The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson

Nina, Avery and Mel form the Bermudez Triangle: they have been best friends since they were little, and the summer before their senior year they have to face their first long separation. Nina is going to Stanford for a ten-week pre-university program, and Mel and Avery are staying in their home town in upstate New York and working at a newly opened Irish restaurant. In California, Nina meets and falls in love with an eco-warrior from Oregon named Steve. As for Mel and Avery, they fall in love too. With each other. And when Nina returns, they know that nothing will be the same again.

The Bermudez Triangle is an example of my favourite kind of YA: smart, funny, meaningful, peopled with intelligent and sarcastic teenagers who almost make me want to do high school again, only this time with them as my friends. Where were they when I was a teenager? Hiding away in Maureen Johnson’s brain, I guess. But my point still stands!

You might be thinking that this is the exact kind of thing I normally say whenever I finish a book by John Green, and well, you’d be correct. There’s a reason for that: John Green and Maureen Johnson have very distinct voices, but they do seem to share a similar kind of sensibility, not to mention a talent for dialogue and characterization as well as a fondness for nerdy humour that immediately endears them to me. I’d been meaning to read Johnson for a very long time, and I wasn’t disappointed in the least.

But let me tell you something about the characters that goes beyond my wish that they were my friends. Nina is the most assertive and goal-driven of them all. What she’s dealing with is separate from Avery and Mel’s situation, except that it’s not, because they’re all best friends, after all. I appreciated the fact that Nina was willing to ask herself difficult questions, such as “Am I homophobic?” or “Is this really any of my business?”. As for her relationship with Steve, well, it was mostly in the background, but I wasn’t as dissatisfied with it as I normally am with how long-distance relationships are portrayed in fiction. And even though I worried at one point, there is no What-were-you-even-thinking?-these-things-never-work conclusion to her story. Which isn't to say, of course, that there are no problems.

Avery is the funniest and most sarcastic of the three girls, but she’s also avoidant when it comes to, well, being honest about her feelings. As for Mel, she’s quiet and shy, and much more certain about her sexuality than Avery is. One of my favourite things about this book is how it isn’t afraid to explore all the confusion and grey areas of sexual orientation. Nothing is clear cut. Avery knows she’s attracted to Mel, but she doesn’t know what that means. The fact that they’ve been best friends for so long only complicates matters further.

Friendship is really at the centre of this book—much more so than romantic relationships or sexual orientation, really. You hear a lot about how you have to work at romantic relationships; about how things are never easy, and require commitment and effort and sacrifice. But sadly, you don’t hear half as much about how friendship isn’t really all that different. The Bermudez Triangle reminded me a little of Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List in this regard, even though the books are quite a bit different overall.

Having said that, my favourite scene in the book does have to do with lgbtq issues: it’s the scene in which Mel sort of accidentally comes out to her parents. It was infuriating, but this is only a sign of how well-written it is. Mel’s father is quiet but well-meaning, but her mother is one of those people who worry about what their kid’s actions will say about them. What will people think of her if she has a gay daughter? Think of the gossip, the drama, the scandal!

Considering the amount of controversy surrounding The Bermudez Triangle, I was surprised at how tame it actually is. I said above that Avery struggles with her sexuality, and while this is true, absolutely everything happens off the page. All we see are kisses. There aren’t even any make out scenes. What had people up in arms is really just the fact that two girls fall in love.

I was going to go on about Parker, an adorable and hilarious supporting character, but it’s probably a good idea to wrap things up at this point. So: Read this book! Believe me, you will want to spend time with these characters.



Other opinions: Book Nut, Mari Reads, MotherReader, Once Upon a Bookshelf, The Zen Leaf, I'm Here, I'm Queer. What the Hell do I Read?, Piling on the Books

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The History of the West Wing - Review at Color Online

I really apologize for the double post today, but I wanted to point you towards my guest review of The History of The West Wing by Sun Jiayu and Guo Guo at Color Online. The History of the West Wing is a gorgeously illustrated graphic novel based on a traditional Chinese story that dates back to the eight century.

If you have a minute, I'd love it if you could click over. And while you're at, you should take a moment to explore Color Online if you haven't yet - they're awesome, and I'm very honoured to be able to contribute to the site.

Here's some artwork to entice you:


And for a second opinion on this book, visit the lovely Shanra, who was kind enough to pass it on to me. (Thank you again!)

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The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy

Poland, 1943. A Jewish family is trying to escape the Nazis. With the enemy close on their heels, they drive through a forest on a stolen motorbike. The stepmother suggests that leaving the children behind is the only way to give them all a chance of survival, and so it is done. The children are left in the forest – they’re told to forget their Jewish names, to call themselves Hansel and Gretel instead, and to find food and shelter. Together, they make their way to a cottage, where an old woman everyone calls a witch lives alone.

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel uses the fairy tale’s original darkness and its unsettling nature to tell a story of survival under the direst circumstances. In many ways, it doesn’t read like a fairy tale—not because it’s serious or dark, as fairy tales are serious and uncomfortable and dark, but because it doesn’t have that same kind of fairy tale mood that a book like, say, Tender Morsels does.

But on the other hand, the familiar elements are all there: the breadcrumbs, the witch’s cottage, the cage, the big oven where a child would fit. And Bialowieza Forest, where the story is set, most definitely feels like a fairy tale forest. “Hansel and Gretel” is about abandonment and hunger and loneliness and death, and in many ways so is this story. The darkness is all there, but its sources are intelligently turned around. The Witch, an old woman named Magda, is a protector rather than a threat. And by doing the unthinkable and abandoning the children, their stepmother saves their lives. Louise Murphy says in an interview at the end of my edition of the book that one of her goals was to take two kinds of women who have always been demonized in stories—stepmothers and older women—and to present them under a different and more human light. She does that perfectly, and I love her for it.

But The True Story of Hansel and Gretel is not just about two Jewish children hiding from the Nazis in a cottage in a forest. It’s also about the Polish village near which Magda lives and all its inhabitants; it’s about German occupation and how ordinary people deal with it; it’s about a group of Partisans who also live in the forest and what they do to fight back—and at what cost; it's about cultural identity and memory and fear.

But what really makes this book is the characterization. The Nazis occupying the village of Piaski are, naturally enough, not presented sympathetically. But they're complex enough to be human beings rather than monsters. This is something I always value in books about Holocaust, as I think it's important to remember that yes, it was people who did these things. And then there's Magda, Nelka, Telek, the village's children. I grew to care about each and every one of the main characters, and my heart was in my hands for them the whole time. All along I knew I should know better than to expect a happy ending from a Holocaust story, but it’s only human to hope against hope, and that's part of what gives the book its power. I won’t tell you how things end, but I’ll say that it’s neither unrealistically nor on an entirely bleak note. There’s a whole lot of tragedy, but also a small miracle or two.

I especially loved the fact that The True Story of Hansel and Gretel explored sides of WW2 that I hadn’t read about before: life in an ordinary and somewhat remote Polish village, the activities of Partisan groups, the persecution of the Roma people. No book about the Holocaust can ever tell the whole story, and the truth is that making sense of what happened is probably something nobody will ever be able to do. But the reason why I keep reading these books is because I want to know what it felt like to live through a period so unthinkably dark. The True Story of Hansel and Gretel gives me a glimpse of that.

Other opinions: Bookworms Dinner, Books’N’Border Collies, Book Addiction, Everyday Reads, Maw Books, You’ve GOTTA Read This, Random Wonder

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Slam by Nick Hornby

Sam is sixteen, a skater (he insists that it be made clear that this means skateboarding, not ice skating), and he lives in London with his mother. Things are going pretty well: he gets along with his mother just fine, he does well in school, and he’s giving the possibility of becoming the first member of his family to go to college some serious thought. But then he meets Alicia at a party. They start seeing each other, and Alicia becomes pregnant. And as much as Sam wishes this weren’t so, he knows that nothing can ever be the same again.

