The Fantasy and Sci-Fi Post

I think that this genre is very "love it or hate it."  Readers who like fantasy can't get enough of it, will try practically any kind, and sometimes even write their own.  Those who don't can't stay far enough away.  There's a small, small subgroup in the middle, consisting of those who dip a toe in very cautiously and seldom:  that's where I fit in.  I'm not talking about juvenile fantasy a la Harry Potter -- adult fantasy and sci-fi is a completely different kettle of fish.  Being asked as a rational grown-up to suspend your disbelief and bear with the author for a while is a lot more difficult than whiling away a couple of hours with what is essentially a fairy tale.

I'm going to single out Mistwood, by Leah Cypess, not simply because it's a good read, but because I've known Leah practically forever and it tickles me to know a published author.  This is actually a Young Adult book; I enjoyed it and I'm waiting to buy the next book, Nightspell.  The books deal with shape-shifters, and have just the right amount of suspense and creepiness minus the gore you might find in an adult book of this kind.

I'm not sure how Tolkien would feel being relegated to second place here, but here he is:  The Lord of The Rings.  Somehow, TLOTR doesn't seem like fantasy to me -- it's almost like historical fiction.  Tolkien was, in fact, a historian, and he even created languages (with grammar!) for the different races he dreamed up.  The writing is absolutely beautiful, though I will admit the length is off-putting -- I would recommend getting it volume by volume rather than in the single book form.  I also recommend the movie, which I normally would never do, as movies based on books tend to completely ruin the book for me; this one, however, is terrific.

Isaac Asimov is always an easy choice.  He's written the same book about a hundred times, but always quite competently.  I prefer the Foundation series; also good is Caves of Steel.

One aspect of sci-fi that makes it a classic (or not) is the degree to which it actually anticipates the future.  I think that one element that keeps the classic Star Trek episodes constantly in reruns is the fact that so much of the technology used in the show is actually reality today.  On the other hand, books written years ago which failed to anticipate today's way of living tend to disappoint.  For example, The Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis, published in 1992, describes a near future in which time travel is possible, but fails to predict the wide usage of cell phones.  The first time I read this book I enjoyed it tremendously; one of the protagonists goes back to the Middle Ages and gets stuck at the time of the Black Death (also, sort of historical fiction).  I read it again and found it ridiculous -- back at Oxford, where they are desperately trying to retrieve the lost character, the other figures in the story race each other all over town, missing vital phone calls as they chase their tails.  The absence of something that is today ubiquitous seemed obvious and totally ruined the book for me.  Don't let it hold you back, though, if you want to try it.  Willis recently published two companion books which take place during WWII; some of the same characters time-travel back to the Blitz:  Blackout and All-Clear.  They're poorly edited and full of errors; don't bother.

Any opinions here?

A Confession

Sometimes I read my kids' books.  Yes, that apostrophe is correctly placed -- I don't mean that I sometimes read books to my children (though I do, sometimes interminably) -- I sometimes find myself riffling through their piles of library books in search of a guilty pleasure.  Occasionally it's the result of a very dry week at the library, or a slew of incredibly depressing picks, read one after the other.  Other times, I'm just down in the dumps, and there's nothing like a couple of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books to lift one out of that state.  Very rarely, I spy a book that really looks interesting, and I squirrel it away to read it myself; I recently read the I, Q books,  which feature children + famous singers + terrorism.  Quite a good read, even if it is written for middle-schoolers.



By far the best books to read when one is blue, or bored, or desperate, are the books one is most familiar with.  I often go back to those I loved as a pre-teen; the ones I read over and over and formed so much of who I am today.  One of these is The Long Secret, the not-so-well-known companion novel to Harriet the Spy.  Another is The Night Journey, by Kathryn Lasky, which I don't know if I'd give my pre-teen daughter to read, but I still love to dip into.

Also good when I'm in that kind of mood are books that are so predictable one can figure out from the first page what the denouement will be, and one forgets the whole story within minutes of completing the book.  Often, these are books penned by authors who can only write one kind of story, so all their books are pretty much the same -- but so comforting, like hot soup.  One whose adult novels are now out of print, but is experiencing a renaissance as a childrens' writer is Eva Ibbotson.  Her adult novels used to be shelved with the bodice-rippers at the library I patronized as a teenager, but her books couldn't be more different.  They're all at some point before 1940, and tend to wander around Europe a bit.  There's always a nice female protagonist who's rather special in some way (this varies); a man or two is involved, and one is really nice.  Even the one who isn't nice isn't especially nasty.  My personal favorite is Madensky Square, but the others are just as good (and just the same, I might add).

