good fantasy.

8. The Naming by Alison Croggon. I hear it's a very good read.

9. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. I've strained my eyes again, and feel like reading something short and easy with a happy ending.

10. Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson. This one somehow turned up twice in my to-read list, so I looked it up again, and sure enough it sounds worth reading.

What are you looking forward to reading throughout the spring?

Butterfly in the Sky: What we Write, Why we Read

Source.

“Why are we reading if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?…Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness..?”
~Annie Dillard

“Why are we reading? What readers do we write for? And why, and how?”
~Masha

The answers to these questions strike me as immense enough to fill books, or powerful enough to engender some good aphorisms, but I don't expect to easily answer them in a blog post. Especially not since Mr. Pond already said pretty much everything that can be said in summary form regarding the first:

Why do we do anything, really?

That’s not a fit of existential angst, that’s an honest answer. I read for more or less precisely the same reasons I do anything else. Because I want to, or have to, or am getting paid to, or might get paid eventually. Or because of the company I’m with. Or because I want to learn something new, or revisit something old. I want to be frightened, or soothed, or contented. I want to improve myself, or I want to put myself to sleep.

Good enough for me. It's not like I have a better reason. I learned to read at age four; that's about the time my memory kicked in, so I have no actual memories that involve not being able to read. Whereas I have numerous memories of the McGuffey Readers, trips to the library for Curious George or Billy and Blaze, and then reading my own copies of the Little House books and The Chronicles of Narnia. In high school, Mom sometimes grounded me from fiction for extended periods of time, not as a punishment, but to convince me to live some part of my life outside a book. I've always had trouble with that.

Why? I don't know why. I love story. Therefore, I read. And write.

Mr. Pond answers Masha's second question as follows:

We write for other people, other living people who read. It’s as simple as that.

True, but when I'm alone with my stories I find that I write for myself. Whatever I need to understand, whatever I wish I believed, whatever I want to read of—those are the things I write. And why? says Masha. Well, because I've read Harry Potter, and I've read Lewis' Space Trilogy, and I've read Shannon Hale and Robin McKinley and Tolstoy and Alcott and Austen and Spyri and Card and Jordan, and yet I still find myself searching for more of their kind.

Masha did not try to answer her own question "And how?", but she gave us some suggestion of it with this:

...the stories that some people can shape into art, are within everyone. They’re the shared experiences of humanity, in some people they live forever within, unable to be formed into literature, and in others they burst out, unable to resist becoming literature, but they belong to each person because of our shared humanity.

Yes. That's not a method, but that is rather what it feels like. As for method, I don't know of one that could be called general, let alone universal. No one does. Steinbeck has said, and I quote secondhand from this post at TheAtlantic.com:

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes, but by no means always, find the way to do it. You must perceive the excellence that makes a good story good or the errors that makes a bad story. For a bad story is only an ineffective story.

I'll tell you what I do. I put pen to paper, and pray for magic.

Between Earth and Stars and other stories

When I consider the blizzards and hurricanes and tornadoes many other parts of America must face regularly, I sometimes think our rain is beautiful. True, it is gray—often cold and gray, with heavy low clouds, and the lack of sunshine is sincerely depressing. But if I look carefully, the gray has its own subtle lovelinesses. Soft shades of cloud. Dark fir-tree shapes waving against the sky. Fine droplets everywhere.

Still... late-winter rains make this the hardest time of year to see the stars, and I wish I weren't mostly missing this.

On the rare nights when I can catch sight of them, Venus and Jupiter are stunning, so close together. Never more so than when the moon drifts among them. Saturn, too, I love to see rising just before bed. Mars I have yet to find, and Mercury... Mercury would require a good stiff walk, just at dusk, on a clear night. That conjunction hasn't happened. But someday.

* * *

After weeks of looking like they meant to bud any time, the ornamental cherry trees finally began to bloom out these past few days—an early sign of spring for which I am always immensely grateful.

* * *

Maia's obsession of the week: clawing at the kitchen cabinet doors and yowling. I have no idea what she thinks she'll find inside, but it's hilarious. Scratching the ugly purple paint isn't the most destructive of her tricks, at least.

* * *

Writers' link of the week: Contract lawyer Passive Guy talks about author/agency agreements, with links to several other of his posts on the subject.

Also, Strange Horizons' extensive list of Stories We've Seen Too Often.

* * *

Music of the week: Last Friday night, Lou and I and his parents went up to WWU for an evening performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni. The libretto had been translated into English, and I must admit that the opera is pretty comical for being a tale about a man who won't stop womanizing, on account of which he gets dragged to hell.



This aria is between the Don and a young bride, Zerlina. Spoiler alert! Don't worry—he doesn't quite manage to complete the seduction.