I should probably start by telling you that I started reading Slam in bed one night, meaning to read a chapter or two before turning off the lights, and next thing I knew it was 3am and I was done with the book. Having said that, this is still probably my least favourite Nick Hornby novel to date. But that’s really like saying “that’s my least favourite kind of cheesecake.” (Argh. Why do I have the feeling that I’ve used this bad analogy before? Please feel free to stop me anytime.)

In one of his “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” columns, when commenting on the abundance of novels you can find these days about writers and other highly educated and self-aware people, Nick Hornby wrote that he thought it was more of a challenge, and possibly more interesting, to write a novel that focused on someone who wasn’t quite as self-aware; someone who didn’t articulate their every thought and feeling with such ease.

This is certainly the case with Sam. Sam is a bright kid, but a kid nonetheless, and a lot of the time he not only doesn’t know what to do, but isn’t quite sure how he feels about things either. He makes mistakes, and he really can't explain why. He tells his story very effectively, and I applaud Hornby for his achievement. But unfortunately, I did find his voice a little strained at times, which is something I’d never felt with one of his novels before.

But this is a minor point, really. For the most part I loved Slam. I loved the plot, and the fact that it surprised me. Teen boy becomes a father seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? But I was pleasantly surprised to find some elements that can only be described as science fiction-y. And then there are things that are completely ridiculous from afar, only he manages not to make them so. For example, Sam’s hero is a skater named Tony Hawk, and he has the habit of confiding in a poster of his that he has on his bedroom wall. And sometimes, the poster talks back. I won’t tell you more (because yes, there is more), but believe me, it’s not silly. It’s funny, yes—but not silly.

There are a lot of things about Slam that are funny, as well as things that are serious and sad. As usual, Nick Hornby combines comedy and drama expertly. But my favourite thing of all is the fact that he writes about characters that are a little idiotic at times with such compassion, honesty, and even tenderness, that I have no choice but to love them. I never judge them: I embrace them, flaws and all. I cheer for them; I feel for them if things go wrong.

Slam is about learning how to make the best of less-than-ideal circumstances, and I really appreciated the fact that, like the first part last, it’s neither a cautionary tale about teen sex nor a celebration of teen parenthood. But then, I expected no less from Nick Hornby. It’s also not exclusively a book about teen pregnancy–there are other issues, namely class ones. Alicia’s family is better off than Sam’s. And furthermore, Sam’s mother also had him when she was sixteen. So at one point, Alicia’s father makes a remark along the lines of, “Don’t you people ever learn?” How this question is handled in the story goes beyond pointing out the obvious class prejudice and describing the conflict between the two families. More than that, we see Sam give the question of whether he’s doomed by his social circumstances some serious thought. We watch him consider the possible causes of what happened to him.

Knowing how humane and compassionate Hornby’s writing always is, the conclusion he reaches come as no surprise to me. He's clearly not someone who would preach social fatalism. But don’t expect a joyful “I can do anything!” ending either. Sam’s very real concerns are given the serious consideration they deserve.

Bits I liked:

Does this sound mad to you? It probably does, but I don’t care, really. Who doesn’t talk to someone in their heads? Who doesn’t talk to God, or a pet, or someone they love who has died, or maybe just to themselves? TH…He wasn’t me. But he was who I wanted to be, so that makes him the best version of myself, and that can’t be a bad thing, to have the best version of yourself standing there on a bedroom wall and watching you. It makes you feel as though you mustn’t let yourself down.

I don’t know. As far as people like Alicia’s parents are concerned, you’re a bad person if you don’t read and study, and as far as people like my dad are concerned, you’re a bad person if you do. It’s all mad, isn’t it? It’s not reading and whatever that makes you good or bad. It’s whether you rape people, or get addicted to crack and go out mugging. I don’t know why they all get themselves into such a stew.

It’s just that there comes a point where the facts don’t matter any more, and even though you know everything, you know nothing, because you don’t know what anything felt like. That’s the thing about stories, isn’t it? You can tell someone the facts in ten seconds, if you want to, but the facts are nothing.

They read it too: Book Gazing, Booking It, BookNAround, Adventures in Reading, bookshelves of doom, Rhinoa’s Ramblings, Out of the Blue, Shelf Love

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The Sunday Salon - Freedom to Read

Yesterday marked the beginning of Banned Books Week, and like many other bloggers I'll be participating by reading a book that has been challenged or removed from a library. At the beginning of the month, I joined the Banned Books Challenge at The Biblio Blogzine, and last week I posted my thoughts on Dangerous Angels by Francesca Lia Block. Right now I'm reading The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson. You can read more about the controversy surrounding the book (as well as get a taste of her delicious sarcasm) at Maureen Johnson's blog.

I was a bit puzzled by this article on Banned Books Week (which I found via Chris), as it seems to miss the point quite spectacularly. Petitions for a book to be removed from a library are not "attempts by parents to guide their children's education." They're more like attempts to have libraries do someone's parenting for them; to have libraries parent every single kid who uses them according to the petitioner's scale of values. One parent's questionable material is another's gold, obviously enough. But then again, it seems that this is not really that obvious.

I do think that up to a certain age (and what that age will be will vary from kid to kid) parents have the right to have a say in what their own kids do or don't read. But I don't think unsupervised reading is disastrous. I grew up in a house with plenty of books and nobody who much minded what I took from the shelves. This did result in a few episodes of precocious reading, but hey, I didn't turn out as badly as that. Anyway, I thought I'd share a few of those episodes with you:

The first adult book I ever remember reading was The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils. I can't remember how old I was - between eleven and thirteen, most likely - and I think I picked it up simply because I was bored one summer. Possibly also because the synopsis made it sound vaguely forbidden: the book tells the story of a love affair between a man and a courtesan who is dying of tuberculosis. But this being nineteenth-century literature, there's nothing terribly explicit about it.

As you might expect, most of the book went over my head, but I do have an interesting memory of reading it: the day I finished it, I had some trouble sleeping. Every time I was close to drifting off, I'd start to have dreamlike thoughts in the language of the book, and that would upset me so much I'd wake up again. This has happened to me several times now, and I quite like it when it does. I know that a book's had an impact on me when I dream in its language, or when I dream about reading it. But back then, it really disturbed me. I felt that the book's language was replacing my own, that I could no longer think my own thoughts. Has anything like this ever happened to you before?

Not too long after The Lady of the Camellias, I read Dracula by Bram Stoker. I was home sick from school for a week, and I read it under the covers, feverishly and a little tentatively. I hadn't been told I couldn't read it, not exactly, but a few weeks before my parents had rented the movie version, and they had waited until I went to bed to watch it. I had peered at the TV screen from the hallway (ah, the advantages of a living room with glass doors), unsure of whether or not I wasn't allowed to be there, until I got too sleepy to care about surreptitiously watching it anymore. But I was curious, and so I read the book. I didn't find it too scary, and I liked it. I didn't love it until later on, and I was quite disappointed that it wasn't more of a romance, which, from what I'd seen of the movie, I was expecting it to be. Needless to say, this is not an opinion I share with my younger self anymore.

Of course, two nineteenth century classics are hardly American Psycho, and I know that something more explicit, especially in terms of violence, could have had a different impact on me. But I think that most of the time, kids are the first to walk away from things that make them truly uncomfortable.

Tell me, did you ever stumble upon any books too mature for you when you were a child or teen? Any stories to share?