I can't sign off without mentioning Rosamund Pilcher.  Her books are so comfortingly written, and her characters so likeable, that the reader finds herself (sorry, really not "guy" books) condoning the most immoral behavior on their parts.  I must have read The Shell Seekers fify times; it's a great beach book because it's set in Cornwall. 

So now it's your turn -- what are your guilty pleasures?

Brave Mom Writes "Brave Girl Eating"

This is, emphatically, not the type of book I typically select.  In fact, I've been seeing it on the library new book shelf for the last couple of weeks, and passing it by.  However, this week I took it out, and read it, and now I'm writing about it.  In part, this is my way of marking Mother's Day on my blog (why not?), but the impetus to actually read this book came from the fact that I was recently touched, quite indirectly, by the death of a friend's friend who was rumored to have suffered from anorexia most of her short life.
What I know about anorexia is fairly limited -- it's taught in the Abnormal Psychology class that was a requirement; nowadays most schools try to educate their female students about eating disorders, but this was not something that was talked about -- not out loud -- when I was a teenager.  It is also poorly understood; not just by the layman, but by experts as well.  The theories I learned in college are no longer in vogue and have been replaced by a new set, perhaps more valid, perhaps not.
Harriet Brown pens this memoir of her experiences with her daughter, Kitty, with remarkable aplomb.  What must have been a gut-wrenching experience for her comes through so remarkably and believably, the reader wants to reach through the pages and hug her.  Once Brown comes to the realization that her daughter has this terrible illness, she casts around for ways to help her.  Her choices at the time boil down to sending her away to a specialized residential clinic, or keeping her hospitalized on an outpatient basis.  Brown, helped by her sympathetic and ultra-competent pediatrician, decides on another path -- Family-Based Treatment, or the Maudsley approach.  This entails the support of the entire family, and their goal is to get Kitty to eat, whatever it takes.  This is much, much harder than it sounds.  At times, Brown writes of anorexia as a demon that has inhabited her daughter; she tries desperately to take her daughter's aggressive anxiety and separate it from the daughter she loves so much and whose life she actually saves.  Yes, saves -- this painful and wretched ordeal, calorie by calorie, saves Kitty's life, and gradually she begins to emerge whole again.
As a mother, I cried for Harriet Brown as I read her book, because (although I pray that I will never be tested) any mother should hope to do the right thing, as she did, even though it was so desperately hard.  The FBT was hard on Brown, it was terrible for her husband, it was traumatic to Kitty's younger sister, and it almost completely shattered any semblance of normal family life.  However, as a mother, she knew that this was her job, and that Kitty's mother, father, and sister were the ones to bring her back and rid her of the demon anorexia.  Anorexia has cruel statistics -- close to 20 percent of anorexics die, according to Brown, half of those from suicide.  Harriet Brown and her family continue to battle these statistics, as anorexia can be a lifetime disease, and they refuse to allow their child to become one of the 20 percent.

Gosh, what a downer.  I'll get a bit more cheerful now, and introduce another new book that I read over the weekend.  A Jane Austen Education:  How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter is pure fun for the Austen lover.  One of the only negative things about Austen is that she wrote only six books, and Janeites who finish all six are left with a craving for more.  This has led to a small industry in Austen copycats, mysteries featuring Austen characters (cringe), Austen sequels (gag), and Austen spoofs (actually, some of these aren't bad).  This isn't one of the above list.  This is the nonfictional account of William Deresiewicz, who started off his adult life as an immature, obnoxious pseudo-intellectual.  Forced to read Austen in college, he slowly comes to the realization that it is not chick-lit, it is quite relevant, and it helps him gradually reorient himself and become, in a word, a mentsh.  This is an entertaining and light read, and it has a lovely happy ending.  What more could you ask?

Asperger's in The Kitchen Daughter and The Way Things Look to Me

I've noticed an odd phenomenon -- occasionally, I'll take out a load of books from the library's 14-day bookshelf (new and bestseller list), choosing quite randomly because I'm rushed.  Then, I'll read my new stash, and gradually I'll find some odd similarity -- for example, all the books might feature abductions, or addictions, or dead pets.  Sometimes the connection is even more odd, and most of the books will feature a combination of events (Jews living in Northern Italy during the German occupation).  These similarities are never noted by me before I read the books; they're usually not notable enough to be included in the jacket blurb.  This week I read two books, actually quite dissimilar (both in quality and in plot) which shared one important characteristic:  both featured a prominent character with Asperger's Syndrome, and the plots both revolve around this character.