* * *

Random amusement of the week: Prayers specific to your Myers-Briggs personality type. I am an ISFJ, and yeah, the thought's pretty accurate. :D

* * *

I'm off—I have a book to revise. Well, three. But one to focus on today.

Happy weekend!

Currently Reading: A Creed for the Third Millenium

He was going to be difficult to investigate, though. Already she had tabulated the points his dossier revealed as negative; he was a maverick in his field rather than well accepted and respected by his peers, he was not always very consistent in his attitudes, his operation was so small-scale it suggested he thought on a small scale, and there was a distinct possibility that he was riddled with Oedipal guilts. Dr. Carriol did not think highly of the internal resources of men in their thirties who still lived with Mother and to all intents and purposes had never embarked upon a sexual encounter with man or woman. Like the rest of the world, she found self-imposed celibacy a great deal harder to understand than any alternative sexual state, including the basest perversions; and this in spite of the fact that she was herself a frigid woman. The strength to resist one’s primal urges was far more suspect than the weakness of succumbing to them or avoiding them. For he didn’t have the eyes of a cold or an unfeeling man...

Author: Colleen McCullough

Synopsis: In the year 2032, another ice age advances upon the Earth, driving North Americans further south every year. Unhandsome but charismatic Dr. Joshua Christian is more than happy helping the people of his dying Connecticut town overcome their depression, which is induced by lengthening winters, a one-child policy, and constant change. But the depression isn’t limited to the town of Holloman, and government think tank leader Judith Carriol wants to see him bring his message to the world.

Notes: The difficulty in reading a 1985 sci-fi is that the turn of the millenium was such a big mythic deal leading up to it—but now that we’re twelve years in, it’s just not that different from the nineties. Which were different from the eighties primarily in having smaller hairdos and less neon and not quite so much disco.

That is to say, in 1985 it was comparatively believable that there might be an ice age early in the new millenium. Who knew what that dreaded ozone hole, caused by trillions of cans of hair spray, might do? Instead, people nowadays talk of global warming, which is hardly something Colleen McCullough could have predicted. But for the long-term believability of her novel, she probably would have been better off not setting a date.

The novel is more than mere dystopian setting, however, and its primary focus is on retelling the gospel narrative after removing all definition. No one in the book carries a subtle name: not Joshua Christian, not his brothers Andrew and James or his sisters Mary and Martha (whose personalities are reversed) and Miriam, not Operation Search genius Moshe Chasen, and not Judith Carriol (think about it.) McCullough knows she isn’t being subtle; she goes so far as to flaunt it, referring to Dr. Christian’s ideas as “the Christian myth” and “the Christian philosophy”.

Which myth, by the bye, is rather shy of being theologically Christian. It’s a call to believe in God even if you cannot accept any of the religions available, and to stand up and save yourself. Make up your own idea of God, but don’t waste your love on someone so perfect and all-encompassing; love your fellow man instead. It’s the reverse—in one sense, at least—of Christian charity, which at its zenith is love so wholly given to a very specific God that it necessarily results in perfect and complete love for man.

To be very honest, I found the overt allegorizing a challenge to interpret. McCullough may have been attempting to show the frailty of humanism and unspecific spiritualism, but then she may also have been out to question the validity of messianic religion in general and Christianity in particular. Or perhaps she had no point except to explore, psychologically, the effects of messianism upon a human and imperfect messiah. Whatever the case, the funhouse-mirror imaging of Christ’s passion made for an uncomfortable and confusing read. Which, to be fair, was possibly as intended.

Dr. Christian and Dr. Carriol both engender some sympathy in the reader, but the former reads as too superhuman and the latter as too coldly ambitious to win hearts entirely. Most of the other characters are also a mix of likable and not-so-much. Interactions between the characters tended to be overly dramatic; the two consistently believable emotions in the story were the twin resentments against long winters and the one-child policy. The latter, Dr. Christian treats as necessary, but makes some stirring statements in understanding of the suffering it causes.

The story doesn’t hide the fact that it’s headed in a generally tragic direction, which took me by surprise considering the just-shy-of-romance-novel cover (and there’s nothing romantic about the tale itself). The ending leaves a number of untied and threatening plot threads. Whether McCullough intended a sequel, I couldn't say, but none exists as far as I know.

Dystopian fiction by nature portrays a bleak and brutal world, and no law states that a bleak book must offer hope somewhere. Also, McCullough is a talented author who may well have had something very important to say that I entirely missed. But though the story kept me engaged with both suspense and symbolism, I finished it without knowing what to make of it, and the ending unfortunately circumvented my desire to read it again and find out.