Happy Banned Books Week, everyone!

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Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand

(As per Eva, Heather and Maree’s order, I’m starting this post with: ZOMG THIS BOOK IS AWESOME GGGAHFFR!!1@ READ IT NOW@! There. It felt good to get that out of the way.)

In the Victorian Age, an American illustrator by the name of Radborne Comstock moves to London. There he meets a member of the Folk-Lore Society, a doctor who offers him a job at an insane asylum in Cornwall. He accepts the offers, and later meets one of the patients, a beautiful woman who paints herself, and who is often visited by Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones and by poet Algernon Swinburne.

In our age, a young man named Valentine Comstock grows up in an old house in Maine which is described as “Manderley on bad acid”. There he discovers some of his grandfather’s paintings, as well as a hidden talent within himself. Things become complicated, however, when in his early teens he begins to have strange visions. And in modern-day London, American journalist Daniel Rowland is attempting to write a book called Mortal Love, a study of the legend of Tristan and Iseult through the ages. Until, that is, his musician friend Nick Hayward introduces him to a mysterious woman who changes the direction of his research (among other things).

Don’t you love parallel storylines? I do, especially when they come together as beautifully as these do. I want to climb onto a rooftop and shout about how everyone should read this book right now. However, I realize that part of my enthusiasm has to do with the fact that Mortal Love is so very me: Victorian London, Cornwall, Pre-Raphaelite artists, lost paintings, folklore and mythology, references to Goblin Market, The Mabinogion, The Owl Service, a scene with Lady Wilde, and so on. If you love these things too, then I’ll predict you’ll also find yourself fighting the urge to climb onto the nearest rooftop to shout about this book.

But you know what, even if you don’t, there’s plenty to love here: the lovely writing, the wonderful atmosphere, the subtle and tasteful eroticism, all the references to art history, the characters, the exciting plot, and the very universal themes it deals with: love, obsession and its dangers, passion and longing, losing something or someone and learning how to let go, and the relationship between beauty and mortality and art.

I confess that I’ve always been a bit sceptic about the association between artistic genius, melancholy and madness, and Mortal Love touches on that. But I really like the way this was dealt with here: it’s not superficial, and it goes beyond Romantic stereotypes about art and those who create it. What it does is deal with the very human urge to create, and how it can consume us; with how art is often related to our knowledge that beauty—that life itself—is ephemeral, that time is always passing, that there's no escaping loss. And believe me, it does this very well.

Then there’s the fact that it goes back to the roots of myth and fairy lore: there’s nothing about Mortal Love that is tame or cute. What it is is mysterious, dark, ambiguous, sensual and frightening. Reading it reminded me of Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrless, of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, of The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers (minus the complicated mythology), of The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt. And it’s not that it resembles any of these books—to be honest, it resembles nothing I’ve read before. It's just that some of the things I loved about them can also be found in Mortal Love. Ah, I just want to hug this book.


Pan and Psyche by Edward Burne-Jones
Memorable passages:

When I was a kid, Red gave me a book that contained images of Louis Wain’s schizophrenic fractal cats. I recognized in them the pattern that my grandfather’s late painting followed, nearly photorealistic detail giving way to fancy and, in the end, ferociously fragmented, almost purely geometric images, like the endlessly replicating honeycombs traced across your eyelids during an acid trip.

In real life Goldengrove was creepy as shit, especially the yews that shadowed the house’s entrance like thunderheads. My grandfather had planted them over a century before. He loved to pain trees, and he had a knack for growing real ones that looked positively demonic. The gardens were filled with them: melancholy crabapples, wind-savaged poplars, stands of birches cancerous with peeling bark.
None were as disturbing as the yews, great tortured-looking trees with red berries that glistened like eyes and blackish needles thatched with spiderwebs. Their branches blocked the sun from my bedroom and knocked ceaselessly against the glass if there was the slightest wind at night.

“What you feel for her, Daniel,” she whispered, and her hands rested upon his shoulders, light as leaves falling. “That desire for something hopeless, for what is already gone, for what can never be yours—we, too, know that. Every time we touch you, we taste your mortality. It is the closest we come to understanding what it is like for you: to live knowing that you will die.”

Other Opinions:
A Book a Week
(Did I miss yours?)

Also, you can read a wonderful interview with Elizabeth Hand by Cheryl Morgan at Strange Horizons.

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Unauthorized Pleasures by Ellen Bayuk Rosenman (and clearing off my shelves)

When we think of the Victorians and sexuality, it's likely that words like “stiff” or “repressed” are among the first to come to mind. But in Unauthorized Pleasures: Accounts of Victorian Erotic Experience, Ellen Bayuk Rosenman examines what lies beneath the surface: the voices of dissent, those who refused to accept the pathologization of sexuality, and the hidden world of Victorian pornography and court scandals.

Rosenman’s point is not quite to say that the predominant picture we have of sexuality in the Victorian age is inaccurate, but rather to point out that it doesn’t tell the whole story. With this goal in mind, she analysis several primary sources. She says:

My aim here is to enrich our map, to sketch the topography in more detail, to fill in the blank spaces, to treat the borders between normality and deviance, heterosexuality and homosexuality, masculinity and femininity as territories in themselves. In their lively, resourceful engagement with their culture, these documents reveal the complex, varied and subtle texture of erotic lives in the Victorian age.

The texts she looks at include medical documents about the spermatorrhea panic (the belief that excessive ejaculation, caused by either masturbation or unrestrained sexual activity, resulted in the enfeeblement of the body and mind), the pornographic memoir in ten volumes My Secret Life, works by Wilkie Collins, Alexander Walker and Arthur Munby, and accounts of the court case of Theresa Longworth, whose husband Charles Yelverton denied ever having married her.

Some of these were more compelling than others, but most of all I liked how she gave me glimpses of things that I’ll probably never pick up myself (Wilkie Collins not included, of course), but which were interesting to hear about. I was particularly interested in Theresa Longworth's story: I'm not likely to ever read court reports myself, but I've just recently realized that Victorian court cases are absolutely fascinating to read about, so I'm thankful for the short version presented here.

I should tell you that Ellen Bayuk Rosenman is a literary critic and not a historian – it’s not that this is a bad thing, but it means that her method was different from what I was expecting when I picked up this book. It was quite theoretical, and it's clear that the book was written more with fellow academics and researchers than with a general audience in mind. It was still interesting because the subject matter is interesting, but I'll admit that it was slower and less gripping than I had anticipated. Also, her approach has psychoanalytic leanings – not so much in her interpretation of events as in the kind of language she uses. But I know this won’t be as off-putting for others as it was for me.

But on to the good things: Rosenman is interested in what sexuality tells us about gender roles, and this is something that interests me too. As we all know, gender was extremely strict in the Victorian era, but there's still a lot to be discovered if we look between the lines. Rosenman looks at the cracks and contradictions – the belief that men were the “stronger sex” versus their constant fear of enfeeblement; the idea that women were above having sexual feelings versus the stereotype of the seductress, the temptress, the hypersexual woman (something which is far from being a thing from the past, I might add); the discrepancy between official stances and what actually went on in people’s private lives.

As you can see, Unauthorized Pleasures gave me quite a lot to think about. I did find it a bit dry at times, but if you’re interested in the Victorian era or in the history of sexuality, I’d say give it a go.

Interesting bits:

As hysteria and the rest cure did for women, spermatorrhea offered a refuge from the demands of a rigid gender role, supplying a pretext for an otherwise unacceptable self-indulgence. But the label of illness also ensured that these states would continue to be defined as deviant and undesirable. The dichotomy of sick and well underscored other dichotomies that preserved this version of phallic masculinity –soft and hard, open and closed, liquid and solid—as absolute.