I read The Way Things Look to Me first; I've read Roopa Farooki's previous book, Bitter Sweets, and I thought it was excellent.  Her books feature characters who are Indian or Pakistani in ethnic origin, but who no longer live there.  The character in The Way Things Look to Me around whom the whole story (and all the characters) revolve is Yasmin, a teenager with Asperger's Syndrome.  Having lost both parents, Yasmin lives with her brother, Asif, who gave up his Cambridge education to return home and care for her after his mother dies.  Her sister, Lila, is more distant but also deeply tied to Yasmin; she bears the emotional scars of growing up in a home where the other siblings were sacrificed to the one with special needs.

I found this book to be very moving.  The characters aren't always likeable; at times Lila comes across as downright unbearable and Asif pathetically stuck in his role as martyred caregiver.  But it is a story that rings true, from Yasmin's narrated selections, which really do sound like those of a person who has great difficulty connecting to other people, to the raw pain and bitterness of her siblings.

The Kitchen Daughter did not provide the same experience.  In this book, the narrator has Asperger's Syndrome, which the reader is not made aware of in so many words.  Also, it seems that neither the narrator nor the narrator's family have any idea why she is different, which I find unlikely -- she apparently made it to adulthood with no diagnosis at all, even though she periodically hides in her parents' closet and has tantrums in public if people touch her.  The pivotal event in this book is the death of both her parents (yes, another coincidence) and Ginny turns to cooking for solace.  As she cooks from the recipes of her dead relatives, they appear to her on her kitchen stool with messages from beyond the grave, none of which make too much sense.  This story does not build up to much of anything, and it just did not ring true to me.  I did enjoy reading about the food she cooks, but she just doesn't come across as the character she is meant to be.

Mysteries and Whodunits

Sometimes your head needs a little bit of a workout, but not the sort of exertion you'd need for, say, Kant or Sartre.  You've had a long day, you're tired, but you want a book to sink your teeth into and get the cerebral wheels turning.  That's when you really need a mystery to read.  There's so much variation out there that you'll find a lot of cross-genre mysteries to suit any taste, even chick lit! 
Start with the classics of mystery fiction --  one can't mention mystery without a bow to the master, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Author of some dubiously sci-fi books, his career really took off when he created Sherlock Holmes.  Holmes and his sidekick, Watson, live eternally in Doyle's short-story series, as well as his novels, The Hound of the Baskervilles, A Study in Scarlet, and The Sign of Four.  Doyle also provided subsequent generations of mystery writers with the pattern of genius detective and somewhat dopey friend to serve as a kind of straight man.
Of course there's Agatha Christie as well, who created the characters of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot.  I've always loved Miss Marple -- it's so easy to underestimate the scatty old lady knitting in the corner; however, she's nosey as anything and has a wealth of knowledge that no one would imagine her having at all.  Christie wrote prolifically, but the quality is a bit uneven.  (She was quite mysterious herself; she disappeared at some point during her adult life, reappearing later with no explanation).  I recommend as a start Murder on the Orient Express (with Poirot), At Bertram's Hotel (Miss Marple), and then you can take it from there.
I've mentioned Dorothy Sayers and her Lord Peter Wimsey before, so I won't get too fulsome here.  I'll only mention that The Nine Tailors is considered by many to be the finest and least solvable mystery ever written.
Other classic mystery writers include Josephine Tey, who didn't write enough of them to make me happy -- I've reread her Brat Farrar until it fell apart, and The Daughter of Time, in which Richard III has his character rehabilitated by a police detective stuck in the hospital, is generally considered one of the best mystery/historical novels ever written.
Not to neglect the American classic mysteries, it's worth trying Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries.  A more unpleasant, more brilliant, and fatter detective you will not find, but these books take the reader straight to 1920's New York City.
Moving along to our times, P.D. James has, at this point, donned the crown of mystery queen in Christie's place.  Also British, her mysteries feature Adam Dalgliesh, who is a far more complex character than any ever created by Christie.  James, I think, is really a very sophisticated writer who has chosen to write mysteries.  Sometimes a bit horrifying, her stories are the kind that keep you guessing, but not wildly.
I also like Robert Parker's books, which are not too complicated (anyone can pretty much solve them by the end of the first chapter) but are a delight to read.  The dialogue is hilariously written, and by the end of the book the reader thinks Spenser is a real person.  Last time I went to Boston I looked for him every time I saw someone walking a large black dog (in the books she's called Pearl).  Sadly, he died recently, so you'll have to make do with what he's written already.  Another similar writer is Bill Pronzini, whose Nameless Detective novels are terrific.  Interestingly enough, he's married to Marcia Muller, another well-known mystery writer, but I can't say I like her books as much as I like his.
This weekend I read Martha Grimes's latest, Fadeaway Girl.  I really prefer her Richard Jury series, but she's such a hoot to read that I enjoyed it anyway.  Grimes creates terrific characters -- each one has bizzare idiosyncrasies.  One doesn't read Grimes for the mystery; I think her books are more about the process.  Fadeaway Girl is the sequel to Belle Ruin, and is narrated by a twelve-year-old girl who works in her mother's hotel.  Among other responsibilities, she mixes novel cocktails for her Great-Aunt Aurora, who lives on the top floor.  Oh, and there are two characters, brothers called Ubub and Ulub (after their license plates -- don't ask) with speech impediments.  If you like Grimes, you're lucky -- she's written a lot of books.
A new mystery series I've gone through recently features Flavia De Luce, a ten-year-old growing up in '50's Britain who makes her debut in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.  No, it's not for children.  Flavia plays with chemicals as a hobby.  There are at least two more of these by Alan Bradley, and he seems to be on a roll.
I'll stop here, because otherwise I could go on all day, but if you have comments, questions, or special requests, please post in the comments section.  Also, try to think of any contributions you could make to my Guilty Pleasures post!