Recommendation: Read it if you want to see what the gospel narrative might have been like, had it lacked a named and personal God.

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Places to Read

This week's topic: Top Ten [insert genre name] Books, a list I'd feel much better about making if I felt myself truly master of any one genre. But of my two best options, I've come too recently to the realms of high fantasy, and I'm not sure I consider "classics" a genre. Even if I did, I'm not an English professor of great respect and tenure, and therefore not remotely qualified to tell the world which ten are the best.

All that to say, today I'm picking an old topic. A very easy one, because my brain is moving oh-so-slowly.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! Do come join the fun...

This topic has only one difficulty, which is that I spend nearly all of my reading time at number 1. But I'll try and get imaginative.

1. Tucked into the corner of the couch, wrapped up in a blanket. Preferably with coffee or tea or cookies and milk at hand.

2. Out in the yard, on a blanket in the grass, under the summer Sunday afternoon sun, with my husband and a gin and tonic.

3. In a high meadow, in a light breeze, overlooking wide open spaces, perhaps leaning against a rock or a tree or—as I sometimes did when I lived in such a place—a fence post.

4. On a stretch of quiet stony Washington beach, away from other people.

5. On a towel in the white sand of a tropical beach... although, to be honest, in this case I have a hard time staying out of the water. Unless there are sting rays or barracudas or rip tides.

6. In the grass beneath a leafy green tree, when the sky is warm and blue.

7. On an airplane or in the car or on a train, going somewhere interesting, with a new book.

8. On a bench in an old-fashioned flower garden, on a day just gray enough to keep the pages from glaring.

9. In the late evening, in an overstuffed chair, beside a fireplace.

10. In bed, by lamplight, mostly buried under the covers, with my husband reading beside me. Preferably with the Kindle, which is easier to manage while lying down.

Where are your favorite places to read?

Brief Interruption

Masha, carrying forward the discussion on discussion, gave me the option of a week off, which she was taking. I've had a delightful but exhausting weekend, and I'm going to take the freebie here.

Masha's post and Mr. Pond's are both worth reading, however, so there are the links. Enjoy, and I'll be back in the blogalectic next Monday.

Grateful for the Small Strong Stuff and other stories

It's good to be grateful for the small things, so I am grateful for having given up alcohol rather than coffee for Lent.

Right now I'm overtired and looking forward to a fun but busy weekend involving two dinner parties and a chili cookoff. Also, I'm grumpy and about ready to block a few Facebook friends (none of the offenders have ever claimed to read my blog, so probably not you) until the elections are over this fall (as Mom always said, it's not necessarily what you say, it's how you say it... and how many times you post about it in the space of ten minutes...) All of which adds up to a great deal of gratitude for the comforting hot cup in my hands and the energy boost it offers. And possibly even the ensuing jitters.

P.S. I live an hour and a half's drive from Seattle, where it's possible to get all kinds of excellent coffee—but my sister-in-law down in California makes the best. :)

* * *

All right, cat people: what do you do with a bored kitty?

Her toys include socks, little balls with bells, little balls without bells, an indestructible rubber strap, a cardboard box, and two humans with hands and feet and shoelaces. She's allowed in every room of the house but the laundry room. But still, she'll have evenings where none of this is good enough, and we'll hear her reaching for small items on the high shelves in the study, then yowling at the laundry room door, and then clawing at cabinet doors trying to get in, which she's discovered she can sometimes do. Next thing I know, she's digging up my greenery.

This week she got into the recipe box, of all things, spreading the contents all over the counter, and played in the pots of two plants, including the one with the pot taped and cardboarded over. How she got into that is a mystery to me.

It's a good thing cats are so cute. Sometimes they're especially cute when they're naughty. But when she digs in my plants, the cuteness loses its effect on me and she faces getting restricted to one room at night again. If we did that, though, she'd yowl and find a way to climb the curtains.

* * *

Writers' link of the week: Alicia over at EditTorrent asks whether writing voice can be taught.

Also, last week I linked Tim Parks' NYBooks post about writing as a career. That turned into a fascinating email conversation between some friends and I about creative writing school, Eliot, and the state of literature. Hogwarts professor John Granger, one of the participants in that conversation, just posted the whole thread. If that interests you, enjoy.

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Music of the week: We've had several days of snow and sleet alternating with lovely clear skies and leaves just on the point of bursting out, which makes this likable little song and video seem fitting.



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Random amusement of the week: TheHairPin.com's The Comment Section for Every Article Ever Written about PETA. Utterly hilarious. Via Rod Dreher.

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House to clean! Cat to amuse! Clam chowder to make! Better do it while the coffee's still acting on my energy levels.

Take care, and happy weekend!