What Cohen calls the “unspeakeability” of sex implies a threshold of explicitness that literature must not cross; respecting that threshold requires literary language to cultivate subtlety and ambiguity in order to express what it cannot openly declare. And, like the bedroom threshold that a bride crosses on her wedding night—or, rather, across which she is carried by her husband, to preserve her erotic passivity—the threshold of discursive explicitness marks the gulf between the virginal heroine and the sexually aware woman.

(Have you posted about this book too? Let me know and I'll be glad to add your link here.)

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You've probably seen me say a that I'm getting tired of reading challenges and that I'm not going to join any more at least a dozen times. And it's true! I mean it when I say it! Until, that is, the next irresistible one comes along. Such is the case with S. Krishan's Clear Off Your Shelves Challenge. The goal is to read from your tbr pile, and so it goes with my book buying ban like honey goes with lemon tea.

And plus I love that instead of listening books we want to read, we decide on a percentage. I'm going to go with 80% - I'm not meant to be reading anything but books from my tbr pile, but I want to make allowances for the new library card I mean to get.

I don't know what it is about challenges. Perhaps it's the fact that they allow me to pretend I'm accomplishing something. I may by twenty-*cough* and unemployed and clueless in a thousand different ways, but hey, I'm doing something! I'm reading those books on my shelves!

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Deogratias: A Tale of Rwanda by J.P. Stassen

The story told in Deogratias is set in Rwanda in 1994 and 1995. Deogratias is a boy who belongs to the Hutu ethnic group. He goes to school with two girls who belong to the Tutsi group, and ends up dating one of them. This is 1994 – the year when around a million Tutsi people were murdered with machetes (the women often being raped before they were killed) in an organized genocide.

Deogratias doesn’t depict the genocide itself – it takes place before and after. Before is when Deogratias, Apollinaria and Benina lived and talked and laughed and went to school together. And after, we see a broken, crazed Deogratias haunted by the image of dogs eating the intestines of bodies – haunted by the unspeakable violence he witnessed and by his role in it. The killings are never actually portrayed graphically, and the violence takes place off the pages. But the implication is enough.

I should start by warning you that I cried for something like half an hour after I finished this book, and that I’ve been thinking about it often ever since. I should also apologize to Jason and hope he won’t take it personally if my post sounds like a response to his – it’s just that I found it when looking for reviews to link to, and it got me thinking about what it is that a book like Deogratias does, and what it aims to do.

The story told here is fragmented: it’s not neat, it doesn’t offer hope, and it doesn’t make the kind of narrative sense we’ve come to expect from stories. But I think that’s intentional. How do you even begin to make sense of something like this? A genocide that happened not even two decades ago, whose effects can still be felt today – something so big, and yet something so much of the world barely even knows about?


In the introduction, the translator Alexis Siegel says: “…it is only through deep, heartfelt understanding that we can hope to overcome—within ourselves, first—the false divisions that have brought such horror into the world. And find reasons to hope.” This is really the reason why I read books like Deogratias: because without a personal connection, it’s only through stories, fragmented or not, that I develop this kind of empathy and understanding. To put it simply, stories make me care. And it’s not even that the kind of images we're shown on TV desensitize me – comics include images too, after all. It’s just that stories force me to step into the shoes of another human being in a way that news reports don't. They’re as close as I’ll ever get to being personally involved.

Having said this, I’m the last person you'd catch telling others that they have some sort of moral obligation to read a book that will upset them. And yes, Deogratias is upsetting and relentlessly dark and depressing. It shows humans at their very worst, and no, there are no acts of kindness to counterbalance that. So, you know. I’m sure you all know your limits as readers enough to be able to tell whether or not this would be too much for you. Personally, I’m glad I read it.


To end on a lighter note: Deogratias reinforces my decision to read First Second Books’ entire catalogue. I’ve yet to read a book of theirs that wasn’t amazing.

Reviewed at:
The YA YA YAs
A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy
5-Squared
The Zen Leaf
Book Addiction

(Did I miss yours?)

And you can see a list of books on the Rwanda Genocide at Maw Books.

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Dangerous Angels by Francesca Lia Block

Dangerous Angels collects Francesca Lia Block’s five Weetzie Bat novellas, originally published between 1989 and 1995: Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan and the controversial Baby Be-Bop. And how do I even begin to tell you what they’re about? I think I’ll have to resort to quoting Nick Hornby’s immortal words in Shakespeare Wrote for Money:

Weetzie Bat is, I suppose, about single mothers and AIDS and homosexuality and loneliness, but that’s like saying that “Desolation Row” is about Cinderella and Einstein and Bette Davis. And actually, when I was trying to recall the last time I was exposed to a mind this singular, it was Dylan’s book Chronicles that I thought of—not because Block thinks or writes in a similar way, and she certainly doesn’t write or think about similar things, but because this kind of originality in prose is very rare indeed.

The prose is indeed unique, as is the world Block created (which is our world but-not-quite), and this a big part of what makes these books so amazing. Still, I suppose a short synopsis of sorts might be helpful: the books are urban fairy tales set in LA, and they begin when Weetzie Bat meets her best friend Dirk in high school. Dirk is gay and dreams of finding someone to love; Weetzie is not and dreams of the same. There’s a magical plot involving a genie and three wishes, and Dirk and Weetzie do end up meeting two special someones. I won’t tell you how, but I can tell you that their troubles don't end there. The rest of the series focuses on Weetzie’s children, Witch Baby and Cherokee Bat, except for Baby Be-Bop, which is a prequel of sorts about Dirk’s life before he met Weetzie.

That’s just the basic plot, and as I was saying before, the plot doesn’t tell you much. You know, these books are almost too much: too quirky, too twee, too cutesy and punk fairy tale-ish; too colourful, too hyper, too full of perfect characters who surf and cook vegetarian meals and worry about the world. Except they never are. Because suddenly there are these little moments that absolutely shatter me, and I find myself crying and don’t even know how it happened, how Francesca Lia Block managed to do that. But manage she does, again and again. Believe me, it takes quite a bit for me to love books that use expressions like “lanky lizards” and “slinkster-cool” so freely and that have characters named My Secret Agent Lover Man. But I loved these.

My favourite was probably Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, in which Weetzie’s daughters and their boyfriends start a band. It’s the most fairy tale-ish of them all, with a pair of wings and fur pants and goat horns with strange powers. But it’s not about magic, and not even mainly about music. The boyfriends are not boyfriends when the story begins, so it’s about that moment between childhood and adulthood; about sexual awakening and longing and love, about vulnerability and fear; about passion, identity and belonging. It’s such a beautiful book.

And oh, so is Missing Angel Juan, a ghost story of sorts in which Witch Baby, Weetzie’s misfit almost-daughter, spends Christmas in New York on her deceased almost-grandfather’s apartment, and roams the streets looking for her boyfriend Angel Juan. And while she's at it she learns how to let go, how to let the boy she loves have room for other things in his life. Oh, just read it. I can’t do it justice, but it’s beautiful and slightly unsettling and very very moving.

And then there’s Baby Be-Bop, in which we see a young Dirk fall in love for the first time, and worry about what it all means, and fear that there’s something wrong with him, that his grandmother who raised him will reject him, that nobody will ever accept him because he likes boys. I honestly cried every five pages or so: it's so human, so painful, and ultimately so full of love.

My favourite thing about all these books is really how full of love they are. It’s not easy to create something this earnest, this completely devoid of cynicism, and this fragile and vulnerable that doesn’t fall apart. There were a hundred moments in which these books could have become sentimental or clichéd, but they never ever did. And I love them for it.