What I Read This Weekend

This post is going to present a sort of smorgasbord of reading material; I had some themes in mind, but I got wrapped up in several books I read over the past two days.  Which reminds me -- before I launch into the meat and potatoes of this post, I would like to address a personal issue.  Since I began this blog, I've been frequently asked, "When do you find time to read?" and variations of that question, many asked in a borderline insulting way, have been getting to me.  I've said this before:  people make time for the pastimes they most want to do.  Some of you crochet, cook fiddly and complicated meals, carve watermelons (if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't ask, you'll never understand), exercise at the gym daily, paint, shop obsessively, surf the net -- you get my point.  If those are your favorite pastimes, you find time to do them, and more power to you.  I like to read.  I like reading better than any of the above.  So put a sock in it, please.

Back to business -- I started my weekend reading with Suffer the Children, by Marilyn Wedge.  A family therapist, Wedge proposes a whole new way of viewing the psychological maladies that are so often diagnosed in children today.  While I found her writing style to be a bit self-aggrandizing, her methods seem so sensible and down-to-earth when compared to the veritable frenzy of medicating that we seem to be doing lately.  In many cases where a child is displaying behavioral symptoms, Wedge finds that it is often a function of how the family is doing holistically.  For this reason, Wedge often meets with the parents alone after initially meeting the child, and she has, in many cases, treated a child successfully by addressing problems in the parents' marriage, for example.  Other situations included a child who was on the verge of being diagnosed as ADHD and on the autistic spectrum, whom she discovered was simply very nearsighted and no one had noticed.  It's a must-read for any educator, and if you're a parent, it will really make you think.  I know it gave me much food for thought.

A couple of fun books I got through this afternoon included The Peach Keeper,  by Sarah Addison Allen, and Friendship Bread, by Darien Gee.  Friendship Bread is a fluffy confection of a feel-good book; it features estranged sisters, more than one character with a tragic loss, a flood, and lots of talk about cake.  I can't resist books that talk about cake; it's almost as good as eating it.  Of course there's a lovely happy ending, but it's a worthwhile read just for the occasional funny parts -- Gee does a great job of spreading out the laugh-out-loud bits while keeping the tone fairly serious.  You don't want to miss the part where two characters are having a pregnancy-test marathon, one thrilled and the other disbelieving.
The Peach Keeper, on the surface, seems to be much the same, but a few pages in it becomes evident that this book has a touch of something different.  In a way it reminded me of Chocolat, which had an undercurrent of magical menace; The Peach Keeper has this supernatural vein running just below the surface; blink and you might miss it.  It's the story of a southern town, ladies' society and all, where an old mansion is being regentrified into a posh bed-and-breakfast, and old classmates return and reunite in unexpected ways.  Sounds familiar, no?  Throw in a corpse under a peach tree, and some weird poltergeist-like events, and that's the book.  I enjoyed it, even though I didn't expect to like it much.