A few of my favourite passages:

You can feel sad and worse when your dad moves to another city, when an old lady dies, or when your boyfriend goes away. But grief is different. Weetzie’s heart cringed in her like a dying animal. It was as if someone had stuck a needle full of poison into her heart. She moved like a sleepwalker. She was the girl in the fairy tale sleeping in a prison of thorns and roses.

There was a constant tossing and turning of their bodies, a constant burning heat. She remembered how she had slept before—a caterpillar in a cocoon, muffled and peaceful. Now she woke up fragile and shaky like some new butterfly whose wings are still translucent green, easy to tear and awaiting their color. All day she smelled Raphael on her skin.

An amusement park in winter is like when you go to the place where you went with the person you love but they’re not with you anymore. Everything rickety and cold and empty. If you had cotton candy it would burn your lips and cut your throat like spun pink glass. If you rode the roller coaster you’d have to hold on tight to the bar to keep your whole body from being lifted off the sea with nobody there to hang on to except maybe a ghost.

The skinheads were on him all at once. Dirk saw their eyes glittering like mica chips with the reflections of his own self-loathing. He wondered if he deserved this because he wanted to touch and kiss a boy. The sound of everything was so loud and he kept seeing the skinhead skulls with the stubble, the bunches of flesh at the back of the neck like a bulldog’s. His own head felt like a shell. A thin one you could crush on the beach. He had never realized how delicate his head was. This pain was hardly different from what he had always felt inside—torn, jarred, pummelled. In a way it was a relief—a confirmation of that other pain. But he wanted to escape it all finally.

Other Opinions:
Becky’s Book Reviews
Stella Matutina: Missing Angel Juan, Baby Be-Bop
An Adventure in Reading: Weetzie Bat
Valentina's Room: Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys
somewhere i have never travelled - Weetzie Bat
I'm Here, I'm Queer, What the Hell do I Read? - Baby Be-Bop
Paperback Reader - Weetzie Bat
Nothing of Importance

(Did I miss yours?)

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The Sunday Salon - It's a Mystery

After finishing - and really enjoying - The Woman in White last week, I started thinking, not for the first time, that I really ought to read more mysteries. The trouble is, the genre is so vast and so diverse that I felt a bit of that reluctance that I sometimes see on people's faces whenever the subject of reading more fantasy comes up.

It's the same with every genre, I guess: there's enough variety that there will be books belonging to it to suit everyone's taste, but how do we find them? I'm hoping that the answer will be, "why, you ask your blogging friends, of course!" I know some of you are well-acquainted with mystery, and you know my taste pretty well by now. So tell me, what should I read?

I thought it would be fun, and maybe even useful, to put together a list of characteristics that my ideal mystery would have:

• Strong characterization. That's my number selling point for any type of fiction, really.


• It can be dark, but ideally there wouldn't be too much graphic violence. I'm not exactly squeamish, but sometimes violent scenes have a way of repeating themselves over and over again in my head, and I'd like to avoid that.
  


• It'd be atmospheric.

• Ideally, it would have an interesting setting. I'm thinking that historical mysteries and I could become very good friends, but there are so many of them that I feel kind of lost.
  


• It would deal with interesting themes. You know the ones I like: identity, power, gender, connections, social issues, and endless variations of why do people do people-ish things.
  


• It would ask more questions than it would give answers. I mean this more in terms of themes than of plot. Having said that, I don't mind an open ending. I don't mind a neat resolution either, but I just don't want something that won't ask any questions about the world.
  


• In a perfect world, it would be a stand alone, because I really don't need to start any more series. But you might as well disregard this, as I seem to be starting them all the time anyway.

There are a few mysteries - all of which are series, ha! - that I'm considering: First of all, the Amelia Peabody series. I know there's one of them in the picture above, but I haven't actually read any because I have volumes 5, 8 and 7 or something like that - the reason why is a not-so-long story involving my complete inability to resist book bargains. Secondly, the Brother Cadfael series of medieval mysteries. And finally, the Mary Russell series by Laurie R. King. The only but is that I haven't read all that much Sherlock Holmes yet, and I probably should do that first, no? (And no, I haven't read that big black tome in the picture yet either. Then why am I asking for other suggestions? That's a very good question. A very good question indeed.)

So I'm asking you, dear internet, to tell me which of these series I'd like best, or else to recommend something completely different. And if you're feeling chatty, you could tell me wh you think I'd like it, and I'd be even more grateful. Thank you in advance!

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Time to announce the winners of my BBAW giveaways: The Ask and the Answer goes to She at a Book Blog, Period.

Jemima at The Reading Journey and Vivienne at Serendipity win a set of two homemade bookmarks each.

Congratulations! If you happen to see this before you hear from me, please e-mail me your addresses - my e-mail is in my profile, and you can also use my contact form.

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The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

The mystery begins when Walter Hartright, on his way to an estate in Cumberland to tutor two sisters in the art of drawing, meets the woman in white. It’s a dark night, and the woman in white is walking alone on a road in north London. Walter helps her find her way, and later discovers she escaped from a lunatic asylum. But the most intriguing thing of all is that in their short time together, she mentions Limmeridge, the house in Cumberland which is Walter’s destination.

I won’t tell you anything more, as going into this book knowing as little as possible is half the fun. You know how spoilers for classics are almost impossible to avoid? Well, in this case I somehow managed to, so I was able to read The Woman in White with fresh eyes. The plot, however, wasn’t as surprising as it must have been a century and a half ago, as so much of what happens here has become a cornerstone of Gothic fiction.

Take, for example, the structure. The story is told by multiple narrators through letters, journal entries, and testimonies. In the preface to the 1860 edition, Collins explains what he tried to achieve by doing this – to tell the story “as an offence against the law is told in Court by more than one witness.” It made me smile that he explained, as this structure has become so common today.

But common structure and unsurprising plot elements or not, there were still a few twists and turns that did surprise me. And regardless of how unexpected the plot is, who doesn’t love a tale of madness, crime, forgery, secret societies, mistakes, conspiracies, and gloomy mansions? (On that note, how ominous a name is Blackwater Park?)

The Woman in White is so very Victorian. This shows in many ways, including in the language, the setting, the gender roles. But it’s especially Victorian in that the plot itself is only made possible by a very particular social structure. The secrets at the heart of this novel just wouldn’t be possible in today’s world.

One of the things I found the most interesting was the fact that the story explores the cracks in this social structure. It doesn’t quite question it, but it manages to be subtly subversive. Laura is the traditional damsel in distress, but then we have Marian, who is resourceful, brave, and anything but helpless. The story goes beyond social appearances, blurring the lines between gentlemen and villains, questioning what was then thought to be a “natural” association between money, property and education, and strength of character. Nothing is fixed; nothing is what it seems. And the events described bring danger into the domestic sphere, into the hearts of respectable and wealthy homes. There’s also the fact that the central event in this novel highlights the helplessness of married women before the law.

Returning to the structure, I loved the fact that it reinforces this lack of rigidity, and the theme of the illusory nature of appearances. Because we see events through the eyes of several different characters, there is no definitive version of the truth, which makes the story more ambiguous and complex. For example, Eliza Michelson, the housekeeper at Blackwater Park, maintains her positive opinion of a certain character until the very end. In the light of certain revelation it’s likely that most readers will disagree with her, but we’re still forced to see how someone else views this character. I thought this was very clever, and it adds so much to the story.

And in addition to doing all the things it does, The Woman in White also manages to be a very entertaining piece of storytelling. To everyone who told me not to be intimidated just because this was a Victorian chunkster: you were so right. It was so readable, so difficult to put down, so gripping and atmospheric – and funny too! While the story does unfold at a slow pace, especially at first, I was never bored. I so enjoyed the mood, the language, the characters and their interactions – seriously, how brilliant a creation is Count Fosco?