I just put down another new book I wasn't wild about, but I'll mention it here because I have a feeling it will be talked about -- these types of books that feature historical figures, weird characters, and lots of subtext usually are.  Mr. Chartwell, by Rebecca Hunt, features the about-to-retire Winston Churchill.  If you're into that period of history, you may know that Churchill was prone to periods of depression; he called it his "black dog."  Well, Mr. Chartwell is the physical manifestation of that Black Dog.  He's on the cover as well.  At the opening of the story, Mr. Chartwell rents a room in the house of a widow, Esther Hammerhans, whose own loss is not immediately revealed.  Over the course of the story, Esther and Churchill are drawn together, albeit briefly.  It's not a comfortable story to read.  Some parts are downright disgusting (he is a large black dog, living in a house); but for the most part, it's not really a book to inspire and exalt the spirit.  Like the Black Dog, it depresses one.  However, because this shows every sign of being an Important Book, you may as well read it and seem to be up on things in the literary world.


I'm planning a post on Guilty Pleasures in reading -- I'd appreciate any comments and suggestions you'd send my way.  Think of the books that you feel a little sheepish reading, that you wouldn't necessarily flaunt but are just the thing for a bubble bath or with cake and tea late at night.  Thank you!

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

Given the amount of media attention this memoir has garnered, I've decided to give Amy Chua's memoir of raising her two daughters its own post.  If anything, the hullabaloo over this book has shown me how ridiculously unreliable book reviews and commentary can be when confused with a journalist's personal agenda.

From what I can see, most of the reviews of this book are shocked, shocked to hear a mother crowing over her coercion and borderline abusive behavior.  Ms. Chua forces her daughters to practice their respective instruments for hours each day, (gasp!) refuses to accept a grade lower than A (unless it's in gym), rejects her daughters' pathetic birthday cards, and mocks the tendency of Western parents to allow their children to follow their passions (whether it be soccer or Facebook for fourteen hours a day).  All this is done in the spirit of being a Chinese parent, because this is how Chinese parents do it, and it's far better than how you sloppy Americans parent.  So there! says Chua.  Goodness, how dreadful, I thought.  And then my local library came through with the book, and I finally read it for myself.

Now let's rewind a little -- this book is not meant to be taken quite as literally as most of the media has apparently taken it.  Part parody, part confessional, part memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is the story of a very driven and extremely controlling woman who happens to be Chinese.  (Incidentally, her husband is Jewish).  It seems to me that this book is more about how this woman, whose tough parenting methods worked beautifully with her talented and self-motivated elder daughter, hits a brick wall with her younger daughter.  Sophia, the firstborn, takes to her instrument (piano) like a fish to water and thrives on the pressure as it intensifies. However, the younger daughter, Lulu, is a lot more like her mother.  Perhaps even more gifted than her sister, Lulu is given violin lessons and shows great talent.  However, Lulu doesn't allow herself to be pushed around, and the book features episode after episode in which parent and child lock horns.  Lulu is a driven as her mother, and as set on being successful and high-achieving, but she wants to drive the bus.  I don't want to give away too much, as this book is a really fun read (as are the photos, which generally feature Chua, arms folded, hovering threateningly over daughter and instrument), but I don't really understand why readers come away with a feeling of loathing for her.  After reading her book, I felt a bit sorry for her, but I also was satisfied with the way she accepts her limitations as a parent and learns to adjust herself a bit.

Really, this book is not about how Chinese parenting is better than Western parenting, and Chua admits as much (though she states that it was supposed to be about that).  It's about an individual family, and their parenting, and the successes and shortcomings of their parenting. However, there is quite a bit of constructive takehome lesson here.

• "For Chinese people, when it comes to parents, nothing is negotiable.  Your parents are your parents, you owe everything to them (even if you don't), and you have to do everything for them (even if it destroys your life)."  Extreme statement, perhaps, but the essence of this is something I could get behind.  Chua doesn't simply pay lip service to this -- when her mother-in-law is too ill to live alone, Chua insists that she move in with them, even though the two do not really get along well.
• "The Chinese model turns on achieving success.  That's how the virtuous circle of confidence, hard work, and more success is generated." 
• It helps a lot if your children know exactly what you expect from them -- if you're providing them with the tools to achieve it.

This book is a quick, fun read -- but please, don't take it too seriously.