Other Opinions: (Lots and lots of them)
Rebecca Reads, Trish’s Reading Nook, Book Nut, Girl Detective, Musings of a Bookish Kitty, A Reader’s Journal, books i done read, The Zen Leaf, Stella Matutina, Books N’ Border Collies, Bibliolatry, 1 More Chapter, BiblioAddict, A Garden Carried in the Pocket, Reading Reflections, Library Queue, Andrea’s Book Nook, Tip of the Iceberg, The Blog Jar, A Book Blog, Period

(Please let me know if I missed yours!)

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PS: BBAW has been lots of fun, but also slightly overwhelming, which is the reason why I’m behind on replying to comments, visiting other blogs, and don’t even get me started on e-mail. To my new visitors, welcome! I hope nobody will feel ignored. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all the comments I’ve been receiving. I hope you’ll make yourselves at home, and I look forward to interacting with you.

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In Which I do the Earnest/Awkward Thing Again + BBAW Giveaway the Second

So, some two years and a half ago, when I first sat down to start doing This Thing in Which I Blab About Books on the Internet in the Hope that Someone Will Come By and Talk to Me About Them Because Sadly Nobody I Know IRL Seems Inclined to Do So, I had no idea what I was doing. I'm not the most confident person, and there were a few moments where I nearly panicked and went to find a hole to hide in, because what was I doing? Writing about books? In a foreign language?! Somewhere where anyone could read it?!?

Two years and a half later, I still don't feel that I know what I'm doing, but at least I no longer panic on a daily basis, and it's because of you. And not because you've made me feel appreciated, even though you very much have. If I feel a bit more confident, it's because of everything I've learned from you, my fellow bloggers. You've taught me to ask more questions, to strive to articulate my thoughts better, to engage with ideas even if they make me uncomfortable: to be a better reader and a better writer. And the best thing of all? Thanks to all of this, I've learned to appreciate books even more. I didn't think this was possible, but it turns out it was.

I've always taken awards with a grain of salt, and BBAW is no exception: no award should be seen as the ultimate proof of quality, and if someone were to ask if the results of the voting didn't owe something to name recognition within a group, I'd say that was a very fair question. But. This week has meant something to me, and it has meant something to others too. Not just because of the awards - definitely not just because of the awards. But because we've all been having fun and connecting with others, and I really think that was the goal.

It still surprises me that there are people who actually read my musings on books, and it surprises me even more that they listen, but I feel like I'm part of something now, and that means the world to me. And because I'm really thankful to all the people who continue to teach me how to be a better blogger and a better reader, let me point you towards some of them. These are some of my reviewing heroes: they may not even know they've helped me (I stalk some of them sort of quietly) but they really have: A Striped Armchair, YA Fabulous, Raging Bibliomania, third-storey window, Stella Matutina, Musings of a Bookish Kitty, Tales From the Reading Room, Nonsuch Book, Jenny's Books. And Dewey. Always Dewey.

Visit these people: they have intelligent things to say, and they know how to say them. This whole thing sounds ridiculously like an acceptance speech, doesn't it? That is not how I meant it, though. I promise!

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Moving on: When I'm not reading, blabbing about books on the internet, or being awkward and socially inept, I like to make things. And one of the things I like to make is bookmarks. I also like inflicting my creations on people, and this is where you come in. Here's a picture of the last batch I made:

Things that I'm not: A Good Photographer. Also, click to enlarge

If you're interested in a set of my homemade bookmarks, just leave me a comment describing your favourite bookmark. Or better yet, link to a picture! If you don't have a favourite bookmark, you can tell me what you usually mark your books with. I promise I'll still enter you in the giveaway even if you're a dog-earer. I'll draw two winners on Sunday and they'll each get a set of two bookmarks. Good luck!

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The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (with a Thank You)

Today's BBAW blogging topic is to write about a book we were introduced to by a fellow blogger. So let me begin by telling you how I discovered Tove Jansson's wonderful The Summer Book: some weeks ago I wrote a post asking for recommendations of quiet, subtle books about connections, not necessarily romantic ones, and Gavin suggested this book. And as I was telling you the other day, if there's one thing I know it's that I can trust Gavin's recommendations. There's one more blogger I can thank for my discovery of Tove Jansson: Cath at Read Warbler. I confess I had never heard of Jansson before, not even of the Moomin books, until Cath posted a link to the "Which Fantasy Writer Are You?" quiz. My number one result was, not very surprisingly, Philip Pullman. But the quiz told me I was also like Ursula K. Le Guin and Tove Jansson. Considering how much I love the first two authors, it only made sense to read the third as soon as possible (my edition of the book, by the way, has a blurb by Philip Pullman).

But anyway, let me tell you about The Summer Book: It's a novel in stories, about a summer that six-year-old Sophia and her grandmother spend together on a small island in the Gulf of Finland. Sophia's mother is dead, but her presence, or rather her absence, haunts these pages. Sophia's father is also spending the summer on the island, but it's the child's relationship with her grandmother that is at the centre of these stories.

I could tell you that my favourite stories were "Of Angleworms and Others", about a tract Sophia dictates to her grandmother about small critters and their vulnerability; "The Cat", about the independent cat Sophia loves and the affectionate one she does not; and "The Tent", about the first time Sophia sleeps in a tent. But that wouldn't be saying much, because the charm of The Summer Book isn't in what happens in these stories. It's in its humour, its gentle irony, its wisdom, its quiet tenderness and understated feelings.

Sophia and her grandmother explore their small island and some of its neighbours, and while they're at it they have conversations about live and death, loss, memory, faith, growing up and growing old, humankind's relationship with nature, and the people that surround them. These conversations are simple - there isn't a single line of dialogue that sounds unbelievable for a six-year-old - but they're moving and meaningful all the same. Together, the two learn how to move around people, how to love a place, and how to let it go.

The island itself is treated almost like a character, and The Summer Book's wonderful sense of place was yet another thing I loved about it. I could almost smell the salt and hear the waves; it made me want to be near the sea. This book is not in any way an environmental treaty disguised as a novel, but the sensibility behind it is very much one of respect, of consciousness when it comes to our impact on the places we inhabit. Sophia and her grandmother love the island, and they treat it with a tenderness and care that befits that love.

Probably not everyone will love The Summer Book, but if you don't mind a slower, gentle, subtle read, then I highly recommend that you give it a try. These stories have been in my mind ever since I finished it, and the more I think about it, the more I realize how much it really touched me.


Bits I liked:

If only she were a little bigger, Grandmother thought. Preferably a good deal bigger, so I could tell her that I understand how awful it is. Here you come, headlong into a tight little group of people who have always lived together, who have the habit of moving around each other on land they know and own and understand, and every threat to what they're used to only makes them still more compact and self-assured. An Island can be dreadful for someone from outside. Everything is complete, and everyone has his obstinate, sure and self-sufficient place. Within their shores, everything functions according to rituals that are hard as rock from repetition, and at the same time they amble through their days as whimsically and casually as if the world ended at their horizon.

"He is no longer among us," Verner explained angrily.
"Oh, you mean he's dead," said Grandmother. She started thinking about all the euphemisms for death, all the anxious taboos that had always fascinated her. It was too bad you could never have an intelligent discussion on the subject. People were either too young or too old, or else they didn't have time.

One summer, Sophia was suddenly afraid of small animals, and the smaller they were, the more afraid she was. This was altogether new. Ever since the first time she trapped a spider in a matchbox in order to make it a pet, her summers had been full of caterpillars, tadpoles, worms, beetles, and similar uncompanionable creatures, whom she provided with everything they could want from life, including, eventually, their freedom. Now everything was changed. She walked about with cautious, anxious steps, staring constantly at the ground, on the lookout for things that crept and crawled. Bushes were dangerous, and so were sea grass and rain water. There were little animals everywhere.

They Read It Too:
Vulpes Libris
Stuck in a Book
Paperback Reader
Libri Touches

(Did I miss yours?)

And look! Ali Smith loved it too.

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The Impostor’s Daughter by Laurie Sandell

In The Impostor’s Daughter, Laurie Sandell tells the story of her difficult relationship with her father. She grew up idolizing him, and listening in rapture to his stories of duels in Argentina, adventures in Vietnam, and personal relationships with some of the world’s most influential people. But as she gets older, she begins to realize that her father is not the man she believed him to be. As she tries to discover and come to terms with the truth about her father, Laurie also has to deal with her own search for identity. Her story is one of world travel, loneliness, sexual experimentation, substance addiction, the search for intimacy, and, eventually, peace.

My reaction to The Impostor’s Daughter most likely has to do with how I feel about memoirs in general. For me to find them interesting, I have to be very interested in the person of whose life I’m getting a glimpse. And to be honest I feel like a bit of a jerk for even saying this, because it almost equals saying that someone’s life isn’t worth reading about. That’s really not how I mean it, though. Everyone feels drawn to different people, and for that reason I’m sure that some of you would love The Impostor’s Daughter.

As for me, I can’t quite say I didn’t like it – I can’t find flaws in the storytelling, except perhaps in the fact that some of the sections seemed to go by too fast. I read it in a single sitting, and I really liked the art. Also, I liked the fact that Laurie Sandell used the comics medium well – this isn't just prose with accompanying pictures. But all along, I felt disconnected from the story. I suspect that this has to do with the fact that I had some trouble relating to the impact her father’s lies had on her own sense of identity.

I always worry I’ll sound unsympathetic when I say these things. Some of you may remember I had a similar problem with The Forgotten Garden. I understand what it’s like to feel betrayed when someone you love is dishonest with you. But I don’t understand how someone else’s lies invalidate your own experiences. Laurie grew up with a larger-than-life man for a father. It turns out that his stories weren’t true, but to me that doesn’t make the impact these stories had on her any less real. Does this make sense? Anyway, sense of disconnection aside, I actually enjoyed reading about an emotional experience that is so different from my own. I want to understand why people feel the way they do about things.

There were other ways in which Laurie’s experiences felt alien to me: she finds a job interviewing celebrities for a renowned magazine, for example, and she talks about how great it felt to be sitting at a table with these people and feeling all eyes in the room on her; to feel that people envied her because she was the one sitting at their table talking to them. I never really got the whole celebrity cult thing, so that was a little strange to me. But again, this doesn’t mean it wasn’t interesting to read about.

This post is probably sounding more negative than I intended it to, so let me focus on some positive things: I like the fact that she approaches the question of writing her father’s story in the book. Before The Impostor’s Daughter, she wrote a piece for a magazine about her father’s lies, and the whole process is documented here, along with her family’s reaction to it. And I liked that there were moments of vulnerability, moments that moved me, as well as moments that made me laugh.

If you tend to like memoirs, you’ll probably enjoy The Impostor’s Daughter more than I did. As for me, I continue not to know how I feel about them. The ones I love I really love (hello Fun Home), so I’m not quite ready to swear them off. Do you read memoirs often? Do you like them? Why or why not?

A few samples of the art:




Other Opinions:
Bookfoolery and Babble (Thank you again for sending me this book, Nancy!)
Kiss a Cloud
Nonsuch Book
Bermudaonion’s Weblog
She Reads and Reads
At Home with Books
Graphic Novel Reporter
Trish's Reading Nook

(Please let me know if I missed yours.)

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Meet Sandy at You've GOTTA Read This

As part of Book Blogger Appreciation Week, several bloggers agreed to be paired and interview each other. My partner is Sandy Nawrot. Before I became a subscriber, I'd think of You've GOTTA Read This as "that blog with the lovely cat in the header". I've given you a reason to visit already, haven't I? Here are a few more - Sandy is smart, approachable, friendly, and a pleasure to talk to. But I'll let you see that for yourselves:

I am 43 years old, live in Orlando, FL, have two kids (Emma, 11 and Ryan, 9), and have been married for 17 years as of tomorrow! [August 21st] Five years ago, I quit a corporate management position to stay home with my kids. Raising a family with an 80 hour work week and travel was providing me a one-way ticket to the looney bin. I was exhausted and burned out. Luckily we were in the position that we could afford to do this, and I haven't looked back. I stay busy. I golf, I volunteer at the kids' school (I am the Book Fair Queen), and I do all the pool, house and yard work. And blogging of course!

One aspect of my life that invades many topics is my husband's background. He was born and raised in communist Poland, and came to the US when he was 19. He has a very fascinating and colorful family history that is deeply intertwined with WWI, WWII and the Solidarity movement. We visit Poland every other year to see my husband's parents, sister and nephew.


Sandy and her family in Poland
I hope you don't mind if I borrow one of your questions - it's just that it's a really good one! Can you tell us a little bit about how you first started blogging?
A year ago, I never would have dreamed of having a blog. I love to read, and always have, and I love to write, but it never crossed my mind. My sister has been maintaining a movie review blog for the last couple of years, and I've always admired her for that. Last October, I mentioned to her in passing that I wished I could find a good online book club, but hadn't had any luck. She said (I imagine an infamous word bubble that is still floating in my house somewhere) "Well, hell, sis! Do your own book blog. What do you have to lose? I'd read it!". Oh yeah right. I told my husband, and he just shook his head. But the seed was planted, and pretty soon, that is all I could think about. I was insecure about the whole thing, but I couldn't get the idea out of my head. A week later, I published my first inane post.

I very much doubt it was inane! One of the first things I noticed about you was that you're a great commenter. You always have something thoughtful and encouraging to say. So I thought I'd ask you to share some of the reasons why commenting is so important to you.
Comments have always been very important to me. For awhile, I felt like I was blogging to myself. I knew my mom and sister were reading it, but they never uttered a word. But you get that first comment (on Tana French's The Likeness, I remember!) and over the moon I went. I know how good it feels to get feedback, and like to make sure I return the favor. Beyond that, I am just a chatterbox and never shut up!

Agreed! About the feedback that is, not you being a chatterbox. Do you find it hard to juggle your offline life, posting on your own blog, commenting on others, and making time for other hobbies, etc.? Any time management tricks you could tell us about?
Well, that is the million dollar question for all of us, isn't it? God help me if I worked. I'm probably not a good person to ask this question, as I can have balance issues. I try to get a good bulk of my socializing, and review-writing done early in the morning and in the evening so it doesn't take away from my other life. I am notorious, however, for stopping by the computer for a quick glance while I am cleaning the house. Or stopping by the computer in the middle of the night when I get up to get a drink of water. Then of course there's the reading! Have to squeeze that in somewhere as well...

What's your all-time favourite book? If picking just one is too hard, maybe you could tell us about a book you love but haven't discussed on your blog before?
Hoo boy. It would even be hard to list my top 10. I loved Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet...I read that while I was on a work stint in England. Talk about two worlds colliding! The sequel World Without End was good too. In Cold Blood blew me away. The Harry Potter series is a pure delight. The Devil in the White City...a serial murderer and Chicago history...can't get any better than that. Beach Music by Pat Conroy would be up there near the top. All of these books were read before I started my blog. I know I just totally disregarded your request for one. Sorry...

Don't worry! I doubt any of us could pick just one. My next question is: if someone who's thinking of starting their own book blog were to ask you for a few tips, what would you tell them?
I've actually given this advice to a couple of my friends. One tip would be exactly what my sister told me - what do you have to lose? Put it out there, experiment with it, fine-tune it, then tell all your friends when you are happy. Another tip would be to socialize. Get out there and let people you know exist. Leave comments, be friendly, and the traffic will swing your way. Last tip? Don't take it too seriously. Have fun. You don't have to post every day (unless you are an obsessive overachiever like me), you don't have to go through your blogroll and visit every post, and if you don't get an award that is going around, no big deal. (I think I need to take my own advice - ha!)

Excellent advice, Sandy. Now tell us about a great book or author you discovered thanks to blogging!
My dear friend Jackie at Farm Lane Books sent me a birthday gift this year, a book called Random Acts of Heroic Love by Danny Scheinmann. This was one of Jackie's favorites from 2008. I'd never heard of this book and probably never would have, had it not been for blogging. It is an amazing, touching book that earned a serious 5 star from me.

You've mention on your blog that you have family in Poland and visit there regularly. What are your favourite things about travelling? Maybe you could tell us about your favourite place that you visited, either in Poland or elsewhere?
My family loves to travel. My husband and I are fortunate enough to have my parents available to watch the kids so we can get away on our own (we love golfing trips), but we also enjoy taking the kids along as well. You get so wrapped up in your day-to-day lives, that it is easy to lose touch. On vacation, though, you reconnect, you have earnest discussions, and adventures together. Traveling to Poland, specifically, is extra special because of the time we have with my in-laws. They bask in the company of their grandchildren. Poland has some beautiful country to see also. For the third time in our trips there, we spent some of our vacation in the Tatra Mountains, on the southern border by Slovakia. We rented a big house that overlooks this majestic mountain range. We grilled kielbasa over an outdoor firepit, went rafting on a river that runs through a gorge, and hiked until we couldn't walk. I'm not sure if I could come up with a destination that we have enjoyed more than that. Except maybe for Californian wine country, but that is a whole different ballgame!


Sandy's children in Poland - how gorgeous a place is this?

Thank you so much, Sandy! Chatting with you was a pleasure. You can visit Sandy's blog to read her interview with me. And also to get to know her better, of course!

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Wolf by Gillian Cross

‘The what?’ Cassy snorted and put the drawing down on the floor again. ‘That’s just nonsense. Wolves are wolves, and people are people.’
‘It’s not quite as simple as that.’ Robert looked earnest and pompous, as if he were giving a lecture. ‘The way we think about wolves is twisted up with the way we think about ourselves. We’d been linked for thousands of years. Perhaps for millions.’

Gillian Cross’ Carnegie Medal winning Wolf is not exactly a retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood” – it’s rather a story that incorporates and subverts some of the fairy tale’s main elements. And it does this in a very original way. Thirteen-year-old Cassy lives in London with her grandmother. Because Nan isn’t feeling very well, she sends Cassy to stay with her mother for some time. But Cassy can put two and two together, and she realizes that she’s always sent away after a stranger’s late-night visits to her grandmother’s flat .

Cassy’s mother, Goldie, lives with her partner and his son Robert. They run a company called Moongazer that puts together school plays, and the one they’re currently working on is about wolves: both the real animals and the mythical beasts. With Robert’s help, Cassy tries to find out the real reason why she was sent away by her Nan, as well as the identity of the real wolf at the door.

I loved Wolf: it's so smart and surprising. I’m not exactly sure what I expected when I picked it up, but what I got was something entirely different. This is a story about people, much more so than it is about wolves; about our potential for violence and kindness; about courage, resourcefulness, desperation and fear; about the things we believe in and the things we do.

But the wolves, of course, are still very much there. I love the fact that Wolf deconstructs the image we have of them without romanticizing them either. They’re neither monsters nor noble beasts: they’re animals, and the way we have chosen to perceive them says a lot more about us than it does about them. I also appreciate the fact that, without ever beating readers over the head with it, the book very much has an environmentalist slant.




But none of this actually is what is at the heart of this story. I can't tell you much more because this is a short book and it's very easy to give too much away. But I can say that the secret Cassy uncovers is, quite literally, a matter of life or death. And discovering it means she has to come to terms with her past, find a way to forgive those she loves the most, and rethink some of her assumptions about the world she lives in. Wolf is dark, mysterious, meaningful, and impossible to put down.

One more bit I liked:

‘What is this thing you’ve got about real life?’ Robert said quietly. ‘Real life and real people? That doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a way of making walls, to shut out what’s uncomfortable. And it doesn’t work, you know. If things are there, you have to admit it in the end.’

Other Opinions:
Words by Annie

(Did I miss yours?)

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Blogs You Should Be Reading

As part of BBAW, today we're all invited to highlight some of our favourite book blogs that weren't included in the shortlists for the BBAW Awards. I have far too many favourites (don't worry, though, I won't let my cats and dogs starve), so I came up with this list through the highly scientific process of opening my favourites folder and going "eeny, meeny, miny, moe".

But really, you should be reading them:

Page 247 - Gavin is one of the bloggers whose taste is the most similar to mine, so I know I can always trust her recommendations.

Bookgirl's Nightstand - Iliana is a veteran among book bloggers. She's smart, friendly, and a very talented writer and crafter.

Kiss a Cloud - Like Iliana, Claire has many talents. I'm in awe of her skills as a photographer - she always makes everything look so perfect. Not to mention, of course, the fact that she recommends fantastic books.

Books & Other Thoughts - Darla's taste is very eclectic. She reads classics, YA, children's books, fantasy, manga, Gothic novels, you name it. I've lost count of the number of books I've heard of for the first time at her blog.

Fyrefly's Book Blog - As Nicki was saying the other day, even computers think we have similar taste in books. If I ever happen to run out of fantasy recommendations, I know the crisis will be immediately solved if I stop by her blog.

Paperback Reader - Claire is so smart that she'd be intimidating if she wasn't also extremely friendly and approachable. When I go to her blog I'm guaranteed to find something a little different. And I love her coloured bookshelves posts.

Stella Matutina - The thing about Memory's blog is, I'd still be reading it even if I didn't care one bit about the books she reads. If tomorrow she decided to start blogging about fishing instead of books, I'd keep reading. Because yes, her writing is that engaging and entertaining.

Thank you for doing what you do, guys.

What about you? What are some of your favourite blogs?

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BBAW - Giveaway the First

Book Blogger Appreciation Week is almost here, and I thought I'd post my first giveaway The prize is a copy of The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness, and all you have to do to be entered is answer a few questions. The book is the sequel to The Knife of Never Letting Go, and if you haven't read it yet, well, here's your excuse!

The questions I have for you are:

1. What's your favourite book cover so far this year? It doesn't have to be a book published this year, just one you discovered in 2009.

2. Who's your favourite underrated author?

3. What about an underrated book or series? Is there any you wish more people would discover and love?

4. What was the last book you bought as a gift?

5. Do you have a favourite unsympathetic character? If so, who are they, and why do you like them?

As you can see, they're simple questions, but I thought they'd make things a bit more interesting. The giveaway is open worldwide, and you can enter until the last day of BBAW, which is the 18th. Please make sure I have a way to contact you if you win. Good luck!

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For her weekly Saturday Spotlights feature, Jen at Geek in Me asks her fellow bloggers to answer some great questions about books, reading habits, blogging, etc. Today, she's spotlighting me, and I'd love it if you visited her. Not to hear me blabbing about books some more, but so you can get to know Jen and her fantastic blog. She's a comic book lover, a fellow Neil Gaiman fan, and an all around interesting person.

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